NATURAL THEOLOGY. 355 



The sting also of the bee has this relation to 

 the honey, that it is necessary for the protection 

 of a treasure which invites so many robbers. 



III. Our business is with mechanism. In the 

 panorpa tribe of insects, there is a forceps in the 

 tail of the male insect with which he catches and 

 holds the female. Are a pair of pincers more me- 

 chanical than this provision in its structure ? or 

 is any structure more clear and certain in its de- 

 sign V^ 



IV. St. Pierre tells us,* that in a fly with six 

 feet (I do not remember that he describes the spe- 

 cies,) the pair next the head and the pair next the 

 tail have brushes at their extremities, with which 

 the fly dresses, as there may be occasion, the an- 

 terior or the posterior part of its body; but that 

 the middle pair have no such brushes, the situa- 

 tion of these legs not admitting of the brushes, if 

 they were there, being converted to the same use. 

 This is a very exact mechanical distinction.^ 



angles actually made differ by about two R)inutes fioiia those 

 given by the calculus ; but no one can doubt that subsequent dis- 

 covery will explain this. 



^ In the genus Trichius (a tribe of beetles closely allied to the 

 rose beetle) the males have the tibicE of the middle pair of legs 

 curved for the same purpose. 



^ The stag-beetle {Lucanus cervus) cleans its antennae "by 

 drawing them between the thigh of the fore-leg and the underside 

 of the thorax, in both of which parts a velvet-like patch of hair is 

 to be observed, which is well adapted for such purpose." See 

 this, and other peculiarities in the same insect, in the fest Part of 

 the Entomological Society's Transactions, in "The .Journal of 

 Proceedings," page 6. 



+ Vol. i. p. 342. 



