The telescope shows us what God has created in the innumerable millions of stars and suns which every clear night look down with gentle beams upon the earth; it shows us that the earth on which we dwell, compared to the worlds by which it is surrounded, is as a grain of sand to a mighty mountain. But the microscope, on the contrary, shows us what is almost more wonderful even than this; for it shows us that though the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity has created all these vast systems of suns and stars, yet he has not thought it beneath Him to chisel the egg of an insect or to adorn the coat of a tiny caterpillar. Well might we pause and ask as we look now through the wonder-revealing tube of the microscope and then through that of the telescope--Was it not a greater evidence of power and wisdom to create, clothe, organize, and endow with the powers of life, a little atom which we can detect only by means of a powerful microscope, than to form even a great and mighty world? For our part, then, we think an insect's history as much a display of the wisdom and infinite power of the Creator as the history of such an enormous body as is the sun, or any of the large planets belonging to our system. However humble be the object which God has seen fit to create, let not any one think it beneath _him_ to examine. The poet Thomson has written some pretty lines which we shall venture to transcribe, which, with far greater beauty of language than we can pretend to, set before us the same train of thought:--
"Let no presuming impious railer tax Creative wisdom, as if aught was formed In vain, or not for admirable ends. Shall little haughty ignorance pronounce His works unwise, of which the smallest part Exceeds the narrow vision of her mind?"
Animals, birds, reptiles, fish, and plants, have had their biographers, and ponderous books have been written to give us an introduction to their various families: so also have insects; although despised by many, they have been highly esteemed by a few; and if honours went by the size of books written about them, it might perhaps be shown that the insects can boast of great and closely-printed books taken up with nothing else but an account of them and their doings.