536 
ARTICULATA. 
like ; nay, that even tunnels are excavated by them so immense, compared with their own size, 
as to be twelve times bigger than that of Brunei under the Thames. The modern fine 
lady, who prides herself on the luster and beauty of the scarlet hangings which adorn the stately 
walls of her drawing-room, or the carpets that cover its floor, fancying that nothing so rich and 
splendid was ever seen before, and pitying her vulgar ancestors who were doomed to unsightly 
whitewash and rushes, is ignorant all the while that before she or her ancestors were in exist- 
ence, and even before the boasted Tyrian dye was discovered, a little insect had known how to 
hang the walls of its cell with tapestry of a scarlet more brilliant than any her rooms can exhibit, 
and that others daily weave silken carpets both in tissue and texture, infinitely superior to those 
she so much admires. ISTo female ornament is more prized and costly than lace, the invention 
and fabrication of which seems the exclusive claim of the softer sex. But even here they have 
been anticipated by these industrious little creatures, who often defend their helpless chiysalis 
by a most singular covering, and as beautiful as singular, of lace. Other arts have been equally 
forestalled by these creatures. What vast importance is attached to the invention of paj^er ! 
For nearly six thousand years one of our commonest insects has known how to make and apply 
it to its purposes ; and even pasteboard, superior in substance and polish to any thing we can 
produce, is manufactured by another. We imagine that nothing short of human intellect can 
be equal to the construction of a diving-bell or an air-pump, yet a spider is in the daily habit of 
using the one, and what is more, one exactly similar in principle to ours, but more ingeniously 
contrived, by means of which she resides tmwetted in the bosom of the water, and procures the 
necessary supj^lies of air by a much more simple process than our alternating buckets ; and the 
caterpillar of a little moth knows how to imitate the other, producing a vacuum, when necessary 
for its purposes, without any piston beside its own body. If we think with wonder of the popu- 
lous cities which have employed the united labors of man for many ages to bring them to their 
full extent, what shall we say to the white ants, which require only a few months to build a me- 
tropolis capable of containing an infinitely greater number of inhabitants than even imperial 
Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, or Pekin in all their glory ?" 
BUTTERFLY, GRUB OR CATERPILLAR, AND PUPA OR CHRYSALIS. 
The metamorphoses of insects have been noted as among the wonders of nature from the 
earliest ages. " The butterfly which amuses you with its aerial excursions, one while extracting 
nectar from the tube of the honeysuckle, and then, the very image of fickleness, flying to a rose, 
as if to contrast the hue of its wings wdth that of the flower on which it reposes, did not come 
into the world as you now behold it. At its first exclusion from the egg, and for some months 
of its existence afterward, it was a worm-like caterpillar, crawling upon sixteen short legs, greedily 
devouring leaves with two jaws, and seeing by means of twelve eyes so minute as to be nearly 
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