CONTENTS.

species (Agrion), rests upon a hedge while discussing its cannibal
repast, a captured gnat. Hovering just above is the Dragon-Fly's
enemy, and sometimes conqueror, the Scorpion-Fly (Panorpa), so called
from the appendage to its tail. To its left appears the graceful Lacewing
(Hemerobius), green and golden-eyed; the rose-leaf to the right, below,
being occupied by a grub, or larva (magnified), of the same carnivorous
insect busy in its usual occupation of destroying Aphides

"Tremble on the approach of your arch-destroyer."

A trembling "White" of the garden about to fall into the embrace (to
Butterflies always fatal) of a great Green Dragon-Fly

XV

272

283

33. RESEMBLANCE AND RELATION.

The mimicry of vegetable by animal forms is here illustrated by figures of
some looping caterpillars, termed “Walking branches," and by that of
a moth, the Oak Lappet (Gastropacha quercifolia), likened to a Walking
Leaf. Above the latter, fixed motionless to a branch of hawthorn,
which it closely simulates, is the caterpillar of the Brimstone Moth
(Rumia crategata)), the moth itself appearing in flight above. On the
left, another stick caterpillar-that of the Swallow-tail Moth (Ourap-
terix sambucaria), is attached to a branch of elder, of which it affords
a close copy in form, colour, and markings. A second specimen of the
same in its walking position forms an arch upon the branch below. . 284

"Queer creatures! neither grass nor grasshoppers."

Museum visiters, lost in astonishment at the vegetable-seeming insect spe-
cimens from India and China, the leaf-like, and its relative, the
stalk-like Mantis

34. MOTHS AS IDLERS.

.301

The Moths in this group are of those not figured in the frontispiece. That
in the foreground, beneath the white convolvulus, is the common
'Tiger" (Arctia caja); the smaller insect above, is the Humming-
Bird Sphynx (Macroglossa stellatarum), uncoiling its tongue for
insertion into the flower. The large one to the left, the Lime-Hawk
(Smerinthus Tilia). Above, in upward flight, is the elegant "White

xvi

CONTENTS.

Plume" (Pterophorus pentadactylus); next, beneath it, is the little
'Clearwing" (Egeria tipuliformis); and, below this, a Vapourer'
(Orgyia antiqua), of which the nearly wingless female occupies, still
lower, a branch of hawthorn supporting also the cocoon, which she
employs as a bed for the reception of her eggs

302

A trio of Moths drinking deeply of honied wine, out of a flower flagon

326

THE LADY-BIRD OF OUR CHILDHOOD.

"Give me leave

To eat my fill, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul surface of the infected leaf."

MANY who exterminate Spiders as a matter of merit, crush Earwigs without remorse, and hold Black-Beetles in abhorrence, look with involuntary kindness on the little Red-Beetle, styled a Lady-bird. For this especial favour she stands indebted partly to her pretty spotted gown, and partly to her being associated with the earliest recollections of our childhood. A word or two, en passant, on Nursery Rhymes, on that one at least which is pertinent to our subject.

"Lady-bird! Lady-bird! fly away home,

Your house is on fire and your children alone!"

Now, in reality, instead of flying to the rescue of her own innocents, her business is most probably to murder and devour a score of other innocents, clustered together on a hop or rose-leaf; or, in other words, to make a luscious meal of Aphides or Honey-dew Insects, of whom her Lady-birdship is exceedingly fond-fond as a wolf of a flock of sheep.

So stands the fact; and the nursery fiction may, perhaps, in these matter-of-fact times, be impugned for giving a notion purely imaginary concerning the Lady-bird's "house" and her "children," and her probable course and business when released from her captor's grasp. Yet, what matters it? The simple couplet may implant a wrong notion, but that is soon corrected; and it may implant, also, a right feeling likely to abide. It urges to humanity at the expense of selfishness; to set at liberty the pretty prisoner, of which the childish captor is so proud, that it may go to the rescue of its distressed little ones. Such, at least, is the spirit in which we imagine this address to the Lady-bird to have been originally dictated to some little child long since grown grey and mouldered into earth.

The Lady-bird, or Coccinella, has many claims upon our kindness in addition to those which it possesses as the favourite of our childhood. Of our manhood it is also the useful friend, however little we may so regard it; and it is, par excellence, a friend in all weathers. It greets us in early spring, enjoys the summer with us, stays by us through the fall of the leaf, and

even in mid-winter often emerges from its hybernal retreat, as if on purpose to remind us of more cheerful seasons, past and to come. Perhaps, on account of its hardihood,—an endowment for which it is no doubt in some measure indebted to its highly varnished covering,—the Lady-bird has acquired amongst our catholic neighbours the appellations of Vache à Dieu and Bête de la Vierge, as though it were a creature especially favoured by providential care. These names, however, are somewhat more applicable if the insect be regarded as one of those little, but not unimportant agents, whereby the kind Creator is accustomed to confer benefits; and that for such we are indebted to the Coccinella is a fact with which every gardener,-every one at least who knows how to distinguish between friend and foe,-is practically acquainted. He sees his rose trees and honeysuckles and other favourites of his care, laden with blight insects (the Aphides, or Plant-lice, whose history we need not now repeat), and on finding their multitudes gradually thinned, he knows that he is mainly indebted for their riddance to exterminating Ladybirds, which, aided by two or three allies, confer on the hopgrower a similar benefit.

By entomologists the Lady-bird is regarded as a beautiful example of his favourite order of Beetles (Coleoptera), and when the pencil of nature furnishes him with a rare or newly coloured variety, he looks upon it as a prize. It was the striking prettiness of a black and yellow Lady-bird, added to