eally believes
that they grow! He smiled at me compassionately when I told him that
insects never grew when in the perfect state; but, like Minerva from the
brain of Jove, issue full-armed with sharpest weapons, and corslets of
burnished green, purple, and gold, in panoply complete: yet is this
gentleman a man of genius, wit, and very extensive knowledge.

_Von Os._ Not in bees.

_Dov._ He was not aware of the numerous species of British bees; and
that several, of a small intrepid sort, will enter the hives, and prey
on the treasures of their more industrious congeners.

_Von Os._ Reasoning from analogy does not do in natural history.

_Dov._ No; for who, without observation, or the information of others,
ever by analogical reasoning could reconcile the enormous difference of
size and colour, in the sexes of some of the humble bees?--or ever
discover that in some species there are even females of two sizes?

_Von Os._ But these never grow.

_Dov._ Certainly not. Bees, however, hatched in very old cells, will be
somewhat smaller: as each maggot leaves a skin behind which, though
thinner than the finest silk, layer after layer, contracts the cells,
and somewhat compresses the future bee.

_Von Os._ No ignorance is so contemptible as that of what is hourly
before our eyes. I do not so much wonder at the fellow who inquired if
America was a very large town, as at him who, finding the froth of the
Cicada spumaria L. on almost every blade in his garden, wondered where
were all the cuckoos that produced it.

_Dov._ They call it cuckoo-spit, from its plentiful appearance about the
arrival of that bird.

_Von Os._ That is reasoning from analogy.

_Dov._ And yet I see not why the bird should be given to spitting;
unless, indeed, he came from America.

_Von Os._ The vulgar, too, not only delight in wonders inexplicable, but
have a rabid propensity to pry into futurity.

_Dov._ I believe that propensity is far from being confined to the
vulgar.

_Von Os._ True; but not in so ridiculous a way: as they prophesy the
future price of wheat from the number of lenticular knobs (containing
the sporules) in the bottom of a cup of the fungus Nidularia.

_Dov._ The weather may be foretold with considerable certainty, for a
short time, from many hygrometric plants, and the atmospheric influence
on animals.

_Von Os._ And from _Cloudology_, by the changing of primary clouds into
compound; and these resolving themselves into n