previous next

CHAP. 37. (32.)—THE CHRYSALIS.

Many insects, however, are engendered in a different manner; and some more especially from dew. This dew settles upon the radish1 leaf in the early days of spring; but when it has been thickened by the action of the sun, it becomes reduced to the size of a grain of millet. From this a small grub afterwards arises, which, at the end of three days, becomes transformed into a caterpillar. For several successive days it still increases in size, but remains motionless, and covered with a hard husk. It moves only when touched, and is covered with a web like that of the spider. In this state it is called a chrysalis, but after the husk is broken, it flies forth in the shape of a butterfly.

1 Cuvier observes, that this is a very correct account of the cabbage or radish butterfly, the Papilio brassicæ or Papilio raphani of Linnæus.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (14 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: