INDUSTRIES OF INSECTS. 
103 
Those who on their birth come in contact with chill green leaves, 
and their lustrous glaze, are still more industrious. They practise arts 
which astonish the observer. Some raise enormous masses with imper¬ 
ceptible cables, and by mechanical processes analogous to those which 
were employed in removing and rearing the obelisk of the Place de 
la Concorde. Others cut out figures purposedly irregular, which the 
seam afterwards fits into its harmonious ensemble. 
Every industrial corporation may be found represented in this 
little world: tailors, weavers, felters, spinners, miners, and the like. 
And in each corporation you meet with species working each after its 
peculiar fashion, by the various processes appropriate to it. 
The tailors work from a pattern. They mark out on the leaf a 
suitable piece; which they remove, and lay upon another leaf; tack it, 
cut out a second on the first model, and stitch them together. This 
done, with their scaly head they flatten the ribs, just as the tailor 
smooths down the seams with his iron. Then they line this coat, 
which they carry about with them, with the very finest silk. 
Others work in mosaic, others in marquetry and veneering. After 
having woven the robe, they disguise it by artistically gluing to it a 
variety of surrounding materials. The aquatic insects, for example, 
embellish theirs with moss, lentils, mussels, or little snails. 
The miners erect galleries between a couple of leaves, and roam 
about in them, constructing places of exit and ingress in their subter¬ 
ranean abodes. 
The labour is great. But among all the species an admirable justice 
prevails. Whoso works hard while a child, does little when an adult; 
and vice versa. The bee, which in the larva state is richly fed by 
its parents, and always carried about and cradled, is destined hereafter 
to an exceedingly laborious life. 
On the contrary, another insect which, as a grub, has toiled, and 
woven, and spun, will having nothing to do in its later life but whisper 
love-phrases to the rose. I am speaking of Sir Butterfly. 
For the great majority, hard work is for infancy, for the larva 
or the grub; work twofold and excessive. On the one hand, the 
constant, urgent, and pressing search after the food craved for by an 
