[[Contents]]

[[Contents]]

MORE BEETLES

[[Contents]]

BOOKS BY J. HENRI FABRE

• [THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER]
• [THE LIFE OF THE FLY]
• [THE MASON-BEES]
• [BRAMBLE-BEES AND OTHERS]
• [THE HUNTING WASPS]
• [THE LIFE OF THE CATERPILLAR]
• [THE LIFE OF THE GRASSHOPPER]
• [THE SACRED BEETLE AND OTHERS]
• [THE MASON-WASPS]
• [THE GLOW-WORM AND OTHER BEETLES]
• [MORE HUNTING WASPS]
• [THE LIFE OF THE WEEVIL]
• MORE BEETLES

[[Contents]]

MORE BEETLES

BY
J. HENRI FABRE
TRANSLATED BY
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
FELLOW OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1922

[[Contents]]

Copyright, 1922
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

PRINTED IN U. S. A. [[v]]

[[Contents]]

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

This, if we count The Life of the Weevil as the third, is the fourth and last volume on Beetles in the Collected English Edition of Fabre’s entomological works. The first was entitled The Sacred Beetle and Others; the second The Glow-worm and Other Beetles.

Of the fourteen chapters, part of the four devoted to the Minotaur appeared, in an abbreviated form, in The Life and Love of the Insect, prepared by myself for Messrs. Adam and Charles Black and published in America by the Macmillan Co. Similarly, The Pine Cockchafer and the two chapters on the Gold Beetles occur in Mr. Fisher Unwin’s Social Life in the Insect World (published in America by the Century Co.), translated by Mr. Bernard Miall, whom I take this opportunity of thanking for his assistance in the translation of the present volume. These seven chapters are included in the Collected Edition by arrangement with the publishers named.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Chelsea, 29 September, 1921. [[vii]]

[[Contents]]

CONTENTS

[[ix]]

[[Contents]]

MORE BEETLES

[[1]]

CHAPTER I

THE CETONIÆ

My hermitage boasts a long, wide lilac-walk. When May is here and the two rows of bushes, bending beneath their load of clustering blooms, form pointed arches overhead, this walk becomes a chapel, in which the loveliest festival of the year is celebrated beneath the kisses of the morning sun: a peaceful festival, with no flags flapping at the windows, no expenditure of gun-powder, no drunken squabbles; a festival of simple creatures disturbed neither by the harsh brass band of the dance nor by the shouts of the crowd acclaiming the amateur who has just won a silk handkerchief at the hop, skip and jump. Vulgar delights of drinks and crackers, how far removed are you from this solemn celebration!

I am one of the worshippers in the chapel of the lilacs. My orison, which cannot be translated into words, is a tender and intimate emotion. Devoutly I make my stations from one column of verdure to another, [[2]]telling step by step my observer’s rosary. My prayer is an “Oh!” of admiration.

To this delicious festival pilgrims have hastened, to gain the Lenten indulgences and to slake their thirst. Here, dipping their tongues by turns into the holy-water stoup of the same flower, are the Anthophora[1] and her tyrant the Melecta.[2] Robber and victim sip their nectar like good neighbours. There is no ill-feeling: between them. Both attend to their own affairs in peace. They seem not to know each other.

The Osmiæ,[3] clad in black-and-red velvet, dust their ventral brushes with pollen and make hoards of meal in the reeds round about. Here are the Eristales,[4] noisy, giddy-pated insects, whose wings shimmer in the sun like scales of mica. Drunk with syrup, they withdraw from the festival and sleep off their debauch in the shadow of a leaf. [[3]]

These others are Wasps, Polistes,[5] hot-tempered swashbucklers. When these intolerant creatures are abroad, peaceful insects withdraw and establish themselves elsewhere. Even the Hive-Bee, predominating in numbers and ever ready to unsheathe her sting, makes way for them, busy as she is gathering in the harvest.

These thick-set, richly variegated Moths are Sesiæ, with wings not dusted with scales throughout. The bare zones, like so much transparent gauze, contrast with the covered zones and are an added beauty. The sober sets off the magnificent.

Here is a crazy swarm, eddying, receding, returning, rising and falling. It is the ballet of the common Butterfly-folk, the Cabbage Butterflies,[6] all white, with black, eye-shaped dots. They flirt in mid-air, pursuing and pressing their attentions on one another, until, weary of frolic, now one, now another of the dancers alights once more upon the [[4]]lilacs, quenching her thirst from the amphoræ of the flowers. While the proboscis dives down the narrow throat of the blossom, sucking the nectar at the base, the wings, gently fluttering, are raised above the back, expanding anew and again standing erect.

Almost as numerous but less sudden in flight, because of his wide-spreading wings, is the Machaon, the magnificent Swallow-tail Butterfly, with the orange spots and the blue crescents.

The children have come to join me. They are enraptured by this elegant creature, which always escapes their pouncing hands and flies a little farther to taste the nectar of the flowers while moving its wings after the fashion of the Cabbage Butterfly. If the pump is working quietly in the sunlight, if the syrup is rising easily, this gentle fanning of the wings is in all these Butterflies a sign of satisfaction.

A catch! Anna, the youngest of the whole household, gives up all hope of capturing the Swallow-tails, who never wait for her nimble little hand to seize them. She has found something more to her liking. It is the Cetonia. The handsome insect has [[5]]not yet recovered from the chill of morning; it lies slumbering all golden on the lilac-blossoms, unconscious of danger, incapable of flight. It is plentiful. Five or six are quickly caught. I intervene, so that the rest may be left in peace. The booty is placed in a box, with a bed of blossoms. Presently, during the heat of the day, the Cetonia, with a long thread tied to one leg, will fly in circles round the little girl’s head.

Childhood is pitiless because it does not understand, for nothing is more cruel than ignorance. None of my madcaps will heed the sufferings of the insect, a melancholy galley-slave chained to a cannon-ball. These artless minds find amusement in torture. I dare not always call them to order, for I admit that I on my side am also guilty, though I am ripened by experience, to some extent civilized and beginning to know a thing or two. They inflict suffering for the sake of amusement and I for the sake of information: is it not really the same thing? Is there a very definite line of demarcation between the experiments of knowledge and the puerilities of childhood? I cannot see it. [[6]]

Human barbarity in the past employed the rack to force a prisoner to speak. Am I anything but a torturer when I interrogate my insects and put them to the rack to wrest some secret from them? Let Anna get such pleasure as she can out of her prisoners, for I am meditating something worse. The Cetonia has things to reveal to us, things that will interest us, beyond a doubt. Let us try to obtain these revelations. We cannot, of course, do so without serious inconvenience to the insect. So be it; and now let us proceed: we will silence our kindly scruples for the sake of the story.

Among the guests at the festival of the lilacs the Cetonia deserves to be most honourably mentioned. He is of a good size, which lends itself to observation. Though deficient in elegance with his massive, square-cut build, he has splendour in his favour: the gleam of copper, the flash of gold, or the austere magnificence of bronze as it leaves the brass-founder’s burnisher. He is a regular frequenter of my enclosure, a neighbour, and will therefore spare me the trips which are beginning to tell upon me. Lastly—and this is an excellent quality when one wishes to be understood by all [[7]]one’s readers—he is known to everybody, if not by his classic name,[7] at least as an object that often meets the eye.

Who has not seen him, like a great emerald lying at the heart of a rose, whose tender blush he enhances by the richness of his jewellery? In this voluptuous bed of stamens and petals he is encrusted, motionless; he remains there night and day, intoxicated by the heady fragrance, drunk with nectar. It needs the stimulus of fierce sunlight to arouse him from his bliss and set him soaring with a buzzing flight.

To watch the idle Beetle in his sybaritic bed, without further information, one would hardly suspect him of gluttony. What nourishment can he find on a rose or a cluster of hawthorn-blossom? At most a tiny drop of sugary exudation, for he does not browse upon the petals, still less upon the foliage. And can this, a mere nothing, satisfy that big body? I hesitate to believe it.

In the first week of August I placed in a cage fifteen Cetoniæ that had just burst their shells in my rearing-jars. Bronze [[8]]above and violet underneath, they belong to the species C. metallica, Fab. I provide them, according to the resources of the day, with pears, plums, melon or grapes.

It is a joy to see them feast. Once at table they do not budge. Not a movement, not even a shifting of the feet. With their heads in the fruit-pulp, often with their bodies completely submerged, they sip and swallow night and day, in the darkness, in the sunlight, without a break. Surfeited with sweets, the guzzlers hold on. Collapsing under the table, that is to say, under the deliquescent fruit, they still lick their lips, in the blissful drowsiness of a child that drops asleep with its slice of bread and jam at its lips.

There is no sportiveness in their orgy, even when the sun shines fiercely into the cage. All activity is suspended; the time is wholly devoted to the joys of the stomach. In this torrid heat it is so pleasant to lie under the greengage, oozing with juice! With such good things at hand, why go flying across the fields where everything is parched? None dreams of such a thing. There is no scaling of the walls of the cage, [[9]]no sudden unfurling of the wings in an attempt to escape.

This life of junketing has already lasted a fortnight without producing satiety. Such a protracted banquet is not frequent; we do not find it even in the Dung-beetles, who are zealous eaters. When the Sacred Beetle, spinning his little unbroken cord of intestinal refuse, has remained a whole day on a tasty morsel, it is the most that the gormandizer can allow himself.[8] But my Cetoniæ have been feasting on the sweets of the plum and pear for a full fortnight; and there is no sign yet that they have had enough. When will the orgy make way for the wedding and the cares of the future?

Well, there will be no wedding and no family-cares this year. These are put off till next year: a singular postponement, quite at variance with the usual custom, which is to be extremely expeditious in these important matters. It is the season of fruits; and the Cetonia, a passionate glutton, means to enjoy these good things without [[10]]being diverted from them by the worries of egg-laying. The gardens offer the luscious pear and the wrinkled fig, its eye moist with syrup. The greedy creature takes possession of them and becomes oblivious to all else.

However, the dog-days are becoming more and more pitiless. Day after day, another load of brushwood, as our peasants say, is added to the furnace of the sun. Excessive heat, like cold, produces a suspension of life. To kill the time, creatures that are grilled or frozen go to sleep. The Cetoniæ in my breeding-cage bury themselves in the sand, a couple of inches down. The sweetest fruits no longer tempt them: it is too hot.

It takes the moderate temperature of September to wake them from their torpor. At this season they reappear on the surface; they settle down to my bits of melon-rind, or slake their thirst at a small bunch of grapes, but soberly, taking only short draughts. The hunger-fits of early days and the interminable filling of the belly have gone for ever.

Now comes the cold weather. Again my captives disappear underground. Here they pass the winter, protected only by a layer of [[11]]sand a few inches in depth. Under this slight covering, in their wooden shelter, exposed to all the winds of heaven, they are not endangered by the severe frosts. I thought them susceptible to cold, but I find that they bear the hardships of the winter remarkably well. They have retained the robust constitution of the larvæ, which I used to find, to my astonishment, lying stiff and stark in a block of frozen snow, yet returning to life when carefully thawed.

March is not over before signs of life reappear. My buried Beetles emerge, climb up the wire trellis, wandering about if the sun is kind, going back into the sand if the air grows colder. What am I to give them? There is no fruit. I serve them some honey in a paper dish. They go to it without any marked assiduity. Let us find something more to their taste. I offer them some dates. The exotic fruit, a delicious pulp in a thin skin, suits them very well, despite its novelty: they could set no greater store by pears or figs. The dates bring us to the end of April, the time of the first cherries.

We have now returned to the regulation diet, the fruits of the country. A very moderate consumption takes place: the hour is [[12]]past for feats of gastric prowess. Very soon my boarders grow indifferent to food. I surprise them in nuptial embraces, a sign that egg-laying is near at hand. In anticipation of events, I have placed in the cage, level with the soil, a pot full of dead, half-rotten leaves. About the summer solstice I see them enter it, one by one, remaining in it for some little time. Then, having finished their business, they return to the surface. For a week or two longer, they wander about, finally hiding themselves in the sand, at no great depth, and dying.

Their successors are in the pot of rotten leaves. Before the end of June I find, in the tepid mass, plenty of recent eggs and very young larvæ. I now have the explanation of a peculiarity which caused me some confusion at the time of my earlier studies. When rummaging through the big heap of leaf-mould which, in a shady corner of the garden, provides me yearly with a rich colony of Cetoniæ, I used to find, under my trowel, in July and August, intact cocoons which would soon split open under the thrust of the insect inside; I also found the adult Cetonia, who had emerged from her strong-box that very day, and quite close to [[13]]these I would find very young larvæ, which had only just made their appearance. I had before my eyes the crazy paradox of children born before their parents.

The breeding-cage has cleared up these obscure points completely. It has taught me that the Cetonia, in the adult form, lives through a whole year and the summer of the following year. The cocoon is broken during the summer heats of July and August. The regular thing would be, provided the season were propitious, to think at once of the family, after indulging in a few nuptial frolics. This is the general rule among other insects. For them the present form is an efflorescence of brief duration, which the needs of the future employ as quickly as may.

The Cetonia does not display this haste. She was a gross eater in her days of pot-bellied grubhood; she remains a gross eater beneath the splendour of her adult cuirass. She spends her life, so long as the heat is not too overwhelming, in the jam-factory of the orchard: apricots, pears, peaches, figs and plums. Lingering over her meal, she forgets all else and defers her egg-laying to the following year. [[14]]

After the torpor of hibernation in some place of shelter, she reappears with the first days of spring. But there is no fruit now; and last year’s glutton, who, for that matter, has become a frugal eater, whether by necessity or by temperament, has no other resource than the niggardly drinking-bar of the flowers. When June has come, she sows her eggs in a heap of vegetable mould, beside the chrysalids whence the adult insect will emerge a little later. This being so, unless we are in the secret, we behold the mad spectacle of the egg preceding the mother that lays it.

Among the Cetoniæ that make their appearance in the course of the same year we must therefore distinguish two generations. Those of the spring, the inhabitants of the roses, have lived through the winter. They must lay their eggs in June and then die. Those of the autumn, passionate fruit-lovers, have recently left their nymphal dwellings. They will hibernate and will lay their eggs about the middle of the following summer.

We have come to the longest days of the year; this is the moment. In the shadow of the pines, against the wall of the enclosure, stands a heap some cubic yards in volume, [[15]]formed of all the rubbish of the garden and particularly of dead leaves collected at the time of their fall. This is the compost-factory which supplies the needs of my potted plants. Now this bank of corruption, warmed by the slow decomposition which is working in it, is a paradise for the Cetoniæ in their larval state. The fat grub swarms there, finding abundant provender in the shape of fermented vegetable matter and an agreeable warmth, even in the heart of the winter.

Four species live here, thriving admirably, despite the annoyance which my curiosity causes them. The most numerous is the Metallic Cetonia (C. metallica, Fab.). This is the insect that provides me with the greater part of my data. The others are the common Golden Cetonia, or Rose-chafer (C. aurata, Linn.), the Dark-brown Cetonia (C. morio, Fab.) and lastly the small Funeral-pall Cetonia (C. stictica, Linn.).[9]

Let us inspect the heap about nine or ten o’clock in the morning. We must be diligent and patient, for the advent of the laying mothers is subject to capricious delays [[16]]and often makes us wait in vain. Chance favours us. Here is a Metallic Cetonia dropping in from some neighbouring spot. In wide circles she flies once or twice over the heap; she inspects the lie of the land from above and selects a point easy of access. Whoosh! She pounces upon it, digs with her head and legs and forthwith makes her way in. Which way will she go?

At first the sense of hearing tells us of the direction followed: we hear a rustling of withered leaves as long as the insect is working through the dry outer layer. Then nothing but silence: the Cetonia has reached the moist centre of the heap. Here and here only must the laying take place, so that the grub emerging from the egg may find soft food at hand without seeking for it. Let us leave the mother to her task and return a couple of hours later.

But first let us reflect upon what has just occurred. A magnificent insect, a living gem of goldsmith’s work, was slumbering just now at the heart of a rose, on the satin of its petals, in the sweetness of its scent. And now this voluptuary in her golden tunic, this sipper of ambrosia, suddenly leaves her flower and buries herself in corruption; she [[17]]abandons the sumptuous hammock, fragrant of attar, to burrow in nauseous filth. Whence this sudden depravity?

She knows that her grub will regale itself on what she herself abhors; and overcoming her repugnance, not even giving it a thought, she takes the plunge. Is she actuated by the memory of her larval days? But what memory of food can she have after a year’s interval, above all after an absolute remoulding of her organism? To draw the Cetonia hither, to make her come from the rose to this putrid heap, there is something better than the memory of the belly; there is a blind, irresistible impulse, which acts in the most logical manner under cover of a seeming insanity.

Let us now return to the heap of leaf-mould. The rustle of the withered leaves has informed us approximately: we know in what direction to make our search, a minute and hesitating search, for we have to follow the mother’s trail. Nevertheless, guided by the materials thrust aside on the insect’s passage, we reach our goal. The eggs are found, scattered without order, always singly, with no preparatory measures. It is enough that there should be close at hand [[18]]soft vegetable matter, suitably fermented.

The egg is an ivory globule, departing only slightly from the spherical form and measuring nearly three millimetres[10] in diameter. The hatching takes place twelve days later. The grub is white, bristling with short, sparse hairs. When laid bare and removed from its leaf-mould, it crawls upon its back, that is to say, it possesses the curious method of locomotion characteristic of its race. With its earliest wriggles it proclaims the art of walking on its back, with its legs in the air.

Nothing is easier than to rear this grub. A thin box, which hinders evaporation and keeps the provisions fresh, receives the nursling together with a selection of fermented leaves, gathered from the heap of mould. This is enough: my charge thrives and undergoes its transformation in the following year, provided I take care to renew the victuals from time to time. No entomological rearing gives less trouble than that of the Cetonia-larva, with its robust appetite and its vigorous constitution.

Its growth is rapid. At the beginning of August, four weeks after hatching, the grub [[19]]has reached half its final size. The idea occurs to me to estimate its consumption of food by means of the stercoral granules which collect in the box from the time of its first mouthful. I find, 11,978 cubic millimetres;[11] that is to say, in one month the grub has digested a volume of matter equivalent to several thousand times its own initial bulk.

The Cetonia-grub is a mill that is always grinding dead vegetable substances into meal; it is a crushing-machine of great efficiency, which night and day, almost all the year round, shreds and powders the matter which fermentation has already reduced to tatters. In the rotting heap the fibres and veins of the leaves would remain intact indefinitely. The grub takes possession of these refractory remnants; with its excellent shears it tears and minces them very small; it dissolves them, reducing them to a paste in the intestines, and adds them, henceforth capable of being used, to the riches of the soil.

In the larval stage, the Cetonia is a most active manufacturer of leaf-mould. When the metamorphosis occurs and I review the results of my insect-rearing for the last time, [[20]]I am shocked by the amount of eating which my gormandizers have done in the course of their lives; it can be measured by the bowlful.

The Cetonia-larva is worth attention from another point of view. It is a corpulent grub, an inch long, with a convex back and a flat belly. The dorsal surface is wrinkled with thick folds, on which the sparse hairs stand erect like the bristles of a brush; the ventral surface is smooth, covered with a fine skin, through which the ample wallet of ordure shows as a brown patch. The legs are very well-shaped, but are small, feeble and out of proportion to the rest of the body.

The creature is given to coiling itself into a closed ring. This is a posture of repose, or rather of anxiety and defence. At such times the living coil contracts so violently that we fear to see it burst open and void its entrails when we seek to unroll it by force. When no longer molested, the grub unrolls itself, straightens out and makes haste to escape.

Then a surprise awaits us. If placed upon the table, the harassed creature travels on its back with its legs in the air, inactive. [[21]]This extravagant method, contrary to the accepted usages of locomotion, appears at first sight an accident, a chance manœuvre of the bewildered animal. Not at all: it is a normal manœuvre; and the grub knows no other. You turn it over on its belly, hoping to see it progress in the customary fashion. Your attempts are useless: obstinately it lies down on its back again, obstinately it crawls along in a reversed position. Nothing will persuade it to walk on its legs. Either it will remain motionless, coiled into a circle, or, straightening itself out, it will travel upside down. This is its way of doing things.

Leave it undisturbed on the table. It sets off, longing to bury itself in the soil and escape from its tormentor. Its progress is by no means slow. The dorsal pads, actuated by a powerful layer of muscle, give it a hold even on a smooth surface, thanks to their brush-like tufts of hair. They are ambulacra which, by their multiplicity, exert a vigorous traction.

The moving mechanism is apt to roll from side to side. By reason of the rounded form of the back, the grub sometimes turns turtle. The accident is not serious. With a heave of its loins, the capsized grub at once [[22]]recovers its balance and resumes its dorsal crawl, accompanied by a gentle swaying to right and left. It also pitches to and fro. The prow of the vessel, the larva’s head, rises and falls in measured oscillations. The mandibles open and bite at space, apparently trying to seize some support which is lacking.

Let us give it this support: not in the leaf-mould, whose opacity would hide what I want to see, but in a transparent medium. I happen to have what I need, a glass tube of some length, open at both ends and of a gradually diminishing calibre. At the large end the grub enters comfortably; at the other end it finds a very tight fit.

As long as the tube is more than wide enough, the grub moves along on its back. Then it enters a part of the tube whose calibre is equal to that of its body. From this moment the locomotion loses its abnormal character. No matter what its position, whether the belly is uppermost, undermost or to one side, the grub advances. I see the muscular waves of the dorsal pads moving with a beautiful regularity, like the ripples spreading over a calm sheet of water which has been disturbed by the fall of a pebble. [[23]]I see the bristles bowing and standing up again like corn waving in the wind.

The head oscillates evenly. The tips of the mandibles are used as a crutch which measures the paces in advance and gives stability by obtaining a purchase of the walls. In all the positions, which I vary at will by turning the tube between my fingers, the legs remain inactive even when they touch the supporting surface. Their part in locomotion is almost nil. What use, then, can they be? We shall see presently.

The transparent channel in which the larva is worming its way tells us what happens in the heart of the heap of garden-mould. Supported on every side at once, close-sheathed in the substance traversed, the grub progresses in the normal position as often as in the reversed position and even oftener. By virtue of its dorsal waves, which come into contact with the surrounding materials in every direction, it moves back or belly uppermost, indifferently. Here are no longer fantastic exceptions; matters return to their habitual order; if we could see the grub ambling through the heap of rotting leaves, we should not regard it as in any way peculiar. [[24]]

But, when we expose it on the table, we perceive a glaring anomaly, which disappears upon reflection. Support is lacking on every side save from below. The dorsal pads, the principal ambulacra, take contact with this one surface; and the animal straightway walks upside down. The Cetonia-grub surprises us by the strangeness of its locomotion merely because we are observing it outside its usual environment. It is thus that the other corpulent, short-legged grubs would travel—the grubs of the Cockchafer, the Oryctes[12] or the Anoxia-beetle—were it possible to unroll them entirely and to straighten out the crook of their mighty paunches.

In June, which is laying-season, the old larvæ that have lived through the winter make their preparations for the transformation. The nymphal caskets are contemporary with the ivory globules from which the new generation will emerge. Although rudely made, the Cetonia-cocoons are not without a certain elegance. They are ovoids almost the size of a Pigeon’s egg. Those of the Funeral-pall Cetonia, the smallest of the species inhabiting my heap of leaf-mould, [[25]]are very much smaller, hardly larger than a cherry.

All, however, have the same shape and the same appearance, so much so that, with the exception of the small cocoons of the Funeral-pall Cetonia, I cannot distinguish one from the other. Here the work tells me nothing of the worker; I must wait until the adults come out to name my discoveries correctly. However, as a general rule, subject to many exceptions, the cocoons of the Golden Cetonia have an outside facing of the insect’s droppings, set close together without any definite arrangement. Those of the Metallic Cetonia and the Dark-brown Cetonia are covered with remnants of decayed leaves.

We must regard these differences as resulting merely from the materials that surround the grub at the moment when it is building its cocoon and not from a special method of construction. It seems to me that the Golden Cetonia likes building in the midst of its old dejecta, now hard granules, while the other two prefer cleaner spots. Hence, no doubt, the diversity of the outer layer.

In the case of the three larger Cetoniæ, [[26]]the cocoons are free, that is to say, they do not adhere to a fixed base; they are constructed without a special foundation. The Funeral-pall Cetonia has other methods. If it finds in the leaf-mould a little stone, no larger than a finger-nail, it will by preference build its hut on this; but, if there is no little stone, it can quite well dispense with it and build as the others do, without any firm support.

The inside of the cocoon is smooth as stucco, as is required by the delicate skin first of the grub, then of the nymph. The wall is tough, resisting the pressure of the finger. It consists of a brown, homogeneous material, of a nature which at first is difficult to determine. It must have been a smooth paste which the grub worked in its own fashion, even as the potter works his clay.

Does the ceramic art of the Cetonia likewise employ some sort of fuller’s earth? So we should judge from the books, which agree in regarding the cocoons of the Cockchafer, the Oryctes, the Cetonia and other Beetles as earthy structures. The books, which are generally compilations and not collections of facts directly observed, do not [[27]]inspire me with much confidence. In this instance my doubts are increased, for the Cetonia-larva could not find the necessary clay within a short radius, in the midst of the decayed leaves around it.

I myself, digging this way and that in the heap, should be greatly put to it to collect enough plastic material to fill a thimble. What of the grub, which no longer stirs from its place when the time has come to shut itself up in a cocoon? It can gather only immediately around it. And what does it find? Solely remains of leaves, humus, a bad mortar that does not set. The conclusion is inevitable: the grub must have other resources.

To divulge these resources will perhaps expose me to the foolish accusation of unblushing realism. Certain ideas shock us though they are quite straightforward and consistent with the sacred simplicity of things. Nature has not our scruples: she makes direct for her goal, heedless of our approval and our dislike. Let us silence a delicacy which seems out of place: we must ourselves become animals to a certain small extent, if we wish to understand the beautiful economy of animal industry. Let us [[28]]gloss over things as best we can, but let us not shrink from the truth.

The Cetonia-larva is about to build itself a strong-box in which the transformation, the most delicate of tasks, will be accomplished; it is about to erect itself an enclosing wall, I might almost say, to spin itself a cocoon. The caterpillar, to weave its cocoon withal, has silk-tubes and a spinneret. The Cetonia-larva, which cannot make use of outside things, has nothing at all, it would seem. But this is a mistake. Its poverty is only apparent. Like the caterpillar, it has secret reserves of building-materials; it has even a spinneret, but at the other end of its body. Its store of cement is its intestine.

The grub was a mighty evacuator in its active period, as is proved by the brown granules which it has scattered in profusion along its road. As the transformation approached, it became more moderate; it began to save up, amassing a hoard of paste of a most fine and binding quality. Observe the tip of its belly as it withdraws from the world. You will see a wide dark patch. This is the bag of cement showing through its skin. This store, so well provided, tells us plainly in what the artisan specializes: [[29]]the Cetonia-larva works exclusively in fæcal masonry.

If proofs were needed, here they are. I isolate some larvæ which have attained their full maturity and are ready to build, in small jars, placing one in each. As building needs a support, I provide each jar with some slight contents, which can easily be removed. One receives some cotton-wool, chopped small with the scissors; another some bits of paper, the size of a lentil; a third some parsley-seed; a fourth some radish-seed. I use whatever comes to hand, without preference for this or that.

The larvæ do not hesitate to bury themselves in these surroundings, which their race has never frequented. There is here no earthy matter, such as we should expect to find used in the construction of the cocoons; there is no clay to be collected. Everything is perfectly clean. If the grub builds, it can only do so with mortar from its own factory. But will it build?

To be sure it will and supremely well. In a few days’ time I have magnificent cocoons, as strong as those that I extracted from the leaf-mould. They are, moreover, much prettier in appearance. In the flask [[30]]containing cotton-wool, they are clad in a fluffy fleece; in that containing bits of paper, they are covered with white tiles, as though they had been snowed upon; in those containing radish or parsley-seed they have the look of nutmegs embellished with an accurate milling. This time the work is really beautiful. When human artifice assists the talent of the stercoral artist, the result is a pretty toy.

The outer wrapper of paper scales, seeds or tufts of cotton-wool adheres fairly well. Beneath it is the real wall, consisting entirely of brown cement. The regularity of the shell gives us at first the idea of an intentional arrangement. The same idea occurs to us if we consider the cocoon of the Golden Cetonia, which is often prettily adorned with a rubble of droppings. It looks as though the grub collected from all around such building-stones as suit its purpose and encrusted them piecemeal in the mortar to give greater strength to the work.

But this is not so at all. There is no mosaic-work. With its round rump the larva presses back the shifting material on every side; it adjusts it, levels it by simple pressure and then fixes it, at one point after another, [[31]]by means of its mortar. Thus it obtains an egg-shaped cavity which it reinforces at leisure with fresh layers of plaster, until its excremental reserves are exhausted. Everything that is reached by the trickling of the cement sets like concrete and henceforth forms part of the wall, without any further intervention by the builder.

To follow the grub through the whole course of its labours is impracticable: it works under a roof, protected from our indiscretion. But we can at least surprise the essential secret of its method. I select a cocoon whose softness indicates that the work is not yet completed. I make a moderate hole in it. If it were too wide, the breach would discourage the occupant and would make it impossible for the grub to repair its shattered roof, not for lack of materials, but for want of support.

Let us make a cautious incision with the point of a penknife and look. The grub is rolled into a hook which is almost closed. Feeling uneasy, it puts its head to the sky-light which I have opened and investigates what has happened. The accident is soon perceived. Thereupon the hook closes entirely, the opposite poles of the grub come [[32]]into mutual contact and then and there the builder is in possession of a pellet of cement which the stercoral factory has that moment furnished. To display such prompt obedience the intestine must certainly be peculiarly obliging. That of the Cetonia-larva is very highly so; directly it is called upon to act, it acts.

Now the true function of the legs is revealed. Of no use for walking, they become precious auxiliaries when the time comes for building. They are tiny hands that seize the piece gathered by the mandibles, turn it over and over, and hold it while the mason subdivides it and applies it economically. The pincers of the mandibles serve as a trowel.

They cut bit after bit from the lump, chewing and kneading the material and then spreading it on the edge of the breach. The forehead presses and smooths it as it is laid. When the supply of the moment is exhausted, the grub, coiling itself again into a closed hook, will obtain a further piece from its warehouse, which remains obedient to its orders.

The little that the breach allows us to see—for it is pretty quickly repaired—tells [[33]]us what goes on under ordinary conditions. Without the aid of sight, we see the grub evacuating at intervals and renewing its store of cement; we can follow it as it gathers the clod with the tips of its mandibles, squeezing it with its legs, dividing it to its liking and spreading it with its mouth and forehead on the weak spots of the wall. A rolling motion of the rump gives it a polish. Without borrowing any extraneous materials, the builder finds within itself the building-stones of its edifice.

A similar stercoral talent is the portion of other big-bellied larvæ, which wear around their abdomen a wide brown sash, the insignia of their craft. With the contents of their intestinal wallet they build the hut in which metamorphosis takes place. All tells us of the high economy which knows the secret of turning the abject into the decent and of producing from a box of ordure the Golden Cetonia, the guest of the roses and the glory of the spring. [[34]]

[1] One of the wild Bees. Cf. The Mason-bees, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. viii; and Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. ii., iv. and vii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] A parasitic Bee. Cf. The Mason-bees: chap. viii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] For these wild bees, cf. Bramble-bees and others: passim.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4] Drone-flies.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[5] Cf. The Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. vii.; and The Mason-Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. ix and x.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xiv.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[7] The Cetonia is also known as the Rose-chafer (C. aurata). Cf. More Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: Translator’s Note. [↑]

[8] Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. i to vii. and in particular chap. iv.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[9] This Beetle, also known as C. Oxythyrea, Muls., is black and, in the males, covered with white spots, suggesting a pall.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[10] .117 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[11] 732 cubic inches.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[12] The Rhinoceros-Beetle.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER II

SAPRINI, DERMESTES AND OTHERS

Twenty thousand, Réaumur[1] tells us, twenty thousand embryos in the body of the Grey Flesh-fly![2] Twenty thousand! What does she want with this formidable family? With offspring that reproduce themselves several times in a year, does she intend to dominate the world? She would be capable of it. Speaking of the Bluebottle,[3] who is far less prolific, Linnæus[4] already wrote:

“Three Flies consume the carcase of a Horse as quickly as a Lion could do it.”

What could not the other accomplish? [[35]]

Réaumur reassures us:

“Despite such amazing fertility,” he says, “these sorts of Flies are not commoner than others which resemble them and in whose ovaries we find only two eggs. The maggots of the former are seemingly destined to feed other insects, which very few of them escape.”

Now which are the insects charged with this task of extirpation? The master suspects their existence; he guesses that they are there, without having had the occasion to observe them. My retting-vats provide me with the means of filling up this historical gap; they show me the consumers at their appointed task of thinning out the obtrusive maggot. Let me record this tragic business.

A larger Adder is liquefying, thanks to the solvent dribbled by the teeming vermin. The earthenware dish becomes a porringer full of cadaveric fluid whence the reptile’s backbone emerges spiral-wise. The scaly sheath swells up and throbs in gentle undulations, as though an internal tide were lifting the skin with its ebb and flow. Gangs of workers pass to and fro between skin and muscle, seeking a suitable spot for their activities. A few of them show themselves [[36]]for a moment between the disjointed scales. Surprised by the light, they dart forth their pointed heads and at once pop in again. Close beside them, in the gaps between the spiral coils, the highly-flavoured broth lies in stagnant channels. Here the greater part are feeding in shoals, motionless, packed together, with their bud-shaped breathing-holes expanded on the surface of the liquid. Their numbers are indefinite and immense, defying computation.

Many strangers take part in the maggots’ banquet. The first to hasten to it are the Saprini, lovers of corruption, as their name implies. They arrive at the same time as the Luciliæ,[5] before the flesh liquefies. They take up their positions, inspect the body, tease one another in the sunshine, disappear under the corpse. The time has not yet come for a good square meal. They wait.

Despite their habit of dwelling in fetid surroundings, the Saprini are pretty insects. Well-armoured, thickset, moving by fits and starts with short, quick steps, they glisten like beads of jet. On their shoulders are [[37]]chevron-like stripes which the classifier notes to mark where he stands in the midst of this specific variety; they temper the brilliance of their black wing-cases with stippled spaces which diffuse the light. Some display polished, shimmering patches on a dull-bronze background chased as though with the graver’s tool. Sometimes the sombre ebony costume is embellished with brightly-coloured ornaments. The Spotted Saprinus decorates each wing-case with a splendid orange crescent. In short, considered merely from the æsthetic point of view, these little undertakers’ assistants are by no means devoid of merit. They cut an excellent figure in the glass cases of our collections.

But one should see them above all at work. The Snake is submerged in the broth of its liquefied flesh. The maggots are legion. With their diadem-like valves gently opening and closing, they lie, spread like a field of flowers on the pool of meat-extract. The hour has come for the Saprini to begin feasting.

Busily bustling to and fro on the parts that are still uncovered, they scale the reefs and promontories formed by the reptile’s coils and from these points, protected [[38]]against the perilous flood, they fish for their favourite titbit. Here is a grub near the bank, one not too large and for that reason all the more tender. One of the gluttons sees it, cautiously approaches the depths, snaps with his mandibles and pulls, uprooting his prey. The plump little sausage emerges, wriggling. As soon as it is on dry land, the victim is disembowelled and rapturously crunched up. Not a scrap is left. The morsel is often shared, two collaborators tugging in opposite directions, but without a scuffle.

Maggot-fishing is carried on in this way at every point of the shore. The catch is not abundant, for most of the fry are some distance from the mainland, in deep waters where the Saprini do not venture. They never risk wetting their feet. However, the tide withdraws by degrees, absorbed by the sand and evaporated by the sun. The grubs retreat under the corpse; the Saprini follow them. The massacre becomes general. A few days later, we remove the Snake. There are no maggots left. Nor are there any in the sand, making ready for the metamorphosis. The horde has disappeared: it has been eaten. [[39]]

The extermination is so complete that, to obtain pupæ, I have to resort to rearing them in private, guarding the larvæ against the invasion of the Saprini. The earthenware pans in the open air, though thoroughly searched, never yield me any, however numerous the maggots were at the outset. During my earlier experiments, when as yet I had no suspicion of the massacre, I could not get over my surprise when, after noting an abundance of vermin under this or that piece of carrion a few days before, I no longer found anything, even in the sand. I should have concluded that the occupants had migrated in a body, had it been permissible to imagine a maggot making a long journey through a waterless world.

The Saprini, those lovers of fat sausages are entrusted with the task of thinning out the Grey Fly, of whose twenty thousand offspring only a few will survive, just enough to maintain the race within proper limits. They flock about the dead Mole or Adder; but, kept at a distance by the too liquid sanies and, for that matter, able to live on a few frugal mouthfuls, they wait until the maggots’ work is finished. Then, the liquefaction of the corpse completed, they slaughter [[40]]the liquidators. To purge the soil swiftly of life’s offal, the scavenging maggot multiplies its legions; then, having itself become a peril by reason of its numbers, it disappears, exterminated, when its cleansing task is done.

In my district, I obtain nine species of Saprini, some found under carrion, others under dung. I give their names in a footnote.[6] The first four species hasten to my earthenware pans, but the most numerous and most assiduous, those on whom the bulk of the work falls, are S. subnitidus and S. detersus. They arrive as early as April, at the same time as the Luciliæ, whose offspring they ravage with the same zeal as that of the Grey Fly. Both of them abound in my charnel-pits until the torrid sun of the dog-days puts an end to the invasion of the Flies by drying up the exposed carrion too quickly. They reappear in September, with the first cool breezes of autumn.

Flesh or fish, fur, feather or reptile, everything suits them because it also attracts the [[41]]maggot, their favourite meat. While waiting for the vermin to grow, they take a few sips of the sanies; but these are scarcely more than an appetizer in preparation for the great feast, when the wriggling grubs are fattened to a turn.

Seeing them so active, one at first pictures them as occupied with family-cares. So I believed; and I was wrong. Under the carrion in my necrotic laboratory, there is never an egg belonging to them, never a larva. The family must be established elsewhere, in the dung-hills and dust-heaps apparently. I have, in fact, found their nymphs, which are easily recognized, in March, on the floor of a poultry-run saturated with the droppings of the fowls. The adults visit my retting-pans to feast upon the maggot. When their mission is accomplished, in the late autumn, they seem to return to the filth under whose shelter the generation is prepared which, as soon as winter is over, hastens to the dead bodies of animals to moderate the excesses of the Sarcophagæ[7] and the Luciliæ.

The labours of the Fly do not satisfy the requirements of hygiene. When the soil [[42]]has drunk the cadaveric extract elaborated by the grubs, a great deal remains that cannot be liquefied or dried up by the heat. Other workers are needed, who treat the mummified carcase anew, nibbling at the shrivelled muscles and tendons until the relics are reduced to a heap of bones as clean as ivory.

The Dermestes are charged with this long labour of gnawing. Two species come to my earthenware pans at the same time as the Saprini: D. undulatus, Brahm., and D. Frischii, Kugel. The first, striped with fine, snow-white, wavy lines on a black ground, has a red corselet speckled with brown spots; the second, the larger of the two, is dull black all over, with the sides of the corselet powdered ashen grey. Both wear white flannel underneath, which forms a violent contrast with the rest of the costume and seems inconsistent with the insect’s calling.

The Necrophorus,[8] the burier of the dead, has already shown us this propensity for soft stuffs and the clash of discordant colours. He covers his breast with a waistcoat of nankeen [[43]]flannel, decorates his wing-cases with red stripes and sports an orange club at the tip of his antennæ. The Wavy Dermestes, wearing a leopard-skin cape and a jerkin striped with ermine, could almost, humble though he be, rival the elegance of this mighty undertaker.

Both of them numerous, the two Dermestes come to my earthenware receptacles with a common aim; to dissect the dead body to the bone and to feed on what the maggots have left. If the work of these is not completed, if the lower surface of the corpse is still oozing, they wait, gathered on the edges of the pan or clinging in long rows to the cords by which it is slung. In their tumultuous impatience, falls are frequent, which throw the clumsy insect on its back and for a moment reveal the white flannel of the belly. The thoughtless Beetle soon recovers his feet, runs away and once more climbs the strings. In the kindly sunshine, frequent pairings occur, which is another way of killing time. There are no fights for the best places and the best morsels. The banquet is plentiful; there is room for all.

At last the victuals are in the requisite [[44]]condition; the maggots have disappeared, carried off by the Saprini; these last are themselves becoming scarce and are repairing elsewhither in search of another hoard of vermin. The Dermestes take possession of the corpse and remain indefinitely, even during the cruel dog-days, when the excessive heat and drought have put all else to flight. Under cover of the dried-up carcase, in the shadow of the Mole’s fur, which makes an impenetrable screen, they nibble and gnaw and clip as long as a scrap of edible matter remains on the bones.

And the work of consuming goes fast, for one of the Beetles, Frisch’s Dermestes, is surrounded by her family, who are endowed with the same appetites. Parents and larval offspring of all ages feast higgledy-piggledy, insatiably. As for the Wavy Dermestes, the other’s collaborator in the dissection of corpses, I do not know where she lays her eggs. My pans have taught me nothing in this respect. As against that, they tell me a great deal about the larva of the other Dermestes.

All through the spring and the greater part of the summer the adult abounds beneath my carcases, accompanied by the youngsters, [[45]]ugly creatures covered with wild bristle of dark hairs. The pitch-black back has a red stripe running down the middle from end to end. The white-leaded lower surface already promises the white flannel of maturity. The penultimate segment is armed, above, with two curved points. These are grapnels, which enable the grub to slip swiftly through the interstices of the bones.

The exploited carcase seems deserted, so quiet is everything outside. Lift it up. Instantly what liveliness, what confusion! Surprised by the sudden rush of light, the hairy-backed larvæ dive under the remains, wriggling their way into the crevices of the skeleton; the adults, whose movements are less supple, run to and fro in their distress, burying themselves as best they can, or flying off. Leave them to their darkness: they will resume the interrupted work and, some time in July, we shall find their nymphs with no other shelter than the remnants of the corpse.

Although the Dermestes disdains to burrow underground in order to undergo their transformation, finding sufficient protection beneath the remains of the wasted corpse, this is by no means the case with the Silpha, [[46]]another exploiter of the dead. Two species visit my pans: S. rugosa, Linn., and S. sinuata, Fab. Although assiduously frequented by both species, my appliances tell me nothing definite about the history of these two habitual associates of the Dermestes and the Saprinus. Perhaps I took up the matter too late.

At the end of the winter, indeed, I find beneath a toad the family of the Wrinkled Silpha. It consists of some thirty naked larvæ, glossy, black, flat and tapering to a point. The abdominal segments end on either side in a spike aimed backwards. The penultimate segment has short, bristling filaments. Hidden in the shadow of the disembowelled toad, these larvæ are nibbling the dry meat, long toasted in the sun.

About the first week in May, they repair underground, where each of them digs itself a spherical recess. The nymphs are continually on the alert. At the slightest disturbance, they twirl their pointed abdomen, brandishing it to and fro with a rapid whirling motion. At the end of the same month, the adults leave the soil. Equally precocious, it would seem, are the insects that come to [[47]]my pans, to eat their fill but not to reproduce their species. Family cares are postponed to a later season, to the end of autumn.

I shall mention but briefly the Necrophorus (N. vestigator, Herch.), whose feats I have described elsewhere.[9] He comes to my apparatus, of course, but without making a long stay, the carcases being as a rule too large for his burying-methods. For that matter, I myself would thwart his enterprises if it did suit him. I want to see not burials but operations in the open air. If the sexton is persistent, I dissuade him by pestering him.

Let us pass on to others. Who is this, assiduous visitor, but appearing only in small parties, hardly more than four or five at a time? It is an Hemipteron,[10] a slender Bug, with red wings and with stout, toothed thighs to its hind-legs; it is the Spurred Alydus (A. calcaratus, Linn.), a near kinswoman of the Reduvius, so interesting because of her explosive egg.[11] She too has [[48]]an appetite for game, but how moderate compared with the other’s! I see her wandering over my specimens in search of a denuded bone bleached by the sun. After finding a suitable point she applies the tip of her rostrum to it and for some time remains motionless.

With her rigid implement, fine as a horse-hair, what can she extract from that bone? I ask myself in vain, so dry does the surface exploited appear to be. Perhaps she collects the vestiges of grease left by the Dermestes’ conscientious tooth. Quite a secondary worker, she gleans where others have reaped. I should have liked to follow this bone-sucker’s habits more closely and above all to obtain her eggs, in the hope of discovering some little mechanical secret at the moment of hatching. My attempts failed. When imprisoned in a glass jar with the victuals which she requires, the Alydus allows herself to pine away from one day to the next. She needs to fly in freedom over the neighbouring rosemary-bushes, after her sojourn in the retting-vats.

We will close this list of undertakers’ assistants with the Staphylini,[12] the tribe with [[49]]the short wing-cases. Two species, both inmates of dung-hills, haunt my earthenware pans: Aleochara fuscipes, Fab., and Staphylinus maxillosus, Linn. My attention is drawn rather to the latter, the family giantess.

Barred with ash-grey velvet on a black ground, the Big-jawed Staphylinus reaches me only in small numbers, always one by one. She flies up hastily, perhaps from the stables hard by. She alights, coils her belly, opens her pincers and dives impetuously into the Mole’s fur. Then, with her powerful nippers, she punctures the skin, now blue and distended by gases. The sanies oozes out. The glutton greedily eats her fill; and that is all. Soon she departs, as suddenly as she came.

I have not had the good fortune to see anything further. The big Staphylinus hastens to my pans only to feast upon a highly seasoned dish. Her family dwelling must be in the dung-hills about the stables of the neighbourhood. I should have much liked to see her make her home in my charnel-pits.

The Staphylinus is a curious creature indeed. Her short wing-cases, covering just the top of her shoulders, her fierce mandibles, [[50]]overlapping like a meat-hook, and her long, naked abdomen, which she lifts and brandishes in the air, make her a being apart, of alarming aspect. I should like to learn something of her larva. As I cannot do this with the Beetle that visits my Moles, I apply myself to a kindred species, as nearly as possible her equivalent in respect of size.

In winter, when I raise the stones beside the foot-paths, I often come across the larva of the Stinking Staphylinus (S. olens, Müll.), or Devil’s Coach-horse. The ugly animal, which is not very different in shape from the adult, measures about an inch in length. The head and thorax are a fine, glossy black; the abdomen is brown and bristles with sparse hairs. The cranium is flat; the mandibles are black and very sharp, opening in a ferocious crescent whose width is more than twice the diameter of the head. The mere sight of these curved daggers enables us to guess the highwayman’s habits.

The creature’s most singular implement is the end of the intestine, which is covered with a horny substance prolonged into a stiff tube standing at right angles to the axis of the body. This member is an instrument of locomotion, an anal crutch. In walking, [[51]]the animal presses the tip of this crutch to the ground and thrusts backwards as with a lever, while the legs struggle forward. Doré,[13] the famous illustrator of extravagant notions, conceived a similar system. He shows us somewhere a legless cripple seated in a bowl supported by a pivot and working himself along on his hands. The artist’s grotesque imagination might well have been inspired by the grotesque appearance of the insect.

Even among its own kind, the crutched insect is a bad neighbour. Very rarely do I find two larvæ under the same stone; and, when this happens, one of the two is always in a pitiful state: the other is devouring it as if it were its ordinary game. Let us watch this conflict of two cannibals, each thirsting for the other’s blood.

In the arena furnished by a tumbler containing some moist sand, I place two larvæ of equal strength. The moment they face each other, they suddenly rear up, bending their bodies backwards, with the six legs in the air, hooks of the mandibles wide open and the anal crutch firmly fixed. They look [[52]]magnificently audacious in this posture of attack and defence. This above all is the best moment for recognizing the great advantage of the pivot at the tail. Though in danger of being disembowelled by its adversary, the larva has no other support than the tip of the abdomen and the terminal tube. The six legs play no part in sustaining it; they wave in the air, all six free and ready to clasp the enemy.

The two adversaries are standing face to face. Which of the two will eat the other? Chance decides. Mutual threats are followed by a hand-to-hand struggle. The fight does not last long. Favoured by the hazards of the fray, or perhaps timing its blows more accurately, one seizes the other by the scruff of the neck. It is done: any resistance on the part of the vanquished is impossible; blood flows and murder has been committed. When all movement has ceased, the victor devours the slain, leaving only the unpleasantly hard skin.

Is this frenzy for killing among creatures of the same species due to cannibalism enforced by starvation? I really do not think so. When well-fed to begin with, rich, moreover, in the victuals which I lavish upon [[53]]them, these miscreants are as prone as ever to butcher their kith and kin. In vain I overwhelm them with choice morsels: succulent sausages in the shape of young Anoxia-larvæ;[14] Vitrinæ,[15] tiny molluscs which I give them half-crushed, to spare the banqueters the trouble of extracting them from the shell. As soon as they are confronted, the two bandits, which have just been feasting on a prey as bulky as themselves, stand up, challenging each other and snapping at each other until one of the two is dead. Then follows the odious meal. To eat the murdered kinsman is, it seems, the usual thing.

The Mantis[16] who, in captivity, preys upon her mates has the madness of the rutting beast as her excuse. The fierce, jealous creature can find no better way of getting rid of her rivals than to eat them, provided she be the stronger. This procreative depravity is found much higher in the scale. The Cat and the Rabbit notably are prone to devour the young family which might stand in the way of their unslaked passions. [[54]]

In my glass jars and under the flat stones in the fields the Devil’s Coach-horse has no such excuse. Thanks to its larval state, it is utterly indifferent to the disorders attendant on the pairing. Those of its fellows which it encounters are not its amorous rivals. And yet without more ado they seize and slay one another. A fight to the death decides which is to be the consumed and which the consumer.

In our language we have the word anthropophagi to denote the horrible eating of man by man; we have nothing to express a similar act in animals of the same species. A proverbial phrase would even seem to say that such a term is uncalled for, except where man is concerned, that baffling admixture of nobility and baseness. Wolf does not eat Wolf, says the wisdom of the nations. Well, here we have the larva of the Stinking Staphylinus giving the lie to the proverb.

What a morality. In this connection, I should have wished to consult the Big-jawed Staphylinus when she came to visit my highly-seasoned Moles, my putrefying Snakes. But she always refused to divulge her secrets, withdrawing from the charnel-pit once she had filled her maw. [[55]]

[1] René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757), the French physicist and naturalist, inventor of the Réaumur thermometer and author of Mémoires pour savoir à l’histoire naturelle des insectes.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. x.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] Cf. idem: chaps. xiv. to xvi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4] Carolus Linnæus (Karl von Linné, 1707–1778), the celebrated Swedish botanist and naturalist.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[5] Or Greenbottles. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap. ix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] Under carrion: S. subnitidus, De Mars: S. detersus Illig.: S. maculatus, Ros.: S. æneus, Fab.—Author’s Note.

Under dung: S. speculifer, Latr.: S. virescens, Payk.: S. metallescens, Erich: S. furvus, Erich: S. rotundatus, Illig.—Author’s Note. [↑]

[7] S. carnaria is the Grey Flesh-fly.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[8] Or Burying-beetle. Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. xi. and xii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[9] Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chaps. xi. and xii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[10] An order of insects consisting mainly of Bugs.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[11] The essay on the Masked Reduvius will appear in the following volume, the last volume of the series.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[12] Or Rove-beetles.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[13] Gustave Doré (1833–1883), the French illustrator of Dante, Rabelais, La Fontaine and many others.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[14] The Anoxia is a Beetle akin to the Cockchafer.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[15] A genus of Land-Snails.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[16] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. vi. to ix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER III

THE BEADED TROX

The Fly has deserved well of hygiene. The first to come to the dead Mole, she left behind her a garrison of scavengers which, without dissecting-instruments, whether lancets or scalpels, set to work upon the corpse. The most urgent matter was to sterilize the carcase, to extract from it such substances as are readily corrupted, the source of rapid and dangerous putrescence. And this is what the maggot has been doing. From its pointed mouth, for ever poking and rummaging, it dribbled forth a solvent as effective as any in my laboratory; with this reagent it dissolved the flesh and viscera, or at least reduced them to a thick liquid broth. Gradually the soil is saturated with the fertilizing moisture, which the plant will soon restore to the laboratory of living chemistry.

When her mission is completed, the Fly herself becomes a danger, because of her excessive [[56]]numbers. In order to perform their pressing task more quickly, the maggots operate in legions. If not checked, they would encumber the world. The balance of things in general demands their disappearance. Then, in due season, the exterminator arrives, the Saprinus doting on fat sausages, the slow-trotting Beetle in black armour who massacres the vermin and leaves only enough survivors to maintain the race.

The Mole is now a dried-up mummy, but is harmful if affected by moisture. This remnant also has to disappear. The Dermestes is entrusted with the task. She establishes herself beneath the remains in company with the Silpha, her collaborator. With her patient tooth she files, rasps and disarticulates as long as a scrap of cartilage is left to gnaw. She is greatly assisted by her starveling larvæ, who are lither in the back and therefore able to slip into narrow crevices.

By the time the Dermestes has finished, my pans contain so many heaps of bones, a conglomeration of Snakes’ vertebræ arranged in a row, Moles’ jaws, with their fine, insectivorous teeth, Frogs’ toe-and-finger-joints, [[57]]radiating like knotty sticks, Rabbits’ skulls overlapping their powerful incisors, all white and clean enough to arouse the envy of the people who prepare our anatomical specimens.

Yes, working one on the soft parts and then the other on the hard, the maggot and the Dermestes have performed a meritorious task. There is no longer any pestilential filth, any dangerous effluvia. The residue, mostly of a chalky nature, if it still offends the eye, is at least capable of vitiating the air, the first aliment of life. General hygiene is satisfied.

Besides his bones, the Mole has left the tatters of his fur; the Snake has been flayed in tatters like the skin which boiling water strips from a fleshy root. The Fly’s solvent was powerless to affect these refractory substances; the Dermestes refused them. Will these epidermic shreds remain unutilized? Certainly not. Nature, the sublime economist, takes good care that all things return to the treasury of her works. Not an atom must be allowed to go astray.

Others will come, frugal and patient pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, and will garner the Mole’s fur, hair by hair, to cover [[58]]themselves, to clothe themselves with it; there will be some, we may be sure, that will feast upon the Snake’s cast scales. These are the Tineæ, the humble caterpillars of no less humble Moths.

Everything suits them in the way of animal clothing: bristles, hair, scales, horn, fur, feather; but for their labours they need darkness and repose. In the sunshine and bustle of the open air they refuse the relics in my pans; they wait until a gust of wind sweeps the charnel-pits and carries the Mole’s velvety down or the reptile’s parchment into a shady corner. Then, infallibly, the cast-off garments of the dead will disappear. As for the bones, the atmospheric agencies, having plenty of time, will crumble and disintegrate them in good time.

If I wish to hasten the end of the epidermic remains disdained by the Dermestes, I have only to keep them in a dry place, in the dark. Before long the Moth will come to exploit them. They infest my house. I had received the skin of a Rattlesnake from Guiana. The horrible specimen, rolled into a bundle, reached me intact, with its poison-fangs, the mere sight of which makes one shudder, and its alarm of rattling rings. In [[59]]the Carib country it had been steeped in a poison which should have ensured its preservation for an indefinite length of time. A useless precaution: the Moths have invaded the thing; they are gnawing at the Rattlesnake’s skin and find the unusual dish, here eaten for the first time, excellent. More familiar victuals, such as the skin of our native Snake, tanned by the maggots and the sun, would be exploited with even greater enthusiasm.

And any relics of what has once lived are visited by specialists who come hurrying up to work upon dead matter and restore it to circulation under new forms. Among them are some whose peculiar specialty shows us with what scrupulous economy the waste material of life is utilized. Such is the Beaded Trox (T. perlatus, Scriba), a humble Beetle, no larger than a cherry-stone at most, black all over and decorated on the wing-cases with rows of protuberances which have earned it the epithet of beaded.

Not to know the Trox is quite excusable, for the insect has never been much talked about. It is an obscure creature, overlooked by the historian. When impaled in a collector’s box, it ranks close to the Dung-Beetles, [[60]]just after the Geotrupes.[1] Its mean and earthy attire denotes a digger. But what precisely is its calling? Like many others, I did not know, when an accidental discovery enlightened me and taught me that the beaded insect deserves something better than a mere compartment in the collector’s necropolis.

February was drawing to a close. The weather was mild and the sun warm. We had gone off in a family party, with the children’s lunch, an apple and a chunk of bread, in the basket, to see the almond trees in bloom. When lunch-time came, we were resting under some great oaks, when Anna, the youngest of the household, always on the watch for “beasties” with her six-year-old eyes, called to me from a distance of a few yards:

“A beastie!” she cried. “Two, three, four of them! And such pretty ones! Come and look, papa, come and look!”

I ran up to her. The child had dug into the sand, to no great depth, with a bit of stick, and was breaking up a sort of rag of [[61]]fur. I produced my pocket trowel and joined her in the task; and in a moment I possessed a dozen Trox-beetles, most of whom I found in a filthy tangle of fur and broken bones. They were working away at it and apparently feeding on it. I had disturbed them at their banquet.

What could this mess be? That was the fundamental question to be solved. Brillat-Savarin[2] declared as an axiom:

“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”

If I wish to know the Trox, I must first enquire what she eats. Reader, pity the sorrows of the naturalist! Behold me scrutinizing, meditating, conjecturing, my mind set in a whirl by an unspeakable problem, a stercoral problem.

Whom am I to hold responsible for this fibrous lump, in which I seem to distinguish Rabbit’s fur as the chief ingredient? The probabilities point to the dog. Rabbits abound on the Sérignan hills; they even enjoy a certain reputation among our epicures. The village sportsmen hunt them assiduously; and their Dogs, those poachers heedless of [[62]]licences and of the police, do not fail to harry them on their own account, at all seasons, close or open.

Two of them are known to me by report: Mirate and Flambard. They meet by appointment of a morning in the market-place, exchange an inquisitive glance, inspect each other with the three regulation turns, lift a leg against the wall … and off they go! For the best part of the morning you can hear them on the neighbouring hill-sides, giving vent to short, sharp yelps, close on the heels of a Rabbit who scampers from thicket to thicket, with his little white scut in the air. At last they return home: the result of the expedition may be read on their bloody chaps: the Rabbit was eaten on the spot, just as it was, skin and all.

Does this really explain the substance on which my Trox-beetles were living? It seems to me that it does. Henceforth it would appear an easy matter to rear them. I install the insects in a large earthenware pan with a bed of sand and a wire-gauze cover. The provisions consist of Dog-droppings, dried on the road-mender’s stone-heaps beside the highway. My menagerie absolutely refuse to look at them. I have [[63]]made a mistake. Then what does it want?

It is under hairy ordure that I find the insect, always there and never any elsewhere. Rarely does a lump of this rough felt fail to conceal a few of them. Under their tight-fitting wing-cases, they have only quite rudimentary wings, unsuited to flight. These short-legged creatures hasten to the titbit and gather about it on foot. They come from afar, from all points of the compass, guided by the scent. Once more, what is the origin of this felt, which has a strong enough stench in the fresh state to attract its consumers from such a distance?

At last I have my answer. Investigations patiently pursued on the slopes of the hills, above all near the farms, furnish me with a decisive piece of evidence. This is a mass of filth, full of fur and Trox-beetles, like the others, but this time a regular nugget, all glittering with wing-cases of the Golden Carabus.[3] Eureka! Never did Dog, even though starving, feed on Beetles, least of all on acrid Carabi. Only the Fox, in time of dearth, accepts such food, in the absence of anything better. Later on he makes up for [[64]]it with Rabbits, slaughtering them by night, when his rivals, Mirate and Flambard, are resting from their labours.

The fur from which the Fox’s stomach can derive no benefit has its votaries. In the natural state, as it grows on the skins which provide the hat-maker with felt, it suits the Moth; unsuccessfully worked by the carnivore’s intestine and seasoned with fæcal matter, it delights the Beaded Trox. There are all sorts of tastes in this world, so that nothing may be lost. The menagerie under the wire-gauze dome, when supplied with the requisite diet of Rabbit’s fur pickled by an attempt at digestion, fares very well.

Moreover, the food is collected without difficulty. The Fox is only too common in my neighbourhood. I can easily find his furry excreta on the tangled paths which he frequents at night when going his round of the farms. My Trox-beetles have plenty to eat.

Not endowed with a nomadic temperament and abundantly provided for, they seem very well satisfied with the arrangements made on their behalf. By day, they remain on the heap of victuals; feeding at leisure, without moving. If I approach the [[65]]wire-gauze cover, they instantly drop down; then, recovering from their excitement, they hide under the heap. There is nothing striking in the habits of these pacific creatures, unless it be the pairing, which drags on for two months, frequently broken off, frequently resumed, often a passing fancy. It is never finished.

At the end of April I proceed to search under the heap of provisions. The eggs are distributed very near the surface in the moist sand, singly, without cells or any preparation by the mother. They are white and globular, about the size of small birdshot. I find that they are very bulky in comparison with the size of the insect. Their number is not great. Ten at most is the allowance for one mother, as far as I can judge.

The larvæ soon appear and develop rather quickly. They are naked, cylindrical grubs, dull white, curved into a hook like the Dung-beetles’, but without the knapsack in which the latter reserve the cement for plastering the interior of the emptied loaf and preserving the victuals from desiccation. The head is powerful and glossy black; there is a brown streak on either side of the first [[66]]thoracic segment; the legs and mandibles are strongly made.

Classed close beside the Dung-eaters, the Trox-beetles form a genus of boorish habits, far removed from the domestic fondness of the Scarabæus, the Copris[4] and the others. With them there are no longer provisions stored away beforehand, no rations kneaded for the larva’s benefit. The least industrious of the Dung-beetles, the Onthophagi,[5] for example, pack into the bottom of a pit a short sausage, selected from the best part of the exploited heap; in the dish thus provided they contrive a hatching-chamber, in which the egg is daintily lodged. Thanks to the mother’s care, often, also, to the father’s, the new-born grub finds itself provided with all it could wish. It is a privileged creature, spared the asperities of life.

The Trox, on the other hand, has a harsh and pitiless training. The grub has to find board and lodging at its own cost and peril, a serious question even for a consumer of Fox-dung. The mother scatters her eggs [[67]]under the furry ordure. Her foresight in the interest of her young goes no further. The cake that nourishes her will feed her family likewise. It is large and will be enough for all.

In order to follow the first actions of the grubs, I set apart a few eggs, singly, in a glass tube. At the bottom is a column of moist sand; above this is a store of food taken from that part of the Vulpine excrement which is richest in Rabbit’s fur. Hatched by day, the grub at first attends to its lodging. It digs, hollowing itself a retreat in the sand, a short, vertical shaft into which a few scraps of the fostering felt are dragged afterwards. As and when the provisions are consumed, the grub returns to the surface to collect more.

The manœuvres of the grubs in the chief establishment, the earthenware pan with the wire-gauze cover, begin and are continued in the same fashion. Under cover of the heap exploited in common, the larvæ have dug themselves a vertical shaft apiece, the length of a man’s finger and the diameter of a thick pencil. At the bottom of the dwelling there is no mass of victuals stored up in advance, such as the abundance on the surface would [[68]]permit. Instead of hoarding, the Trox-larvæ live from day to day, I surprise them, above all in the evening, discreetly climbing to the top, scraping the heap above their pit, collecting a shaggy armful and immediately climbing down again tail foremost. They do not reappear so long as the little bale of fur holds out. When their provisions are finished and their appetite returns, they make a fresh ascent and a fresh collection.

This frequent coming and going in the shaft threatens sooner or later to bring down the sandy wall. Here we see renewed the industry of the Geotrupes couples, who have a way of plastering the wall of their pit with dung in order to avoid its collapsing while the material of the huge sausage is being amassed on repeated journeys; only, with the Trox, it is the larva itself that undertakes the work of consolidation. From end to end it lines its gallery with the same felt on which it feeds.

In three or four weeks’ time, all the hairy materials of the heap have disappeared underground, dragged by the larvæ to the bottom of their burrows. On the surface of the soil nothing is left except the remains [[69]]of the bones. The adults have gone to earth and are dead or dying. Their time is over. I obtain the first nymphs at midsummer. A glass receptacle shows them to me slowly turning round and round and polishing with their backs the earthy wall of their cell, a simple, oval cavity.

By the middle of July the perfect insect has matured. Not yet defiled by the dirt of its calling, it is really magnificent in its ebony cuirass, its strings of large beads surmounted by white hairs, its hinder and middle tarsi shod with bright red. It comes up to the surface, finds the Fox’s dejecta, settles down and from now onward is a filthy scavenger. Once torpid in the sand, under the heap of ordure which serves it as a roof, it will pass the winter there and resume its labours in the spring.

When all is said, the Trox is a somewhat uninteresting insect. One single point in her history deserves to be remembered, namely, her predilection for what the Fox’s stomach has refused. I know another instance of these peculiar tastes. The Owl, when he has caught a Field-mouse, stuns her with a blow of his beak on the back of the neck and swallows her whole. It is for the [[70]]digestive pouch to bone and skin her and sift the bad from the good. When the selection is made—as it is, most admirably—the bird, with a shrug of its body, gets rid of the indigestible stuff; it vomits a pellet of bones and fur. Now, just like the furry mass evacuated by the Fox, these balls of filth have their votaries. I have just seen one of them at work. This is the Choleva tristis, Panz., a dwarf related to the family of the Silphæ.

Is the fur of a Rabbit or a Field-mouse such a very precious thing, then, that it has special exploiters appointed to work at it again after the Fox’s intestine and the Owl’s crop have been unable to break it up and use it? Yes, this fur has a certain value. Nature’s treasury claims it for fresh purposes with such an imperious voice that our own industries, which in their fashion are endowed with a terrific power, of digestion, cannot guarantee us the protracted possession of what was a scrap of fluff.

Cloth comes from the Sheep. It has been worked up by the teeth of machinery at the spinner’s and the weaver’s; it has been steeped in chemicals at the dyer’s; it has passed through worse ordeals than an attempt [[71]]to digest it. Is it now safe from attack? No: the Moth vie with us for its possession.

Poor swallow-tail coat of mine, of supple broadcloth, companion of my drudgery[6] and witness of my poverty, I abandon you without regret for the peasant’s jacket; you are reposing in a drawer, with a few bags of camphorated lavender; the housewife keeps an eye on you and shakes you from time to time. Useless pains! You will perish by the Clothes-moths, as the Mole perished by the maggot, the Snake by the Dermestes and we ourselves by.… Let us not dig that last pit of all before the hour has struck. Everything must return to the renovating crucible into which death is continually pouring materials to ensure the continual blossoming of life. [[72]]

[1] Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, xii. to xiv.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), the author of La Physiologie du Goût.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] Or True Ground-beetles. Cf. Chapters XIV and XV of the present volume.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4] For the Scarabæus, or Sacred Beetle, the Broad-necked Scarab, the Spanish Copris and the Lunary Copris, cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chaps. i. to x. and xvi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[5] Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chaps. xi., xvii. and xviii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] This is a reference to the days when the author was a provincial schoolmaster. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chaps. xiii., xiv., xix., and xx.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IV

MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS: THE BURROW

To describe the insect which forms the subject of this chapter, scientific nomenclature has combined two formidable names: that of the Minotaur, Minos’ Bull fed on human flesh in the windings of the Cretan labyrinth, and that of Typhon or Typhœus, one of the giants, sons of Terra, who attempted to scale heaven. Thanks to the clue of thread which he received from Minos’ daughter Ariadne, Theseus the Athenian found the Minotaur, slew him, and came out safe and sound, after delivering his country for ever from the dreadful tribute destined for the monster’s food.

Typhœus, struck by a thunder-bolt on his piled-up mountains, was hurled into the flanks of Etna. He is still there. His breath is the smoke of the volcano. When he coughs, he spews forth streams of lava; when he shifts his weight from shoulder to [[73]]shoulder, he puts all Sicily in a flutter: he shakes her with an earthquake.

It is not unpleasing to find an echo of these old fables in natural history. Mythological names, so resonant and grateful to the ear, do not entail any contradiction with reality, a defect not always avoided by terms entirely built up of data derived from the lexicon. When, moreover, vague analogies connect the fabulous with the historical, then the happiest surnames and forenames are obtained. Minotaurus Typhœus Lin. is an instance in point. It is the name given to a fair-sized black Beetle, closely related to the earth-borers, the Geotrupes.[1] This is a peaceable, inoffensive creature, but even better provided with horns than Minos’ Bull. None among our armour-loving insects wears so threatening a panoply. The male carries on his corselet a bundle of three sharp spears, parallel and pointed forwards. Imagine him the size of a Bull: Theseus himself, if he met him in the fields, would not dare to face his terrible trident.

The Typhœus of the legend had the ambition to sack the home of the gods by stacking [[74]]one atop of the other a pile of mountains wrenched from their base; the Typhœus of the naturalists does not climb: he descends; he bores the soil to enormous depths. The first, with a heave of the shoulder, set a province trembling; the second, with a thrust of his back, makes his little mound quake as Etna quakes when he who lies buried beneath her stirs.

Such is the insect which I propose to study to-day, penetrating as far as may be into the secret sources of its actions. The few particulars which I have already gained, during the long period of my acquaintance with it, make me suspect habits worthy of a fuller record.

But what is the use of this record, what the use of all this minute research? I well know that it will not bring about a fall in the price of pepper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages or other serious events of this sort, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent upon exterminating one another. The insect does not aspire to so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in all the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to [[75]]decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves.

Insects are easy to obtain, by no means burdensome to feed and not repulsive when subjected to a physical examination; and they lend themselves far better than the higher animals to our curious investigations. Besides, the others are our near kinsfolk and do but repeat a somewhat monotonous theme, whereas insects, with their unparalleled wealth of instincts, habits and structure, reveal a new world to us, much as though we were conferring with the natives of another planet. This is why I hold insects in such high esteem and constantly renew my untiring relations with them.

Minotaurus Typhœus affects the open sandy places where the flocks of Sheep, on their way to the pasture, scatter their trails of black pellets, which constitute his daily food. In their absence, he also accepts the tiny products of the Rabbit, which are easy to gather, for the timid rodent, perhaps afraid of scattering broadcast the evidences of his whereabouts, always goes to some accustomed spot surrounded by tufts of thyme, to deposit his droppings. [[76]]

These to the Minotaur represent victuals of inferior quality, utilized, in the absence of anything better, for his own nourishment, but not served to his family. He prefers those supplied by the flock. Were it a matter of naming him according to his tastes, we should have to call him the assiduous collector of Sheep-droppings. This pastoral predilection did not escape the old observers, one of whom speaks of him as the Sheep Scarab, Scarabæus ovinus.

The burrows, which may be recognized by the little mound that surmounts them first become numerous in autumn, when the rains have at last come to moisten the soil parched by the scorching heat of summer. Then the young of this year emerge slowly from underground and for the first time come out to enjoy the light; then, for a few weeks, they feast in temporary marquees; and next they begin to hoard with a view to the winter.

Let us inspect the dwelling: an easy task, for which a simple pocket-trowel will suffice. The mansion occupied in the late autumn is a shaft as wide as a man’s finger and about nine inches deep. There is no special chamber, but a sunk pit, as perpendicular as the [[77]]inequalities of the soil will allow it to be. The owner, now of one sex, now of the other, is at the bottom, always alone. The time to settle down and establish a family not having yet arrived, each of them lives like an anchorite and thinks only of his own welfare. Above the hermit a vertical column of Sheep-droppings blocks the dwelling. There is often enough to fill the palm of one’s hand.

How did the Minotaur acquire so much wealth? He amasses it easily, being spared the worry of seeking it, for he is always careful to install himself near a copious defecation. He gleans on the very threshold of his door. When he thinks fit, especially at night, he chooses from the heap of pellets one to suit him. Using his clypeus as a lever, he loosens it below; rolling it gently, he brings it to the orifice of the pit, where the booty is swallowed up. More follow, one by one, all easily handled because of the olive-like shape. They roll like casks trundled by the cooper.

When the Sacred Beetle proposes to go banqueting underground far from the madding crowd, he packs his share of victuals into a ball; he gives it its spherical form, [[78]]that best adapted to transport. The Minotaur, though also versed in the mechanics of rolling, has no occasion to make these preparations: the Sheep saves him the trouble by modelling fragments which are easily moved.

At last, satisfied with his harvest, the gleaner goes indoors. What will he do with his treasure? Feed on it, that goes without saying, until the cold and its consequent torpor stay the appetite. But eating is not everything. In the winter, certain precautions become essential in a retreat of only middling depth. When December draws nigh, already we find a few mounds as large as those of spring. They correspond with burrows running down three feet or more. In these deeply buried crypts there is always a female who, sheltered from the rough weather outside, is frugally nibbling at her scanty provender.

Dwellings like these, with an equable temperature, are still rare. The majority, always occupied by a single inhabitant, whether male or female, are barely nine inches deep. As a rule, they are padded with a thick blanket, obtained from dry pellets, crumbled and reduced to shreds. We may take it that this fibrous mass, which is [[79]]eminently fitted to retain the heat, has a good deal to do with the hermit’s comfort in severe weather. In the late autumn, the Minotaur hoards so that he may take refuge in a felt mattress when the cold really sets in.

Couples addicted to nest-building in concert begin to meet in the early days of March. The two sexes, hitherto isolated in burrows near the surface, are now associated for a long time to come. Where does the meeting take place, where is the agreement to collaborate concluded? One fact, to begin with, attracts my attention. At the end of autumn, as in winter, females abound as frequently as the males. When March comes, I find hardly any, so much so that I despair of properly stocking the cage in which I propose to observe the insects’ habits. To fifteen males I unearth three females at most. What has become of the latter, so numerous in the beginning?

True, I am excavating the burrows most readily accessible to my pocket-trowel. Perhaps the secret of the absentees lies at the bottom of those retreats which are more difficult to inspect. Let us appeal to arms, suppler and stronger than my own; let us take a spade and dig deep into the soil. I [[80]]am rewarded for my perseverance; Females are found at last, as many as I could wish. They are alone, without provisions, at the bottom of a perpendicular gallery whose depth would discourage any one not endowed with exemplary patience.

Everything is now explained. From the time of the spring awakening and even sometimes at the end of autumn, before they have made the acquaintance of their collaborators, the valiant future mothers set to work, choosing a good place and sinking a shaft which, if it does not yet attain the requisite depth, will at least be the starting-point of more considerable works. It is in these shafts, more or less advanced, that the suitors come in search of the workers, at the secret hours of the twilight. Sometimes there are several of them. It is not uncommon to find two or three gathered round the same bride. As one is enough, the others decamp and pursue their quest elsewhere, as soon as the lady’s choice and perhaps a bit of a skirmish have concluded the matter.

The quarrels among these pacific creatures cannot be very serious. A little grappling with the legs, whose toothed shanks [[81]]grate upon the rigid harness; a few tumbles provoked by blows of the trident: the strife amounts to no more than this. When the superfluous wooers are gone, the pairing takes place, the household is established; and then and there bonds are contracted which are remarkably enduring.

Are these bonds never dissolved? Do the husband and wife recognize each other among their fellows? Are they mutually faithful? Cases of connubial disloyalty are very rare, are in fact unknown, on the part of the mother, who has long ceased to leave the house; on the other hand, they are frequent on the part of the father, whose duties often compel him to go abroad. As we shall see presently, he is throughout his life the purveyor of victuals, the person appointed to cart away the rubbish. Single-handed, at different hours of the day, he shoots out of doors the earth thrown up by the mother’s excavations; single-handed he explores the surroundings of the house at night, in quest of pellets whereof to knead the children’s loaves.

Sometimes two burrows are side by side. May not the collector of provisions, on returning home, easily mistake the door and [[82]]enter another’s house? On his walks abroad, does he never happen to meet ladies taking the air who have not yet settled down and then, forgetful of his first mate, does he not qualify for divorce? The question was worth looking into. I have tried to solve it in the following manner.

I take two couples from the ground when the excavations are in full swing. Indelible marks, scratched with a needle on the lower edge of the wing-cases, will enable me to distinguish them one from the other. The four objects of my experiment are distributed at random, singly, over the surface of a sandy space some eighteen inches deep. Soil of this depth will be sufficient for the excavations of a night. In case provisions should be needed, I supply a handful of Sheep-droppings. A large earthenware pan, turned upside down, covers the arena, prevents escape and affords the darkness favourable to peaceful concentration.

Next day, I obtain splendid results. There are two burrows in the settlement and no more; the couples have formed again as they were: each Jack has recovered his Jill. A second experiment, made next day, and yet a third meet with the same success: the [[83]]marked couples are together, those not marked are together, at the bottom of the shaft.

Five times more, day after day, I make them set up house anew. Things now begin to go amiss. Sometimes each of my four subjects settles down apart from the rest; sometimes the same burrow contains the two males or the two females; sometimes the same vault receives the two sexes, but associated otherwise than in the beginning. I have repeated the experiment too often. Henceforth, disorder reigns. My daily shufflings have demoralized the diggers; a crumbling house that has constantly to be begun afresh has put an end to lawful unions. Respectable married life becomes impossible from the moment when the house falls in from day to day.

No matter: the first three experiments, made when scares, time after time renewed, had not yet tangled the delicate connecting thread, seem to point to a certain constancy in the Minotaur’s household. The male and female recognize each other, find each other in the confusion of events which my mischievous doings force upon them; they exhibit a mutual fidelity, a very unusual [[84]]quality in the insect class, which is but too prone to forget its matrimonial obligations.

How do they recognize each other? We recognize one another by our facial features, which vary so greatly in different individuals, notwithstanding their common likeness. They, to tell the truth, have no faces; there is no expression beneath their rigid masks. Besides, things happen in profound darkness. The sense of sight therefore does not count at all.

We recognize one another by our speech, by the tone, the inflection of our voices. They are dumb, deprived of all means of vocal appeal. There remains the sense of smell. Minotaurus finding his mate makes me think of my friend Tom, the house-dog, who, when the moon stirs his emotions, lifts his nose in the air, sniffs the breeze and jumps the garden-walls, eager to obey the remote and magical summons; he puts me in mind of the Great Peacock Moth,[2] who hastens from miles afield to pay his respects to the newly-hatched maid.

The comparison, however, is far from being complete, the Dog and the big Moth [[85]]get wind of the wedding before they know the bride. The Minotaur, on the contrary, has no experience of long pilgrimages and makes his way, within a short radius, to her whom he has already frequented; he recognizes her, he distinguishes her from the others by certain emanations, certain individual secrets inappreciable to any save the enamoured swain. Of what do these effluvia consist? The insect did not tell me; and that is a pity, for it might have taught us things worth knowing about its powers of smell.

Now how is the work divided in this household? To discover this is no easy undertaking, for which the point of a penknife will suffice. He who proposes to inspect the burrowing insect in its home must resort to exhausting excavations. We have not here the chamber of the Sacred Beetle, the Copris or other Beetles, which is uncovered without trouble with a mere pocket-trowel; we have a shaft whose floor can be reached only with a stout spade, manfully wielded for hours at a stretch. And, if the sun be at all hot, you return from your drudgery, feeling utterly worn out.

Oh, my poor joints, grown rusty with age! [[86]]To suspect the existence of a beautiful problem underground and to be unable to dig! The zeal survives, as ardent as in the days when I used to demolish the spongy slopes beloved of the Anthophoræ;[3] the love of research has not abated; but my strength fails me. Fortunately I have an assistant in the person of my son Paul, who lends me the vigour of his wrists and the suppleness of his back. I am the head, he is the arm.

The rest of the family, including the mother—and she not the least eager—usually go with us. You cannot employ too many eyes when the pit becomes deep and you have to observe from a distance the tiny objects unearthed by the spade. What one overlooks another will detect. Huber,[4] when he was blind, studied the Bees through the intermediary of a clear-sighted and devoted helper. I am even better off than the great Swiss naturalist. My sight, which is still fairly good though much worn, is assisted [[87]]by the perspicacious eyes of all my family. I owe it to them that I am able to continue my research-work: let me thank them here and now.

We are on the spot early in the morning. We find a burrow with a large mound formed of cylindrical plugs forced out as though by blows of the hammer. We clear away this hillock and a pit opens below it. A good, long reed, gathered on the way, is inserted in the hole. Pushed farther home, as the surface soil is cleared away, it will serve us as a guide.

The soil is quite loose, unmixed with pebbles, which are obnoxious to the digging insect that loves the perpendicular and especially obnoxious to the cutting edge of the exploring spade. It consists solely of sand cemented with a little clay. The digging would therefore be easy, if one had not to reach depths in which tools become extremely difficult to handle unless the whole area is overturned. The following method gives good results without unduly increasing the volume of earth removed, a procedure to which the owner might object.

A space of roughly a yard in radius is attacked around the shaft. As the guiding [[88]]reed is laid bare, we push it lower in. It began by going about nine inches underground, it is now eighteen inches down. Soon it becomes impracticable to remove the earth with the spade, which is hampered by lack of room. We have to go on our knees, collect the rubbish in both hands and toss it outside. The more we do so, the deeper the hole becomes, increasing the already enormous difficulty. A moment arrives when, to continue, we are obliged to lie flat on our stomachs and dip the front of our bodies into the hole, as far as our more or less supple waists allow. Each dip flings up a good handful of earth. And the reed goes lower and lower, without giving any indication of an immediate check.

It is impossible for my son to continue in this fashion, despite his youthful elasticity. To reach the bottom of the disheartening cavity, he lowers the level of the sustaining soil. A cut is made at one side of the circular pit, giving just enough space to admit his two knees. This is a shelf, a ledge, which will be lowered as we go on. The work is resumed, this time more actively; but the reed, when we consult it, descends, descends to a great depth. [[89]]

We lower the supporting shelf still more and employ the spade again. When the rubbish is removed, the excavation is more than three feet deep. Are we there at last? Not at all: the terrible reed dives still lower down. Let us sink the ledge again and continue. Perseverance is rewarded. At four feet and a half, the reed touches the obstacle; it goes no farther. Victory! The task is done: we have reached the Minotaur’s chamber.

The pocket-trowel discreetly lays it bare and the occupants appear: first the male, and, a little lower down, the female. When the couple are removed, a dark, circular patch is seen: this is the top of the column of provisions. Let us be careful: dig gently! What we have to do is to cut away the central clod at the bottom of the pit, to separate it from the surrounding earth and then, slipping the trowel underneath and using it as a lever, to extract the block all in a lump. There! That’s done! We have the couple and their nest. A morning of arduous digging has procured us these treasures: Paul’s broiling back can tell us at the cost of what efforts.

This depth of nearly five feet is not and [[90]]could not be uniform: there are many causes that induce it to vary, such as the degree of moisture and consistency in the soil traversed, the insect’s passion for work and the time available, according to the more or less remote date of the egg-laying. I have seen burrows dip a little deeper; I have seen others reach not quite three feet. In any case, Minotaurus, to settle his family, requires a lodging of extravagant depth, such as is dug by no other burrower of my acquaintance. Presently we shall have to ask ourselves what imperious needs oblige the collector of Sheep-droppings to dwell at such depths.

Before leaving the spot, let us note a fact whose evidence will be of value later. The female was right at the bottom of the burrow; above her, at some distance, was the male: both were struck motionless with fright in the midst of an occupation whose nature we are as yet hardly able to specify. This detail, observed repeatedly in the different burrows dug up, seems to show that each of the two fellow-workers has a definite place.

The mother, more skilled in nursery matters, occupies the lower floor. She alone [[91]]digs, versed as she is in the properties of the perpendicular, which economizes labour while giving the greatest depth. She is the engineer, always in touch with the working-face of the shaft. The other is her labourer. He is stationed in the rear, ready to load the rubbish on his horny hod. Later, the excavatrix becomes a baker: she kneads the cakes for the children into cylinders; the father is then the baker’s boy. He brings her from outside the wherewithal for making flour. As in every well-regulated household, the mother is minister of the interior, the father minister of the exterior. This would explain the invariable position in their cylindrical home. The future will tell us if these conjectures truly correspond with the reality.

For the moment, let us examine at our leisure, in the comfort of our own home, the central clod, so laboriously acquired. It contains a preserved foodstuff in the shape of a sausage nearly as long and as thick as a man’s finger. This is composed of a dark, compact material, arranged in layers, which we recognize as the Sheep-pellets reduced to small crumbs. Sometimes the dough is fine and almost homogeneous from one end of [[92]]the cylinder to the other; more often the piece is a sort of hardbake, in which large fragments are held together by an amalgamation of cement. The baker apparently varies the more or less careful composition of her confectionery according to the time at her disposal.

The stuff is tightly packed into the closed end of the burrow, where the walls are smoother and more elaborately treated than in the rest of the shaft. The point of the knife easily rids it of the surrounding earth, which peels off like a rind. In this way I obtain the food-cylinder free from any earthy stain.

When this is done, let us enquire into the matter of the egg, for this pastry has certainly been manipulated for the sake of a grub. Guided by what I learnt in the old days from the Geotrupes, who lodge the egg at the lower end of their black-pudding, in a special recess contrived in the very heart of the provisions, I look to find the egg of the Minotaur, their near kinsmen, in a hatching-chamber right at the bottom of the sausage. I am mistaken. The egg sought for is not at the spot anticipated, nor at the [[93]]other end, nor in any part whatsoever of the victuals.

A search outside the provisions reveals it me at last. It is below the food, in the sand itself, and has benefited by none of the meticulous cares wherein mothers excel. There is here not a smooth-walled chamber, such as the delicate skin of the new-born larva would seem to demand, but a rough, irregular cavity, the result of a mere falling in rather than of material ingenuity. The grub is to be hatched in this rude crib, at some distance from its provisions. To reach the food, it will have to demolish and pass through a ceiling of sand some millimetres thick. As regards her offspring, the Minotaur mother is an expert in the art of sausage-making, but she knows nothing at all of the endearments of the cradle.

Anxious to watch the hatching and observe the growth of the larva, I install my find in cells reproducing as nearly as may be the natural conditions. A glass tube closed at one end of the same diameter as the burrow receives first a bed of moist sand to represent the original soil. On the surface of this layer I place the egg. A little of the same sand forms the ceiling through which [[94]]the new-born grub must pass to reach the provisions. There are none other than the regulation sausage, rid of its earthy rind. A few careful strokes of the rammer make it occupy the available space. Lastly, a plug of wet, but not dripping cotton-wool fills up the cell completely. This will be a source of permanent moisture, similar to that of the depths in which the mother establishes her family. The provisions will thus remain soft, in accordance with the youthful consumer’s needs.

This softness of the food and the flavour produced by the fermentation due to moisture probably have something to say to the instinct to bore deeply at the time of egg-laying. What do the father and mother really want? Do they dig to ensure their own welfare? Do they go so low down in order to find an agreeable temperature and moisture when the fierce summer heat prevails? Not at all. Endowed with a robust constitution and loving the sun’s kisses as other insects do, they both inhabit, until the family is founded, a modest dwelling in a convenient position. Not even the inclemencies of winter drive them to seek a better shelter. [[95]]

At nesting-time it is another matter. They descend to a great depth underground. Why? Because their family, which is hatched about June, must find soft food awaiting it at a time when the heat of summer will bake the soil hard as a brick. The tiny sausage, if it lay at a depth of ten or twenty inches, would become hard as horn and uneatable; and the grub, incapable of biting into the tough ration, would perish. It is important therefore that the victuals should be cellared at a depth where the most violent heat of the sun cannot lead to desiccation.

Many other food-packers know the risks of excessive dryness. Each has his own method of warding off the danger. The Geotrupes makes his home under the voluminous heap dropped by the Mule, an excellent obstacle to speedy desiccation. Besides, he works in autumn, the season of frequent showers; moreover, he gives his product the shape of a big roly-poly, of which the middle part, the only part used, gives up its moisture very slowly. For these several reasons, he digs burrows of medium depth.

The Sacred Beetle likewise attaches no value to remote retreats. He houses his offspring in vaults at no great distance from the [[96]]surface of the soil; but he makes amends by fashioning the victuals into a ball: he knows that round tins keep their contents moist. The Copris does very much the same with his ovoids. So with the others, the Sisyphus,[5] the Gymnopleurus.[6] The Minotaur alone takes an enormous dive underground.

There are different reasons that call for this. Here is a second, more imperious even than the first. The dung-workers all go for recent materials, fully endowed with their toothsome and plastic qualities. To this system of baking the Minotaur makes a stronger exception: what he needs is old, dry, arid stuff. I have never seen him, either in my cages or in the open country, gather pellets quite recently ejected. He wants them dried by long exposure to the sun’s rays.

But, to suit the grub, the hard food has to simmer for a long time and to improve by keeping, in surroundings saturated with moisture. So the coarse whole-meal bread is replaced by the bun. The laboratory in which the children’s food is prepared must therefore be a very deep-seated factory, which can never be entered by the drought [[97]]of summer however long prolonged. Here succulence and flavour are imparted to dry materials which no other member of the stercoral guild thinks of employing, for lack of an annealing-chamber, of which Minotaurus possesses the monopoly. And, the better to fulfil his mission in life, he also possesses an instinct to bore to enormous depths. The nature of the victuals makes an incomparable well-sinker of the three-pronged Dung-beetle; his talents have been determined by a hard crust. [[98]]

[1] The Beetle under consideration is known to some nomenclators as Geotrupes Typhœus.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] A genus of wild Bees. Cf. Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. iv. and vii. and passim.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4] François Huber (1750–1831), the Swiss naturalist, author of Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles. He early became blind from excessive study and thereafter conducted his scientific work with the aid of his wife.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[5] The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. x., Cf. v.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] Cf. idem, chap. viii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER V

MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS: FIRST ATTEMPTS AT OBSERVATION

Long ago, the Minotaur’s cousins, the Geotrupes, afforded me a delightfully unusual spectacle, that of a prolonged association in pairs, a real domestic couple, working in common for the children’s welfare. Philemon and Baucis, as I used to call them, prepared their board and lodging with equal ardour. Philemon, the sturdier of the two, compressed the food by pushing it with his fore-arms; Baucis explored the heap on the surface, picking out the best part and lowering by the armful the wherewithal to manufacture the enormous sausage. It was magnificent to see the mother sifting and the father compressing.

A cloud overshadowed this exquisite picture. My subjects occupied a cage wherein any inspection demanded an excavation on my part, discreetly conducted, it is true, but enough to startle the labourers and make [[99]]them stop work. With unsparing patience, I thus obtained a series of snapshots which the logic of things, that delicate cinematographer, afterwards combined to form a living scene. I wished for more than this: I should have liked to observe the couple in continuous action, from the beginning to the end of their task. I had to abandon the idea, so impossible did it seem to me to observe the mysterious underground happenings without perturbing excavations.

To-day, my ambition to achieve the impossible has returned. The Minotaur proclaims himself a rival of the Geotrupes; he even appears to be their superior. I propose to follow his actions underground, at a depth of a yard and more, completely at my ease, without in any way distracting the insect from its occupations. To do this I shall need the eyes of a Lynx, which are said to be capable of piercing the opaquest night, whereas I have only my ingenuity to fall back upon in endeavouring to see plainly in the dark. Let us see what it can do.

To begin with, the direction of the burrow enables me to foresee that my plan is not altogether absurd. When digging her nest, the Minotaur descends perpendicularly. If [[100]]she worked at random, following all sorts of directions, excavation would demand an infinite area of soil, out of all proportion to the means at my disposal. Well, her invariable adherence to the perpendicular informs me that I need not trouble about the quantity of sand available, but only about the depth of the bed. In these conditions, the undertaking is not unreasonable.

As good luck will have it, I possess a glass tube which has long been diverted from chemistry and placed at the service of entomology. It is a yard or more in length, and over an inch in width. If fixed in a vertical position, it will do, I think, for the Minotaur’s shaft. I close one end with a plug and fill the tube with a mixture of fine sand and moist clay soil, packing the mixture in layers with a ramrod. This column will be the plot of ground allotted to the digger to work in.

But it must be kept upright and completed with different accessories essential to successful operation. For this purpose, three bamboo canes are planted in the earth contained in a large flower-pot. Joined at their tips, they form a tripod, a frame supporting the whole structure. The tube is set up in the [[101]]centre of the triangular base. A small earthenware pie-dish with a hole made in the bottom, receives the open upper end, which projects a little and holds a layer of earth that comes level with the brim. This will represent, around the mouth of the shaft, the space in which the insect can attend to its business, either to shoot the rubbish from the shaft or to gather the provisions round about. Lastly, a glass bell, fitting into the dish, prevents escape and preserves the slight quantity of moisture needed. A few supporting strings and bits of wire keep the whole thing firmly fixed.

We must not overlook one most important detail. The diameter of the tube is about twice that of the natural burrow. Therefore, if the insect digs along the axis and in an exactly perpendicular direction, it will have at its disposal more than the required width. It will obtain a channel lined on every side by a wall of sand a few millimetres thick. We may however assume that the digger, knowing nothing of geometrical precision and ignorant of the conditions provided for it, will take no account of the axis and will deviate from it to one side or the other. Moreover, the least additional [[102]]resistance in the substance traversed will cause the Beetle to turn aside slightly, now hither, now thither. Consequently the glass wall will be completely denuded at sundry points; windows will be formed, chinks upon which I rely to make observation possible, but which will be hateful to the darkness-loving workers.