BUTTERFLIES.


The splendid appearance of the plumage of tropical birds is not superior
to what the curious observer may discover in a variety of Lepidóptera;
and those many-coloured eyes, which deck so gorgeously the peacock's
tail, are imitated with success in Vanéssa Io, one of our most common
butterflies. "See," exclaims the illustrious Linnaeus, "the large,
elegant, painted wings of the butterfly, four in number, covered with
small imbricated scales; with these it sustains itself in the air the
whole day, rivalling the flight of birds, and the brilliancy of the
peacock. Consider this insect through the wonderful progress of its
life, how different is the first period of its being from the second,
and both from the parent insect. Its changes are an inexplicable enigma
to us: we see a green caterpillar, furnished with sixteen feet,
creeping, hairy, and feeding upon the leaves of a plant; this is changed
into chrysalis, smooth, of a golden lustre, hanging suspended to a fixed
point, without feet, and subsisting without food; this insect again
undergoes another transformation, acquires wings and six feet, and
becomes a variegated white butterfly, living by suction upon the honey
of plants. What has nature produced more worthy of our admiration? Such
an animal coming upon the stage of the world, and playing its part there
under so many different masks! In the egg of the Papilio, the epidermis
or external integument falling off, a caterpillar is disclosed; the
second epidermis drying, and being detached, it is a chrysalis; and the
third, a butterfly. It should seem that the ancients were so struck with
the transformations of the butterfly, and its revival from a seeming
temporary death, as to have considered it an emblem of the soul, the
Greek word _psyche_ signifying both the soul and a butterfly. This is
also confirmed by their allegorical sculptures, in which the butterfly