INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 17 



the artisan with a new and improved set of tools. In 

 this last respect insects deserve particular notice. All 

 their operations are performed with admirable precision 

 and dexterity ; and though they do not usually vary the 

 mode, yet that mode is always the best that can be con- 

 ceived for attaining the end in view. The instruments 

 also with which they are provided are no less wonderful 

 and various than the operations themselves. They have 

 their saws, and files, and augers, and gimlets, and knives, 

 and lancets, and scissors, and forceps, with many other 

 similar implements ; several of which act in more than 

 one capacity, and with a complex and alternate motion 

 to which we have not yet attained in the use of our 

 tools. Nor is the fact so extraordinary as it may seem 

 at first, since " He who is wise in heart and wonderful 

 in working " is the inventor and fabricator of the appa- 

 ratus of insects ; which may be considered as a set of 

 miniature patterns drawn for our use by a Divine hand. 

 I shall hereafter give you a more detailed account of 

 some of the most striking of these instruments ; and if 

 you study insects in this view, you will be well repaid 

 for all the labour and attention you bestow upon them. 



But a more important species of instruction than any 

 hitherto enumerated may be derived from entomological 

 pursuits. If we attend to the history and manners of 

 insects, they will furnish us with many useful lessons in 

 Ethics, and from them we may learn to improve our- 

 selves in various virtues. We have indeed the inspired 

 authority of the wisest of mankind for studying them in 

 this view, since he himself wrote a treatise upon them, 

 and sends his sluggard to one for a lesson of wisdom a . 



a 1 Kings iv. 33. Prov. vi. 68. 

 VOL. I. C 



