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its nest. In less than half an hour, several of its companions sallied forth, traversed the ceiling, and reached the repository, which they constantly revisited, till the treacle was consumed. The same power of communication belongs also to bees and wasps; as may be proved by any one who carefully attends to their habits. This is their language, not of articulate sounds, indeed, but of signs, a language which, as Jesse observes, we can have no doubt is perfectly suited to them,-adding, we know not how much, to their happiness and enjoyments, and furnishing another proof that there is a God allmighty, all-wise, and all-good, who has ornamented the universe' with so many objects of delightful contemplation, that we may see Him in all His works, and learn, not only to fear Him for his power, but to love Him for the care which He takes of us, and of all His created beings." Whether this power of communication be rational or instinctive, it is obviously only suited to be useful to a being possessed, at least to a certain extent, of intellectual faculties,—of the power of forming designs,—of combining, with others, to execute them,— of accommodating itself to circumstances, and, therefore, of remembering, of comparing, of judging, and of resolving. These are assuredly acts of reasoning; at least I know not under what other category to arrange them.

The instance which Dr Darwin gives of a wasp, noticed by himself, is in point. As he was walking one day in his garden, he perceived a wasp upon the gravel walk, with a large fly, nearly as big as itself, which it had caught. Kneeling down, he distinctly saw it cut off the head and abdomen, and then, taking up with its feet the trunk, or middle portion of the body, to which the wings remained attached, fly away; but a breeze of wind, acting on the wings of the fly, turned round the wasp, with its burden, and impeded its progress. Upon this, it alighted again on the gravel walk, deliberately sawed off, first one wing, and then another, and having thus

removed the cause of its embarrassment, flew off with its booty.

Here we have contrivance, and re-contrivance; a resolution accommodated to the case, judiciously formed and executed, and, on the discovery of a new impediment, a new plan adopted, by which final success was obtained. There is, undoubtedly, something more than instinct in all this. And yet we call the wasp a despicable and hateful insect!

There is, I am well aware, a great reluctance in some minds, to admit that any of the lower animals can be gifted with a faculty superior to blind unreasoning instinct. It is imagined that this would be to confound man with the brutes, and thus to deprive him of that distinctive superiority on which he founds his strongest argument for the immortality of the human soul. Of such a consequence I have no fear. It is not on natural arguments that the Christian's hope of future happiness is founded, but on that gospel, which has “brought life and immortality to light." Yet, I freely admit, that the argument from natural religion is satisfactory as a proof of the coincidence of revelation with the rational expectations, and the analogical reasonings, of man. But these expectations and reasonings are founded on stronger grounds than that of the absence of every thing approaching to reason among the lower animals, otherwise, I fear, they could not be readily sustained. Whatever may be their strength, however, it is delightful to know that our assurance comes from a higher source, and that we are not reduced, like one of the most enlightened and virtuous of heathens, to end all our anxious arguments on this most important subject, with the feeble and doubting conclusion, "Quod, si in hoc erro, libenter erro."*

* Cicero.

SEVENTH WEEK-TUESDAY.

HYBERNATION OF INSECTS.-EGGS.

In attending to the state of animated nature in winter, as compared with that of summer, few things are more striking than the almost total disappearance, during the former season, of all the insect tribes. In the warmth and sunshine of the summer months, all nature was instinct with life; and the abundance and variety of the more minute animals could not fail to attract the observation, and excite the wonder, of all who have eyes to see. The bee, the dragon-fly, the butterfly, the gnat, and the midge, in all their varieties, with myriads of flies of other species, seemed to communicate life and enjoyment to the very air we breathe; while the worm, the beetle, the ant, the caterpillar, the spider, and innumerable other creatures, some of them too minute to be examined without the assistance of art, swarmed on every flower we plucked, and animated the very dust beneath our feet. Where now is all this busy world? Tribe after tribe, they have vanished from our view; and even in days of balmiest air, and brightest sunshine, we seek for them in vain. Has the breath of winter pierced through their tiny forms, and frozen the current of life at its source? And, if so, by what process of reproduction shall all their various species be reanimated in the returning spring? The inquiry is at once interesting and useful; and here, again, we shall have occasion to admire the inexhaustible resources of Divine intelligence.

Of some insect families, it is known, that all the individuals are destined to perish before the cold of winter arrives. The natural term of their existence is comprised within the span of a few months; and their periods of youth, of vigour, and of decay, nay, of resuscitation under new forms, and of the various stages of their

second or even third state of existence, have all been accomplished during the season of genial warmth; so that they naturally cease to exist before the heat which cherished them, and the food which sustained them, are withdrawn. Their modes of life will more properly form the subject of attention at another season; but at present we have to inquire into the provision of Providence, by which the various species are preserved after the whole race has ceased to live.

As the principle of equivocal generation is nearly exploded from natural history, it will readily be conjectured that the Creator must have provided for the preservation of the future generations of these animals by means of their eggs; and this, in reality, is the case. There are various conditions, however, that require to be fulfilled before this could be successfully accomplished. Not to advert, at present, to the wonderful but familiar contrivance of an egg containing the embryo of the future animal, a contrivance which shall afterwards be considered, it is to be remarked that, in the present instance, the egg must be endued with the quality of preserving its principle of vitality for several months, in circumstances which would have proved fatal to the animal itself; that it must only produce the living creature when the wintry storms are past, and when those vegetable substances have begun to appear on which that creature can subsist; and, that it must be so situated, and so endowed, as to be able, when animated, to find its way to the open air, and to its natural food. If any one of these conditions were wanting, it is sufficiently apparent that the species must perish.

Now, let us take an instance, and see what actually occurs. I select the case of the gipsey-moth, which I abridge from the article Insect Transformations, in the "Library of Entertaining Knowledge." The female of this insect has her body thickly covered with a soft down, of a hair-brown colour, apparently for the express purpose of enabling her to protect her eggs during winter;

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and she follows the impulse of her nature, in a manner well worthy of notice. Having emerged from her pupacase in the month of August, she enjoys life for a few days, and then prepares for the propagation of her species, after which she quickly dies. She places herself on the trunk of an oak or elm, invariably with her head downwards. Having made a bed or nest of down, by tearing it from her body, she lays an egg in it; and this egg being covered with adhesive gluten, attaches around it all the hairs of the down with which it comes in contact, and also sticks to the bark of the tree, from its being pushed home. Proceeding in this manner, she continues for several hours adding to the mass; but she does not, in general, finish the operation in less than two days, indulging in occasional rests. At intervals, she takes care to protect the eggs placed in the heap, which is made in a conical shape, with an exterior covering of the same down; and, it is not a little remarkable, that in the external coping, which is designed to keep out the winter rains, the hairs are carefully placed in a sloping direction, like the tiles on a house, or the pile of a wellbrushed hat, pointing downwards, towards the base of the cone. The eggs, which are deposited with so much care, are destined to abide all the pitiless pelting of the storms of winter; for, although they are laid in the beginning of harvest, they are not hatched till the elm, which is to furnish food to the future caterpillar, comes into leaf in the following spring. This covering of down, from the manner in which it is tiled and brushed smooth by the mother moth, not only protects them from wet, but, being one of the best non-conductors, keeps them safe from the injury which they might sustain from severe cold, or what might be more fatal, from sudden alternations of heat and cold.

In the instance now detailed, there are some things worthy of particular notice ; and, as it is a fair specimen of the wonderful instincts of insects with reference to the preservation of the species during winter, it may be