REAUMUR. 189 



on plants ! How many species that devour others ! 

 How many that live at the expense of larger ani- 

 mals, on which thej^^ feed continually ! How many 

 species are there, some of which pass the greater part 

 of their time in water, while others pass it entirely 

 there ! The immensity of Nature's works is no- 

 where more apparent than in the prodigious multi- 

 plicity of these species of little animals." He then 

 proceeds to remark, that, as it is impossible for one 

 man to acquire a knowledge of all the insects of even 

 a limited district, and as thousands of minute insects 

 must for ever remain unknown to us, instead of 

 burdening our memory with the characteristic dis- 

 tinctions of these creatures, and thus preventing 

 ourselves from attending to matters of more im- 

 portance, it would be sufficient for us to know the 

 principal genera, and especially those that are of 

 most frequent occurrence, and to make ourselves 

 acquainted with their peculiarities, their food, their 

 propagation, the different forms which they assume 

 in the course of their life, and such like circum- 

 stances. He avows that he had no great regard for 

 a precise enumeration of the species of each genus ; 

 holding it enough to distinguish the more remark- 

 able. 



" Although," he continues, " we would greatly 

 restrict the limits of the study, there are persons who 

 will think them still too wide ; there are even some 

 who consider all knowledge of this part of natural 

 history as useless, and who unhesitatingly pronounce 

 it a frivolous amusement. We are equally willing 

 that these pursuits should be regarded as amusements, 

 that is, as studies which, so far from being trouble- 



