ENTOMOLOOrCAL SOCfETY^ OF ONTARIO. 33 



into the water and ker p it there, it would turn into a snake." He did not make a disciple 

 of me, for I had read Coljbold's, Leidy's and Asassiz's observations on Gordins aqnaticuti, 

 etc. 



I have come to this conclusion that whether we go to the " other-end of nowhere,' or 

 to " the uttermost parts of the morning," we shall find nothing better to rest upon than 

 the old statement, " God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, 

 cattle, and creeping lldng, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so." Gen. 

 I, 24. 



That every kind has its own well-ordered and fitting life-history we are assured, from 

 the succfss that has attended the efforts of entomologists in. following through their 

 various stages of existence n any of the most minute and obscure of living things. 



I have shewn that an authorized school-book may be misleading — the school master's 

 desk is not always the seat of entomological authority. 



From the pulpit too, hard sayings sometimes reach our ears. 



In the lansuage of the ancients, as you know, the word Psyche meant both a bntterjiij 

 and ilie soul. And in ancient art an association of the two ideas was embodied, in a 

 figure of a beautiful damsel holding an expiring torch in one hand and a butterfly in the 

 other. In this mam er, the soul escaping from the worn-out body was portrayed. Christian 

 writers have endeavored to improve upon their imagery, and in doing so have erred. 

 They have compared man's earthly life to the caterpillar state of the insect, the tenantless 

 body to tVie auielia, and the future glorified body to the imago of the insect, in all this 

 there is an evident straining of the analogy. The apostle Sr. Paul, to illustrate the great 

 doctrine of the resurrection, said : "Thou fool that whi h thou sowest is not quickened 

 except it die" (I Cor. XV, 36). But under normal conditions an insect does not die in 

 the aurelia stage — death with it i.H the final scene — and so we never find the inspired 

 writers making use of the metamor('hoses of insects to illustrate that great doctrine. 



One quotation from a modern writer will show at once, and better than a long 

 argument, the inappropriatenes-s of such illustrations. fu the 2nd vol. of "Sermons for 

 the Christian year'' by the Rev. William fl. Lewis, D. D., Rector of Christ Church, 

 Watertown, Conn., page 312, we read : 



" We stand by the sedgy pond, and see dark forms of water-insects skating along, that could not live a 

 moment if they were taken in that state out of the wave*, just as we could not bear with such bodies as we 

 now have the life of heaven ; Ijut by and by these insects ' (appear ?) "to sicken and die, and lie motionless 

 for a while, and then a creature ris«-s to the smface, climbs up some reed or flag, and dri^s it!?elf awhile in 

 the sun, and then flashes through the air, with the splendid wings of the dragon fly, perhaps. Nor could it 

 live in its old home in the wateis any more ; just as man raised in his spiritual body will no longer be fitted 

 for such life as he now lives on earth. It is an eml)'em of the resurrection —a creature of one world, or 

 element, passing by decay and seeming death to another." 



Unfortunately for this illustration, the nymph of the dragon-fly is both active and 

 predaceous, and cairies on its puisuits until the very hour in which it ascends the stem of 

 a water-plant, or other pi'ominence, from which, as from a vantage-ground, as soon as its 

 outer skin is ruptured and cast off", the transformed boJy takes its flight to pursue its 

 depredations in the upper air. 



The illustration is a very unsavoury one. The Libellula is a tarror to its neighbours 

 in every stage of its existence ; and surely the man who has " bulldozed " his fellow 

 creatures in this world can hardly be warranted in indulging in blissful anticipations of 

 doing the same in the world to come. 



The giants among men of letters, the great masters of song and others, who in the 

 strength of genius have trusted to their own observation, have sometimes, by a word, 

 brought before us peculiarities of insect form or habit recognizable in all time. Thus 

 Homer speaks of the rin<,ed was-ps : Shakesjieare of the mealy wings of butterflies ; Rogers 

 of the glow-worm's emerald light ; Shelley of the golden bee ; Tennyson of the " high- 

 elbowed grigs that leap in summer grass," Even Horace's •' mail culices " strikes the 

 musquitobitten entomologist as singularly appropriate. 



But lesser lights who have given rein to fancy, or have imperfectly interpreted the 

 phenonena of nature, have often greatly blundered in treating on entomological subjects. 



The entomological mistakes of writers have arisen : 



(1) Fro7n sheer ignorance. — This was the case with the man who translated the pas 



3 (EN.) 



