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
These insects live upon plants, and particularly in flowers. The one
figured here is the black thrips, with white wings; the antennæ have six
articulations; the body is black; the wings whitish, long, and hairy;
the head small, with two large reticular eyes. The antennæ are of an
equal size throughout, and divided into six oval pieces which are
articulated together. The extremities of the feet are furnished with a
membranaceous and flexible bladder, which it can throw out and draw in
at pleasure. It places and presses this bladder against the substances
on which it is walking, and seems to fix itself thereby to them; the
bladder sometimes appears concave towards the bottom, the concavity
increasing or diminishing in proportion to the degree of pressure.
They have four wings, two upper and two under ones; these last are with
great difficulty perceived, they are fixed to the upper part of the
breast, lying horizontally; both of them are rather pointed towards the
edges, and have a strong nerve running round them, which is set with a
fringe of fibrillæ, tufted at the extremity. The wings are represented
by themselves at Fig. 4; the insect of the real size at Fig. 5. They are
to be found in great plenty in the spring and summer, in the flowers of
the dandelion, and various other plants.
OF THE SKIN OF THE LUMP SUCKER.
Plate XVIII. Fig. 2 and 7.
For a full description of this singular fish, I must refer the reader to
Pennant’s British Zoology, vol. iii. p. 117. The Linnean name is
cyclopterus lumpus. Fig. 2 is a piece of the skin highly magnified:
there are no scales on the body, but a great number of tubercles, which
are here exhibited. Fig. 7 is the natural size of the object.
These fishes being extremely fat, renders them an agreeable diet to the
natives of Greenland, in which seas they abound in the months of April
and May; they also resort in multitudes during spring to the coast of
Sutherland, near the Ord of Caithness in North Britain, where the seals
prey greatly upon them, leaving the skins; numbers of which thus emptied
float at that season ashore. When a good specimen is procured, it forms
a most beautiful object for the opake microscope.
OF THE CIMEX STRIATUS.
Plate XX. Fig. 1 and A.
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