146 THE BUTTERFLY VIVARIUM. 



Avings. It might seem to a fanciful reasoner, that 

 feeding exclusively on the "delicate juices of flowers," 

 the Butterfly hecomes like them in form and aspect, 

 as though a general tendency existed in all things 

 to produce their similitude. Gerard, the quaint 

 old herbalist, had evidently some such notion, 

 when rhapsodizing, after his peculiar manner, on 

 the influence of flowers, he is led to make his re- 

 flections on these beautiful insects; and he does 

 not stand alone in his notion, for in a foot-note 

 to one of the "Letters of Gilbert White," by 

 Mr. Mitford, we find the annotator asking the 

 question whether the circumstance mentioned by 

 Mr. Pegge be true, " that Butterflies partake of the 

 colour of the flowers they feed on." 



Without overstraining the fancy to create re- 

 lations and sympathies which do not exist, there is 

 sufficient analogy between floral and insect deve- 

 lopment to allow of many poetic associations, such 

 as need not trench upon the positive domain of fact. 

 The egg of the parent insect is, both in aspect and size, 

 much like the seed of a plant ; and in its principle 

 of life the seed exhibits a still stronger resemblance, 

 inasmuch as it contains within it the already trace- 

 able forms of the future tree or flower. Then, the 

 cotyledons, or " seed leaves," as they have been 



