woods for themselves, and in the evening are summoned home by this call, which they well understand, to food and rest. I have been near hogs rooting and grazing in the woods, when suddenly the shout of the distant negro has pealed along the air; instantly they are all attention, every head is raised, they listen a moment, then all is bustle; with a responding grunt they scamper away towards home, and each races to be foremost. The southern hogs are a queer breed; very singular creatures indeed; one does not often laugh when alone, but, really, when I have looked on these animals, with their sharp thin backs, long heads, and tall legs, looking so little like hogs, and so much like greyhounds, and have observed the shrewd look, half alarm, half defiance, with which they regard one, I have laughed till the water has run out of my From the amount of liberty which is granted them, and their consequent habits of self-protection and self-dependence, they are very wild; indeed, many are found in the woods which are as really wild, in every sense of the word, as any panther perfectly ownerless; swift of foot, and fierce and strong withal. They have a peculiar colour (a dark brown), an appearance which distinguishes them from the owned hogs; and they are often hunted by the planters on horseback with hounds. They show good sport, sometimes leading a long and smart chase, but when close pressed, they stand at bay, and often inflict severe wounds with their sharp tusks upon the dogs that are not well trained; young dogs in particular frequently suffer for their temerity. When wanted for food, the rifle-ball puts the period to the chase, but the pigs are often marked on the ear, and turned adrift again. These marks are considered a token of ownership, and are always respected by those who make any pretensions to honour. Now, then, that we are returned, as supper is not quite ready, perhaps you are not so fatigued but that you would prefer walking in the garden to sitting in the house. Although the twilight is fast fading into darkness, and therefore the brilliant tints and elegant forms of the flowers will be lost upon our unperceiving eyes, yet we shall not be without enjoyment: the sweetest fragrance is given out in the dewy evening; in the dusty, scorching, glaring day, we walk amongst the blossoms and admire their beauty, but wonder they are so scentless; but when night has begun to cool the atmosphere, and the exhaled vapours descend, then the air is loaded with perfume; from bud, leaf, and flower, from garden, field, and forest, the odours throng upon our senses. The Guinea-fowls have ended their pertinacious clack, and have retired to their roost; the field-negroes have turned their mules into the yard; and the mocking-bird is sweetly serenading his mate in the neighbouring wood. But here: look at this bush covered with blossoms; it is still light enough to discern their beauty, if you stoop down: the flowers are numerous, tubular, bright yellow, sometimes pink, sometimes both hues united. The plant is the Marvel of Peru (Mirabilis jalapa), called the Four o'clock, from the singular habit of opening its flowers just at that hour. During the heat of the day they remain closed, the mouth or wide part of the corolla being curled inward, and appearing shrivelled; but about four in the afternoon,-and I have often been struck with admiration at the precision with which the hour is marked, the blossoms begin to unfold, and in the course of a quarter of an hour all are wide expanded, and remain open all night. They are sweet-smelling, and their deep tubes make them a great centre of attraction to the large hawk-moths which choose the morning and evening gloaming for their peregrinations; and it is partly for them that I have brought you to this bush. We will be patient a moment:-there is one; I hear the humming of his muscular wings: be cautious! now I see him coming round the further side of the bush; we won't net him yet, we will watch his motions a few minutes, as well as we can for the dim twilight. He is suspended on the wing, just over the mouth of a flower into which his long tongue or sucker is inserted, probing to the very bottom, where the nectar lies: his wings are like an undefined film on each side, owing to the rapidity of their vibration, and by their motion make that shrill hum which so instantly discovers his presence. Now he is at another flower, having changed his position so quickly that it seems as if done merely by a volition, without passing through the intervening space. He stays three or four seconds at each blossom, visiting them in succession, if undisturbed, pretty regularly; not unerringly, however, as he often revisits a flower which he has just robbed. He never works in a resting position; I have never seen one alight; they always continue on the wing, and if alarmed, are gone like a thought. This is the Tobacco Hawk-moth (Sphinx Carolina), a large but sober-coloured species. The usual food of the larva is the tobacco-plant, on which it is found in considerable numbers, and it is therefore eagerly sought and destroyed; yet still the perfected moth is by no means scarce. I have also taken it from the tomato. The pupa is large, dark-reddish brown, subterraneous in its habits, and is remarkable for a curious departure from ordinary structure, though this departure is not quite peculiar to it. If we take off the hard, shelly skin of a chrysalis, not very near its time of change, we find what appears to be nearly a homogeneous mass of white matter in a semifluid state, without any semblance of limbs, members, or organs. Yet all the parts of the future fly are there, perfectly separate and distinct, though not yet fully developed. In the outer skin, however, which has acquired consistency by exposure, the shape of the limbs and external organs is definitely marked. On the front of a chrysalis, we usually perceive in the centre, running from the head, half-way down the body, a double line, which covers the tongue; on each side of this are ranged three other folds, marking the positions of the three pairs of legs: these folds are broadest at the head, and taper to a point; then come the antennæ, long and slender, one on each side the legs; in some moths, however, they are very wide and short; and outside them, the fore-wings folded down on the breast, small of course, but still displaying the future form, and even the nervures; the hind-wings cannot be seen, because they are folded directly beneath the others. Now, as I said, the tongue usually lies straight down the middle of the breast, but in some of the larger Sphinxes this organ is destined to be in the future moth of unusual length and size; and therefore, as in this species, it is not folded down with the other members, and covered only by the common skin of all, but has a separate skin or sheath, projecting from the head, with the tip (in some instances recurved) resting on the breast, looking very much like the trunk of an elephant. The tongue or sucker, when the perfect insect is evolved, is an organ well worth a moment's examination, as a beautiful instance of the modification of a part to adapt it to altered circumstances. Look here! I will unfold the apparatus, nearly two inches long, yet when rolled up in this beautiful spiral, curl within curl, scarcely larger than the head of the pin with which I am opening it. It is tubular throughout its whole length; and what, is singular, it is composed of two parts perfectly separable, you see, each part being a half cylinder, yet, when placed side by side, meeting so exactly as to form a tube quite air-tight. This is proved by the very purpose for which it is used; for if it were in any part pervious to air, a vacuum could not be formed in it, and consequently the honey of the flowers could not be sucked through it. Now, in this long cylinder, who could detect the slightest analogy to the hard-toothed jaws of a beetle? yet, in fact, the two halves of the cylinder are neither more nor less than the two jaws, altered and modified to suit the necessities of the insect; for a Sphinx placed at the outside of a tubular flower, furnished only with a pair of short, hard jaws, would be in somewhat the same condition as the fox whom the stork invited to dinner; but as it is, who does not see the hand of a God in all this? [To be continued.] THE RAINBOW. STILL young and fine, but what is still in view HENRY VAUGHAN (1651). PROGRESS OF VEGETATION ON OLD BUILDINGS. SEEDS, to our eyes invisible, will find On the rude rock the beds that fit their kind; The long-enduring forms in time will all Where the winged seed may rest, till many a flower CRABBE. |