The knowledge of the _Fulgora lanternaria_ has been spread and popularised in Europe by a celebrated book, which has for its title, "Métamorphoses des Insectes de Surinam." This book, which contains the result of patient study of the natural history of Dutch Guyana (Government of Surinam), was written and published in three languages, by a woman whose name this work has rendered immortal--Mlle. Sybille de Mérian--and who won the admiration and respect of her contemporaries by her love of the beauties of Nature, and her perseverance in making them known and admired. Sybille de Mérian was born at Bâle. Daughter, sister, and mother of celebrated engravers, herself an excellent flower-painter, she had worked a long time at Frankfort and at Nuremburg; and had read with the greatest attention the "Théologie des Insectes,"[25] and with admiration Malpighi's book on the silkworm. Full of enthusiasm for the study of natural history, she left Germany, to visit the magnificent collection of plants which were kept in the hot-houses of Holland, and made admirable reproductions of them with her pencil. [25] "Théologie des Insectes, ou Démonstration des Perfections de Dieu dans tout ce qui concerne les Insectes, par Lesser, traduit en Français." La Haye, 1742. [Illustration: Fig. 83.--Lantern Fly (_Fulgora lanternaria_).] This attentive study of the vegetable world suggested to her the idea, which soon became an ardent desire, of observing these marvels of Nature in those parts of the globe in which they display themselves with the greatest magnificence and splendour. At the age of fifty-four, Sybille de Mérian set out for equatorial America. From the very first days of her arrival she hazarded her life, sometimes without a guide, in the swampy plains or burning valleys of Guyana. During the two years she sojourned in those dangerous parts, she made a large collection of drawings and paintings, which were destined to inaugurate in Europe the introduction of art into natural history. In the plates to her work, Sybille de Mérian represents always the insects she wishes to describe under its three forms of larva, pupa, and perfect insect. With this drawing she gives another of the plants which serves the insect for food, as also of the animals which prey on it. Each plate is a little drama. Near the insect is seen the greedy lizard opening its dreadful mouth, or the ferocious spider watching for it. The short life of insects is shown here in its entirety, with its continual struggles, its infinite artifices, its rapid end, and all the episodes of its existence, for which life, as in the case of the moral man, is but a long and painful struggle.