180 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



ful properties of reason and judgment. How many persons 

 who have found a disgusting little worm in an apple have 

 ever thought that they never can find but one in each ap 

 ple? Yet so it is. How many have ever dreamed that 

 that worm, if allowed to live, would become a moth, and 

 reproduce itself over and over again, and. yet among the 

 myriads of such insects there would be deposited but one 

 egg on each fruit ? How do other moths know that there 

 is an egg already deposited there, or that there is already a 

 caterpillar within the fruit ? How do they know their eggs 

 will not fructify upon ground already occupied by another? 

 Is it instinct or reason teaches them these things, and marks 

 their course with so much accuracy? 



Again, look at another phenomenon connected with this 

 wonderful little caterpillar. Cut an apple open that con 

 tains one of these inhabitants, and you see the whole quan 

 tity of its black, granular excrements tied together by silky 

 filaments, produced by this worm, in order to prevent these 

 minute grains from rolling about and impeding its motions. 

 Is not this contrivance, thought, design ? Is it reason or in 

 stinct that guides their tiny but wonderful course? Were 

 these little bubbles of foam on Life s great ocean wafted to 

 our barks in vain ? Were these animated atoms sent crawl 

 ing on the choicest fruit that we gather with our hands, or 

 carry to our mouths, to exhibit in their ephemeral existence 

 only a striking illustration of Nature s nice adaptation of 

 means to an end ? 



Or were they created, solitary preachers on each little 

 globe of fruit, which falls like manna from above, to teach 

 us some great moral lesson? Come they into our very 

 faces to remind us how &quot; dearly we pay for the primal 

 fall?&quot; Do they inhabit the finest specimens of that fruit 

 by which our first mother was tempted, in order to bid us 

 taste the viands of Eden, and make us feel that &quot; the trail 

 of the serpent hangs over them all ?&quot; 



