The designs of supreme intelligence in the creation and preservation of the insect world, and the regulations and appointments whereby their increase or decrease is maintained, and periodical appearance prescribed, are among the most perplexing considerations of natural history. That insects are kept in reserve for stated seasons of action, we know, being commonly made the agents of Providence in his visitations of mankind. The locust, the caterpillar, the palmer-worm, the various family of blights, that poison in the spring all the promise of the year, are insects. Mildew, indeed, is a vegetable; but the wireworm destroys the root, the thrips the germ of the wheat, and hunger and famine ensue. Many of the coleopteræ remove nuisances, others again encumbrances, and worms manure the soil; but these are trite and isolated cases in the profusion of the animal world; and, left alone, as we are, in the desert of mere reason and conjecture, there is no probability that much satisfactory elucidation will be obtained. They are not perhaps important objects of inquiry; but when we see the extraordinary care and attention that has been bestowed upon this part of creation, our astonishment is excited, and forces into action that inherent desire in our minds to seek into hidden things. In some calm summer’s evening ramble, we see the air filled with sportive animated beings: the leaf, the branch, the bark of the tree, every mossy bank, the pool, the ditch, all teeming with animated life, with a profusion, an endless variety of existence; each creature pursuing its own separate purpose in a settled course of action, admitting of no deviation or substitution, to accomplish or promote some ordained object. Some appear occupied in seeking for the most appropriate stations for their own necessities, and exerting stratagems and wiles to secure the lives of themselves or their offspring against natural or possible injuries, with a forethought equivalent or superior to reason; the aim in some others we can little perceive, or, should some flash of light spring up, and give us a momentary glimpse of nature’s hidden ways, immediate darkness closes round, and renders our ignorance more manifest. We see a wonderfully fabricated creature struggling from the cradle of its being, just perfected by the elaboration of months or years, and decorated with a vest of glorious splendor; it spreads its wings to the light of heaven, and becomes the next moment, perhaps, with all its marvellous construction, instinct, and splendor, the prey of some wandering bird! and human wisdom and conjecture are humbled to the dust. That these events are ordinations of supreme intelligence, for wise and good purposes, we are convinced; but are blind, beyond thought, as to secondary causes; and admiration, that pure source of intellectual pleasure, is almost alone permitted to us. If we attempt to proceed beyond this, we are generally lost in the mystery with which the divine