SOME QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE
That nothing walks with aimless feet.
—_Tennyson._
In a corner of the garden, where the lilacs grew tall and broad, Ruth
was waiting for something to happen. She had a feeling, as she told
Belinda, that the most interesting things were coming, for the wind had
been kissing her cheeks and ruffling her hair, just as though it was
saying to her, “Watch now. Watch closely and listen.” Then, too, the
garden seemed to be alive. Bees droning over the flowers; wasps
collecting their tiny balls of wood pulp or marketing for their
families; ants running here, there, and everywhere; not to mention many
other winged creatures, some of whom were made after a fashion so queer
that Ruth, forgetting how rude it is to make personal remarks,
deliberately asked of one:
“If you please, what is that long piece which seems to be growing from
the tip of your body? It looks like Mary’s stove hook when she sticks it
in the lid.”
“That,” was the rather short answer, “is my abdomen, and it isn’t
growing from the tip of my body, but from the _top_ of my thorax. It
seems to me you have never seen an ensign fly before.”
“No, I never did. Please, what does ensign mean?”
“The dictionary will tell you that. All I know is some man got an idea
that we carried our abdomens aloft like a flag or ensign, and so named
us ensign fly. We are not flies, to begin with, but we have to keep any
idiotic name they choose to tack on us. Now take Mrs. Horntail, who
wants——”
“Thank you, I can speak for myself,” interrupted the horntail, sharply.
She was quite handsome, with her black abdomen banded with yellow, her
red and black head, yellow legs and horn, and dusky wings.
“I like my name. It means something, for I have a horn on my tail, and,
what’s more, I use it. You should see me bore into solid green wood.
None of your dead wood for me. I am not content with one hole either. I
bore a great many, and in each I drop an egg, and when my babies hatch
they get fat on the sap wood of the tree.”
“There seem to be such a lot of things to eat trees,” said Ruth.
“Perhaps there are, but I am interested in horntail babies only. They do
their share of eating too, and when they grow sleepy they make cocoons
of chips and silk from their own bodies, and go to sleep. After they
wake they are changed into winged creatures, who naturally do not care
to live in the tree any more. So they gnaw their way through the bark to
the outside world and——”
“Not if the woodpeckers and I can help it,” interrupted an ichneumon
fly, keeping her antennæ in constant motion. She seemed to have long
streamers floating from the back of her, and, altogether, Ruth thought
her even queerer looking than the ensign fly.
“Those streamers are my ovipositor,” she explained to Ruth. “The thing I
lay eggs with, you understand. When I shut them together they form a
sort of auger, with which I bore into a tree, way, way in, where the fat
horntail babies are chewing the sap wood, and so ruining the tree. Into
their soft bodies I lay my eggs and when my children hatch they eat, not
the tree, but the horntail baby. It is a wonderfully good riddance, and
so the farmer and fruit grower consider us their friends and call us
‘trackers,’ because we find the hiding places of so many pests that harm
the plants.”
“You can’t get my babies,” said Mrs. Saw Fly. “I haven’t a horn, but I
have a saw, and, though it will not bore into wood, it saws fine gashes
in green leaves. Of course I drop an egg in each gash, and soon there’s
a swelling all around it, and when my children hatch they rock in gall
nut cradles, and the sap which gathers there is their food.”
“Talk about gall cradles,” said a gall fly, “my sisters and I are the
fairies who make them to perfection. Each of us has a different plant or
tree which she prefers, and each follows her own fashion in making
galls, and we puzzle even the wise men. Have you ever seen the brown
galls that grow on oaks?”
“Why, of course,” answered Ruth, glad the question was such an easy one.
“Well that’s something, but I doubt if you have noticed the rosy
coloured sponge that sometimes grows around the stem, or the mimic
branch of currants drooping from the spot where the tree intended an
acorn to be, or the tiny red apple-like ball on the leaf.”
Ruth shook her head. “They must be very pretty,” she said.
“Pretty? I should say so. They are all different kinds of galls too, and
we gall flies make them. Sometimes we sting the leaf, sometimes the
twig, and sometimes the stem, and always just the kind of cradle we
intended grows from it, and the egg we laid there hatched into a baby
grub, ready to eat the sap.”
“Then you know about the one on the willow tree,” put in Ruth. “The one
the housefly told about. It grows like a pine cone, and is made by some
one with a dreadfully long name.”
“That is something entirely different,” answered the gall fly. “We do
not pretend to make all the galls, you understand. Some are made by
insects belonging to quite another order. The willow tree cone is one.
You may always know ours from the fact that we make no door for the
babies to come out, as other insects do. Our babies make their own door
when they are ready to leave their cradle. And now to show how much is
in some names, I will tell you that those other gall insects are called
gall gnats and belong to the order of flies, while we are called gall
_flies_, and belong to the order Hymenoptera.”
“Oh!” cried Ruth, clapping her hands. “Now I know the kind of tera you
belong to, Hy-men-op-tera,” she repeated slowly. “Please tell me just
what it means.”
“No, I won’t,” was the ungracious answer. “I hate explanations.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Mrs. Horntail. “I know all about it.” And as Ruth
turned to her with grateful eyes she began:
“Hymenoptera means membrane wing, and that’s the kind we have, though
some of our order have no wings at all. The others have four wings, the
front pair being larger, with a fold along the hind edge, that catches
on hooks on the front edge of the hind wings; so we really seem to have
but one pair. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” nodded Ruth.
“Very well. We are divided into two sub-orders: stingers and borers. Our
larvæ are called maggots. They are not like us, being white grubs, with
round horny heads, pointed tails, six legs——”
“Here, here!” said the ichneumon fly, “that does well enough for your
children, but you know perfectly well that the babies of the rest of us
have no legs.”
“Yes, I know. Poor things! Legless children! How sad! Mrs. Saw Fly and I
are the only exceptions.”
“And your children use their legs to no good purpose either,” said the
ichneumon fly.
“My children need no legs. They never move from the spot where they are
hatched until after they transform. Why should they? Their dinner is
right there.”
“The same with mine,” added a little bright-coloured brachnoid. “I
choose a nice fat caterpillar, or something like that, to lay my eggs
in, and he always lasts until my babies are ready to spin their cocoons,
which they do on his shell, or dried skin, or whatever you choose to
call it. I know he himself is quite gone. It is a pretty sight to see
them.”
The brachnoid herself was a pretty little thing and as she looked not
unlike the ichneumon fly, only smaller, Ruth asked Mrs. Horntail if she
were not a young ichneumon fly.
“Young ichneumon?” repeated Mrs. Horntail. “Whoever heard of such a
thing? A young ichneumon is as large as an old one. None of us insects
grow after we leave our cocoons. When we are what you mean by
young—babies, in other words—we are different. I thought you had learned
that before now. Haven’t you had larvæ and pupæ explained to you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ruth, “but I had forgotten. Of course you are different
when you are first hatched, and then you get wings, while you sleep, but
I thought maybe you grew even after you had wings.”
“Some of the grasshopper tribe do that, and spiders are hatched little
spiders and grow bigger as they grow older, but we do no such thing.
Besides, as you heard a while ago, an ichneumon baby is legless,
absolutely legless, and homely. Well, I think the homeliest thing that
lives, but then what can you expect with such a mother?”
“I don’t think she is so awfully homely,” said Ruth. “She is
odd-looking, and—and——”
“Odd-looking?” repeated Mrs. Horntail. “You should see her drilling a
hole and laying her eggs. If she doesn’t cut a figure, I don’t know one.
With her abdomen all in a hump, her wings sticking straight up, and her
antennæ standing out in front, not to mention the ridiculous loop she
makes with the ovipositor, she certainly is a sight.”
“But I find the horntail babies,” said the ichneumon fly, quite
undisturbed, “and that is the important thing. I wonder if this meeting
is over?”
“I hope so,” answered Mrs. Horntail. “It is not a proper meeting at all.
If I had the regulating of it, I would make some of these creatures
behave. See that ant on the pebble over there. She is making faces,
actually making faces.”
“I am not making faces,” answered the ant. “I am getting ready to talk,
and I haven’t had a chance.”
She was little and brown, and scarcely an eighth of an inch long, but
she looked quite important as she prepared to address the audience.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]