48 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



Studied them with some attention. This he has shown, not only by being 

 aware of the distinctions which separate the various tribes of grasshoppers, 

 crickets, &c. (Gryllus, L.) into different genera^ but also by noticing the 

 different direction of the two anterior from the four posterior legs of insects ; 

 for, as he speaks of them as going upon four legs^, it is evident that he 

 considered the two anterior as arms. Solomon, the wisest of mankind, 

 made Natural History a peculiar object of study, and left treatises behind 

 him upon its various branches, in which creeping things or insects were 

 not overlooked^; and a wiser than Solomon directs our attention to natural 

 productions, when he bids us consider the lilies of the field^, teaching us 

 that they are more worthy of our notice than the most glorious works of 

 man : he also not obscurely intimates that insects are symbolical beings, 

 when he speaks of scorpions as synonymous with evil spirits^; thus 

 giving into our hands a clue for a more profitable mode of studying them, 

 as furnishing moral and spiritual instruction. 



If to these scriptural authorities we add those of uninspired writers, 

 ancient and modern, the names of many worthies, celebrated both for wis- 

 dom and virtue, may be produced. Aristotle among the Greeks, and Pliny 

 the elder among the Romans, may be denominated the fathers of Natural 

 History, as well as the greatest philosophers of their day ; yet both these 

 made insects a principal object of their attention : and in more recent 

 times, if we look abroad, what names greater than those of Redi, Mal- 

 pighi, Vallisnieri, Swammerdam, Leeuvvenhoek, Reaumur, Linne, De 

 Geer, Bonnet, and the Hubers? and at home, what philosophers have 

 done more honor to their country and to human nature than Ray, Wil- 

 lughby, Lister, and Derham ? Yet all these made the study of insects one 

 of their most favorite pursuits ; and, as if to prove that this study is not 

 incompatible with the highest flights of genius, we can add to the list the 

 name of one of the most sublime of our poets. Gray, who was very zeal- 

 ously devoted to Entomology ; as were the celebrated modern artists, 

 Fuseli and Stothard, and that prodigy of talent, our Dr. Thomas Young, 

 one of whose first essays was upon the habits of spiders, and above all, 

 the immortal Cuvier, who began his career in this science, and retained for 

 it to the last a strong predilection.® As far therefore as names have weight, 



1 Levit. xi. 21, 22. Lichtenstein in Linn. Trans, iv, 51, 52. 



2 Levit. xi. 20. conf. Bochart, Hierozoic. ii. 1. 4. c. 9. 497, 498. 



3 1 Kings, iv. 33. * Luke, xii. 27. ^ jbid. x. 19, 20. 



^ Several manuscript volumes of Cuvier's description of insects, and beautifully accurate 

 figures by his own pen, begun to be written and drawn when he was but seventeen yeans 

 of age, and continued for five or six years following, still exist (fac-similes of some of 

 which have recently been published in Silbermann's Eevue Eniomologique) ; and it was, as 

 he himself avowed, the marvels which he discovered in the organization of insects which 

 elevated his genius to the still higher conceptions which made him the first naturalist of 

 the age. In acknowledging the honor which the Entomological Society of France had 

 conferred on him, in electing him an honorary member, he thus expressed himself in his 

 letter, dated, alas ! but a fortnight before his death. " I should have been more worthy of 

 the honor formerly, when in my youth this fine science occupied all my leisure moments, 

 but if other branches of natural history have not permitted me to give myself up to it with 

 the same ardor, I do not the less feel always the greatest interest in it." " If," said he one 

 day to his friend, Professor Audouin, " I had not studied insects when I was at college 

 from taste, I should, at a later period, from reason and necessity." For he was convinced 

 that the habit of devoting the entire attention to the examination of minute details, and 

 the experience of the danger of faUing into error the moment this habit is deviated ftom, 

 are most useful preliminaries to the study of the higher animals, and to enable us to derive 

 from it its most valuable fruits. " Are you an entomologist ? " he asked, one day in M. 



