250 INDIRECT BENEl'lTS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



and skilful to remedy it — and whether our higher facul- 

 ties are not brought more into play, and our mental 

 powers more invig-orated, by the meditation and expe- 

 riments necessary to secure ourselves. Viewed in these 

 lights, what was at first regarded as Avholly made up 

 of evil, may be discovered to contain a considerable 

 proportion of good. 



This reasoning is here particularly applicable : and if 

 the ultimate benefit to man seems in any case proble- 

 matical, it is merely because to discover it requires more 

 extended and remote views than we are enabled by our 

 limited faculties to take, and a knowledge of distant or 

 concealed results which we are incompetent to calcu- 

 late or discover. The common good of this terraqueous 

 globe requires that all things endowed with vegetable 

 or animal life should bear certain proportions to each 

 other ; and if any individual species exceeds that pro- 

 portion, from beneficial it becomes noxious, and inter- 

 feres with the general welfare. It was requisite there- 

 fore for the benefit of the whole system that certain 

 means should be provided, by which this hurtful luxu- 

 riance might be checked, and all things taught to keep 

 within their proper limits : hence it became necessary 

 that some should prey upon others, and a part be sacri- 

 ficed for the good of the whole. 



Of the counterchecks thus provided, none act a more 

 important part tlian insects, particularly in the vegetable 

 kingdom, every plant having its insect enemies. Man, 

 when he takes any plant from its natural state and 

 makes it an object of cultivation, must expect that these 

 agents will follow it into the artificial state in which he 

 has placed it, and still prey upon it; and it is his busi- 



