What is this fleck of foam, like a drop of saliva, which we see in springtime on the weeds of the meadows; among others on the spurge, when its stems begin to shoot, and its sombre flowers open in the sunlight? "It is the work of an insect. It is the shelter in which the Cicadellina deposits her eggs. What a miraculous chemist! Her stiletto excels the finest craft of the botanical anatomist" by its sovereign art of separating the acrid poison which flows with the sap in the veins of the most venomous plants, and extracting therefrom only an inoffensive fluid. [(7/2.)]
At every step the insects set us problems equally varied. The other creatures are nearer to us; they resemble us in many respects. But insects, almost the first-born of creation, form a world apart, and contain, in their tiny bodies, as Réaumur has admirably said, "more parts than the most gigantic animals." They have senses and faculties of their own, which enable them to accomplish actions, which are doubtless very simply related in reality, but which seem, to our minds, as extraordinary as the habits of the inhabitants of Mars might, if by chance they were to descend in our midst. We do not know how they hear, nor how they see through their compound eyes, and our ignorance concerning the majority of their senses still further increases the difficulty, which so often arrests us, of interpreting their actions.
The tubercled Cerceris "finds by the hundred" and almost immediately a species of weevil, the Cleona ophthalmica, on which it feeds its larvae, and which the human eye, though it searches for hours, can scarcely find anywhere. The eyes of the Cerceris are like magnifying glasses, veritable microscopes, which immediately distinguish, in the vast field of nature, an object that human vision is powerless to discover. [(7/3.)]
How does the Ammophila, hovering over the turf and investigating it far and wide, in its search for a grey grub, contrive to discern the precise point in the depth of the subsoil where the larva is slumbering in immobility? "Neither touch nor sight can come into play, for the grub is sealed up in its burrow at a depth of several inches; nor the scent, since it is absolutely inodorous; nor the hearing, since its immobility is absolute during the daytime." [(7/4.)]
The Processional caterpillar of the pine-trees, "endowed with an exquisite hygrometric sensibility," is a barometer more infallible than that of the physicists. "It foresees the tempests preparing afar, at enormous distances, almost in the other hemisphere," and announces them several days before the least sign of them appears on the horizon. [(7/5.)]
A wild bee, the Chalicodoma, and a wasp, the Cerceris, carried in the dark far from their familiar pastures, to a distance of several miles, and released in spots which they have never seen, cross vast and unknown spaces with absolute certainty, and regain their nests; even after long absence, and in spite of contrary winds and the most unexpected obstacles. It is not memory that guides them, but a special faculty whose astonishing results we must admit without attempting to explain them, so far removed are they from our own psychology. [(7/6.)] But here is another example:
The Greater Peacock moths cross hills and valleys in the darkness, with a heavy flight of wings spotted with inexplicable hieroglyphics. They hasten from the remotest depths of the horizon to find their "sleeping beauties," drawn thereto by unknown odours, inappreciable by our senses, yet so penetrating that the branch of almond on which the female has perched, and which she has impregnated with her effluvium, exerts the same extraordinary attraction. [(7/7.)]
Considering these creatures, we end by discovering more things than are contained in all the philosophies...if we know how to look for them.
Among so many unimaginable phenomena, which bewilder us, "because there is nothing analogous in us," we succeed in perceiving, here and there, a few glimpses of day, which suddenly throw a singular light upon this black labyrinth, in which the least secret we can surprise "enters perhaps more directly into the profound enigma of our ends and our origins than the secret of the most urgent and most closely studied of our passions." [(7/8.)]
Fabre explains by hypnosis one of those curious facts which have hitherto been so poorly interpreted. When surprised by abnormal conditions, we see insects suddenly fall over, drop to the ground, and lie as though struck by lightning, gathering their limbs under their bodies. A shock, an unexpected odour, a loud noise, plunges them instantly into a sort of lethargy, more or less prolonged. The insect "feigns death," not because it simulates death, but in reality because this magnetic condition resembles that of death. [(7/9.)] Now the Odynerus, the Anthidium, the Eucera, the Ammophila, and all the hymenoptera which Fabre has observed sleeping at the fall of night, "suspended in space solely by the strength of their mandibles, their bodies tense, their limbs retracted, without exhaustion or collapse"; and the larva of the Empusa, "which for some ten months hangs to a twig by its limbs, head downwards": do not these present a surprising analogy with those hypnotized persons who possess the faculty of remaining fixed in the most painful poses, and of supporting the most unusual attitudes, for an extremely long time; for instance, with one arm extended, or one foot raised from the ground, without appearing to experience the least fatigue, and with a persevering and unfaltering energy? [(7/10.)]