The Story of the Butterflies. 



417 



eating and drinking was over, lay in his narrow cell (chr\-salis) from which his soul 

 escaped in due course. So to the ancients the butterfly was adopted as a type of 

 the soul, and the one word Psyche served for both. Psyche, the nymph, indeed, was 

 always portraved by painter or sculptor in human form, but with the wings of a 

 butterfly. 



As a rule when Insect metamorphosis is referred to it is the life-history of the 

 butterfly that is in our thoughts, for here it is best exemphfied, the creature being 

 unconcealed in all its stages, and therefore patent to the least observant. We 

 may have observed the small tortoiseshell-butterfly laying her greenish eggs upon 

 the leaves of stinging nettle, and shortly afterwards seen the same nettle plant 

 clustered with small caterpillars clothed 

 with short spines. Curiosity aroused, we 

 watch their progress from day to day, see 

 them casting their skins at intervals and 

 coming out of them larger each time, until 

 they have reached their full stature. Then 

 we see them suspended by their tails from 

 the branches and leaf-stalks, and observe 

 the last caterpillar-skin rolled up to and 

 off the tail, and the strangely shaped grey 

 chrysalis revealed, with the points along its 



back tinged with gold. Finally, we see the 

 head end of the chrysalis split, and the 

 butterfly climbing out with the aid of its 

 weak, thread-like legs, and its soft and 

 crumpled rags of wings hanging limply. 

 But \\hat a change is evident in an hour ! 

 The wings have expanded, and are re- 

 splendent on the upper side with dull red 

 and yellow and black and spots of blue. 

 And the wings having been fanned a little 

 to make sure that the motive muscles are 

 in working order, away sails our butterfly 

 in the June sunshine, a thing of perfect 

 beauty. 



Now, unless our ancestors far back 

 had watched this process they could never have imagined that there was 

 any connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly. There is not 

 a single point of external form or structure that could suggest such 

 an amazing possibilitv as that the one would develop into the other, or 

 that the eggs laid by the butterfly would not hatch directly into small butterflies 

 again as the eggs of birds hatcli into birds. If they had examined the mouth of 

 the caterpillar and found the cutting-jaws, and the several other parts fltted for the 

 tearing and mastication of vegetable matter, and compared it with the long, trunk- 

 like formation of the butterfly's principal mouth-parts, thev would have found no 



Pholn by] [H. S. ChMiiii, F.R.MS. 



Sc.\LES FROM A BuTTERFLY'S WiXG. 

 The colours and patterns on the wings of butterflies and niotlis 

 are due to thearrarigeinentof innumerable scales of microscopic 

 proportions. In some cases the scales are themselves coloured, 

 but the colour effects are sometimes merely optical, due to 

 the reflection of light by delicate ridges and striations on each 

 scale. The few shown in this pliotograph are magnified thirty 

 six times. 



