The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-09-19 00:00:00

ANTS ENEMIES TO CATERPILLARS.

The Belgian Official Journal, referring to the ignor-
ant conduct of those who destroy all kinds of birds and
insects indiscriminately, insists on the necessity of
children in primary schools being taught to distinguish
between useful and noxious insects, and thus to exercise
their destructive faculties against the latter only. The
writer proceeds to say that the ant, which is very
disagreeable and inconvenient in many respects, does
excellent service in chasing and destroying caterpillars
with relentless energy. A farmer who had noticed
this fact, and had had his Cabbages literally devoured
by caterpillars, at last hit upon the expedient of having
an ant-hill, or rather nest, such as abound in Pine
forests, brought to his Cabbage plot. A sackful of
the Pine points, abounding in ants, was obtained, and
its contents strewn around the,infested Cabbage plants.
The ants lost no time, but immediately set to work;
they seized the caterpillars by their heads. The next
day heaps of dead caterpillars were found, but not
one alive nor did they return to the Cabbages. The
value of the ant is well known in Germany, and
although their eggs are in great request as food for
young partridges, pheasants, and nightingales, there
is a fine against taking them from the forests. The
ant is indefatigable in hunting its prey; it climbs to
the very tops of trees, and destroys an immense quantity
of noxious insects.

DEATH OF M. GIIIZOT.
(From the Daily News.)
M. Guizot died on Saturday at his residence at Val
Richer, after a gradual decline, the result of extreme
old age. It had been evident for some time that his
illness could have no other termination, and his family
and friends gathered round him in expectation of the
event. He had survived most of his contemporaries, and
to the present generation of Frenchmen his was already
an historical name. M. Guizot, who had almost
completed his eighty-seventh year, having been born
at Nimes on the 4th October, 1787, was of Huguenot
descent. His father, a distinguished advocate,
perished on the scaffold in 1794, the same year in
which the fathers of his future colleagues, the late
Due de BroglM and Count Mold, were executed as
bad citizens. Madame Guizot fled with her son,
Pierre Francois Guillaume, to Switzerland, remaining
at Geneva till the revolution of the 18th Bnimaire
restored the exiles to France. He was then eighteen,
and his nine years of schooling in Geneva ha A fitted
him to be tutor in the family of the Swiss Minister,
M. Stapfer. Ile soon got into literary society, and met
Mdlle. Pauline de Meulan, who was then writing for
the Publietate, and who, though fourteen years his
senior, became his wife in 1812. This marriage threw
him into Royalist circles, and as he was becoming
known as an able and industrious writer, and had pub.
lished an edition of Gibbon, with annotations, M.
de Fontanes named him Professor of Modern His-
tory in the Sorbonne. With the return of the
Bourbons his political career began, by his appoint-
ment, through the influence of M. Royer Collard,
as Secretary to the Minister of the Interior. On
Napoleon's return he threw up the chair of his-
tory which the Government wished him to retain,
and paid a visit to Louis XVIII, at Ghent. The
motive of this journey was ever afterwards a subject
of debate, M. Guizot's friends maintaining that its
object was to plead for the constitutional charter.
On the second restoration he again took office, and
held it, after a temporary retirement in 1816, till the
murder of the Due de Berri in 1820, when, t 9 use
Chateaubriand's expression, the Duc Decases "slipped
in blood." For the next ten years M. Guizot was
almost entirely occupied in producing those historical
works which have made his literary fame, and in ex-
',minding the principles of that doctrinaire school of
politicians of which M. Royer Collard was the apostle
and M. Guizot the most distinguished pupil.
, The revolution of 1830 gave M. Guizot the opportu-
nity of putting his doctrina ire principles in practice.
In the last two years of the reign of Charles X., when
the Polignac Ministry was leading the old Monarchy
to the precipice over which it at last threw itself, M.
Guizot had sat in the Chamber of Deputies for Lisieux.
Restored to his chair in the Sorbonne he had honour-
ably associated his name with those of Cousin and
Villernain, in the advocacyof public instruction; and in
the Chamber had taken a prominent part in opposing
the reactionary policy of the Government. After the
three days of July, he became provisionally Ministerof
Instruction, and afterwards Minister of the Interior.
To write the life of M. Guizot for the next eighteen
years would be to retell the familiar story of the
Monarchy of July. For some years he retained
under successive Ministries, and with short periods
of opposition, the portfolio of the Ministry of
Instruction, and for a short time represented his
country as French Ambassador in London. In
1840 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs in
the Cabinet of Marshal &mit, but was himself the
leading spirit of the Administration, and continued
to enjoy the favour of the King, till Monarch and
Minister fell together in 1848. M. Guizot's foreign
policy was too pacific to please the French people,
while the affair of the Spanish Marriages destroyed
its moral influence in European affairs. His
domestic policy was even more unfortunate. The
minister of a monarch who owed his throne to
the belief of the people that he was "the best of
Republics," M. Guizot resisted all suggestions of
movement in the Liberal direction. While European
opinion all round was becoming day by day more
Liberal, he attempted to keep France to the old
ways. Only a month before the final catastrophe
M. de Montalembert had declared that France
was within three months of a Republic, and M. de
Cormenin had said much earlier that " fright-
ful fissures will appear in the building, blown
upon on all sides by the tempest of democracy ; then
it will be necessary to pack up as soon as possible, and
M. Guizot, the presumed Conservative, will perhaps
be among the first to cry saare qui pest." All the
world saw the danger: M. Guizot and the King did
not see it till the fabric of the Monarchy was falling
about their ears, and M. de Cormenin's prophecy was
literally fulfilled.
As the revolution of 1830 called M. Guizot to power,
so that f 1848 threw him out of politics. He was still
in the prime of life, but never succeeded in regaining
any political influence. He returned, however, with
characteristic energy to his literary labours, and
amongst other works published a history of his own
time, which will give invaluable materials to future
historians. The curioas impracticability of his political
opinions came out in the publication of a defence of the
temporal power of the Pope on his favourite prin-
ciple of authority." In his ecclesiastical rela-
tions he has shown the same worship of "autho-
rity" which led to the catastrophe of 1848. As a
prominent member of the Reformed Church, he took
an active part in the discussions which during the last
few years have led to the establishment of a doctrinal
test of its membership. M. Guizot was in fact a
Huguenot of the old school who had become a
isditician in new times. His personal character was
beyond reproach. Generous in his friendships, and
affectionate and tender in his domestic relations, he
was nevertheless without that sympathetic nature
which could bring him into full and living relation to
the age in which he lived, and the men and women
among whom he moved. He began life as a peda-
gogue, and in all his public relations he WWI a peda-
gogue to its close. Small and slight in stature, he was
nevertheless a man of striking appearance. His voice
was full and sonorous, but his manner was cold and