NATURAL THEOLOGY. 365 



The same writer tells us, from his own observa- 

 tion, that thirty-seven species of winged insects, 

 with distinctions well expressed, visited a single 

 strawberry-plant in the course of three weeks.* 

 Ray observed, within the compass of a mile or 

 two of his own house, two hundred kinds of but- 

 terflies,'"" nocturnal and diurnal. He likewise as- 

 serts, but, I think, without any grounds of exact 

 computation, that the number of species of insects, 

 reckoning all sorts of them, may not be short of 

 ten thousand. f And in this vast variety of animal 

 forms, (for the observation is not confined to in- 

 sects, though more applicable perhaps to them 

 than to any other class,) we are sometimes led to 

 take notice of the different methods, or rather of 

 the studiously diversified methods, by which one 

 and the same purpose is attained. In the article 

 of breathing, for example, which was to be pro- 

 vided for in some way or other, besides the ordi- 

 nary varieties of lungs, gills, and breathing-holes, 

 (for insects in general respire, not by the mouth, 

 but through holes in the sides,) the nymphae of 



rates ten thousand, since the pubheation of which, many new spe- 

 cies have been discovered. We are now speaking of true in- 

 sects, — animals having six legs, &c., — and not including crabs, 

 spiders, scorpions, and others, which have been classed with in- 

 sects. 



'0* Ray must mean butterflies and moths, -rr^ we have not one 

 hundred species of butterflies in this country; and besides, no 

 butterflies are "nocturnal." 



* Vol, i. p. 3. t Wisd. of God, p. 23, 



31* 



