72 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



while they possess advantages as a subject of study 

 and investigation, equal to almost any other branch 

 of zoology. Such is the extent of the subject, and 

 the variety of aspects in which it may be viewed, 

 that minds of very different tastes and capacities 

 may find congenial occupation in some one or other 

 of its numerous details. The investigation of ge- 

 neric and specific distinctions, which are often so 

 faint and evanescent as almost to elude observation, 

 accustoms the eye to habits of nice discrimination, 

 the relations which groups and families bear both 

 to each other and to the different kingdoms of na- 

 ture, lead to general views sufficient to exercise 

 the faculties of the most gifted minds, while the 

 variety of form and structure which the species pre- 

 sent, is the source of inexhaustible gratification to 

 those who delight to trace the footsteps of the Cre- 

 ator in his works. When to the consideration of 

 their forms and habits we add the internal anatomy 

 of insects, what a wide and fruitful field of enquiry is 

 laid open ! The celebrated Lyonnet spent a consi- 

 derable portion of his life in examining the structure 

 of a single insect, and yet left much to be supplied 

 by his successors to complete our knowledge even of 

 that individual species. In the body of an insect not 

 exceeding an inch in length, M. Straus has enume 

 rated 306 hard pieces entering into the composition 

 of the outer envelope ; 494 muscles for putting these 

 in motion ; 24 pair of nerves to animate them, di- 

 vided into innumerable filets ; and 48 pair of tra- 



