IN AN OLD GARDEN 249 



of the process, like a man to whom the post has 

 brought too many letters; but there was one — 

 the last I opened — the living active contents of 

 which served to remind me that some insects are 

 unable to make a cylinder for themselves, having 

 neither gum nor web to fasten it with, and yet 

 they will always find one made by others to shelter 

 themselves In. Here were no fewer than six 

 unbeautiful creatures, brothers and sisters, 

 hatched from eggs on which their parent earwig 

 sat incubating just like an eagle or dove or swal- 

 low, or, better still, like a pelican; for in the end 

 did she not give of her own life-fluid to nourish 

 her children? Unbeautiful, yet not without a 

 glory superior to that of the Purple Emperor, 

 and the angelic blue Morpho, and the broad- 

 winged Ornithoptera, that caused an illustrious 

 traveller to swoon with joy at the sight of its 

 supreme loveliness. Du Maurier has a drawing 

 of a little girl in a garden gazing at two earwigs 

 racing along a stem. *'I suppose,'' she remarks 

 interrogatively to her mamma, "that these are 

 Mr. and Mrs. Earwig?" and on being answered 

 affirmatively, exclaims, **What could they have 

 seen in each other?" What they saw was blue 



