If from generalities we descend to details, we shall see that the very species may, in many instances, be determined from the nature of its victuals.

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Brillat-Savarin, when pronouncing his famous maxim, "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," certainly never suspected the signal confirmation which the entomological world would bestow upon his saying. Our gastrosopher was speaking only of the culinary caprices of man rendered fastidious by the sweets of life; but he might, in a more serious department of thought, have given his formula a wider and more general bearing and applied it to the dishes which vary so greatly according to latitude, climate and customs; he might above all have taken into his reckoning the harsh realities suffered by the common people, when perhaps his ideal of moral worth would have been found in a platter of chick-peas oftener than in a pot of pate de foie gras. No matter: his aphorism, the mere whimsical sally of an epicure, becomes an imperious truth if we forget the luxury of the table and look into what is eaten by the little world which swarms around us.