10 IXSECT ARCPIITECTURE. 



minute beetles ; but the same agencies relieve us from that 

 extreme abundance of vegetable matter whicli would 

 render the earth uninlmbitable were this excess not 

 periodically destroyed. In hot countries, the great busi- 

 ness of removing corrupt animal matter, which the vulture 

 and the hya3na impeifectly perform, is eifected with 

 certainty and speed by tlie myriads of insects that spring 

 from the eggs deposited in every carcase by some fly 

 seeking therein the means of life for her progeny. Destruc- 

 tion and reproduction, the great laws of Nature, are carried 

 on very greatly through the instrumentality of insects ; 

 and the same principle regulates even the increase of parti- 

 cular species of insects themselves. When aphides are so 

 abundant that we know not how to escape their ravages, 

 flocks of lady-birds instantly cover our fields and gardens 

 to destroy them . Such considerations as these are thrown 

 out to show that the subject of insects has a great philoso- 

 phical importance — and what portion of the works of 

 Nature has not? The habits of all God's creatures, 

 whether they are noxious, or harmless, or beneficial, are 

 worthy objects of our study. If they aftect ourselves, in 

 our health or our possessions, whether for good or for evil, 

 an additional impulse is naturally given to our desire to 

 attain a knowledge of their properties. Such studies form 

 one of the most interesting occupations which can engage 

 a rational and inquisitive mind ; and, perhaps, none of the 

 employments of human life are more dignified than the 

 investigation and survey of the workings and the ways of 

 Nature in the minutest of her productions. 



The exercise of that habit of observation which can alone 

 make a naturalist —" an out-of-door naturalist," as Daines 

 Barrington called himself — is well calculated to strengthen 

 even the most practical and merely useful powers of the 

 mind. One of the most valuable mental acquirements is 

 the power of discriminating among things which differ in 

 many minute points, but whose general similarity of ap- 

 pearance usuall}^ deceives the common observer into a 

 belief of their identity. The study of insects, in this point 

 of view, is most peculiarly adapted for youth. According 



