It seems, then, that in the Insect World exist a complete pharmacy, chemistry, and perfumery. Have our sciences been sufficiently attentive to this fact? The potent vitality which gives an extraordinary force to the muscles of such tiny creatures, seems also to endow their liquids with active properties and burning energies which the large animals do not possess. Many, for defensive purposes, are gifted with caustic secretions--which they eject the moment you approach--or with fulminating powders. Others with poison, which flows as soon as the sting has been thrust in. Some possess, in addition, an art of magnetizing or etherizing their enemy; and others, like certain ants which work in damp, woody places, season their abodes by burning them, as it were, with potent formic acid. * * * * * The entire genus of the _Cerambyx_ (or Long-horned Beetle) exhale a strong, rose-like odour, which is smelt at a distance, is lasting, and endures after the creature's death. Even among the Carnivora, ay, and among the Coprophagi, we meet with perfumed insects, or, at all events, with insects which, when in danger of being captured, endeavour to deceive you, or implore pity, by emitting agreeable odours. Others shine with admirable colours. The deep reds of the Nopal Coccus have furnished the purple of kings. By a skilful mixture, we also obtain from the cochineal the pre-eminently gay and radiant colour, carmine, with its innumerable tints and rosy shades. A sovereign art with the insect is to carry on its sting, and concentrate at a particular point, the liquids which flow in the plant, in the living being. It is the very art of irritation. Its applications are innumerable in medicine and industry; tints, paintings, varied ornaments, a hundred fantastic and beautiful things come to us from the sting of the galls, the excrescences and gibbosities which they so skilfully raise. The cochineal insect, while engaged in extracting by this process from exotic vegetables the envelope of solid green in which it will spend its prolonged period of rest, furnishes us with the red of reds, the scarlet of lake, which will colour varnishes, and wax, and a multitude of objects. In health or illness, the stings of insects upon the living flesh are violent irritants for disturbing or re-establishing the course of life. In these there is nothing mediocre. A few, without sting, burn you by their internal acridity.