Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/162

soil. This furnishes food and support to vegetable forms, which in their turn feed the animal world. Then we, as we draw the knife through the juicy sirloin, separate atoms, which perhaps once clad the bones of monsters now reposing on the shelves of our museums, but which tenanted our island long before it was and island or naked British savages existed.

The philosophic Hamlet might thus muse:—

But we are prepared to go far beyond him in our musings; and whereas he only contemplated the animal returning to the mineral world, we recognize it rising from the mineral through the vegetable, culminating in the animal, and sinking into the earth again, and thus completing one link of a continuous chain, one round of the "circle of life."

But, how of the future? If our bodies on their dissolution are destined to contribute to the sustenance of unborn generations, shall we not strive that our intellectual powers shall have an influence in that future? Shall we not endeavour to contribute something to the store of human knowledge, to devise some diminution of human pain, to contrive some additional source of human pleasure? Shall we not, in addition to our legacy of bones and dust, which a dead horse could bequeath as well, and which extinct reptiles have bequeathed to us, leave behind us also some memorials of a higher "circle of life"?

To the wanderer in the wild solitudes of a primeval forest, the voice of each animal, the note of every bird, the chirp and buzz of insects, the whispering wind, or the rolling flood, has some deep mysterious meaning. The sounds produced, whether denoting love, anger, or fear, generally bear a fancied resemblance to names that are familiar to him. Thus one of the goatsuckers (Caprimulgus vociferus) has been named the "Whip poor-Will;" another (Cap. carolinensis), "Chuck-Wills-widow;" a third, "Whip-Tom-Kelly." The Carolina quail, "Bob-white;" the rice-bunting, "Bobby-link;" and Australian kingfisher, "the Laughing Jackass;" a marmot, "the Rock Whistler;" and so on ad infinitum. In this way one of the most conspicuous grasshoppers (Platyphyllum concavum) found in North-west America has obtained the name of "Katy-did."

In the quiet evening, as the sun steals off behind the hills, and the busy hum of the insect world gradually dies away, and birds, one by one, warble their vesper hymns and settle down to sleep; then it is the plaintive ceaseless song of the Katy-did rings out from every tree and flower. Its persistent complaint, that "Katy did it—she did, she did," often recalls pleasant recollections, giving rise to many curious conjectures as to the origin and meaning of its singular cry.

Every act of animated nature, to the thoughtful mind, points out some unseen path, from the creature up to the hand that made it. Who can watch the toiling ant, the busy bee, or the little squirrel piling in its winter hoard, without growing wiser, learning contentment, and that golden lesson one should treasure through life's pilgrimage—that sure success generally follows untiring industry. Again, the metamorphosis of the crawling caterpillar into the bright and gaily-tinted butterfly, has in all ages been a source of hope and comfort, typifying a higher, a purer life. Each animated atom of creation bears the stamp of some great moral or intellectual significance, appealing alike to the poet's enthusiasm, the naturalist's all-absorbing love of nature, the philosopher's insatiable desire to penetrate hidden mysteries, and to man's universal conviction, "that naught was made in vain."

Now, what Katy-did has again and again roused up such thoughts as these. A poet, I believe an American, supposes himself to have asked this little tell-tale the cause of its continual assertion Katy-did, and in answer obtained some hints as to clandestine meetings between a Miss Katy, more fair than prudent, and her lover. He says:

This beautiful little insect belongs to the order Orthoptera, in English straight-winged; about an inch and a half in length; its wings, when fully extended, about three inches from tip to tip, of a pale green colour, and in texture like beautiful gauze. The wing-coverts are of a darker green than the wings, and so curiously veined as to exactly resemble a leaf. It is next to impossible, when the insect is at rest, to make them out to be anything but leaves. In the males, at the base of the wing-cover, is a hard glassy membrane tightly stretched, and in shape somewhat like a doll's eye. There are two of these plates, which, rubbed together by the movement of the wing-converts, produce the sound peculiar to these insects.

It is okay the males that possess these curious