14. _Metamorphoses of the Lepidoptera._--Professor Agassiz said that he had, during the past season, been studying the metamorphoses of the Lepidoptera, and, to his great surprise, he had found that one stage in the transformation of these insects has been overlooked by naturalists. We knew the Lepidoptera in three conditions,--that of the worm, furnished with jaws and jointed, the chrysalis, and the perfect insect with four wings. The change not before described, which he had noticed, is somewhat concealed under the skin of the caterpillar. The animal at a certain period swells at the thoracic region, and becomes extremely sensitive to the touch in this part, the skin being, in fact, in a state of inflammation. On cutting open the skin at this place, Professor Agassiz found beneath it a four-winged insect, before it had passed into the chrysalis state. The wings were long enough to extend half the length of the perfect insect. The posterior pair he found to be membraneous bags, somewhat flattened, like the respiratory vesicles of marine worms, with distinct ribs, which are blood-vessels. The anterior pair are also bags, with their upper half stiff and inflexible, like the elytra of coleoptera. The legs are tubular, but not joined, as in the perfect insect. The jaws are changed into two long tubes, which are bent backwards, as are also the antennæ. In the chrysalis, the wings are flattened and soldered together, as are the legs and sucking-tubes, which are bent backwards. The order of development of the different parts and the coleopterous condition at an incomplete stage, show that naturalists have been in error in placing chewing insects, as the coleoptera, above the sucking insects. The order should be reversed. Professor Agassiz said that he had confirmed his observations in many specimens, by examining them just at the moment when the skin begins to split on the back.--_American Annual of Scientific Discovery_, p. 327.