^4 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 



instructed these despised insects to anticipate him in many of them. The 

 builders of Babel doubtless thought their invention of turning earth into 

 artificial stone, a very happy discovery^ ; yet a little bee^ had practised 

 this art, using indeed a different process, on a small scale, and the white 

 ants on a large one, ever since the world began. Man thinks that he 

 stands unrivalled as an architect, and that his buildings are without a 

 parallel among the works of the inferior orders of animals. He would be 

 of a different opinion did he attend to the history of insects : he would 

 find that many of them have been architects from time immemorial ; that 

 they have had their houses divided into various apartments, and containing 

 staircases, gigantic arches, domes, colonades, and the like ; nay, that even 

 tunnels are excavated hy them so immense, compared with their own size, 

 as to be twelve times bigger than that of Sir M. I. Brunell under the 

 Thames.^ The modern fine lady, who prides herself on the lustre and 

 beauty of the scarlet hangings which adorn the stately walls of her draw- 

 ing-room, or the carpets that cover its floor, fancying that nothing so rich 

 and splendid was ever seen before, and pitying her vulgar ancestors, who 

 were doomed to unsightly white-wash and rushes, is ignorant all the while, 

 that before she or her ancestors were in existence, and even before the 

 boasted Tyrian dye was discovered, a little insect had known how to hang 

 the walls of its cell with tapestry of a scarlet more brilliant than any her 

 rooms can exhibit^, and that others daily weave silken carpets, both in 

 tissue and texture infinitely superior to those she so much admires. No 

 female ornament is more prized and costly than lace, the invention and 

 fabrication of which seems the exclusive claim of the softer sex. But 

 even here they have been anticipated by these little industrious creatures, 

 who often defend their helpless chrysalis by a most singular covering, and 

 as beautiful as singular, of lace.^ Other arts have been equally forestalled 

 by these creatures. What vast importance is attached to the invention of 

 paper ! For nearly six thousand years one of our commonest insects has 

 known how to make and apply it to its purposes^; and even pasteboard, 

 superior in substance and polish to any we can produce, is manufactured 

 by another.''' We imagine that nothing short of human intellect can be 

 equal to the construction of a diving-bell or an air-pump — ^yet a spider is 

 in the daily habit of using the one, and, what is more, one exactly similar 

 in principal to ours, but more ingeniously contrived ; by means of which 

 she resides unwetted in the bosom of the water, and procures the neces- 

 sary supplies of air by a much more simple process than our alternating 

 buckets^ — and the caterpillar of a little moth knows how to imitate the 

 other, producing a vacuum, when necessary for its purposes, without any 

 piston beside its own body.^ If we think with wonder of the populous 

 cities which have employed the united labors of man for many ages to 

 bring them to their full extent, what shall we say to the white ants, which 

 require only a few months to build a metropolis capable of containing an 

 infinitely greater number of inhabitants than even imperial Nineveh, 

 Babylon, Rome, or Pekin, in all their glory ? 



' Gen. xi. 3. * MegachUe miiraria. ' The white ants. * Megachile Papaveris. 



^ The late ingenious Mr. Paul, of Harlston in Norfolk, under the bark of a tree discov- 

 ered a considerable portion of a fabric of this kind, which from its amplitude must have 

 been destined for some other purpose. 



* The common wasp. ' Chariergus nidulans. ^ Argyroneta aguatica. ' Tinea serratella, L. 



