144

Defective Instinct.

French general said, as he looked down from the heights on the gallant six hundred :-"This is magnificent, but it is not war." So with insects which attack an animal immensely superior in strength and cunning. Instinct does

not tell them when they have no chance-at least not always-nor how to use the opportunities they possess. I remember, when a boy, getting some twenty pounds of honey out of a space between two timbers in a lath-and-plaster house. We took no means to stupefy the bees; indeed, it would have been dangerous to burn anything under them. When, therefore, I opened a hole in the wall, out came the bees, highly choleric. Of course I knew that I was taking a liberty, and had tied a veil over my head, and put on thick gloves. But all the bees could think of was to fly at me full butt, though a little judicious crawling would have discovered some weak place, and gratified their resentment. Poor bees! they only took little tours in the air, as if they were appealing to the world, and then came back at me with all the malignancy of disappointment. I got twenty pounds of honey out of their hole, and we made mead of it, which all turned

sour.

But whether bees are clever in warfare or

not, there is one great lesson to be learnt from them that little fellows will be treated with great respect if they are ready to defend themselves when attacked, though they may go about their business at other times with all the patience expected in a civilised community.

L

( 146 )

INSECT APPETITE.

HE man who wished he had a throat a mile long, and a palate all the

way, might envy the feats performed in the world of insignificance. Some insects are endowed with an appetite so keen, and a digestion so rapid, that they eat incessantly throughout the whole of their lives. They begin as soon as they are born, and go steadily on till they die. Their existence is a feast, without a change of plates, or a pause between the courses. Morning, noon, and night, their mouths are full, and an endless procession of favourite food gratifies the unwearied palate. They know not the names of meals. Breakfast commences with infancy, and their only after-dinner nap is a passage to another state of existence.

This is generally the case with grubs, where the eggs from which they are produced are laid in the food on which they live. Thus they lose no time when they come into

Their Work is to eat.

147

the world. Everything is prepared for them. Their work is to eat. They have no other calling, amusement, or pursuit. Talk of a pig! In a natural state, he has to think and bestir himself to get victuals. His intellect is exercised in searching for the whereabouts of acorns, snails, and what not. Besides, society expects him, occasionally, to lie in the sun and grunt. Many hours of his youth are spent in spasmodic gambols with his little brothers and sisters. Unless shut up, and supplied by man, he never grows fat. A cow, certainly, contrives to fill up a good deal of her time in gratifying the sense of taste. What with bona-fide eating, and then material review of that process, with her eyes shut, she makes the most of a mouthful.

a

But for steady consistent application commend me to a grub. While in that state, the quantity of food consumed by insects is vastly greater, in proportion to their bulk, than that required by larger animals. Some caterpillars eat twice their weight of leaves daily-which is, as if a man of twelve stone were to get through something over two hundred legs of mutton in the course of a week. There are larvæ, however, who dis

148

Refinement-Endurance.

tance the caterpillars. The maggots of flesh flies have been said actually to treble their weight in half an hour.

As might possibly be expected, these animals in the next stage of their existence, which is as sublimated as before it was gross, eat very little. The greedy caterpillar, when become a butterfly, dips the tip of its tongue in honey; and the maggot itself, when transformed into a fly, is content with an occasional whet of its proboscis.

But there are many insects in a state higher than that of vulgar larvæ who distinguish themselves at table. The ant-lion will devour daily an animal of its own size. Fancy the Fusileer Guards eating up the London Scottish at a meal. But though these little Heliogabali are so greedy, their powers of abstinence are equal to their appetite.

Instances are given in that charming book, "Entomology," by Kirby & Spence, of a spider being made to fast, without injury, for ten months, and of a beetle kept alive for three years without food. Another writer, a foreigner, tells us of a mite, which he gummed alive to the point of a needle, and placed before his microscope, and adds that it took eleven weeks to die. Horrible!