STATES OF INSECTS. 213 



by the caterpillar of the beautiful swallow-tail butterfly 

 [Papilio Machaon) and others of the same family. This 

 first forms the loop which is to serve for its girth, and 

 then creeps under it. But the difficulty it has to surmount 

 is, to keep itself from being entangled in the fifty or sixty 

 fine distinct threads of which the girth is composed, and 

 to preserve them all extended so as to be able to intro- 

 duce its body beneath them. For this purpose it makes 

 use of the two first pair of its fore-legs, employing them 

 as a woman does her hands in winding a skein of cotton, 

 to collect and keep all the threads of its card unentangled 

 and properly stretched ; and it is often with great diffi- 

 culty, towards the end of the process, that it prevents 

 them from slipping off. When a sufficient number of 

 threads is completed, the animal bends its head between 

 its legs, and insinuates it under the collected loop, which 

 by its annular contraction it easily pushes to the middle 

 of the body. 



In about thirty hours after the larva? which girth them- 

 selves have finished their operations, the skin splits, and 

 the pupa disengages itself from it by those contractions 

 and dilatations of its segments which have been before 

 described, pushing the exuviae in folds to the tail, by dif- 

 ferent motions of which it generally succeeds in detach- 

 ing them. One would have thought there would be con- 

 siderable difficulty in slipping the skin past the girth; 

 but this, according to Reaumur, seems to be easily ef- 

 fected 3 . 



If you are desirous of witnessingfor yourself the manoeu- 

 vres by which these curious modes of suspension are 



a For the above account see Reaum. i. Mem. x. xi. 



