10 Insect Architecture. 



against the destructive propensities of insects which are 

 offensive to man. But a philosophical study of natural 

 history will teach us that the direct benefits which insects 

 confer upon us are even less important than their general 

 uses in maintaining the economy of the world. The mis- 

 chiefs which result to us from the rapid increase and the 

 activity of insects are merely results of the very principle by 

 which they confer upon us numberless indirect advantages. 

 Forests are swept away by minute beetles ; but the same 

 agencies relieve us from that extreme abundance of vegetable 

 matter which would render the earth uninhabitable were 

 this excess not periodically destroyed. In hot countries the 

 great business of removing corrupt animal matter, which the 

 vulture and hyasna imperfectly perform, is effected with 

 certainty and speed by the myriads of insects that spring 

 from the eggs deposited in every carcase by some fly seeking 

 therein the means of life for her progeny. Destruction and 

 reproduction, the great laws of nature, are carried on very 

 greatly through the instrumentality of insects ; and the same 

 principle regulates even the increase of particular species of 

 insects themselves. When aphides are so abundant that we 

 know not how to escape their ravages, flocks of lady-birds 

 instantly cover our fields and gardens to destroy them. 

 Such considerations as these are thrown out to show that 

 the subject of insects has a great philosophical importance 

 and what portion of the works of nature has not ? The 

 habits of all God's creatures, whether they are noxious, or 

 harmless, or beneficial, are worthy objects of our study. If 

 they affect ourselves, in our health or our possessions, whether 

 for good or for evil, an additional impulse is naturally given 

 to our desire to attain a knowledge of their properties. Such 

 studies form one of the most interesting occupations which 

 can engage a rational and inquisitive mind ; and, perhaps, 

 none of the employments of human life are more dignified 

 than the investigation and survey of the workings and the 

 ways of nature in the minutest of her productions. 



The exercise of that habit of observation which can alone 

 make a naturalist " an out-of-door naturalist," as Daines 



