ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 401 



" What is the correct pronunciation of the name of the German poet 



Goethe } " It is impossible to reproduce the sound of this name accurately 

 through English letters. A partial approximation may be made, however. Try 

 Gay-tek, and you will not be so very wrong. Sun. 



So Bagehot is Bah'-jote ; and Quatrefages, Kah'-ire-falij. 



There seems to be more sentiment than science in objecting to the study 



of insects on account of the pain occasioned by their capture and preservation. 

 Shakespeare says, ' The poor beetle that we tread upon, in corporeal sufferance 

 feels a pang as great as when a giant dies" which shows that he did not un- 

 derstand the anatomy of insects. "Minute dissections and the closest anatomi- 

 cal examinations have proved that, though insects are possessed of nerves, they 

 have no well-defined organs representing the brain, the seat of concentrated feel- 

 ing, where all the nervous connections meet. They have, instead, a chain of 

 ganglia or bundles of nerve-substance, from each of which nerves branch out to 

 contiguous parts, so that the sensations are not all carried to one grand central 

 focus of acute sensibility as with us ; but form as it were separate systems, any 

 one of which might be destroyed without disturbing the sensation of the others." 

 It is well known that large moths, found asleep in the day-time, may be pinned 

 to the trunks of trees without suffering pain enough to awaken them, and, only 

 at the approach of twilight, do they seek to free themselves from what they 

 doubtless consider an inconvenient situation. It is related that Mr. Haworth, 

 the well-known English entomologist, being in a garden with a friend who firmly 

 believed in the acute susceptibility of insects, struck down a large dragon-fly, 

 and, in so doing, accidentally severed its long abdomen from the rest of its body. 

 The mutilated insect, after this misfortune, felt so little inconvenience or loss of 

 appetite that it greedily devoured two small flies. Mr. Haworth then contrived 

 to form a false abdomen, to create such a balance to the rest of the body as 

 would enable it to fly ; after which, it devoured another fly, and on being set at 

 liberty, flew away with the greatest glee, as if it had received no injury. But all 

 dispute upon this point should be ended by the entomologist's simple expedient of 

 dipping his pin in prussic acid before piercing the insect, so that the effect is in- 

 stantaneous. 



Sir Charles Bell, upon looking over a biographical sketch of himself,, 



made the following marginal comment on that part of it which spoke of his edu- 

 cation: "Nonsense! I received no education but from my mother; neither 

 reading, writing, ciphering, nor anything else. My education was the example 

 set by my brothers. There was, in all the members of my family, a reliance on 

 self a true independence ; and, by imitation, I obtained it. People prate about 

 education, and put out of sight example, which is all in all." 



A teacher in London, on being asked what moral education or training 



he gave to his scholars what he did, for instance, when he detected a child in a 

 lie his answer was this: "I consider all moral education to be a humbug. 

 Nature teaches children to lie. If one of my boys lies, I set him to write some 

 such copy as this : ' Lying is a base and infamous offense ' ; I make him write a 

 quire of paper over with this copy, and he knows very well that, if he does not 

 bring it to me in a good condition, he will get a flogging." 



Xanthus, the historian, says that a man killed by a dragon will be re- 

 stored to life by an herb which he calls talin. Democritus asserted and Theo- 

 phrastus believed that there was an herb at the touch of which the wedge the 

 woodman had driven into a tree would leap out again. 

 vol. xx. 26 



