COLEOPTEROUS INSECTS. 79 



sense and motion, and has a nervous and respiratory 

 system of greater complexity than many of the lar- 

 ger animals that the various processes of digestion, 

 assimilation, and secretion, are continually going 

 forward that not a limb can be put in motion 

 without calling into play a multitude of muscles 

 and that this atomic being is moreover endowed 

 with instincts which regulate with almost unerring 

 certainty all its habits and economy we can scarce- 

 ly fail to regard it as affording a more striking in- 

 stance of consummate skill than if it had occupied 

 a much larger space. 



The shapely limb, and lubricated joint, 

 Within the small dimensions of a point, 

 Muscle and nerve miraculously spun, 

 His mighty work, who speaks and it is done ; 

 The invisible in things scarce seen revealed, 

 To whom an atom is an ample field. 



" To the eye of the naturalist," says Latreille, 

 " the mass or volume of an object is a matter of 

 little consequence. The wisdom of the CREATOR 

 never appears more conspicuous than in the struc- 

 ture of those minute beings which seem to conceal 

 themselves from observation ; and Almighty Power 

 is never more strikingly exhibited than in the con- 

 centration of organs in such an atom. In giving 

 life to this atom, and constructing in dimensions 

 so minute so many organs susceptible of different 

 sensations, my admiration of the Supreme Intelli- 

 gence is much more heightened than by the con- 



