"Utilitarians may, perhaps, inquire the uses of butterflies—what they do, make, or can be sold for; and I must confess that my little favourites neither make anything to wear, like the silkworm, nor anything to eat, like the honey-bee, nor are their bodies saleable by the ton, like the cochineal insects, and that, commercially speaking, they are just worth nothing at all, excepting the few paltry pence or shillings that the dealer gets for their little dried bodies occasionally; so they are of no more use than poetry, painting, and music—than flowers, rainbows, and all such unbusinesslike things. In fact, I have nothing to say in the butterfly's favour, except that it is a joy to the deep-minded and to the simple-hearted, to the sage, and, still better, to the child—that it gives an earnest of a better world, not vaguely and generally, as does every "thing of beauty," but with clearest aim and purpose, through one of the most strikingly perfect and beautiful analogies that we can find throughout that vast Creation, where—

 

"All animals are living hieroglyphs."

 

The butterfly, then, in its own progressive stages of caterpillar, chrysalis, and perfect insect, is an emblem of the human soul's progress through earthly life and death, to heavenly life."

-From British Butterflies by W.S. Coleman 1860