In a corner of the garden, where the lilacs grew tall and broad, Ruth was waiting for something to happen. She had a feeling, as she told Belinda, that the most interesting things were coming, for the wind had been kissing her cheeks and her hair, just as though it was saying to her, “Watch now. Watch closely and listen.” Then, too, the garden seemed to be alive. Bees droning over the flowers; collecting their tiny balls of wood or 149for their families; ants running here, there, and everywhere; not to mention many other winged creatures, some of whom were made after a fashion so queer that Ruth, forgetting how rude it is to make personal remarks, asked of one:
“If you please, what is that long piece which seems to be growing from the tip of your body? It looks like Mary’s stove hook when she sticks it in the lid.”
“That,” was the rather short answer, “is my , and it isn’t growing from the tip of my body, but from the top of my thorax. It seems to me you have never seen an ensign fly before.”
“No, I never did. Please, what does ensign mean?”
“The dictionary will tell you that. All I know is some man got an idea that we carried our aloft like a flag or ensign, and so named us ensign fly. We are not flies, to begin with, but we have to keep any name they choose to on us. 150Now take Mrs. Horntail, who wants——”
“Thank you, I can speak for myself,” interrupted the horntail, sharply. She was quite handsome, with her black abdomen banded with yellow, her red and black head, yellow legs and horn, and dusky wings.
“I like my name. It means something, for I have a horn on my tail, and, what’s more, I use it. You should see me bore into solid green wood. None of your dead wood for me. I am not content with one hole either. I bore a great many, and in each I drop an egg, and when my babies hatch they get fat on the sap wood of the tree.”
“There seem to be such a lot of things to eat trees,” said Ruth.
“Perhaps there are, but I am interested in horntail babies only. They do their share of eating too, and when they grow sleepy they make of chips and silk from their own bodies, and go to sleep. After they wake they are changed into winged creatures, who naturally do not care to live 151in the tree any more. So they their way through the bark to the outside world and——”
“Not if the woodpeckers and I can help it,” interrupted an ichneumon fly, keeping her antennæ in constant motion. She seemed to have long streamers floating from the back of her, and, altogether, Ruth thought her even queerer looking than the ensign fly.
“Those streamers are my ovipositor,” she explained to Ruth. “The thing I lay eggs with, you understand. When I shut them together they form a sort of , with which I bore into a tree, way, way in, where the fat horntail babies are chewing the sap wood, and so ruining the tree. Into their soft bodies I lay my eggs and when my children hatch they eat, not the tree, but the horntail baby. It is a wonderfully good riddance, and so the farmer and fruit grower consider us their friends and call us ‘trackers,’ because we find the hiding places of so many pests that harm the plants.”
“You can’t get my babies,” said Mrs. Saw Fly. “I haven’t a horn, but I have a saw, and, though it will not bore into wood, it saws fine in green leaves. Of course I drop an egg in each , and soon there’s a all around it, and when my children hatch they rock in nut cradles, and the sap which gathers there is their food.”
“Talk about gall cradles,” said a gall fly, “my sisters and I are the fairies who make them to perfection. Each of us has a different plant or tree which she prefers, and each follows her own fashion in making , and we puzzle even the wise men. Have you ever seen the brown galls that grow on oaks?”
“Why, of course,” answered Ruth, glad the question was such an easy one.
“Well that’s something, but I doubt if you have noticed the coloured sponge that sometimes grows around the stem, or the branch of currants from 153the spot where the tree intended an to be, or the tiny red apple-like ball on the leaf.”
Ruth shook her head. “They must be very pretty,” she said.
“Pretty? I should say so. They are all different kinds of galls too, and we gall flies make them. Sometimes we sting the leaf, sometimes the , and sometimes the stem, and always just the kind of cradle we intended grows from it, and the egg we laid there hatched into a baby grub, ready to eat the sap.”
“Then you know about the one on the
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