254 Lepidoptera. INSECTS. Vanessa. 
butterflies of the British Museum ” is also au excellent 
work. 
Tlie late George Newport, F.R.S., showed clearly 
by many experiments, that if insects were injured 
accidentally or intentionally in their larval or chrysalidal 
states, these insects showed traces of the injury in their 
perfect state. For instance, -if a foot was injured in a 
grub, or the place where the wing or antenna would be 
developed in the pupa, the foot, the wing, or other 
organ, was defective in the perfect insect. Several 
series of experiments were made on Vanessa urticm 
and Vanessa Id, with complete success; as the result 
of these experiments, the perfect insects, with their 
diminutive and newly-formed limbs, were produced. 
Some of these specimens are now deposited in the 
cabinets of the British Museum, and others in the 
Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. 
The details of the experiments have been published ; 
so that this physiological question may now be regarded 
as completely settled. 
Many of the Lepidoptera, when emerging from the 
chrysalis, discharge a red fluid from their anus. This 
fluid, when the numbers of the insects have been con- 
siderable, has looked like, and been taken for, a shower 
of blood. In 1553, it is recorded that a vast number of 
butterflies swarmed over a considerable part of Ger- 
many; and where they abounded, plants, buildings, and 
even men were sprinkled with red drops, as if there had 
been a shower of blood. The cause was apparent, and 
men’s minds were at ease. Not so, however, at Aix in 
1G08, when the suburbs of that town and the country 
adjacent seemed to be covered with a shower of blood. 
The inhabitants of all classes were alarmed, and most of 
them began to regard the appearance as the precursor 
of some impending calamity. Reaumur records that M. 
Peiresc, a philosopher of the place, allayed the fears that 
began to prevail. He had a chrysalis, which he watched. 
On hearing a fluttering he looked into the hox, and found 
that the insect had emerged from its pupa state and had 
left behind it a red spot. This he compared with the 
spots of the so called bloody shower, and found them to 
be exactly alike ; he observed, also, that at the time a 
great number of butterflies were flying about, and that 
the drops were not found on the tiles nor on the upper 
surface of stones, but chiefly in places where rain could 
not easily come. The naturalist was able to dispel the 
fears and terror which his fellow-townsmen’s ignorance 
had occasioned.* 
The Ettrick Shepherd, as personified by Christopher 
North in one of his fine imaginary conversations, full 
of poetry and criticism, and often mantling with fun 
as well as occasional pawkiness and prejudices, intro- 
duces insects into his picture of a calm summer 
day :t— 
“ Perhaps a bit bonny butterfly is resting, wi’ faulded 
wings, on a gowan no a yard frae your cheek ; and 
noo, waukening out o’ a simmer dream, floats awa in 
its wavering beauty, but, as if unwilling to leave its 
place of mid-day sleep, cornin’ back and back, and 
roun’ and roun’, on this side and that side, and ettlin’ 
(intending, attempting) in its capricious happiness to 
* Kirby and Spence, i., p. 28. 
1 Nodes AnibVosiaua;, vol. i., p. 158 ; 1855. 
fasten again on some brighter floweret, till the same 
breath o’ wund that lifts up your hair sae refreshingly 
catches the airy voyager, and wafts her away into 
some other nook of her ephemeral paradise.” 
The Shepherd goes on to speak of other inhabitants 
of the mountains. “ Mony million moths ; some o’ as 
lovely green as the leaf of the moss rose, and others 
bright as the blush with which she salutes the dewy 
dawn ; some yellow as the long steady streaks that 
lie beneath the sun at set, and others blue as the skj' 
before his orb has westered. Spotted, too, are all the 
glorious creatures’ wings — say rather starred with con- 
stellations! Yet, 0 sirs, they are but creatures o’ a 
day ! ... 
“ Gin a pile o’ grass straughtens itself in silence you 
hear it distinctly. I’m thinking that was the noise o’ 
a beetle gaun to pay a visit to a freen’ on the ither side 
o’ that mossy stane. The melting dew quakes ! Ay, 
sing awa, my bonny bee, maist industrious o’ God’s 
creatures ! Dear me, the heat is ower muckle for 
him ; and he burrows himsel’ in amang a tuft o’ grass, 
like a beetle, panting 1 and noo invisible a’ but the 
yellow doup o’ him.” 
Among artists we find not a few who have derived 
excellent hints from the colouring and variegated 
shading of the wings of Butterflies. Vandyck kept a 
collection of the finer exotic Butterflies, and Stothard, 
the Royal academician, kept a collection for the same 
purpose. 
Mrs. Bray mentions two Butterflies of which Stoth- 
ard was very fond— the species named Vanessa Id and 
Vanessa urticce by naturalists ; they are alluded to in 
the following extract from her “ Life of Stothard 
About 1794, the year in which he was elected a Royal 
academician, Stothard “ painted a picture which gave 
rise to a new and delightful combination in his studies 
of colour for his works. The circumstance which led to 
it deserves not to be forgotten. He was beginning to 
paint the figure of a reclining sylph, when a difficulty 
arose in his own mind how best to represent such a 
being of fancy. A friend who was present said, ‘ Give 
the sylph a butterfly’s wing, and there you have it.’ 
‘ That I will,’ exclaimed Stothard ; ‘ and to be correct, 
I will paint the wing from the butterfly itself.’ He 
immediately sallied forth, extended his walk to the 
fields some miles distant, and caught one of those 
beautiful insects ; it was of the class (species) called 
the Peacock, Our artist brought it carefully home, 
and commenced sketching it, but not in the painting- 
room ; and leaving it on the table, the servant swept 
the pretty little creature away before its portrait was 
finished. On learning his loss, away went Stothard 
once more to the fields to seek another butterfly. But 
at this time one of the tortoise-shell tribe crossed his 
path, and was secured. He was astonished at the 
combination of colour that presented itself to him in 
this small but exquisite work of the Creator, and from 
that moment determined to enter on a new and delight- 
ful field — the study of the insect department of natural 
history. He became a hunter of butterflies ; the more 
he caught, the greater beauty did he trace in their 
infinite variety, and he would often say that no one 
knew what he owed to these insects ; they had taught 
