The Life and Love of the Insect

by Jean-Henri Fabre

The plastic ball, girt with a circle at one end, has been hollowed out in a groove, the starting-point of the neck; it has, moreover, been drawn out a little into an obtuse projection. In the centre of this projection, a pressure has been effected, which, causing the matter to fall back over the edges, has produced the crater, with its shapeless lips. Circular enlacement and pressure have sufficed for this first part of the work.

Fig. 2.—The Sacred Beetle’s pill dug out cupwise to receive the egg.

Towards evening, I pay a fresh sudden visit, amid complete silence. The insect has recovered from its excitement of the morning and gone down again to its workshop. Flooded with light and baffled by the strange events to which my artifices give rise, it at once makes off and takes refuge in the upper storey. The poor mother, persecuted by my illuminations, runs up into the thick of the darkness, but regretfully, with hesitating strides.

The work has progressed. The crater has become deeper; the thick lips have disappeared, are thinner, closer together, drawn out into the neck of a pear. The object, however, has not changed its place. Its position, its aspect are exactly as I noted them before. The [[40]]side that lay on the ground is still at the bottom, at the same point; the side that faced upwards is still at the top; the crater that lay on my right has been replaced by the neck, still on my right. Whence comes a conclusion completely confirming my previous statements: no rolling; mere pressure, which kneads and moulds.

The next day, a third visit. The pear is finished. Its neck, yesterday a yawning sack, is now closed. The egg, therefore, is laid; the work has been carried through and demands only the finishing touches of general polishing, touches upon which the mother, so intent on geometrical perfection, was doubtless engaged at the time when I disturbed her.

The most delicate part of the affair escapes my observation. I see quite clearly, in the main, how the hatching-chamber of the egg is obtained: the thick pad surrounding the original crater is thinned and flattened out under the pressure of the feet and lengthened into a sack the mouth of which gradually narrows. Up to this point, the work provides its own explanation. But we have no explanation of the exquisite perfection of the cell wherein the egg is to hatch, when we think of the insect’s rigid tools, the wide, toothed armlets whose jerky awkwardness suggests the spasmodic movements of an automaton.

With this clumsy equipment, excellently adapted to coarse work though it be, how does the Scarab obtain the natal dwelling, the oval nest so daintily polished and glazed within? Does the foot, a regular saw, fitted with enormous teeth, begin to rival the painter’s brush in delicacy from the moment when it is inserted through the narrow orifice of the sack? Why not? I have said elsewhere and this is the occasion to repeat it: [[41]]the tool does not make the workman. The insect exerts its gifts as a specialist with any kind of tool wherewith it is supplied. It can saw with a plane or plane with a saw, like the model workman of whom Franklin tells us. The same strong-toothed rake with which the Sacred Beetle rips the earth is used by her as a trowel and brush wherewith to glaze the stucco of the chamber in which the grub will be born.

In conclusion, one more detail concerning this hatching-chamber. At the extreme end of the neck of the pear, one point is always pretty clearly distinguished: it bristles with stringy fibres, while the rest of the neck is carefully polished. This is the plug with which the mother has closed the narrow opening after placing the egg; and this plug, as its hairy structure shows, has not been subjected to the pressure which, throughout the rest of the work, crams the smallest projecting scrap into the mass and causes it to disappear.

Why this arrangement at the extreme pole, a very curious exception, when every elsewhere the pear has received the powerful blows of the insect’s foot? The hind-end of the egg rests against this plug, which, were it pressed down and driven in, would transmit the pressure to the germ and imperil its safety. The mother, aware of the risk, blocks up the hole without ramming the stopper: the air in the hatching-chamber is thus more easily renewed; and the egg escapes the dangerous concussion of the compressing paddle. [[42]]