Insect miscellanies / [Anon].

Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insect miscellanies / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    155/452 (page 133)
    cause has ceased, prolonging the sensation of light (especially of a vivid one) for an instant in the eye. We may thus conceive the possibility of other animals, such as insects, incapable of being affected with any of our colours, and receiving their whole stock of lum- inous impressions from a class of vibrations: altogether imagined (we may almost say proved) to be the case with their perceptions of sound.’* / This view of the matter is certainly beautiful and plausible, though, in the present state of our knowledge, we can only admit it as a theory. The vision of insects has been recently investi- gated with great minuteness by Professor Miiller, of Bonn,t an excellent account of whose researches has been given by Mr Parsons, of which we shall avail ourselves. ‘The compound eye of the com- mon or grey dragon fly’ (Libellula Vulgata), says Mr Parsons, ‘when examined externally, may be divided into two parts ;. one superior and posterior, of an obscure red colour, and provided with facets