XXV111 INTRODUCTION. 



intervention, still we are wonderstruck on reflecting 

 that this simple larva, when first it emerges from the 

 egg, not thicker than a thread of silk, should contain 

 its own triple, or in some cases its octuple covering, 

 the mask of an aurelia and a butterfly, folded in the 

 most astonishing manner over each other ; and besides 

 these, different respiratory and digestive organg, 

 a nervous system, and muscles of motion peculiar to 

 each stage of its existence. It is inconceivable how 

 these successive changes should be effected, through 

 the agency of the food which it takes into its stomach 

 during the caterpillar state. And what is still more 

 incomprehensible, is, that this stomach, at one time, 

 is incapable of digesting vegetable food, the nectar of 

 flowers being all it can contain. In this perfect 

 condition, it is deprived of the very organs by which 

 it could feed on vegetable matter, and is supplied 

 by a proboscis for sipping the honey. It is no less 

 remarkable, how, at one period of its existence, it 

 emits from that stomach a substance for the formation 

 of silky filaments, which in its imago condition, it is 

 incapable of doing. 



The knowledge of all these facts shut out the strict 

 analogy which existed, before their discovery, between 

 the transformation of lepidopterous insects, and the 

 resurrection of the human body; yet there is a striking 

 picture of that eventful change. Swammerdam, the 



