148 LAST STAGE BRIEFEST. 



ring, through the air, for eight or nine successive evenings of 

 the month of May.* 



AYe have noticed, already, that the brilliant Ephemera, 

 which, in its winged prime, seldom lives long enough to see 

 both rise and set of sun, has previously existed for two years 

 and upwards as an earth-caverned dweller in some river's bank. 



Again, the little gall-fly, as a grub, occupies, often for six 

 months, its secret chamber in the heart of an oak-apple or 

 other gall, while a few days suffice to terminate its winged 

 activities.*" 



Similar examples might be multiplied, but the above serve 

 sufficiently to illustrate the position that insect life is usually 

 the most brief in its last and brightest stage, affording, in this 

 respect, a contrast, instead of a symbolic parallel, to the history 

 of a beatified soul. 



A few instances do, indeed, occur, of insects being very 

 long-lived after their attainment of a perfect form ; but these 

 are, for the most part, to be found, not among the gay and 

 gaudy flutterers of air not among the livers upon sweets am- 

 brosial quaffed from painted flower-cups, not more fragile than 

 themselves not among the baskers in the sun, or the sporters 

 on his beams ; but rather amongst the dull, lugubrious, sober- 

 suited crawlers which lurk in the dark places of the earth and 

 the dark corners of our habitations. 



The churchyard beetle (~Blaps mortlsaga], at whose very 



* See Vignette. 



