In philosophy, an attribute is a quality or property of a substance, as whiteness or hardness. A substance is known to us only as a congeries of attributes.
In the fine arts an attribute is a symbol regularly accompanying and marking out some personage. Thus the caduceus, purse, winged hat, and sandals are attributes of Mercury, the trampled dragon of St George. Research Attribute
Dragon was the Celtic word for a Chief. This has led to confusion through history where writers refer to a dragon being slain by a knight, and readers confuse the reality of a Celtic chief being killed, with that of a knight battling a massive fire-breathing, winged reptile. Research Dragon
Pegasus is an ancient Greek northern constellation, situated south-east of Andromeda. The three brightest stars of Pegasus form a square with Andromeda, called the square of Pegasus. The constellation, which is named for the winged horse of Greek mythology, is usually seen upside down in the sky, with only the head, neck, and front half of the animal represented by the stars. Research Pegasus
The albatross is a long winged, powerful oceanic bird. There are some thirteen species of albatross, all related to the petrels, and constituting the family Diomedeidae. Albatross have large heads, stout bodies and extremely long narrow wings. The bill is straight and strong, the upper mandible hookedat the point and the lower mandible truncated. The bill is covered with distinctive horny plates. The feet are webbed with three toes on each foot. The upper part of the body is of a greyish brown colour, the belly white. The albatross is the largest known sea bird, with a wing span of some 533 cm. Albatross often accompany ships for days on end without ever landing, and are regarded with feelings of attachment and traditionally superstitious awe by sailors - it being considered bad luck to kill an albatross. Research Albatross
The Amazon Ant (Formicidae rufescens) is a reddish coloured ant, about eight millimetres long found in a large part of the temperate Holarctic region preferring sunny, warm habitats on sandy soil or limestone. Amazon ants have aggressive sword-like mandibles which they use as weapons when raiding. The Amazon ant is remarkable in that it is unable to build a nest, feed itself or rear its offspring. Instead it raids other ant nests, particularly those of Formica fusca, and carries off pupae which soon hatch and are employed as slaves. Amazon ant raids usually occur in late afternoon in July and August. The Amazon ants emerge, and after a while slowly line up into a formation a few centimetres wide and several metres long containing thousands of ants. This formation then marches the tens of metres to another antnest, kill the defending ants and carry away thousands of pupae to be hatched as slave workers. After mating, the winged male dies, but the winged female sheds her wings and assaults an antnest of another species, penetrating the nest she kills the queen ant and gradually takes over the entirenest, enslaving the worker ants. Research Amazon Ant
Ant is the popular name for hymenopterous (or membranous-winged) insects of various genera of the super-family Formicoidea. Ants are found in most temperate and tropical regions. They are small but powerful insects, and have long been noted for their remarkable intelligence and interesting habits. They live in communities regulated by definite laws, each member of the society bearing a well-defined and separate part in the work of the colony. Each community consists of males; of females much larger than the males; and of barren females, otherwise called neuters, workers, or nurses. The neuters are wingless, and the males and females only acquire wings for their Nuptial flight, after which the males perish, and the few females which escape the pursuit of their numerous enemies divest themselves of their wings, and either return to established nests, or become the foundresses of new colonies. The neuters perform all the labours of the ant-hill or abode of the community; they excavate the galleries, procure food, and feed the larvae or young ants, which are destitute of organs of motion. In fine weather they carefully convey them to the surface for the benefit of the sun's heat, and as attentively carry them to a place of safety either when bad weather is threatened or the ant-hill is disturbed. In like manner they watch over the safety of the nymphs or pupae about to acquire their perfect growth. Some communities possess a special type of neuters, known as 'soldiers,' from the duties that specially fall upon them, and from their powerful biting jaws.
There is a very considerable variety in the materials, size, and form of ant-hills, or nests, according to the peculiar nature or instinct of the species. Most of the British ants form nests in woods, fields, or gardens, their abodes being generally in the form of small mounds rising above the surface of the ground and containing numerous galleries and apartments. Some excavate nests in old tree-trunks. One little yellow ant (Myrmica domestica) is common in houses in Britain in some localities. Some ants live on animal food, very quickly picking quite clean the skeleton of any dead animal they may light on. Others live on saccharine matter, being very fond of the sweet substance, called honey-dew, which exudes from the bodies of Aphides, or plant-lice. These they sometimes keep in their nests, and sometimes tend on the plants where they feed; sometimes they even superintend their breeding. By stroking the aphides with their antennae they cause them to emit the sweet fluid, which the ants then greedily sip up. Various other insects are looked after by ants in a similar manner, or are found in their nests. It has been observed that some species, like the European Red Ant (Formica sanguinea), resort to violence to obtain working ants of other species for their own use, plundering the nests of suitable kinds of their larvae and pupae,which they carry off to their own nests to be carefully reared and kept as slaves. Amazon Ants (Polyergus rufescens) often keep between three and five times as many slaves as their own inhabitants in a nest.
In temperate countries male and female ants survive, at most, until autumn, or to the commencement of cool weather, though a very large proportion of them cease to exist long previous to that time. The neuters pass the winter in a state of torpor, and of course require no food. The only time when they require food is during the season of activity, when they have a vast number of young to feed. Some ants of southern Europefeed on grain, and store it up in their nests for use when required. Some species have stings as weapons, others only their powerful mandibles, or an acrid and pungent fluid (formic acid) which they can emit. The name ant is also given to the neuropterous insects otherwise called Termites.
In the 1990's a new species of ant, in appearance the same as any common garden ant, was discovered in Budapest and in 2009 the same species was found in Britain, which has a suicidal attraction to electrical fields - an attraction which overides even the desire to eat. Like American fire-ants, these ants are drawn in vast quantities to electrical switches where they die and can cause failure of the electrical system due to the numbers of ants involved, typically hundreds of thousands. In Texas, fire-ants are a major cause of traffic light failures, being drawn to the switch boxes where they die and short out the circuits. Research Ant
Aphis is a genus of insects (called plant-lice) of the order Hemiptera, the type of the family Aphides. The species are very numerous and destructive. The Aphis rosae lives on the rose; the Aphis fabae on the bean; the Aphis humuli is injurious to the hop, the Aphis granaria to cereals, the Aphis lanigera or woolly aphis equally so to apple-trees. The aphides are furnished with an inflected beak, and feelers longer than the thorax. In the same species some individuals have four erect wings and others are entirely without wings. The feet are of the ambulatory kind, and the abdomen usually ends in two horn-like tubes, from which is ejected the substance called honey-dew, a favourite food of ants. The aphides illustrate parthenogenesis; hermaphrodite forms produced from eggs produce viviparous wingless forms, which again produce others like themselves, and thus multiply during summer, one individual giving rise to millions. Winged sexual forms appear late in autumn, the females of which, being impregnated by the males, produce eggs. Research Aphis
The Army Worm is the very destructive larva of the moth Heliophila or Leucania unipuncta, so called from its habit of marching in compact bodies of enormous number, devouring almost every green thing it meets. It is about 30 mm long, greenish in colour, with black stripes, and is found in various parts of the world, but is particularly destructive in North America. The larva of Sciara militaris, a European two-winged fly, is also called army worm. Research Army Worm
The bee is a four winged stinging insect of the order Hymenoptera. Bees form the super-family Apoidea of the sub-order Apocrita.
The most important member of the family is the common hive or honey bee (Apis mellifica). It belongs to the warmer parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, but is now naturalized in the Western. A hive commonly consists of one mother or queen, from 600 to 800 males or drones, and from 15,000 to 20,000 working bees, formerly termed neuters, but now known to be imperfectly-developed females. The last-mentioned, the smallest, have twelve joints to their antennae, and six abdominal rings, and are provided with a sting; there is, on the outside of the hind-legs, a smooth hollow, edged with hairs, called the basket, in which the kneaded pollen or bee-bread, the food of the larvae, is stored for transit.
The queen has the same characteristics, but is of larger size, especially in the abdomen; she has also a sting. The males, or drones, differ from both the preceding by having thirteen joints to the antennae; a rounded head, with larger eyes, elongated and united at the summit; and no stings. According to Huber the working-bees are themselves divisible into two classes: one, the cirieres, devoted to the collection of provisions, etc; the other, smaller and more delicate, employed exclusively within the hive in rearing the young.
The mouth of the bee is adapted for both masticatory and suctorial purposes, the honey being conveyed thence to the anterior stomach or crop, communicating with a second stomach in which alone a digestive process can be traced. The queen, whose sole office is to propagate the species, has two large ovaries, consisting of a great number of small cavities, each containing sixteen or seventeen eggs. The inferior half-circles, except the first and last, on the abdomen of working-bees, have each on their inner surface two cavities, where the wax, secreted by the bee from its saccharine food, is formed in layers, and comes out from between the abdominal rings.
Respiration takes place by means of air-tubes which branch out to all parts of the body, the bee being exceedingly sensitive to an impure atmosphere. Of the organs of sense the most important are the antennae, deprivation of these resulting in a species of derangement. The majority of entomologists regard their function as in the first place auditory, but they are exceedingly ssensitive to tactual impressions, and are apparently the principal means of mutual communication.
Bees undergo perfect metamorphosis, the young appearing first as larvae, then changing to pupae, from which the imagosor perfect insects spring. Whether the offspring are to be female or male is said to be dependent upon the contact or absence of contact of the egg with the impregnating fluid received from the male and stored in a special sac communicating with the oviduct, unfertilized eggs producing males. The further question whether the offspring shall be queens or workers is resolved by the influence of environment upon function. The enlargement of a cell to the size of a royal chamber and the nourishment of its inmate with a special kind of food appear to be sufficient to transform an ordinary working-bee larva into a fully-developed female or queen-bee.
The season of fecundation occurs about the beginning of summer, and the laying begins immediately afterwards, and continues until autumn; in the spring as many as 12,000 eggs may be laid in twenty-four days. Those laid at the commencement of fine weather all belong to the working sort, and hatch at the end of four days. The larvae acquire their perfect state in about twelve days, and the cells are then immediately fitted up for the reception of new eggs. The eggs for producing males are laid two months later, and those for the females immediately afterwards. This succession of generations forms so many distinct communities, which, when increased beyond a certain degree, leave the parent hive to found a new colony elsewhere. Thus three or four swarms sometimes leave a hive in a season. A good swarm is said to weigh at least three kilograms. Besides the common bee (Apis mellifica) there are the Apis fasciata, domesticated in Egypt, the Apis Ugustica, or Ligurian bee of Italy and Greece, introduced into England, etc.
The humble-bees, or bumble-bees, of which about forty species are found in Britain and over sixty in North America, belong to the genus Bombus, which is almost worldwide in its distribution. Of these species solitary females which have survived the winter commence constructing small nests when the weather begins to be warm enough; some of them going deep into the earth in dry banks, others preferring heaps of stone or gravel, and others choosing always some bed of dry moss. In the nest the bee collects a mass of pollen and in this lays some eggs. The cells in these nests are not the work of the old bee, but are formed by the young insects similarly to the cocoons of silk-worms; and when the perfect insect is released from them by the old bee, which gnaws off their tops, they are employed as honey-cups.
The humble-bees, however, do not store honey for the winter, those which survive until the cold weather leaving the nest and penetrating the earth, or taking up some other sheltered position, and remaining there until the spring. The first brood consists of workers, and successive broods are produced during the summer. The experiment of domesticating different kinds of wild bees has been tried with no satisfactory results. Some bees, from their manner of nesting, are known as 'mason bees,' 'carpenter bees,' and 'upholsterer bees.' Some of these bees (genus Osmia) cement particles of sand or gravel together with a viscid substance in forming their nests; others make burrows in wood. The leaf-cutter or upholsterer bee (genus Megachile) lines its burrow with bits of leaf cut out in regular shapes. Research Bee
Common bistort (Polygonum Bistorta), adder's-wort or snakeroot, is a perennialherb of the buckwheat family, family Polygonaceae, found in Britain. It has a stout, snake-like twisted rhizome and an erect, unbranched stem. The basalovate to lanceolate leaves with undulate margins and winged petioles are arranged in a rosette. The smaller stem leaves are triangular, sessile and clasp the stem. The flowers are pink in colour, and arranged in a dense terminal spike. The fruit is a three-sided achene surrounded by a persistent perianth.
Common bistort contains a lot of tannin, which gives it astringent properties and led to its use in medicine. The young leaves can be eaten in salads or cooked like spinach and the root is edible after it has been soaked and roasted. In northern England it is commonly called Easter Giant and around Manchester it is called Patience Dock. Research Bistort
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
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