Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/143

dustrious little workmen never rested until their labour was completed. As they grew bigger and needed more accommodation, they enlarged the boundaries of their silken fabric, and sometimes this was almost a daily work. When the weather was very hot, they must have found the inside of the nest uncomfortably warm, for many of them would come out and lie on the outside to sleep, packed in a group together as tightly as they could lie. Then these would go in after they had enjoyed sleeping out for a time, and another party would come out in the same way. When the Caterpillars were fully grown, they were about two inches in length. There were a few of them, about half a dozen, who wore much fatter and bigger than the rest, quite a kind of aldermen in their way. Down each side of the body were a row of small squares filled with a tuft of light-brown hair, the lines forming the squares being bright yellow. Down the middle of the back, between these rows on either side, was a rich purple stripe. Their legs were red. When they were fully grown, they showed signs of wishing to build their cocoons and pass into their "dead-alive" state. At this time they evidently wished to separate; for whenever the box was opened, they rushed out on all sides with tenfold more eagerness than they had over done before. My sister kept them together, however, as the box was amply large enough for them to pass their changes in, and she wished to trace them through the whole. They made for themselves small oval smooth cocoons of rather a hard nature, brown in colour, some rather darker than others. Each had one, and some two, tiny little holes in the side, just like a minute needle-prick; I conclude they were to afford air to the mysterious being within. If this was their purpose, they would show that respiration is carried on by the chrysalis and set at rest one point respecting the life of the insect during this period of entombment. On the 17th July, they began to change. In the following spring (1858) the moths emerged from their living tombs into the glories of the sunlit-world. On March 20th, the first appeared, and the others, upwards of 400 in number, followed closely after. They had beautifully contrived a little door in one end of the cocoon with a hinge of the most perfect workmanship which opened outwards, and, therefore, on being pushed from within, made an outlet for the little prisoner. By about the end of April, the short lives of these little creatures were all ended, the one life of each was gone for ever, their "narrow span." What "blessed toil" filled up each hour of that tiny life we understand not fully, but they did their work and did it bravely, each in that little home, the builder and the soldier and the careful watcher, and many another that was hidden from our view. They worked out their little destiny, and that is the task which is allotted to each of us.

In the course of a recent re-examination of some of the Barbados-deposit slides, I came upon an object not referable to any of the infusorial forms I had ever seen; and on sending it to a friend in Edinburgh of the highest microscopical authority, the answer received was, "It is undoubtedly the scale of some Lepidopterous insect, possibly off the wing of some antediluvian butterly." How did it get among the Polycystins? The first thing was to ascertain from the careful, experienced, and most skilful preparer of the slides, whether he had about him any other material at the time he was manipulating the Barbados earth, from which this scale could have been accidentally brought into the preparation. No; the replies to these inquiries quite confirmed the notion that the scale in question was an integral part of the Barbados deposit. On further examination it appeared to be partially silicified, which, in fact, it must have been, not to be destroyed by the repeated boilings and washings in strong acids and alkalis to which the material had been subjected.

Sir Henry de la Beche says ("Geological Observer," p. 631), in countries, and especially in tropical islands, such as the West Indies, where the off-shore or land winds are at times somewhat strong, multitudes of insects are often borne out to sea, where, though the greater proportion may become the food of marine creatures, some fall in situations to be entombed amid mud, silt, or sand.

In deposits chiefly formed of organic remains, the probable chemical composition of objects introduced amid the accumulations in which they are found should not be neglected. Whole layers may be formed of the harder parts of infusoria; so that when these are siliceous, they, and the spiculæ of many sponges, may serve to diffuse no small amount of silica amid deposits of a different character. Has, then, our little scale been brushed from the wing of some ancient seaward-wafted butterfly, and thus preserved amid the siliceous organic silt of that former sea-bottom, now raised and forming a stratum of dry earth under the hard coral-rock of the Peak of Teneriffe? It is a beautiful object under a high magnifying power; its scolloped end is transparent for a little way down, and then the ear appears a roughened and slightly opaque surface, while down each side is a richly-ornamented border, or binding; and the stalk or peduncle by which it was attached to the