Our collections contain about one hundred thousand species. But taking into consideration that every plant at the least nourishes three, we obtain the result, according to the number of known plants, of three hundred and sixty thousand species of insects! And each, be it remembered, of prodigious fecundity.
Now call to mind that every creature nourishes other creatures on its surface, in the thickness of its solids, in its fluids, and in its blood; that each insect is a little world inhabited by insects; and that these again have parasites of their own.
Is this all? No; in the masses men have supposed to be mineral or inorganic, animals are now revealed to us of which it would take a thousand millions to form one inch in thickness,—the which do not the less present us with a rough sketch or outline of the Insect, and have a right to be spoken of as insects commenced. And what are the numbers of these? A single species accumulates the Apennines out of its débris, and with its atoms has raised up that enormous backbone of America, the Cordilleras.
Having arrived at this point, we think our review is ended. Patience! The molluscs, which in the Southern Seas have created so many islands,—which literally pave, as recent soundings have shown, the twelve hundred leagues of Ocean separating us from America,—these molluscs are qualified by many naturalists with the name of embryo insects; so that their fertile tribes form, as it were, a dependency of the higher race,—candidates, one might say, for the rank of Insect.
This is sublime. The reason that, nevertheless, makes me regret the little world of Birds,—those charming companions which bore me aloft on their wings not long ago,—is not their harmonious concerts, is not even the spectacle of their airy and sublime life—but because they understood me!
We comprehended and we loved one another; we interchanged our languages. I spoke for the Bird, and the Bird sang for me.
Having fallen from heaven at the threshold of the sombre kingdom, and in the presence of the mute and mysterious sons of night, what language am I to invent, and what signs of intelligence? How am I to exercise my wits to discover a mode of communicating with them? My voice and gestures do but drive them away. There is no glance of recognition in their eyes; no emotion visible on their inscrutable mask. Under its warrior-cuirass the Insect remains impenetrable. Does its heart—for it has one—beat after the fashion of mine? Its senses are infinitely subtle, but do they resemble my senses? It seems as if they still remained apart, unknown, ay, and without a name.