The Natural History of Pliny (Volume 3) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of those senses) of the powers of hearing, smelling, and tasting, as well as those other precious gifts of Nature, address, courage, and skilfulness ? That these creatures have no bloods I am ready to admit, just as all the terrestrial animals are not possessed of it; but then, they have something similar, by way of equivalent. Just as in the sea, the ssepia9 has a black liquid in place of blood, and the various kinds of purples, those juices which we use for the purposes of dyeing; so, too, is every insect possessed of its own vital humour, which, whatever it is, is blood to it. While I leave it to others to form what opinion they please on this subject, it is my purpose to set forth the operations of Nature in the clearest possible light, and not to enter upon the discussion of points that are replete with doubt. CHAP. 3. (4.) THE BODIES OF INSECTS. Insects, so far as I find myself able to ascertain, seem to have neither sinews,10 bones, spines, cartilages, fat, nor flesh; nor yet so much as a frail shell, like some of the marine animals, nor even anything that can with any propriety be termed skin; but they have a body which is of a kind of intermediate nature between all these, of an arid substance, softer than muscle, and in other respects of a nature that may, in strictness, be rather pronounced yielding,11 than hard. Such, then, is all that they are, and nothing more: " in the inside of their bodies there is nothing, except in some few, which have an intestine arranged in folds. Hence it is, that even wfyen cut asunder, they are remarkable for their tenacity of life, and the palpitations which are to be seen in each of their parts. For every portion of them is possessed of its own vital principle, which is centred in no limb in particular, but s Cuvier remarks, th...