in its normal
position.

We have just seen the insect turn head uppermost. This reversal causes
the wings and elytra to fall into their natural position. Extremely
flexible, and yielding to their own weight, they had previously drooped
backwards with their free extremities pointing towards the head of the
insect as it hung reversed.

Now, still by reason of their own weight, their position is rectified
and they point in the normal direction. They are no longer curved like
the petals of a flower; they no longer point the wrong way; but they
retain the same miserable aspect.

In its perfect state the wing is like a fan. A radiating bundle of
strong nervures runs through it in the direction of its length and forms
the framework of the fan, which is readily furled and unfurled. The
intervals are crossed by innumerable cross-nervures of slighter
substance, which make of the whole a network of rectangular meshes. The
elytrum, which is heavier and much less extensive, repeats this
structure.

At present nothing of this mesh-work is visible. Nothing can be seen but
a few wrinkles, a few flexuous furrows, which announce that the stumps
are bundles of tissue cunningly folded and reduced to the smallest
possible volume.

The expansion of the wing begins near the shoulder. Where nothing
precise could be distinguished at the outset we soon perceive a
diaphanous surface subdivided into meshes of beautiful precision.

Little by little, with a deliberation that escapes the magnifier, this
area increases its bounds, at the expense of the shapeless bundle at the
end of the wing. In vain I let my eyes rest on the spot where the
expanding network meets the still shapeless bundle; I can distinguish
nothing. But wait a little, and the fine-meshed tissues will appear with
perfect distinctness.

To judge from this first examination, one would guess that an
organisable fluid is rapidly congealing into a network of nervures; one
seems to be watching a process of crystallisation comparable, in its
rapidity, to that of a saturated saline solution as seen through a
microscope. But no; this is not what is actually happening. Life does
not do its work so abruptly.

I detach a half-developed wing and bring it under the powerful eye of
the microscope. This time I am satisfied. On the confines of the
transparent network, where an extension of that network seems to be
gradually weaving itself out of nothing, I can see that the meshes are
rea