letter, and suspect his disinterestedness;
but one glance at my gentle and
amiable wife reconciles me to all.

         MICHELET AND INSECTS.

THE cries and the melodies of the winged
world* do not prevent our overhearing the
murmur of an infinite world of living creatures,
who, although shrouded in shadow
and silence, utter an energetic claim to our
attention—a claim ot appalling power, when
we think of their number. Our collections
contain about a hundred thousand species.
But, if we think that every species of plant
feeds at least three kinds of insects, we have,
according to the number of known plants,
three hundred and sixty thousand species of
insects—every one, be it noted, of prodigious
fecundity. Remember, besides, that every
creature nourishes other creatures, on its
surface, in its solid substance, or in its fluids;
that every insect is a little world inhabited
by insects, and that those again are tenanted
by others. Nor is this all; in masses
which we used to believe mineral and inorganic,
we are shown animalcules, of which
it would take a thousand million to make
a cubic inch; and these, nevertheless, offer a
rough sketch of an insect, and which would
have a right to call themselves incipient
insects. And their aggregate number? A
portion of the Apennines is built up with
them; their atoms have served to raise that
enormous hump or hunchback of America
called the Cordilleras. At this point we
might suppose the review to be ended; yet
the molluscs which have fabricated such
multitudes of islets in the South Seas, which
literally pave (as the latest soundings inform
us) the twelve hundred leagues of ocean
which separate us from America—these
molluscs are qualified by several naturalists
with the title of embryonic insects. So that
their prolific tribes come as a sort of dependence
on this superior people; or, as we might
say, they are candidates for insect dignity.
* See page 140 of the present volume.

This is grand. Nevertheless, what binds
us to the little world of birds, is not their
music, nor even the spectacle of their sublime
and buoyant mode of life. It is, that the
bird can understand us. We make with
him an interchange of languages; we speak
for him, and he sings for us. But by what
signs of intelligence can we contrive to open
any communication with the insect? Our
voice, our gestures, have no other effect on
hirn than to cause him to fly. There is no
look or speculation in his eyes; no movement
in his silent mask. His senses are of
infinite subtlety, but are they similar to our
senses? He seems even to have senses
apart, unknown in their nature, and, as yet,
without name. He escapes our comprehension;
nature has arranged so as to ignore his
presence in respect to man. If she exhibits
him for a moment during the season of love,
she hides him for years in the murky earth
or in the discreet bosom of timber-trees.
When found, caught, opened, dissected, and
examined with the microscope, bit by bit, he
remains for us an enigma still—an enigma
which is anything but re-assuring, whose
strangeness almost scandalises us, so
completely does it confound our received ideas.
What can we say of a creature who breathes
at the flank, through holes in his sides? Of
a paradoxical walker who, contrary to usual
custom, presents his back to the earth and
his belly to the sky? In many things, the
insect is a being turned upside down, or with
the wrong side outwards. His minuteness is
another cause of our misconstruing his ways.
Many an organ appears odd and menacing
because our eyes are too feeble to see and
explain its structure and utility. Things
imperfectly beheld cause uneasiness, like
objects seen in the dark. Meanwhile, we
kill him. He is so small, moreover, that in
his case we fancy ourselves dispensed from
acting with justice. A German dreamer
thought to seal the insect's fate by the
dictum: God made the world, but the Devil
made the insect.

The poor creature, however, does not own
himself beaten merely by an insulting speech.
To the systems of the philosopher and the
fright of the child (which are, perhaps, the
same tiling) he replies pretty nearly as
follows: That, in the first place, justice is
universal; that stature has nothing to do with
right and wrong; that, if it be possible to
suppose right not to be equal, and that
universal love can incline the scale, it would
be in favour of the small and weak. He
says that it would be absurd to judge him by
his appearance; to condemn organs whose
use you are ignorant of; that the greater
part of them are the apparatus necessary for
special professions, the instruments of a
hundred different trades; and that he, the
insect, is the grand destroyer and fabricator,
the artisan par excellence, the active
mechanician of life. Finally, he states (the claim
will perhaps appear a little lofty), that, to
judge by visible signs—namely, works and
results—he of all living creatures is the one
who loves the most. Love has given him
wings, a marvellous iris of colouring, and
even visible flame. Love is, for him, death
either instantaneous or near at hand, together
with an astonishing second-sight of maternity
to afford to the orphan the most ingenious
forms of protection. In short, this maternal
genius is so highly developed that, surpassing
and eclipsing the rare associations of birds
and quadrupeds, it has made the insect the
founder of republics and cities.

The insect often inspires children with
terror and an instinctive repugnance. But
we are all children; and the philosopher
himself, notwithstanding his attempts at