In July, at about eleven o’clock on a warm, still night, I find him crouching flat on the inside of the cavernous willows or oftener on the outside, on the rough bark of the trunk. The males occur pretty frequently. Motionless, undismayed by the sudden flashes of my lantern, they await the coming of the females lurking in the deep crevices of the decayed wood.
The Ægosoma also is armed with powerful shears, with mandibular cleavers which are very useful to the new-formed adult for hewing a way out, but which become a crying abuse among insects of the same family, [[192]]when addicted to chopping off each other’s legs and antennæ. If I do not isolate my subjects one by one in strong paper bags, I am certain, on returning from my nocturnal expeditions, to find none but cripples in my box. The mandibular knife has done furious execution on the way. Almost all the insects are the poorer by at least a leg.
In the wire cage, with chips of old willow-wood for a refuge and figs, pears and other fruits for food, they are less intolerant. For three or four days, my captives betray great excitement at nightfall. They run swiftly along the trellised dome, quarrelling as they go, biting one another, striking at one another with their cleavers. In the absence of females, almost undiscoverable at the time of my visits, which are possibly not late enough, I have not been able to observe their nuptials; but I have seen acts of brutality that tell me something of what I want to know. No less expert in chopping off legs than his kinsman of the pines, the Ægosoma should also be somewhat deficient in gallantry. I picture him beating his wife and crippling her a little, not without himself receiving his share of wounds.
If these were Longicorn affairs, the scandal [[193]]would not be far-reaching; but, alas, we also have our domestic quarrels! The Beetle explains his by his nocturnal habits: the light makes for milder manners; the darkness tends to deprave them. The result is worse when the soul is in darkness; and the lout who thrashes his wife is a child of the gloom. [[194]]
[1] “Luxury had reached such a pitch among the Romans that they looked upon the huge worms of the oak as a delicacy; they called them Cossi.” [↑]
[2] Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chap. vii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] Cossus ligniperda, the caterpillar of Xylentes cossus, the Great Goat-moth.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] Marcus Gabius Apicus, a famous Roman epicure who lived in the days of Augustus and Tiberius.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[5] Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), the famous French gastronomer, author of La Physiologie du goût.—Translator’s Note. [↑]