The Life of the Scorpion

by Jean-Henri Fabre

Now it may happen that the winged population is ripe and ready to increase and multiply before there is a breach in the wall, either because the gall is not yet sufficiently distended, or because it has dried up before its time and is henceforth unable to open.

What do the captives do in the event of such a disaster? Precisely what they would do in the open air. Their business cannot be postponed. When the imperious hour has struck they bring forth their young, one on top of another, in such a crush that it is hardly possible to move. For good, or ill, the great task is accomplished.

In this tangle of wings a-flutter in the midst of a waxy powder, this skirmish of [[285]]legs seeking equilibrium on an ever-shifting support, many young Lice are trampled underfoot and injured, many are unable to strip and shrivel into grains of dust. The majority, none the less, so tenacious of life are they, contrive to escape in the swarming confusion.

Let us, in October, open a globular or horn-shaped gall which has dried up without bursting. We shall find it crammed with black Lice, all winged and all dead; a mass of procreators who have died after parturition. Beneath the heap of corpses, more especially against the walls of the dwelling, the lens, in amazement, discovers thousands of young ones. This is a new people: it is the future struggling amidst the cadaveric relics of the past; it is the progeny of the winged Lice, the family born in prison. Here and there, in the midst of this bustling youth, are vermilion-coloured specks, more awkward in their gait but as lively as the rest. These are the grandmothers of the colony, still doing fairly well and capable, I should say, of surviving the winter.

I have some hope of keeping them alive, they look so healthy. Perhaps their part is [[286]]not yet fully played. I set them aside, together with their galls, opened with a penknife. If left to the inclemencies of the weather in their ruined cells, they would die when the cold sets in; but may they not hold out if sheltered under glass? I almost think they will.

And indeed at the outset things do not go so badly. My little red insects continue to look in the best of health. Then, at the first frosts, they become motionless, though still fresh in appearance as though they meant to return to life in the spring. Appearances deceive; the motionless Lice never move again. Long before April the whole herd is dead. My care has slightly delayed the dissolution, without preventing the inevitable end. None the less I marvel at the tenacious vitality of the little red grandmothers. They live half the year, their daughters but a few days.

Released henceforward from the necessity of feeding themselves, the black emigrants, the winged Lice, leave their terebinth and need not search for another, as is proved by my bough, which, placed in the path of the emerging insects, does not even serve them [[287]]as a temporary resting-place. They seem equally heedless in selecting a spot for the establishment of their family. Before my window the young Lice are dropped at random, at any point to which the hazards of flight have led: on the window-panes, the plaster of the embrasure, the wood of the cross-bars or the threads of cobweb indifferently. There is nothing to show that the unfamiliar spot is regarded as inopportune. There is no sign of uneasiness, no attempt to fly off elsewhither, to a more propitious place. Soberly and serenely, the winged legion brings forth its young and goes its way.

In the open country things must happen no otherwise. The moment they are free, the emigrants shake off their waxen dust and flit away in this direction or in that, according to the prevailing breeze. A flying-machine has sprouted from their shoulders, a remarkable contrast to the clumsy paunch of their early days. Quick, for the sunlight, for flight, for the joys of the ballet in mid-air! Off they go, hovering as long as their feeble wings allow; then, wearied of merry-making in the sun, they alight on the first object that [[288]]offers, without henceforth renewing their flight as do my prisoners behind the closed window. Here, no matter what the nature of the site, parturition takes place. There is nothing left for them but to die.

With these urgent methods, disdainful of deliberate selection, the wastage among the emigrants’ tiny offspring must be great. On the bare soil, on stones, on dry bark, the little Lice undoubtedly perish. They need food quickly; and they are scarcely capable of wandering in quest of it themselves. Their sucker, sometimes of inordinate length, projecting beyond the tip of the abdomen like a caudal rapier, demands that the wearer shall erect it, shall drive it into some yielding source of sap. The insect must drink or die. In the test-tubes wherein I collect the young Lice born before my eyes, my captives die in less than a fortnight from want of food.

I try various kinds of green stuff. I have no success with any of them. But here, if direct observation fails me, logic comes to my assistance. There is no doubt that the tiny Lice, at the present moment the sole representatives of their race, must live [[289]]through the winter and serve as the origin of the population which will occupy the terebinth in the spring. These puny creatures cannot remain exposed to the severities of the winter. A shelter is indispensable, a shelter that will afford them both food and lodging. Where will they find it? Only one shelter is possible: it must be underground, beneath some sort of grass that will retain a little green in winter.