
No Heaven on Earth
In Maria Sibylla Merian’s first caterpillar book, printed in 1679, a garden tiger moth lives parallel lives. On one side of a stalk of blue flowers is the expected metamorphosis: a heap of pearly eggs, a tiny caterpillar, a swirled pupa, and a black and tangerine moth. On the other, a fat caterpillar crawls under a blackened pupa, open and empty. A larva of a different species has sucked the life out of the would-be moth and produced its own minute black fly. The split image arrests time: Emergence, transformation, and decay transpire on a single page.
An avid naturalist, Merian hatched hundreds