THE LIVING WORLD. 
227 
line of poetry and many a favorite work in prose ; they Have held the interest 
of the most able, intelligent and earnest students of Natural History, such as 
Wallace and Lubbock and Darwin in England; Scudder and Riley in America. 
With the Devonian age and the appearance of trees and vegetation, insects 
first appear, thus emphasizing the wonderful provision for the support of 
animal life and the adaptation of life to its surroundings. The mathematicians 
have proved the impossibility of many coincident accidents, and hence the 
student is forced to recognize the work of an unerring wisdom, such as be¬ 
longs alone to the Creator. 
The Carboniferous age, with its rank plant-life, marshes, decaying trees, 
furnished yet more favorable conditions for insect life, which consequently 
multiplied and flourished increasingly. With succeeding eras insect life con¬ 
tinues with its changed forms of existence and its infinite adaptation to new 
conditions. 
Entomology, or the study of insect life, offers special attractions. In the 
first place there is the infinite variety of species (one hundred thousand of 
these having already been distinguished). Then there are the many and 
curious transformations, beauty of coloring, diversity of form, and finally there 
is their wonderfully developed instinct, their adaptation to the life which they 
are to lead, and the service or disservice to mankind. 
They furnish at once an opportunity, a provocation, and a satisfying 
means for the study of that process of evolution which, far from denying the 
agency of the First Great Cause, recognizes his method of acting rather in the 
initiation of nature’s mysteries than by a continued and unnecessary inter¬ 
ference when the process has once been.set in motion. No student of the won¬ 
derful metamorphosis of insect life can fail to admire more intensely and more 
intelligently God’s wisdom in providing for such adaptation to one’s functions 
and surroundings as shall enable the smallest insect to perfectly fulfil its 
mission. Natural Theology is not antagonistic to doctrinal theology or inspired 
revelation, but rather lends the strongest support to doctrines and to the ethi¬ 
cal teachings of Holy Writ. 
Thus a moment’s reflection will satisfy the reader that not merely to the 
naturalist and the lover of nature, but even to the speculative student of our 
cosmogony, the insects, as subjects of investigation, have the supremest interest 
and importance. But yet again, the practical value of the study can hardly be 
overestimated.* Professor G. V. Riley, the entomologist, is admitted to have 
saved thousands and thousands of dollars to the agricultural, horticultural, flori- 
cultural and arboricultural interests of the United States. Truly, as has been 
said and sung, “knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers,” and the undirected 
experiments of the farmer and gardener are too slow and costly to be accepted 
as a substitute for the exact and useful experience gathered by those whose 
lives and energies have been consecrated to a study of the insects. Think for 
a moment of the ravages of the cotton-worm, and you will realize the actual 
cash value of information at once exact and placed within the reach of the 
unscientific reader. 
Many of the insects have already been made to serve economical needs, 
and thus have resulted in the creation of new branches of commerce with all 
the-distribution of labor, wealth and intelligence which this implies. _ The silk¬ 
worm supplies necessities felt by every household; the cochineal insect sup- 
