276 



THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY 



Garden at Kew. From St. Vincent, Captain Bligh sailed 

 for Jamaica, where he left three hundred and forty-seven 

 bread-fruits, and two hundred and seventy-six others, which 

 were a selection of all the finest fruits of the east. Some 

 of the plants were also left on the island of Grand Cayman; 

 and the ships finally came to the Downs on the 2d of August, 

 1793. 



But, after all the peril, hardship, and expense thus in- 

 curred, the bread-fruit tree has not, hitherto, at least, an- 

 swered the expectations that were entertained. The ba- 

 nana is more easily and cheaply cultivated, comes into 

 bearing much sooner after being planted, bears more abun- 

 dantly, and is better relished by the negroes. The mode 

 of propagating the bread-fruit is not, indeed, difficult; for 

 the planter has only to lay bare one of the roots, and mound 

 it with a spade, and in a short space a shoot comes up, 

 which is soon fit for removal. 



Europeans are much fonder of the bread-fruit than ne- 

 groes. They consider it as a sort of dainty, and use it 

 either as bread or in pudding. When roasted in the oven, 

 the taste of it resembles that of a potatoe, but it is not so 

 mealy as a good one. 



DECEMBER. 



Nature is stripped of all her summer drapery. Her ver- 

 dure, her foliage, her flowers have all vanished. The sky 

 is filled with clouds and gloom, or sparkles only with a 

 frosty radiance. The earth is spongy with wet, rigid with 

 frost, or buried in snows. The winds that in summer 

 breathed gently over nodding blooms, and undulating grass, 

 swaying the leafy boughs with a pleasant murmur, and 

 wafting perfumes all over the world, now hiss like serpents, 

 or howl like wild beasts of the desert; cold, piercing, and 

 cruel. Every thing has drawn as near as possible to the 

 centre of warmth and comfort. The farmer has driven 

 his flocks and cattle into sheltered home inclosures, where 

 they may receive from his provident care, that food which 

 the earth now denies them; or into the farm-yard itself, 

 where some honest Giles piles their cratches plentifully 

 with fodder. The labourer has fled from the field to the 

 barn, and the measured strokes of his flail are heard daily 

 from morn till eve. It amazes us, as we walk abroad, to 

 conceive where can have concealed themselves the infinite 

 variety of creatures that sported through the air, earth, and 

 waters of summer. Birds, insects, reptiles, whither are 

 they all gone? The birds that filled the air with their mu- 

 sic, the rich blackbird, the loud and cheerful thrush, the 



linnet, lark, and goldfinch, whither have they crept? The 

 squirrel that played his antics on the forest tree; and all 

 the showy and varied tribes of butterflies, moths, dragonflies, 

 beetles, wasps, and warrior-hornets, bees, and cockchafers, 

 whither have they fled ? Some, no doubt, have lived out 

 their little term of being, and their bodies, lately so splen- 

 did, active, and alive to a thousand instincts, feelings, and 

 propensities, are become part and parcel of the dull and 

 wintry soil; but the greater portion have shrunk into the 

 hollows of trees and rocks, and into the bosom of their 

 mother earth itself, where, with millions of seeds and roots, 

 and buds, they live in the great treasury of Nature, ready 

 at the call of a more auspicious season, to people the world 

 once more with beauty and delight. 



As in the inferior world of creatures, so is it with man. 

 The wealthy have vacated their country houses, and congre- 

 gated in the great Babylon of pleasure and dissipation ; fami- 

 lies are collected around the social hearth, where Christmas 

 brings his annual store of frolic and festivities; and the 

 author, like the bee, withdrawn to his hive, revels amid the 

 sweets of his summer gathering. It is amusing to imagine 

 what a host of pens are at this moment in motion, in sundry 

 places of this little island! In splendid libraries, furnished 

 with every bodily comfort, and every literary and scientific 

 resource, when the noble or popular author fills the sheet 

 which the smile of the bibliopole and reader awaits, and 

 almost anticipates; in naked and ghastly garrets when the 

 "poor-devil-author" scrawls with numbed fingers and a 

 shivering frame, what will be coldly received, and as quickly 

 forgotten as himself; in pleasant boudoirs, at rose-wood desks, 

 where lady-fingers pen lady-lays; in ten thousand nooks 

 and recesses the pile of books is growing, under which, 

 shelves, booksellers, and readers, shall groan, ere many 

 months elapse. Another season shall come round, and all 

 these leaves, like those of the forest, shall be swept away, 

 leaving only those of a few hardy laurels untouched. But 

 let no one lament them, or think that all this "labour under 

 the sun," has been in vain. Literary tradesmen have been 

 indulged in speculation; critics have been employed; and 

 authors have enjoyed the excitement of hope, the enthu- 

 siasm of composition, the glow of fancied achievement. 

 And all is not lost; 



Tlie following year another race supplies, 

 They fall successive, and successive rise. 



The heavens present one of the most prominent and 

 splendid beauties of winter. The long and total absence of 

 the sun's light, and the transparent purity of a frosty at- 

 mosphere, give an apparent elevation to the celestial con- 

 cave, and a rich depth and intensity of azure, in which the 



