114 MY FIRST VISIT 



show them the way. If they perceive that the hody of the cockroach 

 lies across the hole and will not thus pass through, an order is given, 

 and the body is turned endwise, and thus it is dragged in and a dinner is 

 made of cockroach broth. Kirby says, "he saw two or three ants haul- 

 ing along a young snake not dead, which was as thick as a goosequill." 

 St. Pierre relates that he saw a number of ants carrying off a Patagonian 

 centipede. They had seized it by all its legs and bore it along as work- 

 men do a large piece of timber. 



"Have ants and caterpillars eyes, and if they have, do they use them?" 

 I do not believe that caterpillars see. The experiments I have made con- 

 vince me of that fact, — but ants see very distinctly. They are perfect 

 insects ; caterpillars are not, but have to undergo their transformation, 

 before they are imagines^ or perfect insects. Sight is not necessary for 

 them, for the eggs from which they are hatched, are laid on the tree or 

 shrub, where they find their appropriate food as soon as they are ex- 

 cluded from the egg. Nature is very economical. Sight is not neces- 

 sary to the happiness of the animal, and therefore it is not bestowed on 

 them. The reason why the ants passed by some of these caterpillars, 

 until they "stumbled" upon another, was not that they did not see, but 

 they were looking out for ihe fattest subjects. They instinctively knew 

 which would afford the richest repast. The "lean kine" they rejected, 

 but pounced on the " fat and well favored." Even a child will select 

 the biggest and softest of a pile of apples. Are you satisfied ? 



RUSTICUS. 



MY FIRST VISIT TO THE OCEAN. 



Events and scenes that, to the traveller and man of experience, may 

 be trifling and unimportant, often constitute an era in the life-time of 

 those who have before scarcely extended their journeyings beyond their 

 college walls. I say this, that 1 may anticipate the smile of those to 

 whom the scenes described below, are familiar. 



I left college in the fall of 1S4-, with just such an idea, and about 

 the same views of the great world of nature as a Sunday-scholar has 

 of the world of heathenism — confused, indistinct, and purely imagin- 

 ary — and when I found, after rambling some weeks in the Middle States, 

 that I was but thirty miles from the sea-shore, no language can tell my 

 anxiety. It was a long day's ride through the interminable pines and 

 sands of Jersey — however, just after sun-set one beautiful evening — 

 tired, jaded, and exhausted in every way, except of thinking and talk- 

 ing about the ocean, we drove up to the door of a boarding house, at 



