176 
COLOURING OF INSECTS. 
tlie fancy which possesses them (says good Du Tertre) of becoming 
birds. They speak through their brilliant hieroglyphics of colours and 
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ic; 
fantastic designs, their strange coquetry of 
extraordinary toilets. They speak in their 
very lustre, and some species reveal their 
inner flame by a visible torch. 
They lavish with royal magnificence their 
last days. And wherefore should they 
economize, when to-morrow they die ? 
Break forth then, 0 life of splendour! 
Sparkle, ye gold and emeralds, and sap¬ 
phires and rubies! And let that incande¬ 
scent ardour, that torrent of existence, that 
cataract of profuse radiance, be poured out 
in one common, rapid flood 1 
There is not space in our museums for 
the proper display of the prodigious, the 
unbounded variety of decoration with which 
Nature has, mother-like, sought to glorify 
the hymeneal of the insect and to empara- 
dise its nuptials. A distinguished amateur 
having had the patience to show me in due 
succession genus after genus, species after 
species, the whole of his immense collection, 
I was astounded—in truth, I was stupefied 
— almost terrified by the inexhaustible 
energy—I was going to say fury—of inven¬ 
tion which Nature displayed. I was over¬ 
come—I closed my eyes, and begged for a 
truce; my brain was dizzied and blinded, 
and became confused. But she, she would 
not let me go; she inundated and over¬ 
whelmed me with beautiful beings, with fantastic beings, with admir¬ 
able monsters, with wings of fire, and cuirasses of emerald, clad in a 
hundred kinds of enamel, armed with singular apparatus—no less 
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