264 MOSAIC OF BUTTERFLIES. 



But it is not, as we have all along declared, either our 

 province or our purpose, or desire, to wander far, even de- 

 scriptively, from home ; and it is time now to end our brief 

 and most imperfect notices of insect painting, chiefly of the 

 British school, by a word or two on the most admired and 

 most permanent of all Nature's performances, in this depart- 

 ment of her grand atelier the colouring, namely, of butter- 

 flies and beetles. But of this, in truth, especially as concerns 

 butterflies and moths, we have little left to say. For the few 

 individual descriptions we have found space to afford them we 

 must refer our readers to preceding pages and pictures ; and as 

 a general observation on their mode of decoration, we have 

 noticed, we believe, that the painting on the wings of Lepidop- 

 tera is executed in mosaic, the scales or plumelets of which 

 it is composed being laid upon, or, more properly, inserted 

 through, minute holes in the transparent membrane of the 

 pinion. No niggard of her colours, Nature on these over- 

 spreads both sides of her delicate canvas. Some, indeed, 

 among our butterflies are able to display on the reverse of 

 their glorious pinions, as they " ope and close them," a greater 

 show of pattern than that which adorns their upper surface. 

 Of this description are the standards of the "Bed Admiral,"* 

 for in these we hardly can decide which are the most " ad- 



Hemiptera and Orthoptera, see the works of Stoll, ' Kepre"sentations colorees des 

 Punaises des quatre parties du Monde,' 1788; also 'Des Cigales, Sprectres,' &c. 

 * Vanessa Atalanta ; also " Admirable." 



