42 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



play of this his native talent, lias nevertheless drawn 

 and painted these specimens from my cabinet with the 

 skill of the most experienced professional artist; and 

 this he has done from the disinterested purpose of 

 aiding me in rendering more valuable and popular this 

 important department of Natural History. In return 

 for his kindness, I beg to offer him here my sincere 

 thanks, assuring him that I take great pleasure in asso- 

 ciating with this work the name of Hoppin — a name 

 not undistinguished in the annals of American Art. 



AVe have already remarked, in the lives of the 

 Insects under consideration, that they afford a constant 

 evidence of the working of Nature's great law of Anta- 

 gonization, — the one undoing what the other does ; the 

 injuries which one species would inflict upon man are 

 checked by other species, which prevent their super- 

 abundance, and keep an even balance in the scale of 

 being. It is with the insect world as with the political, 

 religious, and social worlds. One political party is con- 

 stantly exercising a conservative restraint upon the 

 other. The controversies of the different religious sects 

 tend to preserve a healthy balance between morbid 

 superstition and unrest rained licentiousness, between a 

 tyrannical domination over the consciences of men, and 

 a wild, illiterate paganism. The fanatic abolitionist 

 may imprecate the curse of Heaven upon a slave- 

 holding State, and, if unrestrained, might involve his 



