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Title: The Real Fairy Folk
Author: Jamison, Louise
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Real Fairy Folk" ***
Libraries.)
[Illustration]
THE REAL FAIRY FOLK
[Illustration: “‘I FEEL THE WIND,’ CRIED RUTH, WITH BRIGHT EYES. ‘DEAR
VOICE, ARE YOU THE WIND?’”]
_THE
Real Fairy Folk_
_BY
LOUISE JAMISON_
_ILLUSTRATED
BY
JAMES M. GLEESON_
[Illustration]
_NEW YORK_ _GARDEN CITY, N. Y._
_DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY_
_MCMXII_
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN
LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
[Illustration]
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
_To my Mother and Father this little book is lovingly dedicated_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. In the Old Willow Tree 3
II. Two Funny Gentlemen and What They Said 13
III. Ruth and the Wonderful Spinners 33
IV. Mrs. Mosquito and Her Kin 51
V. Ruth Hears About Some Water Babies 64
VI. Ruth Goes to a Concert 82
VII. Ruth Meets All Sorts and Conditions 100
VIII. Mrs. Tumble Bug and Others 118
IX. Little Mischief Makers 134
X. Some Queer Little People 148
XI. Wise Folks and Fiery Ones 159
XII. The Honey Makers 180
XIII. The Most Beautiful of All 197
XIV. Real Fairies 212
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
“‘I feel the wind,’ cried Ruth, with bright eyes. ‘Dear
voice, are you the Wind?’” _Frontispiece_
PAGE
“‘Sometimes it seems as if it must be Fairyland all
around, only I’m deaf’” 8
“Ruth, holding Belinda tightly, drew close to the edge
of the brook” 14
“‘How’s that?’ and with a splash a big green and brown
frog landed on the stone at her feet” 15
“‘I am a frog, of course, but my family name is Rana’” 16
“That nice fat toad in the garden” 18
“‘I didn’t move, but my tongue _did_’” 19
“‘I was soon swimming about with a lot of other tads,
slapping tails, and having all kinds of fun’” 23
“A loud splash and Mr. Rana’s long legs disappeared in
the brook” 24
“‘I’m right over here in the shade’” 25
“‘The mother spins the cocoon of silk from her own
body’” 38
“‘Why, it’s Daddy Long Legs’” 46
“‘I made one of these pits and in the funnel end I lay
in wait for ants’” 76
The wise grasshopper 88
“‘My friends, there are ants and ants’” 160
“‘Then there are ants who keep slaves’” 162
“‘Then there are ants who cut pieces from green leaves
and carry them as parasols’” 163
The house of the mound-builder ant 165
“Vespa Maculata” 170
The Queen Bee and her bodyguard of drones 187
“‘Smart children, aren’t they?’ asked some moths” 203
“‘I am the moon moth, the Luna’” 213
[Illustration]
THE REAL FAIRY FOLK
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
IN THE OLD WILLOW TREE
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small.
—_Coleridge._
Ruth climbed to her favourite perch in the old willow tree, and settled
Belinda in a crotch beside her.
“Now,” she said, drawing a long breath, “we will be cool and comfy.”
Certainly if there was a cool spot to be found on this hot August
morning it was in the shade of this big willow.
“Her very own tree,” as Ruth always called it, for, since she could
climb at all, she had loved to sit among its drooping branches and hear
the leaves whispering together the wonderful things, which she knew they
were telling each other, even though she could not understand them.
Then, too, she could look down into the brook, and watch the doings of
the queer little people who made their home there.
These, like all the tiny folk of the outdoor world, were a source of
never-failing interest and wonder.
In their company, Ruth was never lonely, even though she had neither
brother nor sister, nor indeed any little boy or girl to play with.
Still it would be so much nicer if she could only talk to the bugs and
things. There were such lots of questions she wanted to ask them.
How she did wish that the funny old tumble bugs would stop rolling their
ball, and tell her all about it. They never did, though. They just kept
at that ball as though it was the most important thing in the world.
Then she wanted to know what the bees whispered to the flowers as they
buzzed above them, and whether the butterflies spoke to each other as
they flew by in the sunshine.
There were the ants, too, always so busy, and in such a hurry. How fast
they could run when any one upset their nest; and how funny they looked
carrying those queer white bundles.
Mother had called these bundles the ants’ babies, but Ruth thought them
very odd babies, and she wondered if they had to be fed and bathed and
put to sleep like human babies.
She wanted to know all about them, and about the spiders too, and their
wonderful webs.
“Just think what a chance Miss Muffet had,” she said to Belinda, when
both were settled to her satisfaction in the willow-tree perch. “Only a
very friendly spider would come up and sit down by you, and who knows
the interesting things it could tell. The idea of being afraid of a
spider anyhow! You might as well be afraid of that funny old toad in the
garden, and I don’t believe he could hurt you if he tried. I guess he
doesn’t do anything but sleep.”
Ruth had been trying to talk to the toad that very morning. He had
looked so solemn and so wise as he sat under the shade of a big stone in
the damp corner of the garden, “but,” as she said, “he wasn’t any good
at all,” for he only looked at her, then drew a film over his eyes, and
went on swallowing very hard.
“He can talk, though, I know,” she said to Belinda. “They can all talk
in their way. It sounds like noise to us, because we can’t understand.
Do hear them, Belinda? What are they saying?”
But of course Belinda could not answer. She never said more than “mama,”
in a very squeaky voice, and you had to squeeze her ever so hard to make
her do that.
Ruth sighed softly, then, leaning forward with her elbow propped on her
knee, and her chin resting in the palm of her hand, she listened to the
flood of sound about her; the hum and buzz that came from garden and
orchard, from field and meadow; thousands of tiny voices, rising and
falling and rising again, as they told their fascinating life stories,
from every leaf and twig and grass blade.
“They are talking just as fast as they can,” Ruth said again, “but I
don’t know what they are saying. Oh! if I only did. Why don’t people
learn their language instead of German and French and lots of other old
things that aren’t any good? It would be ever so much nicer, and they
could find out so many wonderful things, couldn’t they, Belinda?”
But, as usual, Belinda only stared at Ruth, and said nothing.
[Illustration: “‘SOMETIMES IT SEEMS AS IF IT MUST BE FAIRYLAND ALL
AROUND, ONLY I’M DEAF’”]
“Oh, dear,” said Ruth, “if you were only alive, and could tell me
things, you’d be ever so much more interesting, but then maybe,” she
added, thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t understand you any better than I do
them. Maybe doll language is different too. It is all so puzzling.
Sometimes it seems as if it must be Fairyland all around, only I’m deaf.
I wonder if there’s a word that lets you in so you can know about
things, like ‘Open Sesame’ in ‘The Forty Thieves.’ Oh, Belinda, do you
think there is?” And Ruth clasped her hands together at the very
thought. “But we can’t find it out,” she added, more soberly, “and so it
wouldn’t be any use.”
“Watch and listen! Watch and listen!” said a voice so close to her ear
that Ruth jumped, and nearly fell to the ground.
She looked about her expectantly, but no one was in sight, either in the
tree or under it.
“It is very queer,” she said. “You can’t talk, Belinda, and I don’t see
a single person anywhere.”
“It is not so queer as you think,” the voice replied, as close to her
ear as before. “You cannot see me, but you can feel me.”
A passing breeze had touched her cheek and was softly ruffling her hair.
“I feel the wind,” cried Ruth, with bright eyes. “Dear voice, are you
the Wind? Why have you never talked to me before? If you only knew how I
have wanted some one to talk to me, and tell me things! People don’t
seem to like to answer questions. They haven’t time or something. But
you must know such a lot. The wind goes everywhere.”
“Yes, I am a great traveller, but, child, the marvellous things are not
all far off. There is a wonderland right here at home, if one has the
eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to feel and understand.”
Ruth clapped her hands, and her eyes danced.
“I knew it! I knew it!” she cried eagerly. “I told Belinda it was
Fairyland all around us; but, dear Wind,” she added, while a little
cloud filled her eyes, “I do see and hear lots of things, but I _can’t_
understand, and I _do_ want to know all the whys and becauses. Won’t you
please, _please_ tell me?”
“I may not do that, child,” was the answer, “for each thing speaks in
its own language, and will tell its own story to those who seek truly
and earnestly. You are a thoughtful child, and for that reason it will
be given to you to know those things which you most desire to learn.
Only remember, ‘Watch and be patient,’ and never forget the password
‘Brotherhood,’ for even the lowest creature has some rights to be
respected.”
The breeze passed on, softly singing through the willow branches, but
Ruth sat without moving, her eyes wide with eager wonder.
“I didn’t dream it,” she said at last in an awed little whisper. “It was
as real as anything could be that you couldn’t see. I suppose
‘brotherhood’ means not to be unkind or cruel to things. Oh, Belinda,
just think of it: hearing what they say, the bees and the butterflies
and the dear little crickets and funny old grasshoppers,” and she
snatched Belinda to her and hugged her tight. “It will be harder than
ever to go into the house now, won’t it?” she finished soberly. Then she
sat for a few minutes thinking, very quiet, but very happy.
“Kerchug—kerchug—kerchug,” called a voice from the brook, and Ruth
started so suddenly she nearly dropped Belinda, and caught a branch just
in time to keep herself from falling.
“Gracious,” she said, “how that scared me. I do believe it was that big
green and brown frog. See him down there, Belinda? He is just showing
his head and his funny eyes out of the water. Let’s get down close to
him, and maybe he’ll come out all the way.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II
TWO FUNNY GENTLEMEN AND WHAT THEY SAID
Nothing useless is or low.
—_Tennyson._
“To be sure I’ll come out,” answered a croaky voice, as Ruth, holding
Belinda tightly, drew close to the edge of the brook. “How’s that?” and
with a splash a big green and brown frog landed on the stone at her
feet.
“Now,” he added, swelling out his white vest with an air of importance,
“I am a frog, of course, but my family name is Rana. Please don’t forget
it.”
[Illustration: “RUTH, HOLDING BELINDA TIGHTLY, DREW CLOSE TO THE EDGE OF
THE BROOK”]
“Family name?” said Ruth, sitting down on the edge of the stone. “I
didn’t know frogs had family names.”
“There’s a great deal you don’t know,” said Mr. Rana, in his decided
way.
[Illustration: “‘HOW’S THAT?’ AND WITH A SPLASH A BIG GREEN AND BROWN
FROG LANDED ON THE STONE AT HER FEET”]
“Maybe there is,” agreed Ruth, “but it isn’t very polite to tell me so.”
Then, with a sudden thought, she added quickly, “Why, you are really
talking.”
“Of course, I’m talking. Do you suppose it’s the first time?”
[Illustration: “‘I AM A FROG, OF COURSE, BUT MY FAMILY NAME IS RANA’”]
“He’s dreadfully snappy,” Ruth whispered to Belinda.
“It isn’t my fault that people can’t understand,” finished Mr. Rana,
swallowing very fast.
“I wanted to understand,” declared Ruth meekly. “I was sure you could
tell me such a lot of interesting things, and that nice fat toad in the
garden too. He is so——”
“You’d better talk to the fat toad, then,” said Mr. Rana, looking very
cross.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Ruth, “I didn’t mean I’d _rather_ talk to him. I do
want you to tell me things. All about yourself, please.”
“Now you are showing your good sense,” said Mr. Rana, as Ruth settled
herself with a ready-to-listen air. “Nothing can be more interesting
than my story; but excuse me one second. I see Mrs. Mosquito. This
morning I ate her husband, and now——”
His sentence was not finished, but Mrs. Mosquito was; and Mr. Rana
folded his hands across his fat stomach and looked at Ruth, while a big
smile played about his broad mouth.
[Illustration: “THAT NICE FAT TOAD IN THE GARDEN”]
“She’s gone,” said Ruth, in a slightly awed tone, “and I know you’ve
swallowed her, but I wish you would tell me how you did it. I didn’t see
you move.”
[Illustration: “‘I DIDN’T MOVE, BUT MY TONGUE DID’”]
“I didn’t move, but my tongue _did_, and it went so quick you couldn’t
see it. When you eat, you bring things to your tongue, but when I eat, I
send my tongue to my dinner. It’s a simpler way, I think. My tongue is
rather wonderful too. It is fastened to my mouth in front, and rolled
back; besides, it has a sort of glue on the end that catches whatever
there is to catch. The number of pests I eat in a day would astonish
you. Slugs, grubs, snails, mosquitoes, and—well, what’s the matter? You
don’t like such things, I suppose. Tastes differ, you see. Now, to tell
my story. What do you think I looked like when I was first hatched?”
“A tadpole, of course,” answered Ruth. “I’ve seen lots of tadpoles. They
are funny, wiggly things.”
“They _are_ lively fellows,” agreed Mr. Rana, swallowing several times,
while Ruth silently watched the sides of his neck puff out.
“Please tell me why you swallow so much,” she asked at last. “You are
not eating, are you?”
Mr. Rana smiled, and this time the smile went all around his mouth.
“I swallow to breathe,” he answered. “I can’t swallow air while my mouth
is open, and so I stop talking and shut it. Every time I swallow, the
air sac on the side of my neck fills out. That’s why my voice has such a
lovely croak. My poor wife hasn’t any air sac, so her voice is never
croaky.”
“But in the water——” began Ruth.
“In the water,” answered Mr. Rana, “I take in air through my skin. It is
very porous. My skin I mean. It is really a pleasure to tell you things.
Now to get back to the beginning, being a tadpole, or, I should say, an
egg. Looking at me now, could you imagine that I was once a tiny egg?
It’s a fact, though. My mother laid her eggs near some water rushes,
and, as I said, these eggs were but tiny specks, black specks enclosed
in a gluey case, which the water made swell, until it looked like a mass
of jelly. I came from one of those specks, and I tell you I was a lively
fellow when I was first hatched. Some people say tadpoles are all head
and tail, but there were other parts to me—places for legs, and I know I
had two eyes and a mouth. Of course I made the most of life. A whole
pond to circle in seemed a mighty big world to me, and I was soon
swimming about with a lot of other tads, slapping tails, and having all
kinds of fun. Indeed, we were always lively, especially when we were
trying to get away from those who wanted us for dinner. There were lots
of them too.”
“Ugh!” said Ruth, screwing up her face.
This displeased Mr. Rana.
“A tadpole is very delicate eating,” he said. “You have never tasted
one, so you cannot judge; but let that pass. _I_ was not eaten, as you
can see for yourself.”
“I am glad you were not,” said Ruth as Mr. Rana stopped to swallow some
air, “because then I shouldn’t have known you.”
[Illustration: “‘I WAS SOON SWIMMING ABOUT WITH A LOT OF OTHER TADS,
SLAPPING TAILS, AND HAVING ALL KINDS OF FUN’”]
“Well, that’s a fact. Now let me see what comes next. Oh, yes—my legs.
Legs, you must know, are very important affairs to a tadpole, because
when he gets them he isn’t a tadpole any more; so you may be sure I was
happy when I saw mine beginning to grow. At the same time, my tail
became shorter and shorter, until at last I had none at all. I was
really and truly a frog. After this I was not obliged to stay in the
water all the time. I had lungs and could breathe air.”
[Illustration: “A LOUD SPLASH AND MR. RANA’S LONG LEGS DISAPPEARED IN
THE BROOK”]
“But you do go in sometimes,” said Ruth. “I’ve seen you.”
“Of course I do,” agreed Mr. Rana. “I must keep my skin wet, and that
reminds me it’s pretty dry now, so I will have to leave you. Good-by for
the present.” And before Ruth could say a word there was a loud splash
and Mr. Rana’s long legs disappeared in the brook.
[Illustration: “‘I’M RIGHT OVER HERE IN THE SHADE’”]
“Oh, dear, he’s gone!” sighed Ruth.
“Yes, and good riddance,” croaked a voice that was not Mr. Rana’s.
Ruth looked around quickly.
“It’s nice having things talk to you,” she said, “but it keeps you
jumping.”
“Use your eyes, and you wouldn’t have to jump,” went on the same voice.
“I’m right over here in the shade. My blood’s cold, and I can’t stand
the hot sun.”
It was her friend the garden toad. Ruth could see him plainly now. He
looked more puffy than ever, as he sat under the bushes, swelling his
leathery throat with importance. “If my cousin can talk to you I guess I
can too,” he added. “I’m Mr. Bufo, and I’m quite as interesting as he
is.”
Ruth was only too willing to agree to this, though, as she whispered to
Belinda, she thought frogs and toads had very good opinions of
themselves.
“I have a wife,” croaked Mr. Bufo when Ruth had sat herself on the
ground close to him, “a worrying wife. Do you know it’s a bad thing to
have a worrying wife?”
Ruth didn’t know, but she nodded her head in agreement.
“A bad thing,” repeated Mr. Bufo. “In the Spring, after Mrs. Bufo had
laid her eggs, she gave me no peace. Of course, like all toads, she laid
them in the water, but, instead of being reasonable about it, she was
always asking me how she was to know them from the eggs Mrs. Rana and
Mrs. Urodillo had laid. Theirs were in the water too.”
“Please, who is Mrs. Urodillo?” asked Ruth. “I know Mrs. Rana is a
frog.”
“Mrs. Urodillo is a water salamander,” answered Mr. Bufo, not over
pleased at being interrupted. “Now where was I? Oh, yes. Mrs. Bufo was
afraid she wouldn’t know her own eggs. Well, I tried to argue with her.”
“‘Didn’t you lay yours in double strings?’ I asked, ‘and didn’t you with
motherly care enclose them in thin but strong tubes?’ Of course she
couldn’t deny it. ‘But I won’t know my own tadpoles,’ she kept
insisting.”
“No wonder she was worried,” said Ruth. “Any one would want to know
their own babies.”
“Mothers in our family never do,” declared Mr. Bufo. “They lay their
eggs, and that’s the end of it. Mrs. Bufo knew that as well as I did.
She only wanted something to worry about. All tadpoles are pretty much
alike to begin with, but they don’t end alike. Toad egg tads always grow
into toads; frog egg tads become frogs, and salamander egg tads will be
salamanders and nothing else.”
All the while he talked Mr. Bufo had stopped every little while to
swallow, not only air, but whatever in the way of insects came within
his reach. So of course Ruth saw his tongue.
“Your tongue is just like Mr. Rana’s,” she said, after watching it for a
few seconds.
“Our tongues may be alike,” agreed Mr. Bufo, “but there’s a vast
difference in our legs. His are too long for any use, and his skin is so
horribly smooth it gives me the shivers just to look at it. Of course I
know I am not handsome, and that reminds me of some lines that have been
written about me. Want to hear them?”
Then without waiting for an answer he swallowed some air and began:
“I’m a clumsy, awkward toad,
And I hop along the road;
’Tis the only way we toads can well meander;
While in yonder marshy bog
Leaps my relative the frog,
Very near my aunt, the water Salamander.
“And if you should ever stray
Near a slimy pool some day,
And along its grassy margin chance to loiter.
Do not pass it idly by,
For it is the spot where I
Was born a lively tadpole in the water.
“I’m a homely, harmless thing;
I catch insects on the wing,
And in this I serve you all; it is my duty.
And now tell me which is best,
To be useless and well dressed,
Or useful, even though I am no beauty?”
Mr. Bufo had scarcely finished, when his mate hopped out from some
nearby bushes.
“I’d be ashamed,” she said, in a very puffy voice, “to sit there
repeating that lovely poetry, with such shabby clothes as yours are. How
many more times must I tell you to change them?”
“It doesn’t matter about his clothes,” said Ruth. “I think it is so
lovely to hear him talk.”
“You haven’t heard him as often as I have,” puffed Mrs. Bufo, hopping
almost into Ruth’s lap. “Besides, his clothes are a disgrace. They are
not only faded and dull, but they are actually beginning to split up the
back.”
“Are they?” croaked Mr. Bufo meekly.
Then he drew a film over his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
“Now look here,” said Mrs. Bufo, “you can’t deceive me. That is only
your third eyelid. You are not asleep. Now do get off those old
clothes.”
“Well, if I must, I must,” croaked Mr. Bufo, hopping away.
“There, I’ve made him do it at last,” puffed Mrs. Bufo, swallowing a
passing fly. “It’s a hard job, and I don’t blame him for getting out of
it as long as possible. He has to twist and turn, and use first one leg
and then another, until he is quite free from his old suit, and then,
tired as he is, he must eat it.”
“Eat it?” repeated Ruth, screwing up her face.
“Yes, eat it, and not a tooth to chew with either. I can’t see why we
haven’t teeth like those horrid frogs, though, to tell the truth, theirs
are no good for chewing. They only have them in their upper jaws, and
they point backward, too, like fish teeth. I can’t see that they help
much in chewing, but they do help to hold what the frog wishes to
swallow, and, after all, we toads and frogs are swallowers rather than
chewers.”
As she spoke, several flies went to prove her words.
“Yes,” she added with a big puff, which Ruth took for a sigh, “we have
our troubles and worries from early Spring, when we leave our holes,
where we sleep all Winter, to the time when frost drives us into our
holes again, and no one seems to think about the work we do. The garden
couldn’t have a better friend, for the bugs and harmful insects we eat
can’t be counted. Well, there’s no use talking this way. I must go to
Mr. Bufo. He’ll need some cheering up, I’m sure. One good thing, he
won’t have to make his new suit. He’ll find it all ready under his old
one.”
“Well, she does think of him, anyhow,” thought Ruth as Mrs. Bufo hopped
away. “I hope she will talk to me again some day.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III
RUTH AND THE WONDERFUL SPINNERS
She throws a web upon the air and soon
’Tis caught and lifted by the willing breezes,
Then, freed from trouble in her light balloon,
Our spinner travels wheresoe’re she pleases.
—_Edith M. Thomas._
Ruth was in the garden counting colours among the hollyhocks when a
little breeze hurried by.
“Come,” it said, kissing her cheek, “and hurry; things are going to
happen.”
“It is my dear Wind,” cried Ruth, her eyes growing big with expectation,
and, stopping just long enough to snatch up Belinda, who of course would
wish to go, too, she followed where the little breeze led.
This was to a lovely spot on the edge of the wood, and one of the first
things she saw was a big round spider’s web on the branches of a tall
bush.
“Oh,” she said, going up closer, “who would ever think a spider could
make anything like that?”
“Indeed,” said a voice which made her give a little jump, “who else but
a spider could spin a web, I’d like to know? You haven’t any brains, I’m
thinking.”
“Oh, please excuse me,” said Ruth. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“That’s because you don’t use your eyes properly,” was the answer of the
large, handsome black and gold spider hanging head down from the centre
of the big web.
Her eight long, slender legs were outstretched and rested by their tips
on the bases of the taut radii, and her eight eyes were staring at Ruth.
“I saw you as soon as you came,” she said.
“I suppose you will stay to the meeting. I’m to be chair-spider.”
“Chair-spider?” repeated Ruth, slightly confused by those eight bright
eyes. “And please, what meeting?”
“Why, our meeting, of course. Mrs. Cobweb Weaver says men always have a
chairman at their meetings, so why shouldn’t spiders have a
chair-spider, I’d like to know?”
“I suppose they should,” agreed Ruth.
“Of course we should. Considering you are a human creature, with only
two eyes, two legs, and no spinnerets, you really show a great deal of
sense. Now sit down on the crotch of that little tree, then you will be
near me and can hear all I say. What’s that thing you are carrying?”
“Why, it’s Belinda, my doll,” explained Ruth. “I tell her everything. I
think she will like your—your—meeting.”
“Well, I don’t care whether she does or not,” said Madame Spider. “Now
our friends are arriving, and as you can see, with even two eyes, they
are all shapes and sizes. Long legged, short legged, plump, thin, grave
and gay. All colours too—quite enough to satisfy any taste, I should
say.”
Ruth looked about her in wide-eyed astonishment.
“I never knew there were so many kinds of spiders,” she said at last,
“or that they had such lovely colours. I thought spiders were mostly
grayish or brownish.”
“That is because you haven’t used your eyes, as I said before; but you
are only like others of your kind. Such ignorance! Because some spiders
are dull and colourless, most people imagine that all are so. I suppose
they think, if they stop to think at all, that all kinds of webs are
spun by the same kind of spider, and that all spiders spin webs.”
“Don’t they?” asked Ruth, with some hesitation, for Mrs. Spider’s
indignation made her look quite fierce.
“They do _not_,” was the decided answer. “All spiders are spinners, but
not all are web makers.”
Ruth looked puzzled.
“You see,” explained Mrs. Spider, “it all depends upon the way they
catch their prey. Spider habits are as different as their looks. Some
like the sun, others prefer the shade. Some live in the forest, and
others with the house people. Many make their home in the bark of trees,
and under stones.”
“I’ve seen that kind,” interrupted Ruth, eagerly, “and when you lift up
the stone they run awfully fast. Sometimes they have a funny little gray
bundle, just as the ants carry their babies. Maybe it’s their babies
too. Is it?”
“Well, they will be babies if nothing happens. Those gray bundles are
cocoons full of eggs. The mother spins the cocoon of silk from her own
body.”
“Oh, now, I understand. They are spinners, but they don’t have any web.
Isn’t that it?”
“Exactly. They do not need a web. They spring on their prey when the
prey isn’t looking. We call them hunters, also runners.”
“Well, they _can_ run,” said Ruth.
[Illustration: “‘THE MOTHER SPINS THE COCOON OF SILK FROM HER OWN
BODY’”]
“The flower spiders are not web spinners either,” went on Madame Spider,
who seemed to like nothing better than to talk. “They live among
flowers, and eat the visiting insects. You can see some of them over
there. Talk about colours! They are gay enough, just like flowers
themselves. Perhaps you can guess why.”
Ruth thought a few minutes.
“Well,” she said, “if they were the same colour as the flower they
couldn’t be seen so easily. I saw something walk out of an ear of corn
once, and it looked like a kernel of corn on eight legs. It was awful
funny. Was that a spider?”
“Very likely. We are wonderful enough for anything. I suppose you have
never heard of the trapdoor spider and his silk-lined burrow, with its
little hinged door, nor of the spider who lives under the water, in a
tiny silken house, which she spins herself, and fills with air carried
down, bubble by bubble, from the surface. Don’t look as though you
didn’t believe me. It isn’t polite. I am telling you the truth. Very
likely you’ll doubt me when I say that we sail in balloons, of our own
making, and cross streams of water on bridges, which we can fashion as
we need them—that is, we orb weavers do, for, after all, we stand at the
head of the spider clan. Did you know I was an orb weaver?”
“I—I—haven’t thought about it,” said Ruth, slowly, for the question had
come very suddenly, “but I’d like you to go on telling me things. Do you
always hang with your head down? I should think it would make you
dizzy.”
“Dizzy? Whoever heard of such a thing? Of course I keep my head down,
and my toes on my telegraph lines. Then I can feel the least tremble in
any one of them, and I’m pretty quick to run where I know my dinner is
waiting. Sometimes I don’t hurry quite so fast. That is when the line
trembles in a way which lets me know that something big has been caught.
Indeed, there are times when I bite the threads around what might have
been my dinner, and let it go; for it is wiser to lose a meal than run
the chance of being a meal.” And Mrs. Orb Weaver winked, not with one
eye only, but with all eight. “Now it is time to talk to the company,”
she added, “as I am chair-spider.”
She said the last words in a loud voice, intended for all to hear; then
she looked around to see if any one objected.
“They had better not,” she said to Ruth, and in a louder voice, added:
“My friends, we are not appreciated. Men talk about the wonderful bees,
the wonderful wasps, the wonderful ants, but few of them say anything
about the wonderful spiders. Now we are wonderful, too, and we are
honest, and we are industrious. We eat flies and lots of other pests,
and we do not hurt orchards, or steal into pantries, or chew up clothes.
Indeed, we do man no harm at all. But is he grateful? Tell me that. I’ll
tell you he isn’t. Ask Mrs. Cobweb Weaver if there isn’t always some
broom sweeping down the nice web she makes. I wonder she doesn’t hate a
broom. No, my friends, man is not grateful. Even those who call
themselves our friends are ready to pop us into bottles, or boxes,
whenever they get a chance. They give us what they call a painless death
in the cause of science. Now we would rather live in our own cause. At
least I would.”
Mrs. Orb Weaver had become so excited that her whole web was shaking
violently.
Ruth was excited, too.
“It’s rather horrid to do that way,” she said, “but maybe people don’t
know about you. I didn’t until to-day. The wonderful things I mean, and
I want to know lots more. How your web is made and—and—everything.
Please tell me.”
“Why, certainly,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver readily. “To begin with, my
web is made of silk.”
“Who didn’t know that?” snapped a running spider.
“I didn’t,” answered Ruth.
“You! And who are you, pray?”
“Be quiet,” commanded Mrs. Orb Weaver. “She is my guest, and anything
she wishes to know I shall be happy to tell her. Now, to get on, our
webs are made of silk, and the silk comes from our own bodies, through
little tubes called spinnerets. It is soft at first, but gets harder
when it reaches the air, just like caterpillar silk. We guide each
thread with our hind feet, making heavier strands by twisting a number
of fine ones together. Of course, we spin the foundation lines first.
They are the ones which fix the web to the bush. Then the ray lines,
those like the spokes in a wheel. They are all heavy strands, and only
after they are finished do we spin the real snare, the lines which run
around. They are very fine, and are covered with a sort of glue, for
they have to catch and hold the flies and other insects that come on the
web. We orb weavers are the only ones who have this glue. No other
spiders use it. They trust to the meshes of the web to entangle their
prey.”
“But why don’t the sticky parts catch you too?” asked Ruth, who had been
listening with eager attention. “I’ve seen you run all over your web
and——”
“We never get caught. Of course not,” finished Mrs. Orb Weaver. “And
why? That’s a question. The wise men don’t know, and if we do, we are
not telling. Now I am getting hungry, so I think I will tell a little
story, then we will adjourn. I am sorry there isn’t time for Mrs. Funnel
Weaver to speak.”
“But there is,” declared a large brown spider, whose body looked as
though it were set on a framework of legs. “I mean to speak too—if only
to point out all those webs in the grass.”
“Oh, I’ve often seen webs like that,” said Ruth. “They are lovely with
dew on them. But why do you call yourself a funnel weaver?”
“I don’t!” she snapped. “The men, who think they know everything, gave
me that name, because at one side of my web is a funnel-shaped tube. It
is our way to escape our enemies. We run through it into the grass when
something too big for us to manage gets into our web.”
“I generally make my web in houses,” said a small, slender-legged,
light-coloured spider.
She spoke in a hurry, as though she was afraid some one might stop her
before she finished. “I have cousins who like fields and fences and
outbuildings, but our webs are all the same pattern. Not so regular as
yours, Mrs. Orb Weaver, but very fine and delicate.”
“Oh, everybody knows you, Mrs. Cobweb Weaver,” said a voice from a
nearby twig. “Now if you are speaking of legs——”
“We are not,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver, “and I should like to know how
you came here.”
“On my legs of course. Don’t you think they are long enough? And though
I can neither spin nor weave, I am your relation, and I have as much
right to be here as you have. I——”
“Why, it’s Daddy Long Legs,” interrupted Ruth, with a friendly smile of
recognition. “I like daddies.”
“Well, I am not saying anything about my legs,” remarked a fat little
spider, as Daddy tried to bow to Ruth, “though I have eight of them. I
usually travel in a balloon, which I make myself. Oh, I tell you, it is
fine to go
“Sailing mid the golden air
In skiffs of yielding gossamer.”
[Illustration: “‘WHY, IT’S DADDY LONG LEGS’”]
“Poetry,” said a handsome spider, wheeling back and forth on a silken
bridge swung between two bushes. “I could have learned some too, but I
didn’t know it was allowed. Of course I can build bridges. Who is asking
that idiotic question? You?” And eight glaring eyes were fixed upon
Ruth. “Maybe you don’t know that spiders were the first bridge builders
and when men suspend their great bridges to-day they follow our ideas
and ways, without giving us the least credit; but that’s the way with
men.”
“Well, we can’t expect to regulate men,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver, “and,
besides, it’s time to tell my story, and then you will know why we get
our name, and why we are such wonderful spinners. Now listen, all of
you:
“Once upon a time——”
Ruth chuckled contentedly. All nice stories began, “Once upon a time.”
“Please go on,” she whispered eagerly.
“Then don’t interrupt me,” said Mrs. Orb Weaver, and she began again:
“Once upon a time, ever so long ago, there lived in a beautiful land
called Greece a maiden named Arachne. Arachne was not only fair to look
upon, but she could also spin and weave in a fashion so wondrously fine
that all who saw her work said that the great Athena herself must have
been her teacher. Now this surely was praise enough, but Arachne was
vain. ‘Nay,’ she said, ‘no one has taught me, and gladly will I weave
with the great goddess herself, and thus prove the skill to be all my
own.’ Her words only shocked all who heard them, but Arachne cared not,
and again repeated her wish to try her skill with Athena.
“So it happened that as she sat spinning one day an old woman, leaning
on a staff, stopped by her loom.
“‘Child,’ she said in a gentle voice, ‘a great gift is yours.’
“Arachne tossed her head, and answered scornfully:
“‘Well do I know it, yet Athena dares not try her skill with mine.’
“‘Dares not?’ repeated the old dame, in tones that should have made
Arachne tremble. ‘Dares not, say you? Foolish maiden, be warned in
time.’
“But Arachne was too proud to yield, and she still persisted, even
though the old dame had dropped her mantle, and stood revealed as the
great goddess herself.
“‘Be it so,’ said Athena, sternly, and both began to weave.
“For hours their shuttles flew in and out. Arachne’s work was wonderful,
but for her theme she had chosen the weakness and the failure of the
gods. Athena pictured forth their greatness. The sky was her loom, and
from the rainbow she chose her colours, and when her work was finished
and its splendours spanned the heavens, Arachne realized that she had
failed.
“Ashamed and miserable, she sought to hang herself in the meshes of her
web.
“‘Nay, rash maid,’ spoke Athena; ‘thou shalt not die, but live to be the
mother of a great race, the most wonderful spinners on earth.’
“Even as Athena spoke, Arachne grew smaller and smaller, until not a
maiden, but a spider, hung from that marvellous web.
“And now, my friends,” finished Mrs. Orb Weaver, “need I tell you that
we are the wonderful race of which Athena spoke, and need _I_ add that
we have inherited Arachne’s marvellous skill, and are truly the most
wonderful spinners on earth? Now I am hungry and the meeting is
adjourned.”
“So am I,” added Daddy Long Legs, “not adjourned, but hungry, and, by
the way, do you imagine any one believes that old story?”
He winked at Ruth, and then moved away as fast as his long legs would
carry him.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV
MRS. MOSQUITO AND HER KIN
“Thou art welcome to the town, but why come here
To bleed a fellow poet gaunt like thee?
Alas! the little blood I have is dear,
And thin will be the banquet drawn from me.”
—_Bryant._
“That horrid mosquito,” said Ruth, waking with a start, and slapping her
cheek.
“Aha! you didn’t get me that time,” answered a thin, high-pitched voice!
Ruth sat up. She had been asleep under the apple tree, but she was quite
awake now.
“Where are you?” she asked, “and are you really talking?”
“I seem to be,” answered the mosquito, “though you tried to finish me
just now. I bear no ill-will, though. I am quite used to being an
outlaw. What is more, I don’t intend to be any better. I shall go on
biting people as much as I please. I must have my meals as well as the
rest of the world. People seem to forget that fact.”
“But just biting people——” began Ruth.
“It isn’t just biting,” put in the mosquito. “It really isn’t biting at
all. I have a sharp little instrument to pierce the skin of the fellow I
choose for my dinner, and the best kind of sucking pump to pump up his
blood. That’s the way I get my meals. It is different with my mate. He
is a harmless sort of fellow. He can’t even sing, and he likes such baby
food as the nectar of flowers. Now tell me why I am different from other
insect musicians.”
She fixed her big eyes on Ruth, who moved uneasily, and answered with
not a little hesitation:
“I—I—really don’t know.”
“I’m a female. That’s why. In all the orders, so far as I know, the
singers are males. Naturally I am proud of being an exception. Well, you
didn’t know that. Do you know why I don’t care for science?”
“It is just like an examination,” thought Ruth, and again she answered.
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Mrs. Mosquito. “Is there anything you _do_
know? Well, I suppose I must tell you. I don’t care for science, because
it interferes too much. Once upon a time men were our friends. We not
only had nice juicy meals from them, but we had their rain barrels as
nurseries for our children. Of course, what they said about us, when we
came too near them, was not always complimentary, but a mosquito,
attending strictly to business, doesn’t mind a little thing like that.
But now come these fellows who know so much, or think they know so much.
We carry malaria, they say, whatever that is, and the rain barrel must
go, because it helps to breed mosquitoes. Not only that, these
interfering fellows seem to spend their time thinking up ways to finish
us. Well, I sting them every chance I get.”
“But alas! the rain barrel is going. I was hatched in one of the few to
be found in these sad days. I was a lively baby, I can tell you. Young
mosquitoes are called wrigglers and, true to my name, I wriggled for all
I was worth. Now, when you know that my mother had laid something like
three hundred eggs, and all had hatched into wrigglers as lively as
myself, you can imagine the time there was in that old rain barrel.”
“But why,” asked Ruth “are you called wrigglers when you are young, and
mosquitoes when you are grown up?”
“Why are you called baby when you are born, girl when you are half
grown, and woman when you are quite grown?” replied Mrs. Mosquito, and
Ruth said no more.
“Now,” went on Mrs. Mosquito, “I should like to tell you more about
wrigglers, how they stand on their heads and breathe with their tails,
and how they shed their skins when they become full-grown mosquitoes,
but I haven’t time. The others are coming.”
“Others?” repeated Ruth. “What others?”
“The members of the Diptera order of course,” answered Mrs. Mosquito,
with an important air. “You see, I found you sleeping under the tree and
I knew you wanted to learn about the things that are worth while, and as
we are very worth while, I sent a friend to tell all the members of our
order to meet in this spot.”
“Exactly what that young mosquito told me,” said Mrs. Hessian Fly,
buzzing up excitedly.
She was a dusky-winged creature, scarcely more than an eighth of an inch
long.
“What is the Diptera anyhow?”
“Why, you are one,” explained Mrs. Mosquito, with a superior smile. “It
is quite a tax to know things for everybody,” she said to Ruth, “but you
see I am around men so much I learn a great deal. I once attended a
meeting of the men who think themselves wise. I wasn’t invited, you
understand, but I went, and I attracted much attention too. Well, this
is what I heard: The audience will please listen, it concerns you all:
“‘The members of the order Diptera have two gauzy wings and two
thread-like organs with knobs at the end in the place where most other
insects have a second pair of wings. Their mouth is framed for sucking,
and sometimes for piercing. Only a few make cocoons. Their larvæ are
called maggots, and they have no legs. Some are vegetable eaters, some
carnivorous, and many are scavengers.’ They said all that about us, and
maybe it’s true, but I tell you every man in that meeting felt my
sting.”
“I don’t care what they say,” remarked Mrs. Hessian Fly. “To be talked
about shows our importance, though I have never doubted mine. My family
is a Revolutionary one, as my ancestors came over with the Hessians. Of
course you have heard of them?”
“No, I am only interested in the people who live now,” answered Mrs.
Mosquito.
“Well, I live now,” said Mrs. Hessian Fly, “and I am interesting enough
for any use. I don’t make galls like so many flies, but simply lay my
eggs in young blades of wheat, and when my little red babies hatch, they
have only to crawl down and fasten themselves to the tender stalk, just
below the ground. Don’t they love the sap, though? A field of wheat
looks pretty sick after they have worked on it a while. Sometimes the
wheat midges help them and then it is good-by to the wheat. Mrs. Wheat
Midge, you know, lays her eggs in the opening flower of the grain, and
her babies eat the pollen and ovule. You may guess what happens then.”
“I think it is real horrid to do that,” said Ruth.
“And what do you know about it, pray?” retorted Mrs. Hessian Fly. “We
must all eat to live.”
“We certainly must,” said a house fly, flitting up with a loud buzz. “I
have just escaped with my life. A cook wanted to take it because I tried
to lay some eggs on her meat. What better place could a fly ask, I’d
like to know? If Mrs. Blow Fly had been there, she would have put her
eggs on that meat, screen or no screen. She is a most determined body
and she can drop her eggs through the finest mesh, if she makes up her
mind to do it.”
“Is Mrs. Blow Fly that big, buzzing, blue-bodied thing that is such a
botheration?” asked Ruth.
“She’s big and blue, and she buzzes, or talks, with her wings, as we all
do,” answered Mrs. House Fly, with dignity, “but she isn’t a thing.
She’s a fly. There are hundreds of different kinds of flies, I’d like
you to understand. The kind like me live in houses, but some prefer
stables. They seem to like to stay with horses and cows, and are rather
common. They have beautiful eyes, though, and plenty of them. Would you
believe it, my head is nearly all eyes? I have thousands of tiny ones in
my two big ones, not to mention the three single ones at the top of my
head.”
“Gracious!” said Ruth. “No wonder it is so hard to catch you. But
doesn’t it make you dizzy when you walk upside down, and how do you keep
from falling?”
“Of course we don’t get dizzy and it is easy enough to keep from falling
if you have pads and fine hairs on your feet. They just hold you to the
place you are standing on. Men seem to consider this quite a wonderful
thing. One of them has written some poetry about it. This is how it
goes:
“What a wonderful fellow is Mr. Fly,
He goes where he pleases, low or high,
And can walk just as well with his feet to the sky
As I can on the floor.”
“Say,” spoke up a slim, narrow-winged creature with abnormally long
legs, “I’m one of your relations, though I can’t walk upside down.”
“You?” repeated Mrs. House Fly, contemptuously. “Why, you can’t walk
decently right side up.”
“It is true,” sighed the crane fly. “I haven’t even the grace of Daddy
Long Legs, for:
“My six long legs all here and there
Oppress my bosom with despair.”
“Well, I don’t care about your legs,” said Mrs. House Fly. “I was
speaking of my relations—my _smart_ relations. All are not smart. I have
some who need only bite the twig of a tree and lay their eggs there, and
what do you suppose happens? A round ball grows over the spot and men
call it a gall, but it is really a tiny house for my cousin’s babies. I
have another cousin, whose name is Cecidomyia strobiloides. It is long
for such a tiny creature, but she bears up very well under it.”
“I couldn’t ever pronounce it,” said Ruth. “What does she do, please?”
“She flies to a willow tree in the Spring, before the leaves are out,
and with a spear on the end of her body she cuts a gash in the tip end
of the bud, just where it is most tender and juicy. She lays an egg in
the gash; then goes to another twig, and does the same thing, until she
has laid as many eggs as she wishes. When her babies hatch, they do not
look at all like their gauzy-winged little gray mother, nor do they care
for sun or air. In fact, they never stir from their cells. They can eat,
though, and the sap of the tree is their food.”
“You all seem to think a good deal of eating,” said Ruth.
“Of course. Isn’t that what we are hatched for? But my cousin’s babies
have lost their appetites by the Fall, and then they go to sleep. They
wake up in the Spring, and, strange to say, they have grown exactly like
their mother and are ready to lay eggs on some more willow twigs. Very
likely the willow tree does not care to have them do it, for the twig
where their cradle is does not grow into a branch as the tree meant it
should. Instead, the small leaves just crowd upon each other, until they
look like a green pine cone.”
“I hope it will never happen to my willow tree,” said Ruth; “but please
tell me more things. They are very interesting.”
“Interesting? I should say so. Indeed, I could go on talking all day,
and not tell you one half the things we can do. But life is too
uncertain to waste it all in talking.”
“Life is certainly full of accidents,” buzzed a big horse fly. “I’m here
to tell Mrs. Mosquito, if she is looking for the messenger she sent out
a while ago, she’d better make up her mind never to see her again. She
went too near a horrid warty toad, and you can guess the rest.”
“We can,” sighed Mrs. Mosquito. “If it isn’t frogs, it’s toads and——”
“Often it’s birds,” finished Mrs. Horse Fly, “and they are the worst of
all.”
“Such subjects remind me that I am hungry,” said Mrs. Mosquito, “and I’m
off to find a juicy somebody for dinner. I think I shall lay some eggs
too.”
“I wonder if it was my toad who ate that mosquito,” thought Ruth, as she
watched the audience fly away.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V
RUTH HEARS ABOUT SOME WATER BABIES
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk, from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
—_Tennyson._
Ruth lay in the grass, under the old willow tree, watching a dainty
little creature with a pale green body and four gauzy wings flashing
with all the tints of the rainbow.
“What a beautiful dragon fly,” she said, half under her breath. “I never
saw one so lovely before. I wonder if it is a dragon fly. Do you think
it is, Belinda?”
“I am not a dragon fly,” came in answer from the dainty creature
herself. “I’m a lacewing. Why don’t you use your eyes? It’s about time
you learned something.”
“I do want to learn,” said Ruth meekly. “I am trying all the time. I
wish you would tell me things. I thought you were prettier than most
dragon flies.”
Mrs. Lacewing looked pleased. “Now you show your taste,” she said, “and
I am quite willing to help you. Just wait a little while, and see what
happens. Then if you don’t like it, well——” And without waiting to say
more, or to let Ruth thank her, she was off.
“I think she means to come back,” said Ruth, expecting, she scarcely
knew what, “and it will be nice, I am sure. Oh, Belinda, isn’t it just
like living in Fairyland, since we can hear what they talk about? There!
what did I tell you! It is Fairyland.”
Ruth added this with a rapturous little squeeze, for just then she saw
the lacewing flying toward her, and with her many other beautiful winged
creatures.
“The order Neuroptera, or the nerve wings,” said the lacewing, flitting
close to Ruth, “that is some of them.” Then she introduced Ruth as a
friend, adding in a self-satisfied tone: “She thinks I’m beautiful, and
I quite agree with her, don’t you?”
Apparently the audience did. Of course she _was_ beautiful, and,
besides, she carried a scent bag which was not at all pleasant, and they
knew they were likely to have the full benefit of it if they
contradicted or displeased her.
“Now we’ll begin,” she went on, with the air of one who had settled all
difficulties, but the next second she stopped, and, looking at a group
of caddice flies, she asked sternly:
“Why are you here? and bless my wings, if there aren’t dragon flies, and
stone flies, and, who would believe it, May flies. Now you know that not
one of you belongs to our order.”
“Well, we belonged to it once,” answered a caddice fly, speaking for
all.
“But I don’t understand,” began Ruth.
“Then don’t say anything,” put in a dragon fly, darting before her.
“Keep quiet and listen, and you’ll learn things. Besides, it is very
rude to interrupt people.”
Ruth felt snubbed, and tried to turn her back on the dragon fly, but, as
he seemed to be everywhere at once, she found it impossible.
The caddice fly was still speaking. “We can’t always remember,” she
said, “and I should like to know what right the wise men have to take us
out of one order and put us in a sub-order.”
“Right is the last thing they think about,” spoke up a stone fly, “but I
really care very little whether I’m called Neuroptera, as I was once, or
Plecoptera, as I am now. Life is just as uncertain and full of
accidents. Why, my friends, it is the greatest wonder I lived to grow
up.” She sighed and began to fan her long, fat body with her broad fore
wings.
“You know I was once a water baby.”
“Water baby?” repeated Ruth. “Wouldn’t your wings——”
“No they wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Stone Fly, “because I hadn’t any wings
then. I was homely, flat, six-legged, and just the colour of the stone
under which I spent most of my young life, hiding. I had to hide, or the
boys would have found me and used me for bait. Think of it! Bait!”
And Mrs. Stone Fly, quite overcome, could say no more.
“We came to make a few remarks,” said one of a swarm of May flies that
had been hovering about, “but we must go now. Life is too short for
talking.”
“Poor things,” said Mrs. Lacewing, “life with them is indeed short. No
wonder they are called Ephemerida. Think of living only for a day!”
“But they lived a long time as Nymphs,” said the dragon fly, who was
still darting about, now here, now there, like a flash of living flame.
“I know, because they were water babies like me. They could eat too,
then, and the number of times they changed their skins was a caution.
Why, my friends, they even change them after they leave the water and
have their wings. No other insect does that.”
“Now, my story, in the beginning, is something like theirs. I, too, was
born in the bottom of the pond and, no doubt, I played with some of you,
or I may have tried to make a meal of you. Well, if I did I failed, and
I shouldn’t be blamed for the sins of my youth. All of us eat when we
can get the chance, and there’s no use in being sorry for the dinner. I
suppose you would like to hear how I managed to get into the pond?” He
looked at Ruth, who nodded her head, though she was still laughing at
the idea of being sorry for a dinner.
“You see,” explained Mrs. Lacewing, “the dinner might be your nearest
relation.”
“Just so,” agreed the dragon fly. “Now my mother, for of course I had a
mother, though like most pond people I never knew her——”
“Do get to the point,” said an ant lion impatiently; “we are all growing
old.”
“Well, the point is my mother,” answered the dragon fly, undisturbed,
“but first I should say that I no longer belong to the order Neuroptera,
but to the sub-order Ordonata. It means something about a tooth, but if
I have any teeth, I don’t know it. Now to get back to the point: my
mother flew down to the water one day, and when she left it there was a
cluster of small yellow eggs floating on the surface. I came from one of
those eggs, and I didn’t look like a dragon fly, I can tell you. I had
six tiny spider-like legs, but not a sign of wings, and when I breathed
it was not as I do now, like all perfect insects, through openings on
each side of my body. I had gills, and a tube at the end of my body
brought fresh water to them. This tube was a funny affair. It really
helped me along, for when I spurted water through it I was pushed
forward. Then I had a wonderful mouth, with a long under lip, that I
could dart out and catch anything within reach, while I did not need to
move my body at all.”
“Just like frogs and toads!” cried Ruth.
“Not at all,” answered the dragon fly. “They only send out their
tongues. I send out my whole under lip. If you could only keep quiet you
would not show your ignorance so plainly.”
Once more Ruth was snubbed, and the dragon fly continued:
“In time I became a pupa.”
Ruth looked the question she dared not ask.
“I’ll explain,” said the dragon fly, amiably. “Larva—that’s what I was
at first—means mask, or something that hides you. You will find out in
time, if you do not know now, that the larva of an insect is really a
mask which hides its true form. The plural of the word is larvæ. Now
pupa, plural pupæ, means baby. It is usually the state of sleep in which
the larva lies after spinning its cocoon or cradle, but in my case it
didn’t suit at all. Dragon flies, far from sleeping in the pupa state,
seem to grow more active, and their appetites are larger. Indeed, I will
say right here, everything that came my way, and was not too big, went
into my mouth. In fact, I finally reached my limit and burst.”
“Gracious!” cried Ruth in a shocked tone. “How _did_ you get yourself
together again?”
“Well, you see, the whole of me didn’t burst. I simply grew too big for
my skin, or my pupa case, as the wise men call it, and it cracked right
open. I was climbing on a water plant when this happened, for all at
once I had felt a longing to leave the water and get to the open air. My
first effort was to get rid of the useless old shell which still clung
to me, but I had quite a tussle before I could do so, and afterward I
was very weak and tired. But the result was worth all my labour, for I
found myself with these four wings, and the rest of my beautiful body,
and I needed only to dry myself before sailing away on the wind, the
swiftest thing on wings, and the most renowned mosquito killer on
record. Of course, my legs aren’t arranged for walking. Why should they
be? All six of them go forward, as if they were reaching for something,
and so they are, reaching for something to eat. Woe betide any insect I
start after. I catch him every time. I ought to, for I have thousands of
eyes, and I can fly forward, backward, or any old way. I never stop to
eat my dinner either. I hold it, and eat it as I go. Now if I had time,
I would tell you how the children of Japan make a holiday, and go out to
catch us for pets, and how they sing pretty songs to us and——”
“It is about time you stopped,” interrupted Mrs. Ant Lion. “You have
tried our patience long enough, and I mean to speak this very minute.
I’ve been told I am much like the dragon flies,” she added to the
company, “but my babies are not at all like theirs. They do not belong
to the water, and I am glad of it. I’m tired of water babies. I’ve heard
so much of them to-day. My mother had the good sense to lay her eggs in
sand, and I shall do the same. I was hungry from the minute I was
hatched, and I would have run after something to eat right away, only I
found I couldn’t. My legs were fixed in such a way I had to walk
backward.”
“Backward?” echoed Ruth.
“Yes, backward. So there was nothing to do but to dig a trap for my
dinner, and I set about it pretty quick. No one showed me how, either. I
simply used my shovel-shaped head, and before long I had made quite a
pit, broad and rounded at the top, and sloping to a point like a funnel
at the bottom. You have seen them, of course?”
“I think I have,” answered Ruth.
“They are not hard to find if you keep your eyes open,” went on the ant
lion.
“Well, as I said, I made one of these pits, and in the funnel end I lay
in wait for ants. Soon one came along, slipped over the edge, as I
expected, and tumbled right into my open mouth. Nor was she the only
one. Some were strong enough to turn, even while they were slipping, and
start to crawl up again, but I just heaped some sand on my head and
threw it at them, and down they would come. My aim was always good, so
were the ants, though I only sucked their juice. Of course I did not
leave their skins around to frighten away other ants. I piled them on my
head, and gave them a toss, which sent them some distance away. After a
time I stopped eating, and made a cocoon. Then I went to sleep!—for many
days—during which I changed wonderfully, as any one must know who has
seen ant lion babies and now sees me. This is all of my story, and I
suppose we will hear about another tiresome water baby.”
[Illustration: “‘I MADE ONE OF THESE PITS AND IN THE FUNNEL END I LAY IN
WAIT FOR ANTS’”]
“You shall hear about a water baby,” replied Mrs. Caddice Fly, waving
her antennæ by way of salute, “but tiresome will do for your own homely
children. I will begin by saying that, with the accidents of life, it is
a wonder that any of us are here. When we caddice flies were hatched we
were soft, white, six-footed babies. We were called worms, though we
were not worms. Think of it! Soft bodied, with not very strong legs,
white, and living at the bottom of the pond. Could anything be worse? No
wonder we seemed to do nothing at first but try to get away from things
that wanted to eat us. I tell you, pond life is most exciting. After a
while the front part of our bodies and our heads began to turn brown,
and, as the rest of us was white, and seemed likely to stay so, we all
decided to make a case or house to cover our white part. So we set to
work and of bits of sticks, tiny stones, and broken shells, glued
together with silk from our own bodies, we made these cases. True, many
of us went down the throat of Belostoma, the giant water bug, before we
had finished, but those of us who didn’t crawled into our little houses,
locking ourselves in by two strong hooks which grew at the end of our
bodies. We could move about, but of course we carried our houses with us
and——”
“How ridiculous!” said Mrs. Ant Lion. “Why didn’t you stay still?”
“Because we didn’t wish to,” answered the caddice fly. “We had to eat,
and we had to get away from those who wished to eat us. At last we went
to sleep, after first spinning a veil of silk over our front and back
doors. I can’t answer for the others, but when I awoke I tore open my
silken door, threw aside my pupa skin, and found I had wings. Since then
I have had a new life, but even that has its enemies, and one never
knows what will happen.”
With which doleful saying Mrs. Caddice Fly sailed away to the pond to
lay some eggs among the water plants.
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Lacewing, “we seem to need something cheerful after
that. I am glad I never lived in the water, if it makes one so blue. Now
I shall tell you what my babies _will do_, not what I _have done_. Of
course it is the same thing, but it is looking forward rather than to
the past. After this meeting is over I shall lay some eggs, on just what
plant I haven’t yet decided, but it will be in the midst of a herd of
aphides. Be sure of that. Aphides are plant lice,” she explained, seeing
the question in Ruth’s eyes. “You will learn more of them later. Now as
to the way I shall lay my eggs: First, from the tip of my body I shall
drop a thick gummy fluid, and draw it out into a long, stiff, upright
thread, and upon the end of this thread I shall fasten an egg. I shall
lay a number of eggs in this way, each on its own pole, so to speak.
Some people may think my way odd, but it is very wise. A lacewing knows
her children. They are not beautiful. Such short-legged, spindle-shaped
things couldn’t be pretty, but they are sturdy, and they have an endless
appetite.”
“I should think they would feel lonely on those ridiculous poles,” said
Mrs. Ant Lion.
“Not at all. They are not there long enough to feel lonely. They are in
too great a hurry for dinner. They are hungry, with a big H. Now just
suppose I should lay my eggs as the rest of you do, ever so many
together, what do you think would happen? I will tell you in a few
words. The dear child who came out first would eat all his unhatched
brothers and sisters. He doesn’t, only because he can’t reach them.”
“It’s a wonder he doesn’t eat his pole,” said Ruth, her face showing
what she thought of such babies.
“Yes, it is,” agreed Mrs. Lacewing, “but, strange to say, he doesn’t
seem to care for it. Indeed, he leaves it as quickly as he can, and goes
hunting. Of course he needn’t hunt far, for he is in the midst of
aphides. Every mother looks out for that, and really it is quite a
pleasure to see him suck the juice from aphid after aphid, holding each
one high in the air in his own funny way. So you can see why lacewing
babies are friends to the farmer and the fruit grower, for aphides kill
plants and trees, and young lacewings kill aphides. They can eat and eat
and eat, and never grow tired of aphides. Indeed, they really deserve
their name—aphislion. When they do stop eating it is to fall into their
long sleep, but first they weave a cocoon as beautiful as a seed pearl,
in which they change into a most lovely creature—one like me. Now our
meeting is adjourned, and I hope a certain person has learned a few
things.”
“Oh, ever and ever so many, thank you,” answered Ruth gratefully.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI
RUTH GOES TO A CONCERT
Oh, sweet and tiny cousins that belong,
One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine.
—_Leigh Hunt._
Ruth and Belinda were crossing the meadow, when a big grasshopper made a
flying leap, and landed on Belinda’s head.
“Do excuse me,” he said; “I missed my aim. No one hurt, I hope, or
frightened?”
“Oh, no,” answered Ruth. “Belinda is real sensible; she isn’t afraid of
anything, and I am just as glad—as _glad_—to see you. Maybe you will——”
Ruth hesitated, hoping he would know what she meant to say. She was sure
he could tell her a great many things, if only he would. He was so
polite and nice; besides, he looked very wise.
“I suppose you’re going to the concert,” said Mr. Grasshopper, after
waiting a second for Ruth to finish her sentence.
“Concert?” she repeated, opening her eyes wide. “What concert?”
“Why the Straightwings’ Concert. They give one every sunny day in
Summer. Didn’t you know that? Dear me, where were you hatched and where
have you been living since? Well, why do you stare at me so? Don’t you
like my looks?”
“Oh, yes,” Ruth hastened to answer. “You look very nice—something like a
little old man.”
“I’ve heard that before, and there’s a story about it. Shall I tell it?”
“Yes, please; I just love stories.”
“Very well. Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived in Greece a
beautiful young man named Tithonus. Now it chanced that Tithonus loved
Aurora, the Goddess of the Dawn.”
“Greece?” said Ruth. “Why, that’s where Arachna lived, the one who
turned into a spider, you know?”
“Do you want to hear my story or don’t you?” asked Mr. Grasshopper,
sharply.
“I do want to hear it. I really do.”
“Very well, then, don’t interrupt me again. As I was saying, Tithonus
loved Aurora, and every morning he would lie in the meadow and wait for
her coming. Then the fair goddess would give him her sweetest smiles.
But one day Tithonus grew pale and ill, and all the love of Aurora could
not make him well again. ‘Alas!’ he cried, ‘I am mortal, and I must
die.’ ‘Nay,’ answered Aurora, ‘you shall not die, for I will win for you
the gift of the gods.’ And, speeding to the mighty Jupiter, she begged
that Tithonus might be as a god, and live forever. So for a while they
were happy together, but as the years passed Tithonus grew old and bent,
for Aurora had forgotten to ask that he might always be young. Grieving
much, Tithonus lay under the shadow of the trees and sighed through the
long days.”
“‘Ah, my Tithonus,’ whispered Aurora, ‘I love you too well to see you
thus unhappy. No more shall you be sad or bend beneath an old man’s
weakness, but, as a child of the meadow, happy and free, you shall sing
and dance through the golden hours.’ In that moment Tithonus became a
grasshopper, and ever since then his descendants have danced and sung in
the sunshine. That’s the end of the story. I might have made it twice as
long, but Summer is so short, and I want to dance.”
“It was a very nice story,” said Ruth, “but do you really dance?”
“Of course, our kind of dancing.”
“But don’t you do lots of other things too?”
“Yes; we give concerts, and we eat. We are hatched with big appetites,
and a strong pair of jaws, and we start right in to use them on the
tender grasses around us. We only follow our instincts, though men call
it doing damage. You eat, don’t you?”
“Why, yes, but I don’t eat grass, you know.”
“Because it isn’t your food. You see it’s this way: In the kingdom of
nature all creatures have a certain work to do, and each is exactly
fitted for its place, for all are governed by laws more wonderful than
any man has made. Not that I wish to speak lightly of man, he is good
enough in his place, but he is apt to think himself the whole thing, and
he isn’t. Maybe he doesn’t know that for every human creature on earth
there are millions of plants and animals.”
“Oh,” said Ruth, “really and truly?”
“Really and truly. You couldn’t begin to count them, and do you know, if
the earth was to grow quite bare, with only one living plant left on it,
the seeds from that one plant could make it green again in a very few
years. But if certain insects were left without other creatures to eat
and keep them down, the poor old earth would soon be bare once more. So
you see there must be laws to fix all these things. Nature balances one
set of creatures against the other, so there will not be too many of any
kind.”
Ruth had listened in open-eyed astonishment. Surely this was a very wise
grasshopper.
“You know a great deal,” she managed to say at last.
“Yes, I do,” was the answer. “I heard two men say the things I’ve just
told you. They were walking across this meadow, and I listened and
remembered. You see, I believe in learning even from men. But do listen
to the concert—we are right in the middle of it.”
[Illustration: THE WISE GRASSHOPPER]
They certainly _were_ in the middle of it. The zip, zip, zip, zee-e-ee-e
of the meadow grasshoppers seemed to come from every part of the sunny
field, while the shorthorns, or flying locusts, were gently fiddling
under the grass blades, their wing covers serving for strings, and their
thighs as fiddle bows, and the field crickets, not to be outdone, were
scraping away with the finely notched veins of the fore wings upon their
hind wings.
The longhorns were also there, some in green, others in brown or gray,
all drumming away on the drum heads set in their fore wings.
“You would hear katydid too,” said Mr. Grasshopper, “only he refuses to
sing in the day. He hides under the leaves of the trees while it is
light, and comes out at night. If you think _me_ wise, I don’t know what
you would say of him. He is such a solemn-looking chap, always dressed
in green, and his wing covers are like leaves. You might think him
afraid if you saw him wave his long antennæ, but he isn’t. He is
curious, that’s all. It is a high sort of curiosity, too, like mine—a
wish to learn. I suppose you know we don’t make our music with our
mouths?” he asked suddenly. “Well, that is something,” he added, as Ruth
nodded “Yes.”
“I sing with the upper part of my wing covers, but my cousins, the
shorthorns, sing with their hind legs. Why do you laugh? Aren’t legs as
good to sing with as anything else?”
“I—I suppose so,” said Ruth. “It sounds funny, because I am not used to
that kind of singing.”
“Just it. Now I shall tell you a few more facts about us. We belong to
the order of the Straightwings, or the Orthoptera, as the wise men call
it.”
“Will you please tell me what that means?” asked Ruth. “Do all insects
belong to something ending in tera? Most everything I have talked to
does except toads and spiders.”
“And they are not insects,” said Mr. Grasshopper. “Not even the spiders.
The word insect means cut into parts, and all insects have three parts,
a head, and behind that the thorax or chest, and the abdomen. Then, too,
they always have six jointed legs. Now maybe you have noticed that
spiders are not built on this plan? There are only two parts of them.
The head and thorax are in one. It is called the cephalothorax. I’d feel
dreadfully carrying such a thing around with me, but the spiders do not
seem to mind it. Their other part is their abdomen. I heard a little boy
say it was like a squashy bag; and between ourselves that is about what
it is. Of course you know that spiders have eight legs and that alone
would settle the question. True insects never have but six. Now as to
the orders: All insects are divided into groups, and it is something
about the wings which gives them their names. That is why they all end
in ptera, because ptera comes from pteron, a word which means wing. It
isn’t an English word, you know, but is taken from a language called
Greek.”
Ruth listened very patiently. If she had heard all this in school it
would have seemed very dry, but when a grasshopper is telling you things
it is of course quite different.
“But I am sure I can never remember it all,” she said.
“Ah, yes, you can. Remembering is easy if you only practise it.”
“Why, that’s like the White Queen,” cried Ruth. “She practised believing
things till she could believe six impossible things at once, before
breakfast.”
“I don’t know the person,” said the grasshopper.
“She lived in the Looking Glass Country,” began Ruth, but Mr.
Grasshopper was not listening.
“You have met the Diptera, or Two Wings,” he said. “That’s easy. Then
you’ve met the Neuroptera, or Nerve Wings. That’s easy too. And now you
have met the Orthoptera, or Straightwings, meaning me, and if I’m not
easy, I should like to know who is. You see our wings are——”
“Wings?” said Ruth in surprise.
“Of course. Look here,” and opening his straight wing covers, Mr.
Grasshopper showed as nice a pair of wings as one could wish to possess.
“Not all of us have wings,” he added, folding his own away, “but those
of us who have not live under stones. Our order includes graspers,
walkers, runners, and jumpers. Not all are musicians. The graspers live
only in hot countries. Maybe you have seen the picture of one of
them—the praying mantis he is called, just because he holds up his front
legs as if he were praying. But it isn’t prayers he is saying. He is
waiting for some insect to come near enough so he may grab and eat it.
That will do for him. Next come the walkers. The walking stick is one,
and he isn’t a good walker either, but the stick part of the name fits
him. He is dreadfully thin. There is one on that twig now, and he looks
so much like the twig you can scarcely tell which is which.”
“Why, so he does,” said Ruth, poking her finger at the twig Mr.
Grasshopper pointed out. “Isn’t he funny?”
“Indeed,” grumbled the walking stick. “Maybe you think it polite to come
staring at a fellow, and sticking your finger at him, and then call him
funny, but I don’t. I want to look like a twig. That’s why I am holding
myself so stiff. I have a cousin in the Tropics who has wings just like
leaves.”
“Yes,” added the grasshopper, “and his wife is so careless she just
drops her eggs from the tree to the ground and never cares how they
fall.”
“Well, if that suits her no one else need object,” snapped the walking
stick. “I believe in each one minding his own business.”
“An excellent idea,” said Mr. Grasshopper. “Now let me see, where was I?
Oh! the runners; but you’ll excuse me, I will not speak of them at all.
They include croton bugs and cock roaches, and it is quite enough to
mention their names. With the jumpers it is different. They are the most
important members of the order. I’m a jumper, I am also a true
grasshopper. You can tell that by my long slender antennæ, longer than
my body. For that reason I am called a longhorn, but my antennæ are
really not horns.”
“I don’t see how any one _could_ call them horns,” said Ruth.
“No more do I, but some people have queer ideas about things. Well, I
don’t care much. There is my mate over there. Do you notice the
sword-shaped ovipositor at the end of her body? She uses it to make
holes in the ground and also to lay her eggs in the hole after it is
finished. Yes, she is very careful. Her eggs stay there all Winter, and
hatch in the Spring, not into grubs or caterpillars, or anything of that
sort. They will be grasshoppers, small, it is true, and without wings,
but true grasshoppers, which need only to grow and change their skins to
be just like us. And I’m sure we have nothing to be ashamed of. We have
plenty of eyes, six legs, and ears on our forelegs, not like you people
who have queer things on the sides of your heads. Such a place for
hearing! but every one to his taste. Well, to go on, we have wing
covers, and lovely wings under them, a head full of lips and jaws, and a
jump that _is_ a jump. What more could one wish? Do you know what our
family name is?”
Ruth didn’t know they had a family name, so of course she could not say
what it was.
“It is Locustidae,” said Mr. Grasshopper, answering his own question.
“Funny too, for there isn’t a locust among us. Locusts are the
shorthorned grasshoppers—that is, their antennæ are shorter than ours.
They are cousins, but we are not proud of them. They are not very good.”
“No one is asking you to be proud,” said a grasshopper, jumping from a
nearby grass blade. She had a plump gray and green body, red legs, and
brown wings, with a broad lemon-yellow band.
“What’s the matter with me?” she demanded. “I guess you don’t know what
you are talking about. It’s the Western fellow that is so bad. We
Eastern locusts are different.”
“Well, I suppose you are,” agreed the longhorn. “I know the Western
locusts travel in swarms and eat every green thing in sight. They are
called the hateful grasshoppers.”
“No one can say that our family has ever been called hateful or anything
like it,” said a little cricket with a merry chirp. “We are considered
very cheery company, and one of the sweetest stories ever written was
about our English cousin, the house cricket.”
“I am sure you mean ‘The Cricket on the Hearth,’” said Ruth. “It is a
lovely story, and I think crickets are just dear. Are you a house
cricket too?”
“No, I belong to the fields, and I sing all day. Sometimes I go into the
house when Winter comes and sing by the fire at night, but my real home
is in the earth. I dig a hole in a sunny spot and Mrs. Cricket lays her
eggs at the bottom, and fastens them to the ground with a kind of glue.
Sometimes there are three hundred of them, and you can imagine what a
lively family they are when they hatch.”
“I should like to see them,” said Ruth, for it was quite impossible for
her to imagine so many baby crickets together.
“Well, it is a sight, I assure you,” answered the little cricket. “Did
you ever come across my cousin the mole cricket? She is very large and
quite clever. She makes a wonderful home with many halls around her
nest. She is always on guard too so that no one may touch her precious
eggs. Then I have another cousin, who doesn’t dress in brown like me,
but is all white. He lives on trees and shrubs and doesn’t eat leaves
and grass as we do. He prefers aphides. You can hear him making music on
Summer evenings. We crickets seldom fly. We——”
The sentence was not finished, for just then a long droning note grew on
the air, increasing in volume, until it rose above the meadow chorus.
“Oh!” cried Ruth, spying a creature with great bulging eyes and
beautiful, transparent wings, glittering with rainbow tints, “There’s a
locust! Isn’t he beautiful, Belinda? Maybe he will tell us some things.
Oh, Belinda, aren’t we in luck?”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII
RUTH MEETS MANY SORTS AND CONDITIONS
The shrill cicadas, people of the pine,
Make their summer lives one ceaseless song.
—_Byron._
“A locust, indeed,” said the newcomer, and Ruth could see plainly that
he was not pleased. “It does seem to me you should know better than
that. Can’t you see I have a _sucking_ beak and not a _biting_ one, like
the grasshopper tribe? Besides, my music isn’t made like theirs. No
faint, fiddly squeak for me, but a fine sound of drums.”
“I think I’ll move on,” said Mr. Grasshopper, and Ruth could see that he
was quite angry. She turned to look at the cricket, but he was far
across the field, fiddling to his mate.
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” she said to the grasshopper. “You have been so
nice to me and I have learned ever so much from you.”
“Oh, I dare say,” was the answer. “More than you will learn from some
people I could mention, but I really must leave you. My mate wants me.”
And a flying leap carried him quite away.
“There, we are rid of the old grandfather,” said the cicada, “and now
what can I do for you?”
“Tell me your real name if it is not locust,” answered Ruth.
“It certainly is not locust. I’ve been called a harvest fly, though I am
not a fly either. I’m a cicada, and nothing else, and I belong to the
order of bugs.”
“And what kind of tera is it?”
“Tera?” repeated the cicada, looking at her with his big eyes. “Oh, yes,
yes, I understand. You mean our scientific name. It is Hemiptera,
meaning half-wings. I know we have some objectionable members, but I
don’t have to associate with them, and I rarely mention their names. I
have a cousin who lives in the ground seventeen years. Think of it! Of
course he is only a grub and doesn’t care for air and sun. I lived there
two years myself, but I was a grub also then. You see my mother put her
eggs in the twig of a tree, and when I came out of one of them I wanted
to get to the ground more than I wanted anything else, so I just crawled
out to the end of the branch and let go. Down I went, over and over, to
the ground, where I soon bored my way in, and began to suck the juices
of the roots about me. I liked it then, but I couldn’t stand it now. Of
course the moles were trying. They were always hungry and we were one of
the things they liked for dinner. One day something seemed to call me to
the world of light, and I came out a changed being—in fact, the
beautiful creature you see before you now. Perhaps you do not know how
much attention we have attracted? In all ages poets have sung of us,
even from the days of Homer. Maybe you will not believe me, but the
early Greeks thought us almost divine, and when Homer wished to say the
nicest things about his orators he compared them to cicadas. A while ago
I told you we were sometimes called harvest flies. We have also been
given the name Lyremen. Shall I tell you why?”
“A story!” cried Ruth, clapping her hands. “Oh, yes, please tell it!”
“Very well. Once upon a time, ages ago, a young Grecian player was
competing for a prize, and so sweet was the music he drew from his lyre
that all who heard it felt he must surely win. But alas! when he was
nearly finished one of his strings snapped, and, with a sad heart, he
thought that all his hope was gone. Not so, however, for a cicada, drawn
from the woods by the sweet sounds, had perched upon the lyre and when
the musician’s trembling fingers touched the broken string it gave forth
a note that was clear and true. Thus again and again the cicada answered
in tones that were sweet and full. When the happy player realized that
the cicada had won the prize for him, he was so filled with gratitude
that he caused a full figure of himself to be carved in marble, and in
his hand a lyre with a cicada perched upon it. Now wouldn’t you be proud
if your family had such a nice story about them?”
“I’m sure it is very nice,” agreed Ruth.
“Yet I’m not one to brag,” added the cicada, “and I am never ashamed to
say I’m a bug. Now if you will come with me to the pond I will show you
some of my cousins. They are very interesting.”
And with a whiz the gauzy-winged fellow darted up into the sunshine, and
Ruth, following him across the meadow, could only hug Belinda in a
rapture of expectation, and whisper in a low voice:
“Aren’t we in luck, Belinda—just the best kind of luck?”
They had gone only a little way, however, when a mole pushed his strong
little snout above the ground.
“Gracious! what a noise,” he said. “If I had had a chance when you were
a baby you wouldn’t be here now to disturb quiet-minded people.”
Ruth jumped. She thought the mole meant he would have eaten her. Then
she laughed. “Of course it was the cicada he was talking to,” but the
cicada didn’t mind.
“I know that very well,” he answered, cheerfully, “but you didn’t get
me. That makes all the difference, and now you can’t.”
“Well, nobody wants you now. You would be mighty dry eating, but when
you were a grub, oh, my! so fat and juicy, like all the other grubs and
slugs and worms. I eat you all. Yet what thanks do I get from man for
doing away with so many of his enemies? Complaints, nothing but
complaints, and just because I raise a few ridges in the ground. I can’t
help that. When I move underground I push the earth before me, and, as
it has to go somewhere, it rises up.”
“What do you push with?” asked Ruth, sitting down in front of the mole.
“With my snout and forepaws,” he answered, “what else? The muscle which
moves my head is very powerful, and you can see how broad my forepaws
are, and, also, that they turn outward. They help to throw back the
earth as I make my way forward. I have ever so many sharp little teeth,
too, and my fur lies smooth in all directions, so it never rumples
and——”
“Do come on,” interrupted the cicada; “that fellow isn’t interesting.”
“That’s so,” said a thin little voice, as an earthworm cautiously lifted
his head from the ground. “Has he gone?” he asked anxiously. “He’d eat
me sooner than wink if he saw me. It is warm and damp this morning, that
is why I am so near the surface. I don’t like dry or cold weather. My
house——”
“Have you a house?”
Ruth had turned upon him in a second, full of questions as usual.
“Certainly I have a house. It is a row of halls, lined with glue from my
own body. The walls are so firm they can’t fall in. Underground is
really a delightful place to live, snug and soft, cool in Summer, warm
in Winter. Lots to see, too. All the creeping, twining roots and stems
reaching out for food, storing it away, or sending it up as sap to the
leaves. The seeds waking up in the Spring, and hosts of meadow and wood
people wrapped in egg and cocoon, who spend their baby days there. Quite
a little world, I assure you. Of course I can’t see any of these things.
I have no eyes.”
“Oh!” said Ruth, “how dreadful!”
“No, it is just as well. If I had eyes I might get earth in them. I go
through the ground so much.”
“But isn’t that awful hard work?” asked Ruth, shutting her eyes to
realize what having no eyes might mean.
“It isn’t hard when one has a nice set of bristles, as I have to help me
along.” The earthworm was one who saw the best side of everything. “I am
made up of more than a hundred rings,” he went on, “and on each are
small stiff hair-like bristles so, though I have neither eyes, ears,
hands, nor feet, I am quite independent. I can move very fast, and the
slime that covers me keeps the earth from sticking to me. Do you know I
am the only jointed animal that has red blood? It is so. I do no harm,
either, to growing things, and I help to build the world. My tunnels let
air into the ground and help to keep it loose. I also bring up rich soil
from below, and lay it on the surface. I also——”
“Well, that’s enough,” interrupted the cicada, moving his wings
impatiently. “I thought you wanted to see _my_ relations?” he added to
Ruth.
“So I do,” answered Ruth. “Where are they?”
“There are a number of them right in this meadow, though you would never
think it, to look at them. They are not at all like me. See that white
froth clinging to those grass stems? A cousin made that. Of the sap of
the plant too. If you look, you will find her in the midst of it. She is
green and speckled and very small. Then there are the tree hoppers, as
funny in shape as brownies, and the leaf hoppers. They are all my
cousins. The aphides too. Of course you know the aphides?”
“I believe they were the things Mrs. Lacewing told me I should learn
about later,” said Ruth, with sudden remembrance.
“Very likely. Mrs. Lacewing’s children should know about them. The
aphides are very bad, though they are so very tiny. But what they lack
in size they make up in numbers. Really there are millions of them. They
are not travellers, either, but stay just where they are hatched, and
suck, suck, suck. In that way they kill many plants, for it is the sap
of the plant, its life juice, which serves them for food. They eat so
much of this that their bodies can’t hold it all, and what they don’t
need is given off as honey dew. The ants like this honey so well that to
get it they take good care of the aphides. But there are some aphides
which do not give off honey dew. Do you see this white stuff on the
alder bushes?”
“Yes. I’ve often seen it before, too. It looks like soft white fringe.”
“Well, it isn’t. It is a lot of aphides, each with a tuft of wool on its
body, and a beak fast stuck in the alder stem.”
They had now reached the pond, which lay smiling in the sunshine.
“It would be so pretty,” said Ruth, throwing herself down on the grass,
“if it wasn’t for the horrid, green, oozy stuff all over it.”
“Horrid, green, oozy stuff?” repeated the cicada. “Child, you don’t know
what you are talking about. That green stuff is made up of tiny green
plants more than you could count. Each has a rootlet hanging down like a
silver thread and leaves almost too small to be called so. They are
green though and they do the mighty work of all green leaves, for,
besides shading the pond world from the hot rays of the sun, they make
for the many inhabitants the life-giving oxygen without which they would
die. And I want to tell you something more: In that duckweed—for what
you call green, oozy stuff is duckweed—there are millions of tiny living
things too small to be seen by the eye except with the aid of a
microscope.”
Ruth looked quite as astonished as the cicada meant she should be.
“You have a great deal to learn, I assure you. Maybe you haven’t thought
of the pond as a world, but just see what a busy place it is.”
Ruth looked and agreed with the cicada. Dragon flies were darting here,
there, and everywhere; frogs, with their heads out of the water, seemed
to be admiring the scenery when they were not swallowing air or whatever
else came in their way; glancing minnows and bright-eyed tadpoles played
amongst the swaying water weeds; even the wrigglers were there, standing
on their heads in their own funny way; and the water striders, skating
after their own queer fashion. Yes, it was a busy place.
A party of whirligig beetles came dashing by, circling, curving,
spinning, and making such a disturbance that a backswimmer lost his
patience and told them to be quiet.
They didn’t like that at all, so they threw about him a very
disagreeable milky fluid which made the backswimmer dive for the bottom
in a hurry.
“That settled him,” said one of the whirligigs. “Hello! friend Skipper
Jack,” he called to a water strider, “what are you doing?”
“Skating, of course,” answered the water strider. “There, they are
gone,” he added, to the cicada, “and I am glad of it. They are
nuisances.”
“You are right,” agreed the cicada.
“I am glad they don’t belong to our order.”
“Don’t they?” asked Ruth. “I think they are awfully funny.”
“Funny or not, they are beetles,” answered the water strider. “You had
better use your eyes. Do you know why I can skate and not get my feet
wet? No, of course you don’t, and yet it is as plain as the nose on your
face. I have a coat of hairs on the under side of my body. That’s why. I
spend my time on the surface of the water, for my dinner is right here.
Plenty of gnats, insect eggs, and other eatables. Then if I wish I can
spring up in the air for the things that fly. My Winters I spend under
water, but for other seasons give me the surface.”
“And I like the bottom best,” said a water boatman, showing himself
quite suddenly, his air-covered body glittering like silver armour.
“Another cousin,” whispered the cicada in Ruth’s ear. “He is called the
water cicada, as well as water boatman.”
“He looks more like a boat than he does like you,” said Ruth.
“My body is boat-shaped,” spoke up the boatman; “and see my hind legs;
they really are like oars, aren’t they?”
“I am wondering what brought you to the surface,” said the cicada.
“Why, I let go my hold on that old water weed, and you know the air that
covers my body makes it lighter than the water and unless I cling to
something I naturally rise. It is inconvenient, for I do not need to
come to the surface for air. I can breathe the same air over and over,
because I know how to purify it.”
“How do you do it?” asked Ruth. Surely these insects were wonderfully
clever.
“Oh, I simply hang to something with my front legs, while I move my back
ones just as I do in swimming, and that makes a current of water pass
over my coat of air and purify it. That fellow swimming on his back over
there is obliged to come to the surface every little while. He carries
air down in a bubble under his wings.”
“Do you mean me?” asked the backswimmer, making a sudden leap in the
air, and flying away.
“Gracious!” cried Ruth in surprise. “I didn’t know he could fly.”
“There’s a good deal you don’t know,” replied the water boatman, a
remark Ruth had heard before. “I can fly too,” and he also spread his
wings and was off.
“Well,” said the cicada, “I guess we might as well be off too. There
seems to be no one in sight to interest us.”
“What about cousin Belostoma?” asked a sort of muffled voice, as a great
pair of bulging eyes showed themselves above the water, and out came the
giant water bug as big as life.
“I’ve just had my dinner,” he said. “It really is funny to see how
everything hides when Belostoma shows his face. My wife is the only one
who doesn’t seem to be afraid of me and she—well, she’s a terror and no
mistake.”
“Why, what’s the matter now?” asked the cicada.
“And what has happened to your back?” added Ruth, with eager curiosity.
“My wife’s happened, that’s what,” answered Belostoma in a doleful tone.
“She laid her eggs a while ago and glued every blessed one to my back.
It is nothing to laugh at either. There’s no joke in being a walking
incubator. Well, I must be going now. It is dinner time.”
“I thought you just had your dinner,” said Ruth.
“Yes, but it’s time again. It is always time. How silly you are.”
“I must go too,” said the cicada, “but it isn’t dinner that calls me. I
feel sure my mate is longing for some music and I’m off to give her a
bit. See you later.”
And, spreading his wings, the cicada flew away, beating his drums as he
went.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VIII
MRS. TUMBLE BUG AND OTHERS
Their wings with azure green
And purple glossed.
—_Anna L. Barbauld._
Something exciting was going on. Ruth could not tell just what it was at
first. She could only watch and wonder. Then her eyes grew large and
bright. Surely some fairy’s wand had touched the old orchard, for
suddenly it seemed alive with beetles—big beetles and little beetles;
beetles in sober colourings, and beetles gleaming with all the tints of
the rainbow. Ruth had never dreamed that there could be so many of them
or that they were so beautiful.
The gorgeously coloured, graceful tigers attracted her first, though she
didn’t know their name.
“Oh,” she cried, “how lovely!”
“And how strange,” added a voice just above her head, “how very strange,
their children should be so homely.”
“What’s that?” asked one of the tigers, a metallic green fellow, with
purple lights, and two pale yellow dots on the edge of each wing cover.
“Our children not so beautiful as we are, did you say? Of course, they
are not; a fat grub couldn’t be, you know. But let me tell you, there
are few things as smart as a tiger beetle baby. I say,” he added,
looking full at Ruth, “have you ever seen the hole he digs? It is often
a foot deep, while he is less than an inch long. He has only his jaws
and fore legs to work with too. Yet he piles the earth on his flat head
as if it were the easiest thing in the world, and then, climbing to the
top, he throws it off, and is ready for another load.”
“I suppose he digs a hole to catch things,” said Ruth, “like the ant
lion, and does he stay at the bottom and——”
“No, he doesn’t stay at the bottom. He watches near the top of his hole
for his dinner, hanging on by a pair of hooks which grow out of a hump
on his back. He always goes to the bottom to eat his dinner, though; he
seems to like privacy. Yes, we are a fierce family from the beginning,
for we grown tigers can catch our prey either running or flying, and we
usually manage to get it, too. But, then, farmers need not complain of
us, for we never eat plants, and that is more than can be said of many
here.”
“Such taste,” said a cloaked, knotty horn, holding herself in a position
that showed off her changeable blue and green dress, and her short
yellow cape.
But the tiger did not answer. He was off after his dinner. Several tree
borers, however, nodded their heads in agreement.
“I believe in a vegetable diet myself,” said Mrs. Sawyer, who wore as
usual her dress of brown and gray. “It is just such people as the tigers
who make things like that necessary in a respectable meeting,” and as
she spoke she waved her very long antennæ toward a big sign which read:
“THE AUDIENCE ARE REQUESTED NOT TO EAT EACH OTHER DURING THE MEETING”
“I am glad to say I am not one of that kind. I wonder if any one of you
know why the members of our family are called sawyers. Perhaps I had
better tell you: It is because our children saw into the trunks of
evergreen trees, and sometimes they make holes large enough to kill the
trees. Smart, isn’t it, for a baby?”
“But it doesn’t seem to be very nice,” began Ruth. Then she stopped, for
Mrs. Sawyer was looking at her and the borers were nodding their heads
again.
“Our children do not saw,” said the borers, “but they do bore, and it is
pretty much the same thing for the tree.”
“My friends,” broke in a very solemn voice.
Every beetle stopped talking, and Ruth jumped to her feet, then flopped
down on the grass again, waiting for what was coming.
The speaker, a large, clean-looking beetle, had just flown to a twig in
the very middle of the meeting. He was black in colour, well sprinkled
above and below with pale straw yellow in dots and points, but the queer
thing about him was the two oval velvety black spots, each with a narrow
line of straw colour around it, on his thorax. They were like great
eyes, and made him look very wise.
“He is the eyed-elater,” whispered Mrs. Sawyer to Ruth. “There he is
speaking again.”
“My friends,” the big beetle was saying in tones as solemn, as before,
“the important thing in any meeting is to keep to the main issue.”
“The main issue?” said the goldsmith beetle, a beautiful little creature
with wing covers of golden yellow, and a body of metallic green covered
with white, woolly fuzz. “What is the main issue?”
“Dinner,” replied the tiger beetle, returning to his old place. “If it
isn’t breakfast or supper.”
“No, my friend,” said the eyed-elater, with a grave glance, “the main
issue is——”
Then he stopped and fixed his two real eyes and the two spots which
looked like eyes on some small beetles which were leaping in the air,
turning somersaults, and making quite a noise.
“Will you be still?” he said in his sternest voice.
“How foolish,” said Mrs. Sawyer, “to expect click beetles to be still!”
But Ruth was all curiosity.
“I’ve seen you before,” she said, going closer and touching one of the
funny little fellows.
Suddenly it curled up its legs, dropped as if shot, then lay like one
dead.
“Here, here!” called the elater. “No more of that! We know all about
your tricks!”
“All right,” said the would-be dead one, and he gave a click, popped
into the air several inches, and came down on his back.
“That won’t do at all,” he said, and, clicking and popping once more, he
came down on his feet.
“There,” he added, “you need to have patience with click beetles. You
ought to know that, friend elater, for you are one of us.”
“Well, I’m bigger, and not so foolish, and my children are not so
harmful as yours. Think of being a parent of those dreadful wire worms!
That is what you click beetles are, and you know the farmer hasn’t a
worse enemy. Now we must get back to the main issue.”
“_Back?_” said Mrs. Sawyer. “Were we ever there to begin with? You can’t
scare me,” she added, “no matter how hard you stare. You haven’t any
more eyes than the rest of us. Those two spots are not real eyes, and
you know it.”
“The main issue,” repeated the elater in a very loud voice, “is, What
makes us beetles?”
“That’s something I’d like to know,” said a handsome little beetle in a
striped coat. “I’m a beetle, if there ever was one, yet I have a
world-wide reputation as a bug.”
“Pray don’t get excited, Mrs. Potato Bug. It isn’t your time to talk
yet. We are on the main issue, and I will answer my own question.”
Ruth was glad some one would answer it, for at this rate it seemed they
would never get anywhere.
“We are beetles for several reasons,” went on the elater. “In the first
place, we belong to the order Coleoptera.”
Another tera, thought Ruth.
“That name is taken from a language called Greek, and means sheath wing.
It is given to us because we have handsome outside wings which we use to
cover our real flying wings. All beetles have them, though those of our
cousin, Mr. Rove Beetle, are quite short.”
“That’s a fact,” said a rove beetle, “and no one need think we have
outgrown our coats. It is simply a fashion in our family to wear our
sheath wings short. We can always fold our true wings under them, and
I’d like to see the fellow who says we can’t.”
“Well, you needn’t get so mad about it,” answered the elater in mild
tones.
“And don’t curl your body up as if you were a wasp,” added Mrs. Sawyer.
“Everybody knows you can’t sting.”
“I don’t care,” said the rove beetle. “I hate to be misunderstood. We
are useful too. I heard a man call us scavengers. I don’t know what it
means, but something good, I am sure, from the way he said it. I must be
going soon. It is so dry here. You know my home is in damp places under
stones or leaves.”
“You may go when you wish,” answered the elater. “We are still on the
main issue. As I said before, we are beetles, and there is no reason to
take us for bugs. Calm yourself, Mrs. Potato Bug. We have no sucking
beak as the bugs have, but we have two sets of horny jaws, which move
sideways, and _not_ up and down. These are to bite roots, stems, and
leaves of plants, so most of our order live on vegetable food and are
enemies to the farmer, but some of us are his friends, for we eat the
insects that injure his crops. Our children are called grubs. Some of
them make a sort of glue, with which they stick together earth or bits
of wood for a cocoon; others make tunnels in tree trunks or wood and
transform in them. We may well be proud, for we belong to a large and
beautiful order, and we are found in all parts of the world. We are
divided into two sub-orders—true beetles and snout beetles. I hope our
cousins, the snout beetles, will not be offended. They are real in a
way.”
“The farmer and fruit grower think so anyway,” said a little weevil. “We
have been called bugs just because we have a snout, but any one can see
at a glance that it isn’t a bug’s snout. It is not a tube at all, but
has tiny jaws at the tip.”
“I don’t believe I could see all that,” said Ruth rather timidly, for
these clever little people had a way of making her feel she knew very
little.
“Maybe you can’t,” was the short answer, “and I dare say you can’t tell
how we use our snouts either. We punch holes with them in plums,
peaches, cherries, and other fruits, not to mention nuts and the bark of
trees. I am a peach curculio, but that is not important. We all work in
the same way—that is, drop an egg in the hole made by our snout, then
use the snout again to push the egg down. Mrs. Plum Weevil is busy now
in the plum orchard back of us; so of course she couldn’t come to this
meeting. ‘Duty before pleasure,’ she said. She will lay eggs in quite a
number of plums, and the plums will drop from the trees before they are
ripe.”
“And there’ll be a lump of gum on them!” cried Ruth, clapping her hands.
The weevil looked at her with approval. “You do notice some things,” she
said.
“The gum oozes out of the hole made by our snouts. Of course our egg
hatches inside the fruit, and the baby has its dinner all around it. As
it hasn’t a leg to walk on——”
“Dear! dear!” sighed the elater. “You seem to forget that we are trying
to keep to the main issue. As I said before——”
“You are always saying what you said before,” snapped Mrs. Sawyer.
“Now, they are beginning again,” thought Ruth, but the elater paid no
attention to Mrs. Sawyer.
“As I said before,” he repeated, “we have reason to be proud, for though
we build no cities, like ants, wasps, and bees, and make no honey or
wax, or have, in fact, any special trades, yet we are interesting and
beautiful. The ancient Egyptians thought some of us sacred and
worshipped us.”
“There!” cried Mrs. Tumble Bug, literally tumbling into their midst. “I
couldn’t come at a better time.”
Ruth gave a little scream of delight when she saw her, and Mrs. Tumble
Bug nodded with the air of an old friend.
As usual, her black dress looked neat and clean, though she and her
husband had rolled and tumbled all over the road in their effort to get
their ball to what they considered the best place for it. They had
succeeded, and Mrs. Tumble Bug’s shovel-shaped face wore a broad smile
in consequence.
“I knew about this meeting,” she said, “but my husband and I agreed that
duty should come before pleasure.”
“She heard me say that,” whispered the little peach weevil to her
nearest neighbour.
“I didn’t,” answered Mrs. Tumble Bug. “I have just come. We only found a
safe place for our ball a little while ago.”
“That ball!” said Mrs. Sawyer in disgusted tones. “I should think you
would be tired of it.”
“Tired of our ball?” repeated Mrs. Tumble Bug. “Why, our ball is the
most important thing in the world. This was a big one, too. We made it
in Farmer Brown’s barnyard, and then I laid my eggs in it, and we rolled
it all the way here. Of course it grew on the road, and I couldn’t have
moved it alone, but my mate helped me. He always helps. Indeed it seems
to me tumble bugs are the only husbands in the insect world who care
about their children’s future.”
“Now I know,” said Ruth, who had been thinking very hard. “You think so
much of your balls because they hold your eggs. I’ve often wondered
about them.”
“Of course that is the reason,” answered Mrs. Tumble Bug; “and when our
eggs hatch the babies will have a feast all around them.”
“Ugh!” said Ruth, and some flower beetles shook their little heads, and
added:
“It would be better to starve than eat the stuff in that ball.”
“Tastes differ,” said Mrs. Tumble Bug, amiably; “but, speaking of sacred
beetles, it was our family the Egyptians worshipped. They could not
understand why we were always rolling our ball, so they looked upon us
as divine in some way, and made pictures of us in stone and precious
gems. They can be seen to-day, I am told, but I do not care about that.
I must make another ball,” and, nodding to her mate, they left the
meeting together.
“Now we’ll adjourn for dinner,” announced the elater, much to the
disgust of Mrs. Potato Bug, who was just getting ready to speak.
“Dinner is well enough,” she said, “but how is one to enjoy it when one
must stop in a little while?”
“You needn’t stop,” answered the elater. “Stay with your dinner. We are
not so anxious to hear you talk.”
“But I mean to talk, and I _will_,” and Mrs. Potato Bug was off to the
potato field, intending, as she said, to take a light lunch, and be back
when the meeting opened.
But potato bugs propose, and farmers dispose, and——
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX
LITTLE MISCHIEF MAKERS
It’s a wonder, it’s a wonder
That they live to tell the tale.
—_Anon._
Mrs. Potato Bug did not return. A sister bug rose to speak when the
meeting opened after dinner. There had been a sad tragedy in the potato
field, she told them, and even at that very minute the farmer and the
farmer’s men, armed with barrels of “pizens,” were waging a warfare in
which millions of potato bugs were going down to their death. “Alas! my
friends,” she finished with a sigh that seemed to come from the very
tips of her six feet, “no words can paint the dreadful scene. She who
was here but a short while ago, so chipper and so gay, even she was
giving her last gasp as I fled from the field of carnage.”
The story moved the audience deeply, and all agreed that something
should be done to suppress the farmers. It was even suggested to appoint
a committee to consider ways and means, but at this point a very young
potato bug asked the question:
“If there were no farmers, who would plant potatoes for us?”
“No one,” answered Mrs. Sawyer, who was there just as self-important as
ever. “Then maybe there would be no potato bugs, and I for one wouldn’t
be sorry.”
“Indeed,” said the potato bug who had told the tale of battle, “I’d have
you know we are Colorado beetles, if you please, and our family has a
world-wide fame. We are true Americans, too, and not emigrants from
Europe, like many other insects, and that reminds me: The other day when
I was having a nice chew on some very juicy potato leaves, I heard
somebody say to somebody else: ‘Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the
West.’ He said a lot more, but I heard that plainly, and I wondered if
he meant our family, and didn’t know our name, because, you know, we
came out of the West.”
“I am sure he didn’t mean you,” said Ruth, who was in her old place
right in the middle of the meeting. “That line is from a lovely piece of
poetry about——”
“No one asked your opinion,” answered the potato bug angrily. “It is bad
enough to have outsiders force themselves in, without being obliged to
hear their silly remarks.”
Ruth’s face grew red, and she was about to reply, when Mrs. Sawyer
whispered in her ear.
“Don’t mind her, she is only a potato bug.”
It was well that Mrs. Potato Bug did not hear this. “Before 1859,” she
was saying, “our home was in the shade of the Rocky Mountains. There we
fed on sandspur, a plant belonging to the potato family, and the East
knew us not. It was only after the white settlers came West and planted
potatoes that we found out how much nicer a potato leaf is than a
sandspur leaf, so of course we ate potato leaves. We came East,
travelling from patch to patch, and by 1874 we had conquered the country
to the Atlantic Ocean. That shows what a smart family we must be, and I
will tell you how we do. We lay our eggs on the potato leaves, and our
children find their dinner all ready, and, as they hatch with splendid
appetites, they get right to work. Those that hatch in the Fall sleep
all Winter in the ground and come out as beetles in the Spring, just in
time to lay more eggs. So we keep things going, especially the
potatoes.” And Mrs. Potato Bug retired with the air of one quite proud
of herself.
Her place was taken by a little ladybug, looking quite pretty in her
reddish-brown dress, daintily spotted with black.
“I have several cousins,” she said, “of different colours, but all
spotted and all friends to farmers and fruit growers, for we eat the
aphides and scale bugs which do so much harm to plants. We are called
bugs, but of course we are beetles. I could tell you a story——”
“Never mind the story,” said a great brown blundering fellow, much to
Ruth’s regret, for she wanted to hear the story.
“Excuse my awkwardness,” said the newcomer. “It bothers me to fly by
day. I like to go around the evening lamps. I can buzz loud enough for a
fellow three inches long, though I am really not one. I am called a June
bug, and I’m really a May beetle. What do you think of that? I have been
told that the farmers do not like us, nor our children either. They are
such nice, fat, white grubs too. They do love to suck the roots of
plants though, and, as we grown fellows are just as fond of the leaves,
between us we make the poor old plants pretty sick.”
“I wish something had made you sick before you came here to disturb
quiet folks with your buzzing,” said a large blue beetle, dropping some
oil from her joints in her excitement.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she added when Ruth spoke to her about it. “It
only proves that I have a right to be called an oil beetle. In these
days it is so important to know who is who.”
Ruth was watching the oozing oil curiously.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” was the answer. “It is perfectly natural. I can’t move about
fast, I am too fat, and I haven’t any wings to speak of. So when
anything disturbs me I can only play ’possum and drop oil. I wasn’t
always like this, though,” she went on, with a heavy sigh. “Would you
believe it? I was born under a stone in a field of buttercups. I was
tiny, but my body had thirteen joints and three pairs of as active
little legs as you ever saw. Each had a claw on it too. What do you
think of that? I used my legs right away to climb a nearby flower stalk.
Something inside of me seemed to tell me just what to do, and when a bee
came flying by, though she looked like a giant, I wasn’t a bit afraid,
but I popped on her back, and clutched so tight with my six little
claw-like legs she couldn’t have gotten me off if she had tried. But
maybe she didn’t know I was there. Anyway, I had some lovely free rides,
for she flew from flower to flower, and then she went home.”
“Oh,” interrupted Ruth, “did you go right into the hive?”
“Yes, but I didn’t notice much about it at first. I felt very tired, and
I can only remember dropping from her back and going to sleep. When I
awoke a funny thing had happened.”
“What?” asked Ruth, full of curiosity.
“My legs were gone, and only a half dozen short feelers were left me
instead. But I didn’t mind. I was in one of the tiny rooms of the hive,
and there was a nice fat bee baby for me to eat. I didn’t lose any time
either; I was hungry. Besides the baby there were bee bread and honey.
Who could ask for more? Indeed, I ate so much I went to sleep again,
and, would you believe me? in that sleep I lost even my short feelers,
and, worst of all, my mouth.”
“Gracious!” said Ruth.
“I suppose after that I slept again, for what’s the use of staying awake
if you can’t eat? But that nap finished me. I waked up looking as I do
now. It was a sad change. Maybe that is why I feel so blue and am called
the indigo beetle.”
“I don’t see why you changed so many times,” said Ruth.
“Neither do I. No other insect does, but I suppose it has to be. I shall
soon lay my eggs, and that no doubt will be the end of me. We seem to
begin and end with eggs.”
She sighed heavily, and went on: “I have a cousin who is used to make
blisters on people. Think of it! She is called Spanish fly, and she is
no more a fly than you are.”
“Does she bite them to make the blister?” asked Ruth.
“Dear me, no! The poor thing is dried and made into powder and then
spread with ointment on a cloth. That makes the blister. I suppose it
takes ever so many of my poor cousins for just one blister. I tell you,
life is sad.”
“Do stop that sort of thing, I can’t stand it!” said a plain, slender
little beetle, with no pretensions to beauty of any sort. “I came here
as a special favour, and then I am forced to hear such talk as that. I
am never at my best in the day, and you should know it. Some of you
complain of being called bug, and others object to the name fly. Now I
am as much a beetle as any of you, and I’ve been called both bug and
fly.”
“A lightning bug?” cried Ruth.
“Yes, and also firefly, and if it was dark I’d prove it. Of course my
light can’t be seen in the day, and generally I’m not to be seen either,
for we fireflies hide away on the leaves of plants until it begins to
grow dark. Then we come out, and have gay times flying over the meadows.
Some of our family who live in warm climates are so large and bright
they are used to read by. Not only that, ladies wear them as they would
jewels, and in Japan——”
But the firefly could say no more, for just at this moment some
whirligig beetles came flying in and every one turned to look at them.
“I should like to know what those fellows are doing here,” said a
bumble-bee beetle, making such a loud humming that Mrs. Sawyer declared
she thought a real bumble bee was in their midst. “People who live in
the water shouldn’t belong to our family, anyhow. I can’t imagine any
one liking the water.”
“That’s because you are not a water beetle,” answered one of the
whirligigs.
“Why, the water is the most sociable place in the world. Something
lively happening all the time. Constant changes too. Those who are with
us one moment are gone the next, but that is life on land as well as in
the water for us insects. Dinner is always our first thought. Of course
we water fellows are fitted for our life. We are put together more
tightly than you land beetles, and we are boat-shaped besides. We use
our hind legs for paddles, and we have wings with which we can leave the
water if we wish. We whirligigs are sociable fellows, always a lot of us
together, and such fun as we have dancing and whirling about in the
water! We don’t often dive unless something is after us.”
“You must have very good times,” said Ruth, watching the shiny, bluish
black little beetles with eager attention. Then she asked quite
suddenly:
“Have you four eyes?”
“No, my dear,” answered the first speaker, “we have only two. They look
like four, because they are divided into upper and lower halves. So you
see we can look up and down at the same time, and, I tell you, insects
need to step lively to keep out of our way. Good times? I should say we
did have good times. Now to the surface to snatch bubbles of air with
the tiny hairs on the tip of our tails, and then down again for a race
or a game of tag with our friends. No, not all the water beetles are as
frisky as we are. Some are—now what _is_ that?”
The whirligig might well ask the question, for a sound like a tiny
popgun had broken in upon his remarks, and the whole audience, including
Ruth of course, was looking at a greenish blue beetle who had just come
in, leaving a fine trail of smoke behind him. It was he who had made the
queer noise, and he seemed quite disturbed by the sensation he was
creating.
“Do excuse me,” he begged. “I really forgot I was among friends.”
“I should think so,” answered the elater, looking at him sternly. “A
beetle who carries a gun should be careful about using it.”
“Well, I try to be careful, but accidents will happen.”
“Yes, you might really call it a gun,” he said, in answer to Ruth’s
question, “and I have been named the Bombardier beetle because I carry
it. When men try to catch me, I shoot it off, though I suppose it really
doesn’t hurt them, but it quite blinds my insect enemies until I can get
away, anyhow. Oh, no, I do not use balls or shot. It is a fluid, in a
sac at the end of my body, and when I spurt it out it turns to gas, and
looks like smoke.”
“Well, we have had talk enough for to-day,” interrupted the elater, and
the Bombardier beetle said no more.
“Talk?” repeated Mrs. Sawyer, “I should say so. Very tiresome talk too.
Now I’m going out to lay some eggs. I know a lovely tree.”
“That’s all she thinks about,” said the elater. “I’m sure we have had a
very interesting meeting, and I made the main issue very plain.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER X
SOME QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE
That nothing walks with aimless feet.
—_Tennyson._
In a corner of the garden, where the lilacs grew tall and broad, Ruth
was waiting for something to happen. She had a feeling, as she told
Belinda, that the most interesting things were coming, for the wind had
been kissing her cheeks and ruffling her hair, just as though it was
saying to her, “Watch now. Watch closely and listen.” Then, too, the
garden seemed to be alive. Bees droning over the flowers; wasps
collecting their tiny balls of wood pulp or marketing for their
families; ants running here, there, and everywhere; not to mention many
other winged creatures, some of whom were made after a fashion so queer
that Ruth, forgetting how rude it is to make personal remarks,
deliberately asked of one:
“If you please, what is that long piece which seems to be growing from
the tip of your body? It looks like Mary’s stove hook when she sticks it
in the lid.”
“That,” was the rather short answer, “is my abdomen, and it isn’t
growing from the tip of my body, but from the _top_ of my thorax. It
seems to me you have never seen an ensign fly before.”
“No, I never did. Please, what does ensign mean?”
“The dictionary will tell you that. All I know is some man got an idea
that we carried our abdomens aloft like a flag or ensign, and so named
us ensign fly. We are not flies, to begin with, but we have to keep any
idiotic name they choose to tack on us. Now take Mrs. Horntail, who
wants——”
“Thank you, I can speak for myself,” interrupted the horntail, sharply.
She was quite handsome, with her black abdomen banded with yellow, her
red and black head, yellow legs and horn, and dusky wings.
“I like my name. It means something, for I have a horn on my tail, and,
what’s more, I use it. You should see me bore into solid green wood.
None of your dead wood for me. I am not content with one hole either. I
bore a great many, and in each I drop an egg, and when my babies hatch
they get fat on the sap wood of the tree.”
“There seem to be such a lot of things to eat trees,” said Ruth.
“Perhaps there are, but I am interested in horntail babies only. They do
their share of eating too, and when they grow sleepy they make cocoons
of chips and silk from their own bodies, and go to sleep. After they
wake they are changed into winged creatures, who naturally do not care
to live in the tree any more. So they gnaw their way through the bark to
the outside world and——”
“Not if the woodpeckers and I can help it,” interrupted an ichneumon
fly, keeping her antennæ in constant motion. She seemed to have long
streamers floating from the back of her, and, altogether, Ruth thought
her even queerer looking than the ensign fly.
“Those streamers are my ovipositor,” she explained to Ruth. “The thing I
lay eggs with, you understand. When I shut them together they form a
sort of auger, with which I bore into a tree, way, way in, where the fat
horntail babies are chewing the sap wood, and so ruining the tree. Into
their soft bodies I lay my eggs and when my children hatch they eat, not
the tree, but the horntail baby. It is a wonderfully good riddance, and
so the farmer and fruit grower consider us their friends and call us
‘trackers,’ because we find the hiding places of so many pests that harm
the plants.”
“You can’t get my babies,” said Mrs. Saw Fly. “I haven’t a horn, but I
have a saw, and, though it will not bore into wood, it saws fine gashes
in green leaves. Of course I drop an egg in each gash, and soon there’s
a swelling all around it, and when my children hatch they rock in gall
nut cradles, and the sap which gathers there is their food.”
“Talk about gall cradles,” said a gall fly, “my sisters and I are the
fairies who make them to perfection. Each of us has a different plant or
tree which she prefers, and each follows her own fashion in making
galls, and we puzzle even the wise men. Have you ever seen the brown
galls that grow on oaks?”
“Why, of course,” answered Ruth, glad the question was such an easy one.
“Well that’s something, but I doubt if you have noticed the rosy
coloured sponge that sometimes grows around the stem, or the mimic
branch of currants drooping from the spot where the tree intended an
acorn to be, or the tiny red apple-like ball on the leaf.”
Ruth shook her head. “They must be very pretty,” she said.
“Pretty? I should say so. They are all different kinds of galls too, and
we gall flies make them. Sometimes we sting the leaf, sometimes the
twig, and sometimes the stem, and always just the kind of cradle we
intended grows from it, and the egg we laid there hatched into a baby
grub, ready to eat the sap.”
“Then you know about the one on the willow tree,” put in Ruth. “The one
the housefly told about. It grows like a pine cone, and is made by some
one with a dreadfully long name.”
“That is something entirely different,” answered the gall fly. “We do
not pretend to make all the galls, you understand. Some are made by
insects belonging to quite another order. The willow tree cone is one.
You may always know ours from the fact that we make no door for the
babies to come out, as other insects do. Our babies make their own door
when they are ready to leave their cradle. And now to show how much is
in some names, I will tell you that those other gall insects are called
gall gnats and belong to the order of flies, while we are called gall
_flies_, and belong to the order Hymenoptera.”
“Oh!” cried Ruth, clapping her hands. “Now I know the kind of tera you
belong to, Hy-men-op-tera,” she repeated slowly. “Please tell me just
what it means.”
“No, I won’t,” was the ungracious answer. “I hate explanations.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Mrs. Horntail. “I know all about it.” And as Ruth
turned to her with grateful eyes she began:
“Hymenoptera means membrane wing, and that’s the kind we have, though
some of our order have no wings at all. The others have four wings, the
front pair being larger, with a fold along the hind edge, that catches
on hooks on the front edge of the hind wings; so we really seem to have
but one pair. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” nodded Ruth.
“Very well. We are divided into two sub-orders: stingers and borers. Our
larvæ are called maggots. They are not like us, being white grubs, with
round horny heads, pointed tails, six legs——”
“Here, here!” said the ichneumon fly, “that does well enough for your
children, but you know perfectly well that the babies of the rest of us
have no legs.”
“Yes, I know. Poor things! Legless children! How sad! Mrs. Saw Fly and I
are the only exceptions.”
“And your children use their legs to no good purpose either,” said the
ichneumon fly.
“My children need no legs. They never move from the spot where they are
hatched until after they transform. Why should they? Their dinner is
right there.”
“The same with mine,” added a little bright-coloured brachnoid. “I
choose a nice fat caterpillar, or something like that, to lay my eggs
in, and he always lasts until my babies are ready to spin their cocoons,
which they do on his shell, or dried skin, or whatever you choose to
call it. I know he himself is quite gone. It is a pretty sight to see
them.”
The brachnoid herself was a pretty little thing and as she looked not
unlike the ichneumon fly, only smaller, Ruth asked Mrs. Horntail if she
were not a young ichneumon fly.
“Young ichneumon?” repeated Mrs. Horntail. “Whoever heard of such a
thing? A young ichneumon is as large as an old one. None of us insects
grow after we leave our cocoons. When we are what you mean by
young—babies, in other words—we are different. I thought you had learned
that before now. Haven’t you had larvæ and pupæ explained to you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ruth, “but I had forgotten. Of course you are different
when you are first hatched, and then you get wings, while you sleep, but
I thought maybe you grew even after you had wings.”
“Some of the grasshopper tribe do that, and spiders are hatched little
spiders and grow bigger as they grow older, but we do no such thing.
Besides, as you heard a while ago, an ichneumon baby is legless,
absolutely legless, and homely. Well, I think the homeliest thing that
lives, but then what can you expect with such a mother?”
“I don’t think she is so awfully homely,” said Ruth. “She is
odd-looking, and—and——”
“Odd-looking?” repeated Mrs. Horntail. “You should see her drilling a
hole and laying her eggs. If she doesn’t cut a figure, I don’t know one.
With her abdomen all in a hump, her wings sticking straight up, and her
antennæ standing out in front, not to mention the ridiculous loop she
makes with the ovipositor, she certainly is a sight.”
“But I find the horntail babies,” said the ichneumon fly, quite
undisturbed, “and that is the important thing. I wonder if this meeting
is over?”
“I hope so,” answered Mrs. Horntail. “It is not a proper meeting at all.
If I had the regulating of it, I would make some of these creatures
behave. See that ant on the pebble over there. She is making faces,
actually making faces.”
“I am not making faces,” answered the ant. “I am getting ready to talk,
and I haven’t had a chance.”
She was little and brown, and scarcely an eighth of an inch long, but
she looked quite important as she prepared to address the audience.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XI
WISE FRIENDS AND FIERY ONES
A was an ant, who seldom stood still,
And who made a nice nest in the side of a hill.
—_Edward Lear._
“Sh!” said Ruth to the audience in general, for she wanted very much to
hear what the ant had to say. The ant looked at her approvingly, and
then said in a very solemn tone:
“My friends, there are ants and ants.”
“Who doesn’t know that?” snapped Mrs. Horntail.
[Illustration: “‘MY FRIENDS, THERE ARE ANTS AND ANTS’”]
“Yes, there are ants and ants,” repeated the speaker, not noticing the
interruption. “There is the carpenter ant, for one. In the books she is
called Componotis Pennsylvanicus, but never mind the name. It doesn’t
seem to hurt her. She makes her nest in the trunks of trees, old
buildings, logs, and places of that kind. You can see her on the leaf by
Mrs. Saw Fly. She is large and black and——”
“Clean,” finished the carpenter ant, speaking for herself, and, without
asking further permission, she poised on her hind legs and began to ply
her tongue, and the fine and coarse combs on her fore legs, until she
had gone over her whole body, smoothing out ruffled hairs, and getting
rid of every atom of soil. Her toilet done, she gave a few leisurely
strokes, then drew her fore legs through her mouth to clean the combs,
and stretched herself with an air of satisfaction.
“I hope I haven’t interrupted the proceedings,” she said, “but if I am
not clean I am miserable. Now, Miss Lassius Brunens, please go on.”
[Illustration: “‘THEN THERE ARE ANTS WHO KEEP SLAVES’”]
“Miss who?” asked the little brown ant. “Oh, I see. You are calling me
by the name the wise men give me. Well, I can stand it. To continue: I
have mentioned the carpenter ant, and there are also the mound builders.
Everybody knows their big hills. Then there are ants who keep slaves,
and live under stones, and there are honey ants, who live in the South
and use the abdomens of their own sisters to store honey in, and there
are ants who sow seed and harvest it, and ants who cut pieces from green
leaves and carry them as parasols, and soldier ants and——”
[Illustration: “‘THEN THERE ARE ANTS WHO CUT PIECES FROM GREEN LEAVES
AND CARRY THEM AS PARASOLS’”]
“Oh, give us a rest!” broke in Mrs. Horntail. “I am tired of ants.”
“Jealous, you mean,” said the little brown ant, “because you are not as
wise as we are. Maybe you don’t know that whole books have been written
about us and our clever doings. And men have spent years and years
trying to study our ways. Now my family may not be the most wonderful,
but I think it is the best known. We are the little ants who make the
hill with a hole in the middle, which you so often see on sandy paths,
or roadsides, or in dry fields.”
Ruth had edged closer, and was listening eagerly. Once more the little
ant looked at her approvingly, then went on:
“Some people think our houses are queer, because they are dark. Of
course we have no windows, only a door, and that is a hole in the roof.
We like it so though, and you might be surprised if you could see our
many wonderful galleries and chambers. We made them all too. Dug them
out of the earth, with our feet, throwing the soil out behind us, until
the burrow grew too deep. Then we had to take it out grain by grain. We
made our pillars and supports also, using damp earth for mortar. We
don’t mind work, but we _do_ mind human giants carelessly putting their
feet in the middle of our hill and breaking in upon our private life.
Those accidents will happen though, and our first thought is always the
babies. They have no legs, and we have no hands, so we take them in our
jaws, and speed away with them to our underground chambers, where they
will be safe. I have seen human babies carried when they _did_ have
legs. There is no excuse for that.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF THE MOUND-BUILDER ANT]
“Another thing, I know better than to call a human baby an egg, but,
would you believe me, there are lots of people who think our babies are
eggs. I have heard them called so. Now the reason we are so careful of
our babies is because if there were no babies there would be no ants,
and that brings me to the queen, for without her there would be no
babies, because there would be no eggs, and babies always begin by being
eggs. Only the queen lays eggs, remember that. She is important for this
reason, and no other. She is not our ruler, as some suppose. In fact, we
have no ruler. Ants do as they please, but they usually please to do
what is best for the whole community. We have many queens, but they are
not jealous of each other, as the bee queens are. They do not look like
us workers. They are ever so much larger, and were hatched with wings.
The males also have wings, but it really matters very little what they
have. They are such a weakly set, and after they go abroad with the
queens, when they take the one flight of their lives, they usually die,
or something eats them, and so they are settled. It is the queens who
interest us. Some of them we never see again. They go off somewhere and
start new colonies, or something may eat them too, but those that come
back either unhook their wings, or we do it for them. Then they settle
down and begin to lay eggs. Their egg laying is not after the fashion of
bee queens, who go to certain cells and leave eggs in them. The ants
drop their eggs as they walk around.”
“Don’t they get lost?” asked Ruth.
“No, indeed. Workers follow and pick up every one. They take good care
of those precious eggs, too, and when they hatch into helpless grubs,
without wings or feet, our work begins in earnest. Every morning we
carry them into the sunshine, and bring them down again at night. We
fondle them too, and keep them clean by licking them all over. Then of
course they must be fed, and, like other babies, they prefer milk.”
“And I know where you get the milk!” cried Ruth, all excitement. “It is
from the aphides, isn’t it? The cicada told me. The aphides are his
cousins. He doesn’t think so much of them, but he says you do.”
“Well, why shouldn’t we? They give us the most delicious milk. We have a
fine herd of aphides now pasturing on a stalk of sweetbrier, and when
Winter comes we will keep their eggs down in our nest, and put them on
the sweetbrier in the Spring, so that the little aphides which hatch
from them will have plenty to eat. Yes, and we may even build tiny sheds
for them to keep their enemies from reaching them.”
“I wonder if you intend to talk all day?” broke in a sharp voice. “I
sha’n’t wait another minute.”
It was not Mrs. Horntail, as Ruth thought at first, but Madame Vespa
Maculata, or, in plain English, the white-faced hornet, and, as she was
a fiery lady, no one disputed her when she said:
“I am the largest and most distinguished of my family, and I build a
nest whose delicacy and beauty make it a wonderful piece of insect
architecture. It is proper that I should speak first, and I will speak
right now.”
“Speak, by all means,” said the little ant. “I have quite finished.”
“Then move,” answered Vespa; “I need space.”
The whole audience gave it to her, including Ruth, who did not edge up
close, as she did to the other speakers.
“It is this way,” she whispered to Belinda. “Those sharp people are very
interesting, but it is better not to get too near until you know them
quite well.”
[Illustration: “VESPA MACULATA”]
“I suppose,” Madame Vespa was saying, “I suppose we wasps can scarcely
be called general favourites. We have a sting, you see, but, my friends,
that was intended for laying eggs, and if we use it on people it is
because they meddle in our business. It is our way. We _will_ sting
those who bother us. Now, in our community—for we are social wasps—the
female is unquestionably the better half. We have our rights and we
insist on them. My mate was a good-for-nothing fellow, like the rest of
them. I didn’t marry him until Fall, and he soon left me, and did
nothing but perch around in the sunshine with others like him, and I had
all the hard work of the home. Finally he died. I suppose he couldn’t
help that, but I doubt if he would have made an effort anyhow. Well,
reproaches are of no use now, for he is very much dead by this time. I
have had a whole Winter’s sleep since I saw him last. We queen wasps
always sleep in Winter. We are the only ones of the colony who do not
die when cold weather comes. You see, our community is not like the
bees. It lasts only for a Summer, and each Spring the queens wake up and
start a new one. That was what I did. I slept in the crevice of a barn
and left it full of plans. You can imagine the task before me, but I was
plucky and soon chose a tree to suit me. My house was made of paper, and
I should like to say right here that we wasps are the first paper makers
in the world, for while Egypt still traced her records in stone, or on
the inner bark of the papyrus, my ancestors were manufacturing paper,
that man has finally learned to make in the same way. For paper is only
vegetable fibre reduced to a pulp and pressed into sheets.”
Ruth’s eyes were wide with astonishment, and she was edging nearer to
Madame Vespa.
“Can you really make paper out of wood?” she asked.
“Of course. See my jaws? They are made to chew wood. Not decayed wood
either. That may do for wasps who live under ground, for the brownish
paper it makes isn’t strong enough to stand exposure. I choose good
wood, and I make fine gray paper.”
“I wish you would tell me how you do it,” begged Ruth.
“Why, I simply gnaw the wood with my powerful jaws, and chew it until it
is a pulpy mass, then I spread it in a sheet, wherever I wish it, and
smooth and pat it with my feet. See how flat they are? I have heard of
people beginning their houses at the cellar and building up. I consider
that perfectly ridiculous. I always begin at the top. First, I make a
slender stem or support to fasten the nest to the tree. Then I make
three or more six-sided cells, which I hang from the support, and lay an
egg in each, fastening it in with glue, for the open side of the cell is
down. After this I enclose my cells with a wall of paper, and by this
time, I am glad to say, my children begin to hatch, and though at first
they look like horrid little worms, who can’t help themselves at all, I
always know they will grow like me soon, and do a great deal of work.
“Feeding them isn’t an easy job, I can tell you, especially when it is
added to my other duties, but, after a while, each baby weaves a little
silken door over its cell, and goes to sleep. When she wakes she is a
wasp, and the first thing she does is to wash her face and polish her
antennæ, nor is it long before she gets to work. My first children are
always workers, and after a number of them are hatched I can give my
whole time to laying eggs.”
“But when the nest is once done?” began Ruth, who had forgotten her fear
entirely and was now quite close to Madame Vespa.
“The nest done?” repeated the fiery lady. “You should know that our nest
is never done. New cells must be added, old walls gnawed down, and fresh
ones built up to enclose larger combs. Indeed, we are never idle. We
ventilate as the bees do, and we have sentinels too. Later in the season
I lay eggs that hatch out drones, and last of all, the queen eggs. They
are——”
“Now you would think,” said a yellow jacket, buzzing up excitedly, “you
would really think that Vespa might mention the fact that other wasps
exist, but not she. Now I want to tell you, the white-faced hornet
_isn’t_ the whole thing. There are yellow jackets too.”
“We have eyes,” said Madame Vespa, “but go ahead and talk, and get
through, for pity’s sake.”
“Yes, I mean to talk, and I shall get through when I please. We always
insist that people shall respect our rights, and they generally do
or—something happens. Our nests are quite as remarkable as Vespa’s,
though we do not hang them from trees, as she is in the habit of doing.
Our cousin, Mrs. Polistes, also makes a paper nest, but she builds only
a layer of cells, with not a sign of a wall about them. Any one can look
right in on her private life.”
“I’m quite willing they should,” spoke up Mrs. Polistes, a long, slender
brown wasp, with a yellow line around her body. “I could wall up my
house if I wished to, but I _don’t_ and I _won’t_; so there.”
“They all have awful tempers, haven’t they?” said Ruth to Mrs. Horntail.
“Tempers?” repeated that lady. “They are perfect pepper pots, though I
must say Mrs. Polistes isn’t usually as bad as the others.”
“I am talking,” called the yellow jacket, “and the rest of the audience
will please keep still. As I was saying, though I doubt if you all heard
it, there are other members of our family who have not been mentioned
yet. We have miners, masons, and carpenters just like the bees. Of
course they are solitary, and——”
“I object!” interrupted Mrs. Muddauber. “I won’t be bunched in with ever
so many others. I will speak for myself.”
She was quite graceful, with a waist as slender as a thread, but she
jerked her wings about in such a nervous and fidgety fashion that Mrs.
Horntail declared she must have St. Vitus’s dance.
“I haven’t any such thing,” answered Mrs. Muddauber, angrily. “I haven’t
any time to dance. I’m nervous, that’s all. Anybody would be nervous
with all the work I have to do, and my mate such a lazy fellow that he
never thinks of lending me a helping mandible in making my home. He says
he doesn’t live very long, and wants to enjoy himself while he can.
Speaking of houses, I don’t approve of paper ones. I always make mine of
mud. I’m a mason, you see. I get one room finished, and lay an egg in
it. Then I go to market to get my baby’s dinner.”
“But you haven’t any baby,” objected Mrs. Horntail. “Your egg doesn’t
hatch as soon as it is laid, I know that.”
“What of it? The egg will be a baby sometime, and the baby will be
hungry. He will not be a vegetarian either. He will want meat. Juicy
spiders are what he prefers, and he likes them fresh. Now if I should
kill them they would be anything but fresh when he is ready to eat them,
so I merely sting them until they are quite paralyzed, then I put them
in the room with my egg and seal it up. I build a number of cells with
an egg and spiders in each, but I am not a jug builder. I have no time
to fool after such silly affairs as you sometimes see on twigs and
bushes.”
“She isn’t artistic enough, she had better say,” remarked the little jug
builder. “My nests are wonderfully pretty. I have heard many people say
so. I am very careful to give them a delicate shape. I line them with
silk too, but I will not tell you how I make this silk. Even the wise
men have not discovered our secret.”
“Disagreeable creature!” remarked Mrs. Horntail; “but then what can you
expect from a wasp of any kind? Now who _is_ making that dreadful noise?
I shall certainly be a wreck before I get away from this place. People
who buzz in such a fashion ought certainly to be turned out. But there,
what’s the use of asking? I might know it could only be——”
“Sir Bumble Bee at your service.” And a big fellow dressed all in black
and gold buzzed up before the angry Mrs. Horntail.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XII
THE HONEY MAKERS
Gaily we fly, my fellows and I,
Seeking the honey our hives to supply.
“I am an American,” he went on, in a voice which all could hear. “A
native of this great and glorious country, and I have a right to buzz,
or make any noise I please. Those little bees who make honeycomb are
foreigners—immigrants. Useful citizens, I will grant, but still
immigrants. Now, _my_ ancestors were here when Columbus discovered
America. Do you know that my name is Bombus, spelt with a big ‘B’? Now,
to show you how useful we bumble bees are, I shall tell you a story.
Once upon a time—are you all listening?”
“I am,” answered Ruth, quickly. “Please go on.”
“Well, once upon a time there was no red clover in Australia, and the
farmers of that country decided to take American seed there and plant
it. The first year the crop grew finely. There were plenty of flowers,
but no seeds. Of course that was bad, they needed seed for the next
year’s sowing. Well, once more they brought seed from America, and once
more the crop grew finely, but not a seed came from it. Then the people
began to think, and after a while they found out the trouble. They
hadn’t the American bumble bee and they had to have him, for, my
friends, we, only, of all the bees, can fertilize the red clover
blossom, for only we have tongues long enough to reach its nectar cups
and the cell where its precious pollen is hidden. You may not think our
tongue so long, because it is rolled up when we are not using it, but
look!” And he unrolled a long brown tongue, which, in a moment, seemed
gone again.
“Gracious!” said Ruth.
“Now do you wonder that we can reach down into the red clover? When _we_
went to Australia the clover not only grew, but set seeds too.”
“But,” questioned Ruth, “do different flowers have different bees to
come to them, and how do you know?”
“Ah, that’s just it. A voice within us seems to whisper, ‘Go to the
blossom whose heart you can best reach, feed upon its honey and take
your fill of its golden dust.’ We know it to be the law, and we obey,
and, even as we obey, the pollen clings to our hairy bodies, and we bear
it to the next flower we visit. This is what usually happens, but
sometimes,” he added, as though ashamed, “I must say, we break the law,
and, finding a flower whose honey we cannot reach, we use our tongues to
cut a hole in the spot where we know the nectar is hidden and enter from
the outside. Plainly speaking, it is the way of the thief, getting our
feast without paying for it. For the bee who takes it so carries away no
pollen, and an honest bee should never act so. Now perhaps you would
like to know how we bumble bees began life? I am sure the little girl
would.” And Ruth nodded an emphatic “Yes.”
“We do not live all Winter, as honey bees do. Only a few queens sleep
through the cold months, and they do not need food; so while we make a
little honey to eat in Summer, we do not lay by any stores for Winter,
and naturally we make no combs. What looks like them are the silken
cocoons our babies spin. If I were a queen, I wouldn’t be here. Queens
have too much work to do to be abroad in Summer. You may see them in the
early Spring flying about and hunting up good home sites. A hole under a
log is often chosen, and gathering nectar and pollen the queen carries
it to this underground palace. In the mass she lays an egg, then gathers
more, in which she also lays an egg. In this way her house is soon full.
When the eggs hatch, the babies eat the pollen and nectar they find
around them. I was just such a baby, and, being a gentleman, I haven’t
much to do. I shall probably marry a queen some day, but now I simply
play in the sunshine. We bumble bees belong to the social branch of the
family, but there are many bees who live alone. They all follow trades.
There is the carpenter, who isn’t furry like us, but black and shiny.
She can bore right into solid wood and make cells for her eggs. Then
there are the miners, who burrow into the ground, and the masons, who
make nests out of grains of sand glued together, or out of clay or mud.
Some of the carpenters line their nests with pieces of leaves, which
they cut out with their sharp jaws. They have been called upholsterers
and they——”
“This is all very interesting,” interrupted a honey bee, “but really I
must speak now. I have so much to say, and my work is waiting.”
“Talk, by all means,” answered Sir Bumble Bee, gallantly. “I am a
gentleman, and I always yield to ladies.”
“Thank you, but I can’t call myself a lady. I am just a worker honey
bee. My name is Apis Mellifica, but I do belong to a wonderful family. I
will admit that. We are the greatest wax makers in the world. I heard
somebody once say that bees are always in a hurry, while butterflies
seem to take their time. Now there’s a good reason for that. Butterflies
haven’t any work to do. They do not even see their children, and never
take care of them, while bees have thousands of babies to feed and look
after. Then you must know we clean house every day, for we are extremely
neat housekeepers. We clean ourselves also, and we have combs and
brushes for that purpose.”
The words combs and brushes seemed to have quite an effect on the bees
and ants in the audience, and many began to make their toilets, Miss
Apis among them. They looked so very funny that Ruth laughed outright,
but she quickly settled down to listen, as Miss Apis, feeling herself
quite clean, said briskly:
[Illustration: THE QUEEN BEE AND HER BODYGUARD OF DRONES]
“Now I will tell a story. Once upon a time there was a large hive under
an apple tree. A hedge sheltered it from the wind, and the tree shaded
it from the sun, which made it very pleasant for the family who lived
there. It was a very large family, for there were thousands and
thousands of members, but they lived together in peace, each doing her
own share of work. Of course there was a queen. She had a long, slender
body and short wings. This did not matter, for she had only flown from
the hive once, and then she had a bodyguard of drones. Maybe you think
that because she was a queen she had nothing to do. It is true, she was
not obliged to gather honey, make wax, clean house, nurse the children,
or anything of that sort, but she was kept busy laying eggs. She laid
thousands every day.”
Ruth opened her eyes wide. “Think of it, Belinda!” she said. “Thousands
of eggs a day! Just suppose she was a hen.”
“She is something far more important,” answered Miss Apis, “and her eggs
are of much more consequence. Besides the queen there were drones and
workers in this big family. The drones did no work at all, though they
were large and thick-bodied. Indeed, all they seemed fit for was to fly
with the queen when she took her one trip abroad, and to eat what the
workers gathered.”
“See here!” said a drone from the back of the assembly. “I am getting
tired of being called lazy. I should like to say right here that we
drones haven’t any honey sac nor any pollen baskets, not even a pollen
brush, like Mrs. Carpenter Bee, so how can we gather pollen or honey?
Besides, we haven’t any sting to defend ourselves with.”
“We will not argue the point,” said Miss Apis, “but go on to the
workers, who formed the largest part of the colony. They were hatched to
work, and they were willing to work until they died. They had strong
wings, lots of eyes, and three stomach sacs.”
“Well, I can’t see any use in so many stomachs,” said Mrs. Horntail, and
Ruth agreed with her, though she did not say so.
“You would if you were a bee,” said Miss Apis, mildly. “You see, or
maybe you don’t, that eating honey, and just swallowing it, are two
different things. When a bee just swallows honey it passes through the
strainer, or fine hairs, in the first sac, so that every speck of pollen
may be taken out, and into the second one, where it remains until the
bee is ready to unswallow it in the hive. But when a bee wishes to eat
this honey it passes on into the third sac, or the real stomach, and is
digested.”
“Well, I am sorry I spoke,” said Mrs. Horntail, “for I certainly do not
enjoy these details.”
“I can’t help that,” answered Miss Apis, undisturbed, “I am telling
facts. Not only had these workers three stomach sacs, but they also had
pollen baskets on their hind legs, for it is from the pollen gathered in
the flowers and mixed with honey and water that the bee bread fed to the
baby bees is made. Not all the workers gathered honey, though. Some made
wax and built combs, and this was a very hard job, for they were obliged
to hang from the ceiling and pick wax from the under side of their
bodies, then chew it and plaster it to the walls. This wax is in eight
scales, or pockets, on the under side of the worker bee’s body, and it
is made by what she eats. When the pockets of one bee were emptied, the
next one took her place, and when the lump on the side of the wall was
large enough another set of bees formed it into cells. Of course you
know that the cells in a beehive are always six-sided. That is because
six-sided cells use all the space, and are also strongest. At least the
wise men say that is probably the reason why we make them so, and they
think they know. Other of the workers took care of the babies. They fed
them and kept them clean, and some aired the hive.”
Ruth’s eyes were big with questions. Miss Apis saw and continued:
“They did this by moving their wings rapidly as if they were flying, and
when many did it at the same time the good air was driven around the
hive and the bad air out. Then, of course, there had to be sentinels to
speak to every bee who passed in, and make sure she had the right to
enter, for human people are not our only robbers. There are flies that
look much like us, but ask them to show their pollen baskets, and they
can’t do it. Now it happened one Spring in the hive I am telling you
about that the queen heard a sound that she didn’t like at all. It was a
thin piping, and it came from one of the brood cells, which is the
nursery of the hive.”
“‘It sounds like a young queen,’ she said, ‘but I have laid no queen
eggs.’ The workers stopped their tasks long enough to talk about it.
They knew perfectly well that it was a young queen, and they also knew
how she happened to be there, even though the old queen had laid no eggs
in the cells on the edge of the comb meant for queen eggs. The old queen
did not wish another royal lady, but the workers knew that if anything
happened to the old queen there would be none to take her place, and
such a thing must not be allowed. So they had taken down two waxen walls
between three small brood cells, where a worker egg lay, and so made it
into a royal cell. They bit away the wax with their jaws, and pressed
the rough edges into shape with their feet, and when the egg within
hatched, instead of feeding the baby with flower dust and honey and
water, as they would have done had they intended it to grow into a
worker, they fed it royal jelly. And so after it had grown and spun a
cocoon, within which it had lain for sixteen days, it had become a young
queen, ready to leave her cell. But the workers knew it would never do
for her to come out just yet, for she and the old queen would have to
fight, and one would surely die.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” cried Ruth. “Why should they?”
“Because only one queen may reign in a hive.”
“‘We will keep her in her cell a little longer,’ the workers said to
each other. And they built a wall of wax over her door, leaving only a
hole large enough for her to thrust out her tongue so that they might
feed her. But though she couldn’t get out, she could complain.”
“I should have complained too,” said Ruth.
“Well this young queen complained in earnest, and the old queen heard
her, and of course she tried to get to the cell of this pert young one,
and settle her for all time. This the workers would not allow. They
would not touch their old queen, but they formed a bodyguard about the
cell of the new one, and so protected her.”
“‘Well,’ said the old queen at last, ‘I can’t stand this. I will not
stay here. I shall take my friends with me and fly away to a place where
only I shall be queen.’”
“She grew more and more excited, as time passed, and, as many of the
workers were excited too, the hive was in much confusion.”
“‘We are much too crowded,’ said some of the workers.”
“‘I can’t seem to settle down to work,’ answered others. ‘What can you
expect when thousands of children are added to a family in a week? The
time comes when the house must be made larger, or some of the members
must move.’”
“‘We will _move_,’ said the old queen in a tone of decision. ‘We will
move right now. Those who are my friends, come. The others may stay with
the piping thing in yonder cell.’”
“And without further words, the old queen flew away, followed by a great
many workers.”
“Now I know what swarming means!” cried Ruth. “I used to wonder about
it.”
Miss Apis nodded.
“When the swarm was well away, the workers who were left in the hive
hastened to let out the new queen.”
“She must have been glad,” said Ruth.
“Very likely,” agreed Miss Apis. “She began her reign with a flying trip
into the world with the drones. But after this, she came back to the
hive, and settled down to the business of egg-laying. Of course the
workers took up the same old tasks, for whatever happens, workers will
work. That is why they have no love for the drones, and when Winter
comes they drive these lazy ones from the hive.”
“I think I feel a little bit sorry for the drones,” said Ruth, “if they
can’t help being lazy, as that drone said a while ago.”
“Well, it is our way,” answered Miss Apis. “Only those who have worked
in the Summer have a right to eat in the Winter. Now my work is calling
me, and I must leave. This story of one hive is true of all. I hope you
have enjoyed it, and so good-by.”
“There, she is finished at last,” said Mrs. Horntail. “I think this
whole meeting has been most tiresome.”
But Ruth did not agree with her.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIII
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF ALL
Lo! the bright train their radiant wings unfurl.
—_Anna L. Barbauld._
“It seems nothing but butterflies!” cried Ruth, running out into the
garden as soon as breakfast was over.
“Of course,” answered a voice, “the Lepidoptera will meet by the
summer-house.”
“Does that mean butterflies? And oh, please, may I come?”
“Yes, to both questions,” was wafted back from the beautiful creature
flitting so gracefully on the light warm breeze.
“Just like a flower with wings,” thought Ruth as, holding Belinda
closely, she followed as fast as she could go.
Indeed, they all seemed like flowers with wings, she decided, as she
came into the middle of the gathering.
“It is the most beautiful we have been to yet,” she whispered to
Belinda, “and I am sure it is going to be the most interesting. I
couldn’t begin to count them.”
Ruth might well say this, for nearly all the fifty-four families of
moths to be found in America north of Mexico were represented by at
least one member, while there were many from the four families of
butterflies and the two families of skippers.
Ruth came only just in time, for already one of the moths had begun to
speak. He was a handsome fellow, with fore wings in different shades of
olive.
“My friends,” he said, “I am called the modest sphinx, and, that being
the case, you may imagine how painful it is for me to put myself forward
in this way. I have been asked, however, to give you a few general
facts. Why I am expected to know these facts is, perhaps, because, being
a sphinx, I should also be wise. Yet I am not the only sphinx here, and,
if I remember aright, the old and historic sphinx _asked_, rather than
_answered_, questions.”
“He uses awfully big words,” Ruth whispered to her usual confidant,
Belinda.
“Now to begin,” went on the sphinx, “you know, I suppose, that we belong
to the order Lepidoptera, which means the scale wings, because the
colour of our wings is made by scales so tiny that they are really like
dust. We are divided into moths, butterflies, and skippers, and all of
us are messengers for the flowers, carrying the precious pollen from
blossom to blossom. Our children are generally enemies to the plants.
They are called caterpillars, and seem to have a great many legs, but
really only six of them are true legs and remain when the youngster is
full grown. The others are prolegs. There may be two or there may be
ten. They help in walking, but are shed with the last skin.”
“Alas!” sighed a voice in the corner. “I haven’t any to shed—that is, in
the middle of my body.”
Ruth turned as Mr. Looper, otherwise known as the measuring worm, made
this remark. She would have asked a question, for Mr. Looper, rearing
his head after his own queer fashion, seemed quite ready to talk, but
the sphinx stopped her.
“This is not the time to talk about individual legs,” he said. “We are
trying to get at general differences. Now there are certain ways in
which all moths differ from all butterflies.”
“I should say so,” said Miss Papilio, a handsome tiger swallowtail.
“Moths have short, stout bodies, and ours are slender.” And Miss Papilio
circled above them so that all might admire her delicate body and the
beauty of her tawny yellow wings, with their gray bands and stripes, and
their ends pointed in true swallowtail fashion.
“And here is another difference,” she added, coming to rest with her
wings folded together vertically. “We always carry our wings so when we
are not flying. You moths hold yours horizontally, or sloping. Never
upward.”
“Well, that’s true,” said the sphinx, “and you know we generally have
beautiful feathery antennæ, though I, and a few others, are an exception
to that rule, but you butterflies can boast only very thread-like
antennæ, with a knob at the end.”
“Enough about that subject,” spoke up Miss Papilio. “What I am wondering
about is why moths like to fly at night, or in the twilight. Now,
butterflies must have sunshine.”
“We love the cool, soft night, I can’t tell you why,” answered the
sphinx, “and we sleep through the noisy day.”
“But it is so dangerous to sleep as you do, when birds and other
nuisances are up and doing.”
“Well, birds are pests, there is no doubt about it, and if it hadn’t
been for them we insects would have possessed the earth long ago, but
you forget, we always choose a place that is nearly the colour of
ourselves, and we look so much like our surroundings that it would take
a sharp eye to find us. We are not brightly coloured, as a rule, like
the butterflies, or if we wear gay colours at all it is usually on our
hind wings, which we hide under the fore wings. Now the general remarks
being made, the audience may view the exhibits and hear their individual
histories.”
Ruth was up in a second.
“I must talk to that funny measuring worm,” she said to herself. “Why,
where is he?” she added, standing before the bush on which she had seen
him a while before.
“Right here,” answered what Ruth thought was a twig, and which proved to
be none other than Mr. Looper himself, who raised his head and began to
walk on his hind legs in his own eccentric fashion. Indeed, not only he,
but a number of other Mr. Loopers, all showing themselves in different
positions.
[Illustration: “‘SMART CHILDREN, AREN’T THEY?’ ASKED SOME MOTHS”]
“Smart children, aren’t they?” asked some moths, variously coloured in
black and brown and yellow, hovering above the tree where the loopers
were feeding. “They are ours—that is, not exactly ours, but ours will be
like them when they are hatched. These fellows will soon make little
cradles of leaves and go into the ground to go to sleep, and when they
come out they will be like us. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” agreed Ruth, “but I’d like to know about their legs.”
“I can explain that,” said Mr. Looper quickly. “I have no legs in the
middle of my body, and as that part of me isn’t supported, I can’t walk
like other caterpillars, for I _am_ a caterpillar, even if they _do_
call me a worm.”
“The legs, or the want of them, is a fault of his ancestors no doubt,”
interrupted a voice. “Probably they walked in his idiotic fashion for
fun, or to be different, even when they did have the right number of
legs, and so lost the use of them, and the legs, too, finally. That
often happens. I could tell you of cases——”
“Why, you look something like Miss Papilio,” said Ruth, turning to the
last speaker, and interrupting her reminiscences.
“I am a Miss Papilio,” was the answer, “but not the one you heard a
while ago. She was a tiger swallowtail, while I am a black swallowtail,
different, but quite as handsome in my way. We swallowtails all believe
in dressing well. We are butterflies, not moths, but though I am so
beautiful, I serve some very humble plants. I carry the precious pollen
for them. My children, I’m afraid, will not be so helpful, but what can
one do? I happen to like honey, but they prefer the leaves of parsley,
carrot, celery, and such things. They have large appetites, too.”
“Everything seems to have an appetite,” said Ruth.
“Well, my children will be able to eat, I can tell you. See, I have laid
my eggs on this bed of parsley. Ah! there’s a larva now. Not mine, but
mine will be like it. See, he is green, ringed with black and yellow. If
you tease him he will stick out his yellow horns at you, and you won’t
like the odour either. Would you believe I was once like that, and I
slept in a pupa case like the one under the twig there? You know there
always comes a time in the life of every caterpillar, if he lives long
enough of course, when he stops eating for good and wants nothing so
much as to sleep. That came to me, and I crawled from the parsley bed to
an old rail fence and began to spin. The silk was in my body, and it
came through two tubes in my lower lip.”
“That isn’t the way spiders spin,” said Ruth. “They——”
“I was not a spider,” said Miss Papilio. “I was a caterpillar, and they
always spin with their mouths. So that is what I did, and before long I
had lashed myself securely to the fence by strong silken loops. Then I
shed my pretty suit, and my skin shrivelled until it was a hard case. In
that safe cradle I went to sleep, and came out in the Spring with six
legs instead of sixteen, a slender tongue in place of sharp, hungry
jaws, and, best of all, four beautiful wings. Oh, the joy of sailing
through wonderful space, and sipping nectar from the sweetest flowers!”
“We have all felt that way,” said a large red-brown butterfly, whose
wings, lighter below, were veined and bordered by black, with a double
row of white spots on the edges. “Look at the chrysalis from which I
came, and say no more. Can you guess my name?”
Ruth was obliged to confess that she could not.
“I have often seen you though,” she added, “or butterflies just like
you.”
“Probably you have. I am called the monarch, and, frail as I look, I can
fly hundreds of miles without resting. I was just laying some eggs on
this milkweed, and since you are here, you might use your eyes a little.
You may see something worth while.”
Ruth was using her eyes as best she could, and soon she spied a number
of caterpillars chewing away upon the milkweed leaves. They were lemon
or greenish-yellow, banded with black.
“Will they grow into butterflies like you?” she asked.
“Yes,” was the answer, “but there is something more to see.”
Again Ruth looked, and now saw what appeared to be a little green jewel
dotted with golden nails.
“Oh!” she cried, “how lovely!”
“I thought you would say that,” and the monarch fluttered her wings
proudly. “That is our chrysalis, the cradle in which we sleep for our
great transformation. That is one thing the viceroy can’t do, though she
mimics us as much as possible.”
“Mimics you?” repeated Ruth, in surprise.
“Yes, certainly. You see we monarchs are wrapped in a magic perfume—that
no birds like, and so they never try to eat us. Now, Mrs. Viceroy hasn’t
this perfume, and to protect herself she tries to imitate our family
colours, so that the birds, mistaking her for one of us, may leave her
alone too. She even flies as we do. See her over there? She is smaller
than I am, but quite like me, except for the black line on her hind
wings. A careless observer would scarcely notice that, however.”
The monarch floated off to lay some more eggs, and Ruth found herself in
the midst of ever so many tawny brown butterflies, all bordered and
checkered with black, and having wings covered with silver spots.
“Oh, you are so lovely!” she cried, with shining eyes, and then, as they
passed on, calling back their name, “Fritillaries!” “Fritillaries!” she
turned to see many other dazzling creatures fluttering about her. Some
she had never seen before, but others were like old friends. There were
the meadow browns, the stout-bodied coppers, the slender, beautiful
blues, and more white cabbage butterflies than she could count. The
handsome red admiral flirted with the pretty painted lady, and the
mourning cloaks, with their purple-brown wings, yellow-bordered and
marked with light blue spots, were flitting about, telling everybody how
they had slept all Winter as butterflies, which is most uncommon in the
butterfly world, and were for that reason the first to show themselves
in the Spring.
“I used to wonder why you were out so early,” said Ruth, “and once I
found one of you in a crevice on a Winter day, and I couldn’t understand
about it.”
“Well, you do now. We hibernate like many animals.”
“But you must have been eggs in the beginning,” said Ruth. “The oil
beetle told me that all insects begin as eggs. And will you please tell
me how a butterfly knows the right kind of plant to lay her eggs on? It
always seems to be just the one her caterpillars like to eat. She
doesn’t eat it herself.”
“Of course not,” answered one of the mourning cloaks. “You need but look
at out tongues to see that we eat only honey. I can’t answer your
question, for none of us knows. Something tells us the proper plant for
our eggs. We lay them there without hesitation, and we lay a great many.
This is necessary, for one never knows what may happen. Most of them may
make a meal for something before they even hatch into caterpillars, and
if some miss this fate, and do hatch, there are any number of birds, and
their enemies, who like nothing so well as a fat, juicy caterpillar for
dinner. Then if that danger is escaped, there are the birds again, and
other hungry things, all anxious to get a taste of the butterfly. So you
can understand that in a life so full of accidents it is important to
have many eggs to begin with.”
“Yes,” said Ruth, “but——”
She didn’t finish, for just then she put her hand on what she thought
was a leaf, and, much to her surprise, she found that it was alive.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIV
REAL FAIRIES
or the possible glory that underlies
The passing phase of the meanest things.
_Mrs. Whitney._
Alive it certainly was, this exquisite green moth, which rose on
shimmering wings at Ruth’s touch. No wonder Ruth almost screamed aloud
in her surprised delight.
“Are you a moonbeam?” she asked. “You are just lovely enough for one.”
“No, I am not a moonbeam,” was the answer, “_but I am the moon moth, the
Luna_. I am a messenger for the night-blooming flowers, for only the
long tongues of the moths may reach through the deep tubes to their
honeyed hearts. I was taking my day nap when you touched me.”
[Illustration: “‘I AM THE MOON MOTH, THE LUNA’”]
“I didn’t know you were there,” said Ruth, “you looked so much like a
leaf.”
“That is what I wished to look like. Many others are sleeping the same
way. You wouldn’t know them unless they moved. Our larvæ are not
sleeping, however. I can answer for that. They are quite awake and busy
eating the leaves of hickory, walnut, and other trees of that family.
Maybe you have seen them? They are large and handsome, and they spin
very snug cocoons of silk, wrapped about with a dead leaf, very much
like those made by the polyphemus babies.”
“Now you know your cocoon never had the quantity of silk in it that mine
had,” said a yellowish-brown moth, rising from the trunk of a nearby
tree.
She was very handsome. There were window-like spots on her wings, and
dusky bands edged with pink. Not far away were her larvæ, having a good
time chewing the leaves of a plumb tree. They were light green, with an
oblique yellow line on each side, and a purplish-brown V-shaped mark
near the end of their bodies.
“You may always know the polyphemus children by that mark,” said Mrs.
Polyphemus, for it was she who had interrupted the Luna’s remarks. “Now,
speaking of cocoons,” she went on, “as I said before, ours contain a
great deal of silk. They have been used in the making of silk too. Shall
I tell you my story?”
Of course Ruth wanted to hear it.
“Very well,” said Mrs. Polyphemus. “I belong to the family of giant
silkworms, though, of course, we are not worms. I began my life on an
elm leaf. It was a lovely morning in May when I was hatched, and the
world seemed a beautiful place to live in. I did not spend much time
admiring the scenery, though, for I was hungry. I ate the shell of my
egg for the first course, then I began to chew elm leaves, and I kept it
up steadily. Naturally I grew, and I changed my skin five times. When I
was ready to make my cocoon I found a twig on the ground among the dead
leaves, and spun a fluffy mass of gray-white silk all about it, and this
wrapped in a dead leaf——”
“What?” interrupted Mrs. Cecropia, “spin your cocoon on the ground? What
a careless habit. Why not fasten it to the twig of a tree or——”
“Inside a curled leaf?” added Mrs. Promethea. “That is the safest way.
The wind will rock it and——,”
“I said nothing about curled leaves,” answered Mrs. Cecropia. “I never
use a curled leaf. I leave that for the leaf rollers. I——”
“Well, I know swinging would make me ill,” declared Mrs. Polyphemus,
“and I prefer the ground for my cocoon.”
“Quite right,” agreed Mrs. Hummingbird Moth. “The ground for me, too.
Our children always go down and——”
“Gracious! you don’t suppose my children would go down in the ground?”
asked Mrs. Polyphemus. “No, indeed; they will sleep in their cocoons,
among the fallen leaves on top. It is snug and cozy too, this cocoon, or
it will be, I should rather say, for it isn’t made yet. I remember mine
though. A mass of coarse silk first, and a coating of varnish inside,
then more silk, and another coating of varnish. I slept soundly, I can
tell you, and when I awoke in the Spring I had only to send from my body
a milky fluid, which softened the varnish and silk, until a doorway was
made for me to come out of. I felt very weak, miserable, and forlorn
just at first. I had but six legs, and my wings seemed of no use
whatever, but after I had hung a while to a twig, and my wings had grown
dry and strong, I was a different being. My body was lighter and smaller
too. Do you know why?”
The question came suddenly, and Ruth, though she had been listening
intently, could think of no answer.
“Because the fluids from it were pumped into my wings,” said Mrs.
Polyphemus. “The next time you see a moth just out of its cocoon,
hanging by its feet and waving its wings to and fro, you may know it is
pumping fluids into them, so they may grow big and strong. You may see
many wonderful things if you only keep your eyes open. Well, to go back
to my story: After my wings were strong, I could fly and be as happy as
I pleased. Now it is time for me to lay my eggs.”
“I wondered if you ever meant to stop talking,” said Mrs. Promethea.
“There are others, you know. I really can’t see how you Polyphemuses
grow up, considering the careless way your cocoons lie about on the
ground. Perhaps the people who say that caterpillar children are not
cared for have you in mind. Generally I believe it is better for
children to help themselves. You never hear caterpillars say, ‘I can’t
do this, and will some one please help me to change my skin, or some one
spin my cocoon for me?’ No, they do these things for themselves, and ask
no advice about them either. Still I do believe one can’t be too careful
about cocoons, for once you are in one and asleep you can’t defend
yourself. It is much better to make them safe to begin with. That was
what I thought when I made mine. I enclosed it in a leaf, and then to
make sure the leaf wouldn’t fall in the Winter winds, I fastened it to a
branch of the tree with a thread of silk. No wind or anything else could
break that thread. It was so strong. Just try it,” she added to Ruth,
“the next time you find a Promethean cocoon. You will probably see a
number together, but all will have the same strong fastenings. Another
thing, I didn’t have to make a hole to get out by, as Mrs. Polyphemus
told us she did. My cocoon had a valve in the top, and I had only to
crawl through that. Talk about difference in looks! My mate is so unlike
me you would think he belonged to another species. Our children are very
handsome. Fully two inches long and blue-green in colour, not to mention
the row of lovely black knobs along their bodies.”
“They can’t compare with ours,” said a fine cecropia, settling on a
branch and spreading her beautiful wings.
She was very large and very handsome. Her wings were grayish, with many
markings of white, brick-red, pink, and violet, and with splendid eye
spots on each.
“We are the largest of the giant silkworms,” she said, “and our larvæ
are as handsome in their way as we are in ours. You can see them on the
plum trees over there. They are wearing their last suits, of course,
for, like all caterpillars, they eat so much they need bigger skins
every little while.”
“They _are_ pretty for caterpillars,” agreed Ruth, looking at the
blue-green creatures, with their knobs of red, yellow, and blue, all
bearing black bristles.
“They are pretty enough for _anything_,” declared Mrs. Cecropia, with
decision. “Our cocoon is large and fine too. Indeed, everything about us
is first class. We never enclose our cocoon in a leaf, though sometimes
a dead leaf may cling to the outside. We spin it along a branch, to
which it is securely fastened. Some are larger and looser than others,
but all are beauties.”
“Well, _I_ can’t boast of fine clothes,” said a plainly dressed little
moth, who was quietly hiding on a shrub, “but I belong to a very old
family, and a very useful one. We were known and appreciated in Asia
more than four thousand years ago. I, too, came from a tiny egg. My body
was black, covered by stiff hairs, and of course I was hungry. I liked
best the leaf of the mulberry tree, and I ate so much I had to change my
dress often, as all caterpillars do. They all get too big for their
skins, and that is what I did, but, finally, I lost my appetite, and I
knew the time had come for me to spin my silken cradle. And now I may
boast with good reason, for I am the true silkworm. My cocoon is spun in
one thread a _quarter of a mile long_.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Cecropia. “I should like to know how you measured
it.”
“I haven’t measured it,” the silkworm answered, “but the wise men have.
Not my particular cocoon, you understand, but those of our family, and
they are said to average that. They are very pretty too, these cocoons.
I suppose you have all seen them? I was nine days making mine, and three
days after that I cast off my baby clothes and went to sleep. I was very
weak when I awoke and left my cocoon cradle, but I soon grew stronger
and could walk, for you must know that the family to which I belong is
not in the habit of flying. Its members are homebodies and seldom use
their wings. Many of us, I may say the majority, do not live to be
moths, for our cocoons are so precious, because of the long silk thread,
that the larvæ are killed before they come out.”
“Why?” said Ruth.
“Because when the larvæ come out they break the thread. And now perhaps
you understand how very useful we are, for all the silks, satins,
ribbons, and velvets in the world are made by us.”
Ruth’s eyes grew wide with astonishment.
“It is a big boast, isn’t it?” said a very small straw-coloured moth,
flitting rapidly about. “It is a true one, though. My children make
cocoons too, and I made one myself, but it was quite unlike a
silkworm’s, and I have an idea we are not considered useful either. I do
not work among the flowers. I belong to the Wool Exchange, at least that
is what somebody said about me once. My eggs will not be laid on a
plant, or any growing thing. I shall choose carpet, or fine cloth, or
something of that sort, and when my babies hatch they will gnaw away the
fibres of the cloth, and eat and eat. Then what they don’t eat they will
use to cover themselves with, binding the threads together with silk
from their own bodies.”
“I know you, anyway,” said Ruth. “You ate my Winter dress full of holes.
At least it was some moths like you.”
“No, my dear, not moths, but their caterpillar babies did the eating.”
“Well, it wasn’t nice, whoever did it,” declared Ruth, with some heat.
“Nice?” repeated Mrs. Clothes Moth. “I suppose it is nice to kill the
silkworm babies and make dresses from their cradles, and nice to do a
lot of other things that I could mention. I guess you had better not
talk.”
Ruth was silent. She felt she had the worst of the argument.
“You must not mind,” whispered a large and beautiful moth whose wings
were of many delicate shades of ash-gray marked with black.
Ruth turned to the speaker.
“You are something like the sphinx moth,” she said.
“Yes. I am a sphinx,” was the answer. “All of us look somewhat alike,
though some are smaller than others, and colours vary. But our wings are
always clear cut, our scales close fitting, and our colours quiet; a
tailormade air about us, as it were. We are sometimes called hawk moths,
because our wings are narrow, long, and strong, and sometimes
hummingbird moths, because we fly at twilight, and poise above a flower
while extracting its honey, just as hummingbirds do.”
“But why are you named the sphinx?” asked Ruth. “You haven’t told me
that.”
“Well, you see, our larvæ have a queer habit of rearing themselves up in
front and remaining in that position, and the wise men thought they
looked something like the old Egyptian Sphinx. There’s a sphinx moth
caterpillar on that tomato vine.”
“He is awful fat and green,” said Ruth. “Can you show me his cocoon?”
Even the larva laughed when Ruth asked this question.
“Dear, dear! what ignorance!” said the moth. “Just put your hand in that
soft earth and take out what is there.”
Ruth obeyed, and presently brought up a dark brown case, pointed at each
end.
“That is our pupa case,” explained the moth, “and in it is wrought our
wonderful transformation. We do not weave cocoons, but the little brown
case holds the same miracle of life and growth.”
“Well, there is just as much life and growth under my old blanket as in
any pupa case, or cocoon, that was ever made.”
The speaker was a hairy caterpillar, chestnut brown in the middle, and
black at each end.
“That’s the woolly bear,” explained the sphinx. “Just pick him up, and
see what will happen.”
“I know,” answered Ruth, but nevertheless she took the little brown
fellow in her hand, whereupon he promptly curled up in a tight ball and
rolled to the ground.
“I will do it every time,” said the caterpillar. “I have been called the
hedge hog because of that cute trick.”
“It _is_ cute,” agreed Ruth, “but what do you mean by your blanket?”
“Oh, as to that, I don’t fool after cocoons, or pupa cases, or the rest
of it. I simply take off my hair when I am ready for my long sleep, and
make it into a blanket, which covers me snugly.”
“But it is a cocoon just the same,” persisted Ruth.
“Well, you may call it what you please, I say it is a blanket. When I
wake from my sleep under it I am no longer a caterpillar, but a moth.”
“Like me,” added a dull yellow moth, spreading her black dotted wings.
“I am the Isabella, if you care to know.”
“So you see,” rejoined the woolly bear, “it really doesn’t matter
whether it is a cocoon, a pupa case, or a blanket which encloses the
glory of our transformation, the marvel of it is just the same.”
Long after they had drifted by, that gay company of butterflies and
moths, Ruth sat thinking of the wonder of it all.
“Didn’t I tell you, Belinda,” she whispered, “didn’t I tell you it was
really living in Fairyland, and now, when we can hear what they say, and
they tell us such interesting things, it is more Fairyland than ever.
The Wind told us to watch and listen, and we will do that. We will watch
and listen with all our might, for oh! Belinda, there is such a lot to
learn yet.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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