Note 130 — Chapter VII · DESCRIPTION OF THE SILK-WORM, &c.

“See,” exclaims Linnæus, “the large, elegant painted wings of the butterfly, four in number, covered with delicate feathery scales! With these it sustains itself in the air a whole day, rivalling the flight of birds and the brilliancy of the peacock. Consider this insect through the wonderful progress of its life,—how different is the first period of its being from the second, and both from the parent insect! Its changes are an inexplicable enigma to us: we see a green caterpillar, furnished with sixteen feet, feeding upon the leaves of a plant; this is changed into a chrysalis, smooth, of golden lustre, hanging suspended to a fixed point, without feet, and subsisting without food; this insect again undergoes another transformation, acquires wings, and six feet, and becomes a gay butterfly, sporting in the air, and living by suction upon the honey of plants. What has Nature produced more worthy of our admiration than such an animal coming upon the stage of the world, and playing its part there under so many different masks?” The ancients were so struck with the transformations of the butterfly, and its revival from a seeming temporary death, as to have considered it an emblem of the soul, the Greek word psyche signifying both the soul and a butterfly; and it is for this reason that we find the butterfly introduced into their allegorical sculptures as an emblem of immortality. Trifling, therefore, and perhaps contemptible, as to the unthinking may seem the study of a butterfly, yet when we consider the art and mechanism displayed in so minute a structure,—the fluids circulating in vessels so small as almost to escape the sight—the beauty of the wings and covering—and the manner in which each part is adapted for its peculiar functions,—we cannot but be struck with wonder and admiration, and allow, with Paley, that “the production of beauty was as much in the Creator’s mind in painting a butterfly as in giving symmetry to the human form.”