of October, 1804, I remarked that there were among the grass and wool at the bottom about forty grains of maize. These appeared to have been arranged with some care and regularity, and every grain had the corcule, or growing part, eaten out, the lobes only being left. This seemed so much like an operation induced by the instinctive propensity that some quadrupeds are endowed with for storing up food for support during the winter months, that I soon afterwards put into the cage about a hundred additional grains of maize. These were all in a short time carried away, and on a second examination I found them stored up in the manner of the former. But though the animal was well supplied with other food, and particularly with bread which it seemed very fond of, and although it continued perfectly active through the whole winter, on examining its nest a third time, about the end of November, I observed that the food in its repository was all consumed except about half a dozen grains." SEA-SIDE PICTURES. 399 SEA-SIDE PICTURES. This being the month when the worn and weary dwellers in town think first of migrating to the invigorating and pleasant sea-side, let us give them a sea-picture from Crabbe, than which neither Stanfield nor Bentley have ever painted one more faithfully. Turn to the watery world! but who to thee The ebbing tide has left upon its place; As an awakened giant with a frown, Might show his wrath and then to sleep sink down. View now the winter-storm! above, one cloud, Is restless change; the waves are swelled and steep, May watch the mightiest till the shoal they reach, And sports at ease on the tempestuous main. Darkness begins to reign; the louder wind SEA-SIDE PICTURES. Lo! he has something seen, he runs apace, A seaman's body; there'll be more to-night!" Lights, signs of terror, gleaming from the stern; No need of this; not here the stoutest boat D D 401 INSECT MUSIC. BY ACHETA DOMESTICA. To the man of transparent skin and opaque fancy-or no fancy at all-the hum of the gnat is suggestive, we know, of nothing but angry cheeks and swollen temples, with corresponding sounds of pshaws! and buffets; but to those who are less outwardly, but more inwardly sensitive, the "horn" even of this insect blood-hunter is not without its melody, with sylvan accompaniments, such as the "ploughboy's whistle o'er the lea," and the gurgle of pebbly brooks, red in the glowing sunset. When, and wherever a bee may happen to flit, humming past us, is one not borne at once upon her musical wings to the side of some heathy hill? and does one not forthwith hear in concert the bleating of flocks, the bursting of ripened furze-pods, and the blithe carol of the rising skylark? or, our thoughts taking a turn more homely, we listen in fancy to the sound of tinkling cymbal placed by rejoicing housewife to celebrate and accompany the aerial march of a departing swarm. Thus sweet and infinitely varied is the concert of concordant sounds, all of the allegro character, which may be assembled for the pleasing of the mental ear, even by the simple and single, and passing strains of the above, and other insects, which make melody in their mirth; and then how numerous are the corresponding images, which are wont at their bidding to be conjured up before the mental eye! Glowing embers, smiling flowers, dancing leaves, waving cornfields, glittering waters, all intermingled in a haze of merry motion; an imaged dance of life got up within the chamber of the mind at the stirring of, sometimes, but a note of Nature's living music. But besides the sensations of involuntary pleasure which we have often owed, without knowing it, to insect minstrelsy, it affords, though on this subject few, perhaps, ever think, matter for thought-inquiry concerning the way in which it is produced. It is all of an instrumental, and not vocal character; and among the varied mechanisms of |