114 



JUNE. 



nomy — whether he considers the perfection of their 

 movements, the inconceivable minuteness of the parts 

 moved, or the strength, persistence or velocity of their 

 contractions." Insects are proverbially of small com- 

 parative dimensions — " minims of nature" — 



" that wave their limber fans 

 For wings, and smallest lineaments exact, 

 In all the liveries decked of summer's pride." 



Their presence, indeed, around us, is only remarked 

 as conferring additional life and gaiety to the land- 

 scape ; and, except when by some inordinate increase 

 in their numbers they make up by their multitude for 

 their diminutive size, the ravages committed by them 

 are trifling and insignificant. Far otherwise, however, 

 would it be if they attained to larger growth, and still 

 possessed the extraordinary power with which they are 

 now so conspicuously gifted ; they would, then, indeed, 

 become truly the tyrants of the creation ; monsters such 

 " as fable never feigned or fear conceived," fully ade- 

 quate to destroy and exterminate from the surface of 

 the earth all that it contains of vegetable or of animal 

 life. 



We have already seen that the flea or the grasshopper 

 will spring two hundred times the length of its own 

 body ; that the dragon-fly possesses such indomitable 

 strength of wing that for a day together it will sustain 

 itself in the air, and fly with equal facility and swiftness 

 backwards or forwards, to the right or to the left, with- 

 out turning ; that the beetles are encased in a dense and 

 hard integument, impervious to ordinary violence ; and, 

 we might add, that the wasp and the termite ant will 



