INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 9 



perhaps for some beneficial discoveries. The painter might thus probably 

 be furnished with more brilliant pigments, the dyer with more delicate tints, 

 and the artizan with a new and improved set of tools. In this last respect 

 insects deserve particular notice. All their operations are performed witii 

 admirable precision and dexterity ; and though they do not usually vary 

 the mode, yet that mode is always the best that can be conceived for at- 

 taining the end in view. The instruments also with which they are provided 

 are no less wonderful and various than the operations themselves. They 

 have their saws, and files, and augurs, and gimlets, and knives, and lancets, 

 and scissors, and forceps, with many other similar implements ; several of 

 which act in more than one capacity, and with a complex and alternate 

 motion to which we have not yet attained in the use of our tools. Nor is 

 the fact so extraordinary as it may seem at first, since " He who is wise in 

 heart and wonderful in working" is the inventor and fabricator of the 

 apparatus of insects ; which may be considered as a set of miniature pat- 

 terns drawn for our use by a Divine hand. I shall hereafter give you a 

 more detailed account of some of the most striking of these instruments ; 

 and if you study insects in this view, you will be well repaid for all the 

 labour and attention you bestow upon them. 



But a more important species of instruction than any hitherto enumera- 

 ted may be deriveti from entomological pursuits. If we attend to the history 

 and manners of insects, they will furnish us with many useful lessons in 

 Ethics, and from them we may learn to improve ourselves in various virtues. 

 We have indeed the inspired authority of the wisest of mankind for studying 

 them in this view, since he himself wrote a treatise upon them, and sends 

 his sluggard to one for a lesson of wisdom.^ And if we value diligence and 

 indefatigable industry, judgment, prudence, and foresight, economy, and 

 frugality ; if we look upon modesty and diffidence as female ornaments ; if 

 we revere parental affection ; of all these, and many more virtues, insects 

 in their various instincts exhi!)it several striking examples, as you will see 

 in the course of our correspondence. 



With respect to religious instruction insects are far from unprofitable ; 

 indeed in this view Entomology seems to possess peculiar advantages above 

 every other branch of Natural History. In the larger animals, though we 

 admire the consummate art and wisdom manifested in their structure, and 

 adore that Almighty power and goodness, which by a wonderful machinery, 

 kept in motion by the constant action and re-action of the great positive 

 and negative powers of nature, maintains in full force the circulations 

 necessary to life, perception, and enjoyment; yet as there seems no dispro- 

 portion between the objects and the different operations that are going on 

 in them, and we see that they afford sufficient space for the play of their 

 systems, we do not experience the same sensations of wonder and astonish- 

 ment that strike us when we behold similar operations carried on without 

 interruption in animals scarcely visible to the naked eye. That creatures, 

 which in the scale of being are next to nonentities, should be elaborated 

 with so much art and contrivance, have such a number of parts both internal 

 and external, all so highly finished and each so nicely calculated to answer 

 its end ; that they should include in this evanescent form such a variety of 

 organs of perception and instruments of motion, exceeding in number and 

 peculiarity of structure those of other animals ; that their nervous and 



1 1 Kings, iv. 33. Prov. vi. C— 8. 



