LEFIDOPTERA. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Child of the sun ! pursue thy rapturous flight. 

 Mingling with her thou lov'st, in fields of light ; 

 And where the flowers of paradise unfold, 

 Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold. 

 There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky, 

 Expand and shut with silent ecstasy. 

 Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept 

 On the bare earth, then Avrought a tomb, and slept ! 

 And such is man ; soon from his cell of clay 

 To burst a seraph in the blaze of day ! 



Rogers. 



The primary division, or Order, of the Class of 

 Insects, to the illustration of which the present vo- 

 lume is devoted, acquires its name, like all the other 

 Linnean orders, from the characters presented by the 

 wings. These members have their entire surface 

 covered with a thick coating of minute imbricated 

 scales, which has caused the insects to be designated 

 by the name Lepidoptera, from Astt/?, a scale, and 

 Trn^ciy wings. This clothing, however, is not uni:- 

 versal in the group, as there are several genera par- 

 tially denuded of scales, and others in which the 

 wings ai-e clear and transparent, without any traces 

 of them. But these occasional deviations from the 



