LETTER XVII.

ON THE FORMATION OF INSECTS THEIR CLASSES AND IMPORTANCE-THEIR METAMORPHOSES-THEIR ACTIONS AND HABITS—THEIR SENSES, QUALITIES, MIND, AND FEELINGS.

THE INSECTS and WORMS were the "creeping things" which were ordered to appear among the creations of the sixth day. As they have recently become objects of much attention, and have been described in their most striking characteristics, with great knowledge and discrimination, by very able naturalists, our countrymen and contemporaries, it will fulfill my purpose of laying before you a general map of created nature, if I select only a few facts and observations which will bring some of their most remarkable properties and peculiarities under your consideration.

The insect race are, in number, by far the most considerable portion of animated beings; and whoever duly studies their habits, economy, and uses, "will acknowledge that they have been created with design; and will not doubt but the design was benevolent."(1)

The triple metamorphosis or transformation which most of them undergo has been said to be effected by casting off the different coats or coverings in which the perfect insect is inclosed; but it may be more near the unknown truth to say, that the perfect insect is forming or developing in the first or caterpillar state, and is completed in its second or chrysalis condition, from which it emerges into a new and

(1) Samouelle's Entomologist's Companion, p. 17. "All genuine insects have six legs; a head distinct from their body, furnished with two antennæ; and pores for respiration, conducting to trachea, arranged along their sides. They are all produced from eggs. Some undergo no metamorphosis; others but a partial change; whilst the remainder pass through three stages of existence after their egg state." Ib. 21.

more active existence, which is its last and reproducing form.(2)

Linnæus arranged them into seven orders; and these into many genera; which were again subdivided into a large multiplicity of species.(3) The real quantity of these we may conceive, when we find that three thousand of them are to be found in Great Britain alone. The multitude must therefore be very great which are existing elsewhere.(4) It is not necessary to say that they are the favorite productions of the Creator, because each of his kingdoms claim and deserve the same idea: all his works on earth have been favorite operations with him; though most of all, our much honored and most favored race. The flower and the fish have been as finely imagined and as elaborately executed as the richest butterfly and the most brilliant beetle. But we may admit, that he has combined and displayed in the insect world the beautiful and the graceful, the interesting and the alluring, the curious and the singular. They deserve our notice, and compel our admiration, not only for their sprightliness, forms, and colors, but also for (what most impresses my mind) exhibiting to us another investiture and display of

(2) "The egg is first excluded by the female, and contains the insect in its smallest state. From the egg is produced the larva, grub, or caterpillar, of a moist, soft substance, without wings, slow in motion; often with numerous feet; sometimes with none; sterile; and very voracious of its proper food. From this state it passes into that of the pupa chrysalis, or nymph; which is drier and harder than the last, confined in a narrow compass; naked, or inclosed in a web; often without a mouth; and sometimes with, sometimes without feet. Escaping from this last confinement, it becomes the perfect, active insect, furnished with antennæ." Turt. Linn. v. 2, p. 4.

(3) These orders, in his own last edition of his Systema, were, coleoptera; hemoptera; lepidoptera; neuroptera; hymenoptera: diptera; aptera. T. Linn. 4..... Fabricius endeavored to supersede this system by a different one, in thirteen classes; but it has not been found so useful as the Linnæan.

(4) "These, in Britain, are probably not one half the European insects; while we know that every other quarter of the globe is still more prolific in species wholly different. Every kind of plant probably affords nutriment, on the average, to three or four species of insects. Hence there can be little doubt that the insect is vastly more populous than the vegetable world." Sam. p. 46. . . . . This estimation is moderate; but Mr. Kirby states the British insects to be 10,000; and that the number in the whole globe may amount to 400,000 species. v. 4, p. 477. But these vast calculations are too vague to be relied on.

the living, and sentient, and thinking principle; and this, in full activity and power within figures and limbs so small, as to compel our wonder at the nature of that intellectual mystery and miracles to which space is indifferent, and which is equally efficient and astonishing in the smallest as in the greatest body-in the winged fly, that is but a speck, as much as in the elephant, the boa, or the eagle.(5) The mental principle is shown by the insect world to be quite independent of magnitude or matter; of general form, and of any particular organization. It is energetic, effective, and manifest in all. It is equally associable with every combination of material element; although it never appears but in assigned, regular, transmitted, and specific configurations. It is every where in diversified but in special organizations, reproducible only from themselves. Insects, notwithstanding their multifarious nature, demonstrate this truth as clearly as the plant or the quadruped. No insect. produces any other species than its own; but each class steadily continues its descending perpetuity. Yet still their external appearances are so curious and pleasing, as to deserve our attention, and often our warmest admiration.(6)

(5) A yellow insect is now running before me, not bigger than a dot, but as rapid, for him, as a dog in full speed. He runs straight forward over my paper, and turns toward the inky letters. What are dry, he runs over, what he finds wet, he stops at, and goes round them; he runs over the white space in a direct line for some time, either obliquely, straight, or in a horizontal one. When I put the feather of my pen in its way, it stops, and remains for some time motionless, till, finding no further alarm, it resumes its activity. It certainly paused by its own choice and will. It exerted an act of judgment as it came to the ink; it deemed, or felt that to be unsuitable, and repeatedly turned from it; yet it discerned when it was dry, and then ran over what became so. In the space of a small dot, a printer's full stop, it had movable legs and their muscles, and displayed all the activity, power, and thought of a larger animal.

(6) We may coincide with Mr. Kirby and Mr. Spence, that to these "valued miniatures" nature, that is, its Author, "has given the most delicate touch and highest finish of her pencil. Numbers are armed with a glittering mail, like burnished gold, the genera eumolpus; in others, is the dazzling radiance of polished gems. Some are decked with what looks like liquid drops or plates of gold and silver. Some exhibit a rude exterior, like stones in their native state, the genus trox; while others represent their shining state from the tool of the polisher. Some vie with flowers in the delicacy and variety of their colors; others, in the texture of their wings; and others, in the rich cottony down that clothes them." Kirby and Spence Entom. v. 1, p. 8.

The metamorphoses of insects are their most characterizing peculiarity. In these we certainly behold three distinct animals, as dissimilar from each other, in some genera, as the bird is from the serpent and the shell-fish; and yet united into one and the same living being, by the personal identity of their principle of life. This only continues permanent and abiding through their triple change of material form. The bodily substance undergoes the most striking mutations; but the existing and feeling self remains unceasing and unaltered through all. The same animal crawls in its caterpillar shape; rests or sleeps in its torpid chrysalis; and springs from earth into air, with its new wings, its proboscis, and its antennæ, in its butterfly or moth configuration. What a stupendous wonder this magical transformation would be to us, if it were not so familiar.(7) There is no reason to doubt that all the parts of the butterfly are in the caterpillar, as those of the human being are in the oval embryo. The material mechanism, the specific organization is all ready and arranged, though not at first discernible, from its invisible minuteness.(8) Gradually, this hidden form increases into an object of sight; every limb and function enlarging in just and progressive proportion; until the complete figure, so exactly beforehand conceived, assigned, and provided, grows into its last perfection, and emerges, like a new creation, into its aerial and beautiful vivacity.(9)

(7) "That butterfly, at its first exclusion from the egg, and for some months of its existence afterwards, was a worm-like caterpillar, crawling upon sixteen short legs, greedily devouring leaves with two jaws, and seeing by means of twelve eyes, so minute as to be nearly imperceptible without the aid of a microscope. You now view it furnished with wings, capable of rapid and extensive flights. Of its sixteen feet, ten have disappeared; and the remaining six are in most respects wholly unlike those to which they have succeeded. Its jaws have vanished, and are replaced by a curled up proboscis, suited only for sipping liquid sweets. The form of its head is entirely changed: two long horns project from its upper surface; and instead of twelve invisible eyes, you behold two very large ones, and composed of at least twenty thousand convex lenses, each supposed to be a distinct and effective eye." Kirby, Sp. p. 61.

(8) "A caterpillar is not a simple, but a compound animal, containing within itself the germ of the future butterfly." Ib. 71.

(9) "In the internal conformation, you witness changes even more extraordinary. In the former, you would find some thousands of muscles, which in the latter are replaced by others of a form and structure entirely different. Nearly the whole body of the caterpillar is occupied by a capa

It seems like a resurrection from the tomb into a fresh life, with celestial destinations. It is so analogous to that which the human spirit is appointed to undergo, that the intellect cannot well avoid viewing the insect transformation as the emblem, the token, the natural herald and promise of our own. The ancients, without our Christian revelation, thought so; for one of their most pleasing imaginations, yet visible on some of their grave-stones which we dig up, is that of a butterfly over the name or the inscription which they record. They place the insect there as the representation of their Psyche-of the animating and surviving soul; as the intimation that it will reappear in a new form and region of being.(10) It is thus analogous to the word "resurgam" on our hatchments. It beautifully and picturesquely declares, "Non omnis moriar-I shall not wholly die; but I hope yet to rise again." The allusion and the applicability are so striking, that I cannot but believe that one of the great purposes of the Deity, in creating his insect kingdom, was to excite this sentiment in the human heart, and to raise by it the contemplative mind to look forward to a possible revival from the tomb, as the butterfly from its sepulchral chrysalis.(11) Like the insect, the human personality has three states, and changes, and forms of being, but continues indestructible through all. It emerges from its ovum into the figure and life of the present fleshly body; it rests in its earthy grave, unextinguished, though visible to mortal eye no longer; and it will emerge from that, at the appointed time, into its ethereal nature and immortalized capacities; always the same self in each transmutation, never dying or dissolving with its material

cious stomach. This has become converted in the butterfly into an almost imperceptible thread-like viscus, and the abdomen is now filled by two large packets of eggs or other organs, not visible in their first state." Kirby and Sp. 62.

(10) It is also on some of their gems with the same metaphorical allusion.

(11) This "intermediate state is not less singular. After casting its skin, to its very jaws, several times, and attaining its full growth, the caterpillar attached itself to a leaf by a silken girth. Its body is greatly contracted; its skin once more split asunder, disclosing an oviform mass without exterior mouth, eyes, or limbs, and exhibiting no other symptom of life, than a slight motion when touched. In this death-like torpor, and without tasting food, the insect exists for several months." K. Sp. 62.