How did it find its way into the strong-box, armoured on every side with impenetrable horn? We may be sure that it was introduced while yet a germ through the button-hole aperture whence oozes the syrup. A mother must have chanced this way, who, [[321]]discovering the orifice, took a sip, and then, turning herself about, plunged her oviduct into the opening. Here, without use of violence, the enemy entered the citadel.
The enemy belongs to the tribe of Chalcidians, those zealous ransackers of entrails. An extremely rapid worker, she acquires her adult form and emerges from the shell in the early part of June. In comparison with the offspring of the Kermes she is a giant, being no less than a twelfth part of an inch in length. The narrow dormer-window by which the germ was introduced being no longer able to give it passage, the recluse, with his patient, steely tooth, opens a door of emergence for himself through the wall of the shell, so that the latter is finally pierced with as many round openings as there were fellow-feasters. When they have departed the coffer is empty; there is no trace left of the plentiful omelette.
This ravager of ovaries is of a deep bluish-black colour; dark, concave wings, closely pressed down after the fashion of the elytral apron, giving it a vague look of the Beetle family. The head is flattened, projecting beyond the corselet on either side; [[322]]the powerful mandibles are such as are needed to perforate the tough, leathery wall. The long antennæ, incessantly vibrating, bent at an angle, slightly dilated at the tip, are ornamented with a white ring. Dumpy and thickset, the tiny creature runs swiftly along, polishing its wings and brushing its antennæ; it is full of delight at having emptied the belly of a Kermes. Has it a name in our scientific catalogue? I do not know, and am not especially anxious to know. A label in barbarous Latin would afford the reader no more information than would a few lines of history.
June is nearly over. For some time the sugary oozing has ceased; the Ants no longer come to their restaurant, a sign of profound alteration within. The outer aspect, however, has undergone no modification. We still have the small, black, glossy sphere, smooth and firmly fixed on its base, which is whitened with wax. With the point of a pen-knife let us break open the ebony casket, at the upper pole, at a point opposite the point of adhesion. Its wall is quite as hard and brittle as the wing-cover of a Scarabæus. Within, not a trace remains of the [[323]]juicy pulp: the contents consist of a dry meal, a mixture of red and white specks.
Let us collect this powder in a small glass tube; let us reinforce our sight by a magnifying-glass, and examine it. The appearance of the stuff is amazing. This dust is moving, these ashes are alive, and with life so numerous that the very idea of computation becomes alarming. It is the legion of the uncountable. In safeguarding a Louse fecundity knows no limits.
By their white hue we may distinguish those eggs that are not yet ripe for hatching. Now, at the end of June, these are the less numerous. The others, coloured by the tiny creatures within them, are bright red or orange yellow. Preponderant over all is the collection of white specks, the tattered husks of the eggs which have been hatched.
Now these discarded husks are arranged in radiating clusters, just as were the germs in the glomerulus of the ovary. This detail informs us that there was no period of egg-laying; that is, not only were the eggs not conveyed to a point external to the mother’s body, but they were not even conveyed to any particular point of the enclosure [[324]]bounded by the carapace, by a common protecting roof. They were hatched on the very site of their formation. The bunches of eggs, their arrangement and position remaining unchanged, have become clusters of offspring.
The Psyche has already provided an example of that singular genesis which exempts the mother from the process of egg-laying, the family being hatched out on the spot occupied by the eggs. Let us recall the shapeless moth, whose appearance is even more miserable than that of the caterpillar. She withdraws herself into the husk of her chrysalid, and there she wastes away, swollen with eggs which will be hatched on the spot. The mother Psyche becomes a lifeless bag whence emerges her living family. This is likewise the case of the Kermes.
I witness the process of birth. The new-born insects are struggling to escape from their envelopes. Many of them succeed in doing so by leaving the delicate husk of the egg where it is fastened, still included in the radiating pattern. Others, no less numerous, drag their sheath from its place and for a long time trail it after them, hanging [[325]]to their hinder parts. It adheres so firmly that the tiny creature is able to cross the threshold of the shell with its moulted husk, completing its liberation in the open air. Thus it is that we find on the natal twig, at some distance from the maternal pill, numbers of white discarded husks, which, if one had not closely followed the progress of events, would give one reason to believe that the eggs were hatched outside the Kermes. These filmy envelopes are deceptive; for the whole family was hatched inside the coffer.
Having collected the living dust with which it is now filled, let us glance at the ebony box itself. The cavity is divided into two storeys by a transverse partition, a fine-spun relic of the dessicated animal. The individual substance of the Kermes was so little that it is now represented by a delicate film. The rest of the mass enclosed by the shell appertains to the ovaries. The upper storey is therefore occupied by the newly born no less than the lower.