No, once more, I do not like those brutalities which, denying all that gives some dignity to our wretched life, stifle our horizon under an extinguisher of matter. Oh, don't come and forbid me to think, though it were but a dream, of a responsible human personality, of conscience, of duty, of the dignity of labour! Everything is linked together: if the animal is better off, as regards both itself and its race, for doing nothing and exploiting others, why should man, its descendant, show greater scruples? The principle that idleness is the mother of prosperity would carry us far indeed. I have said enough on my own account; I will call upon the animals themselves, more eloquent than I.
Are we so very sure that parasitic habits come from a love of inaction? Did the parasite become what he is because he found it excellent to do nothing? Is repose so great an advantage to him that he abjured his ancient customs in order to obtain it? Well, since I have been studying the Bee who endows her family with the property of others, I have not yet seen anything in her that points to slothfulness. On the contrary, the parasite leads a laborious life, harder than that of the worker. Watch her on a slope blistered by the sun. How busy she is, how anxious! How briskly she covers every inch of the radiant expanse, how indefatigable she is in her endless quests; in her visits, which are generally fruitless! Before coming upon a nest that suits her, she has dived a hundred times into cavities of no value, into galleries not yet victualled. And then, however kindly her host, the parasite is not always well received in the hostelry. No, it is not all roses in her trade. The expenditure of time and labour which she finds necessary in order to house an egg may easily equal or even exceed that of the worker in building her cell and filling it with honey. That industrious one has regular and continuous work, an excellent condition for success in her egg-laying; the other has a thankless and precarious task, at the mercy of a thousand accidents which endanger the great undertaking of installing the eggs. One has only to watch the prolonged hesitation of a Coelioxys seeking for the Leaf-cutters' cells to recognize that the usurpation of another's nest is not effected without serious difficulties. If she turned parasite in order to make the rearing of her offspring easier and more prosperous, certainly she was very ill-inspired. Instead of rest, hard work; instead of a flourishing family, a meagre progeny.
To generalities, which are necessarily vague, we will add some precise facts. A certain Stelis (Stelis nasuta, LATR.) is a parasite of the Mason-bee of the Walls. When the Chalicodoma has finished building her dome of cells upon her pebble, the parasite appears, makes a long inspection of the outside of the home and proposes, puny as she is, to introduce her eggs into this cement fortress. Everything is most carefully closed: a layer of rough plaster, at least two-fifths of an inch thick, entirely covers the central accumulation of cells, which are each of them sealed with a thick mortar plug. And it is the honey of these well-guarded chambers that has to be reached by piercing a wall almost as hard as rock.
The parasite pluckily sets to; the idler becomes a glutton for work. Atom by atom, she perforates the general enclosure and scoops out a shaft just sufficient for her passage; she reaches the lid of the cell and gnaws it until the coveted provisions appear in sight. It is a slow and painful process, in which the feeble Stelis wears herself out, for the mortar is much the same as Roman cement in hardness. I myself find a difficulty in breaking it with the point of my knife. What patient effort, then, the task requires from the parasite, with her tiny pincers!
I do not know exactly how long the Stelis takes to make her entrance-shaft, as I have never had the opportunity or rather the patience to follow the work from start to finish; but what I do know is that a Chalicodoma of the Walls, incomparably larger and stronger than the parasite, when demolishing before my eyes the lid of a cell sealed only the day before, was unable to complete her undertaking in one afternoon. I had to come to her assistance in order to discover, before the end of the day, the object of her housebreaking. When the Mason-bee's mortar has once set, its resistance is that of stone. Now the Stelis has not only to pierce the lid of the honey-store; she must also pierce the general casing of the nest. What a time it must take her to get through such a task, a gigantic one for her poor tools!
It is done at last, after infinite labour. The honey appears. The Stelis slips through and, on the surface of the provisions, side by side with the Chalicodoma's eggs, the number varying from time to time. The victuals will be the common property of all the new arrivals, whether the son of the house or strangers.
The violated dwelling cannot remain as it is, exposed to marauders from without; the parasite must herself wall up the breach which she has contrived. The quondam housebreaker becomes a builder. At the foot of the pebble, the Stelis collects a little of that red earth which characterizes our stony plateaus grown with lavender and thyme; she makes it into mortar by wetting it with saliva; and with the pellets thus prepared she fills up the entrance-shaft, displaying all the care and art of a regular master-mason. Only, the work clashes in colour with the Chalicodoma's. The Bee goes and gathers her cementing-powder on the adjoining high-road, the metal of which consists of broken flint-stones, and very seldom uses the red earth under the pebble supporting the nest. This choice is apparently dictated by the fact that the chemical properties of the former are more likely to produce a solid structure. The lime of the road, mixed with saliva, yields a harder cement than red clay would do. At any rate, the Chalicodoma's nest is more or less white because of the source of its materials. When a red speck, a few millimetres wide, appears on this pale background, it is a sure sign that a Stelis has been that way. Open the cell that lies under the red stain: we shall find the parasite's numerous family established there. The rusty spot is an infallible indication that the dwelling has been violated: at least, it is so in my neighbourhood, where the soil is as I have described.
We see the Stelis, therefore, at first a rabid miner, using her mandibles against the rock; next a kneader of clay and a plasterer restoring broken ceilings. Her trade does not seem one of the least arduous. Now what did she do before she took to parasitism? Judging from her appearance, the transformists tell us that she was an Anthidium, that is to say, she used to gather the soft cotton-wool from the dry stalks of the lanate plants and fashion it into wallets, in which to heap up the pollen-dust which she gleaned from the flowers by means of a brush carried on her abdomen. Or else, springing from a genus akin to the cotton-workers, she used to build resin partitions in the spiral stairway of a dead Snail. Such was the trade driven by her ancestors.
Really! So, to avoid slow and painful work, to achieve an easy life, to give herself the leisure favourable to the settlement of her family, the erstwhile cotton-presser or collector of resin-drops took to gnawing hardened cement! She who once sipped the nectar of flowers made up her mind to chew concrete! Why, the poor wretch toils at her filing like a galley-slave! She spends more time in ripping up a cell than it would take her to make a cotton wallet and fill it with food. If she really meant to progress, to do better in her own interest and that of her family, by abandoning the delicate occupations of the old days, we must confess that she has made a strange mistake. The mistake would be no greater if fingers accustomed to fancy-weaving were to lay aside velvet and silk and proceed to handle the quarryman's blocks or to break stones on the roadside.
No, the animal does not commit the folly of voluntarily embittering its lot; it does not, in obedience to the promptings of idleness, give up one condition to embrace another and a more irksome; should it blunder for once, it will not inspire its posterity with a wish to persevere in a costly delusion. No, the Stelis never abandoned the delicate art of cotton-weaving to break down walls and to grind cement, a class of work far too unattractive to efface the memory of the joys of harvesting amid the flowers. Indolence has not evolved her from an Anthidium. She has always been what she is to-day: a patient artificer in her own line, a steady worker at the task that has fallen to her share.