198 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COLLECTING INSECTS. 



shattered and emaciated by an insidious fever, excessive application 

 and the wolf-like gnawings of gaunt want, but patient and gentle, 

 self devoted and undiscouraged, and in the midst of all the gloom and 

 disappointments of a laborious and short career, in the very last hours 

 of life finding a tender consolation in the friendship and religious 

 mysticism of Antonia Bourignon, until death gently and slowly led 

 the great, good soul down to his secluded valley, and bade him rest 

 and sleep. But still he does not sleep ; his memory lives to animate 

 many desponding minds, to invigorate many faint hearts. 



The pages of entomological history are adorned, too, by the names 

 of many of the gentler sex, and their accomplishments and graces have 

 served to beautify the study. The sympathy of woman with all that 

 is tender and beautiful in nature, the delicacy and facility with which 

 they manipulate minute objects, would seem to indicate this study as 

 one which should be with them a favorite and congenial pursuit ; and 

 I could instance at least one example of its successful cultivation in 

 our own country, if I deemed it proper, without appealing to the mag- 

 nificent works of the heroic Maria Sibilla de Merian, or the minute 

 and pains-taking investigations of Mademoiselle Jurine. ^' I have 

 seen the young London beauty," says the eloquent Kingsley, in 

 Glaucus, "amid all the excitement and temptation of luxury and 

 flattery, with her heart pure and her mind occupied in a boudoir full 

 of shells and fossils, flowers and sea-weeds, and keeping herself 

 unspotted from the world by considering the lilies of the field, how 

 they grow." The feelings of repulsiveness with which insects are so 

 frequently regarded, arising from antipathies produced by false educa- 

 tion and false ideas, soon vanish when once we become acquainted 

 with their lives. We recognize in each species a distinct and indi- 

 vidual biography. We perceive they are influenced by many of the 

 same passions and instincts that animate the higher animals ; that 

 Iheir existence presents a marked and striking contrast even to our 

 own. Ours is ushered by the beautiful, bright days of fresh youth_, 

 during which we seem to flutter idly from pleasure to pleasure, only 

 to descend surely and slowly to the dark and languid days of decrepit 

 age ; while theirs is entered upon in sombreness and toil, and weighed 

 down in unwieldy and unattractive forms, to rise at last from its long 

 obscurity to the sweet sunlight and the blue heavens, to a youthful- 

 ness in which they die glorified. Everything, indeed, in the little 

 lives we would endeavor to interpret and understand, appeals harmo- 

 niously to our sympathies, even the coincidences of nature established 

 for their well being, or which glide into their histories. Let us mark 

 a coincidence. The soft voice of springtime, and its warmest breath, 

 arouses vegetation from its long night of winter sleep, and we admire 

 the early flowers rising from the earth, and opening glad eyes in the 

 sunlight, till on the green hill-sides and the meadows is spread an invi- 

 ting banquet. And even whilst we ask ourselves for whom, or what, 

 all this decoration and renovation of prairie and hill-side is intended — 

 for whom the magnificent festive board is spread? the answer is brought 

 to our ears, when at the same time the influence which has awakened 

 vegetation calls forth from the waters, the earth, and places of cunning 

 concealment, the insects, whose structure and forms declare they were 



