pictures of the most interesting and delightful character, and powerfully contrasted in the associations they would excite, with those regular rows of moths and beetles pricked on paper, which our juvenile collectors now exhibit.
It may be said, that even such specimens of insects could scarcely be obtained without some sacrifice of life or liberty; but we all know that when the eye and the hand are habituated to catch the likeness of any object, it is done with increasing facility each time the experiment is made, until a comparatively slight observation of the general appearance, position, and characteristic features of the living model, is sufficient for the artist in the completion of his likeness.
The same facility of delineation would assist our researches through the whole range of natural history. By such means we should not only be supplied with endless amusement, but might at the same time be adding to our store of useful knowledge. We should not only be making ourselves better acquainted with the poetry of nature, but with its reality too. For what is there either practical, or real, in the specimens of plants and insects as we generally find them. Real, they unquestionably are in one sense, as the mummy is a real man; but who would point to that pitiful vestige of mortality as exhibiting the real characteristics of a human being?
It seems to me a perfectly natural subject of repulsion, when the poet exclaims—
"Nor would I like to spread, |
And few there are who would not prefer to such miserable memorials, as actually more real, a well-painted like-
