The young men, on the other hand, are assiduous frequenters of the café, which is much more luxurious than the old-fashioned pot-house. Here they find vermouth, bitters, absinthe, amer Picon, in short the whole collection of stupefying drugs. Such tastes as these make the fields seem too humble and the soil too stubborn. Since the receipts no longer come up to the expenses, they leave the land for the town, which is better-suited, so they imagine, for money-making. Alas, saving is no more practicable there than here! The workshop, where opportunities of spending money lie in wait by the score, makes a man no richer than the plough. But it is too late: you have made your bed; and you remain a poverty-stricken townsman, in terror of paternity.
And yet this country, with its glorious climate, fertility, and geographical position, is invaded by a host of cosmopolitans, sharks and sharpers of every sort. Long ago, it used to attract the sea-roving Phœnicians; the peace-loving Greeks, who brought us the alphabet, the vine and the olive-tree; the Romans, those harsh rulers, who handed down to us barbarities very difficult to eradicate. Swooping on this rich prey came the Cymri, the Teutons, the Vandals, the Goths, the Huns, the Burgundians, the Suevi, the Alani, the Franks, the [[257]]Saracens, hordes driven hither by every wind that blows. And all this heterogeneous mixture was melted down and absorbed by the Gallic nation.
To-day the foreigner is stealthily making his way into our midst. We are threatened with a second barbarian invasion, peaceful, it is true, but yet disturbing. Will our language, so clear and so harmonious, become an obscure jargon, harsh with exotic gutturals? Will our generous character be dishonoured by rapacious hucksters? Will the land of our fathers cease to be a country and become a caravanserai? There is a fear of it, unless the old Gallic blood runs swift and strong once more and engulfs the stream of invaders.
Let us hope that it may be so and let us listen to what the horned Dung-beetle has to teach us. A large family demands food. But progress brings new needs, which cost much to satisfy; and our revenues are far from increasing at the same rate. When men have not enough for six or five or four, they are content to live as a family of three or two, or even to remain single. Guided by such principles as these, a nation, in its successive stages of progress, is on the road to suicide.
Let us go back then to where we were, suppress our artificial needs, those unwholesome fruits of a hot-house civilization, honour rustic frugality once again and remain on the land, where we shall find the soil bountiful enough to satisfy us if we moderate our desires. Then and not till then will the family flourish once more; then will the peasant, delivered from the town and its temptations, be our salvation.
The third Dung-beetle that has shown me the gift of paternal instinct is likewise a stranger. He comes to me from near Montpellier. He is the Bison Onitis, or, [[258]]according to others, the Bison Bubas. Taking no interest in nomenclature subtleties, I shall not choose between the two generic names, but will retain the specific denomination of Bison, which has the sound which Linnæus wanted. I made his acquaintance many years ago in the country around Ajaccio,[2] among the saffrons and cyclamens that bloom so sweetly under the shade of the myrtles. Come hither and let me admire you yet once again, O beauteous insect! You recall my youthful enthusiasm on the shores of the glorious gulf, so rich in shell-fish. Far was I from suspecting at the time that it would one day fall to my share to sing your praises! I have not seen you since. Welcome to my vivarium! And now tell us something about yourself.
You are a sturdy little chap, short-legged and packed into a solid rectangle, a sign of strength. On your head you wear two abbreviated horns, curved like a Steer’s; and you prolong your corselet into a blunt forehead adorned with two pretty dimples, one on the right and one on the left. Your general appearance and your male finery make you a near neighbour of the coprinary group. The entomologists, in fact, class you immediately after the Copres and a long way from the Geotrupes. Does your trade tally with the place which the systematists allot to you? What can you do?
In common with others, I admire the classifier who, studying the mouth, the legs and the antennæ in the dead insect, is sometimes happy in his grouping and able, for instance, to include in the same family the Scarab and the Sisyphus, who differ so greatly in appearance and so little in habits. Yet this method, which ignores the higher manifestations of life in order to pore [[259]]over the smallest details of the corpse, too often misleads us as to the insect’s real talent, which is a much more important characteristic than a joint more or less in the antennæ. The Bison, like many others, warns us to be careful where we are going. Though akin to the Copris in structure, he is much nearer the Geotrupes in his industry. Like them, he packs sausages in a cylindrical mould; like them again, he has the paternal instinct.
I inspect my one couple in the middle of June. Under a plentiful pile provided by the Sheep is a perpendicular shaft a finger’s-breadth in diameter, open freely throughout its length and running some nine inches down. The bottom of this well branches out into five different galleries, each occupied by a roly-poly pudding similar to the Geotrupes’, but less bulky and not so long. The mass of fodder has a warty surface, is rounded off clumsily and has a hatching-chamber scooped out of it at the lower end. This chamber is a little round cell, coated with a semifluid wash. The egg is oval, white and comparatively large, as is the rule among Dung-beetles. In short, the Bison’s rustic work is a very close reproduction of the Geotrupes’.
I am disappointed: I expected better things. The insect’s elegance seemed to promise something more artistic, a finer craftsmanship, skilled in the modelling of pears, gourds, balls and ovoids. Once again, be careful how you judge animals, any more than men, by appearances. The structure gives us no idea of the insect’s all-round ability.