METAMORPHOSES. 63 



transformation as singular and surprising-, though va- 

 ried in many of its circumstances. That active little 

 fly, now an unbidden guest at your table*, whose deli- 

 cate palate selects your choicest viands, one w hile ex- 

 tending his proboscis to tlie margin of a drop of wine, 

 and then gaily flying to take a more solid repast from 

 a pear or a peach ; now gamboling with his comrades 

 in the air, now gracefully currying his furled wings 

 with his taper feet, — was but the other day a disgust- 

 ing grub, without wings, without legs, without eyes, 

 wallowing, well pleased, in the midst of a mass of ex- 

 crement. 



The " grey-coated gnat," whose humming saluta- 

 tion, while she makes her airy circles about your bed, 

 gives terrific warning of the sanguinary operation in 

 which she is ready to engage, was a few hours ago the 

 inhabitant of a stagnant pool, more in shape like a fish 

 than an insect. Then to have been taken out of tlie 

 water would have been speedily fatal : now it could as 

 little exist in any other element than air. Then it 

 breathed through its tail ; now through openings in its 

 sides. Its shapeless head, in that period of its exist- 

 ence, is now exchanged for one adorned with elegantly 

 tufted antennae, and furnished, instead of jav»^s, w ith an 

 apparatus more artfully constructed than the cupping 

 glasses of the phlebotomist — an apparatus which, at 

 the same time that it strikes in the lancets, composes a 

 tube for pumping up the flowing blood. 



The " shard-born beetle," whose " sullen horn," 

 as he directs his " droning flight" close past your ears 



" " Ccenis etiam non vocatus ut Musra arivolo." Aristophon in Pij- 

 tiu'gorista apud Atbinse.um. (MouflTrt, 56.1 



