114 

 flower garden, to cast a melancholy look over its dust and 



o 



ruins. 



Our pupils, having been largely of the class who had 

 talents and energy to educate themselves, have given a 

 high average, and we have known of no failure, among 

 the large number who have gone forth to honorable sta- 

 tions, in all the professions ; and we have yet to learn if 

 the high schools, which are supported by taxation, in all 

 the large towns, with a view to giving a scientific and clas- 

 sical education to the whole [population, are furnishing us 

 as many, or* as talented teachers as flowed out spontane- 

 ously from the four thousand pupils of our seventy acad- 

 emies, without cost to anybody but themselves, twenty 

 years ago. Our self-made men have always held honor- 

 able competition with the sons of affluence, or the 

 proteges of the State ; and it is yet doubtful whether acad- 

 emies, accessible to all who had taste and talent, to work 

 their own way to learning and business, were not better 

 than high schools for a whole population, upon free cost, 

 and half a dozen schools, remote from a great part of the 

 state, furnished with palatial buildings, and all the modern 

 conveniences that a state's wealth can purchase ! 



Mr. JAMES H. EMERTON of Salem, mentioned several 

 cases of protective colors and habits in spiders which he 

 had seen in the grove during the morning walk. 



The common Epeira caudata of Hentz, covers the re- 

 mains of its prey and other rubbish with loose silk and 

 arranges them in a line across the web, with room enough 

 at the centre for the spider, who draws her feet close to 

 her body, showing only the brown and gray abdomen, 

 which can hardly be distinguished from the dirt around it. 



A specimen of Attus was caught on dried oak leaves, 

 in the woods, colored almost the same shade of brown, 



