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
When we have once formed the idea that all the exterior parts are
inlaid, or included one within the other, the production of new organs
does not appear so embarrassing, being nothing more than a simple
developement; but it is more difficult to form any conception of the
changes that happen in the viscera before and after the transformation,
the various modifications they undergo eluding our researches. We have
already observed, that a little before the change the caterpillar
rejects the membrane that lines the intestinal bag: this bowel has
hitherto digested only gross food, whereas it must hereafter digest that
which is very delicate: a fluid that circulates in the caterpillar from
the hind part towards the head, circulates a contrary way after
transformation. Now if this inversion is as real as observation seems to
indicate, how amazing the change the interior parts of the animal must
have undergone? When the caterpillar moults, small clusters of the
tracheal vessels are cast off with the exuvia, and new ones are
substituted in their room; but how is this effected, and how are the
lungs replaced by other lungs? The more we endeavour to investigate this
subject, the more we find it is enveloped in darkness.
Whilst the powers of life are employed conformable to the laws of Divine
Providence, to change the viscera, and give them a new form, they are
also unfolding divers other organs, which were useless to the insect
while in the larva state, but which are necessary to that which
succeeds. That these interior operations of life may be carried on with
greater energy, the animal is thrown into a kind of sleep; during this
period, the corpus crassum is distributed into all the parts, in order
to bring them to perfection, while the evaporation of the superfluous
humours makes way for the elements of the fibres to approach each other,
and unite more closely. The little wounds in the inside, which have been
occasioned by the rupture of the vessels, are gradually consolidated;
those parts which had been violently exercised, recover their tone, and
the circulating fluids insensibly find their new channel. Lastly, many
vessels are effaced, and turned into a liquid sediment, which is
rejected by the perfect insect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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