getation, _Florae
liberti, et libertini!_ If for the sake of a moment's relaxation we might
indulge a Darwinian flight, though at the risk of provoking a smile, (not,
I hope, a frown) from sober judgment, we might imagine the life of insects
an apotheosis of the petals, stamina, and nectaries, round which they
flutter, or of the stems and pedicles, to which they adhere. Beyond and
above this step, Nature seems to act with a sort of free agency, and to
have formed the classes from choice and bounty. Had she proceeded no
further, yet the whole vegetable, together with the whole insect creation,
would have formed within themselves an entire and independent system of
Life. All plants have insects, most commonly each genus of vegetables its
appropriate genera of insects; and so reciprocally interdependent and
necessary to each other are they, that we can almost as little think of
vegetation without insects, as of insects without vegetation. Though
probably the mere likeness of _shape_, in the _papilio_, and the
papilionaceous plants, suggested the idea of the former, as the latter in
a state of detachment, to our late poetical and theoretical brother; yet a
something, that approaches to a graver plausibility, is given to this
fancy of a flying blossom; when we reflect how many plants depend upon
insects for their fructification. Be it remembered, too, that with few and
very obscure exceptions, the irritable power and an analogon of voluntary
motion first dawn on us in the vegetable world, in the stamina, and
anthers, at the period of impregnation. Then, as if Nature had been
encouraged by the success of the first experiment, both the one and the
other appear as predominance and general character. THE INSECT WORLD IS
THE EXPONENT OF IRRITABILITY, AS THE VEGETABLE IS OF REPRODUCTION.

With the ascent in power, the intensity of individuation keeps even pace;
and from this we may explain all the characteristic distinctions between
this class and that of the vermes. The almost homogeneous jelly of the
animalcula infusoria became, by a vital oxydation, granular in the polypi.
This granulation formed itself into distinct organs in the molluscae; while
for the snails, which are the next step, the animalized lime, that seemed
the sole final cause of the life of the polypi, assumes all the characters
of an ulterior purpose. Refined into a horn-like substance, it becomes to
the snails the substitute of an organ, and their outward skeleto