The Life of the Scorpion

by Jean-Henri Fabre

Although the rest of the room is thoroughly well lit in all directions, the flight of the departing Lice is always directed towards the window facing the sun. There are thousands upon thousands of them; and not one takes another path, veering ever so little to the right or left. You feel a certain surprise at the invariable route pursued by these atoms which, when released, in a space well lit on every side, all, from the first to the last, rush towards the delights of a ray of sunshine. A handful of shot dropped from a height does not return to earth with greater certainty. The leaden pellets are attracted by gravity, to which all dead matter is subject, while the specks of living matter obey the light.

My window-panes check them. In the absence of this obstacle, where would they go? Certainly not to the terebinth-trees near by. I have definite proof of this here, before my eyes. As a resting-place I have [[275]]set up a bough of the cherished bush. None of the newly emerged insects takes notice of it; none of them pauses there. If on the way to the window one of them collides with the green thicket and falls upon a leaf, it quickly picks itself up again and makes off in a hurry to join the others in the sunlit window. Freed henceforth from the demands of the stomach, they are no longer interested in the terebinth; they all avoid it.

The exodus lasts a couple of days. When the last loiterers have gone, let us open the gall entirely. The population has been rigorously sorted. At first it was a mixture of wingless red and winged black Lice. The latter have all left their dwelling; the others are still there. Those faithful to their home are small as before, squat, wrinkled and vermilion. Some of them bear the dorsal wallet, the maternal pouch. In them I recognize the legion of the mothers, now left alone in the house. For some time yet they linger on languidly, the gall being open to wind and weather; those less exhausted continue to produce offspring; mere abortions without a future; the time is too short and [[276]]the house is falling into decay. At length they perish, with their belated young. The gall is a deserted ruin.

Let us return to the emigrants, checked in their flight by the window-panes. In shape, colour and size they are all alike; the swarm is a monotonous repetition of the same individual; there is not one detail, however minute, to denote any difference. Yet we should expect to find males and females here. The Plant-louse, until this moment in the humble larval stage, has just acquired the attributes of the perfect insect. The heavy, pot-bellied Louse has become a slender midge, glorified by four iridescent wings. In any other insect this would be an infallible token of the nuptial frolics.

Well, in the children of the galls, these wings, these adornments of maturity, belie their promises. There is no wedding and there can be none. Not a Louse in all the swarm is endowed with sex, and yet each has her brood, which she brings into the world by direct reproduction as her predecessors did.

With a slip of straw moistened with saliva I pick up a winged Louse at random. I [[277]]press its abdomen with a pin. My brutal obstetrics produces an immediate effect: the insect’s outraged flanks eject a string of five or six fœtuses; and the process is repeated without variation no matter what specimen we deliver.

Let us, for that matter, consult the natural procedure. A couple of hours elapse and my prisoners behind the window are in the throes of childbirth on the glass of the panes, the plaster of the embrasure, the wood of the cross-bars. Matters become so urgent that any place suits them.

The Louse in the act of parturition raises her two large wings, the upper pair, and gently moves the two small ones, the lower pair. The tip of the abdomen bends downwards, touches the supporting surface and the thing is done: a fœtus is implanted perpendicularly to the support, with its head uppermost. A little farther away, a second is deposited as promptly, followed by another and yet others. In one brief sitting the distribution is over. The average number of the litter is six.

The infant, we were saying, is fixed in an upright position, at right angles to the supporting [[278]]surface. This nicely-balanced attitude is necessary. The new-born Louse is, in fact, wrapped in a thin tunic of which it must first of all divest itself. In a minute or two this swaddling band splits and is thrust backwards. The legs release themselves, kicking freely in all directions, which they could not do were the tiny creature lying on the ground. By this means joints that are working for the first time gain strength and suppleness. After a few moments of these gymnastic exercises, the tiny insect drops on its feet and wanders forth into the wide world.

While it is struggling in an upright position, passers-by sometimes knock it over, without consideration for its tender age. Then the danger is great. Thrown from its sticky pedestal, the little insect often perishes, incapable of casting off its slough. There are a few threads of cobweb in the corner of the window. Some winged Lice have been caught in them. The garlands of hanging Lice give birth to their offspring all the same, but the young ones, falling on the sill of the embrasure, cannot manage to strip, because they are not in a standing position. [[279]]