Margaret Warner Morley

“ It quickly starts away when we touch one of the feelers.
Yes, Mollie, the katydid walks more than the grasshopper.
It can jump well with those long, slender hind legs. How beautiful its hind legs are! They are longer and more delicate than those of the grasshopper.
And its wings, how gauzy and dainty! Its wing covers are not so stiff as those of the grasshopper. [Pg 97] They look almost like flying wings, they are so delicate.
See, they open, and fasten themselves open, like the wing covers of the grasshopper; and when they are at rest they overlap like the wings of the grasshopper. ”

“ Yes, indeed, little Nell, the segments of the thorax are made of chitin; they are very stiff.
Ned thinks the segments of the legs are made of chitin too.
Their outside shell certainly is.
The whole outer shell of the insect is made of the horny chitin.
You hard little chitin-covered, segmented people, you are very different from us.
Ah! yes, May, they are like us in many ways.
Indeed, Mollie, insects do have brains.
They have muscles, too, to move their little bodies with.
We have muscles under our skin, you know. The muscles move our arms and legs and bodies. ”

“ No one should ever shoot a bird. The birds are our natural protectors against the vast armies of insects, that, but for the birds, would soon destroy us by eating up our food plants.
What is that, May? You belong to an Audubon Society for the protection of the birds?
Yes, I know you do, and so do John and Ned and Mollie and little Nell.
I wish every child in the United States belonged to the Audubon Society. Then our birds would be safe. They would never be killed as they are now for foolish women to wear on their hats. ”

“ The spiracles open into air tubes that carry air to the blood of the insect.
Spiracles
If you watch a grasshopper or a bee, you can plainly see it breathe. The abdomen moves in the bee as though it were panting. These movements of the abdomen cause the air to go in and out. All insects move their abdomens to send the air in and out, but it does not show plainly in all of them, for, though insects need air, some of them can get along with very little.
Yes, John, insects have blood. It is not just like our blood, but still it is blood. ”

“ Some insects have sweet odors, like perfumes.
The pleasant odors are not used to repel, but to attract.
If an insect wishes to see its mate, it may be able to give forth a pleasant odor that will reach a long way through the air, and the mate, smelling it, will follow it to its source. You see, this pleasant odor is one way of talking; at least it is one way of sending a message.
Insects can detect odors much better than we can.
No doubt many insects produce odors that affect other insects, but that are so faint we cannot smell them at all. ”

“ Yet wise men have been very much interested in our poor, ill-smelling old cockroaches, and have studied carefully all about them.
If you dislike to touch the cockroach so much, perhaps you will look at this picture of a croton bug. [Pg 47]
See, the upper wings are different; the cockroach does not fly with them, he merely uses them to cover up the under wings, and we call them wing covers.
It is the under wings the cockroach flies with.
Cockroaches may not be pleasant, but who can say they are not interesting?
What other insect lays its eggs in little bandboxes? ”

“ It does not need to, for now it is a dainty little nun, with a long, tan-colored cloak. Its cloak, of course, is its wings folded down about its body. Like the fairy May flies it has no mouth and eats nothing in the adult form. ”

“ Do you not remember how the leaf of the jewel weed, or touch-me-not, as it is also called, shines when you plunge it in water? It, too, is covered with fine hairs that hold air. Many leaves shine in this way [Pg 118] when put under water, and always because of the fine hairs that prevent the air from being pushed out by the water. You see the hairs on the bugs serve the same purpose as those on the leaves; they hold fast the air.
Our water boatman breathes this air that surrounds him.
You know how insects breathe do you not? ”

“ It is some particular part of the creature. An arm is an organ, a stomach is an organ, an eye is an organ. The whole creature is made up of organs, and is called an organism.
Your whole body, John, is an organism, but your legs and arms are organs. Now, I think you understand.
Our cicada has one organ that is very interesting; it is the little apparatus by which it sings.
Turn it over, Ned, and all of you look at the two [Pg 148] thin plates lying against the abdomen just below the thorax.
Those membranes are like two little kettle drums, and they are its song organs. ”

“ They call every insect a "bug," but bugs are bugs, flies are flies, ants are ants, and neither flies nor ants are bugs.
Indeed, no insects are bugs—excepting just bugs!
Our croton bugs are not really bugs. They do not belong to the bug family.
A bug has four wings—when it has any.
But its wings are not like those of the Orthoptera or Odonata or Ephemerida or Plecoptera.
Some bugs have no wings.
Young bugs are like old bugs, only smaller, and they have no wings. ”

“ Yes, May, this little cast is made of chitin, and it will last a long time. Chitin is a very indestructible substance; even fire will not destroy it, but in course of time the moisture and the acids in the earth destroy it, so that at last the millions of cicada shells and grasshopper cast-off skins, which are also of chitin, and cricket moults, and all the other little cast-aside chitinous overcoats of the insects, return again to the earth and the air whence they came. The minerals and gases that compose them let go of each other, as it were, and the chitin is no longer chitin. ”

“ See, the femur is larger than the other segments, but it is small as compared to the femur of the hind leg.
The tibia is shorter, too, than the tibia of the hind leg.
The little tarsus is like the tarsus of the hind leg with its claws and its pulvillus, only, of course, it is smaller.
The middle pair of legs is like the front pair, only larger.
Now, see how the legs are placed on the grasshopper's body.
The front pair are directed forward. When the insect walks, they pull.
The middle and hind legs are directed backward. When the insect walks, they push. ”

“ The tibia shuts into a groove in the femur, and thus the bug is able to seize and hold its prey.
It clasps its victim in its arms, as it were, and calmly proceeds to suck out its blood.
In some species of the giant water bugs the female does not leave her eggs in the pond to take care of themselves; she puts them on the back of her mate, who is obliged to carry all of his progeny about with him until they relieve him by hatching out and swimming off to see life for themselves. [Pg 127]
Little Mrs. Shore Bug
May says she wants to hear more about bugs. ”

“ It will some day become a shiny-winged dragon fly and catch mosquitoes.
We will call it larva, and we will watch it a little while.
Look and see if it has a head, a thorax, and an abdomen.
Are there antennæ on its head? And has it eyes?
If you were to look at its eyes with a microscope, you would find that they are made of six-sided facets, like the eyes of the grown-up dragon fly.
They are compound eyes, but they are not as large as the eyes of the grown-up dragon fly.
How many legs has it? What are its legs fastened to? ”

“ Although insects are so very interesting, we have to protect ourselves against many species in order to live.
Yes, John, it is oftentimes merely a question which shall profit by the crops we plant, the insects or ourselves.
Sometimes the insects win, sometimes we win, but it is a closely contested warfare all the time.
We plough the land and take care of it, we plant the seeds and keep out the weeds. Then, when we have a fine crop growing, along come certain destructive insects, feeling very happy, no doubt, to have found such a feast. ”

“ Well, the insects have to breathe air.
Every living thing has to breathe air. Nothing in the world could live without air.
Even plants breathe the air, you know.
Now, there is a little row of holes or pores along each side of the abdomen of the insect.
These are the breathing pores. No, May, the insects do not breathe through their mouths, they breathe through their sides.
[Pg 119]
You can see the breathing pores, or spiracles, as they are called, very plainly in many insects.
You can see them on the abdomen of the locust, and in some caterpillars they are bright-colored spots. ”

“ If the stink bug is not disturbed, it does not give forth the bad odor; but when we jostle the bushes in getting the berries, that startles it, and we get the benefit of its alarm.
Yes, undoubtedly the bugs make a bad odor for the same reason the grasshoppers make molasses. They wish to repel their enemies.
Very few birds ever touch a stink bug.
Nell thinks a bird would be crazy to eat a stink bug.
Mollie says if it were not crazy when it began, it surely would be before it got through!
Not only the bugs make these disagreeable odors.
Many other insects do. ”

“ The female katydids have a long sword- [Pg 96] shaped ovipositor with which they roughen the bark on twigs, and place the eggs there, fastening them with a gummy substance.
The egg is glued fast so it will not fall off.
It hatches into a little dot of a katydid that has no wings, but, like the larvæ of the other insects we know about, it eats and grows and moults, and at last its wings and the rest of its body are full grown.
It casts its skin for the last time; it is no longer a larva, but a full-grown insect.
Yes, May, we call the young of all insects larvæ. ”

“ The name of the plant louse that infests pear trees is the pear-tree psylla. It is very destructive to pear trees, sucking out the juices of the young shoots.
The pear trees can be saved by spraying them with kerosene emulsion as soon as the young leaves have opened in the spring.
The Aphids
Now, let us go in search of the aphids, or aphides, as they are also called. We shall not have to search far.
In a very dry season we generally need not search at all. All we need do is to examine the nearest weed to find plenty of aphides. ”

“ Most of us are only too well acquainted with the rose-leaf hopper that swarms on rose bushes and kills the leaves. If we have not noticed the insect itself, we have not failed to notice the little white skins that it has cast off and left clinging to the leaves. ”

“ The truth is, there is always air mixed in with water, and it is this air the larva breathes when the water goes in and out of the syringe. [Pg 19]
It uses the syringe for another purpose too. When it pleases it can shoot out the water with great force, and thus propel itself quite a distance.
By means of the syringe it can leap through the water faster than it can move by its slow-going legs.
Mollie wants to know if we can see the syringe.
No, it is inside the body.
But there is a kind of dragon fly that has a pair of gills outside, at the end of the abdomen, instead of the syringe inside. ”

“ Instead of changing gradually and remaining active all the time up to the final metamorphosis, our corydalus goes into the pupa state, and in that motionless condition transforms to the perfect insect.
This is called a complete metamorphosis.
When the change is gradual, without any pupa form, any stopping place as it were, the change is said to be an incomplete metamorphosis.
Yes, the metamorphosis of the grasshoppers is incomplete, and of the katydids and the crickets and all [Pg 181] the other insects we have studied until we came to the dobson. ”

“ Some larvæ breathe by gills, and do not have spiracles until they are grown up, but all grown-up insects breathe by spiracles.
Yes, John, the larvæ of the dragon flies and May flies breathe with gills.
I thought you would remember that.
The water boatman breathes by spiracles, and carries his supply of air with him. All grown-up bugs breathe by spiracles.
Now look down into the pond. I think you will see some water boatmen anchored near the bottom.
Yes, May, they cling by their front feet. Their hind pair of legs are rather odd-looking; they have a fringe of hairs on the inside. ”

“ Insects smell with their feelers, you know, but our dragon flies see so well they do not need to smell very well, I suppose.
See how it can turn its head around. That is because it has a little short neck between its head and its body.
Its eyes, its mouth, and its antennæ belong to its head.
Of course our demoiselle can fly well; one need only look at those wings to know that.
To fly well is quite as necessary to one of its habits as to see well.
What would be the use of seeing an insect if it could not fly fast enough to catch it? [Pg 8]
We all like your pretty wings, little dragon fly ”

“ You see, the half of the wing next the body is stiff like a wing cover, and the other half is thin and silky, and folds up under the stiff part. When the insect flies it spreads out the under wings, too, for there is a pair of thin, flying wings folded on the body under these upper wings. ”

“ You say the ground below the alder bush was all sticky and black, John?
That was the honey dew, blackened by a little plant something like mould, that grows on it.
We often see woolly plant lice in the summer-time on different plants, and one species injures apple trees. It gets on the roots as well as on the tender bark of young trees and kills them.
Yes, indeed, Mollie, the aphids are bugs. They belong to the bug order, which is a very large and important insect family, and contains some members that are exceedingly troublesome to us.
Scale Bugs
What, May, you are tired out? ”

“ It is said that the trout become fat and good-flavored when the May flies emerge, they eat so many of them. And what the fish do not catch the birds try to. Swallows and other insect-loving birds have a glorious feast when the May flies come out. ”