Euplexoptera

Next after the beetles comes the order of the Euplexoptera, which means beautifully folded wings. This order contains the earwigs. We do not know much about these insects in the United States; but they are so constantly spoken of in books about England, where they are numerous, that it will be well to describe them.

Perhaps you did not know that earwigs have wings; and certainly one does not often see these beetles flying. But nevertheless they have very large and powerful wings, only, during the daytime, while they are not being used, these organs are folded away in the most beautiful manner under the tiny wing-cases. By night, however, earwigs often fly; and when they settle, they fold up their wings most cleverly by means of the horny pincers at the tail-end of their bodies, and then pull the wing-cases down over them!

That is the real use of the pincers, although the earwig is able to give quite a smart pinch with them if it is interfered with.

Another very curious fact about the earwig is that the mother insect heaps her eggs together into a little pile, and sits over them until they are hatched. If you turn over large stones early in the spring you may often find a mother earwig watching over her eggs in this odd manner, and she will allow herself to be torn in pieces rather than desert her charge.

Orthoptera

Next comes this order, the name of which means straight-winged insects, so-called from the way in which the wings are folded. This order contains many very well-known insects.

There is the cockroach, for example, which is so common and so mischievous in our houses. It is often called the black beetle, although it is not a beetle at all, and is not black, but dark reddish brown. It is remarkable for several reasons. One is that while the male has large wing-cases and broad, powerful wings, those of the female are very small indeed, so that she cannot possibly fly. And another is that the eggs are laid in a kind of horny purse, about a quarter of an inch long, with a sort of clasp on one side. These little purses are hidden away in all sorts of dark corners, and if you open one you will find two rows of little eggs inside it, arranged rather like the peas in a pod.

The crickets, too, belong to this order.

Of course you have often heard the big black cricket chirping merrily away in the fields; and in Europe they have a kind called the house-cricket, which comes into the house, and is often spoken of as "the cricket on the hearth" in the kitchen. It is not correct, however, to speak of the "note" or "song" of this insect, for it is not produced in the throat at all, but is caused by rubbing one of the wing-cases upon the other. You will notice, on looking at a cricket, that in each wing-case there is a kind of stout horny rib, which starts from a thickened spot in the middle. Now in the right wing-case this rib is notched, like a file, and when it is rubbed sharply upon the other the loud chirping noise is produced.

The feelers of the cricket are very long and slender, and at the end of the body of the male are two long hairy bristles, which seem almost like a second pair of feelers, warning the insect of danger approaching from behind. At the end of the body of the female is a long spear-like organ, with a spoon-like tip. This is called the ovipositor, and by means of it the eggs are laid in holes punched in the soil.

Crickets have large wings, and fly rather like the woodpeckers, rising and falling in the air at every stroke.

Another kind of cricket lives in holes in the ground, which it digs by means of its front legs. These limbs are formed almost exactly like the fore feet of the mole, and for this reason the insect is known as the mole-cricket. It is generally found in sandy fields, and scoops out a chamber almost as big as a hen's egg at the end of its burrow, in which to lay its eggs and where it lies, showing only its jaws and great front legs until some small creature comes near upon which it may pounce for food.

Grasshoppers

Right here has come a mixing up of names between the English, as spoken and written in Great Britain, and that used in the United States. When an Englishman speaks of a grasshopper he means the related insect which we call a cicada, or katydid, and this we call a locust; but when he says "locust" he refers to what we call "grasshopper." We suspect he is nearer right than we are, who have unfortunately fallen in with the mistake of some ignorant early settler. At any rate the locusts of which we read in the Bible, and in books of travel in desert regions, are all of the same race as our grasshoppers. None of the cicada tribe could ever do so much damage.

Grasshoppers (to stick to our own name) abound in all warm countries, especially in those which in summer, at least, are hot and dry, such as Egypt, or Syria, or parts of India. They feed exclusively on leaves, blades of grass, and the like, and are strong fliers; and in countries that are favorable to them, where they are always very plentiful, certain species sometimes become excessively abundant, and then spread over the land, and swarm away to neighboring countries, in such immense numbers that they devour every green leaf and every blade of grass, or spear of grain, until they leave the ground as bare as if it had been swept by fire.

Nor is this the worst, for wherever they go the females push quantities of eggs down into the ground. The following summer these eggs hatch, and the devastation of the previous year is repeated, for where before dense clouds of flying grasshoppers descended from the sky, now enormous armies of grubs march over the ground, climb all the plants and bushes, and devour all that has newly sprung up.

Millions may be killed by fire or other means, but it has little effect, and the farmers and grazers of a region so visited are all but ruined—perhaps wholly so.

When, in the last century, men began to settle on the prairies of the far West, they met this plague; and between 1870 and 1880 the gardens and farms and young orchards of Kansas, Nebraska, and other western districts, were ruined again and again. The government sent out several of the wisest entomologists it could employ to study the insects, and they found that these destructive red-legged grasshoppers had their home in the dry foothills of the Rocky Mountains, especially toward the north. They learned a great deal about the habits of the insects, and reported that there seemed no remedy just at hand; but that the more the West was settled and cultivated, the more grass and other food would be provided for the grasshoppers, so that they would not have to make those wide flights, and the more the plowing of the land and burning of rubbish would destroy their eggs, so that gradually the pest would become less and less, until finally it would cease to be troublesome. This has turned out to be true, and already the fear of grasshoppers has departed. The same thing is taking place in Egypt and some other improving countries, which no longer suffer from the plague of locusts as they used to do.

The wonderful walking-stick and the leaf-insects also belong to this order. They are so marvelously like the objects after which they are named that as long as they keep still it is almost impossible to see them. They seem to know this perfectly well, and will remain for hours together without moving, waiting for some unwary insect to come within reach, for they are among the insects of prey. They are found in all the warmer parts of the world.

Equally curious, too, is the praying-mantis, which also is very much like a leaf. It has very long front legs, with a row of sharp teeth running along their inner margin, and when it is hungry it holds these limbs over its head, in very much the attitude of prayer. That is why it is called the praying-mantis. Then when an insect comes within reach it strikes at it, and seizes it between the upper and lower parts of these limbs, so that the long spike-like teeth enter its body and hold it in a grip from which there is no escape. These occur in various parts of the world, including the warmer parts of America.

Dragon-flies and May-flies

The dragon-flies belong to another division of the Orthoptera. You must know these insects very well by sight, with their long slender bodies and their broad gauzy wings; for they are common in almost all parts of the country, and you can hardly go for a ramble on a sunny day in summer or autumn without seeing them in numbers. There are a good many different kinds. Some have yellow bodies, some blue ones, and some red ones, and the loveliest of all perhaps are the graceful demoiselles, whose wings are rich metallic purple. You may sometimes see these beautiful insects flitting to and fro over streams and ditches.

All the dragon-flies spend the earlier part of their lives in the water. The grubs are very curious creatures and catch their prey in a curious way. Underneath the head is an organ called the mask. This consists of two horny joints, which fold upon one another while not in use. At the end of the second joint is a pair of great sickle-shaped jaws, and when the grub sees a victim it swims quietly underneath it, unfolds the mask, reaches up, and seizes it with the jaws. Then it folds the mask again, and by so doing drags the prisoner down against the true jaws, by means of which it is leisurely devoured.

This grub swims, too, in a singular manner. At the end of its body you will notice a short sharp spike. Now this spike really consists of five points, which can be opened out into the form of a star; and in the center of this star is a small round hole, which is really the entrance to a tube running right through the middle of the body. And the grub swims by filling this tube with water, and then squirting it out again with all its force, so that the escaping jet pushes, as it were, against the surrounding water, and drives the insect swiftly forward by the recoil.

Dragon-flies are voracious, and always seem to be hungry. They feed entirely upon other insects, and spend almost all their time in chasing and devouring them.

The May-fly, or June-fly, also belongs to this order. One sometimes sees it in thousands, dancing, as it were, up and down in the air toward evening on warm spring days, in the neighborhood of water. You can always tell this insect by the three long thread-like bristles at the end of its body.

Most people think that this insect only lives for a single day. This, however, is not strictly true, for in damp weather many May-flies live for three or four days. Before they become perfect flies, however, they have lived for nearly two years in the muddy banks of rivers and ponds, in the form of long slender-bodied grubs. These grubs always make their burrows with two entrances, in the form of the letter U turned sideways, so that they can easily leave them without having to turn round.

Termites

The most wonderful of all the insects which belong to this order, however, are the termites. Often these creatures are known as white ants, and although they are not really ants, they are certainly very much like them. In Africa they make marvelous nests of clay, which are often twelve or fourteen feet high, and are so very large that a church, a parsonage, and a schoolroom have been built of clay slabs cut from the walls of a single termites' nest! These nests are made up of a wonderful series of chambers and galleries, and in the middle is the royal cell, in which the "king" and "queen" live. For in every termites' nest there is one perfect male and one perfect female, which are treated with very great respect, and have a kind of palace, as it were, all to themselves. And the rest of the insects in the nest are either imperfect males, which are called soldiers, or imperfect females, which are called workers.

The "king" is quite a handsome and graceful insect, with broad and powerful wings; and the "queen," at first, is very much like him. But they never take more than one flight in the air, and as soon as that is over they actually break off their own wings close to their bodies! Then they burrow into the ground and begin to form a nest. Before long, the workers build the palace for the royal couple; and as soon as they have been shut up inside it the body of the queen swells to a most enormous size, so that she can no longer walk at all. This is because of the vast number of eggs, developing within her body, which she at once begins to lay at the rate of many thousands in a single day. As fast as she lays them they are carried off by the workers, which also take care of the little grubs that hatch out from them, just as bees do.

The duty of the soldiers, as their name implies, is simply to fight, and if a hole is broken in the side of the nest they hurry to the spot at once, and begin to snap with their jaws at the foe. And these jaws are so sharp and so powerful that they can really give a very smart bite. The workers are a good deal smaller, and they have to build the nest and keep it in repair, to find food for the grubs, and take care of them, and wash them, and feed them, and do everything else that is necessary for the welfare of the colony.

The grubs of these insects are fed upon dead wood, which is generally obtained from the trunks and branches of trees. But termites are sometimes very troublesome in houses, for they will devour the woodwork and the furniture and the books, leaving nothing but a thin shell of wood or paper behind them.

There are a good many different kinds of these wonderful insects, and they are found in warm countries in all parts of the world.

The North American termites do not build great clay hills or houses above ground, but some species make extensive galleries beneath the surface, while others hollow out a dead stump, or the dying branch of a tree, or even an old fence-post or telegraph pole, until it becomes a mere sponge, with a thin outside shell.

Neuroptera

The Neuroptera, or nerve-winged insects, form an order whose wings are divided up by horny nerves, or nervures, into such numbers of tiny cells, that they look as if they were made of the most delicate lace.

The caddis-flies belong to this order—brownish insects with long thread-like feelers and broad wings, which are folded tentwise over the body when they are not being used. They are very common near ponds and streams, in which they pass the earlier part of their lives, living down at the bottom in most curious cases, which cover them entirely up with the exception of their heads.

These cases are made of all sorts of materials. Some caddis-grubs merely fasten two dead leaves together, face to face, and live between them. Others make a kind of tube out of grains of sand, or tiny stones, or little bits of cut reed, all neatly stuck together with a kind of glue which resists the action of water. But the oddest case of all is made of tiny living water-snails, and you may sometimes see fifteen or twenty little snails all trying to crawl in different directions, while the grub is unconcernedly pulling them along in another!

The grubs never leave these cases, but drag them about with them wherever they go. And when they find that their odd little homes are becoming too small, they just cut off a little piece at the end and add a little piece on in front, rather larger in diameter. And so they always manage to keep their homes of exactly the proper size.

Most likely, too, you have heard of the ant-lion fly, which is a rather large fly with a slender body and four long narrow wings, and is found in many parts of the south of Europe, as well as in America. But the interest lies in the grub, or "ant-lion" proper, which has a most singular way of catching its insect victims. It digs a funnel-shaped pit in the sand, about three inches in diameter and two inches deep, by means of its front legs and its head. Then it almost buries itself at the bottom, and lies in wait to snap up any ants or other small insects which may be unfortunate enough to fall in. And if by any chance they should escape its terrible jaws and try to clamber up the sides, it jerks up a quantity of sand at them, and brings them rolling down again to the bottom, so that they may be seized a second time.

A relation of the ant-lion is called the lacewing fly, and is a pretty pale-green insect with most delicate gauzy wings, over which, if you look at them in a good light, all the colors of the rainbow seem to be playing; and its eyes glow so brightly with ruby light that one can scarcely help wondering if a little red lamp is burning inside its head. You may often see it sitting on a fence on a warm summer day, or flitting slowly to and fro in the evening.

This fly lays its eggs in clusters on a twig, or the surface of a leaf, each egg being fastened to the tip of a slender thread-like stalk. The result is that they do not look like eggs at all; they look much more like a little tuft of moss. When they hatch, a number of queer little grubs come out, which at once begin to wander about in search of the little greenfly insects upon which they feed. And when they have sucked their victims dry, they always fasten the empty skins upon their own backs, till at last they are covered over so completely that you cannot see them at all!

CHAPTER XXXIII
INSECTS (Continued)

We now come to a very large and important order of insects indeed—that of the Hymenoptera. This name means membrane-winged, and has been given to them because their wings are made of a transparent membrane stretched upon a light horny framework. It is not a very good name, however, for many insects which do not belong to this order at all have their wings made in just the same way. All the Hymenoptera, however, have the upper and lower wings fastened together during flight by a row of tiny hooks, which are set on the front margin of the lower pair, and fit into a fold on the lower margin of the upper ones.

Bees

The bees belong to this order, and most wonderful insects they are—so wonderful, indeed, that a big book might easily be written about them. They are divided into two groups, namely, social bees and solitary bees.

The social bees are those which live together in nests; and our first example, of course, must be the hive-bee.

In every beehive there are three kinds of bees. First, there are the drones, which you can easily tell by their stoutly built bodies and their very large eyes. They are the idlers of the hive, doing no work at all, and sleeping for about twenty hours out of every twenty-four. For six or eight weeks they live only to enjoy themselves. But at last the other bees become tired of providing food for them. So they drive them all down to the bottom of the hive and sting them to death one after another. And that is the end of the drones.

Next comes the queen, the mistress of the hive. You can easily recognize her, too, for her body is much longer and more slender than that of the other bees, and her folded wings are always crossed at the tips. The other bees treat her with the greatest respect, never, for example, turning their backs toward her. And wherever she goes a number of them bear her company, forming a circle round her, in readiness to feed her, or lick her with their tongues, or do anything else for her that she may happen to want. Her chief business is to lay eggs; and she often lays two or three hundred in the course of a single day.

Lastly, there are the workers. There are many thousands of these, and they have to do all the work of the hive, making wax and honey, building the combs, and feeding and tending the young.

The comb is made of six-sided cells, and is double, two sets of cells being placed back to back. Some of these cells are used for storing up honey. But a great many of them are nurseries, so to speak, in which the grubs are brought up. These grubs are quite helpless, and the nurse-bees have to come and put food into their mouths several times a day.

Fastened to the outside of the combs, there are always several cells of quite a different shape. They are almost like pears in form, with the smaller ends downward. These are the royal nurseries in which the queen grubs are brought up.

Bees feed their little ones with a curious kind of jelly, made partly of honey and partly of the pollen of flowers. This is called bee-bread; and it is rather strange to find that one kind of bee-bread is given to the grubs of the drones and the workers, while quite a different kind is given to those of the queens.

You will want, of course, to know something about the sting of the bee—though perhaps you already know enough of the pain it can give! This is a soft organ, enclosed in a horny sheath, with a number of little barbs at the tip. When a bee stings us, it is often unable to draw the sting out again, because of these barbs. So it is left behind in the wound, and its loss injures the body of the insect so severely that the bee very soon dies. The poison is stored up in a little bag at the base of the sting, which is arranged in such a way that when the sting is used a tiny drop of poison is forced through it, and so enters the wound.

Then, no doubt, you would like to know how bees make honey; but that neither we nor any one can tell you. All we know is, that the bee sweeps out the sweet juices of flowers with its odd brush-like tongue and swallows them; that they pass into a little bag just inside the hind part of its body, which we call the honey-bag; and that by the time the bee reaches the hive they have been turned into honey. But how or why the change takes place no one knows at all.

Bumblebees, or humblebees, are also social bees; but their nests are not quite as wonderful as those of the hive-bee, and their combs are not so cleverly made.

One of these bees is called the carder, and you may sometimes find its nest in a hollow in a bank. But it is not at all easy to see, for the bee covers over the hollow with a kind of roof, which is made of moss and lined with wax. And this looks so like the surrounding earth that even the sharpest eye may often pass it by. When this roof is finished, the bee makes a kind of tunnel, eight or ten inches long and about half an inch in diameter, to serve as an entrance; and this is built of moss and lined with wax in just the same way.

On a warm sunny day in spring you may often see one of these bees flying up and down a grassy bank searching for a suitable burrow in which to build. Then you may be quite sure that she is a queen. For among bumblebees the drones and workers die early in the autumn, and only the queens live through the winter.

Solitary bees are very common almost everywhere, and you may find their nests in all sorts of odd places. One kind of solitary bee, for example, builds in empty snail-shells, and another in small hollows like keyholes. A third gnaws out a burrow in the decaying trunk of an old tree, or in the timbers of a barn or house-porch and makes a number of thimble-shaped cells out of little semicircular bits of rose-leaf, which it cuts out with its scissor-like jaws. Haven't you noticed how often the leaves of rose-bushes are chipped round the edges, quite large pieces being frequently cut away? Well, that is the work of the leaf-cutter bee, as this insect is called, and very often not a single leaf on a bush is left untouched.

But the commonest of all the solitary bees burrows into the ground. As you walk along the pathway through a meadow in spring, you may often see a round hole in the ground, just about large enough to admit an ordinary drawing-pencil. That is the entrance to the burrow of a solitary bee; and if you could follow the tunnel down into the ground you would find that it was about eight or ten inches deep, and that at the bottom were four round cells. In each of these cells the bee lays an egg. Then it fills the cells with flies, or spiders, and caterpillars, or beetles, for the little grubs to feed upon when they hatch out. For solitary bees do not nurse their little ones, as social bees do, and feed them several times a day. But at the same time the grubs are quite helpless, and cannot possibly go to look for food for themselves. So the mother bee has to store up sufficient to last them until the time comes for them to spin their cocoons and pass into the chrysalis state. These are only a few examples of a large number of interesting ways in which the solitary bees in various parts of the world provide for their young.

Wasps

Wasps make nests which are almost as wonderful as those of the hive-bee. That of the common yellow-jacket wasp is generally placed in a hole in the ground, or in a cavity under a stone, and is made of a substance very much like coarse paper, which the wasps manufacture by chewing wood into a kind of pulp. You may often see them sitting on a fence, or on the trunk of a dead tree, busily engaged in scraping off shreds of wood for this purpose. When the nest is finished it is often as big as a football, and of very much the same shape; and inside it are several stories, as it were, of cells placed one above another, and supported by little pillars of the same paper-like material. These cells are six-sided, like those of the hive-bee, but they are squared off at the ends, instead of being produced into pointed caps, and they always have their mouths downward. In a large nest there may be several thousands of these cells, and very often three generations of grubs are brought up in them, one after the other.

The hornet, which is really a kind of big wasp, makes its nest in just the same way, but places it on a beam in an out-house, or in a hole which the sparrows have made in the thatched roof of a house, or in a hollow tree, or perhaps hangs it in the open air to the bough of a tree.

Ants

Even more wonderful than bees and wasps are the ants, which sometimes do such extraordinary things that we are almost afraid to tell you about them, for fear that you might not believe us. There are ants, for example, which actually take other ants prisoners and make them act as slaves, forcing them to do all the work of the nest, which they are too lazy to do themselves; and there are ants which keep large armies, sometimes more than one hundred thousand strong; and there are many ants which harvest grain and store it away in underground barns! Many ants, too, keep little beetles in their nests as pets, and fondle and caress them just as one might pat a dog, or stroke a favorite cat. They even allow them to ride on their backs; while, if the nest is opened, the first thing they think of is the safety of their pets which they pick up at once and hide away in some place of safety, even before they carry off their own eggs and young. They also pet tiny crickets and small white wood-lice in just the same way.

Then ants have little "cows" of their own, which they "milk" regularly every day. These are the greenfly or aphis insects which do so much harm in our gardens and fields, plunging their beaks into the tender shoots and fresh green leaves of the plants, and sucking up their sap unceasingly. And as fast as they do so they pour the sap out again through two little tubes in their backs, in the form of a thin, sticky, very sweet liquid which we call honeydew. Now the ants are very fond of this liquid, and if you watch the greenfly insects which are almost always so plentiful on rose-bushes, you may see the ants come and tap them with their feelers. Then the little creatures will pour out a small quantity of honeydew from the tubes on their backs, which the ants will lick up. That is the way in which ants milk their little cows, and they are so fond of the honeydew that they will carry large numbers of these aphides into their nests and keep them, like a herd of cattle, all through the winter, so that they may never be without a supply of their favorite beverage!

Ants, like bees and wasps, almost always consist of drones, queens, and workers. Only the drones and queens have wings, and these are seldom seen until the end of August. But then they make their appearance in vast swarms, which are sometimes so dense that from a little distance the insects really look like a column of smoke. They only take one short flight, however, and when this is over they come down to the ground and snap off their wings close to their bodies, just as termites do.

One of the most curious of all these insects is the parasol-ant, of South America, which makes enormous dome-shaped nests of clay. But as the clay will not bind properly by itself, the insects work little pieces of green leaf up with it. These pieces of leaf are generally obtained from an orange plantation, perhaps half a mile distant. And when the ants are returning from their expedition, each holds its little piece of leaf over its head as it marches along, just as if it were carrying a tiny green parasol!

Another very famous ant is the African driver, which owes its name to the way its vast armies drive every living creature before them. Insects, reptiles, antelopes, monkeys, even man himself, must give way before the advancing hosts of the drivers; for it is certain death to stand in their path.

Saw-Flies

The saw-flies also belong to the order of the Hymenoptera. These flies are so called because the female insects have two little saws at the end of the body, which work in turns, one being pushed forward as the other is drawn back. With these they cut little grooves in the bark of twigs, or in the midribs of leaves, in which they place their eggs by means of the ovipositor between the saws.

Some of these insects are extremely mischievous. The grub of the turnip saw-fly, for instance, often destroys whole fields of turnips, while the currant saw-fly is equally destructive to currants and gooseberries. One often sees bushes which it has entirely stripped of their leaves.

You may always know a saw-fly grub by the fact that it has no less than twenty-two legs—three pairs of true legs on the front part of the body, and eight pairs of false legs, or prolegs, as they are often called, on the hinder part.

There is one little family of saw-flies, however, which are quite unlike all the rest, for instead of having saws at the ends of their bodies, they have long boring instruments, very much like brad-awls. With these they bore deep holes in the trunks of fir-trees, in order to place their eggs at the bottom; and the grubs feed, when they hatch out, on the solid wood.

These insects are known as horn-tailed saw-flies, and one, which is very common in pine woods, is very large, sometimes measuring an inch and a half from the head to the tip of the tail, and very nearly three inches across the wings, while the boring tool is fully an inch long. It is a very handsome insect, and looks rather like a hornet, the head and thorax being deep glossy black and the hind body bright yellow, with a broad black belt round the middle. The feelers are also yellow, and the legs are partly yellow and partly black.

Gall-Flies

Another group of the Hymenoptera consists of the gall-flies. These are all small insects, which lay their eggs in little holes which they bore in roots, twigs, and the ribs and nervures of leaves. In each hole, together with the egg, they place a tiny drop of an irritating liquid, which causes a swelling to take place, on the substance of which the little grub feeds. Sometimes these galls, as they are called, take most curious forms. The pretty red and white oak-apples of course you know; and no doubt, too, you have often found the hard, woody, marble-shaped galls which are so common on the twigs of the same tree. Then some galls look like bunches of currants, and some look like scales, and some look like pieces of sponge. And if you cut one of them open you will find perhaps one little grub, or perhaps several, curled up inside them.

Ichneumon-Flies

This is the last group of Hymenoptera that we can mention. These insects lay their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars or chrysalids, and sometimes in those of spiders, boring holes to receive them by means of their little sting-like ovipositors. Before long the eggs hatch, and the little grubs at once begin to feed upon the flesh of their victims. For some little time, strange to say, the unfortunate creature seems to suffer no pain, or even discomfort, but goes on feeding and growing just as before, although hundreds of hungry little grubs may be nibbling away inside it. Sooner or later, however, it dies; and then the little grubs spin cocoons and turn to chrysalids, out of which other little flies appear in due course, just like the parents.

Millions of caterpillars are destroyed by these little flies every year. Out of every hundred of those which do so much damage to our cabbages and cauliflowers, for example, at least ninety are sure to be "stung." Indeed, if it were not for ichneumon-flies we should find it quite impossible to grow any crops at all, for they would all be eaten up by caterpillars.

Lepidoptera

Next we come to the butterflies and moths, which are called Lepidoptera, or scale-winged insects, because their wings are covered with thousands upon thousands of tiny scales. If you catch a butterfly, a kind of mealy dust comes off upon your fingers, and if you look at a little of this dust through a microscope, you find that it consists simply of little scales, of all sorts of shapes. Some are like battledores, and some like masons' trowels, and they are nearly always most beautifully sculptured and chiseled. These scales lie upon the wing in rows, which overlap one another like the slates on the roof of a house. And sometimes there are several millions on the wings of a single insect.

Butterflies

It is possible here, of course, to mention only a few of the most striking forms of butterflies, out of the many hundreds of species counted as North American. It may be said that these insects are much alike in general features all round the northern half of the globe, the same families being represented, so that, at first glance, European or Asiatic examples of such butterflies as the great yellow, black-striped swallowtail seem the same as American examples.

Among the handsomest of all northern butterflies is the purple emperor, which you may sometimes see flying round the tops of the tallest trees in large woods in the south of England. Far commoner, however, are the large, small, and green-veined whites, whose caterpillars are so destructive to cabbages; the scarlet admiral, with broad streaks of vermilion across its glossy black wings; the peacock, with its four eye-like blue spots on a russet ground; the tortoise-shells, mottled with yellow and brown and black; and the pretty little blues, which one may see in almost every meadow from the middle of May till the end of September. Then there are the brimstone, with its pale yellow wings, which with the blues dance along the roadways in little whirling companies all summer; the meadow-brown and the large heath, to be seen in thousands in every hayfield; the small heath and the small copper, even more plentiful still; the fritillaries, some of which live in woods, and some on downs, and some in marshy meadows; the pretty orange-tip, with pure white wings tipped with yellow; and the odd little skippers, which flit merrily about grassy banks in the warm sunshine in May and again in August—besides several others, which are so scarce or so local that hardly anybody ever sees them.

Moths

You can easily tell moths from butterflies by looking at their antennæ, or feelers, which have no knobs at the tips, as those of butterflies have. Their number also is very great, and we can mention only a few of the most remarkable.

First among these is the splendid death's-head sphinx, or hawk, the largest of all the insects, which sometimes measures five inches from tip to tip of its wings when they are fully spread. It owes its name to the curious patch of light-brown hairs on its thorax, which looks just like a skull. The caterpillar is a huge yellowish creature, often nearly six inches long, with a blue horn at the end of its body, and seven blue stripes, edged with white, on either side. It lives in potato-fields, hiding underground by day and coming out at night to feed upon the leaves. And it is an odd fact that both the caterpillar and the perfect insect have the power of squeaking rather loudly. The moth appears in October.

The humming-bird hawk-moth flies by day, and you may often see it hovering over flowers in the garden, with its long trunk poked down into a blossom in order to suck up the sweet juices. As it does so it makes quite a loud humming noise with its wings, like the little bird from which it takes its name. And sometimes you may see a bee-hawk, which has transparent wings, hovering in front of rhododendron blossoms in just the same way.

The swifts fly between sunset and dark, and the largest of them is very curious indeed. For although it has glossy white wings, so that one can see it quite clearly in the dusk, it will suddenly disappear. The fact is that although its wings are white above they are yellowish brown below; so that when it suddenly settles, and folds them over its back, it at once becomes invisible.

The goat-moths are large, heavily built insects, with brownish-gray wings marked with a number of very short upright dark streaks. The caterpillar is a great reddish-brown creature with a broad chocolate band running down its back. It lives for three years in the trunks of various trees, and then spins a silken cocoon in which to turn to a chrysalis.

Tiger-moths have brown fore wings streaked with white, scarlet hind wings with bluish-black spots, and bright scarlet body. The caterpillar, which is very common in gardens, is generally called the woolly bear, because of the long brown hairs which cover its body.

Very beautiful indeed are the burnets, which have dark-green front wings, with either five or six large red spots, and crimson hind wings, edged with black. You may often see them resting on flowers and grass-stems by the roadside in the hot sunshine. And in some parts of the country the cinnabar-moth is almost equally plentiful. You can recognize it at once by the crimson hind wings, and by the streak and the two spots of the same color on the front ones. The caterpillar, which is bright orange in color, with black rings round its body, feeds upon ragwort.

The Curious Vaporer

The vaporer-moth is very common toward the end of summer, and even in London one may often see it dashing about in the hot sunshine with a strange jerky flight. But one only sees the male, which is a bright brownish-yellow insect measuring about an inch across the wings; for the female is much more like a grub than a perfect insect, and has wings so small that they are hardly visible. Of course she cannot fly; and her body is so big and clumsy that she cannot even walk. So she spends her life clinging to the outside of the cocoon in which she passed the chrysalis state, and covers it all over with her little round white eggs. And when she has laid the last of these she falls to the ground and dies.

Very handsome indeed is the emperor-moth, which has a big eye-like spot in the middle of each wing, something like those of the peacock-butterfly. But its caterpillar is even more beautiful still, for its body is of the loveliest grass-green color, sprinkled all over with little pink tubercles, each of which is enclosed in a ring of black, and has a tuft of glossy black hairs sprouting from it. This caterpillar feeds on bramble and heather, and when it reaches its full size it spins a light-brown cocoon among the leaves of its food-plant, and then turns to a chrysalis, from which the perfect moth hatches out in the following April.

Very often one finds caterpillars which look just like little bits of stick, and which walk in a most curious fashion by hunching up their backs into loops, and then stretching them out again, just as if they were measuring the ground. These caterpillars are called loopers, and they turn into moths with large broad wings and very slender bodies.

There are a great many kinds of these moths. One, called the swallowtail, may often be found hiding among ivy in July. It has large wings of a pale-yellow color, with little tails upon the hinder pair. Then there are the sulphur, a smaller insect with wings of a brighter yellow; the emeralds, of the most delicate green; the magpie, which has wings of the purest white, marked with streaks of orange and numbers of almost square black spots and blotches; and many others far too numerous to mention. If you ever shake a bush in summer-time you may see quite a dozen of them flying away to seek for some fresh hiding-place.

Then there is a large moth known as the puss, because it is colored rather like a brindled gray cat. The caterpillar is bright green, with a big hump in the middle of its body, and two long thread-like organs at the end of its tail, with which it will sometimes pretend to be able to sting you. But in reality it is perfectly harmless. You may often find it feeding on the leaves of willow-trees in August, and when it is fully fed it spins a hard, oval cocoon in a crack in the bark. And there are three smaller moths belonging to the same family, which are known as kittens!

Another very large group of moths is that of the Noctuæ, or night-fliers. But we so seldom see these unless we go out specially to look for them that we shall pass them by without further mention.

Homoptera

The next order is that of the Homoptera, or same-winged insects, which are so called because their upper and lower wings are just alike.

The froghoppers all belong to this order. Do you know them? They are little brown or gray insects, sometimes marked or marbled with white, which carry their wings folded tentwise over their backs, and hop about with really wonderful activity. It has been calculated that if a man of ordinary height could leap as well as a froghopper, in proportion to his greater size, he would be able to cover nearly a quarter of a mile at a single jump!

But if you do not know the froghoppers by sight you must at any rate know something of their grubs; for these are the creatures which cause the cuckoo-spit of which one sees so much during the early summer. Very often the weeds and long grass in a meadow, or by the roadside, are almost covered with the odd little masses of froth, so that one's feet get quite wet as one walks through the herbage. And in the middle of each mass is a fat little grub, which is sucking up the sap of the plant upon which it is resting, and pouring it out again in frothy bubbles.

The mischievous little aphides, or greenfly insects, also belong to this order. There are many different kinds, some of which do terrible damage to hops and corn and all sorts of cultivated plants. We have already mentioned these when describing the habits of ants, and you will recollect that they have sharp little beaks, which they thrust into young shoots and tender leaves in order to suck up the sap; and that as fast as they do so they pour it out again through two little tubes upon their backs in the form of the thin, sweet, and very sticky liquid which we call honeydew. You will remember, too, how fond ants are of this liquid, and how they "milk" the tiny insects just as if they were little cows.

So, you see, the aphides injure plants in two ways. First, they draw off all their sap, which is really their life-blood; and then they drop this sticky honeydew on to the leaves below, and choke up the little holes by means of which they breathe. And the worst of it is that these insects multiply so rapidly. Where there is one to-day there will be five and twenty to-morrow; and two days later there will be five and twenty times five and twenty; and two days later still there will be five and twenty times five and twenty times five and twenty! Indeed, if it were not for ladybirds and lacewing flies and one or two other insects which feed upon aphides, every green leaf would be destroyed by them in a few months' time.

A very curious fact about these insects is that as long as they can find plenty of food they do not grow any wings. But as soon as the sap becomes scanty or thin, wings make their appearance, so that they can fly away and seek for better food elsewhere.

Heteroptera

The order of the Homoptera, or same-winged insects, is followed by that of the Heteroptera, or different-winged insects, in which that part of the wings nearest to the body is hard and leathery, while the rest is softer and thinner, and is generally almost transparent. Some of these live upon land, while others spend most of their lives in the water.

The curious bishop's-miters belong to the former group. There are a good many kinds, and some of them are very common. You may see them sitting upon flowers, or resting upon raspberries and blackberries in the sunshine. But although they are sometimes very pretty, we do not advise you to handle them, for they have the power of pouring out a liquid which will make your fingers smell very nasty indeed. And you should be most careful not to eat any fruit on which they have been resting, for they leave a horrible flavor behind them, which is even worse than the smell.

Among those which live in the water there are several most interesting insects. There are the water-striders, for example, which you can see running about on the surface of any pond, and which look like narrow-bodied long-legged spiders. But you will notice that they only have six legs, whereas true spiders always have eight. They skim about on the water by means of the middle and hinder limbs, the front pair being used in catching prey. And when they have caught a victim they suck its juices through their sharp little beaks.

Then there is the water-boatman, which always swims on its back. The reason why it does so is that when its body is in that position it is shaped just like a boat, while its long hind legs serve as a pair of oars. So the little insect really rows itself through the water. On a bright sunny day you may often see it resting on the surface of a pond, with its hind legs thrown forward in readiness for a stroke. And if even your shadow falls upon it, or it feels the vibration of a heavy footstep, it will dive down in a moment to some hiding-place among the weeds.

If you ever catch a water-boatman, be careful how you handle it, or it will give your finger a very painful prick with its sharp beak.

The water-scorpion, too, is very curious. It is a flat, oval insect, of a dirty-brown color, which looks very much like a piece of dead leaf. It seems to know this quite well, for when it is hungry it always hides among dead leaves down at the bottom of the water, and keeps perfectly still. Then the other insects do not notice it, and as soon as one of them comes within reach it seizes it with its great jaw-like front legs, and plunges its beak into its body.

This insect is called the water-scorpion because it has a long spike at the end of its body, which looks something like a scorpion's sting. It is really a breathing-tube, however, the top of which is poked just above the surface of the water while the insect is lying at the bottom, so as to enable it to breathe quite easily.

Aphaniptera

The order of the Aphaniptera, or unseen-winged insects, is a very small one, consisting only of the fleas. The name has been given to them because their wings are so tiny that, even with the microscope, they can hardly be seen at all.

There are a good many different kinds of fleas, all of which suck the blood of animals through their sharp little beaks. Some of them are able to leap to a really wonderful distance, by means of their powerful hind legs. And they are so wonderfully strong that if a man were equally powerful, in proportion to his greater size, he would easily be able to drag a wagon which a pair of cart-horses could scarcely move!

Diptera

The last order of insects is that of the Diptera, or two-winged flies, which seem to have two wings only instead of four. But if you look at them closely, you will see a pair of little knob-like organs just where the hind wings ought to be. And these little organs, which we call balancers, are really the hind wings in a very much altered form.

Although they are so tiny, and look so useless, these balancers are used in some way during flight; for if they are damaged or lost the insect can no longer balance itself or direct its course in the air.

The Mosquito

The mosquito is a troublesome insect which most of us know only too well; for there are very few of us who have not suffered from the wounds caused by its beak. Its life-history is very interesting. The eggs, which are shaped just like tiny skittles, are laid in the water, and the mother gnat fastens them cleverly together in such a way that they form a little boat, which floats on the surface. After a time a little door opens at the bottom of each egg, and a tiny grub tumbles out into the water. It is a very odd-looking little creature, with a very small head, a very big thorax, and a very long tail; and it mostly floats in the water with its head downward, and the tip of its tail resting just above the surface.

These grubs feed on the little scraps of decaying matter which are always floating in the water of the pond, and they wriggle their way about in the strangest manner, by first doubling up their bodies and then stretching them out, over and over again. After a time they throw off their skins and change to chrysalids, and out of this, a few days later, the perfect gnats make their appearance.

The mosquito is a gnat that has many relatives, some very troublesome, like the black fly. Some gnats have very big bushy feelers, just like big plumes. These are the males, and you need not be afraid of them, for they have no beaks and cannot bite.

Crane-Fly and Drone-Fly

Then there is the crane-fly, whose balancers you can see quite easily. This insect lays it eggs in the ground, and the grubs which hatch out from them are called leather-jackets, because their skins are so very tough. They feed upon the roots of grass, and sometimes do a great deal of mischief in pastures. Indeed, if it were not for such birds as the crow and meadow-lark, which destroy them in enormous numbers, we should find it almost impossible to grow any grass at all.

The drone-fly really does look rather like a bee; but it only has two wings instead of four, while its body is much more stoutly built, and it has no sting, so that you need not be in the least afraid of it. You may often see it sitting on flowers on sunny days in autumn, and it is especially fond of those of the ragwort.

The grub of this fly spends its whole life buried head downward in the mud at the bottom of some shallow pool—thick, black mud, which is largely made up of decaying leaves—and never comes out of it even to breathe. But at the end of its body it has a long tube, the tip of which rests just above the surface of the water, so that it can draw down as much air as it requires. And this tube is made something like a telescope, so that if a heavy fall of rain should raise the level of the water, all that the grub has to do is to push out another joint, when it can breathe just as easily as before. This grub is often known as the rat-tailed maggot.

Hawk-Flies, Etc.

As you walk through a wood in summer, you may often see a black and yellow fly hovering in mid-air. If you move, it darts away so swiftly that the eye cannot follow its flight. But if you stop, and remain perfectly still, it will come back again in a moment or two, and hover just as before.

This is a hawk-fly, and it is very useful, for the mother insect always lays her eggs on twigs and leaves which are swarming with aphides. On these insects the grubs feed, so that as soon as they hatch out they find themselves surrounded with prey, and destroy the little insects in great numbers.

The house-fly and the bluebottle fly also belong to the order of the Diptera. They are not very pleasant insects, but while they are grubs they are really most useful, for they feed upon all sorts of decaying substances. And another insect, called the flesh-fly, is even more useful still, for it is the parent of from sixteen to twenty thousand grubs: so that if even a single fly finds the carcass of a small animal and leaves her eggs upon it, the little ones that soon hatch out will devour it in a very short time. In a few days all these grubs turn into perfect flies, and in their turn become the parents of thousands of grubs: so that it has been said that three of these flies could devour a dead ox as fast as a lion could!

The last insect that we can mention is a brown and gray fly known as the warble. It is very troublesome indeed to cattle, for the mother fly lays her eggs upon their backs. Then as soon as the grubs hatch, they burrow underneath the skin of the poor animals, and form large swellings there, in which they spend the whole of their lives. When they are fully fed they wriggle out through a hole in the hide, drop to the ground, burrow into it, and turn to chrysalids, from which the perfect flies appear a few months later.

CHAPTER XXXIV
SPIDERS AND SCORPIONS

Most people think that spiders are insects. But this is a very great mistake, for they are just about as unlike insects as they can possibly be.

Insects, for example, always have distinct heads. But spiders never do, for their heads are so sunk and lost in their chests that you cannot possibly tell where the one leaves off and the other begins. So that spiders have their bodies divided into two parts only instead of into three, as is always the case in the insects.

Then insects always have six legs; spiders always have eight. Insects have wings; spiders have none. Insects have feelers; spiders have none. Insects nearly always have a great many eyes, which are six-sided; spiders never have more than eight eyes, which are round. And while insects may have biting jaws, or sucking jaws, or a trunk, or a beak, spiders always have poison-fangs, which no insect ever possesses.

So you see that as far as the outside of their bodies is concerned, spiders are very different indeed from insects. And the differences inside the body are just as great. Insects have no hearts, the only blood-vessel in their bodies being one long tube which runs along the back; but spiders have quite a big heart, and a good many arteries as well. Insects have no lungs, but breathe by means of slender tubes which run to every part of the body; but spiders have quite big lungs, in which the blood is purified just as it is in our own. Insects have no brains, but only bunches of nerves in different parts of their bodies; but spiders have quite big brains. And besides this, while all insects which spin silk produce it through their mouths, spiders always do so by means of organs at the very end of the body. So that inside, as well as outside, there is hardly any respect in which spiders and insects really resemble one another.

The silk-organs of a spider are very wonderful indeed. Remember, in the first place, that the silk, as long as it remains in the body of the spider, is a liquid—a kind of thick gum, which is produced and stored up in six long narrow bags, or glands. Then if you look at the end of a spider's body through a good strong magnifying-glass—or, better still, through a microscope—you will see several little projections, which we call spinnerets. Now each of these spinnerets is covered with hundreds of tinier projections still, every one of which has an extremely small hole in the middle. And all these holes communicate, by means of very slender tubes, with one of the silk-glands.

So what a spider does when it wants to spin its line is to squeeze a little drop of silk into one of the spinnerets. It then just touches the object to which the line is to be fastened, and draws its body away. And as it does so a delicate thread comes out from every one of the projections on the spinneret; and all these threads unite together into one stout cord. That is why a spider's thread is so strong. It really consists of several hundred separate threads all firmly fastened together. And if the spider wants to spin a stronger line still, it can unite all the threads coming from several spinnerets into one, so as to make a very stout cord indeed.

Spiders use this silk for all sorts of different purposes. In the first place, they use it for snaring insects.

The Garden-Spider

Let us take for an example, the web of the common garden-spider. It is to be seen in every garden, resting in the middle of its web; and you may always recognize it by the white cross upon its back. But I don't suppose that you have ever seen it spinning its net. For it always does so very early in the morning, generally beginning before sunrise, so that it may be quite ready for use as soon as the insects begin to fly.

First of all, the spider makes a kind of outer framework of very strong silken cords, and fastens it firmly in position by stout guy-ropes of the same material. Next, she carries a thread right across the middle and fixes it down on either side. Then, starting from the center, she carries thread after thread to the margin, carefully testing the strength of each by giving it two or three smart pulls, and fastening it firmly down. When she has finished this part of her task, the web looks like a badly shaped wheel.

The next thing that the spider does is to spin a little silken platform in the middle of her web to sit upon. And as soon as she has done this she begins to spin the spiral thread. Beginning from the center, she goes round and round and round, fastening the thread down every time that it crosses one of the straight cords—the spokes, as it were, of the wheel—until at last the web is finished. Then she goes to the little platform in the middle, and there remains, upside down, waiting for an insect to blunder into her net.

By and by, perhaps, a bluebottle fly does so. Then she shakes the web violently for a few moments, so as to entangle it more thoroughly, rushes down upon it, seizes it, and plunges her fangs into its body. But if she catches a wasp or a bee she nearly always cuts it carefully out, drops it to the ground, and then patches up the hole in her web. For she knows perfectly well that wasps and bees can sting!

Would you like to know why it is that flies stick to the web as soon as they touch it? The microscope shows us. All the way along, the spiral thread is set with very tiny drops of liquid gum. So tiny are these drops indeed, that there are between eighty and ninety thousand of them in a large web! And would you like to know why it is that the spider does not stick to the web as the flies do? Well, the fact is that only the spiral thread is set with these little gummy drops, and that as the spider runs about over her web she is most careful to place her feet only on the straight threads, and never on the spiral line. Other spiders, however, snare their prey in quite a different way.

The Marmignatto

This small spider, found on our western plains, is remarkable for feeding on large insects, such as grasshoppers and field-crickets, which it catches in an ingenious manner. It stretches a few silken threads across a narrow path way, quite close to the ground, along which these insects are likely to pass, and lies in wait just opposite until a grasshopper or a cricket approaches. When it comes to the threads the insect is sure to get at least one of its feet entangled. Then it stops, and tries to shake itself free. The only result of its struggles, of course, is that its other feet become entangled too; and while it is struggling the marmignatto springs upon its back, fastens a silken thread to it, springs down again, and fastens the other end to a grass-stem close by. Over and over again it does this, and before very long the unfortunate insect is firmly fastened down by hundreds of threads, and is quite unable to break free, or even to move one of its legs. Then the spider leaps upon its back once more, plunges its fangs into its body, and proceeds to suck its blood.

Hunting-Spiders

Perhaps you may have seen little hairy black spiders, with white markings upon the upper part of their bodies, running about in an odd jerky way on sunny fences and walls. These are called hunting-spiders, because they hunt their prey instead of snaring it. You may see them gradually creeping up to a fly, so slowly that they hardly seem to move, and then suddenly leaping upon it when they are about two inches away. Then spider and fly, locked in one another's embrace, go falling toward the ground together. But they never reach it, for wherever a hunting-spider goes it always trails a rope of silk behind it, and fastens it down at intervals. So when it springs from the fence it is brought up at once by its own thread, and swings in the air till its victim is dead. Then it just climbs up its thread, and so gets back to the fence.

Bird-Spiders

These great spiders of the tropics hunt for prey in much the same way. Only instead of catching flies on walls they prowl about the branches of trees in search of small birds, springing upon them when they are roosting at night, and killing them almost immediately by a smart bite from their venomous fangs. These spiders, of course, are very large. Indeed, the body of a full-grown bird-spider is as big as a man's fist, while its great hairy legs cover nearly a square foot of ground when they are fully spread out.

Trap-door Spiders

These famous spiders are found more or less commonly in all warm countries. They all live in tunnels in the ground, which they dig by means of their fangs; and as they do not want the situation of their nest to be discovered, they carry the earth away to a little distance as fast as they dig it up, and carefully hide it. Very often the hole which they dig in this way is eighteen inches or two feet deep. And at the bottom it always turns sideways for an inch or two, so that the general shape of the burrow is very much like that of a stocking.

This hole is always dug in the side of a bank, so that when there is a heavy fall of rain the water may run away without flooding it.

When the burrow is finished, the spider lines it throughout with two sheets of silk. The outer sheet, which comes next to the earth, is rather coarse in texture, and is quite waterproof, in order to keep the tunnel dry. The inner one is very much finer and softer, so that the little home may be as comfortable as possible.

As soon as the lining process is completed, the spider sets to work on the trap-door. This she makes in the cleverest manner possible. First she measures the doorway most carefully by the aid of her feelers. Then she spins a thin silken pad of exactly the same size and shape. This is sticky on the top, like the spiral thread of the web of the garden-spider: and she sprinkles it all over with very small scraps of earth. Upon this she fastens another silken pad, which she sprinkles with earth in the same way. And then comes another and then another, and so on till the door is sufficiently thick. Finally, she fastens it in position by means of a hinge, which is also made of silk; and she always places this hinge on the upper side of the doorway, so that the door may fall down behind her by its own weight whenever she leaves the burrow. She is rather a lazy creature, you see, and does not want to have the trouble of shutting the door for herself! And if she left it open, every passer-by would find out where she had made her home.

The door always fits most wonderfully into its place, and the spider carefully covers the top with little bits of moss and small scraps of earth and stone, so as to make it exactly like the surface of the ground all round it. Indeed, unless one happens to see the spider push it open, it is almost impossible to find it.

When one of these spiders is in her burrow, she always fastens about half a dozen silken threads to the inner side of the door, carries them down to the bottom, and sits with one of her feet resting upon each. No one can then try to force her door open without her knowledge, and as soon as she feels the least pull upon the threads she rushes up the burrow, clings to the walls with her hind feet, seizes the door with her front ones, and pulls it downward with all her might. And if the door is forced open in spite of her efforts, she slips into a sort of side tunnel which she always makes near the top of her burrow, and stays there until the danger is past.

The Raft-Spider

There are several spiders which live on or in the water. One of these is the raft-spider, which is found in the fen districts of England. If you should happen to meet with it you can recognize it at once, for all round the upper part of its body is a narrow band of yellow, and inside this is a row of small white spots.

This spider is about an inch long, and owes its name to the fact that it actually makes a little raft on which to go out searching for water-insects. Collecting together a quantity of little bits of leaf and cut grass and reeds, it fastens them firmly together with silken threads, just as shipwrecked sailors might lash planks together with ropes in order to escape from a sinking vessel. In this way it makes a small floating platform, perhaps a couple of inches in diameter. When the raft is finished, the spider gets upon it, pushes off from the shore, and allows the current to carry it along. By and by, perhaps, it catches sight of some water-insect floating at the surface, or of a drowning fly which has fallen into the stream. Then it leaves its raft, runs along over the surface of the water, seizes its victim, and carries it back to the raft to be devoured. And if it should be alarmed, or think itself in danger, it gets under the raft and clings to the lower surface, so that it cannot be seen from above.

The Water-Spider

More curious still is the water-spider, which actually makes its nest under water. This spider, which is almost black in color, and has a very hairy body and legs, is common in ponds and canals, and spends almost the whole of its life beneath the water. Its little silken nest is shaped like a thimble, with the mouth downward, and is placed among weeds, to which it is firmly fastened down by guy-ropes, also of silk. And when it is finished the spider fills it with air. She does this in a most curious manner. Rising to the surface, she turns upside down, pokes her long hind legs out of the water, and crosses the tips. Then she dives again, carrying down a big bubble of air between these hairy legs and her equally hairy body as she does so. She next gets exactly underneath the entrance to her nest and separates her legs. The result is, of course, that the air-bubble floats up and occupies the upper part. Another bubble is now brought down in the same way, and so the spider goes on, fetching bubble after bubble, until at last her little nest is completely filled with air. Then she gets inside it, and watches for the grubs of water-insects to swim by.