23 



a near view at once discloses the difference. While 

 the spangle of the fern consists of a heap of minute 

 golden-coloured boxes, every box bursting when 

 mature, and discharging innumerable atoms of "fern- 



OAK-SPANGLES. 



seed," the spangle of the oak-leaf is a crowd of 

 greenish or reddish hairs, and seems as if cut out of a 

 piece of velvet that might have been worn by Titania. 

 It consists, of the same kind of substance as the 

 oak-apple, but disposed in a different form, the 

 insect which gave the impulse being a different one. 

 Not the least extraordinary fact in this strange 

 history is, that out of the same material, the simple 



