Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/144

wings of the insect is inserted between the layers composing the scale, and forms a little raised ridge.

The accompanying figure is magnified about 600 diameters. We need not doubt the possibility of so frail a subject as the dust off a butterfly's wing being preserved through ages of time; for many delicate insect vestiges, even gnats and ants, have been found in the Miocene beds, and associated with the leaves and branches of fossil ferns in the coal measures; and Sir Charles Lyell, in his latest work on geology, published in 1865, gives, on the authority of Professor Oswald Heer, a very remarkable instance of a fossil Vanessa (a tolerably near relation of our English Camberwell beauty, or peacock butterflies), in the brown coal of Radaboj, near Angram, in Croatia, so perfect that the pattern on the butterfly's wing has escaped obliteration; "and when we reflect on the remoteness of the time from which it has been faithfully transmitted to us, this fact may inspire the reader with some confidence as to the reliable nature of the characters which other insects may afford."

The Vanessa figured (see Lyell, p. 243), retains, says Heer, some of its colours, and corresponds with V. Hadena of India. The accompanying plants in the Miocene marlstone of Radaboj are tropical, including several palms.

I was smoking, and my chimney, from some cause unexplained, and always most mysterious in the habits of chimneys generally, deemed it expedient to smoke also, and puffing out spasmodically vast volumes of pungent gas, drove me to seek refuge in the cook's sanctuary, the kitchen chimney being the only one free from bad habits, and sociably warm and comfortable, as a respectable and well-conducted chimney ought to be. Everything was still and quiet, and as I sat watching the curling wreaths of fragrant smoke (as all Englishmen do), that, making their way up from the cosy pipe, twist and turn themselves into all sorts of strange fantastic shapes, my reverie was disturbed by a slight rustling noise, that evidently came from under the grate. On looking down, I saw at first about a dozen "nasty black-beetles" (cockroaches) making most erratic and hurried gallops through the cinders. It was quite clear that something was wrong. A hawk suddenly wheeling over a hedge, and coming plump among a flight of small birds—a beadle appearing like a ghost amidst a crowd of mischievous urchins—would have hardly created a greater panic, or produced a more general state of disturbance. The cause was soon evident: slowly marching from their holes in the walls, came a sortie of crickets—big, powerful, handsome fellows they were. Just as greyhounds course a hare, or the hunting-spider pounces of his prey, so did the crickets set upon and wage deadly war on the cockroaches. Quick as thought a cricket pounced upon and seized a cockroach much larger than himself, and, fixing his powerful nippers on him, like a steel trap, dragged him off to the hole, and, backing in, tugged the luckless beetle to inevitable destruction. It was often a stiff trial of strength, a rough-and-tumble battle; but the "pale face" always had the best of it, and invariably vanquished and tugged away his dingy foe. Several crickets I watched backing up the smooth iron of the stove, each with a heavy beetle in its mouth; twice I saw a beetle slip from its captor, and fall to the ground, but no sooner had he reached the floor than another cricket had him, or the one who had lost his prisoner would rush down and again grab him savagely, and try the system of backing up again. I never saw one attempt to carry up the load; they knew, by some inherent and marvellous intelligence, that it was easier to drag it up than to carry it. There was one Brobdingnag beetle, that evidently depended for safety on size and strength; whether he scorned to seek safety by running away, or whether he was too fat and portly for rapid progression, I could not clearly make out; at any rate, I saw him set upon several times and seized; but "no go." He was manifestly too ponderous to be upset or towed away, so he remained during the battle looking on in sullen indifference. I watched this hunt among the black-beetles for some time, until the cricket-hunters, having each bagged his beetle, disappeared into their lodges, and I, growing sleepy, turned into bed, and turned over in my mind this to me novel proceeding on the part of this household pet. I have watched the "cricket on the hearth" on and off since I was a boy, and knew him to be of a prowling, dishonest, destructive disposition, given to nibbling holes in stockings left to dry, eating the black off boots, making predatory excursions over the kitchen dresser for stray bits of anything nice; but never did I know he was such a blood-thirsty cannibal as I then discovered him to be.

A lady and gentleman witnessed the conflict as well as myself, so I could not have been deceived, or, having smoked myself into a state of nightmare, have dreamt it. No, it was all true; the cherished little minstel enshrined in poetic fancies, celebrated alike in song and story as gentle, innocent, compassionable, the embodiment of every domestic virtue, was a sanguinary savage—a very Dahomey.

It may be said in his favour, that the black gentleman he destroyed was a most objectionable pest; but, nevertheless, it does not exempt him from the charge of being a murderer, and all his poetry, like "Othello's occupation," has gone from me for ever.