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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 methodical classifier, who works in cemeteries and seems to fly the living cities, keeps the two families far removed from each other because of considerations and attaching to the nervures of the wings and the joints of the palpi. At the risk of passing for a heretic, I bring them together at the suggestion of the menu-card.

This is a small dry, white membrane, oval in shape, convex on the outer side, and crossed along its larger diameter by a bundle of three or four brown nervures, which give it elasticity. Its entire circumference is rigidly fixed.

It is, as before, a dry white scale, convex on the outside, and crossed by a bundle of fine reddish-brown nervures. From the forward side of the first segment of the abdomen project two short, wide, tongue-shaped projections, the free extremities of which rest on the cymbals.

The left or lower wing-cover is of similar structure, with the difference that the bow, the callosity, and the nervures occupy the upper face. It will be found that the two bows that is, the toothed or indented nervures cross one another obliquely. When the note has its full volume, the wing-covers are well raised above the body like a wide gauzy sail, only touching along the internal edges.

If the wings of a butterfly be pressed upon a surface of card-board covered with gum-water to the extent of their own outlines, and be left there until the gum-water is dry, the outer layer of scales may be rubbed off with a handkerchief, and the double membranes and intervening nervures may be picked away piecemeal with a needle's point, and there will remain upon the card a most beautiful representation of the other surface of the wings, its scales being all preserved by the gum in their natural positions.

The two bows, the toothed nervures, engage obliquely one with the other, and their mutual friction causes the sonorous vibration of the two stretched membranes. The sound can be modified accordingly as the strokes of each bow bear upon the callosity, which is itself serrated or wrinkled, or on one of the four smooth radiating nervures.

Bernadette alone struggled on to the finish, so pleased she was at being there, in that narrow nave whose slender nervures were coloured blue and red. At the farther end was the altar, also painted and gilded, with its twisted columns and its screens on which appeared the Virgin and Ste. Anne, and the beheading of St. John the Baptist the whole of a gaudy and somewhat barbaric splendour.

But the simplicity is only apparent, for the mould in its turn must somewhere derive the requisite and inextricable complexity. We need not go so far back; we should only be in darkness. Let us keep to the observable facts. I examine with a magnifying-glass one of the triangular coat-tails of a larva on the point of transformation. I see a bundle of moderately strong nervures radiating fan-wise.

It is almost flat on the back, but suddenly folds over at the side, the turn being almost at right angles. This lateral fold encloses the flank of the abdomen and is covered with fine oblique and parallel nervures.