THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 91 



Certain flies (Stenopteryx) which never fly, and remain all 

 their lives adherent to the feathers of the swallow, have 

 nevertheless vestiges of wings, quite unsuited to flight ; 

 whilst others (Melophagus), still more degraded, have none 

 at all, and pass their lives clinging to the wool of the sheep. 



CHAPTER I. 



MARVELS OF INSECT ORGANIZATION. 



THE torch of anatomy has shed a flood of light upon the 

 organization of the inferior animals, and the microscope, by 

 allowing us to pry into the most intricate structural details, 

 has unfolded before our eyes a field as vast as it was unex- 

 pected. But we must acknowledge, that if the investiga- 

 tion of the infinitely small has acquired such an advanced 

 degree of certainty, this result is due to men who have 

 often devoted all their lives to the task. 



An advocate of Maestricht, Lyonet, passed nearly all his 

 life in studying a caterpillar which gnaws the wood of the 

 willow, and produced on this insect one of the most splen- 

 did monuments of human patience. 



Goedart, a Dutch painter, spent twenty of his best years 

 in watching the metamorphoses of insects, a most inter- 

 esting spectacle for him who looks at it with the eye of 

 religion. Hence, in the midst of the most brilliant parties 

 (into which affliction makes its way despite both pomp and 

 gold), he felt tempted to exclaim, " Ah ! let me rather see 

 a butterfly born. In his puniest creatures God reveals his 



