英文科學讀本 第三冊·Lesson 45 Life History of an Insect

Lesson 45 Life History of an Insect

Look at that beautiful butterfly, Norah, said Fred. "Its life has been a strange one. If you will shut your eyes, and listen again as you did to the frog, you shall hear its history."

I was once an ugly caterpillar.' This is what it would say if it could speak. 'I remember the time when I first crawled out from an egg. I was a very small, ugly, crawling thing then. My mother had laid the eggs for me and my brothers and sisters in the leaf of a cabbage. She put them there because she knew that we youngsters would be very fond of cabbage. That's about the only kind thing she ever did for us, for she died soon after.

Some mothers, I am told, put their eggs in other places. The fly, for instance, likes to lay her eggs in the meat in the butchers' shops, so that the maggots that come from them may have, plenty of the food they like best. The beetle places her eggs in a dung-heap, where the grubs that come from them are sure to get plenty to eat.

Well, it seems to me, whether we were caterpillars, maggots, or grubs, we did justice to the food our good mothers provided for us. I know I did little else but feed from morning till night, and as I fed and grew, my skin split in all directions, and I threw it off from time to time, always finding a new one underneath. I don't think the gardener can have been very fond of us, for we must have done a good deal of damage to his plants.

Well, after a while I suppose I must have reached my full size, for I had no longer any desire to eat. I seemed to want to sleep. I rolled myself up in a snug ball, gummed myself into the leaf, and covered myself with a loosely-spun, flossy silk. I think people called me a pupa or a chrysalis in those days, but how long it lasted I never shall know.

All I do know is that when at length I woke up, I was no longer a crawling larva, nor was I a pupa, but I found myself furnished with the most beautiful wings. I could fly. I was never more to crawl like an ugly worm. I can't tell you the joy I felt.

Well, I soon began to feel my appetite, but I had now quite a loathing for those nasty cabbage-leaves and green food. Something—I can't tell what it was—seemed to urge me to go to the flowers. I went, and then I found I had a beautiful trunk for sucking up the sweet juice of the flowers. This has been my food ever since.

I have been so happy, but I begin to feel it will soon end. I must go and lay my eggs in that cabbage, and then I fear it will be all over with me.'

SUMMARY

Insects come from eggs, laid by the parent, in the midst of some substance which will serve for food. The larva, or grub, comes from the egg, and feeds voraciously till it reaches its full size. It then changes to the "pupa" form, from which it emerges as a perfect insect.