338 THE MICROSCOPE. 



effected by taking hold of its thread and letting it drop into scalding- 

 water, and then suddenly withdrawing it : the skin easily peels off. 

 After this it was put into distilled vinegar and spirits of wine mixed in 

 equal proportions; this gave a firmness to the parts, and the exuvia or 

 skin readily separated ; the pupa is then seen to be enclosed, and the 

 butterfly traced in the pupa. 



Parasites may be quickly killed by immersing them in spirits of 

 wine or spirits of turpentine ; in a short time take them out, and dry 

 them ; if transparent, they may be at once mounted in glycerine or 

 Goadby's solution : if opaque, they must be mounted in Canada 

 balsam. 



TRANSFORMATION OF INSECTS. 



The metamorphoses of the insect race offer some of the most 

 curious and wonderful of nature's phenomena for contemplation. " We 

 see," says an old author, " some of these creatures crawl for a time as 

 helpless worms upon the earth, like ourselves ; they then retire into a 

 covering, which answers the end of a coffin or a sepulchre, wherein 

 they are invisibly transformed, and come forth in glorious array, with 

 wings and painted plumes, more like the inhabitants of the heavens 

 than such worms as they were in their former state. This trans- 

 formation is so striking and pleasant an emblem of the present, inter- 

 mediate, and glorified state of man, that people of the most remote 

 antiquity, when they buried their dead, embalmed and enclosed them 

 in an artificial covering, so figured and painted as to resemble the 

 caterpillar in the intermediate state ; and as Joseph was the first we 

 read of that was embalmed in Egypt, where this custom prevailed, it 

 was probably of Hebrew original." 



Faint and imperfect symbol though it be, yet it may perchance 

 offer a glimpse of the metamorphosis awaiting our own frail bodies. 

 Between the highest and lowest degree of corporeal and spiritual per- 

 fection, that there are many intermediate degrees, the result of which 

 is one universal chain of being, no one can for a moment gainsay. Thus 

 the angel Raphael is made to say in Milton's Paradise Lost : 



" What surmounts the reach 



Of human sense, I shall delineate so, 



By likening spiritual to corporeal forms, 



As may express them best : though what if earth 



Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein 



JSach to other like, more than on earth is thought !" 



The great class of insects, which furnishes four-fifths of the existing 



