194 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 
which proceeds the perfect hawk-moth in the following 
summer. 
These are some of the beauties as well as the monsters 
of the night. Now let us see whether the day will reveal 
any thing more perfect or more beautiful. 
Butterflies (Lepidoptera diurna). 
These beautiful, light-winged fairies possess one great ad- 
vantage over the moths; viz.: they are born to flourish in 
the light, to adorn the brightest day, and to grow only 
more resplendent in the dazzling beams of the noonday sun. 
Of all the rich and sparkling colors that shine in Flora’s 
variegated summer dress, there are none more brilliant, 
none that attract the eye so like flashes of unearthly light, 
as those with which Nature has adorned these flitting life- 
beams of the day. It has passed into a moral axiom that 
those human characters which can bear the most oper 
scrutiny are the truest and the purest, while it is only the 
evil who shun the light; and so, in our ordinary apprecia 
tion of the beautiful, that which will bear the strongest 
light without exhibiting imperfection is considered the most 
perfect. — 
Besides, the diurnal butterflies are surrounded with scenes 
and circumstances calculated to make them more attractive 
than any others. They are not only more seen and noticed 
in the day, but they appear at a season and time when the 
summer's warmth and genial breath expands all hearts, 
and draws out even the sick from their close and gloomy 
chambers to admire the beauties of earth and air, and to 
partake of the vivifying and gladdening influences which 
Nature sheds around. Then they come, like winged mes- 
sengers from the spheres of love and beauty, flitting from 
flower to flower, basking in the sunshine, joyously provid- 
ing for their future offspring; and then not lingering along 
to die in the winter of a desolate life, but, amidst all the 
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