Part 5

The oddly-marked caterpillar of the Puss Moth carries the same plan of campaign to a much more artistic pitch. This very quaint insect is common on willows and poplars in England, and is on the whole protectively coloured. Black at first, it looks like a mere speck or spot on the leaf; as it grows, it becomes gradually greener, relieved with broad purple patches on the back, which produce the effect of lines and shadows. When quite full-grown, as seen in No. 7, the adult caterpillar generally rests at ease on the twigs of the willow-tree. Our illustration shows it in this final stage of its larval life, just taking alarm and humping its back at the approach of some bird or other enemy. If the alarm continues, it goes through a most curious series of evolutions, admirably shown by Mr. Enock in No. 8. Here, the little beast is altogether on the defensive: it withdraws its head into the first ring of the body, and inflates the margin, which is bright red in colour. Two black spots, which are not really eyes, but which look absurdly eye-like, now give it a grotesque and terrifying appearance. In fact, the inflated ring resembles a hideous grinning mask, and gives the impression of a face with eyes, nose, and mouth, like that of some uncanny creeping creature. But the apparent face is not a face at all: it is artfully made up of lines and spots on the skin of the body. At the same time that the caterpillar thus assumes its mask, it stands on its eight hind legs as erect as it can, and whips out two pink bristles or tentacles from the forked prongs at the end of its tail--you can see them in the picture. It then bends forward the tail, and brandishes or waves about these pink bristles over its false head, so as to present altogether a most gruesome aspect. Indeed, even Mr. Enock's vigorous sketch of the little brute in its tragic moments does not quite convey the full effect of its acting in the absence of colour: for the bright red margin and the swishing pink switches add not a little to the telling smirk and black goggle-eyes of the mask-like face thus produced _in terrorem_.

That is not all, either. The Puss Moth caterpillar has a rapid trick of facing about abruptly in the direction of the enemy as if it meant to bite: and this trick is always most disconcerting. If ever so lightly touched, it instantly assumes the terrifying attitude, and presents its pretended face to the astonished aggressor. From a harmless caterpillar it becomes all at once a raging bulldog. Touch it on the other side, and it faces round like lightning in the opposite direction. Professor Poulton tried the effect of its grimace on a marmoset, and found the marmoset was afraid to touch the mysterious creature. We are not marmosets, but I notice that most human beings recoil instinctively from a Puss Moth caterpillar when it assumes its mask. Even if you _know_ it is harmless, there is something very alarming in its rapid twists and turns, and in the persistent way in which it grins and spits at you.

Really spits, too; for the insect has a gland in its head which ejects, at need, an irritating fluid. If this fluid gets into your eyes, they smart most unpleasantly. It contains formic acid, and is strong enough to be exceedingly stinging and painful. The discharge repels lizards, and probably also birds, who are among the chief enemies of this as of other caterpillars.

The deadliest foe of the Puss Moth larva, however, is the ichneumon-fly, a parasitic creature, which lays its eggs in living caterpillars, and lets its grubs hatch out inside them, so as to devour the host from within in the most ruthless fashion. There are many kinds of ichneumon-fly, some of them very minute: the one which attacks the Puss Moth in its larval stage is a comparatively big one. The fly lays its eggs behind the caterpillar's head, where the victim is powerless to dislodge them. In all probability the defensive attitude and the shower of formic acid are chiefly of use against these parasitic foes: for when an ichneumon-fly appears, the caterpillar assumes his "terrifying" attitude the moment it touches him, and faces full round to the foe with his false mask inflated. A very small quantity of the formic acid Professor Poulton found sufficient to kill an ichneumon: and there can be little doubt that this is its main object.

The last of these "bluffing" caterpillars with which I shall deal here is that of the Lobster Moth. In No. 9 you see a couple of these quaint and unwieldy creatures "demonstrating" before an enemy, as if he were the Sultan. The Lobster Moth in its larval stage frequents beech-trees, and you will see in the illustration that the two represented are on a twig of beech. When at rest, the caterpillar resembles a curled and withered beech-leaf, and by this unconscious mimicry escapes detection. But when discovered and roused to battle, oh, then he imitates the action of the spider. He holds up his short front legs in a menacing attitude, so as to suggest a pair of frightful gaping jaws: the four long legs behind these he keeps wide apart and makes them quiver with rage in the most alarming pantomimic indignation. His tail he turns topsy-turvy over his head like a scorpion; while the forked appendages at its end seem like frightful stings, with which he is just about to inflict condign punishment on whoever has dared to disturb his quiet. But it is all mere brag, though the whole effect is extremely terrifying. The performance does not, indeed, mimic any particular venomous beast, but it suggests most appalling and paralyzing possibilities. Many of these queer attitudes, indeed, owe their impressiveness just to their grotesque simulation of one knows not quite what: they are not definite and special, they are worse than that; they appeal to the imagination. And if only you reflect how afraid we often feel of the most harmless insects, merely because they _look_ frightful, you will readily understand that such vague appeals to the imagination may be far more effectual than any real sting could ever be. We dread the unknown even more than the painful.

The funniest of all these false pretences, however, is one which Hermann Müller, I believe, was the first to point out in this same Lobster Moth caterpillar. When very much bothered by ichneumon-flies (to whose attacks it is particularly exposed), this bristling beast displays, for the first time, two black patches on its side, till then concealed by a triangular flap. Now, these patches closely resemble the sort of wound made by the ichneumon when it deposits its eggs, so it is probable that they serve to take in the assailant, who is thus led to think that another fly of her own kind has been before her, and, therefore, that it is no use laying her eggs where a previous parasite is already in possession. There would not be enough Lobster Moth to feed _two_ hungry ichneumon families. In fact, the caterpillar first begins by bluffing, and says, "If you touch me, I bite!" then, finding the bluff unsuccessful, it further pretends to throw up the sponge, and cries out with a bounce: "Oh, if egg-laying is your game, _that's_ no good: I'm already occupied!" For a combination of wiles, this crafty double game probably "licks creation."

If the defenders are so cunning, however, the attackers can sometimes turn the tables upon them. Animals that hunt often disguise themselves, in order to avoid the notice of the prey, and so steal unobserved upon their victims. Such tactics are like those of the Kaffirs, who cut bits of bush, and then creep up slowly, slowly behind them, under cover of the branches, upon the gnus or antelopes which they wish to slaughter. In No. 10 we have one example of this method of hunting or stalking, as pursued by the intelligent English grass-spider. All spiders, of course, have eight legs, four on each side; but in most of the class, the various pairs of legs are evenly distributed, so as to lie about the body in a rough circle or something like it. The grass-spider, however, has his own views on this important matter. His form and attitude are quite peculiar. He lies in wait for his prey on the open, crouched against a stem of grass, with his two front pairs of legs extended before him, and his back pair behind, in an arrangement which is rather linear than circular. This position makes him almost invisible--much more invisible in real life, indeed, than you see him in the drawing; for if he were represented as inconspicuous as he looks you would say there was no spider there at all, only a naked grass-stem. The delusion is heightened by his lines and colours: he is mostly green or greenish, with narrow black or brown stripes which run more or less up and down his body, instead of cross-wise as usual, so that they harmonize beautifully with the up-and-down lines of the blades and stem in the tuft which he inhabits. When he is pressed close against a bent of grass, on the look-out for flies, it is almost impossible for the quickest eye to distinguish him. Flies come near, never suspecting the presence of their hereditary foe; as soon as they are close to him, the grass-spider rushes out with a dash and secures them. His jaws are among the most terrible in all his terrible race: they are large and wide-spreading, with two rows of teeth on either side, and a pair of long fangs of truly formidable proportions.

In other ways, also, this particular spider is a clever fellow, for he lives near water; but when the rains are heavy and there is likely to be a flood, he shifts his quarters higher up the ground, and so escapes impending inundation.

Deceptions and false pretences of this sort are somewhat less common among plants than among animals; but still, they occur, and that not infrequently. "What? Plants deceive?" you cry. "The innocent little flowers? How can they do it? Surely that is impossible!" By no means. I have watched plant life pretty closely for a good many years now, and every year the conviction is forced upon me more and more profoundly that whatever animals do, plants do almost equally. There is no vile trick or ruse or stratagem that they cannot imitate: no base deception that they will not practise. They lie and steal with the worst; they hold out false baits for deluded insects, and hide real fly-traps with honeyed words and sweet secretions.

As a good illustration among English plants, look at the Grass of Parnassus, that beautiful, dishonest bog-herb, with glossy-green leaves and pure white blossoms, which is considered the especial guerdon of poets. I found a whole nest of it once in a swamp near Cromer, and carried off a bunch of the lovely flowers as an appropriate offering to Mr. Swinburne who was stopping at Sidestrand. Yet this poet's flower, dainty and delicate as it is--you see in No. 11 its counterfeit presentment--is not ashamed to deceive the poor bees and flies in a way which the Heathen Chinee would have considered unsportsmanlike. It is a sham, a commercial sham of the worst type. It lives for the most part on wet moors among mountains, or else in the boggy hollows between blown sand-hills by the sea: and when its milk-white flowers star the ground in such spots, it forms one of the loveliest ornaments of our English flora. But trust it not, oh butterfly: it is fooling thee! From a distance, it looks as if it were full of honey; it advertises well: but at close quarters 'tis a wooden nutmeg; it turns out to be nothing better than an arrant humbug.

The deception is managed in this disgraceful fashion. Inside each petal lies a curious ten or twelve-fingered organ, which is in reality an abortive stamen. No. 12 shows you one such petal removed, with the false honey-glands drawn on a larger scale than in the other illustration. The ten-fingered stamen bears at its tip a number of translucent yellow drops, which look like pure nectar. But they are nothing of the kind; I regret to say, they are solid--solid--a commercial falsehood. They glisten like drops: but they are mere glassy imitations; and they are put there with intent to deceive, in order to attract flies and other insects, which come to quaff the supposed nectar, and so unwittingly fertilize the seeds, while they are muddling about perplexed among the pretended honey-glands, without getting paid one sip for their toil and trouble. This is, of course, a flagrant case of obtaining services under false pretences; it deserves fourteen days' without the option of a fine. As a rule, in similar cases, the flies are rewarded for their kind offices as carriers by the merited wage of a drop of honey. But the Grass of Parnassus, mendacious herb, pretends to be purveying a specially fine quantity and quality of nectar, while in reality it offers only a hard, glassy knob with nothing in it. This pays the plant, of course, because the blossoms do not have to go on producing honey fresh and fresh; a mere inexpensive show does just as well as the real article: "Our customers like it!" but the language of the flies when they discover the fraud is something just awful.

Nor is this by any means a solitary example of plant depravity. The whole group of pitcher-plants, for instance, cruelly manure themselves by means of living insects in the most treacherous fashion. These lovely and wicked plants live, without exception, in wet and boggy soil, where they cannot get enough animal matter for manure in the ordinary way by the roots: so they lay themselves out instead to capture and absorb the tissues of insects. For this horrid purpose, they twist their leaves into deep pitchers which catch and hold the rain water, and so form reservoirs to drown their prey. Then they entice insects by bright colours to their traps, and allure them to enter by secreting honey at the top of the pitcher. Hairs point downward inside; these allow the flies to walk on to their fate, bribed as they go by lines of nectar: but if they try to return, ah, then they find their mistake: the hairs prevent them, after the fashion of a lobster-pot. Thus they walk on and on till they reach the water, when they are swamped and clotted in a decaying mass, from which the treacherous plant draws manure at last for its own purposes. The pitchers are thus at once traps to catch animals, and stomachs to digest them.

Another and still odder case of deceptiveness in plants is shown by a curious group of South African flowers, the Hydaoras and Stapelias. These queer and malodorous herbs have very large and rather handsome but fleshy blossoms, an inch or two across, dappled and spotted just like decaying meat. They live in the dry and almost desert region, where carrion-flies abound. Such flies lay their eggs and hatch out their grubs for the most part in half-eaten carcasses of antelopes or smaller animals killed and in part devoured by lions and other beasts of prey. So the flowers have taken to imitating dead meat. They are a lurid red in colour, with livid livery patches, and they have a strong and unpleasant smell of decaying animal matter. The flies, deceived by the scent, flock to them to lay their eggs, and in so doing carry out the real object of the plant by fertilizing the blossoms. But, of course, the whole thing is a vile sham; for when the maggots hatch out, the flower has died, and there is no food for them, so they perish of starvation. Dr. Blackmore, of Salisbury, once gave me some of these curious plants and flowers: I noticed that in the sunlight, where they smelt just like decomposing meat, they attracted dozens of bluebottle flies and other carrion insects.

Protective resemblance also occurs among plants: for in the same dry South African region, where every green thing gets nibbled down in the rainless season, certain ice-plants and milk-weeds have acquired the trick of forming tubers or stems exactly like the pebbles among which they grow: so that when the leaves die down in the dry weather, the tuber is not distinguishable from the stones all round it. Such tubers are really reservoirs of living material destined to carry the life of the plant over the dead season: as soon as rain comes again, they put forth fresh green leaves at once, and grow on after their sleep as if nothing had happened. Even terrifying attitudes are not unknown in the vegetable world: for one of the uses of the movements in the Sensitive Plant is almost certainly to frighten animals. Browsing creatures that come near the bushes in their native woods see the leaves shrink back and curl up when touched, and are afraid to eat a tree that has so evidently a spirit in it. The Squirting Cucumber of the Mediterranean, again, alarms goats and cattle by discharging its ripe fruits explosively in their faces the moment the stem is touched. In this case the primary object is no doubt the dispersal of the seeds, which squirt out elastically as the fruit jumps off; but to frighten browsing enemies is a secondary advantage. There can be no question as to the reality of the plant's hostile intention, because the fruits also contain a pungent juice, which discharges itself at the same instant into the eyes of the assailant. As I have received a volley of this irritating liquid more than once in my own face (in the pursuit of science) I can testify personally on the best of evidence that it is distinctly painful. The tactics of the Squirting Cucumber in first frightening you, and then injecting acrid juice into your eyes, are thus exactly similar to the plan of action pursued by the angry larva of the Puss Moth.

_From Behind the Speaker's Chair._

XLVIII.

(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)

THE SEARCH FOR GUY FAWKES.

The proceedings at the opening of the forthcoming Session, the fifth in the fourteenth Parliament of Queen Victoria, will be fully reported in the morning papers. There is a proceeding preliminary to the Speaker's taking the Chair which, from its history and character, is of necessity conducted in secret. It is the search through the underground chambers and passages of the House with design to frustrate any schemes in the direction of a dissolution of Parliament that descendants or disciples of Guy Fawkes may have in hand. The present generation has seen, more especially when a Conservative Government have been in power, some revolutionary changes in Parliamentary procedure. The solemn search underneath the Houses of Parliament, preceding the opening of the revolving Sessions ever since Gunpowder Plot, is still observed with all the pomp and circumstance attached to it three hundred years ago.

The investigation is conducted under the personal direction of the Lord Great Chamberlain, who is answerable with his head for any miscarriage. When a peer comes newly to the office he makes a point of personally accompanying the expedition. But, though picturesque, and essential to the working of the British Constitution, it palls in time, and the Lord Great Chamberlain, relying upon the discretion, presence of mind, and resource of his Secretary, usually leaves it to him. Oddly enough, the House of Commons is not officially represented at the performance, the avowed object of which is not, primarily, to secure the safety of the Lords and Commons, but to avert the conclusion aimed at by Guy Fawkes--namely, to blow up the Sovereign. It is as the personal representative of the Queen that the Lord Great Chamberlain takes the business in hand.

To this day the result of the inquiry is directly communicated to Her Majesty. Up to a period dating back less than fifty years, as soon as the search was over, the Lord Great Chamberlain dispatched a messenger on horseback to the Sovereign, informing him (or her) that all was well, and that Majesty might safely repair to Westminster to open the new Session. To-day the telegraph wires carry the assurance to the Queen wherever she may chance to be in residence on the day before the opening of Parliament.

THE SEARCH PARTY.

Whilst the Commons take no official part in the performance, the peers are represented either by Black Rod or by his deputy, the Yeoman Usher, who is accompanied by half-a-dozen stalwart doorkeepers and messengers, handy in case of a fray. The Board of Works are represented by the Chief Surveyor of the London District, accompanied by the Clerk of Works to the Houses of Parliament. The Chief Engineer of the House of Commons, who is responsible for all the underground workings of the building, leads the party, the Chief Inspector of Police boldly marching on his left hand.

These are details prosaic enough. The nineteenth century has engrafted them on the sixteenth. The picturesqueness of the scene comes in with the appearance of the armed contingent. This is made up of some fourteen or sixteen of the Yeomen of the Guard, who arrive at the place of rendezvous armed with halberds and swords. The halberds look well, but this search is, above all, a business undertaking. It is recognised that for close combat in the vaults and narrow passages of the building halberds would be a little unwieldy. They are accordingly stacked in the Prince's Chamber, the Yeomen fearlessly marching on armed with nothing but their swords. Clad in their fifteenth century costume, they are commanded by an officer who wears a scarlet swallow-tailed coat, cocked hat, and feathers, gilt spurs shining at his martial heel. The spurs are not likely to be needed. But the British officer knows how to prepare for any emergency.

Following the Yeomen of the Guard stride half-a-dozen martial men in costumes dating from the early part of the present century. They wear swallow-tail coats, truncated cone caps, with the base of the cone uppermost. They are armed with short, serviceable cutlasses and bâtons, such as undertakers' men carry, suggesting that they have come to bury Guy Fawkes, not to catch him.

Most of the underground chambers and passages of the Houses of Parliament are lit by electricity. Failing that, they are flooded with gas. When search for Guy Fawkes was first ordered, the uses of gas had not been discovered, much less the possibilities of electricity. Lanterns were the only thing, so lanterns are still used. As the dauntless company of men-at-arms tramp along the subterranean passages, it is pretty to see the tallow dips in the swinging lanterns shamed by the wanton light that beats from the electric lamps.

PARLIAMENTARY CAVES.

Her Majesty's Ministers meeting Parliament at the opening of their fifth Session remain happy in the reflection that their position is not endangered by any mines dug within the limits of their own escarpment. It is different in the opposite camp. The first thing good Liberals do as soon as their own party comes into power is to commence a series of manoeuvres designed to thrust it forth. Sometimes they are called "caves," occasionally "tearoom cabals." But, as Mr. Gladstone learned in the 1868-74 Parliament, in that of 1880-85, and, with tragic force, in the Parliament which made an end of what Mr. Chamberlain called "The Stop-Gap Government," they all mean the same thing. Lord Rosebery when he came to the Premiership found the habit was not eradicated.