INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 



11 



what wisdom is displayed, what power, what unfathomable 

 perfection ! " ^ But even this will not bring you to the end 

 of your pleasures : you must leave the dead to visit the living ; 

 you must behold insects when full of life and activity, engaged 

 in their several employments, practising their various arts, 

 pursuing their amours, and preparing habitations for their 

 progeny : you must notice the laying and kind of their eggs ; 

 their wonderful metamorphoses ; their instincts, whether they 

 be solitary or gregarious ; and the other miracles of their 

 history — all of which will open to you a richer mine of 

 amusement and instruction, I speak it without hesitation, 

 than any other department of Natural History can furnish. 

 A minute enumeration of these particulars would be here 

 misplaced, and only forestall what will be detailed more 

 at large hereafter ; but a rapid glance at a very few of 

 the most remarkable of them may serve as a stimulus to ex- 

 cite your curiosity, and induce you to enter with greater 

 eagerness into the wide field to which I shall conduct you. 



The lord of the creation plumes himself upon his powers of 

 invention, and is proud to enumerate the various useful arts 

 and machines to which they have given birth, not aware that 



He who teacheth man knowledge " has instructed these 

 despised insects to anticipate him in many of them. The 

 builders of Babel doubtless thought their invention of turning 

 earth into artificial stone, a very happy discovery ^ ; yet a 

 little bee ^ had practised this art, using indeed a different 

 process, on a small scale, and the white ants on a large one, 

 ever since the world began. Man thinks that he stands un- 

 rivalled as an architect, and that his buildings are without a 

 parallel among the works of the inferior orders of animals. 

 He would be of a different opinion did he attend to the his- 

 tory of insects : he would find that many of them have been 

 architects from time immemorial; that they have had their 

 houses divided into various apartments, and contahiing stair- 

 cases, gigantic arches, domes, colonnades, and the like ; nay, 

 that even tunnels are excavated by them so immense, com- 

 pared with their own size, as to be twelve times bigger than 



1 Plin. Hist. Nat. 1. 11. c. 2. - Gen. xi. 3. 3 Megachile muraria. 



