4 Insect Architecture. 



comparatively scarce, while the small two-spot lady-bird 

 (Coccinella bipundatd) was plentiful. 



There is, perhaps, no situation in which the lover of 

 nature and the observer of animal life may not find oppor- 

 tunities for increasing his store of facts. It is told of a 

 state prisoner, under a cruel and rigorous despotism, that 

 when he was excluded from all commerce with mankind, and 

 was shut out from books, he took an interest and found 

 consolation in the visits of a spider; and there is no 

 improbability in the story. The operations of that per- 

 secuted creature are among the most extraordinary exhibi- 

 tions of mechanical ingenuity ; and a daily watching of the 

 workings of its instinct would beget admiration in a rightly- 

 constituted mind. The poor prisoner had abundant leisure 

 for the speculations in which the spider's web would enchain 

 his understanding. We have all of us, at one period or 

 other of our lives, been struck with some singular evidence 

 of contrivance in the economy of insects, which we have 

 seen with our own eyes. Want of leisure, and probably 

 want of knowledge, have prevented us from following up the 

 curiosity which for a moment was excited. And yet some 

 such accident has made men naturalists, in the highest 

 meaning of the term. Bonnet, evidently speaking of himself, 

 says, " I knew a naturalist, who, when he was seventeen years 

 of age, having heard of the operations of the ant-lion, began 

 by doubting them. He had no rest till he had examined into 

 them : and he verified them, he admired them, he discovered 

 new facts, and soon became the disciple and the friend of the 

 Pliny of France "* (Eeaumur). It is not the happy fortune 

 of many to be able to devote themselves exclusively to the 

 study of nature, unquestionably the most fascinating of 

 human employments ; but almost every one may acquire 

 sufficient knowledge to be able to derive a high gratification 

 from beholding the more common operations of animal life. 

 His materials for contemplation are always before him. 

 Some weeks ago we made an excursion to West Wood, near 

 Shooter's Hill, expressly for the purpose of observing the 

 * Contemplation de la Nature, part ii. ch. 42. 



