390 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



beneath them will be as nearly colourless as the wing 

 of a house fly. The fine dust, then, that glistens on 

 our thumb and finger, when we have rudely closed 

 them on the wing of a butterfly, is a pinch of beautiful 

 scales, feathers, and hairs of curious and elegant forms 

 and many different colours, and in a few of our insects 

 these objects, when properly adjusted under a micros- 

 cope, are so inconceivably splendid, that they are not 

 surpassed by the most brilliant clusters of gems ever 

 worn by a ball-room belle in anything but size and 

 conventional value. Beautiful, however, as the butterfly 

 is in its perfect state, it has passed through its pre- 

 paratory stages under very different forms ; hatched 

 from an egg, which in many species is a marvel of 

 beauty in itself, it enters on its active existence as a 

 voracious larva or caterpillar, sometimes not very 

 attractive in appearance. In this condition it is pro- 

 vided with a pair of powerful cutting jaws, which it 

 plies incessantly, between its periods of moulting, on 

 the leaves of the plant on which the egg has been 

 deposited by its parent. After a few changes of skin 

 it has completed its growth, and becomes an inactive 

 chrysalis or pupa, to emerge in a few weeks or months 

 as a perfect winged insect. Henceforth it mends its 

 ways, instead of disfiguring the leaves of plants, it 

 seeks its liquid food in the flowers alone, and the 

 change that takes place in its habits is scarcely less 

 remarkable than the modification that is effected in 

 the different parts of its mouth. The jaws that for- 

 merly made such havock among the culinary and 

 other plants in our gardens, are replaced by an elegant 

 apparatus, outwardly resembling an elephant's trunk 

 in miniature, which, when not in use, is carefully coiled 

 up like a watch spring, and concealed under the head 

 of the insect. This trunk, or tongue, consists of two 

 distinct pieces, each of which has a groove channelled 

 out all along its inner side, so that when they are 

 brought together in close contact the two grooves 



