Sir A. E. Shipley

“ Our knowledge of the special perils which beset particular species is so incomplete that we are often at a loss for the reason of this great inequality in fertility. For instance, how does Synageles picata maintain its numerical strength by laying only three eggs, when, as M‘Cook points out, its resemblance to the ant, though advantageous to the adult spider, affords no protection to the egg? Our knowledge must be greatly extended before we are able to account for particular cases. Many influences hostile to spiders as a group are, however, well known, and we may here enumerate them. ”

“ There are differences of opinion as to whether this form should be split up into numerous species, or subspecies, according to the genus of the mammals upon which it lives. We, at any rate, will confine our attention to the human kind and so avoid losing ourselves in the tortuous maze of synonymy and the arid discussion of a meticulous classification so dear to the analytical German mind. To us a Demodex shall be a Demodex, and we will leave it at that. ”

“ Being unable to obtain material for the study of malaria in man owing to the scare caused by the outbreak of plague amongst the natives, Ross worked out the life-history of an allied organism which causes malaria in birds. It is to the brilliant researches of the Italian school—prominent among whom are Grassi, Bastianelli, and Bignami—that we owe the first complete accounts of the life-history of the human parasite. It has already been explained that some of the parasites do not form spores, but persist in a more or less unchanged condition whilst in the blood of man as gametocytes. ”

“ The Limulus has seized with its chelate claws the protruding siphon of this mollusc, which, being rapidly drawn in, drags with it the limb of the king-crab, and the valves of the clam are swiftly snapped to. ”

“ There are one or two structural features in a flea which are peculiar: the most remarkable being that, unlike most other insects, it is much taller than it is broad. As a rule, insects—such as a cockroach, the bed-bug, or a stag-beetle—are like skates, broader than they are thick, but the flea has a laterally compressed shape, like a mackerel or a herring. Then, again, the three segments or rings which come after the head are not fused into a solid cuirass or thorax as they are in the fly or the bee, but they are movable one on the other. ”

“ In ‘The Minor Horrors of War,’ we rather neglected the Navy—the senior Service, and till now the more dominant of our two magnificent forces—partly because it is less interfered with by insect pests than is the sister Service, though the common pests of our poor humanity—the flea, the louse, the bug—are, like the poor, ‘always with us.’ Like aeroplanes, insects have captured the air; like motors, they have made a respectable show on land ”

“ What can be done to diminish malaria? A few years ago, before we understood the cause of the disease, much had been done to lessen it. While aiming at other objects, we drove malaria out of England by draining. Now that we know the secret of the disease we can direct our efforts more intelligently. There are two points exposed to attack. The first is the sporulating organism in the blood of man, the second is the insect. If we could eliminate the organism from man, the mosquito would be saved much suffering, and would be powerless to infect man ”

“ Despite this massing together we look in vain for any elaborate social economy, or for the development of complex instincts among Crustacea, such as excite our admiration in many insects, and though many a crab or lobster is sufficiently uncanny in appearance to suggest unearthly wisdom, he keeps his intelligence rigidly to himself, encased in the impenetrable reserve of his armour and vindicated by the most powerful of pincers. ”

“ Insects are not only highly intelligent animals, but are by far the most numerous and dominant class of the Animal Kingdom; [Pg 3] and they have probably come to conclusions about themselves and the sea, comparable to those expressed by Dr. Johnson about man and the ocean: ‘To all the inland inhabitants of every region the sea is only known as an immense diffusion of waters, over which men pass from one country to another, and in which life is frequently lost.’
But one insect at least causes more trouble to sailors than to soldiers—and that is the cockroach. ”

“ Think what a life-history this parasite has! Living in the blood-corpuscles of a dog, sucked up by an adult tick, passed through her body until it reaches an egg, laid with that egg, being present while the egg segments and slowly develops into the larva, living quiescent during the larval stage and the nymph stage, surviving the metamorphosis, and only leaping into activity when the adult stage is reached. This most remarkable story probably indicates that the Piroplasma undergoes a series of changes comparable to those of the malaria organism when it is inside the mosquito ”

“ On the one hand, therefore, the Tarantula has acquired the habit of striking the wasp in the only point where its blow is instantaneously fatal, while on the other the wasp, with a different object in view, has been led to select the precise spot where its sting will disable without immediately destroying the spider. The latter case is, if anything, the more extraordinary, as the insect can hardly have any recollection of its larval tastes, and yet it stores up for progeny, which it will never see, food which is entirely abhorrent to itself in its imago state. ”

“ As a rule, each host has its own species of flea; but though for the most part Pulex irritans is confined to man it is occasionally found on cats and dogs, whilst conversely the cat- and dog-fleas (Ctenocephalus felis and Ct. canis) from time to time attack man.
The bite of the flea is accompanied by the injection of the secretions of the so-called salivary glands of the insect, and this secretion retards the coagulation of the victim’s blood, [38] stimulates the blood-flow, and sets up the irritation we have all felt. ”

“ They also visit the depths and afford an indefinite food-supply to the deep-sea dwellers.
But probably by far the larger part of the food consumed by abysmal creatures consists of the dead bodies of animals which sink down like manna from above. The surface layers of the ocean teem with animal and vegetable life. Every yachtsman must at times have noticed that the sea is thick as a purée with jelly-fish, or with those little transparent, torpedo-shaped creatures, the Sagitta. ”

“ Knowing the cause, we can now guard against malaria; mosquito-nets and wire-protected windows and doors are a sufficient check on the access of Anopheles to man. If the mosquito and man could only be kept permanently apart, we might hope for the disappearance of the parasite from our fauna. In relieving man from this world-wide pest, all genuine lovers of animals will rejoice that we are also relieving the far more serious lesions of one of the most delicate and beautiful insects that we know. ”

“ This spider, though strictly an air-breathing animal, spends almost the whole of its existence beneath the water. That it can live in such a medium is due to the fact that the long hairs which clothe its abdomen retain a bubble of air as it swims beneath the water, so that it carries with it its own atmosphere. The air-bubble which invests its body gives it a strong resemblance to a globule of quicksilver, and renders it a pretty object in an aquarium as it swims about in search of food or in prosecution of its spinning operations. ”

“ It must always be remembered that Pasteur was trained as a chemist—was, in fact, a chemist. In afterlife he attacked problems proper to the biologist, the physiologist, the physician, the manufacturer; but he brought to bear on these problems, not the intellect of one trained in the traditions of natural science, medicine, or commerce, but the untrammelled intelligence of a richly-endowed mind, ‘organized common sense’ of the highest order. After the legal, there is, perhaps, no learned profession so dominated by tradition, by what our fathers have taught us, as the medical ”

“ I have no doubt my publisher is right, because if publishers were not invariably right, and authors invariably wrong, how can one explain the fact that publishers are proverbially prosperous and prominent people, whereas authors are notoriously penniless and obscure? ”

“ The Epeiridae, spinners of the round web, are certainly, as a rule, very dim-sighted creatures. A fly may be held within an inch of them, but, unless it buzz, it will excite no notice whatever. A careful observation of the performances of the large Garden-spider in securing her prey will soon convince the onlooker that she is guided almost entirely by appeals to her sense of touch communicated along the tremulous lines of her snare. ”

“ The brilliant discovery by the Danish investigators of immense numbers of the fry of the common eel in the deep water of the Atlantic, west of Ireland, and the absence of the eggs and fry from the North Sea and Baltic, render it practically certain that the countless hordes of eels which leave the rivers of North Western Europe in autumn migrate to the ocean for spawning purposes; and, more remarkable still, that the delicate young elvers which enter the same streams in autumn have already overcome the perils of their long return migration. ”