METAMORPHOSES. 61 



strange and surprising, to which I am now about to 



direct your view, miracles, which, though scarcely 



surpassed in singuhirity by all that poets have feigned, 

 and though actually wrought every day beneath our 

 eyes, are, because of their commonness, and the mi- 

 nuteness of the objects, unheeded alike by the igno- 

 rant and the learned. 



That butterfly which amuses you w ith its aerial ex- 

 cursions, one while extracting nectar from the tube of 

 the honeysuckle, and then, the very image of fickle- 

 ness, 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 v» orld as you now behold it. At its 

 first exclusion from the cg^, and for some months of its 

 existence afterwards, it was a worm-like caterpillar, 

 crawling 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 disappeared, and the remain- 

 ing 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 sa\ eets ; the form of its head is entirely 

 changed, — two long horns project from Its upper sur- 

 face ; and. Instead of twelve invisible eyes, you behold 

 two, very large, and composed of at least twenty thou- 

 sand convex lenses, each supposed to be a distinct and 

 effective eye ! 



Were you to push your examination farther, and by 

 dissection to coraoare the iiilernal conformation of the 



