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Cultural Clinical
Psychology and PTSD
Andreas Maercker, Eva Heim, & Laurence J.
Kirmayer (Eds.)
About the Editors
Andreas Maercker, PhD MD, Professor and Chair at the
Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland,
is one of the world-leading experts in psychological trauma
consequences and post-traumatic stress disorder. He has
directed several basic and treatment research programs on
traumatized populations in Germany and Switzerland. His
research and clinical practice focuses on trauma survivors
from different periods of life, traumatic experience of man-
made or disaster origins, and from different countries or
continents. From 2011 to 2018 he chaired the working group
“Specifically Stress-Associated Disorders” for the revision
of ICD-11 by World Health Organization.

Eva Heim, PhD, co-directs the working group “Cultural

Clinical Psychology” at the Department of Psychology,
University of Zurich, Switzerland, and works as a
psychotherapist at the Department’s outpatient clinic. She
graduated in clinical psychology from the University of Bern
and conducted the fieldwork for her PhD in Bolivia, where she
lived for four years. In her current research, she focuses on
the cultural adaptation of e-mental health interventions for
culturally diverse populations, e.g., in Lebanon or with
immigrants in Switzerland.

Laurence J. Kirmayer, MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, FRSC, is James

McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and
Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill
University and Director of the McGill Global Mental Health
Program in Montreal, Canada. He is Editor-in-Chief of
Transcultural Psychiatry, a Senior Investigator at the Lady
Davis Institute, and Director of the Culture and Mental
Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family
Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, where he
conducts research on culturally responsive mental health
services, the mental health of Indigenous peoples, and the
anthropology and philosophy of psychiatry.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication information
for the print version of this book is available via the LC
Marc Database under the Library of Congress Control Number
2018952743
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cultural clinical psychology and PTSD / Andreas Maercker,
Eva Heim,
& Laurence J. Kirmayer (Eds.).
Includes bibliographical references.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-88937-497-3 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-61676-497-5
(PDF).--
ISBN 978-1-61334-497-2 (EPUB)
1. Post-traumatic stress disorder. 2. Traumatic incident
reduction.
3. Cultural psychiatry. 4. Clinical psychology. 5.
Ethnopsychology.
I. Maercker, Andreas, 1960-, editor II. Heim, Eva, editor
III. Kirmayer,
Laurence J., 1952-, editor

RC552.P67C84 2018 616.85'210651 C2018-904467-5

C2018-904468-3

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Contents
Preface

References

Part 1 Culturally Sensitive Approaches to PTSD and Related

Mental Disorders

1 Culturally Responsive Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry:

An Ecosocial Approach

Introduction

Locating Culture

Dynamics of Culture in a Globalizing World

Methodological Challenges in Research on Culture and

Mental Health

Cultural Variations in Modes of Experiencing and

Expressing Distress

Cultural Influences on the Mechanisms of

Psychopathology

Integrating Culture Into Assessment and Treatment

Cultural Formulation in Clinical Assessment

 Reconciling Cultural Competence and Evidence-Based
Practice

Conclusion

References

2 Variability of PTSD and Trauma-Related Disorders Across

Cultures: A Study of Cambodians

Culturally Varying Attempts to Treat Distress

Psychopathological Dimensions and Cultural Variation

Unwanted Recall of Trauma Events and Its Cultural
Interpretation
Sleep-Related Disturbances and Their Cultural
Interpretation
Startle and Hypervigilance and their Cultural
Interpretation
Poor Sleep and Its Cultural Interpretation
Poor Concentration and Forgetfulness and Its Cultural
Interpretation
Cultural Interpretation of Worry Episodes and
Associated Symptoms
Panic Attacks That Combine PD and PTSD
Characteristics
Somatic Symptoms and Associated Catastrophic
Cognitions
Anger, Including Trauma Associations and Catastrophic
Cognitions Triggered by Anger Episodes
 Catastrophic Beliefs About the Perduring Bodily and
Mental Effects of Trauma
Survival Guilt
Negative Self-Schemas
Negative World Schemas
Negative Spiritual Schemas
Feedback Loops to Anxiety and Depression

Concluding Remarks

References

3 Sociosomatics in the Context of Migration

Migration and Health in Switzerland

Approaches to Migrant Health Care in Clinical Practice

Sociosomatics
Local Biologies
Interdisciplinarity
The Study
Example 1: “ Nerves” and “Have No Idea” About
Perceived Causes
Example 2: Humoral Balance and Social Role
Conceptual Consequences

References
Part 2 Cultural Values, Metaphors, and the Search for
Universals

4 Cultural Psychology Is More Than Cross-Cultural

Comparisons: Toward Cultural Dimensions in Traumatic Stress
Research

Background: Cross-, Inter-, Trans-Cultural Psychology,

or just Cultural Psychology?

PTSD and PTG in Etic and Emic Research

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Prolonged Grief Disorder

Lacking Context in Etic and Emic Methodologies: Global

Regions and the Sociological Triad of Race, Class, and
Gender

Cultural Dimensions: A First Formulation of Relevant

Variables

Value Orientations as Cultural Dimensions

Conclusion and Application for Clinical Practice

References

5 Distress and Trauma in the Clinical History of Neurosis

in Sweden and Finland

Nervous Patients in the Urban Setting in Sweden, ca.

1915–1950
 Nervous Patients in a Finnish Mental Hospital
Consequences of the War and Physical Trauma
Family Dynamics, Sex, and Religion

Aspects of Nervous Suffering in Sweden and Finland

Conclusion: Social Class and Mental Health

References

6 Trauma and Umwelt: An Archetypal Framework for

Humanitarian Interventions

Trauma: The Range of Uses of This Term

Prolegomena
The Umwelt
Imago and Image
Imago, Archetypes, and the Psychic Realms

The Umwelt and Its “Traumas” in the Therapeutic

Encounter
Sayed, a Somali Refugee
Epistemology of the Responses to Adversity
Umwelt and Archetypal Networks

Concluding Reflections

References
7 Wounds and Dirt: Gendered Metaphors in the Cultural
History of Trauma

Introduction

Gendered Histories of Trauma

The History of Western Gender Roles
The Constitution of Trauma
Gendering the Traumatic Wound
The Rise of PTSD
(De-)Gendering the Metaphor of the Wound
The Gendered Metaphor of Contamination

Summary

References

8 Metaphors of Trauma in Indigenous Communities in India

and Brazil

Broadening the Concept of Psychological Trauma

Metaphor Analysis as a Tool to Better Understand Trauma

in Different Cultures

Results of Recent Emic Research From Selected Countries

An Ethnopsychological Study Among Adivasis in India
A Field Study Among an Indigenous Community in Brazil

Discussion: Extreme Adversities as Shock and Mark

Embodied Metaphors and Culture-Specific Idioms
 Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

9 Metaphors of Posttraumatic Growth: A Qualitative Study in

Swiss, Lithuanian, and Brazilian Rural Communities

Posttraumatic Growth From a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Metaphor Variation in Cultural Context

Ethnographic Field Research in Three Different Cultures

Mountain Villagers from Gondo, Switzerland
Rural Population in Lithuania
Indigenous Pitaguary Community in Brazil

Broadening the Five Dimensions of the PTG Model by

Culture-Specific Metaphors
Increased Sense of Personal Strength
Changed Priorities and New Possibilities
Stronger Appreciation of Life
Closer Interpersonal Relationships
Enriched Existential and Spiritual Life

Similarities and Differences in Metaphors and Their

Sociocultural Context

Final Thoughts
 Acknowledgments

References

10 Paradoxes and Parallels in the Global Distribution of

Trauma-Related Mental Health Problems

Introduction

Country Vulnerability

Country Vulnerability and Mental Health

Exposure to Trauma, Country Vulnerability, and PTSD
Exposure to Trauma, Country Vulnerability, and Any
Mental Health Disorder
Vulnerability Paradox and Gender
Country Vulnerability and Cultural Dimensions
Country Vulnerability and Professional Psychosocial
Services

Reflections
Possible Explanations
Implications for Professionals

Further Research

References

Part 3 Global Mental Health and Intervention Challenges

11 Principles and Evidence of Culture Sensitive Mental
Health Approaches

Conceptualizations of Culture

Approaches for the Development of Culture-Sensitive

Interventions
The Adaptation–Fidelity Debate
When Are Cultural Adaptations Justified?
Which Interventions Should Be Culturally Adapted?
Dealing With Heterogeneous Cultural Groups
Theoretical Frameworks for Cultural Adaptations
How Should Cultural Adaptations Be Carried Out?

Empirical Evidence on Cultural Adaptations

Most Frequently Adapted Elements
Effectiveness of Culturally Adapted Interventions

Summary and Discussion

Conclusions and Recommendations for Future Studies

References

12 Culture-Sensitive Interventions in PTSD

Introduction

Intercultural Competence
Training Guidelines
 Training
German Training Program
Efficacy of Intercultural Training

Intercultural Competence in the Treatment of PTSD

Universal Principles in Facilitating Adaptation After
Trauma
Narrative Exposure Therapy
Culture-Sensitive Narrative Trauma Therapy

Conclusion

References

13 Cultural Adaptation of Scalable Interventions

Culture, Context, and Psychological Interventions

Scalable Psychological Interventions

Cultural Adaptation of Scalable Interventions

Interpersonal Psychotherapy in Uganda
The Friendship Bench Program in Zimbabwe
Problem Management Plus
Step-by-Step

Conclusions

Acknowledgments

References
 14 A Grief Intervention Embedded Within a Chinese Cultural
Practice for Bereaved Parents

Prolonged Grief Disorder: Expanding the Cultural

Relevance
Bereavement and Prolonged Grief
Grief Symptomatology and Culture
Grief Interventions and Culture

Developing a Culturally Adapted Grief Intervention

Sociocultural Context and Cultural Values
Chinese Philosophies in Mental Health

Evaluating a Culturally Adapted Art Therapy

Intervention Design
Feasibility and Acceptability
Potential Intervention Effect on Prolonged Grief
Severity
Reflections on Possible Psychological Mechanisms

Summary

Acknowledgment

References

Contributors
|VII| Preface
Andreas Maercker, Eva Heim, & Laurence J. Kirmayer
Traumatic stress and its consequences have been a major focus
of investigation and clinical innovation for the last several
decades, with a fast-growing body of research on the causes,
clinical conditions, and best practices in prevention and
treatment. However, honest reflection on the state of the art
in traumatic stress studies makes it clear that many
questions are unresolved, and much remains to be done to put
the field on a firm footing. Among the reasons for this
knowledge gap are the varied expressions of traumatic stress
and the diversity of responses of individuals both within and
across cultures. The most frequently cited and best known
“face” of overwhelming stress response is the mental
disorder of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD has
received a lot of attention, driven by concerns about the
mental health effects of war, political conflict,
interpersonal violence, and natural disasters. The construct
has been used both to advance research and to organize
clinical services with the goal of improving the lives of
individuals affected by trauma. To those alert to its varied
manifestations, trauma may be hidden behind a broad variety
of disorders, symptoms, and forms of suffering (Maercker,
Schützwohl, & Solomon, 2000). Indeed, trauma has become a
common trope for describing many forms of structural violence
and social injustice. This has prompted a critique of the
over-extension of the metaphor of trauma, posing the
challenge of how to decide which constructs are genuinely
useful in clinical work, mental health promotion, or other
settings (Fassin & Rechtman, 2009).

A cultural clinical perspective offers the most promising

road to broadening and deepening our understanding of the
great diversity of manifestations of traumatic stress. This
perspective tries to disentangle the multitude of clinical
expressions of distress and coping or survival strategies
after experiences of adversities. One major lesson of the
cultural clinical perspective is that not all human beings
regard themselves as entirely autonomous individuals that
have to overcome the most severe hardships on their own.
Rather, many people see themselves as deeply imbricated in
their close networks of family, kin, and community,
reflecting Aristotle’s dictum “humans are social animals.”
This is expressed both in the ways people describe their
suffering and in their accounts of resilience and recovery.
As a participant in a study in an Indigenous community in
Brazil put it: “If something serious strikes us, we bend
like the bamboo in a plantation … and just as bamboo rises
together, we will spring back” (Meili, Heim, Pelosi, &
Maercker, in press). Consistent with Indigenous concepts of
personhood, the classic metaphor of resilience in terms of
the bending of bamboo is mentioned not as a feature of a
solitary plant, but as a collective response of the whole
(Kirmayer, Sehdev, & Isaac, 2009).
 Despite many illuminating discussions of culture and trauma
over the last 30 years (e.g., Hinton & Good, 2016; Kirmayer,
Lemelson, & Barad, 2007; Marsella, Friedman, & Spain, 1996),
the application of a cultural clinical perspective to
understanding the experience of survivors of potentially
traumatic events from a genuinely cultural perspective
remains the exception rather than the rule. This is clear
from reading the research reports on traumatic stress in
international scientific journals as well as most of the
treatment literature on PTSD. The vast majority of
contributions take for granted the Western notion of
autonomous individuals who are self-reflective and can
readily express their inner mental states. This assumption
may be true for many individuals in Western societies, but
such modes of self-construal and expression are not the norm
for members of many other |VIII| cultures. More generally, the
cultural clinical perspective poses questions about the
extent to which our knowledge in the field of traumatic
stress can be universally applied, and which aspects of
theory and practice need to be adapted – or even set aside
– to respond adequately to specific contexts.

This volume outlines approaches to cultural clinical

psychology in three broad areas: (1) culturally sensitive
approaches to PTSD and related mental disorders; (2) cultural
values, metaphors, and the search for universals; and (3)
global mental health and intervention challenges. In addition
to mapping key issues for research, the volume aims to
provide a wealth of description of diverse contexts,
theoretical approaches, and intellectual journeys – as well
as potential applications in clinical and other settings.
 The chapters in the first part of the volume examine these
questions of cultural generalizability and describe
culturally specific expressions of stress-related disorders.
Kirmayer and Gómez-Carrillo (Chapter 1) outline an ecosocial
approach to integrating culture and context in mental health
theory and practice. They emphasize the importance of
recognizing the production of knowledge within psychiatry and
psychology as itself shaped by cultural assumptions and
background knowledge. Hence, every clinical encounter is an
intercultural encounter. Diagnostic assessment and labeling
has its own impact on the experience and course of trauma-
shaping memory, symptom attributions, coping strategies, and
outcomes in ways that may help or hinder recovery. Hinton and
Bui (Chapter 2) demonstrate the variability of PTSD across
cultures by presenting a cross-cultural model of trauma-
related disorder . This model includes a variety of dimensions
of psychopathology, which cover many of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5)
criteria along with somatic symptoms and cultural syndromes,
all of which are important to assess in culturally diverse
settings. The model further emphasizes the key role of the
catastrophic interpretation of trauma symptoms in some
contexts – for example, among Cambodian refugees. Salis
Gross and Killikelly (Chapter 3) introduce the concept of
sociosomatics, originally proposed by Arthur Kleinman (1998).
Based on interviews with Bosnian and Turkish refugees in
Switzerland, the authors outline culturally specific examples
of how distress is closely interlinked with interpersonal
conflicts, and expressed mainly through somatic complaints.
 The second part of this volume addresses the interplay of
cultural specificity with universal patterns and processes
found across the globe, starting with an overview of possible
approaches to integrating local and specific ( emic
)
perspectives with general and universal (etic ) models. In
Chapter 4, Maercker argues that cultural values can help
place the construct of PTSD in cultural perspective. The
study of values has been central to cultural psychology for
decades. As developed and applied by social psychologists,
the measurement of values has been a productive way to
capture latent features of culture empirically. In this
context, values research has looked at how cultural values
change along with the economic growth and modernization of
societies. In particular, Maercker suggests that the increase
of modern values such as self-determination or emancipation
may be associated with an increase in the acknowledgment of
posttraumatic suffering – or even an increase of PTSD
prevalence – around the globe.

Although we have contrasted the culture of “the West”

with “the Rest” (i.e., the very diverse cultures of the
majority world), it is important to recognize that there is
also great social and cultural diversity among and within
Western societies. Social contexts influence how stress-
related symptoms are perceived and expressed, which is
addressed from three different perspectives in this volume.
Pietikäinen (Chapter 5) discusses the history of labeling of
symptomatology of cognate mental disorders in northern
Europe. Papadopoulos (Chapter 6) discusses the ecological
concept of Umwelt (drawn from ethology) or local environment
and applies it to the experience of a Somali refugee. In her
contribution, Malich (Chapter 7) focuses on the historical
interrelation between gender and traumatic stress in Western
culture.

Metaphor analysis provides another means of exploring the

bodily, personal, and cultural mediation of illness
experience (Kirmayer, 1992). Two chapters in this volume show
how a focus on metaphors can yield important insights into
the cultural grounding and consequences of exposure |IX| to
traumatic stress. Rechsteiner and Meili (Chapter 8) examine
metaphors used to describe aversive or catastrophic events in
India and Brazil, as part of a larger study that also
included samples from Switzerland and Lithuania. Based on
data from the same cross-cultural research project, Meili,
Gegieckaite, and Kazlauskas (Chapter 9) emphasize metaphors
related to posttraumatic growth and resilience. Indeed, we
might ask if the dominant metaphor of trauma itself – which
is drawn from the Greek for wound – is adequate to the task,
or whether it colors our theory and practice in ways that may
reveal some features (analogous to wounding and healing)
while hiding others (like resilience, moral development,
forms of posttraumatic growth, or changes of identity and
social position). Perhaps other metaphorical expressions are
needed to capture these alternate experiences, states, and
trajectories of people who have experienced various forms of
adversity, including terrifying and violent disruptions to
their lives. To conclude the second part of this volume,
Dückers and Brewin (Chapter 10) discuss and further explore
the seeming paradox that, despite high levels of exposure to
violence, PTSD is rarely diagnosed in non-Western countries.
 The third part of this volume addresses cultural aspects in
psychological interventions, including the usual Western
setting of face-to-face psychotherapies or counseling, work
in individual or group settings in the countries of origin of
traumatized persons, and scalable interventions developed for
countries with large numbers of people affected by
adversities and with restricted resources to address the
mental health needs of these people. Stammel (Chapter 11)
provides a comprehensive overview of frameworks and methods
regarding the cultural adaptation of psychological
interventions. In Chapter 12, von Lersner describes aspects
of cultural competence in psychotherapy, mainly in face-to-
face encounters, along with training components for
therapists working in culturally diverse settings. Heim,
Harper Shehadeh, van’t Hof, and Carswell (Chapter 13) focus
on the cultural adaptation of scalable interventions, arguing
that easy-to-understand core interventions developed in the
West, such as problem solving or behavioral activation, can
be adapted to culturally diverse contexts, leading to
considerable symptom reduction and increase in functioning.

Two of the contributions to this volume (Chapters 4 and 14)

extend the area of investigations from traumatic stress and
its consequences, to the closely related domain of grief and
loss. This reflects changes in the field of traumatic stress
studies, with the recognition of prolonged grief (also
labeled pathological orcomplicated grief ) as a new disorder
category in the leading classification systems of mental
disorders. Interestingly, it appears that this new category
of prolonged grief has received more attention from
academics, practitioners, and the public in several Asian
countries than from Western cultural psychology or
psychiatry. In the last chapter, Xiu and Killikelly (Chapter
14) describe a culturally adapted grief intervention in
China. The authors present a case example of how a cultural
practice, Chinese painting, can be minimally adapted to
become a grief intervention for parents who have lost their
only child (a more common predicament because of the one-
child policy in China). Including grief along with trauma, as
closely related (and frequently co-occurring) forms of
suffering, is one way to advance an integrative, pluralistic,
person-centered approach to cultural clinical psychology and
psychiatry.

This volume brings together authors and topics from many

different disciplines and fields of expertise. We are
grateful that all of the authors engaged with this effort to
begin to build a foundation for a cultural clinical
psychology of trauma and its consequences. We also hope that
this colloquy and collaboration of psychologists,
psychiatrists, epidemiologists, philosophical and social
anthropologists, and sociologists will continue. Much remains
to be done to build a multifaceted knowledge base for further
progress in the science and practice of traumatic stress
studies.

|X| References
Fassin, D., & Rechtman, R. (2009). The empire of trauma: An
inquiry into the condition of victimhood. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Hinton, D. E., & Good, B. J. (Eds.). (2016).Culture and PTSD:
Trauma in global and historical perspective. Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kirmayer, L. J. (1992). The body’s insistence on meaning:

Metaphor as presentation and representation in illness
experience. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 6 ,
(4) 323–346.
Crossref

Kirmayer, L. J., Lemelson, R., & Barad, M. (Eds.). (2007).

Understanding trauma: Integrating biological, clinical, and
cultural perspectives: Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.

Kirmayer, L. J., Sehdev, M., & Isaac, C. (2009). Community

resilience: Models, metaphors and measures. International
Journal of Indigenous Health, 5 ,
(1) 62–117.

Kleinman, A. (1998). Sociosomatics: The contributions of

anthropology to psychosomatic medicine. Psychosomatic
Medicine, 60 ,
(4) 389–393. Crossref

Maercker, A., Schützwohl, M., & Solomon, Z. (Eds.). (2000).

Posttraumatic stress disorder: A lifespan developmental
perspective. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
Marsella, A. J., Friedman, M. J., & Spain, E. H. (Eds.).
(1996). Ethnocultural aspects of PTSD: An overview of issues
and research directions . Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Meili, I., Heim, E., Pelosi, A. & Maercker, A. (in press).
Metaphors and cultural narratives on adaptive responses to
severe adversity: A field study among the indigenous
Pitaguary community in Brazil.Trancultural Psychiatry .
 PART 1
CULTURALLY SENSITIVE APPROACHES
|1|

TO PTSD AND RELATED MENTAL

DISORDERS
 1
Culturally Responsive Clinical
|3|

Psychology and Psychiatry

An Ecosocial Approach
Laurence J. Kirmayer & Ana Gómez-Carrillo

Introduction
Cultural clinical psychology and psychiatry aim to address
the mental health needs of diverse communities by integrating
attention to cultural differences in knowledge, social
institutions, identities, and practices. These differences
affect mental health by influencing the causes and mechanisms
of psychopathology, shaping illness experience and
expression, and guiding processes of coping, adaptation,
healing, and recovery. Various theoretical models, borrowed
from the social sciences, have been used to understand the
interaction of culture and mental health and the nature of
psychiatric disorders. These models reflect the cultural
assumptions of psychiatry itself, and becoming aware of some
of these tacit assumptions is essential to open up a space
for intercultural work. In this chapter, we will advance an
ecosocial approach to culture in mental health in terms of
culturally responsive care. This aims to identify crucial
dimensions of culture and social context relevant to the
lived experience of those with mental health problems and
apply that understanding to clinical assessment and
interventions.

Definitions of culture change over time with changing

configurations of the social world. Contemporary cultural
psychiatry approaches culture as the social matrix of
experience. This includes all of the socially constructed
aspects of life that shape neurodevelopment, everyday
functioning, self-understanding, and experience in illness
and health. While some aspects of culture are explicitly
marked, as norms, values, ideologies, and practices, most of
culture is implicit, involving taken-for-granted systems of
knowledge, beliefs, values, institutions, and practices that
constitute social systems, including families, communities,
and societies. The culturally implicit may only become
apparent at moments of culture change or during intercultural
encounters. Difference, otherness, and alterity are central
to our thinking about culture because tacitly shared
references of meaning and affordances become apparent when we
are confronted by the “other.”

In mental health research and practice, cultural difference

is often reduced to constructs such as race, ethnicity, or
national origin. However, these forms of identity are
themselves cultural constructions based on norms and
conventions (Kirmayer, 2012a). To develop a culturally
responsive approach to clinical practice that does not simply
reproduce conventional social categories that |4| result in
stereotyping or over-generalization, we need to consider
local history, context, and intersectionality.

Attention to culture is crucial to understand illness

experience and to the ways in which social structure
privileges or marginalizes particular groups. Focusing
excessively on cultural difference may “culturalize”
problems that are related to structural issues of power,
conflict, and social inequalities. Hence, cultural competence
needs to be supplemented with structural competence (Metzl &
Hansen, 2014). There is great variation within any ethnic
group, and this is further amplified by the ongoing
intermixing of cultures and the creation of new hybrid
identities that draw from local communities as well as
transnational networks. The concept of culture must also be
expanded to include local subcultures and global flows of
knowledge and practices shared by groups of experts,
including mental health professionals (Bibeau, 1997).

In clinical practice, attention to culture serves multiple

functions: (1) it can enable patients to communicate their
concerns in ways that are experience-near and meaningful to
themselves and to others in their family and community; (2)
it can help clinicians interpret the diagnostic significance
of symptoms and behaviors and assess patients’ predicaments
in relation to relevant norms and contexts; (3) it can guide
the development of culturally appropriate treatment plans and
interventions; and (4) it is essential for negotiating the
delivery of interventions and assessment of outcomes
(Kirmayer & Swartz, 2014).
Locating Culture
Culture is located in the interaction between people and
their life worlds, which includes material and symbolic
aspects of the socially constructed environment (Seligman,
Choudhury, & Kirmayer, 2016). As such, culture is embodied
and expressed through forms of socially meaningful bodily
action and communication (e.g., verbal and nonverbal
language, metaphors, idioms, symbols). The forms of action
and communication that constitute culture shape experience
from its inception through looping effects between embodied
developmental processes and social enactments such as giving
a narrative account of one’s experience or telling stories.
Understood in this way, cultural knowledge and skills are
necessary for navigating and adapting to particular social
worlds or contexts. Identifying the impact of these contexts
on the feedback loops that contribute to dysfunction and
distress or to healing and recovery is an important task in
clinical assessment.

The emerging paradigms of embodiment and enactment within

the 4-E cognitive science framework provide new ways to think
about the influence of culture and context on behavior and
experience (Kirmayer & Ramstead, 2017). In this framework,
action and experience are understood as embodied (occurring
in a body as opposed to just in the brain), embedded (within
a social context), enacted (through interaction with the
world), and extended (reaching beyond the boundaries of the
physical body to include aspects of the world in the process
of cognition). These approaches from cognitive science
emphasize the co-emergence of mind and culture over
evolutionary, developmental, and everyday time scales
(Seligman, Choudhury, & Kirmayer, 2016). A key element of
these processes for psychiatry is the intersubjective
grounding of experience through modes of embodied
interpersonal interaction, cooperation, and collaboration
(Fuchs & De Jaegher, 2009).

Individuals pursue their own life goals by engaging with

others in their networks and with social institutions. To do
this, they employ cultural background knowledge that guides
their interactions. Some of this background knowledge
involves schemas or models. However, much cultural knowledge
is not stored as mental representations within the individual
but consists of strategies for attending to specific cues and
exploiting the resources of particular contexts. Cultural
knowledge resides in the social environment, with its
material structure, distributed roles, and opportunities for
cooperative activity with others. We can thus view an
environment or local niche as providing cultural affordances
– that is, opportunities for perception and action. For the
culturally prepared |5| and attuned individual, specific
contexts afford particular ways of experiencing the world and
acting on it, alone or in concert with others.

Cultural affordances provide possibilities for action and

sense making that vary with an individual’s identity and
position within a social system, community, or local world.
Mental health problems may alter how the individual engages
with cultural affordances both by changing the person’s
expectations and patterns of activity and because a
diagnostic label confers a new identity and social position
which comes with its own set of affordances in a given
context. This altered mode of engaging with a social world
will influence the trajectory of the illness over time,
affecting both how the individual copes with symptoms and how
the illness fits their identity. Both individuals’ illness
narratives and the autobiographical narratives stories
through which they express their identities are shaped by the
wider meanings conferred by participation in particular
social and cultural contexts (Kirmayer, 2003, 2007).

Symptoms arise from the interaction of psychophysiological,

cognitive-affective, and social processes that include
culture-specific explanations of distress, and thus are more
than just indices of disorder (Kirmayer, 2015; Hinton, Lewis-
Fernández, Kirmayer, & Weiss, 2016). Symptoms are shaped and
amplified by bodily, psychological, and social processes.
Sensations, experiences, and events are perceived and
interpreted in terms of available cognitive schemas and
cultural models, as well as through ongoing interactions with
others. To make sense of symptoms, clinicians therefore need
to consider the specific contexts, including the clinical
setting itself, in which illness experience emerges and its
meanings are negotiated (Kirmayer, Guzder, & Rousseau, 2014).

Dynamics of Culture in a Globalizing

World
Viewing culture as a stable set of traits tends to reify and
essentialize differences between groups that are better
understood as negotiated and context-dependent (Seligman,
Choudhury, & Kirmayer, 2016). Culture is an abstraction that
points to dynamic processes that involve creativity,
improvisation, and contestation among individuals and groups
participating in different ways of life, with issues of power
and agency always at stake. This more dynamic and agentic
view of culture can counter the tendency to exoticize and
caricature others in terms of simplistic dichotomies such as
traditional/modern, Eastern/Western, or
individualist/collectivist.

Of course, in any community or geographic region, there are

specific cultural, historical, and political factors that
define the available categories of identity and their social
implications. These may be important for a given individual
because they affect the kinds of social stresses they
experience and their access to resources for coping and
recovery. Any of these may be clinically relevant for a given
patient in a given context and require careful exploration
(Groen, 2009). However, many of these categories are applied
by others and may not be intrinsic to patients’ own identity
and experience. The local politics of identity and alterity
determine what forms of difference and diversity are viewed
as important to address in health care systems, and which
kinds of difference are discounted or simply ignored. For
example, in the US, until recently, research on cultural
diversity and training programs for cultural competence have
generally approached identity in terms of the five broad
ethnoracial blocs defined by the Census. When people are able
to provide their own categories of identity, the predefined
categories are shattered, resulting in a wide array of new
identities constructed on many different bases including
migration status, religion, sexual orientation, occupation or
vocation, and illness (Good & Hannah, 2015).

Any cultural system is the product of interactions among

multiple communities and institutions. In a world of mass
migration and intermingling of people over generations,
identity is necessarily hybrid, multiple, and fluid (Bibeau,
1997). Globalization, migration, and telecommunication have
contributed to situations of hyperdiversity in many cities.
As a result, most individuals present hybrid forms of
identity that reflect influences from their families and the
multiple local |6| and transnational communities in which
they participate. For immigrant and ethnic minorities, this
hybridity may include varying degrees of involvement with
both their cultures of origin and the cultures of the
dominant society. While recognizing this diversity and
hybridity poses challenges, it is essential for understanding
patients’ predicaments and devising appropriate
interventions. How an individual or group balances and
navigates multiple, at times conflicting, positions is itself
a determinant of mental health. Exploring and supporting the
hybridity of identity – and addressing the predicaments of
those who find themselves caught between cultural worlds –
can support individuals in their life projects by helping
them to position themselves socially in ways that are
adaptive and advantageous, promoting flexibility, and
allowing engagements with multiple communities (Kirmayer,
2006; Hinton & Kirmayer, 2017).
Methodological Challenges in Research on
Culture and Mental Health
While the widely disseminated diagnostic constructs of
psychiatric nosology provide an international language and
framework for research and clinical work, cultural psychiatry
and psychology offer conceptual and methodological approaches
to clarify diagnostic heterogeneity and develop greater
cultural relevance and fit in mental health care. There is
wide recognition that a one-size-fits-all approach is
inadequate, both for global mental health and in the context
of multicultural and multiethnic societies (Alegria, Atkins,
Farmer, Slaton, & Stelk, 2010; Kirmayer, 2011).
Unfortunately, most mental health research is conducted in
Western populations, especially college students and others
attending mental health clinics (Henrich, Heine, &
Norenzayan, 2010) or exclusively uses constructs, categories,
and scales developed in Western contexts. There is a need for
more research on diverse populations to assess the
generalizability of findings and to develop new constructs,
measures, and interventions that are appropriate for specific
cultures and contexts (Whitley, Rousseau, Carpenter-Song, &
Kirmayer, 2011). However, cross-cultural research poses
particular methodological challenges (Kirmayer & Ban, 2013).

Studying psychiatric disorders across cultures presupposes

that the same construct is valid across different social and
cultural contexts (i.e., it has the same internal coherence
and external relationships to other key constructs), and that
it can be accurately identified or measured. Validity cannot
be resolved simply by determining the psychometric
equivalence of measures, but requires showing that the
underlying constructs have similar clinical and pathological
significance across cultures in relevant contexts (Kirmayer &
Swartz, 2014).

Most cross-cultural epidemiological research has focused on

identifying people whose symptoms fit conventional
psychiatric criteria for specific disorders in diverse
settings. Thus standard instruments like the Composite
International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) (Robins et al.,
1988) have been translated and used to establish the
prevalence of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM) orInternational Classification of Diseases
(ICD) disorders in many regions (Kessler, & Üstün, 2004).
This work has found substantial variations in prevalence,
which may reflect differences in the susceptibility of
specific populations, but which also may reflect
methodological limitations related to variations in the ways
distress and disorders are expressed (Demyttenaere et al.,
2004). Most of this work has not attempted to identify and
include culture-specific symptoms that may not be part of the
core definitions of disorders, even though they may be common
and associated with distress, functional impairment, and help
seeking. The mere fact that people can be found who fit
preexisting diagnostic criteria does not ensure that the
category is locally meaningful or efficient as a way to
identify people who might benefit from mental health services
(Kirmayer, Gomez-Carrillo, & Veissière, 2017).

Kleinman (1977, 2008) noted that the tendency to see local

forms of suffering only through the lens of preexisting
diagnostic constructs was a sort of category fallacy. Getting
beyond these |7| blinders requires taking the time to explore
local modes of expressing distress, and building these
symptoms and behaviors into interviews and self-report
measures used in epidemiological research. Recent work on
network theories of psychopathology suggests that clinical
syndromes may reflect the interaction of distinct symptom
processes (Borsboom & Cramer, 2013; Bryant et al., 2017;
McNally et al., 2015). This makes the exploration of the
wider domain of distress elaborated in particular cultural
contexts especially important because, in addition to
identifying new culture-specific symptoms, the relationships
among symptoms may vary across cultures, giving rise to new
syndromes or to new dynamics of previously recognized
syndromes. Taking this approach would also reduce the risk of
exporting diagnostic categories with limited external
validity.

While the widespread use of the diagnostic categories of

international psychiatric nosology like the ICD or DSM 5th
edition (DSM-5) reflects a tacit acceptance that these are
meaningful and useful, the high degree of comorbidity and the
difficulty in classifying many patients in everyday
psychiatric practice expose the limitations of current
nosology (Kirmayer et al., 2017). Current nosology is based
on grouping syndromes according to phenotypic expression or
putative mechanisms (e.g., anxiety disorders, mood disorders,
dissociative disorders), without any way of verifying the
underlying pathology. Indeed, even when it is possible to
apply international diagnostic criteria, the causes, clinical
expression, treatment response, course, and outcome of
disorders may vary substantially across cultures and
contexts. Ongoing use of these categories in culturally
diverse settings leads to reification through practice, as
patients and clinicians take up the category and use it to
organize their experience. This phenomenon has been described
by philosopher Ian Hacking as a looping effect (Hacking,
1995). Hacking argues that

to create new ways of classifying people is also

to change how we can think of ourselves, to
change our self-worth, even how we remember our
own past. This in turn generates a looping
effect, because people of the kind [created by
the classification] behave differently and so are
different. (Hacking, 1995, p. 369)

Many clinically relevant loops may involve social practices

like diagnostic labeling, which can lead to stigma and
impaired social functioning, which can then reinforce the
reality, use, and consequences of the diagnostic label.
Similarly, the act of taking prescribed medication may
influence one’s sense of having a specific illness. Other
kinds of loops may engage bodily processes (bio-looping) –
for example, taking a prescribed medication causes additional
symptoms (side effects) that reinforce the sense of being
sick and the diagnostic label. Diagnostic categories thus
have consequences that go beyond their implications for
treatment. Social science methods are needed to trace these
effects, which need to be considered in clinical practice.
Cultural Variations in Modes of
Experiencing and Expressing Distress
Current medical and psychological anthropology have
distinguished different modes of communication of distress
that are recognized in the DSM-5 as distinct types of
cultural concepts of distress, including explanatory models,
idioms of distress, cultural syndromes, and folk diagnostic
categories (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Lewis-
Fernández, Kirmayer, Guarnaccia, & Ruiz, 2017; see Table
1.1). Although as defined, these types of concepts are
distinct, the same term (e.g., depression nerves
, , or
burnout) can be used in multiple ways by different people or
by the same person in different contexts.

|8| Table 1.1 Cultural Concepts of Distress in the DSM-5

Construct Definition Examples a
Cultural A cluster or configuration of co- amok, ataque de
syndrome occurring symptoms found in a nervios, koro, latah,
specific cultural group, khyal attack (culture-
community, or context (may be specific forms of
purely classificatory or point panic attack),
toward mechanisms that give rise possession, shenjing
to the symptoms) shuairuo, taijin
kyofusho
Idiom of A linguistic term, phrase, way of burnout, nerves,
distress talking, or other form of behavior thinking too much
shared with other people from the
same culture (i.e., ethnicity,
religion, community) used to
express, communicate, or comment
on distress
Cultural A causal attribution, explanatory fright illness, ghost
explanation model, or other form of illness, jinn, mal de
explanation for a specific type of ojo, root work, zar
 affliction, symptom, behavior, or
experience of distress
Folk A category of illness recognized brain fag, dhat, hwa-
diagnosis within a specific ethnomedical byung, locura, sangue
system by healers and/or laypeople dormido, susto
Note. Based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) glossary of culture-
bound syndromes and idioms of distress, and the DSM 5th
edition (DSM-5) discussion of cultural concepts of distress
(see Lewis-Fernández, Kirmayer, et al., 2017).
a Examples taken from DSM-IV.

The term cultural syndrome replaces the older term culture-

bound syndrome (CBS) because in the contemporary world,
cultures are not well-bounded but rather in constant exchange
and flux. However, the term cultural syndrome retains the
essential insight of the older literature that cultural
contexts and developmental experiences may result in
distinctive syndromes. However, many of the entities labeled
as CBS in the past are now recognized to be better
characterized as folk diagnoses, idioms of distress, or
causal explanations grounded in particular cultural
ontologies.

Folk diagnoses are labels drawn from local healing

practices or ethnomedical systems that may involve more or
less elaborate theories and classifications. Some of these
systems, such as traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurveda,
have become modernized, but in their more technical and
elaborate forms, they remain the province of traditional
practitioners or healers. Laypeople may participate in these
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The hop-louse has other enemies besides the grower. These are the
lady-birds (less prettily called “lady-bugs”), which feed greedily on
the parasites, so that when the hop-grower sees plenty of them on a
hop-vine he does not trouble to wash it. And there are other
predaceous insects which tend to keep the hop-lice down.
Cultivation and excessive production have resulted in putting, as it
were, too heavy a task upon the natural enemies of the pest, whilst
the more delicate but valuable varieties of hop cannot withstand the
attacks of blight, which less valuable varieties would tolerate without
fatal injury.
Another complicated and difficult problem for the hop-grower is the
“curing” of the hops when gathered. He has to arrange to grow a
number of varieties which will not be all ready for picking at the
same moment, so that the hop-pickers may be employed for some
six weeks, and gather each kind at the exact time of ripeness. Then
the gathered hops have to be “dried” and “cured.” In Germany
(where the highest-priced hops are produced) small cultivators dry
them in the sun, and they are “cured” by the purchaser, but in
England they are dried in kilns (called “oasts” in Kent) near the hop-
grounds. They are cured with sulphur fumes on the spot as soon as
dried. The object of the drying and curing is quickly to get rid of the
water, which forms 75 per cent. of the weight of the green flower-
heads, but is reduced by drying to 10 per cent., and to destroy the
“mould” (fungus) which may be present, and to keep the hops free
from new access of mould by the slight deposit of sulphur fumes on
their surface. The drying and fumigating require a great deal of skill,
and a fine crop may be injured or even rendered worthless by want
of care, rapidity, and judgment in treating the freshly gathered
flower-cones. It is said that it takes years to acquire the art, and that
skilled hop-curers are more difficult to obtain than formerly.
The natural difficulties and fluctuations with which the English hop-
grower has to contend are made far more serious by the fact that he
does not know what will be the yield of the American and German
hop-plantations, and so cannot prepare beforehand for the demands
of the market. It appears that ice-storage is now being made use of
in some districts to hold over any excess of produce of particular
kinds of hop beyond the special demand for those kinds. But a
formidable source of trouble exists (and, it appears, must always
exist) in the enormous changes and expansion of the brewing
industry in all parts of the globe. It is actually the case that there
has been a greatly increased and unforeseen demand for hops of
less highly developed aroma, for the purpose of brewing light ales
with little of the perfume given by the finest and hitherto most
highly priced hops. So that, having expended skill and money to
produce the finest hops, and having been favoured by the weather, a
grower may find that his pains have been thrown away, and that
there is a sudden falling-off in the demand for the beautiful high-
priced crop which he has gathered in. There is no remedy for these
world-wide fluctuations in the market, and the only way in which the
grower can protect himself is by combining with others to procure
information from every part of the world as to the probable
production and the probable demand of the various qualities of hops
a year or more in advance of his planting. More has been done in
America and in Germany in this way than in England, and it is
probable that the future success or failure of hop-growing in this
country depends more on the possibility of obtaining correct
information in regard to the tendencies of production in all hop-
growing countries, and in regard to the demand in all the brewing
industries of the world, than on anything else.
This brief sketch of the hop-growing industry is sufficient to show
what a very difficult problem is before those who desire to take
legislative measures for the preservation of the old industry of the
hop-garden in this country. But it must not be at once assumed,
because the case is a difficult and complicated one, that nothing can
be done, and that the beautiful hop-vines and the finest hops are
necessarily to be banished from the English soil.
 XXXV

GREEN-FLIES, PLANT-LICE, AND

PARTHENOGENESIS
The minute “green-flies” which attack all kinds of plants, and among
which are ranked the hop-louse or hop-blight, the rose aphis or
green-fly of rose trees, the woolly blight or aphis of apple trees and
pear trees, and the terrible vine-killer—the Phylloxera vastatrix—
form a special group of bug-like insects known as the Aphides. They
have soft cylindrical bodies, six legs, sometimes two pairs of
transparent wings, sometimes none, and a sharp beak (in some
kinds this is one and a half times as long as the body), with which
they prick the soft parts of plants, when they suck up the juices
which issue from the wound (Fig. 59). There is in the temperate
regions of the world a special kind of aphis or plant-louse peculiar to
each of many kinds of flowering plants, including most trees. A very
complete, illustrated account of the kinds or species of British
aphides, amounting to some two hundred, was produced by the late
Mr. Buckton, F.R.S., and published by the Ray Society.
There are many facts of extraordinary interest about these tiny
swarming insects. In the first place, they are closely related to the
minute scale-insects or Coccidæ, several species of which produce
the celebrated lac of lacquer-work and the dyes known as lake,
cochineal, and kermes, the latter a dye manufactured in South
Europe and used to colour wool and cloth crimson before cochineal
reached us from Mexico. The Coccidæ include also the “mussel-
scale” and other destructive diseases of fruit trees. A beautiful
purple colour can be extracted from crushed masses of some kinds
of aphides (as well as from Coccidæ), and has been used as a dye.
The aphides have very generally a green colour, like many insects
(caterpillars and leaf insects) which pass their lives upon green
leaves and feed on them. It is often supposed that this green colour
is merely the green colouring matter (so-called chlorophyll) of the
leaf, taken up by the insects in feeding on the leaf. But this is not so;
it is a peculiar substance derived in a crude state from the plant-
juice, but digested in the stomach and completed in the insects’
blood and tissues. Then, again, the aphides produce curious
secretions, often in great abundance, which surround them as the
lac surrounds the lac-insect. The threads which are produced in such
abundance, by the woolly aphis of apple trees, as to look like masses
of cotton wool adhering to the twigs of the tree, are of this nature.

Fig. 58.—Foundress or stock-mother of the hop-louse: the

individual hatched from a winter egg, laid on the bark of a
plum tree, who produces viviparously a wingless virgin
brood. That brood produces wing-bearing young, which fly
off to the hop-plants.
Fig. 59.—Side view of winged viviparous female of the hop-
louse, b, the stabbing beak.

Fig. 60.—An ant “milking” a “plant-louse” or “green-fly” for

honey-dew. The drop of honey-dew is seen exuding from
one of the two long tubes or spouts (called “cornicles”) on
the back of the plant-louse at a. These spouts are seen at
the hinder part of the body in the drawings of the hop-louse
(Figs. 55 to 59). The ant is causing the aphis to pour out its
honey-dew (in fact “milking” it) by “drumming” on the body
of the plant-louse with its clubbed antennæ, and has taken
the drop of honey-dew between its jaws. This drawing was
made from life by the late Mr. Buckton, F.R.S., a great
student of these creatures. The ant is that kind known as
Myrinica rubra. The plant-louse is the Aphis sambuci or
blight of the elder-tree.
Another curious production of the aphides—common on the leaves
of elms and other trees infested by them—is known as “honey-dew.”
It is sticky and sweet, and was supposed by old writers to have
distilled from the stars, or otherwise to have dropped from heaven.
It is this sweet secretion which has led to the establishment of a
most curious friendship between ants and aphides, or plant-lice. It
has long been known that an ant will approach an aphis, and tickle
it, when at once the aphis exudes from its cornicles (see Fig. 60) a
drop of sweet honey-dew, which the ant swallows—just as a man
may milk a cow and drink the milk. And the resemblance goes
further, for the ants take possession of certain aphides, and keep
them either underground or in specially constructed chambers,
where they can gain ready access to them and “milk” them for
honey-dew. There has been a certain amount of exaggeration in the
description of these facts by some of the older writers; but it is
undoubtedly true that some species of ants keep special flocks or
herds of aphides, and feed on their sweet secretion.
Other small insects nourish themselves on the enormous swarms of
plant-lice in a less gentle way, but a way which man is very glad to
see in active operation, namely, by biting them and sucking out their
soft entrails—thus destroying them in great numbers. The lady-bird
beetle is especially active in this matter, both when it is a grub and
on attaining its adult form. A trustworthy observer saw as many as
forty aphides consumed by a lady-bird in an hour. Where the plant-
lice or aphides abound, there come also in countless swarms the
beetles known as lady-birds. In the year 1869, such a cloud of these
beetles passed over and settled on the fields and gardens of Kent,
Sussex, and Surrey, as to cause something like terror; it was
impossible to walk in the lanes without crushing hundreds under
foot. But the little lady-birds are not like the terrible locust, which
appears in millions and devours all vegetation before it; on the
contrary, they are what are called “beneficials,” and come solely to
feed on and destroy the plant-lice of the hops, plum trees, and apple
trees. A first-rate hop crop in the year 1870 was the consequence of
the abundance of lady-birds in 1869. It is this beneficent activity of
the lady-birds which has given them their name. In Italy they are
called Bestioline del Signore, also Madonnine, and Marioline, and in
France Bête à Dieu. In English they are “our lady’s blessed bugs,”
which save the crops from destruction.
The exertions of the aphides in pricking the plants they infest so as
to get at their juices lead to the growth of galls on the leaves, and
also on the rootlets of many plants, and often the leaves become
rolled up into bag-like bodies filled with aphides. Many trees and
smaller plants are killed by these attacks, but it is probable that
where the plants have not been rendered delicate by nursing and
cultivation, and where the aphides are not a strange foreign kind,
introduced by man’s carelessness or by some rarely (if ever)
occurring wind or flood, the aphides do not actually destroy any
plants by their visitation, excepting the weaklings, and that their
numbers are kept within bounds by their natural enemies the lady-
birds and other such carnivorous insects.
We must now notice the most interesting of all the wonderful things
which have been discovered about these tiny insects, which are even
smaller than fleas. Any one who has a rose-garden and chooses to
spend some hours a day in studying the “green-fly” can follow out
the facts. They reproduce themselves—that is to say, propagate—
with astounding rapidity. The great Linnæus, a hundred and fifty
years ago, came to the conclusion, from his observation of one kind
or species, that in one year a single aphis would produce a quintillion
of descendants! Without insisting upon the exact numbers in
different kinds of aphides, we may say that that is a fair indication of
the rate at which they produce young. No sooner does a mother
aphis produce some thirty or forty young, than in a few hours or
days, according to the warmth of the season and the abundance of
food, these young have grown to full size and themselves each
produce the same number of young, and so on through the summer,
and even into the autumn. Nineteen generations in sixteen weeks
have been counted in some kinds of the plant-lice. Hence it is no
wonder that these little creatures increase exceedingly and cover the
leaves and shoots on which they feed; no wonder that they furnish a
plentiful nourishment for the lady-birds which prey on them. But the
most curious thing is this, that these abundant and rapidly
reproducing broods of aphis are all females, and that they do not lay
eggs, but extrude their young in a more or less complete state of
development, that is to say, they are viviparous. They are all
females! It is only late in the season that males are produced!
In fact, the summer broods of the “green-fly” and other aphides
which do so much damage to rose bushes, hops, and other
cultivated plants, are produced by females alone, without the
intervention of a male. These minute insects present true instances
of that very remarkable and interesting occurrence which is called
“parthenogenesis,” or virginal propagation. It is further a noteworthy
thing that the virginal aphis mothers do not lay or deposit eggs, but
that the young grow from the eggs inside their mothers (Fig. 61),
and are only extruded when they are complete little six-legged
insects, capable of walking, and ready to feed themselves by
stabbing the soft leaves of the plant on which they find themselves,
and sucking up its juices. The summer aphides are spoken of as
being both “viviparous” and “parthenogenetic.” The words are really
useful, and we cannot get on without them.
No case is known to medical men or to naturalists of the birth of
young from an unimpregnated or virgin mother among what are
called the higher animals—those which are classed as vertebrates,
and include mankind, mammals, birds, reptiles, batrachians, and
fishes. But though uncommon, this virginal reproduction (or
“parthenogenesis”) does occur constantly in a very few kinds of
small insects and in some small shrimp-like creatures. It has excited
the greatest interest amongst naturalists from the early days when it
was first observed until the present, and it has been very carefully
studied in the past thirty years.
In order to appreciate this matter it is necessary to know the chief
facts about the ordinary process of reproduction in animals and
plants. All animals and plants are built up of minute particles of living
matter called “cells” (see p. 170). Really, these are not cells, or
hollow boxes, or cases. We use the word “cell” for the contents of a
cell. Each is a droplet of protoplasm or living matter lying in a small
or large envelope or case of dead matter which it has produced
around itself (Fig. 61). Observers using their microscopes saw at first
only the case, and called it a “cell,” and the word “cell” is now used
almost universally for the soft stuff within the cell (see p. 173). Each
soft cell of “plasm” or “protoplasm” has a very special structure. The
existence in it of a central kernel, or “nucleus” of peculiarly active
substance, is the most obvious feature. These “cells” are so small
(for instance, those which build up the human body) that from one
to two thousand could be placed side by side on a line an inch long.
They are the “units” which make up the body of an animal or plant,
just as bricks and planks and rods make up a building constructed by
human contrivance. Two most important things about them are—
first, that each is always the seat of chemical activity, absorbing
liquid material, changing it and either fixing it or throwing it out in a
new chemical condition; and, second, that as a result each cell
grows, and after a very little growth divides into two. This “dividing
into two” is immensely important, for in this way the number of cells
forming a very young or small animal or plant is increased from a
few thousands to many millions whilst the organism grows. And not
only that, but we find on tracing the young animal or plant back to
its beginning as an individual that it actually started as a single cell.
The germ of every living thing, then, is a single nucleated particle of
protoplasm—a cell which we call the “egg-cell,” because “eggs” are
merely shells and packing to hold and protect this all-important egg-
cell.
 Fig. 61.—A single egg-tube or ovarian tube (usually there
are many) of an insect. The youngest and smallest eggs are
at the narrow end. o o are larger egg-cells with a striated
shell or envelope; g, nucleus of the egg-cell. The unshaded
egg is one grown to full size, and in the parthenogenetic
aphis would develop where it is without fertilisation into a
young aphis.
Every individual flower, tree, insect, snail, fish, and man started as a
single egg-cell, which became detached from the mother’s body.
Take the case of a common marine animal, the star-fish. At the
breeding season, early in the year, the female star-fish discharges
thousands of these egg-cells into the sea-water. Each floats
separately in a delicate case of its own. Before any one of those
floating egg-cells can commence to divide so as to build up a new
mass of cells—a new young star-fish—it must undergo the process
of “fertilisation.” That is to say, its substance must fuse with that of a
“sperm-cell.” These “sperm-cells” are discharged into the sea-water
in countless thousands by the male star-fishes. They are excessively
minute, actively wriggling threads, swollen out at one end to form a
little knob, the “nucleus” of the sperm-cell (see p. 134 for figures of
the spermatozoa, and eggs of the oyster). The water is rendered
cloudy by the abundance of these microscopic filaments, which are
called “spermatozoa.” One sperm-cell, or spermatozoon comes into
contact, in the sea-water, with each of the discharged floating egg-
cells. It burrows into it and fuses or melts and mixes with the
substance of the egg-cell. The whole process is easy to watch with a
microscope, and I am writing of what I, in common with many
others, have actually seen.
The egg-cell after this process consists really of the substance of two
equal cells—the egg-cell and the sperm-cell—completely fused so as
to form a single cell, having a single “nucleus,” which has resulted
from the fusion of the nucleus of the egg-cell with that of the sperm-
cell. Now, and not before, the egg-cell can divide, take up
nourishment, and continue to divide and grow, so as to form a
constantly increasing mass of young cells, a young animal which
gradually assumes the form of a star-fish. All animals, and plants,
too, reproduce themselves in this way. When the animal or plant is
not aquatic in its habits the sperm-cell and the egg-cell cannot be
discharged and take their chance of coming into contact with one
another outside the parent’s body; the sperm-cells are, in such
cases, received into a chamber of the egg-producing parent’s body,
and there the fusion of the egg-cells with them, one sperm-cell to
one egg-cell, takes place. Parthenogenesis then consists in the
omission of the fusion of a sperm-cell with the egg-cell. The egg-cell
develops, divides again and again, and produces the young animal
without the addition to it of a sperm-cell—without, in fact, being
“fertilised,” as it is called. That is what happens in the summer
broods of the little plant-lice or aphides (Fig. 57). When, however,
the cold weather comes the virgin mothers suddenly produce two
kinds of young—males as well as females—and then the solitary
winter egg, which the late autumn females lay to last through winter
until spring, is fertilised by a sperm-cell derived from the late
produced autumn male (Fig. 56) in the ordinary way.
Another parthenogenetic animal is the rare little fresh-water shrimp
called Apus, which goes on multiplying in this manner in wayside
ponds for years, thousands of female individuals being produced in
successive seasons, laying their eggs and carrying on the race for an
indefinite time until at last—one fine day—we do not know why then
and not before, that rare creature a male Apus is hatched. Why
these and one or two other such small shrimps and insects are able
to set aside the almost universal law as to the necessity for
fertilisation of the egg-cell by a sperm-cell, naturalists have not yet
found out. It is quite certain that these exceptional creatures have
been derived from ancestors which had their eggs fertilised in the
regular way, and that this elimination of the male is a special device,
an innovation.
There are incomplete attempts at it in other insects. Thus it has
been discovered that the queen bee produces only females from the
eggs which are fertilised before she lays them. When the stock of
sperm-cells which she received from a drone in her nuptial flight is
exhausted, or if we carefully remove by a painless operation the
internal sac in which they are stored, the eggs are no longer
fertilised, but they are not rendered sterile or abortive. They develop
into drones! And drones or male bees are produced in no other way,
and only drones are so produced, never worker-females (so-called
neuters) nor queens.
Another curious fact is that in rearing moths in captivity some
naturalists have quite unexpectedly found that when they have
hatched out female moths from the chrysalids and kept them from
the moment of hatching quite apart from the male moths (which are
of another size and colour, and easily distinguished), these females
will sometimes lay eggs—unfertilised eggs—which give birth to
caterpillars, which feed and complete all their changes. The second
generation of moths so produced are male and female, but the
females, being kept apart again, produce a parthenogenetic brood,
and the process has been repeated to a third generation. These
instances are very rare. The remarkable thing about them is that,
apparently, the parthenogenesis is only due to the experimental
interference of an entomologist, and that unless some such accident
had befallen the moths, the eggs would have been fertilised in the
usual way, since there was no deficiency of male moths. These facts
have led to many interesting speculations, and are particularly
curious in regard to the inquiry as to what determines the sex of
offspring, about which sensational announcements are sometimes
made in the foreign correspondence columns of our newspapers.
Here we find the parthenogenetic eggs of the moths producing both
males and females, those of the aphides and the pond-shrimp
producing predominantly females, and those of the queen bee
producing exclusively males (drones). Biologists have not yet arrived
at a solution of the problem raised by these divergent results.
It is necessary, in regard to this subject, to remember that many
lower animals and plants can reproduce or propagate by separating
“buds,” or large bits of their bodies, built up of thousands of cells,
and, therefore, not to be confused with the single egg-cell. The egg-
cell is a cell specially prepared for fusion with a sperm-cell,
necessitating—except in very rare instances—the union in the new
individual or young of living material from two separate parental
organisms, and, therefore, in many cases, from two widely separate
lines of ancestry. A snippet, or bit cut from a begonia leaf, will
produce a new individual plant; a bit cut or torn from a polyp will
similarly give rise to a new individual: but the parthenogenetic egg is
not to be confused with these masses of cells. It is a true egg-cell
which might have been fertilised, and it is found in animals such as
insects and crustaceans, which are more highly elaborated in
structure than any which, like the polyps and zoophytes, multiply by
buds and cuttings.
 XXXVI

THE DEADLY PHYLLOXERA

It was only after long and patient investigation that the various
broods of the terrible Phylloxera which, between 1868 and 1888,
destroyed half the vineyards of France, became known, their
relations to one another determined, and the final cure for the
devastation caused by them decided upon and put into practice.
In all ordinary plant-lice or green-fly (aphides) at the end of the
summer, the last parthenogenetic brood produces a generation of
distinct males and females, which differ a good deal in appearance
from the virginal broods of the spring and summer. Each female,
after receiving sperm-cells from a male, lays a single egg, which
consists of a fertilised egg-cell enclosed in an egg-shell. It is
deposited in a safe place in a crack of the bark of a tree, or on the
rootlets of some plant, and remains unchanged through the winter.
In the spring from every such egg hatches a single female aphis,
which feeds and increases in size. In a very short time (a week or
so) this solitary female (Fig. 58) proceeds to produce, without male
intervention, young which grow from true egg-cells which are not
laid but remain inside her. The young are born or pass out of her as
small six-legged insects. They feed and grow up, and in turn
produce “parthenogenetically” and viviparously broods of young like
themselves. The first female thus hatched from the winter egg is
called a “foundress,” or “stock-mother,” because she starts a whole
colony of young which, by virginal propagation of successive broods,
may number many millions in a season. These are known as “virgin-
mothers” (Fig. 57), and eventually their later generations always
produce males and females, so that we distinguish, in the course of
a year, four sets of aphides, starting from the egg, namely (1) the
foundresses, (2) the numerous generations of virgin-mothers, (3)
the males, and (4) the egg-laying females.
In different kinds of plant-lice any of these “sets” may be either
winged or wingless (Figs. 55, 56, 59); many generations of the
virgin-mothers are wingless, but not all, in all species. According to
the species or kind of aphis and its requirements in regard to the
plants on which it feeds, wings are developed so as to enable the
aphis to fly from one tree or locality to another, or are not developed
if the aphis has to remain where it was born. The whole series of
successive broods of some kinds of aphis remain on one plant and
about the same part of it, and then there is little need for wings.
Others have their summer broods on the twigs or leaves, but the
later broods descend in winter to the roots of the same plant. The
woolly aphis of the apple trees and pear trees behaves in this way;
other species again produce a late-winged brood, which leaves the
plant on which its parents were feeding, and travels some distance
to the twigs or to the roots of a quite distinct kind of plant to
produce an autumn brood, and from these the final males and
females are born, and the winter eggs are then deposited. The hop-
louse leaves the hop when the hop-vine dies down in autumn. The
abundant wingless form (Fig. 58) of which there have usually been
ten generations, produces at last a winged “migrant” brood (Fig. 59)
which flies away to plum trees and sloe bushes, perhaps a quarter of
a mile distant. There the migrants produce wingless females on the
plum tree. They are followed to the plum trees by a final migrant
brood from the dying hops which are males—the first yet seen (Fig.
56). The males fertilise the wingless females born on the plum tree
—and the latter lay each one fertilised egg in the crevices of the
bark of the plum tree near the young buds. Winter now sets in: all
are dead except the eggs. In the following late spring a foundress
hatches out from each egg so deposited. The “foundress” (Fig. 58)
in this species, the hop aphis, is wingless. She produces
parthenogenetically and viviparously a brood of wingless females.
They similarly produce on the plum tree a third generation of virgin
females, but these have wings! (Fig. 55). They fly back to the hop-
vines, which are now well risen from the ground and offer abundant
juice to the wingless virgin brood which escapes from the winged
migrants as soon as they have settled on the hop, and feed and
grow and produce new wingless broods (Fig. 57) in rapid succession.
The phylloxera of the vine is a plant-louse or aphis, which exhibits
an interesting adaptation of winged and wingless broods to the
requirements of the insect’s nutrition and multiplication. A
“foundress” hatches from an egg on the bark of the vine where it
has passed the winter. It proceeds to attack the young leaves and to
produce a brood of young. The leaves of the vine when thus
attacked swell up and produce galls, in which the young phylloxera
are enclosed, and there the phylloxeras continue to multiply,
producing more galls and thus destroying the leaves. Some of the
young broods now crawl down the vine to its roots; others stay on
the leaves and continue their destructive work there. There are
several varieties of form and size amongst these broods. Those
which go to the roots attack the rootlets and produce knobs and
swellings on them, leading to their destruction as feeding organs.
Meanwhile the root-phylloxeras multiply exceedingly, and those on
the leaves are still feeding and multiplying. From one foundress
mother as many as twenty-five millions are produced in six months.
At last in the autumn the root-parasites produce a winged
generation of virgin-mothers, which come up from the ground and
fly away to other vines, upon which they produce males and
females. These females each lay a fertilised egg on the bark of the
previously healthy vine, and so the infection is spread. The root-
infesting forms continue to multiply, and in warm climates there is
no cessation of this process even in winter.
This parasite—the Phylloxera vastatrix—was introduced with some
American species of grape-vine—brought over as experimental
samples from Colorado—about 1864. In its native country it does
comparatively little harm, for the roots of the American species of
vine are, though attacked by it, not seriously injured. They have the
property of throwing out new rootlets when those already existing
are punctured and injured by the phylloxera, and so are not killed by
the attack, as is the European grape-vine.
The introduction of this deadly parasite to Europe was a mere
chance, due to ignorance and stupid want of supervision of
importations on the part of the Government, such as is common in
this country, though less so in France and Germany—part of the
blind mixing-up of the nicely adjusted products of all parts of the
earth which civilised man is always bringing about with disastrous
and terrifying results. In twenty years France lost 400 million pounds
in consequence; three million acres of vineyards were destroyed.
Other countries—Germany, Italy, and the Cape—also suffered. All
sorts of remedies were suggested and tried, such as the application
of poisons to the roots and the sinking of the vineyards under water.
Gradually the only effective method of dealing with the case has
been established. The old European vine-stocks or standards have
been grubbed up in all but the very choicest vineyards, and
American vines have been planted in their place. On to these have
been grafted cuttings of the local French vines, and they have taken
kindly to their new conditions. The produce of the French vineyards
is now greater than it has ever been. It had fallen from an annual
yield of 1,300,000,000 gallons to 650,000,000—but in 1900 it had
risen again to a yield of more than 1,400,000,000 gallons.
This history is a striking instance of the vast importance to civilised
communities of a knowledge and control of even such minute living
things as the plant-lice, and of the extraordinarily large results which
obscure living things may produce. It must tend to convince
reasonable men of the importance of accurate knowledge as to living
things and of the necessity of expending public money in constantly
improving and extending that knowledge.
An ingenious illustration of the enormous fecundity of the plant-lice
occurs to me as worth giving in conclusion. The late Professor
Huxley—a careful and trustworthy authority—calculated that the
produce of a single aphis would, in the course of ten generations,
supposing all the individuals to survive, “contain more ponderable
substance than five hundred millions of stout men; that is, more
than the whole population of China.” And this calculation is held by
some authorities to be below rather than above the mark!
 XXXVII

CLOTHES MOTHS
The way in which the lives of all animals and plants are interwoven
with that of other animals and plants, often in obscure and
unsuspected ways, comes home to man when he contemplates the
numbers and variety of living things which exist with him and upon
him—that is to say, at his expense and to the detriment of the stores
which he accumulates, the clothing with which he covers himself,
and the buildings which he constructs. Man not only has carefully
taken a number of animals and plants in hand and cultivated them
as food-givers, as sources of clothing, and other useful material, but,
much to his annoyance, he finds, per contra, that other animals (and
plants, too), with similar self-seeking habit, make use of him in his
turn, and of his belongings, with a complete disregard of his
convenience, treating him and his arrangements as so much
available “food-stuff,” and showing no atom of respect to him as the
lord of creation. Just as in dealing with the more deadly attacks of
disease-producing parasites, so in meeting the destructive invasions
made by his fellow-creatures of all sizes and kinds in search of food
and shelter—man has to be continually on the alert, and to wage a
constant warfare, unless he will consent to see himself and his
possessions moth-eaten, fly-blown, worm-burrowed, reduced to
fragments and powder. And this warfare he has incessantly carried
on with increasing skill and knowledge from the earliest times of
which we have any record.
The sparrow and the rat, of which there has lately been much talk,
are examples of fairly large, easily detected enemies of this kind.
The almost ultra-microscopic bacteria—similar to those which
produce disease by multiplying in the living body—are examples of
the most minute living pests which injure man by causing sourness,
putrefaction, and destructive rot in his food and stores. Every year
civilised man is gaining greater knowledge of these “ferment
organisms,” and vastly increased skill in preserving his possessions,
such as food and drink, from the attacks of their ubiquitous swarms.
Between the larger depredators, such as birds and rats, and the
smallest, such as the microscopic bacteria and moulds (to whom
alone putrefaction is due, and without whom it would never occur),
there are a host of small troublesome creatures, which belong
chiefly to the group of animals called “insects”—beetles, moths, flies,
and bugs—which give man incessant occupation in warding off their
attacks upon his food, his clothes, his furniture, his buildings, his
crops and fruit trees, and his domesticated animals. The study of
these things and of the means of grappling with them is the
fascinating occupation of those who are called “economic” zoologists
and botanists. Of course, in order to carry on their inquiries
successfully they have to bring to bear on the questions they
investigate as complete and thorough a knowledge as possible of all
the kinds of animals and plants, and of their ways of feeding,
reproducing, and protecting themselves in natural conditions.
One of the most widely celebrated and anciently detested of insect
pests is the clothes moth. It is the caterpillar of this moth which is
objectionable—biting off, eating, and using to weave a case the hair
of furs and the fine filaments of woollen fabrics. Not every one is
able to recognise the clothes moth, which is a very small creature of
a greyish-yellow colour. The wings when set for flying measure only
half an inch in expanse, and when the moth is walking or at rest,
shut closely to the body so as to give it an almost cylindrical shape,
with an attenuated snout. Much bigger moths occasionally get into
our rooms, but do no harm. These little clothes moths lay their eggs
on fur or wool, and the caterpillars which hatch from them do the
damage. The moths themselves have no jaws and take no food. But
the caterpillar or grub, though soft and readily crushed, has a pair of
very hard, minute, dark-coloured jaws, with which it works away,
cropping the fur and wool on which it lives. The moths are seen in
houses commonly between January and October, and it is, of course,
the object of the victimised householder to destroy them before they
can lay eggs, or, what is more practical, to keep woollen and fur
clothes away from their reach. Things which are in daily use are not
very liable to receive a deposit of eggs from the clothes moth, and
as a rule the enemy may be kept at bay by daily shaking and beating
the things in question, and hanging them up in the air. But coats,
flannels, etc., which are hidden away, left quietly in drawers or
cupboards, offer the undisturbed conditions which the clothes moth
seeks. There is no safety for them unless they are wrapped up or
shut in with a quantity of naphtol or of camphor, or, as is nowadays
more usual, placed in a refrigerating chamber.
The little caterpillar which does all the damage is of a dull white
colour, with a reddish head. It is remarkable for the fact that it
makes a sort of movable tunic or case for itself out of the hair or
wool which it crops, and it crawls about protected by this case.
There are not many insects which thus construct portable cases for
themselves when in the grub or caterpillar state of life. Such “cases”
must not be confused with the very similar “cocoons” by which some
moth-grubs surround themselves (as, for instance, the silkworm
moth) when their growth is completed, and they become quiescent
and hard, and are known as chrysalids. Such “cocoons” are
constructed in the same way as the lining of the clothes moth’s case,
by threads of silk secreted by the caterpillar, but they are made once
for all when the grub has ceased activity. The little clothes moth
caterpillar, on the other hand, has continually to enlarge its tunic or
case as it itself increases in size. There is a hole at the end, from
which the head and three legs of the caterpillar emerge, so that it
can crawl and feed freely. The outer surface of the case consists of
cut lengths of the fibre on which the grub is living, and so is
protective in resembling the surrounding material and hiding the
minute ravager. It is easy enough for the little grub to add a bit to
the case at the end from which its head protrudes, and, being very
flexible, it can turn right round in the tube and put its head out at
the other end and secrete a bit more there, cementing cut hairs to
the outer surface. But in order to increase the breadth of the tube or
case, the caterpillar has, from time to time, to undertake a
formidable operation. It actually slits up the case lengthwise for
about half its extent, and fills in the gaping space with new material;
then it cuts up the opposite face of the same half of the tube, and
puts in a new patch there. And after that, it has to treat the
remaining half of the tube in the same way, making two more cuts,
one opposite the other, and filling in the gap in each case as before.
Students of these little creatures have amused themselves by
changing the position of the caterpillar and its case, from fur or wool
of one colour to fur or wool of another colour, and in this way the
industrious caterpillar is made to work in different coloured fibre in
successive enlargements of his case, so that it becomes a Joseph’s
coat of many colours.
An interesting fact about the movable case made by the clothes
moth caterpillar is that the nearest thing in nature to it is the case
made by the aquatic grubs or caterpillars of another kind of insects
—the caddis-worms (“case-worms”) which are common in ponds and
streams. They show extraordinary powers in making their cases so
that they balance nicely in the water, as the animal crawls along on
the bottom of a pool, with his head and six legs emerging from one
end of the case. Caddis-worms are of various kinds or species, and
some attach to their cases little broken sticks, others minute empty
snail-shells, others the fine green threads of water-plants. The
caddis-worm becomes changed into a delicate fly, with transparent
wings, just as the clothes-grub becomes changed into a moth—and
it is an interesting fact that the caddis-flies, though they are classed
with the May-flies and such net-winged insects, and not with the
moths and butterflies (the Lepidoptera, or insects with wings
covered with dust-like scales, which give the colour and patterns to
the wings), yet agree with moths in having some scales on the
wings and with one kind of minute moth, namely, the clothes moth,
in having grubs which make movable cases.
The clothes moth caterpillar was known to the Romans by the name
Tinea, and is described with correct detail by the Roman naturalist
Pliny. Modern naturalists have accepted this name Tinea as that of
the genus to which the clothes moth belongs. There are thirty
different British species of Tinea, of which four are guilty of attacking
animal fabric, and so causing trouble to man. The one which builds a
case and is the titular chief of the clan of clothes moths—“the”
clothes moth, just as one may say “the” Macintosh—is scientifically
indicated by the name Tinea pellionella. The other three do not form
movable cases when in the caterpillar stage, and attack coarser stuff
than fur and fine wool. One of them is known as the “tapestry
moth,” because its caterpillar establishes itself in old tapestry and
carpets, and burrowing into these thickish materials is concealed
without the aid of any self-provided tunic or case. The name Tinea is
often used by entomologists in an expanded form as Tineina, to
indicate the whole series of minute moths of which the genus Tinea
is only one little group. Many of these moths are much smaller even
than the clothes moth, and they are found in all parts of the world
and in all sorts and conditions of life—in relation to trees, shrubs,
and plants of all kinds. It has been estimated that there are as many
as 200,000 distinctly marked different kinds of these minute
creatures. The insect collectors and students who occupy themselves
with the magnificent butterflies and larger moths (of which there are
an enormous variety of kinds) refuse to deal with the somewhat dull-
looking and almost innumerable minute moths which are classed as
Micro-lepidoptera, in contrast to the Macro-lepidoptera (or big moths
and butterflies). Consequently they have become the favourite study
of a few enthusiasts, who are known as Micro-lepidopterists, and
have a wide but not uninteresting field of exploration all to
themselves. The Micro-lepidoptera include, besides the Tineina, a
group of less minute though small moths, with narrow, fringed
wings, amongst which are the window moth, the milk moth, the
tabby moth, the meal moth, and the grease moth. Though the
clothes moths may well be described as “tiny” moths, yet the word
Tinea, as applied to them, has no such origin, but is the name given
to the destructive grub by the Romans. The same word has
unfortunately been applied by medical men and botanists to a
vegetable parasite which causes a skin disease (ringworm) resulting
in baldness. The Tinea calvans of the doctors has only this in
common with the moth Tinea pellionella—that it causes hair to
disappear and baldness to ensue; but the vegetable parasite attacks
the hair on a living man’s head, the caterpillar that on his fur coat.
 XXXVIII

STONE AND WOOD BORERS

Boring into wood is a favourite proceeding on the part of many small
creatures, insects, shrimps, and ship-worms, by which they not only
acquire nourishment, but at the same time penetrate more and more
deeply into safe quarters and concealment. It is not surprising that it
has become the necessary and regular mode of life of a host of
small animals, and consequently that man who wants wood in good
sound blocks and planks for his various constructions is a good deal
put out by the voracity of the wood-boring community. To some
extent he has given up the task of checking their proceedings, and
now uses metal where he formerly used wood, but that only applies
to a limited field. Wood is still the great material of rough
construction, and the main substance used in fittings and furniture.
In our own country and in most parts of the world there are large
grubs or caterpillars, such as those of the goat moth, three inches
long and as thick as one’s finger, which eat into the stems of trees
and spoil the timber. The grub of the handsome moth known as the
wood leopard is another of these. It attacks poplar trees, and we
used to take it in numbers in the London parks and squares when I
was a collector. The goat moth is specially destructive to willow
trees. But there are a very large series of smaller grubs and adult
insects which injure trees or bore or devour wood already cut and
dried. Among these are the saw-flies and a number of beetles, and
in Sicily and the tropics there are the wonderful white ants which are
not ants at all, but more like May-flies. The destruction caused by
these borers and eaters of wood is increased by the fact that when
they have riddled a piece of wood, moisture penetrates it, and