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NATURE NOTES 
June 9. The buttercups and daisies are shedding their petals 
and the red and white clover are in blossom, 
the potatoes are coming up in the school garden. 
I have copied this from the Weekly Calendar in my school 
exercise book. Olive Williams. 
THE BUTTERFLY’S LIFE. 
tissues and organs that are most wonderful, 
butterfly derive its wings ? 
lOME of the workers in stained glass who made the 
grand coloured windows for ancient cathedrals and 
monasteries were fond of introducing figures of a 
gaudy butterfly, with its expanded wings, gay colours, 
and lively flight when they wished to represent the idea of the 
resurrection from the dead. What a difference there is between 
a green and yellow caterpillar, covered with bunches of hair 
here and there, and not smelling over-nice, that gorges cabbage- 
leaves hour after hour and day after day, and the delicate white 
butterfly, with its black spots on its large wings, its long pro- 
boscis, which rarely is used, its silky body, pretty long horns, 
and hesitating flight ! The caterpillar becomes a chrysalis, and 
this the perfect insect. To the eye there is a decided change of 
form — a metamorphosis ; but to the anatomist there are proofs 
of internal and external changes in the construction of the 
Whence does the 
There are no traces of them in 
the hairy and thick skin of the caterpillar. If a caterpillar 
is dissected the skin is noticed to cover some mnscular fibres, 
by which the insect lengthens or shortens its body and crawls. 
There are no traces of wings, and therefore it is not correct 
to say that the caterpillar contains the imperfect organs of the 
perfect insect. But when the caterpillar has grown to its full 
length, and cabbages have become rare, it retires to a quiet 
nook and begins to diminish in length. It fixes its hind legs 
tightly to a board or tree by weaving a little web with its 
mouth, then it curves its body and fixes a silk thread on one 
side of it, on the wood, and, throwing its head backwards, it 
curves its body to the other side, fixing the thread on the 
opposite side of the wood. The caterpillar then straightens 
itself, and being securely lashed by its feet and tied tightly by 
its silken girdle to the wood, it changes its skin, and from 
under the old one appears the queer-looking thing, without legs, 
mouth, or hairs, called the chrysalis. This has a brown skin, 
and on either side of the body is a sort of fold ; and within this 
the process of wing-making is going on all through the winter, 
although the chrysalis never moves, and does not eat or drink. 
The pretty body and the delicate head are being formed within 
the brown skin. At last, on some fine spring day, the brown 
skin of the chrysalis splits, and the butterfly comes out with 
its wings nicely folded. It soon gains energy in the sun, and 
breathes the fresh air, the wings unfold and become stifl, and 
the little creature flies off with a careless flight. The beautiful 
