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LETTER IX. 



BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 

 INDIRECT BENEFITS. 



My last letters contained, I must own, a most melancholy though not an 

 overcharged picture of the injuries and devastation which man, in various 

 ways, experiences through the instrumentality of the insect world. In this 

 and the following I hope to place before you a more agreeable scene, since 

 in them I shall endeavor to point out in what respects these minute ani- 

 mals are made to benefit us, and what advantages we reap from their 

 extensive agency. 



God, in all the evil which he permits to take place, whether spiritual, 

 moral, or natural, has the ultimate good of his creatures in view. The 

 evil that we suffer is often a countercheck which restrains us from greater 

 evil, or a spur to stimulate us to good : we should therefore consider every 

 thing, not according to the present sensation of pain, or the present loss or 

 injury that it occasions, but according to its more general, remote, and 

 permanent effects and bearings ; — whether by it we are not impelled to 

 the practice of many virtues which otherwise might lie dormant in us — 

 whether our moral habits are not improved — whether we are not rendered 

 by it more prudent, cautious, and wary, more watchful to prevent evil, 

 more ingenious and skilful to remdy it — and whether our higher faculties 

 are not brought more into play, and our mental powers more invigorated, 

 by the meditation and experiments necessary to secure ourselves. Viewed 

 in these lights, what was at first regarded as wholly made up of evil, may 

 be discovered to contain a considerable proportion of good. 



This reasoning is here particularly applicable ; and if the ultimate 

 benefit to man seems in any case problematical, it is merely because to 

 discover it requires more extended and remote views than we are enabled 

 by our limited faculties to take, and a knowledge of distant or concealed 

 results which we are incompetent to calculate or discover. The common 

 good of this terraqueous globe requires that all things endowed with vege- 

 table or animal life should bear certain proportions to each other ; and if 

 any individual species exceeds that proportion, from beneficial it becomes 

 noxious, and interferes with the general welfare. It was requisite therefore 

 for the benefit of the whole system that certain means should be provided, 

 by which this hurtful luxuriance might be checked, and all things taught 

 to keep within their proper limits : hence it became necessary that some 

 should prey upon others, and a part be sacrificed for the good of the whole. 



Of the counterchecks thus provided, none act a more important part 

 than insects, particularly in the vegetable kingdom, every plant having its 

 insect enemies. Man, when he takes any plant from its natural state and 

 makes it an object of cultivation, must expect that these agents will follow 



