104 LABOURERS. 



accomplish every step by alternately stretching out and looping 

 up their bodies in the form of a Greek ft. They are no less 

 remarkable for the singular positions which their extraordi- 

 nary muscular power enables them to assume, when quiescent. 

 Attached to a branch by the hinder legs, they will remain for 

 hours together, stiff and straight, stretched out at an angle 

 from it, or bent into some contorted curve. Of this descrip- 

 tion are the walking-branch caterpillars, elsewhere noted.* 



On being touched, or shaken, these wary tumblers who 

 are always provided, in their internal magazines, with a silken 

 cord to break their fall allow themselves to drop sometimes 

 from the loftiest oak, and seldom fail to reach the ground in 

 safety. The same rope serves as a ladder for their re-ascension. 

 Numbers are sometimes seen thus suspended, resting midway 

 in their aerial transits, and it would require a ruder blast than 

 ordinary to break their strong, though almost invisible, sup- 

 porting cords. 



After these, some of the most idle of our city's population, 

 we took notice of the most laborious the occupiers of subter- 

 ranean dwellings in its lowest quarter. Now, looking round 

 the oak tree for their insect representatives, we presently discern 

 them, in a dingy multitude of laborious ants bearing their 

 bulky burthens, and issuing from their dark abodes, excavated 

 in the trunk or root. These are Jet Ants, or Emmets black 

 and shining as well-fed negroes and without whip, or master, 



* Vignette. 



