no 
THE MIRACULOUS IN NATURE. 
the grave, which makes us the mock of destiny ? It sleeps in the egg, 
and afterwards sleeps again in the nymph. It is thrice born; and it 
dies thrice—as larva, nymph, and beetle. In each of these existences 
the larva or mask is the prefigurement of the succeeding existence. It 
prepares, begets, and hatches itself. From the most repulsive sepulchre 
it emerges sparkling. On the dust it shines; on the gray Egyptian 
plain, in its season of aridity, it shimmers, and eclipses everything. 
Its jewelled wing mirrors the all-powerful sun. 
Where was it ? In the foul shadow, in night and death. A be¬ 
nignant Power has summoned it forth, and will yet do much more for 
this beloved organism ! Sweet, tender ray! The hope was surely 
founded upon justice, on the impartial love of the Creator of all life. 
Has modern science swept away the ancient poesy ? Has it com¬ 
pletely eliminated the miraculous from nature ? 
The inaugurate of this science, Swammerdam, has discovered that 
the grub already contains the nymph; nay more, even the butterfly. 
In the grub he has detected the rudiment of the wing and proboscis 
of the future being. 
This is not all. Malpighi saw the nymph of the silkworm in its 
virgin slumber, already furnished with the attributes of its coming 
maternity ,—containing the eggs which, as a butterfly, it would 
fecundate. 
And yet again, this is not all. Reaumur, in the oak-grub, in a grub 
scarcely a few hours old , found the eggs of the future butterfly. In 
other words, the infant insect, at that very stage when the grub itself, 
as Harvey points out, is simply a mobile egg, already possesses eggs 
and children. 
It is the identity of three beings. It seems as if there could be no 
intermediary deaths; one single life is continuous^ carried on. 
