352 INSECT- CLIMBERS. 



a part near the tail with its hooked jaws, and, after strongly 

 contracting itself from a circle into an oval, throws itself 

 with a jerk into a straight line ; an action which effects the leap. 



There is a certain fish, 1 which, when tired of swimming in 

 its native element, is said to take the air by ascending trees. 

 This climbing fish must be looked on, we should think, as a 

 very odd fish among his finny fellows, on account of the 

 strangeness of such proceeding ; but the oddest part of it, to us, 

 must appear, while unexplained, the power of the legless 

 swimmer to accomplish his restless or ambitious purpose. 

 This is effected, it would seem, by help of his spiny fins and 

 gill- covers. 



Now a climbing chrysalis, as all must be ready to admit who 

 know a chrysalis by sight, is a thing scarcely less wondrous 

 seeming than a climbing fish ; and we find, in some instances, 

 that the apparatus by which a chrysalis is assisted to climb, or 

 raise itself upwards towards the surface, or from out the ground 

 or other imbedding substance, is of a somewhat similar descrip- 

 tion to the spines of the above-mentioned tenant of the waters. 

 To give an instance. 



The Goat-moth, whose works, as a carpenter caterpillar, in 

 heart of oak or willow we have elsewhere noticed, has a chry- 

 salis which, as well as some others, is furnished with a row of 

 spiny serratures, extending nearly round each ring of its body. 

 The use of these appendages become sufficiently apparent when 

 opportunity offers (as it has done with ourselves) of watching 

 the emergement of this case-bound creature from out the strong 

 cell of cemented woody particles in which it is usually enclosed. 

 A hard head, armed with points, having first enabled it to 

 open, as with a battering-ram, a breach in the wooden walls of 

 its prison, the swathed moth is then assisted by the purchase of 

 its spiny case to draw itself more than half-way through the 

 opening, wherein it remains tightly wedged, while the aurelian 

 skin, bursting at the shoulders, gives egress to the winged form. 



1 Perca scandens. Note in Sharon Turner's "Sacred History of the World.' 1 



