Insects. 1289 



in kind from the flower-shaped Psyche that flutters with free wing above it. And won- 

 derfully in the insect realm doth the irritability, the proper seat of instinct, while yet 

 the nascent sensibility is subordinate thereto ; most wonderfully, I say, doth the mus- 

 cular life in the insect, and the musculo-arterial in the bird, imitate and typically re- 

 hearse the adaptive understanding, yea, and the moral affections and charities of man. 

 Let us carry ourselves back, in spirit, to the mysterious week, the teeming work-days of 

 the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye of the inspired historian ' of the genera- 

 tions of the heavens and earth, in the days that the Lord God made the earth and the 

 heavens.' And who that had watched their ways with an understanding heart, could, 

 as the vision evolving still advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee ; 

 the home-building, wedded, and divorceless swallow ; and above all, the manifoldly intel- 

 ligent ant tribes, with their commonwealth and confederacies, their warriors and mi- 

 ners, the husband-folk, that fold in their tiny flocks on the honied leaf, and the virgin 

 sisters with the holy instincts of maternal love, detached and in selfless purity; and not say 

 to himself, Behold the shadow of approaching humanity, the sun rising from behind in 

 the kindling morn of creation ! Thus all lower natures find their highest good in sem- 

 blances and seekiugs of what is higher and better. All things strive to ascend, and as- 

 cend in their striving. And shall man alone stoop ? Shall his pursuits and desires, the 

 reflections of his inward life, be like the reflected image of a tree on the edge of a pool 

 — that grows downward, and seeks a mock heaven in the unstable element beneath it, in 

 neighbourhood with the slim water-weeds and oozy bottom-grass that are yet better than 

 itself and more noble, in as far as substances that appear as shadows are preferable to 

 shadows mistaken for substances. No ! it must be a higher good to make you happy. 

 While you labour for anything below your proper humanity, you seek a happy life in 

 the region of death. Well saith the moral poet : — 



* Unless above himself he can 

 Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! ' " 



2. ChjEROphyllum, Linn. Chervil. 

 Species infested. C. sylvestre, Linn. Wood Chervil. 



This species was more than half grown at the end of February, 1846. It is shin- 

 ing, convex, pale greenish-yellow, increasing in breadth from the head till near the tip 

 of the abdomen : the antennae are slender, setaceous, hardly longer than the body ; the 

 tips of the joints from the second to the fourth and the whole of the following joints are 

 fuscous : the mouth reaches to the base of the middle legs ; its tip is fuscous : the eyes 

 are dark brown : the abdomen has a row of impressions and a slight rim on each side ; 

 the tubes are about one-fifth of the length of the body ; their tips are fuscous : the legs 

 are long ; the tarsi and the tips of the tibiae are fuscous. The wingless generations of 

 Aphides are mostly organized in order to obtain their permanent food from the plant 

 whereon they are born ; their life passes away in sucking, in making honey, and in 

 bringing forth young ones. 



" Felix qui patriis aevum transegit in agris. 

 Ipsa domuspuerum quem videt, ipsa senem." 

 With them there is no interval of repose, no winter season when all the powers of life 

 are dormant, no event whereon to raise the allegory of the death of Adonis or of Bal- 

 der, no epoch when the faculties are recalled from their outward exercise to become 



iv 4 x 



