Field, Forest and Farm / Things interesting to young nature-lovers, including some matters of moment to gardeners and fruit-growers

by Jean-Henri Fabre

Stag-beetle

“The whole animal consisted of little more than a crawling stomach unprovided with any protection. The head alone was fortified with a substantial skull of horn, and it also bore, one on the right side of the mouth, the other on the left, two short but strong teeth adapted to cutting in pieces the wood of the oak, its sole nourishment.

“Such a worm, entirely naked, evidently cannot live in the open air, where the thousand little roughnesses of the ground would be continually wounding its delicate skin. It must have a safe shelter that it need not leave until it has become the well-armored insect we now see. The grub of the stag-beetle does [[230]]in fact live inside the oak, which affords it at once food and lodging. There, in the depths of the tree-trunk, is its inviolable retreat.

“With its two teeth, as hard and sharp as a carpenter’s tool, it cuts away, patiently, bit by bit, the fresh wood imbued with sap. Each fragment thus detached is a mouthful for the worm’s nourishment; but as it is by no means a rich diet there must be a good deal of it to furnish enough nutriment. Therefore the gnawing goes on without cessation, in all directions, with a corresponding enlargement of the domicile, which soon becomes a labyrinth of galleries that go up and down and cross one another, penetrate farther into the trunk or approach the surface, at the pleasure of the occupant, whose choice is determined by its taste for morsels lying in this or that direction.

“For three or four years this is the worm’s mode of life. To make itself big and fat is its sole business, and to this it devotes itself with vigor. I leave you to imagine what must become of an oak tree worked by a dozen of these gnawing creatures. Under the bark, which is almost intact, the trunk is one vast wound, perforated with galleries that are themselves littered with wormhole dust, and oozing with a brown juice that smells like a tannery. Unless the forester applies a remedy, and that speedily, the enormous oak will be ruined. Leaving this care to his charge, let us go on with our story.

“When it has become big enough and fat enough, after at least three years of continual feasting, the [[231]]worm prepares to change its form. Near the surface, that its future exit may be the easier, the little creature hollows out a sufficiently large oval chamber and lines it with a sort of wadding made of the finest fibers of the wood. Thus the tender flesh of the rejuvenated insect will be protected from all rude outer contact.

“These precautions taken, the worm undergoes its transfiguration: it splits open all down the back, strips off its skin, throws it away like a discarded garment, and is born a second time, as one might say, but under a totally different form. It is no longer a worm—far from it—but it is not yet a stag-beetle, although the outlines of the latter are already discernible.

“The creature is quite motionless, as if dead. The legs, neatly folded over the stomach, are as transparent as crystals; the nippers are pressed close to the breast; the wings, not yet expanded, have the appearance of a short scarf encircling the flanks; and the whole is swathed in swaddling-clothes finer in texture than an onion skin. The entire organism is wrapped in a repose so profound that one might think all life extinct. It is white or crystalline in appearance, and so tender that a mere nothing will wound it. The coarse worm of the beginning has been succeeded by this most delicate of creatures.

“Out of the material amassed by the wood-gnawer’s voracious appetite there is created an entirely new being. The flesh, at first nearly fluid, slowly [[232]]acquires consistency; the skin hardens, assumes a chestnut hue, takes on the firmness of horn; in fact, when the warm season returns again the insect wakes up from that deep sleep, not of death, but nevertheless very much like it. The creature moves, tears apart the swathing bands under which its rebirth has taken place, strips off these wrappings, and here at last we have the insect in its full perfection. Behold the stag-beetle!

“It comes out from its native oak, spreads its wings in flight under cover of the foliage, and settles down, now on this tree, now on that, in the rays of the sun. The freedom of the open air and the enjoyment of the light of day constitute its supreme felicity for which it has been preparing during the three or four years of constant toil in the dark galleries of an old oak.