The History of Insects. 171 



lower parts of the ship, must amount to more than one-third as much as 

 the mean value of the former, being equivalent to 1000 tons, acting on a 

 lever of one foot in length , while the strain, arising from the unequal dis- 

 tribution of the weight and the displacement, amounts, where it is great- 

 est, that is, about 37 feet from the head to 5260, in a seventy-four gun 

 ship of the usual dimensions ; and although the strain is considerably less 

 than this exactly in the middle, and throughout the aftermost half of the 

 length, it is no where converted into a tendency to " sag," or to become 

 concave. 



To correct these serious alterations of form, has been the great object of 

 the labours of Seppings, — labours which every day affords abundant 

 proofs of their accuracy and truth. 

 ' (To he continued. J 



II. The History of In sects. Vol. I. — Family Library, No. 7. 



At no distant period a history of insects would have been regarded as 

 only calculated for those investigators of science whose leisure and pecu- 

 liar taste fitted them for pursuing or understanding what in the eyes of 

 the multitude might seem to be totally valueless, or at best but an idle 

 amusement. With the exception of the Bee and the Silk Moth, and a few 

 others, little was popularly known of the manners and instincts of those 

 countless myriads of living atoms which crowd every country, and still 

 less of the powerful agency of the insect tribes in the general economy of 

 nature. This agency, which is now becoming matter of daily observation, 

 was seldom recognized, except when the excessive reproduction of particu- 

 lar species in certain regions destroyed the labours of the husbandman, 

 and produced famine and pestilence. Facts, however, have been gradually 

 accumulating in the writings of entomologists, which tend to show that 

 this, the most numerous class of animated beings, exercises functions in 

 nature not less important than many others whose relative bulk precludes 

 our regarding their existence with indifference. The whole tribe of mo- 

 noecious and dioecious plants owe their fertility to the agency of the insect 

 tribes ; and if attention had been earlier directed to these minute beings, 

 many arts of but recent invention might have been perfected ages before. 

 It has been remarked by a celebrated naturalist, that the hornets composed 

 their dwelling of a species of paper, fabricated on principles exactly similar 

 to those now practised, long before the manufacture of that itivaluable ar- 

 ticle was stumbled upon by human ingenuity ; the Tenthredines, or saw- 

 flies, cut the branches of trees with their serrated instruments before the 

 saw was used in the arts ; and their small but powerful organ has 

 still this advantage over the mechanics' tool, that it combines the proper- 

 ties of a rasp and file with that of a saw. The Wood-boring Bee and the 

 Ichneumons are possessed of an apparatus for boring, from which even 

 human ingenuity may improve their implements destined for similar pur- 

 poses ; and the Termes of Africa build in an incredibly short space of time 

 dwellings of from twelve to fifteen feet high, upon which the pick-axe 

 makes no impression — monuments far more wonderful, and five times 



