88 
THE CHEYSALIS. 
and almost laughable, but it was really done, and 
succeeded admirably. He fastened the chrysa¬ 
lides, on pieces of paper, and enclosed them in a 
hollow ball of glass, about the size of an egg. 
He then put them under a hen, and the next 
day went to see how they were going on. The 
glass on the inside of the ball was covered with 
minute drops of moisture, and he unstopped it, 
and allowed them to dry up. He left it again 
under the hen, and at the end of four days, to his 
great joy, he found a butterfly. Very soon all 
the chrysalides were hatched, and this at least a 
fortnight before their proper time. They seemed, 
however, none the worse for it, and no one could 
have guessed they had been brought into the 
world in this unnatural manner. 
Reaumur next tried the experiment of keeping 
the butterflies unhatched by exposing them to 
cold. He put the chrysalides into an ice-house, 
and the butterflies did not appear until six 
weeks after the right time. 
Naturalists were very glad to have made this 
discovery of hatching the chrysalis, for they 
thought they now possessed the power of bring¬ 
ing insects into life, or of keeping them 
back at pleasure. And so they could in some 
instances; but in others, Nature baffled all their 
calculations. 
