250 SPRING. 



least fatigued by this extraordinary effort (to it, it is 

 not extraordinary, though to us it appears so) ; for 

 when it meets with a resistance that it cannot easily 

 overcome, it careers backwards or forwards, as if its 

 means of rest were more accelerated motion. The 

 power of insects that are absolutely microscopic is 

 astonishing, and though the diminished quantity of 

 matter that they move may in part occasion the dif- 

 ference, it will not wholly do it. The common frog- 

 hopper, which during its transformation is contained 

 in, and protected by, those little masses of froth that 

 are so common on plants in the early part of summer, 

 can leap 100 times as far in proportion as man, and its 

 leaping muscles are a less fraction of its whole volume 

 than his are. The law is differently modified in dif- 

 ferent creatures, according to their organization ; but 

 still it is general that the durability and energy are 

 inversely as the size, though in what proportion it 

 would not be easy to see. This, again, is one of those 

 beautiful arrangements that w r e find in the system of 

 nature. The powers that contend with the variable 

 weather of the spring are more energetic, and less liable 

 to injury, than those which, in a more advanced state, 

 meet the milder air of the summer; and these little 

 animals, the impinging of a grain of dust, against 

 which, when the wind blows, is the same, as to motion 

 and mass, as if two or three tons of rock were flung at 

 an elephant, are so constituted that they are no more 

 injured by the contact, than a human being is by the 

 gentle zephyr that scarcely ruffles the leaves of the 

 aspen. 



And here comes a gleam of immortality, a proof 



