[1] ·546 × ·273 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] ·585 × ·39 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] Pantagruel: chap. i.; Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] Minotaurus typhœus. Cf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chap. x.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
Chapter xii
THE GEOTRUPES: THE PUBLIC HEALTH
To complete the cycle of the year in the adult form, to see one’s self surrounded by one’s sons at the spring festival, to double and treble one’s family: that surely is a most exceptional privilege in the insect world. The Bees, the aristocracy of instinct, perish once the honey-pot is filled; the Butterflies, the aristocracy not of instinct but of dress, die when they have fastened their packet of eggs in a propitious spot; the richly-armoured Ground-beetles succumb when the germs of a posterity are scattered beneath the stones.
So with the others, except among the social insects, where the mother survives, either alone or accompanied by her attendants. It is a general law: the insect is born orphaned of both its parents. And lo, by an unexpected turn of fate, the humble scavenger escapes the catastrophes that devour the mighty! The Dung-beetle, sated with days, becomes a patriarch.
This longevity explains first of all a fact that struck me long ago, when, to learn a little about the tribes whose history attracted me so greatly, I used to stick rows of Beetles on pins in my boxes. Ground-beetles, Rose-chafers, Buprestes, Capricorns, Saperdæ[1] and the rest were collected one by one, after prolonged search. Now and again a lucky find would make my cheeks glow with [[190]]excitement. Exclamations broke from our prentice band when one of these rarities was captured. A touch of jealousy accompanied our congratulations of the proud possessor. It was bound to be so; for think: there were not enough to go round.