THEIR RELATIONS. 269 



to plants and insects, with a few of which we must close our 

 very imperfect enumeration of resembling points between them. 

 In fragrance, even the rose is emulated by a pretty green 

 beetle 1 not uncommonly found near willow-trees, around which 

 it perfumes the air. Per contra and opposed to all " the 

 sweets of Arabia " there are the cockroach the churchyard 

 beetle the fetid centipede, and other lurkers in damp dark 

 places, both above ground and below, which resemble in ill 

 odour, as they do in gloomy localities, the hellebores, the hem- 

 locks, and the mandrakes of the vegetable world. And as a 

 few among the flowers of the sun are not a whit behind their 

 darker fellows in this one repulsive quality, so among insects, 

 to say nothing of the pretty lady-bird, there is the green, 

 golden-eyed, lace-winged fly, 2 that exhales an odour which, 

 even pour V amour de ses beaux yeux, and for the elegance of 

 its form, one can scarcely pardon, any more than for its splen- 

 dour, one can cordially admire that pride of the hot-house, the 

 most beautiful but most foetid of the Stapelios, named, by the 

 Dutch inhabitants of the Cape, the Arabische Hose. 



The power of emitting light is another property, common, in 

 some peculiar instances, both to plants and insects, the fire- 

 fly the glow-worm and the electric centipede, each having 

 its vegetable representative in the luminous Fraxinella, the 

 Euphorbia phosphorea, and various plants and fungi in a state 

 of decay. 



For almost every vegetable production there is an analogous 

 insect secretion. To say nothing of honey and bees' wax, 

 which may be viewed rather as vegetable products animalized, 

 there is the white insect wax of China produced by the Cicada 

 limbata, made into candles, and paralleled both in quality and 

 use by the tallow-tree, a native of the same empire. For 

 vegetable gums, we have the insect gum-lac; for vegetable 

 dyes, the insect cochineal, galls, and chermes. 



1 Cerambyx moschatus (musk beetle). 2 Chrysopa perla. 



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