times and seasons, or not doing anything "Order is Heaven's first law," down patiently, and let the storms sweep over; and on their passing, if they pass, rise up, and go on its way, looking up to that region of blue calm which is never long invisible to the pure of heart, this is the blessedest possession that any woman can have. Better than house full of silver and gold, better than beauty, or high fortunes, or prosperous and satisfied love. 66 While, on the other hand, of all characters not radically bad, there is none more useless to herself and everybody else, who inflicts more pain, anxiety, and gloom on those around her, than the one who is deprecatingly described as being “ of an unhappy temperament." You may know her at once by her dull or vinegar aspect, her fidgety ways, her proneness to take the hard or ill-natured view of things and people. Possibly she is unmarried, and her mocking acquaintance insult woman and a mind without order can by no possibility be either a healthy or a happy mind. Therefore, beyond all sentimental sympathy, or contemptuous blame, should be impressed upon all women inclined to melancholy, or weighed down with any irremediable grief, this simple advice, to make their daily round of life as harmoni-hood by setting down that as the cause of ously methodical as they possibly can; leaving no odd hours, scarcely an odd ten minutes, to be idle and dreary in; and by means of orderly arranged, light, airy rooms, neat dress, and every pleasant external influence that is attainable, to leave untried none of those secondary means which are in the power of every one of us, for our own benefit or that of others, and the importance of which we never know until we have proved them. There is another maxim, easy to give, and hard to practice: Accustom yourself always to look at the bright side of things, and never make a fuss about trifles. It is pitiful to see what mere nothings some women will worry and fret over, lamenting as much over an ill-made gown as others do over a lost fortune; how some people we can always depend upon for making the best, instead of the worst, of whatever happens, thus lessening our anxieties for themselves in their troubles; and O! how infinitely comforting when we bring to them any of our own, assured that if any one can help us they can and will; while others we never think of burdening with our cares at all, any more than we would think of putting a butterfly in harness. The disposition which can bear trouble; which, while passing over the lesser annoyances of life, as unworthy to be measured in life's whole sum, can yet meet real affliction steadily, struggle with it while resistance is possible; conquered, sit her disagreeableness. Most wicked libel! There never was an unhappy old maid yet who would not have been equally unhappy as a wife, and more guilty, for she would have made two people miserable instead of one. It needs only to count up all the unhappy women one knows, women whom one would not change lots with for the riches of the Queen of Sheba, to see that most of them are those whom fate has apparently loaded with benefits, love, home, ease, luxury, leisure, and denied only the vague fine something, as indescribable as it is unattainable, the capacity to enjoy them all. Unfortunate ones! You see by their countenances that they never know what it is to enjoy. That thrill of thankful gladness, oftenest caused by little things, a lovely bit of nature, a holiday after long toil, a sudden piece of good news, an unexpected face, or a letter that warms one's inmost heart, to them is altogether incomprehensible. To hear one of them, in her rampant phase, you would suppose the whole machinery of the universe, down even to the weather, was in league against her small individuality; that everything everybody did, or said, or thought, was with one sole purpose, her personal injury. And when she sinks to the melancholy mood, though your heart may bleed for her, aware how horribly real are her selfcreated sufferings, still your tenderness sits uneasily, more as a duty than a pleasure, and you often feel, and are shocked at feeling, that her presence acts upon you like the proverbial wet-blanket, and her absence gives you an involuntary sense of relief. For, let us pity the unhappy ever so lovingly and sincerely, and strive with all our power to lift them out of their grief, | when they hug it, and refuse to be lifted out of it, patience sometimes fails. Human life is so full of pain, that once past the youthful delusion that a sad countenance is interesting, and an incurable woe the most delightful thing possible, the mind instinctively turns where it can get rest, and cheer, and sunshine. And the friend who can bring to it the largest portion of these is, of a natural necessity, the most useful, the most welcome, and the most dear. The "happy woman," in this our world, (which is apparently meant to be the road to perfection, never its goal,) you will find too few specimens of to be ever likely to mistake her. But you will recognize her presence the moment she crosses your path. Not by her extreme liveliness; lively people are rarely either happy or able to diffuse happiness; but by a sense of brightness and cheerfulness that enters with her, as an evening sunbeam across your parlor wall. Like the fairy order in the nursery-tale, she takes up the tangled threads of your mind, and reduces them to regularity, till you distinguish a clear pattern through the ugly maze. She may be neither handsome, nor clever, nor entertaining, yet somehow she makes you feel "comfortable," because she is so comfortable herself. She shames you out of your complainings, for she makes none. Yet mayhap, since it is the Divine law that we should all, like our Master, be "made perfect through suffering," you are fully aware that she has had far more sorrow than ever you had; that her daily path, had you trodden it, would be to you as gloomy and full of pitfalls as to her it is safe and bright. She may have even less than the medium lot of earthly blessings, yet all she has she enjoys to the full, and it is so pleasant to see any one enjoy! Her sorrows she neither denies nor escapes; they come to her naturally and wholesomely, and passing over, leave her full of compassion for all who may have to endure the same. Thus, whatever her fate may be, married or single, rich or poor, in health or sickness, though a cheerful spirit has twice as much chance of health as a melancholy one, she will be all her days a living justification of the ways of Providence, who makes the light as well as the darkness, nay, makes the light out of the darkness, a help and a peace-maker to her fellow-creatures, because she is at peace in herself: undoubtedly, as is plain to all, a happy woman. ONE THE INSECT WORLD. NE of the great attractions of entomology lies in the fact, that it invests with an attribute of wonder the most common and familiar objects. The little creatures that have crossed our path a hundred times, and which we have before regarded merely as so many sources of injury or annoyance, all at once become transformed into objects of great interest, astonishing us by the variety and beauty of their structure, and, at the same time, exciting our admiration by the wonderful instincts with which they are endowed. It is a great advantage, moreover, in the study of this science, that the objects of investigation are everywhere accessible. No one need lack the opportunity of observing and studying the habits and history of some members of the insect tribes. Much may be done without stepping beyond one's own threshold; and the possession of a garden, even though it be no bigger than the extraordinary six-feetsquare inclosures so designated, which one sometimes sees attached to suburban cottages, opens up to investigation more wonders than most men would be able to explore in half a lifetime. Nor is it merely in verifying the observations of others that the beginner in the study may employ himself. There is no branch of natural history in which there is more room still left for original research, or in which such research is more likely to conduce to the general advancement of the science. But, before proceeding further, it may not be amiss to remind our readers, that all are not insects which are insects called. The entomologist takes no heed of a number of little creatures which popular phraseology everywhere assigns to his care. The more precise and discriminating knowledge of the present day cuts off large sections of the animal world, which naturalists themselves, the great Linnæus included, formerly ranked with the insect tribes. The "model" insect is an animal which, in its mature form, has a body separated into three distinct regions, six legs, two antennæ or feelers, and one or else two pairs of wings. Let the reader make prisoner for a time of the first fly that settles on his nose, and he will see that the gentleman corresponds to the description we have given. The common wasp, the cockchafer, or a butterfly, would answer the purpose equally well, and would also show how wide the range of variation may be while still adhering to the general typical form. It is only in their mature or perfect state, however, that insects exhibit these distinctive characteristics, and before that mature form is reached, they have, for the most part, to undergo a more or less complete series of transformations. thoughtful person the feeling of wonder, and almost awe, to which the observation of the extraordinary changes which these creatures undergo gives rise. The interest of entomology as a study consists, to a great extent, in noting the endless variety of procedure among insects while preparing for, or actually undergoing, these transformations. The history of every individual insect, from the moment when the little caterpillar or grub makes its escape from the egg, through each subsequent incident and stage in its career, till it finally comes forth from the pupa, a winged denizen of air, is replete with interest to the curious observer, and could hardly fail to impress a devout mind with the sentiment of Bonnet: "It seems to me that I am at a spectacle where the Supreme Artist is hid behind the curtain." Much misapprehension prevails as to Nothing in the whole range of natural the precise character of these insect transhistory excites the wonder of the observer formations. And strangely enough, an more powerfully than these transforma- error which was not altogether unnatural, tions or metamorphoses of the insect tribes. when the general subject of the embryonic "If," say Kirby and Spence, in one of development of animals was less perfectly their most frequently quoted passages, "a understood than it is at present, is still naturalist were to announce to the world propagated by some of the leaders in enthe discovery of an animal which for the tomological science. The error to which first five years of its life existed in the we refer is thus stated by Kirby and form of a serpent; which then, penetrating Spence: "A caterpillar is not, in fact, a into the earth, and weaving a shroud of simple, but a compound animal, containing pure silk of the finest texture, contracted within it the germ of the future butterfly, itself within this covering into a body with- inclosed in what will be the case of the out external mouth or limbs, and resem- pupa, which is itself included in three or bling, more than anything else, an Egyp- four more skins, one over the other, that tian mummy; and which, lastly, after will successively cover the larva." Acremaining in this state, without food and cording to this notion, which is, or seems without motion, for three years longer, to be, indorsed by Mr. Douglas in his reshould at the end of that period burst its cent attractive little book, " The World of silken cerements, struggle through its Insects," and is supported by several great earthly covering, and start into day a names among the naturalists of former winged bird; what, think you, would be days, the metamorphosis of an insect is the sensation excited by this strange piece nothing more than a repeated casting off of intelligence?" What, indeed ? of its external skin, the perfect insect exyet the supposed case differs but in mat-isting all the while, in its proper form, ters of detail from the actual history of by far the larger proportion of the members of the insect world. In some of the tribes the metamorphosis is only partial, and the insects which belong to them exhibit pretty much the same appearance, and lead an almost identical mode of life throughout the entire period of their existence. Among other tribes, the moths and butterflies especially, the reverse of this obtains, and no degree of familiarity with the subject is sufficient to destroy in the mind of a And beneath and within its different external wrappers. But surely, as Professor Rymer Jones remarks, it can be no more necessary to suppose the pre-existence of so many skins, in order to explain the moults of a caterpillar, and its subsequent changes to a chrysalis and a butterfly, than to imagine that we ourselves have several skins one beneath the other, because, when the cuticle is removed by the application of a blister, a new layer of epidermis is again and again renewed. The error arises from a mistaken idea, that the metamorphosis of the insect is something singular and exceptional in the animal world, combined with a misconception as to the true nature of the epidermic investment. The proper explanation of the phenomena appears to be this, that the successive changes which the insect undergoes are, in principle, the same as obtain among most other creatures in their early embryonic stages; and that the repeated moults and changes of form are due to the living skin or cutis beneath the external epidermis gradually developing itself, and expanding into variously shaped organs, in accordance, in every case, with the law of being, if we may so speak, of each individual species. The popular notion is, no doubt, by far the most attractive of the two; but, unfortunately, nature and truth do not always square with our ingenious fancies, which injure quite as often as they advance the cause of science. Let us pass, however, from this somewhat dry and abstruse topic to the history of an insect familiar to all our readers, and which has long occupied the attention of naturalists. The aphides, or plant lice, the "green fly" of the gardener, have as wonderful a history as any members of the insect tribes, and with a small expenditure of trouble our readers may trace the entire wonderful history for themselves. It appears that in autumn the swarms of aphides which infest our plants are composed of both male and female insects, which, after pairing, and the deposition of the eggs by the females for a fresh brood, speedily die. In the following spring, as soon as the sap begins to flow, the eggs, which survive all the rigors of winter, are hatched, and the young lice, beginning immediately to pump up sap from the tender leaves and shoots, rapidly increase in size, and soon come to maturity. In this state, it is found that the whole brood, without a single exception, consist of females, or, let us say, of individuals capable of reproducing their kind. In a short time these animals produce a second brood of females like themselves, which again give birth to a third brood of precisely the same description, and this process goes on throughout the summer without the appearance of a single male insect. In the autumn, however, insects of both sexes are again produced, and the females deposit eggs to continue the species in the same manner through the next summer. This extraordinary mode of reproduction has naturally excited great attention, and several theories have been advanced to account for it. Reaumur endeavored to elude the difficulty altogether by asserting that aphides were androgynous; Leon Dufour referred the phenomena to spontaneous or equivocal generation; and Steenstrup, who gives the reproductive virgins the curious name of ammen, or wet nurses, treats the matter as an instance in support of his doctrine of the "alternation of generations." The latest authority on the subject is Dr. W. T. Burnett, who discusses the question, and gives the result of his own personal observations, in an important paper, first published in "Silliman's American Journal" for January, 1854; and the conclusion to which this gentleman comes is, that a modification of the view put forth by Steenstrup is probably the correct one. It is quite clear, however, that much has yet to be done before the matter can be regarded as settled, and any enterprising entomologist may, if he will, turn to good account the little vermin which batten on his geraniums and calceolarias, by still further following up the subject. In Closely connected, if not in some respects identical, with this anomalous mode of reproduction among the aphides, is the phenomenon which has been designated parthenogenesis, or reproduction by virgins, which are indisputably true females. Professor Siebold, of Berlin, has greatly added to our knowledge of the insect wonders of this kind by his essay "On a True Parthenogenesis in Moths and Bees," a work which has recently been given to the English public in a translation by Mr. Dallas, one of our ablest entomologists. this essay Professor Siebold announces the discovery of the remarkable fact, that a queen bee, which has never had her nuptial flight with a drone, will yet lay fertile eggs, such eggs, however, invariably producing drone bees alone. It is only after the nuptial flight that the queen bee is able to lay the eggs of either sex at pleasure. One chapter of the book is devoted to a record of cases in which virgin females of the silk-worm moth have been known to deposit fertile eggs; but the moths among which this mode of reproduction chiefly prevails, are a curious race of tiny crea the organs of flight being the guide throughout for the arrangement of the mighty host of animated forms which constitute what is fitly termed "the insect world." tures, whose caterpillars construct for organs of flight are neatly folded up when themselves movable cases of earth, or not on 66 active service." Bees, wasps, stems of grass, in which they undergo ichneumon flies, and the like, have simple their transformations, and which also serve membraneous wings, and are therefore as dwelling-places for the wingless fe- the Hymenoptera; the dragon-fly with males, by which these moths are all dis- its gauzy wings, the frail ephemera, and tinguished. The males of these insects others of the kind, form the Neuroptera, or appear to be singularly disproportionate in nerve-winged order; and so on; the numnumber to the females, the collector some-ber, nature, or degree of development of times rearing hundreds of the larvæ without obtaining anything but the same invariable wingless females; and it is probably designed as in some sort a compensatory provision for the continuation of the race, that the females are endowed with this extraordinary power of virgin reproduction. Professor Siebold was struck by observing the violent impulse by which the female moths, very soon after their exclusion from the pupa, were impelled to deposit their eggs; but he continues, "If I had wondered at the zeal for oviposition in these husbandless Solenobia, how was I astonished when all the eggs of these females, of whose virgin state I was most positively convinced, gave birth to young caterpillars, which looked about with the greatest assiduity in search of materials for the manufacture of their little cases." It only remains for us to add, that, as in the instance of the "wet nurses" among the aphides, the female moths continue their reproductive power through several successive generations. In the classification of insects, the wings, | which, as Professor Owen remarks, are "the grand and characteristic endowment" of the tribe, serve as the basis for their distribution into separate orders. It is not necessary here to go into the details of the classifications generally adopted, though it will not be out of place to mention briefly some of the more prominent divisions. The moths to which we have just been referring constitute, with the butterflies, the order Lepidoptera, or scalewinged insects; the so-called down or feathers with which the wings of these insects are clothed being nothing less than an almost infinite number of beautiful symmetrically formed scales attached to the membrane of the wing in regular rows, like the slates or tiles covering the roof of a house. "The sharp-bone beetle" and his allies form the Coleoptera, or sheathwinged order, the said "shards," in all their endless variety, being literally the sheaths or shields under which the real One of the few insects which do not readily fall into rank and file in the ordinary systems of classification is that little rogue, often very well known where his acquaintance is never acknowledged, the common flea. Pulex irritans is his name; and very irritating fellows they are generally allowed to be; though that genial old lady, mentioned by Kirby and Spence, who thought them "the prettiest little merry things in the world,” appears to have regarded them with great favor. It has often occurred to us, by the way, that the old lady above mentioned must be the same that is referred to in another part of the "Introduction," who declared she could always hear when a flea walked over her nightcap, and that it clicked as it went along, as if walking on pattens! If there be any one insect more than another which deserves to be called the universal favorite, it is surely the honeybee. Little children sing about it in the nursery; it is an everlasting theme with those grown-up children the poets; and, as we have already seen, the philosophers find in it abundant scope for their profoundest study. It ranges at large over the New World as well as the Old; everywhere known, and everywhere an object of interest, and even affection. "A bee among the flowers in spring," says Paley, "is one of the cheerfulest objects that can be looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment; so busy and so pleased." Next to the honey-bee, the best-known members of the tribe are doubtless the humble-bees. They are all social insects, and live in communities, consisting, as in the case of the honey-bee, of males, females, and workers, the number of individuals in each nest being small, however, in comparison with the teeming population of the hive, and never exceeding two or |