4 INSECT AKCEUTECTURE. 



timities for increasing his store of facts. It is told of 

 a state prisoner, nnder a cruel and rigorous despotism, 

 that when he was excluded from all commerce with 

 mankind, and was shut out from books, he took an interest 

 and found consolation in the visits of a spider ; and there 

 is no improbability in the story. The operations of that 

 persecuted creature are among the most extraordinary 

 exhibitions of mechanical ingenuity ; and a daily watching 

 of the workings of its instinct would beget admiration in a 

 rightly-constituted mind. The poor prisoner had abundant 

 leisure for the speculations in which the spider's web 

 would enchain his understanding. We have all of us, at 

 one period or other of our lives, been struck with some 

 singular evidence of contrivance in the economy of insects, 

 which we have seen with our own eyes. Want of leisure, 

 and probably want of knowledge, have prevented us from 

 following up the curiosity which for a moment was excited. 

 And yet some such accident has made men Naturalists, in 

 the highest meaning of the term. Bonnet, evidently speak- 

 ing of himself, saj^s, " I knew a naturalist, who, when he 

 was seventeen years of age, having heard of the operations 

 of the ant-lion, began by doubting them. He had no rest 

 till he had examined into them ; and he verified them, he 

 admired them, he discovered new facts, and soon became 

 the disciple and the friend of the Pliny of France." * 

 (Reaumur.) It is not the happy fortune of many to be able 

 to devote themselves exclusively to the study of nature, 

 unquestionably the most fascinating of human employments ; 

 but almost every one one may acquire sufficient knowledge 

 to be able to derive a high gratification from beholding the 

 more common operations of animal life. His materials for 

 contemplation are always before him. Some weeks ago we 

 made an excursion to West Wood, near Shooter's Hill, 

 expressly for the purpose of observing the insects we 

 might meet with in the wood : but we had not got far 

 among the bushes, when heavy rain came on. AVe imme- 

 diately sought shelter among the boughs of some thick 

 underwood, composed of oak, birch, and aspen; but we 

 * Contemplation de la Nature, part ii. cli. 42. 



