“How a beginning?” inquired a Butterfly.
“I am alluding to your larval constitution as Caterpillars,” returned the Philosopher. “Your advance upon that humiliating condition is, I admit, remarkable. I only wonder that it should not have proceeded much further. With such capacity for development, it is incomprehensible that you should so long have remained stationary. You ought to be all toads by this time, at the very least.”
“I beg your pardon,” civilly interposed the Butterfly. “To what condition were you pleased to allude?”
“To that of a Caterpillar,” rejoined the Philosopher.
“Caterpillar!” echoed the Butterfly, and “Caterpillar!” tittered all his volatile companions, till the air seemed broken into little silvery waves of fairy laughter. “Caterpillar! he positively thinks we were once Caterpillars! He! he! he!”
“Do you actually mean to say you don’t know that?” responded the Philosopher, scandalised at the irreverence of the insects, but inwardly rejoicing at the prospect of a controversy in which he could not be worsted.
“We know nothing of the sort,” rejoined a Butterfly.
“Can you possibly be plunged into such utter oblivion of your embryonic antecedents?”
“We do not understand you. All we know is that we have always been Butterflies.”
“Sir,” said a large, dull-looking Butterfly with one wing in tatters, crawling from under a cabbage, and limping by reason of the deficiency of several legs, “let me entreat you not to deduce our scientific status from the inconsiderate assertions of the unthinking vulgar. I am proud to assure you that our race comprises many philosophical reasoners—mostly indeed such as have been disabled by accidental injuries from joining in the amusements of the rest. The Origin of our Species has always occupied a distinguished place in their investigations. It has on several occasions engaged the attention of our profoundest thinkers for not less than two consecutive minutes. There is hardly a quadruped on the land, a bird in the air, or a fish in the water to which it has not been ascribed by some one at some time; but never, I am rejoiced to say, has any Butterfly ever dreamed of attributing it to the obnoxious thing to which you have unaccountably made reference.”