Inf] AND SYMBOLS. 165 



all the tints of the rainbow, is also a darkness-lover, and passes 

 its life sunk in the black mud of the sea-shore. Here, there- 

 fore, we have two instances of inexplicable beauty. " Beauty 

 which is not explicable is," says a great thinker, " dearer than 

 a beauty which we can see the end of." Certainly in Nature 

 we never see the end of it. It is ever coming upon us as a new 

 surprise. It is an eternal symbol. H. 



Inexplicable Services. 



The most singular species of all the white ants is that of the 

 parasol ants of Trinidad in the "West Indies, which walk in 

 long procession, each carrying a cut leaf over its head, as a 

 parasol in the sun, and these they deposit in holes ten or 

 twelve feet under ground, apparently with no other object than 

 to form a comfortable nest for a species of white snake, which 

 is invariably found coiled up among them or digging out the 

 deposit. What regard they can have for this snake, or why 

 they should render him any service, is quite a mystery : as also 

 are the acts of men who have bequeathed vast wealth to rich 

 people whom they have never seen and who never did them 

 any good. Such proceedings rank amongst the inexplicable 

 services of the world. I. L. 



Earth's Hints of the Infernal. 



Beauty, says Akenside, was sent from heaven the loving 

 mistress of truth and good to this dark world. And beauty 

 gives us many a splendid picture in every clime and on every 

 shore, which suggests a glory yet to come, a paradise elsewhere. 

 But there are in Nature many scenes over which beauty does 

 not preside views which are overshadowed by appalling 

 forms, coloured with awful hues, and portraying the huge, the 

 poisonous, the hideous, moving in horrible and stupendous 

 combination around abyssmal depths, or on plains vast and 

 terrible in their gloomy grandeur. Look where the densely 

 leaved cypress of the New World grows in company on the 

 plains of California, Louisiana, and Virginia, forming extensive 

 forests. There, with the tree of some thousand years in some 



