Part 36

But are they all dead and gone, those happy winged things that danced up and down in shady nooks, or so lately shone like jewels in the sunshine? Where are the topaz-coloured butterflies that glanced from flower to flower, the emerald tiger-beetles, the ladybirds, and the grasshoppers?

Some of them are indeed dead; their little life, bounded by a few summer days, was soon lived out; they have laid their eggs, making careful provision for the protection and food of the young ones which they will never see--for the eggs of insects will bear the cold which so soon proves fatal to their mothers--and their little hour of work in this busy world is finished; but many more are only very fast asleep. Like the dwarfish Esquimaux, when their long dark winter comes, and they draw their mossy blankets over them, they are taking their winter rest, and lie hidden safely in depths of soft moss, or beneath the bark of some ivy-grown tree, or deep in the lap of Mother Earth herself.

And with many of them, before they wake to life again, such changes will have taken place that they will come forth from their hiding-places like new creatures, fitted to enjoy a new mode of living. It is not difficult to see that this winter-sleep, or torpor, is no wasted time, but a means by which God has ensured the lives of hosts of His creatures which, having no extra clothing to protect them from the frost, and no power of migrating to a land of sunshine and plenty, would otherwise be liable to perish during the long season of cold and dearth.

So when

"Bright yellow, red, and orange, The leaves come down in hosts,"

those insects whose life is in "the herb of the field" have the instinct ("that power," as it has been well explained, "of doing without thinking what we do by thinking") which makes them seek out some safe shelter or quiet hole, and there give themselves up to sleep, awakening only when the time of the singing of birds has come, and all the green things are sprouting and budding, and there is food for them everywhere.

Those who have watched this mysterious slumber, tell us that when it begins the insect is as if benumbed, and will move when touched; but that as the cold increases, the torpor deepens, until the little dormant creature seems no longer to breathe, but lies to all appearance dead, until the warmth of the sun shall break the spell, and call it up to life again.

We are a long time reaching the ant-city, but it would be quite an insult to the Insect-family to give no thought to the most wonderful thing about it--the "transformations" by which many of its six-legged members pass through their three distinct stages of existence; so it will be well to turn over a few pages in the story of the Butterfly, one of the family-branch called Lepidoptera, because its wings are covered with thousands of tiny scales, which enclose the colouring that makes them as softly tinted as the flowers upon the nectar of which it feeds.

When we, by rough handling, brush the bloom off a butterfly's wing, we have really torn away these delicate scales.

Let us suppose we have been so fortunate as to find a Red-admiral, the most gorgeous of British butterflies--often found late in the summer near nettles, because its caterpillar used to like their leaves better than any other.

We will look at this beautiful insect and see what it is, and then go back in its history and find out what it was.

It has six feet, and its head bears two horns or feelers ("antennæ," they are called), two large eyes which, when seen under a microscope, seem as if cut like precious stones, and a trunk like that of an elephant, which it can uncurl so as to suck the honey from the very heart of the flowers. Its legs are hairy, and very little used; its body, light and slender. Of the broad, beautifully-marked wings, generally erect when at rest, we need not speak, for it would be impossible to describe them.

Now for a page or two in the early history of this brilliant creature. We will go back to the time when it was a tiny egg, laid by the mother Red-admiral shortly before her own death; this egg soon develops into the "larva," or caterpillar--the word, which means a mask, expressing that the butterfly that is to be, is thus disguised in its first form.

How admirable are God's orderings--the same spring sunbeams which, as it were, waken up the living creature sleeping in the egg deposited by Mrs. Red-admiral, also cause the green things, upon which it will feed so voraciously, to appear!

For the little worm is a tremendous eater; it seems to do almost nothing else during its grub existence; but eats and grows, eats and grows; constantly changing its skin for a new one in order to obtain room for itself, while it is laying up a store against the time when it will be unable to take in food.

At last it really seems tired of eating, and after it has cast its skin four times, the fifth one becomes thick and hard, and the caterpillar hangs itself by a fine silken thread of its own spinning to a twig, and passes into its second stage--that of the "pupa," or chrysalis, from which it will awaken, a thing of life and beauty, to live in the air instead of crawling.

The name "pupa" or doll, was given to the creature in this stage, because long ago people thought the way in which insects are thus enclosed was somewhat like the way in which the babies used to be wrapped round in bandages or "swaddling clothes": it is also called a "chrysalis," because sometimes dotted with gold or pearly spots. But the wonder of it is that inside that narrow shell lies an insect quite unlike the caterpillar which lay down to rest; a creature with legs and wings beautifully folded, all ready for use when the time for its release has come.

How little we dream, as we watch a caterpillar crawling along a leaf, of what lies hidden beneath its skin! Yet I have read of a naturalist who proved for himself that it was actually so. Having killed a full-grown caterpillar, he let it remain for a minute or two in boiling water, then gently drew off the outer skin, and beheld to his delight "a perfect and real butterfly." But though I tell you of this, I do not wish you to try the experiment, as he warns us that it requires great care, for the limbs of the butterfly are very tender and small, and folded in a very complicated manner. Nor should I advise you to try hatching butterflies like chickens, by enclosing some chrysalides in a glass shaped like an egg, and placing them under a hen, though it has been done successfully!

There seems no doubt that all the while the caterpillar sleeps within its chrysalis, it is being made ready for the new kind of existence it is to enjoy; and just as, while the grub lay dormant in the egg, its food was being prepared, so while the butterfly that is to be sleeps in its dark tomb, the flowers upon which it is to live are slowly unfolding to the light.

And now, what words can describe the wonder of the third chapter of this story of life in its changes? The pupa dies and falls to pieces,

"An inner impulse rends the veil Of his old husk,"

and the butterfly comes forth, a glorious creature, "a living flash of light" whose home is in the sunbeam!

What a change! No wonder that it has so long been looked upon as a parable and type of resurrection, an image of what will come to pass when the Lord Jesus comes, according to that promise which was a comfort to that little girl in the Children's Hospital, for His own--whether they have "fallen asleep in Jesus," or are living on this earth--and all "they that are Christ's at His coming" shall be "changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye."

To both alike the Lord will give a body of glory, "fashioned like unto His glorious body," a body which knows not, weakness or suffering or death--"a spiritual body."

You remember--do you not?--that a type is but a very small and faint picture of the real thing; yet, when you see a butterfly, and think of what it once was and what it has become, let it preach its little sermon to you; say to your own heart, "If that wonderful moment, which is so soon coming, were to come just now, should I be one of those who are Christ's at His coming? Would my body be changed and made like His glorious body? Should I 'be caught up together with them' (those who 'sleep in Jesus') 'in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air,' and so be for ever 'with the Lord'?"

And now as we turn from the wonderful story of the butterfly, in which we may, as has been said, "see the resurrection painted before our eyes," to the busy little ants; let us see that it is the sluggards, the lazy persons, who are especially told to "consider" their ways. To do this we must visit them in their own home, which we shall find in some pine-wood, like the "pincushion-wood," or in some grassy thymy spot, covered with little green tufts. Each of these grassy hillocks is an ant nest, and if you look inside you will find that it contains a great many tiny rooms, connected by galleries. Some of the rooms are hollowed out below the surface of the earth; these are the cellars where the baby-ants are kept warm in cold weather, while in summer they are taken by their watchful nurses to the cool upper storeys.

Now I have read that every ant-city has its wary sentinel, to keep watch and ward, and give warning of the approach of the foe. And when he does give warning there is a great hurry-scurry in the town; young ants, whether in their larva or pupa stage, must be carried down to the cellars for safety, and all the provisions which have been collected and stored with so much care must also be removed to a secure hiding-place. But who is to accomplish all this?

If you notice carefully, you will see that it is a mistake to think of these insects as all of one kind, and you may have heard that they have been divided by those who have studied them, into three classes--males, females, and neuters.