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LARVA OF THE TIGER-BEETLE.

of lying in wait for prey with head alone visible, is a stratagem employed also by the grub of the tiger-beetle, which for beauty, fierceness, and rapidity of motion stands at the head of our native Coleoptera. The larva of this insect tiger, which is no less voracious than the perfect beetle, is a soft, white, roundbodied animal with six feet, two horn-like tubercles on the back, a head shielded by a circular scaly plate, and armed with a pair of formidable jaws.

The lair of this unsightly, devouring, and cunning monster, when on the look-out for living booty, is a cylindrical hole of its own excavation, wherein, supported perpendicularly by the dorsal appendages above mentioned, it rests hidden all but the mailed head, which nearly fills up the mouth of its hole, and with its jaws expanded on the stretch for prey. If an unwary insect happens to approach, forth darts the lurker, and suddenly seizing, retreats with its victim, which it drags downwards to devour.

When arrived at maturity, the tiger-beetle exhibits a form as singularly beautiful as in the stage of larva it was singularly ugly, but no less strikingly adapted than the latter to the predacious activity, which, in contrast to the predacious strategy of its early life, is henceforward to distinguish it. Long agile limbs, projecting eyes, and toothed jaws, alike bespeak and fit it for a creature of rapine, and for pursuit of prey in open sandy places; while resembling its mammalian prototype in * Rhagio vermilio.

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gracefulness of exterior as well as thirst of blood, it displays a richness and variety of colour boasted by few among its beetle brethren of our northern clime. The least uncommon of our seven or eight species is the Cicindela campestris,* seen not unfrequently from March to October, on heaths and sunny banks. It is of a brilliant green, with usually five spots of yellowish-white on each elytron; the legs and breast of rubyred, which mingles also with the general hue.

In the mature perfection of their rapacious strength and destructive organs as animals of force, both the ant-lion and the tiger-beetle cease to be animals of artifice. Devices and the art of devising are only useful to the weak, the slow, the awkward, or the immature. On these, therefore, do we find them almost invariably bestowed. Such the kind compensation of "even-handed Nature!"

THE 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 not alone by features of solemn grandeur-the "long-drawn aisle" whose arches and pillars are the growth of ages, the azure "vault" whose lamps are suns and worlds-but no less by a profusion of adornment worthy of the mighty fabric.

Flowing draperies of foliage, hung on high as curtains or as

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banners-floors tessellated 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 those gifts of creation not essential to existence, but bounteously bestowed to enhance its enjoyment, are those gratifications of the eye for which it is indebted to the colouring properties of light. But for these, what a sombre world should we live in !

"If," says Dr. Brewster, "the objects of the material world had been illuminated with white light, all the particles of which possessed the same degree of refrangibility, and were equally acted upon by the bodies on which they fall, all nature would have shown with a leaden hue, and all the combinations of all external objects, and all the features of the human countenance, would have exhibited no other variety than that which they would possess in a pencil sketch or China-ink drawing; He who has exhibited such matchless skill in the organization

but

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AMENITIES OF LIGHT.

of material bodies, and such exquisite taste in the forms upon which they are modelled, has superadded that ethereal beauty which enhances their more permanent qualities, and presents them to us in the ever-varying colours of the spectrum."

Is this a boon to be slighted, or regarded only by the eye as a source of mere sensual, mere involuntary pleasure, when nothing, perhaps, more than colour, sprung of "the Light, creation's mind," is adapted and intended to address itself to the mind of man? To raise our thoughts to their ethereal origin would seem, indeed, a peculiar attribute, not only of those vivid hues

"That live among the clouds, and flush the air,
Lingering and deepening at the hour of dews,"

but of those also which invest the living objects of creation. Though falling short usually of this their highest purpose, the more showy of Nature's paintings are wont commonly to exercise, to a certain extent, a striking influence and attraction; and in proportion to the richness, brilliancy, and contrast of their colours are natural objects valued and admired by the many by whom elegance of form and curiosity of structure are almost wholly overlooked. The leopard, the zebra, the peacock, the gold and silver fish, the butterfly, the tulip, all owe their estimation to their colouring; it would seem, in short, a natural, and therefore not an erring taste, to admire what is gaudy; and we doubt whether the natives of the Celestial Empire, who copy in their gay attire the celestial hues of their