The quarrels among these pacific creatures cannot be very serious. A little grappling with the legs, whose toothed shanks [[81]]grate upon the rigid harness; a few tumbles provoked by blows of the trident: the strife amounts to no more than this. When the superfluous wooers are gone, the pairing takes place, the household is established; and then and there bonds are contracted which are remarkably enduring.
Are these bonds never dissolved? Do the husband and wife recognize each other among their fellows? Are they mutually faithful? Cases of connubial disloyalty are very rare, are in fact unknown, on the part of the mother, who has long ceased to leave the house; on the other hand, they are frequent on the part of the father, whose duties often compel him to go abroad. As we shall see presently, he is throughout his life the purveyor of victuals, the person appointed to cart away the rubbish. Single-handed, at different hours of the day, he shoots out of doors the earth thrown up by the mother’s excavations; single-handed he explores the surroundings of the house at night, in quest of pellets whereof to knead the children’s loaves.
Sometimes two burrows are side by side. May not the collector of provisions, on returning home, easily mistake the door and [[82]]enter another’s house? On his walks abroad, does he never happen to meet ladies taking the air who have not yet settled down and then, forgetful of his first mate, does he not qualify for divorce? The question was worth looking into. I have tried to solve it in the following manner.
I take two couples from the ground when the excavations are in full swing. Indelible marks, scratched with a needle on the lower edge of the wing-cases, will enable me to distinguish them one from the other. The four objects of my experiment are distributed at random, singly, over the surface of a sandy space some eighteen inches deep. Soil of this depth will be sufficient for the excavations of a night. In case provisions should be needed, I supply a handful of Sheep-droppings. A large earthenware pan, turned upside down, covers the arena, prevents escape and affords the darkness favourable to peaceful concentration.
Next day, I obtain splendid results. There are two burrows in the settlement and no more; the couples have formed again as they were: each Jack has recovered his Jill. A second experiment, made next day, and yet a third meet with the same success: the [[83]]marked couples are together, those not marked are together, at the bottom of the shaft.
Five times more, day after day, I make them set up house anew. Things now begin to go amiss. Sometimes each of my four subjects settles down apart from the rest; sometimes the same burrow contains the two males or the two females; sometimes the same vault receives the two sexes, but associated otherwise than in the beginning. I have repeated the experiment too often. Henceforth, disorder reigns. My daily shufflings have demoralized the diggers; a crumbling house that has constantly to be begun afresh has put an end to lawful unions. Respectable married life becomes impossible from the moment when the house falls in from day to day.
No matter: the first three experiments, made when scares, time after time renewed, had not yet tangled the delicate connecting thread, seem to point to a certain constancy in the Minotaur’s household. The male and female recognize each other, find each other in the confusion of events which my mischievous doings force upon them; they exhibit a mutual fidelity, a very unusual [[84]]quality in the insect class, which is but too prone to forget its matrimonial obligations.
How do they recognize each other? We recognize one another by our facial features, which vary so greatly in different individuals, notwithstanding their common likeness. They, to tell the truth, have no faces; there is no expression beneath their rigid masks. Besides, things happen in profound darkness. The sense of sight therefore does not count at all.
We recognize one another by our speech, by the tone, the inflection of our voices. They are dumb, deprived of all means of vocal appeal. There remains the sense of smell. Minotaurus finding his mate makes me think of my friend Tom, the house-dog, who, when the moon stirs his emotions, lifts his nose in the air, sniffs the breeze and jumps the garden-walls, eager to obey the remote and magical summons; he puts me in mind of the Great Peacock Moth,[2] who hastens from miles afield to pay his respects to the newly-hatched maid.
The comparison, however, is far from being complete, the Dog and the big Moth [[85]]get wind of the wedding before they know the bride. The Minotaur, on the contrary, has no experience of long pilgrimages and makes his way, within a short radius, to her whom he has already frequented; he recognizes her, he distinguishes her from the others by certain emanations, certain individual secrets inappreciable to any save the enamoured swain. Of what do these effluvia consist? The insect did not tell me; and that is a pity, for it might have taught us things worth knowing about its powers of smell.