INSECTS. 1 5 



ally given \vay to a temporary sally of contempt 

 at the historians of the minuter productions of 

 Nature. Thus the celebrated Count de Buffo n, 

 happening not to have had any particular ad- 

 diction to the study of Insects, has not scrupled 

 to hint in strong and striking terms his opinion 

 of its inferiority compared with the study of the 

 greater and more conspicuous parts of the creation. 

 " Who," says this celebrated writer, " gives us 

 the grandest and most magnificent ideas of the 

 Creator of the Universe ? he who represents him, 

 in the plenitude of his power, directing the 

 formation of suns and of planets, and guiding the 

 revolutions of worlds, or he who discovers him 

 busied in regulating the ceconomy of an hive of 

 bees, or deeply engaged in folding the wings of a 

 beetle?" 



Other philosophers however, of the most exalted 

 character, have expressed a widely different opi- 

 nion. The great Boyle declares that for his own 

 part his wonder was more excited by the con- 

 templation of a mite than by that of an elephant ; 

 and adds, in a phrase somewhat singular, that his 

 admiration dwelt not so much on the clocks as on 

 the watches of Nature; and the opinion of Plinv, 

 which Linnaeus takes for the motto of his volume 

 on Insects is evident from his own words. In his 

 tarn parvis tamque fere nullis qnce ratio ! quanta 

 vis! quam ine.it ricabilis perfectio! 



