ENIGMAS AND THEIR MEANING. 
203 
neither to the naked eye nor under the microscope, could excite a feel¬ 
ing of interest; hut if you take the trouble to lift up, with a delicate 
and patient scalpel, the laminae which com¬ 
pose the thickness of its scaly wing, you 
will find there, in most instances, a variety 
of unexpected designs, sometimes vegetable 
curves,— sometimes airy ramifications,— 
sometimes angular striated figures, like 
hieroglyphics, which remind you of certain 
Oriental languages; and compose, in truth, 
a genuine necromancer’s book, that can 
neither be referred to, nor compared with, 
any known form. 
These singular characters, while strongly 
attracting the eye and disquieting the 
mind, are fully worthy of the interest they 
excite. What they express, and give utter¬ 
ance to, in their emphatic language, is the 
circulation of life. Some are tubes through 
which the air enters the wing, and distends 
it for flight; others are tiny veins where 
circulate the powerful liquids that endow 
the imperceptible organism with its colours 
and its energy. 
The most attractive forms are living 
forms. Take a drop of blood, and submit it 
to the microscope. This drop, as it spreads, 
rewards you with a delightful arborescence, 
—with the delicacy and lightness of certain 
winter trees, when revealed in their actual 
figure, and no longer encumbered with leaves. 
Thus, ^Nature’s infinite potency of beauty is not limited to the 
surface, as antiquity supposed. It does not trouble itself about human 
eyesight, but labours for its own behoof, and on its own work. From 
the surface to the interior, it frequently increases in beauty as in 
