26 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



3. Plants have to support guests of every size and shape. 

 The butterfly and its less gaudy relations drink with their 

 long trunks sweet honey out of gorgeously colored flower- 

 cups ; four-winged bees carry away the precious dust of 

 anthers in large spoons fastened to their thighs ; gall-insects 

 pierce with sharp daggers the tender leaf, drink its refresh- 

 ing juice, and deposit their eggs in the delicate texture ; 

 beetles gnaw and saw with a hundred curiously shaped in- 

 struments through the hardest wood of noble trees ; naked, 

 helpless-looking worms make the very trunk their cover 

 and their home, and with sharp augers often destroy whole 

 forests. The ingenious ant of South America has its winter 

 residence in the warm ground, and its cool summer-house 

 on tall plants. For there grows on the banks of the Ama- 

 zon River a gigantic reed, nearly thirty feet high, which is 

 frequently crowned with a large ball of earth, like the 

 golden globe on the utmost end of a lofty church-steeple. 

 This is the comfortable home of myriads of ants, which re- 

 tire to these safe dwellings, high and dry, at the time of 

 rains, and during the period of inundation, rising and de- 

 scending in the hollow of the reed, and living on what they 

 find swimming on the surface of the water. 



4. Another curious lodger of a South American plant 

 is the famous cochineal-bug, well known from the precious 

 red color that bears its name, and which it draws from a 

 certain cactus until its body becomes impregnated with the 

 brilliant scarlet. It is probably the most sedentary of all 

 insects, making but one short journey in early life, and 

 then settling down for ever upon one and the same spot. 

 As soon, namely, as the young insect leaves its egg, it 

 manifests great activity and a restless desire to travel. 

 But, alas ! it finds itself upon a prickly, thorny stem, 

 hanging high in the air, and in contact with no other. 

 But Nature soon comes to its aid, and sends a small spider 

 to spin a silken thread from branch to branch. Upon this 



