_Uncle Philip tells the Children about Grasshoppers and Bees,
that bore Holes with a Gimlet._
"Well, Uncle Philip, here we are again, to hear more about the tools
that animals work with; we have seen in the bark of trees, and old
wooden posts, little holes as round as a gimlet could make, and we
have been thinking whether any of these little creatures have augers
and gimlets, as well as saws. Do you know of any of them that can bore
holes?"
"Oh yes, boys; I know of more than one that can bore as smooth and round
a hole as any carpenter you ever saw. There are some of the grasshoppers
that have an excellent gimlet. The contrivance has five pieces in it;
two of the pieces make a case to keep the augers in, two more are the
augers or borers, and the other is a piece between the two borers on
which they slide; this piece has a ridge on each side of it, and the
augers have a groove which exactly fits the ridge. Besides this, each
auger ends in a knob, and that knob has teeth all around it. Here is a
picture of it."
[Illustration: Ovipositors, with files, of the Grasshopper, magnified.]
"But, Uncle Philip, what is the piece with the ridge for?"
"Ah, boys, that piece shows the wisdom and the goodness of God. '_His
tender mercies are over all his works_:' he has placed that piece there
to keep the borers stiff, so that they cannot get out of joint, or be
broken, when the little workman is boring."
"Well, this is very curious."
"Yes; but there are some of these insect workmen more curious still.
Did you ever see a spy-glass? You know it is a round, hollow piece of
wood, with brass tubes in it, which are made smaller and smaller, so
as to slide into one another, when the glass is not used. Now there
is a sort of gadfly (she is a little creature, too) which has exactly
such a contrivance to keep her gimlet in. It is in four pieces, and the
smallest piece ends in five sharp points, three of which are longer than
the other two: she twists these five sharp points into one piece, and
as some are longer and some shorter, when they are all put together,
they make a sharp edge running all around, and are almost exactly like
an auger or gimlet. When she wants to use it, she just shoots out the
different tubes, so as to make a stem for the gimlet; and when she is
done, she puts all back into its case again.
"Here is a drawing of it, and I think that by looking at it you will
understand what I have been telling you: I do not know whether men
learned from this part of the fly how to make the case of a spy-glass;
but I know they might have learned.
[Illustration: Ovipositor or Gimlet of the Gadfly, greatly magnified,
with a claw and part of the tube, distinct.]
"There is also a bee, boys, which is called the _carpenter-bee_, because
it is such an excellent wood-borer. It commonly looks for some old post,
or dry plank, or withered part of a tree, to work in. It never works in
wood that is green and has the sap or juices in it; for the bee knows,
just as well as any carpenter does, that it is very hard to get tools
through such wood. I expect that you have seen sometimes, when an old
post or dry board was split, a long hollow groove in the middle of it,
with little round thin pieces of something like paper, about as thick as
a wafer, fastened in it by their edges, one above the other, all the way
through. These show the work of the carpenter-bee: she bored the hole,
and she put those little partitions like paper in it, to separate the
cells; and more than that, she made the partitions out of the dust she
got by boring. She always likes, too, to get a piece of wood in a place
where the sun can shine on it; and when she has made her choice, she
begins to bore at first into the post in a slanting direction, and as
soon as she has gone far enough in, she then turns and bores straight,
with the grain of the wood."
"Does she do it quickly, Uncle Philip?"
"Not very quickly, for sometimes the wood is very hard; I have seen
one of these holes nearly twelve inches long in a very hard oak board.
Sometimes she has to work at it for months; but she works steadily,
boys, and that does a great deal. What makes it more tiresome is, that
the poor little creature has to bring out all the dust she makes by
boring."
"How large is the hole?"
"Oh, large enough to put my forefinger in, and sometimes fifteen inches
long. After she has bored it as deep as is necessary, she begins to
divide it into separate cells. So she commences at the bottom, and puts
in a quantity of what is called bee-bread, until it reaches about an
inch in height; on the top of this she lays an egg, and the bread is put
there to feed the young one as soon as it comes out of the egg. She then
makes a floor over it out of the dust, as I told you; she knows how to
glue this dust together, and she brings it grain by grain from the heap
in which she put it when she first brought it out: and she always begins
by gluing the dust around the outside of the hole she has bored, and
then glues another ring to that, and then another, and another, making
each ring smaller and smaller, until she has it all filled; so that her
floor, when it is done, appears like a parcel of rings of smaller and
smaller sizes placed within each other. On the top of this floor she
puts bee-bread, as before, and places another egg on it, and then covers
it with a floor again; and so she goes on making cells and filling them
with bread, and covering each with a floor, until she has filled up the
hole."
"Uncle Philip, how do the young bees get out when the egg is hatched? It
seems as if they were shut up for ever in prison."
"No, boys; there is a way for them to get out, and it shows the
wonderful wisdom of God in teaching this poor bee how to contrive the
matter. The egg which is put in the lowest cell being the oldest, the
little worm that is afterward to be a bee will come out of that one
first: now, you know, he never could get through all the cells over his
head, filled as they are with bee-bread, so as to come out at the top
of the hole. If he gets out at all, then, it must be at the bottom. The
old bee knows this, and she so arranges these eggs that when the worm
comes out it will be with his head pointed downwards; he falls to eating
his bread, and so eats himself down to the bottom of his cell, and there
he finds that his mother has bored a hole from his cell to the outside,
and through that he comes out. When his brother in the cell above him
has eaten his way down to the bottom of his cell, he just eats through
the floor and gets into the cell below, which is then empty, you know,
and walks out at the same hole which his older brother used before him.
And so all the rest one after another eat their way downwards into the
empty cells below them, and get out at the same back-door, which their
mother made by what we call her _instinct_, which just means the share
of wisdom which God gives to the lower animals to show them how to take
care of themselves."
[Illustration: =A=, represents a part of a post, tunnelled in several
places by the violet carpenter-bee; the stick is split, and shows the
nests and passages by which they are approached. =C=, a piece of thin
stick, pierced by the carpenter-bee, and split, to show the nests. =D=,
perspective view of one of the partitions. =E=, carpenter-bee. =F=,
teeth of the carpenter-bee, greatly magnified; _a_, the upper side; _b_,
lower side.]
"Why, that instinct, as you call it, Uncle Philip, is a curious thing."
"Very curious, very curious indeed, boys; and at some other time, if
you wish, we will talk more about it, and I will tell you a great many
stories of animals, which will show you their instinct. But for this
time I have told you enough to keep you thinking until we meet again. So
now just look at this picture of the carpenter-bee's house, and then you
may go home."