250 HOUSE, GARDEN, AND FIELD 



adapted to large size by its mechanical construction, and 

 actuated by muscles of far greater power, that it compares 

 so well as it does with an insect. If it resembled an insect 

 in build and composition, we may safely predict that it 

 could not even stand. 



THE ABODES OF INSECTS. 



The versatility of insects is very great, as a glance at 

 their places of abode shows. There are insects which 

 live in the earth, on trees, in ponds and streams, in torrents, 

 in the sea, in brine-pits, on glaciers and snow-fields, in 

 hot springs which scald the hand. A small beetle will live 

 and multiply for years in a bottle of argol (crude potassium 

 tartrate), drawing its whole nourishment from that un- 

 inviting substance. More than one insect finds its home 

 and its food in the living colonies of the freshwater sponge. 

 A leaf is not too thin for burrowing larvae of many kinds 

 (see p. 15). Many caterpillars and fly-larvae run their 

 tortuous galleries between the upper and lower epidermis 

 of bramble-leaves, buttercup-leaves and many others, 

 pupating in the excavated space, and emerging as moths 

 or flies, having accomplished their whole growth at the 

 expense of a small fraction of the living cells which are 

 contained in a single leaf. 



INSECTS AND HONEY. 



Honey is a product worked out by insects and flowers 

 for their mutual advantage. The flowers contribute more 

 than the insects, for they can apparently make a little 

 honey by themselves, but the co-operation of insects was 

 necessary to the extensive and profitable natural industry, 

 which has sprung from such unimportant beginnings. 



Honey occurs in nature either as bee-honey or flower-honey. 

 It is not known for certain that these two kinds differ in 

 any material respect. The honey-bee collects sweet juices 

 from flowers, stores them in its crop (an enlarged part of 

 the gullet) and then disgorges them into a comb made 



