

114 ; THE INSECT WORLD. 







Guyana. During the two years she sojourned in these dangerous 
We parts, she made a large collection of drawings and paintings, which 
Ld were destined to inaugurate in Europe the introduction of art into 
i natural history. 
| In the plates to her work, Sybille de Mérian represents always 
the insect she wishes to describe under its, three forms of larva, 
pupa, and perfect insect. With this drawing she gives another of 
the-plants which serve the insect for food, as also of the animals| 
which prey on it. Hach plate 1 is a little drama. Near the insect 
is seen the greedy lizard opening its dreadful mouth, or the fero- 
- cious ider watching for it. The short life of insects 1s shown, 
here in its entirety, with its continual struggles, its infinite artifices, 
its rapid end, and all the episodes of its existence, for which 
life, as in the case of the moral man, is but a long and painfull 
































struggle. 
| Such was the work, such were the noble devotion and the worthy 
| career of Sybille de Mérian. Let women, let young girls, who are! 
i martyrs to the ennui of a life devoid of occupation, peruse her 
a beautiful book, and learn from it how much a woman may do 
| with the time which is now either utterly unoccupied or only, 
devoted to useless employments. To study nature, in any of 
its phases, ought, it seems to us, to give more satisfaction to the 
\ soul, more ire ah to the mind, and cause more admiration and) 
4 gratitude for thes supreme Author of nature, than doing a little 
embroidery. 
It is, as we have already said, in the work of Sybille de Mérian| 
‘‘ Metamorphoses des Insectes de Surinam,” that one finds mentioned 
| for the first time the luminous properties of the Fulgora laternaria| 
| The author thus relates her observations, which were the result 0; 
chance :— 
| “Some Indians having one day brought me a great numba 
of the Lantern flies, I shut them up in a large box, not know: 
ing then that they gave light at night. Fidos a noise, ] 
sprang out of bed and had a candle brought. I very soon dis’ 
covered that the noise proceeded from the box; which I hurriedly 
opened; but, alarmed at seeing emerging from it a flame, or, t 
speak more correctly, as many flames as there were insects, I a| 
first let it fall. Having recovered from my astonishment, or rathe: 
