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NEST OF THE MOLE-CRICKET.

cases and chest. His usual food consists of potatoes, with roots of grass and other plants, varied, probably, with the partially carnivorous appetite of his family, by underground insects, as well as flies. The nests of these crickets consist of subterranean chambers, situate most frequently near the banks of rivers. One of these, constructed near the banks of a canal, and laid open by the deep incision of a mower's scythe, is described by White of Selborne as "a pretty chamber dug in clay, of the form and about the size it would have been if moulded by an egg, the walls being neatly smoothed and polished. In this little cell were deposited about a hundred eggs of the size and form of caraway comfits, and of a dull, tarnished white colour. The eggs were not very deep, but just under a little heap of fresh mould, and within the influence of the sun's heat." Mr. Rennie notices a difference of colour between the above and some eggs of the same insect in his possession, which were "translucent, gelatinous, and greenish." He observes, further, that, "like the eggs and young of other insects, those of the molecricket are exposed to depredation, and particularly to the ravages of a black beetle, which burrows in similar localities." The mother cricket, therefore, defends her nest "like a fortified town, with labyrinths, intrenchments, ramparts, and covered ways. In some part of these outworks she stations herself as an advanced guard, and, when the beetle ventures within her circumvallations, she pounces upon him and kills him.”*

* Insect Architecture.'

THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR SHADOW.

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Now, ye carpers and cavillers at our story, we assure you, that however far we may indulge ourselves by flights into the realms of fancy, we never knowingly play towards you the part of an ignis fatuus, misleading you by false allusions into the swamps of error regarding the realities of nature.

Supposing the mole-cricket to be really luminous, we shall find in its location, its mode of flight, its coat of armour -above all, in its mail-clad hands of human form-a close correspondence with the wandering "corpse light" of our Tim, who, with the enlargement and heightening furnished by his excited mind, might not very unnaturally have mistaken a mole-cricket for the apparition of a dwarfish knight.

INSTINCTS OF MATERNITY.

THE POPPY BEE.

Royal cradles, lined with down,
By plume surmounted or by crown!
There's a chamber in the earth,

With a cradle in that dwelling,
Furnished for a humble birth,

Yet all your workmanship excelling,

Far as the lily's robe of gold*

Outshone King Solomon's of old.

* The orange or golden lily of the East-the same as that of Guernsey, the

roots of which are said to have been first planted byʼshipwreck on the shores of that island.

THE POPPY BEE.

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Crimson tap'stry lines the wall,
Crimson curtains graceful fall
Round the tender nurseling's bed;
And beside it, heaped on high,
Luscious food, from flow'rets shed,

Waits his wants-a rich supply.
Say, by whom this chamber drest?
Who can be its looked-for guest?

None but soft maternal care
Such a nursery could prepare;
Yet when the nurseling opes his eye,

Earth alone might seem his mother,
For around, beneath, on high,

Vainly would he seek another:

His is far, in fields of air,

While he bursts to being there.

Perhaps she sips her honied pleasure,
Forgetful of her infant treasure.

Yet blame her not, ye lady mothers!

She is but a Poppy Bee:
Only mind that ye and others

Do your duty well as she,

Who, by loving foresight guided,
For her offspring's wants provided.

THE implied censure of our concluding lines is one which we really believe few mothers, either lady or lowly, need appropriate; for if there be one virtue more prevailing than another with high and mean, civilized and savage,—nay, even with bad and good,-we should say it was maternal tenderness. What, however, is observed by the worthy Fuller, with regard to the performance of more enlarged charity, may be, in some degree, applicable also to those charities which "begin at home," and

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MATERNAL UPHOLSTERERS.

flow from that fountain-head of all virtues-a mother's heart. The old divine tells us that "the best disposed [to bounty] may need a remembrance;" quaintly adding, "I am sure the nightingale which would wake will not be angry with the thorn which pricketh her breast when she noddeth."

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Now, as some nodders there doubtless are, even on the maternal nest,-some who, possessing, perhaps, all the tenderness of the dove, think it sufficient merely to keep their nestlings warm, and display none of the wisdom of the serpent in providing for their future wants-those, especially, of the hungry mind; to such parents a few patterns of laborious activity exerted prospectively for their offspring's welfare by mothers of the insect race, may serve as gently pricking "thorns," while to others they may be pleasant to look upon as a cluster of wild roses, gathered in a soil which they may have little expected to produce them.

The subject of our opening lines-the Poppy Bee-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 peculiar designation of "Poppy" being derived from the material employed for her work by this particular 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

* Rennie.