the Butterfly; in zoology, a genus of insects belonging to the order of lepidoptera. It has four wings, imbricated with a kind of downy scales; the tongue is convoluted in a spiral form; and the body is hairy. There are 273 species, principally distinguished by the colour of their wings.

The world is well acquainted with the beauties of this part of the animal-creation; but Mr Reaumur has given accounts of some very singular species, which deserve a peculiar regard.

One species of these he has called the bundle of dry leaves. This, when it is in a state of rest, has wholly the appearance of a little cluster of the decayed leaves of some herb. The position and colour of its wings Papilio, greatly favour this resemblance, and they have very large ribs; wholly like those of the leaves of plants, and are indented in the same manner at their edges as the leaves of many plants are. This seems to point out the care of nature for the animal, and frequently may preserve it from birds, &c.

The skull butterfly is another singular species, so called from its head resembling, in some degree, a death's head, or human skull. This very remarkable appearance is terrible to many people; but it has another yet greater singularity attending it, which is, that, when frightened, it has a mournful and harsh voice. This appeared the more surprising to Mr Reaumur, as no other known butterfly had any the least voice at all; and he was not ready of belief that it was a real voice, but suspected the noise, like that of the cicada, to be owing to the attrition of some part of the body; and, in fine, he, by great pains, discovered that this noise was not truly vocal, but was made by a hard and brisk rubbing of the trunk against two other hard bodies between which it is placed.

Another butterfly there is, so small that it might be mistaken for a small fly. This is certainly the extreme in degree of size of all the known butterflies, and cannot but have been proportionally small in the state of a caterpillar and chrysalis: this creature spends its whole life in all the three stages of caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly, on the leaf of the celandine. It lives on the under side of the leaf; and though in the caterpillar state it feeds on it, yet it does no damage. It does not eat the substance of the leaf, but draws from it only a fine juice, which is soon repaired again, without occasioning any change in the appearance of the leaf. This species is very short-lived; and passes through its three states in so short a time, that there are frequently ten generations of it in one year; whereas, in all the other butterflies, two generations in the year are all that are to be had. These two generations are sufficient to make a prodigious increase: in a large garden, if there are twenty caterpillars in spring, these may be overlooked, and there may be easily concluded to be none there, even on a narrow search; but if these twenty caterpillars afterwards become twenty butterflies, ten of which are male and ten female, and each female lay the same number of eggs that the common silk-worm does, that is, four hundred; if all the caterpillars hatched of these become butterflies, and these lay eggs in the same proportion, which remain the winter, and come to be hatched in the succeeding spring; then from these twenty, in only one year, you will have eight hundred thousand; and if we add to this the increase of these in a succeeding year, the account must appear terrible, and such as no art could guard against. The great ruler of the world has put so many hindrances in the way of this over-abundant production, that it is very rare such years of destruction happen. Some such have happened, however; and much mischief has been dreaded from them, not only from their eating all the herbage, but from themselves being eaten with herbs in salads and otherwise: but experiments have proven this an erroneous opinion, and they are found to be innocent, and eatable as snails or oysters.