Essays on the Microscope: Containing a Practical Description of the Most Improved Microscopes, a General History of Insects, etc., etc.Adams, George
Science
Essays on the Microscope: Containing a Practical Description of the Most Improved Microscopes, a General History of Insects, etc., etc.
Adams, George
Insects -- Early works to 1800; Microscopy -- Early works to 1800
Besides the foregoing terms, the antennæ are called breviores, or short,
when they are shorter than the body; mediocres, or middling, when they
are of the same length; and longiores, when they are longer.
Near the mouth there is also a species of small filiform articulated
antennæ, called the palpi, or feelers; they are generally four in
number, sometimes six; they are placed under and at the sides of the
mouth, which situation, together with their size, sufficiently
distinguish them from the antennæ; they are in continual motion, the
animal thrusting them in every matter, as a hog would its nose, when in
search of food. Some have supposed them to be a kind of hand to assist
in holding the food when it is near the mouth.
OF THE EYES OF INSECTS.
The structure of the eye has always been considered as a wonderful piece
of mechanism; the admirable manner in which those of the human species
are formed, and the nature of vision, are speculations which cannot but
excite the attention of every inquisitive mind. The eyes of insects,
though they differ considerably in their construction from those of
other animals, are no less objects of our admiration. Indeed, among the
exterior parts of insects, none are more worthy of minute investigation,
and very few persons are to be found, who can be insensible to the
beauties of this organ when exhibited under the microscope, as that
instrument alone points out to us the prodigious art employed in their
organization, and evidently shews how many wonders escape the unassisted
sight.
The construction of the eye in insects is not only distinct from that of
other animals, but also differs in different species. They vary in
number, situation, connection, and figure. In other creatures the eyes
are moveable, and two in number, one on each side of the head: in
insects, the genus of cancri excepted, the eyes are fixed; they have no
eye-brows, but the outer coating is hard and transparent.
The greater part of insects have two eyes; in the monoculus they
approach so near to each other, as to appear like one; the gyrinus has
four eyes, the scorpion six, the spider eight, and the scolopendra
three.
Of the eyes of insects, some have them single, that is, placed at a
small distance from each other; while others are furnished with an
indefinite number, all placed in one common case or socket; the latter
are generally termed the reticulated eyes.
OF THE RETICULATED EYES OF INSECTS.
The microscope does not disclose greater wonders, when it exhibits to us
millions of animals invisible to the naked eye, where we should suppose
nothing living existed, than when it discovers to us hidden beauties in
those, which, though they are large enough to be seen by our natural
eye, yet in their several minute parts are no ways discernible, but by
the assistance of glasses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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