leapt two thorn-stumps blindly, and, stumbling, plunged head-deep into
the ant-hill.
[Illustration]
The ant-hill covers two square yards of ground, and every inch of it is
peopled. Though soft, it is no place to fall on. Its citizens resent
intrusion--nay, more, resent it actively.
When Bunny Rabbit reached the grass he felt the pricking of a thousand
needles. The pain and smart of them half maddened him. He rolled upon
his back; he scraped his neck on stones; he writhed; he bit himself.
[Illustration]
The pain eased as his torturers dropped off him. Once more he tried to
run, but in ten yards his strength was gone. His fore-paws flopped and
stumbled, his hind paws dragged, his nose was bruised, his coat was hot
and steamy. So he flung down bewildered, scraped an imaginary bed (a
poor half-hearted scraping), slid out his feet, and lay full length,
eyes closed.
[Illustration: BERUS THE ADDER]
Nothing now seemed to matter much. The hornet moth came whirring past
his ears, he never heard it; the drone fly danced upon his nose, he
never felt it; the Man lay almost at his side, he never saw him. Poor
tired-out baby! Nature had ordered sleep and so he slept.
* * * * *
The Man woke slowly. Nature had been his comfort, too, though sleep had
not refreshed him. He rose half-dreaming, with a smile. "All right,
little girl," he said; then his face tightened. "It's the same place,"
he muttered, "just where we lost the locket. First bluebell, then
foxglove, then ragwort; blue, purple, and gold. It was the gold she
loved."
The woodland rang with voices, but Bunny Rabbit slept until man spoke.
Then he leapt up and found himself a prisoner.
"You sha'n't be hurt, Bunny," said the Man.
Bunny Rabbit ceased his wriggling, and lay quite limp, his eyes
upturned, his nose a-quiver.
"Why lying in the open?" said the Man "foolish, foolish Bunny. What's to
be done with you? Stoats and foxes and hawks, Bunny. You can't be left,
that's certain. You can't be taken to your Mother, for I don't know your
Mother. You can't be taken to your hole, for I don't know your hole.
Hungry, Bunny? You look as though you'd travelled. Try some grass."
Bunny Rabbit knew nothing of grass and kept his teeth tight-clenched.
"You must eat something," said the Man.
He loosed one hand to reach a groundsel-top, and Bunny Rabbit, squirming
clear, slipped deep into his pocket.
"Well, it's your own choice, Bunny. Now you come home with me."
It was dark and warm and soft inside the pocket. The Man took swinging
downhill strides, and, at each stride, the folds changed shape. Now they
were loose and twisty, and Bunny Rabbit stretched full length to fill
them. Now they were tightened to a ball, and Bunny Rabbit tightened as
the centre.
The Man paused as he reached the corn, and stepped two paces up again.
He stooped, and Bunny Rabbit was inverted. He rose, and Bunny Rabbit
found his feet. But now he was more cramped than ever. He lay deep in
the farthest corner. Over, and on all sides of him, was packed a
stifling mass of green.
Then Bunny Rabbit used his teeth, axe-fashion at first, but soon to
better purpose. The lesson that he should have long since learnt was now
enforced by circumstance.
He bit and tasted.
* * * * *
"Bunny Rabbit," said the Man, "your ears are abnormal."
Bunny Rabbit lay crouched upon the hearthrug, blinking. At first he had
found covert in the curtains, but these had been looped up. Then he had
squeezed behind the bookcase and been, with difficulty, extracted. Then
he had set himself to dig. The carpet had repaid him with some fluff.
The doormat and the wicker chair seemed promising, but he made little
headway, and so had lain down tired.
[Illustration: LAY FULL LENGTH, EYES CLOSED]
"Very abnormal ears, Bunny," the Man went on. "This smacks of the
domestic. Then why so frightened?"
But Bunny Rabbit was more tired than frightened.
"More food, Bunny?" A bunch of green had lain upon the floor but every
scrap had vanished.
"You've had enough for one day, Bunny. It's bedtime, up you come."
So Bunny Rabbit slept that night on blankets, he and the moonshine. The
Man tossed restlessly and Bunny Rabbit watched his moving lips. Twilight
crept in soft-footed, and Bunny Rabbit took three little jumps and
wormed inside the bed-clothes.
* * * * *
"Slept well, Bunny?" said the Man; "it's more than I have. I've made my
mind up, Bunny. I'm going. I can't bear the house. I can't bear the
rooms. They're empty, empty, empty."
The Man stepped slowly down the stairs and Bunny Rabbit stumbled after
him. He reached the hall and paused, then caught up Bunny Rabbit, and
once more ascended. He entered every upstairs room and gazed as though
to clinch them on his memory. He entered every downstairs room, and in
one room, the loneliest of all, he sat and cried his heart out.
* * * * *
"We're homeless, Bunny Rabbit," said the Man. "But you're the better
off, for your home's somewhere here."
They had got half-way up the slope. The Man stood tall among the
ragwort, and Bunny Rabbit, with wide, frightened eyes, clung to his
shoulder.
The Man stooped down, and Bunny Rabbit slid to earth.
"Now you must find your home or make one," said the Man, and Bunny
Rabbit straightway tried to make one. He plunged his forepaws in the
ground and scratched. The dust flew out behind and, in the midst, shot
something hard and glittering.
It was a small gold locket.
The Man bent down and picked it up. He opened it and with dimmed eyes he
kissed it.
"You've done me a good turn," he said--"of course it's pure
coincidence," and Bunny Rabbit watched him out of sight.
[Illustration: BUNNY RABBIT WATCHED HIM OUT OF SIGHT]
A BUTTERFLY PAINT-BOX
(MAY)
[Illustration]
I wonder how many of my young readers know why these dainty flying
creatures are called "Butterflies"?
We all know what butter is, and we know, too, that there are quite a
number of English words which begin with "butter." It is not a pretty
beginning, is it? But there it is. Let us think of a few--_butter_-fly,
_butter_-cup, _butter_-wort, _butter_-fingers, _butter_-scotch--why, one
can think of half a dozen straight away.
Now this shows us clearly that "butter" is a very old word, and that the
people of long ago (who were much less clever than we are, perhaps) must
have used it quite naturally when they wanted to describe anything which
was squashy, or pasty, or greasy, or slippery, or yellow.
Look at the picture at the top of the next page. I wish I could have
given it to you in its proper colours. It looks much nicer like that.
Look at it carefully. No other English butterfly has the same pretty
curves to its wings, and some of you, I dare say, will know what it is
by its shape. But I must tell those who do not know. It is a Brimstone
Butterfly, and its colour is bright, bright yellow with an orange spot
in the middle of each wing (you can only see one wing in the picture,
the other three are hidden behind it; one way to tell a butterfly from a
moth is to remember that butterflies' wings close standing up, but
nearly all moths' wings close down flat).
[Illustration: THE BRIMSTONE BUTTERFLY
After whom all "Butterflies" are probably called]
It is almost certain that this insect was the first insect to be called
"Butter"-fly because of its butter colour. When people began to see that
there were other pretty flying things of much the same shape, though of
quite different colours, they called them all Butterflies after this
first one.
[Illustration: THE RED ADMIRAL
A Butterfly of many beautiful colours]
So we speak, nowadays, without ever thinking of how funny it really is,
of blue butterflies and white butterflies and black butterflies and
purple butterflies, and red and yellow and green butterflies--all the
colours of the rainbow, in fact.
[Illustration: THE PURPLE EMPEROR
The most gorgeous Butterfly in England, though not by any
means the most beautiful]
We would hardly talk of black butter or purple butter, would we?
Some of you will perhaps wonder why the Brimstone Butterfly was the
first to be noticed when there are so many others which are just as
common.
I think I can tell you.
The Brimstone is almost always the first butterfly to be seen in the
spring. Most butterflies die towards the autumn, and leave eggs behind,
which hatch out in the following year, but the Brimstone, and a few
others, sleep through the cold winter months and come out in the first
warm days of spring and _then_ lay their eggs. The Brimstone comes out
first of all, often quite early in February, and so he is the first
butterfly that is likely to be noticed in the year.
[Illustration: THE CLIFDEN BLUE]
Perhaps his coming out at a time when cows began to give more milk, and
butter began to be more plentiful, had something to do with his being
called "butterfly," but I think that his colour had more to do with it.
[Illustration: THE SWALLOW-TAIL BUTTERFLY
Almost a paint-box in itself. It will give you blue, red,
black and yellow. It is only found in the Cambridgeshire
Fens]
What lovely colours butterflies are! Have you ever fancied a butterfly
paint-box? Let us think of a few common colours, and see how we could
fill it. Suppose we wanted a blue? Why we should have a whole family of
butterflies "The Blues" to choose from, and we should be just as well
off for blacks and browns. For red we could take the beautiful scarlet
ribbon of the Red Admiral. "Why is he called Admiral?" you ask. Well,
Admiral is the same as Admirable, and his old name was Red Admirable.
For purple we should have the Purple Emperor and the Purple
Hair-streak--there is no purple quite so glorious as the purple that
these have on their wings. For orange, the Orange-tip and the Clouded
Yellow. For yellow, the Brimstone and several others. For white, of
course, the Whites. Green might bother us a little, but there is one
English butterfly, the Green Hair-streak, whose wings are a beautiful
green underneath. As he is our only green butterfly I give you his
picture. He is the upper butterfly in the first picture and, as you see,
quite a little one.
[Illustration: THE BLACK PEPPER MOTH
Probably quite the blackest Moth we have. They vary very
much in colouring though]
We must not forget gold and silver. When I was young, I expected to find
gold and silver in a really nice paint-box, and I do not suppose young
people have changed much since then. Silver we should have no trouble
about. There is a big family of butterflies called the Fritillaries, who
have wonderful patches and ribbons of silver on their wings. I do not
think you will find gold, except perhaps a little gold powder, on any
English butterfly, but you will find it on several chrysalises. Indeed,
Chrysalis means "the little golden one," and the name was given to these
queer spiky things because gold patches were so often seen on them.
[Illustration: THE SILVER WASHED FRITILLARY
The silver is in broad bands on the under wings]
I have seen little pictures made with the scales of butterflies' wings,
with blue skies and green trees and everything. So you see a butterfly
paint-box is not altogether a make-believe, though it is not an easy
paint-box for young people to paint with.
TWO WONDERFUL WASPS
(JUNE)
I expect you all must know the Common Yellow Wasps--the kind that come
buzzing into the jam at tea-time; and I want to tell you this about
them--that I don't think they ever really get angry if there is jam
about and you leave them alone, though, when small people jump up and
scream, and edge away from the table, and make bad shots at them with
spoons, they get so frightened and bewildered, poor things, that they
may sting somebody, because they feel they really must do something
exciting.
[Illustration: This is one of Spinipes' burrows opened up.
There is an egg at the bottom on the left-hand side and a
caterpillar on the right-hand side. The egg is hanging by a
silk thread, but you can't see this]
Perhaps some of you do _not_ know that there are seven different kinds
of these Yellow Wasps to be met with in this country of ours, and I
should be surprised to hear that any of you know _much_ about the two
Black Wasps whose story I am going to tell you. I say "black," because
they _look_ black, though both of them have yellow girdles on their
bodies. I wish they had English names; for I am sure they both deserve
them; and English names are much easier to remember than Latin ones.
However, Latin names are the only ones I know for them, so we must make
the best of it, and call one of them Spinipes (you must read this as if
it were Spiny Peas) and the other Crabro.
We will take Spinipes first.
If you look at the picture on the opposite page, you will see what she
is like, and, if you look at the picture in Spinipes the Sand-Wasp (p.
151) you will see one of the clever things she does.
[Illustration: This is a little picture of Spinipes
bringing up a grub, which she is clasping beneath her body]
She is building a little tube out of sand which is so delicate that the
slightest touch from one of our own clumsy fingers will knock it down
like a card-house, but it is strong enough for her to crawl inside; and
she has to crawl inside very often, as you will see. I expect you will
all want to know how she builds it, and what it is for. I will tell you
how she builds it to begin with. You must know first that she has a pair
of jaws which work quite differently from ours. Instead of moving up and
down, they move across each other from side to side just like a pair of
scissors.
[Illustration: This is the Spinipes' grub feeding on the
little green caterpillars]
The first thing that Spinipes does is to work this little pair of
scissors in the sand so as to make a little hole. I am showing you on
page 148 a picture of her when she is just starting to dig. Every little
pellet of sand she digs out she puts carefully round the outside of the
hole, and presently she glues them all together. She carries the glue
somewhere inside her, and brings it out when she wants it, Then she digs
a little deeper and glues another layer of sand pellets on the top of
the first one, and in a very short time she has dug a hole about two
inches deep, and built a little tube round the top of it, which is made
of the little sand-pellets she has brought out of the hole. Sometimes
the tube stands straight up, but more often it bends about half-way and
curves downwards. When she has finished it off, and is sure that the
hole is deep enough, and the tube is long enough, she goes right down to
the bottom and lays an egg, and she hangs the egg by a tiny thread
(which she also makes herself, but I don't know how she does it) to the
side of the hole a little above the bottom. You will be able to see this
in the picture, but you must remember that in this and in some of the
other pictures the sand has been cut away so that you can see exactly
how the hole goes. Then, if it is a bright, sunny day, as it usually is
when she begins digging, she flies away, and in about half an hour's
time comes back carrying something clasped tight against her body. What
do you think that is? It is a small green caterpillar. She stops a
moment at the entrance of the tube, pushes the caterpillar down in front
of her, and disappears after it. In a few seconds she is out again and
off, and in another quarter of an hour or so she is back again with
another caterpillar and so on, without ever tiring, through six or seven
hours of a hot June or July day.
[Illustration: This shows you the cocoon which Spinipes'
grub makes for itself. I have opened it to show you the
grub, and also the little partition in the shaft above the
grub, which is the last thing Spinipes herself makes]
I expect you will have guessed what the caterpillars are for. They are
food for the wasp grub when it hatches out of the egg. Generally each
hole has between twenty and thirty little caterpillars in it, and
sometimes, when caterpillars are scarce, the Mother Wasp has to work
hard for three or four days. If you dig into a hole yourself and look at
the store of little caterpillars, you will see there is something the
matter with them. They seem to be alive and yet they don't seem to be
able to crawl. Wise men say that the wasp stings them just enough to
make them drowsy so that they can't crawl out of the hole, and can't
hurt the wasp grub by jostling up against it. It wouldn't do to kill
them, because then they would go bad in the hole before the grub had
time to eat them. This sounds rather cruel, but I don't think it is
really, because it is quite certain that the caterpillars cannot feel as
we should perhaps feel, and we may be quite sure that in the wonderful
Nature World everything is arranged for the best, so that only the right
number of wasp-grubs may be properly fed and grow up to do what it is
their duty to do, and only the right number of small green caterpillars
may grow up also.
[Illustration: The little beetle that the caterpillars turn
into. It is sitting on its own open-work cocoon, from which
it has just hatched out. The picture makes it about twice
its real size]
You will wonder, I expect, why the Mother Wasp troubles to make the
little tube above the hole. I think I can tell you one reason and you
must remember this, because it was just by chance that I found it out.
One hot morning in June I watched Mother Spinipes bringing seven
caterpillars to her hole. Then a heavy thunderstorm came on, and the
rain came down in buckets, and I had to run away for shelter. Late in
the evening when it had cleared up a little, I thought I would like to
see what had happened to the tube I had been watching, and I went back
to the place and found that the rain had knocked it all to pieces. But I
saw something much more interesting than this. The tube had been on the
face of a sand-cliff, and in a crack close by there was an ants' nest. I
found that the ants were running down the wasp's hole and bringing out
the caterpillars as fast as they could (I saw them take six away), and
taking them along the face of the cliff into their own stronghold. Now
the tube that stands out from the sand somehow frightens the ants (I
never saw an ant climb out along the tube and down inside it), and so I
think that one of the reasons for the tube must be that it keeps away
ants and creatures of that kind who crawl about on the face of the sand
cliff and like eating caterpillars.
[Illustration: BEFORE THE THUNDERSTORM]
[Illustration: AFTER THE THUNDERSTORM]
It was a long time before I found out what kind of creature the
caterpillars stored by Spinipes would have turned into if they had not
been caught. I thought that it would have been a small moth, but I was
quite wrong. At different times I took several caterpillars away from
the tubes, and tried to bring them up, but it was of no use, for they
all died because they could not eat. One day, however, I happened to be
sweeping with a butterfly-net in a field of lucerne--it is great fun
sweeping, and you should try it, for you never know what you may get
next--and I swept up what I knew at once was the self-same little green
caterpillar that Spinipes stocked her larder with. She _always_ brought
the same kind. Well, I got a good many of them by sweeping in the
lucerne, and brought them up carefully, and, in due time, they spun
little open-work cocoons on the lucerne leaves which I fed them with,
and at last turned into small, brown, long-nosed beetles. I need not
trouble you with the Latin names of these beetles, but I may tell you
that they are a kind of weevil which is very common and very destructive
to clover and plants of that kind. So, if we consider that every Mother
Spinipes lays eight or nine eggs, and stocks eight or nine burrows each
with about thirty destructive little caterpillars, we must allow that
she is a very useful little wasp.
[Illustration: This is a large picture of Crabro, about
twice as big as she really is]
But I am not sure that she is more useful to man than the other little
wasp I have to tell of, the Crabro. I found out her usefulness quite by
chance, and I expect you will like to hear how. To begin with, I must
tell you that all the "Digger" Wasps, as some people call them, Spinipes
and the Crabros and several other kinds, store their burrows with insect
food for their grubs to feed on.
[Illustration: This is Crabro looking out of her hole. The
front of her face is covered with bright silver hair, so
fine that it looks like a silver plate. The picture is
twice her real size]
[Illustration: This is how the cocoon looked when I had
taken the sawdust away. The plug of sawdust above it leads
into the round hole in the wood]
But each one has her own particular idea as to what is the _best_ food.
One will use nothing but little spiders, another nothing but little
flies, another, like Spinipes, nothing but little beetle grubs. And the
queer part is that they seldom seem to make any mistake as to the kind
of food they want. It will be _one_ kind of spider, and _one_ kind of
fly, and _one_ kind of beetle-grub. If there are ever more than one
kind, they are always very near relations, and, I suppose, taste very
much alike.
[Illustration: At the bottom of the picture you will see
one of Crabro's stores of blue-bottles, and if you look
carefully you will see one of the fly's wings stretching
out of it]
Now Crabro's store consists of really _large_ flies, blue-bottles, and
green-bottles--I expect most of you know the beautiful shiny
green-bottle fly whose proper name is Caesar--and how little Crabro
manages to overcome and carry off large bottle-flies who are several
times her own size and several times her own weight, I cannot tell. But
I have found out for certain that she does so, and the pictures will
show you how I found out.
[Illustration: This is what the piece of elm-bough looked
like. You will be able to see the little tunnels, and the
stores of blue-bottles, which are black-looking, and the
plugs of sawdust, in which the pupa cases of the wasp-grubs
are hidden. You can see one pupa about half way up]
Last autumn a dangerous bough had to be taken down from the top of a
high elm-tree in my garden. It was perhaps sixty feet above the ground
and it came down with a crash and broke up into little pieces. I picked
up one of these tubes and galleries, which I knew were insects' work.
But there was something much more exciting than this. A number of the
galleries had blind ends to them, and at the bottom of these were masses
of dead blue-bottles, tightly packed, which rested on small pillows of
sawdust, and had long plugs of sawdust above them.
I opened one of the long sawdust plugs and found, as I half expected to
find, that at the end of it next to the blue-bottles, was a small brown
papery cocoon, and that inside the cocoon was a wasp grub. I need hardly
tell you that I collected a lot of the wood, and kept it carefully
through the winter, and tried to make the little grubs as much at home
as if they had stayed up in their tree. To do this I had to keep the
wood in moist and rather dark surroundings. Then when the spring came
round I sometimes put the wood in the sunshine, when it was not too hot,
and in the first week in June I was rewarded for my trouble, for the
little wasps hatched out in dozens, and so I was able to find out what
they were.
[Illustration: This is one of the cocoons of Crabro in the
elm-bough. Crabro is just going to hatch out. You can see
the little black hole where she has started gnawing]
Look up to the top of the trees some warm summer day, and think of the
blue-bottle hunt which may be going on above us, and of the wonderful
little hunter, Crabro.
SPINIPES THE SAND-WASP
(MIDSUMMER DAY)
AUTHOR'S NOTE
[Illustration]