“DEAR SIRS,—Had I been requested to write down my personal experiences I should have declined the task, as it seems to me impossible to write an honest history of one’s own career. The following biographical sketch is the fruit of moments stolen from the active hours of a busy life. I stand alone in the world, and shall never know the happiness of being either a father or a mother; I belong to the great family of neuter Hymenoptera. Feeling the misery of a solitary life, you will not be surprised to learn that I consented to become a tutor. An aristocratic Butterfly who lived near Paris in the woods of Belle Vue, had once saved my life, and as a token of gratitude I consented to become the foster-parent of the child he would never live to see. The egg was carefully deposited in the calyx of a flower, and hatched by a ray of sunlight the day after the parent’s death. It pained me to see the youth begin life by an act of ingratitude. He left the flower that had found a place for him in her heart without saying a word. His early education was most trying to one’s temper; he was as capricious as the wind, and of unheard-of thoughtlessness. But thoughtless characters are ignorant of the harm they do, and as a rule, are not unpopular. I loved the little orphan, although he had all the faults of a poor caterpillar. My instruction, advice, and guidance seemed to be thrown away upon him. Full of vivacity and light-heartedness, he embraced every opportunity of following the bent of his own reckless will. If I left him for an instant, on my return I never found him in the same place. He would venture to climb almost inaccessible plants, and risk his neck along the edges of leaves that hung over a yawning precipice. I remember being called away on important business, at a time when his sixteen legs would hardly carry him. On my return, I in vain searched for my charge, until at last I found him up a tree whose topmost branch he had reached, at the peril of his life. “He was scarcely out of his babyhood when his vivacity suddenly left him. It seemed to me that my counsels were beginning to bear fruit, but I was soon undeceived. What I had mistaken for signs of repentance was the chrysalis malady, common to the young. He remained from fifteen to twenty days without moving a muscle; apparently asleep. “ ‘What do you feel like?’ I asked him from time to time. ‘What is the matter, my poor child?’ “ ‘Nothing,’ he replied in a husky voice. ‘Nothing, my good tutor. {190} I cannot move about, and yet feel sensations of life and motion all over me. I am weary, weary, do not talk to me! Keep quiet, do not stir!’