114 THE INSECT WOELD. 



Guyana. During the two years she sojourned in these dangerous 

 parts, she made a large collection of drawings and paintings, which 

 were destined to inaugurate in Europe the introduction of art into 

 natural history. 



In the plates to her work, Sybille de Merian represents always 

 the insect she wishes to describe under its three forms of larva, 

 pupa, and perfect insect. "With this drawing she gives another of 

 the plants which serve the insect for food, as also of the animals 

 which prey on it. Each plate is a little drama. Near the insect 

 is seen the greedy lizard opening its dreadful mouth, or the fero- 

 cious spider watching for it. The short life of insects is shown 

 here in its entirety, with its continual struggles, its infinite artifices, 

 its rapid end, and all the episodes of its existence, for which 

 life, as in the case of the moral man, is but a long and painful 

 struggle. 



Such was the -work, such were the noble devotion and the worthy 

 career of Sybille de Merian. Let women, let young girls, who are 

 martyrs to the ennui of a life devoid of occupation, peruse her 

 beautiful book, and learn from it how much a woman may do 

 with the time which is now either utterly unoccupied or only 

 devoted to useless employments. To study nature, in any of 

 its phases, ought, it seems to us, to give more satisfaction to the 

 soul, more strength to the mind, and cause more admiration and 

 gratitude for the supreme Author of nature, than doing a little 

 embroidery. 



It is, as we have already said, in the work of Sybille de Merian, 

 " Metamorphoses des Insectes de Surinam," that one finds mentioned 

 for the first time the luminous properties of the Fulgora laternaria. 

 The author thus relates her observations, which were the result of 

 chance : 



"Some Indians having one day brought me a great number 

 of the Lantern flies, I shut them up in a large box, not know- 

 ing then that they gave light at night. Hearing a noise, I 

 sprang out of bed and had a candle brought. I very soon dis- 

 covered that the noise proceeded from the box, which I hurriedly 

 opened ; but, alarmed at seeing emerging from it a flame, or, to 

 speak more correctly, as many flames as there were insects, I at 

 first let it fall. Having recovered from my astonishment, or rather 



