dred and thirty-six pearls or hemispheres in a silk-worm's two eyes, when in the fly state: three thousand, one hundred, eighty-one in each eye of the beetle, and eight thousand in the two eyes of a common fly.

The eyes of other creatures are as it were mul tiplied by motion; whereas those of a fly are fixed and immoveable, and can only see what lies directly before them; they are therefore very numerous, and placed in a round surface, some in a high, others in a low situation, to inform the fly of every thing in which it may be interested. It has a number of enemies; but with the aid of the eyes that surround its head, it is enabled to discover whatever danger thre tens from above, behind, or on either side

Spheresi

The Common Fly and other Insects. 309 even when it is in full pursuit of a prey distate: trectly before it.

in each in the

These eyes or little hemispheres are placed, in all kinds of flies and aerial animals, in a very neat, regular, and admirable ordination of triangular rows, ranged as near to one another as possible, and leaving the least pits or furrows between them that can possibly be. But in crabs, lobsters, shrimps, whose eyes are less pearled, the pearls are ranged in a quadrangalar order, the rows intersecting at right angles, by which disposition their number on surfaces must be less; but, to make them a recompence for this, Nature has formed their equal a little moveable, whereas those of flying insects are all fixed.

nly see

are ti

ound s

The goodness of Providence is particularly distinguishable in the formation and situation of the eyes of different animals, in a manner most suitable to their different necessities and living. In hares and rabbits, whose safety depends on flight, they are very protuberant, and ways of placed so much towards the sides of their heads, that their two eyes take in nearly a whole or pd In cats, the pupil being erect, and the shutting of the eye-lids transverse, they can so close the pupil, as to admit, as it were, only one single ray of light; and, on the contrary, by throwing all open, they can take in the faintest rays, which

dament

310

is an incomparable provision for animals that have occasion to watch and way-lay their prey both by night and day. But, besides this, some nocturnal creatures have a certain radiation, or darting out of rays of light from their eyes, enabling them to catch their prey in the dark: and this most people have been witnesses of in

cats.

Some writers have been of opinion that moles are blind; but greater diligence, and more exof periments, have shown them to have eyes most excellently fitted for their subterraneous way life; not, indeed, much bigger than a large pin's head, but which it is supposed they have a faculty of withdrawing, if not quite into the head, yet more or less within the hair, as they have more or less occasion to employ or guard

them.

The eyes of snails are placed at the ends of their horns, and are thrust out at some distance, or drawn quite within the head, as the animal thinks proper.

of

Those of the camelion turn backwards, or any way else, like a lens or convex glass in a globular socket, without any motion of the head; and it is very extraordinary to see one of the eyes this creature moving, while the other remains fixed; one turning forwards at the same time that the other is looking behind; or perhaps one looking up to the sky, while the other turns itself downward towards the ground.

THE SEMPSTRESS.

"Few, save the poor, feel for the poor;
The rich know not how hard
It is, to be of needful food

And needful rest debarr'd.

Their paths are paths of plenteousness,
They sleep on silk and down;
They never think how wearily
The weary head lies down.

They never by the window sit,
And see the gay pass by,

Yet take their weary work again,
With downcast mournful eye."

L. E. L

HE sufferings of poverty are not confined to those of the common, squalid, every day beggars, who are inured to hardships, and ever ready to receive charity, let it come to them as it will. There is another class on whom it presses with still heavier the self-respecting, who have struggled with their power: the generous, the decent, lot in calm silence, "bearing all things, hoping all things," and willing to endure all things, rather than breathe a word of complaint, or to acknowledge, even to themselves, that their own efforts will not be sufficient for their own necessities.

Pause with me awhile at the door of yonder poor

looking house. In one of its small rooms lives a widow and her daughter, who are dependent entirely on the labours of the needle, and those other slight and precarious resources, which are It all that remain to woman when left to struggle her way through this bleak world alone." contains all their small earthly store, and there is scarce an article of its little stock of furniture that has not been thought of, and toiled for, and its price calculated over and over again, before everything could come right for its purchase. Every article is arranged with the utmost neatness and care; nor is the most costly furniture of a fashionable parlour more sedulously guarded from scratch or a rub, than is that brightlyVarnished bureau, and that neat cherry tea-table and bedstead. The floor, too, boasted once a carpet; but old Time has been busy with it, picking a hole here, and making a thin place there; and though the old fellow has been followed up by the most indefatigable zeal in darning, the marks of his mischievous fingers are too plain to be mistaken. It is true, a kindly neighbour has given a bit of faded baize, which has been neatly clipped and bound, and spread down over an entirely unmanageable hole in front of the fire-place; and other places have been repaired with pieces of different colours; and yet, after all, it is evident that the poor carpet is not long for this world.

But the best face is put upon everything.