INSECTS. 



113 



ject to very great changes of form, attended bv 

 equally remarkably alterations in their habits and 

 propensities. These transformations or onetamor- 

 phoses, as they are called, quite as strange as any we 

 read of in Ovid, might cause the same insect, at 

 different ages, to be mistaken for three different 

 animals. For example, a caterpillar, after feeding 

 upon leaves till it is fully grown, retires into some 

 place of concealment, throAvs off its caterpillar skin, 

 and presents itself in an entirely different shape, 

 wherein it has no power of moving about nor of 

 taking food. In this, its second or chrysalis state, 

 it seems to be lifeless, having neither a distinct head 

 nor moveable limbs — after a lapse of time the chry- 

 salis skin bursts open, and from the rent issues a 

 butterfly, Avhose wings, soft and crumpled at first, 

 soon extend and harden, and become fitted to bear 

 away the insect in search of the honied juices of 

 flowers. Hence there are three distinct periods in the 



Fig. T7. — metajiorphoses of butteufly. 



life of an insect, more or less distinctly marked. In 

 the first, or period of infancy, an insect is technically 



