Part 6

But Spinipes was too engrossed to hear her. Already, swayed by instinct she was hunting, hunting an unknown quarry in the lucerne. From plant to plant, from leaf to leaf, she fluttered. Now she dropped down to earth, and ran this way and that in the green twilight tangle. Now she sped nimble-footed up a stalk. Now she took flight and skimmed above the leaves.

At last she paused, her every muscle trembling, and stared at what confronted her.

It was a flabby, green, black-headed grub, fixed slug-like on its food-plant. A trail of skeleton tracery marked where its jaws had passed, and, as it reached the border of its leaf it swung its head, and starting near midrib, gnawed yet another ribbon-strip of green.

It ceased to feed as Spinipes appeared, and rested motionless, until her weight made its leaf-platform shiver. Then it dropped silently to earth. But Spinipes reached earth almost as fast, and, quartering every inch of ground, found it and gripped it tightly. It struggled feebly as she pinned it down, and, as she stung it, shuddered. The sting was measured to the millionth part. It robbed the grub of sentient life, yet left it living. So Nature had enjoined. For every infant Spinipes, a score of live green grubs. Robbed of full life, lest struggling they should harm the egg; forbidden death, lest dying they should taint the shaft; lulled to long sleep in mercy. Of Nature's ordinance the grub knew nothing--and Spinipes knew nothing. Her task was to make store of food against the time when her gold egg should hatch. Instinctively she knew the grub was food: instinctively she paralysed its being: instinctively she laboured to transport it.

Her jaws were fastened tight behind its head. Slowly she dragged it up a stalk until blue sky alone was over her. Then, loosing her mouth-grip of it, and clasping it with all six legs, she soared on high; one long unbroken down-glide brought her to her tower. An instant's pause to shift her grip, and she had pushed the grub within the entrance. Keeping a foot-hold on it, she eased it gently downwards, until it lay beneath her egg. She turned it over on its back and propped it to the side wall, caressed her egg, and mounted to the light again.

Back to the lucerne field she flew, and, in ten minutes, reappeared, a second grub beneath her.

This, too, she propped up carefully, and so she worked throughout the day, hunting, benumbing, storing. Twelve grubs in all she brought. All twelve she packed into a single pile. A few made feeble movements, and these, for prudence' sake, she stung afresh.

She passed the night contentedly, for it had been good hunting.

The morrow's sky was wind-swept. Across it scurried wisps of grey with torn and fretted edges. These raced to catch each other, and fused in rounded velvet clouds. Mass joined to mass, and, surging slowly upwards, veiled the sun. Southwards, where earth met sky, a fine-drawn streak of blue endured, while, here and there, a rent across the veil gave passage to a radiant fan-spread beam. Once only did such radiance reach the cliff. It brought a treacherous message. Out swarmed the bees to snatch the chance of work, and out, with like intent, came Spinipes. Straight to her hunting-ground she flew, but, even as she reached it, came the rain.

For two hours she was weather-bound. At last a watery gleam of light, mirrored in every dripping leaf, enticed her from her shelter. Homeward she sped, and, reaching home, found havoc. Her tower was gone--the rain had razed it utterly--but there was worse mishap than this. Swift-scurrying on the surface of the sand were gangs of ants, and every gang was busy with a grub, one of _her_ grubs. They pulled and pushed and shouted to each other, and worked their burdens upward to the cleft which marked their city's entrance. She poised aghast, as with a mocking spit at her, the gaping shaft disgorged another grub. Six sturdy ants came with it, and, ranging up in order, (a pair to tug, a pair to push, a pair to guide,) commenced their long ascent.

The grubs might be replaced in time--what of her precious egg? Downwards she tumbled headlong. Three grubs, the lowest of the pile, were left; her egg-- She had been in the nick of time. Her egg was there, nay more, it was uninjured. Her mother instinct told her this as, with quick trembling passes, she felt the hang and weight of it. Her mother instinct swung her round, as down the shaft she heard a scraping footfall. Even as she turned, an ant's black face peered round the lower bend.

"Out thief!" she cried. "Assassin! Bandit! Robber!"

The ant retreated hurriedly, but all that night she sat at the shaft's mouth, and barred the way below with her own body.

Next day the weather mended--a blaze of sun from an unclouded sky, and, on the sand-cliff, ecstasy of life.

Hard work in store for Spinipes! Three hours she spent in raising a fresh tower, five hours in reprovisioning her burrow. But she no longer worked alone. For others of her race had found the cliff, and other towers, twin to her own, were rising from the sand-ledge. Between them pygmy digger wasps dug shafts to match their bodies, and trident-tailed ichneumons sailed about them, and sneaking, prying, jewel flies, here, there, and everywhere on mischief bent.

She _caught_ her old acquaintance, caught her in the act, and dragged her out, and stung her as was promised.

"I looked inside, that's all--that's really all," whimpered the culprit as she clutched the rim.

"Take that--and that--and that," said Spinipes, and drove her sharp sting home. But jewel flies are toughened folk, and this one, flung aside at last, was in full flight, and merry as a grig, within a minute of her punishment.

Daily the work grew harder. It took more time to find the grubs, since other wasps were hunting, and soon the increasing bulk of them taxed her full powers of flight. Once, as she neared the ledge, she dropped her burden. It lay where it had fallen till it died, for neither she nor other of her kind had wit to forge, or mend, a link in instincts broken chain. Once she found strange additions to her store. A human hand had robbed a neighbouring shaft and, with well-meant intention, sought to help her. Vain fancy! Here the self-same chain (to hunt--to catch--to bring--to store) was, end for end, reversed. The alien grubs were, one by one, dragged forth, and, one by one, flung headlong.

Within a week the burrow held full store, a stack of five-and-twenty grubs piled up to meet the egg. This last was at the hatching-point. The silken cord, by which it hung, had lengthened with its growth, and each hour found it closer to its food. All had gone well, and Spinipes' last task, to seal the shaft with a partition-wall, was soon accomplished. Nor did she ever see that egg again. In time the tower itself fell in--I fancy that she helped it, and in its falling, smothered the main entrance.

She sank five other curving shafts--each held an egg--and built five towers to guard them. She made five further stores of grubs; and then, her life-work ended, she crept into a cleft and died.

What of the eggs? you ask. They hatched to golden yellow grubs, which fattened on the food stores, and when, at length, their food was all consumed, they spun them silken coverlets, and changed from grubs to sleeping nymphs. They slept through autumn's dreariness, through winter's cold, through spring's soft showers, and, when at length the warmth of summer beckoned, they burst their bonds, and, working through the sand, flew forth, as those before them had flown forth. So recommenced the cycle. An æon back it was the same. An æon hence--who knows?

PICTURES ON BUTTERFLIES' WINGS (JULY)

I have already told you of the beautiful colours to be found on butterflies' wings, and how people have actually used a butterfly paintbox to make pictures with. Now I am going to show you some butterflies and moths (quite common ones all of them) which have queer little pictures on their wings ready made--real pictures I mean, faces and animals and things like that.

You may find it, at first, a little hard to see them, for they are puzzle pictures, like those you get in crackers, but once you have found the face, or whatever it may be, you won't be able to help seeing it.

I will start you with quite an easy one. Some of you, I expect, have noticed how often living creatures have a pattern on them like an open eye. This is called an "eye-marking," and is of course quite a different thing from the eye which is used for seeing with. Nearly all our butterflies have an eye-marking somewhere on their wings, and we find it in many other creatures besides butterflies. In birds, for instance (you will remember the peacock at once), and fish (next time you pass a big fishmonger's look out for a John Dory, he has a beauty) and lizards and snakes and frogs and things like that. It is not often seen on animals, though a leopard's or a jaguar's spots are something very like it.

If you look at the picture of the Emperor Moth you will see that there is a very nicely drawn eye on each of his upper wings (his real eyes are quite hidden by his little fur cape); and if you look at the caterpillar of the Elephant hawk-moth long enough, I am sure you will think that he is looking back at you, and that he does not like the look of you much.

Here, again, it is not his eyes that you see, but his eye-markings. In the first picture they are just where you would expect eyes to be, and I must explain to you why. He is called the "Elephant" caterpillar because the head-end of him ("head-end" sounds rather queer; but I think that if one may say "tail-end" one may say "head-end") tapers off very quickly from his fat body, and when he swings this end of him, as he often does, it looks like an elephant's trunk. You will see what I mean in the second picture.

Now when he is frightened or angry, he tucks his head in like a telescope close up to the eye-markings, and then these look as if they are really eyes.

Some people think, and they may be quite right, that these eye-markings frighten off birds and lizards and things like that, who would soon eat the caterpillar if they did not think that his eye-markings were really eyes, and that they must have a big body behind them.

You remember the eyes as big as tea-cups in "The Little Tin Soldier"? If you have not read that, read it as quickly as you can.

Eye-markings are very easy to see, and I am sure that you will be able to find four of them on the wings of the Peacock Butterfly.

Some people think that these frighten off creatures who might eat him, just like those on the Elephant Hawk caterpillar, and some people think just the opposite--that the eye-markings are so clear a mark that the butterfly's enemies will bite at _them_, and so get a mouthful of butterfly's wing, instead of the butterfly himself; which is, of course, all for the good of the butterfly. I don't think we can be quite sure that either of these reasons is true, but we may be certain that if the eye-markings were not somehow useful to the butterfly they would not be there.

The upper eye-markings on the Peacock have nothing particularly curious about them, but those on the under-wings each form a clear man's face with a big moustache, whiskers, and a bald forehead. If you hold the paper a little way off, you will see it clearly. It is something like Mr. Balfour.

This is a full-face picture, but in the other moths, the Mother Shipton and the Magpie, you will find side-face pictures. The Mother Shipton takes its name from having the face of an old witch on each of its upper wings. I will leave you to puzzle this out for yourselves, but I will give you the hint that the old witch has a hooked nose and a pointed chin.

The Magpie Moth has the side face of rather an ugly boy with a button of a nose and his mouth wide open. This is made up by the markings of each pair of wings taken together, and can only be seen when the wings are in a certain position. I will give you a hint here, too, which will help you. The seventh spot on the border of the upper wing, counting downwards, is the boy's eye; and he has a fine head of hair.

Nearly all butterflies and moths have some kind of picture on their wings, and I think that it is nicer looking for these than looking for pictures in the fire, because, when once you have found a butterfly picture, you may be sure of finding it again, and showing it to other people.

A VERY WEE BEASTIE AND A VERY BIG ONE (AUGUST)

I am going to talk about two animals this time--one a very big one and one a very small one. I am showing you two pictures of the small one and two of some cousins of his. He is quite the wee-est beastie in this country of ours, and nearly the wee-est beastie in all the world. He is called the Pygmy Shrewmouse, and his name, as you see it printed, is just about as long as his soft, velvet body.

I wonder how many of you know which is the _largest_ of our British animals? If you guess quickly you are sure to guess wrong, and so I will tell you, and then there will be no need to put you right. It is the Blue Whale.

Very few of us have ever seen a Blue Whale, or, indeed, have ever had the chance; but he comes to our northern coasts almost every summer, and so, as he is met with in British seas, he is quite rightly called a British animal.

He does not often swim close inshore, for, if he does, he is likely to be caught by the tide, and left high and dry like a jelly-fish, which, indeed, has more than once happened.

The Blue Whales which come to this country are between seventy and eighty feet long (there is really no room to give you a picture of one) and weigh between a hundred and fifty and two hundred tons. The Pygmy Shrewmouse, tail and all, is less than three inches long and weighs about a tenth of an ounce. Now I know that measurements are difficult things for young folks to understand, so I will try to make you see the difference between these two animals of ours in a different way. I expect we all know what a lawn-tennis court looks like. Two Blue Whales would just fill a lawn-tennis court, but if we wanted to fill a lawn-tennis court with Pygmy Shrewmice, we should want five-hundred thousand of them, and if we could lift a Blue Whale on an enormous pair of scales, and tried to balance him with Pygmy Shrewmice, we should want--how many do you think? We should want more than _seventy millions_ of them.

It is wonderful to think that the wee Pygmy and the huge Whale should belong to the same Class of creatures. But it is so. Nearly all the bones in the Pygmy (some are scarcely thicker than a hair) can be matched by the same sort of bones in the Blue Whale. If the Blue Whale were a fish (and he certainly looks like one) his bones would be quite different and quite differently arranged, and from this we know that the Whale is not a fish like a Shark, but an animal like a Seal, or a Pygmy Shrewmouse or one of ourselves.

Now we must look at the pictures. You will see at once what a long nose the Pygmy has got. This nose is very useful to him, for much of his food is tiny insects, and he pokes his nose into tiny holes after them.

You can't see his teeth in the pictures, which is a pity, for they are very curious teeth, and the front ones, instead of pointing up and down like ours do, point outwards rather, and come together like a pair of tweezers. This helps him to catch insects too, and to pull little snails out of their shells.

I don't think his teeth are strong enough to crack snail shells, but his dark-brown cousin, the Common Shrewmouse (his picture is on page 181), cracks snail shells quite easily, and so does his black cousin, the Water Shrewmouse.

What does the great Blue Whale eat, you ask? I expect you will be surprised to hear that he eats much the same kind of things as the Pygmy--small slug-like creatures, scarcely an inch long, which swarm in parts of the sea. Of course he eats barrelfuls at once.

He catches them by a wonderful arrangement in his mouth, which is made of what we call whalebone. It is something like the gratings across drain-pipes, which let the water through but stop everything else, and he can lift it up or drop it down as he pleases. When he is hungry, he takes a huge mouthful of sea-water and lets it out again through this whalebone grating. All the small slug-like things which are swimming in the water are trapped, and, when he has got most of the water out of his mouth, he swallows them.

I don't think that the Whale can have much trouble about getting his dinner; all he has to do is to find the right piece of sea and then open his mouth; but the Pygmy, I think, has to work very hard, as he has to catch everything separately, and he is such a delicate little creature that he is seldom about unless the weather is warm and fine.

Then he has to make up for the hungry time when bad weather has kept him in his hole.

In the autumn one often finds dead shrewmice lying on the paths. Nobody quite knows why they die in the autumn, but I think it is because only a few of them, if any, are strong enough to stand cold and wet and hunger all at once. The rest die just like the leaves die.

You must not think a dead Shrewmouse is like a live one to look at, for he is quite different. When dead, the poor little beastie lies stretched out straight, but when he is alive he is all bunched up together and runs about like a little fur ball on legs.

IN WEASEL WOOD (LAMMAS DAY)

Again the Fox Cub was puzzled. His muzzle wrinkled dubiously, his ears twitched and puckered, he barked (a new accomplishment), he mewed (a newer habit still), and then, since sound proved futile, he sank from his hindquarters forward slowly, grounded his nose between his paws and stared.

This was the queerest happening of all. Queerer than the briar's queer flutter; and the shower of pink petals from it; and the glint of savage little eyes half-way up it; and the savage little chestnut face behind them. Queerer than the scream from the sky; and the rotten elm-branch dancing bough to bough; and cannoning against the trunk; and shattering at his feet. Queerer than the swish through the nettlebed--swish of a purple snaking shadow, which might have been mere bird, had the trail of it been clumsier, or its ripple more fretful.

Birds he had known since teething. Mother had brought them often; Father less often--scraggy, thin-necked, towsled things, yet mostly of fine flavour; finer than rabbits certainly (except quite baby rabbits); finer, too, than frogs; or lizards; or mice; or snails; or any of the myriad crawl-by-nights on which young teeth gain confidence.

The Fox Cub stared round-eyed towards the bracken. It certainly was moving--moving in waves which spent themselves abruptly, moving in spins and eddies. Now and again great swathes of it sank downward.

The Fox Cub froze to stone. His muzzle hardened; his ears drooped flat; only his tail (his brush was yet to come) twitched half in interest, half in apprehension.

The bracken started midway down the slope, in straggling, wayward patches. These quickly joined in an unbroken mass, and, on the level ground, gained full luxuriance. A cart-track twisted through them, half of it clear to eyes above, half intercepted.

Beyond, the ground crept up once more--bracken gave place to bramble, bramble to coppice, coppice to the sky.

The Fox Cub's eyes missed nothing.

Movement above he saw--the brown owl changing station. Movement upon mid-slope--the dormouse in the brambles. Movement upon the cart-track--the shrewmouse worrying snails. But these were mere diversions--their interest passed. The bracken furnished a besetting problem--movement inexplicable, sound inexplicable--long-drawn, wheezy breathings, snorts of exertion, sighs of content. There was scent also, heavy musted scent, which came in whiffs and dangled at his nose.

But for this scent he must have smelt the Stoat. The Stoat came dancing up the wind, passed by to right of him, and swung about. He held himself with an air, his body arched, one broad white pad uplifted, his tail curved decorously. From where he lay, the Fox Cub took his measure, then slowly reared himself and yawned. He, too, had teeth to show.

The Stoat's black tail twitched side to side. He met the challenge squarely. The Fox Cub sank full length again. The Stoat tiptoed towards him, and, stretching full-neck forward, nibbled at his fur. So was their peace established.

"Badger," whispered the Stoat, and danced from point to point excitedly, "Badger, grub-grub-grubbing."

A stunted patch of bracken burst apart, and from its cover lurched a broad grey back.

"He scents you," said the Stoat.

The Fox Cub still lay motionless. It was the broadest back he yet had seen.

"Should one run?" he whispered. This spelt sheer ignorance of the woods.

"Run?" said the Stoat. "Whoever ran from Badger but a rabbit? Badger is all benevolence. Badger is King. We run towards him."

"Who are _We_?" said the Fox Cub.

"_We?_" said the Stoat. "Why, Marten, Polecat, Stoat, and Weasel. Flesh-eaters All. All of one Brotherhood. Beasties Courageous. Squirrel is living up to us--he does his best with eggs."

"_Squirrel is living up to us?_" It was a cough and splutter from above and Stoat and Cub peered upwards. Squirrel sat twenty feet away, and stamped with indignation. "Squirrel is living up to us? My plumed tail! you wait till Squirrel grows."

"Never mind him," said the Stoat, "he's silly."

The broad grey back had swung about, and Badger's head was lifted. Slowly it swayed from side to side, slowly it nodded.

"Where are his eyes?" whispered the Fox Cub.

"In his head," chuckled the Stoat.

"His head's a puzzle," said the Fox Cub--which, indeed, it was. Seen from above, and swinging to and fro, its clean-cut symmetries of black and white foreshortened in confusion.

"Wait till he fronts you," said the Stoat, and presently this happened. The head stopped motionless. A broad white stripe divided it; on either side were triangles of black; beneath was white again, and white tricked out the outline of each ear.

"He's black beneath," said the Stoat, "and grey behind--now you can see him."

Badger had backed a pace or two and craned his neck to snuffle. Ebon-chested he was and ebon-footed.

"Still I can't see his eyes," muttered the Fox Cub, but, even as he spoke, he saw them--steadfast, watchful, gimlet eyes, as black as their black setting.