METAMORPHOSES. 



55 



dead chrysalis ? What more probable, than that its apparent 

 re-assumption of life should be owing to its receiving for 

 tenant the soul of some criminal doomed to animate an insect 

 of similar habits with those which had defiled his human 

 tenement?^ 



At the present day, however, the transformations of insects 

 have lost that excess of the marvellous, which might once 

 have furnished arguments for the fictions of the ancients, and 

 the dreams of Paracelsus. We call them metamorphoses and 

 transformations, because these terms are in common use, and 

 are more expressive of the sudden changes that ensue than 

 any new ones. But, strictly, they ought rather to be termed 

 a series of developments. A caterpillar is not, in fact, a 

 simple but a compound animal, containing within it the germ 

 of the future butterfly, enclosed in what will be the case of 

 the pupa, which is itself included in the three or more skins, 

 one over the other, that will successively cover the larva. 

 As this increases in size these parts expand, present themselves, 

 and are in turn thrown ofi", until at length the perfect insect, 

 which had been concealed in this succession of masks, is 

 displayed in its genuine form. That this is the proper 

 explanation of the phenomenon has been satisfactorily proved 

 by Swammerdam, Malpighi, and other anatomists. The first- 

 mentioned illustrious naturalist discovered, by accurate dissec- 

 tions, not only the skins of the larva and of the pupa encased 

 in each other, but within them the very butterfly itself, with 

 its organs indeed in an almost fluid state, but still perfect in 

 all its parts.^ Of this fact you may convince yourself 

 without Swammerdam's skill, by plunging into vinegar or 

 spirit of wine a caterpillar about to assume the pupa state, 

 and letting it remain there a few day days for the purpose of 

 giving consistency to its parts ; or by boiling it in water for 

 a few minutes. A very rough dissection will then enable 

 you to detect the future butterfly ; and you will find that 



1 " A priest who has drunk wine shall migrate into a moth or fly, feeding on 

 ordure. He who steals the gold of a priest shall pass a thousand times into the 

 bodies of spiders. If a man shall steal honey, he shall be born a great stinging 

 gnat ; if oil, an oil-drinking beetle ; if salt, a cicada ; if a household utensil, an 

 ichneumon fly." histitutes of Menu, 353. 



2 Hill's Swamm. ii. 24. t. 37. f. 2. 4. 



E 4 



