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LETTER Xiy. 

 HABITATION'S OF INSECTS. 



In forming an estimate of the civilisation and intellectual 

 progress of a newly discovered people, we usually pay at- 

 tention to their buildings, and other proofs of architectural 

 skill. If we find them, like the wretched inhabitants of Van 

 Diemen's Land, without other abodes than natural caverns 

 or miserable penthouses of bark, we at once regard them as 

 the most ignorant and unhumanised of their race. If, like 

 the natives of the South Sea Isles, they have advanced a step 

 further, and enjoy houses formed of timber, thatched with 

 leaves, and furnished with utensils of different kinds, we are 

 inclined to place them considerably higher in the scale. When, 

 as in the case of ancient Mexico, we discover a nation in- 

 habiting towns, containing stone houses, regularly disposed 

 into streets, we do not hesitate without other inquiry to 

 decide that it must have been civilised in no ordinary degree. 

 And if it were to chance that some future Park in Africa 

 should stumble upon the ruins of a large city, where, in 

 addition to these proofs of science, every building was con- 

 structed on just geometrical and architectural principles ; 

 where the materials were so employed as to unite strength 

 with lightness, and a confined site so artfully occupied as to 

 obtain spacious symmetrical apartments, we should eagerly 

 inquire into the history of the inhabitants, and sigh over 

 the remains of a race whose intellectual advances we should 

 infer with certainty were not inferior to our own. 



Were we by the same test to estimate the sagacity of the 

 different classes of animals, w^e should, beyond all doubt, 

 assign the highest place to insects, which, in the construction 

 of their habitations, leave all the rest far behind. The nests 

 of birds, from the rook's rude assemblage of sticks to the 

 pensile dwellings of the tailor bird, wonderful as they doubt- 

 less are, are indisputably eclipsed by the structures formed by 



