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It has discovered that 57 species of birds feed upon scale-insects dreaded enemies of the fruit grower. It has shown that woodpeckers as a class, by destroying the larvae of wood-boring insects, are so essential to tree life that it is doubtful if our forests could exist without them.
In the dead bough of a lilac-tree the dark-hued Xylocopa, the wood-boring bee, is busy tunnelling her gallery. In the shade of the rushes the Praying Mantis, rustling the floating robe of her long tender green wings, "gazes alertly, on the watch, her arms folded on her breast, her appearance that of one praying," and paralyses the great grey locust, nailed to its place by fear.
But there their children are, in myriads; and ere a generation has passed, every dead gray stem will have disappeared before the ants and beetles and great wood-boring bees who rumble round in blue-black armour; the young plants will have grown into great trees beneath the immeasurable vital force which pours all the year round from the blazing sun above, and all be as it was once more.
The woodpeckers are the great natural protection of the forests by waging constant warfare on the wood-boring insects and ants beneath the bark where no other birds can reach them. They are equally useful in an orchard except that here man may only at great trouble and expense partly hold them in check.
Their aimless attacks on other species approaching or passing near them, even on large birds like hawks and pigeons, is a habit they have in common with many solitary wood-boring bees.
White ants do not eat it, nor, excepting when first cut, and before it is barked, do any of the wood-boring beetles. Sometimes they lay quiet until I was passing underneath, and then shaking a branch of the nispera tree, they would send down a shower of the hard round fruit. Fortunately I was never struck by them.
This curious combination of characters shows that the aye-aye is a very specialized form that is, one whose organization has been slowly modified to fit it for a peculiar mode of life. From information received from its native country, and from a profound study of its organization, Professor Owen believes that it is adapted for the one purpose of feeding on small wood-boring insects.
In the most famous of these suits, he was defended by Daniel Webster and opposed by Rufus Choate, so that we see interwoven in the story of rubber the names of two of the greatest statesmen this country has produced. For the very first of the rubber story we may thank a little wood-boring beetle, and the way nature has of helping her children to protect themselves.
Humming-birds, to my mind, have a much closer resemblance to the solitary wood-boring bees and to dragon-flies. It must also be borne in mind that insects have very little time in which to acquire experience, and that a large portion of their life, in the imago state, is taken up with the complex business of reproduction.
It has discovered that 57 species of birds feed upon scale-insects dreaded enemies of the fruit grower. It has shown that woodpeckers as a class, by destroying the larvae of wood-boring insects, are so essential to tree life that it is doubtful if our forests could exist without them.
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