on which he can carry any small prey he may
take a fancy to; the flea has a case of minute
but terribly sharp piercing and cutting instruments;
and the leech has a cavernous mouth
that acts like a huge cupping-glass, and a file of
sharp teeth that see-saw their way through the
distended skin. Even the gall-fly cannot lay her
eggs in peace and charity with all the world, but
must needs drop some poison along with them,
whereby the very being and nature of the oak is
changed, and the stern old woody fibre converted
into pap and pabulum for a few crawling
maggots. The butterfly remains innocent to
man, but not so wholly guiltless to nature. His
beautiful proboscis is a flat spiral ribbon of
several coils, acting as a sucking-pump, and
furnished with a large number of hooks, by which
the edges can be united at will. This elegant
coil he inserts into the nectar tubes of flowers,
and sucks out all the juices with gluttonous
rapacity. We venture to say that the poet who
spoke of butterflies kissing the sweet lips of
flowers, &c., never looked through a microscope
and saw that flat coiled tongue bristling with
hairs and armed with hooks, rifling and spoiling
like a thing of worse fame, but of no worse
life.

Antennæ, which are like fans in the cock-
chafer, and like fern fronds in the oak-egger
moth, in the crabs are ears (the upper and inner
pair), while the outer and lower are organs of
smell. Crabs go through four stages before
they arrive at maturity; barnacles go through
two—barnacles, with their twenty-four long
delicate filaments curling and uncurling like a
hand, or spread abroad like a casting-net to
gather up prey for that black oval with pale blue
edges.

Spiders are the most murderous animals in
creation. They have nets and traps, caves,
fangs, hooks, and poison bags—all the paraphernalia
of robbers and assassins, with a stock in
trade sufficient for half a dozen Mrs. Radcliffes.
When a spider attacks a hapless fly, he plunges
his two horrid fangs downward into it, pouring
out his poison into the wound, whereby he soon
kills his miserable victim. That this poison is a
powerful acid is proved by its power of turning
litmus paper red for a considerable distance
round the place struck. The fangs shut up like
a knife-blade into its case when not used or
wanted, and open and erect themselves when the
creature is savage and wants to use them. Its
eight eyes are like globes of polished diamond,
and curiously follow the necessities of his
situation. When the creature lives at the end of
long tubes, or underground, they are clustered
forward on his forehead, for he only wants to
look straight before him, but to look before him
intently; when he lives in short tubes, terminated
by a large web exposed to the open air,
they are more separated, and give him a wider
range; when he lives in the centre of an open
web they are more divergent still, and set in
slight prominences so as to have a freer axis;
and when he is of the wandering tribe, they are
scattered so that he can see every way and all
round at once. The nocturnal species have no
dark pigment like the rest, but have, instead, a
curtain which reflects a brilliant metallic lustre,
so that their eyes shine like cats' eyes in the
dark.

Spiders' webs are made of two kinds of
silk; the one forming the cables and radii simple
and innocuous, the other forming the concentric
or special threads, closely studded with minute
globules of fluid like small drops of dew. These
globules are intensely viscid, and by them alone
is retained the fly, and even the bee, the gnat,
and the pretty little moth. A fat old spider,
basking half asleep in the middle of his
treacherous net, yet never so asleep as not to be on
the alert if but the wind shake its moorings too
roughly, is more like one of Bunyan's giants
than anything else; he is the tyrant, of the
garden, the butcher, the assassin, the oppressor
of the weak, the wily circumventor of the strong.
He demands no quarter and he deserves none,
for after he has gorged himself with the fat of
his thousands, he haply falls a prey to some
tyrant over him, and so the whole circle is complete,
from the centre to the circumference.

                     WELL DRESSED.

A WOMAN fond of dress, is a term of opprobrium.
What does this condemnatory phrase
mean if it has any meaning? Is it that the woman
neglects her mind, her manners, her husband,
and her children, whilst she trims tawdry yellow,
with sky blue? Or that she tries to be neat
clean, and clothed in a manner becoming her
position in life, her age, her figure, and her complexion?
Dress has been described as affording an
index to a woman's character. It does more; it
actually affects her character. A woman well
dressed, and conscious of being well dressed,
becomes a very different person when she is put
into slatternly clothes. In the first position she
respects herself; in the second she feels not only
discontented with herself, but with her neighbours.
Goldsmith, in the Vicar of Wakefield, says: "A
suit of mourning has transformed my Coquette
into a Prude, and a new set of ribands has
given her younger sister more than natural
vivacity."

It is a question open to some debate whether
manners have affected dress, or dress manners.
No one can deny that the one has always reacted
on the other. Stiff, elaborate dress is
connected with stiff and courtly manners; the
high-flown compliment, the minuet, the rivolta.
No knight could have borne arms in defence of
a Bloomer, nor could the most determined lover
drink a toast out of a Balmoral boot. The hair
in long ringlets, or wrapped round a classic brow,
speaks of poetry, music, painting, and all that
is refined. We imagine these visionary
personages thus clothed, walking on some pleasant
terrace, feeding a peacock, whose graceful
plumage harmonises with the costume of its fair
owner. A woman is decidedly an imitative
animal; and, when you put her into the wide-