67 



LETTER III. 



METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS. 



Were a naturalist to announce to the world the discovery of an animal 

 which for the first five years of its life existed in the form of a serpent ; 

 which then penetrating into the earth, and weaving a shroud of pure silk 

 of the finest texture, contracted itself within this covering into a body 

 without external mouth or limbs, and resembling, more than any thing else, 

 an Egyptian mummy ; and which, lastly, after remaining in this state 

 without food and without motion for three years longer, should at the end 

 of that period burst its silken cerements, struggle through its earthy cover- 

 ing, and start into day a winged bird,^what think you would be the 

 sensation excited by this strange piece of intelligence ? After the first 

 doubts of its truth were dispelled, what astonishment would succeed ! 

 Amongst the learned, what surmises ! — what investigations ! Amongst 

 the vulgar, what eager curiosity and amazement ! All would be interested 

 in the history of such an unheard-of phenomenon ; even the most torpid 

 would flock to the sight of such a prodigy. 



But, you ask, " To what do all these improbable suppositions tend ?" 

 Simply to rouse your attention to the metamorphoses of the insect world, 

 almost as strange and surprising, to which I am now about to direct your view, 

 ■ — miracles which, though scarcely surpassed in singularity by all that poets 

 have feigned, and though actually wrought every day beneath our eyes, 

 are, because of their commonness, and the minuteness of the objects, un- 

 heeded alike by the ignorant and the learned. 



The butterfly which amuses you with his aerial excursions, one while 

 extracting nectar from the tube of the honeysuckle, and then, the very 

 image of fickleness, flying to a rose as if to contrast the hue of its wings 

 with that of the flower on which it reposes, did not come into the world as 

 you now behold it. At its first exclusion from the egg, and for some 

 months of its existence afterwards, it was a worm-like caterpillar, crawl- 

 ing upon sixteen short legs, greedily devouring leaves with two jaws, and 

 seeing by means of twelve eyes so minute as to be nearly imperceptible 

 without the aid of a microscope. You now view it furnished with wings 

 capable of rapid and extensive flights : of its sixteen feet ten have disap- 

 peared, and the remaining six are in most respects wholly unlike those to 

 which they have succeeded ; its jaws have vanished, and are replaced by 

 a curled-up proboscis suited only for sipping liquid sweets ; the form of its 

 head is entirely changed, — two long horns project from its upper surface ; 

 and, instead of twelve invisible eyes, you behold two, very large, and 

 composed of at least seventeen thousand convex lenses, each supposed to 

 be a distinct and effective eye ! 



Were you to push your examination further, and by dissection to com- 

 pare the internal conformation of the caterpillar with that of the butterfly, 



