342 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



an hour, no longer visible, and the insect becomes 

 fitted for flight.* 



Kirb)'-, in speaking of the swallow-tailed butterfly 

 (Papilio Machaon ), says, " I had the pleasure of 

 seeing it leave its puparium the 16th of May. With 

 great care I placed it upon my arm, where it kept 

 pacing about for the space of more than an hour; 

 when all its parts appearing consolidated and deve- 

 loped, and the animal perfect in beauty, I secured it, 

 though not without great reluctance, for my cabinet, 

 — it being the only living specimen of this fine fly I 

 had ever seen. To observe how gradual, and yet 

 how rapid, was the development of the parts and 

 organs, and particularly of the wings, and the perfect 

 coming forth of the colour and spots, as the sun gave 

 vigour to it, was a most interesting spectacle. At 

 first, it was unable to elevate or even move its wings ; 

 but in proportion as the aerial or other fluid was 

 fijrced by the motions of its trunk into their nervures, 

 their numerous corrugations and folds gradually 

 yielded to the action till they had gained their greatest 

 extent, and the film between all the nervures became 

 tense. The ocelli, and spots and bars, which appeared 

 at first as but germs or rudiments of what they were 

 to be, grew with the growing wing, and shone forth 

 upon its complete expansion in full magnitude and 

 beauty ."t 



The probable object of the movements which an 

 insect makes, upon just escaping from the chrysalis, 

 is to impel the fluids that had been compressed 

 during its confinement, and more particularly air, 

 into the various parts of the expanding body and 

 wings. The wings, it may be remarked, are not, on 

 the exclusion of the insect, folded up as are the long 

 wings of an earwig {Forjicula auricularid)^ but are 

 * Swammeidain, ii. 7, &c. f Intr. iii. 293. 



