150 AUGUST. 



exposing their beautifully marked under-wings as they 

 settle on the blades of grass and the clover tops, while 

 the grizzled skipper (Thanaos tages) dashes along as 

 if defying the eye of the tyro to follow his movements ; 

 and Vanessa Urticce, together with Satyrus ^Egeria 

 and S. Megcera, flit from plant to plant, giving beauty 

 to the earth by their presence, and pleasure to the eye 

 by the harmony of colour they present. 



A remarkable instance of the utility of the study of 

 natural history, as to its educational bearings on the 

 arts, is exemplified by a passage in "The Life of 

 Thomas Stothard, R.A." " He was beginning to 

 paint the figure of a reclining sylph, when a difficulty 

 arose in his own mind how best to represent such a 

 being of fancy. A friend who was present said, ' Give 

 the sylph a butterfly's wing, and then you have it.' 

 ' That I will,' exclaimed Stothard, ' and to be correct 

 I will paint the wing from the butterfly itself.' He 

 sallied forth, extended his walk to the fields some miles 

 distant, and caught one of those beautiful insects. It 

 was of the class called the peacock. Our artist brought 

 it carefully home, and commenced sketching it, but 

 not in the painting-room ; and, leaving it on the table, 

 a servant swept the pretty little creature away before 

 its portrait was finished. On learning his loss away 

 went Stothard, once more to the fields, to seek another 

 butterfly. But at this time one of the tortoise-shell 

 tribe crossed his path, and was secured. He was 

 astonished at the combination of colour that presented 

 itself to him in this small but exquisite work of the 

 Creator; and from that moment determined to enter 

 on a new and difficult field —the study of the insect 



