Gall bee (gall wasp) and deathwatch beetle
Date
18 March 1695
Creator
Unknown, Artist
Object type
Archive reference number
Manuscript page number
p5
Material
Dimensions
height (page): 317mm
width (page): 198mm
width (page): 198mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Figures of a 'Deathwatch' (deathwatch beetle) and a 'Gall bee' (gall wasp), with and without a microscope. The letter by Benjamin Allen at Braintree, Essex was read to the Royal Society on 18 March 1695, and printed as B. Allen, ‘An account of a gall bee, and the death-watch’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 20, no. 245 (October 1698), pp. 375-78 (fig. 1: gall bee, figs 2-4: death watch beetle). Fig. 1 was cut out of p. 2 and glued to this page, with a note by the printer, Benjamin Walford, possibly to the engraver, 'For the next Transactions to bee engraven in time, B. Walford'.
Transcription
Scarabaeus galeatus Pulsator. The Deathwatch Viewd by a Microscope.
All the strokes on the thighs are hairs
For the next Transactions to bee engraven in time. B. Walford
Transcribed by the Making Visible project
All the strokes on the thighs are hairs
For the next Transactions to bee engraven in time. B. Walford
Transcribed by the Making Visible project
Object history
18 March 1695, 'There was read a Paper of one Mr Benjamin Allen of Braintry [sic for Braintree] in Essex, giving the description of the Insect commonly call'd the Death watch, which he names Scaraboeus Galeatus pulsator: as also of a sort of Bee, which he found in an Aleppo Gall nut, and he observes that these Bees are not the only animals that live in Galls, but that there are several other species' (JBO/9/221).
B. Allen, ‘An account of a gall bee, and the death-watch’, Phil. Trans. vol. 20, no. 245 (October 1698), pp. 375-78.
B. Allen, ‘An account of a gall bee, and the death-watch’, Phil. Trans. vol. 20, no. 245 (October 1698), pp. 375-78.
Associated place