The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1900-08-10

How Insects Execute the Lords Conn
mend to fan the Seas and the Earth.

(The Rev. Theodore Wood in The Lon
don Mail)
Insects may be briefly described as
small animals with very large families.
They think nothing of having a few
hundreds of little ones at a single birth.
Many OF them are never satisfied with
less than eight or ten thousand, while
there are not a few whose offspring
resemble the sands of the sea, since they
cannot be numbered for multitude.
One of these is the common English
oil beetle, great bluish-bIack creature
which waddles clumsily about in grassy
places IN spring, ana squeezes out an
eyil-smelling yellow fluid all over your
fingers II you venture to pick it up. 1t
cannot walk properly, for its body is so
hug " distended with eggs that it drags
heavily on the ground behind it.
There are some fifty thousand Of these
eggs altogether and the beetle lays them
in patches in holes in the ground, five or
six thousand IN batch, and then con-
siders herself as absolved from all re-
sponsibility with regard to their future
welfare. The little long-legged grubs
which hatch out from them, however,
are quite capable of looking after them
selves. They just scramble up the stems
of the nearest flowers, and hide among
their petals until bumblebees come along
in search of honey. Then they spring on
to the hairy bodies of those industrious
but somewhat simple insects and ride
them pIck-a-back to their nests, where
they feed luxuriously on the eggs of the
bees and on the food which they had
stored up for the young. Another insect
with very big family Is the heshny,
first cousin TO the common or household
blueb0UCle. Ih1s creature believes not
only in having as many little ones as it
possibly cans but also in rearing them
with the utmost practicable rapidity.
So instead OF laying eggs, as almost all
other insects do, it lays live grubs, which
come pouring out IN continuous stream,
all neatly arranged side by side together,
like ribbons from the mouth OF a conipr-
er. These grubs, which are deposited
upon carrlOn, at once set to work to de-
your It, and the more they eat the hum
grier they get, SO that life is simply one
long unbroken meal.
The common hive bee is fairly prolific,
for the queen lives for three or four
years, and lays eggs at the rate of about
couple OF hundred a day from March
until the end of October. Her annual
output probably, amounts to between
forty and fifty thousand
The queen ant is more prolific still, for
she drops eggs wherever she goes for her
attendants TO gather up and carry away
TO the nurseries. In many cases her
offspring must number at least half a
million in the course of "a single season.
Even this magnificent record. however,
is put into the shade by that of the queen
- p Ifa orrf Will
to such an enormous extent that she
looks like a large white sausage, with a
tiny head and six absurd little legs at
one end. The workers build a strong
clay prison around her. inolosing her in
a narrow cell, from which there is no
possibility of escape. But the precaution
is quite unnecessary, since she could not
drag her great, numbering body along for
a single inch under any circumstances
whatsoever. She can only lie perfectly
still for four or five years and pour out
eggs IL one continual torrent, while hun
dreds Of tiny workers pick them up as
Iast as they fall and carry them away.
In the subsequent career of her numerous
little ones she takes no interest whatever.
She Is simply a live machine for pro-
ducing millions ana millions of eggs.
But the efforts OF the queen termite,
great as they e, never result in so vast
a ia nily as that of the aphis-the for
midabIe green fig of the farmer.
An aphis does no lay eggs, as a rule,
unJil the very end OF the summer. All
the rest of the season it produces living
young by a kind Of budding process,
little ones sprouting out of its body at
the rate of some five and twenty a day.
This goes on for a month or i've weeks,
while the young are born IN so advanced
a state of development that in very few
days they begin to set up budding opera
tions on their own account. So the orig
inal parent very soon finds herself sur
rounded by descendants of the fourth or
fifth generation. And, moreover, all
these little ones are females. Aphides of
the masculine persuasion are exceedingly
rare. They only make their appearance,
once in every season, so that aphides,
when they die, are gathered, not to their
fathers, but of their mothers.
The consequence is that these creatures
multiply with almost inconceivabIe IA