Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/135

 accident has made men Naturalists, in the highest meaning of the term. Bonnet, evidently speaking of himself, says, "I knew a naturalist, who, when he was seventeen years of age, having heard of the operations of the ant-lion, began by doubting them. He had no rest till he had examined into them; and he verified them, he admired them, he discovered new facts, and soon became the disciple and the friend of the Pliny of France " (Reamur). It is not the happy fortune of many to be able to devote themselves exclusively to the study of nature, unquestionably the most fascinating of human employments; but almost every one may acquire sufficient knowledge to be able to derive a high gratification from beholding the more common operations of animal life. His materials for contemplation are always before him.

The silk-worm is a species of caterpillar which, like all other insects of the same class, undergoes a variety of changes during the short period of its life; assuming, in each of three successive transformations, ''a form wholly dissimilar to that with which it was previously invested''.

Among the great variety of caterpillars, the descriptions of which are to be found in the records of natural history, the silk-worm occupies a place far above the rest. Not only is our attention called to the examination of its various transformations, by the desire of satisfying our curiosity as entomologists, but our artificial wants incite us likewise to the study of its nature and habits, that we may best and most profitably apply its instinctive industry to our own advantage.

It has been well observed by Pullein, a writer on this subject, that "there is scarcely anything among the various wonders which the animal creation affords, more admirable than the variety of changes which the silk-worm undergoes;" but the curious texture of that silken covering with which it surrounds itself when it arrives at the perfection of its animal life, vastly surpasses what is made by other animals of this class. All the caterpillar kind do, indeed, pass through changes like those of the silk-worm, and the beauty of many in their butterfly state