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of the year are commonly called soldiers, and are often .caught and sported with 

 by children. The cockchaffers ( Melolontha vulgaris) are not so numerous now 

 as they have been, but one carelessly whirs by now and then, and the much 

 smaller Scarbceus solstitialis now appears clustering round that half opened half 

 destroyed Burnet-rose. A host of minuter insects, coleopterous and dipterous, 

 animate the solar beams, and when the clouds intercept the bright rays, numbers 

 may be observed resting on the leaves of plants, lurking in the broad shade of the 

 trees, or even asleep in the flower-cups. 



The lovely Cowslips, late so beautiful, have all faded away, except that one tall 

 tuft deep in the shade, overshadowed by the Witch-elm and its hop-like clusters ; 

 and were not every primrose long ago fled, we might almost imagine that bright 

 brimstone butterfly ( Gonepteryx RhamniJ was a blossom of one wafted before 

 the playful breeze. The sun gleams now without a veil before him, and a host of 

 azure blue butterflies appear sporting along the topmost spikes of the grass. We 

 are covered with gramineous farina in chasing them, but they rise up opening their 

 blue wings on every side almost as numerous as the thousand Eyebrights (Eu- 

 phrasia officinalis), whose modest beauties, though half hid, we see at every step ; 

 and vieing with the casrulean of the woolly-leaved Scorpion-grass. 



But what numbers of Aphides cover the stems of the plants around us. Let 

 us pause at this dock. Here the Aphides are wingless and black, and clothe the 

 topmost stems of the plant like a mantlet of the ancient Romans, presenting noth- 

 ing but their polished black armour to the attack of the enemy, so closely cling 

 they to the plant. And well have they need ; for a squadron of the small red Ants 

 have found them out, and though they cannot carry them off yet they have found 

 a prize which will save them the trouble of foraging for some time. See how 

 they are passing over the Aphids, and now stopping and moving their antenna? 

 about. They are regular lawyers, these Ants, and the poor Aphides their clients ; 

 they have extracted all they can from them already, and are urging them 

 for another fee, nor will they leave them till nothing further is to be obtained. 

 The fact is that the excrement of the Aphis being derived from the juice of the 

 plant is very sweet and clammy, and the Ants are so fond of it, that they devour it 

 as fast as it is produced by the Aphides, and the supply being insufficient for the 

 demand, though the Ants do not exactly, like the boy in the fable, kill the goose 

 to get all the eggs at once, yet, having devoured all the honey-dew the Aphides 

 have manufactured, they tickle and incite them as much as possible to produce 

 more, which they immediately devour. Whatever may be urged in favour of Ants, 

 in general, as an industrious and provident race, but little praise is due to those 

 I am now alluding to, who are evidently idle marauders, escaped from the 

 restraints of legitimate authority, and are here living an idle and luxurious life, de- 

 pending entirely upon the labours of others. I have often wondered how Ants 

 were enabled to find their way up the labyrinthine passages of tall spinous Thistles, 

 vol. i. x 



