Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/163

sound-producing appendages, and they only can tell what Katy-did, poor Katy herself being obliged to remain silent and listen to the music of her lord. The female can be readily distinguished from the male,—having a long sword-like ovipositor at the extremity of the abdomen. This she uses for boring holes in the ground, in which to deposit her eggs; which are laid about September, and hatched in the ensuing spring. I have often watched their proceedings; and most interesting and amusing it is, and easily managed, by putting a pair of these little leaf-like gems, male and female, into a glass globe with a layer of turf at the bottom, which must be kept damp, and a piece of net, tied over the top to prevent escape.

About twilight, the female begins to lay her eggs, first boring a hole in the ground with her long ovipositor, then using it as a tube for dropping the eggs through into the hole. The male during the whole time carols away, and keeps asserting, "Katy-did it—she did, she did." By keeping this earth through the winter, in the following spring you will obtain the insect larva quite perfect in everything, but that of being destitute of wings.

The favourite home of the Katy-did is amongst the leaves of the "Tacha-mahaca" (Populus balsamifera). But the "Grasshopper-bird" being a full-blooded American, true to its proclivities, is given to spread, and, like a true squatter, everywhere claims its right of pre-emption. The word Tach means grasshopper amongst the Indians of the West and South-west, and a favourite food of the savages is the mahaca cake, made from the bodies of these insects, stripped of their wings, sun-dried, or baked on heated stones, and then ground into flour. Hence the tree on which the Katy-did is found to be most abundant has been named by the Indians Tacha-mahaca.

There are numerous species of the genus; as the narrow-leaved Katy-did (Phaneroptera angustifolia), the oblong leaf-winged Katy-did (Phylloptera oblongifolia), the sword-bearer (Cenocephalus ensiger). The tropics also supply innumerable instances, where the resemblance to leaves and twigs is so truthful that one ceases to feel surprised at the fabulous accounts that have been published of leaves metamorphosed into insects, and insects into leaves and sticks. In an American work of comparatively modern date we read, "On this continent an animated insect often changes itself into a lifeless plant by putting its feet into the ground and allowing them to take root, when they steadily become the stems of a foliated plant."

The "Vegetable insect," from Australia, headed several articles in our own papers some few years ago, which turned out to be only a parasitic plant, growing from the body of a caterpillar of a hawk-moth. In the silkworm a minute fungus (Botrytis bassiana) completely fills the interior of the worm, then bursting through the skin, covers the entire body with a white efflorescence. As a proof how simple matters of science may become magnified into marvellous stories by the uneducated, I will briefly relate a fact that came under my immediate notice.

About three years ago, when residing at Esquimalt, Vancouver's Island (then naturalist to the British North American Boundary Commission), a message reached me that a merchant at Victoria had just received a most wonderful monster, brought to him by an Indian fisherman. The messenger informed me that he had seen the beast; that it was "half bird, half shell-fish;" possessed a perfectly-formed beak, head, and neck, but enclosed in shell as hard as limestone, and "breathed just for all the world like a Christian." Off I started post-haste. Dreams of immortalizing myself by a grand and wonderful discovery—perhaps doing "Barnum," or giving to the world a new and unknown link in the chain of species. Imagine my disgust at being shown only a huge rock-barnacle, vigorously opening and shutting its valvular mouth, impatiently awaiting the anxiously-expected tide.

The owner, a "keen down-easter," literally laughed at my explanation, deeming it a ruse to obtain the wonderful bird-fish at my own price. Of course it died, and I then had it for nothing, and its shell now figures in the British Museum as a monster Ballanus. The old story of the Barnacle geese over again.

Read what quaint old Du Bartas says:—

In the vegetable world, like strange transformations, believed by the woodsman to be the work of enchantment, constantly take place. To cite one instance, where a mahogany-tree changes into a gamboge-tree, a process the mahogany-chopper believes to be due to an evil spirit haunting the woods.

The pods of the Clusia alba et rosea (one of the trees producing the yellow pigment known as gamboge), when fully matured, burst, and the seeds, enveloped in a thick adhesive material, descend to the ground like so many spiders or caterpillars, suspended by a fine thread-like filament. As the seeds swing, blown about by the wind, it often happens that some of them are driven against, and stick fast to a mahogany-tree, take root in the bark, and in the course of a few years change its entire character. The trunk of the mahogany-tree dies, its branches drop off, and in its place stands its usurper, the gamboge-tree.