Copyright by The Century Co.
TIGER SWALLOWTAIL
Copyright by The Century Co.
LARQUIN’S ADMIRAL
Butterflies possess a remarkably perfect organization, which includes the possession of senses and a considerable measure of intelligence, when we consider the relative lowliness of their station in the scale of being. Butterflies can see. They have, as all insects have, compound eyes, made up of a number of facets, so that they can look upward, downward, forward, and backward all at the same time. Their antennæ (or feelers, as they are sometimes erroneously called) are most probably organs for smelling. Their organs for hearing, if they have any, are located upon their legs, as they are in the grasshoppers and other insects. But butterflies do not appear to be talkative, as the grasshoppers and crickets are; though some species can make curious clicking sounds, as some moths can make squeaking sounds. That they can taste is more than likely. Connected with the proboscis of butterflies, through which they suck the honey of flowers, there are, no doubt, gustatory nerves. Their brains, if the nerve-knot in the head can be so called, are not very large; but their instincts in some respects are marvelous. What, for instance, could be more wonderful than the manner in which the female butterfly, without having received a botanical education, infallibly selects the right plant upon which to lay her eggs, so that her progeny, which she never lives to see, may obtain proper nourishment? Nobody ever saw a female Swallowtail lay her eggs upon pine or clover; nobody ever saw a Cabbage butterfly lay her eggs upon other than a cruciferous plant,—either a cabbage, or one of its cousins, as plant relationships go.
WONDERS OF TRANSFORMATION
One of the most wonderful things in the world of life is the manner in which insects and butterflies, and moths in particular, undergo transformation, passing from the egg into the caterpillar, then changing into the chrysalis, and finally emerging as the winged insect, fluttering among the flowers.
The eggs of butterflies are beautiful objects when examined under a microscope. Some are shaped like spheres, some like cones, some like spindles, others like turbans. They are fluted, ribbed, pitted, sculptured, in a multitude of ways. In color they are as various as the eggs of birds. Figure 3 shows the egg of the Viceroy (Basilarchia disippus), one of the Admirals belonging to the same group of insects as those which are figured on one of the plates of “The Butterfly Book,” reproduced with this article. Figure 4 shows the egg of the Monarch, or common “Milkweed butterfly” (Anosia plexippus), which the Viceroy mimics in the color and markings of its wings.