20 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
descriptions are so short, that very few of the com- 
monest insects can be identified. 
(11.) While entomology was thus making a slow 
and painful progress in England, the science received 
a, new impulse on the Continent from the experiments, 
as they were then termed, of two celebrated men, 
Goedartius and Redi: the one undertook to inves. 
tigate the metamorphoses of insects, the other was 
chiefly occupied in tracing their vital functions, and 
both may be thus considered ds the founders of 
zoological analysis. The little volumes of Goedart, 
printed in 1662, showed a very marked improve- 
ment in the entomology of the seventeenth century, 
not so muck in the descriptions as in the faithful- 
uess of the numerous copper-plates, representing 
the larva, pupa, and perfect insect of a considerable 
number of lepidoptera: these “experiments” are ex- 
tended to many species of the other orders ; and the 
lates are so goad, that they may be consulted with 
advantage even in the present day.* It is curious 
to trace, even at this more advanced period, the 
remnaat of that superstition regarding common 
animals which was so prevalent in the preceding 
century. Upon turning to such plates of the work 
before us as represent the angulated chrysali of 
butterflies, the reader will perceive them transformed 
into the likenesses of swarthed mummies, where the 
nose, eyes, and chin, are distinctly marked out: 
there is certainly a curious resemblance to the human 
* Metamorphosis et Historia Naturalis Insectorum. Autore 
Joanne Goedartio, cum Comentariis D. Joannis de Mey. Me- 
droburgi, 3 vols. The date only appears at the end of the 
dedication, “ 27 Januarii, 1662.” 
