WALKING INSECTS. 347 



like the man and the monkey; while many of them are endowed 

 with motive powers of a kind possessed by no other living 

 creatures with which we are acquainted. 



But the best way, perhaps, to obtain a tolerable notion of 

 the extent and perfection of insect activities will be to divide 

 them into two classes, the one consisting of movements common 

 to other animals, the other of those nearly or quite peculiar to 

 themselves. 



First, for that most ordinary mode of progression, walking. 

 This, among insects, (most of which are possessed, in their 

 perfect state, of six legs) varies in rate or pace from the slowest 

 creep to the swiftest run. The Coleoptera, or Beetle-tribe, 

 alone furnish instances of each degree of progression exem- 

 plified in its extremes by the laborious creep of the oil-beetle, 1 

 overwhelmed, seemingly, by oozing fatness, and the light, 

 rapid, agile course of the predatory Carabus, 1 or that of the 

 rapacious Cicindela, resembling 



" The forest's leaping panther, 

 Fierce, beautiful, and fleet." 



Some butterflies amongst others, the little " Tortoise-shell" 

 may be designated insect quadrupeds, inasmuch as of their 

 six legs the two foremost being very short and imperfect, four 

 only serve the purpose of walking ; an accomplishment, by the 

 way, in which butterflies in general, like the ladies of England, 

 do not particularly excel. If rapidity of pace depended on the 

 number of instruments employed in walking, both butterfly 

 and moth, in their estate of caterpillars, would always outstrip, 

 as pedestrians, their own winged maturity, sixteen, instead of 

 six or four, being the number of legs with which caterpillars 

 are usually provided. This, however, is only the case in cer- 

 tain instances, for hardly do beetles exhibit greater variety in 

 their rates of movement than the larvas of Lepidoptera. We 



1 See Vignette. 



L L 



