140 COMING OUT. 



out" for summer "with the butterflies;" a phrase which 

 brings us back to the sweet natural, and gives occasion to 

 look more closely than our wont into some of those expansive 

 processes by which the youthful flutterers of summer are 

 *' finished " for their " coming out " in the gay assemblies of 

 the insect world. 



Now day by day do the garlands which adorn their verdant 

 ball-rooms grow thicker with opening flowers, and together 

 with these, and emerging in numbers nicely proportioned, do 



" Throngs of insects in the shade 

 Try their thin wings, and dance in the warm beams 

 That waked them into life." 



We are thus reminded, at every step, that flower, leaf, and 

 insect, were intended for each other; a fact already noticed, 

 together with various other analogies between their respective 

 " comings out." 



It is no easy matter, watch it as we may, to see a flower in 

 the act of blowing bursting from forth the confining calyx ; 

 nor is it much less difficult (out of doors) to catch an insect in 

 the act of emergement from the trammels of its chrysalis 

 estate. It needs, however, but small pains and patience, 

 which will be well rewarded, to become witnesses, within 

 doors, of the latter operation. This with a variety of insects 

 is equally curious and interesting, though most conspicuous and 

 easy of observation with the tribe of Butterflies and Moths. 



Numerous Cabbage Butterflies, both of the larger and 

 smaller species, have "come out" already, and are now upon 

 the wing; but as of these there are various successive broods, 

 there are almost as many still enwrapped in the skins of their 

 angular chrysalides, and hung pendent, horizontally, in their 

 chosen places of security, such as under the copings and 

 ledges of garden walls and palings. 1 We have only to lay 

 gentle hands on a few of these seeming sleepers, and carefully 

 1 Vignette to 'Life in Death.' 



