And the little insect does fend for itself. I see the new-born Bugs, pressed close against one another, remaining for some days on the patch of empty egg-shells. Their flesh grows firmer and their colouring brighter. Mothers pass at no great distance: none of them pays any attention to the drowsy company.
When hunger comes, one of the little ones moves away from the group in search of a canteen; the others follow; they love to feel shoulder touching shoulder, like grazing Sheep. The first to move draws the whole band after him; they make their way in a flock to the tender spots where they insert their suckers and drink their fill; whereupon [[215]]all return to their native village, seeking a resting-place on the tops of the empty eggs. These expeditions in common are repeated within an increasing radius, till at last, having grown a little stronger, the community, becoming emancipated, makes off and disperses, no longer returning to the place of its birth. Henceforth each lives as he pleases.
What would happen if, when the flock is moving about, a mother were encountered, slow-stepping as the sober Bugs so often are? The little ones, I fancy, would confidently follow their chance-met leader as they follow those among themselves who are the first to make a start. We should then see something like the Hen at the head of her Chicks; accident would give all the appearance of maternal solicitude to a stranger quite indifferent to the mob of brats at her heels.
The worthy De Geer, it seems to me, must have been deceived by such meetings as these, in which maternal care played no part whatever. A little colouring, by way of involuntary adornment, completed the picture; and since then the domestic virtues of the Grey Bug have been lauded in all the books. [[216]]
[1] Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chaps. xviii. and xix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] For the Nut-weevil, cf. The Life of the Weevil, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. vi; also his Social Life in the Insect World, translated by Bernard Miall.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] Baron Karl de Geer (1720–1778), author of Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insectes.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757), author of Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des insectes and inventor of the Réaumur thermometer-scale.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[5] Or Burying-beetle. Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chaps. xi and xii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]