242 
INSECTS. 
wounding the organs of respiration or digestion ; and 
when they had arrived at their full growth, they 
ate their way out of the sides of the animal, at the 
same time destroying it. The caterpillar thus at- 
tacked by the larva of the ichneumon never escapes; 
its destruction is infallible : but then its life is not 
taken away at once ; the larva, while it is feeding 
thereon, knows how to spare the paits that are es- 
sential to its life, because its own is at the same 
time tied up in that of the caterpillar.” 
How surprising it must appear to a person totally 
unacquainted with natural history, to be told, that 
there are a multitude of animals in different forms 
to be met with, some of whom live deep in the 
earth itself, others in the water, and who afterwards 
assume a new figure, live upon the surface of the 
ground, and creep like serpents through woods and 
fields ; who after a certain period cease to eat, and 
build themselves habitations, or rather monuments 
of death, where they continue buried several weeks, 
and sometimes months and whole years, without 
motion or action, and to all appearance without life 
itself; and who, after all this, revive in the form of 
birds, and break through the enclosure of their se- 
pulchres, unfold a most beautiful plumage to the 
sun-beams, and with expanded wings commence 
inhabitants of the air ! Yet nothing is more certain, 
as all this takes place in the transformation of in- 
sects from the egg to the butterfly. 
From the time the caterpillar first emerges from 
its shell, till it begins to spin its tomb, it is called 
