ANATOMY OF THE INSECT. 
349 
if they were born less soft, a little firmer, and somewliat less impression¬ 
able.” 
Yes; but in that case they would be just so far unfitted for the essential 
circumstance which ensures their development. Nature wishes them to be 
soft, ay, and very soft, that they may more easily undergo the moultings and 
painful changes which are imperative upon them,—which moultings, if the 
insect-substance were hard, would inflict upon it the most severe injuries. 
By instinct they are aware of this, and dread extremely lest their bodies 
should harden. The processionary caterpillars, for example, though covered 
thickly with hair, conceal themselves from the sun under ample curtains. And 
they are also mindful to issue forth only in the evening, when the damp and 
misty air may preserve their salutary humidity. 
NOTE 6.—Book i.. Chap. vii. 
The Appearance of the Perfect Insect. —The anatomy of the insect has been 
the theme of one of the greatest disputes of our time. Some one having 
visited Goethe, soon after the French Revolution of July 1830:—“Well, 
well,” inquired the illustrious sage, “ have they settled the question 1 ” And 
as the traveller seemed to think he referred to the political question, “ Oh, it 
is something of far greater importance ! ” said Goethe ; “I refer to the great 
duel between Cuvier and Geoffroy.” 
The world took part in it. Strauss and others remained faithful to Cuvier. 
The great physicist Ampere, in an anonymous article inserted in the first 
volume of the Annales des Sciences Naturelles , adopted the opinions of Geoffroy, 
Audouin, and Serres, and even expressed them with a juvenile audacity that 
these anatomists, in their modesty, had not displayed. 
All the complex details of their proceedings had been extracted and pre¬ 
pared [by Madame Michelet] for the present volume with a patience and 
persevering love such as could be inspired only by a true and tender re¬ 
ligion of Nature. Barbarian that I am, I must sacrifice this arduous labour, 
which, perhaps, would not be much relished by the public to whom I address 
myself. 
The place which the insect occupies in the animal creation is very clearly 
defined in Lacordaire’s excellent resume :—“ Equal to the vertebrates in the 
energy of its muscular fibre, scarcely inferior to them in the organization of 
its digestive canal, superior even to the bird by the quantity of its respiration, 
it falls below the molluscs through the imperfection of its system of circulation. 
Its nervous system is less concentrated than that of many of the Crustacea.” 
(Lacordaire, vol. ii., p. 2.) 
