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Lorsque le document eet trop grend pour fttre reproduit en un seul cliche. 11 est f ilm< i pertir de i'angia supArieur gauche, de gauche i drohe. et da haut en baa. an prenant la nombre d'images nteaaaaira. Las diagrammes sulvants illustrant ia m4thoda. 12 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 »MC»OCtm RKOUITION TiST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) y^PUEO IIVHGE Inc 1653 EosI Main Strtct ?•??!?•'•'■■ '**• ^o* i+eos USA (716) 482 - 0300 - Phon. (716) 288 - 5989 - Fa, itC'^'ro 1 >v ./^ ^ L 6-/V--^ #A^'-5^ ; ■^HC PROPER! • OF iSCARBORO PUBLIC LIBRARY. IN NATURE'S WORKSHOP By th0 MMint Author. FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE. With 1 50 Illustration* by Frederick Kmnih. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6i>, ' The Jwok will make an admirable gift for any person who care* for country life, and even for the town dweller it will be useful, for he can see many of the subjects dealt with in the parks and open spaces. "—I.anc€t. THE STORY OF THE PLANTS. With 49 Illustrations. Cloth, u. " Tlie whole of the book is excellent, but special praise is due to his exposition of the relations existing between plants and insects. Miiny chapters of th<; story he tells must prove to the unitiated as exciting as a xon\9X\7 188 189 1 89 VIU Contents and Illustrations WINGS AND LEGS AM. OUT ! . . . HOLDING ON BY HSJi TAIL CICADA JUST EMERGED. WITH EMI'TY Pbl-A-CASIC PLIMMING HKR WINGS WINGS FULLY EXPANDED ..." LAYING EGGS ... CARRIED OFK BY AN ENEMY THE ENEMY'S LARVA FEEDING ON DEAD CICADA THE ROBBERS' CAVES : SECTIO.NS OF THE ENEMY's BURROWS LIFE-HISTORY OF THE ARMY-WORM . ARMOUR-PLATED ANIMALS TILE-SHAPED PLATE-ARMOUR : THE PANGOLIN THE TREE-HAUNTING PANGOLIN SOLID CUIKASSKS: THE THREE-BANDED ARMADILLO AN ENEMY THREATENS: THE ARMADILLO RETIRES THE "ARMADILLO" WOOD-LOUSE A SOUTH AFRICAN TORTOISE WITH DISTINCT SCALES A SOUTH AFRICAN TORTOISE: THE SCALES COALESCING A MUD-TORTOISE : THE SCALES ALMOST OBLITERATED THE SPINY LOBSTER .... THE SPINY lobster's TAIL A knight's plate-armour . . A JOINTED AND ARMOURED MOLLUSC, THE CHITON A MAILED WATER-BEETLE . PACK 190 191 192 •93 194 »95 196 «97 198 203 207 210 215 217 219 221 225 226 227 234 23s 239 FAGK 190 192 »93 194 »9S 196 «97 ' 198 203 207 210 21s 217 219 221 225 226 227 234 235 239 IN NATURE'S WORKSHOP SEXTONS AND SCAVENGERS another tL^oll TJrTT"^ f '" "'^P'^'J' «<> °n= The hawks! ZVj^^"^^^'' "f ''"'"'' =?'"'• true brotherly love towardf 7 ^ t''""=' "'"" °' tits : and the mice LhT ^ .^ ''*' "■■ "'' '"m- cats by norerlSfe^X""'^^"'''''' society is hardly what m,. Ti^ ^-operative family, still in sniT t one could call a happy the pLt Z "NaCets on^e'^l'"^'^"" "P™ ^^ no preacher can heal" t !« ""^ ''='?"'-» harm a certain rough baianl """ '^'^ '">« 'hat adjustment of fart ^pS "o" ^«°'»»<«'-«on or "ent of animal and vegSle 1^' Zu"'' "^P^"-'" '0 think, i, could hardfyt 1 tise Th*' """^ I ^/ P.ant PerishVi^rtr sX-tutlrC' A 2 In Nature's Workshop in an island which contained no flies; kingfishers necessarily presuppose fish; and silkworms imply the presence of mulberry leaves. You cannot have vultures wild in a country where there are no dead animals lying about loose ; nor can you keep bees except where there are honey-bearing flowers. Dutch clover depends for its very existence upon a few insects which fertilise it and set its seeds. The draining of the fens killed out a dozen species of English plants and animals ; the inclosure of the prairies deprived the buffaloes of their chance of pasture.' In this sense, all nature hangs together as it were ; each species fills some place in the great mosaic which cannot be altered without consider- able disturbance of adjacent pieces. Destroy the rabbits in a given area, and you have nothing left for the weasels to feed upon. Sometimes, too, apparently unimportant or un- noticed creatures perform in the aggregate some valuable work for the rest of the plant and animal community, which little suspects its real indebted- ness to them. Darwin showed long ago that the humble and despised earthworm was really answer- able for the greater part of that rich layer of vegetable mould or soil which covers the bare rocks; it deposits the material in which all our plants root and from which they derive a large element of their sustenance. Kill out the earth- worms over the whole of our earth, and you would reduce a vast proportion of it to the condition of a desert. For the worms pull down green leaves into their neat little burrows; and the refuse of Sextons and Scavengers 3 season by the industrious small workmen, forms bv far the greater share of that dark layer of vec^able mould which is the chief source of^he fertility in plains and lowlands. Sandy upland sLts whe e support a poor moorland growth of eorse ani h^^ You must have pLy of t^" ^u want to grow corn or turnips. ' But there are other unconsidered creatures besides ; these creatures which perform for us functions almost as useful and important as those of ^fc earthworms; and I propose to de'te a f:* pa«: ! o h lrct"t,r ">' ",1 """"^ commissions : the vas^ hL ^' .' *'" ™"""'' '° call them- '^^Jtotiyi' ""= ^'crgVe°nm'ealwsi:S TTJIT i f "^'^"''' 5'°" ^'■"°^' n'ver come across consider that the fields ihL u I ', ^"* J"^* ^^here are its cemeteries? Squirrels and dor- 4 In Nature's Workshop S'*K ^'l ^^'"^ '" ^''^'y *^°P*« '' but what becomes of their bodies ? Who ever saw a dead bat ? VVho knows the tomb of the deceased hedgehogs ? Of course a great many of the smaller animals Che a violent death, and find their living gravTin exnl^nT '^''' devourers-one must fdmit that fro,^ th ^ ^ u^'t""'"^ ^^^^ ''^«" disinterred from the stomach of a single buzzard when it was shot „, the act of digesting after a good dinnir and ow s and snakes are answerable for the fate of no small proportion of our minuter wild animals mo^ S thf ' '°°' ^"'*"^^^ ^"^ ^-^^'« d-ot mos of the carrion as it lies; while even in England we have a few dead-meat-eaters, such as the carnon-crow, the rat, and the shrike. But for the most part our rural English public scavengers are smaller and less conspicuous creatures. Fore! most among them in number and utility we may reckon the various kinds of burying beetle. ^ If you ^^ find the body of a mouse or shrew lying unburied m England, it occurs almost always'on a path or high-road. Now this fact is in itself significant; for the high-road is practLlly a man made desert so hardened and steam-rollerei so pounded and wheel-ridden, that no plant can grow on It; so exposed that small animals will onlv scurry across it for dear life in fear and tremblhi j^ and so difficult to dig into that no burroS creature can hope to worm his toilsome way through 1 . Hence the animals that die on ^e road are almost never buried; while those that die Sextons and Scavengers 5 in the field or copse are either eaten at once by larger beasts, or else decently interred within a few hours by the sexton beetles and other established scavengers. Indeed, a common superstition exists among country folk that one of the small long- nosed, msect-eating animals known as shrews can- not so much as cross a road without being killed instantly. A human track is supposed to be fatal to them. The superstition has arisen in this way • shrews die of cold and hunger in great numbers at he approach of winter. A certain proportion of them perish thus in the open fields; these, however, are immediately buried by the proper authorities he sexton beetles. But a few happen to die as they are crossing a road or path ; these lie where they fell, because the sextons cannot there pierce the hard ground, and seldom even dare venture on the road to carry, them oflF to softer spots for burial. The rustic sees dead shrews in the road, and none on the open ground : so he hastily concludes in his easy-going way that to cross a human path is sudden death to shrews, who are always supposed for other reasons to be witch-like and uncanny animals. If the road leads to a church, a fatal stroke IS specially certain ; for the shrews, like all witch-creatures, hate Christianity. I need hardly say, however, that the burying beetles do not perform their strange funereal office out of pure benevolence, without hope of reward Like human sextons and undertakers, they adopt their lugubrious calling for the sake of gain : thev expect to be paid for their sanitary services The * In Nature's Workshop Our Illustration No. i introduces us to a typical DISCOVERING A DEAD FIELD-MOUSF. ' miscellaneous group of these insect scavengers occupied m appropriating a very fine and desS carcass on which they have just lighted A field mouse, vanquished by fate in the sLggle tr" existence, has lately "turned up his toes" in the Sextons and Scavengers 7 most literal sense, and lies unburied, like Archytas, on the loose sand of a bare patch in a meadow. All carnon-eating creatures are rr .larkable for their powerful sense of smell : and the sexton beetles, like the vultures and condors, 'are no ex- ception to the rule. They snifj their prey from atar: for where the carcass is, there shall the carrion beetles be gathered together. All are eager to take their share of the feast, and still more to lay their eggs in the dead body. Some of them m.'iy crawl up from the immediate neighbourhood • others, summoned from afar, come flying on their gauze-hke wings from considerable distances. They are as a rule, nocturnal creatures, and they come out on their burying expeditions by night alone The insect just alighting from his flight, in the upper part of the illustration, is the burying beetle par excellence among our British kinds ; he rejoices (we are always supposed to rejoice foolishly in our personal designations) in the dignified title of Necro- phorus vespillo. In stature he measures about an inch long, and he is a handsome beast, with two bright orange bands on his hard wing-covers The Illustration shows these wing-covers raised, as is the habit of beetles when they fly, while the thin but powerful wings beneath them are expanded as true pinions. When the insect alights, he folds the wings up carefully and replaces them under the hard protective wing-covers : he is then securelv armour-plated from head to foot, and need fear no foe, save birds which swallow him whole-a very tough morsel-and hedgehogs which crunch him 8 In Natures Workshop hel'tC^^^^^^^^^^^^ However, exude whe'n a\Sed t^^::7'^' ^^[^^ -" gusting smeJI: and thilmoSe «, H ? ""''^ " ^''" resembles that of the skunk and thl 1^"'"' ^*^*"^ protects him from obtrmivr. P°'*'''^*' "«"«"y be handled with ^ution^ZlT?''- ^' "'^'^ spoils woollen clothes and h J ^f 'T^ ^'^ ^''^"««« two or three washings ^^' *° ^^"^ ^"«^^« «fter ing^^tietnts:^^^^^^^^^^^^ r; °^ ^-^- -fly up to the scene nf „!f r" ''"»'»'"<' "nd wile possesion of the prev . ^h""r '°«"''" »"" •>"■« Mr. Enock has repreLtert * '", '^ '""^'^tion at once in staking o'LTclatas whf." ''i""^ '"S-fi'" often enough in nature T^,^' ^ '"''"«' '•='PI«"» b« on any one dead bird or ''°1 '=°""' *'"= ""■"■ always li„d thevare .1 ?""""'''"'"*'" "'"«'»« words, so man/ pa™ I!" '" "-"ber-in other "hows us the next act ,„,t, f "" '"""'*• No. 2 ■uale beetles, after s, i Lr „' .h "'"' """"• ^he hunger, proceed oburvti''"' "™ """"*"" curious and labor ousmL^er V^' '"," ""^ der how so small a rr.,t . ^°'' """W «op- a result : the fac ?s [he b««°'"1 P-'"""" » S^eat continuous unde-cLttt.Th'f""? •""■• "^ by in the body: the ™^,e\J*^ 't'"-''* ■"'"'' herself dead creature «^S^h"rHeT.''r ^'"' ""^ '"c frog, or bird to " suLh^. ".' t'^' "»' "'""^c. S'MU.,. Sextons and Scavengers g which are tools specialised for the purpose, and provided with strong and powerful muscles. The cl'irr rf '"''^ '''"'"*'^ '°'' t^'« °^>iect a short ock. The httle e.igineers begin by excavatinc a furrow all round the body, and then a second inldde NO. 2.-THE .EXTONS AT WORK: BURYiNO TH. BODY. that again, throwing the earth out of each into the previous one; and so on till the carcass beg ns to beneath i carrying out loads of earth, one after another, till bit by bit the carcass collaps'es into the hole hrst in front, then behind, and has reached a level considerably below the surface Then hey 10 In Nature's Workshop I Pi m upTe bo 'A hlf^;tr .---'ed, and cover • regret to'sarthey p oceed ZTu ' """ -hich, consists in eatinff »« m,, T ! ..! '""'^''^' ^"vice for ,l,eir "«„ pip„Tes wh ',k'"'\'^ "-'^ "'-•« ">=■> appetite, ,L7b^g „ .^ hTnk oTthe"?'*'^*^'' posterity The n^r.tu i , *"^ interests of •a-e ot eV^^^ tn -'buSTot 1 ''' '" animal knows bv instinr. . , ''''' '•"■ «>'"y to deposit its yoZ and ,».'"""''"""='' '" »""<=h happens to suit S' ^ P'"''' '°°'' "-Wch c™Uu?tflth:t'^''; '"^ '"° P-nt beetles themselves are con-^.rn ^ H ^° ^^"^ ^^ ^^^Y this is to procure food / ^7 °"'>^ "^^^^^ ^" ^" venger insects go very far P^ "''^ '^^- that there is no dilfnLf . '''^ "°'^ ^^"°^' layer of the JoH vvh".h '° ^'"°^ ^^ "^^ toP earth (as Tst peopt in. J' ^1'"''"^ '"^"-^ ^-^ of ramifying Ii?e!S",,'^!^;"^)'!'"* ^ '"'"gled mass sand intermixed Jth end '"f "1 "' ^^^^ ^"^ both animal and yegetaWe '"'"u*" organisms, weeyils, and all soTtf of n.n ^^'' ^^^^"'•'^' "^'t^«' up and'destroy Wm e: ly'^^?^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ -^ to their influence The IL/h .u "^^ ^"^jected able deodoriser and n a '' *^"' ^ "^^^^ ^^mir- layers, theTdy beln'g f^W "^' '?^' ^ '^^ *°P action of the deyou 3 Sb^?"''^ *° ^'^ ^^P'^ -de Of deposing Of fe^r^ynirtrpirtSi^ ■Wiiij Sextons and Scavengers II played in the East by vultures and jackals, or by the wild dogs of Constantinople, is far more effec- tually and unobtrusively played in our fields and meadows by the many kinds of burying beetles and other insect scavengers. If we remeifiber how NO. 3. -THE GRUBS UNDERGROUND : FEEDING UPON THE BODY. great a nuisance a single dead rat becomes in a house, we can faintly picture to ourselves the debt we owe to these excellent and unnoticed little sanitary commissioners. Without them, our fields would not smell so fresh, nor would our flowers bloom so bright ; for we must remember that by 12 In Nature's Workshop best possible fashion Th.T,^ 'he pastures in the decay rapidly and 1, J T' °' ^"'1 '"'•<^^>^ gro^rth of vegetalr Th^K ''■!' '"'"''■'^' '<"■ ^e by night onrt,dfi„d^h'- •"'"'' "^ =■ ■•"'= "unt by the sense Vs^^r" i.T 'j;;'''' f ™""^'' ^o, male hovers abovH lija! 7 " *"" "' ""^ and round, so a. ^o potat " Jt T""^, -""" female fiies straight to it and h • ,. "'"'^'' *« delay i„ ,he rich banquet ™' ""''" *"''°"» each body about arm^Jelgsr 1^^,^^''.^^ '" support. In a very shor^ timi' ?h? L"''' " """ and the grubs begfn ,o devo™, t"T f"" ""'' provided for then, -Th f ^ abundant feast the iliustrat on a e tie vrnf*' '° "" ''S"' '" orange-banded burying beeUe^ ?l °"'" '"''"'' ">» - a larva of an alhed\^r^ to v„' h"tj° ""^ '"' name of Silnha ti,. tI """"^n by the poet cal remainf of l' Z^Z Id" T' V"" °" ">= bones of every libroffl^th '{""■""Shly strip the ton is bare, thTy consider ft. ^^ f°" ^' ^e skele- and pass o'n to'thrsecond'stre o°f t?™ "" '""'"S' the pupa, or mummy-case ^ " ^'"»'^"«- wotmjfa^d hat ST m''"^''""'^ '->= '"<- in 'he'intermrdLr^agTwfen .t \=''°« '"em into a clay cell nr 7 ''' ''^™ "'etired their transLm'iC rZ TeffeTinrr^^ are here suDDoserl fr. i,^, f'-'icl-i msect. We supposed to have removed the soil on one Sextons and Scavengers 13 side so as to give a view into the concreted earthen chambers where the pupae are changing into full- grown beetles. You can see the much longer legs of the adult insect beginning to develop, while the head assumes slowly its later form. The grubs NO. 4.-NO MORE LEFT I THE GRUBS IN THEIR COCOONS TURNING INTO BEETLES. remain in the cocoon through the winter, and emerge m spring as winged beetles, when they fly away with their brilliant wing-cases raised, in search of congenial mates and more dead field-mice The best places to look for all these beetles are the keepers trees," on which gamekeepers hang up aI f! I '4 In Nature's Workshop the jays and weasels thev shoot fr. others. If you tap onelJhT'l ^"^^"^age the generally fi„'d it is^simplys^t'Tnt "'.^^ ^°" ""' Yet, strange to say even ^h?^ ^'*^ '"'^^* ''^e- themselves fre not without th,'"''^'' undertakers and their musical peTceptioVs^ The''' °' '^^"^^ of our commonest Engl h iinJ h ""'^T ^""^^ veloped as attractions for th. ^^''^ ^^^" ^e- and the male beetles have also a '""'"^. "^^^"' ment of their own in the IL^ r ™""''*^ '"«tru- likering on the body whtcMhe ' ^^^"'-^ ^^^P- the wing-cases, and slnm ?^ ''^" '"^ ^^^'n^t ciated chirping; ^uch nst^u'nfenTal t,r''"r ^■ employed, like the son^ nfu J music is always heighten the attractiv^„?.3 of the ' ? " ^'^^"^ '« burying beetles may be heard o '".f' •' ""^ '"^^^ sunny days competing with ol ^u ^''^"'"S^ °f contests. Indeed, ft o^In h ^"°*^''' ^" °»"«'cal which seem to u dis/usL."^^'"' *^"* ^"'"^^^^ among themselves muf h Lslher "?'^'"" ^^^P'^^ gifted with more sense of h5 f "" **'*^' ^"^ are than many other SrmsJ^r^ °' ^'''" °' ™"^'^ would be Lre inS trtjk for^ th""'" '''' of these higher endowments ^ Presence whla;raiX> fgir;^ r *^e bodies i„ bodies would dry up and th^ ^*'°'^" ^'■°""d' the greater risks. % buryinl th?^J ^^ '^ ^"^ provide their young wmiflj^' 1"^^ ^"'"^al, they and so displayUlo^^^^^^^^^^^ together^ Another verv distinct orm.^ "Sence. Sextons and Scavengers 15 than ours are the famous scarabs or sacred beetles worshipped almost like gods by the ancient Egyp- jans. English people know the scarabs best, I hink, tn the neighbourhood of Naples, or on the Lido at Venice-that great bank of sand and shingle which separates the lagoons from the open Adriatic. When wearied with sight-seeing at St. Mark's and he Doge s Palace, we have, most of us, taken the little steamer that runs across to the baths on the Lido and spent a pleasant hour or two in picking up she Is and dried sea-horses on the firm belt of beach that stretches away to Malamocco. A little inland, the beach gives way to dry sand-hills, blown about by the wind, and overgrown by patches of blue-green maram-grass and other sandy seaside weeds. If you lie down on one of these sand-hills choosing a spot not quite so dirty as its neighbours,' you will soon be amused by seeing a curious little comedy going on perpetually around you in everv direction A number of odd-looking beetles with long hind legs and very quaint heads! are occuSS round''h'n f '"?"'*'J:. •" '■°"'"S a lot of dark, round balls almost as big as themselves along the slopes of the sand-hills. In many places, the whole ground is alive with the tugging and pushing S beasts : indeed, when you come to look close you will find that every half-acre of sand on the Vene tian shore or the lower edge of the Egyptian desert IS a perfect city of these busy wee creiiures. Earth IS honeycombed with their holes, towards which innumerable beetles are continually rolling their mysterious balls at every possible angle m U ^•..^11 f:-^^ i''li m i6 In Nature's Workshop Now, what are thp KoH comes the oddest part of thr"??'^ °^ ? There ;;ng. The plain trufh on ill:f,f °d^ P^^^^^ ^^e assistant scavengers-^i^l^" '^' ^^^^^^ beetles Oriental substitutes for 7T '^* ^^^^^^''^ and The balls consist of d„n. d^r!! .""''"^^'^ «y«t««^- beetles collect them on th^ onen h ''!"''' ^"^ ^^« the sun, roll them to the me make out, a pair o" bee.l "^ t'J"' ^' ' «" 'dually ,o share a hole ii ' ^"'' ''=™1'. »ee,„ balls of food to it either ".l"^"""""' "^ •" '°'l cannot say , have etr seenT;'" '°""^'- ' except between such partners o '^"""P"-""" F'tiiners. Once a ball is Sextons and Scavengers 19 "L secured and safely landed-for here, as elsewhere there s many a slip 'twixt the cup and the hn-the happy couple proceed to eat it up. and apparently do not emerge again from their burrow till the supply ,s exhausted. Patient naturalists say that NO. 6.-PK,MITIVE «OLF-KN.. OK A ROUND: THE SCARABS HOI.INr. THEIR BALLS. one ball has been known to last a scarab as long as a fortnight, but this I do not vouch for of per sona knowledge. When more food is wanted, Ihe couple emerge once more on the open sand and begin to collect fresh dung and refuse, which they roll mto a new food-ball and then dry and harden |i , ( ( i i 11*11; I ^ili 1! I 20 I '» Natures Workshop the f.male'«^^b^',; d*^ ""'T"'' "^'^^ ">« and that the young crub, h!f J".*""' °' ""'•»"». »toclB, and 4"„ f, " '^.'<=''«'' *i«hin,uch food- belief has r^^Myi^ '°J'T' "«»"• This emphasis by a go^ French nt'""* *'"• S""' many balls ,„d?:^dnrets°.'r,T;"''°°'*~'' his conclusion. I hav,^55\. '*""'>* a«ept myself near Venice an^"?!"?^ """"«" <>' ball, eggs, while in o^e «»T" '" ««ral one or two ; *«overed a half-growntrV 'T ' ■""*> 'ore m this matter to behevi^'n "'"" ""«'■ those of even the mosUeleb,^tL ^''"' ?"8ainst entomologists. ' "lebrated and authoritative aIl'^«|uSjLian'ri'rhinlc""T''."^ ""'"'d from the sca?ab has'^^lld'a'n 'elTnte'tll';:"'*' "«" unite in rolling it to a of J^ 1. ^"' "" P"ents level of the annual nuL,.- ?' '*'*'5'' "bove the Nile. At anr^te s««b Tb''"*i° "■« "'»« °' the a very early i,e/Uou?d seem "th"" ^«'''"- ^' of these beetles attracted thp^r* .* "'"°"'' «tion Egyptians, whose^orsh ^ „, •'"",°' "« ""<='«' the most marked fl,„ts^ ■' ?"'."""» *« one of hgion. Hence grew ,1..!. ' "onstrous re- superstition. A race whirl H^^ J"'' "^espread cat, the ibis, and ?he ir^t^t '"''' **" ''='»"'. 'he look the marvellous „r„.^ "°' '"'^'J' 'o over- beautiful scarab SoXve '"^^ ?' l"^ ^""^ ""I may conjecture, beean bJ?? l"'^ Egyptians, we something divine in^he natu' '?^ """' ""■»' be worked so ceaseless,yt"Sf1fT;-:;t^b Sextons and Scavengers 31 rolled such big round balls behind it up such relatively large hillocks. Watching a little closer, as time went on, the Egyptian discovered, no doubt, that sacred beetles did not proceed directly from sacred beetles, like lambs from ewes, but grew, as it were, out of the dirt and corruption of the mysterious pellets. A modern observer would of course, at once suspect that the scarab laid an egg inside the ball, and would promptly proceed to pull one open and look for it. But that cold scientific method was not likely to commend itself to the mystic and deeply religious Egyptian mind. The priests by the Nile jumped rather to the con- elusion that the scarab collected dirt in order to make a future scarab out of clay, and that trom this dirt the young beetle grew, self-existent, self- developed self-created. Considering the absence of scientific knowledge and comparative groups of scientific facts at the time, such a conclusion was by no means unnatural. Once started on so strange a set of ideas, the li-gyptians proceeded to evolve a worship of the scarab which grew ever and developed, as they thought the scarab itself did, practically out of nothing. The immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body were the central ideas of Egyptian religion; the thinkers of Thebes and Memphis instantly perceived a fanciful analogy between the scarab rising from its bed of dirt and the mummy reviving when the expected day of resurrection should at last arrive. As a con- sequence of this analogy, the scarab was made n #ii m ■ B'^i 22 '" ^'*^'"*«'8 Workshop I* headed gT""."' ^Sypt. Thefe Jras 1 .""-J- N"e vaUey i7bS/-o« m .he his";?; "^ IL^ «»"« of these sacred ^"'u7 '"*" «"=* to bury perhaps a/ive (in »hj^^7'"« *"h the mummv ,. J .u '"' ^««l's have th.? '^'■''^P'' »'^o dead ----he.„„.-r-°rrrdti: Sextons and Scavknoers ,3 kind mscnhtd with sacred words, and rMarded .t':!T:^ ': ^ii:^!^";:,'"- —,»« .. o.je or the British Museum, is illustrated in No. 7. Com- parison with the live beetles in the other en- gravings will show how well the Egyptians copied nature in this instance. These beautiful and often costly Egyptian scarabs have been made the sub- ject of very exhaustive study by various writers, more particularly by Mr , rcirie. 1 ne Egyptians did scarab, in the British not coin money, so that ""s^^i'm- somewhaUhr *"" "'""=' °' """Ss came to have somewhat he same importance for Egyptian his- 1^': "r "TV"', "" "''""y "' i^'^'-^vihs ; nations. Mr. Loftie tr.iccs the origin of the in ^nbed scarabs to a very early !poch in the ne end of the native monarchy," he savs "cer 'am usages continued unchanged. Among them f- i 1' ' 1 3 ' H »N Nature's Workshop ought rather to have ^ h \l ^'^'''' '*"-he mud i„ which its eJLTstn ! '*~"^ '^^" of period so remote thft we "a^':' ""^' «^ ^-"e "J-teJy date it, seized p".' ^T th ''k " ^^P^^'^'" the idea of futurity ri? ^ ^'n^odiment of egg, became the symbol of 'tr'^^' ^""^'"8 ^'^ he happy time toVome of f J'"'?^^''°"' °^ things; and with every corni '^'^"feation of all and scarabs were seweH^ '""""^^^ ^^re buried, strung into a networrloT" "". ^'^°"^' -"^ -upended round The n ck a^d t '"'y' ^^ dead hands. As niany s thr 1,, '''P^^ '" *he have been found in one tomb ^f"' ^^^'"^h^ existence in museum?Ud nr'"? '^' ""'"^^'- '" past count." SomeTf ih ^ -''^^ collections is of blue pottery enanln^"'' ;'""^*'°" beetles are of 'apisLuIi,'^ade trnel ''' ^"^ others are Precious stones.' s;creThrth '"'. "^^">' "^^er very form, that of the eve red ""?'""' ^^ ^^eir rendered still more sacked 1 "^^ S°^' ^^ey are tions, which consist of nn^ t^y their mystic inscrip- in hieroglyphic w:iting'^^'''P"^*^^^''g-"« Phrase's to the Greeks, and a to t" t^e T''' ^^^^^ - Greek scarabs have been fl ^l "'''^"'- ^any ^Ktruscan tombs such lueJ " ^ '""^ '" '^' °'^ •vely common. They are n,^ ?, ' ""'^ <^ompara- 'ess in imitation of the E^nT ^ "'^^^ "^^''e or enough, even the earl S '^" °T"''^- Oddlv any Christians themselves did Sextons and Scavengers 2^ not at once get over the hei.ei i;^. fi.r^ sanctity and tahsmanic character of !he sacred I ..etle, for the Kev. W. J. Loftie has po,,!tcd out e>iinples of late scarabs engraved with undoubted C!;ristian symbols —not only crosses but even cruciHxes. In our own days, a slight revival of the antique superstition has once more taken place, and some ladies of my acquamtance wear specimens of th old sacred beetles as charms in brooches or suspended on their watch-chains. Though such numbers of true ancient scarabs have been unearthed in Egypt, still the supply of the genume article does not quite keep pace with the increasing demands of the ordinary tourist; and there is now a flourishing manufactory of sham antiques at Luxor, where hundreds of false scarabs with nice imitation hieroglyphic inscrip- tions are neatly turned out for the market every season. About sixty different kinds of live scarabs are known to inhabit the Mediterranean district in Europe, Asia, or Africa : and four of these kinds can be easily distinguished as being individually represented in the old Egyptian gems. We have no true scarab of this class living in Britain ; but there are other scavenger beetles which take their place, the best known being the common dor-beetle. One of the same family, but with a quaintly horned head, exists in vast numbers on the Surrey hills where I have pitched my tent. This English dung- beetle burrows in the soft sandstone, and throws up neat little heaps of clean sand at the mouth it 1;.., ■j 26 Jn Natures Workshop I «' English sJXe^^X^ r'-^'"- Still, our 'ng as the southern type ^^^^^^ ^ '° '"^^''^^t- n^erely grubs a straight tunnllT'" '" «"^ ^^''t lays her egg in a loosl ma s of"d ' ^'"""'' ^"^ drags to the bottom in a 2TZi ""^' "^^'^^ «he f'eetle utters a pSin ive bT '^^ ^°"^'«°n- This -hasmg its matel-a sort of ^TH "'^ ^'^"" '* '« seems calculated to soften L u ^"^^^^^ " ^^'^h lady beetle, a is as rn" ^^'''■* "^ ^^^ hardest othersof itsrace, or if "ou"^ •" '*^ way as mos 'J at once draws'in L 4°" o . -V" ^'""^ '^^"d, ^-ad." All the Engl ^ an^^^^^^ I'eetles perform a usefu, tl u"T ^^^^^"g^'* animals and clearing fwL^u^ ^^ ^^^^^'ng up a special kind of beetle Tav^ ^'u '''"^^' '"deed, for each species of larJe ^. '"^/ °"* ^« ^^avenge attached to^he cow onf to r' ' T ^'"^ ^^'"S camel, and so on th^Ch a ll ff'^' °"^ *° thf satellites. "^""^^ ^ ^^ng l«t of patrons and You will thus see that in ♦!,• creation moves together .t '^''^^' «^"«e all co-operative society, each kfnH ^ ."^^'^ Joint-stock ^or its own good aVne but"lrh 1"^ -^""^^'^-'^ deeper and unconscious wav en f"u '" ^ ^^'•*^'" general well-being of all '^^..^^"^"buting to the special function. Neverth . ^"^^'^'^^ ^^ some always performed by each >. ''' '""^"°" '« for its own purposes -It . ^''"* °'' ^"'"^al itself to benefit th^ oCrs ' Thus^r^'"^^"^ ^-- and the scavenger beetles ^:S:%';ZT aH^^J Sextons and Scavengers 27 ostensibly for their own food and the food of their offspring: ,t is merely as an incidental result, undesigned by themselves, that they assist in pun ymg the air and the soil for all other species. Ur, to put It still more simply, while these indus- tnous httle creatures are working individually for their own ends, they are also in the wider scheme of nature working unconsciously and almost un- willingly ,n the service of others. x\ature bribes each kind, as it were, by some personal advan- age to perform good work for the benefit of the totality. The good work performed by the scavengers may be thus summed up. If dead bodies and the refuse of food were left about everywhere freelv on the open germs of disease and putrefaction would fly about much more commonly than even at present. But a large number of scavenger animals scavenger birds, and scavenger insects -hyenas,' vultures, burying beetles, and so forth -act as public servants to prevent this calamity. Again he earth needs the bodies and the refuse as fer- tilisers: and many of the scavengers carry down such materials into the first layer of the soil, where hey become of enormous use in promoting the freer growth of vegetation. Thus, long before men learnt to bury their dead or to manure their fields r^l""? f.u '""'"'"^ ^""'^ '^^'^ P'-^^^^^^es, and registered them, so to speak, in the instinct^ and habits of a special class of insect sextons and sanitary inspectors. It is always so in life. There IS hardly a human trade or a human activity 5f ;r;i| 28 In Nature's Workshop object, in future chaol '"^ '* ^^'^ ^'^ ^V other directions somTsi^h T' !'''°'"^ ^^^ •" or foreshadowings of' "' • "'■•^' anticipations '"gs> or man s inventions. II FALSE PRETENCES HUMAN life and especially human warfare are rich in deceptions, wiles, and stra*-- gems. We dig pitfalls for wild beasts, car fully concealed by grass and branches ; we take in the unsuspecting fish with artificial flies, or catch them with worms which conceal a hook treacher- ously barbed for their surer destruction. The savage paints his face and sticks feathers in his hair so that he may look more terrifying to his expected enemy; civilised men mask their batteries, and sometimes even paint muzzles of imaginary guns in the spaces between the gaping mouths of the real ones. Chevaux defrise block the way to points liable to attack ; real troops lie in ambush and dart out unexpectedly in the rear of the assailants. Trade in like manner is full of shams— a fact which I need hardly impress by means of special ex- amples. But Nature we are usually accustomed to consider as innocent and truthful. Alas, too trust- fully : for Nature too is a gay deceiver. There is hardly a device invented by man which she has not anticipated : hardly a trick or ruse in his stock of wi es vvhich she did not find out for herself long before he showed her. * 39 '■ ! II 1 % fi 30 Pt J' if.- In Nature's Wokkshop o'^Z^Tl^' '"^ ^^^-- ^ ^ew cases striking or typical bn^r"°* ""^^^^ ^^^ '"ost well-known K;h*K"f "\°^^"'- -'"ong fairly shall begin with our Ir^"^ ""'"'^'^- And I friend, th'eDe^TscLtho::: ^"' ""^^^^''^^ «'^ cereTtw^^i'r^ r.rsrctii'^^ "^^^^ °^ ^- another animal wh^h f, ^" ''°'"' »"ention to Coach.hor.e":lntctu ^"''L:;„t»V'''K °""'» that is the commnn c^ ■ P'^^^^"as to be : and No. I Mr. Enock has Zf ■"•. '" "'"^'i-ation frantic deathrruggle bf we "' " dehneation of a ^>a.ge and po.effu, ^'uTh ^^f^r xr """ mous creature with the «♦.«« T 7 ^"® ^^"o- the spider is on th rig'hT"' "/st " °" "^ '=" ' goes, the antaffoni«jt« ^.rf /'• , ^^ "^^'"^ size the scorpionTs'riesT:^^^^^^^^ Tl "^*^^^^' but and defensive armour m! ,' K^f' T*^ °^^"«'^'^ hke claws enable Wm to h^H ^^^''^''^^^ or crab- his grip as in a vice then S fh" '"''"^'^ '''"b^ '" he bends over h s tki in\h ^^^^'•'t'<^^' "^onient, his sting is situated anH ? '''*''"^'*y «^ ^hich throughihe coXa^iv: yVg^^^^^^^^^ 'J ^'"^ ^ body or thorax, iniectinff a fh. ^^ ^P'^^^ « pungent drop of hifd '^dly pltr'^h'^T"^ '' tenstic action of the ncnZ ^^'^ ^harac- over its body and rais nTf/. '" ""'""'"S its tail attitude is we'll k^rt^o'l^rds^^^f,'" ^ "^^"-'"^ of the species : often the mere thr../ / ^""'"'^^ 's a sufficient deterrent Ch °^ ^•*^''"^* eierrent . the dangerous beast just False Pretences ^j elevates its poisonous appendage or assumes an angry mien, and the inquisitive intruder is frightened away immediately. It is the same with ourselves. The bare sight of thai uplifted sting suffices to repel us. Even a child who saw a scorpion once arch Its back and prepare to strike with its reversed tail would instinctively understand that there was t NO. I.— A BATTLE ROVAL : SCORPION V. SPIDER : THE SCORPION STRIKING. danger ahead, and would withdraw its hand be- fore the venomous creature had time to pounce upon it. ^ Owing to these unamiable personal traits of the scorpion race, it is not popular among other animals. But to be feared il to be respected : and scorpions for the most part are left severely alone under the stones where they love to lurk, by the I' ^i il '^ i 32 In Nature's Workshop 11 1 r 11: 11 various denizens of the districts they inhabit. Now >t IS a fact in nature as in human life that to be successful ,s to have many imitators. Thus a number of harmless flies dress up like wasps in black and yellow bands, and so escape the too pressmg attentions of insect-eating birds and other enemies They have no stings, to be sure, but hey look so I,ke the wasps, and flaunt about so fearlessly m their borrowed uniform, that they are universally taken for the insects they mimic : even the cautious entomologist himself stares at them twice and makes quite sure of his specimen before he ventures to lay hands on any such doubtful masquerader. I shall in a later article give some further account (with illustrations) of these facts will stick close to our text, the Devil's Coach- horse. For this familiar English beetle is an imi- tator of the scorpion, and obtains immunity from the attack of enemies to a great extent by pretend- ing to powers which are not his in reality In No. 2 we have a portrait of the Coach-horse in his hours of ease, seen from above, engaged in doing nothing m particular. He does not /^^ like a flying insect, but he is. He has a long pair of wings tucked away in folds under his horny wing- cases, and he can use them with great effect for he is one of our swiftest and strongest fliers-lthe long-distance champion, I almost fancy, among the beetles of England, unless indeed the tiger-beetle be pitted against him. But when crawling on the ground, and attacked or menaced, he does not take II False Pketencks 33 to flight or show the white feather : being a pug- nacious and spirited Uttle beast, he bridles up at once, and endeavours incontinently to terrify his assailant. In No. 2 you see him from above when he IS merely engaged in . raxvhag along the ground lookmg as mild as milk, aiid as gentle as any suck- ing dove: you would hardly suppose he could show fight or raise his hand — I mean his antennae — to injure any one. But in No. 3 he is repre- sented in his favourite act of attacking a caterpillar: for he is really a very voracious and courage- ous carnivore. In the autumn, when Devil's Coach-horses are usually most abundant, you can easily catch them by putting a piece of meat or a dead frog under an empty flower-pot, and then tiltmg the edge up with a stone, so that the beetles can crawl in and get at the food thus temptinglv laid out for them. ' If you disturb the Coach-horse, however, while he IS engaged in eating his quiet meal, or even c NO. 2 THE devil's COACH-HORSE IN HIS HOURS OK EASE. ill II 34 In NATrKEs Workshop r I V ii when he js walking at leisure along a country road, he puts himsel at once into his "terrifying" attitude and nnjtates the scorpion. No. 4 exhibits him t this military character, cocking up his tail and pretencHng he can sting-which'is only hit Lrag he just does .t to frighten you. Ht.t the attitude is aluays produces an nn.nediate effect : hardly any- body hkes to molest a Deyils Coach-horse. If you put down your hand to touch him, and he rears m NO. 3._THE DEVIL'S COACH-HORSE SAMPLING A CATERPILLAR. ZValT' !'k*° °"? y°" '^'•" ''''^^^'^''' 't in alarm 1 ^ua.::": ^" ^"S''"*"^ *^^«^ beetles often enough find their way into larders or cellars, seeking whom or what they may devour; and when thf seryants light upon them, they almost invariably abourthat ?h"' T' '■ /'r '^ '' ^^"^^«' °P--n about that the ugly and threatening black beasts are uncanny and poisonous, or else why should hey turn up their tails at you in such an insulting fashion ? » False Pretences 35 " But," you may object, •• there are no scorpions m England : how then can the Devils Coach-horse be benefited by imitating .an animal which he has never seen, and of whose very existence he has not been able to read in pretty picture-books ? " Your objection has some force— though not so much .as you imagine. It is quite true that there are no scorpions in England; but then, there are Devil's Coach-horses in many other countries, and the habit of tail-cock- ing need not necessarily have been acquired in these islands of Britain. That is not all, however : it suffices the beetle if the tactics it adopts happen to frighten and repel Its enemies, no matter why. Now, in the first place, many of our migratory birds go in winter to Southern Europe and Africa — especially the msect-eaters, which can find no food in frozen weather. The hard-billed seed-eaters and fruit- NO. 4 —THE DEVII/S COACH-HORSE FRETENIJS TO BE A SCORPION. '1 k 'i if' 1 w 36 In Natitre'8 Wokkshop : !! eaters remain with us, but the soft-billed kinds retire to warmer climates, where food is plentiful Of course, however, it is just these insect-eatinij birds that the Devil's Coach-horse has most to fear from. The birds must be quite familiar with the habits and maimers of scorpions in their southern homes ; and they are not likely to inquire closely whether the dangerous beast they know on the Mediterranean has, or has not, been scheduled m Britain. We all of us dislike and distrust any insect that resembles a bee or wasp, and that buzzes or hums in a hostile manner; we give all such creatures a wide b^rlh, wherever found, on the bare off-chance that they may turn out to be venomous— be hornets or so forth. Just in the same way, a bird when it sees an unknown black beastie cock up its tail and assume a threatening attitude, IS not likely to inquire too curiously whether or not It IS really a scorpion : the bare suspicion of a sting IS quite enough to warn it off from interfer- ing with any doubtful customer. Moreover, in the second place, even those birds or men who have never seen a scorpion at all are yet sure to be alarmed when an insect sticks up its forked tail menacingly, and shows fight, instead of skulking or flying away. As a general rule, if any animal makes signs of resistance, we take it for granted he has adequate arms or weap' is to resist with • and so this mere dumb-show of being a sort of scorpion proves quite sufficient to protect the Devil's Coach -horse from the majority of his enemies. If False Pretences 37 I onjjht to add that while our beetk thus frightens larger enemies, he is actively and offen- sively objectionable to small ones. The main use of his tail, indeed, is for folding away his wings, much as the earwig folds hers by aid of her pincers. But the Devil's Coach-horse makes it serve a double purpose. For he has a couple of yellow scent- glands in his tail, which secrete an unpleasant and acrid aromatic substance. These scent-glands are protruded in No. 4 : you can just see them at the tip of the tail ; and if the annoyance to which the beetle is subjected seems to call for their interven- tion, a drop of the volatile body they distil is set free, and is at once discharged in the face of the enemy. Such a manoeuvre is in essence like that of tJie skunk : it is defence by means of a nasty odour, and it occurs not only in the Coach-horse's case, but also among a number of beetles and other insects. The odd little creatures known as Bombardier Beetles are still quainter in their habits : they carry the last-mentioned mode of defence to an even greater pitch of perfection. For, like miniature artillery-men, they actually fire off a regular volley of explosive gas in the faces of their pursuers. The gas is secreted as a liquid ; but it is very volatile, and it vaporises at once on contact with the air, so as to form a small, white cloud of pungent smoke, resembling in its effects nitric acid. Our native English species of Bombardier roams about in large flocks or regiments : and when one member of a clan is disturbed, all the other beetles of the 1 i * t ill P 38 In Nature's Workshop scaTtere"d voir*" ^" '^""^^^ ^* °"^^' ^° '^-' the scattered volley has something the apoearance of B a much larger and very handsome carnivorous beetle known as Calosoma. When this insect tiger cauiht hi" ^.^'"Sk. Bombardier, and has almost caught him, the fugitive wails till his pursuer is quite dose, and then salutes him with aSarge somas eyes and mouth and distracts him for a ofZ"' • r ""^ Bombardier escapes in Z mMst of the confusion thus caused, under cover of the cloud he himself ha^ exploded. That is the most amo^. ZTrT'' •" "'''"« "' -"-'•■ W among the British insects. so little suspect of any attempt to bully and bluff others as the soft-bodied caterpillars. They are as mereVe^^r^ '"u- ^'^"^^'^ ^"^ defenceless : a t^l P"^^^'-^'" ^ bird's beak is enough to kill them for when once their tight, thin skin is broken burst out at once in the messiest fashion Yet even caterpillars, strange to say, have their 'tricks of terrifying. They pretend to be dangerous characters. I will set out with some of ?he onTo a nfn '"' .^''^'^P^^ '^'''' ^"^ ^^en pass on to a more complex and wily class of deceivers. To begin with, I must premise that two sets of caterpillars have two different ways of evading the unpleasant notice of birds and other insect efters One way is that adopted by the common " woolly." False Pretences 39 bear," a great hairy caterpillar, frequent in gardens, and covered from head to tail with long needles or bristles. These prickly points make the creature into a sort of insect hedgehog; birds refuse to touch him, because the serried spikes, which to us are mere hairs, seem to them perfect spines or thorns, sticking into their tongues and throats, or clogging their gizzards. Protected caterpillars like the woolly-bears live quite openly, exposed on the leaves and branches of their food-plant ; they are not afraid of being seen : nay, they rather court observation than shun it, because they know nobody will attack them. The porcupine has no need to run away like the rabbit. Similar tactics are also adopted by many nasty-tasting caterpillars, in whose bodies natural selection has developed bitter or unpleasant juices. These caterpillars are rejected by birds and lizards— the great enemies of the race— and therefore they find it worth while to clothe themselves in gaudy and conspicuous red or yellow bands, so as to advertise all comers of their inedible qualities. Whenever you see such brilliantly-attired grubs (like those of the Mag- pie Moth, so common on gooseberry bushes— a striking creature tricked out in belts of black and orange), you may be sure of two things : first, they live openly and undisguisedly on the leaves of their food-plant, without any attempt at mean conceal- ment ; and second, they are nasty to the taste, and therefore rejected as food by insect-eating animals. Now and then a young and inexperienced bird may eat one, to be sure ; but it never tries twice, 1:: i'f 1^! W''\ 'X n II ■^nii . m 40 In Nature's Workshop r If tne race Their bright colours and gaudy bands Si^s' Frr"*^' " ' "^^^' °^ '^-^ ^— caternnL ' i°""^' "^"*y ^^^^^ ^ould do a one trial, or, perhaps, even before it by rherhed t'Z7t^Z l'^""'"^"' "warning c"^„; specfes Su?h (,. '^ '"»"y =""ong the uneatable spec.es. Such fat and smooth-skinned edible cater Diras and other insect-eatine animal* Th • mofons like those of all grubs^re sTow alS if they hved exposed on their food-plants after thi wouia all be eaten up before th^v j,^,* ♦• ^ . ^ into moths or butterLsZ-Het^thtlfrerru"" False Pretences ^r selection has produced the contrary result from that which it produces among protected kinds. Caterpillars of this edible type which showed them- selves too openly and imprudently have got picked off by birds, like sentries and pickets who make themselves too conspicuous to the enemy's sh&rp- shooters. Only the most prudent, modest, and retinng grubs have survived to become moths or butterflies, and so be the parents of future genera-, tions, to whom they hand on their own peculiarities. In this way the edible caterpillars have acquired at last a fixed hereditary instinct of lurking under leaves, or in dark spots, and never showing them- selves openly. The larvae of the butterfly group as a whole thus fall into tw.-> great classes (as far as regards habits alone, I mtan) : the protected, which are either hairy or nasty, and which flaunt them- selves openly ; and the unprotected, which lurk and skulk, endeavouring to escape notice as sedulously as their rivals the protected endeavour to attract it. Nor is that all. It would clearly be useless for a bright red or yellow caterpillar to hide under a green leaf, and then suppose by that simple device he was going to escape observation. Birds are always looking out for insects under leaves. The consequence is that skulking or lu-king caterpillars are soon found out by sharp-eyed and hungry enemies, unl s they closely resemble the foliage or stems upna which they lie. From generation to generation, accordingly, the less imitative insects get eaten, and the more imitative spared : so that nowadays most unarmed caterpillars are green like I I 4 f I 42 In Nature's Workshop the leaves or grey like the stems, and are even prov,ded with markings of light and shade upon their skms which mimic the distribution of light and shade among the ribs and veins of the sur- rounding foliage. Such deceptive leaf-like cater- pillars are always very difficult to find ; so that careless observers as a rule know only those of the other type, the great hairy " woolly-bears " and the brilliant red and yellow-banded bitter kinds • they never observe the unobtrusive green and brown sorts, which harmonise so admirably with their native tree in colour and markings. Many greenish caterpillars, however, when dis- covered and disturbed, fall back on their second Ime of defence : they endeavour to frighten their enemies by devices closely similar to those of the Devil s Coach-horse. The caterpillar of the Broad- bordered Bee-hawk, for example, forms a good instance of a very simple stage in the development of such brazen-faced "terrifying" tactics. This warlike grub is shown in No. 5, trying on its simple little attempt to make itself alarming. Though by no means an uncanny-looking or appalling insect. It will rear itself up on its haunches (so to speak when attacked, raising the fore part of its body erect with a sudden jerk, and holding its head high as If It meant to bite or sting, so as to give itself as formidable an aspect as possible. The mild ruse succeeds, too ; for birds will eye the harmless creature askance when it attempts this evolution, putting their heads on one side, and ruffling their crests in evident terror. The attitude is all a simple False Pretences 43 piece of bluff, to be sure, but it pays ; indeed, bluff in warfare is often more than half the battle. If you put on a bold face in a row, and seem able to take care of your- self, people are apt to think you have a knife up your sleeve, and therefore to refrain from unnecessarily annoying you. The cunning cater- pillar which finally de- velops into the Privet Hawk-moth has a slightly more evolved mode of purely theatri- cal frightening. You see him in No 6, a full-fed specimen, just ready to turn at once into a chrysalis. This grub feeds usually on the vivid leaves of the privet; he is therefore protectively coloured a bright green, Hke that of the foliage about ^°- 5— caterpillar him. "But why those great purple stripes on his sides ? " you will ask. « Surely they must make him an easy mark for birds ? " Not at all : please notice that they run obliquely. There is method 'I OF THE BROAD - BORDERED BEE - HAWK TRYING TO LOOK ALARMING. 44 In Nature's Workshop a i! i in ttet obliquity. When the caterpillar is smaller he lurks unseen on the under side of the "aves and th,s pattern of oblique purplish hnes exactly imitates the general effect of the shadows cast by the ribs — so much so, that if you look for him on a privet tree in spring, I doubt whether you will find him till I point him out to you. Even when he waxes fat and full fed, the purple stripes still aid him more or less by breaking up the • large green surface into smaller areas, as Professor Poul- ton has well noticed. He harmonises better so with the broken masses of the leaves about him. Then again, when the time arrives for him to turn into a chrysalis, he de- scends to the ground, which, under a thickly- leaved privet bush, is most often brown. So, just as reach.nc fho ^^ '^ coming of age and backaf ' ! P^'- "'°'"'"* ^""^ '"'8'-^*^°"' his that he '!v r. ^^'"k *° '"'■" ^'■°^"' •" ^••der that he may be less observed as he walks about NO. 6. — FULL-GROWN CATER- PILLAR OF THE PRIVET HAWK - MOTH, SIMILARLY OCCUPIED. False Pretences ^5 on the stem ; while by the time he is quite ready to take to the earth he has grown brown all over, thus matching the soil in which he has next to bury himself. You could hardly have a better example of the sort of colour-change which often accom- panies altered habits of living. In the illustration, however, you see this really harmless and undefended grub in the act of trying to pretend he is poisonous. He is now mature, and the stripes on his sides stand out conspicuously as he walks on the stem. A sparrow threatens him. He retorts by showing fight — fallaciously and deceptively, for he has nothing to fight with. He lifts his head with an aggressive air, and throws himself about from side to side, as if he knew he could bite, and meant to do it. He also lashes his tail in pretended anger— "I would have you to know. Sir Bird, I am not to be trifled with ! " The empty demonstration usually succeeds: the sparrow gets alarmed and believes he means it. This policy is, in essence, that commonly known as " spirited " : it consists in trying to frighten your enemy instead of fighting him. The oddly-marked caterpillar of the Puss Moth carries the same plan df campaign to a much more artistic pitch. This very quaint insect is common on willows and poplars in England, and is on the whole protectively coloured. Black at first, it looks hke a mere speck or spot on the leaf ; as it grows, it becomes gradually greener, relieved with broad purple patches on the back, which produce the effect of lines and shadows. When quite full- ft 46 In Nature's Workshop grown, as seen in No. 7, the adult caterpillar aene Our 1 stration shows it in this final stage of its larval l.fe, just taking alarn, and humping'L back at the approach of some bird or other enemy. If the alarm continues, it goes through a most curi- ous series of evolu- tions, admirably shown by Mr. Knock in No. 8. Here, the little beast is alto- gether on the defen- sive : it withdraws its head into the first ring of the body, and in- flates the margin, which is bright red in colour. Two black spots, which are not really eyes, but which look absurjily eye-like, nowgive it a grotesque and terrifying appear- n., . . . ance. In fact, the in- ^it. 7^ '''''"^''' ^ ^'^^""^ g"""'"g '"^«k^ and gives the impression of a face with eyes, nose and mouth like that of some uncann/c eepiS creature. But the apparent face is not a facf artfully made up of lines and spots NO. 7 CATERPILLAR OF THE PUSS MOTH PREPARINfl FOR ACTION. at False Pretences 47 on the skin of the body. At the same time that the caterpillar thus assumes its mask, it stands on Its eight hind legs as erect as it can, and whips out two pink bristles or tentacles from the forked prongs at the end of its tail— you can see them in the picture. It then bends forward the tail, and brandishes or waves about these pink bristles over its false head, so as to present alto- gether a most gruesome aspect. Indeed, even Mr. NO. 8.-THK SAME CATERPILLAR TERRIFYING AN ENEMY. Knock's vigorous sketch of the little brute in its tragic moments does not quite convey the full effect of its acting in the absence of colour : for the bright red margin and the swishing pink switches add not a little to the telling smirk and black goggle-eyes of the mask-like face thus pro- duced t'u terrorem. That is not all, either. The Puss Moth caterpillar has a rapid trick of facing about abruptly in the ■';! ■A I 'If a j '11 it \l I! i j ■ i n :> i} 48 In Nature's Workshop direction of the enemy as if it meant to bite : and this trick IS always most disconcerting. If ever so hghtly touched, it instantly assumes the terrifying attitude, and presents its pretended face to the astonished aggressor. From a harmless caterpillar 1 fif °T Vf* °"^^ •'* ''^^•"S ^""d°fr Touch it on the other side, and it faces round like lightning m the opposite direction. Professor Poulton tried the effect of its grimace on a marmoset, and found the marmoset was afraid to touch the mysterious creature. We are not marmosets, but I notice that most human beings recoil instinctively from a Puss Moth caterpillar whpn it assumes its mask. Even if you know it is harmless, there is something verv alarmmg in its rapid twists and turns, and in the persistent way in which it grins and spits at . '^^^"y ^P'tS' *oo ; for the insect has a gland in its head which ejects, at need, an irritating fluid. If this fluid gets into your eyes, they smart most un- pleasantly. It contains formic acid, and is strong enough to be exceedingly stinging and painfuK The discharge repels lizards, and probably also birds who are among the chief enemies of this as of other caterpillars. The deadliest foe of the Puss Moth larva, how- !rih7 the ichneumon-fly, a parasitic creature, which lays Its eggs in living caterpillars, and lets Its grubs hatch out inside them, so as to devour the host from within in the most ruthless fashion There are many kinds of ichneumon-fly, some of them very minute : the one which attacks the Puss False Pretences 49 Moth in its larval stage is a comparatively big one. The fly lays its eggs behind the caterpillar's head, where the victim is powerless to dislodge them. In' all probability the defensive attitude and the shower of formic acid are chiefly of use against these para- sitic foes : for when an ichneumon-fly appears, the caterpillar assumes his "terrifying" attitude' the moment it touches him, and faces full round to the foe with his false mask inflated. A very small quantity of the formic acid Professor Poulton found sufficient to kill an ichneumon : and there can be little doubt that this is its main object. The last of these "bluffing" caterpillars with which I shall deal here is that of the Lobster Moth. In No. 9 you see a couple of these quaint and unwieldy creatures "demonstrating" before an enemy, as if he were the Sultan. The Lobster Moth in its larval stage frequents beech-trees, and you will see in the illustration that the two repre- sented are on a twig of beech. When at rest, the caterpillar resembles a curled and withered beech- leaf, and by this unconscious mimicry escapes detection. But when discovered and roused t6 battle, oh, then he imitates the action of the spider. He holds up his short front legs in a menacing attitude, so as to suggest a pair of frightful gaping jaws: the four long legs behind these he keeps wide apart, and makes them quiver with rage in the most alarming pantomimic indignation. His tail he turns topsy-turvy over his head like a scor- pion ; while the forked appendages at its end seem like frightful stings, with which he is just about to O i t li K'M Ml ' 1 i 50 In Nature's Workshop nflict condign punishment on whoever ha» dared o disturb h.s quiet. But it is all mere brag, though he whole effect is extremely terrifying. The per- formance does not, indeed, mimic any particular venomous beast, but it suggests most appalling and paralysing possi- bilities. Many of these queer atti- tudes, indeed, owe their impressive- ness just to their grotesque simula- tion of one knows not quite what : they are not de- finite and special, they are worse than that; they ap- peal to the imagi- nation. And if only you reflect ho waf raid we often feel of the most harmless insects, merely because they look frightful, . , ^ ,, you will readily understand that such vague appeals to the imagi- nation may be far more effectual than any real stinc could ever be We dread the unknown even more than the pamful. The funniest of all these false pretences, however, NO. 9. -CATERPII.LARS OK THE LOBSTER MOTH DEMONSTRATING IN FORCE BE- FORE THE HOSTILE BATTALIONS. False Pretences ,, is one which Hermann Muller, I believe w,» the pin r ^T "'" '" """ -■"• >-H».er ;^,r a,e, P liar When very much bothered by ichneumon. flies (to whose attacks it is particularly extZd lh,s bnst ,„« beast displays, for the lirs^ ZT^tt .rtnXfl'ar" V ''"V"' """ --"'""Ca whe' Vden,Ts L? """"' ■"•""' "^ '"^ ''*"'•'"""'" «rve to takl 1 h ''^''' r " '' P'°'"'''« that they think .haraU;r„;:T'h::'or ii„rhVt "^ hefore her, and, therefL, .hat itll o' ".•"^Tnil:" eggs where a previous parasite is already fn'^, leea «m< hungry ichneumon families In f-.ri .k caterpillar first begins by bluffing, ind says ' '» u"u«:slrrt' r' >^"" "■'"- «"<""« ^' "-"ff unsuccessful, it further pretends to throw uo th, ponge and cries out with a bounce : « o" Te„ occupied ! I. or a combination of wiles this cr=f.v doub e game probably "licks creation '•' ""^ If he defenders are so cunning, however th^ attackers can sometimes turn the tahl!! .hem. Animals that hunt of"e„" e them" selves, in order to avoid .he notice of the nrev" and so stea unobserved upon their vict „ s Such bi^^aTd t '*""' °' ""= '^'«'^' »'>o cul bUsof .h:n; ui"dVt:"ver r-ih^b^s tr^r'"^ or antelopes which .hey'^sh' ' irghtr'"lT No. to we have one e.xample of this Shod ol 52 In Nature's Workshop hunting or stalking, as pursued by the intelUgent English grass-spider. All spiders, of course, have eight legs, four on each side; hut in most of the class, the various pairs of legs are evenly distributed, so as to lie about the body in a rough circle or something like it. The grass-spider, however, has his own views on this important matter. His form and attitude are quite pecu- liar. He lies in wait for his prey on the open, crouched against a stem of grass, with his two front pairs of legs e.xtended be- fore him, and his back pair behind, in an arrangement which is rather linear than circular. This position makes him almost invisible — much more invisible in real life, indeed, than you see him in the drawing ; for if he were represented as inconspicuous as he looks you would sav -(JRASS-Sl'lDER, IN ,, . , . ;sii FOR Ki.iKs. ^"^'■^ was no spider there at all, only a naked grass- stem. The delusion is heightened by his lines and colours : he is mostly green or greenish, with narrow black or brown stripes which run more or less up and down his body, instead of NO. lO. AMIIUSII False Pretences ^-^ cross-wise as usual, so that they harmonise beauti- fully with the up-and-down lines of the blades and stem in the tuft which he inhabits. When he IS pressed close against a bent of grass, on the look-out for flies; it is almost impossible for the quickest eye to distinguish him. Flies tome near, never suspecting the presence of their heredi- tary foe ; as soon as they are close to him, the grass-spider rushes out with a dash and secures them. His jaws are among the most terrible Ml all his terrible race : they are large and wide- spreading, with two rows of teeth on either side and a pair of long f;, rg of truly formidable pro^ portions. In other ways, also, this particular spider is a clever fellow, for he lives near water ; but when the rains are heavy and there is likely to be a flood, he shifts his quarters higher up the ground, and so escapes impending inundation. Deceptions and false pretences of this sort are somewhat less common among plants than among animals; but still, they occur, and that not infrequently. "What? Plants deceive?" you cry. "The innocent little flowers? How can they do it ? Surely that is impossible ! " By no means. I have watched plant life pretty closely for a good many years now, and every year the conviction is forced upon me more and more profoundly that whatever animals do, plants do almost equally. There is no vile trick or ruse or stratagem that they cannot imitate: no base deception that they will not practise. They lie ; i ihi » hi i '¥ 54 In Nature's Workshop and steal with the worst ; they hold out false baits NO. II.-OKASS OK I'ARNASSUS, DISI-LAYINC AND AI.VERl ISIM: ITS IMITATION HuNkY. for deluded insects, and hide real fly-traps with honeyed words and sweet secretions. False Pretences 55 As a good illustration among English plants, look at the Grass of Parnassus, that beautiful,' dishonest bog-herb, with glossy-gieen leaves and pure white blossoms, which is considered the especial guerdon of poets. I found a whole nest of it once in a swamp near Cromer, and carried off a bunch of the lovely flowers as an appropriate offering to Mr. Swinburne who was stopping at Sidestrand. Yet this poet's flower, dainty and delicate as it is— you see in No. ii its counterfeit presentment— is not ashamed to deceive the poor bees and flies in a way which the Heathen Chinee would have considered unsportsmanlike. It is a sham, a commercial sham of the worst type. It lives for the most part on wet moors among mountains, or else in the boggy hollows between blown sand-hills by the sea : and when its milk- white flowers star the ground in such spots, it forms one of the loveliest ornaments of our English flora. But trust it not, oh butterfly : it is fooling thee! From a distance it looks as if it were full of honey ; it advertises well : but at close quarters 'tis a wooden nutmeg ; it turns out to be nothing better than an arrant humbug. The deception is managed in this disgraceful fashion. Inside each petal lies a curious ten- or twelve-fingered organ, which is in reality an abortive stamen. No. 12 shows you one such petal removed, with the false honey-glands drawn on a larger scale than in the otlier illustration. The ten-fingered stamen bears at its tip a number of translucent yellow drops, which look like pure : il 9- I 56 In Nature's Workshop nectar. But they are nothing of the kind ; I regret iood^' Th'' '-^^.r^^^'fr^''^-^ commercial false- hood. They ghsten hke drops : but they are mere glassy .m.tat,ons ; and they are put there with inTnt to deceive, m order to attract flies and other insects wh.ch come to quaflf the supposed nectar and so unwittingly fertilise the seeds^'while ^.e^a^e Id" dhng about perplexed among the pretended hoTey- glands, without getting paid one sip for their toil and trouble. This is, of course, a flagrant case of obtaining ser- vices under false pre- tences ; it deserves four- teen days' without the option of a line. As a rule, in similar cases, the flies are rewarded for their kind offices as carriers by the merited wage of a drop of honey. But the Grass of Par nassus, mendacious herb, pretends to be purveying a specially fine quantity and quality of Ictar while in reality it offers ouly a hard glassv knob bTc'auTete'i^ '' '^'^h '''' ''^ P'-^tt because the blossoms do not have to go on pro- ducing honey fresh and fresh ; a mere Lxpens ve show does just as well as the real article f-Qur customers like it!" but the language of the flies when they discover the fraud is something ju Uwfu, No. 12.— A SINGLE PETAL, H, SHOW THE CHARACTER OK THE SHAM HONEY. False Pretences 57 Nor is this by any means a solitary example of pant depravity. The whole group of pitcher- plants, for mstance, cruelly manure themselves by means of living insects in the most treacherous tJi^hion. These lovely and wicked plants live, with- out exception, in wet and boggy soil, where they cannot get enough animal matter for manure in the ordmary way by the roots : so they lay them- selves out instead to capture and absorb the tissues of insects. For this horrid purpose they twist their leaves into deep pitchers which catch and hold the rain-water, and so form reservoirs to drown their prey. Then they entice insects by bright colours to their traps, and allure them to enter by secreting honey at the top of the pitcher. Hairs point downward inside; these allow the flies to walk on to their fate, bribed as they go by lines of nectar : but if they try to return, ah, then they find their mistake: the hairs prevent them, after the fashion of a lobster-pot. Thus they walk on and on till they reach the water, when they are swamped and clotted in a decaying mass, from which the treacherous plant draws manure at last for Its own purposes. The pitchers are thus at once traps to catch animals, and stomachs to digest them. Another and still odder case of deceptiveness in plants is shown by a curious group of South African flowers, the Hydnoras and Stapelias. These queer and malodorous herbs have very large and rather handsome but fleshy blossoms, an inch or two across, dappled and spotted just like decaying ■I 111 II 58 In Nature's Workshop Zlt' \^^^ ''''^ '" *^^ ^'y ^"^1 «>»"ost desert region, where carrion-flies abound. Such flies lav part m ha -eaten carcasses of antelopes or smaller ammals k.Ued and in part devoured by 1 onT and other beasts of prev. So the flowers have taken to .m.tatnig dead meat. They are a lurid red in colon,, w.th livid livery patches, and they have a hem to lay their eggs, and in so doing carry out o^r Bur'?' *'' p'l"* 'y ^^^*'''-'s ^'^^ l>'o"- soms. But, of course, the whole thing is a vile hardild"a".'TK*'' "^^^^^^ ^^^^^ -t> *he flow has died and there is no food for them, so thev perish of starvation. Dr. Blackmore, of Sa rsbury once gave me some of these curiois plants and s^irius hke'f *''* "• *'^ ^""'•^^*' '^- tJ"v dozens^ o hf K ?.?"'P°''"S '"^^t' they attracted dozens of bluebottle fl.es and other carrion in- for^in *?h"''' '■^^^™^'^"^^ ^J«o occurs among plants ; for m the same dry South African region, where slZlfT:'-'"^- ^''\ "'^^'^^ ^-- in^the'rable season, certain ice-plants and milk-weeds have e\'a\r1ikl':h*^^'lHr' ''''"''-' tuberrot st'em: exactly like the pebbles among which they grow • 4he tuL?-'" *'r i'T^ ''^ '°^^'" '" '^^ ^^y - X' round It. Such tubers are really reservoirs of l.v.ng material designed to carry the .fe of the plant over the dead season : as soon as rafn comes False Pretences eg again, they put forth fresh green leaves at once a.id grow on after their sleep as if nothing had happened. Even terrifying attitudes are not un- known ni the vegetable world : for one of the uses of the movements in the Sensitive Plant is almost certainly to frighten animals. Browsing creatures that come near the bushes in their native woods see the leaves shrink back and curl up when touched, and are afraid to eat a tree that has so evidently a spirit in it. The Squirting Cucumber of the Mediterranean, again, alarms goats and cattle by discharging its ripe fruits explosively in their faces the moment the stem is touched. In this case the primary object is no doubt the dispersal of the seeds, which squirt out elastically as the fruit jumps off; but to frighten browsing enemies is a secondary advantage. There can be no question as to the reality of the plant's hostile intention, because the fruits also contain a pungent juice which discharges itself at the same instant into the eyes of the assailant. As I have received a volley of this iiTitating liquid more than once in my own face (in the pursuit of science) I can testify person- ally on the best of evidence that it is distinctly painful. The tactics of the Squirting Cucumber m first frightening - and then injecting acrid juice into your eyes, are thus exactly similar to the plan of action pursued by the angry larva of the Puss Moth. ^ r > ' •ii. Ill PLANTS THAT GO TO SLEEP PLANTS sleep almost as truly as animals. To be sure, their sleep is a trifle less obtrusive -plants never snore : but it is quite real to show It here, m a great many instances. Perhaps the best-marked forrt, of slumber in the vegetable world .s that of the great winter rest, when so ToTlndT '"'^''f^^-'^^'^ "nder the sheltering soil, and there he dormant, side by side with the slumbenng animals. We all know that when winter approaches the sleek dormouse retTeats ust above the ground, where he dozes away SQui rds Zn T lu ''''' °' unconsciousness' bquirrels similarly hibernate in the holes of tree- trunks ; while bears grow fat in autumn, and afLr sleeping the winter through, emerge in ipril mere cold-blooded animals, such as newts and lizards snakes and adders, they dream away the chHlv months, like the Seven Sleepers of EpLsu:, coiled up m tangles among the banks and hedges' The lesser creatures-snails, and beetles, and grubs and so forth-hibernate underground or cfi'ceai DO Plants that go to Sleep 6i themselves in the crannies of rocks and walls. But how does this long winter rest of animals differ, after all, from the winter rest of the crocus or the hyacmth, which withdraw all the living material from their leaves in autumn, and bury themselves mches deep in the soil in the shape of a bulb, till February rains or April suns tempt leaves and flowers out again? The whole vast class of bulbous and tuberous plants, indeed — the lilies, orchids, daffodils, narcissi, tulips, squills, blue-bells,' and snow-drops — are they not just hibernating creatures, which retire underground in autumn with the slugs and the queen wasps, to reappear in spring about the same time with the return to upper air of the moles, the tortoises, and the fritillary butterflies ? In the case of pond plants and pond animals, in particular, this close similarity of habit is especially evident. I have pointed out in "Flashlights on Nature" how the frogs and newts betake them- selves to the depths before the surface freezes oyer ; and how at the same time, when the whirli- gig beetles and the tapering pond-snails go below to hibernate, the buds of the frogbit and the growing shoots of the curled pondweed similarly detach their ends from the dying stems so as to bury themselves safely in the unfrozen mud of the oozy bottom. But it may not strike every one that much the same sort of winter sleep, for plants as for animals, is common on land too. When the squirrel retires into winter quarters in the trunk of the oak, where he has stored up his hoard of acorns i k ' id I 6» In Nature's Workshop aKainsf the dead season, does not the life of the oak tselJ do ,ust the same thing ? Does nouhe tr« ,"?• '»" "-"'"P 'ill the succeeding summer ? I JTv the hfe of the oak " in the most literal Tnse • for*^ remember, the protoplasm or living L^i"^;^ "j Sreen leaves is withdrawn, before they falL into the vial layer just below the bark; and there it ?e^ns a»^y the wmter, protected by its overcoat .' Z ottrwri kll r I'h h"" '™^'» "•»' -•"« oinerwise kill ,t. Indeed, it s only the dead skeleton of the leaf that drops on the ground the life re,„a.r.s and hides in the trunk or branches snake, the cast shell of the lobster, the emotv pupa-case of the butterfly. Nay, more, one m^^ y perennial herbs hibernate-become dormant in .wmter; but some of them conceal theriinc protoplasm m bulbs or tubers which they bTr? underground, while others store it i„ the stem or .ru^k,^wrapped warmly up i„ a thick ve^e™We Even evergreens sleep, though not quite so openly Take , wo familiar contrasted case Th^ SCO ch fir and the larch are closely related ■ but the larch, a native of wind-swept heights in Centra Europe and Northern Asia, would have its slender .he w Iff ™ ="'" "^ ™^y'"8 trunk snapped by to suits' iMhTr "'"''' ""^ *°"" '"' ™-p''''d he u^Z h ™' •*"""'" °" "" "•« through the u.nter, besides running a good chance of beiL blown down ,n every big storm ; so it has acquired Plants that go to Sleep 6j luc^l^T """'"'' ""'""^ ^«"'^*^'-^> "' 'Shedding • Its cast-off leaves ,n autumn like the oak and the dm after a has hidden away their vital contents i^ the hvuig layer. 1„ this way, it comparative v l>ear and a so presents a far smaller expanse of fcmSs"' Th" '^ ^';."'"^^y ''y^"'*^^^ and SiWrian tempests. The Scotch lir. on the other hand, a stouter tree w.th stronger branches, can endure the heavy load of snow, which it shifts often enough a! the wmd strikes it ; so it has evergreen leaves like most of .ts class: but these needle-like leaves arc th.ck-skmned and covered with a protective g a st gte wh.ch effectually guards the living mat er wthm from the frosts of January. Large-^avec eve,-greens, hke the common laurel and th^e hodo tohage , but they are more southern types ; bur northern wmter tries them often, and revere seasons they get terribly frost-bitten. Even these sively. that ,s to say. their life is really suspended more or ess during the winter months' though the living material is then exposed in the leaves instead of bemg withdrawn into the bark as in the la do' But besides this yearly winter sleep or hiberna- turn a great many plants also sleep e^cry night in other words they suspend more or less theif usuL" activities, and devote themselves to rest and recu peration For what do we mean by sleep ? We Mr. Herbert Spencer has admirably defined Tl 4>\ 'II ^ In Nature's Workshop "the period when repair predominates over waste " use tip the hvn.g material of the body : in our sleeping hours we rebuild and restore it. Now this js not qu.te true to the same extent of pLts though even plants in certain sensen grow more' by n.ght than by day. Yet it is true i.i the ma^n that plants sus- pend in their sleeping hours a great many func- tions which they carry on while they wake; and that the sleeping time is mostly de- voted to repair and growth, not to active inter- course with ex- ternal nature. By day, plants eat: by night, they utilise and arrange what My i.Ius.ra.b„ No. x shows the i*7of:Xo"sa bush m , s wak.ng moments. You would ca ™t S hrt s,gh, rather a branch than a leaf, no doubt but m that you would be mistaken ; it s really one much-d,v,ded leaf though not by any me^^s a simple one ; and when it falls off, it falls off from »«. I.->«A«CH OK MIMOSA, lilt m, AWAKB. Plants that go to Sleep 65 the base like a sini»Ie structure i* :. 'act, a very comp„„'„d lea."ll -"P in o'L''""" "' of .he s„rrou„di„« air, Jh! h .';,:,;: ;;:7/„"' thus KW;*x m the dayliuht just as i, „v bee works when i, Ra.h'ersCey ^.tV;;', fr^'* plants and animalsfthey u« Le a1 "cr W !?' suocmctly puts it, "each shining hVr""^"' Fo , I'Lt?' a°T^'™■" "«''°"='"y 'a' „r rood, ca"bo";,'::^'a<^d,''th eXTJh'tTV'^ p™-" seen as they tStCZ'^l^Tr" l""'"' the dark hours of the evenl^*^ v f'' ;'"""« famous and well-known SenXe Planf ,°"'^ ,'!"= this, but also many other klT .'^"'."'^'^P* ><>"' acacia n.uch cultiva'.ed i, our te^L"'"""^" t"" a P.et.y sight to see then. fa,IVg;:dtT:s.eep- E '!■ 66 In Nature's Workshop dozing off, if I may be allowed that familiar expres- sion. First of all the opposite pairs of leaflets fold together upward, so as to present a single combined surface, like that of a hinged tablet when you shut its halves together. Then the four main leaf- stalks on which the leaflets are fixed sink slowly down like a sleepy child, and double themselves away out of the range of danger. Last of all, the principal leaf-stalk or main mid- rib of the whole branch- like leaf itself droops and drops drowsily, and the entire structure hangs limp, as if dead, against the branch that supports it. In No. 2 you can see a pair of such four-branched leaves soimd asleep in their pendent attitude. Each of these, when ex- panded, would resemble NO. Z-BK.KCH OK MIMOSA. n.K [J^tj^P^" ^""^ '""''^ '""^ LEAVES FAST \SLEEP. '" ^O. I. \ QU CaU SCC for , - . ^ . . yourself that the waking leaf IS obviously equipped for work and action, while the sleeping leaves are quite as obviously arranged for rest and recuperation. You can also observe in IK Plants that go to Sleep 67 No. 2 the main leaf-stalk or mid-rib of a third leaf, whjch is hanging down unseen, out of the field of the drawing. The machinery for producing these curious sleep- movements is situated in certain very irritable little knobs at the base of the leaf-stalk, one of which you can observe close to the stem in the case of the lowest leaf-stalk (with its leaf unseen) in No. ^. The mechanism acts much like a nervous system- it governs the movements and attitudes of the leaf by night or day. In the true Sensitive Plants the leaflets fold up out of harm's way when touched. In most mimosas and acacias, however, they only fold at night, or in very cold or dark weather. Their folding is partly effected for the sake of warmth, because they then expose only one surface of each leaf; it may be compared to the way in which mice and other animals curl up in their nests, or to the habit of snakes in lying coiled up in holes, knotted together one with the other But It is partly also done for physiological reasons : the plant rebuilds itself in sleep just as truly as the animal, and this posture seems to suit It? growing and redistributing activities. In No. 3 we have a branch of that common and beautiful little English wild-flower, the wood-sorrel. The plant is here represented wide awake in the daytime, its blossom expanded to court the insects that fertilise it, and its leaves wide open, drinking in Its gaseous food as fast as they can drink it. Wood- sorrel is a tender and thin-textured spring herb • a chill is therefore highly prejudicial to its health • UI 1; «8 In Natures Workshop without beinK exactly delicate-for in a certain «nse u^d-sorrd .nay even be calleS Lrd"- p;t TVr^r ;ir,r tte rb d.spos,t,on of its d«nty wan foliage. TheTaves are composed of thrrt^ leaflets each, and even at a casual glance, something about their mid- ribs might sug'^est to you the idea that they were in- tended for folding. And so they are. They fold quaintly downward — not one against the other, as in the , mimosa, but half of each leaflet against the other half. In the »ar«,th tu , ^^^ sunshine md he Nvarmth they expand to the utmost, as vou see HI No. 3 ; when night falls they fall too as y^c^n observe m No. 4, where both leaves ^'d flovv^r are fast asleep, resting after the arduous laboulo the day m a profound slumber. If you consider what the parts are doing in each case you w.ll realise that day differs from'night for NO. J.-WOOD-SORRKJ.; THE FLOWER AND ..EAVES BOTH AWAKE. Plants that go to St-EEP 69 the plant exactly as ,t dilfers for the animal-the one being a period of direct intercourse vvrth ex- ternal nature, and the other a period of repose growth, and internal restoration. For during the daytime; the wood-sorrel swallows or sucks in with Its leaves such carbonic acid as the wind brings its way, and then exposes it in the full sunlig^it to be assimilated and ren- dered useful : but hy night it folds its leaves, just as the shopkeeper puts up his shutters or the mill stops work ; it keeps them warm by contact with one an- other ; and it begins to use up the material it has eaten for growth and *fvelopment. Similarlv with tht- d;«Mty whitr lilac- streaked flowers : during the day they open their slender petals, hold up their heads, and receive the visits of th« insects upon whom they depend for ferti- lisation : but when night comes, and the insects have gone to bed, it is no use hanging out the sign any longer, so to speak-for the petals are just sign-boards to attract the eyes of the insect cus- tomers. Various misfortunes might happen to the NO. 4.- WOOD-SORREI. ; THE FLOWER ANU LEAVES BOTH ASI EEl'. w 70 In Nature's Workshop T^rn"/''^''^!'* 'JP''"^ "'Shts, if it still kept open. mtht f.l ""f T "P ""^ ^''^ '^' petals : Ln might fa 1 and wash away the honey or the pollen w.nd might disperse the fruitful golden graTns' mtended for the seed-vessels of sifter blofsom ! curl themselves up m their holes : it makes the flower hang its head and close its petal^so as to irnpnson warm air within its bell-shaped hotlow dUute th! h '"P "^ ^' *° ^''^^ *he «t«n^ nor dilute the honey, nor waste the pollen. Thus all night long, the wood-sorrel suspends its busTriess .ntercou.se with the outer world, and retireHpon itsdf for rest and rect^peration ; when morning comesagam, ,t opens its leaflets to drink in ^ a^ and the sun, and lifts its flowers once more to aU.act the insect. Alike for warmt^ ors^etv ^ for economy, it sleeps l.y night ; [t wakes by eSe^ce. "^*^" "-*""'- " ^^ ^^««- ^ its I may add that ^ feww otherwise ho* parhc larly necessary is h^ to the wood^omM H^ examn^ the under-side of the wTnter fea L "^ mean those few old leaves which mai^To Enghsh January -you will find that they ;^e distinctly reddish or purple. Now, chem sts ha^ shown us that this red or purple cilouring mattl^ which IS spread on the under-side of the fXe m many plants is a substance with a cSs power of catching the remnant of such Hght ay Plants that go to Sleep 71 as pass unused through the green cells of the leaf, and transforming them into heat-rays. To put it plainly, the red pigment is a warmth-catcher, a machine for transmuting light into heat. You therefore find it most often on the under-side of many early spring plants, which naturally need all the heat they can get, as well as on- aquatic herbs like the water-lilies, whose under-surface is constantly chilled (even in summer) by contact with the cold water. For example, the cyclamens so commonly grown in drawing-room windows in winter have bright purple under-sides to their leaves, because they grow and flower in the coldest months : so has an exotic wood-sorrel, which is a favourite pot-plant with cottagers, and which goes to sleep every night of its life, even more conspicuously than our wild English species. In every case where you light upon purple or red colouring matter abundantly present in leaves or shoots (as in sprouting peonies, and spring growth of rose-bushes), you may at least suspect that warmth is its principal purpose. Nature does nothing in vain : there is always a reason in the merest detail. But you may ask, "Why do not all leaves equally go to sleep at night? Why have you thus to pick out a few select examples?" The answer is, all leaves do ; but some of them sleep more conspicuously and visibly than others. The cases in which you can see that they sleep are those of plants with thin and delicate foliage, where the leaves or leaflets gain mutual protection against jy 72 In Natures Workshop I radiation and cold bv Dutfin^ *h i speak, two layers .hick' '^^•"yL„L"':nt"',T '" shows sleep „,„s, obviously : vet.h'cS r "^^ leaves, like tho^P nf tk . ^ inick and coarse dron, Ihe Siberian s^^l^t";™' "" ^'•""-'«- sleep without folding tZ; h """""'" '"•"•^'' o^ |.assy coverin^eS • „;\n: J!™:;; ^"^^ prwrteHiitTXir^^^^^^^^^ unshed .hr;„;!;r;':";i.":l,„^;^'='' '*=""" "•- afi:^:L4"r;;.hr.r:L7ofL^^^^ Blossoms are delicate inri u "'^^^^P ot leaves. ^-irpj£!£-^^»o"^^^^^^^ of'hepla'^'^hrch dLthem' r"""'' ."^ P^'* business and holds ,heT,os,sp"ctli::^'"', ''^'"'' with the re,t of nature Th, I ^f ■ntercourse the sun and the ar^lon?' b^'tt flf "°T "'* attract and satisfy all L'rts o f,!?^'' *"' '° p yers cnoose to make him. The rule with Plants that oo to Sleep 73 flowers is this : they open the shop when customers are most hkely to drop in ; they shut it when there IS nobody about and when valuable goods Hke honey and pollen run a risk of getting damaged. The purple crocus, illustrated in its working hours in No. 5, is an early spring flower which has to open under considerable •disadvantages. It lays by material during the previous summer in an underground bulb, sleeps the winter through, and pushes up its head in the very early spring, at a time when frost and snow are still extremely pro- bable. All such early spring plants, I need scarcely say, are naturally hardy : they also wrap themselves up warm in blankets and over- coats. The crocus bud when it first emerges is folded tight (like an Indian papoose or an Italian bambmo) in a neat and commodious papery coverlet : it only peeps out of its close-fitting mummy-case when the weather promises a chance of successful flowering. A little break of warmth in February or March, however sutKces for its purpose. It will unfold its purple corolla gaily in the sun, and flaunt its golden-yellow NO. S.~PURPLE CROCUS, OPEN IN SUNSHINE. n 4 - IM 74 In Nature's Workshop stigma in the midst of the blue cup to allure its Winged allies to the store of honey. These allies are all of them bees, dozens of whom venture out on the prowl on 'sunny day through the whole winter. It is for them "hat the gorse hangs out its nutty-scented fiowersTfor th m chaict AOr'^"''? °^ P"^P»^' expand their chalices. As long as the sun shines, in spite of cold east wmds, the bees bury themselves deep .n the temptmg blossoms, dust their hairy thighs with quantities of pollen, and rub it o/aglst the tre?7sit" Rf^'^-^"^'"'^^ °^ '"^^ "-* «-er they visit. But spring sunshine is not a joy to r. "T' . ""'"'^ ^^'^^ *^'«"d« roll up and obscure the clear bl'ue sky; a cold wind accom- panies them; the bees hurry off, full-laden To their hives or their underground nests; rairsleet or snow threatens. The prudent crocus perceives that all chance of business is over for the present has'lVt'"''-'r" ^* ^ ^^^^' -^- *»^'-owi care^of t ^'''TV'' '^"* "P '*^ ^^°P ^"^ take care of its merchandise. And it is well advised for its shape renders it peculiarly liable to damage cZii/Ts °' ^''* "'^" °p^" ' - •* <=»«- ' lobes do darty as an umbrella. If rain or snow comes, It IS thus effectually protected : the pollen IS not washed away, nor is the large and fleshy stigma ruined. You will find These tactics common among cup-shaped or chalice-shaped flowers like the crocus and the tuHp : they never occur among bdl-shaped hanging flowers, like Plants that go to Sleep 75 the harebell or the wild hyacinth, where the whole blossom, being turned downward and entered from below, forms a perpetual umbrella to guard its own pollen and its own honey from stress of weather. These last are a higher and more evolved type, belonging for the most part to very advanced and pro- gressive families. Most spring flowers, however, in their anxiety to attract the few insect visitors who are about at that treacherous period of the year, keep open door, and spread their blossoms, cup - like, upward. Ex- amples, other than the crocus and the tulip, are the winter aconite, the buttercup, the wood-ane- mone, the Alpine gentians, the globe-flower, and the hepatica. Most of these early flowers shut up for "****.— a cloud passes; ihk every passing cloud, and '.IS "^^.U" -"• open agam for every gleam of sunshine. They are hard at work all the time, openmg and shutting as the weather changes. On a typical April day I have often noticed the yellow crocuses expand and close half-a-dozen times over. A great many flowers which have the honey ,< I 76 In Nature's Workshop and pollen openly exposed in this cun-Iike u-av Tafra S nf h P'^'^^.^^^^^^^e they are natu ally so atraid of being spoiled by a wettiiur Th;. i^iirJI^:': "^^^*' theUe^st^p^/ronn': those, I mean, w.th open flat saucers like the common pimpernels. An old English name for our little red pim- pernel is "shepherd's weather-glass," be- cause it opens its eyes in the broad sunlight, but closes them at once ill shade or when a cloud passes. Plants of this type sleep all night long habitually, but also take a gentle doze every now and again when danger „„ , ^ '°wers. So fowls have .V l~^"^ GERANIUM, LAYING becu knowu to an fo ITSBLI. OUT TO ATTRACT INSECTS roo.* , ^" ^° 8° ^O INSECTS, roost during a total aegree. Here you see three flowers awake »„rf expanded, w,.h .heir pre.ty p„,p„ p,,r(tark:d Plants that oo to Sleep 77 by darker lines or honey-guides) flaunting in the sun as advertisements to the insects. The lines on the petals are not there for mere ornament : thev point straight to the honey, and so save the time of the visitor, by showing him at once where he- should stick his inquisitive proboscis in search of It. But No. 8 exhibits the very same branch in the evening or when clouds are obscuring the sun. Danger now looms : a shower threatens. So what does the frightened wild geranium do ? Ob- serve that the overblown flowers, the buds, and the leaves retain their posi- tions as before : rain can- not hurt them. But the three open flowers bend their heads against the storm, instead of closing their petals: they con- vert themselves into an umbrella, thus temporarily imitating the tactics of the bluebells and the snow- drops. By this simple device, the honey and pollen are secured from danger. When day or sunshine returns, the geranium raises its lolling heads again because its flowers are small and inconspicuous • they depend upon minor insect visitors-flies or the like — and cannot afford to do without the NO. 8.— WILD GERANIUM, AT NinHT OK IN CLOUDY WRATHBR, MAKINC EACH FLOWER IN rOAN UMBRELLA KOR THE PROIKCTION OF THE POLLEN. ) . H MICROCOPY RESOUITION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) A /APPLIED IM^GE Ir ^SM 1653 East Main Street SRA Rochester, Ne» York U609 USA ■^g (716) 482 -0300 -Phone ^B (716) 28S - 5989 - Fax 78 In Nature's Workshop display of their purple upper-side, like the far more noticeable hyacinths and harebells. A different method of compassing the same result .s seen m that queer English weed, the carline inistle. It IS a very common plant on our chalk downs, and on many dry hillsides : it abounds, for ^>^^^^^,fi^ WM^i^i wfrn'^^i I ^tfej ■ ^**'',/!i'.^'.'V, f-'^fWi'WMt/ii'i NO. 9 -CARLINE THISTLE, ITS BRACTS OIEN AND ACTINr. LIKE PETALS TO ALLURE INSECTS. example, on Box Hill: and yet, if you are not a bo amst, I greatly doubt whether you will ever have noticed It For it is a curious creature which always looks dead, even when it is most alive • you can see it in No. 9 much as in real life, only you must remember that its colour is almost that of a dry dead thistle. Its leaves are cottony ; its flowers Plants that go to Sleep 79 are dingy in hue ; and its general aspect is sugges- tive of death, decay, and dissolution. Yet it is really very much alive ; and its form is so admir- ably adapted to its place in nature, that I think before I describe its mode of sleeping I must first devote a few lines in passing to its other dodges for pickmg up an honest livelihood. The carline grows only on dry fields, high open sheep-walks, and sandhills by the sea. All these places are, of course, much liable to be browsed over by sheep, cattle, donkeys, and other animals, not forgetting the destructive rabbit and that strangest of all grazers, the goose-a bird which puts Itself into competition with the herbivorous ruminants, and crops the meadows with its bill shorter and closer than any of them with their teeth Now, all plants which live under such conditions are obliged to adopt protective measures against animal depredators. Most of them are prickly : such are gorse, blackthorn, and the common thistles : nay there are even certain herbs, like the pretty pink rest- harrow, which are unarmed when they grow in enclosed meadows, but which produce a special prickly variety when they occupy spots exposed to donkeys, rabbits, and geese, the worst and deadliest of grazing enemies. Other plants defend themselves in subtler ways, by bitter juices, or by unpleasant hairs dotted about over their surface. Yet others like the subterranean clover, bury their ripening pods underground, so that their seeds at least may escape the keen-eyed depredators. The thistles of rich meadows have long stalks and rise a foot or ,1. 8o In Nature's Workshop two high : but on the fine sward of chalk downs a special species has been developed, know, as the S emless Th.stle, which consists simply of a rosette of prickly leaves, in whose midst a compact head of flowers hes pressed close to the ground, and well protected by the prickly points of the leaves around •t. Indeed, the whole nibbled turf of the downs consists everywhere of creeping cr low-growing plants, specially designed to flower and fruit, and so reproduce their kind, in spite of the murderous assaults of animals to which they are continuallv subjected. .. - It isjn the mid^t of such a stunted world as this that the carhne has to carve itself out a niche in nature Its leaves, as you can see in No. o, are pressed flat against the ground, looking almost as if they had been trodden into it-a peculiarity still more noticeable in the specialised form of plantain evolved in chalk country, on whose lawns it is a weed much hated by gardeners. These leaves are intensely prickly, with long and rigid spines protect- ing them at all angles from the attacks of nibblers. 1 he whole carline plant is remarkably rigid and juiceless ; in winter it looks absolutely dead but revives again in spring as if by a miracle. In the centre of the rosette of spiny leaves a flower-head develops, looking at first sight like a single flower but consisting really of many tubular bells, clustered together in a round group, and enclosed by an in- volucre or prickly basket of bracts. The inner bracts of this basket are long, slender, and ray- like: in texture they are thin and shining like Plants that go to Sleep 8i straw, while in hue they are of a pale straw colour, so that Ihey add altogether to the dead-alive aspect of the plant. But when these shining straw-coloured bracts are spread ou\ horizontally in the sunlight forming a crown about the true flowers or little bells in the centre, they produce precisely the effect of petals, and serve the same purpose in attracting the notice of the fertilising insects. No. 9 shows you the aspect of the carline in these its most allur- mg moments, when it is laying itself out to be agreeable to visitors. That is the attitude it always adopts in bright dry weather, when the winged guests on which it depends for fruiting are around and active. Its bracts then spread out like the rays of a star, and mimic the true ray-florets of a daisy or a chrysan- themum. But when the air becomes damp the bracts, which are highly sensitive to moisture curl up of themselves, as you see in No. 10, and form a sort of hut or shed above the true flowers in the centre. The conical tent or pent-house thus pro- duced makes a shelter against the impending rain which would wash away the pollen and dissolve the honey. The illustration shows you very well the general arrangement of the plant and its parts, con- sisting outside of a rosette of spinous leaves, and inside of a basket or involucre to guard the flowers • this involucre itself being once more composed of two distinct parts ; the outer layer of prickly and protective bracts, designed to ward off browsing enemies, and the inner layer of thin, dry bracts with a shiny texture like that of : everlastings' F ri 82 In Nature's Workshop designed in dry weather to play the part of petals, and in wet to rise up as an umbrella or rain-shelter. Ihe word carline is good old English for a withered old woman, a wizened witch, and it is very aptly applied to this curious and tattered grey weather-beaten species. Robert Burns applies it to fiiiliii'riiitiiltlF-'^'^''''''^^*^'''-'^''^'^''-''^- ''■■'■' ITiVlUUUiOVLvl^AlLii ■^'.-Uji'^'-' ■:->''\.i-*i I •■ .it'll. I ' 'ntuniurirnAir ' nWl.flJ'P'"' yv\v ' iflvHH' m:Mt''<''] tWiiK., J!yif» f In j/;" {"TlFfli/ NO. IO.-CARLINE THISTLE: CLOUDY WEATHER OR NIGHT: THE BRACTS CLOSE AND FORM A PENT-HOUSE TO PROTECT THE FLOWERS. the hags whose orgies were interrupted by Tani o' Shanter. Most plants and most animals sleep by night and wake by day. But there are of course a number of kinds, both in the animal and yegetable world, which find it pays them best to be nocturnal. Day IS the time when most enemies are abroad : there- fore, to get the better of the enemies, it may be Plants that go to Sleep 83 well to sleep by day and turn out in the twilight. Defenceless species, no doubt, begin the game : they fly -'broad in the dusk to secure safety from birds and other aggressive foes. That is the policy of the moths, the fireflies, the mosquitoes, and many other night-flying insects. Then the bats and the night-jars discover in turn that it is worth while to prowl about at night, in order to swoop down upon the insects which have thus tried to escape from the swifts, the swallows, the martins, and the fly- catchers. Similarly, the smaller mammals, such as mice and shrews, go out by night in search of beetles : and the owls follow in search of mice and shrews. Thus the larger half of nature is by habit diurnal, while the smaller half has become nocturnal, either to escape its enemies or to capture its prey. It is like the human case of guns and armour : we make armour-plated ironclads so thick that no gun can pierce them ; then we invent new guns which can pierce even the impenetrable armour. Nature is one vast game of check and counter-check: it consists of devices intended to outwit other devices, and themselves outwitted in turn by devices still more stringent or more marvellously cunning. Now plants too have followed the general fashion of producing nocturnal types, wherever the circum- stances rendered it desirable for them to do so. The night-flying moths are in many cases honey- eaters, therefore they may be utilised as carriers of pollen by any enterprising plant that chooses to lay itself out for securing its services. Here are so many Pickford's vans, as it were, going begging : 84 In Nature's Workshop it's. the plant that chooses to flower at night and close by day will be able to get its fertilisation done cheap, with greater certainty than if it had to com- pete with the ruck that opens every morning. So a great many flowers have taken the hint and laid themselves out for this twilight blossoming. I will give you one simple example first, and then pass on to more complex cases. Everybody knows the common English red campion-the day lychnis, or Robin Hood as it is often called m the country. It is a pretty pink flower, scentless and somewhat weedy, and 'it grows abundantly m hedgerows all over England It is ptnk, because it ,is principally fertilised by day- flying butterflies, which love bright colour : it needs no perfume, because its brilliant hue is sufficient advertisement for all practical purposes. But it has a very near relation, almost exactly like it save m two respects : and this relation is the white even- ing lychnis or night-flowering campion. It differs from the red campion, first in colour, and second in being delicately and pervasively scented. Why ? Because it opens its blossoms about five or six in mnth^'^^TK^' '" Z^^' *° "^*^^ *h^ night-flying moths. These moths are chiefly attracted by white flowers, which show up best in the grey dusk of evening: and they are also guided very largely by seen so that blossoms which lay themselves out for the patronage of moths are almost always heavily perfumed. ^ A few more examples will show you some other peculiant.es of this group of night-blooming moth- Plants that go to Sleep 85 alluring blossoms. Everybody now knows the so- called "tobacco-plant" or Nicotiana affinis, so greatly cultivated of late in gardens. This beautiful and graceful flower closes during the day, but opens at nightfall, when its pure white blossoms become strongly scented. If you are at all in the habit of noticing flowers, too, you must have observed that the " tobacco - plant " is almost self- luminous in the dusk : it glows with a strange phosphorescent light, as if illumi- nated from within. This is the case with many noc- turnal flowers, and I suspect (though I do not know) that the property is connected with their insect - eat- ing habits, about which more by-and-by. Again, you may note that there are a large number of similar night-flowering plants, all of them moth-fertilised, such as gardenia, white jasmine, tuberose, stephanotis, night-flowering cereus, and so forth. All of these are pure white, and all of them are heavily scented with very similar perfumes. Moreover (and this is a curious NO. II CATCHFLT, A NOCTURNAI, PLANT, SLEEPING BY DAY, WHEN ITS MOTHS ARE ABSENT. si I'll 86 In Natures Workshop coincidence), none of them have any streaks, spots, or Imes on their petals. The reason is simple. Such streaks or Hnes are always honey-guides, to lead the insects straight to the nectary. Day insects see such lines and are greatly influenced by them : but at night they would be useless, so their place is taken by scent and by deep tubes, which make a dark spot near the centre of the blossom. What night flowers need most is a bright white surface which will reflect all the small light they can get : and this I sus- pect they sometimes supplement by a faint phosphorescence. The Nottingham Catchfly, which you see asleep by day in No. II, is a highly developed example a ^ °^ *^^se nocturnal flowers. During the daytime it coveu its blossoms by bending its petals inward, so as to preserve its honey from casual diurnal visitors, and keep it till night for the regular customers. At evening it opens them again, as you see in No. 12, displaying its brilliant white inner surface, which is dazzling NO. 12. — CATCHFLY, OPENING ITS WHITE PETALS AT NIGHT, WHEN ITS MOTHS ARE FLYING. Plants that go to Sleep 87 in 's purity But why, you may ask, does it not avail itsel. of the day insects as well ? Because they are jt the ones specially fitted to do its r'v II'. \^^''^^ ^'^ "o* "f the right shape: the Nottingham Catchfly has laid itself out for special moths, and has so formed its blossoms that those moths can fertilise it most easily and most economically. It is a good example of a highly vrsltor^ *yP^' 'specially fitted for a particular The name of Catchfly, again, it owes to an odd peculiarity which it shares with many other nocturnal flowers. The top of the stem at the flowering period is covered with sticky hairs, which have glands at their ups: and these glands exude a peculiar viscid liquid. Small flies light on the stem, and are caught by the sort of bird-lime thus prepared for them ; the plant then digests them and sucks their juices. I do not know whether my next guess ,s correct or not-I am not chemist enough myself to verify it : but I am inclined to conjecture that the plant uses up the phosphates in the bodies of the insects in order to produce the peculiar luminous appearance of the petals in the twilight I leave this hint for those of my readers whose chemical skill may be greater than mine is. i I ,^1 IV MASQUERADES AND DISGUISES T Iv ^'^''!?''' ''^^P*'^' °' *^'^ ^oo"^' I introduced 1 my readers to certain bold and deceptive whir''*'r?' "bounders" of their racel which pretend to powers they do not possess and endeavour by sheer bluff 'to frighten away Pre'enrch^^^^ *'?" '^"^^^'^ P"^^^' »" "^e present chapter I am going to touch on sundry other wily animals which, either in order to escape the notice of their foes or to creep n s. ence upo„ their unwary prey, imitate 1 ^ or less closely other objects in their surroundings -m ampler words, walk about in masquerade This chapter is thus to be devoted to the subject o/ sc:fer:ndshr^"\r '* ^^^^'^^^^ ^^^^-'^he scenes and show you the make-up of the principal cSr " "'^""'^ -elodrama of "Strictly [n An ounce of example is worth a ton of descnphon: so I will begin with a simpL 1 us ra .ve case among the class of fishes Mv .llustration No. i shows a "person of the drama" mttaslleTht"""^ " "P^"^"^^ ^^^* ^-""^- imie beastie, the common sea-horse, or hinno- campus. In his dried^ condition, this qL'amt Masquerades and Disoiises «9 small Mediterranean fish is a well-known denizen of every child's domestic museum. Visitors to Venice have picked up sea-horses in abundance on the sandy ridge of the Lido— that long hank of shmgle which divides the lagoons from the open Adriatic, a spot which I have already men- tioned in my writings as a favourite haunt of my own, and also of my good old friend the sacred scarab or ball - rolling beetle. In most marine aquari- ums, too, the sea - horse is a much-appreci- ated popular per- former : a group of them in the Brighton Aqua- rium (which, though you may not know it, contains tanks with fish in them always receives an early call from me when- ever I happen to be anywhere in their neighbour- hood. By these means it comes about that even those who do not go down to the sea in ships have NO. I.— THE SEA-HORSE, UNDISGUISED, SEDATELY SWIMMING. lii 90 In Nature's Workshop become fairly familiar with the appearance of the sea-horse and with his mode of h^ which ^pursues unaltered-being indeed a Sluggish and phlegmatic brute — in a shallow basin as in the open Mediterranean. In general shape, as you see, the hippo- campus bears a striking resem- blance to the knight in a set of chessmen. But instead of a round stand, he has a pre- hensile tail like a monkey's, by means of which he can securely moor himself to pieces of sea- NO. 2.-A PAIR OF SEA-HORSES, MOORED TO A FUCUS. weed or other sn^all objects. Th mTs "s":! couple of hippocamp. so curled together in friendly ™7:r:'';r °" =■ '^''^ °< -■"' '«" s s S.:n:d bvTeir W,r " ^° "' ""=■" '"- -inextricable fh,, . " "" '""rtricable knot inextricable, that ,s to say, till you notice one Masquerades and Disguises 91 4 of them display a nascent desire in his small mind to untie himself. Then you begin to perceive a sinuous wriggling movement in the coils of his tail, which communicates itself by degrees to his slimy comrades. For about a minute the would-be rover is engaged in disentangling his own nether part from the nether parts of his companions ; at last, with a triumphant gliding motion, he sets himself free, and begins to swim, half upright, as you see in No. i, with a sedate and church- wardenly motion, through the water about him. His tins, it is true, vibrate with extraordinary rapidity, like a waving ribbon ; in spite of which he moves almost imperceptibly forward, and never goes more than a foot or two at a time in any direction. Though armed with a rather knobby and prickly coat, the sea-horse is exposed by the mere slowness of his gait to the attacks of more active and energetic enemies. Our European sea-horse, as you can see in these illustrations, makes no pretence at conceal- ment : he moves about undisguised, like an honest gentleman, and can be readily recognised where- ever you meet him. But there is an Australian relative of his, the leaf-like sea-horse (known to men of science as Phyllopteryx), which is much softer and more palatable in the body, and there- fore stands in greater need of protection from predatory fishes. This curious ragged creature, shown in No. 3, has its tail and fins provided with irregular long waving appendages, exactly resembling in form and colour the seaweed in is i| 92 In Nature's Workshop neighbouring weeds kL tf "^'""' " '"•''■" ">* stand that in m1„L' ^ '^°" '^^" "'"y ""der- knotted nla^s oT'sulh twe^ L'r/tJr" '" " grown rocks a, the botto^^'it^^^ t Z^ NO. 3-AUST,«L,A„ SEA.HO,,., D,so„„„ ^, ,„,„,^„ H SrotTT ^' ^^--P'st-eyed enemy to piolc It out from the fronds it so closely resembles Th. many ages have been assiduously eaten. If Masquerades and Disguises 93 J every one of them had been eaten, however, the species would now be extinct : and this is really what has happi-ned over and over again to many species in the sea, as it has happened on land in our own time to the American bison, the great auk, the moa of New Zealand, and several other creatures. But if any sea-horse of this more threatened class happened to resemble the sea- weed in which it lived, either in form or in colour, or in both, rather more than the rest of its kind, it would stand on the whole a somewhat better chance of not getting eaten, and would on the average leave more offspring than its less protected fellows. Thus, from generation to generation, as enemies poked their noses into the tangled weed in search of food, the tendency would be for the more seaweed-like to escape and mate, while the less seaweed-like were detected and eaten. This is what we call "natural selection," or "survival of the fittest." The result would be that the protected, mating always with the protected produced young like themselves, and that out of their offspring the ones least like seaweed would still oftenest get devoured, while those most like seaweed still escaped. The leaf-like sea-horse is a simple case of what is now known as protective resemblance. A very similar instance is that of the so-called skeleton shrimp, which also moors itself to bits of seaweed, and looks just like the plant it clings to. But the same sort of thing occurs on a large scale among the entire group of animals inhabiting what is ■|! 94 In Nature's Workshop ca led the Sargasso Sea. This sea is a belt of the Atbntjc near the Azores, where great masses of a part.cu ar trop.c,l seaweed, known as sargasso- weed, mat together so as to form perfect floating inhabft'ed h T^ 'I P^'^ y^"°^^ '" ^"^' «"d is inhabited by vast numbers of small marine animals -crabs, prawns, and the like-all of which are pro- tectively coloured exactly like the weed on which they live. I have often had a bucket of sargasso-weed fished up for me by the sailors when crossing this sea, and have amused myself > by trying to distinguish the numerous little beasts among the almost similar berry-like knobs of the sargasso in which they lurked. In the case of the Aus- tralian sea-horse and of the ., crabs and fish which inhabit specialised kind. No. 4 represents a butterflv of a species peculiar to the Malay ArchipelaB? and known as a Kallima. That is^ how t lofks wl,,le 1, flies about coquetting in the open sun attractlhTtr^,'" ';""""' '"'''■ ""^ ^-l""g o attract the attention of its observant mate. Under such circumstances, it is a beautiful creature its wings are dark brown at the tip, and crossed' by NO. 4 KALUMA BOrrBk- KLY, DISPLAYING ITSELF WHILE FLYING. Masquerades and Disguises 95 a bright yellow band ; the under wing being blue, with shot hues running through it. A very gallant gentleman indeed the male Kallima appears when thus flaunting his beauty in the tropical sun before the eyes of the ladies of his species. But let some enemy threaten, some bird pounce down upon him, and the Kallima butterfly has an easy refuge. He need but settle down quietly on a neighbouring bough, and hi, presto! all at once he seems to have put on the cap of invisibility. If you are chasing one of these butterflies, and he alights on a tree, you imagine atlirst that he has dis- J^ appeared entirely. '^o. 5.— the same kau,i ma, settled And so he has, on a tr.e : puzzle, to kind the ' BUTTERFLY. though only from your vision. At rest, he is indiscoverable. No. 5, if you look close, contains the explanation of this " mysterious disappearance of a gentleman." But you musi look close if you want to find him out in his excellent disguise. The branch, you see, has four leaves on it : well, the uppermost left-hand leaf is our vanishing butterfly. The under-sides of ■^H^ PROPER! ; OF ^CARBORO PUBLIC LIBRARY. i.( i 96 In Nature's Workshop his wings are coloured and lined so as exactly VTu' '^' '"""^^ °^ ^'^^ favourite bush on which he usually settles. Mid-rib and veins are andi:?'"'^J"'*^*^'^ "^"^ *^« actua body and legs of the insect become quite unobtrusive Indeed, ,n real life, the imitation is even more perfect, owing to the addition of colour Than Jt seems in the sketch, for here you have Mr Enocks sharp eyes-and I know none sharper -to pick out the creature for you, apart from all the leaves on the tree it inhab ts ; whereaT •n nature, you would have to hunt it up Tor exTcT;"keT"' ' "'°^^ '"^^^"' °^ ^°«^g'' ^" Residents in London can easily try for themselves this interesting game 6t hide-and-seek with a van Ih mg butterfly: for in the vestibule of the Sal History Museum at South Kensington there is a case o animals intended to illustrate p o 4 ve resemblances; and conspicuous in the case is a large group of these very butterflies, some of them ainiost impossible to detect among the leavL around them It IS noticeable, too, that similar types of double colouring-for display and for protecfion are common in nature. The upper-s^e of L wing. 1. visible only when they are unfolded and he insect IS consciously showing off his charms in the sunshine to his mates : he then desires toTook as handsome, as well-dressed, and as conspicuous r"sir;tl.d^"* ^'^ ""'^^-^'^^ '^ shown w'hn he cue is then f '"'"^1°" " *^'S' ^"d his obvious cue IS then to escape observation. In the one case, Masquerades and Disguises 97 he is the gallant at large ; in the other case, the fugitive in hiding. Similar instances of protective resemblance, pro- duced no doubt by natural selection, are now well known in many different classes of animals. The most familiar are the leaf-insects of Ceylon and Java — wonderful green creatures with ribs and veins like those of leaves, so deceptively arranged that, as Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace says, "not one person in ten can see them when resting on the food-plant close beneath their eyes." Others of the class imitate bits of stick, with little knots and branches, so that one can only recognise them as alive when one touches them. A stick-insect brought to Mr. Wallace in Borneo so exactly mim- icked a piece of stick, covered with green mosses and liverworts, that it fairly took in even that lynx- eyed naturalist. That these protective devices do really benefit the animals which exhibit them there can be no doubt at all : for Mr. Belt saw a locust in Nicaragua got up as a leaf, and absolutely overrun by foraging ants, hungry carnivores which devour every insect they come across like a ravening army : yet they never even discovered that the apparent leaf they were walking over was itself a store of good ant-meat. The locust, on the other hand, fully recognised the nature of his immunity from attack, and understood that if he moved a single limb he would betray himself : for he allowed Mr. Belt to pick him up in his hand, examine him closely, and replace him among the ants, without making an effort to escape or a movement to reveal G |! i:i ■ If ■I 98 In Nature's Workshop his true nature. This trick of "shamming dead," as it is called, is common among beetles and many other insects. In most of the cases known to us, such imitations are due to the need for protection alone. Some- times, however, the tables are turned: animals which prey upon others deceive their prey by posing as something quite harmless and even at- tractive. Thus the lizards of the desert are usually sand-coloured, so that they may creep up unob- served upon the insects they devour ; while in the Arctic snows, all the beasts and birds alike are snow-white, because there a black or red animal would be seen and avoided at once by all its possible victims. One of the strangest instances I know of imitation in a hunting creature occurs in Java. There is a type of creature allied to the grasshoppers and known as the Mantis, many species of which in various countries are specialised into leaf-insects : they are voracious creatures, with lo.ig arm-like fore-limbs, which lie in wait for and devour many smaller insects. One such Mantis in Java IS coloured pink, and resembles when at rest a pink orchid. The butterflies on which it feeds mis- take It for a flower, alight on what seem its petals in search of honey, and are instantly seized by the ruthless hand-like claws and devoured without mercy. As Mr. Wallace pithily puts the case, " It is a living trap, and forms its own bait." Examples like this lead one on to the still more remarkable group of facts known as mimicry. It might almost be called impersonation. A certain Masquerades and Disguises 99 number of animals belonging to the most different Ir^'t oT *'' n'.' ^^^"'•'^"^y °^ resembling" as It IS often called "mimicking," sundry other animals to which they are not reklly in the^easJ degree related. As before, I will begin with a smgle good typical ex- ^ ample of such mimicry, and when we have thoroughly compre- hended its nature and meaning, will pass on to the principles which govern the practice in all similar cases. No. 6 shows us, be- low, a specimen of the common English hornet. Now, every- body knows that the hornet is a large red and brown and yellow wasp, very active and irritable, with a nasty, aggressive temper, and an unpleasant way of stinging on the slightest provocation, or none at all for that matter. Further- more, everybody who has once been stung by a hornet-as I have been not infrequently in the cause of science-is keenly aware ?hat a hornIS stmg bears to an ordinary wasp's the same relation as scourging with scorpions bears to scourging wUh NO. 6 LOWER FIGURE, THE COM- MON HORNET: UPl'ER FIGURE. THE MOTH WHICH PERSONATES IT. aM tj HHI lOO In Natures Workshop rods. On this account, hornets are generally let severely alone by birds and other insect Jting creatures It must clearly be an advantage to tht wasps and hornets that they possess a sting: and iLX'u ^'" M ^"'* '*^'*--'* P^°*^^*« ^^^^ from attack by possible enemies. Again, almost all speciaily-protected creatures, as I mentioned once before in the case of the nasty, tasked and inedible caterpillars, are very brilliantly and conspicuously coloured. The contrasted bands of black and yellow in the common wasp, which render him so easily recognisable at sight, are a familiar instance. Such vivid bands or bright tints have been well described by Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace as " warning colours." The moment we see a bright black-and-yellow-belted insect alight Ti"" vll^' """ *^' ''"'* ^* ^^'^'^' ^'« ««y »t once L r. ''"t\°"'^; '''''''' ^ ^^«P ' I^on't touch ftim ! This almost instinctive fear which the mere sight of the venomous insect inspires in on- lookers IS all to the good for him : it serves his end by preventing us from handling or crushing him. Still more do the lower animals give such insects a wide berth : a very young and inexperienced puppy, It IS true, will sometimes make an impru- dent snap at a passing wasp ; but the piteous way he licks his tongue afterwards, and the dejected attitudes by means of which he tells us that he is very sorry for himself, show before long that the wasp, though vanquished, has left his mark behind him. That puppy, you may be sure, will never try to snap at another bright yellow-banded insect as Masquerades and Disgitises ioi ^uIl put h.s tail between his le«s like a wise clog, and retire incontinently into safer quarters »n L? "uT '^^" ''"°'*'" ^'^^^ whenever we find ♦rT J' *7'°"Sin« to usually sober families, but tncked ou ,n gaudy red ^r orange or yellow, they are almost invariably ^ .otected in one way or ?o ?i Y":'*'"^ ^'*'!*''" ^«"o»""»s. or stinging, or nasty and-white-banded skunk, the power of ejecting an offensive and irritating odour. A famous instance "Bel -s'froT" ;°"v-' '"'^'^'"'y ""^ ^"■•"•^"^y *« Mr Hplf /^" J" Nicaragua, that close observer, Mr. Bel , found a small kind of frog, gorgeously Ike King Solomon in all his glory. Frogs of this dazzling sort were extremely abundant in alST ""'?' '"' "^^^^ "^'^^ *»^« ^'-ghtes" hab,TnM "?""*^^''"«"*- Now, it is the common habit of land frogs, all the world over, to be pro- tectively coloured with brown or greei, according trees ^h""* *""* ^'l^ «^°""^ ^' *^^ '-'-g*^ oi n most warm climates, for example-every visitor briltnt r''" """'* "^"^^ '^'"^ well-are either a br.ll.ant grass-green, to imitate the foliage to whose under-s.de they cling by their sucker-padded feet or else are mottled with grey and white and brown to m.m.c ba.-k, dead leaves, and lichen-covered branches. So Mr. Belt felt convinced that h's N.caraguan frog, which behaved so dilTerenUv from the rest of its kind-which was so brillia,"tly ii III 'o» In Nature's Workshop dressed and never tried to hide itself-must h. venomous or inedible. He tried t^Lron b^ «•"'"« ^'«Y '~«* *° »»« '°^'» and duck the wary b.,d, ,^^^ ^j ^^^^ suspiciously put thei? heads on o'ie s.de, and refused to touch them a[ last by throwing a single frog down unobtrusivety among pieces of meat for which the ducks were scrambmg, he managed to induce a youncTnd inexperienced duck to nick .m ♦t ^. "In«t«.aH ^t II . ^ "P *"* creature. jerkmg its head as f trvinc to a*^* r;,i ^t unoleaaant ♦»«♦» " i u ^ ^ ^° S" rid of some unpleasant taste. I have myself experimented in the same way on some brilliantly-coloured slugs TerlnnTr/^"^ '" '^' °I^"' ^"^ Can add my personal est.mony to that of Mr. Belt's witness the incautious duckling. wimess, But I am wandering from the question Let u. return to our pictures. The upp2r i„^c in No 6 represents not a hornet or relative o^the Lor^ets but a moth, deceptively coloured so as to m?mic and suggest the home. kind. Bees and w^s being spec.es that enjoy immunity from aTt^ck are naturally very much imitated by otheT inS The who e family to which this imitatioi hornet" belongs, indeed-that of the clear-winc moZ seems to have laid itself out on purprel^^ s^iT ate the wasps and bumble-bees, for almosreverv species ,s an imitator of some Particular sl^^^^^^^ shnging insect. Of course the moths arrthem selves quite harmless soft things : but they Ul^e wasps or hornets, and that is enough to ^otttt Masquerades an > Disguises 103 them. They produce their effect in a very odd manner. Most moths, as we know, have feathery wings, covered with a fine powder of dust-like JJcaes; but the clear-wings have got rid of the scales, so as to resemble wasps and bees with their membranous wings; and it is this peculiarity in their structure which gives the common English name to the family. Not only, however, are the wmgs transparent, but the bodies also are shaped much like those of wasps and hornets, and are conspicuously banded with red and yellow. The antennaB, too, are made as wasp-like as possible. The clear-wings Hy about rapidly in the open sun- shine, and their flight resembles that of wasps and bumble-bees, according to the model selected for imitation by each species. Indeed, the resemblance IS much greater in real life than in Mr. Knock's sketch, because the colour is so deceptively similar. No ordinary person who saw a hornet clear-wing would dare to put his hand upon it, even if told 1* was harmless: naturalists themse!ves look twice before they venture incautiously fo imger a doubt- ful specimen. The hornet clear-wing is a threat frequenter of poplar trees, in the wood of which the larva burrows- and in No. 7, Mr. Knock has shown us the same two insects again, at rest on the bark of a branch of this favourite food-trec. As before, the hornet is still below, and the moth above; but in this instance, even without the aid of colour, the decep- tive resemblance becomes still more conspicuous. If, while the moth is thus sitting in the sunshine on mn I 104 In Nature's Workshop a trunk of poplar, you try to touch its body, it will perform one of those curious "terrifying" evolu- tions wh.ch I have already described in so many .nsects. It W.11 curve its back, and dig once or twice mto the bark with its tail, as if it had a sting and meant to use it. This queer habit puts a finishing touch to the clever de- ception; and the consequence IS, that the hornet clear-wing is seldom molested by birds or other inquisitive strangers. The imitation pays: it secures the little mimic from undesirable in- truders. Still stranger and more immoral IS the gross case of impersonation for purposes of burglary, illus- trated in No. 8. Here we have, below, a great burly bustling bumble-bee, and above, a parti- cular fly, named Volucella, which dresses itself up to imitate the NO. 7- -HORNET AND ^^^ '" indistinguishablc hairs HORNET cLEAR-wiNG ^"^ colours. And it does so for MOTH ON A BRANCH 3 vcry curious and treacherous TooKTHER. ^bject. The grubs of the fly K.,«,Ki u . ''""'' P^'^^^'tic on the grubs of the bumble-bee and wasp : and the female Volucella is hus^enabled to enter the nests of bumble-bees, and ay her eggs among those of the real owners, whose larvc-e the fly larvae will finally devour. It is true that ft Masquerades and Disguises 105 doubts have lately been cast upon this fact, because the fly which imitates the bee has been seen to enter the nests of wasps : but I do not attach much importance to this objection, which needs even now to be more widely demonstrated. At any rate, these facts remain, that various kinds of Volucella mimic various kinds of bumble-bee, and that the young of one de- vour the young of the other. For my part, I say confidently, a clear case of loitering under disguise, with intent to commit a burglary. The case of the bumble- bee and the Volucella fly is an excellent example also of the extent to which alone mimicry is possible. I said above that ani:nals of quite different families mimicked one another : and you can see for yourselves here just how far the imitation goes, and where it fails. For the bees have two pairs of wmgs each, folded one slightly under the other; but the whole group of flies has practically only one pair, the second or hinder pair having dwindled away to a couple of slender little "poisers," or " balancers," which you can see sticking out from the side of the upper figure in No. 8. Now, NO. 8. — LOWER KIGURK, BUMBLE-BEE: UPPER FIGURE, KLY WHICH IMI- TATES IT. i:. f-'i i io6 In Nature's Workshop the fly couldn't easily re-develop these stunted and almost abortive wings to the primitive size, as one sees them in the bumble-bee; so what did it do? Made the one pair of front wings look like two pair, by means of a notch half-way down the side, as you may see by comparing the two figures. 'Tis ever thus. The disguise is always external only; it affects nothing but outer appearances, leaving internal organs and u.iuerlying structure of the beast unaltered. So, when a savage dresses up in the skin of a wild animal, in order to approach others of the same kind without being noticed, his disguise is external only : peel off the skin, and in essentials, beneath, he is human. It is the same with mimicry. Visible parts undergo modi- fication : invisible parts are never altered. A legend of the stage tells us of a thoroughly conscientious actor who blacked himself all over to play Othello ; nature is content with blacking the face and hands like the ordinary unconscientious player. In No. 9 you see the same two insects, the bumble-bee and the Volucella fly, feeding side by NO. 9.— THE REAL BEE AND THE FALSE ONE, ON A HEAD OF DUTCH CLOVER : WHICH IS WHICH? m Masquerades and Disguises 107 side on a head of Dutch clover. (You remember Its trick of tucking away the fertihsed blossoms.) Both are sucking honey ; and it takes a keen eye to distinguish them. But lest family quarrels arise over the question, I will say that the bee IS to the left, the fly to the right. These are only a few stray examples out of the numerous msects which imitate bees, wasps, and other sting- ing species. Often enough, indeed, I have seen adies scream at the approach of a perfectly harm- less fly, because he came to them in wasp's clothing. The drone-flies, which imitate bees, do it so well that even spiders are taken in, and treat them with caution as if they had stings. Mimicry is not wholly confined to the smaller animals. It occurs, though sparingly, higher up in the scale of being. There are several venomous snakes, for example, in tropical America, con- spicuously arrayed in alternate bands of red and black, or red, black, and yellow, which are clearly warning colours. They mean, in effect, "Let me alone, or I sting you." Now, i ; the same region, three genera of unarmed and harmless snakes mimic and personate the various species of venomous banded snakes, so that it is often impossible to dis- tinguish one from the other except by killing them Naturally, snake-eating birds and mammals follow m such cases the familiar principle of the British jury, and "give them the benefit of the doubt." A few defenceless birds likewise imitate pugnacious and powerful ones, and so secure immunity from the attacks of enemies. r io8 In Nature's Workshop of butterflv fto";1' '' ' ''"''''''^ "' P"'"'""e species h!™!.: i*^ * '"''' " particular concrete exaraple) one, ,t «ould derive some slight advantage from wou ?Xn r """r^' "'^"^ =""• o'"- '-n^- attack It As the birds or other enemies Brew sharper by dint of practice, the edible ^Tvidi^a ! protected kind would escape, while those which east resembled it would be spotted and devoured n thjs way the imitation would at last become c red 'u"^' the '"^^ " '^^ ^^ ^^^^^-'^ -™- d:;;5urr m^rrortL"^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^'^ *« cases thus present, in Mr ^Bates's "rtordf "I palpably mtentional likeness that is quite staler! hf subS ^:,f^*---*ehis fam'ous papef on ine subject endless new mstances have been accumulated, and we now know of hundreds o mim.ckmg species, both among insects and nth! anunals, the whole world over °*^^'" Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, who has also paid V, r Masquerades and Disguises 109 great attention to this subject, has further pointed ou that true cases of mimicry can be said to occur only where hve distinct conditions are all fulfilled To begin with, the imitator and the original protected species must live in the same district • tor. If not, the enemies would not know and avoid the protected species : how, therefore, could thev mistake the masquerader for it ? Again, the imil tators are known to be always more defenceless than the creature they imitate : harmless them- selves they pretend to belong to a dangerous or inedible kind. There is some sense in an antelope dressmg up as a tiger, but none at all in a tiger dressing up as a hyena. Once more, the imitating species IS always less numerous in individuals than the kind It personates: only rather common and well-known venomous types are ever mimicked- types that everybody knows and avoids-and the mimickers must be relatively uncommon, or else their enemies will soon discover the fraud It is also noticeable that the mimics alwayti Jiflfer con- spicuously from their own allies: they have to dress the part, a part for which nature did not originally fit them. Finally, the imitation never goes one mite beyond the merest externals • it is not a real analogy, but a disguise and a fancy dress— a superficial outer seeming. Actual mimicry of another sp^'ecies, such as we see in these special cases, is the furthest pitch of which protective resemblance is ever capable Be tween that and the mere general resemblance of Arctic foxes, Arctic hares, Arctic ptarmigan, Arctic ill no In Nature's Workshop willow-grouse, and so forth, to the snows in whose midst they live, we get every possible variety of gradation The general principle involved appears to be this. Where the surroundings are very uniform, as among the ice and snow of the Polar regions, the protected animals are all uniformly coloured -in this case with snow-white fur or feathers. Where the prevalent hue changes, as in sub-Arctic lands, the animals may change too, being brown or grey or russet in summer, and white in winter. Where the ordinary tint is slightly varied, as in the desert, the animals tend to be sand-coloured or speckled. The same rule holds good of the sea sands. Excellent examples of this stage are to be seen in the soles and other flat fish, which imitate on their exposed or upper side the colour of the bottom on which they habitually he. Everybody who has watched the behaviour of soles in an aquarium must h?ve observed not only that they are hard to distin- guish, when at rest, from the sand on which they repose, but also that, in order to increase the resemblance and conceal from foes the outline of their shape, they have a canny way of flipping a little loose sand with a wave of their fins over the edge of the body every time they settle down again after a short swim. Soles frequent sand, and are therefore of a brownish sandy tone of hue ; dabs or flounders, which lurk in mud, are more uniformly mud-coloured ; plaice, which affect pebbly banks have a variegated pattern, interspersed with red spots, to imitate coloured pebbles; and turbot Masquerades and Disguises m which belong to somewhat greyer tracts, are vaguely grey and spotty, with raised knobs scat- tered over the surface to make them look like the rough ground about them. All, however, are white on the under side ; because, when they swim, the white makes it more difficult for an enemy below them to recognise them against the general shimmer- ing glare on the surface of the water, as you look up at It from the bottom. Every swimmer must have noticed as he dives how dazzling white this surface seems when observed from below. In woods, forests, tangled brake, jungle, copses, hedgerows, thickets, and so forth, the surroundings are much more varied, and the protective resem- blances therefore become somewhat more complex. A simple case of this more special kind is that of the great cats, whose colours differ exactly in accordance with their lairs. The lion, a desert beast, IS simply sand-coloured ; the tiger, a jungle beast, frequenting tracts overgrown with bamboos and other big yellow reed-like grasses, has up-and- down stripes, which render him difficult to perceive as he creeps upon his prey among the up-and- down lights and shadows of the pale straw-coloured dead grasses in his favourite ravines; while the tree-cats, such as jaguars, ocelots, and so forth, are spotted or dappled, because the spots make them more difficult to recognise among the round lights and shadows in their native forests. Spotted deer and antelopes also belong to forest regions ; while almost all of those with vertical stripes are constant frequenters of deep grasslands. 112 In Nature's Workshop Smaller creatures go yet a step further : they imitate not merely the general effect, but particular objects in their surroundings, such as leaves, sticks, bits of moss, and lichens. Certain greyish moths, tor example, pretend to be bird-droppings; while many spiders fold themselves up in the angle between a leaf and the stem, and masquerade as buds, on the hunt for in- sects. A group of plant-bugs cover themselves al! over with thin threads of white wax, which they secrete them- selves ; and they are then mistaken for fragments of wool, rubbed off and left behind on the bark of the tree by some passing animal. Caterpillars and , , . , . grubs are particu- larly given to this class of deception : and, con- sidering how ruthlessly they are persecuted by birds, the sternest moralist can hardly Hame them. No. lo represents one such typical peci- men : the ingenious larva of the swallow-tail moth, pretending for all he is worth that he is NO. la — CATERPILLAR OK THE SWALLOW-TAIL MOTH, PRETEND- ING TO BE A TWIG OF IVY. Masquerades and Disguises hj a twig of ivy. The branch to the right is the real tw,g: observe its buds and the scars at the bases of the fallen leaf-stalks. Then look at the etctly 2 ^rue twS'L-"""'"^'^ "^'^' '" """"'^ Side it. He holds on by his hind legs, and sticks his body out from the stem, in a rigid attitude, at the appropriate angle; a knob on his side mimics the scars of the fallen leaves, while the turn of his head and neck exactly reproduces the terminal bud on the real ivy- branch. This admirable insect-actor, Mr. Enock tells me, has often im- posed even on the artist who here paints his por- trait. A slightly different specimen of the same class of deception is given in No. II, which is the likeness of the caterpillar who turns into the thorn- moth. Only a very keen eye can detect a well- disguised grub like this on a knotty branch of its native food-plant. No. 12 is a common example of the group of H NO. II.— CATERPILLAR OF | HE THORN MOTH, PRETENDING TO BE A TWIG OF HAWTHORN. -r 1 114 In Nature's Workshop stick-insects, allies of the grasshoppers, crickets, and locusts, a tribe among which the resemblance to leaves and twigs is carried further than in any other mstance. This particular stick-insect does not look very much disguised in the sketch, it is true ; but then, you must remember that colour counts for half the battle in all these cases; and I have not yet ven- tured to ask for coloured illustra- tions. I know the stick - insects well, however, in many parts of the world — I was " raised " on them in Canada — and I know that they are often most difficult of detec- tion. Sherlock Holmes himself - would sometimes hnd them very hard cases. It has happened to me more than once to stand gazing for some mmutes mto a bush in search of them, and find none : suddenly, a slight movement somewhere would arrest my attention : and then, all at once. NO. 12.— COMMON STICK - INSECT, LOST AMONG THE THICKET OK TWIGS WHICH HE IMITATES. Masquerades and DiscjinsEs 1,5 the twig at which I had been gazing with rapt attention would get up and walk away in the most leisurely and lordly fashion. Stick-insects are Tow and inactive creatures: they sleep by dav -ind u^nder forth by night to feed on leavL, fo';, h^ Mr Bernard Shaw, they are strict vegetarians. Only those who have looked close into tropical jungles or into English hedgerows, with long and carefu scrutiny, can realise the large part which such disguises play in the balanced and compli- cated scheme of nature. Unobservant people are apt to disbelieve in them. For, naturally, unob- servant people see only the obvious : most of the birds and animals they know are just the protected minority which have bright warning colours, or are courageous enough and strong enough to dare to be conspicuous. But the world about us teems with unobtrusive, skulking life : and this skulking life in many ways the most curious and interesting f ' || IS unknown save to the naturalist. I hope » .nav have succeeded here in unmasking the disguises of some fev^ among these countless natural masquera- ders,and that a proportion of my readers at least may be led by my remarks to look a little more closely into that glorious and profoundly absorbinc panorama which nature unfolds, free of charge J^'l ?'\T^ ^""^'^ morning. Barnum's show,' indeed ! Why, nature can give Mr. Barnum, his heirs, executors, and assignees, ninety-nine points in every game, and " beat him, easy ' " m r^ I SOMli STRANGE NURSERIES YOU could hardly find a better rough test of relative development in the animal (or ve^je- table) world than the number of young pro- duced and the care bestowed upon them The fewer the offspring, the higher theVv;ry low animals turn out thousands of eggs with reck Z profusion ; but they let them look after themse^es tL h'r"''' '^ '^"''"'^^' '' ^'»^^"" -i" have i ' le^lteJZ fT *'' ^'^'^ °^ ^'"S, the smalle the fam.i.ei,, but the greater the amount of pains expended upon the rearing and upbringing oMhe young. Large broods mean low urganisat on small broods imply higher types and mo e ea"e in the nurture and education of the offspring off ^hr 'Ik': P^°'"" '^' wholesale or th'e off chance that some two or three among them may perhaps survive an infant mortality of^pe^ cent., so as to replace their parents :^dv?nced kinds produce half-a-dozen young or less hnt bring a large proportion of these ''on'navirage up to years of discretion. average Without taking into account insects and such other small deer, this fundamental principle of population will become at once appa enMf we Some Strange Nitrseries 1,7 examine merely familiar instances of back-boned cLh t''*« ?""""'*• '^*^* '"^^'^^ vertebrates are dearly the hshes: and fish have almost invariably gigantic famihes, especially in the lower orders of the race. A single cod, for example, is said to pro- duce, roughly speaking, nine million eggs at a birth (cannot pretend I have checked this calculation) ; but supposing they were only a million, and tha one-tenth of those eg«s alone ever ca.ne to mahl nty, there would still be a hundred thousand cod- fish m the sea this year for every pair that swam in It last year: and these would increase to a hun- dred thousand times that number next year: and so on, till m four or five years' time the whole sea would be but one solid mass of closely - packed cod-banks. We can see for ourselves that nothing of the sort actually occurs - practically speaking, there are about the same number of cod one year as another In spite of this enormous birth-rate, therefore, the cod population ,s not increasinL.-i is at a standstill. What does that imply ? Whv that taking one brood and one year with another only a pair of cod, roughly speaking, survive to maturity out of each eight or nine million eggs. The mother cod lays its millions, in order that two may arrive at the period of spawning. All the res get devoured as eggs, or snapped up as young fry, or else die of starvation, or are other- wise unaccounted for It seems to us a wasteful way of replenishing the earth : but it is natures way; we can only bow respectfully to her fip-I decision. ^1 ■ t , i\< ii8 In Natitre's Workshop Frogs and other amphibians stand higher in the scale of hfe than fish: they have acquired legs m place of fins, and lungs instead of gills ; they can hop about on shore with perfect freedom. Now, frogs still produce a great deal of spawn, as every one knows : but the eggs in each brood are numbered m their case by hundreds, or at most by a thousand or two, not by millions as with many fishes. The spawn hatches out as a rule in ponds and we have all seen the little black tadpoles crowd- ing the edges of the water in such innumerable masses that one would suppose the frogs to be developed from them must cover the length and breadth of England; Yet what becomes of them all ? Hundreds are destroyed in the early tadpole stage — eaten up or starved, or crowded out for want of air and space and water : a few alone survive to develop four legs and absorb their tails and hop on shore as tiny froglins. Even then the massacre of the innocents continues : only a tithe of those which succeed in quitting their native pond ever return to it full grown, to spawn in due time and become the parents of further generations. Lizards and other reptiles make an obvious ad- vance on the frog type : they lay relatively few eggs, but they begin to care for their young : the family IS not here abandoned at birth, as among frogs but IS frequently tended and fed and Overlooked by the mother. In birds we have a still higher development of the same marked parental tend- ency ; only three or four eggs are laid each year, as a rule, and on these eggs the mother sits, while Some Strange Nurseries 119 both parents feed the callow nestlinjjs till such time as the" upj abie to take care of themselves and pick up th( T own livinj.'. Amon^' mammals, which stand undoLl»t(,d!y at tht liead of created nature, the lower types, hkc n:'ce and rabbits, have frequent broods of many young at a time ; but the more advanced groups, such as the horses, cows, deer, and ele- phants, have usually one foal or calf at a birth, and seldom produce more than a couple. More- over, in all these h gher cases alike, the young are fed with milk by the mother, and so spared the trouble of providing for themselves in their early days, like the young codfish or the baby tadpole. Starvation at the outset is reduced to a minimum. It is interesting to note, too, that anticipations of higher types, so to speak, often occur among lower races. An animal here and there among the simpler forms hits upon some device essen- tially similar to that of some higher group with which it is really quite unrelated. For example, those who have read my account of the common earwig (given in the si.xth chapter of "Flash- lights on Nature") will recollect how that lowly insect sits on her eggs exactly like a hen, and brings up her brood of callow grubs as if they were chickens. In much the same way, anticipations of the mammalian type occur pretty frequently among lower animals. Our commonest English lizard, for example, which frequents moors and sandhills, does not lay or deposit its eggs at all, but hatches them out in its own body, and so apparently brings them forth alive : while among snakes, the same habit i.i I20 In Nature's Workshop W\ F-!} occurs in the adder or vin^r ti,» in^^^j • «"wci or viper, ihe very name via^r to a Ll fact i^%h ""'"^ °' "■« «>^'^ "-"^ers Stickleback "^'^^^'^^^d' '^^ common English Which of us cannot look back in vouth to th. mysteries of the stickleback fisheries °r*, courageous, we sallied forth wUh bent JnT^ P.ece of thread, to woo the wily qua':"/ w^lh h\"f Some Strange Nurseries 121 an inch of chopped earthworm. For stickleback abound m every running stream and pond in l^ngland. They are beautiful little creatures, too when you come to examine them, great favourites m the fresh-water aquarium ; the male in particular IS exquisitely coloured, his hues growing brighter and his sheen more conspicuous at the pairing season. There are many species of sticklebacks— m England we have three very different kinds— but all are alike in the one point which gives them their common name, that is to say, in their aggres- sive and protective prickliness. They are armed against all comers. The dorsal fin is partly re- placed in the whole family by strong spines or stickles, which differ in number in the different species. One of our English sorts is a lover of salt water : he lives in the sea, especiallv off the Cornish coast, and has fifteen stickles or spines : on which account he is commonly known as the Fifteen- spined Stickleback : our other two sorts belong to fresher waters, and are known as the Ten-spined and the Three-spined respectively. The special peculiarity of the male stickleback consists in the fact that he is, above all things, a model father. In his acute sense of parental re- sponsibility he has few equals. When spring comes round, he first exhibits his consciousness of his commg charge by suddenly enduing himself in a glowing coat of many colours and of iridescent brilliancy. That is in order to charm the eyes of his prospective mate, or rather mates, for I may as well confess the sad truth at once that our amiable It fijij '1*1 122 i I In Nature's Workshop friend is a good parent but an abandoned polvfia- niist. We all know that " In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast ; n the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest ; in the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove ; of fovr""*'' * ^°""^' ""^"'^ ^^"""^ ^'^^^^^ ^""""^ ^° thoughts Not to be out of the fashion, therefore, the roman- tic stickleback does precisely the same thing as all these distmguished and poetical compeers. And he does It for the same reason too : because he wants to get hnnself an appropriate partner. " There is a great deal of human nature in man," it has been said : I am always inclinecl to add, "And there is a great deal of human nature in plants and animals." The more we know of our dumb relations, the more closely do we realise the kinship between us. Fish in spring are like young men at a fair— all eager for the attention of their prospective partners. The first care of the male stickleback, when he has acquired his courting suit, is to build a suitable home for his future wives and children. So he picks up stems of grass and water-weeds with his mouth, and weaves them deftly into a compact nest as perfect as a bird's, though somewhat different in shape and pattern. It rather resembles a barrel open at both ends, as though the bottom were knocked out : this form is rendered necessary be- cause the eggs, when laid, have to be constantly aerated by passing a current of water through the nest, as I shall describe hereafter. No. i shows us. such a nest when completed, with the female stickle- Some Strange Nurseries 123 back loitering about undecided as to whether or not she shall plunge and enter it. You will observe that the fabric is woven round a fixed support of some waving water- weeds; but the cunning little architect does not trust in this matter to his textile skill alone; he cements the straws and other mate- rials together with a gummy mortarofmuc- ous threads, secreted for the purpose by his internal organs. As soon as the building operations are fully com- pleted, the eager little householder sallies forth into his pond or brook in search of a mate who will come and stock his neatly-built home for him. At this stage of the proceedings, his wedding-garment becomes NO. I. -stickleback's nest : the mother about to enter. 1'^^ 8 f: '24 In Nature's Workshop 2LTZ" ^'•"'''»"*r^ g'-ncing than ever; he finds hi' ,!;T """^ ^^^"g^^"' g^'"^-- when he finds h,s ady-love, he dances rotnd her. "mad with exctement," as Darwin well phr;sed tt, looking his handsomest and best with his lustrous coloursglisten- inglikeanopal. If she will listen to his iuit, he grows wild with delight, and coaxes her into the nest with most affection- ate endear- ments. In No. 2, as you per- ceive, the mate of his choice has been in- duced to enter, and is laying her eggs in the dainty home NO. 2.— THE MOTHER LAYING THE EGGS. uu t- dainty home his care has provided for her. The father fish meanwhile dances and capers around, in a /.. '; /m;«///. at the success of his endeavours One wife, however, does not suffice to fill the nest with eggs: and the stickleback is a firm believerTn Some Strange Nurseries "5 the advantages of large families. So, as soon as his first male has laid all her spawn, he sets out once more in search of another. Thus he goes on until the home is quite full of eggs, bringing back ope wife after another, in proportion to his success in wooing and lighting. For, like almost all polyga- mists, your stickleback is a terrible fighter. The males join wager of battle with one another for possession of their mates ; in their fierce duels they make fearful use of the formidable spines on their backs, sometimes entirely ripping up and cutting to pieces their ill-fated adversary. The spines thus answer to the spurs of the game-cock or the antlers of the deer; they are masculine weapons in the struggle for mates. Indeed, you may take it for granted that brilliant colours and decorative ad- juncts in animals almost invariably go with irascible tempers, pugnacious habits, and the practice of fighting for possession of the harem. The con- sequence is, with the sticklebacks, that many males get killed during the struggle for supremacy, so that the survivors wed half-a-dozen wives each, like little Turks that they are in their watery seraglios. Only the most beautiful and courageous fish suc- ceed in gaining a harem of their own : and thus the wager of battle tells in the end for the ad- vantage of the race, by eliminating the maimed, the ugly, and the cowardly, and encouraging the strong, the handsome, the enterprising, and the valiant. This is nature's way of preventing de- generacy. In No. 3 the nest is seen full of eggs, and the 1^^ If Ml li' 126 In Nature's Workshop I', i excellent father now comes out in his best light _ '' -""' ^^"-^'"ft «ff the attacks of would-be enemies who desire to de- vour them, even though theintruderbe several times his own size. The spines on his back here stand him once more in good stead : for small as he is, the stickle- back is not an antagonist to be hghtly de- spised : he can inflictawound which a perch or a trout knows how to estimate at its ♦K^* • i 11 . full value. But hat IS not all the good parent's duty. He takes the eggs out of the nest every now and then with his snout, airs them a little in the fresh water outs.de, and then replaces and rearranges NO. 3.-1I1E FATHER STICKLKBACK AIRING IHE EGGS. ■ I Some Strange Nurseries 127 them, so that all may j»et a fair share of oxygen and may hatch out about simultaneously. It is this question of oxygen, indeed, which gives the father lish the greatest trouble. That necessary of life is dissolved in water in very small quantities: and it is ..bsolutely needed by every egg in order to enable it to undergo those vital changes which we know as hatching. To keep up a due supply of oxygen,therefore, the father stickleback ungrudgingly devotes laborious days to poising himself delicately just above the nest, as you see in No. 3, and fanning the eggs with his fins and tail, so as to set up a con- stant current of water through the centre of the barrel. He sits upon the eggs just as truly as a hen does : only, he sits upon them, not for warmth, but for aeration. P'or weeks together this exemplary parent con- tinues his monotonous task, ventilating the spawn many times every day, till the time comes for hatching. It takes about a month for the eggs to develop; ,ind then the proud father's position grows more arduous than ever. He has to rock a thousand cradles at once, so to speak, and to pacify a thousand crying babies. On the one hand, ene- mies hover about, trying to eat the tender trans- parent glass-like little fry, and these he must drive off : on the other hand, the good nurse must take care that the active young fish do not stray far from the nest, and so expose themselves prematurely to the manifold dangers of the outer world. Till they are big enough and strong enough to take care of themselves, he watches with incessant vigilance I 128 In Nature's Workshop I i I with loferaw!"*'' "'. '°°" "^ ^^^^^ ^«" g° 'o^t»» with tolerable security upon the world of their holly"' *'""'' '^ *^'^^ ^* '^^^ ^ well-merUed learn 'th".f 7Tu"^ """*" *^"'" circumstances to ZTJ: J^^"- """^bers are enormous, wherever they get a fair chance m life, because they multiply rapidly up to the extreme limit of the means of at lalt^* "■' u ' inexorable Malthusian law at las steps in : when there is not food enough for all some must ^ starve : that is the long and the short of the great population question. But St^H r7"r '' '' forthcoming they increase gaily. Sticklebacks live mainly on the spawn of other fish though they are so careful of their own, and they are therefore naturally hated by trout-preservers and o^ , of fisheries in general. Thousands and InTTt "■' '""S*^* ^""^ y^^'' •" so'^e places mdeed, they are so numerous that they are used ZZ"T"' . " '!, *^^'' ""™^^"' °^ <^°"-e, that ™t *'^^'",/°'''"'^-ble : they are the locusts ;f the streams, well armed and pugnacious, and provided with most remarkable parental instincts of a pro- tective character, which enable them to fill up all vacancies in their ranks as fast as they occur with astonishing promptitude. To those whose acquaintance with fish is mainly IrZ^?' t T^ '"^"^ °^^ *° ^^^' that the father stickleback alone takes part in the care of the nursery. But this is really the rule among the Some Strange NirRSERiEs 129 whole class of fish : wherever the young are tended, it is almost always the father, not the mother, who undertakes the duty of incubation. Only two instances occur where the female fish assumes maternal functions towards her young: about these I shall have more to say a little later on. We must remember that reptiles, birds, and mammals are in all probability descended from fish as ancestors, and it is therefore clear that the habit of handing over the care of the young to the female alone belongs to the higher grades of vertebrates— in other words, is of later origin. We need not be astonished, therefore, to find that in many cases among birds and other advanced vertebrates a partial reversion to the earlier habit not infre- quently takes place. With doves, for example, the cock and hen birds sit equally on the eggs, taking turns about at the nest; and as for the ostriches, the male bird there does most of the incubation, for he accepts the whole of the night duty, and also assists at intervals during the day- time. There are numerous other cases where the father bird shares the tasks of the nursery at least equally with the mother. I will glance first, how- ever, at one of the rare exceptions among fish where the main duty does not devolve on the devoted father. In No. 4 we have an illustration of the tube- mouth or Solenostoma, one of the two known kinds of fish in which the female shows a due sense of her position as a mother. The tube- mouth, as you can see at a glance, is a close I 1 I ' if ill 4^ If f »3o In Nature's Workshop relation of our old fHend the sea-horse, whose th^Tn^/"^ "ndlsguised forms in Australia an^ the Mediterranean we have already obser> d when dealing w.th the question of animal masqueratrs Solenostoma ,s a native of the Indian Ocean, from Zanz,bar to China, and in real life is about doS NO. 4.-THE MOTHER Tl-BE-MOUTH CARRYING HER EGGS IN A HOUCH. lowef Lt' 'J'",^"^^'^'^ ^^^^'"g- In the male, the fi h . but ui the female, represented in the accom- panymg sketch, tl.cy are lightly joined at the edge, K^l .K°"" ^ '°'* °^ P^"^'^ 'ike a kangaroo's, in which the eggs are deposited after bein| laid, and thus earned about in the mother's safe keeping No. 5 shows the arrangement of this pouch ir Some Stran'^e Nurseries »3i detail, with the eggs inside it. The mother Solen- ostoma not only takes charge of the spav n while it is hatching in this receptacle, hut also looks after the young fry, like the father stickleback, till they are of an age to go off on their own account in quest of adventures. The most frequent adventure that happens to them on the way is, of course, being eaten. Our own common English pipe-fish is a good example ot the other and much more usual case in which the father alone is actuated by a proper sense of parental responsibility. The pipe-fish, indeed, might almost be described as a pure and blameless ratepayer. No. 6 shows you the outer form of this familiar creature, whom you will recognise at a glance as still more nearly allied to the sea-horses than even the tube- mouth. Pipe-fishe J are timid and skulk- ing creatures. Like their horse-headed no. s.-thk relations, they lurk for the most part •'"'^chwith among seaweed for protection, and, I." mR r^' Demg but poor swimmers, never ven- ture far from the covering shelter of their native thicket. But the curious part of them is that in this family the father fish is provided with a pouch even more perfect than that of the female tube-mouth, and that he himself, not his mate, takes sole charge of the young, incubates them' in his sack, and escorts them about for some time after hatching. The pouch, which is more 111 132 1;! ,' I H h^ In Nature's Workshop fully represented in No. 7, is formed by a loose fold of skjn ansmg from either side of the creature n to show h'*"" *'" '°"' '^ ^'^''y -thdraw ";o a" to show the young p.pe-fish within their safe ;etreat tr^v that tT °"' '' '^ ^^•^' ' '^-^ -how truly, that the young fry will stroll out for an NO. 6.-T„E FATHER PIPE-FISH. CARRYING HIS YOUNC. IN A POUCH. occasional swim on their own account, but will return at any threat of danger to theiV father's bosom, for a considerable time after the first hatching. This is just like what one knows o whTTh ^"^/"^"y °*her pouched mammals, where the mother's pouch becomes a sort o nursery, or place of refuge, to which the little ones return for warmth or safety after every excursion s h \L Some Stkangk Nitrseries 133 The sea-horses and many other fish have similar pouches ; hut, oddly enough, in every case it is the male fish which bears it, and which undertakes the arduous duty of nurse for his infant otTspring. A few female hsh, on the other hand, even hatch the eggs within their own bodies, and so apparently bring forth their young alive, like the English lizard among reptiles. This, however, is far from a common case : indeed, in an immense number of instances, neither parent pays the slightest attention to the eggs after they are once laid and got rid of : t 4 NO. 7.— THE POUCH HAl.K OPENED, TO SHOW THE YOUNG. the spawn is left to lie on the bottom and be eaten or spared as chance directs, while the young fry have to take care -of themselves, without the aid of parental advice and education. But exceptions occur where both parents show signs of realising the responsibilities of their position. In some little South American river fish, for instance, the father and mother together build a nest of dead leaves for the spawn, and watch over it in unison till the young are hatched. This case is exactly analogous to that of the doves among birds : I may add that wherever such instances occur they always seem to ill <•', i ■ ■ ' J j i 1; .1 i i n ^M ) > I n »34 In Nature's Workshop be accompanied by a markedly gentle and :.ff.. S dote ^0 Mc^ The" d ""' "Tf"'' '°^ are familiar instances '' """ '"^-"'^"^ Frogs are very closely allied to fish • indp,H «„- s: r«;iiTea"''' -^-z '™« •««'"' «'" - ''«°" tadllf ■ ""' ""'^ "' '«' terrestri rl; The" tth-'d^^ !rot''r^::d^«rT4¥-^-' bins it isfhrf"?^"'"' ""'"'""y """-al amphi. as much as a couple of yards long, lyL fooi " rdt!:Kdi;^hr^iS'T^^^^^^^^^ precious bufden lo'sfme;!' ■" t^t' b?„r*f ht native pond, where he lurks in seclusbn .iU ,he Some Strange Nurseries 135 eggs develop. Frogs do not need frequent doses of food — their meals are often few and far between — and during the six or eight weeks that the eggs take to mature the father probably eats very little, though he may possibly sally forth at night, un- observed, in search of provender. At the end of that time the devoted parent, foreseeing developments, takes to the water once more, so that the tadpoles may be hatched in their proper element. I may add that this frog is a great musician in the breeding season, but that as soon as the tadpoles have hatched out he loses his voice ntirely, and does not recover his manly croak till the succeeding spring. This is also the case with the song of many birds, the crest of the newt, the plumes of certain highly-decorated trogons and nightjars, and, roughly speaking, the decorative and attractive features of the male sex in general. Such features are given them during the mating period as allurements for their consorts : they disappear, for the time at least, like a ball-dress after a ball, as soon as no immediate use can any longer be made of them. Some American tree-frogs, on the other hand, imitate rather the motherly Solenostoma than the fatherly instincts of the pipe-fish or the stickleback. These pretty little creatures have a pouch like the kangaroo, but ni their case (as in the kangaroo's) it is the female who bears it. Within this safe receptacle the eggs are placed by the male, who pushes them in with his hind feet; and they not only undergo their hatching in the pouch, but also pass through their whole tadpole development in ii in i f fif! '36 In i\ATURE's Workshop through ru;"; .".r r/r J" ^'^"'^. moisture. The devices they have hH "" °' their new-laid eg^fo:tS^o:^^."• T" ^'"^ fry pass througf the tadpoirrtag 1'" TV" mucus which surrounds them "^m'^ ^^ ,''""'' discovers such cunning schemes ,0 „ f """" apparent difficulties in hfr way and th. f T*' have solved the problem for Lrse, ': rhawf arp"rrs"Tthe fT"" '"-'"- Oddest:; froff^' Trhf;- ■'^'"'S'' '"™"'«<' hy " Darwin's =5 ,s,sf^" ■"-->■-« Some Strangk Nitrseries »37 The Surinam toad, represented in No. 8, is also the possessor of one of the stranjjest nurseries known to science. It lives in the dense tropical forests of Guiana and Brazil, and is a true water- haunter. But at the breeding season the female iS^Z' %-^M^ ..'1 V f .". il -: '!l '.i NO. 8.— SURINAM TOAD, CARRYINC HER FAMILY. undergoes a curious change of integument. The skin on her back grows pulpy, soft, and jelly-like. She lays her eggs in the water : but as soon as she has laid them, her lord and master plasters them on to her impressionable back with his feet, so as to secure them from all assaults of enemies. Every It I I i i ; 138 In Nature's Workshop Which soon closes over it automatically thus burymg each in a little cell or niche where i pa"stXu;Jrth"^'r r^'°P--t. Th; Tadpole pass through their larval stage within the cell and o^^i!l? '.*'°"* ^' '°°" as they have gone off elf ^:^^h I ''"^'.'^^"' *'^ mother toad fin'ds her ml h^ '"^^'"^ '"^ honeycombed skin, which must be very uncomfortable. So she rubs the remnant of it off against stones or the bark of ree' and redevelops a similar back afresh at the next' breeding season. ^^^ Almost never do we'find a device in nature which occurs once only. The unique hardly e^s" wholly unhke kinds are all but sure to hit indepen- dently upon the self-same mechanism. So S is^not Sjd r th.T °^ '!''y'"S ^*^ y°""g t° that adopted by the Surinam toad: only, here it is on the under surface, not the upper one that the scientific name ,s Aspredo, are pressed into the ml nT.^ ^°^y' ^"^ ^° b°^"« about by the mother till they hatch. This is the second instance of which I spoke above, where the female fish her- self assumes the care of her offspring, instead of leavmg it entirely to her excellent partner. . Higher up in the scale of life, we get many instances which show various stages in Ihe Tame progressive development towards greater care f^r Some Strange Nurseries 139 the safety and education of the young. Among the larger lizards, for example, a distinct advance may be traced between the comparatively uncivilised American alligator and his near ally, the much more cultivated African crocodile. On the banks of the Mississippi, the alligator lays a hundred eggs or thereabouts, which she deposits in a nest near the water's edge, and then covers them up with leaves and other decaying vegetable matter. The fermentation of these leaves produces heat, and so does for the alligator's eggs what sitting does for those of hens and other birds : the mother deputes her maternal functions, so to speak, to a festering heap of decomposing plant-refuse. Nevertheless, she loiters about all the time, like Miriam round the ark which contained Moses, to see what happens ; and when the eggs hatch out, she leads her little ones down to the river, and there makes alligators of them. This is a simple and relatively low stage in the nursery arrangements of the big lizards. The African crocodile, on the other hand, goes a stage higher. It lays only about thirty eggs, but these it buries in warm sand, and then lies on top of them at night, both to protect them from attack and to keep them warm during the cooler hours. In short, it sits upon them. When the young crocodiles within the egg are ready to hatch, they utter an acute cry. The mother then digs down to the eggs, and lays them freely on the surface, so that the little reptiles may have space to work their way out unimpeded. This they do by biting at the shell with a specially developed tooth ; at i A u I- 140 In Natures Workshop the end of two hours' nibbling they are free, and nareif fT *°/*'' '^^^'' ^^ ^^^'^^ aflfectionate parent. In these two cases we see the beginnings universal.'" """'" "' '""^''^^^ become almost I say a/mos/ universal, because even among birds thert: are a few kinds which have not to this day progres^sed beyond the alligator level. Australia is the happy huntmg-ground of the zoologist in search of antiquated forms, elsewhere extinct ; and several Austrahan birds, such as the brush-turkeys, ^LT -lu^'' ^^^' essentially on the alligator Of earth and decaymg vegetable matter, as much as would represent several cartloads of mould • and m this natural hot-bed the hens lay their eggs burymg each separately with a good stock of leaVes around It. The heat of the sun and the fermenting mould hatch them out between them ; to expedite the process, the birds uncover the eggs during the warmer part of the day, expose them to the^sun! and bury them again in the hot-bed towards even- ing. Several intermediate steps may also be found between this early stage of communal nesting by proxy and the true hatching instinct; a good one IS supplied by the ostrich, which partially buries Tn ^ if' ^",^ mother birds taking shares by turn m the duties of incubation. The vast subject which I have thus lightly skimmed is not without interest, again, from its Some Strange Nurseries 141 human implications. Savages as a rule produce enormous families ; but then, the infant mortality in savage tribes is proportionately great. Among civilised races, families are smaller, and deaths in infancy are far less numerous. The higher the class or the natural grade of a stock, the larger as a rule the proportion of children safely reared to the adult age. The goal towards which humanity is slowly moving would thus seem to be one where families in most cases will be relatively small— perhaps not more on an average than three to a household— but where most or all of the children brought into the world will be safely reared to full maturity. This is already becoming the rule in certain favoured ranks of European society. '^'•'C LIBRAE f^ARY, lit II 5 ! -;l VI ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE HEDGEHOGS MAN was not the first inventor of coats of ma.1 and .ronclads. Two types of defensive armour are common in nature. The first type almost exactly resembles the jointed plate armour of mediaeval knighxs : one sies this J^nd we 1 exemplified in the armadillo and the lob ter a hi uVf '" ^^' *°^^°'«^' *he beetle, and many hard-shelled msects. The second type his no Txac^ onTa'nd thf '"' V' '^ °^^"^'^^ ^^ ^'^"-e a one and the same time ; one sees it exhibited in the porcupme, the hedgehog, the bramble, the this L a.d an immense variety of other plants ind animal? With this second group the armour consis"s not' ripe' :SaSa"lt:'h'"'''^ T^^ °^ thorns,tCh repel assailants by wounding the tender fl^^h •^ per'haTt " "^^ '"^^ p'ickliness of urfa e devict Le^^^^^^^^ ^"°"g ^" -^- P^otechve aevices invented by living creatures : it is remark able for its universal diffusion both in vTriot countries and in various classes. There are'Tec hedgehogs and vegetable porcmines [nT 5 scarcely a ijreat orrf^r M «i * ^ Indeed, nam^H ,.t • if J °' P^^"*^ o^ animals can be named which does not contain at least one or two such prickly or thorny species. ° 14a Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 143 The common English hedgehog (shown in No. 1 in two characteristic attitudes) makes a good example of the prickly-urmoured class with which to begin the exammation of this interesting series. Every- body is tolerably familiar with the hedgehog's appearance — a squat, square, inquisitive little creature, one of nature's low comedians, %,ith very NO, I.— HEDGEHOGS, ROLLED AND UNROLLED. short legs and no tail to speak of, but c- cred on his back and upper surface with dirty white spines, which merge more or less into indefinite blackness! But if he is comic to us, he is serious to himself. Slow and sedate in all his movements, your hedge- hog seldom does anything so undignified as to run : to say the truth, he is a poor racer ; he is not built for haste, bat strolls calmly along on his bandy legs if J 144 In Nature's Workshop showmg httle sense of fe.r even when surprised on the o,Hjn, for he is well aware that his coat of spines amply sufhces to secure him from aggression. The hr*h "k^V^u*''' '^^^' '^' ••»^»'*» *° his burrow; but the hedgehog relies upon his prickles for pro' tection and scorns to flee when he can oppose to S K T uf '?*''^ P^^'^« resistance!^ His bright, beady black eyes form his one claim to beauty: they gleam with cunning : save for them, he IS a dmgy and unattractive animal. But though he be ongs to a very ancient and honourable famUy .^nl / Au '"!^«^,^t-eaters-long since superseded m most of the high places of the earth by younger and more advanced types, he still manages to hold petitors, mamly by virtue of his excellent suit of spmy armour. J^tl f'^S"*^°f i^' °" *he whole, a nocturnal to Th- ^\™° K ?' *^'' ^^'■'y group of insectivores o which he belongs. Now, as a class, the msectivores have been driven from the best positions m nature's hierarchy by the keen com- petition of the rodents, the ruminants, and the carnivores ; they have been compelled to earn a precarious living in out-of-the-way corners by night prowling. They are the gipsies and tinkers, fhe P^TIT. l^^"' °^ ^^^ ^"'™^' economy. Our English hedgehog, one of the luckiest members of this persecuted class, lives usually in some comfort- able hole in a hedge or copse, and sleeps away the daytime in owl-like seclusion. When night comes however, he sallies forth on the hunt, in search o Animal and Vegetable Hed^ish is 145 beetles and other hard-shelled insects, which form his staple diet, and for crushing which his solid set of grinders admirably adapts him. In winter, when insect food fails, he hibernates in his lair, rolling himself up in a thick blanket of dead leaves for warnjth : his spines here stand him in good stead for a different function from that of mere defence for he fastens the leaves on them as if they were pins, and so keeps himself warm and dry through the snows and frosts and rains of winter. He has a tramp's true instinct : he knows how to make the best of poor surroundings. With the first genial showers of April, our prickly friend turns out once more, very thin and hungry, m quest of the insects which are then just emerging from their burst cocoons or their snug winter quarters. Often enough at this season he comes forth from his nest with a layer or two of leaves still impaled upon his prickles, in which condition he cuts a most quaint and amusing figure. Every evening he shuffles about awkwardly in search of his prey, which consists mainly of beetles, relieved by a pleasing variety of slugs, snails, worms, frogs, and young birds, as well as an occasional egg, and now and again a snake or a shrew-mouse. Though despised by man, in his own small hedgerow world he is an undisputed tyrant, and has few real enemies. Most higher animals are afraid to tackle him. A dog will just sniflf at him with a dubious air of inquiry, but when the spines prick his tender nose, he draws back disgusted, a^d refuses to join battle with the uncanny, bow-iegged creature. K K' 'I ■■ 146 In Nature's Workshop Indeed the hedgehog's only serious foe is the owl. which has invented a special device for seizing him unawares. Almost all other mouse and rat-eating 'P^f'^' (^!f *° ^"g^ge so well-armed an enemy. The difficu ty of the attack lies, of course, in his spines, a first hne of defence, which one may regard as typical of the tactics adopted among the whole group of pnckle-bearing animals. These spines are hard m exture, and very sharp at the point: cylindrical m shape, and an inch long or there- abouts. They are lightly embedded in the skin and are so arranged that they can be erected at will into a most aggressive position. This trick of raising the spines ii managed by an extremely interesting mechanism, something like the muscle by means of which certain gifted persons (chiefly schoolboys) can move and ruffle up the skin and hair of the head just above the temples, only on a much more extended scale of organisation. The set of muscles thus specialised enables the animal to curl Itself about in the lithest fashion. When an " enemy approaches, the hedgehog does not flinch • he simply rolls himself up into a round ball. The bouth American armadillo does much the same thing: only, when the armadillo is rolled up he becomes a mere hard sphere, something like a bombshell: whereas the hedgehog becomes an unapproachable globe of fixed bayonets. He tucks his head and legs well out of harms wav under his lower surface, and exposes only the spinv upper portion of his back and body. A great band of specialised muscle, assisted by several subsidiary Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 147 belts, draws his supple skin tight over his whole body, and at the same time points the sharp ends of the spines radially outward. When a hedgehog is thus rolled up into his attitude of passive defence, no animal on earth can do anything with him in fair open fight, though some few of them have invented mean underhand tricks for getting round him by artifice. Most of these are too nasty for full description. Rolling him into water and drown- ing him is one of the least objectionable : but the method pursued by his chief human foe, the gipsy, though extremely cruel, is so quaintly clever that it seem- to deserve a passing mention. Gil ,ses never despise any form of wild food, and they have hit upon a perfidious dodge for utilising the hedgehog. They catch him alive, which is always easy enough : for the little beast, trusting to his array of spines, seldom runs away when attacked, but contents himself with rolling himself up into his spherical and apparently lifeless condition. The season for hedgehogs is at the end of autumn, when the animal has fattened himself for his winter sleep. Kneading a ball of moist clay, the gipsies embed the poor creature in it entire, so that spines and all are completely covered. Then they lay the bail in their fire, and roast the unhappy animal alive. As soon as the clay cracks, the hedgehog is cooked : they break the ball, and the skin comes off whole, spines, clay, and all, leaving the steaming hot body baked and savoury in the middle. I mention this curious but hateful trick because it is very charac- teristic of the sort of plan which many animals have I 1 48 In Nature's Workshop acquired instinct. ^ mnented and Afnca-the hedgehogs and their like are a^f' J' '' and possess the characteristic power of roE themselves up into a perfect sphere, there tf Sri '''"■'"'™'°P«d hedgehog. like creatures belated m various outlying island!, which are o S rough sketches or imperfect foreshadowing of he fully-evolved type. Some of these, like i!e bu lau Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 149 of Sumatra, have just a few stiff bristles scattered about here and there among the hairs of the back • others, more advanced, Hke the Madagascar tanrec! have strong and stiff spines, but cannot roll them- selves up into a perfect sphere like the true hedge- hogs. Intermediate species also occur which more and more closely approach our European pattern It IS probable that these interesting undeveloped creatures represent arrested ancestral forms of our own English type : but that while in the great contments, the stress of competition has resulted at last in producing our highly-evolved form, a few outlying groups in isolated lands (such as Haiti and Mauritius) have retained to this day the earlier features of certain primitive stages in the history and evolution of the hedgehog family. We have here, so to speak, all the "missing links" in the development of the group, preserved for our edification, like living fossils, in remote and scattered oceanic islands. Even so, while Paris, London, New York, and Calcutta are civilised cities, the Andaman Islander and the Melanesians of the Pacific represents in our midst the primeval savage. But the sea has its hedgehogs no less than the land: and the close similarity between the habits and manners of the two is a beautiful ex- emplification of the general principle that similar conditions produce similar effects even in quite unrelated plants and animals. The most interest- ing sea hedgehog is a kind of globe-fish, and it IS represented in its ordinary elongated swimming <)| i n * ,i ■ h. k . ! ;,' ': 150 In Nature's Workshop condition ,n No. 2. The porcupine-fish, as this lets skT r- 11 °"'" ^^"^''' '^^ ^ ^--^i^' --'- less skin thickly covered at intervals with sharp and stout spines. When the fish is swimming etrLn ";, ''"'■'^ °^ ^°°^' '^' «Pi"^« ^^- inofff ' rV^. ^' '" ^'^^ hedgehog, and point inoffensively backward. But let an enemy come NO. 2— A SEA HED(,EHOG, THE GLOriE-FISH, SWIMMING FREELY. in view, and, hi presto! what a change' The porcupine fish follows at once the tactics" of his terrestrial analogue, and converts himself into a bristling ball of prickles, though by a somewhat different method. He rises to the surface and swallows in haste a quantity of air, which distends him instantly into a perfect balloon, as you see Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 151 in No. 3. The skin is thus stretched tight like a drum, and the sharp spines stand out straight in every direction, forming a radial ball, exactly as in the case of the hedgehog. This erect and threatening condition of the spines is still better exhibited in No. 4, which shows the porcupine- NO. 3.— THE GLOBE-FISH, INFLATKD, WHEN DANGER THREATENS. fish a very tough morsel for any aggressive shark or dogfish which may be minded to attack it. Oddly enough, the distention has one most unex- pected result. When thus inflated, as if he were a Dunlop tyre, the fish becomes top-heavy, a.id turns upside down, floating passive on the surface with his back downwards. He does not attempt I. i. I-: ;f;j m 'li 152 In Nature's Workshop to swim but lets wind and current carry him like ever'te fiV P"l^ ^'^^ '^"^er is /ast hot ever he fish expels the air from its mouth with l!:Ar'' '''''''''"''' ''''-^^'^-^^-■^-' Few sea-wolves of any sort will venture to attack NO. 4. -"WHO'S AFRAID? LET 'EM ALL COME!" a globe-fish in its distended state : those that do th.f Th rKT'""".*" '■"^'■"^ •*• ^^'•^^•" 'mentions that globe-fish have frequently been found floating ahve and unhurt, within the stomach of a shark that has swallowed them, and even that one has been known to eat its way bodily through the devourers side, so killing its would-be murderer Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 153 This feat is rendered possible by the very hard and sharp jaws or beak of the globe-fishes, which resemble the hedgehog in this particular too — that they crunch extremely hard food, such as coral, shell-fish, and lobster-like creatures, for which purpose their solid tooth-like jaws are admirably suited. It is a pet theory of mine that whatever an animal does, some plant does also in all essentials. The hedgehog and porcupine with their vegetable imitators are good instances of the truth of this rough generalisation. For there are plant hedgehogs and plant porcupines as well as animal ones. The most remarkable and strictly analogous examples of these spiny plants are of course the cactuses, which may be regarded as in one sense the por- cupines, and in another sense the camels, of the vegetable world. Cactuses grow wild only in very dry and poverty-stricken deserts, not absolutely waterless indeed, but given over for many months of the year to unbroken drought, and then drenched for a short time by the territorial rains of the tropical wet season. Under these circumstances, the cactuses have learnt to store water in their own tissues exactly as the camel does. They lay by, not for a rainy day, but for a dry one. Their stems have grown extremely thick and fleshy ; the outer portion is covered with a hard and glassy skin, which resists evaporation ; and when the occasional rains occur, the provident plant sucks up all the water it can get as fast as it can suck it, and lays it by for future use in the cells of the |i|ir li it I'' lit lij I J*, hi '54 In Nature's Workshop skin and th^" to™, Jni'Tu Ic 7rU' .kTrr' sun and dry winds nf th. «i .. ** Parching cactuses are thus enaWed !1 h'TJ" "'fT'' "" ""y . against continuous a™ ^hts e^ctrL .h """""^ ^on^'ttoir xirr i: trr"^-- -' ^v^i^w^ichactast/nrCt^Vor^S: countries thin green TeaL'U'S' J^^„r«^4■^ useless : they would be wilted up by tteTeat of the sun at once, and the plant would die for 1^ of .ts accustomed mouths and stomach! H^^ almost all trees and shrubs wh h grew i„ 'ver, .erofX7o^^*iThe''T^"•5••'™^"'^^^^^ true fh^ * *^® Australian desert, it is eavV but r. "' '°"^^'' "'^^ "^^* 'o^J^ ike Ss and ^ Vu '," '"""*y ^^•^'^ fl^«ened leaf- ttallv',," hnT *';^/^^f-*«Jks are all placed ver- their fl^t J °"*^"y' °" ^^^ stems-stand with their flat edge or expanded surface sideways ud and down. .„stead of being extended parallel "o Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 155 the soil, to catch the sunlight : they are thus struck by the oblique rays in the early morning and late evening, when the sun has little power, but not by the direct and scorching rays of midday, which would burn them up and wither them. It is this peculiarity of vertical foliage (or what looks like foliage) which gives rise to the well-known shade- lessness of the dreary Australian gum-tree forests. In the dry region of America, on the other hand, most of the plants have given up the vain attempt to produce leaves altogether, or even to imitate leaves by flattened branches: they let the green stem do all the work of eating and assimilating usually performed by the true foliage. That is why most cactuses have nothing that ordinary people would regard as bark : the whole exposed surface of the plant has to be green, because it contains the chlorophyll or living digestive material which assimi- lates fresh food : the cactus eats with every fold of its skin or exterior layer. In reality, this exposed portion is all bark, from a botanical point of view : and so is the greater part of the internal water- storing pith or spongy matter. But it is green bark, not brown : bark which has assumed the function of leaves under stress of circumstances. Now, you will readily understand that, in a thirsty land, a plant so full of stored-up water as the various species of cactus must be very liable to attack from animals of all sizes. Any unarmed and unprotected kinds must thus from the very begin- ning of their family history have been greedily devoured by the herbivores of the desert. The ;! m '56 In Nature's Workshop consequence is that only the best protected and most hedgehog-like species have st.rvived to our day, especially in the driest portions of the de^r NO. 5. A VEGETABLE HEDGEHOO, ONE OF THE SPJNY CACTUSES. country Nature is a great utiliser of odds and ends: she always finds some unexpected use for discarded organs. The cactuses, thus placed and Animal and Vkgetable Hedgehogs 157 having; nothing more for their leaves to do in the ordinary way of business, invented a new function for them by turninf» them into spines to protect the precious store of internal water laid by in the sponjjy pith for the plant's own purposes. To deter thieves from breakinjj in and stealing this valuable deposit, they made their leaves ever shorter and stiffer, till at last they have assumed in many cases the form of regular rosettes of prickles, disposed in tufts over the whole surface of the plant that bears them. No. 5 shows us an excellent instance of these prickly and repellent desert types, a tall cactus which imitates in many ways a hedge- hog, or still more closely a sea-urchin. No. 6 is an enlarged view of the top of the same plant, showing the thick coat of defensive spines, and the dilftculty of attacking so bristling a treasure-house. Like a strong man armed, the cactus protects its vital water-supply with a serried row of weapons : it might almost be compaied to a fort with an army mounting guard over its magazine, and fixed bayonets pointed in every direction. Observe how impossible it would prove to break the line any- where: ; he would be a bold strategist who would venture to assault that perfectly defended position with its innumerable caltrops. The charge of the Lancers at Omdurman would be a mere trifle t' . it. Nevertheless, astute enemies do sometimes manage to get the better even of these experienced vegetable tacticians. The horses that roam half- wild over the arid plains of upland Mexico will often combine to kick down the tall pillar-like cac- I '58 In Natures Workshop tuses which grow upright in those regions, knockinii hem fiercely with their hoof., and then eating he water. They will also trample open the globular NO. 6.-TOP PART OF THE SAME, SHOWING THE ROWS OF FIXED BAYONETS. forms which abound in the same district :,nH t a greedily upon the succulentTnlror Buf o'f extreme thirst and hunger would divelhLt tackle so dangerous a plant, and we murrememb r that horses are not native to Mexico or to any par Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 159 of America : they were first introduced (in modern times at least) by the Spanish conquerors: therefore the cactuses could not have been originally developed with -an eye to defence against such solid-hoofed enemies. As a rule a c? i h^dge is practically impervious to animals : Iiaifl" ' any ''vii" beast will venture to face it. Eveti tiic wild lidrsr- .'lemselves often receive dangerous uo ml-, v\hiic* kii ' ing cac- tuses, which thusavcii^'c tl emselvt oiy th mvading army. Various degrees c ledgi ii>)Vt ness exist, however, among the cactus group: f Irn ic n.ore developed and less developed forms, accordir.i; to the nature of the soil and the amount it ' nnfall or the charac- ter of the enemies to be expected locally. Some kinds, such as the leaf-like Phyllanthus, often grown in conservatories, are quite unarmed. Others, such as the well-known prickly pear— an American cactus now largely naturalised on the Riviera, in Italy, in Algeria, and in Syria— have comparatively few spines, though they are well beset with little groups of short sharp hairs, which break off at a touch and cause an immense amount of trouble in the hands when one rubs them. The fruit of the prickly pear is intended to be eaten : it relies upon animals for the dispersion of the seeds: it has therefore refa- tively few spines, but it must nevertheless be handled with caution. Other forms of cactus are progres- sively shorter, stouter, and more spiny, until at last, in the most exposed spots, we arrive at that most perfect of vegetable hedgehogs, the globular melon cactus, many species of which are commonly culti- = 11 ill !| '^1 4 I i6o In Natiire's Workshop t'hdr^^nf^!.' '"England, more for the oddity of their form than for the sake of the flowers This quamt httle creature is as round as thrrolled ud Sbv'r *'; i"'^*^'' ^'^^^-«-^^^ -^ "^pro- tected by a perfect array of thick and prickly spines No. 7 shows one of these extremely^dense fo ms where the need for defence seems to have swallowed up the whole plant— like a military des- potism, it has no time to think of any. thing but warlike pre- parations. Such types grow always in their na- tive condi- tion on very dry and open spots, where unless It covers itself ,n this fashion with a regular arsenal of daggers and javelins. ^ It may have surprised you to be told that the spines of cactuses are in reality the last relics of he true leaves : I will return to that point a little later aiid show by what gradual stages this curiou t a I-' formation has been slowly effected. But for the NO. 7.-A STILL PRICKLIER CACTUS, ALL SPINES AND DEFENCES. Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs i6i present I want rather to insist upon the point that desert conditions almost necessarily run to the pro- duction of excessive prickliness in all sorts and con- ditions of plants and animals. Where water is so scarce, food is scarce too : and where food is scarce hunger drives the few animals which can exist in the dry region to attack every living thing they come across, be it animal or vegetable. Hence, the ! NO. 8.— A PRICKLV LIZARD, THE MOLOCH OR "THORNY DEVIL." smaller animals of deserts have need of protection just as much as the plants. Western and Southern Australia, as everybody knows, have a very dry climate, and they are provided accordingly with a most prickly and spiny fauna and flora. Their bush is sparse and extremely thorny. No. 8 shows you a very characteristic specimen of the animal forms which arise under such conditions. It is a lizard which frequents the driest and sandiest soils of that L 1 62 In Nature's Workshop desert tract, and it is specially adapted for holding Its own against the local lizard-eaters of the neigh- bourhood it inhabits. Science knows it by the scriptural title of Moloch-and, indeed, it is ugly enou#» and repulsive enough to be called any bad names ; but the Western Australians, less polite in he.r speech than thr Royal Society, describe it familiarly as the " thorny devil." It is one mass of spines and its head and brain in particular are specially protected by a couple of prickly horns, bent almost like fish-hooks. The Moloch, in spite of Its name, is a harmless crea.ure : it does not thistle, for defence, not defiance. But, lik« most prickly beasts, it knowc ": is practicallv safe from aggression, for it is as slow as the hedgehog m rts rj'";r!'; ^""f ^^'^' °P""'y °" '^^ «»"dhills, aware that few foes will venture to attack it A glance at No. 9, however, may bring into ,till stronger relief the point which I am labouring to show-the close analogy which always exists be- tween plant and animal life under similar conditi«i, ^ZirJ'TV- ^"u^ '''^'^^ ^^^"*'y represents the thorny JVfoloch in the vegetable uorld. The desert regions of South America, indeed, are full of pricklv or armour-plated animals : and in the same desert regions we get a whole group of intensely spinous and armour-plated plants and shrubs, of which No. 9 ,s a capital example. This curious bush known as Colletia, is now fairly common in hot- houses in England, and is grown outdoors on the and hills of the Riviera, where so many desert Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 163 shrubs from Mexico, Arabia, Australia, and Peru find a congenial honie. It is really the prickliest thing I know, for its branches are very stiff and its points very sharp, and 1 have never tried to handle one without wounding myself severely. The same conditions which make prickly animals make prickly plants; and Colletia is prickliness pushed to its utmost possible limit. It is true, the sharp ends are not so numerous as in many other instances, but they are as hard as steel, and as penetrating as a surgical instrument. Nobody tries twice to fight a Colletia. Our common English gorse, represented in No. ID, will help to show how foliage-leaves can be developed into mere defensive spines, as we saw with the cactuses. I have already explained in a previous volume that the young gorse seedling has trefoil leaves like a clover, and have pointed out how, as it grows older, the successive blades become sharper and NO. 9.— A PLANT OF THE SAMK TYPE— THE COLLETIA. 164 In Nature's Workshop sharper, until at last they assume the shape of mere stiff prickles, scarcely to be distinguished from the pointed branches on whose sides they sprout. The Illustration exhibits very well the intensely pro- tective nature of the spines, which are so ar- ranged as to de- fend the flowers and buds from the attacks of enemies. Our common hea- ther also tells one something the same tale : its leaves are spiny, and would readily enough de- generate into prickles if need were: the cac- tuses have only carried thesame tendency a de- imagine a holiy leaf or a thistle leaf with the fleshy portion suppressed, and you have anCtome oi the probable history ot the cactus-spin, CSe NO. IO.-BRANCH OF GORSE. WITH SPINES DEFENDING THE BUDS AND FLOWERS. Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 165 course of its development from expanded foliage to defensive prick'e. Indeed, in certain types, every stage occurs be- tween the plants and animals which are quite unde- fended, through the plants and animals which are defended in part only or on the most vulnerable points, down to the plants and animals which seem reduced externally, like the sea-urchin and the melon cactus, to a mere rugged mass of defensive javelins. Thus, among lizards, the iguanas have a sharp row of spines down the back only, the back bemg the part most exposed to attack : while others, like the horned lizards of Mexico and the southern United States, inhabiting the same dry region as the cactuses, are almost as closely covered with pro- tective spines as the Australian Moloch. In Ihe Arabian desert, once more, we get the thorny-tailed lizards, whose hinder portion is ringed round with prickles; and in other dry districts we find other protected kinds, progressively varying in the stage of their armour from the simplest to the most com- plex in every possible gradation. So among fish. No. II represents a frequent type, answering to the Iguana' type among lizards, where a few strong spines on the crest of the back seem sufficient to deter most would-be assailants. Our own stickle- backs, as I have pointed out before, are smaller examples of the same principle. But the other kmds of fish have more and more scattered spines over the whole body, till at last we arrive at highly protected species like the inflated globe-fish, which are veritable hedgehogs both in shape and in in '*;>1 a ill 166 In Nature's Workshop pr.ckhness Vou may observe thut the best-armed kmds are almost always globuUr ,n form, at least in then- defensive attitude, and are equally covered w. h pr,ckles all over, because a sphe're JJlZt ^J ^oJd'^/-.,^vould say-the hardest -formation" to attack, while the equal distribution of the spines NO. ir.-A FISH, DEFKNDED ON BACK 0«LY. leaves no loophole for approach to the T»a.f cunnmg assailant. ^^****^ An exactly similar gradation from the unarmed Take, for LtanlrSlt^r^K-re^l^re I. Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 167 or two species which, though they look much hke other thistles both in foliage and flower, have really no actual prickles at all ; the ends and angles of the leaves, while shaped as in the armed sorts, are quite soft and yielding. Then there are more advanced types which have hard prickly points to every lobe of the leaf, but still can be grasped by the smooth and un- armed stem; ^Kse kinds live mostly in rather exposed spots, but not in those where com- petition is fiercest and grazing ani- mals most nume- rous. Last of all, we get species like the one repre- sented in No. 12, which have the leaves prolonged down the stem by means of prickly wings, so that every portion of the plant is abso- lutely prottcted. Such sorts are developed on open commons and in boggy clay soils where pasture is abundant. In the nettle tribe, the same tactics are carried still further, for there each hair or prickle has a poison-bag at its base— a sort of snake's fang No. 12.— A SPINY THISTLE, WITH PRICKL.ES Rl'NNIN(J DOWN THE STEM. ^ 172 In Nature's Workshop If 1'^ of the world where ahnost every plant and a vast number of the animals are thus covered with sharp thorns, or spines, or bristles. This is especially true of the Mediterranean region, as every one knows who has wandered on the dry hills behind Nice and Cannes, or botanised the prickly bushes in the North African mountains, or hunted insects among the dry and thorny acacia scrub of Syria and Egypt. No. 16 in- troduces us to one of the many cater- pillars which are protected by such spines or bristles as seem to us men scarcely more than hairs. It , , , , is the well- known larva of the tortoise-shell butterfl-. At first sight, you could hardly suppose that these hairs could be classed among the spikes and prickles we have hitherto been considering. But just imagine yourself a bird, and try to think of yourself as swallowing one of these hairy insects. It must be NO. 16.— A PRICKLY CATERPILLAR. Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 173 pretty much the same thing as if you or I were to try swallowing a clothes-brush. As a matter of fact, indeed, protected caterpillars like these are seldom or never eaten by any of the small birds which frequent our hedgerows ; though they have other enemies which manage to tackle them some- how. The cuckoo, for example, is an insatiable caterpillar-eater, and, strange to say, he delights, most of all, in the hairy forms. He seems to have a throat specially constructed for bolting them, while the hair or bristles form at last a perfect coat of felt in the bird's stomach. That is characteristic of the check and counter-check of nature : every move on one side is met and defeated by an oppo- site move on the other. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that most hairy caterpillars are amply pro- tected from the majority of their enemies, for they show themselves openly, like hedgehogs and por- cupines, and do not attempt concealment like the edible sorts ; though when attacked, they often roll themselves up into a ball, after the fashion of so many other animals in this protected group, and turn a uniform set of stiff bristles towards the attacking party. It cannot be by accident, I think, that the globular form is assumed in such different cases both by thorny plants and by prickly animals. The various creatures must have learnt by ancestral experience that this spherical arrangement of the spines or hairs is the best mode for defence: and while some of them, like the melon cactus and the sea-urchin, assume it permanently, others, '74 In Nature's Workshop II fif hke the hedgehog, the globe-fish, and the woolly- bear caterpillar, assume it only when special danger threatens. It is c.irious to note that something similar happens with armadillos and woodhce, as well as with many marine animals of the armour-plated kind. Analogies like this run all through nature : they recur again and agam m the most unlike classes. What succeeds in one place will succeed in another, where con- ditions are similar : whatever device is hit upon by one plant or animal is almost certain to be independently hit upon in like circumstances by some other elsewhere. We are all of us a great deal less original than we suppose : and as for us men. It almost invariably happens that our latest invention has been anticipated ages ago by a grub or a sea-anemone. When we prepare to receive cavalry on a thick wall of bayonets at different angles, what are we doing after all save imitating a device long since inaugurated by the hedgehog the cactus, and the hairy caterpillars ? Our hollow square is but an echo of the sea-urchin's shell : our armoured ships, with their destructive rams, are s nkingly like the lobster with his pointed forehead. If you look abroad in nature for such hints and anticipations of human progress, you will find them on all sides-especially as regards tne arts and stratagems of war. It is only in the highest indus- tries of peace and the fine arts of beauty that we have really got so very much ahead of our dumb relations. For desert warfare, in particular, was there ever a finer strategist than the humble Animal and Vegetable Hedgehogs 175 melon cactus ? Commissariat is always the great problem in the desert ; wells are the crux : he has solved that problem and avoided that crux in a way that would seem to deserve a peerage. t m i h ' t VII THE DAY OF THE CANKER-WORM IT was Attila's boast, they say_I never met him personally— that where his horse's foot had once trodden, grass never grew again. Chief of the countless hordes of Huns and other barbarians scattered among the northern mosses of Europe and Asia, he swept, the Scourge of God, across the civihsed but decrepit Roman empire, and left behind him one broad path of destruction in ruined towns and desolated homesteads. Centuries later, another Mongo , Timur, came forth from the same savage heart of Asia, and built his pyramid of skulls among the lonely steppes to testify to the countless thou- sands of human lives he had recklessly sacrificed. But these historical plagues of conquering kings though terrible indeed in their kind, are as nothing in devastating power when compared with the de- structive insect armies which from time to time burst over and obliterate whole wide areas of cul- ture. The hosts of locusts which eat their way across the face of a continent might make Attila's boast with greater truth than the ferocious Hun himself could make it : the desolation which follows one of these terrible floods of living things is appal- ling to behold. And then, does not the very petti- The Day of the Canker-worm 177 ness of the enemy render him harder to enga^'e ? Artillery is useless against myriads upon myriads of tmy foes ; even railway trains have been stopped in their course in America by hordes of insects. The smaller and more numerous the adversary, the less the chance of engaging him with honour : you kill a million ; and straightway ten millions take their place. France has lost more by the phylloxera which devours her vines than by the indemnity she paid to Germany for the war of 1870 : and the worst of it is, the Uhlan has gone, but the phylloxera still remains encamped and intrenched in all her vine- yards. That tiny fly is an enemy with which treaties and capitulations are impossible: no cession of fortresses will satisfy its greed ; no promises of money down or of territory ceded will induce it to forego its conquered provinces. I propose in this chapter to trace the life-history of one or two among these famous armies of conquer- ing insects, the Assyrian hosts or Napoleonic hordes of their kind, creatures which are produced in vast quantities at once, and which suddenly appear in devastating numbers over whole areas of country. And I do not think we can do better for a begin- ning than by taking the case of that too familiar American pest, the so-called seventeen-year locust. American, I say, because in this, as in most other matters, America still "whips creation." When the United States go in for anything, they go in for it as a rule on the huge scale : their vast areas of forest and prairie and wheatfield allow the de- velopment of gregarious life in a way unknown to M . r.t 178 In Nature's Workshop our little peninsular and mountain-severed Europe. Here we have meadow and pasture and copse and heath dividing the soil with corn or turnips : m America, wheat occupies whole square miles in a hne, and so affords an easy prey to every ag- gressive insect. Hence it happens that such pests m the States assume the proportions of veritable armies, and that skilled entomologists have to be employed by government like policemen or soldiers in order, if possible, to check the assaults of the foe by opposing to each its own appropriate natural and hereditary antagonist. You will hardly be surprised to hear at the outset that the seventeen-year locust is not a locust at all. "Things are not what they seem," the poet tells us; and most plants and animals are so strangely misnamed by popular natural history, that the fact of a creature being called by one name almost suffices to make one conclude It must deserve another. Locusts in Africa are very destructive beasts: a cicada in America is equally destructive; that casual resemblance of habit and practical result was enough to make the American farmer call his own local pe-+ by the name of locust. But if you look at the portrait of the female cicada, as shown in No. 15, you wil see at a glance that she does not present the shgiitest resemblance to the true locusts, but that on the contrary, she is almost identical with the quaint little chirpers which keep up such a ceaseless and emulous concert in the fields and woods of Southern Europe in piping summer-time. Wherever The Day of the Canker-worm 179 vines grow, there you will find the south European cicada busily performing. Its continuous song is faint y pleas.ng to most people, especially if heard at a httle distance : hut it becomes disagreeable at last, from its constancy and monotony, and if heard very near it is harsh and grating. A word or two at the outset about cicadas in general, viewed as a family, may help to put you more at home with the group as a whole: after which, we may proceed to inquire into the domestic concerns of the seventeen-year cicada herself in particular. Cicadas in the lump are large and stout- bodied insects, of the beaked class : they are very musical in their tastes, and have wings which are arranged slantwise, like the roof of a house. Their food is strictly vegetarian. Like all their kind, they are specially adapted for living by suction, draining the juices of the plants on which they fasten. For this purpose they are provided with an elaborate and highly-developed beak, intended for piercing the tissues of the food-plant. The females have also a stout and horny egg-layer or ovipositor, extremely complex in its mechanism, as I shall show hereafter; and this egg-layer is equally designed for making incisions in the tissues of plants, and laying the eggs where the young grubs, in their earliest stage, will be safest from attack and surest of rich and nutri- tious provender. Cicadas have always two large and very prominent eyes, set sideways at the edge of the head : but in addition to this pair, many kinds have also three secondary eyelets or ocelli, which are placed between the main eyes in the' i . i8o In Nature's Workshop M • centre of the forehead : and these smaller eyes are frequently most brilliant in hue, with a gleam like a jewel's. Otherwise, the cicadas are not remarkably handsome or decorated insects ; they reserve the whole of their .x'sthetic taste for the musical faculty. As a rule, indeed, you will find that birds and msects specialise their allurements in one or other of these two directions— song or colour ; the two are seldom found together. Very brilliantly plumaged birds, like the peacock, the birds of paradise, the humming-birds, and the parrots, do not often possess beautiful voices : and, per contra, very sweet-voiced birds, like the lark, the nightingale, the thrush, and the linnet, are not usually remark- able for the hues of their feathers. It seems almost as though nature economised in the matter of dis- play : where she attracts by song, she does not think it necessary to attract by colour; where plumage suffices to charm the eyes of delighted mates, she does not trouble to add music also. So pretty a girl, she says, can do without accomplish- ments: so accomplished a girl has no need for beauty. Now the cicadas are, almost without excep- tion, musical. But their song is produced exclu- sively by the male insects, who are provided for the purpose with a curious resonant, drum-like instru- ment. It consists of a cavity with a stretched membrane, whose vibration, controlled by muscles, sets up the familiar chirping or stridulating noise so well known to all who have lived in Italy. In warm sunshine these insect vocalists keep up a continuous concert of sweet sounds, intended no doubt to 'A a The Day of the Canker-worm i8i attract the females. Resonators in the body in- crease the volume of the note, and make it car-y further ; we had one cicada in our house in Jamaica which sang so loud that we always knew it as the prima donna. We were wrong in the gender, I admit : we ought rather to have said the first tenor; for the females have no song : a fact much com- mented upon by the malicious Greek poet— doubt- less a married man, tied to a loquacious Athenian lady :— " Happy the cicadas' lives, Since they all have voiceless wives." You can thus tell a male cicada from a female at once, because the large horny plate which covers the stridulating apparatus in the nobler sex is wanting or at least rudimentary in the ladies of the species. But I am too long delaying the introduction of our particular subject, the seventeen-year cicada, who is really the hero of this present drama. The name is an odd one, but it is strictly true. The cicadas of this kind appear in each district once only in every seventeen years—" And that is once too many," said an aggrieved Kentucky farmer. The fact is, all cicadas remain for a long time underground in the grub condition before emerging in the upper air as perfect insects ; and this parti- cular sort takes no less than seventeen years to mature, though there is in certain States a thirteen- year variety or local species. No. i of my illustra- tions shows you a specimen with the wings on one side removed, so as to exhibit the chief offending i I I82 In NATrKKs Workshoi' . organs-the month or beak (,/) and the saxv-like t?««-layiT (fi). I„ the bieechn« season, the n.ales appear for a short time only, sin«, pair, and then die at once, it bein« probable, indeed, that they cannot or do not eat in the adult or perfect condi- tion H„t the females make up for this liltle defect •n Ijeir partners' econon.y by eating voraciously and laying some four or five hundred cf^s apiece- m the buds or tuij^s of trees : after xvhich they, too proceed t(, die, having also fulfilled their place in nature. For the winged state in insects is usually little more than a device for mating and egg-lay- ing: it may be aptly compared to the flower- ing stage in plants, since the flower exists only for the sake of being fertilised, and fades as soon as the seeds begin to set ; Its sole use is to attract the impregnating msects, as the sole use of the butterfly is to mate and lay eggs for future generations. But the ovipositor or egg-layer, seen at 6 in No. i, IS a most remarkable organ, whose minute structure you can further observe in No. 2, where I have had It much enlarged for you. In a, this wonderful cut- tmg mstrument is seen from above, and in ^, from beneath, the dotted lines being intended to indicate the up-and-down motion of the saw-like blades or cutters. These cutters are fitted together by grooves SI NO. I THE SEVENTEEN-YEAR CICADA. ■I \ '^ ? TnK Day o*^- thk Cankkk-wokm 1H3 into the fixed holder or axis almost like a pu/./le, so as to move up and down truly : and the crosu- scction in No. 3 enables you to appreciate the exquisite way in which the parts fit into one another, with that extra- ordinary accuracy only to be found in the works of nature. No. 4, again, shows you how the mechanism acts as a whole. It exhibits a series of views of the twig of a tree operated ^^ upon by the seventeen- year cicada. At a, you have a recent puncture drilled by the ovipositor. At 6, the surface of the twig has been deftly removed, so as to show the arrangement of the eggs in the egg-basket thus cunningly excavated. At c, you have a side-view of the eggs lying in their basket ; and at i/, you have the cavity exposed after the eggs are removed, so as to let you see the sculpture left by the ovipositor, I think you will agree that a neater or more perfect nest NO. 2.— THE SAW KoR MAKING KCn-NESTS. NO. 3. — SECTION OK I HK SAW, SHOWING now THK PARTS FIT TOGETllfcR LIKE A PUZZLE. 1 84 In Nature's Workshop could hardly be deyised than this thus carved out of a hving twig by the minute instruments at the disposal of a petty two-inch-long insect. The eggs soon hatch out in their snug little nest in the twig: but the larvae do not con- 3 tinue to live there permanently. In a very short time they drop to the ground, burrow their way in- to the soil by means of their strong- toothed thighs, and fasten on to the roots of trees and plants, where they [ earn their liveli- hood by perpetual suction. Cater- pillars and other aboveground larvie, exposed to stress of weather and with the perpetual terror of winter before ,. , r J , ^^^^^ ^y^s, usually live and feed for one summer only : they turn into pupa, during the course of that summer, or at best assume the chrysalis form in late NO. 4.— NESTS AND EGGS IN TWIGS OF CHESTNUT. The Day of the Canker-worm 185 autumn, hibernating as well as they can in the dormant condition, and coming out as perfect msects with the succeeding springtide. But the cicada tribe pass their larval period for the most part underground, where they are tolerably pro- tected from the inclemency of the weather, for frost never strikes deep ; therefore they need be in no hurry to grow old apace : they can take their own time for arriving at maturity. And they do take It : they eat their way slowly and laboriously through life : one variety of the periodical cicada matures in seventeen years, the other in thirteen. Meanwhile, the larva lives by suction on roots and underground stems or tubers, doing much unobtru- sive damage to vegetation in a quiet way, and eating what he can get with constant vigilance. Of course, he IS often eaten in turn, in accordance with the usual law of nature : for myriads of the larvje are devoured by birds, by frogs, and even by pigs, which grub them up with their snouts from the soil where they have buried themselves ; but myriads more survive, and turn out in the end as fully- winged cicadas, to the no small disgust of the American agricultural interest. No. 5 is a portrait of the larva, aged eighteen months. You will see at once that our undeveloped cicada IS already a creature capable of doing a fair amount of serious damage to trees or crops ; and when you consider that he has still fifteen years to grow, you understand that he inspires a just fear in the bosom of the farmer who has most to deal with him. Admirably adapted both for sucking and nip- I i86 f In Nature's Workshop pmg, as this picture shows, he can do as much harm as any msect of his size known to science, with the sohtary exception, perhaps, of that famous winged hend, the true African locust. At the end of his long and tedious minority, the NO. S.— THE LARVA OF THE CICADA, AGED EIGHTEEN MONTHS. Cicada larva begins at last to think of assuming the toga virilis of his race, and prepares to put on he robe of the pupa. But his pupa stage is not like that of the butterfly, an inert and mummy-like chrysalis existence : in common with the great group of beaked insects to which he belongs the cicada only undergoes what is technically knovvn as The Day of the Canker-worm 187 an " imperfect metamorphosis." The pupa in these cases does not become dormant : it is merely a sort of active hobbledehoy, which walks and behaves hke the larva or the perfect insect : it represents an mtermediate form between the grub and the winged cicada— an intermediate form quite as cap- able of taking care of itself as the perfect animal. I^or seventeen years vast hordes of larvje live unseen NO. 6.— THE GALLERIES FOR THE I'UP/E. underground in the same district : at the end of that time, all with one accord begin to change into pupae, and construct for themselves strange galleries of emergence, so that the soil in certain places seems honey-combed with their tunnels. Two of these galleries are seen in No. 6, one in front view, and the other laid open as a section. Here e is the' door or orifice of the gallery, and r is a pupa wait- i88 In Natpre's Workshop h ing to undergo transformation; while ic tongue into the galleries of the interior. The ants or termites rush out, as is their wont when 214 In Nature's Workshop m W ' disturbed, to repel the invader. They are then caught and entangled in the sticky secretion, like flies on treacle-paper ; as soon as the pangolin has secured as many as will make a mouthful, he with- draws his tongue or trap, and swallows his haul with great gusto. For this reason he has no need of teeth : but he grinds up his food internally after- wards, in a sort of gizzard-like stomach, assisted (as m the case of many birds) by occasional pebb es which act as millstones. You may also perhaps observe that the pangolin's fore-feet have very long curved nails or claws ooking as if his mother had carelessly neglected to cut them in early infancy. These claws are exce lently adapted for burrowing, and also for breaking into the nests of white ants and other tropical insects ; but, on the other hand, they are so much bent under (like a hoe or pick) that when the animal walks, he has to shamble along ungracefuHy on what ought to be their upper surtace. This, however, does not greatly matter as the pangolin is an infrequent and unobtru- sive walker : he is generally engaged in private business underground; when he emerges into the open, it is mostly by night, in search of an s ; for, being a slow and tardy creature, he naturally obeys the antique precept, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard." He shuffles along as best he may from nest to nest on the plain, in an awkward, slipshod fashion ; and since he doubles himself up when attacked by more powerful animals, the clumsiness of his pace does not seriously harm Armour-platkd Animals 215 I him. Indeed, you wil' find that almost all armour- clad or prickly creatures are slow of progress ; being amply protected by their coat of mail or their suit of spiny quills, they have little need of the fleet foot of the hare or the slender limbs of the timid antelope. A somewhat different type of pangolin, also from the Dark Conti- nent, is repre- sented in No. 2, which shows the portrait of the pale brown scaly ant-eater, a West Afri- can species. This creature, though it nests underground, is not so much a burrower as a tree-climber : its scales each end in three sharp points, which give it a little more of the hedge- hog character. Oddly enough, it has also one very hedgehog -like trick, for it will roll itself up into a ball as it sits on the branch of a tree. NO. 2. — THK TREE-HAUNTINO PANROI IN. 2l6 In Nature's Workshop and then fearlessly trundle itself over, trustini^ to fail tor It The pangolins, as a whole, indeed have been well compared to "an animated spructfir cone, furnished with a head and le^s '' K^Z could better describe their quai^nUppfaranc'^.^*''"^ Now ,f we run right across the southern hemi sphere from Afnca to South America, we shall find animarber' ''^^ ^T' ^^oup of k^l^-plated animals, belonging to the same great order as ihl ortTTr:'' ^"^'^"^ and^Wttor und anfs and f ^""t^^es - and living like them upon ants and termites, but otherwise very different in •"any important poii.ts of structure. These are the com.c httle armadillos, a great many s^ecTes of which are now known~odd-looking^v^ebeasl whose general type is well exhibited by the photo grapne portrait of the three-handed ImJuot No 3. This portrait, together with several others '" the present chapter, has been taken from the excel ent specimen in the British Mu:eumTnd desire here to express my thanks to the authorities at South Kensington for the kind way in which they have permitted Mr. Knock and myself toTver haul and pose their treasures nJfl^l point of difference between the a-ad 1 os^^d the pango ins is the nature of their cove ng f the pangolins, the plates of the armour are hornv in texture, and consist of united or agglutinated h^ in the armadillo they are bonv, being composed o/ oTrntr^t'T.^'^' '"^^^'^-^ sfin in tKape of httle shields, though each such shield is also Armour-plated Animals 217 itself once more enclosed or overlaid by a horny plate, developed in the epidermis or outer scurf- skin. In the particular instance I have chosen for our illustration— that of the quaint and dainty little three-banded armadillo— the coat of armour con- sists of several distinct portions. First, there is the cuirass or shoulder-shield, a sort of solid cape. f f i Na 3.— SOLID CUIRASSES: THE THREE-BANDED ARMADILLO. within which the fore legs can be completely with- drawn. Then there is the jointed central part, consisting of the three movable bands from which the animal takes its Christian name, so to speak, being distinguished from the rest of the armadillo family in general as the three-banded armadillo : this central part is girt in rows of plates with movable skin between them, and is extraordinarily 2l8 In Nature's Workshop flexible and easy in its movements, the parts gliding beneath one another in the most admirable and workmanlike manner. Then comes the hind shield or body-armour, a sort of mantle for the flanks, with a notch in it to receive the tail ; and this part serves to protect the hind legs as well as the whole of the back and digestive apparatus. Finally, a smaller set of plates protects the forehead and face, while another set covers the tail : so that only the under surface of the body is at any time exposed to the attacks of the enemies. That is how the armadillo looks when it is abroad on Its hunting expeditions and fears no foe ; but let danger threaten, and, quick as thought, the httle beast immediately clears the deck for action, as you see in No. 4, where it is shown preparing to receive cavalry. A dog or other inquisitive assailant has manifested a desire to investigate the armadillo : the armadillo wisely declines to be examined, and prefers to retire into the privacy of its internal con- sciousness. By a strong muscular contraction it folds Itself up bodily : the head and fore legs retreat behind the cuirass or cape; the hind legs tuck themselves away neatly in the recess of the body- shield ; and the armour-plated upper surface of the forehead and tail fill in the interspaces of the notched coat of mail, lying side by side in the crevice and completing the general globular form of the new position. When thus rolled up into a perfect globe, the armadillo is even better protected from attack than the hedgehog: for if a beast of prey tries to bite it, the smooth living ball glides Armour-plated Animals 219 away unhurt, and leaves the baffled assailant open- mouthed and wondering. You will notice that in No. 3 the armadillo has very long claws on his fore-feet : especially is this the case with the middle toe, which is specialised as a burrowing instrument, and is useful in digj^ing up the nests of white ants and other insects. The NO. 4.— AN ENEMY THREATENS: THE ARMADILLO RETIRES. armadillos pass most of their life underground, and seldom venture out except in search of food or mates. But they are not for the most part noc- turnal. All the existing kinds are comparatively '•mall— none of them longer than three feet— but many of their cousins in laie geological times were much more formidable in size, and must have looked '?20 In Nature's Workshop like gigantic turtles. An extinct species, known to science as the glyptodon, measured no less than eleven feet in length ; while a still more closely- related type, the chlamydothere (I ar; not respon- sible for these very learned words), was almost as tormidable as its own name, for it rivalled in bulk our modern rhinoceroses. Such colossal creatures clad in plate-armour to match, must have moved about like living terrestrial ironclads, and are sure to have been better respected than loved by most ot their contemporaries. It is to descend from the sublime to the ridicu- lous, I admit, to go straight from these huge South American fossil monsters to the common little wood-louse of our English copses (No. 5). Yet the resemblance of habit in that lurker under stones to the burrowing beasts of the Argentine Pampas is so great that many prim speakers, disliking the strong Saxon flavour of its good old English name, habitually speak of our British wood-louse as' the armadillo " ; even science itself has sanctioned the usage in the slightly altered form of anna- d^fdtum. If you lift up a fallen log or mossy boulder in almost any English grove, it is ten to one that you will find crouched beneath it a curious little many-legged running beast, very smooth and shiny who tries to avoid the light, and scampers away the moment the wood or stone which forms the roof is removed from his underground dwelling Touch h.m with your finger, and he doubles him- self up mstantly into a shiny ball, as you see in No. 5, being then protected from harm bv his tough Armour-plated Animals 321 shell or armour-plated carapace. So smooth and round IS he, indeed, that he rolls away from your grasp, like a glazed pill, and can hardly be picked up save with a little care. He is not an insect. '^■■^■-i^; ■ BW/ V p 4 ■iti ,,1 ■• • ' , > t V /'^ r ♦ I \'. " ~ "*'^ n ^ * V..-' •V-. * '• *l' 'f. ( V *^^:. • " r. ^J :!'-■' '.', »• ■ ■r-i-- . 1 NO. 5.— LIKE CAUSES, LIKE RESULTS: THE "ARMADILLO" WOOD-LOUSE. The wood-lice are land-haunting crustaceans, re- mote relations of the crab and lobster, marine '';i'^*!"?'.u''''''''.^^''^ '*^PP^^ ^oJ^'y "» ^hore and adapted themselves to the habit of breathing air, though they stdl live in moist holes or crannies 222 In Natures Workshop amoiiii dark damp spots, hiding through the day and prowhng forth in search of food at n.ght-time. I hey are vegetarians by conviction and habit, and live mainly on dead leaves, though they have also a decided fondness for living lettuces. But the curious thing about these little beasts is that, though they are crustaceans by descent, utterly unrelated of course, to the armadillo or any other mammal hey have independently developed an almost iden- tical mode of defence, and have learnt to tuck away their head and tail, and their many pairs of legs^ within their smooth globular armour exactly in the same fashion as their South American prototype tucks his own belongings away within his bony cuirass. Even the muscular machinery for Dlline and unrolling the body and shell is absurdly similar m the larger beasts and the small ones. Many other examples of such globular armour-plated animals occur in various groups of lower t>pes; but I leave them to the ingenuity of the reader to discover. Perhaps the most marvellous, however, of all the mail-coated animals are our good old friends, the common tortoises and turtles. We have been so long familiar with their shape, and with their extra- ordinary tunic of bone and horn, that we have long ago ceased even to wonder at them ; but if we were shown a tortoise for the first time, and saw him withdraw his head and legs at a touch within the shelter of his shell, we should all exclaim, "What a surprising creature ! " In order to understand the origin of the very complete defensive armour in the Armoitr-plated Animals 223 turtle group, we ought first to consider the bucklers and hauberks of the crocodiles and alligators, which, though much less perfect, lead up to and explain the turtle's panoply. Crocodiles are, in essence, very big lizards, though they differ technically from the true lizards in some important points, but resemble them in outer shape and in most anatomical peculiarities. But their chief and best-marked external feature is their loose coat of movable scaly mail, which stands to the solid, welded shell of the turtles much as the old linked chain-armour of the Norman conquerors stood to the developed plate-armour of the later Flantagenet period. Crocodiles have their backs, tails, and the under side of their bodies amply defended by square horny shields, which move freely against one another at the edges. In the more vulenerable parts, such as the back, however, the wily crocodile does not trust to the strength of these horny plates alone : he has developed beneath them a similar series of stout bony plaques, each of which is neatly and deftly jointed at the edge with the ones beside it. So perfect a safeguard in its own fashion is this double set of armour, horny and bony, that sportsmen will tell you the only sure way to kill a crocodile is to hit him in the eye : that is his one vulnerable spot, his heel of Achilles : everywhere else, a bullet glides off him harmlessly. He lolls in the water unconcerned and winks at his assailant. Now, the turtle group are descendants, appa- rently, of some ancient ancestor who possessed a "4 In Nati're's Workshop coat of movable armour extremely like the plated suit of the existing; crocodiles and ailijjators. I venture to believe, even, that crocodiles and turtles are remote offshoots of the same orij»inal lizard-like stock, which has variously sjiecialised itself for various walks of life under different conditions. All turtles and tortoises possess what wc call in common lanj^uage a shell, thouj^h science— which always loves long words— prefers to describe it as a carapace. The shell is bony, and in almost all instances is actually welded together into one with the backbone and ribs, so as to form a single im- movable dome-shaped suit of armour. If you look inside the dead shell, you will see the vertebrjf like a chain running down the middle. There are usually two shells, one covering the upper part of the body and one the lower ; and in many species of tortoise— for their name is Legion, the family being a very large one— the head and legs can be entirely withdravn within the margin of the cara- pace. In such ,s, just as in that of the armadillo, the gaps in the ai mour are neatly filled up, for the exposed parts are covered on purpose with horny masks or aprons, which thus complete and round off the entire defensive mechanism. The bony dome itseff is also covered with a skin or breastwork of horny shields, which form the externaPv visible portion of the shell, and are most interesting objects for examination, because they exhibit the origin and development of the whole suit of armour. For the visible horny shell consists in most species of quite distinct and unwelded plates, much as in the croco- Akmopr I'l.ATKi) Animals 2i5> dile, only that they are not separately movable : while the true bony shell beneath them consists, on the contrary, of a single welded or united piece, which, however, hen one comes to look at it closely, turns out to be compound— shows by its lines and channels that it was originally composed of distinct plates, like those of alligators. Thus tin NO. 6.— A SOUTH AFRICAN TORTOISK WITH DISTINCT SCALRS. turtles preserve for us in their own bodies an epito- mised history of the course of their development. I have selected for illustration here three species only among the many hundred kinds of the tortoise group now known to naturalists, in order to exhibit three successive stages in the gradual obliteration of the separate plates. No. 6 represents a land- tortoise from South Africa, in which the plates 226 In Nature's Workshop are still almost as distinct as on a crocodile's back, though, of course, not movable. This is a very pretty dappled species, and the sculpture in relief on the separate shields or bosses which make up the shell is extremely elegant. No. 7, on the other hand, is a tortoise from the Argentine : it displays much more flattened and obliterated shields, which f I NO. 7.— A SOUTH AFRICAN TORTOISE : THE SCALES COALESCING. have coalesced more perfectly, and do not nearly so well recall the original crocodile or alligator type. No. 8, again, is a good example of the bask- ing mud-tortoises, in which the separateness of the plates has almost disappeared, so that the entire shell, both bony and horny, has practically coal- esced into a single smooth and rounded dome. The particular specimen here figured comes from Armour-plated Animals 227 Fort Essington (in these days of Imperial ex- tension, I will be cosmopolitan at all hazards): but other mud-turtles, similar in this respect, are found in shallow waters almost all the world over. We have in these cases a little bit of the history of evolution among animals served up for us in detail : indeed, if you will go to the Natural History Museum NO. 8.— A MUD-TORTOISE: THE SCALES ALMOST OBLITERATED. at South Kensington and look carefully at all the crocodiles, alligators, tortoises, and turtles there on view— an endless group— you will soon come to the conclusion that here at least there are no "missing links," but that every stage in the long, slow evolution of the tortoise's shell from the sepa- rate alligator-like scales of its lizard ancestor has been fully preserved for us. Incidentally such a 228 In Nature's Workshop visit will also serve to suggest the unspeakable variety and diversity of nature : before you examine the cases in the reptile room, you will probably imagine that a few dozen types of crocodile and turtle are all that exist: after you have compared them in full, you will come away astonished at the number, the strangeness, and the exquisite adapta- tion of the many kinds displayed for you— which after all form but a portion of those existing in nature. Ut me give one probably unexpected instance of this curious adaptation to local conditions. The tortoises with humpy and bossy scales, more or less quaintly coloured (like the first here figured), are very conspicuoi^ in museums : but in nature' they are often quite hard to distinguish from their natural surroundings, even where they are plentiful and basking in the open ; for they usually frequent rocky and pebbly spots, or else jungles of dry grass: and their humps and colours harmonise excellently with the shapes and hues of the objects about them. On the other hand, the smoothest forms are generally mud-tortoises, which sun them- selves at their ease on logs in the water, or else lurk among soft mud, and under these circumstances their smoothness makes them less conspicuous to the few enemies whom even their solid coats do not enable them to set at defiance. All the suits of armour with which I have hitherto been dealing are quite permanent: they cannot be taken off and put on again as readily as a mediaeval knight-errant's casque and brigand i ne • Armour-plated Animals 229 indeed, since the turtle's coat and his backbone are, like the French Republic, "one and indivi- sible," he could no more divest himself of it with safety than you or I could change our skeletons, or get a new skull to suit the fashion. But the next suit of armour of which I am going to speak has that further peculiarity that it is shed by its owner at periodical intervals— I mean the lobster's. Everybody knows, of course, that lobsters moult as much as canaries. They begin life as tinj tad- poles or larvae, about half an inch long, in which stage they have grotesquely big goggle eyes, like the dwarf in a pantomime, and swim about freely on the surface of the water. You would never take them for lobsters at all at this point in their history: they have much more resemblance to the uncouth larvae of beetles and mosquitoes than to their own demure and sedate parents. After several moults, however, and several perplexing alterations of form, like so many crustacean " quick- change artists," they arrive at last at the adult lobster condition. Adult, I say, because they have now attained their final form : but not full grown : they go on growing ; and as the shell they wear fits them tightly all over, and is composed of a single piece, though much jointed, they have no alterna- tive but to cast it off bodily from time to time, and develop a new one. When the lobster is still very young, he does this at frtjn;nt intervals; in middle life, he does it once a year; but when he has grown old and thoroughly hardened, he changes his suit a good deal less frequently. At i 230 In Nature's Workshop the moulting period he retires for a time into private life, and changes his suit, like a gentleman that he is, in a sequestered dressing-room, far from observers. Oddly enough, however, he grows before, not after, he casts his shell. That is to say, he lays by material for new cells and tissues inside his old coat, but he does not plim them out, so to speak —does not inflate them, if I may use a metaphor which will be clear to all cyclists. The raw stuff is there, but not the mere filling. At last, when he has got everything ready for the eventful change, he proceeds to endue himself in his new suit of armour. An entire soft shell grows round his limbs within the old hard one; then the lobster withdraws himself, leg by leg, claw by claw, and swimmeret by swimmeret, from his disused coat, and steps out of his skin, a brand-new creature. Even the hard bits of the interior— the shelly walls at the base of the small legs— are shed with the rest; for the whole suit hangs together in one piece, the inner parts being, in reality, mere folds of the skin, doubled inward. The cast skeleton, when he has wriggled out of it, forms a perfect model of a lobster, in fact, and looks like a whole beast, till you discover that it is empty. The real lobster himself, on the other hand, after thus shuffling off his mortal coil, emerges upon the world a new and defenceless fleshly creature. It must feel odd for him to find himself suddenly deprived of his wonted mail. For in order to withdraw his big claws from the shed skeleton, and otherwise Armour-plated Animals 231 disengage himself from the suit he has outgrown, he has to become as soft as jelly : in which con- dition he pulls his limbs one by one through the narrow chink of the huge pincer-like claws in the most incredible fashion. As soon as the moult is complete, however, he begins to grow, or appa- rently grow, within the new and swelling skin, at a rate which might well astonish anybody but a mushroom. He absorbs water through the thin, jelly-like shell, and with it inflates the animal tissues ; but before he takes off his oM coat he has made himself a new one, perfect from head to tail, and waiting only to be hardened by a supply of lime, partly laid up in his body beforehand, and partly eaten for the purpose in the shape of other shells, which he greedily devours and digests in bulk at this stage of his existence. In a few days the new shell has acquired the consistency of a leathern jerkin, and by the end of six weeks ', once more become a perfect suit of solid pla. armour. Our own common lobster is, perhaps, the finest example now living on earth of the mail-coated animals : for he is a soldier and a member of a dominant type, like the mediaeval barons in their iron panoply ; not a mere defensively-armed non- combatant, like the armadillo and the tortoise, which skulk and hide themselves. Shielded by his impenetrable corslet of stony armour, provided with huge pinching claws which can crush a sea- shell like so much paper, and capable of attacking almost any foe he meets in his own element, your i 232 In Nature's Workshop ■ 1 ; t i lobster is a magnate of the most ancient order. My illustration, No. 9, however, represents not this hidalgo of the seas, but a cousin of the family of somewhat inferior rank— the spiny lobster or sea- crayfish— who unites in his own l^erson to a certain extent the tactics of the tortoise with those of the hedgehog. He is half armadillo, half porcupine in his mode of defence. His body is well covered by a stout corslet like that of the common Eng- lish lobster, but instead of being smooth it is prickly or thorny like the shell of the Japa- nese devil-crab, whom I have had the honour of presenting to my readers in a pre- vious chapter. And the reason why the spiny lobster needs this extra protection of spikes on his shell is pretty clear when you come to ex- amine him closely. He has no great crushing NO. 9.— THE SPINY LOBSTER, BOTH ARMOUR-PLATED AND PRICKLY. Armour-plated Animals 233 nut-cracker claws like the powerful vices of the common lobster ; his first pair of legs are scarcely bigger or more muscular than the others ; as a man of war, he is not to be compared for a moment to his more familiar and highly developed NO. 10. — THE SPINY LOBSTER'S TAIL, TO SHOW ARRANGEMENT OF IM.ATKS. relation. Therefore he makes up for it by spines on his back : he doubles the parts, as it were, of armadillo and hedgehog, so as to be safe either way. We have a spiny lobster of this type in our own British seas ; but in order to meet the views of 234 In Nature's Workshop Colonial readers, Mr. Enock has here selected for Illustration its New Zealand representative. No. 10 is an enlargeo view of this sea-crayfish's tail, intended to show its very close analogy to the joints of plate-armour exhibited in No ii The NO. II A knight's plate-armour, FOR COMPARISON WITH THE LOBSTER'S. resemblance is one of the best examples one could choose of the very close fashion in which art half unconsciously imitates nature, or nature half un- consciously foreshadows art. Compare it once more with the pangolin's tail and the armadillo's Armour-plated Animals 235 belts, and you will further observe how much nature also imitates and anticipates herself — how the same device to obtain the same result appears over and over again through all her handiwork. The self-same lesson is very beautifully impressed upon us by the curious little marine creature delineated in No. 12. What is he? you wonder. Well, you know that most molluscs have either NO. 12. — A JOINTED AND ARMOURED MOLLUSC, THE CHITON. two valve-like shells, familiar to everybody in the oyster, the mussel, the cockle, and the scallop — I choose examples whose nearness to " the great heart of the people " makes them sure of recogni- tion— or else a single more or less spiral shell, as in the equally well-known cases of the whelk, the periwinkle, the garden snail, and the limpet. But you would hardly suspect this odd-looking creature. 236 In Nature's Workshop like a lobster's tail with the body omitted, of being also a mollusc. Nevertheless, it is one. Its name IS chiton : and chiton is good Greek for a cloak or robe. The quiint beast in question derives his title from the eight aexible shell-plates which cover his back with a complete suit of armour, exactly analogous to so many which we have already examined. A few species of chiton inhabit our British seas ; but it will give once more a faint Idea of the vast variety of all these strange types if I add that, taking the round world over, more than four hundred distinct kinds of these jointed molluscs have been described by naturalists. ^ I have chosen only a few among the larger or more conspicuous members of the great group of armour-plated animals, but many of them occur in other classes—too many for me even to enumer- ate roughly. Sometimes a whole vast alliance is armour-plated almost without exception— for ex- ample, the molluscs. The enormous majority of these are enclosed in very hard shells, like the oyster and cockle, sometimes reaching the size of the huge conch or giant clam, with three great tooth-hke furrows, which is occasionally used as a receptacle for fountains, or as a font or holy-water basin in Continental churches. The big univalves, so often found as ornaments of cottage cabinets] show one equal hardness ; and in many cases the mouth of the shell, the only exposed part, is closed by a solid door, known as an operculum, which the animal pulls in behind it, and keeps in place by Armour-plated Animals 237 means of a powerful muscle. In not a few instances, the hedgehog principle reinforces the turtle one : the shells are covered with hard spines or prickles. Some few molluscs, however, like the slugs, have found it pay to get rid of their shells : and here is curious to note a singular analogy with the gradual discarding of armour by human soldiers after the invention of firearms. For when the heavy plate«armour was superseded as a whole, the helmet and breast-plate, covering the most vulner- able and important parts, the head and heart, were still foi* a time retained, as by Cromwell's Ironsides. Now, just the same thing occurs in the transition from snails to slugs. True snails can retire alto- gether within their protective shells : intermediate types occur which have shells a little too small for them, so that they cannot hide in them ; then come imperfect slugs, with small, shield-like shells carried on their backs — mere bucklers, just covering the heart and most vital organs ; after that, we get slugs who have no visible external shell at all, but possess a hidden breast-plate under the " mantle " or flesh of the body, exactly as Cromwell himself is said to have worn concealed armour under his woollen jacket ; and, last of all, as in the big black slug, we fjnd forms with no shell of any sort, open or buried, but at best only an imperfect relic in the shape of a few formless fragments of lime scattered about in the flesh of the mantle. Here, once •nore, as in the turtles, the various steps in the evolutionary history of a type have been fully pre- served for us. a38 In Nature's Workshop The greater number of crustaceans, again, such as crabs and prawns, are also armour-plated, the armour bemg, of course, proportioned in thickness as a rule, to the size of the animal. The great edible crab of our own coasts, too well known on the supper-table to call for illustration, is a most for- midable beast, protected alike by his solid carapace and by the muscular strength of his powerful crush- ing claws, weapons hardly second to those of our friend the lobster. Among insects, too, there are several great groups of armour-plated kinds; for example, the beetles. The common stag-beetle of our own country is a fine instance of a mailed type • some tropical kinds have shells as hard and as impenetrable as the crab's; many of them are also provided in addition with oflFensive weapons of no mean description. No. 13 exhibits a'simple typical case of a mailed water-beetle. The scorpions form another stout armoured class, with pincer claws as strong as those of the crabs and lobsters. I need enumerate no more ; I must resist the temptation to describe at length the bony-pike of America, a true fish enclosed from head to tail in a complete and close-fitting mail of lozenge-shaped scales enamelled and slimy, like a glistening suit of silvery armour ; or the ungainly sturgeons, with their rows of bony plates protecting the sides; or that quaint creature the coflFer-fish, like a living carved ivory box, incased in a hard setting of SIX- sided plates, which form a curious mosaic pattern over its entire body. But I must draw a line somewhere. Armour-plated Animals 239 I will only suggest before I conclude that a good subject for a day's stroll through the Natural His- tory Museum at South Kensington or any other great collection of zoological r.pecimens would be NO. 13— A MAILED WATER- BEETLB. the examination and comparison of all such ar- moured creatures. Such a study would show, not only the snnilarity of the means employed for defence m various cases, but also the beautiful variety of ways in which the general plan of armour- 240 In Nature's Workshop plating is adapted in each instance to the particular needs of the different kinds, crawling, swimming, or walking, marine or terrestrial, powerful or feeble, provided with offensive arms or dependent wholly on their defensive covering. THE END