He informs us, that, whenever they are to dance, a place is prepared for them, hung round with bunches of grapes and ribbons. The patients are dressed in white, with red, green, or yellow ribbons; on their shoulders they have a white scarf; they let their hair fall loose about their ears, and throw the head quite back. He says that they are exact copies of the ancient priestesses of Bacchus. The introduction of Christianity abolished all public exhibitions of heathenish rites; but the women, unwilling to give up their darling amusement, in performing the frantic character of Bacchantes, devised other pretences; and he supposes that accident led them to the discovery of the Tarantula, of which they took advantage for that purpose.
THE CHEESE MITE. (Acarus siro.)
These destructive little creatures differ from spiders in having the thorax and abdomen united and covered with the same skin, though it is contracted in one part. They have also, when young, only six legs, though the two others appear afterwards; and their feet are armed with strong hooks, which enable them to retain hold of the cheese or other food, in which they take up their abode. Their bodies are covered with hair, and their mouths are furnished with strong mandibles, with which they soon hew down huge rocks and mountains of cheese. The eggs of these Mites are so small, that it has been computed that a pigeon’s egg would contain thirty millions of them. It must be observed that this Mite is only found in dry cheese, in which it looks like reddish dust. The cheese-hopper, found in moist rotten cheese, is the maggot of a kind of fly. (Piophila Casei.)
§ IV. Insects.
Insects have all six legs and two antennæ or feelers; and though the transformations they undergo differ slightly in the different kinds, the following is the order in which they occur:—The perfect insect lays eggs, which when hatched produce larvæ; and which are called grubs when they belong to beetles, maggots to flies, and caterpillars to butterflies and moths. These larvæ eat voraciously; and as they rapidly increase in size, they generally moult, that is, change their skins, two or three times. When the larvæ are full grown, they go into the pupa state, in which they remain torpid and without food for a considerable length of time, sometimes first spinning a loose covering for the pupa called a cocoon. The pupa is generally called a chrysalis; but it is also sometimes called a nymph, and sometimes an aurelia. The last transformation is when the insect breaks from its covering in a perfect form, when it is called the imago. There are, however, some insects which are active throughout their lives, and in these the larvæ and pupæ are very similar to the perfect insect. The perfect insect is divided into three segments, or parts, called the head, the thorax, and the abdomen.
Order I. Coleoptera, or Beetles.
The larva of the beetle is a grub, which often continues in that state three or four years, eating voraciously during the whole period. When full grown it in most cases either descends into the ground, where it undergoes its transformations, first into a nymph, or pupa, and then into a beetle; or it makes itself a rough cocoon of bits of stick and dead leaves, in which it changes into a pupa, and afterwards into a beetle. The wood-eating beetles undergo their transformations in the tree on which they feed. The pupa of the beetle is termed incomplete, because all the parts of the insect are visible in it, instead of being enclosed in one thick covering, as in the moths and butterflies. The head of the beetle is furnished with two compound eyes; two antennæ (differing in shape in the various species, but having usually eleven joints); and a mouth, consisting of a labrum, or upper lip, a labium, or under lip, two mandibles, or upper jaws, and two maxillæ, or under jaws. There is also the mentum, or chin, and a part called the clypeus, to which the upper lip is attached.
The thorax is the part which supports the legs and wings. The legs are divided into five portions, of which the part terminated by the claw is called the tarsus. There are two membranous wings, covered by two hardened wings or wing-cases, called the elytra, which generally open by a straight line down the back; and hence the name of Coleoptera, which signifies wing in a case: the abdomen is simply the body.
The number of beetles is very great, and indeed Mr. Westwood informs us that more than thirty thousand species have been described, of which about three thousand five hundred are natives of Britain.