Chapter V: Part 5

We do not gather "figs from thistles," but some equally incongruous botanical associates are sometimes brought about through the insinuating and clambering methods of the tendril. Have we not all seen apple-trees bearing pumpkins or squashes or gourds, all originally carried thither in the form of great yellow blossoms or tender shoots! The grape-vine occasionally plays a singular botanical prank in the orchard. Here is a drooping tendril which has been swinging about for weeks from its vine canopy on the old apple-tree. It had become almost discouraged, when a chance-favoring breeze wafted its tip in contact with an apple close by. It was its last chance; with its hooked extremity it clasped the stem of the fruit, and soon made itself fast with three or four firm coils. Doubtless the little reversing loop somewhere along the tendril was also awakened from its chronic lethargy, and did its best to start the coil. Presumably it succeeded, for the pull was sufficient to dislodge the apple, which, falling to the entire length of the tendril, was still held fast in the grip, whose new responsibility had given it new strength.

And there our apple hung for weeks, swinging like a pendulum from the slender grape-vine, the coils on duty still keeping their firm grip on the stem, even though all above were straightened by the weight of the burden.

A Strange Story of a Grasshopper

A few days ago, while returning from a walk, I chanced to observe a dead grasshopper upon the dirt at the side of the road. Now this incident would not have been of special importance had I not discovered, upon careful _post-mortem_ examination, the very remarkable manner of the insect's death, which recalled a similar surprising episode of several years ago which I had almost forgotten. Upon referring to my note-book of that period, however, I found considerable space devoted to the incident, which greatly astonished me at the time. Inasmuch as it presents in a startling light the wonderful and strange resources by which nature holds in check the too rapid increase of species and maintains the great law of equilibrium among the insect forces, it is well worth recalling in these pages, in the firm belief that my young entomological readers will henceforth look more compassionately and tenderly upon the poor "high-elbowed grig" who is the unfortunate hero of my story. He is familiar to us all, that hovering "rattler" above the hot, dusty road of August, flying up from nowhere beneath our feet in the path, fluttering like a yellow moth, and always disappearing before our eyes when he alights. He is also known as the "Quaker," from his drab suit and bonnet, and his generosity with his "molasses" is proverbial from the days of the Pilgrim settlers. Who would have believed that such a fate as the following lay in store for him.

In previous papers I have indicated some of the remarkable pranks which the various ichneumon-flies play with unsuspecting caterpillars. The polyphemus, for instance, whose cocoon, filled with hopes of a beautiful butterfly existence, yields only a swarm of wasps. The caterpillars are helpless, and would seem an easy prey to the wily fly who lays her eggs upon them; but even the agile-winged "Quaker," and doubtless many of his kind--yes, and still more agile insects--are not quick enough to escape a like fate.

At the time of my discovery I had in preparation an article for "Harper's Magazine" entitled "Among Our Footprints." I wished to describe and illustrate a singular battle which I had shortly before observed between a large red mutilla ant and a "Quaker." The mutilla I had captured at the time, and had preserved as a specimen. I needed only the grasshopper to complete my drawing. Directly in front of my city house a number of vacant grassy lots offered a favorite haunt for the insects--I used to call it the Quaker camp-meeting ground--and I started out to procure one. Having no net, I was soon convinced that I was greatly at a disadvantage. The thermometer was about 90 deg., and, of course, the "Quakers," being in their element, had much the best, not to say the easiest, time of it. I at length gave up the chase, and was about leaving the field, when fortune favored me by the discovery of a clumsy specimen, which seemed unable to fly for any great length, and he was soon captured. Upon examination his wings seemed partially paralyzed, but otherwise he appeared to be in good health and spirits, his hind legs being especially lively and snappy. I immediately took the insect to my studio, and pinned him through the thorax. He was strong enough to pull out the pin from the board and jump around the room with it in my temporary absence.

I lost no time in taking his portrait, which figured in the illustration to the article on "Footprints" as "the ungainly victim," I little dreaming when I gave him such a title what a remarkable sort of victim he even then was. The drawing took me about ten minutes. I then left the studio, and was absent precisely fifteen minutes. Upon returning I found the grasshopper dead.

My curiosity was aroused, not only by such a rapid demise (for the impaling through the thorax is not usually an immediately fatal injury to an insect), but especially by some very strange and unnatural automatic movements of the victim--head protruding and turning from side to side; queer expansion of body, as though breathing; unusual lifting and other motions of legs, particularly of hind legs; the whole demonstration a mockery on life. The grasshopper was pinned to my drawing-board, and against a piece of newspaper. As I watched his strange antics, I suddenly discovered that he had become a veritable phantom of his former self; that I could actually _read the newspaper text through his body_. Examination now revealed the mystery. I could easily see every nook and cranny of the grasshopper's interior, so glassy were the walls of the body, and I could now count about a dozen small, white larvae, which were now full grown, and were crawling about within through head, thorax, body, and hind legs, cleaning its walls of every particle of remaining tissue, and causing the singular motions described. Such a strange house-cleaning I never saw before.

When the "Quaker" locust was captured it showed not the slightest sign of any such goings-on within its being. The final voracity of the larvae was swift and terrible. And what an astonishing instinct is that which should teach these parasites to avoid the vitals of their insect host until the last moments of their own final, complete growth! The entire space of time from the activity of the grasshopper to the empty, transparent phantom was less than thirty minutes. I placed the unfortunate victim in a small, close box. Next morning he presented nothing but a clean, glassy shell, now more glassy than before, empty of every vestige of organic matter, while scattered about on the bottom of the box lay fifteen dark red, egg-shaped chrysalides of the escaped larvae. Two weeks later, upon opening the box, a swarm of flies flew out. I was enabled to keep two of them. They were almost exactly like the common house-fly to the ordinary observer, but belonged to a distinct genus. At this writing, in the absence of my specimen, I cannot give the name by which they are known in learned circles, but I think I am safe in saying that they probably belong to the group called _Tachina_, a family of parasitic flies which spend their early lives in a similar questionable manner, to the probable discomfort of potato-bugs, caterpillars, and other accommodating insect hosts.

I had seen similar flies emerging from my caterpillar boxes in my early entomological days without suspecting their significance, and any large collection of caterpillars in confinement is likely to include a victim.

Riddles in Flowers

Indeed, are they not all riddles? Where is the flower which even to the most devoted of us has yet confided all its mysteries? In comparison with the insight of the earlier botanists, we have surely come much closer to the flowers, and they have imparted many of their secrets to us. Through the inspired vision of Sprengel, Darwin, and their followers we have learned something of their meaning, in addition to the knowledge of their structure, which comprised the end and aim of the study of those early scholars, Linnaeus, Lindley, Jussieu, and De Candolle. To these and other eminent worthies in botany we owe much of our knowledge of _how_ the flowers are made, and of the classification based upon this structure, but if these great savants had been asked, "You have shown us that it _is so_, but _why_ is it thus?" they could only have replied, "We know not; we only know that an all-wise Providence has so ordained and created it."

Take this little collection, which I have here presented, of stamens and petals selected at random from common blossoms. What inexplicable riddles to the botanist of a hundred years ago, even of sixty years ago! For not until that time was their significance fully understood; and yet each of these presents but one of several equally puzzling features in the same flowers from which they were taken.

In that first anther, for example, why those pores at the tip of the cells, instead of the usual slits at the sides, and why that pair of horns at the back? And the next one, with longer tubes, and the same two horns besides! Then there is that queer specimen with flapping ears--one of six from the barberry blossom; and the pointed, arrow-headed individual with a long plume from its apex; and the curved C-shaped specimen--one of a pair of twins which hide beneath the hood of the sage blossom. The lily anther, which comes last, is poised in the centre. Why? What puzzles to the mere botanist! for it is because these eminent scholars _were mere_ botanists--students and chroniclers of the structural facts of flowers--that this revelation of the truth about these blossom features was withheld from them. It was not until they had become philosophers and true seers, not until they sought the divine significance, the reason, which lay behind or beneath these facts, that the flowers disclosed their mysteries to them.

Look at that random row of petals, too!--one with a peacock's eye, two others with dark spots, and next the queer-fingered petal of the mignonette, followed by one of that queer couple of the monk's-hood blossom which no one ever sees unless he tears the flower hood to pieces. We all know the nasturtium, but have we thought to ask it why these petals have such a deep crimson or orange colored spot, and why each one is so beautifully fringed at the edge of its stalk?

These are but a dozen of the millions of similar challenges, riddles, puzzles, which the commonest flowers of field and garden present to us; and yet we claim to "know" our nasturtium, our pink, our monk's-hood larkspur, our daisy, and violet!

No; we must be _more_ than "botanists" before we can hope to understand the flowers, with their endless, infinite variety of form, color, and fragrance.

It was not until the flowers were studied in connection with the insects which visit them that the true secret of these puzzling features became suspected.

We all know, or should know, that the anther in flowers secretes and releases the pollen. For years even the utility of this pollen was a mystery. Not until the year 1682 was its purpose guessed, when Nehemias Grew, an English botanist, discovered that unless its grains reached the stigma in the flower no seed would be produced (Diagram A). But the people refused to believe this, and it was not until fifty years later that Grew's statement was fully accepted, and then only because the great Linnaeus assured the world that it _was_ true. But about fifty years later another botanist in Germany, Sprengel, made the discovery that the flower could not be fertilized as these botanists had claimed, that in many blossoms the pollen could not fall on the stigma.

Sprengel knew that this pollen must reach the stigma, but showed that in most flowers it could not do so by _itself_. He saw that insects were always working in the flowers, and that their hairy bodies were generally covered with pollen, and in this way pollen grains _were_ continually carried to the stigma, as they could easily be in these two blossoms shown at Diagram B. Sprengel then announced to the world his theory--the dawn of discovery, the beginning of the solution of all these floral riddles. The _insect_ explained it all. The bright colors and fragrance were intended to attract him, and the nectar to reward him, and while thus sipping he conveyed the pollen to the stigma and fertilized the flower.

But now Sprengel himself was met with most discouraging opposition to his theory, showing that he had guessed but half the secret after all. Flowers by the hundreds were brought to his notice, like that shown in Diagram C, in which the insect could _not_ transfer the pollen from anther to stigma, as the stigma is closed when the pollen is ripe, and like that in Diagram D, which does not open until the pollen is shed. For seventy years this astonishing fact puzzled the world, and was at last solved by the great Darwin, who showed that nearly all flowers shun their own pollen, and are so constructed, by thousands of singular devices, that the _insect_ shall bring to each the _pollen of another flower_ of the same species, and thus effect what is known as _cross-fertilization_.

We must then look at all flowers as expressions of welcome to some insect--day-flowering blossoms mostly to bees and butterflies, and night-bloomers to moths. And not only expressions of welcome, but each with some perfect little plan of its own to make this insect guest the bearer of its pollen to the stigma of another flower of the same species. And how endless are the plans and devices to insure this beautiful scheme! Some flowers make it certain by keeping the stigma closed tight until all its pollen is shed; others place the anther so far away from the stigma as to make pollen contact impossible; others actually imprison these pollen-bringing insects until they can send them away with fresh pollen all over their bodies.

Take almost any flower we chance to meet, and it will show us a mystery of form which the insect alone can explain.

Here is one, growing just outside my door--a blossom "known" even to every child, and certainly to every reader of the "Round Table"--the pretty bluets, or Houstonia, whose galaxy of white or blue stars tints whole spring meadows like a light snowfall. We have "known" it all our lives. Perhaps we may have chanced to observe that the flowers are not all constructed alike, but the chances are that we have _seen_ them _all our lives_ without discovering this fact. If we pluck a few from this dense cluster beside the path, we observe that the throat of each is swollen larger than the tube beneath, and is almost closed by four tiny yellow anthers (Fig. 1). The next and the next clump may show us similar flowers; but after a little search we are sure of finding a cluster in which a new form appears, as shown in Fig. 2, in which the anthers at the opening are missing, and their place supplied with a little forked stigma! The tube below is larger than the first flower for about two-thirds its length, when it suddenly contracts, and if we cut it open we find the four anthers secreted near the wide base of the tube. What does it mean, this riddle of the bluets? For hundreds of years it puzzled the early botanists, only finally to be solved by Darwin. This is simply the little plan which the Houstonia has perfected to insure its cross-fertilization by an insect, to compel an insect to carry its pollen from one flower and deposit it upon the stigma of another. Once realizing this as the secret, we can readily see how perfectly the intention is fulfilled.

In order to make it clear I have drawn a progressive series of pictures which hardly require description. The flowers are visited by small bees, butterflies, and other insects. At the left is an insect just alighting on a clump of the blossoms of the high-anther form indicated below it. The black probe represents the insect's tongue, which, as it seeks the nectar at the bottom of the tube, gets dusted at its thickened top with the pollen from the anthers. We next see the insect flying away, the probe beneath indicating the condition of its tongue. It next alights on clump No. 2, in which the flowers happen to be of the high-stigma form, as shown below. The tongue now being inserted, brings the pollen against the high stigma, and fertilizes the flower, while at the same time its tip comes in contact with the low anthers, and gets pollen from them. We next see the insect flying to clump No. 3, the condition of its tongue being shown below. Clump No. 3 happens to be of the first low-stigma form of flowers, and as the tongue is inserted the pollen at its tip is carried directly to the low stigma, and _this_ flower is fertilized from the pollen from the anthers on the same level in the previous flower. And thus the riddle is solved by the insect. From clump to clump he flies, and through his help each one of the pale blue blooms is sure to get its food, each flower fertilized by the pollen of another.

Pollen high on Insect's Tongue after withdrawal from Blossom.

2d Clump.--Flower enlarged. Pollen thrust against high Stigma at top and touching Pollen below.

Pollen at Base of Insect's Tongue after withdrawal from Blossom.

3d Clump.--Flower enlarged. Pollen thrust against low Stigma.]

Another beautiful provision is seen in the difference in size of the pollen-grain of the two flowers, those of the high anthers being much larger than those from the lower anthers. These larger grains are intended for the high stigma, which they are sure of reaching, while those of smaller size, on the top of the tongue, which should happen to be wiped off on the high stigma, are too small to be effective for fertilization.

Luck In Clovers

Under one guise or another the fickle goddess Fortuna would seem to have established her infallible interpreters or mediators. The lovelorn maiden with the daisy, its petals falling beneath her questioning finger-tips to the alternate refrain, "He loves me. He loves me not," is a sacrificial episode in the life of the daisy wherever it grows.

The still younger maiden with her dandelion ball, whose feathered parachutes must be dislodged upon the breeze with three puffs from her little puckered mouth, with all sorts of fate depending upon the odd or even number of the remnant seeds, is as universal as the dandelion itself, while the more homely symbols of wish-bone, horseshoe, or horsechestnut, as we all know, are proverbially potent as personal or household charms against ill luck. I once knew a shrewd countryman who gave all the credit of his success in "tradin'" to the "hoss-chestnut" which he carried in his pocket, and would as soon think of throwing his money away as to "drive a trade" without it. More than one old "down-East" dame "sets gre't store" by the horseshoe hung above her doorway, always secured ends up, "so's the luck can't run out." Then there was old Aunt Huldy, who, while she claimed to locate springs and wells the country round by her witch-hazel divining-rod, never ventured upon these expeditions without the concealed necklace of dried star puff-balls hung about her neck.

But perhaps the most universal of all these natural symbols of good-fortune is to be found in the four-leaved clover, almost a world-wide superstition, and traced back to the ancient astrologers. "If a man, walking the fields," writes one of them, "finds any four-leaved grasse, he shall in a short while after finde some good thing."

The clover was considered as being especially "noisome to witches," and the "holy trefoil charm" was a powerful spell against their harm; the "trefoil" being the most widely used title of the clover--_Trifolium_, as it is in the botany--three leaved. And such it _should_ be, to be true to its christening. But it frequently takes exception to the botany and gives us an extra leaf, and thus we have our "four-leaved clover," a rarity which many of us, seek as we will, have never yet been able to discover in its native haunt, even though a whole handful of them are plucked here and there before our eyes by our more favored companions. Indeed, there are some lucky folk who seem literally to stumble upon "four-leaved grasse" wherever they go--who, having found one leaf, will sit down quietly in the grass and ere long accumulate a bouquet.

Yes, here's the secret: It is not your eager gadding quest that gets your four-leaved clover. Nor is it all a matter of "sharp eyes." There is a "knack" about finding four-leaved clover, and this very knack of the so-called "lucky ones," implying as it does the operation of quest, observation, and common-sense, would logically argue a corresponding fulfilment of success in the affairs of daily life. For the observant clover-hunter, if his mind and eye work together, soon learns that the "four-leaved" variety is fond of company, and that the whim of the plant which thus produces one such leaf is very apt to be humored in several others. Thus, having discerned _one_ four-leaved clover, we assume a _tendency_ in the parent plant, which further search often discloses, sometimes to our great surprise, and, if we are as superstitious as our antique philosopher above quoted, to our unbounded satisfaction. If, for instance, this one extra leaflet brings such assurance of "good things" to come, what shall be said of a leaf with five or six leaflets--yes, seven, or perhaps eight--I might even add nine--a veritable little green rose of clover leaves, all on one stem, a stem which is sometimes plainly composite, of two or three adherent stems? All of these exuberant forms are to be found with diligent search, and often in the same close vicinity. Nor are these all the varied freaks which the plant will disclose for the seeking. Perhaps you may chance upon that four-leaved variety in which the extra leaflet stands upright in the midst of the three, and is transformed into a tapering cup. These elfin goblets are not exceedingly rare. Occasionally we may chance to find two of these supported by one or two perfect leaflets at the base. Or, if we are especially fortunate, our "good health" may be offered in three of the tiny beakers, not mere _apparent_ cups, but with the edges of the goblets completely united, and which might be filled to the brim with dew.

A collection of the natural whims of the clover, both red and white, would make an interesting leaflet in our herbarium. In the hands of the floriculturist who should cultivate these eccentricities most remarkable varieties of clover might ensue. Fancy a clover plant with every leaf a cluster of tiny cups, or of leaves so doubled as to appear like green roses! Here is a chance for our boys and girls to experiment, and without much real labor, too. Both the red and white clovers are perennial--that is, they come up year after year from the same root. A plant which this year favors the "four-leaf" will doubtless follow the same example next year, and the seed from its flowers might also inherit and transmit the same peculiarity, possibly in an exaggerated degree; and careful selection from year to year, keeping the plants in a corner by themselves, might lead to some interesting results, especially if the tendency were further stimulated by enrichment of soil, to which the clover responds vigorously.

My experience with "clover luck" has been considerable. I believe I have found almost every possible eccentric combination of which the plant is naturally capable, a few of which I have here pictured.

My best success has been met in the "rowen" fields, or the growth after mowing, the energy of the plant, thus pruned as it were in its prime, finding immediate expression in an exuberance of luxuriant foliage, which, I think, inclines to a multiplication of leaves. I once sat down beside such a clump upon which I had discovered a single "four-leaf," and by dint of plucking and examining every leaf in the cluster, succeeded in obtaining thirty-nine specimens. "Why not make it forty while you are about it?" a friend of mine recently remarked, with evident incredulity. Well, I _tried_ to, but after grubbing up the last embryo leaf at the ground, thirty-nine was my limit--all from one plant. The collection might be subdivided as follows: Four leaves, 22; five leaves, 7; six leaves, 3; seven leaves, 1; nine leaves, 1; cups and leaves, various, 5.

At another time I spied a single five-leaved in a dense bed of rowen clover at the road-side, and seating myself close beside it, calculating on this habit of the plant, I vowed I would not get up until I had collected forty multiple leaves. I soon obtained more than this number.

The clover-leaf quest is a good eye-sharpener. Which of our boys can show us the best record?

I wonder if any of my young readers have ever seen how the clover says its prayers and goes to sleep, with its two side leaflets folded together like reverent palms, and the terminal leaflet bowed above them? So the normal leaf spends the night in the dews. I often wonder what arrangement of adjustment is arrived at when so many leaflets conspire to confuse.

My clover-hunting has been confined to the red and white clovers, both species having common tendencies. In the red, the leaves being larger, the freaks are more conspicuous, but the cup forms seem more commonly identified with the white clover.

Barberry Manners

One who is unfamiliar with the remarkable doings of blossoms in association with their insect honey-sippers might consider it somewhat surprising to attribute "manners" to a flower. But who that has seen the sage-blossom clap its bee visitor on the back as she ushers him in at the threshold of her purple door, marking him for her own with her dab of yellow pollen as she almost pushes him into the nectar feast within; who that has witnessed the almost roguish demonstration which the tiny andromeda-bell extends to the sipping bee at its doorway--who that has seen these can any longer doubt that blossoms have "manners" as well as we bigger, more conscious beings? Yes, manners, unquestionably--"bad manners," it would almost seem, in some instances, as, for example, in this andromeda blossom-bell, which, in its perfume and its nectar, deliberately invites the tiny _Andrena_ bee, only to deluge its little, black, hairy face with a smothering shower of dusty pollen. A remarkable style of etiquette, surely, that is, from our _human_ standpoint. But in the realm of Flora the standards of decorum, so far as greeting is concerned, are not governed by artificial whim. There is no "smart set" to dictate and set the fashion for others less smart to follow. Each individual flower is a law unto itself as to the method of its greeting to its especial insect friend. The blossom etiquette of welcome is literally as "old as the hills," and has come down with little change from an ancestry which dates back perhaps to a period when there were no human "ancestors" on the globe. So these "manners" are natural and original, to say the least, even if they are so queer sometimes. What would you think of a friend whose hospitable smile and welcome at his doorway should invite you thither only that your foot might touch a trigger and let fall the floor beneath you, while at the same time you are half suffocated with an explosion of a bushel of yellow corn meal? Yet such is something like the spectacular reception which the lotus clover, the desmodium, and the genista flowers consider the most expressive form of welcome. But the little bees seem to enjoy it, and go again and again to each successive flower, well knowing what the result will be, and apparently "touching off the trigger" without a tremor, or even holding their breath. But they and their foreparents for thousands of years have got accustomed to it, and I half imagine that the baby bee, even in his first visit to one of these blossoms, knows precisely what will happen. Pop! pop! go the exploding flowers, one after the other, at each touch of the bee, throwing up a cloud of yellow pollen which covers the bodies of the insects until they are as dusty as little millers.

There is an endless variety in these various welcomes among the flowers, and our barberry has one of the queerest of them all. Poets of all ages have loved to dwell upon the flowers--their "swete smels," exquisite forms, fragrance, and colors. The droning bees in an environment of fragrant bloom have moved many a poetic pen to inspiration. But it is not often that the bards have seen deep enough into the floral mysteries to immortalize the _doings_ of the blossoms.

I recall one such allusion, however, with reference to this mischievous blossom of the barberry. How well old Hosea Biglow knew its pranks!

"All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers
The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers,
Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try
With _pins_. They'll worry yourn so, boys, bime-by."

Those "shrinkin' hearts" of the barberry blossom, so long the wonder and amusement of children, including many children of adult growth, have, so far as I know, herein found their first and only historian--historian, but not interpreter. For Hosea Biglow, nor his literary parent, James Russell Lowell, never dreamed of the significance of this strange spectacle in the shrinkin' hearts of the barberry bloom when surprised with the point of a pin.

But the bee can tell us all about it. He has known this singular trick in the barberry for ages, and kept the secret all to himself. Only comparatively recently (1859 or thereabouts) did the secret leak out, when Darwin, by the previous hints of several other philosophers, discovered the key which unlocked the mystery of this as well as thousands of other similar riddles among the flowers.

These strange "manners" of the blossoms had then a deep vital principle at their base. They had not _always_ been thus, but had gradually, through long ages of time, changed and modified their shapes, colors, odors, nectar, and their manners for one purpose--_to insure_ their pollen being conveyed away upon the bodies of insects and carried to a _second_ flower, and there placed upon the stigma to insure fertilization and development of the seed.

The plans, devices, tricks, and pranks by which flowers accomplish this result are past belief. I have indicated only a few by way of a hint, and in previous papers on the bluebottle and figwort have described others, but none quite similar to the barberry.

We all know the barberry, the prickly, thorny barberry, whether with its "strings o' golden flowers" or its drooping clusters of brilliant scarlet acid berries. But each one of those berries is but a token of a bee's visit, as we shall presently see. At Fig. 1 I have shown a plan of the barberry blossom seen from below, its yellow sepals and petals open, and opposite each of the inner set, and pressed against it, a stamen. This stamen is shown below in three stages--closed, partly open, and fully open--the queer little ear-shaped lids finally drawn up, showing the pollen-pockets, and also withdrawing a portion of the pollen from the cavity. At the centre is seen the circular tip of the ovary which finally becomes the berry--that is, when the little scheme here planned has been fulfilled. This circular form represents the tip of the ovary, and the little toothed rim the _stigma_. Now what is the intention here expressed? This construction represents a plan, first, to invite a bee--this is done by its color, its fragrance, and its nectar, which is secreted in a gland at the base of each petal, near the centre of the flower; secondly, to make that bee bear away the pollen; thirdly, to cause that same bee to place this pollen on the stigma rim of the next flower he visits. In Fig. 2 we see how beautifully this plan is carried out by the insect, without his suspecting how perfectly he has been utilized. At A we see the same flower cut open sideways, the waiting, expectant stamens tucked away at the sides, leaving a free opening to the base of the flower. Now comes our bee. He must needs hang back downward to sip at the drooping flower. As his tongue enters, and finally touches the base of these stamens, _clap_! they come one after another against his tongue and face, and there deposit their load of pollen (B). The bee, who has doubtless got over his surprise at this demonstration--if, indeed, he ever had any--now flies to another blossom, perhaps on the same cluster (C). Entering it as before, the notched edge of the stigmatic rim comes in contact with the pollen on his tongue and face, and the flower is thus fertilized by pollen from another barberry blossom, the intention of the flower now perfectly realized in _cross_-fertilization.

The seeds from _cross_-fertilized flowers are almost invariably more vigorous, and thus yield more vigorous plants, than those of flowers fertilized with their own _pollen_, and this is why most flowers have necessarily developed some means by which cross-fertilization can be secured. And this has been done through evolution working on the lines of _natural_ selection, those seedlings which had originally happened, by a variation in the flower, to be thus favored by some chance peculiarity which insured cross-fertilization, winning in the struggle with the previous weaker individuals, and finally supplanting them altogether.

A Woolly Flock

Hardly a season passes without my being in receipt of one or more inquiries, personal or by letter, concerning this snowy brood which haunts the alders in the swamp or along the road-side, and which envelops the smaller branches in its dense, feathery fringe. It is often one of the most frequent and conspicuous incidents in a country walk during its season, and its season ranges from its height in early summer until the frost. And yet how few there are, even of those, perhaps, who pass it every day, who have any definite idea of its character!

I know one rustic who claimed that it was "dry-rot," or a "speeshy of mould"; but the woolly phenomenon is commonly dismissed by the rural mind with the observation that it is "bugs of some sort." In this case the haphazard verdict happens to be the literal truth, though the speaker little suspects how closely he has discriminated. But his present skill is easily accounted for when we remember that only yesterday he had a great deal to say about "June-bugs" and "lightning-bugs." He will tell you all about "lady-bugs," too, and "rose-bugs," and "horn-bugs," and "pinch-bugs"--and has he not often given his strong opinion on "potato-bugs"?--not one of which insects is in the least entitled to the name of "bug." Only this very morning he asked me if I was "as fond of goin' buggin' as I used to be." But to the granger laity the entomologist is always a "bug-hunter," even though no single species of a bug is to be found in his entire insect cabinet.

What, then, is a bug, and why is the discrimination of "bugs of some sort" so truly applicable to this brood with the snowy wool which grows upon the alder twigs?

The term "bug" has almost become a popular synonym for "insect." All bugs _are_ insects, 'tis true, but it by no means follows that all insects are bugs. The "squash-bug" is almost the only insect that is known by its true title in the popular vocabulary, for this disgusting insect is in truth a typical bug.

But who would ever think of calling the whizzing harvest-fly a "bug?" Rather will they persist that he is a "locust," which he is not. He should be called the cicada. The "grasshopper" of the fields is the true locust, whose swarms of certain species in the Orient have so often shut out the sun, and whose voracious feeding has laid waste whole square miles of vegetation in a single night.

But such a swarm of locusts as we read of in Scripture, and frequently in the history of modern times and in our own country, would be comparatively tame and merely amusing affairs were they composed of our so-called "locust"--he of the whizzing timbrel in the sultry August noon. For this insect has no teeth, and could not bite a blade of grass if it wanted to. And herein we see one of the peculiarities which constitute him a "bug," and which also includes in the same company our woolly swarm upon the alder twigs. In place of teeth these insects are supplied with a beak for sucking the juices of plants. If we carefully examine the dense snowy mass we find it composed of small tufts closely crowded together, each tuft being borne upon the plump body of a small insect whose beak is deeply sunk into the tender bark.

I have separated one of the little creatures, and furnished his portrait as he appears when viewed through a magnifying-glass, only the lower portion of his body being covered with the wool, his head and legs being usually concealed beneath the pluming growth of his neighbors. This feathery growth seems of the most delicate consistency--in truth, more suggestive of white "mould" than any other natural substance, and seems to proceed from pores in the plump body beneath it. The slightest breath wafts the cobwebby tips of the fringe, and the least rude touch easily dislodges it, exposing the round, naked body of what is now clearly seen to be an aphis, or plant-louse, which nature, for some reason, has seen fit to clothe with swan's-down.

In early June the white down first appears on the alders in tiny patches here and there. This gradually extends down the stem, at length, perhaps, completely encircling it, and thus remaining for weeks, the full-grown aphis at last attaining a length of about three-sixteenths of an inch.

A similar brood is sometimes seen in profusion on beech-trees and also on the apple-tree. But if we imagine that because these insects are without teeth they are therefore harmless, we are greatly mistaken. What they lack in individual effect they fully compensate for in numbers, and the combined attack of a girdle of thousands of these sucking beaks, for weeks absorbing the sap, may often result in the death of the branch beyond them.

Dr. Harris, in his admirable work on "Insects Injurious to Vegetation," tells us that "in Gloucestershire, England, so many apple-trees were destroyed by these lice in the year 1810 that the making of cider had to be abandoned. So infested were many of the trees that they seemed, at a short distance, as if they had been white-washed."

Other insects, such as the flea and the mosquito, are also possessed of similar "beaks for sucking," but neither of these examples is a bug, both being _flies_--the flea merely a wingless fly with wonderfully developed legs. Our entomology tells us that a bug is a member of the _Hemiptera_, meaning "half-winged;" the wings of the typical bug, like the squash-bug, being transparent for only about half their length. But as in the flea among flies, here we find myriads of true bugs without a vestige of wings, and others, like the cicada, with ample wings as clear and free from opacity as those of a fly. It would take more space than I have at disposal to tell precisely what a bug really is entomologically, such a diversity of forms is presented in the family. But the sucking beak, and the fact that the average bug is _born_ a bug from the egg, instead of going through the usual transformation of larva, chrysalis, and imago, will have to suffice us for the present. Here, for instance, is the great sub-tribe of the aphis, to which our woolly specimen belongs. What is their life history? The eggs of the mother aphis are laid in the autumn, giving birth to the baby swarm in the following spring. In an almost incredible time they have multiplied to such an extent that the twigs of our roses and many other plants are lost to view in the encircling swarm. The secret of this wonderful arithmetical progression may be seen in the following quotation, which applies to aphides in general:

"The plant-louse of the apple-tree produces one hundred young ones in a single generation, these being born alive, and each of these brings forth others in equal number, until, at the end of the tenth generation, which is reached before the coming of frost, the original aphis has become the mother of one quintillion of her species."

But up to this time nearly all the aphides have been females; in the last generation the winged males appear, and are seen assembled among the swarm--the last mother brood laying the eggs which are to start anew the cycle of life the following season.

So far as I have observed, however, the woolly species of aphis never acquires wings, nature having in a measure compensated for their absence in the growth of plumy down, which, according to Harris, is so buoyant as to enable the insect to be borne upon the breeze from tree to tree. To this resource he attributes the spread of the wingless apple-lice species. But it would take a stiff breeze thus to waft the body of our plump dweller on the alder, unless, indeed, in his younger days.

"What Ails Him"

On a certain afternoon last August, having just completed a particularly laborious work upon which I had long been engaged, and with my mind naturally inclined towards relaxation in my plans for the morrow's labors, my eye instinctively sought a certain note-book upon my table. It was a note-book containing memoranda on a wide variety of Nature topics, but presented in a particular place a choice, selected list of topics under the title of "Young People." A large number of these memoranda were crossed off with a pencil line, which told me that these particular topics had already served their purpose, were sufficiently elaborated in the columns of the "Young People," and were now safely preserved between the covers of my book "Sharp Eyes."

But what an array of items were still left from the winnowing, which had after all culled only a few of the best! Indeed, it was hard to decide which should be selected as the subject for the morrow. Let's see; shall it be those travelling underground buds of the Clintonia, with all their leaves and flowers ready for next spring? No, I must wait a little for these a month later and they will be more mature, and I must make my drawing from nature. Then there is that queer blue oil beetle, with his queerer history; that slender-waisted wasp that digs its deep hole in the dirt, and those round holes in the path, with their mysterious hocus-pocus.

Yes, it shall be these, the magic holes that disappear as you cautiously look at them, or suddenly start into view as you approach--deep holes, the diameter of a slate-pencil, with apparently nothing in them, but which in reality have a good deal of mischief at the bottom of them or at the top of them, as it happens. "Ant holes," most people call them. Many an ant, doubtless, goes into them, but not because he wants to. "Yes," I thought, "my next chapter shall be devoted to these queer holes and their shy tenants, which so few people ever see or even dream of."

Having thus decided, I closed my note-book, but the experience of the next few minutes quite reversed my plans, and led to the completion of an entirely different article, or the pictures for it at least, on the same afternoon, without awaiting the morrow.

I had barely closed the note-book when, chancing to glance out of my studio window, I observed a well-known neighbor, a thrifty, retired granger and carpenter, approaching across lots. His house stood out against the sky at the crest of the slope, about a furlong distant, above my studio, and he had perhaps reached half-way to my window before I had observed him. Something in his walk, his somewhat accelerated pace and evident preoccupied mood, as well as a peculiar position of his extended right hand, foretold that some unusual errand had turned his steps hitherward. With considerable curiosity I endeavored to detect at a distance the specimen which he was bringing, well knowing from experience that I should soon recognize an old friend, which for sixty years had somehow managed to escape the notice of its new discoverer.

Half across the meadow I now observed that he held a leaf in his outstretched hand, and now I clearly noted that it was a compound leaf, and in another second I knew it all. For was it not a leaf of the Virginia-creeper or woodbine? and how many before him have marvelled at that strange exhibition among the woodbine leaves which had now probably met his eyes for the first time? In another moment he was at the piazza stoop, and now he appears at the studio door. Eager anticipation and shortness of breath were equally manifest as he approached my easel and, with his right hand still outstretched towards me, exclaimed, "Well, what ails _him_?" at the same time laying down before me the mysterious specimen. It was a leaf of the woodbine, bearing along its stem a cylindrical mass of what appeared to be tiny, oblong, white eggs, all set on end, and so densely packed that but for the head and tail of the shrunken, green caterpillar which appeared at the two extremities of the mass no one would have guessed their origin. "What ails him?"

"I was sitting on my porch," continued my puzzled visitor, "and saw the white thing among the leaves, and took a closer look at it, and found it was this. I never saw anything like it before, and I thought perhaps you hadn't either, or, at least, that if you had you could tell me something about it. What ails him, anyhow?"

The story was simply told, and my readers who have followed my articles already know what the story is. We remember the strange history of those little, puzzling cocoon clusters on a grass stem, those "bewitched cocoons" which gave birth to swarms of tiny wasps instead of moths, and we realize that here is more of the same sort of mischief, all of which I explained to my good neighbor, to his astonishment. How a few weeks since, when our caterpillar was much smaller than now, a tiny, black midget hovered about him, and, in spite of all his wriggling and squirming, stung him again and again, each time inserting within his body its tiny eggs. Perhaps, and probably in this case, from the number of the white tokens, more than one of the flies took a turn at the unlucky victim, for he certainly seems to have got more than his share.

"These eggs thus inserted beneath the skin of the caterpillar," I explained, "soon hatched into minute white grubs, which immediately fastened themselves upon the tissues within the caterpillar's body, and he is now obliged to eat for the whole family, which he continues to do without any outward signs of inconvenience or protest, which, of course, would be useless. I fancy he must have frequent attacks of that 'all-gone' feeling that we hear so much about in dyspeptic people, but if he does he gives no hint of it by his looks, as he devours one leaf after another along the stem, and displays his plump proportions with evident pride--like the whole tribe of horny-tailed 'sphinx' caterpillars to which he belongs.

"But a few days ago he had a sudden and terrible experience. He had begun to think of retiring down among the dried leaves on the ground and spinning a cocoon, and there were bright visions of a future life filling his little green head--visions of a life on wings, as quick as thought, in an atmosphere of twilight and fragrance, and all manner of sweet indulgences. But his beautiful dream was interrupted, and probably will remain only as a dream. At one moment we see him in his prime, a perfect specimen for the 'bug-hunter' who is after the larva of _Choerocampa pampinatrix_. In ten minutes we look at him again: we find his body shrunken and covered with minute white grubs, all standing on their tails, which are still imbedded in his body; here one barely emerged; here another half enshrouded in a gauzy cocoon; others with their bodies bent into loops weaving the webby gauze about them, while a few hours hence all are concealed, as we see them now, in the completed long, oval, white cocoons which still remain attached to his body."

"Well," remarked my listener, "I guess he feels pretty sick; if he don't, I vow I feel sick for him. I knew something awful ailed him, but didn't know what. I thought the things were eggs. What's the good of it all, anyhow? What do the cocoons turn into?"

I have wished more than once that my friend could have been in my studio the day following his visit, in order to have witnessed the ocular answer to his last question. It was evident that his caterpillar specimen might have been discovered with its load of cocoons a fortnight ago, for in the morning, upon opening the box in which I had placed him, a number of tiny black flies flew out, and several of the white cocoons were open at the end, their dainty hinged lids thrown back. Here is one with its black midge just creeping out; others with the tiny imp peeping through the fine crevice; others with the lid still tightly closed, but with its juncture disclosing more distinctly every moment the knavery of the busy teeth within. One by one the silken lids popped up, and out flew the mischievous jack-in-the-box until within the space of a few hours every cocoon was empty. So this is "what ailed him." He has been the victim of the parasitic fly known as _microgaster_.

But even now that his mortal enemies have left him, I fancy he is past encouragement or salvation. What will become of him? In his particular case he continued to dwindle and soon died, though in other instances I have known him to recover and reach the chrysalis stage, to complete his transformation into a beautiful olive and red sphinx-moth.

The Cicada's Last Song

Under the popular name of "locust," our cicada, or harvest-fly, has long enjoyed the reputation as our chief insect musician, vying with the katydid in the volume of its song. We all know its long, whizzing crescendo in the sultry summer days. But let us call things by their right names. This buzzing musician is _not_ a _locust_; it is a _cicada_. The true locust is what we ordinarily call a grasshopper, that "high-elbowed grig" of the meadows, so generous with his "molasses," and with such a vigorous kick. He, too, is a musician in a modest way--a fiddler, carrying his "fiddle" on the edge of his folded wing covers, against which he gently grinds out faint, squeaky music, using his thigh-joint as a fiddle-bow. His single efforts are barely audible, but multiplied ten-thousandfold in his great field orchestra, becomes a murmur which may be distinctly heard, and which no doubt all of us have heard without a suspicion as to its source. It is a part of the great musical symphony of the harvest-fields, a roundel sustained and prolonged by the hum of bees and the buzzing of innumerable flies, and the sprightly notes of crickets, attuned to the soft murmur of breeze-blown grass. This meadow music is perceptible to any one who cares to listen for it, but it is rarely noticed. What we call the "quiet" country life, or "the quiet summer noon" of the poet, is a misnomer.