Having shut itself up in its cocoon, the larva is transformed into a chrysalis. Nothing now remains of the caterpillar but its head, which rests upon the top of the chrysalis. The latter is about an inch long, and is considerably thicker than the larva. It has the usual form of lepidopterous pupa, being blunt at one end, and tapering to the other. Its color is brown, which is darker along the back. Through the pupa-case can be seen the tracings, as it were, of the wings and other component parts of the perfect insect.

The larva does not always succeed in reaching the state of a chrysalis. Indeed, our insect may be arrested at any stage in its career of development, and perish, from a great variety of causes. Soon after entering its cocoon, it may fall a prey to the larvæ of several species of ichneumon flies, which feed upon the interior of its body, and entirely prevent its transformation into a pupa. In one instance which came under my examination, there were seven large white ichneumonidan larvæ within the cocoon, which were apparently ready to enter the chrysalis state. Nothing remained of the original caterpillar, the rightful occupant of the cocoon, except the skin, which was still green, and conspicuously displaying its cornua. In another case there were nine ichneumon flies in the pupa state. Many cocoons which I have opened have been occupied by great numbers of very small larvæ or pupæ. Out of fortyfour cocoons which I examined ten were infested with the progeny of ichneumon flies. In all these cases, I presume that the flies deposit their eggs in the body of the caterpillar before the latter enters its

cocoon.

The larva of the spicewood moth is liable to perish before finishing its cocoon. In an instance which occurred to me, the cocoon consisted of only a few loose threads, and within it was a dead caterpillar, shriveled and faded. The cornua were still visible. It had died before completing its tenement. The chrysalis might also die. Out of forty-four cocoons twenty contained putrid chrysalides. We thus perceive how few comparatively of the larvæ of the spicewood moth ever attain perfection.

If the chrysalis be pricked with a pin at an early period, there will flow from the puncture a clear amber-colored liquid. At a period considerably later the con

tained liquid will be found to be of the color and consistence of cream. This soft liquid condition of the internal structure of the insect has been particularly noticed by Herold and Murray, as an index of important morphological changes, carrying the animal forward to its perfect state. The gentleman last mentioned finely compares the process of softening to that pursued in a paper manufactory, in which the rags are first reduced to a pulp, before they can be made into paper.

In the month of May the perfect moth leaves its cocoon. The head emerges ; this is followed by the thorax and wings, and lastly by the abdomen. The moth is a quite pretty object, in its sober dress of deep brown and purple. The arrangement of the colors is such as to give it a mottled appearance. It measures more than three inches between the tips of its extended fore-wings. The female is somewhat larger than the male. The animal lives but a short time, the most important event in the life of the female being the laying of its eggs. It appears to be destitute of feeding organs, and therefore can

not eat.

We will now revert to the cocoon, as it presents several points of interest, which have not as yet been noticed. How deceptive is its appearance! Deception not only to the birds, who, if they knew anything of its contents, would soon be pecking away at it in order to make a luscious meal of the chrysalis; but deceptive also to the generality of men and women who, as they pass along, and occasionally catch a glimpse of the cocoon, in its dried and withered covering, dangling from the extremity of a leafless branch, little dream of what it is, and of what it contains. But thus it is with almost all of nature's marvels. Not only their features of interest, but even their very existence, are unknown save by the ardent and inquisitive votary of science.

There is a most important use of the cocoon, which is eminently deserving of attention. It is the agent which effects the expansion of the wings of the perfect moth. At its upper extremity its texture is loose, and composed of threads converging somewhat like the wires to the opening of a rat-trap. The aperture thus formed yields to pressure from within, and permits the egress of the moth, while it prevents the entrance even of the smallest

insect. As the moth passes out of the cocoon, the rim of the opening presses upon the abdomen, and forces the fluids into the nervures of the wings, causing their full expansion. This function of the cocoon was first pointed out by Meinecken. I have not the least doubt of the agency of the cocoon in this matter, and will mention a fact which corroborates the view which has been stated. About two years since, I took four large chrysalides from their cocoons, and when the perfect moths emerged from their pupa-cases, their wings were entirely unexpanded, and folded up precisely as they are during the chrysalis state.

The silk spun by the spicewood moth, from the manner of its attachment, could not be made available for the purposes of man. An allied species, the Bombyx Cynthia, found in India, yields a kind of silk, which the humbler inhabitants of that region make into coarse garments. An interesting statement upon the subject was presented to the French Academy of Sciences, a few years since, by M. Milne Edwards.

SKETCHES OF COLONIAL HISTORY.

OUR

SECOND PAPER.

UR brief sketch of the celebrated Father Le Moine, in the last number of THE NATIONAL, ended with his return from his apparently successful visit to the Onondagas. In the following year, 1655, two others, Father Joseph Chaumont and Father Claude Dablon, were sent by the Society of Jesuits at Quebec, as missionaries to that post. They met with a flattering reception, as they conceived, and one of them returned to Quebec to obtain additional help. Having succeeded in his object, he hastened back to the new field of his labors, accompanied by "three fathers and two brothers of the society, and a good number of Frenchmen," who all arrived at the place of their destination on the 11th day of July, 1655. Thus was a Catholic mission, under the auspices of the Society of Jesuits at Quebec, inaugurated on soil claimed by the Protestant government of Great Britain, and among a people who were claimed by that government as its rightful subjects.

For a time the missionaries were encouraged with high hopes of permanent

success, and they reported that "the harvest appeared plentiful in all the villages of the upper Irondequois." The common people, they said, listened to the words of the Gospel with simplicity. And if the chiefs had any other than a friendly regard for them and their labors, they cloaked it with "a well-disguised dissimulation." On the reception of this report the record says: "Father Paul Ragueneau, Father Francois Du Peron, some Frenchmen, and several Hurons departed from Montreal on the 26th of July, 1657, to aid their brethren and compatriots."

Scarcely had they settled down in their work when a sudden and unlooked-for catastrophe befel them, which shocked their sensibilities and overwhelmed them with terror and dismay. The savages, instigated by a sudden impulse of their inveterate hatred against the French and their allies, or, more probably, by a suspicion that this accumulation of missionaries and Frenchmen among them meant something more than a pious care for the spiritual welfare of their souls, without the slightest intimation of their design, fell upon and massacred the Hurons who accompanied the missionaries, with many of their captives whom they had before taken of the same tribe.

After this demonstration the missionary fathers, and all the French and Indians who were of their party, felt no security for their lives, only in consideration of the fact that there were at that time a number of Iroquois Indians detained among the French near Quebec, on whom their friends in Canada would wreak their vengeance, should the savages massacre them as they had the Hurons. But even this slight ground of security was dissipated by intelligence they received from one who was in the secret of the chiefs, that they designed to subject them to the fate of the Hurons, whose barbarous massacre they had so recently witnessed, which they delayed only from prudential considerations. Their informant was sick, received baptism, and soon after died. But his information was confirmed by the spirit and conduct of the Indians.

In this peculiar condition the missionaries set themselves at work to devise some means of escape. them on every side.

Difficulties beset They communi

cated intelligence of the massacre to their friends to Quebec. The letters sent them in return by certain Mohawks who were in the province at the time were destroyed by the treacherous savages to whom they were intrusted. A messenger of the Onondaga nation, who was sent by a government officer with a communication to them, failed to deliver it, but rendered their condition more perilous and perplexing by telling the chiefs that the French were leagued principally with the Algonquins to make war upon them. This excited their subtle enemies to greater fury, and increased the alarm of the missionaries

and their associates. The Onondagas, however, desirous to act in concert with the Mohawks, who were incensed at the detention of some of their people by the French, but feared for their safety if an open rupture occurred between themselves and that nation, delayed their meditated destruction of the mission family, in the hope that the influence of Father Le Moine might be employed soon to effect a release of the Mohawk prisoners. This gave them time to consider and devise other means of escape. In despair of receiving either intelligence or relief from Quebec, Three Rivers, or Montreal, they were thrown upon their own sagacity and energy to extricate themselves from their perilous situation. This they did by adopting the bold resolve to leave in a body, and make the best of their way to their friends in the province, or perish in the attempt. The latter, however, seemed the more probable alternative. How could they hope to escape without being discovered by the savages, who would seize the first indication of their intention to do so as a signal to execute their bloody design upon them?

Preparation must be made in the presence of the savages for conveying more than fifty men with their effects and provisions across the Onondaga Lake down the river to Lake Ontario, and over that lake to the St. Lawrence River. Their effects must be transported from Onondaga Hill to their place of embarkation, probably near to where the salt-works at the southwest end of the lake now stand, a distance of several miles. And it was at a season of the year when they had reason to apprehend obstructions from ice in the lakes and rivers, and if retarded in their flight before reaching the French

settlements they were exposed to be fallen upon by the Indians at any moment and totally destroyed. In his report to his superior Father Ragueneau says:

"Notwithstanding these obstacles, which appeared insurmountable to them [the Indians] as well as us, God, who holds in his hands all the moments of our lives, so happily inspired us with all that was necessary to be done that, having departed on the 20th of March from our house of St. Marie, near Onontagui, at eleven o'clock at night; his Divine providence

guiding us, as if by a continued miracle, in the midst of all imaginable dangers, we arrived at Quebec on the 23d of the month of April, having passed Montreal and Three Rivers before any canoe could be launched, the river not having been open for navigation until the very day we made our appearance."

Their voyage was one of toil, suffering, and peril. The first part of it was spent in the darkness and cold of a March night on the Onondaga Lake. Passing down the river, they were obliged often to be in the water mingled with ice up to their armpits, to prope their batteau and canoes; to lodge at night upon the snow; and to carry their baggage around the rapids in the river, in continued fear of assassination by the Indians, who, if they discovered their departure in time, could intercept them at any point and cut them off at a blow.

The stratagem by which they contrived to escape, Father Ragueneau ascribed to the interposition of God, and their deliverance to a continual miracle. How much of faith and piety they exercised to secure such a special interposition of Heaven in their behalf may be inferred from the device they adopted, and the manner of carrying it into effect. These are stated by Father Ragueneau as follows:

"The difficulty was to embark unperceived The by the Iroquois who constantly beset us. batteau, canoe, and all the equipage could not be conveyed without noise, and yet without secrecy there was nothing to be expected save a general massacre of us all the moment it would be discovered that we entertained the

least thought of withdrawing.

"On that account we invited all the savages in our neighborhood to a solemn feast, at which we employed all our industry, and spared neither noise of drums nor instruments of music to deceive them by a harmless device. part with so much address and success that all He who presided at this ceremony played his were desirous to contribute to the public joy. Every one vied in uttering the most piercing cries, now of war, anon of rejoicing. The sav ages, through complaisance, sung and danced after the French fashion, and the French in the Indian style. To encourage them the

more in this fine play, presents were distributed among those who acted best their parts and who made the greatest noise, to drown that caused by about forty of our people outside, who were engaged in removing all our equipage. The embarkation being complete, the feast was concluded at a fixed time; the guests retired, and sleep having soon overwhelmed them, we withdrew from our house by a back door, and embarked with very little noise without bidding adieu to the savages, who were acting cunning parts, and were thinking to amuse us to the hour of our massacre with fair appearances and evidences of good will."

Fortunately or unfortunately for these adventurous missionaries, this expedient of guile and dissimulation, which savors more of cunning artifice than divine inspiration, succeeded in averting from them the crown of martyrdom, which seemed suspended over their heads. The savages, exhausted by their riotous carousing and reveling at the solemn feast to which they were lured by the cunning device of the missionaries, who had come among them to teach them the way of salvation, were soon overcome by sleep, from which they did not recover until late on the following day. As they had not discovered the removal of the canoe and batteau of the missionaries, nor any sign of an intention on their part to effect their escape, which, indeed, they deemed impossible, they were greatly surprised to find their house closed, and no one of them on the premises. It was thought for a time that they were within attending prayers. But as they did not make their appearance after a sufficient time had elapsed to conclude their devotions, they knocked at the door, and received no response but the barking of the dogs within, which the Frenchmen had left for the purpose of deceiving them. Judging, from the presence of the dogs and other animals which were left on the premises, that their masters were not far off, the day was suffered to pass without any particular search being made for them. But, after much perplexity, and many superstitious conjectures respecting their mysterious disappearance, they were forced to a reluctant admission of the fact that they had made their escape, perhaps to their friends in Canada, perhaps to some secluded place in the wilderness, whence they might pounce suddenly on their village when they should deem it to their advantage to do so. Such was the fate of one of the first missions of the Jesuits among the Iroquois Indians

in the province of New York, which just two hundred years ago at this present writing was in its highest tide of prosperity, and strengthened by a force which it was thought would render it permamanent and successful; but within three months thereafter was dashed in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Father Ragueneau, who seems to have felt the responsibility of chief in this early missionary enterprise among the savages of Western New York, speaks of its success as a religious work in the language of gratulation and triumph. In a communication to "the Rev. Father Jaques Renault, Provincial of the Society of Jesus in the Province of France," he says:

"MY REV. FATHER,- The present is to inform your reverence of our return from the Iroquois mission, loaded with some spoils resthan five hundred children and a number of adults, the most of whom died after baptism. We have re-established faith and piety in the hearts of a poor captive Church, the first foundation of which we had laid in the Huron country. We have proclaimed the Gospel unto all the Iroquois nations, so that they are henceforth without excuse, and God will be fully justified against them at the great day of judgment."

cued from hell. We bear in our hands more

The numerical force of this mission was such as would seem to promise efficient operations. Seven Jesuit fathers, with other subordinate members of the society, and a number of Frenchmen and baptized Indians professing the Catholic faith, and resolute in the propagation of it, all collected within one tribe, and exerting their combined influence upon the untutored pagans in the wilderness, might have been expected to produce an impression which would result in the conversion of many from their sins and degrading follies, had all been imbued with the spirit of the apostles and primitive Christians. But compared with the missionary labors of the primitive ministers of Christ, or even of Eliot, and Brainerd, and Finley, and Case, and others through whose instrumentality whole tribes of American savages have been brought to abandon their wicked practices, and lead peaceable and quiet lives in all godliness and honesty, this mission of the Jesuit fathers presents a contrast which cannot fail to impress all rational minds with the fact that they were missionaries of an essentially different type from those honored servants of God, the epistles of whose ministry are known and read of all men.

THE DYAKS.

BY A PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE OF THEIRS.

them residing in one house under the headship of one tuah, or elder, whose influence among them depends very much on his personal qualifications. The house in which each community lives is an edifice of from fifty to a hundred yards in length, and raised on posts eight or ten feet high. Its frame-work is constructed of posts lashed together with split ratans; while the roof and partitions are composed of attaps, a kind of thatch, so simple and useful as to merit a distinct description. It is made of the leaves of the Nipu, a palm which grows in the mud on the banks of the rivers, and differs from most other palms in having no trunk, being merely a collection of fronds proceeding from one root. Each frond consists of a stem or mid-rib, about twenty or thirty feet in length, on each side of which grow a series of leaves, two or three feet long, and two or three inches broad. To form attaps, the Dyaks cut off these leaves, and wind them over a stick a yard long, making them overlap each other, so as to become impervious to rain. They then sew or interlace them all firmly with split ratans; thus forming a sort of leaf-tile, at once strong and light, and well adapted for excluding both sun and rain. The house is divided longitudinally in the middle by a partition, on one side of which is a series of rooms, and on the other a kind of gallery or hall, upon which the rooms open. In these rooms, each of which is inhabited by a distinct family, the married couples and children sleep; the young unmarried women sleep in an apartment over the room of their parents, and the young men in the gallery outside. In this gallery likewise, which serves as a common hall, their principal occupations are carried on; and here the planks of their war-boats, their large mats, and all their more bulky articles, are kept; and the grim trophies of their wars, the scorched and blackened heads of their enemies, are suspended in bundles. The floor is a kind of sparwork, composed of split palm-trunks, and raised ten or twelve feet from the ground, access being given to it by a ladder, or more frequently by a log of wood cut into

the sun.

Thus, a Dyak house is rather a singular structure; and when imbosomed, as it often is, among cocoa-nut, plantain, and other fruit-trees, forms a quietly pleasing and picturesque object, suggestive of much social happiness enjoyed in a simple state of society. It awakens, moreover, ideas of a higher kind, for it is a sign of the presence of the all-subduing man on the confines of the jungle that is yet to fall before his ax.

The materials of which these edifices are constructed are so fragile, that they require to be rebuilt every five or six years, and when this necessity occurs, the Dyaks, instead of erecting the new house in the immediate vicinity of the old one, generally remove to a considerable distance.

From the above description, it will be seen that a Dyak house may with more propriety be called a village, as it is the residence of a score or two of families who live in a series of rooms under one roof, and all of whom look up to one tuah, or elder, as their head. These houses are sometimes in groups of two or three, but more frequently they stand alone; and thus it happens that if the tribe is populous, it may be scattered over a very great extent of country.

Besides the tuahs, there is another and superior class of chiefs, called orang kaya, (rich men,) grave, steady old men of good family, who, when young, have distinguished themselves by their courage; and who, in their riper years, are regarded as discreet judges in weighty matters of the law. Even the power of an orang kaya, however, is extremely limited. He has no actual authority over his followers, so as to compel them to do anything against their will; his superiority is shown only in leading them to battle, and acting as a judge in conjunction with other chiefs. In other respects, the chiefs have scarcely any distinction. They work at their farms and their boats as hard as their own slaves; they wear the same dress, and live in the same manner as the rest of the community; their only token of chieftainship being the respect which is voluntarily accorded to