62 



A TOUR BOUND MT GARDEN. 



and shuts up closely. The birds have ceased to sing, and 

 quarrel for the snuggest places under the leaves; you may 

 see the colours you admired in the morning reappear in the 

 heavens; but they have assumed severer and deeper shades. 

 The rose-colour of the morning is red in the evening ; the 

 yellow is orange, the lilac has become violet ; the globe of fire 

 descends, and disappears in a red fog, which looks like the 

 lighted ashes of a volcano. The trees in the east, in their 

 turn, receive the adieu and last look of the sun, as the trees 

 in the west received his " good morning," and his earliest 

 ray. The beetle kind fly heavily about; the horned and 

 rhinoceros beetles issue from the hollows of the oaks, the blue 

 and white stercoraires, more richly clothed than kings, rise 

 from the cow-dung. 



It is night. 



But the night has its birds, its flowers, and its insects, 

 which sleep during the day, and which awake while the others 

 sleep. 



The moon is their sun. 



The nightshade has opened its little purple, yellow, or 

 white horns. One variety, whose white flower is supported by 

 a long tube, has a centre of a rich violet, and exhales a sweet 

 odour. The evening primrose expands its beautiful perfumed 

 yellow cups. The convolvulus will wait till the middle of 

 the night. 



The stars glitter forth in the heavens. In the grass the 

 female glowworms* begin to shine with a green, phosphoric 



light ; it is only the lower 

 extremity of their body, 



iJf ^_i ITJWSilffiyWiirWiT ""^ ^^^ ^^^ under part, 

 ,^ a^^lt.^lnMHH^^^K^^^ which is so luminous. 



^"^ The glowworm is, in the 

 ' \ day time, a flat insect, 

 ; dragging itself along 

 upon six feeble feet. 



You know the history 

 of Hero and Leander: 

 they wore two lovers, 

 separated by a branch of the sea. Every night Leander 



" LampyrU noctilucii. — Ed 



THE (iLOWWuKM, 



