from the third pair. The belly is considerably large, composed of eight rings, and terminated by a forky tail, covered with down, like the tail of a rat. When examined internally, besides the gullet, we discover a small stomach; and behind that a very large one, wrinkled and furrowed inside; lower down there is still a third; so that it is not without reason that all the animals of this order are said to chew the cud, as they so much resemble ruminating animals in their internal conformation.

A short time after the grasshopper assumes its wings, it fills the meadow with its note; which, like that among birds, is a call to courtship. The male only of this tribe is vocal; and, upon examining it at the base of the wings, there will be found a little hole in its body, covered with a fine transparent membrane. This is thought, by Linnæus, to be the instrument it employs in singing; but others are of opinion the sound is produced by rubbing its hinder legs against each other; however this may be, the note of one male is seldom heard but it is returned by another; and the two little animals, after many mutual insults of this kind, are seen to meet and fight most desperately. The female is generally the reward of victory; for, after the combat, the male seizes her with his teeth behind the neck, and thus keeps her for several hours.

Towards the latter end of autumn, the female prepares to deposit her burthen: and her body is then seen greatly distended with her eggs, which she carries to the number of a hundred and fifty. In order to make a proper lodgment in the earth for them, she is furnished with an instrument at her tail, somewhat resembling a two-edged sword, which she can sheathe and unsheathe at pleasure; with this she pierces the earth as deep as she is able; and into the hole which her instrument has made, she at once deposits her eggs, one after the other.

Having thus provided for the continuation of her

posterity, the animal does not long survive; but as winter approaches, she dries up, seems to feel the effects of age, and dies from a gradual decay.

In the mean time the eggs which have been deposited continue unaltered, either by the severity of the season or the lateness of the spring. They are of an oval figure, white, and of the consistence of horn; their size nearly equals that of a grain of anise; they are enveloped in the body within a covering, branched all over with veins and arteries; and, when excluded, they crack on being pressed between the fingers; their substance within is a whitish, viscous, and transparent fluid.

Generally, about the beginning of May, every egg produces an insect about the size of a flea; at first they are of a whitish colour, but at the end of two or three days they turn black, and soon after they become of a reddish brown. From the beginning they appear like grasshoppers wanting wings, and hop among the grass, as soon as excluded, with great agility.

Yet still they are by no means arrived at their state of full perfection; although they bear a strong resemblance to the animal in its perfect form. They want, or seem to want, the wings, which they are at last seen to assume; and can only hop among the grass, without being able to fly. However, the wings are not wanting, but are concealed within four little bunches, that seem to deform the sides of the animal; there they lie rolled up in a most curious manner, and occupying a smaller space than one could conceive.

At length the skin covering the head and breast is seen dividing above the neck; the head is seen issuing out first from the bursting skin; the other parts follow successively; so that the little animal with its long feelers, legs and all, works its way from the old skin. It is, indeed, inconceivable how the insect thus extricates itself from so exact a sheath as that which covered every part of its body.

The grasshopper, thus disengaged from its outer skin, appears in its perfect form; but then so feeble and its body so soft and tender, that it may be moulded like wax. Still, however, the animal continues to show no signs of life, but appears quite spent and fatigued with its labour for more than an hour together. During this time the body is drying, and the wings unfolding to their greatest expansion; and the curious observer will perceive them, fold after fold, opening to the sun, till at last they become longer than the two hinder legs. The insect's body also is lengthened during this operation, and it becomes more beautiful than before.

These insects are generally vocal in the midst of summer; and they are heard at sunsetting much louder than during the heat of the day. They feed upon grass, and if their belly be pressed, they will be seen to return the juice of the plants they have last fed upon. If they are caught by one of the hinder legs, they quickly disengage themselves from it, and leave the leg behind them. This, however, does not grow again, as with crabs or spiders; for, as they are animals but of a single year's continuance, they have not time for repairing these accidental misfortunes. The loss of their legs also prevents them from flying; for being unable to lift themselves in the air, they have not room upon the ground for the proper expansion of their wings. If they be handled very roughly, they will bite fiercely; and when they fly they make a noise with their wings. They generally keep in the plains, where the grass is luxuriant, and the ground rich and fertile.

What wonderful things there are even in this world! Heaven will reveal far greater wonders-living trees -living rivers-living crowns! Shall we taste their fruit, drink their waters, and wear one of those everlasting ornaments?

SIR THOMAS GRESHAM, who built the Royal Exchange, was the son of a very poor woman, who left him in a field, when an infant; but the chirping of a grasshopper leading a boy to the place where he lay, his life was preserved. From this circumstance the future merchant took the grasshopper for his crest, and hence the cause of placing the figure of that insect over the Royal Exchange.

THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

THE poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
That is the grasshopper's: he takes the lead
In summer luxury; he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever;
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

KEATS.

INSECT EMBLEM.

CHILD of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields of light;
And where the flowers of paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,
Expand and shut with silent ecstacy!

Yet thou wert once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept!
And such is man; soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day!

ROGERS.

ON Nov. 14, we crossed the tropic of Capricorn. It was an angry, tempestuous-looking night, with a wild stormy sky, and the sun set in grandeur. Alas! it set for ever to one who was intently watching it from the vessel's deck. Wilson, the sailor-boy, a noble, generous fellow, stood looking over my shoulder as Í made a hasty sketch of the evening sky. It was the last sunset of the tropic, and the black clouds seemed to portend the outburst of a tempest. Poor boy! he knew not that that sunset was to be his last-that he should no more watch it sink over the blue horizonthat before the morrow dawned, his fair forehead should be laid low in the dark and stormy sea-and that the sun should shine upon his grave, a silent, unknown place of waters, as the ship held on her way, amid the glories of its next setting. About midnight he was ordered to stow the royal. Presently, the cry of "a boy overboard!" broke the solemn stillness of the night. It was a wild and fearful cry: one to be