4 
TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS. 
should often lead different lives during the successive stages of 
their growth and development ; that they should be able to live 
under most opposite conditions of existence, being clothed in 
most varied garb ; that they should undergo metamorphoses. 
Every civilised nation, during its early days, produced students 
of Nature who wondered at the metamorphoses of insects. They 
considered that there was a complete transformation of one being 
into another, and that the metamorphosis of the fable was 
repeated as a common condition in these lowly winged tribes. 
Scientific research and the results of the microscope proved, many 
years since, that this opinion was incorrect, and that the trans- 
formations were phases in the development or evolution of the 
animal. 
The butterfly — the metamorphoses of which are most striking 
to the young observer — could never have existed unless it had 
completed its regular course of development, separated by dis- 
tinct stages. The insect is born in an embryonic condition, 
that is, immature and imperfectly developed — born, as it were, 
too soon. The imperfectly developed insect is the caterpillar. 
The caterpillar receives in the egg the gift of the principal vital 
organs which are to be traced in the chrysalis and butterfly, but 
they have to be modified and perfected, and others have to ap- 
pear at a more advanced stage of the development of the insect. 
During the early part of its existence the insect only requires 
an abundant supply of food, and grows daily in bulk, without 
there being any changes in its outlines and shape. Then, with 
increasing dimensions, come repeated skin sheddings and many 
internal alterations. It attains its greatest size, and then traces 
of new organs are to be discovered by the anatomist. Oftentimes 
old structures disappear. 
The caterpillar then ceases to eat, and appears to shorten and 
to contract ; the skin splits and falls off, and there remains an 
almost quiescent mass, the vitality of which is often doubtful in 
the eyes of the curious. It is an armoured being, some of whose 
outlines foreshadow a future condition ; it is a mould wherein the 
changes of the animal alchemy are proceeding slowly and surely ; 
it is the dross before the gold ; it is the chrysalis, out of which, 
in due time, flies the butterfly. 
