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, creeping, hairy, and feeding upon the leaves of a plant; this is changed into chrysalis, smooth, of a 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 variegated white butterfly, living by suction upon the honey of plants.  What has nature produced more worthy of our admiration?  Such an animal coming upon the stage of the world, and playing its part there under so many different masks!  In the egg of the Papilio, the epidermis or external integument falling off, a caterpillar is disclosed; the second epidermis drying, and being detached, it is a chrysalis; and the third, a butterfly.  It should seem that 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.  This is also confirmed by their allegorical sculptures, in which the butterfly occurs as an emblem of immortality.”  Swammerdam, speaking of the metamorphosis of insects, uses these strong words:  “This process is formed in so remarkable a manner in butterflies, that we see therein the resurrection painted before our eyes, and exemplified so as to be examined by our hands.”  “There is no one,” says Paley, “who does not possess some particular train of thought, to which the mind naturally directs itself, when left entirely to its own operations.  It is certain too, that the choice of this train of thinking may be directed to different ends, and may appear to be more or less judiciously fixed, but in a moral view, if one train of thinking be more desirable than another, it is that which regards phenomena of nature with a constant reference to a supreme intelligent Author.  The works of nature want only to be contemplated.  In every portion of them which we can decry, we find attention bestowed upon the minuter objects.  Every organized natural body, in the provisions which it contains for its sustentation and propagation, testifies a care, on the part of the Creator, expressly directed to these purposes.  We are on all sides surrounded by bodies wonderfully curious, and no less wonderfully diversified.”  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 must feel convinced that the maker of all has bestowed equal skill in every class of animated beings; and also 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.”