Hearing a buzzing noise in a large unkept hedge, I went to the spot and found a stag trying to extricate himself from some soft fern-fronds growing among the brambles in which he had got entangled. In the end he succeeded, and, finally gaining a point where there was nothing to obstruct his flight, he launched himself on the air and flew straight away to a distance of fifty yards; then he turned and commenced flying backwards and forwards, travelling forty or fifty yards one way and as many the other, until he made a discovery; and struck motionless in his career, he remained suspended for a moment or two, then flew swiftly and straight as a bullet back to the hedge from which he had so recently got away. He struck the hedge where it was broadest, at a distance of about twenty yards or more from the point where I had first found him, and running to the spot, I saw that he had actually alighted within four or five inches of a female concealed among the clustering leaves. On his approaching her she coyly moved from him, climbing up and down and along the branchlets, but for some time he continued very near her. So far he had followed on her track, or by the same branches and twigs over which she had passed, but on her getting a little farther away and doubling back, he attempted to reach her by a series of short cuts, over the little bridges formed by innumerable slender branches, and his short cuts in most cases brought him against some obstruction; or else there was a sudden bend in the branch, and he was taken farther away. When he had a chain of bridges or turnings, he seemed fated to take the wrong one, and in spite of all his desperate striving to get nearer, he only increased the distance between them. The level sun shone into the huge tangle of bramble, briar, and thorn, with its hundreds of interlacing branches and stringy stems, so that I was able to keep both beetles in sight; but after I had watched them for three-quarters of an hour, the sun departed, and I too left them. They were then nearly six feet apart; and seeing what a labyrinth they were in, I concluded that, strive how the enamoured creature might, they would never, from the stag-beetle point of view, be within measurable distance of one another.
Something in the appearance of the big beetle, both flying and when seen on the ground in his wrathful, challenging attitude, strikes the rustics of these parts as irresistibly comic. When its heavy flight brings it near the labourer in the fields, he knocks it down with his cap, then grins at the sight of the maltreated creature's amazement and indignation. However weary the ploughman may be when he plods his homeward way, he will not be too tired to indulge in this ancient practical joke. When the beetle's flight takes him by village or hamlet, the children, playing together in the road, occupied with some such simple pastime as rolling in the dust or making little miniature hills of loose sand, are suddenly thrown into a state of wild excitement, and, starting to their feet, they run whooping after the wanderer, throwing their caps to bring him down.
A stag-beetle's fate
One evening at sunset, on coming to a forest gate through which I had to pass, I saw a stag-beetle standing in his usual statuesque, angry or threatening attitude in the middle of the road close to the gate. Doubtless some labourer who had arrived at the gate earlier in the evening had struck it down for fun and left it there. By-and-by, I thought, he will recover from the shock to his dignity and make his way to some elevated point, from which he will be able to start afresh on his wanderings in search of a wife. But it was not to be as I thought, for next morning, on going by the same gate, I found the remains of my beetle just where I had last seen him—the legs, wing-cases, and the big, broad head with horns attached. The poor thing had remained motionless too long, and had been found during the evening by a hedgehog and devoured, all but the uneatable parts. On looking closely, I found that the head was still alive; at a touch the antennæ—those mysterious jointed rods, toothed like a comb at their ends—began to wave up and down, and the horns opened wide, like the jaws of an angry crab. On placing a finger between them they nipped it as sharply as if the creature had been whole and uninjured. Yet the body had been long devoured and digested; and there was only this fragment left, and, torn off with it, shall we say? a fragment of intelligent life!
We always look on this divisibility of the life-principle in some creatures with a peculiar repugnance; and, like all phenomena that seem to contradict the regular course of nature, it gives a shock to the mind. We do not experience this feeling with regard to plant life, and to the life of some of the lower animal organisms, because we are more familiar with the sight in these cases. The trouble to the mind is in the case of the higher life of sentient and intelligent beings that have passions like our own. We see it even in some vertebrates, especially in serpents, which are most tenacious of life. Thus, there is a recorded case of a pit viper, the head of which was severed from the body by the person who found it. When the head was approached the jaws opened and closed with a vicious snap, and when the headless trunk was touched it instantly recoiled and struck at the touching object.
Tenacity of life
Such cases are apt to produce in some minds a sense as of something unfamiliar and uncanny behind nature that mocks us. But even those who are entirely free from any such animistic feeling are strangely disturbed at the spectacle, not only because it is opposed to the order of nature (as the mind apprehends it), but also because it contradicts the old fixed eternal idea we all have, that life is compounded of two things—the material body and the immaterial spirit, which leavens and, in a sense, re-creates and shines in and through the clay it is mixed with; and that you cannot destroy the body without also destroying or driving out that mysterious, subtle principle. Life was thus anciently likened to a seal, which is two things in one—the wax and the impression on it. You cannot break the seal without also destroying the impression, any more than you can break a pitcher without spilling the liquor in it. In such cases as those of the beetle and the serpent, it would perhaps be better to liken life to a red, glowing ember, which may be broken into pieces, and each piece still burn and glow with its own portion of the original heat.
The survival after death of something commonly supposed to be dependent on vitality is another phenomenon which, like that of the divisibility of the life-principle, affects us disagreeably. The continued growth of the hair of dead men is an instance in point. It is, we know, an error, caused by the shrinking of the flesh; and as for the accounts of coffins being found full of hair when opened, they are inventions, though still believed in by some persons. Another instance, which is not a fable, is that of a serpent's skin. When properly and quickly dried after removal, it will retain its bright colours for an indefinite time—in some cases for many years. But at intervals the colours appear to fade, or become covered with a misty whiteness; and the cause, as one may see when the skin is rubbed or shaken, is that the outer scales are being shed. They come off separately, and are very much thinner than when the living serpent sheds his skin, and they grow thinner with successive sheddings until they are scarcely visible. But at each shedding the skin recovers its brightness. One in my possession continued shedding its scale-films in this way for about ten years. I used it for a book-marker and often had it in my hands, but not until it ceased shedding its scale-coverings, and its original bright green colour turned to dull blackish-green, did I get rid of the feeling that it had some life in it.
But the most striking instance of the continuance or survival long after death of what has seemed an attribute or manifestation of life remains to be told.
A dead glow-worm's light