Book of Monsters Part 1

Book of Monsters.

by David Fairchild and Marian Hubbard (Bell) Fairchild.

BOOK OF MONSTERS

The pictures in this book are portraits of creatures which are as much the real inhabitants of the world as we are, and have all the rights of ownership that we have, but, because their own struggle for existence so often crosses ours, many of them are our enemies. Indeed, man's own real struggle for the supremacy of the world is his struggle to control these tiny monsters.

The plague of the middle ages, which spread like some mysterious supernatural curse over Europe and carried off millions of people, the yellow fever that has haunted the coasts of South America, the malaria which has strewn the tropics of the world with millions of graves, have been caused by the activities of two of these monsters so universally present in our homes as to have become almost domesticated creatures, the flea and the mosquito. During these last two decades these have come under our control, and the flies which leave a colony of germs at every footstep will not much longer be tolerated, indeed, every creature that bites and sucks our blood or that crawls over our food and dishes has been placed under suspicion.

Man struggles against these tiny monsters not only for his life and health but for his food as well. Almost every cultivated plant has its enemy, and some of them have many. The bugs alone which stick their beaks into all sorts of plants to suck their juices would starve man out in one or two brief seasons if they in turn were not held in check by enemies of their own. The chinch bug alone has demonstrated his power to devastate the wheat fields. The bark beetles that girdle square miles of forest trees, the moths that destroy their foliage, the creatures that burrow into the fruit and fruit trees, the gall-forming flies that form galls on the roots of the grape vines able to destroy the revenues of a whole country, the beetle which strips the potato of its leaves, the one which infects with its dirty jaws the melon vines of the South and turns the melon patches brown--these are a few of the vast array of our enemies. It would require a book much larger than this one just to enumerate those well known.

It should make every American proud to know that it is the American economic entomologist who has, more than any other, pushed his way into this field and shown mankind how to fight these monsters which destroy his food, his animals and himself.

But all these fascinating little creatures are not our enemies. We must not forget that man has domesticated certain of the insects and that gigantic industries depend upon them for their existence.

The honey-bee furnished mankind with sweets during the generations preceding the discovery of the sugar cane, and the silk worm furnishes still the most costly raiment with which we clothe ourselves.

The friends we have in the insect world are those which destroy the pests of our cultivated crops like the Australian lady-bird beetle which has been sent from one country to the other to keep in check the fluted scale which is so injurious to the orange orchards, and the parasites of the gipsy-moth which, in Europe, helps to keep under control this plague of our forest trees, must certainly be counted as our friends.

Also, they are our friends if, like the spiders, they kill such monsters as suck our blood or make our lives unsafe, or, like the great hordes of wasps and hornets, wage unending warfare against the flies but which, because they attack us personally if we come too near their nests, we kill on sight. Strangely enough, it is often these same stinging insects which help us by fertilizing the blossoms of our fruit trees. Indeed many plants are so dependent on these little creatures that they have lost the power of self-fertilizing and thousands of species of trees and plants would become extinct in a generation without their friendly aid.

The ancestors of some of the creatures pictured in this book were buried in the transparent amber of the Baltic many thousands of years ago and the fossil remains of others date back a million years or more, but while man has been developing his surroundings from the primitive ones of savagery to the almost inconceivably complicated ones of civilized life, these creatures, most of them at least, seem to be leading essentially the same kind of lives that they led hundreds of thousands of years ago.

They have powers which neither man nor any other mammal ever dreamed of having.

Some have powers of flight which enable them to sail a thousand miles before the wind. Others can jump a hundred times their own length. One of these monsters can manufacture a liquid rope as easily as mammals produce milk and with it weave aerial nets to trap their prey or, by attaching it, can drop from the dizziest heights without danger, and when the rope has served its purpose they eat it up.

Their weapons of defense are comparable to the deadly ones that only poisonous serpents have. If they were larger they would be, in fact, what legend pictures the dragons to have been.

The unthinkably old germ plasm of these species produces creatures which act with a precision of purpose and a degree of absolute self-sacrifice which cannot fail to stagger the most conscientious of the human race.

They might even make one wonder whether the fulfillment of biological life does not consist in sacrifice of the individual for the good of the species to which it belongs.

Certain it is, that human thought is now drifting away from the consideration of the individual and is coming to pay more attention to the species and the things which affect its development. This is a picture book produced in the playtime hours of two busy people. It is a collection of actual photographs of a few of the small-sized monsters which inhabit the tall gra.s.s, the flower garden and vegetable garden, the pines and oaks of a place in the woods of Maryland.

If it should show to others a world of new and fascinating things it would be simply doing for them what the taking of the photographs has done for us, opened the door into a realm of real life, of a terrible struggle to live, which is as full of fascination as the dragon tales of old j.a.pan. At the same time, it makes us realize what vast and yet untouched fields of material value lie in the efforts man is making to outwit and circ.u.mvent and even, perhaps, to exterminate such of the monsters as encroach upon his own environment.

HOW THE MONSTER PHOTOGRAPHS WERE TAKEN

If you compare these photographs with those to be found in most books on insects, you will find that they differ in several particulars. They are all either front views or side views of the creatures, whereas those in books on entomology are generally views from above. Imagine a book on the horse in which only top views were shown, or a guide to a zoological garden ill.u.s.trated with the various wild beasts photographed from above.

It is true that, being an much larger, we generally look down at these monsters, but a mouse also generally runs along the floor or under our feet and yet a zoologist pictures it from the same point of view that he does an elephant. Crows look down upon us, yet I imagine that no one will admit that the crow's impression of human beings is as correct or as interesting as that which we have of ourselves. Every creature has a right to be portrayed from its own level, and the reason these photographs are unusual is because they carry out this principle and do each creature justice.

Another particular in which these pictures are new is that, although they represent magnifications of from five to twenty diameters, they are not enlargements from small photographs, but views taken directly from 5 7 photographic negatives.

Then too, these creatures have been posed with considerable care in order to give them a lifelike appearance, and this work was done immediately after they had been anesthetized, and in some cases while they were still alive.

The whole art of taking these large photographs of insects is so simple that thousands of amateurs ought to be able to take them.

The outfit consists of the camera, which is just a long box, a long-focus lens, a piece of ground gla.s.s and a focusing gla.s.s, a flash light, a pair of pincers, some needles mounted in handles or else some small dental tools, a few little blocks of wood, a candle, a piece of gla.s.s covered with tissue paper, and a long hollow cylinder made of stiff black paper or cardboard. Add to these a great deal of patience and you have all that is needed.

I made my camera box out of thin quarter-inch whitewood boards and pasted black paper over the joints to keep out the light. Into one end of this box I set the front board with the objective screwed into it. Squaring off the other end of the box, I carefully fitted to it a 5 7-inch ground gla.s.s holder, exactly the size of an ordinary 5 7 plate holder. I framed this in with pieces of wood so that I could slip out the ground gla.s.s holder and put a plate holder in its place. For purposes which will be explained later, the ground gla.s.s was not fastened into its holder, but a narrow slit through one end of the frame was made just large enough so that it could be slid in or out without taking out the frame itself.

The object to be taken, having been mounted on a little block of wood and fastened there with candle wax, is placed in front of the long focus lens by an a.s.sistant, who stands ready to move it back and forth, or sideways, or up and down, according to directions.

Getting to the far end of the camera under the focusing cloth, I begin to hunt for the dim image on the ground gla.s.s, and, by directing the a.s.sistant to move the object in various ways, am quickly able to bring it into view, but not into sharp focus. In order to do this, I slip the ground gla.s.s itself half way out, take up the focusing gla.s.s, holding it against the edge of the ground gla.s.s in order to steady it. I am thus able to see every detail distinctly without looking through the ground gla.s.s at all and can make sure that they are in focus. With the focusing lens, one is able to see the image in the air very plainly, even when the diaphragm is nearly closed and when only the faintest shadow could be seen on the ground gla.s.s.

Having made sure that the image covers the plate well and is in good focus, I put in my plate holder, my a.s.sistant places the cap over the objective, I draw the slide and walk down to the front of the long camera.

Wills, my a.s.sistant, then prepares a charge in the Prosch flash lamp and puts the tube of black paper in front of the lens to protect it from the glare of the flash. With one hand I hold up a pane of gla.s.s on which thin white paper has been fastened to protect the insect from the direct sunlight; with the other hand I remove the cap of the camera and expose the plate for from 50 to 80 seconds, depending upon the lightness of the object, the brilliancy of the sunlight and the stop employed, 16, 32 or 64. In the meantime, Wills blows off a full charge of magnesium powder in the flash lamp, so holding the lamp that the rays from it will light up the shadows which are underneath the creature's body. The cap is then put on again and the plate holder closed in the ordinary way. Only the freshest obtainable orthochromatic double-coated plates are used.

The friends who visited us on holidays helped make the long camera, and it was made at three separate times, an eight-foot length at a time. When the creature is very small I use the twenty-four-foot length, but when it is large the twelve or eight-foot one. Each length fits into the one in front of it and is covered with black cloth to make it tight.

The taking of the photographs is not, however, the hardest work of monster photographing, although perhaps the hottest, for in summer it is no joke to swelter under a focusing cloth for half an hour at a time, and the focusing itself is hard on the eyes. It is the mounting of the beasts which wears upon one's nerves, and here is where the woman's skill comes, for Mrs. Fairchild learned the art of insect taxidermy and many of the most lifelike photographs in the book were mounted by her.

It has been a source of keen satisfaction to find, upon showing the results to professional entomologists, that many of them did not realize that the insects were not alive when photographed. But, although they were not alive, they had just recently been put to sleep with ether, for we soon discovered that to get a lifelike photograph one must photograph a monster at once, within half an hour after death, the sooner the better.

Many ways of mounting were tried, but none were so successful as the following: Cover the top of a small block of wood with a thin, even coating of paraffin or ordinary candle wax by letting the drippings of the candle fall upon it. Pick a large leaf and turn its upper surface down upon the wax, before it cools, and let it stick there; this will give a natural looking ground for the insect to stand upon. Hold the insect over the block of wood and arrange the legs in as natural a position as you can with a long needle or fine dental tool. Then fasten each foot in place by heating the needle in the candle flame and p.r.i.c.king a hole in the leaf just under each foot so that the wax will come up through the leaf and hold it fast.

This mounting is not so simple as it seems, and, until one has actually experienced it, he can have no idea of the perversity of these six-legged beasts. The way the contracting muscles of a gra.s.shopper's back legs will pull the other four legs loose, or the way the hornet will refuse to hold its head up, or the way long flexible antennae will droop are exasperations which lead straight to profanity, unless one is very careful.

The whole thing is a game of quickness, ingenuity and patient skill, for so many things must be watched at once. The wilting insect cannot wait, the sunlight shifts, clouds drift across the sun and then, just as everything is in readiness, a breeze springs up which stirs the creature's wings and the whole thing has to be given up.

The pioneer in this field of photography is Dr. N. A. Cobb, for it is he who first showed what the face of a fly looks like. His suggestions are what first encouraged me to take up the work, although the method finally used by me is quite different from that which he employed. I subst.i.tuted the long horizontal camera and the long focus lens for his vertical bellows and short focus lens, believing that for larger creatures I get a greater depth of focus and more lifelike appearance.

After my first mild success, that critical period beyond which so many experiments never go, three friends came to the rescue with their enthusiastic approval and encouragement and I desire that their names be connected with this book which they have helped to make, Mr. and Mrs.

Alexander Graham Bell and Mr. Barbour Lathrop.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LONG CAMERA WITH WHICH THE MONSTERS WERE TAKEN

The camera, consisting of several long boxes which fit into one another, is stretched on a table made of board and a number of posts set in the ground. At one end is the lens and at the other, the ground gla.s.s plate to focus the image on. The monster is mounted on a small wooden block and set up the proper distance in front of the lens. It is moved back and forth in response to directions from the operator, at the other end of the camera, who is watching the image on the ground gla.s.s. Lying on the camera above the lens is a black paper cone which, when everything is ready, is put over the lens between it and the monster to prevent the smoke from the flash powder from drifting between the lens and the insect during the exposure. Wills, the a.s.sistant, is holding the Prosch magnesium blow lamp, and the insect is shaded from the direct rays of the sun by a large pane of gla.s.s covered with a thin sheet of tissue paper. Direct sunlight is reflected from the hairs and polished surfaces of the insects and makes spots on the negative.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOME OF THE MONSTERS AS THEY APPEAR WHEN MOUNTED ON PINS IN AN INSECT BOX

It has always seemed a pity to me that these beautiful forms of life should be so evanescent. We look at their dried remains in collections and are impressed by their colors and grotesque forms, but we should not forget that after all these are nothing but their dried-up corpses and scarcely more to be compared in real beauty with their living bodies than are the Egyptian mummies comparable to the living faces and forms of the great Pharaohs.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MONSTERS PICTURED ON THE SUCCEEDING PAGES, AND MANY MORE, IMPRISONED IN ONE MUSEUM CASE

They are all pinned in the box and have dried out and changed almost beyond recognition, but the impression which their portraits have made will, I hope, be lasting.]

Knowing little about insects I have been dependent upon the kindness of the entomologists of the National Museum, in particular on Dr. L. O.

Howard, for the scientific names of the monsters, which names have given me access to what is published about them in the handbooks on entomology.

Practically all of the negatives and prints have been made by Mr. Scott Clime of the Department of Agriculture, who took a particular interest in their preparation.