THE PHŒNIX.
The drama is complete. From the gray or blackish mummy which just now lay before you dried and shrivelled, you see the new creature, the resuscitated, the phœnix, blithely escaping, to shine resplendent in all the glory of youth.
The very reverse of our destiny: commencing with bright and butterfly days, in later life we crawl and languish; while the insect commences with years of gloom, and from a long life of obscurity emerges into the youth in which it dies glorified.
Let us be present at this departure. The warm breath of spring has awakened the plants; its banquet is prepared. More than one flower, awaiting it, secretes its honey. It delays, because to-day that impenetrable envelope which ensured its safety becomes for a moment its obstacle. Enfeebled and fatigued by so great a transformation, how shall it break through the too solid cradle which threatens to suffocate it?
Some species—as, for example, the ants—experience so great a difficulty, that the captive, probably, would never effect its release but for the opportune assistance of some power which, from without, hastens to extricate it, to deliver it (so to speak), and separate it from the trammels of its swaddling-clothes. Fortunate difficulty! which creates the bond between the two ages, attaches the liberator to the child she has delivered, and herself begins its education and society!
But, for the majority of insects, the liberator is no other than Nature. This mother, inexhaustible in tenderness and invention, gives to the little one the key which will open the barrier, pierce the prison, and introduce it to daylight and liberty.