26 THE NATURALIST. 



fruits and flowers ; they are generally seen either sporting in the air, or resting on the 

 disk of some expanded flower, and all their habits are such as beseem " pure creatures 

 of the element." They are seldom noticed but in fine weather, and never in profusion 

 but when the season is in its highest bloom, and their appearance then becomes asso- 

 ciated in our minds with the charms of external nature, and is connected with those 

 images of life and beauty which give rise to many of the genial influences of summer. 

 Several species also contrive to outlive the winter, although their frail forms seem but 

 ill adapted to resist the rigors of that inclement season, and issuing from their retreats 

 in the first warm days of spring, are among the earliest and not least interesting heralds 

 of the purple year. 



The diurnal Lepidoptera are very numerous in species ; they abound in all tropical 

 countries, but a great proportion of the largest and most highly ornamented kinds are 

 natives of America, especially of Brazil. 



The mode of painting employed to produce these rich tints, may not improperly be 

 called a kind of natural mosaic, for the colors invariably reside in the scales, which 

 form a dense covering over the whole surface. These scales are usually of an oval or 

 elongated form, and truncated at the tip, where they are occasionally divided into 

 teeth ; but sometimes they are conical, linear, or triangular. They are fixed in the 

 wing by means of a narrow pedicle, and are most commonly disposed in transverse rows, 

 placed close together, and overlapping each other like the tiles of a roof. In some in- 

 stances, they are placed without any regular order, and in certain cases they appear to 

 be two layers of scales on both sides of the wings. When they are rubbed off, the wing 

 is found to consist of an elastic membrane, thin and transparent, and marked with 

 slightly indented lines, forming a kind of groove for the insertion of the scales. The 

 latter are so minute that they appear to the naked eye like powder or dust, and as they 

 are very closely placed, their numbers on a single insect are astonishingly great. 

 Leeuwenhoek counted upwards of 400,000 on the wing of the silk moth. 



Both the different kinds of eyes which occur among insects, are to be found in the 

 diurnal Lepidoptera. The ordinary, or compound eyes, are large and hemispherical, 

 occupying the greater part of the head, and no fewer then 17,325 lenses have been 

 counted in one of them. As each of these crystalline lenses possesses all the properties 

 of a perfect eye, some butterflies may therefore be said to have no fewer than 34,650 ! 

 The simple eyes, in the form of pellucid spots, are usually two in number, and placed 

 on the crown of the head. 



The antenna are of moderate length, and consist of a great number of joints, which 

 usually increase in thickness towards the extremity, where they form a club or knob. 



The thorax that portion of the body intermediate between the head and abdomen 

 is composed of three segments, so closely united as apparently to form a single piece. 

 The thorax is always shorter than the abdomen, and generally more robust, as it sup- 

 ports all the organs of motion, and contains the muscles by which the latter are 

 actuated. 



These important appendages are of course the wings and legs ; the latter, as in all 

 other genuine insects, are six in number, and composed of the same amount of pieces 

 as in most of the class. They are inserted pretty close to each other, without any ine- 

 quality in the size of the intervening spaces. The thigh is often fringed with long 

 hairs, and the tibia is frequently armed with a spur near the middle, and two others 

 at the tip. The tarsi in all the perfect legs are five-jointed, and furnished with two 

 claws at the extremity, which are often bifid. Many of these insects, however, have 



