farms and their appurtenances, ponds screaming with
dog-defying geese, and barnyards commingling all the mixed noises of
their live stock together. Encampments of ants dressed out in uniforms
quite unlike those worn by the _Formicary_ legions in Italy; gossamer
cradles nursing progenies of _our Cisalpine_ caterpillars, and spiders
with new arrangements of their _eight pairs of eyes_, forming new
arrangements of meshes, and _hunting_ new flies, are here. Here too,
once again, we behold, not without emotion, (for, _small_ as he is, this
creature has conjured up to us former scenes and associations of eight
years ago,) that tiny light-blue butterfly, that hovers over our
ripening corn, and is not known but as a stranger, in the south; also,
that minute diamond beetle[1] who always plays at bo-peep with you from
behind the leaves of his favourite hazel, and the burnished corslet and
metallic elytra of the pungent unsavoury _gold beetle_;[2] while we miss
the _grillus_ that leaps from hedge to hedge; the thirsty dragon-fly,
restless and rustling on his silver wings; the hoarse cicadae, whose
"time-honoured" noise you _durst_ not find fault with, even if you
would, and which you come insensibly to like; and that huge long-bodied
hornet,[3] that angry and terrible disturber of the peace, borne on
wings, as it were, of the wind, and darting through space like a meteor!

MISCELLANEA.

Though the "Flora" round about Vichy be, as we have said it is, very
rich and various, it attracts no attention. The fat Boeotian cattle
that feed upon it, look upon and _ruminate_ with more complacency over
it than the ordinary visitors of the place. The only flowers the ladies
cultivate an acquaintance with, are those manufactured in Paris;
_artificial_ passion flowers, and false "forget-me-nots," which are
about as true to nature as they that wear them. Of fruits every body is
a judge; and those of a sub-acid kind--the only ones permitted by the
doctors to the patients--are in great request. Foremost amongst them,
after the month of June, are to be reckoned the dainty fresh-dried
fruits from Clermont; of which, again, the prepared pulp of the mealy
wild apricot of the district is the best. This _pate d'abricot_ is
justly considered by the French one of the best _friandises_ they have,
and is not only sold in every _department_ there, but finds its way to
England also. Eaten, as we ate it, fresh from Clermont twice a-week, it
is soft and pulpy