Ah, I confess that it needed a robust faith to cherish the audacious hope of discovering anything further when the masters had seen nothing! I read and reread Réaumur’s essay on the Solitary Wasp. [[30]]The Insect’s Herodotus gives us a host of particulars, but says nothing, absolutely nothing, about the hanging egg. I consult Léon Dufour,[2] who treats subjects of this kind with his usual raciness: he has seen the egg; he describes it; but of the suspension-thread not a word. I consult Lepeletier,[3] Audouin,[4] Blanchard:[5] they are absolutely silent on the means of protection which I expect to find. Is it possible that a detail of such great importance can have escaped all these observers? Am I the dupe of my imagination? Is the protective system, though proved to my mind by close logical reasoning, merely one of my [[31]]dreams? Either the Eumenes have lied to me or my hopes are justified. As a disciple rebelling against his masters, a disciple strong in arguments which I believed invincible, I set to work investigating, convinced that I should succeed. And I did succeed; I found what I was looking for; I found something better still. Let me set things down in detail.
There are various Odyneri established in my neighbourhood. I know one who takes possession of the abandoned nests of Eumenes Amadei. This nest, a structure of unusual solidity, is not a ruin when its owner moves away; it loses only its neck. The cupola, preserved untouched, is a fortified retreat of too convenient a nature to remain vacant. Some Spider adopts the cavern, after lining it with silk; Osmiæ[6] take refuge in it in rainy weather, or else make it their dormitory, wherein to spend the night; an Odynerus divides it, by means of clay partitions, into three or four chambers, which become the cradles of as many larvæ. A second species uses the deserted nests of the Pelopæus;[7] a third, removing the pith from [[32]]a dry bramble-stem, obtains, for the use of her family, a long sheath, which she subdivides into stories; a fourth bores a gallery in the dead wood of some fig-tree; a fifth digs herself a shaft in the soil of a footpath and surmounts it with a cylindrical, vertical kerb. All these industries are worth studying, but I should have preferred to discover that which Réaumur and Dufour have rendered famous.
On a steep bank of red clay, I at length recognize, in no great profusion, the signs of a village of Odyneri. Here are the characteristic chimneys mentioned by the two historians, that is to say, the curved tubes, with their guilloche-work, that hang at the entrance to the dwelling. The bank is exposed to the heat of the noonday sun. A little tumbledown wall surmounts it; behind is a dense screen of pines. The whole forms a warm refuge, such as the Wasp requires for setting up house. Moreover, we are now in the second fortnight of the month of May, which is just the working-season, according to the masters. The outside architecture, the site and the period all agree with what Réaumur and Léon Dufour have told us. Have I really chanced upon one or other of their Odyneri? This remains [[33]]to be seen and without delay. Not one of the ingenious constructors of guilloche porticoes shows herself, not one arrives; I must wait. I take up my position close by, to watch the homing insects.
Ah, how long the hours seem, spent motionless, under a burning sun, at the foot of a declivity which sends the heat of an oven beating down upon you! Bull, my inseparable companion, has retired some distance into the shade, under a clump of evergreen oaks. He has found a layer of sand whose depths still retain some traces of the last shower. He digs himself a bed; and in the cool furrow the sybarite stretches himself flat upon his belly. Lolling his tongue and thrashing the boughs with his tail, he keeps his soft, deep gaze fixed upon me:
“What are you doing over there, you booby, baking in the heat? Come here, under the foliage; see how comfortable I am!”
That is what I seem to read in my companion’s eyes.
“Oh, my Dog, my friend,” I should answer, if you could only understand, “man is tormented by a desire for knowledge, whereas your torments are confined to a desire [[34]]for bones and, from time to time, a desire for your sweetheart! This, notwithstanding our devoted friendship, creates a certain difference between us, even though people nowadays say that we are more or less related, almost cousins. I feel the need to know things and am content to bake in the heat; you feel no such need and retire into the cool shade.”
Yes, the hours drag when you lie waiting for an insect that does not come. In the pinewood hard by, a couple of Hoopoes are chasing each other with the amorous provocations of spring:
“Oopoopoo!” cries the cock, in a muffled tone. “Oopoopoo!”
Latin antiquity called the Hoopoe Upupa; Greek antiquity named it Ἔποψ. But Pliny turned the ἔ into ou and must have pronounced the word Oupoupa, as the cry imitated by the name teaches me to do. Rarely have I received a lesson in Latin pronunciation better authenticated than yours,[8] you beautiful bird, who provide a diversion for my long hours of weariness. Faithful to your idiom, you say “Oopoopoo!” as you said in the days of [[35]]Aristotle and Pliny, as you said when your note sounded for the first time. But our own idioms, our primitive idioms, what has become of them? The scholar cannot even recover their traces. Man alters; animals do not change.