50 



METAMORPHOSES. 



Gray, was not in his infancy an inhabitant of air ; the first 

 period of his life being spent in gloomy solitude, as a grub, 

 under the surface of the earth. The shapeless maggot, which 

 you scarcely fail to meet with in some one of every handful 

 of nuts you crack, would not always have grovelled in that 

 humble state. If your unlucky intrusion upon its vaulted 

 dwelling had not left it to perish in the wide world, it would 

 have continued to reside there until its full growth had been 

 attained. Then it would have gnawed itself an opening, 

 and, having entered the earth, and passed a few months in a 

 state of inaction, would at length have emerged an elegant 

 beetle furnished with a slender and very long ebony beak : 

 two wings, and two wing-cases, ornamented with yellow 

 bands ; six feet ; and in every respect unlike the worm from 

 which it proceeded. 



That bee but it is needless to multiply instances, a 



sufficient number has been adduced to show, that the appa- 

 rently extravagant supposition with which I set out may be 

 paralleled in the insect world ; and that the metamorphoses 

 of its inhabitants are scarcely less astonishing than would be 

 the transformation of a serpent into an eagle. 



These changes I do not purpose explaining minutely in 

 this place : they will be adverted to more fully in subsequent 

 letters. Here I mean merely to give you such a general 

 view of the subject as shall impress you with its claims to 

 attention, and such an explanation of the states through 

 which insects pass, and of the different terms made use of to 

 designate them in each, as shall enable you to comprehend 

 the frequent allusions which must be made to them in our 

 future correspondence. 



The states through which insects pass are four : the egg ; 

 the larva ; the pupa ; and the imago. 



The first of these need not be here adverted to. In the 

 second, or immediately after the exclusion from the egg, they 

 are soft, without wings, and in shape usually somewhat like 

 worms. This Linne called the larva state, and an insect 

 when in it a larva, adopting a Latin word signifying a mask, 

 because he considered the real insect while under this form 

 to be as it were masked. In the English language we have 



