Carbelide Nelicanya Sectory 23
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I must, however, return to Frost's "Lives of Eminent Christians." I will leave none of the ambiguity about my words in which Moore and Wordsworth seem to have delighted. I am very sorry the book is gone, and know not where to turn for its successor. Till I have found a substitute I can write no more, and I do not know how to find even a tolerable one. I should try a volume of Migne's "Complete Course of Patrology," but I do not like books in more than one volume, for the volumes vary in thickness, and one never can remember which one took; the four volumes, however, of Bede in Giles's "Anglican Fathers" are not open to this objection, and I have reserved them for favourable consideration. Mather's "Magnalia" might do, but the binding does not please me; Cureton's "Corpus Ignatianum" might also do if it were not too thin. I do not like taking Norton's "Genuineness of the Gospels," as it is just possible some one may be wanting to know whether the Gospels are genuine or not, and be unable to find out because I have got Mr. Norton's book. Baxter's "Church History of England," Lingard's "Anglo-Saxon Church," and Cardwell's "Documentary Annals," though none of them as good as Frost, are works of considerable merit; but on the whole I think Arvine's "Cyclopedia of Moral and Religious Anecdote" is perhaps the one book in the room which comes within measurable distance of Frost. I should probably try this book first, but it has a fatal objection in its too seductive title. "I am not curious," as Miss Lottie Venne says in one of her parts, "but I like to know," and I might be tempted to pervert the book from its natural uses and open it, so as to find out what kind of a thing a moral and religious anecdote is. I know, of course, that there are a great many anecdotes in the Bible, but no one thinks of calling them either moral or religious, though some of them certainly seem as if they might fairly find a place in Mr. Arvine's work. There are some things, however, which it is better not to know, and take it all round I do not think I should be wise in putting myself in the way of temptation, and adopting Arvine as the successor to my beloved and lamented Frost.

A comparatively small number of insects pass the winter in the larval or active stage of the young. Of these, perhaps the best known is the brown "woolly worm" or "hedgehog caterpillar," as it is familiarly called. It is thickly covered with stiff black hairs on each end, and with reddish hairs on the middle of the body. These hairs appear to be evenly and closely shorn, so as to give the animal a velvety look; and as they have a certain degree of elasticity, and the caterpillar curls up at the slightest touch, it generally manages to slip away when taken into the hand. Beneath loose bark, boards, rails, and stones, this caterpillar may be found in mid-winter, coiled up and apparently lifeless. On the first bright, sunny days of spring it may be seen crawling rapidly over the ground, seeking the earnest vegetation which will furnish it a literal "breakfast." In April or May the chrysalis, surrounded by a loose cocoon formed of the hairs of the body interwoven with coarse silk, may be found in situations similar to those in which the larva passed the winter. From this, the perfect insect, the Isabella tiger moth, _Pyrrharctia isabella_ Smith, emerges about the last of June. It is a medium sized moth, dull orange in color, with three rows of small black spots on the body, and some scattered spots of the same color on the wings.

To be an officer in the French Academy is an honor surpassed in France by that of the Legion of Honor only. Within a twelvemonth two hundred and seventy-five women have been thus distinguished, twenty-eight of them being painters and designers. From this famous Academy down, through the International Expositions, the Salons, and the numberless exhibitions in various countries, a large proportion of medals and other honors are conferred on women, who, having now been accorded all privileges necessary for the pursuit of art and for its recompense, will surely prove that they richly merit every good that can be shared with them.

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