EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 349 
I trust that what I have here advanced will excite your 
attention to the subject I am now to enter upon; and I 
flatter myself, that although at first sight it may promise 
nothing more than a dry and tedious detail of parts and 
organs, you will find it not without its peculiar interest 
and attraction. 
This department of the science—the Anatomy of In- 
sects—may still be regarded as in its infancy ; and consi- 
infidelity are grafted. Nature, in the eyes of a large proportion of 
the enemies of Revelation, occupies the place and does the work of 
its Great Author. Thus Hume, when he writes against miracles, ap- 
pears to think that the Deity has delegated some or all of his powers 
to nature, and will not interfere with that trust. Essays, ii, 75—. 
And to name no more, Lamarck, treading in some measure in the 
steps of Robinet (who supposes that all the links of the animal king- 
dom, in which nature gradually ascends from low to high, were ex- 
periments in her progress towards her great and ultimate aim—the 
formation of man. Barclay On Organization, &c. 263), thus states 
his opinion: “ La nature, dans toutes ses opérations, ne pouvant pro- 
céder que graduellement, n’a pu produire tous les animaux a-la-fois : 
elle n’a d’abord formé que les plus simples; et passant de ceux-ci 
jusques aux plus composés, elle a établi successivement en eux dif- 
férens systémes d’organes particuliers, les a multipliés, en a augmenté 
de plus en plus l’énergie, et, les cumulant dans les plus parfaits, elle 
a fait exister tous les animaux connus avec |’organisation et les fa- 
cultés que nous leur observons.” (Anim. sans Vertébr. i. 123.) Thus 
denying to the Creator the glory of forming those works of cre- 
ation, the animal and vegetable kingdom (for he assigns to both the 
same origin, Jdid. 83), in which his glorious attributes are most con- 
spicuously manifested ; and ascribing them to nature, or a certain 
order of things, as he defines it (214)—a blind power, that operates 
necessarily (311); which he admits, however, to be the product of 
the will of the Supreme Being (216). It is remarkable, that in his 
earlier works, in which he broaches a similar opinion, we find no 
mention of a Supreme Being. (See his Systéme des Animaux sans Ver- 
tebres, Discours d’Ouverture.) Thus we may say that, like his fore- 
runner Epicurus, Re tollit, dum oratione relinquit Deum. But though 
he ascribes all to nature ; yet as the immediate cause of all the ani 
