lyS NATURE STUDY. 



and a few are as satisfactory in a collection as a multitude 

 would be. Besides, as Catocalas feed upon forest trees, 

 and are rarely numerous, they inflict no great injury, and 

 there is therefore a lack of the comfortable feeling, as with 

 many of the Noctuids, that in destroying them we are pro- 

 tecting vegetation from their ravages. No true nature 

 lover, I am sure, would care to kill more than a very few 

 of the dainty and beautiful Underwings. Those that he 

 does capture, should be carefully expanded and pinned in 

 the box labeled with the family name, Noctuidae. 



About Swallows. 



One year, far back in the last century, spring was very 

 late in England, a fact which greatly troubled the good 

 Mr. Broderip, the naturalist, who longed for the return of 

 the birds and flowers. On the 28th of March he entered 

 in his note-book, " There was thick ice yesterday on the 

 water in St. John's Park," which was, of course, a very 

 unusual occurrence. On this late day in March, then, 

 Mr. Broderip first piously observed that " the winds are 

 best in the hands of the Great Anemonologist," and after, 

 with a heart filled with yearning for the springtime, fell to 

 gossipping of the swallows. 



" Still," he wrote, " shivering mortals may be pardoned 

 for looking with intense anxiety for the winged herald of 

 summer, whose advent ever has been and ever will be 

 hailed by man. A Greek design is now before me, repre- 

 senting three persons of different ages. The one on the 

 left, a young man in the flower of youth, exclaims, as he 

 points to the bird flying above him, " Behold a swallow ! " 

 The center figure, a man of more advanced but still vigor- 

 ous age, seated, like the former, has just turned his up- 

 lifted head, saying, "True, by Hercules!" and at the 

 same moment a boy, standing and pointing at the same 



