424 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
A similar caterpillar to the aweto lias been found at Tara¬ 
naki, which perfectly changes into a vegetable substance, but 
likewise wants the bulrush. This was dug up in great num¬ 
bers in the garden of J. Wicksteed, Esq., at New Plymouth. 
One specimen of a locust was brought to me ( Sphceria 
Basili), which I have named from its finder, had undergone 
this change, and had also a perfect plant growing from its 
neck, very much resembling a small white fungus found on 
decayed wood. 
Insects having a vegetative process of a similar kind, have 
been discovered in other parts of the world ; and, probably, 
when the flora of each country is more carefully examined, 
will be found existing in most of them. 
Attwood, in his history of Dominica, gives the following 
account of a vegetable fly found in that island :—“ It is of the 
appearance and size of a small cockchafer, and buries itself in 
the ground, where it dies: and from its body springs up a 
small plant, which resembles a young coffee-tree, only that its 
leaves are smaller. It is often over-looked from the supposi¬ 
tion people have of its being none other than a coffee plant; 
but on examining it properly, the difference is easily distin¬ 
guished—the head, body, and feet of the insect appearing at 
the root as perfect as when alive.” 
In the American Philosophical Transactions, the Rev. 
Nicholas Collins describes a certain zoophyton in the Ohio 
county, which he declares is both vegetable and animal; for 
having crawled about the woods in its animal state till it grows 
weary of that mode of existence, it fixes itself in the ground, 
and becomes a stately plant, with a stem issuing out of its 
mouth. 
A small vegetating caterpillar is also found in Britain, the 
sphceria entomorhiza. The Chinese also have a similar plant, 
(sphceria sinensis) called by them hea tsaou tungehung, 
or the summer vegetable winter insect. In Van Diemen’s 
Land there is a vegetating caterpillar (sphceria gunnii); it 
somewhat resembles the New Zealand one, from which it 
chiefly differs in having the stem of its vegetating process 
thicker than the insect from which it arises. 
