190 INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 
tension to which a subsequent resumption of the vital pow- 
ers restores them. Bonnet having suspended the anima- 
tion of the caterpillar of Sphing Ligustri by keeping it 
submerged, squeezed it between his fingers, until it had 
wholly lost its cylindrical form and was as flat and sup- 
ple as the empty finger of a glove; yet in less than an 
hour the very same caterpillar became as firm, as com- 
pact, as cylindrical, and in short, as well, as though it 
had never been submitted to treatment so rough?. 
It is fortunate that animals of a large size, as has been 
well remarked, especially noxious ones, have not been 
endowed with a muscular power proportionable to that 
of insects. A cockchafer, respect being had to their size, 
would be szx times stronger than a horse; and if the ele- 
phant, as Linné has observed, was strong in proportion 
to the stag-beetle, it would be able to pull up rocks by 
the root, and to level mountains®. Were the lion and 
the zzger as strong and as swift for their magnitude as the 
Cicindela and the Carabus, nothing could have escaped 
them by precaution, or withstood them by strength. 
Could the viper and the rattlesnake move with a rapidity 
and force equivalent to that of the Zudus and Scolopendra, 
who could have avoided their venemous bite? But the 
Creator in these little creatures has manifested his Al- 
mighty PowER, in showing what he could have done 
had he so willed; and his GoopNEss in not creating the 
higher animals endued with powers and velocity upon 
the same scale with that of insects, which would proba- 
bly have caused the early desolation of the world that 
he has made. From this instance we may conjecture, 
* Bonnet Guvr. ii. 124. ° N. Dict. d Hist. Nat. xxii. 81. 
