INTRODUCTION. 3 



By means of such a structure as the one just 

 alluded to, the insect, with its series of striking 

 transformations, may be made to disclose to the 

 curious eye a succession of phenomena in some 

 instances more beautiful and surprising than even 

 those of the singularly organized forms of life that 

 clothe the borders of the ocean floor. Few, in these 

 days of general education and shilling' lectures, 

 are without the knowledge, though of a va"-ue 

 kind, that all the caterpillars, so commonly seen 

 feeding on our ordinary garden plants, are des- 

 tined to become moths or butterflies, or, at all 

 events, to undergo some remarkable change ; but of 

 the precise nature of that change, for want of some 

 convenient mode of observation, they are in all pro- 

 bability profoundly ignorant. Of what particular 

 kind of butterfly, moth, or saw-fly any caterpillar 

 under observation may be the first stage, they have 

 no idea. 



Very few, for instance, even among those who 

 take a tolerably correct general view of the nature 

 of the metamorphoses of insect life — very few, on 

 seeing a colony of caterpillars, of deep velvet black, 

 feeding voraciously upon a bed of nettles, would be 

 able to pronounce that these singular-looking and 

 intensely black creatures are, in fact, the gor- 



