86 COLLECTION AND PRESERVATION OF INSECTS. 



cule increase. Ai-gument with others, in these cases, is 

 wholly useless ; but each individual may say to himself: — 

 Insects are wonderfully and beautifully made ; they appear 

 equal, often superior, in structure and in powers, to any 

 other work of the great Creator; He, moreover, in their 

 unaccountable instincts, appears directly to guide the ac- 

 tions of each without the medium of reason or memory. 

 How can these beings, thus so immediately under the care 

 of the Creator, be too insignificant for me to notice ? 



It will not be amiss at the same time to reflect, that con- 

 sidered in relation to ourselves insects are not unimportant. 

 Cantharides, a drug of great value, and which, as the prin- 

 cipal ingredient of blisters, is yet unequalled, is the name 

 given to beetles collected in great abundance fiom ash and 

 other trees in the south of Europe ; they are merely dried 

 and pounded, and are at once fit for use. Silk, an article 

 of dress, and one which gives employment and consequent 

 means of subsistence to millions of human beings, is, as we 

 have already related, the produce of the silk-worm. Ink, 

 an article of immense importance in our communications 

 with each other, and in the preservation of knowledge, is 

 principally made from galls produced on trees by a minute 

 insect called the gall-fly. Cochineal, the most valuable 

 and beautiful of dies, is an insect which feeds on a species 

 of Cactus, in Mexico, and other parts of the continent of 

 America. Kermes, the most brilliant scarlet die known 

 pre^iously to the discovery of America, is an insect found 

 abundantly on the Quercus coccifera, in the south of Eu- 

 rope : this was the celebrated Phoenician die. Shell-lac, 

 a glutinous substance, now of very great importance in the 

 manufacture of hats, and of value as an ingredient of print- 

 ers' ink, is secreted by an insect which swarms on the 

 trunks of several kinds of trees in India. Wax, that en- 

 lightens our drawing-rooms, and in combination is applied 



