Hornets.

Otago Witness, Issue 1777, 12 December 1885, Page 27

Hornets.

" Senex " writes as follows in the Town and Country Journal : — Shortly after my arrival in this district I lived for a short time in a slab and shingled cottage, with a very primitive or earthen floor. I had few visitors and but little to do, so made up mind to study the animal life around, having a natural bent in that direction. One of my first visitors was a well developed hornet, whose approaches I had no wish to encourage ; however, as he did not seem to mean mischief, I allowed him to proceed with operations I didnotquite understand. He wasassiduous for several days in carrying clay past in his legs and mandibles to a quiet corner of the building, and in a few days had completed a conglomeration of oval clay cells, placed horizontally and open mouthed. At this conjuncture, and Avhen the cells where quite dry, I observed the hornet, with an assistant of quite a diverse type, busily engaged in bringing spiders to a particular spot on the floor, and covering them up with very fine sand. dust. I did not at first understand this manoeuvre, but allowed them to proceed. Next morning the hornet and his companion female — slave or assistant, I know not which — were busily engaged in removing the collected spiders to their clay cells, where they were effectually incarcerated by a thin coating of clay paste. In about three weeks I opened a cell and found the larva advancing and some of the spiders gone. I continued to open cell after cell at intervals of a few days, and up to the time of the final escape of the hornet, I found that the incarcerated spiders were possesssed of a certain degree of vitality, which evidently prevented decomposition.' My object in writing you now, is to ascertain if this coadjutor is a female hornet, although different in every repect from what I call the yellow striped male, or a nigger slave (being quite black) pressed into the service. Some anaesthetic is undoubtedly injected into the body of the spiders, or they could not, I think, show symptoms of vitality for three weeks or a month after being hermetically enclosed.

— Tiie Death op Animals. — But what makes whales come on shore when they feel ill ? It looks like suicide— and may be. That birds and beasts in the same way go aside from their comrades to suffer the extreme trial of death is a pathetic fact which is well known. Sometimes, no doubt, their friends desert them. They feel that the companionship of an enfeebled individual is a possible source of danger ; or, perhaps, instinct teaches them thus to avoid the risk of infection. Or, again, it may be that the sign of death is intolerable to them, just as it has"bepn arid is to many human tribes, who leave their dying to pass away in solitude, and will not remain to witness the infirmity of man. Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that in the animal world, as a rule, creatures go nway and die by themselves, and for the water-folk commit what may be called suicide by leaving their own element for one in which they cannot live. — London Telegraph.

— The Mole. — The mole is a specially shrewd person. There arc. few animals so difficult to catch. His abode is a masterpiece of defensive engineering, his entrances and exits most cunningly devised. First of all, having chosen a good site, he makes himself a circular gallery under the ground, of course— and from this drives five passages, starting upwards to a second

aud smaller circular gallery, then from this upper gallery it sinks three shafts down, which converge in the centre in a cup-shaped hollow, which is the dwelling-place and bed-room of the " little gentleman in velvet." When alarmed, therefore, b~y the shaking of the earth, the mole can either run from its couch by any one of three passages into the upper gallery, and thence by any of five, down again into the lower, whence it can vanish by no fewer than nine different exits into space ; or, having a special back door to its bed-room, it can scuttle oft' and make at once into any one of the high roads leading to its citadel that it chooses.