miration was raifed much higher than before, when I obferved
that they would receive no harm, for they had a power of lengthening
their tail about an inch, but that they were not left without
means o f life in a much more increafed depth of water; on
adding a quart more water, it was loon found that the apparent
tail of the infeft was a mere tube, containing within it another
much fmaller, yet fufficiently large for the pafiage o f all the air
that was neceflary to this animal, a fine (lender pipe being immediately
darted up out of this, and extended to the new furface ;
on railing the water two inches higher the pipe was immediately
lengthened again as far as was neceflary, and fo on till the limits
of the glafs fuffered us to carry the experiment no further.
Of the G eneration of Insects.
One o f the greated myfteries in nature is generation, or that
power by which the various fpecies of animals, &c. are propagated
: by which one (ingle individual gives birth to thoufands,
or even millions o f individuals like itfelf; all formed agreeable
to proportions which are only known to that A dorable W isdom
which has eftablifhed them. We (hall never be able to form any
adequate conception of this power, till we are acquainted with
the principles o f life, and can trace their various gradations in
different orders o f beings. Many ancient philofophers, from a,
mifconception and perverfion of the fentiments o f the more ancient
fages, imagined that infefts were produced from corrupt and
putrefied fubftances; that organised bodies, animated with life,
and framed in a mod wonderful manner, owed their origin to
mere chance! Not fo the mod ancient fages ; they taught that
every degree o f life mud proceed from the fountain and fource of
all life, and that therefore, when manifeded, it mud be replete
with infinite wonders ; but then they alfo (hewed, that i f in it’s
defcent through the higher orders o f being it was perverted, it
would be manifeded in loathfome forms, and with filthy pro-
penfities ; and that according to the degree o f reception o f the
Divine goodnefs and truth, or the perverfion thereof, new forms
o f life would be occafionally manifeded. The gloom o f night
dill wraps this fubjeft in obfcurity; will the dawn o f day ere
long gild the horizon of the fcientific world:' or is the time of
it’s breaking forth yet far from us? Be this as it may, infefts
will be found to conform to that general law o f order which
runs through the whole of animated nature, namely, that the
conjunction of the male and female is neceflary for the production
o f their offspring. Where we cannot afcertain caufes, we mud
be content with facts.
Though infeds are, like larger animals, diflinguiflied into
male and female, yet in fome clafles there is a kind o f mules,
partaking o f neither fex, though originating themfelves from the
conjunction o f both:, many other particularities relative to the
fexes can only be touched upon here. ■
In many infefts the male and female are with difficulty diftin-
guilhed, and in fome they differ fo widely, that an unlkilfui
perfon might eafily take the male and female of the lame infeft
for different fpecies ; as for indance, in the phatena humuli,
piniaria, ruflula. The diflimilarity is dill greater in thofe inlefts
in which the male has .wings and the female none, as in the
coccus lampyris, phalaena antiqua, &c.
H h In