Part II Chapter 1 Doctor Dolittle's Garden by Hugh Lofting
INSECT LANGUAGES
There were to have been two volumes to that book, Tales of the Home for Crossbred Dogs. But it was around this time—when I was finishing the first of them—that I was asked by the Doctor to assist him in another department. This kept me writing so busily that everything else was laid aside for the time being.
It was the study of Insect Languages. For years and years the Doctor had been patiently working on it. He had, as I have told you, butterfly-breeding houses where the caterpillars of moths and butterflies were hatched out and liberated in a special enclosed garden, about the size of a room, full of flowers and everything needed for butterfly happiness.
Then hornets, wasps, bees and ants—we had other special apparatus and homes for them too. Everything was designed with one foremost idea in view: to keep the insects happy and in normal conditions while they were being studied.
And the water-born creatures, like the dragon flies, the stone flies, etc., for them he had hundreds of small aquarium tanks with plants and grasses growing in them. Beetles, the same way. In fact there was practically no branch or department of Insect Life which the Doctor had not at one time or another studied with a view to establishing language contact with it. He had built many delicate machines which he called "Listening Apparatus."
About this time too Morse's experiments in electricity and telegraphy were attracting a good deal of public attention. And John Dolittle had been very hopeful that these sciences would aid him in some way. Bumpo and I had built him a shed especially for this and he had entirely filled it with electrical batteries and things which he felt confident would eventually solve some of his problems in connexion with insect languages.
But in spite of a tremendous amount of patient labour, trial and experiment, he had admitted to me only a week or so ago that he felt he had accomplished nothing. So you can imagine my surprise when, just as I was finishing the last chapter to the first volume for the mongrels' club, he came rushing into the Dogs' Dining Room, grabbed me by the arm and breathlessly asked me to come with him. Together we ran across to the insect houses. There, over the various listening apparatus, he attempted to explain to me how he had at last achieved results—results which, he was confidently sure, would lead to his dream being realized.
It was all highly scientific and frightfully complicated; and I am afraid that I did not understand a great deal of it. It seemed mostly about "vibrations per second," "sound waves" and the like. As usual with him on such occasions, everything else was laid aside and forgotten in his enthusiasm.
"Stubbins," said he, "I shall need your help for the secretarial work and the note-keeping—there's a tremendous lot of recording to be done. I am overwhelmed by my results. It all came at once—so suddenly. In one swoop I established what I believe are the beginnings of language-contact with five different kinds of insects: a wasp, a caterpillar—or rather a maggot—a house-fly, a moth and a water-beetle. If I am right in my surmises this is the greatest moment in my whole career. Let us go to work."
And then for many days—and most of the nights too—we laboured. Goodness, how we worked! Dab-Dab was in despair. We were late for all meals—for some of them we didn't turn up at all. A large part of the time I was asleep, or half asleep, because the Doctor not only worked regularly far into the night, but he was up early in the mornings as well. It reminded me of the time when he had met his first success in shellfish languages on the ship going to Spidermonkey Island.
He brought insects into the house in pails, in biscuit-tins, in tea-cups, in everything. You never saw such a mess. His bedroom, the kitchen, the parlour, the study—everywhere you went you found pots of maggots, glasses full of wasps, bowls full of water-beetles. Not content with that, he kept going out and getting more. We would walk miles and miles across country, armed with collecting-boxes, in search of some specially large beetle or some new kind of wasp which he felt sure would be better for experimenting purposes than any he had used so far.
Poor Gub-Gub was continually getting stung by the wasps—indeed the house seemed full of them. As for Dab-Dab, her indignation every time a new lot of maggots was brought in was quite indescribable. She threw several lots out of the window when the Doctor wasn't looking; but she was always brought to account for it. Because John Dolittle, no matter how many messy little cans he had placed around the house, knew immediately if a single one were missing.