AJ\"D DISTRIBUTE INSECT VARIETY. 27 



Who, weary with the business of the night, 

 Within a hollow bough was slumbering light. 

 The Owl, grown testy with the clamour, sighed : 

 ' Keep quiet, can't you 'r' but the more she cried, 



And then again requested, ' Stop it, or ' 



But she fired up, and dinned, the more, the more. 



The Owl now twigg'd there was no other way, 



Her words despised, to stay the babbler's play. 



Devised at length a means to take her in, 



And sleep in freedom from the noisy din : 



' Sweet are the notes thou deem'st that thrill thy lyre. 



Sweet as Apollo can alone inspire ; 



But come, I have a mind to drink a draught 



Minerva gave me lately to be quaffed ; 



Your thi'oat is parched ; take counsel, drink with me.' 



The Cicada, who thought that she could see 



Her voice was praised, all artless to her went. 



The Owl down swooping from the hollow pent. 



Her trembling chased and packed to Lethe's wave ; 



So that refused in life in death she gave." 



But not alone were the pipings of the Cicadse painful in 

 civic ears ; in this opinion, we find, acquiesces Virgil, with a 

 most exquisite perception for the mournful sound of the foaming 

 waves and chill starlight on the sea ; the enchanted rush of the 

 homeward-freighted galley round Circe^s cape ; the idle and 

 glassy calm off Tiber's mouth; the whistling breeze and 

 howling tempest, with all those vicissitudes the weather-beaten 

 voyager encountered in olden time who hoisted sail from Italy 

 to polished Attica. Farmer Virgil, who possessed a feeling no 

 less intuitive for the echoing song of the grape-pruner, and 

 dream-inviting murmur of the April bees at his sallow fence, 

 nevertheless, as we have seen, thinks the ten o'clock melody of 

 service to the herdsman. 



If we turn to Hellenic libraries, we find, on the contrary, 

 the deified Tettix a favourite of every bard, from Homer and 

 Hesiod to Anacreon and Theocritus. Prophet of the dog-days 

 and their white lilies ; delight of wayfarer, and solace to the 

 lover reclined in the fragrant shade of plane-tree or dreamy 

 oak — no less was it favoured in the City of the Violet Crown ; 

 for if its clear wayside minstrelsy had led a forgotten priest 

 of Egypt to portray it as a hieroglyphic of music, we may be 

 Sure no scoff of vEsop's, that it piped away the summer hour 

 and might dance in winter, could deter the children of Athena 



