LETTER XL 



ON THE AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR 

 THEIR YOUNG. 



AMONGST the larger animals, every observer of na- 

 ture has witnessed, with admiration, that love of their 

 offspring which the beneficent Creator, with equal regard 

 to the happiness of the parent and the progeny, has in- 

 terwoven in the constitution of his creatures. Who that 

 has any sensibility, has not felt his heart dilate with gra- 

 titude' to the Giver of all good, in observing amongst the 

 domestic animals which surround him, the effects of this 

 divine st-orge, so fruitful of the most delightful sensations ? 

 Who that is not a stock or a stone has read unmoved 

 the anecdote recorded in books of Natural History, of 

 the poor bitch, which in the agonies of a cruel dissection 

 licked with parental fondness her new-born offspring ; or 

 the affecting account of the she-bear related in Phipps's 

 Voyage to the North Pole, which, herself severely wound- 

 ed by the same shot that killed her cubs, spent her last 

 moments in tearing and laying before them the food she 

 had collected, and died licking their wounds ? 



These feelings you must have experienced, but it has 

 scarcely occurred to you that you would have any room 

 for exercising them in your new pursuit. You have not, 

 I. dare say, suspected that any similar example could 

 have been adduced amongst insects, to which at the first 



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