a threatening attitude, and its formidable jaws ready extended for attack or defence.[K] We do not wish that children should be encouraged to expose themselves to danger in their encounters with insects. They should be taught to avoid those few which are really noxious--to admire all--to injure none. The various beauty of insects--their glittering colours, their graceful forms--supplies an inexhaustible source of attraction. Even the most formidable insects, both in appearance and reality,--the dragon-fly, which is perfectly harmless to man, and the wasp, whose sting every human being almost instinctively shuns,--are splendid in their appearance, and are painted with all the brilliancy of natural hues. It has been remarked that the plumage of tropical birds is not superior in vivid colouring to what may be observed in the greater number of butterflies and moths.[L] "See," exclaims Linnæus, "the large, elegant painted wings of the butterfly, four in number, covered with delicate feathery scales! With these it sustains itself in the air a whole day, rivalling the flight of birds and the brilliancy of the peacock. Consider this insect through the wonderful progress of its life,--how different is the first period of its being from the second, and both from the parent insect! Its changes are an inexplicable enigma to us: we see a green caterpillar, furnished with sixteen feet, feeding upon the leaves of a plant; this is changed into a chrysalis, smooth, of golden lustre, hanging suspended to a fixed point, without feet, and subsisting without food; this insect again undergoes another transformation, acquires wings, and six feet, and becomes a gay butterfly, sporting in the air, and living by suction upon the honey of plants. What has nature produced more worthy of our admiration than such an animal, coming upon the stage of the world, and playing its part there under so many different masks?" The ancients were so struck with the transformations of the butterfly, and its revival from a seeming temporary death, as to have considered it an emblem of the soul, the Greek word _pysche_ signifying both the soul and a butterfly; and it is for this reason that we find the butterfly introduced into their allegorical sculptures as an emblem of immortality. Trifling, therefore, and perhaps contemptible, as to the unthinking may seem the study of a butterfly, yet when we consider the art and mechanism displayed in so minute a structure,--the fluids circulating in vessels so small as almost to escape the sight--the beauty of the wings and covering--and the manner in which each part is adapted for its peculiar functions,--we cannot but be struck with wonder and admiration, and allow, with Paley, that "the production of beauty was as much in the Creator's mind in painting a butterfly as in giving symmetry to the human form."