As its isolation led us to expect, the grub of the Bear Larinus therefore eats solid food. There is, however, nothing to prevent it from adding to this diet the milky exudations of the sap.
This fare, in which solid matter predominates, necessarily involves solid excreta, which are unknown in the inmate of the blue thistle. What does the hermit of the carline thistle do with them, cooped up in a narrow cell from which nothing can be shot outside? It employs them as the other does its viscous drops; it upholsters its cell with them.
I see it curved into a circle with its mouth applied to the opposite orifice, carefully collecting the granules as these are evacuated by the intestinal factory. It is precious stuff, this, very precious; and the grub will be careful not to lose a scrap of it, for it has naught else wherewith to plaster its dwelling.
The dropping seized is therefore placed in position at once, spread with the tips of the mandibles [[48]]and compressed with the forehead and rump. A few waste chips and flakes, a few bits of down are torn from the uncemented ceiling overhead; and the plasterer incorporates them, atom by atom, with the still moist putty.
This gives, as the inmate increases in size, a coat of rough-cast which, smoothed with meticulous care, lines the whole of the cell. Together with the natural wall furnished by the prickly rind of the artichoke, it makes a powerful bastion, far superior, as a defensive system, to the thatched huts of the Spotted Larinus.
The plant, moreover, lends itself to protracted residence. It is slightly built but slow to decay. The winds do not prostrate it in the mire, supported as it is by brushwood and sturdy grasses, its habitual environment. When the handsome thistle with the blue spheres has long been mouldering on the edge of the roads, the carlina, with its rot-proof base, still stands erect, dead and brown but not dilapidated. Another excellent quality is this: the scales of its heads contract and make a roof which the rain has difficulty in penetrating.
In such a shelter there is no occasion to fear the dangers which make the Spotted Larinus quit her pitchers at the approach of winter: the dwelling is securely founded and the cell is dry. The Bear Larinus is well aware of these advantages; she is careful not to imitate the other in wintering under the cover of dead leaves and stone-heaps. [[49]]She does not stir abroad, assured beforehand of the efficiency of her roof.
On the roughest days of the year, in January, if the weather permits me to go out, I open the heads of the carline thistles which I come across. I always find the Larinus there, in all the freshness of her striped costume. She is waiting, benumbed, until the warmth and animation of May return. Then only will she break the dome of her cabin and go to take part in the festival of spring.
In majesty of bearing and magnificence of blossom our kitchen-gardens have nothing superior to the cardoon and its near relative the artichoke. Their heads grow to double the size of a man’s fist. Outside are spiral series of imbricated scales which, without being aggressive, diverge at maturity in the shape of broad, stiff, pointed blades. Beneath this armament is a fleshy, hemispherical swelling, as big as half an orange.
From this rises a serried mass of long white hairs, a sort of fur, than which a Polar Bear’s is no thicker. Closely surrounded by this hair, the seeds are crowned with feathers which double the thickness of the shaggy chevaux de frise. Above this, delighting the eye, blooms the spreading tuft of flowers, coloured a splendid lapis lazuli, like that of the cornflower, the joy of the harvest.