Book of Monsters Part 18

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A BLACK ANT

It is strange to think that just because the sunlight which poured upon this little creature's s.h.i.+ny body was reflected back against a photographic plate, its rays being made to diverge widely in so doing, we can get an image of this tiny ant as large as though it were a mouse.

What a world this would be to us had we microscopic vision! A thousand times as many beasts to look at, a thousand times as many things to see and understand!

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ANT GATHERING NECTAR FROM LEAF NECTARIES OF THE CHINESE WOOD-OIL TREE

A year ago I planted in my garden in Maryland three young wood-oil trees from the Yangtse valley of China, broad-leaved trees something like the catalpa. Just where the leaf stem joined the leaf blade there were two curious, dark red, oval glands. The use of these I did not understand until one morning I discovered a big black ant on each leaf, and each ant was stationed at the base of its leaf near these glands and evidently was lapping up from them small drops of nectar which kept oozing out from the center of each gland.

These rapidly-walking little creatures, which spend their time roaming everywhere, had discovered the use of these nectar glands although they were on the leaves of a plant which they had never seen before.

Whenever I touched a leaf the ant upon it ran about as if to frighten an intruder away, and I could not help but wonder if in China, where the wood-oil tree is at home, there might not be some stinging ant which takes upon itself to protect the foliage from the attacks of caterpillars, and gets, in payment for its labor, the nectar from these glands. The tropics are full of such agreements between the plants and the ants, and very effective ones they are, too.

The photograph shows a black ant with antennae extended, reaching over one of these big glands for the drop of nectar which glistens just below its head. On the other gland, just back of the ant's left antenna, a second drop of nectar can be seen.

First one and then the other of these nectaries is licked clean by the ant, and so well was the work done that throughout the summer it was only when I visited the leaves in early morning, before the ants were out, that I could find the beads of nectar in their places in slight depressions in the glands.

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THE ICHNEUMON FLY: ENEMY OF THE SPIDER

(_Crypturopsis sp._)

It would seem as though the spider ought to be able to protect itself from such a beautiful creature as this, but she is said to be one of the spider's worst enemies. With the long ovipositors which may be seen in the photograph and might almost be mistaken for her sting, she lays her eggs inside those of the spider and the larvae hatching from them eat up the spider's eggs. It is, so to say, an insect cuckoo, or worse than that, for the bird cuckoo only crowds the real children out of the nest, whereas the ichneumon fly devours them.

From man's point of view, however, many of the tribe to which this so-called fly belongs are his good friends, for they hold in check some of the pests which molest the plants he lives upon.

CHAPTER III

THE WORLD OF MYRIAPODS AND A SINGLE LAND CRUSTACEAN

THE WORLD OF MYRIAPODS AND A LAND CRUSTACEAN

Every one who has turned over a rotten log has seen these thousand-legged worms, and yet I wonder if many of us have known that these weird wandering things resemble, and are the direct living descendants of some of the first animals which crept up out of the sea to live upon the land.

Long ages before the warm-blooded, lung-breathing beasts came into existence, they worked their way up out of their water life among the corals, sponges, worms, sh.e.l.lfish, and fishes, onto the dry land.

This was in the great transition time when all sorts of amphibian monsters came into existence, monsters which have long since pa.s.sed away. These myriapods deserve respect if for no other reason than because their forefathers crept across the fresh footprints and mud wallows of the prehistoric monsters.

How comes it that these forms of life have changed so little in a million years?

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A MILLIPEDE, ONE OF THE VEGETARIAN MYRIAPODS

Slow moving ringed creature with four legs to each ring or segment of its body! Watch its legs move in ripples as it finds its way over the ground!

Unlike its distant relative, the centipede, which has but two legs to each body ring and darts about with most surprising rapidity, this millipede lives mainly on plant food and seldom eats, as does its savage relative, the bodies of small animals which make their home beneath old rotten logs.

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A CENTIPEDE, ONE OF THE CARNIVEROUS MYRIAPODS

(_Scolopendra sp._)

Perhaps no photograph in the collection serves better to ill.u.s.trate the vastness of the back yard jungle than this one, for myriapods are the only representatives of a gigantic branch of the animal kingdom, the individuals of which are no more insects than they are lobsters. They live their lives altogether on or in the ground, they do not mind the cold as insects do. Some of them have poison fangs and are reputed to inflict fatal wounds. Their matrimonial habits are strange beyond belief.

They compose a vast neglected a.s.semblage of creatures which some of their admirers believe have a value which we do not yet understand nor appreciate; just as we did not appreciate the role of the mosquito or the earth worm until the researches of modern science taught us of their importance.

A great untouched field for exploration lies here among the Myriapods.

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TWO PILL BUGS

(_Armadillidium vulgare_, Fab.)

Down from the time of the prehistoric monsters comes the armadillidium, the last survivor of the great land crustaceans. As the serpents and the lizards are all that remain to remind us of the monsters which swarmed and fought in the tertiary swamps and oceans, so this strange creature, no larger than a pea, which rolls itself into a ball when you startle it as you turn over a stone in the meadow, is the survivor of the land crustacea which at one time, in countless forms, abounded everywhere in the then young world.

It is not an insect, but a last survivor, related to the crabs more closely than to any other branch of the animal kingdom.