128 
NATURE NOTES. 
TO THE ORANGE-TIP BUTTERFLY. 
(Euchloe Cardamines.) 
Cardamines ! Cardamines ! 
Thine is the hour when thrushes sing, 
When gently stirs the vernal breeze, 
When earth and sky proclaim the spring ; 
When all the fields melodious ring 
With cuckoos’ calls, when all the trees 
Put on their green, thou art the king 
Of butterflies, Cardamines. 
What though thine hour be brief, for thee 
The storms of winter never blow. 
No autumn gales shall scour the lea ; 
Thou scarce shalt feel the summer’s glow ; 
But soaring high or flitting low. 
Or racing with the awakening bees 
For spring’s first draughts of honey — so 
Thy life is passed, Cardamines. 
Cardamines ! Cardamines ! 
E’en among mortal men I wot 
Brief life while springtime swiftly flees 
Might seem a not ungrateful lot ; 
For summer’s rays are scorching hot. 
And autumn holds but summer’s lees. 
And swift, ere autumn is forgot. 
The winter comes, Cardamines ! 
C. J. Longman. 
A NOVEL PET. 
HEN leading a quiet, solitary life in the bush, far 
from the busy haunts of men, many queer creatures 
are by turn admitted to a share in one’s affections. 
Young wallaby, “ bloodsuckers,” “ death-adders,” and 
“ tarantulas,” have all had their day with me in the hut, not 
to mention frogs and beetles of various species ; but for inter- 
esting little ways my present protege, now occupying a saucer 
covered by an inverted glass on the table before me, will yield 
the palm to none. The handsome little lady who now holds 
my affections is a neuropterous fly, probably a Raphidia, and 
was lately captured by a friend who knows my tastes, at the 
commencement of the Flowerdale district, three miles from 
here. The capture was presented to me as a “ new sort of 
mantis,” and indeed one cannot wonder at the mistake, for the 
general aspect of the insect, and especially the folding up of 
the front pair of legs, is decidedly mantis-like. A glance, how- 
