and forming a triangle; the lowest row containing seven lenses, the next six, and so on, gradually losing one, till the last terminates in unity.

Compound eyes are the most common in hexapod insects, when arrived at their perfect state; in their larva state their eyes are usually simple. When seen under a microscope, they appear to consist of an infinite number of convex hexagonal pieces. If the eye of any fly be examined with a good glass, it will be found traversed by

being dark, and the circumference paler. In the celebrated tarantula, the pupil is transparent, and red as a ruby; and the iris more opaque, paler, and nearly the colour of amber. When there are more than two, they vary in magnitude. In the enormous bird-spider, (mygale avicularia,) the four external eyes are larger than the four internal; but in other cases, the two or four internal are the largest. They vary also in shape; not only as to the eyes of different insects, but as to the eyes of the same insect. In one spider, (mygale cal-numberless parallel lines, with others equalpeiana,) for instance, the two smallest are round, and the rest oval; and in the trapdoor or mason spider, (mygale cementaria,) the four small internal ones are round, and the large external ones oval; while those that are circumscribed posteriorly with an impressed semicircle, are shaped like the moon when gibbous.

The situation and arrangement of simple eyes are also various. In many they are imbedded, as usual, in the head; but in a little scarlet mite, they stand on a small foot-stalk and why? Because otherwise the hairiness of this creature might have impeded its sight. In the phalangidæ, the frontal eyes of the scorpion cease, and only a pair of dorsal ones are inserted vertically in the sides of a horn or tubercle, often itself standing upon an elevation, which emerges from the back of the animal. And here is another admirable provision; for if the eyes of these insects were not in a vertical and elevated position, their sight would be very limited; but by means of this structure, they get a considerable range of surrounding objects, as well as of those above them. Sometimes the eyes are placed nearly in the segment of a circle; sometimes in two straight lines; at others in three lines, and at others in four. Again, in some instances they form a cross, or two triangles; in others, two squares; in others, a smaller square included in a large one; in others, a posterior square, and two anterior triangles; sometimes a square and two lines. Though generally separate from each other, in several cases two of the eyes touch; and, in one instance, three coalesce into a triangle. But it would be endless to mention all the variations, as to arrangement, in the eyes of spiders.

Conglomerate eyes, instead of being dispersed, are collected into a body, so as, at first sight, to exhibit the appearance of a compound eye; they are, however, not hexagonal, and are generally convex. In the common millepede (iulus terrestris) there re twenty-eight eyes, placed in seven rows,

ly numerous cutting them at right angles, so as to form, apparently, myriads of little squares, with each a lens set in it. The same structure, though not so easily seen, obtains in the eyes of other insects. When the eye is separated and made clean, the hexagons are as clear as crystal. Reaumur fitted one eye to a lens, and could see through it well, but objects were greatly multiplied. The number of lenses in an eye varies in different insects. Hooke computed those in the eye of a horse-fly to amount to nearly 7000; Leeuwenhoeck found more than 12,000 in that of a dragon-fly; and 17,325 have been counted in that of a butterfly. But, of all insects, they seem to be the most numerous in the case of some beetles. The pictures of objects, therefore, that are delineated on these lenses, must be millions of times less than those found on the human eye. Many insects still smaller have eyes, doubtless contrived to see objects thousands of times less than themselves; for such the small particles on which they feed must certainly be.

"A

When a facetted eye, such as that of a butterfly, is examined a little closely, it will be found to have the appearance of a multiplying glass, the sides, or facettes, resembling a brilliant cut diamond. Puget adapted the eye of a flea (pulex irritans) in such a position, as to see objects through it; and nothing could exceed the singularity of the exhibition. soldier, who was seen through it, appeared like an army of pigmies; for while it multiplied, it also diminished the object; the arch of a bridge exhibited a spectacle more magnificent than human skill could perform; and the flame of a candle seemed the illumination of thousands of lamps." Leeuwenhoeck, in the same manner, looked through the eye of a dragon-fly, (libellula,) and viewed the steeple of a church, which was 299 feet high, and 750 feet from the place where he stood. He could plainly see the steeple,

though not apparently larger than the point of a fine needle. He also viewed a house in the same manner, and could discern the front, distinguish the doors and windows, and perceive whether they were open or shut.

and, in case any of these annoyances should slip in, to assist the bees to throw it off, or brush it away the more easily, by a friction which bees perform with their feathered legs. Similar hairs are found in the facetted eyes of many other insects.

Behind the outer coat (cornea) of the bee's eye, there is an opaque substance like what is called the paint (uvea) in the eyes of quadrupeds and man. In bees this is of a deep purple colour; in other insects it is green; in some, blue; in some, black; and, in others, it has a very beautiful mixture of various colours.

SUNSET IN INDIA.

BISHOP HEBER, in his journal, says:— This evening we had a most beautiful sunset, the most remarkable recollected by any of the officers or passengers, and,

Swammerdam has given us so beautiful an account of the eye of the hive-bee, (apis mellifica,) that our pages will be enriched by abstracting it. The outer coat (cornea) of a bee's eye is stiff, hard, flexible, and transparent, similar to a very thin plate of horn. It is not smooth, as in men and other animals, but has various and manifold divisions, which resemble globules or little spheres; and hence Dr. Hooke and others supposed that the insect's eye was a congeries of innumerable little eyes, each agreeing in structure with the eyes of the larger animals; but Swammerdam was unable to verify this. The divisions in the eye of the bee, indeed, are by no means globular, but think, the most magnificent spectacle I rather six-sided, exactly like the closed ever saw. Besides the usual beautiful cells of the comb, rising into a convex and tints of crimson, flame-colour, &c., all globular surface, as if it were vaulted. which the clouds displayed, and which The woven cells of a hornet's nest still were strongly contrasted with the deep more accurately resemble the facettes of a blue of the sea, and the lighter but bee's eye, having six sides, and being very equally beautiful blue of the sky, there beautifully surmounted by an arched web. were in the immediate neighbourhood of The eye of the bee, and most other perfect the sinking sun, and for some time after his insects, considered in this light, is really disk had disappeared, large tracts of a pale like a little net. Some curious persons, to translucent green, such as I had never whom Swammerdam showed these six-seen before, except in a prism, and sursided facettes, were of opinion that, in the structures of the eyes, reasons might be found why bees make their comb-cells sixsided, because they exercise the sense of vision with six-sided eyes. 66 Behold," he exclaims, "how far we are led away by fictions, when, being ignorant of the foundations of things, we follow our vain fancy as a guide; for it would be as natural to say, we should build only round houses, because the pupil of our eyes is of that figure!"

passing every effect of paint, or glass, or gem. Every body on board was touched and awed by the glory of the scene; and many observed that such a spectacle alone was worth the whole voyage from England. One circumstance in the scene struck me as different from all which I had been led to expect in a tropical sunset; I mean that its progress from light to darkness was much more gradual than most travellers and philosophers have stated. The dip of the sun did not The eyes of the bee, Swammerdam fur- seem more rapid, nor did the duration of ther describes as very thickly covered with the tints on the horizon appear materially hair, serving, as he supposes, instead of less than on similar occasions in Engeye-brows, or eye-lashes. In structure land. Neither did I perceive any strikthese hairs resemble bristles, being round, ing difference in the continuance of the and tapering from the root to a fine point. twilight. I pointed out the fact to Major They are very firmly fixed, piercing through Sackville, who replied, he had been conthe outer coat of the eye, as hairs do vinced that the supposed rapidity of sunthrough the human skin. Their number is rise and sunset in India had been exagvery considerable, and though less than thegerated; that he had always found a number of the facettes, they appear so closely set as to constitute a thick forest of bristles, like so many fir-trees planted upon the eye. They are probably fixed to guard the eye against any thing falling on or striking against it, to keep off the dust;

good hour between dawn and sunrise, and little less between sunset and total darkness.-Sept. 19th. I wakened before dawn this morning, and had therefore an opportunity of verifying, to a certain extent, Major Sackville's observations

on a tropical sunrise. I had no watch, | but to my perceptions his account was

accurate.

RELIGION EVERY MAN'S FIRST

CONCERN.

IT is a fact which shocks us, and which shows the degraded state of man, that not a few superior minds look down upon religion as a subject beneath their investigation. Though allied with all knowledge, and especially with that of human nature and human duty, it is by too many wrongly regarded as a separate and an inferior study, particularly fitted to the gloom of a convent, and the seclusion of a minster. Reli

old tablet against the wall, from which time had peeled away the inscription in strips, just as a boy would peel an orange; and the old tumble-down head-stone, with a death's-head and cross-bones at the top, and part of a verse yet readable at the bottom;-all these had excited my interest; and even the green hillock, in the shady corner, that had no tombstone, and nothing but weeds around it, was visited and some of the quaint old sayings, and by me with a strange kind of pleasure; striking texts of Scripture that I used to read there, have never been effaced from my memory to this day.

nished.

As I grew older, this interest in a church-yard rather increased than dimitablet erected against the east end of the I have stood gazing on the church, to the memory of my grandfather, till my tears have blinded me. He and his children's children before his feared God, and charged his children death, to meet him at the throne of Christ in a better world. That charge has sunk deep into the heart and soul of Old Humphrey.

gion is still confounded, in many gifted minds, with the jargon of monks and the subtleties and strifes of theologians. It is thought a mystery, which, far from coalescing, wars with our other knowledge. It is sel dom ranked with the sciences which expand and adorn the mind. It is regarded as a method of escaping future ruin, not as a vivifying truth, through which the intellect and heart are alike to be enlarged. Its bearing on the great objects of thought and the great interests of life is hardly suspected inclination to visit a church-yard is And now that I am an old man, my This degradation of religion into a technical study, this disjunction of it from morals stronger than ever. O, there is a keepfrom philosophy, from the various objects ing, a sort of harmony between the long of liberal research, has done it infinite in-grass, the mouldering stone, the decayed jury, has checked its monument, and an old man! They tell progress, has perpetuated errors which gathered round it in strange tales of the nothingness of the times of barbarism and ignorance, has made world; tales that we know to be true when we think of them, and that we feel to be it a mark for the sophistry and ridicule of the licentious, and has infused a lurking scepticism into many powerful understand ings. Nor has religion suffered alone. The whole mind is darkened by the obscuration of the central light. Its reasonings and judgments become unstable through want of this foundation to rest upon. Religion is to the whole sphere of truth, what God is to the universe; and in dethroning it, or confining it to a narrow range, we commit very much such an injury on the soul, as the universe would suffer, were the Infinite Being to abandon it, or to contract his energy to a small province of his creation.

OLD HUMPHREY ON EPITAPHS.

WHEN I was only a child, I was fond of a church-yard. The broad flat stone on which I sat; the monument with the coat of arms on it, surrounded with iron palisades, inside of which the nettles grew abundantly; the mouldering

true when we sit reflecting in a churchyard.

In our morning and evening prayers, in reading the word of God, in our daily meditations, we are aware that "life is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away;" but in a church-yard, with the memorials of mortality around us, the knowledge comes more home to our hearts; we are made sensible not only that we must all die, but also that "the time is short;" that "as the Lord liveth, and as our souls live, there is but a step between us and death."

I have sat on a tombstone in the grey of the morning, ere yet the rising sun had gilded the weathercock on the spire : I have mused on the shadowy side of the chancel in mid-day: I have peeped at the marble knights on the old monuments in the church, through the windows, when the glittering glass seemed on fire with the beams of the setting sun; and I have silently pacel along the nar