308 INSECTA. 



(808.) The muscular system of insects has always excited the wonder 

 and astonishment of the naturalist, in whatever point of view he exa- 

 mines this part of their economy whether he considers the perfection 

 of their movements, the inconceivable minuteness of the parts moved, or 

 the strength, persistence, or velocity of their contractions. Insects are 

 proverbially of small comparative dimensions " minims of nature," 



. !.. . " that wave their limber fans 

 For wings, and smallest lineaments exact, 

 In all the liveries deck'd of summer's pride ;" 



their presence, indeed, around us is only remarked as conferring addi- 

 tional life and gaiety to the landscape ; and except when, by some in- 

 ordinate increase in their numbers, they make up by their multitude for 

 their diminutive size, the ravages committed by them are trifling and 

 insignificant. Far otherwise, however, would it be if they attained to 

 larger growth, and still possessed the extraordinary power with which 

 they are now so conspicuously gifted ; they would then, indeed, become 

 truly the tyrants of the creation monsters such " as fables never 

 feigned or fear conceived " fully adequate to destroy and exterminate 

 from the surface of the earth all that it contains of vegetable or of 

 animal life. 



(809.) We have already seen that the Flea or the Grasshopper will 

 spring two hundred times the length of its own body ; that the Dragon- 

 fly possesses such indomitable strength of wing, that for a day together 

 it will sustain itself in the air, and fly with equal facility and swiftness 

 backwards or forwards, to the right or to the left, without turning ; that 

 the Beetles are encased in a dense and hard integument, impervious to 

 ordinary violence; and we might add that the Wasp and the Termite Ant 

 will penetrate with their jaws the hardest wood. Neither is the velocity 

 of the movements of insects inferior to their prodigious muscular power. 

 " An anonymous writer in Nicholson's Journal," say Kirby and Spence, 

 " calculates that in its ordinary flight the common House-fly (Musca 

 domestica) makes with its wings about six hundred strokes, which carry 

 it 5 feet, every second ; but if alarmed, he states their velocity can be 

 increased six- or seven-fold, or to 30 or 35 feet in the same period. In 

 this space of time a race-horse could clear only 90 feet, which is at the 

 rate of more than a mile a minute. Our little Fly, in her swiftest flight, 

 will in the same space of time go more than the third of a mile. Now, 

 compare the infinite difference of the size of the two animals (ten 

 millions of the Fly would hardly counterpoise one racer), and how 

 wonderful will the velocity of this minute creature appear ! Did the Fly 

 equal the race-horse in size, and retain its present powers in the ratio 

 of its magnitude, it would traverse the globe with the rapidity of 

 lightning*." 



* Kirby and Spence, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 358. 



