any thing to equal this performance of one of our countrymen. This instance will, I believe, be sufficient to convince mankind that we have among us uncommon geniuses, who have made the most important discoveries, and, spider-like, have furnished themselves alone both with the workmanship and materials. However, I must in justice own, there is now in France such another bright sun, who by his light not only shows, but adds grace and dignity to every object he is pleased to shine upon. I mean that prodigy of our age and glory of his country, the illustrious Reaumur. God grant this great man life to go through, and many years to survive, his great undertaking."[1]
These valuable remains were thus secured for the benefit of science, and rendered accessible to all in the well-known work entitled Biblia Naturæ sive Historia Insectorum in certas classes redacta, &c. &c. This work was originally published at Leyden in 1737, with the text in the original Dutch, and a Latin translation by Professor Gaubius of Leyden. It is known to English readers by a translation from the pen of Thomas Flloyd, which was revised and improved by the addition of notes from Reaumur and others, by Sir John Hill, M.D., and published in a folio volume at London, in 1758. Several of the papers in this volume have been already referred to, and it is so well known that it is quite unnecessary to give any further account of its contents. Besides
- ↑ Book of Nature, Hill's Edit. p. 14.
