The Slate Quarries of North Wales. dresses might not be dirtied." We thought it very gentlemanly of him; and every boy may be a gentleman, as every girl may be a lady. Kind, respectful acts, consideration for others, are proofs of true gentility; and the courteous answer is pleasant to hear, come from whomsoever it may. We had soon taken our placesnot very comfortable though, certainly not so desirable as in a firstclass railway carriage, aye, or even a third. We had to stoop down (no seats, mind) to save our heads, as the long train of trucks, drawn by a single horse, began to enter the tunnel, for it is so low that you may not stand up. Soon all light was left behind, and we found great, heavy drops of water, which trickled through the rock above, falling upon us. This we had made no provision for, so, laughing at our want of knowledge, just did the next best thing-put up with it without complaining. From time to time, as we journeyed on into the interior of the mountain, we had a sudden gleam of daylight through the shafts, which are bored down to the tunnel from the surface of the hill above, then all was darkness again. However, as all journeys do come to an end, we found ourselves at the end of ours, and, getting out of our rough carriage, began to inspect the strange place at which we had arrived. Our guide had to go on with his work, and therefore obtained another for us, so that we might get any information which we might require, and be conducted from one part to another of the works. Thanking him for 275 his politeness, and making him a small present, we wished him good day, and began to attend to our new guide's descriptions. But first, I must try and tell you something about the sort of place we were in. We were standing on a bridge which reached across a cutting from one part of the rock to another. The distance below us to the bottom made us almost giddy to look down, and the bridge on which we stood had no railing to prevent a fall over, besides which it was not much wider than the trucks which ran on the tramway; and added to this, the bridge itself was suspended over the gulf below us by iron rods, which hooked into holes bored into the rock just over our heads; it made one tremble to think of one of the hooks breaking; but as we had come to see what there was to be seen, we looked across to the other side of the deep cutting I have described, and saw the workmen boring and pecking at the side. The work here must be very dangerous indeed; with but little light, as it can only come through from distant openings, the man works suspended by a cord from the side of the rock, the only thing that keeps him up being a hook hitched into a hole, in the same way as the bridge on which we stood. Presently a report was heard, and far below us large masses of rockslate tumbled down to the bottom. The workmen are warned when a train is to be fired, that they may get to places of safety. From this part we proceeded to another, where the cutting is in the open air, and here we saw long tramways running from the upper to the lower part of the works. There are two sets of rails, and as the loaded train of trucks is brought up, the empty ones descend, the whole being regulated by a steam-engine which turns a large drum-wheel; the chains are attached to the trucks, and, passing round the drum-wheel, a constant raising and lowering is carried on; there is besides a water-power ma. chine, which is in use for the same purpose. In these works most of the processes are carried on as at Penrhyn, but the great difference is that at Penrhyn it is like one vast amphitheatre, resembling the Colosseum at Rome, the work open to the sky, whereas, at Ffestiniog, most of the work is in the interior of the mountain-closed in by walls of slate all round. We were shown great masses which were said to be of no use, and probably were not for the usual work; but it is to be hoped they will be of service yet. As the process of slitting and cutting has already been described -and it is the same at both quarries -it need not be mentioned afresh ; and as our curiosity was now satisfied, we got into another train of trucks, and soon found ourselves again on the outside of the moun tain, and on our way back to our hotel. We had been much interested in what we had seen, and I hope we had a better understanding of the Psalmist's words, “O Lord, how great are Thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all.” How great must that Power be, which through so many ages could be forming those beds of slate! and what wondrous proofs of that Power in that the vast masses have been upheaved from the depths where they were formed-that as mountains they should be on the surface of the earth ready for man's use, so that he might have the means of earning his daily bread, and obtain the various articles of usefulness which are necessary for his protection or comfort. "These are Thy glorious works, Parent of Good! Almighty! thine this universal frame Thus wondrous fair-Thyself how wondrous then! Unspeakable; who sitt'st above the heavens ; To us invisible or dimly seen In these Thy lowest works; yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine."-MILTON. J. W. F. The Parables of Nature. BY UNCLE JAMES. CHAPTER VI.-PASSING THROUGH THE WATERS. HE animal kingdom phoses of insects have supplied material for higher truths for thousands of years; why else do we see a butterfly sculptured on the Egyptian tombs? Placed there as seed-corn was, as shown in our last chapter, it prefigured the sleep of what we call "death" and the awakening afterwards. "Do you not perceive that we are caterpillars, born to form the angelic butterfly?" asks an Italian poet. The Greek word for the human soul and butterfly is one and the same without a divine revelation the heathen studied the phenomena of nature, and anticipated the bringing of life and immortality to light; and we can never err in the study of God's works, for they are the very best illustrations of His written word. corolla of flowers, and a pair of trowels, and a couple of cutting blades with which it probably constructs its waxen cell; in its hinder legs are two pockets with "patent" fastenings, which contain a large amount of food, and on its wings are about nineteen hooklets, which fasten one wing to another to increase the surface of the sails when the ærial voyager is laden with sweets, and when additional power is requisite to buoy it in the air; yet once it was a grub, a torpid and apparently lifeless thing, which, when cut open, appeared to consist of nothing but pulp. Look at that merry gnat dancing in the sunbeam, its beautiful plume on each side of its head stands up in gladness as it looks out upon the world with its glorious eye-no, not "eye" but eyes, for it has several thousands, and yet the sphere which contains them appears but as one, and what mortal tongue can describe its wonders? When we speak Look at that curious builder of gold, and emerald, and rubies, the through the glass walls of a busy language is too weak to picture the hive; the chief business of its life phenomena of those beautiful eyes; is to collect material for food, that its wings are covered with the most the royal offspring of the colony elaborate feathers, and its body may be provided for when the cold dressed with multitudinous scales; season precludes its going in search it builds a boat of eggs, and launchof more. What admirable contriving it on the lily-leaf of the stream, ances exhibit themselves in the or the water-tank near our houses, structure of its body for the perform-leaves a family of two or three hunance of its work! Its tongue is curiously fashioned, forming a brush to sweep up the pollen from the dred to perpetuate its name; yet once it was a wriggling, wingless, legless larva; its life was employed in devouring the small fry of the waters at the bottom of which it lived. Yes, "water!" Now it cleaves the warm air with its feathery wings, but then it groped its dark way in the mud of the stream; but on that bright morning, when the time for its "change" had "come," it crawled instinctively to the top of the reed, and slowly emerging from its aqueous tomb, it rose a thing of beauty and wonder, basking itself in the sunbeam, and rejoicing in the newness of its resurrection life. Look, again, at that female warrior, clad, as it would appear, in burnished steel, whose long blue body glitters in the sun, busying itself amidst the rushes growing by the river's brink-what perfection in its two pairs of gossamer sails with which it skims the surface of the water or cleaves the air above: their weight and thickness is incalculably little, their texture exquisitely fine, their purpose admirably complete. Stretching from side to side are airtubes of wonderful construction, which, while they strengthen and sustain the filmy surface, become inflated with air, and buoy the creature aloft, enabling it to dart in every direction swifter than a bird can fly. Look at its wonderful head with two enormous spheres, filled with shining points, not half the size of that of the finest needle-there are twenty-four thousand of them, they are all exquisitely perfect eyes, constructed on the true principles of optics, having each, mind you, a separate cornea, with an optical tube in which is a layer of black pigment, to prevent confusion of image as pictures of the outer world are conveyed, through the optic nerve at which these myriads of eyes meet, to the creature's brain. Look, again, at its work; it is, we were going to say, “anxiously”—and what other word will do?—employed elaborating a secure habitation for a large family whom it is never to see; knowing they will be the objects of destruction by the terrible ichneumon fly, and it desires, therefore, to leave them so well provided for that the enemy shall fail in their discovery. A pair of elaborate saws at the end of its long body, in two perfect sheaths, in which they are safely carried when not in use, and which are constantly cleansed by a set of brushes whose hairy tufts are close at hand, cut first a vertical slit, and then a horizontal one, in the leaf of the rush, and there the brood are invisibly and securely housed, and when the warm sun hatches the tiny eggs the quaint little grubs which come from them are close at home, for, crawling downward, they find the element which death to their mother-is life to themselves. Yes, these are some of the wonderful things in the story of the life of a dragon-fly; and yet once it was a subtle larva whose chief protection was a strong, horny mask, which it put out or drew in according to the company it kept; water was its element then, air now. The whole physical character of its body has gone through a mighty process, and when its "change" came, and it passed through the river with a struggle for life, it broke through its cell and danced in the sunbeam in full enjoyment of resurrection glory. Who that has kept silkworms can have forgotten the practical les sons of life, death, and resurrection taught in the process through which the larva, pupa, and image have to pass? The larva, or, as the name implies “mask,” or caterpillar, hides the future life from view; "pupa" signifies the “mummy”-like appearance which that intermediate state of being represents; and the "image" is the "perfect image" of the insect, and we call it a "moth." But to talk of a worm weaving its own silken shroud out of its own stomach; of the delicate skin of its long insected body becoming the hard outer case of its mummy coffin; of the curious process which is going on as, without food throughout the dark winter months, it lies in a torpid state; of the mighty change when, one day we look upon the grub and find it a broken shell, and observe up in the corner of the box in which we had enclosed it, carefully preserved in bran, an exquisitely formed moth with downy breast and figured wings, upon which have been counted 400,000 feather-like scales, branched antennæ, and 6,200 eyes too glorious to describe-to talk of this! Ah, no! the age of miracles has not passed away; every separate insect is a living parable, a modern miracle; and just the same relation which the one stage of being bore to the other in the "worm," so do they in the man; our life is three-fold, there is a trinity in everything life, death, and immortality make up the triangle of man's being, even as body, soul, and spirit make up the phenomena of his life. But only think of that brief moment when the creature is passing from its crysalis life to that of the perfect moth! Could it only speak to us and : audibly, as well as it does parabolically, how would it express its surprise as the glories of a new world burst upon its new senses, and when it looked upon the broken shell in which for so long * it had been confined, what expressions of amazement would be heard as it contemplated the mightiness of the metamorphosis ! Yes, it is parabolic teaching; it is Nature proclaiming to every heart not hardened by sin, and to every ear upon whose vestibule the grand old word "Ephphatha" is inscribed, that "there is no death;" and, has it not been given in the highest form of animal being-the great human family itself, to lead us a step higher, so that we have something more than poetic illustration to teach us the mighty truth we learned figuratively from an insect? Let me tell you one amongst many others. In a sad, sick room, a few months since, a little girl lay dying: continued fever terminated in wild delirium, and as the last scene was introducing the messenger who had come to strike the blow, parental eyes, already red with weeping, could meet that scene no longer, but, on passing to another room to "weep there," in her old familiar tone, and in her right mind, the dying child exclaimed, "Mother!" and one word more told all that was passing, for it was "Heaven!" and that spirit passed through the river of death to the shore of a better land. Reader, if I might dedicate these few humble chapters about life, death, and resurrection to any human being, it would not be to the * Insects live in the pupa or mummy form from a few weeks to several years. |