196 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 
tutional monarchy, like the bees; nor in a socialistic mon- 
ster phalanstery, like the paper-manufacturing wasps; but 
they are real anarchists, the subject of no superior officer, 
and of no kind of government. Every one takes care of 
himself; and in this fact, perhaps, lies the great secret of 
their happiness ; for, although they are deprived of all social 
comforts, still no one can find fault with another where all 
mind their own business, and are mutually independent. 
This social condition would never answer for mankind, be- 
cause from our nature we are mutually dependent upon one 
another, and ever must be so; but it does very well for the 
short-lived butterflies, who require but little food and have 
no trouble to procure it. Independently they ramble about 
while the sun shines, and during the night they sleep upon 
the trunk or branches of a tree, or on the under side of a 
leaf, of which they take fast hold with their feet. 
Butterflies, like moths, are not directly injurious to vege- 
tation, because they have no mouths with which to eat, but 
only a proboscis through which they suck the sweet juices 
of flowers. Their caterpillars, however, are equally rapa- 
cious, and would destroy all our vegetables, as well as trees, 
if their number was not constantly diminished by birds, 
beetles, wasps, lizzards, frogs, toads, and other animals that 
feed upon them. 
Neither butterflies nor their caterpillars have ever been 
used as articles of food by man, although the ancient Roman 
epicures considered the flesh of some grubs—for instance, 
those of the Stag-beetle—as a very fine relish, and among 
the inhabitants of the tropics in America the palm-worm 
is very commonly eaten. Drury, an English entomolo- 
gist, recommends all persons who are cast by shipwreck on 
desolate islands, and can not find any thing else to eat, to 
seek for those grubs which feed on wood and are found in 
the trunks of trees, and says they can comfortably subsist 
on them, at least for a short time. 
