40 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [February,. 



THE most beautiful as well as pleasing emblem among the Egyptians 

 was exhibited under the character of Psyche the Soul. This was origi- 

 nally no other than a butterfly, but it afterwards was represented as a 

 lovely female child with the beautiful wings of that insect. The butterfly, 

 after its first and second stages as an egg and larva, lies for a season in a 

 manner dead, and is enclosed in a sort of coffin. In this state it remains 

 a shorter or longer period; but at last bursting its bonds, it comes out 

 with new life, and in the most beautiful attire. The Egyptians thought 

 this a very proper picture of the soul of man, and of the immortality to 

 which it aspired. But they made it more particularly an emblem of Osiris, 

 who having been confined in an oak or coffin, and in a state of death, at 

 last quitted his prison and enjoyed a renewal of life. This symbol passed 

 over to the Greeks and Romans, who also considered the butterfly as the 

 symbol of Zephyr. Cowan, Curious Facts. 



WINTER INSECTS. On a Winter day,, when the sere landscape is enli- 

 vened by an unclouded sun, let his genial rays tempt the reader to a stroll 

 in the Pennsylvania woods. He may be cheered by no bird song; no 

 plants except a few evergreen leaves may brighten his path, but insect life 

 will be there to welcome him. 



Those merriest of dancers, the gnats, come forth from the moist earth 

 at the call of the sun. Mosquito-like, they have passed their immature 

 life in the water, and the cases of the little wrigglers are ready to burst 

 open and liberate the winged insects whenever the sun peeps forth from 

 the clouds. This may occur on a sunny day, even when the temperature 

 of the air is far below the freezing point. 



Arctic explorers tell us that as far North as they have gone, away up in 

 the icy fields of Greenland, even where there is no vegetation, these gnats, 

 or species so closely resembling them that only naturalists can detect the 

 difference, are found dancing on wing in the sunlight or clinging to the 

 sides of boats and sledges. 



As we continue our walk through the Winter woods we turn over a log 

 and find crawling about beneath it small, black beetles, a few tough- 

 skinned, hard-headed grubs, and now and then a spider. If the sun 

 shines brightly, even though snow may lie deep on the ground, wasps will 

 be tempted forth from crevices of bark in which they have lain dormant 

 with the cold, and after becoming thoroughly warmed they will take wing 

 through the woods. 



A butterfly known as the Mourning Cloak, richly dressed in brown and 

 blue velvet, bordered with gold, comes forth from its snug retreat when 

 the Winter sun is bright and wings his way through the woods as gayly 

 as he would in mid-summer. His hiding-place has been in the wind-cracks 

 of an old chestnut tree or a bunch of clinging leaves. He may be seen 

 flitting about even when the snow lies several inches deep. Far off in the 

 Rocky Mountains and among the Alps of Switzerland butterflies of various, 

 species may often be seen flying over the snow and glacier ice. 



If we displace the rustling leaves that cover the ground in the woods- 



