VOL. v.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 525 



adding this assertion, that he is able both to show all the parts of a butterfly 

 in a caterpillar, and to make the change of the caterpillar to proceed leisurely, 

 and so to stop it in its change, that it shall appear half caterpillar and half aure- 

 lia ; which he says, he has actually performed before the Great Duke of Tuscany. 



Thirdly, This author reduces all changes of insects, (some few excepted, 

 which he acknowledges he does not yet well understand,) into four classes or 

 ranks ; which are discriminated by four different ways of production, change 

 and growth. The first rank, by him called nympha-animal, has a little animal 

 fully formed in the egg, which after the evaporation of the superfluous moisture, 

 comes forth perfect, and so grows up ; such as the louse and flea, &c. The 

 second, called nympha-vermiculus, has the parts of the insect imperfectly shaped 

 in the egg, and after hatching acquires its perfection visibly by outward food ; 

 such as the locust and cricket, &c. The third, called nympha-chrysalis or au- 

 relia, obtains (after hatching,) its perfection darkly, and not till the last casting 

 of the skin ; such as the emmet and night-butterfly : So that in the second and 

 third classes not a perfect animal, but a worm, precedes the growing up of the 

 parts ; yet with this difference, that in the second, the little creature grows up 

 manifestly; which in the third is done obscurely: The fourth, called nympha- 

 vermiformis, remains always shut up in the skin of the worm, without a pos- 

 sibility of discerning the parts, till casting both skins at once, it becomes capable 

 of generation ; such as the fly. 



In the explication and deduction of all which differences, the author takes 

 notice of many remarkable particulars : E. g. That the insects, which come per- 

 fect out of their eggs, change only by casting their skin ; and those that come 

 forth imperfect, do, besides skin-casting, grow up by food, to become nymphas 

 or puppets : That those which come perfect or imperfect out of the egg, are in 

 the egg first like puppets, and undergo both of them in the egg all the altera- 

 tions which any insect undergoes in the puppet : That the parts of puppets pro- 

 tuberate, much like the budding of flowers : That the caterpillar is the butter- 

 fly itself, only covered over with a mantle, whereby the parts are kept from our 

 discerning: That the doctrine of Signior Malpighi, in his dissertation de 

 Bombyce,* concerning the change of butterflies, is true : That innumerable in- 

 sects fly about and feed by night, as well as others do by day : That snails dis- 

 charge their excrements by the neck, and are each of them both male and 

 female : That from caterpillars, feeding on such and such plants, conjectures 

 may be drawn concerning the agreement of the respective qualities of them; it 

 being very probable, that, if those creatures do eat of several plants (each sort 

 of those insects being esteemed to feed but on one sort of vegetables,) those 

 plants do agree in their nature and virtues, &c. 



* See p. 367 of this vol. of our Abridgement. 



