1 INSECTS. 



pass from the grasshopper and his associates without one 

 word of him whom " only" 



"Cruel immortality consumes :" 



Who dwelt 



" In presence of immortal youth, 

 Immortal age beside immortal youth." 



Tithonous appears to have been seldom made the 

 subject of representation in ancient art ; but there is a 

 curious gem which represents him " undergoing his 

 metamorphosis," of which an engraving is placed at the 

 head of the chapter on Orthoptera.* 



To speak of the butterfly as connected with the super- 

 stitions of past ages would be an injustice. It stands 

 forward amongst the corrupted myths of the ancients, a 

 beautiful example of pure symbolism, and Psyche ($wxfj) 

 or the soul, is almost constantly, in the later periods of 

 ancient art, to be recognised by her butterfly wings. 



First, the grovelling life of this world crawling and 

 feeding upon the earth ; then the deathlike sleep silent 

 and motionless ; then the breaking forth free, beautiful, 

 and winged surely it is not wonderful that to the 

 poetical Grecian mind, man, living, dead, immortal, was 

 pictured here. 



And thus we find it in a thousand representations. 

 On the lips of Plato, preacher of the immortality of the 

 soul, rests a butterfly ;f and the symbol was introduced 

 into early Christian Art by his descendants, the Neo- 



* It will be observed that insects of two orders have here been mixed, 

 but though separated in science, as musicians they are closely connected, 

 and it is sometimes not easy to ascertain to which animal some notices of 

 the ancients, on this point, are to be referred. 



t Or sometimes butterfly's wings are on his head. 



