INSECTS. 225 



sequence is^ as we have seen, that art gladly borrows from 

 nature her contrivance, and imitates it closely. 



But to return to insects. I think it is in this class of 

 animals, above all others, especially when we take in the 

 multitude of species which the microscope discovers, that we 

 are struck with what Cicero has called " the insatiable vari- 

 ety of nature." There are said by St. Pierre to be six thou- 

 sand species of flies ; seven hundred and sixty butterflies ; 

 each different from all the rest. The same writer tells us, 

 from his own observation, that thirty-seven species of winged 

 insects, with distinctions well expressed, visited a single 

 strawberry-plant in the course of three weeks.* E.ay ob- 

 served, within the compass of a mile or two of his own house, 

 two hundred kinds of butterflies, nocturnal and diurnal. He 

 likewise asserts, but I think without any grounds of exact 

 computation, that the number of species of insects, reckoning 

 all sorts of them, may not be short of ten thousand.! And 

 in this vast variety of animal forms — for the observation is 

 not confined to insects, though more applicable perhaps to 

 them than to any other class — we arc sometimes led to take 

 notice of the diflerent methods, or rather of the studiously 

 diversified methods, by which one and the same purpose is 

 attained. In the article of breathing, for example, which 

 was to be provided for in some way or other, besides the ordi- 

 nary varieties of lungs, gills, and breathing-holes — for insects 

 in general respire, not by the mouth, but through holes in 

 the sides — the nymphee of gnats have an apparatus to raise 

 their hacks to the top of the water, and so take breath. The 

 hydrocanthari do the like by thrusting their tails out of 

 the water. $ The maggot of the eruca labra has a long tail, 

 one part sheathed within another — but which it can draw 

 out at pleasure — ^with a starry tuft at the end ; by which 

 ttift, when expanded upon the surface, the insect both sup- 

 ports itself in the water, and draws in the air which is neces- 

 * Vol. ], p. 3. t Wisdom of God, p. 23. t Dcrliam. p. 7. 

 10* 



