Marvels of the Universe 



339 



Ants are not so patient and trv to hustle the 

 giant awav, crawling underneath it, tugging and 

 pulUng, even seizing its beak and trying to draw- 

 it bv force from the wound. The Cicada, whose 

 motto seems to be " Anything for a quiet Hfe," flies 

 off to another branch and leaves the marauders 

 in possession. It will thus be seen that the re- 

 lations subsisting between the ants and Cicada (or 

 grassh'ioper, as the Greek name of the creature 

 is translated) are just the reverse of the case as 

 related by ^Esop, where, we are told, the Cicada, 

 aftei -pending the summer in singing and dancing, 

 on trie approach of winter went to the ant and 

 begged for a morsel of food. The ant, however, 

 replied that it should work during the summer and 

 !a\- up its own food for the winter, and refused 

 to relieve it. 



THE BLACK COCKATOO ■ 



BY SIR H.\RRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G. 



It is curious in the coloration of birds what a 

 tendency there is for closely-allied species to pass 

 from white to black or dark-grey, possibly because 

 such birds may have been derived from ancestors 

 of grey plumage. Thus we have not only white 

 swans, but black swans, and, curiously enough, 

 the cygnet of the white swan is born of a grey colour, 

 whereas the cygnet of the black swan is almost 

 white in tint ; and whilst there are white Cockatoos 

 — those which are best known and commonest — 

 there are also black Cockatoos. In point of beak 

 development and body size the Black Cockatoos 

 are perhaps the most noteworthy of this remarkable 

 sub-family of Parrots. 



When adventurous Italians and Portuguese 

 began to penetrate to Further India in the fifteenth 

 and early sixteenth centuries, they noted with great interest in the stories of their travels the 

 " white " parrots which they saw in the possession of Malays. This is the first mention of Cockatoos 

 in Uterature, but the birds referred to had really been brought by ships from much farther east 

 than the Malay Peninsula or Sumatra. The Cockatoo sub-family is restricted in its range to the 

 Austrahan Continent and the Australasian Islands of New Guinea, the Moluccas, Timor, Celebes, 

 etc., with one outlying representative in the Phihppine and Sulu Islands. There are legends col- 

 lected by trustworthy German travellers of gigantic Black Cockatoos living in the unexplored 

 interior of New Guinea. These may some day come to light and make the example of a Black 

 Cockatoo here illustrated paltry in comparison. But Banks' Black Cockatoo is a sufficiently 

 remarkable bird in appearance, and was the first example of the genus to be discovered by, or 

 through, that most noteworthy pioneer explorer of the British Empire, Sir Joseph Banks, the 

 companion of Cook. Banks probably obtained his first examples of this Black Cockatoo from New 



I'hnto bti] 



[//. Main, F.E.S. 



THE MOLE CRICKET. 



Being like the Mole 

 Cricket is remarkable fo 

 mucH like those of the 

 diggifig appliances. 



a burrowing animal, the Mole 



having its fore-limbs shaped 



Mole, and equally efficient as 



