66 LONDON INSECTS 



Great Fire, and that it was first imported with the fir 

 wood brought over wholesale to rebuild the city. 



It is impossible now to say how far the story may or 

 may not be founded on fact ; but as most of the timber 

 used in building before 1660 was most likely native- 

 grown, there is nothing improbable in it. The passage 

 in Matthew's Bible, published a hundred years before 

 the fire, which gives as the promise of the 91st Psalm 

 that we shall 'not be afraid of the bugs by night,' 

 cannot be quoted as any proof that they were known 

 then, as it is only in later days that the application of 

 the word has been limited to the particular ' terror by 

 night ' which now monopolises it. But if there is any 

 truth whatever in the story it ought to make all of us 

 who are fond of a potato, Irishmen in particular, very 

 grateful to the authorities whose energetic action not 

 taken until Germany had already been successfully 

 invaded has so far succeeded in keeping the Colorado 

 Beetle from landing in any force on the coasts of 

 England or Ireland. 



'Insects' creatures made in sections, Insectcv 

 (' Entomology/ the science of the study of Insects, is a 

 compound of the same word in a Greek dress), stand 

 about a quarter of the way up the great ladder of 

 intelligent life which has man on the highest rung 

 which we can see clearly now, and its foot on the 

 uncertain ground ' that low department of the organic 

 world from which the two great branches rise and 

 diverge,' where creatures without heads or nerves or 

 apparent consciousness, but holding by patent con- 



