confidence, docilely accepting the darkness,
the repose, and the captivity of the tomb. It
feels within itself a reason of existence, a
cause of living still. And what cause?
What reason? The vitality amassed by its
former labours. All the treasure which it
accumulated as a hard-working caterpillar
constitutes its barrier against death, its
inabiility to perish, the cause which makes it
not only live but lead a light and happy life,
whose ease is exactly in proportion to the
efforts which it made during its former
existence.

Admirable compensation! By diving so
low into the depths of life, we might expect
to meet with physical fatalities. What we
really find there is justice, immortality, hope.
Antiquity was right, and modern science is
right. It is death, and it is not death: it is,
if you like, a partial death. And is death
ever anything else? Is not death actually a
birth?

The insect has no part in human language.
He speaks neither by the voice nor the
physiognomy. By what, then, does he express
himself? He speaks by his energies. First:
By the immense power of destruction which
he exercises upon the superabundance of
nature—upon a multitude of sluggish or
diseased existences which he hastens to cause
to disappear. Secondly: By his visible energies,
especially during the season of love, by
his brilliant colours, his phosphorescent
lights, and his poisons, several of which we
employ as remedies. Thirdly: He speaks to
us by his arts, which might give us hints for
the extension of our own.

In order to counteract the shortsightedness,
the disgusts, the terrors, the narrow
and egotistical judgment with which we
consider the things around us, we ought to recall
to mind the grand and necessary reactions of
Nature. Nature has not marched forward
with the regularity of a continued stream,
but with occasional ebbings, retreats backwards,
and retrograding steps which allowed
her the opportunity of harmonising with
herself. Our limited scope of vision, which
sometimes fixes its gaze on apparently
retrogressive movements, takes alarm, becomes
frightened, and misunderstands the purport
of the whole. It is the attribute of Infinite
Love, whose creative power is ever active, in
every creation which He produces to render
it capable of infinite extension. But, in the
midst of this very infinity, He raises up a
creation of antagonism which will keep it
(namely, the said creation) in check. If we
see Him producing monstrous destroyers, be
sure that they are sent, as a remedy and a
repression, to stop the course of monsters of
fecundity.

Herbivorous insects were the check of the
fearful vegetable incumbrance of the primitive
world. But, as those herbivorous insects
multiplied beyond all law and reason, insectivorous
insects were sent for their repression.
These latter, robust and terrible, tyrants of
creation in virtue of their weapons and their
wings, would have been victorious over the
victors, and would have exterminated the
feebler species, if, over the whole insect people
and soaring above its proudest flight, there
had not supervened the wing supreme of a
superior tyrant, the Bird. The haughty
dragon-fly was snapped up by the swallow,
By these successive destructions, increase has
been, not suppressed, but restricted, and the
species held in equilibrium. So that all
propagated, and all live. The more closely a
species is pruned, the more prolific it
becomes. Does it overflow its legitimate
bounds ? Instantly, the superabundance is
balanced by the fresh fecundity with which
it endows its destroyers.

We, men of this tardy epoch, sons of the
spare and sober West, brought up in those
narrow, well-weeded, carefully-kept
garden-grounds which are known amongst us as
large estates, must imagine something quite
different to these miniature inclosures, if we
want to form an idea of the primitive vigour
of the globe, of the abundance and the
superabundance which the earth displayed when,
bathed in hot mist, she sent forth from her
bosom the first blossoms of her youth. The
hottest countries of the actual world show
us a faint image of what it must have been.
The inextricable forests of Guiana and
Brazil, in their entanglement, in their chaos
of mad plants which, without rule or measure,
envelop giant trees, smother them, cause
them to rot, and bury them in ruins,—such
is an imperfect picture of the grand ancient
vegetable chaos. The only creatures sufficiently
impure to support this mass of impurity,
to breathe its air laden with death,
were big-bellied reptiles, heavy toads, green
caymans, and swollen serpents. And such
would have been the sole habitants of the
earth.

Then, from on high pounced down the
Bird; plunging into the reeking gulf, he
brought up to the highest tree-tops some one
of the unclean monsters. But his incessant
warfare would have still remained unequal
to keep down their abominable fecundity,
had not thousands of millions of nibblers
cleared the jungle, opened the noisome
hiding-places, and allowed the sun's health-restoring rays to pierce the thick covering beneath
which the earth was panting. The humblest
of insects performed the work which
rendered the world habitable; they devoured
the chaos.

"Small means for so grand a result!"
You will say, " How could these tiny creatures
contrive to make an end of an infinity?"
You would dismiss all doubts if you had
ever witnessed the waking up of a large
establishment of silkworms, when one fine
morning they quit the egg with that immense
appetite which no abundance of leaves can
satisfy. Their host fancied he had made