The Entomologist's Useful Compendium: Or, An Introduction to the Knowledge of British Insects, Comprising the Best Means of Obtaining and Preserving Them, and a Description of the Apparatus Generally Used; Together with the Genera of Linné, and the Modern Method of Arranging the Classes...according to the Views of Dr. Leach...with Instructions for Collecting and Fitting Up Objects for the Microscope |
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Common terms and phrases
abdomen animals Antenna inserted antennæ antennæ filiform apex base beneath bifid Body oval Brit Carabus clavate claws Coleoptera colour compressed Coombe Wood cylindric dilated Edin elongate elytra Encycl Entomologist external extremities eyes Fabr feet female four fourth joint Gardens Geer genera Genus Geoff Gyll hairy head Heaths Hedges HEMIPTERA hinder Illig Inhabits Europe Inhabits woods insects Jurine Kirby labrum larva larvæ last joint Latr Latreille Leach Linn Linné longer longitudinal male mandibles margin Marsh maxilla maxillary palpi membranaceous Moist Moth mouth nearly notched Oaks obtuse Oliv ovate pair of legs pale Panz Payk ponds posterior pupa quadrate rostrum Sandy places scutellum second joint segment setaceous setæ short side Skirts of woods species spines spots STIRPS submarginal cells superior wings tail tarsi terminated thicker third joint thorax tibia tibiæ transverse truncate Trunks of trees White-thorn Zool
Popular passages
Page 323 - To such perfection, indeed, has nature in them carried her mimetic art, that you would declare, upon beholding some insects, that they had robbed the trees of their leaves to form for themselves artificial wings, so exactly do they resemble them in their form, substance, and vascular structure; some representing green leaves, and others those that are dry and withered. 3 Nay, sometimes this mimicry is so exquisite, that you would mistake the whole insect for a portion of the branching spray of a...
Page 309 - ... their unimpregnated females. One of which is no sooner perceived, than they become so much enamoured of their fair and chaste relation, as absolutely to lose all kind of fear for their own personal safety, which, at other times, is effectually secured by the reiterated evolutions of their strong and rapid wings. So fearless indeed have I beheld them on these occasions, as to climb up and down the sides of the cage which contained the object of their eager pursuit, in exactly the same hurrying...
Page 41 - The inside of the knee is the part on which these flies are most fond of depositing their eggs, and next to this on the side and back part of the shoulder, and less frequently on the extreme ends of the hairs of the mane. But it is a fact worthy of attention...
Page 325 - made use also of very small glass tubes, no thicker than a bristle, and drawn to a very fine point at one end but thicker at the other. These...
Page 324 - Nature, in her sportive mood, when painting them sometimes imitates the clouds of heaven ; at others, the meandering course of the rivers of the earth, or the undulations of their waters ; many are veined like beautiful marbles; others have the semblance of a robe of the finest net-work thrown over them ; some she blazons with heraldic insignia, giving them to bear in fields sable, azure, vert, gules, argent, and or, fosses, bars, bends, crosses, crescents, stars, and even animals.
Page 283 - I took to be a kind of Acarus, which appeared to be immoveably fixed just at the inosculations of the dorsal segments of the abdomen. At length, finding three or four upon a specimen of...
Page 41 - When the female has been impregnated, and the eggs are sufficiently matured, she seeks among the horses a subject for her purpose, and approaching it on the wing, she holds her body nearly upright in the air, and her tail, which is lengthened for the purpose, curved inwards and upwards : in this way she approaches the part where she designs to deposit the egg; and...
Page 325 - He made use, also, of small glass tubes, no thicker than a bristle, and drawn to a very fine point at one end, but thicker at the other. These were for the purpose of blowing up, and thus rendering visible, the smallest vessels which could be discovered by the microscope, to trace their courses and communications, or sometimes to inject them with coloured liquors.
Page 324 - ... beyond all parallel. The rich and velvet tints of the plumage of birds are not superior to what the curious observer may discover in a variety of Lepidoptera ; and those many-coloured eyes which deck so gloriously the peacock's tail are imitated with success by one of our most common butterflies.
Page 323 - indeed, appear to have been Nature's favourite productions, in which, to manifest her power and skill, she has combined and concentrated almost all that is either beautiful and graceful, interesting and alluring, or curious and singular, in every other class and order of her children.