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the dumb announcement that the well cannot be distant ! 

 and canst thou have forgotten the insect tribes, that so 

 much excel in number and variety, all the rest of creation ? 

 Is not that miracle of winged creatures, whose aromatic 

 honieshave imposed the celebrity of their name, alike upon 

 the Canaans and the Atticas of old, have nourished pro- 

 phets in the wilderness and armies on the march,* an ob- 

 ject of thy peculiar care ! and though that silly moth, who 

 hastens to his own funeral pile with such precipitate im- 

 petuosity will not attend to thee, (for such fatuity can be 

 no work of thine !) who shall deny that the Silpha, the 

 Phalcena Cossus, and the Carabus are directed by thy hint, 

 to discharge, on suitable provocation, that caustic venom 

 which one of the family, f (a sharp shooter is he !) is 

 mischievous enough to direct into the eye of the prying en- 

 tomologist? What though the songstress Cicada, careless 

 of thy lessons, involves herself in froth in the vain hope 

 of eluding observation, (for her froth is more observ- 

 able than herself) yet there can be no mistake in attri- 

 buting it to thy suggestion that Tortrices roll themselves in 

 leaves, that the Grillus (that Schcenobatist of the insect 

 reign), escapes us by a series of jumps which make the 

 chase hopeless; that the Cicendella, deeming "discretion 

 the better part of valour," runs out of harm's way, leaving 

 the Cimex, motionless and knowing that he is loathed, to stink 

 in security ! Incited by thy resistless oestrum, see where 

 that amorous spinster, the Lampyris, hangs out her beacon 

 light, to lure the winged gallant to her bower, from that 

 ocean of air which he is navigating ! Tribes without 

 number, and without name, are instructed by thee to wait 

 for the evening star, and go forth into the " all-eyed 

 firmament" to the positions best adapted for defence, 

 snare, or subterfuge! Thou admonishest the Bornbix to 



* Xcnophon Anabasis. f The Procrustes Corinceus. 



Cowley, not Coleridge. 



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