344 
OF INSECTS IN GENERATE 
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The different changes of form which many infefts uni 
dergo, from their firll appearance as eggs, till they arrive 
at their perfect and winged Hate, conftitute an importi 
ant article in their hiflory : Thcfe have been termed their 
metamorphofes, or transformations ; and, from the very 
language employed to exprefs them, the falfe notions 
which were long entertained, even by naturaliffs, are ftill 
difcernable. 
A fly, a fpider, or an ant, infects of the molt different 
kinds in outward appearauce, do not differ more widely 
than the fame infe& does from itfelf, under the different 
forms of a worm, a chryfalis, and a butterfly. What 
is at prefent a worm, however, focn becomes a chryfalis, 
which is again as fuddenly to be changed into a wing- 
ed animal. Changes apparently fo inftantaneoully pro- 
duced, have been compared to the metamorphofes fo re- 
nowned in ancient fable, and probably at fit ft fuggefted 
the idea of thofe transformations which fable has render- 
ed fo celebrated. When an infect in fo Ihort a fpace, ap- 
peared under a form fo different from that which it lately 
exhibited, men imagined that the change was real : They 
traded to appearances, without giving themfelves the 
trouble of refledhing on the improbability of the fa£t. 
They who imagined that a piece of rotten wood or putrid 
flelh could become the eyes, limbs, and body of an infect 
of fuch delicate organization, and confilting of mufclesj 
nerves, veins, and arteries, could have but little difficul- 
ty in admitting, that the flelh of a chryfalis might be 
transformed into the wings of a butterfly, or that the fix- 
teen limbs of a filk worm might furniffi fix for a moth. 
After true philofophy appeared, one of the firft leffons 
ffie gave her votaries, was to beware of trailing too Im- 
plicitly to appearances, and of admitting ideas that were 
neither 
