256 NATURAL HISTORY CALENDAR NOTICES.

mouths but He sends meat to feed them with.” It is
indeed only a homelier way of declaring what the psalmist
had advanced as grounded on his own observation many
long centuries before an English saying could find utter-
ance: “ These,’—the different living creatures,—‘ these
wait all upon Thee, and Thou givest them meat in
due season.” So nicely adjusted indeed is the balance
and proportion, that it is not a mere passing glance that
enables one to entertain the questions—Ave the eaters
here because the food is in supply ? or, Is the food supplied
that the eaters may be satisfied 2 The answer no doubt
is, that both the influx of the eaters and the supply of the
food are regulated by an All-wise and All-beneficent
Creator and Supporter, on principles of mutual inter-
dependency. But I am sure no one can notice what goes
onin the monthly annals of Natural History, especially at
this time of year when vegetable life and insect life spring
forth in such lavish, amazing abundance from the treasuries
of nature, and just at the same time an exceedingly great
and progressively increasing array of consumers of both
comes on the scene or springs into being, without being

struck with the singular evidences of pre-arranged sequence

and connexion displayed on every hand.

A simple walk by a trout-stream, how full of interesting
incident and suggestion it is! I have known many good
fishermen, and some among them—not the worst by any
means—men with some of the spirit and the knowledge
of the Christian naturalist about them; and I have
seen how such men derive an enjoyment, which is very
real and pleasant, and lies quite outside the mere province
of “sport.” Indeed, the fisherman’s experience is a sort
of calendar itself, at least depends most closely on it.
A single day of observation by the stream-side is a pro-
longed study of entomology, and each day the study
varies. Flies with two tails and flies with three; flies
with green bunches of eggs at their tail and flies with
black bunches, or none; flies with their wings set back
to back like the butterfly’s, and flies with wings covering
their backs and sides like the moth’s; flies that flit like
butterflies, and others that dance like motes in the sun-

; beam; flies that run and flies that creep, that hide under

stones or take refuge in crannies in the bank; flies that
emerge from the water and others that spring from the
earthy sides of the stream ; flies of all shades of colour,
and of every imaginable gradation of delicacy in shading
and marking—all are there. Many years ago, when I
knew what leisure was, I began a collection of merely
the flies which were objects of interest to the fly-fisher.
I caught specimens as I saw them over the stream and
the fish rising at them, and was careful to have specimens
of both sexes, and I made careful coloured drawings of
each, and affixed the actual wings in each case by means
of gum at the side of the drawing, and I noted on the
opposite page in the book, the days of the month, and
the time or times in the day at which they appeared and
were most abundant. It was a mere fisherman’s record
in the first instance; but it is difficult to describe the
interest which soon began to attach to the pursuit, or the
beauty of the little collection, or the regret felt a hundred
times since, as I have looked at these records of thirty
years ago, that circumstances interfered to stop the
process of the collection, and that sufficient resolution to

find or make time to continue it had never grown up |

since. What a calendar of insects for April—albeit in
only one small section of insect-life—I should have had

_ crush them and their occupants.

by now, when I find such entries as this, touching the
“Grannom or Greentail ” of the class Phryganex :—« Qy
the water, April 5, in great numbers ; also every day for
some days after, and on April 16 in incredible numbers,
Very few April 19 and 20”—and find that, with its two
figures, to be only one entry of a number made between
April 3 and April 6.

But the butterfly tribe also now begins to arrest atten.
tion as well as claim it. “ From the beginning of spring,”
says one authority, “till the end of autumn one sees”
one particular species specified, “flying about every
where, in the gardens, and even inthe towns.” It is quite
true, and of more sorts than one. And what a host of
calendarical observations, of various sorts, does the fut. |
tering progress of a single butterfly suggest. The eye
merely kept open and attentive, notes the caterpillar in
various stages of growth and change, watches the entrance
on the chrysalis state, hails the emergence of the perfect
insect. A simple walk round the garden in April will,
if the walker likes, be the means of noticing or detecting
almost as many different kinds of moths and butterflies,
in some or other of their stages, as there are different
plants and trees growing there. It would be very hard
to pass a single fruit-tree or shrub on or about which what
the gardener would call the mischief of two or three or
more varieties of the butterfly tribe did not—I will not
say disclose themselves if looked for, but—obtrude them-
selves on the observation; and in such varied and in-
teresting forms too. I will mention but two, the “leaf
rollers,” and the gooseberry caterpillar. Some of the
former tie up the leaf-bud so that it cannot expand, and
then eat the interior at their leisure; others roll up the
leaf after it is more or less fully expanded, using a most
wonderfully curious system of mechanics and mechanical
appliances to produce their end—a system of ropes and
hawsers properly fixed and scientifically tightened. All
this may be seen with a little patience and a lens of
moderate magnifying power, on almost any plum, pear, or
apple-tree, in any oak, elm, or beech, we pass. While
on the gooseberry-bush curiously spotted leaves may be
seen, low down on the plant generally, which, if they are
looked at more closely, give up the fact that their mottled
appearance is due to the circumstance that the upper half
of the tissue of the leaf is eaten away in small cireular-
shaped spots; and the eater in a semi-erect position, if
the leaf is much shaken or jarred, will be seen on each in
the form of a minute, light-creen, baby caterpillar, A
day or-two before he was an egg, or, at least, in it. In
a day or two more the leaf will be eaten through and
through, all but the strong fibres; and the small marau-
ders, eating two or three times their own weight per day,
and growing with a speed proportionate, will have dis-
persed in their migration to adjoining leaves. Let the
gooseberry-grower who wants to secure the foliage, and
consequently the good quality of the fruit, on his bushes,
diligently hunt out these mottled leaves, and unpityingly

Besides the birds specially named at the commencement
of this paper, the wryneck, the white-throat (common
and lesser), the chiff-chaff, and the willow-wren, the
redstart, the stone-chat, the nightingale, the blackcap,
garden and other warblers, &c., may all be looked for as
stated arrivals, and many a nest of many a variety will,
as the month draws on, reward the careful searcher's
diligence and watchfulness.