238 A BUDGET OF CURIOUS FACTS 



ture. Can we fiiid anything worthy of remark in 

 the life of such apparently lifeless things? Cer- 

 tainly ; we may fairly call a chrysalis a most fickle 

 object, a most uncertain creature. Has it not 

 been mentioned over and over again in recent works 

 on butterflies that while one brood may follow 

 another with tolerable regularity, broods are apt 

 to be uneven in their numbers, because some chrys- 

 alids fail to disclose their inmates at the expected 

 time but wait a little or a longer time? That 

 there should be some little variation due perhaps 

 to conditions of temperature might be expected ; 

 but that the continence of the chrysalis should be 

 precisely enough to have it just skip a brood is 

 certainly reason for wonder, for here meteoric 

 conditions can often have clearly nothing to do 

 with it. Some instances, indeed, are on record 

 where, when normally a single winter would mark 

 the duration of a chrysalis, it has lasted two win- 

 ters ^nd, of course, the intervening summer. All 

 these variations seem to be provisions of nature 

 to guard against destruction of the species under 

 adverse circumstances. Nature seems always on 

 her guard. 



Or take a kindred fact. It is well known to 

 the aurelian that the males of a given brood ahnost 



