One of the most marvelously beautiful of all living creatures lies waiting within this case for the resurrection day, when growth shall split open this polished casket and it shall feel the wings, close packed for weeks, unfold, and, stretching to a hundred times their size, bear it away into the sunshine. Did the Pharaohs, I wonder, or their wise men, seeing this, model their mummy cases after those which the butterflies make? This is the chrysalis of a butterfly, that wonder of poets since poetry began, that life-stage of the butterfly which our faith and hopes make comparable to our own rest in the tomb from which man in all ages has believed there came a resurrection and another life, no more to be compared with this than the butterfly's own existence among the flowers is to be likened to his crawling one upon the leaves. And because the minds of many men in seeking to understand, have broken down this beautiful analogy by finding that there is no real decay within the chrysalis, we must not hence conclude they have done more than brush away a fancied similarity. The mystery remains. If you should open this butterfly mummy case, lay bare the mummy as it were, you would find a pair of wings in process of formation, a head, a curled-up sucking beak, legs and embryo antennæ, that is, providing it were near the resurrection time. If not, and you had broken in too early, the greater part within the case would be a semi-fluid mass of broken down cell tissues from which the legs and wings and all the other parts are made. The portholes along the side lead deep into the body and are probably as necessary to the growing butterfly inside as they are to it when it once emerges. The chrysalis must breathe. To many people there is much confusion as to what is a chrysalis and what a real cocoon. Every cocoon is a silken case spun by the caterpillar in which it can securely hide while it changes first into the chrysalis and then into its winged and final form. This chrysalis, or pupa, forms within the body skin and some caterpillars do not spin a cocoon at all, but merely rest somewhere away from view, until this strange process has been completed within the out-worn shell. This photograph is of such a chrysalis. [Illustration] A MOTH We commonly picture the moths and butterflies with their wings spread out or else upright in the air, but many moths trail their wings when they alight and escape our notice by their quiet colors. Walk through the grass and you will frighten thousands which, when they alight again, you cannot for the life of you detect upon the grass stems. There are hardly any butterflies that trail their wings like this and not one of them has beautiful feathery antennæ. [Illustration] NOT GOOD TO EAT