6 Beautiful Butterflies. 



if it would drop off at every motion. We have heard 

 a very slim and genteel lady spoken of as having a 

 waist like a wasp, but hope she was not waspish in 

 other respects. Another meaning for the word insect, 

 given by the great dictionary-maker, is " Anything 

 small or contemptible." Let us illustrate this meaning. 

 — " Sir," said a little upstart man, desirous of impress- 

 ing the person he addressed with a due sense of his 

 consequence, " do you know what sect I belong to ? " 

 " I should say, by the look of you," was the good- 

 humoured, yet cutting reply, u to that called Insect." 



We must not, however, consider that because things 

 or persons are small, that they are therefore mean and 

 contemptible ; arrogance and undue assumption of im- 

 portance always make people so ; but in the world of 

 Nature we find so much that is wonderful in design, 

 and beautiful in construction, in the minutest creatures, 

 that to the philosophic mind they can never be so. With 

 the poet Cowper, — 



" In the vast and in the minute we see 

 The unambiguous footsteps of the God 

 Who gives its lustre to the insect's wing, 

 And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds." 



I am now going to introduce to you another member 

 of the learned family of Ologies. In a former volume 

 of this series you made the acquaintance of two or 



osr 



