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From this circumstance a most exaggerated idea obtained concerning the illuminating power of the flies. The climate of Surinam was so unhealthy for Madame Merian that she could remain there but two years, and in that time she gathered the materials for her great work called "Metamorphoses Insectorum Surinamensium," etc.
Insects (who would have thought it?) lose a great deal by insensible transpiration; from one-tenth to one-quarter of their whole weight, as we have abundantly ascertained by series of experiments, for which we have the tables to show. A very interesting fact respecting the difference of irritability of insects from that of the higher animals, is this: the temperature of man and the mammalia is in health always the same, and varies very inconsiderably in disease. External heat and external cold do not produce a blood, in man, warmer at the equator than at the pole. This is not the case with insects, whose mean temperature may be about 80°; but the thermometer inserted into their bodies may be made to rise or fall by bringing any cold or warm body in contact with their external surface. You may thus sink the temperature of an insect to 50° or raise it to 100°, and the insect continue alive. This is a very curious fact, and shows the inaccuracy of Hunter's description or definition of life "That it was that which resisted the physical agency of cold and heat." Insectorum duorum (e genere Cantharidum) in coitu deprehensorum, extincto a nobis uno, alterum per dies plures, nullo alio qu
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