FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE BY GRANT ALLEN AUTHOR OF-- •' 77/c Story of tin- Plants" " /'.Tofutioii of the Iii,- I V ' ' ^- ' ri 4 '^ ]T COPYKIOHT, |8qS HY I)0URI.I:DAY and MiCLURE Co, CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS THK COWS THAT ANTS MILK A BRANXH OF TIIK FAMILY IRIX WOUN-OUT MOTHER . BUDDING MOTHER WINGED FKMAI.l. UNNATURAL LODGER A TRAGIC ENEMY ' AN ANT M1I.KI.N(; A ROSE AI'IIIS A COMIC -ENEMY A PLANT THAT MELTS ICE LEAVES OK SOLDANEl.I.A . BUD BEGINMNc; TO MELT IIS WAY IP I BUD ENCLOSED IN A GLOBE OK AIR FLOWER REACHING SURFACE OK ICE FLOWER VISITED BY A BKE A GROUI' OF FLOWERS I'ROTRDDING THROl (1 A I'AIR OF FLOWERS WHICH HaVE FAILED A BEAST OF PREY COCOON OF YOING SI'IDERS YOUNG SPIDEKLINGS CASIING FIRSL THREADS BABY SPIDER IN MS FIRST SNARE . ROSALIND'S SPINNERETS .... FOOT, CLAWS, AND FACE oF SPIDER ROSALIND C1N HKR WAY TO BLOW- FLY . ROSALIND TRUNDLING BLOW-FLY . A SPIDER CHANGING ITS CLOTHES . ROSALIND AND HER SUITORS . I ICE I 3 5 9 II 12 i6 21 25 33 34 35 36 37 39 41 47 49 52 53 56 57 62 63 65 67 VI CONTKNTS AND ILLUSTKATIONS A WOODLAND IKAOKDV HIE KUK IIKK-niKI) . THE BU KIIER-HIKDS Will, PART OK HIS I.ARDER HIS WIKE IMPAI.INCi A IIAKVI.S I -MoUSE BEETLKS AM) ITKED-NtOt'sK " I WANT I IIA r I EY " THE WIKE ON HER NESI . MAKRIAGK AMONC. TIIK CI.OVKKS KEMAI.E BECfiNIA Kl.oWERS THE SEEDHAC. KI.OWERS IN BUI) .... MALE KI.OWER, KKOM VIEW . MALE KI.OWER, HA( K VIEW DUICH ( I-OVER IN SIX ASI'KIIS STRAWllERKV (•l.f)VKk IN KIVI. ASI'KCTS TIIO.SE HOUKID KAKWIC.S . rORIRAIT OK A (iENTI.EMAN . I'ORTRAIT OK A I.MiV WITH WINCS ENI'AMiKD . BEC.INNINO TO CI.OSE SEVEN KfRTHER SIACKS . THE TAIL HEl.l'S THE USE OK I UK I'lNCKKS THE TAIL SI RAIOH I ENEI) Al'.AlN THE WINO IMNl.ATIl THE WINO-CA THE WING-, ASi: RAISEh . SITTINC. ON IIKK KCCS HKl. HROOl) OK CHICKS CAMI'OUEA THE EARWU;'s MOU III 7' 74 75 76 79 84 86 S7 94 96 98 99 100 loi 105-113 115-I19 121 124 125 12S 129 30 136 >37 i3« 139 140 141 142 143 144 •45 THE FIR.ST PAPER-MAKKR KAMII.V PORTRAITS . THE CITY, T'VO HAYS ol.It THE CITY, FIVE DAYS OI.U 148 150 156 157 CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS vu THE CITY, KMTKEN DAYS Oil) NEST OK IK IK WASl', IWO ASI'KCTS WASI''S IIKAD IN KIVK ASI'KCTS <^i;ken wasp wnii koi.dkd \vin(;s PART OK TWO WINilS THE POISON-BAC DARTS MAC.MIII.I) TIIK WASr's IIRI'SM AN'I) COMH TUCKS IN IMK SECMKNTS PALII i()4, 105 i<>8 172 •73 «74 •75 176 176 177 AI5II)IN(i CITIKS A WOOD AMS' NIST, KXTKRInR A WOOD ants' NKSI, INIKRIOK "let's go si.a\ k-hun'unc. " . A SLAVK-HUNr .... I'AYINC. OFK OKI) SCoRIS . A I.ONC. I'l'I.l, AM) A STRONC; I'll.I, THE GAKDKN AN 1' ... HEAD OK lIAKDl N AN 1' THE ANT's KRUSH AND COM 11 . "79 180 iSl 186 189 190 191 '94 196, 197 • 199 A FKOZKN WOULD IHE GREAT I'OND-SNAII. IN SC.MMI K . . . THE (;>'KAT POND-SNAII. IN WINIKR THE CJRLED POND WEED I'RODCCI N(; SHOOIS THE SIIO ITS BEKORE, DURINC, AND AKIEk KROSr THE WlllRI.IGU; HKEIT.E DAN( INC AND SI.EEI'INC. THE KROC.mr IN SIMMKR AND WINIKR ITS HL'DS RISINc; IN Sl'RINC .... 204 212 • 213 214 215 217 221, 22^ ^25, 227 229 BRITISH BLOODSUCKLRS THE MOSQITIO'S EGG-RAKT, IN TWO ASPECTS THE EGGS HAICIIING AND YOlNG ESCAPING THE MOSQUITt) LARVA STANDING ON HIS HEAD THE larva's BREATHING-TUBE THE CHRYSALIS HREATHIN(; THE MOSQUITO EMKRGES AND MAKES A BOAT OF HER OLD SKIN . 236, 237 23S 239 241 242 244 246 Vlll contp:\'ts and illustrations HEADS OF MOSgUITOKS TIIK t;AIH'I.Y HIS I.ANCKIS AND 111 MR CUTIlNc; KDGKS A VERY INTKLLKIKNT PLANT . TIIR IIABY GORSK I'LANT , AT (INK WKKK OI.D .... OUTCROWl.Nd ITS INFANT STACK TIIK YOINC, SIIRI'H IIKCINS TO ARM 11 SKI. K TIIK GENISTA TIIK IIROOM I'KOIKCTlNc; TIIK l;UI)S . THE GRKAT-COAT .... THK IT.OWKR, IIAI.K OlMM.l) . DISCIIARC.ING I'OI.I.KNSIIOWKRS THE Pcil>, wnil HKANS . THK !'OI), AITKR DISCII ARCING IlLANS A FOREKIX IWA.SION OF KN(;i.AND AN INVALID ISARl.KV I'l.AN r THK SOTRCK f:K TIIK MlSCIIll.K TIIK CRIU AT WORK SKVKN WKI.I.-l AVOURKI) KARS . SEVKN I.KAN KARS .... THE (IRl'li TIRNING ROUND THE CI.I.MBING I'UI'A. THK I'lM'A CoMKS OUT AND TIIK Fl.Y COMKS OUT OK M' AN IKNN.K KRKK ! . . . . WINGS KRKK ! NOW I OR THK LKGS ! . . . TIIK LAST rri.L .... HANGING HKRSKLK VV lO DRY WILY ENKMY LAYING HER KGGS PACE 252 256 258 262 263 266 267 26S 269 270 271 276 277 280 281 284 288 289 290 292 295 299 300 301 302 304 305 3o5 3" FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE THE COWS THAT ANTS MILK DON'T let my title startle you ; it was Linnieus himself who iirst invented it. Everybody knows the common little " j^reen-flies " or "plant-lice" that cluster thick on the shoots of roses ; and most people know that these trouble- some small insects (from the human point of view) are the true source of that shining sweet juice, rather slimv and clammy, that covers so m;uiy leaves in warm summer weather, and is com- monly called honey -dew. A good many people have heard, too, that ants use the tiny green crea- tures in place of cows, coaxing them with their feelers so as to make them yield up the sweet and nutritious juice which is the ants' substitute for butter at breakfast. But comparatively few are aware how strange and eventful is the brief life- history of these insignificant little beasts which we destroy by the thousand in our flower-gardens or conservatories with a sprinkle of tobacco -water. A 2 FLASFlLlCillTS ON NATURE To the world at lar^e, tlic apliides, as we call them, are mere nameless nuisances — pests that infest our choicest plants ; to the eye of the naturalist, tiiey are a marvellous and deeply interesting j^rouji of animals, with one of the oddest pedi- j^rees, one of the queeiest biographies, known to science. I propose, therefore, in this paper briefly to recount their story from the cradle to the ^rave ; or, rather, to be literally accurate, from the time when they Inst emerge from the ej^g to the moment when they are eaten alive (witli some hundreds of their kind) by one or other of their watchful ene- mies. In this task I shall be aided not a little by the clever and vivid dramatic sketches of the Aphides at Home, which have been prepared for me by my able and watchful collaborator, Mr. Frederick Knock, an enthusiastic and observant naturalist, who thinks nothing of sitting up all night, if so he may catch a beetle's egg at the moment of hatching ; and who will keep his eye to the microscope for twehe liouis at a stretch, relieved only by occasional light refreshment in the shape of a sandwich, if so he may intercept some rare chrysalis at its moment of bursting, or behold some special grub spin the silken cocoon wi hin whose case it is to develop into the perfect winged insect. Kose-aphides, or ** green-Hies," as most people call them, are, to the casual eye, a mere mass of living " blight "—a confused group of tiny trans- TiiK Cows THAT Ants Milk 3 lucciil insects, moored by theii' beaks or suckin*^- tubes to the shoots ol the }ilant on which tliev have been born, and whicli they seldom cjuit unless forcibly ejected. l^'or tiiey are no Columbuses. The spray of rose-bush li^ured in sketch Xo. i shows a ^mall part of one such numerous house- hold in quiet possession oi its lamily tree and NO. I. A liK.\N( 11 01 1111 lAMllV IKI.i:. euj^a^ed, as is its wont, in suckinj^ for dear life at the juices of its own pectiiiai" food-plant. ^'ou will obseive that they are clustered closest .it the ^rowin^^-point. h'^acli little bea^t of this complex family is coloured protectivelv screen, so as to bi- as inconspicuous as possible to the keen eves of its numerous enemies ; and each sticks to its ciiosen twig with beak and sucker as K)ni4 as there is any- 4 Flashlights on Nature tiling left to drink in it, only moving away on its six sprawling legs when its native spot has been drained dry of all nutriment. We often talk metaphorically of vegetating : the aphis vegetates. Indeed, aphides are as sluggish in their habits and manners as it is possible for a living and locomotive animal to be : they do not actually fasten for life to one point, like oysters or barnacles ; but they are born on a soft shoot of some particular plant ; they stick their sucking-tube into it as soon as they emerge ; they anchor them- selves on the spot for an indefinite period ; and they only move on to a new "claim" when sheer want of food or force majeure compels them. The winged members are an exception : t/ieyiwQ founders of new colonies, and are now on their way to some undiscovered Tasmania. And, indeed, as we shall see, these stick-in-the- mud creatures have yet, in the lump, a most event- ful history — a history fraught with strange loves, with hairbreadth escapes, with remorseless foes, with almost incredible episodes. They have enemies enough to satisfy Mr. Rider Haggard or the British schoolboy. If you look at No. 2, you will see the first stage in the Seven Ages of a rose-aphis family. The cycle of their life begins in autumn, with the annual laving of the winter eggs ; these eggs are carefully deposited on the leaf-buds of some rose- bush, by a perfect wingless female, at the first approach of the cold weather. I say a perfect wingless female, because, as I shall explain here- The Cows that Ants Milk 5 after, most aphides (and especially all the summer crops or generations that appear with such miracu- lous rapidity on our loses and fruit-trees) are poor fatherless creatures ; waifs and strays, budded out vegetatively like the shoots of a plant. About this strange retrogressive mode of reproduction, however, I shall have more to tell you in due time by-and-by ; for the pre- sent, we will confine ourselves to the im- mediate history of the autumn brood, which is regularly produced in the legitimate fashion, as the result of an or- dinary insect marriage between perfectly de- veloped males and females. As October approaches, a special generation of such per- fect males and females is produced by the un- wedded summer green-flies ; and the females of this brood, specially told olf for the purpose, lay the winter eggs, which are destined to carry on the life of the species across the colder months, when NO. 2,— WORN-OUT MOTHER — l.AVINC IIKR LAST E<;r.. 6 Flashlights on Nature no fresh shoots for food and drink are to be found in tiie frozen helds or gardens. The eggs, so to speak, must be regarded as a kind of deferred brood, to bridge over the chilly time when living aphides cannot obtain a livelihood in the open. In Xo. 2 we see, above, a rose-twig with its le;if-buds, which are undeveloped leaves, inclosed in warm coverings, and similarly intended to bridge over the winter on behalf of the rose-bush. On this twig, then, we have the winter eggs of the aphis, mere dots represented in their natural size ; they are providently laid on the bud, which in early spring will grow out into a shoot, and thus supply food at once for the young green-flies as they hatch and develop. So beautifully does Nature in her wisdom take care that blight in due season shall never be wanting to our Marshal Niels and our Gloires de Dijon ! In the same sketch, too, we have, below, a pathetic illustration, greatly magniiied, of the poor old worn-out mother, a martyr maternity, laying her last egg in the crannies 01 the bud she has chosen. I say "a martyr to maternity" in solemn earnest. You will observe that she is a shrivelled and haggard specimen of over-bur- dened motherhood. The duties of her statioi have clearly been too much for her. The reason is that she literally uses lu-rself up in the pro- duction of offspring ; which is not surprising, if you consider the relative size of egg and egg-layer. When this model mother began to lay, I can assure The Cows that A\ts Milk 7 you she was fat and well-favoured, as attractive a young green-fly as you would be likely to come across in a day's march on the surface of a rose- twig. But once she sets to work, she l:iys big eggs with a will (big, th;it is to say, compared with her own size), till she has used up all her soft internal material ; and when she has finished, she dies — or, rather, she ceases to be ; for tliere is nothing left of her but a dried and shrivelled skin. During the winter, indeed — in cold climates at least — the race of aphides dies out altogether for the time being, or only protracts an artilicial exist- ence in the heated air of green-houses and drawing- rooms. The species is represented at such dormant periods by the fertilised eggs alone, which lie snug among the folds or scales of the buds till March or April comes back again to wake them. Then, with the first genia weather, the eggs hatch out, and a joyous new brood of aphides emerges. And here comes in one of the greatest wonders ; for these sumr • ;• broods do not consist, like their parents in autumn, of males and females, but of imperfect mothers — all mothers alike, all brother- less sisters, and all budding out young as fast as I they can go, without the trouble and expense of '..father. They put forth their progeny as a tree I puts forth leaves, by mere division. The new I broods thus produced are budded out tail first, as \ shown in No. 3, so that all the members of the family stand with their heads in the same direction, the mother moving on as her offspring increases ; 8 Flashlights on Nature and since each new aphis instantly begins to fix its proboscis into the soft leaf-tissue, and in turn to bud out other broods of its own, you need not wonder that your favourite roses are so quickly covered with a close layer of blight in genial weather. To say the truth, the rate of increase in aphides is so incredibly rapid, that one dare hardly mention it without seeming to exaggerate. A single in- dustrious little green-fly, which devotes itself with a quiet mind to eating and leproduction, may easily within its own lifetime become the ancestor of some billions of great-grandchildren. It is not difficult to see why this should be so. The original parent buds out little ones from its own substance at a prodigious rate ; and each of these juniors, reach- ing maturity at a bound, begins at once to bud out others in turn, so that as long as food and fine weather remain the population increases in an almost unthinkable ratio. Of course, it is the ex- treme abundance of food and the ease of living that result in this extraordinary rate of fertility ; the race has no Malthus to keep it in check — each aphis need only plunge its beak into the rose-shoots or leaves and suck ; it can get enough food without the slightest trouble to maintain itself and a nume- rous progeny. It does not move about recklessly, or use up material in any excessive intellectual effort ; all it eats goes at once to the production of more and more aphides in rapid succession. Many things, however, conspire to show that The Cows that Ants Milk aphides did not always lead so slothful a life : they are creatures with a past, the unworthy descendants of hij^hcr insects, which have de- Ljenerated to this level through the excessive abundance of their food, and through their adop- tion of what is prac- tically a parasitic habit. When life is too easy, men and insects in- variably degenerate : struggle is good for us. One of these little indi- cations of a higher past Mr. Knock has given us in the upper part of sketch No. 3. For some members of the brood go through regular stages of grub and chrysalis, like any other flies ; or, if you wish to be accurately scientific, pass thnjugh the usual forms of larva and pupa, before they reach the full adult con- dition. This, of course, shows them to be the descendants of higher insects which underwent the common metamorphosis of their kind. But most of the budded-out, fatherless broods in summer are NO. 3. — BUDDING MOTHKR — I'RODUCINc; A KATHERLESS HROOD lo Flashlights on Nature produced ready-made, without the necessity for passing through larval or infantile stages. Or rather, they never grow up : they merely moult ; and they produce more young while they are still larvaj. They are born fully formed, and proceed forthwith to moor themselves, to feed, and to bud out fresh generations, without sensible interval. In No. 3 we have various stages in the development of the spring brood. Above we see the pupa, or chrysalis, produced from a grub (not very grub-like in shape), which has sprung from an egg ; and on the right, below, we see the shrivelled larval skin from which it has just freed itself. This particular aphis was thus born as a six-legged iarva from an autumn egg ; it passes through the intermediate form of a pupa, or chrysalis ; and it will finally develop into a winged "viviparous" female, such as you see in No. 4 below, putting out its young alive as fast as ever its wee body can bud them. You may observe, however, that in the case of aphides there is no great difference of form between the three successive stages. Larva, pupa, and fly are almost identical. In No. 4, again, we have a portrait from life of such a 7i>higcd female, the mother of a numerous fatherless progeny ; for both winged and wingless forms are produced through the summer. She is round and well-fed, as becomes a matron. Observe in particular the curious pair of tubes on the last few rings of her back ; these are the organs for secreting nectar or honey-dew, a point about which The Cows that Ants Milk 1 1 I shall have a good deal more to say presently. A winged female like this may fly away to another rose-bush to become the foundress of a distant colony. The same illustration also shows, in a greatly enlarged form, her beak or sucking appa- ratus, which con- sists of four sharp lance - like siphons, enclosed in a pro- tective sheath or proboscis, and ad- mirably adapted both for piercing the rose-twig and for draining the juices of your choicest crimson ramblers. The aphis sticks in the point as if it were a needle, and then sucks away vigorously at the rose-tree's life-blood. Von can watch her so any day with a common small mag- nilier, and see how, like the lady at Mr. Stiggins' tea meeting, she 'Swells wisibly " in the process. Indeed, aphides are always beautiful objects for the microscope or pocket lens, with their pale, trans- parent green bodies, their bright black eyes, their NO. 4. -WI.N(;i;i) IKMAI.E— THE FOUNDRKSS OK A COLONY. 12 F'lashligmts ox Nati'rk jointed hairy legs, their dehcate feelers, and their marvellous honey-tubes ; and it will not be my fault if you still continue to regard them as nothing more than the " nasty blight " that destroys your roses. Do not for a moment suppose, however, that you and your gardener, with his spray and his tobacco-water, are the only cn.mies the rose-aphis possesses. The name of her foes is legion. She is devoured alive, from with- out and from within, by a ceaseless horde of aggres- sive belligerents. The most destructive of these enemies are no doubt the lady-birds, which, both in their larval and their winged forms, live almost entirely on various kinds of green-fly. This prac- tical fact in natural history is well known to hop- growers, for the dreaded " Hy " on hops is an aphis ; its abundance or otherwise governs the hop market, and Kentish farmers are keenly aware that a certain particular lady-bird eats the " fiy " by millions, on which account they protect and foster the lady-bird. NO. 5. — UNNATURAL I.ODGLR EATS HIS HOSTESS OUT OK IIKU SKIN. TnK Cows THAT Ants Milk 13 llnis Ic.iviii)^ the two insects, tlie parasite ami the carnivore, to lijfht it out in their own way between tlieni. But No. 5 introduces us to a still more insidious though less dangerous foe : an internal parasite which lavs its eggs inside the body of the bud- producing female. Tiiere the grub hatches out, and proceeds to eat up its unwilling hostess, alive, froui icit/iiii. In the sketch, we have an illustration, below, of an aphis which has thus been compelled to take in a stranger to board and lodge in her stomach ; while the top figure shows how the lodger, after eating his hostess out, eats himself out into the open air through her empty skin. If you look out closelv for such haunted green-flies, in- habited by a parasite — most often an ichneumon lly — you will tind them in abundance on the twigs of rose-bushes. They have a peculiar swollen, quiescent look, and a brownish colour. No. 6 shows us another such fierce enemv at work. This formidable insect tiger is the larva of the wasp-fly ; he is a savage carnivore, who moors himself by his tail end, stretches out to his full length, and swoops Ci > \\-n upon his unsuspecting prey from above ; and being blessed with a good a[){ietite, he can get rid t)f no fewer than 120 aphides in an hour. As he probably eats all day, with little intermission for rest and digestion, th^s gives a grand total of about 1500 or 1600 victims at a sitting. However, the remaining aphides go on budding away as fast as ever to make up the 14 Flashlights on Nature deficiency, so the loss to the race is by no means i I reparable. " // n'v n pas d' hoiinne piarssaiie," Napoleon used to say ; and the principle is even more true as applied to the green-flies. If a few millions die, their place is soon filled again. Look once more at No. 6, and you will see that while the tiger-like enemy is engaged in hoisting and devouring one unfortunate aphis, its neighbour below, heedless of the tragedy, is quietly engaged in blowing off honey-dew. This blowing-off of honey-dew leads me on direct to the very heart of my subject ; for it is as manufacturers of honey- dew and as cows to the ants that aphides base their chi ^f claim to at- tention, if they did not produce this Turkish delight of the insect world, nobody would have troubled to study them so closely. Let us go on to see, then, what is the origin and meaning of this curious and almost unique secretion. If you examine the leaves of a lime-tree or a rose-bush in warm summer weather you will find NO. 6. — TRAi;iC KNKMY \\lli> DEVOURS I20 I'ER HOIK. The Cows that Ants Milk 15 tlicm covered all (ncr with a soft sticky substance, sweet to the taste, and spread in a thin layer upon the surface of the foliaj^e. This sweet stuH" is honey- dew, and it is manufactured solely by various kinds of aphides, without whose trade-mark none other is {genuine. Why do they make it ? Not, you may be sure, ( of pure unseliisli moral desire to benefit the ant. nd other beasts that like it. In the animal world, nothinj^ for nothing is the principle of con- duct. The true secret of the orij^in of honey-dew appears to be this. Aphides live entirely off a lij^ht diet of vegetable juices ; now, these juices are rich in compounds of hydrogen and carbon, especially sugar (or rather, to be strictly scientific, glucose), but are relatively deficient in nitrogenous materials, which last are needed as producers of movement by all animals, however sluggish. In order, therefore, to procure enough nitrogenous matter for its simple needs, your aphis is obliged to eat its way through a quite superfluous amount of sweets, or of sugar- forming substances. It is almost as though we ourselves had to swallow daily a barrel of treacle so as to reach at the bottom an ounce of beefsteak. To get rid of this surplus of sugar (or rather, un- digested glucose) almost all aphides (for they are a large family, with many separate kinds) have acquired a pair of peculiar orgcUis, known as honey- tubes, on the backs of their bodies. Scjmetimes, when distended with superfluous food, they simply blow out the honey-dew secreted by these tubes on to the leaves below them. i6 Flashlights on Nattkl: The aphis in No. 6 is represented .it the moment when it is thus riddini^ itself of its excessive sweet- ness. But honey-dew is sticky, and apt to get in the way ; it may clog one's legs, or interfere with one's proboscis : so the aphides prefer as a rule to retain it prudently till some friendly animal, with a taste for sweets, steps in to relieve them of the unpleasant tension. The animal which especially performs this kind otiice for the rose -aphis is the NO. 7. — AN ANT MII.KINC A ROSK-ArillS OK ITS HONEY-DKW. garden ant ; and No. 7 represents such an ant in the very act of tapping and caressing an aphis with its feelers, in order to make her yield up on demand her store of honey. The process is ordinarily described as " milking." You must understand, of course, that neither aphis nor ant is actuated by purely philanthropic considerations ; this is a case of mutual accommo- The Cows that Ants Mh.k 17 datioii. TIk- aj^his wants to ^et rid of a trouble- soinc waste product wliicli is apt to cloj^ it. The ant wants to scciux' tliat waste product as a valuable f(X)d-stuit. Hence, from all time, an offensive and defensive alliance of the profoundest type lias been mutuallv struck up between ants and aphides. How far this alliance has j^one is truly wonderful. The ants not merely "milk" the aphides, but actu- allv collect them toj^ether in herds and keep them in parks as domestic animals. Nay, more ; as Sir John Lubbock has pointed out, different kinds of ants domesticate dilierent breeds of aphides, as each is suited to the other's conditions. The common black garden ant attends chiefly to the a[ihides which frequent twij^s and leaves, such as this very rose-aphis — for the black ant is a rover and a good tree-climber ; he is much j^iven to explorinj^ ex- peditions over the surface of plants in search of honey, and he is not particular whether he happens to gather it from llowers or from insects. The brown ant, on the other hand, goes in rather for such species of aphides as frecjuent the crannies in the bark of trees ; while the little yellow ant, an almost subterranean race, living underground among the grass roots in meadows, "keeps flocks and herds" (says Lubbock) "of the root-feeding aphides." All these facts you can verify for your- self with very little trouble. It is most interesting to watch a black ant on the prowl after honey-dew. He is evidentlv led on to the herd by smell, for he mounts the stem where B 1 8 Flashlichits on Nature tlic aphides live in a business-like way, atid goes straiglit to the point, as if he knew what he was after. When he linds an aphis that looks likely, he strokes and caresses her gently with his antennie (as you see in the sketch), coaxing her to yield up tlie coveted nectar. The aphis, on her side, glad to receive his polite attentions, and accustomed to the signal, exudes a clear drop of her surplus sweet, which the ant licks up with its jaws greedily. But ants do much more than this in the way of aiding and protecting their " cows." They really appro- priate them. Often they build, with mud, covered ways or galleries up to their particular herds, and erect earthen cowsheds above them ; they also fight in defence of their flocks, as a Zulu will tight for his oxen, or an Arab for his camels. Their foresight is almost human : for when the winter eggs are laid, the ants will transport them into their nest, to keep tliL'm safe against frost ; and when summer comes again, they will carry them out with care, and place them in the sun to hatch on the proper food-plant. Could man himself show greater prudence and forethought than these mites of herdsmen ? "The eggs." says Sir John Lubbock, "are laid early in October on the food-plant of the insect. They are of no direct use to the ants ; yet they are not left where they are laid, exposed to the severity of the weather and to innumerable dangers, but brought into the nests, and tended with the utmost care through the long winter months till The Cows that Ants Milk 19 tlie lollowing Marcli," when they are brouj^ht out again and placed on their special food-plant. Lubbock even notes that ants have domesticated a far larger v; iety of other animals than we our- selves h ive. Our list includes at best the horse, the dog, the cat, the cow, the camel, the sheep, the llama, the alpaca, the goat, the hen, the duck, the L^oose. the bee, the silkworm, and a dozen or so others ; while ants have domesticated no fewer than 584 different kinds of crustaceans and insects, in- cluding beetles, tiies, and mites, some of which have lived for so many generations in the dark galleries of the ant-hills that they have become totally blind, as iiappens almost always, in the long run, with underground animals. During the live-long summer the aphides go on, eating and drinking, budding out new broods with inexhaustible fertilitv. They settle down calmly on the spot where they were born, tliey stick to it for life, and they seldom move away from their native twig unless somebody pushes them, for though they have legs, they do not care to use them except on extreme provocation. But when autumn arrives "a strange thing happens." Broods of perfect winged males and wingless females are then produced ; and the males of these, like almost all other insects, take a marriage Higlit, lind their predestined mates, and become with them the parents of the dormant eggs which outlive the year, and carry on the race to the succeeding summer. While warm weather lasts, few or no 20 Flashlights ox Nati'kk males arc bucldccl out ; it is only when the cold threatens to destrov the entire eolonv that little husbands are born, so as to ^ive rise to ej^s^s which may bridge over the ^ult between sunrner and summer. If you keep the insects warm, however, and supply them with abundant food (as in a con- servatory), they will J40 on producins^ imperfect females and fatherless broods, without intermission, for many years together. The ej^j^-laying genera- tion is thus shown to be merely a device for meeting the adverse chances of winter ; the budding process suffices well enough, as long as warmth and food render the possibility of freezing or starvatii)n un- important. On the other hand, the eggs and the brood born from them revert to the earlier habit of the race, when it was still an active, free-flving type, before it had been demoralised by acquiring its sedentary, parasitic habits. They hatch out into active little six- footed or six-legged larv;e, which again, in somecases, give rise to very similar chrysalis fv)rms, and finally develop into the "viviparous" or budding females. Whenever a species earns its livelihood with too little exertion, it invariably degenerates, and often grows small, unintelligent, and vastly prolilic ; for superior races have relatively small families, while inferioi races reproduce by the million. The mites which inf(.'st cheese and other fo(xl-stuffs are an exactly analogous case to that of the aphides, for they are degenerate spiders, grown small and prolific tlirough the excessive ease of life afforded them by The Cows that Ants Milk 21 always setllin^ in a cheese, all ready-made iood ior them, without the trouble or exertion of hunting. Creatures which reproduce at such a rate, how- ever, invariably pay the ju-nalty for their rapid increase bv an equally rapid and enormous death- rate ; were it otherwise, the offspring of a siui^le pair of codiish (with their million e^j^s) would soon turn the sea into one solid mass of cod ; while the NO. 8.- rOMIC KNKMY WHO I'OSKS AS OI.O-fl.OTHKS MAN. descendants of a single viviparous aphis would cover the earth with a ten feet thick layer of teeminj; L^reen-llies. However, Nature has remedies in store for them. Storms of rain and hail kill mvriads of aphides ; sudden chaiiL^es of weather wilt them and nip them up; imuunerabU' enemies make an honest livelihood out of them. Another of these ubiqui- tous foes is ^M'aphically represented in Xo. 8 — the 22 Flashlights on Nature grub of the lace-wing fly, a sort of insect old-clothes man, which covers its back with the cast-off skins of its discarded victims. This is a clever device to enable it to escape observation. The larva, which is a fat and juicy morsel, catches aphides wholesale, and sucks their life-blood ; when he has drained them dry, he hoists up their skins on to his back with his jaws, by way of overcoat. Then the hooks or spines on his back (shown above) hold them in place for a time, while the larva bends over and spins a few threads of web across them, to weave them into a neat and compact garment. Thus securely clad, he is hidden from view : he looks much like a twig covered with aphides, and avoids to some extent the too pressing attentions of his own enemies. Observe in this sketch the charac- teristic unconcern of the aphis who is destined to be his next victim. Birds also destroy large numbers of aphides. You can see them picking them off in the bean- fields in summer. It is luckv for us that these insect pests have so abundant a supply of natural enemies ; for man, by himself, is almost powerless against them. Strange to say, and paradoxical as it sounds, it is the smallest enemies that we always find most difficult to extir- pate. Lions and tigers we can kill off without diffi- culty ; they can be shot and exterminated. Wolves and hyenas give us a little more trouble ; while against rabbits, our resources are taxed to the utmost. A plague of rats and mice, or of tiny Thk Cows that Ants Milk 23 lielcl-voles, can hardly be cdir.batcd with any hope of success ; while locusts and Colorado beetles devastate our crops with practical impunity. When it conies to aphides, we are cjuite unable to cope witii the infinite numbers of our infmi- tesimal foes ; and if we taUe the microscopic creatures wliich cause cholera, typhoid fever, and other zvmotic diseases, we may keep out of their wav, it is true, or mav isolate the objects in whicli they breed and store their ijerms, but we are practically without means to kill or hurt them. The larger the foe, the more easily is he met ; tiie smaller our enemy, the more ditticult is he to extirpate. We killed off tlie American buffalo (or bi'^on) in a sini;le f^eneration ; a thousand years would probably fail to kill off the insignilicant little aphides that infest our roses. hi the case of one member of the family at least the experiment has been tried on a j^ij^antic scale in France, and as yet with comparatively small results. For the ch'eaded pliylloxera which attacks tlie vines is, in fact, an aphis ; and though iuunense rewards have been olfered by the Frencli Assembly for any good remedy aj^ainst phylloxera, the only successful plan as yet proposed has been that of plantini^ healthier and sturdier American vines, which resist the little beast a j^ood deal better than the ellete and woiii-out Furopean species. l»iit many other members of the familv waj^e war with distinj^uisJR'd success a-^ainst the British farmer. Tile little black " colliers ' wliich attack our bean t 24 Flashlights o\ Xattre crops are a species of aphis; so are the "blight" of apple-trees, the "fly" on turnips, and the most familiar parasites of the hop, the cabbaj^e, the pear, and the potato. It is well for us, therefore, that the aphides have roused against them so many natural enemies among the birds and insects, or our crops would be destroyed by their persistent efforts. The ichneumon-flies alone kill their millions yearly; and the lady-birds well deserve their popular esteem for the good they do in keeping down the ever- increasing numbers of these voracious insects. Yet, mischiev(nis as they are, the tiny green aphides are well deserving of study, both for their personal beauty and their singular life -history. Everybody can observe them, because they are practically everywhere. If you have a garden, they swarm on every bush. If you grow flowers in your window, they live in every pot. If you con- tent yourself wilh an occasional bunch of roses or geraniums, you will lind them, if you look, sucking away contentedly on the leaves of the rosebuds. Even in London parks or squares you may watch the industrious ants creeping slowly up the stems to milk their wee green cows ; you may see with the naked eye, or still better with a pocket lens, the grateful aphis exude a tiny drop of limpid honey from its translucent tubes, and the ant lick it up with luunistakable gusto. Go out into the parks or gardens and examine it for yourself ; for everv one of the facts I have mentioned in this paper can be verified with ease, if only you have patience. II A PLANT THAT MI-LTS ICE IF you have ever visited the Alps in early spring, you will know well by sight the dainty little nodding bells of the alpine soldanella — twin flowers on one stalk, like fairy tocsins, which push their heads boldly through the ice of the mvc, and form a border of blue blossoms on the edge of the snow-sheet. Most people, to be sure, visit the Alps in August ; and they go too late. Autumn is the time when heather purples our bleak northern moors, but when the central mountain chain of Europe, so glorious in April, has become comparatively green and flowerless. If you wish to see what nature can do in the way of rock-gardens, however, you should go to Switzer- land in early spring. It is then that blue gentians spread vast girdles of blossom over the alpine pas- tures ; then that the green slopes on the mountain sides are yellowed by globe-flowers ; then that the poet's narcissus stars with its white petals and scents with its sweet perfume the rich meadows on the spurs of the lesser ranges. Higher up, sheets of creeping rock-plants, close clinging to the uneven surface, fall in great cataracts of pink »5 26 Flashlights on Natukk and blue over the steep declivities. As the snow melts, upward, the flowers open in zones, one after another, up(jn the mountain sides, so that you can mark your ascent by the variations in the fiora, and the different successive stages of development reached by the most persistent kinds at various levels. There is one adventurous little plant, however, among these competing kinds, which in its eager- ness to make the most of the short alpine summer does not even wait, like its neighbours, for the melting of the snow, but, vastly daring, begins to grow under the surface of the ice-sheet, and melts a way up for itself by internal heat, like a vegetable furnace. It may fairly be called a slow-combustion stove, not figuratively, but literally. It burns itself up in order to melt the ice above it. This won- derful plant is the alpine soldanella, the hardest and one of the prettiest of mountain flowers ; it opens its fringed and pensile blue blossoms in the very midst of the snow, often showing its slender head above a thin layer of ice, where it fear- lessly displays its two sister bells among the frozen sheet which still surrounds its stem in the most incredible fashion. So much every tourist to the Alps in May must have noticed for himself, for whenever he reaches the edge of the melting ice-sheet he can see the ice pierced by innumerable twin pairs of these dainty and seemingly delicate blossoms. Comparatively few observers, however, have pro- ceeded to notice that the soldanella, fragile as it A Plant that Mklts Ice 27 is, actually forces itself up thruu^ii a solid coat of ice, not exactly by hewinj^ its way, but by iiieltiiij4 a path for itself in the crystal sheet above it. Vet such is really the case ; it warms the ice as it goes. The buds bej^in to j^row on the frozen soil before the ground is bare, under the hardened and compressed snow of the nevi — which at its edge is always ice-like in texture. They then bore their way up by internal heat (like that of an animal) through the sheet that covers them ; and they often expand their delicate blue or white blossoms, with the scalloped edges, in a cup-shaped hollow above, while a sheet of refrozer. ice, through which they have warmed a tunnel or canal for themselves, still surrounds their stems and hides their roots and their flattened foliage. This is so strange a miracle of nature that it demands some explanation ; the method by which the soldanella obtains its results is no less marvellous than the results themselves which it produces. The winter leaves of soldanella, which hibernate under the snow just as truly as the squirrel or the dormouse hibernates in its nest, are large, leathery, tough, and evergreen. They are, in fact, just living reservoirs of fuel (like the fat of the dormant bear), which the plant lays by during the heat of summer in order to burn it up again in spring for the use of its flowers. When I use this language, you will think at first I am speaking figuratively. Hut I am not ; I mean it in just us literal a sense as when I say that the coal in 2 8 Flash LK.HTs o\ Natukk the tLMidcT of a locomotive serves as fuel for the engine, or that the corn in the bin of a stable serves as fuel to heat the horse's body. These leaves contain material laid by for burninj^ ; and it is by burning that material up at tiie proper period that the soidanella manages to melt its way out of the wintry ice-sheet, and so to steal a march upon competing species. The process requires explanation, I admit ; let us try to understand it. Everybody knows, as a matter of common experience, that animals are warmer in winter than the air which surrounds them ; warm-blooded animals, that is to sav, which form the only class most people trouble about. Not everybody knows, however, that the same thing is more or less true of plants as well — that many plants have the power of evolvinj^ heat for themselves in considerable quantities. But this is actually true ; indeed, all growinj^ parts of a stem or young leaf-shoot must neces- sarily be slightly warmer than the air around them. For, when you come to think of it, whence do animals derive their heat ? " From the oxidation of their food," the small boy of the day, crammed full of knowledge, will tell you, glibly. And what do you mean by oxida- tion but very slow burning ? You may take a load of hay, and set a match to it, and it will burn at once quickly, by combining with the oxygen of the air in the open ; or you may, if you choose, give it to a pair of horses to eat instead, and then it will burn up slowly, by A Plant that Melts Ice 29 coinbiniiij^ witli the oxygen of the air in tlicir bodies. Luii,i;s, in tact, are mere devices for takiiii^ ill fresh oxyj^en, which then combines with tlie food or fuel in the blood of the animal. A centmv ai^o, Count Rumford pointed out that you mi^ht biun your hay as you ciiose, either in a horse or in a steam-eiii^ine ; and tiiat in either case you produced alike heat and motion. Wliat we call fuel is just carbon and hydroj^en, separated from oxyj^en ; and wliat we call burninj^ or combustion is just the re-union of the oxyj^en with the other elements, accompanied by a ^ivinj^- off of heat equivalent in amount to that orij^inally reciuired in order to separate tiiem. Now, the foodstuffs of most animals are plants or parts of plants, especially seeds or j4i-ains, as well as the rich stores of starch or oil laid by in roots, bulbs, and tubers. These are all of them reservoirs of food or fuel, produced by the plant for its own future growth, and meant hereafter to sprout or j^erminate. All seeds, when they be^in to ejuicken, unite with oxygen and evolve heat ; and this heat is just the same in nature, whether it happen to be set free within or without an animal body. If you give an ox corn, he will oxidise it internally and warm his own body with it ; but if you let it j^erminate, it will oxidise itself, and so produce a very small but slow lire, which warms both the corn and the space around it. Similarly, all growing shoots combine with oxygen, and, therefore, rise in temperature. In early spring, when the ground just teems with sprouting seec! , 30 Flashlights on Nature and swcUiiij^ buds, with growing bulbs or shooting tubers, tlie temperature of the soil is sensibly raised ; and this very heat, evolved by germination, becomes itself in turn a cause of more germina- tion ; each seed and root and bidb and sucker helps to warm and start all the others. Spring largely depends upon the warmth tiius produced. The earth, during this orgy of growth, is warmer by a good deal than the air about it ; warmer even than it is in summer weather — indeed, were it not for the number of plants which thus start growing at once, growth would be almost impossible in very cold countries. Like roosting fowls, they warm one another. You think, however, the amount of heat that can be thus evolved must be very insignificant. By no means. Take an example in point. What do we mean by malting ? We collect together a number of seeds or grains of barley, we wet them thoroughly, and allow them to begin germinating. Each grain individually gives out only a small amount of heat, it is true ; but when many of them lie together, the total volume of heat pro- duced is very great, and the amount would be even greater if it were not artificially checked at a certain stage : for the maltster does not wish his malt to be *• over-heated." Malt, then, is nothing more than sprouting barley ; and the heat it begets in the process of malting shows us very clearly how much warmth exists in sprouting seeds, or in the growing portions of young plants, buds, shoots, and tubers. A Plant that Melts Ice 31 At the risk of seeming tedious in this prehmi- nary exphmatioii, I must also add tliat tiower-buds and tlower-stems which f^row and open very rapidly must similarly use up oxyj^en in their growth, and therefore distinctly rise in temperature. In a very few lart^e and conspicuous Howers, such as the big white calla lily, this rise in temperature during the flowering period can be measured even with an ordinary thermometer. No bud can open without giving out heat ; and the amount of heat is some- times considerable. And now, 1 hope, we are in a position to understand how soldanella acts, and why it does so. It is a plant which grows under peculiarly trying conditions. It has to eke out a livelihood in the mountain belt, just below the snow-line ; and it is a low-growing type, which must flower early, or else it would soon be overshadowed by taller rivals. Vov growth is rapid in the Alps, once the snow has melted. Soldanella has thus to blossom, and to secure the aid of its insect fertilisers, at the precise moment when they emerge from their cocoons in the first warm days of the short alpine summer. If it waited later it would be overtopped and obscured in a very few days by the dense and rapid growth of waving grasses, and aspiring globe - flowers, and long - stalked, bulbous plants that crowd all around it. So the soldanella seizes its one chance in life at the earliest possible moment, and makes haste to pierce its way through the solid ice-sheet, while lazier rivals passively await its melting. That alone has 32 Flashlights on Nature secured its survival and success in the crowded world of the alpine pastures. For you must not forj^et that while to you and me the Alps are an unpeopled solitude, to the alpine plants they are a veritable London of competing life- types. The canny plant lays its plans deep, too, and begins well beforehand. It has made prepara- tions. All the previous summer it has been spreading its round leaves to the mountain sun, and laying by material for next year's flowering season. Leaves, you know, are the mouths and stomachs of plants ; and the soldanella has a type of leaves admirably adapted to its peculiar pur- pose : expanded in the sunlight, they eat carbon and hydrogen the live-long summer, and turn the combined oxygen loose upon the air under the influence of the sun. By the time winter comes, they are thick and leathery, filled with fuel for the spring, and, of course, evergreen. They have also long stalks, which enable them during the summer to stretch up to the light ; but in autumn they descend and flatten themselves against the soil, so as not to be crushed by the snows of winter. The first of my illustrations (No. i) shows a group of these fat leaves, seen from above, and fiattened against the ground in ex- pectation of the snow-sheet. The material laid by in the thickened leaves consists of starches, protoplasm, and other rich foodstuffs. The snow falls, and the leaves, pro- tected by their hard and leathery covering, re- A Plant that Mklts Ice 33 inain imluirt by it. The food and fuel they have <4atliered is stored partly in the tohai^e and partly ill the swollen underi^round loot-stock. All winter through, the plant is thus hidden under a compact blanket of snow, which becomes gradually hard and ice-like by pressure. But as soon as the spring sun begins to melt the surface at the lower NO. I.— l.EAVKS OF SOI.nANF.l.l.A IN AUTUMN, FAT \VI IH FIKI . SKKN FROM AHOVK. edge of the sheet, water trickles down tlirough cracks in the ice, and sets the root-stock budding. It produces, in fact, the very same effect as the water which we pour upon malting barley in order to make it germinate. And the same result follows, though here more definitely, for the sol- C 34 Flashlights ox Natirk ir 0^ daiiflla has collected its material deliberately as fuel, and uses it up (M1 purpose to melt its passaj^e. It absorbs oxyj^en from the air below the snow, combines it with the fuels in its own substance, evolves heat from their combination, and bej^ins to send up its jiodding Hower-buds throu^^h the icy sheet that spreads above it. The warmth the plant obtains by this curious process of slow internal combus- tion it fust em- ^ ploys to melt a little round hole in the ice for its arched flower- buds (No. 2). At the beginning, the hollow which is formed above each pair of buds is hemispherical or dome-shaped ; the stem pushes its way up through a dome of air enclosed in the ice ; and the water it liberates trickles down to the root, thus helping to supply moisture for further growth with its consequent heating. But by-and- by the stem lengthens, and the bud is raised to a considerable height by its continuous growth. NO. 2. — lU'I) BEdlNNINC. I O MKI 1' US WAY I'l' THROrc.H 1( K IN A DOMi:- SHAl'Kl) HOLLOW. A Plant that Melts Ice 35 Still, so siij^ht is the total quantity o{ heat the poor little plant can evolve with all its efforts, that by the time the stem is an inch or two lon^, the lower part of the tunnel has curiously frozen over a^ain, by the process which Tyndall called " rej^elation," and whose impor- tance in glacier action he so fully demonstrated. Inthisstage,then, the melted space is no longer a dome ; it assumes the form of a little balloon or round bubble of air, surrounding the flower -bud. At the same time, the ice beneath, having frozen again, almost touches the stem, so that the bud seems to occupy a small, clear area of its own in the midst of the slieet, with ice above, below, and all around it (No. 3). You would say that growth under such circum- stances, in almost icy-cold air, was impossible — but if you examine the ice-sheet at the edge of the neve, you will tind it studded by hundreds of such NO. 3,— BUD, SOMKUIIAI I.AIKR, F.N- CI.OSKI) IN A GI.OllK (tF AIR WITHIN THK ICK-SHEET. 36 Flashlights on Nature bubbles, eiich ciiclosin;^ :in iiiiiiijured soklanelhi bud in its centre. The reason is tliat the lieat from the flower keeps the enclosed air just above freezin<^-point ; and so lon. ; and as she was obliged to spin it all out of her own body, this came verv expensive. We noticed, however, that she was economically minded, for she wasted no web ; I think she ate up all loose ends or renniants : and the central portion, where she occasionally reposed on the look-out for prey, was free from the viscid beads which elsewhere adorned the cross-pieces. You see, this part of the structure was of com- paratively small service as a snare, while the sticky stuff wt)idd have interfered with her own freedom of movement. She usually avoided the beaded spiral, and onlv ran alonij the stouter spokes or cables. Hut the most wonderful scene of all was wit- nessed when Rosalind found in her net a lar]L*e wasp or a blow-tlv. On such occasions, she was <^eneially restint^ in her nest under the rose-leaf, with one foot held iirndy on the cord of communi- cation. If a li.^ht pull oidy came, she would rush wddly forth, and seize in a frenzy the small tly tliat caused it. She seemed as if drunk with lust of carnajfc. But when the strength of the pull showed her that a larj^e bee or wasp was stru}4<^lin^ in the web, she would act in various ways according to the needs (\\-IIA, AMI !• N\ Kl til'lNi; IIIM IN -ill K IKoM IIKK Nl'INNKKKTS. 64 Flashlights o\ XATruM-: she can, so as to prevent his furious struj^^lcs from unnecessarily destroyinj^ her precious weli ; tlien she trundles and bundles him rapidly in a sort of treadmill or merry-j^o-round, with her front pair of le<^s ; holds on to the web and steadies iier- self with her two middle pairs ; and uses her hind pair, with her comb-like claws, to distribute the silk which she winds in coils about his winj^s and bo:ly. Vou can see now how useful are her eij4iit le^s to her. Each fulfils its own function. In about a minute she has twirled him round and round, and swaddled him hrmly in a strong silken coverini'ii)|;r ciiANtaNi; ns sen t>i- ( i.oiUKs. 66 Flashlights o\ NATrRE I niivc left to liic last the delicate tpiestion :)l the (lomestic relations oi spiders, which are cei- taiiily not of a sort to be comnieiuled lor imitation. The lady spider, indeed, too closely resembles the late Mr. Deeming and the natives of Fiji in her unsatisfactory notions of conjuj^al alfection. I rcj^iet to say it is her reprehensible habit to devour alive her unsuccessful suitors, and sometimes also tlie father of her own childi en. These are unami- able traits, but 1 must not conceal them. Vou will observe, no doubt, that throui^hout 1 have said comparatively little of the masculine spider, and much of his lady ; and I have done this of set purpose ; for spideis are a ^roup in which the dominance of the females is marked and undeni- able. The mati iarchate prevails ; the females are the race, and the males exist only as lazy drones, mere idle fathers of future j^enerations. This beinj^ so, the mother spider, true to her thrifty ideas, rej^ards them in the li^ht of necessary evils ; and bein^ always economical, she thinks it well to utilise them for the purposes of the lace by eatinij them up the moment they have fulldled their sole and siuL^le marital function. This peculiar habit makes the courtship of spiders a be hungry or else to be disappointed, or in an ill-humour, she may NO. 9.— KOSAI IM> WAICMINO MKR TWO SIMIORv IN mil III W 111:1 IM'.K 10 A< ( l.l'i OK DKVolK I IIKM. 68 Flashlights on NAxrKK dart out upon tlicin at once and make a meal oti- Iiaiid ol lur devoted admirer. Kveii the successful suitor liimselt is by no means safe ; foi" it is Rosalind's way, when she tires of a lover, not to naj^ and quarrel, hut to devour him outright, and lo(jk out (ov anotlier. This saves time and trouMe, and is better in the end for tlie temper of tlie species. When autumn comes, Rosalind lays her ej^j^s in a cocoon, and fastens them on the under side of a stone or piece of wood, where they liatch out in sprinj^, and so the whole story of lier life bej^ins over aj4ain. She herself, meanwhile, retires to winter quarters, where she passes the cold months mider shelter in a state of more or less torpidity. It is not known exactly how lon^ a spider lives ; but they continue for at least two or thiee years, and probably nmch lonj^er. We had Rosalind muler examination for two successive summers. The family to which Rosalind belongs, that of the geometrical spiders, may be placed at the very head of the whole spider order. Its webs are the most perfect in architecture, are the best planned as snares, and have a strict monopoly of tlie sticky beads, which iielp to entangle the prey, and which are also, under the micrt)Scope, most beautiful objects, decked in prismatic colours, and lookin<4 like so many iridescent opals. In shape and mark- inj^s these spiders are als(j superior to the common run of ei.i*ht-lejL*s4ed beasts, thouifh they are certaiidy less beautiful than some of the lovely u would hardly suspect him at fust si^ht of the hi^h crimes and nus- ilenieanours of which I adunt him to be really guilty. Still, v pinky-white beU)W, and h.is dashes of blue, of grey, of pure white, and oi black scattered about in various parts of his plumage. A bright black bill and a dark ha/.el eye add beauty to his sharp and vigorous countenance. Alertness, indeed, is the keynote of his character. . As in most domin;mt races, his lady differs NO. I. IIIK miTillhk HIRI>. A Woodland Tra(ikdy 75 imicli from him. Slic is duller and darker, and lacks the occasional white patches that adorn her lord. But she shares his j^eneral air of keen life and his rapidity of movement, being in every respect a helpmeet for him. Mr. Knock has represented iier in No. 2 in a characteristic attitude, perched on a small twig N<1. 2. — THK HircilKR-IURIi S WMK of hawthorn, and ready to pounce down upon a luckless tly, whose movements she is watching with interested attention. 1 say hawthoi n on purpose, for the peculiarity of the butcher-hird is that in Kngland or abroad It haunts f(H- the mo-.t pait thorn-bearing bushes. With us, it is but a sununer migrant, occurring 76 Klasmlkihts on Natuuk pretty frequently in the soiitliein counties ; but its winter home is on the Upper Nile and in Kast and South Africa, wliere it can hnd in abundance the thorny shrubs of the desert ranj^es, which NO. 3. I'Akl OK IMK HI' ICIIKR-BIRI) S I.ARDKR. stand it in j^ood stead as pej^s or hooks on whicli to l>ase its larder. In Kns4iand, it usually selects a iiawthorn for its scene of operations. No. 3 shows far Inttir than I can describe it A Woodland Tkacikdy "j-j tlu- nature of tlicsc food-stores, wlitit' tlu' butchci- bird lavs by meat for hinist-lf, liis mate, and his imtledj^ed yoim<4. '''<-' larder is aKvavs sitnated in tlie neij^libomhood of tlie nest, and tlie male bird hunts for thes, bees, and other insects, wliile tlie female sits on the es^j^s hard by. He eats a few at once, to allay his lumj^er, spittinj^ them iiist as a means of holdinj^ them ; but the j^reater luunber he preserves alive upt)n the cruel thorns for the use of his mate and his callow nestlinj^s. " A^'s phrs iie fatiiillc," said Talleyrand, ''soul cop- ablcs de Um*." And we may well exclaim, "Oh, parental alfection, what crimes are perpetrated in thv name I " The particular portion of the larder which Mr. Knock has selected for representation con- tains a Inunble-bee, two larj^e Hies, and a nestlinj^ hedj^e-sparrow, stolen from its mother ; for the butcher-bird does not wholly conline himself to a diet of insects ; he is cannibal enonj^h to catch and eat other birds, not to mention mice and such small mammals. So lierce and savage is he wlun on the hunt after provender, that he will even spear and impale larj^er birds than himself, such as blackbirds and thrushes. Xot content with han^inj^ them on the thorns alive, he will fasten down their le^s and wins^s bv an ingenious cross arrangement of twij^s and branche^, so as to pre- vent them from escapins^ ; f<-i- he does not so nnicli desire to kill his prey, as to keep it alive till he is ready to eat it or to distribute it to his familv. He knows that dead birds soon decav ; and he 78 Flash MonTs on Nature doesn't like his j^iiine hij^li : hut he also knows that wouiuled hirds will livo on and keep quite fresh for days toj^ether ; so he is eareful to dis- ahle without actually killiuj; the creatures he captures. Anion}^ the animals I have seen in hutcher- birds' larders 1 may mention mice, shrews, lizards, robins, tomtits, and sparrows ; amonj^ the smaller birds lie especially alTects willow- wrens and chiff- chatfs : but keejiers tell me that they have even found them sei/in<4 and spittini^ younj^ partridj^es and pheasants. Whether this is true or not 1 can- \\o{ say ; but the ^^ame-preservinj^ interest certaiidy looks upon shrikes with no friendlv eye, and you may sometimes see one hun;^ up on a nail amonj^ the jays and hawks and stoats and weasels on the *' keeper's trees," where the guardians of the wood display tlu- corpses or skins of evil-doers as a tenoi" to their like, nuich as mediieval kin^s displayed the heads of traitors above the j^ates of the city. Oddly enough, however, these "keeper's trees" themselves are favourite haunts and hawkin^-pitches of the butcher-bird, who is so little deterred by the supposed lesson that he uses them as convenient places for catchinj^ insects. For, in spite of his occasional carnivorous tastes, vour shrike is at heart, and in essence, an insect-eater. He adds a mouse or a tit as an exceptional luxury. Now, he knows that the owls and stoats hun}4 up on the keeper's rustic museum attract numbers of carrion flies, and he therefore perches cahnly on the A Wooni.AND Traoedy 79 b()ii}»hs above tlie moiildcriiij^ rcinuins of liis own Nlaiij^literccl brother to await tlie insects that come to devour Iiini. Then lie darts upon them witli somethinj^ of the fly -catcher's eaj'erness, eatinj^ them up at once, or llyini; otf with them ahve to im- pale in his store- house. In No. 4 we see the female butcher-bird, on her return from a successful chase after prey of j^reater import- ance. She has cau^^ht a liarvest- mouse, the tini- est and prettiest of our Knj4- lish mammals, and thouj^h with- out a license to hani^ j^ame, has threaded it throuj^h the neck on a branch of hawthorn, as a preliminary to eating it. 'I'hi^ enables her to NO. 4. I IlK lU' KlIKR HIRPS WIKK INM'AIINi; A IIAk\ I >l-\ltU-,K. 8o Flasmlkjuts on Natikk hold it coiivciiic'iitlv a^ on a fork or sktwi'i while sJH* pi'cks at it. SoiiR'timt'^ yoii will liiid thr mice fastened through the Itodv, and j^nawini^ tin- twi;^ with tlieir teeth in their prolonj^ed a^ony. Hut the butcher-bird takes no notice of their writhinj^s and tlieir groans : siie treats them with the in- difference of a lishmonj^er to lobsters. It is her business to piovide for hei* own younj^, and she does it as ruthlessly as if she were a civilised liuman beinj^. The shrike's ordinary method of capturing prev closely resendiles that of the ilv-catcher, to which, iiowever, it is not reallv related. The resi'inblance is increly one of those due to similarity of habit. Kvery well-conducted butcher-biid has a settled perch or pitch on which he sits to watch and wait, and to which he returns after each short excursion. Flies and bees he catches on tlu- wini^, ilartini» down upon them suddenly with a swoop like a kin^lisher's ; but \w also often takes them sitting, especially when they are settled on a leaf or branch, or are eatim^ carrion. One of his most favourite hunt in;^- boxes is a telegraph wire, and he prefers one that crosses the cornel of a wood ; there he will sit with his head held sapientlv on one side, keeping a sharp look-out from his beady brown eyes in every direction. If a bee lij^hts on a head of clover, if a cockchafer stirs, if a mouse m(»ves in the ^rass, if a lledi^eliu}^ thrush makes a tirst unj^uarded uUempt to tly — woe beticU- the poor innocent ; our butcher-bird is upon him, with a tierce darlinj^ beak, and in ten seconds more, his A Woodland Tkaokdy Si writhing Ixxly adds (<» tin.- ^toic in llic shrikes lardiT. A '^iuhI placi' and tiiiu- to w.itili a hutclu'r-bird at work is in a ciuict Ik-Id by a copse just alti-r the inowiu}^. Hut you luust hide carefully. The short l^rass is then tull ot beetles, ci ickets, aud j^rass- hoppeiN, as well a^ ot uu\:c, shrews, aud li/ards, who cau conceal themselves less easily than they were wont to do in the Ion<^ hay before the cuttin;^. At such times, hawks and owls make a luie liveli- liood in the lieliN ; but their habit is to hunt their ijuany on tlu- open. They hover and drop upon it. 'Chat is not the butchei -bird's plan ; he is a mole cautious and secret foe ; he sits casually on hi>. branch or his telej^raph wire, with his head on one side, till his prey stirs visibly ; then he pounces on him from above, makinj4 a short excursion eacii tuni-, and returmn^ to rest on his accustomed position. When he catches a bird, and eats it at »)nce, he begins by spittm^ it on a thorn : then he attacks tlu' skull lir-^t, breakinj^ it throu^^h and eatin^f the brain, which is his favoui ite tit-bit. He also maki's i aids on the nests of othei birds, aud carries olf the nestlings. if you open the crop of a butclu-r-bird, the con- tents will show you that, in KiiLjland at least, its main articles of diet consist of bees and tlies, hui especially of beetles. it is full of their hard win)4- cases. Now, ornithologists liavi" loni^ noticed that the distribution of butcher-birds in the land is very capricious ; in one district they will be fairly numerous (thouj^h, at best, they are raie birds), F 82 Flashlights on Nature and ill another, close l"»y, tliey will be very un- connnon or cjuite unknown. It is probable that this relative tietjnency or scarcity depends upon the distribution ol' their proper food-insects. In- deed, just as we all know that an " army fights upon its stomach," so we are bej^inninj^ to know now that commissariat lies at the bottom of most problems of animal life. I used to wonder on the Riviera why trap-door spiders, with their lon^ tubular lusts, were abundant in certain deep red clay-banks, but wholly wanting in others, just as sunny, just as soft, just as easy to tumiel ; till (jue day it struck me that the spiderless banks were ex- posed now and then to the cold wind, the niistro/, and hence were naturally almost tlyless. As a matter of C{)mse, the spiders went where the flies were to be fouiul ; and these open banks, thouj^h suimy and warm, were from the spider's point of view mere Klondykes or Saharas. It is just the same with the butcher-birds. Beetles and bees freipient for the most part warm, crumbling soils ; they are infrequent on damp clays and chilly, marshy places. Sandstone and chalk attract them ; on London cla\ or the damp Hats of the Weald they are few and far be- tween. Hence, where the beetles are, there will the shrikes be j^athered to^^ether. They abound (comparatively) in warm sandstone hills, but are almost unknown in chilly clay districts. Not that they mind the colcl as such ; it is the question of food that really affects them. So, too, with the swallows and othei lon^-winj^ed insect-hawkers. A Woodland Tragedy 83 The swift flics very hij^li, and lives on smniner insects, which come out in July and Auj^ust only ; so he arrives here late, and j^oes away a^ain some- times as early as the date of j^rouse-shootin^. The iiouse-martin, on the other hand, subsists on low- flyinj; midges which surround houses; he therefore comes tust of all his j^roup, and }4i)es away latest. The ni^ht-jar Hits over fern-clad or heather-clad moors, and feeds almost entirely on certain nij^ht- flyinj4 beetles and moths ; hence he arrives when they hatch out from the cocoon, and flaps south- ward as^ain on his big, overlajtping wings as soon as they have disappeared or been mostly eaten, it is all a question of commissariat. Our early Knglish kings had manors of their own in manv parts of the country, in all of which supplies were laid up throughout the year for the royal table ; ni due time, the king arrived with all his court, stoppetl a month or six weeks, ate up all that was provided for him, and then rode on with his hungry horde to the next royal manor. It is just the same with the birds ; they come and go as supplies are assured them. The shrike stops in Kngland while bees and beetles last ; when pro- vender fails, he is off on his own strong wings to Rhodesia. Xo. 5 introduces us to another strange scetie in the eternal epic of prey and slaughter. It shows us how beetle proposes, but shrike ili>poses. Here, jxirental feeling wars against parental feeling. A busy group of burying-beetles have lighted upon a dead lield-aunise — itself hawked at, perhaps, 84 Flashlights ox Nature and wounded by "a niousinj^ owl," but not quite killed at the time, and now abandoned on tlie open. The buryinj^-beetles, all a^o^, proceed to cover it with a layer of earth — not, indeed, out of such instinctive piety as that which induced NO. 5.— lUIRYINC-HKKIII'S AM) KI KID- NKM'SK. I'ROI'OSKS, HU r SIIRIKK DISIOSKS. BEETLE the robin-redbreast and the wren in the story to cover the Babes in the Wood with mouldering leaves, but for a much more prosaic and practical, though none the less praiseworthy, motive. They want to lay their eggs in it, so that the maggots may have, plenty to eat when they hatch out — for A Woodland Trac.kdy 85 these burying-beetles are carrioii-feedcrs, \vh(ise larvae thrive on dead aiul decayiiij^ animals ; and they desire to bury the corpse in order to keep it intact for their own brood, without interference on the part of other and more powerful carrion- eaters. When successful, they cover the mouse entirely with mould, and thus leave their youn<^ supplied with a liberal diet. But hidden amonj^ the greenery of a tree over- head, a cynical butcher-bird is calmly watching those insect sextons from the corner of his eye. As soon as enouj^h of them have collected on the spot, he will swoop down upon their bodies unseen from above, and will carry them off to spike them on his own pet thorns for the benefit of his struggling young family. Thus does parental affection war imconsciously against parental affec- tion. Each kind fights only for its own hand, and regards only the young of its own species. For as Tennyson says well in " Maud " : — " Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal ; Tlie Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow speared by the shiike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey." No. 6 shows us one member of the butcher- bird's young family, just hatclied and fledged, in his streaky grey plumage, and beginning to go out upon the world for himself. He is trying to catch an insect on a thorn above him. It also suggests to us the appropriate moral that if 86 P'LASH LIGHTS ON NATURE you train up a butcher-bird in the way he should go, wlieii he is old he will not depart from it. Lessons of cruelty are here imbibed — I cannot NO. 6.— THE NAUGHTY BUTCHER-BIRD—"! WANT THAT FI.Y !" truthfully say, " with his mother's milk," but at least from his father's and mother's example. While the mother-bird sits upon her nest (as you see her in No. 7), the little chicks are fed A Woodland Tkagkdy «7 " by hand," so to speak, with captured insects. But as soon as they can Hy a little, they come out and perch upon the twigs of the larder, that NO. 7.— THE m'rciIKR-lURD's WIKK SITIINv; ON IIKR NEST. they may learn fly-catching by helping themselves to insects spitted on the thorns, where parental affection, however misguided, has placed them for that purpose. Thus they imbibe a taste for 88 Flasiilkhits on Nature living food from tlicir earliest nioni'jnts. As Prior lon^ aj^o put it : — " Was ever Tartar fierce and cruel Upon the stron.LjtIi of \vater-},'riiel ? Ikit how restrain his raj,'e and force When first lie kills, then eats, his horse ?'' What the hiitelier-hird requires in his phice of residence, then, is, above all things, easy access to warm sandstone or limestone tracts, with plenty of insects, lizards, mice, and small birds ; he also needs an open common to htnit over, bushes and trees on which to perch at watch, and clumps of thorn-bearing shrubs to provide him with a larder. There he builds his rude nest, one of the roughest and most inartistic I know ; and there the mother brings up her yoimg in her own wicked fashion. But though a rather shy bird, the shrike does not wholly fear or slum civilisation ; for the rich insect popidation of our garden often attracts the wicked pair ; and in July and August, when flies are rife among the fruit-trees, they will bring their young brood into the currant and gooseberry beds, and teach the young idea how to shoot in the manner proper to so carnivorous a species. As a matter of evolution, the shrike's position is a very interesting one. For he is not exactly a bird of prey — certainly he does not belong to the hawk and eagle order. His near relations are all mere insect-eating birds ; but he has gone a little beyond them in his carnivorous habits, by adding mice, birds, and lizards to his diet. His A Woodland Tragedy 89 qreat discovery, howevcM-, is his cruel device of usin^ thorns for his hirder ; this ingenious but hnteful invention it is whicii has secured him a place in the struggle for existence. It is curious to note, too, how the habit has reacted on the bird's structure and appearance. He has acquired the quick eye and nervous alertness of a bird of prey, and has even grown like that higher group to some small extent in his beak and talons. He is a wonderfullv plucky little lighter, too, both against his own kind and against other species. Have you ever reflected how wonderfully varied and eventful is the life of such a migratory bird as this cruel butcher ? We human beings, who can only travel south in one of the crawling expresses misnamed Irains-de-liixcy have little con- ception of the freedom and variety which every mere shrike can claim as its birthright. Let us follow one out briefly through its marvellous life- cycle. It is hatched from a creamy -coloured and dappled egg in a nest in England. From four to six brothers or sisters occupy the home, and, indeed, to be strictly accurate, more than fill it. Everybody knows the old conundrum, " Why do birds in their little nests agree ? " with its quaintly sensible answer, " Because, if they didn't, they would fall out." Well, with the butcher-birds, that remark is literally accurate. The nest is a ragged and rickety structure, hardly big enough to hold the young as soon as they are fledged. It is built in the boughs of a thorn bush, and 90 Flashlights on NAxrHE near it stands the well-stocked parental larder. The young butcher-bird, as soon as he can fly, is taught to eat insects from the family hoard, and later on to pick them up for himself on the wing in the open. He is usually hatched about the beginning of June ; by the middle of July, his mamma and papa take him on the insect hunt into neighbouring gardens. In his early plumage, he takes after his mamma, but already shows some signs of the white tips and black markings which will distinguish him as a male bird in his adult existence. Once abroad in the world, he grows apace ; and this is necessary, because, about September, he will have to fly ofl" with his afi^ectionate parents on a long, forced journey to warmer winter quarters. Not, of course, that he minds the winter in itself ; but the flies and beetles are gone ; their sole representatives are now the eggs and chrysalids ; mice and lizards have retired into winter quarters ; no small birds are about in the unfledged condi- tion where one gets a fair chance with them ; and altogether there is nothing for it but to travel south and find more plentiful support in some warmer country. So southward the family flits, when partridge shooting begins, first over Channel to France, and then on to the Mediterranean. But food is scarce even in Provence and Italy during the winter months ; so our wise young shrike and his parents do not loiter about with the invalids and jlducurs at Cannes or Naples ; they strike right across sea. A Woodland Tkagkdy 91 vid Sicily and Tunis, to the Nile Valley. Thence, anticipatin^aiiist the common flower stem. This they do partly in order not to confuse and worry their allies the bees, but partly also to avoid certain other danj^ers to which I will recur later. Plants often try in such ways to save bees or butterflies time and trouble, be- cause the easier they make matters for the bee or butterfly, the more likely is he to visit and fertilise them. He is a useful customer whom they desire to conciliate. If a bee on his rounds finds that any particular species oi plant jjives him un- necessary trouble in j^ettinj4 at the honey, he is apt to neglect it and pass it by, in order to devote himself to other kinds which he sees are more business-like and obliging. The moment he comes to a head of Dutch clover, then NO. 7. — Dl'lCII Cl.cnKK, IIIK FER- Tiijsr.i) ri.owERs turned DOWN, HIE I'NIERTII.ISED COl'RTINC TlIK HKI.S. MAKKIAC.E AMONli TIIK Cl.OVKUS 109 lie knows at once tliat lie may safclv ii^iiorc tlie dry brown flowers tucked away against the stem, because they are already fertilised and honeyless ; he therefore directs all his attention to the mature and open flowers which are now producing honey and ready for fer- tilisation. These form practically, as you will see, at each moment the outer row of the flower- head, and are the ones which naturally lirst en- gage his notice as he alights on the cluster. No. 8 shows us the same head in a little later stage of advancement. Here, almost all the flowers have now been fertilised, and they are therefore turning their brown and faded florets downward against the stem. Two among them, which the bee has only just left, are caught in the very act of bending down, so as to get out of the way of any further visitor. The flowers in the centre, which are still erect, were not yet opened when the last bee paid NO. S. — Dncil CIOVKK, Willi ALMOST Al.l. IIIK ll.inVKkS I'KKI'II.ISKI), AM) TWO JlSr IIKMNi; DiiWN. I lO Flashlights on Nature a p:issin<; call on the coninuinity. They have unfolded their petals since, and are now standing up awaiting their turn to be visited by their winged ally, relieved of their honey, and duly fertilised. It sometimes takes four or live days for a single head to pass Ihrougli all its stages. In No. 9 we have a truly pathetic picture of a solitary old maid, perked up desolate and alone in the midst of her happier sisters. She was an unopened bud when some pass- ing honey - gatherer visited and set the seeds of her more for- tunate relations. The flower on her left, to be sure, has only just turned ; it was the last to receive attention from its winged allies. If you search a field of Dutch clover, you will find every here and there such a solitary old maid. But you must tiear in mind that none of this is true of the common purple clover, nor yet of the brilliant crimson kind (known to our farmers as " carna- NO. 9.— DUTCH CI.OVEK, A SOMl .\K\ ni.I) MAID. Marriage among the Clovers III tioii trifolium "), both of whicli ;ire distinct species with totally different maniaj^e customs. The in- }.feni()ns habit of turning tiie fertilised flowers downward out of the way of the insects is con- lined to a few species of white, pink, and yellow clovers. It is a little dodge on which they happen to have hit, but which has never oc- curred to their larj^er and more conspicuous red and purple cousins. So if you try to follow out these hints in nature, you must be careful to liunt for white kinds only. No. 10 shows us the last stage in the life- history of a head of Dutch clover. All the flowers have by this time been fertilised ; and each flower alike is now pressed down against the stem in a crumpled, brown, and withered- looking mass. The mere casual observer would say, "This clover is dead." But it is nothing of the kind: it is only shauuning. The main object of the flowering and fertilisation, NO. lo.— nrrcu fi.<)\KR, aii. rilK ll.iiWKRS II'.RI IIISKK, AM) MArrKINT, lUK Sl-KI). 112 Flashlights on Natfre after all, is the production of seed ; just ns among birds the main object of pairing and nesting is the laying of eggs and the hatching of their little ones. And this introduces us to a second consideration of great importance. Plants take care of their young. The seeds of clover are small, but they are rich in foodstuffs laid by for the use of the little plant at its start in life. Now, the parent flower is well aware that many insects love to lay their eggs and hatch out their grubs in pods of this character ; if you have ever shelled peas, you must have seen such grubs veryfrequently in the pea-pods. The maternal instinct of the mother makes her lay her eggs where food is abundant ; the maternal instinct of the mother-plant makes it do its best to protect its young against such devouring enemies. In No. 1 1 we see a flower of Dutch clover cut open lengthwise, so as to show the little pod within, very much magnihed, and with one valve opened. Tiny as these pods are, they usually contain two, three, or four seeds. Every kind of clover, owing to the richness of these seeds, is much exposed to the attacks of insect enemies. To baffle these wary foes the clovers have invented an extraordinary variety of protective devices, two of which 1 mean to examine in this essay. Dutch clover meets the difficulty by tucking down the flowers after fertilisation out of the way of the bee, and then retaining the withered corolla or set of petals which completely enclose and hide the pod in the centre. Indeed, such a head as you see in Marriage among the Clovers 113 No. 10, all composed of brown and withered flowers, looks externally as it it we* • quite dead ; but it you remove or cut ojxmi the sere and papery outer parts of the flower, you will iind within them a vigorous little j^reen pod, in which the minia- ture peas, after fertilisation, are maturing actively. In fact, the plant is only pretending to be dead ; yet so effectivi is the pre- tence, and so well does the papery covering guard each pod against the cgg- layirg insects, that 1 cyiniot remember evei" to have found a aingle grub in the seeds of clover. This may seem to / you a small matter to guard against ; but if you open the seed-capsules of the conunon little mouse - ear chick- weed, which has no sucli protection, yri('ll ( I.OVKK, ONK liKV ll.(nVKR (11 Ol'KN 10 SHOW lUK I'l.n AM) ^i.i.Ds kii'KMm;. 114 Flasiiligfits on Nature which euiiblc thcni to miard their embryo young from the assauUs of insects. Every species of clover — and there are many — has some dodj^e of its own for thus protecting its ., and tlic general appearance of a ^rub or caterpillar. To this very ancient and somewhat shadowy ancestor the larvx' of tiie hij^lier insects still more or less revert in their earlier stages ; and we may believe that many insects so reverted durinj^ many generations. But in process of time the primitive " " J '■:' "'. J- -> *■" -^i:' *K- -'^-„' • "^^^WJPhS**^^ •a z^'^^^^ .^^:»^: *? I. J^iJ:''! > W< if)» ^•^.r^^«^-*^ '^ .4^ '•^^^^^«>. ,^'^^^f^'' *»i#i^ ^ ^rt-' ■ NO. l8. — TIIK MorilKR EAKWIC. AM) lll.R Uk(VTI) OF ClIlfKS. type developed into a win<4less, six-lej^j^ed form, like that in Xo. 19 — a form which you can see at once marks a comparatively ^reat advance upon the old, worm-like proi^enitor. This animal, you can note, has six good legs to run about with, and is already provided with a well-marked head, and with the three body-rings and the long tail or abdomen so characteristic to the last of all higher insects. Its segments have been specialised. P'rom 144 Flashlights on Nature such a type, it is probable the earwigs and their allies were developed by natural selection. But to this day every earwig begins life in a shape which closely resembles that of his first six-legged ancestor, and only gradually acquires his wings and other distinctively earwig-like features. If you wonder how an animal so small as an earwig can do all the damage it undoubtedly does in gardens, a glance at No. 20 will explain the mystery. You will see from this sketch that the mouth-organs of the little beast are admirably adapted for de- stroying the petals of your choicest fiowers. Nature has provided the earwig with a beautiful series of instruments for cutting holes in leaves and fruits. The figure in No. 20 is the lower part of the mouth, and is covered when at rest by A/terSirjoiin Lubbock, the uppcr part, wliich is here placed below it. M are the mandibles or cutting jaws ; they are formidable implements employed to saw holes in leaves, petals, or seed-capsules ; while C is the clypetis or shield — in other words, the upper lip, which acts as a patent protector for the whole deli- cate apparatus. AS are the antenn<'e sockets, the feelers themselves having been removed for NO. 19— CAMPODKA, A PRIMiriVK WlNGl.KSS INSECT. Those Horrid Earwigs 145 the purposes of this sketch. The other parts of the meclianisin, 1 regret to say, can only be de- scribed in painfully technical languaj^e ; but as I am generally sparing in my use of technicalities, NO. 20.— IHt KARWKiS MOU I H, IHSSKCTFD. I trust I may be forgiven this solitary slip on the ground of previous good conduct. L is the labium or lower lip, which closes the mouth from below when it is not in action. LP are the labial palpi, K 146 Flashlights on Nature used in in;mipiil;itiiij4 tin.' morsel as it is heiiij* eaten. MX are the iiinxi./tr, or true jaws, employed in masticating^ the food, and answeriui* in their functions pretty closely to the teeth of higher animals. Last of all, M/* are the maxillary palpi, chiefly used like a pair of forks in holding the food, and, perhaps, also in deciding whetiier it is lit for eating. From this brief description, it will be immediately oln'ious to vou that feeding with the earwig is a solenui and very complicate I process. it is carried on by a number of distinct organs and implements, the exact purposes of each of which are only known at full to the iusecl which uses them. I should add that the antennie or feelers (not included in this last sketch, but conspicuous in all the preyious illustrations) are in all likelihood sense-organs, wb.ose precise nature has neyjr been altogether established. Some naturalists belieye that they are used as organs of smell ; others that th-y are combined organs of touch and guidance ; yet others, that they are the seat of a " sixth sense " unknown to humanity. However this may be, it is at least certain that they are useful as a means of communication between the insect himself and his mate, his young, his friends, and his acquaintances. Earwigs clearly feel their way, to a great extent, by the aid of the antenn:e, and also recognise through them tlieir visitors and family. They use them, too, in caressing or fondling their mates and their children. It is known that the antenn:e are pro- vided with numerous nerve-terminals, as is always Thosp: Hokrid Earwkis 147 the c:ise witli orj^ans ol tlic senses ; and I believe myself that, by their means, all insects of the same species are able to communicate mo^e or less with one anotiier by established signals. Perhaps tiie antenna; emit peculiar perfumes, which are recoj^- nised in turn by those of the friend or mate ; per- haps it is by touches and strokes that the insects transmit their ideas to one another. But that tliey do transmit ideas, nobody who has watciied them closely ever doubts for a moment, and many naturalists even use the word " talking " of the parleys which ants and other insects carry on with their feelers. It may be tiiouj^ht that an earwij^'s life, like a policeman's, " is not a happy one." This I hold to be an errcjr. The earwig loves damp and dark- ness, it is true, but lie Ihes at nij^ht in the beautiful twilight or by the soft rays of the moon, while his days are solaced by the companionship of his mate and his chosen ct)mrades, for they are j^rej^arious creatures. The mother tends her y()un<4 with the assiduity of a hen sitting on her chickens, and food being abundant and cheap, life runs, as a rule, fairly smoothly with the earwig. VII THE FIRST PAPIZR- MAKER THE civilised world could liardly ^et on nowadays witliout paper ; yet paper- making is, humanly speakini^, a very recent invention. It dates, at furthest, back to the ancient Ej^yptians. " Humanly speakin<4," I say, not without a set purpose ; because man was anticipated as a paper-maker by many millions of years ; long before a human foot trod the earth, there is reason to sujipose that ancestral wasps were manufacturing paper, almost as they manu- facture it for their nests to-day, among the sub- tropical vegetation of an older and warmer Europe. And the wasp is so clever and so many-sided a creature, that to consider him (or more accurately her) in every aspect of life within the space of a few pages would be practically impossible. So it is mainly as a paper-manufacturer and a consumer of paper that I propose to regard our slim-waisted friend in this chapter. It is usual in human language to admit, as the Latin Grammar ungallantly puts it, that " the mas- culine is worthier than the feminine, the feminine than the neuter." Among wasps, however, the TnK First Papkh-Makek 149 opposite principle is so clearly true — the queen or female is so much more important a person in the complex community, and so much more in evi- dence than the drone or male — that I shall offer no apology here for setting her history before ycni first, and giving it precedence over that of her vastly inferior husband. Place aux davics is in this instance no question of mere external chivalrous courtesy ; it expresses the simple truth of nature, that, in wasp life, the grey mare is the better horse, and bears acknowledged rule in her own city household. Not only so, but painful as it may sound to my men readers, and insulting to our boasted masculine superiority, the neuter in this case ranks second to the feminine ; for the worker wasps, which are practically sexless, being abortive females, are far more valuable members of the community than tlieir almost useless fathers and brothers. 1 call them neuter, because they are so to all intents and purposes : though for some unknown reason that seemingly harmless word acts upon most entomologists like a red rag on the proverbial bull. They will allow you to describe the abortive female as a worker only. In No. I, therefore, I give an illustration of a queen wasp ; together with figures of her husband and of her unmarriageable daughter. The queen or mother wasp is much tiie largest of the three ; and you will understand that she needs to be so, when you come to learn how nuich she has to do, how many eggs she has to lay ; and how, unaided, this brave foundress of a family not only builds a city I50 Flasmlkihts on Nati kk and peoples it with thousands of citizens, hut also feeds and tends it with her own overworked mouth — I cannot lionestly say her hands till her maiden Mak Qii ill. IVorkcr. NO. I. — KAMI I Y I-OKIRAIIS OK THK W A'.rs daughters are of a^e to help her. Women's-rij^lits women may he proud of the example thus set them. Nature nowhere presents us, indeed, with a liner specimen of feminine in- dustry and maternal devo- tion to duty tiian in the case of these courageous and puLinacious insects. / irKBii \ '^^^'^ ' ^^''' '^^'^ '^^^^^ *"''^' ■^ I^ *-■ li* % larjie upon the features of these three faithful por- traits, " expressed after the life," as Elizabethan writers put it, because as we pro- ceed I shall have to call attention in <^reater detail to the meaning of the various parts of the body. It must suffice for the moment to direct your notice here to that very familiar portion of the wasp's anatomy, the sting, or ovipositor, possessed by the females, both per- TiiK FikST Pai'KK-Makkk 151 feet and imperfect — queens or workers — but not by those defenceless creatures, the males. Tlie nature of tlie stin^ (so far as it is not already well known to most of us by pungent experience) I will enter into later ; it must suffice for the pre- sent to say that it is in essence an instrument for depositing the ei4}4s, and that it is oidy incidentally turned into a weapon of offence or defence, and a means of stunning or paralysing the prey or food-insects. The first tiling to understand about a conununity of wasps i>. the way it originates. The story is a strange one. When the lirst frosts ^ct in, almost all the wasps in temperate countries die olf to a worker from the etfects of cold. The chill winds nip them. Kor a few days in autuum you may often notice the last stia^j^liu^ suryiyors crawling feebly about, yery uncomfortable and nund") from the cold, and with their temper some- what soured by the consciousness of their own e.\ceedin_ it is completed. Hut a mother's work is neyer finished ; and surely tliere k8 Flashlights on Xatfre was never u mother so hardly tasked as tlie royal wasp foundress. By the time she has built and stoeked a tew more cells, the three ej^^s tirst laid have duly hatched out, and now she must begin to look after the little grubs or larvre. I have not illustrated this earliest titage of wasp-life, the . ^ , — ■■■■■^- ■ If — / ifl:.,;^;,." -*>>^- NO. 4.— TllK CIIV, 111 IKKN OAYsi OI.l). grubby or nursery period, because everybody knows it well in real life. Now, as the grubs hatch out, they require to be fed, and the poor, overworked mother has hencefortii not only to find food for herself, and paper to build more cells, but also to feed her helpless, worm-like Thk First Pai'kk-Maker 159 otfspriiij^. Tlicif tlit'V lie in tlair cradles, head dowiuvard, crviiij^ always for prowiuU-r, like the daughters ot the horse-leech. Korj^ive lier, there- fore, if hei" tempei' is sometimes shoit, and if she resents intnisioii upon the strawbei ry she is cart- ing away to feed her yonnj^ family by a hasty stin^, administered, perhaps, with rather n)ore asperity than a lady sliould display under tryinj^ circumstances. Some of my readers are mothers themselyes, and can feel for her. Xor is even this all. The j^rubs of wasps ifrow fast — in itself a testimonial to the constant '.are wtth which a deyoted mother feeds and tends them : and eyen as they j^row the poor queen (a tpieen but in name, and more like a maid-of-all-work in reality) has C(jntinually to raise the cell-wall around them. What lo(jked at first like shallow cups, thus ^row at last into deep, hollow cells, the walls beiuj^ raised from time to time by the addition of papery matter, with the growth of the inmates. In this first or foundation-comb — the nucleus and orij^inal ayemie of the nascent city — the walls are neyer carried hij^her than the height of the larya that inhabits them. As the j^rub j^rows, the mother adds daily a course or layer of paper, till the larya reaches its final size, a fat, full ;4rub, ready to underj^o its maryellous metamorphosis. Then at last it bej^ins to do some work on its own accomit : it spins a silky, or cottcMiy, web, with which it coyers oyer the mouth or openinj^ of the cell ; though eyen here you must reuRMuber it deriyes the material from its own body, antl therefore i6o Flashliohts on NATrRE iiltiniiitcly fioiii food supplied it l>y tiic mother, [low one wiisp can ever do so niiich in so sliort a time is a marvel to all who have once watched the process. While the baby wasps remain swaddled in their cradle cells, their food consists in part of honey, which the careful mother distributes to them im- partially, turn about, and in part of succulent fruits, such as the pulp of pears or peaches. The honey our housekeeper either gathers for herself or else steals from bees, for truth compels me to admit that she is as dishopicst as she is industrious ; but on the whole, she collects more than she robs, for many flowers lay themselves out especially for wasps, and are adapted only for fertilisation by these special visitants. Such specialised wasp- flowers have usually small helmet-shaped blossoms, exactly lilted to the head of the wasp, as you see it in Mr. Knock's illustrations ; and they are for the most part somewhat livid and dead - meaty in hue. Common scrophularia, or fig-wort, is a good example of a plant that thus lays itself out to encourage the visits of wasps ; it has small lurid-red flowers, just the shape and size of the wasp's head, and its stamens and style are so arranged that when the wasp rifles the honey at the base of the helmet, she cannot fail to brush ofif the pollen from one blossom on to the sensitive surface of the next. Moreover, the scrophularia comes into bloom at the exact time of year when the baby wasps require its honey ; and you can never watch a scrophularia plant for three Thk First Pai hr-Makkr i6i minutes toi^ctlicr witliout sccinj^ ;it least two or tliree wasps busily en^aj^ed in j4athcriii<^ its nectar. Herb and insect have learned to accommodate one another ; by mutual adaptation they liave fitted each part of each to each in the most marvellous detail. it is a peculiarity of the wasps, however, that they are fairly omnivorous. Most of their cousins, like the bees, have mouths adapted tf) honey-suck- inj4 alone — mere tubes or suction-pumps, incapable of biting throuj^h any hard substance. But the wasp, with her hunj^ry lar<^e familv to keep, has to be less particular about the nature of her food ; she cannot afford to depend upon honey only. Not only does she suck nectar ; she bites holes in fruits, as we know to our cost in our j^ardens, to di^ out the pulp ; and she has a perfect genius for selecting the softest and sunniest side of an apricot or a nectarine. She is not a strict vegetarian, either ; all is hsh that comes to her net : she will iielp her- self to meat or an.y other animal matter she can fmd, and will feed her uncomplaining grubs upon raw and bleeding tissue. Nay, more, she catches tlies and other insects as they flit in the sunshine, saws off their wings with her sharp jaws, and carries them off alive, but incapable of struggling, to feed her own ever-increasing household. By-and-by the first grubs, which covered them- selves in with silk in order to undergo their pupa or chrysalis stage, develop their wings under cover, and emerge from their cases as full-grown workers. These workers, whose portrait you will Hnd on a L i62 Flashlights on Nature previous paj^e, arc partially di'vclopccl Icmalcs, beinj^ imaMc to lay ej^gs. Hut in all other respects they inherit the habits or instincts of tlicir estim- able mother ; and no sooner are they fairly hatched out of the pupa-case, where they underwent their rapid metamorphosis, than they set to work, like dutiful daughters, to assist mannna in the manaj^e- ment of the city. Like the imagined world of Temivson's " Princess," no male can enter, if ever there was a woman-ruled republic in the world, such as Aristophanes feigned, it is a wasp's nest. The workers fall to at " tidying up " at once ; they put the house in order ; they go out and gather paper ; they help their mother to build new cells ; and they assist in feeding and tending the still- increasing nursery. The iirst comb formed, you will remember, was at the top of the foundation colunni or footstalk ; the newer combs are built below this in rows, each opening downward, so that tlie compound house or series of flats is planned on the exactly opposite system from our own — the top storeys being erected first, and the lower ones afterward, each storey having its floor above and its entrance at the bottom. At the same time, the umbrella-shaped covering is continued downward as an outer wall to protect the combs, imtil finally the nest grows to be a roughly round or egg-shaped body, entirely enclosed in a shell or outer wall of paper, and with only a single gate- way at the bottom, by which the biLsy workers go in and out of their city. The nest of the tree-wasp, which we have also The First Papkk-Makek 163 bccMi kindly permitted to pliotoj^raph from the specimens ;it the Xatiiral History Museum (Xos. 5 and 6), exhibits this hnal stage of the compound home. By the time the workers have become tolerably numerous in the j^rowin^ nest, the busy mother and queen bej^ins to relax her external efforts, and confines herselt more aiul more to tiie performance of her internal and domestic duties. She no longer goes out to make paper and collect food ; she gives herself up, like the queen bee, exclusively to the maternal business of egg-laying. You must remember that she is still the only perfect female in the wasp hive, and that every worker wasp the home contains is her own daughter. She is foundress, queen, and mother to that whole busy connnunity of 4000 or 5000 souls. The longer the nest goes on, the greater is the i.umber of workers produced, and the faster does the ciueen lay eggs in the new cells now built for her use by her attentive daughters. These in turn i\y abroad everywhere in search of nectar, fruits, and meat, or gather honey-dew from the green-tlies, or catch and sting to death other insects, or swoop down upon and carry off fat, juicy spiders ; all of which foodstuffs, save what they require for their own subsistence, they take home to the nest to feed the grubs, from which, in due time, will issue forth more workers. It is a wonderful wcjrld of women burghers. As long as sunmier lasts, our queen lays eggs which produce nothing else than such iicuter 164 Flashlkihts on Natire workers. As autumn comes on, liowcvcr, aiul the future of the race must be provided for, slie lays e^^s whicli hatcli out a lirood of perfect females or queens like herself. It is probable that the same e^j^ may develop either into a queen or a worker, and that the difference ot type is due to NO. 5 -NKsr or THEK. WASI*, with I-AI'KK pauii v RKMOVEI). the nature of the food and traininj^. A younj^ }4rub fed on ordinary food in an ordinary cell becomes a neuter ; but a similar j^rub, fed on royal food and cradled in a larj^er cell, develops into a queen. As with ourselves, in fact, rovalty is merely a matter of the surroundings. Tmk Kikst Pai'kk-Makkk 165 Last of all, as the really cold weather bej^iiis to set ill, the cpieeti wasp lays some other ej^j^s from which a small brood of males is tiiiallv developed. Nobody in the nest sets much store by these males : they are necessary evils, no more, so the wasps put up with them. It is humiliating to my se.x, but 1 i*v1Bl^i:V\ '!"''' NO. 6. — NKSlS l)K IkKKWA^P, F.MKKIdK ANIi INIKklOR. cannot avoid mentioninj^ the fact, that the produc- tion of males seems evt-n to be a direct result of chill and unfavourable conditions. The best food and the bi«^<.fest cells produce fertile cpieens ; the second best food and smaller cells produce workers ; finallv, tile enfecblement due to approaching winter 1 66 P^LASH LIGHTS ON NATURP: produces only drones or males. We cannot resist the inference that the male is here the in- ferior creature. These facts, I regret to say, are also not without parallels elsewhere. Among bees, for instance, the eggs laid by very old, decrepit queens, or by maimed and crippled queens, pro- duce males only ; while among tadpoles, if well fed, the majority become female frogs ; but if starved, they become preponderantly male. So, too, starved caterpillars produce only male butter- flies, while the well-fed produce females. I know this is the opposite of what most people ima- gine ; but then, science not infrequently finds itself compelled to differ in opinion from most people. The drones, or males, are thus of as little account in the nest of wasps as in the hive of bees. In both, they only appear for a short time, and for the defniite purpose of becoming fathers to the future generations. When they have fuUilled this their solitary function, the hive, or the nest, cares no UKMc about them. The bees, as you know, have a prudent and economical habit of stinging them to death, so as not to waste good honey on useless mouths through the winter. The wasps act otherwise. They are not going to live through the winter themselves, so they don't take the trouble to execute their brothers : they merely turn the young queens anrl males loose, and then leave the successful suitors to be killed by the fust frost without further consideration. And now comes the most curious part of all Thk First Paper-Maker 167 this stranj^e, eventful history. We do not love wasps ; yet so sad a catastrophe as the end of the nest cannot fail to affect the imajijination. As soon as the youn<^ queens and males have quitted the combs, the whole bustliii^ city, till now so busy, seems to lose heart at once and to realise that it is doomed to speedy extinction. Winter is cominj* on, when no worker wasp can live. So the com- munity proceeds with one accord to commit com- numal suicide. The workers, who till now have tended the yt)un^ ^rubs with sisterly care, draj^ the remaining larv.c ruthlessly from their cells, as if conscious that they can never rear this last brood, and carry them in their mouths and lej^s outside the nest. There thev take them to some distance from the door, and then drop them on the j^round to die, as if to put them out of their misery. As for the workers themselves, they return to the nest and starve to death or die of cold ; or else they crawl about aimlessly out- sivle in a distracted way till the end overtakes them. There is somethinj^ reallv pathetic in this sudden and moiip.inj^less downfall of a whole vast cityful ; somethinj^ strange and weird in this constantly re- peated effort to build up and people a j^ieat com- munity, only to see it fall to pieces hopelessly and helplessly at the first touch of winter. Yet how does it differ, after all, from our human empires, save in the matter of duration ? Wc raise them with infinite pains only to see them fall apart, like Home or BabyU)n. i68 Flashlights on Natfre So, by the time the dead of winter ccmes, both males and workers are cleared off the staj:je ; and universal waspdom is only represented by a few stray fertilised females, who carry the embodied hopes of so many dead and ruined cities. And now that 1 have traced the history of the NO. 7. — MKAI) OK (JURKN WASI', MollH WIPK ol'KN : FRONT VIKW. commune from its rise to its fall, I must say a few words in bi ief detail about the individual wasps which make up its members. And fust of all as to tiie wasp's head. You will have leathered from what I have said that the head of the insect is practically by far its most impor- Thk First Pai-ku-Makkr 169 tant portion. All the work we do with our hands, the wasp docs with its complicated month-organs. And the wasp's liead is such a wonderful mechan- ism, tiiat some little study of the accompanying* illustrations, though they may not at hrst si^ht look very attractive, will amply repay you. 1 will NO. 8.— THE SAMK HKAK, Mni ill WlUKuiKN : HAt K VIEW (I)E( APrrAlEI)). try to explain the uses of each part with as little a>. possible of scientific technicalities. In No. 7 you ^et the head of a ijuccn wasp, seen lull face in front, with the mouth-orj^ans open. The three little knobs in the centre up above are the simple eyes or eyelets {ocelli, if you prefer a Latin word, which sound^ much more learned). I70 Flashlights ox NATrRK The lar^e kidiicv-shapcd bodies on either side of tlie head (here seen as interrupted by the antenii.e or feelers) are the compound eyes, eacli of wiiicli consists of innumerable tinv lenses, j^ivini^ the wasp that possesses them a very acute sense of vision. We do not know exactlv what is the difference in use between the simple eyes and the NO. 9.— THK MOIIIll ( lojilNi;; rONOUK WriHDRAWN : HACK VIBW. compound ones ; but either sort has doubtless its own special pait to play in this complex personality. The antenn;e, oi- feelers, aj^ain, with their many joints and their ball-and-socket base, are beautiful and wonderful objects. The various parts of the mouth are here seen open ; conspicuous amonj^ them are the great saw-like outer jaws, used for Thk Fikst Papkk-Makkk in scrapinj^ wood and inaiiufactminj:* paper ; the lonj^, narrow shield ; the broad ton<^ne ; and the dehcately jointed palps, or linj^er-like teeders. Notice how some of these organs aie suitable for cutting and raspinj^, while others lend themselves to the most dainty and delicate manipulation. No. 8 shows us the same head, decapitated, and NO. lO. — Morm ALMOST riOSKK: All llirDK KOR S(RAnN<; \V(X)I>: HAt K VIKW. seen from behind. The shield-like space in the verv middle i epresciits tlu' jioiut of decapitation — the cut neck, if I may usi- fi anklv human lanjfua^e. Helow is the hollow oi receptacle into which all the oij^ans can bi- \\ ithdi aw n when not in use, and packed awav like surgical knives and lanc^•t^ in an instrument case. Observe in thesetpiel how neatly 1/2 FiwXSHLKiHTs ON Xatikk and completely this c;iii be done : liow each has its jfroove in the marvellous economy of nature. In No. () you see tiie organs closinj^ (also a back view), the ton-^ue having been now drawn in, while the saw-like jaw^ and the delicate feelinj^ palps are still exposed an! ready for workinj4. Xo. H, on the contrarv. is the feeding attitude. NO. II. — MOeiH (.HI IK CIOSED: ATTITUDK ItiR MKAI'INd WOOD: KM) 1)1 t)NK MOVKMKM. in Xo. lo (another back view), the palps have lu'en turned back into their special j^roove, and the saw-like jaw-; are seen \\cc for workinij. This is the attitude in which the wasp attacks a paik paling, in oidei- to scr:tpe off wood-tibre for the maiHifacture of paper. Here, as von see, the jaws are open. In Xo. i i thev are closed, at the end Tm-: FiKsT Papkr-Makkw ^73 of a scrape, 'riu-^r two last attitiidt's arc, of course, alternate. One shows the jaws opened, the other closed, as they look at the heiiinnin^ and end of each forward and backward movement. Von will notice also that, as usual, the insect's jaws work sideways, not up and down like those of man and other hi^^her animals. If vou exanune closely this series of wasp's heads in d.lTeii-nt postui'es, vou will see how well the various parts are adapted, not only tor raspinj^ and nianu- facturinj^ paper, but also for the more delicate work of wall and cell buildinj^. Almost as interestinj^ as the head are the winj^s of wasps, of which there are four, as in most other insects. Hut they have this curious peculiaritv : the two front win^s have a crease down the middle, so that they can be folded up len^tli- wise, like two sej^ments or rays of a fan, and thus occupy only half the space on the body that they would other- wise do. It is this odd device that makes the transparent and liau/.v wins^s so relativelv incon- spicuous when the insect is at ic^t, and the same cause contributes also to tin- disjilay ol the hand- some black-and-yellow-striped body. Xo. i 2 shows us a queen with her wiui^s folded : be-low is one upper or front win^, folded over on itself, and then laid across the under winij. No. 13 intrtxluces us NO. 12. i.il KKN Willi 1 nl.l'Kii \\ l.Nc.s, AM) ONK WINc; 10 sUoW III! dim;. 174 F'LASHMCIMTS OX NATI'RK to a more characteristic feature, coiiunon to wasps with the whole bee family. All these cousins possess by common descent the usual four wiii^s of well-rej^ulated insects. But it so happens that the habits of the race make stron«^ and certain tlij^ht more practically important for them than the mere power of atrial NO. 13. -I'AKI OK TWO WINtlS. U I IH H(»()KS AM> (JKOOVES. coquetting and pirouetting^ possessed by the far less business-like butterflies. Wnw wasp and your bee are women of business. Thev have therefore found it pay them to develop a mechanism by which the two win^s on either siile can be lirmly locked toj^ether, so as to act like a sinj^le pinion. No. 13 very well illustrates this admirable plan for fastenin}» the fore and hind w'mgs t'^gether. The First Papkn-Makku 175 On top yim M-t- tin- back |n)rtit)n ol tin. front wiiiLl, with a ciirvtd Liroovt- 011 it> iiiiici- celiac, liclow, you L^it tlic iVoiit portion ot tlic liiiidcr \vi11j4, with a scries ot httlc hooks, microscopic, yet cNcjiiisitcly moulded, which catch into the groove on the opposite portion. When tlm^ hooked toj^ether, the two wiiil'.-> on the rij^ht act exactly like one. So do the two on the lett. lint they can be un- hooked and folded back on the body at the will of the instct To either side of No. 13 von will notice sections of the two win^s, which will help you to under- stand the nature of the mechan- ism. On the rij^ht, the wiiii^s are seen hooked together ; on the left, they are cauj^ht just in the act of unhooking. Last (>f all, and most important of all to ordinary humanity, we come to the stinj^, with its append- aj4e the poison-baj^. It is well represented in Xo. 14. The main object of the stinj^, and its ori- ginal function by descent, is that of layinj^ ej.Jj4s ; it is merely the ovipositor. Hut besides the ^rcxoved sheath or ej^j^-layer (marked .S in the illustration) and the two very sharp lances or darts (marked I)) which pierce the llesh of the enemy, it is provided with a inland which secretes that most unpleasant body, formic acid ; and when tin- wasp ha^ cause Nil. 14. I'dlhoN HAt;, SHEATH, DARIS, AM) lAl ri. 176 Flashlights on XATrKE to be annoyed, she throws the sting rapidly into the animal that annoys her, and injects the tluid with the formic acid in it. In No. 15 the darts are shown still more highly maj^- nilied. In the queen wasp, the stinj4 is used both for laying eggs and as a weapon of offence ; but in the workers, which cannot lay eggs, it is entirely devoted to the .._ _ work of fighting. Ill II Two other little \l^ III peculiarities of the wasp, how- ever, deserve a final word of re- cognition. One of these is the elaborate brush-and- comb apparatus or antennie-cleaner, drawn in a very enlarged view in No. 16. Whatever the sense may be which the antenna? serve, we may at least be certain that it is one of great import- V NO. 16. — wasp's brush AND COMH, lOR CLEAN- IN«i ANIENN.t. NO. 15,— DARTS MAr.- NIHED 300 DIA- METERS. TnK First Pai'KK-Makkr 177 ;iiict' to the insect ; and liotli wasps ami bees have therefore elaborate iniishes for keepiiij^ these valu- able organs clean and neat and in working order. They always remind nie of the brushes I use myself for cleanin}4 the type in my typewriting machine. The antenn:e-brush of the wasp is fixed on one of her legs ; its precise situation on the leg as a whole is shown in the little upper diagram ; its detail and various parts are further enlarged below. To the left is the coarse or large-tooth comb ; \u the right is the brush ; and above the brush, connected with the handle by an exceed- ingly thin and lilniy mendtrane, is the line-tooth comb, used for removing very small impurities. With this the wasp cleans her precious feelers much as you may have seen flies clean their wings when they have fallen in a jam-pot; oidy the wasp's n,, ,7.-1 itcks.n the meciianism is much mure beau- skcmknts. tiful and perfect. Almost equally interesting with the brush and comb are the series of tucks in the wasp's body or abdomen, delineated in Xo. 17. By means of these extraordinarily flexible rings, each held in place or let loose by appropriate muscles, the wasp can twist her body round so conveniently that, no matter how carefully and gingerly you hold her, she will manage to sting you. They .M 178 Flashliohts on Nature are models of plate-armour. They work upward, downward, and more or less sideways, so that they enable iier to cock her body up or down, right or left, at will, with almost incredible flexibility. Adequately to tell you all about the wasp, how- ever, would require a very stout volume. I have said enouj^h, I hope, to suj^j^est to you that the wasp's liistory is quite as interesting as that of her over-lauded relation, the little busy bee. Indeed, 1 suspect it is only the utilitarian instinct of hum- anity that has caused so much attention to be paid to the domestic producer of honey, and so rela- tively little to that free and independent insect, the first paper-maker. VIII ABIDING CITIES THE papery nests of wasps are purely tempo- rary empires : the vespine race has " no abiding city here " ; each summer sees the populous homes built afresh from the ground ; each winter sees them unpeopled and demolished. But with ants, which are builders for time, things are quite otherwise. The communities of those clever and intelligent little creatures are tolerably perma- nent ; they go on from year to year, and generation to generation, often for very long periods together. Lest I weary you unnecessarily by a long pre- amble, however, I shall present you with views of one such nest at once, outside and inside, in Nos. i and 2, in order that you may see without delay the curious method of their detailed construction. The city whose external lineaments are shown you in the photograph reproduced in No. i is actually situated on St. George's Hill, near Wey- bridge, just ten feet away from the large Scotch fir whose trunk appears on the right of the illus- tration. It is only one among many various types of ants' nests built by different species. From cnit- side, all you can see of it is a confused mass of dry «79 i8o P'lashlights ox Nature pine-nt'cdk'S, arran.tfed in a harrow-shaped hill or mound, sonic cii^Iit tect across at the hasc, and two NO. I.— A WOOD ANTS NEST, EXTIiKIOR. feet high. But that is in reality only the outwork or top storey of the communal habitation. Beneath .\liII)I\(i ClTlKS i8i it lies a second layer, six inches thick, composed entirely of roots ot heather and rootlets of fir-trees, all carefully stripped clean of hark, and makinj^ a dry foundation for the warm hillock of pine-needles. NO. 2. — A WOOn ANTS NESP. IMKKIOR; K(;(;s, CRUBS, AND COCOONS, WITH WOKKKRs : NCAilKD IN IKNOI NC, IHKM. Below this woody layer, aj^ain, the ^r(nmd is tun- nelled to an unknown depth by lon^ subterranean i^alleries, driven rij^ht thiou^h a stratum of solid sandstone. Tiiese inner galleries extend not only 1 83 Flashlights on Nature beneath the hillock, but also all round it, for wherever you step the soil treads soft, and gives beneath your foot to a depth of six or eight inches. This illustrative example is a city built by the com- mon Wood Ant. I have had another just like it — an insect London — under observation for three or four years in a copse on a spur of Hind Head, not far from my cottage. In No. 2 Mr. Enock has represented for us, with his usual skill, a very small section of such a city, " all a-growing and a-blowing," — all engaged in the active exercise of its everyday functions. How it came into being, and how it is ruled and peopled, I will tell you a little later on ; for the present, I want first to familiarise you with the general course of its domestic economy in practical action. We have here an interior view, with one wall removed, of a tunnel or gallery, which runs through the soft upper portion of the nest, composed of pine- needles ; together with a small piece of the outer surface. An ant, which has been out foraging for food, approaches one of the mouths of the nest. Beneath are three successive floors or stages of the tunnel, with excavated chambers, each appropriated to its own particular purpose. In the upper floor of all, we see two groups of minute eggs awaiting their hatching. These are the real eggs, not the much larger things sold as " ants' eggs " for bird food in London, which are really the pupcTe. P'our of the eggs have just arrived at hatching point ; therefore, one of the careful nurses who look after them is seen just in the act of bundling them over Abiding Cities 183 on to stage two, which is the floor here reserved for the nursery of the hatched-out grubs or h^rva?. In this second stage you see a clianiber with a group of sucli grubs, all luuigry and greedy, wait- ing for their nurses to bring them food from outside the household. Observe the obvious expectancy of their attitude, with heads held up, like that of small birds clamouring eagerly for food when their mother approaches them with a worm or a caterpillar. After feeding for some time in this legless, grub- bish condition, the larva turns into a pupa, and encloses itself in a cocoon. One larva has just com- pleted this happy transformation, and a watchful nurse ant is therefore at this moment engaged in carrying it tenderly a stage lower down to the floor reserved for the chrysalis condition. On the third floor, below, you see a group of pupc'c lying by in the dark, and awaiting their development. The wall of one cocoon has here been removed, and within you may catch a glimpse of the imp; isoned grub, now recently transformed into the adult ant pattern. Of course, the nest contains many hun- dreds of such tunnelled galleries, all teeming with life, and all made up of several distinct chambers. Now, how does such a nest begin to be ? Well/ it starts from a queen, or perfect female, who sets out with a few others to form a colony. This colonv soon grows, but it is rather a republic than an Amazon kingdom, like the hive of bees or the nest of wasps. It is composed of several perfect females (instead of one queen), numerous imper- fect females or workers, and a few males, who, as 1 84 FLASHLIGFiTS ON NATURE is usual amon^ social insects, are very unimport- ant and unconsidered creatures. The males and females are winged when they first emerge from their cocoons, and they use their wings for their marriage flight, which is a recognised institution among all insect socialists. Hut as soon as the perfect females have been safely wedded, their wings drop off ; or, in cases where they do not fall of themselves, the insects themselves wriggle and pull them off with their legs in the most comic fashion. I have sometimes seen a dinner- table in Jamaica covered by a sudden irruption of female winged ants of tropical species, which in- sisted on immolating themselves in the soup and the wine (to the advantage of neither party), while others blackened the table-cloth, and devoted them- selves to getting rid of their wings with unpleasant gyrations. As for the males, they are of no further use to the community, so they die at once. But the mass of the larvic develop into imperfect females or workers, which are always wingless from the very first, and it is these that form the ordinary ants of the everyday observer. In many kinds there are also two types of neuters : the one type, workers proper, have rather large head,s and moderate jaws — they are the foragers and builders of the com- munity ; the other type, soldiers, have still bigger heads and very powerful jaws — it is their task to fight in defence of their native city. Other differ- ences of less importance will come out in the course of our subsequent explanation. The winged ants have large and many-faceted Abiding Cities 185 compound eyes, to aid them in their flight abroad ; and they have also single eyelets or ocelli, as in the case of the wasp, which seem to be useful to them in finding the way over large areas, as the com- pound eyes are probably designed for nearer and minuter vision. But the workers liave always the true eyes small, and often rudimentary ; while the eyelets or ocelli are mostly wanting. To put it plainly, they are almost blind. There can be very little doubt that their principal organ of sense resides in the antenna?, or feelers, which are pro- bably used in part for smelling. Whatever may be the perceptive function which these curious appendages, subserve, however, nobody who has watched ants closely ever doubts that they are also used as a means of intercommunication, almost analogous to human language. Whenever two ants of the same nest meet, they stop and parley with one anotlier by waving and crossing their antenna? ; so obvious is it, that the information thus conveyed makes one ant follow another to- wards a source of food, or other object of interest, which the first ant has discovered, that the pro- cess Ls universally described by ant observers as " talking." In No. 3 we get an illustration of two workers belonging to an English species known as the Warrior Ant, from its predatory habits, engaged in just such a profound confab together. They are meditating war, and discussing a plan of cam- paign with one another ; for the Warrior Ant is a slave-making species. It is a large red kind, and it i86 Flash LKiHTs ox XATrRi!; makes raids against nests of the small yellow Turf Ant, a mild and docile race, large numbers of which it carries off tu act as servants. But it does not- steal lally-grown Turf Ants; their habits are formed, and they would be useless for such a pur- pose. What the Warrior Ant wants is raw material which can be turned into thoroughly well-trained servants. So it merely kills the adult ants which strive to oppose its aggression, and contents itself NO. 3. — A CONVERSATION: " I ET S GO SLAVK-Ul' N IING with trundling iiome to its own nest the larva3 and pupai of the Turf Ants which it has put to flight and vanquished. In process of time, these grubs and cocoons produce full-grown yellow workers, which, having never known freedom, can be taught by the Warrior Ants to act as nurses and house- maids, exactly as if they were living in their own proper city. 1 once saw in a garden in Algiers a great pitched battle going on between slave-makers Abidinc. Citiks 187 and the family of tlic future slaves, in which the ground was strewn with the corpses of tiie van- quished. Not till the nest of the smaller ants was almost exterminated did they retire ivoiu the un- equal contest, and allow the proud invader to carry off tlieir brothers and sisters in their cocoons, asleep and unconscious. The two ants figured in No. 3 are deliberating on the chances of such a cocoon-lifting expedition. The one to the right has been hunting for honey up the stems of vetches, and has fallen in by the way with a small nest of Turf Ants. Returning post-haste to her own home, big with this exciting intelligence, slie encounters a conu^ade, to whom she communicates, in antennaj language, her belief that the Turf Ants j^he has discovered are not very numerous, and her conviction that they would fall an easy p ;,'y to a well -organised party of Warrior raiders. The two friends cross their antenn:e as they talk, wave them mysteriously about, and evi- dently succeed in conveying their respective views on the situation to one another. After a short delay, both return, all agog, to the nest together, and rouse the guard with intelligence of plenty of pupa3 ready to be plundered. At once the city hums, alive with bustle and preparation. Workers run to and fro and communicate orders from head- quarters to one another. •' There's a big slave- hunt on ; sister-fighter so-and-so has just brought news of a city of Turfites, quite near, and unpro- tected. The doors are open, and she noticed as she passed that tiie sentries looked most lax and 1 88 Flash m(;hts ox Nature indifferent. Tlic whole place has apparently been demoralised by a recent marriage flij^ht. Every- body in our nest is j^oing to the war. Come along and help us I " Forthwith they sally out, and make for the city of the despised yellow Turfites. They fall upon it unexpectedly, and kill the outer sentries. Then the battle begins in earnest. Half the Turfites rush out in battle array, and, banding themselves to- gether, to make up for their individual small size, fall fiercely upon this or that isolated Warrior. Occasionally, by dint of mere numbers, they beat off the invader with heavy loss ; but much more often, the large and strong-jawed Warriors win the day, and destroy to a worker the opposing forces. They crush their adversaries' heads with their vice- like mandibles. Meanwhile, withm the nest, the other half of the workers -the division told off as special nurses — are otherwise emploved in defend- ing and protecting the rising generation. At the first alarm, at the first watchword passed with waving antenUcC through tlie nest, "A Warrior host is attacking us I " they hurry to the chambers where the cocoons are stored, and bear them off in their mouths into the recesses of the nest, the lowest and most inaccessible of all the chambers. When at last the day is lost, the Warriors break in and steal all the pupie they can lay their jaws upon ; but many survive in the long, dark tunnels, with a few devoted workers still left to tend and teach them. No. 4 shows us the final stage in such a slave- Abidixo Citiics 1S9 liunt. Tlic l">ig red Warrior^ have won ; the littk- yellow Turfites have been repul^^ed and defeated with great slauj^hter. The victors are at present engaged in carrying captured cocoons to their own nests ; tliere the pup;e will hatch out shortly into willing slaves, and, nevei- having known any other condition, will take it for granted that the natural post for small yellow ants is to clean and forage and catch food for big led ones. Our own Warrior Ants aie slave-holders which NO. 4. — A si.A\F,-mNT ; co.Nni.'KROKs < arrvinc; oil iiir. COCOONS OK THK I-.NKMY. still retain some power of working and acting for themselves ; hut there are other species in which the " peculiar institution " has produced its usual degrading resuli by rendering the slave-owner in- capable and degenerate, a mere lighting do-nothing. Among the Amazon ants, which are very conlirmed slave-makers, Sir John Lubbock found that a great lady, left alone without slaves, in the presence of food, did not even know how to feed herself ; she was positively starving to death in the midst of 190 Flashlights on Natckic ^^t v/ VC U-"k' V-i^^' plenty. Then Sir Jolin provided her with a single slave ; instantlv, the industrious little ereature set to work to clean and anantfc her mistress, and to offer her food. This is a striking illustration of the moral truth that slavery is at least as demoralising for the master as for his servant. No. 5 introduces us to a passing phase in a combat of ants — a life-and-death conflict between two single an- tagonists. Ants, indeed, are des- perate fighters ; the workers and perfect females have sometimes stings, like the bees and wasps ; but in most species they light by biting with their jaws, which are moul- ded into strong and vice-like nippers or pincers. Moreover, they have a gland which secretes the same poisonous material as that contained in the venom-bag of the sting among wasps and bees ; and after the ant has made a hole with her jaw in her enemy's armour, she injects into it a little of this painful irritating acid, which kills small insects. During a battle, ants are all most reckless of their own lives; indeed, no ant seems ever to consider herself by compari- NO. 5. I'AYINC, OI'K OLD SCORES: A MFE- ANU-llKATH CONFLICT. Abiding Cities 191 son with the interests of the community iit large. The individual exists for the estate alone, and sacrifices her life and happiness, automatically as it were, on behalf of her city. In No. 6 we see an illustration of the great muscular stiength possessed by ants, especially in their gripping jaws or mandibles. Here, two comrades have got hold of a dead and rigid prey, which they are striving to carry off bv main force to the nest ; for ants are omnivorous. They feed off whatever turns up handv ; all is fish that comes to their net— they seem almost indifferent whether what they dine off is honey or honeydew, a worm or a beetle, a dead bird or a de- parted lizard. A few workers will seize what- ever edible object they happen to find, and combine NM. 6.- -A I.ONO I'ULl., AND A STRONO I'l'I.I , m I Nor All. i<)i;ki iikk. to drag it away, by pushing and pulling, to the underground chambers. In this particular case the two ants began by hauling together ; but the lower one, giving one good tug with her jaws, has succeeded 192 Flashlights on Natukk in raisinjf the whole carcass aloft, and hoisting up her astonished neighbour into the air on top of it. It is impossible to watcii a nest of ants at work for any length of time without being the spectator of many such comic little episodes. I implied above that ants are very fond of honey. But plants by no means desire their attentions ; because, being creeping creatures, guided mainly by the sense of smell, they crawl up the stems of one species after another, indiscriminately, and so do no good in setting the seeds of any particular kind of fiower. To baffle them, accordingly, many plants cover their stems witii downward-pointing hairs, which prove to the ants as impenetrable an obstacle as tropical jungles to the human explorer; while other sorts set various traps like lobster- pots on their stalks, to catch and imprison the unwelcome visitors. But the wild vetches have a still more curious and instructive habit, shared by not a few other ingenious plants. They buy off the intruders by an organised system of black- mail. Below the tiowers intended for fertilisation by flying insects, which tiit straight from one blossom to another of the same kind, the vetches put some arrow-shaped guards or stipules, so arranged like barriers on the stem that a prying ant cannot easily creep past them. In the centre of each stipule, however, the plant produces a little black gland, which secretes honey. This honey is a bribe to the marauding ant ; the vetch puts it there in order that the insect, finding its progress toward the flower blocked, may just stop en route Ahidino Cities 193 and sip this pittance of nectar, leaving tlie richer and more valuable stock of honey in tie actual blossom to be rifled by the bees which are the honoured guests and allies of the vetches. Nature is all full of such quaint plots and counterplots. One example occurs in a South American tree, so very remarkable that I camiot pass it by even in this hasty notice. A certain ant, very common in Brazil, has the habit of cutting large round pieces out of the leaves of trees, which it then conveys to its nest for the purpose of growing fungi upon them— in human language, making tiny mushroom-beds. Now, this habit is naturally obnoxious to the trees, which produce the leaves for their own advantage, not for the sake of leaf-cutting ants which hack and rob them. To guard against the burglarious leaf- cutters, accordingly, one clever South American acacia has hit upon an excellent plan of defence. It produces curious hollow thorns ; while each leaflet has a gland at its base which secretes honey. Into these hollow thorns, colonies of a small and harmless ant migrate, and take up their abode there. They live off the honey at the base of the leaflets. They thus acquire a vested interest in the acacia tree, which is their home and territory ; and whenever the leaf-cutting ants attack the acacia, the little occupants of the thorns and owners of the honey-chambers pour out upon them in their thousands, and compel the invaders to beat a hasty retreat with heavy losses. Thus the cunning tree supplies its insect body-guard with board and X 1 94 Flashlights o\ Nature lodginj4 in return lor cBicicnl protection against the dreaded onslanghl of the common enemy. And now that 1 have succeeded, I hope, in in- teresting you a httle in tlie habits of ants, I am going to tell you a few facts about their structure. That is my dodginess, you see ; I knew if I began by giving you details of legs and body and seg- ments, you would vote the wliole tiling dry ; but NO. 7. —THE f.ARDEN ANT — PORTRAIT OF A WORKER. now that you understand what sort of objects the ant wants to attain, you mfiy be content to examine the organs she attains them with. In No. 7 you have a portrait of the common Garden Ant of England, one of the most interest- ing creatures in the world to watch in action. This is a worker specimen ; therefore, it has a very big liead, with very powerful jaws ; and when Abiding Citiks 195 you remember that ants work for the most part witli the lieacl only, you will understand why that portion needs to be tlie most nuiseular and power- ful part of the body. A lobster has two yery strong claws in front, because those are his light- ing and prey-catching organs ; the ant's jaws just answer in function to the lobster's claws, and to our hands and aims, and, therefore, they are correspondingly big and muscular. Male and female ants do not haye to dig tunnels, to build up ciiambers, to drag heayy weights back to the nest ; tlierefore, they haye smaller heads and bigger eyes ; they are adapted only for tiying and for producing the younger generation. The middle segments of the body, on the contrary, are large and powerful in the males and females, because tliey haye to work the wings ; while in the workers they are smaller, especially in one segment, because the workers are wingless. The legs, howeyer, are fairly strong, since they need to pull and to supply a lirm footing when the ant is tugging hard at some heayy object. But between the part of the body which forms the attachment for the six legs and the abdomen, or " tail," there is a single characteristic segment, or stalk, yery thin and slender, which bears a sort of scale, peculiar to Ihe ant family. 'I'he side yiew, with the legs lemoyed, enables you to note liow admirably the ant is adapted for turning in almost any direction, and explains that extraordinary tiexibility of body wliich you must haye noticed wlieneyer you haye watched 196 Flashlights on Xatikk a troop of ants trying to drag a dead insect over a gravel path, and surmounting all obstacles with clumsy ingenuity. Ants, in short, are built for navvies ; they are insect engineers, and they have acquired a form exactly adapted to their peculiar habits. Hut why are the worker ants so nearly blind ? That must surely hv a disadvantage to them. Xot a bit of it. Ant,; work mainly in dark under- grou.id passages, where the sense of sight would be of little use ; and, moreover, like all hunting animals, they lind smell more important as an indicator of NO. 8. — HEAD OF C.ARDEN ANT. WITH EYKS, food iu tllC OpCU ANTENN.l.;, JAWS, AM. IFELERS, ^liaU visloU. ThC hound does not /ook for the fox he sniffs and scents him. Now, whenever any sense is relatively unimportant, an economy may be effected bv suppressing or cur- tailing it ; the material that would otherwise go to making and repairing its organ is more profitably employed on some better work elsewhere. Ants are obviouslv descendants of flvinM)->NAII, IN Wl.NIKR. up with it. To .L^uard a,Liain>t this calamity, there- fore, the plant has hit upon a dod^e as clever in its way as that of our old fiiend the soldanella, which laid bv fuel to melt the glacier ice in the Alpine spriiii^tide. I'revt'iition, sav> the curled pond-weed, is better than cure. So, in Xo. 3, you catch it in the verv act of iJettinLf ready ceitain 214 Flasiimciits ox Xati-kk specialised detachable shoots, which are its liveliest parts, and in whicii all the most active protoplasm and chlorophyll (or livinj4 mall llies, almost all of 234 P'LASH LIGHTS ON Xatire them members of the genus Ciilex. The one point of similarity between the wliole lot lies in the fact that they all suck b.oocl ; whenever a blood-sucking culex is lighted upon in Enghuxl it is called a gnat ; while whenever one is found in any otiier part of Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, we say it is a n^.osquito. That is just a piece of the well- known British arrogance ; they will not admit that there are such venomous beasts as mosquitoes in England, and therefore, when found, they call them by another name, and fancy they have got rid of them. As a matter of fact, nu^squitoes of one sort oi' another occur in most countries, if not in all the world ; they are mo^t numerous, i^ is true, in the tropics and in warm districts gene- rallv ; but they also abound in Canada, Siberia, Russia, and Lapland. Even in the Arctic regions, they come out in swarms during the short summer ; and wherevei' ponds oi- stagnant waters abound in Finland or Alaska, they bite quite as successfully and industriously while thev last as in Cevlon or Jamaica. At least a hundred and fifty kinds are "known to science," ;ind of these, no fewer than thirty-live occur in Europe. There are nine in Britain. Mo^t of the European species bite quite hard enough to be popularly ranked as m()Squitoes ; the remainder are called by the general and in- definite name of Hies a vague term which covers as large an acreage of evil as charity. In hot sununers. you will often read in the papers a loud complaint tiiat " mosquitoes have made their appearance in England," most often in British Bloodsickeks 235 tlie neiffhhourhood (^f the London docks ; and this supposed importation ot venomous forei^^n insects is usually set down to the arrival ot some steamer from Bombay or Xew Orleans. The papers might almost as well chronicle the " arrival '" of the cock- roach or of the common house-fly. There are always mosquitoes in England; and they bite worse in very hot weather. Occasionally, no doubt, some stray Mediterranean or American gnat, rather hungrier than usual, does cross over in water in the larval form and eifect a lodgment in London for a week or two ; but onlv a skilled entomologist could distinguish him from a native, after careful examination. Let it be granted then, as Euclid says, that there is no essential difference between a gnat and a mosquito, and let us admit that the same name is applied in both cases to a large variety of distinct but closely related species. After wliich preliminary clearing of the ground, we will proceed quietly to the detailed description of one such typical bloodsucker. In justice to India, however, I ought perhaps to add that the particular mosquito chosen for illus- tratic^n by Mr. Enock is not itself a native Briton, but an inhabitant of India. It is thus only British in the wider sense vif being a denizen of her Majesty's dominions, on which the sun never sets, and the buzz of the mosquito never ceases. On the other hand, it differs so slightly from the commonest English gnat that nobody but a trained entomologist could ever deti-ct tlu- difference ; and even he could only discover it m the adult insect 236 Flashlights ox Xatlke by minute variations in the antennae and other ahnost microscopic pccuharities. Indeed, it I liachi't told you this was an Indian mosquito, you would never have discovered that it wasn't a Fenland ;4nat. The mosquito is in a certain sense an amphi- bious animal ; that i> to sav, dining the course ot its lilc, it has tried both land and water. It bej^ins existence as an acpiatic creature, and only steps NO. I. \MSQ! Tins KCC-KAI- r, SF.l.N SUIKWAVS. ashore at last to ily in the open aii- when it has arrived at it-^ adult form and tlays ot discretion. The mother uiosquito, llittin^ in a cloud-like swarm ot her kind, haunts foi- the most part moist and watery spots in thick woods or marsiies, and lays her tiny e^-^s on the surface ot some pool or sta_i^- nant walei-. They are deposited one bv one, and then Joined lOLjether with a glutinous secretion into a little ratt or boat, >hown in Xo, i, which Hc^ats about treely on the pond or puddle. It looks just liKlTISIl HLOODSrCKKRS Vw like tliL" cnnvcntioiial i cprcscntatioiis of tlu- "ark of bulrushes" provick-d f( r the iiiiant M(!>cs. An industrious luothcr will lav ^ouic Iwo or tiuee hundred sueii eL^^L,^ in a -tason, so that we need not wonder at the s^reat eohunns of nio^ciuitoes that often appear in damp plaees in ^ununer. Xo. 2 shows the same ratt seen from al ()\e, and ex- NO. 2. IIIK Mii-tHllOS KCr.-KAl !, -I.IN IKii\| Al;«l\l:. cellentlv illustrates its admiiable bo:'t->h;!.pi'(l or saucer-shaped eon^ti in.'tion. After about three da\-^' tnne. thi' e^^s be^in to hatch, and the active little l:ir\-.e e^cajn-, wii^j^lin^, into the watei. Xo. 3, wliuh i-> enlniLied fortv diameters, exliibit^ the staL;e^ ot the hatching pro- cess. A sort of lid or door at the lower end of tlic 238 Flashlights on Nature flf)ating e^j^ opens downward into the water, and the yonn<4 nioscjuito slides off with a jerk of the tail into its native marshes. Almost everybody who lias travelled in Asia, Africa, or America, must be familiar with these little brown darting larvre, NO. 3. — TIIK KCCS llAICHINr.. AND YnrNT. MOSlJl' I I OF.S KSCAPINC. which occur abundantlv in the soft water in jugs and wash-hand basins. Brown, I say roughly, because they look so at a casual glance ; but if you examine then'i more closely you will see that they are rather delicately green, and often mottled. It is not easy to catch them, however, so quickly t^RITISM HLOODSrCKKRS 239 ; you try to put your liiuui on slip through your liiiLjcrs ; you do tliey \vri_i4<^le them, and they have cauj^ht one now, and, hi presto ! before you know it, he is twirling off to the other side and disportinj^ himself j^aily in aquatic j^ambols. Nevertheless, he is a crea- ture well worth observinif, this larva. (jet him still under the microscope (which is no easy matter — to insure it, you must supply hmi with only the tiniest possible drop of water) and you will then perceive that he has a distinct head, with two large dark eyes, and that behind it comes a j^lobular body, and then a tail of several quickly moving segments. No. 4 NO. 4. — THK MOSrn'no-1 AKVA IN MIS KAVcM'Rri'K ACT Ol- M \NI)1N(. ON HIS m.Ai) AM) hrkaiiiim;. 240 F'LASHLIGHTS OX NATURE is a portrait of the larva in his full-grown stage, near the surface of the water. He is about half an inch long, and nimble as a squirrel. You will observe on his head a sort of big moustache, set with several smaller bristles. This moustache (which consists for science of a pair of mandibles) is kept always in constant and rapid motion ; its use is to create an eddy or continuous current of water ; which brings very tiny animals and other objects of food within reach of the voracious larva's mouth ; for young or old, your mosquito is invariably a hungry subject. In point of fact, you may say that these hairy organs are the equivalents of hands with which the larva feeds himself. They vibrate ceaselessly. At the opposite end of the body, you will observe, there are two other organs, both equally interesting. One of them, which goes straight up to the surface of the water, and protrudes above it, is the larva's breathing-tube ; for the mosquito breathes, at this stage, not with his head but with his tail ; this ingenious mechanism I will explain further presently. The other organ, which in the illustration (No. 4) goes off to the left, and has four loose ends visible, serves its owner as a fin and rudder. It is the chief organ of locomotion — the oar or screw by whose means the larva darts with lightning speed tluough the water, and alters his directit)n with such startling rapidity. You will note that it is not unlike the screw of a steamer, and it answers for the animal the same general purpose. How effectual it is Hkitisii Hloodsickkrs 241 as a locomotive device everybody kno\v> who lias once tried chivvyiiiij a few healthy mosquito larv;e round the brimming sea of his bedroom basin. The breathing - tube deserves a little longer notice. By its means air is conveyed direct into the internal air-channels of the insect, which do not form lungs, but ramify like arteries all over the body. We carry our blood to the lungs to be aerated ; the insects carry the oxygen to the blood. To take in air, the larva fre- quently rises to near the surface, as vou see him doing in Xo. 4 ; then he stands on his head, cocks up his tail, and pushes t)ut his air-tube. Indeed, when at rest this is his usual attitude. Xo. 5, which, of course, is very hignly magnified, shows his tail in the act of taking in a good gulp ot oxygen. The little valves, or doors, which cover the air-tube are here opened radially, and the larva is breathing. To the right you see the position of the tube after he has taken in a long g Ml. 5. IIIK lAKVAS HRKA I inMi-l UKl l.I.OhKH AM> (il'KN. 242 Flasiilkihts o\ Xati'RE draught of aii (just like a whale or a porpoise) and is dartiii,^ to the dcptlis a.i4aiii. The tiny valves or doors are now closed, so that no water can ^et in ; the larva will ^o on upon the air thus stored till all of it is exhausted ; he will then rise once more to the surface, let out the breath loaded with carbonic acid, and draw in a fresh stock again for future use. NO 6. Tin: IMPA OK ( iirvsai.is, hrkatiiinc tiiroit.ii I Wil IIOKN-I.IKK I IBKS The young mosquito remains in the larval form for about a fortnight or three weeks, during the course of which time he moults thrice. As soon as he is full-grown, he becomes a pupa or chry- salis— lies by, so to speak, while he is changing into the winged condition. No. 6 is a faithful portrait of the mosquito in this age of transition. (I borrow the last phrase from the journalists.) HKITISH Hl.OODSl-CKKKS 243 Witliiii Iho piipa-casc, wliicli is sinalK-r tli.m llic i.iiva, the insect is bent (li)iihle; in this apparently nnconifortable position, it bej^ins to develop the \vinj4>, the le\<4s, and [\\v blood-snekinj^ apparatns of tile perfect niostpiito. Xevertheless, ill-adapted as such a shape nii^ht seem for locomotion — with one's head tucked undei", and one's eyes lookim; downward— the mosquito in the pupa continues to move about freely, instead of taking life mean- while in the spiiit of a nuunm\ in the mummy- case. By way of change, however, he now eats nothing — having, in fact, no mouth to eat with. Hut the most wonderful tiling of all is the altera- tion in his method of breathing. The pupa no longer breathes with its tail, but with the front part t)f its body, where two little hoiii -shaped tubes are developed for the purpose. Vou can see them in the illustration (Xo, 6), which is taken at the moment when the active and loco- motive pupa has just come to the surface to breathe, and is floating, back up, and head doubled under downward, in a most constrained position. The attitude reminds one of nothing; so much as that of a bull, with his head be- tween iiis lei^s, rushing forward to attack one. Vou can see through the pupa-case the j^reat dark eyes and the rudiments of the le^s as they forni below it. Xo. 7 exhibits very prettily the next stai^e in this short eventful history the emertreni4th will conic to her ; ?46 Fl,.\SinJ(iUTS ox XATrRK she will plim them on the Miinmer air, nncl float awav carelessly, seeking whom ^he may devcnir. in < < C < o (/i o I 00 All this is what happens to a sueeessfiil insect. l^nt often the boat tails ; the yonn,i4 win^s ; «', I UK iiMAiK, niiiN«; A III M \N II \Nli. M es- 248 Flashlights on Nature salina or a Brinvilliers, incongruously wedded to a vej4ctarian innocent. Even the very forms of the head and its appendages are quite different in tlie two sexes in achiptation to these marked differences of hahit. No. 9 shows us the varieties of form in the male and female at a glance. Above (in Fig. A) we have the harmless vegetarian male. Observe his innocent sucking mouth, his bushy beard, his lack of sting, his obvious air of general respecta- bility. He might pass for a pure and blameless ratepayer. But 1 uuist be more definitely scientific, perhaps, and add in clearer language that what I call his beard is really the antenme. These con- sist of fourteen joints each, fitted with delicate circlets of hair ; and the hairs in the male are so long and tufted as to give him in this matter a feathery and military appearance, wholly alien to his real mildness of nature. Look close at his head and you will find it is provided with three sets of organs -first, the tufted antennic ; second, a single sucking proboscis, adapted for quiet flower- hunting and nectar-eating ; third, a pair of long palps, one on each side of the proboscis. Now. beneath him, marked H, we get the head of his faithful spouse, the abandoned blood-suck- ing mosquito, which looks at first sight, I confess, much more simple and harmless. Its antenn.e have shortei" and less bri>tling hairs ; its proboscis seems quiet enough ; and its palps are reduced to two mere horns or knobs, not a quarter the length of the bristly husband's, on each side of the pro- boscis. But notice in front of all that she has British BLOonsrcKKKS 249 five lon<4 lancets, guarded by an upper lip, which do not answer to anythinj^ at all in her husband's economy. Those live lancets, with their serrated points, are tlie awls or piercers with which she penetrates the skin of men or cattle. They cor- respond to the mandibles, maxilhe, and tonj^ue, wliich I shall explain hereafter in the moutli of the gadfly. How they work you can observe in the lowest figure, C. Here you have a bit of the hand of a human subject — not to put too fine a point upon it (whicli is the besetting sin of mosquitoes), the artist's. He has delivered him- self up to be experimented on in the interests of scietice. The sharp lancets have been driven through the skin into the soft tissue beneath, and the bent proboscis is now engaged in sucking up the blood that oozes from il. If that were all, it would be bad enough ; but not content with that, the mosquito, for some mysterious reason, also injects a drop of some irritant fluid. 1 have never been able to see that this proceeding does her any good, but it is irritating to us ; and that, perhaps, is quite sufficient for the ill-tempered mosquito. Owing to the habits of the larva, mosquitoes are of course exceptionallv abundant in maishy places. They were formerly conunon in the Fen district of Kngland, but the draining of the fens has now almost got rid of them, as it has also of the fever- and-ague microbe. As a rule, mosquitoes are nocturnal animals, though in dark woods, and al>o in very swampy districts, they often bite quite as badly through the 250 PYashlights o\' Nature daytime as at tii^^ht. But when evening falls, and all else is still, then wander forth these sons (or dauj^hters) of Belial, flown with insolence and blood. " What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn," says Milton ; and that sultry horn is almost more annoying than the bite which it precedes. You lie coiled within your mosquito - curtains, wooing sweet sleep with appropriate reflections, when suddenly, by your ear, comes that still small voice, so vastly more pungent and more irritating than the voice of conscience. You light a candle, and proceed to hunt for the unwelcome intruder. As if by magic, as you strike your match, that mosquito disappears, and you look in vain through every fold and cranny of the thin gauze curtains. At last you give it up, and lie down again, when straightway, *• z-/.-z-z," the humming at your ear commences once more, and vou begin the unequal contest all over again. It is a war of extermina- tion on either side - you thirst for her life, and she thirsts for your blood. Xo peace is possible till one or other combatant is linally satisfied. You can best observe the mosquito in action, however, by letting one settle undisturbed on the back of your hand, and waiting while she lills herself with your blood ; you can easily watch her doing so with a pocket lens. Like the old lady in "Pickwick," she is soon " swelling wisibly." She gorges iierself with blood, indeed, which she straight- way digests, assimilates, antl converts into the 300 eggs aforesaid. But if, while she is sucking, you gently and imobtrusively tighten the skin of your British BLooDsrcKKKs 251 hand by clenchinj:^ your fist hard, you will find that shf cannot anv lonj^er withdraw her man- dibles ; they arc cau,^ht fast in your Hcsh by their own harpoon-likc teeth, and there she must stop accordinj^ly till you choose to release her. If you then kill her in the usual manner, bv a smart slap of the liand, you will see that she is literally full (>f blood, havinj4 suckerl a i^ood drop (;f it. The hununinj4 sound itself by which the mos- quito announces her approaching^ visit is produced in two distinct manners, 'i'he deeper notes which go to make up her droniniLi song are duv to the rapid vibration of the female insect's wings as she flies ; and these vibrations are found by means of a siren (an instrument which measures the fre- quency of the waves in notes) to amount to about 3000 in a minute. The mo>e|uito's wings must, therefore, movi' with this extraordinarv rapidity, which suiticientlv accounts for the ditficultv we have in catching one. Hut the higher and shriller notes of the complex melodv an' due to special stridulating organs situated like little drums on the openings of the air-tubo ; for the adult mosquito breathes no longer by om- or two aii-entranccs on the tail or back, like the larva, but bv a number of spiracles, as they are called, arranged in rows along the sides of the body, and couunmucating witli the network of internal aii-chambers. 'I'he cui"i(<^is mosquito music thus generated bv the little drums serves almost bevond a doubt a> a means of attract- ing male mosquitoes, for it is known that the long hairs on the antemiic of the males, shov»ii in Xo. 9, 2^3 FLASHI-KIHTS 0\ XAiris'K Fij^. A, vibrate syinpathctically in unison with the notes ol a tiiiiiiij4-f()rk, within the raiiL^e of the s:)uncls emitted b\' (he leinale. In othc-r words, hairs and (hums \us\ an^wei" to one anothei". We may, theieton.-, i (.-.isonablv eonehide that tlie female sin^s in order to please and attiaet hei" wanderin.i^ mate, and that the anteini;e of tlu- male are oi'^ans of hearing whieh eateh and ie->p')nd to the bu/.zinjf nmsic she pour-^ toith toi hei lo\'.i s rai>. A whole swaim of .L^nat-^ ean be biou^ht down, imleed, by utteiinj^ the appro- priate note of the laee ; xoii ean eall tliL-m somewhat as you ean eall male ^low-worms b\' showing a h.Liht whieh they mistake for the female. A mneh lait^ei" and more jiowerful liiiti^h bloodsueker than the mo->i.|nito, a^ain, is the ^adlly oi" hoise- tly, wiiose life-^i/e poitiait Mi. Knoek ha> diawn for us in Xo. lo. Most people know this fear- some beast well m the liehK in simnner. He has a triek ol settling on the baek of one's neek, and miking a hole' in om-'s skin with his sharp mandibles ; alter whieh he. (.piietly sneks one's blood almost without one's peieeiyinij him. Horses in pastures are oftcai teiribly troubk-d b\' these per- sistent ereatures, whieh make no noise, but creep S!t« Nil. |(). -rilK (,.\lil I V, NVIIRAI SIZK. I)lv'ITI>ll lil.OtJDSlCKKNS 253 ^ilcntlv lip aii'l -^rtlli' on llic mo'^t cxpn'^i'l p;ll•t■^ <>f till- Ici^N and llaiik^. 'l'lu\' an- \ri \ \( n acitdi-^, and nianai^L' to (k'Noiii an amount (it Mood winch is truly surj^ri->in;;. A little examination ot" the ^adtlv will ^how you, too, one important point in which it and all other tiik llies dilfi'i" tVom the heis, wa>p-., hutteiilies, and the va^t ma^-> ol or(hiiarv ui>ect>. All the othei' races have lour winL^^, and 1 --howed yon m the ca^e ot the wa-^p die beautiliil nu'chanisin of hook> and i^roove-^ h\- which the tore and hind win^s are olteii locked together in one Ljreat ,^ioup, so as to injure unitoriiiitv and tixitv in livinj^. Anionic the \v\\c [\\c>, howfwi. including not only the house-liy and the meat-ll\-, luit aKo the Liadllie-. and the mo-^c|uitoe>. onl\- one pair ot winj^s the tront pail" - is e\er de\i-lope 1. TIk' ■>econd or hind pair is feebly repri-^enled h\- a couple r,\ \\\]\ rudi- mentary win^s, known a-^ poi^er-^ or balancers, which you can iii->t make out in the •^kt.tch, like a couple of stalked kiiob^, in the --pace bi-twi-en the true wiiiL^^ and tlu- tail or abdouu-n. It i-- pretty cleat" that the common anct-^tor of all these two- winded lhe> inii->t !ia\e had foui" winL;s, like the rest of the L;i"i.at cl,i>s to which Ik- belonged ; but he tound it in -oine wav more coiu'enu-nt loi" his purpose to L^et rid of one pair, and he \\a> handed down that singular modilication of stiucluiL- to all his descendants. \c\ wluiiever an or^an or set of origans is suppressed in thl-^ wa\-, it almost always happens that nidiments or relics of the suppressed part rciiKiin to the latest fenerations ; and thus the 254 Flash lk; UTS o\ Xatcrk LA. MP. true flies still retain, in ino-^t ca^es, tin- two tiii\ poiseis (»r balanceis, jii^t to leiuiiul ll^ ot then descent trDUi lOnr-win^ed ancestors. Natme has no habit more interesting than this retention ol parts lonj4 since disused or almost disused ; by their aid we are able to trace the j^enealo.^y ol plants and am- mals. in \o. I I we have a dissec- ted view of the mouth-orj^ans and blood-suck- ing apparatus of the i^adfly, inunensely en- larged, so as to show in detail the minute struc- ture. In life, all these separate parts are com- bined together into acompound sucker (com- monly called the proboscis), which forms practi cally a sin;4le tube or sheath ; thev are dissected out here for facility of comprehension. The lonj^est part, marked L.\ in the sketch, is the labium or lower lip, which makes up the mass of the tube ; it ends in two soft tinker-like pads, which are fleshy in te.\ture, and which enable it to lix itself firmly NO. II. — THE C.ADKI.Y S lANCKIS. \vn n OTHER I'AklS (IK TMK rROUosCls. Hkmtisii Hloodsickkks 255 (like a canit'l's toctt) on tlic >k\\\ ot the victim. 'I'Ir- j^roovccl and (laj^j^fi-shaped oimaii, in;irkc(l LHK, i> tilt' lahrmn, or upper lip ; and the tube oi" sheath formed by the shuttinj^ together of these two parts encloses all the other orj^ans. Combiiierl, they form a trunk or proboscis, not nidike that of the elephant. lint the elephant is not a bl()t)dsucker ; his trunk encircles no daiiL^erous cutting weapon. It is otherwise with the i^adllv, which has a pair ot >.harp knives within, foi lanciuLj the thick skin of its unhappy victims. These knives are known as mandihhs, and are marked MI) in the sketch, one on either side of the labium. Thev Inst pierce the skin ; the iiiaxi/ur, maiked MX, ot which there are also a pair, then lap up the blood from the internal tissues. Finally, there is the true tonj^ue or /ini^ud, marked L, which is the or^an for tastinj^ it. As to tlie !nnx///(irv p(i//>s, marked MP, thev do not form part of the tube at all, but stand outside it, and assist like hands in the work of manipulation. Tliis is how the mouth looks when fully opened out for microscopic examination. Hut as the tly uses it, it forms a closed tube, of which the labium and the labrum are the two walls, enfold inj^ the lances or mandibles, and the lickers or ina.xilhu, as well as the tonj^ue. Pack them all away mentally, from MX to MX, within the two covers, and von will then understand the nature of the mechanism. Look back at Fi^. B in No. 9, and you will there observe that all the parts in the mosquito answer to those in the gadfly. The long upper sheath is the upper lip : 256 FLASMi.ir.nTs ON NvrrRK then coiiK- the- lancets, the hippci s, and the tunguc, and last ot all, the lower lip. In No. 12, which is still more hij^iily nia^nilied, we have the essential parts of the blood-sucking apparatus made (.[uite clear for us. Here LHR is the tip of the labi imi, or upper lip, formin<4 the front of the j^roove or sheath in which the lances work. Its end is blunt, so as to enable it to be pressed close aj4ainsttheminute hole formed by the lances. MI) is the sharp tip of one of the two lances, with its serrated or saw- like cuttinif-edj^e ; this is the orj^an that does the serious work of im percept ibly piercinj' the skin and the tissues beneath it. MX is the tip of one of the maxilhe, or blood lappers, which suck or lap up the blood from the wound after the lances have opened it. 1 need hardly call your attention to the extraordinary delicacy and mimiteness of these hard, sharp weapons, strong enough to pierce the tough hide of a horse, yet so small that if represented on the NO. t2.— TiiK cirniNi; kik.ks ok rHK I.AN( KIS. British Bloodsickkks 357 same scale as the insect itself, you wouKl tail to perceive them. Is it not iiuirvellons, too, that the same bet of orj^ans about the moiitii, which we saw employed i^y the wasp for ciittiiij^ paper from wood, and by the ant for the varied functions of civilised ant-life, should be capable of modilication in the inittertly into a sucker for honey, and in the j^ad- tly into a cunning mechanism for piercing thick hides and feedinj^ on the life-blood of superior animals. Nature, it seems, is sparing of j^round- plan, but stranj^ely lavish of nnnor modifications. She will take a sinj^le set of orj^ans, inherited from some early common ancestor, and keep them true in the main throuj^h inlinite varieties ; but as habits alter in one species or another, she will adapt one of these sets to one piece of work and another to a seccnd wholly unlike it. While she preserves throughout the siniilaiity due to a common orij^in, she will vary inliintely the details and the minor structures so as to make them apply to the most div-Jise functions. Xothinj^ shows this truth r.iore beautifully, and more variously, th:«!*. ihe mouths of msects ; and though liie n.unes by which we call the dilfereut parts are, 1 will admit, somewhat harsh and technical, I feel sure that anybody who once masters their meaning cannot fail to be delij^hted by the end- less modifications by which a few small instru- ments are made to fit an ever-increasinj^ and inhnite diversity of circumstances. XI A VI.RV IXTI I,Mc;i.XT PLANT PlvOlMJ'^ who haw nc'vci had occasion to oliscMVc plants closely oltcn fall into the error of re^aidin^ them as practically dead -dead, that is to say, in the sense of never doinj^ or con- trivinj^ anythin;^ active. Thev know, of conrsc, that herbs and trees ^row and increase ; that they Hower and fi nit ; that they pnt forth j^reen leaves in spring and lo>/■ the tree or shrnb rather than by it. Those, however, who have kept a close watch upon living j^reen thinj^s in their native con- dition have j4enerallv learned by slow dej^rees to take cjuite a difleient view of jilant morals and plant economy. They be^in to lind out in the course of their observations that the life of a herb is pretty nuich as the life of an animal in almost everything save one small particular. The plant, as a rule, is rooted to a simple spot ; the animal, as a rule, is fiee and locomotive. Yet even this difference itself is not quite abso- lute : for there are on the one hand locomotive plants, such as tliat quaint microscopic ve^^etable 258 A Vkry Intklligknt Plant 25; tiiiiiMcr, till- ll();itiiij4 j^rccn voKox, wliicli wliiris alioiit t-iuicklv till tiiij^li tlif Wiitt'i likt- ;i liviiii^ wheel, hv means oi it>. rapid vihiatoiv liaiis ; and there are, on tlie other liancl, lixed animals, such as the oyster and tlie sea-anemone, which are far more rij^idly attached to one spot tor lite than, sav, the connnon lield-orchid or the yellow crocus. For lield-orchids and crocuses do travel very slij^htly from place to place each season, by puttinj^ out fresh bulbs or tiibeis at the sides of the old ones, and sprin;^in<4 up next year in a spot a few inches awav from their last vear's foothold ; whereas the oyster and the sea-anemoife settle down earlv in life on a particular rock, and never stir one step from it durin}4 their whole existence. Thus the distinction which seems to most people most funda- mental as marking olf plants from animals — the distinction n( movement- turns out on examina- tion to be purelv fallacious There are sedentarv animals and movinj^ plants ; there are herbs that catch and eat insects, and there are insects that live a life more uneventful and more staj^nant than that of any herb in a summer meadow. Aj4am, everybody who has studied plants in a broad spirit is well aware that each act of the plant's is just as trulv purposive, as full of practical import, as any act of an animal's. If a child sees a cat lyinj^ in wait at a mouse's hole, it asks vou whv she does so ; it is told, in reply, and truly told, " Because she wants to catch her prey for dinner." Hut even imaginative children seldom or never ask of a rose or a 26o Flashlights on Xatirk narcissus, " Wliy docs it prodiRc this notch on its petals ? Why docs it make tliis ciiri(Jiis crown inside the cup of its Hower ? " Tliose thin exhausted, and it has accumulated a little stock of its own by its private exertions, it begins to mamifacture new leaves and branches that it mav rise above the tangled mass of competitors by which its birth- place is surrounded. NO. 2.~-rilK (;OKSK ri AM' Al ONK WKKK Oil). 264 Flashlkhits on NATI'RE No. 2 shows us tliis second sta^e in the younjij shruli's (levclopniL'iit. At fust si^ht you would liardly suppose it was a j^orse at all ; you niij^ht take it for the younj^ of some such allied species as a broom or a j^euista. You will observe that at this point in its history the younj^ j^orse has trefoil leaves, not very unlike those of some kinds of clover. VV^hy is this 'i Well, we have many ^oo:l reasons for supposinj^ that the ancestors of ^orse were orij^inally soft-leaved and unarmed shrubs, like the ornamental ^^enistas which we f^row in pots for drawinj^-room decoration ; hut as they were much exposed on open moors and commons, where they were liable to be j^razed down and browsed upon l>y rabbits, sheep, and other herbivorous aiumals, the tenderer and more luscious amon^ them stood little chance of sur- vivinjf. Indeed, so hard is it for plants to ^row in such situations, that one not unconnnoidy linds tiny trees of Scotch lir, close cropped to the ground, yet with many years' j^rowth exhi- bited bv the animal linj^s of wood in their imderj^round root-stock. These poor persistent little trees have been nibbled down, year after year, as soon as they appeared, by rabbits or donkeys ; yet year after year they have j^one on sproutini^ afresh, as well as they could, and layinj^ by an annual rinj^ of woody tissue in buried root-stock. To some such attacks the ancestral j^orses nuist always have been exposed on the opeii moors and hillsides of primitive Europe, at first, no A Very Intklligknt Plant 265 doubt, from deer and wild oxen and beavers, but later on from the sheep and cows and j^oats and donkeys which followed in the wake of aj^- j^ressive civilisation. Under these circumstances, most of the soft-leaved and unprotected plants }4ot eaten down and killed off ; l>ut any shrub which showed a nascent tendency to develop stout spines or prickles on their branches must have been favoured by nature in the struf^j^le for existence. 'i'he consequence was that in the end our upland slopes and open spaces all over Western Europe came to be occupied by nothinj^ but stronj^ly armed plants — brambles, thistles, blackthorns, may-bushes, nettles, butcher's-broom, and the various kinds of furze, all of which can hold their own with ease against the attacks of (■luadrupeds. Indeed, there is one not uncom- mon Enj^lish herb, the little purple-tlowered rest- harrow, which very well illustrates this curious coimection between the production of thorns and the habit of ^rowin^ in much - browsed- over spots ; for when it settles in enclosed and protected fields it produces smooth and unarmed creeping branches, but when it happens to lind its lot cast in places where donkeys and rabbits abound, it defends itself aj^ainst the dreaded enemy by coverinj^ its shoots with stout woody prickles. Still, to the end of its days, the developed j^orse plant never entirely forj^it^ that it is the remote descendant of trefoil-beariu}' ancestors; for iu)t only does every young gorse begin life with trefoil :66 Klashlkihts on XA'rrwK foliaj^e, but if frost happens to check the growth of the hiiddiiij^ branches in the fiill-j4ro\vn bush, or if lire singes tliem, tlie slnnib at once puts forth a sliort sprout of trefoil leaves at the injured point, as though revert- ing in its trouble to its infantile nature. In No. 3 we see the third stage in the up- ward evolution of the babv gorse. Here, the see Uing begins to outgrow its childish trefoil stage, and to prepare itself for the repellent prickliness of its armed manhood. You will observe in this case that the outer and lower leaves have still three leaflets apiece, but that the upper and imier ones — that is to say, the youngest and latest produced — have the form of singU' long blades, like those of the bn)oin bush. As vet. these solitary leaves are also unarnu-d : thev do not end in sharp points like the later fohage, and they cannot pierce or wound the tender noses of NO. 3. -riiK ri AM' f)rr(;R(>\vi.Ni; MS TK 1:1 nil. SIAr.K. A Vkky Imkllioknt Plant 267 sheep or rabbits. Hut if tlie j^orse were to con- tinue loiij^ in this unarmed coiuhtion, it would stand a poor chance in hfe on its open hillsides ; so it soon proceeds to the statue exhibited in Xo. 4. This illustration shows you a plant about a tortnij^ht or three weeks old, with trefoil leaves below, passin^f gradually into silky and hairy sinj^le blades, which in turn j^row sharpei' and thinner as they push upward to- wards the unoccupied space above their native tliicket. Interspersed anion^ these sharp little leaves you will also note a few jfrooved branches, each endinj^ in a stout prickly point ; these prickles are the chief de- of- fence of the bush aj^ainst its watchful enemies. But the leavis and the branches are often so much alike that only a skilled botanist can distinguish the one from the other. Both are sharp and intended for defence ; NO. 4. IIIK VOINi; SIIRIII HRC.INS 10 A KM 1 IsKl 1-. 26S FLASMLKiHTS ON NATCKK and as llic branches of j^orse are i»reen like the leaves, liotli pertOnn the same feeding function. In No. 5 I have chosen for illustration and coinpaiison a tiill-j^rown shoot of tlu' cotnnion- ^centerl yellow j^enista, so often j^rown in pots as a talile decora- tion. Tiiis prettv shrub be^^ins in life so much like a^orse-bush,that if 1 weri' to show you very youth- ful seedlings of both, vou could hardly discrimi- nate them. That is U) say, in all probability, both are descendants of a conmion an- cestor which had trefoil leaves and bri>4ht yellowpea- llowers. But the scented j^enistas happened to lind theii lot cast in inaccessible places, on clitfs or craj^s, where defence aj^ainst browsinj^ ammals was practicallv luniecessary ; while »)ur rudi-r nortluri. j^orse had its lines laid on rough upland moors, wLere every passing beast Nt>. 5. IIS in KKOM khi.-iavim; inskcts. 2/2 Flashlights on Nature out to the nearest common, and examine a flower- ing gorse-bush for yourself, when you will see how wonderfully and how intelligently the plant provides for the equal security of all its blossoms. I do not wish to be personal, but if for one moment you can imagine yourself a donkey, and try to help yourself with your teeth to some of the juicy buds, you will find that it is practically im- possible to do so without receiving a whole array of serried lance-thrusts from several separate prickles. But large animals are not the only foes against which the gorse has to defend its blossoms. It is almost equally exposed to the unfriendly attentions of flying insects, which desire to lay their eggs near its rich store of pollen and its soft yellow petals. To ward off these winged assailants, mere prickles are insufficient. The insect can wriggle in side- ways, and so deposit its egg, which would develop in time into a hungry grub ; the grub would pro- ceed to eat up the flower, and thus defeat the object which the plant has in view in producing its blossoms. No. 8 shows you how the gorse meets this second difficulty. It covers up the buds with its stout calyx, which, for greater security, is reduced to a pair of sepals only, though in allied types there are five, and traces of the five still exist in the lobed top of the existing calyx. This outer coverlet, or greatcoat, is thickly sprinkled with a sort of fur, composed of dark brown hairs, which baffle the insects, and prevent them from laying their eggs upon the surface. Indeed, nothing A Very Intelligent Plant 273 keeps off insects so well as hairs ; they form to these little creeping creatures an impenetrable thicket, like tropical jungle to an invading army. Ants, you will remember, cannot creep up stems which are thickly set with hairs ; and in warm climates, people take advantage of this peculiarity by wrapping fur round the legs of meat-safes, so as to keep off those indefatigable pests of the equatorial housekeeper. Nor is this the only use of the short brown hairs. I spoke of the calyx above as a great- coat, for warmth is really one of its chief objects. It keeps off the cold as well as the insects. You must remember that the greater gorse is a winter-flower- ing plant : it lays itself out to attract the few stray bees which tlit out in search of food on sunny mornings in December and January. A bush with this habit needs protection for its buds from the cold: just as you see the crocus does, when it wraps up its flowers in a papery spathe, and as the willow does when it encloses its catkins in soft, silky coverings. The hairy coat of the gorse bud has just the same function : it is there for warmth as well as for protection against egg-laying insects. That, I think, is the reason why the hairs are coloured brown ; because brown is a good absorber of heat ; the fur collects and retains whatever warmth it can get from the winter sun in his friendlier moments. You will further observe in the illustrations, and still better on the living gorse-bush, that all the buds are not at the same stage of development S 274 F'LASHLKiHTS OX XATIKE t()ring on the bare spots around a moor or common, you will find gorse seedlings by the thou- sand, all fight- ing it out amo.ig them- selves, and all trying their best to occupy the uncovered spaces in the neighbourhood of their parents. And here the wonder of their lives begins all over again. Vov while the gorse was old and woody, it grew like gorse, all stern and prickly. Hut as soon as the young seedlings start afresh in life, they seem to forget their parents : they revert once more to the old trefoil condition. All young plants and animals, at least in their embryonic stages, show this strange tendency to throw back NO. 12.— IHK I'()I), AFl I R I)IS( MARGINC. TlIK H1.ANS KIASI KAI.l.Y. 282 Flashlights on Natirk at first to the ancestiJil form ; and it is fortunate for us tliat they do so, for it oftc.i enables us to perceive undcrlyinj^ relationships which in the adult form escape our notice. Nobody who looked at a furze-bush in its stiff and prickly old ajfc would ever suspect it at first sij^ht of a cousinship with clover. Yet when we consider the trefoil leaves of the seedlinj^, and the shape of the sepa- rate peaHowers in the adult form, we can see for ourselves that the two plants are far closer toj^ether than we mij^ht be tempted to imaj^ine. Indeed between the little creeping yellow clovers and the a;4gressive furze or the tall and beautiful laburnum, we can hnd even now a regular series of con- necting^ links which show clearly that all alike are sliffhtly divergent descendants of a single common ancestor. We may conclude, then, that gorse in every particular lays itself out in life to fight its own battle, and to meet the peculiarities of its special situation by its own exertions. Born a trefoil- bearing plant, unarmed and undefended, it pro- duces spines instead of leaves as soon as its growth exposes it to the attacks of enemies. It defends its buds alike from the attacks of cattle and the assaults of insects ; it wraps them up from the cold in efficient overcoats. It cares for its young and lays up food in its beans on their account ; it scatters its seed upon unoccupied spots where they may stand the best chance of picking up a living. All these acts are analogous to those produced by intelligence in animals ; and though the intelligence A Very Inteli.igkxt Plant 28^ is here no doubt unconscious and inherited, I think we are justified in applyin^f the same word in both cases to operations whose effects are so closely similar. Gorse, in short, may fairly be called a clever and successful plant, just as the bee may be called a clever and successful insect, because it works out its own way through life with such conspicuous wisdom. XII A FORI'IGN INVASION OF I.NGLAND OUR worst enemies are not always the most apparent ones. It is easy enongh to build forts for tile protection of our towns and harbours aj^ainst French or Germans, but it is very difficult to devise means of defence aj^ainst such insidious foreii^n invaders as the influenza _<4erm or the Colerado beetle. France lost much by the war with Germany, but she probaldy lost more by the silent onslau<^ht of the tiny phylloxera, which attacked her vineyards — attacked them, liter- ally, root and branch, and paralysed for several years one of her richest industries. Yet invasions like these, bein_Lf less obvious to the eye than the landinL^ of a boat-load of French or German marines on some bare rock in the Pacihc claimed by Britain, attract far less attention than aggres- sions on the Niger or advances in Central Africa. The smallness of the foe makes us overlook its real strength — it has the force of numbers. We forget that while we can exterminate hostile human bands with Armstrongs and torpedo-boats, the re- sources of civilisation are still all but powerless against the potato blight, the vine disease, and the destroying microbe. A Foreign Invasion of England 285 The enemies of our com crops in particular are many and various. There is tiie wheat -beetle, for example, which ravaj^es the wheat-liekls in two ways at once, the jfruh devouring the growing young leaves, while the perfect winged insect eats up at leisure the grain as it ripens. There are the various cockchafers, which vie with one another in their cruel depredations on th.e standing corn. There are the skip-jacks and wire-worms, and other queerly named beasties, which attack the roots of the plant underground. There is the corn saw-fly, whose larva feeds on the stalk of rye and wlieat, till it finally cuts off tlie whole haulm altogether close to the soil at the bottom. There are th.e midges which lay their eggs in the swelling ear, where the maggots develop and prevent the proper growth of the impregnated grain. There is the gout-fly, which causes a gouty swelling at the joints, and the corn - moth, which c'evours the stored wheat in the granary. There are the red- maggot, and the grain-aphis, and the thrips, and the daddy-longlegs, all of which in various ways prove themselves serious enemies of the agricultural interest. And there are dozens more known only to men of science by dry Latin names, and duly chronicled by the farmer's friend. Miss Ormerod, in many learned and exhaustive monographs. But as if these were not enough for our " de- pressed " neighbours, the agriculturists, the last ten years or so have seen England invaded by a foreign foe, either from Germany or America — a foe whose life-history has been made a special 286 Flashlights on Nature subject of study by my collaborator, Mr. Knock, and whose stranj^e story I shall detail (largely from his materials) with no unnecessary scientific verbiage in this present chapter. The new invader is called the Hessian fly ; and he made his first appearance in Britain, or at least first attracted official entomological attention in this country, in 1886. If he was here earlier, he skulked incognito. For more than a century, however, he liad already been a great scourge in America, where he first acquired the name of Hessian fly during the revolutionary war, through the popular belief that he had been imported from Europe into Pennsylvania by the Hessian troops employed as mercenaries by George III. in his fruitless struggle against the revolted colonies. The Hessians were the hefes noircs of the patriotic Americans ; and the farmers, finding their crops devastated by a pest till then unknown, came at once to the conclusion that their enemy. King George, had sent the two plagues, human and entomological, over sea together. They regarded the question much in the same spirit as that of the loyal poet in the " Rejected Addresses," when he asks about Napoleon, " Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies ? " The Briton set down every natural misfortune to " the Corsican ogre" ; the American set down all evils that befell him to the Rhenish mercenaries. Ever since that day, much controversy has raged in America and Germany as to the original home of the destructive creature. One school of dis- A FoRKTGN Invasion of Kx(ii.ANn 2S7 piitaiits hotly niaintuins tluit tlic Hessian llv, which now abounds in |)arts of France, Austria, and Russia, is a native of the Old World, and that its first home coincided with that of our primitive cereals, Southern Europe and Western Asia. An- otlier scliool, anxious to make out the enemy an American citizen, hj^hts hard for its beinj^ an aboriginal inhabitant of the United States. Thus much, at least, is certain, that at the present day the "fly" is found in both hemispheres in too great abundance, and that in America in particular in certain disastrous years it has almost ruined the entire wheat crop. I liave seen whole fields upon fields there simplv pillaj^ed by its ravages. The loss produced by tins insiqnilicant little crea- ture, indeed, has in some seasons been measured by millions of poimds sterling. If you go out into a barley-iield in England where the Hessian fly has effected his entrance, you will probably fmd a large number of plants of barley, like tliat delineated in No. i, with the stem bent down sliarply toward the ground at the second joint. At lirst sight you might imagine these stalks were merely broken by the wind or fallen by their own weight ; but if you exa- mine them closely in tlie neighbourliood of the bend, wiiich occurs with singular unanimity in all the affected plants at about the same point, you will find inside tlie sheath of the blade, where it encircles the stem, a curious little body which the farmers with rougli eloquence have agreed to describe as a " flax seed." If you watch the 288 Flashlights on Nature development of tlie "Haxseed" a^ain, yoii will find that it is not a seed at all, but the pupa- case (or rather the j^rub-shell) of a small winded insect ; and it is the life-history of this insect, the Hessian fly, that I now propose to sketch for you in brief outline. No. 2 shows the mother fly herself, very much enlarged, for in nature she is but a small black gnat, belonging to the same group as our old NO. I. — AN INVALID RARI.EY PLANT. friend (and foe) the mosquito. You will observe that she is a fairy- like creature, for all her wicked- ness : she has two delicately fringed wings (with " poisers " behind them), a pair of long antennae with beaded joints, six spindle legs, and a very full and swollen body. She needs that swollen body, for she is a mighty egg-layer. She flies about on the stubbles in September, and lays her eggs on the self-sown barley plants and on the aftergrowth of the cut crops ; as well as in spring A Foreign Invasion of England 289 (a second brood) on the new sprouting barley. One industrious female which Mr. F2nock watched when so employed laid no less than 158 eggs on six distinct plants ; while another laid eighty on a single leaf. He has noted in detail many cases in the same way, and all show an astonishingly high level of matu- rity. The eggs are extremelv minute, and are pale orange in colour, with reddish dots. Most of them are deposited on the leaf itself, or on the sheath or tube which forms its lower portion. And no w see how clever this dainty little creature is ! She lays her eggs with the head end downward ; and as soon as the tiny grub hatches, which it does about the fourth day, it emerges from the shell, and walks straight down towards the stem, at the point where the protecting leaf-sheath is wrapped closely round it. The worm forces itself in between the stem and the sheath, and after T NO. 2.— THE SOURCE OF IHE MISCHIEK THE HESSIAN 1 I.Y. 290 Flashlights on Nature walking steadily for four hours, at the end of which time it has covered a record space of nearly three inches, it arrives at tlie joint, where the sheath begins, and so finds its way blocked by the partition wall ; it can get no further. Here NO. 3. — THK r.RUR AT WORK. then the young grub stops, as you see in No. 3, wedged tightly in between the leaf-sheath and the stem, and with its head pointing downward. Being a hungry, and therefore an industrious creature, it at once sets to work to eat the barley-plant. This it does by fixing its sucker-like mouth on the A FoKKir.x Invasion of England 291 soft, sweet, and jiiicv portion of the stem just above the joint tluit same soft, sweet, and juicy portion wliich children love to pull out and suck, and from whicii tlie ^rub, too, sucks the life-juice of the barlev-plant. Naturally, however, you can't suck a plant's life-blood without injuring its growth ; so, after a very short time, the enfeebled stem bej^ins to bend, as you see in No. 3, a little distance above the point where the j^rub is devourinj^ it. It has been undermined, and its vitality sapped, so it gives way at once near the source of the injury. How much damage this action does to the crop you can best understand by a glance at the two next contrasted illustrations. No. 4 represents ''seven well-favoured ears" of barley, unaffected by Hessian fly, and with the grains richly filled out as the farmer desires them ; No. 5, on the contrary, shows you '* seven lean ears," attacked by the fly, and bent and ruined in various degrees by the indirect action of the silently gnawing larva. Look on this picture and on that, and you will then appreciate the British farmer's horror of his in- significant opponent. You will observe, by the way, that I speak throughout of barley, not of wheat. This is because in England, where these sketches are studied, the time of wheat- sowing is such that the wheat has so far escaped the pest ; the female flies are all dead before the crop is sprouted : whereas in America the " fall wheat " comes up at the exact moment when the female Hessian fly is abroad and scouring the fields in search of plants on which to lay the eggs of her 292 Flashlights ox Xatire future generations. In Enghiud, tlierefore, it is barley alone which is l.irj'ely attacked ; and since bailey is mainly used for malting, to make beer or whisky, the teetotaler may perhaps retiect with NO. 4. — SEVKN WEI T.-FAVOURED. EARS. t'NATTACKED. complacency that the tiy is merely playing the game of the United Kingdom Temperance Alliance. His joy, however, is fallacious, for, on the other hand, if we don't raise enough barley at home to brew our ale, we don't on that account refrain A F'ORp:ir.\ Invasion ok England 293 from malt liquors : we buy it from elsewhere ; so that, ill the eyes of the impartial political economist at least, the Hessian i\y in Britain must be regarded as an unmitij^ated national misfortune. • The }4rub eats and eats, in his safe cradle between the sheath and the stem, till he is ready to pass NO. 5. — SF.VKN LEAN KARS, AITACKF.I) BY CIRUB^. into the adult condition. But he does this by various and complicated sta<^es, all of which I do not propose to set f(M-th in full with the tedious minuteness of a scientific treatise, lest I weary that fastidious and somewhat lazv perst)n, the " general reader." It must sut'ticc here io say, in brief, tliat 294 Flashlights on Natire the larva is at first soft and free, hut that hefore hecomiiif^ a true pupa or chrysalis he passes through an iiiteruiecliate encased or "flax-seed" stage, in which he performs some curious evolutions. The young larva when he starts in life is whitish or yellowish ; in the " flax-seed " stage he becomes a rich chestnut brown, and seems externally quiescent. But the fact is, he arrives at full growth in the white form, and then leaves off feeding ; his skin now hardens and darkens, and he looks from out- side very much like a pupa. Indeed, his outer covering is now a sort of solid pupa-case, in shape just the same as the original grub, but more sombre in colour. No. 6 shows you the portrait of the grub in this curious intermediate condition. If you compare it with No. 3, you will see that the outer skin still preserves the original shape of ihe fat young larva ; but that the enclosed grub him- self, here shown as if the case were transparent, has shrunk away from his own old skin, just as a ripe nut shrinks away from its shell, to borrow Mr. Knock's admirable phrase for describing the process. And this strange shrinkage is connected with a very curious fact in the eventful life-history of the Hessian fly ; it tells us of a problem which the grub has to face, and for which it has devised a most unexpected solution. You remember that the young maggot had necessarily to work its way head doivmvard along the stalk, in order to fix itself in the only place where it can find the soft food needful for it, between the sheath and the stem, where the tissue A P'OKEiGN Invasion of England 295 is tenderest. But when it emerges later (in in the open air as a fly, it lias to walk back aj^ain to the outer world above the joint ; and this it could not do if it had still to ^^o head downward. Yet there seems no room for it to turn in. Somehow or NO. 6. — THK C-.RUB TURNINt; RoUNO INSIDE ITS OWN SKIN. other, in that restricted space, it must reverse its position ; it must ^et itself head upward. How is it to do so ? This difhculty early struck Mr. Enock in his examination of the creature's life ; and with characteristic patience he determined to investigate it. His researches not only answered 296 Flashlights on Nati'ke the question itself, but also discovered a meaning and purpose in a certain orj^an of the adult grub, the nature of which had heretofore been a standing puzzle to that section of society whicii interests itself prominently in the Hessian fly question. The larva in its " tlax-seed "' stage develops an odd and very hard organ, known as '* the anchor-process," near the head; and this "anchor-process," as Mr. Knock has shown, is used by the grub to turn it round completely within its hardened pupa- case. (The last phrase, I will admit, is not quite scienti- fically correct, but I do not wish to complicate the subject by introducing a multiplicity of tech- nical terms unknown to my readers.) In Xo. 6 you can see the adult grub in the very act of thus turning round, head to tail, within his outer skin, so that he may be able to emerge as a full-grown fly, head upward. A tiger is nothing to it, though a tiger moves within his own integuments more freely than most of us. You will note that during the feeding stage the grub's mouth and under side were pressed against the stem ; when he has performed this curious somersault on his own axis, so to speak, the head is uppermost, but the mouth and under side of the body are turned out- ward towards the sheath, not inward towards the stem and hollow centre of the barley -plant. He wants now to bite his way out, not to suck at the stalk for its nutritive juices. I need hardly add that it takes some watching to detect such invisible movements inside a hard dark case ; and only by the closest and most unweary- A P'OKEiGN Invasion of P2nc;land 297 ing attention was Mr. Enock enabled to discover the true use and nieaniiij^ of tlie so-called "anchor- process." It is really not an anchor, but a sort of hooked foot or lever, by wiiose aid the apparently dormant ^nih turns himself bodily over within iiis ow hardened skin, now become too lar^^e for liis shr> cen body. Discoveries like these are hard to make ; yet they bring little return in money or glory. Hut it is only by such patient and careful investigation that a way can be discovered to get rid of pests which cost civilisation many hundreds of thousands, nay, many millions, annually. The grub in the turning stage is thus by no means what he looks a dormant creature; on the contrary, he is a gymnast of no small skill and activity. The muscular contortions by which he seeks to free himself of discomfort when disturbed by man show that he possesses great power of contraction, and that he can exercise a consider- able force of leverage. After the grub has succeeded in putting itself in position for assuming the winged stage, and emerg- ing from its home head upward, it begins next to grow into a true pupa, or chrysalis. It is in tiie pupa, of course, that all winged insects acquire their wings and become definitely male or female, and this stage is, therefore, one of the most im- portant. As soon as the grub begins to reach it, he swells once more and grows quite tight inside his larval skin, which is stretched so much that it seems to be bursting. At last, as he wriggles and 298 F'LASH LIGHTS ON NAIURE twists within it, the skin does burst, first over the mouth and head, and then over the central joints of the body. Af^ain the insect twists and wriggles inside this half- broken skin, and again he pushes it backward toward his tail, till at last he has sloughed it all off entirely, and it remains a shriv- elled relic — an empty case — in the spot where he has hitherto lived and breathed and had his being. He is now a true pupa, white at first, but gradually growing a delicate pink, and then rosy. Just at first, however, the pupa looks almost as formless as the grub it replaces, revealing no limbs or distinct segments. But little by little, feet and legs and eyes and wings begin to be visible through the semi-transparent shell of the chrysalis. He is changing slowly into a winged insect, and you can watch the change through the delicate horny coverings. Stranger still, the Hessian fly at this stage is not torpid and quiescent like most ordinary insects. The piipa, as in many of this family, is locomotive. It has legs and feet, and it can wriggle its way up, as you see in No. 7, where the lower object is the empty larval skin, now deserted by its inmate, while the upper one is the pupa, emerging from the sheath, and making its first experiences of the wide, wide world outside its native leaf-bound hollow. It is ready now to come forth from the pupa stage, and to fly forth in the open air in search of a mate with whom to carry on the serious business of replenishing the fields with new gene- rations of similar larvae. A Foreign Invasion of England 299 The succeeding illustnitions show you in detail the various sta<;es in the process of emerji^ence. No. 8 gives you tlie beginning of emancipation. The pupa has here bitten its way tluough the leaf- sheath with its hard, horny jaws, and is pro- truding visibly. Ju.^t at first, only the head itself gets free ; then the in- sect rests a while after its ardous labour, and begins wriggluig and writhing again, this time working out its body or thorax. After another short interval for recuperation after such a terrihc effort, it manages to pull its legs through the hole, and to support itself upon them by resting them like a bracket against the stem of the barley. This is the point just reached in the illustrati<^n No. 8. There the pupa stops short, having got himself into a convenient positit)n for dispensing with his coverlet ; for the sheath of the barley grasps the pupa-skin tight as in a vice, and he can wriggle his winged body free within it, without paying NO. 7. -TItK n IMHINO VVVA ; BKUIW, THE KMI'IY CASE. 30D Flashlights on Nature any further attention to the disused mummy-case which once confined it. In No. 9, tlie pupa being thus safely anchored, tlie tly is emerj^ing. It is a slow and delicate process, for with so many legs and wings and ^^^Wi- Zi, ■, ' ""'''' fWi n ti 1 nii^M, ** '*^ * ' '-'"'^^^Spi 1 ^^1 '1 ■ ■ ■ ^UB^^^Kiiw ^^^^1 = mB^^^^^^^^^H ^^^^^^^j^^^^^BlagB II^^HhH :• ■ ■ ■ 1 ■ ■ ■ i is H ^^^1 H - Iw^^^^^l ^^^^^^H ^^M ^^B '^ i'Udi^B^I IBI 1 NO. 8.— THE I'UPA COMES OUT. antenna} and appendages to get free from the mummy-case, one cannot hurry : haste might be fatal. At this first stage of emergence, as you will observe, all the important parts are still cramped at their ends within the pupa-shell ; but you can sec how the legs and anteniKu are striving to dis- A Foreign Invasion of England 301 engage themselves. Tlie pupa covering is propped as before by the empty leg-shells so as to fcMin a bracket. In No. 10 — hurrah! witli a supreme effort, our fly has got her antennai free ! She can move them NO. 9.— AND THE KI.Y COMES OUT OF IT. to and fro now, in all their jointed and tufted glory. That enables her to wag her head in either direc- tion without difficulty, and encourages her to go on to fresh exertions for the rest of the deliverance. But her feet are still fast in that hampering mummy- case ; she must try her hardest now to free them each carefully. 302 Flashlights on Nature First, however, lei lier .i^et the tips of her \viti