Book of Monsters Part 3

(_Agelina naevia_, Walck.)

On a summer morning, if you rise with the sun, and if the night has been cool, you will find your lawn covered with most exquisite s.h.i.+mmering gossamer patches, so diaphanous that if you touch them or breathe on them they fade away. These are the webs of the young gra.s.s spiders and, if you watch one of them closely, you will see that the tiny spider is waiting below the web in a funnel of woven spider's silk. It will run out quickly enough if you throw a fly into its net. It is not an orb-weaver and runs over its net instead of climbing along the under side of it as many orb-weavers do.

That this is the photograph of a mature male is evident from the genital palpi, resembling a pair of short front legs.

In the autumn the males and females both desert their webs to wander, for it is not only their mating season but the close of their brief existence.

Under a bit of bark the female lays her eggs and waits for death, guarding her progeny till she dies, although she has no hope of seeing them alive.

How, by what marvelous machinery, do these microscopic eggs beneath the bark inherit, not only the color and the form but the knowledge of web building which their dead parents possessed? Is there not something wrong in our idea of the individual as a separate thing rather than as a transitory part of a living network which has been in existence perhaps a million years, alternating in its form, now as a moving hairy-legged thing, and now as a round immobile egg?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE CRAB SPIDER THAT LURKS AROUND THE NECTARIES OF FLOWERS

(_Xysticus gulosus_, Keys.)

Like the beasts of prey which lurk around the water holes of African deserts, waiting for the feebler game to come down to drink, the crab spiders conceal themselves around the nectar-bearing discs of flowers.

These nectar cups are the feeding places of thousands of sucking creatures, and the tragedies which take place in the shadows of the rose or lily petals are things we do not like to think of, for they are quite as real, quite as horrible and b.l.o.o.d.y struggles as those upon a larger scale, the very thought of which makes our blood run cold.

The crab spiders cannot run forward but dart sidewise and backward at great speed. One cannot help wondering if this ability may not often be an advantage rather than a drawback and enable the creature to surprise its prey by turning its back on it, something as a left-handed man often surprises an antagonist.

That these spiders run their own grave risks in this life around the nectar "water holes" is evident, for they form a large proportion of the food of mud wasps and if you want a handful of them, tear down a few mud daubers' nests sometime in June and empty out their contents. The brilliant colors will surprise you and suggest that possibly the yellow ones haunt the yellow flowers and the blue the blue ones.

The particular species whose low, sprawling form is shown in the photograph is one of forty occurring in the United States and, although it is only from a fourth to a third of an inch long, is considered one of the large species. It is dull-colored, and, unlike its gaily-colored relatives, awaits its prey under bark and stones.

It spins no web and the small male leads a thoroughly vagabond life, whereas the female, in most species at least, settles down toward the end of her life and, after depositing her silken lens-shaped sac of eggs in some protected spot, she lingers near as if to guard it till she dies.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A FRONT VIEW OF A MATURE MALE SPIDER

The reason for existence is so perplexing that it is no wonder we fall back on mysticism whenever we try to explain it.

Inexplicable as it seems when we consider our own lot as humans, the mystery is no less great when we try to view existence from the standpoint of a male spider.

Is it not probable that we cling so dearly to the idea of our own existence as individuals that we forget we are only halves of a whole, and that the whole itself is only a fraction of that vague living something spread out over the earth, moving in millions of places at once which we call a living species?

When we shall have s.h.i.+fted our sympathies and made them cover a thousand generations of beings, we shall have risen to the point of view that a divinity must take.

The enigmas of existence, I venture to say, will only be understood from this standpoint and not from the more sympathetic one of regret over the shortness, cruelty or barrenness of any individual's life.

The male spider seems peculiarly to be just a tool in the machinery of descent, merely a carrier of the male germ cells which, whenever, and not before, they come in contact with their female counterparts, start into activity the marvelous growth which results in new individuals similar to itself.

These male cells which form within its body, mature, and are ejected as living, ciliated things into a web of special make; and two special syringes formed late in life at the tips of the leg-like palpi draw them up and hold them stored until it is time for them to be injected during the mating process into special sacs within the female, where they fuse in some strange way with female cells and start the following generation.

His palpi once emptied of these male cells, of what further use to the species can he be and why should not the carnivorous female promptly eat him up?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE DADDY-LONG-LEGS OR HARVESTMAN

(_Leiobunum grande_, Weed)

Who has not watched daddy-long-legs stalk majestically across the floor or up the wall, one long slender leg waving in front of him like the arm of some gesticulating prophet of old? Indeed, the fly or mosquito is hardly more familiar.

Long-leggedness is all relative to size of body, and viewed from this standpoint everyone must agree that the harvestman is the longest-legged creature in the world. If its body were the size of a flamingo its legs would cover over thirty feet of ground. As it has eight legs and each leg is eight times the length of its body it has sixty-four times as much length of leg as of body.

It is a strange, spider creature having only two eyes which look to right and left from a turret-like hump in the middle of its back. Its claws in front have pincers like a crab's. Opposite the first pair of legs are scent glands from which it pours out a fluid which has so bad an odor that it seems to protect it from its foes.

Swung low between its legs, this creature of twilight and shade wanders in search of small insects which it catches and devours as other spiders do.

It only lives one season in the North and spins no web and makes no nest.

The female lays her eggs deep down in the ground or under stones or in the crevices of the bark of trees.

CHAPTER II

THE INSECT WORLD

STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS

(_Orthoptera_)

When children play with pebbles on the beach, they often put the red ones in one group, the white ones in another. It is much the same with men, they try to put the things that are alike together, and in the bewildering mult.i.tude of shapes and forms and habits with which the insect specialists have had to deal, they catch at any similarity, and put together in one group a lot of creatures which are only alike in a few particulars.

In the straight-winged order of orthoptera they have put the creatures which have four wings, the front pair being leather-like and smaller than the other pair, which latter fold up like a fan. They are also all equipped with strong biting jaws. Bugs often look like them, but bugs have beaks and never jaws.

It is in this order that are found nearly all of the true song insects, at least so far as human ears can tell. The gra.s.shoppers, the katydids and crickets are the great music makers of the insect world, although it is true that there is one, perhaps the loudest, shrillest singer of them all which is cla.s.sified among the bugs, the lyreman, or cicada, one of the species of which is known as the seventeen-year locust.

When we talk of the hum of insects we do not often stop to think that it is quite a different thing in general from their song. Most insects in their flight, providing that their wings move fast enough, make some kind of a noise. The humming of the bee, the buzzing of the house fly and mosquito and the whirring of the clumsy beetle's wings are quite a different thing from the conscious song of the katydid to its mate, or the singing of the cricket on the hearth.

Of course it is impossible for us to be quite sure that there is not a host of insects who have means of making some kind of a noise which is so high up in the scale of noises as to be too faint for us to hear.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE KING GRa.s.sHOPPER

(_Hippiscus sp._)

As this young king gra.s.shopper stands looking so inquiringly at one with his varicolored eyes, each of which is composed of hundreds of facets, I cannot help thinking that he represents a creature quite as fascinating and actually more dangerous than the East African monsters of our school geographies.

Perhaps it is perfectly natural, but it does not seem right, that so little emphasis should be laid in our histories upon the terrible struggles of man with his insect enemies. The time will come when we shall recognize this warfare, when we shall realize how much of human happiness lies buried on the battlefields of our struggle against the insect hordes.