40 THE METAMORPHOSIS. 



admirably adapt them for the situations in which they 

 are deposited, and the way in which they are arranged 

 is sometimes very remarkable ; but these peculiarities_, 

 with the singularly ingenious contrivances by which 

 the females of many insects are enabled to introduce 

 theii' eggs into appropriate situations_, will come under 

 our notice with more propriety at a more advanced 

 stage of our investigation. 



As far as we have gone hitherto, we have only 

 shown Insects to be oviparous, a character in which 

 they agree with the great majority of animals, not 

 excluding the highly-organized class of Birds, in 

 which the phsenomena of egg-laying and hatching 

 must be tolerably familiar to most people. But here 

 the analogy ends for the most part, for the chick, 

 when hatched, is evidently an ugly, cheeping carica- 

 ture of its parent, and merely requires to grow 

 a little to become a perfect likeness; whilst the 

 young insect in most cases creeps out of the egg in a 

 form so different from that of its progenitors, that, 

 without previous knowledge, we should have some 

 difficulty in believing that the one could be the off- 

 spring of the other. It is in fact only through a series 

 of changes by which the life of the creature is usually 

 divided into three very distinct periods, that an Insect 

 arrives at that mature state in which it is fitted for 

 the propagation of its species. This series of changes 

 is called the metamorphosis of an Insect. 



In the majority of insects, then, the young crea- 

 ture, on first quitting the egg, presents itself under 

 the form of a worm, usually covered with a soft and 

 flexible skin, and composed of very nearly similar 

 segments. In this stage of their growth, however. 



