resemblance, in every particular, which, at one time, was thought
to obtain between the metamorphosis of insects, especially of the
_Lepidoptera_ order, and the resurrection of the body, do away that
general analogy which cannot fail to strike every one who at all
considers the subject. Even Swammerdam, whose observations have
proved that the analogy is not so complete as had been imagined,
speaking of the metamorphosis of insects, uses these strong words:
"This process is formed in so remarkable a manner in butterflies,
that we see therein the resurrection painted before our eyes, and
exemplified so as to be examined by our hands[101]." To see, indeed,
a caterpillar crawling upon the earth, sustained by the most ordinary
kinds of food, which, when it has existed a few weeks or months under
this humble form, its appointed work being finished, passes into an
intermediate state of seeming death, when it is wound up in a kind
of shroud and encased in a coffin, and is most commonly buried under
the earth, (though sometimes its sepulchre is in the water, and at
others in various substances in the air,) and after this creature
and others of its tribe have remained their destined time in this
death-like state, to behold earth, air, and water, give up their
several prisoners: to survey them, when, called by the warmth of
the solar beam, they burst from their sepulchres, cast off their
cerements, from this state of torpid inactivity, come forth, as a
bride out of her chamber,--to survey them, I say, arrayed in their
nuptial glory, prepared to enjoy a new and more exalted condition of
life, in which all their powers are developed, and they are arrived
at the perfection of their nature; when no longer confined to the
earth they can traverse the fields of air, their food is the nectar
of flowers, and love begins his blissful reign;--who that witnesses
this interesting scene can help seeing in it a lively representation
of man in his threefold state of existence, and more especially of
that happy day, when at the call of the great Sun of Righteousness,
all that are in the graves shall come forth, the sea shall give up
her dead, and death being swallowed up of life, the nations of the
blessed shall live and love to the ages of eternity?
But although the analogy between the different states of insects and
those of the body of man is only general, yet it is much more complete
with respect to his soul. He first appears in this frail body--a child
of the earth, a crawling worm, his soul being in a course of training
and preparation for a more perfect and glorious existence. Its course
being finished, it casts off the earthy body, and goes into a hidden
state of being in Hades, where it rests from its works, and is prepared
for its final consummation. The time for this being arrived, it comes
forth clothed with a glorious body, not like its former, though
germinating from it, for though "it was sown an animal body, it shall
be raised a spiritual body," endowed with augmented powers, faculties
and privileges commensurate to its new and happy state. And here the
parallel holds perfectly between the insect and the man. The butterfly,
the representative of the soul, is prepared in the _larva_ for its
future state of glory; and if it be not destroyed by the ichneumons
and other enemies to which it is exposed, symbolical of the vices that
destroy the spiritual life of the soul, it will come to its state
of repose in the _pupa_, which is its Hades; and at length, when it
assumes the _imago_, break forth with new powers and beauty to its
final glory and the reign of love. So that in this view of the subject
well might the Italian poet exclaim:
Non v' accorgete voi, che noi siam' vermi
Nati a formar l' angelica farfalla[102]?
The Egyptian fable, as it is supposed to be, of Cupid and Psyche,
seems built upon this foundation. "Psyche," says an ingenious and
learned writer, "means in Greek the human soul; and it means also a
butterfly[103], of which apparently strange double sense the undoubted
reason is, that a butterfly was a very ancient symbol of the soul--from
the prevalence of this symbol, and the consequent coincidence of the
names, it happened that the Greek sculptors frequently represented
Psyche as subject to Cupid in the shape of a butterfly; and that even
when she appears in their works under the human form, we find her
decorated with the light and filmy wings of that gay insect[104]."
The following beautiful little poem falls in so exactly with the
subject I have been discussing, that I cannot resist the temptation
I feel to copy it for you, especially as I am not aware that it has
appeared any where but in a newspaper.
THE BUTTERFLY'S BIRTH-DAY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE BUTTERFLY'S BALL."
The shades of night were scarcely fled;
The air was mild, the winds were still;
And slow the slanting sun-beams spread
O'er wood and lawn, o'er heath and hill:
From fleecy clouds of pearly hue
Had dropt a short but balmy shower,
That hung like gems of morning dew
On every tree and every flower:
And from the Blackbird's mellow throat
Was pour'd so loud and long a swell,
As echoed with responsive note
From mountain side and shadowy dell:
When bursting forth to life and light,
The offspring of enraptured May,
The BUTTERFLY, on pinions bright,
Launch'd in full splendour on the day.
Unconscious of a mother's care,
No infant wretchedness she knew;
But as she felt the vernal air,
At once to full perfection grew.
Her slender form, ethereal light,
Her velvet-textured wings infold;
With all the rainbow's colours bright,
And dropt with spots of burnish'd gold.
Trembling with joy awhile she stood,
And felt the sun's enlivening ray;
Drank from the skies the vital flood,
And wonder'd at her plumage gay!
And balanced oft her broider'd wings,
Through fields of air prepared to sail:
Then on her vent'rous journey springs,
And floats along the rising gale.
Go, child of pleasure, range the fields,
Taste all the joys that spring can give,
Partake what bounteous summer yields,
And live whilst yet 'tis thine to live.
Go sip the rose's fragrant dew,
The lily's honeyed cup explore,
From flower to flower the search renew,
And rifle all the woodbine's store:
And let me trace thy vagrant flight,
Thy moments too of short repose,
And mark thee then with fresh delight
Thy golden pinions ope and close.
But hark! whilst thus I musing stand,
Pours on the gale an airy note,
And breathing from a viewless band,
Soft silvery tones around me float!
--They cease--but still a voice I hear,
A whisper'd voice of hope and joy,
"Thy hour of rest approaches near,
"Prepare thee, mortal!--thou must die!
"Yet start not!--on thy closing eyes
"Another day shall still unfold,
"A sun of milder radiance rise,
"A happier age of joys untold.
"Shall the poor worm that shocks thy sight,
"The humblest form in nature's train,
"Thus rise in new-born lustre bright,
"And yet the emblem teach in vain?
"Ah! where were once her golden eyes,
"Her glittering wings of purple pride?
"Conceal'd beneath a rude disguise,
"A shapeless mass to earth allied.
"Like thee the hapless reptile lived,
"Like thee he toil'd, like thee he spun,
"Like thine his closing hour arrived,
"His labour ceased, his web was done.
"And shalt thou, number'd with the dead,
"No happier state of being know?
"And shall no future morrow shed
"On thee a beam of brighter glow?
"Is this the bound of power divine,
"To animate an insect frame?
"Or shall not He who moulded thine
"Wake at his will the vital flame?
"Go, mortal! in thy reptile state,
"Enough to know to thee is given;
"Go, and the joyful truth relate;
"Frail child of earth! high heir of heaven!"
A question here naturally presents itself--Why are insects subject
to these changes? For what end is it that, instead of preserving
like other animals[105] the same general form from infancy to old
age, they appear at one period under a shape so different from
that which they finally assume; and why should they pass through
an intermediate state of torpidity so extraordinary? I can only
answer that such is the will of the Creator, who doubtless had the
wisest ends in view, although we are incompetent satisfactorily
to discover them. Yet one reason for this conformation may be
hazarded. A very important part assigned to insects in the economy
of nature, as I shall hereafter show, is that of speedily removing
superabundant and decaying animal and vegetable matter. For such
agents an insatiable voracity is an indispensable qualification, and
not less so unusual powers of multiplication. But these faculties
are in a great degree incompatible. An insect occupied in the work
of reproduction could not continue its voracious feeding. Its life,
therefore, after leaving the egg, is divided into three stages.
In the first, as _larva_, it is in a state of sterility; its sole
object is the satisfying its insatiable hunger; and, for digesting
the masses of food which it consumes, its intestines are almost all
stomach. This is usually by much the longest period of its existence.
Having now laid up a store of materials for the development of the
future perfect insect, it becomes a _pupa_; and during this inactive
period the important process slowly proceeds, uninterrupted by the
calls of appetite. At length the perfect insect is disclosed. It
now often requires no food at all; and scarcely ever more than a
very small quantity; for the reception of which its stomach has been
contracted, in some instances, to a tenth of its former bulk. Its
almost sole object is now the multiplication of its kind, from which
it is diverted by no other propensity; and this important duty being
performed, the end of its existence has been answered, and it expires.
It must be confessed that some objections might be thrown out
against this hypothesis, yet I think none that would not admit of a
plausible answer. To these it is foreign to my purpose now to attend,
and I shall conclude this letter by pointing out to you the variety
of new relations which this arrangement introduces into nature. One
individual unites in itself, in fact, three species, whose modes
of existence are often as different as those of the most distantly
related animals of other tribes. The same insect often lives
successively in three or four worlds. It is an inhabitant of the
water during one period; of the earth during another; and of the air
during a third; and fitted for its various abodes by new organs and
instruments, and a new form in each. Think (to use an illustration of
Bonnet) but of the cocoon of the silkworm! How many hands, how many
machines does not this little ball put into motion! Of what riches
should we not have been deprived, if the moth of the silkworm had
been born a moth, without having been previously a caterpillar! The
domestic economy of a large portion of mankind would have been formed
on a plan altogether different from that which now prevails.
I am, &c.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] "Cœnis etiam non vocatus ut Musca advolo." Aristophon _in
Pythagorista_ apud Athenæum. (Mouffet, 56.)
[86] _Gentils_, or _gentles_, is a synonymous word employed by our
old authors, but is now obsolete, except with anglers. Thus Tusser,
in a passage pointed out to me by Sir Joseph Banks:--
"Rewerd not thy sheep when ye take off his cote
With twitches and patches as brode as a grote;
Let not such ungentlenesse happen to thine,
Least fly with her _gentils_ do make it to pine."
[87] For different kinds of larvæ, see PLATES XVII. XVIII. XIX.
[88] _Hist. Anim._ l. 5. c. 10.
[89] PLATE XVI. FIG. 6-9.
[90] In explanation of the terms _Lepidoptera_, _Lepidopterous_,
_Coleoptera_, &c. which will frequently occur in the following pages
before coming regularly to definitions, it is necessary here to state
that they have reference to the names given by entomologists to the
different orders or tribes of insects, as under:
1 _Coleoptera_ consisting of _Beetles_. Plate I. Fig. 1-6.
2 _Strepsiptera_----of the genera _Xenos_ and _Stylops_. Plate
II. Fig. 1.
3 _Dermaptera_----of the _Earwigs_. Plate I. Fig. 7.
4 _Orthoptera_----of _Cockroaches_, _Locusts_, _Grasshoppers_,
_Crickets_, _Spectres_, _Mantes_, _&c._ Plate II. Fig. 2. 3.
5 _Hemiptera_ consisting of _Bugs_, _Cicadæ_, _Water-scorpions_,
_Water-boat-men_, _Plant-lice_, _Cochineal_ Insects, &c. Plate
II. Fig. 4. 5.
6 _Trichoptera_ consisting of the _flies_ produced by the various
species of _Case-worms_, _Phryganea_, L. Plate III. Fig. 4.
7 _Lepidoptera_ consisting of _Butterflies_, _Hawkmoths_, and
_Moths_. Plate III. Fig. 1-3.
8 _Neuroptera_ consisting of _Dragon-flies_, _Ant-lions_,
_Ephemeræ_, _&c._ Plate III. Fig. 5. 6.
9 _Hymenoptera_ consisting of _Bees_, _Wasps_, and other insects
armed with a _sting_ or _ovipositor_, and its _valves_. Plate
IV. Fig. 1-3.
10 _Diptera_ consisting of _Flies_, _Gnats_, and other
_two-winged_ insects. Plate IV. Fig. 4. 5. Plate V. Fig. 1.
11 _Aphaniptera_ consisting of the _Flea_ tribe. Plate V. Fig. 2.
12 _Aptera_----of _Mites_, _Lice_, &c. Plate V. Fig. 3-6.
[91] PLATE XVI. FIG. 10-13.
[92] PLATE XVI. FIG. 4. 5.
[93] PLATE XVII. FIG. 1-4.
[94] PLATE XVII. FIG. 2.
[95] PLATE XVII. FIG. 5-10.
[96] Epist. Dedicat.
[97] "A priest who has drunk wine shall migrate into a moth or
fly, feeding on ordure. He who steals the gold of a priest shall
pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders. If a man shall
steal honey, he shall be born a great stinging gnat; if oil, an
oil-drinking beetle; if salt, a cicada; if a household utensil, an
ichneumon fly." _Institutes of Menu_, 353.
[98] Hill's _Swamm._ ii. 24. t. 37. f. 2. 4.
[99] _De Bombyce_, 29.
[100] Reaum. i. 359.
[101] Hill's _Swamm._ i. 127 a.
[102] Do you not perceive that we are caterpillars, born to form the
angelic butterfly?
[103] It is worthy of remark, that in the north and west of England
the moths that fly into candles are called _saules_ (souls), perhaps
from the old notion that the souls of the dead fly about at night in
search of light. For the same reason, probably, the common people in
Germany call them _ghosts_ (geistchen).
[104] Nares's _Essays_, i. 101-2.
[105] A few vertebrate animals, viz. frogs, toads, and newts, undergo
metamorphoses in some respects analogous to those of insects; their
first form as tadpoles being very different from that which they
afterwards assume. These reptiles too, as well as snakes, cast their
skin by an operation somewhat similar to that in _larvæ_. There is
nothing, however, in their metamorphoses at all resembling the _pupa_
state in insects.
LETTER IV.
_INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS._
DIRECT INJURIES.
In the letter which I devoted to the defence of Entomology, I gave
you reason to expect, more effectually to obviate the objection
drawn from the supposed insignificance of insects, that I should
enter largely into the question of their importance to us both as
instruments of good and evil. This I shall now attempt; and, as I
wish to leave upon your mind a pleasant impression with respect to
my favourites, I shall begin with the last of these subjects--the
_injury_ which they do to us.
The Almighty ordains various instruments for the punishment of
offending nations: sometimes he breaks them to pieces with the iron
rod of war; at others the elements are let loose against them;
earthquakes and floods of fire, at his word, bring sudden destruction
upon them; seasons unfriendly to vegetation threaten them with
famine; the blight and mildew realize these threats; and often, the
more to manifest and glorify his power, he employs means, at first
sight, apparently the most insignificant and inadequate to effect
their ruin; the numerous tribes of _insects_ are his armies[106],
marshalled by him, and by his irresistible command impelled to the
work of destruction: where he directs them they lay waste the earth,
and famine and the pestilence often follow in their train.
The generality of mankind overlook or disregard these powerful,
because minute, dispensers of punishment; seldom considering in
how many ways their welfare is affected by them: but the fact is
certain, that should it please God to give them a general commission
against us, and should he excite them to attack, at the same time,
our bodies, our clothing, our houses, our cattle, and the produce of
our fields and gardens, we should soon be reduced, in every possible
respect, to a state of extreme wretchedness; the prey of the most
filthy and disgusting diseases, divested of a covering, unsheltered,
except by caves and dungeons, from the inclemency of the seasons,
exposed to all the extremities of want and famine; and in the end, as
Sir Joseph Banks, speaking on this subject, has well observed[107],
driven with all the larger animals from the face of the earth. You
may smile, perhaps, and think this a high-coloured picture, but you
will recollect--I am not stating the mischiefs that insects commonly
do, but what they would do according to all probability, if certain
counter-checks restraining them within due limits had not been put in
action; and which they actually do, as you will see, in particular
cases, when those counter-checks are diminished or removed.
Insects may be said, without hyperbole, to have established a kind
of universal empire over the earth and its inhabitants. This is
principally conspicuous in the injuries which they occasion, for
nothing in nature that possesses or has possessed animal or vegetable
life, is safe from their inroads. Neither the cunning of the fox,
nor the swiftness of the horse or deer, nor the strength of the
buffalo, nor the ferocity of the lion or tiger, nor the armour of
the rhinoceros, nor the giant bulk or sagacity of the elephant, nor
even the authority of imperial man, who boasts himself to be the
lord of all, can secure them from becoming a prey to these despised
beings. The air affords no protection to the birds, nor the water to
the fish; insects pursue them all to their most secret conclaves and
strongest citadels, and compel them to submit to their sway. Flora's
empire is still more exposed to their cruel domination and ravages;
and there is scarcely one of her innumerable subjects, from the oak,
the glory of the forest, to the most minute lichen that grows upon
its trunk, that is not destined to be the food of these next to
nonentities in our estimation. And when life departs from man, the
inferior animals, or vegetables, they become universally, sooner or
later, the inheritance of insects.
I shall principally bespeak your attention to the injuries in question
as they affect ourselves. These may be divided into direct and
indirect. By _direct_ injuries I mean every species of attack upon our
own persons, and by _indirect_, such as are made upon our property. To
the former of these I shall confine myself in the present letter.
* * * * *
Insects, as to their _direct_ attacks upon us, may be arranged in
three principal classes. Those, namely, which seek to make us their
food; those whose object is to prevent or revenge an injury which
they either fear, or have received from us; and those which indeed
offer us no violence, but yet incommode us extremely in other ways.
I hope I shall not too much offend your delicacy if I begin the first
class of our insect assailants with a very disgusting genus, which
Providence seems to have created to punish inattention to personal
cleanliness. But though this pest of man must not be wholly passed
over, yet, since it is unfortunately too well known, it will not be
at all necessary for me to enlarge upon its history. I shall only
mention one fact which shows the astonishingly rapid increase of
these animals, where they have once gotten possession. It is a vulgar
notion, that a louse in twenty-four hours may see two generations;
but this is rather overshooting the mark. Leeuwenhoek, whose love for
science overcame the nausea that such creatures are apt to excite,
proves that their nits or eggs are not hatched till the eighth day
after they are laid, and that they do not themselves commence laying
before they are a month old. He ascertained, however, that a single
female louse may, in eight weeks, witness the birth of five thousand
descendants[108]. You remember how wolves were extirpated from this
country, but perhaps never suspected any monarch of imposing a
tribute of _lice_ upon his subjects. Yet we are gravely told that in
Mexico and Peru such a _poll_-tax was exacted, and that bags full of
these treasures were found in the palace of Montezuma[109]!!! Were
our own taxes paid in such coin, what little grumbling would there be!
Two other species of this genus, besides the common louse, are, in
this country, parasites upon the human body----But already I seem
to hear you exclaim, "Why dwell so long on creatures so odious and
nauseating, whose injuries are confined to the _profanum vulgus_?
Leave them therefore to the canaille--they are nothing to us." Not
so fast, my friend--recollect what historians and other writers have
recorded concerning the _Phthiriasis_ or pedicular disease, and you
must own that, for the quelling of human pride, and to pull down the
high conceits of mortal man, this most loathsome of all maladies, or
one equally disgusting, has been the inheritance of the rich, the
wise, the noble, and the mighty; and in the list of those that have
fallen victims to it, you will find poets, philosophers, prelates,
princes, kings, and emperors. It seems more particularly to have
been a judgement of God upon oppression and tyranny, whether civil
or religious. Thus the inhuman Pheretima mentioned by Herodotus,
Antiochus Epiphanes, the Dictator Sylla, the two Herods, the Emperor
Maximin, and, not to mention more, the great persecutor of the
Protestants, Philip the Second, were carried off by it.
I say by this malady, _or one equally disgusting_, because it is not
by any means certain, though some learned men have so supposed, that
all these instances, and others of a similar nature, standing also
upon record, are to be referred to the same specific cause; since
there is very sufficient reason for thinking that at least _three_
different descriptions of insects are concerned in the various
cases that have been handed down to us under the common name of
_Phthiriasis_. As the subject of maladies connected with insects,
or produced by them, is both curious and interesting, although no
writer, that I am aware of, has given it full consideration, and
at the same time falls in with my general design, I hope you will
not regard me as guilty of presumption, and of intruding into the
province of medical men, if I enter rather largely into it, and
state to you the reasons that have induced me to embrace the above
hypothesis, leaving you full liberty to reject it if you do not find
it consonant to reason and fact. The three kinds of insects to which
I allude, as concerned in cases that have been deemed Phthiriasis,
are lice (_Pediculi_, L.) mites (_Acari_, L.), and _Larvæ_ in general.
As far as the habits of the genus _Pediculus_, whether inhabiting man
or the inferior animals, are at present known, it does not appear,
from any well ascertained fact, that the species belonging to it
are ever _subcutaneous_. For this observation, as far as it relates
to man, I can produce the highest medical authority. "The louse
feeds on the surface of the skin," says the learned Dr. Mead in his
_Medica Sacra_; and Dr. Willan, in his palmary work on _Cutaneous
Diseases_, remarks with respect to the body-louse, "that the nits, or
eggs, are deposited on the small hairs of the skin," and that "the
animals are found on the skin, or on the linen, and not under the
cuticle, as some authors have represented." And he further observes,
that "many marvellous stories are related by Forestus, Schenkius and
others respecting lice bred under the skin, and discharged in swarms
from abscesses, strumous ulcers, and vesications. The mode in which
Pediculi are generated being now so well ascertained, no credit can
be given to these accounts." Thus far this great man, who however
supposes (in which opinion Dr. Bateman concurs with him) that the
authors to whom he alludes had mistaken for lice some other species
of insects, which are not unfrequently found in putrefactive sores.
If these observations be allowed their due weight, it will follow, that
a disease produced by animals residing under the cuticle cannot be a
true Phthiriasis, and therefore the death of the poet Alcman, and of
Pherecydes Syrius the philosopher, mentioned by Aristotle, must have
been occasioned by some other kind of insect. For, speaking of the
lice to which he attributes these catastrophes, he says that "they are
produced in the flesh in small pustule-like tumours, which have no pus,
and from which when punctured, they issue[110]." For the same reason,
the disorder which Dr. Heberden has described in his _Commentaries_,
from the communications of Sir E. Wilmot, under the name of _Morbus
pedicularis_, must also be a different disease, since, with Aristotle,
he likewise represents the insects as inhabiting tumours, from which
they may be extracted when opened by a needle. He says, indeed, that in
every respect they resemble the common lice, except in being whiter;
but medical men, who were not at the same time entomologists, might
easily mistake an Acarus for a Pediculus[111].