SEES, WASPS, ETC. 



labour. Then a coat of whitewash is laid over the clay, and 

 all her anxiety about that child is at an end; she 'is off in 

 search of another hole. 



Now, there is in my office an ancient chair, reserved for 

 the use of the lowest-paid clerk, or the abject oomedwar, 

 who lives by drawing up petitions and hoping for temporary 

 vacancies. The chair was once cane-bottomed, and though 

 the cane has long since been replaced by more durable- 

 wooden boards, the holes through which it was drawn remain, 

 and every one of them is closed with that peculiar stopper 

 of whitewashed clay which marks the metallic-blue fly. In 

 the chair there are nineteen of these holes to a side, or 

 seventy-six in all. Now, supposing each hole to contain on 

 an average twenty spiders, large and small, then this one 

 rickety sitting instrument is the sepulchre of 1,520 crea- 

 tures, which just a week or two ago were galloping about 

 among the weeds and grass of the garden, scattering terror 

 and death. Again, multiplying this number by the appe- 

 tite per diem of an average hairy legged grass-spider, we 

 have the number of voracious caterpillars and other insects 

 whose lives are being spared for the maintenance of this 

 one seminary of metallic-blue flies. And in all that great 

 resurrection pie of cold platitudes which constitutes the 



