Insects in Britain--Meadow ants--The indoor view of insect
life--Insects in visible nature--The humming-bird hawk-moth and the
parson lepidopterist--Rarity of death's-head moth--Hawk-moth and
meadow-pipit--Silver-washed fritillaries on bracken--Flight of the
white admiral butterfly--Dragon-flies--Want of English names--A
water-keeper on dragon-flies--Moses Harris--Why moths have English
names--Origin of the dragon-fly's bad reputation--_Cordulegaster
annulatus_--_Calopteryx virgo_--Dragon-flies
congregated--Glow-worm--Firefly and glow-worm compared--Variability
in light--The insect's attitude when shining--Supposed use of the
light--Hornets--A long-remembered sting--The hornet local in
England--A splendid insect--Insects on ivy blossoms in autumn.
The successive Junes, Julys, and Augusts spent in this low-lying,
warm forest country have served to restore in my mind the insect
world to its proper place in the scheme of things. In recent years,
in this northern land, it had not seemed so important a place as at
an earlier period of my life in a country nearer to the sun. Our
insects, less numerous, smaller in size, more modest in colouring,
and but rarely seen in swarms and clouds and devastating multitudes,
do not force themselves on our attention, as is the case in many
other regions of the earth. Here, for instance, where I am writing
this chapter, there is a stretch of flat, green, common land by the
Test, and on this clouded afternoon, at the end of summer, while
sitting on one of the {111} innumerable little green hillocks
covering the common, it seemed to me that I was in a vacant place
where animal life had ceased to be. Not an insect hummed in that
quiet, still atmosphere, not could I see one tiny form on the
close-cropped turf at my feet. Yet I was sitting on one of their
populous habitations. Cutting out a section of the cushion-like turf
of grass and creeping thyme that covered the hill and made it
fragrant, I found the loose, dry earth within teeming with minute
yellow ants, and many of the hillocks around were occupied by
thousands upon thousands of the same species. Indeed, I calculated
that in a hundred square yards at that spot the ant inhabitants alone
numbered not less than about two hundred thousand.
[Sidenote: The unregarded tribes]
It is partly on account of this smallness and secretiveness of most
of our insects--of our seeing so little of insect life generally
except during the summer heats in a few favourable localities--and
partly an effect of our indoor life, that we think and care so little
about them. The important part they play, if it is taught us, fades
out of knowledge: we grow in time to regard them as one of the
superfluities in which nature abounds despite the ancient saying to
the contrary. Or worse, as nothing but pests. What good are they to
us indeed! Very little. The silk-worm and the honey-bee have been
in a measure domesticated, and rank with, though a long way after,
our cattle, our animal pets and poultry. But wild insects! There is
the turnip-fly, and the Hessian-fly, and botfly, and all sorts of
worrying, and {112} blood-sucking, and disease-carrying flies, in and
out of houses; and gnats and midges, and fleas in seaside lodgings,
and wasps, and beetles, such as the cockchafer and blackbeetle--are
not all these pests? This is the indoor mind--its view of external
nature--which makes the society of indoor people unutterably irksome
to me, unless (it will be understood) when I meet them in a house, in
a town, where they exist in some sort of harmony, however imperfect,
with their artificial environment.
[Sidenote: Insects in visible nature]
I am not concerned now with the question of the place which insects
occupy in the scale of being and their part in the natural economy,
but solely with their effect on the nature-lover with or without the
"curious mind"--in fact, with insects as part of this visible and
audible world. Without them, this innumerable company that, each
"deep in his day's employ," are ever moving swiftly or slowly about
me, their multitudinous small voices united into one deep continuous
Æolian sound, it would indeed seem as if some mysterious malady or
sadness had come upon nature. Rather would I feel them alive,
teasing, stinging, and biting me; rather would I walk in all green
and flowery places with a cloud of gnats and midges ever about me.
Nor do I wish to write now about insect life generally: my sole aim
in this chapter is to bring before the reader some of the most
notable species seen in this place--those which excel in size or
beauty, or which for some other reason are specially attractive. For
not only is this corner of Hampshire most abounding in insect life,
{113} but here, with a few exceptions, the kings and nobles of the
tribe may be met with.
Merely to see these nobler insects as one may see them here, as
objects in the scene, and shining gems in nature's embroidery, is a
delight. And here it may be remarked that the company of the
entomologist is often quite as distasteful to me out of doors as that
of the indoor-minded person who knows nothing about insects except
that they are a "nuisance." Entomologist generally means collector,
and his--the entomologist's--admiration has suffered inevitable
decay, or rather has been starved by the growth of a more vigorous
plant--the desire to possess, and pleasure in the possession of, dead
insect cases.
[Sidenote: The parson lepidopterist]
One summer afternoon I was visiting at the parsonage in a small New
Forest village in this low district when my host introduced me to a
friend of his the vicar of a neighbouring parish, remarking when he
did so that I would be delighted to know him as he was a great
naturalist. The gentleman smiled, and said he was not a "great
naturalist," but only a "lepidopterist." Now it happened that just
then I had a lovely picture in my mind, the vivid image of a
humming-bird hawk-moth seen suspended on his misty wings among the
tall flowers in the brilliant August sunshine. I had looked on it
but a little while ago, and thought it one of the most beautiful
things in nature; naturally on meeting a lepidopterist I told him
what I had seen, and something of the feeling the sight had inspired
in me. He {114} smiled again, and remarked that the season had not
proved a very good one for the _Macroglossa stellatarum_. He had, so
far, seen only three specimens; the first two he had easily secured,
as he fortunately had his butterfly net when he saw them. But the
third!--he hadn't his net then; he was visiting one of his old women,
and was sitting in her garden behind the cottage talking to her when
the moth suddenly made its appearance, and began sucking at the
flowers within a yard of his chair. He knew that in a few moments it
would be gone for ever, but fortunately from long practice, and a
natural quickness and dexterity, he could take any insect that came
within reach of his hand, however wild and swift it might be.
"So!"--the parson lepidopterist explained, suddenly dashing out his
arm, then slowly opening his closed hand to exhibit the imaginary
insect he had captured. Well, he got the moth after all! And thus
owing to his quickness and dexterity all three specimens had been
secured.
I, being no entomologist but only a simple person whose interest and
pleasure in insect life the entomologist would regard as quite
purposeless--I felt like a little boy who had been sharply rebuked or
boxed on the ear. This same lepidopterist may be dead now, although
a couple of summers ago he looked remarkably well and in the prime of
life; but I see that someone else is now parson of his parish. I
have not taken the pains to inquire; but, dead or alive, I cannot
imagine him, in that beautiful country of the Future which he perhaps
spoke about to the {115} old cottage woman--I cannot imagine him in
white raiment, with a golden harp in his hand; for if here, in this
country, he could see nothing in a hummingbird hawk-moth among the
flowers in the sunshine but an object to be collected, what in the
name of wonder will he have to harp about!
The humming-bird hawk, owing to its diurnal habits, may be seen by
anyone at its best; but as to the other species that equal and
surpass it in lustre, their beauty, so far as man is concerned, is
all wasted on the evening gloom. They appear suddenly, are vaguely
seen for a few moments, then vanish; and instead of the clear-cut,
beautiful form, the rich and delicate colouring and airy, graceful
motions, there is only a dim image of a moving grey or brown
something which has passed before us. And some of the very best are
not to be seen even as vague shapes and as shadows. What an
experience it would be to look on the death's-head moth in a state of
nature, feeding among the flowers in the early evening, with some
sunlight to show the delicate grey-blue markings and mottlings of the
upper- and the indescribable yellow of the under-wings--is there in
all nature so soft and lovely a hue? Even to see it alive in the
only way we are able to do, confined in a box in which we have
hatched it from a chrysalis dug up in the potato patch and bought for
sixpence from a workman, to look on it so and then at its
portrait--for artists and illustrators have been trying to do it
these hundred years--is almost enough to make one hate their art.
{116}
My ambition has been to find this moth free, in order to discover, if
possible, whether or no it ever makes its mysterious squeaking sound
when at liberty. But I have not yet found it, and lepidopterists I
have talked to on this subject, some of whom have spent their lives
in districts where the insect is not uncommon, have assured me that
they have never seen, and never expect to see, a death's-head which
has not been artificially reared. Yet moths there must be, else
there would be no caterpillars and no chrysalids.
[Sidenote: Moths and butterflies]
One evening, in a potato-patch, I witnessed a large hawk-moth meet
his end in a way that greatly surprised me. I was watching and
listening to the shrilling of a great green grasshopper, or leaf
cricket, that delightful insect about which I shall have to write at
some length in another chapter, when the big moth suddenly appeared
at a distance of a dozen yards from where I stood. It was about the
size of a privet-moth, and had not been many moments suspended before
a spray of flowers, when a meadow-pipit, which had come there
probably to roost, dashed at and struck it down, and then on the
ground began a curious struggle. The great moth, looking more than
half as big as the aggressor, beat the pipit with his strong wings in
his efforts to free himself; but the other had clutched the soft,
stout body in its claws, and standing over it with wings half open
and head feathers raised, struck repeatedly at it with the greatest
fury until it was killed. Then, in the same savage hawk-like manner,
the dead thing was torn {117} up, the pipit swallowing pieces so much
too large for it that it had the greatest trouble to get them down.
The gentle, timid, little bird had for the moment put on the "rage of
the vulture."
In the southern half of the New Forest, that part of the country
where insects of all kinds most abound, the moths and butterflies are
relatively less important as a feature of the place, and as things of
beauty, than some other kinds. The purple emperor is very rarely
seen, but the silver-washed fritillary, a handsome, conspicuous
insect, is quite common, and when several of these butterflies are
seen at one spot playing about the bracken in some open sunlit space
in the oak woods, opening their orange-red spotty wings on the broad,
vivid green fronds, they produce a strikingly beautiful effect. It
is like a mosaic of minute green tesseræ adorned with red and black
butterfly shapes, irregularly placed.
But here the most charming butterfly to my mind is the white admiral,
when they are seen in numbers, as in the abundant season of 1901,
when the oak woods were full of them. Here is a species which, seen
in a collection, is of no more value æsthetically than a dead leaf or
a frayed feather dropped in the poultry-yard, or an old postage stamp
in an album, without a touch of brilliance on its dull blackish-brown
and white wings; yet which alive pleases the eye more than the
splendid and larger kinds solely because of its peculiarly graceful
flight. It never flutters, and as it sweeps airily hither and
thither, now high as the tree-tops, now close to the earth in {118}
the sunny glades and open brambly places in the oak woods, with an
occasional stroke of the swift-gliding wings, it gives you the idea
of a smaller, swifter, more graceful swallow, and sometimes of a
curiously-marked, pretty dragon-fly.
[Sidenote: Dragon-flies]
When we think of the bright colours of insects, the dragon-flies
usually come next to butterflies in the mind, and here in the warmer,
well-watered parts of the Forest they are in great force. The noble
_Anax imperator_ is not uncommon; but though so great, exceeding all
other species in size, and so splendid in his "clear plates of
sapphire mail," with great blue eyes, he is surpassed in beauty by a
much smaller kind, the _Libellula virgo alts erectis coloratis_ of
Linnæus, now called _Calopteryx virgo_. And just as the great
_imperator_ is exceeded in beauty by the small _virgo_, so is he
surpassed in that other chief characteristic of all dragon-flies to
the unscientific or natural mind, their uncanniness, by another quite
common species, a very little less than the _imperator_ in size--the
_Cordulegaster annulatus_.
These names are a burden, and a few words must be said on this point
lest the reader should imagine that he has cause to be offended with
me personally.
Is it not amazing that these familiar, large, showy, and
striking-looking insects have no common specific names with us? The
one exception known to me is the small beautiful _virgo_ just spoken
of, and this is called in books "Demoiselle" and "King George," but
whether these names are used by the people anywhere or not, I am
unable to say. On this point {119} I consulted an old water-keeper
of my acquaintance on the Test. He has been keeper for a period of
forty-six years, and he is supposed to be very intelligent, and to
know everything about the creatures that exist in those waters and
water-meadows. He assured me that he never heard the names of
Demoiselle and King George. "We calls them dragons and
horse-stingers," he said. "And they do sting, and no mistake, both
horse and man." He then explained that the dragon-fly dashes at its
victim, inflicts its sting, and is gone so swiftly that it is never
detected in the act; but the pain is there, and sometimes blood is
drawn.
Nor had the ancient water-keeper ever heard another vernacular name
given by Moses Harris for this same species--kingfisher, to wit.
Moses Harris, one of our earliest entomologists, wrote during the
last half of the eighteenth century, but the date of his birth and
the facts of his life are not known. He began to publish in 1766,
his first work being on butterflies and moths. One wonders if the
unforgotten and at-no-time-neglected Gilbert White never heard of his
contemporary Moses, and never saw his beautiful illustrations of
British insects, many of which still keep their bright colours and
delicate shadings undimmed by time in his old folios. In one of his
later works, _An Exposition of English Insects_, dated 1782, he
describes and figures some of our dragon-flies. It was the custom of
this author to give the vernacular as well as the scientific names to
his species, and in describing the virgo he says: "These ... on
account of the brilliancy {120} and richness of the colouring are
called kingfishers." But he had no common name for the others, which
seemed to trouble him, and at last in desperation after describing a
certain species, he says that it is "vulgarly called the dragon-fly"!
[Sidenote: Vernacular names]
I pity old Moses and I pity myself. Why should we have so many
suitable and often pretty names for moths and butterflies, mostly
small obscure creatures, and none for the well-marked,
singular-looking, splendid dragon-flies? The reason is not far to
seek. When men in search of a hobby to occupy their leisure time
look to find it in some natural history subject, as others find it in
postage stamps and a thousand other things, they are, like children,
first attracted by those brilliant hues which they see in
butterflies. Moreover, these insects when preserved keep their
colours, unlike dragon-flies and some others, and look prettiest when
arranged with wings spread out in glass cases. Moths being of the
same order are included, and so we get the collector of moths and
butterflies and the lepidopterist. So exceedingly popular is this
pursuit, and the little creatures collected so much talked and
written about, that it has been found convenient to invent English
names for them, and thus we have, in moths, wood-tiger, leopard,
goat, gipsy, ermine, wood-swift, vapourer, drinker, tippet, lappet,
puss, Kentish glory, emperor, frosted green, satin carpet, coronet,
marbled beauty, rustic wing and rustic shoulder-knot, golden ear,
purple cloud, and numberless others. In fact, one could not capture
the obscurest {121} little miller that flutters round a reading-lamp
which the lepidopterist would not be able to find a pretty name for.
The dragon-flies, being no man's hobby, are known only by the old
generic English names of dragons, horse-stingers, adder-stingers, and
devil's darning-needles. Adder-stinger is one of the commonest names
in the New Forest, but it is often simply "adder." One day while
walking with a friend on a common near Headley, we asked some boys if
there were any adders there. "Oh yes," answered a little fellow,
"you will see them by the stream flying up and down over the water."
The name does not mean that dragon-flies sting adders, but that, like
adders, they are venomous creatures. This very common and
wide-spread notion of the insect's evil disposition and injuriousness
is due to its shape and appearance--the great fixed eyes, bright and
sinister, and the long, snake-like, plated or scaly body which, when
the insect is seized, curls round in such a threatening manner. The
colouring, too, may have contributed towards the evil reputation; at
all events, one of our largest species had a remarkably serpent-like
aspect due to its colour scheme--shining jet-black, banded and
slashed with wasp-yellow. This is the magnificent _Cordulegaster
annulatus_, little inferior to the _Anax imperator_ in size, and a
very common species in the southern part of the New Forest in July.
But how astonishing and almost incredible that this singular-looking,
splendid, most dragon-like of the dragon-flies should have no English
name!
{122}
[Sidenote: Calopteryx virgo]
Something remains to be said of the one dragon-fly which has got a
name, or names, although these do not appear to be known to the
country people. Mr. W. T. Lucas, in his useful monograph on the
British dragon-flies, writes enthusiastically of this species,
_Calopteryx virgo_, that it is "the most resplendent of our
dragon-flies, if not of all British insects." It is too great
praise; nevertheless the _virgo_ is very beautiful and curious, the
entire insect, wings included, being of an intense deep metallic
blue, which glistens as if the insect had been newly dipped in its
colour-bath. Unlike other dragon-flies, it flutters on the wing like
a butterfly with a weak, uncertain flight, and, again like a
butterfly, holds its blue wings erect when at rest. It is one of the
commonest as well as the most conspicuous dragon-flies on the Boldre,
the Dark Water, and other slow and marshy streams in the southern
part of the Forest.
In South America I was accustomed to see dragon-flies in rushing
hordes and clouds, and in masses clinging like swarming bees to the
trees; here we see them as single insects, but I once witnessed a
beautiful effect produced by a large number of the common
turquoise-blue dragon-fly gathered at one spot, and this was in
Hampshire. I was walking, and after passing a night at a hamlet
called Buckhorn Oak, in Alice Holt Forest, I went next morning, on a
Sunday, to the nearest church at the small village of Rutledge. It
was a very bright windy morning in June, and the oak woods had been
stripped of their young foliage by myriads of caterpillars, so that
{123} the sunlight fell untempered through the seemingly dead trees
on the bracken that covered the ground below. Now, at one spot over
an area of about half an acre, the bracken was covered with the
common turquoise-blue dragon-fly, clinging to the fronds, their heads
to the wind, their long bodies all pointing the same way. They were
nowhere close together, but very evenly distributed, about three to
six inches apart, and the sight of the numberless slips of gem-like
blue sprinkled over the billowy, vivid green fern was a rare and
exceedingly lovely one.
After writing of the lovely haunters of the twilight, and that
noblest one of all--
The great goblin moth who bears
Between his wings the ruined eyes of death,
and the angel butterfly, and the uncanny dragon-flies--the flying
serpents in their splendour--it may seem a great descent to speak of
such a thing as a glow-worm, that poor grub-like, wingless,
dull-coloured crawler on the ground, as little attractive to the eye
as the centipede, or earwig, or the wood-louse which it resembles.
Nor is the glow-worm a southern species, since it is no more abundant
in the warmest district of Hampshire than in many other parts of the
country. Nevertheless, when treating of the Insect Notables of these
parts, this species which we call a "worm" cannot be omitted, since
it produces a loveliness surpassing that of all other kinds.
Here it may be remarked that all the most {124} beautiful living
things, from insect to man, like all the highest productions of human
genius, produce in us a sense of the supernatural. If any reader
should say in his heart that I am wrong, that it is not so, that he
experiences no such feeling, I can but remind him that not all men
possess all human senses and faculties. Some of us--many of us--lack
this or that sense which others have. I have even met a man who was
without the sense of humour. In the case of our "worm," unbeautiful
in itself, yet the begetter of so great a beauty, the sense of
something outside of nature which shines on us through nature, even
as the sun shines in the stained glass of a church window, is more
distinctly felt than in the case of any other insect in our country,
because of the rarity of such a phenomenon. It is, with us, unique;
but many of us know the winged luminous insects of other lands. Both
are beautiful, both mysterious--the winged and the wingless; but one
light differs from another in glory even as the stars. The fire-fly
is more splendid, more surprising, in its flashes. It flashes and is
dark, and we watch, staring at the black darkness, for the succeeding
flash. It is like watching for rockets to explode in the dark sky:
there is an element of impatience which interferes with the pleasure.
To admire and have a perfect satisfaction, the insects must be in
numbers, in multitudes, sparkling everywhere in the darkness, so that
no regard is paid to any individual light, but they are seen as we
see snowflakes.
[Sidenote: Glow-worm and firefly]
I fancy that Dante, in describing the appearance of {125} glorified
souls in heaven, unless he took it all from Ezekiel, had the fire-fly
in his mind:
From the bosom
Of that effulgence quivers a sharp flash,
Sudden and frequent in the guise of lightning.
Of all who have attempted to describe and compare the two
insects--fire-fly and glow-worm--Thomas Lovell Beddoes is the best.
Beddoes himself, in those sudden brilliant letters to his friend
Kelsall, of Fareham, in this county, was a sort of human fire-fly.
In a letter to Procter, from Milan, 1824, he wrote:
And what else have I seen? A beautiful and far-famed insect--do
not mistake, I mean neither the Emperor, nor the King of
Sardinia, but a much finer specimen--the fire-fly. Their bright
light is evanescent, and alternates with the darkness, as if the
swift whirling of the earth struck fire out of the black
atmosphere; as if the winds were being set upon that planetary
grindstone, and gave out such momentary sparks from their edges.
Their silence is more striking than their flashes, for sudden
phenomena are almost invariably attended with some noise, but
these little jewels dart along the dark as softly as butterflies.
For their light, it is not nearly so beautiful and poetical as
our still companion of the dew, the glow-worm, with his drop of
moonlight.
I agree with Beddoes, but his pretty description of our insect is not
quite accurate, as I saw this evening, when, after copious rain, the
sky cleared and a full moon shone on a wet, dusky-green earth. The
light of the suspended glow-worm was of an exquisite golden green,
and, side by side with it, the moonlight on the wet surface of a
polished leaf was shining silver-white.
The light varies greatly in power, according, I suppose, to the
degree of excitement of the insect {126} and to the atmospheric
conditions. Occasionally you will discover a light at a distance
shining with a strange glory, a light which might be mistaken for a
will-o'-the-wisp, and on a close view you will probably find that a
male is on the scene, and the female, aware of his presence though he
may be at some distance from her, invisible in the darkness, has been
wrought up to the highest state of excitement. You will find her
clinging to a stem or leaf, her luminous part raised, and her whole
body swaying in a measured way from side to side. If the insect
happens to be a foot or two above the ground, in a tangle of bramble
and bracken, with other plants with slender stems and deep-cut
leaves, the appearance is singularly beautiful. The light looks as
if enclosed within an invisible globe, which may be as much as
fifteen inches in diameter, and within its circle the minutest
details of the scene are clear to the vision, even to the finest
veining of the leaves, the leaves shining a pure translucent green,
while outside the mystic globe of light all is in deep shadow and in
blackness.
[Sidenote: The glow-worm's light]
With regard to the attitude of the glow-worm when displaying its
light, we see how ignorant of the living creature the illustrators of
natural history books have been. In scores of works on our shelves,
dating from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the glow-worm is
depicted giving out its light while crawling on the ground, and in
many illustrations the male is introduced, and is shown flying down
to its mate. They drew their figures not from life, but from
specimens in a cabinet, only leaving out the {127} pins. But the
glow-worm is not perhaps a very well-known creature. A lady in
Hampshire recently asked me if it was a species of mole that came out
of its run to exhibit its light in the darkness. The insect
invariably climbs up, and suspends itself by clinging to, a stem or
blade or leaf, and the hinder part of the body curls up until its
under surface, the luminous part, is uppermost, thus making the light
visible from the air above. In thick hedges I often find the light
four or even five feet above the ground. Occasionally a glow-worm
will shine from a flat surface, usually a big leaf on to which it has
crawled when climbing. Resting horizontally on the leaf, it curls
its abdomen up and over its body after the manner of the earwig,
until the light is in the right position.
When we consider these facts--the way in which the body is curved and
twisted about in order (as it seems) to exhibit the light to an
insect flying through the air above, and the increase in the light
when the sexual excitement is at its greatest--the conclusion seems
unavoidable that the light has an important use, namely, to attract
the male. Unavoidable, I say, and yet I am not wholly convinced.
The fire-flies of diurnal habits may be seen flying about, feeding
and pairing, by day; yet when evening comes they fly abroad again,
exhibiting their light. What the function of the light is, or of
what advantage it is to the insect, we do not know. Again, it has
seemed to me that the male of the glow-worm, even when attracted to
the female, fears the {128} light. Thus, when the excitement of the
shining glow-worm has caused me to look for the male, I have found
him, not indeed in but outside of the circle of light, keeping close
to its borders, moving about on feet and wings in the dark herbage
and on the ground. I know very well that not a few observations made
by one person, but many--hundreds if possible--by different
observers, are needed before we can say positively that the male
glow-worm fears or is repelled by the light. But some of my
observations make me think that the male of the glow-worm, like the
males of many other species in different orders that fly by night, is
drawn to the female by the scent, and that the light is a hindrance
instead of a help, although in the end he is drawn into it. We
always find it exceedingly hard to believe that anything in nature is
without a use; but we need not go very far--not farther than our own
bodies, to say nothing of our minds--before we are compelled to
believe that it is so. We may yet find that the beautiful light of
our still companion of the dew is of no more use to it than the
precious jewel in the toad's head is to the toad.
[Sidenote: Hornets]
The hornet, one of my first favourites, has, to our minds, nothing
mysterious like our glow-worm, and nothing serpentine or supernatural
about him, but he is a nobler, more powerful and splendid creature
than any dragon-fly. I care not to look at a vulgar wasp nor at any
diurnal insect, however fine, when he is by, or his loud, formidable
buzzing hum is heard. As he comes out of the oak-tree shade and goes
{129} swinging by in his shining golden-red armature, he is like a
being from some other hotter, richer land, thousands of miles away
from our cold, white cliffs and grey seas. Speaking of that, our
hornet, which is at the head of the family and genus of true wasps in
Britain and Europe, is not only large and splendid for a northern
insect, since he is not surpassed in lustre by any of his
representatives in other parts of the globe.
I admire and greatly respect him, this last feeling dating back to my
experience of wasps during my early life in South America. When a
boy I was one summer day in the dining-room at home by myself, when
in at the open door flew a grand wasp of a kind I had never seen
before, in size and form like the hornet, but its colour was a
uniform cornelian red without any yellow. Round the room it flew
with a great noise, then dashed against a window-pane, and I, greatly
excited and fearing it would be quickly gone if not quickly caught,
flew to the window, and dashing out my hand, like the wonderfully
clever parson-collector, I grasped it firmly by the back with finger
and thumb. Now, I had been accustomed to seize wasps and bees of
many kinds in this way without getting stung, but this stranger was
not like other wasps, and quickly succeeded in curling his abdomen
round, and planting his long sting in the sensitive tip of my
forefinger. Never in all my experience of stings had I suffered such
pain! I dropped my wasp like the hottest of coals, and saw him fling
himself triumphantly out of the room, and never {130} again beheld
one of his kind. Even now when I stand and watch English hornets at
work on their nests, coming and going, paying no attention to me, a
memory of that hornet of a distant land returns to my mind; and it is
like a twinge, and I venture on no liberties with _Vespa crabro_.
The hornet is certainly not an abundant insect, nor very generally
distributed. One may spend years in some parts of the country and
never see it. I was lately asked by friends in Kent, who have their
lonely house in a wooded and perhaps the wildest spot in the county,
if the hornet still existed in England, or really was an English
insect, as they had not seen one in several years. Now in the woods
I frequent in the Forest I see them every day, and the abundance of
the hornet is indeed for me one of the attractions of the place. His
nests are rarely found in old trees, but are common about
habitations, in wood-piles, and old, little-used outhouses. I have
heard farmers say in this place that they would not hurt a hornet,
but regard it as a blessing. So it is, and so is every insect that
helps to keep down the everlasting plague of cattle-worrying and
crop-destroying flies and grubs and caterpillars.
But I am speaking of the hornet merely as an Insect Notable, a spot
of brilliant colour in the scene, one of the shining beings that
inhabit these green mansions. He is magnificent, and it is perhaps
partly due to his vivid and lustrous red and gold colour, his noisy
flight, and fierce hostile attitudes, and partly to the knowledge of
his angry spirit and venomous {131} sting, which makes him look twice
as big as he really is.
One of the most impressive sights in insect life is, strange to say,
in the autumn, when cold rains and winds and early frosts have
already brought to an end all that seemed best and brightest in that
fairy world.
[Sidenote: Insects on ivy blossoms]
This is where an ancient or large ivy grows in some well-sheltered
spot on a wall or church, or on large old trees in a wood, and
flowers profusely, and when on a warm bright day in late September or
in October all the insects which were not wholly dead revive for a
season, and are drawn by the ivy's sweetness from all around to that
one spot. There are the late butterflies, and wasps and bees of all
kinds, and flies of all sizes and colours--green and steel-blue, and
grey and black and mottled, in thousands and tens of thousands. They
are massed on the clustered blossoms, struggling for a place; the air
all about the ivy is swarming with them, flying hither and thither,
and the humming sound they produce may be heard fifty yards away like
a high wind. One cannot help a feeling of melancholy at this
animated scene; but they are anything but melancholy. Their life has
been a short and a merry one, and now that it is about to end for
ever they will end it merrily, in feasting and revelry.
And never does the hornet look greater, the king and tyrant of its
kind, than on these occasions. It swings down among them with a
sound that may be heard loud and distinct above the universal hum,
and settles on the flowers, but capriciously, staying {132} but a
moment or two in one place, then moving to another, the meaner
insects all expeditiously making room for it. And after tasting a
few flowers here and there it takes its departure. These large-sized
October hornets are all females, wanderers from ruined homes, in
search of sheltered places where, foodless and companionless, and in
a semi-torpid condition, each may live through the four dreary months
to come. In March the winter of their discontent will be over, and
they will come forth with the primrose and sweet violet to be
founders and mothers of new colonies--the brave and splendid hornets
of another year; builders, fighters, and foragers in the green
oak-woods; a strenuous, hungry and thirsty people, honey-drinkers,
and devourers of the flesh of naked white grubs, and caterpillars,
black and brown and green and gold, and barred and quaintly-coloured
swift aerial flies.
{133}