Introduction. 13 



and its formidable jaws ready extended for attack or defence.* 

 We do not wish that children should be encouraged to expose 

 themselves to danger in their encounters with insects. They 

 should be taught to avoid those few which are really noxious 

 to admire all to injure none. 



The various beauty of insects their glittering colours, 

 their graceful forms supplies an inexhaustible source of 

 attraction. Even the most formidable insects, both in ap- 

 pearance and reality, the dragon-fly, which is perfectly 

 harmless to man, and the wasp, whose sting every human 

 being almost instinctively shuns, are splendid in their ap- 

 pearance, and are painted with all the brilliancy of natural 

 hues. It has been remarked that the plumage of tropical 

 birds is not superior in vivid colouring to what may be 

 observed in the greater number of butterflies and moths. t 

 " See," exclaims Linnaeus, "the large, elegant painted wings 

 of the butterfly, four in number, covered with delicate feathery 

 scales ! With these it sustains itself in the air a whole day, 

 rivalling the flight of birds and the brilliancy of the peacock. 

 Consider this insect through the wonderful progress of its 

 life, how different is the first period of its being from the 

 second, and both from the parent insect! Its changes are 

 an inexplicable enigma to us : we see a green caterpillar, 

 furnished with sixteen feet, feeding upon the leaves of a 

 plant; this is changed into a chrysalis, smooth, of golden- 

 lustre, hanging suspended to a fixed point, without feet, and 

 subsisting without food ; this insect again undergoes another 

 transformation, acquires wings, and six feet, and becomes a 

 gay butterfly, sporting in the air, and living by suction upon 

 the honey of plants. What has nature produced more worthy 

 of our admiration than such an animal, coming upon the stage 

 of the world, and playing its part there under so many dif- 

 ferent masks ?" The ancients were so struck with the trans- 

 formations of the butterfly, and its revival from a seeming 

 temporary death, as to have considered it an emblem of the 

 soul, the Greek word pysclie signifying both the soul and a 



* J. R., iii Mag. of Natural History, vol. i., p. 334. 

 t Miss Jermyn's Butterfly Collector, p. 11. 



