INTRODUCTION. 



THE wonderful metamorphoses of insects affords a 

 pleasing subject of contemplation to the human mind; 

 and what in early ages seems to have been known as 

 an undoubted fact, especially by the Greeks and 

 Romans, was held to be merely imaginary in Britain, 

 so late as the year 1634. Sir Theodore Mayerne, 

 who edited Mouffet's work on insects, entitled Insec- 

 torum sive Animalium Theatrum, says, "that if 

 animals are transmuted, so may metals." 



These astonishing and diversified transitions in 

 the insect tribes, so well known to the ancients, gave 

 a colouring to, and excited a belief in, many of the 

 metamorphoses recorded by their poets. They were 

 utterly unacquainted with the truths of modern 

 physiological discoveries, so that the fact of a cater- 

 pillar being transformed into a butterfly, must have 

 appeared to them sufficient to upset all unbelief in the 

 transmigration of souls. There can be but little doubt 

 that the principles of metempsychosis originated from 



