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We will go back to the time when it was a tiny egg, laid by the mother Red-admiral shortly before her own death; this egg soon develops into the "larva," or caterpillar the word, which means a mask, expressing that the butterfly that is to be, is thus disguised in its first form.
When we, by rough handling, brush the bloom off a butterfly's wing, we have really torn away these delicate scales. Let us suppose we have been so fortunate as to find a Red-admiral, the most gorgeous of British butterflies often found late in the summer near nettles, because its caterpillar used to like their leaves better than any other.
It is probable that the rich dark colouring of the under side of our peacock, tortoiseshell, and red-admiral butterflies answers a similar purpose. But the most wonderful and undoubted case of protective resemblance in a butterfly which I have ever seen, is that of the common Indian Kallima inachis, and its Malayan ally, Kallima paralekta.
I used to be set down in the study, under my Father's eye, to learn a solid page of this compilation, while he wrote or painted. The window would be open in summer, and my seat was close to it. Outside, a bee was shaking the clematis-blossom, or a red-admiral butterfly was opening and shutting his wings on the hot concrete of the verandah, or a blackbird was racing across the lawn.
How admirable are God's orderings the same spring sunbeams which, as it were, waken up the living creature sleeping in the egg deposited by Mrs. Red-admiral, also cause the green things, upon which it will feed so voraciously, to appear!
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