METAMORPHOSES. 7i 



pillar; that the antennae and trunk are coiled up in front 

 of the head; and that the legs, however different their 

 form, are actually sheathed in its legs. Malpighi disco- 

 vered the eggs of the future moth, in the chrysalis of a 

 silkworm only a few days old% and Reaumur those of 

 another moth (Hypogymna dispar) even in the caterpillar, 

 and that seven or eight days before its change into the 

 pupa b . A caterpillar, then, may be regarded as a loco- 

 motive egg, having for its embryo the included butter- 

 fly, which after a certain period assimilates to itself the 

 animal substances by which it is surrounded ; has its or- 

 gans gradually developed ; and at length breaks through 

 the shell which incloses it. 



This explanation strips the subject of every thing mi- 

 raculous, yet by no means reduces it to a simple or un- 

 interesting operation. Our reason is confounded at the 

 reflection that a larva, at first not thicker than a thread, 

 includes its own triple, or sometimes octuple, teguments; 

 the case of a chrysalis, and a butterfly, all curiously fold- 

 ed in each other ; with an apparatus of vessels for breath- 

 ing and digesting, of nerves for sensation, and of muscles 

 for moving; and that these various forms of existence 

 will undergo their successive evolutions, by aid of a few 

 leaves received into its stomach. And still less able are 

 we to comprehend how this organ should at one time be 

 capable of digesting leaves, at another only honey ; how 

 one while a silky fluid should be secreted, at another 

 none ; or how organs at one period essential to the ex- 

 istence of the insect, should at another be cast off, and 

 the whole system which supported them vanish. 



Nor does this explanation, though it precludes the 



* J)e Bmnkycr, 29. b Reaiim. i. 359. 



