I said “tearing,” for want of a better word. But it is not quite that. The term implies violence; and violence there cannot be any, because of the unsteady balance. Should the Locust, upset by his exertions, come to the ground, it would be all up with him. He would shrivel where he lies; or, at any rate, his organs of flight, being unable to expand, would remain pitiful shreds. The Locust does not tear himself loose; he [[413]]flows softly from his scabbard. It is as though he were forced out by a gentle spring.
To return to the wings and wing-cases, which have made no apparent progress since leaving the sheaths. They are still stumps, with fine longitudinal seams, not much more than bits of rope. Their expansion, which will take more than three hours, is reserved for the end, when the insect is completely stripped and in its normal position.
We have seen the Locust turn head uppermost. This upright position is enough to restore the natural arrangement of the wing-cases and wings. Being extremely flexible and bent by their own weight, they were hanging down with their loose end pointing towards the head of the inverted insect. Now, still by virtue of their own weight, they are straightened and put the right way up. They are no longer curved like the petals of a flower, they are no longer in an inverted position; but they still look miserably insignificant.
In its perfect state, the wing is fan-shaped. A radiating cluster of strong nervures runs through it lengthwise and forms the framework of the fan, which is readily furled or [[414]]unfurled. The intervening spaces are crossed by innumerable tiny bars which make of the whole a network of rectangular meshes. The wing-case, which is coarser and much less expanded, repeats this structure in squares.
In neither case does any of the mesh show during the rope’s-end stage. All that we see is a few wrinkles, a few winding furrows, which tell us that the stumps are bundles of cunningly folded material reduced to their smallest volume.
The expansion begins near the shoulder. Where at first nothing definite was to be distinguished, we soon see a diaphanous area subdivided into meshes of exquisite precision. Little by little, with a slowness that defies observation even through the magnifying-glass, this area increases in extent at the expense of the shapeless terminal roll. My eyes linger in vain on the confines of the two portions, the roll developing and the gauze already developed: I see nothing, see no more than I should see in a sheet of water. But wait a moment; and the tissue of squares stands out with perfect clearness.
If we judged only by this first examination, we should really think that an organizable [[415]]fluid is abruptly congealing into a network of nervures; we should imagine that we were in the presence of a crystallization similar, in its suddenness, to that of a saline solution on the slide of a microscope. Well, no: things cannot be actually happening like that. Life does not perform its tasks so hastily.
I detach a half-developed wing and turn the powerful eye of the microscope upon it. This time I am satisfied. On the confines where the network seemed to be gradually woven, that network was really in existence. I can plainly see the longitudinal nervures, already thick and strong; and I can also see, pale, it is true, and without relief, the cross-bars. I find them all in the terminal roll, of which I succeed in unfolding a few strips.
It is obvious. The wing is not at this moment a fabric on the loom, through which the procreative energies are driving their shuttle; it is a fabric already completed. All that it lacks to be perfect is expansion and stiffness, even as our linen needs only starching and ironing.
The flattening out is finished in three hours or more. The wings and wing-cases stand up on the Locust’s back like a huge set of [[416]]sails, sometimes colourless, sometimes pale-green, as are the Cicada’s wings at the beginning. We are amazed at their size when we think of the paltry bundles that represented them at first. How did so much stuff manage to find room there!