But the variety of clothing with which insects are decorated, is most admirable and curious! The upper and the under vestiture of the wings, their fringes, that which covers the body in different parts, varies greatly; the bird, splendidly habited as he sometimes is, frequently will be found draped with less variety of form and color than the insect which escapes our notice by his actions, and the power of our eyes by the smallness of its parts. Our lepidopterous creatures seem to be most characteristically framed and constituted for the different hours and places in which they delight to move; so much so, that I think if we were to invert the order of their appearance, the singular unfitness of many of them for their stations would be immediately manifest to us. The butterfly, light, airy, joyous, replete with life, sports in the sunshine, wantons on the flower, and trips from bloom to bloom, gay as the brilliant morn, and cheerful as the splendor of heaven: heat and light appear to be the very principle of his being; in a cloudy or a chilly atmosphere his energies become suspended, and, closing his wings, reposes like a sickly thing upon some drooping flower: but let the cloud disperse, the sun break out, he springs again to active life; associating with the birds of day, and denizen of the same scenes, he only seems of a less elevated order. But the moth, though possessing at times sufficient activity for self-preservation, is less buoyant, less sprightly on the wing, avoids the heat and light, the higher ranges of the air, and seeks his mate or his food in the shelter of the hedge or the ditch, amidst foliage and shade, where we may see him hovering sedately around some flower, or passing on his way with quiet steady flight, accordant with the silence and twilight of the hour: companion of the owl and the bat, his grave actions are quite unsuitable to the gaiety, the flutter of a summer’s sun; the former is emblematic of levity and display, the latter of retirement and shade. And thus each, though but slightly seen, is in admirable harmony with the season in which it moves, manifesting the peculiar fitness of things to their several stations in this vast world of wisdom; an observation obvious to all, and a truth everywhere admitted, yet, as a Christian moralizer I could not pass by unheeded any evidence of foresight and of power.