170 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



The Tent-caterpillars. 



It is interesting to notice how various principles and 

 habits of mankind are illustrated in the different phases of 

 insect life. So veiy striking are some of these coincidences 

 that we can not avoid the inference that the social customs 

 of society were originally borrowed directly from Nature, 

 and that there was a time when man and beast alike fol- 

 lowed only Nature's teaching. The more artificial become 

 our habits and customs, the farther removed they are from 

 the purity and simplicity of nature, and the more depend- 

 ent upon a conceited and hollow-hearted hypocrisy. 



Among the insects we have already noticed some of the 

 monarchs and aristocrats, the tyrants and the brain-feeders. 

 Now we come to a peaceful working class, bound together 

 by a community of interest, and all laboring together for 

 the common good. The Tent-caterpillars are the purest 

 Socialists in the entomological world, and there is more of 

 pleasure to be derived from a perusal of their history than 

 from that of many a country and nation of the old conti- 

 nent ; because the latter is so filled up -vvith the disgusting 

 biographies of vile despots, their crimes and wholesale mur- 

 ders, that the mind revolts from its contemplation. But in 

 the history of this insect tribe we see something that re- 

 minds us of our own free country, of the mutual depend- 

 ence of the States, and of the common interests that makes 

 us " E pluribus unum.'' God grant that motto may ever 

 float upon her banners and be engraved upon the hearts of 

 her people ! that as her history has been, so it may ever be, 

 the purest and the brightest in the Book of Nations, because 

 the truest to those principles of charity and benevolence 

 which even dumb nature teaches us are the best calculated 

 to produce general happiness and prosperity ! that as we 

 have now witnessed how union and harmony augment even 

 the smallest things, " Concordia res pai-voi cresciuit,"' we may 



