285 



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 constitu- 

 tion 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 off- 

 spring ; or the affecting account of the she-bear related in 

 Phipps's Voyage to the North Pole, which, herself severely 

 wounded 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 for 

 exercising them in your new pursuit. You have not, I dare 

 say, suspected that any similar example could have been ad- 

 duced amongst insects, to which at the first glance there seems 

 even something absurd in attributing any thing like parental 

 affection. An animal not so big perhaps as a grain of wheat, 

 feel love for its offspring — how preposterous ! we are ready 

 to exclaim. Yet the exclamation would be very much mis- 

 placed. Nothing is more certain than that insects are ca- 

 pable of feeling quite as much attachment to their offspring 

 as the largest quadrupeds. They undergo as severe privations 

 in nourishing them ; expose themselves to as great risk in de- 

 fending them ; and in the very article of death exhibit as much 



