14? INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 



suing their amours, and preparing habitations for their 

 progeny : you must notice the laying and kind of their 

 eggs; their wonderful metamorphoses; their instincts, 

 whether they be solitary or gregarious ; and the other 

 miracles of their history all of which will open to you 

 a richer mine of amusement and instruction, I speak it 

 without hesitation, than any other department of Natural 

 History can furnish. A minute enumeration of these 

 particulars would be here misplaced, and only forestall 

 what will be detailed more at large hereafter ; but a ra- 

 pid glance at a very few of the most remarkable of them, 

 may serve as a stimulus to excite your curiosity, and in- 

 duce you to enter with greater eagerness into the wide 

 field to which I shall conduct you. 



The lord of the creation plumes himself upon his 

 powers of invention, and is proud to enumerate the va- 

 rious useful arts and machines to which they have given 

 birth, not aware that " He who teacheth man know- 

 ledge" has instructed these despised insects to anticipate 

 him in many of them. The builders of Babel doubtless 

 thought their invention of turning earth into artificial 

 stone, a very happy discovery 3 ; yet a little bee b had 

 practised this art, using indeed a different process, on a 

 small scale, and the white ants on a large one, ever since 

 the world began. Man thinks that he stands unrivalled 

 as an architect, and that his buildings are without a pa- 

 rallel among the works of the inferior orders of animals. 

 He would be of a different opinion did he attend to the 

 history of insects : he would find that many of them have 

 been architects from time immemorial ; that they have 



a Gen. xi. 3. b MegacMle muraria. 



