298 INSECT DEVELOPMENT. 



a greater proportion to their evident injuriousness than we are 

 apt to think. A curious though certainly very partial service 

 of this nature, received on the side of the vegetable, is exem- 

 plified in the nourishment which some fly-catching plants are 

 supposed to derive from the putridity of dead insects impri- 

 soned within their flower- traps, their pitcher-shaped leaves, or 

 in the viscid exudations of their joints. 



If, leaving the vegetable world, we were to mount upwards 

 in the scale of animated being, we should find amongst fish, 

 reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds, a variety of similar instances, 

 wherein, by resemblances or analogy, by dependence, or as 

 mutually representative, these all stand connected with ob- 

 jects in the insect kingdom. We may from time to time, no- 

 tice some of these relations incidentally ; but to pass over, 

 now, the intermediate orders of creation, let us see whether 

 lordly man, as well as the lowly plant, has not his analogies, 

 at least symbolic, with the insect he despises. 



The mind of man, as it exists in infancy, has been aptly 

 likened to the seed of a plant considered as possessing, in 

 miniature, the trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit of the future 

 tree ; and, agreeably to such a notion, it has been observed 

 that the highest degree of cultivation, of which it is capable, 

 consists in the perfect development of that peculiar organiza- 

 tion which as really exists in infancy as in mature years. 



Having noted already the analogy of insect development, 

 from the egg up to the winged estate, with that of a vegetable, 



