METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS. 37 



garden for weeks and months. In all cases they deposite 

 eggs for a future race before their final exit. 



93. The moth, or as it is more commonly called the 

 butterfly, or the silk-worm, has, like all other insects, six 

 legs. The wings are four, of a grayish white color, with 

 two transverse undulated bands across them. They are 

 far from being beautiful when compared with most others 

 of the same race, and are also entirely void of that sport- 

 ive vivacity, so common to most other species. 



i 



METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS. 



94. The subject of insect metamorphoses has excited 

 curiosity, and has been the object of inquiry and inves- 

 tigation among naturalists and philosophers in all ages 

 of the world. Having given a detail of the changes 

 which take place during this process in a single species, 

 we are now prepared to pursue this wonderful subject 

 more at large, and to show the variety and difference of 

 circumstances which attend the same changes in other 

 species. 



95. Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in one of the best works 

 ever written on insects, introduce the subject of their 

 metamorphoses in the following manner : " Were a 

 naturalist to announce to the world the discovery of an 

 animal, which, for the first five years of its life, existed in 

 the form of a serpent, which then, penetrating into the 

 earth, and weaving a shroud of pure silk of the finest 

 texture, contracted itself within this covering into a 

 body without external mouth or limbs, and resembling 

 more than anything else an Egyptian mummy ; and 

 which, lastly, after remaining in this state, without food, 

 and without motion, for three years longer, should, at 

 the end of that period, burst its silken cerements, strug- 

 gle through its earthy covering, and start into day a 

 winged bird what, think you, would be the sensation 

 excited by this intelligence 1 After the first doubts of 

 its truth were dispelled, what astonishment- would suc- 

 ceed ! Among the learned what surmises, what inves- 



What is said of the time which the chrysalids of insects remain in the 

 torpid state ? 



