THE 
WEEKLY ENTOMOLOGIST. 
“ ENTOMA aUIDQUID AGTJNT NOSTRI EST FARRAGO LIBELLI.” 
No. 13.] SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1862. [Pbicb 2d. 
COMPENSATION . 
wmZBM seem to be in existence 
<*> laws of so universal application 
that even Nature herself must bow to 
them. One of these appears to be the 
law of Compensation. Nature has 
strangely various ways of working. 
She seems to delight in puzzling men 
with her monstrosities, but still, er- 
ratic as these may be, the law of com- 
pensation keeps them in due limits. 
Is she resolved to endow one of her 
favorites with an excess of some qual- 
ity calculated to exalt him above lus 
fellow men ? She must make him de- 
ficient in another respect, and so com- 
pensate the rest of mankind for the 
undue advantage she has bestowed. 
Does she provide for some particular 
class of Creation a feeble and minute 
frame, incapable of meeting and re- 
sisting the dangers of a single hour ? 
She must compensate them for the 
diminution of physical force, by be- 
stowing an increased instinct, sagaci- 
ty or reason. Thus we often find that, 
if a man is deprived of sight, to com- 
pensate for this, the touch is far more 
sensitive than in an ordinary being, 
that a spirit unconquerable and in- 
satiable is often joined to a lamentable 
want of that which could make it 
practically available for good or evil’ 
and that the most minute divisions of 
the animal kingdom, though so minute 
and helpless that one of their larger 
brethren could sweep thousands to 
death at a blow, are endowed with 
such power of united action, and such 
sagacity (reason, we had almost said) 
that they are, at least a match for the 
most gigantic inhabitants of this 
terrestrial globe. 
It has been surmised, and is now 
generally admitted, that, in accor- 
dance with this natural law, provision 
has been made to compensate for the 
great destruction which, from their 
i)j£nite number, must necessarily take 
place in the insect tribes, by depriving 
them of that keen sense of suffering 
which so greatly aggravates the ter- 
rors of death among the larger and 
more powerful animals. 
Our object in calling attention to 
these facts is not to establish their 
truth, as that would be superfluous, 
but merely to point out an apparent 
anomaly caused by the working of the 
law of compensation, in the disunion 
of faculties which we have been ac- 
customed to consider inseparably con- 
nected. How singular that, while 
insects are highly endowed with men- 
