CLASS I. INSECTA. 
536 
tated with success by one of our most common butterflies. Feathers are thought to be peculiar 
to birds, but insects often imitate them in their antennae, wings, and even sometimes in the cov- 
ering of their bodies. We admire with reason the coats of quadrupeds, whether their skins be 
covered with pile, or wool, or fur, yet are not perhaps aware that a vast variety of insects are 
clothed with all these kinds of hair, but infinitely finer and more silky in texture, more brilliant 
and delicate in color, and more variously shaded than what any other animals can pretend to. 
" In variegation, insects certainly exceed every other class of animated beings. Nature, in her 
sportive mood, when painting them sometimes imitates the clouds of heaven; at others, the 
meandering course of the rivers of the earth, or the undulations of their waters ; many are veined 
like beautiful marbles ; others have the semblance of a robe of the finest net-work thrown over 
them ; some she blazons with heraldic insignia, giving them to bear in fields sable, azure, vert, 
gules, argent, and or, fesses, bars, bends, crosses, crescents, stars, and even animals. On many, 
taking her rule and compasses, she draws with j)recision mathematical figures : points, lines, 
angles, triangles, squares, and circles. On others she portrays, with mystic hand, what seem like 
hieroglyphic symbols, or inscribes them with the characters and letters of various languages, 
often very correctly formed ; and what is more extraordinary, she has registered in others figures 
which correspond with several dates of the Christian era. 
"ISTor has nature been lavish only in the apparel and ornament of these privileged tribes; in 
other respects she has been equally unsparing of her favors. To some she has given fins like 
those of fish, or a beak resembling that of birds ; to others horns, nearly the counterparts of those 
of various quadrupeds. The bull, the stag, the rhinoceros, and even the hitherto vainly sought- 
for unicorn, have in this respect many representatives among insects. One is armed with tusks 
not unlike those of the elephant ; another is bristled with spines, as the porcupine and hedgehog 
with quills ; a third is an armadillo in miniature ; the disproportioned hind-legs of the kangaroo 
give a most grotesque aj)pearance to a fourth ; and the threatening head of the snake is found 
in a fifth. It would, however, be endless to produce all the instances which occur of such imi- 
tations, and I shall only remark that, generall}^ speaking, these arms and instruments in structure 
and finishing far exceed those which they resemble. 
" But further : insects not only mimic, in a manner infinitely various, every thing in nature, they 
may also with very little violence be regarded as symbolical of beings out of and above nature. 
The butterfly, adorned with every beauty and every grace, borne by radiant wings through the 
fields of ether, and extracting nectar from every flower, gives us some idea of the blessed inhab- 
itants of happier worlds, of angels, and of the spirits of the just arrived at their state of perfec- 
tion. Again, other insects seem emblematical of a diff'erent class of unearthly beings, when we 
behold some, tremendous for the numerous horns and spines projecting in horrid array from their 
head or shoulders ; others for their threatening jaws of fearful length, and armed with cruel fangs ; 
when we survey the dismal hue and demoniac air that distinguish others, the dens of darkness 
in which they live, the impurity of their food, their predatory habits and cruelty, the nets which 
they spread, and the pits which they sink to entrap the unwary, we can scarcely help regarding 
them as aptly symbolizing evil demons, the enemies of man, or impure spirits, for their vices 
and crimes driven from the regions of light into darkness and punishment." 
The various arts and industry of insects have excited the admiration of every attentive ob- 
server. "The lord of the creation," say the authors we have just quoted, "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 ' Me who teacheth man Jcnoioledge' 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 
practiced this art, using indeed a difterent process, on a small scale, and the white ants on a 
large one, ever since the world began. Man thinks that he stands unrivaled 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 diflPerent opinion did he attend to the history of insects t he would find that many 
of them have been architects from time immemorial ; that they have had their houses divided 
into various apartments, and containing staircases, gigantic arches, domes, colonnades, and the 
