38 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



his example. We often employ the larger animals to 

 destroy each other, but the smaller, especially insects, 

 we have totally neglected. Some may think, perhaps, 

 that in aiming to do this we should be guilty of presump- 

 tion, and of attempting to take the government and di- 

 rection of things out of the hands of Providence : but 

 this is a very weak argument, which might with equal 

 reason be adduced to prove that when rats and mice be- 

 come troublesome to us, we ought not to have recourse to 

 dogs, ferrets, and cats to exterminate them. When any 

 species multiplies upon us, so as to become noxious, we 

 certainly have a just right to destroy it, and what means 

 can be more proper than those which Providence itself 

 has furnished ? We can none of us go further or do more 

 than the Divine Will permits; and he will take care that 

 our efforts shall not be injurious to the general welfare, 

 or effect the annihilation of any individual species. 



Again, with regard to insects that are employed in 

 medicine or the arts, if the apothecary cannot distinguish 

 a Lytta from a Carabus or Cetonia, both of which I have 

 found mixed with the former, how can he know whether 

 his druggist furnishes him with a good or bad article ? 

 And the same observation may with still greater force 

 apply to the dyer in his purchase of cochineal, since it is 

 still more difficult to distinguish the wild sort from the 

 cultivated. There are, it is probable, many insects that 

 might be employed with advantage in both these depart- 

 ments : but unless Entomology be more generally studied 

 by scientific men, who are the only persons likely to 

 make discoveries of this kind, than it has hitherto been, 

 we must not hope to derive further profit from them. It 

 seems more particularly incumbent upon the professors 



