EGG-BRACELETS. 95 



an arm, distinguished from the rest by a circlet of beads, a 

 many-rowed bead bracelet, as regularly wrought as bracelet ever 

 worn on lady's wrist, or woven of silk and beads by lady's 

 fingers. This piece of natural jewellery is the work of a 

 certain Mother Moth, whose own eggs, set in an indissoluble 

 weather-proof cement, are the living gems of which it is com- 

 posed. We can tell you, however, that the hawthorn does 

 not (after the fashion of some fairer wearers) display this 

 ornament without having paid for it, partly already in hard 

 green leaves of last summer, the remaining price of her pearls 

 to be discharged in the forth-coming spring on the first issue 

 of new foliage. The deceased manufacturer of this dear-bought 

 ornament, was a female " Lackey," member of a tribe so called 

 on account of the gaudy liveries (blue and red, white and 

 yellow) in which, while Caterpillars, they are arrayed at the 

 cost, as we have seen, of the unhappy tree (be it hawthorn, 

 plum, pear, or blackthorn) upon which they happen to be de- 

 pendants, often by dozens or scores, stripping it of green 

 honours after the manner of lazy lackeys of another sort, 

 the devourers of trees heraldic. From these bracelet-eggs 

 will come forth with the opening leaves, just in time to devour 

 them, a new troop of these Lackey varlets, which in due 

 season (about June) will doff their coats of many colours, for 

 the sober chrysalidau-brown, and in July emerge from their 

 Aurelian shrouds and cases, a company of sober-suited light- 

 brown Moths, images of her, their lady mother, the constructor 



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