Before we leave the subject of the wings, it must be mentioned that there are some insects which have none. The cut represents a beetle of this class.
If the reader will now take a peep into one of the nurse-boxes in which he may have been rearing butterflies from the pupæ, presuming that several of them have ere this burst from their cases, and are fluttering about anxious for liberty, he will generally detect upon the bottom or sides of the box one or two marks of a somewhat reddish colour; sometimes, indeed, they are very red. These spots are produced by the insect, which, on its emergence from the pupa, generally deposits a drop of fluid from its intestines. Almost all insects perform the same action at this period; but we may well remark with Réaumur, it could scarcely have been supposed, that the excrements of a butterfly should ever have filled the minds of a whole population with terror. Such has, however, been the case, and may, perhaps, yet be in districts where ignorance and superstition close the minds of the inhabitants against the truths of entomology. "Historians," says Réaumur, "tell us of showers of blood, as having been the cause of terror to nations, and considered as prophetic of fearful events, of the destruction of cities, and revolutions of kingdoms. At the beginning of the month of July, in the year 1608, one of these showers of blood was said to have fallen in the suburbs of Aix, and for some miles around. It turned out that the supposed drops of blood were in reality drops deposited by the butterflies. It is not improbable that other showers of blood recorded by historians, and taking place about the same period of the year, might be accounted for in the same natural and simple manner. Gregory of Tours relates that in the time of Childebert a shower of blood fell in different places in Paris, and particularly in a certain house situated in the territory of Senlis. Another was said to have fallen toward the end of June, in the reign of King Robert. In the year 1533, we are told by another author, a prodigious multitude of butterflies appeared throughout a great portion of Germany, sprinkling plants, leaves, buildings, clothes, and men, with bloody drops, as if it had rained blood."