With colored hoods and richly burnished wings,
Are fairy folk, in splendid masquerade
Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid;
Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still,
Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill.
John Clare.
FLOWERS AND INSECTS.
Flowers seem, as it were, to impart a portion of their own characteristics to all things that frequent them. This is peculiarly exemplified in the butterfly, which must be regarded, par excellence, as the insect of flowers, and a flower-like insect, gay and innocent, made after a floral pattern, and colored after floral hues. But even with families which are usually dark and repulsive—that, for instance, of cockroaches, which are for the most part black or brown—the few species which resort to flowers are gayly colored. What a contrast, also, between the dark, loathsome, in-door spiders and their prettily painted green and red, and white and yellow brethren of the fields and gardens, which seek their prey among the flowers; while more striking still is the difference between the wingless, disgusting plague of cities and the elegantly-formed, brightly-colored winged bugs, which are common frequenters of the parterre. Whether this be imputed to the effect of light, or the breathing influence of a flowery atmosphere, and the tendency of all things to produce their similitudes, there lies beneath the natural fact a moral analogy applicable to ourselves.
From “Acheta Domestica.”