So when
"Bright yellow, red, and orange,
The leaves come down in hosts,"
those insects whose life is in "the herb of the field" have the instinct
("that power," as it has been well explained, "of doing without thinking
what _we_ do by thinking") which makes them seek out some safe shelter or
quiet hole, and there give themselves up to sleep, awakening only when
the time of the singing of birds has come, and all the green things are
sprouting and budding, and there is food for them everywhere.
Those who have watched this mysterious slumber, tell us that when it begins
the insect is as if benumbed, and will move when touched; but that as the
cold increases, the torpor deepens, until the little dormant creature seems
no longer to breathe, but lies to all appearance dead, until the warmth of
the sun shall break the spell, and call it up to life again.
We are a long time reaching the ant-city, but it would be quite an insult
to the Insect-family to give no thought to the most wonderful thing about
it--the "transformations" by which many of its six-legged members pass
through their three distinct stages of existence; so it will be well
to turn over a few pages in the story of the Butterfly, one of the
family-branch called Lepidoptera, because its wings are covered with
thousands of tiny scales, which enclose the colouring that makes them as
softly tinted as the flowers upon the nectar of which it feeds.
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