14G 
AN INSECT’S WING. 
delicacy, and a poetical charm which approaches the sublime. This is 
not the place for discussing such a subject. But a mere drop of blood, 
of a brickdust-red by no means agreeable to the naked eye, heavy, thick, 
and opaque, if you look at it when dry, under the magnifying glass, 
presents to you a delicious rose-bloom arborescence, with delicate rami¬ 
fications as fine and subtle as those of the coral are coarse and dull. 
But let us keep to our insects. Let us select the most miserable— 
the wonderfully little butterfly of the clothes-moth, that dirty white 
butterfly which seems the lowest of created beings. Take only his 
wing. Nay, far less, only a little dust, the light powder which covers 
his win a;. You are astounded at seeing that Nature, exhausting the 
most ingenious industry in order that this offcast of creation may fly 
at his ease, and without fatigue, has scattered over his wing, not dust, 
but a multitude of tiny balloons. Or, if you prefer it, so many para¬ 
chutes, most convenient instruments for flight, which, when opened, 
sustain the little aeronaut without fatigue and for an indefinite period; 
which, as they are more or less expanded, enable it to rise or sink ; and 
when folded up, permit of its remaining quiet. The least of the butter¬ 
flies, thus supported, has a faculty of flight as unlimited as the noblest 
bird of heaven. 
We grow keenly interested in these curious apparatus, which have 
anticipated our human inventions. We observe their strange and 
surprising modes of action, as we would observe the inhabitants of an¬ 
other planet, if they were miraculously transported thither. But what 
we most yearn to see, what we burn to detect, is some reflection from 
within , some gleam of the torch which is concealed in their inner 
existence, some appearance of thought. Have they a physiognomy ? 
Can I seize in their strange visage any trace of an intelligence which, 
judging by their works, so closely resembles our own ? Of the expres¬ 
sion which touches me in the eye of the dog, and of other animals 
related to me, shall I detect nothing in the bee, the ant, in those 
ingenious beings, those creators, which accomplish so many things the 
dog cannot accomplish ? 
A clever man once said to me: “ As a boy I was very partial to 
insects; I searched about for caterpillars, and made a collection of them. 
