256 FUGACIOUS COLOURING, 



Shall we begin with the beautiful and glorious mosaics of 

 the butterfly and moth, or with the brilliant and more perma- 

 nent enamel of the beetle ? 



With neither ; but leaving these most highly-finished and 

 elaborate productions, partially described already under other 

 heads, for only a few additional notices under this, we will 

 first invite attention to a few of what we may call, if the 

 liberty be permitted, the more washy or watery-coloured of 

 Nature's insect paintings, such of them as resemble most 

 those of the floral kingdom, and are in some instances almost 

 ;is fugacious, depending like them on the vitality of the bodies 

 they adorn, paintings, these, the least adapted for cabinet 

 collection, and on this account calling for the more attention to 



* ^j 



seize, in their brief duration, the hues which belong usually to 

 a short term of existence, and fade with extinguished life. Of 

 t his description is the colouring of caterpillars and of spiders, 

 and, to a certain degree, that of dragon-flies and grasshoppers. 

 Amongst the most beautifully painted of the caterpillar race 

 are those from which spring the elegant and distinguished 

 tribe of Hawk-moths, known also as Sphinxes, from the form 

 and attitudes, elsewhere described, of these their no less dis- 

 tinguished larvae. None, perhaps, among them are more taste- 

 fully decorated than that of the " privet/'* with his doublet 

 of the most brilliant apple-green laced by oblique stripes of 

 white and purple, further adorned along the sides by orange - 



* Sphiiix Lif/Kstri. Sec Vignette to " A MitlbUiiuhcr Day's Dream." 



