IN AN OLD GARDEN 247 



abundance. Beetles were there — hard, round, 

 polished, and of various colours, like sea-worn 

 pebbles on the beach; and some, called lady-birds 

 in the vernacular, were bound like the books that 

 Chaucer loved in black and red. And the small 

 gilded fly, not less an insect light-headed, a votary 

 of vain delights, than in the prehistoric days 

 when a white-headed old king, discrowned and 

 crazed, railed against sweet Nature's liberty. 

 And ever waiting to welcome this inconstant lover 

 (with fakes) there sits the solitary geometric 

 spider, an image and embodiment of patience, not 

 on a monument, but a suspended wheel of which 

 he is himself the hub ; and so delicately fashioned 

 are the silver spokes thereof, radiating from his 

 round and gem-like body, and the rings, concen- 

 tric tire within tire, that its exceeding fineness, 

 like swift revolving motion, renders it almost 

 invisible. Caterpillars, too, in great plenty — 

 miniature porcupines with fretful quills on end, 

 and some naked even as they came into the world. 

 This one, called the earth-measurer, has drunk 

 himself green with chlorophyll so as to escape 

 detection. Vain precaution! since eccentric mo- 

 tion betrays him to keen avian eyes, when, like 



