2 pliny's natueal histoey. [Book XI. 



in the very largest among them, she found her task easy and 

 her materials ready and pliable ; but in these minute creatures, 

 so nearly akin as they are to non-entity, how surpassing the 

 intelligence, how vast the resources, and how ineffable the 

 perfection which she has displayed. Where is it that she has 

 united so many senses as in the gnat ? — not to speak of creatures 

 that might be mentioned of still smaller size — "Where, I say, 

 has she found room to place in it the organs of sight ? Where 

 has she centred the sense of taste ? Where has she inserted 

 the power of smell ? And where, too, has she implanted that 

 sharp shrill voice of the creature, so utterly disproportioned to 

 the smallness of its body ? With what astonishing subtlety 

 has she united the wings to the trunk, elongated the joints 

 of the legs, framed that long, craving concavity for a belly, and 

 then inflamed the animal with an insatiate thirst for blood, 

 that of m an more especially ! What ingenuity has she displayed 

 in providing it with a sting, 3 so well adapted for piercing the 

 skin ! And then too, just as though she had had the most 

 extensive field for the exercise of her skill, although the 

 weapon is so minute that it can hardly be seen, she has formed 

 it with a twofold mechanism, providing it with a point for the 

 purpose of piercing, and at the same moment making it hollow, 

 to adapt it for suction. 



What teeth, too, has she inserted in the teredo, * to adapt it 

 for piercing oak even with a sound which fully attests their 

 destructive power ! while at the same time she has made wood 

 its principal nutriment. We give all our admiration to the 

 shoulders of the elephant as it supports the turret, to the 

 stalwart neck of the bull, and the might with which it hurls 

 aloft whatever comes in its way, to the onslaught of the tiger, 

 or to the mane of the lion ; while, at the same time, Nature is 

 nowhere to be seen to greater perfection than in the very 

 smallest of her works. For this reason then, I must beg of 

 my readers, notwithstanding the contempt they feel for many 

 of these objects, not to feel a similar disdain for the informa- 

 tion I am about to give relative thereto, seeing that, in the 



3 The trunk of the gnat, Cuvier says, contains five silken and pointed 

 threads, which together have the effect of a sting. 



4 The Teredo navalis of Linnaeus, not an insect, hut one of the mollusks. 

 This is the same creature that is mentioned in B. xvi. c. 80 ; but that spoken 

 of in B. viii. c. 74, must have been a land insect. 



