194 OF INSECTS. 



tions are not more frequent than they are, if it be true, as 

 we allege, that the same principle of intelligence, design, 

 and mechanical contrivance, was exerted in the formation 

 of natural bodies, as we employ in the making of the vari- 

 ous instruments by which our purposes are served. The 

 answers to this question are, first, that it seldom happens, 

 that precisely the same purpose, and no other, is pursued 

 in any work which we compare of nature and of art ; sec- 

 ondly, that it still seldomer happens, that we can imitate 

 nature, if we would. Our materials and our workmanship 

 are equally deficient. Springs are wires, and cork and 

 leather, produce a poor substitute for an arm or a hand. In 

 the example which we have selected, I mean of a lobster's 

 shell compared with a coat of mail, these difficulties stand 

 less in the way, than in almost any other that can be as- 

 signed ; and the consequence is, as we have seen, that art 

 gladly borrows from nature her contrivance, and imitates 

 it closely. 



But to return to insects. I think it is in this class of 

 animals, above all others, especially when we take in the 

 multitude of species which the microscope discovers, that 

 we are struck with what Cicero has called " the insatiable 

 variety of nature." There are said to be six thousand 

 species of flies ; seven hundred and sixty butterflies ; each 

 different from all the rest, (St. Pierre.) The same writer 

 tells us from his own observation, that thirty -seven species 

 of winged insects, with distinctions well expressed, visited 

 a single strav/berry plant in the course of three weeks.* 

 Rat/ observed, within the compass of a mile or two of his 

 own house, two hundred kinds of butterflies, nocturnal, 

 and diurnal. He likewise asserts, but, I think, without any 

 grounds of exact computation, that the number of species 

 of insects, reckoning all sorts of them, may not be short 

 of ten thousand.! And in this vast variety of animal forms, 

 (for the observation is not confined to insects, though more 

 applicable perhaps to them than to any other class,) we 

 are sometimes led to take notice of the different methods, 

 or rather of the studiously diversified methods, by which 



* Vol. i. p. 3. 



t Wisd. of God, p. 23. The number of species of insects known 

 to entomologists, and preserved in cabinets, is at present not less 

 than forty tliousand. This number, however, must probably form a 

 small proportion of the whole number which exist upon the earth. 

 tSee Kirly and Spence's Entomology. £d. 



