Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ... 155 CHAPTER VI. ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. Abdomen (continued). PHYSIOLOGY Of Digestion, Digestive Organs. GLANDULAR SYSTEM. REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS. STING. The digestive and reproductive organs, which occupy the chief space of the abdominal cavity, are, for the most part, fairly open to ordinary observation. Though we may derive the greatest assistance from the labours of preceding anatomists in displaying the details of their structure, yet, in this investigation, we do not find ourselves at once entirely beyond our own resources. And we shall need to take much less on the faith of others' dissections here than in the last chapter. The Digestive Organs of Insects deal with the same kind of substances as do those of the higher animals. Their food is reducible to the same classes of aliment, animal or vegetable, nitrogenous or nonnitrogenous, and the same chemical principles are at work in all alike. The difference of the results depends on the different application which is made of the elaborated material, and on the peculiar nature of the animal. This peculiar nature of the animal has a very wide application, for insects of one kind or another seem to eat anything and everything. The stereotyped answer to the question of what good insects do is, that they destroy other insects. They impregnate flowers, and they do a great many other things which do not concern us just now; but, above all, they consume rubbish and noxious substances. Under the term rubbish and noxious substances many miscellaneous articles are included, wasps, for instance, things laid away in drawers, collections of insects perhaps and the most poisonous drugs. What is one creature's food is another's poison, and the extent to which some of the most virulent poisons are...