Footnote 4054: [(return)]
Ateuchus sacer; Copris sagax; C. capucinus, &c. &c.
Footnote 4071: [(return)]
The engraving on the preceding page represents in its various transformations one of the most familiar and graceful of the longicorn beetles of Ceylon, the Batocera rubus.
Footnote 4072: [(return)]
There is a paper in the Journ. of the Asiat. Society of Ceylon, May, 1845, by Mr. CAPPER, on the ravages perpetrated by these beetles. The writer had recently passed through several coco-nut plantations, "varying in extent from 20 to 150 acres, and about two to three years old: and in these he did not discover a single young tree untouched by the cooroominiya."—P. 49.
Footnote 4073: [(return)]
Leviticus, xi. 22.
Footnote 4081: [(return)]
Phyllium siccifolium.
Footnote 4101: [(return)]
M. aridifolia and M. extensicollis, as well as Empusa gongylodes, remarkable for the long leaf-like head, and dilatations on the posterior thighs, are common in the island.
Footnote 4111: [(return)]
Libellula pulchella.
Footnote 4112: [(return)]
Euphæa splendens.
Footnote 4113: [(return)]
Palpares contrarius, Walker; Myrmeleon gravis, Walker; M. dirus, Walker; M. barbarus, Walker.
Footnote 4121: [(return)]
It becomes an interesting question whence the termites derive the large supplies of moisture with which they not only temper the clay for the construction of their long covered ways above ground, but for keeping their passages uniformly damp and cool below the surface. Yet their habits in this particular are unvarying, in the seasons of droughts as well as after rain; in the driest and least promising positions, in situations inaccessible to drainage from above, and cut off by rocks and impervious strata from springs from below. Dr. Livingstone, struck with this phenomenon in Southern Africa, asks: "Can the white ants possess the power of combining the oxygen and hydrogen of their vegetable food by vital force so as to form water?"—Travels, p. 22. And he describes at Angola, an insect[4123] resembling the Aphrophora spumaria; seven or eight individuals of which distil several pints of water every night.—P. 414. It is highly probable that the termites are endowed with some such faculty: nor is it more remarkable that an insect should combine the gases of its food to produce water, than that a fish should decompose water in order to provide itself with gas. FOURCROIX found the contents of the air-bladder in a carp to be pure nitrogen.—Yarrell, vol. i. p. 42. And the aquatic larva of the dragon-fly extracts air for its respiration from the water in which it is submerged. A similar mystery pervades the inquiry whence plants under peculiar circumstances derive the water essential to vegetation.