2 
plint's natueal histoet. 
[Book XI. 
in the ver)'" largest among them, she found her task easy and 
her materials ready and pliable ; but in these minute creatures, 
so nearly akin as they are to non-entity, how surpassing the 
intelligence, how vast the resources, and how ineffable the 
perfection which she has displayed. Where is it that she has 
united so many senses as in the gnat ? — not to speak of creatures 
that might be mentioned of still smaller size — "Where, I say, 
has she found room to place in it the organs of sight ? Where 
has she centred the sense of taste ? Where has she inserted 
the power of smell ? And where, too, has she implanted that 
sharp shrill voice of the creature, so utterly disproportioned to 
the smallness of its body ? With what astonishing subtlety * 
has she united the wings to the trunk, elongated the joints 
of the legs, framed that long, craving concavity for a belly, and 
then inflamed the animal with an insatiate thirst for blood, 
that of man more especially ! What ingenuity has she displayed 
in providing it with a sting, ^ so well adapted for piercing the 
skin ! And then too, just as though she had had the most 
extensive field for the exercise of her skill, although the 
weapon is so minute that it can hardly be seen, she has formed 
it with a twofold mechanism, providing it with a point for the 
purpose of piercing, and at the same moment making it hollow, 
to adapt it for suction. 
What teeth, too, has she inserted in the teredo, * to adapt it 
for piercing oak even with a sound which fully attests their 
destructive power ! while at the same time she has made wood 
its principal nutriment. We give all our admiration to the 
shoulders of the elephant as it supports the turret, to the 
stalwart neck of the bull, and the might with which it hurls 
aloft whatever comes in its way, to the onslaught of the tiger, 
or to the mane of the lion ; while, at the same time, iJ^ature is 
nowhere to be seen to greater perfection than in the very 
smallest of her works. For this reason then, I must beg of 
my readers, notwithstanding the contempt they feel for many 
of these objects, not to feel a similar disdain for the informa- 
tion I am about to give relative thereto, seeing that, in the 
^ The trunk of the gnat, Cuvier says, contains five silken and pointed 
threads, which together have the effect of a sting. 
^ The Teredo navalis of Linnaeus, not an insect, but one of the mollusks. 
This is the same creature that is mentioned in B. xvi. c. 80 ; but that spoken 
of in B. viii. c. 74, must have been a land insect. ^ 
