254 



Lepidoptera.- 



-INSECTS." 



-Vasessa. 



butterflies of the British Museum " is also au excellent 

 work. 



The late George Newport, F.R.S., showed clearly 

 by many experiments, that if insects were injured 

 accidentally or intentionally in their larval or chrysalidal 

 states, these insects showed traces of the injury in their 

 perfect state. For instance, if a foot was injured in a 

 grub, or the place where the wing or antenna would be 

 developed in the pupa, the foot, the wing, or other 

 organ, was defective in the perfect insect. Several 

 series of experiments were made on Vanessa urticce. 

 and Vanessa Id, with complete success; as the result 

 of these experiments, the perfect insects, with their 

 diminutive and newly-formed limbs, were produced. 

 Some of these specimens are now deposited in the 

 cabinets of the British Museum, and others in the 

 Ilunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 The details of the experiments have been published ; 

 so that this physiological question may now be regarded 

 as completely settled. 



Many of the Lepidoptera, when emerging from the 

 chrysalis, discharge a red fluid from their anus. This 

 fluid, when the numbers of the insects have been con- 

 siderable, has looked like, and been taken for, a shower 

 of blood. In 1553, it is recorded that a vast number of 

 butterflies swarmed over a considerable part of Ger- 

 many; and where they abounded, plants, buildings, and 

 even men were sprinkled with red drops, as if there had 

 been a shower of blood. The cause was apparent, and 

 men's minds were at ease. Not so, however, at Aix in 

 1G08, when the suburbs of that town and the country 

 adjacent seemed to be covered with a shower of blood. 

 The inhabitants of all classes were alarmed, and most of 

 them began to regard the appearance as the precursor 

 of some impending calamity. Reaumur records that M. 

 Peiresc, a philosopher of the place, allayed the fears that 

 began to prevail. He had a chrysalis, which he watched. 

 On hearing a fluttering he looked into the box, and found 

 that the insect had emerged from its pupa state and had 

 left behind it a red spot. This he compared with the 

 spots of the so-called bloody shower, and found them to 

 be exactly alike ; he observed, also, that at the time a 

 great number of butterflies were flying about, and that 

 the drops were not found on the tiles nor on the upper 

 surface of stones, but chiefly in places where rain could 

 not easily come. The naturalist was able to dispel the 

 fears and terror which his fellow-townsmen's ignorance 

 had occasioned.* 



The Ettrick Shepherd, as personified by Christopher 

 North in one of his fine imaginary conversations, full 

 of poetry and criticism, and often mantling with fun 

 as weU as occasional pawkiness and prejudices, intro- 

 duces insects into his picture of a calm summer 



" Perhaps a bit bonny butterfly is resting, wi' faulded 

 wings, on a gowan no a yard frae your cheek ; and 

 noo, waukening out o' a simmer dream, floats awa in 

 its wavering beauty, but, as if unwilling to leave its 

 place of mid-day sleep, comin' back and back, and 

 roun' and roun', on this side and that side, and ettlin' 

 (^intending, attempting) in its capricious happiness to 



* Kirby and Speiice, i., p. 2S. 

 f Noctes Ambrobiaua;, vol. i., p. US; 1853. 



fasten again on some brighter tloweret, till the same 

 breath o' wund that lifts up your hair sae refreshingly 

 catches the airy voyager, and wafts her away into 

 some other nook of her ephemeral paradise." 



The Shepherd goes on to speak of other inhabitants 

 of the mountains. " Mony million moths ; some o' as 

 lovely green as the leaf of the moss rose, and others 

 bright as the blush with which she salutes the dewy 

 dawn ; some yellow as the long steady streaks that 

 lie beneath the sun at set, and others blue as the sky 

 before his orb has westered. Spotted, too, are all the 

 glorious creatures' wings — say rather starred with con- 

 stellations! Yet, sirs, they are but creatures o' a 

 day ! ... 



" Gin a pile o' grass straughtens itself in silence you 

 hear it distinctly. I'm thinking that was the noise o' 

 a beetle gaun to pay a visit to a freen' on the ither side 

 o' that mossy stane. The melting dew quakes ! Ay, 

 sing awa, my bonny bee, maist industrious o' God's 

 creatures ! Dear me, the heat is ower muckle fur 

 bim ; and he burrows himsel' in amaug a tuft o' grass, 

 like a beetle, panting ! and noo invisible a' but the 

 yellow doup o' him." 



Among artists we find not a few who have derived 

 excellent hints from the colouring and variegated 

 shading of the wings of Butterflies. Vandyck kept a 

 collection of the finer exotic Butterflies, and Stothard, 

 the Royal academician, kept a collection for the same 

 purpose. 



Mrs. Bray mentions two Butterflies of which Stoth- 

 ard was very fond— the species named Vanessa lii and 

 Vanessa urticce by naturalists ; they are alluded to in 

 the following extract from her " Life of Stothard :" 

 About 1794, the year in which he was elected a Royal 

 academician, Stothard " painted a picture which gave 

 rise to a new and delightful combination in bis studies 

 of colour for his works. The circumstance which led to 

 it deserves not to be forgotten. lie was beginning to 

 paint the figure of a reclining sylph, when a difliculty 

 arose in his own mind how best to represent such a 

 being of fancj'. A friend who was present said, ' Give 

 the sylph a butteifly's wing, and there you have it.' 

 ' That I win,' exclaimed Stothard ; ' and to be correct, 

 I will paint the wing from the butterfly itself.' He 

 immediately sallied forth, extended his walk to the 

 fields some miles distant, and caught one of those 

 beautiful insects ; it was of the class (species) called 

 the Peacock. Our artist brought it carefully home, 

 and commenced sketching it, but not in the painting- 

 room ; and leaving it on the table, the servant swept 

 the pretty little creature away before its portrait was 

 finished. On learning his loss, away went Stothard 

 on('e more to the fields to seek another butterfly. But 

 at this time one of the tortoise-shell tribe crossed his 

 path, and was secured. He was astonished at the 

 combination of colour that presented itself to him in 

 this small but exquisite work of the Creator, and from 

 that moment determined to enter on a new and delight- 

 ful field — the study of the insect department of natural 

 history. He became a hunter of butterflies ; the more 

 he caught, the greater beauty did he trace in their 

 infinite variety, and he would often say that no one 

 knew what he owed to these insects ; they had taught 



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