_Uncle Philip tells the Children about Animals that are
Tailors._
"Uncle Philip, we are very glad to see you, and we think we have found
out something to ask you, about a kind of work which men do, that no
other animal can accomplish. As we came along this morning to visit
you, and were talking of what you had told us of insects that, like
carpenters, could saw wood and bore holes in it, we passed by the
tailor's shop, near the church; 'and now,' said we, 'we have found out
something which will puzzle good Uncle Philip: there are surely no
tailors among the lower animals; so we will ask him to-day to talk about
creatures that can cut out cloth and sew it up with a needle.'"
"Ah, my dear children, there are a great many things which would puzzle
Uncle Philip. I do not know every thing; nor do I suppose that I can
find _every_ trade in the world among the dumb creatures which God has
made. But you have made a bad choice of a puzzle this morning, my boys;
for there are tailors among the inferior creatures, and some pretty nice
ones, too; at any rate, they always cut so as to fit exactly."
"Why, Uncle Philip! You do not mean to say that they can cut out
_cloth_, and then sew it up again with a needle and thread!"
"No, boys; I do not think it is to be expected that they should take
a pair of shears and cut a piece of cloth, or put a piece of thread
through the eye of a steel needle; any more than we expect the insect
that saws, to go to the cabinet-maker, and borrow his tool to work
with. But with the instruments which God has given to them, they will
cut what is cloth to them, the leaves of trees and flowers, and will sew
them together too: and, now I think of it, there is one that will cut
his garments out of our cloth."
"Pray let us hear about them, Uncle Philip."
"Softly, boys, softly. I have two things to say to you before I begin.
In the first place, I am very glad to hear that you think and talk among
yourselves about the things which I tell you: and in the next place, I
know that you love _me_, and, therefore would not wish, by _puzzling_
me, as you call it, to produce mortification or vexation; nor do I
think that I should have felt either vexed or mortified had I not been
able to find tailors among the lower animals; but I do not wish you to
take pleasure in puzzling people; for it is very apt to produce in you
a feeling of triumph, and to make you vain: and you must remember that
for _one_ of your questions which cannot be answered, a _thousand_ might
be put to you, of the answer to which you would be ignorant. No man, my
dear boys, knows every thing. Wise men talk with each other, that they
may learn from each other; and the wisest are not ashamed to acknowledge
their ignorance of some things; and I believe they take very little
pleasure in puzzling. It is our duty to learn all that we can, and to be
always willing at a proper time to teach others what we know."
"Thank you, dear Uncle Philip, for your advice. We did not mean to
triumph over _you_, if you had not been able to tell us of tailors among
the animals. But we see that you are right. We might get a foolish
habit, which would do us harm."
"Exactly what I meant, boys; and now let us begin. And first we will
talk of the cutting out, as the tailor always does that before he sews.
There is a kind of bee[1] which, like some of the insects we have
already spoken of, is furnished with a borer. With this she forms a
round hole, like that made with an auger or gimlet, in a hard-trodden
path, or sometimes in a piece of soft decayed wood. It is in making her
nest in this hole that she plays the part of a tailor, for the nest is
made of leaves, sometimes taken from the rose, at others from the birch,
ash, or other trees. The little creature cuts them commonly, and I
believe always, into two shapes. They are either half-oval, that is,
half the shape of the bowl of a spoon, or round, and are of different
sizes. Sometimes she makes a mistake in the size, and when she finds it
out, she alters it. These leaves are prepared to line the hole which
she has bored, and she begins with the largest pieces; taking them into
the hole, she winds around in it, until she has spread very smoothly a
tube of leaves the whole length of it; she then closes up one end of it
by rounding it off and doubling the pieces of leaf one over another.
In this case she sets about making her _cells_. She takes three of her
half-oval pieces which have been cut to fit, and contrives to roll them,
so that the edge of one piece will just lap over the edge of the next;
these, when she has finished rolling them, make the hollow of the cell,
which is not quite an inch high. She next turns up the ends of these
pieces, which are cut to fit, so as to form the bottom: she then sets to
work with three other pieces rolled in the same way inside of the cell
just finished, turning up their ends as before to form the bottom; and
within these she again works three others, so that her cell, when it is
done, is of nine thicknesses of leaves. And you see why, though she cuts
the pieces of the same shape, they are not all of one size: they are
of three sizes, so as to make the cells within each other smaller and
smaller."
"But, Uncle Philip, you have not said any thing about the round pieces
which she cuts; how does she use them?"
"I will tell you: after she has finished one cell she lays an egg in it,
and fills it all round with food nearly liquid; now as the cell is lying
down on its side, all this liquid food would run out if it were not
corked up, and the bee therefore uses her circular pieces to stop up the
cells."
"And does she really make these round pieces to fit the cell?"
"Yes, boys, exactly; and they are cut too as regularly as if they had
been first measured and marked with a pair of compasses. And, more than
this, the little creature will fit one in in less than a minute. But the
most curious thing is, that sometimes she will fly off to a distance
to get this round piece, and bring back one which will exactly suit;
so that it really seems as if she carried the size in her head. After
finishing one cell she will make another, until she has completed as
many as she wants; and then, as she always builds them one upon another,
they appear like a parcel of thimbles stuck into each other and put into
a case: and here is a picture of it."
[Illustration: Rose-leaf-cutter Bees, and Nest lined with Rose-leaves]
"This is very wonderful, Uncle Philip; and it does seem like cutting out
pieces to fit."
"Very true: but this is not the only cutter-out of leaves among the
bees. There is another kind, called the poppy-bee,[2] because it uses
the scarlet leaves of the poppy-flower to line its cell. It makes its
hole in the ground, as smooth and regular and polished as can be, and
then proceeds to line it all around with pieces of the leaves, and cuts
them to fit as she goes on. If a piece is too large she will trim it
down to the proper size and shape, and always carries away the scraps.
Now if you should take a pair of scissors and try to cut the leaf of a
poppy-flower, you would wrinkle it, but this little workman will spread
out what she cuts as smooth as glass. When she has lined this hole
throughout, and carried the lining out beyond the entrance, she fills it
with honey and _pollen_, or bee-bread, as it is called, about half an
inch high, lays an egg, then folds down the leaves on it, and finally
fills the upper part with earth."
"Then she was not working for herself?"
"No; she was providing a house for her young, and God has taught her
thus to take care of it.
"I will now tell you of another little workman, which I have heard
called the cloak-maker, because it makes for itself a mantle which
really appears very much like a cloak; and, stranger still, this cloak
is lined throughout with silk."
"Can it be possible, Uncle Philip?"
"Listen, and you shall hear. These mantle-looking cases are made by
the _larva_, as it is called, or grub of a little moth which forms a
covering of pure silk; this silk it spins from itself; it is not woven
so as to appear like our silk, but still it is real silk, and is worked
into a great many thin scales, which lap over one another like the
scales of a fish. But this is only the lining of the cloak. This little
tailor is the field-moth, which first eats what it wants from a green
leaf, and then, from the thin membranes left, sets about making its
mantle: and it makes it of two pieces cut out and joined together with a
seam, just as a tailor would make it."
"How does it go to work, Uncle Philip?"
"Why, I will give you the account as it was given by a gentleman[3] who
was very fond of observing insects, and who watched one of these little
creatures. He says that from the thin membrane of the leaf it first
cut two pieces just equal in size and of exactly the same shape; each
of these pieces was to form one-half of the cloak, and this he says was
done wonderfully fast. He noticed, too, that one end of each piece, that
which was meant for the bottom of the cloak, was just twice as long as
the other end, which was the top. The insect then placed itself between
the two pieces while they were lying flat; it afterward brought the two
sides where the seam was to be, together, and fastened them at certain
places, still leaving, however, considerable spaces open. It then began
to turn and twist its body about in all directions, until it moulded
the pieces into a hollow form to fit. When it found that it would fit
its body, it brought the edges of the seam close together through the
whole length, and contrived to sew or fasten them so neatly together,
that when the gentleman looked, even with a magnifying-glass, he said he
could hardly find the seam. The whole was lined with the silk spun from
itself, and was finished in about twelve hours."
"Why, this little workman is the strangest of all: but, Uncle Philip,
you said there was one of these animal tailors that cut his garment out
of _cloth_: pray tell us of him."
"When I said that, boys, I was thinking of the clothes-moth.[4] They
make their coats of wool commonly taken from our cloth, and silk drawn
from their own mouths; and the strangest thing concerning them is,
that when they outgrow their clothes they will piece them to make them
larger. Suppose the insect wants it longer, it adds a new ring of wool
to the end: suppose it wants it wider, it slits the case or garment, not
from one end to the other, for this would leave it naked, but it splits
it half-way down the sides, and when it has filled it in with proper
pieces, it splits the remaining half, and puts other pieces in them.
There is another curious thing about this tailor: it always makes its
coat of the same colour with the cloth from which it takes the wool; so
that if it has first made its garment of a piece of blue cloth, and is
placed on a bit of red cloth when it wishes to enlarge it, you will see
its work exactly, for the pieces which it puts in will be red. This is
the little fellow, boys, which does so much mischief to our clothes."
"Well, Uncle Philip, one can almost forgive his mischief for the sake
of his ingenuity. But you have said nothing yet about _needles_; how do
these little creatures sew?"
"Why, they have what serves as a needle to them: but I can tell you of
another animal which sews with a needle a great deal plainer to be seen
than that of these little insects."
"Pray let us hear of him, Uncle Philip."
"I must go among the birds to find this workman. There is a kind of
starling, called the orchard starling,[5] about which, Mr. Wilson, a
gentleman who has written a great deal concerning the birds of our
country, gives a very curious account. He says that this bird commonly
hangs its nest from the twigs of an apple-tree, and makes it in a very
singular manner. The outside is made of a particular kind of long
tough grass, that will bend without breaking, and this grass is knit
or sewed through and through in a thousand directions, just as if done
with a needle. The little creature does it with its feet and bill. Mr.
Wilson says that he one day showed one of these nests to an old lady,
and she was so much struck with the work that she asked him, half in
earnest, if he did not think that these birds could be taught to _darn
stockings_? Mr. Wilson took the pains too to draw out one of these
grass threads, and found that it measured thirteen inches, and in that
distance the bird who used it had passed it in and out thirty-four
times."
"Why, this was sewing, sure enough."
"Yes; and I saw, when I was in the West Indies, another kind of
starling[6] which will cut leaves into a shape like the quarter of
an orange-rind, and sew the whole very neatly to the under side of a
banana-leaf, so as to make one side of the nest. But, boys, there is
another most beautiful little bird, which is called the tailor-bird,
because it sews so well.[7] It first picks out a plant with large
leaves, then it gathers cotton from the shrub, and with the help of
its fine long bill and slender little feet it spins this cotton into a
thread, and then using its bill for a needle, it will sew these large
leaves together to hide its nest, and sew them very neatly, too."
"Why, dear Uncle Philip, this is the most wonderful tailor of them all."
"He is, indeed: but, my children, what do we learn from all that I have
been telling you? Who made these little creatures with such curious
skill, and taught them to work so well? It was the same God who made us;
for such wonderful things never came from what people call _chance_.
Chance, boys, never made any thing: and how very wise he must be to
form such nice little workmen; and how very good thus to teach them how
to take care of themselves. The Bible says, truly, that '_his tender
mercies are over all his works_.' And I think, boys, we may learn
another thing: it is, not to be so very proud of what we know; for I
rather suppose that we shall often find that the lower creatures around
us understood many of our trades long before we found them out."
"Yes, Uncle Philip, it is likely that these little fellows you have been
telling us of this morning were the first tailors in the world."
"Very likely, very likely indeed, boys. But now I must bid you good
morning; for here comes our good clergyman, and I am going with him to
see a poor sick woman."
"Good morning, Uncle Philip; we will come again on Saturday."