INSECT STCDY FOR RECREATION OR RESEARCH 



527 



too, curious anatomies, adaptations to 

 all sorts of conditions, vestiges of ancient 

 structures and the very newest wrinkles 

 in many lines. Insects have embryos 

 too; apparently almost anything may 

 happen between the time the sperm 

 enters the egg and the time when new 

 eggs are formed, or there may be no 

 sperm — not even a male. Sometimes 

 this happens regularly every other 

 generation, sometimes the Amazonian 

 state lasts for an indefinite number of 

 generations and then males appear. 

 Why? Other groups of animals show a 

 similar condition of affairs but they are 

 not in my yard, or in yours, and we must 

 have a compound microscope to see 

 them. \Yhen it comes to the study of 

 inheritance I venture to say that one 

 certain species of insect has taught us 

 more about the intricate laws governing 

 the transmission of characters, the re- 

 lation between these anfl the chromo- 

 somes in the germ cells, about sex itself, 

 than all the backboned animals put 

 together. Each individual of that spe- 

 cies took from the meager budget of the 

 biological department merely a minute 

 bit of rotten banana for food and a milk 

 •or oli\e bottle was a luxurious cage for 

 hundreds of them. 



But let us come down to earth and 

 see how our pocket books and, indeed, 

 our very lives are affected by insects. 

 Even I hesitate about mentioning the 

 relation between the yellow fever mos- 

 quito and the Panama Canal; but have 

 you or any of your famih- ever had 

 malaria? An insect did it. Did your 

 baby have "summer complaint" last 

 season? Very likely a fly fell into the 

 milk or walked over the butter. The 

 fly's feet were not clean but he could n't 

 help it. Neither can the mosquito 

 help giving you malaria, nor our neigh- 

 bors to the south, yellow fever. Prob- 

 ably the parasites they carry, and in- 



cidentally pass on when they come for a 

 meal, worry them too. We have all 

 heard about the tsetse flies and the 

 keeping of horses and cattle out of cer- 

 tain parts of iVfrica. Apparently tsetse 

 flies have been at this trick for some 

 time as there were Glossinse in Colorado 

 during Miocene times and Henry Fair- 

 field Osborn believes they may account 

 for the disappearance of certain mam- 

 mals from North America. 



It has been said that old maids are 

 the support of the British Empire for 

 they keep cats; cats destroy field mice 

 which prey upon bumblebee's nests; 

 bumblebees insure seeds to red clover; 

 red clover makes good beef; and good 

 beef makes big strong men who extend 

 and keep up the British Empire. It is 

 typical of human arrogance and egotism 

 that the beginning and end of that 

 amazing chain of logic should be Homo. 

 Bombiis is far more important. She 

 went bustling about fertilizing clover 

 and other plants before there was a 

 British Empire, or old maids either. 

 Mice may have broken into her nest 

 but she did not need the pampered 

 nuisance of Egyptian heathenism to take 

 care of that. We stretch out our hands, 

 sigh, and mournfully quote " Full many 

 a flower is born to blush unseen and 

 waste its sweetness on the desert air." 

 Unseen? Waste? Do you really think 

 the petals were painted or the perfume 

 distilled for the sake of an animal who, 

 if he does not pass them by unseen or 

 unsmelt, is apt to break off the flower 

 and shortly throw aside its withered 

 beauty, or else to breed and breed the 

 plant until he has succeeded in making 

 it dift'erent, an "improvement" upon 

 the work of its Creator? Those petals 

 and those perfumes were developed 

 quite independently of man and for the 

 attraction of what he sometimes dis- 

 dainfully calls "bugs." 



