A FLY-LEAF. 19 



with the Butterfly, is more generally known as Caterpillar and 

 Chrysalis; so that, like the Butterfly, when winged it grows 

 no more. 



Once more to our picture. You know, we suppose, that the 

 Fly has a pair of wings ; but a hundred to one, if one of you 

 out of a hundred has ever noticed that she has also a pair of 

 winglets (or little secondary wings), and a pair of poisers, 

 drum-stick like appendages between the main wings and the 

 body, employed for assisting and steadying her flight. These 

 poisers are much more conspicuous and easily observed without 

 a magnifier in the Gnat and in the Father Longlegs, insects 

 belonging to the same order as Flies. 



Did it ever occur to you to notice the prismatic painting of 

 a Fly's nervous pinion the iridescent colours wherewith its 

 glassy membrane seems overlaid ? If not, only look, we pray 

 you, in a proper light at the next of its kind you may chance 

 to meet with, and if, as is most likely, it comes to tell you 

 a pleasant tale of approaching spring time, we are verily sure 

 that you will see a hundred rainbows painted on its wing. 



A FLY-LEAF. 



Our friend H had the misfortune to be cast up a poet 

 on the stream of Life, since, in this age of mechanism, it 

 has been turned into a mill-stream. Consequently, he found 

 himself held as a mere bubble in the froth or scum of society, 

 and his residence accorded perfectly with such estimation. He 

 was the highest occupant of a house in a low London neighbour- 

 hood, where, nevertheless, he was looked down upon as a nobody. 



Poor H was a worker in the tread-mill of low periodicals, 

 wherein, for ever climbing, each weary round of the month and 

 year left him just where he was at the beginning; but in spite 

 of this his daily labour, he had taken hours, which should have 

 been of rest, for independent composition. One poem, a pon- 

 derous epic, with his name on the title-page, had already been 



