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 Theologygives
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 !
