But Dorothy was not the only daughter with an interest in science, natural history or art. Gladys was also a talented student of botany, an artist, observer and writer. It was Gladys who first wrote to Donald Macdonald, in September 1913 – telling him about their new pet possum, and the problems of belling the cat. And even when Dorothy wrote she often did so on behalf of them both. In 1913 ‘Mallee Bird’ bushman and ornithologist C. H. McLennan congratulated both girls on their contributions to the paper.
In the early 1920s both of Edith’s daughters were studying at the University of Melbourne. Dorothy was enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts, studying English, French, Latin, history and, later, botany. She studied for her Diploma of Education and in later years returned to university to study more botany subjects.
‘I am doing Plant Pathology at the ’Varsity this year,’ she wrote, ‘and am overjoyed to find mould blackening our poor pumpkins or rust on the hollyhocks.’
Gladys graduated later, after her marriage, with a Bachelor of Science. She majored in botany, but also took zoology, parasitology and bacteriology.
The girls must have brought a wealth of new botanical knowledge home with them in the evenings. I can only imagine Edith’s interest in their studies, this new source of information opening up to her. I wonder if it made Edith realise how much information was out there – or if it confirmed how much she already knew. Or even how much more she knew, from her own self-taught education, than these experts. She could read, and probably had read, all the books and papers she needed. She could write to any expert in the world to seek clarification for their explanations or ask for advice on her own findings. But most importantly of all, Edith had the time, patience and persistence to watch and learn from nature itself. And the instinct to ask the right questions.
Some social insects: A caterpillar company – defensive tactics
By E.C
.
The sawfly’s story is one which every young Australian should read for himself or herself, not from books, but from nature. It makes a special appeal to Girl Guides because it tells, if not exactly of team work and community unselfishness, of ‘companies’ of little creatures which find some benefit in dwelling together in a kind of little brotherhood. Perhaps the most interesting stage of the sawfly’s life is the larval, or caterpillar stage, but that is only, I think, because it is so much more easily followed than the adult, or winged stage.
When the eggs which the mother sawfly has so cleverly deposited on a nice green gum leaf hatch into tiny larvae, or caterpillars, they soon form into their first ‘company’. Most young people have seen them, perhaps as many as 25 or more, clinging together in a massed cluster, which suggests a great affection for each other. This affection is not altogether disinterested, as you may see if you gently tap the twig to which they cling. Though each larva is unpleasant enough to look at, and to smell, a bird or a parasiting insect might not hesitate to attack a single one. But a mass of the ugly, squirming creatures, with waving tails and ejections of an unpleasant greenish, odorous liquid might well bluff any bird into the belief that they should be labelled dangerous.
Everyone knows, at times, how useful a weapon bluff can be. Birds, beasts and fishes, as well as girls, occasionally resort to its use. And so, by presenting this formidable front to the enemy, the caterpillar company enjoys a certain measure of security. The life of the larvae is rather a monotonous one, consisting chiefly of feeding, fattening and changing its skin; for like other caterpillars, each time a nice loose skin has become uncomfortably tight from unlimited feeding and rapid growth, the sawfly larva is able to split and cast it aside.
When we find a company of fully-grown larvae looking rather disorganised and restless, they are about to enter upon an interesting stage of their story. Do not lose sight of them when you see the company disband and crawl sluggishly in a tail-tapping procession of twos and threes down the trunk of a tree, but follow their trail in true girl-guide fashion, when, if you are lucky, you may chance to see what may be termed a ‘company burial’ – a funeral where each unit buries itself, and in a remarkably short space of time, too.
If one carefully digs up the whole ‘squad’ you will find that even underground the little brotherhood idea is still in evidence, for though each larva has woven itself a tough, silken cocoon, it is so carefully built on to the side of that of his brother, that we have a massed formation of perhaps 25 cocoons. Occasionally one or two may not have managed to ‘fall in’, and one may find an odd cocoon or two on the outskirts of the company.
It would be easy to carry the next part of the story right into the realms of romance. One must actually ‘see’ it to believe it, and then it isn’t always easy to credit the evidence of our eyes. When each larva has walled itself in by building a prison around its body, it lies and waits for its great day, when from a vegetable-eating caterpillar it will change to winged creature, and after perhaps six months as an earth-dweller, will seek the sunshine above.
The cocoons are at first soft, but tough, like a thin skin, but the larva has within its body the varnish with which to harden and make waterproof its cocoon. Before long every larva has become a pupa, a folded mummy-like creature, more like an inanimate doll with unmovable arms and legs than a living ‘animal’. All through the long summer days it lies in the cool earth waiting for the early autumn to sound the saw-fly’s ‘reveille’.
This time it is not
