Read Ebook: The romance of insect life by Selous Edmund Moore Park Carton Illustrator Speed Lancelot Illustrator

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Ebook has 563 lines and 102597 words, and 12 pages

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"The natural system"--A middle course--Neuropterous insects--White 13 ants and their ways--Kings and queens--A royal diet--Secondary majesties--Soldiers and workers--Ant invaders--Methods of warfare

Ant language--Stridulatory organs--How white ants 20 communicate--Conversation through convulsions--Nests in tubes--Detection of a "crepitus"--Mutual recognition--Cannibalistic propensities--Royal jealousy--Loyal assassins--A kingly feast--Methods of feeding--Foundation of colonies--Swarming habits

Ants and white ants--Guest insects--Ants'-nest beetles--Doubtful 32 relations--A strange forbearance--Yellow ants and white wood-lice--Beetles fed by ants

Ant parasites--Fleet-footed brigands--Honey-stealing mites--A strange 42 table companion--Privileged cockroaches--Ants and their riders--A fly-ride on beetle-back

From biped to quadruped--Flies that borrow wings--Sit-o'-my-head--A 54 novel cradle--Flies that kill bees--Nature's sadness--Consolations of the future--The Tachina fly and the locust

The burden of the locusts--Classical nonsense--Address to 65 Mahomet--Locusts in Europe--Succumb to the English climate--Described by Darwin--Locusts in Africa--The wingless host do greatest damage--Hoppers and jumpers--"An army on the march"

The sense of direction--How locusts look flying--Follow no 75 leader--Unanimity of movement--Flight by moonlight--Roosting at night--Extirpated in Cyprus--The "Chinese Wall" system--Not adapted to Australia--Deference to aboriginal feeling--Locusts in Australia--Strange ceremony of egg-laying--Inadequate explanation

A Greek mistake--Nature vindicated--Cicadas provided for--A difficult 98 feat--Perseverance rewarded--Cicadas in story--Dear to Apollo--Men before the Muses--Plato and Socrates--Athenian views--A mausoleum for pets--The Greek ploughman--Apollo's judgment--Hercules' bad taste--Modern survivals--A beneficent insect--Elementary education in Tuscany

Cicadas in England--A blower of bubbles--The prolific Aphis--A nice 108 calculation--Scientific curiosity--Dragon-fly armies--The son of the south-west wind

Aphides and their enemies--Curious interrelations--The biter 119 bit--Altruistic development--Bread and beer protectors--Saved by ladybirds

Ants and their honey-cows--A mutual benefit--Unity of motive--The end 129 and the means--Two ways of getting honey--Insect cattle--Wasps as cow-milkers--A cow-keeping bee--Ant cow-sheds--Aphides in ants' nests--Children of light and darkness--Forethought extraordinary

Cow caterpillars--The adventures of Theophrastus--Cave-born 144 Ariels--Led to the sky--A strange attraction--Ant slaves and slave-holders--Slave-making raids--Feeble masters--An ant mystery--Effects of slavery--The decadent's reply

Ant wonders--Leaves cut for mushroom growing--How ants plant 172 mushrooms--A nest in a mushroom-bed--"Psychic plasticity"--Two opinions--Ant stupidity--Unfair comparisons--The ant and the servant-maid--Mushroom-growing beetles--Choked by ambrosia--Intelligent uselessness--Automatic phraseology--A curious insect

From wood to ambrosia--Wood-boring beetles--Rival claimants--Stag and 188 other beetles--Metempsychosis--Flies with horns--Comical combatants--Female encouragement--The sacred Scarabaeus--A beetle with a profession--Table companions--Old and new fallacies--From theft to partnership

Bees and wasps--A bee's masonry--What happens to caterpillars--Living 218 food--Variations in instinct--A wasp's implement--Unreal distinctions--A cautious observer--Bees that make tunnels--A wonderful instinct--Leaf-cutting bees--Nests made of poppy-leaves--Born in the purple--Commercial philosophy--The appreciative white man--Economy of labour--Bees and rats--Busy shadows--A bee double

Natural selection--Protective resemblances--A locust's 238 stratagem--Mock leaf-cutting ants--Flowery dissemblers--A Malay explanation--Snake-suggesting caterpillars--A prudent lizard--Inconclusive experiments--A bogus ant--Flies that live with bees--A caterpillar that dresses up--A portrait-modelling caterpillar

Butterfly resemblances--A living leaf--How spiders trap 255 butterflies--Butterfly doubles--Suggested explanation--More evidence wanted--Warning coloration--A theory on trust--A straightforward test--Advice to naturalists--A strange omission

Beautiful spiders--The "Peckham paper"--Spider courtships--Male 289 antics and love-dances--Occasional accidents--Strength of the evidence--The one explanation--Darwin's last words--His theory established

Web-making spiders--Dangerous wooings--An unkind 307 lady-love--Lizard-eating spiders--Enlightened curiosity--Rival entomologists--Instinct of resignation--A worm-eating spider--Alternative explanation--The dangers of patriotism--Trap-door spiders--Web-flying spiders--Spiders that nearly fly--Spider navigators--The raft and the diving-bell

Aquatic insects--Lyonnet's water-beetle--A floating cradle--Larva and 320 pupa--An ingenious contrivance--Nothing useless--The imaginary philosopher--How the cradle is made--The mysterious "mast"--Later observation--The giant water-bug--An oppressed husband

One remark--Phosphorescent insects--Glow-worms and fire-flies--Fiery 329 courtship--A beetle with three lamps--Travelling by beetle-light--The great lantern-fly controversy--Is it luminous?--Madame Merian's statement--Contradictory evidence--A Chinese edict--Suggested use of the "lantern"--Confirmation required--Luminous centipedes

Scorpions and suicide--The act proved--Intention 345 probable--Conflicting evidence--Scorpions and cockroaches--Concentrating backwards--Economy of poison--Decorous feeding

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FIRE-BEETLES AS LANTERNS Frontispiece 335

ANT-EATER AND WHITE ANT-HEAPS 14

AN INSECT FREEBOOTER AND AN INSECT BEGGAR 42

RIDING ON BEETLE-BACK AND A LIVING SWEET-SHOP 52

A BUCCANEER FLY AND A LEAF-RESEMBLING INSECT 58

A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS 76

A WASP BEARING OFF A CICADA 100

A LUCK-BRINGING GRASSHOPPER 106

THE HERCULES BEETLE 190

GREAT ANIMALS PURSUED BY DRIVER ANTS 206

DRIVEN OUT BY HORNETS 220

SOLITARY WASPS 228

PROTECTIVE MIMICRY--LEAF-RESEMBLING BUTTERFLIES 256

A DANCING SPIDER, AND A COCKROACH ATTACKING A 294 SCORPION

A BIRD-CATCHING SPIDER NET 308

INSECTS THAT CARRY LAMPS 330

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

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

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

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

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

Footnote 1:

The Concise Natural History, p. 551.

Footnote 2:

In conjunction with Dr. Sandias, whose name must be understood as accompanying Grassi's--for the most part--when the latter is referred to.

Footnote 3:

Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vols. 39 and 40.

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