168 Education through Nature 



I love to hear thine earnest voice, 



Wherever thou art hid, 

 Thou testy little dogmatist, 



Thou pretty Katydid! 

 Thou mindest me of gentle folks, 



Old gentle folks are they, 

 Thou say'st an undisputed thing 



In such a solemn way. 



Thou art a female Katydid! 



I know it by the trill 

 That quivers through thy piercing notes 



So petulant and shrill; 

 I think there is a knot of you 



Beneath the hollow tree, 

 A knot of spinster Katydids, 



Do Katydids drink tea? 

 To an Insect, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 



The poetry of earth is never dead: 



When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, 



And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 



From hedge to hedge about the new mown-mead ; 



That is the grasshopper's he takes the lead 



In summer luxury he has never done 



With his delights ; for, when tired out with fun, 



He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. 



The poetry of earth is ceasing never; 



On a lone winter evening, when the frost 



Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills 



The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, 



And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, 



The grasshopper's among some grassy hills. 



The Grasshopper and the Cricket, JOHN KEATS. 



XVI. The Sage-brush Galls and Their Inhabitants. 

 By V. M. G. 



Galls are abnormal growths caused by insects upon 

 the parts of many plants. They are of various sizes and 

 shapes and furnish a home and sustenance for the larva 

 which develops within them. Some one has said that 

 Lowell must have thought of these when he wrote: 

 " Never a blade nor a leaf too mean 

 To be some happy creature's palace." 



