Some authors have placed Coleoptera or beetles as the highest of insects, others claim for Lepidoptera or butterflies and moths a first place, while others, and with the best of reasons, claim for Hymenoptera the highest position. The moth is admired for the glory of its coloring and elegance of its form, the beetle for the luster and brilliancy of its elytra or wing-covers; but these insects only revel in nature's wealth, and live and die without labor or purpose. Hymenoptera usually less gaudy, generally quite plain and unattractive in color, are yet the most highly endowed among insects. They live with a purpose in view, and are the best models of industry to be found among animals. Our bees practice a division of labor the ants are still better political economists, as they have a specially endowed class in the community who are the soldiers, and thus are the defenders of each ant-kingdom. Ants also conquer other communities, take their inhabitants captive and reduce them to abject slavery--requiring them to perform a large portion, and sometimes the whole labor of the community. Ants tunnel streams, and in the tropics some leaf-eating species have been observed to show no mean order of intelligence, as some ascend trees to cut off the leafy twigs, while others remain below, and carry these branches through their tunnels to their under-ground homes. The parasitic Hymenoptera, are so called because they lay their eggs in other insects, that their offspring may have fresh meat not only at birth, but so long as they need food, as the insect fed upon generally lives till the young parasite, which is working to disembowel it, is full-grown. Thus this steak is ever fresh as life itself. These parasitic insects show wondrous intelligence, or sense development, in discovering this prey. I have caught ichneumon-flies--a family of these parasites--boring through an eighth or quarter-inch of solid beech or maple wood, and upon examination I found the prospective victim further on in direct line with the insect auger, which was to intrude the fatal egg. I have also watched ichneumon-flies depositing eggs in leaf-rolling caterpillars, so surrounded with tough hickory leaves that the fly had to pierce several thicknesses to place the egg in its snugly-ensconced victim. Upon putting these leaf-rolling caterpillars in a box, I reared, of course, the ichneumon-fly and not the moth. And is it instinct or reason that enables these flies to gauge the number of their eggs to the size of the larva which is to receive them, so that there may be no danger of famine and starvation, for true it is that while small caterpillars will receive but one egg, large ones may receive several. How strange, too, the habits of the saw-fly, with its wondrous instruments more perfect than any saws of human workmanship, and the gall-flies, whose poisonous sting as they fasten their eggs to the oak, willow or other leaves, causes the abnormal growth of food for