298 INSECT DEVELOPMENT. 



to their evident injuriousness than we are apt to think. A 

 curious though certainly very partial service of this nature, 

 received on the side of the vegetable, is exemplified in the 

 nourishment which some fly-catching plants are supposed to 

 derive from the putridity of dead insects imprisoned within 

 their flower-traps, their pitcher-shaped leaves, or in the viscid 

 exudations of their joints. 



If, leaving the vegetable world, we were to mount upwards 

 in the scale of animated being, we should find amongst fish, 

 reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds, a variety of similar instances, 

 wherein, by resemblance or analogy, by dependence, or as 

 mutually representative, these all stand connected with objects 

 in the insect kingdom. \\ e may, from time to time, notice 

 some of these relations incidentally; but to pass over, now, 

 the intermediate orders of creation, let us see whether lordly 

 man, as well as the lowly plant, has not his analogies, at least 

 symbolic, with the insect he despises. 



The mind of man, as it exists in infancy, has been aptly 

 likened to the seed of a plant considered as possessing, in 

 miniature, the trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit of the future 

 tree ; and, agreeably to such a notion, it has been observed that 

 the highest degree of cultivation, of which it is capable, consists 

 in the perfect development of that peculiar organization which 

 as really exists in infancy as in mature years. 



Having noted already the analogy of insect development, 

 from the egg up to the winged estate, with that of a vegetable, 



