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on the physical power of insects. 
We find, in history, frequent instances of useful ideas drawn from a careful 
attention to the works of the insect race.—The Wasp, it will he seen, was 
practising precisely the art of paper-making, on a small scale, long ages ago, when 
men for the want of it wrote on tables of lead, on skins, on the barks of plants, 
&c. I am not aware that the labours of the Wasp served to instruct us in the 
paper-manufacture, as they certainly might have done, but in all probability in 
the earlier ages of the world, when the history of the arts was hidden in obscurity, 
Man was often indebted to the examples set him by a large portion of the animal 
kingdom in their works for the preservation of themselves or their offspring. At 
the same time it is certain they have gathered nothing from us, unless I may be 
allowed to pass to a kindred branch of Natural History, to cite a singular instance 
mentioned by Wilson, in his American Ornithology , where we are informed of a 
bird that used to weave an intricate nest of minute fibres and roots of plants; but 
since the settlement of that country they have found the thread, put out to bleach 
by the careful American housewives, so much better fitted for their purpose, 
that, disregarding all the rights of property, they had become notorious for 
pilfering it. 
Mr. Brunel, when he planned his tunnelling shield, frankly acknowledged he 
had borrowed the idea from a mining Beetle, whose success and industry in 
cutting tunnels or galleries through the earth had some time before arrested 
his attention. 
The late Mr. Smeaton, also, in sketching the design for Eddystone Light¬ 
house, one of the most indestructible fabrics of human labour, was indebted to his 
observations of Nature’s works for the external shape of his tower. 
Again, to shew the necessity for the exercise of caution in proceeding with the 
study of natural phenomena, where we seek to ascertain for what end the work 
going on is designed, I may mention an error of the ancients in considering the 
pellets of clay, with which they often observed the Mason Bee loaded, as ballast 
carried by the insect to steady it against the wind. The pellets, I need scarcely 
say, are for no such purpose, but are solely used for the construction of the 
creature’s nest. Cicero has left on record an equally great error in Natural 
History, though not immediately connected with this branch, when he speaks of 
the Barley-grains as surrounded by a rampart of spears to defend them from the 
ravages of the lesser birds—a very probable reading in Natural History for a 
martial age like his, but which in our times could not be passed without ridicule, 
save for the exquisite language in which his opinions are clothed. 
The labours of insects taken collectively are of great importance to Man— 
not so much as his assistants, like many of the higher animals (although 
numerous .instances are recorded to shew where he does receive essential benefit 
from them), but as grievances, blasting his prospects from the tender plants to which 
