At last our prisoner has come out of its narrow cell, and is delivered from its old covering. What poet can describe to us the sensations of this charming and frail creature which has just risen from the tomb, and for the first time is enjoying the splendid light of day, the radiant sky, and the flowers redolent with delicious perfumes, which are inviting it to kiss and caress them! The wings strike one most. They are very small at the time of birth. [Illustration: Fig. 129.--Moth just emerged.] [Illustration: Fig. 130.--Moth whose wings are folded up.] Fig. 129 represents, after Réaumur,[44] a moth at the moment in which it has just emerged from the pupa. But at the end of a short period the wings become developed; only they are wrinkled, as Fig. 130, given by Réaumur, represents. [44] Tome i., p. 654, planche 46, Fig. 1. Réaumur having taken between his fingers a very short wing of a butterfly which was just hatched, drew it about gently in all directions. He succeeded thus in giving it the whole extent it would have assumed naturally. According to Réaumur the wing of a butterfly just born, which appears so small, is really already provided with all its parts, only it is folded and re-folded on itself. He supposes that what his hands did to lengthen the butterfly's wings, is done naturally by the liquids which are contained in the insect which has just emerged, and whose wings are no longer confined in their cases. At the time of its birth the wings are flat and thick; as they grow, little by little they spread themselves out and become curled up. When they are completely developed and flattened the wings become firm and hard imperceptibly, and this firmness extends at the same time to the whole of the body. [Illustration: Fig. 131.--Moth whose wings are developing.] [Illustration: Fig. 132.--Moth whose wings are developed.] Figs. 131 and 132, borrowed, like the preceding, from the 14th Memoir of Réaumur (_sur la transformation des chrysalides en papillons_), show the states through which the wings of the same moth pass, before they are thoroughly developed. Those pupæ enclosed in cocoons free themselves entirely or in part from their old skin, in the shell itself; but the imago is still a prisoner. It has broken through a first enclosure; it must open itself a way through the second. How does it manage to bore through the often very solid walls of this second prison, so as to regain its liberty? Réaumur states that in the Lackey Moth (_Bombyx neustria_) the head is the only instrument of which the insect makes use in opening a passage, the compound eyes then acting like files. These files cut the very fine threads of which the cocoon is composed, and as soon as the end of the cocoon is pierced through, the insect uses its thorax like a wedge, to enlarge the hole. It very soon manages to get its two front legs out, fixes itself by them on to the outside, and little by little emerges from its prison. THE PERFECT INSECT.