4 NATURAL ARRANGEMENT OF INSECTS. 



they would not be recognised by an inexperienced ob- 

 server as one and the same creature ; when, moreover, 

 there are three of these distinct changes, totally differing 

 from each other, and the pupa becomes inactive ; then 

 the metamorphosis is complete. This, indeed, is ob- 

 vious ; for what change can possibly be greater than that 

 of an active, voracious caterpillar, to a quiescent, almost 

 inanimate chrysalis? or can the imagination conceive 

 any thing more dissimilar than are these two, from the 

 aerial butterfly, fluttering from flower to flower upon 

 fc rainbow-coloured wings," and living upon the nectar 

 they contain? Assuredly, this is the most wonderful 

 and the most complete transformation that the mind can 

 conceive: did it rest upon evidence which could for a 

 moment be questioned, it is so utterly repugnant to the 

 course pursued by Nature in her other works, that human 

 reason would reject the belief with disdain, as totally 

 incredible, and only equalled by the Eastern fable of the 

 transmigration of souls, or the metamorphosis of the an- 

 cient poets. 



(50.) Naturalists have given names to all the vari- 

 ations and degrees of metamorphosis hitherto observed ; 

 and these we shall subsequently notice. Some writers 

 have assigned four states to the insect world ; but no 

 egg can be stated to possess life, until its contents are 

 quickened. The period that the egg or embryo is con- 

 cealed in the matrix of the mother, may just as well be 

 termed one of the stages of existence of an animal, as 

 that in which it lies unformed and inert in the shape of 

 an egg. These considerations appear to confirm our pro- 

 position, that metamorphosis is the grand characteristic 

 of the annulose animals ; for, while very few others are 

 subject to such transformation, we find this property 

 Almost universal among them. This truth could not fail 

 to.be perceived by nearly all the great naturalists of the 

 last and present century ; but, contenting themselves 

 with the simple fact, they seem to have neglected to 

 draw from it the first and most natural inference, 

 namely, that those animals which exhibited these trans* 



