INSECTS FRAGILE AS FLOWERS. 331 



In the world of insects, examples of existence, bright and 

 brief and most precarious, are no less common, and in many 

 respects (especially as occurring amongst sensitive beings) in- 

 finitely more striking ; but, except with those sporters of a day, 

 hence called Ephemera, the frail tenures of insect life seldom 

 serve to remind us of the like nature of our own, and chiefly, 

 perhaps, for the following reason. Many a brilliant flutterer is 

 cut off in the midst of its joyous activity, much more suddenly 

 than the flower over which we have seen it hover, but ere the 

 scattered petals of the one have strewed the surface of the 

 ground, the wings of the other have borne it to die unseen 

 within some hidden covert; or, contributing in death to the 

 support of life, it may have sunk suddenly into the devouring 

 gulf of some insectivorous bird, or carnivorous feeder of its 

 own race. 



It is, by the way, a remarkable dispensation of Nature's 

 Author, and one equally beautiful and kind, that while Death 

 is for ever busy, as elsewhere, in the lower departments of the 

 animal kingdom, so few of the victims they afford him are 

 permitted to offend the eye in any shapes of disgust or danger. 

 To confine this observation merely to insects : We see the 

 air teeming with gnats ; the ground populous with ants and 

 beetles ; the fields, especially towards the end of summer, alive 

 with grasshoppers and Tipulidan flies ; the hedges, through the 

 months of June and July, scarcely more abundant in leaves 

 than in the smaller moths, which in daytime make a covert of 

 their foliage : and of these countless myriads we are told, truly, 

 that even of those among them permitted to reach their good 

 old age, scarce a single gnat survives a week ; not half the 

 beetles, nor any of the Tipulce, nor grasshoppers, a month ; 

 while few are the butterflies or moths which over-live a fort- 

 night. What has become of them ? may naturally be queried 

 by those who bestow upon the subject a mere passing thought ; 

 and though with those who have learnt something of insect 

 history the marvel is greatly diminished, it still remains 



