LETTER XL 



ON THE AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR 

 THEIR YOUNG. 



AMONGST the larger animals, every observer of nature 

 has witnessed, with admiration, that love of their offspring 

 which the beneficent Creator, with equal regard to the 

 happiness of the parent and the progeny, has interwoven 

 in the constitution of his creatures. Who that has any 

 sensibility, has not felt his heart dilate with gratitude to 

 the giver of all good, in observing amongst the domestic 

 animals which surround him, the effects of this divine 

 storge, so fruitful of the most delightful sensations? Who 

 that is not a stock or a stone has read unmoved the 

 anecdote recorded in books of Natural History, of the 

 poor bitch, which in the agonies of a cruel dissection 

 licked with parental fondness her new-born offspring ; or 

 the affecting account of the she-bear related in Phipps's 

 Voyage to the North Pole, which, herself severely wound- 

 ed by the same shot that killed her cubs, spent her last 

 moments in tearing and laying before them the food she 

 had collected, and died licking their wounds? 



These feelings you must have experienced, but it has 

 scarcely occurred to you that you would have any room 



vol. i. z 



