STATES OF INSECTS. 197 



change of skin in these and other the like worms. This 

 matter, therefore, deserves the greatest consideration, 

 and is worthy to be called a specimen of nature's mira- 

 cles ; for it is not the external skin only that these worms 

 cast, like serpents, but the throat and a part of the sto- 

 mach, and even the inward surface of the great gut, 

 change their skin at the same time. But this is not the 

 whole of these wonders ; for at the same time some hun- 

 dreds of pulmonary pipes within the body of the worm 

 cast also each its delicate and tender skin. These seve- 

 ral skins are afterwards collected into eighteen thicker, 

 and, as it were, compounded ropes, nine on each side of 

 the body, which, when the skin is cast, slip gently and 

 by degrees from within the body through the eighteen 

 apertures or orifices of the pulmonary tubes before de- 

 scribed, having their tops or ends directed upwards 

 towards the head. Two other branches of the pulmo- 

 nary pipes that are smaller, and have no points of respi- 

 ration, cast a skin likewise." ..." If any one separates 

 the cast little ropes or congeries of the pulmonary pipes 

 with a fine needle, he will very distinctly see the branches 

 and ramifications of these several pipes, and also their 

 annular composition a ." — Bonnet makes a similar obser- 

 vation with regard to caterpillars ; but he appears to have 

 .observed it more particularly, at least the change of the 

 intestines, previously to the metamorphosis of the insect, 

 when he says with the excrements it casts the inner skin 

 of the stomach and viscera 5 . Both these great men ap- 

 pear to have recorded the result of their own actual ob- 

 servations with regard to the proceedings of two very dif- 



a Bibl. Nat. E. Trans, i. 135. col. b. /.- xxvii./. 6. 

 * (Eiivresy viii. 303. 



