It is the powerful inspirer of infinite swarms of those chilly creatures which seek before all things, as soon as they are born, the means of covering themselves. They are not in want of food; nature has everywhere prepared for them an ample banquet. All the vegetable kingdom, and a great part of the animal, are at their disposal; they might live tender and indolent, as the child sleeps at its ease on the maternal placenta which nourishes its slothfulness. But the cold irritates them; the cold damp air deadens and paralyzes their entrails; finally, the light wounds them. They can enjoy no repose until they have secured a shelter. In the lowest grade of life the smallest grub becomes an artist, and by weaving, and spinning, and carving has soon contrived a robe, and, as with a second skin over her too sensitive epidermis, has covered her suffering nakedness. Happy she who finds herself placed at the outset on a prepared soil, a cloth of warm wool, a fine fur: she does not fail to make in hot haste, according to our human fashion, a pretty paletot fitted to her figure; which, nevertheless, she leaves a little loose, like economical mothers for their young growing children, in whose case the garb too large to-day will be tight and well-fitting to-morrow. Those who on their birth come in contact with chill green leaves, and their lustrous glaze, are still more industrious. They practise arts which astonish the observer. Some raise enormous masses with imperceptible cables, and by mechanical processes analogous to those which were employed in removing and rearing the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde. Others cut out figures purposedly irregular, which the seam afterwards fits into its harmonious _ensemble_. Every industrial corporation may be found represented in this little world: tailors, weavers, felters, spinners, miners, and the like. And in each corporation you meet with species working each after its peculiar fashion, by the various processes appropriate to it. The tailors work from a pattern. They mark out on the leaf a suitable piece; which they remove, and lay upon another leaf; tack it, cut out a second on the first model, and stitch them together. This done, with their scaly head they flatten the ribs, just as the tailor smooths down the seams with his iron. Then they line this coat, which they carry about with them, with the very finest silk. Others work in mosaic, others in marquetry and veneering. After having woven the robe, they disguise it by artistically gluing to it a variety of surrounding materials. The aquatic insects, for example, embellish theirs with moss, lentils, mussels, or little snails. The miners erect galleries between a couple of leaves, and roam about in them, constructing places of exit and ingress in their subterranean abodes.