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.
[Illustration:… "Little butterfly, indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.">[
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.