150 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles 



what impulse, thought, instinct or motive governs 

 its actions ; in fact, they can do no more than guess 

 at these things, as we do; they cannot answer one 

 real live question which any bright boy would ask 

 regarding the life of a butterfly. 



Of course they can give you a name from a lan- 

 guage as dead as the specimens in your collection; 

 they can also tell you that the specimen was once a 

 caterpillar, and sometimes, not always, can tell you 

 what kind of a caterpillar. Frequently they can 

 tell you what sort of eggs the butterfly lays, where 

 it lays them, how long it takes them to hatch, etc. 

 They will also tell you that the caterpillar changes 

 its skin about four times in its lifetime; that after 

 a while it stops eating and changes into the form 

 of a chrysalis and then becomes a butterfly. But if 

 they are real postage-stamp scientists, you will not 

 know what they are talking about because the terms 

 they use are seldom heard in conversation and do 

 not appear in print except in dictionaries and 

 scientific reports. 



But even if you understand what they say, you 

 are still as ignorant as they are of the meaning of 

 a butterfly! The specimen in your collection is of 

 the same value as a postage-stamp in an album. 



