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AN INTRODUCTION TO ENTOMOLOGY.

LETTER XXXVII.

INTERNAL ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF INSECTS.

SENSATION.

Having given you this full account of the external parts of insects, and their most remarkable variations; I must next direct your attention to such discoveries as have been made with regard to their Internal Anatomy and Physiology: a subject still more fertile, if possible, than the former in wonderful manifestations of the power, wisdom and goodness of the Creator.

The vital system of these little creatures, in all its great features, is perfectly analogous to that of the vertebrate animals. Sensation and perception are by the means of nerves and a common sensorium; the respiration of air is evident, being received and expelled by a particular apparatus; nutrition is effected through a stomach and intestines; the analogue of the blood prepared by these organs pervades every part of the body, and from it are secreted various peculiar substances; generation takes place, and an intercourse between the sexes, by means of appropriate organs; and lastly, motion is the result of the action of muscles. Some of these functions are, however, exercised in a mode apparently so dissimilar from what obtains in the higher animals, that upon a first view we are inclined to pronounce them the effect of processes altogether peculiar. Thus, though insects respire air, they do not receive it by the mouth, but through little orifices in the sides of the body; and instead of lungs, they are furnished with a system of air-vessels, ramified ad infinitum, and penetrating to every part and organ of their frame; and though they are nourished by a fluid prepared from the food received into the stomach, this fluid, unlike the blood of vertebrate animals, is white, and the mode in which it is distributed to the different parts of the system, except in the case of the true Arachnida, in which a circulation in the ordinary way has been detected, is altogether obscure.

In order that you may more clearly understand the variations that occur in insects, and in what respects they differ amongst themselves, and from the higher animals, in the vital functions and their organs, I shall consider them as to their organs of sensation, respiration, circulation, nutrition, generation, secretion, and muscular motion.

Organs of Sensation.—The nervous system of animals is one of the most wonderful and mysterious works of the Creator. Its pulpy substance is the visible medium by which the governing principle[1] transmits its commands to the various organs of the body, and they move instantaneously—yet this appears to be but the conductor of some higher principle, which can be more immediately acted upon by the mind and by the will. This principle, however, whatever it be, whether we call it the nervous fluid, or the nervous power[2], has not been detected, and is known only by its effects. The system of which we are speaking may therefore be deemed the foundation and root of the animal, the centre from which emanate all its powers and functions.

Comparative anatomists have considered the nervous system of animals as formed upon four primary types, which may be called the molecular, the filamentous, the ganglionic, and cerebro-spinal[3]. The first is where invisible nervous molecules are dispersed in a gelatinous body, the existence of which has only been ascertained by the nervous irritability of such bodies, their fine sense of touch, their perceiving the movements of the waters in which they reside, and from their perfect sense of the degrees of light and heat[4]. Of this description are the infusory animals, and the Polypi. The nervous molecules in these are conjectured to constitute so many ganglions, or centres of sensation and vitality[5]. The second, the filamentous, is where the nervous system consists of nervous threads radiating from the mouth, as in the