CHAPTER IX.

OTHER INSECT PRODUCTIONS USEFUL TO MAN 154

INTRODUCTION.

If we are struck with wonder and admiration at the progress of the arts and manufactures, and have daily reason to congratulate ourselves on the skill and ingenuity of our fellow-creatures, by which our comforts and conveniences are so much increased; it must also occasionally have crossed our minds, that some of the meaner creatures, though not gifted with our reasoning powers, and therefore not able to profit by the experience of the past, are yet employed in their several departments, and according to their several wants, in exceedingly curious and useful manufactures, mostly designed for the shelter and preservation of themselves or their offspring, but serving, not unfrequently, a higher purpose, in administering to the wants of mankind.

In reading the history, or in watching the proceedings of birds and insects, how many remarkable instances do we meet with of that which may be called manufacture, though performed without hands! How curious to watch in the early spring the proceedings of those busy basket-making birds, the rooks! Rude and clumsy as their nests may at first appear, it is just the sort of workmanship best calculated for their wants. They do not, indeed, choose the smooth and flexible osier-twigs which we should think necessary for basket-making, but they contrive by means of brittle, dead, forked sticks, to plait together a strong bristling out-work, within which they interweave a finer basket-work of fibrous roots, rude indeed, but not inelegant or unsuitable. Then, among birds and insects too, what persevering and industrious carpenters, masons, tailors, miners, and weavers may we not find. Perhaps there are not many persons who have watched the mason-wasps boring their galleries in brick or sand, or building the round towers which serve them as out-works; nor the mason-bee, as she plasters together her neat mud-wall cottage or cell, as the future habitation of her young; but there are few persons unacquainted with the masonry of the chimney swallow, or of the house-martin twittering on the eaves. With no other tools than those which nature supplies, how cleverly do these creatures shape and mould their nests into the required form, using for their work a mortar carefully prepared by their own labour and skill, and just of the consistency required. Few, again, may have had an opportunity of seeing carpenter-bees boring holes in posts or palings, and forming their smoothly chiselled cells, or of inspecting the partitioned galleries dug out in old timber by carpenter-wasps; but perhaps many persons have observed the colonies of emmets, or carpenter-ants, working in the trunks of decaying oak or willow trees; or they may have listened to that interesting carpenter-bird, the wood-pecker, tapping and boring into trees, in pursuit of insects, and for the purpose of making a nesting-place for its young. Most of us know only by hearsay that there are tailor-birds, common enough in American orchards, who sew together broad pieces of grass to make their nests, working them through and through, as if actually done with a needle; but almost every one can say from his own knowledge, that there are weaver-birds, such as our common hedge-sparrow and chaffinch, who weave a circular piece of haircloth for the interior of their nests, each hair being collected and interwoven singly, and always bent so as to lie smoothly in the hollow of the nest. Then who shall describe all the wondrous proceedings of tent-making caterpillars, upholsterer-bees, turret-building ants, net-making spiders, paper and card-making wasps, and spinning worms? Volumes have been written, and volumes might still be written on the history of these creatures. Any one possessing a garden, and taking delight therein, has ample opportunity of watching the habits of birds and insects, and of confirming, if not of adding to, the accounts given by naturalists, of the commoner species. But we must still be indebted to the patient observations of those who have made insects or birds their especial study, for many of the most curious particulars, and for all our knowledge of rare or foreign species.

Interesting as is the whole subject of bird and insect manufactures, there is one department in which we are more concerned than the rest; namely, that in which the product can be applied to our own use, either in the way of food or clothing. Now this department is supplied wholly by insects, no bird, that we are aware of, producing by its own manufacturing powers, any substance that can be so employed, unless, indeed, we except the curious edible nests of the Java swallow, which have been converted by the taste of oriental epicures into an article of food.

Let us then proceed to notice such of the insect manufactures as are useful to man, and trace, at the same time, the history and performances of these small but not insignificant manufacturers.