MISCELLANEOUS. 249 



lunatic, or else that the roll of diagrams under my arm 

 was an infernal machine. 



While writing this page I have before mo an apple 

 from Tasmania. On it I have counted fourteen of these 

 cocci, so that they flourish as much in Australia as in 

 S;cily and in England ; but what would my grandfather, 

 who was living in 1829, have thought of the man who 

 should have prophesied that sixty years after, apples, in the 

 finest condition, would be brought from the other side of 

 the world in a big ship propelled by steam, in about five 

 weeks ! Or that his son's son would have an instrument 

 by means of which the families of fourteen mothers, who 

 had covered their numerous offspring outside with their 

 own dead bodies on one of such apples, would be studied, 

 as they lay sleeping in their cradles, comfortably tucked 

 up inside with silken material spun out of their parent's 

 body, and of his descendant's ability, with the aid of his 

 instrument, to bring them to life ! 



On passing a station on the Brighton line recently, 

 the train stopping in front of a book-stall there, a fellow- 

 passenger, putting his head out of the carriage window, 

 called out, "Have you a shilling romance?" What 

 romance is to be found in natural history ! Could any 

 story in fiction be more romantic than the romance, in 

 fact, of the Coccus family, or could a better illustration in 

 the world be found showing that, in one form or another, 

 from the highest to the lowest, one thing suffers or dies 

 that another may live ? 



A mouldy lemon or a piece of lively cheese under the 

 microscope affords infinite delight both to young and old ; 

 for, in the first you have a fairy botanical, and in the 

 latter a fairy zoological, garden. Wo once had a servant 

 who was provokingly fond of cheese for breakfast, not in 

 very moderate quantities. Seeing that our share was 



