256 FUGACIOUS COLOURING. 



Shall we begin with the beautiful and glorious mosaics of 

 the butterfly and moth, or with the brilliant and more perma- 

 nent enamel of the beetle ? 



With neither ; but leaving these most highly-finished and 

 elaborate productions, partially described already under other 

 heads, for only a few additional notices under this, we will 

 first invite attention to a few of what we may call, if the 

 liberty be permitted, the more washy or watery-coloured of 

 Nature's insect paintings, such of them as resemble most 

 those of the floral kingdom, and are in some instances almost 

 as fugacious, depending like them on the vitality of the bodies 

 they adorn, paintings, these, the least adapted for cabinet 

 collection, and on this account calling for the more attention to 

 seize, in their brief duration, the hues which belong usually to 

 a short term of existence, and fade with extinguished life. Of 

 this description is the colouring of caterpillars and of spiders, 

 and, to a certain degree, that of dragon-flies and grasshoppers. 



Amongst the most beautifully painted of the caterpillar race 

 are those from which spring the elegant and distinguished 

 tribe of Hawk-moths, known also as Sphinxes, from the form 

 and attitudes, elsewhere described, of these their no less dis : 

 tinguished larvae. None, perhaps, among them are more taste- 

 fully decorated than that of the "privet,"* with his doublet 

 of the most brilliant apple-green laced by oblique stripes of 

 white and purple, further adorned along the sides by orange- 



* SpJdnx Ligustri. See Vignette to " A Midsummer Dav's Dream." 



