168 ROUND THE YEAR 



with a discussion on what we now call the Transfor- 

 mations of Insects. Swammerdam protests with all 

 his might against such words as Transformation and 

 Metamorphosis. They sounded in his ears as Trans- 

 mutation might sound to us, calling up such possibili- 

 ties as the change of men to wolves, the change of 

 the flesh of oxen to bees, the change of putrefying 

 plants to caterpillars, and the change of lead to gold. 

 Very likely Mayerne believed in all of them ; Harvey 

 certainly believed that Insects could be generated 

 spontaneously from putrefying matter. Metamor- 

 phosis was with him not a particular kind of growth, 

 but an alternative with growth. No wonder that 

 Swammerdam should bitterly remark, after giving a 

 long extract from Harvey, that it contained nearly as 

 many mistakes as words ; no wonder that he should 

 hate the words about which such rank misconceptions 

 had gathered. He insists time after time that an 

 Insect grows in just the same sense as a plant or a 

 Frog. We, who have not had Mayerne or Harvey 

 to refute, wonder a little at his vehemence, and see 

 no reason why we should not employ the very con- 

 venient terms Transformation and Metamorphosis. 

 They mean to us, who are happily unencumbered by 

 the rags of scholasticism, nothing more than con- 

 spicuous change in the form and mode of life of an 

 animal. The change may be apparently sudden, as 

 when a larva becomes a pupa, or a pupa an imago ; 

 again, it may be insensibly slow, as when a Tadpole 

 loses its tail and gills, and acquires legs, taking three 

 or four months to accomplish the transition. Whether 

 sudden or gradual to the eye, the change is always in 



