THE CRICKET
Among the beasts a tale is told
How a poor Cricket ventured nigh
His door to catch the sun’s warm gold
And saw a radiant Butterfly.
She passed with tails thrown proudly back
And long gay rows of crescents blue,
Brave yellow stars and bands of black,
The lordliest fly that ever flew.
“Ah, fly away,” the hermit said,
“Daylong among your flowers to roam;
Nor daisies white nor roses red
Will compensate my lowly home.”
True, all too true! There came a storm
And caught the other in its flood, [[305]]
Staining her broken velvet form
And covering her wings with mud.
The Cricket, sheltered from the rain,
Chirped and looked on with tranquil eye;
For him the thunder pealed in vain,
The gale and torrent passed him by.
Then shun the world, nor take your fill
Of any of its joys or flowers;
A lowly fire-side, calm and still,
At least will grant you tearless hours![5]
There I recognize my Cricket. I see him curling his antennæ on the threshold of his burrow, keeping his belly cool and his back to the sun. He is not jealous of the Butterfly; on the contrary, he pities her, with that air of mocking commiseration familiar in the ratepayer who owns a house of his own and sees passing before his door some wearer of a gaudy costume with no place to lay her head. Far from complaining, he is very well satisfied with both his house and his violin. A true philosopher, he knows the vanity of things and appreciates the charm of a modest retreat away from the riot of pleasure-seekers. [[306]]
Yes, the description is about right, though it remains very inadequate and does not bear the stamp of immortality. The Cricket is still waiting for the few lines needed to perpetuate his merits; and, since La Fontaine neglected him, he will have to go on waiting a long time.
To me, as a naturalist, the outstanding feature in the two fables—a feature which I should find repeated elsewhere, beyond a doubt, if my library were not reduced to a small row of odd volumes on a deal shelf—is the burrow on which the moral is founded. Florian speaks of the snug retreat; the other praises his lowly home. It is the dwelling therefore that above all compels attention, even that of the poet, who cares little in general for realities.
In this respect, indeed, the Cricket is extraordinary. Of all our insects, he alone, on attaining maturity, possesses a fixed abode, the monument of his industry. During the bad season of the year, most of the others burrow or skulk in some temporary refuge, a refuge obtained free of cost and abandoned without regret. Several create marvels, with a view to settling their family: cotton satchels, baskets made of leaves, towers of [[307]]cement. Some carnivorous larvæ dwell in permanent ambuscades, where they lie in wait for their prey. The Tiger-beetle, among others, digs itself a perpendicular hole, which it closes with its flat, bronze head. Whoever ventures on the insidious foot-bridge vanishes down the gulf, whose trap-door at once tips up and disappears beneath the feet of the wayfarer. The Ant-lion makes a funnel in the sand. The Ant slides down its very loose slope and is bombarded with projectiles hurled from the bottom of the crater by the hunter, who turns his neck into a catapult. But these are all temporary refuges, nests or traps.
The laboriously constructed residence, in which the insect settles down with no intention of moving, either in the happy spring or the woful winter season; the real manor, built for peace and comfort and not as a hunting-box or a nursery: this is known to the Cricket alone. On some sunny, grassy slope he is the owner of a hermitage. While all the others lead vagabond lives, sleeping in the open air or under the casual shelter of a dead leaf, a stone, or the peeling bark of an old tree, he is a privileged person with a permanent address. [[308]]
A serious problem is that of the home. It has been solved by the Cricket, by the Rabbit and, lastly, by man. In my neighbourhood, the Fox and the Badger have holes the best part of which is supplied by the irregularities of the rock. A few repairs; and the dug-out is completed. Cleverer than they, the Rabbit builds his house by burrowing wheresoever he pleases, when there is no natural passage that allows him to settle down free of any trouble.
The Cricket surpasses all of them. Scorning chance refuges, he always chooses the site of his abode, in well-drained ground, with a pleasant sunny aspect. He refuses to make use of fortuitous cavities, which are incommodious and rough; he digs every bit of his villa, from the entrance-hall to the back-room.
I see no one above him, in the art of house-building, except man; and even man, before mixing mortar to hold stones together, before kneading clay to coat his hut of branches, fought with wild beasts for the possession of a refuge in the rocks or an underground cavern.
Then how are the privileges of instinct distributed? Here is one of the humblest, [[309]]able to lodge himself to perfection. He has a home, an advantage unknown to many civilized beings; he has a peaceful retreat, the first condition of comfort; and nobody around him is capable of settling down. He has no rivals until you come to ourselves.
Whence does he derive this gift? Is he favoured with special tools? No, the Cricket is not an incomparable excavator; in fact, one is rather surprised at the result when one considers the feebleness of his resources.
Can it be made necessary by the demands of an exceptionally delicate skin? No, among his near kinsmen, other skins, no less sensitive than his, do not dread the open air at all.
Can it be a propensity inherent in the anatomical structure, a talent prescribed by the secret promptings of the organism? No, my neighbourhood boasts three other Crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus, de Geer; G. desertus, Pallas.; G. burdigalensis, Latr.), who are so like the Field Cricket in appearance, colour and structure that, at the first glance, one would take them for him. The first is as large as he is, or even larger. The second represents him reduced to about half [[310]]his size. The third is smaller still. Well, of these faithful copies, these doubles of the Field Cricket, not one knows how to dig himself a burrow. The Double-spotted Cricket inhabits those heaps of grass left to rot in damp places; the Solitary Cricket roams about the crevices in the dry clods turned up by the gardener’s spade; the Bordeaux Cricket is not afraid to make his way into our houses, where he sings discreetly, during August and September, in some dark, cool spot.
There is no object in continuing our questions: each would meet with no for an answer. Instinct, which stands revealed here and disappears there despite organisms alike in all respects, will never tell us its causes. It depends so little on an insect’s stock of tools that no anatomical detail can explain it to us and still less make us foresee it. The four almost identical Crickets, of whom one alone understands the art of burrowing, add their evidence to the manifold proofs already supplied; they confirm in a striking fashion our profound ignorance of the origin of instinct.
Who does not know the Cricket’s abode! Who has not, as a child playing in [[311]]the fields, stopped in front of the hermit’s cabin! However light your footfall, he has heard you coming and has abruptly withdrawn to the very bottom of his hiding-place. When you arrive, the threshold of the house is deserted.
Everybody knows the way to bring the skulker out. You insert a straw and move it gently about the burrow. Surprised at what is happening above, tickled and teased, the Cricket ascends from his secret apartment; he stops in the passage, hesitates and enquires into things by waving his delicate antennæ; he comes to the light and, once outside, he is easy to catch, so greatly have events puzzled his poor head. Should he be missed at the first attempt, he may become more suspicious and obstinately resist the titillation of the straw. In that case, we can flood him out with a glass of water.
O those adorable times when we used to cage our Crickets and feed them on a leaf of lettuce, those childish hunting-trips along the grassy paths! They all come back to me to-day, as I explore the burrows in search of subjects for my studies; they appear to me almost in their pristine freshness when my companion, little Paul, already an expert in [[312]]the tactical use of the straw, springs up suddenly, after a long trial of skill and patience with the recalcitrant, and, brandishing his closed hand in the air, cries, excitedly:
“I’ve got him, I’ve got him!”
Quick, here’s a bag; in you go, my little Cricket! You shall be petted and pampered; but mind you teach us something and, first of all, show us your house.
It is a slanting gallery, situated in the grass, on some sunny bank which soon dries after a shower. It is nine inches long at most, hardly as thick as one’s finger and straight or bent according to the exigencies of the ground. As a rule, a tuft of grass, which is respected by the Cricket when he goes out to browse upon the surrounding turf, half-conceals the home, serving as a porch and throwing a discreet shade over the entrance. The gently-sloping threshold, scrupulously raked and swept, is carried for some distance. This is the belvedere on which, when everything is peaceful round about, the Cricket sits and scrapes his fiddle.
The inside of the house is devoid of luxury, with bare and yet not coarse walls. Ample leisure allows the inhabitant to do away with any unpleasant roughness. At the [[313]]end of the passage is the bedroom, the terminal alcove, a little more carefully smoothed than the rest and slightly wider. All said, it is a very simple abode, exceedingly clean, free from damp and conforming with the requirements of a well-considered system of hygiene. On the other hand, it is an enormous undertaking, a regular Cyclopean tunnel, when we consider the modest means of excavation. Let us try to be present at the work. Let us also enquire at what period the enterprise begins. This obliges us to go back to the egg.
Any one wishing to see the Cricket lay her eggs can do so without making great preparations: all that he wants is a little patience, which, according to Buffon, is genius, but which I, more modestly, will describe as the observer’s chief virtue. In April, or at latest in May, we establish isolated couples of the insect in flower-pots containing a layer of heaped-up earth. Their provisions consist of a lettuce-leaf renewed from time to time. A square of glass covers the retreat and prevents escape.
Some extremely interesting facts can be obtained with this simple installation, supplemented, if need be, with a wire-gauze cover, [[314]]the best of all cages. We shall return to this matter. For the moment, let us watch the laying and make sure that the propitious hour does not evade our vigilance.
It is in the first week in June that my assiduous visits begin to show satisfactory results. I surprise the mother standing motionless, with her ovipositor planted perpendicularly in the soil. For a long time she remains stationed at the same point, heedless of her indiscreet caller. At last she withdraws her dibble, removes, more or less perfunctorily, the traces of the boring-hole, takes a moment’s rest, walks away and starts again somewhere else, now here, now there, all over the area at her disposal. Her behaviour, though her movements are slower, is a repetition of what the Decticus has shown us. Her egg-laying appears to me to be ended within the twenty-four hours. For greater certainty, I wait a couple of days longer.
I then dig up the earth in the pot. The straw-coloured eggs are cylinders rounded at both ends and measuring about one-ninth of an inch in length. They are placed singly in the soil, arranged vertically and grouped in more or less numerous patches, which correspond [[315]]with the successive layings. I find them all over the pot, at a depth of three-quarters of an inch. There are difficulties in examining a mass of earth through a magnifying-glass; but, allowing for these difficulties, I estimate the eggs laid by one mother at five or six hundred. So large a family is sure to undergo a drastic purging before long.
The Cricket’s egg is a little marvel of mechanism. After hatching, it appears as an opaque white sheath, with a round and very regular aperture at the top; to the edge of this a cap adheres, forming a lid. Instead of bursting anyhow under the thrusts or cuts of the new-born larva, it opens of its own accord along a specially prepared line of least resistance.
It became important to observe the curious hatching. About a fortnight after the egg is laid, two large, round, rusty-black eye-dots darken the front end. A little way above these two dots, right at the apex of the cylinder, you see the outline of a thin circular swelling. This is the line of rupture which is preparing. Soon the translucency of the egg enables the observer to perceive the delicate segmentation of the tiny creature [[316]]within. Now is the time to redouble our vigilance and multiply our visits, especially in the morning.
Fortune, which loves the persevering, rewards me for my assiduity. All round this swelling where, by a process of infinite delicacy, the line of least resistance has been prepared, the end of the egg, pushed back by the inmate’s forehead, becomes detached, rises and falls to one side like the top of a miniature scent-bottle. The Cricket pops out like a Jack-in-the-box.
When he is gone, the shell remains distended, smooth, intact, pure white, with the cap or lid hanging from the opening. A bird’s egg breaks clumsily under the blows of a wart that grows for the purpose at the end of the chick’s beak; the Cricket’s egg, endowed with a superior mechanism, opens like an ivory case. The thrust of the inmate’s head is enough to work the hinge.
The hatching of the eggs is hastened by the glorious weather; and the observer’s patience is not much tried, the rapidity rivalling that of the Dung-beetles. The summer solstice has not yet arrived when the ten couples interned under glass for the benefit of my studies are surrounded by their [[317]]numerous progeny. The egg-stage, therefore, lasts just about ten days.
I said above that, when the lid of the ivory case is lifted, a young Cricket pops out. This is not quite accurate. What appears at the opening is the swaddled grub, as yet unrecognizable in a tight-fitting sheath. I expected to see this wrapper, this first set of baby-clothes, for the same reasons that made me anticipate it in the case of the Decticus:
“The Cricket,” said I to myself, “is born underground. He also sports two very long antennæ and a pair of overgrown hind-legs, all of which are cumbrous appendages at the time of the emergence. He must therefore possess a tunic in which to make his exit.”
My forecast, correct enough in principle, was only partly confirmed. The new-born Cricket does in fact possess a temporary structure; but, so far from employing it for the purpose of hoisting himself outside, he throws off his clothes as he passes out of the egg.
To what circumstances are we to attribute this departure from the usual practice? Perhaps to this: the Cricket’s egg stays in the ground for only a few days before hatching; the egg of the Decticus remains there for [[318]]eight months. The former, save for rare exceptions in a season of drought, lies under a thin layer of dry, loose, unresisting earth; the latter, on the contrary, finds itself in soil which has been caked together by the persistent rains of autumn and winter and which therefore presents serious difficulties. Moreover, the Cricket is shorter and stouter, less long-shanked than the Decticus. These would appear to be the reasons for the difference between the two insects in respect of their methods of emerging. The Decticus, born lower down, under a close-packed layer, needs a climbing-costume with which the Cricket is able to dispense, being less hampered and nearer to the surface and having only a powdery layer of earth to pass through.
Then what is the object of the tights which the Cricket flings aside as soon as he is out of the egg? I will answer this question with another: what is the object of the two white stumps, the two pale-coloured embryo wings carried by the Cricket under his wing-cases, which are turned into a great mechanism of sound? They are so insignificant, so feeble that the insect certainly makes no use of them, any more than the [[319]]Dog utilizes the thumb that hangs limp and lifeless at the back of his paw.
Sometimes, for reasons of symmetry, the walls of a house are painted with imitation windows to balance the other windows, which are real. This is done out of respect for order, the supreme condition of the beautiful. In the same way, life has its symmetries, its repetitions of a general prototype. When abolishing an organ that has ceased to be employed, it leaves vestiges of it to maintain the primitive arrangement.
The Dog’s rudimentary thumb predicates the five-fingered hand that characterizes the higher animals; the Cricket’s wing-stumps are evidence that the insect would normally be capable of flight; the moult undergone on the threshold of the egg is reminiscent of the tight-fitting wrapper needed for the laborious exit of the Locustidæ born underground. They are so many symmetrical superfluities, so many remains of a law that has fallen into disuse but never been abrogated.
As soon as he is deprived of his delicate tunic, the young Cricket, pale all over, almost white, begins to battle with the soil overhead. He hits out with his mandibles; he sweeps aside and kicks behind him the [[320]]powdery obstruction, which offers no resistance. Behold him on the surface, amidst the joys of the sunlight and the perils of conflict with the living, poor, feeble creature that he is, hardly larger than a Flea. In twenty-four hours he colours and turns into a magnificent blackamoor, whose ebon hue vies with that of the adult insect. All that remains of his original pallor is a white sash that girds his chest and reminds us of a baby’s leading-string. Very nimble and alert, he sounds the surrounding space with his long, quivering antennæ, runs about and jumps with an impetuosity in which his future obesity will forbid him to indulge.
This is also the age when the stomach is still delicate. What sort of food does he need? I do not know. I offer him the adult’s treat, tender lettuce-leaves. He scorns to touch them, or perhaps he takes mouthfuls so exceedingly small that they escape me.
In a few days, with my ten households, I find myself overwhelmed with family cares. What am I to do with my five or six thousand Crickets, a pretty flock, no doubt, but impossible to rear in my ignorance of the treatment required? I will [[321]]set you at liberty, my little dears; I will entrust you to nature, the sovran nurse.
Thus it comes to pass. I release my legions in the enclosure, here, there and everywhere, in the best places. What a concert I shall have outside my door next year, if they all turn out well! But no, the symphony will probably be one of silence, for the savage pruning due to the mother’s fertility is bound to come. All that I can hope for is that a few couples may survive extermination.
As in the case of the young Praying Mantes, the first that hasten to this manna and the most eager for the slaughter are the little Grey Lizard and the Ant. The latter, loathsome freebooter that she is, will, I fear, not leave me a single Cricket in the garden. She snaps up the poor little creatures, eviscerates them and gobbles them down at frantic speed.
Oh, the execrable wretch! And to think that we place the Ant in the front rank of insects! Books are written in her honour and the stream of eulogy never ceases; the naturalists hold her in the greatest esteem and add daily to her reputation, so true is it, among animals as among men, that of the [[322]]various ways of making history, the surest way is to do harm to others.[6]
Nobody asks after the Dung-beetle and the Necrophorus,[7] invaluable scavengers both, whereas everybody knows the Gnat, that drinker of men’s blood; the Wasp, that hot-tempered swashbuckler, with her poisoned dagger; and the Ant, that notorious evil-doer, who, in our southern villages, saps and imperils the rafters of a dwelling with the same zest with which she devours a fig. I need not trouble to say more: every one will discover in the records of mankind similar instances of usefulness ignored and frightfulness exalted.
The massacre instituted by the Ants and other exterminators is so great that my erstwhile populous colonies in the enclosure become too small to enable me to continue my observations; and I am driven to have recourse to information outside. In August, among the fallen leaves, in those little oases where the grass has not been wholly scorched by the sun, I find the young Cricket already rather big, black all over like the adult, [[323]]with not a vestige of the white girdle of his early days. He has no domicile. The shelter of a dead leaf, the cover of a flat stone are enough for him; they represent the tents of a nomad who cares not where he lays his head.
This vagabond life continues until the middle of autumn. It is then that the Yellow-winged Sphex[8] hunts down the wanderers, an easy prey, and stores her bag of Crickets underground. She decimates those who have survived the Ants’ devastating raids. A settled dwelling, dug a few weeks before the usual time, would save them from the spoilers. The sorely-tried victims do not think of it. The bitter experience of the centuries has taught them nothing. Though already strong enough to dig a protecting burrow, they remain invincibly faithful to their ancient customs and would go on roaming though the Sphex stabbed the last of their race.
It is at the close of October, when the first cold weather threatens, that the burrow is taken in hand. The work is very simple, judging by the little that my observation of [[324]]the caged insect has shown me. The digging is never done at a bare point in the pan, but always under the shelter of a withered lettuce-leaf, some remnant of the food provided. This takes the place of the grass screen that seems indispensable to the secrecy of the establishment.
The miner scrapes with his fore-legs and uses the pincers of his mandibles to extract the larger bits of gravel. I see him stamping with his powerful hind-legs, furnished with a double row of spikes; I see him raking the rubbish, sweeping it backwards and spreading it slantwise. There you have the method in its entirety.
The work proceeds pretty quickly at first. In the yielding soil of my cages, the digger disappears underground after a spell that lasts a couple of hours. He returns to the entrance at intervals, always backwards and always sweeping. Should he be overcome with fatigue, he takes a rest on the threshold of his half-finished home, with his head outside and his antennæ waving feebly. He goes in again and resumes work with pincers and rakes. Soon the periods of repose become longer and wear out my patience.
The most urgent part of the work is done. [[325]]Once the hole is a couple of inches deep, it suffices for the needs of the moment. The rest will be a long-winded business, resumed in a leisurely fashion, a little one day and a little the next; the hole will be made deeper and wider as demanded by the inclemencies of the weather and the growth of the insect. Even in winter, if the temperature be mild and the sun playing over the entrance to the dwelling, it is not unusual to see the Cricket shooting out rubbish, a sign of repairs and fresh excavations. Amidst the joys of spring, the upkeep of the building still continues. It is constantly undergoing improvements and repairs until the owner’s decease.
April comes to an end and the Cricket’s song begins, at first in rare and shy solos, soon developing into a general symphony in which each clod of turf boasts its performer. I am more than inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the spring choristers. In our waste lands, when the thyme and the lavender are gaily flowering, he has as his partner the Crested Lark, who rises like a lyrical rocket, his throat swelling with notes, and from the sky, invisible in the clouds, sheds his sweet music upon the fallows. Down below the Crickets chant the responses. Their [[326]]song is monotonous and artless, but so well-suited, in its very crudity, to the rustic gladness of renascent life! It is the hosanna of the awakening, the sacred alleluia understood by swelling seed and sprouting blade. Who deserves the palm in this duet? I should award it to the Cricket. He surpasses them all, thanks to his numbers and his unceasing note. Were the Lark to fall silent, the fields blue-grey with lavender, swinging its fragrant censers before the sun, would still receive from this humble chorister a solemn celebration. [[327]]
“Fare thee well, good neighbour Cricket; from thy presence I must flee;
Mine ears also will be taken for a pair of horns,” said he.
“Horns, i’ faith!” the Cricket answered. “Is thy servant mad or blind?
Those are ears which thy Creator with His own hand hath designed!”
“Yet the world will one day call them horns,” his fellow made reply,
“And ere that day dawn, my neighbour, I will bid this place good-bye.”
[2] Jean Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794), Voltaire’s grand-nephew, the leading French fabulist, after La Fontaine.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
“My snug little home is a place of delight:
If you want to live happy, live hidden from sight!”
[4] My friend, who is always accurate in his descriptions, is here speaking, if I be not mistaken, of the Swallow-tail.—Author’s Note. [↑]
[5] For the translation of these and the other verses in this chapter I am indebted to my friend Mr. Stephen McKenna.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[6] For the author’s only essay on Ants, cf. The Mason-bees: chap. vi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[7] Or Burying-beetle.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[8] Cf. The Hunting Wasps: chaps. iv to vii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
CHAPTER XVI
THE CRICKET: THE SONG; THE PAIRING
In steps anatomy and says to the Cricket, bluntly:
“Show us your musical-box.”
Like all things of real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that of the Grasshoppers: a bow with a hook to it and a vibrating membrane. The right wing-case overlaps the left and covers it almost completely, except where it folds back sharply and encases the insect’s side. It is the converse of what we see in the Green Grasshopper, the Decticus, the Ephippiger and their kinsmen. The Cricket is right-handed, the others left-handed.
The two wing-cases have exactly the same structure. To know one is to know the other. Let us describe the one on the right. It is almost flat on the back and slants suddenly at the side in a right-angled fold, encircling the abdomen with a pinion which [[328]]has delicate, parallel veins running in an oblique direction. The dorsal surface has stronger and more prominent nervures, of a deep-black colour, which, taken together, form a strange, complicated design, bearing some resemblance to the hieroglyphics of an Arabic manuscript.
By holding it up to the light, one can see that it is a very pale red, save for two large adjoining spaces, a larger, triangular one in front and a smaller, oval one at the back. Each is framed in a prominent nervure and scored with faint wrinkles. The first, moreover, is strengthened with four or five chevrons; the second with only one, which is bow-shaped. These two areas represent the Grasshoppers’ mirror; they constitute the sounding-areas. The skin is finer here than elsewhere and transparent, though of a somewhat smoky tint.
The front part, which is smooth and slightly red in hue, is bounded at the back by two curved, parallel veins, having between them a cavity containing a row of five or six little black wrinkles that look like the rungs of a tiny ladder. The left wing-case presents an exact duplicate of the right. The wrinkles constitute the friction-nervures [[329]]which intensify the vibration by increasing the number of the points that are touched by the bow.
On the lower surface, one of the two veins that surround the cavity with the rungs becomes a rib cut into the shape of a hook. This is the bow. I count in it about a hundred and fifty triangular teeth or prisms of exquisite geometrical perfection.
It is a fine instrument indeed, far superior to that of the Decticus. The hundred and fifty prisms of the bow, biting into the rungs of the opposite wing-case, set the four drums in motion at one and the same time, the lower pair by direct friction, the upper pair by the shaking of the friction-apparatus. What a rush of sound! The Decticus, endowed with a single paltry mirror, can be heard just a few steps away; the Cricket, possessing four vibratory areas, throws his ditty to a distance of some hundreds of yards.
He vies with the Cicada in shrillness, without having the latter’s disagreeable harshness. Better still: this favoured one knows how to modulate his song. The wing-cases, as we said, extend over either side in a wide fold. These are the dampers [[330]]which, lowered to a greater or lesser depth, alter the intensity of the sound and, according to the extent of their contact with the soft abdomen, allow the insect to sing mezza voce at one time and fortissimo at another.
The exact similarity of the two wing-cases is worthy of attention. I can see clearly the function of the upper bow and the four sounding-areas which it sets in motion; but what is the good of the lower one, the bow on the left wing? Not resting on anything, it has nothing to strike with its hook, which is as carefully toothed as the other. It is absolutely useless, unless the apparatus can invert the order of its two parts and place that above which was below. After such an inversion, the perfect symmetry of the instrument would cause the necessary mechanism to be reproduced in every respect and the insect would be able to stridulate with the hook which is at present unemployed. It would scrape away as usual with its lower fiddlestick, now become the upper; and the tune would remain the same.
Is this permutation within its power? Can the insect use both pot-hooks, changing from one to the other when it grows tired, [[331]]which would mean that it could keep up its music all the longer? Or are there at least some Crickets who are permanently left-handed? I expected to find this the case, because of the absolute symmetry of the wing-cases. Observation convinced me of the contrary. I have never come across a Cricket that failed to conform with the general rule. All those whom I have examined—and they are many—without a single exception carried the right wing-case above the left.
Let us try to interfere and to bring about by artifice what natural conditions refuse to show us. Using my forceps, very gently, of course, and without straining the wing-cases, I make these overlap the opposite way. This result is easily obtained with a little dexterity and patience. The thing is done. Everything is in order. There is no dislocation at the shoulders; the membranes are without a crease. Things could not be better-arranged under normal conditions.
Was the Cricket going to sing, with his inverted instrument? I was almost expecting it, appearances were so much in its favour; but I was soon undeceived. The insect submits for a few moments; then, finding [[332]]the inversion uncomfortable, it makes an effort and restores the instrument to its regular position. In vain I repeat the operation: the Cricket’s obstinacy triumphs over mine. The displaced wing-cases always resume their normal arrangement. There is nothing to be done in this direction.
Shall I be more successful if I make my attempt while the wing-cases are still immature? At the actual moment, they are stiff membranes, resisting any changes. The fold is already there; it is at the outset that the material should be manipulated. What shall we learn from organs that are quite new and still plastic, if we invert them as soon as they appear? The thing is worth trying.
For this purpose, I go to the larva and watch for the moment of its metamorphosis, a sort of second birth. The future wings and wing-cases form four tiny flaps which, by their shape and their scantiness, as well as by the way in which they stick out in different directions, remind me of the short jackets worn by the Auvergne cheese-makers. I am most assiduous in my attendance, lest I should miss the propitious moment, and at last have a chance to witness the moulting. [[333]]In the early part of May, at about eleven in the morning, a larva casts off its rustic garments before my eyes. The transformed Cricket is now a reddish brown, all but the wings and wing-cases, which are beautifully white.
Both wings and wing-cases, which only issued from their sheaths quite recently, are no more than short, crinkly stumps. The former remain in this rudimentary state, or nearly so. The latter gradually develop bit by bit and open out; their inner edges, with a movement too slow to be perceived, meet one another, on the same plane and at the same level. There is no sign to tell us which of the two wing-cases will overlap the other. The two edges are now touching. A few moments longer and the right will be above the left. This is the time to intervene.
With a straw I gently change the position, bringing the left edge over the right. The insect protests a little and disturbs my manœuvring. I insist, while taking every possible care not to endanger these tender organs, which look as though they were cut out of wet tissue-paper. And I am quite successful: the left wing-case pushes forward above the right, but only very little, barely [[334]]a twenty-fifth of an inch. We will leave it alone: things will now go of themselves.
They go as well as one could wish, in fact. Continuing to spread, the left wing-case ends by entirely covering the other. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the Cricket has changed from a reddish hue to black, but the wing-cases are still white. Two hours more and they also will possess the normal colouring.
It is over. The wing-cases have come to maturity under the artificial arrangement; they have opened out and moulded themselves according to my plans; they have taken breadth and consistency and have been born, so to speak, in an inverted position. As things now are, the Cricket is left-handed. Will he definitely remain so? It seems to me that he will; and my hopes rise higher on the morrow and the day after, for the wing-cases continue, without any trouble, in their unusual arrangement. I expect soon to see the artist wield that particular fiddlestick which the members of his family never employ. I redouble my watchfulness, so as to witness his first attempt at playing the violin.
On the third day, the novice makes a [[335]]start. A few brief grating sounds are heard, the noise of a machine out of gear shifting its parts back into their proper order. Then the song begins, with its accustomed tone and rhythm.
Veil your face, O foolish experimenter, overconfident in your mischievous straw! You thought that you had created a new type of instrumentalist; and you have obtained nothing at all. The Cricket has thwarted your schemes: he is scraping with his right fiddlestick and always will. With a painful effort, he has dislocated his shoulders, which were made to mature and harden the wrong way; and, in spite of a set that seemed definite, he has put back on top that which ought to be on top and underneath that which ought to be underneath. Your sorry science tried to make a left-handed player of him. He laughs at your devices and settles down to be right-handed for the rest of his life.
Franklin left an eloquent plea on behalf of the left hand, which, he considered, deserved as careful training as its fellow. What an immense advantage it would be thus to have two servants each as capable as the other! Yes, certainly; but, except for [[336]]a few rare instances, is this equality of strength and skill in the two hands possible?
The Cricket answers no: there is an original weakness in the left side, a want of balance, which habit and training can to a certain extent correct, but which they can never cause wholly to disappear. Though shaped by a training which takes it at its birth and moulds and solidifies it on the top of the other, the left wing-case none the less resumes the lower position when the insect tries to sing. As to the cause of this original inferiority, that is a problem which belongs to embryogenesis.
My failure confirms the fact that the left wing-case is unable to make use of its bow, even when supplemented by the aid of art. Then what is the object of that hook whose exquisite precision yields in no respect to that of the other? We might appeal to reasons of symmetry and talk about the repetition of an archetypal design, as I, for want of a better argument, did just now in the matter of the cast raiment which the young Cricket leaves on the threshold of his ovular sheath; but I prefer to confess that this would be but the semblance of an explanation, wrapped up in specious language. For the Decticus, [[337]]the Grasshopper and the other Locustidæ would come and show us their wing-cases, one with the bow only, the other with the mirror, and say:
“Why should the Cricket, our near kinsman, be symmetrical, whereas all of us Locustidæ, without exception, are asymmetrical?”
There is no valid answer to their objection. Let us confess our ignorance and humbly say:
“I do not know.”
It wants but a Midge’s wing to confound our proudest theories.
Enough of the instrument; let us listen to the music. The Cricket sings on the threshold of his house, in the cheerful sunshine, never indoors. The wing-cases, lifted in a double inclined plane and now only partly covering each other, utter their stridulant cri-cri in a soft tremolo. It is full, sonorous, nicely cadenced and lasts indefinitely. Thus are the leisures of solitude beguiled all through the spring. The anchorite at first sings for his own pleasure. Glad to be alive, he chants the praises of the sun that shines upon him, the grass that feeds him, the peaceful retreat that harbours him. The [[338]]first object of his bow is to hymn the blessings of life.
The hermit also sings for the benefit of his fair neighbours. The Cricket’s nuptials would, I warrant, present a curious scene, if it were possible to follow their details far from the commotions of captivity. To seek an opportunity would be labour lost, for the insect is very shy. I must await one. Shall I ever find it? I do not despair, in spite of the extraordinary difficulty. For the moment, let us be satisfied with what we can learn from probability and the vivarium.
The two sexes dwell apart. Both are extremely domestic in their habits. Whose business is it to make a move? Does the caller go in search of the called? Does the serenaded one come to the serenader? If, at pairing-time, sound were the sole guide where homes are far apart, it would be necessary for the silent partner to go to the noisy one’s trysting-place. But I imagine that, in order to save appearances—and this accords with what I learn from my prisoners—the Cricket has special faculties that guide him towards his mute lady-love.
When and how is the meeting effected? I suspect that things take place in the friendly [[339]]gloaming and upon the very threshold of the bride’s home, upon that sanded esplanade, that state courtyard, which lies just outside the entrance.
A nocturnal journey like this, at some twenty paces’ distance, is a serious undertaking for the Cricket. When he has accomplished his pilgrimage, how will he, the stay-at-home, with his imperfect knowledge of topography, find his own house again? To return to his Penates must be impossible. He roams, I fear, at random, with no place to lay his head. He has neither the time nor the heart to dig himself the new burrow which would be his salvation; and he dies a wretched death, forming a savoury mouthful for the Toad on his night rounds. His visit to the lady Cricket has cost him his home and his life. What does he care! He has done his duty as a Cricket.
This is how I picture events when I combine the probabilities of the open country with the realities of the vivarium. I have several couples in one cage. As a rule, my captives refrain from digging themselves a dwelling. The hour has passed for any long waiting or long wooing. They wander about the enclosed space, without troubling about [[340]]a fixed home, or else lie low under the shelter of a lettuce-leaf.
Peace reigns in the household until the quarrelsome instincts of pairing-time break out. Then affrays between suitors are frequent and lively, though not serious. The two rivals stand face to face, bite each other in the head, that solid, fang-proof helmet, roll each other over, pick themselves up and separate. The vanquished Cricket makes off as fast as he can; the victor insults him with a boastful ditty; then, moderating his tone, he veers and tacks around the object of his desires.
He makes himself look smart and, at the same time, submissive. Gripping one of his antennæ with a claw, he takes it in his mandibles to curl it and grease it with saliva. With his long spurred and red-striped hind-legs, he stamps the ground impatiently and kicks out at nothing. His emotion renders him dumb. His wing-cases, it is true, quiver rapidly, but they give forth no sound, or at most an agitated rustling.
A vain declaration! The female Cricket runs and hides herself in a curly bit of lettuce. She lifts the curtain a little, however, and looks out and wishes to be seen. [[341]]
Et fugit ad salices; et se cupit ante videri,[1]
said the delightful eclogue, two thousand years ago. Thrice-consecrated strategy of love, thou art everywhere the same!
The song is resumed, intersected by silences and murmuring quavers. Touched by so much passion, Galatea, I mean Dame Cricket, issues from her hiding-place. The other goes up to her, suddenly spins round, turns his back to her and flattens his abdomen against the ground. Crawling backwards, he makes repeated efforts to slip underneath. The curious backward manœuvre at last succeeds. Gently, my little one, gently! Discreetly flattened out, you manage to slide under. That’s done it! We have our couple. A spermatophore, a granule smaller than a pin’s head, hangs where it ought to. The meadows will have their Crickets next year.
The laying of the eggs follows soon after. Then this cohabitation in couples in a cage often brings about domestic quarrels. The father is knocked about and crippled; his [[342]]violin is smashed to bits. Outside my cells, in the open fields, the hen-pecked husband is able to take to flight; and that indeed is what he appears to do, not without good reason.
This ferocious aversion of the mother for the father, even among the most peaceable, gives food for thought. The sweetheart of but now, if he come within reach of the lady’s teeth, is eaten more or less; he does not escape from the final interviews without leaving a leg or two and some shreds of wing-cases behind him. Locusts and Crickets, those lingering representatives of a bygone world, tell us that the male, a mere secondary wheel in life’s original mechanism, has to disappear at short notice and make room for the real propagator, the real worker, the mother.
Later, in the higher order of creation, sometimes even among insects, he is awarded a task as a collaborator; and nothing better could be desired: the family must needs gain by it. But the Cricket, faithful to the old traditions, has not yet got so far. Therefore the object of yesterday’s longing becomes to-day an object of hatred, ill-treated, disembowelled and eaten up. [[343]]
Even when free to escape from his pugnacious mate, the superannuated Cricket soon perishes, a victim to life. In June, all my captives succumb, some dying a natural, others a violent death. The mothers survive for some time in the midst of their newly-hatched family. But things happen differently when the males have the advantage of remaining bachelors: they then enjoy a remarkable longevity. Let me relate the facts.
We are told that the music-loving Greeks used to keep Cicadæ in cages, the better to enjoy their singing. I venture to disbelieve the whole story. In the first place, the harsh clicking of the Cicadæ, when long continued at close quarters, is a torture to ears that are at all delicate. The Greeks’ sense of hearing was too well-disciplined to take pleasure in such raucous sounds away from the general concert of the fields, which is heard at a distance.
In the second place, it is absolutely impossible to bring up Cicadæ in captivity, unless we cover over an olive-tree or a plane-tree, which would supply us with a vivarium very difficult to instal on a window-sill. A single day spent in a cramped enclosure [[344]]would make the high-flying insect die of boredom.
Is it not possible that people have confused the Cricket with the Cicada, as they also do the Green Grasshopper? With the Cricket they would be quite right. He is one who bears captivity gaily: his stay-at-home ways predispose him to it. He lives happily and whirrs without ceasing in a cage no larger than a man’s fist, provided that we serve him with his lettuce-leaf every day. Was it not he whom the small boys of Athens reared in little wire cages hanging on a window-frame?
Their successors in Provence and all over the south have the same tastes. In the towns, a Cricket becomes the child’s treasured possession. The insect, petted and pampered, tells him in its ditty of the simple joys of the country. Its death throws the whole household into a sort of mourning.
Well, these recluses, these compulsory celibates, live to be patriarchs. They keep fit and well long after their cronies in the fields have succumbed; and they go on singing till September. Those additional three months, a long space of time, double their existence in the adult form. [[345]]
The cause of this longevity is obvious. Nothing wears one out so quickly as life. The wild Crickets have gaily spent their reserves of energy on the ladies; the more fervent their ardour, the speedier their dissolution. The others, their incarcerated kinsmen, leading a very quiet life, have acquired a further period of existence by reason of their forced abstinence from too costly joys. Having neglected to perform the superlative duty of a Cricket, they obstinately refuse to die until the very last moment.
A brief study of the three other Crickets of my neighbourhood has taught me nothing of any interest. Possessing no fixed abode, no burrow, they wander about from one temporary shelter to another, under the dry grass or in the cracks of the clods. They all carry the same musical instrument as the Field Cricket, with slight variations of detail. Their song is much alike in all cases, allowing for differences of size. The smallest of the family, the Bordeaux Cricket, stridulates outside my door, under the cover of the box borders. He even ventures into the dark corners of the kitchen, but his song is so faint that it takes a very attentive ear [[346]]to hear it and to discover at last where the insect lies hidden.
In our part of the world, we do not have the House Cricket, that denizen of bakers’ shops and rural fireplaces. But, though the crevices under the hearthstones in my village are silent, the summer nights make amends by filling the country-side with a charming symphony unknown in the north. Spring, during its sunniest hours, has the Field Cricket as its musician; the calm summer nights have the Italian Cricket (Œcanthus pellucens, Scop.). One diurnal, the other nocturnal, they share the fine weather between them. By the time that the first has ceased to sing, it is not long before the other begins his serenade.
The Italian Cricket has not the black dress and the clumsy shape characteristic of the family. He is, on the contrary, a slender, fragile insect, quite pale, almost white, as beseems his nocturnal habits. You are afraid of crushing him, if you merely take him in your fingers. He leads an aerial existence on shrubs of every kind, or on the taller grasses; and he rarely descends to earth. His song, the sweet music of the still, hot evenings from July to October, begins at [[347]]sunset and continues for the best part of the night.
This song is known to everybody here, for the smallest clump of bushes has its orchestra. It is heard even in the granaries, into which the insect sometimes strays, attracted by the fodder. But the pale Cricket’s ways are so mysterious that nobody knows exactly the source of the serenade, which is very erroneously ascribed to the Common Black Cricket, who at this period is quite young and silent.
The song is a soft, slow gri-i-i, gri-i-i, which is rendered more expressive by a slight tremolo. On hearing it, we divine both the extreme delicacy and the size of the vibrating membranes. If nothing happen to disturb the insect, settled in the lower leaves, the sound remains unaltered; but, at the least noise, the executant becomes a ventriloquist. You heard him here, quite close, in front of you; and now, all of a sudden, you hear him over there, fifteen yards away, continuing his ditty softened by distance.
You move across. Nothing. The sound comes from the original place. No, it doesn’t, after all. This time, it is coming from over there, on the left, or rather from [[348]]the right; or is it from behind? We are absolutely at a loss, quite unable to guide ourselves by the ear towards the spot where the insect is chirping.
It needs a fine stock of patience and the most minute precautions to capture the singer by the light of a lantern. The few specimens caught under these conditions and caged have supplied me with the little that I know about the musician who is so clever at baffling our ears.
The wing-cases are both formed of a broad, dry, diaphanous membrane, fine as a white onion-skin and capable of vibrating throughout its whole area. They are shaped like a segment of a circle thinning towards the upper end. This segment folds back at right angles along a prominent longitudinal vein and forms a flap which encloses the insect’s side when at rest.
The right wing-case lies above the left. Its inner edge bears underneath, near the root, a knob which is the starting-point of five radiating veins, of which two run upwards, two downwards and the fifth almost transversely. The last-named, which is slightly reddish, is the main part, in short the bow, as is shown by the fine notches cut [[349]]across it. The rest of the wing-case presents a few other veins of minor importance, which keep the membrane taut without forming part of the friction-apparatus.
The left or lower wing-case is similarly constructed, with this difference that the bow, the knob and the veins radiating from it now occupy the upper surface. We find, moreover, that the two bows, the right and the left, cross each other obliquely.
When the song has its full volume, the wing-cases, raised high up and resembling a pair of large gauze sails, touch only at their inner edges. Then the two bows fit into each other slantwise and their mutual friction produces the sonorous vibration of the two stretched membranes.
The sound appears to be modified according as the strokes of each bow bear upon the knob, which is itself wrinkled, on the opposite wing-case, or upon one of the four smooth radiating veins. This would go some way towards explaining the illusions produced by music which seems to come from here, there and everywhere when the timid insect becomes distrustful.
The illusion of loud or soft, open or muffled sounds and consequently of distance, [[350]]which forms the chief resource of the ventriloquist’s art, has another, easily discovered source. For the open sounds, the wing-cases are raised to their full height; for the muffled sounds, they are lowered more or less. In the latter position, their outer edges press to a varying extent upon the insect’s yielding sides, thus more or less decreasing the vibratory surface and reducing the volume of sound.
A gentle touch with one’s finger stifles the sound of a ringing wine-glass and changes it into a veiled, indefinite note that seems to come from afar. The pale Cricket knows this acoustic secret. He misleads those who are hunting for him by pressing the edges of his vibrating flaps against his soft abdomen. Our musical instruments have their dampers, their sourdines; that of Œcanthus pellucens vies with and surpasses them in the simplicity of its method and the perfection of its results.
The Field Cricket and his kinsmen also employ the sourdine by clasping their abdomen higher or lower with the edge of their wing-cases; but none of them obtains from this procedure such deceptive effects as those of the Italian Cricket. [[351]]
In addition to this illusion of distance, which, at the faintest sound of footsteps, is constantly taking us by surprise, we have the purity of the note, with its soft tremolo. I know no prettier or more limpid insect song, heard in the deep stillness of an August evening. How often, per amica silentia lunæ,[2] have I lain down on the ground, screened by the rosemary-bushes, to listen to the delicious concert of the harmas![3]
The nocturnal Cricket swarms in the enclosure. Every tuft of red-flowering rock-rose has its chorister; so has every clump of lavender. The bushy arbutus-shrubs, the turpentine-trees, all become orchestras. And, with its clear and charming voice, the whole of this little world is sending questions and responses from shrub to shrub, or rather, indifferent to the hymns of others, chanting its gladness for itself alone.
High up, immediately above my head, the Swan stretches its great cross along [[352]]the Milky Way; below, all around me, the insects’ symphony rises and falls. The infinitesimal telling its joys makes me forget the pageant of the stars. We know nothing of those celestial eyes which look down upon us, placid and cold, with scintillations that are like blinking eyelids. Science tells us of their distance, their speed, their mass, their volume; it overwhelms us with enormous figures, stupefies us with immensities; but it does not succeed in stirring a fibre within us. Why? Because it lacks the great secret, that of life. What is there up there? What do those suns warm? Worlds like ours, reason declares; planets whereon life revolves in infinite variety. It is a superb conception of the universe, but, when all is said, only a conception, not supported by obvious facts, those supreme proofs within the reach of all. The probable, the extremely probable, is not the manifest, which forces itself upon us irresistibly and leaves no room for doubt.
In your company, on the contrary, O my Crickets, I feel the throbbing of life, which is the soul of our lump of clay; and that is why, under my rosemary-hedge, I give but an absent glance at the constellation of the [[353]]Swan and devote all my attention to your serenade! A dab of animated glair, capable of pleasure and of pain, surpasses in interest the immensity of brute matter. [[354]]
“Then tripping to the woods the wanton hies
And wishes to be seen before she flies.”
—Virgil, Pastorals: book i.; Dryden’s translation. [↑]
“Safe under covert of the silent night
And guided by the imperial galley’s light.”
—Virgil, Æneid: book ii.; Dryden’s translation. [↑]
[3] The enclosed piece of waste land, adjoining his house at Sérignan, in which the author used to study his insects in their natural state. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap. i.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
CHAPTER XVII
THE LOCUSTS: THEIR FUNCTION; THEIR ORGAN OF SOUND
“Mind you are ready, children, to-morrow morning, before the sun gets too hot: we are going Locust-hunting.”
This announcement throws the household into great excitement at bed-time. What do my little helpmates see in their dreams? Blue wings, red wings, suddenly flung out fanwise; long, saw-toothed legs, pale-blue or pink, which kick out when we hold their owners in our fingers; great shanks acting as springs that make the insect leap forward like a projectile shot from some dwarf catapult hidden in the grass.
What they behold in sleep’s sweet magic lantern I also happen to see. Life lulls us with the same simple things in its first stages and its last.
If there be one peaceful and safe form of hunting, one that comes within the powers of [[355]]old age and childhood alike, it is Locust-hunting. Oh, what delicious mornings we owe to it! What happy moments when the mulberries are black and allow my assistants to go pilfering here and there in the bushes! What memorable excursions on the slopes covered with sparse grass, tough and burnt yellow by the sun! I retain a vivid recollection of all this; and my children will do the same.
Little Paul has nimble legs, a ready hand and a piercing eye. He inspects the clumps of everlastings where the Tryxalis solemnly nods his sugar-loaf head; he scrutinizes the bushes out of which the big Grey Locust suddenly flies like a little bird surprised by the hunter. Great disappointment on the part of the latter, who, after first rushing off at full speed, stops and gazes in wonder at this mock Swallow flying far away. He will have better luck another time. We shall not go home without a few of those magnificent prizes.
Younger than her brother, Marie Pauline patiently watches for the Italian Locust, with his pink wings and carmine hind-legs; but she really prefers another jumper, the most elegantly attired of all. Her favourite wears [[356]]a St. Andrew’s cross on the small of his back, which is marked by four white, slanting stripes. His livery has patches of verdigris, the exact colour of the patina on old bronze medals. With her hand raised in the air, ready to swoop down, she approaches very softly, stooping low. Whoosh! That’s done it! Quick, a screw of paper to receive the treasure, which, thrust head first into the opening, plunges with one bound to the bottom of the funnel.
Thus are our bags distended one by one; thus are our boxes filled. Before the heat becomes too great to bear, we are in possession of a number of varied specimens which, raised in captivity, will perhaps teach us something, if we know how to question them. Thereupon we go home again. The Locust has made three people happy at a small cost.
The first question that I put to my boarders is this:
“What function do you perform in the fields?”
You have a bad reputation, I know; the text-books describe you as noxious. Do you deserve this reproach? I take the liberty of doubting it, except, of course, in the case of [[357]]the terrible ravagers who form the scourge of Africa and the east.
The ill repute of those voracious eaters has left its mark on you all, though I look upon you as much more useful than injurious. Never, so far as I know, have our peasants complained of you. What damage could they lay to your charge?
You nibble the tops of the tough grasses which the Sheep refuses to touch; you prefer the lean swards to the fat pastures; you browse on sterile land where none but you would find the wherewithal to feed himself; you live upon what could never be used without the aid of your healthy stomach.
Besides, by the time that you frequent the fields, the only thing that might tempt you, the green wheat, has long since yielded its grain and disappeared. If you happen to get into the kitchen-gardens and levy toll on them to some slight extent, it is not a rank offence. A man can console himself for a piece bitten out of a leaf or two of salad.
To measure the importance of things by the foot-rule of one’s own turnip-patch is a horrible method, which makes us forget the essential for the sake of a trivial detail. The short-sighted man would upset the order of [[358]]the universe rather than sacrifice a dozen plums. If he thinks of the insect at all, it is only to speak of its extermination.
Fortunately, this is not and never will be in his power. Look at the consequences, for instance, of the disappearance of the Locust, who is accused of stealing a few crumbs from earth’s rich table. In September and October, the Turkeys are driven into the stubble-fields, under the charge of a child armed with two long reeds. The expanse over which the gobbling flock slowly spreads is bare, dry and burnt by the sun. At the most, a few ragged thistles raise their belated heads. What do the birds do in a desert like this, simply reeking with famine? They cram themselves, in order to do honour to the Christmas table; they wax fat; their flesh becomes firm and appetizing. With what, pray? With Locusts, whom they snap up here and there, a delicious stuffing for their greedy crops. This autumnal manna, which costs nothing and is richly flavoured, contributes to the elaboration and the improvement of the succulent roast that will be so largely eaten on the festive evening.
When the Guinea-fowl, that domesticated game-bird, roams around the farm, uttering [[359]]her rasping note, what is it that she seeks? Seeds, no doubt, but, above all things, Locusts, who puff her out under the wings with a pad of fat and give greater flavour to her flesh.
The Hen, much to our advantage, is just as fond of them. She well knows the virtues of that dainty dish, which acts as a tonic and increases her laying-capacity. When left at liberty, she hardly ever fails to lead her family to the stubble-fields, so that they may learn how to snap up the exquisite mouthful deftly. In fact, all the denizens of the poultry-yard, when free to wander about at will, owe to the Locust a valuable addition to their diet.
It becomes a much more important matter outside our domestic fowls. If you are a sportsman, if you are able to appreciate the value of the Red-legged Partridge, the glory of our southern hills, open the crop of the bird which you have just brought down. You will see that it contains a splendid certificate to the services rendered by the much-maligned insect. You will find it, nine times out of ten, more or less crammed with Locusts. The Partridge dotes on them, prefers them to seed as long as he is able to [[360]]catch them. This highly-flavoured, substantial, stimulating fare would almost make him forget the existence of seeds, if it were only there all the year round.
Let us now consult the illustrious black-footed tribe, so warmly celebrated by Tousserel.[1] The head of the family is the Wheatear, the Cul-blanc,[2] as the Provençal calls him, who grows disgracefully fat in September and supplies delicious material for the skewer. At the time when I used to indulge in ornithological expeditions, I made a practice of jotting down the contents of the birds’ crops and gizzards, so as to become acquainted with their diet. Here is the Wheatear’s bill of fare: Locusts, first of all; next, many various kinds of Beetles, such as Weevils, Opatra, Chrysomelæ, or Golden-apple-beetles, Cassidæ, or Tortoise-beetles, and Harpali; in the third place, Spiders, Iuli,[3] Woodlice and small Snails; lastly and [[361]]rarely, bramble-berries and the berries of the Cornelian cherry.
As you see, there is a little of all kinds of small game, just as it comes. The insect-eater does not turn his attention to berries except in the last resort, at seasons of dearth. Out of forty-eight cases mentioned in my notes, vegetable food appears only three times, in trifling proportions. The predominant item, both as regards frequency and quantity, is the Locust, the smaller specimens being chosen, in order not to tax the bird’s swallowing-powers.
Even so with the other little birds of passage which, when autumn comes, call a halt in Provence and prepare for the great pilgrimage by accumulating on their rumps a travelling-allowance of fat. All of them feast on the Locust, that rich fare; all, in the waste lands and fallows, gather as best they can the hopping tit-bit, that source of vigour for flying. Locusts are the manna of little birds on their autumnal journey.
Nor does man himself scorn them. An Arab author quoted by General Daumas[4] in his book, Le Grand désert, tells us: [[362]]
“Grasshoppers[5] are of good nourishment for men and Camels. Their claws, wings and head are taken away and they are eaten fresh or dried, either roast or boiled and served with flesh, flour and herbs.
“When dried in the sun, they are ground to powder and mixed with milk or kneaded with flour; and they are then cooked with fat or with butter and salt.
“Camels eat them greedily and are given them dried or roast, heaped in a hollow between two layers of charcoal. Thus also do the Nubians eat them.
“When Miriam[6] prayed God that she might eat flesh unpolluted by blood, God sent her Grasshoppers.
“When the wives of the Prophet were sent Grasshoppers as a gift, they placed some of these in baskets and sent them to other women.
“Once, when the Caliph Omar was asked if it were lawful to eat Grasshoppers, he made answer:
“ ‘Would that I had a basket of them to eat!’ [[363]]
“Wherefore, from this testimony, it is very sure that, by the grace of God, Grasshoppers were given to man for his nourishment.”
Without going so far as the Arab naturalist, which would presuppose a power of digestion not bestowed on every man, I feel entitled to say that the Locust is a gift of God to a multitude of birds, as witness the long array of gizzards which I consulted.
Many others, notably the reptile, hold him in esteem. I have found him in the belly of the Rassado, that terror of the small girls of Provence, I mean the Eyed Lizard, who loves rocky shelters turned into a furnace by a torrid sun. And I have often caught the little Grey Lizard of the walls in the act of carrying off, in his tapering snout, the spolia opima of some long-awaited Acridian.
Even fish revel in him, when good fortune brings him to them. The Locust’s leap has no definite goal. A projectile discharged blindly, the insect comes down wherever the unpremeditated release of its springs shoots it. If the place where it falls happen to be the water, a fish is there at once to gobble up the dripping victim. It is sometimes a [[364]]fatal dainty, for anglers use the Locust when they wish to bait their hook with a particularly attractive morsel.
Without expatiating further on the devourers of this small game, I can clearly see the great usefulness of the Acridian who by successive leaps transmits to man, that most wasteful of eaters, the lean grass now converted into exquisite fare. Gladly therefore would I say, with the Arab writer:
“Wherefore, from this testimony, it is very sure that, by the grace of God, Grasshoppers were given to man for his nourishment.”
One thing alone makes me hesitate: the direct consumption of the Locust. As regards indirect consumption, under the form of Partridge, young Turkey and others, none will think of denying him his praises. Is direct consumption then so unpleasant? That was not the opinion of Omar,[7] the mighty caliph, the destroyer of the library of Alexandria. His stomach was as rude as his intellect; and, by his own account, he [[365]]would have relished a basket of Grasshoppers.
Long before him, others were content to eat them, though in this case it was a wise frugality. Clad in his Camel’s-hair garment, St. John the Baptist, the bringer of good tidings and the great stirrer of the populace in the days of Herod, lived in the desert on Grasshoppers and wild honey:
“And his meat was locusts and wild honey,” says the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
Wild honey I know, if only from the pots of the Chalicodoma.[8] It is a very agreeable food. There remains the Grasshopper of the desert, otherwise the Locust. In my youth, like every small boy, I appreciated a Grasshopper’s leg, which I used to eat raw. It is not without flavour. To-day let us rise a peg higher and try the fare of Omar and St. John the Baptist.
I capture some fat Locusts and have them cooked in a very rough and ready fashion, fried with butter and salt, as the Arab author prescribes. We all of us, big and little, partake of the queer dish at dinner. [[366]]We pronounce favourably upon the caliph’s delicacy. It is far superior to the Cicadæ extolled by Aristotle. It has a certain shrimpy flavour, a taste that reminds one of grilled Crab; and, were it not that the shell is very tough for such slight edible contents, I would go to the length of saying that it is good, without, however, feeling any desire for more.
My curiosity as a naturalist has now twice allowed itself to be tempted by the dishes of antiquity: Cicadæ first; Locusts next. Neither the one nor the other roused my enthusiasm. We must leave these things to the powerful jaws of the negroes and the huge appetite of which the famous caliph gave proof.
The queasiness of our stomachs, however, in no way decreases the Locusts’ merits. Those little browsers of the burnt grass play a great part in the workshop where our food is prepared. They swarm in vast legions which roam over the barren wastes, pecking here and there, turning what could not otherwise be used into a foodstuff which is passed on to a host of consumers, including, first and foremost, the bird that often falls to man’s share. [[367]]
Pricked relentlessly by the needs of the stomach, the world knows no more imperative duty than the acquisition of food. To secure a seat in the refectory, each animal expends its sum total of activity, industry, toil, trickery and strife; and the general banquet, which should be a joy, is to many a torment. Man is far from escaping the miseries of the struggle for food. On the contrary, only too often he tastes them in all their bitterness.
Ingenious as he is, will he succeed in freeing himself from them? Science says yes. Chemistry promises, in the near future, a solution of the problem of subsistence. The sister science, physics, is preparing the way. Already it is contemplating how to get more and better work done by the sun, that great sluggard who thinks that he has done his duty by us when he sweetens our grapes and ripens our corn. It will bottle his heat, garner his rays, in order to control them and employ them where we think fit.
With these supplies of energy, the hearths will blaze, the wheels will turn, the pestles pound, the graters grate, the rollers grind; and the work of agriculture, so wasteful at present, thwarted as it is by the inclemency [[368]]of the seasons, will become factory-work, yielding economical and safe returns.
Then chemistry will step in, with its legion of cunning reagents. It will turn everything into nutritious matter, in a highly concentrated form, capable of being assimilated in its entirety and leaving hardly any foul residue. A loaf of bread will be a pill; a rumpsteak a drop of jelly. Of agricultural labour, the inferno of barbarian times, nothing will remain but a memory, of interest only to the historians. The last Sheep and the last Ox will figure, neatly stuffed, as curiosities in our museums, together with the Mammoth dug up from the Siberian ice-fields.
All that old lumber—herds and flocks, seeds, fruits and vegetables—is doomed to disappear some day. Progress demands it, we are told; and the chemist’s retort, which, in its presumptuous fashion, recognizes nothing as impossible, repeats the assertion.
This golden age of foodstuffs leaves me very incredulous. When it is a question of obtaining some new toxin, science displays alarming ingenuity. Our laboratory collections are veritable arsenals of poisons. When the object is to invent a still in which [[369]]potatoes shall be made to yield torrents of alcohol capable of turning us into a nation of sots, the resources of industry know no limits. But to procure by artificial means a single mouthful of really nourishing matter is a very different business. Never has any such product simmered in our retorts. The future, beyond a doubt, will do no better. Organized matter, the only true food, escapes the formulæ of the laboratory. Its chemist is life.
We shall do well therefore to preserve agriculture and our herds. Let us leave our nourishment to be prepared by the patient work of plants and animals, let us mistrust the brutal factory and keep our confidence for more delicate methods and, in particular, for the Locust’s stomach, which assists in the making of the Christmas Turkey. That stomach has culinary receipts which the chemist’s retort will always envy without succeeding in imitating them.
This picker-up of nutritive trifles, destined to support a crowd of paupers, possesses musical powers wherewith to express his joys. Consider a Locust at rest, blissfully digesting his meal and enjoying the sunshine. With sharp strokes of the bow, [[370]]three or four times repeated and spaced with pauses, he sings his ditty. He scrapes his sides with his great hind-legs, using now one, now the other, anon both at a time.
The result is very poor, so slight indeed that I am obliged to have recourse to little Paul’s ear in order to make sure that there is a sound at all. Such as it is, it resembles the creaking of the point of a needle pushed across a sheet of paper. There you have the whole song, so near akin to silence.
There is nothing more to be expected from so rudimentary an instrument. We have nothing here similar to what the Grasshopper clan have shown us: no toothed bow, no vibrating membrane stretched into a drum. Let us, for instance, take a look at the Italian Locust (Caloptenus italicus, Lin.), whose apparatus of sound is repeated in the other stridulating Acridians. His hinder thighs are keel-shaped above and below. Each surface, moreover, has two powerful longitudinal nervures. Between these main parts there is, in either case, a graduated row of smaller, chevron-shaped nervures; and the whole thing is as prominent and as plainly marked on this outer side as on the inner one. And what surprises me even [[371]]more than this similarity between the two surfaces is that all these nervures are smooth. Lastly, the lower edge of the wing-cases, the edge rubbed by the thighs which serve as a bow, also has nothing particular about it. We see, as indeed we do all over the wing-cases, nervures that are powerful but devoid of any rasping roughness or the least denticulation.
What can this artless attempt at a musical instrument produce? Just as much as a dry membrane will emit when you rub it. And for the sake of this trifle the insect lifts and lowers its thighs, in sharp jerks, and is satisfied with the result. It rubs its sides very much as we rub our hands together in sign of contentment, with no intention of making a sound. That is its own particular way of expressing its joy in life.
Examine it when the sky is partly obscured and the sun shines intermittently. There comes a rift in the clouds. Forthwith the thighs begin to scrape, increasing their activity as the sun grows hotter. The strains are very brief, but they are renewed so long as the sunshine continues. The sky becomes overcast. Then and there the song ceases, to be resumed with the next gleam of sunlight, [[372]]always in brief spasms. There is no mistaking it: here, in these fond lovers of the light, we have a mere expression of happiness. The Locust has his moments of gaiety when his crop is full and the sun benign.
Not all the Acridians indulge in this joyous rubbing. The Tryxalis (Truxalis nasuta, Lin.), who sports a pair of immensely elongated hind-legs, maintains a gloomy silence even under the most vigorous caresses of the sun. I have never seen him move his shanks like a bow; he seems unable to use them—so long are they—for anything but hopping.
Dumb likewise, apparently as a consequence of the excessive length of his hind-legs, the big Grey Locust (Pachytilus cinerescens, Fabr.) has a peculiar way of diverting himself. The giant often visits me in the enclosure, even in the depth of winter. In calm weather, when the sun is hot, I surprise him in the rosemaries, with his wings unfurled and fluttering rapidly for a quarter of an hour at a time, as though for flight. His twirling is so gentle, in spite of its extreme speed, as to create hardly a perceptible rustle.
Others still are much less well-endowed. [[373]]One such is the Pedestrian Locust (Pezotettix pedestris, Lin.), the companion of the Alpine Analota on the ridges of the Ventoux. This foot-passenger strolling amid the paronychias (P. serpyllifola) which lie spread in silvery expanses over the Alpine region; this short-jacketed hopper, the guest of the androsaces (A. villosa), whose tiny flowers, white as the neighbouring snows, smile from out of their rosy eyes, has the same fresh colouring as the plants around him. The sunlight, less veiled in mists in the loftier regions, has made him a costume combining beauty and simplicity: a pale-brown satin back; a yellow abdomen; big thighs coral-red below; hind-legs a glorious azure-blue, with an ivory anklet in front. But, being incapable of going beyond the larval form, this dandy remains short-coated.
He has for wing-cases two wrinkled slips, distant one from the other and hardly covering the first segment of the abdomen, and for wings two stumps that are even more abbreviated. All this hardly covers his nakedness down to the waist. Any one seeing him for the first time takes him for a larva and is wrong. It is indeed the adult insect, [[374]]ripe for mating; and the insect will remain in this undress to the end.
Is it necessary to add that, with this skimpy jacket, stridulation is impossible? The big hind-thighs are there, it is true; but what is lacking, for them to rub upon, is the grating surface, the edge of the wing-cases. Whereas the other Locusts are not to be described as noisy, this one is absolutely dumb. In vain have the most delicate ears around me listened with might and main: there has never been the least sound during the three months’ home breeding. This silent one must have other means of expressing his joys and summoning his partner to the wedding. What are they? I do not know.
Nor do I know why the insect deprives itself of wings and remains a plodding wayfarer, when its near kinsmen, on the same Alpine swards, are excellently equipped for flight. It possesses the germs of wing and wing-case, gifts which the egg gives to the larva; and it does not think of using these germs by developing them. It persists in hopping, with no further ambition; it is satisfied to go on foot, to remain a Pedestrian Locust, as the nomenclators call it, when it [[375]]might, one would think, acquire wings, that higher mechanism of locomotion.
Rapid flitting from crest to crest, over the valleys deep in snow; easy flight from a shorn pasture to one not yet exploited: can these be negligible advantages to the Pedestrian Locust? Obviously not. The other Acridians and in particular his fellow-dwellers on the mountain-tops possess wings and are all the better for them. What is his reason for not doing as they do? It would be very profitable to extract from their sheaths the sails which he keeps packed away in useless stumps; and he does not do it. Why?
“Arrested development,” says some one.
Very well. Life is arrested half-way through its work; the insect does not attain the ultimate form of which it bears the emblem. For all its scientific turn of phrase, the reply is not really a reply at all. The question returns under another guise: what causes that arrested development?
The larva is born with the hope of flying at maturity. As a pledge of that fair future, it carries on its back four sheaths in which the precious germs lie slumbering. Everything is arranged according to the rules of [[376]]normal evolution. Thereupon, suddenly, the organism does not fulfil its promises; it is false to its engagements; it leaves the adult insect without sails, leaves it with only useless rags.
Are we to lay this nudity to the charge of the harsh conditions of Alpine life? Not at all, for the other hoppers, living on the same grassy slopes, manage very well to achieve the wings foretold by the larva’s rudiments.
Men tell us that, from one attempt to another, from progress to progress, under the stimulus of necessity, animals end by acquiring this or that organ. No other creative intervention is accepted than that of need. This, for instance, is the way in which the Locusts went to work, in particular those whom I see fluttering over the ridges of the Ventoux. From their niggardly larval flaps they are supposed to have extracted wings and wing-cases, by virtue of secret and mysterious labours rendered fruitful by the centuries.
Very well, O my illustrious masters! And now tell me, if you please, what reasons persuaded the Pedestrian Locust not to go beyond his rude outline of a flying-apparatus. [[377]]He also, surely, must have felt the prick of necessity for ages and ages; during his laborious tumbles amid the broken stones, he must have felt the advantage that it would be for him to be relieved of his weight by means of wing-power; and all the endeavours of his organism, striving to achieve a better lot, have not yet succeeded in spreading bladewise his incipient wings.
If we accept your theories, under the same conditions of urgent necessity, diet, climate and habits, some are successful and manage to fly, others fail and remain clumsy pedestrians. Short of resting satisfied with words and passing off chalk for cheese, I abandon the explanations offered. Sheer ignorance is far preferable, for it prejudges nothing.
But let us leave this backward one who is a stage behind his kinsmen, no one knows why. Anatomy has its throwbacks, its halts, its sudden leaps, all of which defy our curiosity. In the presence of the unfathomable problem of origins, the best thing is to bow in all humility and pass on. [[378]]
[1] Alphonse Tousserel (1803–1885), author of a number of interesting and valuable works on ornithology.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] Also known as the Stone-chat, Fallow-chat, Whin-chat, Fallow-finch and White-tail, which last corresponds with the Cul-blanc of the Provençal dialect. The French name for this Saxicola is the Motteux, or Clod-hopper.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] Wormlike Millepedes.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] General Eugène Daumas (1803–1871), the author of several works on Algeria.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[5] More correctly the Locust, not to be confused with the true Grasshopper, who carries a sabre.—Author’s Note. [↑]
[6] The Blessed Virgin Mary.—Author’s Note. [↑]
[7] Omar, the second caliph and the first to assume the title of Commander of the Faithful, reigned from 634 to his death in 644. The Alexandrian library was burnt in 640.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[8] Cf. The Mason-bees: passim.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LOCUSTS: THEIR EGGS
What can our Locusts do? Not much in the way of manufactures. Their business in the world is that of alchemists who in their gourdlike stomach elaborate and refine material destined for higher objects. As I sit by my fireside, in the evening hours of meditation, scribbling these notes upon the part which Locusts play in life, I am not prepared to say that they have not contributed from time to time to the awakening of thought, that magic mirror of things. They are on the earth to thrive as best they can and to multiply, the latter being the highest law of animals charged with the manufacture of foodstuffs.
From the former point of view, if we except the all-devouring tribes which at times imperil the very existence of Africa, the Locusts hardly attract our attention. They are poor trenchermen; and I can surfeit a whole [[379]]barrack-room in my cages with a leaf of lettuce. As for the way in which they multiply, that is another matter and one well worth a moment’s attention.
At the same time we must not look for the nuptial eccentricities of the Grasshoppers. Despite close similarity of structure, we are here in a new world as regards habits and character. In the peaceful Locust clan, all that has to do with pairing is correct, free from impropriety and conducted in accordance with the customary rites of the entomological world. Any one keeping it under observation at the time of the procreative frenzy will realize that the Locust came later than the Grasshopper, after the primitive Orthopteron had sown his monstrous wild oats. There is nothing striking to be said therefore on this always delicate subject; and I am very glad of it. Let us pass on and come to the eggs.
At the end of August, a little before noon-day, let us keep a close watch on the Italian Locust (Caloptenus italicus, Lin.), the boldest hopper of my neighbourhood. He is a sturdy fellow, very free with his kicks; and he is clad in short wing-cases that hardly reach the tip of his abdomen. His costume [[380]]is usually russet, with brown patches. A few more elegant ones edge the corselet with a whitish hem which is prolonged over the head and wing-cases. The wings are colourless except at the base, where they are pink; the hinder shins are claret-coloured.
The mother selects a suitable spot for her eggs on the side where the sun is hottest and always at the edge of the cage, whose wirework supplies her with a support in case of need. Slowly and laboriously she drives her clumsy drill perpendicularly into the sand, this drill being her abdomen, which disappears entirely. In the absence of proper boring-tools, the descent underground is painful and hesitating, but is at last accomplished thanks to perseverance, that powerful lever of the weak.
The mother is now installed, half-buried in the soil. She gives slight starts, which follow one another at regular intervals and seem to correspond with the efforts of the oviduct as it expels the eggs. The neck gives throbs that lift and lower the head with slight jerks. Apart from these pulsations of the head, the body, in its only visible half, the fore-part, is absolutely stationary, so intense is the creature’s absorption in her [[381]]laying. It is not unusual for a male, by comparison a dwarf, to come near and for a long time to gaze curiously at the travailing mother. Sometimes also a few females stand around, with their big faces turned towards their friend in labour. They seem to take an interest in what is happening, perhaps saying to themselves that it will be their turn soon.
After some forty minutes of immobility, the mother suddenly releases herself and bounds far away. She gives not a look at the eggs nor a touch of the broom to conceal the aperture of the well. The hole closes of its own accord, as best it can, by the natural falling-in of the sand. It is an extremely summary performance, marked by an utter absence of maternal solicitude. The Locust mother is not a model of affection.
Others do not forsake their eggs so recklessly. I can name the ordinary Locust with the blue wings striped with black (Œdipoda cœrulescens, Lin.); also Pachytylus nigrofasciatus, De Geer, whose cognomen lacks point, for it ought to suggest either the malachite-green patches of the costume or the white cross of the corselet.
Both, when laying their eggs, adopt the [[382]]same attitude as the Italian Locust. The abdomen is driven perpendicularly into the soil; the rest of the body partly disappears under the sliding sand. We again see a long period of immobility, exceeding half an hour, together with little jerks of the head, a sign of the underground efforts.
The two mothers at last release themselves. With their hind-legs, lifted on high, they sweep a little sand over the orifice of the pit and press it down by stamping rapidly. It is a pretty sight to watch the precipitous action of their slender legs, blue or pink, giving alternate kicks to the opening which is waiting to be plugged. In this manner, with a lively trampling, the entrance to the house is closed and hidden away. The hole in which the eggs were laid disappears from sight, so well obliterated that no evil-intentioned creature could hope to discover it by means of vision alone.
Nor is this all. The driving-power of the two rammers is the hinder thighs, which, in rising and falling, scrape lightly against the edge of the wing-cases. This bow-play produces a faint stridulation, similar to that with which the insect placidly lulls itself to sleep in the sun. [[383]]
The Hen salutes the egg which she has just laid with a song of gladness; she announces her maternal joys, to the whole neighbourhood. Even so does the Locust do in many cases. With her thin scraper, she celebrates the advent of her family. She says:
“Non omnis moriar; I have buried underground the treasure of the future; I have entrusted to the incubation of the great hatcher a keg of germs which will take my place.”
Everything on the site of the nest is put right in one brief spell of work. The mother then leaves the spot, refreshes herself after her exertions with a few mouthfuls of green stuff and prepares to begin again.
The largest of the Acridians in our part of the country, the Grey Locust (Pachytylus cinerescens, Fabr.), rivals the African Locusts in size, without possessing their calamitous habits. He is peace-loving and temperate and above reproach where the fruits of the earth are concerned. From him we obtain a little information which is easily verified by observing the insect in captivity.
The eggs are laid about the end of April, a few days after the pairing, which lasts [[384]]some little while. The female is armed at the tip of the abdomen—as, in varying degrees, are the other Locust mothers—with four short excavators, arranged in pairs and shaped like a hooked finger-nail. In the upper pair, which are larger, these hooks are turned upwards; in the lower and smaller pair, they are turned downwards. They form a sort of claw and are hard and black at the point; also they are scooped out slightly, like a spoon, on their concave surface. These are the pick-axes, the trepans, the boring-tools.
The mother bends her long abdomen perpendicularly to the line of the body. With her four trepans she bites into the soil, lifting the dry earth a little; then, with a very slow movement, she pushes down her abdomen, making no apparent effort, displaying no excitement that would reveal the difficulty of the task.
The insect is motionless and contemplative. The boring-implement could not work more quietly if it were sinking into soft mould. It might all be happening in butter; and yet what the bore traverses is caked, unyielding earth.
It would be interesting, if it were only possible, [[385]]to see the perforating-tool, the four gimlets, at work. Unfortunately, things happen in the mysteries of the earth. No rubbish rises to the surface; nothing denotes the underground labour. Little by little the abdomen sinks softly in, as our finger would sink into a lump of soft clay. The four trepans must open the passage, crumbling the earth into dust which is thrust back sideways by the abdomen and packed as with a gardener’s dibble.
The best site for laying the eggs is not always found at the first endeavour. I have seen the mother drive her abdomen right in and make five wells one after the other before finding a suitable place. The pits recognized as defective are abandoned as soon as bored. They are vertical, cylindrical holes, of the diameter of a thick lead-pencil and astonishingly neat. No wimble would produce cleaner work. Their length is that of the insect’s abdomen, distended as far as the extension of the segments allows.
At the sixth attempt, the spot is recognized as propitious. The laying thereupon takes place, but nothing outside betrays the fact, so motionless does the mother seem, with her abdomen immersed up to the hilt, which [[386]]causes the long wings lying on the ground to rumple and open out. The operation lasts for a good hour.
At last the abdomen rises, little by little. It is now near the surface, in a favourable position for observation. The valves are in continual movement, whipping a mucus which sets in milk-white foam. It is very similar to the work done by the Mantis when enveloping her eggs in froth.
The foamy matter forms a nipple at the entrance to the well, a knob which stands well up and attracts the eye by the whiteness of its colour against the grey background of the soil. It is soft and sticky, but hardens pretty soon. When this closing button is finished, the mother moves away and troubles no more about her eggs, of which she lays a fresh batch elsewhere after a few days have intervened.
At other times, the terminal foamy paste does not reach the surface; it stops some way down and, before long, is covered with the sand that slips from the margin. There is then nothing outside to mark the place where the eggs were laid.
Even when they concealed the mouth of the well under a layer of swept sand, my [[387]]various captives, large and small, were too assiduously watched by me to foil my curiosity. I know in every case the exact spot where the barrel of eggs lies. The time has come to inspect it.
The thing is easily discovered, an inch or an inch and a half down, with the point of a knife. Its shape varies a good deal in the different species, but the fundamental structure remains the same. It is always a sheath made of solidified foam, a similar foam to that of the nests of the Praying Mantis. Grains of sand stuck together give it a rough outer covering.
The mother has not actually made this coarse cover, which constitutes a defensive wall. The mineral wrapper results from the simple infiltration of the product, at first semifluid and viscous, that accompanies the emission of the eggs. The wall of the pocket absorbs it and, swiftly hardening, becomes a cemented scabbard, without the agency of any special labour on the insect’s part.
Inside, there is no foreign matter, nothing but foam and eggs. The latter occupy only the lower portion, where they are immersed in a frothy matrix and packed one on top [[388]]of the other, slantwise. The upper portion, which is larger in some cases than in others, consists solely of soft, yielding foam. Because of the part which it plays when the young larvæ come into existence, I shall call it the ascending-shaft. A final point worthy of observation is that all the sheaths are planted more or less vertically in the soil and end at the top almost level with the ground.
We will now describe specifically the layings which we find in the cages. That of Pachytylus cinerescens is a cylinder six centimetres long and eight millimetres wide.[1] The upper end, when it emerges above the ground, swells into a nipple. All the rest is of uniform thickness. The yellow-grey eggs are fusiform. Immersed in the froth and arranged slantwise, they occupy only about a sixth part of the total length. The rest of the structure is a fine, white, very powdery foam, soiled on the outside by grains of earth. The eggs are not many in number, about thirty; but the mother lays several batches.
That of P. nigrofasciatus is shaped like a slightly curved cylinder, rounded off at the [[389]]lower end and cut square at the upper end. Its dimensions are an inch to an inch and a half in length by a fifth of an inch in width. The eggs, about twenty in number, are orange-red, adorned with a pretty pattern of tiny spots. The frothy matrix in which they are contained is small in quantity; but above them there is a long column of very fine, transparent and porous foam.
The Blue-winged Locust (Œdipoda cærulescens) arranges her eggs in a sort of fat inverted comma. The lower portion contains the eggs in its gourd-shaped pocket. They also are few in number, some thirty at most, of a fairly bright orange-red, but unspotted. This receptable is crowned with a curved, conical cap of foam.
The lover of the mountain-tops, the Pedestrian Locust, adopts the same method as the Blue-winged Locust, the denizen of the plains. Her sheath too is shaped like a comma with the point turned upwards. The eggs, numbering about two dozen, are dark-russet and are strikingly ornamented with a delicate lacework of inwrought spots. You are quite surprised when you pass the magnifying-glass over this unexpected elegance. Beauty leaves its impress everywhere, even [[390]]in the humble covering of an unsightly Acridian incapable of flight.
The Italian Locust begins by enclosing her eggs in a keg and then, when on the point of sealing her receptacle, thinks better of it: something essential, the ascending-shaft, is lacking. At the upper end, at the point where it seems as if the barrel ought to finish and close, a sudden compression changes the course of the work, which is prolonged by the regulation foamy appendage. In this way, two storeys are obtained, clearly defined on the outside by a deep groove. The lower, which is oval in shape, contains the packet of eggs; the upper, tapering into the tail of a comma, consists of nothing but foam. The two communicate by an opening that remains more or less free.
The Locust’s art is not confined to these specimens of architecture. She knows how to construct other strong-boxes for her eggs; she can protect them with all kinds of edifices, some simple, others more ingenious, but all worthy of our attention. Those with which we are familiar are very few compared with those of which we are ignorant. No matter: what the cages reveal to us is sufficient to enlighten us as to the general form. It remains [[391]]for us to learn how the building—an egg-warehouse below, a foamy turret above—is constructed.
Direct observation is impracticable here. If we took it into our heads to dig and to uncover the abdomen at work, the mother, worried by our importunity, would leap away without telling us anything. Fortunately, one Locust, the strangest of my district, reveals the secret to us. I speak of the Tryxalis, the largest member of the family, after the Grey Locust.
Though inferior to the last-named in size, how far she exceeds her in slenderness of figure and, above all, in originality of shape! On our sun-scorched swards, none has a leaping-apparatus to compare with hers. What hind-legs, what extravagant thighs, what shanks! They are longer than the creature’s whole body.
The result obtained hardly corresponds with this extraordinary length of limb. The insect shuffles awkwardly along the edges of the vines, on the sand sparsely covered with grass; it seems embarrassed by its shanks, which are slow to work. With this equipment, weakened by its excessive length, the leap is awkward, describing but a short [[392]]parabola. The flight alone, once taken, is of a certain range, thanks to an excellent pair of wings.
And then what a strange head! It is an elongated cone, a sugar-loaf, whose point, turned up in the air, has earned for the insect the quaint epithet of nasuta, long-nosed. At the top of this cranial promontory are two large, gleaming, oval eyes and two antennæ, flat and pointed, like dagger-blades. These rapiers are organs of information. The Tryxalis lowers them, with a sudden swoop, to explore with their points the object in which she is interested, the bit which she intends to nibble.
To this abnormal shape we must add another characteristic that makes this long-shanks an exception among Acridians. The ordinary Locusts, a peaceful tribe, live among themselves without strife, even when driven by hunger. The Tryxalis, on the other hand, is somewhat addicted to the cannibalism of the Grasshoppers. In my cages, in the midst of plenty, she varies her diet and passes easily from salad to game. When tired of green stuff, she does not scruple to exercise her jaws on her weaker companions.
This is the creature capable of giving us [[393]]information about methods of laying. In my cages, as the result of an aberration due no doubt to the boredom of captivity, it has never laid its eggs in the ground. I have always seen it operating in the open air and even perched on high.[2] In the early days of October, the insect clings to the trelliswork of the cage and very slowly discharges its batch of eggs, which we see gushing forth in a fine, foamy stream, soon stiffening into a thick cylindrical cord, knotty and queerly curved. It takes nearly an hour to complete the emission. Then the thing falls to the ground, no matter where, unheeded by the mother, who never troubles about it again.
The shapeless object, which varies greatly in different layings, is at first straw-coloured, then darkens and turns rusty-brown on the morrow. The fore-part, which is the first ejected, usually consists only of foam; the hinder part alone is fertile and contains the eggs, buried in a frothy matrix. They are amber-yellow, about a score in number and shaped like blunt spindles, eight to nine millimetres in length.[3] [[394]]
The sterile end, which is at least as big as the other, tells us that the apparatus which produces the foam is in operation before the oviduct and afterwards goes on while the latter is working.
By what mechanism does the Tryxalis froth up her viscous product into a porous column first and a mattress for the eggs afterwards? She must certainly know the method of the Praying Mantis, who, with the aid of spoon-shaped valves, whips and beats her glair and converts it into an omelette soufflée; but in the Acridian’s case the frothing is done within and there is nothing outside to betray its existence. The glue is foamy from the moment of its appearing in the open air.
In the Mantis’ building, that complex work of art, it is not a case of any special talent, which the mother can exercise at will. The wonderful egg-casket comes from the ordinary action of the mechanism, is merely the outcome of the organization. A fortiori, the Tryxalis, in discharging her clumsy sausage, is purely a machine. The thing happens of itself.
The same applies to the Locusts. They have no industry of their own specially devised [[395]]for laying eggs in strata in a keg of froth and extending this keg into an ascending-shaft. The mother, with her abdomen plunged into the sand, expels at the same time eggs and foamy glair. The whole becomes coordinated of its own accord simply by the mechanism of the organs: on the outside, the frothy material, which coagulates and becomes encrusted with a bulwark of earth; in the centre and at the bottom, the eggs arranged in regular strata; at the upper end, a column of yielding foam.
The Tryxalis and the Grey Locust are early hatchers. The latter’s family are already hopping on the yellow patches of grass in August; before October is out, we are frequently coming across young larvæ with pointed skulls. But in most of the other Acridians the ovigerous sheaths last through the winter and do not open until the fine weather returns. They are buried at no great depth in a soil which is at first loose and dusty and which would not be likely to interfere with the emergence of the young larvæ if it remained as it is; but the winter rains cake it together and turn it into a hard ceiling. Suppose that the hatching takes place only a couple of inches down: how is [[396]]this crust to be broken, how is the larva to come up from below? The mother’s unconscious art has provided for that.
The Locust at his birth finds above him, not rough sand and hardened earth, but a perpendicular tunnel whose solid walls keep all difficulties at a distance, a road protected by a little easily-penetrated foam, an ascending-shaft, in short, which brings the new-born larva quite close to the surface. Here a finger’s-breadth of serious obstacle remains to be overcome.
The greater part of the emergence therefore is accomplished without effort, thanks to the terminal appendage of the egg-barrel. If, in my desire to follow the underground work of the exodus, I experiment in glass tubes, almost all the new-born larvæ die, exhausted with fatigue, under an inch of earth, when I do away with the liberating appendage to the shells. They duly come to light if I leave the nest in its integral condition, with the ascending-shaft pointing upwards. Though a mechanical product of the organism, created without any effort of the creature’s intelligence, the Locust’s edifice, we must confess, is singularly well thought out. [[397]]
Having come quite close to the surface with the aid of his ascending-shaft, what does the young Locust do to complete his deliverance? He has still to pass through a layer of earth about a finger’s-breadth in thickness; and that is very hard work for budding flesh.
If we keep the egg-cases in glass tubes during the favourable period, the end of spring, we shall receive a reply to our question, provided that we have the requisite patience. The Blue-winged Locusts lend themselves best to my investigations. I find some of them busied with the work of liberation at the end of June.
The little Locust, on leaving his shell, is a whitish colour, clouded with light red. His progress is made by wormlike movements; and, so that it may be impeded as little as possible, he is hatched in the condition of a mummy, that is to say, clad, like the young Grasshoppers, in a temporary jacket, which keeps his antennæ, palpi and legs closely fixed to his breast and belly. The head itself is very much bent. The large hind-thighs are arranged side by side with the folded shanks, shapeless as yet, short and as it were crooked. On the way, the [[398]]legs are slightly released; the hind-legs are straightened out and afford a fulcrum for the sapping-work.
The boring-tool, a repetition of the Grasshoppers’, is at the neck. There is here a tumour that swells, subsides, throbs and strikes the obstacle with pistonlike regularity. A tiny and most tender cervical bladder engages in a struggle with quartz. At the sight of this capsule of glair striving to overcome the hardness of the mineral, I am seized with pity. I come to the unhappy creature’s assistance by slightly damping the layer to be passed through.
Despite my intervention, the task is so arduous that, in an hour, I see the indefatigable one make a progress of hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch. How you must labour, you poor little thing, how you must persevere with your throbbing head and writhing loins, before you can clear a passage for yourself through the thin layer which my kindly drop of water has softened for you!
The ineffectual efforts of the tiny mite tell us plainly that the emergence into the light of day is an enormous undertaking, in which, but for the aid of the exit-tunnel, the [[399]]mother’s work, the greater number would succumb.
It is true that the Grasshoppers, similarly equipped, find it even more difficult to make their way out of the earth. Their eggs are laid naked in the ground; no outward passage is prepared for them beforehand. We may assume, therefore, that the mortality must be very high among these improvident ones; legions are bound to perish at the time of the exodus.
This is confirmed by the comparative scarcity of Grasshoppers and the extreme abundance of Locusts. And yet the number of eggs laid is about the same in both cases. The Locust does not, in fact, limit herself to a single casket containing a score of eggs: she puts into the ground two, three and more, which gives a total population approaching that of the Decticus and other Grasshoppers. If, to the greater delight of the consumers of small game, she thrives so well, whereas the Grasshopper, who is quite as fertile but less ingenious, dwindles, does she not owe it to that superb invention, her exit-turret?
One last word upon the tiny insect which, for days on end, fights away with its cervical [[400]]rammer. It is outside at last and rests for a moment, to recover from all that fatigue. Then, suddenly, under the thrust of the throbbing blister, the temporary jacket splits. The rags are pushed back by the hind-legs, which are the last to strip. The thing is done: the creature is free, pale in colouring as yet, but possessing the final larval form.
Then and there, the hind-legs, hitherto stretched in a straight line, adopt the regulation position; the legs fold under the great thighs; and the spring is ready to work. It works. Little Locust makes his entrance into the world and hops for the first time. I offer him a bit of lettuce the size of my finger-nail. He refuses. Before taking nourishment, he must first mature and develop for a while in the sun. [[401]]
[1] 2.34 by .312 inches.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] The big Grey Locust is sometimes subject to the same aberration.—Author’s Note. [↑]
[3] .312 to .351 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
CHAPTER XIX
THE LOCUSTS: THE LAST MOULT
I have just beheld a stirring sight: the last moult of a Locust, the extraction of the adult from his larval wrapper. It is magnificent. The object of my enthusiasm is the Grey Locust, the giant among our Acridians, who is common on the vines at vintage-time, in September. On account of his size—he is as long as my finger—he is a better subject for observation than any other of his tribe.
The fat, ungraceful larva, a rough draft of the perfect insect, is usually pale-green; but some also are bluish-green, dirty-yellow, red-brown or even ashen-grey, like the grey of the adult. The corselet is strongly keeled and notched, with a sprinkling of fine white worm-holes. The hind-legs, powerful as those of mature age, have a great haunch striped with red and a long shank shaped like a two-edged saw. [[402]]
The wing-cases, which in a few days will project well beyond the tip of the abdomen, are in their present state two skimpy, triangular pinions, touching back to back along their upper edges and continuing the keel of the corselet. Their free ends stand up like a pointed gable. These two coat-tails, of which the material seems to have been clipped short with ridiculous meanness, just cover the creature’s nakedness at the small of the back. They shelter two lean strips, the germs of the wings, which are even more exiguous. In brief, the sumptuous, slender sails of the near future are at present sheer rags, of such meagre dimensions as to be grotesque. What will come out of these miserable envelopes? A marvel of stately elegance.
Let us observe the proceedings in detail. Feeling itself ripe for transformation, the creature clutches the trelliswork of the cage with its hinder and intermediary legs. The fore-legs are folded and crossed over the breast and are not employed in supporting the insect, which hangs in a reversed position, back downwards. The triangular pinions, the sheaths of the wing-cases, open their peaked roof and separate sideways; the two [[403]]narrow strips, the germs of the wings, stand in the centre of the uncovered space and diverge slightly. The position for the moult has now been taken with the necessary stability.
The first thing to be done is to burst the old tunic. Behind the corselet, under the pointed roof of the prothorax, pulsations are produced by alternate inflation and deflation. A similar operation is performed in front of the neck and probably also under the entire covering of the shell that is to be split. The delicacy of the membranes at the joints enables us to perceive what is going on at these bare points, but the harness of the corselet hides it from us in the central portion.
It is there that the insect’s reserves of blood flow in waves. The rising tide expresses itself in blows of an hydraulic battering-ram. Distended by this rush of humours, by this injection wherein the organism concentrates its energies, the skin at last splits along a line of least resistance prepared by life’s subtle previsions. The fissure yawns all along the corselet, opening precisely over the keel, as though the two symmetrical halves had been soldered. Unbreakable [[404]]any elsewhere, the wrapper yields at this median point which is kept weaker than the rest. The split is continued some little way back and runs between the fastenings of the wings; it goes up the head as far as the base of the antennæ, where it sends a short ramification to the right and left.
Through this break the back is seen, quite soft, pale, hardly tinged with grey. Slowly it swells into a larger and larger hunch. At last it is wholly released. The head follows, extracted from its mask, which remains in its place, intact in the smallest particular, but looking strange with its great glassy eyes that do not see. The sheaths of the antennæ, with not a wrinkle, with nothing out of order and with their normal position unchanged, hang over this dead face, which is now translucent.
Therefore, in emerging from their narrow sheaths, which enclosed them with such absolute precision, the antennary threads encountered no resistance capable of turning their scabbards inside out, or disturbing their shape, or even wrinkling them. Without injuring the twisted containers, the contents, equal in size and themselves twisted, have managed to slip out as easily as a smooth, [[405]]straight object would do, if sliding in a loose sheath. The extraction-mechanism will be still more remarkable in the case of the hind-legs.
Meanwhile it is the turn of the fore-legs and then of the intermediary legs to shed armlets and gauntlets, always without the least rent, however small, without a crease of rumpled material, without a trace of any change in the natural position. The insect is now fixed to the top of the cage only by the claws of the long hind-legs. It hangs perpendicularly, head downwards, swinging like a pendulum, if I touch the wire-gauze. Four tiny hooks are what it hangs by. If they gave way, if they became unfastened, the insect would be lost, for it is incapable of unfurling its enormous wings anywhere except in space. But they will hold: life, before withdrawing from them, left them stiff and solid, so as to be able firmly to support the struggles that are to follow.
The wing-cases and wings now emerge. These are four narrow strips, faintly grooved and looking like bits of paper ribbon. At this stage, they are scarcely a quarter of their final length. So limp are they that they bend under their own weight [[406]]and sprawl along the insect’s sides in the opposite direction to the normal. Their free end, which should be turned backwards, now points towards the head of the Locust, who is hanging upside down. Imagine four blades of thick grass, bent and battered by a rainstorm, and you will have a fair picture of the pitiable bunch formed by the future organs of flight.
It must be no light task to bring things to the requisite stage of perfection. The deeper-seated changes are already well-started, solidifying liquid mucilages, bringing order out of chaos; but so far nothing outside betrays what is happening in that mysterious laboratory where everything seems lifeless.
Meanwhile, the hind-legs become released. The great thighs appear in view, tinted on their inner surface with a pale pink, which will soon turn into a streak of bright crimson. The emergence is easy, the bulky haunch clearing the way for the tapering knuckle.
It is different with the shank. This, in the adult insect, bristles throughout its length with a double row of hard, pointed spikes. Moreover, the lower extremity ends in four large spurs. It is a genuine saw, but [[407]]with two parallel sets of teeth and so powerful that, if we dismiss the size from our minds, it might be compared with the rough saw wielded by a quarryman.
The larva’s shin is similarly constructed, so that the object to be extracted is contained in a sheath as awkwardly shaped as itself. Each spur is enclosed in a similar spur, each tooth fits into the hollow of a similar tooth; and the moulding is so exact that we should obtain no more intimate contact if, instead of the envelope waiting to be shed, we coated the limb with a layer of varnish distributed uniformly with a fine brush.
Nevertheless the sawlike tibia slips out of its long, narrow case without catching in it at any point whatever. If I had not seen this happen over and over again, I could never have believed it: the discarded legging is quite intact all the way down. Neither the terminal spurs nor the two rows of spikes have caught in the delicate mould. The saw has respected the dainty scabbard which a puff of my breath is enough to tear; the formidable rake has slipped through without leaving the least scratch behind it.
I was far from expecting such a result as [[408]]this. Because of the spiked armour, I imagined that the leg would strip in scales which came loose of themselves or yielded to rubbing, like dead cuticle. How greatly did the reality exceed my expectations!
From the spurs and spikes of the infinitely thin matrix there emerge spurs and spikes that make the leg capable of cutting soft wood. This is done without violence or the least inconvenience; and the discarded garment remains where it is, hanging by the claws to the top of the cage, uncreased and untorn. The magnifying-glass shows not a trace of rough usage. As the thing was before the excoriation, so it remains afterwards. The legging of dead skin continues, down to the pettiest details, an exact replica of the live leg.
If any one suggested that we should extract a saw from some sort of goldbeater’s-skin sheath which had been exactly moulded on the steel and that we should perform the operation without producing the least tear, we should burst out laughing: the thing is so flagrantly impossible. Life makes light of these impossibilities; it has methods of realizing the absurd, in case of need. And the Locust’s leg tells us so. [[409]]
If the saw of the shin were as hard as it is once it leaves its sheath, it would absolutely refuse to come out without tearing to pieces the tight-fitting scabbard. The difficulty therefore is evaded, for it is essential that the leggings, which form the only suspension-cords, should remain intact in order to furnish a firm support until the deliverance is completed.
The leg in process of liberation is not a limb fit for walking; it has not the rigidity which it will presently possess. It is soft and highly flexible. In the portion which the progress of the moult exposes to view, I see it bending and curving as I wish, under the mere influence of its own weight, when I lift the cage. It is as supple as elastic cord. And yet consolidation follows very rapidly, for the proper stiffness will be acquired in a few minutes.
Farther on, in the part hidden from me by the sheath, the leg is certainly softer and in a state of exquisite plasticity—I was almost saying fluidity—which allows it to overcome difficult passages almost as a liquid would flow.
The teeth of the saw are there, but have none of their future sharpness. I am able [[410]]to strip a leg partially with the point of a knife and to extract the spines from their horny mould. They are germs of spikes, flexible buds which bend under the slightest pressure and resume their upright position as soon as the pressure is removed.
These spikes lie backwards when the leg is about to be drawn out; they stand up again and solidify while it emerges. I am witnessing not the mere stripping of gaiters from limbs completely enclosed, but rather a sort of birth and growth which disconcert us by their rapidity.
Much in the same way, but with far less delicate precision, do the claws of the Crayfish, at moulting-time, withdraw the soft flesh of their two fingers from the old stony sheath.
The shanks are free at last. They are folded limply in the groove of the thigh, there to mature without moving. The abdomen is next stripped. Its fine tunic wrinkles, rumples and pushes back towards the extremity, which alone for some time longer remains clad in the moulting skin. Except at this point, the whole of the Locust is now bare.
It is hanging perpendicularly, head down, [[411]]supported by the claws of the now empty leggings. Throughout this long and finikin work, the four talons have never yielded, thanks to the delicacy and care with which the extraction has been conducted.
The insect, fixed by the stern to its cast skin, does not move. Its abdomen is immensely swollen, apparently distended by the reserve of organizable humours which the expansion of the wings and wing-cases will soon set in motion. The Locust is resting; he is recovering from his exertions. Twenty minutes are spent in waiting.
Then, by an effort of its back, the hanging insect raises itself and with its front tarsi grabs hold of the cast skin fastened above it. Never did acrobat, swinging by his feet from the bar of a trapeze, display greater strength of loin in lifting himself. When this feat is accomplished, what remains to be done is nothing. With the support which he has now gripped, the Locust climbs a little higher and reaches the wire gauze of the cage. This takes the place of the brushwood which the free insect would utilize for the transformation. He fixes himself to it with his four front feet. Then the tip of the abdomen succeeds in releasing itself, [[412]]whereupon, loosened with one last shake, the empty husk drops to the ground.
The fact of its falling interests me, for I remember the stubborn persistency with which the Cicada’s cast skin defies the winter winds without being detached from its supporting twig. The Locust’s transfiguration is conducted in much the same way as the Cicada’s. Then how is it that the Acridian gives himself such very shaky hangers? The hooks hold so long as the work of tearing continues, though one would think that this ought to bring down everything; they give way under a trifling shock so soon as that work is done. We have, therefore, a very unstable condition of equilibrium here, showing once more with what delicate precision the insect leaves its sheath.
I said “tearing,” for want of a better word. But it is not quite that. The term implies violence; and violence there cannot be any, because of the unsteady balance. Should the Locust, upset by his exertions, come to the ground, it would be all up with him. He would shrivel where he lies; or, at any rate, his organs of flight, being unable to expand, would remain pitiful shreds. The Locust does not tear himself loose; he [[413]]flows softly from his scabbard. It is as though he were forced out by a gentle spring.
To return to the wings and wing-cases, which have made no apparent progress since leaving the sheaths. They are still stumps, with fine longitudinal seams, not much more than bits of rope. Their expansion, which will take more than three hours, is reserved for the end, when the insect is completely stripped and in its normal position.
We have seen the Locust turn head uppermost. This upright position is enough to restore the natural arrangement of the wing-cases and wings. Being extremely flexible and bent by their own weight, they were hanging down with their loose end pointing towards the head of the inverted insect. Now, still by virtue of their own weight, they are straightened and put the right way up. They are no longer curved like the petals of a flower, they are no longer in an inverted position; but they still look miserably insignificant.
In its perfect state, the wing is fan-shaped. A radiating cluster of strong nervures runs through it lengthwise and forms the framework of the fan, which is readily furled or [[414]]unfurled. The intervening spaces are crossed by innumerable tiny bars which make of the whole a network of rectangular meshes. The wing-case, which is coarser and much less expanded, repeats this structure in squares.
In neither case does any of the mesh show during the rope’s-end stage. All that we see is a few wrinkles, a few winding furrows, which tell us that the stumps are bundles of cunningly folded material reduced to their smallest volume.
The expansion begins near the shoulder. Where at first nothing definite was to be distinguished, we soon see a diaphanous area subdivided into meshes of exquisite precision. Little by little, with a slowness that defies observation even through the magnifying-glass, this area increases in extent at the expense of the shapeless terminal roll. My eyes linger in vain on the confines of the two portions, the roll developing and the gauze already developed: I see nothing, see no more than I should see in a sheet of water. But wait a moment; and the tissue of squares stands out with perfect clearness.
If we judged only by this first examination, we should really think that an organizable [[415]]fluid is abruptly congealing into a network of nervures; we should imagine that we were in the presence of a crystallization similar, in its suddenness, to that of a saline solution on the slide of a microscope. Well, no: things cannot be actually happening like that. Life does not perform its tasks so hastily.
I detach a half-developed wing and turn the powerful eye of the microscope upon it. This time I am satisfied. On the confines where the network seemed to be gradually woven, that network was really in existence. I can plainly see the longitudinal nervures, already thick and strong; and I can also see, pale, it is true, and without relief, the cross-bars. I find them all in the terminal roll, of which I succeed in unfolding a few strips.
It is obvious. The wing is not at this moment a fabric on the loom, through which the procreative energies are driving their shuttle; it is a fabric already completed. All that it lacks to be perfect is expansion and stiffness, even as our linen needs only starching and ironing.
The flattening out is finished in three hours or more. The wings and wing-cases stand up on the Locust’s back like a huge set of [[416]]sails, sometimes colourless, sometimes pale-green, as are the Cicada’s wings at the beginning. We are amazed at their size when we think of the paltry bundles that represented them at first. How did so much stuff manage to find room there!
The fairy-tales tell us of a grain of hemp-seed that contained the underlinen of a princess. Here is a grain that is even more astonishing. The one in the story took years and years to sprout and multiply and at last to yield the quantity of hemp required for the trousseau; the Locust’s supplies a sumptuous set of sails in a short space of time.
Slowly the proud crest, standing erect in four straight blades, acquires consistency and colour. The latter turns the requisite shade on the following day. For the first time the wings fold like a fan and lie in their places; the wing-cases lower their outer edge and form a gutter which falls over the sides. The transformation is finished. All that remains for the big Locust to do is to harden his tissues still further and to darken the grey of his costume while revelling in the sun. Let us leave him to enjoy himself and retrace our steps a little. [[417]]
The four stumps, which issued from their sheaths shortly after the corselet split its keel down the middle, contain, as we have seen, the wings and wing-cases, with their network of nervures. This network, if not perfect, has at least the general plan of its numberless details mapped out. To unfurl these poor bundles and convert them into generous sails, it is enough that the organism, acting in this case like a forcing-pump, should shoot a stream of humours, which have been kept in reserve for this moment, the hardest of all, into the little channels already prepared for their reception. With the channel marked out in advance, a slight injection is sufficient to explain the rapid spread.
But what were the four strips of gauze while still contained in their sheaths? Are the wings spatules and the three-cornered pinions of the larva moulds whose creases, corners and sinuosities shape their contents in their own image and weave the tissues of the future wing and wing-case? If we had to do with a real instance of moulding, our brains could call a halt. We should say to ourselves that it was quite simple for the thing moulded to correspond with the shape [[418]]of the mould. But our halt would be short-lived, for the mould in its turn would want explaining: we should have to seek for a solution of its infinite intricacies. Let us not go so far back; we should be utterly in the dark. Let us rather keep to facts that can be observed.
I examine through the magnifying-glass a pinion of a larva ripe for transformation. I see a bundle of fairly thick nervures radiating fanwise. Other nervures, paler and finer, are set in the intermediate spaces. Lastly, the fabric is completed by a number of very short transversal lines, more delicate still and chevron-shaped.
This, no doubt, gives a rough outline of the future wing-case; but how different from the mature structure! The arrangement of the radiating nervures, the skeleton of the edifice, is not at all the same; the network formed by the transversal veins in no way suggests the complicated pattern which we shall see later. The rudimentary is about to be succeeded by the infinitely complex, the crude by the exquisitely perfect. The same remark applies to the wing-spatule and its outcome, the final wing.
It is quite evident, when we have the preparatory [[419]]and the ultimate stage before our eyes at the same time: the larva’s pinion is not merely a mould which elaborates the material in its own image and shapes the wing-case upon the model of its hollow. No, the membrane which we are expecting is not yet inside in the form of a bundle which, when unfurled, will astonish us with the size and the extreme complexity of its texture. Or, to be accurate, it is there, but in a potential state. Before becoming a real thing, it is a virtual thing, which is nothing as yet, but which is capable of becoming something. It is there just as much as the oak is inside its acorn.
A fine, transparent rim binds the free edge both of the embryo wing and the embryo wing-case. Under a powerful lens we can see a few uncertain outlines of the future lacework. This might well be the factory in which life intends to set its materials going. There is nothing else visible, nothing to suggest the prodigious network whose every mesh will shortly have its form and place determined for it with geometrical precision.
There must therefore be something better and greater than a mould to make the organizable [[420]]matter shape itself into a sheet of gauze and describe the inextricable labyrinth of the nervation. There is a primary plan, an ideal pattern which assigns to each atom its precise place. Before the matter begins to move, the configuration is already virtually traced, the courses of the plastic currents are already marked out. The stones of our buildings are arranged in accordance with the architect’s considered plan; they form an ideal assemblage before existing as a real assemblage. Similarly, a Locust’s wing, that sumptuous piece of lace emerging from a miserable sheath, speaks to us of another Architect, the Author of the plans which life must follow in its labours.
The genesis of living creatures offers to our contemplation, in an infinity of ways, marvels far greater than those of the Acridian; but generally they pass unperceived, overshadowed as they are by the veil of time. The lapse of years, with its slow mysteries, robs us of the most astonishing spectacles, unless our minds be endowed with a stubborn patience. Here, by exception, things take place with a swiftness that arrests even a wavering attention.
He who would, without wearisome delays, [[421]]catch a glimpse of the inconceivable dexterity with which life does its work has but to go to the great Locust of the vines. The insect will show him that which, with their extreme slowness, the sprouting seed, the budding leaf and the blossoming flower hide from our curiosity. We cannot see a blade of grass grow; but we can easily witness the growth of a Locust’s wings and wing-cases.
We stand astounded at this sublime phantasmagoria of a grain of hemp-seed which in a few hours becomes a superb piece of linen. What a proud artist is life, driving its shuttle to weave the wings of a Locust, one of those insignificant insects of which Pliny, long ago said:
“In his tam parvis, fere nullis, quæ vis, quæ sapientia, quam inextricabilis perfectis!”
How well the old naturalist was inspired on this occasion! Let us repeat after him:
“What power, what wisdom, what indescribable perfection in the tiny corner of life which the Locust of the vines has shown us!”
I have heard that a learned enquirer, to whom life was but a conflict of physical and [[422]]chemical forces, did not despair of one day obtaining artificial organizable matter: protoplasm, as the official jargon has it. Were it in my power, I should hasten to satisfy this ambitious person.
Very well, be it so: you have thoroughly prepared your protoplasm. By dint of long hours of meditation, deep study, scrupulous care and inexhaustible patience, your wishes have been fulfilled; you have extracted from your apparatus an albuminous glair, which goes bad easily and stinks like the very devil in a few days’ time: in short, filth. What do you propose to do with your product?
Will you organize it? Will you give it the structure of a living edifice? Will you take a hypodermic syringe and inject it between two impalpable films to obtain were it only the wing of a Gnat?
For that is more or less what the Locust does. He injects his protoplasm between the two scales of the pinion; and the material becomes a wing-case, because it finds as a guide the ideal archetype of which I spoke just now. It is controlled in its intricate windings by a plan which existed before the injection, before the material itself. [[423]]
Have you this archetype, this coordinator of forms, this primordial regulator, at the end of your syringe? No? Then throw away your product! No life will ever spring from that chemical ordure. [[424]]
CHAPTER XX
THE FOAMY CICADELLA
In April, when the Swallow and the Cuckoo visit us, let us consider the fields for a while, keeping our eyes on the ground, as befits the eager observer of insect-life. We shall not fail to see, here and there, on the grass, little masses of white foam. It might easily be taken for a spray of frothy spittle from the lips of a passer-by; but there is so much of it that we soon abandon this first idea. Never would human saliva suffice for so lavish an expenditure of foam, even if some one with nothing better to do were to devote all his disgusting and misdirected zeal to the effort.
While recognizing that man is blameless in the matter, the northern peasant has not relinquished the name suggested by the appearance: he calls those strange flakes “Cuckoo-spit,” after the bird whose note is then proclaiming the awakening of spring. [[425]]The vagrant creature, unequal to the toils and delights of housekeeping, ejects it at random, so they say, as it pays its flying visits to the homes of others, in search of a resting-place for its egg.
The interpretation does credit to the Cuckoo’s salivary powers, but not to the interpreter’s intelligence. The other popular denomination is worse still: “Frog-spit!” My dear good people, what on earth has the Frog or his slaver to do with it?[1]
The shrewder Provençal peasant also knows that vernal foam; but he is too cautious to give it any wild names. My rustic neighbours, when I ask them about Cuckoo-spit and Frog-spit, begin to smile and see nothing in those words but a poor joke. To my questions on the nature of the thing they reply:
“I don’t know.”
Exactly! That’s the sort of answer I like, an answer not complicated with grotesque explanations.
Would you know the real perpetrator of this spittle? Rummage about the frothy [[426]]mass with a straw. You will extract a little yellow, pot-bellied, dumpy creature, shaped like a Cicada without wings. That’s the foam-producer.
When laid naked on another leaf, she brandishes the pointed tip of her little round paunch. This at once betrays the curious machine which we shall see at work presently. When older and still operating under the cover of its foam, the little thing becomes a nymph, turns green in colour and gives itself stumps of wings fixed scarfwise on its sides. From underneath its blunted head there projects, when it is working, a little gimlet, a beak similar to that of the Cicadæ.
In its adult form the insect is, in fact, a sort of very small-sized Cicada, for which reason the entomologist capable of shaking off the trammels of nonsensical nomenclature calls it simply the Foamy Cicadella. For this euphonic name, the diminutive of Cicada, the others have substituted that horrible word Aphrophora. Orthodox science says, Aphrophora spumaria, meaning Foamy Foambearer. The ear is none the better for this improvement. Let us content ourselves with Cicadella, which respects the tympanum and does not reduplicate the foam. [[427]]
I have consulted my few books as to the habits of the Cicadella. They tell me that she punctures plants and makes the sap exude in foamy flakes. Under this cover, the insect lives sheltered from the heat. A work recently compiled has one curious piece of information: it tells me that I must get up early in the morning, inspect my crops, pick any twig with foam on it and at once plunge it into a cauldron of boiling water.
Oh, my poor Cicadella, this is a bad look-out! The author does not do things by halves. I see him rising before the dawn, lighting a stove on wheels and pushing his infernal contrivance through the midst of his lucern, his clover and his peas, to boil you on the spot. He will have his work cut out for him. I remember a certain patch of sainfoin of which almost every stalk had its foam-flakes. Had the stewing-process been necessary, one might just as well have reaped the field and turned the whole crop into herb-tea.
Why these violent measures? Are you so very dangerous to the harvest, my pretty little Cicada? They accuse you of draining the plant which you attack. Upon my word, they are right: you drain it almost as dry as [[428]]the Flea does the Dog. But to touch another’s grass—you know it: doesn’t the fable say so?—is a heinous crime, an offence which can be punished by nothing less drastic than boiling water.
Let us waste no more time on these agricultural entomologists with their murderous designs. To hear them talk, one would think that the insect has no right to live. Incapable of behaving like a ferocious landowner who becomes filled with thoughts of massacre at the sight of a maggoty plum, I, more kindly, abandon my few rows of peas and beans to the Cicadella: she will leave me my share, I am convinced.
Besides, the insignificant ones of the earth are not the least rich in talent, in an originality of invention which will teach us much concerning the infinite variety of instinct. The Cicadella, in particular, possesses her recipes for aerated waters. Let us ask her by what process she succeeds in giving such a fine head of froth to her product, for the books that talk about boiling cauldrons and Cuckoo-spit are silent on this subject, the only one worthy of narration.
The foamy mass has no very definite shape and is hardly larger than a hazel-nut. It is [[429]]remarkably persistent even when the insect is not working at it any longer. Deprived of its manufacturer, who would not fail to keep it going, and placed on a watch-glass, it lasts for more than twenty-four hours without evaporating or losing its bubbles. This persistency is striking, compared with the rapidity with which soapsuds, for instance, disappear.
Prolonged duration of the foam is necessary to the Cicadella, who would exhaust herself in the constant renewal of her products if her work were ordinary froth. Once the effervescent covering is obtained, it is essential that the insect should rest for a time, with no other task than to drink its fill and grow. And so the moisture converted into froth possesses a certain stickiness, conducive to longevity. It is slightly oily and trickles under one’s finger like a weak solution of gum.
The bubbles are small and even, being all of the same dimensions. You can see that they have been scrupulously gauged, one by one; you suspect the presence of a graduated tube. Like our chemists and druggists, the insect must have its drop-measures.
A single Cicadella is usually crouching invisible [[430]]in the depths of the foam; sometimes there are two or three or more. In such cases, it is a fortuitous association, the fabrics of the several workers being so close together that they merge into one common edifice.
Let us see the work begin and, with the aid of a magnifying-glass, follow the creature’s proceedings. With her sucker inserted up to the hilt and her six short legs firmly fixed, the Cicadella remains motionless, flat on her stomach on the long-suffering leaf. You expect to see froth issuing from the edge of the well, effervescing under the action of the insect’s implement, whose lancets, ascending and descending in turns and rubbing against each other like those of the Cicada, ought to make the sap foam as it is forced out. The froth, so it would seem, must come ready-made from the puncture. That is what the current descriptions of the Cicadella tell us; that was how I myself pictured it on the authority of the writers. All this is a huge mistake: the real thing is much more ingenious. It is a very clear liquid that comes up from the well, with no more trace of foam than in a dew-drop. Even so the Cicada, who possesses [[431]]similar tools, makes the spot at which she slakes her thirst give forth a limpid fluid, with not a vestige of froth to it. Therefore, notwithstanding its dexterity in sucking up liquids, the Cicadella’s mouth-apparatus has nothing to do with the manufacture of the foamy mattress. It supplies the raw material; another implement works it up. What implement? Have patience and we shall see.
The clear liquid rises imperceptibly and glides under the insect, which at last is half inundated. The work begins again without delay. To make white of egg into a froth we have two methods: we can whip it, thus dividing the sticky fluid into thin flakes and causing it to take in air in a network of cells; or we can blow into it and so inject air-bubbles right into the mass. Of these two methods, the Cicadella employs the second, which is less violent and more elegant. She blows her froth.
But how is the blowing done? The insect seems incapable of it, being devoid of any air-mechanism similar to that of the lungs. To breathe with tracheæ and to blow like a bellows are incompatible actions.
Agreed; but be sure that, if the insect [[432]]needs a blast of air for its manufactures, the blowing-machine will be there, most ingeniously contrived. This machine the Cicadella possesses at the tip of her abdomen, at the end of the intestine. Here, split lengthwise in the shape of a Y, a little pocket opens and shuts in turns, a pocket whose two lips close hermetically when joined.
Having said this, let us watch the performance. The insect lifts the tip of its abdomen out of the bath in which it is swimming. The pocket opens, sucks in the air of the atmosphere till it is full, then closes and dives down, the richer by its prize. Inside the liquid, the apparatus contracts. The captive air escapes as from a nozzle and produces a first bubble of froth. Forthwith the air-pocket returns to the upper air, opens, takes in a fresh load and goes down again closed, to immerse itself once more and blow in its gas. A new bubble is produced.
And so it goes on with chronometrical regularity, from second to second, the blowing-machine swinging upwards to open its valve and fill itself with air, downwards to dive into the liquid and send out its gaseous contents. Such is the air-measurer, the drop-glass [[433]]which accounts for the evenness of the frothy bubbles.
Ulysses, the favourite of the gods, received from the storm-dispenser, Æolus, bags in which the winds were confined. The carelessness of his crew, who untied the bags to find out what they contained, let loose a tempest which destroyed the fleet. I have seen those mythological wind-filled bags; I saw them years ago, when I was a child.
A peripatetic tinker, a son of Calabria, had set up between two stones the crucible in which a tin soup-tureen and plates were to be remelted. Æolus did the blowing, Æolus in the person of a little dark-skinned boy who, squatting on his heels, forced air towards the forge by alternately squeezing two goatskin bags, one on the right and one on the left. Thus must the prehistoric bronze-smelters have performed their task, they whose workshops and whose remains of copper-slag I find on the hills near my home: the blast of their furnaces was produced by these inflated skins.
The machine employed by my Æolus is pathetically simple. The hide of a goat, with the hair left on, is practically all that is necessary. It is a bag fastened at the [[434]]bottom over a nozzle, open at the top and supplied, by way of lips, with two little boards which, when brought together, close up the whole apparatus. These two stiff lips are each furnished with a leather handle, one for the thumb, the other for the four remaining fingers. The hand opens; the lips of the bag part and it fills with air. The hand closes and brings the boards together; the air imprisoned in the compressed bag escapes by the nozzle. The alternate working of the two bags gives a continuous blast.
Apart from continuity, which is not a favourable condition when the gas has to be discharged in small bubbles, the Cicadella’s bellows works like the Calabrian tinker’s. It is a flexible pocket with stiff lips, which alternately part and unite, opening to let the air enter and closing to keep it imprisoned. The contraction of the sides takes the place of the shrinking of the bag and puffs out the gaseous contents when the pocket is immersed.
He certainly had a lucky inspiration who first thought of confining the wind in a bag, as mythology tells us that Æolus did. The goatskin turned into a bellows gave us our metals, the essential matter whereof our [[435]]tools are made. Well, in this art of expelling air, an enormous source of progress, the Cicadella was the pioneer. She was blowing her froth before Tubalcain thought of urging the fire of his forge with a leather pouch. She was the first to invent bellows.
When, bubble by bubble, the foamy wrapper covers the insect to a height which the uplifted tip of her belly is unable to reach, it is no longer possible to take in air and the effervescence stops. Nevertheless, the gimlet that extracts the sap goes on working, for nourishment must be obtained. As a rule then, in the sloping part, the superfluous liquid, that which is not converted into foam, collects and forms a drop of perfectly clear liquid.
What does this limpid fluid lack in order to turn white and effervesce? Nothing but air blown into it, one would think. I am able to substitute my own devices for the Cicadella’s syringe. I place between my lips a very slender glass tube and with delicate puffs send my breath into the drop of moisture. To my great surprise, it does not froth up. The result is just the same as that which I should have with plain water from the tap. [[436]]
Instead of a plentiful, lasting, slow-subsiding foam, like that with which the insect covers itself, all that I obtain is a miserable ring of bubbles, which burst as soon as they appear. And I am equally unsuccessful with the liquid which the Cicadella collects under her abdomen at the start, before working her bellows. What is wrong in each case? The foamy product and its generating liquid shall tell us.
The first is oily to the touch, gummy and as fluid as, for instance, a weak solution of albumen would be; the second flows as readily as plain water. The Cicadella therefore does not draw from her well a liquid liable to effervesce merely by the action of the blow-pocket; she adds something to what oozes from the puncture, adds a viscous element which gives cohesion and makes frothing possible, even as a boy adds soap to the water which he blows into iridescent bubbles through a straw.
Where then does the insect keep its soap-works, its manufactory of the effervescent element? Evidently in the blow-pocket itself. It is here that the intestine ends and here that albuminous products, furnished either by the digestive canal or by special glands, [[437]]can be expelled in infinitesimal doses. Each whiff sent out is thus accompanied by a trifle of adhesive matter, which dissolves in the water, making it sticky and enabling it to retain the captive air in permanent bubbles. The Cicadella covers herself with an icing of which her intestine is to some extent the manufacturer.
This method brings us back to the industry of the lily-dweller, the grub which makes itself a loathsome armour out of its excretions;[2] but what a distance between the heap of ordure which it wears on its back and the Cicadella’s aerated mattress!
Another fact, more difficult to explain, attracts our attention. A multitude of low-growing, herbaceous plants, whose sap starts flowing in April, suit the frothy insect, without distinction of species, genus or family. I could almost make a list of the non-ligneous vegetation of my neighbourhood by cataloguing the plants on which the little creature’s foam is to be found in greater or lesser abundance. A few experiments will tell us how indifferent the Cicadella is to both [[438]]the nature and the properties of the plant which she adopts as her home.
I pick the insect out of its froth with the tip of a hair-pencil and place it on some other plant, of an opposite flavour, letting the strong come after the mild, the spicy after the insipid, the bitter after the sweet. The new encampment is accepted without hesitation and soon covered with foam. For instance, a Cicadella taken from the bean, which has a neutral flavour, thrives excellently on the spurges, full of pungent milky sap, and particularly on Euphorbia serrata, the narrow notch-leaved spurge, which is one of her favourite dwelling-places. And she is equally satisfied when moved from the highly-spiced spurge to the comparatively flavourless bean.
This indifference is surprising when we reflect how scrupulously faithful other insects are to their plants. There are undoubtedly stomachs expressly made to drink corrosive and assimilate toxic matters. The caterpillar of Acherontia atropos, the Death’s-head Hawk-moth, eats its fill of potato-leaves, which are seasoned with solanin; the caterpillar of the Spurge-moth browses in these parts on the upright red spurge (Euphorbia [[439]]characias), whose milk produces much the same effect as red-hot iron on the tongue; but neither one nor the other would pass from these narcotics or these caustics to utterly insipid fare.
How does the Cicadella manage to feed on anything and everything, for she evidently obtains nourishment while putting a head on her liquid? I see her thrive, either of her own accord or by my devices, on the common buttercup (Ranunculus acris), which has a flavour unequalled save by Cayenne pepper; on the Italian arum (Arum italicum), the veriest particle of whose leaves is enough to burn the lips; on the traveller’s joy, or virgin’s bower (Clematis vitalba), the famous beggars’ herb, which reddens the skin and produces the sores in request among our sham cripples. After these highly-seasoned condiments, she will promptly accept the mild sainfoin, the scented savory, the bitter dandelion, the sweet field eringo, in short, anything that I put before her, whether full-flavoured or tasteless.
As a matter of fact, this strange catholicity of diet might well be only apparent. When the Cicadella punctures this or that herb, of whatever species, all that she does [[440]]is to extract an almost neutral liquid, just as the roots draw it from the soil; she does not admit to her fountain the fluids worked up into essential principles. The liquid that trickles forth under the insect’s gimlet and forms a bead at the bottom of the foamy mass is perfectly clear.
I have gathered this drop on the spurge, the arum, the clematis and the buttercup. I expected to find a fire-water, pungent as the sap of those different plants. Well, it is nothing of the kind; it lacks all savour; it is water or little more. And this insipid stuff has issued from a reservoir of vitriol.
If I prick the spurge with a fine needle, that which rises from the puncture is a white, milky drop, tasting horribly bitter. When the Cicadella pushes in her drill, a clear, flavourless fluid oozes out. The two operations seem to be directed towards different sources.
How does she manage to draw a liquid that is clear and harmless from the same barrel whence my needle brings up something milky and burning? Can the Cicadella, with her instrument, that incomparable alembic, divide the fierce fluid into two, admitting the neutral and rejecting the peppery? [[441]]Can she be drawing on certain vessels whose sap, not yet elaborated, has not acquired its final virulence? The delicate vegetable anatomy is helpless in the presence of the tiny creature’s pump. I give up the problem.
When the Cicadella is exploring the spurge, as frequently happens, she has a serious reason for not admitting to her fountain all that would be yielded by simple bleeding, such as my needle would produce. The milky juice of the plant would be fatal to her.
I gather a drop or two of the liquid that trickles from a cut stalk and instal a Cicadella in it. The insect is not comfortable: I can see this by its efforts to escape. My hair-pencil pushes the fugitive back into the pool of milk, rich in dissolved rubber. Soon this rubber settles into clots similar to crumbs of cheese; the insect’s legs become clad in gaiters that seem made of casein; a coating of gum obstructs the breathing-valves; possibly also the extremely delicate skin is hurt by the blistering qualities of the milky sap. If kept for some time in that environment, the Cicadella dies.
Even so would she die if her gimlet, working simply as a needle, brought the milk of [[442]]the spurge to the surface. A sifting takes place then, which allows almost pure water to issue from the source that gives the wherewithal for making the froth. A subtle exhaustion-process, whose mechanism is hidden from our curiosity, a piston-play of unrivalled delicacy, effects this marvellous work of purification.
Water is always water, whether it come from the stagnant pool or the clear stream, from a poisonous liquid or a healing infusion; and it possesses the same properties, when it is rid of its impurities by distillation. In like manner, the sap, whether furnished by the spurge or the bean, the clematis or the sainfoin, the buttercup or the borage, is of the same watery nature when the Cicadella’s syphon, by a reducing-process which would be the envy of our stills, has deprived it of its peculiar properties, which vary so greatly in different plants.
This would explain how the insect makes its froth rise on the first plant that it comes across. Everything suits it, because its apparatus reduces any sap to the condition of plain water. The inimitable well-sinker is able to produce the limpid from the cloudy and the harmless from the toxic. [[443]]
It may possibly happen that the insect’s well supplies water that is not quite pure. If left to evaporate in a watch-glass, the clear drop that trickles from the mass of foam yields a thin white residue, which dissolves by effervescence in nitric acid. This residue might well be carbonate of potash. I also suspect the presence of traces of albumen.
Obviously, the Cicadella finds something to feed on at the bottom of the puncture. Now what does she consume? To all appearances, something with an albuminous basis, for the pigmy herself is, for the most part, but a grain of similar matter. This element is plentiful in all plants; and it is probable that the insect uses it lavishly to make up for the expenditure of gum needed for the formation of froth. Some albuminous product, perfected in the digestive canal and discharged by the intestine as and when the blow-pocket expels its bubble of air, might well give the liquid the power of swelling into a foam that lasts for a long time.
If we ask ourselves what advantage the Cicadella derives from her mass of froth, a very excellent answer is at once suggested: [[444]]the insect keeps itself cool under that shelter, hides itself from the eyes of its persecutors and is protected against the rays of the sun and the attacks of parasites.
The Lily-beetle makes a similar use of the mantle of her own dirt; but she, most unhappily for herself, flings off her nasty cloak and descends naked from the plant to the ground, where she has to bury herself to slaver her cocoon. At this critical moment, the Flies lie in wait for her and entrust her with their eggs, the germs of parasites which will eat into her body.
The Cicadella is better-advised and altogether escapes the dangers attendant on a removal. Subject to certain summary changes which never interrupt her activity, she assumes the adult form in the very heart of her bastion, under the shelter of a viscous rampart capable of repelling any assailant. Here she enjoys perfect security when the difficult hour has come for tearing off her old skin and putting on another, brand-new and more decorative; here she finds profound peace for her excoriation and for the display of the attire of a riper age.
The insect does not leave its cool covering until it is grown up, when it appears in [[445]]the form of a pretty little, brown-striped Cicadella. It is then able to take enormous and sudden leaps, which carry it far from the aggressor; and it leads an easy life, untroubled by the foe.
Looked upon as a system of defence, the frothy stronghold is indeed a magnificent invention, much superior to the squalid work of the invader of the lily. And, strange to say, the system has no imitators among the genera most nearly allied to the froth-blower.
In her larval form, the Asparagus-beetle is victimized by the Fly because she does not follow the example of her cousin, the Lily-beetle, and clothe herself in her own droppings. Even so, on the grass, on the trees displaying their tender leaves, other Cicadellæ abound, no less exposed to danger from the Warbler seeking a succulent morsel for his little ones; and, as they draw out the sap through the punctures made by their suckers, not one of them thinks of making it effervesce. Yet they too possess the elevator-pump, which they all work in the same manner; only they do not know how to turn the end of their intestine into a bellows. Why not? Because instincts are not to be [[446]]acquired. They are primordial aptitudes, bestowed here and denied there; time cannot awaken them by a slow incubation, nor are they decreed by any similarity of organization. [[447]]
[1] Kirby and other English naturalists refer to Aphrophora spumaria as the Frothy Froghopper; but this is rather because the insect’s outline and hopping-powers suggest those of a Frog.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] The larva of the Lily-beetle (Crioceris merdigera), the essay on which insect has not yet been translated into English.—Translator’s Note. [↑]