Insect architecture / [Anon].

  • James Rennie
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insect architecture / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    thoughts, even while the infirmities of age weigh down the body. | It has been objected to the study of insects, as well as to that of Natural History in general, that it tends to withdraw the mind from subjects of higher moment; that it cramps and narrows the range of thought; and that it destroys, or at least weakens, the finer creations of the fancy. Now, we should allow this objection in its fullest extent, and even be disposed to carry it further than is usually done, if the collecting of specimens only, or, as the French expressively call them, chips (échantillons), be called a study. But the mere col- lector is not, and cannot be, justly considered as a naturalist; and, taking the term naturalist in its en- larged sense, we can adduce some distinguished in- stances in opposition to the objection. Rousseau, for example, was passionately fond of the Linnzean botany, even to the driest minutiz of its technicalities; and yet it does not appear to have cramped his mind, or impoverished his imagination. If Rousseau, how- ever, be objected to as an eccentric being, from whose pursuits no fair inference can be drawn, we give the illustrious example of Charles James Fox, and may add the names of our distinguished poets, Goldsmith, Thomson, Gray, and Darwin, who where all enthusiastic naturalists. We wish particularly to insist upon the example of Gray, because he was very partial to the study of insects. It may be new to many of our readers, who are familiar with the Elegy in a Country Church-yard, to be told that its author was at the pains to turn the characteris- tics of the Linnean orders of insects into Latin hexameters, the manuscript of which is still preserved in his interleaved copy of the ‘‘ Systema Nature.” Further, to use the somewhat exaggerated words of Kirby and Spence, whose work on Entomology is one of the most instructive and pleasing books on
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