One of the greatest mysteries in nature is generation, or that power by which the various species of animals, &c. are propagated, enabling one single individual to give birth to thousands, or even millions of individuals like itself; all formed agreeable to proportions which are only known to that ADORABLE WISDOM which has established them. We shall never be able to form any adequate conception of this power, till we are acquainted with the principles of life, and can trace their various gradations in different orders of beings. Many ancient philosophers, from a misconception and perversion of the sentiments of the more ancient sages, imagined that insects were produced from corrupt and putrefied substances; that organized bodies, animated with life, and framed in a most wonderful manner, owed their origin to mere chance! Not so the most ancient sages; they taught that every degree of life must proceed from the fountain and source of all life, and that therefore, when manifested, it must be replete with infinite wonders; but then they also shewed, that if in its descent through the higher orders of being it was perverted, it would be manifested in loathsome forms, and with filthy propensities; and that according to the degree of reception of the Divine Goodness and Truth, or the perversion thereof, new forms of life would be occasionally manifested. The gloom of night still wraps this subject in obscurity; will the dawn of day ere long gild the horizon of the scientific world? or is the time of its breaking forth yet far from us? Be this as it may, insects will be found to conform to that general law of order which runs through the whole of animated nature, namely, that the conjunction of the male and female is necessary for the production of their offspring. Where we cannot ascertain causes, we must be content with facts. Though insects are, like larger animals, distinguished into male and female, yet in some classes there is a kind of mules, partaking of neither sex, though themselves originating from the conjunction of both: many other particularities relative to the sexes can only be touched upon here. In many insects the male and female are with difficulty distinguished, and in some they differ so widely, that an unskilful person might easily take the male and female of the same insect for different species; as for instance, in the phalæna humuli, piniaria, russula. The dissimilarity is still greater in those insects in which the male has wings and the female none, as in the coccus lampyris, phalæna antiqua, &c. In general the male is smaller than the female. The antennæ of the male are, for the most part, larger than those of the female. In some moths, and other insects which are furnished with feathered antennæ, the feathers of the male fly are large and beautiful, while those of the female are small, and hardly perceptible. Some male beetles are furnished with a horn, which is wanting in the female.