14 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 



insects^ they will furnish us with many useful lessons in 

 Ethics, and from them we may learn to improve ourselves in 

 various virtues. We have indeed the inspired authority of 

 the wisest of mankind for studying them in this view, since 

 he himself wrote a treatise upon them, and sends his sluggard 

 to one for a lesson of wisdom.^ And if we value diligence 

 and indefatigable industry, judgment, prudence, and fore- 

 sight, economy, and frugality ; if v/e look upon modesty and 

 diffidence as female ornaments; if we revere parental af- 

 fection; of all these, and many more virtues, insects in 

 their various instincts exhibit several striking examples, as 

 you will see in the course of our correspondence. 



With respect to religious instruction insects are far from 

 unprofitable ; indeed in this view Entomology seems to 

 possess peculiar advantages above every other branch of 

 Natural History. In the larger animals, though we admire 

 the consummate art and wisdom manifested in their structure, 

 and adore that Almighty power and goodness, which by a 

 wonderful machinery, kept in motion by the constant action 

 and re-action of the great positive and negative powers of 

 nature, maintains in full force the circulations necessary to 

 life, perception, and enjoyment ; yet as there seems no dis- 

 proportion between the objects and the different operations 

 that are going on in them, and we see that they aiford 

 sufficient space for the play of their systems, we do not 

 experience the same sensations of wonder and astonishment 

 that strike us when we behold similar operations carried on 

 without interruption in animals scarcely visible to the naked 

 eye. That creatures, which in the scale of being are next to 

 nonentities, should be elaborated with so much art and 

 contrivance, have such a number of parts both internal and 

 external, all so highly finished and each so nicely calculated 

 to answer its end ; that they should include in this evanescent 

 form such a variety of organs of perception and instruments 

 of motion, exceeding in number and peculiarity of structure 

 those of other animals; that their nervous and respiratory 

 systems should be so complex, their secretory and digestive 

 vessels so various and singular, their parts of generation so 



1 1 Kings, iv. 33. Prov. vi. 6—8. 



