BOIS’NET. 
53 
He truly remarks that in philosophy nothing is more 
dangerous than hasty generalisation. His first obser- 
vations led him to believe with Reaumur that all 
Aphides were hermaphrodite, and that they were 
sufficient of themselves for reproduction; but after 
later observation had made him acquainted with the 
male and mature female forms he adopted the second 
hypothesis put forth by our countryman Abraham 
Trembley, viz. that the influence of the male, as exerted 
in the previous autumn, was sufficiently powerful to 
affect numerous future generations, an idea which has 
been more recently revived by Prof. Owen.^ Bonnet 
tells us that he often observed these creatures con- 
secutively from 4 o’clock a.m. to 9 o'clock p.m. His 
diligence was rewarded by witnessing under a lens 
the coitus of a small winged male with the apterous 
female of jouceron de chene’^ of Reaumur, which 
he calls a very elephant amongst the tribe from its 
great size and its remarkably extended proboscis. He 
gives a ludicrous account of the wooing, which was 
accompanied by a rapid vibration of the antennm and 
oscillation of the legs of the insect. He appears to 
have first discovered the singular recurved penis of the 
male^ and afterwards he describes foetus, which 
he affirms to be un veritable oeuf.” Bonnet says 
that if we argued analogically from the ascertained fact 
that the females of certain moths and beetles are wing- 
less, we should arrive at the conclusion that the 
females of Aphides would be also apterous. In the 
true female which deposits eggs he found such to be 
the case. 
In the years 1773 and 1778 the famous Swedish 
naturalist Baron Be Geer published to the world his 
‘ History of Insects’ in seven volumes. In his researches 
* Strictly speaking Trembley was a native of Geneva, but naturalised 
in England. His researches obtained for him the favour of the Royal 
Society, who in 1743 elected him a Fellow and subsequently awarded him 
the Copley medal. He discovered that animals like the Hydroida are 
capable of reproduction, both by a process of budding similar to plants, 
and also by a process of spontaneous subdivision of their bodies. 
