384 MOSAIC OF BUTTERFLIES. 



now to end our brief and most imperfect notices of insect 

 painting, chiefly of the British School, by a word or two on 

 the most admired and most permanent of all Nature's per- 

 formances in this department of her grand atelier the colouring, 

 namely, of butter-flies and beetles. But of this, in truth, 

 especially as concerns butterflies and moths, we have little left 

 to say. For the few individual descriptions we have found 

 space to afford them we must refer our readers to preceding 

 pages and pictures ; and as a general observation on their mode 

 of decoration, we have noticed, we believe, that the painting on 

 the wings of Lepidoptera is executed in mosaic, the scales or 

 plumelets of which it is composed being laid upon, or, more 

 properly, inserted through, minute holes in the transparent 

 membrane of the pinion. No niggard of her colours, Nature 

 on these overspreads both sides of her delicate canvas. Some, 

 indeed, among our butterflies are able to display on the reverse 

 of their glorious pinions, as they " ope and close them," a 

 greater show of pattern than that which adorns their upper 

 surface. Of this description are the standards of the " Red 

 Admiral," 1 for in these we hardly can decide which are the 

 most " admirable/' the rich and glowing masses of the upper, 

 or the varied and elegant shadings and pencillings of the lower 

 side : the same may be observed of the robes of the " Painted 

 Lady" 2 and their linings. In many also of our genus Poly- 

 ommatus, the cerulean blue opened in expansion towards the sky 

 it emulates is hardly more beautiful than that warmer grey 

 beset with mimic eyes, seeming, when the wing is erected, to 

 look on the lowlier things of earth. 



But we must have done with enamelled and metallic painting, 

 or where shall we find space to notice, finally, another species 

 of decoration, which confers on certain among insect forms an 

 apparent relation yet closer with the mineral kingdom, that 

 semblance, we mean, of gilding, which they not unfrequently 



1 Vanessa Atalanta ; also " Admirable." 8 Cynthia Cardui. See Vignette. 



