STATES OF INSECTS. \C)9 



SECTION II. 



THE PECULIARITIES EXHIBITED BY INSECTS IN THEIR PASSAGE 

 TO THE PERFECT STATE. 



Perhaps none of the phenomena of natural history have 

 attracted a greater share of the attention of mankind in all 

 ages, than those exhibited by insects in their passage to the 

 perfect state. It is perfectly consistent with that innate 

 propensity of the human mind towards the marvellous, that 

 the change of a caterpillar into a butterfly should have been 

 considered by the ancients as a true metamorphosis, in no 

 manner reconcileable with the ordinary process of nature. 

 If this were indeed the case in the darker days of zoological 

 knowledge, when the true nature of these changes was not 

 understood, it is equally certain that the subject has lost 

 none of its interest, although, owing to the admirable re- 

 searches of Libavius and Redi, Malphighi and Swammerdam, 

 Reaumur and De Geer, all of the marvellous has been re- 

 moved, and a series of gradual developements exposed, far 

 exceeding in peculiarity those exhibited in any of the other 

 tribes of animals. 



But it is not alone in elucidating the natm*e of the changes, 

 by means of which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, that the 

 researches of these authors are most valuable; since this 

 discovery naturally led to the equally important truth that 

 the caterpillar is produced from a creature which has at one 

 period of its existence resembled itself; and which, having 

 arrived at its perfect state, and been impregnated, has per- 

 petuated its species by the deposition of eggs, which, when 

 hatched, produce small voracious animals of variable forms, 

 ordinarily termed caterpillars, grubs, or maggots, and syste- 

 matically larvae (plural of the Latin word larva), liable to a 

 series of moultings, varying in number. To this state, in the 

 majority of insects, succeeds a quiescent period, during which 



