Julia McNair Wright , Nature readers (1887)

“ When the drone ants and the queens are young, the work ants let them go out and fly. When they go out, the drones do not often come back. They get lost or die.
The young queens come back, except those who go off to make new hills. But when the young queen settles down in life, to her work of laying eggs, the workers do not let her leave the hill any more.
How do they keep her in? If she has not taken off her pretty wings, they take them off and throw them away! If she tries to walk off, a worker picks her up in its jaws and carries her back. ”

“ First, let me tell you that that largest of birds, the ostrich, builds no nest. She puts her eggs in the sand. The sun-heat is all they need during the day, and the father-bird cares for them at night. A few birds lay their eggs in heaps of dead leaves, and let the leaves keep them warm. ”

“ To the plant the stem is of use, as it holds the leaves, and flowers, and fruit, up into the air and sun. Also the stem is made up of the tubes or pipes which carry the sap, and the food it holds, through all the plant.
Plant stems are very useful to men. The stems of trees give us wood for fuel, and to build ships and houses, and to make furniture. Some stems are also good for food. ”

“ The leaf-green changes color if it gets too much oxygen. In the autumn the plant does not throw out so much oxygen. What it keeps turns the leaf-green from green to red, yellow, or brown.
The bright color in plants is not in the flower alone. You have seen that roots and seeds have quite as bright colors as blossoms. What flowers are brighter than many fruits are? ”

“ The perch is covered with scales of a rich green-brown and a golden white. Some fish, as the eel and sword-fish, have no scales. A shark has no true scales, but his skin has hardened into little bony points. Some other fish, instead of scales, have large bony plates. The heads and the fins seldom have any scales upon them. ”

“ You will not care to hear about the beetle while he is only an egg. As an egg he lies quiet where the mother beetle hid him. These eggs are placed in earth or in water. Sometimes they are put into the bodies of dead animals, or into holes in trees, or into fruit. Some kinds of beetles choose one place, some another, for their eggs.
After a while the larva comes out. [Pg 80] Sometime you may find a long, soft, stupid white worm, with its body made in rings. It has two big eyes, two jaws, no feet, or, perhaps, very small ones, never any wings. ”

“ As it has no seas and no air, it follows that the moon has no sky. The lovely blue we see above us, is merely caused by many miles of air, but from the moon one would merely look away into immensity; and day, and night, sun, moon, stars, comets, and meteors could not be seen, while instead of the lovely blue dome above us, where stars innumerable shine and tremble, space, as seen from the moon, is a perpetual, limitless, black abyss. ”

“ Shining large and fair in the heavens, the moon seems, as a queen, to lead forth the hosts of the stars, but if we watch its course each of the twenty-seven days which it requires for its journey around the earth, we shall see that it continually falls behind the progress of the shining hosts, and possesses a motion entirely independent of them. The moon, like the earth, shines by the reflected light of the sun, and this causes the lunar or moon phases. ”

“ When the pollen is of full size, or ripe, the little box bursts open, and out the pollen flies. The growth of the plant begins here, with the pollen.
A tiny grain of pollen, falling on the top of the pistil, begins to grow. It puts out little threads like roots. These grow down the stem, or post, of the pistil into the seed case. There they find the seed germs, and when the pollen comes to them, the germs begin to grow. They grow very fast.
It is then that the pretty flowers fade. The work of the blossom is done when the pollen is ripe, and the seed germs begin to grow. ”

“ The May-Flies are very pretty insects. They are something like dragon-flies, but very much smaller, and not fond of tearing up other insects. You will find them in moist places. The body of the May-Fly is much slimmer even than that of the dragon-fly. The wings are unequal. Their heads are smaller. May-Flies have two fore legs, nearly as long as the body, held almost straight out as they fly. On their tails they have three long stiff hairs, twice as long as the body. ”

“ The mother alligator builds with her front feet a mound of mud, or sand, though if she finds a mound just to her taste, she takes that, and saves herself trouble. In the mound she places her eggs, and in due time the sun hatches them. The eggs of reptiles are not enclosed in hard, brittle shells, as those of birds, but in a thick, tough, elastic skin, as if the white skin that lines a bird’s egg-shell had grown parchment-like and served instead of shell. ”

“ A strong man next leaps on its back, grasps its fore-legs and draws them bridle-wise back to serve as reins. Thus mounted the captor maintains his seat as on a fractious horse, during all the creature’s plunges and tail-lashing, until finally it succumbs, fairly worn out by its own battle. Once entirely exhausted, it becomes weak, mild, and obedient.
The food of the alligator is squirrels, rabbits, water-rats, water-fowl, fish, hares, and young dogs, but it will attack men and kill children if it has opportunity. Its method of preying is much like that of the Nile crocodile ”

“ When the teeth are molar, or grinding teeth, we know that the animal lived on grain or herbs—and thus from the formation we may decide that it was a grazing animal; sharp-pointed canine, or dog-like teeth, show a meat-eating animal, a hunting, flesh-seeking creature; worn teeth, teeth with the enamel ground down, tell us that the animal was old. Among the teeth found, some suggest mammals that lived on insects, fruit, and roots, and some teeth found in the ancient rocks are very like those of the kangaroo rat ”

“ From the timber the natives can build their boats, and they make cloth from the bark. So with a rain tree, a milk tree, and a bread-fruit tree one could do very well for food, drink, shelter, and clothing.
As we have here in our wonder grove a bread tree, it is proper to put a milk tree close by its side. Water, bread, milk, these three trees of our collection afford all that is needful to support life. But the milk-producer, the cow tree, is not a native of Africa; it grows in South America, on the dry plains of Venezuela, where food and drink are alike hard to obtain. ”

“ The hatteria belongs to the lizard-like reptiles with tails and scales; is possessed of four legs, the front pair being hand-like in structure. The creature suggests to us some venerable grandparent who has divided a large part of his patrimony among numerous descendants and collaterals; for the other four orders of reptiles all share some of the characteristics of the hatteria, as if it had divided its traits among them. We might write them thus:—
So there is the hatteria, or sphenodon, a link between the new and the old. ”

“ As the earth rolls over upon itself, it also rolls along its orbit, or sky-path. The path of the earth about the sun is travelled over in three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days, giving us our change of seasons by the inclination of the earth’s axis to the plane of its orbit.
Next removed beyond the earth from the sun, is the splendid planet Mars, which is easily distinguishable by its red light. It is in some parts of its path only seven millions of miles further from the earth than Venus. ”

“ The young tadpoles are jet black and very active. They make all their changes very early and in the same manner as the frog, and are quite small when they arrive at the perfect toad-shape. As soon as they have produced four legs and their tails have been absorbed, they leave the water and set off on long journeys; for the toad is a born vagrant, and not, like the frog, a home-stayer.
Avoiding the sun’s heat they travel chiefly by night, and by day hide under stones or herbage. If clouds cover the sky they take heart and hop forth on their pilgrimage. ”

“ It is also true that there are some nebulæ which are really “cloud-masses of glowing gas.”
Wandering among the stars are seen at times brilliant bodies with long trains or tails of glowing vapor. These are comets. Once their appearances caused great terror, as indicating disaster to the human race, and even now some persons are alarmed lest one of these sky wanderers should, in his frantic flight, run against our earth and dash the poor little globe to pieces! But these comets are not such vagrants as they seem. ”

“ Between man and the snake there seems to be placed an instinctive and unappeasable enmity. The snake, seeing any [Pg 273] human being, either glides off in haste, or coils itself up and hisses, or throws itself forward in attack. The human being, on the other hand, experiences fear, disgust, aversion, and seizes stick or stone, or makes use of his heel, if well protected, to kill the snake. “War to the death, and no quarter,” seems to be the cry between the highest of the mammals and the serpent tribe. ”

“ It darts up to our lovely stone lily, and bites it from its pearl-white stem! Yonder comes a crab swimming along at ease, a prophecy of a king-crab, that will come many ages after. The fish-like monster takes him at a mouthful.
We Pixies are angry at this devastation; we cry, “We [Pg 21] hope you will try to eat a trilobite [12] and choke yourself!” But here comes an unlucky trilobite, and the new monster crushes it in its great jaws! It would eat us, only we are Pixies, creatures of myth, mere bubbles. As it is, we hide in our coral groves, and weep over our lost lingulæ and stone lilies. ”

“ Its hind legs are very short, and its arms or fore legs are very long; its claws are strong and curved, and the toes are buried in the skin up to the nails, so that they can make no separate movements. Their leg joints turn outwards, and when the creatures try to walk on the [Pg 330] ground, they are compelled to double up their fore legs and go on their knees. Moreover, these sloths cannot bear strong light. When placed on the earth in the sunshine they seem to be crippled and blind.
The sloth has no tail, and no external ears. ”

“ In each hive there are three kinds of bees. The queen bee is the first. She rules all, and she is the mother of all.
[Pg 37]
The queen bee does no work. She lays eggs in the cells. The father bee is called the drone. He does no work.
Who, then, builds so many fine cells? Who lays up so much honey? Who feeds the baby bees?
The small, quiet, brown work bees do all that.
In each hive there is one queen bee to lay eggs.
And there are the drone bees, who hum and walk about. And there are more than you can count, of work bees, to do all that is done.
WORK AND PLAY.
How does a bee grow? ”

“ Soon it is ready to enlarge the outer shell. So the inside skin cracks apart and falls off. By degrees some barnacles become quite large as fresh shell grows from within.
When the old inside skin falls off, the eggs are set free. Out of them come the larvæ. The larvæ are active, hungry little fellows, who know how to swim as soon as they are loose in the water.
The larva acts as if it liked to be free from the shell prison. It darts about in the sea, and each day its shape changes. It has one eye, a mouth, two feelers like horns, and six legs. It can swim, and can walk over sea-weed. ”

“ They lie on the grass, shut their eyes, and roll to and fro; they sit and fan themselves; they stretch out and gently comb themselves with the nails on their hind flippers; they take naps; they run races; they play leap-frog over each others’ backs, and snort and roar with great hilarity.
[Pg 311]
“These young seals have the long, coarse over-hair, less gray than the big seals, and the soft, rich under-coat is silken and of a delicate brown color. The down and feathers on a duck’s breast are arranged much as the hair and fur on a seal. ”

“ Now and then, if a tree or plant is set in the earth, top down, the roots will put out leaves and buds. [Pg 14] This shows that they are underground stems, or branches.
“What kind of a root is a potato?” asks Bobby. A potato is not a root. It is a thick underground stem. The real potato roots are the little fibres.
“What kind of root is an onion?” says Mary. An onion is not a root, it is a bud or bulb. The scales are leaves that have grown white and thick. The real roots of the onion are the fibres that hang in a bunch under the round part. ”

“ It draws its fingers together, throwing the membrane of the wing into folds, and so the free, strongly clawed thumb projects, and on this claw, and the hind feet which are free to the ankles, the bat walks, but as you might expect, its gait is very awkward.
The bat is a night-flying creature. Its sight is better suited for night than daylight; it prefers twilight, or dark caverns. Like the owl and the moth it sleeps by day, and comes out after sunset. As it eats insects it frequents shady places where insects can be found ”

“ If any rain comes, or the hill is broken, the nurses run to carry the babies to a safe place.
When the larva is full grown, it spins around itself a little fine net, which wraps it all up. When people see these white bundles in the ant-hills, they call them “ant-eggs.” They are not eggs. They are pupa-cases. In them the baby ants are getting ready to come out, with legs and wings, as full-grown ants.
The pupa-cases are of several sizes. The largest ones are for queens and drones. The next size holds large workers; the smallest cases hold the smallest workers. ”

“ Seeds are the best and strongest, and most likely to produce good plants, if the pollen comes to the pistil, from a flower not on the same plant.
This is true even of such plants as the lily, the tulip, and the columbine, where stamens and pistils grow in one flower.
Now you see quite plainly that in some way the pollen should be carried about. The flowers being rooted in one place cannot carry their pollen where it should go. Who shall do it for them?
Here is where the insect comes in. Let us look at him. Insects vary much in size. ”

“ If you set a bird’s nest here, a wasp’s nest there, a bright stone next, and then a beetle, or a card of butterflies, your cabinet will have small teaching value. Remember a cabinet is not merely made to “look pretty” like a doll’s house, or a shop window.
Place things of a kind together. Then put kinds which are nearest like next each other. Put your insects together, and arrange them by their orders. Put the beetles together, the butterflies together, the wasps, and bees, and so on. Spiders come in as one order of the insects. ”