the beautiful winged creature that sprang out of the pupa into which the repulsive-looking pirate had been transformed, launch forth into its new element, changed in everything save its nature, but still unchanged in that, and rendering itself as formidable to the moth and the butterfly as it had been before to the newt and the tadpole. There is, I daresay, an analogy here also. It is in the first state of our own species, as certainly as in that of the dragon-fly, that the character is fixed. Further, I used to experience much interest in watching the progress of the frog, in its earlier stages from the egg to the fish; then from the fish to the reptile fish, with its fringed tail, and ventral and pectoral _limbs_; and, last of all, from the reptile fish to the complete reptile. I had not yet learned--nor was it anywhere known at the time--that the history of the individual frog, through these successive transformations, is a history in small of the animal creation itself in its earlier stages--that in order of time the egg-like mollusc had taken precedence of the fish, and the fish of the reptile; and that an intermediate order of creatures had once abounded, in which, as in the half-developed frog, the natures of both fish and reptile were united. But, though unacquainted with this strange analogy, the transformations were of themselves wonderful enough to fill for a time my whole mind. I remember being struck one afternoon, after spending my customary spare half hour beside the pond, and marking the peculiar style of colouring in the yellow and black libellulidæ in the common wasp, and in a yellow and black species of ichneumon fly, to detect in some half-dozen gentlemen's carriages that were standing opposite our work-shed--for the good old knight of Conon House had a dinner-party that evening--exactly the same style of ornamental colouring. The greater number of the vehicles were yellow and black--just as these were the prevailing colours among the wasps and libellulidæ; but there was a slight admixture of other colours among them too: there was at least one that was black and green, or black and blue, I forget which; and another black and brown. And so it was among the insects also: the same sort of taste, both in colour and the arrangements of colour, and even in the proportions of the various colours, seemed to have regulated the style of ornament manifested in the carriages of the dinner party, and of the insect visitors of the pond. Further, I thought I could detect a considerable degree of resemblance in form between a chariot and an insect. There was a great _abdominal_ body separated by a narrow isthmus from a _thoracic_ coach-box, where the directing power was stationed; while the wheels, poles, springs, and general framework on which the vehicle rested, corresponded to the wings, limbs, and antennæ of the insect. There was at least sufficient resemblance of form to justify