gardener or forester who does not know that these 

 are the cocoons of the useful Ichneumonidce, but 

 considers them to be really the eggs of moths, 

 rubs them oh the trees, and thus annihilates his 

 best friends. [The Ichneumons are insects which 

 deposit their eggs in the bodies of the caterpillars 

 of other insects, and sometimes in their eggs 

 also ; the young Ichneumons, being hatched, de- 

 vour the eggs or living grubs within which they 

 are contained, and thus effect the destruction of 

 thousands of the most noxious insects.] On the 

 other hand, the gipsy-moth {Bombyx dispar) 

 lays its eggs in large circular or oval spots on the 

 bark of trees or hedges, and covers them with 

 yellow wool. If we destroy these eggs, one heap 

 of which often contains 3000, in autumn or 

 spring, our fruit-trees fc ':will be secured from one 

 of their most dangerous enemies. It is equally 

 easy to destroy in the egg the yellow-tail moth 

 {Bombyx chrysorrhozd) which is no less inju- 

 rious to our orchards. This moth, says Vincent 

 Kollar, lays its eggs on the leaves of fruit-trees, in 

 a long narrow heap, and covers them with gold- 

 colored hair, which makes them very conspicuous. 

 Pulling off and destroying these leaves, secures 

 the garden from another dangerous enemy. — C. W. 



The Swallow Tribe. — The swallow, says Sir H. 

 Davy, is one of my favo rite birds, and a rival of 

 the nightingale ; for he glads my sense of seeing, 

 as much as any other does my sense of hearing. 

 He is the joyous prophet of the year — the harbin- 

 ger of the best season ; he lives a life of enjoy- 

 ment amongst the loveliest forms of nature ; 

 winter is unknown to him ; and he leaves the 

 green meadows of England in autumn, for the 

 myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and the palms 

 of Africa ; he has always objects of pursuit, and 

 his success is secure. Even the beings selected 

 for his prey are poetical, beautiful, and transient. 

 The ephemera are saved by his means, from a 

 slow and lingering death in the evening, and 

 killed in a moment, when they have known 

 nothing of life but pleasure. He is the constant 

 destroyer of insects — the friend of man ; and, 

 with the stork and the ibis, may be regarded as 

 a sacred bird. The instinct which gives him his 

 appointed season, and which teaches him always 

 when and where to move, may be regarded as 

 flowing from a divine source ; and he belongs to 

 the oracles of nature, which speak the awful 

 and intelligent language of a present deity. — 

 Emily P. 



[It is a curious fact, that these mysterious visi- 

 tants, creatures of instinct are by many persons 

 supposed to perform their eccentric gyrations from 

 mere caprice, while in reality they are amongst 

 the very best friends of mankind. If it were 

 not for such beautiful and graceful birds, our 

 crops would be totally annihilated. We have no 

 idea of the number of insects. Take the plant 

 louse — the British locust. Bonnet, whose re- 

 searches on it remind us of Huber on the honey 

 bee, isolated an individual of this species, and 

 found that from the 1st to the 22nd of June it 

 produced 95 young insects, and that there were 

 in the summer no less than nine generations. 

 These are both wingless and winged ; and 

 Bonnet calculates a single specimen may produce 

 550,970,489,000,000,000 in a single year, and 



Dr. Eichardson very far beyond this. Now, when 

 we see the swallow flying high in the air, he is 

 heard every now and then snapping his bill and 

 swallowing these and similar destroyers. If, at 

 this season, one swallow destroys some 900 

 mothers per day on an average ; and estimating 

 each of these to be the parent of one-tenth of 

 the above number, it would require some powers 

 of arithmetic to calculate the benefit produced, 

 and the number of insects destroyed.] 



More of the Cochin China Fowl Mania. — I 

 have met with many instances lately of Cochin 

 China hens dying apparently very thin, but in 

 reality choked with internal fat. I had one sent 

 to me a few days since. The little flesh she had 

 was red ; the skin dry and tight. Her crop was 

 full. On opening it, I found several lumps of calf's 

 liver. Unable to get rid of this unnatural food, 

 she had picked up pieces of crockery-ware, bones, 

 and tobacco-pipes — all to no purpose. I found 

 every organ of the stomach literally obstructed 

 with fat, the liver of an immense size, and perfectly 

 white, the gall-bladder nearly empty, and the in- 

 testines saffron color. There was an egg in her, 

 which should have been laid some days before, and 

 in her efforts to lay it she died on the nest. Now, 

 it is a common complaint that these birds die 

 suddenly ; and I think it may be attributed to the 

 fact, that, to attain weight, they are improperly 

 fed, and that such feeding induces an unnatural, 

 and, consequently, unhealthy state of body. I 

 mentioned it to a clever medical friend, who said 

 it was clear that as nature had provided fowls with 

 capacity for digesting grain, with occasional worms, 

 or chance pieces of meat — if you wished to alter 

 the natural food, and substitute one of a totally 

 different character, you must, to ensure impunity, 

 first provide them with increased powers of diges- 

 tion, or such results as those complained of must 

 occur. — J. Baily. 



Photographic Engraving. — We are told, Mr. 

 Editor, by Mr. Talbot, that he has, after much 

 difficulty, succeeded in converting photographic 

 metal plates into what he calls " positive etchings," 

 by causing the plate, by certain chemical means, 

 to engrave itself. Any object which can be placed 

 in contact with the metallic plate, — as the leaf of 

 a fern, the light, feathery flowers of a grass, a 

 piece of lace, &c, is engraved as accurately as if 

 its shadow had itself corroded the metal. Objects 

 which cast a broad and uniform shadow, as the 

 opaque leaf of a fern, or other plant, produce an 

 etching which, when printed, delineates the ori- 

 ginal, in a pleasing but unusual form, — something 

 between an aqua-tint engraving and an Indian-ink 

 drawing. The size of the plate offers no difficulty, 

 except in requiring more than usual care in the 

 operator. But the larger the plate, the less obvious 

 the minute deviations from the original. — W. 



[Thanks. Read the article on " Photography," 

 at page 143. The subject is one of pleasing 

 interest.] 



Morality in Manchester and Glasgow. — It 

 appears, Sir, from the statistical records, that in 

 Glasgow, where the profession of " religion " is 

 extreme, one out of every twenty-two in the popu- 

 lation is put down as " drunk and incapable," — 



