AND DISTRIBUTE INSECT VARIETY. 19 



allowing the escape of the winged sylph. This metamorphosis 

 did not escape the keen, though uninformed, eye of antiquity, 

 and consequently takes shape as a pretty mythological trait. 

 Aurora, it is said, had a failing for two yoving men, Cephalus 

 and Tithonus, and, as the legend goes, carried them to heaven ; 

 but having forgotten to ask perpetual youth for Tithonus, he 

 became old and decrepid, and, like an infant, was rocked in a 

 cradle. Hereupon, weary of life and immortality in such a 

 form, he asked but power to die. The goddess of roseate dawn 

 said this was not possible, but, exerting her magic, she trans- 

 formed him to a Cicada, which moults when it is old and grows 

 young again. 



Proceeding to ramble in the mowing-grass at the end of 

 June, I found the brown paper-like cases whence the Cicadse had 

 emerged, not unfrequently clinging on to rank mints and 

 grass stalks ; and sometimes I came upon a newly-fledged male 

 sounding his double pipes low down in a bush, or even sitting 

 ignommiously on the ground, Pip ! piping ! like an angry infant 

 on the point of losing its equilibrium. Some of these I caught, 

 and when grasped by the hand they made a guttural noise like 

 a young bird, strongly beating their wings and raising their 

 abdomens. Then walking out about 10 a.m., where the sun fell 

 on the foliage, and the quick-eyed green lizard frisked over the 

 tree trunks and walls, I invariably heard the sqviallers at the 

 accustomed spots ; and by dint of careful scrutiny the minstrel 

 could be brought in view. Their matutinal music then resembled 

 most innumerable watches set on the trees and let run down one 

 after another. 



It was now midsummer by the banks of the Po, and the 

 brisk movement of Italian life had given way to languor in the 

 heavy and fragrant evening air. Groups of gaily-clothed shop- 

 girls walk past my window flirting their fans ; across the river 

 wings to and fro a flat-bottomed barquetta, to bear Amaryllis 

 and Phyllis to romp and lounge where the shadows descend on 

 the grass and flowers, and at late twilight to return and arrange 

 their hair by the watery mirror. Bathers plunge in the flood, 

 are borne down by the current, and struggle back to the alders. 

 And now all is gloom ; the village lads chat in groups and fire- 

 flies flash, where before was so much subdued animation. 

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