STATES OF INSECTS. (Larva.) 199 
their skins several times previously to becoming pupe?. 
The grubs, also, of bees, wasps, ants ? and probably many 
other Hymenoptera, do not change their skin till they 
assume the pupa, nor the larva of the female Coccus>. 
If you feel disposed to investigate the reasons of that 
law of the Creator which has ordained that the skins of 
the higher animals shall be daily, and imperceptibly, and 
as it were piece by piece renewed, while those of insects 
are cast periodically and simultaneously,—the proximate 
cause must be sought for in the nature of the two kinds 
of skin, the one being more pliable and admitting a 
greater degree of tension than the other, and being so 
constructed as to scale off more readily. If, ascending 
higher, you wish to know why the skins of insects are so 
differently circumstanced from our own, the most appa- 
rent reason is, to accommodate the skin to the very rapid 
growth of these animals, which a gradual and slower 
change would have impeded too much, or the skin have 
suffered constant dilapidation and injury; therefore their 
Beneficent Creator has furnished them with one which 
will stretch to a certain point, and during a certain pe- 
riod, and then yield to the efforts of the inclosed animal, 
and be thrown aside as a garment that no longer fits the 
wearer. 
viii, And this leads me to a subject to which I am de- 
sirous now to bespeak your attention,—the Growth, I 
* Reaum. iv. 604. 
> Ibid. 364. N. Dict. @ Hist. Nat. xx. 365. Huber Fourmis, 78. 
M. Huber does not say expressly that the grubs of ants do not change 
their skin; but his account seems to imply that they change it only 
previously to their metamorphosis. 
