Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/46

46 "What, moreover, can I say to you respecting the works he has left, with which you are as well acquainted as I am myself. "I should not certainly, in such a case, before other men and in the presence of any other assembly, have been silent respecting the works of genius which procure for this inanimate bust the honour of such an inauguration. "But before conveying a full comprehension of the merits of him whom it represents, it would have been necessary to show the importance of the science, so much despised by the vulgar, to which he devoted his long and laborious life. "I should have been obliged to point out how all the parts of natural history are incomplete without that of insects, not only because it is in itself the most considerable by the number of the individuals which it embraces, but also because it is connected with all the rest.

"It would have been necessary for me likewise to prove that it is at once the most difficult, the most extensive, and the most philosophical of them all; since it is it which shows the phenomena of life and all the mysteries of instinct under the most singular and varied aspects; since it is it which best reveals to our view the fecundity, power, and resources of Nature, along with its innumerable diversities in form and colours. "I should then have to direct attention to the fact, that the greatest geniuses who have cultivated natural history; that those who have rendered their