Beautiful Butterflies. 29 



will place, beneath the name of each, its pictorial repre- 

 sentative. 



The appearance of these creatures in their various 

 states of Caterpillar, Chrysalis, and Butterfly, is so 

 strikingly dissimilar, that it was long a general belief 



Larva. Pupa. Imago, 



Caterpillar. Chrysalis. Butterfly. 



that they underwent, at each successive stage, a com- 

 plete transmutation, or change from one being to ano- 

 ther; "but it is now clearly seen," says the naturalist 

 Swammerdam, " that within the skin of the Caterpillar 

 a perfect and real Butterfly is hidden, and therefore the 

 skin of the Caterpillar must be considered only as an 

 outer garment, containing in it parts belonging to the 

 nature of a Butterfly, which have grown under its 

 defence by slow degrees, in like manner as other sen- 

 sitive bodies increase by accretion," that is, by growing 

 or gathering of new matter. In every Caterpillar, 

 therefore, it would seem that from the earliest period 

 of its life there exists the germ or seed, if I may so call 

 it, of the future fly, even as in the interior of the 



