Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/483

18, 1863.] fact which may be mentioned. It is that the number of cells made is always proportioned to that of the different bees to be produced. Another curious fact is that when several queen bees are produced they are all killed but one. If more than a single female were allowed to remain in the hive, a greater number of eggs would be laid than the working bees would be able to supply with cells.

Monkeys are very fond of birds’ eggs. In some countries where these animals abound, birds, in order to preserve their eggs, will make their nests at the end of the slender branches of trees, so that the monkeys cannot reach them.

Woodpeckers will carefully remove the bits of wood which they break off a tree in making a hole in it for their nest—evidently to prevent persons discovering their abode. For the same reason many birds carefully remove the excrements of their young from the neighbourhood of the nest.

There is in South America a very large species of spider which in a similar way throws out strong threads from one tree to another, each of them many feet apart. When this has been accomplished, it is easy for the spiders to convey their threads backwards and forwards, until a web or network has been completed, sufficiently strong to capture any small birds which may fly against it, and on which these spiders feed.

Let me give one more anecdote of a spider, which was communicated to me by three eye-witnesses of the fact, persons of the highest respectability, who were residing at Oporto at the time it took place. In the house of one of the principal ecclesiastics in that town, there was a room which was set apart for the reception of grains of Indian corn which had been threshed out. Each of these grains must be at least as heavy as two or three of our common wheat. On visiting this room one day, the owner of it perceived a grain of the maize suspended from the ceiling of the room by a single thread thrown out by a spider, and which was being slowly but gradually drawn upwards. Surprised at this very unusual sight, he invited several persons, and among others, my three informants, to witness it. How the spider contrived to fix its thread to the grain, or what its motive was in drawing it up to its nest, must remain in doubt, but it is a curious circumstance. There are, indeed, a thousand little facts in natural history, either in this or other countries, which escape being recorded, either from their being thought too trivial, or from a want of a ready mode of communicating them.

It is said that when a scorpion is surrounded by a circle of burning coals or wood, and begins to feel the heat, it runs about to seek some mode of escape, but finding none, it stings itself and immediately dies. It is a common amusement among the soldiers at Gibraltar, where these reptiles abound, to witness the fact above stated. Here we have an instance of self-destruction, and of a knowledge of a mode of getting quit of a painful existence.

It is an interesting fact that all birds make the size of their nests, not in proportion to the number of their eggs, but in proportion to the number and size of the young it will have to contain. 2em

Ducie with her reaping-hook Went homeward through the vale, Where shaws are steep and waters deep, High up in Harwood Dale.

The rooks were cawing overhead; The beck ran loud below; The hills were red with hazy light; The sun was large and low:

She had not walk’d a mile or more, A mile, but barely twain, When she was ware of some one there Came riding up the lane.

“Now who are you,” the stranger said, “You lissome lass and blithe? And is it in John Ashton’s fields To-day ye whet the scythe?”

He look’d upon her bonny face Or ere he spake; and yet He saw not that her lips were closed, And both her eyes were wet!

“Kind sir, you’re tied to come frae far, Or you would know the tale; John Ashton’s dead this very day,” Said Ducie of the Dale;

“We ken not where the body lies, Nor how he came to die; But he was slain, the neighbours say, Through some foul jealousy.”

“Now God defend your father’s house, The homestead and the farm! But who could be John Ashton’s foes? And who should do him harm?

“For, as I rode by Hackness woods And sweet Saint Helen’s cell, The sawmill folks they told me there He was both wick and well.”

“I wish he was!” the maiden said; “To bring him back to me I’d creep by night round Helen’s cell Upon my bended knee:

“For, sir, he was my master dear, My sweetheart true and all; And while he lived, to me and mine No evil could befal.

“It chanced upon the Lammas tide (I mind the day so well Because for him we all of us Were reaping, down the dell),

“While I was throng with binding work, And stooping at the sheaves, He puts a posy in my hair Of poppies and of leaves,

“And ‘See,’ he says, ‘upon your head How close they stick, the flowers! So my heart will, through good or ill, For ever stick to yours.’

’Tis but a twelvemonth’s time since then— And now, to think he’s gone! But I’ll awand we’ll know the hand That did it, ’ere we’ve done!”

Now was it fear, or fret of spur, Or sudden strain of nerve, That shook the rider in his seat, And made his good horse swerve?