2 THE LADY-BIRD. 



Now, in reality, instead of flying to the rescue of her own 

 innocents, her business is most probably to murder and devour 

 a score of other innocents, clustered together on a hop or 

 rose-leaf; or, in other words, to make a luscious meal of 

 Aphides or Honey-dew Insects ; of whom her Lady-birdship 

 is exceedingly fond fond as a wolf of a flock of sheep. 



So stands the fact ; and the nursery fiction may, perhaps, 

 in these matter-of-fact times, be impugned for giving a notion 

 purely imaginary concerning the Lady-bird's Chouse" and 

 her " children, ' r and her probable course and business when 

 released from'' her captor's grasp. Yet, what matters it ? The 

 simple couplet may implant a wrong notion, but that is soon 

 corrected ; and it may implant, also, a right feeling likely to 

 abide. It urges to humanity at the expense of selfishness ; to 

 set at liberty the pretty prisoner of which the childish captor 

 is so proud, that it may go to the rescue of its distressed little 

 ones. Such, at least, is the spirit in which we imagine this 

 address to the Lady-bird to have been originally dictated to 

 some little child long since grown gray and mouldered into 

 earth. 



The Lady-bird, or Coccinella, has many claims upon our 

 kindness in addition to those which it possesses as the favourite 

 of our childhood. Of our manhood it is also the useful friend, 

 however little we may so regard it ; -and it is, par excellence, a 

 friend in all weathers. It greets us in early spring^enjoys the 

 summer with us, stays by us through^the fall of the leaf, and 



