WHAT BUTTERFLIES ARE GOOD FOR. 25 



surely, there was proof enough for me, or any one else. 

 So, I suppose, he steadfastly believes to this day, that 

 the moth was a truculent, bloodthirsty monster; whilst 

 I still presume to believe, that if any wound was caused 

 at the moment in question, it was by the nails of the 

 lady attacked, or her friends, in clutching frantically at 

 the terrific intruder ; who, poor fellow, might have been 

 pardoned for mistaking the fair neck for one of his 

 favourite flowers (a lily, perhaps), while the utmost 

 harm he contemplated was to pilfer a sip of nectar from 

 the lips he doubtless 'took for rosebuds. 



Utilitarians may, perhaps, inquire the uses of butter- 

 flies what they do, make, or can be sold for ; and I 

 must confess that my little favourites neither make 

 anything to wear, like the silkworm, nor anything to 

 eat, like the honey-bee, nor are their bodies saleable by 

 the ton, like the cochineal insects, and that, commer- 

 cially speaking, they are just worth nothing at all, 

 excepting the few paltry pence or shillings that the 

 dealer gets for their little dried bodies occasionally ; so 

 they are of 110 more use than poetry, painting, and 

 music than flowers, rainbows, and all such unbusiness- 

 like things. In fact, I have nothing to say in the 

 butterfly's favour, except that it is a joy to the deep- 

 minded and to the simple-hearted, to the sage, and, still 

 better, to the child that it gives an earnest of a better 

 world, not vaguely and generally, as does every " thing 

 of beauty," but with clearest aim and purpose, through 

 one of the most strikingly perfect and beautiful analo- 

 gies that we can find throughout that vast Creation, 

 where 



"All animals are living hieroglyphs." 1 



The butterfly, then, in its own progressive stages of 

 caterpillar, chrysalis, and perfect insect, is an emblem 

 of the human soul's progress through earthly life and 

 death, to heavenly life. 



Even the ancient Greeks, with their imperfect lights, 



1 Bailey's " Festus." 



