METAMORPHOSES. 73 



vessels for breathing- and digesting, of nerves for sen- 

 sation, and of muscles for moving ; and that these va- 

 rious forms of existence will undergo their successive 

 evolutions, bv aid of a few leaves received into its sto- 

 mach. And still less able are we to comprehend how 

 this organ should at one time be capable of digesting 

 leaves, at another only honey ; how one while a silky 

 fluid should be secreted, at another none ; or how or- 

 gans at one period essential to the existence of the 

 insect, should at another be cast oif, and the whole sy- 

 stem which supported them vanish. 



Nor does this explanation, though it precludes the 

 idea of that resemblance, in every particular, which, at 

 one time, was thought to obtain between the metamor- 

 phosis of insects, especially of the Lepidoptcra order, 

 and the resurrection of the body, do away that general 

 analogy, which cannot fail to strike every one who at 

 all considers the subject. Even Swammerdam, whose 

 observations have proved that the analogy is not so 

 complete as had been imagined, speaking of the meta- 

 morphosis of insects, uses these strong words : " This 

 process is formed in so remarkable a manner in butter- 

 flies, that we see therein the resurrection painted be- 

 fore our eyes, and exemplified so as to be examined by 

 our hands ^." To see, indeed, a caterpillar crawling 

 upon the earth, sustained by the most ordinary kinds 

 of food, which, when it has existed a few weeks or 

 months under this humble form, its appointed v,ork 

 being finished, passes into an intermediate state of 

 seeming death, when it is Mound up in a kind of 

 shroud and encased in a coffin, and is most commonly 



'^ Hill's Swamm. i. 127 a. 



