CHAP. 1. (1.)—THE EXTREME SMALLNESS OF INSECTS.
WE shall now proceed to a description of the insects, a
subject replete with endless difficulties;
1 for, in fact, there
are some authors who have maintained that they do not respire,
and that they are destitute of blood. The insects are numerous,
and form many species, and their mode of life is like that of
the terrestrial animals and the birds. Some of them are furnished with wings, bees for instance; others are divided into
those kinds which have wings, and those which are without
them, such as ants; while others, again, are destitute of both
wings and feet. All these animals have been very properly
called "insects,"
2 from the incisures or divisions which separate the body, sometimes at the neck, and sometimes at the
corselet, and so divide it into members or segments, only
united to each other by a slender tube. In some insects, however, this division is not complete, as it is surrounded by
wrinkled folds; and thus the flexible vertebræ of the creature,
whether situate at the abdomen, or whether only at the upper
part of the body, are protected by layers, overlapping each
other; indeed, in no one of her works has Nature more fully
displayed her exhaustless ingenuity.
(2.) In large animals, on the other hand, or, at all events,
in the very largest among them, she found her task easy and
her materials ready and pliable; but in these minute creatures,
so nearly akin as they are to non-entity, how surpassing the
intelligence, how vast the resources, and how ineffable the
perfection which she has displayed. Where is it that she has
united so many senses as in the gnat?—not to speak of creatures
that might be mentioned of still smaller size—Where, I say,
has she found room to place in it the organs of sight? Where
has she centred the sense of taste? Where has she inserted
the power of smell? And where, too, has she implanted that
sharp shrill voice of the creature, so utterly disproportioned to
the smallness of its body? With what astonishing subtlety
has she united the wings to the trunk, elongated the joints
of the legs, framed that long, craving concavity for a belly, and
then inflamed the animal with an insatiate thirst for blood,
that of man more especially! What ingenuity has she displayed
in providing it with a sting,
3 so well adapted for piercing the
skin! And then too, just as though she had had the most
extensive field for the exercise of her skill, although the
weapon is so minute that it can hardly be seen, she has formed
it with a twofold mechanism, providing it with a point for the
purpose of piercing, and at the same moment making it hollow,
to adapt it for suction.
What teeth, too, has she inserted in the teredo,
4 to adapt it
for piercing oak even with a sound which fully attests their
destructive power! while at the same time she has made wood
its principal nutriment. We give all our admiration to the
shoulders of the elephant as it supports the turret, to the
stalwart neck of the bull, and the might with which it hurls
aloft whatever comes in its way, to the onslaught of the tiger,
or to the mane of the lion; while, at the same time, Nature is
nowhere to be seen to greater perfection than in the very
smallest of her works. For this reason then, I must beg of
my readers, notwithstanding the contempt they feel for many
of these objects, not to feel a similar disdain for the information I am about to give relative thereto, seeing that, in the
study of Nature, there are none of her works that are unworthy
of our consideration.