Part 22

This creature affords us a good example of that extraordinary artifice, to which some insects have recourse upon the apprehension of danger, the counterfeiting of death. The dorr, with a violent and noisy flight, proceeds on its way, or circles around with an apparent fearlessness of harm; yet the instant it is touched, or interrupted in its progress, though in no way injured, it will immediately fall to the ground, generally prostrate on its back, its limbs extended, stiff, and seemingly devoid of life, and suffering itself to be handled without manifesting any signs of animation. In time, finding no harm ensues, it resumes its former state. If our conjectures be correct, that the object of this stratagem is to preserve its life, it is difficult to comprehend how far it can be successful. Several birds feed on it, as we observed; and that others do so likewise is evident from their castings. Of these, the owl and the nightjar catch it when on the wing; and the crows, rooks, magpies, &c., seem to have no hesitation in picking it to pieces, as well as all the other beetles, that put on the semblance of death, in whatever state they find them. One or two beasts, it is said, when captured, feign death. With these exceptions, we remember none of the other orders of creation, that have recourse to such an expedient upon any emergency; but with insects it is by no means an uncommon procedure, most probably resorted to by them for a motive we are not fully acquainted with, and which is in all likelihood attended with the success it was designed to effect.

The perfect cleanliness of these creatures is a very notable circumstance, when we consider that nearly their whole lives are passed in burrowing in the earth, and removing nuisances; yet such is the admirable polish of their coating and limbs, that we very seldom find any soil adhering to them. The meloe, and some of the scarabæi, upon first emerging from their winter’s retreat, are commonly found with earth clinging to them; but the removal of this is one of the first operations of the creature; and all the beetle race, the chief occupation of which is crawling about the soil, and such dirty employs, are notwithstanding remarkable for the glossiness of their covering, and freedom from defilements of any kind. But purity of vesture seems to be a principal precept of nature, and observable throughout creation. Fishes, from the nature of the element in which they reside, can contract but little impurity. Birds are unceasingly attentive to neatness and lustration of their plumage. All the slug race, though covered with slimy matter calculated to collect extraneous things, and reptiles, are perfectly free from soil. The fur and hair of beasts in a state of liberty and health is never filthy, or sullied with dirt. Some birds roll themselves in dust, and occasionally, particularly beasts, cover themselves with mire; but this is not from any liking or inclination for such things, but to free themselves from annoyances, or to prevent the bites of insects. Whether birds in preening, and beasts in dressing themselves, be directed by any instinctive faculty, we know not; but they evidently derive pleasure from the operation, and thus this feeling of enjoyment, even if the sole motive, becomes to them an essential source of comfort and of health.

It may be noted probably by some, how frequently I recur to the causes and objects of the faculties, manners, and tendencies of animate and inanimate things. This recurrence springs from no cavil at the wisdom, no suspicion of the fitness of the appointment, nor, I trust, from any excitement to presumptuous pryings into paths which are in the great deep, and not to be searched out; but are humbly indulged, from the pleasure which the contemplation of perfect wisdom, even in a state of ignorance, affords; and if by any consideration we can advance one point nearer to the comprehension of what is hidden, we infinitely increase our satisfaction and delight.

May 24, 1827.—Abundance of cockchaffers (melolantha vulgaris) are flying about, yet by no means in the profusion of some years. How much at times the interest of man and the wild creatures about him are at variance! Those that are domesticated and precluded from obtaining food but by his permission, have their welfare in part identified with his—they may share in his abundance, or pine from his parsimony; but the independents of the field are differently circumstanced. The appearance of these chaffers, in any numbers, is very uncertain and partial, but in those summers when they abound, very extensive injuries frequently ensue. In the grub state, they will entirely destroy the pastures where they inhabit, by consuming the roots of the grasses; acres and fields are deprived of their produce, becoming brown as stubbles, with only a sprig or tuft of green useless vegetation observable in them; the grain crop likewise totally fails when the larvæ of this chaffer feeds in the field. Upon assuming their winged state, they devour the foliage of the oak and other trees so effectually, that entire copses may be seen early in June defoliated by their depredations. So much for their injury to man: but now the feast of the wilding commences—the plow in April dislodges multitudes of these long white grubs. Dogs then seek them eagerly to eat, but they seem to be surfeited by the food; for, though fattened at first, they afterwards become diseased, and lose their hair. Rooks and crows are running over the ridges, busily seeking for this larvæ; the swine find it out, and come in for their share, and having finished here, they commence grubbing in the grass lands. The insect now soon takes wing, and then every tree in the wood or the brake becomes a scene of plunder and delight to all the train from the rookery—the cats will eat him—every sparrow that flies by has a chaffer in its mouth, captured on the wing or snatched from the spray, and now to be pecked to pieces on the ground—the thrush feasts too, and all the poultry in the yard are running after chaffers, or chasing each other for the prize; and thus this insect supplies in one state or another a general feast to many.

Surrounded as we are by wonders of every kind, and existing only by a miraculous concurrence of events, admiration seems the natural avocation of our being; nor is it easy to pronounce amidst such a creation what is most wonderful. But few things appear more incomprehensible than the constant production and reabsorption of matter, impressed upon us even by these very dorrs. An animal falls to the ground and dies; myriads of creatures are now summoned by a call, by an impulse of which we have no perception, to remove it, and prepare it for a new combination; chemical agencies, fermentation, and solution, immediately commence their actions to separate the parts, and in a short time, of all this great body, nothing remains but the framework or bones, perhaps a little hair or some wool, and all the rest is departed we know not whither! Worms and insects have done their parts; the earth has received a portion, and the rest, converted into gases, and exhalable matters, has dispersed all over the region, which, received into vegetable circulation, is again separated and changed, becomes modified anew, and nourishes that which is to continue the future generations of life. The petal of the rose; the pulp of the peach; the azure and the gold on the wing of the insect; all the various productions of the animal and vegetable world; the very salts and compounds of the soil, are but the changes some other matters have undergone, which have circulated through innumerable channels since the first production of all things, and no particle been lost; bearing in mind this assured truth, that all these combinations have not been effected by chance or peculiarity of circumstances, but by the predetermination of an Almighty Intelligence, who sees the station, progress, and final destination of an atom, what an infinity of power and intellective spirit does this point out! an omnipotence, which the bodied minds of us poor creatures cannot conceive. Truly may we say, “who can find out the Almighty to perfection?”

Our extensive cultivation of the potato furnishes us annually with several specimens of that fine animal the death’s-head moth[64] (acherontia atropos), and in some years I have had as many as eight brought me in the larva or chrysalis state. Their changes are very uncertain. I have had the larva change to a chrysalis in July, and produce the moth in October; but generally the aurelia remains unchanged till the ensuing summer. The larvæ or caterpillars, “strange ungainly beasts,” as some of our peasantry call them, excite constant attention when seen, by their extraordinary size and uncommon mien, with horns and tail, being not unusually five inches in length, and as thick as a finger. This creature was formerly considered as one of our rarest insects, and doubtful if truly indigenous; but for the last twenty years, from the profuse cultivation of the potato, is become not very uncommon in divers places. Many insects are now certainly found in England, which former collectors, indefatigable as they were, did not know that we possessed; while others again have been lost to us moderns. Some probably might be introduced with the numerous exotic plants recently imported, or this particular food may have tended to favor the increase of rarely existent natives; but how such a creature as this could have been brought with any plant is quite beyond comprehension. We may import continental varieties of potatoes, but the death’s-head moth we have never observed to have any connexion with the tuber itself, or inclination for it. As certain soils will produce plants by exposure to the sun’s rays, or by aid of peculiar manures, when no pre-existent root or germ could rationally be supposed to exist; so will peculiar and long intervening seasons give birth to insects from causes not to be divined. We may perhaps conclude, that some concurrence produced this sphinx, and then its favorite food, the potato plant, nourished it, to the augmentation of its species.

Superstition has been particularly active in suggesting causes of alarm from the insect world; and where man should have seen only beauty and wisdom, he has often found terror and dismay. The yellow and brown tailed moths, the deathwatch, our snails, as mentioned in p. 231, and many others, have all been the subjects of his fears; but the dread excited in England by the appearance, noises, or increase of insects, are petty apprehensions, when compared with the horror that the presence of this acherontia occasions to some of the more fanciful and superstitious natives of northern Europe, maintainers of the wildest conceptions. A letter is now before me from a correspondent in German Poland, where this insect is a common creature, and so abounded in 1824, that my informer collected fifty of them in the potato-fields of his village, where they call them the “death’s-head phantom,” the “wandering death-bird,” &c. The markings on its back represent to these fertile imaginations the head of a perfect skeleton, with the limb bones crossed beneath; its cry becomes the voice of anguish, the moaning of a child, the signal of grief; it is regarded not as the creation of a benevolent being, but the device of evil spirits, spirits enemies to man, conceived and fabricated in the dark; and the very shining of its eyes is thought to represent the fiery element whence it is supposed to have proceeded. Flying into their apartments in the evening, it at times extinguishes the light, foretelling war, pestilence, hunger, death to man and beast. We pity, rather than ridicule these fears; their consequences being painful anxiety of mind and suffering of body. However, it seems these vain imaginations are flitting away before the light of reason and experience. In Germany as in England, they were first observed on the jasmine, but now exclusively upon the potato, though they will enter the bee-hives, to feed on the honey found in them. This insect has been thought to be peculiarly gifted in having a voice, and squeaking like a mouse, when handled or disturbed; but in truth no insect that we know of has the requisite organs to produce a genuine voice. They emit sounds by other means, probably all external. The grasshopper and the cricket race effect their well-known and often wearisome chirpings by grating their spiny thighs against their rigid wings; and this acherontia atropos appears to produce the noise it at times makes, which reminds us of the spring call of the rail or corncrake, by scratching its mandible, or the instrument that it perforates with, against its horny chest. The object of this noise is apparently a mere sexual call. Heavy and unwieldly creatures, they travel badly, and from the same cause fly badly and with labor; and as they commonly hide themselves deep in the foliage and obscurity, without some such signal of their presence a meeting of the parties would seldom be accomplished.

Another of the ravenous creatures that infest our pools is the great water-beetle (ditiscus marginalis); and perhaps it is the most ferocious of any of them, being adapted by every provision for a life of rapine, endued with great muscular power, armed with a thick and horny case over its body, and having its eyes large to observe all the creatures about it, and powerful mandibles to seize and reduce them to fragments. It riots on the polyphemus of the pool; and having thinned its herd in one place, is supplied with wings to effect a removal to a fold better furnished. It even eats the young of the frog; and its bite is so powerful, as to be painfully felt by the hand that holds it a captive, though defended by a glove. In the larvæ state it is almost equally destructive; it swims admirably; its hinder legs are long and brawny, beside being aided by a fringe of hairs, so that they are powerful oars to propel its body with celerity and ease. Nor must we omit a peculiarity attending the constitution of this beetle, which marks it as a creature especially endowed for the station in which it is placed. Multitudes of insects exist in the larva state for a certain space of time in water, and, having accomplished a given period in this state perfecting their forms, they take wings and become aërial creatures, after which a return to the element whence they sprang would be death to them. But this beetle, when it has passed from the larva state and obtained its wings, still lives in that water which nourished it to this state of perfection, without any inconvenience, as long as it suits its inclination; when weary of this place, or its food becoming scarce, it wings its way to another pool, into which it immediately plunges, and recommences its life of rapine. Having deposited its eggs in autumn, we suppose it to die in the winter; yet many may survive this season, and, arising from the mud in the spring, be undistinguished from the recently perfected larvæ. Such little notices and indications of the habits of these obscure creatures, though certainly unimportant, are not perhaps wholly unprofitable; for we so darkly see our way, and proceed so slowly in acquiring intelligence of the paths of nature, that nothing should be considered as beneath regard that we meet with in them, and every advancing step must elevate the mind, as it affords additional knowledge of the solicitude and provision of the great Architect of creation in the appointment and endowment of his creatures; since, though we are very rarely able to comprehend even the object of existence, we see sufficient to convince us, that such care and such powers were not bestowed except for some wise and good purpose. It seems hardly possible that mankind can ever obtain anything approaching to the comprehension of the motives of Providence, because they have not, as far as is apparent to us, individual and separate bearings, but are connecting and in concordance with a series of influences, and consequently the whole should be seen, fitly to understand a part; and this mighty mechanism what human mind can embrace? Heaven metes out to man by degrees something of its laws and ordinances; but no life, no period, can exhaust that store of hidden wisdom, by which these mandates have been decreed, every little transitory view that we obtain should be received with gratitude as an advance in knowledge, a progress in the wisdom of Him who hath ordained all things in truth.

The eye of the naturalist, prying about in places where those of indifferent persons are rarely fixed, sees many things, that others do not notice, or observe without interest, from forming no connexion with any previous subject of pursuit. Few perhaps would stay to inspect the clay hairworm (gordius argillaceus), yet it is a very curious creature. We find it at the bottoms of drains and ditches, chiefly in the spring of the year. Its color is a pale yellow; and it appears like some long vegetable fibre, or root, coiled up and twisted together. The whole body of the animal consists of numerous annulations, or rings, by means of which it has the power of contracting its substance, as it has likewise of extending it, until it becomes nearly a foot in length, and smooth as a wire. The extreme points are transparent and tapering, formed of apparently harder materials than the body. The designation of most of our small land and water creatures, in the economy of creation, is very obscure; and owing to the places they frequent, and the secrecy of their actions, amidst mud and vegetation, we have little opportunity of becoming acquainted with their habits. This hairworm, however, is rather less mysterious in its movements than some others; and there is cause to suppose that its chief occupation is that of forming perforations and openings in clayey soils, admitting by this means water to pervade the mass, and open it; the finer roots of vegetables then find entrance, and part it yet more, or decay in it, and meliorate and fertilize the substance.

Wonderful as all the appointments and endowments of insects are, there is no part of their economy more extraordinary than the infinite variety of forms and materials to which they have recourse in the fabrication of their nests; and, as far as we can comprehend, their expediency for the various purposes required. Among those, with which I am acquainted, none pleases me more than that of a solitary wasp (vespa campanaria), which occasionally visits us here. It is not a common insect; but I have met with their nests. One was fixed beneath a piece of oak bark, placed in a pile; another was pendent in the hollow of a bank of earth. The materials, which composed these abodes, seemed to be articles scraped or torn from the dry parts of the willow, sallow, or some such soft wood, and cemented again by animal glue, very similar in texture to that provided by the common wasp, which makes great use of the halfdecayed wood of the ash, and will penetrate through crevices in the bark, to abrade away the dry wood beneath. They seem to have but small families, ten or twelve cells only being provided. These are situate at the bottom of an egg-shaped cup, contracted at the lower end, where an orifice is left for the entrance. This again is covered, in the part where the cells are placed, by a loose hood, or shed, extending about halfway down the inner one. The pendent situation of the whole, and this external hood, round which the air has a free circulation, are admirably contrived for securing the cells from injury by water. The nest, when hanging in its proper situation, is like the commencement of some paper- work flower, and can never be observed but with admiration at the elegance of its structure; and the unusual appearance of the whole must excite the attention of the most incurious observer of such things.

Every-day events manifest to very superficial observation, that no created being, from the monster of the ocean, “that makes the deep boil like a pot of ointment,” to the insect that feebly creeps on the ground, exists free from the persecutions or annoyance of another. Some may be subject to fewer injuries than others, but none are wholly exempt: the strong assail by power, and become assaulted themselves by the minute or weak. This year (1826) the hornet (vespa crabro) abounded with us in unusual numbers, and afforded constant evidence of its power and voracity, that could not have been exceeded by any ravenous beast. In our gardens the imperious murmur of four or five of them at a time might be frequently heard about our fruit trees. They would occasionally extract the sweet liquor from the gage, or other rich plums; but the prime object of their visit was to seize the wasps, that frequented the same places. This they not only did when the creature was feeding on the fruit, but would hawk after them when on the wing; capture them with a facility, to which their heavy flight seemed unequal; bear them to some neighboring plant, and there feed on the insect, which seemed perfectly overpowered by the might of the hornet. The first operation was to snip off the head, then to cut away the lower part by the waist; and, when near, we could hear them shearing away the outer coat from the body, and crushing it with their strong mandibles; sometimes devouring it, but generally only sucking the juices it contained. Their avidity for this sort of food is very manifest when the grape ripens on the wall: being commonly the only remaining fruit, the wasp abounds there; the hornets flock to the prey, and we may see them in constant progress, bearing their victims from the bunches. The wasp itself seizes the house fly; but this seems rather the display of wanton power than for food, as it bears the fly about with it for a length of time, and drops it unconsumed. The fly, in its turn, is conducive after its manner to the death of many an animal. We know not any insect that destroys the hornet; but its power and being are terminated by some very effective agent, as in particular years it is almost unknown.[65] Though we may not often perceive the means by which certain races are reduced in number, more than their multiplication effected, yet we are frequently sensible that it is accomplished.