METAMORPHOSES. 71 



of some criminal doomed to animate an insect of similar 

 habits with those which had defiled his human tene- 

 ment ^ ? 



At the present day, however, the transformations of 

 insects have lost that excess of the marvellous, which 

 might once have furnished arguments for the fictions 

 of the ancients, and the dreams of Paracelsus. AVe 

 call them metamorphoses and transformations, because 

 these terms are in common use, and are more expres- 

 sive of tlic sudden changes that ensue than any new 

 ones. But, strictly, they ought rather to be termed a 

 series of developments. A caterpillar is not, in fact, 

 a simple but a compound animal, containing within it 

 the germ of the future butterfly, inclosed in what will 

 be the case of the pupa, which is itself included in the 

 three or more skins, one over the other, that will suc- 

 cessively cover the larva. As this increases in size 

 these parts expand, present themselves, and are in 

 turn thrown off, until at length the perfect insect, 

 which had been concealed in this succession of masks, 

 is displayed in its genuine form. That this is the pro- 

 per explanation of the phenomenon has been satisfac- 

 torily proved by Swammerdam, Malpighi, and other 

 anatomists. The first-mentioned illustrious natura- 

 list discovered, by accurate dissections, not only the 

 skins of the larva and of the pupa incased in each 

 other, but within them the very butterfly itself, with 



* " A priest who lias drunk wine shall migrate into a moth or fly, feed- 

 ing on ordure. He who steals the gold of a priest shall pass a thousand 

 times into the bodies of spiders. If a man shall steal honey, he shall be 

 born a great stinging gnat; if oil, an oil-drinking beetle; if salt, a 

 eicada; if a household utensil, an ichneumon fly/' Imlilulcs of Menu-, 

 353. 



