_p184_face_swallow-tailed_butterfly_metamorphosis.png)
Metamorphosis of swallow-tailed butterfly: a, larva; b, chrysalis; c, imago, or perfect insect.
“The change from the caterpillar to the chrysalis and from this to the butterfly is in reality less rapid than might at first sight be supposed. The internal organs all metamorphose very gradually, and even the sudden and striking change in external form (from the chrysalis to the perfect insect) is very deceptive, consisting merely of a throwing off of the outer skin—the drawing aside, as it were, of a curtain—and the revelation of a form which, far from being new, has been in preparation for days, or even for months.”—Sir John Lubbock.
“The winged butterfly has come such a long distance from its wormlike ancestor that we ordinarily would never connect the two. But if we wish to visualize the far ancestors of the butterflies we have but to look at their caterpillars. What an interesting revelation of evolution at work!”—Vernon Kellogg.
Why, except as answered by evolution, does a butterfly pass through the stages of a crawling grub and a quiescent chrysalis to the full-fledged “imago,” with wings?
Editor.
