144 NATURAL HISTORY. 



ture within, is not without a parallel in human nature, 

 and may often be observed in individual life as well as 

 in a social community. The females, filled with eggs, 

 like the larva) of the palm beetle, are eaten as dainty 

 food. There is a tribe of wandering ants found in 

 Guinea, not unlike the above-described, with yellow 

 breast-plates, and black heads and bodies ; and, not less 

 scourges, crawl on the surface of the earth, devour or 

 ruin everything they meet with in their journeyings, 

 wherefore the inhabitants destroy them with arsenic. 

 The cells of the termites are described in many natural 

 histories to be most artistically constructed ; this is not 

 so ; they are only ill-shaped masses of clay, or, if formed 

 on trees, a wooden lump, in which the ligneous body of 

 the trunk or branch is curiously hollowed into cells about 

 the size of a chestnut, in each of which a young ant is 

 deposited, and the openings closed with a filamentous 

 covering, so as to insure its safety. 



FOURTH OEDER. 



BUTTERFLIES. 



The Lepidoptera or Butterflies are distinguished 

 from all other insects by having their beautiful wings 

 covered with a scaly dust which renders them opaque. 

 In themselves, they are colorless and transparent, and 

 if rubbed between the fingers lose that beautiful dust 

 which gives them their opacity and brilliancy, leaving 

 them pale and diaphanous, like those of a fly. Being 

 closely examined, in a microscope, this dust appears to 

 consist of small leaves resembling the petals of the suc- 

 cory blossoms, and, fixed on the wings by their minute 



