The Butterfly. 
423 
and againe, others have no homes at all, some have many feete, and 
some fewer, and none at all have above sixteen feete. Most of them 
have a bending swift pace, and like unto waves, and others againe 
keepe on their way very plainely, softly, by little and little, and with¬ 
out any great haste. Some change their skinnes yeerely, others againe 
there be that neither change nor cast their old dry skinnes, but keepe 
them still. Some of them, ceasing altogether from any motion, and 
giving over to eate any thing at all, are transformed very strangely 
into a kind of vermin or worms, who beeing covered with a hard crust 
or shell, lye as it were dead all the winter; and from these come in the 
beginning of hot weather, our usuall butter-flyes.” (Book 3, p. 104.) 
The opinions held by Bacon on the subject of insect 
transformations were somewhat vague. He writes :— 
“ The caterpillar is one of the most general of wormes, and breedeth 
of dew and leaves: for we see infinite number of caterpillars which 
breed upon trees and hedges by which the leaves of the trees or 
hedges are in great part consumed, as well by their breeding out of 
the leaf as by their feeding upon the leaf. . . . Greatest cater¬ 
pillars breed on cabbages which have a fat leaf, and are apt to 
putrefy. The caterpillar towards the end of summer waxeth 
volatile and turneth to a butterfly or perhaps some other fly.” (Nat. 
Hist., century viii.) 
The entomologist will find some amusing reading 
concerning caterpillars and their ways in Izaak Walton’s 
Complete Angler (part i. ch. 5). 
Shakspeare uses this guest of summer as a most 
appropriate comparison to “ translate the stubbornness of 
fortune: ”— 
“ What the declined is 
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others 
As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies, 
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer.” 
(Troilus and Cressida , iii. 3, 76.) 
Valeria tries to console Virgilia for her husband’s 
absence by speaking in flattering terms of young 
Marcius 
“ O’ my word, the father’s son: I’ll swear, ’tis a very pretty boy. 
O’ my troth, I looked upon him o’ Wednesday half an hour together: 
