Part 3

When they have made a hall and a room, they make a nest. It is of grass, or leaves, or hay, cut fine. They lay eggs in the nest.

They make honey in large combs. The combs are more soft and dark than those which the hive bee makes. Field mice and moles eat these bees and their combs.

One little bee, that lives alone, saws out a nest in a post or tree. She makes one room over the other. In each she puts an egg and food.

She seals the door up with a paste made of sawdust. Then she goes off and dies. The next spring out come the new bees.

They know how to get food and make homes, just as the mother did. One kind of bee makes a house much like an ant-hill. She makes a long hall.

From the hall she opens small rooms. In each room she puts food, in a ball like a pea. Then she lays an egg by it, and leaves the small bee to grow up alone.

LESSON XXV.

OTHER BEES.

One bee is called a mason bee. She takes fine mud or clay, to make a cell. The cell is the shape of an urn. Now and then, she builds this urn in an empty snail shell.

One kind of the mason bees is of a dark green color. Mason bees are very small. Some mason bees live in holes in the ground. In the hole they make a clay cell like a box.

But they are so neat that they do not like to see a mud wall. What does the bee do to her wall? She cuts out bits of nice, soft leaves, and lines her cell! Some bees take bits of green leaves, as of the plum tree.

But they like bright color best. One kind of bee lines her cell with the petals of roses. When she has glued them all over the cell, she then puts into it some food and an egg.

Do you not think the new bee will like its gay, pink cell? One kind of bee likes red poppy leaves best. She cuts the bits of leaf quite small.

There is a bee in Brazil, which makes a large nest, like a great bag. It is full of round balls. The balls are full of honey. The wax and honey of this bee are of a dark color.

One kind of bee has no sting. Would you like that bee best?

The tree bee is also called the wild bee. This bee takes an old tree with a hollow trunk. It cleans out more and more of the old, dead wood, and builds nice combs.

A tall tree may be full of combs, from root to top. In such a tree, more than one swarm will live and work. Each swarm has its queen, and keeps in its own place.

Smoke makes bees fall, as if dead. People drive bees off with the smoke from a fire of wood or paper.

When I was a little girl, our bees sometimes swarmed on the fourth of July. I had to stay home and watch them, and I am sure I did not like that.

LESSON XXVI.

MORE ABOUT BEES.

Would you like to own bees? Once I knew a boy who had some bees. He kept them in a room, at the top of his house. He left the window open, and the bees came and went as they chose.

A swarm of bees costs about five dollars. Each year it may gain for you five dollars, or more, by honey, and a new swarm.

If you live in the city, you cannot so easily keep bees. Why not?

They could not find the right food.

They need to fly in the field or in a garden, so that they can get the honey and the yellow dust of flowers. They need to fly where they can get the thick gum from trees to line their cells.

If you have a hive of bees, you should learn to watch them well. Like Huber, you may find out some new things. We do not yet know all about bees. We could learn more than is now known about drones.

If you stand by a hive, the bees will not hurt you if you keep still, and do not get in their way to the door as they go in and out.

Bees lay up for winter more honey than they need. So the bee-keepers take out much of it to eat or to sell.

They must leave some for the bees. If too much comb is taken out, the bees must be fed. You can give them sugar or some sweet stuff. Bees like flour made of peas.

They cannot feed young bees if they do not have sweet dust or flour. They cannot make wax if they have no sweet food. They cannot line their cells, nor seal them well, if they have no strong gum from trees.

I know some people who think bees like to hear a song, and so sit near the hives and sing to them. But bees, really, love color, and sweet smell, and nice tastes, and do not care much for any noise.

LESSON XXVII.

THE SPIDER AND HIS DRESS.

Flies, wasps, bees and ants are insects. Insects have six legs, and their bodies have three parts. An insect is at first a tiny egg. From the egg comes a grub, and the grub turns to a full-grown wasp, or fly, or bee.

When it first gets its legs and wings, and comes out of its cell or case, it is as large as it ever will be. Insects do not grow after they get wings. The small fly does not grow to a big fly, nor the small bee to a big bee. The first size they have when they come out is the size that they keep.

The spider is an insect of another kind. It lays eggs, and out of the eggs come little spiders. They grow to be big ones. The spider changes its size, it grows. It molts its skin.

The body of the insect is hard, and is made in rings. It cannot pull its coat off to get bigger, as a crab can.

The spider’s body is soft. Its skin is tough; it changes its skin often when it is very young.

The spider has eight legs instead of six, and most spiders have eight eyes. The spider’s body is in two parts. The poison is not in a sting in the tail. It is in the base of the two jaws.

The spiders are somewhat like crabs; somewhat like other insects, as the daddy-long-legs. The real daddy-long-legs is a fly with long legs. A spider that has just such legs is also called a daddy-long-legs.

The front part of the spider’s body is not so large as the hind part. The front part has all the eight legs and the head.

The spider has no wings, but he has two small front legs, or hands, with five joints. He uses them to feel with, and to take his food.

You will see on the head of the spider two short fangs. They are its jaws. They have the poison in them. They are used to bite.

The claws on the eight feet of a spider are very much like a lion’s claw. The claws have a brush of hairs on them.

The spider can walk up a wall. The brush on his feet will not let him drop off. He uses his legs to jump and to walk, and to guide his thread when he spins.

Spiders spin webs. The hind part of the spider is large and round. It has six small, round tubes. Each of these tubes is made of many very small tubes. What are they for? They are to spin this web. What is the web?

In the tube is a kind of glue. When it is drawn out into the air, it gets hard. It is then a fine silk, and as it comes out it is woven into a net which we call a web. All spiders spin webs.

Spiders are of all colors. Their dress is like velvet. It is black, brown, red, and gold. It is in stripes and spots. The spider is like a king in his rich dress.

The eight eyes of the spider cannot move. They are set so that they can see every way at once.

While the spider is growing, he pulls off his dress as Mr. Crab does. The crab’s bones are his coat. The spider has no bones, but his skin is hard and tough, and before the baby spiders are two months old, they shed their coats three or four times.

We say they molt when they do this. They spin a bit of line to take firm hold of. Then the skin on the front part of the body first cracks open; then after this the skin on the hind part falls off; and by hard kicks they get their legs free.

The new skin is fine and soft but soon grows firm and tough.

LESSON XXVIII.

THE SPIDER AT HOME.

The spider, like the wasp, is busy all the time. It is not cross like a wasp. The bite of a spider does not do a man or a child much harm. A spider does not bite unless it is hurt, or when it kills its food. The bite is to kill flies, bees, wasps, ants, and such things, to eat.

Spiders make webs, nets, and snares. They can spin, weave, dig, hunt. Some can build rafts, and others make mud houses.

Their webs are to live or lie in.

The nests are for baby spiders. The snares are to catch food. The silk of the web is very fine, but it is very strong. It will hold up a big, fat spider.

It will hold fast a wasp or a bee. Do you see the spider on his thread? It is his swing. He can swing as the boy does in his rope swing.

Do you see the spider lie at rest in his web? Do you see the child rest in a web made of string?

How does the spider make his web?

First he finds a good place. He presses the end of the tube he spins with, and makes a drop of glue fast to a wall, or leaf, or stem. Then he drops away; and as he goes, the glue spins out in many fine streams, which unite into one, and turn to silk-like thread. If he does not find a good place to make his web fast, he can climb back!

How can he climb back? He runs up his line as fast as he came down. If you scare him, he drops down on his line like a flash. It will not break.

If you break it, he winds up the end quickly. Then he runs off to find a new place to which to make it fast.

The long lines in the web are called rays. The spider spins the rays first. The rays are spread out like the spokes of a wheel.

Webs are of many shapes. You often see the round web.

The spider guides the lines with his feet as he spins. He pulls each one to see if it is firm.

Then he spins a thread, round and round, from ray to ray, until the web is done.

LESSON XXIX.

THE LITTLE NEST.

The web of the spider is made of two kinds of silk. The silk of the rays is smooth. The silk that goes across the rays has tiny drops of glue on it. This makes the line stick to the rays.

Mrs. Spider begins her lines at the outer edge. They are laid nearer to each other as she gets to the centre of the web. When all is done, she is in the centre, and does not need to walk on her new web. She has a nest near her web.

From the nest runs a line. Mrs. Spider can sit in the door of her nest, and hold the line in her claw. When a bug or fly goes on the web, the web shakes. She feels her line move. She runs down the line and gets the fly or bug, and takes it to her nest to eat.

Before she takes the prey to her nest, she kills or stuns it. Then she winds some fine web about it. She makes a neat bundle of it, and then carries it off.

You can make Mrs. Spider run down her line if you shake the web a very little with a bit of grass or stick. She will run out to see if she has caught a bee or a fly.

The nest of the spider is made of close, fine silk. It is like soft, nice cloth.

In shape it is like a ball, or a horn, or a basket. Each kind of spider makes its web in the shape it likes best. In the nest the spider lays her eggs in a silk ball. The eggs, at first, are very soft. After a time they grow harder.

More than two spiders never live in a nest. Often a spider lives all alone. Spiders are often apt to bite off each other’s legs. A spider can live and run when half its legs are gone. But it can get a fine new leg as a crab can.

When the baby spiders come out of the egg, they must be fed. The mother takes good care of them.

They grow fast. When they are grown, they go off and make their own webs. Sometimes the eggs are left in the silk ball all winter. The baby spiders come out in the spring.

Then the old ones are dead. But the young ones know how to hunt and to spin. The very young spiders do not have so rich a dress as the old ones. The hairs of their coat are not so thick at first.

The soft, silk-like coat, with its rich color, is the only beauty a spider has. People do not like his long legs and his round, soft, bag-like body. Still, some people who watch spiders learn to like them very well.

LESSON XXX.

THE SPIDER AND HIS FOOD.

Some people say that they hate spiders. Why do they hate them? “Oh,” they say, “they are so very greedy!” Well, a spider must eat a great deal, or he cannot spin his web.

His food makes the glue that makes the web. Spiders work hard. So they must eat much.

“But they bite.” They will not bite you if you do not hurt them. If they do, the bite will do you no harm. They bite insects to kill them.

Do you not eat fish, meat, and birds? Who kills this food for you?

“But the spider is not pretty.” True, his shape is not pretty, nor are his long hairy legs pretty. Just see his fine black or gold coat!

If he is not pretty, he is wise and busy. Webs are very pretty, if spiders are not.

Spiders eat flies and all kinds of small bugs. When a fly is fast in a web, he hums loud from fear.

The spider will eat dead birds. One kind of spider kills small birds to eat.

There is a spider that lives on water. He knows how to build a raft.

He takes grass and bits of stick and ties them up with his silk. On this raft he sails out to catch flies and bugs that skim over the water.

There is a spider that lives in the water. She can dive. Her nest is like a ball. It shines like silver. Her web is so thick that it does not get wet. Her velvet coat keeps her as dry as a fur coat. Her eggs are of the color of gold.

When spiders eat, they do not chew their food: they suck out the juice.

Spiders are very neat. They hate dust and soot.

They will not have a dirty web. If you put a bit of dirt or leaf on the web, Mrs. Spider will go and clean it off.

She shakes her web with her foot until all the lines are clean. If the dirt will not shake from the web, the spider will cut the piece out, and mend the web with new lines.

LESSON XXXI.

VERY QUEER SPIDERS.

I have told you of the spider that dives. I also told you of the spider that makes a raft. The one that makes the round web is the garden spider.

There is a spider that runs on water. How can she do that? Have you seen boys dash about on ice with skates on their feet? Did you ever see a man walk on snow-shoes? This spider wears shoes.

They are shoes made for walking on the water. What are they like? They are like bags of air. It is as if she had a wee toy-balloon on each of her eight feet. She cannot sink.

There is one spider called a trap-door spider. She lives in the ground. She digs a tube down, and makes her nest deep in the earth.

Then she makes a door. It is a nice door at the top of the hole. It has a hinge. It will open and shut.

It is like the lid of a box. How does she make this? She spins a thick, round web. She fills it with earth.

Then she folds the web over, to hold the dirt in. She makes a hinge of web. This trap-door will open and shut. It is firm and strong.

But the odd thing is, that the spider plants moss or small ferns on this door! She digs the moss up, sets it on her door, and it grows well. These trap-door spiders eat ants and worms. When they come out of their holes, they leave the door wide open so that they can go back.

Once a man put a lady-bird at a spider’s trap-door. She took it in to eat. She found it had too hard a shell to bite. So she took it back and laid it out by her door.

Then the man put a soft grub by the door, and the spider took that to eat. She did not bring that back. She ate it.

Spiders now and then eat other spiders, but not always.

One kind of spider makes a tent of leaves. She ties the leaves down with silk. She lives in the tent and keeps her eggs there.

One garden spider makes a nest in the shape of a pear. One ties a little ball to stems of grass.

The young spiders have not their thick coats at first. Small spiders will stay by their mother and sit on her back. They act like the small chicks with the hen. Most spiders live only one year. Some live two. Some live over four.

There are some mason spiders. When a man is a mason, what does he do? In what does he work? There are mason wasps, and mason bees, and mason worms. Mason spiders make a nest of clay.

They take the clay in small bits and build a clay mug. It is six inches long. They line it with thick silk. The door is like a box lid. It has a hinge.

Some spiders are so small you can hardly see them. One of the very wee ones is clear, bright red. Some are very big.

The big ones are black, with spots and stripes, and have thick coats like fur. If you could find a tower spider, or a trap-door spider, and sit down to watch it build or catch its food, I think you would be happy for a whole day, or for many days. The tower spider builds over her hole a neat tower two or three inches high; she sits on her tower.

She has as many as fifty baby spiders at once. They sit on her back for four or five weeks, until they molt two or three times. They do not fight with each other. When Mrs. Spider gets a fly or bug for the little ones to eat, she crushes it, and the baby spiders come and suck the juice, as she holds the food for them.

LESSON XXXII.

REVIEW.

What is an insect?

Name some kinds of insects.

Can you tell me how an insect’s body is made?

How many legs, wings, and eyes do insects have?

What three kinds of bees live in each hive?

Tell me what the queen bee does.

What does a drone bee do, and how does he look?

Which bee makes cells?

How do bees get honey and wax?

Tell me how nurse bees take care of bee babies.

How can nurse bees make a new queen bee?

Why do the queen bees fight?

Tell me about the fight of the queen bees.

Why does a swarm of bees leave the hive?

What do bees eat?

What do they make?

Tell me of odd places where bees live.

What things eat the bees and steal their combs?

How must you take care of bees, if you have them?

What colors do bees like best?

Tell me about ground bees.

Tell me about mason bees.

Do all bees make combs with cells that have six sides?

Is a spider an insect?

In what is he not like other insects?

What can a spider make?

How does the spider spin a web?

Tell me about the spider’s eyes.

How does a spider tend its young ones?

Tell me about the water spiders.

What can you tell about other queer spiders?

What does a spider eat?

What good things can you say for the spider?

LESSON XXXIII.

OUT OF HARM’S WAY.

By this time I am sure you think that all the small bugs, flies, spiders, and crabs must soon be dead.

You have found how cold kills them. You have heard how they kill each other. You know that men and birds and beasts kill them.

How can any live? What is there to save the poor things?

The two chief things that save them are their shape and their color.

Why, how is that?

Let us see how this is done.

On the sand by the sea the crab that lives mostly out in the air is of a gray color. It has fine red spots like sand. The shell of this crab looks so like sand that, if he lies flat and still, you can scarcely see him.

The crab that lives on the sea-side mud is black-green like the mud. Birds cannot see him very well, he is so like the mud that he lies on.

The spiders that live in the woods are of much the color of a dead leaf.

Some of them, as they lie in their webs, fold up their legs and look like a dead leaf. One spider puts a row of dead leaves and moss all along her web. She lies on this row, and looks like part of it. Birds cannot see her, as she lies in this way.

One small bee that lives in trees is green, like a new leaf. The bees, in brown, black, and gold, look like parts of the flowers on which they alight.

Birds and beasts that live in snow lands, are often white, as the polar bear and the eider duck.

Snakes that live on trees, or on the ground, are often brown or green. They look like the limbs of trees.

Little lizards in walls are gray like stone. In woods, they often are the color of a dead twig. These things can fold up, or stretch out, and look like twigs, or leaves, or balls of grass or hay.

All this will keep them from being seen by animals that would kill them.

Some of them you know have hard shells to shield them. Did I not once tell you how fast they move? They dart and run and jump, quick as a flash of light. That helps them to get out of the way.

Did I not tell you, also, how the crab has his eyes set on pegs? He can turn them every way to see what is near him.

The insect and the spider do not have their eyes on long pegs. Some kinds have six or eight eyes. These eyes are set in a bunch, and some face one way, some another. They can see all ways at once.

Then, too, so many small live things grow each year, that they cannot all be put out of the way.

Each crab will lay more eggs then fifty hens. One spider has more baby spiders than you can count. One bee has more new bees in the hive each year than there are people in a large city. In a wasp’s big nest there are, no doubt, as many wasps as there are leaves on a great tree.

Of the creatures which it is most easy to kill, very many are made. And so, while many of them perish each day, many are left to live.

LESSON XXXIV.

SHELL-FISH.

Have you not all heard the song, “Rock-a-by Baby upon the Tree-top”? What babies live in tree-tops? You will say, “Bird, wasp, bee, and spider babies swing in the trees.”

Do you not know that there are small cradles that rock all day long on the waves?

Up and down, in the sun, on the water, rock the cradles of many shell-fish.

What are shell-fish?

They are soft animals that live in hard shells.

But you must know that these are not true fish. A true fish is an animal that lives in the water, and has a back-bone. The back-bone of a fish is very much like your back-bone.

All fish can swim. Most of them have fins and scales. Very many of them have long, slim, smooth bodies, that will glide easily through the water.

All of you can see fish, in the ponds, lakes, or brooks near your home. You often have them to eat on your table.

If you live in the city, you can go to the place where they sell fish and look at them.

In some other book I may tell you a little about the true fishes.

In this book I shall now tell you a very little about what are called “shell-fish.”

This is not a very good name for them, but we will use it, because you will hear it from many people, and will often see it used in books.

The right name for these shell-fish is a hard word, which means “soft body” or “soft thing.” That suits them very well, for they are all soft bodies, they have no bones.

There are in the water soft-bodied things that have no shells to cover them. In the next book we will tell you of some of them.

These soft things that live in shells are mostly of a round or a wedge shape. Their shells serve them for houses to live in, for ships to sail in, for coats to cover them, for bones to keep their soft bodies in shape.

The shells of these soft things are of many forms.

Some are all in one piece, like a twist or curl. Some have two parts, like the covers of a book. These two parts are held by a hinge. And some shells are made in many pieces or scales.

There are three kinds, or orders, of shell-fish. One kind has a head on its foot. Another has a head much like that of the snail. Still another kind, or order, has no head at all!

Well! That is a queer thing, to have no head!

Let us learn first about the shell-fish with a head and a foot.

There are many kinds of shell-fish of this order. They differ in size, color, shape, and way of life. But if we learn about one, we shall have an idea of all.

You know that the hermit crab steals a shell to live in. It is often a long shell, like a curl. That is the sort of shell that shell-fish with heads live in. It is a shell all in one piece.

These shells are very hard and thick. Why is that? The fish in them is soft. It has no bones.

If these soft things had no hard shells, they could not live. The waves would kill them. The crabs, fish, and other animals in the sea, would eat them at once.

Let us see how a shell-fish is made. The conch, or winkle, is the largest shell-fish you will be likely to find. His body is soft but tough. It runs to a point.