or KNEE-PAN, in Anatomy. See ANATOMY Index.

or LIMPET, a genus of shell-fish belonging to the order of vermes testacea. See CONCHOLOGY Index.

in the History of Insects, a name given by Lister and other authors to a little husk or shell, found on the bark of the cherry, plum, rose, and other trees, containing an animal within, and useful in colouring. These patellae are of the form of globes, except where they adhere to the tree, and are for the most part of a shining chestnut colour. The husk itself strikes a very fine crimson colour on paper, and within it is found a white maggot which is of no value: this, in time, hatches into a very small but beautiful bee. The size of this bee is about half that of an ant. They have a sting like bees, and three spots placed in a triangle on the forehead, which are supposed to be eyes. They are of a black colour, and have a large round whitish or pale yellow spot on the back. The upper pair of wings are shaded and spotted, but the under pair are clear. It might be worth while to try the shells or husks in order to discover whether the colour they yield might not be useful. It is to be remarked, that the deepest coloured husks afford the finest and deepest purple: they must be used while the animal in them is in the maggot form; for when it is changed into the bee state the shell is dry and colourless. Lister, who first observed these patellae, went so far in comparing them with the common kermes, as to assert that they were of the same nature with that production: but his account of their being the workmanship of a bee, to preserve her young maggot in, is not agreeable to the true history of the kermes; for that is an insect of a very peculiar kind. He has in other instances been too justly censured for his precipitancy of judging of things, and perhaps has fallen into an error by means of it here. It is very possible that these patellae may be the same sort of animals with the kermes, but then it produces its young within this shell or husk, which is no other than the skin of the body of the mother animal; but as there are many flies whose worms or maggots are lodged in the bodies of other animals, it may be that this little bee may love to lay its egg in the body of the proper insect, and the maggot hatched from that egg may eat up the proper progeny, and, undergoing its own natural changes there, issue out at length in form of the bee. This may have been the case in some few which Dr Lister examined; and he may have been misled by this to suppose it the natural change of the insect.