BEES, 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 the cane has long since been replaced by more durable 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 



