fort and safety: the spider folds up its long legs, turns in its head, like the vexed hedgehog, and suddenly works such a change upon its appearance as to hide its identity from the onlooker. The wasp knows nothing of this passive endurance. Its sting is ever ready, ever right, and a very slight annoyance will provoke it to resistance or open attack. When a hive of them has been disturbed, they become very fierce, and many an unwary passer-by has been made to feel the truth of Spenser's lines—

"No man nor beast may rest or take repast,

For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries."

The arrangements of God for the preservation and defence of insects, which would otherwise fall a prey to those birds or to those other species of insects which live upon them, are full of evidences of His wisdom and goodness in a great department of nature which we are apt to overlook. Some of those creatures find means of safety in the kind of food which they eat. Thus, when the caterpillar of one insect lives upon a kind of yellow lichen its colour corresponds, but when it feeds upon one which is gray, it assumes a gray hue. In either case it is so like the lichen on which it feeds, that it is distinguished from it with some difficulty. Others assume the hue of the soil which they frequent. The weevil tribe vary very much in this way. "Thus," say Spence and Kirby,

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one of our scarcest British weevils (Cleonus nebulosus), by its gray colour, spotted with black, so closely imitates the soil, consisting of white sand mixed with black earth, on which I have always found it, that its chance of escape, even though it be hunted for by the lyncean eye of an entomologist, is not small. Another insect of the same

tribe (Thylacites scabriculus), of which I have observed several species of ground-beetles make great havoc, abounds in pits of a loamy soil of the same colour precisely with itself—a circumstance that doubtless occasions many to escape from their pitiless foes. Several other weevils resemble chalk, and perhaps inhabit a chalky or white soil. But the most surprising instance of this adaptation of the colour of an insect to that of the soil where it resides, is found in some of the Mantis tribe, separated by M. Lefebvre under the generic name Eremiaphila, of which he gives so interesting an account. These insects (which he met with in the nymph state only, in the very midst of the African desert, apparently passing a life of absolute solitude in the midst of these burning sands) had the most perfect identity of colour with that of the soil on which they were found, being brown where the soil was brown, and at not above a hundred paces distant of a silvery white, when found amongst the white particles of broken shells or calcareous rocks of a similar dazzling colour."

This mode of protection is had recourse to by birds and quadrupeds also. In some of the climbing birds it is often seen; and who has not observed the nimble squirrel, when pursued, betake himself to some brown-barked tree, and lie flat on its trunk, or round the root of one of its branches, as if he were a mere excrescence of bark?

The most interesting example of this kind of adaptation of the insect to the places which it frequents, in so far as form and colour go, is to be found in a foreign insect, the Phyllium. A friend gave us one of these lately, and it is now before us. Again and again, when it has been shewn

to others, the remark made was- "What do you do with these half-withered leaves?" Let us look at Phyllium. Suppose the top of a sprout of this year's growth be broken from a bay-the leaves stripped off-two of them taken and laid back to back along the sprout to within about a quarter of an inch from the top, you have then the body and head of Phyllium. At the end of the bare sprout, two forked, incipient leaves stand out. These will do for the "horns." The midribs of the leaves lying thus along the sprout give, as they taper towards their points, the aspect of the body; while the uncovered projecting part, with its half-formed buds, represents the head and the eyes. The wings will be represented by an oak leaf cut up the centre of the midrib. These wings bear the most striking resemblance to this leaf thus cut. The regularity of the larger veins, and the distinctness of the smaller ones, are very marked. Then you have the four legs, like fragments of leaflets, joined to the upper part of the body; while two arms, serving the same purpose as the long tentacula of the butterfly, branch off from the shoulder. These, too, are like fragments of a leaf also; but when they are brought together, they form an entire leaf, with its base at the head, and its point projecting. When Phyllium shall creep gently on a bush, or lie at rest among its leaves, it will be a quick observer indeed of beast or bird which shall detect it. Then when it flies, it will always look like a stray leaf torn from its branch.

Kirby and Spence give some interesting details of certain attitudes which various insects have recourse to in order to protect themselves.

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"The great rose-beetle (Gorius olens) presents an object sufficiently terrific, when, with its large jaws expanded, and its abdomen turned over its head, like a scorpion it menaces its enemies, some of which this ferocious attitude may deter from attacking it."

"The caterpillars of the hawk-moth (Sphinx), particularly that which feeds upon the privet, when they repose, holding strongly with their prolegs the branch on which they are standing, rear the anterior part of their body so as to form nearly a right angle with their posterior; and in this position it will remain perfectly tranquil—thus eluding the notice of the enemies or alarming them-perhaps for hours.”

"The caterpillar of a moth (Lophopteryx camelina), whenever it rests from feeding, turns its head over its back, then becomes concave, at the same time elevating its tail, the extremity of which remains in a horizontal position, with two short horns like ears behind it."

Whether, then, we look at insects as feigning death when they are touched by man, or as becoming assimilated to the substances on which they live in so far as colour goes-or as coming forth, like the wasp and the bee, armed in mail, and well provided with sharpest stings we cannot but be struck with the thought, that while the great Creator sits enthroned on the riches of the mighty universe, He yet condescends to care for the tiny insect by the wayside, teaching it a discretion which often triumphs over the wisdom of man himself.

JONATHAN AT MICHMASH:

THE MIGHT OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

Seldom

"LIKE sire like son," does not always hold true. have father and child been so widely dissimilar as Saul and his son Jonathan. The contrast has brought out, in boldest relief, two men who played a very distinguished part in the early history of Israel. Saul was crafty, cunning, worldly; while, to serve his own purposes, he could assume a profession of love to God, and devotedness to God's cause, which even the experienced eye of Samuel could not see through. Though he set out in life with a good name among the covenant people of God, he was never known to sacrifice one personal consideration either for the welfare of his people, or in behalf of the Church of God. He was, indeed, helpful to both for a time, but that was only so long as their interests crossed not the path of his ambition, and their welfare interfered not with his aggrandisement. Jonathan was the very reverse of all this. Nursed amidst the luxury of an Eastern court, he was not spoiled by it. Surrounded by men who, regarding him as heir to the kingdom, would not fail to speak to him with flattering lips, or to cast encouragements to licentiousness in his way, he was not seduced from his manly simplicity of character. And in the midst of men who, like the king, subordinated everything good and noble to their own selfish ends, he was yet capable of most disinterested acts, and of friendships of the deepest and tenderest kind; while he could cheer