Read Ebook: Natural History Or Uncle Philip's Conversations with the Children about Tools and Trades among Inferior Animals by Hawks Francis L Francis Lister

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Ebook has 569 lines and 41817 words, and 12 pages

NATURAL HISTORY.

"Well, boys, this is a beautiful day. The sun is shining brightly, and the birds are singing, and the insects are flying about, and the grass is green, and every thing appears pleasant, and you feel happy too, and have come, I suppose, to see old Uncle Philip."

"Yes, Uncle Philip, we are tired of playing now, and so we have come to ask you to talk with us, and tell us about some of the curious things you know."

"Well, boys, I will tell you about some very strange things. I will talk to you about animals that know how to work with tools like a man."

"Work with tools, Uncle Philip! That is strange; but we know it is so, if you say so; because you will not tell us any stories but true ones. But where do they get the tools?"

"But, Uncle Philip, what sort of tools do you mean? Tell us about them."

"Very well, I will; do you think of some kind of tools that men use: think of the carpenter and his tools, and let us see if we cannot find some of them among the insects."

"Why, the carpenter has a saw. Is there any saw among these little fellows?"

"Uncle Philip, what is the saw made of?"

"But, Uncle Philip, it must take them a great while to saw a very little cut; they are so small."

"Yes, it does; but they persevere. It takes them more than an hour and a half to make one groove, and sometimes they will go on and make as many as six without stopping. That shows, boys, what perseverance will do."

"And when it is done sawing, Uncle Philip, where does it keep its saws?"

"Oh, I told you they fitted in a case; but when the fly is done sawing, it uses the saws to put the egg in the place cut for it, and then it draws the saws almost entirely into the case, and drops upon the egg a sort of frothy stuff like a drop of soap-lather."

"What is that for?"

"I suppose it is to glue the egg fast, or else to keep the juices in the bush from hurting it."

"Well, this is a curious fly, Uncle Philip."

"It is strange, boys, because you never heard of it before; but it is a cunning fly, as well as a curious one."

"What does it do, Uncle Philip?"

"Why, when it is frightened, it will fold up its case and saws under its body, and draw up its legs, and pretend to be dead; and then it will not move, even if you stick a pin through it."

"Can you tell us any thing more about this fly?"

"Well, Uncle Philip, here we are again, to hear more about the tools that animals work with; we have seen in the bark of trees, and old wooden posts, little holes as round as a gimlet could make, and we have been thinking whether any of these little creatures have augers and gimlets, as well as saws. Do you know of any of them that can bore holes?"

"Oh yes, boys; I know of more than one that can bore as smooth and round a hole as any carpenter you ever saw. There are some of the grasshoppers that have an excellent gimlet. The contrivance has five pieces in it; two of the pieces make a case to keep the augers in, two more are the augers or borers, and the other is a piece between the two borers on which they slide; this piece has a ridge on each side of it, and the augers have a groove which exactly fits the ridge. Besides this, each auger ends in a knob, and that knob has teeth all around it. Here is a picture of it."

"But, Uncle Philip, what is the piece with the ridge for?"

"Well, this is very curious."

"Yes; but there are some of these insect workmen more curious still. Did you ever see a spy-glass? You know it is a round, hollow piece of wood, with brass tubes in it, which are made smaller and smaller, so as to slide into one another, when the glass is not used. Now there is a sort of gadfly which has exactly such a contrivance to keep her gimlet in. It is in four pieces, and the smallest piece ends in five sharp points, three of which are longer than the other two: she twists these five sharp points into one piece, and as some are longer and some shorter, when they are all put together, they make a sharp edge running all around, and are almost exactly like an auger or gimlet. When she wants to use it, she just shoots out the different tubes, so as to make a stem for the gimlet; and when she is done, she puts all back into its case again.

"Here is a drawing of it, and I think that by looking at it you will understand what I have been telling you: I do not know whether men learned from this part of the fly how to make the case of a spy-glass; but I know they might have learned.

"Does she do it quickly, Uncle Philip?"

"Not very quickly, for sometimes the wood is very hard; I have seen one of these holes nearly twelve inches long in a very hard oak board. Sometimes she has to work at it for months; but she works steadily, boys, and that does a great deal. What makes it more tiresome is, that the poor little creature has to bring out all the dust she makes by boring."

"How large is the hole?"

"Oh, large enough to put my forefinger in, and sometimes fifteen inches long. After she has bored it as deep as is necessary, she begins to divide it into separate cells. So she commences at the bottom, and puts in a quantity of what is called bee-bread, until it reaches about an inch in height; on the top of this she lays an egg, and the bread is put there to feed the young one as soon as it comes out of the egg. She then makes a floor over it out of the dust, as I told you; she knows how to glue this dust together, and she brings it grain by grain from the heap in which she put it when she first brought it out: and she always begins by gluing the dust around the outside of the hole she has bored, and then glues another ring to that, and then another, and another, making each ring smaller and smaller, until she has it all filled; so that her floor, when it is done, appears like a parcel of rings of smaller and smaller sizes placed within each other. On the top of this floor she puts bee-bread, as before, and places another egg on it, and then covers it with a floor again; and so she goes on making cells and filling them with bread, and covering each with a floor, until she has filled up the hole."

"Uncle Philip, how do the young bees get out when the egg is hatched? It seems as if they were shut up for ever in prison."

"Why, that instinct, as you call it, Uncle Philip, is a curious thing."

"Very curious, very curious indeed, boys; and at some other time, if you wish, we will talk more about it, and I will tell you a great many stories of animals, which will show you their instinct. But for this time I have told you enough to keep you thinking until we meet again. So now just look at this picture of the carpenter-bee's house, and then you may go home."

"Uncle Philip, we are very glad to see you, and we think we have found out something to ask you, about a kind of work which men do, that no other animal can accomplish. As we came along this morning to visit you, and were talking of what you had told us of insects that, like carpenters, could saw wood and bore holes in it, we passed by the tailor's shop, near the church; 'and now,' said we, 'we have found out something which will puzzle good Uncle Philip: there are surely no tailors among the lower animals; so we will ask him to-day to talk about creatures that can cut out cloth and sew it up with a needle.'"

"No, boys; I do not think it is to be expected that they should take a pair of shears and cut a piece of cloth, or put a piece of thread through the eye of a steel needle; any more than we expect the insect that saws, to go to the cabinet-maker, and borrow his tool to work with. But with the instruments which God has given to them, they will cut what is cloth to them, the leaves of trees and flowers, and will sew them together too: and, now I think of it, there is one that will cut his garments out of our cloth."

"Pray let us hear about them, Uncle Philip."

"But, Uncle Philip, you have not said any thing about the round pieces which she cuts; how does she use them?"

"I will tell you: after she has finished one cell she lays an egg in it, and fills it all round with food nearly liquid; now as the cell is lying down on its side, all this liquid food would run out if it were not corked up, and the bee therefore uses her circular pieces to stop up the cells."

"And does she really make these round pieces to fit the cell?"

"Yes, boys, exactly; and they are cut too as regularly as if they had been first measured and marked with a pair of compasses. And, more than this, the little creature will fit one in in less than a minute. But the most curious thing is, that sometimes she will fly off to a distance to get this round piece, and bring back one which will exactly suit; so that it really seems as if she carried the size in her head. After finishing one cell she will make another, until she has completed as many as she wants; and then, as she always builds them one upon another, they appear like a parcel of thimbles stuck into each other and put into a case: and here is a picture of it."

"This is very wonderful, Uncle Philip; and it does seem like cutting out pieces to fit."

"Then she was not working for herself?"

"No; she was providing a house for her young, and God has taught her thus to take care of it.

"I will now tell you of another little workman, which I have heard called the cloak-maker, because it makes for itself a mantle which really appears very much like a cloak; and, stranger still, this cloak is lined throughout with silk."

"Can it be possible, Uncle Philip?"

"How does it go to work, Uncle Philip?"

"Why, I will give you the account as it was given by a gentleman who was very fond of observing insects, and who watched one of these little creatures. He says that from the thin membrane of the leaf it first cut two pieces just equal in size and of exactly the same shape; each of these pieces was to form one-half of the cloak, and this he says was done wonderfully fast. He noticed, too, that one end of each piece, that which was meant for the bottom of the cloak, was just twice as long as the other end, which was the top. The insect then placed itself between the two pieces while they were lying flat; it afterward brought the two sides where the seam was to be, together, and fastened them at certain places, still leaving, however, considerable spaces open. It then began to turn and twist its body about in all directions, until it moulded the pieces into a hollow form to fit. When it found that it would fit its body, it brought the edges of the seam close together through the whole length, and contrived to sew or fasten them so neatly together, that when the gentleman looked, even with a magnifying-glass, he said he could hardly find the seam. The whole was lined with the silk spun from itself, and was finished in about twelve hours."

"When I said that, boys, I was thinking of the clothes-moth. They make their coats of wool commonly taken from our cloth, and silk drawn from their own mouths; and the strangest thing concerning them is, that when they outgrow their clothes they will piece them to make them larger. Suppose the insect wants it longer, it adds a new ring of wool to the end: suppose it wants it wider, it slits the case or garment, not from one end to the other, for this would leave it naked, but it splits it half-way down the sides, and when it has filled it in with proper pieces, it splits the remaining half, and puts other pieces in them. There is another curious thing about this tailor: it always makes its coat of the same colour with the cloth from which it takes the wool; so that if it has first made its garment of a piece of blue cloth, and is placed on a bit of red cloth when it wishes to enlarge it, you will see its work exactly, for the pieces which it puts in will be red. This is the little fellow, boys, which does so much mischief to our clothes."

"Why, they have what serves as a needle to them: but I can tell you of another animal which sews with a needle a great deal plainer to be seen than that of these little insects."

"Pray let us hear of him, Uncle Philip."

"Why, this was sewing, sure enough."

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