Edmund Selous

“ The effect of a number of these points of brilliancy, gleaming out, now here, now there, on the soft night air of the tropics, is inexpressibly beautiful, as though, in a smaller firmament, innumerable miniature stars had ceaseless birth and death.
Women, who like to emphasise their own beauty, or the want of it, by placing themselves in juxtaposition with every lovely thing in nature, and care not if a thousand deaths go to help one smile or glance, have not forgotten the fire-flies. ”

“ Together they leave the nest, together they fly from flower to flower, together they re-enter it. Together, too, they seem to glow in industry—to emulate each other’s toil. But all the while that the true industrious bee is collecting pollen and nectar the double is only pretending to do so—or rather, let us say, seeming—and whilst the former bustles about, feeding the larvæ and making the cells, the latter only bustles about, like the shadow of a busy person on the wall. But when the true bee lays an egg, the double lays one too, almost at the same moment, and in the very same cell. ”

“ This caterpillar is, of course, green, like the leaf he feeds on, but he is not the same colour all over. He is light above and dark below, and this exactly suits—I have it on authority—the chiaroscuro of the situation, so that, both in light and shadow, he looks for all the world like a little elongated bit of green leaf attached to the midrib by a couple of stalks. ”

“ In tropical countries fire-flies take the place of glow-worms with us, and though the light which these give out is not so soft and poetic as the lovely green or golden green one of the latter, yet it is more effectively beautiful, owing to the way in which it wanders through the night, appearing and disappearing in successive brilliant flashes. For here the beetle that carries the lamp is a flier, and flashes it about at pleasure through the air, having the power, it would seem, either of showing or concealing its light. ”

“ Thus, perforce, it stayed where it wished to stay, penetrating, perhaps, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of galleries, as successive generations of cave animals have retreated farther and farther from the light of day, until at length, finding the wherewithal to live, it became wholly subterranean in its habits, lost the power of doing what it never required to do—namely, of rolling itself into a ball—and, through the absence of all sunlight, lost, too, its colouring matter, and became of its present dead, bleached white. ”

“ If this be conceded, then, indeed, we have a plentiful crop, nor need we any longer feel sceptical because the eagle, say—that bird of fierce energy—does not flash out like all the crown jewels together as it descends on its prey, or because the swift, whose vital force is, perhaps, even greater, leaves no train of jewelled light to die all day, behind it, on the air. ”

“ At the proper time she—for, of course, we are dealing with the female—may be seen running about the ground, and eagerly searching the various plants and grasses that come in her way. Occasionally, as though in lightness both of heart and body, she gives a leap off the ground, and at other times will fly up from it more deliberately, to make an examination of some overhanging leaf. At last, as a result of these little aerial excursions, let us say, she knocks down a certain green caterpillar of the kind wanted, and with maternal devotion full upon her, at once sets to work. ”

“ Wherever there is a river, many-coloured armies, bivouacked amidst its various shoals and reefs, sit sucking water through, the moist particles of the sand, whilst others, in even greater numbers, pass and repass from one bank to another, making, however wide the waterway, an aerial fluttering bridge. Other butterflies, also denizens of the great Brazilian or Central American forests, have broad white wings, shot with a satiny lustre, whilst those of yet another are like glass, with one opaque spot of violet and blue, in the midst of each of them. ”

“ Why should one bee—or any other insect or creature—look just like another one, and yet have a Latin name of its own, which the other has no right to? Why should the individuals of one species be hardly more like each other than they are like the individuals of another species, even though—as is often the case—these two species are widely separated in the system of nature? ”

“ What matters it, though Nature be “red in tooth and claw,” if the fierce rendings of the outer integuments are but as the first gropings towards interior rest and calm? And should we not, in the lower walks of life, look to the soul through the body, and see in processes which, with ourselves, might seem to represent the flesh only, a blending which but anticipates the more complete separation? ”

“ The egg is laid, it cannot be detached, and, when hatched, the issuing grub bores, with enthusiasm, into the head of the ant. Coming to the brain he has nothing to do but to eat it, and he does so until the whole cavity of the skull has become an empty chamber, except for his own presence there. The movements of the ant during this process—of its feelings we have no record—have become more and more erratic, and it feels itself less and less capable of performing its duties as a member of an active and industrious community. ”

“ Surely, then, if an insect, looking at a leaf or any other object, received but a general impression of colour, with an outline more or less blurred, or ill-defined, these copies of nature by nature—made to deceive—would bear witness to the fact. A study of protective resemblances is perhaps the best way of forming an idea as to how creatures, other than ourselves, see the world. ”

“ In what light this fact, if true, exhibits the labours of those naturalists—as the world calls them—who, living for years amidst the life-teeming regions of the earth, have spent their whole time in constantly killing and killing, coming home, at last, with an acre of carcasses, to write a book containing hardly anything of first-hand observation—the soul of natural history—I will not pause to inquire. ”

“ The charming effect is the one thing dwelt upon, and charming it may very well be, though to gain it through a mass of even insect discomfort is, to my mind, a contemptible thing. Fancy fifty or a hundred uncomfortable, writhing, struggling things on the dress that a lady is dancing in, every one of which, if let go, would make a wandering star in the air more really worth looking at than the whole ball-room together! By substituting flowers for women, however, effects far more beautiful are gained through less reprehensible means. ”

“ Poised in the air, the buccaneer fly selects its victim from the bees issuing from a hive, pounces on it like a winged fury, and kills its hapless prey. The insect depicted beneath is protected from its enemies by its strange resemblance to a dead leaf. ”

“ No wonder, then, that the little ladybird is beloved by all, since, but for its efforts, many a poor man might have to live in a state of enforced sobriety, which, in its turn, must deleteriously affect that position of respect and esteem which many illustrious and highly placed individuals now hold in the hearts of the people, so that a general disturbal of habits and ideas, amounting almost to moral chaos, would attend any serious diminution in the numbers of this insect, England’s true guardian angel. ”

“ And in very fact, as all the world now knows, we do find what is called slavery amongst ants, though to me it hardly seems the right word, since there is perfect willingness on the part of the slave, and no power of punishment lies with the master. There is equality, moreover, since this is not a matter of the kind of things which one class of a community does and another does not do, but of the spirit in which each does them. With the ants we have the Japanese spirit—or rather the Japanese seem getting nearer to the ants—and so there is real equality. ”

“ Such openings in the primeval forest are often made by the fall of great trees—for even where the axe is not there is death in the midst of life—and as these majestic insects sail high above them in a world of air and light, their shadows fall upon the place beneath, and trace their course along the ground. ”

“ At length it falls down, and not long afterwards its head falls off, giving to the maggot inside it its first opportunity of looking out into the world through the window of the neck-hole. Hitherto its life, however easy and pleasant, has been of a sedentary nature, but now it can enjoy the pleasures of a walk, and moves about something after the manner of a snail, dragging its cephalic shell behind it. ”

“ Wallace, somewhere in his Malay Archipelago, moralises over the beautiful little kingbird of paradise, sparkling out its life amidst the forest solitudes of a remote island, unseen by human eyes, save those of savages, till once or twice, perhaps, in a century, some wandering white man, who alone is capable of appreciating its beauty, comes to bang its life out and bear away its skin. ”

“ Beneath is shown the well named honey-pot ant with its distended body full of honey, which it gives away to any hungry working ant.
A diet of mushrooms, or fungus, is not the only thing for which these little blind, light-shunning cockroaches are indebted to their landlords, the ants, for often one of them may be seen to mount upon one of the latter, and take a ride on its back. They seem especially fond of the soldiers, as horses, and will sit perched on their enormous heads, as they walk up and down in a stately sort of way, sometimes for quite a long time. ”

“ Meanwhile Paussus, owing to its sweet secretion, which, after relations had once become amicable, the ants would soon have discovered, had got to be a very welcome guest, so much so that, even when it took to eating their larvæ, they retained their love for it, as a species, though resenting such conduct upon the individual. And now the once redoubtable invader could be punished with impunity, for the habit of never discharging against an ant had become a fixed, inherited instinct, not to be got rid of even though life were at stake. ”

“ Bees, beetles, butterflies, moths, even grasshoppers are thus treated, and sometimes, by a beautiful retributive arrangement—enough to throw one into ecstasies—they turn cannibals, and prey upon each other. Nay, there is even more than this to arouse our admiration, for so stern and unbending is the law of eternal justice, that even the softest feelings of nature are not allowed to interfere with it, and the female, wooed by the male, is frequently compelled to eat him. ”

“ Scientific men—unless their particular science is philology—are dreadful pedants in regard to names, and always want to substitute their own manufactured ones, which have no real life in them, for what has sprung up naturally on the lips of the people. Thus, instead of hedge-sparrow—a name that explains itself to anyone who has seen the bird and knows something of its ways—ornithologists would have us say “hedge-accentor”—a preposterous concoction—and stormy petrel should, according to them, be “storm-petrel,” because the bird itself cannot be stormy, whatever the sea may be. ”

“ Our spider, however, has no fears, nor need it to have any, since no sort of capsizal can affect a structure which answers its purpose as well one side up as another; whilst even if it were to sink—though that hardly lies in its nature—there is always the water to run on. The raft, in fact, is only like the nest or web ashore—a place to have a comfortable meal in. The prey—some aquatic insect—is caught generally on the surface of the stream, and the spider, after each successful raid, skims back with her booty to the little self-guiding boat which it has temporarily left. ”

“ Now the general more intelligent public who read, perhaps, widely, but not very deeply or very specially, know that Darwin believed in two forces—natural and sexual selection—by the joint action of which, species, as he held, had been gradually modified and evolved, and they know that the former of these two has been accepted by science, but that to the latter there has been much more opposition, and that it is not—or is not supposed to be—established like the other. ”

“ Of the great purple emperor family, it is purple on the upper surface, and gleams like a meteor as it shoots about in the rich, sun-bathed atmosphere of the tropics, its conspicuousness being enhanced by a sort of miniature, sharp-pointed swallow-tail, in which the hinder pair of wings end, and a broad, orange bar, like a sash or scarf of honour, running right across the anterior wings. It flies boldly and strongly, and when it descends upon a bush or shrub it is as though a little purple torch had shot through the foliage ”

“ Ants, though they fall a prey to various animals larger than themselves—such as birds or ant-eaters—yet in their relations with other insects occupy a position of comparative safety, on account of their weapons and pugnacity, and, still more, of their numbers. The driver ants of equatorial Africa, and their South American representatives, the ecitons, are indeed, when they set out on their foraging expeditions, the terror, not only of insects, but of all animal life. ”

“ Thus, from the very necessities of the case, it is evident that a sense of partnership—at least a feeling of doing work in combination with another—has begun to dawn in the mind of the Scarabæus. The fact that when the one beetle is left alone with the ball, whilst the other excavates, it does not immediately go off, but stays a little, as though waiting to be rejoined, suggests to my mind that this feeling, fostered by custom, has already gone some way, though it is not wonderful that, after a time, the primitive individualistic tendency should again assert itself. ”

“ In the termite nest, as amongst ants, all members work for the good of all. The soldiers, which are furnished with large heads and long scythe-like jaws, take upon themselves the duties of attack and defence, though in some species they only do so when the enemy is of a formidable nature, leaving unimportant foes to their less specialised companions. These are equal to such inglorious tasks, but when the colony is invaded by hostile members of their own race, or by some fierce ant enemy, they retreat into the inner recesses, leaving the danger and honour to others. ”

“ In one’s own house one would hardly wish a bomb to be thrown, even against one’s greatest enemy—at any rate not in the drawing-room. That the ants should, by this means, be able, or, if able, willing to rid themselves of the mites which infest them, as has been conjectured, seems especially unlikely—indeed, hardly possible. On the whole, it seems to me that the relations at present existing between the two insects could only have grown up through Paussus having ceased to discharge, not only at an ant, but even—owing, probably, to there never being any occasion for it—in an ants’ nest. ”