OBJECTION'S ANS^TERED. 45 



But this is the smallest half of the value of their 

 pursuit. With what view is the study of the mathema- 

 tics so generally recommended? Not certainly for any 

 practical purpose — not to make the bulk of those who 

 attend to them, astronomers or engineers. Rut simply 

 to exercise and strengthen the intellect — to give the 

 mind a ha])it of attention and of investigation. Now 

 for all these purposes, if 1 do not go so far as to assert 

 that the mere ascertaining of the names of insects is 

 equal to the study of the mathematics, I have no hesi- 

 tation in affirming that it is nearly as efloctual ; and 

 w ith respect to giving a habit of minute attention, supe- 

 rior. Such is the intricacy of nature, such the imper- 

 fection of our present arrangements, that the discovery 

 of the name of almost any insect is a problem, calling 

 in all cases foracuteness and attention, and in some for 

 a balancing of evidence, a calculation of the chances 

 of error, as arduous as are required in a perplexed law- 

 case; and a process of ratiocination not less strict than 

 that which satisfies the mathematician. In proof of 

 which assertion I need only refer any competent judge 

 to the elaborate disquisitions of Laspeyres, called for 

 by one work alone on the lepidopterous insects of a 

 single district — the Wiener Verzeickniss, which occupy 

 above two hundred octavo pages*, and must have cost 

 the learned author nearly as much labour of mind as 

 the Diictor DuhHantium did Bishop Taylor. 



Do not apprehend that this occasional perplexity is 

 any deduction from the attractions of the science: 

 though in itself, in some respects, an evil, it forms in 

 fact to many minds one of the chief of them. The pur- 



» Illig. i¥«^. ii, 33. iv. 3. 



