E.
Donavan. Birch Weevils: Natural History of British Insects, 1794
The 18th century took
to insects, both as objects of beauty and interest in their own
right, and also speculatively and to the glory of God. Biological philosophy at that time
was dominated by a conception of "The Chain of Being" in which insects had their
essential and not insignificant place. It is set forth in a noble poem addressed by
Benjamin Stillingfleet to Thomas Pennant, who was also the respondent of Gilbert
White.
After mentioning some
of the more utilitarian aspects of Creation, "Not these alone,"
he says:
Which strike ev'n eyes
incurious, but each moss,
Each shell, each crawling
insect holds a rank
Important in the plan
of Him, who fram'd
This scale of beings;
holds a rank, which lost
Would break the chain,
and leave behind a gap
Which Nature's self
would rue.
The same thesis occurs
in Thomson and Pope. Paley in his Natural Theology gives
considerable space to insects. They had, in fact, become respectable. Gray loved
them to the extent of turning Linnaeus's entomology into Latin verse. Everyone
remembers, "where the beetle wheels his droning flight," and he mentions the
appearance of the White Butterfly, of Gnats, and of the Ladybird, in his letters. But
what deeply touched his enthusiasm was a present of foreign insects :
"Here is Mr. Foljambe,
has got a flying hobgoblin from the East Indies, and a power of
rarities, and then he has given me such a phalaena, with looking glasses in its wings,
and a queen of the white ants, whose belly alone is as big as many hundred of her
subjects, I do not mean their bellies only, but their whole persons; and yet her tetons
and her legs are no bigger than other people's. Oh, she is a jewel of a pismire !"
And elsewhere, less
breathlessly and more scientifically, he describes his jewel in
fuller detail.
Indeed the Augustan
period was certainly insect-conscious, from Addison with his
rather second-hand Ants to William Smyth, Professor of Modern History at
Cambridge, who, in his English Lyrics of 1797, has a charming poem to a Bee, and
Erasmus Darwin, who, two years later, wrote this beautiful invocation :
Stay thy soft murmuring
waters, gentle Rill;
Hush, whispering Winds;
ye rustling Leaves, be still;
Rest, silver Butterflies,
your quivering wings;
Alight, ye Beetles,
from your airy rings;
Ye painted Moths, your
gold-eyed plumage furl,
Bow your wide horns,
your spiral trunks uncurl;
Glitter, ye Glow-worms,
on your mossy beds;
Descend, ye Spiders,
on your lengthened threads;
Slide here, ye horned
Snails, with varnished shells;
Ye Bee-nymphs, listen
in your waxen cells !
