390 THE CATERPILLAR. 



confined, yet, when the time is arrived when it is to be- 

 come a chrysalis, or aurelia, instinct teaches it to pre- 

 pare for the extraordinary change. At this period its 

 appetite seems suspended, and it generally adheres to 

 the stems of plants instead of the leaves ; its colours 

 likewise become pale and faded, and it begins spinning 

 a web or cone to conceal it from the sight, where, after 

 forcing the body into the form of a bow, and changing 

 its skin for the last time, it appears almost in a lifeless 

 state. 



The caterpillar, thus stripped of its external cover- 

 ing, becomes an aurelia, in which parts of the future 

 butterfly may distinctly be seen; and in a little time it 

 forms a complete cone or covering, composed of a 

 slimy liquid, and combined with sand, or the puk 

 verized bark of trees ; and in this abode they remain 

 secure and defended, until the animal principle is re*- 

 vived by the power of heat, when it forces a passage 

 through the callous covering, and a gaudy butterfly is 

 presented to the sight. 



OF BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS. 



It has been already proved, that butterflies are pro- 

 duced from caterpillars, though it was beyond the li- 

 mits of our design to give an explicit account of the 

 change. Linnaeus has described near eight hundred 

 kinds of this beautiful insect ; and even his catalogue 

 is allowed to be incomplete. 



The butterfly may be distinguished from every other 

 species merely by a slight observation upon its wings, 

 which, in the fly-kind, are transparent like gauze, or, 

 in the beetle-kind, hard and crusted ; whilst those, in 

 the race we are now describing, are soft, opaque, and 

 covered over with a beautiful dust that adheres to the 



