INSECT TRIBES-JULY. HARK to the grasshopper among the grass: His merry chirp doth tell of summer days. THE chirp of the common grasshopper (gryllus) is heard occasionally by him who wanders forth at night, lingering and listening to her nameless sounds, when the rushing of some clear stream over its pebbly bed may be readily mistaken for a far-off torrent, and whispers of the wind in woods for the rising of a storm; then it is that every sound is heightened, and that the voice of the little chirpers makes vocal many a moon-lit bank. Grasshoppers begin their songs before sun-rise, chirping till the sun is high, and resuming them in the cool of evening; for this purpose they are provided with a kind of tympanum, or drum, so arranged as to allow of striking upon it with the right and left legs, and thus producing that pleasant sound which agreeably harmonizes with their solitary haunts. Poets in all ages loved to speak concerning the larger species of nocturnal singers which are common to the south of Europe, and chirp incessantly during the summer months. Romantic tales are told with regard to their musical powers, and the ancient Greeks often kept them in cages for the sake of their song-a custom which still prevails among the Spanish ladies, who prefer them to birds. So attached were the Athenians to these insects, that people of distinction wore golden images of them in their hair, and regarded them with superstitious veneration as the happiest and most innocent of created beings. Every Grecian bard sung concerning them, from Homer and Hesiod, to Anacreon and Theocritus; they fabled that the joyous creatures, which hail the dawn of day, and chirp with grateful hearts when evening closes in, tasted no earthly food, but were sustained solely by the dew of heaven. Hence a poet of old times entreated the shepherds to spare this wood-side minstrel, the nightingale of nymphs and hamadryads, and to chase from their haunts the mischievous "thrush and blackbird." "Sweet prophet of the summer!" sung Anacreon, "the muses love thee. Phoebus himself loves thee, and has endowed thee with the powers of melody; old age does not wear thee; thou art wise, earth-born, musical, exempt from the agency of external causes, and without the vital fluid that flows in the veins of animals and birds-truly, thou art almost a divinity!" ancient poet sung concerning the same bankhaunting insect: "All the various seasons' treasure, All the products of the plains, "Thy cheerful voice, in wood and vale, And Summer smiles in ev'ry dale, To excel this joyous insect in singing seems to have been the highest commendation of public performers; and the eloquence of Plato was not thought to suffer by a comparison with his musical powers. Even now, the gladsome chirp of an exotic species is supposed to resemble the sound of a harp or lyre, and he is called, in consequence, a harper; and so loud and spirit-stirring is the song of a Brazilian cicada, as to be heard at the distance of a mile. A proportionate power of voice in a man of ordinary stature would enable him to shout from pole to pole. The drum of the common grasshopper, however curiously constructed, is yet a simple piece of machinery when compared with that of the cicada. First, there is a pair of large plates, semi-oval, or triangular, or forming the segment of a circle, covering the anterior portion of the body, and fixed to the trunk and hind-legs. Beneath these is a hollow cavity; and next to its narrow opening appears another cavity, divided into three parts, lined with a beautiful membrane-in some species semi-opaque, in others transparent and reflecting all the colours of the rainbow. This membrane is not, however, the real organ of sound, but is supposed to modulate it; and within the middle portion is a horny plate, placed horizontally, forming the bottom of the cavity; and contiguous is another membrane, folded transversely, on which it is conjectured that the will of the creature acts, by stretching or relaxing it at pleasure. Yet still this apparatus, however curious, is insufficient to produce sound. Muscles are next discovered, consisting of numerous fibres, united, but readily separated, and so admirably arranged, that when Reaumur, having pulled one from its place, let it go again, the usual sound was emitted, though the creature had been long dead. Each group of muscles is terminated by a nearly circular sinewy plate, from which issue several little tendons, and these, forming a thread, pass through an aperture in a horny plate supporting the drum, and are attached to its under surface. The drum itself, the true organ of sound, consists of a crescent-shaped cavity, and its aperture is to the cicada what our larynx is to us. The cluster of muscles, therefore, being alternately and briskly relaxed and contracted, draw in and let out the drum; so that its convex surface, thus rendered concave when pulled in, produces sounds, when let out, through a natural effort to recover its convexity; and this, striking upon the mirror and other membranes, before escaping from under the plates already mentioned, is modulated and aug Who has not read concerning the rival musicians Eunomus and Ariston, who were contending for a prize upon the harp? and how, when one, having broken a string, would have lost the day, had not a compassionate cicada flown to his aid, and gained for him the victor's crown? Hence one of these insects sitting upon a harp became emblem-mented by them. atic of the science of music; and the event was commemorated by a statue representing a Grecian youth playing upon his instrument, with a grasshopper perched upon it. Gems of remote antiquity in the gallery of Florence equally symbolize the musical powers of this curious insect; one of the finest represents a cicada singing on a lyre; another, as playing on a syrinx. And thus has an What adorable wisdom, what consummate skill, is displayed in the admirable contrivance and complete structure of this wonderful apparatus! The Creator of all that lives and moves has placed in these insects an unparalleled organ for producing and emitting sounds, which, as Kirby and Spence have well observed, seems to resemble that which he has given to man and the larger animals for receiving sounds, to which the air, that nimble handmaid which comes and goes continually, ministers and conveys from place to place. An insect of the cicada tribe, and a very noisy one, was discovered some time since in the New Forest, Hampshire, previous to which, this stentorian musician was not supposed to exist in the British Isles. A full-grown specimen of the Acrida Bingleii was also found at Goodwin's Croft, near Christchurch, in the same county, and given to the late Rev. W. Bingley-whence its name. He was singing merrily in a tuft of the vernal carex, and being carefully preserved, he soon became familiar, and uttered his pleasant voice at twilight when a candle was lighted in the room. This cheerful creature, in common with his brethren, whether grillida, cicada, or achete, inhabits sunny banks, and forms a nest in places facing westward, whence in due time he sallies forth with a glad-hearted progeny, to chirp through the summer months. "The poetry of earth is never dead; When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, On a lone winter evening, when the frost And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost, (coccinella) with affection and some degree of reverence; and hard of heart must the youngster be who does not feel commiseration for a mother whose family is in the utmost peril. This kindly feeling ensures the sisterhood kind treatment and liberty; and the child who finds the crimson-coated insect on some dangerous place, carefully removes her to a shrub or wall, repeating the well-known couplet "Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home, Thy house is on fire, and children at home!" In France, also, the race are deemed sacred to the Virgin, hence their cognomen of "Our Lady's sheep; and the care with which young shepherds remove them from off the path-way, when leading their flocks to pasture. Few insects are, perhaps, more useful than the lady-bird. She is constantly employed in keeping down the redundancy of insect life, feeding eagerly on the rose-louse, the bane of gardeners, which adhere to the opening buds and leaves, and remain so closely wedged together as to give a strange extraneous aspect to the plant. A kind of honeydew is secreted by these pernicious aphides-that sweet clammy substance which naturalists formerly conjectured to be derived either from the atmosphere or leaves, but which the adhering aphis alone produces. Still more pernicious are the visitations of all aphides to hop-grounds; and it happens, not unfrequently, that such as gave an earnest of abundant increase, become suddenly dark and withered-looking. Vain are all attempts to save them; neither electric fluid, nor yet heavy rain avail to cleanse the plants. But wherever the hop-fly abounds, means are provided whereby to check the injuries they inflict. These voracious insects generally make their first appearance about the twelfth of May, occasionally two days earlier, but almost uniformly between the tenth and thirteenth; and it is not a little curious, that they usually appear on the same day in the four hop districts, viz., Kent, Sussex, Farnham, and Worcester:-yet not without an opponent, who presently arrives with ample powers to repress their aggressions; and wherever a branch abounds with aphis, lady-birds are seen in considerable numbers, as also a curious looking insect, resembling a lizard, which is in fact the caterpillar of the lady-bird. Ants, according to the animated description of Newman in his Letters of Rusticus, are there likewise, in quest of the honey-dew which the aphis emits, but far from injuring the animals that yield such a pleasant food, they show them the greatest attention and kindness. Not so the lady-bird and its lizard-like companion; they both feed voraciously on the blights, and readily clear a leaf containing forty or more in the course of a single day. The former may be seen with her nose to the stem or leaf, after the fashion of a pointer, threading the mazes of the plant, and hunting out the pernicious insects, which she eagerly devours. Lady-birds are, therefore, highly valued by hopgrowers; and boys are frequently employed in hop-grounds to chase with loud cries and rattles all such insectivorous birds as would prey upon them. The hop-fly has two other formidable enemies, which render important services to mankind. One is a green ungainly grub, without legs, and which having seized on an unfortunate aphis when passing (for the creature lies flat on the surface of the leaf), immediately proceeds to suck out all its juices. This curious grub turns to a fly of many colours, which may be seen in summer under the branches of trees, and around flowers, and sometimes stationary in the air, as though asleep-yet still with all its wits about him, for if you attempt to catch him he darts off in a moment. The second is a ferocious looking creature, with six legs, and strong recurved jaws; merciless too, and boastful, for not content with feeding quietly on the aphides, he struts about with their skins on his back. This arrogant freebooter is, however, destined to a higher state of being. When his useful, though sanguinary career, is finished, he comes forth an elegant fly, adorned with four wings, all of which are divided into meshes like a fine net, and with two beautiful golden eyes. Rusticus further speaks of a fourth enemy to the hop-fly, in a minute ichneumon, similar to that which is parasitic on the blight of the rose tree. The males are active, and skim rapidly about, coursing over the surface of the leaves, and searching into every nook and corner; the females are less roving in their habits, and generally occupy themselves in providing for the establishment of their numerous families; they have indeed no particular inducement to wander abroad, for they are placed among myriads of hop-flies, in the midst of luxuriant vegetation, and have no dwelling to construct, like the industrious ant or bee, nor yet stores of food to collect from distant places. Thus pleasantly situated, they may be seen with their antennæ stretched out, and wings quivering with eagerness, pacing leisurely among the defenceless herd; and no sooner has each matron selected a victim by a slight touch of her antennæ, than, with equal celerity, she deposits an egg on the under side of the hop-fly, which gradually becomes developed, and forms a perfect insect, which necessarily destroys the foster-parent, and at length darts forth in the maturity of energies and instincts. on which he hangs suspended like a spider, swinging backwards and forwards with the wind as perfectly unconcerned as if in his silken domicile. When the time approaches for a new development of life, each caterpillar fastens himself by his hindlegs to a part of his web, and after remaining for some time with his head downward, he turns into a chrysalis. Dozens may be seen thus hanging together in a line till the time appointed for their emerging, when, at the end of June or beginning of July, pretty little moths suddenly appear flying about the hedge, having wings of a leaden-ground colour with jet-black spots, though occasionally invested in pure white. Last year, the hedges about Farncomb swarmed with them, and on gates, and under the coping of stone walls, and all such places, you might have found the chrysalides hanging by thousands. A larger moth (Arctia chrysorrhea), with a yellow tail, and snow-white body and wings, is also very destructive to white-thorn hedges. This moth is appropriately called the yellow-tail. Another, similar in her habits to the little ermine moth, inhabits oak-trees, and sometimes in such numbers as to consume every leaf, and encase the twigs in a continuous web for some hundred acres. We owe to the ingenious entomologist above cited, the curious fact, that in the July of 1831, the oak woods around Downton Castle, the residence of the celebrated horticulturist, Mr. Knight, were as completely leafless as at Christmas. The season was somewhat late, and the moth was then in a chrysalis state, as the narrator ascertained by climbing some of the trees, and shaking down hundreds of them. Early in the spring, the caterpillars may be seen, when the sun is warm, suspended by their little threads from almost every part of an oak-tree, swinging to and fro with the least breath of air, like pendulums, each varying in time according to the length of its thread, and occasionally giving itself a twist like a slack-rope dancer, in the overflowing joy and gladness of its little heart. Each turns to a black chrysalis, and ten days after, to an exceedingly beautiful pea-green, bell-shaped little moth, (Tortrix viridanus.) GARDENING JULY. FLOWERS.-Water, weed, train, stake, and tie up wherever requisite; although you may have a goodly show of flowers, yet the least untidiness will spoil the appearance of the whole, Who has not frequently observed the white-thorn hedges stripped of their leaves, and the twigs matted together like a web! This curious effect, according to the statement of the ingenious author of "The Letters of Rusticus," is occasioned by the caterpillar of a small moth, the Little Ermine Moth, which deposits her eggs on the twigs the year before. When the eggs are hatched into tiny caterpillars, the instinctive creatures feed for a few days on the pulpy portion of the leaves, and then wisely commence spinning nice silken spacious dwellings wherein to fix their abode. Conscious, it would seem, of the desirableness of having food at hand, they enclose two or three leaves, and when these are devoured they enlarge Pressed by limited space, and the urgency of their houses and collect fresh leaves, and thus the spring operations, I have, as yet, been unable they proceed till a considerable mass of web is to notice all of those plants which are termed par formed. These masses are often so abundant as excellence, Florists' flowers; I, therefore, now emto touch one another, and the whole hedge appears brace the opportunity allowed me by the less busy as if dead; its unwelcome visitors having de- month of July, to treat of those-the brightest stroyed every green leaf. Rusticus relates also, jewels in the diadem of Flora. The taste for that having occasionally disturbed the occupant of Florists' flowers in England, is, with good reasons, one of these ingenious webs, forth has come a lit- generally supposed to have been brought over tle blueish-black caterpillar, with a row of jet-black from Flanders with our worsted manufactures, spots down his sides, as if to inquire the reason of during the religious persecutions of Philip II. of such an ungracious doing; but that, apparently Spain; and the cruelty of the Duke of Alva, in feeling his strength to be insufficient for any effec-1567, was the occasion of our receiving, through tive demonstration on his part, makes a virtue of the Flemish weavers, who sought an asylum in necessity, and philosophically retreats backward, this country, Gillyflowers, Carnations, and Prospinning at the same time a kind of rope-ladder, vence Roses. Many of those weavers settled in auricula grower has his own particular compost or soil; to grow them in; and I am enabled to say that a great deal of quackery, and belief in nostrums, generally enters into the composition. I consider it is not so much any peculiarity of soil, but care, attention, and perseverance, that grows fine auriculas. One-half thoroughly rotted dung, one-fourth turfy-loam, one-eighth peat, or heath-mould, and the rest rotted leaves and river sand; the whole, well mixed, frequently turned over, and exposed to the preceding winter's frost, is the compost generally used by auricula growers, and the finest I have ever seen were grown in it. At the time of taking away the offsets, and dividing the roots, the old plants should be repotted and then placed in the shade, or in the frame where they are to pass the winter. They must be protected during winter either in a cold frame, or other shelter. Wherever the pots are placed, Florists' flowers, are, generally speaking, those boards, bricks, ashes, or similar materials, should that have been improved in form, colour, or size, be put beneath them to prevent worms from enteror in all these three combined. They are, in fact, ing, or the hole at the bottom of the pot from nearly all the productions of art; having been being clogged with soil. In fine weather in early raised, by high cultivation, from insignificant, spring, the plants should be well exposed to light beauty-less plants. Any-one who compares the and air; and about February the soil on the surwild Heart's-ease, and the cultivated Pansy-the face of the pot should be removed to about the wild and cultivated Tulip-the single and double depth of an inch, and its place supplied with Pink and Carnation, &c., must be struck by the fresh, rich compost. Liquid manure should, very great difference between the same species in about this time, be given once a week, and if, its natural, and artificial state; and, consequently, when the plants begin to show flower, more than florists' flowers are one of the most impressive one flower-stem arises, the weakest should be reproofs of man's skill and ingenuity which the moved. If the umbel, or flower-head, seems to vegetable kingdom can exhibit. Florists' flowers be too crowded with buds, a few of the smallest are, also, those which sport, as it is technically should be carefully snipped out of the bunch termed by gardeners; or, in other words, those with a small sharp pair of scissors. When in full which produce new and distinct varieties when flower, the plants should be kept in the shade, propagated by seed. For a long time, these uni- which will prolong their bloom; and after they versally admired varieties have been raised, and have done flowering, they should be again potted, brought to perfection, principally by men in and treated as before. Auricula seed should be humble life. As before mentioned, the Spitalfields, sown from about the middle of February to the Norwich, Manchester, and Paisley weavers, are middle of March. Sow in pots about six inches famous for producing flowers of this description; in diameter, and six in depth, having secured a and even the rude Northumbrian miners on the good drainage by filling them half full of cinders. banks of the coaley Tyne, cultivate their prize Cover the seeds very lightly, and place the pots in pansies, pinks, and auriculas, during the few front of a conservatory, the window of a room, or hours of God's light, and fresh air, that their sub- a cool frame. If you cannot command those terranean occupations permit them to enjoy. Of conveniences, place the pots in a sheltered situalate years, however, florists' flowers have become tion-where they can only have the morning sun more fashionable; a few in the higher ranks of in the open air, covering them with a handlife having followed the example of those humble glass. The seed and soil in which it is sown must floricultural pioneers, raising, and growing suc- always be kept moist, but not too wet. The best cessfully many new and splendid varieties. way to apply water is by means of a clothes-brush Amongst amateurs there are certain rules laid dipped in soft water, and then held in the left hand down by which the merits, or demerits, of these with the hair side uppermost; by briskly drawplants are judged, and decided. Some designate ing the right hand over the wet hair, the water will these rules by the high-sounding term of "Canons fly off in a contrary direction, and in particles alof criticism,"-others, as "properties," "points," most as fine as dew. This is the very best plan "criterions." I would be very glad, here, to de- for watering any small and delicate seeds. If scribe the "properties" of each plant, but I am the surface of the soil in the seed-pots becomes perfectly satisfied that it would be useless, though mouldy or mossy, it should be carefully stirred reading may assist to form a taste, yet nothing all over with a pin to the depth of about the but the long experienced eye can make a con- thickness of a shilling. In from three to five weeks the young plants will appear, you must then admit air gradually, by tilting up one side of the hand glass; and about May it can be removed altogether, and the seed-pots placed in the coolest and airiest spot in the garden; keeping the soil moist, at the same time protecting them from heavy rain. As soon as the young plants have acquired six leaves they must be transplanted into pots, or boxes, the plants about two inches apart; and when that they have grown so that their AURICULAS-to be grown to perfection, should be in pots; they are propagated by seeds and offsets; the former when new varieties are required, the latter for multiplying and continuing choice kinds. The best time for dividing the roots, and taking off offsets, or rooted slips, is when the plant has done flowering, and ripening its seed. Plant the divisions and offsets separately in small pots, and in a rich soil. Almost every choice |