THE CHARACTERISTICS OF INSECTS. 35 



amples among true insects; in his second class, 

 those which are complete with the exception of 

 wings ; and in his third class, those which, after an 

 active stage of existence, go into a perfectly impas- 

 sive state, during which they take no food, and from 

 which, after a certain lapse of time, they come forth 

 in their perfected form. 



We have learnt, by the discoveries made during 

 the attempts to class insects according to their 

 mode of transformation, that there is nothing so 

 mysterious as was once supposed in insect changes. 

 Since the discoveries of Swammerdam, indeed, and 

 those of Reaumur, Bonnet, and others, we no longer 

 imagine, as naturalists did up to that time, that 

 certain Elies spring into their larva form of life spon- 

 taneously, from decaying matter ; nor that the Gnat 

 issues in a similar manner into spontaneous life 

 from the slime of water acted on by the sun. We 

 can, therefore, no longer consider such changes so 

 astonishing as to deem them, as the alchemists did, 

 positive transmutations, analogous to those which 

 they sought to produce in metals, and of which they 

 thought those of insects typical examples. But, not- 

 Avithstanding the discoveries of science, and the 

 mysteries unravelled by the power of the micro- 

 scope, these changes still remain wonderful de- 



