The Sacred Beetle, and Others

by Jean-Henri Fabre

The horns outline a splendid crescent, leaning backwards and resting on the shoulders. They are swollen; [[284]]they are colourless, like everything that life elaborates in the midst of a generating-fluid; and at their base are the dark ocular specks, not yet capable of sight, but promising to become so. The clypeus is expanding and beginning to stand out. Seen from the front, the head is that of a Bull, with a wide muzzle and enormous horns, copied from those of the Aurochs.

If the artists in the time of the Pharaohs had known the immature Onthophagus, they would certainly have used him for their hieratical images. He is quite as good as the Sacred Beetle and even better from the point of view of those oddities which offer such scope to sacerdotal symbolism. On the front edge of the corselet, a single horn rises, as powerful as the two others and shaped like a cylinder ending in a conical knob. It points forward and is fixed in the middle of the frontal crescent, projecting a little beyond it. The arrangement is gloriously original. The carvers of hieroglyphics would have beheld in it the crescent of Isis wherein dips the edge of the world.

Some other peculiarities complete the nymph’s curious appearance. To right and left the abdomen is armed, on either side, with four little horns resembling crystal spikes. Total, eleven pieces in the creature’s harness: two on the forehead; one on the thorax; eight on the abdomen. The beast of yore delighted in queer horns: certain reptiles of the geological period stuck a pointed spur on their upper eyelids. The Onthophagus, more greatly daring, sports eight on the sides of his belly, in addition to the spear which he plants upon his back. The frontal horns may be excused: they are fairly common; but what does he propose to do with the others? Nothing at all. They are passing fancies, [[285]]jewels of early youth; the adult insect will not retain the least trace of them.

The nymph matures. The appendages of the fore-head, at first quite crystalline, now show, when held up to the light, a streak of reddish brown, curved like a bow. This is the real horn taking shape, consistency and colour. The appendage of the corselet and those of the belly, on the other hand, preserve their glassy appearance. They are barren sacks, void of any germ capable of development. The organism produced them in a moment of impulse; now, scornful, or perhaps powerless, it allows its work to wither and become useless.

When the nymph sheds its covering and the delicate tunic of the adult form is rent, these strange horns crumble into fragments, which fall away with the rest of the cast clothing. In the hope of finding at least a trace of the vanished things, the lens vainly explores the bases but lately occupied. There is nothing appreciable left: the nymph is now smooth; the real has given place to the non-existent. Of the accessory panoply so full of promise, absolutely naught remains: everything has vanished into thin air.

The Bull Onthophagus is not the only one endowed with these fleeting appendages, which completely disappear when the nymph sheds its clothes. The other members of the tribe possess similar horny manifestations on their bellies and corselets. One of them, the Spectral Onthophagus, on achieving the perfect state, adorns the front of his corselet with four tiny studs arranged in a semicircle. The two end ones stand alone; the two middle ones are together. These last correspond exactly with the base of the nymph’s thoracic horn and might easily be taken for the atrophied remnant of the [[286]]vanished appendage. We must abandon this idea, however, for the lateral studs, which are more developed than the middle ones, occupy points where the nymph had no horns. In this Onthophagus, as in the others, the nymphal armour is misleading and abortive.

Certain Dung-beetles related to the Onthophagi likewise possess horned nymphs. One of these is the Yellow-footed Oniticellus, the only one whom circumstances have allowed me to examine from this point of view. He wears, in the nymphal stage, a magnificent horn on his corselet and a row of four spikes on each side of his abdomen, as is the rule among the Onthophagi. This all disappears entirely in the adult insect.

It seems likely that, if I had known how to improve the occasion some years ago, when I was successfully rearing the Bison Onitis sent me from Montpellier, I should have perceived the same armour on the nymph’s thorax and abdomen. Not having been warned by earlier observations and being anxious also to disturb the pair of strangers as little as possible, I let the opportunity slip.

Let us remark lastly that the Onitis, Oniticellus and Onthophagus genera all three construct for the nymphosis a scaly cabin whose shape suggests the cedar-cone and the fruit of the alder. One may therefore admit, without being too venturesome, that the various builders of similar caskets are all acquainted with the nymphal panoply of a horn on the corselet and a diadem of eight spikes around the abdomen. This is not equivalent to saying that the armour determines the casket or the casket the armour. These curious details go together without influencing each other.

A simple setting forth of the facts is not enough: we should like to see the motive of this horned magnificence. [[287]]Is it a vague reminiscence of the customs of olden time, when life spent its excess of young sap upon quaint creations, banished to-day from our better-balanced world? Is the Onthophagus the dwarfed representative of an ancient race of horned animals now extinct? Does it give us a faint image of the past?