SYSTEM OF INSECTS. 373 



perfect structure, cannot place an animal above those 

 which in every other respect so obviously excel them. 

 With regard to insects particularly, we may further ask 

 Who that considers how man employs his powers and 

 organs even in his most degraded state, or that contem- 

 plates the wonderful works that he is enabled to accom- 

 plish when his faculties receive their due cultivation and 

 direction, can avoid regarding him as superior to the 

 rest of the animal creation ? And what unsophisticated 

 mind, not entangled in the trammels of system, when it 

 surveys the industry, the various proceedings, and almost 

 miraculous works that have been laid before you, the 

 waxen palaces of the bee, the paper cottages of the 

 wasp and hornet, the crowded metropolis of the white 

 ants, the arts, the manufactures, and stratagems of 

 other insects, the associations and labours for the com- 

 mon good of those that are gregarious ; will not at once 

 conclude that they must be a superior race to the slug, 

 the snail, and others, which live only to eat and propa- 

 gate their kind ? 



Or who, that considers the wonderful structure of 

 the animals whose cause I advocate, the analogy that 

 exists between their organs of manducation, of motion, 

 and of sensation, and between various other parts of it a , 

 with those of the higher animals, the acuteness of their 

 senses, their wonderful strength of muscle b , and powers 

 of locomotion , but will think them superior to the head- 

 less and almost inanimate oyster or muscle, or the con- 

 glomerate Alcyonict) though they have a heart and circu- 

 lation ? 



VOL. III. p. 46. See above, p. 247. 



" See above, p. 195. c VOL. II. p. 306- . 



