CHAPTER VIII. 
ON THE RENOVATION OF OUR ARTS BY 
THE STUDY OF THE INSECT. 
THE Arts properly so called, the Fine Arts, should 
profit much more than the Industrial, by the study 
of insects. The goldsmith and the lapidary would do 
well to seek in them models and instruction. The 
soft insects, the flies, specially possess in their eyes 
truly magical irises, with which no casket of gems can 
bear comparison. In passing from one species to 
another, and even, if I mistake not, from one individual 
to another, new combinations may be observed. Remark 
that the flies with brilliant wings are not always the 
most richly endowed, as far as their optical organs are 
concerned. Take the dull, gray, dusty, odious horse-fly, 
which lives on warm blood; its eye, to the magnifying- 
glass, offers the strange faéry spectacle of a mosaic of jewels, such as all 
the art of Froment-Meurice has scarcely invented. 
