176 COLOURING OF INSECTS. 
the fancy which possesses them (says good Du Tertre) of becoming 
birds. ‘They speak through their brilliant hieroglyphies of colours and 
fantastic designs, their strange coquetry of 
extraordinary toilets. They speak in their 
very lustre, and some species reveal their 
inner flame by a visible torch. 
They lavish with royal magnificence their 
last days. And wherefore should they 
economize, when to-morrow they die ? 
Break forth then, O life of splendour ! 
Sparkle, ye gold and emeralds, and sap- 
phires and rubies! And let that meande- 
scent ardour, that torrent of existence, that 
cataract of profuse radiance, be poured out 
in one common, rapid flood ! 
There is not space in our museums for 
the proper display of the prodigious, the 
unbounded variety of decoration with which 
Nature has, mother-like, sought to glorify 
the hymeneal of the insect and to empara- 
dise its nuptials. A distinguished amateur 
having had the patience to show me in due 
succession genus after genus, species after 
species, the whole of his immense collection, 
I was astounded—in truth, I was stupefied 
almost terrified by the inexhaustible 
energy—I was going to say fury—of inven- 
tion which Nature displayed. I was over- 
come—I closed my eyes, and begged for a 
truce; my brain was dizzied and blinded, 
and became confused. But she, she would 
not let me go; she mundated and over- 
whelmed me with beautiful beings, with fantastic beings, with admir- 
able monsters, with wings of fire, and cuirasses of emerald, clad in a 
hundred kinds of enamel, armed with singular apparatus—no less 
