SYBILLE DE MEKIAN. 
359 
narrow cradles and inferior regimen. Now, as these workers form nearly the 
whole people (except five or six bred as queens, and a few hundred males), it 
follows that the hive of twenty or thirty thousand bees is female. Thus the pre¬ 
dominance of the feminine sex, the general law of insect life, has obtained its 
supreme confirmation. There are no neuters ; neither among the bees, nor the 
ants, nor all the superior tribes of insects. The males are a small exception, a 
secondary accident. I feel able to assert that, on the whole, the insect is female. 
Mademoiselle Jurine’s discovery has also revealed to us the true character 
of the maternity of adoption, an admirably original characteristic of these 
insects, and the elevated law of disinterestedness and sacrifice which is the 
ennoblement of their communities. 
An undoubtedly inferior, but still distinguished merit to that of accom¬ 
plishing great discoveries, is that of representing animals to us by pen or 
pencil in their true forms, their movements, and the general harmony of the 
things with which they are associated. No art seems to belong more naturally 
to woman. A woman has commenced it. 
The illustrious Audubon has won just admiration for his representation of 
the bird in its complete harmonies, its animal and vegetable medium, on the 
plants which feed, near the enemy which assails it. But it has been too gene¬ 
rally forgotten that the model of his harmonious paintings, which present us 
with so true a picture of life, was furnished by a woman, Sybille de Merian. 
Her handsome volume ( Metamorphose des Insectes de Surinam, folio, in three 
languages, ed. 1705), was the first in which this admirable method was in¬ 
vented and skilfully applied. 
She is called “ Mademoiselle ,” though she was married. The name of 
“ dame ” was in her time still restricted to women of noble birth. And she 
remains “ Mademoiselle;” is never cited except under her maiden name. Her 
books, from their pure science and great perseverance, give one the idea of a 
person lifted above the world of persons, and wholly devoted to art and nature. 
I have dedicated to her a word or two, but without speaking of her life. 
A native of Bale, the daughter, sister, and mother of celebrated engravers, and 
herself an excellent painter of flowers upon velvet, she long resided at Frank¬ 
fort and Nurenberg. She experienced great misfortunes, her husband being 
ruined and having separated from her. She then sought refuge in a mystical 
society, analogous to that which had formerly consoled Swammerdam. The 
religious spark of the new science, the theology of insects, as a contemporary 
terms it, here produced a strong impression on her mind. She was acquainted 
with Swammerdam’s great idea, the unity of metamorphoses, and with that 
which Malpighi had flung in the face of astonished Europe in his book on 
the silkworm : “ Insects have a heart.” 
What ! they have a heart, like us ! Which, like ours, throbs and stirs at 
