262 Metamorphoses of Insects. 



viscus ; and the abdomen is now filled by two large packets of 

 eggs, or other organs not visible in the first state. In the former, 

 two spirally-convoluted tubes w^ere filled with a silky gum ; in the 

 latter, both tubes and silk have almost totally vanished; and 

 changes equally great have taken place in the economy and 

 structure of the nerves and other organs. 



What a surprising transformation ! Nor was this all. The 

 change from one form to the other was not direct. An 

 intermediate state not less sino-ular intervened. After castino; its 

 skin, even to its very jaws, several times, and attaining its full 

 growth, the caterpillar attached itself to a leaf by a silken girth. 

 Its body greatly contracted : its skin once more split asunder, and 

 disclosed an oviform mass, without exterior mouth, eyes, or limbs, 

 and exhibiting no other symptom of life than a slight motion 

 when touched. In this state of deat)i-like torpor, and without 

 tasting food, the insect existed for several months, until at length 

 the tomb burst, and out of a case not more than an inch long, and 

 a quarter of an inch in diameter, proceeded the butterfly before 

 you, which covers a surface of nearly four inches square. 



Almost every insect which you see has undergone a transforma- 

 tion as singular and surprising, though varied in many of its 

 circumstances. That active little fly, now an unbidden guest at 

 your table, * whose delicate palate selects your chociest viands 

 one while extending his proboscis to the margin of a drop of wine, 

 and then gaily flying to take a more solid repast from a pear or 

 a peach ; now gamboling with his comrades in the air, now 

 gracefully currying his furled wings with his taper feet, was but 

 the other day a disgusting grub, without wings, without legs, 

 without eyes, vrallowing, well pleased, in the midst of a mass of 

 excrement. 



The "grey-coated gnat," whose humming salutation, while she 

 makes her airy circles about your bed, gives terrific warning of the 

 sanguinary operation in which she is ready to engage, was a few 

 hours ago the inhabitant of a stagnant pool, more in shape like a 

 fish than an insect. Then to have been taken out of the water 

 would have been speedily fatal ; now it could as little exist in any 

 other element than air. Then it breathed through its tail ; now 

 through openings in its sides. Its shapeless head, in that period 



* " Coenis etiam non vocatus ut Mnsca advolo." Aristophon in Pytha- 

 gorista apud Athenaeum. (Mouffet, 56.) 



