A HOUSEHOLD OF ENTOMOLOGISTS. 377 



Christmas. Well, you may look as if you didn't believe it ; 

 but we shall see" 



At the parsonage we were all in our different ways addicted 

 to entomology ; following therein the example of its master. 

 He himself had ever, it is true, displayed more of the butter- 

 fly than the bee in his acquisition of knowledge. To one kind 

 never devotedly constant, he had visited a number of the 

 flowers of learning, but it was only for desultory sippings of 

 their sweets, which were seldom, by any transmutive process 

 of his mind, converted, bee-like, into honey for store, or sub- 

 stance of use more permanent ; or if anything like honey was 

 ever thence elaborated, it was dropped, more than directly im- 

 parted, for the benefit of others who could imbibe it only after 

 the manner of ants when they follow for their sweets the trail 

 of aphides. Something after this fashion we had all, as we 

 have said, including the two chief domestics, picked up a 

 something about insects, learnt, at all events, to look upon 

 them as things of some importance, with which, moreover, we 

 had each, in our way, some personal concern. My uncle pos- 

 sessed a cabinet of entomological specimens, with a case full 

 of entomological books, finely illustrated also, in the season, 

 an insect menagerie, of which the collection and the feeding 

 was chiefly mine. The care of the cabinet and the books, as 

 coming within the province of librarian, fell to the share of 

 Caleb, who having, in their camphoring and dusting, made 

 himself acquainted, by halves, with a few scientific names of 



