Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1872-06-13
Tropical Insects.


they do not run in swarms about these
arid paths as they do at home. But the
wasps and bees, black and brown, are in
Vulnerable. That huge blue bee in steel
blue armor, booming straight at you
which some one compared to the lord
mayors man in armor turned into cherub
and broken loose-(Get out of his way,
for he is absorbed in busines9-is pro-
ably d wood-borer, of whose work you
may read in Mr.. Woods " Homes With
out Hands" That long, black wasp com
monty called a Jack Spaniard, builds pen
sile paper nests under every roofand shed.
Watch, now, this more delicate brown
wasp, probably one of the PelopWi o.
which we have read in Mr.. Gosse's "Na-
turalist in Jamacia," and Mr.. Bates
"Travels on the Amazon" She has made
under shelf mud nest Of three long
cells, and filled them one by one with
small spiders, and the precious egg which,
when hatched is to feed on them. One
hundred and eight spiders have been
counted in single nest like this; and the
wasp, much of the same shape as the Jack
Spaniard, but smaller, works, unlike him,
alone, or at least only with her husbands
help. The long mud nest is built upright,
often in the angle of doorpost or panel,
and always added to, and entered from
below. With joyful hum she flies back
to it all day long with her pellets of mud,
and spreads them out with her mouth
into pointed arches one laid on the other,
making one side of the arch out of each
pellet, and singing low but cheerily over
her work. As she works downward, she
parts off the tube Of the nest with horizon
tai floors of a finer and harder mud, and
inside each story places some five spiders,
and among them the precious egg or eggs
which is to feed on them when Matched
If we open the uppermost chamber, we
shall find every vestige of the spiders gone,
and the cavity filled (and strange to say
exactly filed by q brown-coated wasp
pupa, enveloped in fine silken shroud.
In the chamber below perhaps we shall
find the grub full.grown and finishing his
last spider; and so on, down six or eight
stories, till the lowest holds nothing but
spiders, packed close, but not yet sealed
up. These spiders, be it remembered arc
not dead BY some strange craft, the
wasp knows exactly where to pierce them
with her sting so as to stupety but not to
kill, just as the sand-wasps Of our banks
at home stupefy the large wccyil5 which
they store in their burrows rs TODD for
their grubs.
There are wasps, too, which make pretty
little jar shaped nests, round, with a
neatly lined round lip. Paper nests, too,
more like those ofour tree-wasps at home,
hang from the trees in the woods. Ants
nests, too, hang sometimes from the
stronger boughs, looking like huge hard
Jumps of clay. And once, at least, we
have found silken nests Of butterflies or
moths, containing many chrysalids EACH
Meanwhile, dismiss from your mind the
stories of insect plaques. If good care is
taken to close the musquito curtains at
night, the flies about the house are not
nearly as troublesome, as we have often
found the midges in Scotland. AS for
snakes, we have seen none; centipedes
are, certainly, apt to get into the bath,
but can be tished out dead and thrown to
the chickens. The wasps and bees do
not sting, orin anywise interfere with our
comfort, save by building on the books.
The only ants which come into the house
are the minute. harmless, and most use
full "crazy ants" which run up and down
wildly all day till they find some eatable
thing, an atom of bread or disabled
cock-roach, of which last by-the-by, we
have seen hardly any here. They then
prove themselves in their sound senses by
uniting to carry of their prey, some pull
ling, some pushing, with q steady COM
bination of effort which puts to shame
and average negro crew. And these are
all we have to fear, unless it be now and
then huge spider, which it is not the
fashion here to kill, as they feed on flies.
Lizards run about the walks in plenty,
about the same size as the green lizard of
the South of Europe, but of more sober
colors. The parasol ants-of which |
could tell you much, save that you will
read far more than | can tell you in
half a dozen books at home-waIk in
triumphal professions, each with bit of
green leaf borne over its head, and prob
ably, when you look closely, with q little
ant or two riding on it, and getting lift
home after work on their stronger sisters
back-and these are all the monsters
which you are likely to meet.-A Christ
mas IN tie Vest Indies.