The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-24 00:00:00

LITLRATURE.

An Introduction to Entomology. By William
Kirby, M.A., F.R.5.., F.L.S., and William
Spence, F.R.S., F.L.S. Longman, London.
Here we Lave a valuable work in condensed form
at a fabulously cheap price. As this is the seventh
edition, it may be readily supposed that the sub-
ject is treated in a manner worthy of the extensive
patronage it has enjoyed. The epistolary form is
adopted, which is pleasant and familiar, admitting
of discursive and entertaining digressions, while
solid information on all points of insect economy
is aptly conveyed. Insect life is developed by the
talented authors in all its purposes and stages.
The powers of direct and indirect injury, the in-
stincts, affections, food, hybernations, societies,
means of defence, and, in fact, all that the minute
aeration of earnest science has discovered relative
this countless class of creation, is here compiled,
and in such attractive style that the book must be
welcome to every knowledge-seeking reader. In
discussing that well-known gentleman, the spider,
who we remember reading of as having politely
asked the Lady Fly to " walk into his parlour,'
wo are told :
" The situations in which spiders place their nests are as
various as their construction. Some prefer the open air,
and suspend them in the midst of shrubs or plants most
frequented by flies and other small insects, fixing them in a
horizontal, a vertical, or an oblique direction. Others select
the [corners of windows and of looms where prey always
abounds; while many establish themselves in stables and
neglected outhouses, and even in cellars and desolate places
in which one would scarcely expect a fly to be in a month.
It is with the operations of these last especially that we are
accustomed to associate the ideas of neglect and desertion by
man—associations which, both in painting and allegory, have
been often happily applied. Hogarth, when he wished to
produce a sneaking picture of neglected charity, clothed the
poor's box iu one of his pieces with a spider's net ; and the
Jews, in one of the fables with which .they have disfigured
the records of Holy Writ, have not less ingeniously availed
themselves of the same idea. They relate that the reason
why Saul did not discover David and his men in the cave of
Adullam was, that God had sent a spider which had quickly
woven a web across the entrance of the cave in which they
were concealed ; which being observed by Saul, ho thought
it useless to investigate further a spot bearing such evident
proofs of the absence of any human being."
The description of the weaving of the nets of the
above insect is very interesting and lucid, and we
regret that it is too lengthy for extract. We con-
clude our notice of this excellent publication with
the following morsel of information touching the
metamorphis of entomological existence :
" The 'grey-coated gnat,' whose hnmming salutation,
while she makes her airy circles about your bed, gives
terrific warning of the sanguinary operation in which she
is ready to engage, was a few hours ago the inhabitant of
a stagnant pool, more in shape like a fish than an insect.
Then to have been taken out of the water would have been
speedily fatal ; now it coald as little exist in any other ele-
ment than air. Then it breathed through its tail ; now
through openings in its sides. Its shapeless head, in that
period of its existence, is now exchanged for ono adorned
with elegantly tufted antennae, and furnished, instead of
jaws, with an apparatus more artfully constructed than
the cupping-glass of the phlebotomist—an apparatus,
which, at the same time that it strikes in the lancets, com-
p•ses a tube for pumping up the flowing blood.
" The shard-born beetle,' whose Bullet) horn,' as he
directs his ' droning flight' close past your ears in your
evening walk, calling up in poetic association the lines in
which he his been alludel to by Shakspeare, Collins, and
Gray, was not in his infancy an inhabitant of air, the first
plied of his life being spent in gloomy solitude, as a grub,
under the surfaceof the earth. The shapeless maggot, which
you scarcely fail to meet with in collie one of every hand-
ful of nuts you crack, would not always have grovelled in
that humble state. If your unlucky intrusion upon its
vaulted dwelling had not left it to perish in the wide world
it would have continued toresidethere until itsfall growth
had been attained. Then it would have gnawed itself an
opening, and, having entered the earth, and passed a
few months in a state of inaction, would at length have
emerged an elegant beetle furnished with a slender and
very long ebony beak ; two wings, and two wing-cases,
oruarneated with yellow bands; six feet; and in every
respect unlike the worm from which it proceeded."

PEACE AND THE POOR.