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LETTER III. 
METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS. 
Were a naturalist to announce to the world the discovery of an animal 
which for the first five years of its life existed in the form ofa serpent; 
which then penetrating into the earth, and weaving a shroud of pure silk 
of the finest texture, contracted itself within this covering into a body 
without external mouth or limbs, and resembling, more than anything else, 
an Egyptian mummy ; and which, lastly, after remaining in this state 
without food and without motion for three years longer, should at the end 
of that period burst its silken cerements, struggle through its earthly cover- 
ing, and start into day a winged bird, — what think you would be the sensa- 
tion excited by this strange piece of intelligence ?. After the first doubts of 
its truth were dispelled, what astonishment would succeed! Amongst the 
learned, what surmises !— what investigations! Amongst the vulgar, what 
eager curiosity and amazement! All would be interested in the history of 
such an unheard-of phenomenon ; even the most torpid would flock to the 
sight of such a prodigy. 
But, you ask, ‘To what do all these improbable suppositions tend ?” 
Simply to rouse your attention to the metamorphoses of the insect world, 
almost as strange and surprising, to which I am now about to direct your 
view, — miracles which, though scarcely surpassed in singularity by all that 
poets have feigned, and though actually wrought every day beneath. our 
eyes, are, because of their commonness, and the minuteness of the objects, 
unheeded alike by the ignorant and the learned. 
That butterfly which amuses you with his aérial excursions, one while 
extracting nectar from the tube of the honeysuckle, and then, the very 
image of fickleness, flying to a rose as if to contrast the hue of its wings 
with that of the flower on which it reposes, did not come into the world 
as you now behold it. At its first exclusion from the egg, and for some 
months of its existence afterwards, it was a worm-like caterpillar, crawling 
upon sixteen short legs, greedily devouring leaves with two jaws, and 
seeing by means of twelve eyes so minute as to be nearly imperceptible 
without the aid of a microscope. You now view it furnished with wings | 
capable of rapid and extensive flights: of its sixteen feet ten have dis- 
appeared, and the remaining six are in most respects wholly unlike those 
to which they have succeeded : its jaws have vanished, and are replaced 
by a curled-up proboscis suited only for sipping liquid sweets; the form. 
of its head is entirely changed, — two long horns project from its upper 
surface; and instead of twelve invisible eyes, you behold two, very large, | 
and composed of at least seventeen thousand conyex lenses, each supposed 
to be a distinct and effective eye! 
Were you to push your examination further, and by dissection to compare 
the internal conformation of the caterpillar with that of the butterfly, you 
would witness changes even more extraordinary. In the former you would 
find some thousands of muscles, which in the latter are replaced by others - 
of a form and structure entirely different. Nearly the whole body of the 
