INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 251 



our higher faculties are not brought more into play, and 

 our mental powers more invigorated, by the meditation 

 and experiments necessary to secure ourselves. Viewed 

 in these lights, what was at first regarded as wholly made 

 up of evil, may be discovered to contain a considerable 

 proportion of good. 



This reasoning is here particularly applicable : and if 

 the ultimate benefit to man seems in any case proble- 

 matical, it is merely because to discover it requires more 

 extended and remote views than we are enabled by our 

 limited faculties to take, and a knowledge of distant or 

 concealed results which we are incompetent to calculate 

 or discover. The common good of this terraqueous globe 

 requires that all things endowed with vegetable or animal 

 life should bear certain proportions to each other ; and if 

 any individual species exceeds that proportion, from be- 

 neficial it becomes noxious, and interferes with the general 

 welfare. It was requisite therefore for the benefit of the 

 whole system that certain means should be provided, by 

 which this hurtful luxuriance might be checked, and all 

 things taught to keep within their proper limits : hence 

 it became necessary that some should prey upon others, 

 and a part be sacrificed for the good of the whole. 



Of the counterchecks thus provided, none act a more 

 important part than insects, particularly in the vegetable 

 kingdom, every plant having its insect enemies. Man, 

 when he takes any plant from its natural state and makes 

 it an object of cultivation, must expect that these agents 

 will follow it into the artificial state in which he has placed 

 it, and still prey upon it ; and it is his business to exert 

 his faculties in inventing means to guard against their at- 

 tacks. It is a wise provision that there should exist a race 

 of beings empowered to remove all her superfluous pro- 



