404 SKETCHES OF INSECTS, 



wlio might not have been exactly aware of the process they must 

 pass through before they could become the pretty object they 

 emulated. This very naturally conducts us to a remarkable 

 circumstance in the history and economy of insects — tlieir trans- 

 formations or metamorphoses. 



These metamorphoses, though in reality to be regarded as 

 transitions, or stages of growth and development, are nevertheless 

 sufficiently remarkable to call for minute attention, and in the 

 lepidopterous tribes are very conspicuously pourtrayed. No one 

 could imagine prima facie that a caterpillar adapted only for 

 clinging to or crawling upon a leaf, would ever be able to throw 

 off his green vestment and heavy prolegs, and attired in a totally 

 different manner, fitted for celestial excursions, be addressed with 

 propriety like the dove of Anacreon — 



Winged courier of the sky, 



Whence ? and whither dost thou fly ?'* 



Such an idea would be dismissed as absurd and fabulous, did not 

 experience prove it to be actually correct. But when we atten- 

 tively examine the subject, we cannot but be convinced of the 

 admirable arrangement and wisdom this contrivance displays. 

 Were caterpillars always to remain such, they would become a 

 greater plague than the locusts, or any pest that visited the 

 Egyptians. Vegetation would be destroyed, trees and plants 

 would entirely perish before the scourge perpetually upon them, 

 and no vegetable food would remain for the subsistence of man. 

 Even now, with the present constitution of things, caterpillars 

 occasionally swarm in such immense numbers as to render them, 

 for the time, a great pest; but having completed the allotted 

 period of their existence in the caterpillar state, they become 

 pupae, devoid, in most instances, of apparent life or motion ; 

 they leave the plants they so lately devoured, and soar glittering 

 through the air, the bright-winged butterflies we so justly 

 admire.^ 



* I am quite aware that I am here recapitulating what is now known to every 

 babe in Natural History. Still, in taking a general survey of insects, it was 

 necessary to allude to this remarkable feature in their history — the changes of ex- 

 ternal form, marking the progress of their development. I imagine there must 

 still be numbers in the generation passing away who are imperfectly informed 

 upon these points ; for when I was a schoolboy, I well recollect in searching among 

 the currant trees in my grandmother's garden, I used to find numbers of chrysalises 

 of the Magpie Moth, which, banded with yellow, and moving their apparent tails 

 when touched, alarmed me much, so that I took them for a kind of wasp. In those 

 days, Natural History was never heard of as a branch of knowledge deserving 

 general study, and I left school firmly persuaded that bees might be manufactured 

 after the approved receipt of Virgil. 'Tis true many happy hours in woods and 

 fields have since kindled an enthusiastic fire which I might not have felt had these 

 things been earlier understood, but I have often thought what painfully idle hours 

 in early childhood might have been delightfully filled up, could such works on 

 Natural History as we now daily see have been put into ray hands. The Systema 

 Naturae of Linnaeus now seems but a fragment in comparison of discoveries since 

 made, and how ought future naturalists, with the ample materials they now have 

 before them, to eclipse their predecessors. 



