26 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 
It may seem a long digression, but the lovely insects of 
that place, as they appear in my cabinet, or are pictured 
forth on canvas for the inspection of my readers, excite in 
me a thousand grateful emotions, that “come crowding 
thickly up for utterance.” It is worth a visit to the Pen- 
insula of the Crimea to behold these beautiful insects; it 
ten times repays one to make the acquaintance of its lovely 
inhabitants. The climate there is an eternal spring. The 
undulating soil.is rich in all kinds of delicious fruits and 
vegetables—the scenery highly romantic, consisting of an- 
cient castles in ruins, at the foot of which are seen domestic 
camels, and on the open fields before them herds of four- 
horned sheep. Here is 
‘The land of the cedar and vine, 
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine ; 
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute; 
Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky, 
In color though varied, in beauty may vie, 
And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye; 
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, 
And the spirit of man is all but divine!” 
Although this terrestrial paradise now belongs to Russia, 
and its inhabitants have lost their national independence, 
still they have preserved their genuine Caucasian beauty ; 
and while gazing with admiration upon them, it has often 
occurred to me that the Apollo of Belvedere, the Venus de 
Medicis, and the Madonna of Raphael must have been ac- 
curate copies of the men and women of the Crimea. 
Their morals are not less to be admired than their beau- 
ty. Drunkenness, quarreling, riots, and murders are en- 
tirely unknown there. You may travel unarmed and laden 
with riches, from one end of the country to the other, with- 
out being molested; such a thing as a thief is never heard 
of there; and every where, in the cottage and in the palace, 
