210 INCENTIVES TO OBSERVATION. 



copied chiefly from the laboured pictures of careful naturalists 

 to the ear, it would read but as an imperfect echo of their 

 minute descriptions, attractive indeed when verified by obser- 

 vation ; but. in the mere perusal, smelling somewhat more of 

 the lamp of science than of the flowery, sunny fields. We 

 have but touched on what has been elaborately handled, given 

 a taste only of what has furnished ample food for inquiry to 

 many minds greedy of knowledge, which, with all they have 

 devoured, leave an exhaustless store behind ; but little as we 

 have laid before our readers on the subject of Insect senses, 

 that little may have sufficed, we hope, as an incentive to the at 

 least occasional employment of their own upon the nature and 

 manifestations of those similar gifts bestowed upon the tiniest 

 Midge ; and wherein the Midge may be looked on as equal to 

 the man, except inasmuch as the senses of the latter are exer- 

 cised as handmaids to observation and to thought. 



But are our senses and our reason worthily occupied in 

 scrutiny of the miniature organism of the tiny beings whose 

 endowments we have been considering ? We think they are. 

 There are miracles of minuteness as well as of magnitude, and 

 in few things, perhaps, is the power of the Creator more admi- 

 rably displayed than in the perfect senses of Insects considered 

 relativelv to their size. We can imagine a spark of life 

 enclosed in the body of a Mite, because we are accustomed to 

 consider vitality as a thing independent of space, therein 

 resembling its divine source ; but when we think of five, seven, 



