The smallest insect village has become familiar to me: I know each fruit-branch where the Praying Mantis perches; each bush where the pale Italian Cricket strums amid the calmness of the summer nights; each wad-clad blade of grass scraped by the Anthidium, that maker of cotton bags; each cluster of lilac worked by the Megachile, the leaf-cutter.
If cruising among the nooks and corners of the garden do not suffice, a longer voyage shows ample profit. I double the cape of the neighbouring hedges and, at a few hundred yards, enter into relations with the Sacred Beetle, the Capricorn, the Geotrupe, the Copris, the Dectus, the Cricket, the Green Grasshopper, in short, with a host of tribes the unfolding of whose story would exhaust a human life. Certainly, I have plenty, I have too much to do with my near neighbours, without going and wandering in distant regions.
And then, besides, roaming the world, scattering one’s attention over a host of subjects, is not observing. The travelling entomologist can stick numerous species, the joy of the collector and the nomenclator, into his boxes; but to gather circumstantial documents is a very different matter. A Wandering Jew of science, he has no time to stop. Where a prolonged stay would be necessary to study this or that fact, he is hurried by the next stage. We must not expect the impossible of him in these conditions. Let him pin his specimens to cork tablets, let him steep them in tafia jars and leave to the sedentary the patient observations that require time. [[101]]
This explains the extreme penury of history outside the dry descriptions of the nomenclator. Overwhelming us with its numbers, the exotic insect nearly always preserves the secret of its manners. Nevertheless, it were well to compare what happens under our eyes with that which happens elsewhere; it were excellent to see how, in the same corporation of workers, the fundamental instinct varies with climatic conditions.
Then my travelling regrets return, vainer to-day than ever, unless one could find a seat on the carpet of which we read in the Arabian Nights, the famous carpet whereon one had but to sit to be carried whithersoever he pleased. O marvellous conveyance, far preferable to Xavier de Maistre’s post-chaise! If only I could find a little corner on it, with a return-ticket!
I do find it. I owe this unexpected good fortune to a Christian Brother, to Brother Judulian, of the Lasalle College at Buenos Ayres. His modesty would be offended by the praises which his debtor owes him. Let us simply say that, acting on my instructions, his eyes take the place of mine. He seeks, finds, observes, sends me his notes and his discoveries. I observe, seek and find with him, by correspondence.
It is done: thanks to this first-rate collaborator, I have my seat on the magic carpet. Behold me in the pampas of the Argentine Republic, eager to draw a parallel between the industry of the Dung-beetles of Sérignan[2] and that of their rivals in the western hemisphere.
A glorious beginning! An accidental find procures me, to start with, Phanæus Milo, a magnificent insect, blue-black all over. The corselet of the male juts forward, over the head, in a short, broad, flattened [[102]]horn, ending in a trident. The female replaces this ornament with simple folds. Both carry, in front of their shield, two spikes which form a trusty digging-implement and also a scalpel for dissecting. The insect’s squat, sturdy, four-cornered build resembles that of Onitis Olivieri, one of the rarities of the neighbourhood of Montpellier.
If similarity of shape implied parity of work, we ought unhesitatingly to attribute to Phanæus Milo short, thick puddings like those made by Olivier’s Onitis. Alas, structure is a bad guide where the instinct is concerned! The square-chined, short-legged Dung-worker excels in the art of manufacturing gourds. The Sacred Beetle himself supplies none that are more perfect nor, above all, more capacious.
