A GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK. 661 



tion of parasitic insects, as undoubtedly the somewhat ponderous 

 houses of the larvae render them to a high degree impervious to the 

 onslaughts of insect enemies; the cause of death must be looked for 

 elsewhere. Death usually occurs after the larva has undergone meta- 

 morphosis, the pupa gradually shriveling up after assuming its proper 

 form, nor can anything be done, apparently, to avert the calamity. 



To return to the case moth's metamorphoses. The female insect, 

 as we have seen, unlike the male, is destined never to desert the larval 

 home. For her no hour of emergence ever comes. When the pupa 

 has slept the appointed time, the unwieldy and almost motionless 

 moth feels little of the movement of oncoming life then experienced 

 by her lithe and lively partner; the animal, still resident within the 

 habitaculum formed by the larva, splits asunder the pupa skin, and 

 her transformations are complete; in some, at least, of the species the 

 female imago is continually inclosed in the pupa case. Here, there- 

 fore, we have an insect which in its adult state is forever excluded 

 from the light, and never even beholds its mate. 



Having filled the bottom of their puparium with their ova, 

 packed in the down rubbed from their own body, these females do 

 not long survive. The moth is then literally nothing but thin skin. 

 Reduced to a shriveled, dried, and scarcely animated morsel of this 

 matter, she either presses herself through the opening of the case 

 or, exhausted, the last feeble flicker of life burned out, expires 

 within. 



A GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK. 



By CLARENCE MOOEES WEED. 



NOTHING illustrates more vividly the change which has taken 

 place during the present century in the attitude of naturalists 

 toward the objects of their study than the colors of plants and ani- 

 mals. To the dried-specimen systematist of a hundred years ago 

 color was an immutable factor in Nature. The delicate beauty of 

 the butterfly, the iridescent hues of the paradise bird, the tawny 

 stripes of the tiger, the somber shades of the reptile, the whiteness 

 of the lily and the redness of the rose — these and the myriad other 

 color phases in the living world were believed to exist now as the 

 Creator designed them a few thousand years ago. To the naturalist 

 they were chiefly valuable in enabling him to separate species from 

 species in dreary Latin tomes. To the theologian they served to 

 show the goodness of God in adorning man's passing abode. To the 

 artist beauty was its own excuse for being. 



But there were not wanting interpreters of Nature who saw that 



