268 PLANTS AND INSECTS. 



equally worthy of notice, though less likely to excite it, a few 

 resemblances of a more general kind between these two 

 departments of the reign of nature. In external form, hues, 

 and clothing, there is quite sufficient of general likeness betwixt 

 plants and insects to stamp them as productions of the same 

 designing mind and matchless skill. In clothing, wool, hair, 

 spines, and scales are common to both. Flowers alone emulate 

 the colours of the more splendid butterflies and beetles. The 

 delicate veined leaflet or petal are prevailing similitudes of 

 form drawn yet closer in the papilionaceous tribe ; the purple 

 pea-flower and the yellow broom telling us, in poetic per- 

 sonality, 



" The butterfly all green and gold 



To me hath often flown, 

 Here in my blossoms to behold 



Wings lovely as his own." Wordsworth. 



As well as ephemeral flowers there are ephemeral insects. 

 The gauzy wings of the May-fly, like the delicate petals of the 

 cistus, strew the ground in a few brief hours after their expan- 

 sion ; and the Favonia, 1 which displays its crimson glories in 

 the beams of morning (as is the case often with the ephemeral 

 insect) is, like it, dead by noon-day. There are certain flowers, 

 such as the goat's beard, &c, which are known to time their 

 opening at certain hours of the day ; and so, in like manner, 

 various moths have been observed to emerge from their 

 chrysalis-covering with equal regularity. 



Again, the daisy, the pimpernel, and many other flowers, 

 show the nicest sensibility to atmospheric changes, by always 

 shutting up their petals at the approach of bad weather ; and 

 the bee, the butterfly, and other insects, with an instinctive 

 prescience of coming showers, hide within the flower-cups, or 

 close their wings, fearfully resting from their labours or their 

 pleasures. 



Numerous also are the properties and productions common 



1 Tigridia favonia. 



