The Adventures of a Grain of Dust Part 11

THE ANT WHO DIDN'T KNOW HIS TRADE

As you may suppose, this is real architectural engineering and no place for amateurs. I once saw a foolish worker starting a roof from the top of one of the side walls without paying any attention to the fact that the other wall was much higher. The result was he struck the middle of it, instead of joining it at the top. Another ant pa.s.sing, possibly the supervising architect, saw what was going to happen. So what does he do but stop and tear down the other's work and build the ceiling over again!

"There! _That's_ the way to put in a ceiling," he seemed to say. "For goodness sake, where _did_ you learn your trade?"

Huber, the famous student of ants, saw two of these wonderful insects do the very same thing.

Sometimes the situation is such that it is necessary to build a very wide ceiling, so wide that it would fall of its own weight unless supported in some way. Then what would you do; that is, if _you_ were an ant?

"Why, I'd put up pillars to hold it."

That's exactly what the ants do; they put up pillars; but instead of using steel beams, as men do in this day of steel, the ant architects make pillars of clay--build them up with pellets, little clay bricks which they shape with their mandibles--their jaws.

But the ants seem to have some of the methods of steel construction, too; the use of girders and things. Ebrard, a French student of ants, tells how, when a certain roof threatened to fall, some Sir Christopher Wren of the ant world used a blade of gra.s.s as a girder, just as Sir Christopher in his day put in girders to support the roof of Saint Paul's Cathedral, and as men use steel girders to-day. The ant fastened a little ma.s.s of earth on the end of a gra.s.s stalk growing near to bend it over; then gnawed it a little at the bottom to make it bend still more, and finally fixed it with mud pellets into the roof.

But here's something that will make you smile! You have heard about the lazy man down in Arkansas with the hole in his roof? You remember he never mended it in dry weather because it didn't need it, and when it rained he _couldn't_ mend it on account of the rain!

RAINY-DAY WORK IN THE ANT WORLD

Well, these _Formica fusca_ folks are as different from that Arkansas man as anything you could imagine. First of all, being ants, they are anything but lazy; secondly, they never put off needed work on their roofs on account of rain. In fact, they _choose_ the first wet day to do it. As soon as the rain begins they build up a thick terrace on the roof of the old dwelling, carrying in their jaws little piles of finely ground earth which they spread out with their hind legs. Then, by hollowing out this roof, they turn it into a new story. Last of all they put on the ceiling. You see the rain helps them in mixing their clay.

There are ants that build up vaulted viaducts or covered ways, and they use clay for that.[13] They make the clay by mixing earth with saliva.

Some of these viaducts reach out from the house--the ants' house--to their "cow" pasture.

[13] The scientific name for this particular kind of ant is _Lasius niger_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ANT CARRYING ONE OF HER COWS]

You know about how ants keep cows, little bugs called aphids? The aphids feed on plants, and the clay viaducts protect the ants from their enemies and from the sun in going to and from the pasture; for this particular family of ants doesn't like the sun. They make clay sheds for their cattle, too. Here and there along the clay viaduct are large roomy s.p.a.ces, cow-sheds, so to speak--where the little honey cows gather when they aren't feeding. Another kind of ant builds earth huts around its cow pastures. The large red ants (_F. rufa_), sometimes called "horse ants," build hills as large as small hayc.o.c.ks.

II. THE TERMITES AND THEIR TOWERS OF BABEL

But speaking of big buildings, did you ever hear of a skysc.r.a.per a mile high? Well the home of the six-footed farmer I am going to tell you about now is as much taller than he is as a mile-high skysc.r.a.per would be taller than a man. The remarkable little creatures that build these skysc.r.a.pers are called "termites." Termites are also known as "white ants." This seems funny when we know that they are neither "ants" nor are they white. The young of the workers are white, to be sure, but the grown-ups are of various colors, and never milky white as they are when young. The termites were first called "white ants" in books of travel because the termites the travellers saw were the young people.

HOW TERMITES ARE LIKE THE ANTS

The termites are really closer relatives of dragon-flies, c.o.c.kroaches, and crickets than of the ants, but they do look a great deal like an ant, and they have many of the ways of the ants. As in the case of ants, all the members of one community are the children of one queen. The king lives with the queen in a private apartment. Sometimes--as with human royalties--the king and queen will have separate residences, but the termite royalties always live in the same house with their people; they are very democratic.

Some kinds of termites live in rotten trees, which they tunnel into, and that is their contribution to soil-making; while others build great, big solid houses of earth and fibres, mixed. These houses are called "termitariums," and are six, eight, ten, even twenty-five feet high; fully 1,000 times the length of the worker. Think of a man five feet high, and then multiply by 1,000, and you see you have got nearly a mile!

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKYSc.r.a.pERS A MILE HIGH

"Some kinds of termites build great, solid houses of earth and fibres mixed. These houses are six, eight, ten, even twenty-five feet high, fully one thousand times the length of the worker. Think of a man five feet high and then multiply by one thousand, and you see you have got nearly a mile."]

These termite skysc.r.a.pers aren't much to look at on the outside, but inside they're just fine; they have everything the most particular ant could want. For instance, the termites are right up-to-date in their ideas about fresh air, their houses being well ventilated through windows left in the walls for that purpose. You can see the importance of this fresh-air system when you know there are thousands of termites under the same roof. They also have a sewage system for carrying off the water of the rains. And a fine piece of mechanical engineering the building of it is, too; for these "water-pipes" are the underground pa.s.sages hollowed out in getting the clay to build the homes. The termites build their homes with one hand and dig the sewer with the other, so to speak.

THE THERMOSTATS FOR THE NURSERIES

The termitarium has as many rooms in it as a big hotel--oh, I don't know _how_ many--and they are all built around the chambers of the king and queen. Next to the royal apartments are the pantries, a lot of them, and they are all stored with food. In the upper part of the termitarium are the nurseries--many nurseries--for no one nursery could care for any such numbers of babies as the queen has. Between the nursery and the roof is an air-s.p.a.ce, and there are also air-s.p.a.ces on the sides and beneath. The nursery thus being surrounded by air, the eggs and, when they come along, the babies are protected from changes of temperature.

It's the same principle that's employed in making refrigerators and thermos bottles. The rooms in which the eggs are kept are divided by walls made of fragments of wood and gum glued together. This mixture is a bad conductor[14] of heat or cold. And so the eggs are kept at an even temperature.

[14] A "bad" conductor is often a _good_ thing, as you'll see by looking it up in the dictionary.

While we cannot see any of the termite skysc.r.a.pers in the United States, because we have none of the species of termites that build them, we can see a member of the termite family. This is the common white ant that digs into joists of houses. On the outside of these same joists, and up in the attics of old farmhouses, if there happens to be a broken window-pane, or some other hole through which she can get in, you can see the nest of another tiller of the soil, the wasp. The mason-wasps or mud daubers are the most common. You will find their nests on the rafters of the barn when you go to throw down hay, or when you go into the corn-crib. They have all sorts of fancies--these wasps--about their clay homes and where to build them. Some build on the walls and some in the corners of rafters, others prefer outdoor life. Some want to live alone, others like society. What are known as "social" wasps sometimes build their nests in tiny hollows that they dig in the ground; others fasten their nests to the boughs of trees. The work of these wasps, from the farming standpoint, is useful not alone in grinding the soil, but helping to supply it with humus; for their nests are made of wood fibre, which they tear with their mandibles from gateposts, rail fences, and the bark of trees.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NESTS OF MASON-WASPS]

The carpenter-wasp is both a wood-worker and a clay-worker. He cuts tubular nests in wood and divides them by part.i.tions. We think we're pretty smart, we humans, because we are always picking up ideas, but here's a creature, no bigger than the end of your finger, who has picked up an idea from the carpenter-bee, grafted it on his native trade of clay-worker, and made himself as nice and cosey a country place as you'd want to see!

ABOUT THE WASP, THE FOX, AND THE b.u.mBLEBEE

Here's another example of the same thing, this spreading of good ideas among the neighbors. It's about the fox, the digger-wasps, and the b.u.mblebee. The fox can dig his own burrow when he has to, but if he finds somebody else's that he can use, he just helps himself--provided, of course, the owner isn't Brer Bear, or some other big fellow that Brer Fox doesn't care to have any words with. In the same way the digger-wasps make their own little burrows if they are obliged to, but prefer to help themselves to ones they find already made, although they don't drive anybody else out. They simply take possession of holes left by field-mice. The b.u.mblebee does the same thing. The b.u.mblebee digs a hole a foot or more deep, carpets it with leaves, and lines it with wax.

Leading up to the home is a long, winding tunnel. As b.u.mblebeeville grows bigger there may be two or three hundred bees in one nest. As the b.u.mblebee babies keep coming and coming, the burrow has to be dug bigger and bigger, to take care of them.

III. THE HOUSE THAT MRS. MASON BUILT

But the greatest of bee workers in the soil is the mason-bee. You can get an idea of what a useful citizen the mason-bee is when I tell you that one of the little villages of one species sometimes contains enough clay to make a good load for a team of oxen. Yet for all that, they might have gone on with their work for years and years to come--just as they have for ages in the past--and people wouldn't have thought much about it, if it hadn't been for some boys.

One time, in a village in southern France, a school-teacher, who was getting on in years, took his small cla.s.s of farmer boys outdoors to study surveying--setting up stakes and things, you know, the way George Was.h.i.+ngton used to do. It's a stony, barren land--this part of France--and the fields are covered with pebbles. The teacher noticed that often when he sent a boy to plant a stake, he would stoop every once in a while, pick up a pebble and _stick a straw into it_! That's what it looked like! Then he would suck the straw.

Well, to make a long story short,[15] these pebbles had on them the little clay cells of the mason-bee. Mrs. Mason-Bee fills these cells with honey, lays an egg in the honey, and when the babies come along--don't you see? In other words, Mother Bee not only puts up their lunch for them, but puts them right into the lunch! This makes it convenient all around; for, like almost all insect mothers, Mrs.

Mason-Bee is never there after the babies come.

[15] The whole story is told in the famous book, "The Mason Bee," by Henri Fabre. He was the teacher.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MASON-BEE CELLS AMONG THE ROCKS]

There were so many of these pebbles scattered over the plain, and the bees that were building new homes or repairing old ones flew so straight and so fast between the pebbles and a near-by road that "they looked like trails of smoke," as Fabre expresses it.

Now, you may well wonder why the bees flew clear over to that road to get dirt to build their nests when there was plenty of loose earth right at their own door-steps; right around the pebbles themselves. Isn't that queer?

Well, here's something that sounds stranger still. Mrs. Mason-Bee takes those extra trips because a roadway is so much harder to dig in! It's not because she needs the exercise, goodness knows--this busy Mrs.

Mason-Bee--but because the hard earth of the roadway makes the strongest homes; that is, when she finally gets it dug out and worked up. And here's another thing that will seem odd at first; although the soil she thus works over must be dampened before she can plaster it into the walls of her home, she just won't use damp soil to begin with. Nothing will do her but dust, and dust that she herself sc.r.a.pes from the roadway. The reason of this is that the moisture already in the soil will not answer at all. She has got to knead the soil carefully and thoroughly with saliva, which acts as a kind of mortar. This saliva, of course, she supplies.

And the dust she works with must be as fine as powder and as dry as a bone. Then it absorbs the saliva, and when it dries it is almost like stone. In fact it's a kind of cement, like that men use for sidewalks and for buildings and bridges.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Copyright by Brown Brothers._

FABRE STUDYING THE MASON-BEE]

But this wonderful old teacher and his boys[16] found that even this isn't all this little house-builder and house-keeper has to think of.

She must have dust that is really ground-up stone! So she digs in the roadway where the bits of stone in this stony soil have been ground to powder and then packed hard by the wheels of the farmer's cart and by the hoofs of horses and oxen drawing their heavy loads. But what did Mrs. M. B. do for ground-up stone in the long ages before man came along with his carts? Mr. Earl Reed, who, beside being the distinguished etcher of "The Dunes," is a close observer of nature in general, tells me he has often seen a mason-bee gathering the pulverized stone at the base of cliffs. Evidently the mills of the wind and rain, that we have read of in previous chapters, had Mrs. B's wants in mind too.

[16] The boys were a great help. You ought to see what Fabre himself says about them in that famous book of his.