CHAPTER III 



LONDON INSECTS 



' Come take up your hats, and away let us haste 

 To the Butterfly's ball and the Grasshopper's feast ; 

 The Trumpeter Gadfly has summoned the crew, 

 And the revels are now only waiting for you.' ROSCOE. 



IN Alphonse Karr's little book already quoted there are 

 two chapters with very suggestive, if not very elegant, 

 headings, 'Sur le dos' and 'Sur le ventre' lying on 

 the grass, and looking first down in the strong light 

 into thickets of thyme, and moss forests of miniature 

 palms, and tree ferns, to watch the important doings 

 of insects which live there, and then turning over, and 

 looking with shaded eyes through the gaps in the 

 branches of the larger trees and floating gossamer 

 threads at the clouds and clear depths of sky beyond. 



It may depend on the turn of one's mind whether, 

 used independently, the telescope or microscope sets 

 one thinking most, but together they must make the 

 least imaginative of us feel what a very little space it 

 is after all that man, with all his many inventions, 

 occupies in creation. 



' Vast chain of being ! which from God began. 

 Natures ethereal, human angel, man, 

 Beast, bird, fish, insect. What no eye can see, 

 No glass can reach. From infinite to thee, 

 From thee to nothing.' 



