And earth's hold on us grows slighter, When he wrote this, the end was not far off. His health was evidently failing, and in the last week of April he left his house in Boston upon a visit to his daughter at New York, with the view of obtaining special medical advice. On Saturday, the 24th of May, he died, listening, just as consciousness was fading away, to some old hymns familiar to him in his childhood, when his mother taught him the way to God. He was buried in the neighbourhood of Boston on the following Thursday, a double quartette of coloured people undertaking the musical portion of the service. Addresses of deep interest were delivered by some of his old coworkers. It is impossible to conceive of a life more peculiarly successful than his. had rounded off into a beautiful completeness. The work he set himself to do he had done. It This notice of his life cannot be more appropriately closed than by quoting some lines which were composed after his death. by his old friend the poet Whittier, and sent to be read at the funeral service : "The storm and peril overpast, The hounding hatred shamed and still; Go, soul of freedom! take at last The place which thou alone canst fill. "Confirm the lessons taught of old, Life saved for self is lost, while they Who lose it in His service hold The lease of God's eternal day. "Not for thyself, but for the slave, Thy words of thunder shook the world; No selfish griefs or hatred gave The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled. "From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew, We heard a tenderer under song; Thy very wrath from pity grew, From love of man thy hate of wrong. "Now past and present are as one; Thy life below is life above; Thy mortal years have but begun The immortality of love. "Not for a soul like thine the calm Of selfish ease and joys of sense; But duty, more than crown or palm, Its own exceeding recompense. "Go up and on! thy day well done, Its morning promise well fulfilled, Arise to triumphs yet unwon, To holier tasks that God has willed. Go, leave behind thee all that mars The work below of man for man; With the white legions of the stars Do service such as angels can. "Wherever wrong shall right deny, WILLIAM DORLING. THE SILENCE OF LOVE. BY THE LATE FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL. "Rest in the Lord" (margin, "Be silent").-PSALM XXXvii. 7. AN invalid was left alone one evening for sence and the silence are full of brightness 66 a little while. After many days of acute pain, there was a lull. Now," she thought, "I shall be able to pray a little." But she was too wearied out and exhausted for this; feeling that utter weakness of mind and body which cannot be realised without actual experience, when the very lips shrink from the exertion of a whisper, and it seems too much effort of thought to shape even unspoken words. Only one whisper came; "Lord Jesus, I am so tired!" She prayed no more, she could not frame even a petition that, as she could not speak to Him, He would speak to her. But the Lord Jesus knew all the rest; He knew how she had waited for and wanted the sweet conscious communing with Him, the literal talking to Him and telling Him all that was in her heart; and He knew that, although a quiet and comparatively painless hour had come, she was "so tired" that she could not think. Very tenderly did He, who knows how to speak a word in season to the weary, choose a message in reply to that little whisper. "Be silent to the Lord!" It came like a mother's "hush" to one whom his mother comforteth. It was quite enough, as every spirit-given word is; and the acquiescent silence was filled with perfect peace. and eloquence, and you feel they are enough. This is one of the expressions which are He Sometimes He takes the opportunity of our silence to speak Himself. He answers it "with good words and comfortable words." And do we not know that one such word from Him is more than anything else, worth ten thousand-fold all the weariness or exhaustion of pain which brought us to be silent! Only real friends understand silence. With a passing guest or ceremonial acquaintance you feel under an obligation to talk, you make effort to entertain them as a matter of courtesy; you may be tired or weak, but no matter, you feel you must exert yourself. But with a very dear and intimate friend sitting by you, there is no feeling of the kind. To be sure, you may talk, if you feel able: pouring out all sort of confidences, relieved and refreshed by the interchange of thoughts But sometimes He answers silence with and sympathies. But if you are very tired, silence. What then? Are we to conclude you know you do not need to say a word. that He is gone away, or is not thinking You are perfectly understood and you know about us, forgetting to be gracious? We are it. You can enjoy the mere fact of your judging Him as He would not judge us. He friend's presence, and find that does you did not put such an interpretation on our Let us more good than conversation. The sense of silence, then why should we on His? that present and sympathetic affection rests take His interpretation of it; surely we you more than any words. And your friend should believe what He Himself asserts! takes it as the highest proof of your friend-" He will be silent in His love" (Zeph. iii. 17, ship and confidence, and probably never margin). Can any words be more beautiful! loves you so vividly as in these still moments. It is as if He, even He, who made man's No matter that twilight is falling, and that mouth, had made no words which could exyou cannot see each other's faces, the pre-press His exceeding great love, and therefore is silent to) God," we may rest assured that He could only expand it in the silence which lies above and below and beyond all language. When we have said, as very likely we have often done, "Why art Thou silent unto me, O Lord?" why did we not take His own ex-say to us, when He sees we can bear them. quisite answer, and trust the love that was But till His time to speak is come, let our veiled in the silence? For, whenever we silence of trust respond to His silence of can say, “Truly my soul waiteth upon (Heb. love. THE APHIS. BY THE REV. J. G. WOOD, M.A. THE HERE is a very curious group of insects | single cochineal insect be placed in a glass called Homoptera, i.e. similar wings, of hot water, it will diffuse through the water because both pairs of wings resemble each an amazing amount of the splendid hue which other. The rays, veins, or nervures of the we know by the name of carmine. Confecwings are comparatively few, and they are tioners make great use of this insect for not traced with the decision which charac- colouring jellies, creams, and sugars. terizes those of the bees, wasps, and ants. All these insects are furnished with sharply pointed suckers which they can drive into living vegetables, mostly leaves, or the young bark of trees, and through which they suck the juices of the plant. Several of them are familiar to us under the name of Frog-hopper, which is the perfect form of the Cuckoo-spit of our gardens. Then there are the Cicadas, so well known in hot countries by their wonderfully loud voices-if the sound which they produce may be called by the name of voice-but which have only one small British representative inhabiting the New Forest, and, as far as I know, confined to that locality. Our hothouses and greenhouses are often plagued with little insects known to gardeners as Scale-bugs, or Mealy-bugs. They derive the first of these names from the scale-like appearance of the female insects as they adhere to the leaves, and the second name from the white, mealy substance which is found within them. The white cottony "blight" which infests our fruit trees, and is | popularly called the "American blight," is one of the same group. To the scale insects, however, we are indebted for one of our most valuable dyes, called Cochineal. This is procured from the females of the Coccus cacti, a species which lives on the Cactus cochinelifer. Thousands of acres are planted with this cactus for the sake of procuring the cochineal insects, which, when properly grown, are swept from the leaves and dried. There There is nothing particularly beautiful about them when dry, as they are of a blackish grey, powdered as it were with white; but if a Another useful member of this group is the Lac insect (Coccus lacca) which furnishes the materials for lacquered ware, and for sealing-wax of good quality. This, by the way, never can be cheap, the low-priced sealing-wax being made almost wholly of common resin. It is deposited by the insect on the twigs of the food plant, and in that state is collected and sold under the name of stick-lac. When removed from the sticks and purified, it is formed into thin, curved flakes, which are known by the name of shell-lac. The so-called "manna" of the druggists is the product of another scale insect which feeds on the Tamarix mannifera. It is in much favour as a medicine, especially for children who have been badly educated and refuse to touch any medicine of a repulsive taste or odour, as they will readily take the manna, which has a sweet, insipid flavour. Another scale insect, plentiful in China, produces large quantities of a material which looks exactly like white wax, and can be used for the same purposes. The Chinese, who never waste anything, cultivate these insects, scrape the wax from the branches, purify it, and make it into cakes which have a ready sale. So, were it but for the scale insects alone, man owes a debt of gratitude to the homoptera. There is, however, one group of homoptera which appear, according to our present state of knowledge, to be essentially harmful, and to have no redeeming points about them. These are the Aphides, popularly called plantlice, or green fly, or green blight. That they must have some important part to play in the world is evident, were it but for their exceed-solutely to hide the plant from sight and to ing numbers, but, up to the present time, I drain it of its life-juices. believe that no one has been able to discover, or even to conjecture, anything in their favour. All rose fanciers must be too familiar with the green blight, which nothing seems to affect. There is a prevalent idea that tobacco smoke will kill them. So it will if it be dense enough, strong enough, and they can be kept long enough in it. Smoking pipes or the greenhouse is quite useless. The insects certainly dislike the smoke, but it does not kill them, and almost the only remedy is the double brush. Did aphides them selves to our roses, or even to garden plants, such as the bean, we should not have to com plain of; but one In The answer to this question lies in the astonishing fecundity of the insect, which baffles all calculation. As a rule among insects, there is one male and one female parent. The latter lays eggs, which pass through the different stages of larva and pupa before they can attain to their perfect form, and then in their turn become the parents of a new generation. The aphides, however, are quite independent of rules, one female having been known to continually produce other females, and so on, for a space of four years, all the young producing fresh young, without a single male having been It has been cala male aphis were only to live to be a great-greatgrandfather, and none of his off spring were to die, he would find himself the progenitor of a family just fifty times more numer ous than the human population of the entire globe. Of course, The such an event does not occur. aphides of the land even exceed the fishes Aphides and Ant magnified. of the sea in fecundity, and, if their in deed, seasons crease were unchecked, would take possession of nearly the whole vegetable world, just as the fishes would, under similar circumBut the Maker stances, choke up the sea. of all things holds His own balances, and so we find that both with the fishes of the water and the aphides of the land, there are counteracting influences which keep the scales even. The most powerful, or, at all events, the most conspicuous, of these counteracting in-jawed grub, almost as lithe as an elephant's fluences is the Ladybird (Coccinella), which, trunk, and being able to elongate, contract, or both in the larval and perfect state, feeds twist itself to a wonderful extent, while envoraciously on the aphides. Instinct seems gaged in its business of eating aphides. So to make it aware of their presence, though voracious is it, that it has received the popuat ever so great a distance; and where- lar and appropriate name of aphis lion. ever the aphides swarm, the ladybirds are sure to follow, upborne by the ample wings with which we have all been made familiar by the nursery ditty of our childhood. The multitudes of ladybirds that migrate to the hop grounds in search of the "fly" must be seen to be appreciated. Along the Kentish coasts I have seen the shores reddened with ladybirds which have been drowned in the sea, while the roads were so covered with them that it was hardly possible to move a step without treading on some of the insects. They entered houses and could not find their way out again, so that even when the winter's cold had driven the insects from the fields, the ladybirds still infested the houses. They took an especial fancy for bedrooms, hanging in heavy clusters in every corner, like huge bunches of red currants, and, as they possess a very disagreeable odour, their presence was not desirable. Still, as they could not have waged war with the aphides unless they had come in such overwhelming numbers, the inhabitants were glad enough to put up with the temporary inconvenience There is another insect which is a determined foe to the aphides. This is the Lacewing-fly, or Golden-eye (Hemerobius)—marvellously pleasing to the eye, and equally displeasing to the nostrils. It belongs to the same order as the dragon-flies, and is nearly related to the ant-lions. It may easily be known by its pale green, slender body, its large, delicate, iridescent wings, which look as if they were made of thin flakes of mother-ofpearl, and its large, rounded, projecting eyes which glow with a golden lustre as if blazing with hidden fire. Let it be looked at and admired, but let it not be touched by those who possess the olfactory sense. It gives no offence while untouched, but if handled, and especially if crushed, it imparts to the fingers an odour so inexpressibly noisome that no one would willingly try the experiment a second time. It is also remarkable for the mode in which it deposits its eggs, each of which is laid at the end of a long, translucent, elastic thread, which projects boldly from a twig or leaf, and so holds the egg aloft out of danger. Each of those eggs, when hatched, produces a long-bodied, small-headed, sharp Then there is at least one species of ichneumon fly which attacks the aphis. When I was a child I used to be puzzled at the fact that many aphides altered their shape, became rounded, hard, yellow, and smooth. Then a tiny hole appeared in them, and then the dry skin became brittle, and when it was broken, was almost entirely empty. At last, it was evident that an ichneumon must have done the mischief, as the hole in the skin was exactly like that which is made by some of the ichneumons in the pupæ of the Atalanta, though of course on a much smaller scale. Small birds are also very fond of the aphis, so that altogether its enemies can well keep pace with its fecundity. If the reader will refer to the illustration, he will see that an ant is introduced, and that it evidently has something to do with the aphides. I need hardly state that both ant and aphides are considerably magnified. I have already stated that the aphides are continually employed in sucking the sap of the plant on which they live. Now, this sap is not entirely expended in the nourishment. of the insect. Much of it is converted within the body of the aphis into a sweet, honeylike liquid, which slowly exudes out of two little tubes that project from the body near its extremity. An ordinary magnifying glass will show this sweet liquid gradually rising from the orifice of the tubes, and forming itself into little bead-like drops. When the drop is too large to be sustained any longer, it falls upon the leaves of the tree or plant, and is popularly known by the name of honey-dew. The leaves are shiny, sticky, and sweet, and both look and taste as if they had been dipped in sugar and water. Bees are very fond of honey-dew, and sometimes congregate in such multitudes upon an aphis-infested tree, that the hum of their wings may be heard at a considerable distance. Ants also prize the honey-dew, and, small as they are, secure a much larger share of it than do the bees and wasps. They not only lick it as it exudes from the aphides, but actually pat them in such a way that they seem obliged to yield more of the sweet secretion than they would have done had they been let alone. |