AGENCY OP INSECTS IN THE ECONOMY OF NATURE. 331 



these organs,, in Hyleccctus, are strongly pectinated, like 

 a hand with many fingers, the joint representing the 

 thumb setting off in opposition to the others : in Ly- 

 mexylon, they consist of several ramose branches, spring- 

 ing out of a large basal cup-like joint : in Atractocerus, 

 they are more regularly pectinated ; and this last has 

 its eyes nearly meeting on the face, and very minute 

 elytra, the body excessively long, the wings themselves 

 expansive, and folding in repose merely longitudinally, 

 and, of course, wholly exposed. We surmise, from the 

 structure, that it must be a most active insect, al- 

 though nothing is known of its natural history, it 

 being exclusively inter tropical, where it is, doubtlessly, 

 the representative of the two other typically northern 

 forms, and exercises there similar functions, which are 

 certainly to accelerate the decomposition of dead trees, 

 by perforating them in all directions. This agency we 

 have had occasion to notice in the Bostrichidce and else- 

 where. Nature thus operates by various means to ac- 

 complish one end, to clear away that which has become 

 dead, which we cannot, however, here say has run its 

 course, but has consequently become useless, to make 

 room for that which has to live ; and to produce this 

 result the more rapidly, for otherwise dead vegetation 

 would stifle the living, and choke its growth, she in- 

 troduces these little agents ; thus every where exhibit- 

 ing her prolific energy of vitality, by making all her 

 purposes subservient to the extension of life and living 

 beings in every possible form and organisation ; for so 

 varied are her plans and purposes, and her means of 

 accomplishing them so interminable, that the imagina- 

 tion cannot conceive a new form that has not been, or 

 does not now exist, and its own combinations of old 

 ones are so monstrous, that Nature's monsters are 

 symmetrical in the comparison. The insect world, 

 throughout, extensively exhibits these wonder-working 

 phenomena, and displays conspicuously the gigantic 

 effects of such seemingly insignificant and inefficient 

 agencies. 



