Part 6

As man has at all times been in the habit of deifying creatures of which he is afraid, it is not surprising that snake worship has existed to a very considerable extent among most of the primitive peoples of the world in localities where the snake is a good deal in evidence, and even among the moderns it is intimately associated with the author of all evil. Among the almost infinite number of legends that surround the snake, and testify to the deep respect in which it has always been held, is that to the effect that earthquakes are due to the movements of a gigantic serpent immured deep down in the centre of the world. Had the snake been gifted with the ordinary powers of locomotion, it is probable that he would have excited a smaller amount of disfavour, but man is given to dislike anything that he does not understand, and the mysterious and silent movements of the snake were to him so unaccountable as to excite antipathy. It is remarkable, however, that the worm, whose mode of progression is somewhat similar, has escaped the same odium. The eye of the snake has unquestionably operated to his prejudice; there is an entire want of expression about it which baffles the effort of man to penetrate its mask, and to get at the creature’s inner nature. Had the snake been endowed with an eyelid and a clear liquid eye, man would have been more inclined to respond to its advances, and to give it the place it requires by his domestic hearth. It is doubtless unjust that the snake should suffer from a defect for which it is not personally responsible, but unfortunately man is not always just in his dealings with the lower order of creation.

The snake varies in dimensions far more than does any other living creature. The dog perhaps approaches most nearly to it in this respect, but the dog is to a great extent what man has made him by careful breeding and selection; and yet even in that case the great St. Bernard is not so large in proportion to the tiny toy terrier as is the giant boa of tropical forests by the side of some of the slender little whip snakes. Undoubtedly the snake in prehistoric times grew to much larger dimensions than at present, and skeletons of snakes have been found in America by the side of which the largest existing python is absolutely insignificant. Indeed, they rival in size the largest sea-serpent, as described by its beholders. The serpent that kept a whole Roman army at bay was but a pigmy to these extinct creatures, and man has reason to congratulate himself that they probably disappeared before he had any opportunity of coming into contact with them.

No theory has been offered by men of science why some species of snakes should be provided with venomous fangs, while others have no such advantage, and there have been hot arguments whether the original father of all snakes was or was not so furnished. The balance of probability would certainly appear to be with those who argue that he must have had venomous teeth. Had it not been so, it is difficult to believe that his descendants could by any process of survival or selection have established poison bags in their jaws, with the necessary apparatus for passing that poison through hollows in the fangs. Upon the other hand, it is easy to understand that had the snakes all been originally so furnished, some of them might, either from accident or from incautiously grasping a round stone under the belief that it was a bird’s egg, have knocked out their fangs, and that their descendants might have been born without them. We have, indeed, an example of similar action in the case of the Manx cat, who, being descended from an ancestor which had, either by traps or otherwise, the misfortune to lose his tail, begot a race of tail-less cats, whose descendants have to the present day lacked the usual caudal appendage. If, then, a cat could transmit this accidental peculiarity to his descendants, there can be no reason to doubt that, in some cases, a snake having lost his poison fangs could be the father of a race of snakes similarly deficient.

As might be expected, the largest snakes all belong to the non-venomous species. Being unprovided with the teeth that enabled their congeners to slay their prey or combat enemies, the fangless snakes would naturally devise other means to procure a living. Having no offensive weapons, they would recognise at once that some entirely novel means must be hit upon. They could neither bite nor tear their prey: they could neither stun it with blows, nor, like the crocodile, drown it. It was, we may suppose, to a snake of exceptional genius that the idea occurred of squeezing a foe to death. The idea was, doubtless, received with enthusiasm, but to be carried into effect against any but the smallest of creatures it was clearly necessary that the fangless snakes should attain far larger dimensions than those possessed by any of the species furnished with poison fangs. However, the idea once mooted, Mr. Darwin’s system of natural selection would do the rest. The smaller individuals remained small, and from them sprang the blind worm and other species of harmless snakes. The larger individuals paired together, and keeping the one object steadily before them, in time their descendants attained the gigantic proportions of the fossil serpents, who could have mastered and made a meal of the Mastodon as easily as the largest boa now existing could dispose of a rabbit. With the disappearance of the huge prehistoric animals, the serpent must have seen that unless he were to perish of hunger it was necessary for him to reduce his size; and by a long process, the exact reverse of that by which he had built up his bulk, he diminished himself to dimensions which, though still vastly greater than those of the poisonous snake, were yet in exact proportion to the size of the animals that were henceforth to furnish him with food.

So far there has been no marked change in the sentiments which man and the snake have entertained towards each other from the earliest times; and it is probable that at no distant date, when man has peopled the world to its utmost limits, the snake will find that it is incumbent upon him to go.

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FROGS.

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THERE can be no doubt that frogs do not stand as high as they ought to do in the estimation of the world. They are regarded as creatures of little account, and their large mouths and general emptiness have told against them, though why this should be so can hardly be explained, seeing that several human beings possessing precisely the same characteristics are regarded as great statesmen. But these physical peculiarities are, after all, a minor consideration, and the low estimation in which frogs are regarded really arises from an irreparable misfortune which has befallen the whole race—namely, their inability to stand upright. It is this inability which has sunk the frog so low in the scale of creation. Had he possessed the power of standing upright, his striking resemblance to a somewhat stout human being would have been so remarkable, that it is probable he would have ranked even higher than the monkey as a type, if not as an ancestor, of man. Any one who has seen well executed specimens of frogs set up in the attitudes of human beings, must have been struck with the extraordinary resemblance, and a community of frogs capable of walking would undoubtedly be regarded by men as the closest assimilation in the animal world to human forms and ways. Frogs, no doubt, owe this loss of the power of walking to the persistent habit of their early ancestors of sitting in the water, a habit which, at first, naturally resulted in lumbago, and finally deprived them and their descendants of the proper use of their lower limbs.

In the earlier ages of the world there is strong evidence that frogs had not lost this power; and the learned may without difficulty assign the origin of all the early legends of pixies, brownies, and dwarfs to the accidental discovery by ignorant rustics of communities of frogs, which had not, as yet, lost the power of walking. It may, of course, be urged that even admitting the existence of troops of little manikins with human motions, this would not account for the long conversations and strange doings reported of the brownies and pixies, were these nothing but frogs with the power of standing and walking upright. But such an argument fails to take into consideration the united power of superstition and imagination. Have not elaborate ghost stories originated upon no more solid basis than a shadow upon a wall, a fluttering garment, or a wreath of evening mist? Are not the Irish peasantry full of stories of the most detailed adventures with fairies, and are not all popular myths built up on the most slender foundations? The frightened peasant who, returning from work in the gloaming, first came upon a tribe of frogs walking about like human beings, would, upon reaching home, scared out of his senses, magnify what he had seen. Not content with describing the tribe of little men, clad in green and brown jerkins, he would be sure to invent further wonders in the way of conversation, and, as his story spread, so it would grow, until the existence of a race of brownies would become locally believed in. The next rustic who came upon the tribe of frogs would of course outvie the first discoverer in the fulness of his details; and thus we can see how, upon the foundation afforded by the frogs who had not yet lost their power of walking upright, the whole superstructure of brownies, pixies, and elves would naturally be raised.

No one who has closely watched the habits of a frog can doubt that he possesses great thinking powers, and a fund of information, inherited or acquired. His habit of sitting motionless is clearly identical with that of the philosophic thinker. There can be no reason why he should so long remain in the same attitude, save that he is meditating. His weather-wisdom is notorious; he descries the approach of wet weather long before any change is visible to the duller sense of man. As an athlete he is remarkable, in spite of his comparatively disproportionate girth; he can leap long distances, and as a swimmer he is unrivalled. Although habitually silent, he is capable of sustaining a lively conversation, and even of singing. These accomplishments he is chary of displaying in this country, having experience of the proneness of the rustic boy to cast stones at him; but in countries such as Italy, where the boy is less aggressive and the frog more numerous, the force and power with which a tribe of frogs will lift up their voices in chorus is astounding.

It has been the opinion of scientific inquirers that the frog could do a great deal more talking than he does if he chose. Certain it is that a frog, when in danger, such as being played with by a cat, can cry like a child, making himself heard two or three hundred yards away. But it is only on an emergency like this, or when assembled in conclave, that the frog cares to break his customary silence. He acquired the habit undoubtedly during the period of his sojourn under water in the guise of a tadpole. During that period of his life he had neither means nor opportunities of exchanging ideas with his fellows, and the result is the same taciturnity in afterlife that would be shown by a human being deprived during his early years of all friendly intercourse with others. That the frog possesses a strong sense of humour is undeniable. The manner in which he will sit, apparently unconscious of the approach of man, until a hand is outstretched to seize him, and will then, with a whisk and plunge, dive headlong into a pool, and lift his head from the water at a safe distance, in evident enjoyment of the trick he has played, is a proof of this.

That frogs are dainty eating is acknowledged by all who have tried them. In this respect their striking likeness upon a small scale to the human race has, doubtless, been advantageous to them, for it is this which has deterred the fastidious from feasting on them,—the idea that there is something approaching cannibalism in the consumption of a frog being still very strong in the uncultivated human mind. It has been urged, as an argument against the near relationship of frogs to the human family, that they build no abodes for themselves; but such abodes would be clearly superfluous in the case of creatures who absolutely prefer being wet to being dry, who are comfortably clothed in handsome waterproof jackets, and prefer to eat their food raw to cooking it. In some respects the frog has an advantage over the human being. He has no trouble whatever with his family, which is a large one, for, from the first, tadpoles are able to set themselves up in life without assistance from their parents.

Frogs vary in colour and habit in different countries fully as much as do the human race. Although, as a family, they prefer marshy places, some species never go near the water from the time they emerge from the tadpole state until they return to it full of family cares. There are other kinds which make their living among trees, climbing with great sureness of foot, rivalling the leaves in their hue, and feeding upon the insects that frequent them. This power of adaptation to circumstances must be taken as another proof of the intellectual development of the frog, and, had the race received as much consideration from man as has fallen to the lot of many animals, there is no saying to what point their intellectual faculties would have developed. As it is, it cannot be denied that they compare not unfavourably with similarly neglected human beings, and the frog can, at least, claim to be on a level with a Digger Indian.

Whether the frog is endowed with courage is a moot point. He has not, it is true, been seen to dispute the passage of his favourite haunts with wild beasts, or even with horses or oxen; but this may arise from magnanimity as well as from want of courage, and he may feel that, being able to enjoy the pool at all times, it would be unjust to grudge a drink occasionally to thirsty animals. As to insects, he is less tolerant, and destroys those who venture on the surface of what he considers his water with promptitude and despatch. Enough has surely been said to show that the frog is worthy of vastly higher consideration at the hands of man than he has been in the habit of receiving, and that, were it not for that unfortunate affliction in the matter of legs, frogs would attract great attention from their striking similarity to men, their meditative habits, their powers of concerted singing, and their great athletic attainments. Now that attention has been called to them, doubtless the race will be seriously studied, and it may be expected that it will be discovered that they possess far higher and finer traits of character than has hitherto been suspected.

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DADDY-LONG-LEGS.

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ONE compensation for the coming of winter is that at that season we are free from the presence of the daddy-long-legs, known to the scientific as Tipula oleracea, who comes among us in the autumn in vast hosts, and makes himself as unpleasantly conspicuous as possible by his earnest and persevering efforts to commit suicide in our lamps and candles. This creature is remarkable as being a standing protest against the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. Nothing could be more unfit than this insect to battle for existence; his flight is slow and weary; he is incapable of dodging his pettiest foes, and his long, useless legs are everywhere in his way. Had there been anything in the theory, the Tipula oleracea would have set to work to shorten his legs, to strengthen his wings, and to attain something of the easy elegance and lightness of movement of his first cousin, the gnat. That it is no fault of his own that he has not done so we may be sure, for evidently the creature is painfully conscious of the clumsiness of his appearance and gait, and is prepared at the shortest of notice to divest himself altogether of the legs which are such an encumbrance to him. The urgency of his desire to commit suicide in the flames is another proof of his consciousness that he is a painful failure, and that the sooner he terminates his existence the better, and he gladly yields up his life on the smallest pressure between the human finger and thumb. He himself is unable to see, and no one else has been able to discover, the raison d’être of his existence. He is certainly not ornamental, nor is he useful. He has no means of defence, and seems to have no joys in his life. He does not appear to have even the pleasure of going to sleep. Other insects are diurnal or nocturnal in their habits, but the Tipula is active all day, and about and on the look-out for candles all night. The closest observer has never seen him close an eye. Even in the grub state his existence cannot be a cheerful one, unless he derives a positive pleasure from the act of devouring everything he comes across. For as a grub, he possesses no legs, and no visible eyes; he is a round, wrinkled, tough tube, and one of the most destructive of the enemies of the farmer and the gardener.

Why in one stage of his life this creature should be altogether legless, while in the other he should possess an absolute superfluity of leg, is a problem which has puzzled the deepest thinkers, and it has been suggested that the abnormal stupidity of the daddy-long-legs is caused by his own ineffectual efforts to grapple with the problem. Nature, indeed, has given to him an infinitesimally small amount of brain. While in the fly and the ant the head bears almost the same proportion to the body as it does in the human species, in the Tipula oleracea it is not the hundredth part of the bulk of the body; indeed, it is questionable whether in all nature a creature is to be found so badly provided with head. Even the rustic mind, which is slow to recognise facts in Natural History, views this unfortunate and misshapen insect with good-natured pity and sympathy. The very village boys abstain from tormenting him, partly perhaps from their feelings of kindly contempt; more because he is too slow and stupid for his chase to cause any excitement; most of all because he parts with his legs and wings so willingly that there can be no pleasure in tormenting a creature who does not care whether he loses them or not. The Tipula is spoken of by rustics as Gaffer-long-legs, sometimes as Peter—or Harry-long-legs, and is credited with a character for harmlessness and blundering well-meaningness, which is sufficiently well deserved in his state as a perfect insect, but is wide of the mark indeed in his larva stage. The wrinkled tube is one of the most voracious of creatures, and nothing comes amiss to it. The roots of grass, turnips, potatoes, and, indeed, almost all vegetables, are equally welcome. When the villa gardener sees with dismay his cherished little piece of lawn turn yellow and gradually wither up, he knows, or ought to know, that it is the work of the grub of the daddy-long-legs. He had, indeed, in the autumn watched swarms of these creatures blundering about on the grass, taking short flights of a foot or two, and settling down again, but it did not then strike him that each and every one of them was hard at work laying eggs, and that their seemingly meaningless flights were only movements from crevice to crevice in the soil, an egg being inserted in the ground whenever the Tipula could find a spot in which she could introduce it. The work of maternity once completed, the daddy-long-legs waits till nightfall, and then hastens to commit suicide at the first friendly light. As many will, if an opportunity be offered, perform this speedy despatch previous to the deposition of their eggs, those who have the wellbeing of their lawn at heart will do well to light a fire of shavings or other brightly burning stuff in the close vicinity of their grass for an hour or two every evening when the daddy-long-legs first begin to appear in form. They will fly into the flames by thousands. Some may urge that such a method is cruel, but death in a large body of flame is instantaneous. Indeed, ocular demonstration is abundant to show that these creatures, as, indeed, most other insects, are scarcely capable of suffering; for, were it otherwise, it is hardly possible that they should, after repeated singeings, continue to fly at a candle flame till they finally succeed in destroying themselves. Where such measures as this are not taken, and the flies are permitted to deposit their eggs in the soil, the only method of safety is by rolling the ground with very heavy rollers, so as to destroy the grubs, but this has only a partial success, as most of them are too deep below the surface to suffer injury from the pressure.

Birds are valuable allies to the farmer and gardener in their war with the daddy-long-legs, but their numbers are wholly insufficient to cope with the evil. Even the most voracious bird would be choked did he try to stow away more than a certain-sized bundle of straggling legs and wings in his crop. Moreover, the Tipula appears at about the same time that plums ripen, and birds greatly prefer stone fruit to daddy-long-legs. As our own taste inclines the same way, we cannot find any serious fault with them on this score. Spiders dispose of a few, but it is remarkable that, awkward and blundering as the daddy-long-legs’ flight is, he very seldom intrudes into the meshes spread for him by the spider. He makes no efforts to avoid a human being, and will fly right into his face with the greatest nonchalance; he will settle in his hair, and cling to his clothes, but he will almost always manage to avoid a spider’s web. In the autumn spiders are extremely plentiful, and their webs spread from bush to bush, and from tree to tree, are a perfect nuisance to passers-by. With the nets spread for them in all directions, it is wonderful how the Tipula manages always to avoid these snares; for, however thickly they may be swarming in the garden, it will need a very careful search to find a single specimen in one of the webs.

This naturally gives rise to the idea that the daddy-long-legs is a far craftier insect than he is generally assumed to be, and that his awkwardness of gait and motion is assumed merely to gain sympathy and toleration; just as a woman pretends to be an invalid when she wishes to coax her husband into giving her something she has set her mind on. There may be something in the hypothesis, but the smallness of head and lack of brains are against the theory; and we prefer to believe that the insect’s power of avoiding the snares of the wily spider is due to some at present undiscovered sense or instinct. The daddy-long-legs has not been used to any extent for edible purposes, but there is no reason why he should not be as good as the locust, who is by no means bad eating. Those who are fond of experiments could easily collect a sufficient number by the aid of a sweep net on any piece of grass during the month of September.

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THE APHIS.

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INDIVIDUALLY the aphis is insignificant; collectively the aphides are a mighty army working incessant damage to man. Whether the locust, the caterpillar, or the aphis effects the greatest injury upon the vegetation necessary to man’s existence is a moot point. Were the locust to be found in all parts of the world, instead of being confined within comparatively limited regions, the palm would certainly be awarded to it, for the locust spares nothing, and destroys every green thing as its armies march along. The caterpillar and the aphis, although far more widely distributed, are less universal in their tastes, and fortunately neither of them has any partiality for cereals, the great staple of man’s food. It may well be believed, however, that were it not that the caterpillar is kept down by the ichneumon, and the aphis by the ladybird and other foes, both would in a very short time multiply so vastly that having devoured every other green thing they would be driven to fall upon the corn crops in their green stage; for when approaching ripeness the cereals are far too hard for mastication even by the jaws of the caterpillar, while the aphis might as well endeavour to obtain sustenance from a stone-wall. It is needless, however, here to enter into a detailed consideration as to the respective merits, or rather demerits, of the three insect scourges; it is enough that one aphis alone is fully capable, if left to its own devices, of developing in the course of a single year into a host so mighty that it would cover the land and wither up and devour all green things. While the caterpillar devours the substance of plants, the aphis only sucks their juices, and kills by so enfeebling the shoots that they are unable to put forth their leaves. It is an awkward, slow-moving creature, with its heavy green body swelled almost to bursting with vegetable juice, supported by legs so thin and fragile that they can scarce hold up its weight; and yet it seems to pervade all nature, and to appear at its season in vast armies, which fall almost simultaneously, it would seem, upon the plants it affects. So sudden and unaccountable is their appearance, that there are many persons who have maintained, and vast numbers still firmly believe, that the aphis is spontaneously produced from the juices of the plants it affects. The rose-grower will go into his garden and watch the young shoots from the leaves making vigorous progress, and he smiles to himself at the thought of how soon the sprays will be covered with rich blossoms. A cold night comes, followed perhaps by a day or two of dull weather. He shakes his head as he inspects his bushes, and marks how the delicate young leaves are slightly discoloured. He knows what will follow. Two or three days later every shoot is closely packed with a layer of the green fly sucking up its vital juices. It is not surprising that the grower absolutely refuses to believe that the whole of this infinite number of creatures were floating in the air waiting to pounce upon his plants at the very instant when, weakened by the frost, they are the less able to resist its attacks.

What renders the problem still more difficult is that the aphis army is not homogeneous. Each plant has its own tribe that prey upon its juices. The bean aphis differs from that of the rose, and this again from the hop fly; and, indeed, the number of varieties of aphis is exceedingly large. This greatly adds to the difficulty of explaining their simultaneous appearance in such countless numbers, for it would be necessary to imagine not only one army of aphides ready to sweep down upon vegetation weakened by frost or east wind, but a number of them, each selecting the particular plants they love, and rejecting all others—one hovering round the town looking out for the rose-trees in its suburbs, another scouring the rural districts in search of beans or peas, a third biding its time until drought or long spell of wet weather shall have weakened the hop bines to a point when they may be in a condition to suit its palate. It must be remembered that their appearance upon a certain plant is not gradual, but almost simultaneous. A week after a sharp frost on a May morning the whole of the rose growers in the district affected by the frost will find their plants attacked by the aphis, while the wail of the hop growers at the appearance of the fly will rise simultaneously over a whole district. The scientific explanation is that the appearance of the aphis in such vast numbers simultaneously is due to its prolific nature, but the practical man refuses to credit the suggestion. The aphis is prolific, but not prolific in the same way as is the white ant. The aphis will produce twenty-five offspring daily, but this will not account in any way for the fact that within a day or two of the pest making its appearance hundreds of thousands are to be found on every rose bush. Could the female aphis, like the termite, produce eighty thousand per day, the argument that the whole of the rose trees in a garden have been covered by the offspring of comparatively few females who found their way there might be accepted readily enough; but the rate of increase is incredible when we know that each female can produce but twenty-five young in twenty-four hours. It would need, then, not a few, but an infinite host of winged females, to account for the phenomenon. That many may pass the winter as eggs in the bark of trees and other places may be granted, but no one has yet observed the vast hordes streaming out from their places of concealment ready to start off in search of peas or beans, roses or hops. Moreover, in seasons favourable to vegetation, when neither frost nor east winds nor prolonged wet nor drought weaken the plants, and they grow robust and strong, what becomes of the armies of green fly that would, had the vegetation been sickly, have pounced down upon it? Nothing could be less scientific than these arguments, but as somehow there is common sense in them, they commend themselves to the minds of the foolish multitude, who, in spite of the teaching of their instructors, still believe the evidence of their own eyes that the aphis is the product of a certain unhealthy state of the juice of plants.

But although the increase at the rate of twenty-five per day by no means accounts for the almost simultaneous appearance of countless millions, it is a ratio that unless checked would by the end of the season absolutely cover the face of the earth, for the young ones so speedily become mothers that it is calculated the descendants of one aphis will during the season number 5,904,900,000. One objection on the part of scientific men to the spontaneous generation theory is that the aphis in other respects is an exception to the general law that governs the lives of all other creatures. It is not necessary for the aphis to have a father. The aphides that appear in spring are all females, and the process of multiplication and re-multiplication goes on with as much regularity as if the male sex had no part whatever in the economy of the world. It is only late in the autumn that the males appear, and it is not until after pairing that the females take to laying eggs, all the previous generations having been born alive. It is clear that when treating of a creature so unique in its habits and ways, the word “impossible” should never be used even by men so absolutely sure of what they assert as are scientific men. It is well, indeed, for man that the six thousand million possible descendants from each spring aphis do not put in their appearance. Happily nature, while in a moment of light-heartedness producing creatures possessed of such extraordinary powers of multiplication, and of no visible place or advantage in the general scheme of creation, thought proper to furnish them with a vast number of foes, whose life should be spent in ceaseless efforts to counteract the effects of this fertility. Chief among these stands the ladybird, but there are numerous others almost as indefatigable and voracious, even without counting man, with his tobacco juice, soap-suds, and fumigating apparatus. Nature has handed over the aphis defenceless to its destroyers. It possesses neither jaws nor sting; it is unprovided with armour, it cannot coil itself up like a wood louse, or assume a threatening aspect like the Devil’s Coach-horse. It is simply a helpless and unresisting victim, whose destiny is to do as much damage as it can to vegetation, and then to be slain. The closest observers have been unable to detect any signs of playfulness or of any other form of enjoyment in the aphis. Its existence is as monotonous as that of the vegetable the juices of which it drinks, and from the juices of which it is popularly believed to have sprung.