At present nothing of this mesh-work is visible.  Nothing can be seen but a few wrinkles, a few flexuous furrows, which announce that the stumps are bundles of tissue cunningly folded and reduced to the smallest possible volume.

The expansion of the wing begins near the shoulder.  Where nothing precise could be distinguished at the outset we soon perceive a diaphanous surface subdivided into meshes of beautiful precision.

Little by little, with a deliberation that escapes the magnifier, this area increases its bounds, at the expense of the shapeless bundle at the end of the wing.  In vain I let my eyes rest on the spot where the expanding network meets the still shapeless bundle; I can distinguish nothing.  But wait a little, and the fine-meshed tissues will appear with perfect distinctness.

To judge from this first examination, one would guess that an organisable fluid is rapidly congealing into a network of nervures; one seems to be watching a process of crystallisation comparable, in its rapidity, to that of a saturated saline solution as seen through a microscope.  But no; this is not what is actually happening.  Life does not do its work so abruptly.

I detach a half-developed wing and bring it under the powerful eye of the microscope.  This time I am satisfied.  On the confines of the transparent network, where an extension of that network seems to be gradually weaving itself out of nothing, I can see that the meshes are really already in existence.  I can plainly recognise the longitudinal nervures, which are already stiff; and I can also see—­pale, and without relief—­the transverse nervures.  I find them all in the terminal stump, and am able to spread out a few of its folds under the microscope.

It is obvious that the wing is not a tissue in the process of making, through which the procreative energy of the vital juices is shooting its shuttle; it is a tissue already complete.  To be perfect it lacks only expansion and rigidity, just as a piece of lace or linen needs only to be ironed.

In three hours or more the explanation is complete.  The wings and elytra stand erect over the locust’s back like an immense set of sails; at first colourless, then of a tender green, like the freshly expanded wings of the Cigale.  I am amazed at their expanse when I think of the miserable stumps from which they have expanded.  How did so much material contrive to occupy so little space?

There is a story of a grain of hemp-seed that contained all the body-linen of a princess.  Here we have something even more astonishing.  The hemp-seed of the story needed long years to germinate, to multiply, and at last to give the quantity of hemp required for the trousseau of a princess; but the germ of the locust’s wing has expanded to a magnificent sail in a few short hours.