THE ROMANCE OF
INSECT LIFE

FIRE BEETLES AS LANTERNS.

The Aztecs of Mexico were accustomed to use these insects to light them through the forests by night. Fastening them to their hands and feet, they passed flaming along. It is said that the Mexicans still use them for this purpose. The fire beetle is shown to the left of this inscription.

THE ROMANCE OF

INSECT LIFE

INTERESTING DESCRIPTIONS OF

THE STRANGE AND CURIOUS IN

THE INSECT WORLD

BY

EDMUND SELOUS

AUTHOR OF

“THE ROMANCE OF THE ANIMAL WORLD,” “BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES,”

“BIRD WATCHING,” “TOMMY SMITH’S ANIMALS,” &c.

WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS BY

LANCELOT SPEED

&

CARTON MOORE PARK

THIRD EDITION

LONDON

SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED

38 Great Russell Street

1914

THE LIBRARY OF ROMANCE

Extra Crown 8vo. With many illustrations. 5s. each.

“Splendid Volumes.”—The Outlook.

“The Library of Romance offers a splendid choice.”—Globe.

“Gift Books whose value it would be difficult to over-estimate.”—The Standard.

“This series has now won a considerable & well deserved reputation.”—The Guardian.

“Each Volume treats its allotted theme with accuracy, but at the same time with a charm that will commend itself to readers of all ages. The root idea is excellent, and it is excellently carried out, with full illustrations and very prettily designed covers.”—The Daily Telegraph.

By Prof. G. F. SCOTT ELLIOT, M.A., B.Sc.

The Romance of Savage Life

The Romance of Plant Life

The Romance of Early British Life

By EDWARD GILLIAT, M.A.

The Romance of Modern Sieges

By JOHN LEA, M.A.

The Romance of Bird Life

By JOHN LEA, M.A. & M. COUPIN, D.Sc.

The Romance of Animal Arts and Crafts

By SIDNEY WRIGHT

The Romance of the World’s Fisheries

By the Rev. J. C. LAMBERT, M.A., D.D.

The Romance of Missionary Heroism

By G. FIRTH SCOTT

The Romance of Polar Exploration

By CHARLES R. GIBSON, F.R.S.E.

The Romance of Modern Photography

The Romance of Modern Electricity

The Romance of Modern Manufacture

The Romance of Scientific Discovery

By CHARLES C. TURNER

The Romance of Aeronautics

By HECTOR MACPHERSON, Junr.

The Romance of Modern Astronomy

By ARCHIBALD WILLIAMS,

B.A. (Oxon.), F.R.G.S.

The Romance of Early Exploration

The Romance of Modern Exploration

The Romance of Modern Mechanism

The Romance of Modern Invention

The Romance of Modern Engineering

The Romance of Modern Locomotion

The Romance of Modern Mining

By EDMUND SELOUS

The Romance of the Animal World

The Romance of Insect Life

By AGNES GIBERNE

The Romance of the Mighty Deep

By E. S. GREW, M.A.

The Romance of Modern Geology

By J. C. PHILIP, D.Sc., Ph.D.

The Romance of Modern Chemistry

By E. KEBLE CHATTERTON, B.A.

The Romance of the Ship

By T. W. CORBIN

The Romance of Submarine Engineering

SEELEY, SERVICE & CO., LIMITED.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

By Lancelot Speed & Carton Moore Park

THE ROMANCE OF

INSECT LIFE

CHAPTER I

“The natural system”—A middle course—Neuropterous insects—White ants and their ways—Kings and queens—A royal diet—Secondary majesties—Soldiers and workers—Ant invaders—Methods of warfare.

IF there is any plan in this little book it will, no doubt, appear in time to its readers, but I myself am only quite clear as to this, that, not being of a scientific nature, it will not include a definition of an insect. Why should it? Everybody knows what he thinks an insect is, and those who may be willing to have their ideas on such a fundamental subject disturbed will rightly consult some work of greater authority than this can pretend to. So instead of worrying myself, and others, about what insects really are, or what are not really insects, as, for instance, spiders, centipedes, scorpions, and the like, all which I propose to include in my tale—should they happen to present themselves—I shall confine myself to saying something about what some insects do, and I shall let one suggest and lead to the discussion of another, quite at haphazard, and without any attempt at system or classification whatever. This, in fact, is my own idea as to what is “the natural system,” and the only trouble about it is knowing where to begin, because, as there are some 300,000 known insects,[^[1]] and any one of them will do as well to start from as any other, there is a great embarras de richesses. In such cases the usual thing to do is to take either the head or the tail of the series—to commence with the Hymenoptera, which include the highest and most intelligent forms, such as the ants and bees, or else with the Collembola or Thysanura, which are understood to contain the lowest. I shall not adopt either of these methods. The Neuroptera, as far as I can make out (and if they don’t it doesn’t matter), stand somewhere about the middle, and with them accordingly—as being between the two extremes—I decide to break ground. Having done so, as I said before, I may go anywhere—absolute freedom will be mine. Like Plato, I can follow the argument whithersoever it leads; inspired with which reflection I hasten to begin it.

Though the order of neuropterous—which, by the way, means nerve-winged—insects does not contain any ants, yet the so-called white ants or termites—which are very like ants in their ways, and almost, or quite, as interesting to talk about—are included in it. They are commonest in tropical or, at any rate, very hot countries, such as Africa, Australia, and South America, and here the conical, or dome-shaped structures, made of red earth, which they erect above the surface of the ground, and which contain the greater part of the nest, are of such dimensions as to take a very prominent part in the features of the landscape. Often they are covered with vegetation, including bushes, or even small trees, on which, in Africa, antelopes are accustomed to browse. In Australia there is no reason, that I can see, why kangaroos should not, at least upon the grass which must often clothe them, and which is their staple of food.

WHITE ANT HEAPS

These great mounds are made by the white ants, and contain their nests; but large and strong as they are, the ant-eater breaks them down and devours the ants. A queen white ant is shown at the right-hand corner with the extraordinary development in which the eggs are carried.

These great mounds are pierced in every direction with innumerable galleries, leading to and from the various cells and chambers in which the domestic economy of the white ants is principally performed, one of which, known as the royal cell, contains the king and queen, and is situated beneath all the others. Not all white ants, however—for there are several species—are governed or presided over in this way. Grassi, who studied them in Sicily,[^[2]] declares that the whole of the Termitidæ, whether belonging to Southern Europe or the still hotter countries from which they have, no doubt, been unknowingly imported, fall into two primary types. In the first of these the colony is presided over by a king and queen, representing the fully developed male and female forms, which have once, unlike the workers and soldiers—for, like ants, these insects are divided into castes—possessed fully developed wings, which they have subsequently got rid of in the same way that the queen ant does hers. In the second type the colony possesses several kings and queens, but these, though they marry and produce offspring, are not perfect males and females, and never possess wings. They are, in fact, produced artificially by the working termites, just as the hive-bees are able to make themselves a new queen—should they require one—by feeding an ordinary worker with royal jelly, and by a method somewhat similar though not precisely the same, the royal substitutes being fed, not on any extraneous substance, but on a salivary fluid secreted by the workers themselves—saliva, in fact. The colony, however, is, in this case, not founded by the royalties thus bred up, but by a portion of a pre-existent colony which, migrating from the parent nest, takes this method of augmenting its numbers.[^[3]]

In the termite nest, as amongst ants, all members work for the good of all. The soldiers, which are furnished with large heads and long scythe-like jaws, take upon themselves the duties of attack and defence, though in some species they only do so when the enemy is of a formidable nature, leaving unimportant foes to their less specialised companions. These are equal to such inglorious tasks, but when the colony is invaded by hostile members of their own race, or by some fierce ant enemy, they retreat into the inner recesses, leaving the danger and honour to others. Such an enemy is Cremastogaster scutellaris—or call him Cremas—who, though never invaded by the white ants, enters their nest—or termitary, to use the learned word—intent upon massacre. Under such circumstances “the soldiers place themselves, with gaping mandibles, waiting for any ant that may come within reach. They then snap their jaws rapidly, shearing off antennæ and legs, tearing the abdomen, or even cutting the ants in two. The soldiers’ mandibles are seen to act like extremely sharp shears.”[^[3]] This should be somewhat discouraging for the ants, and, indeed, they seem rather shy of the soldiers, avoiding their heads, and “only daring occasionally to attempt to lop off their mandibles.” Their more considered method, which they adopt whenever practicable, is to approach them from behind, and bite their abdomens, the soldiers, on their part, endeavouring to protect this vulnerable portion—and it is a fairly large one—of their anatomy by creeping backwards under pieces of wood or stones, from which the head, with its murderous jaws, is alone allowed to project.

In these encounters the advantage does not seem to lie so decidedly with the ants as to explain their conduct in making the invasion, since peace, according to Professor Grassi’s observations, is usually concluded “after about an hour’s conflict, with a certain number of killed and wounded on both sides.”[^[3]] As a result, however, it would appear that the ants often remain in possession of a portion of the nest, whilst the original occupants have to be contented with what remains. If this, therefore, is their object, the invaders have carried the day, but if, as seems likely under natural conditions, they should prefer to return to their own home, they can hardly be said to have done so. Information seems wanting on these points.

As with ants, war is also waged between the various species of Termitidæ. Termes lucifuga, for instance—for where there is no English name there is nothing for it but to speak Latin—is, though much smaller, a terrible enemy of Calotermes. The soldiers of the latter can, indeed, without much difficulty, cut their own in two, but their greater activity is often more than a match for the superior strength of their opponents. The workers are more easily disposed of, but with these the soldiers of Calotermes do not often concern themselves. They are left to the nymphs[^[4]] and larvæ, the equivalents, with the latter species, of a true worker caste which has not yet been developed amongst them, as it has with others of the family. When Professor Grassi placed a worker of Termes in one of his Calotermite tube-nests[^[5]] it was at once placed hors de combat by a nymph (somewhat a shrewish one) of the latter, which, rushing upon it, cut off a portion of its mouth. Other nymphs, as well as several large larvæ, then hurried up and proceeded to further the good work by severing the unfortunate creature’s legs, and tearing open its abdomen. In all this the soldiers took no part until one, towards the end of the struggle, advanced and added his single bite to those which had been so plentifully bestowed. Similar observations were made upon various other occasions, from which it appears plain that, as before remarked, the soldiers of this—very probably of all the termites—are accustomed, purposely, to reserve their strength for foemen worthy of their steel.

It will be seen from the above account that termites differ from true ants in one very important particular, namely, that they are as active and free-moving in the larval and pupal states as in the mature, or imago, one. “The termite society,” indeed, “consists, for the most part, of wingless sexually immature individuals, children potentially of both sexes, which do not grow up.”[^[6]] Out of the majority of these the worker caste, when it exists, is formed, whilst a much lesser number develop into the large-headed, long-jawed soldiers. Both of these castes, apparently, are produced independently of sex, that is to say, they are potentially either males or females, and not composed exclusively, as is the case with ants and bees, of undeveloped females. Only the genuine king and queen of the termitary would seem to have attained the true imago state; such substitute royal forms as the workers, by feeding the larvæ with saliva, are able to produce, retaining larval characteristics, though sexually mature—a phenomenon scientifically known as neoteinia. As with the bees, these potential future royalties are bred up by the working termites to meet possible future emergencies. They are never allowed to leave the nest, and, should any accident befall the reigning king and queen, a pair of them are chosen to rule and produce offspring.

CHAPTER II

Ant language—Stridulatory organs—How white ants communicate—Conversation through convulsions—Nests in tubes—Detection of a “crepitus”—Mutual recognition—Cannibalistic propensities—Royal jealousy—Loyal assassins—A kingly feast—Methods of feeding—Foundation of colonies—Swarming habits.

It used to be supposed that such communication as ants are capable of holding with one another took place entirely, or almost entirely, through the mutual stroking of the antennæ, and Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury) was unable to satisfy himself, after numerous experiments, that they could either hear or utter any sound. It is now known, however, that not only can some ants emit various sounds at their pleasure—as, indeed, is sufficiently obvious in the case of one or two species—but also that they possess special structures enabling them to do so, and the existence of which is inconceivable, except on the supposition that they both hear and attach a meaning to the notes thus evolved. Thus at a meeting of the Entomological Society held in the year 1893, Dr. David Sharp (author of the “Insects” portion of The Cambridge Natural History) declared that “examination revealed the existence in ants of the most perfect stridulating or sound-producing organs yet discovered in insects, these being situated on the second and third segments of the abdomen in certain species. The sounds produced were of the greatest delicacy, and it appeared doubtful whether the microphone would be able to assist the human ear in their detection”—which, indeed, it has not yet done.[^[7]] Later, in the work above mentioned, Dr. Sharp remarks, “In many ants these parts”—that is to say the abdominal segments—“bear highly developed stridulating organs, and the delicacy and perfection of the articulations allow the parts to be moved, either with or without producing stridulation.”[^[8]]

As these ant utterances are not sufficiently loud to be audible to our human ears, they must, I suppose, be inferred from the existence of the organs above-mentioned, and the way in which they work; but this is surely sufficient data to go upon, since it is hardly possible for one hard substance to grate upon another silently. Forel, accordingly, as well as Janet and other observers, now believe sound to be one of the principal means by which ants hold converse with each other, and it is interesting to find that Grassi and Sandias have arrived at the same conclusion in regard to white ants, or termites. Their opinion, together with the facts upon which it has been founded, is thus expressed:—

“Several writers have mentioned the convulsive movements characteristic of Termites. These movements, or quiverings, are easily observed in Calotermes, and may be repeated periodically at very short intervals, almost at the frequency of the pulse-rate. In the act of quivering, the legs are held motionless, whilst the body is shaken forwards and backwards. Sometimes a white ant may stop, whilst running, in order to quiver one or more times. Occasionally these convulsive movements are repeated a few times only, and then stop altogether; but at other times they recur after a few seconds’ or, at most, a few minutes’ rest, and may thus be continued, sometimes, for hours, at regular or irregular intervals. In the intervals between successive convulsions the insect remains still, or progresses for a short distance only. These movements are executed by all members of the colony except the newly hatched ones. I have satisfied myself,” continues Professor Grassi, “by careful observation of the phenomena exhibited in tube-nests, that these convulsions serve as a cry to summon help or give alarm, or as a lament: in short as a mode of intercommunication.”[^[9]]

The same observers then go on to tell us that if white ants are disturbed in any sudden way, as by the too rough shaking of their nest, or by a light being suddenly flung upon it, or if otherwise annoyed, “all the members of the colony begin to quiver, except those that are running briskly about in search of a better situation.”[^[9]] When dying, too, they will sometimes quiver in this way, at intervals of a few minutes, for as much as an hour or two, or even longer. Should an enemy—such as those we have been speaking of—be introduced of a sudden into the nest, the less valiant members of it prefer to run away, but in the midst of their retreat they may often be seen to stop and quiver with unusual energy. Their object in these cases seems to be to raise a general alarm, nor is it long before they are successful. Again, if whilst one insect is burrowing into wood another outside should quiver in this way, the burrower quickly comes out, as though in response to some signal of alarm. From all this it seems evident that these curious movements must be accompanied by some sound, or sounds, inaudible to our human ears, and perhaps having a varied range, and with considerable power of modulation. To produce them, however, some stridulating or other organs would seem to be necessary, and of these, though they must, if there, be visible under the microscope, Professor Grassi says nothing. Possibly, however, sounds may be produced by the rubbing together of various parts of the body without any special apparatus having been developed, in which case the language, if we may call it so, cannot be so rich or copious.

The above remarks apply more especially to the larger of the two white ants of Southern Europe. In regard to the smaller one, Professor Grassi makes the following interesting remarks: “Termes makes the same convulsive movements as does Calotermes, but the soldier of this species is able to produce a special creaking sound, which arises, whenever the head is held horizontally, during the act of quivering, by friction between the back of the head and the front part of the thorax. But whenever the head, during this act, is held in the usual position, which is not quite horizontal, no perceptible sound is produced, owing to the absence of such friction. The soldiers of Termes, therefore, possess two distinct modes of communication, whilst those of Calotermes have only one, in which no perceptible sound is produced. This characteristic crepitus,” continues the Professor, “may be heard, at frequent intervals, by applying the ear to a tube containing a nest of Termites. This proves that the quivering motions are a constant feature in undisturbed nests, so that they cannot be employed only as signals of alarm or distress. I conclude, therefore, that besides such special significations these convulsive movements must also have the value of ordinary speech; that they constitute, in short, a means of intercommunication. The same conclusion holds good for Calotermes (the one we have hitherto been talking about), and I imagine that the quivering of both species produces a sound which is perceptible to the insects themselves, but inaudible to the human ear.”[^[9]]

Members of the same ant community are known to recognise each other, and this is no less the case with the white ants, or termites. Thus when a few of the latter were removed from the termitary and returned to it after five or six hours, the population showed no signs of alarm—not scurrying wildly about as they would have done had strangers been introduced—but remained quiet and orderly. It was objected, however, though I cannot see the force of such an objection, that the exiles, on their return, would have instantly recognised their old nest, and thus, knowing exactly where to go and what to do, they would have created no disorder, and consequently roused no suspicion, amongst the other members of the colony. To meet this theory Professor Grassi provided one of his colonies with a new nest from which he excluded a certain number of individuals, so that when these were introduced into it, an hour or two after their companions had settled down in their fresh abode, it was, of course, quite unfamiliar to them. In spite of this, however, they caused no disturbance, but were clearly recognised as friends. When, however, a few strangers of the same species were introduced, they created great alarm amongst the rightful proprietors, who scattered in all directions. In a little while, however, all was again quiet, and as no fighting was observed, it would appear that, amongst the termites, strangers from different nests soon become friendly with one another. This, however, applies to the commoners only, it is not the same where royalty is concerned. Thus when a second king and queen were introduced into a termitary already provided with a pair, they were at once attacked by the subjects of the latter, who loyally bit off their legs. Two days afterwards the reigning queen was herself seen to attack the male pretender, or rather unfortunate victim of scientific curiosity. He, however, though without legs to assist him, managed to drag himself away, but was afterwards found dead, with the outraged queen nibbling vindictively at his mutilated stumps. Next day the stranger queen was also found dead, and the same thing always happened whenever the experiment was repeated. Sometimes, indeed, the supernumerary royal pair, or pairs, had disappeared altogether, from which it seems clear that they must have been not only killed, but eaten.

Cannibalism, indeed, is rather an institution than a vice in the termitary. To begin with, the cast skin of every member is eaten by the others as a matter of course. With this view, any individual who is ready to moult receives the skilled aid of two or more assistants, who either eat the outer portion of their friend, bit by bit, as they shred it off, or else carry it away whole and devour it at their leisure. Sometimes, moreover, one, after licking another affectionately, in the way that ants do, may be seen to give it a covert bite, as though desirous of something more filling, whilst any sick member is eaten by its companions before it is dead. Royalty is not exempt from this treatment, and, on one occasion, nine individuals, including one soldier, were observed by Professor Grassi in the act of enjoying a meal on the body of a substitute king who was in process of moulting. The wretched animal was still alive, and writhed all over its body, to free itself from the torture. The nine assassins were probably annoyed at the light, for they at once stopped eating, and jointly carried off the victim to a darker part of the nest. Meanwhile many others crowded up to partake in this feast of royal flesh.[^[9]]

A soldier, too, has been observed to kill and partially eat one of its worker companions, nor is it altogether uncommon for an individual of any class, after licking, for some little while, the leg of another, suddenly to snap it off. The bond of union, therefore, though sufficiently developed to allow of an elaborate social organisation, is not so strong between members of the same termitary as it is in the case of ants, amongst which latter such unseemly conduct is never known to occur. So, too, unless a particular chemical substance, which seems to have a maddening effect, be flung amongst them, ants of one community never attack each other. Amongst white ants, however, warfare will occasionally break out within the nest, more especially if this be disturbed, in which case the soldiers are apt to turn savagely on those nearest to them, perhaps considering them as the cause of the calamity. Still, upon the whole, order, and, if not friendship, at least co-operation, is conspicuously displayed, and the majority often interfere to put a stop to such individual or partial combats as may from time to time break out.

There is more excuse for the soldier termites in their cannibalistic propensities, since owing to the special development of their jaws, which are long and slender, they are unable to triturate wood, which is the basis of diet of these insects. They might die, therefore, but for such occasional lapses, were it not the common practice for all members of the community to feed one another, though the soldiers, for the above reason, are much more dependent on such aid. The food thus administered has just been swallowed by the individual who parts with it. Such transfer is performed in two ways, the first of which is familiar enough—that process, namely, known as regurgitation—but the second and more staple one is too peculiar to be dealt with in a non-scientific work. When a termite regurgitates, an exceedingly small round pellet of reddish-brown colour may be seen, by attentive observation, to form about the mouth, and gradually to increase in size till it becomes plainly apparent, and is seen to consist of food—that is to say, wood—which has previously been swallowed, in a moistened and softened condition. Sometimes this pellet is used for building purposes, but often another termite comes forward, receives, and swallows it.

Another article of diet which has a peculiar efficacy, and is used for a certain purpose, has been already alluded to—viz. saliva. This, we are told, “issues,” when required to do so, “as a colourless and distinctly alkaline liquid. It collects on the labium (the insect equivalent of lips) as a small drop, which may be employed either as a cement in building or as food for others. These may either possess themselves of the drop and then retreat a little way in order to swallow it gradually, or they may receive it from the one which secretes it and clearly provides it for them as an article of diet. The assimilation of a drop requires a certain number of acts of deglutition, which may be counted, and are usually four or five.”[^[9]] Very young larvæ (the whole community, it must be remembered, are either in this or the pupal state) are fed after this fashion, until sufficiently advanced to be able to swallow wood-meal. Under this course of diet the abdomen becomes remarkably transparent, and this, in older individuals, is an indication that they are being bred up by the workers to become royal substitutes. The development, therefore, of termites from the larval to the perfect, or, at least, the sexually perfect form, seems to be wholly dependent on their being fed with this substance.

As is well known, the body of the queen termite, in the African and other tropical species, swells, when about to lay, to an enormous size, but this is not nearly so noticeably the case with her European representatives. Neither is a cell, in this case, constructed for her accommodation, but the royal pair, whether they are true king and queen, or only substitutes, “remain, in close proximity, in the heart of the nest, where the inmates are always most crowded.” They are not imprisoned, therefore; but can go from one place to another, should they, as sometimes happens, wish to change their situation. In this they would seem to be happier than their more specially accommodated royal cousins, but no doubt, with the latter, or at any rate with the queen, the instinct of locomotion ceases with the capacity to indulge in it. The purpose of the specially made cell is probably rather to guard than to restrain the queen.

In regard to the swarming of white ants—another habit in which we are reminded both of ants and bees—with the subsequent founding of a new colony, Professor Grassi has the following remarks to make. They apply more especially to the larger of the two European species, viz. Calotermes. “Before swarming,” he tells us, “they collect near one of the exit-holes of the termitary, and when the proper time comes, issue from it in ones or twos, so that the twenty or thirty members who are ready to take flight emerge in perhaps a quarter of an hour. Once outside, they run upwards, if the locality admits of it, for a few metres, and then only do they take wing. In a room they fly towards the light, and if a wind is blowing they follow its direction. Some, becoming tired, settle soon upon trunks of trees, and all may do this eventually. Here they group themselves into pairs, the males and females of which must frequently be derived from separate nests, since the sexes swarm separately; this acts as a safeguard by which Calotermes habitually avoids in and in breeding. Matrimonial alliances having been thus formed, the work of excavation commences, each pair seeking for some decayed spot in which to bury themselves and become, in time, the parents of a fresh community. The wings, by this time, have been got rid of. They may be shed by coming into contact with an obstacle, or by getting damp and adhering to some spot, while the insect continues to move. But, if not favoured by chance, the Calotermite purposely rids itself of these now useless encumbrances. Thus four perfect insects were captured after flying about the room, and put under a piece of rotten wood. Hardly had they settled when they stripped off their wings by resting the tips against some projecting corner of the wood, and then moving backwards a little, so that the wings bent near the base, broke, and dropped off. When rid of them they began to gnaw the wood, at first along and then across the grain. When they encountered each other by chance they first threatened to bite one another, and then ran off in opposite directions. This was because they were of the same sex. Had they been of opposite ones, an attachment, under such circumstances, would no doubt have been formed between them.”[^[9]]

This is all the space which I can afford to these interesting insects. There are many other points in connection with them which I might have touched upon, but I thought it better to say less about what may be read by anyone in a score or so of works, and select as my text-book a series of the closest and most interesting observations, which lie buried in the pages of a scientific journal not at all likely to meet the public eye. Where possible, I shall be guided by the same or a similar principle throughout this small work.

CHAPTER III

Ants and white ants—Guest insects—Ants’-nest beetles—Doubtful relations—A strange forbearance—Yellow ants and white wood-lice—Beetles fed by ants.

FROM what has been said about the Termites in the last chapter, it is clear that they very much resemble ants in their habits, so that it is no wonder that they have long passed for ants in popular estimation. Such a similarity is quite enough to justify one part of the name, as names go; and as for the word white, which entomologists are always complaining about, that is quite near enough too, for though their bodies are not white, but yellow, yet the greater part of them—the soft fat abdomen, which particularly catches the eye—is of such a light yellow that it suggests white in contrast to the darker colouring of most ants. Scientific men—unless their particular science is philology—are dreadful pedants in regard to names, and always want to substitute their own manufactured ones, which have no real life in them, for what has sprung up naturally on the lips of the people. Thus, instead of hedge-sparrow—a name that explains itself to anyone who has seen the bird and knows something of its ways—ornithologists would have us say “hedge-accentor”—a preposterous concoction—and stormy petrel should, according to them, be “storm-petrel,” because the bird itself cannot be stormy, whatever the sea may be. No imagination behind the common use of language, then. No poetic transference of attributes. All is to be as prosy as professors can make it, and “we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.” But names, which are a part of language, come into being as language itself does—spontaneously, that is to say, and by a natural growth. They are right because they exist; and the very errors contained in them—telling, as they do, of popular beliefs and superstitions—are of greater and wider interest than the rectitudes of a few pedants. Could they play with substance as they can with breath, these wise simpletons would first draw up a theory of anatomy, and then annul all bodies that did not conform to it. Such and such a word or name is wrong, in their eyes, though it exists quite as naturally as any nerve or muscle, and is quite as tough though only made of air. This last they will find if they live long enough, and “hedge-sparrow” and “stormy petrel” will survive all their lifeless substitutions, though embalmed in many dull paragraphs of many dull books.

But let us come back from words to things. Much as the white ants resemble real ones in many of their habits, the more remarkable ones that distinguish the latter are not practised by them. They make no slaves and keep no domestic animals—at least I have never heard of their doing so, though in natural history one must always be prepared for new discoveries. Many insects do, in fact, live with them in the termitary, just as others live in the formicaries of ants, and it is quite possible that, when these have been better studied, some of them will be found to have special relations—involving mutual intelligent action—with their landlords.

At present, however, we seem to have little or no information on this head. With ants it is different, and perhaps one of the most interesting chapters in their history is that which has to do with these myrmecophilous, or guest insects, as they are called.[^[10]] Take, for instance, the ants’-nest beetles, and especially one family—the Paussidæ—which numbers some 200 species, every one of which passes the whole of its life, when not flying by night, within the nest of some species of ant. These beetles are small, as might be expected, the largest being not more than half an inch in length, but present an extraordinary appearance owing to the antennæ ending in two broad palmated surfaces, like the horns of a moose deer, which project outwards, one on each side, at right angles with two short stalks, forming the only serviceable joints of these strangely modified feelers. All the other ones (in some species, at any rate) have been fused and welded together to form these flattened club-like structures, the use of which is not at first-sight apparent, and may not be fully understood. If, however, a paussus is laid on its back upon a flat surface, a predicament which would be as embarrassing to many beetles as it is to a turtle, one of their special functions is at once seen. Turning back the two clubs till they rest on the ground, and making the joint rigid, the insect uses the one most conveniently placed as a lever, and soon gets on to its legs again. Could we imagine that such an expedient would often need to be resorted to, the curious modification of the antennæ is at once explained; but it probably rarely happens that any small beetle finds itself on its back in a place where there are no irregularities to aid it in righting itself. Possibly, however, the smooth galleries or chambers of some of the larger ants might expose these Myrmicophilæ to such a catastrophe, though, for my part, I suppose that the antennæ are used in some other special way which is of far more importance to their owners.

The relations existing between the ants and these curious beetles has not yet been fully made out. It is true that the various species of Paussidæ have upon some part of their bodies a smooth downy substance—a pubescence, to use the word dear to entomologists—which in other ants’-nest beetles is known to exude a sweet honey-like dew which the ants, not unnaturally, are very fond of, and for which they assiduously lick them. As they have also been seen to lick their Paussi, we seem, here, to have at least the root of the matter, nor does the fact that, at other times, when perhaps these have ceased to supply the attraction, they pay little attention to them, seem of much importance, since we are all neglected when we have given what we have to give. But there are other circumstances not of so straightforward a nature. It has been lately discovered by a French observer—M. Péringuey—that these Paussidæ, welcome guests as they generally are, will yet, sometimes, eat the larvæ of the ants with whom they live, when any small worker is engaged in carrying them from one place to another. The ants resent this, and occasionally a large one, who feels himself equal to the undertaking, will attack and even kill a Paussus that he sees behaving in such a manner. Yet, with all this, so valued are these beetles by the ants that they often drag them back into their nests, when they have approached, or emerge from, the entrance. On such occasions, and also when the ants attack and even dismember them, the Paussidæ make no sort of resistance. Yet they are extremely well able to do so, being armed with a weapon of tremendous efficiency, by which in a moment they could kill or stun a whole crowd of ants round about them. For they are bombardier beetles, having the power at any moment of discharging a fluid of a highly acrid nature, and so volatile that, on coming in contact with the air, it explodes with a puff of blue smoke, exhaling at the same time a very pungent and unpleasant odour. When they are tickled with a straw, even, this bombardment at once takes place, and ants all round are seen to stagger or drop to the earth. Small workers are killed, large ones retreat in confusion; yet the owner of this deadly battery, which can only have been developed for the express purpose of overwhelming an enemy, will not, even to save life or limb, discharge it against an ant—not one, at least, to whom it stands in these somewhat doubtful relations.

How have these relations—whatever in their entirety they may be—come about? My own idea is that these beetles, like some other creatures—amongst them the little white wood-louse that lives with our own Formica flava—found ants’ nests very comfortable places of retirement, since, by reason of their peculiar weapon of defence, they could defy any attempt to interfere with them, on the part of the ants. The ants, on their side, would soon have given up molesting them, so that, never requiring to defend themselves against the creatures by whom they were surrounded, the intruders got to associate them with quite other ideas, and, having first lost the habit, at length lost the power of turning their artillery in this direction. Meanwhile Paussus, owing to its sweet secretion, which, after relations had once become amicable, the ants would soon have discovered, had got to be a very welcome guest, so much so that, even when it took to eating their larvæ, they retained their love for it, as a species, though resenting such conduct upon the individual. And now the once redoubtable invader could be punished with impunity, for the habit of never discharging against an ant had become a fixed, inherited instinct, not to be got rid of even though life were at stake. Thus, as it appears to me, it may have come about that, though armed with dynamite, and carrying bombs, no living Paussus has ever defended itself against an ant, and no living ant, perhaps, ever seen a Paussus discharge its artillery. Of course these are only conjectures, and the last, especially, may be opposed to fact, since it has been suggested that one way in which Paussus may make itself useful within the nest of its hosts, may be by bombarding certain obnoxious parasites, or other would-be invaders. This does not, however, appear to me to be likely, for how could these explosion take place, under such circumstances, without doing damage to the ants themselves? In one’s own house one would hardly wish a bomb to be thrown, even against one’s greatest enemy—at any rate not in the drawing-room. That the ants should, by this means, be able, or, if able, willing to rid themselves of the mites which infest them, as has been conjectured, seems especially unlikely—indeed, hardly possible. On the whole, it seems to me that the relations at present existing between the two insects could only have grown up through Paussus having ceased to discharge, not only at an ant, but even—owing, probably, to there never being any occasion for it—in an ants’ nest. The experimental tickling with a straw was, of course, an artificial stimulus. In spite of its sweet secretion, I cannot see how a beetle with such a power at its command as Paussus has, can have been originally selected by the ants for domestication, but, on the other hand, an armed invader might easily, by coincidence, possess some property which would make it, in time, of use and value to the population on which it forced itself.

An example of an invader having no such merit, but harmless, and that has become tolerated through necessity, is, in my opinion, the little white wood-louse before mentioned. It apparently has now lost the power of rolling itself into a ball, but when it first began to penetrate into the galleries of Formica flava—our little yellow ant—it may very well have had it, and this would have rendered it impervious to attack, whilst its weight and round scaly surface would have made the task of removing it almost an impossible one. Thus, perforce, it stayed where it wished to stay, penetrating, perhaps, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of galleries, as successive generations of cave animals have retreated farther and farther from the light of day, until at length, finding the wherewithal to live, it became wholly subterranean in its habits, lost the power of doing what it never required to do—namely, of rolling itself into a ball—and, through the absence of all sunlight, lost, too, its colouring matter, and became of its present dead, bleached white. Whether its eyesight, if it ever had any, is also gone, I do not know; but it can hardly, under present conditions, have any use for it, whereas its antennæ are constantly moving, and seem to be of extreme delicacy. I could never observe—for I have kept nests of Formica flava—the smallest sign of any kind of relations between these wood-lice and their hosts; and if any scavenger work is done by the former, from which the latter derive benefit, I believe that this is merely incidental, and that the ants know nothing about it. But they have got accustomed to the wood-lice being there, and put up with them because they cannot help it.

It must be remembered, in regard to Paussidæ, that the family is represented by some two hundred species, all of which pass the greater part of their lives with ants. In regard to this Mr. Kirby remarks: “The observations made upon the family are so contradictory that the discrepancies can only be accounted for by supposing that different species have very different habits. Possibly some species may perform various useful services to the ants, while others are hostile; or they may be so useful that the ants are willing to pay toll of a certain number of their offspring, in return.”[^[11]]

This last, however, does not seem very well to accord with recorded observations as to ants attacking any individual Paussus whom they may chance to see devouring their larvæ, nor with the latter refusing to bombard, under these circumstances, even when in danger of their lives. It is impossible to imagine a hostile Paussus not bombarding, in such a case, unless, indeed, we suppose it to have first lost its hostility, and then again to have become hostile, without, however, regaining the power of using its natural weapon. But this is a state of affairs hardly to be conceived.

We probably do not know the whole round of occupations which make up the life by day, of the Paussidæ; of their life by night, we know nothing at all. The nefarious raids upon the larvæ or eggs (for both are appreciated) of the ants can hardly be of frequent occurrence, or the partnership, one would think, must come to an end. Other ant-guests, however, including sometimes smaller members of their own family, are likewise preyed upon by these curious beetles, but very frequently, when observed, they seem to be asleep, nor do they appear then to be taken much notice of by the ants. Where or under what conditions their eggs are hatched, or what is the larval and pupal history of each species, we do not know, but only the perfect insect has as yet been found in any ants’ nest.

Other beetles that live with ants are either indifferent or hostile to them, but others, again, are kept and tended in the same manner as are the aphides, and for a similar purpose. All or most of these secrete some sweet substance, which their hosts lick up, and, in return, offer them an asylum from all enemies, and are ready to give them their personal protection, should this be necessary. They go even further than this, and actually feed them as they do their own larvæ, with honey, or something of a similar nature, which they regurgitate from their crops. One little beetle—Atemeles by name—is extremely fond of such a meal, and solicits it from the ants by stopping in front of them and assuming a certain attitude, accompanied with insinuating motions of the antennæ. Whether Atemeles is able to feed itself, or must live wholly upon these ministrations, I am not quite sure; but another beetle—poor Clavigertestaceus—is, according to Janet, so entirely dependent upon the ants for subsistence that, if separated from them, he has nothing to do but to die.

CHAPTER IV

Ant parasites—Fleet-footed brigands—Honey-stealing mites—A strange table companion—Privileged cockroaches—Ants and their riders—A fly-ride on beetle-back.

LEAVING the beetles—though as there are probably some thousands that live habitually in ants’ nests, we have said very little about them—we may glance at an extraordinary little creature, in appearance something like a wood-louse with a fish’s tail, that resides with certain ants on the footing of a freebooter, constantly stealing from them, and eluding their resentment by extreme activity, living, as it were, in a state of perpetual motion. The legs of these persistent yet withal timid brigands are many and long, which, together with their shape and general lightness of build, enables them to run with great speed, so that they easily outdistance the ants, and, escaping to some less frequented part of the nest, with which they are always well acquainted, remain there quiet for a time. Should a single ant approach them, however, they immediately run away, or, if forced by circumstances to be near one or more—which, in an ants’ nest, must be often difficult to avoid—make a point, apparently, of never keeping still, as though to confuse them, or, perhaps, to be the better able to dash off at any instant.

AN INSECT FREEBOOTER, AND AN INSECT BEGGAR.

The extraordinary looking insect shown towards the top is the lepismid, or fleet-foot, who lives by stealing food from ants when they are in the act of passing it from one to the other. The atemeles beetle shown below is begging food, which will not be refused, from the ant in front of him.

The way in which these fleet-foots secure their food is highly remarkable, each little theft—which has about it more of the parasite than the brigand—occasioning a group of three. The ants upon which they live are of the species known as Lasius umbratus, and, like many other kinds, often feed one another, the hungry asking of the full, by whom he is rarely, if ever, denied. In the process of regurgitation—with which we are now familiar—the two stand fronting each other, with mandibles interlocked, and a drop of honey passes from mouth to mouth. For an instant it trembles between the two, resting on both, and that instant is the opportunity of the Lepismid. Darting forward, he interposes his own, and having absorbed some portion of the drop in transitu, speeds swiftly away to make a third elsewhere. Such a life, however great may be the thief’s agility, is full of danger, and, from time to time, an individual is captured and killed. In nests under observation such executions may be witnessed, and Lepismid corpses—or, as various professors prefer calling them, cadavers—are sometimes noted. Under artificial conditions, however, opportunities of escape are much more limited, unless, indeed, some special provision is made. Thus, when Professor Wheeler first introduced a colony of Lasius umbratus into one of his formicariums, he found, after a couple of dies,[^[12]] five Lepismid cadavers. But having, by the addition to the said formicarium of a refugium, or asylum, made it more as in natura, this mortality ceased, and the remaining Lepismids continued henceforth existentes.

A similar mode of feeding, but under circumstances of much greater security, is indulged in by Antennophorus, another ant-guest, whose relations with its host are of a still closer description. Antennophorus is a mite which, according to M. Janet, fixes itself on to the head, or the sides of the abdomen, of the ant which it affects, and clings there as long as it sees fit. This it is enabled to do owing to a special adaptation of the feet, which end in little horny cups (cornicula is the word here) furnished with some substance of so adhesive a quality that it might well be called “stickphast,” if no Latin word were at hand. Not all the feet, however, are of this description, for the anterior ones are transformed into a pair of long waving antennæ, which contain olfactory organs of the greatest sensibility. With these their owner makes up for the want of eyes, and, smelling and feeling its way, walks, when it wishes to, along the bodies of its hosts, passing from one to another. Sometimes, either by accident or otherwise, it becomes detached, and is then helpless as far as locomotion is concerned, but by no means so in other respects. Its object, now, is to reaffix itself: nor is it long before it succeeds in doing so. As it “lies upon the soil in one of the galleries of the nest it raises and stretches forward its first pair of ambulatory feet, and, at the same time, explores the space around it with its long antenniform ones. These appendages are much more agitated when an ant passes close by. Should it pass near enough, the Acarid (which has a finer sound than ‘mite’) glues itself on to its body by means of the cup of sticky material at the end of one of its ambulatory feet, which it holds up ready for this operation, and it can, in this way, soon climb up and fix itself in a good position on its host. The latter is surprised, and seeks to rid itself of its strange companion, but failing in this, it becomes resigned very quickly (as we do to increased taxation) as soon as the Acarid has taken up one of its normal positions.”[^[13]] It will carry two indeed, or even three, without complaining. An ant with one of these burdens fixed, like the income-tax, to the under side of its head, and two others, which may stand for a rise in tea and sugar, is a very common sight.

The feeding of Antennophorus has been closely observed by M. Janet in his artificial nests, and is thus described by him: “The ants had acquired a habit of placing themselves, crowded one against another, in one corner of the nest, and thither came such as had their crops well filled, after a meal of honey, and disgorged it before the mouths of their comrades who had none. While the fasting ant was eating the honey thus disgorged, Antennophorus, riding on its head, took its share. To do this, it pushed itself forward, and thrust its rostrum into the droplet, and generally, whilst holding itself in position by means of the two hinder pairs of legs, it attached itself by means of the forward pair (which in this case, however, would represent antennæ) to the head of the disgorging ant.”[^[13]] Perhaps there is some little mistake here—possibly I have not copied the passage correctly. There has been no hint before as to the modified antenniform legs of the parasite performing any other office than that of feeling and smelling, whilst the word “attach” or “affix” is that always used to describe the working of the sticky, cup-footed ones. In the position described the antennæ might very well act as supports, but hardly, one would think, in such a way as that their owner could be described as attaching himself through their means. Possibly it is the first pair of true legs that act in this way, but the matter is of no great consequence—not more than a war, say, or the fall of a ministry, in the general run of things. Suffice it that we have our picture, the little parasite stretched, like a bridge, between the heads of the feeding and disgorging ants, and taking its share with the latter.

Lasius something is the name of the ant which Antennophorus utilises in this way, and it is, I think, a European species. Another one—Pachycondyla harpax—the large, black ant of America—wears its parasite round its neck, like an Elizabethan ruff. In this case both host and guest are in the larval state, and the involuntary partnership between them—involuntary probably on the part of either—is not dissolved until both have attained full maturity. The position of affairs is this: the ant larva apparently lies on its back upon earth a little hollowed, to receive it, by the workers of the nest. The parasitic larva—that of an unknown species of fly—has a long, slender neck, as we may call the anterior part of the body, and whilst this is wound about the corresponding portion of its host, the body, which broadens out after the manner of an oil-flask, is affixed by a disc at its end to some part of the back of the latter. When the ants feed the larvæ, they place the food—which consists either of grain that has been stored, or of insects captured and torn up by them—on the broad surface of the abdomen, which forms a sort of trough for its reception. Immediately upon feeling the welcome load, the hungry larva stretches down its head to the banquet, but that of the parasite moves with it, and its small, sharp jaws take eager toll of each dish. Thus the two feed together, cheek by jowl, and should what has been provided prove insufficient for this double onslaught, the unbidden guest will stretch its snake-like neck, and move it ceaselessly until the ever-ready jaws come into contact with a second feast, upon the table next it. Should none, however, be within reach, the guest will give vent to its irritated feelings by biting the bodies of such unbounteous Timons, or even that of its own host. They wriggle with pain, and this may possibly induce the ants to bring them fresh supplies, under the impression that they are hungry, as indeed they may be, with meals shared in this way. If so, we can hardly suppose a parasitic larva to act with such a motive, but as the best biters would in this case get the most food, natural selection may possibly have helped to develop the habit, which would have a compensating advantage for the wrigglers too. As the French say, “Il y a compensation en tout.”

The parasite, whilst stretching out as far as it can from the body of its host, in quest of food, remains, all the while, attached to the latter by the disc in which its body ends. It can, however, leave one ant larva for another, though Professor Wheeler, to whom we owe this interesting discovery, believes that it does this “with great reluctance, and only under urgent circumstances, such as extreme hunger, the death of the larva to which it is attached, and perhaps, when fully mature, and about to pupate.”[^[14]] So long, indeed, as its original host, on whose body, when quite young, it was probably hatched from the egg, continues well and is well fed, it has no reason to seek farther, since all its wants are provided for. It is not only fed by the worker ants, but shares in any other of the benefits which these may bestow upon the rising generation of the nest. Thus, if they move larvæ, as is customary, to give them change of temperature, and produce the requisite hygienic conditions, the parasite is moved along with them, and it is cleaned also—a still more important advantage possibly—at the same time as they are. At such times the ants never seem to notice the uncouth incubus upon the bodies of their infant sisters, though one would suppose the difficulty would be not to do so. They are, it is true, blind, or nearly so, but it seems strange that their sense of touch, which is no doubt delicate, should not be able to inform them, since the parasite, though small enough, absolutely, is of great size regarded as an excrescence on its host’s body. This probably is the way in which the matter presents itself to the ants, if they think about it at all, for since the two lives are passed constantly together, and are subjected to the same conditions, it is likely that they share one smell between them.

But this curious parasitic relation between ant and fly is not confined to the larval stage of each. Continued observation led to a further discovery which I give in Professor Wheeler’s own words: “As the days passed, the mature ant-larvæ spun their brown cocoons one by one, and one by one the mature commensals (the larval parasites, that is to say) disappeared. No traces of them could be discovered. The only remaining resource was to open the cocoons. Five were opened, and in two of recent formation commensals were found! Having shared the table of their host, they had come to share its bed as well. The dipteron (the parasite, as I have said, is a fly) had pupated after the manner of its kind, forming a puparium, that is, instead of spinning a cocoon like the ant larva: the dead larval skin, somewhat shrivelled and contracted, was used as an envelope, and within this the pupa proper was found. In all cases the puparium was located in the caudal pole (at the bottom) of the ant cocoon, and was immovably stuck to the wall of the cocoon, its anterior end directed towards the cephalic pole”[^[14]] (the top). But what, asks Professor Wheeler, does the commensal larva do “while the ant-larva is weaving its cocoon? Does it move about to avoid the swaying jaws of the spinning larva? or does it take up its position, from the first, at the posterior end of the larval ant, and there remain motionless while the posterior pole of the cocoon is being completed? It is very difficult to answer these questions.”[^[14]]

One might think that young ants thus deprived, day by day, of a portion of every meal, would be stunted in their growth, and not make such large and healthy workers as those who had never been encumbered with a parasite. This, however, does not seem to be the case, and no difference can be detected between the one and the other. Perhaps, therefore, ants habitually eat, if not more than is good for them, at least more than they require. This is the case almost universally amongst civilised men, at least in Northern Europe, and with savages to a still greater extent whenever the wherewithal is at hand. In the above case we have, as Professor Wheeler remarks, a very perfect example of what is termed commensalism, in the original meaning of the word—that is to say, of two or more individuals dining together at the same table. As applied to natural history, the individuals in question must be of different species, but it is not often that the definition otherwise is so rigorously adhered to.

This curious parasite inhabits the nests, or, more strictly speaking, the bodies, of an ant, native to Texas, that has long been famous as a storer of grain, but whose supposed still further achievements in an agricultural direction would now seem open to doubt. In the nest of another American ant, which most certainly does grow mushrooms, the same observer found another “myrmecophile,” or ants’ nest insect, viz. a minute species of cockroach that lives its life amongst the caves and galleries of the great vegetable mass which forms, and is designed to form, the mushroom bed, upon the product of which it feeds. Here again the ants have become thoroughly reconciled to the presence amongst them of a guest from which, as far as can be seen, they derive no benefit, whilst having to submit to a loss, through its agency, of some part of the fruits of their labours. These little cockroaches are fairly numerous, and have become so adapted to living in darkness that their eyes have almost disappeared. Another loss, or partial loss, is of a more curious nature, and, one might think, would be a great privation to them. Their antennæ, namely, are always incomplete, but this does not seem to have come about by a gradual process of atrophy, but rather to have been caused by mutilation during their owners’ lifetime. But how has this happened, and what has been the mutilating agency? Professor Wheeler’s explanation, which he believes to be the only one, is that their antennæ have been unconsciously sheared off by the ants, whilst engaged either in clipping their mushrooms or in cutting up the pieces of leaves which they are continually bringing into the nest, to add to the bed on which they grow. “It is easy,” he says, “to understand how an insect like a cockroach, living in the midst of thousands of ants which are continually opening and closing their scissor-like mandibles, should be certain, sooner or later, to have its long antennæ cropped. One wonders how the tarsi (the legs, that is to say) of the cockroach escape the same treatment.”[^[15]] This wonder, however, if there is really any reason for it, suggests a doubt as to the sufficiency of the explanation here offered. The antennæ, one would think, might be held high, in which case, if sheared at all, it could only be at the base, but if here (as would not, however, seem to be the case) why should not the legs be sheared too? Again, it seems possible that the insects themselves may be in the habit of gnawing one another’s antennæ. As the cockroaches live and flourish it would seem that this mutilation of their antennæ, if that, indeed, be the explanation, can do them no great injury. Yet these organs are supposed to be of great importance to insects, and, judging by their length and delicacy, one would think that they were especially so to the members of the cockroach family. In this case they would probably be extremely careful of them, and the fact that these ants’-nest cockroaches do not seem to be so, may show that subterranean conditions, contrary to what one might have expected, have affected their efficacy.

A RIDE ON BEETLE-BACK, AND A LIVING SWEET-SHOP.

Enjoyment seems to be the only motive the fly has for riding on the back of the African beetle shown in the upper part of this illustration. Beneath is shown the well named honey-pot ant with its distended body full of honey, which it gives away to any hungry working ant.

A diet of mushrooms, or fungus, is not the only thing for which these little blind, light-shunning cockroaches are indebted to their landlords, the ants, for often one of them may be seen to mount upon one of the latter, and take a ride on its back. They seem especially fond of the soldiers, as horses, and will sit perched on their enormous heads, as they walk up and down in a stately sort of way, sometimes for quite a long time. Enjoyment seems here to be the only motive, and perhaps it is a natural one, since there is a fly in Africa which seems to have quite a passion for riding on the back of a beetle. “Across the mouth of the Seyhouse,” says the Rev. Mr. Eaton, “on sandy pasture-land bordering the seashore, big coprophagous beetles—it sounds abusive, but no harm is meant—are common, sheltering in large holes in the soil, when at rest, and running about on business. A small species of Borborinæ (that is the fly) may often be seen riding on their backs, chiefly on the pronotum and about the bases of the elytra, sometimes half a dozen females on one beetle. The beetles occasionally throw themselves on their backs, and try to get rid of them by rolling; but the flies elude all their efforts to dislodge them, dodging out of harm’s way into the jointures of the thorax, and darting from back to breast, and back again, in a way that drives the beetle nearly mad. In vain she scrapes over them with her legs, in vain does she roll over, or delve down amongst the roots of the herbage: the flies are as active as monkeys (not perhaps a very striking simile here), and there is no shaking them off. It is difficult (such is their strange predilection) to get them off into the killing-bottle. Nothing (not even the killing-bottle) persuades them to fly, and they would very much rather stick to the beetle than——” what? Not go to heaven, but “be driven off it down the tube.”[^[16]] The tube must be the neck of that same bottle. This, surely, is a case of infatuation if ever there was one. Eccentric fly! And what must be the charms of a beetle that can prevail over those of cyanide of potassium! But the beetle, it must be remembered, is a coprophagous one. There may be a world of explanation in a word like that.

CHAPTER V

From biped to quadruped—Flies that borrow wings—Sit-o’-my-head—A novel cradle—Flies that kill bees—Nature’s sadness—Consolations of the future—The Tachina fly and the locust.

ALTHOUGH from the way in which the story is told, one might imagine that the fly here was merely enjoying a ride upon beetle-back, yet, from the efforts made by the latter to shake off its persecutors, and, still more, because these were of the female sex, the probability is that we have here to do with a case of parasitism. The fly, we may almost feel certain, was endeavouring to lay its eggs, and the reason why she took so long about it was that she required a certain spot upon the beetle in order to do so, and that the beetle’s efforts, though appearing futile, were more or less successful in guarding this spot. At any rate, if this was not the case here, it is so in many other instances, various flies being parasitic on various other insects. Not all of these are fatal to the object of their choice, which, if it affords them board as well as lodgings, may only do so to the extent of its blood. Such are the curious family of Hippoboscidæ, or Bird Ticks, who begin life with wings, but are so little appreciative of the powers which these confer that, having found the creature upon whom they elect to live, they bite them off, or otherwise wilfully rid themselves of them, after the manner of ants and termites, thus offering yet another example in the insect world of

“one whose hand,

Like the poor Indian, flung a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe.”

For what can be imagined more glorious to possess, speaking of physical attributes, than the power of flight?

The course of life of these flies—if all be truth that is spoken of them—is, indeed, very extraordinary, for during the first or winged stage of their adult life they live on birds, but migrate from them to some quadruped—as, say, a deer—as soon as they find themselves within easy reach of it, and then, as having reached their final place of abode, do away with their wings. Thus, being too lazy or lethargic to fly themselves, they choose rather to stand indebted to another being for a power which they no doubt once possessed in perfection, and which they are still quite capable of exercising. What the larval stage of these flies is, whether they lay their eggs upon their first or last habitation—or on both, and if not, where or in what manner the larva passes its life, I do not know, and as my authority, who should be up to date, holds his peace upon the matter, I conclude that it is not yet made out. Possibly the grub is a vegetable feeder, or possibly, again, it is as fatal to some other insect as is that of a little fly with a big name—Apocephalus pergandei to wit—to ants. The victim here chosen—if there be not others also—is a black tree-climbing ant, common in Pennsylvania. As it runs over the ground or up and down the trunks of trees, the fly darts after it on tiny wings, intent on laying her egg upon its neck. The ant tries to elude her endeavours, but Apocephalus—or Sit-o’-my-head—has a mission to fulfil, and will take no denial. The egg is laid, it cannot be detached, and, when hatched, the issuing grub bores, with enthusiasm, into the head of the ant. Coming to the brain he has nothing to do but to eat it, and he does so until the whole cavity of the skull has become an empty chamber, except for his own presence there. The movements of the ant during this process—of its feelings we have no record—have become more and more erratic, and it feels itself less and less capable of performing its duties as a member of an active and industrious community. At length it falls down, and not long afterwards its head falls off, giving to the maggot inside it its first opportunity of looking out into the world through the window of the neck-hole. Hitherto its life, however easy and pleasant, has been of a sedentary nature, but now it can enjoy the pleasures of a walk, and moves about something after the manner of a snail, dragging its cephalic shell behind it. But this active state is not of long duration. The time of change is at hand, and snug within the ant’s head and its own last larval skin, which, as is the way with fly caterpillars, serves it in lieu of a cocoon, the fortunate little creature turns into a chrysalis, and dreams away its time till, on some sunny day, it issues from its cradle a happy, active fly, feeling strangely attracted by ants.

Another little fly belonging to this same family group—the hump-backed flies or Pharidæ—has it fate linked with that of bees, in whose hive it is hatched and on whose eggs and larvæ it feeds; nor does the grown bee itself, though armed with its sting, escape from the more rapacious members of the order. These are known by the name of Robber Flies, though as the robbery involves the death of the victim, and consists of the juices of its body, murder would seem to be the better word. These flies, though of somewhat slender build, which the better fits them for their swift and darting flight, are excessively strong, as might be expected from their long muscular-looking legs and rough hairy bodies. All sorts of insects are their prey, for the despatch of which they are furnished with a hard tubular beak, enclosing, as in a sheath, a lancet-like instrument, which, being protruded at will, severely lacerates the body of the captive. The beak, or sheath, is also struck some way into the wound, and being tipped with bristles, these serve as so many barbs to keep it in position, whilst the blade continues to probe and hack the victim, on whose back the fly has descended, embracing it with its powerful legs. “These flies,” says Dr. Fitch—who seems strangely unalive to the moral beauty underlying the mere mechanical expression of it—“are inhuman murderers, they are savages of the insect world, putting their captives to death with merciless cruelty. Their large eyes, divided into such a multitude of facets, probably give them the most acute and accurate vision for espying and seizing their prey; and their long, stout legs, their bearded and bristly head, their whole aspect indicates them to be of a predatory and ferocious character. Like the hawk, they swoop upon their prey, and grasping it securely between their fore feet, they violently bear it away.”[^[17]] Bees, beetles, butterflies, moths, even grasshoppers are thus treated, and sometimes, by a beautiful retributive arrangement—enough to throw one into ecstasies—they turn cannibals, and prey upon each other. Nay, there is even more than this to arouse our admiration, for so stern and unbending is the law of eternal justice, that even the softest feelings of nature are not allowed to interfere with it, and the female, wooed by the male, is frequently compelled to eat him. Thus the noble maxim of fiat justitia ruat cælum, though, for a time, it may seem to be in abeyance, finds, at last, unconscious expression, if not in the breast, at least in the appetite of a cruel and murderous insect; and thus in the animal world, not less than in our human one, “the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.”

To bee-keepers—and to bees perhaps still more so—these terrible buccaneer flies are especially obnoxious. Poised in air, in the neighbourhood of some hive, they watch the issuing and returning stream, and, making swift choice of a victim, sweep, like the wingéd furies that they are, upon him. There is a sharp, shrilly sound, as the bee’s wings vibrate, for a moment, more rapidly, then the fatal legs wrap her round, and, pressed tightly to the oppressor’s body, she is borne to some shrub or flower, in the shade or pleasant fragrance of which the juices of her body are sucked out, through a hole specially made to allow of their passage. When nothing remains but the empty shell, the fly drops this, and returns to the scene of its labours. Through all the hot sunny hours these raids are continued, till hundreds of empty bee-shells strew the ground. As the sun declines the sport flags and gradually ceases, but it begins again the following morning as merrily as ever. America seems to be the home par excellence of these flies, but they are represented, under various forms, in many parts of the world. The United States has been accorded its fair share of them, and according to their numbers, each season, the labours of the bee-farmer are rewarded or otherwise. So much is this the case that the fact that “during certain seasons, in a bee-raising district of New York, not a single hive threw off a swarm”[^[17]] has been attributed to this cause alone.

A BUCCANEER FLY, AND A LEAF-RESEMBLING INSECT.

Poised in the air, the buccaneer fly selects its victim from the bees issuing from a hive, pounces on it like a winged fury, and kills its hapless prey. The insect depicted beneath is protected from its enemies by its strange resemblance to a dead leaf.

It would appear from these facts either that no bee ever succeeds in stinging its assailant, or else that the latter is proof against the injection of poison. The former seems to me the most probable, since the system of the bee itself has no such immunity. It seems strange that so deadly a weapon should fail thus constantly, at a pinch, and it would be interesting to know if these redoubtable adversaries attack wasps as well as bees. As it is not stated that they do so—as wasps are pointedly omitted from the list made out of their victims—the contrary may, I think, be assumed, and also, as a corollary, that if wasps were attacked they would be able to use their sting, probably with fatal effect. This superior capability is, no doubt, owing to the superior flexibility of a wasp’s abdomen over that of a bee; and if we ask ourselves what is the cause of this—how and for what reason the superiority has been acquired—the answer seems “as ready as a borrower’s cap,” viz. “as a means of self-defence through a process of natural selection.” Nothing could be better adapted to bring this process into play than the very ordeal through which the bee is passing; for if some could only succeed, through superior flexibility, in stinging the flies, they ought to increase at the expense of those unable to do so. As far as it goes, this seems to point to the wasp having gone through a longer course of development than the bee—to its ancestry dating farther back in time; but when we think of the latter’s more elaborate social organisation and the greater perfection of its cells, one feels inclined to reverse this opinion. As no bees possess such powers of twisting about and doubling round their abdomens as do wasps, though some can do so in a very fair degree, it seems probable that the common ancestor of all the species was more thickly built than that of the wasps, or at least that the potential capacity handed down by it of development in this direction was less. But precisely the same argument may be used in regard to the brain of the ancestral wasp, and thus we see that unless we have geological evidence on the subject it is very difficult to say which of two species has the more ancient descent.

The Robber Flies—whose scientific name I have forgotten—however disagreeable they may be, are at least not parasites. They attack their prey and kill it quickly, instead of handing it over to prolonged torture at the hands of the next generation. This last is what the Tachina flies—to say nothing of other kinds—do, who, as they principally attack caterpillars, may be considered beneficial to man. In the United States of America there is no greater destroyer of all sorts of trees than the so-called army-worm caterpillar, or rather grub—for it represents a fly merely—which gathers together in enormous numbers when about to enter the pupal state. “I have seen,” says Mr. Leland Howard, “vast armies of the army-worm, comprising, unquestionably, millions of individuals, and have been unable to find a single specimen which did not bear the characteristic eggs of a Tachina fly. These flies were present in such numbers that their buzzing as they flew over the army of caterpillars could be heard at some distance, and the farmers were unnecessarily alarmed, since they conceived the idea that the flies were the parents of the caterpillars, and were flying everywhere and laying their eggs in the grass and wheat. As a matter of fact, one great outbreak of the army-worm in northern Alabama in the early summer of 1881 was completely frustrated by the Tachina flies, aided by a few other parasites and predatory insects. They also attack grasshoppers, bugs, beetles, saw-flies and saw-fly larvæ, humble bees, and wasps. (How they avoid the sting of the latter we are not told; perhaps their insignificant size is a protection.) The eggs are stuck by some sort of gummy substance to the surface of the preyed-on insect; and the small white eggs are frequently seen sticking to the back of some unfortunate caterpillar. From the under side of each egg there hatches a little maggot, which bores its way through the skin of the host, and penetrates into its body, where it lives, nourishing itself upon the fatty matter and lymph until it reaches full growth, usually, if not always, destroying before it emerges some vital organ, so as to cause the death of the host insect. It almost invariably issues, when full grown, from the body of the insect attacked, and pupates, at or near the surface of the ground, within the last larval skin, which hardens into a brown oval puparium.”[^[17]] There are some points of special interest about the parasitism of these Tachina flies, which seem to be directed by a less perfect instinct than that which guides other insects of similar habits; for instance, the Ichneumon flies, which, however, are such merely in name, being members of the order Hymenoptera, which includes the bees and ants.

These latter, by merely touching an insect with their antennæ, can tell if it is already occupied—in which case they withdraw—nor do they ever lay eggs in excess of the number of issuing larvæ that can be supported by the little world of provender into which they will be born. Neither do they choose a caterpillar to lay on, which is just about to cast its skin, by which manœuvre the host would escape, and the guests be left to perish. All these mistakes, however, are frequently made by the Tachina fly, the consequence being that many poor children die of starvation; whilst others, from wanting their necessary complement of food, have their growth checked and become poor pitiable objects, less than half the size that, with a more generous diet, they would certainly have attained to. It is painful to know that such privation exists and to have no means of relieving it; but nature is full of sadness, and it is best to look truth in the face. Some comfort may perhaps be derived by looking forward to a distant future, when the instinct which is now liable to these errors shall have been perfected. Such comfort, at any rate, lives in Mr. Leland Howard’s views that “the parasitic mode of life in the Tachina fly is one of comparatively recent acquirement, and that sufficient time has not elapsed since they began to take on this habit”[^[17]] to allow of its having reached the final goal towards which it is always advancing. It is difficult, however, to console oneself for the imperfections of a work-a-day world in a far distant prospect of Elysium.

In the somewhat numerous list of insects distinguished by the attentions of the Tachina fly, grasshoppers have been mentioned. In Africa they, or, at any rate, one species of the family, attack the terrible plague locust, that has from time to time committed, and still apparently commits, such terrible devastations. The latter seems quite aware of the fate in store for it, and makes vigorous efforts to evade its destiny. Buzzing in the air, above the ravenous horde, the fly waits for one to hop or rise on the wing, and then darts swiftly upon it. To avoid her, the locust rises or sinks, tacks suddenly to right or left, scudding this way and that like a ship to meet a varying breeze. The Tachina, in the meanwhile, circles about her quarry, awaiting a favourable opportunity, which generally arises just as the locust alights, or is on the point of alighting, when, descending upon it before the lost impetus can be renewed, she clings lovingly, and deposits her eggs, either on the neck or under one of the wings,

“——and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king.”

It is not, however, as a rule, till after the grub or grubs have made their exit from the body that the locust dies, though it has drooped and become languid for some time. Of the vast swarms that darken the sky and descend upon the country, like a mantle, a very small proportion would seem to perish in this way, since everywhere the females may be seen drilling with their abdomens into the ground, preparatory to laying their eggs. The check upon their numbers, whatever it may be—and on the whole it must be very effective—supervenes, for the most part, at this early stage, before the egg is hatched, that is to say.

CHAPTER VI

The burden of the locusts—Classical nonsense—Address to Mahomet—Locusts in Europe—Succumb to the English climate—Described by Darwin—Locusts in Africa—The wingless host do greatest damage—Hoppers and jumpers—“An army on the march.”

LOCUSTS are insects famous in story, and when one reads about them in various entomological or other writings, one might imagine that the whole world had been doing little else, ever since it began, than play a losing match with these creatures. It is only after one has gone a little about the world, and lived for some time in regions noted as their head-quarters without seeing anything whatever of them, that one begins to doubt this view, and lean towards another one, viz. that they are fabulous animals; but truth, as in other cases where two extreme views are held, lies somewhere betwixt and between. The whole matter is this, that when one reads one narrative after another, with its burden of a darkened sun, devastated territories, strong winds, drownings in the sea, and pestilences engendered by innumerable carcases cast up along hundreds of miles of beach, the intervals, as well as the countries, between each one of these occurrences, are annihilated in the imagination, and the dates, if seen, are forgotten. Thus, to use the Kaffir expression—which has not yet lost its meaning for a civilised European—one sees everything red; locusts are very convincing—“you may almost hear the beating of their wings.”

However, there is no doubt that these insects, in relation to man, have played what the Germans call “eine bedeutende Rolle” in the world, and are worth saying something about, if only one has something not too desperately antique to say, and this, by virtue of a work which I, at any rate, have never seen quoted, and a paper in a certain Antipodean organ, which for the majority of people here might as well be in the Faerie Queene or Paradise Lost, I think I may have. But first let us turn to what, though it be antique, is also classical, and—though this would not be a corollary for everyone—very delightful: “To look,” say the authors of the famous Introduction, “at a locust in a cabinet of insects, you would not, at first sight, deem it capable of being the source of so much evil to mankind as stands on record against it. ‘This is but a small creature,’ you would say, ‘and the mischief which it causes cannot be far beyond the proportion of its bulk. The locusts so celebrated in history must surely be of the Indian kind mentioned by Pliny, which were three feet in length, with legs so strong that the women used them as saws. I see, indeed, some resemblance to the horse’s head, but where are the eyes of the elephant, the neck of the bull, the horns of the stag, the chest of the lion, the belly of the scorpion, the wings of the eagle, the thighs of the camel, the legs of the ostrich, and the tail of the serpent, all of which the Arabians mention as attributes of this widely dreaded insect destroyer, but of which, in the insect before me, I discern little or no likeness?’” Personally, I do not for a moment imagine that even in 1815, the date of the first edition of the work in question, any reasonably educated person would have spoken or thought in this way, without any conception, apparently, of what numbers can effect, but it is interesting to know what the Arabs think, or say, about the locust, and especially that they represent it—as we are told a few lines on—as thus addressing Mahomet: “We are the army of the Great God; we produce ninety-nine eggs; if the hundred were completed, we should consume the whole earth and all that is in it.”

The authors then proceed to give a short résumé of the various locust plagues under which the earth, over a large part of its surface, has at different times groaned. The first and best authenticated goes back to a very early period—about 4000 B.C.—after which the evidence does not conform quite so strictly to the test demanded of it by the modern scientific spirit. Pliny, however, we are told, “mentions a law in Cyrenaica by which the inhabitants were enjoined to destroy the locusts in three different states, three times in the year—first their eggs, then their young, and lastly the perfect insect. And not without reason was such a law enacted; for Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 3800 Africa was infested by such infinite myriads of these animals that having devoured every green thing, after flying off to sea they were drowned, and being cast upon the shore, they emitted a stench greater than could have been produced by the carcases of 100,000 men (a very confident statement, surely). St. Augustine also mentions a plague as having arisen in that country from the same cause, which destroyed no less than 800,000 persons (octingenta hominum millia) in the kingdom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the territories bordering upon the sea.” After this we make a jump to A.D. 591, and find the locusts in Europe. In that year “an infinite army of them, of a size unusually large, grievously ravaged part of Italy; and, being at last cast into the sea, from their stench arose a pestilence which carried off near a million of men and beasts. In the Venetian territory also, in 1478, more than 30,000 persons” (but this seems pitiful) “are said to have perished in a famine occasioned by these terrific scourges.”

Many other instances of their devastations in Europe, in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc., are recorded by the same authors. “In 1650 a cloud of them was seen to enter Russia in three different places, which from thence passed over into Poland and Lithuania, where the air was darkened by their numbers. In some places they were seen lying dead, heaped one upon another to the depth of four feet; in others they covered the surface, like a black cloth, the trees bent with their weight, and the damage they did exceeded all computation.” Nay, “even this happy island (lucus a non lucendo), so remarkably distinguished by its exemption from most of those scourges to which other nations are exposed (as fog, sunshine, etc.), was once alarmed by the appearance of locusts. In 1748 they were observed here in considerable numbers, but providentially they soon perished without propagating”—the “happy island” apparently having been too much for them. These unfortunates would appear to have been stragglers from far vaster numbers which a year before had devastated Eastern Europe, one swarm of which, “entering Transylvania in August, was several hundred fathoms in width. At Vienna the breadth of one of them was three miles, and extended to so great a length as to be four hours in passing over the Red Tower: and such was its density that it totally intercepted the solar light, so that when they flew low one person could not see another at the distance of twenty paces.” Another host that appeared in India is said to have formed a column five hundred miles long, and “so compact was it when on the wing that, like an eclipse, it completely hid the sun, so that no shadow was cast by any object, and some lofty tombs not more than 200 yards off were rendered quite invisible.”

Dr. Clarke in his Travels speaks of locusts covering “his carriage and horses, and says the Tartars assert that people are sometimes suffocated by them.” He mentions two species, “the first of which is almost twice the size of the second, and, because it precedes it, is called by the Tartars the herald or messenger.” From 1778 to 1780 a dreadful curse of locusts, alluded to by Southey in his “Thalaba”—or, perhaps, forming the subject of that poem—I really don’t know—fell upon the Empire of Morocco. “Everything green was eaten up, not even the bitter bark of the orange and pomegranate escaping. A most dreadful famine ensued. The poor were seen to wander over the country deriving a miserable subsistence from the roots of plants; and women and children followed the camels, from whose dung they picked the undigested grains of barley, which they devoured with avidity; in consequence of which numbers perished, and the roads and streets exhibited the unburied carcases of the dead.” Again, “From Mogador to Tangier, before the plague of 1799, the face of the earth was covered by them. At that time a singular incident occurred at El Araiche. The whole region from the confines of the Sahara was ravaged by them; but on the other side of the river, El Kos, not one was to be seen, though there was nothing to prevent their flying over it. Till then they had proceeded northwards; but upon arriving at its banks they turned to the east, so that all the country north of El Araiche was full of pulse, fruits, and grain—exhibiting a most striking contrast to the desolation of the adjoining district.” Lastly—that is to say, to make a last quotation from the classics—“The Arabs of the Desert, whose hands are against every man, and who rejoice in the evil that befalls other nations, when they behold the clouds of locusts proceeding from the north, are filled with gladness, anticipating a general mortality, which they call El Khere (the benediction), for when a country is thus laid waste they emerge from their arid deserts and pitch their tents in the desolated plains.”

Darwin, in his Journal of Researches, gives the following account of a flight of locusts: “Shortly before we arrived at the village of Luxan we observed to the south a ragged cloud of a dark reddish-brown colour. At first we thought that it was smoke from some great fire on the plains; but we soon found that it was a swarm of locusts. They were flying northward, and with the aid of a slight breeze they overtook us at a rate of ten or fifteen miles an hour. The main body filled the air from a height of twenty feet to that, as it appeared, of two or three thousand above the ground; ‘and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle,’ or rather, I should say, like a strong breeze passing through the rigging of a ship. The sky, seen through the advanced guard, appeared like a mezzotinto engraving, but the main body was impervious to sight; they were not, however, so thick together but that they could escape a stick waved backwards and forwards. When they alighted, they were more numerous than the leaves in the field, and the surface became reddish instead of being green: the swarm having once alighted, the individuals flew from side to side in all directions.” At that time—the year was 1835—locusts were “not an uncommon pest in this country: already during this season several smaller swarms had come up from the south, where, as, apparently, in all other parts of the world, they are bred in the deserts. The poor cottagers in vain attempted by lighting fires, by shouts, and by waving branches to avert the attack.” This locust, Darwin tells us, closely resembled the famous Gryllus migratorius of the East—the one that spoke to the Prophet—if, indeed, it was not identical with it.

Though these accounts are all interesting in their way, they none of them tell us much—or, indeed, anything—about the locusts themselves, for which reason I will supplement them with some which have that advantage, and are also, in some sort, a check or commentary upon the others. It is to be noted that, in all these, we hear only of flying locusts, and anyone would imagine by reading of them that it was by such, and no others, that all the damage was done. In Africa, however, and also in Cyprus—from which we may assume that it is the same elsewhere—the case is widely different. Writing evidently as a locust expert of the former country, Dr. Æneas Munro tells us that it is in their early wingless state—answering to the caterpillar one, though far less differentiated from the perfect form—that the most terrible, the overwhelming, injury is inflicted by these insects. Of the full-grown flying locusts he says, “To a certain extent, they do injure here and there, where they select to settle and feed; but they do not devour everything clean before them, like the army of the larval stage or jumpers.”[^[18]] Of the latter and its doings ab ovo we have the following interesting account: “When the tiny creatures issue from their nest they are of a greenish white or creamy colour, about an eighth of an inch in length,” and on the day that they do so “the very dust of the ground, which was so still before, now seems to waken into life. They begin to move by a process of twisting or rolling over one another, so that, for the first few days, they receive the name of twisters. Within eight or ten days, however, they can jump four or six inches, and at the age of three or four weeks a new characteristic makes its appearance. A desire to explore manifests itself, and in a surprising manner. The whole company moves in a body in one general direction, and more or less in a straight line, as if by one common instinct, without apparently having any recognised leader or commander,”[^[18]] which is just the way, in my opinion, that rooks and starlings move.[^[19]]

Marching in this way they spread themselves out over the country, “eating everything that comes in their way—wheat (if sufficiently young and tender), maize (even if strong and old), corn, sugar-cane, linseed, alfalfa (lucerne), pasture of all kinds, vegetables of all kinds (tomatoes and celery), and all garden produce, potatoes (ordinary and sweet), the leaves and sometimes even the bark of the trees, causing their ruin. The fruit, of course, is lost for the season. Orange, willow, poplar, palm, banana, peach, pear, plum, vine, acacia, roses, etc., are stripped,” but not “the gum and paradise trees, which seem to be poisonous to them. They make everything ‘clean bare’; sometimes they will enter houses, and eat the very clothes and curtains at the windows.”[^[20]] They will even eat the wool off the backs of the sheep, and “last stage of all that ends this strange, eventful history,” on a pressing occasion they will eat one another. Continuing his interesting account—the graphic and convincing one of an eye-witness— Dr. Munro tells us that “when these hoppers and jumpers (voetgangers, as the Boers call them) are on the march, they sometimes appear so determined and bent on the fearful execution of their work, that they resemble and have got the name of ‘an army on the march.’ They move in open file, and carry themselves in a proud, haughty way, with heads high up and fixed. It is beautiful and interesting to see them on the march, if we only divest ourselves for the moment of the idea of their devastating object.”[^[20]] And again, “The whole of the company begin to walk at the same time, as if by order; the head is kept erect, and the neck is as if stiffened. They go straight on, irrespective of danger,”[^[20]] and are deterred, as is well known, by hardly any obstacle. “The sight of this army is a very impressive one, and once seen will never be forgotten. In some respects it is an awful sight; the spectacle strikes you with pity and sorrow to see at once before you that the toil and the labour for the season, or, indeed, the year, is lost.”[^[20]]

“It is in this marching stage,” continues Dr. Munro, “that the voetgangers do enormous damage and eat every edible thing in their path, and completely destroy the work of the husbandman. They are not content with levying toll merely, but they will have all, and will leave nothing behind but desolation. They are therefore unlike the flying company of locusts, which only levy toll here and there, but these, when they pass, leave nothing.”

Some curious facts are then given in regard to the uniform direction—varying according to the country—in which these wingless locusts march. The account will be remembered of how a flying host came to the banks of a river which they refrained from crossing. One might almost think that a mistake had here been made, and that the locusts were really voetgangers, but had they been so, the river, unless a large one, need not have deterred them—at least, they will pass streams, though doubtless great numbers are sacrificed in doing so. If, however, the stream had run parallel to the direction in which the swarm was advancing, we can understand, in the light of what seems to be now established, their not crossing it.

CHAPTER VII

The sense of direction—How locusts look flying—Follow no leader—Unanimity of movement—Flight by moonlight—Roosting at night—Extirpated in Cyprus—The “Chinese Wall” system—Not adapted to Australia—Deference to aboriginal feeling—Locusts in Australia—Strange ceremony of egg-laying—Inadequate explanation.

IN regard to the faculty of direction with which locusts seem endowed, Dr. Munro says: “The flying locusts in the Argentine come from a northerly direction, and the hoppers or creepers march towards the south, although it might be, so far as abundance of suitable food goes, to their manifest advantage to go in an opposite direction. In certain countries the direction may be known. In this country (South Africa) it will be found that they march towards the south, and not towards the north, east, or west, though either of these directions might have been better for them. The direction may not be true south; it may incline at one time to the south-east, at another to the south-west; but, taken as a whole, it will be southwards.” And he adds: “If proof be needed that the ‘saltonas,’ another name—perhaps the Portuguese one—for these wingless armies, march in one direction, it is abundantly found in the experience of the screen and trap, or Cypriote system of destroying locusts, which is based on this fact, and on this alone. This is conclusive demonstration.”[^[21]]

The distance that these footgangers—to translate, almost without changing, the Dutch word—go in a day depends upon the amount of food they find upon the road, but fluctuates, as a rule, between one mile and two. They start about eight o’clock, when the sun begins to get hot; and halt for the night a little before the sun sets. Dr. Munro describes the way in which the female locust, before laying her eggs, drills a hole in the hard ground with the disc-like extremity of her abdomen, but he mentions nothing very peculiar in connection with the laying of the eggs such as characterises the performance of that ceremony by the Australian plague locust, as will be mentioned shortly.

A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS

The dark cloud is entirely composed of locusts, which sometimes fill the air from twenty feet to two or three thousand feet above the ground. The poor people attempt in vain, by shouts, by lighting fires, and waving branches, to avert the attack.

The first appearance of these locusts is in enormous hosts, which may sometimes be seen at a distance of from seven to ten miles, and then appear as a black cloud in the clear and rarefied air of South Africa. “It is impossible,” says Dr. Munro, “to estimate the number of locusts in these clouds, but some idea may be formed from the fact that when they are driven, as sometimes is the case in a storm, into the sea, so many are washed ashore that they lie on the beach as a bank from three to four feet thick and from fifty to one hundred miles in length, and the stench from the corruption of their bodies, it is affirmed, is sensibly perceived for a hundred and fifty miles inland.”[^[22]] The aerial movements of the locusts, when they fairly surround one, are described as “curious, interesting, and pretty.” Distant vision (more especially overhead) is impeded on account of their numbers. The effect when you look on them in the sun’s rays resembles “snow falling thickly and gently,” and the sun is only seen as though it were in eclipse. “Its light is darkened and shadows cannot then be cast from it.”[^[23]] The height at which the swarm flies may be anything between forty feet and two miles from the ground, but as a rule it is not greater than 400 feet, though from 500 to 800 is not uncommon. Sometimes they fly by moonlight, but this is not their usual practice. As in their earlier wingless state, they seem to act by one common impulse, which prevents confusion. It is obvious, indeed, that with such myriads filling the whole air, a leader could neither be perceived nor followed, and from my own observations I am convinced that the same difficulty applies to this way of explaining the movements of flocks of birds. I have never, myself, seen any evidence of birds being led by one or more of their number, but much to convince me that when banded together, in numbers, their movements are governed by a totally different principle, viz. that of thought transference or thought-unity—collective thinking, as I have elsewhere called it—for that is what it most suggests. If this is not the case with locusts, what, I would ask, is the alternative explanation? If great hosts of men be neither led nor of one mind where to go, they must fall into confusion, impeding one another’s movements, and this is a law which has to do with numbers merely, without respect to the species of which they are composed. It has often been noticed, however, that large crowds seem liable to be swayed suddenly by some common impulse.

Locusts may fly about a district all day doing but little harm, “and at sundown,” says Dr. Munro, “the sight becomes interesting beyond description, for the whole company then appear to vie with one another in order to roost quickly.”[^[23]] When all have found a resting-place, “every twig, branch, bush, or separate stalk of the corn or wheat or flax are completely covered, and sometimes they stick to each other”[^[23]]—three or four deep even. “As far as the eye can see, the surface assumes a brownish-red hue. Pillars, posts, or the walls of houses are all alike to them at the time of roosting for the night.”[^[23]]

Such, then, is the Plague Locust of South Africa, which is, when at maturity, about three inches long. Some years ago, however—the exact date is not given—a larger and handsomer species made its appearance, and is thus referred to in a letter which was sent by “A Disgusted Farmer” of Grahamstown to one of the South African papers: “The new red locust, which, during the last month, has spread from the Orange River to the sea, coming apparently from the north as well as from Natal, is doing terrible damage. Everywhere fruit-trees are being destroyed—quince, apricot, fig, orange, lemon, naartje trees. Not only are the leaves eaten, but young branches are all barked, so that they are probably killed. A splendid crop of mealies, covering the whole of Peddie, Lower Albany, Alexandria, and other districts, has been entirely destroyed. Pumpkin plants are being eaten too. Vegetables of all kinds—lucerne, cattle-cabbage, and kale—are also swept away. The locusts are laying everywhere, and, no doubt, the plague will continue some years. What is the agricultural farmer to do?”[^[23]] I do not know, but here, probably, were there locusts, he would pick out all such birds as fed on them and try to get them taken off the list of protected species, shooting them illegally all the while he was petitioning.

Dr. Munro’s work was published in 1900, and its principal object was to induce the South African Government to adopt the system of dealing with the locust plague which had been practised with such entire success in the isle of Cyprus. Whether this has since been done, and with what results, I am unable to say. In Cyprus, however, the locusts, which from the year 1600, especially, have changed the country from a garden into a wilderness, were in one season almost entirely swept away. The method by which so great a result was effected is the invention of an Italian gentleman—Signor Matthei by name—resident in the island, and is based upon the inability of the immature locusts, the footgangers—probably the grown ones too, but this is immaterial—to crawl up a smooth perpendicular, still more an overhanging surface. Such a surface was supplied by a long band of leather, glazed and polished, surmounting a strip of calico, which was made about four feet high, but need not, as it was afterwards found, have been more than two. This insurmountable obstacle, supported at intervals by sticks set in the ground—not upright, but slanting a little towards the path of the locusts—was set up over a large area of country like a miniature Chinese Wall, and proved even more insurmountable. At intervals along the inner side of the barrier deep pits were dug, whilst at wider ones stood men provided with brooms, spades, brushwood, and all else requisite. When the locusts arrived at the Chinese Wall they climbed up the canvas part of it, but being unable to pass the smooth band of leather they fell down in heaps, and their ever-increasing multitudes soon filled the pits, in which they were buried, burnt, stamped down, or otherwise provided for. Afterwards their carcases were dug out and heaped on carts, and the pits, being empty again, were ready for more. In this way two hundred million quadrillion billions—or something of that sort—of locusts were destroyed, and next year when everything was again ready for them hardly any appeared. By this invention, as simple as it is ingenious and inexpensive, the locust plague in Cyprus has become a thing of the past, and if the conferrer of so great a benefit was ever not a man of large fortune, let us hope that that has become a thing of the past, too, for he must have saved several to the British Government. If the locusts, after coming to the Chinese Wall and finding themselves unable to climb it, had turned round and walked in another direction, this would have made a capital instance of intelligence shown by insects—but they did not do so.

With native labour, the above system, which has been so entirely successful in Cyprus, could, Dr. Munro makes no doubt, be put in operation in Africa; but Mr. W. W. Froggatt, the Government entomologist of Australia, does not think it adapted for that country. Writing in The Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales (March, 1901), Mr. Froggatt says, “Though they have been successfully dealt with in Cyprus, Egypt, Algeria, and India by means of trenches, traps, and burning in the hopper state, and digging up and destroying the eggs in the earlier stage, in nearly all cases the areas infested were comparatively small; the labour employed was so cheap that small armies of natives could be employed at a small cost to destroy them, while in several instances an autocratic government made the natives, whether they were inclined or not, work at their plan of destruction.” In Australia, where, “whether they were inclined or not,” the natives have been got rid of, very much as though they were locusts—or some less stubborn insects—themselves, this would not do.

It was in the summer of 1899 that Mr. Froggatt, in consequence of reports received of the advent of locusts in various parts of the country, left Sydney for Condobolin. On the way there many “mobs”—to use the Australian word—were encountered, and numbers of locusts flew in at the railway carriage windows. Upon alighting, Mr. Froggatt became the witness of a very interesting spectacle—a ceremony, as it may well be called, in which vast numbers of the insects were engaged—of which he gives the following description:—

“In the open red soil we found them laying their eggs in thousands, and the operation was very remarkable. The female set to work by pressing the tip of her abdomen into the soil, and working the plates at the apex, so that she gradually bored a regular circular shaft, slightly over an inch in depth and under a quarter of an inch in diameter, the segments of the abdomen extending and stretching as the work progressed. But the most extraordinary part of the operation was that each female, while boring the chamber to deposit the eggs, was attended by two males, each of which rested his head against hers, with his antennas resting over her head, and the inner foreleg clasped over the prothorax behind the base of the head. Resting like this, with the tails of the two attendant males pointing outwards, the three formed a three-rayed star. Wherever the business of egg-laying was going on, each female and her attendants were surrounded by a cluster of admiring males, averaging from thirty to fifty in number, generally in bunches of fours or fives, forming an irregular ring round them, but separated from her by a clear space of three or four inches. In no instance were there ever more than two males touching the female, though we examined thousands of them at work.”[^[24]]

What is the meaning of this odd performance?—this ceremony, as it appears to me, though Mr. Froggatt takes a utilitarian view of it. “The probable and only reason,” he remarks, “that I can see for the attendance of the two males upon the egg-laying female is that it enables her to get a firmer grip of the ground, and, in fact, holds her in position till she completes her task.”[^[24]] But why, then, should the females of no other species of locust, as far as we are aware, require this aid, and should not the soil of Africa be as hard as that of Australia? “I can find,” says Mr. Froggatt, “no record of this habit in any of our described species, which have the same habits.”[^[24]] Again, besides the two chief actors, we have the admiring ring of from thirty to fifty males, who can be of no possible service, but whose conduct shows that they take a strong interest in what the female is doing. What is it, too, that regulates the number, or, at any rate, the personality of the assistant males? If it is a matter of rendering assistance only, and the two males who do so are bound to the female by no more special tie than the crowd of interested spectators, why do not these, or some of them, push forward? Why is there never any contention between them? These considerations make me think that there is something of a formal and ceremonious character about these queer proceedings, and that they are governed by the same general law as are certain antics or set figures amongst birds, wherein three individuals take a part. What one requires to know is the courting and marital relations of the male and female locust before the egg-laying takes place.

These little locusts—Epacromia terminalis is the specific name—are only about an inch in length, and the male, from the description, seems a little brighter than the female, which may be due to sexual selection. The female appears to lay nineteen eggs only, neither more nor less, which is not so many as one would have expected from the Arabian legend. With some other species, however, the number more conforms to the statement said to have been made to Mahomet.

There is no vanity at all in my thinking that this has been an interesting account of locusts, since I myself have had nothing to do with it. In giving a general description, from general reading, of things generally known, and that have been described scores of times before, one is entitled to use one’s own language, and to think, perhaps, that one stands at no particular disadvantage in doing so. But when, in regard to something specially curious or interesting, the graphic words of an eye-witness are before one, the best thing one can do, in my opinion, is to copy them out. If it be suggested that this is but a lazy way of writing a book, my reply is that a compiler best shows his industry in the searching out of material. The late Professor Romanes was alive to this fact, and has left us in consequence his Animal Intelligence—one of the most interesting books that exist, in my opinion—about one-eighth of which, or perhaps a little more, is written by himself.

CHAPTER VIII

Locusts and locustidæ—The most musical grasshoppers—Katydid concerts—A much-resembling note—Cricket thermometers—Cicadas and sounding-boards—Admired musicians—An appreciative audience.

LOCUSTS, as everybody knows, belong to the grasshopper family, but it may surprise some who have read the grumblings of the learned over popular names—white ants, hedge-sparrows, etc.—to find that entomologists have so managed matters that they do not belong to the locustidæ—which is one of the two groups into which all grasshoppers are divided—but to the other group. There are long-horned grasshoppers and short-horned grasshoppers. The long-horned ones, which are not locusts, are all of them locustidæ, but none of the locustidæ are locusts, because locusts have short horns. Entomologists think it would be absurd to alter this, after it has gone on so long, a view in which ornithologists, with their storm-petrels and hedge-accentors, no doubt agree with them. A mere popular name, with its roots in the Saxon or Celtic, can be changed, and there an end, but scientific nonsense, in Latin, and begun by Linnæus, as is generally the case, let no man presume to meddle with.

It is amongst the locustidæ that we find the most musical of the grasshoppers, the Katydids—so well known and highly appreciated in the United States—standing on a far higher level in this respect than the comparatively unmusical locusts. Not that the locustidæ—however musical—use their long horns for blowing purposes. Properly speaking, these are only antennæ, and function as such, the musical apparatus being situated elsewhere. The Katydids, for instance, rasp their fore wings against each other, according to the general idea, three times in succession, producing the three syllables, Ka—ty—did, which have given the insect its name, but according to Mr. Scudder[^[25]] only twice, which makes either “Katy,” or “She did”; that is to say, as a general rule, for he admits the three on occasions. The notes are uttered with great emphasis, and at the rate of some two hundred in the minute, the performance continuing, at least in the case of some species, all day and all night long.

A number of grasshoppers go by the name of Katydids in America, but the general type of the insect is a graceful, green, fragile-looking creature, with very long, slender antennæ, and, in the female, a long ovipositor at the other end, as if to balance matters. There are many species, and all, or most of them, sing both by night and day, and what is very remarkable, or, at least, very interesting, they have a different note for either. Speaking of one—or, rather, of a long-horned grasshopper nearly related to the Katydids, but not actually a member of the sisterhood—which he had been watching in the sunshine, Mr. Scudder says: “As a cloud passed over the sun he suddenly changed his note to one with which I was already familiar, but without knowing to what insect it belonged. At the same time, all the individuals around, whose similar day-song I had heard, began to respond with the night-cry. The cloud passed away, and the original note was resumed on all sides.”[^[26]] Scudderia angustifolia is the name of this little musician, so called, perhaps, because so sensitive to scudding clouds. But the Katydids do more than merely play an individual tune, each on his own instrument. They hold concerts, at which many join together to make an elaborate musical display, a certain number commencing on one note, and others joining in harmoniously on another. There are leaders, whose business it is to hold the time-measure, and, by a steady insistence on the right note, to draw back any who may happen for a moment to get out of tune. The orchestra is divided into so many companies, who support and assist one another, so that the whole makes a concerted harmony, in which there are many different movements. As a rule the performance is most creditable, though occasionally the effect is marred by a careless player. Before commencing, the company always tunes up.

Possibly it may be thought that there is some mistake here—that things cannot be quite like this. Personally I have no knowledge on the subject—never having been to America—but here is what Dr. George M. Gould says, writing in Science for October or November, probably 1895, since the number is referred to as “recent” in Nature for December 5th of that year. “As soon as the sun has set and twilight is advancing, the Katydids in the trees begin to ‘tune up.’ The first notes are scattered, awkward and without rhythm, but if no wind is blowing thousands soon join in, and from time to time, until daylight breaks, there is no intermission.... In order to make my description clearer, let us suppose a thousand Katydids, scattered through the trees, to utter their several notes all at once, and call them Company A. Another thousand—Company B—at once answers them, and this swing-swong is kept up, as I say, all night. Company A’s note is the emphatic or accented note, and is more definitely and accurately a precise musical note, whilst the note of Company B varies from one to five half-tones below, the most conspicuous note being five. In the old-fashioned musical terms I learned as a boy, Company A is, e.g., clearly and definitely do, while the note of Company B is either la, or more certainly sol. Not only is Company A’s note more unisonal and definite, but it is firmer, more accented, and it seems to me that more insects join in this note than in the second. Careful observation has convinced me that no insect of Company A or Company B ever joins in the other company’s note. The rhythm is usually perfect, unless there is a disturbance by a breeze. A sharp gust upsets the whole orchestra, and confusion results, but the measured beat is soon refound. In the instants of confusion one can detect the steady see-saw of certain ones, as it were, ‘leaders,’ or first violinists, who hold the time-measure, despite the wind, and who soon draw the lost notes of the others once more into the regular measure or beat. I do not mean to say that by diligent attention one may not at times detect individuals sawing out of tune, stray fellows that are indifferent or careless, but the vast majority, usually even without a single exception, if there is no wind or rain, thus swing along, hour after hour, in perfect time. I have counted the beats several times, and find the number is always identical: thirty-four double beats, or sixty-eight single ones, in sixty seconds. The effect of the rhythm upon the mind is not unlike that of the woodman’s cross-cut saw, handled by two steady, tireless pairs of hands, although the Katydids give a larger volume of sound, and the timbre is harsher.” Such is the account, and upon it Dr. Gould asks two questions: “What function does the orchestration subserve?” and “Is there anything comparable to it among other animals?”

In view of these performances of the Katydids one may perhaps question the statement, often made, that crickets are the most musical of all insects. The Snowy Cricket, however, of the United States, and no doubt elsewhere in America, is a very striking performer, especially at night, when it emits sounds which Nathaniel Hawthorne has likened to “audible stillness,” and of which he says: “If moonlight could be heard it would sound like that.” Thoreau describes it as a “slumbrous breathing,” but according to the State Entomologist of the United States, this “slumbrous breathing,” or “audible stillness,” consists of “a shrill re-teat, re-teat, re-teat,” which Mr. Leland Howard,[^[26]] indeed, thinks the best description, but is not quite my idea—nor probably Hawthorne’s—of how moonlight would sound. Harrington—who I suppose is another entomologist—does not interfere with any of these opinions, but describes something which he has seen, and can find nothing about in books. “While the male,” he says, “is energetically shuffling together his wings, raised almost vertically, the female may be seen standing just behind him, and with her head applied to the base of the wings, evidently eager to get the full benefit of every note produced.”[^[26]] No doubt the female likes the notes—that, indeed, is the rationale of their utterance—but what they are really like it is impossible to make out from these various descriptions, another of which, by the way, is “a rhythmic beat.” Possibly they are no more extraordinary (at any rate, “re-teat” is not) than those of our own, and cheerful, house-cricket, which to my ear have always sounded very pretty, but which Cowper evidently did not care about except as a matter of association, since he thus alludes to them in the Task:—

“Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh,

Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever (sic) reigns,

And only there, please highly for their sake.”

No doubt there are associations, though these, belonging to the kitchen, appear to me to be of another and blither description, but the “sounds” themselves, in my opinion, are neither harsh nor inharmonious, as far as any unpleasantness to the ear is conveyed by the last word.

One interesting point about the song of crickets is that the number of notes uttered in any given space of time—per minute, say—varies according to the temperature, the two rising together. Professor Dolbeare was the first, as far as I know, to call attention to this fact, and he is thus confirmed by a lady: “One cool evening a cricket was caught and brought into a warm room. In a few minutes it began to chirp nearly twice as rapidly as the out-of-door crickets. Its rate very nearly conformed to the observed rate maintained on other evenings under the same temperature conditions (as now indoors). From this series of observations we found that the rate of chirping was, as Professor Dolbeare says, very closely dependent on the temperature.”[^[27]] So the crickets are little thermometers—sixty-three degrees Fahrenheit to one hundred chirps per minute.

As we have seen, the Katydids give concerts, and we may therefore infer that they like their own music in a musically appreciative way; that they listen to each other as critical connoisseurs, whether they have other feelings or not, and that it is not a mere matter of the female alone admiring the sounds made by the male, just because he makes them. In all this, however, the admiration is confined—at least, as far as we know—to one species—that to which the musician belongs. Katydids appreciate the performances of Katydids. But there is one group of performers whose music gives satisfaction, not merely to individuals of other species than their own, but to such as are not even included in the same order with them, so that racial pride or family prejudice cannot be the reason of it. Towards these stars we will now turn our gaze.

All who have lived in the more southern parts of the world, including the southern countries of Europe, must have made the acquaintance of the cicadas, for in these regions they are large insects, conspicuous by their appearance when once seen, and by their song long before they are noticed. There is something very uncouth—one might almost say grotesquely humorous—yet at the same time pleasing and lovable about the broad flat heads and great goggle eyes of these insects, in the which it is easy to imagine some quaint sort of expression that seems to mean or suggest something for which the language supplies no word. Their wings, both long and broad, which, when folded, project far beyond the extremity of the abdomen, concealing everything save the great head and the wide shield or boss of the thorax, help also in giving them a most salient and characteristic appearance, and make them look more aerial than they really are. Their legs, whilst they retain their ordinary resting attitude, are entirely hidden, and so too are the organs of the mouth, which combine to make a sharp-pointed beak. Thus their appearance is typical of air and sunshine, and anything so gross as mere feeding or terrestrial locomotion seems foreign to their nature. The ancients, who loved and admired the cicadas extremely, thinking them the most fortunate of creatures, supposed that they lived entirely on dew.

“Oh Tettix, drunk with sipping dew,

What musician equals you?”

sings Anacreon, or someone who imitated him and wrote very gracefully, for Tettix was a common Greek name for the cicada. Really they live on the sap of the trees on which they sit, and there may even be two opinions about their music. To me it is pleasant enough—full of the joy of the sunshine, as it were, and its loudness and the continuous way in which it goes on excites one’s wonder. In regard to the way in which it is produced, Darwin says, at page 351 of his immortal work, The Descent of Man: “The sound, according to Laudois, who has recently studied the subject, is produced by the vibration of the lips of the spiracles, which are set in motion by a current of air emitted by the tracheæ. It is increased by a wonderfully complex resounding apparatus, consisting of two cavities covered with scales. Hence the sound may truly be called a voice. In the female the musical apparatus is present, but very much less developed than in the male, and is never used for producing sound.” As the Greeks, who must have had their observers, used to say—

“Happy the cicadas’ lives,

Since they all have voiceless wives.”

This sounds all right—I mean the account of the apparatus—but according to Dr. Powell, of New Zealand, it is all wrong. Writing in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute,[^[28]] Dr. Powell, after quoting the above passage, says, “I am, of course, ignorant of the details of his description; but unless the cicada which he describes differs essentially in the nature of its musical organs from those found in New Zealand, and also from those described more or less correctly by other authors, especially Réaumur, he is most certainly in error.” Dr. Powell, then, after telling us that the stridulating organs of the cicada are constructed on a principle unique in nature, viz. a vibrating membrane, continues: “In the male, on the upper surface of the first ring of the abdomen, on either side, may be seen a crescent-shaped opening, and on examining this opening with a magnifying-glass it will be seen to lead into a shallow cavity, closed in by a horny membrane. This membrane is highly elastic, and the sound is produced by the contraction of the muscle straightening out the folds of the membrane; this produces a click and, on the muscle relaxing, the membrane, from its elasticity, springs back with another click.” That this is really the way in which the sounds are produced seems proved by the fact that “if a live insect be caught, and these membranes be observed during the act of stridulation, they will be seen to be vibrating rapidly in time with the beats of the shrill sound.”

But what about the “wonderfully complex resounding apparatus, consisting of two cavities covered with scales”? After a full examination and various experiments, Dr. Powell arrives at the unexpected conclusion that the sound is in no way dependent upon these “large transparent, drum-like membranes,” as he calls the cavities in question. I was “much surprised,” he says, “to find that the large drums seemed to take no part in the production of the sound, and the idea occurred to me that they might be hearing organs; but on examining the females, which are dumb and do not possess the stridulating organs, I found that the drums exist, indeed, but are quite rudimentary instead of being large, as we should expect to find them, were they subservient to the sense of hearing.” If, however, the drums did answer the purpose of a resounding apparatus in the male, we should expect to find them exactly as they are in the female, and so strong does the evidence of their suppression in her appear to me, that I cannot help thinking that, in spite of all Dr. Powell’s observations and experiments, he was somehow mistaken, and that in nature they do act in this way.

As to the quality of the sound produced by the cicada—of its song, as we may call it—this varies greatly in the different species, for there are many cicadas. Speaking of that of the largest—the great Pomponia imperatoria of Borneo—as big as a mouse, one may almost say, Mr. Annandale remarks, “The sound produced by this species is, at the beginning of the song, like the winding up of a large clock, and ends by being comparable to the notes of a penny whistle. Between these extremes it rises in a series of trills, each of which concludes with a kind of click. Each section of the song is faster, louder, and clearer than the one which preceded it, until, almost five minutes after the cicada’s settling, the noise suddenly comes to an end as the insect flies off to another tree, where it commences again.”[^[29]] This great pompous imperial insect—to give it a free rendering of its Latin name—sits shrouded in the mysteries of the deeper jungle, while smaller and less majestic babblers haunt its skirtings and the village groves. “Another species, commonly heard at night in the jungle, has a clear, loud, clarion-like call, which can be heard for a great distance.”[^[29]]

Of the three New Zealand species of cicada—or those found in Canterbury—a large and small green, and a black one, the two first, Dr. Powell tells us, say “crrrk-crrrk-crrrk,” the second “r-r-r-r-r-r,” and the third “crrrk-rrrrr,” ad infinitum. “Many persons,” he adds, “are totally unable to hear the voice of the small green cicada, or any very acute sounds, and inasmuch as the entire range of the human ear is, according to Helmholtz, eleven octaves, it has been justly remarked that the air may be filled with shrill insect sounds, which may be perfectly audible to the insects themselves, but absolutely inaudible to our grosser senses.”[^[30]]

It is in Natal—at least, the fact has been observed there—that the cicadas, as they sing, are listened to by admiring groups of other insects. These appear to be beautiful creatures, having wings of a soft, gauzy texture, but iridescent, and shot with the colours of the rainbow. A band of these radiant attendants, consisting sometimes of a dozen or fifteen, fly to the tree where a cicada is sitting and arrange themselves in a semicircle around it, facing its head. They are “all ear” evidently, and, as the sweet sounds continue, one or other of the listeners will advance and touch the antennæ or legs of the object of its admiration. Such marks of appreciation, however, though flattering in proportion to their undoubted sincerity, are not to the taste of the cicada, who will sometimes, whilst in the midst of its song, strike out vigorously with a foot or so—for, of course, it has six—causing its too obtrusive admirers to retreat to a more respectful distance, where they continue to listen with every sign of being extremely pleased.[^[31]] Some years ago we did not even know the name of these musical-connoisseur-like, and withal very beautiful insects, but now they have been identified by Mr. Kirby, at the British Museum, as Nothochrysa gigantea, so we are all much the wiser, and have a weight lifted from our minds.

CHAPTER IX

A Greek mistake—Nature vindicated—Cicadas provided for—A difficult feat—Perseverance rewarded—Cicadas in story—Dear to Apollo—Men before the Muses—Plato and Socrates—Athenian views—A mausoleum for pets—The Greek ploughman—Apollo’s judgment—Hercules’ bad taste—Modern survivals—A beneficent insect—Elementary education in Tuscany.

THE Greeks thought that the life of the cicadas was all joy, but modern research has been successful in removing the reproach of inconsistency from the general scheme of creation. All is in order, as it now appears: the cicada’s case has been considered, and a very handsome wasp provided for it. At least, I think it is handsome. It is large and strong, I know, as is necessary for the part it has to perform, but I cannot quite remember the colours it flies under; an expression which, though metaphorical, may be pardoned, since flags have much to do with such dramas as that now to be described. For as the joyous, sun-loving creature sits in its accustomed place, chirupping forth those shrill yet musical notes which I, at least, have never wearied of, the destroyer is at hand, and settling on its broad back, curves its abdomen beneath that of the poor blithe singer, and in a moment has done its work. As the sting enters, the happy note that has been sounding regularly for the last hour, perhaps, is changed to a discordant scream of pain, and with a spasmodic spring or flutter—the last, or near the last, that it will ever make—the cicada, with the wasp still clinging to it, falls to the ground. This is awkward for the wasp, who doubtless considers herself aggrieved in the matter, since the cicada is so bulky that, powerful as she is, she can neither lift it from the ground in flight, nor is she prepared to drag it all the way to her burrow. What, then, is she to do, or of what use to her is the prize she has obtained with such adroitness? But she has her plan, and though the captious behaviour of the cicada has, for the moment, a little deranged it, it is not permanently frustrated. Slowly, but with firm insistence, she drags her victim to the tree on which a moment before it was so happily seated, and then exerting all her force, begins to mount the trunk with it. Often she has to pause and rest, often it seems as though the task would be beyond her, but she continues the laborious ascent, sometimes for upwards of an hour, until at last a height has been reached at which it is possible for her to put her great project into execution. This is no other than to fly down obliquely, with her victim clasped in her arms, to the pleasant little sarcophagus which she has previously prepared for it, for though flight upwards, or in a straight line, with such a burden, is out of the question, her strength is equal to this. It is necessary, however, that she should balance the body nicely, and make a fair and uninterrupted start, in order not to be overweighted and again fall. Her enterprise is “full of poise and difficult weight,” and cannot be successfully carried out in face of the rude struggles of a tiresome obstructive not “in tune with the infinite.” These struggles, however, have now ceased; the cicada is in a comatose condition, and, having adjusted it properly, and assumed the requisite attitude and position, our wasp—whose scientific name, by the way, is Sphecius speciosus—launches herself, with “the white man’s burden” she has “taken up,” from her coign of vantage, and reaches home with it in safety. How high she has previously ascended the tree I cannot say, since my informant does not, but it would be interesting to ascertain both this and the average distance which she has to fly to her nest, and to compare the one with the other. Unless the latter is very much greater than the former—and as the journey is constantly downwards it cannot, one would think, be very far—then we must see in the wasp’s choice of a toilsome ascent up a perpendicular tree-trunk, in preference to a horizontal journey along the ground, a triumph of instinct over intelligence, and it is, indeed, quite possible that, having always been accustomed to fly back with her prize, which perhaps was not always so heavy, she should go through as much labour to enable her to do this as, differently directed, would attain the end for which it is employed.

A WASP BEARING OFF A CICADA.

After the wasp has killed the cicada, they both fall to the ground. Strong as the wasp is it is not easy for her to carry such a heavy insect to her nest. But she has her plan. Slowly but persistently she drags her victim to a tree-trunk and up it, though it may take her an hour to reach the requisite height. Then she sails off for her nest on an inclined plane, with wings extended, and her victim clasped in her arms.

The burrow of this wasp consists, we are told, “of a gently sloping entrance, extending for about six inches, when, ordinarily, a turn is made at right angles, and the excavation is continued for six or eight inches farther, ending in a globular cell an inch and a half in diameter. Frequently a number of branches leave the main burrow at about the same point, each terminating in a round cell.”[^[32]] In each of these cells either one or two cicadas are deposited, and it would seem that when there are two, only one of these is provided with an egg, so that some of the wasp-larvæ have double rations. As the female speciosus (her arguments, I think, would need to be specious to make one in love with a scheme in which she plays such a part) is very much larger than the male, it seems more than probable that the female eggs are laid in the chambers which contain two cicadæ, and the male ones in those which accommodate a single one only. If so, then these solitary wasps must have the same control over the sex of the eggs laid by them as the queen bee has. The social ones, should this be the case, no doubt have, too, but as the former must have preceded the latter, it would appear that this power has not been developed to meet the needs of a complex state of society—as has been generally supposed—but in accordance with much more simple conditions. The fact, however, if it be one, has not yet been demonstrated.

“The delicate white, elongate egg of the wasp is laid under the middle leg of the cicada, and when it hatches, the larva protrudes its head and begins at once to draw nourishment from between the segments of its victim. The egg hatches in two or three days, and the larva attains full growth in a week, or a little more. It feeds entirely from the outside, and, when full-grown, spins a white silken cocoon (mixed with much earth, however), which is finished at the expiration of two days. It remains in the cocoon, unchanged, through the winter, transforming to pupa only in the following spring, and shortly before the appearance of the true insect. When the adult hatches it gnaws its way out of the cocoon, and so on up through the burrow to the surface of the ground, thus completing its life-round in a full year.”[^[32]] How long, exactly, the life of the cicada lasts after it has entered into hospitable relations with the speciosus I am unable to say.

Such, then, is the end of the cicada, in spite of the love of Apollo, who, according to the Anacreontic ode, bestowed upon it its shrill song. Thus it dies, though “cherished by the Muses, painless and fleshless, almost equal to the gods.” Whether it be fleshless speciosus, in the larval state, best knows (on the latter point there will have been no means of comparison), that it is painless one can only hope. It is something, however, to be so known to fame. Homer himself alludes to the cicada in terms of respect, calling its shrill song “delicate music,” whilst Hesiod tells of “the dark-winged Tettix, when he begins to sing to men of the coming summer; he whose meat and drink is of the refreshing dew, and who all day long and at break of day pours forth his voice.”

There was no end, apparently, to the love of the ancients—especially the Greeks—for the cicadas, or tettiges—for they were known by both names—or to the graceful things they said of them. From poets and philosophers down to ploughmen, all were equally fond of them. “We bless thee, Tettix,” says a poet whose name has been merged in that of one who is now a name only, though a great one—Anacreon, namely—“We bless thee for that seated on the tree-tops, sipping the dew, thou singest royally.... Oh, sweetest of summer prophets! honoured by mortals, thou art cherished by the Muses. Phœbus himself loves thee, and gave thee thy shrill song”; and Plato tells us that “as music soothes the mind and dissipates fatigue, so the ploughman loves and cherishes the cicada for its song.” The Greek ploughman, apparently, was a less gross embodiment than the one of the present day, after twenty-five centuries or so of improvement. To Apollo the cicadas were sacred, because they “everlastingly sang to the sun,”[^[33]] and, for the Muses, they had once supplied their place. “As the story goes,” says Plato, “before the Muses lived the cicadas were men on earth, and so loved song and singing that, to lose no time from it, they left off eating, and so died of that dear delight. But, in death, they became cicadas, and this boon was granted them by the Muses, lately born, that on earth they should eat no more, but only sing until they died again, and that then they should return to the Muses to tell them who, amongst mortals, loved and worshipped them most.” “A lover of music like yourself,” says Socrates in the “Phædrus” of Plato, addressing one of his worshippers, “ought surely to have heard this story of the cicadas, how they were once human beings, but died through forgetting to eat. But now, dear to the Muses, they hunger no more, thirst no more, but sing only, from their birth. And in heaven they tell Terpsichore of the dancers, Erato of the lovers, Calliope, eldest of the nine, and Urania, of those whose heart is in philosophy—and thus they whisper to them all.”

So established were these and similar stories that, in Greece, a cicada perched on a harp was often engraved upon gems as the symbol of the Muses, and, were there a musical contest, one had only to settle on the lyre or pipe of the competitor it favoured, for the prize to be instantly adjudged to that one—since Apollo was then held to have spoken. Only in the absence of such indication were other methods of forming a conclusion resorted to. In common with other graceful creatures, cicadas were often kept as pets by the Greeks, and that mausoleums were sometimes raised to these favourites we know from the following epigram of the poetess Anytie—written probably for the friend it celebrates:—“For a grasshopper, a nightingale of the fields, and for an oak-haunting cicada Myro has built one common tomb. There the maiden sits and weeps for three pets, torn from her by unrelenting Hades.”

Amongst the Athenians the cicadas were looked upon as children of the soil of Attica, and those only who, like them, had been born upon it, were permitted to twist the golden tettix, or bodkin, amidst their flowing locks, thus forming the knot in which they were accustomed to wear them. This privileged bodkin received its name through being surmounted with the head, in gold, of a cicada, or tettix, and the wearers—or bearers—of these insignia—which were strictly forbidden to strangers—were known for this reason as Tettigophori. They were most proud of the distinction, and, indeed, as it showed them to be Athenians, they had a somewhat better right to be than is common in such cases. Yet, amidst all this praise, we meet, here and there, with a dissentient note. Hercules, for instance, feeling inclined to sleep, once, on the banks of the river, opposite where the town of Locris stood, and not being able to, on account of the perpetual singing of the cicadas, took it so seriously that he prayed to the gods to put a stop to their disturbing him. The gods, with whom Hercules was always a favourite, heard his prayer, and cicadas, from that time, ceased to sing opposite Locris, though they swarmed all round about that town. Here it seems just to be hinted that Hercules was not very fond of the cicadas’ song, and Virgil—but he was a Roman—has called it (infandum!) a creaking note. On the whole, however, when he mentions these insects, he gives us a pleasing picture.

“Sole sub ardenti, resonant arbusta cicadis,”

he sings; a line which seems bathed in sunlight, and makes one see the green lizards too. On the whole I cannot help thinking that Virgil loved the cicadas.

It is interesting to find that in modern Italy, generally, but especially in Tuscany, the old ideas and legends in regard to the cicadas have not yet died out. Still, according to the Tuscan peasant, they were maids—not men—before the Muses, till Apollo, as a mark of his favour, promoted them into insects. Now, however, but little distinction seems to be drawn between cicadas and crickets, or grasshoppers, and, indeed, this was to some extent the case in classical times—the three often figuring together on ancient coins or rings. Amongst all of these—and together they supply a number of species—the greatest favourite with the Tuscan peasant of to-day—as perhaps it was in days long gone by—is a beautiful grey-green grasshopper, which the Americans would call a Katydid, but is, here, the cavalletta. This insect is looked upon as the special patron of children, upon whom it has the power of conferring musical and poetic genius, as well as more general mental endowments. To perform this properly, however, it must enter the room where its little favourite lies asleep, and this it seems often to do. The mother, should she see it, has her own part to play in the matter, which she does by tying the beneficent insect, by a long thread, to the bed-post, and chanting the following verses, with the idea, probably, that “then the charm is firm and good.”

“Cavalletta, good and fair,

You bring good fortune everywhere,

Then since into this house you’ve come,

Oh, bring good fortune to our home,

Unto me and everyone,

But bring it mostly to my son.

Cavalletta, this I pray,

Bring, and do not take away.

In life you were a lady, full

Of talent, good, and beautiful,

Let me pray, as this is true,

You’ll give my child some talent too.

And when you fly from east to west,

May you, in turn, be truly blest,

For though an insect form you bear,

You’re still a spirit good and fair.”

A LUCK-BRINGING GRASSHOPPER

In Tuscany, if this insect comes into a child’s room whilst asleep, it is the mother’s duty to attach the grasshopper by a thread to the child’s bed to bring good fortune. The grasshopper is shown in the right-hand corner.

As the child grows older, and learns to talk, he is instructed in the truth of the matter, and taught by heart the following verses, which he must repeat whenever he sees a Cavalletta:—

“I am but little, as you see,

But yet I may a genius be;

And if, when grown, I shall be great

And make a name in Church and State,

I’ll not forget that one fine day,

As I in cradle sleeping lay,

A Cavalletta blessed me there,

In answer to my mother’s prayer.”[^[34]]

We are not told what happens to the Cavalletta that has been tied up, after “the charm’s wound up.” The proper thing for the mother to do would certainly be to let it go, but I can’t help thinking that what she really does do is to put her foot on it, under the idea that only that can make the thing quite certain. That would be so like the peasantry—of any country.

CHAPTER X

Cicadas in England—A blower of bubbles—The prolific Aphis—A nice calculation—Scientific curiosity—Dragon-fly armies—The son of the south-west wind.

IT is generally understood that there are no cicadas or tettixes in England, and this—with a reservation in favour of a single species residing in the New Forest—is roundly asserted in various entomological works of authority. Since, however, Mr. George Bowdler Buckton, F.R.S., has written a monograph of the British Cicadæ, or Tettigidæ, in two volumes, each of which has a number of plates giving figures of the various species, all with their Latin names, there would seem to be a conflict of learned opinion; and I, for my part—since one of these species has relations with a nice little parasite which I should like to describe—am of opinion, after profound investigation and impartial weighing of the evidence on both sides, that Mr. Buckton is right. What strikes one at first sight as curious is that numbers of creatures, as large sometimes as humble bees, or larger, and of very striking appearance—often quite brilliantly coloured—should for so long have escaped observation; for certainly one has never seen them oneself, and, on making inquiries, one soon finds that nobody else has. But there is an explanation of this seeming miracle, and that of a not very satisfactory nature. One may have noticed, whilst going through the plates, that in the neighbourhood of each striking figure there are two little irrelevant-looking black lines, drawn soft and fine, very unobtrusive, looking as though they wished to elude observation; and gradually it begins to dawn upon you that these lines represent the real size in linear measurement of the very salient, outré-looking creature you are looking at. This, then, is the key to the mystery. England is full of cicadas, but they are all so small that nobody can see them—at least without taking some trouble. So our poets have been silent, our philosophers have made no reflections, and our ploughmen, to this day, are without a proper objective for those appreciative perceptions of life around them which, if it only existed, there might be some evidence of their possessing. Our aristocracy too, or old county families, have never been able to “think gold of themselves,” as the saying is, on account of their golden tettix-pins, though the feeling itself has not been entirely denied them. In a word, our national character has been uninfluenced by cicadas, and, on this, two questions arise: first—for it is no use to start on an assumption—whether faults exist in it, and then, if they do, whether all or any of them are due to this cause. But such matters are for the historian to deal with, and would be out of place in the pages of a work like this.

Though cicadas are so small in England—whilst their voices, if they have any, as there seems no particular reason to doubt, are too attenuated to be audible to our human ears—yet they are not quite invisible. When seen, however, they are known by some other name, such as frog-hoppers, tree-hoppers, or the like. Some of these, in their larval stage, which much resembles the adult, take a great deal of pains to conceal themselves, though in this they have another reason than that of wishing to elude observation. Our common cuckoo-spit is a good instance of this, and also of how a wrong explanation of a common and easily observed phenomenon may for a long time be given, not only in popular works, but also in scientific text-books or monographs, or within the supposedly up-to-date pages of various encyclopædias. The cuckoo-spit, as everyone knows, sits in the midst of a little bower of froth (allied to that other of bliss perhaps) which, on being examined, resolves itself into an accumulation of bubbles, having a somewhat sticky consistency. We had always been told—and still are now very often, though the contrary has been well made out—that these bubbles proceeded from the insect itself, after the manner of any other secretion. But this is not the case. The secretion here is only a clear fluid, and into this the insect afterwards blows bubbles by a mechanical process, and through the addition of air. It is Professor E. S. Morse who, in the pages of Appleton’s Popular Scientific Monthly,[^[35]] has thus revolutionised all our ideas on this subject. His account is as follows: “The so-called frog-spittle or cuckoo-spit appears as little flecks of froth on grass, buttercups, and many other plants during the early summer. Immersed in this froth is found a little green insect, sometimes two or three of them concealed by the same moist covering. This little creature represents the early stage of an insect which, in its full growth, still lives upon grass, and is easily recognised by its triangular shape and its ability of jumping like a grasshopper.”