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Show 158 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO IY. Swarm on each leaf with eggs or etnbryons big, And pendent nations tenant every twig. Amorous with double sex, the snail and worm, Scoop' d in the soil, their cradling caverns form; f{eap their white eggs, secure from frost and flood s, And crowd their nurseries with uncounted broods. Ere yet with wavy tail the tadpole swims, Breathes with new lungs, or tries his nascent limbs; 360 Her countless shoals the amphibious frog forsakes, And living islands float upon the lakes. The honey-dew on the upper surface of leaves is evacuated by th ese insects, as they hang on the underside of the leaves above; when they take too much of this saccharine j,uice during the vernal or midsummer sap-flow of most vegetables; the black powder on leaves is also their excrement at other times. The vegetable world seems to have escaped total destruction from this imect by the number of flies, which in their larva state prey upon them; and by the iclmeum? n fl~, whic~ depo~its its eggs in them. Some vegetables put forth stiff bnstles with pomts round their young shoots, as the moss-rose, apparently to p1~event the depredation of these insects, so injurious to them by robbmg them of their chyle or nourishment. The tadpole swims, 1. 359. The progress of a tadpole from a fi sh to a .quadruped by his gradually putting forth his limbs, and at length lea~m? the \~ater, and breathing the <lry air, is a subject of g reat cunostty, as 1t resembles so much the incipient state of all oth er quadrupeds, and men, who are aquatic animals in the uterus and become aerial ones at their birth. ' CANTO IV. OF GOOD AND EVIL. The migrant herring steers her myriad bands From seas of ice to visit warmer strands· ) Unfathom'd depths and climes unknown explores, And covers with her spawn unmeasured shores. -All these, increasing by successive birth, Would each o'erpeople ocean, air, 'and earth. '' So hum?n progenies, if unrestrain' d, By climate friended, and by food sustain' d, 0' er seas and soils, prolific hordes I would spread Erelong, and deluge their ten·aqueous bed; But war, and pestilence, disease, and dearth, Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth. Thus while new forms reviving tribes acquire Each passing moment, as the old expire; Like insects swarming in the noontide bower, Rise into being, and exist an hour; The births and deaths contend with equal strife, 159. 370 And every pore of Nature teems vrith Life; 380 |