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 as 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 much 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 good, that they may be consulted with 

 advantage even in the present day. * It is curious 

 to trace, even at this more advanced period, the 

 remnant 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 swarthecl 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." 



