INSECTS. 211 



CHAPTER XIX. 



OF INSECTS. 



"We arc not writing a system of natural history , tln/re 

 i'.iw we have not attended to the classes into which the sub' 

 jects of that science are distributed. What we had to ob- 

 serve concerning different species of animals, iell easily, lor 

 the most part, within the divisions which the course of our 

 argument led us to adopt. There remain, however, some 

 remarks upon the insect tribe which could not properly be 

 introduced under any of these heads ; and which therefore 

 ■H/e have collected into a chapter by themselves. 



The structure, and the use of the parts of insects, are 

 less understood than that of quadrupeds and birds, not only 

 by reason of their minuteness, or the minuteness of their 

 parts — for that minuteness we can, in some measure, follow 

 with glasses — ^but also by reason of the remoteness of their 

 manners and modes of life from those of larger animals. 

 For instance, insects, under all their varieties of form, are 

 endowed Avith antennce, which is the name given to those 

 long feelers that rise from each side of the head : but to 

 what common use or want of the insect kind a provision so 

 universal is subservient, has not yet been ascertained ; and 

 it has not been ascertained, because it admits not of a clear, 

 or very probable comparison with any organs Avhich we 

 possess ourselves, or with the organs of animals which re- 

 semble ourselves in their functions and faculties, or A'idth 

 which we are better acquainted than we arc with insects. 

 Wc want a ground of analogy. This difficulty stands in 

 our way as to some particulars in the insect constitution 

 which we might wish to be acquainted with. Nevertheless, 

 there are many contrivances in the bodies of insects, neither 

 dubious in their use, nor obscure in their structure, and most 

 properly mechanical. These form parts of our argument. 



I. The elytra, or scaly wings of the genus of scaraboeus 



