than they generally do. The sting, or lancet, which this insect carries at its mouth, is a microscopic object, and affords the lover of natural wonders great subject for inquiries. Its trunk is in the shape of a scaly sheath, and so fine, that the extremity can scarcely be seen with the assistance of the best microscope; from this trunk it darts five small cutting instruments, which inflict those troublesome wounds we feel so keenly, and which are attended with a local swelling, which is produced by a small drop of poison distilling down the lancet, and a drop of caustic liquid emitted at the hinder part of the body; this swelling occasions the blood to rush to the wound, and the insect is seen to swell and become red, as the blood ascends into its body.

5. THE ANT-LION

Is an insect of wonderful properties; it is hatched from an egg laid in soft moving ground, or sand; the insect increases soon in size, and assumes the shape of a small spider, with this difference, that his legs are constructed in such a way that he proceeds backwards; he has six feet, and the belly is in the shape of a heart, armed with small tubercles and bristles. The corselet, to which the legs are attached, is small; and the head is armed with two horns, not unlike those of the stag beetle, and two very sharp eyes. What must create our utmost admiration is, that this insect, which cannot move but in a retrograde direction, is doomed by Nature to feed upon flies and ants, the quickness and agility of which would at all times deprive him of his prey; but he has been endowed with an uncommon instinct, attended with stratagem: he makes a kind of funnel-like hole in loose earth or sand, and placing himself at the bottom of it, waits there with the utmost patience, for several days, till an uncautious ant, or giddy fly, falls into the deathful pit. Then all his skill

is put in requisition; he throws out, by the shaking of his horns, a great quantity of sand upon and above the insect, to prevent its climbing up the steep sides of his hole; and, when the prey appears strong and nimble, he gives a general commotion, the whole construction crumbles down, and the imprudent insect, overwhelmed with the ruins, falls into the horns of the Ant-lion, which open as a pair of forceps at the bottom. When he has sucked out the blood and inside of his prey, he takes it upon his head, and, by a sudden jerk, throws the carcass to a distance from his abode. After passing several weeks in these watchings and troubles to get his food, being then grown to a larger size, he makes himself a kind of hall out of the sand, which he hangs inside with a shining kind of thread or silk, and remains there till he arrives at his second state, which is a sort of chrysalis or larva, the appearance of which is between the past and the future form. From this larva, this shapeless, uncouth, ill-looking, mummy-like being, arises a slender-waisted, winged insect, which, after fluttering about for a few weeks, performing the duty of nature, and depositing eggs in the sand, resigns its life. The winged insect has a head of a chestnut colour; the body is of a pearly gray, the legs short, the wings long and grayish, and the superior ones marked with four brown spots. It is often seen fluttering about the sides of roads and dry banks exposed to the east, in the months of June and July-continues for a little time, and then entirely disappears. The Ant-lion is very rare in this country; but in France and Italy there is not a bank on the sides of a public road, or a sandy ridge at the foot of an old wall, which does not harbour a great number of these insects.

At once came first whatever creeps the ground,
Insect or worm. Those waved their limber fans
For wings, and smallest lineaments exact
In all the liveries deck'd of summer's pride,
With spots of gold and purple, azure and green.
MILTON.

IT would be a considerable task to enumerate, and a much greater one to describe, every insect which obtains these names. Every bush, every tree, every plant, has its assigned Caterpillar, or an insect nearly of the same nature; and that which lives on the nettle could no more feed upon the elm or mulberry tree, than the ox upon raw flesh, or the wolf upon straw or hay. The Caterpillars are divided into two classes, the regular and the irregular ones. The regular have sixteen feet, two near the tail, eight along the body (four on each side), and six about the fore part of the breast, which they use when they spin, to direct the thread which issues out of their mouths. The irregular ones have any other number, and sometimes as few as Their metamorphoses have been from the

only six.

earliest times a subject of admiration for the wisest observers of Nature; and their acquiring wings, after passing through a state of apparent insensibility, generally received as an emblem of the immortality of the soul. We shall give here the description of a few of these insects, from which the reader will be able to acquire the knowledge of the particular habits of all the different tribes.

TORTOISE-SHELL BUTTERFLY.

THE Caterpillar which feeds on the nettle is about an inch in length, covered with bristles, and of a reddish brown colour. After having changed its skin three times when in the shape of a worm, it crawls up to a branching part of the stalk; and, hanging itself by the hinder part or tail, swells and bursts in such a curious way, that the Caterpillar's skin drops to the ground, and the Chrysalis, or Aurelia, so called from the golden tinges of its body, remains suspended; till, after a fortnight of torpor, it bursts its skin again, and escapes in the vast plains of the air, under the beautiful form of a variegated Butterfly.

WHEN the colewort and cauliflower begin to heart, the perfect insect of this caterpillar is found depositing her eggs upon the leaves. The heat of the sun soon vivifies them and brings forth the caterpillars, which immediately proceed to consume the vegetables on which they received being. They bear the heat of the sun without inconvenience; but cannot endure long rains; for in wet weather they waste so fast as, in a very short time, to have nothing left them but their skins. The worm prepares for its transformation about the third of August; and, on the seventeenth of the same month, the Butterfly is produced. The perfect insect is very inactive, and slow in its motions. It generally exists throughout the winter; and has been found alive when the spring has been far advanced.