202 
THE EYE AND THE MICROSCOPE. 
If you descend still lower, insects which do not live, like this fly, 
upon living but upon dead matter, ordure, and decomposition, astonish 
us by the richness of their reflections, which our enamel ought to 
endeavour to reproduce. The dunghill beetle, an ungainly black in¬ 
sect if we look only at the upper part of its body, is, underneath, of a 
deep sapphire-blue which no kingly diadem ever equalled! And what 
shall we say of the son of the dead, of the Egyptian scarabseus,—a 
living emerald, but far superior to that jewel in the gravity, opulence, 
and magic of its lustre ? The imagination is impressed, and one does 
not feel astonished that a people so tender and devout, so in love 
with death, so full of the dreams of eternity, took for a symbol 
the little miraculous animal,—a burning jet of life springing from the 
grave ! 
A certain skill in examination, and a choice of day and of light, are 
necessary. You cannot properly study the insect of the tropics and 
that of our colder climates on the same day or at the same hour. The 
former should be examined only in favourable weather, under a pure 
sky and a strong sun,—a vivid and genial ray, analogous to the light 
which bathes it in its own country. The other, frequently uninterest¬ 
ing to the naked eye, but of great beauty under the microscope, may 
reserve its grand illuminating effects for the evening, or for artificial 
light. Little is promised by the cockchafer, at first sight so coarse and 
prosaic in appearance. Yet its scaly wing, when submitted to the 
focus of the microscope, and well lighted up beneath the little mirror, 
so that it is seen by transparency, presents a noble winter stuff, a dead 
leaf, where meander veins of a very beautiful brown. And in the 
evening it becomes quite another thing: the yellowish part of the 
scale has got the best of it, and in the light shines forth like gold—(a 
poor comparison!)—the strange, magical gold of paradise, which we 
dream of for the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem, or for the robes ol 
light worn by saints and spirits before the Throne ! A sun softer and 
tenderer than the orb of day, and one which, we know not why, charms 
and affects the heart. 
A strange mirage ! And yet nothing but a cockchafer’s wing! 
Perhaps it may next be an insect which neither by day nor night, 
