120 
NATURE’S INEXHAUSTIBLE PROVISIONS. 
has awakened the plants; its banquet is prepared. More than one 
flower, awaiting it, secretes its honey. It delays, because to-day that 
impenetrable envelope which ensured its safety becomes for a moment 
its obstacle. Enfeebled and fatigued by so great a transformation, 
how shall it break through the too solid cradle which threatens to 
suffocate it ? 
Some species—as, for example, the ants—experience so great a diffi¬ 
culty, that the captive, probably, would never effect its release but for 
the opportune assistance of some power which, from without, hastens 
to extricate it, to deliver it (so to speak), and separate it from the 
trammels of its swaddling-clothes. Fortunate difficulty ! which creates 
the bond between the two ages, attaches the liberator to the child she 
has delivered, and herself begins its education and society! 
But, for the majority of insects, the liberator is no other than 
Nature. This mother, inexhaustible in tenderness and invention, gives 
to the little one the key which will open the barrier, pierce the prison, 
and introduce it to daylight and liberty. 
“ What key ?—and how ? ” say you. “ How can this soft and fluid 
being contrive to seize upon a firm, compact tissue, frequently doubled 
and immured by the alluvial accumulation of a protracted winter ? ” 
The circumstance embarrasses us greatly, but Nature is not 
troubled. Means of the utmost simplicity suffice her; she eludes, and 
sports with, the difficulty. The butterfly of the silkworm, for instance, 
at the critical moment finds a file—where ?—in its eye ! This eye, with 
numerous facets, has a fine diamond point, which files through and 
severs the silken prison. 
Another, the cockchafer, shut up underground, suddenly discovers 
that it is a perfect mechanician. Of its whole body it makes a lever. 
Its posterior extremity furnishes it with a strong-pointed auger. It 
sinks solidly, anchors, and makes fast. From this point cVa/ppui it 
derives an enormous force, and with its robust shoulders uplifts the 
heavy clod, enlarges the aperture, finds at length the light, extends 
its unwieldy apparatus of wings and wing-cases, and flies like a gnat. 
Another deformed (or shapeless) miner, the mole-cricket, would never 
reach the surface if, to reascend from the depth of the earth, it had not 
