CURIOUS FACTS IN NATURAL HISTORY.
The examination of flowers by the microscope opens a new field of wonder to the inquiring naturalist; by which we are enabled to perceive that the minutest works of Nature are adorned with the most consummate elegance and beauty. As one proof, from innumerable others that might be selected, I beg to subjoin Sir John Hill's interesting account of what appeared on examining a carnation;—first published in the Inspector, No. 109. "The principal flower in this bouquet, was a carnation; the fragrance of this led me to enjoy it frequently and nearly: the sense of smelling was not the only one affected on these occasions; while that was satiated with the powerful sweet, the ear was constantly attacked by an extremely soft but agreeable murmuring sound. It was easy to know that some animal, within the covert, must be the musician, and that the little noise must come from some little body suited to produce it. I instantly distended the lower part of the flower, and, placing it in a full light, could discover troops of little insects frisking and capering with wild jollity among the narrow pedestals that supported its leaves, and the little threads that occupied its centre! I was not cruel enough to pull out any one of them for examination: but adapting a microscope to take in at one view, the whole base of the flower, I gave myself an opportunity of contemplating what they were about, and this for many days together without giving them the least disturbance.—Thus could I discover their economy, their passions and their enjoyments. The microscope, on this occasion, had given what nature seemed to have denied to the objects of contemplation. The base of the flower extended itself under its influence to a vast plain; the slender stems of the leaves became trunks of so many stately cedars; the threads in the middle seemed columns of massy structure, supporting at the top their several ornaments; and the narrow spaces between were enlarged into walls, paterres, and terraces. On the polished bottom of these, brighter than Parian marble, walked in pairs, alone, or in larger companies, the winged inhabitants: these from little dusky flies (for such only the naked eye would have shown them,) were raised to glorious glittering animals, stained with living purple, and with a glossy gold that would have made all the labours of the loom contemptible in the comparison. I could, at leisure as they walked together, admire their elegant limbs, their velvet shoulders, and their silken wings; their backs vieing with the empyrean in its blue; and their eyes, each formed of a thousand others, out-glittering the little planes on a brilliant; above description, and too great almost for admiration. Here were the perfumed groves, the more than myrtle shades, of the poet's fancy, realized; here the little animals spent their days in joyful dalliance; or in the triumph of their little hearts, skipped after one another from stem to stem among the painted trees; or winged their short flight to the close shadow of some broader leaf, to revel undisturbed in the heights of all felicity."