ITS VARIETIES." 9 



prison, there thou shalt abide till we have taken thy portrait. 

 Yes, queer creature as thou art ! thy angular figure and round 

 physiognomy shall be exhibited in our first vignette. Thou 

 shalt be honoured as our opening subject, and if thy name 

 had not served already the purpose of one, whose sympathy 

 with thy merry chirrup has been shared by thousands, thou 

 shouldst have given a title to our book, like ' The Bee ' 

 and other seekers and gatherers of Sweets ? Thou art, in truth, 

 an omnium-gatherer, nothing comes amiss to thy convenient 

 appetite, and variety must be the character of the feast we 

 would provide, no less than of that which thou lovest to 

 devour. True, as we have said, thou art not particular, " scum- 

 mings of pots, sweepings, bread, yeast, flesh and fat of broth/'' 

 thy pickings most esteemed, seem not, some of them, the most 

 inviting fare ; yet do these dainties, each in its kind, serve to 

 symbolize, not unaptly, the very sort of viands we would seek 

 and set before our readers. 



Tor "scumrnings of pots," suppose we say the "cream of our 

 subject/' the most light, and, withal, the richest of the agreeable 

 matter already laid up by others, to be extracted by ourselves 

 in the field of observation. For " sweepings " let us put 

 " gleanings, " Gleanings in Entomology and we have the 

 very term adopted by a well-known writer for his amusing 

 anecdotes in various branches of Natural History. Then 

 "bread", with Cricket as with man, the very "staff of life," if 

 poverty forbid him not to grasp it, what substance more properly 



