CHAPTER III. 



INSECTS, AND THEIR HUNTEBS. 



" Is not the earth 



With various living creatures, and the air 

 Replenished, and all these at thy command 

 To come and play before thee? Know'st thou not 

 Their language and their ways? They also know 

 And reason not contemptibly ; with these 

 Find pastime." 



THE readers of the " Tatler" will remember that in one of the 

 famous lucubrations of Isaac Bickevstaff, Esq., the study of 

 the insect tribes is held up to ridicule in the person of a 

 certain virtuoso, one Nicholas Gimcrack, who having spent a 

 large fortune in making a collection of insects and other 

 "natural rarities and curiosities," at his death bequeaths the 

 accumulated treasures to his family and friends. In his lifetime 

 the " whimsical philosopher " is made out to have set a greater 

 value on a collection of spiders than on a flock of sheep, and to 

 have sold his coat off his back to purchase a tarantula ; while in 

 the details of the will, which is given entire, the satire is carried 

 to its height by the absurd gravity with which the poor 

 enthusiast is represented as distributing his trifles in the imme- 

 diate prospect of death. 



It was thus that the wits, in days gone by, made merry with 

 the poor savants who gave their attention to the insect world ; 

 and though many and marvellous changes have taken place since 

 the time when the " Tatler " and the " Guardian " made their 

 appearance, damp from the printing-office, on the breakfast- 

 tables of our forefathers, there has been but little change in the 

 popular estimate of the dignity or advantage of entomological 

 pursuits. The opinion of most men is still pretty much what 

 Addison gives us as his judgment on the subject, that " obser- 

 vations of this kind are apt to alienate us too much from tho 

 knowledge of the world, aiid to make us serious upon trifles ;" a 



