But these herbivora exceeding all law and all reason, the insectivorous insects were created to confine them within limits.
The latter, robust and terrible, the tyrants of creation by their weapons and their wings, would have been the conquerors of the conquerors, and have driven to extremities the feebler species, if, above all the insect world and its weak powers of flight, had not risen on mighty wing a superior tyrant—the Bird. The haughty libellula was carried off by the swallow.
By these successive agencies of destruction, however, production has not been suppressed, but restrained, and the species balanced in such wise that all endure and live. The more a species is pruned, the more fertile it becomes. Does it exceed? Immediately the superabundance is equilibrized by the new fecundity which is given to its destroyers.
Ye men of this lingering epoch,—sons of the lean and sober West—brought up in the little, close, carefully tended, pared, and picked gardens, which you call "wide cultivation,"—enlarge, I pray you, your conceptions; extend them, and endeavour to imagine something greater than these petty corners, if you would comprehend anything of the earth's primitive forces; of the abundance and superabundance which she displayed when, soaked with warm mists, her bosom heaved with the glow of her first youth.
The hotter countries of our present globe still show something of this profusion, though in a pale decay. Africa, which over the greater portion of its area has lost its waters, preserves as a souvenir in its happier zones that enormous and swollen herb, or herbaceous tree, the baobab. The inextricable forests of Guiana and Brazil, in their labyrinthine chaotic confusion of wild plants which, without rule or measure, envelop and choke the colossal trees, corrupt them, and bury them in their débris, are but imperfect images of the great ancient Chaos. The only beings impure enough to endure its impurity and breathe its deadly exhalations, are great-bellied reptiles, unwieldy frogs, green caymans, and serpents swollen with filth and venom. And such would have been the inhabitants of earth. Unable to draw breath in the horrible suffocation, she could never have given forth that pure air in which man alone can live.
Accordingly, from on high pounced down the bird, and, plunging into the gulf, carried back to the sky on the tops of the lofty forests some one of these monsters. But its incessant struggle would have been vain against their abominable fecundity, if, from below, myriads of nibblers had not lightened the accumulation, cleansed the frightful lairs, and thrown open to the arrows of the sun the filth under which earth was panting. The humblest insects accomplished the gigantic work which made earth inhabitable: they devoured chaos.
"Small means," you say, "and great results! How could these little beings come to the aid of an infinity?" You would not cherish the doubt, if you had been ever a witness of the awakening of the silkworms, when, one morning, they are hatched with that vast hunger no abundance of leaves can satisfy. Their proprietor has supposed himself in a position to content them with a rich and beautiful plantation of mulberry-trees; but it counts for nothing. You supply them with forests, and they still ask for more. At a distance of twenty or thirty yards you hear a strange uninterrupted buzzing; a murmur like that of brooks incessantly flowing, and incessantly grinding and wearing out the pebbles. Nor are you mistaken: it is a brook, a torrent, a boundless river of living matter, which, under the grand mechanism of so many minute instruments, sounds, and resounds, and murmurs, passing from the vegetable life to that of insects, and softly but invincibly bases itself on animality.
To return to the primeval age. The most terrible destroyers, the most implacable assailants, which penetrated the lowermost rottenness of the great chaos, which at a higher level delivered the tree from the pressure of its parasites, and finally mounted to its branches, and brightened up the livid shadows,—these were the benefactors of species yet to come. Their uninterrupted work of unconquerable destruction reduced within reasonable limits the excess in which Nature was almost lost. They opened up splendid, free, and unencumbered spaces; and the monsters, banished from the gulf where they swarmed, grew more and more barren, and by that great revelation of the forest were exposed to the child of Light,—the Bird.
A profound agreement and genial fellowship were established between the latter and his protagonist, the child of Night, the Insect, which had thrown open the abyss, and delivered into his power the enemy. Consider, moreover, that in proportion as an exuberant nourishment fortified and exalted the insect, when its blood was intoxicated by so many burning plants, a ferocity previously unknown prevailed, and the fiercer and bolder species no longer limited themselves to undermining the retreats of the monsters, but attacked the monsters also. Stings, augers, cupping-glasses, trenchant teeth, sharpened pincers, an arsenal of unknown and as yet unnamed arms, came into existence, were elongated and whetted for assault upon the living matter. They were needed. They proved to be the lancet which cut the putrescent sore of the rising world. This latter had nourished and multiplied the feebly animalized myriads of torpid worms and pale-blooded larvæ, a ghastly and also the lowest life, which gained by passing through that burning crucible of keen existence, the superior insect-race.
I know nothing upon earth which seems stronger, firmer, more durable, and more formidable than those miniature rhinoceros-like cuirassiers, which traverse earth as quickly as the great mammal traverses it heavily and slowly. The carabi, the galeritas, the stag-beetles, which carry with so much ease armour far more formidable than that of the Middle Ages, reassure us only by their size. Here strength is relatively formidable. Were a man proportionally strong, he might take in his arms the obelisk of Luxor.