When a radical change of habits occurs, as in the sapsucker, deviating so
sharply from the ancient principles of its family, many other forms of
life about it are influenced, indirectly, but in a most interesting way.
In its tippling operations it wastes quantities of sap which exudes from
the numerous holes and trickles down the bark of the wounded tree. This
proves a veritable feast for the forlorn remnant of wasps and
butterflies,--the year's end stragglers whose flower calyces have fallen
and given place to swelling seeds.
Swiftly up wind they come on the scent, eager as hounds on the trail, and
they drink and drink of the sweets until they become almost incapable of
flying. But, after all, the new lease of life is a vain semblance of
better things. Their eggs have long since been laid and their mission in
life ended, and at the best their existence is but a matter of days.
It is a sad thing this, and sometimes our heart hardens against Nature for
the seeming cruelty of it all. Forever and always, year after year,
century upon century, the same tale unfolds itself,--the sacrifice of the
individual for the good of the race. A hundred drones are tended and
reared, all but one to die in vain; a thousand seeds are sown to rot or to
sprout and wither; a million little codfish hatch and begin life
hopefully, perhaps all to succumb save one; a million million shrimp and
pteropods paddle themselves here and there in the ocean, and every one is
devoured by fish or swept into the whalebone tangle from which none ever
return. And if a lucky one which survives does so because it has some
little advantage over its fellows,--some added quality which gives just
the opportunity to escape at the critical moment,--then the race will
advance to the extent of that trifle and so carry out the precept of
evolution. But even though we may owe every character of body and mind to
the fulfilment of some such inexorable law in the past, yet the witnessing
of the operation brings ever a feeling of cruelty, of injustice
somewhere.
How pitiful the weak flight of the last yellow butterfly of the year, as
with tattered and battered wings it vainly seeks for a final sip of
sweets! The fallen petals and the hard seeds are black and odourless, the
drops of sap are hardened. Little by little the wings weaken, the tiny
feet clutch convulsively at a dried weed stalk, and the four golden wings
drift quietly down among the yellow leaves, soon to merge into the dark
mould beneath. As the butterfly dies, a stiffened Katydid scratches a last
requiem on his wing covers--"_katy-didn't--katy-did--kate--y_"--and the
succeeding moment of silence is broken by the sharp rattle of a
woodpecker. We shake off every dream of the summer and brace ourselves to
meet and enjoy the keen, invigorating pleasures of winter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------