PAPA DO. You will find very much to amuse you. ANNA-I have often wondered what becomes of insects during the winter, papa. I should think they must all die of cold and hunger; unless it be the bees and ants: they are, I know, provident, and lay up stores for it.

PAPA.-The bees lay up stores, and perhaps ants may in warmer climates; but I do not apprehend that to be the case with those in our country. The sup posed grains of corn, which they have been observed to carry in and out of their nests with such assiduous care, are, in reality, their pupae. I am inclined to believe that ants do as most other insects do, remain torpid during the cold season; and in that condition you know they want no food. Insects pass the winter in all their states of egg, larva, pupa, and imago: but the greater number in the two last. Their winter quarters are too various to be described. Numbers of eggs as well as of larvæ, pupæ, and perfect insects, are buried in the ground, or concealed in the ivy-covered interstices of decayed trees; while many insinuate themselves under large stones, dead leaves, or the moss of the sheltered side of an old wall or bank, and there sleep out the winter in solitude and silence. When spring returns, they awake to all the activities of their existence, and assert their empire over the rest of creation: in very many instances, it is true, beneficially; but in numerous others, to the annoyance or destruction of multitudes both of the animal and vegetable tribes.

ANNA. They do not injure us personally much, however.

PAPA.--You are much mistaken, my dear child. Not to mention the many and dreadful cutaneous diseases which are attributable to them, we must view insects as among the most terrible scourges with which God has been pleased to visit the sins of mankind.

They were the instruments by which he punished the horrible tyranny and wickedness of Antiochus Epiphanes; of the Dictator Sylla; of the two Herods; of the Emperor Maximin; and of that cruel persecutor of the Protestants, Philip II. of Spain. All these oppressors, and many others that might be mentioned, died of loathsome maladies produced by disgusting swarms of lice and mites, or by the larvæ of other insects, familiarly called worms. It is not, however, those only among these pigmy tormentors that prey upon us internally, that do us essential injury: to say nothing of the chigoes, or fleas of the West Indies; or of the ́various species of bugs, of mosquitoes, and of gnats, which are, as I have already told you, and as the names which they have given to various districts prove, terrible personal pests in the countries where they abound; the ravages these little ubiquaries make on our cattle and on our vegetable productions, are frequently very serious in their nature, and alarming in their consequences. Often do our hops, our corn, and our pulse; our shrubs, our flowers, and our fruits, wither under the influence of these minute enemies: indeed there is no sort of property, whether living or dead, that is secure from their devastations. They devour our grain and our flour; our meat, whether salted or fresh; our cheeses, our sugar, our spices; our drugs and medicines; our garments and houses, and even our books and cabinets of curiosities.

HENRY.-What are the most destructive species of insects, father?

PAPA.-In our houses and among our stores, the cock-roach, the house-cricket, and the various species of termites, or white ants, commit the greatest ravages; particularly the latter. In this country we are happily strangers to them; but in India the damages they often do are incalculable. They will destroy all the timberwork of a spacious apartment in a few nights; and sometimes even whole villages, when deserted by their

inhabitants, so that in two or three years not a trace of them will remain. Linnæus calls these insects "the great calamity of both the Indies." But of all insect plunderers, none commit such terrible devastations as locusts. You remember what they once did in Egypt.

HENRY.-They are almost entirely confined to Africa and Arabia, I believe.

PAPA. That quarter, of the world has always been peculiarly subject to their depredations. From the year 1778 to 1780, the empire of Morocco was terribly devastated by them; they ate up every green thing. and caused such a tremendous famine, that the poor inhabitants were obliged to live on roots; and fathers even sold their children, and husbands their wives, to obtain a little food. They are not, however, confinèd to Africa. It is said that in the Venetian territory in 1478, more than thirty thousand persons perished in a famine which they had occasioned: France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Poland, with other countries in Europe, have been repeatedly the scenes of their ravages; and once, in the year 1748, they ap peared in this country, where they excited considerable alarm; they soon perished, however, without doing us any injury.

HENRY.-I suppose the aphides, or plant-lice, are our greatest enemies of this kind.

PAPA. Yes. They not unfrequently act the part of locusts in destroying vegetable produce. As each plant has its particular aphis, however, which will not feed on any other, their ravages are never so universal, Insects have however a claim on our regard; for the benefits they confer, in a variety of ways, are more than a counterbalance against the evils they inflict. What would be the situation, think you, of the inhabitants of tropical countries more especially, if these active "scavengers of nature" were not in existence to consume the decayed animal and vegetable substances, which, if left to the slow action of the atmosphere,

would fill the air with impurity? Even the white ants, though they do occasionally direct their voracity to their houses, and books, and valuable cabinets, render them eminent services by their activity and speed in this department. Many insects are useful too in destroying others. The ichneumon tribes, so called from their resemblance in this respect to the Egyptian ichneumons, lay their eggs in living insects, chiefly while in the larva state, and thus prevent myriads of them from coming to maturity. Ants, wasps, hornets, dragon-flies, and earwigs, with many others, consume also vast numbers; and the beautiful lady-bird renders itself very useful by destroying the aphides which injure hops. They are of use, moreover, as food to fish, and birds, and other animals; and even, sometimes, to man. The devastating locusts furnish a considerable supply to numerous African and Indian nations; the mischievous white ants are eaten by the Hottentots; the Chinese, who waste nothing, send the chrysalis of the silk-worm to table; and Sparrman reckons among the delicacies of a Boshiesman's feast "those caterpillars from which butterflies proceed."

HENRY.-Are not insects useful in medicine?

PAPA. Our forefathers had great faith in their efficacy. Among their recipes were powder of silkworm for vertigo and convulsion; earwigs to strengthen the nerves; fly-water for disorders in the eyes; the cockchafer for the bite of a mad dog and the plague; with a variety of similar nostrums too numerous to be mentioned. But their wiser descendants have discarded most of these fanciful remedies. The cantharides, or Spanish fly, a species of beetle, which is both used in making blisters and taken internally, is now almost the only insect employed in medicine. Insects are especially useful in manufactures and commerce; and perhaps it is in this part of the benefits they confer, that their services are more especially felt. To them we owe our honey and wax; our ink, which is, as you

know, made from gall-nuts; our best dyes; with our extensive and lucrative trade in silks; without which courts would lose half their splendour, and the poor. half their means of subsistence. Indeed the benefits as well as injuries which we derive from the insect world, are by far too many for me even to enumerate. If you wish to know more on this subject, I must refer you to Kirby and Spence's "Introduction to Entomology;' a work which is replete with the most amusing and interesting information on every particular connected with the history of insects, and to which I must own myself indebted for the greater part of the knowledge I have obtained respecting them. Z. Z.

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DESCRIPTION OF BRITISH TREES.
No. XIV.

Lime Tree-Tilia.

THE Tilia, Lime Tree, or Linden, is among the most beautiful of the forest, in form and foliage, besides the exquisite perfume of its blossoms. The trunk is usually very upright, and the bark smooth and even: the leaf nearly circular-the flowers of the palest green,

"Other perfections of the tree, besides its unparalleled beauty for walks, are that it will grow in almost all grounds; that it lasts long; that it soon heals its scars; that it affects uprightness; that it stoutly resists a storm; that it seldom becomes hollow. The timber of a well-grown Lime is convenient for any use that the Willow is; but much to be preferred as being stronger and yet lighter: whence Virgil calls them Tilias leves; and therefore fit for yokes. They are turned into boxes for the apothecaries. And because of its colour and easy working, and that it is not subject to split, architects make with it models for their designed buildings; and the carvers in wood used it, not only for small figures, but large statues and entire histories, in bass and high relieve: witness, beside several more, the lapidation of St. Stephen, with the structures and elevations about it; the trophies, festoons, fruitages, encarpia, and other sculptures, &c. to be seen about the choir of St. Paul's, and other churches, royal palaces, and noble houses in the city and country. With the twigs they make baskets and cradles; and of the smoothest side of the bark, tablets for writing; for the ancient Philyra is but our Tilia, of which Munt