as a clean dried specimen; for this is an
_agalena_ spider, which dispenses with the winding-sheet of the field
species--_epeira_ and _argiope_. Last week a big bumble-bee-like fly
paid me a visit and suddenly disappeared. To-day I find him dried and
ready for the insect-pin and the cabinet on the window-sill beneath the
web, which affords at all times its liberal entomological
assortment--Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera, and Lepidoptera. Many are
the rare specimens which I have picked from these charnel remnants of my
spider net.

Ah, hark! The talking "robber-fly" (_Asilus_), with his nasal, twangy
buzz! "_Waiow!_ Wha-a-ar are ye?" he seems to say, and with a suggestive
onslaught against the window-pane, which betokens his satisfied quest,
is out again at the window with a bluebottle-fly in the clutch of his
powerful legs, or perhaps impaled on his horny beak.

Solitude! Not here. Amid such continual distraction and entertainment
concentration on the immediate task in hand is not always of easy
accomplishment.

[Illustration]

Last week, after a somewhat distracted morning with some queer beguiling
little harlequins on the bittersweet-vine about my porch, of which I
have previously written, I had finally settled down to my work, and was
engaged in putting the finishing touches upon a long-delayed drawing,
when a new visitor claimed my attention--a small hornet, which alights
upon the window-sill within half a yard from my face. To be sure, she
was no stranger here at my studio--even now there are two of her yonder
beneath the spider-nest--and was, moreover, an old friend, whose ways
were perfectly familiar to me; but this time the insect engaged my
particular attention because it was not alone, being accompanied by a
green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body
as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my
little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have
made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and
wondered where you would take up your abode."

The insect now reaches the edge of the sill, and, taking a fresh grip on
her burden, starts off in a bee-line across my drawing-board and towards
the open door, and disappears. Wondering what her whimsical destination
might be, my eye involuntarily began to wander about the room in quest
of nail-holes or other available similar crannies, but without reward,
and I had fa