INSECTS. 375 



to methodise, and thereby to circumscribe, the subjects of 

 human knowledge, or who err in their estimate of the 

 perceptive powers of the human mind as applied to other 

 matters of inquiry, may be deterred by the vague boun- 

 daries of such a field, a greater number, and with more 

 propriety it is hoped, may be induced to enter it, from the 

 very consideration of such a rich and unreaped harvest. 

 While a fragment of inert matter, which chemical analysis 

 determines to differ in its constituent proportions from 

 other fragments previously examined, is once in a lustre 

 dignified by the name of a new species, and the name of 

 a Haiiy or a Dolomieu is bestowed on the unconscious 

 mass. — and while, even in the richer domain of British 

 botany, the student of that science, however much he may 

 extend our knowledge of the localities of plants, labours 

 with but a feeble chance of adding to the actual list even 

 of indigenous species, and has probably no chance at all 

 of ever refreshing his eyes with the sight of a plant which 

 nobody ever saw before, — it is far otherwise with the 

 innumerable tribes of insect life. The "gilded summer- 

 flies "' are numerous as leaves in Vallombrosa. No recess 

 of the forest so obscure but there the " winded messengers " 

 are seen to sport and play ; and each summer sunbeam 

 falls not alone on the dewy herbage of the open glades, 

 but lights up the gorgeous lines of those bright creatures 

 which a mystical philosophy has ennobled as the types of 



