Part 12 (2/2)

(Fabre's book on the sacred beetle also deals, incidentally, with the Cicada.)

Often one thing is named after another from a merely fanciful resemblance, as, for instance, the ”sea horse.” But the mole cricket really seems to have been patterned on the mole; either that, or both the four-legged and the six-legged moles were patterned after something _else_. Mole crickets are very useful little people to know. You should see how they protect their nest-eggs from the weather and how and why they move their nests up and down with the change of the seasons.

What good to the soil do the insects do that eat up dead-wood?

Scott Elliott, in his ”Romance of Plant Life,” deals with this subject.

The mining bees are very interesting, and some of these days, perhaps millions of years hence, they will be still more interesting, for they are learning to work together, although not to the extent that the bees and ants do. Working together seems to develop the brains of insects just as it does human beings.

Thomson's ”Biology of the Seasons” tells how the mining bees are learning ”team-work.”

The tarantula spider is a relation of the six-footed farmers, you should know, although he is not an insect himself. In ”Animal Arts and Crafts” in the ”Romance of Science” series you will find how, in his digging, he makes little pellets of earth, wraps them up in silk, and then shoots them away, somewhat as a boy shoots a marble.

The same book tells why the trap-door spider usually builds on a slope. It also tells why she puts on the front door soon after beginning her house. (This looks funny, but you wouldn't think it was so funny if _you_ were a trap-door spider and you had a certain party for a neighbor, as you will agree when you look it up.)

The door, by the way, has a peculiar edge to make it fit tight.

What kind of an edge would _you_ put on a door to make it fit tight? (Look at the stopper in the vinegar-cruet and see if it will give you an idea.)

This book also tells about a certain wasp that makes pottery and gets her clay from the very same bank that certain other people depend on for _their_ potter's clay. This wasp sings at her work and has three different songs for different parts of the work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIELD MOUSE AND THE FARMER

When we remember how much soil the field mouse worked over, and so made better, long before man's time on earth--to say nothing of what the mice have done since--doesn't it give an added and deeper meaning to the lines of Burns?

”I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve.

What then? Poor beastie, thou maun live.”

CHAPTER VII

(JULY)

Well said, old mole! Canst work i' the earth so fast?

--_Shakespere: ”Hamlet.”_

FARMERS WITH FOUR FEET

Before we start this chapter--it's going to be about the farmers with four feet, you see--I want to say something, and that's this: _Don't let anybody tell you moles eat roots._ They don't! They eat the cutworms that do eat the roots. Haven't I been in mole runs often enough to know!

Of course, the moles do cut a root here and there occasionally when it happens to be in the way, as they tunnel along, but what does that amount to?

Why, in France they put Mr. Mole in vineyards--on purpose! He's one of the regular hands about the place, just like the hired man.

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