One day, into the studio of the painter Gros entered a pupil of his, a handsome and careless young man, who had thought it clever to pin to his hat a beautiful butterfly, which, having just been captured, was still struggling painfully. The artist, indignant, broke out into a violent passion. "What, wretch!" he cried, "is this your feeling for the Beautiful? You find an exquisite creature, and can make no better use of it than to crucify and kill it barbarously! Begone, begone, and return here no more! Never again make your appearance in my presence!" This speech will not surprise those who are acquainted with the great master's vivid sensibility, and his reverence for the Beautiful. What is more astonishing is that an anatomist, a man living with the scalpel always in his hand--Lyonnet--should speak in the same sense, and so speak in reference to insects which are to ordinary observers the least interesting. That able and patient man has opened up, as we know, an entirely new channel for science by his colossal investigation of the willow-grub, from which we learn that the muscular development of the insect is identical with that of the higher animals. Lyonnet congratulates himself that he was able to bring his prolonged labours to a conclusion without killing more than eight or nine individuals of the species he wished to describe. A noble result of study! In fathoming life by this persevering toil, far from growing coldly indifferent, he became more intensely sympathetic. The minute details of the infinitely little had revealed to him the sources of the keen sensibility which Nature has hidden everywhere. He had found it existing at the bottom of the animal scale, and thus he acquired a due reverence for every form of life. We are sometimes disquieted, repelled, and dismayed by insects exactly in proportion to our ignorance. Nevertheless almost every species, especially in our European climates, is perfectly harmless. But we suspect the unknown; and we are apt to kill those with which we are not acquainted, by way of acquiring knowledge.