THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 5 



needlewomen) — has all but vanished from your 

 drawing-room since the " Lady-ferns " and " Venus's 

 hair " appeared ; and that you could not help your- 

 self looking now and then at the said "Venus's 

 hair," and agreeing that nature's real beauties were 

 somewhat superior to the ghastly woollen caricatures 

 which they had superseded. 



You cannot deny, I say, that there is a fasci- 

 nation in this same Natural History. For do not 

 you, the London merchant, recollect how but last 

 summer your douce and portly head-clerk was 

 seized by two keepers in the act of wandering in 

 Epping Forest at dead of night, with a dark lan- 

 tern, a jar of strange sweet compound, and innu- 

 merable pocketfuls of pill-boxes ; and found it very 

 difi&cult to* make either his captors or you believe 

 that he was neither going to burn wheat-ricks, nor 

 poison pheasants, but was simply " sugaring the 

 trees for moths," as a blameless entomologist ? 

 And when, in self-justification, he took you to his 

 house in Islington, and showed you the glazed and 

 corked drawers full of delicate insects, which had 



