CLASS I. INSECTA. 535 



tated with success by one of our most common butterflies. Feathers are thought to be peculiar 

 to birds, but insects often imitate them in their antennae, wings, and even sometimes in the cov- 

 erins: of their bodies. AVe admire with reason the coats of quadrupeds, wJiether their skins be 

 covered with pile, or wool, or fur, yet are not perhaps aware that a vast variety of insects are 

 clothed with all these kinds of hair, but infinitely finer and more silky in texture, more brilliant 

 and delicate in color, and more variously shaded than what any other animals can pretend to. 



" In variegation, insects certainly exceed every other class of animated beings. Nature, in her 

 sportive mood, when painting them sometimes imitates the clouds of heaven; at others, the 

 meandering course of the rivers of the earth, or the undulations of their waters ; many are veined 

 like beautiful marbles ; others have the semblance of a robe of the finest net-work thrown over 

 them ; some she blazons with heraldic insignia, giving them to bear in fields sable, azure, vert, 

 gules, argent, and or, fesses, bars, bends, crosses, crescents, stars, and even animals. On many, 

 taking her rule and compasses, she draws with precision mathematical figures : points, lines, 

 angles, triangles, squares, and circles. On others she portrays, with mystic hand, what seem like 

 hieroglyphic symbols, or inscribes them with the characters and letters of various languages, 

 often very correctly formed ; and what is more extraordinary, she has registered in others figures 

 which correspond with several dates of the Christian era. 



" Nor has nature been lavish only in the apparel and ornament of these privileged tribes ; in 

 other respects she has been equally unsparing of her favors. To some she has given fins like 

 those of fish, or a beak resembling that of birds ; to others horns, nearly the counterparts of those 

 of various quadrupeds. The bull, the stag, the rhinoceros, and even the hitherto vainly sought- 

 for unicorn, have in this respect many representatives among insects. One is armed with tusks 

 not unlike those of the elephant ; another is bristled with spines, as the porcupine and hedgehog 

 with quills ; a third is an armadillo in miniature ; the disproportioned hind-legs of the kangaroo 

 o-ive a most grotesque appearance to a fourth ; and the threatening head of the snake is found 

 in a fifth. It would, however, be endless to produce all the instances which occur of such imi- 

 tations, and I shall only remark that, generally speaking, these arms and instruments in structure 

 and finishing far exceed those which they resemble. 



" But further : insects not only mimic, in a manner infinitely various, every thing in nature, they 

 may also with very little violence be regarded as symbolical of beings out of and above nature. 

 The butterfly, adorned with every beauty and every grace, borne by radiant wings through the 

 fields of ether, and extracting nectar from every flower, gives us some idea of the blessed inhab- 

 itants of happier worlds, of angels, and of the spirits of the just arrived at their state of perfec- 

 tion. Again, other insects seem emblematical of a diflTerent class of unearthly beings, when we 

 behold some, tremendous for the numerous horns and spines projecting in horrid array from their 

 head or shoulders ; others for their threatening jaws of fearful length, and armed with cruel fangs ; 

 when we survey the dismal hue and demoniac air that distinguish others, the dens of darkness 

 in which they live, the impurity of their food, their predatory habits and cruelty, the nets which 

 they spread, and the pits which they sink to entrap the unwary, we can scarcely help regarding 

 them as aptly symbolizing evil demons, the enemies of man, or impure spirits, for their vices 

 and crimes driven from the regions of light into darkness and punishment." 



The various arts and industry of insects have excited the admiration of every attentive ob- 

 server. "The lord of the creation," say the authors we have just quoted, "plumes himself upon 

 his powers of invention, and is proud to enumerate the various useful arts and machines to which 

 they have given birth, not aware that ' He who teacheth man knowledge' has instructed these 

 despised insects to anticipate him in many of them. The builders of Babel doubtless thought 

 their invention of turning earth into artificial stone a very happy discovery ; yet a little bee had 

 practiced this art, using indeed a diflerent process, on a small scale, and the white ants on a 

 larse one, ever since the world beo-an. Man thinks that he stands unrivaled as an architect, and 

 that his buildings are without a parallel among the works of the inferior orders of animals. He 

 would be of a diff"erent opinion did he attend to the history of insects : he would find that many 

 of them have been architects from time immemorial ; that they have had their houses divided 

 into various apartments, and containing staircases, gigantic arches, domes, colonnades, and the 



