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; 
The 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 
