INSECTS. 
15 
ally given way to a temporary sally of contempt 
at the historians of the minuter productions of 
Nature. Thus the celebrated Count de Buffon, 
happening not to have had any particular ad- 
diction to the study of Insects, has not scrupled 
to hint in strong and striking terms his opinion 
of its inferiority compared with the study of the 
greater and more conspicuous parts of the creation. 
“ Who,” says this celebrated writer, “ gives us 
the grandest and most magnificent ideas of the 
Creator of the Universe ? he who represents him, 
in the plenitude of his power, directing the 
formation of suns and of planets, and guiding the 
revolutions of worlds, or he who discovers him 
busied in regulating the oeconomy-of an hive of 
bees, or deeply engaged in folding the wings of a 
beetle r” 
. Other philosophers however, of the most exalted 
character, have expressed a widely different opi- 
nion. The great Boyle declares that for his own 
part his wonder was more excited by the con- 
templation of a mite than by that of an elephant; 
and adds, in a phrase somewhat singular, that his 
admiration dwelt not so much on the clocks as on 
the watches of Nature; and the opinion of Pliny, 
w hich Li mucus takes for the motto of his volume 
on Insects is evident from his owm words. In his 
tarn parvis tamqiie fere nullis quce ratio! quanta 
vis! quam inextrkabilis perfecLio! 
