12 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
genera’, but also by noticing the different direction of the two anterior 
from the four posterior legs of insects ; for, as he speaks of them as going 
upon four legs”, it is evident that he considered the two anterior as arms. 
Solomon, the wisest of mankind, made Natural History a peculiar object 
of study, and left treatises behind him upon its various branches, in which 
creeping ikings or insects were not overlooked ®; and a wiser than Solomon 
directs our attention to natural productions, when he bids us consider the 
lilies of the field 4, teaching us that they are more worthy of our notice 
than the most glorious works of man : he also not obscurely intimates that 
insects are symbolical beings, when he speaks of scorpions as synonymous 
with evil spirits®; thus giving into our hands a clue for a more profitable 
mode of studying them, as furnishing moral and spiritual instruction. 
If to these scriptural authorities we add those of uninspired writers, 
ancient and modern, the names of many worthies, celebrated both for 
wisdom and virtue, may be produced, Aristotle among the Greeks, and— 
—Pliny the elder among the Romans, may be denominated the fathers of 
Natural History, as well as the greatest philosophers of their day ; yet 
both these made insects a principal object of their attention: and in more 
recent times, if we look abroad, what names greater than those of Redi, 
Malpighi, Vallisnieri, Swammerdam, Leeuwenhoek, Reaumur, Linné, De 
Geer, Bonnet, and the Hubers? and at home, what philosophers have 
done more honour to their country and to human nature than Ray, Wil- 
loughby, Lister, and Derham? Yet all these made the study of insects one 
of their most favourite pursuits; and, as if to prove that this study is not 
incompatible with the highest flights of genius, we can add to the list the 
name of one of the most sublime of our poets, Gray, who was very 
zealously devoted to Entomology ; as were the celebrated modern artists, 
Fuseli and Stothard, and that prodigy of talent, our Dr. Thomas Young, 
one of whose first essays was upon the habits of spiders, and above all, 
the immortal Cuvier, who began his career in this science, end retained 
for it to the last a strong predilection.® As far, therefore, as names have 
1 Levit. xi. 21,22. Lichtenstein in Linn. Trans. iv. 51, 52. 
2 Levit. xi. 20. conf. Bochart, Hierozoic. ii. 1. 4. ¢. 9. 497, 498. 
5 1 Kings, iv. 33. 4 Luke, xii. 27. 5 Ibid. x. 19, 20. 
— 6 Several manuscript volumes of Cuvier’s descriptions of insects, and beautifully 
accurate figures by his own pen, begun to be written and drawn when he was but 
seventeen years of age, and continued for five or six years following, still exist 
om at d of some of which have recently been published in Silbermann’s Revue 
ntomologique) ; and it was, as he himself avowed, the marvels which he discovered 
in the organisation of insects which elevated his genius to the still higher concep- 
tions which made him the first naturalist of the age. In acknowledging the honour 
which the Entomological Society of France had conferred on him, in electing him 
an honorary member, he thus expressed himself in his letter, dated, alas! but a 
fortnight before his death, ‘I should have been more worthy of the honour for- 
merly, when in my youth this fine science occupied all my leisure moments, but if 
other branches of natural history have not permitted me to give myself up to it with 
the same ardour, I do not the less feel always the greatest interest init.” “If,” said 
he one day to his friend, Professor Audouin, “I had not studied insects when I was 
at college from taste, I should, at a later period, from reason and necessity.” For he 
was convinced that the.habit of devoting the entire attention to the examination of 
minute details, and the experience of the danger of falling into error the moment 
this habit is deviated from, are most useful preliminaries to the study of the higher 
animals, and to enable us to derive from it its most valuable fruits. “Are you an 
entomologist?” he asked, one day in M. Audouin’s presence, a young man who had 
ventured to speak to him of some remarkable peculiarity wvitigh he fancied he had 
discovered in dissecting a human subject. “No,” replied the medical student, 
