Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/134

 we learn to estimate rightly the extraordinary provisions and most abundant resources of a creative Providence; and the better do we appreciate our own relations with all the infinite varieties of Nature, and our dependence, in common with the ephemeron that flutters its little hour in the summer sun, upon that Being in whose scheme of existence the humblest as well as the highest creature has its destined purposes. "If you speak of a stone," says St. Basil, "if you speak of a fly, a gnat, or a bee, your conversation will be a sort of demonstration of his power whose hand formed them, for the wisdom of the workman is commonly perceived in that which is of little size. He who has stretched out the Heavens, and dug up the bottom of the sea, is also He who has pierced a passage through the sting of the bee for the ejection of its poison."

If it be granted that making discoveries is one of the most satisfactory of human pleasures, then we may without hesitation affirm, that the study of insects is one of the most delightful branches of natural history, for it affords peculiar facilities for its pursuit. These facilities are found in the almost inexhaustible variety which insects present to the curious observer.

There is, perhaps, no situation in which the lover of nature and the observer of animal life may not find opportunities for increasing his store of facts. It is told of a state prisoner under a cruel and rigorous despotism, that when he was excluded from all commerce with mankind, and was shut out from books, he took an interest and found consolation in the visits of a spider; and there is no improbability in the story. The operations of that persecuted creature are among the most extraordinary exhibitions of mechanical ingenuity; and a daily watching of the workings of its instinct would beget admiration in a rightly constituted mind. The poor prisoner had abundant leisure for the speculations in which the spider's web would enchain his understanding. We have all of us, at one period or other of our lives, been struck with some singular evidence of contrivance in the economy of insects, which we have seen with our own eyes. Want of leisure, and probably want of knowledge, have prevented us from following up the curiosity which for a moment was excited. And yet some such