332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



CUE DEBT TO INSECTS. 



By grant ALLEN. 



IT has often occurred to me as a curious fact, when I have been 

 watching the bees and butterflies in an English meadow of a sum- 

 mer morning, that no one should ever yet have adequately realized 

 (so far as I know) the full amount of human indebtedness to those 

 bright and joyous little winged creatures. I do not mean our practi- 

 cal indebtedness to insects for honey and bees'-wax, silk and satin, 

 cochineal and lacquer, or a hundred other such-like useful products : 

 these, indeed, are many and valuable in their own way, though far 

 less so than the tribute we draw from most of the other great classes 

 of animal life. But there is one debt we owe them so out of all pro- 

 portion to their size and relative importance in the world that it is 

 strange it should so seldom meet with due recognition. Odd as it 

 may sound to say so, I believe we owe almost entirely to insects the 

 whole presence of color in nature, otherwise than green ; without 

 them our world would be wanting in more than half the beautiful 

 objects which give it its greatest sesthetic charm in the appreciative 

 eyes of cultivated humanity. Of course, if insects had never been, 

 the great external features of the world would still remain essentially 

 the same. The earth-sculpture that gives rise to mountains and val- 

 leys, downs and plains, glens and gorges, is wholly unconnected with 

 these minute living agents ; but all the smaller beauties of detail 

 which add so much zest to our enjoyment of life and nature would be 

 almost wholly absent, I believe, but for the long-continued aesthetic 

 selection of the insect tribes for innumerable generations. We have 

 all heard over and over again that the petals of flowers have been 

 developed mainly by the action of bees and butterflies ; and as a bo- 

 tanical truth this principle is now pretty generally accepted ; but it 

 may be worth while to reconsider the matter once more from the 

 picturesque and artistic point of view by definitely asking ourselves, 

 How much of beauty in the outer world do we owe to the perceptions 

 and especially to the color-sense of the various insects? 



If we could suddenly transplant ourselves from the gardens and 

 groves of the nineteenth century into the midst of a carboniferous 

 jungle on the delta of some forgotten Amazon or some primeval Nile, 

 we should find ourselves surrounded by strange and somewhat monot- 

 onous scenery, very different from that of the varied and beautiful 

 world in which we ourselves now live. The huge foliage of gigantic 

 tree-ferns and titanic club-mosses would wave over our heads, while 

 a green carpet of petty trailing creepers would spread luxuriantly 

 over the damp soil beneath our feet. Great swampy flats would 

 stretch around us on every side ; and, instead of the rocky or undulat- 



