An entire colony of those strange little people, the Orange-dwellers,
were killed in our town yesterday morning. And not a newspaper
reporter found it out! Just one of the Orange-dwellers escaped, and as
Mary and I were the means of saving his life, and are taking care of
him as well as we can (Mary has him now on a small piece of
orange-rind in a pill box), he has told us the story of his life and
something about the other orange-dwelling people. Some of the
Orange-dwellers live in Mexico; some live in Florida, and some in
California; in fact they are to be found wherever oranges grow. Of
course, you have guessed already that the Orange-dwellers are not
human beings; they are not really people; they are insects.
The name of the Orange-dweller we had saved, and with whom we became
very well acquainted, is so long and strange that I shall tell you
merely his nickname, which is Citrinus. The oranges on which Citrinus
and a great many of his brothers and sisters and cousins lived grew in
Mexico, and when these oranges were ripe, they were gathered and
packed into boxes and sent to our town. Imagine if you can the fearful
strangeness of it! To have one's world plucked from its place in
space, wrapped up in tissue-paper, and packed into a great box with a
lot of other worlds; then sent off through space to some other place
where enormous giants were waiting impatiently for breakfast! When
Citrinus's world reached our town, one of these giants, who is my
brother, took it up, and saying, "See, what a specked orange,"
straightway began unwittingly to kill all of the Orange-dwellers on it
by vigorously rubbing and scraping it. For Citrinus and his
companions were the specks! That is all an Orange-dweller seems to be
when carelessly looked at; simply a little circular, scale-like,
blackish or reddish-brown speck on the shining surface of the orange,
his world. You can find the Orange-dwellers almost any morning at
breakfast.
When my brother began to scrape off the specks, I hastily interfered,
but only in time to save one of the little people, Citrinus, whom, as
I have said, Mary has since faithfully cared for. He will soon die,
however, for he has lived already nearly three months, and that is a
ripe age for an Orange-dweller. But he has had time enough to tell me
a great deal about his life, and as it is such a curious story, and is
undoubtedly true, I venture to repeat it here to you. As a matter of
fact I must confess--still Mary says that _of course_ Citrinus can
talk, because he talks with other Orange-dwellers later in the story,
and so of course can talk to us now.
Citrinus has lived for almost his whole life on the orange on which we
found him. His mother lived on one of the fragrant leaves of the tree
on which the orange grew. She was, as Citrinus is now, simply a
reddish-brown circular speck on the bright-green orange-leaf; and
because she couldn't walk, she had to get all her food in a peculiar
way. She had a long (that is, long for such a tiny creature), slender,
pointed hollow beak or sucking-tube, which she thrust right into the
tender orange-leaf, and through which she sucked up the rich sap or
juice which kept flowing into the leaf from the twig it hung on. She
had thus a constant supply of food always ready and convenient;
whenever she was hungry she simply sucked orange-sap into her mouth
until she was satisfied. This is the way all the Orange-dwellers get
their food, the very youngest of the family being able to take care of
itself from the day of its birth. They never taste any other kind of
food but the juice from the leaf or twig or golden orange on which
they live.
Citrinus is one of a large number of brothers and sisters, more than
fifty indeed, who were hatched from tiny reddish eggs which the mother
laid under her own body. Before laying the eggs, Citrinus's mother had
built a thin shell or roof of wax over her back, and after the eggs
were laid she soon died and her body shriveled up, leaving the eggs
safely housed under the waxen roof. When the baby Orange-dwellers were
hatched, each had six legs and a delicate little sucking-beak
projecting from his small plump body. Citrinus and his brothers and
sisters scrambled out from under the wax shell and started out each
for himself to explore the world. First, however, each thrust his beak
into the leaf and took a good drink of sap. Then they were ready to
begin their journeying. But a terrible thing happened!
Just as Citrinus was pulling his beak out of the soft leaf, he saw a
great six-legged beast, in shape like a turtle, with shining
red-and-black back and fearful snapping jaws. On each side of its
head, which it moved slowly from side to side, it had an immense eye,
which looked like a hemispherical window, with hundreds of panes of
glass in it. The beast's legs were large and powerful, and on each
foot there were two claws, each of them as long as the whole body of
Citrinus. Truly this was an appalling sight, and all of the little
Orange-dwellers ran as fast as they could, which, unfortunately,
wasn't very fast. The beast leisurely caught up in its great jaws one
after another of Citrinus's brothers and sisters, and crushed and tore
their tender bodies to pieces and ate them!
Now this beast, which seemed so large to Citrinus, was what is to us a
very small and pretty insect, one of the lady-bird beetles. These
beetles care for no other food than plump Orange-dwellers and other
equally toothsome small insects; and instead of being sorry for its
victims, we are glad it eats them! This seems very cruel indeed, but
there are so many, many millions of the Orange-dwellers all sucking
the juice of orange-trees that although they are so small, and each
one drinks so little sap, yet altogether they do a great amount of
damage to the orange-trees, often killing all the trees in a large
orchard. So the lady-birds are a great help to the orange-growers.
Little Citrinus escaped from the Beetle by crawling into a small, dark
hole in the surface of the leaf; but he was badly frightened. This was
his first experience with the terrible dangers of the world, with the
struggle for life, which is going on so bitterly among the people of
his kind, the insects. For although there would seem to be enough
plants and trees to serve as food for all of them, many insects find
it easier or prefer to eat other insects than to live on plant food.
Now because the insects which live on plant food do injury to our
fruit-trees and vegetables and grain crops by their eating, we call
them injurious insects; while we call the insect-eating kinds
beneficial insects, because they destroy the injurious insects.
But little Citrinus didn't look at the matter at all in this light. He
thought the lady-bird beetle a very cruel and wicked being, and
resolved to warn every Orange-dweller he met in his travels to beware
of the cruel, turtle-shaped beast with the shining black-and-red back.
As he wandered on from leaf to leaf along the tender twigs in the top
of the tree, he met many other Orange-dwellers, whom he would have
told all about the Beetle, but he found that all of them had had
experiences as sad as his; in fact he soon learned that of all the
Orange-dwellers who are born, only a very, very few escape the Beetles
and other devouring beasts who pursue them. And he was highly
indignant when one shrewd Orange-dweller told him that it really was a
good thing for the race of Orange-dwellers that so many of them were
killed. For, the shrewd Orange-dweller said, if all of us who are born
should live and have families, and not die until old age came on,
there would soon be so many of us that we should eat all the
orange-trees in the world, and then we should all starve to death. And
this is quite true.
Finally Citrinus came to a remarkable being, a very beautiful being
indeed. It had two long, slender, waving feelers on its head, four
large ball-shaped eyes, and, strangest of all, two delicate gauzy
wings. This beautiful creature greeted Citrinus kindly and asked him
where he was going. Citrinus, who was at first a little afraid of the
strange creature, was reassured by its kind greeting, and answered
simply, "I don't know. My brothers and sisters were all eaten by the
Beetle; my father and mother I have never seen; and no one has told me
where to go."
The stranger smiled a little sadly and said, "That is the common story
among us Orange-dwellers. Our fathers and mothers always die before we
are born. It is a great pity. Yes, before my little Orange-dweller
children are born--"
"What," cried Citrinus, "are you an Orange-dweller; you, who are so
different from me?"
"Indeed I am," replied the gauzy-winged creature. "I am an old
Orange-dweller. Oh, I know it seems strange to you," he continued,
noticing the look of astonishment on Citrinus's face, "but some day
you will look just like me. You will have wings, and be able to fly;
and will have long feelers on your head to hear and to smell with, and
big eyes to see all around you with. You will have some strange
experiences, though, before you become like me."
"But as I had started to say, we fathers, and the mothers too for that
matter, always die before you youngsters are hatched out of your eggs.
Now I shall probably die to-morrow or next day, because I have lived
three days already, and that is a long time to live without eating."
Little Citrinus could hardly believe his senses. It was so wonderful.
"But why don't you eat," urged Citrinus, who felt very badly to think
of any one's going without food for three days. He always took a drink
of sap every few minutes.
"Why, how absurd," replied the winged Orange-dweller, "don't you see I
have nothing to eat with? No sucking-beak, no mouth at all. When I get
my wings and my four eyes, I lose my mouth, and can't eat or drink any
more."
This was incredible; but when Citrinus looked at the head of his
companion, he saw it was perfectly true. He had no mouth. Citrinus
gently waved his little sucking-beak, to be sure he still had it.
Suddenly he began to cry; a sad thought had come to him. "And did my
mother starve to death too?" he sobbed.
"Not at all, little one," rather impatiently exclaimed the other.
Little Citrinus seemed to know so very little, indeed. "Your mother
was not at all like me. When she was full-grown she had no wings, no
legs, and no eyes, but she had a very long beak, and could suck up a
great deal of orange-sap. If you will listen and not interrupt, I will
tell you how we Orange-dwellers grow. When we are hatched from our
eggs we are all alike, brothers and sisters. We each have a plump
little body, six legs, two eyes, and a sucking-beak to get food with.
We walk about for a few days, and finally stop on some nice green leaf
or juicy orange, and stick our beaks far in and go to sleep, or do
something very like it. We never walk about any more. Indeed, if you
are a girl Orange-dweller you never leave this spot, but live all the
rest of your life and die here. However, I am getting too far along in
my story. While we are asleep we shed all of our skin, fold it up into
a little ball or cushion and put it on our backs, together with some
wax which comes out of small holes in our bodies. While shedding our
skin we make a great change in our bodies. We lose our legs! So we
simply remain where we went to sleep, with our beaks stuck into the
leaf, sucking the sap. After a few days we go to sleep again, and
again we shed our skins and fold them on our backs. But at this time
something even more wonderful than before happens to our bodies. That
is, to the bodies of the boy Orange-dwellers. For this time we lose
our sucking-beaks, but we regain our six legs, and in addition we get
a second pair of eyes, we find on our heads a pair of long, slender,
hairy feelers, and, most pleasing of all, we have been provided with a
pair of wings. Our wings are not yet full-grown or ready to fly with,
so we still remain quietly in our resting-place for a few days longer,
when we shed our skin once more, and then fly away, looking just as I
do now. Our sisters, though, when they shed their skins the second
time, make no change in their bodies, except to grow larger. They
remain with their sucking-beaks thrust into the leaf. They keep
increasing the size of the wax scale or shell over their backs, until
they are entirely covered by it. Now they look just as your mother
did. From above, all one can see is the flat circular wax scale with
two spots on it, where the folded-up cast skins are. Underneath the
scale lies the Orange-dweller, with its sucking-beak stuck into the
sap, but with no legs or wings or long, hairy feelers. After a while
she lays a lot of eggs under her body, and then dies. And soon the new
family is born. Now this is the way we grow, and all of the wonderful
things which have happened to me will happen to you,--if the Beetle
does not get you."
With that the winged Orange-dweller flew away, and little Citrinus was
left alone, wondering over the strange story. After taking a drink of
sap from the leaf on which he was standing, he wandered aimlessly
about until he came to a large yellow ball hanging from the branch,
which gave out a delightful odor. Scrambling down the slender stem by
which it was suspended, he walked out on to the shining surface of the
orange; for, of course, that is what the yellow ball was. He tried a
drink of sap from the ball and found it delicious. He decided to stay
on the ball, the more readily as he was getting rather tired with his
long traveling, and a sort of sleepy feeling was coming over him. So
thrusting his beak far into the ball, he went to sleep. How long he
slept he doesn't know, but when he awoke he could hardly believe his
senses. He had no legs; and on his back there was a thin shell of wax
and a little packet. He realized, too, that he was bigger than he was
before he went to sleep. Then the strange story told him by the winged
Orange-dweller came back to him, and he knew that the stranger had
told the truth. The first great change had happened. He was delighted,
for he thought it would be very pleasant to have wings and fly about
wherever he wished, to see the world.
Suddenly a great shock came: his World trembled, then shook violently,
and, with a quick wrench, started to move swiftly through space. Then
came a stop, a series of shocks and curious whirlings, and then a
filmy-white cloud settled down over it all, shutting out the sunlight
and the blue sky. Finally there came a few more shocks and wrenches,
and then total darkness and silence. Citrinus had held on to his world
all through this, because his beak was still thrust into the fragrant
surface, and now he felt thankful that he had come alive through these
series of world catastrophes and convulsions and still had all the
food he could possibly use.
After a few days, when Citrinus's world all nicely wrapped in
tissue-paper and packed in a box with ninety-nine other similar worlds
had traveled a thousand miles, the sunlight came again, and soon after
came that greatest danger of all--that danger from which I saved him
by staying my brother's hand in its ruthless rubbing off of the specks
on his breakfast orange! Now Citrinus and Mary and I are all waiting
impatiently for the day when he shall get his beautiful wings and his
two pairs of eyes.
[Illustration: THE DRAGON OF LAGUNITA]