136 OF INSECTS. 



having no other; and how much better adapted it is, than 

 a mouth would be, for the collecting of the proper nourish- 

 ment of the animal, is sufficiently evident. The food of 

 the bee is the nectar of flowers ; a drop of syrup, lodged 

 deep in the bottom of the corolls, in the recesses of the 

 petals, or down the neck of a monopetalous glove. Into these 

 cells the bee thrusts its long narrow pump, through the cavity 

 of which it sucks up this precious fluid^ inaccessible to 

 every other approach. The ringlets of which the probos- 

 bis of the bee is composed, the muscles by which it is ex- 

 tended and contracted, form so many microscopical won- 

 ders. The agility also, with which it is moved, can hardly 

 fail to excite admiration. But it is enough for our pur- 

 pose to observe in general^ the suitableness of the structure 

 to the use, of the means to the end, and especially the wis- 

 dom, by which nature has departed from its most general 

 analogy (for animals being furnished with mouths are such) 

 when the purpose could be better answered by the devia- 

 tion. 



In some insects, the proboscis, or tongue, or trunk, is 

 ^hut up in a sharp-pointed sheath, which sheath, being of 

 a much firmer texture than the proboscis itself^ asj well as 

 sharpened at the point, pierces the substance which con- 

 tains the food, and then opens within the icound, to allow 

 the enclosed tube, through which the juice is extracted, to 

 perform its office. Can any mechanism be plainer than 

 this is; or surpass this? 



V. The ?«etemo?'p7i05/5 of insects from grubs" into moths 

 and flies, is an astonishing process. A hairy caterpillar 

 is transformed into a butterfly. Observe the change. We * 

 have four beautiful wings, where there were none before ^ 

 a tubular proboscis, in the place of a mouth with jaws and 

 teeth ; six long legs, instead of fourteen feet. In another 

 case, we see a white, smooth, soft worm, turned into a 

 black, hard, crustaceous beetle, vvith gauze wings. These, 

 as I said, are astonishing processes, and must require, as 

 it should seem, a proportionably artificial apparatus. The 

 hypothesis which appears to me most probable is, that, in 

 the grub, there exist at the same time three animals, one 

 within another, all nourished by the same digestion, and 

 by a communicating circulation ; but in different stages of 

 maturity. The latest discoveries, made by naturalists, 

 seem to favour this supposition. The insect already equip- 

 ped with wings, is descried under the membranes, both of 

 the worm and the nymph. In some species, the proboscis^ 



