CHAPTER X
MOSQUITOES AND FLIES
Thoughtful persons are much given to pondering on what is to be the outcome of our present age of intensive mechanical development. Thinking, the writer holds, is all right as a means of diverting the mind from other things, but those who make a practice or a profession of it should follow the example of that famous thinker of Rodin's, who has consistently preserved a most commendable silence as to the nature of his thoughts. We can all admire thinking in the abstract; it is the expression of thoughts that disturbs us. So it is that we are troubled when the philosophers warn us that the development of mechanical proficiency is not synonymous with advancement of true civilization. However, it is hot for an entomologist to enter into a discussion of such matters, because an observer untrained in the study of human affairs is as likely as not to get the impression that only a very small percentage of the present human population of the world is devoted to efficiency in things mechanical or otherwise.
There is no better piece of advice for general observance than that which admonishes the cobbler to stick to his last, and the maxim certainly implies that the entomologist should confine himself to his insects. However, we can not help but remark how often parallelisms are to be discovered between things in the insect world and affairs in the human world. So, now, when we look to the insects for evidence of the effect of mechanical perfection, we observe with somewhat of a shock that those very insect
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