CHAPTER IV. 

 DEVELOPMENT AND METAMORPHOSIS. 



Every animal develops from a single cell; and, when 

 that cell is enclosed in some characteristic wall or cover- 

 ing, is accompanied by more or less of reserve food or yolk, 

 and undergoes a resting period of greater or less length, 

 we call the cell an egg. That insects come from eggs is 

 almost as familiar a fact as the insects themselves. But 

 the average student of nature usually stops there, and 

 knows^ little or nothing of the changes undergone by the 

 grasshopper, the butterfly, or the firefly before the adult 

 insect appears. Many of us have found grubs without 

 knowing that they are a stage in the life of some beetle. 

 The various cocoons found hanging to some twig or weed 

 or tree are interesting, without impressing us as only one 

 stage in the life of some gay butterfly or somber moth. 

 Worms are "just worms" for most of us, nasty horrid 

 things that do nothing but eat up our flowers or gardens 

 or trees; yet even the worst one among them will disap- 

 pear from our sight, and if we had the desire we could 

 trace it to its winter quarters, mark the place, and the 

 next spring we should be rewarded by a flutter of bright 

 wings and a decided preference for flower nectar in the 

 new animal coming out from the cocoon, all its days of leaf- 

 eating forgotten, neither knowing nor caring for anything 

 save sunshine, pollen, and nectar. 



Insects, then, come from eggs, and the changes of 

 form undergone on the way from the egg to the adult 



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