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
Though the form of this insect is naturally disgusting, yet the eyes
make a beautiful object for the microscope. They have generally eight;
two on the top of the head, that look directly upwards; two in the
front, a little below the foregoing, to discover what passes before it;
on each side a couple more, whereof one points sideways forward, the
other sideways backward; so that the spider can nearly see all around.
These eyes are immoveable, and seem to be formed of a hard transparent
horny substance. A portion of each sphere projects externally beyond the
socket, the largest part is sunk within it. There is round each eye a
circular transparent membrane. Mr. Baker placed the eye of a spider over
a pin-hole made through a piece of card, and then applied it as a lens
to examine objects; he found it magnified the objects greatly, but that
it did not exhibit them distinctly; this he however attributed to the
length of time the spider had been dead whose eye he used. The number of
eyes is not the same in all species of the spider.
OF THE STEMMATA.
It might be imagined, that as every fly has two reticulated eyes, they
could not have occasion for more; but so it has not appeared to that
GREAT BEING who formed them, for many are furnished besides with other
eyes, differing in form and construction from those that are
reticulated.
These were first noticed by M. de la Hire; they are three lucid
protuberances placed on the back part of the head of many insects: their
surface is glossy, of an hemispheric figure, and a coal black colour.
They are transparent, and disposed in a triangular form; by modern
naturalists they are termed stemmata.
Reaumur made experiments on these eyes, similar to those he had made on
the reticulated ones, and found that when the stemmata were covered with
dark varnish, the insects flew but to a small distance, and always at
random.
No insect is, I believe, found with both kind of eyes, unless in its
perfect state: there are many species which are not furnished with
stemmata, gnats and tipulæ are without them.
We are apt to suppose that nature has lavished all her bounty upon her
larger creatures, and left her minims of existence, as Shakspeare
phrases it, unfinished; with what different ideas must those be
impressed, who find the apparatus for vision in these small creatures so
various and so wonderful in their structure, and who must perceive so
much design and order manifested in the position, construction, and
number of these delicate and useful organs.
OF THE BODY OF INSECTS.
The trunk or body of the insect is situated between the head and
abdomen. Naturalists divide it into three parts; the thorax, scutellum,
and sternum.
The thorax is the upper part of the body, it is of various shapes and
proportions; the sides and back of it are often armed with points.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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