Animals and their dead
In some social hymenopterous insects we see that the dead are removed; it would be impossible for ants to exist in communities numbering many thousands and tens of thousands of members crowded in a small space without such a provision. The dead ant is picked up by the first worker that happens to come that way and discovers it, and carried out and thrown away. Probably some chemical change which takes place in the organism on the cessation of life and makes it offensive to the living has given rise to this healthy instinct. The dead ant is not indeed seen as a dead fellow-being, but as so much rubbish, or "matter in the wrong place," and is accordingly removed. We can confidently say that this is not a knowledge of death, from what has been observed of the behaviour of ants on the death of some highly regarded individual in the nest—a queen, for instance. On this point I will quote a passage from the Rev. William Gould's Account of English Ants, dated 1747. His small book may be regarded as a classic, at all events by naturalists; albeit the editors of our Dictionary of National Biography have not thought proper to give him a place in that work, in which so many obscurities, especially of the nineteenth century, have had their little lives recorded.
It may be remarked in passing that the passage to be quoted is a very good sample of the style of our oldest entomologist, the first man in England to observe the habits of insects. His small volume dates many years before the Natural History of Selborne, and his style, it will be seen, is very different from that of Gilbert White. We know from Lord Avebury's valuable book on the habits of ants that Gould was not mistaken in these remarkable observations.
In whatever Apartment a Queen Ant condescends to be present, she commands Obedience and Respect. An universal Gladness spreads itself through the whole Cell, which is expressed by particular Acts of Joy and Exultation. They have a peculiar Way of skipping, leaping, and standing upon their Hind Legs, and prancing with the others. These Frolicks they make use of, both to congratulate each other when they meet, and to show their Regard for the Queen.... Howsoever romantick this Description may appear, it may easily be proved by an obvious Experiment. If you place a Queen Ant with her Retinue under a Glass, you will in a few Moments be convinced of the Honour they pay, and Esteem they entertain for her. There cannot be a more remarkable Instance than what happened to a Black Queen, the beginning of last Spring. I had placed her with a large Retinue in a sliding Box, in the Cover of which was an Opening sufficient for the Workers to pass to and fro, but so narrow as to confine the Queen. A Corps was constantly in waiting and surrounded her, whilst others went out in search of Provisions. By some Misfortune she died; the Ants, as if not apprised of her Death, continued their Obedience. They even removed her from one Part of the Box to another, and treated her with the same Court and Formality as if she had been alive. This lasted two Months, at the End of which, the Cover being open, they forsook the Box, and carried her off.
Two days after I found the dead pewit the parent birds disappeared; and a little later I paid my last visit to the adders, and left them with the greatest reluctance, for they had not told me a hundredth part of their unwritten history.
CHAPTER V
Cessation of song—Oak woods less silent than others—Mixed gatherings of birds in oak woods—Abundance of caterpillars—Rapacious insects—Wood ants—Alarm cries of woodland birds—Weasel and small birds—Fascination—Weasel and short-tailed vole—Account of Egyptian cats fascinated by fire—Rabbits and stoats—Mystery of fascination—Cases of pre-natal suggestion—Hampshire pigs fascinated by fire—Conjectures as to the origin of fascination—A dead squirrel—A squirrel's fatal leap—Fleas large and small—Shrew and fleas—Fleas in woods—The squirrel's disposition—Food-hiding habit in animals—Memory in squirrels and dogs—The lower kind of memory.
The nightingale ceases singing about 18th or 20th June. A bird here and there may sing later; I occasionally hear one as late as the first days of July. And because the nightingale is not so numerous as the other singers, and his song attracts more attention, we get the idea that his musical period is soonest over. Yet several other species come to the end of their vocal season quite as early, or but little later. If it be an extremely abundant species, as in the case of the willow-wren, we will hear a score or fifty sing for every nightingale. Blackcap and garden warbler, whitethroat and lesser whitethroat, are nearly silent, too, at the beginning of July; and altogether it seems to be the rule that the species oftenest heard after June are the most abundant.
The woodland silence increases during July and August, not only because the singing season is ended, but also because the birds are leaving the woods: that darkness and closeness which oppresses us when we walk in the deep shade is not congenial to them; besides, food is less plentiful than in the open places, where the sun shines and the wind blows.
Woods, again, vary greatly in character and the degree of attractiveness they have for birds: the copse and spinney keep a part of their population through the hottest months; and coming to large woods the oak is never oppressive like the beech and other deciduous trees. It spreads its branches wide, and has wide spaces which let in the light and air; grass and undergrowth flourish beneath it, and, better than all, it abounds in bird food on its foliage above all trees.
My favourite woods were almost entirely of oak with a holly undergrowth, and at some points oaks were mixed with firs. They were never gloomy nor so silent as most woods; but in July, as a rule, one had to look for the birds, since they were no longer distributed through the wood as in the spring and early summer, but were congregated at certain points.
Mixed bird-companies
Most persons are familiar with those companies of small birds which form in woods in winter, composed of tits of all species, with siskins, goldcrests, and sometimes other kinds. The July gatherings are larger, include more species, and do not travel incessantly like the winter companies. They are composed of families—parent birds and their young, lately out of the nest, brought to the oaks to be fed on caterpillars. It may be that their food is more abundant at certain points, but it is also probable that their social disposition causes them to congregate. Walking in the silent woods you begin to hear them at a considerable distance ahead—a great variety of sounds, mostly of that shrill, sharp, penetrative character which is common to many young passerine birds when calling to be fed. The birds will sometimes be found distributed over an acre of ground, a family or two occupying every large oak tree—tits, finches, warblers, the tree-creeper, nuthatch, and the jay. What, one asks, is the jay doing in such company? He is feeding at the same table, and certainly not on them. All, jays included, are occupied with the same business, minutely examining each cluster of leaves, picking off every green caterpillar, and extracting the chrysalids from every rolled-up leaf. The airy little leaf-warblers and the tits do this very deftly; the heavier birds are obliged to advance with caution along the twig until by stretching the neck they can reach their prey lurking in the green cluster, and thrust their beaks into each little green web-fastened cylinder. But all are doing the same thing in pretty much the same way. While the old birds are gathering food, the young, sitting in branches close by, are incessantly clamouring to be fed, their various calls making a tempest of shrill and querulous sounds in the wood. And the shrillest of all are the long-tailed tits; these will not sit still and wait like the others, but all, a dozen or fifteen to a brood, hurry after their busy parents, all the time sending out those needles of sound in showers. Of hard-billed birds the chaffinch, as usual, was the most numerous, but there were, to my surprise, many yellowhammers; all these, like the rest, with their newly brought out young. The presence of the hawfinch was another surprise; and here I noticed that the hunger call of the young hawfinch is the loudest of all—a measured, powerful, metallic chirp, heard high above the shrill hubbub.
Caterpillars and ants
Watching one of these busy companies of small birds at work, one is amazed at the thought of the abundance of larval insect life in these oak woods. The caterpillars must be devoured in tens of thousands every day for some weeks, yet when the time comes one is amazed again at the numbers that have survived to know a winged life. On July evenings with the low sun shining on the green oaks at this place I have seen the trees covered as with a pale silvery mist—a mist composed of myriads of small white and pale-grey moths fluttering about the oak foliage. Yet it is probable that all the birds eat is but a small fraction of the entire number destroyed. The rapacious insects are in myriads too, and are most of them at war with the soft-bodied caterpillars. The earth under the bed of dead leaves is full of them, and the surface is hunted over all day by the wood or horse ants—Formica rufa. One day, standing still to watch a number of these ants moving about in all directions over the ground, I saw a green geometer caterpillar fall from an oak leaf above to the earth, and no sooner had it dropped than an ant saw and attacked it, seizing it at one end of its body with his jaws. The caterpillar threw itself into a horseshoe form, and then, violently jerking its body round, flung the ant away to a distance of a couple of inches. But the attack was renewed, and three times the ant was thrown violently off; then another ant came, and he, too, was twice thrown off; then a third ant joined in the fight, and when all three had fastened their jaws on their victim the struggle ceased, and the caterpillar was dragged away. That is the fate of most caterpillars that come to the ground. But the ants ascend the trees; you see them going up and coming down in thousands, and you find on examination that they distribute themselves over the whole tree, even to the highest and farthest terminal twigs. And their numbers are incalculable—here in the Forest, at all events. Not only are their communities large, numbering hundreds of thousands in a nest, but their nests here are in hundreds, and it is not uncommon to find them in groups, three or four up to eight or ten, all within a distance of a few yards of one another.
I had thought to write more, a whole chapter in fact, on this fascinating and puzzling insect—our "noble ant," as our old ant-lover Gould called it; but I have had to throw out that and much besides in order to keep this book within reasonable dimensions.
There is another noise of birds in all woods and copses in the silent season which is familiar to everyone—the sudden excited cries they utter at the sight of some prowling animal—fox, cat, or stoat. Even in the darkest, stillest woods these little tempests of noise occasionally break out, for no sooner does one bird utter the alarm cry than all within hearing hasten to the spot to increase the tumult. These tempests are of two kinds—the greater and lesser; in the first jays, blackbirds, and missel-thrushes take part, the magpie too, if he is in the wood, and almost invariably the outcry is caused by the appearance of one of the animals just named. In the smaller outbreaks, which are far more frequent, none of these birds take any part, not even the excitable blackbird, in spite of his readiness to make a noise on the least provocation. Only the smaller birds are concerned here, from the chaffinch down; and the weasel is, I believe, almost always the exciting cause. If it be as I think, a curious thing is that birds like the chaffinch and the tits, which have their nests placed out of its reach, should be so overcome at the sight of this minute creature which hunts on the ground, and which blackbirds and jays refuse to notice in spite of the outrageous din of the finches. The chaffinch is invariably first and loudest in these outbreaks; a dozen or twenty times a day, even in July and August, you will hear his loud passionate pink-pink calling on all of his kind to join him, and by-and-by, if you can succeed in getting to the spot, you will hear other species joining in—the girding of oxeye and blue tit, the angry, percussive note of the wren, the low wailing of the robin, and the still sadder dunnock, and the small plaintive cries of the tree-warblers.
Weasel and small birds
What an idle demonstration, what a fuss about nothing it seems! The minute weasel is on the track of a vole or a wood-mouse and cannot harm the birds. Yes, he can take the nestlings from the robin's and willow-wren's nests, and from other nests built on the ground, but what has the chaffinch to do with it all? Can it be that there is some fatal weakness in birds, in spite of their wings, in this bird especially, such as exists in voles, and mice, and rabbits, and in frogs and lizards, which brings them down to destruction, and of which they are in some way conscious? Some months ago there was a correspondence in the Field which touched upon this very subject. One gentleman wrote that he had found three freshly-killed adult cock chaffinches in a weasel's nest, and he asked in consequence how this small creature that hunts on the ground could be so successful in capturing so alert and vigorous a bird as this finch.
For a long time before this correspondence appeared I had been trying to find out the secret of the matter, but the weasel has keen senses, and it is hard to see and follow his movements in a copse without alarming him. One day, over a year ago, near Boldre, I was fortunate enough to hear a commotion of the lesser kind at a spot where I could steal upon without alarming the little beast. There was an oak tree, with some scanty thorn-bushes growing beside the trunk, and stealing quietly to the spot I peeped through the screening thorns, and saw a weasel lying coiled round, snakewise, at the roots of the oak in a bed of dead leaves. He was grinning and chattering at the birds, his whole body quivering with excitement. Close to him on the twigs above the birds were perched, and fluttering from twig to twig—chaffinches, wrens, robins, dunnocks, oxeyes, and two or three willow-wrens and chiffchaffs. The chaffinches were the most excited, and were nearest to him. Suddenly, after a few moments, the weasel began wriggling and spinning round with such velocity that his shape became indistinguishable, and he appeared as a small round red object violently agitated, his rapid motions stirring up the dead leaves so that they fluttered about him. Then he was still again, but chattering and quivering, then again the violent motion, and each time he made this extraordinary movement the excitement and cries of the birds increased and they fluttered closer down on the twigs. Unluckily, just when I was on the point of actually witnessing the end of this strange little drama—a chaffinch, I am sure, would have been the victim—the little flat-headed wretch became aware of my presence, not five yards from him, and springing up he scuttled into hiding.
Fascination
If, as I think, certain species of birds are so thrown off their mental balance by the sight of this enemy as to come in their frenzy down to be taken by him, it is clear that he fascinates—to use the convenient old word—in two different ways, or that his furred and feathered victims are differently affected. In the case of the rabbits and of the small rodents, we see that they recognise the dangerous character of their pursuer and try their best to escape from him, but that they cannot attain their normal speed—they cannot run as they do from a man, or dog, or other enemy, or as they run ordinarily when chasing one another. Yet it is plain to anyone who has watched a rabbit followed by a stoat that they strain every nerve to escape, and, conscious of their weakness, are on the brink of despair and ready to collapse. The rabbit's appearance when he is being followed, even when his foe is at a distance behind, his trembling frame, little hopping movements, and agonising cries, which may be heard distinctly three or four hundred yards away, remind us of our own state in a bad dream, when some terrible enemy, or some nameless horror, is coming swiftly upon us; when we must put forth our utmost speed to escape instant destruction, yet have a leaden weight on our limbs that prevents us from moving.
I have often watched rabbits hunted by stoats, and recently, at Beaulieu, I watched a vole hunted by a weasel, and it was simply the stoat and rabbit hunt in little.
Weasel and vole
It is a typical case, and I will describe just what I saw, and saw very well. I was on the hard, white road between Beaulieu village and Hilltop, when the little animal—a common field vole—came out from the hedge and ran along the road, and knowing from his appearance that he was being pursued, I stood still to see the result. He had a very odd look: instead of a smooth-haired little mouse-like creature running smoothly and swiftly over the bare ground, he was all hunched up, his hair standing on end like bristles, and he moved in a series of heavy painful hops. Before he had gone half a dozen yards, the weasel appeared at the point where the vole had come out, following by scent, his nose close to the ground; but on coming into the open road he lifted his head and caught sight of the straining vole, and at once dashed at and overtook him. A grip, a little futile squeal, and all was over, and the weasel disappeared into the hedge. But his mate had crossed the road a few moments before—I had seen her run by me—and he wanted to follow her, and so presently he emerged again with the vole in his mouth, and plucking up courage ran across close to me. I stood motionless until he was near my feet, then suddenly stamped on the hard road, and this so startled him that he dropped his prey and scuttled into cover. Very soon he came out again, and, seeing me so still, made a dash to recover his vole, when I stamped again, and he lost it again and fled; but only to return for another try, until he had made at least a dozen attempts. Then he gave it up, and peering at me in a bird-like way from the roadside grass began uttering a series of low, sorrowful sounds, so low indeed that if I had been more than six yards from him they would have been inaudible—low, and soft, and musical, and very sad, until he quite melted my heart, and I turned away, leaving him to his vole, feeling as much ashamed of myself as if I had teased a pretty bright-eyed little child by keeping his cake or apple until I had made him cry.
With regard to these fatal weaknesses in birds, mammals and reptiles, which we see are confined to certain species, they always strike us as out of the order of nature, or as abnormal, if the word may be used in such a connection. Perhaps it can be properly used. I remember that Herodotus, in his History of Egypt, relates that when a fire broke out in any city in that country, the people did not concern themselves about extinguishing it; their whole anxiety was to prevent the cats from rushing into the flames and destroying themselves. To this end the people would occupy all the approaches to the burning building, forming a cordon, as it were, to keep the cats back; but in spite of all they could do, some of them would get through, and rush into the flames and die. The omniscient learned person may tell me that Herodotus is the Father of Lies, if he likes, and is anxious to say something witty and original; but I believe this story of the cats, since not Herodotus, nor any Egyptian who was his informant, would or could have invented such a tale. Believing it, I can only explain it on the assumption that this Egyptian race of cats had become subject to a fatal weakness, a hypnotic effect caused by the sight of a great blaze. In like manner, if our chaffinch gets too much excited and finally comes down to be destroyed by a weasel, when he catches sight of that small red animal, or sees him going through that strange antic performance which I witnessed, it does not follow that the weakness or abnormality is universal in the species. It may be only in a race.
Strange weaknesses
Again, with regard to rabbits: when hunted by a stoat they endeavour to fly, but cannot, and are destroyed owing to that strange—one might almost say unnatural—weakness; but I can believe that if a colony of British rabbits were to inhabit, for a good many generations, some distant country where there are no stoats, this weakness would be outgrown. It is probable that, even in this stoat-infested country, not all individuals are subject to such a failing, and that, in those which have it, it differs in degree. If it is a weakness, a something inimical, then it is reasonable to believe that nature works to eliminate it, whether by natural selection or some other means.
The main point is the origin of this flaw in certain races, and perhaps species. How comes it that certain animals should, in certain circumstances, act in a definite way, as by instinct, to the detriment of their own and the advantage of some other species—in this case that of a direct and well-known enemy? It is a mystery, one which, so far as I know, has not yet been looked into. A small ray of light may be thrown on the matter, if we consider the fact of those strange weaknesses and mental abnormalities in our own species, which are supposed to have their origin in violent emotional and other peculiar mental states in one of our parents. "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and their children's teeth are set on edge," is one of the old proverbs quoted by Ezekiel. I know of one unfortunate person who, if he but sees a lemon squeezed, or a child biting an unripe-looking fruit, has his teeth so effectually set on edge, that he cannot put food into his mouth for some time after. Here is a farmer, a big, strong, healthy man, who himself works on his farm like any labourer, who, if he but catches sight of any ophidian—adder, or harmless grass snake, or poor, innocent blindworm—instantly lets fall the implements from his hands, and stands trembling, white as a ghost, for some time; then, finally, he goes back to the house, slowly and totteringly, like some very aged, feeble invalid, and dropping on to a bed, he lies nerveless for the rest of that day. Night and sleep restore him to his normal state.
I give this one of scores of similar cases which I have found. Such things are indeed very common. But how does the fact of pre-natal suggestion help us to get the true meaning of such a phenomenon as fascination? It does not help us if we consider it by itself. It is a fact that "freaks" of this kind, mental and physical, are transmissible, but that helps us little—the abnormal individual has the whole normal race against him. Thus, in reference to the cat story in Herodotus, here in a Hampshire village, a mile or two from where I am writing this chapter, a cottage took fire one evening, and when the villagers were gathered on the spot watching the progress of the fire, some pigs—a sow with her young ones—appeared on the scene and dashed into the flames. The people rushed to the rescue, and with some difficulty pulled the pigs out; and finally hurdles had to be brought and placed in the way of the sow to prevent her getting back, so anxious was she to treat the villagers to roast pig.
This is a case of the hypnotic effect of fire on animals, and perhaps many similar cases would be found if looked for. We know that most animals are strangely attracted by fire at night, but they fear it too, and keep at a proper distance. It draws and disturbs but does not upset their mental balance. But how it came about that a whole race of cats in ancient Egypt were thrown off their balance and were always ready to rush into destruction like the Hampshire pigs, is a mystery.
To return to fascination. Let us (to personify) remember that Nature in her endeavours to safeguard all and every one of her creatures has given them the passion of fear in various degrees, according to their several needs, and in the greatest degree to her persecuted weaklings; and this emotion, to be efficient, must be brought to the extreme limit, beyond which it becomes debilitating and is a positive danger, even to betraying to destruction the life it was designed to save. Let us consider this fact in connection with that of pre-natal suggestion—of weak species frequently excited to an extremity of fear at the sight, familiar to them, of some deadly enemy, and the possible effect of that constantly recurring violent disturbance and image of terror on the young that are to be.
The guess may go for what it is worth. We know that the susceptibility of certain animals—the vole and the frog, let us say—to fascination, is like nothing else in animal life, since it is a great disadvantage to the species, a veritable weakness, which might even be called a disease; and that it must therefore have its cause in too great a strain on the system somewhere; and we know, too, that it is inheritable. But the facts are too few, since no one has yet taken pains to collect data on the matter. There is a good deal of material lying about in print; and I am astonished at many things I hear from intelligent keepers, and other persons who see a good deal of wild life, bearing on this subject. But I do not now propose to follow it any further.
I went into the oak wood one morning, and, finding it unusually still, betook myself to a spot where I had often found the birds gathered. It was a favourite place, where there was running water and very large trees standing wide apart, with a lawn-like green turf beneath them. This green space was about half an acre in extent, and was surrounded by a thicker wood of oak and holly, with an undergrowth of brambles. Here I found a dead squirrel lying on the turf under one of the biggest oaks, looking exceedingly conspicuous with the bright morning sun shining on him.
A poor bag! the reader may say, but it was the day of small things at the end of July, and this dead creature gave me something to think about. How in the name of wonder came it to be dead at that peaceful place, where no gun was fired! I could not believe that he had died, for never had I seen a finer, glossier-coated, better-nourished-looking squirrel. "Whiter than pearls are his teeth," were Christ's words in the legend when His followers looked with disgust and abhorrence at a dead dog lying in the public way. This dead animal had more than pearly teeth to admire; he was actually beautiful to the sight, lying graceful in death on the moist green sward in his rich chestnut reds and flower-like whiteness. The wild, bright-eyed, alert little creature—it seemed a strange and unheard-of thing that he, of all the woodland people, should be lying there, motionless, not stiffened yet and scarcely cold.
A keeper in Hampshire told me that he once saw a squirrel accidentally kill itself in a curious way. The keeper was walking on a hard road, and noticed the squirrel high up in the topmost branches of the trees overhead, bounding along from branch to branch before him, and by-and-by, failing to grasp the branch it had aimed at, it fell fifty or sixty feet to the earth, and was stone-dead when he picked it up from the road. But such accidents must be exceedingly rare in the squirrel's life.
Fleas large and small
Looking closely at my dead squirrel to make sure that he had no external hurt, I was surprised to find its fur peopled with lively black fleas, running about as if very much upset at the death of their host. These fleas were to my eyes just like pulex irritans—our own flea; but it is doubtful that it was the same, as we know that a great many animals have their own species to tease them. Now, I have noticed that some very small animals have very small fleas; and that, one would imagine, is as it should be, since fleas are small to begin with, because they cannot afford to be large, and the flea that would be safe on a dog would be an unsuitable parasite for so small a creature as a mouse. The common shrew is an example. It has often happened that when in an early morning walk I have found one lying dead on the path or road and have touched it, out instantly a number of fleas have jumped. And on touching it again, there may be a second and a third shower. These fleas, parasitical on so minute a mammal, are themselves minute—pretty sherry-coloured little creatures, not half so big as the dog's flea. It appears to be a habit of some wild fleas, when the animal they live on dies and grows cold, to place themselves on the surface of the fur and to hop well away when shaken. But we do not yet know very much about their lives. Huxley once said that we were in danger of being buried under our accumulated monographs. There is, one is sorry to find, no monograph on the fleas; a strange omission, when we consider that we have, as the life-work of an industrious German, a big handsome quarto, abundantly illustrated, on the more degraded and less interesting Pedicularia.
The multitude of fleas, big and black, on my dead squirrel, seemed a ten-times bigger puzzle than the one of the squirrel's death. For how had they got there? They were not hatched and brought up on the squirrel: they passed their life as larvæ on the ground, among the dead leaves, probably feeding on decayed organic matter. How did so many of them succeed in getting hold of so very sprightly and irritable a creature, who lives mostly high up in the trees, and does not lie about on the ground? Can it be that fleas—those proper to the squirrel—swarm on the ground in the woods, and that without feeding on mammalian blood they are able to propagate and keep up their numbers? These questions have yet to be answered.
It struck me at last that these sprightly parasites might have been the cause of the squirrel's coming to grief; that, driven to desperation by their persecutions, he had cast himself down from some topmost branch, and so put an end to the worry with his life.
A squirrel's disposition
Squirrels abound in these woods, and but for parasites and their own evil tempers they might be happy all the time. But they are explosive and tyrannical to an almost insane degree; and this may be an effect of the deleterious substances they are fond of eating. They will feast on scarlet and orange agarics—lovely things to look at, but deadly to creatures that are not immune. A prettier spectacle than two squirrels fighting is not to be seen among the oaks. So swift are they, so amazingly quick in their doublings, in feints, attack, flight, and chase; moving not as though running on trees and ground, but as if flying and gliding; and so rarely do they come within touching distance of one another, that the delighted looker-on might easily suppose that it is all in fun. In their most truculent moods, in their fiercest fights, they cannot cease to be graceful in all their motions.
A common action of squirrels, when excited, of throwing things down, has been oddly misinterpreted by some observers who have written about it. Here I have often watched a squirrel, madly excited at my presence when I have stopped to watch him, dancing about and whisking his tail, scolding in a variety of tones, and emitting that curious sound which reminds one of the chattering cry of fieldfares when alarmed; and finally tearing off the loose bark with his little hands and teeth, and biting, too, at twigs and leaves so as to cause them to fall in showers. The little pot boils over in that way, and that's all there is to be said about it.
Walking among the oaks one day in early winter when the trees were nearly leafless, I noticed a squirrel sitting very quietly on a branch; and though he did not get excited, he began to move away before me, stopping at intervals and sitting still to watch me for a few moments. He was a trifle suspicious, and nothing more. In this way he went on for some distance, and by-and-by came to a long horizontal branch thickly clothed with long lichen on its upper sides, and instantly his demeanour changed. He was all excitement, and bounding along the branch he eagerly began to look for something, sniffing and scratching with his paws, and presently he pulled out a nut which had been concealed in a crevice under the lichen, and sitting up, he began cracking and eating it, taking no further notice of me. The sudden change in him, the hurried search for something, and the result, seemed to throw some light on the question of the animal's memory with reference to his habit of hiding food. It is one common to a great number of rodents, and to many of the higher mammals—Canidæ and Felidæ, and to many birds, including most, if not all, the Corvidæ.
When the food is hidden away here, there, and everywhere, we know from observation that in innumerable instances it is never found, and probably never looked for again; and of the squirrel we are accustomed to say that he no sooner hides a nut than he forgets all about it. Doubtless he does, and yet something may bring it back to his mind. In this matter I think there is a considerable difference between the higher mammals, cats and dogs, for instance, and the rodents; I think the dog has a better or more highly developed memory. Thus, I have seen a dog looking enviously at another who had got a bone, and after gazing at him with watering mouth for some time, suddenly turn round and go off at a great pace to a distant part of the ground, and there begin digging, and presently pull out a bone of his own, which he had no doubt forgotten all about until he was feelingly reminded of it. I doubt if a squirrel would ever rise to this height; but on coming by chance to a spot with very marked features, where he had once hidden a nut, then I think the sight of the place might bring back the old impression.
I have often remarked when riding a nervous horse, that he will invariably become alarmed, and sometimes start at nothing, on arriving at some spot where something had once occurred to frighten him. The sight of the spot brings up the image of the object or sound that startled him; or, to adopt a later interpretation of memory, the past event is reconstructed in his mind. Again, I have noticed with dogs, when one is brought to a spot where on a former occasion he has battled with or captured some animal, or where he has met with some exciting adventure, he shows by a sudden change in his manner, in eyes and twitching nose, that it has all come back to him, and he appears as if looking for its instant repetition.
The lower kind of memory
We see that we possess this lower kind of memory ourselves—that its process is the same in man and dog and squirrel. I am, for instance, riding or walking in a part of the country which all seems unfamiliar, and I have no recollection of ever having passed that way before; but by-and-by I come to some spot where I have had some little adventure, some mishap, tearing my coat or wounding my hand in getting through a barbed-wire fence; or where I had discovered that I had lost something, or left something behind at the inn where I last stayed; or where I had a puncture in my tyre; or where I first saw a rare and beautiful butterfly, or bird, or flower, if I am interested in such things; and the whole scene—the fields and trees and hedges, and farm-house or cottage below—is all as familiar as possible. But it is the scene that brings back the event. The scene was impressed on the mind at the emotional moment, and is instantly recognised, and at the moment of recognition the associated event is remembered.
CHAPTER VI
Insects in Britain—Meadow ants—The indoor view of insect life—Insects in visible nature—The humming-bird hawk-moth and the parson lepidopterist—Rarity of death's-head moth—Hawk-moth and meadow-pipit—Silver-washed fritillaries on bracken—Flight of the white admiral butterfly—Dragon-flies—Want of English names—A water-keeper on dragon-flies—Moses Harris—Why moths have English names—Origin of the dragon-fly's bad reputation—Cordulegaster annulatus—Calopteryx virgo—Dragon-flies congregated—Glow-worm—Firefly and glow-worm compared—Variability in light—The insect's attitude when shining—Supposed use of the light—Hornets—A long-remembered sting—The hornet local in England—A splendid insect—Insects on ivy blossoms in autumn.
The successive Junes, Julys, and Augusts spent in this low-lying, warm forest country have served to restore in my mind the insect world to its proper place in the scheme of things. In recent years, in this northern land, it had not seemed so important a place as at an earlier period of my life in a country nearer to the sun. Our insects, less numerous, smaller in size, more modest in colouring, and but rarely seen in swarms and clouds and devastating multitudes, do not force themselves on our attention, as is the case in many other regions of the earth. Here, for instance, where I am writing this chapter, there is a stretch of flat, green, common land by the Test, and on this clouded afternoon, at the end of summer, while sitting on one of the innumerable little green hillocks covering the common, it seemed to me that I was in a vacant place where animal life had ceased to be. Not an insect hummed in that quiet, still atmosphere, not could I see one tiny form on the close-cropped turf at my feet. Yet I was sitting on one of their populous habitations. Cutting out a section of the cushion-like turf of grass and creeping thyme that covered the hill and made it fragrant, I found the loose, dry earth within teeming with minute yellow ants, and many of the hillocks around were occupied by thousands upon thousands of the same species. Indeed, I calculated that in a hundred square yards at that spot the ant inhabitants alone numbered not less than about two hundred thousand.
The unregarded tribes
It is partly on account of this smallness and secretiveness of most of our insects—of our seeing so little of insect life generally except during the summer heats in a few favourable localities—and partly an effect of our indoor life, that we think and care so little about them. The important part they play, if it is taught us, fades out of knowledge: we grow in time to regard them as one of the superfluities in which nature abounds despite the ancient saying to the contrary. Or worse, as nothing but pests. What good are they to us indeed! Very little. The silk-worm and the honey-bee have been in a measure domesticated, and rank with, though a long way after, our cattle, our animal pets and poultry. But wild insects! There is the turnip-fly, and the Hessian-fly, and botfly, and all sorts of worrying, and blood-sucking, and disease-carrying flies, in and out of houses; and gnats and midges, and fleas in seaside lodgings, and wasps, and beetles, such as the cockchafer and blackbeetle—are not all these pests? This is the indoor mind—its view of external nature—which makes the society of indoor people unutterably irksome to me, unless (it will be understood) when I meet them in a house, in a town, where they exist in some sort of harmony, however imperfect, with their artificial environment.
Insects in visible nature
I am not concerned now with the question of the place which insects occupy in the scale of being and their part in the natural economy, but solely with their effect on the nature-lover with or without the "curious mind"—in fact, with insects as part of this visible and audible world. Without them, this innumerable company that, each "deep in his day's employ," are ever moving swiftly or slowly about me, their multitudinous small voices united into one deep continuous Æolian sound, it would indeed seem as if some mysterious malady or sadness had come upon nature. Rather would I feel them alive, teasing, stinging, and biting me; rather would I walk in all green and flowery places with a cloud of gnats and midges ever about me. Nor do I wish to write now about insect life generally: my sole aim in this chapter is to bring before the reader some of the most notable species seen in this place—those which excel in size or beauty, or which for some other reason are specially attractive. For not only is this corner of Hampshire most abounding in insect life, but here, with a few exceptions, the kings and nobles of the tribe may be met with.
Merely to see these nobler insects as one may see them here, as objects in the scene, and shining gems in nature's embroidery, is a delight. And here it may be remarked that the company of the entomologist is often quite as distasteful to me out of doors as that of the indoor-minded person who knows nothing about insects except that they are a "nuisance." Entomologist generally means collector, and his—the entomologist's—admiration has suffered inevitable decay, or rather has been starved by the growth of a more vigorous plant—the desire to possess, and pleasure in the possession of, dead insect cases.
The parson lepidopterist
One summer afternoon I was visiting at the parsonage in a small New Forest village in this low district when my host introduced me to a friend of his the vicar of a neighbouring parish, remarking when he did so that I would be delighted to know him as he was a great naturalist. The gentleman smiled, and said he was not a "great naturalist," but only a "lepidopterist." Now it happened that just then I had a lovely picture in my mind, the vivid image of a humming-bird hawk-moth seen suspended on his misty wings among the tall flowers in the brilliant August sunshine. I had looked on it but a little while ago, and thought it one of the most beautiful things in nature; naturally on meeting a lepidopterist I told him what I had seen, and something of the feeling the sight had inspired in me. He smiled again, and remarked that the season had not proved a very good one for the Macroglossa stellatarum. He had, so far, seen only three specimens; the first two he had easily secured, as he fortunately had his butterfly net when he saw them. But the third!—he hadn't his net then; he was visiting one of his old women, and was sitting in her garden behind the cottage talking to her when the moth suddenly made its appearance, and began sucking at the flowers within a yard of his chair. He knew that in a few moments it would be gone for ever, but fortunately from long practice, and a natural quickness and dexterity, he could take any insect that came within reach of his hand, however wild and swift it might be. "So!"—the parson lepidopterist explained, suddenly dashing out his arm, then slowly opening his closed hand to exhibit the imaginary insect he had captured. Well, he got the moth after all! And thus owing to his quickness and dexterity all three specimens had been secured.
I, being no entomologist but only a simple person whose interest and pleasure in insect life the entomologist would regard as quite purposeless—I felt like a little boy who had been sharply rebuked or boxed on the ear. This same lepidopterist may be dead now, although a couple of summers ago he looked remarkably well and in the prime of life; but I see that someone else is now parson of his parish. I have not taken the pains to inquire; but, dead or alive, I cannot imagine him, in that beautiful country of the Future which he perhaps spoke about to the old cottage woman—I cannot imagine him in white raiment, with a golden harp in his hand; for if here, in this country, he could see nothing in a hummingbird hawk-moth among the flowers in the sunshine but an object to be collected, what in the name of wonder will he have to harp about!
The humming-bird hawk, owing to its diurnal habits, may be seen by anyone at its best; but as to the other species that equal and surpass it in lustre, their beauty, so far as man is concerned, is all wasted on the evening gloom. They appear suddenly, are vaguely seen for a few moments, then vanish; and instead of the clear-cut, beautiful form, the rich and delicate colouring and airy, graceful motions, there is only a dim image of a moving grey or brown something which has passed before us. And some of the very best are not to be seen even as vague shapes and as shadows. What an experience it would be to look on the death's-head moth in a state of nature, feeding among the flowers in the early evening, with some sunlight to show the delicate grey-blue markings and mottlings of the upper- and the indescribable yellow of the under-wings—is there in all nature so soft and lovely a hue? Even to see it alive in the only way we are able to do, confined in a box in which we have hatched it from a chrysalis dug up in the potato patch and bought for sixpence from a workman, to look on it so and then at its portrait—for artists and illustrators have been trying to do it these hundred years—is almost enough to make one hate their art.
My ambition has been to find this moth free, in order to discover, if possible, whether or no it ever makes its mysterious squeaking sound when at liberty. But I have not yet found it, and lepidopterists I have talked to on this subject, some of whom have spent their lives in districts where the insect is not uncommon, have assured me that they have never seen, and never expect to see, a death's-head which has not been artificially reared. Yet moths there must be, else there would be no caterpillars and no chrysalids.
Moths and butterflies
One evening, in a potato-patch, I witnessed a large hawk-moth meet his end in a way that greatly surprised me. I was watching and listening to the shrilling of a great green grasshopper, or leaf cricket, that delightful insect about which I shall have to write at some length in another chapter, when the big moth suddenly appeared at a distance of a dozen yards from where I stood. It was about the size of a privet-moth, and had not been many moments suspended before a spray of flowers, when a meadow-pipit, which had come there probably to roost, dashed at and struck it down, and then on the ground began a curious struggle. The great moth, looking more than half as big as the aggressor, beat the pipit with his strong wings in his efforts to free himself; but the other had clutched the soft, stout body in its claws, and standing over it with wings half open and head feathers raised, struck repeatedly at it with the greatest fury until it was killed. Then, in the same savage hawk-like manner, the dead thing was torn up, the pipit swallowing pieces so much too large for it that it had the greatest trouble to get them down. The gentle, timid, little bird had for the moment put on the "rage of the vulture."
In the southern half of the New Forest, that part of the country where insects of all kinds most abound, the moths and butterflies are relatively less important as a feature of the place, and as things of beauty, than some other kinds. The purple emperor is very rarely seen, but the silver-washed fritillary, a handsome, conspicuous insect, is quite common, and when several of these butterflies are seen at one spot playing about the bracken in some open sunlit space in the oak woods, opening their orange-red spotty wings on the broad, vivid green fronds, they produce a strikingly beautiful effect. It is like a mosaic of minute green tesseræ adorned with red and black butterfly shapes, irregularly placed.
But here the most charming butterfly to my mind is the white admiral, when they are seen in numbers, as in the abundant season of 1901, when the oak woods were full of them. Here is a species which, seen in a collection, is of no more value æsthetically than a dead leaf or a frayed feather dropped in the poultry-yard, or an old postage stamp in an album, without a touch of brilliance on its dull blackish-brown and white wings; yet which alive pleases the eye more than the splendid and larger kinds solely because of its peculiarly graceful flight. It never flutters, and as it sweeps airily hither and thither, now high as the tree-tops, now close to the earth in the sunny glades and open brambly places in the oak woods, with an occasional stroke of the swift-gliding wings, it gives you the idea of a smaller, swifter, more graceful swallow, and sometimes of a curiously-marked, pretty dragon-fly.
Dragon-flies
When we think of the bright colours of insects, the dragon-flies usually come next to butterflies in the mind, and here in the warmer, well-watered parts of the Forest they are in great force. The noble Anax imperator is not uncommon; but though so great, exceeding all other species in size, and so splendid in his "clear plates of sapphire mail," with great blue eyes, he is surpassed in beauty by a much smaller kind, the Libellula virgo alts erectis coloratis of Linnæus, now called Calopteryx virgo. And just as the great imperator is exceeded in beauty by the small virgo, so is he surpassed in that other chief characteristic of all dragon-flies to the unscientific or natural mind, their uncanniness, by another quite common species, a very little less than the imperator in size—the Cordulegaster annulatus.
These names are a burden, and a few words must be said on this point lest the reader should imagine that he has cause to be offended with me personally.
Is it not amazing that these familiar, large, showy, and striking-looking insects have no common specific names with us? The one exception known to me is the small beautiful virgo just spoken of, and this is called in books "Demoiselle" and "King George," but whether these names are used by the people anywhere or not, I am unable to say. On this point I consulted an old water-keeper of my acquaintance on the Test. He has been keeper for a period of forty-six years, and he is supposed to be very intelligent, and to know everything about the creatures that exist in those waters and water-meadows. He assured me that he never heard the names of Demoiselle and King George. "We calls them dragons and horse-stingers," he said. "And they do sting, and no mistake, both horse and man." He then explained that the dragon-fly dashes at its victim, inflicts its sting, and is gone so swiftly that it is never detected in the act; but the pain is there, and sometimes blood is drawn.
Nor had the ancient water-keeper ever heard another vernacular name given by Moses Harris for this same species—kingfisher, to wit. Moses Harris, one of our earliest entomologists, wrote during the last half of the eighteenth century, but the date of his birth and the facts of his life are not known. He began to publish in 1766, his first work being on butterflies and moths. One wonders if the unforgotten and at-no-time-neglected Gilbert White never heard of his contemporary Moses, and never saw his beautiful illustrations of British insects, many of which still keep their bright colours and delicate shadings undimmed by time in his old folios. In one of his later works, An Exposition of English Insects, dated 1782, he describes and figures some of our dragon-flies. It was the custom of this author to give the vernacular as well as the scientific names to his species, and in describing the virgo he says: "These ... on account of the brilliancy and richness of the colouring are called kingfishers." But he had no common name for the others, which seemed to trouble him, and at last in desperation after describing a certain species, he says that it is "vulgarly called the dragon-fly"!
Vernacular names
I pity old Moses and I pity myself. Why should we have so many suitable and often pretty names for moths and butterflies, mostly small obscure creatures, and none for the well-marked, singular-looking, splendid dragon-flies? The reason is not far to seek. When men in search of a hobby to occupy their leisure time look to find it in some natural history subject, as others find it in postage stamps and a thousand other things, they are, like children, first attracted by those brilliant hues which they see in butterflies. Moreover, these insects when preserved keep their colours, unlike dragon-flies and some others, and look prettiest when arranged with wings spread out in glass cases. Moths being of the same order are included, and so we get the collector of moths and butterflies and the lepidopterist. So exceedingly popular is this pursuit, and the little creatures collected so much talked and written about, that it has been found convenient to invent English names for them, and thus we have, in moths, wood-tiger, leopard, goat, gipsy, ermine, wood-swift, vapourer, drinker, tippet, lappet, puss, Kentish glory, emperor, frosted green, satin carpet, coronet, marbled beauty, rustic wing and rustic shoulder-knot, golden ear, purple cloud, and numberless others. In fact, one could not capture the obscurest little miller that flutters round a reading-lamp which the lepidopterist would not be able to find a pretty name for.
The dragon-flies, being no man's hobby, are known only by the old generic English names of dragons, horse-stingers, adder-stingers, and devil's darning-needles. Adder-stinger is one of the commonest names in the New Forest, but it is often simply "adder." One day while walking with a friend on a common near Headley, we asked some boys if there were any adders there. "Oh yes," answered a little fellow, "you will see them by the stream flying up and down over the water." The name does not mean that dragon-flies sting adders, but that, like adders, they are venomous creatures. This very common and wide-spread notion of the insect's evil disposition and injuriousness is due to its shape and appearance—the great fixed eyes, bright and sinister, and the long, snake-like, plated or scaly body which, when the insect is seized, curls round in such a threatening manner. The colouring, too, may have contributed towards the evil reputation; at all events, one of our largest species had a remarkably serpent-like aspect due to its colour scheme—shining jet-black, banded and slashed with wasp-yellow. This is the magnificent Cordulegaster annulatus, little inferior to the Anax imperator in size, and a very common species in the southern part of the New Forest in July. But how astonishing and almost incredible that this singular-looking, splendid, most dragon-like of the dragon-flies should have no English name!
Calopteryx virgo
Something remains to be said of the one dragon-fly which has got a name, or names, although these do not appear to be known to the country people. Mr. W. T. Lucas, in his useful monograph on the British dragon-flies, writes enthusiastically of this species, Calopteryx virgo, that it is "the most resplendent of our dragon-flies, if not of all British insects." It is too great praise; nevertheless the virgo is very beautiful and curious, the entire insect, wings included, being of an intense deep metallic blue, which glistens as if the insect had been newly dipped in its colour-bath. Unlike other dragon-flies, it flutters on the wing like a butterfly with a weak, uncertain flight, and, again like a butterfly, holds its blue wings erect when at rest. It is one of the commonest as well as the most conspicuous dragon-flies on the Boldre, the Dark Water, and other slow and marshy streams in the southern part of the Forest.
In South America I was accustomed to see dragon-flies in rushing hordes and clouds, and in masses clinging like swarming bees to the trees; here we see them as single insects, but I once witnessed a beautiful effect produced by a large number of the common turquoise-blue dragon-fly gathered at one spot, and this was in Hampshire. I was walking, and after passing a night at a hamlet called Buckhorn Oak, in Alice Holt Forest, I went next morning, on a Sunday, to the nearest church at the small village of Rutledge. It was a very bright windy morning in June, and the oak woods had been stripped of their young foliage by myriads of caterpillars, so that the sunlight fell untempered through the seemingly dead trees on the bracken that covered the ground below. Now, at one spot over an area of about half an acre, the bracken was covered with the common turquoise-blue dragon-fly, clinging to the fronds, their heads to the wind, their long bodies all pointing the same way. They were nowhere close together, but very evenly distributed, about three to six inches apart, and the sight of the numberless slips of gem-like blue sprinkled over the billowy, vivid green fern was a rare and exceedingly lovely one.
After writing of the lovely haunters of the twilight, and that noblest one of all—
The great goblin moth who bears
Between his wings the ruined eyes of death,
and the angel butterfly, and the uncanny dragon-flies—the flying serpents in their splendour—it may seem a great descent to speak of such a thing as a glow-worm, that poor grub-like, wingless, dull-coloured crawler on the ground, as little attractive to the eye as the centipede, or earwig, or the wood-louse which it resembles. Nor is the glow-worm a southern species, since it is no more abundant in the warmest district of Hampshire than in many other parts of the country. Nevertheless, when treating of the Insect Notables of these parts, this species which we call a "worm" cannot be omitted, since it produces a loveliness surpassing that of all other kinds.
Here it may be remarked that all the most beautiful living things, from insect to man, like all the highest productions of human genius, produce in us a sense of the supernatural. If any reader should say in his heart that I am wrong, that it is not so, that he experiences no such feeling, I can but remind him that not all men possess all human senses and faculties. Some of us—many of us—lack this or that sense which others have. I have even met a man who was without the sense of humour. In the case of our "worm," unbeautiful in itself, yet the begetter of so great a beauty, the sense of something outside of nature which shines on us through nature, even as the sun shines in the stained glass of a church window, is more distinctly felt than in the case of any other insect in our country, because of the rarity of such a phenomenon. It is, with us, unique; but many of us know the winged luminous insects of other lands. Both are beautiful, both mysterious—the winged and the wingless; but one light differs from another in glory even as the stars. The fire-fly is more splendid, more surprising, in its flashes. It flashes and is dark, and we watch, staring at the black darkness, for the succeeding flash. It is like watching for rockets to explode in the dark sky: there is an element of impatience which interferes with the pleasure. To admire and have a perfect satisfaction, the insects must be in numbers, in multitudes, sparkling everywhere in the darkness, so that no regard is paid to any individual light, but they are seen as we see snowflakes.
Glow-worm and firefly
I fancy that Dante, in describing the appearance of glorified souls in heaven, unless he took it all from Ezekiel, had the fire-fly in his mind:
From the bosom
Of that effulgence quivers a sharp flash,
Sudden and frequent in the guise of lightning.
Of all who have attempted to describe and compare the two insects—fire-fly and glow-worm—Thomas Lovell Beddoes is the best. Beddoes himself, in those sudden brilliant letters to his friend Kelsall, of Fareham, in this county, was a sort of human fire-fly. In a letter to Procter, from Milan, 1824, he wrote:
And what else have I seen? A beautiful and far-famed insect—do not mistake, I mean neither the Emperor, nor the King of Sardinia, but a much finer specimen—the fire-fly. Their bright light is evanescent, and alternates with the darkness, as if the swift whirling of the earth struck fire out of the black atmosphere; as if the winds were being set upon that planetary grindstone, and gave out such momentary sparks from their edges. Their silence is more striking than their flashes, for sudden phenomena are almost invariably attended with some noise, but these little jewels dart along the dark as softly as butterflies. For their light, it is not nearly so beautiful and poetical as our still companion of the dew, the glow-worm, with his drop of moonlight.
I agree with Beddoes, but his pretty description of our insect is not quite accurate, as I saw this evening, when, after copious rain, the sky cleared and a full moon shone on a wet, dusky-green earth. The light of the suspended glow-worm was of an exquisite golden green, and, side by side with it, the moonlight on the wet surface of a polished leaf was shining silver-white.
The light varies greatly in power, according, I suppose, to the degree of excitement of the insect and to the atmospheric conditions. Occasionally you will discover a light at a distance shining with a strange glory, a light which might be mistaken for a will-o'-the-wisp, and on a close view you will probably find that a male is on the scene, and the female, aware of his presence though he may be at some distance from her, invisible in the darkness, has been wrought up to the highest state of excitement. You will find her clinging to a stem or leaf, her luminous part raised, and her whole body swaying in a measured way from side to side. If the insect happens to be a foot or two above the ground, in a tangle of bramble and bracken, with other plants with slender stems and deep-cut leaves, the appearance is singularly beautiful. The light looks as if enclosed within an invisible globe, which may be as much as fifteen inches in diameter, and within its circle the minutest details of the scene are clear to the vision, even to the finest veining of the leaves, the leaves shining a pure translucent green, while outside the mystic globe of light all is in deep shadow and in blackness.
The glow-worm's light
With regard to the attitude of the glow-worm when displaying its light, we see how ignorant of the living creature the illustrators of natural history books have been. In scores of works on our shelves, dating from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the glow-worm is depicted giving out its light while crawling on the ground, and in many illustrations the male is introduced, and is shown flying down to its mate. They drew their figures not from life, but from specimens in a cabinet, only leaving out the pins. But the glow-worm is not perhaps a very well-known creature. A lady in Hampshire recently asked me if it was a species of mole that came out of its run to exhibit its light in the darkness. The insect invariably climbs up, and suspends itself by clinging to, a stem or blade or leaf, and the hinder part of the body curls up until its under surface, the luminous part, is uppermost, thus making the light visible from the air above. In thick hedges I often find the light four or even five feet above the ground. Occasionally a glow-worm will shine from a flat surface, usually a big leaf on to which it has crawled when climbing. Resting horizontally on the leaf, it curls its abdomen up and over its body after the manner of the earwig, until the light is in the right position.
When we consider these facts—the way in which the body is curved and twisted about in order (as it seems) to exhibit the light to an insect flying through the air above, and the increase in the light when the sexual excitement is at its greatest—the conclusion seems unavoidable that the light has an important use, namely, to attract the male. Unavoidable, I say, and yet I am not wholly convinced. The fire-flies of diurnal habits may be seen flying about, feeding and pairing, by day; yet when evening comes they fly abroad again, exhibiting their light. What the function of the light is, or of what advantage it is to the insect, we do not know. Again, it has seemed to me that the male of the glow-worm, even when attracted to the female, fears the light. Thus, when the excitement of the shining glow-worm has caused me to look for the male, I have found him, not indeed in but outside of the circle of light, keeping close to its borders, moving about on feet and wings in the dark herbage and on the ground. I know very well that not a few observations made by one person, but many—hundreds if possible—by different observers, are needed before we can say positively that the male glow-worm fears or is repelled by the light. But some of my observations make me think that the male of the glow-worm, like the males of many other species in different orders that fly by night, is drawn to the female by the scent, and that the light is a hindrance instead of a help, although in the end he is drawn into it. We always find it exceedingly hard to believe that anything in nature is without a use; but we need not go very far—not farther than our own bodies, to say nothing of our minds—before we are compelled to believe that it is so. We may yet find that the beautiful light of our still companion of the dew is of no more use to it than the precious jewel in the toad's head is to the toad.
Hornets
The hornet, one of my first favourites, has, to our minds, nothing mysterious like our glow-worm, and nothing serpentine or supernatural about him, but he is a nobler, more powerful and splendid creature than any dragon-fly. I care not to look at a vulgar wasp nor at any diurnal insect, however fine, when he is by, or his loud, formidable buzzing hum is heard. As he comes out of the oak-tree shade and goes swinging by in his shining golden-red armature, he is like a being from some other hotter, richer land, thousands of miles away from our cold, white cliffs and grey seas. Speaking of that, our hornet, which is at the head of the family and genus of true wasps in Britain and Europe, is not only large and splendid for a northern insect, since he is not surpassed in lustre by any of his representatives in other parts of the globe.
I admire and greatly respect him, this last feeling dating back to my experience of wasps during my early life in South America. When a boy I was one summer day in the dining-room at home by myself, when in at the open door flew a grand wasp of a kind I had never seen before, in size and form like the hornet, but its colour was a uniform cornelian red without any yellow. Round the room it flew with a great noise, then dashed against a window-pane, and I, greatly excited and fearing it would be quickly gone if not quickly caught, flew to the window, and dashing out my hand, like the wonderfully clever parson-collector, I grasped it firmly by the back with finger and thumb. Now, I had been accustomed to seize wasps and bees of many kinds in this way without getting stung, but this stranger was not like other wasps, and quickly succeeded in curling his abdomen round, and planting his long sting in the sensitive tip of my forefinger. Never in all my experience of stings had I suffered such pain! I dropped my wasp like the hottest of coals, and saw him fling himself triumphantly out of the room, and never again beheld one of his kind. Even now when I stand and watch English hornets at work on their nests, coming and going, paying no attention to me, a memory of that hornet of a distant land returns to my mind; and it is like a twinge, and I venture on no liberties with Vespa crabro.
The hornet is certainly not an abundant insect, nor very generally distributed. One may spend years in some parts of the country and never see it. I was lately asked by friends in Kent, who have their lonely house in a wooded and perhaps the wildest spot in the county, if the hornet still existed in England, or really was an English insect, as they had not seen one in several years. Now in the woods I frequent in the Forest I see them every day, and the abundance of the hornet is indeed for me one of the attractions of the place. His nests are rarely found in old trees, but are common about habitations, in wood-piles, and old, little-used outhouses. I have heard farmers say in this place that they would not hurt a hornet, but regard it as a blessing. So it is, and so is every insect that helps to keep down the everlasting plague of cattle-worrying and crop-destroying flies and grubs and caterpillars.
But I am speaking of the hornet merely as an Insect Notable, a spot of brilliant colour in the scene, one of the shining beings that inhabit these green mansions. He is magnificent, and it is perhaps partly due to his vivid and lustrous red and gold colour, his noisy flight, and fierce hostile attitudes, and partly to the knowledge of his angry spirit and venomous sting, which makes him look twice as big as he really is.
One of the most impressive sights in insect life is, strange to say, in the autumn, when cold rains and winds and early frosts have already brought to an end all that seemed best and brightest in that fairy world.
Insects on ivy blossoms
This is where an ancient or large ivy grows in some well-sheltered spot on a wall or church, or on large old trees in a wood, and flowers profusely, and when on a warm bright day in late September or in October all the insects which were not wholly dead revive for a season, and are drawn by the ivy's sweetness from all around to that one spot. There are the late butterflies, and wasps and bees of all kinds, and flies of all sizes and colours—green and steel-blue, and grey and black and mottled, in thousands and tens of thousands. They are massed on the clustered blossoms, struggling for a place; the air all about the ivy is swarming with them, flying hither and thither, and the humming sound they produce may be heard fifty yards away like a high wind. One cannot help a feeling of melancholy at this animated scene; but they are anything but melancholy. Their life has been a short and a merry one, and now that it is about to end for ever they will end it merrily, in feasting and revelry.
And never does the hornet look greater, the king and tyrant of its kind, than on these occasions. It swings down among them with a sound that may be heard loud and distinct above the universal hum, and settles on the flowers, but capriciously, staying but a moment or two in one place, then moving to another, the meaner insects all expeditiously making room for it. And after tasting a few flowers here and there it takes its departure. These large-sized October hornets are all females, wanderers from ruined homes, in search of sheltered places where, foodless and companionless, and in a semi-torpid condition, each may live through the four dreary months to come. In March the winter of their discontent will be over, and they will come forth with the primrose and sweet violet to be founders and mothers of new colonies—the brave and splendid hornets of another year; builders, fighters, and foragers in the green oak-woods; a strenuous, hungry and thirsty people, honey-drinkers, and devourers of the flesh of naked white grubs, and caterpillars, black and brown and green and gold, and barred and quaintly-coloured swift aerial flies.