METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS. 49 



M. de Peiresc, a philosopher, who, among other kinds ol* 

 knowledge, had not neglected that of the operations and 

 economy of insects, was consulted on the subject. He 

 found the walls of a church-yard near the place, and the 

 walls of several small villages in the neighborhood to be 

 spotted with large drops of a blood-colored liquid. A little 

 before this time this gentleman had happened to pick up a 

 large and beautiful chrysalis, which he had carefully laid 

 in a box. Immediately after its transformation into the 

 butterfly state, he remarked that it had left a large drop 

 of a blood-colored liquid in the bottom of the box. The 

 red stains on the walls, and the stones near the highways, 

 and on the leaves of plants in the fields, were found to 

 be perfectly similar to that left on the bottom of the 

 box. M. de Peiresc hesitated no longer to pronounce 

 that all the blood-colored stains wherever they appeared, 

 proceeded from the same cause. The prodigious number 

 of butterflies which he at the same time saw flying in 

 the air, confirmed his original idea. He likewise observed 

 that the drops of miraculous rain were never found in the 

 middle of the town, but that they appeared only in places 

 bordering upon the country ; and that they never fell 

 upon the tops of houses, or upon walls more elevated than 

 the height to which butterflies generally rise. What the 

 investigator of these facts saw himself, he showed to 

 many persons of knowledge, or curiosity, and finally 

 established as an incontestable fact, that the pretended 

 drops of blood were in reality nothing more than drops of 

 red liquid deposited by these butterflies. It is also de- 

 serving of remark, that all the showers of blood that 

 have been recorded to have happened, took place in the 

 warm season of the year, when butterflies are most nu- 

 merous. 



131. And now who will deny the practical use of en- 

 tomology, when these simple facts have been the means 

 of delivering the world from the thraldom of superstitious 

 fear, which from time immemorial, has been consequent 

 upon the belief in miraculous showers of blood. When 

 Newton demonstrated that the comets, instead of wan- 

 dering in any direction aud without order, were confined 

 to regular orbits, and therefore that we of the earth, had 



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