Accordingly, the widow draws from its death the brilliant pledge of the future, and gives utterance to this woman's cry:--"Merciful Heaven! do for my husband and for me what thou hast done for the insect. Do not grant less to man; do not grant to my best-beloved less than thou accordest to this brother of the gnat!" * * * * * Has modern science swept away the ancient poesy? Has it completely eliminated the miraculous from nature? The inaugurator of this science, Swammerdam, has discovered that the grub already contains the nymph; nay more, even the butterfly. In the grub he has detected the rudiment of the wing and proboscis of the future being. This is not all. Malpighi saw the _nymph_ of the silkworm in its virgin slumber, _already furnished with the attributes of its coming maternity_,--containing the eggs which, as a butterfly, it would fecundate. And yet again, this is not all. Réaumur, in the oak-grub, _in a grub scarcely a few hours old, found the eggs of the future butterfly_. In other words, the infant insect, at that very stage when the grub itself, as Harvey points out, is simply a mobile egg, already possesses eggs and children. It is the identity of three beings. It seems as if there could be no intermediary deaths; one single life is continuously carried on. All this seems clear, does it not? The ancient mystery has perished? Man has discovered, in its fulness, the secret of things? Réaumur does not think so; Réaumur himself, who has guided us so far. In recording his observations he does not appear satisfied, and confesses "that they still leave very much to be desired."[I] [Footnote I: Réaumur, "Histoire des Insectes," tome i., p. 351.] In truth, it is a thing to confound and almost to terrify the imagination, to think that a grub, at the outset no bigger than a thread, should include in itself all the elements of its moultings and metamorphoses; should contain its triple, and even octuple envelopes; nay more, the sheath or case of its _nympha_ and its complete butterfly, all folded up one in another, with an immense apparatus of vessels, respiratory and digestive, of nerves for feeling and muscles for moving! A prodigious system of anatomy! first traced out in complete detail in Lyonnet's colossal work on the willow-grub. The twofold monster, endowed with a strong grub-stomach for the destruction of innumerable hard leaves, will possess ere long a light and delicate apparatus for extracting the honey of flowers. And yet the clothed creature, which contains in its organism a complete silk-manufactory, will almost immediately sweep away the complex system.