Let us suppose we have been so fortunate as to find a Red-admiral, the most gorgeous of British butterflies--often found late in the summer near nettles, because its caterpillar used to like their leaves better than any other. We will look at this beautiful insect and see what it _is_, and then go back in its history and find out what it _was_. It has six feet, and its head bears two horns or feelers ("antennæ," they are called), two large eyes which, when seen under a microscope, seem as if cut like precious stones, and a trunk like that of an elephant, which it can uncurl so as to suck the honey from the very heart of the flowers. Its legs are hairy, and very little used; its body, light and slender. Of the broad, beautifully-marked wings, generally erect when at rest, we need not speak, for it would be impossible to describe them. Now for a page or two in the early history of this brilliant creature. We will go back to the time when it was a tiny egg, laid by the mother Red-admiral shortly before her own death; this egg soon develops into the "larva," or caterpillar--the word, which means a _mask_, expressing that the butterfly that is to be, is thus disguised in its first form. How admirable are God's orderings--the same spring sunbeams which, as it were, waken up the living creature sleeping in the egg deposited by Mrs. Red-admiral, also cause the green things, upon which it will feed so voraciously, to appear! For the little worm is a tremendous eater; it seems to do almost nothing else during its grub existence; but eats and grows, eats and grows; constantly changing its skin for a new one in order to obtain room for itself, while it is laying up a store against the time when it will be unable to take in food. At last it really seems tired of eating, and after it has cast its skin four times, the fifth one becomes thick and hard, and the caterpillar hangs itself by a fine silken thread of its own spinning to a twig, and passes into its second stage--that of the "pupa," or chrysalis, from which it will awaken, a thing of life and beauty, to live in the air instead of crawling. [Illustration: (A) CATERPILLAR; (B) CHRYSALIS.] The name "pupa" or doll, was given to the creature in this stage, because long ago people thought the way in which insects are thus enclosed was somewhat like the way in which the babies used to be wrapped round in bandages or "swaddling clothes": it is also called a "chrysalis," because sometimes dotted with gold or pearly spots. But the wonder of it is that inside that narrow shell lies an insect quite unlike the caterpillar which lay down to rest; a creature with legs and wings beautifully folded, all ready for use when the time for its release has come.