10 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 
respiratory systems should be so complex, their secretory and digestive 
vessels so various and singular, their parts of generation so clearly developed, 
and that these minims of nature should be endowed with instincts in many 
cases superior to all our boasted powers of intellect — truly these wonders 
and miracles declare to every one who attends to the subject, “ The hand 
that made us is divine.” We are the work of a Being infinite in power, in 
wisdom, and in goodness. 
™ But no religious doctrine is more strongly established by the history of 
insects than that of a superintending Proviprencr. That of the innumera- 
ble species of these beings, many of them beyond conception fragile and 
exposed to dangers and enemies without end, no link should be lost from 
the chain, but all be maintained in those relative proportions necessary for 
the general good of the system ; that if one species for a while preponderate, 
and instead of preserving seem to destroy, yet counter-checks should at the 
same time be provided to reduce it within its due limits; and further, that 
the.operations of insects should be so directed and overruled as to effect 
“the putposes for which they were created, and never exceed their com- 
mission :nothing can furnish a stronger proof than this, that an unseen 
hand holds the reins, now permitting one to prevail, and now another, as 
shall best promote certain wise ends ; and saying to each, “ Hitherto shalt 
thou come and no further.” ; 
So complex is this mundane system, and so incessant the conflict between 
its component parts, an observation which holds good particularly with 
regard to insects, that if, instead of being under such control, it were left 
to the agency of blind chance, the whole must inevitably soon be deranged 
and gotoruin. Insects, in truth, are a book in which whoever reads under 
proper impressions cannot avoid looking from the effect to the Causg, and 
acknowledging his eternal power and godhead thus wonderfully displayed 
and irrefragably demonstrated: and whoever beholds these works with the 
eyes of the body must be blind indeed if he cannot, and perverse indeed if 
he will not, with the eye of the soul, behold in all his glory the Almighty 
Workman, and feel disposed, with every power of his nature, to praise and 
magnify 
Him first, Him last, Him midst, Him without end. 
And now having led you to the vestibule of an august temple, which in 
its inmost sanctuary exhibits enshrined in glory the symbols of the Divine 
Presence, I should invite you to enter and give a tongue to the Hallelujahs, 
which every creature in its place, by working his will with all its faculties, 
poe forth to his great Creator: but I must first endeavour to remove, as 
trust I shall effectually, those objections to the study of these interesting 
beings which I alluded to in the outset of this letter, and this shall be the 
aim of my next address. 
Tam, &c. 
