Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Entomology.djvu/45

Rh works, but Swammerdam's figure greatly surpasses all that have subsequently appeared (See Biblia Naturæ, pl. 39.) It was figured before his time, both by Goedart and Aldrovandus, the former of whom called it the chamæleon, from having kept an individual alive for nine months without food; the latter names it the water intestine. Both were unacquainted with its metamorphosis, and nearly all its most remarkable peculiarities; Swammerdam's account leaves little to be desired. He was so much struck with the beauty of its parts, and their exquisite adaptation to the functions they perform, that he frequently breaks out in lamentations of his own inadequacy to examine them aright, and in adoration of the power and goodness which they so signally manifest. "O God, thy works infinitely surpass the reach of our feeble understandings; all that we actually know of them, or ever can know, is but a faint and lifeless shadow of thy adorable perfections. The brightest understandings fail in the contemplation of them, and are obliged to confess, that all this boasted penetration is but short sightedness, when employed in fathoming the depth of that power, goodness, and wisdom, it has pleased thee to exert in the lowest part of thy creation. "The transformation from a worm to a fly, observable in this insect, presents us with a real miracle, and may justly be considered, as a laying down of old worn-out parts, and an acquisition of new perfect ones instead of them; in fine, as a total change of an old to a new, and of an imperfect to a