54 



METAMORPHOSES. 



its parts, bursts the case which enclosed it, quits the pupa, 

 and enters upon the fourth and last state. 



We now see it (unless it be an apterous species) furnished 

 with wings, capapble of propagation, and often under a form 

 altogether different from those which it has previously borne 

 — a perfect beetle, butterfly, or other insect. This Linne 

 termed the imago state, and the animal that had attained to 

 it the imago ; because, having laid aside its mask, and cast off 

 its swaddling hands, being no longer disguised or confined, or 

 in any respect imperfect, it is now become a true representa- 

 tive or image of its species. This state is in general referred 

 to when an insect is spoken of without the restricting terms 

 larva or pupa. 



Such being the singularity of the transformations of insects, 

 you will not think the ancients were so wholly unprovided 

 with a show of argument as we are accustomed to consider 

 them, for their belief in the possibility of many of the marvel- 

 lous metamorphoses which their poets recount. Utterly 

 ignorant as they were of modern physiological discoveries, 

 the conversion of a caterpillar into a butterfly must have 

 been a fact sufficient to put to a nonplus all the sceptical 

 oppugners of such transformations. And however we may 

 smile, in this enlightened age, at the inference drawn not two 

 centuries ago by Sir Theodore May erne, the editor of Mouffet's 

 work on insects, " that if animals are transmuted so may 

 metals it was not, in fact, with his limited knowledge on 

 these subjects, so very preposterous. It is even possible that 

 some of the wonderful tales of the ancients were grafted on 

 the changes which they observed to take place in insects. 

 The death and revivification of the phoenix, from the ashes of 

 which, before attaining its perfect state, arose first a worm 

 ((r?£coX>]0), in many of its particulars resembles what occurs in 

 the metamorphoses of insects. Nor is it very unlikely that 

 the doctrine of the metempsychosis took its rise from the 

 same source. What argument would be thought by those 

 who maintained this doctrine more plausible, in favour of the 

 transmigration of souls, than the seeming revivification of the 



Epist. Dedicat, 



