66 PASTORAL DA VS. 



adjacent bark, although different in each, that several of my friends, even 

 with the most careful scrutiny, failed to detect the deceptive spot. 

 Whether the result of chance or of the instincts of the insect, I do not 

 know ; but certain it is that he paints with different colors under varying 

 circumstances. 



Insect-hunting had always been a passion with me. Large collec- 

 tions of moths and butterflies had many times accumulated under my 

 hands, only to meet destruction through boyish inexperience ; and even 

 in childhood the love for the insect and the passion for the pencil strove 

 hard for the ascendency, and were only reconciled by a combination 

 which filled my sketch-book with studies of insect life. 



There was one inhabitant of our fields which had always been to me 

 a never-failing source of entertainment. There he is, the gilded tyrant. 

 I see him now swinging to and fro on his glistening nest of silken 

 threads, his golden yellow form glowing in bold relief against the dark 

 recess in the brambles. My sketch is left in the grass, and I am soon 

 seated in front of the gossamer maze. A festive grasshopper jumps up 

 into my face, and makes a carom on the web. With a spasmodic snap 

 of one hind le«; he extricates it from its entanglement, and in another 

 instant would fall from the meshes ; but the agile spider is too quick for 

 him. With a movement so swift as almost to elude the eye, he draws 

 from his body a silver cloud of floss, and with his long hind legs throws 

 it over his captive. The head and tail of the grasshopper are now fur- 

 ther secured, after which the spider carefully straddles around the strug- 

 gling insect, and bites off the other radiating webs in close proximity. 

 The unlucky prey now hangs suspended across the opening. With 

 business-like coolness his tormentor dangles himself from the edge of 

 the torn web, and another cataract of glistening floss is thrown up and 

 attached to the under side of the prisoner, after which he is turned round 

 and round, as if on a spit. The stream of floss is carried from head to 

 foot, and in less time than it takes to describe it the victim is wrapped 

 in a silken winding-sheet, and soon meets his death from the poisoned 

 fangs of his captor. Here is but one of the thousands of tragedies that 

 are taking place every hour of the day in our fields. While deeply inter- 

 ested in the closing scenes of this one, I suddenly become aware of a 

 shadow passing over the bushes. I turn my head, and meet the puzzled 

 and pleasant gaze of Amos Shoopegg, as he stands there, hands in pock- 

 ets, and milk-pail swinging from his wrist. 



