The Life and Love of the Insect

by Jean-Henri Fabre

The pocket-trowel prudently lays things bare and we see the occupants appear: the male first and, a little lower, the female. When the couple are removed, a dark, circular patch shows: this is the end of the column of victuals. Careful now and let us dig gently! What we have to do is to cut away the central clod at the bottom of the vat, to isolate it from the surrounding earth and then, slipping the trowel underneath and using it as a lever, to extract the block all in a lump. There! That’s done it! We possess the couple and their nest. A morning of arduous digging has procured us those treasures: Paul’s steaming back could tell us at the price of what efforts.

This depth of five feet is not and could not be constant; numbers of causes induce it to vary, such as the degree of freshness and consistency of the soil traversed, the insect’s passion for work and the time available, according to the more or less remote date of the laying. I have seen burrows go a little lower; I have seen others reach barely three feet. In any case, Minotaurus, to settle his family, requires a lodging of exaggerated depth, such as is dug by no other burrowing insect of my acquaintance. Presently we shall have to ask ourselves what are the [[134]]imperious needs that oblige the collector of sheep-droppings to reside so low down in the earth.

Before leaving the spot, let us note a fact the evidence of which will be of value later. The female was right at the bottom of the burrow; above her, at some distance, was the male: both were struck motionless with fright in the midst of an occupation the nature whereof we are not yet able to specify. This detail, observed repeatedly in the different burrows excavated, seems to show that each of the two fellow-workers has a fixed place.

The mother, more skilled in nursery matters, occupies the lower floor. She alone digs, versed as she is in the properties of the perpendicular, which economizes work while giving the greatest depth. She is the engineer, always in touch with the working-face of the gallery. The other is her journeyman-mason. He is stationed at the back, ready to load the rubbish on his horny hod. Later, the excavatrix becomes a baker: she kneads the cakes for the children into cylinders; the father is then her baker’s boy. He fetches her from outside the wherewithal for making flour. As in every well-regulated household, the mother is minister of the interior, the father minister of the exterior. This would explain their invariable position in the tubular home. The future will tell us if these conjectures represent the reality as it is.

For the moment, let us make ourselves at home and examine at leisure the central clod so laboriously acquired. It contains preserved foodstuffs in the shape of a sausage nearly as long and thick as one’s finger. This is composed of a dark, compact matter, arranged in layers, which we recognize as the sheep-pellets reduced to morsels. Sometimes, the dough is fine and almost homogeneous from one end of the cylinder to the other; more often, the [[135]]piece is a sort of hardbake, in which large fragments are held together by a cement of amalgam. The baker apparently varies the more or less finished confection of her pastry according to the time at her disposal.

The thing is closely moulded in the terminal pocket of the burrow, where the walls are smoother and more carefully fashioned than in the rest of the pit. The point of the knife easily strips it of the surrounding earth, which peels like a rind or bark. In this way, I obtain the food-cylinder free of any earthy blemish.

Having done this, let us look into the matter of the egg; for the pastry has certainly been manipulated in view of a grub. Guided by what I learnt some time ago from the Geotrupes, who lodge the egg at the lower end of their pudding, in a special recess contrived in the very heart of the provisions, I expect to find Minotaurus’ egg right at the bottom of the sausage. I am ill-informed. The egg sought for is not at the expected end, nor at the other end, nor at any point whatever of the victuals.

A search outside the provisions shows it me at last. It is below the food, in the sand itself, deprived of all the finikin cares dear to mothers. There is here not a smooth-walled cell, such as the delicate epidermis of the new-born grub would seem to call for, but a rough cavity, the result of a mere landslip rather than of maternal industry. The worm is to be hatched in this rude berth, at some distance from its provisions. To reach the food, it will have to demolish and pass through a ceiling of sand some millimetres thick.

With insects held captive in an apparatus of my invention, I have succeeded in tracing the construction of that sausage. The father goes out and selects a pellet whose length is greater than the diameter of the pit. He [[136]]conveys it to the mouth, either backwards, by dragging it with his forefeet, or straight ahead, by rolling it along with little strokes of his shield. He reaches the edge of the hole. Will he hurl the lump down the precipice with one last push? Not at all: he has plans that are incompatible with a violent fall.

He enters, embracing the pellet with his legs and taking care to introduce it by one end. On reaching a certain distance from the bottom, he has only to slant the piece slightly to make it find a support at its two ends against the walls of the channel: this because of the greater length of its main axis. He thus obtains a sort of temporary flooring suited to receive the burden of two or three pellets. The whole forms the workshop in which the father means to do his task without disturbing the mother, who is fully engaged below. It is the mill whence will be lowered the semolina for making the cakes.