64 METAMORPHOSES. 



in your evening walk, calling- up in poetic association 

 the lines in which he has been alluded to by Shake- 

 speare, Collins, and Gray, was not in his infancy an 

 inhabitant of air ; the lirst period of his life being- spent 

 in gloomy solitude, as a grub, under the surface of the 

 earth. — The shapeless maggot, which you scarcely fail 

 to meet with in some one of every handful of nuts you 

 crack, would not always have grovelled in that hum- 

 ble state. If your unlucky intrusion upon its vaulted 

 dwelling- had not left it to perish in the wide world, it 

 would have continued to reside there until its full 

 growth had been attained. Then it would have gnawed 

 itself an opening, and having entered the earth, and 

 passed a few months in a state of inaction, would at 

 length have emerged an elegant beetle, furnished with 

 a slender and very long ebony beak ; two wings, and 

 two wing-cases, ornamented with yellow bands ; six 

 feet ; and in every respect unlike the worm from which 

 it proceeded. 



That bee but it is needless to multiply instances. 



A sufficient number has been adduced to show, that the 

 apparently extravagant supposition with which I set 

 out may be paralleled in the insect world ; and that the 

 metamorphoses of its inhabitants are scarcely less asto- 

 nishing than would be the transformation of a serpent 

 into an eagle. 



These changes I do not purpose explaining minutely 

 m this place : they will be adverted to more fully in 

 subsequent letters. Here I mean merely to give you 

 such a general view of the subject as shall impress you 

 with its claims to attention, and such an explanation of 

 the states through Avhich insects pass, and of the diffe- 



