RP.MARKS ON INSKCT8. 331 



immediately he was so furiously assailed by a battalion before 

 unobserved or unnoticed, that he was compelled to throw down 

 the nest, and seek his safety in flight. In this case it would seem 

 that the wasps out of the nest did not understand what was taking 

 place in their mansion and treasures, till informed by the few who, 

 having escaped from within, suddenly cheered them on to the 

 rescue. Spiders, closely allied to insects, have formed intimacies 

 with prisoners, in whose cells they had fixed their abodes, and have 

 learned to come out of their webs when called ; — but how far they 

 understood the connection thus made, or if it was merely an 

 impulse to obtain food, is a fact not clearly ascertained. 



In one respect, it must be confessed, insects are deficient — they 

 have no voice. With all their humming, booming, buzzing, piping, 

 chirrupping, creaking, droning, whizzing and whirring ; aye, not- 

 withstanding a thousand seeming evidences to the contrary, and the 

 assertion of the Bard of the ** Seasons," that 



■Theburnish'd/y 



Sprung from the meads, o'er which he sweeps along, 

 Cheer'd by the breathing bloom and vital sky. 

 Tunes up amid these airy halls his song :" 



Notwithstanding this, and the delight every one must have expe- 

 rienced from standing in the midst of a rich balmy-breathing field, 

 gay with May-flowers, and listening to the multitudinous variety of 

 insect-sounds that now rising upon the gale in trumpet-like 

 clangors, now falling into the softest and gentlest almost unheard 

 murmurs, soothe the ear, and impart a delicious — a luxurious 

 tranquillity 3 — notwithstanding what is familiar to all 



"the ceaseless hum 



To him who wanders through the woods at noon,"* 



and resting beneath some grotesque yew tree, dark with refreshing 

 verdure, dozes in sweet repose, while the bees, among the banks 

 of mellifluous thyme, as they wing from blossom to blossom 



" Travel with audible melodious hum"\ 



soothing him to that ecstatic rest which the tired pedestrian of a 

 summer's day can only appreciate 3 — even the wish of Milton 



— — — — " Hide me from day's garish eye. 



While the bee with honied thigh, 



That at her flowery work doth sing ;" — 



is unavailing — for it must be admitted that insects are altogether 

 deficient of the legitimate organs of speech j they have no larynx, 

 and consequently any noises they make are merely mechanical — 

 just as any one may clap their hands, beat a drum, or whirl a stick 

 round. This certainly affords some ground for the celebrated sar- 

 casm of Xenarchus the Rhodian ; — 



" Happy the Cicadas' lives. 



Since they all have voiceless wives." 



• Cowp«r. t Bidlake, 



