LETTER XL 



ON THE AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR 

 THEIR YOUNG. 



Amongst the larger animals, every observer of na- 

 ture has witnessed, with admiration, that love of their 

 offspring which the beneficent Creator, with equal regard 

 to the happiness of the parent and the progeny, has in- 

 terwoven in the constitution of his creatures. Who that 

 has any sensibility, has not felt his heart dilate with gra- 

 titude to the Giver of all good, in observing amongst the 

 domestic animals which surround him, the effects of this 

 divine storge^ so fruitful of the most delightful sensations ? 

 Who that is not a stock or a stone has read unmoved 

 the anecdote recorded in books of Natural History, of 

 the poor bitch, which in the agonies of a cruel dissection 

 licked with parental fondness her new-born offspring; or 

 the affecting account of the she-bear related in Phipps's 

 Voyage to the North Pole, which, herself severely wound- 

 ed by the same shot that killed her cubs, spent her last 

 moments in tearing and laying before them the food she 

 had collected, and died licking their wounds ? 



These feelings you must have experienced, but it has 

 scarcely occurred to you that you would have any room 

 for exercising them in your new pursuit. You have not, 

 T dare saj', suspected that any similar example could 

 liave been adduced amongst insects, to which at the first 



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