74- EARLY PREJUDICK. 



ment. He loves, while yet in freedom, to ride upon a sun- 

 beam ; but would be content, when once enthralled, to bask 

 only iii the sunshine and his mistress's smile, to revel and to 

 sleep upon a bed of roses. What think you, ladies, of this our 

 candidate for your especial notice ? In proper and euphonious 

 parlance, ' Cetonia aurata ' is the fitting appellation which he 

 bears ; but to you, probably, if already known at all, he is 

 more familiar as ' a nasty beetle ! ' 



Yes, it is thus, doubtless, that, blinded (as some are for their 

 live-long day) by the morning mist of early prejudice, you have 

 been led to miscall even that beautiful creature, the Rose or 

 Golden Chafer ; with a multitude of others scarcely less worthy 

 of admiring notice. 



The first unlucky Scarabaus, which may have crossed the 

 toddling footsteps of our childhood, was made, perhaps in our 

 childish fearlessness, an object of manual examination, and that 

 with impunity, for the insect is almost always as innocent as we 

 were once. But only let nurse, or some other person grown up 

 in error, have been at hand, and our earliest experiment in en- 

 tomology would have been abruptly ended by a warning lecture, 

 rendered intelligible to our dawning apprehension in the sense, 

 at least, of fear and repugnance. With this false impression, 

 struck anew on every occasion, and deepening with our strength, 

 we grow up ; if to manhood, with dislike; if to womanhood, with 

 terror of every thing that wears a beetle's shape, although it is 

 one considered by entomologists as the most perfect (or per- 



