Some plants of the same alliaceous group are even more remarkable. They send up a normal stem, ending in what appears to be a spherical head of blossom. Properly this head should blossom into an umbel of flowers. [[265]]But this is not what happens. There are no flowers whatever; they are replaced by bulbils, a diminutive form of clove. Sexuality has disappeared: instead of seeds, announced by the preparations for flowering, the plant produces plantlets, concentrated into fleshy buds. On the other hand, the underground part has a lavish supply of cloves. Though the garlic is sexless, its future is assured; it will have no lack of successors.
To a certain extent, the genesis of the Plant-louse will bear comparison with that of the garlic. The strange insect also puts forth bulbils: that is to say, it is spared all ovarian delay and procreates live offspring without assistance.
The male is nobler than the female, says Lhomond.[3] This is a pedantic formula, generally refuted by natural history. In the animal kingdom, work, industry and ability, those true titles of nobility, are the attributes of the mother. No matter: let us accept Lhomond’s dictum; and, since we are allowed the choice, let us speak of the Plant-louse [[266]]as of the masculine gender, which is the nobler from the grammarian’s point of view. For that matter, nothing shall prevent us speaking of it as feminine, if our speech thereby gains in lucidity.
Isolated in his cell, the original Plant-louse, we were saying, grows a new skin and puts on flesh. He brings sons into the world, all of whose beaks play their part in enlarging the gall, while all their bellies are engaged in increasing the population. We are reminded of the avalanche which, at first a mere lump, becomes an enormous mass of snow.
When summer is over, in September, let us open a gall, no matter which, spread out the contents on a sheet of paper, take up a magnifying-glass, and see what there is to see. Folds, spindles, auricles, globes and horns afford us almost the same spectacle, allowing for numbers, which are here restricted and there enormous. The Lice are a magnificent orange yellow. The largest have stumps on their shoulders, the rudiments of wings to be.
All are clad in an exquisite cloak, whiter than snow, which projects some distance behind [[267]]them, like a train. This finery is a waxy fleece exuded by the skin. It will not bear the touch of a camel-hair brush; a breath destroys it; but the Louse despoiled of it will soon sweat out another. In the crowded gall, where so many individuals are huddled together, jostling one another, the waxen garment is often torn to shreds and pulverized. Hence a collection of floury rags, forming the downiest of beds, in which the tribe lie about.
Mixed higgledy-piggledy with the orange Lice we see others, much less numerous but easily detected. They are smaller, and are sometimes a rusty-red, sometimes a fairly bright vermilion. Always stocky and wrinkled, they are, according to the age and the pattern of the gall, either round as a Tortoise or shaped like a triangle with rounded corners. On their backs, they carry six to eight rows of white tufts, a waxy exudation, like the white smocks of the others. An attentive examination with the magnifying-glass is needed to detect this detail of their costume. They never sport the wing-stumps which the others acquire sooner or later.
One last characteristic, more important [[268]]than all the rest, places these pigmies in a category completely by themselves. From time to time I see on their backs a monstrous protuberance which mounts as high as the neck and doubles the creature’s bulk. Now this hump, which is here to-day and gone to-morrow, only to reappear later, is the conjurer’s wallet containing the future. When I manage to open one, without mishap, with the point of a needle, I extract from it a slimy speck displaying two black eye-spots, with traces of segmentation. My Cæsarean operation has laid bare an embryo.
I reserved the right to pass, grammatically, from the masculine to the feminine gender. And this is the time to do so. I isolate a few of the hunch-backed squaws in a small glass tube, with a scrap of gall. They give me young ones; and the humps disappear. The observation, unfortunately, cannot be continued: the scrap of gall withers and my specimens die. None the less it is now established that these pigmy Lice are mothers and that they carry knapsacks on their backs as incubating pockets.
The little red tortoises found in all the galls in the late summer are therefore as [[269]]prolific as the famous old woman who lived in a shoe: they alone bring forth young. All around them swarm their descendants, fat orange babies, who deck themselves in snow-white furbelows, suck the sap, distend their stomachs and prepare to grow wings in view of an approaching migration.