Metamorphoses of Insects. 263 



of its existence, is now changed for one adorned with elegantly 

 tufted antennae, and furnislied, instead of jaws, with an apparatus 

 more artfully constructed than the cupping-glasses of the 

 phlebotomist, — an apparatus which, at the same time that it 

 strikes in the lancets, composes a tube for pumping up the flowing 

 blood. 



The " shard-born beetle," whose " sullen horn," as he directs 

 his " droning flight" close past your ears in your evening walk, 

 calling up in poetic association the lines in which he has been 

 alluded to by Shakspeare, Collins, and Gray, was not in his 

 infancy an inhabitant of air, the first period of his life being spent 

 in gloomy solitude, as a grub, under the surface of the earth. The 

 shapeless maggot which you scarcely fail to meet with in some 

 one of every handful of nuts you crack, would not always have 

 grovelled in that humble state. If your unlucky intrusion upon 

 its vaulted dwelling had not left it to perish in the wide world, it 

 would have continued to reside there until its full growth had 

 been attained. Then it would have gnawed itself an opening, 

 and, having entered the earth, and passed a few months in a state 

 of inaction, would at length have emerged an elegant beetle, 

 furnished with a slender and very long ebony beak, two wings, 

 and two wing-cases, ornamented with yellow bands, six feet, 

 and in every respect unlike the worm from which it proceeded. 



That bee but it is needless to multiply instances, a 



suiBcient number has been adduced to show that the apparently 

 extravagant supposition with which I set out may be paralleled in 

 the insect world ; and that the metamorphoses of its inhabitants 

 are scarcely less astonishing than would be the transformation of 

 a serpent into an eagle. 



These changes I do not purpose explaining minutely in this 

 place : they will be adverted to more fully in subsequent letters. 

 Here I mean merely to give you such a general view of the 

 subject as shall impress you with its claims to attention, and such 

 an explanation of the states through which insects pass, and of the 

 different terms made use of to designate them in each, as shall 

 enable you to comprehend the frequent allusions which must be 

 made to them in our future correspondence. 



The states through which insects pass are four : the ^^y, the 

 larva, the pupa, and the imago. 



The first of these need not be here adverted to. In the second^ 

 or immediately after the exclusion from the egg, they are soft, 



