Alexandria Gazette

Account of a Carnation viewed through a Microscope.—From an elegant bouquet, I selected a carnation, the fragrance of which led me to enjoy it frequently, and near. The sense of smelling was not the only one affected on these occasions; while that was satiated with the powerful sweet, the ear was constantly attracted by a soft but agreeable murmuring sound. It was easy to know that some animal within the covert must be the musician, and that the noise must come from some little creature suited to produce it. I instantly distended the lower part of the flower, and placing it in full light, could discover troops of little insects frisking with wild rollic among the parry pedestals that supported its leaves, and the little threads that occupied its centre. What a fragrant world for their habitation! what a perfect security from all annoyance in the dusky husk that surrounded the scene of action. Adapting a microscope to take in at one view the whole base of the flower, I gave myself an opportunity of contemplating what they were about, and this for many days together, without giving them the least disturbance. Thus I could discover their economy, their passions, and their enjoyments. The microscope, on this occasion, had given what nature seemed to have denied to the objects of contemplation.

The base of the flower extended itself, under its influence, to a vast plain; the slender seams of the leaves became trunks of so many stately cedars; the threads in the middle seemed columns of a massy structure, supporting, at the top, their several ornaments; and the narrow spaces between were enlarged into walks, parterres, and terraces. On the polished bottoms of these, brighter than Parian marble, walked in pairs, alone, or in larger companies, the winged inhabitants; these, from little flies, for such only the naked eye would have shown them, were there raised to glorious glittering animals, stained with diving purple, and with a glossy gold! that would have made all the labors of the loom contemptible in the comparison. I could, at leisure, as they walked together, admire their elegant limbs, their velvet shoulders, and their silken wings; their backs vying with the empyrean in its blue; and their eyes out-glittering the little plains, and brilliant above description, and almost too great for admiration.

I could observe them here singling out their favorite females—courting them with the music of their buzzing wings, with little songs formed for their little organs, leading them from walk to walk among the perfume shades—and pointing out to their taste the drop of liquid nectar just bursting from some vein within the living trunk. Here were the perfumed groves, the more than myrtle shades of the poet's fancy, realized. Here the happy lovers spent their days in joyous dalliance, or, in the triumph of their little hearts, skipped after one another from stem to stem among the painted trees, or winged their short flight to the close shadow of some broader leaf to revel undisturbed in the heights of all felicity.—Facet.