A Book of Nimble Beasts

She caught her old acquaintance, caught her in the act, and dragged her out, and stung her as was promised.

"I looked inside, that's all—that's really all," whimpered the culprit as she clutched the rim.

"Take that—and that—and that," said Spinipes, and drove her sharp sting home. But jewel flies are toughened folk, and this one, flung aside at last, was in full flight, and merry as a grig, within a minute of her punishment.

Daily the work grew harder. It took more time to find the grubs, since other wasps were hunting, and soon the increasing bulk of them taxed her full powers of flight. Once, as she neared the ledge, she dropped her burden. It lay where it had fallen till it died, for neither she nor other of her kind had wit to forge, or mend, a link in instincts broken chain. Once she found strange additions to her store. A human hand had robbed a neighbouring shaft and, with well-meant intention, sought to help her. Vain fancy! Here the self-same chain (to hunt—to catch—to bring—to store) was, end for end, reversed. The alien grubs were, one by one, dragged forth, and, one by one, flung headlong.

SHE SANK FIVE OTHER CURVING SHAFTS AND BUILT FIVE TOWERS TO GUARD THEM

Within a week the burrow held full store, a stack of five-and-twenty grubs piled up to meet the egg. This last was at the hatching-point. The silken cord, by which it hung, had lengthened with its growth, and each hour found it closer to its food. All had gone well, and Spinipes' last task, to seal the shaft with a partition-wall, was soon accomplished. Nor did she ever see that egg again. In time the tower itself fell in—I fancy that she helped it, and in its falling, smothered the main entrance.

She sank five other curving shafts—each held an egg—and built five towers to guard them. She made five further stores of grubs; and then, her life-work ended, she crept into a cleft and died.

What of the eggs? you ask. They hatched to golden yellow grubs, which fattened on the food stores, and when, at length, their food was all consumed, they spun them silken coverlets, and changed from grubs to sleeping nymphs. They slept through autumn's dreariness, through winter's cold, through spring's soft showers, and, when at length the warmth of summer beckoned, they burst their bonds, and, working through the sand, flew forth, as those before them had flown forth. So recommenced the cycle. An æon back it was the same. An æon hence—who knows?

PICTURES ON BUTTERFLIES' WINGS

(JULY)

The Magpie Moth

I HAVE already told you of the beautiful colours to be found on butterflies' wings, and how people have actually used a butterfly paintbox to make pictures with. Now I am going to show you some butterflies and moths (quite common ones all of them) which have queer little pictures on their wings ready made—real pictures I mean, faces and animals and things like that.

You may find it, at first, a little hard to see them, for they are puzzle pictures, like those you get in crackers, but once you have found the face, or whatever it may be, you won't be able to help seeing it.

I will start you with quite an easy one. Some of you, I expect, have noticed how often living creatures have a pattern on them like an open eye. This is called an "eye-marking," and is of course quite a different thing from the eye which is used for seeing with. Nearly all our butterflies have an eye-marking somewhere on their wings, and we find it in many other creatures besides butterflies. In birds, for instance (you will remember the peacock at once), and fish (next time you pass a big fishmonger's look out for a John Dory, he has a beauty) and lizards and snakes and frogs and things like that. It is not often seen on animals, though a leopard's or a jaguar's spots are something very like it.

If you look at the picture of the Emperor Moth you will see that there is a very nicely drawn eye on each of his upper wings (his real eyes are quite hidden by his little fur cape); and if you look at the caterpillar of the Elephant hawk-moth long enough, I am sure you will think that he is looking back at you, and that he does not like the look of you much.

The Emperor Moth

Here, again, it is not his eyes that you see, but his eye-markings. In the first picture they are just where you would expect eyes to be, and I must explain to you why. He is called the "Elephant" caterpillar because the head-end of him ("head-end" sounds rather queer; but I think that if one may say "tail-end" one may say "head-end") tapers off very quickly from his fat body, and when he swings this end of him, as he often does, it looks like an elephant's trunk. You will see what I mean in the second picture.

The Elephant Hawk Moth's Caterpillar showing his Eye-markings

Now when he is frightened or angry, he tucks his head in like a telescope close up to the eye-markings, and then these look as if they are really eyes.

The Elephant Hawk-Moth's Caterpillar, showing his Trunk

Some people think, and they may be quite right, that these eye-markings frighten off birds and lizards and things like that, who would soon eat the caterpillar if they did not think that his eye-markings were really eyes, and that they must have a big body behind them.

You remember the eyes as big as tea-cups in "The Little Tin Soldier"? If you have not read that, read it as quickly as you can.

Eye-markings are very easy to see, and I am sure that you will be able to find four of them on the wings of the Peacock Butterfly.

Some people think that these frighten off creatures who might eat him, just like those on the Elephant Hawk caterpillar, and some people think just the opposite—that the eye-markings are so clear a mark that the butterfly's enemies will bite at them, and so get a mouthful of butterfly's wing, instead of the butterfly himself; which is, of course, all for the good of the butterfly. I don't think we can be quite sure that either of these reasons is true, but we may be certain that if the eye-markings were not somehow useful to the butterfly they would not be there.

The Peacock Butterfly

The upper eye-markings on the Peacock have nothing particularly curious about them, but those on the under-wings each form a clear man's face with a big moustache, whiskers, and a bald forehead. If you hold the paper a little way off, you will see it clearly. It is something like Mr. Balfour.

This is a full-face picture, but in the other moths, the Mother Shipton and the Magpie, you will find side-face pictures. The Mother Shipton takes its name from having the face of an old witch on each of its upper wings. I will leave you to puzzle this out for yourselves, but I will give you the hint that the old witch has a hooked nose and a pointed chin.

The Magpie Moth has the side face of rather an ugly boy with a button of a nose and his mouth wide open. This is made up by the markings of each pair of wings taken together, and can only be seen when the wings are in a certain position. I will give you a hint here, too, which will help you. The seventh spot on the border of the upper wing, counting downwards, is the boy's eye; and he has a fine head of hair.

The Mother Shipton Moth

Nearly all butterflies and moths have some kind of picture on their wings, and I think that it is nicer looking for these than looking for pictures in the fire, because, when once you have found a butterfly picture, you may be sure of finding it again, and showing it to other people.

A VERY WEE BEASTIE AND A VERY BIG ONE

(AUGUST)

I AM going to talk about two animals this time—one a very big one and one a very small one. I am showing you two pictures of the small one and two of some cousins of his. He is quite the wee-est beastie in this country of ours, and nearly the wee-est beastie in all the world. He is called the Pygmy Shrewmouse, and his name, as you see it printed, is just about as long as his soft, velvet body.

I wonder how many of you know which is the largest of our British animals? If you guess quickly you are sure to guess wrong, and so I will tell you, and then there will be no need to put you right. It is the Blue Whale.

Very few of us have ever seen a Blue Whale, or, indeed, have ever had the chance; but he comes to our northern coasts almost every summer, and so, as he is met with in British seas, he is quite rightly called a British animal.

He does not often swim close inshore, for, if he does, he is likely to be caught by the tide, and left high and dry like a jelly-fish, which, indeed, has more than once happened.

The Blue Whales which come to this country are between seventy and eighty feet long (there is really no room to give you a picture of one) and weigh between a hundred and fifty and two hundred tons. The Pygmy Shrewmouse, tail and all, is less than three inches long and weighs about a tenth of an ounce. Now I know that measurements are difficult things for young folks to understand, so I will try to make you see the difference between these two animals of ours in a different way. I expect we all know what a lawn-tennis court looks like. Two Blue Whales would just fill a lawn-tennis court, but if we wanted to fill a lawn-tennis court with Pygmy Shrewmice, we should want five-hundred thousand of them, and if we could lift a Blue Whale on an enormous pair of scales, and tried to balance him with Pygmy Shrewmice, we should want—how many do you think? We should want more than seventy millions of them.

The Common Shrewmouse, who is Half as Big Again as the Pygmy

It is wonderful to think that the wee Pygmy and the huge Whale should belong to the same Class of creatures. But it is so. Nearly all the bones in the Pygmy (some are scarcely thicker than a hair) can be matched by the same sort of bones in the Blue Whale. If the Blue Whale were a fish (and he certainly looks like one) his bones would be quite different and quite differently arranged, and from this we know that the Whale is not a fish like a Shark, but an animal like a Seal, or a Pygmy Shrewmouse or one of ourselves.

Now we must look at the pictures. You will see at once what a long nose the Pygmy has got. This nose is very useful to him, for much of his food is tiny insects, and he pokes his nose into tiny holes after them.

You can't see his teeth in the pictures, which is a pity, for they are very curious teeth, and the front ones, instead of pointing up and down like ours do, point outwards rather, and come together like a pair of tweezers. This helps him to catch insects too, and to pull little snails out of their shells.

I don't think his teeth are strong enough to crack snail shells, but his dark-brown cousin, the Common Shrewmouse (his picture is on page 181), cracks snail shells quite easily, and so does his black cousin, the Water Shrewmouse.

The Water Shrewmouse, who is nearly Half as Big Again as the Common Shrewmouse

What does the great Blue Whale eat, you ask? I expect you will be surprised to hear that he eats much the same kind of things as the Pygmy—small slug-like creatures, scarcely an inch long, which swarm in parts of the sea. Of course he eats barrelfuls at once.

He catches them by a wonderful arrangement in his mouth, which is made of what we call whalebone. It is something like the gratings across drain-pipes, which let the water through but stop everything else, and he can lift it up or drop it down as he pleases. When he is hungry, he takes a huge mouthful of sea-water and lets it out again through this whalebone grating. All the small slug-like things which are swimming in the water are trapped, and, when he has got most of the water out of his mouth, he swallows them.

The Pygmy Shrewmouse

His fur has a beautiful purple bloom, like that on a yellow plum; and is so fine that it often shows mother-of-pearl colours

I don't think that the Whale can have much trouble about getting his dinner; all he has to do is to find the right piece of sea and then open his mouth; but the Pygmy, I think, has to work very hard, as he has to catch everything separately, and he is such a delicate little creature that he is seldom about unless the weather is warm and fine.

This is how the Pygmy coils Himself up to sleep

Then he has to make up for the hungry time when bad weather has kept him in his hole.