The romance of the animal world

NATURE’S PARASITES—PUSS-MOTH CATERPILLAR AND ICHNEUMON-FLY—CATERPILLAR DEFENCES—WASPS AND THEIR VICTIMS—A SPIDER CAUGHT—ANTS THAT ARE OGRES—OSPREY AND EAGLE—GULLS AND SKUAS—PEEW...

SEALS AND THEIR WAYS—BREEDING HABITS OF THE SEA-BEAR—SEA-ELEPHANTS—THE WALRUS AND THE POLAR BEAR—MATERNAL AFFECTION UTILISED—A WINTER SLEEP IN A SNOW-HOUSE—A DANGEROUS INTRUSION...

THE SEA-SERPENT—MANY OCCASIONS ON WHICH IT HAS BEEN SEEN—CONSCIENTIOUS SCEPTICISM OF SCIENTIFIC MEN—A FIGHT BETWEEN MONSTERS—THE LARGEST LAND-SERPENT—SNAKES AND SNAKE-STONES—MED...

Before there can be any romance—as I understand the word—in animal life, there must be some degree of intelligence in the romance-making animals. The question, therefore, is, at...

In the sea-anemone affixing itself to the shell of the hermit-crab, who becomes its friendly and interested landlord, we have seen one of the more pleasing instances of associat...

Amongst the strangest and, as Buffon calls them, the most unbirdlike-looking of all birds, are the penguins—an aquatic family, numbering many species, whose headquarters are the...

The penguins, like others of the diving sea-birds—our own guillemots and razor-bills, for instance—make no nests. Birds, however, taken as a class, are remarkable, as we all kno...

As we have seen in the last chapter, some nests of birds are very wonderful buildings, but there are some birds which make much more wonderful buildings than nests. These are th...

That strange habit which the bower-birds have of bringing all sorts of things—such as bleached bones, shells, etc.—to the places they make, is practised also by at least one spe...

But the greatest enemy that either the prairie-dog or the bizcacha has to contend with, is not the fox or the rattlesnake, but the dreaded puma or cougar, next to the jaguar the...

The most wonderful of all insects—that, at least, would be the general opinion—are bees and ants. As bees are so very well known, and kept by so many people, I will not say much...

We will next consider the foraging ants of such tropical countries as Brazil and Western Equatorial Africa. To the latter the name of driver-ants has been given, because when th...

In the white ants, or termites—to use their more scientific name—we have insects greatly resembling ants in their general plan and mode of life, and also much like them in gener...

In the ant-lion that we have just been talking about it might be thought that the summit of strategy, as employed by one animal to prey upon another, had been reached. Inasmuch...

In previous chapters we have seen how spiders are preyed upon in a peculiar way, and for a special purpose, by various species of wasps, and how, in a more general manner, they...

Though we have already had something to say about spiders, they are such interesting creatures that we may as well devote a few pages more to them—especially as the web, which i...

The beaver may be said to occupy amongst mammals the place that ants do amongst insects. Wood says of him: “Of the Social Mammalia, he takes the first rank, and is the best poss...

The last chapter left off just as we were coming to the family life of beavers; so to this and the houses in which they live, with other matters growing therefrom, we will devot...

We have seen the beaver as a dam-maker and a house-builder, but we have not yet considered him as a maker of canals. This we will now proceed to do. In the construction of the d...

SEALS AND THEIR WAYS—BREEDING HABITS OF THE SEA-BEAR—SEA-ELEPHANTS—THE WALRUS AND THE POLAR BEAR—MATERNAL AFFECTION UTILISED—A WINTER SLEEP IN A SNOW-HOUSE—A DANGEROUS INTRUSION...

The most interesting thing I know about crocodiles and alligators—and this is a remark which applies to a good many animals—is the way in which they procure their food. This the...

The little peccary that we have been speaking about is the wild boar of America—especially of South America—and though it is tiny compared to the Indian wild boar, and sometimes...

A slight digression arising out of the subject took me away from the seals, or rather from the cetaceans, or whale tribe, which come next to them in that orderly sequence by whi...

The sword-fish and killer, whose acquaintance we made in the last chapter, are two of the principal enemies of the larger whales; especially of those that are provided with bale...

The little pilot-fish is not the only friend that the shark has. The remora, or sucking-fish, as we shall soon see, is still more attached to him. This is one of the queerest fi...

THE SEA-SERPENT—MANY OCCASIONS ON WHICH IT HAS BEEN SEEN—CONSCIENTIOUS SCEPTICISM OF SCIENTIFIC MEN—A FIGHT BETWEEN MONSTERS—THE LARGEST LAND-SERPENT—SNAKES AND SNAKE-STONES—MED...

In several of the preceding chapters we have seen something of the stratagems and contrivances made use of by various creatures—fish, insects, birds, or crustaceans—in order to...

The various ruses mentioned in the preceding chapter were all of an offensive character, employed, that is to say, by one animal in order to entrap and prey upon another. But as...

We have seen how some animals are, by their cunning and sagacity, able to compete even with man himself. At an earlier period, when wild animals were more numerous than they are...