The proposed _rationale_ of those who reject these statements,--that female vipers in the last stage of pregnancy have been opened, and have given freedom to living and active young, and that careless and unscientific observers have leaped to the conclusion that their young must have entered by the mouth,--will not stand before the testimony distinctly given by witnesses, who have actually seen the young retreat into the mouth, and have then found them within the body. No doubt the subject needs further investigation by careful and unprejudiced naturalists; but the positive evidence already adduced on the testimony of so many deponents, warrants our accepting the phenomenon as a normal habit of certain species of Saurians and Ophidians, though it may be somewhat rarely resorted to, and that whatever physical difficulties may seem to stand in the way of its _à priori_ probability--difficulties which perhaps depend on our ignorance, and which will disappear before the light of advancing knowledge. * * * * * The entomologists have fallen most ungallantly foul of Madame Merian, a lady who resided in Surinam nearly two hundred years ago, and devoted her attention to the native entomology, painting insects in a very admirable manner. She is set down as a thorough heretic, not at all to be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an inventor of false facts in science. Among other things, she speaks of a large hemipterous fly, which has in consequence of her reports been named _Fulgora lanternaria_. This insect has the head produced into a large inflated proboscis more than an inch in length, which is said to carry an intense luminosity within its transparent walls, as a candle is carried within a lantern. The fair observer says that the first discovery which she made of this property caused her no small alarm. The Indians had brought her several of these insects, which by daylight exhibited no extraordinary appearance, and she enclosed them in a box until she should have an opportunity of drawing them, placing it upon a table in her lodging-room. In the middle of the night the confined insects made such a noise as to awake her, and she opened the box, the inside of which, to her great astonishment, appeared all in a blaze; and in her fright letting it fall, she was not less surprised to see each of the insects apparently on fire. She soon, however, divined the cause of this unexpected phenomenon, and re-enclosed her brilliant guests in their place of confinement. She adds that the light of one of these Fulgoræ is sufficiently bright to read a newspaper by: and though the tale of her having drawn one of these insects by its own light is without foundation, she doubtless might have done so if she had chosen.