two ornamented and one plain--go to form a filmy body, only a
small fraction of the thickness of paper.

But there are other portions of a butterfly to claim our interest besides
its wondrous wings.

On the creature's head are grouped together some most beautiful and
important organs. The most peculiar of these is the long spiral "sucker,"
which extracts the honied food from the blossoms to which its wings so
gracefully waft it. This organ is shown, slightly magnified, at fig. 8,
Plate II., and a most delicate piece of animal mechanism it is. Any human
workman would, to a certainty, be not only puzzled, but thoroughly beaten,
in an attempt to construct a tube little thicker than a horse-hair, yet
composed throughout its length of two distinct pieces, capable of being
separated at pleasure, and then joined again so as to form an air-tight
tube. This redoubtable problem, however, is solved in the construction of
this curious little instrument that every butterfly carries.

The junction of the two grooved surfaces that form the tube is effected by
the same contrivance that reunites the web of a feather when it has been
pulled apart. We all know how completely it is made whole again, and on
examining by what means this result is brought about, we find that it is by
the interlacing of a {26} number of small fibres or hairs, just as, on a
larger scale, a pair of brushes adhere when pressed face to face; and so in
the butterfly's sucker, the two edges that join to form the tube are
closely set with minute bristles that, when brought together, interlock so
closely as to make an air-tight surface.

Fig. 9, Plate II., is a transverse section taken near the base of the
sucker, the small opening at the top being the food passage, those at the
side the air-tubes that supply air for respiration and perhaps assist in
suction.

The tube is probably made with separable parts in order that if its
interior should become at any time clogged by grosser particles drawn up
with the flower nectar, it may be opened and cleansed by the insect;
otherwise, the tube once rendered impassable, the insect would speedily
starve, as this narrow channel is the only inlet for the creature's
nourishment--its only mouth, in fact, for no butterfly possesses jaws to
bite with, or can take any but the liquid food pumped up by suction through
this pipe.

At the end of the proboscis--or, as it is called scientifically, the
Haustellum[3]--there are visible