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THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

EPISODES OF INSECT LIFE

EPISODES

OF

N S E C T

I F E

BY ACHETA DOMESTIC A, M.E.S.

EDITED AND EEVISED
BY THE REV. J. G. WOOD, M.A., F.L.S.

LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS,
YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

1879.

CHISWICK PRESS :— C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.

B1

PREFACE.

HE Editor hopes that this abridged form
of " Episodes of Insect Life " retains all
the beauties of the original edition, while
it is freed from the repetitions, and other
defects, which resulted from the manner in which the
original volumes were successively produced.

The readers attention is specially directed to the illus-
trations, which represent insects and scenes in their life.
The minuteness with which the artist has reproduced
every characteristic detail is truly admirable ; and even
in small insects, which are drawn of their natural size,
the artist has been equally conscientious, not neglecting a
single joint of the antennae, nor each claw of the tiny foot.
Most of the drawings must be examined, as the insect
itself must be viewed, with the aid of a magnifying

vi PREFACE.

glass ; and not until this is done, will the singular truth-
fulness of their execution be seen.

The letterpress is a mixture of scientific facts with
fanciful invention, sometimes investing insects with
human attributes, and sometimes placing mankind on a
level with the insect. In all cases the object of the writer
has been twofold: firstly, to display graphically the salient
points in insect life, and secondly, to promote a kindly

feeling towards insects.

J. G. W.

CONTENTS AND DESCRIPTION OF

VIGNETTES.

CONTENTS AND DESCRIPTION OF
VIGNETTES.

JANUARY.

1. THE CRICKET. INTRODUCTORY . . . ^ . . ]

" Episodes, then, they shall be called."— Symbolic portrait of the
author in his character of the Cricket, Acheta domestica, selecting
a title for his lucubrations . . . . . - . ; • •'. •- 7

2. THE POINTS OF OUR HOBBY . . . . . . 8

" To the end of time this will carry us." — Emblems of riches,
rank, and the pomps and vanities of life outweighed in the balance
by the author's hobby of Entomology under the figure of a May-
Fly 15

3. FLIES IN WINTER, AND A FLY LEAF .... 16

" Try Lightness, friend Poet." — A leaf of the Poet's epic failure,
exposed to the critical scrutiny of a fly on its return to the author
from a butter-shop '."''«.. . ,23

4. THE GNAT.— A LIFE-OF BUOYANCY . . . .24

" Let us strive to keep up our buoyancy" — The buoyant Gnat
Pupa, and the winged Gnat, which half flies, half walks upon the
water, figuring the light spirits which dance upon the stream of
life, and are unsubmerged by the missiles of care . . .29

5. THE WOOD- ANT AND THE APHIDES . . . . 30

" No one took notice of our poor dripping traveller."— The
luxuriant and well-fed Aphis, in fashionable attire and sheltered
from the storm by her acorn-cup parasol, passes disdainfully by
the starving but industrious Ant, seated unsheltered, naked, and
solitary, on a toad-stool . 35

CONTENTS. ix

Page

FEBRUARY.

6. LIFE IN DEATH ......... 36

" In the apparent death of winter." — The author, Acheta domestica, in
his propensity for burrowing among the hidden secrets of nature,
explores a catacomb of the chrysalides of Moths and Butterflies,
with the view of detecting life amidst frost, and snow, and torpor . 43

7. A MILITARY EXPEDITION,— BATTLE OF THE AMAZONS . 44

" How flows the tide of battle?" — Ant Amazons, chieftains of Rufia,
hand to hand with the citizens of Fusca, fighting for the rape and
rescue of infant subjects to be converted by the aggressors into
slaves . . . . - ''•"• ••'••• 49

8. INSECT AERONAUTS,— SPIDERS . . ..- ... 50

"All seem bent upon ascension." — A spider aeronaut ascending in
his gossamer balloon . . . 55

9. THE FRESH-WATER SIREN 56

" Her mail-clad opponent his falchion plied.1" — The Siren of the
Poem, hideous above water, beauteous beneath it, changes under her
adversary's thrust into the Water Spider, whose habits the tale is
intended to illustrate. Her Knightly foe finds his insect prototype
in the Water Beetle 63

MARCH.

10. USES OF INSECTS 64

" The Locust after its kind."— A professor of the culinary art, anti-
cipating the time when Pat£s de Sauterelles will be considered as
great a luxury among the Epicures of our own country, as the
Locust is in the present day among certain inhabitants of Syria,
Arabia, Persia, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Barbary . .... . 71

11. ON APHIDES . ... . . . ; . ,'r ••-.,.' . 72

"The Larva wolf in the Aphis flock " — The part of a wolf in sheep's
clothing performed by the larva of a Lacewing Fly, Chrysopa perla,
as it makes havoc among a flock of wool-coated Apple Aphides,
Eriosoma lanigerum, under cover of their empty skins . . .79

12. INSECT SENSES , . .*' .'' .-:/. '"'; . . 80

'* TKe passions are expressed by sounds." — A sentimental Grasshop-
per performing his moonlight serenade, whilst his ladye love directs
b

x CONTENTS.

Page

her listening antennae to the quarter whence the strains proceed. The
light guitar furnished to the amative Gryllus by Fancy, ranks not
more properly as an instrument of music, than does that organ of
sweet sounds, the gift of nature, which he plays on at nature's
bidding . ,»*..'••.,.. - • • • 87

13. A DEFENCE OF WASPS .... . . . . .88

"A widowed winter -survivor." — Portrait of a notable insect charac-
ter, a widowed Wasp, one of the few forlorn winter-survivors of a
populous summer colony, and the destined foundress of a future
spring settlement, weeping over the remains of a defunct partner,
deposited in an acorn-shell 95

APRIL.

14. THE ROYAL REFORM,- BEES AS A BODY POLITIC . 96

" The aged Professor of the Mesmeric art." — A youthful Queen-Bee
under the benevolising operation of a mesmerising Nurse-worker of
her race, a practitioner in Phreno-magnetism : — an allegory of the
curious process of conversion in Bee Queen-making, discovered by
Schirach in his "LaReinedes Abeilles" 103

15. MOTHS AS DESTRUCTIVES 104

" Two Moths still lingered."— Moths of the Banners of the tale, illus-
trating by the armorial bearings on the wings of one, and the
equipage on the wings of the other, the two consuming principles of
Pride of Birth and Pride of Show Ill

16. WATER DEVILS 112

" He rows with infinite speed." — A Boat- Fly punt, with crew of dia-
bolic aspect, queer and cruel, fit passengers for Charon's ferry-boat.
The captive of the party with uplifted arms represents a young and
imperfect Water Scorpion, and the shadowy imp employed in the
erection of the flag, exhibits the linear form and piercing proboscis
of the Water- Measurer. In the head of the rower is depicted that
of the aquatic larva of the Dragon-Fly, with face concealed by a
natural mask capable of being depressed or raised, shut or opened at
pleasure. Of the passengers seated near the prow, one has a nearly
similar visor, whilst the female is invested with the features of the
Boat-Fly, resembling those which form the figure-head of the boat 119

17. BUTTERFLIES IN GENERAL ... . . . . 120

" In her Jiours of supposed privacy." — The painted Lady Butterfly,
Cynthia Cardui, whose Memoirs deserve a volume to themselves, if
only for the moral they teach, —

CONTENTS. xi

Page
" Such mistresses dare never come in rain

For fear their colours should be washed away ; "
of equal application to the summer-day flutterer of fashion, and this,
her prototype of the insect world, the Cynthia of the Thistle, upon
which plant she loves to regale as a spiny caterpillar, before putting
on her butterfly attire 128

MAY.

18. THE LADYBIRD OF OUR CHILDHOOD . . , . .129

" No doubt, Sir, an Entomologist?" — The author, in his character
of A-cheta. domestica, makes a new acquaintance, who keeps Lady-
birds ... . .137

19. COMING OUT 138

"See, Heaven's own emblem of the sowZ." — The sinner exhorted, by
the symbol of insect transformation, to " come out " from the sen-
sual debasements of his fallen nature . . . . . 149

20. THINGS OF A DAY . * . . . . '. . . 150

" These stand their purposed day." — An ephemeral establishment
for ephemeral education ; one, as the other, temporary in design-
rotten in foundation . ... . . ** . . . .155

21. INSECT MAGICIANS ... . . . . . . 156

" Oh! most royal retribution!" — Subject to the wand of a Fairy
Cynips, the shade of the Merry Monarch sits imprisoned in an oak-
apple . . . . . . .... . . 163

JUNE.

22. A LOVE AMONG THE ROSES . . . • ,j^* • 164

" There's a pet for you!"— Stag-Beetle, Lucanus Cervus, exhibits
its playful propensities by tossing a ball of cotton on its horns — no
fancy, but attested fact . . . . . . .. .171

23. THE TRIBES OF AN OAK . . ' . * • • '• • 172

" Even the acorn has its appropriator." — A golden Cicada, a little
shovel-headed frequenter of the Oak, plays the part of Jehu to a
" Devil's Coach-horse " (or Rove Beetle), harnessed to an acorn car 181

24. A FEW FRIENDS OF OUR SUMMER GLADNESS . . 182

" Sipping their cups of dew." — A trio of thirsty Butterflies, the
demoiselles Pontia and Vanessa seated foremost at their leafy board 191

xii CONTENTS.

Page

25. LE LUCCIOLE . . . . . . . >• • • 192

" Thou shalt not want for diamonds." — The Lucciole, to the Italian
peasant objects of dread, have been by the Italian lady employed as
articles of decoration — living gems imprisoned in gauze for adorn-
ment of her hair 203

JULY.

26. LEASES OF LIFE 204

" They set me at defiance ! " — The power of death defied miraculously
by a swarm of Bees, which, according to an accredited relation, be-
came revivified under process of boiling with their combs . .211

27. A SYLVAN MORALITY, OR A WORD TO WIVES . .212

" Arrayed in likeness of the Faery Queen." — Acheta domestica in
his study surprised by the appearance of the young wife, attired for
a fancy ball, in character of Queen Mab 221

28. BUSINESS AND PLEASURE 222

" Heedless of Business and of Pleasure." — Pleasure with her gar-
land, Business with her cart-rope, try, equally is vain, to raise the
drowsy drone from his luxurious rose-leaf pillow .... 229

29. INSECT MINSTRELSY 230

" The classic Cicada, the grassy Gryllus, and the deep- toned Dor."
— A musical trio composed of the above 237

30. MOTHS AS OPERATIVES 238

"Head amongst caterpillars of his craft." — COSSHS, the Master-
Carpenter of Moth operatives, on the look-out for business in heart
of oak and willow 247

AUGUST.

31. A SUMMER DAY'S DREAM 248

" That victim no idle fly." — A giant in augmented bulk takes ven-
geance on his enemy of the broom 255

32. FAIR AND FIERCE 256

" Tremble on the approach of your arch-destroyer" — A trembling
" White " of the garden about to fall into the embrace (to Butter-
flies always fatal) of a great Green Dragon -Fly . . . . 263

CONTENTS. xiii

Page

33. RESEMBLANCE AND RELATION . . . ' V . . 264

" Queer creatures! neither grass nor grasshoppers" — Museum visi-
tors, lost in astonishment at the vegetable- seeming insect speci-
mens from India and China, the leaf-like, and its relative, the
stalk-like Mantis . . . . . '. • . . .271

34. MOTHS AS IDLERS . . V . . V. .272

'* Luxurious feeders amongst lazy fiutterers." — A trio of Moths
drinking deeply of honied wine, out of a flower flagon . . . 280

SEPTEMBER.

35. LOVERS OF PLEASURE - .. ./ . . . . .281

" Thou dost dance and thou dost sing." — A pair of Gryllidaey Anac-
reontic types and patterns of supreme happiness .... 289

36. PARASITES .. 290

" The Puss, in its greatness, a prey to parasites." — Wealth and
grandeur, in likeness of a " Puss Caterpillar " (a prince amongst its
fat fraternity), at once drained and incensed by parasitic satel-
lites of the tribe Ichneumon 297

37. INSTINCTS OF MATERNITY 298

" Admire the dexterity of the Leaf-cutter See." — A Maternal
" Upholstress " shaping the material of her leaf-lined nest, which,
in form of a cradle, is represented near her 305

38. FATHER LONGLEGS AND HIS FAMILY . '* -^ • 306

" How vast (to an emmef) its stupendous elevation ! " — A spacious
platform and commanding observatory for creeping millions . .313

OCTOBER.

39. THE SCARAB^US AND ITS MODERN WORSHIPPERS . 314

" The Scarabtsus, an amasser of filth, fit emblem of mammon -wor-
ship."—The Dung Beetle, set up on high for the adoration of the
sordid .321

XIV

CONTENTS.

Page

40. INSECT DIRGE-PLAYERS . , . . v . . 322

" Phantoms foot it to the Deathwatch drum." — A dance of death
got up, at Superstition's bidding, to the beat of the dreaded Death-
watch . . ;, . . 329

41. SHORT LIVES AND LONG . , ; . . . .330

" The threads of insect life are variously apportioned." — The Parcse
meting the lengths of insect existence, allowing them the shortest
measure in their perfect and brightest stages .... 337

42. STARS OF THE EARTH . .... . . 338

"Inquire we the uses of the Glowworm's lamp?" — It here supplies
to a studious fairy the purpose of the midnight oil ... 345

NOVEMBER.

43. INSECT MOVEMENTS . 346

" In the sioift Tiger and slow Oil-Beetles, see the fabled hare and
tortoise" — The rapid Cicindela, diverted from its course by the sight
of insect prey, exemplifies anew the old adage, that " the race is not
always to the swift " 355

44. FOR THOSE WHO ARE NOT OVER-NICE . . . .356

" Steeds of mettle and muscle, for a steeple- chase in earnest." — If
chases such as these were never calendered in graver fashion — if, as
here, the vaulters were but Fleas — the chase but "coming off" on
paper, the horse might leap for joy, the man rise higher, that is, to
his proper place, as an animal of reason and humanity . . . 365

45. STORY OF AN OGRE . ... . . . .366

" Together with the ball they lift her on their shoulders." — The For-
mic heroine (a captive Ant) escapes from the clutches of the Ant-
lion Ogre, by concealment in the hollow ball (puparium) of the
monster's own weaving . . . . . . . .379

46. PAINTING, CARVING, AND GILDING 380

" You shame our trumpery drawing." — Acheta throws down his
pencil in despair at the inimitable perfection of his living patterns . 385

DECEMBER.

47. SPIDERS IN THEIR ANALOGIES WITH OTHER ORDERS

OF CREATION . . 386

" Where are snare-setters existent but amongst human animals and
Spiders?" -The Man Bird-catcher emulated in his trade by the
Spider Fly-catcher . . 393

CONTENTS. xv

Page

48. A NEW GALLERY OF PRACTICAL SCIENCE . . .394

" We challenge all the nations."— Insect artisans, whose tools of
divine adaptation, and works divinely guided, defy, unpresumingly,
all human competition . . . ... . . . 403

49. TWO THINGS OF DIFFICULT DEFINITION . . .404

" More ways than one of getting at the bottom of a secret."— A portly
Humble Bee, one too bulky for entrance at the spring door of the
Snapdragon, leading to its nectary, bores a hole at the bottom of the
floral cask to obtain its honeyed wine . » . . . . 413

50. THE SPIRITS OF HEARTH AND HOME ... . 414

" Memory, painter of the past, let us invoke thee" — Acheta, in a re-
view of past stages, traces the development of his own imago, his
present self 430

The House Cricket, Acheta domestica, gaining access to the milk -jug by a
sprig of holly.

THE CRICKET. INTRODUCTORY.

N eminent French Entomologist, Reaumur, has
very justly observed, that " it is certainly no
fault of Nature's if we do not possess works
upon Insects which everybody may read with
pleasure/' — His most amusing, though rather
voluminous publication, ' Memoires pour servir a 1'Histoire des
Insectes/ 1734, went far to supply, in his time, the deficiency
at which he hints, and in ours, amidst the multitude of familiar
books on every subject, it might certainly be supposed that there
is no lack of such as would suit and please everybody on this.

No inquisitive mind need complain of any want of keys for
the simple opening of that drawer in Nature's cabinet (a drawer

2 NATURE'S CABINET.

of gems) which has been labelled " Entomology." Of these
there are an abundance, — gilded keys of popular, as well as iron
keys of scientific manufacture, but the still prevailing want is an
incitement to place them in the lock. The works of Kirby and
Spence, Rennie and Jardine, Burmeister and Westwood, may
be said to furnish, pre-eminently, the gilded, or, with reference
to their intrinsic worth, the golden keys in question ; but seeing
how generally even these are left to tarnish on the shelf, some-
thing would seem to be required as an incentive to their more
frequent handling.

The most prevalent feeling about Insects, except, perhaps,
the " busy people" of the hive or the " painted populace" of
the garden, is that of indifference, if not distaste ; and who of
the multitude thus ignorantly prepossessed, would seek for
books strictly devoted to their history, or believe that they
could find interest in the mere relation of their instincts, how-
ever pleasantly detailed ?

The first anxiety of a writer is, as all the world knows, to
establish a kindly sympathy between himself and his readers ;
but how can this be speedily created betwixt one who, as an
Entomologist, would seem to think of nothing but Insects, and
" the many" who have always regarded them as below a passing
thought? With even a slight knowledge, once acquired, of
their wondrous ways, the latter will be induced to a confession
that these " Minims of Creation" are something, even in them-
selves; but it may be well, meanwhile, for him who would
bring them into general notice, to invest them with the charm
of adventitious interest and reflected consequence. Insects are
peculiarly capable of being thus treated ; for in their analogies
and correspondences, illustrative and emblematic, innumerable
are their relations with other things, from the most trifling
objects of the world we live in, up to the highest subjects of
human contemplation. Multiplied then, and still multiplying,
as are books on Entomology, we venture to think there is yet
scope and use for one of a character more discursive, a book

THE FATE OF OUR VENTURE. 7

resemble our prototype, except that we rob in open daylight
and thankfully acknowledge what we appropriate. There
are yet other points of resemblance, more personal, between
ourselves and the house Cricket. As with him, a warm hearth
in winter and a sunny bank in summer are the seats of our
supreme felicity. Like him, also, we joy in the possession of a
quiet retreat, and prefer to uplift our voice from behind a screen.
We have now set forth quite as much of our design, and
revealed as much of our personality as has become connected
with our immediate subject, and from the scattered grains of
intimation already dropt, some prying reader may even now
have gleaned more about the Cricket's ways and whereabouts
than we have thought it expedient to reveal. Something more
of them may be disclosed hereafter. Meanwhile, surmise what
thou wilt, good gossip ! but, above all, we entreat thee to bear
in mind that, alike in our proper and our emblematic cha-
racter, we most heartily rejoice in all that warms and all that
cheers.

_.^gf

ItiliP

4,*^ ^

€pi|ot>e& tfien, tDep IB&H 6e calleti.'

The Cricket mounted on the back of a magnified May-Fly, Ephemera vulgata,
in search of entomological subjects.

THE POINTS OF OUR HOBBY.

HAT have we here ? A May-Fly in January !
A magnified May-Fly ! Verily, Master
Cricket, thou dost not only magnify, but
most unseasonably misplace the objects of
Creation, — strangely, too, dost thou misapply
them, — for in seating thy domestic self upon the back of this
ephemeral high-flier, we are quite at a loss to guess thy
meaning. — Then, gentle reader, guess not at all, only have
patience, and all seeming incongruities shall be reconciled.
Suffice it, now, that as in the Cricket we have introduced thee
to our symbolic self, so in the May-Fly we would beg thee to
recognize oui symbolic hobby.

EPISODES. 3

not professing to teach the science, but to persuade to its study
those who may have time and opportunity for the pursuit ; and
to show those who have not, that they may, nevertheless, find
interest and pleasure in common observation (not commonly
exercised) of the insect million by which they are surrounded.
With a confidence that some such work might be generally read,
though by no means equally assured of our ability to write one,
we long had wavering thoughts of making the attempt. At last
we resolved to try, reminded by a returning epoch (a brush, en
passant, from the wing of time) that while we doubt and linger,
" La vie k differer se passe."

The end of the year was at hand : " To-morrow," said we to
ourselves, " we will really begin a work for everybody about
Insects. This very evening shall be devoted to a final decision
on its plan ;" for under a hundred Protean forms, and almost
as many different names, had our intended work been floating
for months before our " mind's eye." Letters — Sketches —
Conversations, these were familiar shapes into which our
materials might be moulded ; but they seemed, in one sense,
too familiar ; the public taste might be tired of these hackneyed
modes of dressing up the sister sciences. Besides, clothing
such as this, however light, would overmuch confine us in
the very discursive rambles which we had thoughts of taking
amongst our creepers, and fliers, and swimmers. Episodes
might better serve our purpose, and impose fewer shackles on our
roving fancy : Episodes, then, they shall be called — Episodes of
Insect Life, providing every month a seasonable admixture of
the Real and the Ideal. But to-morrow, and for a month to
come, what insects will be in season ? Of all the summer
myriads, the bulk have long ago expired ; the remnant, scared
even by the shadow of advancing winter, betook themselves
to hidden places ; and now old Christmas has benumbed them
with his icy paw, and keeps them unconscious prisoners
within the earth or waters.

We may still discourse, it is true, of torpid Bees, of sleeping

4 THE NEWBORN YEAR.

Ants, of buried Beetles, and a forlorn few of widowed Wasps,
stupified by grief or cold, sole relics of their perished race ;
but what a drowsy doleful prelude would this be to the cheerful
airs we would draw from the harp of nature. These insect
sleepers would furnish us with themes of life in death, for in
all of them, under forms of death, forms of vitality, arrested or
unexpanded, lie hidden ; as in all real deaths, merely natural,
are contained the germs of life. Even this departing year does
not wholly die, since being full fraught with causes (seeds
which are sure to ripen into the fruit of consequences), in these
it will continue to live to the end of time, aye, even to eternity ;
but believe, and philosophize, and hope as we may, neither
death nor death's semblances are the most enlivening objects
of contemplation. At all events, we felt our spirits growing
flat and our thoughts confused, as we looked at our waning
candle (like the year, approaching to its end), and reviewed
the subjects, defunct or drowsy, from amongst which we must,
perforce, choose one for that of our opening essay. Dreaminess
trod on the heels of dullness, and before we had come to a
decision as to what sleeping insect should constitute our
commencing theme, we were ourselves nodding beside our
solitary fire.

Suddenly we were awoke by a clang of bells from the
neighbouring steeple of our parish-church, the requiem of the
departed, and salutation to the new-born year. It was soon
pealed out, and we were left once more to the silence of our
little parlour, a silence which seemed deepei than usual, and
more solemn, yet not to the spirit's ear unbroken ; for it is in
pauses such as these on life's rattling road, that the " still
small voice" is always audible, unless it be drowned, as is common,
by the noise of social mirth. We sank into a reverie, regretful
more than hopeful, of retrospect rather than of prospect, and in
the current of mingled thoughts that rushed over it, our lately
ruling and uppermost idea (that of our contemplated book)
was completely overwhelmed. Of a sudden, however, it was

OUR OPENING SUBJECT. 5

again brought to the surface : a shrill sound broke upon the
stillness ; another chorus, within the house, succeeded to the
hushed peal without. The Crickets, from the kitchen below,
were uplifting their chirping strains to salute, in full concert,
the new-come year. We were at no loss, now, for at least
one cheerful subject wherewith to commence our Episodes. —
Bless their merry voices for the opportune suggestion ! Forth-
with, we took up, not our pen but our candle, and descended
to the lower regions, of which we found our chirpers left in sole
possession. The noisy varlets broke off, instanter, in their song,
and, each to his hole or cranny, scampered off at our approach ;
but we captured a straggler in the very act of draining the
milk-pot, arid carried him off to our oarlour fire-side for the
cultivation of a more intimate acquaintance, and with a view to
making him as well known to our readers, by sight, as he,
or rather his merry fraternity are likely to be already by
sound. Finish thy song there, little Master ! and, " with what
appetite thou mayest," thy supper too ! said we, as we placed
our lean lank-bodied prisoner beneath a tumbler, under which
we were so merciful as to insert a few crumbs of bread, one
of the Cricket's favourite repasts. Aye, leap as thou wilt,
and climb against gravity up the smooth walls of thy crystal
prison, there thou shalt abide till we have taken thy portrait.
Yes, queer creature as thou art ! thy angular figure and round
physiognomy shall be exhibited in our first vignette. Thou
shalt be honoured as our opening subject, and if thy name
had not served already the purpose of one, whose sympathy
with thy merry chirrup has been shared by thousands, thou
shouldst have given a title to our book, like " The Bee'
and other seekers and gatherers of Sweets ! Thou art, in truth,
an omnium-gatherer, nothing comes amiss to thy convenient
appetite, and variety must be the character of the feast we
would provide, no less than of that which thou lovest to
devour. True, as we have said, thou art not particular, " scum-
mi ngs of pots, sweepings, bread, yeast, flesh and fat of broth,"

6 THE CRICKET, A PILFERER.

thy pickings most esteemed, seem not, some of them, the most
inviting fare ; yet do these dainties, each in its kind, serve to
symbolize, not unaptly, the very sort of viands we would seek
and set before our readers.

For " scummings of pots," suppose we say the " cream of our
subject/' the most light, and, withal, the richest of the agreeable
matter already laid up by others, to be extracted by ourselves
in the field of observation. For " sweepings " let us put
" gleanings," — Gleanings in Entomology — and we have the
very term adopted by a well-known writer for his amusing
anecdotes in various branches of Natural History. Then
" bread," with Cricket as with man, the very " staff of life," if
poverty forbid him not to grasp it, what substance more properly
symbolic of that which must form the ground-work of our
book, — matters of solid fact, mixed with and lightened by the
" yeast " of illustration, discursive and pictorial. As for the
" flesh " and " fat," the strongest fare on which the Cricket
delighteth to regale, may they not serve to typify that principle
of mental nourishment, of all the most vital, afforded by the
religious contemplation of all natural objects endowed with
life?

The Cricket is the thirstiest of all thirsty creatures. He is
not therefore

" the blither for the drouth,"

for where no ampler supply of liquid is at hand, he is said
(heed it, ye careful housewives !) to gnaw holes in wet woollen
stockings or flannel, hung by the fire to dry. Therein, also,
(though in more harmless fashion), we would make him our
representative, as, thirsting after knowledge of our subject, we
strive to extract from it, even when seemingly most arid, a
something of refreshing moisture.

Lastly, in all his doings, our Cricket is, confessedly, a
pilferer, and taking, as we largely must, from stores collected
by the labours and observations of others, we shall herein, also,

VARIETIES OF INSECT LIFE. 9

Dear Entomology ! We have called thee our hobby, we
have likened thee to a hack ; but thou art more. Thou art a
powerful Genie, a light-winged Fairy, not merely bearing us
through earth, and sky, and water, but peopling every scene
in every element with new and living forms, before invisible.
For us, Nature has now no desert places: touched by thy
magic wand, every tree has become a peopled city, teeming
with busy multitudes; every flower, a pavilion, hung with
gorgeous tapestry, for the summer occupation of Insect nobles,
clad in velvet, gauze, or coat of mail; nay, the very moss
that grows upon the tree or clothes the stone, has become
to us a forest, where, as in forests of larger growth, roam the
fierce and the gentle, preying or preyed on by each other ; and
the stone, we have only to upturn it, and we are certain
almost to discover beneath, some hidden lurker, or some
wondrous subterranean structure, perhaps a solitary dwelling,
perhaps a nursery, perhaps a general home of refuge. Yes,
our darling pursuit, of all most lightsome and life-giving,
with thee for our companion, the bare, the barren, the desolate,
and the death-like become instinct with life. The arid heath,
the decaying tree, the mouldering wall are converted at once
into fertile fields of interest and inquiry, while the summer
skies and glittering waters grow brighter yet with glancing
wings and oar-like feet ; and with the knowledge that both are
plied by a multitude of happy creatures.

Entomology signifies the study of Insects, from whose pe-
culiar formation the term owes its origin ; the bodies of this
part of the Animal Creation being inserted, or divided into
three principal parts, head, trunk, and abdomen, besides other
subdivisions. For this reason, the Latin name Insecta, Greek
"EvrofAa, from whence Entomology.

Now of these little insected animals, thus curiously divided
from the rest of animated nature (except the Crustacea,
once also classed as Insects), many great men of antiquity,
philosophers as well as poets, thought no scorn. Among these,

10 PRIMITIVE ENTOMOLOGISTS.

Aristotle, Pliny, and Virgil wrote of them largely, though,
indeed, somewhat erroneously ; the former, with other similar
fables, asserting not only that flies were meat-engendered (a
notion still ignorantly entertained), but that they also inherited
a disposition, fierce or harmless, according to that of their
flesh-fathers, when in life. Quite as absurdly, though more
poetically, Virgil says or sings of Bees that

" From herbs and fragrant flowers
They call their young."

With these and similarly confused notions about the origin
of Insects and other created beings, their beauties and wonders
had, certainly, much less claim upon the notice of the ancients
than on ours, who have acknowledged them for the work
of one Divine Hand, and regarded them as visible tokens of
that Divine Mind of which they are thus permitted to afford
us a partial revelation ; but since with incentives comparatively
slight, the study of nature in general, and of Insects in
particular, was yet deemed by enlightened heathens worthy of
infinite attention, is it not strange that the classic robe which
has so often lent a dignity to a host of insignificancies, should
not at least have defended poor Entomology from , neglect or
ridicule ? Yet so it has not been.

On the revival of general learning, there appeared in Europe
a few works in which Insects were noticed among other objects
of natural history ; but it was not, we believe, till the reign'
of Charles the First that they obtained in England the honour
of a whole Latin book to themselves, and were introduced to
the learned public in Mouffet's Theatrum Insectorum.

An English translation1 followed, and a curious old book
it is, giving a complete view of all that was then known
on the subject of Insects, with much information since
confirmed, and with it an infinitely larger portion of gravely
and quaintly affirmed nonsense, perhaps not the least amusing

1 Theatre of Insects, Mazerne.

ENTHUSIASM OF SWAMMERDAM. 11

part of the production. It is amply adorned with figures,
many of them amusing too, from their very imperfection.
Some of the greatest men are, perhaps, to be found among
those who pursue little objects, — those, we mean, held as
little in general estimation; such people are great in their
discernment to discover the real worth of what is commonly
despised, and they are greater still in their independence of
spirit to follow up objects whose pursuit exposes them to
ridicule, and whose attainment is little likely to bring them
admiration or repute. Well, in the 17th century, several
gifted individuals, in this sense very great, appeared and took
neglected Entomology by the hand. Chief among these were
the English Ray and the Dutch Swammerdam. Insects were
then found capable of exciting enthusiastic energy, incompa-
rable patience, and fervent piety. " Oh," says Swammerdam,
while studying for his work on the habits and structure of
Bees, " Oh, for one year of continued light and heat, that I
might work without interruption !" Such was his enthusiasm.
In his admirable dissection of Insect anatomy he has left a
record of his perseverance, equalled, however, by Boerhaave,
who could employ a whole day in clearing one Caterpillar
from its fat, and by Lyonnet, who counted 1804 aerial tubes
in the body of another, whose structure formed the chief study
of his life; and for piety, that of Swammerdam finds ardent
expression in the following apostrophe, drawn forth by the
wonder and beauty of those divine mechanisms which patience
had laid open to his own and others' observation : — " Oh
God!" he exclaims, "how Thy works infinitely surpass the
reach of our feeble understandings ; all that we actually know
of Thee, or ever can, is but a faint and lifeless shadow of Thy
adorable perfections, in contemplation of which the brightest
understandings grow bewildered !" With the same feelings,
inspired by similar objects, our venerable Ray composed his
work called " The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works
of Creation." And again, it was the interest excited by

12 MADAME MERIAN.

Insect forms, their singularity and surpassing beauty, which,
in the same era, inspired the artistic pencil of a Merian, and
induced her, with a woman's energy, to cross the seas, and
brave the noxious climate of Surinam, for the sake of its
curious and splendid Insects. These she has as truthfully
depicted ; l though misled, perhaps, by her own enthusiasm
into a too ready credence of the marvellous, the accuracy of
her accompanying descriptions has been more than questioned.
Thus in the latter end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th
centuries, a few among the most highly endowed with talent,
learning, and piety, considered the study of Entomology not
unworthy to constitute the grand pursuit of life ; yet, at this
very period, in such low estimation was it generally held, nay,
so extravagant or childish was it deemed, that we are told by
Kirby of an attempt to set aside th"e will of a rational woman
(Lady Glanville) on the ground of lunacy, evinced solely by
her fondness for collecting Insects. Ray himself had to appear
as a witness of her sanity. How was it that his own escaped
impeachment ? For all this, and calmly smiling at the scoffs of
the vulgar ignorant and vulgar learned, Entomology marched
on steadily, supported by a phalanx of staunch professors, such
as Reaumur (called the French Pliny), Lyonnet, Bonnet,
Gould, the historian of English Ants, the Swede, Baron
de Geer, and at the head of all, his illustrious countryman,
Linna3us.

From the glow-worm light in which it had so long glim-
mered, Entomology now shone, as it were, in the radiance of
a swarm of Fire-flies. Yet this, her augmented brightness,
did but serve for a season to make her a more conspicuous butt
for the shafts of ridicule ; and many a quill was shot, in
derision, at this persecuted science, which could only have
been aimed with any show of fairness at her merest classifiers
and collectors, such as every branch of Natural History may
number among the lesser minded of its votaries. But even
1 Insects of Surinam.

PERSECUTION OF THE SCIENCE. 13

persons like these, who would seem in the words of the
satirist to

" Think their eyes
And reason given them, but to study flies,"

may still perhaps be followers of objects not a whit less
insignificant than those which occupy their neighbours ; only
that the pursuits of the many escape ridicule, because they
are sought along the high-ways instead 'of the bye-ways of
wasted life. But the laugh at Entomology is nearly spent.
Known professors of the science, and members of its
" Society," may now assemble in council and communicate
their observations and inquiries without fear of becoming
themselves subjects for a commission De lunatico inquirendo,
and Butterfly-hunters, net in hand, may now chase their game
without being themselves made game of. In recent times, the
works of Latreille, Lamarck, Cuvier, Curtis, Leach, Macleay,
with many more, have been gradually improving the science
which their names adorn, while Kirby and Spence,1 Rennie,2
Jardine,3 Knapp,4 Burmeister,5 and Westwood,6 have pub-
lished their researches to the multitude in works, which, were
they as popular as they should be, would have a place not only
in every library, but in every body's hand, to serve literally as
hand-books in their country rambles.

Return we now to the great volume on which the above
are but imperfect commentaries ! — that volume, bound in
ethereal blue, and at this our chosen chapter, printed in living
characters on leaves of every tint from vernal green to the
richest hues of autumn ; nay, on the brown or snow-white
sheet of winter, for at no season is the student of Entomology
presented with an entire blank. Even in the month of January,
besides our chirping representative of the hearth and certain

1 Introduction to Entomology.

2 Insect Transformations, Architecture, and Miscellanies.

3 Naturalist's Library : Beetles and Butterflies.

4 Journal of a Naturalist. * Manual of Entomology.

* Introduction to the Classification of Insects. • -

14 NATURE'S VOLUME.

Gnats which disport over frozen pools, a sprinkling of other
Insects may be seen melting their frosted fluids in the wintry
sunbeam or the sheltered window. Numerous others, hidden
from all but practised eyes, are laid up snugly in various
hybernacula of which the discovery adds a zest to their pursuit.
Of these, some are concealed in caverns under ground, some in
beds of mud beneath the water, some are ensconced in hollow
trees, and behind or in crannies of their bark, while others lurk
within the tunnels of dry perforated stalks, sleep within the
domes of protecting gall-nuts, or lie defended from frost and
famine in other homes of shelter, such as the care of Him who
careth for all has led them so seek out.

Using our hobby as a hunter, we may pursue our game for
two different objects ; that of observation or collection, or both
combined. And we may collect for two different purposes ;
that of scrutinizing living instincts, or arranging and looking at
dead objects. As for him whose delight in natural objects, of
what kind soever, consists solely in their amassment, or is cir-
cumscribed within the walls of his cabinet, he is no naturalist
at all, a mere kindred spirit of the Bibliomaniac, and little
better than the miser whose iron heart is in his iron chest.
Neither are specimens necessary to the study of Insects, though,
like the Hortus Siccus of the botanist, they are of great as-
sistance, especially at its commencement. Subsequently, if you
should desire to collect, we would recommend the pursuit, for
this purpose, of one selected tribe ; say, Beetles, as the most
varied and perfect, or Butterflies and Moths, as the most
elegant and interesting of the Insect classes. The study of the
latter only, in the search after Caterpillars, the feeding them on
fresh leaves of such plants as they frequent, and the opportu-
nities thus afforded of watching them through their changes,
transformations, and most ingenious labours, will afford ample
occupation and amusement for nearly every season of the
year, and moreover present us, if we choose, a collection of
cabinet paintings, in whose exhibition and contemplation

FORCE OF MORAL RIGHT. 15

(always with reference to their Great Designer) we may take a
laudable delight.

For Aurelians, or collectors of Moths and Butterflies, this
month and the following constitute one of the great harvest
seasons. Trowel in hand, they are now repairing to the leafless
woods, where carefully digging a few feet around the trunks of
the trees, they " disquiet and bring up" from their winter
catacombs, the mummy-like aurelias of various Moths which,
as Caterpillars, have fattened in summer on the foliage above.
Such as are disposed to become Aurelians themselves, must
have in readiness for their treasures, thus exhumed, boxes of
wood or pasteboard partly filled with vegetable earth, and
covered at top with gauze. The Chrysalides consigned to their
earthy bed, there should be laid over them a green coverlet of
moss, which, once a fortnight in winter and oftener in summer,
should be steeped in water for the purpose of giving moisture
to the mould beneath.

: (Co tfie eno of time t&ig toill carte uf .*

A magnified representation of the House Fly, Musca domestica, crawling up
a volume in the natural history library. To the left is a highly magnified
figure of the foot, and in the centre are the larva and pupa of another species
much resembling it, abundant in its imperfect stages between the membranes of
dock leaves.

FLIES IN WINTER,— AND A FLY LEAF.

HE Flies are gone, but where are they gone
to? that is the question. At the close of
summer, when they are busy and buzzing
around us in the shape of a visitation, it is
certainly no easy matter to let them " pass by
us as the idle wind;" but in one respect they are, to most
people, like the wind too, since they scarce know whence they
come or whither they go. Doubt the first, as to whence they
come, is not difficult to solve, though perhaps with the most

EGGS OF FLIES. 17

presuming of Flies, as with the most presuming of folks, the
more we pry into their places of birth, the more we may be in-
clined (but with the insect not justly) to hold them in contempt;
suffice it, that as the domestic Fly makes himself quite at home
in our houses, so has his parent, in all likelihood, made herself
equally free of our stables, where she finds a hot-bed for her
eggs, and in the same a provision for her infant race. There,
in their first and wingless state of maggot or lava, they com-
mence, thus early, their important use of helping to rid the
earth of all things that offend, and on how grand a scale they
are able to carry on this operation may be estimated from the
fact, that a single Fly will lay no less than 177 eggs. House
Flies come then chiefly from the stable, the road, and the
grazing meadow ; though some nearly resembling them come
from other places, and exist in their earliest state on vegetable,
instead of animal substances. Among these we have noticed a
very common species, which finds its first " bed and board "
between the upper and under skins of dock-leaves, burrowing
and feeding on the pulpy flesh. From spring to autumn we
may see them thus busily employed, merely by gathering and
holding to the light such leaves as are to be found continually,
not adorned by large, discoloured, transparent blotches, the
outward tokens of their inward presence. These, from the
above habit, may be ranked among a set of insect labourers or
feeders of more classes than one, hence called Leaf-miners,
some of whose winding ways we mean, by and by, to
follow.

A Fly on the wing is a no less curious object than one on
foot, yet when do we trouble our heads about it, except as a
thing which troubles us ? The most obvious wonder of its flight
is its variety of direction, most usually forwards, with the back
upwards, like a bird, but on occasion, backwards, with the back
downwards, as when starting from the window arid alighting
on the ceiling.1 Marvellous velocity is another of its charac-

1 Mudie.

18 FLY FEEDING.

teristics. By fair comparison of sizes, what is the swiftness of
a race-horse, clearing his mile a minute, to the speed of the Fly
cutting through her third of the same distance in the same
time 71 And what the speed of our steaming giants, the grand
puffers of the age, compared with the swiftness of our tiny
buzzers, of whom a monster train, scenting their game afar,
may even follow partridges and pheasants on the wings
of steam in their last flight as friendly offerings ? But
however, with their game, the Flies themselves would be most
" in keeping" on an atmospheric line, a principal agent in
their flight, as well as in that of other Insects, being the air.
This enters from the breathing organs of their bodies into the
nerves and muscles of their wings ; from which arrangement,
their velocity depends, not alone on muscular power, but also
on the state of the atmosphere.

Lastly, how does the Fly feed ? — the " busy curious thirsty
Fly" that " drinks with me," but does not " drink as I,"
his sole instrument for eating and drinking being his trunk
or sucker, the narrow pipe, by means of which, when let
down upon his dainties, he is enabled to imbibe as much as
suits his capacity. This trunk might seem an instrument
convenient enough when inserted into a saucer of syrup, or
applied to the broken surface of an over-ripe blackberry, but
we often see our sipper of sweets quite as busy on a solid lump
of sugar, which we shall find on close inspection growing
" small by degrees" under his attack. How, without grinders,
does he accomplish the consumption of such crystal condiment?
A magnifier will solve the difficulty, and show how the Fly
dissolves his rock, Hannibal fashion, by a diluent, a salivary
fluid passing down through the same pipe which returns the
sugar melted into syrup.

The Fly is a perfect Insect (or Imago), having already
passed through its two preparatory stages of transformation,
those of Larva and Pupa (see vignette), corresponding to what,

1 Kirby and Spence.

A FLY-LEAF. 19

with the Butterfly, is more generally known as Caterpillar and
Chrysalis; so that, like the Butterfly, when winged it grows
no more.

Once more to our picture. — You know, we suppose, that the
Fly has a pair of wings ; but a hundred to one, if one of you
out of a hundred has ever noticed that she has also a pair of
winglets (or little secondary wings), and a pair of poisers,
drum-stick like appendages between the main wings and the
body, employed for assisting and steadying her flight. These
poisers are much more conspicuous and easily observed without
a magnifier in the Gnat and in the Father Longlegs, insects
belonging to the same order as Flies.

Did it ever occur to you to notice the prismatic painting of
a Fly's nervous pinion — the iridescent colours wherewith its
glassy membrane seems overlaid ? If not, only look, we pray
you, in a proper light at the next of its kind you may chance
to meet with, and if, as is most likely, it comes to tell you
a pleasant tale of approaching spring time, we are verily sure
that you will see a hundred rainbows painted on its wing.

A FLY-LEAF.

Our friend H — had the misfortune to be cast up a poet
on the stream of Life, since, in this age of mechanism, it
has been turned into a mill-stream. Consequently, he found
himself held as a mere bubble in the froth or scum of society,
and his residence accorded perfectly with such estimation. He
was the highest occupant of a house in a low London neighbour-
hood, where, nevertheless, he was looked down upon as a nobody.

Poor H — was a worker in the tread-mill of low periodicals,
wherein, for ever climbing, each weary round of the month and
year left him just where he was at the beginning; but in spite
of this his daily labour, he had taken hours, which should have
been of rest, for independent composition. One poem, a pon-
derous epic, with his name on the title-page, had already been

•20 HOPE.

sent abroad into the world; but it had gone forth, like its
author, unfriended, ill drest, patron wanting, paper and printing
paltry. Its reception was accordant; if H — had thrown a
stone out of his garret window, the passing multitude (at least
if it had fallen harmless as his poem) could only have trodden
on or over it the same. Yet was he still sanguine and would
still believe that his neglected work, stone-like, as he proudly
fancied, in solid merit, might one day serve for a pedestal
whereon his laurelled statue might be planted. But few are
the pedestals formed of a single stone. To complete his, he
must, he thought, lay one upon another; so lighted to his
labour by the flicker of hope's torch and the flare of tallow
candle, he went on working (blockhead as he was !) through
many a fireless winter's night at another ponderous block of
literature — a second epic poem.

It was the afternoon of a sultry first of August ; " magazine
day" just over, the hireling had got a respite from his daily
drudgery. He had employed it on the favourite labour of his
brain ; but that was ended, his epic was actually completed, even
to the last word of the last line of the last fair copy, which was
about to be exchanged for notes and notice.

The poet wiped his pen with an air of complacency, then
wiped his thin face, threw himself back in his rush-bottomed
chair, and with half-closed eyes still bent upon his manuscript,
his bulky embodiment of thought, indulged in a delicious
reverie. For once, all conspired to encourage the poet's day-
dream, when it was suddenly broken by the unlooked-for
entrance of— his tea. The black kettle was placed on the red
rusted hob, and a quarter of a pound of salt butter, fresh from
the shop, was deposited plateless (but, mind ye, not paperless)
on the table. Scarcely were his fretted nerves composed, and
the stair relieved from the servant's heavy tread, when from
some point unseen arose the voice of an abominable Fly. Buz —
buz — buz — louder than buz was ever heard before. The poet
looked towards the small window of his sky-parlour. But no
Fly was there. H — next rose and examined the dark corners

THE SIBYLLINE FLY-LEAF. 21

of the room, and then rushed desperately to the corner cup-
board, the sole lurking place left unexplored. " Buz ! buz !
buz !" again rose, as if in mockery at the very thought. He
returned hopeless to his chair : perhaps it was fancy after all,
but presently the Fly's voice rose louder still, closer than ever,
to repeat " buz ! buz ! buz !"

The Faster at last betook himself, with what appetite he
might, to his rigid loaf, his melting butter. He cuts a slice,
he proceeds to unfold the printed leaf wherein the dissolving
condiment lay curtained. But not alone lay that butter in its
melting luxury; a ravisher had been feasting on its charms,
and now, out he bounces with a buz indeed, and buz! buz!!
buz !!! re-echoes round, as a burly Blue-bottle, tipsy with love
and jollity, mad at escape from thraldom, or merry at discovery,
bangs up and bounces again and again against the unopened
half of the garret casement.

The mystery is out ; yet the Poet stands aghast, fixed as in
a stupor of horror and dismay. He scarcely notices the
escaped offender; the buz of Blue-bottle now falls unheeded on
his ear ; the bouncings of Blue-bottle attract not his eye, for
his eye is strained on more appalling objects, — on the printed
envelope of rancid butter, — on the title-page of his first inde-
pendent and avowed production, — on his own dishonoured
name conspicuous in the transparency of grease ! This, then,
was the publicity acquired by his first great work, and there,
torn from its very self, was the sibylline leaf, which had told,
in the warning buz of that prophetic Fly, the coming fate of
his second, his still greater work, so laboured, so exquisitely
finished. Finished ! it is finished, indeed, with hope, with
effort ! So spoke more plainly than could words the deep

drawn sigh with which poor H resumed his seat, not,

we may be sure, to taste his ill-savoured bread and butter,
but only to sip his cold tea, as if to swallow down with it
something of chagrin, or to sip in something of consolation.

22 THE FLY AND THE POET.

One day, towards the end of the same August, whose first
was made, as we have just commemorated, a big black-letter
day in our Poet's calendar, he was called on, in the midst of
his heaviness, to furnish something light, just to puff out what
would else have been a slender number of the Milliner's
Magazine. In the same parlour, under much such a heavy sky,
before him the same sorry equipage for tea, beside him a like
bit of melting butter, nothing would have been wanted, but
the Fly defunct, the fly-leaf burned, the manuscript burned too,
to bring back to its author's mind, had it been ever absent, that
notable era when his second grand Epic was completed. There
he sat, like the distressed Poet of the " Moral Painter," — like
him might have " p'lunged for his thought/' and like him have
" found no bottom there," only that to save diving, he seized
the lightsome object brought vividly to remembrance, with all
its heavy associations, by the scene, the hour, and the weather.
In short, he caught again that villain Fly, and committed him,
in the following strain, once more to paper : —

THE FLY AND THE POET.

DARK were the cares of the Poet's breast,

Grand were the thoughts of his head,
But sad thoughts and grand ones must all be represt,

For he had to write nonsense for bread.

Proud was the curl on the Poet's lip,

And big was the tear in his eye ;
Scarce he saw in the inkstand his pen to dip,

But he saw on its summit a Fly.

There Blue-bottle sat, and stroked down his face

With a twirl of his head, twice or thrice,
Then says he, " Brother bard — I pity your case,

And have brought you a bit of advice.

" Nay, man, never wince ! I heed not your scorn,

'Tis a fact, and I'll presently show it,
That if not, as you think yourself, Poet born,

I'm by place and by feeding a Poet.

THE FLY AND THE POET. 23

" I come from a spot where the fruit of the vine,

And the oil of the olive abound ;
Where Arabia and India their riches combine,

And shed spiciest of odours around.

" High over blue mountains with snowy white tips,

I wander , but use your own eyes,

Only look round the shop where you go for your dips,

And you'll see the Parnassus of Flies.

" And now for my council — thus rich the domain,

Whence I draw inspiration and bread ;
But by lightness, not weight, I this empire maintain,

And by emptiness stand on my head.

" While others can't climb, using infinite pains,

I, gravity turning to jest,
Ascend, with all ease, perpendicular planes,

Rough or smooth, just as pleases me best.
So try lightness, friend Poet — I warrant you'll find
That as I rule matter, so you may rule mind !"

frienb poet,"

Transformation of the common Gnat, Cuhx pipiens, the eggs united in a
boat-like form ; the aquatic larva suspended, head downwards ; the =pupa with
head upwards ; and, last stage of all, the pupa with the winged gnat emerging
from it.

THE GNAT.— A LIFE OF BUOYANCY.

HERE are certain temperaments which, hard
as iron, are only acted on, precisely like that
sturdy metal, by atmospheric changes. In dull,
damp weather they gather an additional coat of
rustiness or crustiness, while the finest and driest
fails to produce any visible effect upon their aspect or temper.
When, however, one grain of mental mercury enters into the
compound, our spirits cannot choose but rise at the exhila-
rating influence of a bright winter's morning. Besides the
effects, merely physical, of a clear bracing frost, the sunshine

A WINTER'S WALK. 25

of January, if it warms us less, cheers us more than the sun-
shine of June, through the force of contrast — contrast with the
gloom which has gone before, and is sure to come after — con-
trast with the dark wintry objects on which it shines ; and
perhaps, more than all, contrast with that peculiar stillness
which usually attends fair weather at this season, a stillness
perceptible both to eye and ear, and produced, partly by the
quiet of the tuneful groves, but quite as much by the absence
of those insect myriads which animate the summer beam. This
very stillness is exciting, because (our ideas of light and life
being always associate) it seems, on a bright day, strange and
almost unnatural. Through a silent sunshine of this descrip-
tion, we repaired yesterday morning to an oak wood, which is
one of our favourite places of resort and research. This wood,
till lately, was a sylvan assemblage of most ancient standing,
but is now composed almost wholly of comparative upstarts,
exulting in their vigorous life over the truncated stumps below
them. But even these, the monuments of fallen greatness,
substantial in decay, stood not a whit more motionless than the
slenderest sapling of the living generation, not a breath being
abroad to wave their tops or to stir the brown leaves which had
held on, laughing at autumn gales and wintry blasts. A sprinkle
of snow, crisp and glittering, slightly veiled the wood tracks,
and as we trod them " we heard not a sound," but the brittle
gems breaking on the spangled pathway. This was exactly the
stillness we have just been noting as an addition (usually) to
the effect or mute expression of old Winter's face, when he treats
us to its brightest side ; but somehow or another we felt it, on
the present occasion, more as a feature wanting. Our spirits
were so light, our blood danced so briskly, our heart glowed,
like our feet, so warmly, and rose so thankfully to the Great
Source of all things calm and bright and beautiful, that we
longed for something animate to join us in our homage of en-
joyment. The wish was hardly conceived ere it was accom-
plished, for on passing beneath a canopy of low interlacing

26 WINTER GNATS.

branches, we suddenly found ourselves making one with a
company of Gnats, dancing (though more mutely) quite as
merrily as they could possibly .have footed it on the balmy air
of a summer's eve. Their appearance was welcome to our eyes,
not as flowers in May, but as flowers in January, and so we
sat down on one of the oaken stumps hard by, to watch their
evolutions : mazy and intricate enough, in sooth, they seemed.
The " set" upon which we had intruded, was an assemblage of
those Tipulidan or long-legged Gnats which have been named
Tell-tales, we suppose, because by their presence' in winter,
they seem to tell a tale of early spring, belied by the bitter
east, which often tells us another story when we turn from
their sheltered saloon of assembly. In this sense, however,
these are not the only tell-tales of their kind, for quite as
common, at the same season, are some other parties of aerial
dancers, one of which we fell in with soon after we had taken
leave of the first. These were tiny sylphs with black bodies
and wings of snow-white gauze, and like " choice spirits, black,
white, and grey," (for they wore plumes of the latter colour,)
they were greeting the still New Year with mirth and revelry,
and that over a frozen pool, whose icy presence one would have
fancied quite enough for their instant annihilation. But though
(warmed by exercise) these merry mates care so little for
the cold without, they are glad enough, when occasion serves,
to profit by the shelter of our windows. In ours we often
watch them, and you, good reader, had better seek for them,
unless you would miss the sight of as pretty and elegant a little
creature as any one could desire to look at on a fine summer's,
much more a winter's, day. We have spoken of the plumes of
these winged revellers, black, white, and grey, which dance in
the air as merrily as the Quaker's wife in the song; but here
be it observed, that our Gnats' wives, with real quaker-like
sobriety, rarely, if ever, dance at all, and never by any accident
wear feathers.

But stay ! here we are arrived at the end of our dance, nay,

GNAT'S LIFE OF BUOYANCY. 27

at the end of our dancers' lives, without having said a word
about their beginning. Well, we have nothing for it but to
go backwards, jumping over the steps already made, up to the
premier pas, our aerial performer's birth and parentage.

Now for the beginning of the Gnat's life of Buoyancy,
which commences on the water. Man has been believed by
the nations of antiquity to have

'* Learned of the little Nautilus to sail,
Spread the thin oar, and catch the rising gale ;"

but he might also have taken a first lesson in boat-building
from an object common in almost every pond, though, certainly,
not so likely to attract attention as the craft of that bold
mariner, the little Argonaut. This object is a boat of eggs,
not a boat egg-laden ; nor yet that witch's transport, an egg-
shell boat, but a buoyant life-boat, curiously constructed of her
own eggs by the common Gnat. The boat may be seen, at
home and at all hours, within the convenient compass of a
basin filled from an adjacent pond. When complete, the boat
consists of from 250 to 350 eggs, of which, though each is
heavy enough to sink in water, the whole compose a structure
perfectly buoyant, so buoyant as to float amidst the most violent
agitation. What is yet more wonderful, though hollow, it
never fills with water, and even if we push it to the bottom of
our mimic pool, it will rise unwetted to the surface. In a
few days each of the numerous " lives " within having put on
the shape of a grub or Larva, issues from the lower end of its
own flask-shaped egg, but the empty shells continuing still
attached, the boat remains a boat till reduced by weather to a
wreck.

Here let us leave it, and follow the fortunes of one of the crew
after he has left his cabin, which he quits in rather a singular
manner, emerging through its bottom into the water. Happily,
however, he is born a swimmer and can take his pleasure in
his native element, poising himself near its surface head down-

28 GNAT PUPA.

wards, tail upwards. Why chooses he this strange position ?
Just for the same reason that we rather prefer, when taking a
dabble in the waves, to have our heads above water, for the
convenience, namely, of receiving a due supply of air, which
the little swimmer in question sucks in through a sort of tube
in his tail. This breathing apparatus, as well as the tail itself,
serves also for a buoy, and both end in a sort of funnel, com-
posed of hairs arranged in a star-like form and anointed with
an oil by which they repel water. When tired of suspension
near the surface, our little swimmer has only to fold up these
divergent hairs, and plump, he sinks down to the bottom. He
goes, however, provided with the means of re-ascension, a
globule of air which the oil enables him to retain at his funnel's
ends ; on re-opening which he again rises whenever the fancy
takes him. But yet a little while, and a new era arrives in
the existence of this buoyant creature: buoyant in his first
stage of Larva, in his second of Pupa he is buoyant still.
Yet, in resemblance, how unlike ! But lately topsy-turvy, his
altered body first assumes what we should call its natural
position, and he swims, head upwards, because within it there
is now contained a different, but equally curious apparatus for
inhaling the atmospheric fluid. Seated behind his head, arises
a pair of respirators, not very much unlike the aural appendages
of an ass, to which they have been compared ; and through these
he feeds on air, requiring now no grosser aliment. At his
nether extremity there expands a fish-like finny tail by help of
which he can either float or strike at pleasure through the
water.

Thus passes with our buoyant Pupa the space of about a
week ; and then another and a more important change comes
" o'er the spirit of his dream." While a noon-day sun is warm
upon the water, he rises to the surface and above it, elevating
both head and shoulders, as if gasping for the new enjoyments
which await him. His breast swells, his confining corslet
bursts, and the head, all plumed and decorated for a more

GNAT IMAGO. 29

brilliant theatre, emerges through the rent, followed by the
shoulders and the filmy wings which are to play upon the

air. But have a care, my little debutant ! thou art yet

upon the water ; an unlucky somerset would wet thy still soft
and drooping pinions, and render them unfit for flight. — Now
is thy critical moment — hold thee steady — lose not thy per-
pendicular, or But why fear we for the little mariner ?

He who clothes the lily and feeds the sparrow has provided
him support in this, his point of peril. The stiff covering of
his recent form, from which he is struggling to escape, now
serves him as a life-boat. His upright body forms its mast
as well as sail, and in the breeze now rippling the water, he
is wafted rapidly along. He will assuredly be capsized from
press of sail. But see, he has acquired by this time other
helps to aid his self-preserving efforts. His slender legs
(hitherto hung pendant) now feel for and find the surface of
the pool. His boat is left behind and, still endowed with one
aquatic power, he stands a moment on the water, then rises
buoyant, a winged inhabitant of air !

'"Set ug tjjen gtrttoe to fieep up our fiuopancy."

ir

• \ :viU ^ ;\

Aphides of the Oak. Two of the large brown Aphis quercus, with their
curious suckers, and another species of the oak with the wood Ant, Formica
rufu, in search of honey-dew, — magnified.

THE WOOD-ANT AND THE APHIDES.

the midst of an oak wood stands a village or
scattered group of rustic habitations. These
are curiously excavated in the earth, above
which rise their dome-like roofs, thatched in a
peculiar manner, with pieces of stick and straw,
and each is the common abode of a large community of various
ranks and orders. In one of these sylvan dwellings there lived,
and perhaps lives still, a good sort of body, a female member
of the working class, who set a perfect pattern of industry.
Often at work, not only from morn till eve, but from eve till
dewy morn, she had turned, as it were, the summer into one
long day, and seemed to think that she had thereby acquired a

ASLEEP AND AWAKE. 31

title to convert the winter, or as much of it as she chose, into
one long night. Accordingly, when December arrived, and
with it a frost of intense severity, our busy-body shut herself
up in her warm underground quarters, and fell into a comfortable
dose, and from thence into a slumber, profound as that fabled of
the Seven Sleepers. On went the frost, and with it on went
the good house-wife's comfortable snooze ; but one day the
sharp north-east having whistled his lullaby, his brother, the
soft south-west, arose to do duty in his stead. The sun, at the
same time, drew aside his fog curtain, and shone out so bright
and warm, as to penetrate even to our sleeper's underground
chamber. She felt its reviving power, and awoke. She then
stept up to the entrance of her dwelling, or, we should rather
say, one of them, since it had almost as many as the far-famed
residence of John o' Groat. These, however, had been all
carefully barred up on the setting in of the frost, so that, all
alone, she had to take down one of the barricades she had
assisted to erect; and this done, though not without some
effort, she was able to take a peep at the outward world, from
which she had been so long retired. Presently she bethought
her of a certain large family, with whom her own had long
been upon the most intimate and social footing, and by whom,
indeed, both herself and friends had often been regaled, even
when they had gone in a large party to claim hospitality. The
question now was how to reach their abode, which was seated
under the protection of an old oak pollard at some distance
from her own. In summer, nothing could be easier, and,
novice as she was in winter travelling, she thought, poor little
soul ! deceived by appearances, that she should find it mighty
pleasant and clean walking over the snow. And so a few hours
before, she might; but now the snow being half melted by the
sun, she sank and floundered at every step, besides being ever
and anon nearly swept away by tremendous avalanches falling
from the laden boughs over head. Pushed on, however, by
hunger and her own determined spirit, she arrived at length

32 A WALK IN THE SNOW.

within sight of the desired oak tree. A few minutes more
brought her under its boughs, and into the very midst of the
family she had come to visit. Like her, they had all been
brought out by the sunshine, and like her had all been sleeping
through the frost, a habit in which they exactly resembled our
busy friend and her fellows ; but here all likeness ended, the
people of the oak being as lazy a crew as ever slept or ate
away existence. Idlers as they were, yet after their late long
fast you may be sure they were all busy enough in breaking
it; and as their famishing visitor drew near, her hungry eyes
were not slow in discerning that young and old, big and little,
were hard at work, not with their knives and forks, but with
their pipes, which served them instead of either. Not one of
the party took the slightest notice of the pitiful presence of our
poor dripping wearied traveller, as she stood at an humble
distance, and looked round timidly before she ventured, except
by looks, to make known her wants. She first tried to recognize
among the younger of the party some who might have been her
foster-children ; but they were all grown out of knowledge, —
at all events seemed to have no knowledge of her. From the
juveniles she then turned to one' who, judging by appearance,
might have been " le Pere de la Famille ; " brown-coated,
round, sleek, and shining, he had been busiest of the busy with
his pipe, which, by the way, was much longer and, as his
petitioner soon found, much more pliant than himself. Fairly
tired out with its use, he had laid this curious instrument of
repletion, not aside, for he was too much attached to it, but out
of the way, and now depending from his chin and bent over
his portly stomach, it passed between his legs, and turned up
like a tail behind. Well, this was the one-tailed Bashaw whom
our hungry suppliant at length ventured to accost, though why
in preference to others we cannot say, unless it might have
been from the unoccupied consequence of his air. She related
her pressing need ; but twice told, or told a hundred times, it
fell, as is usual with tales of like burthen, upon a heedless

THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 33

ear. The little plump brown-coated gentleman coolly brought
forward his pipe, and under the starveling's very nose began
again to draw in, after his peculiar fashion, the remainder
of his unfinished and apparently interminable repast. The
short winter's day was nearly at a close, and perishing with
hunger, cold, and wet, bitter seemed her end, and soon she
fell into a nap which promised to be much longer even than
her last, when she was suddenly awoke by a gentle tapping.
On opening her eyes, she could just discern the young face
of one belonging to the numerous family, all of whom she
had reason to believe alike hard-hearted. This little creature
had heard and pitied the story of her distress, when she thought
she had related it to none but dull cold ears. Now that her
elders were again busy with their pipes, the kind-hearted soul
crept round to their uninvited guest, to offer her her own
supper. The poor destitute creature thankfully received and
was wonderfully refreshed by the timely aid. She slept that
night in the old tree, and the next day contrived to reach her
home.

So ends our tale : but we have yet to disclose the name of
our industrious, good-natured, yet withal improvident and
rather simple little hero. There is a certain busy worker of
whom it is declared, that "she provideth her meat in the
summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest," for which
sagacious proceeding all teachers of morality, from the wise
monarch of Israel downwards, have held her up as a bright
pattern of industrious forethought — the prudent Ant.

And now for the way in which these Ant communities pass
the winter, and for the neighbours to whom they are accus-
tomed to apply in time of need. These have been already
glanced at under the guise of fable. In the plain garb of
corresponding fact, let us look at them a little more closely, as
their doings stand recorded in some right pleasant and vera-
cious chronicles of the Formic nations. " Ants," says their
historian, (Huber, p. 239,) " usually become torpid during the

34 ANTS FED BY APHIDES.

intense cold, but when the season is not severe, the depth of
their nest guards them from the effects of frost. They do not
lose their activity unless the temperature be reduced to the
second degree of Reaumur below freezing point. I have occa-
sionally seen them walking upon the snow, engaged in their
customary vocations. In so reduced a temperature they would
be exposed to the horrors of famine, were they not supplied
with food by the Pucerons. By an admirable concurrence of
circumstances, which we cannot attribute to accident, these
Insects become torpid at exactly the same degree of cold as
those to which they are thus useful, and recover from this
state also at the same time, so that the Ants always find them
when they need them." We see from this that the providing
instinct is not bestowed where a substitute is given.

When we say the providing instinct is not given, we must
limit the observation to the business of storing grain for winter's
want. Though they do not this, they sometimes do as much
or more. What say you to the habit of keeping and tending
infant herds with a view to future use ? At all events, through
a prospective instinct, " they will sometimes (says Huber) col-
lect the eggs of Aphides, deposit them in their own nests, guard
them with the greatest care, till evolved, and then, as we pasture
milch kine, continue to keep an eye over them for the delicious
nutriment they afford. Those Ants which do not know how
thus to assemble them, are, at least, acquainted with their re-
sorts. They follow them to the base of the trees and branches
of the shrubs they are used to frequent, and at the beginning
of frost pursue along the hedges the paths which lead to their
retreat. As soon as the Ants recover from their torpor, in-
duced by severe cold, they venture forth to procure their food.
The honied aliment, thus collected and swallowed, is on their
return home equally distributed among their companions."
The Ant figured in our story, and prefigured in our vignette,
is one of that large species before spoken of, popularly known
by the different names of Pismire, Wood, Hill, and Horse

OAK-APHIS. :tf

Ant. Their stick and straw-capped cones scattered through
the woods, must be familiar to all wood-land walkers. With-
out, a mound of confusion, within they are a marvel of arrange-
ment. The conical coping which presents itself to our eye, is
indeed the roof, but may also be considered as the upper story,
or perhaps several, which contain within them various chambers,
one in the centre larger and loftier than the rest, with passages
of communication, besides others which lead to the exterior of
the nest. The outer entrances of these various avenues, at other
times open, are carefully barricaded, not only in winter, but in
rainy weather, and also of a night.

Our yillager's " many friends " of the old pollard, are
intended expressly, though not with reference to character, for
a family of the large brown Oak-Aphis, greatest of its tribe,
with a pipe or sucker of prodigious length, which, when not
employed in extraction of sweet juices from leaf and branch, i?
carried under *he body, passing upwards like a tail.

,fr

.no one tooR notice of our poor tripping traveller.'

The Tortoise-shell Butterfly, Vanessa urticce. Suspended beneath the
parapet of the wall is the chrysalis of the Cabbage butterfly, Pontia brassiccc.
Above is the hairy caterpillar of the Tiger Moth, Arctia caja. To the right
are three caterpillars of the Magpie Moth, Abraxas grnssulariata, attached, as
if frozen, to the branches. On the lower stems are the cocoon of a Saw Fly,
Trichiosoma lucorum, and an old cocoon of the Vapourer Moth, Orgyia antiqua,
employed as a winter bed for her eggs. Encircling a twig above the Butter-
fly is a bracelet-like cluster of the eggs of the Lackey Moth, Clisiocampa
ncustria.

LIFE IN DEATH.

4

E were loath to begin the year by contemplation
of our Insect subjects while buried in a sleep
wearing Death's perfect semblance ; but we
can look at them now, and their dreamless
slumber inspires no corresponding dulness,
but only curious expectancy ; for they are about to awake,

LIFE IN DEATH. 37

and soon their songs of life and liberty, their morning hymn
and their evening boom, will be resounding over the bursting
hedgerows and the opening flowers. The Bee is still mute;
the Beetle still motionless; the Butterfly (like the bud)
still enfolded in its protecting shroud: but they are not the
less existent, and to discover where and how, is a curious
object of pursuit, and eke a cheerful one, showing how
life and pleasure, activity and beauty, lie lurking under a
thousand dry and death-like forms, to which they owe their
preservation.

Our first preserve, and, as already noticed, one of the best,
is our garden, albeit but a very little one. Let us look around,
and here on this hedge we discern a something rarely enough
seen, although exposed to our view almost everywhere on every
winter's day. Amidst the intricate branches of the bare haw-
thorn, stretches forth an arm, distinguished from the rest by a
circlet of beads, a many-rowed bead bracelet, as regularly
wrought as bracelet ever worn on lady's wrist, or woven of silk
and beads by lady's fingers. This piece of natural jewellery is
the work of a certain Mother Moth, whose own eggs, set in an
indissoluble weather-proof cement, are the living gems of which
it is composed. The deceased manufacturer of this ornament,
was a female " Lackey," member of a tribe so called on ac-
count of the gaudy liveries (blue and red, white and yellow)
in which, while caterpillars, they are arrayed. From these
bracelet-eggs will come forth with the opening leaves, just in
time to devour them, a new troop of these Lackey varlets, which
in due season (about June) will doff their coats of many colours,
for the sober chrysalidan-brown, and in July emerge from their
Aurelian shrouds and cases, a company of sober-suited light-
browri Moths, images of her, their lady mother, the constructor
of this bracelet. That we may look into its workmanship a
little closer, let us cut it from the hedge, with the branch it
compasses, and from which we can slip it like a ring. We find
on inspection, that each of the beads or eggs comprising it;

38 MOTHS' EGGS.

is shaped like the arch stones of a bridge, the whole of them
being cemented together in like manner, and thus rendered so
strong, compact, and impervious, as to preserve unharmed
through winter's wet and cold, the embryo lives for whose
protection it was intended.

On another leafless spray of hawthorn hangs another group
of Insect eggs, the embryo progeny of another maternal Moth.
These, however, instead of being united, as in the bracelet,
with strong cement, are loosely scattered, but by no means
carelessly, for they are laid upon an oval silken bed, the warm
cocoon, which having, while she was a Chrysalis, served to
protect the mother, was converted by the maternal instinct of
her mothhood into a winter cradle for her eggs. From these,
in the Month of May, will appear a brood of Caterpillars, at
first dark and hairy, afterwards black and grey, with bright
yellow tufts, and red and yellow spots, and from these, after the
usual changes, we shall have a company of Moths called
" Vapourers," the females of which are almost wholly des-
titute of wings. One of these was the layer of the eggs in this
cocoon, which furnishes, therefore, a striking instance of a
seeming deficiency of organization being compensated by an
instinctive perception. The mother Moth has no wings where-
with to travel far in search of a safe asylum for her eggs, and
she would seem, for this reason, guided instinctively to employ
her own discarded covering as a bed suited to preserve
them.

Let us seek now for a specimen of insect life (though still it
may be only " Life in death") advanced one step beyond its
threshold, or from egg to Caterpillar. But without a leaf yet
opened for its support, where is the Caterpillar to be found ?
Perhaps we must go farther than our little garden to discover
it, for as we look about us, not a living thing, or one like it,
can we see, except that rogue of a thrush, busy yonder at a
currant bush. Suppose we watch him, and see if he may not
prove a guide, an indicator to assist us in our search. What

MAGPIE CATERPILLARS. 39

is he about? Plucking and picking at the bare branches, when
meanwhile, close beside him, lies a snail, one of his favourite
morsels. There goes the quick-eared songster, put to flight
even by our stealthy step ; but let him go, we shall find out, all
the same, the business he's been after. Aye, aye, Sir Thrush,
we even thought so, — thy large bright eye has been quicker
than our own, in discovering, before us, the very game for
which we have been hunting. We are not so clever as thou
art in detection of life, clothed in the garb of death. On this
branch of the currant bush, where thou wast so busy, remains
a trio of stiff, stick-like little animals, more like twigs than
Caterpillars, and distinguishable only from the branch itself,
neither by form nor motion, but slightly by colour, which in-
stead of brown, is whitish yellow, besprinkled with black.
These are the Caterpillars of the Magpie Moth, numbers of
which, so called from their mode of colouring, are to be seen
in almost every garden, flying heavily through the twilight of
summer's evenings ; and from the eggs of one of them, deposited
on this currant branch, came forth, in autumn, the curious spe-
cimens of " still life" now before us. In these we have an in-
stance, among others, of Caterpillars defended through the
winter by a state of torpidity in which they have now continued
for many weeks, without eating, and will thus remain till the
breath of spring has roused them to activity, and provided employ-
ment for their jaws. The power of Caterpillars, also, in resisting
cold has been proved by experiment to be very great, scarcely
indeed inferior to that of insect eggs. Those of the cabbage,
frozen so stiff as to snap like glass, have yet lived and become
Butterflies, while others have revived, after chinking like stones
when thrown into a glass.*

What next have we come to, basking in a ray of wintry sun-
shine on a root of dandelion ? It is another Caterpillar, now a
very little one, because short of his full growth, not naked, like

* Dr. Lister.

40 TIGER-MOTH CATERPILLARS.

the tiny sticks of the Magpie, but clothed, d la Russe, in a
brown fur jacket.

The moment we touch him, he curls up like a hedge-hog,
and falls from the plant upon the ground. From this practice
he is known to some people by the appellation of a " Devil's
ring," though why a creature harmless as a dove should have
acquired this misnomer it is hard to say. His proper, though
not, in his present state, a much more fitting appellation, is the
Caterpillar of the Tiger Moth ; he is now more like a little
bear; but bear or tiger, we have now at home a box or cage-full
of the like animals, born from the egg in the early part of last
October. Instead of attaining in a few weeks to the full
measure of their bulk, as is the case with the summer broods of
the same Caterpillar, these, like the little individuals just en-
countered, have been, since an early stage, quite stationary as
to growth, nearly the same as to motion, have kept on the same
coats, instead of often changing them, and it is only in mild
weather that they eat sparingly of the leaves of dandelion,
wherewith it is not easy to supply them. When the latter are
entirely nipped by frost or covered by snow, our little winterers
subsist as well without them, upon sleep. In this, their nice
and altered adaptation to a rigorous season and short supplies,
are not the growth and appetite even of these Caterpillars
worthy of notice ?

With the arrival of April, and a plentiful supply of dock and
dandelion green meat, we shall find in our little " Tigers" a
proportionate increase of activity and appetite ; their skins, as
they increase in size, will be frequently cast, and in May, each
having attained to the full measure of its growth, will display
to great advantage its jerkin of black velvet, ornamented with
rows of white studs, from each of which springs a long tuft of
gold-brown grey-tipped hairs, forming, en masse, an upper
K>at of fur. Our Caterpillar will then speedily repay us for
the trouble of his keep, by showing how cleverly he can make
his cocoon, spinning it of his own silk, interweaving it with

SOCIAL CATERPILLARS. 41

hair plucked from his own body, and eking out these natural
materials by extraneous ones, such as grains of earth, pieces
of leaf, or even bits of paper when placed within his reach.
Shut up in this secure asylum he will become a chrysalis, and
in two or three weeks, come forth a Tiger Moth complete, a
winged creature, glorious in " crimson dyes" and richest brown
and cream colour.

* *****

Leaving the garden, let us extend our hunt over a wider
range, and here, without the paling, we discover, hung upon
an oak-tree, another cloak of protection for Caterpillar life
amidst the surrounding death of vegetation. We have here
no solitary survivors, but a social company, if social we may
designate a few dozens of half, or quite, dormant little animals,
bidding defiance to Jack Frost from behind the triple tapestry of
a silken hammock woven by themselves. This their winter dor-
mitory is of shape irregular, with here and there a brown oak-
leaf woven into its outward texture, the interior being divided,
also with tapestry, into various snug apartments, where the
little inmates lie coiled together by twos and threes, till waked
into activity by the coming spring. These, at present harmless
slumberers, will grow, by and bye, into tremendous ravagers of
the oak and other trees, and will then, on the boughs they have
stripped bare, be sufficiently discernible in their tufted parure
of black, white, and scarlet. These are the progeny of a pretty
white moth, yclept the gold-tail, from a tuft of gold-coloured
hair at the end of her body. But stay ! What have we here ?
A sort of rough excrescence seeming to grow out of the tree,
just within the edge of its shell-like trunk. When we come to
look at it, it seems not, however, like a vegetable growth, it is
the wood-built structure of a Caterpillar, and his present dor-
mitory, now that he has cast off his working dress, and put on
the monastic habit of an idle chrysalis. Let us look into his
cell, or at least on its exterior, a little closer.

The fabric is of oval form, composed of pieces of rotten wood

42 PUSS COCOON.

and bark, meshed in and kept together by silk and gluten ; the
latter renders it so hard, that it refuses to yield under pressure
of the finger ; we might perhaps force it, though not without
trouble, by aid of stick or knife; but let us spare it, leaving its
ingenious builder and occupant to finish, unmolested, his winter's
nap, to sleep on till the merry month of May ; and then, forcing
his wooden walls by help, it is said, of an expressly provided
acid, to expand his pencilled pinions on the evening air.

But it might please you, curious companions of our rambles,
to see for yourselves, the pattern of those pretty pinions ; and
so in due time you shall, for we have at home almost a facsimile
of this wood-built cell, constructed under our own eye by a
brother artisan, a " Puss" Caterpillar, which, as a chrysalis,
now lives within it. Yonder is the wall of a kitchen garden.
Just under the coping of the wall, its only shelter, slung in
horizontal position, hangs a chrysalis, which by its shape,
angular instead of rounded, as well as by the open mode in
which it is exhibited, we recognize, at once, as a future Day-
flier; and by the colour, a greenish yellow, besprinkled with
black, no less than by its choice of situation, know it to have
been, in autumn, a Cabbage Caterpillar, to appear in spring
(though not perhaps till May) a large white garden Butterfly.
It hangs here attached to the wall by a double support, a silken
button at the tail, and a band or loop of threads round the
middle of the body, its last pieces of ingenious workmanship
while in the Caterpillar form ; and we perceive, also, a thin
silken web stretched over a small space of the brick above.
This is a preparation of its surface to receive the ends of the
supporting girth, which would not else adhere.

But look ! What is flitting past us, even now ? In very sooth,
a "Devil's Butterfly" has come from the ivy overhead, or a
warmer place below, to reproach us for indifference to Butterfly
presence, or to upbraid yonder cabbage sleeper for still sleeping
on. There ! now she has settled, not on the elder clusters, nor
yet on the hazel flowers, but on this leafless hawthorn, and

TORTOISE-SHELL BUTTERFLY. 43

here do her " golden pinions ope and close," as if she designed
to enhance their living splendour by contrast with the death-
like branches. Well! be thou Butterfly of " devil" or of
" witch," as our brethren of Scotland are wont to call thee (we
suppose for thy winter-braving hardihood), thou art a glorious
creature, and thy tamer name of " little Tortoise-shell" does
but sorry justice to thy glowing beauty.

This " little Tortoise-shell" which, in common with others of
her hardy sisterhood, has survived the winter, her radiant robes
laid up in ivy or some other close green wardrobe, belongs to
the beautiful genus " Vanessa" or Fan-winged Butterflies,
which, while in their state of spiny Caterpillars, feed for the
most part upon nettles. They are distinguished by their warm
rich colours, their angular scalloped wings, with points at the
hinder margin, and the shortness of their fore-legs, which do
not serve the purpose of walking.

9!n tfje apparent beatfj of tointer.

An assemblage, of two species of Ants, Formica rufa and cunicularia, illus-
trating the mode in which the former attacks the latter, and seizes its larva*
and pupae. In the foreground is an instance, not uncommon in insects, of an
individual retaining its vitality after the loss of its body, and above are a
winged male and female of the same species.

A MILITARY EXPEDITION,— AND A NEW
BATTLE OF THE AMAZONS.

N the midst of various other nations are now
dwelling and have dwelt from the year — no-
body knows what — a pigmy people, whom we
shall call Form leans, divided into tribes, and
long celebrated for their activity, industry, and
form of government both civil and military.

The custom of slave-making, as still sanctioned by the
example of biped nations, has been always practised by certain

SLAVES AND SLAVE-HOLDERS. 45

tribes of this pigmy people. In some respects, however, our
Lilliputian slave-owners are wofully behind-hand, as compared
with those of larger stature. The slaves live as well as their
possessors, and on some occasions, the common rule of such
relationship being reversed, would seem to take the chief au-
thority into their own hands. With all this indulgence, these
little slaves are famous hands at labour. No Jack-of-all-trades,
nor maid-of-all-work (for be it here observed that they are all
females) can beat them for universal usefulness. The greater
number of their owners are of the same sex with themselves,
and, what may seem on this account the more remarkable is,
that they are all without exception soldiers — amazonian soldiers.
It follows, consequently, that their slaves have everything to
do. In a populous city they are, at once, the builders, the
scavengers, the porters, and the nurses of the infant population.
Nay, they are even the feeders of the grown-up free comna unity,
which consists solely of the above-named lady soldiery, a few
idle gentlemen, and some two or three queens or princesses of
the blood. The slave population being thus absolutely neces-
sary to the comfort, nay, very existence of their owners, it of
course follows that the keeping up of its numbers is a most
important matter. This object is effected by predatory excur-
sions, taken frequently into the territories of those harmless
unoffending tribes which furnish the desired supply, and from
which the female warriors usually return triumphant, each laden
with the trophy of an infant captive.

On a certain day of a certain year, the Amazonian chieftains
of Rufia, one of the slave-making states of Formica, assembled
to concert a plan of operation for a new campaign or marauding
expedition.

It was towards the close of a fine summer's day that the
army of the Rufians was seen issuing from their capital. Their
march soon brought them to an arid sandy plain, strewn with
rocky fragments, between which they pursued their way in
winding but unbroken files, their polished brown corselets

46 THE FIGHT.

glistening like sparks of fire in the glow of the declining sun.
Marching with great rapidity, considering their diminutive
stature, they soon traversed this desert-like tract without loss
or accident, a matter for no small congratulation, seeing the
manifold dangers to which their exposed route had rendered
them liable.

Onward they pressed, while 'some of the most ardent of the
assailants, leaving the main body behind, rushed forward to
attack the enemy's sentinels, who were posted at each of the
avenues leading down into the subterranean city.

These watchful guards, who presently gave notice of the
approaching army, were, like their assailants, all Amazonian
soldiers, only of a much milder and more pacific disposition,
being used to combine gentle employments with their profes-
sion of arms, — a profession, moreover, never exercised except
defensively.

Slavery, as inflicted on others, is a thing unknown among
the Fuscans ; and their working females, who constitute the
chief bulk of the population, are not only the sole defenders of
the state, but also perform all the useful offices, which among
the Rufians are made to devolve upon the slaves.

Now comes the tug of war. The defenders are assembled
in front of their city, fighting for their queen, their lives, and
the liberty of their infant population. The assailants, their
main body having now come up, are fighting for glory and
for plunder, and above all, for the rape of Fuscan babies, to
become the future slaves of their own rising generation. Oh !
for a Homer's pen to describe the universal ardour and the
individual prowess of our pigmy Amazons. By far more nu-
merous are the dusky Fuscans, though in discipline and personal
strength they are much inferior to the warlike Rufians. Of
the latter we have spoken, hitherto, as Lilliputians, but now
we have to treat of them as opposed to a tribe of very inferior
stature.

The battle-field, an area of some four feet square, is strewed

THE FIGHT. 47

with dead and dying. Sulphureous fumes exhale around.
Single combatants by thousands, each so eager in their re-
spective contests as to seem unconscious of all besides, have
spent their ammunition ; but with rancour undiminished, behold
them now, limb to limb, head to head, seized by each other
and held in savage grip — now wrestling upright, now rolling
in the dust ; long does the dubious strife continue, till a third,
Rufian or Fuscan, comes to turn the balance and throw
death into the ascending scale. In another quarter, see perhaps
a dozen combatants of either party, all firmly linked together
in a living chain, dashing, writhing like a wounded snake in
serpentine convulsions, till snap goes a link beneath a mortal
blow ; but in an instant the dissevered portions reunite, and
struggle on with double fury.

Look now at that powerful long-limbed Rufian and the active
little Fuscan, her opponent : the latter springs like a cat o'
mountain on the chest of her bulkier foe ; but dearly does she
pay for her temerity. Caught in the grasp of the Amazonian
Ajax, she is crushed and falls strangled to the earth. She
falls — but let not her conqueror exult — a sister heroine, no
bigger than herself, and like herself, carrying in a little body
a mighty mind, beholds and vows to avenge her fate. She
too springs upon the Rufian, but with more effective grasp,
her powerful jaws enclosing, as in a vice, one limb of her
athletic antagonist. The Rufian severs in twain the body of
her assailant ; its lower half falls and is trampled in the dust ;
but (horrible to see !) the upper portion still retains its hold,
supported by the jaws which death has double-locked. The
fixed eyes continue to look up angrily into the living face, the
rigid arms to encircle the warm body of the wounded Rufian.
Vainly she strives to shake off the hideous burthen : like the
old Man of the Mountain, it will not be dislodged ; and though
the Amazon of Rufia left that battle-field, yet

" ever more

The lady wore,"

48 WARS OF ANTS.

carried, perforce, about her, the slaughtered Fuscan's head and
shoulders, frightful trophy of her dear-bought victory !

Who can paint the scene that followed ? Who can number
the innocents that day made captive ?

Triumphant was the homeward march of the victorious
Rufians, each Amazonian victress shouldering her ravished bant-
ling. Of the little captives, some (the pupce) were wrapt in a
sort of swaddling-clothes, whilst others (the larvae), who were
younger and not thus enthralled, felt equally ill at ease under
the awkward handling of their warlike captors. No longer
keeping (in consequence, perhaps, of their acquired encum-
brances) the regular array, in which, spite of impeding obstacles,
they had advanced towards the ransacked city, their return,
for the greater portion of the way, was straggling and irregular:
but converging from all points, they at last reassembled again
in a compact body before their own capital.

Thus were the free nurseries of Fusca stripped almost to ex-
tinction, that the slave nurseries of Rufia might be replenished
to overflowing.

******

The foregoing, like many another historic record of a graver
nature, is not, we confess it, exactly true ; but the following
notes, drawn chiefly from Huber, the veracious chronicler of
the Ant nations, will show that our fiction treads very closely
on the heels of fact.

The wars of Ants were observed long ago, and one of their
battles, fought under the pontificate of Eugenius IV, was
honoured by having for its historian ^Eneas Sylvius, who was
afterwards Pope himself, as Pius II. The most warlike of the
Ant tribes, according to Huber, is the Wood-ant, the largest
British species, of which we have elsewhere told a tale with
relation to other than its military characteristics.1 These, as
well as its domestic doings, are delightfully described by the
above writer, and a walk to some neighbouring wood is almost

1 Supra, p. 74.

INSECT ARTILLERY. 49

sure to afford personal acquaintance with these sylvan warriors
with their corselets of rusty red, and black head and tail pieces.
There also we may see their " fortified cities," their " military
roads," diverging from these "citadels" like so many rays
from a centre ; their regular battles with the same or a weaker
species; their skirmishes, their single combats, their ambus-
cades, their barricades, and all the pomp and circumstance
of Formican warfare. But though it was known centuries
ago that Ants made war, it was not discovered till of late
years, and that by Huber himself, that they also made slaves,
seizing them while in their infancy (their state of larva or of
pupa) to be trained up for their service, by compatriot slaves
already grown up in the same.

The Wood-ant above mentioned has been frequently de-
tected in thus making free with members of its neighbours'
infant population, and may probably turn them to the like
useful account ; but the slave-maker par excellence is a
larger brown species, Formica rufescens, not a native of
the free soil of England, though the slave-made F. fv.sca,
or the negro, is.

'Eoto flotog toe tine of battle ?'

On the left, suspended by its line, is the common Garden Spider, Epeira
diadema; beneath it is the Labyrinthic Spider, Agelena labyrinthica, at the
mouth of its hollow snare ; and on the leaf adjoining is the green Long-bodied
Spider, Tetragnatha extensa. The rotund species to the right, and the traveller
by the cable bridge, are spinners of geometric webs, of which a small one with
its minute artificer, Theridion, is represented as often seen constructed within
the leaf of a nettle. The little urn-shaped body on a leaf near the centre is a
nest of peculiar form guarded by its ingenious weaver.

INSECT AERONAUTS.

/HE weather is dry, warm, and still, yet with-
out a gleam of sunshine, — a combination of
winter gloom with almost summer mildness.
Gossamer is floating or falling slowly through
the air, numerous spiders are hanging, motion-
less, head downwards, in the centre of their geometric webs,
lying in wait for prey, while others, restlessly ascending blades

GOSSAMER. 51

of grass or rail-posts, are inwardly invoking, we suspect, the
presence of some gentle air, to assist them in shooting their
lines, those threads of suspension, long and strong, on which is
to hang the ingenious fabric of their toils. This shooting of
the spider's lines, and that associate " wonder," the origin of
Gossamer, may as well form our not unseasonable theme.

The apparent flight of the wingless spider from tree to tree,
across water, and even through the upper regions of air, has
been almost as great a puzzle to naturalists, as the Fly's walk
against gravity. It was no doubt soon discovered, that this
flight in seeming, was no more a real one than that of an
aeronaut in a balloon, or than those of the foolhardy adven-
turers, such as, from the times of Hogarth to our own, have now
and then made rope-borne transits from steeple to steeple.

That the spider travelled by a line was apparent enough to
nice observers ; but the marvel long was, how such lengthy
lines could be shot forth, as, when attached accidentally to
some fixed body, serve to provide the insect traveller with
a cable bridge to cross from plant to plant, or from tree to
tree; or when floating loosely, serve equally to promote the
more ambitious purpose of bearing him upwards when disposed
to mount in air.

However incurious about their mode of formation, nobody
can have taken an early morning walk, especially towards
autumn, without having noticed these lines or webs of the
Gossamer Spider spread over hedge and field, a silken net- work,
studded with dew-drop diamonds. The prodigious extent of
these woven fabrics only corresponds with the surprising mul-
titude of their fabricators, of whom twenty or thirty will some-
times be found assembled upon one straw of stubble. It would
appear, on these occasions, as if a portion of the sky-lark's
soaring spirit, infused by his animating song, was at work
within these little creeping forms. All seem bent upon the
object of ascension, all are in progress towards the summit of
their respective stations, whether stubble-straw, blade of grass,

52 GOSSAMER WEBS.

hedge-twig, or railing. Having climbed to the greatest height
their legs will carry them, they raise their abdomens to a
position nearly perpendicular, at the same time emitting a,
portion of the glutinous substance which forms their webs ;
this being acted on by the ascending current, is presently drawn
out into long fine lines, when the spiders, quitting their hold
of the objects whereon they stand, are carried aloft on their
journey towards the clouds.

Having thus seen the way in which Spiders shoot their
lines, we come now to the examination of Gossamer, of which
these lines form the material. After having served, singly,
their fabricators' turn, either as bridges to cross the vacant
gulf, or as balloons to rise sky-wards, they are brought together
by the action of " gentle airs," gradually assume the shape of
fleecy flakes, composed of irregular silky masses, and then by
an ascending current of rarified air are borne hundreds of feet
into the atmosphere. On falling, when the upward current
ceases, it would appear by observation of the naturalist above
referred to, that few of these webs contain a Spider, though
numerous winged insects are found entangled in them. Dr.
Lister, however, found more than once in the webs which
he saw fall from heaven, one of these mounting Spiders, which
he calls " birds," and describes some of them as converting
their floating lines into chariots or balloons of flake, by pulling
them in with their fore-feet as they fly. From the top of York
Minster, the same observer watched the descent of webs, high
above him, and on examination of some caught on the pinnacles
of the cathedral, considered such of the adventurous aeronauts
as he found within them, to be all juveniles, of light weight
corresponding to their age. One of them he calls " an excellent
rope-dancer, wonderfully delighted with darting its threads,"
adding, that " by means of its legs closely applied to each other,
it, as it were, balances itself and promotes and directs its course,
no otherwise than as if nature had furnished it with wings or oars."

From the floating lines and aerial chariots cf the Spiders

WEBS OF SPIDERS. 53

which make Gossamer, let us descend to a few of the humbler
fabrics woven by the same and various other species, to serve
as habitations or as snares.

Who is not familiar (too familiar for appreciation of their
excellent workmanship) with the radiate wheel-like nets so
common in gardens and on hedges throughout the summer,
and on dewy autumn mornings rendered so brightly conspi-
cuous by the liquid pearls which they serve to string? In
addition to these borrowed gems, the spiral lines of geometric
webs have been shown by the microscope to be beset by a
number of viscid globules. The ingenious weavers of these
" wheels within wheels," are various species of that tribe of
Spiders called, from their lines and circles, the Geometric;
those of them most commonly known are " the Garden "
(Epeira diadema) and " the Long-bodied " (Tetragnatha
extensa), noticed already among the aeronauts.

Among the out-door fabrics woven by Spiders, which can
hardly fail to attract the eye, however little they may fix atten-
tion, are those large white broad-sheets, sloping downwards into
tunnels, of which numbers are so frequently seen spread out
upon the grass and lower bushes. These webs, of which each
serves a single occupant both as a residence and a snare, are
attached by silken ropes to adjacent objects. The sides of the
horizontal broad-sheet, sloping obliquely downwards till nearly
perpendicular, form towards its centre a cylindrical tunnel, and
sitting near its mouth, the lurker, shaded by the darkness of her
covered way, is ready to rush forth and seize on the first hapless
wanderer that becomes entangled in her fatal web. This
cunning artificer can only be captured by the artifice of getting
behind, and driving her upwards and out of her tunnel, into
which she always descends upon the first alarm.

In addition to the silken material, of which they always
carry with them an internal magazine, there are various out-
door Spiders which employ leaves in the construction of their
retreats, and that after a fashion both ingenious and elegant.

54 CURIOUS LEAF-CELL.

We have sometimes plucked a rolled-up lilac or young oak-
leaf, expecting to find it tenanted by a leaf-rolling Caterpillar,
when, lo ! upon the scroll being opened, out ran a small long-
bodied Spider, which, after lining it with silk, had taken pos-
session of it as his cell. Structures more spacious, consisting
not of one, but of several leaves lined and united by a silken
web, serve often for the abodes of various Spiders found in
woods and gardens ; but of these, few are so curious and elegant
as a single leaf-cell which we have often found on nettles. In
this the point and sides of the leaf being turned over so as to
meet at the edges, are conjoined with silk, and on carefully
forcing up one of the corners of the green triangle, we intrude
on the domestic privacy of a maternal Spider, keeping tender
watch over her bag or ball of eggs.

Who has not seen, or is not curious to behold that " lion "
of the Polytechnic, the diving-bell ? Now those who for lack of
opportunity are among the latter, may see a diving-bell in minia-
ture by repairing to the brink of some running stream, canal,
or ditch (provided it be not stagnant), in the neighbourhood
of London or elsewhere. There they may perceive, shining
through the water, a little globe apparently of silver, which
surrounds, as with a garment, the body of a Diving Spider.1

But it is in the pages of Kirby and Spence that we find
the habitations and habits of this amphibious architect most
strikingly and pleasantly described.2 " Her abode (say they)
built in water and formed of air, is constructed on philosophic
principles, and consists of a subaqueous, yet dry, apartment in
which, like a mermaid or a sea-nymph, she resides in comfort.
Loose threads, attached in various directions to the leaves of
aquatic plants, form the framework of her chamber. Over
these she spreads a transparent (elastic) varnish, like liquid
glass, which issues from the middle of her spinners ; next, she

1 Diving Water-Spider, A.rgyroneta aqnatica.
3 Introduction to Entomology.

THE DIVING SPIDER. 55

spreads over her belly a pellicle of the same material, and
ascends to the surface " to inhale and carry down a supply of
atmospheric fluid. Head downwards, and with her body, all
but the spinneret, still submersed, our diver (by a process
which does not seem precisely ascertained) introduces a bubble
of air beneath the pellicle which surrounds her. " Clothed
in this aerial mantle, which to the spectator seems formed of
resplendent quicksilver, she then plunges to the bottom, and
with as much dexterity as a chemist transfers gas with a
gas-holder, introduces her bubble of air beneath the roof pre-
pared for its reception ; this manoeuvre is ten or twelve times
repeated, and when she has transported sufficient air to expand
her apartment to its intended extent, she possesses an aerial
edifice, an enchanted palace, where, unmoved by storms, she
devours her prey at ease/' Fancy-woven from the foregoing
description is the Fairy Tale which forms the subject of the
next episode.

" 3CH |cem Sent upon agcengton.'

The great Water Beetle, Dytiscus marginalis, and the Diving Water Spider,
Argyroneta aquatica, allegorically typified above, by an armour-clad Knight
and an aquatic Nymph.

THE FRESH-WATER SIREN.
PART THE FIRST.

Y air-built bower come and see,
Stranger, come and dwell with me."
An armour-clad Rover is sauntering near;
At the Siren's sweet accents he pricks up his

ear:

" Gramercy !" quoth he. " She bespeaketh me kind,
And to pay her my devoirs I've almost a inind."
Then he looked at the water, exploring it through,
And there, if his sight brought him evidence true,

THE FRESH-WATER SIREN. 57

He beheld 'neath its surface, in silver bedight,

A most lovely Ladye. No gallant young Knight

Could wish for a fairer in air and in mien, "j

Tho' as to her face, not a feature was seen,

'Twas so veiled in the blaze of her mantle's bright sheen.

But the Knight he stood dubious, the streamlet was deep,

He prudently looked, ere he ventured to leap ;

But the Ladye, impatient, upraised neck and hand,

To grasp hold of his, as he stood on the land.

Then, ye powers of darkness ! the sight that he sees,

Any mortal's warm blood was sufficient to freeze.

The most blear-eyed of witches, the nightmare most foul,

The most grim of hobgoblins, the loathsomest ghoule,

Would have seemed as the fairest of Eve's lovely daughters,

To the horrible thing half raised out of the waters.

Its long hairy arms, so gaunt, rigid, arid thin,

Were as dark and as dry as an old mummy's skin :

Its eyes, glassy and fixed as a fish's when dead,

Glared fiercely like fiery coals in its head,

And like lamps were hung over its horrible jaw, —

The portcullis that led to its cavernous maw.

The grim-looking spectre but rose as a flash
That blasted the vision, then sank with a splash ;
And, enwrapped in her mantle of magical light,
Once more seemed a fairy all beauteous and bright,
Save only the hand raised the water above,
Which still circled the wrist of the warrior's glove.
This wight (and a fortunate hap 'twas for him)
Was not framed like us mortals in body or limb ;
'Neath the back of his glittering corselet lay hid
(Like Jack-in-the-box crumpled under his lid,)
A pair of transparent and powerful wings,
Could be folded and opened by wonderful springs.

58 THE FRESH-WATER SIREN.

From all that he'd seen, he'd a pretty good notion,
That now was the time to set them in motion ;
So, his hand snatched away without further ado,
Wide open the plates of his corselet he threw,
And a moment beheld him high poised in the air,
Looking down with a smile on the Siren's despair,
While uprose from the water her soft witching strain,
Sung sweetly as erst, though, I wist, now in vain.

PART THE SECOND

On the day of her birth,

Or on that of the earth,
Or on some such grand anniversary,

Queen Nature made sport

With the dames of court,
And the bairns of her royal nursery.

From a gilt-edged cloud,

The lark sang loud,
The fish were in ecstasy leaping ;

Each leaf danced light

In the sunshine bright,
And none but the owls were sleeping.

All animate things,

With responsive strings,
Then abroad on the sunny earth,

Unless by age rusted,

Or trouble encrusted,
Were as harps in the hand of mirth.

With the rest of the revellers a young Gallant gay,
Right proud in the gloss of his silken array,

THE FRESH-WATER SIREN. 59

By the glistening water was sauntering along,

Now cutting the rushes, now humming a song.

Looking blithely about him, around and around,

In every direction, except on the ground,

Our gay Gallant stumbled, — now guess ye on what?

On viper, or toad, or a sherd of a pot ? —

His hair bristled with fright, with fear dropped his jaw, -r|

Yet he'd trodden on naught save a feminine paw, I

Hairy and black, and armed with a claw.

Squatting, toad-fashion, amidst the sedge

Which divided the path from the water's edge,

Sat our former acquaintance, the baffled crone,

Now wearing no semblance excepting her own.

Oh ! well might our Gallant's heart quiver and quake,

Well might his limbs like an aspen leaf shake,

Well his jaw it might drop, well might bristle his hair,

As the loathly old creature bespoke him thus fair : —

" Courteous Sir, why this alarm ?

Fear no hindrance, dread no harm j
I'm a gentle Fairy Sprite

For beauty famed,

The Peerless named,
Suffering under foul despite.

" In an unpropitious hour,

A jealous Fay of greater power,
Enwrapped me in a magic spell ;

Hid beneath this streamlet deep,

Where water-elves their revels keep,
For a space I'm doom'd to dwell.

" Or if I rise to upper air,
My proper form, so bright and fair,
Assumes this strange and hateful guise j

60 THE FRESH-WATER SIREN.

Now, if you doubt the words I say,
As (woe is me !) perchance you may,
Then, gentle Sir, believe your eyes."

As she uttered these words, sliding off from the bank,

The ill-favoured thing like a crocodile sank ;

And then in a trice, her form shrouded in light,

In a silvery mantle which dazzled the sight,

Again she uplifted that sweet siren strain,

So oft she had sung, and, of late, sung in vain : —

" My air-built bower come and see,
Come, stranger, come, and dwell with me ! "

As she warbled, our Gallant's unused trepidation
Gave way to a species of queer fascination ;
One more dubious look on the water he cast,
One look on the sun — that look was his last !
Underneath the bright water, and 'neath the bright sun,
A most horrible deed on that day was done.

PART THE THIRD.

Fast as acorns in autumn fall into a pool,

In the Siren's receiver dropp'd many a fool ;

I wot, those that got in were ne'er known to get out.

But by tongues in the air it was bruited about,

That a beauteous enchantress who lived upon flesh,

Was the fowler that caught these young birds in her mesh,

Yet the beldame found out, (a fact proved in society,)

That there's nothing so gainful as bad notoriety.

Her decoy overflow'd, — where she caught one before,

Well I ween she would now lay hold of a score.

THE FRESH-WAT EE SIREN. 61

From old and from young, from high and from low,
From widows in weeds, and from maidens in woe,
There now daily arose such a shrill lamentation,
That it entered, at length, the long ears of the nation.
But cheer up, all ye widows, (whose loss is no gain,)
A champion is near to avenge all your pain !
Cheer up, wives and maidens, dismiss your alarms !
Not long the foul Siren shall work her fell charms :
Look not down to the earth — but look up on high,
Your deliverer comes cutting athwart the blue sky !

On light sprays hung,

By silk cords slung,
O'er-arched by a silken dome,

Is the airy hall,

With water-proof wall,
Where the Siren makes her home.

By a waving screen

Of emerald green,
Her bower is girt about ;

But a lucent gleam

From the sparkling stream,
Looks in from the world without.

For a river sprite,

Or a naiad bright,
'Twas fit — for a fairy queen —

Nay, that pendent cell

Might have suited well,
For the boudoir of sweet Ondine.

In this nice little snuggery sat the witch crone,
Deep immersed in the sweets of a large marrow bone.

62 THE FRESH-WATER SIREN.

In the mill of ner jaws it went crunch, crunch, crunch,
As the juices flowed out, she went munch, munch, munch.
Little dreaming that trouble and danger impended,
She took her siesta when dinner was ended ;
No company present, she knew, but the dead,
In perfect composure she nodded her head.
Thus she sat till the moonlight with fitful gleam,
Peered in thro' the glass of the crystal stream.

The foul creature starts — in a tremor awakes ;

Is it the wind that too boisterously shakes

The tremulous cords of her water-girt dome,

Or is it the voice of her crimes coming home ?

She looks up in affright, through a fearful chasm,

('Twas enough to bring on quite a nervous spasm,)

Down comes the water rushing and roaring,

From the roof of her cell in a torrent pouring.

But since witches can swim, what in this to appal?

Why, perhaps, no great deal, but this was not all.

Riding down on the wave, like a ship in a gale,

The bright moonbeams illuming his coat of mail,

Came the winged knight she'd once thought of entrapping,

And who now, in return, had just caught her napping.

" At last, at your bidding, I'm come, dame," quoth he ;

The Siren looked blue, but no word spoke she ;

Then they meet — in as loving collision, I trow,

As when flint strikes on steel, or fire falls on tow.

For the hub-bub around them they care not a rush,

The waters may roar, and the waters may gush ;

The once air-propp'd dome all to pieces may shiver;

Then, struggling, they rise on the breast of the river.

The knight swam like a drake, the witch like a duck,

Or the Old One's dam ; but the Old One's own luck

Will now and then fail, like the luck of a sinner,

And the witch by ill luck had made too good a dinner;

THE FRESH-WATER SIREN. 63

Indigestion, surprise, and some sickening alarms

Of terror-struck conscience, unnerved her strong arms.

Her foul bloated body now sank and now rose,

While (a scratch for a thrust) she returned the hard blows,

That came pattering like hail on her tough old hide,

As her mail-clad opponent his falchion plied.

Till the moon had gone down did the battle last :

When the game was up, the beldame. was cast.

As a Siren, she troubled the world no more,

But a charmed life (by worse luck) she bore,

And with small change of manners, and little of feature,

Was transformed to a Spider, a dark cunning creature,

That beneath running waters constructs a dry cell,

Where through summer and winter she's wont to dwell ;

While the knight 'gainst whose prowess her sorceries failed,

Is the " Great Water Beetle," amphibious and mailed.

I}cr maii'dab opponent Ms falefiion pljeti.'

Transformation of the Silk-worm, Bomiyx Mori, Eggs, Caterpillar, Cocr^«,
and Male and Female Moths on the mulberrv.

USES OF INSECTS.

EIGH HUNT tells us, in his Indicator, that
an Italian Jesuit, Giulio Cordara, has written
a Poem upon Insects, which he begins by in-
sisting that "those troublesome and abominable
little animals" were created only for our
annoyance, and that they were certainly not inhabitants of
Paradise. Now we scarcely know what to think of the good
Father's notion, except that it was hatched, probably, under
a swarm of Mosquitos, or under dread of Scorpion or Ta-
rantula.

Spite of our Jesuit's flea-bitten theology, we may infer that
amongst the creeping and flying things of first creation, Insects

USES AND VALUE OF HONEY. 65

were included, and that the " vernal airs " of Eden were no
" desert airs," for lack of a glittering multitude of ever-joyous
sporters in the sun and shade. Even for uses economic, who
can say but that in addition to

" Fruits of all kinds, in coats

Rough or smooth rind, or bearded husk or shell,"

and "juice of grape," and " dulcet cream of almonds," the
grassy breakfast-board of Eve might not have been furnished
with honey purer than was ever collected in Narbonne or
on Hymettus. Indeed, if honey was ever stored at all by the
Bees of Paradise, it must have been rather for the use of man
than for their own, since to amass a winter's provision, would
have been labour lost in a clime where reigned " eternal
spring."

And why were Bees " immortalised " in the verse of Virgil,
except on the same principle as that which led man to deify
his brother man? It was wholly for their usefulness, since
there is little doubt, that, but for their important economic
service, their own wonderful economy would have been as much
overlooked as it was misapprehended. Ants, it is true, with
no such claim upon human notice, attracted it scarcely less ;
witness the ancient " records of their wars :" but these are
comparatively recent, and it is likely that the marvels of Apian
monarchies first led to observation of the ways and wonders of
Pismire Republics.

Of the value of honey and its extensive use, we, in our own
country and our own times, since the introduction of sugar, can
have seldom perhaps entertained anything like a just notion, —
a much lower estimate, at. all events, than the Ukraine peasant
with his 400 or 500 bee-hives, or a Spanish priest, possessor
of 5000.

About the uses of wax, a word by-and-by ; but with the
aroma of honey in our nostrils, and its flavour on our lips, let
us think whether we are indebted to Insects for any other

66 INSECTS AS FOOD.

description of palative luxury. Why no, say those who have
only lived and looked at home ; but they who have been at
Rome may tell us that snails are there commonly sold and
eaten, especially as Lenten food. Well, but snails are not
Insects : true, though they were once so considered ; but we
have only to go back to the commencement of the Christian era,
and we shall find that while John the Baptist was subsisting
in the desert of Judea, upon the simple and ordinary fare of
"locusts and wild honey," imperial luxurious Rome was
regaling, in her banquet halls, upon veritable Insects — luscious
Caterpillar grubs, fattened on flour, as we fatten oysters upon
meal. This was the Cossus of Pliny, and supposed identical
with the unsightly wood-devouring larva of the great Goat
Moth, — a lurid red and yellowish Caterpillar, bulky, black-
headed, and black-clawed, a darkling dweller in the trunk of
oak or willow.

Again, without going back at all into remote ages, we have
only to go east and west, north and south, into countries which
now brought near by the power of steam, are remote no longer,
and we shall still find men in daily commission of what, to the
narrow ken of prejudice, may seem the enormity of Insect-
eating ; thereto incited, in one quarter, by the caprice of Epi-
curean luxury, in another, by the united pressure of indolence
and scarcity. The two extremes of society, civilized and bar-
barous, are here brought together in one common habit. See,
in the West Indies, the French planter gourmand (and some-
times the English, as his copyist), seated at his luxurious table,
oiling the hinges of his worn-out appetite with those lumps of
insect fatness known as the grubs of the Palm Weevil ; and
then turn to the poor degraded Hottentot, squatted on the arid
ground, swallowing, by handfuls, White Ants roasted, or just
as often, too hungry or too indolent to dress them, devouring
the uncooked Insects.1

But, after all, none can pronounce these Acridophagi or
1 Smeathmaa.

LOCUST-EATEES. 67

Locust-eaters, as monsters of singularity in their mode of diet.
Was not " the Locust after its kind " expressly allowed for
food by the Mosaic Law ? and from the time of its institution
even to the present, does not the Law of Nature, ever kind and
provident, permit this insect scourge of humanity to be con-
verted into a medium of supporting human life ? Since in all
countries a prey to their ravages, in Syria, Arabia, Persia,
Ethiopia, Egypt, and Barbary, locusts are still an article of
provision, in more or less extensive use. And from what but
prejudice arises our disgust at Insect-feeding ?

Instead of thanking our stars for our own discriminating
taste, let us rather thank Providence for that omnivorous appe-
tite common to our race.

We only marvel that Gastronomy (than whom even Ne-
cessity herself can scarcely boast a more numerous progeny of
inventions and resources) should not, in the demand of her
votaries for new modes, have been led to seek more frequently
for new materiel out of the Insect Kingdom. This, however,
may be reserved for some future time. Cockchafers and
Chafer grubs may yet become articles for the London spring-
market, and Pates de Sauterelles may yet have a place in
second courses.

When from inward regalements we turn to outward adorn-
ments, we are instantly reminded of our obligations to those
spinning millions,

" That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk."

But stay ! are we indeed debtors to those busy insect-artificers,
who, by furnishing material for velvet robes and silken gowns
and silken banners, have ministered so largely to the pride of
the eye and the pride of life? May not the Silk-worm be
ranked rather among the dangerous than the useful gifts of
nature ? We think not ; for assuredly, if Silk- worms and silk
had never been, some other production, how coarse soever,
would have served just as well to keep human vanitv alive and

68 SILK.

warm. In ancient times that light-winged passion nestled
quite as snugly in the folds of fine linen, and the same fact is
sufficiently attested by modern instances.

Be it remembered, that, though " silken sheen " has been
always considered by us of Europe an article more or less of
luxury, in Asia it has been for ages one of absolute use.
While at Rome, silk was valued at its weight in gold, and the
Emperor Aurelian1 refused his Empress a silken robe because
it was too dear, the " lean unwashed artificer " of China was in
some provinces clothed in his silken garment. To the latter
country, under the name of Serica, has been attributed the
discovery of weaving Silk-worm threads, whence the Latin
holo-sericum, or silken garment, of which the first is said to
have been worn by the Emperor Heliogabalus.2 In the days
of Solomon, we are told, a woman named Pamphila of the
Island of Cos, was skilled in the art of making cloth from this
country of Serica or China. Du Halle says, that the most
ancient of the Chinese writers ascribe the invention to one of
the women of the Emperor Hoang Fi, named Silung, and so
important was the discovery held, that all the women in the
Emperor's palace were employed in rearing the worms and
weaving their productions. Nor, indeed, could the Chinese
have valued silk too highly, either as an article of home use, or
as a very principal one of commerce, before it was cultivated
and manufactured in other countries.

As connected with outward apparel, as well as various other
arts of ornament, our next obligation to Insects is for dyes.
Cochineal, which until the year 1694 was believed in Europe
to be a seed, is now known, by putting a few grains in warm
water, to be an Insect, a Coccus, something resembling in form
those commonly found on the leaves of grape-vines and of the
hawthorn. It is a native of China and other parts of Asia,
where the nopal or the prickly pear on which it feeds, is indi-

1 Emperor Aurelian, died A.D. 275.

2 Emperor Heliogabalus, died A.D. 222.

INSECT DYES. WAX. 69

genous. Of the great importance of this Insect production as
an article of commerce, we may form an idea from the recorded
facts, that the East India Company offered a reward of .£6000
for its introduction into India, and that some years ago the
annual consumption in Great Britain alone was reckoned at
750 bags, worth .£375,000.

Another species of Coccus, found on the evergreen oak in
the south of Europe and Asia, has furnished from the earliest
ages a blood-red crimson dye, supplanted now by the Cochineal.
It was known to the Phoenicians under the name of Tola ; to
the Greeks under that of Coccus ; to the Arabians and Persians
under that of Kermes or Alkermes. Kirby suggests that this
wras the dye probably used for the Tabernacle curtains : then,
serving for awhile to heighten the Pagan splendours of Greece
and Rome, it returned once more to sacred uses, in the scrip-
tural figures of the Brussels and Flemish tapestries.

Lac (called either stick, seed, or shell-lac, according to
its state of preparation) is the secretion of another sort of
Coccus found on various Indian trees, and is used also as
a red dye, but more extensively in varnishes, japan, and
sealing-wax.

But of all Insect productions, none perhaps is more useful,
none certainly more interesting, than wax. The little Bee her-
self might verily become inflated with self-importance could she
be aware of the exalted and varied purposes to which this pro-
duct of her labours is applied by man. Of all substances for
the illumination of holy fanes, wax certainly is the most appro-
priate— so sweet, so pure, and, in its origin, leading back the
thoughts to beautiful fields and groves and gardens. In the
halls of festive splendour, no less conspicuously though less
appropriately, shines the produce of the Bee's rustic labour.
Or walk we along the streets, or enter the lounges for amuse-
ment, does not waxen imagery, from the shaven Blue-Beards
and pink Fatimas of the barber's window, to the noted and
notorious of the earth, the monarchs and the murderers of

70 USES OF INSECTS.

Madame Tussaud's show, remind us of the busy Insects, who
were the first workers of the plastic paste. Nor, among the
curious works of art, whose basis is this work of nature, must
we overlook the waxen flowers which, in their fadeless bloom
and exquisite imitative beauty, bring a garden (in all but per-
fume) within the walls of the Pantheon. This is an interesting
as well as elegant use of the rifled riches of " buds and bells/'
thus paid back by perpetuation of their fleeting loveliness.
It is needless to enumerate a variety of other uses to. which
wax is applied, for they are everywhere apparent; even in
the comfortless dry-rubbed floor of the French hotel or chateau,
and the single mahogany table (valued heir-loom of the English
cottage), wherein the housewife is furnished by the Bee's in-
dustry with a mirrored reflection of her own.

Much more extensive and important than any of the fore-
going, but, as less palpable, even more disregarded, are the
general uses of Insect existence. Disease engendered of cor-
ruption in substances animal and vegetable, would defy all the
precautions of man, unless these were aided by scavenger
Insects, those myriads of Flies and carrion Beetles, whose per-
petual labours even in our tempered climate, but infinitely more
so in warmer regions, are essentially important to cleanliness
and health.

Some insects, especially Gnat Larvae, are most useful in
keeping water sweet and pure.

As commissioned agents, ministering more or less directly to
our various pleasures, we owe no slender obligation to Insects.
Besides imparting variety and animation to summer scenes
by their " ceaseless hum " and endless diversity of form, they
assist in the support of most of our favourite songsters of the
garden and the grove. The red-breast, the wren, and the tit-
mouse live almost wholly upon worms and Insects, which also
serve the black-bird and the thrush as meat before a fruit
dessert. To the delicacies of our tables they are also indirect
contributors. Our game grows plump on the' nurselings of

INSECT CHECKS AND COUNTERCHECKS. 71

the Ant-hill, — the larvae and pupae improperly called eggs.
Our fish fatten on "the Fly" in all its varieties; and eve?
our poultry thrive all the better, especially ducks and turkeys,
for a sprinkle of Caterpillars, Flies, and Spiders, as a relish
with their ordinary food.

The aid afforded by Bees and other Insects in the propagation
of various flowers, by conveying on their hairy backs the pollen
of one to the stigma of another, is no secret to the botanist,
and gardeners know something, and ought to know still more,
of the value of certain tribes of insect-eating Insects as checks
upon the vegetable ravagers of their own race. Both the
gardener and the hop-grower would find it worth their while
to keep up standing armies of Lady-bird red-coats against the
Aphis legions which ravage their plantations and parterres.
Lace-winged Flies and Syrphus Grubs are worthy of all en-
couragement for -the same important service, and, as remarked
by Southey, the more Spiders in the stable the less would
horses suffer from the Flies.

1 (Cue %ocugt after it $ ftinb.'

k.

ON APHIDES.

On the rose-buvls are numerous Aphides, A. Rosa, of the natural size; in
the foreground are individuals of the same, winged and wingless, magnified.
In the midst of some small Aphides on a leaf is the leech-like grub of a Scceva
Pyrastri) thinning their numbers, and to the right is a winged Fly, the mature
condition of the same. Another species of the genus, Scceva balteata, is seen
above in different positions on the wing. To the left on a branch of elder, are
individuals of the Elder Aphis, A. Sambucaria, beneath which is a magnified
representation of the same attended by a Brown Ant, Formica brunneu, pro-
curing a supply of honey-dew.

UT what sort of insects are Aphides ? demands
perhaps a reader who is no entomologist. In
plain English, they are Plant-lice. But what
are Plant-lice ? is the question put by another
who is no observer of nature. Let us inquire
:n reply, what is a Wasp, a Spider, a Butterfly ? Did you ever

BLIGHT INSECTS. 73

happen to notice one of those remarkable creatures ? Well then,
we can tell you that for every single Butterfly, you have seen
a thousand Aphides, and for every score of Wasps, a million of
Plant-lice. Not only have you seen, but scarcely a summer's
day has passed without your having destroyed them by dozens.
Your foot annihilates them on the grass. They die by your
hand on almost every flower-sprig you gather ; and with every
vase of sweets which you place upon your table, you consign
them, without a thought, to the bitter death of famine: so
important and fatal is the influence which you, and everybody,
are continually exercising over the destinies of Aphis existence,
little as you would seem to know about it ; although, perhaps,
you may be better acquainted with it by sight than you are by
name. However blind from indifference to the minutiae of
nature, have you not often, when about to pluck a rose-bud or
a piece of honeysuckle, almost started to find the one a green
mass of moving life, the other with leaves green no longer,
but turned black to the eye, and clammy to the touch ? You
perceive, in short, that what most people call a " blight," but
what naturalists only look on as a swarm of Aphides, has been
busy with your flowers before you, and turn away disgusted,
to seek for less contaminated sweets.

Now suppose we look at the leaf-buds of a rose-bush, which,
early as it is, we shall find already occupied by Aphis tenantry,
such as have recently emerged from minute black eggs, de-
posited last autumn on the branches. These are all green, of
small size, and without wings, but later (towards the end of
May) a single flower-bud is likely to present us with two or
three kinds of these infesting sap-suckers, differing in size,
form, and colour.

Now for our blight-disfigured rose-bud, which, instead of
encasing green and bursting red, displays nothing but a
moving multitude — a conglomeration of Plant-lice, which,
taken en masse, is certainly no pleasing object. For all this,
the little winged animal which, as being more conspicuous

74 RAVAGES OF APHIDES.

than the bulk of its fellows, we shall first single from among
them, is no inelegant specimen of nature's Lilliputian work-
manship. It has a plump shining body of deep bright green,
spotted at the sides with black ; long slender legs, inclining
to reddish, and, like a bamboo reed, marked at every joint
with black or darkest brown. The shoulders, head, and long
jointed antennae are also chiefly black, as well as two diverging
spikelets proceeding from the back ; while a pair of ample
wings, much longer than the body, rise erectly over it.

This pretty insect, and those which resemble it, look like the
aristocracy of the wingless multitude by which they are sur-
rounded; and though we cannot pronounce their pinions to
be borne as badges of rank, we believe that no reason has, as
yet, been assigned with certainty for the partial distribution
among Aphis tribes of the organs of flight, which do not with
them, as with various other insects, serve as a distinction either
of age or sex.

If we examine, now, the wingless multitude — the canaille
of our rose-bud — we shall find that the individuals which
compose it have shorter legs and flatter bodies than their
winged superiors, and that they differ exceedingly in size from
one another. For the most part their colour is a light green,
though some are of a pale red ; but however else they differ,
all, both winged and wingless, are furnished with one remark-
able appendage common to the whole Aphis tribe, to whatever
plant peculiar, from the lordly oak to the lowly briar. This
is the haustellum, trunk, or sucking-pipe, appended beak-like
to the head, and which, consisting of a tube both pointed and
perforated, serves the double purpose of piercing the leaf and
sucking its juices.

The pipes of these our little ravagers of the rose are but as
beaklets compared with those of their brethren of the oak;1
yet they form, we can tell you, no despicable instruments of

1 Oak Aphides, {A. qmrcus).

APHIDES, FOOD OF OTHER INSECTS. 75

destruction, employed as they are by thousands in simultaneous
and incessant labour. And this considered, who can wonder at
the marvellous and unsightly changes, the spoil and havoc,
which these peaceful armies carry in their wake.

For the most part, these Insect marauders, living to eat and
to be eaten, seem to have no other business, no thought or
care, except on the matter of supplies, and take no trouble to
conceal their ranks from the observation of their numerous
enemies, or even to shelter themselves from the stormy wind
and rain, which sweep them off by millions.

Most of us have heard of honey-dew, and know, probably,
that it is a sweet clammy substance, found on the leaves of
various trees and plants, especially on the oak, the vine, the
hop, and the honeysuckle. As to the real nature of this sweet
poison to the plant, opinions differ ; and some, perhaps, even of
the learned moderns know as much about it as did the learned
ancient, Pliny, who doubted whether to call it " sweat of the
heavens,'7 " saliva of the stars," or " a liquid produced by
purgation of the air." Careful observation seems, however,
to have pretty clearly ascertained that this honey-dew, (like the
honey of Bees, of vegetable origin,) is extracted with the sap,
secreted, and then thrown out by the Aphides in a state of the
greatest purity. Besides the profusion of sweets which they
scatter around them, like sugar-plums at a carnival, they always
keep a good supply within the green jars of their bodies. By
the lavish distribution of these saccharine riches, our little
Aphides make for themselves, it is true, a few interested
friends, while, on the other hand, they owe to their possession
a host of devouring enemies.

Reaumur designates the race of Aphides as " the very corn "
sown for the use of their more powerful insect brethren ; but
as animate creatures, as well as gregarious green-leaf grazers,
they have been considered with more propriety, as the oves and
boves, the flocks and herds, of those which seem permitted to
hold them in possession. Amongst this devouring crew is the

76 APHIDES REARED BY ANTS.

beautiful gold-eyed, lace-winged Fly, which, while yet in its
crawling minority, roams through its appropriated leafy fold,
making tremendous use of its crooked and perforated tusks,
first to slaughter, then to suck in the sweet juices of its victims
at the rate of two a minute. Of less ferocious aspect, but not
a whit less insatiate than the above, is the green or parti-
coloured Grub of a Bee-like Fly, called a Syrphus, of which
many varieties are common in gardens, darting from flower to
flower, or hovering hawk-like over them. .Applied closely to
a leaf or stalk by their hinder extremities, which are broad and
flattish, the Grubs of these Syrphi may, in June, be noticed by
dozens, on the stretch for the Aphis prey by which they are
usually surrounded. In this attitude they much resemble
Leeches, and like Leeches are in greedy search of blood, — the
honied blood of their victims.

But enough of Aphis enemies; and now for the friends,
which, as well as foes, they owe to the possession of their
honied treasures. We have hitherto seen our flocks of the leaf
appropriated as sheep for the slaughter; but those to whom
this fact, however new, will appear nothing strange, may smile
incredulous, on being told that as " milch kine " they are
sometimes kept, tended, and even reared by insect proprietors,
for the sake of the sweet milk — the honey-dew — which
they afford. In our history of " Fair-weather Friends,"
we have already adverted to this patriarchal practice, and
have, therefore, only to remind our readers that it is exercised
among various tribes of economic Ants, though the Yellow
Ant1 has been termed the greatest cow-keeper of them
all. It may require some time and trouble to become
witnesses ourselves of this marvellous instance of Formic
economy, already proved beyond a doubt by the observations
of others; but everybody has an opportunity of noticing
that Ants and Aphides are held together by some bond of

1 Formica flava.

APPLE-BLIGHT. 77

union. They are continually seen in company, and a little
further scrutiny presently discovers that the Ants are the
followers of the Aphides, and entirely for what they can get
out of them. Last August, the stalks of an elder shrub in
our garden were absolutely blackened at the joints by Elder
Aphides, and among these were continually to be seen a multi-
tude of brown Ants, demanding and receiving their supplies of
honey-dew as emitted by the former.

Besides the general analogy which exists between flocks of
Aphides and flocks of sheep, in their gentle nature, their gre-
garious habits, and in their being appropriated so extensively
for food, there may be noticed, in several instances, a curious
kind of external rapport between "them and the woolly-coated
quadrupeds.

There are some species of Aphides which are actually clothed
with a sort of wool or down. One of them, a four-winged
Gall insect,1 is found in June or July on the poplar, or may
be often noticed at that season, flying or floating about in the
air, like a small white tuft of down. Another hoary-coated
Aphis is unfortunately too well known to apple-growers under
the name of " White Blight." The branches of those trees
selected for their pasture by our insect sheep are soon invested
by their numerous fleeces with a hoary aspect, appearing in
spring and increasing through the summer. These fleeces are
found upon examination to consist of a woolly or cottony sub-
stance, exuded from the insects' bodies, and under its cover a
multitude of these wingless Aphides are incessantly at work
with their destructive pipes, sucking up the sweet vital juices of
the tree : the old and the young being thus employed together,
parents with their offspring, to whom this soft down serves the
purpose of a cradle.

There is a peculiarity which distinguishes the Aphis from
perhaps every other creature in the animal world, — a physical

1 Eriosoma populi.

78 GENERATION OF APHIDES.

enigma about which the divers into Nature's secrets long puzzled
their heads in vain, until at last a clever, patient Frenchman1
hit upon what is considered its solution.

Now, when you see in spring or early summer a group of
Aphides, a group of leaves covered with them, or even a group
of trees which they have made their own, it is certain (at least
we can answer for the fact on good authority), that in all the
multitude on which you cast your eye, you will be looking on
none but Aphides (whether winged or wingless) of the feminine
gender. " Where then are the lords of these numerous ladies?"
is a question you very naturally ask. Why, they are not in
existence and never have been. The ladies may have had
fathers, they have children (to be seen like chickens busy with
their bills around them), but with perfect truth, and without a
shadow of imputation on their spotless characters, they neither
have, nor ever have had husbands.

Now suppose all the elderly matrons presiding over this
assembly to have gone the way of all flesh of Aphides, and that
you are looking on a similar company composed of their imme-
diate descendants. Still presenting the same remarkable defi-
ciency (if deficiency it be) of masculine members, this assem-
blage will consist entirely of the daughters and granddaughters
of the defunct ; and as not one of these, though each in her turn is
pretty sure to become a mother, can ever boast a son, so it goes
on, even to the tenth generation.

Suppose, lastly, that in September or October you fall in
with another company of Aphides regaling on an autumn rose-
branch. If so, prithee, pluck it, and let us scrutinize together
the assembly by which it is occupied ; for being probably the
tenth or last generation, it is likely to contain, at length, some
of the lords of this curious creation. Aye, now we have them !
here, amongst the green " petticoats " are some individuals
distinguished by surtouts, some of bright yellow, some of

1 M. Trembley.

MALE APHIDES. 79

orange, some of sober brown, — colours worn in accordance, it
is said, with their youth, middle, or advanced age. All these
" Mercuries " wear wings ; but even their pinions assume with
equal propriety a corresponding hue, deepening from white
to transparent black according to the period of their wearer's
standing. Might not our evergreen beaux (for evergreen
belles are privileged even by example of feminine Aphides)
take a hint from these sensibly clad seniors of the sap-sucking
race ? Perhaps, however, it is scarcely fair to quote as patterns
in anything such out-of-the-way creatures as those we are
describing — strangest of animals ! but especially in the paternal
character. The Insect race is celebrated for having numerous
progenies, but these, our patriarchal pucerons, are far superior
to all the rest. They are no fathers of ten in family, nor of
twenty, nor of twenty times twenty, but (marvel of multipli-
cation !) each of these sires can boast of being the actual parent
of ten generations, all, save the last, made up of daughters !
You who doubt whether this is true, or may desire to know
how it has been proved, we refer to the scientific pages of
Bonnet, Trembley, Richardson, Rennie, and a host of other
unimpeachable authorities.

C&e Xarba toolf in t&e SCpfjig flocfi.

In the centre is the large green Caterpillar of a Moth, feeding on rose petals }
to the left the Red-tailed or Lapidary Humble Bee, Bomlms lapidarius,
revelling in pollen, and to the right is the small Cabbage Butterfly, Pontia
Rapes ; in the suspended case of spirally-rolled leaves is a smaller Caterpillar,
and above are two long-horned Japan Moths, Adda De Geere.Ha, communi-
cating by antennal language.

INSECT SENSES.

HIS lovely spring-time has brought round a
grand festival — a feast of the Senses, which
seated, as sisters, at Nature's bounteous board,
are now being specially regaled, each with a
" dainty dish " peculiarly suited to her liking.
That insects are endowed with senses like our own is now
almost universally acknowledged. A child can point to the
eyes of a Fly or Bee as readily as to those of an ox ; and though

EYES OF INSECTS. 81

the child judges only by analogy of position and of form,
dissection and experiment have alike induced the natural
philosopher to assign the name and office of eyes to those large,
brown, reticulated bodies, which in the said Fly or Drone-bee
are seen occupying the greater portion of the head. Besides
these, the same insects, and most others, are provided with
three smaller eyes, termed ocelli, which resemble shining
points, and which are usually placed in the form of a triangle,
above and between the larger pair.

We find, therefore, that, both as respects the size and number
of their visual organs, Insects have greatly the advantage over
all other animals at present known, amongst which there is
not one which can boast of five, much less of eight eyes, or of
twenty, the complement bestowed upon the Spider and the
Centipede.

We are by no means, however, to set it down for granted,
on this account, that every insect is a little eagle or Argus in
power and quickness of vision ; for their many eyes would
sometimes seem to serve them like the hare's " many friends/'
or like the many servants by whom we are often worse waited
on than by a few. All that we can pronounce on with any
certainty is this — that the gift of sight, as well as of every
other sense conferred on insects, is adequate to the exigences
of their nature : for the rest, the closest observers are much at
variance.

One of the most curious peculiarities observable in insect
eyes, in those of them, at least, which are large and conspi-
cuous, is their compound construction. Their cornea (or
outer coat) instead of being smooth, is numerously divided
into what are called facets, each of itself a little perfect eye.
Of these, a Butterfly has been assigned, in each compound
organ, 17,335— a Dragon Fly, 12,544— ,a House Fly, 7000.

Possessing such a multitude of eyes or eyelets under one, it
might seem that of every single object Insects must be pre-
sented with a multitude of images. This, however, we have

82 EYES OF INSECTS.

no reason to suppose, inasmuch as we, with our pair of single
eyes, are not in the habit of seeing double, and as (according
to Muller) " each individual facet of an insect's compound eye
can survey but a small space in the field of vision, each only
contributes to the perception of all things within it. Each
separate one does not at the same time see all such objects,
but only conveys its impression to the nervous filament with
which it is supplied, and the latter being united in the great
optic nerve, a common and distinct image is ultimately
produced."

The compound eye of an insect would not seem, therefore,
to multiply objects to its natural possessor, but it has never-
theless been converted by the ingenuity of man into a curious
optical instrument of multiplying power. Through the eye
of a Flea (so placed as to command objects with the assist-
ance of a microscope) a single soldier has appeared as at once
diminished and multiplied into a Lilliputian army, while the
flame of a single candle has been made, in like manner, to
represent a grand miniature illumination.

The eyes of Butterflies present on examination the ap-
pearance of a multiplying glass of this description, the facets
bearing a resemblance to a cut diamond. The ocelli or simple
eyes, appearing as little points of crystal, seated mostly above
the compound pair, and usually three in number, are supposed
to be intended, generally as well as in Bees, for the purposes
of near vision — such as examination of leaves, flowers, &c,
serving for food, or presenting it in the smaller "fry" by
which they are frequented.

The position of Insect eyes is in several cases worthy of
especial notice : affording in their variations from the common
type, so many remarkable instances of that kind creative care
which adapts each organ with exquisite nicety to its intended
use.

In that little shining Beetle, called the Whirlwig, which
may be seen every summer's day whirling about the surface of

EYES OF INSECTS. 83

smooth waters, each of the eyes is, as it were, divided into
an upper and a lower half: the one for looking up into the
air, the other for looking down into the water. Those of the
Harvest Spider are seated at the top- of the head, of all posi-
tions the most convenient for a creature living chiefly among
grass or stubble. In a common Spider, the eyes, which are
all of the simple kind, are no less excellently calculated by their
varied positions, front, top, and side-ways, for commanding
that range of sight so useful, especially in the hunting tribes,
for perception and seizure of their prey.

Of eyelids, Insects, we believe, are wholly destitute, but they
are often amply provided with eye-lashes, or with what stands
them in the stead of those protective appendages. Their pur-
pose in defending the concave surface of the eye from dust and
various injuries is supplied by an assemblage of hairs, with
which the cornea of Bees and many other Insects is over-
spread : the hairs which spring from its reticulate divisions
having been likened, when viewed microscopically, to a forest
of fir-trees.

Linnaeus and other naturalists have doubted whether Insects
hear, although, from common observation, as well as from
general evidence, their hearing would seem as little a matter of
question as their sight. Their aural organs would appear less
decidedly ascertained. It is, however, usual to suppose that
these are none other than the antenna, — those slender flexible
appendages, capable of being directed, like the long movable
ears of an ass or a hare, to all quarters, for the conveyance of
sound.

Observations, such as may be multiplied daily by ourselves,
have also tended to confirm the above inference founded on
analogy. Kirby adduces, among other examples, the common
use made by those prying parasites, the Ichneumon Flies, of
their long, flexible, ever-moving antennae, which they are
accustomed to plunge into the deep nest-holes of the solitary
Bees, whose grubs are converted into living receptacles for

84 INSECT HEARING.

their eggs. Some indeed have conjectured that it may be
merely with intent to explore the nest, and feel for her infant
victim, that the insidious Ichneumon thus inserts her antennae;
but since the holes are always so deep as to prevent the possibility
of her thus reaching the grubs, as they live at the bottom, it
seems much more probable, in the opinion of the writer in
question, that she employs them as ears to detect any sound
of eating or moving from the occupant of the nest.

Insects are pre-eminently gifted with the sense of smell. No
flock of vultures can be directed more unerringly to their re-
volting prey by scenting its odours from afar, than are certain
Insects, such as Dung-flies and Carrion Beetles, whose corres-
ponding office is to assist in ridding the earth of offensive
objects. That the sense of smell alone directs the Blow-fly in
the deposition of her eggs has been fully proved by the fact of
her having, through misguided instinct, been found to lay them
on silk wherewith tainted meat has been covered, or upon the
ill-odoured Stapelias, a tribe of hot-house plants which in scent
greatly resemble it.

The Butterfly and Bee, with other winged collectors whose
more agreeable business lies among sweet odours, are equally
quick scented in their detection at distances almost incredible.
From a prodigious height, not less, it has been estimated,
than sixteen or twenty feet, the former lights down upon its
favourite flower ; while the latter wings its way for miles in the
exact direction of flowery fields and thymy downs, from which
scented breezes bring them invitation. Even when at hand,
it is the odour of flowers rather than their appearance by which
both Bees and Butterflies would seem to be enticed ; for it was
found by M. Huber, that four Bees and a Butterfly were
speedily assembled round some honey which he had placed, for
experiment, in a window, concealed by shutters only sufficiently
open to admit their passage. Availing themselves of this
liking for sweets and perception of their distant and invisible
presence, moth collectors are in the habit of anointing the

SMELL IN INSECTS. 85

trunks of trees with honey or thick syrup, by which means
they attract and capture not a few varieties.

Though thus generally admitted to be what the Italians
would call most excellent Nasuti, Insects still puzzle us as to
what exact part of their enigmatical frames may be con-
sidered an olfactory organ. Tl.is is a point on which natu-
ralists of the highest credit have been so much at issue, that,
when we read the opinions of each, and the experimental
evidence adduced by each in support of his own, we seem as if
we could scarcely arrive, between them, at any nearer conclusion
than that Insects must be all nose.

By Kirby and Spence they are invested indeed with the nasal
appendage corresponding in position, if not always in shape,
with the conspicuous proboscis of a man, a monkey, and the
other Mammalia. Huber also opined that their organ of smell
is seated in the head and near the mouth, at all events in the
case of the Bee ; and in proof of his position, he tells us, that,
having dipped a fine pencil in oil of turpentine, he approached
it carefully to every part of a Bee's head, but without causing
the least apparent sensation until approximated to that in
question, when the Insect, starting suddenly from the honey
on which it was regaling, beat its wings with violence, and
would have flown off but for a removal of the offence. On
repetition of the experiment the same effect ensued : the angry
Bee fanning itself with its wings, as if to blow away the un-
welcome odour.

The feet of our insect artificers, curiously jointed and often
palmed, seem to partake, indeed, of the power, and to perform
in some measure the office of our hands ; but in aid of the
feet, the antenna? and the palpi (four-jointed bodies near the
mouth), popularly termed feelers, are also for ever at work to
try, touch, and examine.

We come now, in the last case, to the important faculty
of taste, with* which Insects of all classes, and in every
region of the earth, whether of propensities herbivorous

86 TASTE IN INSECTS.

or carnivorous, are found to be no less exquisitely gifted.
Caterpillars are, according to their kind, either general or par-
ticular feeders; but even the former confine themselves to
particular classes of plants, and among the latter are some
so exceedingly nice, that (cormorants as they are) they would
sooner die of hunger than eat of leaves other than those which
furnish their accustomed food. The caterpillars of those
beautiful little meadow Butterflies, the " Blues " and the
" Coppers," which feed, in their infancy, on the grasses over
which they subsequently sport, are wont, we are told,1 to
appropriate, each for its own peculiar fare, one of the various
species which are often intermingled in its native meadow,—
that, most likely, on which, with instinctive foresight and dis-
cernment, the parent had deposited her egg.

The accuracy of taste conferred upon the Bee has sometimes
been called in question, on the ground that this indefatigable
gatherer is by no means particular as to the source from whence
she collects her honied stores, giving, in that process, more
heed, as it would seem, to quantity than quality of material.
Yet herein, we may be sure, Mistress Bee knows what she is
about, just as well as her insect fellows. She is most likely
quite as discriminate as they, in culling for her own appetite
and tha£ of her infant charges ; and both, it is probable, would
come but poorly off were her collections confined to those
particular flowers or districts, which, in our opinion, supply
honey of the finest flavour, though not, of necessity, that most
grateful to the palate of a Bee.

Again, both Bees and Butterflies are well known to be any-
thing but what we call nice in the choice of water — the dirty
puddle, or even dunghill pool, being, to all appearances, as
acceptable to their palates as the sparkling rivulet or pearly
dew-drop ; but then, it is said, that Bees only drink from these
fountains of impurity in early spring, and, as it is supposed,

1 Rerinie, Insect Miscellanies.

TASTE IN INSECTS.

87

for the sake of the salts which they contain, and which they
imbibe, it is further concluded, for a like purpose to that
wherewith we, lovers in general of sweets, are accustomed to
take spring-doses of saline and other unpalatable flavours.

With regard to the particular organ whereby the taste of
Insects is chiefly exercised, both analogy and observation point
to the mouth and tongue. In Dragon-flies, Grasshoppers,
and Crickets, this little member is rounded, and somewhat
resembling that of quadrupeds ; in others, its shape is curiously
varied; in the Wasp, forked like a serpent's; in Saw-flies,
triply divided ; in Bees, long and tubular ; in Bugs, awl-shaped
and sharp ; but in all, as has been proved by recent discovery,
the organs of taste and digestion are moistened and kept in
order by a due supply of saliva from pipes opening sometimes
into the mouth, sometimes into the gullet, and sometimes into
the stomach, as may be most suitable for the purposes of
digestion, and according to the greater or less solidity of food.

1 C&e paggiong ace e^ref $e* ftp gounbf .'

In the centre is the common Humble Bee, Bombus terrestris, collecting pol-
len from the Palm-willow ; to the right is a large female Wasp, Vespa vul-
garis, a winter survivor and foundress of a new colony, rasping wood as
material for her nest, and to the left is another individual of the same, in
flight, descending to the bank in which she has formed her burrow.

A DEFENCE OF WASPS.

HE month of Mars has been unusually pacific,
and " Our Lady's Day " has brought us, in
consequence, a thicker sprinkling than usual
of early spring flowers. See the glories of
the palm-willow, already rich in the gold and
silver of her flowery catkins. This willow's wealth would
seem, however, like other riches, to have had its attractions
for the spoiler, for here is a host of Insect plunderers finally
awakened from their winter torpor, and brought from far by

A WASP IN MARCH. 89

the honied perfume which fills the air. Yet, truly, these are
no plunderers ; they are the labourers of the hive. We ask
your pardon, little types and patterns of industry, and are right
glad to see you on the wing. Load your thigh-panniers as
you please with golden treasure, you are no pilferers, for you
take without despoiling, and you rob for us.

But stay, what have we here ? an idler among labourers ! a
highwayman among travellers ! a Wasp among Bees ! A
Wasp in March ! Yes, truly, and a Wasp of Wasps ; a very
Robin Hood of plunderers, in comparison with whom the last
of his pilfering fraternity, seen in autumn on the last peach,
was but a Little John indeed. Let us watch his proceedings.
Is he going, a la coutume, to attack the Bees, or, contrary
to custom, the flowers only ? Neither ; for scornfully passing
over both, he has alighted on this old post beside the willow,
and there he stays ; by turns walking, and standing, and
shaking his wings. Now, he seems to be engaged about
something, but what nobody can tell, unless he is biting and
gnawing the wood for very idleness; or perhaps (waspish
fellow as he is), for very ill-humour at seeing the Bees so
happy and so busy around him.

There ! he has left the post, and flown down to the bank-
side ; and now, all at once, he has disappeared within a hole,
the hylernaculum, we fancy, of some field-mouse, into which
he has entered without even the common civility of asking
permission. What business is he after? some mischief or
another, that's certain, for whenever yet was Wasp or vagrant
intent on good ? always poking his nose, now into this cranny,
now into that, peering here and prying there. Well ! there's not
an atom of his great golden-winged body to be discerned
within the tunnel; so there's certainly no seeing what he is
about, and he will not tell us if we wait for his return ; besides,
a cloud has passed over the sun ; the Bees have all gone off,
some with panniers only half-loaded, as if expecting an April

90 A WIDOWED HEROINE.

shower before its time; and perhaps we shall be prudent to
take their warning and go home too.

Here we are, again seated by our own fire, such as is
always agreeable on an overcast afternoon in early spring;
and we are, consequently, in pleasant mood, disposed to be
in good humour with, and do justice to, all; with propor-
tionate desire to atone for word or deed of unfairness com-
mitted towards the meanest creature. Now some such
debt of compensation do we owe to that gigantic Wasp, met
with in our morning walk, and left, just now, exploring the
mouse-hole tunnel. We have been employing, it is true, the
last half-hour in recording, with the utmost accuracy, those of
its proceedings which met the eye ; but then we have hinted
at its purposes, only in accordance with the common and
prejudiced notion that Wasps are always after mischief, while
we were all the while perfectly aware that our Wasp was
bent upon an enterprise, which, however fraught to us with
incipient evil, was in itself highly laudable, and worthy, not
of an idler or a freebooter, but of a perfect hero, or, more
properly, heroine : this great individual being, in fact, of the
female sex.

Now suppose a certain princess, perhaps but recently a bride,
to have seen her husband and her servants fall successively
around her, the victims of some sweeping pestilence, followed
by an earthquake. From a violent paroxysm, she herself sinks
into a stupor of grief, from which she awakes to find herself
alone. Though it would be easier to die, she must live and
bestir herself, not for her own sake, but to uphold the honour
of her princely house, which can only, indeed, be preserved
from utter extinction by the preservation of the posthumous
heir, which she is likely to bring, soon, into his desolate in-
heritance. In earnest, therefore, does she arouse her energies,
and so much to the purpose are they employed, that she
succeeds, at length, by dint of individual exertion, in founding
a new city and a new empire, which, peopled by her descend-

WASP COLONIZATION. 91

ants, becomes fully equal to those of whose ruins she was the
survivor. Of a widowed princess, playing such a part, it
would be said that she was a pattern heroine: and we must
now advance the claims of a widowed Wasp to a title some-
what similar, for the performance of a like extraordinary
achievement.

It is commonly known, we believe, that the race of Wasps,
in general,

" Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October."

Such, in fact, is the case with the numerous herd of working,
or, as we generally call them, thieving Wasps, — with the males
(a quiet stay-at-home class with which we have little personal
acquaintance), and with a portion of the females ; but of the
latter, which are several times the size of the others, a few
winter survivors are always left in every nest. These (of
which our bulky visitant to the mouse-hole was one), after a
season of torpidity, awake in early spring ; when each taking
her own separate beat, chooses a favourable site for a new nest.
Of this she is the architect, and at this she works, wholly
unassisted, until the eggs, which she takes care to deposit in
its first cells, furnish her with assistants in the building and
peopling of her colony.

From the female and the male come we now (last not least)
to what has been called the Wasp neuter, that correspondent
with the worker Bee and worker Ant, wherein the best
qualities of both sexes, the tenderness and patience of the one,
and the bravery and activity of the other, seem to meet on
neutral ground ; be it noted, however, that this neutral ground,
so rich in every quality but that of productiveness, is, in fact,
female.

Bees as well as Wasps are sometimes robbers, and of a much
worse description, because they rob their brethren. It is not
unfrequent, we are told, for the inhabitants of a distressed hive
to turn marauders, under the name of Corsair-bees. These

92 COURAGE OF WASPS.

not only attack, in a body, more prosperous communities, but,
like highway robbers, will lie in wait, by parties of three and
four, for any unfortunate single Bee returning alone and laden
to its hive. " One seizes it by a leg, another by a wing, or
perhaps there are two on each side confining or pulling its
limbs, while they maul and pummel its chest, and bite its
head. This maltreatment obliges it to disgorge its honey,
which the robbers eagerly lap till they are satisfied, and then
let their prisoner go." 1

The Wasps are above such mean and cowardly proceedings :
we never heard, at least, of their turning, under any extremity,
robbers of their kind; and therefore, socially considered,
they are no robbers at all. Then, for courage, a Wasp is
scarcely to be equalled. A single one will venture, it is said,
to face a whole hive of Bees after a booty of honey, and is, in
fair combat, a match for any three inhabitants of the apiary.
The same character of boldness accompanies, and, in our
opinion, helps to redeem the depredations of the Wasp as
exercised upon ourselves.

Both Reaumur and the younger Huber studied the domestic
economy of the common Wasp, as they did that of Bees, by
means of glass hives. In this they were greatly assisted by the
extreme affection of Wasps for their young; for though the
nest be carried off, cut in various directions, and exposed to
the light, they never abandon it, or relax in their attention to
their progeny. No less admirable than the affection thus
testified is their ingenuity displayed, under the same circum-
stances of distress, in repairing the breaches of their habitation,
removing its ruins, and fixing it to the glass by columns of
support. Operations such as these, suggested by, and adapted
to, unlocked for exigencies, savour certainly of something
beyond the limited powers of instinct ; and an anecdote related
of the Wasp, by Dr. Darwin, exemplifies yet more strongly

1 Kirby and Spence.

ANECDOTE OF A WASP. 93

its capacity of adapting means to ends.1 The doctor saw, on
his gravel walk, a Wasp with a Fly nearly as big as itself.
Kneeling down, he distinctly observed it cut off the head
and abdomen of its prey, and then, taking up the trunk to
which the wings remained attached, fly away ; but a breeze of
wind acting upon the wings of the Fly, turned round the Wasp
with its burthen, and impeded its progress. Upon this, it
again alighted, sawed off first one wing, and then the other,
and having thus removed the cause of its embarrassment flew
off with its booty. In the above instance the Wasp seemed to
have omitted a part of its usual operation on the bodies of
captured Flies, all the wings of which we have several times
seen them thus dexterously cut off.

Let us now return to the hole in the bank — and the giantess
of her kind who disappeared within it. At her business there
we may now make a tolerable guess, namely, that, as survivor
of an old house, and sole foundress of a new one, she was
employed in laying its foundations, having availed herself, as is
not uncommonly the case, of the previous labours of a mouse,
to save her own, in the preparatory business of excavation.

This subterranean area being found or formed, her next
operation is to lay within it the foundations or walls of her
intended city. For this purpose, earth is a material which will
not serve her turn, and the nature of that which she employs
was long a puzzle. The substance of which the walls and cells
of a vespiary are constructed is now, however, ascertained to be
none other than paper formed of wood-raspings, mixed with a
sort of size, worked to a paste, and subsequently spread into
sheets by the Insect fabricator.

We have continually noticed, and any one in summer-time
may do the same, a Wasp busily at work with its jaws upon
an old paling or window frame. Now, many may suppose that
there is little in this worthy of observation ; but simply from
notice of this trifling and common circumstance did Reaumur
1 Quoted by Kirby and Spence.

94 STRUCTURE OF WASPS9 NESTS.

discover the Wasp to be a paper-maker, and was enabled to
trace the subsequent processes of her manufacture.

The foundress, whom we saw this morning, had been occu-
pied, while settled on the post, in the first or wood-rasping
process of her fabrication; and on entering the hole, she no
doubt carried with her a bundle of fibres to be kneaded into
paper-paste. Then, supposing that the nest was in an early
stage of progress, she would proceed to spread a covering of
this substance over the first few cells of her incipient home,
strengthening the same with repeated layers. Her next pro-
ceedings have been thus described : * — " She now begins to
build the first terrace of her city, which she suspends horizon-
tally, and not, like the combs of a Beehive, in a perpendicular
position. The suspension of which we speak is light and
elegant compared with the more heavy union of the Hive-bee's
combs. It is, in fact, a hanging floor or terrace, immovably
secured by rods of similar material with the roof, but rather
stronger. The terrace itself is circular, and composed of an
immense number of cells made of the paper already described,
and almost of the same size and form as those of a honey-comb,
each being a perfect hexagon." These cells, however, are
never used as Honey-pots by Wasps as they are by Bees, for
Wasps make no honey, and the cells are wholly appropriated to
rearing the young. When the foundress Wasp has completed
a certain number of cells, and deposited eggs in them, she soon
intermits her building operations in order to procure food for
the young grubs, which now require all her care. In a few
weeks these become perfect Wasps, and lend their assistance in
the extension of the edifice, enlarging the original coping of
the foundress by side walls, and forming another platform of
cells, suspended to the first by columns, as that had been sus-
pended to the ceiling. By the end of summer, this city of
hanging terraces is completed, and the descendants of the ori-
ginal foundress, according to the calculation of Reaumur, may
amount to 30,000 in one year.

1 Insect Architecture, p. 76.

THEIR DEPOPULATION. ^

Scarcely has the nest arrived at completion, through the
labours of the youngest generation of its inhabitants, when the
early frosts of autumn slightly thin their numbers; their active
limbs and wings begin to stiffen ; their vital juices to grow
sluggish ; their bold spirits to grow tame ; their supplies, and
their energies to seek them, fail both together. When Novem-
ber comes, the Wasp population is cut off as by a pestilence ;
of those abroad, some fall far from their habitation, others crawl
back to die ; while those at home, lately so busy in the works
of building, repairing, or keeping in order, are now sluggishly
inactive. In a little while the city of terraces becomes a city of
the dead ; its sole surviving dwellers, and they, happily buried
in torpor, are some two or three of the widowed females (such
as the one seen at work this morning), on whom depends the
perpetuation of the race. No sooner does the early spring awake
them, than (like her) they depart, each on her way, to found
another city.

Our defence is concluded. Can a Wasp-hater remain
among its readers .'

Two workers and a Drone of the domestic Bee, Apis mellrfica* gathering
honey from the nectar-yielding Broom and Wild Thyme, with the Queen Bee
above and in the distance, as conductor of a swarm.

BEES AS A BODY POLITIC.

E must now treat of Bees as a body politic.
Insect societies, such as those of Bees,
Wasps, Ants, and White Ants or Termites,
are things sui generis, standing by them-
selves ; they present natural pictures to which,
throughout the animal kingdom, no pendants are to be found :
and it is this which makes them doubly interesting.

A well-peopled hive consists of one queen, several hundred
males or drones, and many thousand workers, the latter of
which are all imperfect females, though bearing no resem-

INSECT SOCIETIES. 97

blance, either in size or habits, to the pampered individual who
nominally fills the throne, and actually fills the hive by supply-
ing its abundant population.

The royal female to whom this endowment of surpassing
productiveness forms the very charter of her authority, — the
very bond by which she holds the hearts of her devoted sub-
jects, derives from character but slender claims on their respect.
During the entire period of her life and reign, which is gen-
erally estimated at about two or three years, she performs not
a single labour for the good of the community, save that
of increasing its numbers; and her bulky body is seldom
roused from its wonted state of luxurious indolence, except
when her royal spirit is chafed by vindictive jealousy.

The queen of the hive, born, like the queens of earth, no
better than her meaner sisterhood, like them, issues from the
egg a helpless grub ; but the chamber of her birth, as compared
with theirs, is of right royal dimensions, vertical in position,
and of cylindric instead of octagonal form. Ample room is
thus afforded for the full expansion and development of all her
members, as she progresses towards maturity ; while, to hasten
and improve her growth, the food supplied her by her assi-
duous nurses and future subjects is of the most nutritious and
delicate description; not the simple Bee-bread composed of
common pollen, and considered good enough for common Bee-
infancy, but a rare and curious preparation nicely concocted
from flowery juices, and, as reserved expressly for royal
nutriment, called by Bee-farmers, " royal jelly." Thus spa-
ciously lodged and delicately fed, the favoured grub, when
arrived at full growth, spins within her cell a silken shroud ;
therein changes to a nymph or pupa ; and thence, in due time,
issues forth in all her dignity of majestic size, in all the re-
splendency of her golden-ringed body-suit, the more conspi-
cuous for the scantiness of her gauze drapery, — those filmy
wings in which alone her outward gifts, instead of surpassing,
are inferior to those of her subjects.

98 WORKING BEES.

The baby Bee, destined to become a Bee-labourer, finds
herself, on emerging from the egg, an inhabitant of one of
those common six-sided cells, which (as it would appear) is so
proportioned as in some measure to limit her growth, and thus
prevent her from attaining her full development. To this
outward restriction is superadded an inward check in the
quality of the food administered by her nurses. In lieu of the
royal jelly, that stimulating and nutritious extract prepared
only for the queen, her infancy is supported on the simple fare
of Bee-bread. Our worker comes forth, mature in all Apian
excellence, — modest in habits, a nun among Insects, and a very
" sister of charity " among her fellows.

Thus much for the queen and commonalty, the females of
the hive ; and now for the three or four hundred of the oppo-
site sex, who, as partakers of the royal favour, or as candidates
for the same, as well as for their worthless qualities, may fairly
be compared to the aristocracy of a state, where birth, not
worth, makes the man. We need not describe the Drone,
whether of a biped or of a Bee community, since the one is a
pattern of, and lends name to, the other. The chief difference
between them is this, that biped Drones are to be seen every
day of the year, while Bee-drones are to be only seen, because
they are only allowed to exist, during those days of summer
which intervene betwixt April and August. And truly, living,
as they do, to eat, a quarter's span of luxurious existence, at
the expense of those who only eat to live, is a tolerably fair
proportion. Such at least would seem to be the opinion of the
workers of the hive ; for the queen, having meanwhile chosen
a royal partner, or partners, from among them, the whole
three or four hundred fall by a general massacre, towards the
end of July or early in August.

Have those by whom Bee economy has been held up for
human imitation ever thought about the awful consequences
which would be involved in even a partial copy of the above
severely wholesome policy ?

DRONE BEES. 99

Let us suppose ourselves, one moonlight evening in May,
taking a garden stroll beside a range of Bee-hives. Instead of
the nightly stillness which is wont in Bee cities to succeed the
daily hum, there arises from one of these a loud uneasy
murmur, which instead of lessening, continues to increase with
the lateness of the hour. Our hive is not of glass, but if it
were, the restlessness thus audible without would become
apparent within, by the evidences of crowding, confusion, and
jostling, — by all the tokens, in short, usually attendant on
some grand event in expectation. From so violent a ferment
of vitality something must of necessity arise ; but through the
livelong night nothing comes of it, and the morning sun rises
on nothing but the same scene and sound of agitated turmoil.

From tokens such as these an ordinary keeper of Bees
would merely surmise that a swarm was coming, and an old-
fashioned village dame would be sure by this time to be getting
in readiness her frying-pan and iron ladle, to bring the parting
colony to their new abode.

Mid-day now approaches, and the body of emigrants rush
forth, headed, or, it may be, followed by their sovereign lady.
These, however, we mean not to accompany even to the adja-
cent bough on which they have settled, most likely for a tem-
porary rest, because we shall see better by keeping to the parent
hive, the effect of the loss of its queen with a large proportion
of its population. Row upon row of hexagonal houses hang
suspended in clusters from a common roof. Most of them are
occupied, some as store-houses for honey and Bee-bread, others
as nurseries for Bee-infancy, and, where not otherwise engaged,
as dormitories for Bee-labourers, who, with heads and shoul-
ders ensconced within their cells, are accustomed, at intervals,
thus to turn their backs on labour, and recruit for fresh
exertions. But few enough are the slumberers now taking
their repose; the grand event of the morning has raised a
general commotion by no means subsided with the absence of
its immediate cause, from which mighty effects are yet about
to spring.

100 BEES SWARMING.

In consequence of the departure of their reigning monarch
and queen mother, our amazonian citizens are, for the present,
queenless. What a predicament for a people whose very
spring of action is set in motion, as we have seen, by loyalty ;
but it is an exigence to meet which they are well provided.
Among the common six-sided cells which compose the mass of
building are perceived some half-dozen oval structures, of
more than thrice their size, which are occupied as abodes of
growing royalty; and within these waxen palaces have been
for some weeks nurtured, in different stages of progression
towards maturity, as many young princesses, for one of which
the vacant throne is destined. For which of them? is the
question which priority of birth and emergement from one of
the cells of state is now to settle; for, at present, all these
quiescent candidates for sovereignty are swathed in the silken
shrouds of their second or chrysalis stage of being, — that
wherein Bees are designated by the name of Nymphs. With
heads turned towards the royal apartments, the queenless sub-
jects anxiously await the moment which is to supply their
craving for a sovereign. They wait long, but at length (most
welcome spectacle !) a royal lady, perfect in the maturity of
her full proportions, issues from one of the royal chambers.
A loud and joyful hum proclaims her queen, and her subjects
are crowding round to pay their ready homage — when, lo !
from another of the state apartments, arrived, like herself, at
Bee's and queen's estate, and nearly at the self-same moment,
comes forth a second claimant to the regal honours. The
rivals catch a glimpse of each other, exchange a glance of
angry defiance, then, while the crowd falls back to permit
their meeting, rush like she-dragons on one another. Head
to head, chest to chest, they strive and grapple, and each has
only (in dragon sort) to bend her tail, and fix her venomed
dart, and both will fall victims to each other's stings. But,
no ! at this moment, as if seized simultaneously with panic fear,
they part and recede from the deadly and too equal strife.

THE RIVAL QUEENS. 101

The spectators have hitherto been looking on, inactive,
though not mute, having kept up a ceaseless hum; but now
that the royal combatants give way and separate, that hum
increases to a perfect uproar, and a few individuals, darting
from the crowd, dare to seize upon the retreating queens and
stay their flight, — to hang, even, on their "recreant limbs,"
and hold them back from further retreat, as well as from ad-
vance. But, see ! as if their failing spirits were chafed into
new fury by the indignity thus offered, they burst from their
subjects' hold, and rush back to the encounter. Again the
issue hangs suspended, but not for long ; for now, one of the
queenly combatants, more powerful or more skilful than her
rival, rises above her, seizes one of her scanty wings, and
inflicts on her undefended body a mortal sting. She with-
draws her barbed weapon, while her wounded competitor
falls down — drags her huge length along — then struggles and
expires.

The conqueror's victory is complete ; and now surely she will
rest proudly satisfied with her success in fair and equal combat.
But what does she next? What means she by approaching
rapidly to the nearest of the royal chambers, where still sleeps,
unconscious, one of the four remaining nymphs of royal
breeding? With vindictive fury she tears from its entrance
the silken tapestry by wrhich it is partially defended, and now
she thrusts into the aperture her poisoned dart, and inflicts on
the helpless occupant a fatal wound. Her thirst for rival
blood still rages unabated : another hapless nymph, and yet
another dies for its assuagement; and she ceases not from
the work of murder until her victims and her strength fail
together.

While the ferocious queen is thus employed, what is the
behaviour of her surrounding subjects? Do they submit
tamely to the extinction of the royal race? Yes, — and they
do more; for though they themselves lay not a sting on the
sacred persons of the young princesses, they aid the cruel

102 A BEE TRAGEDY.

queen in the completion of her butchery ; for no sooner does
she quit each scene of her successive assassinations, than drag-
ging from the chamber the body she has left, they hasten to
hide from view the evidence of her jealous fury.

It seems quite essential to the welfare of a hive to acknow-
ledge only one sovereign ; but as on this single sovereign, in
her capacity of general mother, not only the welfare but the
very existence of the state depends ; and as over and above,
no emigration can take place without a queen to accompany
the swarm, a surplus number of royal nymphs is no less re-
quisite to meet contingencies. It will sometimes, however,
happen that, notwithstanding such provision, a hive is unex-
pectedly bereft of its sovereign, when no successor is existing
to supply her place. How then do the people act? Why, for
lack of a queen ready-made, they make one.

For the space of several hours grief and consternation reign
in place of the defunct sovereign. Then do the murmuring,
but not despairing mourners bestir themselves to supply her
place. But how are they to do it? Can they mould from
their ready material — wax, a royal effigy, and then breathe life
into the image ? Not so ; but they can resort, for the supply
of their exigence, to an expedient almost as miraculous. Let
us watch their proceedings in the creation of a queen. Why,
this work appears only a labour of destruction ! Surely they
are bereft not only of their sovereign, but also of their senses ;
and, in a fit of frenzy, are making havoc in the streets of this
well-ordered city ! Several parties are here and there attacking
the six-sided houses, hastily pulling down their waxen walls,
regardless of the young which lie cradled within. Out of
perhaps four or five of these unhappy nurslings, all but one
are sacrificed by those who had heretofore been their careful
nurses ; but for this one, still in its infant or grub estate, a
changed and brilliant destiny is in store.

The first process of her manufacture is begun already by the
destruction going on around her. Her narrow lodging, by

BEE QUEEN-MAKING.

103

the sacrifice of those adjacent, is converted into a spacious
chamber allowing full scope for her bodily expansion; and
soon will numerous nurses be busy, cramming her with that
nutritious stimulating substance called " royal jelly." Then
in due season, in ten days or thereabouts, out will come an
artificial sovereign, in all respect's as good as ever issued from
a royal egg.

The above curious process of conversion, though supposed
to have been known to the ancients, was first published by
Schirach (a French naturalist) in his history of " La Reine des
Abeilles." Although the fact was ascertained by careful ex-
periment, its assertors were for a long time laughed at, and
even abused, in one case, by an opponent who, though he saw
nothing incredible in the conversion of plants into animals,
deemed it the height of absurdity that the nature of an animal
should admit of change.1

1 Needham, Insect Manufacture, p. 313

1 CJje 80<* Profef f or of tfie Ji&ef merit act.

On the left side of the vignette is the Lackey Moth, Clisiocampa neustrta,
on the right the Gold Tail Moth, Porthesia chrysorrhcea, beneath each of which
are their respective Caterpillars, and in the centre is an Oak leaf with a file of
infant Caterpillars of the latter species engaged in stripping it of its verdure.
Over this hang suspended numerous chrysalides of the black and yellow
Ermine Moth, Yponomeuta padella, and above all, in flight, is the small Green
Oak Moth, Tortrix viridana, with its Caterpillar engaged in its ravages as a
leaf-roller. From one of these scrolls protrudes the empty shell of its chry-
salis, and behind this are the remains of leaves which it has reduced to
skeletons.

MOTHS AS DESTRUCTIVES.

HE grand army of Moth-destructives is now
in all the activity of a spring campaign.
According to their local distribution, these
may be considered as attacking us under four
principal divisions. One of them is employed
on what we may call the out-works, our fields and forest-trees ; a

GOLD-TAIL MOTHS. 105

second, coming nearer, spoliates on our gardens ; a third, more
daring, invades our granaries; while a fourth, boldest of all,
attacks the citadel, and makes havoc in our houses.

To begin with the first division of our numerous army.
Among the most formidable invaders of the oak are certain
caterpillar broods, whose earliest infant steps are accustomed to
be taken over the surface of a leaf, which they traverse in
marching order.

Our youthful invaders of the forest are not strong enough to
brave an inclement season without shelter. No sooner, there-
fore, do the changing hues of autumn begin to threaten them
with failure of their supplies, than with instinctive foresight
they begin to prepare cantonments for the winter ; and long
before the arrival of November we may behold our oak-leaf
companies snugly housed in branch-suspended barracks, con-
sisting of hammocks spun by themselves of thickly- woven silk.

Yet awhile, — perhaps towards the beginning of July, — and
we pass beneath some ill-fated oak-tree on which the legion
has been actively engaged. Where, now, proud monarch of
the woods, are thy verdant honours ? Where that crown of
royalty, which, when other leafy coronets are falling around
thee, is wont to be only gilded by the suns of autumn, and
still held fast, often glows the richer even for the blasts of
winter ? That diadem has been stripped from thy brow by a
vile caterpillar crew. But where are the destroyers ? These
ruthless ravagers are nowhere to be seen. But what have we
here, resting on the shady side of an oak's spoliated trunk ? A
little creature of surpassing elegance and beauty; her body
seems clothed in a garment of softest swan's down, trimmed at
the bottom by a flounce of golden fur ; her ample wings of the
same unsullied hue, but of more satiny appearance, are bordered
by a corresponding fringe; and even her delicate feet are furred
or feathered with white nearly to her toes. Her full black
eyes, though lacking lustre, do not lack beauty; and rising
from her head, in graceful curves, a pair of snow-white plumes,

100 GOLD-TAIL CATERPILLARS.

complete her simple, but most elegant attire. We might
almost fancy, as we look at this most delicate of creatures, that
we had surprised by day-light one of the fairy elves, fabled to
hold their moonlight revels beneath the oak. And truly she is
not more beautiful than innocent : — a drop of honey-dew is the
coarsest nutriment her frame requires, if even air suffice not to
support it. But what has she in common, or what has she to
do, with the greedy ruthless strippers of the noble tree she rests
on ? Everything. She has (with them) a common origin :
she is the Gold-tail moth, and they were the Gold-tail cater-
pillars, of which she once was one, and of a brood of which she
will most likely become the parent.

There remains but little more to be said, en naturaliste,
descriptive of the Gold-tail, either in its form of destruction or
of beauty. In the former, however, that of caterpillar, we
shall describe its " black and scarlet uniform " with somewhat
more precision, and for a reason which will presently appear.
Its body-coat of black velvet is enlivened by two stripes of
brilliant scarlet down the middle of the back, a row of white,
resembling embroidery, running along each side ; and again
below these, two other scarlet lines. The head and six-clawed
feet are shining black, the hinder and intermediate legs
yellowish, and the whole body beset with tufts of gold-brown
hair.

Leaving wood and hedge-row, let us in May, or even in
April, walk through the garden, and observe in what manner
the second division of our destroying army may be there em-
ployed. Have these intrusive devourers shown more respect
to the queen of flowers, than to the monarch of the woods ?
Not a whit; and see here the proof! On almost every rose-
bud is a bundle of young leaflets, all drawn from their propriety,
and, contrary to their own expansive inclination, bound
together, usually in a fan-like form, by means of a silken tie.
If we pull asunder the leaves thus unwillingly united, we shall
find, living within and upon them, the agent of their union, a

ROSE-LEAF ROLLER. 107

little brown black-headed caterpillar.1 Secure from wind and
weather, this little imp here feasts at leisure, and nips in the
bud many an infant rose, whose cradling leaflets, intended for
its own protection, only serve to conceal the proceedings of its
destroyer.

Turning from rose to lilac, we find numbers of its leaves
rolled up, both cross and lengthwise, their return to a natural
position being prevented by silken stays or braces. These are
the rollings and weavings of a caterpillar,2 which in due season
will become, as its mother was before it, a small chocolate-
coloured moth, like others, a provident parent, who took good
care to lay her eggs on the leaf best suited for the exercise of
her offspring's ingenuity and appetite.

The hop-vine and the burdock are sometimes seen to droop
their leaves and stalks without any apparent cause. The
rational might suppose them fainting under the influence of
summer heat ; the ignorant imagine them struck by what they
call a blight; the fanciful would have declared, in days of
greater superstition, that they had been exposed to some " evil
eye " of ghost, or witch, or goblin ; and, as it happens, a
ghost is really at the bottom of the mystery, for a Ghost Moth,3
in its caterpillar shape, is gnawing, unseen, at the root of the
insect-haunted plant.

Quitting the garden for the homestead and the house, we
now come to the third and fourth divisions of our consuming
host, — the domestic invaders of our granaries, garments, and
good-nature. These belong chiefly to a family of tiny Moths,
called Tinece, distinguished as much for the ingenious forma-
tion of their own habitations or clothing, as for the ravages
they are accustomed to commit within and upon ours. There
is a certain member of this Tinea family4 (one of the smallest
of the crew) which delights to play her pranks in the farmer's
granary. She there deposits perhaps a score of eggs on a corn

1 Lozotcenia rosana. 3 Lozotamia ribeana.

3 Hepialus humuli. * Tinea hordei.

108 CLOTHES' MOTHS.

of wheat or of barley, and no sooner are the caterpillar
mischiefs hatched than they disperse, each choosing for himself
a single grain to be at once his habitation and his hoard.

Of the same Tinea family, but distinguished from the Grain
Moths by their appetite for animal instead of vegetable food,
are the well-known Clothes' Moths,1 — lovers of fur, wool,
tapestry, and dried insect specimens. Most people are well
enough acquainted, to their cost, with the destructive operations
of these wardrobe pests ; but some, possibly, may be ignorant
that muffs and silks and stuffs afford food, not only for their
appetite, but also for their constructive skill: the little ma-
rauders being accustomed to make for themselves out of these
materials, what we may designate either habitations or clothing,
— moveable tents or closely-fitting body-coats.

The Moth caterpillars of the cabinet scruple not to make free
with the wings of their defunct fellow-insects, cutting and
clipping them into convenient pieces for the shaping and
strengthening of their own body-coats.2

Another little destructive, who is apt to make herself more
free than welcome within the precincts of our dwellings, is
called the Tabby,3 for what reason we cannot exactly tell.
These Moths settle in our libraries and larders ; and their
numerous families are born and nurtured, just also as it may
happen, upon books or butter. Their taste, when literary, is,
however, like that of many other bibliomaniacs, somewhat
superficial, having reference rather to the leather than the
language : the binding, rather than the body, of the works is
the object of their esteem. A Moth caterpillar of another
description dives, however, somewhat deeper into learned lore,
and, devouring the page adorned by mildew and black-letter,
prizes books in proportion to their mouldiness rather than their
merit.

Our Moth destructives have now been traced home to our

1 Tinea pelliondla. 2 See Insect Architecture, p. 209.

3 Aylossa pinguinalis.

TBE MOTHS OF THE BANNERS. 109

houses and our cabinets, — to the clothing of our bodies and the
works of our hands, — even to the productions of our brains ;
and by adopting them as emblems we may bring them closer
still. What better than the tribe of domestic Moths can
serve for images of those evil principles, which, taking pos-
session, we scarce know when or how, fret and defile the robes
of innocence ? And who of us, alas ! ever guards so closely
the chinks and crevices of the moral wardrobe, as not to give
admission to a few or many of this destructive race ?

THE MOTHS OF THE BANNERS.

A TALE.

HE wealth and territories of the noble house of A-

had for upwards of a century been gradually wasting
away. In proportion as these diminished, the Roman-
catholic chapel attached to the family castle had declined from
its ancient splendour, and on the earldom passing for one gener-
ation into a Protestant branch, it was permitted to reach the
verge of complete ruin.

But behold, now, the holy edifice under process of restora-
tion. Where the voices of choristers once arose, where the
mouldering rubbish lately fell, — there hammers are descending.
Where the organ once pealed, where the screech-owl lately
hooted, — there masons are busy with the mallet and the chisel.
Where clouds of incense were once rolling, where the night-
dews lately fell, there whiffs of tobacco are rising through the
dilapidated roof. A new order of things is at hand : monu-
mental knights, whose spurs have been cut off by the scythe of
time, are being newly invested by the aid of the sculptor's
chisel ; whilst dames of chaste cold marble are receiving like
embellishment from Carpue-an restorers of stone noses.

But what is the magic power at whose bidding all these

110 THE MOTHS OF THE BANNERS.

wonders of renovation are produced ? The wizard is named
Wealth. The giant power has appeared as a Slave of the
Ring, and has been evoked by a ceremony at the desecrated

altar. The noble inheritor of the late Lord A 's poverty

has intermarried with the ignoble heiress of a Lancashire
cotton-spinner ; and this is why the old chapel is putting on
its new garment.

It is evening. The chapel-restorers, whose work is well-
nigh accomplished, have all departed for the night, and the
moon is looking through the great eastern window on the
scene of restoration, on the renovated tombs, the reblazoned
hatchments, the repolished carvings, the renewed hangings,
and, proudly conspicuous over all, on a new banner, which had
been raised that morning to replace an old one, of which time,
damp, and moths had only left a tattered remnant.

On the fragments of the ancient banner two Moths yet
lingered, — the only two which had not been put to flight
by the noise and stir of renovation. " Sister," cried one of
them who had just descended on the old banner from a short
exploratory flight towards the new 5 " why art thou thus wil-
fully determined on keeping to our ruined habitation ? 'Tis a
hard necessity, I acknowledge, to desert this wasted fabric in
which our honourable ancestors were born and died ; but it no
longer affords us maintenance becoming our exalted rank, and,
for the good of my descendants, I have resolved to establish
myself up yonder, where our consequence will be properly kept
up." — " Consequence ! maintenance ! " cried the other ; " let
my family perish rather than subsist on the vulgar mongrel
texture of that painted gew-gaw ! Deserting this fabric of un-
mingled silk, pure even to its last attenuated thread, shall we
stoop to provide support for our future progeny on a new-
fangled tissue, basely intermingled with cotton yarn? I marvel
at thy degenerate vanity : ennobled by my presence, these
ruins, however far decayed, retain their pristine grandeur ; and
so long as one particle remains upon another, here do I abide."

TEE MOTHS OF THE BANNERS.

Ill

" And that will be, sister," returned the other, " until to-
morrow's dawn, when you and it together will be trampled into
dust. But do as you like best, and so farewell, for ever, —
unless, before too late, thou seest thy folly." So saying, the
speaker flew up, and settled upon the new standard.

Next morning, when the workmen, returning to the chapel,
proceeded to sweep away the trampled tatters of the old
Banner, they dislodged its sole remaining occupant; arid the
proud and high-born Moth, after a few irresolute flutters, joined
her less pretending sister.

The ruin of the new Banner forthwith commenced, and so

it soon proved with the house of A . Strengthened for

awhile by admixture of cotton yarn, and reburnished by plebeian
gold, that noble line soon began to exhibit symptoms of decay ;
for with it there still continued to exist the old consuming
principles, pride of birth and pride of show, which are repre-
sented by the Moths of the Banners.

Ctoo mot&g gttn lingereb/

The central insects, swimming on their backs, are examples of the Water
Boatmen, Notonecta glauca, the nearer one being attacked by the little Whirl -
wig Beetle. Gyrinus natator, while the other is gliding head foremost into the
extended jaws of the fierce larva of the Water Beetle, Hydrophilus caraboides'
On the rushes to the right is a Water Scorpion, Nepa cinerea. In the distance
are the linear forms of two Water Measurers, Hydrometra stagnorum, and below
them is a Water Bug of less slender growth, Velia currens. The figures above
represent the Water Scorpion and Water Boatman in flight.

WATER-DEVILS.

S we have before observed, nothing can have a
greater general tendency to augment our enjoy -
ment of the country than the study of Entomo-
logy; yet one day, as has happened occasionally
before, our little learning on the subject of
insects served to cast a shade, though it was but a passing one,

CHARMS OF A SPRING MORNING. 113

over the cheerful feelings inspired by early spring. We were
out in the morning while the dews yet hung heavy in the
shade, a few remaining drops still brightly twinkling in the
sun. Leaving the beaten foot-path across the fields, we pur-
sued, over the grass, a little private track of our own making,
towards an old willow pollard, which, from long acquaintance,
and, we believe, sole discovery and appropriation of certain of
its venerable charms, we considered to the full as much our
own property as its legal owner's. To him it is nothing, pro-
bably, but a hollow worthless stump : — to us, it is a perfect
treasure-house, more full, a thousand times, in its mouldering
decay, than it was in its solid strength. The arm of lightning,
shivering picturesquely its highest branch, has struck it into
coin for the painter's mint ; but it is the gentler hand of Time
which has moulded it for us into a casket, and prepared it for
the reception of living treasures, — aurelia of Moth, or grub of
Beetle, ensconced beneath the case of rotten wood and bulging
bark, or packed in its soft lining, the vegetable mould which
fills the hollow of the trunk.

Was there a single object within view, or a single sound
within hearing, that could possibly awaken one discordant emo-
tion ? The sheep in an adjoining field were bleating of peace
and good-fellowship ; the turtle was repeating her lay of love ;
and the " shivering note " of the little willow wren, with a
thousand others, took up the tale. Pleasure was on the wing
in a throng of insect forms, and humming her delight in a
chorus of insect voices. Hope was in the season — happiness
apparently in everything ; and yet, as we sat and looked down
upon the smooth surface of the waters, — itself an image of
bright tranquillity, — thoughts of violence, cruelty, and destruc-
tion took sudden and forcible possession of our mind.

Our eyes were fixed upon the water, which, to the cursory
observer, presented nothing but a picture of still life, — of the
old willow and the blue sky. To another, examining more
closely, the mirrored landscape was not without its moving

M

114 WATER INSECTS.

objects, and these whimsically displaced as well as inverted — a
swallow appearing ever and anon to dip its wing in the clouds
or foliage, while here and there a fish seemed leaping from the
sky. An eye yet more attentive might also have discerned that
the surface of the water was traversed by a multitude of queer
dark little Insects, with straight lanky bodies and angular limbs,
gliding about in all directions. Skimming the glassy mirror
like these, but in shape their very antipodes, were certain other
little active bodies, oval and convex as an egg, bluish-black,
and polished as a steel corslet ; now collected in groups,
appearing by twos and threes to embrace each other, then
starting off singly as if pricked by contact ; now motionless, —
then whirling swiftly round and round, seeming absolutely
tipsy with their native element, or giddy with the joy of exist-
ence. Other creatures of curious boat-like form, almost thrice
as big as the last, were cutting the water with their oars : these
also looked as if they had drunk, but three times deeper, of an
intoxicating draught ; for oblivious apparently of the important
distinction between head and heels, with the latter upwards and
the former immersed, they now hung as it were suspended
in the water, then darted off with the celerity of a six-oared
cutter. All these living objects, as they met the eye, were
in perfect harmony with the surrounding scene of peace.
What then could we discern amiss in the pond and its joyous
occupants ?

We knew that the Insect world of waters was emphatically
a world of destructiveness, and that each of the above described
creatures, wheeling about so merrily on the pond's surface,
was in pursuit, indeed, of pleasure — but of pleasure derived
chiefly from the chase of living prey, or the cannibal delight
of devouring it. Neither on the surface only, but down to its
lowest depths, the pond was teeming with a carnivorous multi-
tude : some (for Insects) of prodigious size, and of uncouth
and frightful shapes ; others of almost invisible minuteness,
but all alike busy and happy in cutting off the happiness of

WATER DEVILS. 115

their fellows. Well! there was nothing in this greatly dis-
cordant with the general order of things, natural and moral ;
but for this very reason the train of thinking it suggested
soon brought disturbance to that sensation of peacefulness
which all besides encouraged, and we rose from our willow
chair almost wishing that we had known nothing of Ento-
mology.

To return now to our own Insect " Devils " of the pond,
with whom there is no harm in making a little farther acquain-
tance. First, for those black lanky-looking creatures gliding
about the water's surface ; — of these our pond (as most others)
affords two varieties ; both of a spare and slender make, but
one so delicately formed that even its body is scarcely thicker
than a line. This line is broken, however, by two prominent
hemispheric eyes, which, though set really in the pigmy's
monstrously long head, appear to be in the middle of his
slender body. He is usually wingless, or with only short
parallel elytra. This is the Hydrometra stagnorum, or Water
Measurer, a common frequenter, from March to August, of
every ditch as well as pond, where lie glides about to murder
the innocent.

The fellow-destroyer,1 by which this is usually accompanied,
is a " bird of the same dark feather," only considerably more
bulky, and furnished with close-setting wings. He rows him-
self merrily along by his hinder feet, the sides of his body
being rendered impervious to water by a coat of silvery hairs.
Somewhat resembling him in habits and in form, though with
body far less lean and long, and with its darker hues enlivened
by red and white, is another gliding or rowing destructive,
completing the " fatal three," which, insects themselves, are
for ever cutting short the slender threads of insect life. It was
not this morning visible on the willow pond ; and though we
have at times observed it on still waters, it usually prefers to

1 Gerris lacustris.

116 WHIRLWIGS AND BOATMEN.

buffet the running stream, to glide, not with, but against
the current. This is known to naturalists as the Velia rivu-
lorum.

A word, now, for that little whirling devil, which, albeit
black in hue, is of less satanic seeming than the above; for in
place of long rigid limbs and angular movements, he displays,
in his circular gyrations and oval form, something of beauty,
in his polished corslet, something of brightness, and in his
social sportiveness, something of good fellowship. He and
his merry mates, — not the less destroyers, — are the little Whirl-
wigs,1 those bluish-black diamond-like Beetles, which few can
have failed to notice, whirling about on every pool. Their
playful evolutions would seem, however, but a passe-temps in
intervals of sterner business, that of putting a full and fatal
stop to the sports of other water-revellers, weaker than them-
selves.

That topsy-turvy imp of darkness, which, in proportion to
its superior magnitude, creates yet greater ravages among his
fellows of the flood (those before named included) is the Water-
Boatman.2 Swimming on his back, legs upwards, tail touch-
ing the surface, head inclined downwards, he waits, motionless,
on the look-out for prey, till, on the least alarm, he rows off
with infinite speed by help of the hairy fringe, with which his
hinder feet are thickly bordered. As well as with oars, our
boatman is provided with wings, useless in water ; but serving,
in case of drought, and failure, in consequence, of his native
element, as a means of transport to some new scene of violence.

But these which appear upon the surface are only a few,
and not the most terrible amongst the devourers of pond and
streamlet, for gliding through the depths below, or lurking
crocodile-like, within the mud or water-weeds, a multitude of
fierce and frightful insects, some in a state of maturity, others
in progressive stages, live solely by destruction. One of these

1 Gyrinus natator. 2 Notonecta glauca, orfurcata.

LARVA OR DRAGON-FLY. 117

is the Water-Scorpion.1 Stretching out its long lobster-like
fore-arms, which are terminated each by a sharp claw, serving
the purpose of a hand, it seizes and holds fast its prey, which it
then pierces with its sharp beak or proboscis, — a pointed hollow
weapon, serving the further purpose of sucking the juices of
its struggling victim. So thoroughly savage is the nature of
this creature, that he would seem to destroy for destroying
sake : and it is related by Kirby that one of them, put into a
basin with several tadpoles, killed all, and ate none.

All the aquatic animals above named are insects in the last,
or adult stage of their existence ; but the two very remarkable
destroyers we shall now describe have yet to put on other and
more perfect forms, although their carnivorous capabilities are
fully developed. A common inhabitant of ponds, or of the
mud at their bottoms, is an ugly-looking animal, with a light
brown wingless body, and six legs, having the air and move-
ments of a little reptile, more than of an insect. His great
projecting eyes, always on the watch for something, eager to
devour, have chosen a victim. With cat-like stealth, he
crawls towards it. Now he is close upon his prey, and his
next movement will surely be to seize and grasp it with the
foremost pair of his hairy legs. But what now ? Surely a
mask is falling from the caitiff's face ! Yes, a veritable mask,
which has hidden, hitherto, both from us, and from his victim,
the grimmest half of his grim visage. He has dropped his
vizard but not entirely, for it still hangs pendent from his chin.
And now, do we see aright ? the mask, as if touched by the
wand of Harlequin, assumes another shape; it has changed
into a sort of toothed and jointed trap, which opens, then closes
on its prey, an unlucky tiny tadpole, which is brought,
wriggling, into convenient reach of the jaws ready to receive
him.

Let us now leave our crawling masked assassin to wallow in
mud and murder at the bottom of his pond, and delight our

1 Nepa cinerea.

118 WATER DEVILS.

eyes by looking at an insect of surpassing brilliancy and beauty,
disporting on the wing above the water. Its graceful shape,
brilliant colours, and glittering gauzy wings, have won it
from the gallant French the appellation of Demoiselle. Among
ourselves it is known better by the names of Horse-stinger and
Dragon-Fly. The first is a misnomer, because, to horses, it is
entirely harmless ; but amongst the insect crew it is a veritable
dragon, to the full as fierce and cruel as our murderer in the
mask. No wonder ! for it is his very self, — one, at least, of
his very kind. He has laid aside his mask, and therewith his
grub estate, but retains, as a perfected and brilliant Fly, the
very same propensities as when an unsightly crawler, — propen-
sities exercised, now, in the devouring of Butterflies in air,
instead of Tadpoles in water.

The arch-fiend with which we shall close our abridged list
of Water Devils, is the British Hydrophilus, the devil par ex-
cellence of the solar microscope, and of exhibitions,— a species
of Water-Beetle, in its first or larva stage of being. This
creature exceeds, perhaps, all its carnivorous fellows in size
(measuring, when at maturity, an inch and a half) ; in courage,
as attacking even small fish, and other animals larger than
itself; in ferocity, and in the possession of destructive weapons,
powerful, remarkably numerous, and singularly adapted to
their designed purpose. Broods of these murderers have
been passing the winter in embryo, that is, in the egg,
enwrapped, like innocents, in silver coverlets, or, to speak more
correctly, in silken balls, suspended, cradle-like, to the stems
of submerged water-weeds. These are now, however, detached
from their supports, and may be seen floating on the surface of
stagnant pools, exposed to the genial influence of the sun. By
this, if not already, they will be soon awakened into life, when
their first employment will be to gnaw a hole in their nests,
whence they will descend to the bottom of the water, each a
walking and swimming little animal, with six legs, a set of
hairy, fin-like appendages, and a bi-forked tail. But most

THE HYDROPHELUS. 119

conspicuous and notable of all its appurtenances are those
which arm the head, the large strong jaws curved and pointed,
opening and shutting like a pair of forceps, with an apparatus
of other instruments, smaller and finer, to assist in piercing,
tearing, masticating, and sucking the juices of its victims,
which comprise, as the infant destroyer advances to maturity,
almost every aquatic insect within reach ; — and in failure of
these, the brethren of one common nest will turn their fangs
upon each other. On a fine sunny day, these insect sharks arise
to the surface of the water where they delight to bask. If
watched, they remain motionless, with their jaws extended,
and if a stick be presented to them, they will seize it, and will
sometimes, it is said, permit themselves to be cut to pieces
rather than relinquish their hold. After the completion of its
life as a larva, the Hydrophilus immures itself in a cell of its
own formation, near the water's edge, and, after passing through
the next stage of pupa or chrysalis, emerges a perfect Beetle.

'I!?e rotog off toitS infinite gpeefc.'

Seated to the right of the Dahlia is the beautiful Red Admiral Butterfly,
Vanessa Atalanta, and to the left the Common Blue, Polyommatus Alexis, both
exhibiting their under-wing painting. The Butterfly descending towards them
is the Common Copper, LyccK.ua phlceas.

BUTTERFLIES IN GENERAL.

HOUGHTS on Butterflies always bring with
them thoughts on flowers. We have viewed
them already in some of their mutual rela-
tions ; but under this, their combined aspect,
they are both so doubly pleasant to look upon,
that we must trace here a few of their corresponding features, —
some of them perhaps for a second time. Flowers seem, as it
were, to impart a portion of their own characteristics to all

FLORAL ANALOGIES. 121

things that frequent them. This is peculiarly exemplified in
the Butterfly, which must be regarded, par excellence, as the
Insect of Flowers, and a Flower-like Insect, gay and innocent,
made after a floral pattern, and coloured after floral hues. But
even with the insect families which are usually dark and repul-
sive, that, for instance, of Cockroaches, which are for the most
part black or brown, the few species which resort to flowers
are gaily coloured. What a contrast also between the dark
loathsome in-door Spiders, and their prettily painted, green and
red, and white and yellow brethren of the field and garden,
which seek their prey among the flowers ; while more striking
still, is the difference between the wingless disgusting plague of
cities, and the elegantly formed, brightly coloured, winged
Bugs, which are common frequenters of the parterre. Whether
this be imputed to the effect of light, or assigned poetically to
the breathing influence of a flowery atmosphere, and the ten-
dency of all things to produce their similitudes, there lies
beneath the natural fact a moral analogy of application to
ourselves.

There has been traced by naturalists an intimate analogy of
states and developments between the Lepidopterous Insect and
the perfect vegetable. The Caterpillar, disclosed from the egg,
encases in its various skins the gradually expanding form of the
future Butterfly ; as the plant, burst from the seed or bulb,
encloses in its successive integuments (of root, stalk, and floral
leaves), the flower and fruit in process of formation. The
chrysalis, that shroud or cover which at once protects and
imprisons the winged creature it encloses, finds its correspond-
ence in the defensive calyx which enwraps the delicate corolla.
Both burst from their envelopes in perfect form, — the Insect to
die, the flower to fade, soon after having provided for the con-
tinuance of their kind.

In the habits, no less than in the structure, of the Butterfly
and the flower, there is observable no slight degree of corres-
pondence. In the gloom of night or of cloudy weather, the

122 FLOEAL AND INSECT ANALOGIES.

Insect folds its wings, the flower its wing-like petals ; and as
flowers love and turn towards the sun, so Butterflies open their
pinions to receive his welcome rays, — sometimes alternately
closing them in fan-like motion, to temper probably his too
ardent beams.

As the blowing of flowers can be forced or retarded by
artificial heat or cold, so it has been found with the emerge-
ment of Butterflies. Reaumur made many successful experi-
ments, by aid of hot-houses and hens, upon various chrysalides,
from which he caused the premature evolvement of the perfect
insect, and proposed by employment of the same means on an
extensive scale, to cause summer flowers and summer flutterers
to appear together in the midst of winter.

Darwin had a pretty fancy that Butterflies usually resemble
in colour the flowers they are most accustomed to frequent.
The poet-naturalist carried this notion doubtless beyond nature,
but the idea is one which seems to shoot less wide of its mark
that many aimed from the Litchfield long-bow. There is a
very large proportion of white and yellow flowers which we
see visited, perhaps, most frequently, by an equally large
proportion of white and yellowish Butterflies, owing probably
to the preponderance of each. The greater number of blue
Butterflies are certainly, however, accustomed to frequent the
blue flowers most • abounding in chalky soils ; and the rich
tone of colouring in our autumn flowers harmonizes well with
that of autumn Butterflies.

We might continue at greater length our remarks on Butter-
flies as connected with flowers, which make verily part and
parcel of their existence, but space forbids us; and now re-
turning to their relations of use, we must notice somewhat
more minutely than most people, perhaps, are in the habit of
doing, the manner in which the delicate delights of rest and
refreshment, provided for them by the flower, are turned to
account by these luxurious insects. Let us follow one to the
garden. Behold him seated on his velvet cushion, the corolla

THE ALDERMAN BUTTERFLY. 123

of an aster or a single dahlia ; in its centre, his table of regale-
ment, on which a whole service of golden vases are set before
him in due order. His long spiral tongue has hitherto lain
coiled betwixt two side appendages, but now unrolling, he
plunges it to the bottom of a chosen chalice, then partially
recurves, and indraws his honied draught through the tube-
like sucker. Again and again, he quaffs like an " Alder-
man"1 as he is. We know him by his bulk and the richness
of his furred and velvet robes, scarlet and black, relieved with
white. But see how the rights and pleasures even of an Alder-
man Butterfly are open to invasion ! Look at that impertinent
prying " Argus,"2 tired of his rustic fare in heath or meadow,
and hovering overhead, allured seemingly by sight or scent of
richer dainties wherein art has had a finger. Down he lights
and seats himself beside the dahlia table, an unbidden guest.
The Alderman's translucent eye from red grows redder, and
his gorgeous robes shake with indignation as he sees the
bold intruder unroll his slender tongue and dip it into one
of his own appropriated cups. Still, however, he restrains
his ire within the bounds of Aldermanic dignity or prudence ;
he attempts not to drive the invader from his invaded board.
But, can it be possible ? the little Argus, not content with a
dinner upon sufferance, has actually become the assailant of his
unwilling host. He closes his blue wings, opening, in the
act, a hundred eyes, and then tries with his pigmy body to
dislodge, by shoving, the corporation of the Alderman. But
the patience of the latter, and his prudence, are now put to
flight. Both start from table, mutually buffet and ascend in
air, mounting higher and higher as their choler rises, each
growing hotter and hotter in his progress towards the mid-day
sun. Now blue ! now red is uppermost ! Now the light
weight and azure pinions of the little Argus — now the heavy
body and flapping wings of the burly Alderman ! Which will

1 Vanessa Atalanta, Alderman or Red Admiral Butterfly.

2 Polyommatus Argus, P. Alexis, Common Blue Butterfly.

124 A BUTTERFLY DUEL.

be the gainer of the day ? For once, Might and Right are
both upon a side, and for that reason, doubtless, Might seems
worsted. The combatants have risen so high that they are

almost beyond our dazzled sight but now behold,

descending and alone, the little blue aggressor. He has
driven his opponent from the aerial field as well as from his
honied fare, which he now returns to appropriate and discuss
at leisure as he resumes his seat upon the dahlia's vacant
velvet. The bold urchin has, however, paid forfeit for his
rudeness and pugnacity. When he first alighted down beside
the Alderman, he was a Beau Butterfly of the first water, —
but now, his blue bravery, late so bright and glossy, all worn
and torn and jagged, he looks what he is, an impertinent, pil-
fering, quarrelsome little varlet.

Besides the above (the Blue Argus), Mr. Knapp in his
" Journal of a Naturalist," notices as a contentious animals, the
common White Butterfly1 of our gardens, and the small
Copper,2 as quarrelsome as he is handsome, — often fighting
even with his kindred, when he meets a fellow on a September
knot of China-asters." It has been noticed by the same
observer, that clouds seem to abate the ardour of contending
Butterflies, and that not unfrequently when two are engaged
on high, in ardent and unheeding strife, the arrival of a third
party in the shape of a hungry bird at once settles the differ-
ence of the pugnacious pair by their conversion into a flying
meal. But the most knowing among naturalists, as well as
those of other professions, are for ever differing ; and these
Butterfly struggles, viewed by the writer last mentioned in the
light of combats, have been regarded by another 3 in the more
pleasant one of pastime, — considered merely as frolicsome
exuberances of the vital principle played on by the buoyant
air, expanded by the sunshine in their wings and bodies.
Neither are their bufferings considered by Mr. Rennie so rude
by half as they appear, and he urges against the probability of

1 Pontia Brassicae. 5 Lycana Phleas. 3 Rennie.

WATER-DRINKING BUTTERFLIES. 125

their angry purpose the number of the insects (sometimes as
many as five or six) seen together in collision. Of this argu-
ment, however, we scarcely see the force, unless it could be
proved that Butterflies, being wiser than men, never took sides
or part in each other's quarrels. But as no mortal consequences
have ever, as we know of, been seen to result from these
rencounters in the air, we must perhaps leave unanswered the
question of their dubious meaning, — that of rough play, or
gentle warfare, — till the progress of phrenology enables us to
pronounce safely on the amount of combativeness in a Butter-
fly's skull. Meanwhile, we would much rather incline to the
pacific notion, and in poetic justice admit our favourite, (until
we know to the contrary) to be

" A beautiful creature
That is gentle by nature ;"

even though by so doing we throw a double stigma, for his
pursuit and devourment, upon our favourite robin.

Butterflies are said to be the thirstiest creatures (save Ants
and Crickets) of all the Insect community ; but however they
may get tipsy, perhaps quarrelsome, over their cups of honied
wine, it would appear that they are the best friends possible,
when, as is no uncommon occurrence, they meet together in
numerous water-drinking assemblies. Like a row of white-mus-
lin Misses at a Temperance Tea-Meeting, the small white But-
terflies are often in hot weather to be seen sitting, side by side,
on the margin of a half-dry pond, where

" in the same bathing their tender feete,"

they are enabled at once to quench their thirst for water and,
very likely, for gossip.

In these social assemblages but few females are accustomed
to be present, though no law of absolute exclusion would seem
to exist against them, as in the aerial dances of the Gnat. The
prevailing absence of lady Butterflies from these water-drink-

126 ROVING BUTTERFLIES.

ing reunions has been assigned rather to their habits, which
being of a most laudable stay-at-home character, do not lead
them to those flights in the burning sun which excite the thirst
of their roving partners. We should be the more unjust in
passing over without due praise this quiet domesticity of the
female Butterfly, because it would never seem with her, as with
some of her Moth cousins, a mere virtue of necessity. The
latter possess, in some cases, only apologies for wings, or such
as are adequate only to the very brief support of their heavy
bodies; whereas the Butterfly, maid or matron, is furnished
with a pair to the full as ample as those of her suitor or
her mate.

Many Butterflies have a wide geographical range, and one of
them, the Painted Lady,1 is remarkable for being a denizen of
each quarter of the globe. With us, this elegant insect is in
some seasons plentiful, in others rare. Its spiny caterpillar is
a feeder on spiny leaves, those chiefly of the great spear-thistle.
Thistles, by the way, even way-side thistles, acquire in our
sight a thousand piquant charms as soon as we begin to notice
insects. We have just seen in its leaves the nursery of the
Painted Lady, one of our prettiest Butterflies, and they afford
the same to one of our prettiest Beetles, the little green Tortoise.
Its honey-scented flower is a load-star of attraction to a hum-
ming host of Hymenoptera, while to some of them, most often
to the red-hipped Humble-bee, it affords also a purple couch
whereupon at drowsy evening, as in the fading time of
year, we are sure almost to catch him napping. When the
purple of the flowers has faded also, the head of a thistle
remains still a tower of strength, for defence not alone of
vegetable life: sometimes its bristling out-works may pro-
tect only its own seeds, but most often they enclose also an in-
sect garrison, to which this bitter corn supplies provisions.
Minute grubs and tiny caterpillars, bright scarlet and brownish
white, thus live by thousands within the prickly calyx, till in

1 Cynthia Cardui.

BUTTERFLY PLUMAGE. 127

lieu of the seed and its feathery down, devoured and arrested,
they themselves are seen floating through the air in the winged
forms of downy Moth or glittering Fly.

For the most part, the wings of both sexes among Butterflies
are adorned alike, but sometimes, as with the feathered race,
there is a difference clearly not to the lady's advantage, in the
painting of her pigmy plumes. The pretty Orange-Tip,1 that
well-known sporter amidst sylvan glades and meadows, has at
home occasionally beside him a white-winged partner, bearing
his name, but without a colour of pretension to the title. The
brilliant blue of our little Argus, of fighting celebrity, is
deepened in his lady to a purplish brown ; while the bright
yellow of the Brimstone beau2 fades in his modest belle to a
greenish white.

Perhaps in the whole range of nature there is no object of
equal size which presents so much combined splendour, variety,
and elegance, as a Butterfly's wing,

" Where colours blend in ever varying dye.
And wanton in their gay exchanges vie."

Its richness of hue and velvety softness of texture are produced
by the seeming powder, in reality minute feathers or scales,
sometimes intermixed with hairs, by which it is thickly over-
laid in the manner of a roof with tiles. The number of these
little plumes is immense, yet hardly so prodigious as the
patience of certain Entomologists, who having counted, found
them on the wing of a Silk-worm Moth to amount to 400,000 ;
while as many as 300,735 were found comprised within a
single square inch of that of a Peacock Butterfly. When
stripped of its plumage, the wing, as all must have noticed, is
left a thin transparent membrane, intersected by nervures and
dotted with little holes wherein the plumelets were inserted.
In a few instances (chiefly in tropical insects) spots are left by
nature perfectly transparent, contrasting prettily with the rich
velvet which surrounds them.

1 Pontia cardamines. 3 Gonapterix rhamni

128

BUTTERFLY PLUMAGE.

Several tribes of our native Butterflies are distinguished and
classed according to their prevailing colours. Our fulgid
Coppers,1 and Fritillaries2 with silver-spotted wings, look
allied by their metallic lustre with the metallic productions of
earth. Our Blues3 imitate the azure tints of the sky, while
others which display shades of light, progressively warming
from white to orange, have been considered not unaptly as
"sacred to the day." Those concentric circles of colour, called
ocelli or eyes, which give, in some instances, such an accession
of life and brilliancy to the wings of Butterflies and Moths,
may be looked on as stars of distinction belonging to their order
(Lepidopterd), conferred solely on one other of the insect race,4
and eclipsed only by the magnitude and profusion of those
which are lavished on the strutting peacock.

2 Melitcea.

Polyommatus.

The Orthoptera.

' 2Gn Jjer fjoutg of guppogefc priuacp."

This vigneUe represents the transformations of the Lady-bird (Coccinella).
On the large hop-leaf, which occupies the foreground, is a group of eggs ;
near them, to the left, a grub or larva, devouring a hop aphis ; again, to the
left, attached to a stalk, is the pupa. Higher, on the right, is a perfect Lady-
bird (C. semptem-punctata), of which genus two other species are figured,
one in flight, the other on a stalk.

THE LADY-BIRD OF OUR CHILDHOOD.

ANY who exterminate Spiders as a matter of
merit, crush Earwigs without remorse, and
hold Slack-Beetles in abhorrence, look with
involuntary kindness on the little Red- Beetle,
styled a Lady-bird. For this especial favour
she stands indebted partly to her pretty spotted gown, and
partly to her being associated with the earliest recollections of

130 THE LADY-BIRD.

our childhood. A word or two, en passant, on Nursery
Rhymes, on that one at least which is pertinent to our subject —

" Lady-bird ! Lady-bird ! fly away home,
Your house is on fire, and your children alone !"

Now, in reality, instead of flying to the rescue of her own
innocents, her business is most probably to murder and devour
a score of other innocents, clustered together on a hop or rose-
leaf; or, in other words, to make a luscious meal of Aphides or
Honey-dew Insects, of whom her Lady-birdship is exceedingly
fond — fond as a wolf of a flock of sheep.

Let us begin with the beginning of the Lady-bird's life, even
from its commencement in the egg-shell. The eggs are of a
bright yellow, small, flat, and oval ; and, laid close together
in patches of a score and upwards, are to be found throughout
the spring and summer, glued to a variety of leaves. It must
not be imagined, however, that the mother insect by whom
they are thus deposited is ever so regardless of the welfare of
her family as to commit it, while in embryo, to the barren
surface of the first leaf falling in her way. Carnivorous her-
self, she takes care that her children, when the sun wakes them
into life with similar but yet more devouring propensities than
her own, shall have abundance of living food for their exercise
conveniently at hand; and for this purpose she fails not to
select as their nursery a leaf, most frequently of rose-bush, hop,
or honeysuckle, but of what sort soever, one sure to be peopled
by, or closely contiguous to, the insect live-stock so essential to
their support.

It is in this its earliest stage of grub or larva — the most
voracious if not the most active of its life — that the Coccinella
plays its most important part in the reduction of the Aphis
million, both in gardens and hop grounds, where the latter is
popularly known as " the Fly."

The second shape which the Lady-bird puts on is that of the
pupa, correspondent to the aurelia or chrysalis of a Butterfly.

LADY-BIRD TRANSFORMATIONS. 131

To know what is the form then assumed, our readers would do
best to seek it on the above-named plants, where, after a pre-
vious glance at our figure, they will be at no loss to discover
the original. As for the history of our Lady-bird's life, in this
its second epoch, a few words suffice, because it is that in
which there is very little life about it. Having, in a few weeks,
gorged as a grub her fill of Aphides, she fixes herself by a sort
of natural glue, either to a stalk or to the under surface of the
leaf which has served the purpose of pasturing her devoured
flock. Thus secured from falling, she puts off the pupa skin
with the limbs which were requisite to obtain her prey ; and
then, in a form of outward inactivity, bides the time until by
inward working and expansion she has arrived at the perfection
of her nature.

The Lady-bird mature is still, as in early life, a feeder on
Aphides, and she is for ever to be observed in the carnivorous
act of their destruction. It is said, however, that her voracity
decreases with her age, and that instead of pursuing her prey
(as when a grub) into the narrow folds of a leaf or retired
recesses of a bud, she is content to victimize the open feeders
within her more convenient reach.

THE CAGED LADY-BIRDS.

A FRAGMENT.

HAVING given the natural history of the Lady-bird, we will
narrate a short " record of the heart," in which one of these
parti-coloured favourites of childhood happened to play a more
than usually important part. We picked up the story in the
course of a ramble for the purpose of collecting insects.

One evening last June, as we were strolling in the neigh-
bourhood of Highgate, wholly occupied in examination of the
hedges beside us, and never thinking of a heavy thunder-cloud
behind, which hung threateningly over the sun-lit spires of the

132 A SUMMER SHOWER.

metropolis, a huge rain-drop, spreading to half-crown diameter,
suddenly darkened the dust at our feet. The fall from the
clouds of the coin itself could scarcely have surprised us more.
Down came a second — then patter — patter — a hundred more,
from which it was high time to seek escape. But how ! Ours
was no high-way, but a bye-way ; there was only one solitary
cottage which stood a few yards distant : but that to our com-
fort had a porch, within which we were presently ensconced.
Yet as the torrents continued to descend, we soon found our
place of refuge less secure than we had deemed it. The porch
was merely a rough trellis thickly covered with clematis, and
as the creeper got gradually soaked, its yielding branches falling
inwards, served only as conductors of the dripping deluge.
Here we would take occasion to observe how a favourite pur-
suit may serve in some sort as a shield against annoyance and
impatience ; for even while our sorry shelter was each moment
lessening, we could not but admire the gnats that were dancing
up and down between the rain-drops. We were not, however,
so entirely engrossed by thinking of the midges' wondrous pre-
servation as to be quite regardless of our own predicament, and
now halted, in our shower-bath, between the two more active
measures of running desperately through the torrent before us,
or of invading the peace of the cottage in our rear. Our mind
was made up to adopt the latter alternative, and a hand was
already stretched towards the little black knocker, when — the
door opened and a tall thin old man, in appearance what has
been called the shabby-genteel, invited us to enter, with a
courteous expression of regret at not having seen us sooner.
Having stood long enough already, we did not stand on
ceremony, but stepping over the door-sill, found ourselves, at
once, in a snug little front parlour. The charity -of our good
Samaritan did not stop here, for taking down from a convenient
peg a long grey threadbare coat, he insisted on our exchanging
for it our own dripping garment which he carried, himself, to
dry at his kitchen fire.

A SUBURBAN PARLOUR. 133

When, in pursuance of this hospitable purpose, the old gen-
tleman had unsuspiciously shut the door upon us, we took an
honest survey of the room ; in a strange apartment no un-
common procedure, often affording at a glance some considerable
insight into its occupant's pursuits and character. Flanking the
watch-tower on the mantle-shelf was a profusion of shells, in
the midst of which, like monsters of the deep, grinned, on each
side one, a pair of corpulent Chinese bonzes. Perhaps our
friend, in his youth, had " occupied his business in great waters."
One thing was evident — there were no women-kind about the
good man's house : not a work-basket, a pair of scissors, a
nutmeg-grater, or even a thread on the carpet to indicate female
occupancy. The old man must be a bachelor ; — but no, — over
the fire-place hung a portrait, and a very good one, of a pretty
woman in the dress of a lady some forty years ago, and below
it the miniature of a sweet little girl, whose innocence looked
out of a pair of large blue eyes, cut exactly after the same pat-
tern as those of the elder portrait. No doubt then he was a
widower. So far satisfied, we turned our eyes towards the
window to see how long we were likely to encroach on his hos-
pitality— and then first noticed in the window-seat a square
glass case, raised by some books to bring it on a level with the
light. It was roofed with gauze and floored with wet sand,
wherein was stuck a branch from a white rose-bush, which we
perceived, on looking clpser, to be peopled by some half-dozen
of large Lady-birds. The insects were almost too many to be
there by accident: the rose-branch, too, was well furnished
with Aphides, their favourite fare, and seemed therefore as if
chosen expressly for their accommodation. The glass case was
certainly then a cage for Lady-birds, and the old gentleman
must be, it followed, a brother entomologist. We had just
arrived at this conclusion when the parlour door re-opened and
in came our stranger friend, followed by a Hebe in curl-papers,
bearing on a tea-tray a smoking jug, a pint bottle, and two
capacious goblets of different shapes and sizes. " The gentle-

134 THE GLASS CASE.

man must take something warm as an antidote against taking
cold."

During the process of compounding the elements, and before
the starting of another subject, we pointed to the glass-case.
"No doubt, Sir, an entomologist?" A shake of the head
overset at once our previous conclusion. — " Beg pardon, Sir,
— I thought from that, that like myself you were fond of
studying the habits of Insects : but most likely you have some
little friend — perhaps some favourite grandchild, for whose

amusement," " No," said the old gentleman, " no — I have

no one — I am a solitary old man. — But indeed, Sir," he
added with a melancholy smile, " you are not the first who has
wondered at my foolish fancy for keeping those little creatures.
Some, I dare say, have set it down as the amusement of my
second childhood ; and, — God help me ! — perhaps they are not
far wrong."

We were sorry to have touched upon what was at all events
a tender theme in return for the good man's kindness : and
though our curiosity concerning the petted Lady-birds was
whetted rather than allayed, we took care to say nothing more
about them, and, fearing to commit a double error, forbore all
notice of the portraits. After an hour's sitting, our well -dried
coat was resumed and we rose to depart.

Our first visit to Providence Cottage led to many more, in
the course of which the old gentleman opened to us much of
his heart and history. He related to us, by snatches, a common
tale. — He told us of losses in trade — loss of health — loss of an
affectionate devoted wife, one who for love of him had left a
higher station, and never by look, word, or deed reminded him
of the sacrifice. But chiefly did he speak of one beloved
child who, when wealth and health and wife were gone, stood

him for awhile instead of all. Of this child only, and only

of her as connected with the caged Lady-birds, shall we repeat
a part of his relation. In her seventh year she, — his little
Rachel, — was seized by severe illness, through which her

THE TIRED WATCHER. 135

heart-stricken father was her sole and constant nurse. If he
had possessed the means, no hireling would he have paid to
tend his darling child : but he was poor, and thus poverty and
will met for once in sweet consent.

On the morning of the fourth day after her attack, the rest-
less uneasiness of the little sufferer subsided into a deep and
quiet slumber. The tired watcher, who, while fatigue and
despair together weighed down his broken spirit, had found it
hard to resist the drowsiness of exhausted nature, was roused
to trembling wakefulness by the flutter of hope within his
heart. He knelt beside the bed — " Oh ! let not this blessed
hope prove a mere delusion. Save, merciful God, my only

treasure ! or if ." The weakness of the flesh forbade

to express in words the dread alternative, but with head
bowed low, the father remained for a few moments in an
attitude, at least, of resignation. When he rose from his knees,
the rush-light had expired and a ray of bright sunshine, enter-
ing at the round hole in the shutter, fell upon the slumberer's
features, which were still composed in quiet rest. Poor Gre-
gory drew the window-curtain quite close ; then quitted the
chamber and descended to the garden. The air refreshed his
throbbing temples ; but, chilled by his night vigil, the morning
sun, as it glistened on the dew-drops, seemed to impart no
warmth to his benumbed frame, and no good augury to his
trembling heart. Before the sun goes down (thought he), —
and fearing he scarce knew what each moment he was absent
from his post, he hastened to resume it, but not till he had
hastily plucked a little bunch of flowers. But one day previous
he would not have dared to gather them, to decorate the sick
chamber, then most likely to become, ere night, the chamber of
death ; but now there was hope, at least, in that quiet slumber.
It had not been broken when the father returned, but in a few
moments the sleeper's eyes opened, and, as if the intense affection
of her parent's gaze had been felt even through the closed
lids, turned directly towards the fond anxious face beside her.

136 ..'" THE SICK CHILD.

" I've brought my Rachel a pretty nosegay/' said he, as he
stooped forward to kiss her, and laid the flowers on the cover-
lid. The child, grasping them in her little thin fingers, raised
them to her faded face.

" Stay, darling, there's a Lady-bird on that white rose, let
me put it out."

" Oh, pretty Lady-bird ! " cried the little girl, her large
sunken eyes lighting up for a moment with childish delight.
" No, let me keep it, only all to-day; and to-morrow I'll take
it out myself, and bid it fly away home, as poor mamma so often
told me."

" But suppose it should please to fly away to-day, how can
my little Rachel help it? "

" Oh, I'll put it in a box, and give it nice green leaves, as
many as it can eat, and "

Poor Rachel's voice was not strong enough to complete the
list of luxuries she would have promised her prisoner in lieu
of liberty; but, as if already bribed to quietude, the insect,
which had hitherto been describing circles round the rose,
stood still near its centre. Delighted to find his little nurse-
ling well enough (for the first time in four days) to notice and
seem amused by anything, the father separated the white
rose from the other flowers, and placing it on a table at the foot
of the bed, inverted a tumbler over it.

" There, sweet one," said he, " your Lady-bird is safe."
The child was satisfied, and went to sleep again, thinking of
her pleasure in letting it fly to-morrow.

When that morrow came, no daylight was allowed to pene-
trate through the darkened window of the chamber where the
Lady-bird still occupied its crystal prison, for the little child
who was to have bid it fly — her innocent spirit had taken its
own flight home.

******

The funeral was over : the chief — the only mourner, stood
in the unwelcome daylight just admitted, beside the bed on

THE CAPTIVE LADY-BIRD.

137

which he had seen depart, successively, the two who had made
life dear : — he stood alone in the room — alone in the hard mock-
ing world. On the table — under the glass — just where it had
been placed to please the innocent eyes which would never
again reward with a smile his labours of love — lay the white
rose he had gathered on the morning before his little one died.
For lack of water the flower had withered even before her
cheek was cold, and now the lapse of a week had turned it
brown and shrivelled. But though there was no life within
the rose, there was life about it — near it. The captive Lady-
bird still survived ; and as if shrinking from contact with the
vegetable death, was traversing uneasily the sides of the tumbler.
And this was the reason why our old gentleman kept in
a glass case white roses and red Lady-birds.

" J3o tioufit, g>(t, an <CntomoTo0.f t ? "

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Insects of three several orders are here depicted as emerged, or emerging from
their pupa cases. On the right, are two caterpillars of the small Tortoiseshell
Butterfly ( Vanessa Urticcs), suspended to the stalks of nettles for their second
transformation. They are hung pendent by means of hooks passing through
silken loops woven to the stalks ; and through the skin of the lowest, which is
rent at the shoulders, appears the head of the emerging chrysalis, or pupa. To
the left of these, and suspended in like manner, hangs the chrysalis itself, or,
more properly, its empty skin, on which, recently come forth, stands the But-
terfly, with wings hung down for more complete expansion. On the nettle-
leaf below, are two empty, barrel-shaped pupa cases of flies, sometimes parasitic
on the same caterpillars ; of these, one is prepared for flight, while the other, more
recently emerged, appears with wings still damp, white, and crumpled. To the
left, on a stalk of marestail (Equisetum), is the pupa of a Dragon-Fly (jEschna
raria), from whence, through a rent on the shoulders, the perfect insect is
" coming out." One emerged appears on wing at a distance in pursuit of its
butterfy prey.

139

COMING OUT.

LD MAY DAY.— Now is May arrived in
earnest — the real flowering May of the Old
Style and the old Poets ; when kings and
queens were wont to "come out," and meet, as
they went a Maying; all the more glorious
things " come out " too, and " coming out " still, bright and
beautiful as ever, now that of all these royal personages even
the old bones are crumbled into dust.

" Coming out ! " what a multitude of pleasant notions are
associated with this expression — the very motto for the season,
now inscribed in living characters on the unfolding scroll of
nature. Who can want an exhortation to " come out" and read it?
Not the flaxen-headed village children, who " coming out "
of school, hie shouting to the wood and meadow, where they
spell it (each after his fashion) with a merry laugh,

Not the captives set free, — be it from durance, from
disease, or labour. These from the dark-barred prison — from
the close sick chamber, — from the foetid factory " coming
out " themselves, all read the bright inscription in the glorious
sunshine — in the free fresh air, — in the opening flowers: —
read it with eyes that glisten, and hearts that, if not crushed
entirely, expand with gratitude and joy.

And other " comings out " are in progress, which, as com-
pared with these, are cold, conventional and artificial — yet not
without a something, in their way, of seasonable light and
gaiety and promise. Of such are the "coming out" of new
books — of new actors — of fair new flowers, not of the garden
or the wild, but of the world,

" With eyes
That mock the hazel-nut and shame the violet."

Last, not least, in eyes like these, are the fashions, " coming

140 COMING OUT.

out " for summer " with the butterflies ; " a phrase which
brings us back to the sweet natural, and gives occasion to
look more closely than our wont into some of those expansive
processes by which the youthful flutterers of summer are
'< finished" for their "coming out" in the gay assemblies of
the insect world.

Now day by day do the garlands which adorn their verdant
ball-rooms grow thicker with opening flowers, and together
with these, and emerging in numbers nicely proportioned, do

" Throngs of insects in the shade
Try their thin wings, and dance in the warm beams
That waked them into life."

We are thus reminded, at every step, that flower, leaf, and
insect, were intended for each other; a fact already noticed,
together with various other analogies between their respective
" comings out."

It is no easy matter, watch it as we may, to see a flower in
the act of blowing — bursting from forth the confining calyx ;
nor is it much less difficult (out of doors) to catch an insect in
the act of emergement from the trammels of its chrysalis
estate. It needs, however, but small pains and patience,
which will be well rewarded, to become witnesses, within
doors, of the latter operation. This with a variety of insects
is equally curious and interesting, though most conspicuous and
easy of observation with the tribe of Butterflies and Moths.

Numerous Gabbage Butterflies, both of the larger and
smaller species, have " come out" already, and are now upon
the wing; but as of these there are various successive broods,
there are almost as many still enwrapped in the skins of their
angular chrysalides, and hung pendent, horizontally, in their
chosen places of security, — such as under the copings and
ledges of garden walls and palings.1 We have only to lay
gentle hands on a few of these seeming sleepers, and carefully
1 Vignette to ' Life in Death.'

INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 141

detaching with a knife their silken buttons of suspension, to
stick them by the same, with a thread girth round the body, to
the upper edge of a deep-sided box; then placing this
beside us on the table, we shall hardly fail by an occasional
glance to have our curiosity gratified in their emergement under
our own eyes.

We must remember that, like the embryo of a plant in the
seed, or the rudiments of a leaf or flower in the bud, the various
parts of the butterfly have been pre-existent even in the cater-
pillar ; and when these are arrived at their full maturity within
heir chrysalis cover, then approaches the crisis of emergement.
At this period there takes place a violent agitation in the fluids
of the insect,1 by which they are driven from the internal
vessels into all the tubes and nervures of the wings, which
being at the same time filled with air from the wind-pipe, in-
crease considerably in size. This, added to the restless motion
of the legs, soon enables the imprisoned creature to burst its
enshrouding skin, which, flying open at the back, discloses,
the head and shoulder of the butterfly. Being then soon re-
leased entirely, it stands for awhile, motionless, on the broken
fragments of its late prison — its wings damp and drooping,
small and crumpled ; but distended by the fresh supply of air,
inhaled through the spiracles, they expand so rapidly, that in
the space of a few minutes their dimensions are increased
five-fold!

Directly after emergement, the wings are thick, and capable
of great extension by stretching, but not so after full expansion ;
neither do butterflies or other winged insects ever grow, when
they have once attained their perfect form.

Besides that of the common White, or Cabbage,2 the coming
out of the small Tortoiseshell Butterfly,3 may also now or early
in June be easily observed. The gilded chrysalides of this also
common but very beautiful insect, are now, and again in August,
to be found almost everywhere, suspended head downwards,

1 Insect Transformations. 3 Pontia brassica, &c. 3 Vanessa urtica.

142 MOTH TRANSFORMATIONS.

either to the stalks of nettles whereon their caterpillars have sub
sisted, or upon adjacent walls and palings. By detaching care-
fully, then re-suspending them in their natural position, we shall
be able to observe, at home and at leisure, the exclusion of their
richly-coloured pinions from the gilded cases which look not
unworthy to enclose them. Or if we choose to follow them
through their two-fold transformations, thereby procuring to
ourselves a two-fold pleasure, it is now easy to collect and keep
some half-dozen of the caterpillars themselves, of which the
younger broods are still feeding in company on the nettle.
They are black and green, black-headed, and spiny coated.

The " coming out" of Moths bears a general resemblance to
that of Butterflies, only that owing to the chrysalides of the
former being usually enveloped in a cocoon, or outer covering,
they have not only to burst from their aurelian skin, but also
to effect their egress through a barrier, sometimes of silk only,
but often fortified by much harder material. The Caterpillar
of the Great Goat-Moth (or Cossus),1 a dweller within the
interior of oaks and willows, on the wood of which it is a feeder,
constructs itself a compact cell or case, of materials nearly
similar to those employed by the Puss1 — namely wood, reduced
partly by decay, partly by its own jaws, to the resemblance of
saw-dust. With this, bound together by silk, and cemented by
glue, it usually composes the exterior of its case, which is lined
also by a silken web.

Our exploration of a hollow willow-tree was rewarded, at
the beginning of last August, by the discovery of such a cell,2
(an oval, wood-covered cocoon, two inches and a half long),
from whence, in a few days, we had the infinite satisfaction of
beholding its inhabitant come forth. The first intimation of
the approaching event was a strange shaking of the solid
fabric; and presently, by dint, as it would seem, of violent
efforts, and the use of its hard bulky head as a battering-ram
against its prison wall, the creature, still clad in chrysalis mail,
1 Frontispiece- a Vignette to * Moths as Operatives.'

INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 143

effected a breach at o" e end of the oval cell. Be it here noticed
that the rings of this Goat-Moth chrysalis are each edged by a
fringe of hook-like appendages, and now observe their use.
Grappling by these, it is enabled to push its brown shining
body half way out of its case, in the aperture of which it
remains then firmly fixed. In this position, supported by its
wooden walls, comes the crisis of its final change. The glazed
back-piece of the aurelian mail bursts asunder at the shoulders,
and through the rent, slowly advancing, comes out a gigantic
brown- winged Moth1 — the perfect form of three years'
development.

The last emergement of various Dragon -Flies, may, during
a great part of summer, be often witnessed, by inspecting the
stems of aquatic plants, to which they fix themselves on
leaving the water, (where their earlier stages have been passed)
and attached to which they are accustomed to leave their
pupa skins, after having come out as tenants of the air.2
Last summer, whilst awaiting the appearance of the small
Tortoiseshell butterflies above mentioned, from several of their
chrysalides, we gained an opportunity of observing, not only
the coming out of the insects expected, but that also of others,
which in the character of parasites had been surreptitiously
introduced. One chrysalis out of five was full of small
Ichneumons, while two others contained, each, several of the
brown oval pupae of a species of Fly, nearly resembling the
common frequenter of our houses. Of these and the like
parasitic invaders — of their modes of getting in, as well as of
coming out, more at a future season.

While the book of nature, as a mere natural history (whether
relating to insects or other things) was almost, perhaps, a
sealed volume, the "coming out" of the butterfly had at-
tracted notice, and been hailed as a symbolic promise that
man also was to " come out," in due time, from the darkness
of the grave. The same Greek word PSYCHE was applied to

1 Frontispiece. 2 Vignette,

144 INSECT EMBLEMS.

denote both a Butterfly and the human Soul ; hence (say the
learned) the Egyptian fable of Cupid and Psyche, and the
reason that in Grecian sculptures Psyche is so often represented
as subject to Cupid, either under the form of a butterfly or
adorned with the wings of that most glorious of insect flut-
terers.

When life and immortality were brought to light by the
Gospel, the insect type by which, in the midst of Pagan
obscurity, they had been dimly shadowed forth, acquired fresh
illumination. Employed by the Fathers of the Church, the
beautiful symbol of the Butterfly shone on their ponderous
pages like a beam of sun-light, falling through a painted
window on the gloom of a cloister. So great, indeed, was the
value attached to this insect emblem by writers for the Church,
in the time of Reaumur, that they absolutely fought for it
with that great and good naturalist, because, with his newly-
acquired light on its natural history, he saw reason to dispute
the entire fitness of insect transformation to represent the
mystery of human resurrection. And certainly, when it came
to be ascertained, by the experiments of Reaumur and others,
that a caterpillar is not in fact a simple but a compound
animal, containing within it the rudiments of the future
butterfly in all its parts, it ceased to be an exact parallel of
the usual idea of the resurrection.

Although the Butterfly seems to have been the first, if
not the only insect noticed by the ancients as representative
of the immortal principle, there are a multitude of others which
furnish emblems quite as fitting of the soul's destination to a
higher sphere.

The fly, now regaling upon sweets, or buzzing in the
summer sun, has come out from a shape, and most likely from
a substance, of disgust. The beetle, now careering it through
the summer evening sky, has emerged from the form of an
unsightly grub, and from a living burial within the earth.
And the gnat, now a graceful and agile sporter in the air, has

THE BARON AND THE BUTTERFLY. 145

issued from perhaps a horse-pond, where it dwelt an hour ago
— a miniature monster of the mimic deep.

Thus by plain and pleasant symbols is Nature for ever teach-
ing us — entreating us to come out and sit with her at the feet
of her Great Author. Her " tongues in the running brooks "
are always tuneful ; her " sermons in stones " never rugged ;
her " good in everything" is always easy of extraction ; and her
moralities are not adorned merely — but wholly conveyed by
picture and parabolic story. The French Fabulist observes
with truth, that

" La morale nue apporte de 1'ennui,
La conte fait passer le precepte avec lui."

But though Nature deals with us, her children, on this very
principle, we turn a deaf ear to " the voice of the charmer," —
and while the Thousand and One Nights of the far-famed
Scherezade are in everybody's memory, the 365 days of the
year, each with its tale within tale of wonders ever new, go
round unheeded or unheard.

THE BARON AND THE BUTTERFLY.

A TALE.

,HERE lived, in the feudal times, a powerful baron,
who wasted his patrimony and stripped his wretched
serfs to feed his appetites. He was like a great cater-
pillar, turning green leaves into brown skeletons in order to
fill his ravenous maw.

Like most great caterpillars, and most great men, he was
infested by greedy parasites ; yet amongst the members of his
household there happened, by a strange accident, to be one
honest dependant, who, by a stranger still, was a priest — the
baron's chaplain and ghostly adviser.

The mere sight of him was enough to remind people of their

146 THE SICK BED.

souls ; but, however this might have been with those about him,
it is certain that the Good Father never forgot that he had a
soul himself; and, what was more, he thought about the souls
of other people, especially about that of his patron. He had
long, indeed, entertained misgivings on account of that pre-
cious jewel, — but great, nevertheless, was his horror on dis-
covering, one day, that the baron, though a Catholic in all
outward observances, was (in those days a thing wonderful as
horrible) an unbeliever.

Piercing swords from the word, — leaden bullets from the
Fathers, — threatening thunderbolts from Rome, — >all were at
the holy man's disposal, and boldly and zealously did he ply
these sacred weapons for the ejection of his patron's spiritual
foes ; but they still keep fast possession of the baron's soul :
and the baron (as well he might) swore that he had not a soul
to keep.

But Providence appoints its own means as well as its own
times and seasons.

The baron fell sick : his breast heaved with the throes of his
fiery and troubled spirit. Now, good Father Ambrose, now is
thy time — now if ever — to aid in the rescue of thy patron from
the power of the enemy. Well he knows it, and there he
stands beside the baron's bed, which fever of body, fever of
mind, and fever heat (for it was a sultry August noon) had
converted into a sea of molten lava.

"Talk not to me, father! — If there was a heaven such as
your idle words describe it, St. Boniface defend me," (the
baron, though he scoffed at God and the Devil, was always
calling on his patron saint) — " St. Boniface defend me from
such a place ! — No horse — no hound — no hawk — no venison
pasty — no garnished boar's head — no Rhenish wine. — Call ye
this heaven ? — To sit upon a cloud, and sing Aves, like a beard-
less chorister ! — A heaven for a man ! By my spurs, it were a
fitter for yonder Butterfly."

" Stay, my good lord," said the monk, eagerly catching his

EXHORTATION. 147

patron's hand in one of his own, while he pointed with the
other to the large White Butterfly, which had just entered
the window ; " you talk, my lord, of that Butterfly — in scorn ;
but know that the Butterfly is heaven's own emblem of the im-
mortal soul !"

The baron awoke next morning with calmer pulse, and in
calmer mood than usual. The leech exulted in the success of
his remedies, and as he retired from his morning visit pressed
the rushes on the floor of the chamber with audible tread.
The Physician of souls also welcomed the patient's clearer
brow and softened tone ; but, more modest than his brother in
the art of healing, took no credit to himself for the smoothing
of the troubled waters; and fearing the calm would prove
but transient, forbore to ruffle it by the renewed breathing of
his ardent spirit. He therefore stood beside the bed in silence,
watching and ministering, even with woman's tenderness, to the
sick man's wants.

" Ambrose," said the baron, as he took from his hand some
cooling drink, " I have been dreaming something — I hardly
know what, of that Butterfly heaven of yours; only I just
remember that I saw there (in sooth it was a foolish fancy)
my brother Hubert."

" And wherefore not, my lord ? Thy brother Hubert was a
good gentleman — and, God rest his soul ! a pious Christian, —
also, a noble benefactor to our ancient house."

" Aye ! father, but he loved a venison pasty, and a stoup of
good Rhenish almost as well as — his sinful brother."

" True ; but these creature comforts, with other carnal lusts,
were not the gods of his idolatry, as "

" They have been of mine, Good Ambrose, you would say ;
but they are broken — broken — now, and so is their worshipper.

Do you know, Ambrose, I would give but, fool that

I am ! what have I left to give — to have been another man ?"

" My dear patron ! my brother in Christ !" exclaimed the
monk, falling on his knees, and grasping the baron's hand in

148 EMBLEMATIC TEACHING.

ecstasy, " be then no longer what you are But what say I ?

the Spirit's influence has already begun — and you, while it is
time, must work with it to complete a change."

" The time is past; or, if I had years instead^ of hours, did
you not once tell me — no, I learnt it from my mother when I
was a little child — that ' the leopard could not change his spots,
nor the Ethiop his skin.' "

"Aye ! but I also told you yesterday that the Butterfly is
an emblem — an image of the soul — your soul. The Butterfly
was once a crawling greedy caterpillar — his world the heart of
a cabbage."

" The devil fell sick — the devil a monk would be ;
The devil got well — the devil a monk was he."

The baron got well ; but his penitence did not exactly evaporate
in a whiff of brimstone, as is here recorded concerning that of
his late master.

One day, while leaning, in his walk, on the arm of Ambrose,
a thought — a clever one as he believed it — entered the conva-
lescent's head.

" Father," said he, '•' what would have become of all these
flying creatures, if when, as you tell me, they were crawling
caterpillars, they had not eaten their fill? Methinks their
bravery would have been finely clipped. See, some of them
are bigger than the others, — those, I warrant, who had a place
nearest to the cabbage heart. If your comparison held good,
the more a man indulged his carnal appetites, the better angel
he would make."

" Satan, avaunt !" inwardly exclaimed the holy man, shocked
at the irreverent idea — " thou speakest as if the carnal man were
in reality a caterpillar, with no better teaching than his own
craving appetites — the immortal spirit really a short-lived But-
terfly. Did I not explain how these are only emblems ? But,
even thus considered, thy objection is but vain. Perhaps thou

EMBLEMATIC TEACHING.

149

knowest not (and here my teaching was in fault) that no Butter-
fly ever yet issued from a caterpillar's skin — no crawling worm
ever yet changed, at once, into a glorious flutterer. The greedy
caterpillar must put off, first, his gross and grovelling nature ;
his sensual delights of cabbage or of nettle must become to
him as nothing."

" Look here," he continued, plucking from off an angle of
the castle wall a suspended chrysalis — " look at this seemingly
lifeless creature — this aurelia, shut up in its gilded skin, and
shut out from the creeping and flying things around it. You
deem it dead ; but its energies are now in fullest action, — its
various parts are maturing, and it will soon join its winged

brethren in the sky.

* * * * # #

A few years saw the baron converted into a reverend brother
of the same order, and an inmate of the same monastery, as
Father Ambrose.

" CfjEge gtanu tOeir putpogefc bap."

The transformations of a May- or Day-Fly (Ephemera vnujata}, form tne sub-
ject of this vignette. On the bank is the grub or larva, with the nest-holes,
usually below water, which it is accustomed to inhabit. Attached to the grass
above is a vacated skin, the complete envelope of a perfect fly, which it always
casts off on its fourth or last development. To the right, flies an imago, or
perfect insect, as freed from this iucasement, while a company of the same are
seen disporting at a distance.

THINGS OF A DAY.

£ are no advocate, through thick and thin,
for " the Good Old Times," into which we
should be sorry to find ourselves carried back
in other than on the wings of Fancy ; but, few
enough, in these days, are the things made or
done with a view to other than a temporary purpose, and for
this reason all our doings (sorry bunglers as we are at best) are
ten times more imperfect than they need be.

EPHEMERA OF ART AND NATURE. 151

Look at that new street, in suburban London, called Atlas
Place. Wanting strength to support their own weight, two
of the end houses fell beneath the gales of last March. But
what of this? They stood their intended day, for they
were only built to sell, and were turned into money; they
served to " raise the wind " before the wind razed them. In the
centre of the row still stands Atlas House, a manufactory of
boarding-school misses, from whence they are to be turned out,
exquisitely polished. The polish, it is true, will lie but on the
surface, soon to be rubbed off, instead of heightened, by the
wear and tear of life. And who can expect it otherwise,
knowing that the neat little articles "finished" at all such
establishments are but plated goods, got up only to last their
day, to pass with the unwary for sterling metal, and fetch above
their value at the matrimonial mart ?

In the house adjoining, at a front window But stay !

what have we here, just fallen upon the ledge of our own
cottage casement? An Ephemeral or May-fly, one, doubtless,
of the early swarm which we noticed at nine o'clock this
morning rising and falling near the brook at the bottom of
the garden. They were then just risen from the water, new-
born into air, and into their perfect stage of being. Now it
is scarce noon, yet of this, and of the greater number of its
active fellows, the life is over. Literally, as proverbially, this
is the creature of a day ; — a day ! say rather of a few brief
hours ; but only let us compare it with the works of art or
artifice intended by us for a day's duration.

Here all is finish and perfection; for Nature metes not the
quality of her workmanship by amount of time. Even amongst
the beautiful and short-lived flowers some of the most beautiful
of all are of all the briefest ; — witness that flower of an hour
the Malva horaria, the Favonia, the Gum-cistus, and the
Night-blowing Cereus.

But now to examine more minutely our cloud-dropt insect
specimen,

152 THE MAY- FLY.

" Extinguished — not decayed."1

Look at these four unequal wings, with nervures so delicately
reticulate, resembling the finest lace, the meshes filled by
yellowish grassy membrane, and " freaked " with dark brown
spots or squares. On the narrow chest, and long and flexible
body, the same colours are harmoniously disposed in spots and
rings, and even the three slender filaments which form the
tail are ringed, en suite, with black and yellow, the whole being
coloured by a natural varnish. How nicely jointed, also, and
finely polished are the six tapering legs, of which the two
foremost are much longer than the others, forming, when
placed together and stretched forward, a sort of counterpoise
in flight to the filaments of the tail. Besides the large com-
pound eyes, which occupy a great portion of the head, we can
just discern without a magnifier (and clearly with one) three
shining spots disposed in a triangle close behind them. These
are the ocelli or simple eyes, common to most other perfect
insects.

And all this external beauty, with external organism yet
more admirable, is intended but for the duration and uses of
less than a single day ! Fewer organs and far less adornment
might seem, in our contracted judgment, to have sufficed for
creatures designed during so short a time to employ the former,
and to have the latter, in most cases, overlooked at least by
human observers. Occasionally indeed, as we are now doing,
we are led to amuse what we call an idle hour by bestowing
a little more than our wonted notice on the more fleeting and
fragile works of nature ; and then, as we admire the elegance
of form, the exquisite finish, the curious adaptation of parts,
so strikingly if not pre-eminently observable in the flower or
the insect of a day, there comes, mingled with our admiration,
a feeling somewhat akin to wondering regret that so much
pains should have been bestowed on the formation of an

1 Vignette.

MAY- FLY CHANGES. 153

object intended to exist but for so short a space. " It's almost
a pity ! It's scarcely worth the while !" — are phrases which,
rising to our lips, are checked only by the monstrous unfit-
ness of applying them to the works of an infinite Being, with
whom to will is to create, and to whom a day is as a thousand
years, — a thousand years as a day.

Maternal instinct, wonderfully guided by Paternal Provi-
dence, directs each parent May-fly (heedless sporter as she
seems) to drop her eggs into the water while she hovers above
its surface. From each of these issues, in due time, a wingless
six-legged grub,1 which bears no resemblance to the perfect
insect, except, perhaps, in the triple appendage of bristles
issuing from the tail. The first care and labour of the larva's
life is to excavate for its habitation, within the soft bank of
the river, a hole or burrow, proportioned to its size, and below
the level of the water, of which it is consequently always full.
This cavernous abode serves the double purpose of protecting
it from the jaws of its finny foes, and of providing it with a
ready supply of that slimy earth on which it is supposed chiefly
to subsist.2

In the above sub-merged, subterranean, sunless and earth-
eating existence the streams of life and of its native current
glide for four and twenty successive moons over the head of
our as yet misnamed Ephemera, which, during the latter part
of the same period, exchanges the first (or Larva) for the
second (or Pupa) state of insect life. It is then that on some
fine May morning (or may be evening) it bids adieu for ever
to its dark subaqueous dwelling, and rises to the surface, pre-
pared to enter on its third estate.

Having burst from the Pupa skin, which is left behind as
the badge and bandage of an inferior and confined condition,
it quits, in company with numerous fellows, the water for the
air, in the shape, to all appearance, of a perfect fly. As if,

1 Vignette. 8 See Insect Architecture, p. 206.

154 FOURTH DEVELOPMENT.

however, the most fugacious of all insect forms was purposely
designed to be also the most elaborately finished, it has still to
pass through another and fourth stage of development. The
singular process by which this additional and final change is
effected has been thus described.1

"After its release from the Puparium, and making use of
its wings for flight often to a considerable distance, the little
Ephemera fixes itself by its claws in a vertical position to
some convenient object, and withdraws every part of the body,
even legs and wings, from a thin pellicle which has enclosed
them like a glove the fingers, and so exactly do the exuvicBj
which remain attached to the spot where the Ephemera
has disrobed itself, retain their former figure, that I have
more than once at first eight mistaken them for the perfect
insect."

When thus adorned in their best and what may properly be
called their bridal vestments, love and pleasure (unimpeded
even by the exigences of hunger, air being then their only
food) form the brief and brilliant consummation of their
lives.

The seasons as well as hours of appearance vary with
different sorts of Ephemerae, which are not therefore strictly
May-flies. That figured in our plate is a large common
species,2 which we have noticed late in May, and early in
June, sporting in groups of few or many, near the banks of
the New River at Hornsey. Its most usual hours of appearance
have been from seven till eleven in the morning, and from
about sunset until dusk. We may here observe, that confine-
ment, instead of abridging, would seem sometimes to prolong
the existence of this short-lived creature ; for of some of the
above species put into a box, at night, several were found
living in the morning.

Some of these insects appear in England even as late as

1 By Kirby and Spence. 2 Ephemera vvlgata.

EPHEMERAS.

155

August ; and Rennie speaks of having noticed them on the
Rhine in the same month of 1829, — when appearing in the
evening all were dead before sunrise. He describes them as
" so thickly strewn in the great square at Wiesbaden, that it
seemed as if a shower of snow had fallen in the night, their
wings being white, and about the size of a broad snow-flake."1
The remarkable brevity of the Ephemera's life seems to have
attracted the notice of the ancients, Aristotle speaking of little
animals on the river Hyparis which live but for a day : — those
(he observes) among them which die at eight in the morning
die in their youth ; those which live to see five in the after-
noon, in their old age.

1 Insect TrarsformHtiuns. p. 316.

©eaben'g otnn em&lem of t&e £011!."

*w

X\vv- ;W*A. \v¥- ^nk&^. ''^' :N.-'

This vignette is intended to represent the magical effects produced in vege-
table growth by the punctures of various Gall-Flies. To the right, on the
Briar Rose, are three of the moss-like galls termed Rose Bedeguars, each
enclosing eggs or larvae of the Producing Fly (Cynips Rosce). The Gall -Fly
itself is figured to the left, above ; and the largest and most gaily-coloured
insect of the four, also distinguished by a tail -like appendage, is a parasitic
Ichneumon ( t'alimone Bedeguaris,) as often as the true Gail-Fly an occupant
of the Rose Bedeguars. On the rose-leaves above the moss-like tufts are two
other galls, globular and spiny, produced by another Cynips, also figured
above. To the left, on the branch of oak, are various fruit-like galls. The
largest, full of perforations, is the common Oak-apple, when turned brown
after exit, through these holes, of its Gall-Fly inhabitants ( Cynips Qwercws),
one of which is represented in the centre of the Vignette. This and the other
flies are considerably magnified. On the oak-leaves are several berry-shaped
galls, green tinged with red, called leaf or currant galls, and nearly similar to
those which hang in bunches from the catkins. Above and below the large
Oak-apple, and proceeding from the branch, are two of the artichoke galls of
the oak-bud. The excrescence, of somewhat oblong form and variegated
colour, attached to a low branch in the centre of the foreground, was drawn
from a specimen found amongst many others in Highgate Wood.

157

INSECT MAGICIANS.

HE day approaches on which oak-apples,
bearing their gilded honours, will perpetuate
the memory of those their ancestral fruits,
which hung, in company with a hunted mon-
arch, on the tree of Boscobel. Whether
dressed in tinsel, or adorned by Nature's painting, these apples
of royalty are pretty things to look at ; and against the coming
anniversary (the 29th of May), which will bring them within
the reach of all, it may be worth inquiring whether they have
aught within deserving notice; or whether, as with the
merry monarch's self, they are to be estimated only for their
outward bravery.

Pleasant to the taste these fair fruits are not (as well we
know by bitter experiences of childhood); so not daring to
bite, let us pull one of them asunder, or, dividing it with a
knife, reveal its secrets. We now see, surrounded and bounded
by spongy pulp, a set of cells, each with its solitary living
occupant for whose safe keeping, and that of his fellows, this
fruitlike tenement was called into existence, not by the labours
of a trifling artificer, but by the touch of a flying fairy. The
insect tenants of these pulpy palaces are not unlike, in one
condition of their being, to the scions of royal houses. It is
not improbable that before one of them has attained to the
majority of its winged estate, all may be despoiled of their
inheritance by a host of usurping parasites, such as, in palaces
reared by hands, have often enacted a resembling part.

The above description of a common oak-apple, its Gall-fly
occupant, and Ichneumon intruder, may seem over-fanciful;
but in writing of Galls, our pen may possibly be carried from
the dry land of simple fact by some spirit of fiction in our ink,
— an infusion, it is likely, of gall-nuts, the produce of the

158 ORIGIN OF GALLS.

East, the very region of romance. With graver pens than ours,
Fancies would seem, indeed, to have been the very growth ot
Galls ; for, descanting on their origin, an Italian entomologist,1
an observant naturalist, — one who waged war, moreover, with
Popular Fallacies, — imagined that Oak-apples and other Galls
were animated, nay, brought into being by a soul — not an
animal but a vegetative and sensitive soul — in the plant itself.
To account for the mysterious entrance of life into the centre
of an imperforate ball, he might just as well have adopted, and
slightly modified to suit his purpose, the no less imaginative
notion of some learned Jewish Rabbins, who believed, or, not
believing, taught that human souls transmigrate after death
into leaves and buds.

But a truce with fancy, and now for fact; or perhaps we
should say rather for the probable instead of improbable con-
jectures to which the extraordinary birth of oak-galls, and galls
in general, have given rise. One thing is clearly ascertained,
namely, that their originator is none other than an insect, — the
winged parent of the wingless grub, or Larva, which begins
life within them ; but how the slight puncture made by the
mother fly upon a leaf, or stem, or bud, can produce, and that
often in a few hours, the extraneous vegetable products which
arise for its protection around the inserted egg, is still no little
of a marvel and a mystery. The common oak-apple (as be-
comes instantly apparent on cutting one across) contains within
its pulpy substance numerous oval cells, each enclosing a small
grub, which in due season, — June usually, or July, — will
issue forth a little four-winged insect, the image of its mother
Gall-fly.2 Such, at least, is the result, when the legitimate
possessors of the apple are allowed to reach maturity ; but, in
spite of the protecting bulwark which Nature has thrown up
around them, a parasitic invader, a brilliant fly of the usurping
family Ichneumon? often detects the helpless dwellers in the

1 Kedl. 2 Vignette. 3 Vignette.

GALLS OF THE OAK. 159

apple, pierces with an instrument adapted for the purpose
through the fleshy pulp, and depositing an egg within each
of the Gall-fly's grubs, leaves them a prey to the cravings of
her own. The latter, when arrived at maturity, emerge a set
of winged impostors, which, besides having taken the lives
and usurped the dwellings of the Gall-fly brood, have some-
times also, through error of observers, robbed them even of
their name.

Besides the oak-apple, many other varieties of Gall (each
the produce of a distinct species of Cynips) are found on the
same tree. One of these is now common on the leaves. They
are either single or in groups ; are about the size of a currant,
green, tinged with red, and serve each as a protecting globe
to a single egg, or grub, which occupies a central cavity,
surrounded by the juicy substance of the fruit. These berry-
like productions are sometimes seen attached also to the oak
catkins, pendant on which they are not unlike a half-plucked
bunch of currants, from their resemblance to which they have
been named Currant . Galls.1 Others, widely differing from
the above in appearance, but of similar origin, are also very
abundant • on the oak, near the extremity of its branches.
These, from their form, and the arrangement of the small
leaflets which compose them, have been named after the
artichoke, which they most resemble.2

Not only the most extreme and tender branches, but the
rugged bark, the solid wood, the root even of the giant oak,
is ready, at the touch of her wand-like piercers, to supply the
fairy Gall-fly with those rapid and extraneous growths, which
serve to protect her tender offspring. Most of these bark and
root-galls have the appearance of brown, woody, irregular
excrescences ; but there are some which form a beautiful and
striking contrast with the coarse substances from which they
spring.

1 Vignette. a Vignette.

160 ROSE GALLS.

Several other of these curious productions of animal origin,
but vegetable growth, have been found upon the English oak ;
but it is to the oaks of other lands, those chiefly of Asia
Minor, that we are indebted for the Galls, which, exported
from Smyrna and Aleppo, made a prime ingredient of our
ink. Such as may be curious to look upon one of those fairy-
like Oriental flies, whose tiny wands have assisted to feed their
pens, perhaps also their purses and their pride, have only to
buy and bruise some half dozen of the best blue galls, in one
or more of which the perfect insect is almost certain to be
found imbedded.

Various are the other trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants
which produce each their peculiar galls. As the towering oak
is not too lofty, neither is the trailing ground-ivy1 too lowly
to escape the impost levied on its juices for the protection and
support of Gall-fly infancy, which is also cradled on the
branches of poplar, willow, rose, and broom. Very commonly
met with on the leaves of the hedge-rose, in July and August,
is a berry-shaped gall, nearly resembling the currant-gall of
the oak. Like that, it is coloured much like an apple, usually
advancing with age from paly-green to rosy and mellow red ;
but, instead of being always smooth, this miniature and mimic
fruit often displays a sprinkling of short sharp thorns indicative
of the character of its fostering, if not parent, stem.2 Besides
the above, the dog-rose is accustomed to display one of the
most conspicuous and perhaps the very prettiest of all Gall-fly
productions. This, which is often called the rose Bedeguar,
wears the appearance of a mossy tuft, varying greatly in size
and in colour from green to brilliant red.3 In some parts of
England it is said to be known by the name of Robin's Pin-
cushion (we suppose Robin Goodfellow's) — a term which
would serve to designate its fairy-like formation. The creative
piercer of the fairy insect is, on this occasion, usually applied

1 The gall of the ground-ivy is produced by a Gall -gnat.
2 Vignette. 3 Vignette.

ROSE BEDEGUARS. 161

to a branch, sometimes to the main stalk of a leaf. The plant
obeys, as usual, the behest of the parent fly, and speedily
puts forth its energies to cover the group of eggs committed
to its care ; but, instead of surrounding them by a fruit-like
globule, it produces, for their protection, a fibrous spiny mass,
shooting in clusters from the several cells which include, each,
its life in embryo. It is justly observed, by Mr. Rennie, that
" the prospective wisdom of this curious structure is admirable.
The Bedeguar grubs live in their cells through the winter,
and, as their domicile is usually on one of the highest branches,
it must be exposed to every severity of the weather. But
the close non-conducting warm mossy collection of bristles,
with which it is surrounded, forms, for the soft tender grubs,
a snug protection against the winter's cold; till, through the
influence of the warmth of the succeeding summer, they
undergo the final change into the winged state, preparatory to
which they eat their way with their sharp manidbles through
the walls of the little cells, which are then so hard as to be cut
with difficulty by a knife."1

The rightful possessors of this comfortable mass-covered
hybernaculum are four-winged flies of no extraordinary beauty;2
but amongst the usurpers, which frequently deprive them in
infancy of life and lodging, are some splendid ichneumon
parasites,3 which have been pronounced unrivalled for elegance
of form and brilliancy of colour. Their bodies, resplendent
with metallic hues, — gold and purple, green and blue, and
their wings (also four) with iridescent lustre, — these insect
gems, which want nothing but size to 'dazzle the admiring
eye, are beautiful objects for the microscope, and are easily
procurable by keeping some of the rose Bedeguars, gathered
in autumn or in spring, until about June; when, if placed
under a glass, the egress of their occupants, whether legitimate
or surreptitious, may be conveniently observed.

1 Insect Architecture. 3 Vignette. 3 Vignette.

162 GALL-FLY.

Besides the Gall-fly, properly so called, there are several
other insects which cause by their punctures a variety of
vegetable excrescences somewhat resembling those described.
Amongst these are the thistle-fly,1 gall-gnat,2 a few minute
beetles, and several sorts of Aphides.

As works of wonder, all the comparatively great effects
which arise from these tiny causes are worthy of description, as
well as notice ; but they are too large and too varied for the
little limits of our page. It remains, moreover, to complete
our outline sketch of Insect Magicians by one or two of the
most plausible conjectures, as to the manner in which their
natural miracles are wrought through the prick of a needle,
tit only for the fingers of Queen Mab.

The Ovipositor, or egg-inserting piercer, of the mother
Gall-fly, is, in some instances, conspicuously long ; in others,
only partially visible, except on pressure, when it appears
issuing from a sheath, in form of a small curved needle longer
than the insect's body, wherein it is, however, rolled up by a
curious internal apparatus. It is supposed, by Mr. Rennie,3
that " after the Gall-fly has made a puncture with this instru-
ment, and pushed her egg into the hole, she covers it over
with some adhesive gluten ; or that the egg itself, as is usual
among moths, &c, may be thus coated over. In either of
these cases the gluten will prevent the sap that flows through
the puncture from being scattered over the leaf, and wasted ;
and the sap, being thus confined to the space occupied by the
eggs, will expand and force outward the pellicle of gluten that
confines it; till, becoming thickened by evaporation and
exposure to air, it at length shuts up the puncture, stops the
further escape of the sap, and the process is completed."
The above explanation is, however, only given as conjectural,
and the one generally adopted by French naturalists is, that

1 Tephritis Cardui. * Cecidomyia.

3 Insect Architecture, pp. 371-3.

ROYAL GALLS.

163

the gall tubercle is caused by irritation, in the same way, as an
inflamed tumor in an animal body.

We have seen now that Galls, though common things, are
things produced in no common way, and things involved still
in a certain degree of mystery. On learning this, some of
you, our friends, may be led perhaps to avail yourselves of the
coming day of oak-apples, to look beneath their surface. If
there be one of you accustomed to estimate Nature only by
her economic uses, — one who has never thought of galls but
as associate with ink, — of willows save as material for
baskets, — of roses, save as ingredients of a pot-pourri, — what
will you think, on finding that the oak, the willow, the briar-
rose, are, even in their excrescences, the supporters of animated
worlds ? What can you think but that your own mind must
have been limited within a little world indeed? — a world
from which you will be as eager to emerge, as is the Gall-fly
from its oak-apple.

ogt ropal retribution ! "

^•JVr.rv-.'-X

;i>c^rfBBHK^jf-»f/Y/'V

Two of the golden green Rose Chafer (Cetonia aurata), seeking their favourite
repast of pollen in the heart of a Rose.

LOVF, AMONG THE ROSES.

ladies, and old, and ladies of a certain
age, all of you who have propensities for
petting, we can recommend to you a pet, — a
novel sort of favourite. We will describe his
person and his qualities. In figure, he is a
model of miniature proportion, a match for the German
Dwarfs, a rival of General Tom Thumb, and a contrast to
many of his pigmy order, frightful in big-headedness, or bulk
of limb. He is clad in a coat of mail, and his armour — how
shall we describe it for lustre, taste, and finish? The finest
suit that ever issued from the workshops of Milan, rich in the

A NOVEL FA VOURITE. 165

most cunning inlay of gold or steel, would prove, if compared
with it, a rude, unsightly piece of workmanship. On the
back of the corslet, burnished green and gold are the prevailing
hues, while in front, on breast-plate, cuisse, and gauntlet, the
lustre of the precious metal is predominant, mingled with
changeable reflections of purplish crimson. But description
fails in doing justice to an array so brilliant. Let us proceed,
therefore, to its owner's character and habits, which are in all
respects consonant to his polished exterior. His gentleness
is in unison with his beauty, and he is no less distinguished
for taste and delicacy. No gross and greedy appetite defiles
his form or nature; for nothing coarser than honey or the
golden farina of flowers, moistened by the juice of fruits,
makes up his table of regalement. He loves, while yet in
freedom, to ride upon a sunbeam ; but would be content, when
once enthralled, to bask only in the sunshine and his mis-
tress's smile, — to revel and to sleep upon a bed of roses.
What think you, ladies, of this our candidate for your especial
notice ? In proper and euphonious parlance, ' Cetonia aurata,9
is the fitting appellation which he bears ; but to you, pro-
bably, if already known at all, he is more familiar as ' a nasty
beetle !'

Yes, it is thus, doubtless, that, blinded (as some are for
their live-long day) by the morning mist of early prejudice,
you have been led to miscall even that beautiful creature, the
Rose or Golden Chafer; with a multitude of others scarcely
less worthy of admiring notice.

We have now ourselves a pair of these pretty insects caged
in an open-worked basket, with serious intent to test the extent
of their longevity, said by Roesel to have reached, in an indi-
vidual of his own keeping, to the term (for an insect patriarchal)
of three years. As was done by the German naturalist, we
supply our captives, in addition to their favourite roses, with
fruit and sugared moistened bread, — a fare with which they seem
by no means disposed to quarrel, any more than with each other,

166 ROSE CHAFERS.

and such excellent friends are they, as often (like an insect
Helena and Hermia) to

" Have with their " jaws " sat working at one flower,"

or at the demolition of one strawberry.

Now if any of our fair friends should feel disposed to try for
themselves the keeping of some of these "loves among the
roses " they may lodge them, if they please, in a style of appro-
priate elegance. In the stead of a basket let them be provided
with a round closely-wired cage, high enough to contain in its
centre a branch of roses, and wide enough to admit of a sur-
rounding bed of light earth or sand.

Well, but perhaps say you, when the last rose of summer is
departed, and the last strawberry is gathered, what then will
become of our rose-beetles ? Why, for lack of summer flowers,
the rose, the peony, and e.lder, they must content themselves
with flowers of autumn, dahlia, marigold, and aster, and
with autumn fruits, the plum and pear. But when winter
comes in earnest? Then it is likely that, according to the
usage of their out-door brethren, which retire for the season to
chambers underground, your domesticated chafers may betake
themselves, for the same, to the bed provided them. In the
case, however (though this is not, we believe, in favour of their
longevity), of their being roused to activity by the warmth of
house or fire, a moistened fragment of our " staff of life " will
suffice amply to support the light burthen of their vitality.

Taking a July ramble through the woods or lanes of some
of our southern counties — Essex, Kent, and Hants especially
— it is more than probable that we may fall in with a gigantic
forester, clad from top to toe in blackish mail, with head
broader than his shoulders, and jaws, armed with formidable
teeth, longer than his head.

" Oh ! the horrifying monster ! " exclaims, with a shudder,
one of our lady-readers. " You can never, Mr. Cricket,
intend to add a Caliban like this to your list of pretenders to

STAG-BEETLE. 167

our favour." " Most assuredly, dear Madam, we have intro-
duced him for the very purpose. Monster, as you call him,
he is one of the most harmless and gentle ib the world. Aye,
and playful in the bargain. Only give heed, we prythee, to
the written character (in a domestic situation) of one whom
you are pleased to designate a Caliban." " After a time (says
his master) he became quite tame and playful, and sometimes
amused himself by tossing about a ball of cotton with his
horns. He was very fond of sugar moistened, and the juice
of raspberries. — There's a pet for you ! so delicate in feeding
and playful as a fawn ; — and now for his name. He is not a
fawn exactly ; but he is a stag — Lucanus cervus— Stag-beetle.
We have said not a word as yet about his horns ; but we have
told you of his jaws ; and though of horns he is not destitute,
the enormous toothed appendages to which he owes his name
are veritable grinders. To look at, they are, in truth, tremen-
dous weapons; but they are innocent of all save vegetable
blood ; and used only to wound the tender branches of oak, or
birch, or chestnut, for extraction of their circulating fluid. It
is possible, indeed, that, with intent most harmless, he might
mistake a lady's finger for a silver birch-twig, or a peeled band
of hazel, and sorely pinch it, even to the flowing of the
crimson sap : of this, therefore, let his mistresses beware."

Like the majority of his Beetle brethren, Lucanus cervus is
accustomed to keep within covert during day, and take its
flight about the hour of sunset. Its appearance, when on
wing, has been likened to that of a flying duck in miniature.
The wood of decaying trees is the nursery wherein, as a grub
or larva, this insect forester passes the period of its infancy.
We have now a Stag-beetle " set up " before us, and we are
compelled, as we look upon this insect giant (a dwarf though, in
comparison with some of its foreign relatives), to confess that
he is a wonderful and admirable creature. So solid — so com-
pact— so perfect — so permanent ; he has nothing about him of
insect lightness and fragility. Armed, not merely " to the
teeth," but to the very eyes, in his encasing panoply of ebon

168 THE WEEVIL TRIBE.

hue and ebon hardness, even death makes no impression on his
outward form; and the ten years' occupant of a collector's
cabinet shows as fresh and life-like, in all but motion, as a
really living specimen. The same qualities of perfection and
permanence belong, more or less, to the whole order Coleop-
tera, comprising the numerous varieties of the Beetle tribe.

Then (a striking contrast with the above rotundities) there
is the pretty and many-coloured tribe of Weevils1 — of form
elongate, and further lengthened by a slender beak or rostrum,
employed as a spiggot for the tapping of their favourite sappy
wine. One of these, now very abundant, especially on the
black-thorn, is a little fellow, with a coat of green verditer —
sometimes glossed with gold.

We have spoken elsewhere of the most interesting of all
objects for which insects can be kept — that of observing their
transformations, and the varied processes of their constructive
skill — those especially of the Order Lepidoptera, comprising
moths and butterflies. If this practice, instead of being
nearly confined to professed entomologists, were very generally
followed, the country would have fewer idlers, Nature more
admirers, and (it could not be otherwise) the God of Nature
more praise.

Were we to talk about pet-caterpillars, we might be set
down as more monstrously absurd than even in our recom-
mendation of pet-beetles ; but, however people may smile at
the idea, it is seriously and perfectly true that we have had
certain caterpillars long enough in our keeping to have
acquired for them a sort of fondness, and to have felt sorry
when their change came. Of these some were the beautiful
larva?2 of the sphinx or hawk moths, which, with their gaily-
coloured and sometimes shagreened skins, mitre-shaped heads,
horn-like tails, and sphinx-like attitudes, seem to have so little

1 Weevil (Curculio).

2 Larvae of the Sphingidae (Hawk moths or sphinxes).

PUSS CATERPILLAR. 169

horn-like tails, and sphinx-like attitudes, seem to have so little
of the crawling worm about them, that one can hardly help
regarding them almost as creatures sui generis. Specimens
of these may be found, next month, upon the poplar, lime, and
privet.

But foremost of our favourites, among their kind, are those
wonders of the willow, the gaudy caterpillars of the puss
moth,1 which sitting up so demurely on their boughs look,
even more than the sphinxes, like animals which " stand "
as well as sit " alone." 2 After having watched and tended
one of these singular creatures from its tiny kittenhood (and
then very like a kitten it is) up to the period of its catf-erpillar
growth, we have really missed it from its 'customed seat — a
perch of willow stretched across its box ; and whereon, when
nearly arrived at its bulky maturity, we have often upheld its
painted body, while, with head protruded from its hood-like
shoulders, it has set busily to work upon a fresh supply of
leafy provender.

Now only let some of those, who laugh at the idea of fond-
ness for a caterpillar, ask themselves if they have never felt
fondness for that whereon a caterpillar feeds — for a plant — we
mean that peculiar liking, distinct from general, which we are
apt to entertain for a favourite plant of our own. To tend on
anything day by day — to minister to its benefit — for that thing
to depend on us for life — though perfectly unconscious of such
dependence — is enough, it can hardly be disputed, to create a
feeling which borders on attachment for even an inanimate object.
Is it strange, then, that from the like causes the like result
should follow with a creature endowed with consciousness, and
possessed of senses resembling our own ?

We know, indeed, that flowers are (as they should be)
universally loved, while insects (the creatures of all others most
nearly allied to them) are, as they should not be, almost univer-

1 Cerura vinula. 2 See vignette to " A Summer's Day's Dream."

170 PREJUDICE COMBATED

sally disliked. But in proof that the latter prejudice may be
overcome — not by argument, nor yet by ridicule — but by the
seeing of the eye, we must be allowed to quote our old domes-
tic, in whom it was the growth of seventy years, and deep-
rooted in the weedy soil of ignorance. Like all persons of her
class, and many of a higher, she 'held the orders of beetle and
caterpillar in especial abhorrence; and when we first began
to keep " our hobby " in the house, Martha was almost
as highly disconcerted as if we had brought home a new
housekeeper.

We value our humble friend a great deal too highly ever to
feel quite indifferent about her opinion — far less her feelings —
however founded in lack of knowledge or in weakness. We
essayed, therefore, quite as much for our sake as for hers, to over-
come her prejudice against the insect race, and we have
succeeded ; but it was by means of going to work very gently
with her antipathies.

We fanned them with the wings of butterflies — dazzled them
by the lustre of our golden chafers — amused and fairly deceived
them by the oddity of our caterpillar " puss." Having thus
cleared a loop-hole for its entrance, we threw in on each of our
subjects a ray of light, — by the double evidence of eyes and
spectacles, convinced our wondering convert that butterflies are
of caterpillars come — that there is no such great difference,
after all, betwixt the green chafer, our love among the roses,
and the black-beetle — her horror among insects — and even that
there are not wanting strong features of family likeness between
the sitting "puss" of the willow and the common crawler of
the cabbage.

These were steps of progression ; and we have now brought
her — or, perhaps we should say, more generously, she has
brought herself — to look with complacency on our insect
menagerie — nay, what is more, has brought her fingers to
bring us, and with a smile of triumph, what she (poor soul),
in spite of all our schooling, takes for something new — albeit,

AND OVERCOME. 171

perhaps, a caterpillar from a cauliflower, or a cockroach from
the kitchen. She even looks with a reconciled eye upon our
pet stag-beetle.

Apropos of this Goliath of British Coleoptera. Though re-
puted to live on sap, we have never, during the six weeks of
his captivity, seen him extract it from leaf or branch by pres-
sure of his pinching jaws. His preferred and chosen fare is
the syrup from sugared bread, and the only leaves he cares for
are those of which the surface is bespread with honey dew.
He seems, in short, to dispense gladly with all labour inciden-
tal by nature to procurement of food, and, provided always that
he be defended from the unwelcome intrusion (by a leafy
canopy) of daylight, seldom evinces restlessness, not even of an
evening, — his time when at liberty for taking wing.

On two occasions only has he shown impatience under con-
finement, and these have been previous to and during thunder-
storms, when atmospheric influence has urged to the most
energetic efforts at escape.

"iCJjere'f apetforgou!1

In this vignette are represented a few only of the innumerable insect inhabit-
ants of an Oak. On the leaf at bottom is a group of the black and yellow
caterpillars of the Buff-tip Moth (Pygcera Bucephala), as they are accustomed
to repose in company after or before a change of skin. Over these, a minia-
ture file of the same, newly-hatched, are marching in order over a leaf, from
which, as they proceed, they strip the upper surface. Higher, towards the
left, is a nest of silk, with indrawn leaves, woven for winter occupancy by the
social caterpillars of a Gold-tail Moth (Porthesia auriflua). Dependent by a
silken line from the branch above, hangs one of the moth caterpillars termed
" Loopers " (Geometridce), of which there are two others, one fixed motionless
at right angles with a branch, the other walking, or looping, on the edge of a
leaf. These occupy the right-hand oak; and on the same, attached to
branches, are two of the curious structures of the moth caterpillar called the
Oak-bark builder (Pyralis strigulatus). Several Tent-makers (Tineidai) are
traversing the intermediate leaf, and a carnivorous Beetle (Scarabus clathratus)
is ascending the branches in search of prey.

173

THE TRIBES OF AN OAK.

E have ascended to a lofty eminence, whence,
as a spectator of London looking from the
summit of St. Paul's, we are taking a bird's-
eye view over a populous city. In the high-
ways swarm a motley multitude, passing and
repassing, some on business, others on pleasure. Some are
employed in the erection of solid habitations — others are raising
shady tents upon the spots of verdure with which, above
all other capitals, this city abounds. Others, again, are
weaving for their occupation large silken hammocks, or are
rocked within them by the breeze, while they take refreshment
or repose. Of these, some are now issuing from their luxu-
rious abodes ; and, as if the footways (although of wood), were
too rugged for their tender feet, are laying down silken carpets
on the ways they are about' to tread. Yonder, on one of the
smooth green areas, slowly advances a compact military-looking
body, marshalled in files, dressed in uniform, and headed by a
leader.

And now what have we here? A group, as it would seem,
of pantomimic players, belonging to some strolling company.
Truly, they are clever fellows in the art of posture-making.

Look at one of the performers. He grasps with his feet an
upright pole, with which his body, extended horizontally, stiff
and motionless, forms a right angle, of which both sides,
instead of only one, look as if formed of wood. What pro-
digious strength of muscle ! He looks like a cataleptic patient
under the hands of a mesmeriser. See now one of his com-
panions— head and feet nearly met upon the ground — back
raised into an arch or Greek £1. This strange position would
seem but a part of his walking-movement ; for now, stretching

174 POSTURE-MASTERS.

forward, he plants, as it were, with his hands, another step;
then drawing up his rear, brings feet and heel again almost
together, and so progresses, looping as he goes, and measuring
the ground he treads on. A third of his comrades, dressed
in like manner, is sitting idle on a horizontal pole, raised a
tremendous height above the ground. But now — powers of
earth and air ! — he throws himself off his station, and must
be dashed to atoms ! Not he ! the rogue ! for there he hangs
suspended by a slender rope, mid-air, like "one that gathers
samphire." Will he let himself drop, now, from that still
fearful height, or has he yet more length of rope (hid
nobody knows where) to let him down easy. By Jove !
neither. He's climbing up again by the line to which he
dangles: and now he's reached the top — the place from
whence he fell. Bravo ! master tumbler ! Bravo ! most ex-
cellent posture-masters ! You shall have our interest for a
season at Vauxhall !

Contrasted with these, who seem the idlers of the city, we
see, here and there, tottering under enormous burthens, and
distinguished by their dingy hue, large heads and slender
frames, some who appear the most laborious of all the labouring
population. Occupying the lowest quarters of the metropolis,
and emerging from underground, this class corresponds, appa-
rently, with the subterranean dwellers of London and all great
capitals — denizens of cellars and dark kitchens, and drudges of
the community.

This, and much more, though nothing perhaps altogether
new, is to be seen " under the sun," in the highways of this
extensive city ; and there are also other things (alas ! not new
either) going on in the shade and the bye-ways thereof. There
murder is boldly stalking, or slily lurking. The strong are
preying on the weak. Members of one society, nay, of one
family, are openly attacking or secretly injuring each other;
while greedy parasites are for ever preying on the substance
of those by whom they live.

SOLID ERECTIONS. 175

Now, shutting our eyes on the creations of Fancy, let us
open them on the realities of Nature. — Where are we ? — Our
populous city, like Aladdin's palace, has disappeared, and in
its stead stands, in solitary grandeur, a stately oak-tree. The
oak itself, with certain of its usual occupants, has stood, in fact,
for our opening sketch. The objects have been traced precisely
as they exist. Let us only fill up their outlines, and give to
each a name, and we shall have no picture of fancy, but a
faithful representation of dwellings that are raised and of the
dwellers which raise them, if not on every oak tree, in every
wood of oak.

To begin with the builders, and their solid erections, com-
pleted or in progress. Following the course of some branch
(or highway) we shall presently perceive them. And here we
have one1 — a covered structure of triangular form — its walls
composed, apparently, of a sort of tiling, which resembles in
colour the bark of the smooth branch whereon it is seated —
and there we see another — and another (call them what you
will, huts or palaces) — not contiguous, but as regular in plan,
aye, and more so, than the houses in our best-built streets.
On another diverging branch are several similar erections, in
different stages of progression, and employed on each of them
we can discern a single artizan, who is preparing the abode
for his own solitary occupation. This labourer is a small yel-
lowish white caterpillar, tinged with red, each segment of his
body being studded with tufts of red hair. He has fourteen
feet, and the upper part of his body is more flat than in the
generality of the caterpillar crew. He has also two brown
spots behind the head. On commencing operations he mea-
sures (using his body as a rule) the place intended for his
structure — the basement of which is of a triangular form,
with the apex at the lower end. "The bricks or tiles of
which the building is composed are small rectangular strap-

1 Vignette.

176 ' TENT-MAKERS.

shaped pieces of the outer bark, cut out from the immediate
vicinity. Upon the two longest sides of the triangular base
he proceeds to build uniform walls, also of triangular shape,
and both, gradually diverging from each other as they increase
in height. When finished, the little architect proceeds to
draw them together by pulling them with silken cords till they
bend and converge and meet. When the two longest sides
are thus joined, an opening is still left at the upper and
broadest end of the triangle, which being filled up in a similar
manner, the building is complete"1 — without, and, when
tapestried with silk, is furnished within. This clever bark-
builder, for whose operations May is the usual season, is the
caterpillar of a moth.2

Next for the tent-makers — those who, not living in the
streets, set up their lighter tabernacles on the verdant spots —
the green parks of our embowered city ; in other words, upon
the foliage of the oak. These also are caterpillars, belonging
to a family of small moths,3 which employ the leaves of
various trees not only for food, but also as material for the
construction of most curious and elegant abodes. " These
tents4 are from a quarter of an inch to an inch in length, and
usually about the breadth of an oat-straw. They are of the
colour of a withered leaf, being cut out, not from the whole
thickness, but artfully separated from the upper layer, as a
person might separate one of the leaves of paper from a piece
of pasteboard."

Next to these, and much more conspicuous on a survey of
our insect city, come the silken hammocks and their luxurious
occupants and weavers. These are 'also caterpillars — those of
a moth in some years very common, called the " Brown-Tail."5
Instead of, like the " tent-makers," working by themselves,

1 Insect Architecture, p. 198. 2 Pyralis Strigularis. — Kirby.

3 Tineidce. 4 Vignette.

5 Silken Hammock Weavers. Caterpillars of Brown Tail Moth (Porthesia
auriflua), and of Gold Tail, ditto.

SOCIAL TENEMENTS. 177

and for their own exclusive accommodation, these are a
social race, and labour together at the formation of their nest
or hammock,1 which is composed of greyish silk, and in form
irregular, either roundish or angular, according to its situation
either in an angle or at the extremity of a branch, the leaves
of which are drawn together and included within the walls.
The most careless of strollers must often have noticed, towards
autumn and through the winter, not only upon oaks, but also
upon beech, apple, and pear trees, and very frequently on the
rose, large web-like masses of silk, with leaves enclosed, and
these are the abodes of which we speak. This common
dwelling is partitioned within into chambers for one or for
several occupants, which communicate by doorways. When
the frosts commence, the silken walls, both outer and inner,
are thickened by new layers of tapestry, and thus snugly
fortified, their inmates, who are also wrapped in sleep, bid
defiance to the autumn gales and cutting blasts of winter.
When invited abroad by the genial breath of spring, and the
tender leafy provender which spring provides them, the mem-
bers of this luxurious community begin to make excursions
from their protecting tabernacle; and on these occasions the
leader of the band always lays down for the succeeding steps
of his companions a strip of woven carpet. This silken clue
serving as a guide, the caterpillar-ramblers, however far and
wide their predatory travels, have no difficulty in returning to
their home, to whose shelter they are always driven by heavy
rain or scorching sun. Both the hammocks and habits of
these social "Brown-Tails" nearly resemble those of the black,
scarlet, and white caterpillars of the " Gold-Tails," also com-
mon on the oak. It is observed by Reaumur (speaking of
these treaders upon silk), " Nous pavons nos grands chemins ;
elles tapissent les leurs."

Where now is our corps of seeming soldiers? — the body

1 Vignette.

178 GEOMETERS.

which we saw progressing in regular " rank and file " across
one of the smooth green areas of our city. Most of the social
caterpillars, whilst occupying a common abode, are accustomed
to move in a certain degree of professional order; but the
species more especially celebrated for the soldier-like regularity
of their marchings, which are performed in parallel files, from
one to six deep, and always headed by a single leader, is the
" Oak processionary," a native of France, but not, we believe
of England.

The Tumblers and Posture-masters, whom we have aescribea
in the exhibition of their wonderful performances in the
branching streets of our leaf-embowered city, belong to another
and very peculiar tribe of Moth Caterpillars. From their
singular mode of progression — wherein they seem, as it were,
to measure the ground over which they pass — they are called
" Measurers and Geometers," — also " Loopers" because they
accomplish every step by alternately stretching out and looping
up their bodies in the form of a Greek H. They are no less
remarkable for the singular positions which their extraordinary
muscular power enables them to assume, when quiescent.
Attached to a branch by the hinder legs, they will remain, for
hours together, stiff and straight, stretched out at an angle
from it, or bent into some contorted curve. Of this descrip-
tion are the walking-branch caterpillars, elsewhere noted.1

After these, some of the most idle of our city's population,
we took notice of the most laborious — the occupiers of subter-
ranean dwellings in its lowest quarter. Now, looking round
the oak tree for their insect representatives, we presently discern
them., in a dingy multitude of laborious ants — bearing their
bulky burthens, and issuing from their dark abodes, excavated
in the trunk or root. These are Jet Ants, or Emmets — black
and shining as well-fed negroes — and without whip, or master,
1 Vignette.

OPEN MURDERERS. 179

save their ruling instinct — as laborious as the hardest-driven
son of Afric.

Such are a few, and a few only, .of the groups in activity,
the labours in progress, within and about the oak ; but under
our figure of a city, we have spoken of various deeds of dark-
ness as being also in constant committal within its precincts.
Where, amongst these, do the weak escape the ravages of the
strong ? and, amongst the tribes of an oak, numerous are the
helpless which are for ever falling a prey to the powerful.
Carnivorous ground beetles are climbing, by day and night, up
the rugged sides of the tree, to devour the helpless caterpillars
which abound thereon. Of these destroyers, some are dark
and grim of aspect (such as the Devil's Coach-horse),1 but
there are some of them beautiful as ferocious : one — a very
demon of destructiveness, with channelled armour, resplendent
in green and gold — clad, in the phrase of the poet, even as

" A mailed angel on a battle day."

But an angel verily of darkness, for ever engaged in attack
and slaughter of the defenceless and unarmed.

This brilliant destroyer is the Calosoma Sycophanta, a beetle
rarely seen in England ; but a species smaller and darker, the
Calosoma Inquisitor — an insect also of no little beauty — is not
at all uncommon, during the present month, on the oak and
hawthorn.

In no other locality has the extensive tribe of Parasitic or
Ichneumon Flies more fertile field for its insidious practices,
than amidst the numerous tribes of an oak.

A corpulent caterpillar is stuffing his furred or velvet
doublet with the juicy pulp of a young and tender oak-leaf.
An Ichneumon Fly, poised in air above him, her iridescent

1 Rove Beetle (Staphylinus).

180 INSIDIOUS MURDERERS.

wings and black-shining body glittering in the sun, is fearfully
vibrating her tail-like piercer, with intent to plunge it into the
fleshy back of her well-fed victim. She stoops — her weapon
enters — is withdrawn — and leaves behind it, in the wound, a
germ of nascent torture a thousand times more dreadful than a
drop of deadly poison — a tiny egg deposited within the warm
orifice pierced for its reception. In a few hours this egg be-
comes a gnawing worm, which thrives and fattens on the vital
juices, leaving carefully untouched the vital organs of the hap-
less gormandiser, thus compelled to foster it. Its growth com-
pleted, the parasitic grub emerges, and then, in completion of
its murderous part, spins a silken thread, with which it pro-
ceeds to bind the nearly exhausted body of its supporter to the
surface of the oak-leaf. Thus manacled, the shrunken remnant
of the once plump-crawler exists yet a few miserable days,
while the young Ichneumon, having enclosed itself within a
shroud of silk, undergoes its transformations, and finally emerges
into perfect life, a sparkling fly, like its parent, close beside the
then dead body of the creature by which it had been nourished
to maturity.

In the above general picture of an oak tree city, and its
occupants, we have taken the license of the dramatist and
painter to group together several insect personages, which are
not likely to be seen assembled under the sun of a single sum-
mer's day, though all are almost certain to be found in the course
of a summer — excepting the social Hammock Weavers, who
only occupy their abodes from autumn to spring.

A single oak-bough will often present to our view an
universe of insect worlds in the numerous galls on leaf, stem,
and catkin, differing in size and form, but all produced (as we
have seen already) by the puncture of a little fly.

Even the acorn has its peculiar and appropriate insect ; each
lichen, moss, and fungus — oak derived — swarms with its insect
denizens; while the oak-supported ivy is the grand resort,

AN INSECT UNIVERSE.

181

especially in autumn, of innumerable flies and bees, which,
when scarcely another flower is remaining, find food in its
honied blossoms and shelter under its glazed foliage.

In our most imperfect review of the insect tribes, which
depend for their all of life and enjoyment on the oak, one can
hardly help being reminded of other orders of being more or
less indebted to the same vegetable benefactor — even from
man, who building house and ship with oaken timber, is
assisted to perpetuate his thoughts by oaken and insect galls —
to the bird who, building his eyrie on oaken branches, derives a
part of her support from oak-residing insects, and, by dropping
the acorns, helps, in return, to extend the race of her protecting
and supporting tree.

" <£6en t&e 5Ccorn fja| ttg appropriator."

This vignette comprises four Butterflies not figured in the Frontispiece to om
First Volume. That on the Thistle to the right is the Clouded Yellow ( Colias
edusa.) That on the left with folded wings, the Painted Lady ( Cynthia Car-
dui). The Purple Emperor (Apatura Iris), lessened by distance, soars above,
and flitting below is the Small Skipper (Pamphila lined).

A FEW FRIENDS OF OUR SUMMER GLADNESS

ET us fill up our slight sketch of " Butterflies
in general" by a few outlines of the chief among
their tribes, which are native to our island.

In our winter's pursuit of " Life in Death,"
we have adverted already to the hardy few (sur-
vivors of the fugacious many), which are accustomed to resort
in autumn to some gnug recess, fold their wings, wrap round
them their cloaks of torpor, and thus, " taking no note of time,"

THE BRIMSTONE BUTTERFLY. 183

to await the spring, unless allured by the wintry sunshine to
pay us a few unseasonable, but ever welcome, visits. Among
these, the " little Tortoise-shell/' and the beautiful " Peacock,"
of whom more by-and-bye, are the intrepid pair which most
often gladden and surprise us in the time of yellow aconites
and Christmas roses ; but after these, we may be on the watch,
towards the end of February, or on the first gentle mornings of
early March, for a flutterer more welcome still, as the herald
of a real and no fictitious spring. This is the " Brimstone
Butterfly,"1 which, gaily painted,

" Soon

Explores awhile the tepid noon,
And fondly trusts its tender dyes
To fickle suns and flattering skies."

It has been supposed by some that this early visitant (also
a late one) is, like the above, a winter survivor ; but from the
trim of his yellow robes, usually so fresh and glossy, it would
seem more likely that, instead of being laid up — not "in
lavender," but, perhaps in ivy — they are of the newest spring
fashion. Be this as it may, he is the very pink, or, as he has
been more properly considered, the very primrose of Papillons,
sometimes to be seen, like a living shadow of the primrose's
self, fluttering beside it in the sunny hedgerow or the sheltered
copse. We may know him by the cut of his bright sulphur-
coloured pinions — each, instead of being rounded, ending in a
smooth tail-like angle.2

Of all the wings of all the Butterflies, these bear, perhaps,
the closest similitude to floral productions, and on each, as if to
perfect the resemblance of their delicate flower-like colouring,
is a reddish spot, an exact copy of that often produced by decay
or accident, on the surface of a yellow petal. In the beautiful
raised veining of their reverse, the pinions of the " Brimstone"

1 Gonopterix Rhamni.

9 For figures of nearly all the Butterflies here mentioned, see Vignette.

184 THE SWALLOW TAIL.

are no less correspondent with the same ; but those of the
female, which, instead of yellow, are of a greenish white,
resemble, perhaps yet more nearly, the leaf of a poplar on its
under side. The dye of the antennae — that purplish pink, so
frequent upon tender leaf and flower stems, — also the clothing
of the body, — a soft, satiny down, like that by which stalks and
seed-pods are so often invested, are all alike accordant with the
floral character of this most elegant flutterer of the spring.
This pretty butterfly comes of a pretty caterpillar, with a
smooth green coat, dotted or shagreened with black, and
marked by a whitish line along the back and sides. It is said
to feed usually on the leaves of buckthorn and alder.

The term Papilio, which was used by Linnaeus to designate
all diurnal or day-flying Lepidopterae, has now become much
restricted, including, amongst a company of brilliant foreigners,
only one or two native species.

Of the latter is the " Swallow Tail,"1 a beautiful insect, ap-
proaching more nearly to some of the tropic butterflies, both in
form and colouring, than any others which our island produces.
Perhaps, in favour of its richer painting, we ought to have
given it the precedence usually assigned it over our favourite
Brimstone, with all its simple elegance ; but besides being of
later, it is also of more rare appearance, and we have a pre-
ference always for bespeaking attention to the beautiful things
that are most common, rather than to those which cross our
path less often. If, however, that path should lead us through
the counties of Hampshire, Middlesex, Cambridge, or Norfolk,
we are not unlikely, from May to August, to meet the Swallow
Tail ; and he is a Papilio, we can tell you, much too distin-
guished to pass by unrecognized, if we can possibly prevent his
cutting, at once, the air and our acquaintance.

Compared with the Brimstone he is truly a magnificent

1 Papilio Machaon.

WHITE BUTTERFLIES. 185

bashaw ; but then, in the place of four, he can only boast
himself of a pair of tails, of a peculiar fashion, appended to
his hinder wings, which are scalloped, and adorned each with
a red, eye-like spot, their prevailing colours being, like the
anterior ones, black and yellow — a fitting case for the enfold-
ing, while latent, of so much beauty. The caterpillar of the
Swallow Tail Butterfly is one of the handsomest of its race. It
has a smooth skin, beautifully variegated with black and green,
and carries, at the back of its head, a badge of distinction, not
however, always visible, in the shape of a flexible horn, forked
like the letter T, which, contrary to the usage of the snail, it is
said to put forth on occasions of alarm. It is a feeder on um-
belliferous plants, chiefly the carrot, wild and cultivated, from
whence it has acquired, in France, the name of " Le grand
Carottier." Of another genus, with hinder wings, rounded
instead of angular, or tailed, is the pretty butterfly known as the
" Clouded Yellow."1 In England, however, it is known but
partially, appearing only in certain seasons, and then chiefly on
the coasts of Kent, Sussex, and Suffolk. As its name imports,
the prevailing hue of its wings is yellow, clouded towards their
outer edge with black. The caterpillar, green with white lines,
is said to feed upon leguminous plants, though the perfect insect
delights chiefly in the flowers of the thistle.

Coming out with the flowers of May, and almost as abun-
dant, are the pale- winged Butterflies, which, like bevies of
white-robed damsels, usher in the summer. From whence
have they issued forth ? 'Tis almost a pity that, as insect
genealogists, we must trace their origin, and confess the most
of them to have been

" Born in a c cabbage,' in a ' cabbage ' bred " —

and that they have come, therefore, from purlieus — the walls —
most likely of the kitchen garden. But what matters it whence

1 Colias edusa.

186 GARDEN WHITE.

they sprang, or whence they came, since they have left behind
them, buried in the hearts of kale, or transferred therewith to
cabbage-feeders of another sort, the vulgar tastes which be-
longed to their caterpillar birth? The fragrant meadow,
the sunny hedgerow, the gay parterre, now constitute their
range, — their meat is honey, washed down by pearly dew-
drops. These are the Butterflies of the genus Pontia, known
universally as the common white — so universally, that descrip-
tion is hardly needed for their general recognition, though
requisite enough for distinction of their several (as many as
about seven) species. At the head of them is placed, usually,
the large "Cabbage White"1 of the garden, with yellowish
mealy wings, the foremost nearly triangular, the hindermost
rounded, and as if sprinkled with grey towards the body. The
anterior pair, both of male and female, are tipped with black,
but those of the latter are marked with two black spots,
wanting in the pinions of the former. The caterpillar of this
primary Pontia is that devouring familiar of the potager, to
which gardeners, sparrows, and Ichneumon flies require not a
word of introduction ; but on account of others, who, for the
sake of the butterfly, may desire to make its acquaintance, we
may just notice that its general hue is bluish-grey, spotted with
black, besprinkled with short hairs, and marked by a yellow
line along the back with one on either side.

Also of the Pontia genus there are the " Little Whites"*
— come of little green caterpillars (the French Vers du Cceur),
feeders on cabbage-hearts — the " Green-veined Whites " — so
called from the nervures of their wings being marked on the
underside with dusky green — and the large " Hawthorn But-
terfly," or " Black-veined White."3 The latter is a handsome
insect, with semi-transparent cream-white wings, strongly
veined with black.

The pretty " Orange-Tip," or Lady of the Woods,"4 is

1 Pontia Brassica. * Pontia Brassicae.

* Pontia, or Pieris Cratagi. 4 Pontia Cardaminis.

LADY OF THE WOODS. 187

likewise of the cabbage family. In its green youth it is a
feeder also upon rape , cabbage, and other cruciform plants ;
but this, while a eater-pillar, is no pillager of cates of culture,
preferring the vegetable in its wilder growth — a taste more
accordant, certainly, with the habits of its maturity and the
favourite spots — such as open glades, and lawns, and wood-
lands, whither it delights to fly, a-Maying. Though we are
accustomed to designate this darling of the summer as the
" Orange-Tip " and " The Lady of the Woods," these epithets,
applied in conjunction, or indifferently, are not by any means
of correct application, seeing that with these butterflies it is
the lord only of the lady, whose white pinions, besides bearing
a black crescent, are adorned by the patch of deep orange,
which makes the title of " Orange-Tip " befitting to him alone
— in both himself and partner the wings on their reverse are
beautifully variegated in white and green.

We come now to the fan-winged genus Vanessa, com-
prising some of our commonest, but also most beautiful and
richly-coloured, Butterflies — all, like the last, with the fore-
legs imperfect. Among these is the little "Tortoise-shell,"1
noticed already as a survivor of, and occasional visitor in,
winter.

The caterpillars are greenish black, with yellow stripes, and
spiny, like the nettle on which they feed; while young, in
large societies, which afterwards disperse. The " Great Tor-
toise-shell," or "Elm Butterfly," is much larger, and less
common than the above.

A glorious insect of the same tribe is the Vanessa lo, or
" Peacock's Eye." Its prevailing hue is a rich brown red,
inclining to purple, each wing being adorned by a large eye
or ocellus, with a dark pupil, margined by a crescent or semi-
circle of blue and yellow.

The caterpillar, which is shining black, studded with white

1 Vanessa Urticoe,

188 PEACOCK'S EYE AND ALDERMAN.

points, is, like the last, a feeder on the nettle, and is found,
commonly in July, throughout the south of England. An old
naturalist styles this lo-Butterfly, the Omnium Regina, and
she well deserves the title. The above is an autumn Butterfly,
and so also is the Vanessa Atalanta, known, likewise, as the
" Alderman," the " Admiral," and the " Admirable ;" l and
admirable truly are the " colours " displayed by this " Admiral
of the Red," as he proudly unfurls them in the August or
September sun, and challenges the autumn flowers to eclipse
his glory. Nor is there one among them — neither velvet
dahlia, nor golden mary-flower, nor many-coloured-aster,
which can boast of hues at once so rich and varied. The deep
black of his upper wings is enlivened by a broad cross band
of brilliant scarlet, white spots, and a scalloped edging of the
same ; while on the secondary pinions the scarlet, which
instead of a bar forms a border, is enriched by a line of
black spots, a black and white scalloped edging, and a small
blue crescent at the inner extremity of both wings. Their
under surface, if less rich, is even more varied in colour, and
more finely pencilled than the upper.

The caterpillar of this beautiful insect, which is greenish
black and spiny, is a solitary feeder on the nettle, found not
uncommonly in July and August. By means of a silken
thread he draws together, edge to edge, a single leaf, out of
which he thus forms himself a temporary tent or case, with
openings at either end which go on widening before the jaws
of its occupants. When he has thus fairly " eaten himself out
of house and home," he betakes himself to another leafy abode
of similar construction. This " Alderman " caterpillar is found
sometimes feasting on the seeds of the nettle ; but still under
cover of the upper leaves.

Closely allied to this beautiful genus, Vanessa, though
belonging to that of Cynthia, is the " Painted Lady," 2 or
1 Vignette to Butterflies in General, 3 Cynthia Cardui.

THE PAINTED LADY. 189

" Belle Dame," a butterfly, as its name imports, of exceeding
elegance. Its upper wings, brown towards the base, and
redder towards the middle, are variegated and tipped with
black, and marked at the apex with a spot of white.

In some seasons our " Painted Ladies " are abundant, in
others scarce ; but of all the Lepidoptera, these are considered
to have the widest geographical range, having been seen in
America, Africa, and Asia, also frequently out at sea. Their
caterpillars are feeders chiefly on the great spear-thistle, whose
unmanageable leaves they yet continue not only to eat but also
to roll, as well as those of the nettle and other spiny vegetables.

In the genus known to naturalists as that of Sipparchia}
we have another of the butterfly tribes, more distinguished for
sombre than for lively colouring. Their caterpillars, usually
green with forked tails, assimilate with the various grasses on
which they feed ; and even when arrayed in winged attire,
their prevailing shades of brown and orange bear still a degree
of correspondence with the hues of the ripened and sunburnt
clothing of their favourite localities, the meadow and the heath.

Amongst other species, not rare, the most common of this
brown brotherhood, perhaps, of all the race of butterflies,
excepting the Cabbage Whites, is the "Meadow Brown."1
The wings of the male are of a uniform blackish brown,
enlivened by a small black eye with a white pupil. Beneath
this ocellus there is in those of the female a large irregular patch
of orange buff, and all her pinions are more prettily, and some-
what more gaily, painted on their under than their upper sides;
the foremost with dark orange, the hindmost with shades of
light brown.

According to their usual arrangement, we come now to that
assemblage of pretty little butterflies, of the genus Theckla,
known to collectors as the " Hair-Streaks."2 They are so called
from the fine hair-like lines streaking the under side of their

1 Hipparchia Janira. 2 G. Theckla.

190 COPPERS.

wings, of which the hindmost pair are further distinguished by
one or two tail-like appendages. The caterpillars of these little
butterflies which feed on trees and shrubs — never on herbaceous
plants — might hardly be taken, save by the entomologists, for
caterpillars at all, being of an oval depressed shape, resembling
very nearly that of wood-lice, and are hence called onisciform.

In the genus Lyc&na, we have, fresh from the mint of nature,
that bright coinage of meadow butterflies, yclept the " Cop-
pers." 1 One of these, the most common, also the smallest, is a
splendid little flutterer,2 with the primary wings of red metallic
lustre, spotted and bordered with deep black ; the secondary,
brown and black, margined by a coppery band — encountered
not unfrequently, early in the summer, also in August. This
is the little Copper Captain, the fiery Mars of his radiant tribe,
so renowned for making war upon his own kindred, and even
daring to engage with antagonists of twice his bulk, but
without his mettle. The caterpillar of this most common
of the Coppers is greenish yellow, onisciform, and, like the
majority of those belonging to its tribe, it is a feeder upon sorrel
and other herbs of the field.

Contrasted with the Metallic Coppers, and often seen side by
side, are the "Aerial Blues."3 These are the little blue butter-
flies, which, loving to disport over the thymy down, the grassy
glade, and flowering meadow, do literally " paint them with
their own delight." Now, arising in sportive pairs or trios,
they enliven the fragrant air. Now, basking on the yellow
buttercups, or chalk-sprung flowers of their own colour, they
reflect, in the hues of their expanded wings, every tint of the
summer sky, from deep, deep blue to lightest azure, or
the glowing lilac, which precedes the sun-set red ; while ever
and anon, closing their pinions, and opening thereby the
many eyes which bestud their under surface, they seem to look

1 G. Lyccena. * Vignette to Butterflies in General. 3 G. Polyommatus.

GRIZZLED SKIPPER.

191

out in smiling happiness at the beautiful things around them.
These belong to the genus Polyommatus, from Greek words
expressive of the many eyes, or eye-like spots -which adorn, as
just noticed, the reverse side of their blue or brown wings.

The "Grizzled Skipper,"1 also a common species in woods
and pastures, has upper wings of dark brown, enlivened by
squarish spots of cream or straw colour : the hinder pair prettily
variegated, and all edged by a fringe of alternate black and
white. The caterpillar of this, as well as of some other species,
is a leaf-roller, the teazle being the apparently uninviting plant
which, nevertheless, affords him board and lodging. Others
of the HesperidfB feed, in their caterpillar infancy, on other
low plants and grasses.

1 Pyrgus Malta;.

' Dipping tfjeic tupg of fceto."

The Flying Glow-worms of Southern Europe (Lampyris Italica), known in
Italy as " Le Lucciole," are the insects here represented.

LE LUCCIOLE.

A MIDSUMMER TALE.

N Midsummer Eve, or the Eve of St. John
(1679), the palaces and hovels of Genoa la Su-
perba were illuminated in honour of the Baptist
by an artificial blaze, contrasted with which
the lamps of nature looked cold and dim. Yet
nowhere are summer evenings more brilliantly lit up than on
the shores which bound the Gulf of Genoa; for, besides the
" rulers of the night," robed in the clearest of nocturnal blue,
and shining forth in regal splendour, there are stars of the

THE LOVERS. 193

earth — radiant galaxies of Italian fire-flies, which, rising from
the low underwood, or falling from the lofty trees, shoot through
the air in scintillating streams of living light.

Away from the glare of the city, and from its noisy revelry
which rose at intervals, on their unheeding ears, a youth and
maiden were wandering in the garden of one of those villa
palaces then numerous on the outskirts of Genoa. They were,
of course, lovers ; for none others, so near their scene, would
have been absent from that evening's festivities. The figure
of the young man was commanding, and correspondent with
his dress, which bespoke him to be of noble rank. His fea-
tures also were of uncommon beauty; but an eye, well
versed in the lines of character, might have detected about
them a certain expression of weakness — a wandering of the.eye,
and an effeminate softness of the mouth, which gave suspicion
of the like defects of disposition ; and one, certainly, who
should have so read his countenance would not have very
greatly wronged the character of young Marco, only son to
the Marchese Bassano, owner of the stately villa, in the grounds
of which he and his companion wandered. The latter was a
fair girl — a fair Italian — with eyes deeply blue, like her native
skies, and rich brown hair which seemed to have stolen of its
golden gleams. She was this, and more; but she was not,
like her lover, of patrician birth, and her lowly rank was indi-
cated both by her peasant's dress and the air of simplicity;
yet, withal, of gentle grace, with which she wore it. The
converse of Marco and his sweet Bianca was so low as to be
nearly overpowered even by the gentle murmur of the sea, as
it broke upon the adjacent shore, and the slight stirring of the
surrounding foliage; while, at intervals, their voices were
wholly drowned by the shouts of revelry which rose from the
illumined city.

Heard clearly above the mingled sounds rising from the
city, the clock of the Annunciata struck nine. It was a signal
for the pair to separate — Marco to join a party of gay com-

194 LE LUCCIOLE.

panions at the festival — Bianca to return to the abode of her
father, an old vine-dresser, who had lived from his youth
upwards on the estate and in the service of the Marchese
Bassano. His cottage was in the midst of an olive grove,
which adjoined the garden of the villa, and communicated
with it by a gate opening on a terrace walk which overlooked
the sea and town. It was here the lovers had been walking ;
and Marco, having accompanied his innamorata through a
portion of the olive grove, they were repeating for the last
(perhaps the twentieth) time, their reluctant " JBuona notte"
when Bianca started — " Heard you not," said she, " a rustling
amongst those trees?"

"Not I, sweet one," returned Marco; — but as he spoke
he plunged into the plantation in the direction towards which
she pointed, and shook the boughs as if to detect the presence
of a suspected lurker. None appeared ; but from the shaken
branches arose a swarm of fire-flies which, checked in their
upward flight by the thick foliage above them, kept wheeling
in radiant streams and circles near the disturbers of their
rest. "There, silly one! now art thou satisfied?" cried the
young man, returning to the pathway. " The Lucciole
have displayed their lamps on purpose to show thee the
emptiness of thy fears; and see ! in honour of St. John have
we not here a brave illumination? — a show of fire-works
shaming the brightest that are let off yonder? Aye, and my
loved one, thou shalt not want for diamonds in thy hair —
gems which the proudest of yon city dames display not one
to equal."

Marco, as he spoke, opened and closed his hand upon
several of the fire-flies which were flitting around him, and
sportively placed them in the coloured net-work which con-
fined the maiden's luxuriant tresses. Bianca shrunk — almost
shrieked — as she tried to arrest the playful action of her
noble lover. " Marco ! for the love of heaven, do not so !
Those Lucciole — if you knew how I dread them ! "

THE EVE OF ST. JOHN. 195

"Dread them?"

"Yes; bright as they look, they come from the dark
graves; and with us, in our family, they have always been
omens — warnings of death and dolor. Before my poor
mother died "

" Nay, nay," cried Marco ; " now thou art more silly than
I deemed thee."

Yet he strove, at the same time, to remove the glittering
causes of alarm. When with some trouble he had disengaged
them from the net-work, one yet clung to his hand, and, on
shaking it off into the air, the insect, as if proud of the place
it had lately occupied, instead of joining its companions, flew
back, and settled on Bianca's head. Not a word, this time,
escaped her lips; but she turned pale and trembled. Her
lover again gently chid her — again displaced the Lucciola, and
threw it far into the underwood. Then, supporting the steps
of the frightened girl, accompanied her to within a few paces
of her father's cottage, once more whispered his tender " Buona
notte," and departed to join in the revels of the night — pro-
longed far into the morning.

*******

Twelve months had brought round another Eve of St. John,
and brought with it, and on just such a summer night, the like
festivities — the like illuminations.

Had the year been productive of as little change to our
high-born youth and low-born maiden ? To Bianca, the proud
noble, who should have been as nothing, was, in womanly
devotion, still everything. Yet had he become an everything
which she was now required, and, in womanly disinterestedness,
was ready to resign.

And Marco ? Why, he still loved the peasant girl, as well,
perhaps, as ever — as well as a young patrician (though sprung
of merchant princes) might. His heart, such as it was, was
still Bianca's ; but his hand, in accordance with the desire and
policy of his father, had been for many months pledged, and

196 PARENTAL POLICY.

in a few days was to be given, to the beautiful and haughty
Beatrice, a daughter of no meaner house than that of Doria.
With this purposed alliance, long known to all Genoa, Bianca
was of course acquainted. It was a finale to her misplaced
affection only such as might always, sooner or later, have been
looked for, and neither resentment nor jealousy embittered the
dispensation under which she meekly bowed, as the just and
inevitable penalty of her having dared to love before she knew
the meaning of either love or rank. But here was the misery,
if nothing worse, to live, as heretofore, within the very shadow
of the house, which was to be the future residence of Marco
and his bride, who were to abide at the Palazzo of the former's
father. How often had Bianca wished that she could flee to
some distant land, where, as she fondly but deceptively be-
lieved, that if she could never quite forget him, she might
sometimes think of him without offence.

Before the arrival of the present Midsummer, this, her
desire, seemed likely of fulfilment. Whether the old Marquis
had suspected something of the attachment, commenced almost
in childhood, between his son and Bianca, and thought that
the latter would now, therefore, be better at a distance, or,
whether it were mere accident that favoured her wish ; but so
it was, that the Marquis having recently (as was a common
custom with the Genoese nobility) purchased an estate in the
more fruitful territory of Naples, proposed to the old vine-
dresser that he should take the office of its superintendency.
The faithful servant, who would not for promotion have left
his " own people," but to whom his master's will was law,
urged moreover by his daughter, agreed to the proposal, and
they were to sail together for their new southern home in a
galley now at anchor in the bay.

Old Jacopo was sad, as the remembrances, both pleasant and
painful, of sixty years, all passed under that humble roof, came
back, like a mingled company of departed spirits, and seemed
to take possession of every corner — every bit of furniture in

A LAST LOOK. 197

the cottage,— all, with itself, to be left behind. He almost
felt as if he were about to part with everything he loved — even
his darling child — though she was to be the companion of his
exile. Not only was he sad, but also weary with preparations
for departure ; and that he might be all the fresher for the
morrow, Bianca persuaded him (after one last look from
between the olive trees at the illuminated city, and after they
had offered up together their evening orisons) to repair early
to his bed. With one hand clasped in his, she sat beside him,
till he fell into a quiet sleep; then kneeling by the bedside
implored the Divine blessing on their morrow's voyage, and
the change it was to bring them ; and she prayed, also, that
no guilty repinings — no vain regrets — connected with one
left behind, should ever disincline her to the cheerful per-
formance of her duties, those especially she owed to him, her
kind old father. On rising, she gently kissed his forehead,
and treading lightly, left the chamber, meaning presently to
seek her own.

Ah, Bianca ! which of the sweetest enticements of that
Midsummer night could break thy purpose, and lure thee to
go forth ? Was it the evening breeze whispering among the
trees close by, or the distant murmur of the placid sea ? Was
it the breath of the evening-scented flowers, or the shouts of
revelry rising from the illumined city ? It was none of these ;
but it was an impulse, sudden, irrresistible, which urged her to
take one last, one little look at that dear garden, where she
had been used to play, and not alone always, in her childhood.
From the garden three minutes would take her through the
olive grove, and give her a parting glimpse — -just only one — of
the terrace walk beyond, — that walk connected with remem-
brances more recent and more dear than all. But one thought
made her hesitate, — might she not meet him ? Oh no.
There was that night, at the Palazzo of the Marchese, a grand
masked ball in honour of the evening's festival, and also of
the approaching bridal. The ducal family of Doria was to be

198 TEMPTATION.

among the guests. Beatrice — in all the blaze of jewels, rank,
and beauty — queen of the night, — Marco, her devoted subject,
in a day or two to be her lord.

" Oh no," thought Bianca, as she hastened through the
grove ; " there's no fear that I shall meet with him."

She found the gate open which led from the olive planta-
tion into the Palazzo garden, and had only to step at once upon
the terrace walk, which lay in the bright moonlight, clear and
unoccupied.

" Bianca — my Bianca !" whispered a well-known voice, and
Marco, wearing a Spanish dress and masked, but to her in no
disguise, stood beside her. What could he, the young patri-
cian, the affianced, well nigh the wedded husband of a fitting
bride, have now to say to her, the foolish maiden of low degree,
who had too long listed to his beguiling tales ? Why, even at
this eleventh hour, he had yet another for her ear — a tale of
love and seeming madness. He had stolen away, he said, from
yonder brilliant company, — from Beatrice, the brightest of
them all, to seek his Bianca, as he had purposed, at her home.
They, she and her old father, should still sail on the morrow,
at early dawn ; but he would be the companion of their voyage.
The captain of the galley should be bribed to convey them not
to the Neapolitan estate but a port of France, and there, with-
out a thought of rank, of home, or even of honour forfeited, he
would make her his lawful bride.

The maiden heard only to reject the dazzling, dangerous
proffer ; but Marco still urged ; when distant voices were heard
shouting out his name, and turning towards the villa they saw
several persons issuing from under the piazza, and advancing
towards them. " Go, go, Marco ! May blessings ever attend
thee!" and Bianca, as she spoke, burst from her lover's
detaining grasp, and retreated from the terrace, behind the
screen of a tall adjacent shrub. The young man followed for
a pace or two, then stopped and hesitated. He distinguished,
amongst the approaching voices, that of Pietro Doria, Beatrice's

LE LUCCIOLE. 199

brother. Do what he might it was as well to save appearances;
so with another look towards the spot where Bianca stood
concealed, and with inward maledictions on the noisy group
which was drawing near, he turned to meet it. Some of the
party had caught, a momentary glimpse of a retreating female
figure ; but the Lady Beatrice, as well as her betrothed,
having been missed from the ball-room, it was only supposed
that the lovers had stolen from the festive scene for half an
hour's converse beneath the gentle moon. Maidenly bashful-
ness might explain the lady's flight, and her preference for
returning to the palazzo alone rather than accompanied by
the merry maskers.

Having seen them all re-enter the building, Bianca issued
from her covert. As she left the moon-lit terrace, and regained
the olive grove, a thrill of terror, sudden as the transition
from light to darkness, shot through her frame; her limbs
trembled, and she was glad to seek the support of an aged
olive, the trunk of which, partially decayed, showed white in
the surrounding gloom. Not once that night had she thought
of the dreadful Lucciole — not one had flitted across her path ;
but at the moment she touched the olive tree, they fell around
her from amongst its foliage in a shower of living sparks.

Well now might the maiden tremble ; well might the drops
of terror mingle with the night-dews on her marble brow ; not
for the harmless glitter of the Lucciole, but for a glimpse of
gleaming, and no fancied horrors, which their light revealed.
She saw (for an instant) the sparkling of diamonds amidst
raven tresses — the flashing of dark eyes distended with vindic-
tive fury — the glittering of jewels on a white uplifted arm —
the gleaming of cold blue steel directed to her heart. In a
brief agony of fear she clung to the olive's trunk ; in an agony,
as brief, of supplication, she raised her mild blue eyes imploring
mercy : but mercy there was none in those dark orbs of ven-
geance which returned their glance. The bright stiletto did
not miss its aim, and, clear in the encircling radiance of the

200 FATHER AND CHILD.

Lucciole, a crimson stain on the bleached trunk of the olive,
showed, even in that place of shade and hour of darkness, that
a deed of murder had been done.

Poor Bianca ! Then did thy simple superstition seem to
have met with terrible fulfilment. The Lucciole had come to
thee indeed as messengers of death ; but in their radiant guise
they were the more fitting representatives of ministers of
mercy, sent, perhaps, in good time, to rescue thee from

danger and from sin.

******

Early next morning the old vine-dresser was up, and
dressed, ready for departure. He wondered why Bianca was
not stirring too ; " but, poor thing ! " thought he, " she shall
rest as long as may be."

Jacopo, while this was passing through his mind, busied
himself in a few remaining preparations — even got ready their
simple breakfast, — ever and anon, in the midst of his occupa-
tion, going to listen at his daughter's chamber door. " How
soundly she is sleeping," whispered he ; " but hark ! there's
the Annunciata striking six ; we're to be on board by seven ;
so wake her I must."

He tapped gently — louder — more loudly. " Bianca ! Bianca !
— wilt thou never awake ?"

A death-like silence ensued, and something of chilling
augury smote upon the old man's heart, even before • he
opened the door, and saw that the room was tenantless — the
bed unruffled.

Then he ran wildly forth — calling as wildly on his child.
The early chirp of the birds in the garden and the olive grove
was his sole response.

But he soon found her, and he (poor miserable old man !)
was soon found with her, sitting under the half-dead olive
tree; her head supported on his knees, and he smiling in
childish vacuity, as he tried to disengage her luxuriant hair
from the clots of blood which confined it.

A TALE OF HORROR. 201

The father and his child were thus discovered by two
mariners, sent by the master of the galley to summon his
expected passengers, and assist in taking on board their
luggage.

Whilst one of the seamen remained with old Jacopo, who
would neither move from the body of his daughter, nor allow
it to be touched, the other hastened to the palazzo, with tidings
of the tragic event which had occurred. His tale of horror
was related first to the domestics ; but he must see, he said,
the Marchese or his son. The former, he was told by the
servants, could not be disturbed so early ; but their young
master, the Count Marco, had been up, they added, by times,
— if, indeed, he had gone to bed at all on the conclusion, at
no very early hour of the morning, of the last night's enter-
tainment. One of the servants was about to apprize him of
the mariner's business, when Marco himself appeared.

The terror-stricken faces of the seaman's late auditors pre-
pared him for some correspondent recital ; but not for the
trembling, agonizing surmises which followed on the man's
brief relation ; and when, in a private interview, particulars
were detailed which left no doubts, as far at least as concerned
the person of the victim, it is difficult to say how the young
noble was able (if he did so) to disguise the fearful intensity of
his individual interest in that which had befallen.

It is more material to our narrative to notice that the sea-
man's chief motive for desiring to speak with the masters of
the palazzo was to put into their hands a splendid jewel — a
bracelet — which he had picked up, he said, lying close beside
the murdered maiden. None of hers (he suspected) could be
an ornament so unsuited to her rank and her attire, and it
might point to the hand by which she had fallen.

Marco, forcing himself to say something in praise of the
mariner's honesty and sagacity, put a gold piece into his hand,
as he received into his own the glittering bauble, on which
hung, perhaps, its owner's life; and who that owner was

RET RIB UTION.

Marco knew well at a single glance. The bracelet was a
gift of his own to Beatrice, and hers, beyond a doubt, was
the hand which, instigated by jealousy and wounded pride,
had plunged the murderous steel into the heart of her humble
rival.

In an hour after the mariner had left his father's villa,
Marco was closeted at the Palazzo Doria with the Duke.
Their interview was long ; but to the curious eave's-dropper
quiet as the grave.

Marco never returned to Genoa, and fell in battle a few
years after, having taken service in the army of the French, at
that time allies and almost masters of the once proud Republic.
And the miserable Beatrice ! — what became of her ? Never
did detected culprit, condemned by man's erring judgment to
give up life for life, suffer a penalty so dread as hers. The
rank and power which had served to shield her from public
condemnation did not stifle private suspicion : and though to
breathe a name like hers in conjunction with a deed of murder
was more, perhaps, than any inhabitant of Genoa, noble or
plebeian, would have dared to do, yet on the city wails, which
the Italians, with reference to such a use, have termed pro-
verbially " Fools' Paper" some daring hand had ventured, in
ambiguous but intelligible terms, to write up her accusation.

But what was this to the " hand writing on the wall," which
above every festive board, on the frescoes of every sparkling
saloon, on the tapestry of her own chamber, presented itself in
characters of blood before the eye of Beatrice. For a season,
and with a view by braving to disarm suspicion, did the
wretched lady compel herself, or was compelled, perhaps, by
her noble family, to face the world ; but the colour had fled her
cheek ; her dark eye grew hollow, and at last she veiled them
from public notice in a convent of Benedictine Nuns.

There, none were more exemplary in their vigils, their
penances, their prayers, than sister Agatha, the name by which
the once proud Beatrice Doria was known amongst the nuns.

RETRIBUTION. 203

Never to one of them (whatever she might have done in the
confessional) did she open the dark secret of her soul ; but
those of the sisterhood, who occupied adjoining dormitories,
told fearful tales of the sounds of agony — groans from the
depths of overwhelming dread which, at times, were heard to
issue from her cell. Other of her habits caused remark.
Seldom in broad day-light, never of an evening when the
nuns were assembled in the convent garden, was she of their
number; but always after sunset did she keep the window of
her cell close shut, however sultry might be the weather.
Could Beatrice have feared the gentle breezes of a summer's
eve? Them she loved not; but far more had learned to
hold in terror and aversion the fire-flies, the Lucciole which
came forth when thev arose.

(CDou | salt not toant for Wamonbf ."

The winged insect in the centre of the vignette is the common Sewer- Fly
(Eristalis tenax)', beneath, on the bank, are three pupae of the same, remark-
able for their rat-like tails ; three others are shown at a distance within the
hollow of a decayed willow. Three of the grubs, or larvae, also rat- tailed, arid
notable for their tough skins and consequent tenacity of life, appear in the
water to the left, but drains and sewers are more properly their habitat.

LEASES OF LIFE.

HE Demon of Frost set out, one dark Novem-
ber morning, to do the bidding of the grim
monarch Death. He passed over a forest,
and the last leaves of autumn fell in countless
thousands at his touch. He passed over a
desolate moor, and meeting a benighted traveller, he heaped
his snow bed, piped his shrill lullaby, and whistled at knowing it

DEFIERS OF DEATH. 205

was the wanderer's last. He entered a garden, and the surviving
dahlias shrank in their velvet mantles, and died at the bidding
of his icy breath. Then he laid one of his freezing fingers on
a little caterpillar, and the ramping worm grew stiff as iron,
and chinked like a stone, as it fell upon the ice-bound earth.

The Demon of Frost went home, well pleased with his
work, and after many another walk, upon the like death-doing
errands, traversed once more, towards the end of February, the
very path he had followed in dark November. Then he saw
in the forest but a few remains, half rotted, of his victim leaves.
On the desolate moor he passed over the whitening bones of
his victim man. In the flower garden not a vestige was visible
of his victim dahlias. But where was his supposed victim
caterpillar ? Amidst the crystal gems of his own scattering,
as they melted in the smiles of his arch enemy the sun, sat a
saucy butterfly, and the Demon of Frost shook his hoary locks,
and gnashed his icy teeth ; for he knew that the tiny spark of
life which animated that winged creature was the very same
which must have laughed at his power in the frost-stiffened
caterpillar.

But what has the Demon of Frost, or frozen caterpillars, to
do with this melting season ? We will endeavour to explain
their unapparent relationship, or tell at least how they have
been brought to our own minds, as connected with the present
time of year.

Every particular season tells a particular tale or tales of
some prevailing and appropriate burthen. This, the season of
Midsummer, tells especially of life, — life in its maximum, like
the sun at its highest, — life on the earth, — life in the waters,
— life in the air, busy and joyous ; and for every single tale of
life told by other things, a million are being repeated in the
world of insects.

This is also a season of leases, just expired, or just renewed.
Some, a week ago, were leaving willingly, some reluctantly,
their old abodes, while others (contumacious tenants) are still

206 STUBBORN TENANCY.

holding fast upon their roof-trees, laughing at notice, landlord,
writ, and bailiff. Now of insects in general, save the bee and
the silk-worm, it may certainly be said, according to our
motto, that

" He's his own landlord, — his own tenant : — stay
Long as he will he dreads no quarter day."

This, as respects his local habitation ; but if we consider the
principle of life as the tenant — the outward form the residence
held at will of the indulgent landlord — the Great Creator of
us all, — then the tiniest of midges holds, as the greatest of
men, a given lease. Regarded thus, the vital spark, or tenant,
whose assigned abode is an insect tabernacle, is oftentimes a
most difficult spark to put out, — a leaseholder as troublesome
to eject (we mean, of course, at the bidding of subordinate
agents) as the most determined house-clinger that ever baffled
bailiff ingenuity.

It is a fact, proved by observation and experiment, that
caterpillars will retain their vitality, and pass through their
usual changes, after the congealment of their juices by intense
cold. Those of the magpie-moth, exposed all through the
winter on a leafless currant bush, will sometimes become stift
as the twigs they occupy, and those of the cabbage butterfly
subjected to a frost which turned them into lumps of ice,1
arrived, nevertheless, at their perfect state.

Other insects would seem to be endowed with the same power
of resisting cold. Amongst these are gnats and mosquitos,
which, as attested by recent travellers, have risen, an active
swarm, from dissolved masses of ice, wherein they have lain
imbedded as thick as plums in a Christmas pudding.

• Nor is it only against the "Demon Frost" that these
determined insect occupiers are accustomed to bar the doors

1 Bv Rdaumur.

DEFIERS OF FROST. 207

of their Lilliputian tenements, a variety of them having been
found to show equal contempt of flood, fire, famine, and steel,
those other bailiffs employed as often, in executions, by the
universal tyrant.

To exemplify, next, the resistance of insect vitality against
the power of water. There is a certain beetle called the
Printer,1 because, while feeding as a grub upon the under
bark of trees, it cuts out therein a variety of tracks resembling
letters ; and to such an extent was this species of type engrav-
ing once carried on, that a million and a half of pines are
said to have been sacrificed in the Hartz Forest2 to supply
material for the work. It became, of course, desirable to
knock up a business carried on at such serious public cost;
but though these devils of printers were battered, together
with their type, within their books of bark — though the trees
of their habitation were laid upon ice, and finally plunged in
water, they remained alive and unhurt.

A somewhat similar but yet more wonderful instance of
obstinate vitality has worthily obtained a place amongst the
"Miracula Insectorum" of Linnasus. This is afforded by
certain tough-coated grubs,3 with rat-like tails, which are
common inhabitants of drains and stagnant waters. These,
often becoming part and parcel of the turbid pulp used in
paper making, exposed afterwards to the action of wooden
mallets, and finally squeezed in strongest presses, are declared
frequently to have survived uninjured these annihilating
operations.

In July or August these miraculous little animals assume
the chrysalis or pupa, still retaining their rattish tails, and,
early in September, cleave the air as black and yellow flies,
bearing some resemblance to drone bees.4 We found last
summer, laid up in the decayed wood of an old willow, a large

1 Bostrichus typographicus.

8 In 1783, Kirby and Spence.

3 Rat-tailed larvae (Eristalis tenax) Sewer Fly. « Viguetto.

208 AN INSECT MIRACLE.

assemblage of these rat-tailed pupae, which had probably,
while yet grubs, deserted, for the hollow of the tree, some
stagnant and very uninviting pools adjacent.

But what is the tinge of the marvellous, investing the above
relations, compared with the red-hot hue of wonder which
colours the following almost incredible, yet (as it would seem)
not ill attested anecdote? The summoners here were the
united powers of fire and water — the sturdy spirits of bees
the little contumacious tenants which refused to dislodge for
all their combined authority.

Mr. Beddoine, a respectable chemist of Tooley Street,
London, in a letter to the editor of the Times, which was
copied in the Times Telescope for 1822, thus writes : " I
bought twenty large hives, and a hogshead of Dutch honey in
the native state, not separated from the wax, which had been
in the warehouse above a year; and, after emptying the hives
as well as I could, I boiled them for a considerable time in
water, to obtain honey from between the interstices. A con-
siderable number of bees, mixed with honey, floated on the
surface of the water. These I skimmed off, and placed on
flag-stones outside my laboratory, which was at the top of the
house, exposed to a July meridian sun. You may imagine mv
astonishment, when in half an hour I saw scores of these bees,
that had been for months in a state of suffocation, and then
well boiled, gradually come to life and fly away. There were
so many of them that I closed the door, fearing that they
might be disposed to return, and punish me for the barbarous
usage they had received at my hands."

The above we must confess to be a marvel of marvels;
but there is something scarcely less wonderful in the stubborn-
ness with which the vital sparks of many insects have been
known to hold out within the tiny citadels of their bodies
when called on to surrender, not by flood or fire but by
famine. We read of a chameleon fly subsisting nine months
upon aii, — of a church-yard beetle living without food for

DEFIERS OF STEEL. 209

three years, — of sheep-lice existing twelve months in a ehorn
fleece; while the grub of an aphis-eating fly,1 left under a
glass, was found alive three months afterwards, the thread of
its existence having been actually eight time? doubled by l}*e
very circumstance seeming most adapted to cut it short.

Lastly, it is not always that cutting steel, or festering bias?,
are effectual in the severing of that slender thread on which,
nevertheless, the life of an insect hangs so strongly suspended.

We are told of beetles found living weeks after impalement
on a transfixing pin. We daily see crane-flies (more commonly
known as father-longlegs) footing it featly over the grass, or
" upstairs and downstairs," with one or more of its half-dozen
shanks deficient, and flying merrily, with scarce even a leg left
to walk on.

Indeed the famous fable of Agrippa would by no means
apply to many of the insect race ; for with them, certainly,
there does not seem to exist the same degree of mutual depen-
dency observable in other animals between the body and the
members. The severed head of a wasp will bite while ita
severed leg clutches a morsel of sugar, as if they were saying
to the detached stomach, " We have no need of a digester ;"
and the dismembered body, in return, will sting furiously, as
if to reply, "And I have no need of a directing head or
assisting limbs."

The same is exemplified in the instance of a dragon-fly,
which, deprived of its long abdomen, was seen2 to devour two
small flies. Connected with this obstinate vitality of insects
comes naturally the question of their sensitivity, which, from
this very vitality, we may certainly infer to be less acute than
with other animals. Happily for them, and certainly much
to our own comfort, when we think upon the subject, we
have far more reason to doubt than to believe the oft-repeated
dictum, that

1 By Kirby. 2 By Mr. Haworth.

210 A MORAL INFERENCE.

" The poor beetle, which we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance feels as great a pang
As when a giant dies."

The existence of any insect brain has been denied by Lin-
na3us and subsequent naturalists ; but Cuvier and Lamarck so
denominate the upper knot of the nervous chord, because dis-
tinguished by the sending forth of nerves to the principal
organs of the senses. The multiplied and detached centres of
sensation, thus furnished by the knots or ganglions, sufficiently
account for life and motion in the divided portions of insect
frames; also for their seeming to feel comparatively little
general pain from the loss of limbs, or even head.

Last, not least, there is another reason, built on the moral
attributes of the Great Creator, for believing that the insect
frame is one of extreme insensibility to outward injury. Can
we imagine that He whose " mercy is over all his works,"
would do other than protect by a shield of comparative obtuse-
ness that innumerable multitude of living things, which, from
their numbers and minuteness, often also in the seeming end of
their creation (that of affording food for others), are exposed
to continual mutilation, as well as violent destruction. Were
it otherwise, independently of what they would endure from
other agencies, of what an infinity of insect sufferings should
we daily, hourly, minutely, be the involuntary cause !

Children are almost always disposed to the commission of
acts of cruelty ; but only in most cases from ignorance or
want of thought : for there is, we believe, in every unperverted
mind a natural repugnance to the taking of the life we cannot
give. Long ago we attempted to make something of an ento-
mologic collection — were eager enough in pursuit — too rude,
doubtless, in triumphant capture; but when it came to the
cold-blooded business of impalement, the pin fell from our
grasp, and the prisoners regained their liberty. We were then
too happy in the bright buoyancy of our own spring-time to
bear to deprive one of them of an existence so much like our

OBSERVATIONS.

211

own. Having grown what some would call more callous,
others, less squeamish, we have, since, been the voluntary
agents of insect extinction, though only when absolutely
essential to the purposes of our pursuit. We have elsewhere
offered, as we hope, an ample defence for "our hobby" on
this its seemingly objectionable side; but that defence was
addressed to the reason rather than the feelings, consequently
not to the very young. We would not even desire that the
very young should be permitted to begin the study of insects
by their collection ; but it is different as life advances : for
ourselves, at least, we can affirm safely that, though we do
occasionally add a beetle or a butterfly to our collection, the
acquisition is always made at the cost of a degree of not
diminished pain, and we were never so careful, as now, to
avoid aught that may uselessly injure or torment one of the
insect crew.

The three larger insects in the foreground are females of the Brown Ant
(Formica brunnea), called sometimes Ant-flies. Two of them are actively
employed in pulling off their own wings, the third having already divested
herself of these appendages. The smaller Ants upon the ground are workers
of the same species : those in flight a male and female.

A SYLVAN MORALITY; OR, A WORD TO WIVES.

E have a young relative, about whom we are
going to relate a little anecdote connected with
insect history, which requires, however, a few
prefatory words.

At the age of 17, Emily S— " came out,"
gilt and lettered, from the Minerva Press of a fashionable
boarding-school, and was, two years afterwards, bound (in
white satin) as a bride. In the short period intervening be-

LOVE IN A COTTAGE. 213

tween these two important epochs she had had a prodigious
run of admiration.

When Emily married, and for a few months previous, it was
of course to be presumed that she had found something bettei
than the world whereon to fix the affection of her warm young
heart. At all events, she had found a somebody to love her,
and one who was worthy to be loved in return.

Soon after their marriage the happy pair set out for Paris.
F — , though his means were slender and tastes retired, made
every effort (as far as bridegroom could so feel it) to gratify
his lively young wife by a stay at the capital of pleasure.
After a subsequent excursion, they returned within a year to
England, and settled at a pretty cottage in Berkshire, to
which we speedily received a cordial invitation. It was no
less readily accepted; for we were anxious to behold the
"rural felicity," of which we little doubted that our friends
were in full possession.

The result, however, of a week's sojourn at their quiet
abode was the reluctant opinion that, somehow or another, the
marriage garments of the young couple did not sit quite easy ;
though to point out the defect in their make, or to discover
where they girted, were matters on which it required more
time to form a decided judgment. One thing, however, was
pretty obvious. With her matronly title, Emily had noi
assumed an atom of that seriousness — not sad, but sober —
which became her new estate ; nor did she, as we shrewdly
suspected, pay quite as much attention to the cares of her
little menage as was rendered incumbent by the limited amount
of her husband's income. She seemed, in short, the same
thoughtless, pleasure-loving, pleasure-seeking girl as ever;
now that she was captured, the same volatile butterfly as when
surrounded and chased by butterflies like herself.

Poor Emily ! her love of gaiety had now, it is true, but little
scope for its display ; but it was still strongly apparent, in the
rapturous regret with which she referred to pleasures past, and

214 THE FANCY BALL.

the rapturous delight with which she greeted certain occasional
breaks in the monotony of a country life. An approaching
dinner-party would raise her tide of spirits, and a distant ball
or archery-meeting make them swell into a flood. On one or
two of such occasions we fancied that F — , though never
stern, looked grave — grave enough to have been set down as
an unreasonable fellow ; if not by every one, at least by that
complex " everybody," who declared that his wife was " one
of the prettiest and sweetest little women in the world," and,
as everybody must be right, so of course it was.

We had passed some weeks at our entertainer's cottage,
when rumours got afloat, such as had not disturbed, for many
a year, the standing and sometimes stagnant pool of Goslington
society. The son of Lord W — was about to come of age,
and the e\ent was to be celebrated by grand doings ; a varied
string of entertainments, to be wound up, so it was whispered,
by a great parti-coloured or fancy-ball. Rumours were soon
silenced by certainty, and our friends were amongst those who
received an invitation to meet all the world of Goslington and
a fragment of the world of London, about to be brought
into strange conjunction at W — castle.

Nothing was said then upon the subject; but we saw the
next morning something very like coolness on the part of F —
towards his wife, which was returned on hers by something
very like petulance. Ah ! thought we, it all comes of this
unlucky fancy ball ! We had often heard it declared by our
friend that he hated every species of masquerade, and would
never allow (though this was certainly before his marriage)
either sister, wife, or daughter of his to attend one.

The slight estrangement spoken of did not wholly pass away,
though so trifling were its tokens, that no eye less interested
than our own might have noticed their existence. Indeed
neither of the parties seemed really angry with the other,
appearing rather to think it incumbent on them to keep up a
certain show of coolness ; but whenever the sunny smile of

THE COTTAGE LIBRARY. 2L5

Emily broke even partially through the half transparent cloud,
it dissolved in an instant the half-formed ice of her husband's
manner. By mutual consent the subject of the fancy ball
seemed left in abeyance, and while in every circle, for miles
round, it formed the central topic, in ours it was the theme
forbid. Thence we tried to infer that it was a matter aban-
doned, and that Emily's better judgment, if not her good
feeling, had determined her to give up her own liking, on
this the very first occasion on which, we believe, her husband
has ever thwarted it.

Well — whether, as with us, awaited in silence, or, as with
the many, harbingered by the music of many voices — the grand
event marched on ; and a day was only wanted of its expected
arrival, when business called F — to London, from whence he
was not to return till late at night. Soon after his departure,
which followed an early breakfast, we left Emily, as we
supposed, to the business of her little household, and repaired,
as was our wont, to the library, — a small apartment which our
friend F — had made the very bijou of his pretty cottage.
Having taken down a choice copy of the Faery Queen, we com-
mitted our person to an ebony arm-chair, and our spirit to the
magic guidance of our author's fancy. Obedient to its leading, we
were careering somewhere betwixt earth and heaven, when a
slight noise brought us down for a moment to our proper
sphere ; yet hardly, — for on looking up we beheld, standing in
the wake of a coloured sunbeam, from which, on wings of gos-
samer, she seemed to have just descended, an unexpected
apparition of surpassing grace and beauty. Titania's self, just
stepped upon the moonlit earth, could scarcely have stood
poised on an unbroken flower-stalk, in form more airy, in atti-
tude more graceful, with countenance more radiant than those
of Emily F — , as, arrayed in likeness of the Faery Queen, she
thus burst upon out view, and with an air half archly
half proudly triumphant, enjoyed our bewildered surprise,
received the involuntary homage of our admiration.

216 DISAPPROBATION.

We saw in a moment how the matter stood ; Emily was
really going to the fancy ball ; and this, of the Queen of Fays,
was the fantastic and too bewitching costume she had chosen to
assume. Knowing her kind heart, and having believed that
its best affections had been gained by her estimable husband,
we were vexed and disappointed in our young relation, and felt
it only right to give, if we could, a check to her buoyant vanity,
by letting her feel the weight of our disapproval, shown, if not
expressed. " So I see, Emily," said I, in the coldest tone ;
" I see, after all, that you are going to this foolish ball/'

The beaming countenance of the beautiful sylph darkened in
a moment, like a cosmoramic landscape. "And why not?"
returned she pettishly : " I suppose then you don't approve."

" My approbation can be of -very little import, if you
possess that of your own heart, and that of your husband.
Under what character, pray, does he attend you ? I suppose he
plays Oberon to your Titania?"

Emily's face reddened. Some strong emotion heaved her
bosom, and I saw that pride alone kept the starting tears from
overflowing. " Charles," said she, with an attempt at assumed
indifference, " will not be there at all ; I am to go with Lady
Forrester."

We felt more vexed than ever, and wished to say something
which might yet hinder the young wife's intention ; but while
considering what that something should be, or whether, indeed,
our age and slight relationship gave a sufficient right to say
anything, we looked down for a moment on our still open book.
Of that moment Emily availed herself to effect an escape, and
on raising our eyes we only caught a glimpse of her glittering
wings as she glided through the door-way. Our first impulse
was to recall her; our next thought, to leave her to herself.
If her better nature still struggled, remonstrance of ours, we
considered, might only s«rvo to set woundod pride against it ;
and wounded passions, like wounded bravoes, fight most des-
perately. We saw no more of oia young hostess till the hour

AN EVENING WALK. 217

of dinner, to which we sat down tite-ti-t&te. Emily's sweet
face had regained all its usual expression of good humour, and
by almost an excess of attention, and an effort at more than or-
dinary liveliness, she strove to make amends for the slight
ebullition of temper stirred up by the morning's incident ; but
her sociability seemed forced, and we felt that our own was
much of the same description.

Our after-dinner sitting was soon ended for an evening stroll.
It had been a sultry day towards the end of August ; the lazy
zephyrs had been all asleep since noontide ; so, with a view to
meet the first of them which should happen to be stirring, we
directed our steps towards a high open heath or common. Its
summit was crowned by a magnificent beech, towards which
we slowly ascended, under a shower of darts levelled by the
declining sun; and, on arriving at the tree, were right glad
to seat ourselves on the circular bench which surrounded its
smooth and bulky bole.

Here, in addition to the welcome boons of rest and shade,
we were presented gratis with the exhibition of a finer pano-
rama than the Messrs. Barker ever yet produced.

What a scene of tranquil splendour lay before us ; one of
those glowing pictures of the declining day and declining
year, whereon, like a pair of dying painters, they seem to have
combined their utmost skill and richest colours in order to
exceed, in a last effort, all the productions of their meridian
prime.

After a few moments of silent admiration, we were on the
point of exclaiming to our young companion, " Oh ! who
could prefer the most brilliant ball-room to a scene like this ? "
but we checked the impulse; for perhaps, thought we, the
" still small voice," which speaks from all around us, is even
now whispering to her heart. But never, we believe, was
adder more deaf to the accents of the " charmer,J> than was
Emily at that moment to those of Nature. Her mind, we are
pretty sure, was still running, and all the faster as she ap-

218 DISCARDED WINGS.

preached it, on that fancy ball. Perhaps she suspected that
ours was following the same turn, and knowing of old our
hahit of making observations upon insects, she, by a little
womanly artifice, availed herself of it to divert their course.
Pointing with her parasol to a long procession of brown ants,
which were crossing the foot-worn area beneath the tree, —
" Look," said she, " I suppose they are going home to bed."

" Or perhaps to a ball," rejoined we, quite unable to resist
the pleasure of taking our fair cousin in her own ruse; " but
let us follow them, and see."

Emily was delighted at having, as she thought, so ingeni-
ously set us on our hobby, and attended us to the spot whither
we had traced the little labourers. Their populous settlement
bore no appearance of evening repose. Other trains were
approaching in various directions, to meet that which we had
followed, and a multitude was covering the conical surface of
the ant-hill, as if taking a farewell bask in the glowing sunset.
Amidst the congregated many, and distinguished from the
common herd by very superior bulk and four resplendent
wings, were several individual ants, which Emily (as well she
might) mistook for flies, and inquired accordingly what could
be their business in such incongruous society. " They are no
flies," said we, " but ants themselves — female ants, — though
with somewhat of the air, certainly, of being in masquerade or
fancy costume. But say what we will of their attire, we must
needs confess that they are in their proper places ; for they are
the matrons of the community, and, as we see, they are at
home."

Our young companion made no reply; but stooping down,
seemed wholly engrossed by examination of the ant-hill.
" Look," exclaimed she, presently ; " there is one of these
portly dames without any wings at all. I suppose some of
her neighbours have taken up a spite against her, and com-
bined to strip her of her glittering appendages."

" By no means," we answered, " she has laid them aside

THE INSECT MATRON. 219

by her own voluntary act. Only see, my dear Emily, here is
one of her sisters even now employed in the business of dis-
robing."

We both stooped, and watched narrowly the curious opera-
tion to which we had directed our young friend's attention.
One of the larger insects in question was actively employed in
agitating her wings, bringing them before her head, crossing
them in every direction, throwing them from side to side, and
producing so many singular contortions as to cause them all
four to fall off at the same moment, leaving her reduced
to the same condition as her wingless sister. Fatigued, ap-
parently, by her late efforts, she reposed awhile, after the
accomplishment of her purpose, brushed her denuded corslet
with her feet, and then proceeding to burrow in the soft earth
of the hillock, was speedily lost to our observation. " How
very odd!" said Emily; " what can possibly be the meaning
of such a strange, unnatural proceeding?"

" I will tell you," replied we, " that which has been
thought fully to explain its intention. This insect female,
in common with her sisters, has hitherto been privileged to
lead a life of entire indolence and pleasure. A few days since,
having risen from her lowly birth-place on those discarded
pinions, we might have seen her disporting in the air with
some gay and gallant companions, of inferior size, but winged
like herself. But now her career of pleasure, though not of
happiness, being at an end, her life of usefulness is about to
begin, and, in character of a matron, she is called to the
performance of such domestic duties as will henceforth con-
fine her to the precincts of her home.

" Of what use now, therefore, are the glittering wings
which adorned and became her in her earlier youth ? Their
possession might only, perchance, have tempted her to desert
the post which Nature, under Divine guidance, has instructed
her to fill. Obedient to its teaching, she has thus despoiled
herself of the showy pinions which (essential to her enjoy-

220 A HAPPY FINALE.

ment in the fields of air) would only have encumbered her in
the narrower but more important sphere of home/'

Emily listened in silence to our lecture on Entomology,
which must have been delivered, we suppose, with peculiar
clearness, as she did not, according to her usual custom, follow
it up by any further inquiry or comment. We soon after-
wards bid adieu to the insect community, and wended our way
homewards.

F — returned from London the same evening ; but, availing
ourselves of an old friend's freedom, we had retired to bed
before his arrival.

Next morning ushered in the day, " the great, the important
day," of the fancy-ball — neither "heavily" nor "in clouds;"
yet greatly did we fear that the pleasant sunshine which
greeted our opening eyes would be met with no answering
beams at the breakfast-table of our friends.

How agreeably, therefore, were we surprised, when, on
entering the parlour, we at once perceived an expression of
more perfect serenity, on the countenances both of F — and
his pretty wife, than had been worn by either since the day of
that confounded invitation.

"Ah!" thought we, "it's pretty plain how the matter is
ended; that wicked little fairy has wrought her charms for
something — has carried her point — and will carry HIM, her
willing captive, to the ball. What poor weak fools fond

husbands are ! Thank heaven that Well ! perhaps

better so than worse."

Breakfast proceeded; chat in plenty; but not a syllable
about the fancy ball ; till, bursting to know how the case, so
long pending, had really ended, we ventured on a pumping
query — " At what hour, Emily," said we, " does Lady For-
rester come to take you to the ball ?"

" I have written to prevent her calling!"

" O, then you are going under other escort?" and we
looked slyly at F — .

A HAPPY FINALE.

221

" I am not going at all," said Emily.

Here she put in ours her little white hand, and looked up
archly in our face, — " / am not going, for I have laid aside my
wings!"

" My good fellow !" said F — , as he took our other hand ;
" you deserve to be made President of the Entomological
Society."

NOTE.

That remarkable procedure of the matron ant, whereon the
preceding narrative is founded, is a well authenticated fact.
The circumstances attending it were partially noted by Gould,
the historian of English ants, Linnaus, and De Geerj and
observed and related with greater accuracy by Huber.

1 SUtrapeD in liftenegg of tfje jFaetrp <&ueen.'

Bees in their transformations, or the two preparatory stages of grub or larva,
nymph or pupa, the latter nearest to the centre of the board. To the right is
a piece of honeycomb, with cells of the common form, with a royal or Queen's
chamber attached, as most usually, to its outer edge. The two bees on the
wing are workers.

BUSINESS AND PLEASURE.

,N our sketch of bees as " a body politic," we
have seen how ill befitting is their waxen
imagery to serve as a model for human imita-
tion— how frail to falling dynasties the sup-
port of waxen pillars ; but there yet remains
in the economy of the hive (especially as exhibited in bee
labour) enough in plenty for counsel, for reproof, for pattern,
for reflection, for admiration — all resolving themselves into
adoration of Him to whom adoration alone is due.

FRANCIS HUBER. 223

We are lingering still on the threshold of the hive ; and here
there meets us a venerable shade who must detain us yet a
little longer. How can we enter the bee-hive without a tribute
of admiration and respect to him who for us and for thousands
had laid the secrets of the bee-hive open — without a word as
well as thought of Francis Huber, the bees' best biographist?
—the great, the good, the gifted, yet bereft — the clear-sighted,
yet the sightless Huber. At this season, nearly a century ago,
did he first open on the summer sunshine those admiring and
inquiring eyes, which for only a brief portion of a long life were
permitted either to behold the glories of day, or to look into the
minuter wonders of the animate creation. Yet most marvel-
lously and kindly in his case, as in many others of similar
privation, was that privation balanced. Through the eyes
of others, aided by his own mental vision of surpassing clear-
ness, he was enabled to keep watch on the works and ways
of the little people of the hive, to throw a blaze of light on
their heretofore obscure history, and to become, for the wise
recreation of future generations, as well as for the amusement
of his own otherwise dark hours, their most interesting and
circumstantial chronicler.

But besides being happy in his own energetic mind, Huber
was also happy in the providential blessing and possession of
friends — friends who, in the grand pursuit of his darkened
but not gloomy life, were without a metaphor " eyes to the
blind" — the blind object of their affectionate regard and ad-
miration. These were, in the first instance, Francis Burnens,
an uneducated peasant, yet his faithful friend and constant and
efficient assistant; next, his wife; and last, not least, his son,
P. Huber, afterwards celebrated for his own researches into
the history of ants.

In the circumstances attendant on Huberts marriage we
meet with one of those pleasant romances of reality which
occasionally vary the monotony of every-day life. At an early
age, the sight of our persevering naturalist fell a sacrifice to

224 FRANCIS HUBER.

minute and intense observation exercised in his darling study.
As with our prince of poets, "a drop serene"1 had "quenched"
his " orbs " of vision ; nor would he for their recovery undergo
the usual operation. Previous to this affliction he had formed
an attachment to Mademoiselle Aimee Pullein, daughter of a
Swiss magistrate, who opposed the marriage of the lovers on
the ground of the young man's blindness. No sooner, how-
ever, did the lady arrive at an age which gave her (at least in
her own opinion) a right of judging for herself, than (after
refusing offers of greater promise) she united her lot with that
of the blind yet loving Huber, with whom forty years of sub-
sequent happiness, wherein she was his secretary, his observer,
and the sharer, not only of his researches, but of the enthu-
siasm with which he followed them, gave her no cause to
repent her choice. Even when deprived by death of his affec-
tionate helpmate, the blind and then aged Huber was not left
destitute of woman's supporting tenderness, which, in the
person of a married daughter, Madame Molin, waited on him
to the hour of his death, in the year 1831, at the age of
eighty-one.2

From the bees' historian come we at last to bees themselves.
Close at hand, from a border of mignonette, we hear the
voice of the " Oriental Deburah," humming cheerfully of
pleasure mingled with labour. And who in this busy little
creature can doubt their union, as we see her rolling amidst
her golden riches, adroitly brushing the precious dust from off
her antlers into the curious panniers with which her thighs are
furnished to receive it?

Now, her baskets are full laden, heaped with orange pollen
high above their brims ; but an elastic fringe of hairs by which
these are surrounded hinders their contents from being over-
turned. Our collector's task is completed for the morning,

1 Gutta serena. a Huber died at Lausanne.

DISPOSAL OF HONEY. 225

and thus laden without, and doubtless lined within, by a full
measure of the nectared juices, " sucked from buds and bells,"
she takes wing, and makes so light of all her lading, that
straight as an arrow from a bow (and eke as swiftly) she cuts
the air, even in the wind's eye, in the exact direction of her
straw-built home.

Our bee, as before noticed, was the bearer of a double load —
pollen or dust of anthers in her thigh baskets, — nectar in her
internal honey-bag ; but neither of these floral treasures have
been collected for herself.

Fulfilling, in the first place, her duty of loyalty, she offers,
as a tribute to her queen, a portion of her honey, pure as at
the moment of swallowing, — an operation merely of transfer
from the nectary of the flowers to her own honey-bag, or first
stomach.

The remainder, all at least except that trifling portion re-
quired for her own support, she then deposits within one of the
store cells of which the contents are appropriated to the supply
of the community ; or instead of this, on finding a group of
labourers employed in building, to some of them she kindly
gives a draught of sweet refreshment.

Her honey thus disposed of — what does she do with her
pollen, the golden lading of her triangular thigh baskets?
This pollen or farina of flowers — after undergoing a certain
process, of which swallowing forms a part — becomes what is
called bee-bread, and constitutes, as such, one of the strongest
supports of bee existence, especially before arrived at maturity.
After being swallowed, it may perhaps be imparted at once
to some of the infant occupants of the nursery cells; or, if
more is collected than immediate need requires, this, as well
as honey, is laid up in store, being diluted and packed for
future use.

We have seen how our busy gatherer has brought home her
quota of pollen or bee-bread, and honey or bee-wine ; but has '
she contributed to the general magazine her share of wax, —

226 MATERIAL OF WAX.

that material so indispensable to form the " casks," or caskets
wherein both these treasures are preserved ? She has done her
part (doubt it not !) in augmentation of this useful commodity ;
but on the present occasion she can furnish no wax, because
she has given away all her honey.

Why a bee could not contribute wax because possessed of
no honey is a question, certainly, which people who know
little about bees would naturally ask now; and the same
query might have been put less than a hundred years ago even
by those best acquainted with their habits.

That Humble-bees, and all bees, were in the habit either of
collecting wax ready made from flowers, or of manufacturing
it from this flowery pollen (the lading of their thigh baskets)
was the generally received opinion ; and even those close
observers, Reaumur and Bonnet, seem to "have thought much
the same ; whereas it is now well ascertained that honey, not
pollen, is the original material of wax, which indeed no bee
can make without it.

That the primary foundation of wax is not pollen was first
concluded by the celebrated John Hunter, on account of its
varied colour ; whereas that of wax is uniform ; and moreover
pollen continues to be collected by the workers of those hives
wherein the comb is already complete. Huber and others
further found, on experiment, that bees fed entirely upon
honey and sugar, and deprived, at the same time, of all oppor-
tunities of gathering pollen, were able without it to construct
combs, though utterly at a loss to feed their brood for lack of
the bee-bread derived from farina of flowers. From these and
other observations, it was proved, beyond doubt, that honey or
sugar, not pollen, is essential to the formation of wax, — a secre-
tion which, exuding from the rings of the bee's stomach, is
sometimes visible in the form of scales.

In addition to pollen and honey, with wax hence derived,
bees are accustomed to levy, from the vegetable world, another
contribution employed in their works of architecture. This

COMB-MAKING. 227

substance, as being chiefly applied outwardly and to the out-
works of their waxen structures, is called Propolis, from Greek
words signifying " before the city." It consists of a brown
resin, which was supposed long ago to be the collection of bees
from trees producing gums of the same description, — a conjec-
ture since confirmed, — Huber having seen them strip the resin
from off buds of the wild poplar and branches placed in their
way ; while Kirby observed them busy, for a like purpose, on
the balsamic buds of the Tacamahaca.

In collection of propolis, as in that of pollen, the bee's thigh
panniers are in high requisition ; but, to avoid their being be-
gummed, as well as beladen with this sticky resin, our little
gatherer has to knead and render it less adhesive, before she
transfers it from her fore feet to the convenient corbeilles
appended to her holder limbs.

With this vegetable gum the honey-combs, heretofore pure
white, are varnished, and their edges strengthened and secured.
It is with propolis also that all accidental holes and interstices
are filled up.

Subsequent on the brief mention, as above, of the materials
employed by bee architects, should follow, properly, a descrip-
tion of the way in which they are accustomed to work them
up. We have never, ourselves, had an opportunity of fol-
lowing any of their wondrous operations as carried on within
the hive, which, by the way, would seem by no means an easy
matter, even when that hive is made of glass. We might
easily, however, copy, in an abbreviated form, some at least of
the relations given of their proceedings by Reaumur, the inde-
fatigable Huber, and other bee historians ; but these, shorn of
their detail, would proportionately lose in interest.

Since, therefore, our account of bee workmanship cannot
(consistently with our limits) be long enough to entertain, we
shall make it so very short, as at all events not to weary. We
would wish it, on the contrary, to stimulate, to serve just as an
incitement to the abundant but not cloying sweets of Huber's

228 THE BEE FOUNDRESS.

delightful pages. There will be found in detail, ample and
accurate, — how that, as a first preparatory step towards the
construction of a comb, the bees (called Wax- workers) suspend
themselves, from the empty interior of the hive, in neck-
lace-like festoons, and thus remain motionless for hours
together, apparently to rest, but in reality to secrete the
wax which becomes visible on the rings of their bodies; —
how that, in step the second, the Bee foundress leaves the
group, clears herself a space, goes to work alone (hundreds of
spectators watching her proceedings), gathers from off her
body, kneads with her mouth, then deposits the first portion of
wax, in other words lays the foundation of the waxen city ; —
how this conspicuous individual, then retiring, leaves a second
bee to imitate her example; then, in succession, a third and
fourth, and so on, till a block or wall of wax is formed at top
of the domed hive ; — how, subsequently, the shapeless mass
thus accumulated is excavated and moulded into honey-comb
cells, — those admirable solutions of that difficult geometric
problem which requires "A quantity of wax being given to
form thereof similar and equal cells of a determinate capacity,
but of the largest size in proportion to the quantity of matter
employed, and disposed in such a manner as to occupy the least
possible space." These conditions are exactly fulfilled in the
six-sided cell of a bee, which is of a shape also the best adapted
to its body.

Plenty of the worldly wise are disposed, doubtless, to look
upon the study of bees, or of any such small people, as
altogether foolishness.

Some there are (though not we hope amongst our
readers) with whom the tastes and pursuits of the wise and
good weigh as nothing, and with whom the intrinsic interest
attached to natural objects (could they even be forced to their
study) would go for nothing too. These have no minds for
the common wonderful — no hearts for the natural poetic, with
both of which the works and ways of bees, and of insects in
general, are fully fraught.

TRANSATLANTIC BEES.

229

They would not care a rush (how should they ?) for the in-
formation of an American poet — the nature-painting Bryan —
when he tells us how that

" The bee, a more adventurous colonist than man,
With whom he came across the eastern deep,"

is always (as becomes a wild-wood insect) the precursor of civi-
lization in the giant forests of his Transatlantic clime.

To the strains of the poet (sing he never so sweetly) the ears
of the mammon worshipper — the mere utilitarian — are doubtless
deaf enough ; but the American poet has (or had) a quaker
countryman, named (we think) John Schall, who, on the sub-
ject of bees, is much more likely to move a sordid spirit.

This gentleman, in the year 1845, was exhibiting in London
his American barrel hives of wood, constructed on the humane
principle of non-destruction to their busy inmates ; and in con-
nection therewith was the proposer of plans for bee cultivation
on an extensive and profitable scale.

of 53u|ine^ ano of pleasure.'

The central and largest insect in this summer's evening group is the great
Green Grasshopper (Gryllus viridissimus). Above it, in descending flight, is
the common Dor or Clock Beetle ( Geotrupes stercorarius). Towards the left,
rising on the wing, is a Cuckoo-spit Froghopper (Cicada spumaria), of which
another is traversing the leaf of sorrel-dock below. A larva of the same insect
occupies a leaf of clover in the foreground, and on the sorrel behind the Grass-
hopper appears a globular patch of the frothy secretion (popularly Cuckoo-
spit), wherein the larva of this Froghopper is usually concealed. The Cicada
spumaria is not a sound-emitting insect, but is here figured, as resembling in
form, and being allied in family with tke foreign Cicada, or Tree-hopper, of
musical celebrity.

INSECT MINSTRELSY.

measured by their influence on the mind,
those simple notes of harmony or discord, pro-
duced by many of the insect race, are of no
mean importance in the scale of sounds,
Their power must certainly, however, be at-
tributed rather to associate ideas than to any intrinsic excellence

CLASSIC MUSICIANS. 231

in the sounds themselves, which, by means of such borrowed
attributes, have often indeed acquired a character and exercised
an influence directly opposite to their own inherent qualities.
It accords not with our plan to say much of insect foreigners,
whether musical or mute ; but we may cite, as the earliest and
one of the most striking examples of what we mean, the song
of the classic Cicada or Tettix — the Tree-hopper ; by a misno-
mer— the Grasshopper of the ancients. This was the Insect
Minstrel to whom the Locrians erected a statue ; some say for
very love and honour of its harmony ; others, as a grateful re-
cord of a certain victory obtained in a musical contest, solely by
its aid. The story goes, that on one of these occasions two
harp-strings of the Locrian candidate being snapt asunder in
the ardour of competition, a Cicada, lighting at the moment on
the injured instrument, more than atoned for its deficiencies,
and achieved, by its well-timed assistance, the triumph of the
player.

Thus highly was this insect's song accounted of, even at a
period when " music, heavenly maid," could scarcely be con-
sidered " young ; " yet as various species of Cicadas have been
described by modern travellers, one can hardly suppose that
any better quality than shrilly loudness can have belonged to
the Tettix of ancient Greece.

We are told, indeed, by Madame Merian, that an insect of
a similar description was called the Lyre-player by the Dutch
in Surinam. The notes of a Brazilian species have been
likened to the sound of a vibrating wire; and those of an-
other, in the swamps of North America, to the ringing of
horse-bells. Similitudes these of sounds sufficiently agree-
able; but contrasted therewith, and almost drowning them,
come the discordant comparisons of numerous other travellers
respecting the same or insects of an allied species. One is
called by Dr. Shaw " an impertinent creature, stunning the
ear with shrill ungrateful squalling/' The noise of a species
in Java is described by Thunberg as shrill and piercing as

232 TETTIX AND CICADA.

the notes of a trumpet ; while Smeathman speaks of another
common in Africa, which emits so loud a sound as to be heard
at the distance of half a mile, or, when introduced into the
house, to silence by its song the voices of a whole company.
The mighty " waits" of the Fulgora, or Great Lan thorn Fly
of Guyana, an insect not of the same but an allied family,
has also obtained the name of " Scare-sleep/' — its din being
likened to the sound of razor-grinding.

On the whole, therefore, it would appear pretty clearly that
loudness is the main characteristic of the Cicada's song. Yet
when we recognize, in this insect minstrel, the " Anacreontic
Grasshopper," the " Son of Phoebus," the " Favourite of the
Muses," the " Nightingale of the Nymphs," the " Emblem
of perpetual Youth and Joy," the " Prophet of the Summer,"
we no longer marvel that its notes, however harsh, should
have sounded melodious even in the ear of the polished
Athenian.

To descend to present times and native performers, first,
there is our own familiar and representative, the Hearth
Cricket, for whose crinking chirp even we can scarcely chal-
lenge much intrinsic merit, yet do we regard it as a song,
and a merry one; and why? because the faggot always
crackles, and the kettle sings, if not in actual, in imaginative
chorus.

But besides the sensations of involuntary pleasure which we
have often owed, without knowing it, to Insect Minstrelsy, it
affords matter for thought-inquiry, concerning the way in
which it is produced. It is all of an instrumental and not
vocal character ; and, among the varied mechanisms of natural
objects, the instruments of sound furnished to insect musicians
are none of the least curious.

That of the celebrated Cicada (the classic lyre player) — an
insect rarely seen in England, but still common in the south
of Europe, — consists, as described by Reaumur, of a pair of
drums fixed one on each side of the trunk ; these are covered

INSTRUMENT OF GRASSHOPPER. 233

on the exterior by two membranaceous plates, usually circular
or oval 5 and beneath them is a cavity, part of which seems
to open into the belly. These drums form, however, but one
portion of a compound instrument ; for, besides these, there is
attached to another drum-like membrane in the interior a
bundle of muscular strings; on pulling which, and letting
them go again, a sound can be produced even after the
animal's death. For the issue of this sound a hole is ex-
pressly provided, like the sound-hole of a violin, or the opening
in the human larynx.

The chirp of the cricket, both of house and field, is said, by
Kirby, to be produced by the -friction of the bases of the
tegmina, or wing cases, against each other, at their base ; but
these insects are also provided with their drums. In the
large green field cricket1 this drum is described2 as a round
plate of transparent membrane tensely stretched, and sur-
rounded by a prominent edge, or nervure. The instrument is
to be found in that part of the right wing-case which is folded
horizontally over the trunk, and is concealed under the left,
in which also there is a strong circular nervure corresponding
to the hoop of the drum beneath. The quick motion with
which these nervures are rubbed together producing a vibra-
tion in the membrane, is supposed to augment the sound.

What we call familiarly the singing or chirping of grass-
hoppers and locusts, is outwardly produced by application of
the hind shank to the thigh, rubbing it smartly against the
wing-cases, and alternating the right and left legs ; but these,
as well as the cicada and the cricket, are provided with their
" petits tambours," — membrane-covered drums, or cavities of
somewhat varied construction, to augment the sound of ex-
terior origin.

Be it here observed that the above-named professors of the
"joyeuse science" — the cicada lyre-players — the crickets of

1 Acrida viridissima. (Vignette). * By De Geer.

234 INSTRUMENT OF GNAT.

our field and household bands — the roving grasshopper trou-
badours, are all, like the feathered minstrels of grove and
garden, of the masculine sex; each doubtless playing his
mid-day sonata, or evening serenade, with intent mainly to
tickle the ear and fancy of his listening lady.

On the muteness of the latter was founded a sly joke on
the Xantippes of antiquity, which is equally applicable both
to scolding and to musical matrons of the present day.
" Happy," says Zenachus the Rhodian,

" Happy the cicadas' lives,
Since they all have noiseless wives ! "

The so-called " Horn" or " Trumpet of the Gnat," would
seem no wind instrument at all ; its buzz, or hum, as well as
that of other two-winged flies, appearing, says Kirby,1 to be
produced by friction of the base of the wings against the chest.
This conclusion would seem, however, scarcely to be recon-
ciled with the fact remarked by Rennie,2 that they sometimes,
especially towards autumn, fly in silence, although, when
flying, the base of the wings must of necessity rub against
the chest.

" The roving bee proclaims aloud
Her flight by vocal wings."

So says the poet ; and, in support of the accuracy as well as
elegance of the dictum, he has the testimony of that careful
naturalist Swammerdam, who opines that her humming pro-
ceeds from the wings alone, especially the small membra-
naceous pair at the shoulders, when played upon by air
propelled from the subjacent air-tubes or spiracles, aided by
certain adjacent cavities which open wide apertures under the
wings. That the wings alone do not, however, produce the
bee's hum, seems sufficiently proved by an experiment of
Hunter's, wherein he found that after its wings were cut off
the poor insect could still utter (as well it might) a shrill

1 Introduction to Entomology. * Insect Miscellanies.

MUSIC OF BEES. 235

peevish sound ; and the same is confirmed by the silent flight
of many insects of the same order.

Speaking of the hum of bees, which, though monotonous,
is, through association, one of the most delightful of all insect
harmonies, Kirby remarks, " that it ceases when she alights ;
that of the wasp and hornet is more sonorous. The bom-
bination of humble-bees may be heard from far, gradually
increasing, till, when in its wheeling flight it passes close
to the ear, almost stunning it by its sharp, shrill, deafening
sound."1

The buzz of flies has been supposed to arise from the striking
of their wings upon the air; but this would seem disproved by
the silent progress of many other rapid fliers, such as the
dragon and crane flies ; also by the power of some to produce
a loud buzz when not upon the wing. Rennie2 cites, as an
example, the buzz of a wasp-fly, when resting, apparently
motionless, on the window. Upon close observation, a vibra-
tory tremor, similar to that of a harp-string, though so rapid
as to be almost invisible, was perceptible in its wings ; and
when these were laid hold of, the sound ceased. It is sup-
posed by the same author that this sound was not referable,
simply, to any muscular movement, but that it must have
arisen either from air playing on the membranaceous edges
of the wings at their origin, as in the case of an ^JEolian harp-
string, or by the stroke or friction of some internal organ upon
the roots of the nervures.3 The drone of the dung beetle,
the " Drowsy Dorr,"4 which, in the still twilight of a summer's*
evening,

" Come brushing by

With buzzing wing"

owes also its origin to friction, — that of the wing-cases upon
the base of the wings. Loud hummers of the same order are
the musk-beetle, the cock- chafer, 'and the beautiful green chafer

1 Introduction to Entomology. a In Insect Miscellanies.

* In Insect Miscellanies, p. 91. 4 Vignette.

236 BEE TRUMPETER.

of the rose, which never fails, in alighting on the bosom of his
favourite flower, to salute her with a wing sonata of delighted
homage.

The tones of insects, as well as the songs of birds, have
been deemed worth the trouble of notation. Gardiner, in
his " Music of Nature," tells us that the gnat hums in the
note A on the second space ; the death-watch calls (as the owl
hoots) in B flat, and is answered in G ; the three notes of the
cricket are in B ; the buzz of a bee-hive in F ; that of the
house-fly in F in the first space; the humble bee an octave
lower ; the cock-chafer D below the line.

Although in no case proceeding from the mouth, the sounds
we have been hitherto regarding as instrumental music are
no less to be considered as a veritable language, serving, in
lieu of voice, to communicate information and express pas-
sions, such as fear, anger, pleasure, — above all, love, that ruler
of the rest, which with insect no less than man may be justly
denominated the " Soul of Song."

There is a peculiar sound often heard issuing from a bee-
hive previous to its sending forth a swarm, — a sharp, clear
hum, produced, seemingly, by the vibration of the wings of
a single bee. This has been interpreted into an harangue
uttered by the young queen, and intended to inspire a portion
of the community with courage to go forth, and colonise a
new empire. On the conclusion of this inspiriting address,
her tone changing to one of supplication, aided even by groans
and lamentation, she has been supposed, turning from the
people, to address the queen mother of the hive, and, as can-
didate for a new throne, entreat her permission to lead the
division about to emigrate. This, at least, is the purport of
the royal speech, as translated by the ear and pen of Butler,
who wrote of music as well as of the " Female Monarchic;"1
of the latter with such marvellous minuteness as to draw a

1 Female Monarchic of Bees, 1 634.

BEE TRUMPETER.

237

poetical apostrophe to the effect that he must have been ad-
mitted into the counsels of the hive.

We are not called upon certainly to give implicit credence
to all that this initiate in bee language has imparted of its
meaning, nor shall we positively assert, with Godart, that
there is in every nest of humble bees a trumpeter, who at
early morn, ascending to its summit, sounds a reveille with its
vibratory wings of a quarter of an hour's duration. But we
have plenty of common evidence, plain even to our common
perceptions, that insects can make audible their anger and
their fears. These we may hear intermingled in the sharp,
impatient scold of the first humble-bee we may venture to
imprison for a moment in the hollow of our closed hand ; and
we may listen to the fly's expression of intense terror, in the
peculiar screaming buzz which she utters, when — and only
when — in the grasp of her arch-enemy the spider.

(Clje cla^ic tftcaba,

ant> tfie Deep^toneb £>or.

Conspicuous in the foreground is the "Carpenter" Caterpillar of the great
Goat Moth ((7oss«s ligniperda), issuing from its woody cocoon in the hollow of
an oak. Various Moth Caterpillars of those called " Tent- makers" (Tineidci),
perambulate, under cover of their portable pavilions, the oak-leaf, just over the
" Carpenter's" cocoon. Above that, hangs another oak-leaf, cut and rolled by
some caterpillar in form of a barrel button. The hazel-leaf, higher and be-
yond, cut across its middle and rolled spirally, in form of a pendant tassel, is
the work of a small caterpillar, which becomes a variegated, greenish Moth.
To the left, on a spray of elder, is a walking-branch caterpillar, of the Swallow-
tail Moth (Ourapterix sambucaria), suspened for transformation, in a cradle
composed of silk and pieces of leaf. On the other leaves of the same shrub, a
"Leaf-Miner" and a " Leaf- Roller," both Moth caterpillars, have exercised
their respective crafts ; a white serpentine track marks the presence of one, a
scroll with silken holdfasts that of the other. On the top of the wall, and
composed of grains thence detached, are two little pyramids, built and occu-
pied by tiny caterpillars called " Stonemasons," from the material thus
employed.

239

MOTHS AS OPERATIVES.

E believe it was Reaumur, who, with the
lively fancy of his nation and character, first
thought of arranging certain caterpillars, as
well as some of the solitary workers among
wasps and bees, into the several crafts of
" Stonemasons," " Carpenters," " Tent-makers," " Muff-
makers," " Flask-makers," and " Miners."

With respect to the solidity if not the ingenuity of his
fabric, let us begin with the 4 Stonemason." * He is the
caterpillar of a little moth with wings of gilded bronze, smaller,
but much resembling the clothes-moth, whose family name
(Tinea) he also bears, although in habits and locality, as well
as the material of his workmanship, he stands widely con-
trasted with the destructive of the wardrobe. Instead of
reposing, like the latter, in " Ladye's Bowre," encased in gar-
ment of wool, or silk, or down, and regaling on the same soft
and delicate substances of animal derivation, our hardy little
operative finds himself, on emerging from the egg, exposed
without protection on the surface of some lichen-covered wall.
Instructed, however, by that kind Power which in this very
lichen provides him with an ample store of provender, he
knows perfectly well how to meet the other exigencies of his
exposed position. Of what avail to him would be a silken or
a leafen tent, liable to be overset and borne away by the sum-
mer breeze? A stone-built tower suits his purpose better;
and such is the structure he proceeds forthwith to erect. By
help of " tooth and nail," he detaches small particles of the
stone or brick with which the wall supplies him, — binds them
together with silk and a sort of natural cement, possessed in
common with his kind, — and thus, after four-and-twenty hours

1 Vignette.

A A

240 CARPENTERS.

of incessant labour, completes for himself a habitation ot sugar-
loaf form, just large enough for his comfortable accommoda-
tion, and under cover of which he proceeds to perambulate his
world of wall, and regale on the vegetable viands with which
for him it is bespread. When the caterpillar portion of his
life is over, and he is about to enter on that quiescent state
which precedes the development of his perfect form, he
attaches to the wall, by silken cables, the hitherto moveable
tenement which has accompanied his rambles. Within the
interior of this now immoveable pyramid, he becomes a chry-
salis, and then, leaving it behind (a self-erected monument
and tomb of his remains), he ascends on his bronzed and
gilded pinions through an opening left for the purpose at
the top.

From their employment of a material next in solidity to
stone, namely, wood, the " Carpenters " among moth opera-
tives would seem best placed after the " Masons," although
widely contrasted with the tiny builders last described both in
size and habits. At the head of this carpenter craft stands the
Cossus, or caterpillar of the Great Goat Moth1 — a large,
smooth, unsightly crawler of a lurid red and salmon colour,
black-headed and black-clawed, whose extensive galleries,
chiselled through solid trunk of willow, oak, and poplar,
attest him to be a mechanic of only too much industry. In
Middlesex and adjacent counties he drives especially a most
flourishing business. A carpenter is said to be "known by
his chips;" but the artizan in question, as if aware that his
operations are all trespasses, swallows (after the fashion of
some detected thieves) every particle of the saw-dust and
shavings which his trenchant jaws produce. In summer he is
content thus to proceed working and eating his way through
the winding wooden tunnels which afford him sufficient shelter
against all enemies — wind and weather included ; but as soon

1 Vignette.

A FLASK-MAKER. 241

as the gales of autumn whistle through the thinned branches of
the trunk he inhabits, he begins to provide himself with a
more seasonable habitation. With this intent he widens a
portion of his gallery into a roomy chamber, and, no longer
satisfied with bare wooden walls, proceeds, by the exercise of
his native skill in weaving, to hang them with an impervious
tapestry, composed of the raspings of wood scooped out
of the cell and united with strong silk. In this snug dormi-
tory he passes the winter, in an idle fast, to resume his labours
and feed with the return of spring ; for this master Carpenter
is a long liver, working, and literally living by his work, for
the space of three years. At the end of this period he casts
aside his working (or caterpillar) garb, and after an aurelian
slumber, passed in a summer cell, lined with a lighter tapestry
than that occupied in winter, he thence emerges a dark-brown
beautifully shaded moth.

As the greatest Emperor of Russia was all the greater for
having once been, by choice, a shipwright, so the great
" Emperor " of moths is all the worthier of note for being
always, by birth, a "Flask-maker." The art by which he
works his way to the royalty of his winged estate may perhaps
be more properly considered as that of weaving. Having
prepared for his labours by feeding on the tree, usually a
willow or black thorn,1 which sheltered the infancy of his
caterpillar life, he begins, towards September, to prepare
himself a private chamber, but of no common construction, for
the mysterious process of transformation. The peculiar excel-
lence of this royal cocoon consists, firstly, in its texture, which
is of silk, so thickly woven as almost to resemble leather;
secondly, in the elegance of its shape, which has been com-
pared to that of a Florence flask ; and thirdly, in its singular
and ingenious formation. Instead of being wholly closed,
like the cocoon of the silk-worm and most others, this has a

1 We have had a specimen found and fed upon the strawberry.

242 TENT-MAKERS.

small circular aperture formed at its upper end, by the con-
vergence of elastic narrow points When the time arrives for
his coming forth, the winged Emperor has only to push
against the elastic points above him, which thus opened,
reclose after his egress, and leave the flask-shaped tenement
entire and unimpaired.

From this imperial, flask-making weaver, we descend (an
abrupt transition) to the tiny tent-maker, which, though
tabernacled in the frail tissue of a piece of leaf, belongs to the
same Tinea family as the sturdy little mason whom we have
seen to build himself a tower of brick or stone. Those who
in a green leaf, or a leaf turned yellow, are accustomed to see
a leaf and nothing more, will acquire enlarged conceptions
even of a single leaf, when led to consider, that while to some
among the insect million it furnishes an extensive plain, to
others, it is absolutely a tented field.

The elegant and curious erections of these tent-making
caterpillars are commonly to be seen on various forest and
fruit trees, especially the elm, oak, hawthorn, and pear, of
which the leaves furnish them at once with food, and material
for the construction of their habitations. They are usually
about a quarter of an inch in length, and being formed out
of pieces of leaf assume, as they wither, a feuille-morte, or
golden hue.1

There is commonly to be seen about Midsummer, upon
leaves of oak, hazel, dock, and other plants, what, on a cursory
glance, appears a bundle of little bits of stalk and straw acci-
dentally collected and combined. On looking closer we find,
however, that the pieces are arranged longitudinally side by
side, and much too regularly to have come together hap-
hazard. We shall perceive also that among several of these
Lilliputian faggots, some are fixed perpendicularly to the leaf,
while others are in motion over the surface. The latter are

1 Vignette.

MUFF-MAKERS. 243

attending the progress of their occupants, each a small prettily-
striped caterpillar, which, with head and shoulders protruded,
thus travels under cover of what we may call a tent of sticks.
The sticks, however, which cover its exterior, form in fact
only a protecting palisade attached to a silk- woven central
case, the real tent which surrounds the body of its ingenious
architect.

The " muff-makers" among moths do not show as much
ingenuity as the moths among muffs in the manufacture of
their body coats; but they display even superior tact and
shrewdness in the appropriation of a ready-made article, admi-
rably adapted to serve their turn. The muffs in question are
of vegetable fur, that short silky down which clothes the seed-
catkins of the palm-willow, and is often chosen by a certain
moth caterpillar to clothe himself. With this felonious intent,
he burrows into the seed for the protection of which the furry
coat was originally designed, lines it with silk, detaches it
from the parent stem, then walks away, clothed a la Russe, to
the annihilation of some incipient willow. These vegetable
muffs, with their insect appropriators, are sometimes found
floating on the water beneath the pilfered tree, and it is sug-
gested by Rennie that the buoyant material of this muff-like
tent might be intended to furnish its little occupant with a life-
boat when blown from off its native willow.

There is another and numerous company of caterpillar arti-
sans, which, from their mode of leaf appropriation, have been
designated Leaf-rollers. Though the labours of this industrious
class do not correspond (like the above) with any particular
craft of human exercise, they are much too ingenious, as well
as in their aggregate of mischief too important, to be passed,
over without notice, either here or within " their green shops '*
— the gardens, hedges, forests, where throughout the summer
they are to be seen incessantly at work.

There is scarcely a single tree or plant which does not afford
material for some caterpillar of the leaf-rolling crew, which,

244 LEAF-CUTTERS.

according to their species, are accustomed to exercise their
ingenuity in forms of infinite variety. That of the simple
scroll1 is very commonly exemplified in the leaves of the lilac
and the oak, almost as soon as they expand. These are formed
by rolling the leaf from its extreme point towards the stalk, —
an operation which the caterpillar is only enabled to accom-
plish by the aiding exercise of its art of weaving, since it is by
silken threads attached to the leaf that he contrives to pull it
into the desired form, wherein it is retained by silken braces.
These hold-fasts, which to the roll of the lilac-leaf are com-
paratively slender, are numerous and strongly doubled in that
of the oak, to meet, seemingly, the greater resistance of its
stiffer fibre. The leaf-rollers which thus presume to bend to
their purpose the foliage of the forest7 s monarch (and that
often to a prodigious and most mischievous extent) assume,
in the month of June, the shape of little green moths,2
which, pretty and innocent as they look, are progenitors of
caterpillar marauders resembling those which they have been
themselves.

Portions of leaves, as well as entire ones, are sometimes
employed in the operations of leaf-rolling caterpillars, which,
in these instances, using their jaws with all the precision of
well-directed scissors, manage to cut out, but without entirely
cutting off, a piece of material shaped exactly to their pur-
pose. A worker of this description is a little smooth greenish-
white caterpillar, which, out of a piece of sorrel-leaf thus
excised and not detached, forms a sort of conical pyramid,
composed of five or six enwrapping folds. Having cut out
the required segment, the cunning artificer rolls it slowly up
by means of threads attached to the surface of the leaf, " and
then, having cut in a different direction, sets the cone upright
by weaving other threads attached to the centre of the roll and
the plane of the leaf, upon which it throws the weight of its

1 Vignette. 2 Tortrix viridana> (green oak moth).

LEAF-BUTTONS. 245

body."1 After having devoured the interior folds of this
ingeniously constructed cone, its little inhabitant, still pro-
tected by the exterior walls, weaves within it a silken cocoon,
and undergoes his final transformations.

A June ramble in Highgate wood furnished us, last summer,
with two most elegant specimens of the leaf-rolling combined
with the leaf-cutting art. A number of young oak-leaves
having been each roughly cut across the centre from the edgo
up to the mid-rib, the half comprising the tip was formed
into a hard compact roll, of exquisite neatness, closely resem-
bling a barrel-button.2 In the centre of each was a bright
yellow egg, but how it had got there (seeing that there was
no visible opening for the ingress or egress of its layer) was
and remains a question as puzzling to us, as, according to
Pindaric record, was once to royal brains the advent of the
apple in the dumpling.

In the same wood, on the same day, we noticed certain
leaves of the hazel, cut and rolled in a form much more grace-
ful if not more curious than the above. These leaves, as those
of the oak, were severed, only more smoothly, across their
centres, the main stalk alone being left undivided ; but the ter-
minating halves, employed by the little artificers of the oak to
form their barrel-buttons, were, in this instance, simply rolled
or twisted into a spiral form, so as to have the appearance, in
their suspension by the mid-rib, of an ear-drop, or a pendant
tassel, — the serrated edge of the hazel-leaf adding to the
elegance of their appearance.3 With one more specimen of the
skill of Leaf-rollers we must close our brief notice of their
ingenious labours. On a cabbage rose-bush, at Hornsey, we
observed, in June of last summer, a case of horn-like shape,
wide and open at top, and pointed at bottom, formed out of a
leaf of the same shrub, twisted spirally, and suspended by
silken strings to the main stalk of a group of young leaflets.

1 Insect Architecture; also Reaumur.

2 Vignette. * Vignette.

246 ROSE-LEAF HAMMOCK.

One of the latter, nearest to the mouth of the pendant horn,
displayed recent marks of excising jaws ; and presently, pro-
truding from the open end of this curious leaf-case, appeared
the head of a green Caterpillar, which, thus protected, resumed
its juicy meal.

Having gained possession of master Leaf-roller and his
ingenious tent, by cutting off the branch to which they were
appended, we placed it in a flower-pot filled with mould,
and when the twig withered took care to plant beside it a
succession of others. To these our tabernacled feeder
never failed to transfer himself and habitation, slinging the
latter, as we originally found it, close beside the leaf of his
pasture. Increasing in bulk and length as he thus regaled,
he soon outgrew his twisted tenement, which he then cleverly
contrived to lengthen by the addition of a piece of fresh leaf
nicely joined and fitted to the larger and upper end of the
spiral horn. Thus far, and no farther, can we carry, from
observation, the history of this artificer in rose leaves; for,
supposing that when his caterpillar life approached its close, he
would either quietly spin himself up in his case, or bury him-
self in the earth of the flower-pot, we trusted too confidingly to
his apparently non-roving propensities, as was proved one fine
morning in July, when we found our Leaf-roller absent without
leave, — his habitation being left (vacant) behind him. That,
barring accidents, he subsequently became a moth, there is
every reason to believe from the nature of his constructive
labours while a caterpillar.

La-stly, a word or two about the Leaf-miner; he, like the
Leaf-roller, and the Leaf-tent-maker, holds his verdant estate
by the slight tenure of a fragile foot-stalk ; but compared with
theirs, indeed without comparison, his lot seems a highly fa-
voured one. His path, a covered way, is through a leaf, often
of the rose ; and each step of progression (for labour he has
none) would seem an act of self gratification, as the little
Sybarite, lodged between the upper and the lower membranes

LEAF-MINER.

247

of the leaf, eats onwards through its soft green pulp, from the
point whence he issued from the egg even to that which ter-
minates his caterpillar career. Thus eating and progressing,
he produces, by removal of the excavated pulp, a visible track,
appearing on the leaf's surface like a broad white tortuous
line, with a dark one running through its centre.

On first waking into life, the leaf-miner finds himself,
through the exercise of maternal care instinctively and pro-
spectively employed, placed on the surface of his green patri-
mony,— the leaf exactly suited to his appetite, into the depths
of which (a depth comprised within the thickness of a sheet
of paper) he at once plunges, — pursues, for his appointed span,
his safe and luxurious way, — then, in a quiet little plain or
dell, which forms the termination of his " happy valley," passes
the period of his aurelian slumber, to emerge thence a minute
moth.

ps^^^&SSJgF^ •

X?eafc, amongst caterpillar^, of fji$ craft.

\\

Seated on the stripped willow-branch to the left is the grotesque caterpillar
of the Puss Moss (Cerura vinula), the Moth itself being figured beneath.
Below appears the singular masked larva of a Dragon-Fly. The centre of
the foreground is occupied by a Dor or Clock Beetle ( Geotrupes stercorarius).
To the right appear the head and shoulders of another common insect of the
same order — the Oil Beetle (Proscarabaus) ; and above and between these, with
wings extended, is a Devil's Coach -horse, or Rove Beetle (Stapftylinus olens).
Attached in sphinx-like attitude to the right-hand branch, is the beautiful
caterpillar of the Privet Hawk-Moth (Sphinx Ligustri).

A SUMMER DAY'S DREAM.

,T was a sultry day in August. — Well, nothing
could be more generally characteristic of "still
lite" than the day and hour, about a year
ago, when, book in hand, we crept from
our little sun-baked domicile, and throwino-

' to

ourselves under the shade of a huge helm-pollard, 'plunged

TEE LACE-WINGED FLY. 249

not, we confess it, into our provided volume, but into a reverie
about as drowsy and dreamy as the beated face of Dame
Nature. And here we must notice, that, while all the other
children, animal and vegetable, of our nursing-mother Earth,
were taking their noontide slumber on her lap, one portion
of her family, that, namely, composed of the insect crew,
seemed resolved to keep the world stirring, or at least to make
a stir in the world, whose sunny places seemed to be entirely
abandoned to their use. These little impertinents, the pipers,
and eke the dancers of the hour, seemed, in truth, to have
taken complete possession of three elements — air, earth, and
water — together with a large portion of the fourth, diffused
through all by the fiery sun; and, in thus possessing, gave
apparent life to the elements themselves, making them reel
again with insect

" Mirth and revelry,
Tipsy dance, and jollity."

We might have repeated appropriately, from the volume in
our hand, —

" Oh ! qui n'eut partage' 1'ivresse universelle,
Que Pair, le jour, Finsecte apportaient sur leur aille?"

" This glad ebriety who could but share —
The winged mirth of insect-season — air ? "

The intoxication of the day was with us, however, entirety
of the somnolent character, and we had already closed our
eyes on the bulkiest moving object within our range of sight —
namely, the lashing tail of a solitary cow, ruminant in an
adjacent pond — when we were startled by a light footstep on
the back of our hand. It was not exactly a fairy who had
come to visit us; but it was a little creature, both in form
and attire, of most fairy-like seeming. It was none other, in
short, than a lace-winged fly,1 the most graceful insect of its

1 Vignette to " Fair and Fierce."

B B

250 A MAGNIFYING FANCY.

elegant and graceful tribe. " Truly," said we, as we looked
upon her gauzy wings of delicate green, mingled in their
iridescence with rainbow hues — " truly it is a pity, my little
lady, that there's so precious little of you ; that all this tissued
bravery, and even those eyes of gold, should, only for lack of
size, be overlooked by nearly all other eyes, save those only
of some lace-winged lover, who for beauty, perhaps, may have
no eye at all ! " Our winged fair-one had, at all events, no
ear for admiration expressed in (to her) an unknown tongue ;
for before our complimentary address was ended she had dis-
appeared.

Only suppose, thought we, pursuing the train of fancy
brought and left behind by the gauze-winged sylph ; suppose
that, by the touch of some Circe's wand, all the insect forms
creeping and flying and floating around us — now less seen
than heard and felt — were all at once enlarged to . the pro-
portions they assume to the eye in that amusing raree-show,
the solar microscope — verily we should feel somewhat ill at
ease in the strange company wherein we should figure then —
as insects most insignificant — as performers playing certainly
no first fiddle.

" Gorgon and hydra, and chimera dire"

would not then exist only in the realms of imagination ; but
fill to suffocation the atmospheric and the aqueous fluids, and
walk in appalling reality on the solid earth. And amidst the
crowd of shapes terrific, small, we take it, would be our in-
clination to single out for admiration such among them as our
lace- winged elegante ; or, with the poet, to admire in

" The beetle panoplied in gems of gold,"
the semblance of

" A mailed angel on a battle day."

At this moment a host — not of angels, but of blood-thirsty

AN ANGRY PHANTOM. 251

demons in the shape of gnats — rose from the adjacent pond,
and passed across our face. Using our book as a weapon of
destruction, we felled a multitude to the earth ; and, in com-
pletion of our angry purpose, trampled many of our fallen
victims into the dusty ground. Scarcely had we done the
deed, when something like a qualm of conscience, arising
partly from our penchant for gnats before recorded, partly
from the magnifying turn our thoughts had taken, , shot
through our heart. It passed, however, as rapidly away as
the remnant of the insect host, whose enjoyment we had so
murderously interrupted; and in a few minutes the drowsy
incubus which had so long hovered over our head fairly
wrapped us in its leaden wings — in short, we fell asleep.
Still our waking fancies followed us. It seemed as though
one of the gnats we had just exterminated rose from the
ground, and, poised in air on a level with our face, set up a
shrill hum, which presently assumed the distinctness of angry
high-toned speech. " By what right," cried the little appa-
rition, '* didst thou cut short the thread of my joyous life?"

" Because," answered we, " as one of creation's lords, we
have the privilege of destroying everything that invades our
peace."

" And by what right art thou a lord of creation?"
" By the right of reason."

"Reason!" exclaimed the insect ghost; "say rather by
right of size. Only let my stature equal thine, and see which
would then possess the mastery ! "

As the winged phantom thus addressed us, her tiny form
expanded ; her long hairy shanks stretching downwards reached
the ground, and upwards waved like spectral arms above our
head ; her enormous eyes, motionless and prominent, seemed
bursting with malignant spleen ; her antlers quivered with
rage, and, pointing towards us her blood-extracting weapon,
straight and long as the stiletto of an Italian bandit, she
seemed about to plunge it in our heart ! We started to our

252 A MONSTER MULTITUDE.

feet in terror ; and at that instant a sudden gloom, as of coming
twilight, overspread the sky, while a flapping as of the canvas
of ten thousand vessels proceeded from a winged multitude,
monstrous now in bulk as in number, which filled the air.
Attempting to escape, we nearly tumbled over— not a stone,
but an enormous beetle (bigger than the biggest turtle ever
captured on the shores of the Antilles), and only regained our
footing to tread upon the loathsome yielding body of a cater-
pillar swollen to a serpent's size, and rolling its mutilated
length about our ankles. All around, the darkened daylight
presented only similar objects, half-revealed: ground, grass,
flower, shrub, and tree, all laden or crushed by living masses
through which we had, if possible, to force our way in order
to gain the shelter of our roof. Armed by desperation, we
continued to advance ; — and what an advance it was ! Pierced
by poisoned arrows, swords, and spears, in the shape of what,
as stings, we once despised — lacerated by forcep-jaws armed
with shark-like teeth — bruised by violent contact with the
mail-clad limbs of grasshopper Goliaths and beetle Bevis's —
deafened and bewildered by sounds most strange and threat-
ening, and of volume augmented in proportion to their utterer's
bulk — we ran the gauntlet through this infernal crew, and at
length, when almost exhausted, reached our door. But
entrance was even then not easy, for our portal was barricaded
by thick silken ropes stretched across it in all directions.
Unable to break, we contrived to sever them with our pocket-
knife ; but (horror of horrors !) no sooner were the cords
divided, than rapidly descending by one of them which hung
loose above our head, a spider, big as a baboon, alighted on
our shoulders, and made her long hairy legs meet around our
neck. By a desperate effort we threw off our disgusting
burthen, and, opening the house-door, shut it with all possible
celerity ; but one of the spider's arms, stretched out to renew
her grasp, crackled like a lobster's claw as we jammed it
betwixt door and door-frame. As we entered our parlour a

AN APPALLING SIGHT. 253

deafening buzz was our first salutation, and the daylight,
obscured as it was without, could here scarcely penetrate at all
by reason of a swarm of gigantic flies, which, unable to find
room in the window, were crowding in double and triple ranks
around it. Hastily retreating, we descended to the kitchen ;
but here — how shall we proceed ? We had escaped with life
from the hideous assemblage through which we had achieved
a passage. We had managed to avoid the fangs of the mur-
derous bloated creature which had fastened upon our door, and
then fastened upon us. We had shut her out, and we had
shut in the swollen sickening blue-bottles; but what we had
left behind was nothing to what awaited us — an appalling
horror which we shudder to describe. On entering the kitchen
we saw not a living thing, not even Martha — old Martha — our
faithful factotum, upon whom we called, albeit in a trembling
voice, fearful to attract the notice of some hidden lurker
amongst our new and hideous enemies ; but no Martha replied,
as expected, from the scullery ; and, with a dread of we scarce
knew what, well nigh exhausted also by terror and exertion,
we sat us down in her arm-chair. The sky was still partially
obscured by monstrous creatures on the wing, and evening was
now approaching, so that there was little light in the apart-
ment but what proceeded from the fire, which had burnt very
low. We had not been seated long before we were startled by
a slight noise proceeding from one of the deep and dark
recesses on either side of the chimney; and, on looking into it,
we could just discern, indistinctly, some moving object. What
this might be we dreaded to ascertain ; but with a shaking
hand we lighted a candle by the dying embers, and held it up
within the recess. Then, oh ! the spectacle that we beheld !
Supported by her enormous web — a tissue of mingled cable —
sat an elephantine spider, to which our assailant at the house-
door was a mere pigmy, — a spider of most hideous aspect, her
eight glassy eyes sparkling 'with greedy ecstasy as she gorged
upon a fresh-caught, fresh-killed victim, and that victim no

254 THE FINALE.

heedless, idle fly, but, alas! that busy bee, Martha — our
faithful Martha ! For a moment we stood horror-stricken ;
then, armed by rage and grief and the kitchen poker, we
rushed upon the loathsome murderess, who, intent upon her
prey, heeded not our approach, and, with a single blow,
brought her bloated body lifeless to the ground, that of her
victim falling with it.

What a night of terror did we pass, holding our vigil by the
dead; but we held it not alone, for beside poor Martha's
hearth, mocking or mourning its desolation, sat a monstrous
cricket, piercing our ear and heart with his shrilly chirp ;
while at intervals — loud as the ticking of a church-clock —
rose the warning click of an enormous death-watch.

We heard no more — our heart sickened — our head swam —

our powerless arms quitted their hold — and we fell

into the insect monster's devouring jaw? Not a bit of it,
dear reader. We only fell (having suddenly awoke) from the
appalling position to which our sleeping fancy had raised us,
to the flowery bank which had been our bed beneath the old
elm pollard.

"What a precious extravaganza!" we mentally exclaimed,
as sitting up we recovered a joyful consciousness of the realities
around — the pleasant realities of a summer's evening — for the
sun had declined, and a refreshing breeze was waving the
silken, silvery heads of the reeds below us.

We are no interpreters of visions — our own or other
people's ; but being, in our way, a sort of utilitarian, we have
always fancied that dreams (not merely those which would
seern sent expressly for reproof or warning, but dreams in
general) may be made available to good by the process of
recalling and turning their purport over in our minds, even
as we should muse habitually over our waking thoughts; a
mental exercise than which, according to philosophers, there
is none more useful.

With a view to some such purpose of improvement, we

DEDUCTIONS FROM A DREAM.

255

thought over, as we walked homewards, the late vagary of our
napping fancy, and were not long in deducing from it some
admiring reflections on the nice proportion as to numbers, size,
and power, preserved through every order of creation ; a pro-
portion to destroy which, in any one department, would be to
bring destruction upon all.

This conclusion and our own threshold we reached at the
same moment, and then occurred to us a subordinate and
domestic purpose, to which our recent dream was also appli-
cable. " I'll tell it, or a part of it, to Martha, and perhaps
through very fear she will grow more lenient towards the
spiders, and I shall hear less of her incessant broom !"

" iC08t Victim no i&Ie ftp.'

The three beautiful and rapacious insects forming the subject of this
vignette, are Dragon, Scorpion, and Lacewing Flies. The first, a small and
common species (Agrion), rests upon a hedge while discussing its cannibal
repast, a captured gnat. Hovering just above is the Dragon-Fly's enemy,
and sometimes conqueror, the Scorpion-Fly (Panorpa), so called from the
appendage to its tail. To its left appears the graceful Lacewing (ffemerobius),
green and golden-eyed ; the rose-leaf to the right, below, being occupied by a
grub, or larva (magnified), of the same carnivorous insect busy in its usual
occupation of destroying Aphides.

FAIR AND FIERCE.

HERE are now to be seen almost everywhere,
hawking about lanes and hedges in search of
prey — fair as the sunshine, and fierce as its
meridian rays — three insect families of the
Linnaean order Neuroptera, which are well
worth observing for their beauty, and studying for the pecu-

DRAGON-FLIES. 257

liarities of their economy. These compiise dragon-flies, scor-
pion-flies, and lace-wing flies ; the former, from their imposing
size, well known by sight to everybody ; while the two latter,
though both, especially the lace-wing, of surpassing elegance
and beauty, are as commonly overlooked, on account of their
comparatively inconspicuous size.

To begin then, in deference to their superior magnitude
(which in some species constitute them the largest of British
insects), with the dragon-flies, popularly called by the French
" Demoiselles" partly, perhaps, in compliment to their beauty,
partly as a satire on Amazonian propensities. By the ignorant
among ourselves they are known as " horse-stingers," a com-
plete misnomer, seeing that the blood wherewith they delight
to moisten their carnivorous jaws is never, by any accident,
taken from those warm red streams which flow through the
veins of beast or man, but consists of that colder, whiter fluid,
which pervades the tender frames of butterfly and case-fly — the
innocent creatures they are ever seeking to devour.

Since our readers may not, just at pleasure, be able to
capture a living specimen of the large green dragon-fly -,1
now so abundant, let them look, en attendant, at one of a
smaller species2 depicted by our pencil. Though a minim of
his kind, is he not a glorious yet formidable looking creature ?
Mark his four large ever-expanded wings of glassy membrane,
with their beautiful lace-like nervures, not distributed for mere
adornment, but in every meander serving as channels for the
circulating air, which, thus spread over the surface of the
pinion, confers on this insect a marked pre-eminence in power
and permanence of flight. Observe his straight, slender body
— so long and light — contrasting with his muscular chest and
bulky shoulders, fit receptacles for the insertion of those
powerful pinions; and the legs, six in number, strong and
rigid, and armed with claws. But notice, above all, the head

* Agrion.

258 THE BUTTERFLY'S ARCH-ENEMY.

— the round enormous head — nearly the whole of its upper
half occupied by large prominent eyes, which, in their crystal-
line transparency, differ remarkably from the generality of
visual organs among insects, with their lifeless appearance of
dull opacity. In these there is no lack of vivid expression, as
the numerous hexagons of which they are composed seem to be
for ever in motion, now appearing visible, then seeming lost
beneath their translucent common covering or cornea. With
the threatening animation of these rapacious-looking eyes, the
mouth and powerful jaws are in formidable accordance; and
if, in the sight of its insect victims, this veritable dragon of
their tribes wears anything like the aspect he bears in ours
(his terrors magnified by superior size, and perhaps, also, by
instinctive dread), with what trepidation must defenceless case-
flies flee before him, and what a panic must be created by
his very shadow amongst a bevy of white-robed butterflies,
when assembled, according to their wont, in a water-drinking
party round a pond. Well may ye tremble, ye harmless
sippers, at the approach of this, your arch-destroyer, as ye
catch the sound of his rapid flight — audible, perhaps, to your
delicate antenna?, though silent to our coarser ears ! Well may
ye rise in terror and confusion, when ye behold his terrible
image reflected, with your own fair forms, upon the surface of
the liquid mirror at your feet ! But little will your feathered
wings avail you when matched in flight against his bare and
nervous pinions. Whether you await or endeavour to escape
him — whether at rest or in the air — he will pounce upon you,
tear off, without mercy, your painted pinions ; and, when re-
duced to a disfigured mutilated trunk, bear you off in triumph
to the first convenient resting-place — some bough or paling —
there to glut his maw upon your honied juices, while repose
gives him new vigour for the pursuit and massacre of others of
your race !

Such is the dragon-fly in his form of maturity, and, even
in his earliest stage — that of a crawling, wingless grub,

LARVA AND DRAGON-FLY. 259

groping in the mire, or swimming through the water of the
pond over which he subsequently soars, he exhibits the same
savage propensities, only modified by form and situation. He
is, in short, " a murderer from the beginning," distinguished
for remarkable rapacity, with endowments yet more remarkable
for its gratification. These we have already noticed under our
head of " water- devils," amongst which, while a grub or larva,
the dragon-fly figures as a very Beelzebub. In the present
month (August), and on to October, the large green dragon-
fly1 is commonly seen on the wing, in sunshine, near streams
and hedges, or found resting, of an evening, on water-plants
or low bushes.

We have spoken of the dragon-fly's four powerful pinions
as always open, in readiness for flight. This is generally the
case with the families of ^Eshna and Libellula ; but in some,
the wings, when at rest, are applied to the body, as in the
instance of a very common but very pretty little species,2 with
bodies variously coloured (as blue and black — red and black
— green and black) which are, in most places, numerous over
ditches in May arid June ; in which months another species
(the large black and yellow), is also not uncommon. About
two hundred different kinds are said to haunt the woods and
streams of Britain.

From the dragon-fly — the above redoubtable giant among
English insects — we come, by no very abrupt transition, except
in the great difference of their bulk, to the scorpion-fly,3 a lesser
but no less striking specimen of the •' fair and fierce." It
would even seem that with reference to the quality of fierce-
ness, or more properly of valour, this latter insect is well
worthy of precedence over its bulkier class-fellow, of which,
being invariably the foe, it is not unfrequently the conqueror.
Only look at these enemies by nature, the great dragon and
the little scorpion flies, in juxta-position, and, on comparison

1 Figured with its puparium in the Vignette to " COMING OUT."

2 Of this is the insect figured in Vignette. 3 Panorpa, also in Vignette.

C C

260 THE SCORPION-FLY.

of their respective sizes and apparent powers, you will hardly
admit the possibility that when opposed in single combat the
latter should come off victor. Yet thus it stands recorded in
the chronicles of insect doings, wherein, on good authority, it
is written that the tyrant of our lakes and pools (cowardly as
tyrants are wont to be) is terrified even at sight of a scorpion
fly assailant. One of these valorous pygmies is related by
Lyonnet to have attacked, in his presence, a dragon-fly ten
times its own size — to have brought it to the ground, pierced it
with its sharp proboscis, and have left it with life only through
the interference of the naturalist spectator.

This insect " hero of a thousand fights" bears in his tail a
formidable-looking, sting-like weapon, which might seem
mainly instrumental to victory in such unequal combats ; but
dangerous as this may appear, his nasal dagger, or stiletto, does
him, we believe, the most good service both in attack and
demolition of his bulky foes. He doubtless, however, finds a
use for the appendage at his tail, and albeit we have found it
harmless within our capturing grasp, its bearer owes the name
of " Scorpion-fly" to its great resemblance outwardly to the
deadly sting of the scorpion of tropic climates.

From May to November these pretty flies are everywhere
common upon hedges and in gardens, where, with predacious
activity, they make cruel sport under the summer sun, cooling
down, with advance of autumn, into a milder state of com-
parative inactivity, which renders them an easy prey alike to
bird and entomologist.

Last, in our trio of "the fair and fierce," but for either
attribute not least, comes the beautiful green and golden-eyed
lace-winged day fly1 — like the daisy (day's eye), loving sunny
weather, and the most elegant perhaps of all insects upon which
the sun (in Britain) ever shines — wanting only augmented bulk
to render it an object of universal admiration.

The form of the tf lace-wing" is always graceful — whether

1 Hemerolius (vignette.)

LACE-WINGED FLT. 261

at rest, with her ample folded wings, arching and sweeping,
train-like, over her slender limbs and body — or whether by
expansion of these her gauzy pinions, she displays to more
advantage their most delicate workmanship — a net of nervures,
interlaced over a thin transparent tissue, beautifully iridescent
with varying hues of azure blue and rose colour. But above
all may this insect-beauty, if she ever takes flattering counsel
at a dew-drop mirror, pride herself on the peculiar lustre of
her eyes — a metallic brilliance closely resembling that of bur-
nished gold. There lurks, however, under these glittering
orbs, as much deception (though of a much more harmless
character) as belongs frequently to others — hazel, black, and
blue. Their burnish is but gilding, being (like that on the
skins of various chrysalides) produced only by an opaque
varnish under the cornea.1

With all her beauty, and all her seeming gentleness, she
bears about her no odour of sweetness — on the contrary, an
ill-conditioned scent ; and could we but inquire of her character
amongst insect nations, especially amongst the tribes of
Aphides,2 which people the waving foliage, we should find her
name, amongst them, in worse odour even than her person.
The very story that flocks might bleat about the wolf, or turkeys
gabble of the fox, these aphides would certainly relate to us
of the lace-winged fly. " She invades," would they declare,
" our verdant pastures, drains our blood, sometimes even
dresses herself in the skins of our slaughtered brethren, and
for this, as well for the harmless mien which cloaks her ruthless
nature, may be looked on, not merely as a wolf, but as a wolf
in sheep's clothing." Thus would say the little aphides; and
the same character, with features somewhat enlarged, but by
no means softened, we are compelled in justice to assign to
their arch enemy, who, even before she has lacy wings to boast
of, or golden eyes to look upon the day, begins her murderous
ravages among their leaf-sucking tribes.

1 See Painting, Carving and Gilding. 2 See article on Aphides.

262 EGGS OF THE LACE-WING.

But let us commence the history of the lace- wing at its
beginning — even from the egg — which in itself presents (by
the way) a tiny object too singular as well as pretty to be over-
looked. There are to be seen, from May to August, attached
to various leaves, but those chiefly of the rose tree, certain
slender filaments, green or white, surmounted by an oval head,
and arranged — sometimes, fringe-like, round the edge — some-
times in groups on the surface of the leaf — standing sometimes
singly and distinct — sometimes with heads united in a cluster.
These heads, with their delicate stalk-like appendages, are none
other than the eggs of the lace-wing fly ; but it hardly needs
to be observed, that from no such minute envelopes could
possibly emerge her winged descendants, which, like all nearly
of the insect race, have to reach their perfect form through
three successive stages of development.

Looking now upon the lace-wing in its earliest shape of
animation, that of larva — a flat, wingless, six-legged crawler,
wanting only size to make it frightful as well as hideous — we
exclaim, " Can it be possible that an object so unsightly can
contain within it the germs of grace and beauty ?" Even so ;
and here, when without disguise — "fierce" but not yet "fair"
— we behold the wolf of aphides playing havoc amongst these
flocks of foliage, which, with more than lamb-like passiveness,
permit themselves to be individually picked out and slaughtered
by their terrible but apparently undreaded enemy, — to her
their green pellucid bodies, filled with saccharine juice, are
so many honey-pots, which she knows well the trick of empty-
ing (at the rate of three in half a minute) by means of her
imperforate as well as pointed jaws. When thus reduced to
skins, the spoils of victim aphides are frequently observed so
heaped up around their destroyer as to seem purposely col-
lected to serve it for a cover — a proceeding which Kirby has
illustrated by comparing it to that of Hercules in clothing
himself with the skin of the Nemean lion.

When our wolf of aphis flocks assumes the second form of

L AGE-WING PUPA.

263

her existence, and becomes from an active grub or larva
(correspondent to the caterpillar of Lepldopterce) an inanimate
pupa (the likeness of the chrysalis), she furnishes of course but
slender matter for the historian of insects. Yet, even in this,
her stage of passive transition, our " Lace-wing" in progress
affords us something worth observing. After being wearied
of aphis slaughter, whereon she has attained her full growth,
her last active operation is to enwrap her body in a silken
shroud or cocoon, spun previously, not after caterpillar usage
by an apparatus at the mouth, but by one provided for the
purpose at the tail.

Before dismissing our trio of the " Fair and Fierce" — the
dragon, the scorpion, and the lace-wing flies — we must bespeak
indulgence for their fierceness — not in favour of their beauty,
but on account of the usefulness of their devouring propen-
sities.

CremOIe on tDe approach of pout arcD

The mimicry of vegetable by animal forms is here illustrated by figures of
some looping caterpillars, termed "Walking branches," and by that of a moth,
the Oak Lappet ( Gastropacha quercifolia), likened to a Walking Leaf. Above
the latter, fixed motionless to a branch of hawthorn, which it closely simulates,
is the caterpillar of the Brimstone Moth (Rumia cratcegata), the moth itself
appearing in flight above. On the left, another stick caterpillar — that of the
Swallow-tail Moth (Ourapterix sambucaria), is attached to a branch of elder,
of which it affords a close copy in form, colour, and markings. A second
specimen of the same in its walking position forms an arch upon the branch
below.

RESEMBLANCE AND RELATION.

HE last time we were in the public insect-
room of the British Museum, our notice was
attracted by a buzz of admiration raised by a
cluster of a Monday's swarm gathered round
one particular case of the entomologic collec-
"Well, I never!" "Queer creatures!" "Neither

tion

WALKING LEAVES. 265

grass nor grasshoppers!" "How curious!" "Perfectly
exquisite!" "What strange similitudes !" " Links between
the animal and the vegetable/' and so on, ascending.

The above notes of admiration, varied according to the
mental compass of each observer, were drawn forth by different
specimens of those curious tropical insects, known popularly as
" Walking Leaves," — an appropriate appellation, presenting as
they do a perfect resemblance in form, colour, texture, and
veining to vegetable foliage in every stage of progression, from
verdant expansion to shrivelled decay. These strange copies,
not of leaves only, but also of branches, are found in several
insect tribes and families, but chiefly those of Locusta, Mantis,
and Phasma.

Some of the tribe of Mantis — treacherous and cruel crea-
tures, with long, desiccate, skeleton limbs — are like spectral
anatomies of vegetable death — yet living and locomotive.
But we need not visit India or China — or even the British
Museum or other collections of foreign insects — to find similar
resemblances, and sometimes such perfect ones between the
insect and the plant that both would seem to have been cast
in a common mould — then endowed, the one with an animal,
the other with what Dr. Darwin would have called "a vege-
table soul." To discover an English specimen of such curious
similitude, we have only, in this present month of August, to
shake some boughs of a hawthorn hedge over an inverted
parasol or umbrella, into which will almost of a surety then
fall some two or three living and moving sticks, or caterpillars
of stick-like form,1 quite as "queer" and closely imitative
as some of the foreigners above noted. These strange little
animals have a brown skin, wrinkled and furrowed just like
the bark of the branches they are accustomed to occupy, with
a forked protuberance on the back resembling diverging twigs
or nascent thorns; while, to render his mimicry the more

1 Vignette.

266 WALKING BRANCHES.

complete, this caterpillar sprig of the hawthorn, in common
with others of branch-like semblance, is in the habit, when at
rest, of stretching himself out stiff' and straight, at right angles
with the twig whereon he reposes; and thus remaining for
hours motionless, supported only by the grasp of his hind
legs, and a single thread proceeding from his mouth. This is
the caterpillar of a very common yellow moth, with reddish
markings, called the Brimstone,1 and belongs to a family
known to collectors as Geometers, Measurers, Loopers, and
Surveyors.

In the month of May, or beginning of June, we may often,
by careful looking for, find a branch of elder supporting its
very image in a caterpillar,2 which is perhaps the most re-
markable of the above singular family — a withered-looking,
stick-like creature, knobbed and ringed and coloured, and even
cracked after the exact pattern of the browner stalks of its
native tree. This most perfect simulator, like others of his
simulating relatives, aids the deception of his figure by his
branch-like attitudes and branch-like quietude (often main-
tained from morning till night), at which latter period he
mostly prefers to exercise both his jaws and locomotive powers.
After the usual changes, this curious caterpillar becomes, about
July, a pale sulphur-coloured moth, remarkable for the elegant
cut of its angular pinions, of which the hinder pair, being
prolonged into acute tails, have given it the name of " Swal-
low Tail.3

So much for walking-branches of British growth ; neither,
as aforesaid, is a walking-tea/1 a wonder to be seen alive only
in foreign parts. We must wait, perhaps, till the arrival of
July ; but then, if with eyes prepared, we look amongst the
foliage of a mingled hedge, we are likely to detect, on a bram-
ble, a hawthorn, or a blackthorn, or may be on a willow, a leaf
endued with life more than vegetative, albeit offeuille morte

1 Rumia crataxjata. 5 Vignette. s Ourapterlx sambucaria.

OAK-LAPPET. 207

hue, and wearing little of motive semblance. We have said a
leaf; but we should rather, perhaps, direct the unpractised eye
to seek what more resembles a leafy group or cluster;1 an
object for which, on a transitory glance, the four large wings
of the Lappet Moth2 are very likely to be mistaken. These
are of shaded brown, glossed with violet, stiff, strongly-ribbed,
and deeply scallopped, and when the insect is in repose (its
usual state in the day-time) they are so disposed by projection
of the hinder pair beyond the foremost, as to deviate from the
usual moth-like contour, and thus approach more nearly to
that of congregated leaves.

The seeming vagaries of Dame Nature in thus, as it were,
dressing up some few among her children in masquerade
attire, have led to a deal of curious inquiry into the " why and
because" of such unusual proceeding. Besides such copies
as those above noted, wherein the animal is made to put on
the vegetable form, there are noticeable among insects a
number of remarkable similarities in colouring with the
leaves, or flowers, or bark of the plants and trees they feed
on, or frequent; and, what is yet more curious, with the
dead and artificially-wrought substances, such as stone walls
and wooden palings, on which they are most frequently seen
resting. Of the kind of imitation last mentioned we have
noticed several instances in the colouring of moths found
commonly on oak palings. We have one in our possession
wherein not only does the painting of the wings resemble the
broad surface of the wood, copied as accurately as by the most
skilful grainer; but even the transverse cutting at the pale's
end would seem to have served as a pattern for the striated
covering of the insect's shoulders.

Our subject was commenced by a notice of a few remarkable
objects in the insect world, which bear a particular resemblance
to others in the vegetable kingdom. Let us now point out, as

1 Vignette. * Gastropacha yuercifolia.

268 PLANTS AND INSECTS.

equally worthy of notice, though less likely to excite it, a few
resemblances of a more general kind between these two
departments of the reign of nature. In external form, hues,
and clothing, there is quite sufficient of general likeness betwixt
plants and insects to stamp them as productions of the same
designing mind and matchless skill. In clothing, wool, hair,
spines, and scales are common to both. Flowers alone emulate
the colours of the more splendid butterflies and beetles. The
delicate veined leaflet or petal are prevailing similitudes of
form drawn yet closer in the papilionaceous tribe ; the purple
pea-flower and the yellow broom telling us, in poetic per-
sonality,

" The butterfly all green and gold

To me hath often flown,
Here in my blossoms to behold

Wings lovely as his own." — Wordsworth.

As well as ephemeral flowers there are ephemeral insects.
The gauzy wings of the May-fly, like the delicate petals of the
cistus, strew the ground in a few brief hours after their expan-
sion ; and the Favonia,1 which displays its crimson glories in
the beams of morning (as is the case often with the ephemeral
insect) is, like it, dead by noon-day. There are certain flowers,
such as the goat's beard, &c, which are known to time their
opening at certain hours of the day ; and so, in like manner,
various moths have been observed to emerge from their
chrysalis-covering with equal regularity.

Again, the daisy, the pimpernel, and many other flowers,
show the nicest sensibility to atmospheric changes, by always
shutting up their petals at the approach of bad weather ; and
the bee, the butterfly, and other insects, with an instinctive
prescience of coming showers, hide within the flower-cups, or
close their wings, fearfully resting from their labours or their
pleasures.

Numerous also are the properties and productions common

1 Tigridia favonia.

THEIR RELATIONS. 269

to plants and insects, with a few of which we must close our
very imperfect enumeration of resembling points between them.
In fragrance, even the rose is emulated by a pretty green
beetle1 not uncommonly found near willow-trees, around which
it perfumes the air. Per contra — and opposed to all "the
sweets of Arabia " — there are the cockroach — the churchyard
beetle — the foetid centipede, and other lurkers in damp dark
places, both above ground and below, which resemble in ill
odour, as they do in gloomy localities, the hellebores, the hem-
locks, and the mandrakes of the vegetable world. And as a
few among the flowers of the sun are not a whit behind their
darker fellows in this one repulsive quality, so among insects,
to say nothing of the pretty lady-bird, there is the green,
golden-eyed, lace-winged fly,2 that exhales an odour which,
even pour V amour de ses beaux yeux, and for the elegance of
its form, one can scarcely pardon, any more than for its splen-
dour, one can cordially admire that pride of the hot-house, the
most beautiful but most fostid of the Stapelios, named, by the
Dutch inhabitants of the Cape, the Arabische Rose.

The power of emitting light is another property, common, in
some peculiar instances, both to plants and insects, the fire-
fly— the glow-worm — and the electric centipede, each having
its vegetable representative in the luminous Fraxinella, the
Euphorbia phosphorea, and various plants and fungi in a state
of decay.

For almost every vegetable production there is an analogous
insect secretion. To say nothing of honey and bees' wax,
which may be viewed rather as vegetable products animalized,
there is the white insect wax of China produced by the Cicada
limbata, made into candles, and paralleled both in quality and
use by the tallow-tree, — a native of the same empire. For
vegetable gums, we have the insect gum-lac; for vegetable
dyes, the insect cochineal, galls, and chermes.

1 Cerambyx inotchatus (musk beetle). 2 Chrysopa perla.

D D

270 INSECT DEVELOPMENT.

If, leaving the vegetable world, we were to mount upwards
in the scale of animated being, we should find amongst fish,
reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds, a variety of similar instances,
wherein, by resemblance or analogy, by dependence, or as
mutually representative, these all stand connected with objects
in the insect kingdom. We may, from time to time, notico
some of these relations incidentally ; but to pass over, now,
the intermediate orders of creation, let us see whether lordly
man, as well as the lowly plant, has not his analogies, at least
symbolic, with the insect he despises.

The mind of man, as it exists in infancy, has been aptly
likened to the seed of a plant — considered as possessing, in
miniature, the trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit of the future
tree ; and, agreeably to such a notion, it has been observed that
the highest degree of cultivation, of which it is capable, consists
in the perfect development of that peculiar organization which
as really exists in infancy as in mature years.

Having noted already the analogy of insect development,
from the egg up to the winged estate, with that of a vegetable,
from the seed up to the flower and fruit — it scarcely needs,
the above admitted, to remark that the human mind finds its
natural parallel (only one yet more striking) in the insect as
well as in the vegetable world.

In the shapes also of good or evil, which the expanding
mind assumes, we shall still find, in insect forms and their
marked characteristics, similitudes — if not more apt, at least
more easily observed, than those presented by larger tribes.
In proportion as, diverging by perversity of free will from
our divine type and pattern, we resemble or make ourselves
the moral counterparts of the tiger, the fox, the hawk, the
serpent, we are of course as justly symbolized by those insects
which have been observed to concentrate in their pigmy forms
the very essence of the same instinctive dispositions, such as
the cruel Mantis, the fierce predatory beetles, the wily ant-lion,
the .treacherous and cruel spider.

SYMBOLIC ANALOGIES.

271

The same applies to those among us of gentler frame, the
lambs and doves amidst the wolves and hawks of human
society, which are in like manner aptly symbolized by insect
tribes of gentle habits (especially the horned and vegetable-
feeding beetles), which have been considered to represent the
grazing quadrupeds.

Others of our qualities — our industry, our prudence, our
fickleness, our temerity — are exhibited also in the tiny indi-
vidualities and miniature institutions of insects and insect
societies, none, of the larger animals, solitary or gregarious,
reflecting us in these respects so faithfully as the bee, the ant,
the butterfly, and self-destructive moth.

' CJuecr creature! ! neit&er graf! nor grafgjjopperg.'

The Moths in this group are of those not figured in the frontispiece. That
in the loreground, beneath the white convolvulus, is the common " Tiger "
(Arctia co/a); the smaller insect above, is the Humming-Bird Sphynx
(Macroglossa stellataruni), uncoiling its tongue for insertion into the flower.
The large one to the left, the Lime-Hawk (Smerinthus Tilia). Above, in
upward flight, is the elegant " White Plume " (Pterophorus pentadactylus) ;
next, beneath it, is the little "Clearwing" (j*Egeria tipuliformis) ; and, below
this, a "Vapourer" (Orpyia antiqua), of which the nearly wingless female
occupies, still lower, a branch of hawthorn supporting also the cocoon, which
she employs as a bed for the reception of her eggs.

MOTHS AS IDLERS.

OTHS have been arranged under two general
divisions : crepuscular, or those that are seen
on wing at twilight ; and nocturnal, or night-
fliers ; the latter comprising by far the largest
number. The twilight family consists chiefly
of hank-moths or sphinxes; the former appellative being

HAWK-MOTHS AND SPHINXES. 273

founded on the moth's hovering mode of flight, — the latter,
on the caterpillar's remarkable form and position when at
rest.

When the gaudy butterfly has folded her wings for sleep,
and while the dark night-flying moth is still lurking under
leafy covert, various sphinxes may be seen darting rapidly from
flower to flower, or busied in rifling their sweets as they hang
suspended over their honeyed cups. These insect tipplers
imbibe their deep potations by unrolling their usually coiled
tongues, which are hollow tubes, often of prodigious length,
and plunging them to the bottom of the nectaries they drain.

Many of the hawk-moths are named after the trees and
plants which furnish the favourite food of their caterpillar
life ; and from among these we shall select, as greatly distin-
guished for size and beauty, the " Convolvulus " * and the
" Privet." The former, called also the " Bind-weed " and the
" Unicorn " hawk-moth, is a splendid specimen of its kind, if
the term "splendid" — so often ridiculously misapplied — may
be aptly employed with reference to its wide expanse of wing
(reaching often to an extension of four inches and a-half), and
to the exquisitely varied yet sober pencilling, black on a ground
of ashy grey, wherewith these ample pinions are elaborately
adorned.

Of a different genus,2 and of size very much inferior to the
two last, but more interesting, perhaps, than either in its
habits and associations, is the hawk-moth called the " Hum-
ming-bird."3 This name is derived from the vibratory sound
emitted by the wings of this pretty insect, as it hangs sus-
pended, morning and evening, above the flowers, of which the
honeyed treasures, however deeply hidden, are never inacces-
sible to its prying tongue. Not even the long, narrow flagons
of Marvel of Peru, or trumpet honeysuckle, can protect their

1 Sphinx convolvuli. * Macroglossa*

3 Macroglossa ftellatarum. (Vignette.)

274 DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH.

delicious nectar from the long, pliant trunk of the humming-
bird hawk.

A word now for the hawk-moth "Death's head,"1 to whom,
perhaps, we ought to have given precedence over all the above,
on account of his yet superior size and the dark celebrity of
his name ; but though called a " hawk," and long classed with
the sphinxes, he is not considered now as belonging strictly
to that family, from which he is distinguished by the very in-
ferior length of his trunk, and also of his antennae.

The caterpillars of hawk-moths are, for the most part, very
distinguished animals of their kind. They are generally large,
with skins smooth or curiously shagreened; most frequently
coloured green, and adorned on each side by oblique stripes
of yellow, blue, or crimson. They may be further and easily
discriminated from the " vulgar crew," by a stiff-pointed horn
rising from near the tail; also by the remarkable elevation
(when at rest) of the head and shoulders, while the hinder
legs attach them firmly to a supporting branch. From this
peculiar position, they have derived the Linnaean name of
Sphinx — after the fabled monster of antiquity. Now fora few
more of the distinctive features which belong, in their first
estate, to the " Hawks/' above noticed, namely, the " Con-
volvulus," "Privet," "Humming-bird," "Death's head,"
" Lime," " Poplar," and " Eyed."

But we must no longer creep with the hawk caterpillars,
or even hover, at morn or eve, with the " hawks " themselves,
over the dewy flowers, for we have yet to accompany, in their
gloomier flights, a select few from the nocturnal Phalcence
which compose the main body of moths proper, or second
grand division of Lepidopterous insects. Among these, the
night-fliers (holding a reverse proportion to those amongst the
feathered race) far exceed in number, not only the evening

1 Acforontia atropos.

GREAT GOAT MOTH. 275

flitters of their own division, but also the " painted populace "
which sip honey in open day.

Now for our select few amongst the numerous night-fliers.
But how to choose out of such a phalanx ? That is the ques-
tion ; and suppose — taking a cursory review of it, with reference
to size, colour j and form — we note a few individuals among
the most distinguished for either attribute.

For size, we may give priority to the Great Goat Moth, of
whose bulky body and dusky wings, of from three to four
inches of expansion, we are not unlikely to catch a glimpse
by the light of this August moon. This is the great Cossus,
of whose proceedings as a carpenter caterpillar we have already
given some description.

" And no great loss either, this dingy insect owl, to the
world of grace and beauty!" might some, perhaps, be ready
to exclaim, on seeing a specimen of the Great Goat Moth.
But differing, with all courtesy, from the taste which can dis-
cern no beauty save in varied colours, we must be allowed to
express, for ourselves, no little admiration of the sober paint-
ing— the silvery or ashy grey, clouded with brown and striated
with black — which, not unlike the plumage of some veritable
owls, adorns the plain-cut pinions of this " owlish " moth.

In accordance with that beautiful harmony prevalent
throughout the works of Nature, the general colouring of
moths, both of evening and night, is of that subdued tone
which, like night-blowing flowers — the " Flores tristes colore
et odore " — seems to correspond best with the hours of their
appearance. This usual absence of brilliant tints is, as we
have already exemplified, amply atoned for by the soft, richly-
blended shading, and exquisitely pencilled variety of pattern,
which render the wings of moths perfect bijoux of natural
mosaic; but there are not wanting among them scattered
specimens painted in another style — in bright and glowing
colours, laid on in broad effective masses. Of this we have a
ready example in one of the commonest, yet withal hand-

276 TIGER MOTHS.

somest of our night-fliers, yclept " the Tiger ; " the rich embla-
zonment of whose ample pinions has been likened by no mean
poet to that of an ancient window : —

" All diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains, and splendid dyes,
As are the Tiger Moth's deep damask wings." l

The prevailing hues of this beautiful genus are black,
crimson, and yellow, or cream-colour, disposed elegantly in
spots and bars. The most common of several species is the
"Great Tiger,"2 found in all parts of Britain from June to
August. Its foremost wings are of rich dark brown, varied by
zigzag bars of cream colour; the hinder, of brilliant scarlet
with black spots, surrounded mostly by a yellow circlet, the
body being also scarlet barred with black.

The Tiger caterpillar, seen more frequently even than the
moth, and sometimes in winter as well as summer, has a black
velvety skin, covered with long brown-tipped hairs, proceeding
from white tubercles. It is a feeder on dandelion, lettuce, and
other salad plants, and, from its habit, when touched, of rolling
round (an innocent measure of self-defence), has acquired the
misnomer of Devil's Ring.3

Having said as much of our night-fliers, with reference to
peculiarities of size and colour, as our proscribed limits will
permit, we shall now notice a few of them distinguished
especially with regard to form. Amongst the latter is the
moth called the Oak Lappet,4 already made known to our
readers as a " Walking Leaf" — the only specimen of British
growth ; and the very image of a "feuille morte" or, more
properly, of several dead leaves together, does it present, in its
large wings of rusty brown, deeply indented, and projecting,
the hindmost beyond the foremost pair.5

In the majority of moths the hinder wings are rounded ; but

1 Keats. a Arctia caja. 3 Vignette to "Life in Death."

4 Gastj-opacha quercifolia. 5 Vignette to " Resemblance and Relation."

SWALLOW-TAIL. 277

in the " Swallow-tail " we meet with a remarkable deviation
from this usual form — the hindmost pinions being prolonged,
as well as the foremost, into an acute tail.

Commencing its nocturnal rambles before the usual con-
clusion of our evening walks, the delicate sulphur-coloured
pinions of this pretty insect often flit past us in the June and
July twilights ; when, in accordance with a comparison
already suggested, we might fancy it an evening primrose on
the wing.

The wing of the moth, as of the butterfly, generally owes
its beauty to the rich mosaic of minute scales or feathers by
which it is overlaid, entirely, as it would seem, by way of or-
nament ; for the creature can use its pinions when reduced to
transparent membranes, as well as other insects, or a few of its
own tribe in which they are naturally clear. Its progress
through the air is no more impeded by the rough handling of
wantonness or weather, than the flight of true genius by the
rough rubs of fortune, however they may strip its soaring
energies of the variegated trappings of worldly splendour.

There exists, however, a singular and beautiful family of
moths, called the " Plumed," to which the above remark is
by no means applicable — the wing feathers of this tribe being
as essential to flight, and serving as much to form its organ,
as those in the pinions of the feathered race.

Who has not noticed, in gardens and by hedge-rows, floating
towards evening in the summer air, an object resembling a
large tuft of down, or a snow-flake dropped (a marvel !) from
a summer cloud ? When followed to its place of settlement
(usually some plant or lowly shrub), this questionable wanderer
will prove one of the moths just mentioned, — that, probably,
designated the " Large White Plume j"1 a little creature (large
omy by comparison) with wings consisting each of a single

1 Pterophorus pentadactylus.

278 PLUMED MOTHS.

row of long quilled feathers of spotless white and silken gloss,,
the delicate body and slender legs being of the same unsullied
hue, contrasted only by large black eyes. This fairy moth,
th*m which few more elegant and graceful flit beneath the
moon, comes of a greenish white, dusky-spotted caterpillar,
common on the nettles of every hedge ; and the " White
Plume" has a cousin, less fair and less in size, but not less
beautiful than herself yclept the " Twenty Plume," l from the
number of separate feathers of which her variegated brown
pinions are composed.

Though of course less conspicuous than the former, the
latter is even more easily and frequently to be met with ; for,
as if inviting the admiration she so well deserves, this beau-
tiful little flutterer often enters our dwellings, and spreads her
feather fans for our inspection as she dances in the window — a
place of shelter to which she often resorts from the bleak
winds of March, or the early frosts of late October ; for our
little " Twenty Plume," fragile as she looks, is no mere bird
of summer.

Having made allusion to certain moths wherein are alto-
gether wanting those merely ornamental appendages, the
coloured scales or feathers which usually clothe the wings of
their tribe, we must say a little more about them; though
that little will here be somewhat out of place, inasmuch as the
few " clear-winged " belong more nearly, by habits and other
affinities, to the Hawk and Twilight Moths first discoursed
of, than to the nocturnal division from which our subjects
have been subsequently drawn.

Towards the end of May there may be seen, sipping honey
on the wing, (chiefly, however, in the woods and gardens of
Surrey, Kent, and Essex), an insect with a short robust, yel-
lowish-olive body, not very dissimilar to that of a drone bee,
except that it is distinguished by some terminating rings of

1 Alucita hexaductyla.

WINGLESS MOTHS. 279

deep red, finished at the extremity by a black and yellow tuft.
From its clear, transparent, brown-bordered wings, none but
the " initiate " would take it for other than a curious sort of
fly or bee, whereas it is in fact the " Bee Hawk-moth," ? one of
those above alluded to. Of another family,2 but resembling
the last in naked transparency of pinion, there is the " Bee
Clear-wing" which, in the heat of noonday, is accustomed to
flit rapidly from flower to flower, alighting on their corollas to
extract their sweets.

From moths with wings painted in mosaic, wings of feathers,
and wings naked, we come lastly to moths without any wings
at all.

There is a certain moth, classed among the nocturnal, but
often to be seen abroad in August sunshine — an active, rest-
less, prying little fellow, who can boast, besides a single pair of
horns or antennae magnificently feathered, a double pair of
bright brown wings, the foremost dotted each with a spot of
white, and of as ample dimensions as any reasonable little moth
need desire. This gay, sunshiny "nocturnal" is called the
" Vapourer;"3 but, if we may be allowed a pun upon his
name, it is his lady to whom the malady of vapours might
seem the most likely to be incidental, seeing that while her
mate is taking his winged pleasure abroad, she (poor soul !) is
compelled to sit at home, or just creep about its precincts, be-
cause she has not a single wing to fly with. In truth, a strange,
homely-looking creature for a moth is this Lady Vapourer,
with her great heavy brown body, making her seem all body
and nothing else; for not only wings, but even head, horns,
legs — each of which are of the smallest possible dimensions —
seem sacrificed to the formation of that bulky corporation — a
perfect sackful of eggs, which are actually discernible through
the skin.4

1 Sesia fu&iformis 2 That of JEgerida. 3 Orgyia antiqua.

4 See vignette for figures of the " Vapourer," male and female.

280

MOTHS AS FEEDERS.

With regard to one habit, that of feeding, our faineant
flutterers widely differ. We have given a notion of the
luxurious labours, in this way, of the honey-sipping " hawks "
and sphinxes : and we have seen a T moth suck sugar for two
hours on a stretch, dissolving it from the lump by a liquid let
down through the tubular pipe wherewith he drew it up in
syrup. Reaumur speaks of others which regaled on sweets
from off his finger, " comme aurait pufaire un oiseau prive."

To many, on the contrary, of the moth fraternity, eating
would seem a thing not only undesired, but absolutely for-
bidden, by the absence of any perceptible organ wherewith to
eat. It is thus, amongst others, with the " Great Goat," the
"Emperor," and the moth of the silk-worm, which latter,
besides having no tongue to use, seldom takes the trouble to
employ his wings.

Thus is the most noted and useful of all " Moth Opera-
tives," of all " Moth Idlers," one of the most pre-eminently
lazw

cv

; %ti):urioug feetoerg amonof t lasj? fluttererf"

The insects in this vignette are of the allied families Achetidae, Gryllida;,
and LocustidtB. On the bank, beside its nest-hole, is a Field Cricket (Acheta
campestris). On the clover-leaves opposite sits a female grasshopper (Gryllus),
with her sword-shaped ovipositor. Ascending the grass above is one of the
small green Locttstida, common in damp meadows ; and flying upwards in tho
centre is the Acridium (or Locusta) gubulatum, a species with very small
elytra, figured in Curtis's " British Entomology."

LOVERS OF PLEASURE.

IFFERENT nations would seem to have as op-
posite ideas about happiness as about beauty.
The Japanese, for instance, have selected that
half-dead liver of centuries, the tortoise, to
figure their idea of perfect enjoyment, while
a Grecian poet chose the grasshopper, so eminently a creature
of life, living through every hour of its single summer, as a

282 GRASS AND TREE-HOPPERS.

representative of surpassing bliss, deserving the apostrophe of

" Happy insect ! what can be
In happiness compared to thee ? "

But know you not, says the entomologist, that these lines of
Anacreon have been only by error and mistranslation assigned
to the English grasshopper, at cost of the Grecian tree-hopper,
to whom they properly belong ? True ; but if we examine,
somewhat entomologically , the well-known ode commencing
with the above couplet, we shall perhaps find that each of the
attributes, real or figurative, which it assigns to the classic song-
ster of the tree, suit as well, and some of them much better, our
rustic songster of the grass.

This felicity, without pretending to decide on its compaia-
tive or positive amount, we may fairly suppose to be tolerably
equal with the hoppers of the tree and of the grass.

" Fed with nourishment divine,
The dewy morning's gentle wine,
Nature waits upon thee still,
And thy verdant cup does fill ;
"Tis filled wherever thou dost tread,
Nature's self thy Ganymede ! "

This may be said no less truly than prettily of both our sum-
mer minstrels, only with reservation. Both, doubtless, take a
similar delight in quaffing the " morning's gentle wine," the
one, from the emerald salver of a leaf, the other, from the
golden chalice of a buttercup ; but, as vegetable feeders, both
of no mean appetite, this " nourishment divine " would, by
itself, serve them only poorly. And as for the tree-hopper, one
of the uses of the gimlet-like tool with which it is provided is
said to be that of tapping trees, after the manner of house-
wives tapping birches for their sappy wine.

Be it noticed, however, by the way, that neither foreigner
nor native are vocal, but, in reality — instrumental performers.
Thus considered, the grasshopper is as a shepherd with his
Pandean reeds, or pipe and tabor, and the tree-hopper, by all

INSECTS AS PROPRIETORS. 283

accounts, as a deafening bagpiper — his shrilly clamour audible,
it is said, at a mile's distance.

As for being " happier than the happiest king," the poet
might have chosen, we imagine, a happier expression to ex-
press the supreme felicity of his monarch of the trees, — sup-
posing, that is, the amount of happiness comprised within the
golden circlet of a crown to be no bigger than philosophers,
and poets also, have usually considered it.

In the undisputed range of their several territories, whether
of foliage or of grass, our two appropriators may be reckoned
much upon a par ; though he of the tree can certainly, from
his loftier position, boast of a wider and more absolute com-
mand. For this reason (considering both as kings) King Tree-
hopper may be also, if not the happier, the safer of the two.

As for the labours of man being made subservient to the
insect's use, this certainly is a distinction which belongs much
more properly to the grasshopper, " the landlord," if you will,
of our meadows and our corn-fields, until at midsummer, or in
harvest (his position reversed) he finds himself a tenant,
forcibly ejected at the point of scythe or sickle. Here let us
stop and compare, as applied to both our revellers of the sum-
mer, the dictum of poet and the evidence of naturalist.

First for judgment on the tree-hopper. The insect of Ana-
creon might and may possibly be of more innoxious character ;
but we are told by Stoll, that the common species of Tettix or
Cicada, what he calls " La Cigale Vieilleuse" does infinite
injury to trees, especially to plantations of coffee,1 by boring
grooves and holes in the smaller branches, both for the depo-
sition of eggs and for extracting juices.

Now, Mr. Grasshopper! Are thy "joy" and "luxury"
the joy and luxury of perfect innocence. On ocular evidence
dost thou stand condemned. Each notch in the verdant, much
more the withering blade, is as a mouth opened against thee in
mute accusation. True, we hear and read but little of thy

1 At Surinam.

K E

284 RAVAGES OF GRASS-HOPPERS.

misdemeanours, while those of "the fly,"1 and "the wire-
worm,"2 and "the grub,"3 are trumpeted loudly forth, and
figure infamously in the " Newgate Calendar " of the indig-
nant farmer. Yet do we suspect, that where thou and thy
merry companions most abound, even in the meads of England,
the mouthfuls of the cow must lack moisture, and the crops of
hay lack weight ; and when we read of thy continental fellows
caught in hand-nets by the bushel, what must we think of the
amount of mischief committed, or likely to have been wrought,
by the combination of their jaws! But, however deep the
damage they effected, direful was the penalty they had to pay;
— when boiled, and their green coats reddened, like those of
lobsters or of shrimps, they were served up, a friand repas, a
dainty dish, to porkers.

The poet to the tree-hopper thus concludes : —

" To thee of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth ;
Happy insect! happy, thou
Dost neither age nor winter know ;
But when thou'st drunk and danced and sung
Thy fill, the summer leaves among,
Sated with thy summer feast,
Thou retir'st to endless rest."

This will do alike for the tree and the grass-hopper, since, with
both, a short life and a merry one is the allotted condition of
being, extended only, we believe, to a few weeks of summer or
early autumn. Neither they, their leaves, nor grass, nor
" flowers," are much exposed, therefore, to those " frosty
fingers" deprecated for the gryllus by the Cavalier Lovelace
(writer of our prefatory lines), who, with true cavalier philo-
sophy (only a variation on the Greek Epicurean), thus con-
cludes his address to the English grasshopper : —

" Poor verdant fool ! and now green ice ; thy joys,
Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,

1 Aphides of the hop, so called. 2 Larva of the Click Beetle.

3 Larva of the Cockchafer.

BRITISH CICADA. 285

Bid us lay in 'gainst winter rain, and poise
Their floods with an o'erflowing glass."

Anacreon's hopper of the tree, and our British hopper of the
grass may now surely be allowed to share between them the
former's celebrated ode, and the palm of happiness and song.

Our sketch comparative may possibly have excited in some
of our readers a desire to compare for themselves the persons
and the merits of our insect professors of the "joyeuse science;"
but this, with the tree-hopper, is no easy matter. The Tettix
of ancient Greece, and Cicada of ancient and modern Italy,
has a place indeed amongst British insects, but it has been
rarely seen in England, and only, we believe, in the New
Forest, whose shades, however, would not seem to have
resounded with its song. Allied insects there nevertheless are,
of English birth, — some of them pretty, some of form remark-
able, but none very likely to attract attention, for lack of size
and song. There is, however, one species to be seen univer-
sally on hedges and in gardens all through the summer, which,
in shape and make, will help to give a notion of the true
Cicada. Though the person of this diminutive tree-hopper, at
least before it attains maturity, is screened in a singular manner
from common observation, there is scarcely an insect of more
easy discovery, when once we have penetrated the mystery of
its white veil. Who has not noticed, about the time of the
cuckoo's welcome advent, the leaves of hawthorn, hazel, wood-
bine— the leaves, in short, of almost every common shrub and
plant in hedge and garden — beginning to be besprinkled with
frothy masses, which they know, probably, by the familiar
appellation of " cuckoo-spit?" Let them examine for them-
selves, and they will find, imbedded in the centre of each
frothy "flocon" a little green, black-eyed insect,1 from whose
body the froth is none other than a secretion, intended, it
would seem, to cover and protect its wingless infancy. If

1 Teitigonia, or Cicada spumaria, Cuckoo-spit Frog-hopper.

286 RAPID TRANSFORMATIONS.

removed by violence, this frothy veil is gradually renewed ; but
as its little wearer approaches maturity it becomes curtailed and
thinner. Then is our time, if we wish to acquire from this
Tom Thumb of tree-hoppers some slender notion of his com-
paratively gigantic relative, the Grecian Singer, to pluck him,
with leaf and branch, from, his native tree, and set him up
under a glass for inspection or exhibition. The veil of froth
having shrunk to a film, we shall then discern, as each part of
the insect emerges from a previous skin, first, a large, flat,
frog-shaped head, with eyes set wide apart ; then a triangular
neck or shoulder-piece, flanked by small protuberances, which
might seem apologies for wings ; and, lastly, a short annulated
body, pointed at the extremity. Six legs, of which the hinder
pair, more strong and lengthy than their fellows, bespeak
endowments of a leaping character, will complete, to all
appearance, the somewhat grotesque figure of our little tree-
hopper, or frog-hopper, as he is more generally called. But,
though thus unveiled and thus uncased (his skin, perfect even
to the legs, left behind him in silvery emptiness, like a shadow
of his former self) we shall yet have to wait a little longer
before we can behold him altogether a thing complete. He
lacks not wings, only his wings want expansion; but, after
about ten minutes, occupied in their unfolding from out the
little shoulder-knots which yet encase them, will appear, in
readiness for flight, two large transparent pinions, defended
outwardly by a pair of less delicate texture. When the latter
have put on their colours, most often variegated brown and
white, behold a final and ample finish to the exterior of our
frog-hopper, who, as soon as released from crystal durance,
will afford, in agile spring, half-flight, half-leap, an ocular
demonstration of the fitness of his name.1

One of the largest and most conspicuous, both for size and
song, of our native grasshoppers, is the " Large Green ;"2 with

1 See Vignette to " Insect Minstrelsy."

8 Acrida viridissima. Vignette to " Insect Minstrelsy."

CANNIBAL GRASSHOPPERS. 287

rather a sharp head, large prominent eyes, ample wings, and
slender antennae as long as the body. This noble of his tribe
is not an unfrequent resorter to hedges and marshy places ; and,
though his green armour may easily escape observation, his loud
chirping can hardly fail to attract notice, especially amidst the
general silence of the feathered choir, in the songless months of
August and September.

The above grandee of grasshoppers, as well as his more
insignificant brethren, is in the frequent habit of filling up
idle pauses between his music and his meals by a sort of
seeming rumination, which many have considered an actual
chewing of the cud; whereas it is opined by others, that,
instead of ruminating, like Mistress Colly, the Sieur Gryllus
thinks of nothing but of licking, like Miss Grimalkin, his
superb whiskers (otherwise antennae) and his paws — an operation
performed, by the way, with a tongue not at all dissimilar in
the shape to the unruly member boasted by ourselves. Whether
or not chewers of the cud, grasshoppers are, decidedly, crop-
pers of the grass ; but we are assured, on good authority, that
they now and then are nothing scrupulous in the variation of
such Brahminian fare, by taking, as a relish, some innocent
little insect of a kind differing from themselves ; still worse,
that when made fellow-prisoners (hard pressed by hunger or
confinement) they have been known to commit the cannibal
enormity of devouring one another — an example being given
wherein one of the gentler sex (which, by the way, among in-
sects is usually the fiercer) was the doer of the deed. But,
worst of all ! — horror of horrors ! — we have it on excellent
evidence, how that a certain great green grasshopper (one of
the sort just described) on being bottled up together with his
own leg (accidentally detached), did make a hearty meal off
that late portion of himself. The reverend naturalist by whom
this unnatural act is recorded, performed himself, what in some
prejudiced opinions might appear a crowning feat of horror.
He followed the example of the Acridophagi, and pronounced,

288 CRICKETS.

on experience, the large green grasshopper of England to be
" an excellent condiment."

The Cricket, like the grasshopper, has long slender antenncs,
but is distinguished from the latter by a thick roundish head,
instead of one more or less pointed.

The most generally known of the Achetidce, or Cricket
family, in England, are those called the " Domestic," the
" Field," and the " Mole." We have long ago described briefly
the most salient points in the character of the fire-side chirper.
His country cousin of the field is, like himself, known much
more generally by sound than sight ; for, being o f a shy, unso-
cial temper, it is not often that we can get a peep (except by
stratagem) at his black, gold-striped, shining jacket, or at the
more duskily-coloured and more portly person of his female
partner, who wears the pacific sword of a " sauterelle a sabre"
No sooner are these timid little animals warned by their long
antennal ears, directed to all quarters like those of a hare, that
footsteps are approaching, than, forthwith ceasing their chirp,
they pop down into their holes among the grass, at the mouths
of which they usually take up their stations.

After having essayed in vain to dislodge them by the spade
from their subterranean citadels, it was found by Mr. White
that the insertion of a straw or pliant bit of grass would
probe the windings of their caverns, and bring to upper air the
poor disquieted inhabitants. In a somewhat similar manner
French children are said to fish for field crickets with long line ;
of horsehair, baited with an ant.

Early in March, the field cricket, with wings as yet covered
in their cases, and so enveloped till the month of April, opens
his ceirs mouth, and, sitting at its entrance, sings, or, to
speak more correctly, plays through the summer days and
nights, on to August, when all trace of him, audible and
visible, disappears, with the obliteration even of the entrance to
his late abode.

1 See Vignette.-

LOCUSTS.

289

The field-cricket, like the grasshopper, is accustomed to fill
up pauses in his music by licking, ever and anon, his feet and
whiskers with his rounded tongue, which, together with his jaws,
is of course employed also, at other intervals, upon something
of more edible description, in the way of breakfast, dinner, or
supper.

The family of Locustidte (locusts), though, as before noticed,
often confounded with«that of Gryllidce (grasshoppers), are
distinguishable from them by the inferior length of their
antenna?, which are generally shorter by half than the body ;
also, by the absence in the female insect of the sword-shaped
instrument employed, where given, to inter eggs within the
ground.1

That prince of insect destroyers, the migratory locust, has
appeared occasionally in Great Britain and in the environs of
Paris, as well as in Southern Europe.

1 See Vignette.

" ®!)ou &o$t Dance anb tijou bogt $in0.'

On a currant-leaf in the foreground lies a caterpillar of the Magpie Moth
(Abraxas grossulariata), which has been pierced by a small Ichneumon (Micro-
gaster ylomeratui), black, with yellow legs, of which a magnified figure appears
flying upwards on the left. Its parasitic larva?, having fed upon the juices of
the caterpillar, have deserted its body, and spun around it their ovate silk
cocoons. Above these, descending on the right, is the large common Ichneu-
mon (Pimpla maniftstator) ; and high in the corner opposite ascends another
large species, black and orange, of the genus Ophion.

PARASITES.

" a plague,

The better fed, the longer kept."

HERE is a certain destructive tribe of insects
which may be seen everywhere ; and they
may be seen not only now, but at almost
every season.

The varied species of insects which com-
pose this tribe differ widely both in magnitude and in strength ;
but they are, one arid all, according to their power, active,

PARASITIC INSECTS. 291

prying, and destructive. They are specious in outward form,
but they are for ever watching opportunities to make breaches
in the citadel of life, that they may introduce therein,
sometimes a single assassin, sometimes a murderous host,
which sap its foundations, and bring it, sooner or later, to
destruction.

Ichneumon is the name generally applied to the parasitic
race of which we have been speaking. There are, however,
various insects of parasitic habits which are not properly ich-
neumons, though the name, as signifying pryers, does not ill
befit them.

The original ichneumon of antiquity was, as most people are
aware, no insect at all, but a little four-footed animal, a pryer
after, and devourer of, crocodiles' eggs, on which account
it was adorned by the deifying people of Egypt as among
their benefactors ; and amongst others, we are bound, cer-
tainly, to rank its insect namesakes, prying as they do, for our
benefit, after caterpillars in the egg as well as in maturity.

But the extensive value of ichneumons, a check upon
caterpillar depredation, may be best estimated by their num-
bers, of which we may form a tolerable notion when we hear
of above 1300 species1 in Europe only, some so minute "that
the egg of a butterfly is sufficient for the support of two
[individuals] until they reach maturity; others so large that
the body of a full-grown caterpillar does not more than suffice
for one." 2

The ichneumons belong to the same order (that of Hy-
menoptera) as wasps and bees ; both, spite of their relation-
ship, among the objects of their treacherous attack.

Of this distant kinship there are outward traces in the
four transparent wings, and in the slight wasp-like attachment
of ichneumon's breast and abdomen, also in its prevailing
colours of black and orange; but the ichneumon, whether

1 " Naturalist's Library." * Kirby and Spence, Introduction.

292 ICHNEUMON BORERS.

a dwarf or a giant of its family, has a figure of such peculiar
cut as to make it easy enough, when acquainted with one,
to recognize a hundred of his name. We may know them by
their long narrow bodies, so convenient for prying and poking
into holes and corners, as well as by their long, flexible,
jointed horns, so continually on the vibrate as to have pro-
cured for their possessors the appellation of Muscce vibrantes.
With these organs l (supposed to combine the uses of feelers
and of ears) our pryers are to be seen for ever exploring,
both by touch and hearing, the places and the living subjects
best suited to receive their eggs.

Cuckoo-flies is another appellation by which ichneumons
are distinguished, because, like the cuckoo, they are accus-
tomed, lazily, intrusively, dishonestly, and cruelly, to deposit
their eggs in stranger nests — sometimes within stranger egg-
shells— sometimes within the bodies of stranger grubs and
caterpillars, either in their infancy or when they have attained
their growth. For execution of these her nefarious practices,
the female ichneumon is provided with a very conspicuous
instrument, tail-like, seeming composed sometimes of one,
sometimes of three divergent hairs, but consisting, in fact,
of a single ovipositor or borer, with a ' sheath longitudinally
divided and opening like a pair of compasses.

The nicest adaptation marks this curious instrument, which,
according to the different species and habits of its possessor,
is employed to pierce, sometimes only an exposed egg, some-
times the skin of a grub, caterpillar, or chrysalis, and some-
times through defences strong and deep, coverings of silk, or
wood, or clay ; and, according to these varied requisitions, it is
shorter or longer, thinner or thicker, stiffer or more pliant.

In one large and common ichneumon,2 easily known by
her black body, red legs, and smoke-coloured wings, spotted
at the base, this tail-like appendage reaches into inches, some-

1 Antennae. 3 Pimpla manifestator.

A LIVING MARTYRDOM. 293

times nearly three — a length extreme, as longer than the
body, but not superfluous, seeing that its office is often to
penetrate, and that through a barrier of clay, down to the
very bottom of deep nest-holes in walls or sand-banks, those,
usually, of the mason wasp, wherein, to the destruction of the
hapless nestling, its rightful occupant, it leaves behind the fatal
deposit of a parasitic egg.

Let us see now — though no very pleasant thing to look
upon or think of — the way in which the ichneumon often
goes to work upon a poor devoted devourer of the leaves
of cabbage, one of the commonest of all caterpillars, whence
spring one of the commonest of all butterflies — the Large
White l of the garden.

While stuffing its variegated doublet of green, black, and yel-
low, with vegetable pulp, a small ichneumon, a little four-winged
imp, with black body and yellow legs, pounces on its back,
flourishes her tremendous egg-inserting weapon, and, seeking
therewith the caterpillar's most vulnerable part, plunges it,
now here, now there, between its rings, leaving, with every
puncture, a " thorn in the flesh," soon to be the living prey
of a brood of devourers.

The victim of this infliction bears all with a most asto-
nishing degree of quietude ; and, without any outward signs
of the visitation which has befallen it, continues to discuss
its cabbage with apparently the same relish as before, and
utterly unconscious that, while seeming only to feed itself, it
is in reality supporting the surreptitious progeny which Mother
Ichneumon has so cunningly committed to its most involuntary
keeping.

Thus strangely supported, the infant or grub cuckoo-flies
attain their growth, and so, to all appearance, does their un-
fortunate fosterer, the caterpillar. According to instinctive
custom, the latter, then deserting its cabbage, betakes

Pontia

F F

294 PARASITIC COCOONS.

itself, perhaps in July or August, to the sheltering coping
of a garden wall, or cross-bar of a paling j places where, in
the common course of nature, it is accustomed to discard the
caterpillar and put on the chrysalis form.

We have happened, perhaps, to see a caterpillar, visited as
just described, ascend its wall or paling. In a day or two,
perhaps in a few hours, we see it again, still a caterpillar,
and alive, but reduced almost to an empty skin, while heaped
around it is a mass of little oval cocoons of yellow silk. By
some people these might be taken for the caterpillars' eggs ; by
others, for a specimen of its own spinning ; and they might
suppose, moreover, that it had worked so hard as well-nigh
to work itself to death ; but no such thing — the yellow silken
cases have been spun by the little brood of parasites.

One most noteworthy circumstance in the above and other
parasitic infestations of a similar kind, is the avoidance, by
the ichneumon devourers, of every vital part of the cater-
pillar devoured, whose living juices are requisite for their
support.

Incipient moths, as well as butterflies, are continually being
defrauded of their winged estate through the agency of ich-
neumon, and sometimes other parasites.

During last August, we had six of the golden chrysalides
of the little tortoise-shell butterfly all suspended to a cluster of
nettles which we had planted in a flower-pot for the provision
of their caterpillars. From two of the number appeared duly,
in all their bright array of black and scarlet, blue and gold,
the insects to be naturally expected ; from the third issued
a brood of small ichneumons. Of the fourth, fifth, and sixth,
the " gold coats " assumed a questionable blackness, and being
hence led to examine how they might be filled, we found,
instead of the wrinkled wings and folded members of butterfly
occupants, three little brown barrels within each, which we
presently recognized for the pupae of two-winged flies ; and
from these accordingly came forth nine as ordinary-looking

ICHNEUMONS IN CHRYSALIDES. 295

little animals of that description as were ever set eyes on
buzzing in a window, — distinguished, however, by their para-
sitic origin from the household herd.

Though the gay and beautiful order Lepidoptera thus holds
a dangerous pre-eminence as an object of parasitic attack,
it is not alone the butterfly and moth which are often robbed
by the same agency of their last estate and brightest in-
heritance.

We have seen already how a common ichneumon, with a
tail-like ovipositor of prodigious length, is accustomed to
assail, in the deep nest-hole of a mason wasp, the infant
progeny of an insect of its own order, that of Hymenoptera ;
and we shall briefly notice, now, the invasion of an infant
asylum of somewhat similar construction, wherein, however, a
parasitic wasp is the aggressor, and a solitary carpenter bee
the maternal guardian, whose cares are often rendered nuga-
tory by its cunning.

The waspish lady (in this case the aggressor) is, however,
we can tell you, Reader, a wasp of no common order; but
one which, for beauty and splendour, has never met her match
in the waspish world, nor her superior, perhaps, in the whole
world of British insects. You must surely have sometimes
seen her, a perfect living jewel as she is ! with head, breast,
and shoulders all thickly set with emeralds, outshone only
by the ruby-red and burnished gold which mingle in her fiery
tail. You must have seen, and certainly have noted, such
a notable as this, when alighted, according to her wont, in
the hottest summer sunshine, upon posts and railings; but
you may not know her by the names either of " Chrysis" of
" Golden Wasp," or of " Ruby-tail Fly ;" or even if you
know her names, you may not be acquainted with her busi-
ness— her business, that is, upon posts and railings. Never
suppose that she so often visits these uninviting, flowerless,
dry localities, merely to bask in the sultry sunbeams, or
challenge them to outshine her golden splendour. No ; this

296 THE GOLDEN WASPS.

creature, in her glorious array, is bent on glorious mischief.
You may, one day, happen to perceive, on the same post as
that chosen for her station by the golden wasp, a hole bored in
the wood, and you may also possibly see its borer, in the
shape of a little bee mother, of the carpenter craft, who, with
infinite pains and labour, has chiselled out with her jaws a
nursery tunnel, divided into cells, and stored it with provisions
for her young. But, ah ! that bejewelled ruby-tailed pryer
has also watched her in her tender labours, which she will
take good care to convert, if possible, to the benefit of her
own waspish offspring. No sooner does she issue from her
nest-hole, than the wily parasite darts from behind her screen,
her dazzling body and glittering wings flash for a moment in
the sun, then suddenly are lost in the dark perforation of the
tunnelled bee's nest. Woe then to its hapless tenants ! They
may feast awhile upon the sweets provided by maternal care ;
but only to be devoured by a grub of the golden wasp, who, in
her visit to their nest (fatal as it is brief), has deposited an egg,
or eggs, from whence will issue all this murderous mischief.

While the infant bee, deep in its perforated cell, is exposed
to dangers such as these, the embryo gall-fly sleeps not a whit
more safely within its pulpy or woody globe, pierced, often, to
the centre by the egg-inserting instrument of a gall ichneumon.
Even the little aphis, or plant-louse, cannot escape, through its
minuteness, from the punctures of an ichneumon parasite pro-
portioned to itself; and the aphides' arch enemy, the ladybird,
while yet an aphis-eating larva, is preyed upon in turn by a
parasitic consumer.

All the parasites above noticed, if not ichneumon, are, be it
remembered, flies, — parasite flies, — either four-winged, of the
order Hymenoptera, or two-winged, of the order Diptera.
They are all, also, when arrived as perfect insects at their
winged estates, livers upon vegetable food, — for themselves,
usually, mere harmless sippers of honey. Only in the parental
character are their cruel and parasitic propensities developed, to

A WILY PARASITE.

297

be exercised either on living subjects, affording at once a cover
for their eggs and nourishment for their young, or else upon
those stranger nests wherein is to be found both shelter and a
store of living prey suitable for the same purposes.

But there are certain other insect parasites (chiefly wingless,
and of the order Aptera) which are parasitic entirely for them-
selves,— perfect insects which infest others, perfect also. Of
such are the Acari, or mites, with which all, who have ever
noticed the commonest of black beetles, must have sometimes
seen them covered, as well as their pretty cousins the gold
green chafers of the rose. The humble bee is another not
unfrequent sufferer from somewhat similar infestation, which is
said, moreover, to rob, occasionally, the merry grasshopper of
his juices, if not of his enjoyment. These, however, with other
parasite tormentors whose visitations extend to bird, and beast,
and man, may be looked on more properly as a part of the
vermin crew, not now the subject of our notice.

" CBe PBantom %ifl&t f irtUenlp fell.'

In the foreground is an Earwig (Forjicula vulgaris), surrounded by her brood
as a hen by her chickens. Above, on the leaf of a rose-bush, is an out-door
Spider (a beautiful species, white with crimson markings), keeping guard over
her numerous eggs, enveloped in a covering of bluish silk. The leaf behind
her has been converted by her industry into a nest, from which, with her eggs,
she is supposed to have been dislodged. On the wooden pale opposite is the
excavated nest, with enclosed cocoons of a mother " Carpentress," amongst the
solitary wasps (Eumenes), who is flying up towards it. On one of the leaflets
of the rose above it is a Leaf-cutter Bee (Megachile centuncularis), employed in
excision of one of the circular pieces used in the lining of her nest ; and above
flies another of the same " Upholsterer " craft.

INSTINCTS OF MATERNITY.

THE POPPY BEE.

HE subject of our opening remarks belongs to
one of those solitary, that is to say, not social,
tribes which, from their ingenious manner of
fitting up or furnishing their nests, have
acquired the name of " Upholsterers" or
" Leafcutters ;" the popular designation of " Poppy " being

NEST OF THE POPPY BEE. 299

derived from the material employed for her work by this par-
ticular species. It is doubted by Kirby and Spence whether
the poppy bee is a native of Britain ; but the author of " Insect
Architecture " ' is almost certain of having seen the nests of her
species in Scotland. We shall give from the latter an interest-
ing description of a tunnelled nursery, formed, and hung, and
furnished by one of these little maternal artificers.

" One of these holes is about three inches deep, gradually
widening as it descends, till it assumes the form of a small
Florence flask. The interior of this excavation is rendered
smooth, uniform, and polished, in order to adapt it to the
tapestry with which it is intended to be hung, and which is
the next step in the process.

" The material used for tapestry by this insect upholsterer is
supplied by the flower-leaves of the scarlet field-poppy, from
which she successively cuts off small oval pieces, seizes them
between her legs, and conveys them to the nest. She begins
her work at the bottom, which she overlays with three or four
leaves in thickness, and the sides have never less than two.
When she finds that the piece she has brought is too large to
fit the place intended, she cuts off what is superfluous and
carries away the shreds. By cutting the fresh petal of a poppy
with a pair of scissors, we may perceive the difficulty of keep-
ing the piece free from wrinkles and shrivelling ; but the bee
knows how to spread the pieces which she uses as smooth as
glass.

" When she has in this manner hung the little chamber
round with this splendid scarlet tapestry, of which she is not
sparing, but extends it even beyond the entrance, she then fills
it with the pollen of flowers mixed with honey, to the height of
about half an inch. In this magazine of provisions for her
future progeny she lays an egg, and, over it, folds down the
tapestry of poppy petals from above. The upper part is then
filled in with earth."2

' Rennie. 2 " Insect Architecture."

300 LEAF-CUTTER BEE.

Another industrious member of the " upholsterer" craft,
and one which, as a common native of England, may be more
easily observed in carrying on her business, is another little bee
called the Rose Leaf-cutter.

From June to August there are often to be found on rose-
trees certain leaves out of which have been cut one or more
pieces of circular or oval form, and that with as much smooth-
ness and regularity as if with a pair of scissors.1 These exci-
sions are, in fact, evidences indubitable that the scissor-like
jaws of the bee sempstress have been busily at work, and, by
watching quietly at hand, it is not unlikely that we may see the
industrious little body busy at her cutting out. Tp follow her
as she carries her work home may be more difficult, at least
on some occasions, — but not on all, as her chamber and de-
signed nursery may happen to be in a gravel-walk, an old
wall, or an old post, — as likely to be close by as far off. Be it
where it may, it consists generally of a cylindrical excavated
hole, of which the site once discovered, the interior art and
mystery may easily be brought to light by help of a spade
or other adapted instrument. In truth, though, to disturb thus
the labour of love exercised by this little artisan would give us
pain hardly to be balanced by gratified wonder at the skill and
neatness wherewith she has fitted up her leaf-lined nest.

We mean not to say, indeed, (and what lover of entomology
would be credited if he did ?) that tenderness would be certain,
in our own case, to master curiosity on discovery, for the first
time, of a leaf-cutter's abode, or on other the like occasion ;
but those from whom the maternal upholsterer is likely to meet
with more consideration may obtain, without invading her
nursery, a very excellent notion of the style of its fitting up.
This they may acquire from pages much more accurately
descriptive than ours;2 but in the meantime we may briefly
tell them how that, having excavated or found her hole, (a
cavity in ground, or wood, or wall, of from six to ten inches
1 See Vignette. 2 Reaumur; also " Insect Architecture."

LEAF-CUTTERS NEST. 301

deep,) she proceeds to construct within it, of the pieces of leaf
she cuts off, several cells, of the shape and about the size of a
thimble, which she inserts, successively, the bottom of one into
the mouth of that below it. It takes from nine to twelve pieces
of leaf to complete each single cell, and as each is finished, she
stores it with a rose-coloured conserve made chiefly of pollen,
and honey collected from flowers of the thistle. When to this
magazine of sweets is superadded the egg from whence its
future consumer is to spring, the provident provider of the
store covers in the whole with three more pieces of leaf cut in
a circle as truly accurate as compasses could describe; room
being left above this cover for insertion of a succeeding cell,
our " upholsterer " thus proceeds till her nursery tunnel is
completely fitted up.

Well might the gardener of Reaumur, on accidentally un-
earthing such a work of wonder as this nest of the leaf-cutter
bee, suppose it, in his ignorance, the work of some magician !

The wool or down of pubescent plants, such as rose campion
and cat's-ear, shaven off" and " rolled up like a ribbon " for
convenient transport, is used by another rather common species
of solitary bee,1 to compose, not the lining or compartments,
but the exterior covering of her nest, which is plastered within,
and provided, like those before mentioned, with a store of
suitable provision.

Bee "carpenters" and bee "masons" — all working with
maternal views, and named, like the " upholsterers," from the
character of their labours — show no less ingenuity and perse-
verance in the employment of their more solid materials. The
masons construct their nests, some with sand, some with earth
and mingled chalk, some with earth and wood, uniting by
gluten their grains or fragments.

The carpenters chisel their cells out of posts and palings a
little softened by decay ; and a nest of this description has
been found, when cut open by a curious observer,2 to consist of
1 Anthidium manicatum. a Rennie, " Insect Architecture."

302 MOTHERS AMONG WASPS.

a tunnel excavated in the wood, and divided by thin partitions
of clay into five or six compartments, each with its supply of
pollen for the single inhabitant who is to emerge from the egg
deposited therein.1

Besides these, there are bee " miners," which, as their name
imports, excavate galleries, for their nurseries, in the earth.

These artisans amongst solitary bees have sisters in nearly
all their crafts amongst the solitary wasps, many of which latter
work no less expertly than the former in their different styles
of maternally-designed architecture.2 Nor are these waspish
mothers a whit behindhand in providing for their nestlings'
necessities, only showing their fiercer propensities in the nature
of the food provided — which, in place of a heap of pollen, is
usually a pile of flies or gnats, and sometimes, as in the case of
the wasp " mason," a spiral column of living caterpillars, or a
brace or two of live spiders.

On these, the number of which is nicely calculated to meet
his wants, the young wasp is nourished up to perfect wasphood,
unless, spite of his mother's labours so cunningly protective, he
himself fall a prey to the usurping offspring of some ichneumon-
fly, who, more clever still, has contrived, cuckoo-like, to lay
her egg within the nest he occupies.

One species of mason-wasp, mentioned by Bonnett, ap-
proaches nearer than any of the above to the feathered race in
her mode of supplying her young, for instead of enclosing at
once within her nursery larder a store sufficient to supply the
future exigencies of its inmate, she, from time to time, carries
thither a living caterpillar, opening and reclosing the nest for
her entrance and exit.

The proscriptive skill and care exhibited by solitary bees
and wasps in the construction of their nurseries is probably,
as with birds in the building of their nests, entirely of an
instinctive character ; but we must assign, surely, one of a
higher description to certain other features of insect maternity,
with a few of which we shall conclude our imperfect sketch.
1 See Vignette. * See Vignette.

BROODING EARWIGS. 303

This love of offspring does not seem the most strongly
developed in the mild and gentle of the insect tribes, — but in
those, especially, of fierce and predatory habits, as the cruel
spider, the devouring water-scorpion, the already-noticed
murderous wasp, and the, occasionally, cannibal earwig.

It might not so much excite our wonder to find the large
feathery wings of the soft and beautiful butterfly, or those of
the downy moth, spread, dove-like, over their eggs or infant
broods, to hatch or cherish them. These, indeed, are not
without their maternal instincts wonderfully displayed. The
butterfly deserts her delicate repast among the flowers to de-
posit her eggs on the (to herself) uninviting cabbage, which is
to support her progeny ; and the moth, in one or more in-
stances,1 strips the down from her own body to defend her
brood against the winter's cold ; but if we want a parallel to
the patience, the care, and affection of a brooding hen, we must
look for it in the harsh, sharp, linear form of the earwig. De
Geer tells us (his observations being confirmed by later
naturalists) that she absolutely sits upon her eggs, as if to
hatch them, and guards them with the greatest care ; if scat-
tered, collects them one by one into a heap, then resumes and
assiduously maintains her sitting. When hatched, her nest-
lings, like those of a hen, creep under her, and are thus some-
times brooded for hours by the mother insect.2

We have had an opportunity of observing for ourselves the
brooding care of these insect Partlets, as exemplified in one
which we transported from her nest beside a stone, and com-
mitted, with half a dozen of her white progeny, to the keeping
of an inverted glass. Knowing that, in spite of an occasional
penchant for a living subject, the usual food of earwigs con-
sists of flowers, we put a blossom of dandelion into our pri-
soner's coop of crystal — a piece of consideration for which we
were amply repaid by seeing Mother Earwig commence, forth-

1 That of the Gipsy Moth ; also the Gold-tail. 2 See Vignette.

G G

304 OTHER HEN-LIKE INSECTS.

with, upon one of the yellow petals, which, directly afterwards,
was attacked, at the bitten edge, by the tender jaws of one of
her surrounding brood, thus led, apparently, to the repast which
she seemed to have prepared for their more easy discussion.

The egg-bearing water-scorpion displays even more attach-
ment for her eggs than birds, for she never leaves them until
hatched, carrying them always in a cluster on her back. The
cochineal insects, of which one species affords the well-known
dye, protect their eggs by covering them with their own life-
less bodies. Some of these little animals, with their eggs thus
curiously guarded, and embedded in a white cottony secre-
tion, are to be found on grape-vines, too commonly for the
gardener, especially near London. The hawthorn furnishes,
in another coccus, another instance of frequent occurrence,
in which the body of the mother insect, dried to a silvery
grey skin, is to be seen protecting from winter's cold a multi-
tude of her orange-coloured eggs.

The two habitudes last named bear, certainly, most of the
instinctive character, but at all events they are poetic in idea.
Perhaps, however, none of the maternal traits above noted
are so strongly marked as those wont to be exhibited by a
species of spider common under clods of earth, and often seen
carrying her eggs in a white silken bag fastened to the end of
her body. " No miser," says Kirby, •'* clings to his treasure
with more solicitude than this spider to her bag. She carries
it with her everywhere. If you deprive her of it, she makes
the most strenuous efforts for its recovery. If you restore it,
her actions demonstrate her joy. She seizes it, and with the
utmost agility runs off with it to a place of security.

" When the proper time arrives, she makes an opening in
the bag for the young to come forth, when they run in clusters
on her back and legs ; she carries them about with her, and
feeds them till able to help themselves."1

Bonnet's relation concerning an individual of the same

1 " Introduction to Entomology."

SOCIAL MATERNITY.

305

species affords a striking parallel to those often recorded of
cats, tigers, and bears, when robbed of their young. To put
her affection to the test, he threw her into the pit of a large
ant-lion, in the sand. The fierce creature seized her bag, when
she struggled till its fastening gave way. She then regained it
with her jaws, but by superior strength he pulled it into the
sand, into which, rather than forsake her treasure, she suffered
herself to be dragged also. Bonnet forced her from it, but,
though repeatedly pulled away, she would not leave the spot.
Many other species of the spider race have shown themselves
scarcely inferior in maternal attachment.

Now with reference to ants, as well as social bees and social
wasps, we must here notice, that the maternal instincts and
affections reign paramount, through life, in the working popu-
lation of the ant-hill and the hive, with which, in fact, love of
their young forms the very mainspring of activity.

3CUmire t&e toesterttp of tDe leaf -cutter 23ee.

On the grass, to the left, is one of the common brown Crane-flies Tipula
oleracea), distinguished as a female by her pointed ovipositor. In flight, above,
is a male of the same species, and below, in the earth, another, in its state of
grubhood, employed in devouring the grass roots, on which, in its earliest
stage, it is accustomed to feed. On the right, above, is a handsome Crane-fly
(Ctenophara), with black and yellow markings and plumed antennae.

FATHER LONGLEGS AND HIS FAMILY.

jEXT to the butterfly and the ladybird, we may
perhaps assign a place among the insect fami-
liars of our childhood, to that ungainly skipper
best known to us, wheresoever wre may meet
him — " upstairs or downstairs or in my lady's
chamber " — as " Old Father Longlegs."

Our book-learning may have possibly made us acquainted
with him, since, under the more refined epithet of Tipula or
Crane-fly; but call the creature by what name we may —

WON DEE OF LONG LEGS. 307

"Tipula," " Crane-fly," "Jenny Spinner," "Tailor," or
" Daddy Longlegs," it was nothing but his legs which made
him, in our childhood, an object of wondering notice: and it is
at this prodigious length of shank that some grown-up people
may be apt to wonder still ; to wonder also for what purpose
it was given ; to wonder, thirdly, why the legs, which seem in
truth hardly to belong to their owner, fall off so readily ; and
to wonder, lastly, at the unimpaired activity which he is
accustomed to evince under the loss of one or more of his six
unstable supporters.

Now, with reference to wonder the second and inquiry the
first, that, namely, about the use to its possessor of an extra
length of limb — no very probable solution is likely to present
itself while we merely look at Father Longlegs when we happen
to encounter him on stairs or in chambers, which, whether
" my lady's" or " my lord's " are places where, in fact, he has
no business — where he is nothing but an intruder — a stranger
— and where, like other awkward creatures in strange society,
he is never to be seen to the best advantage. But let those
who would have a shrewd guess at the use of his ungainly
members, take a peep at Mr. Longshanks when he is at home
in his own element and in the indulgence of his own habits ;
for which purpose they can hardly do better than accompany
us, this fine September evening, to some pleasant meadows
watered by a running stream.

Here then we are, with the sun about to set in all his glory ;
and here is our long-legged acquaintance in his glory too, and
full of glee amidst a crowd of his companions ; now rising
blithely on the wing — now footing it featly over the blades of
grass, be they low or be they high, by the help of his con-
venient pins, used like stilts to overtop all impediments, and to
prove to us, lookers-on, that stilts were given him for some-
thing, and for something better than idly to fan the dust of
" my lady's chamber," as he waves them up and down in his
rest of seeming restlessness upon wall or ceiling. As we look,

308 USES OF LONG LEGS.

now, on the movements of Father Longlegs, we seem to see
clearly that long legs were given him because his proper busi-
ness, exercise, and pleasure require him to make his way not
over level ground, but over high, uneven grass.1

Our stilted walker is now upon the wing, and, as he rises
into air, we perceive another of the apparent uses of his
lengthy legs. We notice now, that in the act of flying his two
fore legs are horizontally pointed forwards, while the four
hinder are stretched out in an opposite direction; the one
forming the prow, the other the stern, of his trim-built vessel,
in its voyage through the ocean of air.1

We see in this, his manner of aerial progress, an additional
fitness of our Tipula's name of Crane-fly, and are forced to
confess that the crane-fly has reason to glor}' in the length of
his legs ; but why he is so remarkably apt to lose them is a
thing which remains rather less apparent to our comprehension.

If any of our friends will take the trouble to look narrowly
at the next Longlegs, rested conveniently for inspection on
wall or window, they will perceive (what perhaps they never
saw before) two curious little appendages, like drumsticks,
placed behind each wing ; for what purpose it may puzzle them
to tell. These instruments, which are by no means peculiar to
the Tipula, but possessed also by the common house and other
two-winged flies, are called poisers, and, as their name imports,
are considered to balance the body and render the flight more
steady, serving (as says Derham 2) " to the insect, as the long
pole laden at the ends with lead does to the rope-dancer/'
The same naturalist tells us, that "if one of these be cut off
the insect flies one side over the other and falleth ;" and
another, who supposes them air-holders, found that a Tipula
deprived of both could not fly at all.

Of these same appendages it has also been suggested, that,
by their employment as veritable drumsticks beating on the

1 See Vignette. 3 In his " Physico-Theology."

LAEVM OF CRANE FLIES. 309

wings, they may assist in the production of that buzzing
sound, to account for which has puzzled not a few philoso-
phers. But, however this may be with the two- winged band
in general, the little knobbed articles, to which we are now
directing special notice, are not thus employed, seeing that
it cannot be said of the crane-fly, as of some other fliers, and
of that celebrated lady, "with rings on her fingers and bells
on her toes," that "the < longlegs' makes music wherever
he goes."

Those who behold the crane-fly only in its proper person —
in the elevated maturity of its stilted supporters — must not
suppose it has been always thus exalted above its fellows, nor
must they imagine it to have grown by degrees to its present
stature. Be it remembered, that perfect insects never grow ;
and to commence from the beginning the life of a Father
Longlegs, we must go back upon a period when he had not a
leg to boast of; when he and his skipping comrades, now
giving double life, by their gymnastics, to the grass they sport
in, were all buried underneath it in the form of legless,
wingless grubs,1 doing their best, by gnawing at its roots, to
deprive this very grass of its own quiet measure of vegetable
vitality. In fact, these harmless-looking idlers are accus-
tomed, in their state of infancy, to play very serious pranks,
though neither by daylight nor by moonlight, under cover
of the suffering herbage. Exactly in reverse of the fertilizing
influence of fairy footsteps, they turn the green sward brown
by invisible workings, quite as withering as were once es-
teemed the fabled mischiefs of the brownies themselves ; and
it is not unlikely that to those, or other the like imaginary
agents, was often ascribed, in days of yore, the occasional cut-
ting off of hay-crop promises by the trenchant jaws of crane-
fly devourers in their grubhood.

But the longlegs himself is harmless ? Why, no ; inas-

1 Larvae of Tipula. See Vignette.

310 DESTROYERS OF GRASS.

much as he, and his long-legged mate, are the parents of these
verdure-blighting imps.

If we look at the slender bodies of different Tipulce of the
dame species, we shall perceive that some of them are trun-
cated, or as if cut off at the end, while others are finished
by a sharp, awl-like point.1 Now this pointed instrument,
which always belongs to and betokens a hen among these
insect cranes, she employs, under direction of prospective
instinct, to bore the ground for deposition within its bosom
of her numerous eggs. From these, which have been com-
pared to grains of gunpowder, issue in due season the verdure-
blasting trains, which, devouring the roots below, give to the
herbage above the appearance of being scorched by fire, or
even totally consumed ; as in an instance, adduced by Mr.
Rennie, of an acre of ground at Blackheath, which he saw in
the summer of 1828, " stripped of grass and everything green,
as if pared off from the surface" by the full-fed larvae, then
about to assume their second form of pupae.2

Reaumur, who describes resembling effects from the like
insect causes, in Poitou, opined that these destructive little
animals are earth-eaters, causing injury to roots only by
disturbance to the ground. This supposition is admitted by
the naturalist before named to have some confirmation in the
fact that certain species of Tipula feed, as grubs, upon the
vegetable mould in hollow trees ; but, amidst different opinions,
it would seem still a questionable point, whether the lanky
limbs of Father Longlegs are to be considered as most of
earthy or of rooty derivation.

But upon whatsoever nourished through its first estate, the
Tipula, when it ceases to be a grub, leaves off grubbing after
earthy roots or rooty earth, in the midst of which it howevei
quietly remains ; while under the encasing form of pupa,3 the
long legs, with all accompanying members of the "coming"

1 See Vignette. 2 " Insect Transformations," p. 254.

3 Pupa of Tipula.

PUPJE OF CRANE-FLIES. 311

fly, are brought by degrees to their full measure and per-
fection. Before, however, this important epoch quite arrives,
our Father Longlegs, now a long fellow in a sack, seeming
through a load of superincumbent earth to smell the air, con-
trives, cleverly, to work himself upwards, not merely to the
surface of the ground, but to an inch or two above it of
upright elevation. Thus supported by surrounding blades
and stalks of grass, comes forth, at length, in all his dis-
proportioned, yet appropriate lengthiness of limb, the Tipula,
alias Crane-fly, alias Tailor, alias Jenny Spinner, alias
Father Longlegs, whose long history we thus end just where
we began it.

Pupa-cases, such as above described, either occupied or
vacant, may sometimes be seen in scores amongst the herbage
where crane-flies are abundant. The practice of these, in
wriggling themselves towards or above the surface, whether
of ground or tree, wherein they have been imbedded, is one
frequently exemplified in the pupaB, or chrysalides, of various
insects, whose delicate wings would otherwise be injured in
bursting from their temporary tombs. One amongst thou-
sands, this, of those nice provisions of Providential care, such
as cannot but excite our love and admiration.

Besides the common Tipula^ there are others of nearly
resembling size and figure, but much more gaily coloured.
One of these 2 sports, instead of the sober russet-grey of Father
Longlegs, an extremely handsome uniform of black and
orange-yellow, black-tipped wings, and plumed antennae of
imposing length and beauty. This, with others of the more
distinguished few of the Longleg family, is only likely to be
met with singly, sporting beside woods and hedgerows, never
in troops over grassy meadows ; and even their grubs, with
birth-places less lowly than the common herd, generally first
see the darkness, not in subterranean vaults underground, but
in the hollow chambers of decaying trees.

1 Tipula oleracia. 2 Ctenophora ornata.

312 THE WHEAT-FLY.

There is a certain little fly, with a bright orange-coloured
body, rounded and fringed wings, and feathered antennae,
belonging to the Longleg family, but compared with which
the "Father" of it is a perfect giant. As with his Robin
Hood relative, the rapacious propensities of this Little John
are all exercised in early life — the period, namely, of his grub-
hood — when he " sows his wild oats" by committing excesses
on our cultivated crops of wheat. While these are yet in
bloom he revels on the pollen florets, and leaves, in the deficient
or withered grain, serious tokens of his destructive presence.

So extensive, in a multiplied form, are the injurious opera-
tions of this tiny midge, that he and his companions in mis-
chief have acquired generally notoriety, under the name of
the "Wheat-fly."1

Besides the above, there is a mixed multitude of small
Tipulce, or long-legged flies, much resembling, and often con-
founded with, the gnat ; though the common gnat is sufficiently
distinguished by the singular transformations of its aquatic
larva, described already in " A Life of Buoyancy." In their
last and perfect stage, many, however, of these Tipulidan flies
or gnats, are full as buoyant as those to which the latter appel-
lation more properly belongs : like them, they are often alert
and joyous, while other insects are dead or dormant ; like
them, fly unwetted in the shower, and often, like them, dancing
in the winter shade, hold, in defiance of the gloomiest season,
their il mid-day sports and revelry." .)

But it is not with such diminutives that we should conclude
handsomely our notice of the line of Longlegs. Let us
return instead to the stilted " fathers" or mothers of the
tribe, with a random guess at the derivation of one of their
incongruous appellations. Why they should be called " Tailors"
we cannot tell, unless, as animals made up of legs, they may
be considered but as fractions — ninth parts, perhaps, of an
insect. Why creatures never known to spin a thread should

1 Cecidomyia Tritici, Kirby.

JENNY SPINNERS. 313

sometimes also be named " Jenny Spinners," was, to us, no
less a mystery, till, on a summer's day, its possible solution
flashed upon us. We were sitting in a shady lane, when, on
the turf that bordered it, what should appear but a single
Mother Longlegs — neither flying nor walking, but whirling
and spinning round in a strange eccentric manner ; her wings
and fore-legs beating in the air, her hind ones bent at their
angles so as to let the end of her pointed body, which was held
bolt upright, come in contact with the ground. Here, then,
was our " Jenny Spinner," not thus spinning for amusement
— merely to make herself drunken with delight, — but gravely
spinning mischief to the grass. With the united points of
her sharp shining forceps she was gimktting the turf, and in
every hole dropping one or more, perhaps, of her grain-like
eggs, germs minute of future long-legged spinners.

\ , ; fe^ =

^i^fWi^^v-^

Ascending the tombstone to the right, is the Churchyard Beetle (Blaps
mortisaga), distinguished by its intense blackness. Next, on the ground
below, is a small, black, shining Dung Beetle (one of the Histeridce) ; and
adjacent, a pair of black and orange Necrophori, notable for their industry in
interment of animal remains. Climbing the grass above, is the Silpha quadri-
punctata, a black and yellow feeder upon carrion ; and in descending flight, les-
sened by distance, is that most common of beetle scavengers, the Dor, or
Clock Geotrupes stercorarius).

THE SCARAB^EUS AND ITS MODERN
WORSHIPPERS.

HAT a striking contrast is there between the
two insects which figure most conspicuously in
the annals of antiquity — the butterfly and the
dung-beetle ! The former was regarded by
the ancients as an emblem of the soul, the

latter was made by them an object of soul's worship.

The one, all beauty, vivacity, and buoyancy; having no

THE EGYPTIAN SCARAB^US. 315

business in life but pleasure — no habitation but among tbe
beautiful flowers, and breathing the perfumed air of summer.
The other, in form dark and repulsive, in habits dull and
laborious ; its abode beneath the earth, or within the loathsome
substances which cumber earth's surface, and its favourite
atmosphere one of steaming fetidity thence exhaled.

Yet this, the Scardbceus sacer, or Sacred Beetle, was the
creature which the wise and civilized Egyptians imaged on
their sepulchral monuments, enclosed with their embalmed
bodies, carved on their lofty columns, inscribed on their astro-
nomical tables, looked on as symbolic of the world, and of the
glorious sun, — nay, adored as a visible deity !

This insect was also more especially the symbol of their
goddess Neith, whose attribute was supreme power in govern-
ing the works of creation, and whose glory was considered to
be increased rather than diminished by the presence of another
power named Phta, the Creator. As typical of Neith, the
insect was carved or painted on rings, and worn by soldiers, in
token of homage to that Power which disposeth the fate of
battles.

The modern representative of the Scarabeeus sacer (imported
from Africa into southern Europe) is the Pill-Beetle, so named
from its practice of moulding round pellets of dung, depositing
an egg in each, and then, by the assistance of the hind legs
and extremity of the body, rolling them backwards into a deep
hole, previously excavated for their reception. If one of the
insects finds itself inadequate, alone, to the performance of
this task, it is accustomed to call in and obtain the assistance
of one or more of its fellows. This, certainly, is a habit suffi-
ciently remarkable to attract attention from the least obser-
vant, and, as one of Nature's uncommon wonders, it formed,
in times of superstition, a convenient peg whereon to hang a
tissue of embroidered fiction. The Egyptians, accordingly,
were wont to regard these insect labours as symbolizing those
of Osiris and the Sun ; the balls of dung were exalted into

H H

316 THE MODERN SCAEAB^US.

types of the world, and, the beetles being supposed to push
them always from east to west, for twenty-eight successive
days, their movement was made also to represent that of the
habitable globe. To carry out this symbolic scheme, the
Scarabaeus (reckoning five joints to each of its six feet) was
said to have thirty fingers, corresponding with the number of
days in each sign of the zodiac ; while, to complete the
analogy, the six notches or angular projections of the insect's
head were likened to the rays of the sun.1

The Scarabaeus was never, that we know of, made in Eng-
land a recipient exactly of divine honours ; yet would it appear
that this, or a beetle of similar habits, held no mean place in
the estimation of one at least among our ancestors, and in times
comparatively recent. Mouffet, one of the fathers of ento-
mology, is loud in praise of its virtues, which (according to
him) should serve as a stimulant to every good quality, —
should invite to labour, temperance, prudence, justice, modesty,
and should teach man contentment, by showing him how a
beetle can luxuriate in a bed of dung, just as well as in a bed
of roses. How justice should have a place in this catalogue of
virtues to be learnt from beetle practice, puzzles us, we confess,
to discover ; nor may it be worth the trouble of inquiry. Per-
haps it would better suit our purpose to see whether this once
worshipped and lauded Scarabasus has sunk, in these modern
times, into utter disregard ; or whether amongst those who,
perhaps, know him not by name, there may not be found a
considerable number who, inasmuch as they follow his ways,
may be said still to worship his image.

Where, at all events, shall we find a better emblem, if not a
better god, for the busy of the money-making, money-loving
world, living immersed in filthy lucre, than the dung-abiding
beetle ? Like it, are they not for ever toiling, from rise to set
of sun, to amass and roll together their corrupt riches ? And

1 Latreille, " Annales du Museum," 1819. "Des Insectes peintes ousculptes
sur les Monumens de PEgypte."

THE CLOCK BEETLE. 317

for what purpose ? Not to diffuse, but to bury them, even as
the beetle, in the earth of their sordid selfishness.

Verily, shade of Sir Thomas Gresham, thou princely mer-
chant ! save but for respect for thee, and for the remnant of
nobler traders which, with the baser sort, are now wont to
assemble in the modern halls surmounted by thy ancient grass-
hopper, we would even tear down that classic, youthful, rural,
mirth-loving insect, and set up, in its stead, a gigantic Scara-
baeus, which, stripped of its fabulous, but clothed in all its
veracious attributes, would be, of all symbols, most appropriate
to surmount a temple of Mammon.

The sacred beetle of Egypt is not a native of Britain, and
only of Europe as naturalized in its southern countries from
the neighbouring continent of Africa.

But though we have not a Scarabceus sacer in the list of
our indigenous beetles, we have an insect greatly resembling
it in form as well as habits, which may be met with almost
everywhere, and on every day from March to October. This
is no other than the " great dor," or " clock" — the " shardborne
beetle" of our immortal Bard, — that which, on summer and
autumn evenings, so often with drowsy hum wheels lumbering
past us, or bangs up right against us.

Like the Scarabaeus, this clock-beetle1 is, in figure, broad,
and short, and clumsy. His forehead has none, indeed, of those
sun-like rays, — in plainer language, none of those vandyked
notches which distinguish that of the Egyptian, but it is
adorned, like the latter, with a pair of horns,2 finished by
laminated or leafy tips. Black, in both insects, is the prevail-
ing hue, at least on the upper side ; but in our dor, the wing-
cases are tinted on their margins with bright violet, while the
legs and whole of the under surface are cased in armour of
steely blue, glossed with green and purple. The exterior,
indeed, of this dweller in defilement is far from unpleasing,

1 See Vignette ; Clock Beetle, Geotrupes stercorarivs. * Antennae.

318 THE DOR BEETLE.

and he is remarkable, as well as others of his tribe, for absence
of all unsightly traces of his habits or resorts.

*To look at the unsullied polish of his mail, one might sup-
pose him risen, like the green gold-chafer, from a bed of roses;
whereas, being a true Scarabaeus in nature, if not in name,
there is little doubt, when we see him in his evening flight,
of his having left recently a bed of very opposite description —
a bed, in short, of dung — wherein, through the live-long day,
he has been reposing ; or whereat, like his Egyptian prototype,
he has been hard at work, helping, perhaps, his partner to roll
masses for enclosure of her eggs, or to bore holes for their
reception.

The drone of the dor-beetle was once taken as a prognostic
of fine weather, and is esteemed by some people, although a
harsh, yet by no means an " undelightful hum." To us, asso-
ciate though it be with warm and quiet evenings, there is
always a sort of sadness in its sound, perhaps because it
reminds us of Gray's " Elegy," perhaps because, being most
often heard towards autumn, it comes like a requiem of depart-
ing summer.

Allied to the above, as belonging to the useful company of
insect scavengers, are the " Burying Beetles,"1 so called from
their being accustomed to perform the office of grave-diggers
to defunct frogsx birds, moles, " mice, and such small gear,"
whose bodies would else cumber the ground more extensively.
A common species of this serviceable family of the Coleop-
terous order is a pretty-looking insect, considerably smaller
than the " great dor," and easily distinguishable from that and
other black beetles by two broad scalloped bands of deep
orange-colour painted across its black wing-cases, which are a
good deal shorter than the body, and have the appearance
of being truncated, or abruptly cut across the ends. The
thorax, head, and legs are of a deep black, also the body ; the

1 Necrophorus vespillo. See Vignette.

THE BURYING BEETLE. 319

latter fringed at the sides and articulations with yellowish
hairs ; the antennae knobbed and foliate at the tips.

We must inquire now into the " burying beetle's " motive
of incitement to its laborious occupation of interment. It is
not certainly the promotion of our sanitary benefit that the
creature has in view ; neither, we suppose, has respect for the
dead or their families much to do with its burial of animal re-
mains. The incentive to the work is not to be found in mere
love of labour, nor yet in love of self, but is, in fact, like the
mainspring of various other insect actions, of a parental charac-
ter. Its eggs being first committed to the carcase, the beetle
then proceeds to commit that to the earth, in order that, thus
protected from predatory birds and foxes, it may afford provi-
sion for her young, as soon as, in the shape of larvae, they come
into existence. This most curious practice of instinctive saga-
city was first noticed by a foreign naturalist, M. Gleditsch,
who, having observed the mysterious disappearance of moles,
laid upon the beds in his garden, discovered that beetles were
the agents of their inhumation, effected for the purpose above
named. To watch their proceedings more narrowly, he put
four of these insect grave-diggers into a glass vessel, half filled
with earth, on the surface of which were laid two dead frogs.
Of these, one was interred in less than twelve hours — the
other on the third day. He then introduced a cjead linnet, on
which the beetles were speedily engaged. The^ began their
operations by pushing out the earth from under the body, so
as to form a cavity for its reception : and it was curious to see
the efforts which they made, by dragging from below at the
feathers of the bird, to pull it into its grave. The male, having
driven the female away, continued to work alone for five
hours. He lifted up the bird, changed its place, turned and
arranged it in its grave, from time to time coming out of the
hole, mounting on the carcase, treading it underfoot, and then
again retiring below to draw it to a greater depth. At length,
wearied apparently with this incessant labour, he came forth

320 THE CHURCH-YARD BEETLE.

and laid his head upon the earth beside the bird, without
the smallest motion, for a full hour, as if to rest ; then again
crept under the earth. The next day, in the morning, the bird
was an inch and a half below the surface of the ground, and
the trench remaining open ; the corpse seemed as if laid out
upon a bier, surrounded by a rampart of mould. In the
evening it had sunk half an inch lower, and in another day
the work was completed, and the bird covered. Other dead
animals being added, the four beetles, in fifty days, interred no
less than twelve bodies in the narrow cemetery allotted for
their work.1

Of a sepulchral character in unison with the above, but of
associations much more gloomy as connected with ourselves, is
the beetle of the churchyard,2 our proposed pattern for a vane
on the Exchange.

This dark, ill-favoured, ill-scented, and, in the eye of super-
stition, ill-omened insect — whose proper name (Blaps mor-
tisaga) savours of mortality as strongly as its common, though
not popular appellation — is one of those creeping things from
which whenever, in its favourite haunt, it happens to cross
our path, we turn instinctively away, even as we are wont
with other, the like mementos, come they in what shape
they may.

The sepulchral locality in which the Blaps mortisaga is
usually met with, may serve, of itself, to enable those unac-
quainted with insects to give a pretty shrewd guess as to its
character and occupation. It may also be distinguished as
one of the blackest of all black beetles, its funeral sable being
totally unrelieved by those tints of green, and blue, and violet,
or even brown, which, in most others of its tribe, serve to
enliven their prevailing sombre hue. In form, this haunter of
cemeteries is rather long and slender, both the body and the
wing-cases, by which it is quite covered, terminating in a

1 M. Gleditsch, quoted by Kirby and Spence ; also in " Insect Architecture."
a Blaps Mortisaga. See Vignette.

PILL-BEETLES.

321

tapered point. The antennae are jointed in their whole length,
but are destitute at their extremities of foliated knobs.

There is another set of little leaping beetles, called Hit-
teridce — also spring visitants — whose exterior is really much
more prepossessing than their resorts and practices would lead
one to expect. Some of these present us with exceedingly
pretty specimens of nature's sculpture ; and, from their habit
of contracting the legs and antennae immediately upon being
alarmed or touched, resemble, when thus indrawn, a carved
seed (usually black, or black and red) rather than a carved
insect. Hence derived are their familiar names of "Pill" and
" Horse-bean beetles." 1

Flies are usually the next agents of consumption, followed
by a host of other beetles.

1 Hitterifks

^^^rr^^^^^^r '

(£tje 5>catflL'acug an amaggec of fiitij, fit; emblem

i V'Tf.fijilWK&llkSjIjW

^ ffisiBfmate

Entering at the open casement, appear the head and shoulders of a Death's-
head Moth (Acherontia Atropos}. The table below is occupied by two Death-
watch Beetles (Anobium tessellatum and A. pertinaz), while another (Anobium,
striatum) is creeping up the wall above. All three are drawn much larger
than life.

INSECT DIRGE-PLAYERS.

T the open window of her solitary kitchen, half
lighted by this October moon, half by a flaring
candle, sits All-work Deborah at her tea-
Why, suddenly arrested in its prophetic orbit,
does the tea-cup, in the very turn of fortune,
drop, shivered, from her shaking hand ? Why does her tal-
lowy dip dip at once into darkness? What is the wailing
cry that salutes her startled ear? Is it the voice of a screech-
owl from the barn, or the squeal of a mouse from the cup-
board ? No! It is, the shriek of some gloomy night-flier,,
which, entering at the casement, has put out the candle,

A NIGHT r IS IT ANT. 323

and deposits its dusky form upon the snow-white dresser.
Deborah can only dimly discern it by the help of the moon.
" Oh, for a light !" she inwardly* ejaculates ; but evening is
warm, the grate is cold, and the damsel dares not stir.

At length, however, in some way or another — the candle
is relit. With trembling hand she places it on the dresser, to
" show up " the characters of her alarming visitant, who ever
and anon continues to salute her with its mournful wail.

Deborah is a country girl, and has therefore learnt, of course,
to distinguish betwixt a butterfly and a black beetle ; and she
thought, till this awful moment, that she knew, quite as
well, the difference between a brown moth and a spirit, black,
white, or grey. That the thing upon her dresser is a moth, of
size prodigious, the candle seems to tell her; but there, as
it lies, vibrating its dingy pinions in unison with its dismal cry,
somewhat else seems to tell her that it is no moth at all, or a
moth of most strange unnatural behaviour, not at all to her
liking. Whether to rid herself by fair means, or by foul, of
her unwelcome guest, " that is the question." By alarming,
to drive away, she might bring the creature in her very face, or
on her very back ; better at once to " end it." So Deborah
screws up her courage, — seizes on a knife, — approaches with a
murderer's step her now quiescent victim, and with a dexterity^
under existing circumstances, perfectly miraculous, severs its
head from its body. Then, as though a coffin had popped from
out the grate, bounds Deborah from the dresser with a piercing
scream. Most marvellous ! — most horrible ! — She hears again,
louder and more doleful than before, that melancholy cry, and
it is the moth's bodiless head, or headless body, from whence
it issues. She lifts the candle — holds it nearer to the object,
the now twofold object of her terror — she looks — she listens —
perhaps her ears, or eyes, or hand, had played her false ; but,
no ! they and her murderous weapon had all been true : — here
lies the head, there the body, — and, sure enough, too, the head
still wails as if in suffering, and the body heaves, and the dark

324 A MEMENTO MORI.

wings quiver, as if in indignation. But it is not alone these
quivering pinions which impart a motion like their own to
Deborah's whitened lip. It is not even the wail of that dis-
severed head which causes her heart to beat like a muffled
drum, in accompaniment of its plaintive pipe ; but she sees —
she sees, plain as the effigy on Master Thomson's new tomb-
stone— right on the creature's back, between its shoulders,
another head — an eyeless skull — magnified, by terror and
consciousness of cruelty, into size above the human. Poor
Deborah beholds no more — she has seen and heard too much,
and falls, plump as her person, on the kitchen floor. There
her mistress, after having by reiterated peals broken the parlour
bell, was the first to find her. In due time, this veracious
tale of wonder was gathered from the domestic's lips ; and in
the mutilated object of her alarm, was discovered the deca-
pitated corpse — of a Death's-head Moth.

Next, in the power of raising superstitious terror, and as more
common than the last, an agent of creating it more extensively,
comes the "Death-watch," that pocket time-piece of the grisly
monarch, heard, not seen, whose measured tick — tick — gives
warning of its master's soundless footsteps. What hollow
echoes are awakened by this monotonous midnight music !

Let us now inspect them in a calmer and clearer manner.

First, for the Death's-head — the Sphinx or Acherontia
Atropos of the entomologist. And here, in the largest of
British moths, we have a beautiful insect of richly variegated
plumage, — bird-like in magnitude — the " wandering bird " of
Poland.

In the upper wings, which, when expanded, cover an extent
of nearly five inches, the prevailing hues are very dark, but
elegantly disposed in waves and shades of brown and black,
broken by a few lighter clouds, and one small white spot near
the centre. The secondary pinions, of less sombre colouring,
are of a deep ochreous yellow, barred with black ; a livery in
which the massive body is also attired. The head and thorax

THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 325

are dark, and it is on the back of the latter that the insect bears
its dreaded badge, the death's head, to which it owes its name,
figured in yellowish grey upon a sable ground.

The power possessed by the death's-head of emitting sound
(a gift rarely, if at all in any other instance, bestowed upon
its race) gives to this singular moth another fancifully imputed
attribute of the supernatural ; and the character of its voice,
if voice it may be called, — loud, shrill, and wailing, — invests
it with an accordant tone of evil augury. However fanciful
its prophecy of ill to others, the lament of this unusually com -
plaining creature would seem to be a real expression of being
ill at ease itself, since, according to Reaumur, when " shut up
in a box, it cries ; when caught, it cries; and when held between
the fingers, it never ceases crying."

Naturalists have been sorely puzzled and widely at variance
as to the organs producing this frequently-employed voice.
One supposes it to proceed from the body ; another thinks it
is produced by friction of the chest upon the abdomen, the
wings having nothing to do therewith ; a third, tout au con-
traire, supposes he has discovered the organs of sound in a
pair of scales at the wing's base, played upon by the action of the
pinions themselves.1 Reaumur opined that the cry proceeded
from the insect's head, its immediate source being the friction
of the palpi against the tongue. Passerini, Dumeril, and
Duponchel, have traced the origin of the sound to the interior
of the insect's head ; from which, according to the statement
of the latter, the sound continues to proceed on separation of
the body.

Yet later than all the above varied opinions, and only accor-
dant with one, comes that of Mr. Denny, according to which,
the true organs, producing the death's-head's melancholy strain,
are two large moveable horny scales, at the bases of the upper
wings, fixed on the thorax, and covering each a small aperture,
which is also a horny substance. In proof that the vibration of
! M. De Johet.

I I

326 DEATH'S HEAD CATERPILLAR

these scales causes the sound, it is stated that during its emis-
sion they, only, are in a state of strong vibration, while all
other parts of the insect may be at rest.

September, or the present month of October, is the season,
usually, when the Acherontia Atropos assumes its winged
form, and may be found, occasionally, resting in daytime upon
trunks of trees, or, attracted by the taper's light, visiting our
houses, where their phantom forms are, now, much oftener
welcomed for their rarity and real beauty than dreaded for once
imputed terrors.

Invested, through the mortal emblem on its tabard, with the
imaginary office of herald to the Fates, disease and death were
anticipated in the wake of its heavy pinions, or thought to be
announced by its mournful cry. A whole sisterhood of nuns
could be terrified by the apparition of a single death's-head
within their holy precincts ; and a parish priest, desirous to
work by terror on the consciences of his flock, could find for
his purpose a powerful instrument in the appearance of this
harmless insect, which, in the year 1730, was described by
a cure of Bretagne, as " revetu de tout ce qu'une pompe funebre
off re de plus triste." Even its wings appeared to his deluding
or deluded fancy, to be, " marquetees comme une espece de drap
mortuaire"

The caterpillar of the death's-head moth is one of the
largest and most beautiful of its tribe, and presents, in its bril-
liant colouring, a striking contrast to the lugubrious colouring
of its perfect form. It is of a fine yellow, obliquely barred by
seven green stripes on each side, with intervening lines of blue
and black spots. It has the pointed tail-like horn common
to hawk-moths, and is endowed, moreover, as in its perfect
state, with the gift (boasted, we believe, by no other caterpillar)
of a voice ; for it is said by Kirby that if disturbed, it draws
back rapidly and emits a loud noise, which may be compared
to the crackle of an electric spark. Its favourite food is fur-
nished by the leaves of the jasmine and potato} and, with

DEATH-WATCH BEETLES. 327

the increased cultivation of the latter, the death's head has
become of late years less scarce than formerly.

The caterpillar is said to feed also on hemp, elder, and the
woody nightshade. It is mentioned in the " Cambridge Chro-
nicle " of September 1846, that Mr. Demny took twenty of
the full-grown larvaB from off a tea-tree, growing on the top of
a house at the back of Downing-terrace, all of which he
successfully reared into splendid specimens of their kind.

These caterpillars, as well as various others, are apt to elude
the search of the collector by taking refuge during day-time
from the sun's rays and the darts of ichneumon-flies, not merely
under the leaves they feed on, but in the earth beneath them.
To the same bed they retire towards the end of August or
beginning of September, and, forming therein their smooth
un tapestried chambers, put off their gay attire for chrysalidan
covers. From these, as we have seen, they burst in autumn,
harbingers of wintry death, at least to the vegetable world.

The ominous Death-watch, when drawn from its hiding-
place in old perforated floor or wainscot, picture-frame, chest,
or black-lettered volume, comes forth (a mouse from a moun-
tain of fear !) a tiny beetle of some quarter of an inch in length,
and in its prevailing hues of grey and brown resembling
the colour of the time-worn wood, whose decay they help
(especially in their grubhood) to accelerate. That alarming
" tick," to which at midnight many a timorous heart has beat
in unison, is generally to be heard first in May, and on to
autumn, by day as well as night, and, being considered analo-
gous in purpose to the " call " of pairing birds, has, in reality,
as little of ominous about it. The sound is not vocal, but
consists of a series of quick successive beats, produced, usually,
by the striking of the insect's mailed head upon the hard
substance whereon it may be standing, or into which it has
penetrated, most likely, while a grub. Some have supposed
the grub itself to be the drummer, but, if this sometimes be
the case, the perfect beetle is a drummer too, various accurate

328 DESTRUCTIVE WOOD-BORERS.

observers having been eye as well as ear witnesses of its
performance.

There are various species of these ticking, or more properly
beating, beeetles, of the genus Anobium, of which a marked
characteristic is the concealment, nearly, of the head beneath
the thorax. Amongst these, two noted drummers are distin-
guishable by their uniforms — in other words, by the markings
of their wing-cases, — which in one * are striated, in the other 2
tessellated. Another of a plain dark brown (Anobium perti-
nax), frequent in holes of old wood, has long been famous
for its pertinacity in simulating death, and for displaying a
seeming indifference to torture, comparable only to the American
Indian. De Geer affirms, upon experiments which it needs
not to repeat, that " you may maim, pull limb from limb, or
roast over a slow fire this pertinacious creature, and not a joint
will move in token that it suffers. A curious instance, this, of
the unconquerable power of an instinct implanted for self-
preservation."

However insignificant in their imputed attributes, these
wood-boring beetles are by no means despicable in their actual
proceedings. Where abundant, not only chairs, tables, and
books have been reduced to powder, but even buildings have
suffered from their combined agency. Curtis mentions the
roof of King's College, Cambridge, having been seriously
damaged by their operations, and thinks that the same species
(the Anobium tesselatum) has been known to cut through
sheet-lead.

Such is the living main-spring of the death-watch when
taken from out its wooden case; and though all its terrors
vanish on being brought to light, it is easy enough to account
for their origin in connection with place, time, and cir-
cumstance.

Most heard in old (perhaps haunted) houses, proceeding
from wainscot or from bed's head, perhaps from picture-frame

1 Anobium striatum. 3 Anobium tesselatum.

SCIENCE VERSUS SUPERSTITION. 329

of grim old portrait, as if the " tick, tick," of the invisible
time-piece issued verily from the lace-fobbed pocket of some
buried ancestor; or heard, possibly, with creeping awe, to
proceed, "tick, tick, tick," from the elm-wood of a coffin
before consigned with its mute tenant to the earth ; heard, too,
by night-wakers, the sick and the solitary, or night-watchers
keeping their vigil beside the dying or the dead, — who can
wonder that, with such concomitants, the hearts of the ignorant
should have often, and may sometimes still echo, fearfully, the
beat of the death-watch ? And, perhaps, with all our little
knowledge, our own might, under the like circumstances, do
the same.

Thus much for the wailing pipe and monotonous tabors of
our " Insect Dirge-Players."

pfjantoml foot it to tfie rcacD taatcfj fcnrau

The insects chosen for this Vignette are such as afford examples either of
longevity, of brevity of existence, or of great disproportions in the length of
its several stages. The Brown VVeevil (Curculio'), a feeder on decayed wood,
at the right hand corner, gives an instance of longevity, contrasted by the
brief duration of the Ephemeral Day-fly (Buetis'), which rises upwards on the
left. In this Ephemera there are two instead of (as in E. vu-gata) three fila-
ments, proceeding from the extremity of the body. On the right, is a common
Cockchafer (Melolontha vulgaris)^ another of the same species;, just arrived at
maturity, is pushing upwards from the grass ; while a third, yet in its stage of
larva, is exhibited in the ground beneath. In this, its form of imperfection, it
exists within the earth for several years, living in the air as a perfect insect
for perhaps a fortnight. On the oak-leaf to the left are two leaf-galls, one
exhibiting its enclosed grub — a long liver, as compared with the little Gall-fly
(Cynips Quercus folii), which is seen in upward flight above.

SHORT LIVES AND LONG.

UR chosen emblems of fragility are flowers ;
and, fixed by the laws of their creation to one
spot, where they bud, and bloom, and wither
beneath our eye, we have been compelled,
almost, to notice their brevity, and are sensible^

at times, of the moral odour which exhales from the union of

their beauty and fragility.

INSECTS FRAGILE AS FLOWERS. 331

In the world of insects, examples of existence, bright and
brief and most precarious, are no less common, and in many
respects (especially as occurring amongst sensitive beings) in-
finitely more striking ; but, except with those sporters of a day,
hence called Ephemera, the frail tenures of insect life seldom
serve to remind us of the like nature of our own, and chiefly,
perhaps, for the following reason. Many a brilliant flutterer is
cut off in the midst of its joyous activity, much more suddenly
than the flower over which we have seen it hover, but ere the
scattered petals of the one have strewed the surface of the
ground, the wings of the other have borne it to die unseen
within some hidden covert; or, contributing in death to the
support of life, it may have sunk suddenly into the devouring
gulf of some insectivorous bird, or carnivorous feeder of its
own race.

It is, by the way, a remarkable dispensation of Nature's
Author, and one equally beautiful and kind, that while Death
is for ever busy, as elsewhere, in the lower departments of the
animal kingdom, so few of the victims they afford him are
permitted to offend the eye in any shapes of disgust or danger.
To confine this observation merely to insects : — We see the
air teeming with gnats ; the ground populous with ants and
beetles ; the fields, especially towards the end of summer, alive
with grasshoppers and Tipulidan flies ; the hedges, through the
months of June and July, scarcely more abundant in leaves
than in the smaller moths, which in daytime make a covert of
their foliage : and of these countless myriads we are told, truly,
that even of those among them permitted to reach their good
old age, scarce a single gnat survives a week ; not half the
beetles, nor any of the Tipulce, nor grasshoppers, a month ;
while few are the butterflies or moths which over-live a fort-
night. What has become of them ? may naturally be queried
by those who bestow upon the subject a mere passing thought ;
and though with those who have learnt something of insect
history the marvel is greatly diminished, it still remains

332 DURATION OF INSECT LIFE.

matter of some surprise, that of the myriads which die daily
round and about our paths, so few "mortal remains" should
meet our eye. Something, in short, of the same sort of
mystery is attached to their entire disappearance as that which
seems to have been noticed by some of old Fuller's " worthies,"
with regard to the disappearance of pins, which caused them
to admire "that so many millions of these useful and neat
little articles made, sold, used, and lost in England, should
vanish away invisible ; " to the which remark, our excellent
divine, with gravity becoming his profession, and quaintness
belonging to his style and character, appends this serious
reflection : — that such persons may rather wonder how so many
that wear them, being no more than pins in the hand of their
Maker, do decay, die, and slip down in the dust in silence and
obscurity.

The duration of insect life varies greatly ; but there is one
remark respecting it of very general application : — Its last and
most perfect stage is usually the most brief, often immensely
disproportioned to those which have preceded it.

A few instances do, indeed, occur, of insects being very
long-lived after their attainment of a perfect form ; but these
are, for the most part, to be found, not among the gay and
gaudy flutterers of air — not among the livers upon sweets
ambrosial quaffed from painted flower-cups, not more fragile
than themselves — not among the baskers in the sun, or the
sporters on his beams ; but rather amongst the dull, lugu-
brious, sober-suited crawlers which lurk in the dark places
of the earth and the dark corners of our habitations.

An individual spider may often, it is probable, live long
enough to lie in murderous wait for flying innocents, even to
the fourth and fifth generation. Goldsmith, indeed, mentions
one as having lived three years ; and though his authority
on this, as well as on other matters, especially of natural
history, has been often called in question, Audibert is also
stated to have kept another quite as long.

LONGEST LIVERS LEAST LIVELY. 333

Some of the weevils — a tribe of beetles distinguished by
their long beaks, or rostrums — can also boast themselves of
a span of life comparatively long. One of these, found upon
rotten wood, the substance which it feeds on, ^we have kept
under a glass from June to the April following, when it escaped.
This, also, though it has not once grown torpid, may be
considered as an insect of gloomy and retired habits, and,
like others of its family which live in wood or earth, is of
sombre dark-brown hue ; * in this respect, strikingly con-
trasted with the gayer colouring — usually a vivid green, some-
times red — displayed by that more cheerful division of the
same tribe, which is used to frequent and feed on trees and
plants, in open daylight, and which die, probably, with the
leaves and stalks whose sap constitutes their wine of life.

It would seem, then, that the highest apparent degrees of
vitality, sensitiveness, and enjoyment, are seldom, in insect
life, made to consist with long duration. With them, to live
long is not always to live much, though we may justly say of
them, as of other and higher existences, that to live much is to
live long.

The Ephemera,1 for instance, in their single day of light
and love — as tenants of the air — may be said to live longer
than in the darksome years of their immurement within earth
and water; while the butterfly, fluttering over the flowers of
the grave, may enjoy more of existence in that short half-hour
of sport and sunshine, than the churchyard beetle in the whole
course of its buried career amongst the relics of mortality.

In this seemingly disproportioned, yet in reality well-balanced
allotment of insect life, there exists, as we have noticed, no
parallel with the history of the soul, viewed as an immortal
principle ; but amongst the instances just adduced, as well as a
thousand more, there is not wanting a very marked corres-
pondence with the earthly tenures of human existence as most
usually holden.

1 See Vignette.

334 BALANCE OF VITALITY.

Which are the lamps of clay found, commonly, to be the
soonest broken, and most early committed to their congenial
soil ? Common observation answers, Those, certainly, in which
a brilliant flame has served to exhaust most speedily the animal
oil whereon it fed. George Herbert said of himself, that he
had " a wit, like a penknife in too narrow a sheath, too sharp
fcr his body ;" and the remark is of general application.

In the case of our old poet and divine, the " sheath," indeed,
proved of tougher material than he seemed to anticipate, for
long afterwards, writing about spring flowers (those favourite
emblems of fragility) he says beautifully and devoutly —

" And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write ;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. Oh, my only Light !
It cannot be that I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

" These are thy wonders, Lord of love !
To make us see we are but flowers that glide,
Which, when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.'-

Opposed to those who, whether their span of life may have
been short or protracted, have lived, like the active May-fly,
ail through their day, there are multitudes over whose remain?
the well-known epitaph or epigram (from Camden) which heads
our observations might seem appropriately placed. —

"Here lies the man — was born, and cried,
Lived sixty years — fell sick, and died."

Yet is even this, on our present principle of reckoning, a me-
morial by far too eulogistic. " Lived sixty years ! " Why
this crawling creature, who ate and slept away existence, did
not live sixty years, nor a sixtieth part of them. Only com-
pare the weary grub-like stage of such a creeping dullard,
with the winged career of a Chatterton, a Kirke White, a
Shelley, a Keats, and other brilliant Ephemera of a poetic sky,

EXPERIMENTS ON INSECT LIFE. 835

and say — if life be computed by the amount of actual living, by
state, which, to mind, often annihilates and stands in the place
of time, by spiritual measurement instead of by finger calcula-
tion— whether the balance of longevity, in its proper sense,
may not incline rather to the span of twenty than of sixty years.

Many curious experiments have been tried successfully in the
prolongation and curtailment of insect life. In some cases,
starvation, that agent, usually, of destruction, has been found,
by retarding the completion of its accustomed stages, to
lengthen the journey of existence to our little fellow-travellers.
The larva of an aphidivorous fly, placed by Kirby under a
glass, where it was left inadvertently without food, was found
alive three months afterwards, living eight times as long as it
would have done in the combined periods of its usual unin-
terrupted stages.

Cold was also an agent employed by the French naturalist
Reaumur to retard the emergence of butterflies from their
aurelian cases, and thus prolong the duration of their life — if
we may apply the term to a state of apparent torpor. The
chrysalis of a nettle butterfly, which usually emerges in a
fortnight, being placed, with others, in a cellar, remained two
months before exclusion.

On the other hand, by the agency of heat, the naturalist —
who, through the exercise of this curious power over life and
death, would seem, in a measure, to command nature — can
abbreviate instead of prolonging the term of existence. En-
closing his chrysalides in the interior of a glass egg, Reaumur
called in the assistance of a brooding hen to hatch the butter-
flies he willed into a prematurity of perfect form, some of which
appeared, accordingly, in four, instead of fourteen, days.

From experimental facts and philosophical deduction, the
lively French naturalist wanders into imaginative speculation
on the probable results of some such life-influencing power in
its application to the human race. First, in the case of abbre-
viation : " A child," he remarks, " would have little reason to

K K

336 SPECULATIVE FANCIES.

complain of a father who might be enabled to force him, in a
few weeks, into a maturity of endowment, bodily and mental/'
He says, " Qui nous oterait nos premieres annees, qui les ferait
passer en quelques jours, nous oterait peu. Qu'est ce que c'est
que de vivre alors ? "

So much for the curtailment, at its commencement, of life's
unfolding roll ; and the power of its voluntary extension would,
we fancy, prove a privilege scarcely more desirable.

To put a case parallel with the artificial lengthening of insect
life, we must, of course, suppose the extra period to be passed
in a state of torpor. On these terms, the addition even of
centuries to our three-score years and ten may appear only a
nominal gain, since, as our French naturalist justly observes, —
" It is only the conscious train of thought and feeling which
constitutes our real existence/' To some people, however, he
adds, it might appear exceedingly agreeable to live, even on the
condition of torpid intervals, for ten or twelve ages, having in
each a few years of active life.

What changes in the face of nature, art, science, manners,
tastes, and fashions would such persons behold ; and how, in
all these matters, would each succeeding period enlarge upon
the tale of wonder told by its predecessor !

Only imagine a courtier, a lord in waiting on King George
the Third or his consort Charlotte, awakened from a nap of
only fifty years, to fill the like office in the court of our
Sovereign Lady. Verily, upon opening his eyes on the strange
things around, they would be stretched beyond power of re-
closing. Suppose him called on to attend the Queen in one of
her frequent " progresses ; " well might such a sleeper
awakened rub those distended eyes, and doubt his wakefulness,
on beholding his royal mistress step into what appears to his
bewildered sight some palace of enchantment, wherein she, and
he, her astonished satellite, are forthwith whirled along ; by —
what ? surely, he believes, by some obedient slave, invisible, of
lamp or ring ; for how can he have dreamt, in his dreamless

SPECULATIVE FANCIES.

337

slumber, of the slave of the kettle — that giant genius, Steam,
which had arisen, while he slept, at the bidding of the magician,
Science, to make a button, to compound a pill, and to transport
a sovereign ?

Or suppose an individual of the present day, thrown by
mesmeric or ethereal influence into a deep, dead, bond fide
slumber, for the remaining half of this nineteenth century, who
shall venture to imagine the astounding marvels on which his
eyes would open at the beginning of the twentieth ? Marvels,
vastly curious and amusing in the speculative distance, but of
which the close reality might be attended by various sensations
something less agreeable. The old-fashioned courtier would
feel awkward enough in the position we have just supposed
amongst his modern brethren of the suite ; but how infinitely
more so one of these latter under circumstances wherein the
lapse of another half-century might place him, when called on,
perhaps, to attend his sovereign — if sovereigns there be, or if
povereigns then have lords in waiting — in a state balloon !

j\

I

<efje t&reabg of Sfngect %ife are bariouglg apportioned

On the right, creeping down the bank, is a common Glowworm, the wingless
female of a beetle (Lampyris noctiluca) which is seen descending from the
corner opposite. Beneath, crawls a luminous or electric Centipede (Scolopendra
electrica) ; and near, in the centre of the foreground, is one of our native Click
Beetles (Elateridai), not (as represented by mistake) a luminous insect, but
closely allied to, and much resembling, the Fire-fly (Elater noctilucus) of the
West Indies and South America.

STARS OF THE EARTH.

HE attention of philosophers was in very
early ages directed to various phenomena
resulting from the properties of light, and,
amongst others, the remarkable phosphoric
appearances of certain animal and vegetable
bodies. Ancient writers allude in general terms to the existence
of luminous insects, of which the species most early known is
supposed to be the Linnaan Lampy rides y or flying glowworms,

TROPIC FIRE-FLIES. 339

abundant in the south of Europe, as well as in Asia and some
parts of Africa. The Greeks included all shining insects under
the name Lampyris, and the Latins called them Cicindela,
Noctiluca, and Lucciola, under which latter designation the
flying glowworms are still known in Italy.

With the Fulgora, or lantern-flies, the ancients are thought
to have had no acquaintance, for, though Asia produces a few
species of them, the most remarkable are peculiar to the
warmest parts of America.

The great lantern-flies spoken of above belong to that order
of insects termed Hemiptera, being allied, unlike as they may
seem, to bugs, boat-flies, and water-scorpions ; but the fire-fly
of the tropics, being of the order Coleoptera, is a beetle. By
day, as sombre and dull-looking a little animal as any to be
seen ; shape, longish ; colour, blackish brown. When at rest,
or walking, it is content with the display of only two lights,
emitted from a pair of lamps, or yellow tubercles, placed on
either side the chest ; but when, with wings extended, it shoots
across the dusky sky, another luminary, also in the thorax, but
seated further back, is rendered visible.

Though we have none of these fire-flies, as yet, in England,
we have certain insects of the same family, which in all, save
luminosity, greatly resemble them. These are the very common
longish brown beetles, known familiarly as " spring and click
beetles," also " skip-jacks " — names expressive of their power,
when laid upon their backs, of springing or leaping into the air,
with a clicking sound.

Our readers, as we hope, all know by this time, that every
beetle has been in its time a grub or larva. They have all
heard, too, most likely, of that farmer's terror, the destructive
wire-worm ; but to some, even amongst farmers, it may possibly
be a piece of information that this wire- worm is none other than
the beetle grub, and the grub, moreover, of such, a beetle as the
click, or skip-jack, an Elater,1 nearly resembling the tropic

1 See Vignette.

340 FLYING GLOWWORMS.

fire-fly; the grub of the latter loving to feed on the roots of
sugar-canes (to which, says Humboldt, it is often very injurious),
in lieu of the roots of corn and other vegetables, the favourite
fare of his British relative.

Like the tropic fire-flies, these glowworms are beetles, though
of a different family, that of the Lampyridce, of which the
Lucciola is a very small species, with blackish-brown wing-
cases; the legs, as well as thorax, of which the shield nearly
hides the head, being reddish yellow. The light of these
insects, when creeping, or perching upon trees, is described as
being hardly perceptible, but becoming brilliant on flight;
not constant, but scintillating, as if disclosed on successive ex-
pansions of the wings. Appearing with the twilight, their full
radiance shines forth in darkness ; when some, shooting through
the air, make luminous tracks in all directions, while others
gpangle the shrubs and herbage.1

Their appearance and effect in the neighbourhood of Genoa
has been thus described by Sir J. E. Smith :2 —

" On the eve of St. John the Baptist, the great festival of
Genoa, the town was brilliantly illuminated, while along the
purple coast to the west, the last rays of the setting sun still
trembled on the hills, and the moon arose in the east. To these
three contrasted lights was added the singular effect of innumer-
able flying glowworms darting their momentary splendour
through all the streets, gardens, and rooms. We used frequently
to catch these little insects, and entangle them in the ladies'
hair and head-dresses, a decoration which the women of some
countries adopt for themselves."

Our English glowworm3 (as we presume most people are
aware) is the wingless female of a winged beetle, which also
carries a light, though one of much inferior lustre.4

1 See " Naturalist's Library."

3 In " Sketch of a Tour on the Continent," quoted in " Nat. Lib."

3 Lampyris noctiluca. See Vignette.

4 A solitary glowworm, resembling the English, but much larger and more
brilliant, was seen by Bishop Heber in Ceylon. He makes no mention of
lantern-fiies.

THE GLOWWORM'S TAPER. 341

Cui bono, the lady's taper ? To answer this inquiry Con-
jecture has been clever, but, as usual, often at variance with
herself.

While it is supposed by some that the light of the wingless
beetle is bestowed for her protection, to scare away her hungry
foes, the nightingale and other birds of night ; it is opined by
others, that the insect's gift of brilliancy (like many of the like
sort bestowed upon mankind) is the very mean of her destruction,
the very lure and light by which her biped foes are assisted to
discover and devour her.

Some people, again, have suggested that, whatsoever else its
purpose, the glowworm's luminary may be employed as a lamp
for her own supper-table, after having previously lent its aid in
the finding of her evening meal. It has been observed, indeed,
that, for the serving of both such uses, her light would have
seemed placed more conveniently at head than tail ; but its
diffusion, we should think, is amply wide enough to render
this objection of little import.

The LampyridcCj even of our northern climate, have
southern predilections, being never seen in the north of Scot-
land, and most universally abounding in the southern English
counties.

To most of the dwellers in these her favourite resorts, the
person of our insect lamp-bearer, so conspicuously displayed in
her own light, must have been, we should suppose, familiar (as
with ourselves) from the summer nights of childhood, — from
that night, in particular, never to be forgot, which first brought
one of these shining mysteries within the compass of our
fingers and a box. While of other little creepers we yet
scarce knew the difference betwixt head and tail, the figure of
our first captive glowworm, as seen at night, and examined
next morning, almost before daylight' served, was stamped
upon our memory ; and, had we never seen another since, we
should not forget her tiny head, and, as we called them, horns,
mocking our curious eye, as she just put forth and then with-

342 NATURE OF INSECT LIGHTS.

drew them under the shielding back-plate which covered the
fore-part of her body ; that slate-coloured, oblong, flat, wingless
body, all divided into rings, and bearing at its nether extremity
the lamp, — by night a lustrous emerald, by day a dull pale
spot, — composed, as we have learnt now, of the sulphur-coloured
substance which supplies its light.1

Of this article, by the way, though it cost her nothing, the
glowworm, it would seem, is somewhat economic; Gilbert White,
at least, confirmatory of Will Shakespeare, having thought
that she always puts out her light at the decent hour of eleven
or twelve, or begins then, according to the poet and the poetic
idea, to " pale her ineffectual fire."

Now for a word or two, — borrowed, of course, from the
scientific page, but considerably at variance,— respecting the
supposed nature and quality of this and other insect fires.
One experimentalist,2 having found that the glowworm's light
is neither diminished by immersion in water, nor increased by
application of heat, — that it is not capable of ignition by the
flame of a candle, nor possessed of any sensible heat when
separate from the bearer's body, denies in this luminous matter
the existence of any ordinary composition of phosphorus;
suggesting, however, that the above facts are favourable to
the supposition of light being a quality of matter, rather than a
substance.

Another examiner,3 on the contrary, seems to have ascer-
tained that the glowworm's light-diffusing substance is chiefly
albumen, combined with a portion of phosphorus; and as
phosphorus can only become luminous by contact with oxygen
(supposing it uncombined with a fatty matter or albumen), he
considers this requisite supplied by means of the male insect's
respiration, which is strongest during flight; while, in the
female, which flies not at all, the greater quantity of albuminous

1 See Vignette. 8 Mr. Macartney, quoted by Kirby and Spence.

3 Mr. Macaire, quoted in " Naturalist's Library."

POETRY OF INSECT LIGHTS. 343

substance contained in her thick body more than compensates
for the lesser respiratory action.

Enough, at all events, has been ascertained about the illu-
minating matter of the glowworm's lamp to prove it perfectly
incapable of setting light to any tapers, save those of fairy
manufacture. Who could quarrel with that pretty conceit of
our immortal Bard, which converts, "the glowworm's fiery
eyes " into lucifers, for the use of Titania's household ? Yet,
in our character of entomologist, we may, perhaps, be per-
mitted to observe, that Shakespeare has here taken more of
poet's licence than he is wont to do in his allusions to natural
objects, which are in general so infinitely more correct than
those of his modern brethren of the lyre. It is admissible
enough io term " fiery" whut looks luminous, but it is
a long stretch, truly, even to the length of the creature's an-
tipodes, to endow it with " fiery eyes," in lieu of a fiery-
seeming tail.

Before having quite done with " fiery eyes," we may notice
that if the " Swan of Avon" had applied this epithet to the
moth instead of glowworm, his fancy would have better cor-
responded with fact ; for a fact it is, though probably quite
unknown in the days of Shakespeare, that many species of
night-flying moths are endowed with luminosity in the organs
of sight, the light being most visible while the insect is in
motion.

" Pour 1'amour de ses beaux yeux," we may perhaps, there-
fore, include the moth among luminous insects; but there is
another, a native of England, perhaps as common as the glow-
worm, which, although from its habits comparatively little
noticed, shares her luminous endowments to a very considerable
extent. This is the electric centipede,1 a black, many-legged
crawler, which almost everybody must have seen and shrunk
from, as it has crossed their path in the day-time. As this

1 Scolopendra electrica. See Vignette.

344 USES OF INSECT LIFE.

creature (which has been likened to a miniature model of a
serpent's skeleton) moves, serpent-like, forward or backward,
he leaves behind him, or before him, a tangible track of the
phosphoric light, which, in darkness, strongly illuminates his
unsightly form ; but, as if conscious of his loathly aspect, it is
mostly in daylight, when it is least conspicuous, that he issues
from his lair, some abode of darkness, either in the earth, or
beneath a stone.

The Mole Cricket is another insect which has been supposed
to emit light; to have been, indeed, in some cases, the
veritable Jack o'Lantern — the ignis fatuus of the benighted
traveller.

The harmless quality of all these insect lights is a kind
provision of Nature, no less adapted than a variety of others to
attract our admiring notice. Truly, it is a thing wonderful
and beautiful, to find in animated forms a substance so nearly
resembling that formidable element, fire ; one possessed of its
power to diffuse light, yet wholly destitute of its dangerous
properties.

Have luminous insects the quality of use ? In common with
all created things undoubtedly they have, and to themselves
their luminaries serve clearly some important purpose, however
we may yet be in the dark as to their exact mode of appliance.
Nor, as regards mankind, are these " diamonds of the night "
altogether without their value, having, as such, been made in
several countries subservient both to ornament and use.

While our native glowworms have begemmed no other
beauty but that of the sleeping wild-flowers, the tropic fire-flies
have sparkled in dark tresses, and been rivalled by flashing
eyes, — have been employed by the gay in the decoration of
festive garments, and by the grave in the conning of small
print. The Pere du Tertre, in his history of the Antilles,
speaks of reading his Breviary by the light of one of these
living lamps. The natives of St. Domingo, and other islands,
are also said to have used them literally as " a light to their

LIGHTS TO DEVOTION.

345

feet and a lantern to their paths," by attaching one to each
foot when travelling by night, employing them also in the
lighting of their habitations. Fire-flies serve, besides, the
important purpose of destroying mosquitos, which are their
favourite prey.

But the glimmer of our English glowworm ? that surely
can serve no other uses save its own ? She would be a dull
diamond in the maiden's tresses — a dim light to read by — a
sorry lantern on a murky night. True; but for all that, she
shines not for herself alone: for us, also, her light is not
without its uses. What these are we may best answer when
returning from our summer's evening walk, as the glowworms
and the stars are coming out together ; for then our minds must
be more creeping than the wingless light-bearers themselves,
if they rise not from them to the glorious orbs they humbly
imitate, and thence to the Great Source and Centre of Life and
Light, from whom alike emanate the " stars of the earth " and
the suns of the universe.

^inquire toe t&e ugef of t&e <$I0to-tnorm'| lamp.

The examples of slow and swift-footed beetles here given, are the Oil-Beetle
(Meloe vulgaris), laboriously creeping up, and the Tiger-Beetle (Cicindela
campestris), rapidly descending the sandy bank. Below, is a fast walker,
almost runner, among hairy caterpillars, and above, on a lime-tree twig, sits
the statety larva of the Lime Hawk Moth (Smerinthus Tilias), like the rest of
its Sphinx-like brethren, slow-footed and averse to motion. The two flies are
of a flower-resorting species, called vibrating (Scioptera vibrans\ which are
distinguished by red heads, scarlet eyes, black-tipped wings, and that qui-
vering or vibrating motion to which they owe their name.

INSECT MOVEMENTS.

,N their endless variety of movement, the Insect
races resemble, equal, and in many cases sur-
pass, nearly every other animated tribe of
earth, air, and water. They walk with the
quadruped ; fly with the bird ; crawl with the
reptile; swim with the fish ; do all, in short, but march erect-

WALKING INSECTS. 347

like the man and the monkey; while many of them are endowed
with motive powers of a kind possessed by no other living
creatures with which we are acquainted.

But the best way, perhaps, to obtain a tolerable notion of
the extent and perfection of insect activities will be to divide
them into two classes, the one consisting of movements common
to other animals, the other of those nearly or quite peculiar to
themselves.

First, for that most ordinary mode of progression, walking.
This, among insects, (most of which are possessed, in their
perfect state, of six legs) varies in rate or pace from the slowest
creep to the swiftest run. The Coleoptera, or Beetle-tribe,
alone furnish instances of each degree of progression exem-
plified in its extremes by the laborious creep of the oil-beetle,1
overwhelmed, seemingly, by oozing fatness, and the light,
rapid, agile course of the predatory Carabus,1 or that of the
rapacious Cicindela, resembling

" The forest's leaping panther,
Fierce, beautiful, and fleet."

Some butterflies — amongst others, the little " Tortoise-shell"
— may be designated insect quadrupeds, inasmuch as of their
six legs the two foremost being very short and imperfect, four
only serve the purpose of walking ; an accomplishment, by the
way, in which butterflies in general, like the ladies of England,
do not particularly excel. If rapidity of pace depended on the
number of instruments employed in walking, both butterfly
and moth, in their estate of caterpillars, would always outstrip,
as pedestrians, their own winged maturity, sixteen, instead of
six or four, being the number of legs with which caterpillars
are usually provided. This, however, is only the case in cer-
tain instances, for hardly do beetles exhibit greater variety in
their rates of movement than the larvas of Lepidoptera. We

1 See Vignette.

L L

348 CATERPILLARS SWIFT AND SLOW.

speak, indeed, of all caterpillars as " crawlers ;" but while some
" drag their slow length along," tardy as the tortoise, or that

•* Enfant la terre errant sur le gazon,
Prive d'os et de sang, et portant sa maison,"

others run with the rapidity of " the Hare," an appellative
really bestowed for its swiftness, on a foreign species. There
are not wanting English runners of the same description. We
may notice, amongst them, as a very common specimen, a
caterpillar (that, we believe, of the Large Ermine Moth) with
a skin blackish or greenish, striated in its length by a broad
white line on either side, and thickly covered by a coat of long
brown fur, made up of tufts proceeding from studs or tubercles.1
This, one of the pillagers of promiscuous cates of an herbaceous
description, may frequently be seen by roadside or in garden,
and usually in company of several messmates, employing his
jaws with prodigious celerity on the leaves of dock, plantain,
dandelion, marigold, or violet. If we rudely interrupt him in
his harmless feasting, he rolls up instanter, and falls from his
station — a defensive feint of death or inactivity, from which,
presently, he betakes himself to flight, and runs, or more pro-
perly glides, away with a degree of celerity which leaves no
doubt of the excellent use he can make, on occasion, of his
eight pair of heels.

As one of the foremost — hindmost, rather — of the creeping
caterpillars, has been noticed that of the Hawk-moth, Filipen-
dula, and the majority of its Sphinx-like brethren,1 are slow
footed as well as averse to movement.

Flies, wasps, and ichneumons, may be all considered run-
ners ; but, in accordance with that system of compensation so
generally carried out amongst created things, it is chiefly
amongst insects that are destitute of wings (those comprised
in the LinnaBan order Aptera) that we meet with such as are
mosi agile and dexterous in the use of their legs, which vary in
number from eight to above a hundred.
1 See Vignette.

FLIGHT AGAINST WIND. 340

Besides the above, which are seldom abroad except at
evening or at early morn, there are to be seen throughout the
summer and the livelong summer's day, hovering over flower-
borders or flowery hedges, a scattered company of two-winged
flies, which, as somewhat resembling, may be taken on a cur-
sory view for four-winged bees. These are the Syrphi,
whose prowess, while in their grub estate, as clearers of aphis-
covered leaves — those especially of the rose-tree — we have
celebrated in another place.1 Contributing thus, through the
carnivorous appetite of their growing youth, to the health and
preservation of the plant, these aphidivorous flies, in their
active and elegant maturity, heighten the beauty of the flower
by adding to the number of its prettiest frequenters, as they
now hover over the enamelled beds in suspension, seeming
motionless, but maintained, in reality, by fast vibration of their
pinions — then dart with rapidity to some other wing-poised station.

Few, perhaps, to look at the great burly body of a humble-
bee when he is " tippling freely in a flower," would suspect him
of out-cutting, when on wing, all the other high-fliers, and
swift-fliers, and far-fliers of his order (Hymenoptera), in-
cluding, as it does, all other bees, wasps, ichneumons, and saw-
flies. Yet such is his reputation in the field (of air), or in the
sporting calendar of the naturalist ; and while it outstrips its
kind, the humble-bee (by no means humble in this particular)
far exceeds, says Kirby, in proportion to its size, the flight
of any bird.

It is said by a German naturalist,2 in speaking of the emi-
grations of the feathered race, that birds require a wind which
blows against them, such a contrary current helping to raise,
and assist their flight. We are not aware, indeed, of any
insect known to require this seemingly hindering help; but,
however little one might think it, the comparatively fragile
wings even of insects are often arrayed in battle against an
opposing current.

1 See article on Aphides, and Vignette. 3 M. Brehm.

350 FLIGHT OF BUTTERFLIES.

Not only can bees and some beetles pursue their flight in
the wind's eye, but even butterflies have been seen, with their
" sail-broad vans," making way against it. In power, swift-
ness, and grace of motion, " the painted populace" present, in
different families, something of the variety which adorns their
pinions; but when we look at these summer vagrants, idly

flitting

" From bed to bed, from one to t'other border,"

we should hardly expect them ever to exemplify permanence
as well as power of flight. We hear, however, not only of
migrating birds, but also of migrating butterflies, of which
some, not satisfied

" The woods, the rivers, and the meadows green,
With their air-cutting wings to measure wide,"

attempt, occasionally, to " measure ocean." For this purpose
they sometimes assemble in gaily-bannered companies, and, in
a straightforward continued course, press seaward and over
sea, only, probably, to add in most cases to the number of
those fair and fragile things which, strewed upon its surface,
are for ever serving to augment the perishable " treasures of
the deep."

But we need not follow insects over ocean, or even stir from
off our chair, to see the surpassing power of their organs of
flight ; or, if we do not now see, we may remember, that the
fly, now crawling so feebly up our window, was able, in the
sunny heyday of her vigour, to sport above our heads at the
rate of above thirty feet in a second, or more than the third of
a mile in a minute — the third of the distance which a race-horse
can achieve in the same period.

When, from the air, we glance downwards to the waters, we
find the finny tribes in like manner equalled, and, size con-
sidered, exceeded in their motive powers by a variety of insect
swimmers. Those which, in their perfect state, are wont to
inhabit or frequently resort to ponds and ditches — such, for

INSECT LEAPERS. 351

instance, as aquatic beetles — are usually provided with a pair
of hinder legs, long, strong, rather flattened, and densely
fringed with hair, assisted by which they cut the fluid element
in all directions, darting about, rising to the surface, or diving
to the bottom with the utmost rapidity.

The above are among the principal of those insect move-
ments which resemble the common motions, on land, in air, and
in water, of other animals ; but the latter exhibit some of a
more peculiar character, wherewith insects also are endowed,
besides others which would seem common to no other creatures
but themselves.

The serpent, deriving a false consequence from its very sen-
tence of degradation, is said to have partly owed its deification
to the power, once looked on as miraculous, of crawling with-
out legs. This attribute of once mysterious motion is shared
by many insects, which in their state of larva are legless, but
can glide onwards, and sometimes with rapidity, not pushed
along like the serpent by the points of the ribs, but by alternate
contraction and extension of the rings of the body.

The wonderful leaps of the salmon up cataracts (which
these alone enable it to ascend), if, as has been stated, per-
formed with tail in mouth, are imitated in manner as well as
magnitude by an insect leaper, of which, as of the salmon,
it may be descriptively affirmed that it is " at once both bow
and arrow." This little animal, which is the legless larva of a
minute and pretty fly, and not, as is popularly (supposed, a
mere offspring of decay, is none other than the cheese-hopper,
a very curious and admirably constructed creature, though to
none, save to entomologists and certain epicures, an object of
admiration. Swammerdam saw one of these legless leapers
spring out of a box six inches deep, or twenty-four times the
length of its own body. To compass leaps like this and others
more stupendous, the saltatory performer erects itself on its
tail, which is furnished with two projections that enable it to
maintain its balance. It then bends itself into a circle, catches

352 INSECT- CLIMBERS.

a part near the tail with its hooked jaws, and, after strongly
contracting itself from a circle into an oval, throws itself
with a jerk into a straight line ; an action which effects the leap.

There is a certain fish,1 which, when tired of swimming in
its native element, is said to take the air by ascending trees.
This climbing fish must be looked on, we should think, as a
very odd fish among his finny fellows, on account of the
strangeness of such proceeding ; but the oddest part of it, to us,
must appear, while unexplained, the power of the legless
swimmer to accomplish his restless or ambitious purpose.
This is effected, it would seem, by help of his spiny fins and
gill-covers.

Now a climbing chrysalis, as all must be ready to admit who
know a chrysalis by sight, is a thing scarcely less wondrous
seeming than a climbing fish ; and we find, in some instances,
that the apparatus by which a chrysalis is assisted to climb, or
raise itself upwards towards the surface, or from out the ground
or other imbedding substance, is of a somewhat similar descrip-
tion to the spines of the above-mentioned tenant of the waters.
To give an instance. —

The Goat-moth, whose works, as a carpenter caterpillar, in
heart of oak or willow we have elsewhere noticed, has a chry-
salis which, as well as some others, is furnished with a row of
spiny serratures, extending nearly round each ring of its body.
The use of these appendages become sufficiently apparent when
opportunity offers (as it has done with ourselves) of watching
the emergement of this case-bound creature from out the strong
cell of cemented woody particles in which it is usually enclosed.
A hard head, armed with points, having first enabled it to
open, as with a battering-ram, a breach in the wooden walls of
its prison, the swathed moth is then assisted by the purchase of
its spiny case to draw itself more than half-way through the
opening, wherein it remains tightly wedged, while the aurelian
skin, bursting at the shoulders, gives egress to the winged form.

• Ferca scandens. — Note in Sharon Turner's " Sacred History of the World.*

STRANGE MODES OF PROGRESS. 353

Who would expect to find anywhere, save in the thinly-
peopled world of monsters, a creature with legs upon its back ?
Yet have two such been discovered in the world of insects :
one, the bat-louse,1 which is described as being able to trans-
port itself with marvellous celerity from one end to the other
of the furry forest wherein it dwells ; the other, the grub of
a little gall-fly,2 which inhabits one of the berry-shaped galls
common upon oak-leaves. The latter can have, of course, but
little room for exercise ; but Reaumur, its discoverer, can hardly
be mistaken in supposing that the singular position of its legs,
in the centre of the back, is that of all others best adapted to its
hollow sphere of action.

Some insects, again, are not only remarkable for the number
of their legs, but also for the remarkable way in which they
use them.

" When centipedes walk backwards, they only use their four
hind legs, and these, when they walk in the usual way, are not
employed, but dragged after them, like the locked wheel of a
coach in driving down a hill. It was first observed, we believe,
by Kirby, that a millipede, common under stones, the bark of
trees, and the hollow stems of decaying plants, and provincially
termed " Maggy Manyfeet," performs its serpent-like motion
by extending alternate portions of its numerous legs beyond
the line of the body, while those in the intervals preserve a
vertical direction."3

The fly's walk against gravity, that phenomenon by common
observers so little noted, by careful ones so contradictorily
explained, and imitated only by some others of the insect race,
is sufficient of itself to confer upon that race a remarkable
superiority over all others as walking animals.

Where, above all, shall we find walkers upon water ? No-
where, save in the ponds and pools and ditches and rivulets,
whereon, almost daily, from spring to autumn, we may see

1 Nycteribia Hermanni. 2 Ct/nips Quercus inferno.

3 " Insect Transformations."

354 NON-PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENTS.

gnats and Tipula lightly skimming, water-bugs gliding with
or against the current, whirlwigs describing circles, and all
performing their varied evolutions upon liquid plains with far
more ease and dexterity than the most accomplished skater
when those plains are rendered solid.

In air, as well as on land and water, various insects exhibit
peculiar movements, as well as those shared with other winged
creatures. The sportive dancing of gnats and Tipulidan flies,
the sailing of winged ants, the beautiful undulating suspension
of the graceful Ephemerae, would appear to have no exact cor-
respondence amongst feathered fliers ; while of a character no
less sui generis are various wing exercises of a non-progressive
character performed by insects only. Of this latter description
is the flirting by the butterfly of her painted fans, the fanning
of bees, and the quivering of his little transparent, black-tipped
pinions by the " vibrating fly," l a tiny, scarlet-headed, black-
bodied lover of the sunshine and of flowers.

The purposes of the above and similar actions may still,
perhaps, admit of doubt, inasmuch as they have been assigned
by careful and intelligent observers to different exciting motives.
By some, the butterfly has been supposed to flirt her wings
simply with the same cooling intent as that wherewith a lady
flirts her fan, while another considers that the " Vanessa," when
she fans the air with her pinions, is inviting its entrance into
their tubes and nervures, as a preparative for flight ; and while,
by one, the quiverings of the vibrating fly are supposed to assist
its respiration, another, from having noticed these same vibra-
tions to be performed only in the sunshine, regards them as
expressions merely of delight.

How can we so often permit our minds to stagnate for want
of exercise, when even in an insect movement, and the springs
which direct it, there is matter for thought, and doubt, and
discovery !

Another peculiarity distinguishes the movements of some
insects from those of nearly all other animals save man. This

1 Scioptera vibrans, Kirby. See Vignette.

SELF-WROUGHT AIDS TO-MOTION. 355

is their power, in some instances, of constructing and availing
themselves of what may be called artificial helps. Such are the
aerial bridges of silken thread, and the balloons of flake, by
which aeronautic spiders cross a void or ascend to the clouds.
Such the silken ropes, descending or mounting by whose aid a
variety of caterpillars, especially the Loopers, are enabled to
break their falls from, or resume their positions upon, elevated
stations ; and also of this description are the rope-ladders, spun
of the same material and employed by the devouring crawler
of the cabbage to scale a garden wall, or, if we please to test
her ingenuity at efforts for escape, the smooth perpendicular of
an imprisoning glass.

The above, and all other insect movements, are, of course,
to be observed at various times and seasons ; but the subject of
animal motion harmonizes with this present month of Novem-
ber, as well as with the two which have gone before it, for to
all three appertain strong features of external movement pre-
ceding and preparatory to the external fixedness of winter.

9Jn tlje gtoift (Ctger anb creeping <©il 23eetleg
gee tfie fa&Ieb pare anti Cortoige.

Jii'l

All the insects of this group, excepting one, consist of Plant Bugs (Penta-
tomidce, Capsida:, &c.) of varied form and colour. The dark, long-bodied insect
creeping up the pailings, is the lieduvius personatus, a bug itself, but an enemy,
especially in its stage of larva, to our domestic horror Cimex lectularius. The
Plant Bug, on a branch of Southern-wood below, is remarkable for a pair of
singularly-shaped antenna?, and its wings (not shown in the figure) are of a
beautiful violet-blue : the general colour of the insect is a dark olive.

FOR THOSE WHO ARE NOT OVER-NICE.

" With ho ! such bugs and goblins in my life."

iOW that insects abroad are become compara-
tively few, it may be as well to notice several
of the race which are much too intimately
connected with home to be entirely overlooked,
though not certainly the most pleasing objects
of contemplation.

A STRANGE TRADITION. 357

To begin with the beginning — the origin of insect vermin.
There is given by a certain traveller1 the following curious
tradition, as preserved amongst a sect of Kurds who dwelt at
the foot of Mount Sindshar : —

" When Noah's ark sprang a leak by striking against a
rock in the vicinity of Mount Sindshar, and Noah despaired
altogether of safety, the serpent promised to help him out of
his mishap, if he would engage to feed him upon human flesh
after the deluge had subsided. Noah pledged himself to do
so ; and the serpent, coiling himself up, drove his body into
the fracture and stopped the leak. When the pluvious element
was appeased, and all were making their way out of the ark,
the serpent insisted upon the fulfilment of the pledge he
had received ; but Noah, by Gabriel's advice, committed the
serpent to the flames, and, scattering its ashes in the air, there
arose out of them flies, fleas, lice, bugs, and all such sorts of
vermin as prey upon human blood ; and in this manner was
Noah's pledge redeemed."2

According to the above tradition, human flesh alone would
have been heir to the debt for which, in his dire extremity, the
venerable Noah was induced to give a bond ; but as all beasts,
birds, and creeping things, were sharers in the preservation
wrought by the cunning stopper of their leaky vessel, it is but
fair that they also should pay a part of the tribute prospectively
exacted. At all events, we find that throughout each order of
animated being, from man down to the meanest insect, there is
scarcely one exempt from some tormenting infestor which lives
upon its vital juices. Scarce anybody who has ever noticed
at all either a common black beetle or a humble-bee, can
have failed to observe the shining mail of the one and the
downy doublet of the other covered with a living load of small
white or brownish insects, from whose attacks they are some-

1 Eulia, quoted in the " Mirror."

a There is also a Hindu tradition, in which the serpent, instead of saving, is
represented as trying to wreck the Ark.

M M

358 INSECT TORMENTORS UNIVERSAL.

times brought to a deplorable condition. These are mites, or
Acari, attached especially to bees and beetles ; but butterflies,
crickets, ants, and even the formidable dragon-fly, are all
subject to the attacks of allied species, independent of other
life-consuming enemies.

Those little maudites betes, termed, facetiously, by a popular
author, " game from the capital pastures," find a favourite
cover and preserve amongst the feathers of the bird creation,
which, in its numerous varieties, is a prey to insect infestors of
this description almost as varied.

The peacock, strutting in his gorgeous panoply of plumes,
has, in common with others who are fretting daily under
" splendid misery," a " thorn in the flesh," such as the most
of his admirers little reck of, in the shape of a tormentor
peculiar to himself (the peacock louse1), peculiar also for its
own very remarkable exterior.

Poll Parrot or Mistress Cockatoo, when bending her head
to invite our caressing fingers, has, ten to one, a less refined
motive in the act than a mere love of notice. Even our little
pet canary cannot always boast exemption from the " rufflers "
of his race. He is sometimes seen to pluck and plume inor-
dinately, without the usual incentive of a change of feathers.
Now we must not attribute this to mere vanity, nor suppose
that he is only smoothing his yellow satin doublet for some
imaginary " at home," since it is quite as probable that certain
unwelcome visitors, in the form of little red mites, are making
themselves " at home " in reality under the unwilling shelter
of his wing. This, however, with a real pet bird — one, that
is to say, kept with cleanliness — is a rare if not unknown
occurrence, for the above tormentor of imprisoned warblers
is chiefly found in dirty or neglected cages. On this account
it needs especial care never to introduce a feathered favourite
into an abode which has been pre-occupied, without subjecting
it, first, to proper ablution and fumigation.

1 Ricintts Pavonis.

PREYERS UPON MAN. 359

Ascending to quadrupeds, it is needless to whisper in ears
polite the name of that exciting cause, or causes, under which
our " Marlboroughs " are apt to forget their high breeding,
and our " King Charles's " to encroach on their parlour pre-
rogatives.

Grimalkin, with her own nine lives, has been said by Lin-
na3us to possess a happy immunity from the burthen of
carrying other lives about her; but we are more inclined to
believe, with less distinguished naturalists, that while Puss is
imbibing the yet warm juices of a mouse, a hungry flea may be
similarly employed in sucking up her own.

We come now to the insect preyers on lordly man, of whom
the lordliest, the kings and potentates of earth, have furnished
some striking and most horrible examples of how the meanest
and most despicable of earth's denizens have been employed by
the Almighty Hand to lower the pride and reprove the cruelty
of tyrants and oppressors.

Antiochus Epiphanes, Sylla, the two Herods, and the second
Philip of Spain, the great persecutor of the Protestants, are
all recorded to have been frightfully distinguished in their
deaths as in their lives, by falling victims to the pedicular
disease.

Various instances are related of another disease, somewhat
resembling, though not similar, in which mites or Acari, lodge
beneath the skin. One of these we shall briefly repeat, though
often quoted, from Mouffet's " Theatre of Insects," because a
natural cause is assigned for the infestation there described,
such as would seem wanting in the cases of those tormentors
tormented, on whom the finger of God was supposed to have
been supernaturally laid.

Of " the Lady Penruddocke " our narrator tells us, that
Acari, or mites, swarmed in every part of her body, head, eyes,
nose, lips, gums, and soles of her feet, tormenting her day and
night, till, in spite of every remedy, all the flesh of her body
was consumed, and death relieved her.

360 BUG AND BUGBEAR.

Mouffet supposes that the insects were generated by drink-
ing too copiously of goat's milk ; a cause seemingly not impro-
bable, from a species of this insect1 being sometimes found
in milk.

As connected with kings and rulers, we must advert to the
tributary lice of the ancient kings of Mexico and incas of
Peru, of whom it has been related, that they found no other
means of ridding their subjects of these infestors, save by the
animal imposition of a tribute to consist of a certain quantum
of the living " specie" Bags full of them were found by
Cortez in the palace of Montezuma and in the magazines of
King Axajacatil.

Torquemada and other historians assign, however, to this
strange poll-tax a motive very different to the above. It was
imposed, say they, only on beggars, because Montezuma, who
could not suffer idleness in any of his subjects, was determined
that even those wretched people who would not labour should
be thus employed.

Reader, — have thy midnight slumbers ever been disturbed
by ghost or goblin? Unless thou art of the few whose
" visionary eyes " have been opened, thou wilt most likely re-
spond in the negative ; and yet thou must have been favoured
almost above the common lot, if a " fearful shape," whose
name bears the same alarming import, has never " in dead of
night " stalked up and down thy curtains, and with intent far
more bloody than ever midnight spectre was known or sup-
posed to entertain. Let us change the question : Have you
ever been alarmed, or worse, by that familiar of London, Paris,
Madrid, or Lisbon, yclept, in English parlance, a bug ? If so,
you have been visited by goblin, — for ghost or goblin does bug,
in Celtic, signify. Nor, till in times comparatively recent, has
that six-legged " terror," which creepeth by night, been thus
appellated.

Of the common root of bug and bugbear a curious proof is

1 Acarus lactii.

MARKED BUG-QACTHER. 361

noticed in the " Insect Miscellanies," namely, that in Mat-
thew's Bible, the fifth verse of the 91st Psalm is rendered —
" Thou shalt not nede be afraide of any bugs by night ; " and in
this same sense the word must have been put by Shakespeare
into the mouth of the Prince of Denmark : —

" With ho ! such bugs and goblins in my life."

Before we leave their favourite locality, the bed of down which
they convert into a bed of nettles, let's see what is this moving
object1 on the floor, by the bedside. 'Tis nothing but a bit of
rubbish, a token of the housemaid's negligence, a mingled piece
conglomerate of flue, and dust, and feathers, set in motion by
the draught from underneath the door. Yet, no ; never did
wind create such careful motion ; — and see ! There is a leg — a
living leg — and now another, protruded from the cloak of
shreds and patches. Never did lame beggar hitch in his gait
more piteously. Perhaps 'tis a great wounded spider caught
in the remnants of his own snare. But whatever be the cripple,
let's uncloak him.

Oh, the rogue ! — impostor ! — hypocrite ! No sooner is he
stripped of his disguise of dirt, than he takes to his heels as if
the devil was behind him ; but he shall not escape us ; and
now that he is fairly caught, let us carry him before the light
for examination. And, truly, a more ill-looking miscreant,
and ferocious withal, was never " pulled up " at Bow Street ;
his eye, especially, has murder in it, and murder, doubtless,
was his design. What other could he have when lurking in
disguise, like a cowardly assassin, beside a bed ? He is self-
condemned, let not the monster live. Yet the monster is but
an insect after all ; as such, shall we not spare him as beneath
our anger ? True ; but ill-favoured as he is, our prisoner, in
relation to ourselves, is innocent ; nay, he is more, — he is, to
us, a friend and benefactor in disguise ; while of our enemy, the

1 Reduvius personatus.

362 FIELD AND GARDEN BUGS.

bug, although of the same kindred, he is also, in disguise, the
deadly foe, destroyer, and devourer. It was in cunning pursuit
of this, his darling prey, that we found him, under cover of his
rubbish canopy, cautiously advancing, that he might spring,
unheeded, on his victim; and for this reason, Iteduvius per-
sonatus, thou masked bug-catcher, we release, and bid thee go
and prosper. It is in its first form of larva that this wily
ReduviuSj or bug-catching bug, may occasionally be observed
engaged as above described in its usual vocation. " The
fierce look of this creature is then rendered," says Kirby,
' ' more hateful by its ocelli) or simple eyes, having a pale iris
round a dark pupil." Our figure1 is that of the perfect
insect, which is often to be found on palings in the month
of May.

Before we take our leave of the extensive and ill-famed
family of bug, we are bound to rescue it from that common
species of injustice to which we owe the proverb of " Give a
dog an ill name and hang him." For this purpose, leaving
the pent-up precincts of the city for sweet fields and flower-
gardens, we must introduce thee, Reader, to a numerous tribe,
which, though bearing the odium of the same ugly patronymic,
are by no means ugly creatures. On the contrary, and as if
they borrowed variety and elegance of form, as well as bril-
liancy of colour, from the plants and blossoms they frequent,
these plant-bugs are amongst the very prettiest of our English
insects. In place of the loathsome wingless platitude of our
domestic town torments, their " country cousins " are adorned,
for the most part, with exquisitely delicate and iridescent
wings, protected, when at rest, by membranous cases, which in
various species present almost every variety of gay, as well as
sober colouring. In short, with some general features of
resemblance, these respective denizens of light and darkness
are as much contrasted with each other, as are the darkness
and the light themselves.

1 See Vignette.

PERFORMING FLEAS. 363

Throughout the summer plant-bugs abound; certain kinds
of them usually frequenting certain plants. Several of similar
form, but varied in colour, red, black, green, are almost
always to be found upon the southern-wood. They are
common also, the green especially, on umbelliferous flowers ;
and there is a pretty brown species peculiar to the thistle,
with four delicately mottled membranous wings. Though
always vegetable frequenters, these insects are not, at least,
always vegetable feeders ; their sharp beak-like suckers (some-
thing resembling those of aphides) being sometimes employed
upon aphides themselves.

In magnitude, as well as brilliancy of colour, the tropic
bugs, as well as tropic butterflies, confessedly excel our own ;
but for the blue bug of China we have one scarcely less
beautiful, the blue bug of England,1 which flies in the July
sunshine, or is found resting upon heath or trees.8

Now, for a word or two about that sanguinary little monster,
the Flea, which, like other sanguinary monsters of a larger
growth, has been, perhaps, of all insects the most distinguished.

Stands it not recorded in history how that an individual flea
was once honoured by a cannon-shot from a female royal hand,
that of the celebrated Queen Christian ? and is not the brass
piece of Lilliputian ordnance used on that memorable occasion
exhibited in proof thereof, perhaps, to this very day, in the
capital of Sweden ?

Has not " a company " of fleas, for many years, attracted,
by its unrivalled performances, the curious sight-seers of
London ? Have they not there beheld a flea quadrille danced
to the fiddles of a flea orchestra ? Have they not laughed at
two pulician combatants, sword in hand, adjusting a point of

1 Pentatoma ccerulea.

8 The flying bugs of Hindostan, resembling our own domestic species in
shape, size, and scent, are described by Bishop Heber as coming out in nightly
swarms from every bush, entering the windows and crowding round the
candles.

364 PULICTAN- POWER

honour? and (oh! the burlesque on human greatness !)
they not there seen a Napoleon mounted on a flea charger ?

The flea, as compared with the generality of insects, is a
long-liver, for the Italian, Bertolotti, speaks of having kept
one for twenty-three months, when it died apparently of age,
having grown gradually darker till it became nearly black.
In the days of its prime, its herculean task was to track a
man of war ; as its strength declined, its task-master lightened
that stupendous load to ten links of gold chain, and on
growing yet weaker, the venerable prisoner was released even
from this splendid misery ; but then, alas ! its leaps, from
two hundred times the length of its own body, could not
clear an inch, and at last it could scarcely crawl across its
prison.

We all owe our consequence to some sort of power ; and to
the power of its muscles is the flea indebted for the best part of
its celebrity. The extraordinary amount of muscular force, as
displayed in its stupendous leaps, attracted very early the
curious and observant; and Socrates measuring the leap of a
flea figures in the "Clouds " of the satirical Aristophanes. And,
in sooth, our agile little vaulter can take a leap worth measuring,
for in reaching to the distance of two hundred times its own
length, it is, in proportion to its size, as if a man should leap
from three to four hundred yards.

This marvellous power must have first put it into the head
of some ingenious person to display both his own mechanic
skill and the flea's strength, by turning the latter into a little
draught animal, in which capacity it has been proved capable
of drawing three hundred and sixty times its own weight.
Mouffet, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, mentions an Eng-
lish mechanic named Mark, who constructed a chain of gold
as long as his finger, which with lock and key were dragged
along by a single flea.

In Bingley's "Animal Biography" are related other the
like instances of human ingenuity and insect prowess ; and

VARIETY OF FLEAS.

365

Latreille celebrates the strength and courage of another
Samsonian flea, which drew a silver mounted cannon, and
stood fire, unmoved, when the piece of loaded artillery was
let off.

Of fleas there are reckoned at least a dozen species, though
some, perhaps, distinguishable only to the eye of an entomo-
logist. Those which infest birds and beasts, and those which
honour us with their peculiar preference, are each distinct
kinds, and are probably therefore endowed with tastes too
discriminating to abide long in, even if they emigrate to
foreign quarters. Comfort herein for the delicately apprehen-
sive, who, having no dogs of their own, are apt to feel fidgety
and irritable in company of those which belong to their
neighbours.

,§tceos» of :r ctai ana muscle foe a etccpie crjape in earnest.

The insect Ogre her represented is the fierce and wily grub of the Arit-liou
(Formica Z,eo). On the fragment in the foreground it is shown in deformity
unveiled, and more backward is seen one of the cleverly-constructed pitfalls
in which it is accustomed to lie buried, all but its extended jaws, for the en-
trapment of its prey. The globular object towards the left is the puparium, or
pupa-case, of this remarkable creature, itself remarkable for the smallness of its
size, as compared with that of the imago (winged insect), which is shown in
process of emergement from it. In its perfect expansion, it soars above — the
Ant-lion Fly complete.

STORY OF AN OGRE.

VER a certain republic in the south of Europe
there reigned, once upon a time, as cruel a
tyrant as ever filled an absolute throne, or was
ever hurled by his subjects from one of those
cumbrous seats of a fashion now in course of

explosion.

NOVEL DANGERS TERRIBLE. 367

This tyrant was that shadowy potentate called Fear; and
inasmuch as the people over whom he had usurped dominion
were located in the midst of various gigantic enemies, and were
exposed at all times to many overwhelming dangers, it might
have been thought, though quite erroneously, that they could
hardly ever be exempt from the same uneasy rule.

It was not, however, the fear of Death always at hand, under
any one of his familiar shapes, that ever caused a moment's re-
flection, much less uneasiness, to a people so entirely occupied,
as was that we are speaking of, in the business of life ; but at
the particular period of our relation, Danger, and Death behind
him, began suddenly to trip up their heels in a manner so new
and so mysterious, as to make the most heedless look very
seriously about them, and hence only arose the panic Terror,
which came for awhile to lord it over them.

The capital of their republic, which was built upon Italian
soil, we shall call Monticello; and it was upon one of the
principal thoroughfares communicating with this city, that the
common enemy first began that unusual and ill-mannered mode
of attack to which we have alluded. This highway had been
traversed by many successive generations, to whom nothing had
thereon befallen, excepting accidents of usual occurrence ; but
one day, as a party of some eight or ten individuals were quietly
pursuing their way along what they supposed to be, as hereto-
fore, a solid causeway, they came suddenly upon the edge of a
deep and wide abyss.

Thus taken by surprise, two or three lost their footing, and
rolled at once down the shelving side of this strange pitfall.
The others might perhaps have maintained their equilibrium,
but, blinded and overthrown by a shower of sand, rising from
the hollow before them, as if from the crater of a volcano,
they also, with exception of one who returned to tell the tale,
were precipitated down the fatal descent.

The road whereon this alarming occurrence took place was
speedily abandoned, — it was made, in fact, impassable ; but in

N N

368 PICCOLETTA.

whatever direction the stream of life was turned, there, with
magic rapidity and in a mode quite inexplicable, yawning gulfs
of a similar description were opened for its interruption.

It was customary, in the republican nation of which Monti-
cello was the metropolis, to confide the care of all the infant
population to public nurses, who were usually the best nurses
in the world ; but under the alarming visitation of which we
are telling, even the care of these faithful guardians began to
relax with their courage, and they would sometimes allow their
charges as well as themselves to die nearly of starvation, for
fear lest, in collecting food, they might become food in their own
persons for the gaping pitfalls or their mysterious fabricators.

It was usual also in fine weather to carry the nurselings, for
air and sunshine, beyond the city walls ; but since the reign of
the panic, they had been nearly all, as in time of siege, immured
within their close apartments. But it had never so fared with
the infant charges under the keeping of one youthful nurse,
who, rather than they should lack anything, had continued to
encounter all extraordinary as well as ordinary dangers, and
that, hitherto, with the most perfect impunity. This kind and
brave-hearted creature we shall call Piccoletta, because she was
but a very little personage, and because, as before noticed, she
and her compatriots were of Italian birth.

Well, this Piccoletta, who, according to her deserts, was
a-general favourite of the city, left it as usual one fine morning,
in order to seek provision in the adjacent country ; but night
came and passed, and so did also the next day, without her re-
appearance, and then every body thought she must have fallen
a victim to their newly-besetting enemies ; but on the second
night, the sentinels on guard perceived in the moon-light a
limping object approach the city, which, though magnified at
first, by their ruling fear, into one of the dreaded trap-makers,
they soon joyfully recognized as the missing Piccoletta. Nothing
could exceed the delight of her neighbours at seeing her again,
except, perhaps, their desire to know what had befallen her;

PICCOLETTA'S ADVENTURES. 369

and when a little recovered from fatigue, and the injuries she
had received in her expedition, she gratified their curiosity by
the following relation : —

"You may remember, my dear friends," said she, how I
got up by sunrise the day before yesterday and went out by
myself into the country. You know, too, that I never, on my
own account, had any more fears about those terrible pitfalls,
than if such things were still, as they used to be, quite un-
known; but, somehow, on that morning, as soon as I got
beyond the shadow of our city walls, my heart seemed to sink
within me, and I should have returned directly, only was
ashamed. Instead, however, of going on steadily as usual, I
every now and then climbed to the top of some rock or emi_
nence, to obtain an extensive view, and wherever I saw before
me a dark roundish shadow, there I fancied a pitfall opened,
and took a round-about way to avoid it. This tired me not a
little, but I was determined to proceed as far as I had intended;
that was, to the clump of elder-trees where some of our black
cattle have been lately at pasture, and from whence I have
often brought fresh supplies of honied milk.

" Judge, however, of my disappointment, when, after so
much toil to reach them, I found the elders all cut down (by
the hands, doubtless, of those two-legged giants who do more
mischief in our beautiful world than all the other creatures put
together), and nothing left of those useful animals I had come
to seek, except a few trampled remains which it made my heart
ache to look upon. It was too late to go further, but not bear-
ing to return as I went, I resolved to take quite a new beat
home, in hopes either of meeting with another herd of our
milch-kine, or of finding some of that sweet vegetable food
which serves us at once for milk and bread. I was intent, eyes
and mind, on this search, and had forgot nearly all about the
pitfalls, when all on a sudden, I found myself in the midst of
the most delicious perfume — not of flowers only, but of the very
thing I was seeking — and saw, to my delight, that I was

370 THE PITFALL.

coming to a large oak-tree covered at the top with a woodbine
in full blossom. I knew by the mingled scent, that the leaves,
both of tree and creeper, must be covered with that precious
manna which kind Providence rains for our support. I then
began to ascend the tree, taking a winding course to make the
ascent more easy, and resting often enough, I can tell you,
before I could reach the first leafy cluster of oak and woodbine
intermixed. Then I had a delicious rest, and a delicious meal
indeed, after which, I took care to load myself with as much as
I could possibly carry of the abundant store around me.

" I meant to descend as soon as I had done so, but what
with walking and climbing, I was too weary to move, and,
after such a plentiful meal, began to feel drowsy. The heat of
the day and the warm scent of the manna and flowers made me
grow more and more heavy, till at last I fell fast asleep.

" How long my nap lasted I cannot tell, but I was first
aroused by the sensation of falling, and then entirely awoke in
terrible earnest, by coming in violent contact with a something
so hard that I seemed almost knocked to atoms. As soon as
I recovered a little from this tremendous shock, I looked about
me, and where do you think I found myself but in one of those
frightful pitfalls I had been, on setting out, so careful to avoid ?

" On what was below me I dared not for some time to cast
an eye ; but when I did, — oh ! I thought I should have died
with terror ! — for what should I see at the bottom of the pit but
a hideous Ogre, with a pair of horrible pointed tusks, longer
than his own head or any of our bodies, and all besmeared with
the blood of some unhappy creature like ourselves, which he
seemed at that moment drinking in, just as our cattle draw in
the sap of the elder and other trees.

" The Ogre was a long time occupied with his sickening
repast, but at length he let fall the body on which he had been
engaged, and rolled his great eyes all around the cavern. He
was coming, I thought, to drag me down, but I suppose I
escaped his notice, for he returned again to his last victim, as I

THE 00 RE. 371

at first imagined, to devour it, but instead of that he only
tossed it several times over, and at last, by a tremendous jerk,
threw it out of his den. Then he lay down, and pushing and
shoving his great body into the deep soft sand at bottom of the
pit, buried himself entirely all but his horrible tusks, which
remained sticking up above the surface. For a long while I
watched in breathless terror for his next proceeding, but, as he
continued quite motionless, I flattered myself that this was his
way of going to sleep ; and now or never, thought I, I must
make a trial to escape. I examined the bank above my head,
and seeing on its smooth surface a piece of projecting stone, set
foot on the steep ascent with a view to grasp it, but on my first
step a mass of dislodged sand fell rolling downwards. How
I shuddered lest the Ogre should be roused ! and so, in truth,
he was — that is, if he had ever been asleep — for instantly
rising to meet the stream of sand descending, came a volley of
the same, thrown up, seemingly, by the tossing of the monster's
broad flat head, as he still kept wallowing in his soft bed at
bottom of the den. I was almost blinded, and thrown nearly
off my station, but I contrived to keep it, and in a short time
all was again clear and quiet, and nothing but those terrible
tusks above the sand showed signs of a living thing in the
cavern, except my poor trembling little self.

" If the Ogre's sleep was real, perhaps he had resumed it ;
but whether or not, I dared not again to set foot on the loose
surface of my prison-wall, but kept crouching on my ledge of
stone, till I grew as cold as it, and wished myself as senseless,
that I might not hear, as every moment I expected, another
stir below me, and feel myself being pelted down into the
monster's clutches. But hours, seeming weeks, went on, and
the Ogre remained still as death, till, as I supposed by the
increased obscurity of the cavern, the sun had set. Then,
suddenly, it grew darker still ; I heard a distant roll of thunder,
and there fell into the pitfall some great drops of rain. The
monster at the bottom began to stir. Ah ! thought I, it's all

372 PICCOLETTA'S ESCAPE.

over with me now ! and the dust which I felt again in motion
assured me that my fate was at hand. I had scarcely power
left to cling to my last holdfast, but cling I did, and presently
became aware, from a terrific roaring of the branches of the
oak above, that it was now a violent gust of wind, and not the
movements of the Ogre, which disturbed the sand and was
whirling it in eddies round the pit.

" Then came a tremendous crash, and my sole support shook
under me. ' Now/ groaned I, ' I am lost indeed ! ' but in that
moment I was saved. Something falling from above had
nearly shut out all remaining daylight from the mouth of the
pitfall, which it lay across, and nearly covered. Here and
there, however, I could catch a glimpse of light, and, when my
terror was a little abated, discovered with infinite joy that the
top of my hideous trap was nearly covered by a bough torn by
the storm from the oak above. Grasping with eagerness this
unlooked-for help, I speedily abandoned my dangerous station,
and a moment afterwards heard the stone which had supported
me rolling to the bottom of the pit.

" Hope renewed my strength, and by turns climbing and
traversing the branches of my saving arm of oak, I soon found
myself again on solid ground, and, with the utmost speed I
could put forth, made my way homewards across the sandy
plain around the pitfall."

The veil of mystery was now drawn in part from before the
dreadful pitfalls ; but the death which lurked within them was
not considered, by most of the listeners to Piccoletta's tale, as
a whit the less formidable in the palpable shape it had now
assumed. One old sage among them seemed, however, of a
different opinion.

" My counsel is, that a strong party should leave the city,
and, closely encircling the first pitfall to be found, compel the
wily occupant either to stay within and starve, or come out
and fall an easy prey to our united force."

A numerous party was assembled for the first expedition

AN EXPEDITION. 373

against the Ogres, and, by her own particular desire, Piccoletta
went with it.

Under her guidance, the troop marched first towards the
pitfall whence she had escaped, not with any view of attacking
the Ogre who had occupied, but who they believed to have
been dislodged from it by the storm, but for the purpose of
strengthening their bodies, if not their hearts, by a plentiful
meal off the manna, or sweet bread, of the oak from which
their little pioneer had fallen.

Having accomplished, without interruption, this desirable
preliminary, they had not proceeded much farther before they
came upon another excavation of which the ugly character,
could they have doubted it, was pretty clearly evidenced by
the appearance, near upon its verge, of several dead bodies, the
cast-out remains of their fellow-citizens. Here they came to a
halt, and formed a circle as close and as deep as their numbers
would permit, around the mouth of the pit-fall, which had been
constructed, as usual, in a sandy soil. Thus they remained,
still as mice ; and quiet as a mouse, too, remained the cat-lik.
Ogre (if Ogre was there) at the bottom of his cavern, which,
from the prudent distance of their position, his besiegers were
unable to discern. Hour after hour passed, till from very
inaction the courage of the surrounding party, which had arrived
in tolerable spirits, began to flag. Declining daylight did not
augment their valour ; and, as surrounding objects grew indis-
tinct, the passing of a moth or bat — even the rustle of a leaf-
sent a tremor through the fearful circle. It would have been
broken, likely enough, by desertion, under cover of darkness,
but for dread of other pitfalls, or their makers, stalking about
under the same nocturnal cloak. The night, however, ended
without one alarm, except from phantom fears. Piccoletta
was the first who suggested that, perhaps, after all, they were
only surrounding an empty trap ; and was the first also, when
morning came, to creep softly and lightly towards its circum-
ference, to ascertain how this might be. She seemed right in

374 A MYSTERIOUS OBJECT.

her conjecture — no ogre was to be seen at bottom of the pit;
but, where the monster usually made his lair, she perceived, as
she thought, a round object, like a ball of sand.

Piccoletta was curious as well as courageous. She proposed
to a comrade that, by the assistance of each other, they should
descend to the bottom of the pitfall ; and when the latter (as
was not very surprising) looked somewhat shy of the attempt,
our little heroine, half-stepping, half-sliding down the descent,
effected her bold purpose by herself. Bold as she was, she
nevertheless shook, for a minute, from top to toe, when she
found herself standing alone in the very print-mark left by the
monstrous body of the late tenant of the den.

But cause for alarm seemed none, as she evidently had the
pit-fall entirely to herself, with nothing whatever near her
except what looked below, as it had appeared from above, a
great ball of sand — great, in comparison with Piccoletta, or
with any of her companions, but very small, as compared with
a creature like the Ogre. On the matter of her re-ascent
Piccoletta felt no concern, being assured that it would prove
the easiest operation in the world, when performed free of the
monster's presence and his arresting volleys.

She began, therefore, with great composure, to examine the
urown ball which had raised her curiosity, and, on feeling its
surface, discovered, to her surprise, that, instead of being hard,
it was soft and yielding to the touch. Meanwhile, the people
above grew curious on their parts to see what was going on
within the pitfall, and some of them, spite of their fears, drew
closer to its edge, from which a few fragments, detached by
their weight, fell crumbling downwards. Piccoletta looked up
with a smile, partly of encouragement to her companions,
partly, perhaps, of self-complacency at her own superior
courage. At that moment, she heard a slight noise beside
her. Turning round, she beheld the ball in heaving motion,
and, presently, through a rent in its circumference, appeared —
a living head. It was not the head of the Ogre ; but to Picco-

A BRILLIANT APPARITION. 375

letta, in her terror, it looked something like it, and she thought
even that she saw the points of the horrible tusks she had once
seen so hideously employed. Then all her courage deserted her,
and she fell senseless to the ground.

The lookers-on above shrank backwards in dismay ; and, as
if they had beheld the Ogre himself striding up the sides of his
den, — broke up their circle — huddled together in confusion —
and rapidly retreated.

Presently, however, as if ashamed of their cowardice, they
stood still, and again turned their faces towards the quarter of
apprehended danger. Not a thing was visible on the smooth
sandy plain around the mouth of the pitfall ; nor, for awhile,
above it; but then, rising suddenly from the centre of the
hollow, a winged form shot upwards, like a sky-rocket. It
approached, glittering in the morning sun, then hovered high
above the wondering and admiring crowd. " A genius ! a
genius ! " they exclaimed ; " a good genius, who has killed the
Ogre, and saved us from destruction ! "

Even as they spoke, the brilliant apparition descended slowly
from its aerian height, and, on four resplendent wings of im-
mense expansion, again hung suspended now close above their
heads. But not long did it thus hover — its brooding was as
that of a kite over a flock of doves, — and presently, kite-like,
it siezed its victim, lifting it from amidst the deluded multitude
by help of sharp talons and a pair of crooked tusks, terrible as
those of the dreaded Ogre.

Their former fears swallowed up by this new alarm, the
discomfited force of Monticello hastened in confusion towards
their city; but, before they reached it, one more of their
number was carried of by the same winged assailant, or another
resembling it, and rising, in like manner, from another of the
ogre pitfalls.

What had become, meanwhile, of Piccoletta ? This was an
inquiry which, after they were safe within the walls of their
capital, suggested itself for the first time to those who had left

o o

376 A NEW ALARM.

her in the lurch. When, however, they had time to think of
it, they felt shame enough, as they well might, at their base
desertion, to control even their new fears of their new enemy,
in defiance of whom a small party speedily retraced their steps,
and reached, without interruption, the pitfall round which they
had been stationed. But there was no Piccoletta to be found,
and not a thing was visible at bottom of the excavation ; not
even the wonderful ball, from whose heaving throes and living
outbirth they had recoiled in terror, before the ascent of the
winged form, which, instead of a good, they now looked on,
and with pretty sufficient reason, as an evil genius. An hour or
two's fruitless search ended in the persuasion that Piccoletta
was lost for ever; and, sorrowful for the loss of their little
townsfellow, and crest-fallen at the cowardice to which, perhaps,
it was owing, the party turned again towards home.

The summer sun had now attained its height, and the baffled
Monticellians were toiling onward under its scorching beams,
their dread of pitfalls, ogres, and genii, all nearly overpowered
by vexation and fatigue, when suddenly their path was over-
shadowed ; a flapping of heavy wings was heard above their
heads, and at the same moment there fell amongst them a —
something — from the stroke of which several individuals fell
prostrate. The others hastily recoiled ; and in the space thus
cleared, there appeared in the now sunny road (for the shade
had passed away with the onward flight of the object which had
caused it) the miraculous ball which they had seen last within
the pitfall. It exhibited, as then, a rent in the side, and was
now, moreover, somewhat crushed and battered.

So fearfully connected was that ball of wonder with the den
of the Ogre, and with the apparition of the cruel winged genius,
that not one of the gazers dared approach, much less touch it;
and, on beholding it again in motion, all drew back, as before,
in consternation.

A voice was heard, — it proceeded from the interior of the
ball, — and, strangely as it sounded, there was something in its

THE BALL OF ENCHANTMENT. 377

tone familiar to those who heard it. Could it be the voice of
her they had been seeking ? It was none other ; and alarm
was all forgotten in joyful surprise when, peeping through the
rent in the misshapen sphere, they saw the little head of Pic-
coletta. Without waiting to inquire how she had got into that
world of wonder, or how she had fallen in, with it, amongst
her friends, some of the latter lifted her, ball and all, upon their
shoulders, and carried her, rejoicingly, to the city.

The history of her second escape was soon told. When
she awoke from her sleep of terror, on the bed of sand in
the pitfall where her friends had left her with so little cere-
mony, she looked first at the ball whose issuing tenant had
so sorely frightened her ; but, through the yawning rent in its
side, saw, or thought she saw, that it was now empty. Then
she looked at the sandy walls, which rose sloping round her,
and, seeing all clear, lost no time in beginning to scale them.
This, though a very laborious, she found (as she had expected)
no impracticable task, and had half achieved it, when she heard
in a tree at hand, the well-known knocking of the great
Pecchio.1 This time, from her precarious position, it made her
heart sink, and, what was worse, caused her foot to slip, so that
she fell rolling with a stream of sand to the bottom of the pit.
The Pecchio heard and saw her, and, darting from his station
on the trunk of an elm, lighted on the edge of the cavity,
devouring her with his great eyes, and ready to swallow her
down his great throat. There was only one place of refuge
open for the trembling Piccoletta, and that was the ball beside
her, into which, in her desperate strait, she was right glad to
creep. But the Pecchio was not to be so easily baulked of his
coveted morsel. He dipped his enormous red head into the
pitfall, seized both the ball and its shaking occupant, rose with
them into the air, and dropped them, by good luck, for Picco-
letta, in the midst of her acquaintance.

This was an explanation, simple enough, of Piccoletta's
1 Pecchio— Italian for Woodpecker.

378 PICCOLETTA AND THE PECGHIO.

entrance into, and her exit from, the wonderful ball; but its
chief mysteries were still unravelled. Who could tell what
that ball had to do with the Ogre and his pitfall? — how it
first came there? — how a winged shape, with pinions of ex-
pansion many times wider than itself, could have issued,
apparently, from the globe ? and how the Ogre's remains were
found in its interior ?

Not, certainly, the citizens of Monticello, to whom all these
things were as the work of a magician.

A pantomime with its machinery exposed would be a sorry
spectacle, stripped at once of its amusing and surprising cha-
racter ; but there are certain pantomimic incidents of which
the theatre is the insect world, and in which the part of
harlequin is played by Nature, that cannot be thus marred, for
the more they are elucidated the more do they raise our admira-
tion. Of this description are the marvels which compose the
history of the " Formica Leo," " Ant-lion," or Ogre of Ants,
on which our " Tale of an Ogre " has its foundation.

The Ant-lion is not a frequenter, now-a-days, of Britain ;
not exactly, therefore, a subject for our exhibition ; but it has a
place in British catalogues, and having, as it would thence
appear, been found once, it may still have lurking-places in our
island. This conjecture is considered the more probable from
its being a native of central France and Switzerland as well as
more southern Europe. At all events, it is sufficiently rare in
this country to constitute a "Lion" indeed among English
insects, and, as such, better worth the seeking. The wily and
cruel grub of the Ant-lion1 (the Ogre of the pitfall) is a grey-
coloured ring-bodied insect, in form not very dissimilar to a
woodlouse, only much larger, and with six, instead of many
legs ; but its most conspicuous distinction consists in a pair of
tremendous jaws, each pointed and curved like a sickle, and
forming together a forceps-like weapon, wherewith, being
tubular, it can at once seize, pierce, and suck the blood, or,
1 See Vignette.

THE ANT-LION.

379

more properly, the acid juice of the ants it preys on. The snare
or pitfall of the ant-lion consists of a funnel-shaped excavation,
scooped out of sand, in size varied, but most often of about
three inches diameter by two deep. In the bottom of this den
the cunning creature awaits its prey ; and, not content with the
screen afforded by its encircling walls of sand, is accustomed to
conceal its whole body within a deep bed of the same material,
leaving only its formidable jaws above the surface. When an
unfortunate ant happens, by treading too near this terrible trap,
to dislodge from its edge a few particles of sand, these in
rolling to the bottom apprise the lurker of its victim's proximity.
Then, forthwith, more active measures are adopted to ensure
the latter's downfall, its concealed enemy beginning to toss up,
by repeated jerkings of its head, successive showers of sand,
whereby the busy little traveller is sure, almost, to be precipi-
tated into the pit and jaws of its wily destroyer. When its
juices are all extracted, the carcase of the victimized insect is
thrown out of the murderer's den.

<<£lo6e ano all tfiep lift 0ec on t&eir ^culber

The insects assembled in this Vignette afford only average specimens of
Nature's decorative skill, but serve to illustrate the three modes above men-
tioned of insect adornment. In the Moth Caterpillar, with its goldfinch
colours (scarlet, yellow, black, white, and brown), resting on a branch of elm,
we have an example of gav painting wanting permanence. This latter quality
is supplied in the Ruby-tailed Wasp (Ckrysis ignitd) on the paling. Above, are
two larvaa (pseudo-caterpillars) of the Currant Saw-fly (Remains Ribes\ their
skins of greenish yellow, studded with raised dots of shining black. On the
nettle-stalk adjacent hangs the gilded chrysalis of a Tortoiseshell Butterfly
( Vanessa Urticei) ; and above, flying upwards, its superior wings laden with
seeming gold, is one of the little Moths (Tmeida) come of caterpillars which
feed on the bark of Birch-trees. Also inscribed in mimic gold is the Greek y,
which gives name to the larger Moth (Plusia gamma), seen on wing beneath
the flower-head of Knapweed (Phrygia nigra\ seated on which, her closed
pinions " freaked " on their reverse, not with gold, but silver, is a brown Fri-
tillary (Argynnis Adlppe). The only specimen of insect Carving for which
room has been here found is one of the sculptured eggs of the y Moth on a
leaf of Knapweed.

THE TEMPLE OF NATURE. 381

PAINTING, CARVING, AND GILDING.

HE Temple of Nature is no plain puritanic
place of worship. It is rather the model of a
gorgeous cathedral, and, like a sacred edifice
of the latter description, it stands distinguished
by a profusion of adornment worthy of the
mighty fabric.

Flowing draperies of foliage, hung on high as curtains or
as banners — floors tesselated with flowery mosaic, or bespread
with verdant velvet — massive pillars and slender shafts marbled
with painted lichen and entwined by graceful creepers — all
these combine, while they immeasurably eclipse the beauty, to
attest the origin of Gothic art.

As with this glorious fane, so it is with the worshippers of
every degree which are found assembled beneath its aerial
canopy. Beauty and variety are the prevailing characteristics
of living things ; and if in dignity and grace of form man and
a few of the larger animals must be confessed pre-eminent, we
find in diversity of shape and brilliancy of colouring a striking
augmentation as we descend, relatively to size, in the scale of
created beings.

Amongst the most beautifully painted of the caterpillar race
are those from which spring the elegant and distinguished tribe
of Hawk-moths, known also as Sphinxes, from the form and
attitudes, elsewhere described, of these their no less distinguished
larvaB. None, perhaps, among them, are more tastefully deco-
rated than that of the " privet/' l with his doublet of the most
brilliant apple-green laced by oblique stripes of white and purple,
further adorned along the sides by orange-circled spiracles or

1 Sphinx Ligustri, See Vignette to " A Midsummer Day's Dream."

382 PAINTING OF CATERPILLARS.

breathing-holes, and finished at the nether extremity by a black
and yellow horn.

Little inferior as respects colour is the garb of the Privet's
cousin of the lime-tree.1 His surtout also is of green, subdued
towards the sides, but on the back so vivid as to dim by com-
parison the brightness of the newest leaves which open round
him. His pervading hue is usually variegated on each side by
seven oblique stripes of yellowish-white and crimson, his small
mitre-shaped head is edged with white, and his six claws are
tinged, like the tips of Aurora's fingers, with rosy red. His
horn, or tail, is bright blue, and the whole surface of his body
is dotted with regular rows of small tubercles, giving to the
skin the appearance of shagreen.

More common specimens of showy caterpillars are the growth
of every garden. Most common of all, the speckled feeders on
the cabbage, the striped " lacqueys," and the black and yellow
spotted " magpies," which commit their leaf larcenies on the
gooseberry and currant. Apropos of spotted caterpillars and
gooseberry and currant bushes, we may notice that, frequently
besetting the latter, and reducing their leaves to perfect skele-
tons, are certain other black-spotted varlets, which we mention
here for the sake of noticing that their spots, or dots, which are
very shining, are raised above the surface of their greenish-
yellow skins, forming thus another sort of shagreen to that which
clothes some of the Sphinxes. This ornamental apparel they
are accustomed, on their last moult, to exchange for a plain one,
" as people," says Reaumur, " when they advance in years,
become usually more simple in their dress than when they
were young."

There are few specimens of the flower-like or water-colour
painting, if we may so call it, which we are now reviewing,
that display more vivid tints, or more elegantly-pencilled
patterns, than are sometimes to be found on the bodies of

1 Smerinthus Tilice. See Vignette to " Insect Movements."

PAINTING OF SPIDERS. 383

spiders, such of them as are frequenters of the garden and the
field. The ungraceful forms of those among the same tribe
which are accustomed to abide in dark places are clothed in
skins of corresponding dulness ; but those which live and lurk
amongst leaves and flowers seem to have stolen of their lively
colours. Green, green and white, red and yellow, red and
white, or varied browns, in regular and tasteful markings,
adorn most commonly a variety of these spinners in the sun-
shine or the leafy shade.

Amongst the less gay, but not least remarkably-painted of
this wily race, we cannot overpass that notable hunter, striped
(in black and white) like a zebra, and leaping like a tiger,
which is sure in the early sunshine of the year to be seen bask-
ing upon walls and window-ledges, ready to pounce upon the
first unlucky fly tempted to the same spot by the same enliven-
ing and unwonted warmth.1 As one of the harbingers of
summer, we always look a welcome on this saltatory lover of
the sun, or perhaps only of the prey the sun procures him ; and,
for the same reason, we first espy with equal gladness his highly
distinguished or distinguishable little cousin, the scarlet Satin
Mite,2 whose showy doublet loses nothing by contrast with the
ground he traverses.

On the order Neuroptera, including dragon, scorpion, and
lacewing flies, the pencil of Nature has laid some of her most
brilliant colours, wanting only breadth to attract more general
attention. The linear trunks of dragon-flies are variegated,
according to their species, with yellow, blue, green, and red,
each accompanied more or less with black, and exhibit in the
peculiar clearness and sharpness of their mode of inlay the
appearance more of mosaic than of surface painting.

But it is not either our province, or our purpose, or desire,
to wander far, even descriptively, from home ; and it is time

See Vignette to " Spiders in their Analogies.
Trombidium holosericum.

384 MOSAIC OF BUTTERFLIES.

now to end our brief and most imperfect notices of insect
painting, chiefly of the British School, by a word or two on
the most admired and most permanent of all Nature's per-
formances in this department of her grand atelier — the colouring,
namely, of butter-flies and beetles. But of this, in truth,
especially as concerns butterflies and moths, we have little left
to say. For the few individual descriptions we have found
space to afford them we must refer our readers to preceding
pages and pictures ; and as a general observation on their mode
of decoration, we have noticed, we believe, that the painting on
the wings of Lepidoptera is executed in mosaic, the scales or
plumelets of which it is composed being laid upon, or, more
properly, inserted through, minute holes in the transparent
membrane of the pinion. No niggard of her colours, Nature
on these overspreads both sides of her delicate canvas. Some,
indeed, among our butterflies are able to display on the reverse
of their glorious pinions, as they " ope and close them," a
greater show of pattern than that which adorns their upper
surface. Of this description are the standards of the " Red
Admiral,"1 for in these we hardly can decide which are the
most " admirable," the rich and glowing masses of the upper,
or the varied and elegant shadings and pencillings of the lower
side : the same may be observed of the robes of the " Painted
Lady"2 and their linings. In many also of our genus Poly-
ommatus, the cerulean blue opened in expansion towards the sky
it emulates is hardly more beautiful than that warmer grey
beset with mimic eyes, seeming, when the wing is erected, to
look on the lowlier things of earth.

But we must have done with enamelled and metallic painting,
or where shall we find space to notice, finally, another species
of decoration, \vhich confers on certain among insect forms an
apparent relation yet closer with the mineral kingdom, — that
semblance, we mean, of gilding, which they not unfrequently

1 Vanessa Atalanta ; also " Admirable." a Cynthia Cardui. See Vignette.

INSECT GILDING.

385

exhibit in common only, we believe, with some of the most
highly decorated of fishes l and of serpents ? 2

From its appearing most frequently on the enclosing cases
of butterflies when in their pupa forms, these have obtained,
with the pupae of moths also, the name of Chrysalides and
Aureliaa. This gilding is easily to be observed in August among
the chrysalides of the small tortoiseshell butterfly (Vanessa
Urticce), which are often to be found suspended, head down-
wards, on the nettle-stalks they have stripped, or on some con-
venient wall or pale adjacent.3 The aurelia of the " Painted
Lady"4 is another which well deserves its name for the gold-
like streaks and speckles which variegate its clouded surface.

1 As the Gold and Silver, the John-Dorey, the Gilt-head, the Scomber
auratus, &c.

2 As the Coluber Atratulla, resplendent in scales of burnished gold, &c.

3 See Vignette. 4 Cynthia Cwdni.

i;o-i siianic our mimpcrn Daubing !

,

^C^ifa^P^ L&fc™ \ \»

The two spiders en the top of the wall are of the tribe called " Hunters," as
opposed to *' Sedentaries," or such as construct snares and sit within or beside
them. That on the right, with zebra-like stripes, is the Salticus scenicus ;
opposite, is a nearly resembling species ; and climbing the Wall-flower, is a
beautifully-coloured geometric Web-Weaver.

SPIDERS IN THEIR ANALOGIES WITH OTHER
ORDERS OF CREATION.

E have had occasion to notice already a variety
of correspondencies observable between in-
sects and the higher, or larger, orders of
animated creation. In the gentle, as well as
predaceous tribes, this resemblance is trace-
able ; but with reference especially to habits of destructiveness,
the Spider alone, in its different species, affords the most striking
parallel and prototype of all destructive beings, from man him-

SPIDERS AND MEN. 387

self (we might even say, from the infernal spirit) through the
descending grades of quadruped, bird, reptile, animal, flower,
even to the vegetable of fly-catching construction. Hidden from
view behind the gauzy screen afforded by her horizontal net,
how does the domestic spinner sit grimly on her cunning watch
for the least vibration in her lines, those single threads so art-
fully extended above the main web for a triple purpose — to
arrest the flight of her victims, by its tremblings to announce
their capture, and as a cable-bridge to enable her to reach and
seize her prey.

Besides thus with crafty wiliness seeming to plan and cer-
tainly compassing the destruction of others, the spider, by
apparent stratagem, often assumes the appearance of death as
a means for the preservation of her own life. Who has not
often noticed how that, on alarm or pressing emergency, she
will sometimes, instead of taking at once to her hairy shanks,
only fold them up under her, and, dropping from her station,
remain without motion, even (according to experimental natu-
ralists) to the piercing and tearing asunder of her soft bloated
body?

Again, it has been said and sung, that even the wild beasts
spare their kind, the destroyer Man alone turning " his fierce
pursuit on man." This is not true, the assertion being contra-
dicted by several carnivorous creatures, both of land and water ;
but the spider follows pre-eminently in the path of the principal
and earliest fratricide, by the habit of killing, and, in cannibal-
fashion, devouring its comrades, even of the same family.
Reaumur attempted to establish a factory of the large garden
spiders, for the sake of their strong and beautiful silk ; but the
factious weavers overturned his "projet" by turning their fangs
upon each other. If it were an agreeable object of discovery,
we might seek and find yet a few more corresponding points of
character betwixt ourselves and the " villain spider ; " and what
is singular, such resembling features are the most apparent
in those species of the race which are greatest frequenters of

p P

388 SPIDERS AND WILD BEASTS.

the human habitation and its neighbourhood, — in those which

" Spread their nets, whether they be
In poet's tower, cellar, barn, or tree," —

and which, comprising the spinners of house and garden, are
of a class called Sedentaries, in distinction to the " Vagrants'1
and " Hunters" which, using no net, either lie in ambuscade,
or roam about, seeking what they may devour.

Now, as the " Sedentaries " are best representatives of preying
men, so these latter, the " Vagrants " and the " Hunters," are
the nearer prototypes of preying beasts. And first, the " Va-
grants," cunning also in their cruelty, bear, perhaps, greatest
resemblance to the feline races, springing, like the tiger from
his lair, upon their unsuspecting prey. Of these, one 1 forms
or finds its ambush in a rolled-up leaf; another2 lurks
behind a stone or the gaping bark of an old tree ; a third 3 (as
a tiger in his jungle) sits embowered in the thick panicle of a
reed ; while a fourth, ensconced, as at bottom of a pit, in the
calyx of a dead flower, sits prepared to pounce upon the first
unwary fly happening to visit it in search of honey.

If the more wary roamers of the forest and the desert have
thus their insect images amongst spider " Vagrants," the more
daring have resemblances as apt in the bolder "Hunters" such
as spring openly on their prey, and, after destroying, carry it
for devourment to their dens. On a flowering shrub sits an
enormous hairy-leg of this description, on the look-out, we may
be sure, for game : — perhaps a swollen blue-bottle, a fat drone
bee, or an overgrown crane-fly ? No ; he aims, or we may
almost say he flies, at a higher quarry — at a living prey, lustrous
as a gem, swift as the lightning ; as it darts from flower to
flower, too rapid on the wing for human sight to follow, yet
not so rapid as to elude the eight-eyed vision of the monster
which has marked it for destruction — not so rapid as to out-
strip his eight-legged spring, or to escape the eight terrible

1 Clubiona holosericeum. C. atrox. 3 Aranta arundinacea.

HUNTING SPIDERS. 389

claws which will soon engrasp the feathered honey-sipper,
and bear it from its sunny joys to be devoured in a den of
darkness.

The " Hunter" here is the gigantic " Bird Spider"1 of South
America ; its prey, which it equals in dimensions, one of the
glittering, quick- winged humming-birds which often, it is
said, fall victims to this insect enemy, for bulk and fierceness
the lion of its tribe.

Compared with the above, our little native tiger of the same
race 2 may seem a tame and insignificant destroyer ; but not so,
we warrant, to its insect prey. This is of that pretty, common
species, banded, like the zebra, with stripes of black and white.
Everybody must have seen them upon sunny walls, and win-
dow-seats, and palings (their scorching deserts) from spring to
autumn, though not many, perhaps, have derived as much
" divertissement " as the " Sylvan " Evelyn from observation of
the cunning dexterity with which they watch, then leap upon
their prey ; when he noticed of these, or of some allied vena-
tores, how that one of them, if it " happened not to be within
a competent leap, would move so softly as the very shadow of
the gnomon seemed not to be more imperceptible, unless the
fly moved, and then would the spider move also in the same
proportion, keeping that just time with her motion, as if the
same soul had animated both those little bodies."3 These
" Hunters," at least some of them, though they do not weave
snares, can weave nests, usually a close tissue, within crannies
and crevices, their common lurking-places.

The Wolf Spider4 is another of the " Hunters," which, seizing
its prey openly, bears it to its den, a cavity beneath a stone.
This carnivorous prowler, which is of a dark greenish-grey,
haunts the borders of ponds and streams, and, as well as diving
under, can walk on the surface of, the water; and another5

Mygale avicularia. * Salticus scenicus. See Vignette.

Evelyn's " Travels in India." * Lycosa saccatu. 5 L. piratica.

390 SPIDERS AND PLANTS.

can perform the same feat, either to escape enemies or to pursue
game, the various winged insects which skim the face of the
same liquid mirror.

The power of fasting for long intervals between their san-
guinary repasts, is another characteristic held by many of the
larger predatory animals in common with the spider. One of
the latter, kept by Vaillant for ten months under a sealed glass,
was found reduced only in size, and not, seemingly, in health
or activity.

To the devouring and amphibious reptile and the rapacious
fish, the spider race no less offers its analogies in economy and
disposition. Breathing by means of gills, they are able to
dive, and walk under water, sometimes hunting on shore and
plunging with their prey to the bottom. In the Diving Spider,1
from whose singular habitudes we have spun elsewhere an
imaginary tissue,2 this faculty of respiration is further aided by
that of carrying down a supply of atmospheric air to her sub-
aqueous habitation.

Lastly, the analogy between the fly-catching spider and the
fly-catching vegetable is by no means so remote as may appear.
It is an opinion generally received, that the latter, such as the
catch-fly, the Venus's fly-trap, and the pitcher-plant, appro-
priate to their own nourishment, if not the very juices of the
insects they entrap, the air at least evolved from them in the
process of putrefaction ; and, this admitted, the imprisoning
vegetable, and the imprisoning animal, the one subsisting
wholly, the other partially on the juices of their victims, must
be allowed to be tolerable representatives of each other.

But we have dwelt, perhaps, over long on those exceedingly
ugly features of resemblance by which the spider is marked
out so clearly as a member of that cunning, ferocious, flesh-
eating family of which we constitute the head. Let us turn
now to the brighter side of the Aranea portraiture, — for a

1 Argyroneta aquation.

2 See " Fresh- Water Syren ; " also " A New Gallery of Practical Science."

PERSEVERANCE OF THE SPIDER. 391

brighter side belongs to it. Against spider vices we have a
set-off of virtues. Foremost among them stands maternal
tendernessj or its very image, shown in the devoted care evinced
by weaving mothers of the " treasure" they " tie up" so care-
fully in " silken bags ; " and not alone do they care for it while
thus enveloped in the shape of little senseless eggs, but when
from each egg has issued fortn a little sentient spinner.

Perseverance is another admirable trait for which the spider
is eminently conspicuous. No one can deny it ; — no one who
has ever watched a garden spider in the construction or the
reparation of her geometric web, who has noticed her doubling
and redoubling the lines by which her fabric is to hang sus-
pended, testing repeatedly their power of support by suspension
from them of her own weight as she drops herself, now here,
now there, from different portions of the thread. See her in
construction of her woven wheel, measuring carefully by her
provided ruler — one of her own legs — each spoke or radius,
and each circular mesh which interlaces them; and behold,
finally, after all is completed, so neat, and trim, and regular,
how that when her cords are sundered by the struggles of some
powerful captive — may be, by a Samson blue-bottle — she will
set to work again so cleverly, so patiently, to repair her broken
snare.

In the death of the darker superstitions which used once to
attach to spiders, the remnant of one more cheerful still sur-
vives in the name of the " money-spinner," and the toleration,
even complacency, wherewith, in comparison with the rest of
her sisterhood, this little visitant is still regarded; and truly
this shadow of a fancy would be worth the keeping if people
would but invest it with the substantiality of a moral such as
the " worthy " Fuller thus sets forth : " When a spider," says
he, " is found upon our clothes we used to say ' some money is
coming towards us.' The moral is this. Such who imitate the
Industrie of that contemptible creature, ' which taketh hold
with her hands, and is in king's palaces,' may, by God's

392 TEACHINGS OF THE SPIDER.

blessing, weave themselves into wealth and procure a plentiful
estate."

But while the idle out of mischief may take a lesson of
reproof, the wavering or the idle, out of faint-heartedness, may
derive one of encouragement from the perseverance of the
" money-spinning " family. We have all read how that the
royal hero Bruce, when fleeing before his foes a hunted wan-
derer, took, as an omen and an oracle, the labours of a spider,
making his own decision for a last and final venture dependent,
with the fate of Scotland, on the success or failure of its seventh
effort for attachment of its line. How often has what is called
our destiny, be we as individuals great or humble, seemed sus-
pended on a thread as slender, a thread we are too apt to look on
as a Parcse's line, the work of, and liable to be cut in two by,
a capricious power out of and independent of ourselves.

But not only have hope and courage been infused into the
heart through the instrumentality of an insect weaver, but when
no human shape of charity could approach to cheer it, the de-
solation of a solitary prison has more than once found assuage-
ment in the welcome companionship even of a spider. Who has
not read of M. Pelisson, the hapless inmate of the Bastille, who,
taming his little comrade, taught it to come for food at the sound
of his flute ; and of that other Frenchman, Quatre Mere
Disjonval, who, during an imprisonment in which spiders were
his sole companions, beguiled the weary hours by watching
their movements and proceedings as connected with atmospheric
changes, — the observations thus made forming materials for a
work published in 1797, on Arachnology, or the art of interpre-
ting weather from the webs and motions of the spider race ;
while in times more recent, " una bella ragna" on his dungeon
wall, became the pet of Silvio Pellico.

To return to the virtues of Arachne, we shall close our list
of her recommendable qualities by that of cleanliness, wherein
she rivals even her direst enemy of the broom, even the
worthiest descendant of such assiduous maidens as were wont,

CLEANLINESS OF THE SPIDER.

393

in the days of Faery, to receive ever and anon a silver recom-
pense in the shape of " a sixpence in their shoe." As such a
maiden with her carpet and her curtains, for ever sweeping
and shaking, and thereto adding the personal propriety of never
failing to " clean herself" when her work is over, so does the
domestic spinner with her web, shaking it and dusting it, then
smoothing down her person, and combing her hairy legs, till
no unseemly particle is left to disfigure her attire or abode.

In addition to perseverance and neatness, the spider num-
bers, as we have seen, amongst her more pleasing attributes a
large amount of ingenuity ; but we do not enlarge here either
on its mode of exercise or the works of constructive skill by
which it is exemplified, these having formed subjects more or
less direct of former essays. We have only done our best to
rescue the hairy-legged spinner from unmerited dislike.

'^nare-gcttmg animal^, men ant> fibers.'

On the canal in front are several insects and objects of insect fabrication
such as might have been suggestive to man of the Art of Navigation. Nearest,
on the right, rowing itself down the current, is a Boat-fly ; on a line with it,
to the left, the egg-boat of a common Gnat; and betwixt them, the raft of a
raft-making Spider, bearing its constructor. Closer to the rail appears the
diving-bell of the Diving Water- Spider. The case at the back is occupied by
various specimens of insect skill, and a few of the tools employed in their con-
struction. On the lowest shelf, to the right, is the nest of the Mason Bee, with
its hole of entrance ; cells, the work of a similar insect, appearing in the mortar
of two detached pieces of wall placed behind it. Next to these, in the compart-
ment adjoining, is a fragment of sand-stone, in which are several nests of
Mason Wasps, with the leaning or curved towers raised over them in process of
excavation. Beside these, is a piece of wood tunnelled, for her nurseries, by a
Violet Carpenter Bee, each divided into cells by partitions of cemented sawdust,
and stored with heaps of pollen. The perforations in the wood are openings to
passages which communicate with the cells. Next in order, is another specimen
of the same; and nearer to the left is the nest of another Bee Carpenter, also
tunnelled in a piece of wood, but divided by partitions of clay, instead of saw-
dust. The first object to the right, on the shelf above, is the cell, as constructed
in earth, of an Earth- Mason Caterpillar. It is open, to show the interior,
which is smooth, and lined with silk for the comfort of the chrysalis which lies
within. Next, on a piece of wood, and composed of detached fragments of the

OUR POLYTECHNIC. 395

same material, is the cocoon or cell of a caterpillar of the Puss Moth. The
next is that of a Goat Moth— the winter abode of its long-lived larva in the
heart of a tree ; — a portion of the wood wherein it is embedded, being cut away,
shows its fabric, a cloth-like substance of mingled silk and raspings of wood.
On the upper shelf of all are three tools, used by insect artificers. To the left
are the powerful toothed jaws, constituting chisel, plane, and forceps of a Mason
Wasp. Next, in the centre, is the compound tool, consisting of an auger and
a pair of files, used by the Tree-hopper, to make grooves in branches for the
reception of her eggs ; and to the right, is a portion of the saw used by Saw-
flies for a similar purpose.

A NEW GALLERY OF PRACTICAL SCIENCE.

ADIES and Gentlemen of a mechanic turn,
we can introduce you to a new theatre of ex-
hibition, where ingenious mechanisms, arts,
and manufactures are in daily operation.
There, without payment of a shilling, you
may look upon diving-bells and balloons — see bodies pro-
pelled through water by the strokes of an internal piston —
examine the models of a life-boat and a raft — observe the effect
of cleverly-constructed buoys — behold in practice, or in their
finished productions, the crafts of masonry, carpentry, spin-
ning, weaving, and paper-making — see the operations of end
the implements for boring and tunnelling, the exercises of
rowing and diving, with various other clever and curious per-
formances, of which the Polytechnic can do no more, and in
many instances does less, than display the parallels. Should
you even be of the number who frequent the above-named
gallery for its music rather than its mechanisms, for its pictures
rather than its philosophy, our theatre lacks not something to
suit your humour.

The use of that most simple yet most powerful of instru-
ments, the wedge, could have been suggested by an operation
commonly performed by every species of bee ; yet he who first
hit upon this wonder-working implement would have no doubt

396 MODELS OF BOATS.

laughed incredulously on being told that he was using the same
sort of agency to rend, perhaps an oak, as that employed by a
bee beside him to effect its entrance or egress through the
closed door of a blossom of a toad-flax or snapdragon. The
insect, in accomplishment of this purpose, rests on the lower
lip of the flower, insinuates its tongue between the upper lip
and the valve, and then thrusting in its head, acts with it as a
wedge to force the shut edges asunder.1

Let us begin by a survey of what we shall denominate our
hall. Around it flows an artificial canal, on the surface of
which, stationary or in movement, we see a variety of what
look, at a little distance, like diminutive model boats. These
living boats, of which the like may be seen gliding in summer
on the surface of every pond, are, in short, none other than
boat-flies ; and most appropriately are they thus named. See,
as they strike out regularly with their oar-shaped feet, how they
cut through the liquid element, with their keel-like backs, their
flat stomachs raised uppermost to form a deck, their broad,
beaked heads the prow, their pointed extremities the stern.2

But of what is this tiny boat composed ? and who the builder ?
In lieu of horizontal planks, its sides, as we lift it from the
water, show an array of pyramidal bodies, small end uppermost
and compacted close together. These are the eggs of the gnat.

Well, here, beside the edge of our canal, moored to an aquatic
plant by some silken cables, we perceive, submerged all but
the top, a bell or dome not very dissimilar in size and shape to
the half of a pigeon's egg. Like that, and like a diving-bell, it
is open at the bottom.

To give you on this point entire satisfaction, we will raise
from the water and reverse our diver's habitation, even at the
risk of disturbing its occupant, who has been also, we must tell
you, its ingenious constructor. There, — the bell is uplifted,
and we see him sitting within it, head downwards — a somewhat
strange position ; but it seems we have fairly routed him. He

1 See " Insect Miscellanies." 2 See Vignette

MASONIC WORKERS. 397

falls ! — falls, though, upon eight legs, and makes off at full
speed, no matter whither. Our business is with his vacated
abode, — a dome woven, as we now see, of close-spun silk, —
open, as we said, at bottom, impervious at top, with no orifice
for entrance of water or of air.1

But we must leave, for the present, these aquatic mechanisms,
though as yet but half examined, that we may bestow a little of
our notice upon a few other assembled specimens. Here is one
insect, a sharp, waspish little animal, busied up to her eyes and
ears in our own material for building, brick. Chipping away her
hardest with a trenchant tool, she is employed in the work of
excavation. To do her justice, we cannot but admit that she
never leaves off; yet, for all her assiduity, her progress is but
slow, for as, piece by piece, each about the size of a mustard-
seed, she scoops into her hard material, she carries off each
particle to some distance from the scene of operation.

We may take a look now at the more rapid proceedings of
another independent labourer, and in appearance and attire not
unlike the last. Like her, she also is an excavator, but she is
something more, — more of an erector. She is employed upon
a block of hard sandstone. Each few grains of sand that she
thus detaches we see her kneading into a little pellet, and with
the like moulded masses (her unbaked bricks) she has built
already a circular wall or rampart round the edge of her exca-
vation. Thus proceeding, as her pit deepens her tower rises,
and will rise still, to the height, perhaps, of two or three inches.

Ask you now the purpose of these arts in their miniature
exercise, and the name of their tiny exercisers ? The latter,
whom perhaps from their exterior you may have known already,
are wasps, " mason " wasps, 2 mother wasps, and they are
scooping their caves, and raising their towers, to provide secure
asylums for their young. ,

Contiguous to the above we see some completed specimens
of masonry of a somewhat different construction, the work of

' See Vignette. * Odynena.

Q Q

398 APIAN MASONRY.

another yet allied class of builders. Here is a dome-shaped
tenement, composed apparently of mud or clay. Within it we
discover two separate cells or chambers " of the form and size
of a lady's thimble, finely polished, and of the colour of plaster
of Paris." This material is not clay, but apparently the mortar
of the wall on which, as we have said, the whole structure was
originally placed. The cells, with their outwork of conceal-
ment, were once the nurseries of young bees of a solitary
species,1 and their mother, one of the "masons" of her tribe,
was the clever architect and patient builder of the entire
edifice.

Now let us look at some specimens of insect travelling. Here
is a nest of a carpenter wasp.2 It is wrought in a piece of
wood, somewhat softened by decay, part, probably, of a post or
pale. The tunnel, which is more square than round, is smooth
within, chiselled as if by the tool of a veritable carpenter, and
divided into as many as six separate cells or compartments, of
which the partitions are no thicker than a card, and formed,
not of sawdust (that having been carefully removed), but
of kneaded clay, fetched as laboriously by the little builder,
who herein shows herself an adept in masonry as well as in
her own peculiar art. Within these cells, or some of them,
is a portion of pollen, with which the bee-mother supplies her
brood.

We are handling now what may be looked upon as a perfect
chef-d'oeuvre in insect joinery. It is the nest of a third apian
carpenter, called, from the beautiful colour of her wings, the
violet bee.3 She is not, indeed, a recognized native of our own
island ; but we can, nevertheless, in this her workmanship,
admire and do justice to her constructive skill.

The material, wood, as in the former specimens, is, in this,
perforated by several tunnels cut for about an inch obliquely,
then in a perpendicular direction. Each of these tunnels is

1 Anthophnra retusa. a Of the genus Eumenes.

3 Xylocopa violacea.

EXCAVATED ARCHITECTURE. 399

about a foot deep by half an incb wide, and divided in its length
into separate cells about an inch in depth.1

Who has not heard or read of the rock-hewn temples of the
East ? of the far-famed cave of Elephanta, — that masterpiece of
excavated architecture, — with its pillars and pilasters, its statues,
its relievos of gigantic bulk, cut, all, out of the living stone
(when, who knows ?) by that dwarf in comparison to these
his works, that ephemera in comparison with their duration,
Man ? But there are insects of another sort who have been
working in ages as remote, and who work still, at excavated
structures, which, as measured with their own statures, are more
gigantic by a thousandfold than the sculptured Elephanta or the
erected Edfou. These also are " carpenters " — carpenter ants,
their craft headed by the jetty emmet.2 Their entire structures
are, of course, too bulky for transportation to this our museum
gallery; but here, in some several fragments, we may look
upon their " walls, their galleries separated by partitions with
oval apertures or door-ways, their pillars, arches, columns, and
arcades ;" all wrought with wondrous lightness and delicacy,
and all dyed of a dark, bordering on a blackish hue, how pro-
duced would seem uncertain, but peculiar to the excavations of
these jet-black labourers — not the only ones which cut their
sculptured cities in the trunks of trees. 3 r>t^

But these "carpenters" must no longer detain us, or we
shall want time to bestow a glance, even, upon their brother
'' Weavers." Upon the process of their manufacture we hardly
can, though many are here assembled and busy at their work.
We may look, however, at a few collected specimens of their
clever spinning, as exhibited in a variety of cocoons, from the
looms chiefly of "Moths as Operatives" in their caterpillar
estate.

Here we have them from a veil of delicate net-work to a
covering thick and warm as cloth.

1 See Vignette, and refer to description.
3 Formica fuliginosa.

400 INSECT MANUFACTURES.

Some (as those of the silk-worm) are of pure silk, mingled
in others, in various proportions, with baser materials, such as
hairs from the weaver's own body, particles of wood, bark, or
earth ; while a few are distinguished by partaking largely of
animal secretions, widely different from silk, such as (in the
lacquey) a powder resembling brimstone, and (in the oak-egger)
a calcareous substance not dissimilar to the crust of an egg.
This cocoon of the Hawthorn Saw-fly,1 exposed with its occu-
pant all through the winter upon leafless hedges, is composed of
a material tough as leather, but much harder (also an animal
secretion). Here is an empty one with a curious lid set open
as for the exit of the perfect fly, which, furnished with an
adapted tool for the cutting of this singular trap-door, never
fails in its circular excision to leave entire just such a portion
as serves for an attachment and a hinge.

With a look at one other fabric, we must take leave for the
present of insect manufactures.

This greyish-white substance is paper, — a paper strong,
smooth, and durable, such as, if in sheets of size sufficient, we
might even now be writing on. It is composed of vegetable
fibres, reduced to a pulp, united by size or glue, and spread
out into thin leaf. It is wrought by an artificer, who adopts
a process precisely similar to that employed by those among
us of the same occupation, only with more invariable success
and skill.

What may be the name of this clever paper-maker ? This
specimen of work nearly discloses it. It is an aggregated col-
lection of hexagonal cells, in all but material resembling a
honeycomb ; and a comb it is, a portion of one taken from the
nest of a common wasp.

Now let us examine a few insect tools. Wonderful alike for
its simplicity and the manifold uses which it is made to serve,
here is the double pickaxe, each blade toothed on the inner
edge, acting thus all the better as a fast-holding pair of forceps,

1 Tenth redo.

OPERATIVE TOOLS. 401

as well as a cutting chisel. This, the compound tool, only
slightly varied with different possessors, is the only tool of the
"wasp mason, carpenter, and paper-maker." A pair of wasp
mandibles or jaws constitutes the instrument now before us.1
A hard bony substance is the material of which this and nearly
all insect tools are constructed.

A saw is the implement which next presents itself, — a tool
much resembling, only more complicated than that of our own
carpenters : we may call it rather a pair of saws, or a compound
saw, when in use working simultaneously at one cut. The in-
struments are so exceeding fine and delicate as to need sup-
port, and we see accordingly, that their backs are set within a
groove. The teeth, instead of being simple, are denticulated
with others cut more finely, which confers on this tool the ad-
ditional properties of a rasp or file.1

What are its uses and by whom employed? Its purpose is
to cut grooves in the branches of trees and shrubs for reception
and protection of insect eggs; and the insect by whom the
grooves are cut is a maternal saw-fly.

Here is another tool of surpassing nicety, lodged in a closely-
fitting sheath, from which, on slight pressure, it is seen pro-
truding. It is large enough for partial examination even by
the naked eye, and, when thus viewed, appears a spike of equal
thickness, except at the point, where it is broader and angular,
and on both sides indented with teeth. Now let us behold it
in the microscope. The teeth, strong and sharp, are, we can
see now, about twelve in number on either side, and diminish
in size as they approach the point. But what else reveals our
magnifier ? Why, it shows that the instrument which appeared
simple to our naked sight is made up in reality of three distinct
pieces, the two outer ones armed with teeth, and called2 " files,"
the central one pointed like a lancet, and not denticulate.
The side pieces can be moved backwards and forwards, while
the middle one remains stationary.1

1 See Vignette. 2 By Reaumur.

402 OPERATIVE TOOLS.

The carpenter, or carpentress which owns it, is the female
Tree-hopper, or Cicada, who thus cuts the branches, while her
mate " bursts the very shrubs" by his shrilly music.

Our next more simple instrument is an awl, or piercer,
which issues from a sheath, in form of a curved needle. It is
the piercing ovipositor of a Gall-fly, and, though a great deal
longer than the insect's body, is, by a mechanical contrivance,
nicely adapted to it.

We have here another borer, or brad-awl, defended by a
sheath, which opens lengthwise, like a pair of compasses. The
awl itself is single, nearly three inches long, and terminates,
not in a simple, but a serrated point. This is the instrument
of that large common ichneumon,1 which, for deposit of her
eggs, pierces through the clay defences of a " mason " wasp's
nest.

Here, as seen in the microscope, is a small needle, — a needle
of human manufacture. Its point appears " above a quarter of
an inch in breadth, not round nor flat, but irregular and un-
equal 5 and the surface, so smooth and bright to the naked eye,
seems full of ruggedness, holes, and scratches, like that of a
rough iron bar."2

Beside this clumsy piece of workmanship is now introduced
another, by an infinitely more skilful hand, which exhibits " a
polish most amazingly beautiful, without the least flaw, blemish,
or inequality, and ending in a point too fine to be visible."3
This we might suppose to be our insect weapon — a natural as
contrasted with an artificial needle ; but no such thing ; it is
not the weapon, only the weapon's sheath. This opens longi-
tudinally ; and now we discover what it enclosed, viz. two
darts, distinctly separate even to the base. We can see further,
that these darts are each of them armed with ten saw-like teeth,
such as occasion the instrument, sheath and all, to remain fre-
quently within the substance wherein it may be plunged. In
truth, this is a formidable-looking tool of torment; but poison

1 Pimpla manifestator. 3 Hooke's " Micrographia." 3 Hooke.

OFFENSIVE WEAPONS.

403

also comes in aid of its lacerating power, — liquid poison, con-
tained in an attached bag, from which, on pressure by a me-
chanical contrivance, it is ejected into the wound at the moment
of its infliction. This deadly weapon is a bee's sting.

We are shown next the blood-drawing stiletto of a gnat.
We inspect it with an unaided eye. It seems to us a needle,
solid, pointed, fine as a hair. We see it in the microscope, and
in lieu of a simple needle, we behold a compound of several
pieces, some of which are barbed. These are the piercers, while
the sheath which encloses them is the sucker, which completes
the apparatus. 1

See Reaumur, Swammerdam, Burmeistcr, and " Insect Architecture."

lOc challenge all .nations !

The subject of this Vignette is the Parsonage House at Barham, Suffolk, oT
the late venerable and lamented Mr. Kirby, the distinguished author, in con-
junction with Mr. Spence, of the well known "Introduction to Entomology,"
and of one of the " Bridgewater Treatises." The Wasp in the foreground,
employed in cutting off the wings of a fly with a view to its more convenient
transport, is illustrative of an anecdote given by Dr. Darwin, and quoted by
Kirby, in his observations on two classes of insect activities — those prompted
solely by Instinct, and those guided by apparent Reason.

TWO THINGS OF DIFFICULT DEFINITION.

MATURE is now daily locking up from obser-
vation, although in no spirit of a miser, more
and more of her vegetable treasure, and
therewith is hidden from our view nearly all
of those insect myriads which filled the sum-
mer air. This dearth comparatively of outward objects of in-
terest inclines, or in a measure drives, us to seek for others of

ANIMAL INSTINCTS. 405

a kind not palpable to sight ; and as the decline of life, with the
failure of its active energies, affords greater leisure, and should
excite increased desire to look within ourselves, so the decline
of the year gives time, and naturally leads us to inquire into the
nature of those inward springs by which are set in motion all
the outward activities which have formed, hitherto, the chief
objects of our notice.

By the animating principle of the insect world, we do not,
of course, mean that of mere vitality, common alike to animal
and plant, but that endowment of perceptive and apparently
judging mind which directs the former in its various operations.
— Instinct shall we call it? Reason? or a combination of
both ?

Perhaps the best definition of insect and other animal in-
stincts is that given by Kirby, who considers them as " un-
known faculties, implanted in their constitution by their
Creator, by which, independent of instruction, observation, or
experience, and without a knowledge of the end in view, they are
impelled to the performance of certain actions tending to the
well-being of the individual and preservation of the species."

Through Instinct, that endowment which is usually as perfect
in the insect's creeping infancy as in its soaring adolescence, all
caterpillars are directed to find, or more properly to appro-
priate, the food instinctively provided by the mother's instinct,
while some, even before that provision is attacked or cared for,
are bidden by the same imperative power to shape and clothe
themselves with garments made generally out of the same
material as that to be employed for food. Of this we have seen
examples in the clothes-moth in its state of infancy, with others
of* the same tribe (Tineidce) which make to themselves cases,
or moveable tents (whence they are called tent-makers), out of
leaves, bark, and other substances.

The weaving, most ingeniously, of variously-formed cocoons,
more or less solid, according usually to the period of their
occupation, — the suspending themselves no less cleverly, and in

406 INSTINCTIVE ACTIONS.

places of security, for the process of transformation, are per-
formances no less admirable of the caterpillar crew ; and the
instinct which directed them, dormant for awhile, with other
faculties, in the chrysalis, wakes again in the winged insect.
Thereby directed, the moth or butterfly, perhaps guided also
by her taste and smell, repairs directly to the flowers whereon
she loves most to take her pleasure ; and then, in opposition to
those very senses, proceeds, at Instinct's bidding, to the flower-
less shrub or vegetable, for deposit of her eggs on the leaves
best suited to support her unthought-of progeny.

With bees, ants, and other social insects, Instinct would not
appear, as with the Lepidoptera, to spring from the egg in full
maturity, not at least with the active and varied powers after-
wards acquired. In bee grubhood, also in that of wasps and
ants, the instincts of imbibing nourishment and of spinning
their cocoons would seem the only ones in activity, the place of
all others being supplied by that watchful assiduity, also in-
stinctive, with which the labourers of the hive or ant-hill tend
upon the young of their communities. But no sooner does the
bee attain to maturity, than Instinct, in full development, like
the form over which it is to bear rule, impels the wings untried,
to carry their possessor by the shortest cut to the flowery fields
of her earliest labour ; then reconducts her to her straw-built
home as unerringly as though she, the tyro gatherer, were the
most veteran collector of the hive.

But does reason shine alone for man of all the inhabitants of
earth ? Men there are, not perhaps of those who best cultivate this
most improveable possession, who would yet for themselves and
kind claim its exclusive monopoly. Such as these must grudge
of course to the gigantic elephant even the half-justice com-
monly awarded him in the epithet of " half -reasoning" animal ;
and looking on him merely as an enormous clock, of which the
clumsy machinery is worked alone by instinct, what other can
they do than regard as a tiny watch that insect miracle yclept
an ant? None acquainted at all with the chronicles of ele-

ACTS OF SEEMING REASON. 407

phantine performance, can be at a loss for facts, not isolated,
entirely at variance with the idea of making of the elephant a
mere monster machine ; and as for the ant, the following rela-
tion,1 with a thousand more, would read strangely of a mechanic
agent : —

" I saw an ant pulling with his mouth a piece of wood. The
rest were busy in their own way ; but when he came to an
ascent, and the load became too much for him, three others
came immediately behind, pushed it up to level ground, and
then left him. The end he pulled was the smallest, and, as
he drew it between two things, it stuck there. After several
fruitless efforts, he went behind, pulled it back, and turned it
round."

Proceedings such as these accord certainly much more closely
with the opinion of the enlightened and pious Sharon Turner
(by whom the fact is quoted), that " the actions and habits of
the insect world display the same kind of animal mind [allowed
by the same writer to be judging mind] and feeling which birds
and quadrupeds exhibit. If there be a difference, it is not to
the disadvantage of insects, for ants, bees, and wasps, and espe-
cially the smallest of these, ants, do things, and exercise sensi-
bilities, and combine for purposes, and achieve ends, that bring
them nearer to mankind than any other class of animated
nature/''2

We insect men may not relish, perhaps, or care to observe,
this approximation towards ourselves, of men-like insects. We
would rather, perhaps, make the most of the inferential argu-
ment, that because insects proper have avowedly a very large
share of instinct, they have therefore no reason at all. We
might as well infer of ourselves, contrary to facts, that because
we may have a large share of reason we are utterly devoid of
instinct.

The practice of ants to rear aphides for the future consump-

1 From the " Imperial Magazine."

2 " Sacred History of the World," vol. iii.

E R

408 VARIATION OF INSTINCT.

tion of the sweets they furnish, bears equally the character of
instinctive prescience.

Instinct can also on occasion vary as well as err ; often dis-
playing, among insects, its capability of accommodating itself,
like reason, to circumstances. This is continually exemplified
in the case of caterpillars, which, when confined to a box, will
employ bits of paper and other chance materials in lieu of the
grains of wood or earth with which nature is accustomed to
supply them. Another instinctive operation varied to meet
exigence is instanced by Reaumur, in the proceedings of a little
elm tent-maker, whose tent or case of leaf-skin having been cut
open at the side, was sewn up by its little occupant, instead of
being supplied by a new one, as unvarying instinct would
have prompted.

We have given, elsewhere,1 Dr. Darwin's often-quoted
anecdote of the wasp and the dead fly, whose wings, when
found on trial to be obstructive of its convenient transport, the
wasp alighted to cut off. Kirby remarks on this relation,
" Could any process of ratiocination be more perfect ? Instinct
might have taught it" (as we believe it usually does) " to cut
off all the wings of all flies previously to flying ; but here it
attempted to fly with the wings on, and was impeded by a cer-
tain cause, diccovered what that cause was, and alighted to
remove it." Did not the discovery of this cause imply also
memory, and a gain of knowledge from experience, by which
alone the wasp could have been taught, or reminded, that the
wings of the fly were the impediments to his flight — have given
him at least reason to suspect it from the greater facility with
which he had transported bodies that were wingless ?

A trick, asserted by Huber to be on occasion resorted to by
humble-bees for the purpose of extracting honey from flowers
that are deeply tubular, has been adduced as another striking
instance of the capability of insects to profit by experience.
These humming honey-suckers usually extract the nectar from
1 " Defence of Wasps."

INSECT COMMUNICATION. 409

the natural opening at top of the bean and other tubular
flowers ; but when by the breadth of their shoulders forbidden
entrance into this narrow passage, they drill a hole with their
proboscis through the calyx right into the tube, and in this
manner tap their luscious wine, while the less bulky Bacchanals
of the same species quaff it in the ordinary way.

It is not ours to boast ourselves of any talismanic gift,
enabling us to " understand the Steven" of parleying insects;
but we never watch the busy workers of the ant-hill, coming
and going, stopping as they encounter, and laying their heads
together, without being pretty certain that they are saying to
each other a something quite as full, perhaps, of informing or
of friendly significance as the " Fine day," or the " How do
you do?" which forms the usual salutation of meeting men.

We may often, too, perceive an ardent little labourer of the
same race toiling at a burden — may be, a great dead blue-
bottle— may be, a fragment of wood five times bigger than
herself. After repeated efforts, she finds her strength unequal
to remove it, and then bethinks herself (for think she must)
that two or three united forces, and several pairs of forceps, are
better than one, and, acting on the thought, we see her approach
another or perhaps a group of her comrades, conduct them to the
spot where she left her load, and succeed by their assistance in
its transport.

On the borders of a path or roadway leading through High-
gate wood towards Hornsey, were scattered several of the
conical cities of the red or wood ants. These, in their comings
and goings, were accustomed continually to cross the thorough-
fare, in doing which many among them fell victims to the feet
of the passers->by. The intelligence of the survivors extended
not certainly to the length of making them take warning by
the fate of their comrades ; yet they seemed to observe and
sympathize therein. We have repeatedly noticed them stop-
ping, first one, then another, on discovering of a dead mutilated
body, till a group of several is collected round it. Sometimes,

410 INSECT CAPABILITIES.

after an apparent consultation, the individuals separated, leaving
the remains where found ; at others, singly or together they
attempted and accomplished their removal.

That with relation to each other, the instincts or the affec-
tions of insects are not, then, as has been imagined, wholly
selfish, — that, however circumscribed their sphere, they yet
move in a circle beyond the central point of sensual gratifica-
tion or self-preservation, is scarcely, we think, a matter to be
doubted ; but how far the mental principles of these little crea-
tures, like those of the larger animals, can communicate with,
or may in any degree be susceptible of, influences from the
" master-mind" of man, is a question which most people would
deride rather than attempt to answer or consider.

From the story of M. Pelisson's spider, which always de-
scended for the meal wherewith he was accustomed to provide
it, on hearing the sound of his flute, we may not infer, perhaps,
that spiders in general are gifted (as would appear with the
seal) with a soul for music. That particular spider, as well as
his race, had probably only a taste for flies ; but from the fact
related, the inference is plainly deducible, that they are capable
of receiving through their senses other impressions than those
absolutely conducive to their support, and that they have in
their minds a power of connection such as mere instinctive
impulse neither requires nor exhibits.

Supposing the insect, in common with all other animal
minds, to possess this extent of capability, we shall not laugh
at Reaumur's expression of "the tamed moth," which sipped
syrup off his finger, or doubt the relation of an English natu-
ralist, who tells us of the humming-bird hawks, which, when
on wing at their flowery repast, flew away frightened by his
presence, till, tamed by custom, they learned to continue un-
alarmed the discussion of their delicate banquet.

In speaking of animal natures in connection with our own,
we cannot forbear extract of a few remarks bearing on the sub-
ject, by an American writer who has broached some new and
intelligent ideas on the development of mind : —

MAN''S RELATION TO ANIMALS. 411

a Everything which surrounds us is full of the utterance of
one word completely expressive of its nature. This word is its
name, for God even now (could we but see it) is creating all
things, and giving a name to every work of his love, in its per-
fect adaptation to that for which it is designed. But man has
abused his power, and has become insensible to the real cha-
racter of the brute creation, still more so to that of inanimate
nature, because, in his selfishness, he is disposed to reduce them
to slavery.

" We find the animal world either in a state of savage wild-
ness or enslaved submission. It is possible, that as the cha-
racter of man is changed they may attain a midway condition
removed from both. As the mind of man acknowledges its
dependence on the Divine Mind, brutes may add to their in-
stinct submission to human reason, preserving an unbroken
chain from our Father in heaven to the most inanimate parts
of creation. * * * Everything will seem to be conscious
of its use, and every man will become conscious of the use of
everything."

But it is more in our province to illustrate than to argue.
Let us show, in conclusion, how two poetic minds — Christian
men of different countries and differing creeds — have thought
and written on this our reconciling speculation. A canine
favourite is the object whereon is made to hang with both poets
their sentiment and belief; but allowing continued existence to
the dog, we must not deny it (admitting the resemblance of
their forms of mind) to the ant or to the bee. Thus, our Southev,
on the death in old age, by drowning, of a faithful friend and
companion of his youth : —

* But fare thee well ! mine is no narrow creed,
And He who gave thee being did not frame
The mystery of life to be the sport
Of merciless man ! There is another world
For all that live and move — a better one !
Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine

412 LINES FROM LAMARTINE.

Infinite Goodness to the little bounds
Of their own charity, may envy thee."1

And thus, in. substance, though in words which do but sorry
justice to the beautiful lines of the original " Episode," does no
meaner man than Alphonse de Lamartine address his real or
imaginary favourite : —

" My dog ! the difference between thee and me
Knows only our Creator ; — only He
Can number the degrees in being's scale
Between thy instinctive lamp, ne'er known to fail,
And that less steady light of brighter ray,
The soul which animates thy master's clay ;
And he alone can tell by what fond tie,
My look thy life — my death, thy sign to die.
Howe'er this be, the human heart bereaved,
In thy affection owns a boon received,
Nor e'er, fond creature, prostrate on the ground,
Could my foot spurn thee or my accents wound !
No, never, never, my poor humble friend,
Could I by act or word thy love offend !
Too much in thee I reverence that Power
Which formed us both for our appointed hour ;
That hand which links, by a fraternal tie,
The meanest of His creatures with the high.
Oh, my poor Fido ! when thy speaking face,
Upturned to mine, of words supplies the place ;
When, sentry by my bed, the slightest moan
That breaks my troubled sleep disturbs thy own ;
When noting in my heavy eye the care
That clouds my brow, thou seek'st its meaning there,
And then, as if to chase that care away,
My pendant hand dost gently gnaw in play ;
When, as in some clear mirror, I descry
My joys and griefs reflected in thine eye, —
When tokens such as these thy reason speak
(Reason, which with thy love compared, is weak),
I cannot, will not, deem thee a deceiving
Illusive mockery of human feeling, —

Southey, 1796.

LINES FROM LAMAETINE. 413

A body organised by fond caress

Warmed into seeming tenderness, —

A mere automaton, on which our love

Plays, as on puppets, when their wires we move.

No ! when that feeling quits thy glazing eye,

'Twill live in some blest world beyond the sky.

No, God will never quench his spark divine,

Whether within some glorious orb it shine,

Or lighten up the spaniel's tender gaze,

Who leads his poor blind master through the maze

Of this dark world ; and when that task is o'er,

Sleeps on his humble grave, to wake no more." l

" Jocelyn," Episode par A. de Lamartine, tome ii. p. 155.

.rtfiore toapg tfjan one of getting to tlje fiottom
ofafeccet.

A trio of common Cockroaches (Blatta Germanica), commonly misnamed
Black Beetles, are the invaders of the kitchen here represented.

THE SPIRITS OF HEARTH AND HOME.

A CHRISTMAS STORY.

EMORY ! painter of the past ! let us invoke
thee ! Ah ! but thou art too busy : we want
but a single subject, and now, with a few
touches of thy magic pencil, thou hast brought
before us pictures enough of persons and of
scenes to furnish an entire gallery, — pictures self-arranged, of
which the clearest and the warmest-tinted are those most distant.
First, there is a landscape, half rural, half marine, of a
village near the Kentish coast, — an old-fashioned quiet little
village, with its heavy-headed chimneys appearing here and there
amidst embowering elm-trees ; more distant, the square spireless

PICTURES OF THE PAST. 415

tower of the ancient church ; and behind all, caught at intervals,
the line of ocean, defined and dark, or mingled almost with the
blue horizon.

Towards the centre of this wood-cradled nest, there stands, in
the foreground of our picture, an old quaint-looking residence,
itself a cottage, but distinguished from the lesser and lowlier of
the assemblage by its magnitude, its flight of steps ascending
from the pathway to the garden gate, its surrounding shrubbery
and flanking fir-trees, its trellised porch and arched doorway,
its casemented bay-windows, and its clustered chimneys. Three
other pictures (family and domestic portraits) we must take down,
next, from our memory-furnished gallery. All are of dwellers
in the cottage just described, the principal residence, and eke
the vicarage, of the village of H .

First, we have its reverend master, of build substantial and
air unpretending as his abode, of middle age, middle stature,
and mediocre features, a man altogether made up of middlings,
except that he seems invested with a portion more than mid-
dling of indolent good humour. Most easy vicar ! dearly did we
love thee ; but only in proportion to thy claims upon our young
affections. Thou wert our kind uncle, and, much more, scarcely
less a father unto us than to thine own only little daughter Lucy ;
and thou wert, moreover, our tutor, our earliest instructor in
much of varied knowledge, — truly more varied than profound.
Thyself an entomologist (albeit of no zealous stamp), 'twas thou
first set us on our hobby, and for this alone we should revere
and love thy memory.

Two humbler personages hang, in their portraitures, beside
our uncle, — humble, yet withal of vast importance in his house-
hold, which, for several years, had been without a mistress.

One is the widower's housekeeper, the nurse of his little
Lucy, and once his own, old Dolly — Dolly Dove — than whom
no feathered parent of the dove-cot ever spread a wing more
tenderly over her cherished nestlings.

The other portrait is that which presents the figure of Dolly's

416 A FIRESIDE INTERIOR.

fellow-servant, our uncle's butler, valet, amanuensis, and libra-
rian, eke our writing-master (Lucy's and mine), the angular,
bony, spindle-shanked, high-shouldered, hard-featured, hard-
minded, if not exactly hard-hearted, Caleb Caligraph, who could
never from his cradle have looked young, and could never to
his grave have appeared absolutely old.

Now, last of our pictures, comes an interior, a scene by fire-
light within the cottage parsonage depicted in our first. Here
is the large low kitchen, opening out of the large low hall, with
its open rafters apt for the double duty of supporting superin-
cumbent chambers and dependent hams ; its dresser of like
solidity, only of more fair complexion, and displaying on its
shelves a bright array of blue-edged platters and polished
pewters, both shining in cold disdainful rivalry against the ruddy
coppers underneath ; the whole illuminated by the glare of a
Vesuvian mountain of wood-crowned coal, glowing at bottom,
blazing at top, crackling and spluttering, rejoicing, as it would
seem, within its ample range, that its culinary labours, for the
day, are ended.

Our interior is not entirely a picture of still life. Seated,
one on a low stool, the other on a wooden chair beside the fire,
are two children — a little white-frocked girl of perhaps nine or
ten, fair, and looking fragile as a flower, and a boy some three
years older, and by his garb seeming, like herself, a visitor only
to the kitchen. The girl is as at Christmas — Christmas fifty
years ago — appeared our little cousin Lucy.

At the period when the above scenes and persons were in-
vested with reality and life, the 23rd of December used to be a
red-letter day in our then short calendar. It was that on which
our uncle was accustomed to entertain a party of old college
friends ; and we and our cousin, our company superfluous in
the parlour, were permitted to bestow it in the kitchen, there to
take tea with Dolly Dove and Caleb.

In the kitchen, then, behold us, by firelight, — Lucy and I,
and a large white cat.

CALEB GALIGRAPH. 437

It was a tempestuous winter's evening : the sleety rain came
every now and then pattering against the casement, and falling
in hissing drops upon the thirsty flames ; and when the showers
remitted of their battering violence, we only heard more plainly
the howl of the east wind in the tops of the old fir-trees round
the house, and the creaking of a rusty weathercock on an
adjacent dove-cot, with the sharp gallop of a hurried horse upon
the hard high road, followed by the angry bark of our house-
dog Keeper ; but of all these varied sounds, nearest and most
distinct, and diverting speedily our attention from them all, was
the chirp of a cricket from between the bricks of the glowing
hearth.

Presently there came a sound of foot-scraping at the kitchen
back door, which opened and gave entrance to a gust of east
wind, and to Caleb Caligraph, returned from seeing that the
visitors' horses had been, like their masters, hospitably enter-
tained.

Having rid himself of hat, great-coat, and lantern, Caleb
joined our company by deposit of his stiff ungainly figure in his
own arm-chair, in which, by the way, he never seemed to take
his ease ; not, however, till he had duly recognized our presence
by two separate inclinations of his queer, incomplete-shaped
head, inclinations of two-fold character, — half, bows of respect
to his master's daughter and master's nephew, half, nods of
patronage to the children he had known from infancy, to whom
he had imparted, or was imparting, of the art and mystery of
penmanship and figures, and to whom, above all, he had given
presents, — the annual present, that is, at Christmas, on the
exact anniversary we commemorate, of a king and queen of gilt
gingerbread.

When our party of four was finally arranged, — Mr. Caleb in
his arm-chair on one side of the fire, Mrs. Dove presiding over
her tea-board opposite, we, their guests, in intermediate places
by the table, — my little cousin began to relate how we had seen
the cricket, and to repeat, with a little of my prompting, a few

s s

418 A MONOGRAPH ON CRICKETS.

couplets of a " Cricket Song." Dolly listened with grave at-
tention, and when the rhymes were ended, — " I can't say," said
she, " that I ever heard a cricket sing as plain as that ; but
there's no knowing, they're such wonderful creturs in their
doings, lapping the milk as nateral as old Tom there, and eat-
ing bread and butter as hearty as a Christian. Then to see how
they run amongst the red-hot ashes with never a foot burnt or
a whisker singed, just like, if I may say so, the three holy
children in the book of Dan'el; and what's most unaccountable
of all, and what makes me think above all that they must be of
the natur of sperits or fairies, they comes and goes all of a sud-
den, nobody can tell when or how." " Why, Dolly," said I,
" they can burrow, you know, and creep through crannies ;
besides, they have large wings to carry them wherever they
please." " Well, dear, if they have, they're not like a rale
insect's, a fly's or a bee's, standing out plain and straight to be
seen by everybody; besides I've never seen one a-flyingof the
hundreds as used to come to this fire-place. But let 'em come
and go however they may, one thing is certain, good luck
comes with 'em, and, whenever they go, turns tail at the same
time. Crickets is certainly wonderful creturs, — if not sperits,
more like -'em than anything else that comes about us."

Lucy looked round fearfully, and got closer to her nurse's
elbow, as the latter brought thus to an emphatic termination
her monographs on the families Achetidce and Blattidce.
They were followed, also, by a sound, compound of groan,
cough, and whistle, from the liny lips of Mr. Caligraph,
succeeded by the sententious apothegm — tf Superstition is the
daughter of Ignorance," uttered with a look of unmistakeable
application to Mrs. Dove, who, dove as she was, seemed slightly
ruffled. " I know," said she, " though I'm my father's own
daughter, that I'm not so wise as some folks, but I think, Mr.
Caligrub, you might be a little more perlite, now at Christmas
time, and in the company of little Miss here, and Master."
" Why," returned the butler, alias librarian, alias writing-

THE ASSAULTED CRICKET. 419

master — " respecting the young lady and young gentleman, I
must take leave to observe that ' youth is apt at learning/ and
that — ahem ! — ' to instil false notions is not good. ' Fairies are
fabulous/ and so, in my opinion, are spirits too, — I always set
iny face against them, always did ; and as to crickets and
kitchen beetles, those mean hinsects, of, I should say, the genus
Hachetidy and Blatty, to talk of their being fairies or spirits,
why"—

Here the fire-side chirper, who for the last half-hour had
been perfectly mute, burst forth with such shrilly loudness as
nearly to overpower the low husky voice of the prosaic setter-
down of Dolly's superstitions. Caleb gave a violent kick with
his great splay foot against the side of the fire-place, over the
very spot whence the insect's voice proceeded. Down fell some
flakes of plaster, and away, over the heated hearth, towards its
opposite side, scampered the assailed cricket. But his move-
ments were not half fleet enough for the ruthless Caleb, who,
deaf to our interceding exclamations, and regardless even of
falling embers, seized the hapless runaway by one of his long
leaping legs just as he had made good his retreat into a snug
cranny between the bricks.

Thus hard pressed and hard pulled, the cricket abandoned
his leg, and leaving it, a trophy, in the hand of his persecutor,
disappeared within his hard-won place of refuge. Lucy burst
into tears ; I, to see her, doubled my fist, and actually dealt our
writing-master a sound blow ; and as to Dolly, no words, no
pencil can depict the change that came over her. She neither
shed a tear nor would she have struck a blow, — hardly felt,
perhaps, either sorrow or anger, all else swallowed up in a
sudden shuddering presentiment, fearfully anticipative of some
coming calamity connected mysteriously with the violence just
done to the cricket, the last cricket of her hearth, the last good
genius of our home.

Well, Mr. Caligraph was certainly sorry or compunctious

420 FORGIVENESS AND FOREBODING.

for having maimed, perhaps killed, the cricket, and so shared
in a measure the discomfiture he had brought upon us all.
He gave us no more of his copy-book moralities, and as soon
as tea had come to a premature end, he muttered something
about something else he had to see to, and left the kitchen.

After Lucy was in bed, Mrs. Dove redescended to the
kitchen, and joined Caleb, to await the return home of the
other servants, and the always tardy break-up of my uncle's
social sederunt. She, poor soul ! had lost her appetite, but she
laid on supper for the old man, and even took down his pipe
and placed it by his side. Softened, perhaps, for once, by these
unmerited attentions, the offending butler, now that we were
no longer present to witness his humiliation, actually made up
his mind to express something like contrition for the deed he
had committed. After sundry uneasy contortions of limb and
feature, the hard lines of his face assumed something of a de-
precating turn. He drew his chair towards that of his vis-d-
vis, and then, in a voice not unlike the scraze of its legs upon
the brick floor, gave utterance, as if with infinite effort, to the
undeniable assertion that " Forgiveness is gracious."

Dolly, with a sorrowful but most forgiving smile, shook her
head ; " Ah, Caleb ! " said she, " you were in a pet, and I
suppose couldn't help it ; but sure as we are sitting here, some-
thing amiss will come over this old house before another Christ-
mas. Well, you may look as if you didn't believe it ; but we
shall see."

At the parsonage we were all in our different ways addicted
to entomology; following therein the example of its master.
My uncle possessed a cabinet of entomological specimens, with
a case full of entomological books, finely illustrated — also, in
the season, an insect menagerie, of which the collection and the
feeding were chiefly mine. The care of the cabinet and the
books, as coming within the province of librarian, fell to the
share of Caleb, who having, in their camphoring and dusting,
made himself acquainted, by halves, with a few scientific names

COLD CHRISTMAS TIDINGS. 421

of orders, families, and species, believed himself, from the acqui
sition of these scanty chips, to have become a deacon in ento-
mologic craft.

On the morrow after the disaster of the cricket, my cousin
and I were again the guests of Mrs. Dove, but then in her own,
the housekeeper's room, for my uncle spent the day in bed, a
custom of no rare occurrence on that which followed his annual
academic commemoration. The next morning, however, being
that of Christmas-day, we breakfasted, as usual, in the parlour,
and received, each of us, a hearty kiss, and a blessing as hearty,
appropriate to the season. In the same overflowing spirit he
failed not to garnish both our plates with nicely apportioned
slices of the spiced beef which always, at the festive season,
reigned paramount over the ham and tongue of ordinary
breakfasts. After having himself done ample justice to
the ruddy round, he had just equalized its surface by a last
shaving, Lucy, lately promoted to the office of tea-maker, was
pouring out his third cup, when Caleb entered, and laid two
letters on the table by his master. Of the two just arrived,
one was a Christmas annual from my father, the vicar's bro-
ther, a merchant in London, the other a stiff, business-looking
letter with a large seal, which my uncle, after he had read
aloud the contents of the first, proceeded to open. Though
fifty years have passed since that morning, I seem to have now
before me the countenance of its reader under the talismanic
change wrought by that piece of paper. He seemed to gulp
down a rising exclamation, but it was more than he could do to
swallow with it the remainder of his breakfast. Presently he
put the letter in his pocket, rose, and left the room, bidding
Lucy prepare for church, but in a tone as altered as his looks.

It was some time before the nature of that Christmas intel-
ligence by which the vicar was so sensibly affected became
apparent. For awhile there was no change within his house-
hold, save in his own dull depressed demeanour, with a shade
of sympathetic gloom discernible in the face of Mrs. Dove.

422 DOLLY IN DECADENCE.

Then, as from a tree shaken by autumnal blasts, every redun-
dancy was seen to fall from the comfortable establishment of
the parsonage cottage. House and kitchen-maids, stable-lad,
and gardener, were one by one dismissed ; the cows were
driven to a fair ; the pony became the property of a neighbour
farmer. The supplies of old pensioners dwindled till they died.
The kitchen range became of course proportionately contracted,
the jack was rarely heard, and as for the cricket, that was
never heard or seen at all — never since that fatal evening;
— he was departed — dead, or, if of mould immortal, mortally
offended.

In a language of signs too significant to be mistaken was
thus revealed the purport of that chilly greeting which had met
my uncle upon Christmas morning ; the announcement, for it
was none other, of his banker's total failure, involving the loss
of his whole fortune, except the slender income derived from his
very small, poor, and lowly-tithed parish.

It may seem strange, but the boding impression made on
Mrs. Dove by the wrong done to the favourite of her hearth
did not appear so greatly deepened as might have been expected
by the blow fallen already on her master's fortune. She was
doubtless perfectly convinced that it had happened in accord-
ance with her prophetic augury ; but perhaps she had expected
worse, and was relieved, therefore, at supposing the doom ac-
complished, and that ill luck or the offended cricket had done
its worst.

Then there was another cause why Dolly's spirits bore up so
bravely. She was more busy than ever. Prodigious were her
efforts to supply to her impoverished master the deficiencies
which, but for them, he might have felt in his personal com-
forts. His dinners were dressed with double care, more pro-
fusely garnished, more punctually served. Not a stew-pan did
she suffer to grow dull in absence of the kitchen-maid, nor a
parlour to mourn in dust and cobwebs for the absence of the
housemaid. She supplied the place of all ; yet every evening

THE DAY OF DEPARTURE. 423

would see her in her cap and apron of unsullied whiteness, the
same respectable concAerge as in better days, ready by her trim
exterior and cheerful aspect to baffle the speculations of all
curious visitors, whether to kitchen or parlour, who might come
to pry into their minister's altered fortunes.

Though my poor uncle's affairs wore an irretrievable aspect,
he had been urgently advised to pay a business visit to the me-
tropolis by friends there resident. Amongst them was my
father (his younger brother), who had sunk in mercantile adven-
ture a younger brother's fortune, and was now, with the burden
of a large motherless family, only toiling to acquire another.
To his abode in the City my uncle had for above three months
been promising to repair ; but in a procrastinating spirit, half-
nervous, half-supine, he had from day to day deferred his jour-
ney till the arrival of the second week in May, when he actually
made up his mind to leave his home for the first time for many
years.

The morning came on which he was to take the coach from
the neighbouring post-town. Its distance of three miles was
beyond that of his usual walking, and he was glad, therefore,
to accept for the occasion a loan of the pony once his own.
Caleb was despatched beforehand to bring it back, and carry his
master's portmanteau, with a basket of provision for the jour-
ney, provided by Mistress Dove. About eight o'clock the
traveller himself started. Dolly stood on the steps, looking
after him with wistful gaze ; Lucy and I (for a part of the way)
bearing him company, — she seated on the saddle before him, I
walking by the side. The labourers returning from their work
to breakfast looked inquisitive as they touched their hats, won-
dering at the object of their pastor's early sortie.

Few were the words, but they were very kind, which my
uncle said to us, and fond were the looks — fond and very sad
— with which he regarded us as we proceeded slowly along the
beautiful winding road, which, after passing the church, ran
nearly parallel with the coast to the little sea-side town from

424 DARK FOREBODINGS.

whence the stage started. Fond, as I have said, more earnestly
fond than usual, were all his looks and words ; but of all, none>
were by me so well remembered as his parting injunction —
" Take care, Frank, of your little cousin." This was given at
the foot of a hill between us and the town, up which he had
forbidden our ascent, and just as I was helping Lucy from the
saddle after he had given her his parting kiss. Then he kissed
me too. " God bless you, my boy ! God bless you, my dear
children !" and the pony, from habit, broke into a canter, and
was presently half-way up the hill.

I felt, at that moment an unaccountable chili strike to my
young heart; but I was to "take care of my little cousin ;"
and, seeing the tears streaming down her cheeks, I began the
fulfilment of my charge, by trying to play the man, and do my
best to console and to divert her.

Week after week passed over, and brought from my uncle
only an occasional short letter, of which those received latterly
made no mention of return. Meantime, the purse which he
had consigned to Dolly on departure waxed low and lower,
while, in like proportion, the face of the faithful stewardess
grew more and more anxious, till she was an entirely altered
person, in all but devoted affection, testified, if possible, more
than ever towards us, her children.

One night, late in September, when we were assembled —
Lucy on a low stool, one hand on Dolly's knee, the other on
the head of the large white cat — her eyes, as those of us all,
bent upon the fire, she suddenly whispered, " Look there !
there's the cricket !" and she pointed as she spoke towards the
hole into which our old favourite had run for refuge on being
routed by Caleb from his original retreat. "Look there!"
she repeated ; " I see his horns " — and sure enough, by the
flicker of the dull fire-light there appeared protruding from
the cranny a long pair of waving antennae. Dolly, eager to be
assured that it was the cricket's self, caught a candle from the
mantel-shelf, lighted, and held it under the grate opposite the

AN UNWELCOME VISITANT. 425

cavity. Its occupant was not dislodged, because probably it
was afraid to advance, and had no retreating passage in its
rear; so motionless it sat, staring at the light or its examiner,
who screamed with at least equal terror on discovery of what
it was. It was no cricket after all, but a dark brother of the
same order — one of those broad flat-bodied, night-loving, all-
devouring, all-polluting, ill-scented creatures, the objects, as
we have seen, of Mrs. Dove's especial hate and horror.

" It's only a cockroach," said I. " Only ! dear," returned
Dolly. " You may call it a cockroast ; but I knows it well ;
'tis a black beadle — one of the very same I saw when I was a
girl at Mortiplume's, and never since. There they came by
hundreds, and that was bad enough ; but here, in this poor
old house, it has come by one, and that's worse, for it's sure for
certain to be the forerunner of a death, here, in the family, or
not far off." " Nonsense, Dolly," said I ; " it's not come to
foretell death, but to pick up its own living, — the crumbs,
perhaps, at our tea-time ; for it's as fond, every bit, of bread
and butter as your own cricket ; but I'll read to you after
tea all about it, and show you it's picture, or Lucy shall, in
one of Uncle's books. I'll go and fetch it before it's quite
dark." — "Not to the libery!— not to-night!" cried Dolly;
and she grasped me tightly by the arm. I wanted to go, but
did not like opposing the good creature, whose fears of the
haunted room were then, we knew, in the ascendant.

While I hesitated, who should come to my relief but Caleb,
who, bearing, perhaps, in mind his awkward part once in the
drama of the cricket, had in this taken hitherto no part at all.
" I'll go," said he. " I can inform you, Mrs. Dove, that
Master Francis is perfectly correct; that hanimal is a cock-
roach— order Coloptery, genius Blatty — I'll get the volume —
* seeing is believing'" — and he rose to put his purpose in
execution. "But won't it do in the morning?" said Dolly.
" You'd better take the candle, at any rate." — " Candle ! "
returned Mr. Caligraph, in his progress towards the door;

T T

426 A MYSTERIOUS CATASTROPHE.

" moon's up — full this morning — nine o'clock, A. M., twenty
minutes — and, supposing it \vas dark, I can put my hand on
e'er a one of the books in the bookcase. I should think so —
a man in my capacity — Order is admirable." — " Well, if go
you will, go you must ; but I wouldn't to-night," repeated
Dolly, entreatingly, as Caleb opened the kitchen door, and
shut it resolutely behind him.

Perhaps, however, when it was closed, a restraining some-
thing, sprung of Dolly's deprecating words or looks, or of his
own fireside musings, made Caleb linger on the threshold, for
a minute at least elapsed before we heard his creaking step
across the hall, up the stairs, and then along the dark narrow
passage which led into mv uncle's study, the door of which

JO «* w *

we then heard close after him. " He might have left it open,
at any rate," said Mrs. Dove, with a look of fluttering wonder-
ment. Then all were silent, and, in momentary expectation of
Mr. Caligraph's return, minutes went on till they made up
perhaps a quarter of an hour — but no Caleb re-appeared.
What on earth could he be about ? I would have gone to see,
but an imploring look from Dolly kept me back, till, thump !
came the sound as of a heavy fall in the direction of the library.
We all three started to our feet, and Dolly was the first to reach
the kitchen door ; there, however, she hung back, and, holding
Lucy back by the hand too, followed me, bearing the candle,
up the stairs.

The back-room door was shut, and something within ob-
structed its opening. Open it we however did, wide enough
to gain admittance, and then, on the floor behind, found ex-
tended the prostrate length of Caleb. Dolly's fears took at
the sight a new turn ; she held the candle with a trembling
hand over the features of her old fellow-servant, fixed now in
even more than usual rigidity ; but when by their scrutiny she
had ascertained that nothing serious, in the way at least of
bodily disorder, had overtaken him, she drew from that tra-
velling dispensary, her ample pocket, some pungent restorer of

AN APPARITION. 427

the wandering senses, and plied it assiduously till Caleb opened
his ink-blot eyes, and, with recollection still at fault, recovered
slowly sufficient of corporeal energy to rise from his recum-
bency, and totter, supported by the arm of Mrs. Dove, to his
dormitory and his bed. There we must leave him, and, taking
a few steps backward, relate his experiences of that memorable
evening, as in substance or in shadow they were imparted
next morning in the weakness of recent terror to the eager
but anticipative ear of Mrs. Dove.

He had, as he declared, just entered the library, when the
door, as if taken by a draught — though wind there was none —
shut to behind him. The moon was shining brightly through
the casement opposite, and threw a long black shadow on the
floor from the high antique arm-chair, placed then with its
back towards him, and fronting the library table, which stood
not far from the cold empty fireplace. Caleb proceeded to-
wards the bookcase, that division of it a little to the right of the
chair, and just above it, which he knew so accurately to be the
precise place of the desired volume. He stood under it — his
arm was raised towards it; but another arm was stretched forth at
the same time, and another hand, pale and shadowy, took down
the book before he could lay hold of it. The apparition to
which that hand belonged must have risen from the great arm-
chair, whose back had screened it on his entrance ; and before
Caleb had time, if he had dared, to look upon its features, was
again reseated, back towards him, book open, at an illustrated
page, whereon it was pointing with its thin white finger to the
figure of a cockroach. Caleb had seen enough, and attempted,
his few teeth chattering, and his knobby knees knocking, to
effect his exit from the library ; had almost reached the door,
when a cold arresting hand seemed laid upon his shoulder, and
he fell, as we had found him, prostrate on the floor.

"Master is dead," said Dolly, after hearing the above
relation. "Master is dead; I know it;" — and her supersti-
tious awe giving way presently to heart-breaking sorrow, she
burst into an agony of tears.

428 DECAY AND DESOLATION.

If news of death were really on the road to us, as our Dove
was now thoroughly persuaded, they travelled, like a hearse,
slowly. Tidings none at all reached us of my uncle ; but howso-
ever it might fare with him, his house seemed more than ever
stricken with death-like symptoms of decay.

In the garden the ordinary touches of autumn were invested,
to me, with more gloomy hues than they had ever worn before.
Frosts had been sharp and early, and the dahlias, as they hung
black and drooping over the middle walk, seemed to mourn for
the admiring master, who, in his own pride, had so often
propped them up in theirs.

But amidst these deepening tokens of decay, within doors
and without, one was, to me at least, more perceptible, more
heart-saddening than them all. Lucy, my little cousin, of
whom I was to take care — she, too, in her early spring-time,
was overtaken by autumnal blight. The cough — the hectic flush
— the sparkling eye — the childish beauty, wearing now almost
unearthly bloom, now a faded pallor, which bespoke too plainly
its true character, — all these told me, though hardly would J
believe their tale, that I should not long have my little cousin
to take care of.

One cheerless rainy afternoon in November we were all as
usual in the kitchen ; Dolly seated by the dull fire, darning
stockings ; Caleb, opposite, reading a religious tract ; I and
Lucy standing by the window watching the heavy rain-drops
and the light brown feathery leaves falling in a mingled shower
from a deciduous cypress, which stood on the grass-plot
opposite. Presently, there came a ring at the garden-gaie — a
ring low and half-fearful, as if the bell were pulled by a timid
or unwilling hand. Keeper barked loudly ; but it seemed to
me as if there was more of recognition than of anger in his voice.
We just saw the top of a hat — a gentleman's hat — above the
close high gate. "It's papa!" cried Lucy — "it mu&t be
papa!" Dolly's stocking fell from her hand; but she sat still
— »he oculdr/t, or she didn't dare to move. I said nothing; but

DEATH IN REALITY. 429

my heart beat violently when, after a short parley at the gate, I
saw who it was that entered and approached the house. It was
my father, and he had come to bring news of my uncle — news
that he was dead. His visit to London had been fruitless,
excepting only of harass and fatigue. His banker's failure was
complete, and he had been diappointed also of a small living,
but of greater value than his own, which had lately fallen
vacant, and of which the patron had given him a promise years
ago when he did not want it. He was on his way homewards
by the coach, when, as he was dismounting at an inn, where
the stage stopped, he fell in a fit of apoplexy at the door. He
survived only a few speechless hours; but from papers found
about him the people of the inn were enabled to write to his
brother, who arrived in time to find him just expired. He had
left no will — had, indeed, excepting debts, little to bequeath.
His remains were laid within the shadow of his own church,
beside those of Lucy's mother ; after which my father staid at
the parsonage but a few days, employed, as days after death
usually are, in the cold curious business of prying into papers
and personal effects of the departed, and in forming such new
arrangements as death may make requisite for those left behind.

My father returned to business, leaving me and Caleb to
follow after the latter had seen to the completion of some ar-
rangements for the sale (for the benefit of his creditors) of my
poor uncle's furniture and effects. His cabinet of insects and a
few of the least costly of his books on entomology my father,
at my request, contrived to save for me.

During the week or two which Lucy and I passed together
before the day of parting I noticed few comparatively of her
threatening symptoms ; and she looked all childish bloom as
well as beauty on that December morning. I saw her again
on the Easter following the December that we parted, my first
holiday from business, when my father allowed me to pay a few
days' visit to Dolly's cottage.

Did I return with renovated hopes or fears confirmed ? per-

430

CERTAINTY AND REPOSE.

haps with hope, for I applied myself to work more steadily
than ever.

On the same anniversary — the cheerful spring-time of the
following year — on a Saturday, when the church was open ; —
two persons were seen loitering in it. They were an aged
woman of comely figure and mild though then overclouded
aspect, and a youth of about seventeen, and they repaired pre-
sently from the aisle to the chancel, where they stood together,
hand-in-hand, before a simple tablet let into the wall. The
names of three individuals had been graven successively upon
the marble, — that of a mother, who had died young — a father
(late vicar of the parish) — and a child, their only child Lucy,
who had followed them at the age of fourteen.

— $ainter of t&e $a|t,
let u£ inboftc tfiec !

CHISWICK PRESS :— C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.

RETURN BIOLOGY LIBRARY

TO—* 3503 Life Sciences Bldg. 642-2531

LOAN PERIOD 1

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS
Renewed books are subject to immediate recall

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

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DUE

APR - J 1979

S^ect tf Recall

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
FORM NO. DD4, 7m, 477 BERKELEY, CA 94720

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