liberty of every citizen was at the mercy of his "little bell," even so did the Grand Sachem of Tammany rule the minor slaves of the Ring. The treachery of a discontented confederate has at last laid bare to the world the history of the most extraordinary system of fraud and spoliation that blots the page of history, and the eyes of Europe are now anxiously watching the efforts of the inhabitants of the Empire City to free themselves from the thraldom of the fatal Ring, which has so long enclosed them in its circle of corruption. DESIGN OR DEVELOPMENT? In many parts of France the walks and alleys in parks and gardens are merely the natural loam beaten hard, sometimes mixed or coated over with road scrapings. In wet weather this forms a sticky, slippery surface, so inconvenient as to lead to the insertion of a line of small flags or stepping-stones along the principal walks, to render the passage along them possible after heavy rains. But in hot dry seasons they become hard and smooth, attaining the consistency of a compact stucco. In this state, their only defect is a tendency to cracking; but as the cracks are never wide nor deep enough to serve as pitfalls to the smallest babe, the fault offends the eye rather than the foot of those who walk upon them. Besides the cracks, these plaster-like walks are often perforated with holes, out of which earth has been thrown by some agent within. By watching a hole, you will see issuing from and entering it, a beelike insect, of mild and innocent mien-it actually feeds itself on the pollen of flowers -but which provides a store of fresh insect-meat for its young, in a way which would make the late Mr. Burke hide his diminished head. A medical man, Doctor Léon Dufour, discovered the crime, but failed to detect the real secret of the creature's operations. He calls the culprit Cerceris bupresticide-Cerceris, the buprestis-slayer. ing hymenoptera. A tiny hill of sand, recently thrown out, caught his eye. It masked the orifice of a deep passage, which he traced by cautiously working with a spade. Soon he saw sparkling the brilliant wing-cases of a much-coveted buprestis; soon afterwards a whole buprestis; and then three and four entire buprestes delighted his gaze with their emeralds and gold. He could not believe his eyes. And that was only the beginning of his discoveries. Out of the ruins of the mine there crept a hymenopterous insect, which he captured as it tried to make its escape. In it he recognised the Cerceris bupresticide. The entomologist's hot blood was up. It was not enough to have found the murderer and the victims; he must know who were the consumers of all this rare and valuable prey. It was as if he had found a human larder stocked with golden pheasants and birds of paradise. Having exhausted this first buprestiferous vein, which he had followed to the depth of a foot, he tried other soundings. In less than an hour he disinterred three cerceris dens, and his reward was fifteen whole buprestes, with the fragments of a still greater number. Here was a perspective to look forward to! In that locality he could catch in a few hours fifty or sixty female cerceres on the blossoms of various species of garlic. Their nests must be in the neighbourhood, provisioned in the same luxurious style. In them he would find, by hundreds, rare buprestes of which he had never been able to catch a single individual during thirty long years of assiduous hunting. And this dream soon became a reality. Some days afterwards, while visiting the estate of one of his friends, in the midst of forests of maritime pines, he set about another cerceris hunt. Their dens were easily recognised. They were exclusively excavated in the principal alleys of the garden, where the compact and welltrodden soil offered the necessary conditions of solidity for the establishment of the insect's domicile. He examined, in the sweat of his brow, about twenty nests; for the work is not so easy as might be In July, 1840, while going his rounds, a imagined. The treasuries, and consepatient suffering under some small ailment quently the treasures, are never less than a which few people die of kept him waiting. foot underground. The best plan to effect To pass the time he went into the garden, the burglary is to thrust into the orifice of and took his post in an alley on the look- the mine a straw or a long stem of grass, out for something. But seeing no more to serve as a conducting clue, and then to than Sister Anne did at first, he searched sap round it with a garden spade, so as to the pathway for the habitations of burrow-lift out the central lump of earth in one or two pieces, and then break it up circumspectly on the ground. Lively were the perspiring huntsman's transports every time he exposed to view a fresh collection of beetles blazing with copper, emeralds, and gold, and which glittered all the brighter for the burning sunshine. Never, during his long career as a naturalist, had he gazed on such a spectacle, or enjoyed such a treat. He knew not which to admire most-the brilliant coleopteræ, or the wonderful sagacity of the cerceres who had put them in store. Incredible as it may seem, amongst more than four hundred individuals so warehoused, the closest investigation could not find the smallest fragment which did not belong to the genus Buprestis. The learned collectors, though simple hymenopteræ, had not once committed the most trifling mistake. The cerceres show themselves to be no fools, by the way in which they shape and stock their subterranean nurseries. We have seen that they select hard, solid soil, well beaten, and exposed to sunshine. This choice implies an intelligence, or, if you prefer it, an instinct, which we might feel inclined to believe the result of experience. Light or sandy soils would undoubtedly be much easier to perforate, but they would be continually apt to give way and cave in. Our insect digs her gallery by means of her mandibles and her anterior tarsi, which, for this purpose, are garnished with teeth, like those of a rake. She makes the entrance wider than the diameter of her body, because it has to admit a prey of larger dimensions than herself. The gallery is not vertical, which would make it liable to be filled up by the wind and other causes. Not far from its origin it makes a bend, which usually runs, for seven or eight inches from south to north, returning then to its first direction. Beyond the termination of this final gallery the careful mother places her progeny's cradles. These latter are five separate and independent cells, disposed in a sort of semicircle, hollowed into the form and size of an olive, polished and solid in their interior. Each cell is large enough to contain three buprestes, the ordinary ration allowed to each larva. It appears that the mother fly lays one egg in the midst of the three victims, and then closes the cell with earth in such a way that when the provisioning of the whole of the brood is concluded, all communication with the gallery ceases to exist. When the cerceris returns from hunting Her with her quarry between her paws, she alights at the door of her underground lodging, and deposits it there for half a moment. Entering the gallery backwards, she seizes the helpless victim in her jaws, and drags it to the very bottom. visits are not confined to the time of providing her family with food. About the middle of August, when the buprestes are devoured, and the larvæ are hermetically sealed in their cocoons, the cerceris is seen to enter her gallery without bringing anything with her. It is clear that the anxious mother wishes to make sure, by repeated visits, that no enemy or accident threatens to destroy her progeny. But by what inconceivable impulse is the cerceris, who feeds herself on nothing but the pollen of flowers, urged to procure, in spite of a thousand difficulties, a total different diet for descendants whom she will never behold, and to lie in wait on trees so dissimilar as oaks and pines, for the insects which are destined to become her prey? What entomological tact compels her strictly to confine herself, in the choice of her game, to one single generic group of insects of which she seems the born foe, and all the while capturing species which differ considerably amongst themselves in length, dimensions, and configuration? The innate propensity which induces the cerceris to construct a nest for her young deep in the ground, manifests an instinct at once marvellous and sublime. That depth indicates that the tender larvæ will have to pass the winter snug in their burrows. Her maternal solicitude places them out of the reach of the inclemency of winter. And yet this careful mother will never see her offspring. Nor has experience given her the slightest hint that such things as winter and its frosts exist, since she came into the world during the great heats of summer, and after having provided for the future destinies of her family, she dies before the temperature is sensibly lowered. How can such facts be accounted for by any imaginable process of natural selection or progressive development? The phenomena are inexplicable, except by a belief in Divine Providence and Creative Wisdom. The The unearthing of the nests of the cerceris reveals a very singular fact. buried buprestes, though showing no signs of life, are always perfectly fresh, as though killed that very day. Their colours are bright and life-like; their legs, antennæ, and the membranes which unite the segments of it is difficult to believe in the action of an antiseptic liquid. Life, we feel assured, must still be there, although latent and passive. Life only, still resisting the de their body are perfectly supple and flexible. It was at first supposed that their preservation was owing to the coolness of the soil, and the absence of light and air. But there must be some other cause of their in-structive invasion of chemical forces, can corruptibility, since twenty-four hours after the death of a beetle in summer its internal organs are either dried up or decomposed. The female cerceris, like the great majority of the hymenopteræ, is furnished with a sting and a poison-bag, and the guess was natural that the subtle liquid which inflicted death possessed antiseptic properties, preventing putrefaction. No one suspected that the captured and doomed buprestes were not really dead. The real truth was discovered by M. Fabre, while observing the proceedings of the tuberculated cerceris, the largest European species, and divulged by him in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles. This cerceris excavates its burrows, and stores them with food during the last half of September. Instead of a flat footpath, it selects a vertical bank, but is not particular about the quality of the soil if it be but dry, and have a sunny aspect. The galleries are entirely the work of the females, who do not disdain to save themselves trouble by repairing burrows of the preceding year. The victim selected by this cerceris is a large species of the weevil tribe, the Cleonis ophthalmicus. If the Bupresticide cerceris, without going beyond the limits of a genus, indiscriminately captures any of the species of that genus, the tuberculated cerceris, more exclusive, confines itself to a single species. One is curious to know the motives which influence so singular and decided a choice. There may be differences of flavour and of nutritious qualities in the respective game, which the larvæ doubtless appreciate, but the mother insect is probably guided by anatomical rather than gastronomical considerations. After what M. Dufour has told us respecting the wonderful preservation of the insects destined to feed carniverous larvæ, it is needless to add that the weevils deposited in the burrows or captive in the claws of their mortal enemy, although deprived for ever of all power of motion, are as completely untainted as when alive and active. Vivid hues, supple joints, healthy viscera, all conspire to make us doubt that the inert body lying before us is a veritable corpse, and we look at it with the expectation that we shall see the insect get up and walk away. In the presence of such facts, thus preserve an organism from decomposition. Life is still there, minus sensibility and motion. We have before us a marvel which neither ether nor chloroform are capable of effecting, and for whose cause we must refer to the mysterious laws of the nervous system. The important point was to ascertain the way in which the murder was committed. With some difficulty, M. Fabre succeeded in surprising the assassin in the fact. The cerceris thrust her poisoned dart two or three times into the joint of the weevil's prothorax, between the first and second pair of legs. In the twinkling of an eye the deed was done. Without the slightest convulsive pang, without any of those twitchings of the limbs which accompany an animal's dying agony, the victim fell motionless for ever, as if struck by lightning. The stroke was terrible and admirable in its rapidity. Instantly the victor turned the vanquished on its back, seized it and flew off with it to her hidden den. By the effect of a microscopic puncture and an imperceptible drop of liquid, the weevil instantly lost all power of motion. But chemistry possesses no such subtle poison; consequently, we must inquire for the cause at the hands of anatomy and physiology. And to comprehend the mystery we must consider not so much the subtlety of the inoculated venom as the importance of the wounded organs, which are precisely the thoracic ganglions, whence spring the nerves which preside over all the motions of the creature's wings and legs. The cerceres who, with a single stroke, benumb the animal functions of their prey, select precisely those species in which this nervous centralisation is the most complete. The buprestes suit them, because the nervous centres of the mesothorax and the metathorax are confounded in one single mass; the weevil suits them, because the three thoracic ganglions lie very close together, the two last even touching each other. The grand puzzle still remains unsolved: Who taught the assassin cerceres these refined secrets of anatomy? The cerceres are not the only insects who display a like manifestation of marvellous foresight. The wasp family includes, besides the species which live in large com munities and build complex nests, like the hornet and the common wasp, others which lead a solitary life. One of these, the Odynerus spinipes, performs its task between the end of May and the beginning of July. Its first operation is to excavate a burrow, in clayey soil or stiff loam, at the further end of which it fashions a cell, plastering it neatly with home made mortar. Each cell receives one egg. The odynerus is a jack-of-all-trades. After working as a mason, it now plays the sportsman, beating the lucerne fields. for the larvæ of a weevil. As soon as caught, it inflicts on each a wound which, without killing, paralyses them, arrests their growth, and retains them in the condition of living prey, incapable of resisting the worm which is to feed on them. At the bottom of each nest, close to the odynerus's egg, you will find a dozen green caterpillars rolled head and tail together, stuck by the back against the walls of the cell, without the possibility of moving. metamorphosis, tears open his chrysalis shell with his teeth, shakes, unfolds, and essays his wings, and then launches boldly into air and sunshine. "What admirable maternal instinct!" some will exclaim. Others, looking further, will add, "What marvellous providential combination!" AN AUTUMN DAWN. THE sun-mist spreads a woof of quivering gold Veiling her white limbs from the God of Day. Upon the armoured furze the cunning work The autumn tints, Purple, and red, and chrome, are on the fells, The vast expanse of sky. Fair, bright, and pure, "EXCEPT THE MAYOR." The reason for this arrangement is clear. The odynerus lays only one egg in each cell. From that egg will issue a carnivorous worm who would disdain to eat stale or tainted meat. He must have fresh, tender, juicy, living game. His mother knows his peculiar tastes, and takes measures beforehand to indulge them. She fills the cell with animals which he will WHO told me, I wonder, and when and only have to devour one after the other, where was I told, a preposterous story, although their size enormously exceeds his with nothing in it, but which tickled me own when he first comes forth from his egg. strangely at the time, and which has never He eats the larva nearest at hand, without failed so to titillate my risible sense, to this troubling himself about the future. He day? The tale went this wise. Some then proceds to the second, then to the four decades since, when the Municipal third, and so on till the twelfth course is Corporations Reform Act was passed, a eaten. Twelve caterpillars, one per day, number of respectable towns in England neither more nor less, are his precise allow- became boroughs, and were not only priance. His mother, well aware of the re- vileged to return members to parliament, quired number, never exceeds it. Her but likewise received charters of incorentomological knowledge is still more sur-poration, and were consequently empowered prising. She hunts after one single species of larve, and, what is still more curious, selects them all of nearly the same age. Disdaining larvæ that are too small for her purpose, she spares herself no trouble to find up those who are old and strong enough to bear a fast without perishing. If they died in the nest, and putrefied there, the stench would render it unbearable. Thanks to the peculiar wound she inflicts, their vital functions are instantly suspended; but life exists in a degree sufficient to preserve them from decay until they have satisfied the wants of the young odynerus, who then undergoes his to elect a mayor, aldermen, and town council for purposes of local self-government. I can remember, indeed, when Brighton the magnificent was destitute of such dignitaries, and was only the Hundred of Herringbone, governed by a high constable' but the town of which I am about to speak, and which I will discreetly allude to under the name of Frogborough, was distant at least a hundred and fifty miles from the queen of watering-places, and was situate in quite a different part of the island. It was a very small town; but had become, mentally, so prodigiously inflated by its accession of importance as the seat of a mayor and corporation, that the Gazetteers might have changed its name to Oxborough; and if it went on swelling in its own estimation in a proportionate ratio, I should not be surprised to hear that it had burst long ago. There alighted, one evening, at the principal hotel at Frogborough-it had only been an inn prior to the passing of the Mayor-giving Act -a certain personage whom I will call the Irreverent Traveller. He was a hungry traveller, too, and immediately after he had flung his baggage to the boots, demanded supper in a voice of thunder. It was the landlord who condescended to bring his repast, and to wait upon him while he partook of it; and for two good reasons did mine host so stoop to conquer. In the first place, his only waiter was assisting at an entertainment given that very evening by his worship the mayor of Frogborough; in the next, the landlord could not but think that a traveller with such a loud voice as that possessed by the Irreverent one, must be a personage of some importance. The traveller partook of a dishful of eggs and ham; two 'helps" of cold roast beef; a considerable amount of pie, and a prodigious quantity of pickles; and made no more of a crusty quartern loaf than though it had been a French roll. He drank a pint and a half of strong ale, and two glasses of brandy-and-water; and then, flicking the crumbs off his knees with a great bandana handkerchief, he drew a deep breath, and slapping the landlord on the back-I warned you that he was an Irreverent Travellerexclaimed: 66 66 There! no man in England could have a better supper than I've had this night." The landlord didn't mind being slapped on the back, for the guest looked like one who could afford to pay for such familiarities. Still, there was something in the dogmatical manner of the traveller that pained him, and he gave an ahem!" in a deprecating tone. "What's that?" cried the guest, in a voice like unto the sound of a trumpet. "I beg your pardon, sir," the landlord began in a tone subdued but firm. "WHAT?" repeated the traveller in stentorian accents. "You said," the landlord went on, politely but seriously, "that no man in England could have supped better than you have done this night." "Of course I did," retorted the guest. "No man could have supped better." Except the mayor, said the host, quietly but solemnly. "Except whom ?" roared the traveller. "The mayor-his worship the mayor of Frogborough-he's a supping now,' the landlord, still deeply agitated, but still determined, replied. "Hang the mayor of Frogborough !" shouted the Irreverent Traveller; "and tell him, with my compliments, that he may go to Bath." The landlord gazed for an instant at the iconoclast, and then rushed from his presence, calling for the constables. They locked the Irreverent Traveller up in the cage; and the next day they brought him up before the borough bench, charging him with fearful crimes. The country was in a disturbed state just then, and a vinous postboy came forward to swear that the traveller had confided to him his complete approval of the principles contained in Cobbett's Register. It was currently reported, too-being market-day-that the prisoner had been discovered lurking under the lee of a hayrick with a tinder-box and matches in one pocket, and an air-gun in the other, and at the farmers' ordinary the rumour ran that he was SWING. The end of the judicial investigation was the discharge, "with a caution," of the traveller; whereupon the Irreverent one, planting his hat firmly on his head, delivered himself of the following seditious words: "I shall be cautious, indeed, before I venture into this poky hole of a town again; and allow me to add, that of all the stupid old fools I ever met with, the landlord of your hotel is the greatest-except the mayor." He turned and fled, and justice was robbed of her prey. How often, and in how many countries, has this idle jest occurred to me, often without rhyme or reason, and, in most instances, without any effort of volition on my part. But who has not his particular "ticklement ?" The old story of the man at Stoney Stratford, who was so terribly bitten by fleas, and the older one still, of the ruined gamester who kicked his valet for always tying his shoe, will never want laughers. "Except the mayor." Ishould be ashamed to revert to this Frogborough story in this place, but that it has some tangible relation to certain circumstances in which I found myself on the evening of the Ninth of November last. I should have been in bed, for I was ill; but by a strange turn of Fortune's whirligig I found myself arrayed in that solemn mockery of woe which is known as |