This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1836. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIX. OF INSECTS. We are not writing a system of natural history ; therefore we have not attended to the classes into which the subjects of that science are distributed. What we had to observe concerning different species of animals, fell easily, for the most part, within the divisions which the course of our argument led us to adopt. There remain, however, some remarks upon the insect tribe, which could not properly be introduced under any other of these heads; and which therefore we have collected into a chapter by themselves. The structure, and the use of the parts, of insects, are less understood than that of quadrupeds and birds, not only by reason of their minuteness, or the minuteness of their parts, (for that minuteness we can, in some measure, follow with glasses,) but also by reason of the remoteness of their manners and modes of life from those of larger animals. For instance : Insects, under all their varieties of form, are endowed with antenncB^ which is the name given to those long feelers that rise from each side of the head: but to what common use or want of the insect kind a provision so universal is subservient has not yet been ascertained; and it has not been ascertained, because it admits not of a clear, or very probable, comparison, with any organs which we possess ourselves, or with the organs of animals which resemble ourselves in their functions and faculties, or with which we are better acquainted than we are with insects. We want a ground of analogy. This difficulty stands in our way as to some particulars in the insect constitution, which we might wish to be acquainted with. Nevertheless, there are many contrivances in the bodies of insects, neither dubious in their use, nor obscure in their structure, and most properly...
