Metamorphosis of htsects. 55 



then leaves it to find its own way through the 

 strange world it has never seen, while she, as a rule, 

 her destiny accomplished, departs to die. 



From the egg there issues, very often, a helpless, 

 wingless creature ; from the egg of a butterfly 

 creeps forth a caterpillar; from that of many 

 beetles comes a soft and tender grub; from that 

 of a fly there springs a maggot. 



These tender larvae, wingless, earth-bound, liter- 

 ally eat their way through the world. Voraciously 

 they store up nutriment for the change that is to 

 come, growing so rapidly that they soon find their 

 skin too small to hold them, and are obliged to 

 split it open and crawl out, sometimes satisfying 

 their voracity by devouring the cast-off garment. 



This happens several times in the course of the 

 creature's larval life, perhaps from three to ten 

 being the most usual number of moults, though 

 Sir John Lubbock assures us that he counted 

 twenty-one moults in a may-fly! 



Some insects pass through this lowly larval 

 stage in a few days or weeks, others remain thus 

 undeveloped for a year, while still others require 

 several years to eat themselves into condition for 

 the next change, the pupa state, which is one of 

 seeming rest. 



When the time for this new change arrives, the 

 voracious larva loses its appetite, grows restless, 

 and finally spins for itself a silken cocoon, or wraps 

 itself in chips or bits of earth, or buries itself in the 



