NATUEAIi HISTORY. 205 



object of commerce, before the introduction of the 

 Coccus cacti as a dye. It lives upon the roots of Scler- 

 antJius perennis, and some other plants. The colour 

 produced from this species is almost equal to that of 

 the Coccus cacti. A species from the East Indies pro- 

 duces gum lac, and another is employed in China for 

 the manufacture of wax tapers. 



Insect changes. — The metamorphoses of the insect 

 race offer very curious and wonderful natural pheno- 

 mena for contemplation. " We see," says an old 

 author, " some of these creatures crawl for a time as 

 helpless worms upon the earth, like ourselves ; they 

 then retire into a covering, which answers the end of 

 a coffin or a sepulchre, wherein they are invisibly 

 transformed, and come forth in glorious array, with 

 wings and painted plumes, more like the inhabitants 

 of the heavens than such worms as they were in their 

 former state. This transformation is so striking and 

 pleasant an emblem of the present, intermediate, and 

 glorified states of man, that people of the most remote 

 antiquity, when they buried their dead, embalmed 

 and enclosed them in an artificial covering, so figured 

 and painted as to resemble the caterpillar in the in- 

 termediate state ; and as Joseph was the first we 

 read of that was embalmed in Egypt — ^where this 

 custom prevailed — it was probably of Hebrew origin." 



