almost all the Omithoptera, and good series of many of them, almost every specimen being in the finest condition. Of 

 Mr. Rothschild's collection, in his Tring museum, it" is safe to say that in no other part of the world is there such a vast 

 collection of Lepidoptera, especially of the Eastern Papilionidse : that among the Omithoptera is to be found nearly 

 every known form — and often in such immense series, and representing so many localities, that it may be considered 

 that in this museum alone the materials for any amount of research may be obtained. The Omithoptera occupy several 

 big cabinets ; and the Papilionida? are contained in one large and high room, arranged in 36 big cabinets of 40 drawers 

 each, or 1,440 drawers in all. But the remainder of the Rhopalocerous and Heterocerous Lepidoptera, which is then 

 only a small section of the contents of the Tring Museum, may be numbered by hundreds of thousands of specimens. 

 These and other collections are always receiving augmentation, and are rendered all the more useful by the almost 

 regal library, treating of so many of the Zoological and Biological subjects for which the museum is famous. 



Finally, the author cannot refrain from expressing his deep admiration and joy in the contemplation of these and 

 the multitudinous works of our holy and glorious God and Creator. The lovely things treated of in this work are but 

 as the smallest portion of the great order to which they belong. A panoramic view of the butterfles and moths of this 

 world would be one long vision of beauty in form, variety of pattern, and delicacy or splendor of colour, illustrated by 

 tens of thousands of species ranging in size from a few millimetres in expanse, to ten or eleven or even more, inches ; 

 their patterns simple in the extreme, or so intricate and complex as to bewilder the eye ; so varied and wonderful in 

 colour as to include every imaginable tint from black or white to dazzling crimson, scarlet, blue, green, pearl, silver and 

 gold ; with markings sometimes resplendent with apparently pure gold, silver, copper, or aluminium, and the colour and 

 flashing of all precious stones — prismatic, silky, velvety, diaphanous, quite transparent, intensely white, or intensely 

 black, or ivory-like ; with colour reflections in the most unexpected places ; with changes of colour according to position 

 of so wonderful and startling a character as to be fairly amazing ; there are combinations of colour hardly dreamed of by 

 the artist, yet so beautifully harmonised as to create astonishment in any sensitive mind ; these most wonderful keys of 

 colour, metallic texture, and brilliancy, are not confined to the larger forms, but are just as commonly met with amongst 

 the most minute ; and with all this glory an extraordinary variation of structure of the legs, palpi, and antennae, and of 

 imitation or mimicry in the shape of the body, characters, or pattern of wings, and simulation of the appearance of very 

 distantly related species, as well as of other objects and other orders of insects ! Some or other of these glorious things are 

 to be found living in all climes and at all altitudes, from far within the Artie circle to the Equator, and from sea-level to 

 18,000 feet of mountain height ! A truly royal Divine gift to the earth is this one order of animals alone ! But the glory of it 

 all is that we only begin to dream of the wealth of creative wonders and beauties as we contemplate these. There are 

 the Coleoptera, often with even greater glories than are to be found among the Lepidoptera, and a diversity of shape and 

 general structure almost absolutely inexhaustable ; with varieties of life habits that are endless — some graceful in the 

 extreme, others bizarre and almost monstrous in appearance, their horns, and armatures, and tusks, as strange in 

 structure as those of deer, elks, rhinoceri, elephants, or any of the African horned vertebrates — these characters being 

 generally confined, as in the vertebrates, to the male sex ; some are covered with spikes, or look like thorns when at 

 rest ; others have long antennae with brush-like appendages ; some resemble winged seeds, or the flat seeds of certain 

 plants ; or they are spherical, tortoise-shaped, hispid, cylindrical, and a multitude of shapes beside ; their shining wing 

 cases (elytra^) are often more gorgeous and brilliant than gems or metals — some of the Lamillicornes look as if sculptured 

 in polished brass that is lighted by electric light — and many of the Phytophaga when alive are like spheres of sunlight, or 

 dazzling dewdrops in the early morning — as the author has seen them in the tropics ; some are apparently small nuggets 

 of gold, silver, copper, iron, or other metals (in the genus Chlamys), others are like gems — sapphires, rubies, emeralds; 

 some, when viewed with the eye appear to be encrusted with emeralds, and under the microscope their wing cases look 

 in parts like mountains and valleys of precious stones, heighted in beauty by the art of the lapidary ; some at night have 

 points behind the eyes blazing with phosphorescent light ; others, as they fly, look like a waving mass of fire-flakes, — 

 as the author has seen them among the dark, feathery palm trees on a moonlight night in New Granada ; and yet 

 others seem to emit fire from every joint of the armour encasing the under side of their bodies. Beetles are so subject 

 to mimicry among themselves, and mimicry of other objects and orders of insects, that we continually meet with the 

 strangest examples of this phenomenon. Some are so small as to be scarcely visible to the eye ; others so large that 

 a pair of them would require to be accommodated with a fairly good-sized box ; they are found in every land, and every 

 position in and out of water : active in darkness and light — in manure, in flowers, in forests and on plains, under stones, 

 in caves (and therefore blind), under the bark of trees, in the heart of timber, in ants' nests (and then shaped like ants) ; 

 mimicking spiders in form, and probably with some of their habits ; like long bits of stick among dead branches ; flying 

 in the air in clouds, or so few in individuals as to always remain rare ; so numerous in species that more than 120,000 

 must have been described, besides thousands of species yet to be named, and multitudes of new species coming every 

 year from various countries. 



And so we may pass on from order to order of insect life, among the Orthoptera with their multitudinous strange 

 forms of Hemipterous (or bug life), with species as gorgeous in colour and wonderful in shape as beetles; of locusts, 

 often with huge upper gauzy and decorated wings, and splendidly coloured under wings, which in a state of rest are 

 folded like the leaves of a fan, and concealed beneath the upper ones ; or the many species of Mantis, with their 

 hypocritical-looking attitude ; or the walking-stick insects, some of them 24 inches long, and most like a lot of brown, or 

 mossy, or lichenous twigs arranged in the form of an insect, and the other curious manifestations of the Phasmidce, or 

 phantom-like insects, or the still more remarkable leaf insects, of which there are many species. All through this great order 

 we meet with wonder upon wonder ! and so we do in every other order, whether as regards form, function, size, or colour. 



But should we depart from the insect world and review either the other Arthropods, or indeed any of the Invertebrate 

 orders ranging from spiders through the almost endless armies of other creatures, down to the diaphanous Medusae of the 

 ocean we shall experience the same overwhelming sense of the vast array of creatures often strange and beautiful in colour 

 and decoration with which this earth is peopled. We should review the spider tribes, with species most tiny and species as 



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