1-M 



*orrTaiti consistence, they issue one after another from 

 the inside of the b<ni, and arrange themselves like tliose 

 of other nymphs. 



By becoming a kind of cmie, the skin of the insect 

 does not lose in all the species, the form that was pro- 

 per to the worm ; some of them preserve it so Well, 

 that the metamorphosed worm scarcely differs at alt 

 from the worm that has not been yet transformed. 



6. A lien that should lay an egg as large as herself, 

 iron; whuh a cork or a hen would be hatched, may 

 offer to us such a prodigy, as we should find some dim- 

 tulty in believing. A fly that is troublesome to horses, 

 and whose form has caused it to be named the spider- 

 jiif, affords us such a prodigy ; and it should not seem 

 the lehs strange because it takes place only in an insect; 

 \Yere there a law in the organical kingdom, to which 

 we knew no exception, it would assuredly be that 

 which ordained every organized body to grow after its 

 birth. Nevertheless, here Is a fly that lays a species of 

 egg, from which is produced another fly as large and as 

 perfect as the mother. This egg is almost round, white 

 at first, and afterwards of a black or ebony colotir. The 

 shell is tirm and polished but 1 rausl undeceive my 

 reader : this is not a real egg, but has only the ap- 

 pearance of one ; it is the insect itself that has assumed 

 the form -of an oblong bail in a cone made of its own 

 skin. The thing s not the less wonderful on that 

 account. All insects that metamorphose themselves go 

 through their various transformations, out of the belly 

 of their motl-er. They are, indeed, to grow considera- 

 bly before they undergo their ikst transformation, but 

 do not grow at all afterwards. We have thtn an insect 

 ti at trans for ms itself in the very belly of its mother, 

 and acquires no farther growth after it has issued 

 from it. 



These cones of the spider-fly, these pretender] eggs 

 h-'ve beesi opened at different limes, and in them have 

 been found the same things that are discerned in the 

 MoTtg a //-nymphs, when observed at their $ftereiit 



VOL. IV. I 



