72 METAMORPHOSES. 



work on insects, " that if animals are transmuted so may metals^," it was 

 not, in fact, with his limited knowledge on these subjects, so very prepos- 

 terous. It is even possible that some of the wonderful tales of the an- 

 cients were grafted on the changes which they observed to take place in 

 insects. The death and revivification of the phoenix, from the ashes of 

 which, before attaining its perfect state, arose first a worm (axoulrjS), in 

 many of its particulars resembles what occurs in the metamorphoses of in- 

 sects. Nor is it very unlikely that the doctrine of the metempsychosis took 

 its rise from the same source. What argument would be thought by those 

 who maintained this doctrine more plausible, in favor of the transmigration of 

 souls, than the seeming revivification of the dead chrysalis ? What more 

 probable, than that its apparent re-assumption of life should be owing to 

 its receiving for tenant the soul of some criminal doomed to animate an 

 insect of similar habits with those which had defiled his human tenement r^ 

 At the present day, however, the transformations of insects have lost 

 that excess of the marvelous, which might once have furnished arguments 

 for the fictions of the ancients, and the dreams of Paracelsus. We call 

 them metamorphoses and transformations, because these terms are in 

 common use, and are more expressive of the sudden changes that ensue 

 than any new ones. But, strictly, they ought rather to be termed a 

 series of developments. A caterpillar is not, in fact, a simple but a com- 

 pound animal, containing within it the germ of the future butterfly, enclos- 

 ed in what will be the case of the pupa, which is itself included in the 

 three or more skins, one over the other, that will successively cover the 

 larva. As this increases in size these parts expand, present themselves, 

 and are in turn thrown off, until at length the perfect insect, which had 

 been concealed in this succession of masks, is displayed in its genuine 

 form. That this is the proper explanation of the phenomenon has been 

 satisfactorily proved by Swammerdam, Malpighi, and other anatomists. 

 The first-mentioned illustrious naturalist discovered, by accurate dissec- 

 tions, not only the skins of the larva and of the pupa encased in each 

 other, but within them the very butterfly itself, with its organs indeed in 

 an almost fluid state, but still perfect in all its parts.^ Of this fact you 

 may convince yourself without Swammerdam's skill by plunging into vine- 

 gar or spirit of wine a caterpillar about to assume the pupa state, and 

 letting it remain there a few days for the purpose of giving consistency to 

 its parts ; or by boiling it in water for a few minutes. A very rough 

 dissection will then enable you to detect the future butterfly ; and you 

 will find that the wings, rolled up into a sort of cord, are lodged between 

 the first and second segment of the caterpillar ; that the antennae and 

 trunk are coiled up in front of the head ; and that the legs, however diffe- 

 rent their form, are actually sheathed in its legs. Malpighi discovered the 

 eggs of the future moth, in the chrysalis of a silkworm only a few days 

 old^, and Reaumur those of another moth (Hypogymna dispar) even in 

 the caterpillar, and that seven or eight days before its change into the 



^ Epist. Dedicat. 



* " A priest who has drunk wine shall migrate into a moth or fly, feeding oa ordure. He 

 who steals the gold of a priest shall pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders. If 

 a man shall steal honey, he shall be born a great stinging gnat; if oil, an oil-drinking 

 beetle ; if salt, a cicada ; if a household utensil, an ichneumon fly." Institutes of Menu, 353. 



3 Hill's Swamm. ii. 24. t. 37. f. 2. 4. * De Bombyct, 29. 



