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

"Why, this was sewing, sure enough."

"Yes; and I saw, when I was in the West Indies, another kind of starling which will cut leaves into a shape like the quarter of an orange-rind, and sew the whole very neatly to the under side of a banana-leaf, so as to make one side of the nest. But, boys, there is another most beautiful little bird, which is called the tailor-bird, because it sews so well. It first picks out a plant with large leaves, then it gathers cotton from the shrub, and with the help of its fine long bill and slender little feet it spins this cotton into a thread, and then using its bill for a needle, it will sew these large leaves together to hide its nest, and sew them very neatly, too."

"Why, dear Uncle Philip, this is the most wonderful tailor of them all."

"Yes, Uncle Philip, it is likely that these little fellows you have been telling us of this morning were the first tailors in the world."

"Very likely, very likely indeed, boys. But now I must bid you good morning; for here comes our good clergyman, and I am going with him to see a poor sick woman."

"Good morning, Uncle Philip; we will come again on Saturday."

FOOTNOTES:

Megachile centuncularis.

Osmia papaveris.

Reaumur.

Tinea sarcitella.

Icterus mutatus.

Icterus bonana.

Sylvia sutoria.

"Ah, boys! how do you do? This is Saturday, and I have been expecting to see you come for some time."

"Why, Uncle Philip, we should have been here sooner, but we went round by the old mill; because we thought that perhaps we might find in some of the old timbers, holes bored by some of those industrious little carpenters you told us about."

"Well; and did you find any?"

"Oh, that I will do, with pleasure, if I can. What is the trade that you think you have discovered?"

"It is paper-making, Uncle Philip. We have found this part of a wasp's nest, which we have brought along; and as you told us it was always best to notice every thing closely, we examined this, and it appeared so much like coarse paper that we thought that man did not make the first paper in the world."

"Well, boys, that was not a bad thought. Now you see the advantage of taking notice of things, and of thinking about what you see. You are perfectly right in supposing that wasps make paper; and, if you please, we will talk this morning about the wasps."

"Oh yes, yes, by all means, Uncle Philip; and we will thank you, too."

"I must first tell you, then, that of the wasps there are several kinds. Some build their nests under ground, and some hang theirs in the air to the limb of a tree. This part of a nest which you have found belonged to the last kind; but I will tell you something about both. But before I begin let me get some drawings I have, which will help us to understand better. I have them. And now, of the wasps which build under ground. As soon as the warm season begins, the first care of the mother-wasp is to look for a fit place in which to build; and in the spring of the year she may very often be seen flying about a hole in the bank of a ditch, and looking into it. These holes which she examines are the old houses of field-mice or moles, and some persons have thought, what I expect is true, that she likes to take such old holes, because they save her a great deal of hard work. But still, as the holes are not large enough for her use, she has a great deal of labour to make them do. So she goes at once to work, digging in the hole she has chosen, and makes a winding, zigzag gallery, about two feet long, and about an inch in width. She digs out the earth, and carries it out, or pushes it out behind her as she goes on. This gallery ends in a large chamber or hole from one to two feet across when it is done: and now she is ready to begin her nest."

"Now then, Uncle Philip, she will begin to make paper, will she not?"

"Yes; but here I ought to tell you that it was a long time before men found out what she made it of. Do you remember my telling you of a gentleman who watched the little cloak-maker to see how he made his garment? Well, this gentleman, whose name was Reaumur, was trying for twenty years, he says, to find out how the wasp made paper, before he succeeded. At last, one day, he saw a female wasp alight on the sash of his window and begin to gnaw the wood; he watched her, and saw that she pulled off from the wood fibre after fibre, about the tenth part of an inch long, and not so large as a hair. She gathered these up into a knot with her feet, and then flew to another part of the sash, and went to work, stripping off more fibres or threads, and putting them to the bundle she had already. At last he caught her, to examine the bundle, and found that its colour was exactly like that of a wasp's nest; but the little ball was dry; she had not yet wetted it to make a pulp of it which could be spread out. He noticed another thing, that this bundle was not at all like wood gnawed by other insects; it was not sawdust, but threads of some little length bruised into lint. He then set to work himself with his penknife, and very soon scraped and bruised some of the wood of the same window-sash, so as to make a little ball exactly like the wasp's. Mr. Reaumur thought that this was the stuff out of which the wasp made paper, and it has since been found out that he was right. The animal wets its little bundle of bruised wooden fibres or threads with a kind of glue that it has, and this makes it stick together like pulp or paste; and while it is soft, the wasp walks backwards, and spreads it out with her feet and her tongue, until she has made it almost as thin as the thinnest paper. With this she lines the top of the hole in which she is going to build her nest, for she always begins at the top. But this is so thin that it would be too weak to keep the dirt from falling in; and therefore she goes on spreading her papers one upon the other until she has made the wall nearly two inches thick. These pieces are not laid exactly flat on each other like two pieces of pasteboard, but with little open spaces between, being joined at the edges only. This is the ceiling; and when it is finished she begins to build what may be called the highest floor of the nest; this she makes of the same paper in a great number of little cells all joined together at the sides; and instead of fastening this floor to the sides of the nest, she hangs it to the ceiling by rods made also out of this paper: these rods are small in the middle, and grow larger towards the ends, so as to be stronger. Here is a drawing of one.

She then makes a second floor, and hangs it under the first by rods as before; and the whole of it, when finished, if it should be cut straight through the middle, would appear something like the following picture of one which I made some years ago."

"This is a very ingenious little paper-maker. Uncle Philip."

"Yes, boys, it is so. This of which I have been telling you is the ground-wasp. The tree-wasp makes its nest of paper prepared in the same way; and the nests are of different shapes. One makes it in a round flattened ball, not much larger than a rose, and when cut open it shows layer upon layer of leaves of the same thin grayish-looking paper. This kind is not so common, however. Here is one of their nests.

"Another makes its nest of cells placed in separate floors, but without any outer wall to keep off the rain; and the most curious thing in this nest is, that it is not placed in a horizontal way; that is, it is not placed with the floors level, because then the cells would catch the rain, and the nest would be spoiled; but it is always placed slanting, so that the rain may run off. It is always placed, too, so as to face the north or the west, and I suppose it is because the wasp knows that it is in more danger of rain from the south and the east. Here is a nest of this kind."

"Ah, Uncle Philip! this must be a kind of lazy wasp. It does not choose to take the trouble to cover up the house, and so it hangs it slanting, to make the rain run off."

"It may be so, boys; but I think that in making this wasp lazy, you make it a very sensible wasp; else how should it know that water would run down a slanting surface? But I cannot believe that it is so lazy; for, though it does not cover up the whole house in a paper shell, yet it does what no other wasp does, it covers its nest with a complete coat of shining, water-proof varnish, to prevent the rain from soaking into the cells. And putting on this varnish, I can tell you, is no trifling work. It forms a pretty large part of the labour of the whole swarm belonging to the nest; and sometimes you may see some of them at work for hours at a time, spreading it on with their tongues. No, my lads, he who wants an example of laziness, will not find it among the wasps.

"But let us come back to the paper. Hornets make paper for their nests much in the same manner as the wasps do, only it is coarser. There is, however, one kind of wasp which makes a sort of paper more curious than this which you have found. It is not a wasp found in this country at all. It is the Cayenne wasp, and so smooth, strong, and white is the outside of his nest that it appears like a card, and he is for that reason sometimes called the card-maker wasp. He hangs his nest on the branch of a tree, and it is so hard and polished on the outside that the rain rolls off from it, as if it were glass. A little hole in the lower end is left for the animal to pass in and out; and in this picture of it, which I have, a piece is left out of the side to show how the cells within are fixed."

"Well, then, Uncle Philip, we were right in thinking that wasps were the first paper-makers; and very glad we are that we saw this old piece of a wasp's nest. Who would have thought that so much could be learned by picking up this old scrap of a wasp's work!"

"Very good sense, boys, in that thought. A wise man will learn something from almost any thing. Use your eyes, and think of what you see. Now in this very trade of paper-making. I think that man would have found it out a great deal sooner if he had watched the wasps at their work. They have been excellent workmen at this business from the beginning; and man has gone on learning little by little of this very trade, as I will tell you at some other time, when he might have made a long step at once, had he but noticed wasps and hornets. We go on very slowly sometimes in learning to make a trade as perfect as it can be: the poor animal, with its knowledge such as God gave it, is often our superior. These dumb creatures cannot teach us every thing; there is a point to which they can go, and no further: but as far as they do know, their knowledge is perfect; and I make no doubt that a great many useful things not now known will hereafter be found out by watching dumb animals."

"Uncle Philip, as the day is fine, instead of sitting here, will you walk with us, this morning?"

"Yes, boys; let me get my cane and hat, and we will take a ramble; perhaps we may see something, if we will use our eyes. Where do you wish to go?"

"Oh, we do not care much, if you are with us, which way we walk; any course will be pleasant."

"Come on, then; we will cross the river, and go down on the other side beyond the old mill, where you found the wasp's paper. And now, such of you as will, may keep a look-out for curious things, while the rest of us will talk together.--Boys, do any of you know Tom Smith?"

"Know him! Why, Uncle Philip, everybody in this part of the country knows him; he is such a shocking drunkard, and swears so horribly, that nobody can forget him; and what makes it worse, he is an old man, too. His hair is almost as white as yours, Uncle Philip."

"But here come some of the boys, running towards us; I suppose they have found something."

"Oh, Uncle Philip! Uncle Philip! Do come with the boys this way. Under that fence yonder there are a great many beautiful wild flowers, and a number of bees are as busy as they can be about them; pray come and see them."

"Well, I will; but not so fast, boys; you forget that I am an old man, and cannot run as you do.--So, here are, indeed, a great many industrious little workmen."

"What are they doing, Uncle Philip?"

"Tools, Uncle Philip! Ah, we like that: pray let us hear of them; what are they?"

"Why, there is a brush and a basket in the legs of these little fellows; but they are so small that you cannot see them without a microscope."

"What is a microscope?"

"It is an instrument, made by fixing glasses in such a way to look through, that small things will seem to be very large. Do you not see how some of these little fellows are rolling themselves over in the inside of the flowers, so that the yellow dust is sticking to them? Now their breasts, and legs, and many other parts of their bodies are covered with very short hairs, which catch the dust. The last joint but one of each leg is made exactly like a brush, the hairs being longer there than on any other part; and with these they brush off the dust, and get it into two little heaps. The bags into which they put it, or rather the baskets, are in the thighs of the last pair of legs. These are hollow, so as to form a three-sided basket. The bottom of it is smooth and shining, and appears like horn, and all around the edges are placed very strong, thick-set hairs, like bristles."

"What are these for?"

"To keep things from falling out of the basket; and these bristles are so strong that even if they heap up more than the basket will hold, the bristles will keep it from falling. Here is a drawing of these legs.

"What is propolis, Uncle Philip?"

"It is a gum which is found upon some trees. This they work up into little balls, and knead it until it is a little dry, so as not to stick. This takes the bee sometimes as much as half an hour. When the balls are ready, she passes them backwards with her feet to the basket, puts them in, and gives them a pat or two to make them lie close; and when she adds more, she pats it still harder, and when the basket is full, away she goes to the hive. But there is another curious instrument about the bee. I mean its sting: this is like the head of a barbed or bearded arrow. There is a sheath for it when the bee does not wish to use it; and here is a picture of it.

But let us now continue our walk."

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