In my glass jars and under the flat stones in the fields the Devil’s Coach-horse has no such excuse. Thanks to its larval state, it is utterly indifferent to the disorders attendant on the pairing. Those of its fellows which it encounters are not its amorous rivals. And yet without more ado they seize and slay one another. A fight to the death decides which is to be the consumed and which the consumer.
In our language we have the word anthropophagi to denote the horrible eating of man by man; we have nothing to express a similar act in animals of the same species. A proverbial phrase would even seem to say that such a term is uncalled for, except where man is concerned, that baffling admixture of nobility and baseness. Wolf does not eat Wolf, says the wisdom of the nations. Well, here we have the larva of the Stinking Staphylinus giving the lie to the proverb.
What a morality. In this connection, I should have wished to consult the Big-jawed Staphylinus when she came to visit my highly-seasoned Moles, my putrefying Snakes. But she always refused to divulge her secrets, withdrawing from the charnel-pit once she had filled her maw. [[55]]
[1] René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757), the French physicist and naturalist, inventor of the Réaumur thermometer and author of Mémoires pour savoir à l’histoire naturelle des insectes.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. x.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] Cf. idem: chaps. xiv. to xvi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] Carolus Linnæus (Karl von Linné, 1707–1778), the celebrated Swedish botanist and naturalist.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[5] Or Greenbottles. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap. ix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[6] Under carrion: S. subnitidus, De Mars: S. detersus Illig.: S. maculatus, Ros.: S. æneus, Fab.—Author’s Note.