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in 1800

owed his astonishing successes to the confinement in which he was forced to work. At eight he astounded and stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin. In his perpetual solitude he had a comrade whom no one suspected, a spider. It was lodged at first in a quiet corner, but it gave itself license to advance from the corner to the music-stand, from the music-stand to the child, even climbing upon the mobile arm which held the bow.

11. There, a palpitating and breathless amateur, it paused and listened. It was an audience in itself. The artist needed nothing more to fill him with inspiration and double his energy. Unfortunately the child had a step-mother, who, one day, introducing a musical critic into the sanctuary, saw the sensitive animal at its post. A blow from her slipper annihilated the little listener. The child fell swooning to the ground, was ill for three months, and died, heart-broken.

MICHELET.

[blocks in formation]

1. THE muscular strength of insects is immense. We once were surprised by a feat performed by a beetle common in the United States. We had put the insect, for want of any box at hand, beneath a quart bottle full of milk upon a table, the hollow at the bottom allowing him room to stand upright. Presently, to our surprise, the bottle began slowly to move and glide along the smooth table, propelled by the muscular power of the imprisoned insect, and continued for some time to perambulate the surface, to the astonishment of all who witnessed it.

2. The weight of the bottle and its contents could not have been less than three pounds and a half, while that of the beetle was about half an ounce; so that it readily moved a weight 112 times exceeding its own. A better notion than figures can convey will be obtained of this feat by supposing a lad of fifteen to be imprisoned under the great bell of St. Paul's, which weighs twelve thousand pounds, and to move it to and fro upon a smooth pavement by pushing within.

3. Mr. Newport has given other instances of insect power equally remarkable. Having once fastened a small, elegantly formed ground-beetle, weighing three and a half grains, by a silk thread, to a piece of paper, and laid a

weight on the latter, at a distance of ten inches from its load the insect was able to drag after it, up an inclined plane of twenty-five degrees, very nearly eighty-five grains. When placed on a plane of five degrees' inclination, it drew after it one hundred and twenty-five grains, exclusive of the friction to be overcome in moving its load. This is as though a man were to drag up a hill of similar inclination a wagon weighing two tons and a half, having first taken the wheels off.

4. According to the same excellent authority, the stagbeetle has been known to gnaw a hole an inch in diameter through the side of an iron canister in which it was confined, and on which the marks of its jaws were distinctly visible, as proved by Mr. Stephens, who exhibited the canister at one of the meetings of the Entomological Society.

5. Let us look at the powers of insects exercised in the act of flying. The house-flies that wheel and play beneath the ceiling for hours together ordinarily move at the rate of five feet per second; but if excited to speed, they can dart along through thirty-five feet in the same brief space of time. Now, in this period a race-horse could clear only ninety feet, which is at the rate of more than a mile in a minute. Our little fly, in her swiftest flight, will in the same space of time go more than one third of a mile.

6. Compare the immense difference of the size of the two animals (ten millions of the fly would hardly counterpoise one racer), and how wonderful will the velocity of this minute creature appear! Did the fly equal the racehorse in size, and retain its present powers in the ratio of its magnitude, it would traverse the globe with the rapidity of lightning. Some of the flies that haunt our gardens

shoot along so rapidly that the eye cannot follow them in flight.

7. Nor are these tiny creatures less masters of the arts of running and leaping. De Lisle mentions a fly so minute as almost to be invisible, which ran nearly six inches in a second, and in that space was calculated to have made one thousand and eighty steps! This is as if a man whose steps measured only two feet should run at the incredible rate of twenty miles in a minute.

8. Every one has had occasion to observe, not always without an emotion of anger, the leaping powers of the flea. A bound of two hundred times its own length is a common feat; as if a man should jump twelve hundred feet, or a quarter of a mile! What a pity that insects were not allowed to be competitors in the athletic games of old!

GOSSE.

99.ANTS AND THEIR SLAVES.

aug-men'ted, increased.

dress, to arrange as soldiers in a straight line.

in'gress, entrance.

or'i-fiçe, an opening.
sim'ple-ton, a silly person.

1. PETER HUBER, the son of the celebrated observer of the manners and habits of bees, walking one day in a field near Geneva, saw on the ground a strong detachment of reddishcolored ants on the march, and bethought himself of following them. On the flanks of the column, as if to dress its ranks, a few sped to and fro in eager haste. After marching for about a quarter of an hour, they halt before an anthill belonging to the small black ant, and a desperate struggle takes place at its gates.

2. A small number of blacks offer a brave resistance; but the great majority of the people thus assailed flee through the gates remotest from the scene of combat, carrying away their young. It was just these which were the cause of the strife; what the blacks most justly feared was the theft of their offspring. And soon the assailants, who had succeeded in penetrating into the city, might be seen emerging from it loaded with the young black progeny.

3. The red ants incumbered with their living booty, left the unfortunate city in the desolation of its great loss, and resumed the road to their own habitation, whither their astonished and almost breathless observer followed them. But how was his astonishment augmented when, at the threshold of the red ants' community, a small population of black ants came forward to receive the plunder, welcoming with visible joy these children of their own race, which, undoubtedly would perpetuate it in the foreign land.

4. This, then, is a mixed city, where the strong warriorants live in a perfectly good understanding with the little blacks. But what of the latter? Huber speedily discovered that, in fact, they do everything. They alone build; they alone bring up the young red ants and the captives of their own species; they alone administer the affairs of the community, provide its supplies of food, and wait upon and feed their red masters, who, like great infant giants, indolently allow their little attendants to feed them at the mouth. No other occupations are theirs but war, theft, and kidnapping. No other movements in the intervals than to wander about lazily, and bask in the sunshine at the door of their barracks.

5. Huber made an experiment. He was desirous of observing what would be the result if the great red ants

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