MAVY-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 Znitro- 
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 butiter- 
‘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 
