20 THE CRICKET AS A SYMBOL. 



beautiful,, take, with the grasshopper, their animal delight 

 therein, but, never converting the delights of nature into 

 matter of mental store and profit, resemble not the bee, who 

 doubles, by an internal process, the value of her floral sweets ; 

 people who disport themselves amidst the fields, and live upon 

 their products, but whose thoughts, never raised to the Divine 

 Source of the beautiful and the good, admit of no parallel with 

 the flights of the butterfly towards the source of day, resem- 

 bling rather the leaps from one blade to another of the heed- 

 less grasshopper, who never cares to rise upon his ample wings 

 into the bright blue sky above him. 



Come we next to the Cricket the fire-basking, thirsty, 

 greedy, always feeding, never-fattened " Acheta domestica" 

 or House Cricket. 



But, stay ! what are we about ? Are we not committing 

 moral suicide? stabbing our own reputation through the 

 lanky sides of the little animal we have chosen for our repre- 

 sentative ? Nay, not so, altogether. There are two sides of a 

 parallel, as well as two sides of a medal ; and, if you will turn, 

 Reader, to our opening paper, you will find that we have placed 

 ourselves, as might have been expected, on the brightest. 



We may observe, also, that our insect emblem is described 

 as (although a domestic) a country cricket, a partaker, as such, 

 of country pleasures a resorter to sunny banks in summer, 

 as well as glowing hearths in winter ; whereas a cricket, town- 

 born, town-bred, and an exclusive dweller in brick and mortar, 



