On the moth of the esere, or ordeal-bean of Old Calabar.

  • Fraser, Sir Thomas Richard, 1841-1920.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the moth of the esere, or ordeal-bean of Old Calabar. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    pillars were enclosed in cocoons, formed in the spaces between either contiguous beans or beans and the enclosing paper. Fifty out of the eighty beans were found with holes—a few with only one, but the majority with various numbers from two to eight. The holes were usually of a round-oval form; they ex - tended through the spermoderm; they were situated on almost any part of the surface of the bean, though generally on the sulcus, towards its broad extremity; they had an average dia- meter of £th of an inch; and they had protruding through them, from the interior of the bean, a quantity of excrement, loosely connected into adhering masses by the silky threads already mentioned. On breaking the spermoderm, the place of the kernel was found to be more or less occupied by excrement, cocoons or their broken-up remains, and caterpillars. In the majority of affected beans, the kernel was entirely absent; in others, portions of va- rious sizes were left, having often eroded margins and other symptoms of the attacks of the caterpillar, and being sometimes fantastically irregular in their outlines. In a few instances, and generally in such beans as had only one or two perforations through the sulcus, the kernel was entire, and a small quantity of entangled excrement only was found in the intercotyledonary spaces. These beans had probably been occupied, at some period, by only temporary boarders. The excrement occurred in large quantity in proportion to the number of caterpillars. It consisted of little, dry, stone-grey irregular cylinders, from -^g-th to -fVths of an inch in length, and about -gVnd of an inch in diameter, and it was always connected in loose bundles by the adhesive thready secretion of the cater- pillar. The microscopic examination of this excrement showed two principal structures—starch-granules, generally broken up, having the characteristic appearance of these bodies in the kernel of the seed of Physostigma, and occupying about one- third of the field, with circular bodies about ToVoth of an inch in diameter, having large nuclei and granular contents, and occupying the remainder of the field. Chemical examination proved the presence of large quantities of uric acid and starch, and of a little ammonia. The uric acid, when precipitated by acetic acid from a solution in potash, assumed the form of perfect, very minute crystals of either detached or clustered rhombs. One or two caterpillars were generally found within each bean; only in one bean as many as six were seen, all of whom were alive and active. They are of a pale yellow colour, about fths of an inch in length and £th in greatest thickness, and have six pectoral, eight abdominal, and two anal feet.