4\G Lusnxous insects. 



From the wood-cover swarm'd, and darkness made 

 Their beauties visible: one while they streamed 

 A bright blue radiance upon flowers that closed 

 Their gorgeous colours from the eye of day ; 

 Novv motionless and dark, eluded search, 

 Self-shrouded ; and anon, starring the sky. 

 Rose like a shower of fire." 



The beautiful poetical imagery with which Mr. 

 Southey has decorated this and a few other entomolo- 

 gic?il facts, will make you join in my regret that a more 

 extensive acquaintance with the science has not enabled 

 him to spread his embellishments over a greater num- 

 ber. The gratification which the entomologist derives 

 from seeing his favourite study adorned with the graces 

 of poetry is seldom unalloyed with pain, arising from 

 the inaccurate knowledge of the subject in the poet. 

 Dr. Darwin's description of the beetle to which the nut- 

 maggot is transformed may delight him (at least if he 

 be an admirer of the Darwinian style), as he reads 

 for the first time, 



*' So sleeps in silence the Curculio, shut 

 In the dark chamber of the cavern'd nut; 

 p]rodes with ivory beak the vaulted shell, 

 And quits on filmy wings its narrow cell." 



But when the music of the lines has allowed him room 

 for pause, and he recollects that they are built wholly 

 upon an incorrect supposition, the Curculio never in- 

 habiting the nut in its beetle shape, nor employing its 

 ivory beak upon it, but undergoing its transformation 

 under ground, he feels disappointed that the passage 

 has not truth as well as sound. — Mr. Southey, too, has 

 fallen into an error : he confounds the fire-fly of St. 



