Abstract
EVERYBODY, whether learned or unlearned, is aware that insects undergo changes in their shapes and habits. Great numbers of popular works on natural history have made the description of these changes or metamorphoses familiar to the public; and Newport, Dugés, Heroldt, Fabre, and those British entomologists and naturalists whose names are household words amongst us, have informed the scientific world upon the anatomical and minute changes of structure which accompany the wonderful varieties in form and in method of life. The array of facts is enormous, and yet, with all this vast amount of sterling knowledge to build upon, very little progress has been made towards recognising the cause and meaning of metamorphosis in biology—in the science of life. The facts and details of the subject have been accumulating, but the nature of its philosophy has been studied by very few naturalists, and it is only of late years that Lubbock and Fritz Müller, and a few others, have been stimulated by the light of the theory of evolution to examine into it. Believing that the subject is increasing in interest, and that its consideration bears upon some of the most important theories respecting life, it is proposed to devote this lecture to a description of the different kinds of metamorphoses in insects, and to a consideration of the biological meaning of the phenomena.
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Insect Metamorphosis * . Nature 7, 30–34 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/007030a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/007030a0