The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects

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Cicada is singing, one can approach it, whistling the while in a quavering manner, and imitating as nearly as possible, its cry, but in such a manner as to predominate over it. The insect then descends a small space down the tree, as if to approach the whistler; then it stops. But if one presents a stick to it, continuing to whistle, the Cicada settles on it and begins again to descend backwards. From time to time it stops, as if to listen. At last, attracted, and, as it were, fascinated by the harmony of the whistle, it comes to the observer himself M. Boyer managed thus to make a Cicada, which continued to sing as long as he whistled in harmony with it, settle on his nose. Charmed by this concert, the insect seemed to have lost its natural timidity. The Cicada orni is of a greenish yellow, spotted with black. The abdomen is encircled by the same colours. The elytra and the wings are hyaline, or glassy, and their veins alternately yellow and brown. The legs are yellow throughout. The song of this species is hoarse, and cannot be heard at any great distance.

M. Solier, in the work we quoted just now, says that the song of this Cicada is of a deeper intonation, but that it is quick and is sooner over. It does not terminate in the manner which characterises that of the other species. Next the genus Cicada comes Fulgora^ whose type is the Fulgora lanternaria, or Lantern Fly (Fig. 83).

Belonging to South America, these insects are above all remarkable and easy to recognise, by their very large elongated head, which nearly equals three-quarters of the rest of the body. This prolongation is horizontal, vesicular, enlarged to about the same breadth as the head, and presents above a very great gibbosity. The antennae are short, with a globular second articulation, and a small terminal hair. The species represented in Fig. 83 is yellow varied with black. The elytra are of a greenish yellow, sprinkled with black; the wings, of the same colour, have at the extremity a large spot resembling an eye, which is surrounded by a brown circle very broad in front. It inhabits Guiana. This remarkable insect enjoys a great renown with the vulgar, by a peculiarity which might be called its speciality — the property of shining by night or in the dark. Hence its name of Fulgora lanternaria. The knowledge of the Fulgora lanternaria has been spread and popularised in Europe by a celebrated book, which has for its title, "Metamorphoses des Insectes de Snrinam." This book, which •contains the result of patient study of the natural history of Dutch

no THE INSECT WORLD.

Guiana. (Government of Surinam), was written and published in thre^ languages, by a woman whose name this work has rendered immortal — Mile. Sybille de Merian — and who won the admiration and respect

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of her contemporaries by her love of the beauties of Nature, and her perseverance in making them known and admired. Sybille de Mérian was born at Bâle. Daughter, sister, and mother of celebrated engravers, herself an excellent flower-painter, she had worked a long time at Frankfort and at Nuremberg; and had read with the greatest attention the “Théologie des Insectes,”* and with admiration Malpighi’s book on the silkworm. Full of enthusiasm for the study of natural history, she left Germany, to visit the magnificent collection of plants which were kept in the hot-houses of Holland, and made admirable reproductions of them with her pencil.

This attentive study of the vegetable world suggested to her the idea, which soon became an ardent desire, of observing these marvels of Nature in those parts of the globe in which they display themselves with the greatest magnificence and splendour. At the age of fifty-four, Sybille de Mérian set out for equatorial America. From the very first days of her arrival she hazarded her life, sometimes without a guide, in the swampy plains or burning valleys of Guiana. During the two years she sojourned in those dangerous parts, she made a large collection of drawings and paintings, which were destined to inaugurate in Europe the introduction of art into natural history.

In the plates to her work, Sybille de Mérian represents always the insect she wishes to describe under its three forms of larva, pupa, and perfect insect. With this drawing she gives another of the plant which serves the insect for food, as also of the animals which prey on it. Each plate is a little drama. Near the insect is seen the greedy lizard opening its dreadful mouth, or the ferocious spider watching for it. The short life of insects is shown here in its entirety, with its continual struggles, its infinite artifices, its rapid end, and all the episodes of its existence, which is almost always nothing but a long and painful struggle.

Such was the work, such was the noble devotion and the worthy career of Sybille de Mérian. Let women, let young girls, who are martyrs to the ennui of a life devoid of occupation, peruse her beautiful book, and learn from it how much a woman may do with the time which is now either utterly unoccupied or only devoted to useless employments. To study Nature in any of its phases ought, it seems to us, to give satisfaction to the soul, strength to the mind, and cause unbounded admiration of and gratitude to the supreme Author of the Universe.

• “Théologie des Insectes, ou Démonstration des Perfections de Dieu dans tout ce qui concerne les Insectes, par Lesser, traduit en Français.” La Haye, 1742.

It is, as we have already said, in the work of Sybille de Merian, " Metamorphoses des Insectes de Surinam," that one finds mentioned, for the first time, the luminous properties of the Fiilgora lanteniaria. The author thus relates her observations, which were the result of chance: — " Some Indians having one day brought me a great number of the Lantern Flies, I shut them up in a large box, not knowing then that they gave light at night. Hearing a noise, I sprang out of bed and had a candle brought. I very soon discovered that the noise proceeded from the box, which I hurriedly opened; but, alarmed at seeing emerging from it a flame, or, to speak more correctly, as many flames as there were insects, I at first let it fall. Having recovered from my astonishment, or rather from my fright, I caught all my insects again, and admired this singular property of theirs."

Since the time when Mile, de Me'rian visited Guiana, different travellers have said that they could not observe, as she did, this phosphorescent phenomenon. It is, then, probable that this property only exists in the male or female insect, and then only at certain seasons.

What a marvellous spectacle must the rich valleys of Guiana present, when, in the stillness of the night, the air is filled with living torches; when, the FulgorcB flying about in space, the flashes of fire cross each other, go out and blaze up again, shine brightly and then die out, and present, on a calm evening, the appearance of those lightning flashes which are usually seen only in the midst of a tempest! Let us now go on to another interesting insect of the order of which we are treating, the Aphrophora, without being frightened by its disagreeable name, for there are many other names we may give it if we choose among those by which it is popularly known. In the months of June and July one sees on nearly every tree, and on plants of the most different kinds, a sort of white froth, composed of air bubbles, deposited on the leaves and branches. It is produced by an insect, and the peasants in France call it Crachat de Coucou, or Eciime prififanihe (spring froth), but in England it is known as

Cuckoo's spittle. De Geer carefully studied the metamorphoses of this insect. The Aphrophora (from acpphs, foam, and ^ep(a, I bear or carry) is lodged in the froth of which we have just been speaking. It lives in it, only leaving it when it has its wings. De Geer wondered why this insect confines itself during the whole of its life in liquid, and concludes that the froth has the effect of protecting the insect from the burning heat of the sun. This covering seems also to pro^

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tect it from the attacks of carnivorous insects and spiders. On the other hand, its skin is without doubt so constituted that it would perspire too freely if it were exposed to the air, and the insect would very soon die dried up. Whatever explanation may be given of the necessity for this semi-aerial, semi-liquid medium, it is easy to verify the fact that the larva of the Aphrophora cannot live long out of its frothy envelope. If withdrawn from it, the volume of its body diminishes perceptibly, and the poor animal dies, like a fish taken out of its natural element.

The insects which live in this froth are six-legged grubs (Fig. 84), which, when the froth is cleared from them, walk quickly enough on the stalks and leaves of plants. They are green, with the belly yellow.

De Geer wished to know how they produced this singular froth, and found out in the following manner:— He took one of them out of its frothy dwelling, wiped it dry with a camel's-hair pencil, and placed it on a young stalk, recently cut from the honeysuckle, which he put into water in a glass, in order to preserve its freshness, and this is what he ¥\g.'&A observed: Larva' of the " It begins," says the Swedish naturalist, " by fixing (^///^,/5z°m itself on a certain part of the stalk, in which it inserts spuvmria). the end of its trunk, and remains thus for a long time in the same attitude, occupied in sucking and filling itself with the sap. Having then withdrawn its trunk, it remains there, or else places itself on a leaf, where, after different reiterated movements of its abdomen, which it raises or lowers and turns on all sides, one may see coming out of the hinder part of its body a little ball of hquid, which it causes to shp along, bending it under its body. Beginning the same movements again, it is not long in producing a second globule of liquid, filled with air like the first, which it places side by side with, and close to, the preceding one, and continues the same operation as vong as there remains any sap in its body. It is very soon covered with a number of small globules, which, coming out of its body one after the other, tend towards the front part, aided in this by the movement of the abdomen. It is all these globules collected together which form a white and extremely fine froth whose viscosity keeps the air shut up in the globules, and prevents its froth from easily evaporating. If the sap which the larva has drawn from the plant is exhausted before it feels itself sufficiently covered with froth, it begins to svick afresh, until it has got