2() 



form and use. In fact, Ike legs of insects are very ser- 

 viceable to assist in their classification. 



6. The appendage to the stomach which we find in the 

 perfect insect seems to be for a reservoir ; in the bee it carries 

 honey, and is the prize schoolboys seek for in the de- 

 struction of bees. What office its possesses in moths I am 

 at a loss to state, as they are not like the industrious bee, 

 a provident race, carrying home in their little sacs the 

 pilfered honey from the floral nectary, and storing it up 

 for winter's use in the hive ; but no doubt every thing is 

 go beautifully constructed by the Great Architect of the 

 universe for some definite end, that, although unknown to 

 us, it has its proper and allotted duty to perform. 



7. The wings. We now come to the last and most impor- 

 tant addition to the insect ; I mean the wings. They are 

 four in number, membranous, with strong ribs passing 

 through them, the whole more or less clothed with 

 little feathers or scales, reflecting every colour under the 

 sun — an object of beauty and admiration. 



I must now conclude, having thus traced the insect 

 through its various changes, and seen it at last dressed in 

 all its perfect and exquisite clothing. Yet before I re- 

 sume my seat I may mention that from insect life, 

 philosophers have believed in the transmutations of metal, 

 from the golden change which some insects exhibit in 

 the pupa state {vanessa urtica) ; and poets have borrowed 

 the sweetest imagery of comparison from all that 

 is lovely in insect life, and precious in the untarnished 

 beauty of human loveliness. The ancient Greeks were 

 alive to some of these transformations, and, with the 

 classic poetry of their race, they figured the beautiful image 

 of the insect in its metamorphosis as emblematic of the 

 transit of the human soul — now for a while, like the 

 creeping larva, feeding upon food more or less coarse, -with 

 ample satiety or famished appetite— then as the shrouded 

 chrysalis in its hardened cerecloth. This is no bad emblem 

 of that state to which all insect life must enter, and all 

 humanity be subject to. Now there is a period of un- 



