Even the insects which live longest in the sun, like the bees and the ants, work willingly in obscurity; are partial to the shadows of their hives and ant-hills. We may assert as a general rule that _the insect is the child of night_. Most insects shun the day. But how can they avoid the air? Even in hot countries, the contact of the variable atmosphere with a live nude body, whose epidermis is not yet hardened, becomes infinitely painful. In our severe climates, each breath of air must produce the sensation of piercing arrows, of a million of fine needles. What would it be, O Heaven, for a poor human foetus to issue, after a week or a fortnight, from its mother's womb, and instead of peacefully undergoing the transformations which strengthen it, to be subjected to them in a naked condition and in open day? What would be its sensations on quitting its soft asylum, and falling into the cold air? Yet such must be those of the insect, when, soft, feeble, assailable, and penetrable everywhere, still almost floating and gelatinous to the eye, it experiences the cold, and the wind, and the shock of so many painful accidents. Certain clothed species are a little better protected. Some are lodged in the heart of a fruit. Others (bees and ants) form a protecting community; but the immense majority are born solitary and naked. Some of our readers, always well clothed and warmed, will say, I am sure, that cold is an excellent thing, which stimulates the appetite and strengthens the frame. But those who have been poor will very well understand my preceding observations. For my part, recollections of my childhood convince me that cold is, in all truth, a punishment; you cannot get accustomed to it; its prolongation does not render its effect less severe. How keen a joy I felt (in rigorous winters) at each thaw which released me from my agitated, terrified, and uneasy condition, and secured the happy re-establishment of the internal harmony! I do not deny, however, that cold may not be a powerful tonic, which sharpens and braces up the mind, and draws from it fresh efforts of invention. Cold, as well as hunger--and perhaps hunger especially--is the great stimulus of the arts; hunger weakens, cold strengthens.