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LETTER III. 



METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS. 



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, struggle through its earthly cover- 

 ing, and start into day a winged bird, what think you would be the sensa- 

 tion excited by this strange piece of intelligence ? After the first doubts of 

 its truth were dispelled, what astonishment would succeed ! Amongst the 

 learned, what surmises ! what investigations ! Amongst the vulgar, what 

 eager curiosity and amazement ! All would be interested in the history of 

 such an unheard-of phenomenon ; even the most torpid would flock to the 

 sight of such a prodigy. 



But, you ask, " To what do all these improbable suppositions tend ? '* 

 Simply to rouse your attention to the metamorphoses of the insect world, 

 almost as strange and surprising, to which I am now about to direct your 

 view, miracles which, though scarcely surpassed in singularity by all that 

 poets have feigned, and though actually wrought every day beneath our 

 eyes, are, because of their commonness, and the minuteness of the objects, 

 unheeded alike by the ignorant and the learned. 



That butterfly which amuses you with his aerial excursions, one while 

 extracting nectar from the tube of the honeysuckle, and then, the very 

 image of fickleness, flying to a rose as if to contrast the hue of its wings 

 with that of the flower on which it reposes, did not come into the world 

 as you now behold it. At its first exclusion from the egg, and for some 

 months of its existence afterwards, it was a worm-like caterpillar, crawling 

 upon sixteen short legs, greedily devouring leaves with two jaws, and 

 seeing by means of twelve eyes so minute as to be nearly imperceptible 

 without the aid of a microscope. You now view it furnished with wings 

 capable of rapid and extensive flights : of its sixteen feet ten have dis- 

 appeared, and the remaining six are in most respects wholly unlike those 

 to which they have succeeded : its jaws have vanished, and are replaced 

 by a curled-up proboscis suited only for sipping liquid sweets ; the form 

 of its head is entirely changed, two long horns project from its upper 

 surface ; and instead of twelve invisible eyes, you behold two, very large, 

 and composed of at least seventeen thousand convex lenses, each supposed 

 to be a distinct and effective eye ! 



Were you to push your examination further, and by dissection to compare 

 the internal conformation of the caterpillar with that of the butterfly, you 

 would witness changes even more extraordinary. In the former you would 

 find some thousands of muscles, which in the latter are replaced by others 

 of a form and structure entirely different* Nearly the whole body of the 



