The rudiments of the wings arise on the edge of the dorsal and ventral side of the 2d thoracic segment, and this, we would remark, is significant as showing a mode of origin of the wings intermediate between that of the manometamorphic and holometamorphic insects. (See pp. 137–142.) While Schmidt could not ascertain the exact structure of the imaginal buds, he says “in general the process of formation of the extremities is exactly as Weismann has described in Corethra.” The two later pupal stages are “as in other metabolic insects.” (See p. 690, Fig. 637.)

Thus far the internal changes in the metamorphosis of the Coleoptera have not been thoroughly studied. They are less complete than in the other holometabolous insects, the differences between the larva and imago being much less marked than in the more specialized orders, and so far as known all the larval organs pass, though not without some great changes, directly into the imaginal ones, the only apparent exception being the mid-intestine, which, as stated by Kowalevsky, undergoes a complete transformation during metamorphosis. The following account, then, refers almost wholly to the Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, and Diptera.

a. The Lepidoptera

The first observations on the complete metamorphosis of insects which were in any way exact were those of Malpighi, in 1667, and of Swammerdam, in 1733. While the observations of Swammerdam, as far as they extended, were correct, his conclusions were extraordinary. They were, however, accepted by Réaumur and by Bonnet, and generally held until the time of Herold in 1815, and lingered on for some years after. The rather famous theory of incasement (“emboîtement”) propounded by Swammerdam was that the form of the larva, pupa, and imago preëxisted in the egg, and even in the ovary; and that the insects in these stages were distinct animals, contained one inside the other, like a nest of boxes, or a series of envelopes one within the other, or, to use his own words: “Animal in animali, seu papilio intra erucam reconditus.”

This theory Swammerdam extended to the whole animal kingdom. It was based on the fact that by throwing the caterpillar, when about to pupate, in boiling water, and then stripping off the skin, the immature form of the butterfly with its appendages was disclosed. Malpighi had previously observed the same fact in the silkworm, perceiving that before pupation the antennæ are concealed in the head of the larva, where they occupy the place previously taken by the mandibular muscles; also that the legs of the moth grew in those of the larva, and that the wings developed from the sides of the worm.

Even Réaumur (1734) remarked: “Les parties du papillon cachées sous le fourreau de chenille sont d’autant plus faciles à trouver que la transformation est plus proche. Elles y sont neanmoins de tout temps.” He also believed in the simultaneous existence of two distinct beings in the insect. “Il serait très curieux de connaître toutes les communications intimes qui sont entre la chenille et le papillon.... La chenille hache, broye, digere les aliments qu’elle distribué au papillon; comme les mères préparent ceux qui sont portés aux fœtus. Notre chenille en un mot est destineé à nourrir et à defendre le papillon qu’elle renferme.” (T. i, 8e Mémoire, p. 363.)

Lyonet (1760), even, did not expose the error of this view that the larva enveloped the pupa and imago, and, as Gonin says, it was undoubtedly because he did not use for his dissections of the caterpillar of Cossus any specimens about to pupate. Yet he detected the wing-germs and those of the legs, stating that he presumed the bodies he saw to be the rudiments of the legs of the moth (p. 450).

Herold, in his work on the development of the butterfly (1815), was the first to object to this erroneous theory, showing that the wings did not become visible until the very end of larval life; that as the larval organs disappear, they are transformed or are replaced by entirely new organs, which is not reconcilable with a simple putting off of the outer envelope. The whole secret of metamorphosis, in Herold’s opinion, consisted in this fact, that the butterfly in the larva state increases and accumulates a supply of fat until it has reached the volume of the perfect state; then it begins the chrysalis period, during which the organs are developed and take their definite form.[[112]] (Abstract mostly from Gonin.) Still the old ideas prevailed, and even Lacordaire, in his Introduction à l’Entomologie published in 1834, held on to Swammerdam’s theory, declaring that “a caterpillar is not a simple animal, but compound,” and he actually goes so far as to say that “a caterpillar, at first scarcely as large as a bit of thread, contains its own teguments threefold and even eightfold in number, besides the case of a chrysalis, and a complete butterfly, all lying one inside the other.” This view, however, we find is not original with Lacordaire, but was borrowed from Kirby and Spence without acknowledgment. These authors, in their Introduction to Entomology (1828), combated Herold’s views and stoutly maintained the old opinions of Swammerdam. They based their opinions on the fact, then known, that certain parts of the imago occur in the caterpillar. On the other hand, Herold denied that the successive skins of the pupa and imago existed as germs, holding that they are formed successively from the “rete mucosum,” which we suppose to be the hypodermis of later authors. In a slight degree the Swammerdam-Kirby and Spence doctrine was correct, as the imago does arise from germs, i.e. the imaginal disks of Weismann, while this was not discovered by Herold, though they do at the outset arise from the hypodermis, his rete mucosum. Thus there was a grain of truth in the Swammerdam-Kirby and Spence doctrine, and also a mixture of truth and error in the opinions of Herold.

The real nature of the internal changes wrought during the process of metamorphosis was first revealed by Weismann in 1864. His discovery of the germs of the imago (imaginal buds) of the Diptera, and his theory of histolysis, or of the complete destruction of the larval organs by a gradual process, was the result of the application of modern methods of embryology and histology, although his observations were first made on the extremely modified type of the Muscidæ or flies, and, at first, he did not extend his view to include all the holometabolous insects. Now, thanks to his successors in this field, Ganin, Dewitz, Kowalevsky, Van Rees, Bugnion, Gonin, and others, we see that metamorphosis is, after all, only an extension of embryonic life, the moults and great changes being similar to those undergone by the embryo, and that metamorphosis and alternation of generations are but terms in a single series. Moreover, the metamorphoses of insects are of the same general nature as those of certain worms, of the echinoderms, and the frog, the different stages of larva, pupa, and imago being adaptational and secondary.

While the changes in form from the larva to the pupa are apparently sudden, the internal histogenetic steps which lead to them are gradual. In the Lepidoptera a few days (usually from one to three) before assuming the pupa stage, the caterpillar becomes restless and ceases to take food. Its excrements are now hard, dry, and, according to Gonin, are “stained carmine red by the secretions of the urinary tubes.” Under the microscope we find that they are almost exclusively composed of fragments of the intestinal epithelium. These red dejections were noticed by Réaumur, and afterwards by Herold, and they are sure indications of the approach of the transformations. It now wanders about, and, if it is a spinner, spins its cocoon, and then lies quietly at rest while the changes are going on within its body. Meanwhile, it lives on the stores of fat in the fat-body, and this supply enables it to survive the pupal period.