MA Y-FLIES. 59 



imago state. Thus, as we follow it from the egg, we 

 perceive that it successively lays aside its mask and 

 throws off its bonds of pupilage ; consequently, being 

 no longer disguised, confined, or imperfect, it becomes 

 the imago, literally speaking, the image and true 

 representative of its class and species. Though the 

 word metamorphoses has been already mentioned 

 here to designate these changes of form and nature, 

 it was merely used in accordance with the popular 

 mode of expression ; for these are not metamorphoses 

 or transformations, in the true sense of the word, but 

 merely a series of embryonic developments. Many 

 animals, much higher in the scale of creation than 

 insects, pass through as strange a series. 



The general analogy existing between the trans- 

 formations of some insects, and the life, death, and 

 resurrection of man, has been most happily treated 

 by the late Rev. Mr. Kirby, in his delightful Intro- 

 duction to Entomology. The subject is rather, perhaps, 

 beyond the scope of this article, still it may just be 

 noticed, en passant, that the ancient fable of " Cupid 

 and Psyche" seems evidently to have been constructed 

 on the same foundation. The word Psyche, in Greek, 

 signified not alone the human soul, but also a butter- 

 fly, and in painting and sculpture the material object 

 served as the symbol of the immaterial. And even 

 to the heathen mind nothing could, in a more forcible 

 or familiar manner, denote the survival and freedom 



