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tion of the world by the Supreme Being, who, in the words of the son of Siraeh, 

 " created her, and saw her, and numbered her." 



And thus voices, addressed to the ear of every rational believer, will be heard 

 proceeding, not from the spheres only, but from every object of the visible uni- 

 verse, audibly declaring that " the hand which made them was divine." 



THE NATURALIST ABROAD ; 

 Or, DAYS IN THE WOODS AND FIELDS : 



INCLUDING INCIDENTAL BOTANICAL AND ENTOMOLOGICAL NOTICES. 



By Edwin Lees, F.L.S. & F.E.S.L. 



No. I. — The First Day of Summer, and the Libellulid^e. 



I have often thought that a carefully constructed contemporaneous calendar of 

 the appearance of birds and insects, and the flowering of wild or naturalized plants, 

 would not only be of great use to the inquiring naturalist, but of extraordinary 

 interest to the general lover of nature's wild scenes. That notices of the kind I 

 allude to are scattered about in various works I am well aware, but they have 

 seldom, if ever, been brought forward together, and their harmonies and associa- 

 tions fully traced. I think a plan of this kind peculiarly adapted for popular 

 illustration ; because, if the appearance of any flower synchronizes with the ap- 

 proach of its associate insect, and if the bird on airy wing, as it first meets the 

 sunny gleam, tells us to look for the opening flower in its wonted haunt, then the 

 images called up in the mind present an additional charm, and the various depart- 

 ments of nature's vast domain, instead of being kept isolated, are concatenated 

 together, and one pursuit agreeably relieves another. Much more is effected by 

 this combination of study than when the naturalist is bound down to one depart- 

 ment only ; for the botanist often unintentionally captures many insects with his 

 flowering herbs, and the entomologist might, in like manner, gather many a bota- 

 nical rarity while engaged in beating the bushes to replenish his collecting box. 

 As nature herself delights in harmonious associations, so mankind are pleased 

 with the combined array of all that her skill can produce, in the same way that a 

 grand pictorial landscape, while true to the aerial outline of the distant mountains, 

 traces, with the same fidelity, the lichened buttress and wild turret, dark in the 

 cloudy shadow of the foreground. 



