452 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



the larvae issuing from these eggs and scientifically devouring their 

 host, taking pains to leave intact until the very last his most vital 

 organs? The orb-weaving spiders have no peers in the art of weav- 

 ing. They know how to fasten marvelously regular webs between 

 the branches of trees, how to pass over rivers on bridges of floating 

 threads, and, when still young, how to use similar threads to take 

 flight through the air as real aeronauts. The sacred Scarab fashions 

 into a pear-shaped ball the oily dung of sheep and into a perfect 

 sphere of foodstuff the coarse excrement of horses ; and certain wasps 

 of the genus Eumenes mold tempered earth into pottery of the 

 most charming design. Face to face with these phenomena which 

 surprise him, man wonders and tries to understand, but especially 

 does he endeavor to protect himself against these strange creatures 

 among which he finds more enemies than aids; prolific and multi- 

 form the minute Phylloxera has succeeded in destroying his vine- 

 yards; voracious and migratory the bulky locusts advance in num- 

 berless legions to lay waste his crops ; various flies and gnats sting 

 und infect his cattle. And he himself does not escape the virus 

 secreted by these terrible pests; mosquitoes threaten him with ma- 

 laria in the vicinity of marshes and the Glossinas with sleeping sick- 

 ness in the damp and shady jungles of the African tropics; fleas 

 bring him the germs of plague, and filthy lice that of the typhus 

 fever which claimed so many victims in the East at the beginning 

 of the present war. 



What a contrast with the vertebrates, which form the other high- 

 est point of the animal kingdom ! No doubt among the latter there 

 exist cruel and voracious species; some of them are openly hostile 

 to us, and many are remarkable for their instincts and their skill. 

 But where do we find the excessive variety of forms and the oddity 

 of habits which are the heritage of the Articulates ? Georges Maeter- 

 linck gives us a poetic version of this striking contrast : " The insect," 

 he says, " does net belong to our world. The other animals, even the 

 plants, notwithstanding their mute existence and the great secrets 

 which they jealously guard, do not seem wholly strangers to us. In 

 spite of everything we have a certain feeling of terrestrial kinship 

 with them. They may surprise, nay, astonish us, but they fail to 

 upset the very foundations of our concepts. The insect, on the other 

 hand, displays something that seems incongruous with the habits, 

 the morals, the psychology of our globe. Apparently it comes from 

 another planet, more monstrous, more vigorous, more demented, more 

 atrocious, more infernal than ours. Vainly does it seize upon life 

 with an authority and a fecundity unequaled here below ; we can not 

 accustom ourselves to the idea that it is part of the scheme of that 

 nature of which we fondly believe ourselves to be the favorite chil- 

 dren. With this amazement and this failure to understand is mingled, 



