HEMIPTERA. Ill 



of her contemporaries by her love of the beauties of Nature, and her 

 perseverance in making them known and admired. Sybille de 

 Merian was born at Bale. Daughter, sister, and mother of celebrated 

 engravers, herself an excellent flower-painter, she had worked a long 

 time at Frankfort and at Nuremburg ; and had read with the greatest 

 attention the " Theologie des Insectes,"* and with admiration Mal- 

 pighi's book on the silkworm. Full of enth'usiasm for the study of 

 natural history, she left Germany, to visit the magnificent collection 

 of plants which were kept in the hot-houses of Holland, and made 

 admirable reproductions of them with her pencil. 



This attentive study of the vegetable world suggested to her the 

 idea, which soon became an ardent desire, of observing these marvels 

 of Nature in those parts of the globe in which they display themselves 

 with the greatest magnificence and splendour. At the age of fifty- 

 four, Sybille de Me'rian set out for equatorial America. From the 

 very first days of her arrival she hazarded her life, sometimes without 

 a guide, in the swampy plains or burning valleys of Guyana. During 

 the two years she sojourned in those dangerous parts, she made a 

 large collection of drawings and paintings, which were destined to 

 inaugurate in Europe the introduction of art into natural history. 



In the plates to her work, Sybille de Merian represents always 

 the insects she wishes to describe under its three forms of larva, 

 pupa, and perfect insect. With this drawing she gives another of 

 the plants which serves the insect for food, as also of the animals 

 which prey on it. Each plate is a little drama. Near the insect is 

 seen the greedy lizard opening its dreadful mouth, or the ferocious 

 spider watching for it. The short life of insects is shown here in its 

 entirety, with its continual struggles, its infinite artifices, its rapid end, 

 and all the episodes of its existence, for which life, as in the case of 

 the moral man, is but a long and painful struggle. 



Such was the work, such was the noble devotion and the worthy 

 career of Sybille de Merian. Let women, let young girls, who are 

 martyrs to the ennui of a life devoid of occupation, peruse her 

 beautiful books, and learn from it how much a woman may do with 

 the time which is now either utterly unoccupied or only devoted to 

 useless employments. To study Nature in any of its phases ought, 

 it seems to us, to give more satisfaction to the soul, more strength to 

 the mind, and cause more admiration of and gratitude to the 

 supreme Author of Nature than doing a little embroidery. 



* " Theologie des Insectes, ou Demonstration des Perfections de Dieu dans 

 tout ce qui concerne les Insectes, par Lesser, traduit en Fran9ais." La Haye, 

 1742. 



