METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS. 53 



M. de Peiresc, a philosopher, who among other kinds of 

 knowledge, had not neglected that of the operations and 

 economy of Insects, was consulted on the subject. He 

 found the walls of a church-yard near the place, and the 

 walls of several small villages in the neighborhood to be 

 spotted with large drops of a blood colored Iqiuid. A 

 little before this time this gentleman had happened to 

 pick up a large and beautiful chrysalis which he had 

 carefully laid in a box. Immediately after its transform- 

 ation into the Butterfly state, he remarked that it had left 

 a large drop of a blood colored liquid in the bottom of 

 the box. The red stains on the walls, and the stones near 

 the highways, and on the leaves of plants in the fields, 

 were found to be perfectly similar to that left on the 

 bottom of the box. M. de Peiresc hesitated no longer 

 to pronounce, that all the blood colored stains wherever 

 they appeared, proceeded from the same cause. The 

 prodigious number of Butterflies which he at the same 

 time saw flying in the air confirmed his original idea. 

 He likewise observed that the drops of miraculous rain 

 were never found in the middle of the town, but that 

 they appeared only in places bordering upon the coun- 

 try ; and that they never fell upon the tops of houses, 

 or upon walls more elevated than the height to which 

 Butterflies generally rise. What the investigator of 

 these facts saw himself, he showed to many persons of 

 knowledge, or curiosity, and finally established as an in- 

 contestible fact, that the pretended drops of blood were 

 in reality nothing more than drops of red liquid deposit- 

 ed by these Butterflies. It is also deserving of remark, 

 that all the showers of blood that have been recorded 

 to have happened, took place in the warm seasons of 

 the year, when Butterflies are most numerous. 



And now who will deny the practical use of Ento- 

 mology, when these simple facts have been the means 

 of delivering the world from the thraldom of supersti- 

 tious fear, which from time immemorial has been con- 

 sequent upon the belief in miraculous showers of blood. 

 When Newton demonstrated that the comets, instead of 

 wandering in any direction and without order, were con- 

 fined to regular orbits, and therefore that we of the earth, 



