[E60] ‘I have in my imprisonment also gained some experience with regard to caterpillars. It amused me at one time to watch their changes. The worms were apparently all of one sort, striped alike, and of similar colour. But butterflies did not come from all. It was quite pretty to see how a part when they were about to change, pressed against something, whatever it might be, and made themselves steady with a thread (like silkworm’s silk) on each side, passing it over the back about fifty times, always at the same place, and often bending the back to see if the threads were strong enough; if not, they passed still more threads round them. When this was done, they rapidly changed their form and became stout, with a snout in front pointed at the end, not unlike the fish called knorr by the Dutch; they have also similar fins on the back, and a similar head. In this form they remain for sixteen days, and then a white butterfly comes out. But of some caterpillars small worms like maggots come out on both sides, whitish, broad at one end and pointed at the other. These surround themselves with a web with great rapidity, each by itself. Then the worm spins over them tolerably thickly, turning them round till they are almost like a round ball. In this it lies till it is quite dried up; it eats nothing, and becomes as tiny as a fly before it dies. Twelve days afterwards small flies come out of the ball, and then the ball looks like a small bee-hive. I have seen a small living worm come out of the neck of the caterpillar (this I consider the rarest), but it did not live long, and ate nothing. The mother died immediately after the little one had come out.’
It is perhaps not unnecessary to add that this observation, which is correct as to facts, refers to the habits of certain larvæ of wasps which live as parasites in caterpillars.
[E61] It has been stated already that a copy of the first part of this work is still preserved. Amongst the heroines here treated of are modern historical personages, as Queen Margaret of Denmark, Thyre Danobod who built the Dannevirke, Elizabeth of England, and Isabella of Castilia, besides mythical and classic characters, as Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, Marpesia, Tomyris, Zenobia, Artemisia, Victorina, etc. There existed not a few works of this kind—we need only mention Boccacio’s ‘Donne Illustri,’ in which many of these last personages also occur.
[E62] The Peblingesö is one of three lakes which surround Copenhagen on the land-side, in a semicircle.
[E63] The Lutheran Church has retained the division of the Commandments used in the Roman Church; and the Commandment against murder is therefore here described as the fifth, whilst in the English catechism it is the sixth.
[E64] The name of this governor, which is not mentioned by Leonora, was Jörgen Iversen, the first Danish governor of St. Thomas. In 1682 he returned to the colony from Copenhagen on board a vessel which was to bring some prisoners over to St. Thomas. Very soon after their departure, some of the prisoners and of the crew raised a mutiny, killed the captain and some of the passengers, amongst them the ex-governor Iversen. But one of the prisoners who had not been in the plot afterwards got the mastery of the vessel, and returned to Copenhagen. The vessel struck on a rock, near the Swedish coast, but the crew were saved and sent home to Copenhagen by the Swedish Government, and the murderers were then executed.
[E65] The Queen’s church was a room in the castle where service was held according to the Calvinist rite.
[E66]
[E66b] This poem still exists, and is printed in the second volume of Hofman’s work on Danish noblemen. It is intended to convey an account of her own and her husband’s fate.
repeated note.
[E67] This picture is still preserved at the Castle of Rosenbourg, in Copenhagen.