2 ROMANCE OF THE INSECT WORLD CHAP. 



of their life-history, from birth to infancy and on to 

 maturity, the great majority of the members of these 

 little lowly winged tribes pass through a series of 

 changes of condition, and assume several successive 

 well-marked forms, to all appearances totally distinct 

 the one from the other. In a general way the 

 youngest persons, and the most ignorant, are in- 

 formed of the fact, but how many, learned and 

 ignorant and young alike, ignore it, owing to the 

 commonness of the occurrences and the minuteness 

 of the objects, and thus deprive themselves of the 

 exceeding interest and pleasure to be gained from 

 study of this, which is perhaps the most admirable of 

 all the extraordinary pages of natural history. 



The butterfly, whose metamorphoses are so striking 

 to the young, could have never existed as we now 

 behold it, had it not successfully accomplished a 

 regular series of changes of structure since the day of 

 its birth. It is produced by the parent as an egg, 

 from which it is hatched in the shape of a caterpillar 

 or larva, a worm-like creature of soft and fleshy con- 

 sistence, furnished with a mouth and a few short legs, 

 its only requirement being an abundant supply of 

 food. Of this it eats with an incomparable appetite, 

 and makes haste to grow, necessitating repeated casts 

 of skin. Eventually it becomes a shrouded chrysalis 

 or pupa. This sleep being over, it awakens to a new 

 life, having little resemblance to its old condition, 

 in its aspect, or internal conformation, or in the work 

 that has then to be done, a winged and perfect 

 butterfly. In the case of beetles likewise, the larvse 

 or grubs at their emancipation from the egg, though 



