“Tell me,” demanded the Count, “has the insect creation, to which your studies have been peculiarly addressed, furnished you with facts as curious as those for which I am indebted to my Picciola?”
“So curious,” replied Girardi, “that you will not fully appreciate even the marvels of Picciola till you have become acquainted with the hosts of animated beings which hover over her verdant branches. You will then learn to admire the secret laws which connect the plant with the insect, the insect with the plant; and perceive that ‘order is Heaven’s first law,’ and that one vast intelligence influences the whole creation.”
Girardi was proceeding to enlarge upon the harmony of the universe, when, pausing suddenly, he pointed out to his companion a brilliant and beautiful butterfly, poised on one of the twigs of his plant, with a peculiar quivering of the wings. “See!” cried he, “Picciola hastens to expound my theory! An engagement has just been contracted between her and yonder insect, which is now consigning its posterity to her guardianship.”
And when the butterfly flew away, Charney verified the assertion by examining a little group of eggs, attached by a viscous substance to the bark.
“Do you imagine,” inquired Girardi, “that it is by chance the butterfly has proceeded hither, to intrust to Picciola this precious deposit? On the contrary, Nature has assigned to every plant analogies with certain insects. Every plant has its insect to lodge, its insect to feed. Admire the long chain of connexion between them! This butterfly, when a caterpillar, was nourished on the substance of a plant of the same species as Picciola; and after undergoing its appointed transformations, and becoming a butterfly, it fluttered faithless from flower to flower, sipping the sweets of a thousand different nectaries. But no sooner did the moment of maturity arrive for a creature that never beheld its mother, and will never behold its children (for its task fulfilled, it is now about to die), than, by an instinct surer than the best lessons of experience, it flew hither to deposit its progeny on a plant similar to that by which, under a different form and in a different season, it was fed and protected. Instinctively conscious that little caterpillars will emerge from its eggs, it forgets, for their sake, the habits it has acquired as a butterfly!
“Who taught her all this? Who endowed her with memory, powers of reasoning, and recognising the peculiarities of a vegetable, whose present foliage bears no resemblance to that which it bore during the spring? The most experienced botanist is often mistaken—the insect, never!”
Charney involuntarily testified his surprise.
“You have still more to learn,” interrupted Girardi. “Examine the branch selected by the insect. It is one of the largest and strongest on the tree; not one of the new shoots, likely to be decayed by frost during the winter, or broken by the wind. All this has been foreseen by the insect. Whence did it derive such prescience?”