3060 Insects. 



glowing freshness and with a vivacity which brings every thing in the clearest manner 

 before the eye of the mind. Through the medium of a friend I have procured from 

 Mr. Stevens, the agent of Mr. Bates, in London, a few of the more beautiful of the 

 diurnal Lepidoptera. They are now before me ; and their contemplation brings for- 

 cibly to the recollection the well-known lines of Thomson : — 



"Who can paint 

 Like Nature ? Can imagination boast, 

 Amid its gay creation, hues like hers ?" 



Certain philosophers are disposed to maintain that beauty of colour is altogether re- 

 lative ; that it is in no case positive and absolute ; and that it is especially determined 

 and regulated by that faculty of the mind which is termed the association of ideas. 

 They say, for example, that blue or green, however lovely in tint, would be regarded 

 as a positive blemish, or rather as ugly in the extreme, if seen on the cheek of an 

 otherwise beautiful female ; and they assert that the charm of the first-mentioned 

 colour arises from its being constantly associated in our thoughts with the glorious 

 firmament of heaven; and that of the second, from its calling to our mind the hue of 

 the robe worn by nature in those seasons when she is the most enchanting. With 

 such reasoners I agree so far ; but my belief in this respect does not stop here. I 

 hold that there are hues and shades of colour which are positively beautiful in them- 

 selves and independently of all associations whatever ; and to look upon which merely 

 as patches of colour, affords a gratification of no mean description. And for the truth 

 of such an opinion, I know not where I should obtain a stronger and a more pleasing 

 proof, than from the Lepidoptera to which I have alluded. The patch, for instance, 

 which is on the posterior wings of the Hectera Esmeralda, and which may be charac- 

 terized as a compound of carmine and of the deepest blue dotted with two spots of 

 vermillion, will in itself, and irrespectively of association, communicate a pleasure to 

 every eye which looks upon it. The band of silver blue on the wing of a large 

 Morpho ; the deep tone, to speak in pictorial phrase, of the black in the Papilio Sesos- 

 tris, finer even than the finest velvet of Genoa; the rich dark orange on Epicilia 

 Ancaea ; the blue, shining in one unnamed species like polished steel, in another 

 (Thecla) with a radiant clearness, which ultramarine itself could not surpass ; the 

 satin-like golden green, the pearly lustrous white, and the deep shining emerald rib- 

 bands in Urania Boisduvalii ; the crimson lines and spots, deeper and clearer than 

 blood, in a species to which no name is attached, of Papilio ; the small spangles of 

 silver with which the under surface of one of the least among them (Cupido) is, as it 

 were, incrusted ; the iridescent and delicate violet with which, on the same surface, 

 a particular species of Hectera is, so to speak, washed over in a way which calls to 

 our remembrance the ' scumbling' given by Rembrandt as the finishing touch to his 

 finest productions : all these and many more, possess a beauty which I contend, in 

 opposition to the doctrine of Alison and Jeffrey, is absolute in itself; which is alto- 

 gether irrespective of association ; and which the most skilful of human pencils 

 would find it impossible completely and properly to copy. — James Smith; Manse of 

 Monqvhitter, Aberdeenshire, January 31, 1851. 



"Note on Cheimatobia boreata. — "Nothing new under the sun," says the Wise 

 Man ; " there is nothing new." One of your correspondents, in his note on the above- 

 named insect in the ' Zoologist ' (Zool. 301 1), remarks, that previous to the appearance 



