Robert Evans Snodgrass

“ Therefore the old-time naturalist is still venerated, as he deserves to be, and those who call themselves "nature lovers" still like to decry the laboratory worker as an evil being who would take the beauty from nature and destroy the soul of man. A modern writer of the old school may sell his wares, but when something goes wrong with his stomach or his nerves, or when his plants or his animals are attacked by disease, it is the knowledge of the laboratory scientist that comes to his aid. ”

“ THE TREE CRICKETS The unceasing ringing that always rises on summer eve- nings as soon as the shadows begin to darken, that shrill melody of sound that seems to come from nothing but from everywhere out of doors, is mostly the chorus of the tree crickets, the blend of notes from innumerable harpists playing unseen in the darkness. ”

“ In biology it signifies nothing that one animal has been on the earth for a million years, and another for a hundred million, for the unit of evolution is not a year, but a generation. If one animal, such as most insects, has from one to many generations every year, and another, such as man, has only four or rive in a century, it is evident that the first, by evolutionary reckoning, will be vastly older than the second, even though the two have made the same number of trips with the earth around the sun. ”

“ But, just as the accomplishments of one member of a human family may give prestige to all his relations and descendants, so the talent of one noted member of the katydid family has given notoriety to all his congeners, and his justly deserved name has come to be applied by the undiscriminating public to a whole tribe of singers of lesser or very mediocre talent whose only claim to the name of katydid is that of family relationship. In Europe the katydids are called simply the longhorn grasshoppers. ”

“ Hall hidden among the leaves, its silvery whiteness pleas- ingly contrasts with the green of the foliage; its smooth silk walls glisten where the sun falls upon them and reflect warm grays and purples from their shadows. The caterpillars have adopted now a community form of living; all feed together, all rest and digest at the same time, all work at the same time, and their days are divided into definite periods for each of their several duties. ”

“ An endless number of tunes may be played upon the same fiddle. With the insects each musician knows only one tune, or a few simple variations of it, and this he has inherited from his ancestors along with a knowledge of how to play it on his inherited instrument. The stridulating organs are not functionally developed until maturity, and then the insect forthwith plays his native air. He never disturbs the neighbors with doleful notes while learning.
Very curiously, none of the katydids nor any member of their family has the earlike organs on the sides of the body possessed by the locusts. ”

“ The special deity of nature delegated to look after living creatures knows well that Boreas sometimes oversleeps and that an egg laid in the fall, if it depended entirely on warmth for its development, might hatch that same season if mild weather should continue. And then, what chance would the poor fledgling have when a delayed winter comes upon it? None at all, of course, and the whole scheme for perpetuation of the species would be upset. ”

“ But when he seems to be assured of solitude he starts his music, a sound of tremendous volume in a room, the tones incredibly harsh and rasping at close range, lacking entirely that melody they acquire with space and distance. ”

“ Let us go back to the swarm of winged males and females that have issued from the nest. The birds are already feeding upon them, for the termites' powers of flight are at best feeble and uncertain. The winds have scattered them, and in a short rime the fluttering horde will be dispersed and probably most of its members will be destroved one way or another. The object of the swarming, however, is the distribution of the insects, and, if a few survive, that is all that will be necessary for the continuance of the race. ”

“ It is one of the provisions of nature that whatever any creature is compelled by its instinct to do, for the doing of that thing it is provided with appropriate tools. Its tools, however, unless it is a human animal, are always parts of its body, or of its jaws or its legs. The set of prongs at the end of the body of the female grasshopper constitutes a digging tool, an instrument by means of which the insect makes a hole in the ground wherein she deposits her eggs. Entomologists call the organ an ovipositor, or egg-placer. Figure 2 B ”

“ Not every change of form, however, is a metamorphosis. The change of a kitten into a cat, of a child into a grown-up, of a small fish into a large fish are not examples of metamorphosis, at least not of what is called metamorphosis. There must be something spectacular or unexpected about the change, as in the transformation of the tadpole into a frog, the change of the wormlike caterpillar into a moth, or of a maggot into a fly. ”

“ We are the newcomers on the earth, but we fume around because we find it already occupied by a host of other creatures, and we ask what right have they to be here to interfere with us! Insects existed millions of years before we attained the human form and aspirations, and they have a perfectly legitimate right to everything they feed on. Of course, it must be admitted, they do not respect the rights of private property; and therein lies their hard luck, and ours. The plant lice are well known to anyone who has a garden, a greenhouse, an orchard, or a field of grain. ”

“ The entire organism, of course, is hot double, for, as we have just seen in the study of the caterpillar, many of the more vital organs are continuous from the larva to the adult; but there is a group of organs which, after reaching a definite form of development in the larval stage, at the end of this stage virtually die and go into dissolution, while a new set of tissues develops into new organs or into new tissues replacing those that have been lost. ”

“ Aphids parasitized by a parasite that makes a cocoon beneath the body of the aphis, where it changes to a pupa and, when adult, emerges through a door cut in the side of the cocoon
worst enemies that insects have to contend against; but really they do not contend against them in most cases, except in the way characteristic of insects, which is to insure themselves against extermination by the number of their offspring. The aphid colonies are often, how- ever, greatly depleted during a season favorable to the predacious and parasitic insects that attack them ”

“ The roach, of course, was not designed to be a household insect, and it lived out of doors for ages before man constructed dwellings, but it happens that its instincts and its form of body particularly adapt it to a lire in bouses. Its keen sense, its agility, its nocturnal habits, its omnivorous appetite, and its flattened shape are all qualities very fitting for success as a domestic pest. ”

“ An instinctive action, then, is the expression of nerve energy working in a particular kind of machine. It would involve a digression too long to explain here the modern conception of the nature of instinct; it is sufficient to say that something in the surroundings encountered by the newly-hatched grasshopper, or some substance generated within it, sets its nerve energy into action, that the nerve energy working on a definite mechanism produces the motions of the insect, and that the mechanism is of such a nature that it works against the pull of gravity. ”

“ The emerged grasshopper is now entering its third stage after hatching, but the shedding of the hatching skin is usually not counted in the series of molts, and the first subsequent molt, then, we will say, ushers it into its second stage of aboveground life. In this state the insect is different in some respects from what it was in the first stage: it is not only larger, but the body is longer in proportion to the size of the head, as are also the antennae, and particularly the hind legs. Again the insect becomes active and pursues its routine life for another week ”

“ INSECTS
usually becomes restless, leaves the empty skin (I9) , and takes up a new position several inches away At this stage the cicada is strangely beautiful. Its creamy-yellow paleness, intensified by the great black patches just behind the head and relieved by the pearly flesh tint of the mesothoracic shield, its shining red eyes, and the milky, semitransparent wings with deep chrome on their bases make a unique impression on the mind. There is a look of unreality about the thing, which out of doors (Plate 6) becomes a ghostlike vision against the night. ”

“ Nature is ever careless of the means, so long as the object is at- tained. Some acts of unreasoning creatures are assured by bestowing an instinct, others are forced by with- holding the means of acting otherwise. The cicada nymphs are at first attracted by the light. Those allowed to hatch on a table in a room will leave the twigs and head straight for the windows ten feet away. This instinct under natural conditions serres to entice the young insects toward the outer parts of the tree, where they have the best chance of a clear drop to earth ”

“ The reason that the specific truths of nature must be found out in laboratories is that there are too many things mixed together in the fields. The laboratory naturalist endeavors to untangle the confusion of elements in the outdoor environment and to isolate the different factors that affect the life and behavior of an animal, in order that he may be sure with just what he is dealing in his efforts to determine the value of each one separately. ”

“ The grasshopper, however, is an insect that grows by a direct course from its form at hatching to that of the adult, and at all stages it is recognizable as a grasshopper (Fig. 9) . A young moth, on the other hand, hatching in the form of a caterpillar, has no resemblance to its parent, and the same is true of a young fly, which is a maggot, and of the grublike young of a bee. ”

“ The farmer plows and plants. He cultivates in hope, watching his growing grain in graceful, wave-like motion wafted to and fro by the warm summer winds. The green begins to golden; the harvest is at hand. Joy lightens his labor as the fruit of past toil is about to be realized. ”

“ An insect, according to its name, is a creature divided into parts, for "insect" means "in-cut." A fly or a wasp, therefore, comes closer to being the ideal insect; but, while not literally insected between the thorax and abdomen, the grasshopper, like the fly and the wasp and all other insects, consists of a head, a thorax bearing the legs, and a terminal abdomen (Fig. 63) . On the head is located a pair of long, slender antennae (Ant) and a pair of large eyes (E) . Winged insects have usually two pairs of wings attached to the back of the thorax (W2, W3) . ”