694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to them. Nevertheless, a comparison of the picture of a real dolphin 

 with an ideal dolphin will show that a bare naturalism could have 

 made much less than art has made out of the animal. But the ancient 

 artists treated the animal world with great freedom, and a large appre- 

 ciation of its spirit ; they only made the real form prominent and 

 mingled the unreal with it, or threw it entirely away, and thus by 

 skillful treatment made a picture agreeable to the eye. This freedom 

 was more justifiable, because the Greeks never had a particular species 

 of dolphin in view ; but, as Cuvier has shown, confounded with it the 

 smaller sharks, thus inventing the extreme diversity of forms in which 

 dolphins are depicted. Add to this the unstable element of the water 

 in which the dolphin was always seen sporting, and the impossibility 

 of getting an accurate view of its form under the circumstances, and 

 it is evident that an artistic fancy might readily and legitimately 

 exaggerate the proper form into the most grotesque. It would, of 

 course, be natural for art to represent the animal as always in motion, 

 and its tail with its sickle-shaped fins in the air after the manner in 

 which it always showed itself to the sailors who observed it. — Die 

 Natur. 



♦»» 



THE PAKENTAL FORESIGHT OF INSECTS. 



IN no manner is the mysterious influence of instinct over the insect 

 world more remarkably manifested than by the care taken by par- 

 ent insects for the future welfare of offspring which they are destined 

 never to behold. As the human parent upon his death-bed makes the 

 best provision he can for the sustenance and prosperity of his infant 

 children, whom death has decreed that he may not in person watch 

 over, so those insects which Nature has decreed shall be always the 

 parents of orphan children, led by an unerring influence within, do 

 their best to provide for the wants of the coming generation. 



The butterfly, after flitting through her short life, seeks out a spot 

 whereon to deposit her numerous eggs, not — as one might expect of a 

 creature devoid of mind — upon any chance plant, or even upon the 

 plant or flower from which she herself has been wont to draw her 

 sustenance, but upon the particular plant which forms the invariable 

 food of the larvae of her species. The various kinds of clothes-moths 

 penetrate into our cupboards, drawers, and everywhere where furs, 

 woolen garments, etc., are stored, that they may there lay their eggs, 

 to hatch into the burrowing grubs which are the terror of our house- 

 keepers. The ichneumon tribe, one of Nature's greatest counterpoises 

 to keep down the too rapid increase of the insect world, lay their eggs 

 in the larvse of other insects, which eggs when hatched develop into a 

 devouring brood, which ungratefully turn upon and devour the help- 

 less creature that sheltered them as a nest. The female ichneumon 



