59 [ 479 j 



usual cost of which is one dollar i^er leus, is all that is usually required. 

 It is a coininou mistake to suppose that insects canuot be studied aud 

 classified Avithout the use of a complex aud costly iniscroscope. ISuch 

 instruments are useful only to examine excessively minute or transpa- 

 rent objects, and though sometimes indispensable to the professed ento- 

 mologist, they are rarely used in the ordinary study of insects. 



THE INSTINCT OF mSECT^<. 



Instinct is that faculty by which animals are enabled to discover their 

 food, construct their nests, and provide for their young, and to perform 

 these operations without having- had any pre\'ious education or experi- 

 ence. Many of the manifestations of this taculty are truly wonderful 

 and unaccountable. Such are the mathematically accurate construction 

 of the cells of the honey-comb ; the cimous economy of the ants and 

 bees ; and the provisions which many kinds of insects make for the fu- 

 ture subsistence of their young, even in advance of their existence. 



Instinct is often spoken of as an imperfect or ])artially developed rea- 

 son, but its relation to that lacidty can be, at most, only that of a very 

 remote analogy. It differs from reason in its in variableness and its al- 

 most absolute infallibility, but most essentially in its independency of 

 previous knowledge and experience. Eeason acts only by A'irtue of what 

 is already known, and man, who vastly excels all other animals in his 

 reasoning powers, approaches perfection in any comj)lex work only by 

 long study and practice; the honey-bee, on the contrary, constructs its 

 first cell with such mathematical accuracy that it cannot be improved 

 by any subseiiuent experience. 



Some of the higher animals, such as the horse and the dog, give proof 

 of the possession of a reasoning faculty similar to our own, and inferior 

 only in degree. But whilst the manifestations of reason are fainter as 

 we descend in the animal scale, instinct becomes more remarkable, and 

 in insects especially, in which reason is almost if not absolutely wanting, 

 instinct is exhibited in its highest perfection, far surpassing, in many 

 instances, in accuracy and iirescience, the reason of man himself. 



Of the nature of the instinct of animals, as of that of the human mind, 

 we know absolutely nothing ; and we can only confess our ignorance 

 by referring its wonderful manifestations to the direct agency of the 

 creator. 



INSECTS FROM A PKACTICAL OR ECONOMIC POINT OF VIEW. 



In regarding insects from this point of view, we .have to consider 

 tltem in both their beneficial and their injimous relations. The directly 

 beneficial insects are almost limited to the three well-known s[)ecies : 

 the honey-bee, the silk-worm and the cochineal-insect ; whereas, those 



