202 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 
two inches long, they metamorphose into a cocoon, which 
they suspend on fences or walls. Fortunately a great num- 
ber of these become the prey of spiders and ichneumon 
wasps, and for this reason four or five summers will not 
unfrequently pass by without our seeing many of these in- 
sects. 
This butterfly is also an inhabitant of Europe and Asia. 
We have seen plenty of them in Italy, France, Germany, 
and Russia, as far north as St. Petersburg, as well as in 
Transcaucasia; but whether the American species are de- 
scendants of these, or vice versa, or whether Nature origin- 
ally created one pair in the Eastern Continent and another 
pair, at the same time, in the Western, we are obliged to 
confess we do not know. ‘The solution of this important 
question, therefore, we must leave to the Historical Socie- 
ties of the present day, who are probably analogically op- 
posed to the opinion of that distinguished philosopher, 
Humboldt, who says that the origin of the human race 
from one or several pair can not be found out a@ posteriori, 
and hence all investigation as to the cradle of the human 
genus is mythological.* F 
Thus unforeseen events, which startle most when most 
nexpected, and which often tell upon the faith or the 
destiny of people and nations, may sometimes occur, as was 
the case in France some years ago, when, fifteen years after 
the death of St. Simon the communist, his pupils and fol- 
says 
9 
lowers paid his tailor’s bill, ‘all tailors in France, 
Heine, ‘* began to believe.” 
The ApmrraL (Vanessa Atalanta), Fig. 50, is another 
beautiful insect of this genus. It has black, velvet-like 
* Tn respect to this question, see the most elaborate philosophical 
work of modern times: ‘‘ Die Aegyptische, und die Zoroastriche Glau- 
Lenslehre als die aeltesten Quellen unserer speculativen Ideen, von Dr. 
Epuarp Roetn, ausserordentlichen Professor der Philosophie an der 
Universitdt zu Heidelberg. Manheim, 1846.” 
