The exercise of that habit of observation which can alone make a naturalist--"an out-of-door naturalist," as Daines Barrington calls himself--is well calculated to strengthen even the most practical and merely useful powers of the mind. One of the most valuable mental acquirements is the power of discriminating among things which differ in many minute points, but whose general similarity of appearance usually deceives the common observer into a belief of their identity. The study of insects, in this point of view, is most peculiarly adapted for youth. According to our experience, it is exceedingly difficult for persons arrived at manhood to acquire this power of discrimination; but, in early life, a little care on the part of the parent or teacher will render it comparatively easy. In this study the knowledge of things should go along with that of words. "If names perish," says Linnæus, "the knowledge of things perishes also:"[J] and, without names, how can any one communicate to another the knowledge he has acquired relative to any particular fact, either of physiology, habit, utility, or locality? On the other hand, mere catalogue learning is as much to be rejected as the loose generalizations of the despisers of classification and nomenclature. To name a plant, or an insect, or a bird, or a quadruped rightly, is one step towards an accurate knowledge of it; but it is not the knowledge itself. It is the means, and not the end in natural history, as in every other science.
If the bias of opening curiosity be properly directed, there is not any branch of natural history so fascinating to youth as the study of insects. It is, indeed, a common practice in many families to teach children, from their earliest infancy, to treat the greater number of insects as if they were venomous and dangerous, and, of course, meriting to be destroyed, or at least avoided with horror. Associations are by this means linked with the very appearance of insects, which become gradually more inveterate with advancing years; provided, as most frequently happens, the same system be persisted in, of avoiding or destroying almost every insect which is unlucky enough to attract observation. How much rational amusement and innocent pleasure is thus thoughtlessly lost; and how many disagreeable feelings are thus created, in the most absurd manner! In order to show that the study or (if the word be disliked) the observation of insects is peculiarly fascinating to children, even in their early infancy, we may refer to what we have seen in the family of a friend, who is partial to this, as well as to all the departments of natural history. Our friend's children, a boy and girl, were taught, from the moment they could distinguish insects, to treat them as objects of interest and curiosity, and not to be afraid even of those which wore the most repulsive appearance. The little girl, for example, when just beginning to walk alone, encountered one day a large staphylinus (_Goërius olens?_ Stephens; vulgo, _the devil's coach-horse_), which she fearlessly seized, and did not quit her hold, though the insect grasped one of her fingers in his formidable jaws. The mother, who was by, knew enough of the insect to be rather alarmed for the consequences, though she prudently concealed her feelings from the child. She did well; for the insect was not strong enough to break the skin, and the child took no notice of its attempts to bite her finger. A whole series of disagreeable associations with this formidable-looking family of insects was thus averted at the very moment when a different mode of acting on the part of the mother would have produced the contrary effect. For more than two years after this occurrence the little girl and her brother assisted in adding numerous specimens to their father's collection, without the parents ever having cause, from any accident, to repent of their employing themselves in this manner. The sequel of the little girl's history strikingly illustrates the position for which we contend. The child happened to be sent to a relative in the country, where she was not long in having carefully instilled into her mind all the usual antipathies against "everything that creepeth on the earth;" and though she afterwards returned to her paternal home, no persuasion or remonstrance could ever again persuade her to touch a common beetle, much less a staphylinus, with its tail turned up in a threatening attitude, and its formidable jaws ready extended for attack or defence.[K] We do not wish that children should be encouraged to expose themselves to danger in their encounters with insects. They should be taught to avoid those few which are really noxious--to admire all--to injure none.