It takes the moderate temperature of September to wake them from their torpor. At this season they reappear on the surface; they settle down to my bits of melon-rind, or slake their thirst at a small bunch of grapes, but soberly, taking only short draughts. The hunger-fits of early days and the interminable filling of the belly have gone for ever.
Now comes the cold weather. Again my captives disappear underground. Here they pass the winter, protected only by a layer of [[11]]sand a few inches in depth. Under this slight covering, in their wooden shelter, exposed to all the winds of heaven, they are not endangered by the severe frosts. I thought them susceptible to cold, but I find that they bear the hardships of the winter remarkably well. They have retained the robust constitution of the larvæ, which I used to find, to my astonishment, lying stiff and stark in a block of frozen snow, yet returning to life when carefully thawed.
March is not over before signs of life reappear. My buried Beetles emerge, climb up the wire trellis, wandering about if the sun is kind, going back into the sand if the air grows colder. What am I to give them? There is no fruit. I serve them some honey in a paper dish. They go to it without any marked assiduity. Let us find something more to their taste. I offer them some dates. The exotic fruit, a delicious pulp in a thin skin, suits them very well, despite its novelty: they could set no greater store by pears or figs. The dates bring us to the end of April, the time of the first cherries.
We have now returned to the regulation diet, the fruits of the country. A very moderate consumption takes place: the hour is [[12]]past for feats of gastric prowess. Very soon my boarders grow indifferent to food. I surprise them in nuptial embraces, a sign that egg-laying is near at hand. In anticipation of events, I have placed in the cage, level with the soil, a pot full of dead, half-rotten leaves. About the summer solstice I see them enter it, one by one, remaining in it for some little time. Then, having finished their business, they return to the surface. For a week or two longer, they wander about, finally hiding themselves in the sand, at no great depth, and dying.
Their successors are in the pot of rotten leaves. Before the end of June I find, in the tepid mass, plenty of recent eggs and very young larvæ. I now have the explanation of a peculiarity which caused me some confusion at the time of my earlier studies. When rummaging through the big heap of leaf-mould which, in a shady corner of the garden, provides me yearly with a rich colony of Cetoniæ, I used to find, under my trowel, in July and August, intact cocoons which would soon split open under the thrust of the insect inside; I also found the adult Cetonia, who had emerged from her strong-box that very day, and quite close to [[13]]these I would find very young larvæ, which had only just made their appearance. I had before my eyes the crazy paradox of children born before their parents.
The breeding-cage has cleared up these obscure points completely. It has taught me that the Cetonia, in the adult form, lives through a whole year and the summer of the following year. The cocoon is broken during the summer heats of July and August. The regular thing would be, provided the season were propitious, to think at once of the family, after indulging in a few nuptial frolics. This is the general rule among other insects. For them the present form is an efflorescence of brief duration, which the needs of the future employ as quickly as may.
The Cetonia does not display this haste. She was a gross eater in her days of pot-bellied grubhood; she remains a gross eater beneath the splendour of her adult cuirass. She spends her life, so long as the heat is not too overwhelming, in the jam-factory of the orchard: apricots, pears, peaches, figs and plums. Lingering over her meal, she forgets all else and defers her egg-laying to the following year. [[14]]
After the torpor of hibernation in some place of shelter, she reappears with the first days of spring. But there is no fruit now; and last year’s glutton, who, for that matter, has become a frugal eater, whether by necessity or by temperament, has no other resource than the niggardly drinking-bar of the flowers. When June has come, she sows her eggs in a heap of vegetable mould, beside the chrysalids whence the adult insect will emerge a little later. This being so, unless we are in the secret, we behold the mad spectacle of the egg preceding the mother that lays it.
Among the Cetoniæ that make their appearance in the course of the same year we must therefore distinguish two generations. Those of the spring, the inhabitants of the roses, have lived through the winter. They must lay their eggs in June and then die. Those of the autumn, passionate fruit-lovers, have recently left their nymphal dwellings. They will hibernate and will lay their eggs about the middle of the following summer.
We have come to the longest days of the year; this is the moment. In the shadow of the pines, against the wall of the enclosure, stands a heap some cubic yards in volume, [[15]]formed of all the rubbish of the garden and particularly of dead leaves collected at the time of their fall. This is the compost-factory which supplies the needs of my potted plants. Now this bank of corruption, warmed by the slow decomposition which is working in it, is a paradise for the Cetoniæ in their larval state. The fat grub swarms there, finding abundant provender in the shape of fermented vegetable matter and an agreeable warmth, even in the heart of the winter.