240 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



for other purposes. Pure lard has little or no taste, and no odoi 

 When long exposed to the air it attracts oxygen, and becomes rancid. 

 It should therefore be kept in air-tight vessels. Within a few years 

 past very large quantities, especially in the Western States, where 

 hogs are numerous, by a chemical process are converted into candles 

 and oil, by many considered equal to the sperm. This will be of 

 immense importance to the country, having already reduced the price 

 of sperm, or put a check upon its advancement. It has been esti- 

 mated, that in Cincinnati only, lard oil is made at the rate of over a 

 million of gallons per annum. Doubtless the manufacture of it will 

 increase. 



LARVA. This is a term applied to that state in which an insect 

 exists immediately after its exclusion from the egg, and before it 

 assumes its distinctive character, or before it becomes a perfect insect. 

 The animals commonly called grubs, maggots, and caterpillars, are 

 larva. The egg of the butterfly produces a butterfly, with the linea- 

 ments of its parent, only these are not disclosed at first, but for the 

 greater part of the creature's life, they are covered with a sort of case, 

 or muscular coat, in which are legs for walking ; which only suit it in 

 this state, but its mouth takes in nourishment that is conveyed to the 

 enclosed animal ; and after a proper time, this covering is thrown off, 

 and the butterfly, that all the while might be discovered in it<>by an 

 accurate observer, with the help of a microscope, appears in its proper 

 form. 



The care of the butterfly tribe to lodge their eggs in safety is sur- 

 prising. Those whose eggs are to be hatched in a few weeks, and who 

 are to live in the caterpillar state during part of the remaining sum- 

 mer, always lay them on the leaves of such plants as will afford a 

 proper nourishment ; but, on the contrary, those whose eggs are to 

 remain unhatched till the following spring, always lay them on the 

 branches of trees and shrubs, and usually are careful to select such 

 places as are least exposed to the rigor of the ensuing season, and 

 frequently cover them from it in an artful manner. Some make a 

 general coat of a hairy matter over them, taking the hairs from their 

 own bodies for that purpose ; others hide themselves in hollow places 

 in trees, and in other sheltered cells, and there live in a kind of torpid 

 state during the whole winter, that they may deposit their eggs in the 

 succeeding spring, at a time when there will be no severity of weather 

 for them to combat. The caterpillar state is that through which every 

 butterfly must pass before it arrives at its perfection and beauty. In 

 the study of the insect tribe will be found most curious phenomena. 



LAUDANUM. This resinous juice exudes upon the leaves of 

 the Cistus ladanum of Linnaeus, in Candia, where the inhabitants 

 collect it by lightly rubbing the leaves with leather, and afterwards 

 scraping off and forming it into irregular masses, for exportation. 

 Three sorts of laudanum have beer, described by authors, but only 



