EXTENDED NATURE OF OBSERVATIONS, 5 



mind have worked a victory over nature. Speak of the 

 powers of the steam-engine, and the many hundred times 

 by which the manual forces of the human frame are increased 

 by its operations — and what is this in comparison with the 

 tens of thousands of times to which the ordinary size of 

 the meanest insect is increased by the assistance of the 

 microscope? Still, the continued employment of this 

 instrument is a painful operation, increased a thousand 

 fold by the minuteness of the objects, and the extent to 

 which it is necessary to carry the investigation of them. 

 Look at the unwearied labours of Lyonnet, which were 

 for years devoted to the anatomical examination of a single 

 insect; or at those of Strauss-Durckheim, whose memoir 

 upon the cockchafer exhibits almost an equal endm-ance 

 of observation. If, moreover, we consider that not only 

 does an insect combine ^vithin itself the systems of respii'a- 

 tion, circulation, digestion, secretion, and sensation analo- 

 gous to those of the higher animals, but also that, owing to 

 the remarkable circumstance that the majority of these ani- 

 mals undergo a series of transformations, whereby these sys- 

 tems are completely altered several times in their progress 

 to the perfect state, it is essential to extend our observations 

 to every period of the life of the animal, before we can arrive 

 at a perfect knowledge of its structure, so as to enable us to 

 form a proper estimate of its comparative anatomy ; we can- 

 not, therefore, but admit that the difficulties attending the 

 labours of the entomologist are not fewer than those in any 

 other department of zoology ; difficulties which, from their 

 very nature, cannot cease to arouse the attention of the de- 

 voted admirer of the Creation. And hence arises the necessity 

 of our having recourse to the labom*s of our predecessors in 

 the vast field opened to us, and in the works of Swammerdam 

 and Lyonnet, De Geer and Reaumm', Latreille and Kirby, 



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