Chapter II: Part 2

There are four animals in this country whose nests can be found without having to dig, and these are the mole, the squirrel, the dormouse, and the harvest-mouse. Three of these build their nests above the ground, and the fourth, "the little gentleman in black velvet," builds the ground above his nest. I am going to tell you something about this one (the mole) first, because his nest, I think, is the easiest to see. I expect most of you know those queer little heaps of earth which are sometimes dotted about the fields and are called mole-hills (I want you to keep these in your minds for the moment), and I expect those of you who have got a natural history book will have seen a picture of what is called a mole fortress. I want you to put that out of your mind altogether; it is quite wrong. Now, the little mole-hills never have a nest in them, and I am not quite sure why the moles make so many, but if you ever find a really big hill among the little ones, as big as six or seven of these heaped together, and grub down into it (it is quite soft, and you can do this with your hands if you don't mind getting dirty), you will find a mole's nest just about the place where you would find the grass growing if there was no hill at all. In May or June you may find the baby moles. Have a good look at them and put them back, for you won't be able to keep them alive, and the mother mole is sure to come back and look after them--when you have gone.

Another animal's nest which is easy to find is the squirrel's, but of course it is no use looking for this anywhere but in woods and places of that kind where you know there are squirrels about. A squirrel's nest is in a hole, or fork of a tree, and always, always out of reach. When it is in a fork of a tree it looks like an untidy bird's-nest, made of rather big twigs. It has a soft, warm lining, though, and, if you can get up to it, you may find the baby squirrels inside in June. If they are furry you can take them away, for then they are quite easy to bring up and tame.

Then there is the harvest-mouse's nest, which is the most beautifully made of all, and is usually to be found in cornfields, built some way up the stalks, and looking just like a bird's-nest except that it is quite round and has no opening that you can see. One can't very well walk about in a cornfield, but you have another chance of finding a harvest-mouse's nest in the hay-time, for they often build in the hay, and once I found one with babies in it, on a haycock, where it had been thrown without any one noticing it.

You have two chances, too, of finding a dormouse's nest, for this mouse builds one nest for the babies, and another to sleep in through the winter. Both of them are rather big compared with the harvest-mouse's nest, and they are generally made of moss and leaves, often honeysuckle leaves, which the mother dormouse seems to like, though I can't tell you why.

The dormouse often makes a sleeping-nest at the side of a path through a wood, and does not seem to fasten it very carefully, for one sometimes finds it in the middle of a path, as if the dormouse had turned over in his sleep and sent the whole thing rolling. It may be, though, that some hungry animal has pulled the nest out, and thinking the dormouse dead, preferred to take the chance of finding something alive and warm, and so left it.

If you ever find a sleeping dormouse, which will feel quite cold, you should take the nest and all and keep it somewhere out of doors. For if you bring it into a warm house, it will wake up before its proper time and very likely die; but if you leave it alone until the spring comes, it will wake up as Mother Nature meant it to, and you will have a pet which you will like much better than one which you looked at in a shop window, and could not resist buying.

Now there are other things for you to learn about animals' nests besides the kind of places in which you may hope to find them. To begin with, you must remember that an animal has not got the beautiful little nest-making tool which a bird has--I mean, of course, a beak. A bird's beak is used something like a knitting-needle, to thread the little wisps of hay and feathers and moss and things like that in and out and round about, until they stick where the beak tells them. I expect that animals use their teeth a little in the same way, but they use them more, I think, in biting leaves into strips, in softening hard stalks, and cutting thick grasses into thin ones, and I feel sure that they would find knitting very awkward, because of their thick lips. Most animals, instead of building a nest in front of themselves, build it round themselves. The first thing they do is to collect a little store of nest-material, and this they manage by biting and nibbling at anything which they think will be nice and soft, and carrying it away in their mouths. I expect most of you have seen a house-mouse's nest. It is usually made of scraps of paper and wool and fluff and other little rubbishes, which they can pick up behind the walls and under the floor. Sometimes, though, Mousey is not content with a common kind of nest, and gets into a hat-box and spoils a pretty hat, or into a drawer and spoils valuable papers. Once a mouse nibbled the date and the signature off a valuable paper of mine. That was all she took, but it gave me a great deal of trouble, for it was a legal paper, and it had to be done all over again. Sometimes Mousey chooses even queerer places. I will tell you three I have heard of; the first was a tin of gunpowder, the second was a box of cigars, and the third was a plum cake. The last sounds the nicest, doesn't it? But mousey is very fond of tobacco, and I have often seen her, when the house was quiet, nibbling at scraps of tobacco which I had dropped on the carpet.

The first thing that animals do, then, is to collect a little store of nest material. The next thing is to dive right into the middle of it. When they are well in the middle, they begin turning over and over, with a tug here and a push there, and little curls and flicks of the tail (the Harvest Mouse has the most useful tail of any of our animals, and that, I think, is one reason why his nest is so neat), until in a very short time they have scooped out a hollow in the ball of grass, or whatever it may be, and are sitting inside it. Sometimes they have to come out and get some more grass, and then the outside of the nest, which is quite springy, closes up like a little trapdoor behind them, and they have to make a fresh way in.

SOMETHING ABOUT BEETLES (APRIL)

I expect that most of you have seen some of the wonderful foreign beetles, whose wing-covers gleam and sparkle with colour as though they were studded with jewels; and some of you, perhaps, may have envied the small Black Folks down south, who have the chance of finding such beautiful things. But if you have a microscope, or even a magnifying glass, or if you know some one who will lend you either, you need not envy the small Black Folks at all, for here, in our own dear country, there are hosts and hosts of beetles as beautiful as any in the world. But there is always a something, isn't there? and the something in this case is that they are so very, very small. There is another something, and that is that nearly all of them have such very, very long names. The reason for this is that the young people were not the first to find them. If they had done so they would certainly have given them names which grownups could understand, just as the young people of long ago christened Tom-Tit and Jenny Wren, and Daddy Long-legs and Flitter Mouse. All these names have lived since they were first made, and they will live, I think, long after some much more learned names for the same things have been altogether forgotten.

Now I must tell you how to find these beautiful little beetles, and I think that you will be able to find them very soon after you have read these lines, for the spring-time will have come, and the May will have flowered, and there is nothing that the little beetles like better than May-buds. All you have to do is to find a May-tree (it doesn't matter if it is white or pink, and it needn't even be a May-tree so long as there is plenty of blossom on it) and hit one of the branches with a stick, and hold a butterfly-net, or an old umbrella, or a piece of newspaper, or even your hat (an old hat is best) underneath, and catch what falls from the branches. You will find all sorts of things, but among them there are sure to be some tiny long-snouted beetles which are called Rhynchophora. That is a dreadful name, isn't it? but I think that the English word "weevils" is just as ugly. Though they are very small indeed, you will see at once that they have very wonderful colours. Probably you will catch an emerald-green one, and a sky-blue one, and perhaps a little square-shaped scarlet one, which is not very uncommon, and there may come a red-letter day when you catch one of the most beautiful little beetles in the world, who is green and crimson and gold. I have done this twice myself.

There are so many different beetles in our country that no one has ever collected all of them. Most are very small indeed, like the weevils, but a few are quite big, and I am showing you pictures of some of the largest.

Perhaps I ought to tell you how to know a beetle when you see one. This sounds easy enough, but it is not quite as easy as it sounds. All beetles have six legs (beetles' bodies are divided into three parts, and the legs grow out of the middle part); nearly all of them have strong, horny covers for their wings, and all of them have their skeletons outside. This sounds a very topsy-turvy arrangement, but it is quite true. We have our bones inside, and our flesh outside, but beetles have their bones outside and their flesh inside. Sometimes you may see beetles crushed flat in the road, but often they are trodden on or run over without being killed; and the reason for this is that their hard, outside skeletons prevent their soft insides from being altogether squashed up. Once I ran over a Stag-beetle on my bicycle--it was nearly dark at the time, and I was over him before I could get out of his way. Now a big Stag-beetle weighs about an eighth of an ounce, and I am rather a heavy person--indeed, with my bicycle thrown in I should think that I must weigh over two hundredweight, which is about thirty thousand times as much as the Stag-beetle. You can imagine how surprised I was to find that the Stag-beetle was not hurt. I ought to tell you, though, that the road was soft, and that my bicycle-tyres were not blown up hard, so perhaps the Stag-beetle did not get all my weight on his back--but, anyhow, it was a wonderful escape for him, wasn't it?

The two largest beetles in this country are the Stag-beetle and the Great Black Water Beetle. I am not sure which should really be called the larger of the two, for it seems hardly fair to count the Stag-beetle's antlers, and if we leave these out, I fancy that the Great Black Water Beetle has the bigger body. It is curious that these two large beetles should be such quiet, easy-going things, and that they should never dream of eating beetles smaller than themselves.

But so it is, for both of them, the Stag-beetle on land and the Great Water Beetle in the ditch, eat scarcely anything at all, and, when they do eat, are quite content to suck the juices out of plants. One reason for these big beetles eating so little is, I think, the very long time which they have for feeding while they are caterpillars--beetle caterpillars, by the way, are always called "grubs" or "larvæ," and beetle chrysalises are called "pupæ." The grubs of the Stag-beetle live on decaying wood (you may sometimes find them at the bottom of an old gate post which has decayed under the ground), and take three or four years to become "full-fed." The grub of the Great Water Beetle spends all his time (three or four years, too, I expect) in the water, and I think he feeds on decaying plants, but I am not sure of this. Some people say that the Stag-beetle uses his great antlers to crush twigs and leaves so as to get the juice. This may be so, but I have never seen him do it.

Another big and beautiful insect is the Musk Beetle. As you see in the picture, he has very long horns and a narrow body. He is a beautiful bronze green all over, and must be a wonderful sight when he is flying in the sunshine. I have never seen him fly myself, but people who have say that his legs and horns stream out behind him, so that he must look like a little green Heron. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about him, however, is his scent. I expect most of you know those little round pink sweets which are called "cachous." He smells just like the taste of those, and that is why he is called Musk Beetle.

Another big beetle I have to show you is the Cockchafer. You must look at his picture carefully, because it shows you how a beetle lifts up his hard wing-covers when he is going to fly. Some beetles, the Burying Beetle for one, turn these wing-covers almost upside down when they are flying, so that the hollowed side is uppermost. I expect that this helps to keep them up when they are flying, and perhaps it helps them to start as well.

Of course you have all heard of the wonderful flying machines which are now being made. To fly at all, you must be able to do three things: lift yourself up, keep yourself up, and move about. If you can do these three things just as quickly and just as slowly as you want to, you will be able to fly perfectly. The hardest puzzle of all is how to make a machine which will keep itself up (and the right way up too) without moving about very quickly. This is what many birds can do so beautifully, and I expect that in time (all great inventions take a long time to make perfect, and they are never the work of one man alone, but rather of one man helped by the work of many men who lived before him) machines will be made in which men will be able to fly as perfectly as birds. At present they only fly as perfectly as beetles, but that they should be able to do this is a very wonderful thing. The great difference, in flying, between a beetle and a bird like a gull, is that the beetle has to keep going full speed all the time, or else he will tumble down to the ground, while a bird like a gull can poise balanced in the air, with just a flap or turn of his wings now and then to keep himself the right way up.

BUNNY RABBIT (LADY DAY)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

There are "go-to-bury" rabbits and "stub" rabbits. The "go-to-bury" rabbits have the longest ears, but the "stub" rabbits, as any stoat will tell you, are the best for dinner.

Moreover, there are rabbits and bunny rabbits--but all were bunny rabbits once.

Bunny Rabbit missed the bluebells, though these rang in his birth.

Up rose the kingly foxgloves, tier upon tier of them pink-purple, but Bunny Rabbit missed these too.

A golden world--the ragwort blazing on the slope, below the mellowing corn-field, and, mantling primrose hills, the dawn.

Now Bunny Rabbit was ready.

The burrow winds in four sharp turns, and, at each one, he stubbed his nose. This through a mad desire to keep near Mother; for Mother's tail bobbed in quick jerks, shaving each corner to a hair, and he and all his brothers raced to catch it. They reached the entrance packed as one, but Bunny Rabbit, squirming clear, shot past the uplifted paw, butted his waiting Father, flung off him like a smoke-puff, and landed on his back six feet below.

That is why he has a separate history.

It was indeed sharp change of circumstance. The nursery had been pitch-black, though one short gleam of light had reached it daily. That was when Mother Rabbit snatched her food, and sealed the entrance up for fear of Father. At other times she screened her babies' eyes. So now the sunshine blinded Bunny Rabbit, and pointed grass-stems pricked a skin which nothing harder than breast-fur had touched.

He took some minutes to collect his wits, then twisted upright, and, with frightened eyes, sought guidance.

But for the woolscrap all would have been well.

Mother Rabbit was close at hand, feeding his brothers with small sprigs of green. Father Rabbit was close too. The sight of his lost wife had softened him. He purred approval. He licked the children's noses.

Assuredly the lost would have been found, but for the woolscrap. The woolscrap fluttered, wind-borne, down the slope, and Bunny Rabbit nature-taught, went after it.

It led him far.

It caught on brambles and then flicked away. It plunged in little valleys. It mounted little hills. It bobbed and jerked and twisted, and Bunny Rabbit, panting hard, pursued.

At last he caught it, checked upon a grass-stem, and--_it wasn't Mother after all_!

Bunny Rabbit sat down bewildered. He was hot with running; his ears were prickly, his coat was rumpled. He combed his ears out, one by one, brushed down his face, and nibbled all the fur that he could reach. Then he felt better.

The morning breeze gained appetite and sent the woolscrap once more on its travels. Bunny Rabbit took no heed of it--he watched and heard the awakening of the wood. Bird notes, that in the burrow had been restful, now screamed and whistled in his ear. Out from the shelter-side of leaves, out from the heart of flowers, out from the grass-stems and from earth itself, came whirring, humming, buzzing insects. In this new myriad-peopled world there seemed small room for loneliness. A red mouse bobbed up from his hole, stared at him curiously, then whisked about and vanished. Bright eyes bejewelled the grass-tufts. Here a flick-footed lizard, here a slow-trailing blindworm, here a squat toad. The day-moths woke and flitted leaf to leaf. The bee-fly clambered up the thyme, poised hovering, vanished slantwise, and vanishing, reappeared.

This was full entertainment, and Bunny Rabbit stared round-eyed. He stared till hunger gripped him. His brothers, a bare hundred yards away, already had acquired the art of nibbling. He had no teacher, and no wits by which to teach himself. So, though food lay on every side, he starved. He felt a craving he had never known; a tightening of his fluffy body; an ache for Mother. Mother would set things straight for him, but where to find her was beyond his reasoning.

He wandered aimlessly this way and that; he nosed the bushes aimlessly; he stepped on Berus the Adder, because to him an adder, neatly coiled, was merely speckled ground.

Berus the Adder, though infuriate, forebore to strike. Venom is far too precious to be squandered, and baby rabbits are too large to swallow. He swayed his ugly head, and slowly, very slowly, he stretched forward. This was enough for Bunny Rabbit, who spun about and left the wind behind.

Before he had been lured by Hope, now Terror thrust her goad at him. He leapt two thorn-stumps blindly, and, stumbling, plunged head-deep into the ant-hill.

The ant-hill covers two square yards of ground, and every inch of it is peopled. Though soft, it is no place to fall on. Its citizens resent intrusion--nay, more, resent it actively.

When Bunny Rabbit reached the grass he felt the pricking of a thousand needles. The pain and smart of them half maddened him. He rolled upon his back; he scraped his neck on stones; he writhed; he bit himself.

The pain eased as his torturers dropped off him. Once more he tried to run, but in ten yards his strength was gone. His fore-paws flopped and stumbled, his hind paws dragged, his nose was bruised, his coat was hot and steamy. So he flung down bewildered, scraped an imaginary bed (a poor half-hearted scraping), slid out his feet, and lay full length, eyes closed.

Nothing now seemed to matter much. The hornet moth came whirring past his ears, he never heard it; the drone fly danced upon his nose, he never felt it; the Man lay almost at his side, he never saw him. Poor tired-out baby! Nature had ordered sleep and so he slept.

* * * * *

The Man woke slowly. Nature had been his comfort, too, though sleep had not refreshed him. He rose half-dreaming, with a smile. "All right, little girl," he said; then his face tightened. "It's the same place," he muttered, "just where we lost the locket. First bluebell, then foxglove, then ragwort; blue, purple, and gold. It was the gold she loved."

The woodland rang with voices, but Bunny Rabbit slept until man spoke. Then he leapt up and found himself a prisoner.

"You sha'n't be hurt, Bunny," said the Man.

Bunny Rabbit ceased his wriggling, and lay quite limp, his eyes upturned, his nose a-quiver.

"Why lying in the open?" said the Man "foolish, foolish Bunny. What's to be done with you? Stoats and foxes and hawks, Bunny. You can't be left, that's certain. You can't be taken to your Mother, for I don't know your Mother. You can't be taken to your hole, for I don't know your hole. Hungry, Bunny? You look as though you'd travelled. Try some grass."

Bunny Rabbit knew nothing of grass and kept his teeth tight-clenched.

"You must eat something," said the Man.

He loosed one hand to reach a groundsel-top, and Bunny Rabbit, squirming clear, slipped deep into his pocket.

"Well, it's your own choice, Bunny. Now you come home with me."

It was dark and warm and soft inside the pocket. The Man took swinging downhill strides, and, at each stride, the folds changed shape. Now they were loose and twisty, and Bunny Rabbit stretched full length to fill them. Now they were tightened to a ball, and Bunny Rabbit tightened as the centre.

The Man paused as he reached the corn, and stepped two paces up again. He stooped, and Bunny Rabbit was inverted. He rose, and Bunny Rabbit found his feet. But now he was more cramped than ever. He lay deep in the farthest corner. Over, and on all sides of him, was packed a stifling mass of green.

Then Bunny Rabbit used his teeth, axe-fashion at first, but soon to better purpose. The lesson that he should have long since learnt was now enforced by circumstance.

He bit and tasted.

* * * * *

"Bunny Rabbit," said the Man, "your ears are abnormal."

Bunny Rabbit lay crouched upon the hearthrug, blinking. At first he had found covert in the curtains, but these had been looped up. Then he had squeezed behind the bookcase and been, with difficulty, extracted. Then he had set himself to dig. The carpet had repaid him with some fluff. The doormat and the wicker chair seemed promising, but he made little headway, and so had lain down tired.

"Very abnormal ears, Bunny," the Man went on. "This smacks of the domestic. Then why so frightened?"

But Bunny Rabbit was more tired than frightened.

"More food, Bunny?" A bunch of green had lain upon the floor but every scrap had vanished.

"You've had enough for one day, Bunny. It's bedtime, up you come."

So Bunny Rabbit slept that night on blankets, he and the moonshine. The Man tossed restlessly and Bunny Rabbit watched his moving lips. Twilight crept in soft-footed, and Bunny Rabbit took three little jumps and wormed inside the bed-clothes.

* * * * *

"Slept well, Bunny?" said the Man; "it's more than I have. I've made my mind up, Bunny. I'm going. I can't bear the house. I can't bear the rooms. They're empty, empty, empty."

The Man stepped slowly down the stairs and Bunny Rabbit stumbled after him. He reached the hall and paused, then caught up Bunny Rabbit, and once more ascended. He entered every upstairs room and gazed as though to clinch them on his memory. He entered every downstairs room, and in one room, the loneliest of all, he sat and cried his heart out.

* * * * *

"We're homeless, Bunny Rabbit," said the Man. "But you're the better off, for your home's somewhere here."

They had got half-way up the slope. The Man stood tall among the ragwort, and Bunny Rabbit, with wide, frightened eyes, clung to his shoulder.

The Man stooped down, and Bunny Rabbit slid to earth.

"Now you must find your home or make one," said the Man, and Bunny Rabbit straightway tried to make one. He plunged his forepaws in the ground and scratched. The dust flew out behind and, in the midst, shot something hard and glittering.

It was a small gold locket.

The Man bent down and picked it up. He opened it and with dimmed eyes he kissed it.

"You've done me a good turn," he said--"of course it's pure coincidence," and Bunny Rabbit watched him out of sight.

A BUTTERFLY PAINT-BOX (MAY)

I wonder how many of my young readers know why these dainty flying creatures are called "Butterflies"?

We all know what butter is, and we know, too, that there are quite a number of English words which begin with "butter." It is not a pretty beginning, is it? But there it is. Let us think of a few--_butter_-fly, _butter_-cup, _butter_-wort, _butter_-fingers, _butter_-scotch--why, one can think of half a dozen straight away.

Now this shows us clearly that "butter" is a very old word, and that the people of long ago (who were much less clever than we are, perhaps) must have used it quite naturally when they wanted to describe anything which was squashy, or pasty, or greasy, or slippery, or yellow.

Look at the picture at the top of the next page. I wish I could have given it to you in its proper colours. It looks much nicer like that. Look at it carefully. No other English butterfly has the same pretty curves to its wings, and some of you, I dare say, will know what it is by its shape. But I must tell those who do not know. It is a Brimstone Butterfly, and its colour is bright, bright yellow with an orange spot in the middle of each wing (you can only see one wing in the picture, the other three are hidden behind it; one way to tell a butterfly from a moth is to remember that butterflies' wings close standing up, but nearly all moths' wings close down flat).

It is almost certain that this insect was the first insect to be called "Butter"-fly because of its butter colour. When people began to see that there were other pretty flying things of much the same shape, though of quite different colours, they called them all Butterflies after this first one.

So we speak, nowadays, without ever thinking of how funny it really is, of blue butterflies and white butterflies and black butterflies and purple butterflies, and red and yellow and green butterflies--all the colours of the rainbow, in fact.

We would hardly talk of black butter or purple butter, would we?

Some of you will perhaps wonder why the Brimstone Butterfly was the first to be noticed when there are so many others which are just as common.

I think I can tell you.

The Brimstone is almost always the first butterfly to be seen in the spring. Most butterflies die towards the autumn, and leave eggs behind, which hatch out in the following year, but the Brimstone, and a few others, sleep through the cold winter months and come out in the first warm days of spring and _then_ lay their eggs. The Brimstone comes out first of all, often quite early in February, and so he is the first butterfly that is likely to be noticed in the year.

Perhaps his coming out at a time when cows began to give more milk, and butter began to be more plentiful, had something to do with his being called "butterfly," but I think that his colour had more to do with it.

What lovely colours butterflies are! Have you ever fancied a butterfly paint-box? Let us think of a few common colours, and see how we could fill it. Suppose we wanted a blue? Why we should have a whole family of butterflies "The Blues" to choose from, and we should be just as well off for blacks and browns. For red we could take the beautiful scarlet ribbon of the Red Admiral. "Why is he called Admiral?" you ask. Well, Admiral is the same as Admirable, and his old name was Red Admirable. For purple we should have the Purple Emperor and the Purple Hair-streak--there is no purple quite so glorious as the purple that these have on their wings. For orange, the Orange-tip and the Clouded Yellow. For yellow, the Brimstone and several others. For white, of course, the Whites. Green might bother us a little, but there is one English butterfly, the Green Hair-streak, whose wings are a beautiful green underneath. As he is our only green butterfly I give you his picture. He is the upper butterfly in the first picture and, as you see, quite a little one.

We must not forget gold and silver. When I was young, I expected to find gold and silver in a really nice paint-box, and I do not suppose young people have changed much since then. Silver we should have no trouble about. There is a big family of butterflies called the Fritillaries, who have wonderful patches and ribbons of silver on their wings. I do not think you will find gold, except perhaps a little gold powder, on any English butterfly, but you will find it on several chrysalises. Indeed, Chrysalis means "the little golden one," and the name was given to these queer spiky things because gold patches were so often seen on them.

I have seen little pictures made with the scales of butterflies' wings, with blue skies and green trees and everything. So you see a butterfly paint-box is not altogether a make-believe, though it is not an easy paint-box for young people to paint with.

TWO WONDERFUL WASPS (JUNE)

I expect you all must know the Common Yellow Wasps--the kind that come buzzing into the jam at tea-time; and I want to tell you this about them--that I don't think they ever really get angry if there is jam about and you leave them alone, though, when small people jump up and scream, and edge away from the table, and make bad shots at them with spoons, they get so frightened and bewildered, poor things, that they may sting somebody, because they feel they really must do something exciting.

Perhaps some of you do _not_ know that there are seven different kinds of these Yellow Wasps to be met with in this country of ours, and I should be surprised to hear that any of you know _much_ about the two Black Wasps whose story I am going to tell you. I say "black," because they _look_ black, though both of them have yellow girdles on their bodies. I wish they had English names; for I am sure they both deserve them; and English names are much easier to remember than Latin ones. However, Latin names are the only ones I know for them, so we must make the best of it, and call one of them Spinipes (you must read this as if it were Spiny Peas) and the other Crabro.

We will take Spinipes first.

If you look at the picture on the opposite page, you will see what she is like, and, if you look at the picture in Spinipes the Sand-Wasp (p. 151) you will see one of the clever things she does.

She is building a little tube out of sand which is so delicate that the slightest touch from one of our own clumsy fingers will knock it down like a card-house, but it is strong enough for her to crawl inside; and she has to crawl inside very often, as you will see. I expect you will all want to know how she builds it, and what it is for. I will tell you how she builds it to begin with. You must know first that she has a pair of jaws which work quite differently from ours. Instead of moving up and down, they move across each other from side to side just like a pair of scissors.

The first thing that Spinipes does is to work this little pair of scissors in the sand so as to make a little hole. I am showing you on page 148 a picture of her when she is just starting to dig. Every little pellet of sand she digs out she puts carefully round the outside of the hole, and presently she glues them all together. She carries the glue somewhere inside her, and brings it out when she wants it, Then she digs a little deeper and glues another layer of sand pellets on the top of the first one, and in a very short time she has dug a hole about two inches deep, and built a little tube round the top of it, which is made of the little sand-pellets she has brought out of the hole. Sometimes the tube stands straight up, but more often it bends about half-way and curves downwards. When she has finished it off, and is sure that the hole is deep enough, and the tube is long enough, she goes right down to the bottom and lays an egg, and she hangs the egg by a tiny thread (which she also makes herself, but I don't know how she does it) to the side of the hole a little above the bottom. You will be able to see this in the picture, but you must remember that in this and in some of the other pictures the sand has been cut away so that you can see exactly how the hole goes. Then, if it is a bright, sunny day, as it usually is when she begins digging, she flies away, and in about half an hour's time comes back carrying something clasped tight against her body. What do you think that is? It is a small green caterpillar. She stops a moment at the entrance of the tube, pushes the caterpillar down in front of her, and disappears after it. In a few seconds she is out again and off, and in another quarter of an hour or so she is back again with another caterpillar and so on, without ever tiring, through six or seven hours of a hot June or July day.

I expect you will have guessed what the caterpillars are for. They are food for the wasp grub when it hatches out of the egg. Generally each hole has between twenty and thirty little caterpillars in it, and sometimes, when caterpillars are scarce, the Mother Wasp has to work hard for three or four days. If you dig into a hole yourself and look at the store of little caterpillars, you will see there is something the matter with them. They seem to be alive and yet they don't seem to be able to crawl. Wise men say that the wasp stings them just enough to make them drowsy so that they can't crawl out of the hole, and can't hurt the wasp grub by jostling up against it. It wouldn't do to kill them, because then they would go bad in the hole before the grub had time to eat them. This sounds rather cruel, but I don't think it is really, because it is quite certain that the caterpillars cannot feel as we should perhaps feel, and we may be quite sure that in the wonderful Nature World everything is arranged for the best, so that only the right number of wasp-grubs may be properly fed and grow up to do what it is their duty to do, and only the right number of small green caterpillars may grow up also.

You will wonder, I expect, why the Mother Wasp troubles to make the little tube above the hole. I think I can tell you one reason and you must remember this, because it was just by chance that I found it out. One hot morning in June I watched Mother Spinipes bringing seven caterpillars to her hole. Then a heavy thunderstorm came on, and the rain came down in buckets, and I had to run away for shelter. Late in the evening when it had cleared up a little, I thought I would like to see what had happened to the tube I had been watching, and I went back to the place and found that the rain had knocked it all to pieces. But I saw something much more interesting than this. The tube had been on the face of a sand-cliff, and in a crack close by there was an ants' nest. I found that the ants were running down the wasp's hole and bringing out the caterpillars as fast as they could (I saw them take six away), and taking them along the face of the cliff into their own stronghold. Now the tube that stands out from the sand somehow frightens the ants (I never saw an ant climb out along the tube and down inside it), and so I think that one of the reasons for the tube must be that it keeps away ants and creatures of that kind who crawl about on the face of the sand cliff and like eating caterpillars.

It was a long time before I found out what kind of creature the caterpillars stored by Spinipes would have turned into if they had not been caught. I thought that it would have been a small moth, but I was quite wrong. At different times I took several caterpillars away from the tubes, and tried to bring them up, but it was of no use, for they all died because they could not eat. One day, however, I happened to be sweeping with a butterfly-net in a field of lucerne--it is great fun sweeping, and you should try it, for you never know what you may get next--and I swept up what I knew at once was the self-same little green caterpillar that Spinipes stocked her larder with. She _always_ brought the same kind. Well, I got a good many of them by sweeping in the lucerne, and brought them up carefully, and, in due time, they spun little open-work cocoons on the lucerne leaves which I fed them with, and at last turned into small, brown, long-nosed beetles. I need not trouble you with the Latin names of these beetles, but I may tell you that they are a kind of weevil which is very common and very destructive to clover and plants of that kind. So, if we consider that every Mother Spinipes lays eight or nine eggs, and stocks eight or nine burrows each with about thirty destructive little caterpillars, we must allow that she is a very useful little wasp.

But I am not sure that she is more useful to man than the other little wasp I have to tell of, the Crabro. I found out her usefulness quite by chance, and I expect you will like to hear how. To begin with, I must tell you that all the "Digger" Wasps, as some people call them, Spinipes and the Crabros and several other kinds, store their burrows with insect food for their grubs to feed on.

But each one has her own particular idea as to what is the _best_ food. One will use nothing but little spiders, another nothing but little flies, another, like Spinipes, nothing but little beetle grubs. And the queer part is that they seldom seem to make any mistake as to the kind of food they want. It will be _one_ kind of spider, and _one_ kind of fly, and _one_ kind of beetle-grub. If there are ever more than one kind, they are always very near relations, and, I suppose, taste very much alike.

Now Crabro's store consists of really _large_ flies, blue-bottles, and green-bottles--I expect most of you know the beautiful shiny green-bottle fly whose proper name is Caesar--and how little Crabro manages to overcome and carry off large bottle-flies who are several times her own size and several times her own weight, I cannot tell. But I have found out for certain that she does so, and the pictures will show you how I found out.

Last autumn a dangerous bough had to be taken down from the top of a high elm-tree in my garden. It was perhaps sixty feet above the ground and it came down with a crash and broke up into little pieces. I picked up one of these tubes and galleries, which I knew were insects' work. But there was something much more exciting than this. A number of the galleries had blind ends to them, and at the bottom of these were masses of dead blue-bottles, tightly packed, which rested on small pillows of sawdust, and had long plugs of sawdust above them.

I opened one of the long sawdust plugs and found, as I half expected to find, that at the end of it next to the blue-bottles, was a small brown papery cocoon, and that inside the cocoon was a wasp grub. I need hardly tell you that I collected a lot of the wood, and kept it carefully through the winter, and tried to make the little grubs as much at home as if they had stayed up in their tree. To do this I had to keep the wood in moist and rather dark surroundings. Then when the spring came round I sometimes put the wood in the sunshine, when it was not too hot, and in the first week in June I was rewarded for my trouble, for the little wasps hatched out in dozens, and so I was able to find out what they were.

Look up to the top of the trees some warm summer day, and think of the blue-bottle hunt which may be going on above us, and of the wonderful little hunter, Crabro.

SPINIPES THE SAND-WASP (MIDSUMMER DAY)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This insect-tale is based on observations of fact extending over several summers. It may interest some of my readers to know the scientific names of the chief characters mentioned. I do not think that any of them have popular names. The heroine is the solitary Sand-Wasp _Odynerus Spinipes_, a blacker and somewhat smaller insect than the familiar yellow Wasps of Town and Garden. The Red King and the Black Queen are the male and female of a solitary Bumble Bee, _Anthophora Pilipes_. The Mistress of the Robes is a "Cuckoo" Bee, _Melecta armata_, which attends on Anthophora, and lays its eggs in the cells made by Anthophora for her own eggs. The grubs of both feed on the honey and pollen which _Anthophora_ alone has the trouble of procuring. _O. Spinipes_ has several cuckoos, the most officious being the jewel flies, _Chrysis ignita_ and _Chrysis bidentata_, whose grubs, I fancy, eat the grub of Spinipes, as well as the food stored up for it. The Ophion is a common Ichneumon fly, and the beetle-grubs belong to a very common and destructive weevil, _Hypera variabilis_.

The Sand Cliff splits the old gravel-pit in two, and, jutting southward, fronts the mid-day sun. The cuttings driven east and west of it have long been clothed with furze and briar and nettle. Rank grass conceals the cart-track round its base, and, on its summit, a thin, root-bound soil gives foothold to a straggling hedge of privet.

Man, needing gravel only, scorned the sand; and, as he turned his back on it, came Nature, gently mothering; and brought it warmth, and light, and life.

First the wild Bees, Red Kings, Black Queens, fringe-footed, shaggy-coated. These made a chambered palace of the cliff, and peopled it within a summer. With them came Lords-in-Waiting and their Ladies, in liveries of black velvet, ermine-faced; and, after these, a fluttering gauze-winged host--jewel-flies ablaze with green and blue and crimson, trim slender-waisted digger-wasps, long-streamered swart ichneumons. And, last of all, came Spinipes herself.

Straight from the blue she dropped on May's last morning, swerved through the hum and racket of the Bees, poised with her smoke-grey wings a-whir, and lighted softly on the centre ledge, her ebony body mirroring the sun, her five gold girdles blazing.

Down dropped a Red King at her side. He stared at her right royally, and kept right royal silence, yet there was kindness in his yellow face, and kindness in the purr of his departure.

Down dropped a Black Queen in his place, and danced and hummed about her, and measured her slim-waistedness, and buzzed her disapproval.--"What is it?" asked she snappishly. "Why does it come in this get-up? Where has it left its furs?"

"It never had furs," said a voice behind her. It was her Mistress of the Robes.

"I know the family, Ma'am. Queer clothes, of course. But artists, Ma'am, artists to the toe-tips."

"Artists in what?" said the Black Queen.

"In Sand, Ma'am, in Sand. See, she's starting now."

"That's hive-bee's work," said the Black Queen contemptuously.

"The art comes at the finish, Ma'am----"

"Well, call me when it comes," said the Black Queen, "and keep her off the nurseries, and clean that eleventh cell of mine, and wait till I come back. She soared up skywards, fussily, cleared the cliff's head, circled three times about, and set a straight course south.

"Good riddance!" said the Mistress of the Robes.

"They're like that everywhere," said Spinipes. "What are her nurseries to me? Black Queens and black sand go together. Now this is red sand. I feel the grip and bind of it."

She was quite right. The ledge was rain-washed silt. Sunshine had bleached the outer crust of it, but, under this, its substance was brick-red--fine ground stuff too, damp, clingy, easily tunnelled, and easily smarmed into a hold-fast mortar.

"In that case," said the Mistress of the Robes, "I may as well be going."

Slowly she floated off the ledge, yet kept her face towards it. Slowly she tacked from side to side, in dipping, widening sweeps. Slowly she passed the cliff's east edge, and disappeared.

_Then_ Spinipes commenced to dig in earnest.

Her scissor-jaws worked viciously, carved four-square pellets from the sun-baked crust, gripped them and flung them backwards. As she engaged the softer soil, she added feverish foot-work, and scraped, and rasped, and scrabbled it, and kicked it back in dust-clouds. Her head was quickly buried, next her waist, and, presently, she disappeared completely.

But not for long.

She backed up to the surface, dragging a sand-load underneath her body. She shook this clear, and, without resting, dived afresh. Ten loads in all she raised, and each one meant a longer spell below. For she had more to do than dig. From end to end her shaft must needs be glazed--and this meant patient mouth-work, deft steadying touches as the mortar set, and skill to keep her tube's round symmetry, and guide it in a gentle curve to end in quiet darkness. Three inches down she sank, and, at the bottom, drove a slant, and hollowed out a store-room.

With this the first stage ended. She left her shaft, and, poising in mid-air, made survey of the ledge. To right she swerved, to left again, outwards and back, upwards and down, until its bearings east and west, from sky above, and earth below, were rooted in her memory.

So far, so good--her morning's work was done, the picture of it fixed into her mind. Upwards she soared until the receding cliff shrunk to a splotch of brown. Once more she took her bearings and was satisfied, set her course east, and, with a dropping arrow's flight, came to the hill-top coppice. She landed on the bramble hedge which skirts its western clearing.

"Good hunting, sister!" said the Ophion Fly. She sat on a high briar-leaf, her rainbow wings uplifted.

"It's hardly time for that," said Spinipes. "To-morrow, p'raps. To-day I feed myself."

"There's lucerne on the slope," the Ophion said, "and something underneath you."

There was a snap and flicker in the grass, and presently appeared a pygmy beetle, long-snouted, dusty-coated, trailing its slow legs wearily.

"D'you _see_ it?" said the Ophion Fly.

"I see it, but what of it?"

"It means good hunting, sister. Green grubs, black-headed, fatted. Too small for me, but just the size for you. You'll find them in the lucerne."

"Thank you," said Spinipes, but she was half across the field, a dancing, filmy wisp of pink, wind-borne.

A meal, and then to work, thought Spinipes. It must be done by sunset. It must. It must.

From spray to spray she flitted. Flower after flower she robbed of its pale nectar. Bud after bud she nibbled. At last she found the food she sought, and, with her strength renewed, took flight. Upwards she soared; three times she circled round; then in a straight, unbroken course, whizzed to her shaft. Her pace was scarcely slackened as she entered. Her wings closed lengthways on her back, and, in a moment, she was at the bottom.

Something was there before her.

Something six legged, which kicked and squirmed and writhed. Something which coiled to a hard, slippery ball, and rolled away from capture.

There was no space for it to pass, and yet there seemed no holding it. At last she pinned it with her feet, and, backing, dragged it upwards to the light. It was a radiant jewel fly, a squat, short-waisted, dumpy thing made glorious by its colour. Gems sparkled on it head to tail, sapphire and ruby, emerald and topaz, and, as it struggled, fire of gold blazed and died down upon its jerking body. Instinctively she shook and worried it. Instinctively she flung it down the slope. Head over tail, tight-clenched, it spun, nor opened till it reached the grass below. Here it snapped out to shape again, took instant wing, and, with a glancing flight, regained the ledge.

"An excellent shaft, Madam; quite excellent. No doubt you made it for a special purpose. Now I----"

"Listen to me," said Spinipes, "and mark my every word. If you come near that shaft again--if you so much as touch it with your feet, I'll sting your prying life out."

She charged at it full swing and chased it off the ledge.

"An area sneak!" she muttered, as she dropt underground once more--"and over-dressed at that."

Below the walls showed signs of the encounter--it took ten minutes to repair their glazing. When this was done, she crept back to the entrance. It was high noon. A shimmery haze rose from the heated sand. The hum of work died fitfully away, as, one by one, the homing bees sought shade. The digger-wasps dived deep into their holes; the hunting spiders hid themselves. These were the last to cease from work; the last to cease from play was the rose-chafer.

Him the fierce blaze of heat impelled to bursts of clumsy flight. Across the pit and back again, and up and down the surface of the cliff, he whirred and swung at random. Soon even he grew listless, and crept within the shelter of the privet.

The change came with a catspaw breeze, which rippled from the valley, and, in its quiet passing, fanned the cliff.

It brought back life and energy.