Part 2

Some crabs can dig into the sand very fast.

They go in backwards. They slip out of sight like a flash.

Or, they leave the tips of their heads and their eye-pegs out, to look about. Sand-crabs do this.

Their shells are a pale brown or sand color. Their shells are wide and round behind, and come to a point in the front.

Their heads are in the narrow part of the shell. Their shells are rough.

They are swift runners.

Some hide in holes in the rocks. Some are sand-color, and their color protects them.

When they are afraid, they lie flat on the sand, and it is hard to see them. Some birds have long, thin bills, with which to pick Mr. Crab out of his sand house.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] See Picture in Lesson IV.

LESSON X.

THE USES OF CRABS.

How often does Mr. Crab get a new coat? His coat does not wear out.

But it gets too small. Then he changes it to get a larger one.

The baby grows fast. You seem to see it grow.

You grow fast. They say it is hard to keep you in clothes.

You cannot wear the coat you had last year. But your papa can wear his coat for many years.

He will tell you that he is done growing.

It is so with a crab.

When he is very young, he grows fast. He needs a new shell very often.

When he is older, he grows more slowly. Then he gets a new coat every spring.

At last he does not grow any more. He keeps the same shell,[8] year after year.

It gets very hard and thick, and loses its bright color. Very often it is nearly covered with limpets.

They fasten their flat or pointed shells to the crab’s back, and stay there. I cannot tell you just how long a crab lives.

Of what use is a crab? Have all things a use?

Yes. God made all things; and all things are of use.

Sometimes we cannot find out the use. Crabs are good for food.

Some kinds are eaten by men, as fish and oysters are eaten. Birds eat a great many crabs.

Some birds almost live on them. Fish eat many crabs.

There are many kinds of crabs so small that you could hardly see them. Fish feed on them.

Men catch and eat the fish. Crabs help to keep the sea and the sea-shore clean.

Crabs are greedy. They eat nearly all kinds of dead things that would spoil and make a bad smell if left on the sand.

They eat dead fish, dead animals that are thrown into the sea, and grubs, flies, and worms. Do you ever see men going about to clean the streets?

The crabs help to keep clean the sea and the shore. There are so many crabs, and they eat so much, and so fast, that they can clean away much of the dead stuff that lies on the shore.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The large claw may be on either the right or left side of the crab.

LESSON XI.

MRS. WASP AND HER HOME.

Here is a round hole on the hill-side path. Is it a crab’s hole?

No, it is too far from the sea for a crab. Mrs. Wasp made it for her baby to live in.

Her name is Vespa. In her house she has a hall, a room, and a bed.

In the bed her baby lies asleep. It is now a soft, white egg.

When the baby wasp comes out of the egg, he will be all alone. When Mrs. Wasp has laid the egg safe in bed, she goes away.

She shuts her door with a lump of mud. She leaves her baby some food to eat.

The food is a pile of little caterpillars. When she leaves her baby, she never comes back.

When he gets big, he digs his way out, and off he flies. If he meets his mother he does not know her.

Mrs. Wasp makes her bed of fine sawdust. She cuts the wood up soft and fine.

She has two small, sharp saws with which to cut the wood. She can make paper.

She saws the wood into a fine dust. Then she mixes it with glue from her mouth.

When she takes it home, she spreads it out thin with her feet. It dries into fine, gray paper.

With it she papers her house, to keep her baby warm and dry.

Mrs. Wasp is cross, but she is wise. She has a long sting. She kills, or puts into a deep sleep, the caterpillars that she takes home.

She is never idle.

LESSON XII.

WHAT MRS. WASP CAN DO.

How does Mrs. Wasp make paper? First she finds a piece of dry, old wood.

She cuts off bits of wood, like fine, soft threads. She wets these with a kind of glue from her mouth, and rolls them into a ball.

Then, she stands on her hind legs, and with her front feet puts the ball between her jaws. She then flies to her nest.

She uses her tongue, her jaws, and her feet, to spread the ball out thin. On her hind legs she has flat feet, to help her lay down the paper.

She lays one sheet of paper on the other, until it is thick enough to make a nest. Some wasps hang these paper nests in trees.

The nests are round, like balls, or are the shape of a top. At the bottom of each you will find two doors.

Some wasps make paste-board. The wasp that builds in a tree does not live alone.

She has in her home very many paper rooms. They are like cells in a honey-comb.

She can make wax. She puts a wax lid on the cells.

She can make varnish, to keep the cells dry.

One kind of wasp is a mason.

Her house is made of mud. She brings mud in little balls, and builds a house.

In the house, she puts a baby wasp. She puts in little spiders for him to eat.

A hornet is a kind of wasp. We may call him Mrs. Wasp’s cousin.

Hornets catch and eat flies. There is a black wasp that is called a mud-dauber.

She builds a little mud house. I know a boy who broke one of these mud houses thirty-two times.

The wasp built it up each time. One of these mud-wasps built a house ten times on a man’s desk. Each time that he broke it up, she built it again.

This kind of wasp does not leave her baby alone.

LESSON XIII.

A LOOK AT MRS. WASP.

Mrs. Wasp’s color is blue-black. She has yellow marks.

She has four thin wings. Two are large and two are small.

The front wings are the large ones. Her wings lie close to her sides when her body is at rest.

The wasp looks as if she had two wings, not four.

The two under ones are hooked to the upper ones.

Her eyes are set close to her head. They are large.

They have a notch or dent in them. She has two long wands, called feelers, on her head.

They are made in joints. She touches things with them.

Her body is in three parts. The first part is the head, with the eyes and mouth.

The next part is thick and short. The hind part is long and slim.

These two join at a point. It looks as if the hind part might drop off, but it never does.

Mrs. Wasp has a long, sharp sting in her tail. The wasp’s sting is like two fine saws.

A drop of poison runs through it from a bag.

You need not fear Mrs. Wasp. She does not sting if you let her alone.

She has six legs. The legs and wings are set on the part of the body that is next the head.

She uses her front legs for hands. The body of the wasp is hard, and made of rings like scales.

Mrs. Wasp uses her jaws to cut up wood for paper. She does not need them to eat with.

She eats honey. When her baby eats spiders and caterpillars, it does not chew them.

It sucks out their juice.

Wasps bite fruit and spoil it. They are cross, and fight.

They kill bees for their honey.

All wasps are not of the same color.

The wasp that leaves her baby alone is the hermit wasp.

There is a wasp of a rust-red color.

LESSON XIV.

MRS. WASP’S YEAR.

I will now tell you of a wasp that does not live alone. This Mrs. Wasp takes good care of her babies. She is called the social wasp.

While it is winter Mrs. Wasp hides. She does not like the cold.

Most wasps die in the winter. Only a few live to come out in the spring.

The first thing Mrs. Wasp does in the spring is to build a new house. She does not use an old house.

She puts her eggs into the house, with some food.

When the young wasps grow up, and come out, they help build.

More cells are put into the house. An egg is laid in each cell.

The egg grows into a grub. The wasps feed the grub.

They bring it honey. The baby wasp has no wings nor feet.

It has to be shut up, to grow into a true wasp. When the time comes, the wasps put a wax lid upon the cell.

At last the new wasp eats off the lid, and comes out, a full-grown wasp. Wasps work hard all the time.

They fly about for food, and for stuff to make paper, wax, and varnish and glue. They have homes to build, and little wasps to rear.

They seem to know they must nearly all die, when frost comes. When the cold begins, the old wasps look into the cells.

They kill all the eggs, grubs, and half-grown wasps that they find there. Why do they do that?

Do they not seem to love the baby wasps? Yes.

They kill them quickly to keep them from dying of hunger and cold. Is not that a queer way to show love?

Some wise people do not feel sure that the wasps kill the little ones in this way.

Do not forget that the wasp does not grow after it gets its wings and leaves its cell. When it comes out it is full grown.

When it is a fat, round, wingless grub it is called a larva. When it has changed its shape, and has wings, it is called a pupa.

Some call the pupa a nymph. Are those very hard words?

LESSON XV.

MRS. WASP AT HOME.

There are many kinds of wasps. There are mud-wasps, which make mud houses.

Lonely wasps build alone in the ground, and dig holes in the sand. They throw the sand back between their hind legs.

Did you ever see your dog dig a hole? The wasp digs in the same way as the dog.

Sand wasps make tiny earth houses on walls and fences. Tree wasps hang great paper houses upon the branches or twigs of trees.

Rust-red wasps do not build houses for their cells. They make fine paper cells, and hang them with the open part down, in some safe place.

They varnish the cells to keep them dry. In a cold land, the wasps build in barns, attics, hollow trees, or in the ground.

In warm lands, they hang a bunch of cells out in the open air, on trees or vines. One day I found a wasp’s nest in an old tin can.

There had been paint in the can. The wasp had made a stem of paint.

She used her feet to twist it into a stiff rope. Upon that, for a stem, she built a nest like a white flower.

She put a cell upon the stem, and six cells around that one. In each cell was a wee, white egg.

The eggs grew to fat grubs. They had black heads.

Then Mrs. Wasp fed them. She went from one cell to the other, and fed her grubs, just as a bird feeds its young.

Mrs. Wasp also makes a pap of bugs and fruit, and gives it to her young.

Wasps are very neat. They keep their nests clean. They use cells more than once.

But they make new nests each year. One kind of wasp is called the White Face.

Every wasp has a clean, shining coat, and a fierce look.

Wasps do not bite or chew food; they suck out the juices of fruit and insects.

LESSON XVI.

REVIEW.

Where, and how, does Mr. Crab make his house? Where are Mr. Crab’s bones?

Where are yours? Will you tell me how Mr. Crab gets on his new coat?

Tell me some of the kinds of crabs that you know of. What do crabs eat?

Why does one kind of crab steal a shell? Tell me about a crab’s eyes.

How is the crab made, which likes to swim on the deep sea? What is a sea tide?

How many tides are there each day? How do little crabs grow?

Where do crabs hide, when they are afraid? What animals catch and eat crabs?

Of what use are crabs? Did I tell you that some crabs eat sea-weed?

What is a wasp? How many legs and wings has Mrs. Wasp?

How is her body made? Why do her two wings on each side seem one?

Tell me what kind of houses wasps build. What can wasps make?

How do baby wasps grow? Tell me how wasps make paper.

What else do you know about crabs and wasps? What can you say about a wasp’s sting?

How does the wasp eat?

LESSON XVII.

THE BEE AND THE MAN.

Did you ever see a hive of bees? Are you afraid of bees? You need not be afraid of them.

They do not often sting those who let them alone. There are some people whom bees never sting. Do you see how small the bees are?

Do they not move very quickly? Are not their cells very small? Now I will tell you a strange thing.

The man who knew most about bees was a blind man! His name was Huber. He lost his sight when he was a boy.

He loved to study. Most of all, he loved to study bees.

From a boy, he had a friend. She was a kind girl. She, too, loved to study. When she grew up, she became Huber’s wife.

Huber was not poor. He had a nice home of his own. He had a man to live with him and wait on him.

Huber, and his wife, and the man, would go and sit by the bee-hive. They read to Huber all the books about bees that had then been made. Then they would watch the bees, to see if they did the things that were told in books.

When they saw the bees do other things, they told Huber. Then they caught bees, and studied the parts of their bodies. Ask your teacher what kind of a glass they used[9] to see the bee with.

The wife and the man told Huber all that they saw. He thought it all over. They watched the bees, year after year.

Huber worked fifteen years. Then he made a great book on bees. He told his wife what to write.

He lived to be very old.

It is both from books, and by your own eyes and thought, that you may learn these things. You must watch if you would know. Give time and work to this study.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The inside of a gold watch-case, held at angle 45°, is a good magnifier. The teacher should explain a little about the microscope.

LESSON XVIII.

HOW THE BEE IS MADE.

There are many kinds of bees. The chief of them all is the hive bee. What does the hive bee make for you to eat?

In each hive there are three kinds of bees. The queen bee is the first. She rules all, and she is the mother of all.

The queen bee does no work. She lays eggs in the cells. The father bee is called the drone. He does no work.

Who, then, builds so many fine cells? Who lays up so much honey? Who feeds the baby bees?

The small, quiet, brown work bees do all that.

In each hive there is one queen bee to lay eggs.

And there are the drone bees, who hum and walk about. And there are more than you can count, of work bees, to do all that is done.

How does a bee grow?

Like the wasp, the bee is first an egg. Then it is a grub, or a worm. Then, shut in a cell, it gets legs and wings, and turns into a full grown bee.

The bee is formed of three parts, as a wasp is; but the body is not so slim. The parts are put close to each other. The bee has six legs, and four wings, and many eyes set close like one.

The bee has many hairs on its legs and body. These fine hairs are its velvet coat.

Part of the bee’s mouth is a long tongue.

It can roll this up: it uses it to get honey from flowers.

The body of the bee is made of rings. The drone bee has a thick body, a round head, and no sting.

The queen bee has a long, slim body. Her wings are small. She can sting: so can the work bee.

The work bee is not so large as the other two, but it has large wings. The work bee must fly far for food or wax. The queen bee stays at home.

LESSON XIX.

THE BEE AT HOME.

Let us look at a work bee. There are two kinds of work bees. Nurse bees take care of the baby bees.

The wax bees build the house. Let us look well at the wax bee. See its body.

Here are the rings, and here are the scales of wax on each ring. The wax is made in the bee from the honey or sweet food that the bee eats.

In the bee’s body are two bags.

Into one bag it puts the honey that it gets from flowers. It takes this home and puts it into the cells. What goes into the other bag feeds the bee and makes wax.

Look at this bee’s legs. On each leg is a basket, a brush, and a tool with which to pinch and press the wax into the cells.

When the bee goes into a flower, it gets covered with dust. The brush on its legs takes off this dust from the bee’s coat and puts it into the basket. That dust is to feed the young bees.

With the tool it strips the scale of wax from the rings on its body. Then it takes the wax in its mouth and lays it to build the wall of the cells. Did you ever see a man lay brick on a wall?

The bee builds her walls very much as the man builds his.

When the work bees make cells, they first lay down a thick sheet of wax. Then they build upon this little wax boxes, each with six sides, set close to each other. When the boxes are as deep as they wish them to be, the bees fill them.

Let us see what they do with the cells. Some of the cells are for the dust, or food, called bee-bread. Some cells are for the baby bees to lie in.

Some cells are for honey. The queen puts eggs in all the cells that are for bees. The nurse bees put in flower dust for the baby bees to eat.

The wax bees build the cells and get honey. The wax bees have pockets for wax. The nurse bees have only small pockets.

The queen bee and the drones have no pockets.

LESSON XX.

THE BEE BABIES.

A bee does not live more than three or four years.[10] The work bees know that some of the grubs must grow to be queens, others to be drones and others work bees. They make for the baby queen bee a large, round cell.

In each hive there are five or six cells for these baby queens. Then the nurse bees feed the grubs. They give the baby queens all they can eat of very nice food.

The baby work bees get only plain bee-bread. The work babies are in small cells. The grub of the new queen bee grows large, and eats as much as it wants.

The grub of the work bee gets little food, and is then shut in its tight cell, to turn into a bee. After a time the grubs shut in the big cells turn into queen bees. They begin to sing a song.

The queen bee hears it. She knows that more queen bees will come out. That makes her angry.

She runs at the cells, to try to kill the new queens. The work bees all stand in her way. They will not let her kill the new queens.

But there can be only one queen in a hive at one time. So the old queen says, “Come! I will go away! I will not live here any more!”

Many of the old bees say, “We will go with our queen.” Then they fly out of the hive in a cloud. They wish to find a new home.

Did you ever see bees swarm? They may fly far away, or they may light near by.

They hang on a vine, or branch, or stick, like a bunch of grapes. Can you put them into a new hive? Yes.

Drop them softly into a new hive where there is a piece of honey-comb. In a few hours they are calm. Then they go to work.

The work bees begin to make cells. They spread wax. They build walls.

If a young bee lays a bit of wax wrong, some old one takes it up and lays it right.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Some claim that the life of a work bee is never longer than six months.

LESSON XXI.

THE BEE WAR.

After the old queen goes out in a rage, what do the rest of the bees do? They all keep still, but they look to the cells where the new queens sing. Then one new queen breaks off the lid of her cell and comes out.

She lifts her head, spreads her wings, dries her legs. Her legs are like gold. Her dress is velvet and gold.

She is fine! The bees fan her and feed her. But just then a cell near by opens, and out comes one more new queen!

This will not do. Two queens do not live in one hive. When the two queens see each other, they rush together and begin to fight.

If they stop the fight to rest, the work bees make them keep on. At last one of them stings the other near the wing, and kills her.

Then this strong queen runs to the other cells, where the baby queens lie. She tears off the wax lids and stings each new queen bee. Then it dies.

Now the strong queen is the one true queen of the hive. Her rage is at an end. The bees come to her and touch her.

They are proud of their fine, new queen, and love her. They carry out all the dead bees from the hive, and in great joy build new cells. The queen bee leaves the hive but twice.

A few weeks after she is made queen, the work bees let her go out once into the sun and air. But her wings are very small. She cannot fly far.

She has no bag for dust. She does not need to get honey. All she need do is to come home and lay eggs.

She does not go out again until the next year. Then she leads off a swarm of old bees, and leaves the hive to the next new queen bee.

LESSON XXII.

THE BEE’S WORK.

You know how the new queen bee is made and how she lives. Now let us see how the work bee gets on. The work bee in its small cell does not grow so large as the queen bee.

But it has larger wings. When it is a true bee, it pulls or breaks off the cap of its cell and comes out. It is wet and cold and weak.

But near by is a cell, open, and full of honey. The new bee takes a nice meal. Then it goes out of the hive into the sun.

The other bees come to it, and touch it with their feelers. They lick it with their tongues, to smooth its brown coat, and help it to spread its wings.

Then off it goes to get honey and flower dust. It knows how at once. It does not need to learn.

It finds its way. It knows the right flowers. It tries to keep out of the way of things that will hurt it.

What color do the bees like best? They like blue best, and red and purple next best. They like flowers of a sweet smell, and all flowers that have honey.

They bring home dust of flowers, honey, and a kind of gum. The gum is to line the cells and to help make them strong.

If a queen bee dies, and all the baby queens are also dead, what can the bees do?

They take a baby work bee and make a queen. Can they not live if they have no queen? No, not long, there will be no eggs laid.

How do they make a queen of a work bee? They pick out a good grub. They put it into a round queen cell.

They feed the work grub the queen food, or “royal jelly.” When it grows up, it is not a work bee, but is a queen.

LESSON XXIII.

THE WISE BEES.

In the bee-hive all is not peace and joy. Foes come in and try to kill the poor bees. Who are these foes?

A caterpillar may come into the hive to live. The bees do not like him. He is not clean; he is in their way.

Slugs also come in. Snails and moths also come to steal the honey. When the foe is a small fly or slug, the bees kill it and take it out.

But a large worm or slug they cannot take out. What do they do then? They kill it, if they can, with their stings.

Then they build over it a tomb, or grave, of wax and gum. That is to keep the bad smell of the bug from the cells. If a snail comes in, they take this same strong gum and glue him to the floor.

Then he must die in his shell. If a strange queen flies in, they will not sting her.

But she must not stay. So the work bees form a ball about her, until she dies for lack of air.

I have told you how wasps kill bees. Birds eat bees.

Some birds break into the hive to get honey. Bears like honey. They break up wild bees’ nests.

Hens and toads eat bees. Moths make the worst trouble in bee-hives.

In June or July, the work bees kill all the drones.

They do not wish to feed them when it is cold.

Bees lay up honey to eat when the flowers are dead and gone.

In the winter, bees sleep most of the time. They need some food to eat when they rouse. As soon as spring comes, they come out and go to work.

LESSON XXIV.

EARTH BEES.

Do all bees build in hives? No. Wild bees like to build in hollow trees.

In hot lands, some bees build in holes in the rock. Swarms of bees that leave hives find odd places to live in. I knew of a swarm that found a hole in the roof of a house.

The bees got into the roof and lived there five years. When a man took them out, they had two big tubs full of comb. Is it not odd that bees can make so much wax from their small wax-bags?

Did you ever find in the earth the nest of a humble-bee? The humble-bee queen works. Humble-bees dig holes in the earth with their front feet.