THE LIFE AND LOVE
OF THE INSECT

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PLATE I

1. The Sacred Beetle. 2. The Sacred Beetle rolling his pill.

3. Kolling the pill to the eating burrow.

THE

LIFE AND LOVE
OF THE INSECT

BY

J. HENRI FABRE

TRANSLATED BY

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

^

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1914

First pullished Septemhtr, iQii
Ke^riiUed January, igi4

"7T. 3 •SS'

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

The author of these essays was born at Serignan, in
Provence, in the year 1823, and was long in coming to his
own. His birthday, indeed, is now celebrated annually
(Henri Fabre is still alive) at both Serignan and Orange ;
but, as Maurice Maeterlinck, writing of this " Insect's
Homer . . . whose brow should be girt with a double
and radiant crown," says :

" Fame is often forgetful, negligent, behindhand or
unjust ; and the crowd is almost ignorant of the name
of J. H. Fabre, who is one of the most profound and
inventive scholars and also one of the purest writers and,
I was going to add, one of the finest poets of the century
that is just past."

Fabre's Souvenirs^' Entomologiques form ten volumes,
containing two to three hundred essays in all. The
present book is a translation of the greater part of a
volume of selected essays, comprising, in addition to
those here presented, three that appeared in a volume
entitled Insect Life and published ten years ago by
Messrs. Macmillan, in a version from the able pen of

vi TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

the author of Mademoiselle Mori, This volume contained
also the first of the four articles descriptive of the habits
of the Sacred Beetle ; and the publishers desire me to
express their thanks to Messrs. Macmillan for permission
to include in The Life and Love of the Insect a variant of
that first chapter from Insect Life. The omission of three
essays included in the French volume of selections explains
the absence of reference to certain insects represented
in some of the photographic plates.

I should like to mention my personal sense of gratitude
to a gentleman belonging to a class of workers whose
services are not always recognized in the manner which
they deserve. I speak of IVIr. Marmaduke Langdale,
my untiring, eager and accurate " searcher," whose work
at both branches of the British Museum — to say nothing
of his uncommonly thorough acquaintance with the
French language — has greatly assisted me in my task
of translation and saved me, I suspect, from making
more than one blunder.

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.

Chelsea, 11 July, 1911.

CONTENTS

PACK

transi-ATOr's note - .... V

CITAPTKR

I. THE SACKED BEETLE ..... 1

rr. THE SACEED BEETLE : THE PEAR - - - - 18

in. THE SACRED BEETLE : THE MODELLING - - - 32
IV. THE SACRED BEETLE : THE GRXTB, THE METAMORPHOSIS.

THE HATCHING-CHAMBER - - - - 42

V. THE SPANISH COPRIS - - - - - 63

VI. THE ONTHOPHAGI - - - - - - 79

VII. A BARREN PROJnSE - - - - - 8S

VIII. A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS - - - - 99

IX. THE GEOTRUPES : THE PITBLIC HEALTH - - - 113

X. MTNOTATTRtrS TYPHCEU3 - - - - - 127

XI. THE TWO-BANDED SCOLIA .... 143

Xn. THE RINGED CALICURGTTS - - - - - 157

Xni. THE OLD \\'EEVILS ------ 171

XTV. LEAF-ROLLERS - - - - - - 184

XV. THE HALICTI - - - - - - 199

X^^. THE HALICTI : THE FORTRESS - - . . 210

XVII. THE LANGtJEDOCIAN SCORPION - . . - 223

X Vrn. THE LANQUEDOCIAN SCORPION : THE FAMILY - - 243

Vll

vn^

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

PLATE I.— 1. The Sacred Beetle. 2. The Sacred Beetle rolling his

pill. 3. Rolling the pill to the eating burrow - - Frontispiece

PLATE II. — Bun-ow and pear-shaped ball of the Sacred Beetle facing 20

Fig. 1. — Section of the Sacred Beetle's pill, showing the egg and the

hatching-chamber .-.-... 24

PLATE III. — 1. The Sacred Beetle pushing away and overturning a
thieving friend who tries to force his assistance upon him. 2, Crypt
in which the Beetle shapes a grub's provision into a pear - facing 36

Fig. 2. — The Sacred Beetle's pill dug out cupwise to receive the egg - 39
Fig. 3.— Grub of the Sacred Beetle - - - . - 46

Fig. 4. — Digestive apparatus of the Sacred Beetle - - - 47

PLATE IV.— 1 and 2. The Spanish Copris, male and female. 3. The
pair jointly kneading the big loaf, which, divided into egg-shaped
pills, will furnish provisions for each grub of the brood. 4. The
mother alone in her burrow : five pills are already finished ; a
sixth is in process of construction - - . . facing 72

Fig. 5. — The Copris's pill : first state - - - - - 72

Fig. 6.— The Spanish Copris's pill dug out cupwise to receive the egg - 73
Fig. 7.— The Spanish Copris's pill : section showing the hatching-
chamber and the egg - - - . . - 73
Fig. 8. — Phanaeus Milo ------. i02

Fig. 9.— Work of Phanceus Milo. A, the whole piece, actual size.
B, the same opened, showing the pill of sausage-meat, the clay
gourd, the chamber containing the egg and the ventilating-shaft - 104
Fig. 10.— Work of Phanxus Milo : the largest of the gourds observed

(natural size) ----... i08

ix

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

PLATE v.— 1. Ontho2)hagus Taurus. 2. Onthojihagus Vacca. 3. The
Stercoraceous Geotrupe. 4. The Wide-necked Scarab. 5. Cleonus
Ophthalmicus. 6. Cerceris Tubereulata. 7. BupresH'- ^rea facing 80

Fig. 11. — The Stercoraceous Gcotrupe's sausage - - - 121

Fig. 12.— Section of the Stercoraceous Geotrupe's sausage at its lower

end, showing the egg and the hatching-chamber - - - 122

PLATE \l.— Minotaur us Typhceus, male and female. Excavating

Jlinotaurus' burrow ------ facing 132

PLATE VIL — The Miuotaurus couple engaged on miller's and baker's

work .------- facing 137

PLATE YIIL— 1. The Common or Garden Scolia. 2. The Two-
banded Scolia. 3. Grub of Cetonia Aurata progressing on its
back. 4. The Two-bauded Scolia paralyzing a Cetonia grub.
5. Cetonia grubs progressing on their backs, with their legs in the
air ; two are in a resting position, rolled up - - facing 146

PLATE IX.— 1. Lycosa Narbonensis. 2. The Ringed Calicurgus.
3. Ammophila Hirsuta. 4. AmmoxMla Sabulosa. 5. Scroll of
Ehynchites Vitis. 6. Scroll of Rhynchites Populi - - facing 162

PLATE X.— The large glass case containing the Scorpions - fa/dng Tl^

PLATE XL— 1. Nuptial allurements, showing "the straight bend. *
2. The wedding stroll. 3. The couple enter the nuptial
dwelling ------- facing 240

PLATE XIL— 1. The Languedocian Scorpion devouring a cricket.

2. After pairing-time : the female feasting on her Scorpion.

3. The mother and her family, with emancipation - time at
hand -------- ./«<:% 252

THE SACRED BEETLE

THE LIFE AND LOVE OF
THE INSECT

CHAPTER I

THE SACRED BEETLE

The building of the nest, the safeguard of the family,
furnishes the loftiest expression of the instinctive faculties.
That ingenious architect, the bird, teaches us as much ;
and the insect, with its still more varied talents, repeats
the lesson, telling us that maternity is the supreme in-
spirer of the instinct. Placed in charge of the duration
of the species, which is of more serious interest than the
preservation of individuals, maternity awakens a mar-
vellous foresight in the drowsiest intelligence ; it is the
thrice sacred hearth wherein smoulder and then sud-
denly burst forth those incomprehensible psychic gleams
which give us the impression of an infallible reasoning
power. The more maternity asserts itself, the higher
does instinct ascend.

The most worthy of our attention in this respect are
the Hymenoptera, upon whom the cares of maternity
devolve in their fulness. All these favourites of instinct
prepare board and lodging for their offspring. They
become past masters in a host of industries for the sake
of a family which their faceted eyes never behold and

1

2 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

which, nevertheless, the maternal foresight knows quite
well. One becomes a manufacturer of cotton goods and
mills cotton-wool bottles ; another sets up as a basket-
maker and weaves hampers out of scraps of flowers ;
a third turns mason and builds rooms of cement and
domes of road-metal ; a fourth starts a pottery-works, in
which the clay is kneaded into shapely vases and jars
and bulging pots ; yet another adopts the calling of a
pitman and digs mysterious warm, moist passages under-
ground. A thousand trades similar to ours and often
even unknown to our industrial system are employed in
the preparation of the abode. Next come the victuals
of the expected nurslings : piles of honey, loaves of pollen,
stores of preserved game, cunningly paralyzed. In such
works as these, having the future of the family for their
exclusive object, the highest manifestations of the instinct
are displayed under the impulse of maternity.

In the rest of the entomological order, the mother's
cares are generally very summary. In most cases, they
are confined to the laying of the eggs in favourable spots,
where the grub can find a bed and food at its own risk and
peril. Where education is so rustic, talents are super-
fluous. Lycurgus banished the arts from his republic, as
enervating. In like manner, the higher inspirations of
the instinct are banished among insects brought up in
Spartan simplicity. The mother neglects the gentle
cares of the cradle ; and the prerogatives of the intellect,
the best of all, diminish and disappear, so true is it that
for the animal, even as for ourselves, the family is a source
of perfection.

While the Hymenoptera, so extremely thoughtful of
their progeny, fill us with wonder, the others, which aban-
don theirs to the chances of good luck or bad, must seem

THE SACRED BEETLE 3

to us, by comparison, of but little interest. These others
form almost the entirety ; at least, to my knowledge,
among the fauna of our country-sides, there is only one
other instance of insects preparing board and lodging for
their family, as do the gatherers of honey and the buriers
of baskets full of game.

And, strange to say, those insects vying in maternal
tenderness with the flower-despoiling tribe of Bees are
none other than the Dung-beetles, the dealers in ordure,
the scavengers of the meadows contaminated by the herd.
We must pass from the scented corollas of the flower-bed
to the droppings left on the high-road by the mule to find
a second example of devoted mothers and lofty instincts.
Nature abounds in these antitheses. What are our
ugliness and beauty, our cleanliness and dirt to her ?
With refuse, she creates the flower ; from a little manure,
she extracts the blessed grain of the wheat.

Notwithstanding their filthy trade, the Dung-beetles
occupy a very respectable rank. Thanks to their usually
imposing size ; to their severe and irreproachably glossy
garb ; to their short, stout, thickset shape ; to the quaint
ornamentation either of their brow or, also, of their
thorax, they cut an excellent figure in the collector's
boxes, especially when to our own species, oftenest of an
ebon black, we add a few tropical species flashing with
gleams of gold and ruddy copper.

They are the sedulous guests of our herds, for which
reason several of them emit a mild flavour of benzoic
acid, the aromatic of the sheepfolds. Their pastoral
habits have impressed the nomenclators, who, too often,
alas, careless of euphony, have changed their note this
time and headed tkeir descriptions with such names as
MeUbseus, Tityrus, Amyntas, Corydon, Mopsus and Alexis.

4 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

We have here the whole series of bucolic denominations
made famous by the poets of antiquity. Virgil's eclogues
have lent their vocabulary for the Dung-beetles' glorifi-
cation.

What alacrity around one and the same dropping !
Never did adventurers hurrying from the four corners of
the earth display such eagerness in working a Californian
claim. Before the sun becomes too hot, they are there
in their hundreds, large and small, promiscuously, of
every sort, shape and size, hastening to carve themselves
a slice of the common cake. There are some that work
in the open air and scrape the surface ; there are some
that dig themselves galleries in the thick of the heap, in
search of choice veins ; others work the lower stratum
and bury their spoil without delay in the underlying
ground ; others — the smallest — stand aside to crumble
a morsel that has fallen from the mighty excavations of
their more powerful fellow- workers. Some, the new-
comers and, no doubt, the hungriest, consume their meal
on the spot ; but the greater number mean to put by a
substance that will allow them to spend long days in
plenty, do-^n in some safe retreat. A nice, fresh dropping
is not found just when j^ou want it, amid the fields bare
of thyme ; a windfall of that sort is as manna from the
sky ; only fortune's favourites receive so fair a portion.
Wherefore the riches of to-day are prudently stored for
the morrow.

The stercoraceous scent has carried the glad tidings
half a mile around ; and all have hastened up to gather
provisions. A few laggards are still arriving, a- wing or
on foot.

Who is this that trots towards the heap, fearing lest
he come too late ? His long legs move with a sudden,

THE SACRED BEETLE 5

awkward action, as though driven by some mechanism
within his belly ; his little red antennae spread their fan,
a sign of anxious greed. He is coming, he has come,
not without sending some few banqueters sprawling. It is
the Sacred Beetle, clad all in black, the biggest and most
famous of our Dung-beetles. Ancient Egypt held him
in veneration and looked upon him as a symbol of im-
mortality. Here he now sits at table, beside his fellow-
guests, each of whom is giving the last touches to his ball
with the flat of his broad fore-legs or else enriching it
with 5'et one more layer before retiring to enjoy the fruit
of his labours in peace. Let us follow the construction
of the famous ball in all its phases.

The shield, that is to say, the broad, flat edge of the
head, is notched with six angular teeth arranged in a
semicircle. This constitutes the tool for digging and
separating, the rake that lifts and casts aside the unnu-
tritious vegetable fibres, goes for something better, scrapes
and collects it together. A choice is thus made, for
these dainty epicures differentiate between one thing
and another : a casual choice, if the Beetle be interested
in his own provender, but a most scrupulous choice,
when it becomes a question of constructing the maternal
baU.

For his owti needs, the Beetle is less fastidious and
contents himself with a wholesale selection. The notched
shield scoops and digs, eliminates and gathers somewhat
at random. The fore-legs play a mighty part in the
work. They are flattened, curved into the segment of
a circle, supplied with powerful nervures and armed on
the outside with five sturdy teeth. If a powerful effort
be needed to remove an obstacle or to force a way through
the thickest part of the heap, the Dung-beetle makes

6 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

play with his elbows, that is to say, he flings his toothed
legs to right and left and clears a semi-circular space with
a vigorous thrust of the rake. Koom once made, a
different kind of work is found for these same limbs : they
collect armfuls of the material raked together by the
shield and push it under the insect's belly, between the
four hind-legs. These are shaped for the turner's trade.
The legs, especially the last two, are long and slender,
slightly bowed and ending in a very sharp claw. One
has but to look at them to recognize a pair of spherical
compasses capable of embracing a globular body in their
curved branches and improving its form. In fact, their
mission is to shape the ball.

Armful by armful, the material is heaped up under the
belly, between the four legs, which, by a slight pressure,
impart their o\^'n curve to it and give it a first fashion.
Then, betweenwhiles, the rough-hewn pill is set spinning
betwixt the four branches of the two spherical com-
passes ; it turns under the Dung-beetle's belly until
it is rolled into a perfect ball. Should the surface layer
lack plasticity and threaten to peel off, should some too-
stringy part refuse to yield to the action of the wheel,
the fore-legs correct the faulty places ; their broad beaters
pat the ball to give consistency to the new layer and to
imbed the recalcitrant scraps into the mass.

Under a hot sun, when the work is urgent, one stands
amazed at the turner's feverish activity. And thus the
business proceeds apace : what was but lately a scanty
pellet is now a ball the size of a walnut ; soon it will be
a ball the size of an ajiple. I have seen greedy-guts
manufacture a ball the size of one's fist. Here, of a cer-
tainty, is food in the larder for days to come !

The provisions are made. The next thing is to withdraw

THE SACRED BEETLE 7

from the fray and carry the victuals to a fitting place.
Here the most striking characteristics of the Scarab begin
to show themselves. The Dung-beetle sets out without
delay ; he embraces the sphere with his two long hind-
legs, whose terminal claws, planted in the mass, serve as
rotatory pivots ; he obtains a purchase with the middle
pair of legs ; and, using the armlets of his fore-legs for
leverage, he travels backwards with his load, bending his
body, with his head down and his hmder part in the air.
The hind-legs, the principal factor in the machinery,
move continually, coming and going, shifting the claws
to change the axis of rotation, maintain the equilibrium
of the load and push it on by alternate thrusts to right
and left. In this way, the ball finds itself touching the
ground by turns with every point of its surface, a process
which perfects its shape and gives an even consistency
to its outer layer by means of pressure uniformly divided.
And now, cheerily ! It moves, it rolls ; we shall get
there, though not without accident. Here is a first diffi-
cult step : the Beetle is wending his way athwart a slope
and the heavy mass tends to follow the incline ; but the
insect, for reasons best known to itself, prefers to cut
across this natural road, a bold plan which a false step
or a grain of sand disturbing the balance may defeat.
The false step is made ; the baU rolls to the bottom of
the valley ; and the insect, toppled over by the impetus
of its load, kicks about, gets up on its legs again and
hastens to harness itself once more. The mechanism
is working better than ever. But look out, you scatter-
brain ! Follow the dip of the valley : that will save you
labour and mishap ; the road is good and level ; j^our
ball will roll quite easily. Not a bit of it ! The insect
prepares once more to mount the slope that was already

8 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

its undoing. Perhaps it suits it to return to the heights.
Against that I have nothing to say : the Scarab's opinion
is more far-seeing than mine as to the advisability of
keeping to lofty regions. But, at least, take this path,
which will lead you up by a gentle incline ! Not at all !
If he find himself near some very steep slope, impos-
sible to climb, that is what the obstinate fellow prefers.
And now begins a labour of Sisyphus. The ball, that
enormous burden, is painfully hoisted, step by step, with
infinite precautions, to a certain height, ahvays back-
wards. I ask myself b}^ w^hat static miracle so great a
mass can be kept upon the slope. Oh ! An ill-planned
movement frustrates all this toil : the ball comes down,
dragging the beetle with it ! The escalade is repeated,
soon to be foUow^ed by another fall. The attempt is re-
newed, better-managed this time at the difficult points ;
a confounded grass-root, the cause of the previous
tumbles, is carefuUy turned. We are almost there ; but
gently, gently ! The ascent is dangerous and a mere
nothing may yet spoil all. For see, a leg slips on a smooth
bit of gravel ! Down come baU and Dung-beetle, all
mixed up together. And the Beetle begins over again,
with indefatigable persistency. Ten times, a score of
times, he will attempt the thankless ascent, until his
obstinacy vanquishes all obstacles, or until, recognizing
the uselessness of his efforts, he takes to the level road.
The Scarab does not ahvays push his precious ball
alone : sometimes he takes a partner ; or, to be accurate,
the partner takes him. This is how the thing usually
happens : once his ball is ready, a Dung-beetle issues from
the crowd and leaves the work-yard, pushing his spoil
behind him. A neighbour, one of the newcomers, whose
own task is hardly begun, suddenly drops his work and

THE SACRED BEETLE 9

runs to the ball now rolling, to lend a hand to the lucky
owner, who seems to accept the proffered aid kindly.
Henceforth, the two cronies work as partners. Each
does his best to push the pellet to a place of safety. Was
a compact really concluded in the work-yard, a tacit
agreement to share the cake between them ? While one
was kneading and moulding the ball, was the other tapping
rich veins whence to extract choice materials and add
them to the common store ? I have never observed such
a collaboration ; I have always seen each Dung-beetle
occupied solely with his own affairs in the works. The
last-comer, therefore, has no acquired rights.

Is it, then, a partnership between the two sexes, a
couple intending to set up house ? I thought so for a
time. The two beetles, one before, one behind, pushing
the heavy ball with equal zeal, reminded me of a song
which the barrel-organs used to grind out some years ago :

Pour monter notre menage, helas ! comment feront-nous ?
Toi devant et moi derriere, nous pousserons le tonneau.^

The evidence of the scalpel compelled me to abandon
this domestic idyll. There is no outward difference
between the two sexes in the Dung-beetle. I, therefore,
dissected the two beetles engaged in conveying one and
the same ball ; and they often proved to belong to the
same sex.

Neither community of family nor community of toil !
Then what is the motive for this apparent partnership ?
It is just simply an attempt at robbery. The eager
fellow-worker, under the deceitful pretence of lending a
helpful hand, nurses the scheme of purloining the ball at

* " When you and I start housekeeping, alas, what shall we do?
You in front and I behind, we'll shove the tub along I"

2

10 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

the first opportunity. To make one's own ball at the heap
implies drudgery and patience ; to steal one readj-made,
or at least to foist one's self as a guest, is a much easier
matter. Should the owner's vigilance slacken, you can
run away with the treasure ; should you be too closely
watched, you can sit down to table uninvited, pleading
services rendered. It is, " Heads I win, tails you lose,"
in these tactics, so that pillage is exercised as one of the
most lucrative of trades. Some go to work craftily, in
the way I have just described : they come to the aid of
a comrade who has not the least need of them and hide
a most indelicate greed under the cloak of charitable
assistance. Others, bolder perhaps, more confident in
their strength, go straight to the goal and commit robbery
with violence.

Scenes are constantly happening such as this : a Scarab
walks off, peacefully and alone, rolling his ball, his law-
ful property, acquired by conscientious work. Another
comes flying up, I know not whence, drops down heavily,
folds his smoky wings under their elytra and, with the
back of his toothed armlets, knocks over the owner, who is
powerless to ward off the attack in his harnessed posture.
While the dispossessed one struggles to his feet, the other
perches himself atop the ball, the best position from which
to repel the assailant. With his armlets folded under
his breast, ready at all points, he awaits events. The
. victim of the theft moves round the baU, seeking a
' favourable spot at which to attempt the assault ; the
thief spms round on the roof of the citadel, constantly
facing him. If the first raise himself in order to scale
the wall, the second gives him a cuff that stretches him
on his back. Safe at the top of his fortress, the besieged
Beetle would baffle his adversary's attempts indefinitely,

THE SACRED BEETLE 11

if the latter did not change his tactics to recover his
property. Sapping is brought into play to bring down
the citadel with the garrison. The ball, shaken from below,
staggers and rolls, carrying with it the robber, who makes
violent efforts to maintain his position on the top. This
he succeeds in doing, though not always, thanks to hurried
feats of gymnastics that enable him to regain a level from
which the rolling of his support tends to drive him.
Should a false movement bring him to the ground, the
chances become equal and the struggle turns into a wrest-
ling-match. Robber and robbed grapple at close quarters,
breast to breast. Their legs twist and untwist, their
joints intertwine, their horny armour clashes and grinds
with the rasping sound of filed metal. Then that one
of the two who succeeds in throwing his adversary and
releasing himself hurriedly takes up a position on the top
of the ball. The siege is renewed, now by the robber,
now by the robbed, as the chances of the hand-to-hand
conflict may have determined. The former, no doubt a
hardy filibuster and adventurer, often has the best of the
fight. Then, after two or three defeats, the ejected Beetle
wearies and returns philosophically to the heap, there to
make himself a new pellet. As for the other, with all
fear of a surprise at an end, he harnesses himself to the
conquered ball and pushes it w^hither he pleases. I have
sometimes seen a third thief appear upon the scene and
rob the robber. Nor can I honestly say that I was sorry.
I ask myself in vain what Proudhon^ introduced mto
Beetle-morality the daring paradox that " property is
based on plunder," or what diplomatist taught Dung-
beetles the savage maxim that " might is right." I have

^ Jean Baptiste Victor Proudhon (1758-1838), author of De la dis.
Unction des hiens, Traite da domaine public, etc. — Translator^ 8 Note,

12 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

no facts whereby to trace the origin of these spohations
which have become a custom, of this abuse of strength to
capture a lump of ordure. All that I can say is that
theft is in general use among the Scarab tribe. These
Dung-rollers rob one another among themselves with a
calm effrontery of which I know no other instance. I
leave it to future observers to elucidate this curious
problem in animal psychology and I return to the two
partners rolling their ball in concert.

Let us call the two fellow-workers partners, although
that is not the proper name for them, seeing that the
one forces himself upon the other, who probably accepts
outside help only for fear of a worse evil. The meeting,
however, is absolutely peaceful. The Beetle owning the
ball does not cease work for an instant at the arrival of
his assistant ; and the newcomer seems animated by the
best intentions and sets to work on the spot. The way
in which the two partners harness themselves differs.
The owner occupies the chief position, the place of
honour : he pushes behind the load, with his hind-legs in
the air and his head down. The assistant is in front, in
the reverse position, head up, toothed arms on the ball,
long hind-legs on the ground. Between the two, the ball
rolls along, pushed before him by the first, dragged
towards him by the second.

The efforts of the couple are not always very har-
monious, the more so as the helper has his back to the
road to be traversed, while the owner's view is impeded
by the load. Hence arise constant accidents, absurd
tumbles, taken cheerfully and in good part : each picks
himself up quickly and resumes the same position as
before. On level ground, this system of draught does
not correspond with the dynamic force expended, for

THE SACRED BEETLE 13

lack of precision in the combined movements : the
Scarab at the back would do as well and better if left to
himself. And so the helper, after giving a proof of his
good-will at the risk of disturbing the mechanism, decides
to keep still, without, of course, abandoning the precious
ball, which he already looks upon as his : finding is keep-
ing ; a ball touched is a ball gamed. He will commit no
such imprudence : the other might give him the slip !

He, therefore, gathers his legs under his belly, flattens
himself, encrusts himself, so to speak, on the ball and
becomes one with it. Henceforth, the whole concern —
ball and Beetle clinging to its surface — rolls along, pushed
by the lawful owner. Whether the load passes over his
body, whether he occupies the top, the bottom or the side
of the rolling burden matters little to the intruder, who sits
tight and lies low. A singular helper this, who has himself
driven in a carriage to secure his share of the victuals !

But a steep ascent heaves in sight and gives him a fine
part to play. He now, on the stiff slope, takes the lead,
holding the heavy mass with his toothed arms, while
his mate seeks a purchase to hoist the load a little higher.
Thus, by a combination of well-managed efforts, the one
above gripping, the one below pushing, I have seen them
together mount acclivities where the stubborn determina-
tion of one alone would have come to naught. But not
all have the same zeal at these difficult moments : there
are some who, on slopes where their assistance is most
needed, seem not in the least aware of the difficulties
to overcome. While the unhappy Sisyphus exhausts
himself in endeavours to pass the dangerous place, the
other quietly leaves him to do his best and, himself
encrusted on the ball, rolls down with it, when it comes
to grief, and is hoisted up with it anew.

14 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Let us suppose the Scarab fortunate enough to have
found a loyal partner ; or, better still, let us suppose that
he has met no self-invited colleague. The burrow is
ready. It is a cavity dug in soft earth, usually in
sand, shallow, the size of one's fist and communicating
with the outside by a short channel just large enough for
the passage of the ball. As soon as the provisions are
safely housed, the Scarab shuts himself in by stopping
up the entrance to his dwelling with rubbish reserved
for the purpose in a corner. Once the door is closed, no
sign outside betrays the banqueting-hall. And, now,
welcome mirth and jollity ! All is for the best in the
best of all possible worlds ! The table is sumptuously
laid ; the ceiling tempers the heat of the sun and allows
but a mild, moist heat to penetrate ; the calm, the
darkness, the concert of the crickets overhead all favour
the digestive functions. So great has been my illusion
that I have caught myself listening at the door, expecting
to hear the revellers burst into that famous snatch from
the opera of Galatee : ^

Ah 1 qu'il est doux de ne rien faire
Quand tout s'agite autour de nous.^

Who would dare disturb the bliss of such a banquet ?
But the wish to learn is capable of all things ; and I had
the courage. I will set down here the result of my viola-
tions of the sanctity of domestic life : the ball by itself
fills almost the whole of the room ; the rich repast
rises from floor to ceiling. A narrow passage runs be-
tween it and the walls. Here sit the banqueters, two at

* A liglit opera, with music by Victor Masse and libretto by Jules
Barbier and Michel Carre (1852). — Translator's Note.

* "Ah, how sweet is far niente,

When round us throbs the busy world !"

THE SACRED BEETLE 15

most, very often but one, belly to table, back to the wall.
Once the seat is chosen, no one stirs ; all the vital forces
are absorbed by the digestive faculties. No little move-
ments, which might cause the loss of a mouthful ; no
dainty toying with the food, which might cause the waste
of some. Everything has to pass, properly and in order.
To see them so pensively seated around a ball of dung,
one would think that they were aware of their task as
scavengers of the earth and that they consciously devoted
themselves to that marvellous chemistry which out of filth
brings forth the flower, the joy of our eyes, and the
Beetles' elytra, the ornament of our lawns in spring. For
the purpose of this transcendental work, which is to turn
into live matter the residue discarded by the horse and
the mule, despite the perfection of their digestive organs,
the Dung-beetle must needs be specially equipped. And,
in point of fact, anatomy compels us to admire the pro-
digious length of his intestine, which, folded and re-
folded upon itself, slowly elaborates the materials in its
profuse circuits and exhausts them to the very last
serviceable atom. From that whence the stomach of the
herbivorous animal has been able to extract nothing,
this powerful alembic wrings riches that, at a mere touch,
turn into ebon armour in the Sacred Scarab and a breast-
plate of gold and rubies in other Dung-beetles.

Now this wonderful metamorphosis of ordure has to
be accomplished in the shortest possible time : the general
health demands it. And so the Scarab is endowed with
matchless digestive powers. Once housed in the com-
pany of food, day and night he will not cease eating and
digesting until the provisions be exhausted. It is easy,
with a little practice, to bring up the Scarab in captivity,
in a volery. In this way, I obtained the following evi-

10 THE LIFE AND IX) VE OF THE INSECT

dence, which wiU tell us of the high digestive capacity
of the famous Dung-beetle.

When the whole ball has been through the mill, the
hermit reappears in the light of day, seeks his fortune,
finds it, shapes himself a new ball and begins all over again.
On a very hot, calm, sultry daj' — the atmospheric con-
ditions most favourable to the gastronomic enjopnents
of my anchorites — watch in hand, I observe one of the
consumers in the open air, from eight o'clock in the
morning until eight o'clock at night. The Scarab appears
to have come across a morsel greatly to his taste, for,
during those twelve hours, he never stops feasting, re-
mains permanently at table, stationary at one spot. At
eight o'clock in the evening, I pay him a last visit. His
appetite seems undiminished. I find the glutton in as
fine fettle as at the start. The banquet, therefore, must
have lasted some time longer, until the total disappear-
ance of the lump. Next morning, in fact, the Scarab is
gone and, of the fine piece attacked on the previous day,
naught remains but crumbs.

Once round the clock and more, for a single sitting at
table, is a fine display of gormandizing in itself ; but here
is something much better by way of rapidity of digestion.
While, in front of the insect, the matter is being continu-
ously chewed and swallowed, behind it, with equal con-
tinuity, the matter reappears, stripped of its nutritive
particles and spun into a little black cord, similar to a
cobbler's thread. The Scarab never evacuates except at
table, so quickly are his digestive labours performed.
The apparatus begins to work at the first few mouthfuls ;
it ceases its office soon after the last. Without a break
from beginning to end of the meal and always hanging
to the discharging orifice, the thin cord is piled in a

THE SACRED BEETLE 17

heap which is easy to unroll so long as it is not
dried up.

The thing works wdth the regularity of a chronometer.
Every minute, or, rather, to be accurate, every four-and-
fifty seconds, an eruption takes place and the thread is
lengthened by three to four millimetres. ^ At long in-
tervals, I employ the pincers, unfasten the cord and
unroll the heap along a graduated rule, to estimate the
produce. The total measurement for twelve hours is
2-88 metres. 2 As the meal and its necessary comple-
ment, the work of the digestive apparatus, went on for
some time longer after my last visit, paid at eight o'clock
in the evening by the light of a lantern, it follows that my
subject must have spun an unbroken stercoraceous cord
well over three yards in length.

Given the diameter and the length of the thread, it is
easy to calculate its volume. Nor is it difficult to arrive
at the exact volume of the insect by measuring the
amount of water which it displaces when immersed in a
narrow cylinder. The figures thus obtained are not un-
interesting : they tell us that, at a single festive sitting, in
a dozen hours, the Scarab digests very nearly its own
volume in food. What a stomach ! And especially what
a rapidity, what a power of digestion ! From the first
mouthfuls, the residuum forms itself into a thread that
stretches, stretches out indefinitely as long as the meal
lasts. In that amazing laboratory, which perhaps never
puts up its shutters, unless it be when victuals are lack-
ing, the material only passes through, is worked upon
at once by the reagents in the stomach and at once
exhausted. We may well believe that a crucible so
quick to purify dirt plays its part in th« general hygiene.

^ "ll to "15 inches. — Translator's Note.

2 Close upon Qj feet. — Translator'' 8 Note. n

CHAPTER II

THE SACRED BEETLE : THE PEAR

A YOUNG shepherd, who had been told in his spare time
to watch the doings of the Sacred Beetle, came to me in
high spirits, one Sunday, in the second half of June, to
say that he thought the time had come to commence a
search. He had detected the insect issuing from the
ground, had dug at the spot where it made its appearance
and had found, at no great depth, the queer thing which
he was bringing me.

Queer it was and calculated to upset the little which I
thought I knew. In shape, it was exactly like a tiny
pear that had lost all the colour of its freshness and turned
brown in rotting. What could this curious object be,
this pretty plaything that seemed to come from a turner's
workshop ? Was it made by human hands ? Was it a
model of the fruit of the pear-tree intended for some
child's collection ? One would say so.

The children come round me ; they look at the treasure-
trove with longing eyes ; they would like to add it to the
contents of their toy-box. It is much prettier m shape
than an agate marble, much more graceful than an ivory
egg or a box-wood top. The material, it is true, seems
none too nicely chosen ; but it is firm to the touch and
very artistically curved. In any case, the little pear dis-
covered underground must not go to swell the collection of
nursery treasures until we have found out more about it.

18

THE SACRED BEETLE 19

Can it really be the Scarab's work ? Is there an egg
inside it, a grub ? The shepherd assures me that there
is. A similar pear, crushed by accident in the digging,
contained, he says, a white egg, the size of a grain of
wheat. I dare not believe it, so greatly does the object
which he has brought me differ from the ball which I
expected to see.

To open the puzzhng " find " and ascertain its con-
tents would perhaps be imprudent : such an act of
violence might jeopardize the life of the germ enclosed,
always provided that the Scarab's egg be there, a matter
of which the shepherd seems convinced. And then, I
imagine, the pear-shape, opposed to every accepted idea,
is probably accidental. Who knows if chance has any-
thmg hke it in store for me in the future 1 It were
wise to keep the thing as it is, to await events ; above
all, it were wise to go in search of information on the
spot.

The shepherd was at his post by daybreak the next
morning. I joined him on some slopes that had been
lately cleared of their trees, where the hot summer sun,
which strikes so powerfully on the neck, could not reach
us for two or three hours. In the cool air of morning,
with the flock browsing under the care of the sheep-dog,
we went in search together.

Scarabaeus' burrow is soon found : it is recognizable by
the recent mole-hill that surmounts it. My companion
digs with a vigorous wrist. I have lent him my little
pocket-trowel, the light, but workmanlike tool which,
incorrigible earth-scraper that I am, I seldom omit to
take with me when I go out. I lie down, the better to
see the arrangement and furnishing of the hypogeum
in process of excavation ; and I am all eyes. The

20 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

shepherd uses the trowel as a lever and, with his free
hand, pushes back the rubbish.

Here we are ! A cave opens out and, in the moist
warmth of the yawning vault, I see a splendid pear lying
full-length upon the ground. I shall certainly long re-
member this first revelation of the maternal work of the
Scarab. My excitement could have been no greater
were I an archaeologist digging among the ancient relics
of Egypt and lighting upon the sacred insect of the dead,
carved in emerald, in some Pharaonic crypt. 0 blessed
joys of truth suddenly shining forth, what others are
there to compare with you ! The shepherd was in the
seventh heaven : he laughed in response to my smile and
was happy in my gladness.

Luck does not repeat itself : " Non his in idem," says
the old adage. And here have I twice had under my eyes
this curious shape of the pear. Could it be the normal
shape, not subject to exception ? Must we abandon all
thought of a sphere similar to those which the insect rolls
on the ground ? Let us continue and we shall see. A
second hole is found. Like the previous one, it contains a
pear. The two discoveries are as like as two peas ; they
might have issued from the same mould. And a valuable
detail is this : in the second burrow, beside the pear and
lovingly embracing it, is the mother Beetle, engaged, no
doubt, in giving it the finishing touches before leaving
the underground cave for good. All doubts are dis-
pelled : I know the worker and I know the work.

The rest of the morning confirmed these premisses
to the full : before an intolerable sun drove me from the
slope explored, I possessed a dozen pears identical in
shape and almost in dimensions. On various occasions,
the mother was present in the workshop.

PLATE II

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THE SACRED BEETLE 21

Let me tell, to finish with this part of our subject, what
the future held in store for me. During the whole of the
dog-days, from the end of June until September, I re-
newed almost daily my visits to the spots frequented
by the Scarab ; and the burrows dug up with my trowel
supplied me with an amount of evidence exceeding my
fondest hopes. The insects brought up in the volery
supplied me with further documents, though these, it is
true, were rare and not to be compared with the riches
of the open fields. All told, at least some hundred nests
passed through my hands ; and it was always the graceful
shape of the pear, never, absolutely never, the round
shape of the pill, never the ball of which the books tell us.

And now let us unfold the authentic story, calling to
witness none save facts actually observed and reobserved.
The Sacred Beetle's nest is betrayed on the outside by
a heap of shifted earth, by a little mole-hill formed of the
superfluous rubbish which the mother, when closing up
the abode, has been unable to replace, as a part of the
excavation must be left empty. Under this heap is a
shallow pit, about two-fifths of an inch deep, followed
by a horizontal gallery, either straight or winding, which
ends in a large hall, spacious enough to hold a man's
fist. This is the crypt in which the egg lies wrapped in
food and subjected to the incubation of a burning sun,
at a few inches underground ; this is the roomy workshop
in which the mother, enjoying full liberty of movement,
has kneaded and shaped the future nursling's bread into
a pear.

This stercoral bread has its main axis lying in a hori-
zontal position. Its shape and size remind one exactly
of those little poires de Saint-Jean which, thanks to their
bright colouring, their flavour and their early ripeness,

22 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

delight the children's tribe. The bulk varies within
narrow limits. The largest dimensions are 45 milli-
metres in length by 30 millimetres in width ;^ the smallest
are 35 millimetres by 28. ^

Without being as polished as stucco, the surface, which
is absolutely regular, is carefully smoothed under a thin
layer of red earth. At first, when of recent construction,
soft as potter's clay, the pjTiform loaf soon, in the
course of desiccation, acquires a stout crust that refuses
to yield under the pressure of fingers. Wood itself is no
harder. This bark is the defensive wrapper which
isolates the recluse from this world and allows him to
consume his victuals in profound peace. But, should
desiccation reach the central mass, then the danger
becomes extremely serious. We shall have occasion to
return to the woes of the grub exposed to a diet of too-
stale bread.

What dough does the Scarab's bake-house use ? Who
are the purveyors ? The mule and the horse ? By no
means. And yet I expected to find it so — and so
would everybody — at seeing the insect draw so eagerly,
for its own use, upon the plentiful garner of an ordinary
lump of dung. For that is where it habitually manu-
factures the rolling ball which it goes and consumes in
some underground retreat.

Whereas coarse bread, crammed with bits of hay, is
good enough for the mother, she becomes more dainty
where her family are concerned. She now wants fuie
pastry, rich in nourishment and easily digested ; she now
wants the ovine manna : not that which the sheep of a
dry habit scatters in trails of black olives, but that which,

* 1'8 X 1*4 inches. — Translator'' s Note.
2 1"4 X I'l inches. — Translator's Note.

THE SACRED BEETLE 23

elaborated in a less parched intestine, is kneaded into
biscuits all of a piece. That is the material required, the
dough exclusively used. It is no longer the poor and
stringy produce of the horse, but an unctuous, plastic,
homogeneous thing, soaked through and through with
nourishing juices. Its plasticity, its delicacy are admir-
ably adapted to the artistic work of the pear, while its
alimentary qualities suit the weak stomach of the new-
born progeny. Little though the bulk be, the grub will
here find sufiicient food.

This explains the smallness of the alimentary pears, a
smallness that made me doubt the origin of my find,
before I came upon the mother in the presence of the
provisions. I was unable to see in those little pears the
bill of fare of a future Sacred Beetle, himself so great a
glutton and of so remarkable a size.

Where is the egg in that nutritive mass so novel in
shape ? One would be inclined to place it in the centre
of the fat, round paunch. This central point is best-pro-
tected against accidents from the outside, best-endowed
with an even temperature. Besides, the budding grub
would here find a deep layer of food on every side of it
and would not be exposed to the mistakes of the first
few mouthfuls. Everything being alike on every side
of it, it would not be called upon to choose ; wherever it
chanced to apply its novice tooth, it could continue
1 without hesitation its first dainty repast.

All this seemed so very reasonable that I allowed myself
to be led away by it. In the first pear which I explored,
slender layer by slender layer, with the blade of a pen-
knife, I looked for the egg in the centre of the paunch,
feeling almost certain of findmg it there. To my great
surprise, it was not there. Instead of being lioUow, the

24 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

centre of the pear is full and consists of one continuous,
homogeneous alimentary mass.

My deductions, which any observer in my place would
certainly have shared, seemed very reasonable ; the
Scarab, however, is of another way of thinking. We
have our logic, of which we are rather proud ; the Dung-
kneader has hers, which is better than ours in this contin-
gency. She has her own foresight, her own discernment

of things ; and she places her
egg elsewhere.

But where ? Why, in the
narrow part of the pear, in
the neck, right at the end.
/^•- ^ Let us cut this neck length-

\ wise, taking the necessary pre-

/ cautions, so as not to damage

,f ■ the contents. It is hollowed

I into a recess with polished

/ and shiny walls. This is the

* . / tabernacle of the germ, the

X: hatching-chamber. The egg,

^--^I___liii*»^ which is very large in propor-

Fio. 1.— Section of the Sacred tion to the size of the layer,

r„tu;e\^*h,t=l»f,b';.! '-' is a long white oval, about

10 millimetres in length by
5 millimetres in its greatest width. ^ A slight empty
space separates it on all sides from the chamber-walls.
There is no contact with these walls, save at the rear
end, which adheres to the top of the recess. Lying hori-
zontally, following the normal position of the pear, the
whole of it, excepting the point of attachment, rests upon
an air-mattress, most elastic and warmest of beds. Let

* "4 X '2 inches. — Translator's Note,

THE SACRED BEETLE 25

us observe also that the top of the nipple, instead of
being smooth and compact like the rest of the pear, is
formed of a felt of particles of scrapings, which allows the
air sufficient access for the breathing-needs of the egg.

We are now informed. Let us next try to understand
the Scarab's logic. Let us account for the necessity
for the pear, that form so strange in entomological
industry ; let us seek to explain the convenience of
the curious situation of the egg. It is dangerous, I
know, to venture upon the how and wherefore of
things. We easily sink in this mysterious domain where
the moving soil gives way beneath the feet, swallowing
the foolhardy in the quicksands of error. Must we
abandon such excursions, because of the risk ? Why
should we ?

What does our science, so sublime compared with the
frailty of our means, so contemptible in the face of the
boundless spaces of the unknown, what does our science
know of absolute reality ? Nothing. The world interests
us only because of the ideas which we form of it. Remove
the idea and everything becomes sterile, chaos, empty
nothingness. An omnium-gatherum of facts is not know-
ledge, but at most a cold catalogue which we must thaw
and quicken at the fire of the mind ; we must introduce
thought and the light of reason ; we must interpret.

Let us adopt this course to explain the work of the
Sacred Beetle. Perhaps we shall end by attributing our
own logic to the insect. After all, it will be just as re-
markable to see a wonderful agreement prevail between
that which reason dictates to us and that which instinct
dictates to the animal.

A grave danger threatens the Sacred Beetle in its grub
state : the drying-up of the food. The crypt in which

4

26 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

the larval life is spent has a layer of earth, some third
of an inch thick, for a ceiling. Of what avail is this
slender screen against the canicular heat that burns
the soil, baking it like a brick to a far greater depth ?
The grub's abode at such times acquires a scorching
temperature ; when I thrust my hand into it, I feel the
moist heat of a Turkish bath.

The provisions, therefore, even though they have to
last but three or four weeks, are exposed to the risk of
drying up before that time and becoming uneatable.
When, instead of the tender bread of the start, the un-
happy worm finds no food for its teeth but a repulsive
crust, hard as a pebble and unassailable, it is bound to
perish of hunger. And it does, in fact, so perish. I
have found numbers of these victims of the August sun
who, after eating plentifully of the fresh victuals and
digging themselves a cell, had succumbed, unable to
continue biting into fare too hard for their teeth. There
remained a thick shell, a sort of closed oven, in which
the poor wight lay baked and shrivelled up.

While the worm dies of hunger in the shell turned to
stone by desiccation, the full-grown insect that has finished
its transformations dies there too, for it is incapable of
bursting the enclosure and freeing itself. I shall return
later to the final delivery and will linger no more on this
point. Let us occupy ourselves solely with the woes of
the worm.

The drying-up of the victuals is, we say, fatal to it.
This is proved by the grubs found baked in their oven ;
it is also proved, in a more precise fashion, by the follow-
ing experiment. In July, the period of active nidifica-
tion, I place in wooden or cardboard boxes a dozen pears
dug up, that morning, from the native spot. These

THE SACRED BEETLE 27

loxes, carefully closed, are put away in the dark, in my
study, where the same temperature reigns as outside.
Well, in none of them is the infant reared : sometimes the
egg shrivels ; sometimes the worm is hatched, but very
soon dies. On the other hand, in tin boxes or glass
receptacles, things go very M-ell : not one attempt at
rearing fails.

Whence do these differences arise ? Simply from this :
in the high temperature of July, evaporation proceeds
apace under the pervious wooden or cardboard screen ;
the alimentary pear dries up and the poor worm dies of
hunger. In the impermeable tin boxes, in the carefully-
sealed glass receptacles, evaporation does not take place,
the provisions retain their softness and the grubs thrive
as well as in their native burrow.

The insect employs two methods to ward off the danger
of "desiccation. In the first place, it compresses the outer
layer with all the strength of its wide armlets, turning
it into a protecting rind more homogeneous and more
compact than the central mass. If I smash one of these
weU-dried boxes of preserves, the rind usually breaks off
sharp and leaves the kernel in the middle bare. The
whole suggests the shell and the almond of a filbert. The
pressure exercised by the mother when manipulating her
pear has influenced the surface layer to a depth of a few
millimetres and from this results the rind ; further down,
the pressure has not spread, whence proceeds the central
kernel. In the hot summer months, my housekeeper
puts her bread into a closed pan, to keep it fresh. This
is what the insect does, in its fashion : by dint of com-
pression, it confines the bread of the family in a pan.

The Sacred Beetle goes further still : she becomes a
geometrician capable of solving a fine problem of mini-

28 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

mum values. All other conditions remaining equal, the
evaporation is obviously in proportion to the extent
of the evaporating surface. The alimentary mass must
therefore be given the smallest possible surface, in order
by so much to decrease the waste of moisture ; neverthe-
less, this smallest surface must unite the largest aggregate
of nutritive materials, so that the worm may find sufficient
nourishment. Now which is the form that encloses the
greatest bulk within the smallest superficial area ?
Geometry answers, the sphere.

The Scarab, therefore, shapes the worm's allowance
into a sphere (we will pass over the neck of the pear for
the moment) ; and this round form is not the result of
blind mechanical conditions, imposing an inevitable
shape upon the workman ; it is not the forcible effect
of a rolling along the ground. We have already seen
that, with the object of easier and swifter transit, the
insect kneads the plunder which it intends to consume
at a distance into an exact ball, without moving it from
the spot at which it lies ; in a word, we have observed
that the round form precedes the roUing.

In the same way, it will be shown presently that the
pear destined for the worm is fashioned down in the
burrow. It undergoes no process of rolling, it is not
even moved. The Scarab gives it the requisite outline
exactly as a modelling artist would do, shaping his clay
under the pressure of the thumb.

Supplied with the tools which it possesses, the insect
would be capable of obtaining other forms of a less dainty
curve than its pear-shaped work. It could, for instance,
make the coarse cylinder, the sausage in use among the
Geotrupes ; simplifying the work to the utmost, it could
leave the morsel without any settled form, just as it

THE SACRED BEETLE 29

happened to find it. Things would proceed all the faster
and would leave more time for playing in the sun.
But no : the Scarab adopts exclusively the sphere, so
difficult in its precision ; she acts as though she knew
the laws of evaporation and geometry from A to Z.

It remains for us to examine the neck of the pear.
What can be its object, its use ? The reply forces itself
upon us irresistibly. This neck contains the egg, in the
hatching-chamber. Now every germ, whether of plant or
animal, needs air, the primary stimulus of life. To admit
that vivifying combustible, the air, the shell of a bird's
egg is riddled with an endless number of pores. The
pear of the Sacred Beetle may be compared with the egg
of the hen. Its shell is the rind, hardened by pressure,
with a view to avoiding untimely desiccation ; its nutri-
tive mass, its meat, its yolk is the soft ball sheltered
under the rind ; its air-chamber is the terminal space, the
cavity in the neck, where the air envelopes the germ on
every side. Where would that germ be better off, for
breathing, than in its hatching-chamber projecting into
the atmosphere and giving free play to the interchange
of gases through its thin and easily penetrable wall and
especially through the felt of scrapings that finishes the
nipple ?

In the centre of the mass, on the other hand, aeration
is not so easy. The hardened rind does not possess the
eggshell's pores ; and the central kernel is formed of
compact matter. The air enters it, nevertheless, for
presently the worm will be able to live in it, the worm,
a robust organism less difficult and nice than the first
throbs of life.

These conditions, air and warmth, are so fundamental
that no Dung-beetle neglects them. The nutritive hoards

30 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

vary in form, as we shall have occasion to perceive :
in addition to the pear, such shapes as the cylinder, the
ovoid, the pill and the thimble are adopted, accordmg to
the species of the manipulator ; but, amid this diversity
of outline, one feature of the first importance remains
constant, which is the egg lodged in a hatching-chamber
close to the surface, providing an excellent means for
the easy access of air and warmth. And the most
gifted in this delicate art is the Sacred Beetle with her
pear.

I was urging just now that this first of Dung-kneaders
behaved with a logic that rivals our own. At the point
to which we have come, the proof of my statement is es-
tablished. Nay, better still. Let us submit the following
pro})lem to our leading scientific lights : a germ is accom-
panied by a mass of victuals liable soon to be rendered
useless by desiccation. How should the alimentary mass
be shaped ? Where should the egg be laid so as to be
easily influenced by air and warmth ?

The first question of the problem has already been
answered. Knowing that evaporation is in proportion
to the extent of the evaporating surface, science declares
that the victuals shall be arranged in a ball, because
the spherical form is that which encloses the greatest
amount of material within the smallest surface. As for
the egg, since it requires a protecting sheath to avoid any
harmful contact, it shall be contained within a thin,
cylindrical case ; and this case shall be implanted on the
sphere.

Thus the requisite conditions are fulfilled : the pro-
visions, gathered into a ball, keep fresh ; the egg, pro-
tected by its slender, cylindrical sheath, receives the
influence of air and warmth without impediment. The

THE SACRED BEETLE 31

strictly needful has been obtained ; but it is very ugly.
The practical has not troubled about the beautiful.

An artist corrects the brute work of reason. He re-
places the cylinder by a semi-ellipsoid, of a much prettier
form ; he joins this ellipsoid to the sphere by means of
a graceful curved surface ; and the whole becomes the
pear, the necked gourd. It is now a work of art, a thing
of beauty.

The Scarab does exactly what the laws of aesthetics
dictate to ourselves. Can she, too, have a sense of
beauty ? Is she able to appreciate the elegance of her
pear ? Certainly, she does not see it : she manipulates
it in profound darlmess. But she touches it. A poor
touch hers, rudely clad in horn, yet not insensible, after
all, to nicely-draAvn outlines !

CHAPTER III

THE SACRED BEETLE : THE MODELLING

How does the Scarab obtain the maternal pear 1 It
is certain, to begin with, that this is in no wise shaped
by the mechanism of conveyance along the ground :
the shape is incompatible with a rolling in every direc-
tion, at haphazard. We might accept that for the belly
of the gourd ; but the neck, the ellipsoid nipple, hollowed
into a hatching-chamber ! This delicate work could
never result from violent, unmeasured jerks. The gold-
smith's jewel is not hammered on the blacksmith's anvil.
Together with other reasons, all good in evidence, already
quoted, the pear-shaped outline delivers us, I hope, once
and for all, from the antiquated belief that placed the
egg inside a roughly- jolted ball.

To produce his masterpiece, the sculptor retires to his
den. Even so the Sacred Beetle. She shuts herself
down in her crypt, to model, in contemplative seclusion,
the materials introduced. Two opportunities offer for
obtaining the block to be worked. In the one case, the
Scarab gathers from the heap, according to the method
which we know, a choice block, which is kneaded into a
ball on the spot and which is already spherical before
it is set in motion. Were it only a question of pro-
visions intended for her own meals, she would never act

otherwise.

32

THE SACRED BEETLE 33

When she thinks the ball of sufficient bulk, if the place
do not suit her wherein to dig the burrow, she sets out
with her rolling burden, walking at random till she lights
upon a favourable spot. During the journey, the ball,
without improving upon the perfect sphere which it was
at the start, hardens a little on the surface and becomes
encrusted with earth and Httle grains of sand. This
earthy rind, picked up on the road, is an authentic sign
of a more or less long excursion. The detail is not
without importance ; it will serve us presently.

Less frequently, the spot close to the heap whence
the block has been extracted satisfies the insect as
suitable for the excavation of the burrow. The soil is
free from pebbles and easy to dig. Here, no journey is
necessary, nor, therefore, any ball convenient for transit.
The soft biscuit of the sheep is gathered and stored as
found and enters the workshop a shapeless mass, either
in one piece, or, if need be, in different lumps.

This case occurs seldom in the natural state, because
of the coarseness of the ground, which abounds with
broken stones. Sites practicable for easy digging are
few and far between and the insect has to roam about,
with its burden, to find them. In my voleries, on the
other hand, where the earthy layer has been purged with
the sieve, it is the usual case. Here the earth is easy
to dig at any point ; wherefore the mother, workmg for
her laying, is content to lower the nearest morsel under-
ground, without giving it any definite shape.

Whether the storing without preliminary ball or con-
veyance be achieved in the fields or in my voleries, the
final result is most striking. One day, I see a shapeless
lump disappear into the crypt. The next day, or the
day after, I visit the workshop and find the artist face

5

34 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

to face with her work. The uncouth mass of the start,
the loose shreds mtroduced by armfuls have become a
pear of perfect accuracy and conscientious finish.

The artistic object bears the marks of its method of
manufacture. The part that rests upon the bottom of
the cavity is crusted over with earthy particles ; all the
rest is of a glossy polish. Owing to its weight, owing also
to the pressure exercised when the Scarab manipulates
it, the pear, which is still quite soft, has become soiled
with grains of earth on the side that touches the floor of
the workshop ; on the remainder, which is the larger
part, it retains the delicate finish which the insect was
able to give it.

The inferences to be drawn from these minutely-
observed details are obvious : the pear is no turner's
work ; it has not been obtained bj^ any sort of rolling
on the ground of the spacious studio, for then it would
have been soiled with earth all over. Besides, its pro-
jecting neck precludes this mode of fabrication. It has
not even been turned from one side to the other, as is
loudly proclaimed by its unblemished upper surface.
The Scarab, therefore, has moulded it where it lies,
without turning or shifting it in any way ; she has
modelled it with little taps of her broad battledores, just
as when we saw her model her ball m the dajdight.

Let us now return to the usual case, in the open.
The materials then come from a distance and are intro-
duced into the burrow in the form of a ball covered with
soil on every part of its surface. What will the insect
do with this sphere which contains the paunch of the
future pear ready-made ? The answer would present
no serious difficulty if, limiting my ambition to the results
obtained, I sacrificed the means employed. It would be

THE SACRED BEETLE 35

enough for me, as I have often done, to capture the
mother in her burrow with her ball and carry one and
all home, to my animal laboratory, to watch events at
first hand.

A large glass jar is filled with earth, sifted, moistened
and heaped to the desired depth. I place the mother
and her beloved pill, which she holds embraced, on the
surface of this artificial soil. I stow away the apparatus
in a half-light and wait. My patience is not very long
tried. Urged by the labour of the ovaries, the insect
resumes its interrupted work.

In certain cases, I see it, still on the surface, destroy-
ing its ball, ripping it up, cuttmg it to pieces, shredding
it. This is not in the least the act of one in despair
who, findmg herself a captive, breaks the cherished
object in her bewilderment. It is an act of wise hygienics.
A scrupulous inspection of the morsel gathered in haste,
among lawless competitors, is often necessary, for super-
vision is not always easy on the harvestmg-spot itself,
in the midst of thieves and robbers. The ball may contain
a blend of little Onthophagi, of Aphodians, which have
not been noticed m the heat of acquisition.

These involuntary intruders, finding themselves very
comfortable in the heart of the mass, would themselves
make good use of the contemplated pear, much to the
detriment of the legitimate consumer. The ball must be
purged of this starveling brood. The mother, therefore,
destroys it, reduces it to atoms, scrutinizes it. Then,
out of the collected remnants, the ball is remade,
stripped of its earthy rmd. It is dragged underground
and becomes an immaculate pear, always excepting the
surface touching the soil.

Oftener still, the ball is thrust by the mother into the

36 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

earth of the jar just as I took it from the burrow, with
the wrinkled covering which it acquired in rolHng across
country during the journey from the place where it was
found to the spot where the insect intended to use it.
In that case, I find it at the bottom of my jar converted
into a pear, itself wrinkled and encrusted with earth
and sand over the whole of its surface, thus proving that
the pear-shaped outline has not demanded a general re-
casting of the mass, inside as well as out, but has been
obtamed by simple pressure and by drawing out the neck.

This is how, in the vast majority of cases, things
happen in the normal state. Almost all the pears which
I dig up in the fields are crusted, unpolished, some more,
others less. If we put on one side the inevitable en-
crustations due to the carting across fields, these blemishes
would seem to point to a prolonged rolling in the interior
of the subterranean manor. The few which I find per-
fectly smooth, especially those wonderfully neat specimens
furnished by my voleries, dispel this mistake entirely.
They show us that, with materials collected near at hand
and stored away unshaped, the pear is modelled wholly
without rolling ; they prove to us that, where the others
are concerned, the earthy wrinkles of the rind are not
the signs of a rolling manipulation at the bottom of the
workshop, but simply the marks of a fairly long journey
on the surface of the ground.

To be present at the construction of the pear is no
easy matter : the sombre artist obstmately refuses to
do any work as soon as the light reaches her. She needs
absolute darkness for her modelling ; and I need light
if I would see her at work. It is impossible to unite the
two conditions. Let us try, nevertheless ; let us seize
by fragments the truth which hides itself in its fulness.

PLATE III

w

1. The Sacred Jjeetle pushing away and oveituiniug a thieving frieud

who tries to force his assistance upon him.

2. Crypt in which the Beetle shapes a grub's provision into a pear.

THE SACRED BEETLE 37

The arrangements made are as follows : I once more
take the large glass jar. I cover the bottom with a layer
of earth a few mches in thickness. To obtain the
transparent workshop necessary for my observations, I
fix a tripod on the earthy layer and, on this support,
a decimetre^ high, I place a round deal slab of the
same diameter as the jar. The glass-walled chamber
thus marked out will represent the roomy cr3^pt in which
the insect works. In the edge of the deal slab, a hollow
is cut, largo enough to permit of the passage of the
Sacred Beetle and her ball. Lastly, above this screen,
I heap a layer of earth as deep as the jar allows.

During the operation, a portion of the upper earth
falls through the opening and slips clown to the lower
space in a wide inclined plane. This was a circumstance
which I had foreseen and which was indispensable to my
plan. By means of this slope, the artist, when she has
found the communicating trap-door, will make for the
transparent den which I have arranged for her. She
will make for it, of course, only provided that she bo in
perfect darkness. I therefore contrive a cardboard
cylinder, closed at the top, and place the glass apparatus
inside it. Left standing where it is, the opaque sheath
will provide the dusk which the Scarab demands ; sud-
denly raised, it will give the light which I require on my
side.

Things being thus arranged, I go in search of a mother
lately removed from her natural lodging with her ball.
A morning is enough to provide me with what I need.
I place the mother and her ball on the surface of the
upper layer of earth ; I cap the apparatus with its
cardboard sheath ; and I wait. The insect, stubborn at
^ 3'9 inches. — Translator'' s Note.

38 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

its work so long as the egg is not deposited, will dig
itself a new burrow, dragging its ball with it as it goes ;
it will pass through the upper layer of earth, which
is not sufficiently thick ; it will come upon the deal board,
an obstacle similar to the broken stones that often bar
its passage in the course of its normal excavations ; it will
investigate the cause of the impediment and, finding
the opening, will descend through this trap-door to the
lower compartment, which, being free and roomy, will
represent to the insect the crypt whence I have just
removed it. Thus prophesies my foresight. But all
this takes time ; and I must wait for the morrow to
satisfy my impatient curiosity.

The hour has come : let us go and see. The study-
door was left open yesterday : the mere sound of the
door-handle might stop my distrustful worker. By way
of greater precaution, before entering, I put on silent

slippers. And whoosh ! The cylinder is removed.

Capital ! My expectations are fully justified.

The Scarab occupies the glazed workshop. I catch
her at work, with her broad foot laid on the rough
sketch of the pear. But, startled by the sudden light,
she remains motionless, as though petrified. This lasts
a few seconds. Then she turns her back upon me and
awkwardly ascends the inclined plane, to reach the
darklmg heights of her gallery. I give a glance at the
work, take note of its shape, its position and its aspect,
and restore darkness with the cardboard sheath. Let
us not prolong the indiscretion, if we would renew the
test.

My sudden, brief visit gives us a first insight into the
mysterious work. The ball, at first exactly spherical,
now has a stout pad circumscribing a sort of shallow

THE SACRED BEETLE

39

crater. The work reminds me, in greatly reduced pro-
portions, of certain prehistoric pots, with* round bellies,
thick lips around the mouth and a neck strangled by
a narrow groove. This rude outline of a pear tells us of
the insect's method, a method identical with that of
Pleistoscene man ignorant of the potter's wheel.

The plastic ball, girt with a circle at one end, has
been hollowed out in a groove, the starting-point of
the neck ; it has, moreover, been drawn out a little into
an obtuse projection. In the centre of this projection,
a pressure has been effected,
which, causing the matter to
fall back over the edges, has
produced the crater, with its
shapeless lips. Circular enlace-
ment and pressure have sufficed
for this first part of the work.

Towards evening, I pay a
fresh sudden visit, amid com-
plete silence. The insect has
recovered from its excitement
of the morning and gone down
again to its workshop. Flooded
with light and baffled by the strange events to which my
artifices give rise, it at once makes off and takes refuge
-in the upper storey. The poor mother, persecuted by
my illuminations, runs up into the thick of the darkness,
but regretfully, with hesitating strides.

The work has progressed. The crater has become
deeper ; the thick lips have disappeared, are thinner,
closer together, drawn out into the neck of a pear. The
object, however, has not changed its place. Its position,
its aspect are exactly as I noted them before. The

\

Fig. 2. — The Sacred Beetle's
pill dug out cupwise to re-
ceive the egg.

40 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

side that lay on the ground is still at the bottom, at the
same point ; the side that faced upwards is still at the
top ; the crater that lay on my right has been replaced
by the neck, still on my right. Whence comes a con-
clusion completely confirming my previous statements :
no rolling ; mere pressure, which kneads and moulds.

The next day, a third visit. The pear is finished.
Its neck, yesterday a yawning sack, is now closed. The
egg, therefore, is laid ; the work has been carried through
and demands only the finishing touches of general
polishing, touches upon which the mother, so intent on
geometrical perfection, was doubtless engaged at the
time when I disturbed her.

The most delicate part of the affair escapes my ob-
servation. I see quite clearly, in the main, how the
hatching-chamber of the egg is obtained : the thick pad
surrounding the original crater is thinned and flattened
out under the pressure of the feet and lengthened into
a sack the mouth of which gradually narrows. Up to
this point, the work provides its own explanation. But
we have no explanation of the exquisite perfection of the
cell wherein the egg is to hatch, when we think of the
insect's rigid tools, the wide, toothed armlets whose
jerky awkwardness suggests the spasmodic movements
of an automaton.

With this clumsy equipment, excellently adapted to
coarse work though it be, how does the Scarab obtain
the natal dwelling, the oval nest so daintily polished and
glazed within ? Does the foot, a regular saw, fitted
with enormous teeth, begin to rival the painter's brush
in delicacy from the moment when it is inserted through
the narrow orifice of the sack ? Why not ? I have
said elsewhere and this is the occasion to repeat it :

THE SACRED BEETLE 41

the tool does not make the workman. The insect exerts
its gifts as a specialist with any kind of tool where-
with it is supplied. It can saw with a plane or plane
with a saw, like the model workman of whom Franklin
tells us. The same strong-toothed rake with which
the Sacred Beetle rips the earth is used by her as a
trowel and brush wherewith to glaze the stucco of the
chamber in which the grub will be born.

In conclusion, one more detail concerning this hatching-
chamber. At the extreme end of the neck of the pear,
one point is always pretty clearly distinguished : it
bristles with stringy fibres, while the rest of the neck
is carefully polished. This is the plug with which the
mother has closed the narrow opening after placing the
egg ; and this plug, as its hairy structure shows, has
not been subjected to the pressure which, throughout
the rest of the work, crams the smallest projecting scrap
into the mass and causes it to disappear.

Why this arrangement at the extreme pole, a very
curious exception, when every elsewhere the pear has
received the powerful blows of the insect's foot ?
The hind-end of the egg rests against this plug, which,
were it pressed down and driven in, would transmit
the pressure to the germ and imperil its safety. The
mother, aware of the risk, blocks up the hole without
rammmg the stopper : the air in the hatching-chamber
is thus more easily renewed ; and the egg escapes the
dangerous concussion of the compressing paddle.

6

CHAPTER IV

THE SACRED BEETLE : THE GRUB, THE METAMORPHOSIS,
THE HATCHING-CHAMBER

The hatching-chamber is an oval recess about one centi-
metre^ in diameter. The egg is fixed at the bottom of
this recess. It is cyHndrical in shape, rounded at both
ends, yellowish-white in colour and havmg nearly the
bulk of a grain of wheat, but shorter. The inner wall
of the recess is plastered with a greenish-brown matter,
shiny, half-fluid, a real cream destmed to form the first
mouthfuls of the grub. In order to produce this delicate
fare, does the mother select the quintessence of the ordure ?
The appearance of the mess tells me differently and
assures me that it is a broth elaborated in the maternal
stomach. The Pigeon softens the corn in her crop and
turns it mto a sort of milk-diet which she afterwards
disgorges for her brood. The Dung-beetle has the same
fond ways : she half-digests selected viands and disgorges
them as a fine pap, with which she hangs the walls of
the nest wherein her egg is laid. In this maimer, the
grub, when hatched, finds an easily-digested food that
soon strengthens its stomach and allows it to attack the
underlying layers, which are less daintily prepared.

A progressive change of diet is here made manifest.
On leaving the egg, the feeble little grub licks the fine

1 '39 inch. — Translator's Note.
42

THE SACRED BEETLE 43

sop on the walls of its lodging. There is not much of it,
but it is strengthening and possesses a high nourishing
value. The pap of tender childhood is followed by the
pottage of the weaned nursling.

The time has come for a sight stranger than any yet
displayed to me by the mechanical daring of the insect.
Anxious to observe the grub in the intimacy of its home,
I open in the belly of the pear a little peep-hole half a
centimetre square. The head of the recluse at once
appears in the opening, to enquire what is happening.
The breach is perceived. The head disaj^pears. I can
just see the white chine turning about in the narrow
cabin ; and, then and there, the wmdow which I have
contrived is closed with a soft, brown paste, which soon
hardens.

The inside of the cabin, said I to myself, is no doubt a
semi-fluid porridge. Turning upon itself, as is shown
by the sudden slide of the back, the grub has col-
lected an armful of this material and, completing the
circuit, has stuck its load, by way of mortar, in the
breach considered dangerous. I remove the closing plug.
The grub acts as before, puts its head at the window,
withdraws it, spins round upon itself like a fruit-stone
slipping in its shell and forthwith produces a second
plug as ample as the first. Forewarned of what was
coming, this time I saw more clearly.

What a mistake was mine ! I am not too greatly
thunderstruck, however : in the exercise of its defensive
skill, the animal often employs methods which our
imagination would not dare to contemplate. It is not
the head that is presented at the breach, after the pre-
liminary twisting : it is the opposite extremity. The
grub does not bring an armful of its alimentary dough,

44 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

gathered by scraping the walls : it excretes upon the
aperture to be closed ; a much more economical pro-
ceedmg. Sparingly measured out, the rations must not
be wasted : there is just enough to live upon. Besides,
the cement is of better quality ; it soon sets. Lastly,
the urgent repairs are more quickly effected, if the
intestines lend their kmdly aid.

They do, in point of fact, and to an astonishing degree.
Five, six times in succession and oftener, I remove
the fixed plug ; and, time after time, the mortar dis-
charges a copious ejaculation from its apparently in-
exhaustible reservoir, which is ever at the mason's
service, without an interval for rest. The grub is already
beginning to resemble the Sacred Beetle, whose stercoral
prowess we know : it is a past master in the art of dunging.
It possesses above any other animal in the world an
intestinal deftness which anatomy will undertake to ex-
plain to us, partly, later on.

The plasterer and the mason have their trowels. In
the same way, the grub, that zealous repairer of breaches
made in its home, has a trowel of its own. The last seg-
ment is lopped off slantwise, and carries on its dorsal
surface a sort of inclined plane, a broad disk surrounded
by a fleshy pad. In the middle of the disk is a gash,
forming the cementing-aperture. Behold the fair-sized
trowel, flattened out and supplied with a rim to prevent
the compressed matter from flowing away in useless
waste.

As soon as the plastic gush is laid down in a lump,
the levelling and compressuig instrument sets to work to
introduce the cement well into the irregularities of the
breach, to push it right through the thickness of the ruined
portion, to give it consistency, to level it. After this

THE SACRED BEETLE 45

stroke of the trowel, the grub turns round : it comes and
bangs and pushes the work with its wide forehead and im-
proves it with the tip of its mandibles. Wait a quarter
of an hour and the repaired portion will be as firm as the
rest of the shell, so quickly does the cement set. Out-
side, the repairs are betrayed by the rough prominence
of the material forced outwards, which remains in-
accessible to the trowel ; but, inside, there is no trace
of the breakage : the usual polish has been restored
at the injured spot. A plasterer stopping a hole in
a wall in our rooms could produce no better piece of
work.

Nor do the worm's talents end here. With its cement,
it becomes a mender of pots and pans. Let me explain.
I have compared the outside of the pear, which, v.hon
pressed and dried, becomes a strong shell, with a jar
containing fresh food. In the course of my excavations,
sometimes made on difficult soil, I have happened occa-
sionally to break this jar Avith an ill-directed blow of the
trowel. I have collected the potsherds, pieced them
together, after restoring the worm to its place, and
kept the whole thing in one by wrapping it in a bit
of old newspaper.

On reaching home, I have found the pear put out of
shape, no doubt, and seamed with scars, but just as solid
as ever. During the walk, the grub had restored its
ruined dwelling to condition. Cement injected into the
cracks joined the pieces together ; inside, a thick plaster-
ing strengthened the inner wall, so much so that the
repaired shell was quite as good as the untouched shell,
but for the irregularity ©f the outside. In its artistically-
mended stronghold, the worm found the peace essential
to its existence.

46 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Let us now give a brief description of the grub, with-
out stopping to enumerate the articulations of the palpi
and antennae, irksome details of no immediate interest.
It is a fat M'orm and has a fine, white skin, with pale
slate-coloured reflections proceeding from the digestive
organs, which are visible transparently. Bent into a
broken arch or hook, it is not unlike the grub of the
Cockchafer, but has a much more ungainly figure, for,
on its back, at the sudden bend of the hook, the third,
fourth and fifth segments of the abdomen swell into

an enormous protuberance, a
tumour, a pouch so prominent
that the skin seems on the
point of bursting under the
pressure of the contents. This
is the animal's most striking
feature : the fact that it
carries a wallet.

The head is small in pro-
portion to the size of the grub,
slightly convex and bright
red, studded with a few pale
bristles. The legs are fairly
long and sturdy, ending in
a pointed tarsus. The grub does not use them as limbs
of progression. Taken from its shell and placed upon
the table, it struggles in clumsy contortions without
succeeding in shifting its position ; and the cripple
betrays its anxiety by repeated eruptions of its mortar.

Let us also mention the terminal trowel, the last seg-
ment lopped into a slanting disk and rimmed with a fleshy
pad. In the centre of this inclined plane is the open
stercoral gash, which thus, by a very unusual inversion,

Fig. 3.— Grub of the Sacred
Beetle.

THE SACRED BEETLE

47

occupies the upper surface. An enormous hump and a
trowel : that gives you the animal in two words.

We must not finish the history of the grub without
saying a few words on its internal structure. Anatomy
will show us the works wherein the cement employed in
so original a manner is manufactured. The stomach or
chylific ventricle is a long,
thick cylinder, starting from
the creature's neck after a
very short gullet. It measures
about three times the length
of the animal. In its last
quarter, it carries a volumi-
nous lateral pouch distended
by the food. This is a sub-
sidiary stomach in which the
supplies are stored so as to
yield their nutritive principles
more thoroughly. The chylific
ventricle is much too long to
lie straight in the grub's
bowels and bends back upon
itself, in front of its appendix,
in the form of a large loop
occupying the dorsal surface.
It is to contain this loop
and the lateral pouch that
the back is swollen into a protuberance. The grub's
wallet is, therefore, a second paunch, an annexe, as it
were, of the stomach, which is itself incapable of holding
the voluminous digestive apparatus. Four very fine, very
long tubulures, irregularly entwined, four Malpighian
vessels mark the limits of the chylific ventricle.

Fic.

4. — Digestive apparatus of
the Sacred Beetle.

4S THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Next comes the intestine, narrow, cylindrical, rising
forwards. The intestine is followed by the rectum, which
pushes backwards. This latter, which is of exceptional
size and fitted with powerful walls, is wrmkled across,
bloated and distended by its contents. Here is the
roomy warehouse in which the scoriae of the digestion
accumulate ; here is the mighty ejaculator, always ready
to provide cement.

The grub gets bigger as it eats the wall of its house
from the inside. Little by little, the beUy of the pear is
scooped out into a cell whose capacity grows in propor-
tion to the growth of the inhabitant. Ensconced in its
hermitage, furnished with board and lodging, the recluse
waxes stout and fat. What more does it want ?

In four or five weeks, the complete development is
obtained. The apartment is ready. The worm sheds its
skin and becomes a chrysalis. There are very few in the
entomological world to vie in sober beauty with the tender
creature which, with its wing-cases laid in front of it like
a wide-creased scarf and its fore-legs folded under its
head, as when the full-grown Scarab counterfeits death,
suggests the idea of a mummy maintained by its bandages
in a sacerdotal pose. Semi-translucent and honey-yellow,
it looks as though it were cut from a block of amber.
Imagine it hardened in this state, mineralized, made
incorruptible : it would be a splendid topaz jewel.

In this marvel, so severe and dignified in shape and
colourmg, one point above all captivates me and gives
me at last the solution of a far-reaching problem. Are
the front-legs furnished with a tarsus, yes or no ? This
is the great business that makes me forget the jewel for
the sake of a structural detail. Let us then return to a
subject that excited me in my early days ; for the answer

THE SACRED BEETLE 49

has come at last, late, it is true, but certain and in-
disputable.

By a very strange exception, the full-grown Sacred
Beetle and his congeners are without front tarsi ; they
lack on their fore-legs that five-jointed finger which is
the rule among the highest division of Coleoptera, the
Pentamera. The other limbs, on the contrary, follow
the common law and possess a very well-shaped tarsus.
Is the formation of the toothed armlets origmal or
accidental ?

At first sight, an accident seems probable enough.
The Scarab is a strenuous mmer and a great pedestrian.
Always in contact with the rough soil, whether in walking
or digging ; used, moreover, for constant leverage when
the insect is rolling its ball backwards, the fore-legs are
much more exposed than the others to the danger of
spraining and twisting their delicate finger, of putting
it out of joint, of losing it entirely, from the very first
moment when the work begins.

Lest this explanation should appeal to any of my
readers, I will hasten to undeceive them. The absence
of the front fingers is not the result of an accident. The
proof of what I say lies here, under my eyes, without
the possibility of a rejoinder. I examine the nymph's
legs with the magnifying-glass : those m front have not
the least vestige of a tarsus ; the toothed limb ends
bluntly, without a trace of a terminal appendage. In
the others, on the contrary, the tarsus is as distinct as
possible, notwithstanding the shapeless, gnarled condition
due to the swaddling-bands and the humours of the
chrysalis state. It suggests a finger swollen with chil-
blains.

If the evidence of the nymph were not sufficient, there

7

50 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

would be that of the perfect insect which, casting its
rejected mummy-clothes and moving for the first time
in its shell, wields fingerless armlets. The fact, there-
fore, is established for certain : the Sacred Beetle is born
maimed ; his mutilation dates from his birth.

"Very well," reply our fashionable theorists, "the Sacred
Beetle is mutilated from the start ; but his remote an-
cestors were not. They were formed according to the
general rule, they were correct in structure down to this
slight digital detail. There were some who, in the course
of their rude task as diggers and rollers, wore out that
delicate, cumbrous, useless member ; and, finding them-
selves better equipped for their work by this accidental
amputation, they bequeathed it to their successors, to
the great benefit of the race. The present insect profits
by the improvement obtained by a long array of ancestors,
and, acting under the stimulus of vital competition, gives
permanence to an advantageous condition due to chance."

O ingenuous theorists, so triumphant on paper, so
vain in the face of reality, listen to me for yet one
moment more ! If the loss of the front fingers be a
fortunate thing for the Sacred Beetle, who faithfully
hands down the leg of yore fortuitously maimed, why
should it not be so with the other members, if they too
happened to lose by chance their terminal appendage,
a small, powerless filament, almost utterly unserviceable,
and, owmg to its delicacy, a cause of grievous conflicts
with the roughness of the soil ?

The Sacred Beetle is not a climber, but an ordinary
pedestrian, supporting himself upon the point of an iron-
shod stick, by which I mean the stout spine or prickle
wherewith the tip of the leg is armed. He does not have
to hold on by his claws to some hanging branch, as does

THE SACRED BEETLE 51

the Cockchafer. And it would therefore, meseems, be
entirely to his advantage to rid himself of the four
remaining fingers, projecting sideways, idle on the march,
inactive in the construction and carriage of the ball.
Yes, that would mean progress, for the simple reason
that the less hold one gives to the enemy the better.
It remains to be seen if chance ever produces this state
of thmgs.

It does and very often. At the end of the fine season,
in October, when the insect has worn itself out in dig-
ging, in carrying balls and in modelling pears, the maimed,
the victims of work, form the great majority. I see
them, both in my voleries and outside, displaying every
degree of amputation. Some have lost the finger on
their four hind-legs altogether ; others retain a stump, a
couple of joints, a single jomt ; those which are least
damaged have a few members left intact.

This is certainly the mutilation pleaded by the
theorists. And it is no accident, occurring at long
intervals : every year, the cripples outnumber the others
at the time when the wmter-season is at hand. In their
final labours, they seem no more embarrassed than those
who have been spared by the trials of life. On both
sides, I find the same quickness of movement, the same
dexterity in kneading the ammunition-bread which will
enable them to bear the first rigours of winter philo-
sophically underground. In the scavenger's work, the
maimed vie with the others.

And these cripples form a race ; they spend the bad
season underground ; they wake up in the spring, return
to the surface and take part, for a second, some-
times even for a third time, in life's great festival. Their
descendants ought to profit by an improvement which

52 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

has been renewed year by year, ever since Scarabs came
into the world, and which has certainly had time to
become fixed and to convert itself into a settled habit.
But they do nothing of the sort. Every Sacred Beetle
that breaks his shell, with not one exception, is endowed
with the four tarsi prescribed by rule.

Well, theorists, what say you to that ? For the two
front legs, you offer a sort of an explanation ; and the
four others contradict j'ou flatly. Have 3'ou not been
taking fancv for truth ?

Then what is the cause of the original mutilation of
the Scarab ? I will confess plainly that I know nothing
at all about it. Nevertheless, those two maimed members
are very strange : so strange, in the endless order of
insects, that they have exposed the masters, the greatest
masters, to lamentable blunders. Let us hsten first to
Latreille,^ the prmce of descriptive entomologists. In his
account of the insects which ancient Egypt painted or
carved upon her monuments, ^ he quotes the writings of
Horapollo, an unique document which has been pre-
served for us in the papyri for the glorification of the
sacred insect :

" One would feel tempted at first," he says, " to set
down as fiction what Horapollo says of the number of
that Scarab's fingers. According to him, there are thirty.
Nevertheless, this computation, judged by the way in
which he looks at the tarsus, is perfectly correct, for this
part consists of five joints ; and, if we take each of them
for a finger, the legs being six in number and each ending

^ Pierre Andre Latreille (1762-1833), one of the founders of entomo-
lojjical science. — Translator s Note.

2 Memoires da Museum, d'histoire naturelle, vol. v., p. 249. —
Author's Note.

THE SACRED BEETLE 53

in a five-jomtcd tarsus, the Sacred Beetles obviously have
thirty fingers."

Forgive me, illustrious master : the total number of
joints is but twenty, because the two front legs are
devoid of tarsi. You have been carried away by the
general law. Losing sight of the singular exception,
which was certamly kno^^Tl to you. you said thirty,
swayed for a moment by that overwhelmingly positive
law. Yes, the exception was known to you, so much so
that the figure of the Sacred Beetle accompanying your
account, a figure drawn from the insect and not from the
Egyptian monuments, is irreproachably accurate : it has
no tarsi on its fore-legs. The blunder is excusable, in
view of the strangeness of the exception.

What did Horapollo himself see ? Apparently what
we see in our day. If Latreille's explanation be right, as
everything seems to denote, if the Egyptian author
began by counting thirty fingers according to the number
of joints in the tarsi, it is because his enumeration was
based in his mind upon the facts of the general situation.
He was guilty of a mistake which was not very repre-
hensible, seemg that, some thousand 5^ears later, masters
like Latreille and Mulsant were guilty of it in their turn.
The only culprit in all this business is the exceptional
structure of the insect.

" But," I may be asked, " why should not Horapollo
have seen the exact truth ? Perhaps the Scarab of his
century had tarsi which the insect does not possess to-
day. In that case, it has been altered by the patient
work of time."

Before answering this evolutionary objection, I will
wait for some one to show me a natural Scarab of Hora-

54 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

polio's date. The hypogea which so religiously guard
the cat, the ibis and the crocodile must also contain the
sacred insect. All that I have at my disposal is a few
figures representing the Sacred Beetle as we find him
engraved on the monuments or carved in fine stone as an
amulet for the mummies. The ancient artist is remark-
ably faithful in the execution of the whole ; but his
graver, his chisel have not troubled about details so
insignificant as those of the tarsi.

Ill-supplied though I be with documents of this kind,
I greatly doubt whether carving or engraving will solve
the problem. Even if an image with front tarsi were
discovered somewhere or other, the question would be no
further advanced. One could always plead a mistake,
carelessness, a leaning towards symmetry. The doubt,
as long as it prevails in certain minds, can only be
removed by the ancient insect in a natural state. I will
wait for it, convinced beforehand that the Pharaonic
Scarab differed in no way from our own.

Let us not take leave of the old Egyptian author just
yet, in spite of his usually incomprehensible jargon, with
its senseless allegories. He sometimes has views that
are strikingly correct. Is it a chance coincidence ? Or
is it the result of serious observation ? I should be gladly
inclined to adopt the latter opinion, so perfect is the
agreement between his statements and certain biological
details of which our own science was ignorant until quite
lately. Where the intimate life of the Scarab is con-
cerned, Horapollo is much better-informed than ourselves.

In particular, he writes as follows :

" The Scarab buries her ball in the ground, where she
remains hidden for twenty-eight days, a space of time

THE SACRED BEETLE 55

equal to that of a revolution of the moon, during which
period the offspring of the Scarab quickens. On the
twenty-ninth day, which the msect knows to be that of
the conjunction of the sun and moon and of the birth
of the world, it opens the ball and throws it into the
water. From this ball issue animals that are Scarabs."

Let us dismiss the revolution of the moon, the con-
junction of the sun and moon, the birth of the world
and other astrological absurdities, but remember this :
the twenty-eight days of incubation required by the ball
underground, the twenty-eight days during which the
Scarab is born to life. Let us also remember the indis-
pensable intervention of water to bring the insect out
of its burst shell. These are precise facts, falling within
the domain of true science. Are they imaginary ? Are
they real ? The question deserves investigation.

Antiquity knew nothmg of the wonders of the meta-
morphosis. To antiquity, a grub was a worm born of
corruption. The poor creature had no future to lift it
from its abject condition : as worm it appeared and as
worm it had to disappear. It was not a mask under
which a superior form of life was being elaborated ; it was
a definite entity, supremely contemptible and doomed
soon to return to the rottenness that gave it birth.

To the Egyptian author, therefore, the Scarab's larva
was unknown. And if, by chance, he had had before his
eyes the shell of the insect inhabited by a fat, big-bellied
worm, he would never have suspected in the foul and
ugly animal the sober beauty of the future Scarab.
According to the ideas of the time, ideas long maintained,
the sacred insect had neither father nor mother : an
error excusable in the midst of the simplicity of the

56 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

ancients, for here the two sexes are outwardly indis-
tinguishable. It was born of the ordure that formed its
ball ; and from its birth dated the appearance of the
nj-mph, that amber gem displaying, in a perfectly recog-
nizable form, the features of the full-grown insect.

In the eyes of all antiquity, the Sacred Beetle begins
to be born to life at the moment when he can be recog-
nized, not before ; else we should have the as yet unsus-
pected worm of affiliation. The twenty - eight days,
therefore, during which, as Horapollo tells us, the off-
spring of the insect quickens, represent the nymphal
phase. This period has been the object of special atten-
tion in my studies. It varies, but within narrow limits.
The notes taken mention thirty-three days as the longest
duration and twenty-one as the shortest. The average,
supplied by a score of observations, is twenty-eight days.
This identical number twenty-eight, this number of four
weeks appears as such and oftener than the others.
Horapollo spoke truly : the real insect takes life in the
interval of a lunar month.

The four weeks past, behold the Scarab in his final
shape : the shape, yes, but not the colouring, which is
very strange when the chrysalis casts its skin. The
head, legs and thorax are a dark red, except the denticula-
tions, which are a smoky brown. The abdomen is an
opaque white ; the w^ing-cases are a transparent white,
very faintly tinged with yellow. This majestic dress,
combining the red of the cardinal's cassock with the white
of the priest's alb, is but temporary and turns darker by
degrees, to make way for a uniform of ebon black.
About a month is necessary for the horny armour to
acquire a firm consistency and a definite hue.

At last, the Scarab is fuUy matured. Awaking wdthin

THE SACKED BEETLE 57

him is the delicious restlessness of an approaching liberty.
He, hitherto the son of the darkness, foresees the glad-
ness of the light. His longmg is great to burst the shell,
to emerge from below ground and come into the sun ;
but the difficulty of liberating himself is far from small.
Will he escape from the natal cradle, now become an
odious prison ? Or will he not escape ? It depends.

It is generally in August that the Sacred Beetle is
ripe for the delivery : in August, save for rare exceptions,
the most torrid, dry and scorching month of the year.
Should there not then come, from time to time, a shower
that to some slight extent assuages the panting earth,
then the cell to be burst and the wall to be broken through
defy the strength and patience of the insect, which is
powerless against all that hardness. By dint of a pro-
longed desiccation, the soft original matter has become
an insuperable rampart ; it has turned into a sort of brick
baked in the oven of the dog-days.

I need hardly say that I have not failed to experi-
ment with the insect in these difficult circumstances.
Pear-shaped shells are gathered contaming the full-
grown Scarab, who is on the point of issuing, in view of
the lateness of the season. These shells, already dry and
very hard, are laid in a box where they retain their
aridity. A little earlier in one case, a little later in the
other, I hear the sharp grating of a rasp inside each shell.
It is the prisoner working to make himself an outlet by
scraping the wall with the rake of his shield and fore-feet.
Two or three days elapse and the delivery seems to make
no progress.

I come to the assistance of a pair of them by myself
opening a loop-hole with the point of a knife. According
to my idea, this first breach will help the egress of the

8

58 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

recluse by offermg him a place to start upon, an exit
that only needs widening. But not at all : these favoured
ones advance no quicker Avith their work than the rest.

In less than a fortnight, silence prevails in all the
shells. The prisoners, worn out with ineffectual efforts,
have perished. I break the caskets containing the
deceased. A meagre pinch of dust, representing hardly
an average pea in bulk, is all that the sturdy imple-
ments— rasp, sav/, harrow and rake — have succeeded in
sundering from the mvincible wall.

Other shells, of a similar hardness, are wrapped m
a wet rag and enclosed in a flask. When the moisture
has soaked through them, I relieve them of their wrapper
and keep them in the corked flask. This time, events
take a very different turn. Softened to a nicety by the
wet rag, the shells burst, ripped open by the shove of the
prisoner, who props himself boldly on his legs, using his
back as a lever ; or else, scraped away at one point, they
crumble to pieces and yawn with a wide breach. The
success is complete. In each case, the delivery is effected
without impediment ; a few drops of water have brought
them the joys of the sun.

For the second time, Horapollo was right. Certainly,
it is not the mother, as the old author says, who throws
her ball into the water : it is the clouds that provide the
liberating ablution, the rain that facilitates the ultimate
release. In the natural state, thmgs must happen as in
my experiments. In August, in a burnt soil, mider a
thin screen of earth, the shells, baked like bricks, are for
most of the time as hard as pebbles. It is impossible for
the insect to wear out its casket and escape from it.
But, should a shower come upon the scene — that life-
giving baptism which the seed of the plant and the

THE SACRED BEETLE 59

family of the Scarab alike await within the ashes of the
soil — should a little rain fall, soon the fields will present
the appearance of a resurrection.

The earth is soaked. This is the wet rag of my experi-
ment. At its touch, the shell recovers the softness of
its early days, the casket becomes yielding ; the insect
makes play with its legs, pushes with its back ; it is free.
It is, in fact, in the month of September, during the first
rains which herald the coming autumn, that the Scarab
leaves the native burrow and comes to enliven the
pastoral sward, even as the former generation enlivened
it in the spring. The clouds, hitherto so chary, have
come at last to set him free.

Under conditions of exceptional coolness of the earth,
the bursting of the shell and the emerging of its occupant
can occur at an earlier period ; but, in ground scorched by
the fierce sun of summer, as is usually the case in these
parts, the Scarab, however eager he may be to see the
light, must needs wait for the first rains to soften his
stubborn shell. A downpour means to him a question
of life and death. Horapollo, that echo of the Egyptian
magi, saw true when he made water play its part in the
insect's birth.

But let us drop the jargon of antiquity and its shreds
of truth ; let us not neglect the first acts of the Sacred
Beetle on leaving his shell ; let us be present at his
prentice steps in the open-air life. In August, I break
the casket in which I hear the helpless prisoner fretting.
The insect, the only one of its species, is placed in a
volery. Provisions are fresh and plentiful. This is the
moment, I say to myself, when we take refreshment
after so long an abstinence. Well, I am wrong : the
new recruit sets no store by the victuals, notwithstand-

60 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

ing my invitations, my appeals to the appetizing heap.
What he wants above all is the joys of light. He climbs
the metal trellis, sets himself in the sun and there,
motionless, takes his fill of its beams.

What passes through his dull-mtted scavenger's brain
during this first bath of radiant light ? Probably nothing.
He enjoys the unconscious happiness of a flower blooming
in the sun.

At last, the insect goes to the victuals. A ball is con-
structed according to all the rules. There is no appren-
ticeship, no first attempt : the spherical form is obtained
as regularly as though after long practice. A burrow
is dug wherein to eat in peace the lately-kneaded bread.
Here we find the novice thoroughly versed in his art.
No experience, however prolonged, will add anything to
his talents.

THE SPANISH COPRIS

CHAPTER V

THE SPANISH COPRIS

To show instinct performing on behalf of the egg what
reason, ripened by study and experience, would advise
is a result of no mean philosophic import ; and I find
myself seized with a scruple aroused by scientific austerity.
Not that I wish to give science a forbidding aspect :
I am convinced that one can say excellent things without
employing a barbarous vocabulary. Clearness is the
supreme politeness of whoso wields a pen. I do my
best to observe it. And the scruple that stops me is
of another kind.

I ask myself if I am not here the victim of an illusion.
I say to myself :

" The Sacred Beetles and others are manufacturers of
balls, of pills. That is their trade, learnt we know not
how, prescribed perhaps by their structure, in particular
by their long legs, some of which are slightly curved.
When working for the egg, what wonder if they continue
undergromid their special craft as ball-makmg artisans ?"

Setting aside the neck of the pear and the jutting tip
of the ovoid, details the interpretation of which presents
quite other difficulties, there remains the most important
mass as regards bulk, the globular mass, a repetition of
that which the insect makes outside the burrow ; there

63

64 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

remains the ball with which the Sacred Beetle plays
in the sun, sometimes without making any other use
of it.

Then what does the globulous form, which presents the
most efficacious preventative agamst desiccation durmg
the heat of summer, do here ? Physically, this property
of the sphere and of its near neighbour, the ovoid,
is undeniable ; but these shapes offer only a casual
concord with the difficulty overcome. The animal built
to roll balls across the fields also fashions balls under-
ground. If the worm be all the better for finding tender
foodstuffs under its mandibles to the very end, that is a
capital thing for the worm, but it is no reason why we
should extol the instinct of the mother.

To complete my conviction, I shall need a portly
Dung-beetle who is a total stranger to the pill-making
craft in matters of every-day life and who, nevertheless,
when the moment of laying is at hand, makes a sudden
change in her habits and shapes her harvest into a ball.
Is there any such in my neighbourhood ? Yes, there is ;
and she is one of the handsomest and largest, next to the
Sacred Beetle. I speak of the Spanish Copris, who is so
remarkable for her suddenly slopmg corselet and for the
extravagant horn surmoimting her head.

Thick-set, round, dumpy, slow of gait, the Spanish
Copris is certainly not equal to the athletic perform-
ances of the Sacred Beetle. The kgs, of very middling
length and folded under the belly at the least alarm,
bear no comparison with the stilts of the pill-rollers.
Their stiff and stunted form alone is enough to tell us
that the insect would not care to wander about hampered
by a rolling ball.

The Copris is, in point of fact, of a sedentary habit.

THE SPANISH COPRIS 65

Once he has found his provisions, at night or in the
evening twilight, he digs a burrow under the heap. It
is a rough cave, large enough to hold a big apple. Here
is introduced, piecemeal, the matter forming the roof
or, at least, lymg on the door-sill ; here is engulfed,
without definite shape, an enormous supply of victuals,
bearing eloquent witness to the insect's gluttony. As long
as the hoard lasts, the Copris, engrossed in the pleasures
of the table, does not return to the surface. The hermit-
age is not abandoned until the larder is emptied, when
the insect recommences its nocturnal searches, finds
a new treasure and digs itself a new temporary estab-
lishment.

Plying this trade as a setter-in of ordure without
preliminary manipulation, the Copris, evidently, is
absolutely ignorant, for the time being, of the art of
kneading and modelling a globular loaf. Besides, his
short, awkward legs seem radically opposed to any such
art.

In May, or June at latest, comes laying-time. The
insect, itself so ready to fill its belly with the most sordid
materials, becomes particular, where the portion of its
family is concerned. Like the Sacred Beetle, it now wants
the soft produce of the sheep, deposited in a single lump.
Even when copious, the cake is buried on the spot in
its entirety. Not a trace of it remains outside. Economy
demands that it be gathered to the last crumb.

You see : no journey, no carting, no preparations.
The cake is carried down to the cellar by armfuls and at
the identical spot where it is lying. The insect repeats,
with an eye to its grubs, what it did when working for
itself. As for the burrow, which is marked by a large
mole-hill, it is a roomy cave dug at a depth of some

9

66 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

twenty centimetres.^ I observe a greater width, a greater
perfection than in the temporary abodes occupied by
the Copris at times of revelry.

But let us leave the insect working in a state of liberty.
The evidence supplied by chance meetings would be in-
complete, fragmentary and disconnected. An examina-
tion in the volery is much to be preferred ; and the Copris
lends himself to this most admirably. Let us first watch
the storing.

In the discreet dusk of the twilight, I see him ap-
pear on the threshold of his burrow. He has mounted
from the depths, he has come to gather his harvest.
He has not long to seek : the provisions are there, outside
the door, plentifully served and renewed by my care.
Timidly, prepared to retreat at the least alarm, he walks
up to them with a slow and measured step. The shield
cuts and rummages, the fore-legs extract. An armful is
separated from the rest, quite a modest armful, crumbling
to pieces. The Copris drags it backwards and dis-
appears underground. In less than two minutes, he is
back again. Never forgetting his caution, he questions
the neighbouring space "with the outspread leaflets of
his antennae before crossing the tlireshold of his dwelling.

A distance of two or thiee inches separates him from
the heap. It is a serious matter for him to venture so
far. He would have preferred the victuals exactly over
his door, forming a roof to the house. This would avoid
his having to go out, always a source of anxiety. I
have decided otherwise. To facilitate my observations,
I have placed the victuals just on one side. Little by
little, the alarmist grows accustomed to the open air and
accustomed to my presence, which, for that matter, I

^ About eight inches. — Translator's Note.

THE SPANISH COPRIS 67

render as discreet as possible. The taking down of the
armfuls is repeated indefinitely. They are always shape-
less scraps, morsels such as one might pick off with a
small pair of pincers.

Having learnt what I want to know about the method
of warehousing, I leave the insect to its work, which
continues for the best part of the night. On the following
days, nothing : the Copris goes out no more. Enough
treasure has been amassed in a single night's sitting.
Let us wait a while and leave the insect time to stow its
harvest as it pleases.

Before the week is out, I dig up the soil of the volery
and lay bare the burrow, the victualling of which I have
partly followed. As in the fields, it is a spacious hall,
with an irregular, surbased ceiling and an almost level floor.
In a corner is a round hole, similar to the orifice of the
neck of a bottle. This is the business-entrance, opening
on a slanting gallery that runs up to the surface. The
walls of the house dug in fresh soil are carefully piled up
and possess enough power of resistance not to give way
under the disturbance produced by my excavations.
We can see that, in labourmg for the future, the insect
has put forth all its talent, all its strength as a digger,
to produce lasting work. Whereas the marquee in which
we feast is a cavity hurriedly hollowed out, our per-
manent dwelling is a crypt of larger dimensions and of
a much more finished construction.

I suspect that both sexes take part in the master
work : at least, I often come upon the couple in the
burrows destined for the laying. The roomy and luxu-
rious apartment was no doubt once the wedding-hall ;
the marriage was consummated under the great vault
to the building of which the swain has contributed : a

68 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

gallant way of declaring his ardour. I also suspect the
husband of lending a hand to his partner with the har-
vesting and the storing. From what I have gathered,
he too, strong as he is, collects his armfuls and goes down
into the crypt. The minute and tricky work goes much
faster with two helping. But, once the house is weU
supplied, he retires discreetly, returns to the surface and
goes and settles down elsewhere, leaving the mother to
her delicate functions. His part in the family-mansion
is ended.

Now what do we find in this mansion, to which we
have seen so many tiny loads of provisions lowered 1
A muddled heap of separate morsels ? Not in the least.
I always find a single lump, a huge loaf which fills the
box, but for a narrow passage all around, just wide
enough to leave the mother room to move.

This sumptuous lump, a real Twelfth-Night cake, has
no fixed shape. I come across some that are ovoid,
suggestmg a turkey's egg m form and size ; I find some
that are a flattened ellipsoid, similar to the common
onion ; I discover some that are almost round, reminding
one of a Dutch cheese ; I see some that are circular and
slightly raised on the upper surface, like the loaves of the
Proven9al rustic or, better still, the foiigasso a Vidu'^ where-
with the Easter festival is celebrated. In every case, the
surface is smooth and regularly curved.

There is no mistaking what has happened : the mother
has collected and kneaded into one lump the numerous
fragments brought down one after the other ; out of all
those particles she has made a homogeneous piece, by
dmt of mashing them, amalgamating them, stamping

1 An egg-shaped cake baked in Provence at Easter. — Translator' s
Note.

THE SPANISH COPRTS 69

on them. I repeatedly surprise the baker on the top
of the colossal loaf beside which the Sacred Beetle's pill
cuts so poor a figure : she goes strolling about on the
convex surface, which sometimes measures a decimetre^
across ; she pats the mass, consolidates it, levels it. I
can give but a glance at the curious scene. As soon as
she is perceived, the pastry-cook slides down the curved
slope and huddles out of sight beneath the pie.

To follow the work further, to study its close detail,
we must resort to artifice. The difficulty is almost nil.
Either my long practice with the Sacred Beetle has made
me more skilful in methods of research, or else the Copris
is less circumspect and endures more readily the annoy-
ance of a long captivity ; for I succeed, without the
least impediment, m follo\\'ing all the phases of the nest-
making at my heart's ease.

I employ two methods, each fitted to instruct me as
to certain particulars. Whenever the voleries supply
me with a few large cakes, I move these, with the
mother, and place them in my study. The receptacles
are of two sorts, according to whether I want light or
darkness. For light, I employ glass jars with a diameter
more or less the same as that of the burrows, say about
a dozen centimetres. 2 At the bottom of each is a thin
layer of fresh sand, quite insufficient to allow the Copris
to bury herself in it, but convenient, nevertheless, to
save the insect from the slippery footing provided by
the glass and to give it the illusion of a soil similar to
that of which I have deprived it. On this layer the
jar receives the mother and her loaf.

I need hardly say that the startled insect would not

* 3'93 inches. — Translator's Note.

* Four to five inches. — Translator's Note.

70 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

undertake anything under conditions of light, however
softly modulated. It demands complete obscurity,
which I produce by means of a cardbrarl box encasing
the cj^linder. By carefully raising this box a little, I
am able, presently, when I feel inclined, to surprise the
captive at her work and even to follow her doings for a
time. The method, the reader will see, is much simpler
than that which I used when I wished to see the Sacred
Beetle engaged in modelling her pear. The easier-going
mood of the Copris lends itself to this simplification,
which would be none too successful with the other. A
dozen of these eclipsed apparatus are thus arranged on
the large table in the laboratory. Any one seeing the
set would take them for an assortment of groceries in
whity-brown paper bags.

For darkness, I use flower-pots filled with fresh, heaped
sand. The mother and her cake occupy the lower
portion, which is arranged as a nest by means of a card-
board screen forming a ceiling and supporting the sand
above. Or else I simply put the mother on the surface
of the sand with a supply of provisions. She digs herself
a burrow, does her warehousing, makes herself a nest
and things happen as usual. In aU cases, a sheet of
glass used as a lid answers for my prisoners' safety.
I rely upon these several dark apparatus to inform me
about a delicate point the particulars whereof will be
set forth in their proper place.

What do the glass jars covered with an opaque sheath
teach us ? They teach us much, of a most interesting
character, and this to begin with : the big loaf does not
owe its curve — which is always regular, notwithstanding
its varying form — to any rolling process. The inspection
of the natural burrow has already told us that so large

THE SPANISH COPRIS 71

a mass could not have been rolled into a cavity of which
it fills almost the whole space. Besides, the strength of
the insect would be unequal to moving so great a load.

Questioned from time to time, the jar repeats the
same conclusion for our benefit. I see the mother,
hoisted atop the piece, feeling here, feeling there, bestow-
ing little taps, smoothing away the projecting points,
perfecting the thing ; never do I catch her looking as
though she wanted to turn the block. It is as clear as
daylight : rolling has nothing whatever to do with the
matter.

The dough-maker's assiduity, her patient cares make
me suspect a delay in the manufacture whereof I was far
from dreaming. Why so many after-touches to the block,
why so long a wait before employing it ? A week and
more passes, in fact, before the insect, ever pressing
and polishing, decides to use its hoard.

The baker, when he has kneaded his dough to the
desired extent, collects it into a single heap in a corner
of the kneading-trough. The heat of the panary fer-
mentation smoulders better in the heart of the volu-
minous mass. The Copris knows this secret of the bake-
house. She collects the sum total of her harvests into a
single lump ; she carefully kneads the whole into a pro-
visional loaf which she gives time to improve by means
of an inner labour that makes the paste more palatable
and gives it a degree of consistency favourable to sub-
sequent manipulations. As long as the chemical work
remains unfinished, both the journeyman-baker and the
Copris wait. To the insect this means a long spell, a
week at least.

It is done. The baker's man divides his lump into
smaller lumps, each of which will become a loaf. The

THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Copris acts likewise. By means of a circular gash made
with the cleaver of the shield and the saw of the fore-legs,
she separates from the main body a section of the pre-
scribed size. For this stroke of the trencher, no hesita-
tion is needed, no after-touches that add or subtract.
Off-hand and with a plain, decisive cut, a lump is obtained
of the requisite bulk.

It now becomes a question of shaping it. Clasping it
as best it can in its short arms, so incompatible, one
would think, with work of this kind, the insect rounds

the section by the one and
only means of pressure. It
gravely moves about the
hitherto shapeless ball, climbs
up, climbs down ; it turns
to left and right, above and
below ; methodically, it presses
a little more here, a Httle
less there ; it improves by
new touches, with unchanging
patience ; and, in twenty-
four hours' time, the angular
piece has become a perfect
sphere, the size of a plum. In a corner of her crammed
studio, the podgy artist, with hardly room to move, has
finished her work without once shaking it on its base ; by
dint of time and patience, she has obtained the geometrical
globe which her clumsy tools and her confined space
seemed bound to refuse her.

The insect continues for a long time yet to improve
and lovingly to pohsh its sphere, gently passing its foot
to and fro until the least protuberance has disappeared.
Its fuiikm after-touches look as though they would never

Fig. 5. — The Copris's pill : first
state.

PLATE IV

1 and 2, The Spanisli L'opn.s, male an J female.

3. The pair jointly kneading the big Joaf, which, divided into egg-

shaped pills, will furnish provisions for e:ich grub of the brood.

4. The mother alone in her burrow: five pills are already finished;

a sixth is in process of construction.

THE SPANISH COPRIS

73

be done. Towards the end of the second day, however,
the globe is pronounced right and proper. The mother
chmbs to the dome of her edifice and there, still by
simple pressure, hollows out a shallow crater. In this
basin the egg is laid.

Then, with extreme caution, with a delicacy that is
most surprising in such rough tools, the hps of the crater
are brought together so as to form a vaulted roof over
the egg. The mother slowly turns, rakes a httle, draws

Fig. 6. — The Sjjanish Copiis's pill
dug out cupwisc to receive the
egg-

Fig. 7. — The Sjianish Copris's
pill : sectiou showirig the
hatching - chamber and the
egg.

the material upwards and finishes the closing. This is the
most tickhsh work of all. A careless pressure, a miscalcu-
lated thrust might easily jeopardize the life of the germ
under its slender ceiling.

From time to time, the work of closing is suspended.
The mother, motionless, with lowered forehead, seems to
auscultate the underlying cavity, to Usten to what is
happening within. All's well, it seems ; and the patient
labour is resumed : a fine scraping of the sides towards

10

74 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

the summit, which tapers a little and lengthens out. In
this way, an ovoid with the small end uppermost replaces
the original sphere. Under the more or less projecting
nipple is the hatching-chamber, with the egg. Twenty-
four hours more are spent in this minute work. Total :
four times round the clock and sometimes longer to con-
struct the sphere, hollow it out basinwise, lay the egg
and shut it in by transforming the sphere into an ovoid.

The insect goes back to the cut loaf and helps itself to a
second slice, which, by the same manipulations as before,
becomes an ovoid sheltering an egg. The surplus suffices
for a third ovoid, pretty often even for a fourth. I
have never seen this number exceeded when the mother
had at her disposal only the materials which she had
heaped up in the burrow.

The laying is over. Here is the mother in her retreat,
which is almost filled by the three or four cradles standing
one against the other, with their poles jutting upwards.
What will she do now ? Go away, no doubt, to recruit
her strength a little out of doors, after a prolonged fast.
He who thinks this is mistaken. She remains. And
yet she has eaten nothing since she came underground,
taking good care not to touch the loaf, which, divided
into equal portions, will be the food of the family. The
Copris is touchingly scrupulous in the matter of the
inheritance : she is a devoted mother, who braves hunger
lest her offspring should starve.

She braves it for a second reason : to mount guard
around the cradles. From the end of June onwards,
the burrows are hard to find, because the mole-hills
disappear through the action of some storm, or the wind,
or the feet of the passers-by. The few which I succeed
in discovermg always contain the mother dozing beside a

THE SPANISH COPRIS 75

group of pills, in each of which a grub, now nearing its
complete development, feasts on the fat of the land.

My dark apparatus, flower-pots filled with fresh sand,
confirm what the fields have taught me. Buried with
provisions in the first fortnight in May, the mothers do
not reappear on the surface, under the glass lid. They
keep hidden in the burrow after laying their eggs ; they
spend the sultry dog-days with their ovoids, watching
them, no doubt, as the glass jars, rid of subterranean
mysteries, tell us.

They come up again at the time of the first autumnal
rains, in September. But by then the new generation
has attained its perfect form. The mother, therefore,
enjoys underground that rare privilege for the insect,
the delight of knowing her family ; she hears her sons
scratching at the shell to obtain their liberty ; she is
present at the bursting of the casket which she has
fashioned so conscientiously ; maybe she helps the ex-
hausted weakhngs, if the ground have not been cool
enough to soften their cells. Mother and progeny leave
the subsoil together and arrive together at the autumn
banquets, when the sun is mild and the ovine manna
plentiful along the paths.

THE ONTHOPHAGI

CHAPTER VI

THE ONTHOPHAGI

After the notabilities of the Dung-beetle tribe, there
remain, in the very limited radius of my research, the
small fry of the Onthophagi, of whom I could gather a
dozen different species around my house. What will
these little ones teach us ?

Even more zealous than their larger comrades, they are
the first to hasten to the exploiting of the heap left by
the passing mule. They come up in crowds and stay
long, working under the spread table that gives them
shade and coolness. Turn over the heap with your foot. ,
You will be surprised at the swarming population whose
presence no outward sign betrayed. The largest are
scarce the size of a pea, but many are much smaller still,
are dw^arfs, no less busy than the others, no less eager to
crumble the filth whose prompt disappearance the public
health demands.

In works of major interest, there is none like the
humble, with their concerted weakness, for realizing
immense strength. Swollen by numbers, the next to
nothing becomes an enormous total.

Hurrying in detachments at the first news of the event,
assisted moreover in their wholesome task by their part-
ners, the Aphodians, who are as weak as they, the tiny
Onthophagi soon clear the ground of its dirt. Not that

79

80 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

. their appetite is equal to the consumption of such plenti-
'I ful provisions. What food do those pigmies need ? An
atom. But that atom, selected from among the exuda-
tions, must be hunted amid the fragments of the masti-
cated fodder. Hence, an endless division and subdivision
of the lump, reducing it to crumbs which the sun sterilizes
and the wind dispels. As soon as the work is done —
and very well done — the troop of scavengers goes in
search of another refuse-yard. Outside the period of
intense cold, which puts a stop to all activity, they
know no dead season.

And do not run away with the idea that this filthy task
entails an inelegant shape and a ragged dress. The
insect knows none of our squalor. In its world, a navvy
dons a sumptuous jerkin ; an undertaker decks himself
in a triple saffron sash ; a wood-cutter works in a velvet
coat. In like manner, the Onthophagus has his own
luxury. True, the costume is always severe : brown and
black are the predominant colours, now dull, now polished
as ebony ; but, on this background, what details of sober
and graceful ornament ! The graver's work completes
the beauty of the dress. Tiny chasings in parallel grooves,
gnarly beads, dainty rows of knobs, seed-plots of pearly
papillae are distributed in profusion among nearly all of
them. Yes, the little Onthophagi, with their stunted
bodies and their nimble activity, are really pretty to
look at.

And then how original are their frontal decorations !
These peace-lovers delight in the panoply of war, as
though they, the inoffensive ones, thirsted for battle.
Many of them crown their heads with threatening horns.
Let us mention that horned one whose story will
occupy us more particularly. I mean Onthophagus

PLATE V

1. Onthophar/us lattrus. 2. OntJiO'ihaijus ]'<iria.

3. The Stercoraceons Geotrupe. 4 The W'ide-neckeJ Scarab.

5. Cleonus Optliahnicus. 6. Cerceris Tuhei\ulata. 7. L'upreati.i .L'rea.

THE ONTHOPHAGI 81

Taurus, clad in raven black. He wears a pair of long
horns, gracefully curved and branching to either side.
No pedigree bull, in the Swiss meadows, can match them
for curve or elegance.

The Onthophagus is a very indifferent artist : his nest
is a rudimentary piece of work, hardly fit to be acknow-
ledged. I obtain it in profusion from the six species which
I have brought up in my jars and flower-pots. Ontho-
phagus Taurus alone provides me with nearly a hundred ;
and I find no two precisely alike, as pieces should be that
come from the same mould and the same laboratory.

To this lack of exact similarity, we must add inaccuracy
of shape, now more, now less accentuated. It is easy,
however, to recognize among the bulk the prototype
from which the clumsy nest-builder works. It is a sack
shaped like a thimble and standing erect, with the spherical
thimble-end at the bottom and the circular opening at
the top.

Sometimes, the insect establishes itself in the central
region of my apparatus, in the heart of the earthy mass ;
then, the resistance being the same in every direction,
the sack-like shape is pretty accurate. But, generally,
the Onthophagus prefers a solid basis to a dusty support
and builds against the walls of the jar, especially against
the bottom wall. When the support is vortical, the sack
is a short cylinder divided lengthwise, with a smooth,
flat surface against the glass and a rugged convexity
every elsewhere. If the support be horizontal, as is
most frequently the case, the cabin is a sort of undefined
oval pastille, flat at the bottom, bulging and vaulted
at the top. To the general inaccuracy of these con-
torted shapes, ruled by no very definite pattern, we must
add the coarseness of the surfaces, all of which, with the

11

82 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

exception of the parts touching the glass, are covered
with a crust of sand.

The manner of procedure explains this uncouth ex-
terior. As laying-time draws nigh, the Onthophagus
bores a cylindrical pit and descends underground to a
middling depth. Here, working with the shield, the
chine and the fore-legs, which are toothed like a rake,
he forces back and heaps around him the materials which
he has moved, so as to obtain as best he may a nest of
suitable size.

The next thing is to cement the crumbling walls of
the cavity. The insect climbs back to the surface by
way of its pit ; it gathers on its threshold an armful of
mortar taken from the cake whereunder it has elected
to set up house ; it goes down again with its burden, which
it spreads and presses upon the sandy waU. Thus it
produces a concrete casing, the flint of which is supplied
by the wall itself and the cement by the produce of the
sheep. After a few trips and repeated strokes of the
troM'el, the pit is plastered on everj^ side ; the walls,
encrusted with grains of sand, are no longer liable to
give W8by.

The cabin is ready : it now wants only a tenant and
stores. First, a large free space is contrived at the
bottom : the hatching-chamber, on whose inner wall the
egg is laid. Next comes the gathering of the provisions
intended for the worm, a gathering made with nice pre-
cautions. Lately, when building, the insect worked upon
the outside of the doughy mass and took no notice of
the earthy blemishes. Now, it penetrates to the very
centre of the lump, through a gallery that looks as though
it were contrived with a punch. When trying a cheese,
the buyer employs a hollow cylmdrical taster, which he

THE ONTHOPHAGI 83

drives well in and pulls out with a sample taken from
the middle of the cheese. The Onthophagus, when col-
lecting for her grub, goes to work as though equipped
with one of these tasters. She bores an exactly round
hole into the piece which she is exploiting ; she goes
straight to the middle, where the material, not being
exposed to the contact of the air, has kept more savoury
and pliable. Here and here alone are gathered the
armfuls which, gradually stowed away, kneaded and
heaped up to the requisite extent, fill the sack to the top.
Finally, a plug of the same mortar, the sides of which
are made partly of sand and partly of stercoral cement,
roughly closes the cell, in such a way that an outward in-
spection does not allow one to distinguish front from back.

To judge the work and its merit, we must open it. A
large empty space, oval in shape, occupies the rear end.
This is the birth-chamber, huge in dimensions compared
with its content, the egg fixed on the wall, sometimes
at the bottom of the cell and sometimes on the side. The
egg is a tiny white cylinder, rounded at either end and
measuring a millimetre^ in length immediately after it
is laid. With no other support than the spot on which
the oviduct has planted it, it stands on its hind-end and
projects into space,

A more or less enquiring glance is quite surprised to
find so small a germ contained in so large a box. What
does that tiny egg want with all that space ? When
carefully examined within, the walls of the chamber
prompt another question. They are coated with a fine
greenish pap, semi-fluid and shiny, the appearance of
which does not agree with the outward or inward aspect
of the lump from which the insect has extracted its

* '039 inch. — Translator's Note.

84 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

materials. A similar lime-wash is observed in the nest
which the Sacred Beetle, the Copris, the Sisyphus, the
Greotrupe and other makers of stercoraceous preserves
contrive in the very heart of the provisions, to receive the
egg ; but nowhere have I seen it so plentiful, in propor-
tion, as in the hatching-chamber of the Onthophagus.
Long puzzled by this brothy wash, of which the Sacred
Beetle provided me with the first instance, I began by
taking the thing for a layer of moisture oozing from the
bulk of the victuals and collecting on the surface of the
enclosure without other effort than capillary action. That
was the interpretation which I accepted originally.

I was wTong. The truth is worthy of attention in a
very different way. To-day, better-informed by the
Onthophagus, I know that this lime-wash itself, this
semi-fluid cream, is the product of maternal foresight.

What, then, is this lime-wash found in every cell ?
The answer is compulsory : it is a produce of the mother,
a special gruel, a milk-food elaborated for the benefit
of the new-born grub.

The young Pigeon puts his beak into that of his parents,
who, with convulsive efforts, force down his gullet first a
caseous mash secreted in the crop and next a broth of
grains softened by being partially digested. He is fed
upon disgorged foods, which are helpful to the weaknesses
of an inexperienced stomach. The grub of the Ontho-
phagus is brought up in much the same way, at the start.
To assist its first attempts at swallowing, the mother pre-
pares for it, in her crop, a light and strengthening cream.

To pass the dainty from mouth to mouth is, in her
case, impossible : the construction of other cells keeps
her busy elsewhere. Moreover — and this is a more serious
detail — the laying takes place egg by egg, at very long

THE ONTHOPHAGl 85

intervals, and the hatching is pretty slow : time would
fail, had the family to be brought up in the manner
of the Pigeons. Another method is perforce needed.
The childish pap is disgorged all over the walls of the
cabin in such a way that the nursling finds itself sur-
rounded by an abundance of bread-and-jam, in which
the bread, the food of the sturdy age, is represented by
the uncooked material, as supplied by the sheep, whereas
the jam, the mess of the puny age, is represented by
the same material daintily prepared beforehand in the
mother's stomach. We shall see the babe presently lick
first the jam, all around it, and then stoutly attack the
bread. A child among ourselves would behave no otherwise.

I should have liked to catch the mother in the act of
disgorging and spreading her broth. I was not able to
succeed. Things happen in a narrow retreat, which the
eye cannot enter when the pastry-cook is busy ; and also
her fluster at being exhibited in broad daylight at once
stops the work.

If direct observation be lacking, at least the appearance
of the material speaks very clearly and tells us that the
Onthophagus, here rivalling the Pigeon, but with a
different method, disgorges the first mouthfuls for her
sons. And the same may be said of the other Dung-
beetles skilled in the art of building a hatching-chamber
in the centre of the provisions.

No elsewhere, in the insect order, except among the
Apidae, who prepare disgorged food in the shape of
honey, is this affection present. The Dung-workers edify
us with their morals. Several of them practise association
in couples and found a household ; several anticipate the
suckling, the supreme expression of maternal solicitude,
by turning their crop into a nipple. Life has its freaks.

8G THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

It settles amid ordure the creatures most highly-endowed
with family qualities. True, from there it mounts, with
a sudden flight, to the sublimities of the bird.

The little worm is hatched in about a week : a strange
and paradoxical being. On its back, it has an enormous
sugar-loaf hump, the weight of which drags it over and
capsizes it each time it tries to stand on its legs and walk.
At every moment, it staggers and falls under the burden
of the hunch.

Unable to keep its hump upright, the grub of the
Onthophagus lies down on its side and licks the cream of
its cell all around it. There is cream everywhere, on the
ceiling, on the walls, on the floor. As soon as one spot
is thoroughly bared, the consumer moves on a httle
with the help of its well-shaped legs ; it capsizes again and
starts licking again. The room is large and plentifully
supplied ; and the jam-diet lasts some time.

The fat babies of the Geotrupe, the Copris and the
Sacred Beetle finish at one brief sitting the dainty where-
with their cabined lodge is hung, a dainty scantUy served
and just sufficient to stimulate the appetite and prepare
the stomach for a coarser fare ; but the Onthophagus grub,
that lean pigmy, has enough to last it for a week and
more. The spacious natal chamber, w^hich is out of all
proportion with the size of the nursling, has permitted
this w'astefulness.

At last, the real loaf is attacked. In about a month,
everything is consumed, except the wall of the sack. And
now the splendid part played by the hump stands re-
vealed. Glass tubes, prepared in view of events, allow
me to follow the more and more plump and hunch-backed
grub at work. I see it withdraw to one end of the cell,
which has become a crumbling ruin. Here it builds a

THE ONTHOPHAGI 87

casket in which the transformation will take place. Its
materials are the digestive residuum, converted into mortar
and heaped up in the hump. The stercoral architect is
about to construct a masterpiece of elegance out of its own
ordure, held in reserve in that receptacle.

I follow its movements under the magnifying-glass.
It buckles itself, closes the circuit of the digestive ap-
paratus, brings the two poles into contact and, with the
end of its mandibles, seizes a pellet of dung ejaculated
at that moment. This pellet, moulded and measured
to perfection, is very neatly gathered. A slight bend of
the neck sets the rubble-stone in place. Others follow,
laid one above the other in minutely regular courses.
Giving a tap here and there with its feelers, the grub
makes sure of the stability of the parts, their accurate
binding, their orderly arrangement. It turns round in
the centre of the work as the edifice rises, even as a
mason does when building a tower.

Sometimes, the laid stone becomes loose, because the
cement has given way. The worm takes it up again
with its mandibles, but, before replacing it, coats it with
an adhesive moisture. It holds it to its anus, whence
trickles, on the moment, almost imperceptibly, a gummy
consolidating extract. The hump supplies the materials ;
the intestines give, if necessary, the connecting glue.

In this way, a nice house is produced, ovoid in shape,
polished as stucco within and adorned on the outside with
slightly projecting scales, similar to those on a cedar-
cone. Each of these scales is one of the rubble-stones out
of the hump. The casket is not large : a cherry-stone
would about represent its dimensions ; but it is so accurate,
so prettily fashioned that it will bear comparison with
the finest products of entomological industry.

CHAPTER VII

A BAEREN PROMISE

In the nymph of Onthophagus Taurus there rises, on the
front edge of the corselet, a single horn, as strong as the
two others and shaped like a cylinder ending in a conical
knob. It points forward and is fixed in the middle of
the frontal crescent, projecting a little beyond it. The
arrangement is gloriously original. The carvers of
hieroglyphics would have beheld in it the crescent of
Isis wherein dips the edge of the world.

Other singularities complete the curious nj^mph. To
right and left, the stomach is armed, on either side, with
four little horns resemblmg crystal spikes. Total, eleven
pieces on the harness : two on the forehead ; one on
the thorax ; eight on the abdomen. The beast of yore
delighted in queer horns : certain reptiles of the geo-
logical period stuck a pointed spur on their upper eye-
lids. The Onthophagus, more daring, sports eight on the
sides of his belly, in addition to the spear which he plants
upon his back. The frontal horns may be excused : they
are pretty generally worn ; but what does he propose to
do with the others ? Nothing. They are passing fancies,
jewels of early youth ; the adult insect will not retain the
least trace of them.

The nymph matures. The appendages of the forehead,
at first quite crystalline, now show, transparently, a streak

88

A BARREN PROMISE 89

of reddish brown, curved arc-wise. These are real horns
taking shape, consistency and colour. The appendage of
the corselet and those of the belly, on the other hand,
preserve their glassy appearance. They are barren sacks,
void of any self -developing germ. The organism pro-
duced them in an impetuous moment ; now, scornful, or
perhaps powerless, it allows the work to wither and become
useless.

When the nymph sheds its covering and the fine tunic
of the adult form is torn, these strange horns crumble into
shreds, which fall away with the rest of the cast clothing.
In the hope of finding at least a trace of the vanished
things, the lens in vain explores the bases but lately
occupied. There is nothing appreciable left : smoothness
takes the place of protuberance ; nullity succeeds to
reality. Of the accessory panoply that promised so
much, absolutely naught remains : everything has dis-
appeared, evaporated, so to speak.

Onthophagus Taurus is not the only one endowed with
those fleeting appendages, which vanish wholly when the
nymph sheds its clothes. The other members of the
tribe possess similar horny manifestations on their bellies
and corselets. These all disappear entirely in the perfect
insect.

A simple setting forth of the facts does not suffice us :
we should like to guess at the motive of this corniculate
display. Is it a vague memory of the customs of olden
time, when life spent its excess of young sap upon quaint
creations, banished to-day from our better-balanced
world ? Is the Onthophagus the dwarfed representative
of an old race of horned animals now extinct ? Does it
give us a faint image of the past ?

The surmise rests upon no vaUd foundation. The

12

90 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Dung-beetle is recent in the general chronology of created
beings ; he ranks among the last-comers. With him
there is no means of going back to the mists of the past,
so favourable to the invention of imaginary precursors.
The geological layers and even the lacustrian layers,
rich in Diptera and Weevils, have so far furnished not the
slightest relic of the Dung-workers. This being so, it is
wiser not to refer to distant horned ancestors as accounting
for their degenerate descendant, the Onthophagus.

Since the past explains nothing, let us turn to the future.
If the thoracic horn be not a reminiscence, it may be a
promise. It represents a timid attempt, which the ages
will harden into a permanent weapon. It lets us assist
at the slow and gradual evolution of a new organ ; it
shows us life working on a portion of the adult's corselet,
which does not yet exist, but which is to exist some day.
We take the genesis of the species in the act ; the present
teaches us how the future is prepared.

And what does the insect that has conceived the
ambition of later planting a spear upon its chine propose
to make of its projected work ? At least as an adjunct of
masculine finery, the thing is in fashion among various
foreign Scarabs that feed themselves and their grubs
on vegetable matters in a state of decomposition. These
giants among the wing-cased tribe delight in associating
their placid corpulence with halberds terrible to gaze
upon.

Look at this one — Dynastes Hercules his name — an
inmate of the rotten tree-stumps under the torrid West-
Indian skies. The peaceable colossus well deserves
his name : he measures three inches long. Of what
service can the threatening rapier of the corselet and the
toothed Ufting-jack of the forehead be to him, unless it

A BARREN PROMISE 91

be to make him look grand in the presence of his female,
herself deprived of these extravagances ? Perhaps also
they are of use to him in certain works, even as the trident
helps Minotaurus in crumbling the pellets and carting
the rubbish. Implements of which we do not know the
use always strike us as singular. Having never associated
with the West-Indian Hercules, I must content myself
with suspicions touching the purpose of his fearsome
equipment.

WeU, one of the subjects in my voleries would achieve
a similar savage finery if he persisted in his attempts.
I speak of Onthophagus Vacca. His nymph has on its
forehead a thick horn, one only, bent backward ; on its
corselet it possesses a Hke horn, jutting forward. The
two, approaching their tips, look like a sort of pincers.
What does the insect lack in order to acquire, on a smaller
scale, the eccentric ornament of the West-Indian Scarab ?
It lacks perseverance. It matures the appendage of the
forehead and allows that of the corselet to perish
atrophied. It succeeds no better than Onthophagus
Taurus in its attempt to grow a pointed stake upon its
chine ; it loses a glorious opportunity of making itself fine
for the wedding and terrible in battle.

The others are no more successful. I bring up six
different species. AH, in the chrysalis state, possess the
thoracic horn and the eight-pointed ventral coronet ; not
one benefits by these advantages, which disappear alto-
gether when the adult spUts its case. My near neigh-
bourhood numbers a dozen species of Onthophagi ; the
world contains some hundreds. All, natives and foreigners,
have the same general structure ; aU most probably
possess the dorsal appendage at an early age ; and none
of them, in spite of the variety of the climate, torrid in

92 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

one place, moderate in another, has succeeded in harden-
ing it into a permanent horn.

Could the future not complete a work the design of
which is so very clearly traced ? We ask ourselves this
the more readily inasmuch as every appearance encour-
ages the question. Examine under the magnifying-
glass the frontal horns of Onthophagus Taurus in the
pupa state ; then consider as carefully the spear upon
the corselet. At first, there is no difference between them,
except the general configuration. In both cases, we find
the same glassy aspect, the same sheath swollen with a
crystalline moisture, the same incipient organ plainly
marked. A leg in formation is not more clearly declared
than the horn on the corselet or those on the forehead.

Can time be lackmg for the thoracic growth to organize
itself into a stiff and lastmg appendage ? The evolution
of the nymph is swift ; the insect is perfect in a few weeks.
Could it not be that, though this brief space suffice to
promote the maturity of the horns on the forehead, the
thoracic horn requires a longer time to ripen ? Let us
prolong the nymphal period artificially and give the germ
time to develop itself. It seems to me that a decrease
of temperature, moderated and maintained for some
weeks, for months if necessarj^ should be capable of
bringing about this result, by delajong the progress of the
evolution. Then, with a gentle slowness, favourable to
delicate formations, the promised organ wiU crystallize,
so to speak, and become the spear heralded by appear-
ances.

The experiment attracted me. I was unable to under-
take it for lack of the means whereby to produce a cold,
even and lasting temperature. What should I have
obtained if my penury had not made me abandon the

A BAEREN PROMISE 93

enterprise ? A retarding of the progress of the meta-
morphosis, but nothing more, apparently. The horn on
the corselet would have persisted in its sterility and,
sooner or later, would have disappeared.

I have reasons for my conviction. The abode of the
Onthophagus while engaged on his metamorphosis is not
deep dowTi ; variations of temperature are easily felt.
On the other hand, the seasons are capricious, especially
the spring. Under the skies of Provence, the months of
May and June, if the mistral lend a hand, have periods
when the thermometer drops in such a way as to suggest
a return of winter.

To these vicissitudes let us add the influence of a more
northerly climate. The Onthophagi occupy a wide zone
of latitude. Those of the north, less favoured by the sun
than those of the south, can, if changing circumstances
assist at the time of the transformation, undergo long
weeks of a decreased temperature which spins out the
work of evolution and ought therefore to permit the
thoracic armour, at long intervals and casually, to
consolidate into a horn. Here and there, then, the con-
ditions of a moderate, or even cold temperature, at the
time of the nymphosis, are realized without the aid of
my artifices.

Well, what becomes of this surplus time placed at the
service of the organic labour ? Does the promised horn
ripen ? Not a bit of it : it withers just as it does under
the stimulus of a hot sun. The records of entomology
have never spoken of an Onthophagus carrying a horn
upon his corselet. No one would even have suspected the
possibiUty of such an armour, if I had not rumoured the
strange appearance of the nymph. The influence of
climate, therefore, goes for nothing here.

94 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Pushed further still, the question becomes more com-
plicated. The homy appendages of the Onthophagus, of
the Copris, of IMinotaurus and of so many others are the
male's prerogative ; the female is without them or wears
them only on a reduced and very modest scale. We
must look upon these corniculate products as personal
ornaments much rather than as implements of labour.
The male makes himself fine for the pairing ; but, with
the exception of IMinotaurus, who pins down the dry pellet
that needs crushing and holds it in position with his
trident, I know none that uses his armour as a tool.
Horns and prongs on the forehead, crests and crescents
on the corselet are jewels of masculine vanity and nothing
more. The other sex requires no such baits to attract
suitors : its femininity is enough ; and finery is neglected.

Now here is something to give us food for thought.
The nymph of the Onthophagus of the female sex, a
nymph with an unarmed forehead, carries on its thorax
a vitreous horn as long, as rich in promise as that of the
other sex. If this latter excrescence be an incompletely-
realized incipient ornament, then the former would be
so too, in which case the two sexes, both anxious for
self-embellishment, would work with equal zeal to grow
a honi upon their thorax. We should be witnessing the
genesis of a species that would not be really an Ontho-
phagus, but a derivative of the group ; we should be
beholding the commencement of singularities banished
hitherto from among the Dung-beetles, none of whom, of
either sex, has thought of planting a spear upon his chine.
Stranger still : the female, always the more humbly
attired throughout the entomological order, would be
vying with the male in her propensity for eccentric adorn-
ment. Aii ambition of this sort leaves me incredulous.

A BARREN PROMISE 95

We must therefore believe that, if the possibilities of
the future should ever produce a Dung-beetle carrying a
horn upon his corselet, this upsetter of present customs
will not be the Onthophagus succeeding in maturing the
thoracic appendage of the nymph, but rather an insect
resulting from a new model. The creative power throws
aside the old moulds and replaces them by others,
fashioned with fresh care, after plans of an inexhaustible
variety. Its laboratory is not a peddling rag-fair, where
the living assume the cast clothes of the dead : it is a
medallist's studio, where each effigy receives the stamp
of a special die. Its treasure-house of forms, of unbounded
wealth, excludes any niggardly patching of the old to
make the new. It breaks up every mould once used ; it does
away with it, without resorting to shabby after-touches.
Then what is the meanmg of those horny preparations,
which are always blighted before they come to aught ?
Without feeling greatly abashed by my ignorance, I
confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the
absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at
least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS

13

CHAPTER VIII

A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS

To travel over the world, by land and sea, from pole to
pole ; to cross-question life, under every clime, in the
infinite variety of its manifestations : that surely would be
glorious luck for him that has eyes to see with ; and it
formed the radiant dream of my young years, at the
time when Robinson Crusoe was my delight. These
rosy illusions, rich in voyages, were soon succeeded by
dull, stay-at-home reality. The jungles of India, the
virgin forests of Brazil, the towering crests of the Andes,
beloved by the condor, were reduced, as a field for ex-
ploration, to a patch of pebble-stones enclosed within
four walls.

Heaven forfend that I should complain ! The gathering
of ideas does not necessarily imply distant expeditions.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau herborized with the bunch of
chickweed whereon he fed his canary ; Bernardin de Saint-
Pierre discovered a world on a strawberry-plant that
grew by accident in a corner of his window ; Xavier de
Maistre, using an arm-chair by way of post-chaise, made
one of the most famous of journeys around his room.^

This manner of seeing country is within my means,
always excepting the post-chaise, which is too difficult
to drive through the brambles. I go the circuit of my

1 Voijage autour de ma chambre (179o\ — Translator's Note.

99

100 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

enclosure over and over again, a hundred times, by short
stages ; I stop here and I stop there ; patiently, I put
questions ; and, at long intervals, I receive some scrap of
a reply.

The smallest insect village has become familiar to me :
I know each fruit-branch where the Praying Mantis
perches ; each bush where the pale Italian Cricket strums
amid the calmness of the summer nights ; each wad-clad
blade of grass scraped by the Anthidium, that maker
of cotton bags ; each cluster of lilac worked by the
Megachile, the leaf-cutter.

If cruising among the nooks and corners of the garden
do not suffice, a longer voyage shows ample profit. I
double the cape of the neighbouring hedges and, at a
few hundred yards, enter into relations with the Sacred
Beetle, the Capricorn, the Geotrupe, the Copris, the
Dectus, the Cricket, the Green Grasshopper, in short, with
a host of tribes the unfolding of whose story would
exhaust a human life. Certainly, I have plenty, I have
too much to do with my near neighbours, without going
and wandering in distant regions.

And then, besides, roaming the world, scattering one's
attention over a host of subjects, is not observing. The
travelling entomologist can stick numerous species, the
joy of the collector and the nomenclator, into his boxes ;
but to gather circumstantial documents is a very different
matter. A Wandering Jew of science, he has no time to
stop. Where a prolonged stay would be necessary to
study this or that fact, he is hurried b}^ the next stage.
We must not expect the impossible of him in these
conditions. Let him pin his specimens to cork tablets,
let him steep them in tafia jars and leave to the sedentary
the patient observations that require time.

A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS 101

This explains the extreme penury of history outside
the dry descriptions of the nomenclator. Overwhehning
us with its numbers, the exotic insect nearly always
preserves the secret of its manners. Nevertheless, it were
well to compare what happens under our eyes with that
which happens elsewhere ; it were excellent to see how, in
the same corporation of workers, the fundamental instinct
varies with climatic conditions.

Then my travelling regrets return, vainer to-day than
ever, imless one could find a seat on the carpet of which
we read in the Arabian Nights, the famous carpet whereon
one had but to sit to be carried whithersoever he pleased.
0 marvellous conveyance, far preferable to Xavier de
Maistre's post-chaise ! If only I could find a little corner
on it, with a return-ticket !

I do find it. I owe this unexpected good fortune
to a Christian Brother, to Brother Judulian, of the
Lasalle College at Buenos Ayres. His modesty would be
offended by the praises which his debtor owes him. Let
us simply say that, acting on my instructions, his eyes
take the place of mine. He seeks, finds, observes, sends
me his notes and his discoveries. I observe, seek and find
with him, by correspondence.

It is done : thanks to this first-rate collaborator, I have
my seat on the magic carpet. Behold me in the pampas of
the Argentine Republic, eager to draw a parallel between
the industry of the Dung-beetles of Serignan^ and that of
their rivals in the western hemisphere.

A glorious beginning ! An accidental find procure?
me, to start with, Phanseus ]\Iilo, a magnificent insect,
blue-black all over. The corselet of the male juts
forward, over the head, in a short, broad, flattened

* Serignan, in Provence, is the author's birth-place. — Translator'' s Note,

102 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

horn, ending in a trident. The female replaces this
ornament with simple folds. Both carry, in front of
their shield, two spikes which form a trusty digging-
implement and also a scalpel for dissecting. The msect's
squat, sturdy, four-cornered build resembles that of
Onitis Olivieri, one of the rarities of the neighbourhood
of Montpellier.

If similarity of shape implied parity of work, we ought
unhesitatingly to attribute to Phanseus Milo short, thick
puddings like those made by Olivier's Onitis. Alas,
structure is a bad guide where the instinct is concerned !
The square-chined, short-legged Dung- worker excels m

the art of manu-
facturing gourds.
The Sacred Beetle
,_^^ himself supplies
=_ J. none that are more
5 perfect nor, above
ii?° all, more capacious.
„, .,., The thick-set

Phana'us Miio.

insect astonishes
me with the elegance of its work, which is irreproachable
in its geometry : the neck is less slender, but neverthe-
less combines grace with strength. The model seems
derived from some Indian calabash, the more so as the
neck opens wide and the belly is engraved with an elegant
guilloche, produced by the msect's tarsi. One seems to
see a pitcher protected by a wicker-work covermg. The
whole is able to attain and even exceed the size of a
hen's egg.

It is a very curious piece of work and of a rare perfec-
tion, especially when we consider the artist's clumsy and
massive build. Once again, the tool does not make the

A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS 103

workman, among Dung-beetles any more than among
om'selves. To guide the modeller there is something
better than a set of tools : there is what I would call the
bump, the genius of the animal.

Phanseus Milo laughs at difficulties. He does more :
he laughs at our classifications. The word Dung-beetle
implies a lover of dung. He sets no value on it, either
for his o^\^l use or for that of his offspring. What he wants
is the sanies of corpses. He is to be found under the
carcasses of birds, dogs or cats, in the company of the
undertakers-in-ordinary. The gourd of which I give a
drawing overleaf was lying in the earth under the remains
of an owl.

Let him who will explain this conjunction of the appe-
tites of the Necrophore with the talents of the Scarab. As
for me, baffled by tastes which no one would suspect
from the mere appearance of the insect, I give it up.

I know in my neighbourhood one Dung-beetle and one
alone who also works among the remains of dead bodies.
This is Onthophagus Ovatus (Lin.), a constant frequenter
of dead moles and rabbits. But the dwarf undertaker
does not on that account scorn stercoraceous fare : he
feasts upon it like the other Onthophagi. Perhaps there
is a two-fold diet here : the bun for the adult ; the highly-
spiced, far-gone meat for the grub.

Similar facts are encountered elsewhere with different
tastes. The predatory Hymenopteron takes her fill of
honey drawn from the nectaries of the flowers, but feeds
her Uttle ones on game. Game first, then sugar, for the
same stomach. How that digestive pouch must change
on the road ! And yet no more than our own, which
scorns in later life that which delighted it when young.

Let us now examine the work of Phanseus Milo

104 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Fig. 9. — Work of Phanseus Mile.

A, the whole piece, actual size. B, the same
opened, showing the pill of sausage-meat,
tlie clay gourd, the chamber containing the
egg and the veutilating-shaft.

more thoroughly. The
calabashes came into
my hands in a state
of complete desicca-
tion. They are very
nearly as hard as
stone ; their colour
favours a pale choco-
late. Neither inside
nor out does the lens
discover the small
fibrous particle point-
ing to a residuum of
grasses. The strange
Dung-beetle does not,
therefore, employ the
bovine cakes, nor
anything similar ; he
handles products of
another class, which
are pretty difficult to
specify at first.

Held to the ear
and shaken, the ob-
ject sounds a little
as would the shell of
a dry fruit with a
stone lying free inside
it. Does it contain
the grub, shrivelled
by desiccation ? Does
it contain the dead
insect ? I thought so,

A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS 105

but I was wrong. It contains something much better
than that for our instruction.

I carefully rip up the gourd with the point of the knife.
Under a homogeneous outer wall, the thickness of which
reaches as much as two centimetres^ in the largest of my
three specimens, is encased a spherical kernel, which
fills the cavity exactly, but without sticking to the wall
at any part. The trifle of free scope allowed to this
kernel accounts for the rattling which I heard when
shaking the piece.

The kernel does not differ from the wrapper in the colour
and general appearance of its bulk. But let us break it
and examine the shreds. I recognize tiny fragments of
gold, flocks of down, threads of wool, scraps of meat, the
whole drowned in an earthy paste resembling chocolate.

Placed on a glowmg coal, this paste, shredded under
the lens and deprived of its particles of dead bodies,
becomes much darker, is covered with shiny bubbles and
sends forth puffs of that acrid smoke in which we easily
recognize burnt animal matter. The whole mass of the
kernel, therefore, is strongly impregnated with sanies.

Treated in the same manner, the wrapper also turns
dark, but not to the same extent ; it hardly smokes ; it
is not covered with jet-black bubbles ; lastly, it does not
anywhere contain shreds of carcasses similar to those in
the central nut. In both cases, the residuum of the
calcination is a fine, reddish clay.

This brief analysis tells us all about Phanseus Milo's
table. The fare served to the grub is a sort of vol-au-
vent. The sausage-meat consists of a mince of all that the
two scalpels of the shield and the toothed knives of the
fore-legs have been able to cut away from the carcass :

* '78 inch. — Translator's Note.

14

106 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

hair and down, crushed ossicles, strips of flesh and skin.
Now hard as brick, the thickening of that mince was
origmally a jelly of fine clay soaked in the juice of cor-
ruption. Lastly, the puff -paste crust of our vol-au-vent
is here represented by a covering of the same clay, less
rich in extract of meat than the other.

The pastry-cook gives his pie an elegant shape ; he
decorates it with rosettes, with twists, with scrolls.
Phanseus Milo is no stranger to these culinary aesthetics.
He turns the crust of his vol-au-vent into a handsome
gourd, ornamented with a finger-print guilloche.

The outer covering, a disagreeable crust, insufficiently
steeped in savoury juices, is not, we can easily guess,
intended for consumption. It is possible that, somewhat
later, when the stomach becomes robust and is not
repelled by coarse fare, the grub scrapes a Httle from the
wall of its pie ; but, taken as a whole, until the adult
insect emerges, the calabash remams intact, havmg acted as
a safeguard of the freshness of the mince-meat at first and
as a protecting box for the recluse from start to finish.

Above the cold pasty, right at the base of the neck of
the gourd, is contrived a rormd cell with a clay wall con-
tinuing the general wall. A fairly thick floor, made of the
same material, separates it from the store-room. It
is the hatching-chamber. Here is laid the egg, which I
find in its place, but dried up ; here is hatched the worm,
which, to reach the nourishing ball, must previously
open a trap-door through the partition separating the two
storeys.

The worm is born in a little box surmounting the
nourishing pile, but not communicating with it. The
budding grub must, therefore, at the opportune moment,
itself pierce the covering of the pot of preserves. As a

A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS 107

matter of fact, later, when the worm is on the sausage-
meat, we find the floor perforated with a hole just large
enough for it to pass through.

Wrapped all round in a thick casing of pottery, the
meat keeps fresh as long as is required by the duration
of the hatching-process, a detail which I have not ascer-
tained ; in its cell, which is also of clay, the egg lies safe.
Capital : so far, all is well. Phanseus Milo is thoroughly
acquainted with the mysteries of fortification and the
danger of victuals evaporating too soon. There remain
the breathing requirements of the germ.

To satisfy these, the insect has been equally well-
mspired. The neck of the calabash is pierced, in the
direction of its axis, with a tiny channel which would
admit at most the thinnest of straws. Inside, this
conduit opens at the top of the dome of the hatching-
chamber ; outside, at the tip of the nipple, it spreads into
a wide mouth-piece. This is the ventilating-shaft, pro-
tected against intruders by its extreme narrowness and
by grains of dust which obstruct it a little, without
stopping it up. It is simply marvellous, I said. Was I
wrong ? If a construction of this sort is a fortuitous
result, we must admit that blind chance is gifted with
extraordinary foresight.

How does the awkward insect manage to carry so
delicate and complex a piece of building through ? Ex-
ploring the pampas as I do through the eyes of an inter-
mediary, my only guide in this question is the structure
of the work, a structure whence we can deduct the work-
man's methods without going far wrong. I therefore
imagine the labour to proceed like this : a small carcass
is found, the oozing of which has softened the underlying
loam. The insect collects more or less of this loam,

108 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

according to the richness of the vein. There are no
precise Hmits here. If the plastic material abound, the
collector is lavish with it and the provision-box becomes
all the more solid. Then enormous calabashes are ob-
tained, exceed-
ing a hen's egg
in volume and
formed of an
outer wall a
couple of centi-
metres thick. ^
But a mass of
this description
is beyond the
strength of the
modeller, is
badly handled
and betrays, in
its outline, the
clumsiness of an
over-d i f f i c u 1 1
task. If the
material be
rare, the inseot
confines its har-
vesting to what
is strictly neces-
movements, it obtains a

Fig 10.

-Work ot Phanseus Milo : the largest of the
gourds observed (natural size).

sary ; and then, freer in its
magnificently regular gourd.

The loam is probably first kneaded into a ball and then
scooped out into a large and very thick cup, by means of
the pressure of the fore-legs and the work of the shield.

^ -78 inch. — Translator s Note.

A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS 100

Even thus do the Copris and the Sacred Beetle act
when preparing, on the top of their round ball, the bowl
in which the egg will be laid before the final manipulation
of the ovoid or pear.

In this first business, Phangeus is simply a potter. So
long as it be plastic, any clay serves his turn, however
meagrely it be saturated with the juices emanating from
the carcass.

He now becomes a pork-butcher. With his toothed
knife, he carves, he saws some tiny shreds from
the rotten animal; he tears off, cuts away what he
deems best suited to the grub's entertainment. He
collects all these fragments and mixes them with choice
loam in the spots where the sanies abounds. The whole,
cunningly kneaded and softened, becomes a ball obtained
on the spot, without any rolling process, in the same way
as the globe of the other pill-manufacturers. Let us
add that this ball, a ration calculated by the needs of
the grub, is very nearly constant in size, whatever the
thickness of the final calabash. The sausage-meat is now
ready. It is set in place in the wide-open clay bowl.
Loosely packed, without compression, the food will re-
main free, will not stick to its wTapper.

Next, the potter's work is renewed. The insect presses
the thick lips of the clayey cup, rolls them out and applies
them to the forcemeat preparation, which is eventually
contained by a thin partition at the top and by a thick
layer every elsewhere. A large circular pad is left on
the top partition, which is slender in view of the weak-
ness of the grub that is to perforate it later, when making
for the provisions. Manipulated in its turn, this pad is
converted into a hemispherical hollow, in which the egg
is forthwith laid.

110 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

The work is finished by rolling out and joining the
edges of the little crater, which closes and becomes the
hatching-chamber. Here, especially, a delicate dexterity
becomes essential. At the time that the nipple of the
calabash is being shaped, the insect, while packing the
material, must leave the little channel which is to form
the ventilating-shaft, following the line of the axis. This
narrow conduit, which an ill-calculated pressure might
stop up beyond hope of remedy, seems to me extremely
difficult to obtain. The most skilful of our potters could
not manage it without the aid of a needle, which he
would afterwards withdraw. The insect, a sort of jointed
automaton, obtains its channel through the massive
nipple of the gourd without so much as a thought. If
it did give it a thought, it would not succeed.

The calabash is made : there remains the decoration.
This is the work of patient after-touches which perfect
the curves and leave on the soft loam a series of stippled
impressions similar to those which the potter of pre-
historic days distributed with the end of his thumb over
his big-bellied jars.

That ends the work. The insect will begin all over
agam under a fresh carcass ; for each burrow has one
calabash and no more, even as with the Sacred Beetle
and her pears.

THE GEOTRUPES

CHAPTER IX

THE GEOTRUPES : THE PUBLIC HEALTH

To complete the cycle of the year in the full-grown form,
to see one's self surrounded by one's sons at the sprmg
festivals, to double and treble one's family : that surely
is a most exceptional privilege in the insect world. The
Apids, the aristocracy of instinct, perish, once the honey-
pot is filled ; the Butterflies, the aristocracy not of in-
stinct, but of dress, die when they have fastened their
packet of eggs in a propitious spot ; the Carabids, richly
cuirassed, succumb when the germs of a posterity are
scattered beneath the stones.

So with the others, except among the gregarious
insects, where the mother survives, either alone or accom-
panied by her attendants. It is a general law : the insect
is born orphaned of both its parents. Now, by an un-
expected turn of fate, the humble scavenger escapes the
stern destiny that cuts down the proud. The Dung-beetle,
sated with days, becomes a patriarch and really deserves
to do so, in consideration of the services rendered.

There is a general hygiene that calls for the disappear-
ance, in the shortest possible time, of every putrid thing.
Paris has not yet solved the formidable problem of her
refuse, which sooner or later will become a question of
life or death for the monstrous city. One asks one's self
whether the centre of Ught be not doomed to be extin-

113 15

1 1 4 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

guishcd one day in the reeking exhalations of a soil
saturated with rottenness. What this agglomeration of
millions of men cannot obtain, with all its treasures of
wealth and talent, the smallest hamlet possesses without
going to any expense or even troubling to think about it.

Nature, so lavish of her cares in respect of rural health,
is indifferent to the welfare of cities, if not actively hostile
to it. She has created for the fields two classes of
scavengers, whom nothing wearies, whom nothmg repels.
One of these — consisting of Flies, Silphids, Dermestes,
Necrophores — is charged with the dissection of corpses.
They cut and hash, they elaborate the waste matter of
death in their stomachs in order to restore it to life.

A mole ripped open hj the plough-share soils the path
with its entrails, which soon turn purple ; a snake lies
on the grass, crushed by the foot of a wayfarer who
thought, the fool, that he was performing a good work ;
an unfledged bird, fallen from its nest, has flattened itself
piteously at the foot of the tree that carried it ; thousands
of other similar remams, of every sort and kind, are
scattered here and there, threatening danger through
their effluvia, if nothing come to establish order. Have
no fear : no sooner is a corpse signalled in any direction
than the little undertakers come trotting along. They
work away at it, empty it, consume it to the bone, or
at least reduce it to the dryness of a mummy. In less
than twenty-four hours, mole, snake, bird have disap-
peared and the requirements of health are satisfied.

The same zeal for their task prevails in the second class
of scavengers. The \dllage hardly knows those ammonia-
scented refuges whither we repair, in the towns, to
relieve our wretched needs. A little wall no higher
than that, a hedge, a bush is all that the peasant asks

THE GEOTRUPES 115

as a retreat at the moment when he would fain be alone.
I need say no more to suggest the encounters to which
such free and easy manners expose you ! Enticed by the
patches of lichen, the cushions of moss, the tufts of home-
wort and other pretty things that adorn old stones, j^ou
go up to a sort of wall that supports the ground of a vine-
yard. Ugh ! At the foot of the damtily-decked shelter,
what a spreading abomination ! You flee : lichens,
mosses and homewort tempt you no more. But come
back on the morrow. The thing has disappeared, the
place is clean : the Dung-beetles have been that way.

To preserve the eyes from offensive sights too oft
repeated is, to those gallant fellows, the least of offices :
a loftier mission is incumbent on them. Science tells us
that the most dreadful scourges of mankind have their
agents in tiny organisms, the microbes, near neighbours
of must and mould, on the extreme confines of the
vegetable kmgdom. The terrible germs multiply by
countless myriads in the intestinal discharges at times
of epidemic. They contaminate the air and water, those
primary necessities of life ; they spread over our linen,
our clothes, our food and thus diffuse contagion. We
have to destroy by fire, to sterilize with corrosives or to
bury underground such things as are soiled with them.

Prudence even demands that we should never allow
ordure to Imger on the surface of the ground. It may be
harmless, it may be dangerous : when in doubt, the best
thing is to put it out of sight. That is how ancient
wisdom seems to have understood the thing, long before
the microbe explained to us the great need for vigilance.
The nations of the East, more exposed to epidemics than
ourselves, had formal laws m these matters. Moses,
apparently echoing Egyptian knowledge in this connec-

116 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

tion, prescribed the line of conduct for his people
wandering in the Arabian desert :

" Thou shalt have a place without the camp," he says,
" to which thou mayst go for the necessities of nature,
carrying a paddle at thy girdle. And, when thou sittest
do'tt^i, thou shalt dig round about and, with the earth
that is dug up, thou shalt cover that which thou art eased
of." (Deut., XXIII., xii-xiv.)

This is a precept of grave import in its simplicity.
And we may well believe that, if Islamism, at the time of
its great pilgrimages to the Kaaba, were to take the same
precaution and a few more of a similar character, Mecca
would cease to be an annual seat of cholera and Europe
would not need to mount guard on the shores of the Red
Sea to protect herself against the scourge.

Heedless of hygiene as the Arab, who was one of his
ancestors, the Proven9al peasant does not suspect the
danger. Fortunately, the Dung-beetle, that faithful
observer of the J\Iosaic edict, works. It is his to remove
from sight, it is his to bury the germ-crammed matter.

Supplied with implements for digging far superior
to the paddle which the Israelite was to carry at his girdle
when urgent business called him from the camp, he
hastens and, as soon as man is gone, digs a pit wherein
the infection is swallowed up and rendered harmless.

The services rendered by these diggers are of the
highest importance to the health of the fields ; yet we,
who are mainly interested in this constant work of
purification, hardly vouchsafe those sturdy fellows a
contemptuous glance. Popular language overwhelms
them with obnoxious epithets. This appears to be the

THE GEOTRUPES 117

rule : do good and you shall be misjudged, you shall be
traduced, stoned, trodden underfoot, as witness the toad,
the bat, the hedgehog, the owl and other auxiliaries who,
to serve us, ask nothing but a little tolerance.

Now, of our defenders against the dangers of filth spread
shamelessly in the rays of the sun, the most remarkable,
in our climes, are the Geotrupes : not that they are more
zealous than the others, but because their size makes
them capable of bigger work. Moreover, when it becomes
simply a question of their nourishment, they resort by
preference to the materials which we have most to fear.

My neighbourhood is worked by four Geotrupes. Two
of them, Geotrupes Mutator (Marsh) and Geotrupes
Sylvaticus (Panz.), are rarities on which we had best not
count for connected studies ; the two others, on the con-
trary, Geotrupes Stercorarius (Lin.) and Geotrupes Hypo-
crita (Schneid.), are exceedingly frequent. Black as ink
above, both of them are magnificently garbed below.
One is quite surprised to find such a jewel-case among
the professional scavengers. Geotrupes Stercorarius is of
a splendid amethyst violet on his lower surface, while
Geotrupes Hypocrita is lavish with the ruddy gleams of
copper pyrites. These are the two inmates of my
voleries.

Let us ask them first of what feats they are capable as
buriers. There are a dozen, of the two species taken
together. The cage is previously swept clean of what
remains of the former provisions, hitherto supplied without
stuit. This time, I propose to arrive at what a Geotrupe
can put away at a sitting. At sunset, I serve to my
twelve captives the whole of a heap which a mule has
just dropped in front of my door. There is plenty of it,
enough to fill a basket.

118 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

On the morning of the next day, the mass has dis-
appeared underground. There is nothing left outside, or
very nearly nothing. I am able to make a fairly close
estimate and I find that each of my Geotrupes, presuming
each of the twelve to have done an equal share of the
work, has stowed away very nearly a cubic decimetre-^
of matter. A Titanic task, if we remember the insignifi-
cant size of the animal, which, moreover, has to dig
the warehouse to which the booty must be lowered.
And all this is done in the space of a night.

So well provided, will they remain quietly imder-
ground with their treasm'e ? Not they ! The weather
is magnificent. The hour of twilight comes, gentle and
calm. This is the time of the great flights, the mirthful
hummmgs, the distant explorations on the roads by
which the herds have lately passed. My lodgers abandon
their cellars and mount to the surface. I hear them
buzzing, climbing up the wirework, knocking themselves
wildly against the walls. I have anticipated this t^wdlight
animation. Provisions have been collected during the
day, plentiful as those of yesterday. I serve them.
There is the same disappearance durmg the night. On
the morrow, the place is once again swept clean. And
this would contmue indefinitely, so fine are the evenings,
if I always had at my disposal the wherewithal to satisfy
those insatiable hoarders.

Rich though his booty be, the Geotrupe leaves it at
sunset to sport in the last gleams of daylight and to go
in search of a new workplace. With him, one would
say, the wealth acquired does not count ; the only valid
thing is that to be acquired. Then what does he do
with his warehouses, renewed, in favourable times, at

* About 61 cubic inches. — Translator's Note.

THE GEOTRUPES 119

each new twilight ? It is obvious that Stercorarius
is incapable of consuming provisions so plentiful in a
single night. He has such a superabundance of victuals
in his larder that he does not know how to dispose of
them ; he is surfeited with good things by which he will
not profit; and, not satisfied with having his store
crammed, the acquisitive plutocrat slaves, night after
night, to store away more.

From each warehouse, set up here, set up there, as
things happen, he deducts the daily meal beforehand ;
the rest, that is to say, almost the whole, he abandons.
My voleries testify to the fact that this mstinct for
burying is more exacting than the consumer's appetite.
The ground is soon raised, in consequence ; and I am
obliged, from time to time, to lower the level to the desired
limits. If I dig it up, I find it choked, throughout its
depth, with hoards that have remained intact. The
original earth has become an inextricable conglomerate,
which I must prune with a free hand, if I would not go
astray in my future observations.

Allowing for errors, either of excess or deficiency, which
are inevitable in a subject that does not admit of precise
gauging, one point stands out very clearly from my
enquiry : the Geotrupes are passionate buriers ; they take
underground a deal more than is necessary for their con-
sumption. As this work is performed, in var^ang degrees,
by legions of collaborators, large and small, it is evident
that the purification of the soil must benefit by it to an
ample extent and that the public health is to be con-
gratulated on having this army of auxiliaries in its service.

In other respects, the plant and, indirectly, a host of
different existences are interested in these interments.
What the Geotrupe buries and abandons the next day

120 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

is not lost : far from it. Nothing is lost in the world's
balance-sheet ; the stock-taking total is constant. The
little lump of dung buried by the insect will make the
nearest tuft of grass grow a luxuriant green. A sheep
passes, crops the bunch of grass : all the better for the
leg of mutton which man is waiting for. The Dung-
beetle's industry has procured us a savoury mouthful.

In September and October, when the first autumn rains
soak the ground and allow the Sacred Beetle to split his
natal casket, Geotrupes Stercorarius and Geotrupes
Hypocrita found their family-establishments, somewhat
makeshift establishments, in spite of what we might have
expected from the name of those miners, so well-styled
Geotrupes, that is to say, " Earth-borers." When he has
to dig himself a retreat that shall shelter him against the
rigours of winter, the Geotrupe really deserves his name :
none can compare with him for the depth of the pit or
the perfection and rapidity of the work. In sandy
ground, easily excavated, I have dug up some that had
attained the depth of a metre. ^ Others carried their
digging further still, tiring both my patience and my
implements. There you have the skilled well-sinker, the
mcomparable Earth-borer. When the cold sets in, he
can go down to some layer where frost has lost its
terrors.

The lodging of the family is another matter. The
propitious season is a short one ; time would fail, if each
individual grub had to be endowed with one of those
manor-houses. That the insect should devote the leisure
which the approach of winter gives it to digging a hole
of unhmited depth is a capital thmg : it makes the
retreat doubly safe ; and activity, not yet quite sus-

* Over 89 inches. — Translator's Note.

122 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

/•

pended, has for the moment no other occupation. But,
at laying-time, these laborious undertakings are impos-
sible. The hours pass swiftly. In four or five weeks, a
pretty numerous family has to be housed and victualled,
which puts a long, patiently -sunk pit entirely out of the
question ,

The burrow dug by the Geotrupe for the benefit of her

grub is hardly deeper than
that of the Copris or the
Sacred Beetle, notwithstand-
ing the difference of the sea-
sons. Three decimetres,^
roughly speaking : that is all
that I find in the fields, where
nothing occurs to limit the
depth.

The contents of the rustic
dwelling take the form of a
sort of sausage or pudding,
which fills the lower part of
the cylinder and fits it exactly.
Its length is not far short
of a couple of decimetres.'^
This sausage is almost always
irregular in shape, now curved,
now more or less dented.
These imperfections of the surface are due to the acci-
dents of a stony ground, which the insect does not always
excavate according to the canons of its art, which favours
the straight line and the perpendicular. The moulded
material faithfully reproduces all the irregularities of its

^ 11 to 12 inches. — Translator's Note.
2 7^ to 8 inches. — Translator's Note.

"^ -_ ,- '

Fig. r.i.— Section ot the Stercora-
ceous Geotrupe's sausage at its
lower end, showing the egg and
the hatching-chamber.

THE GEOTRUPES 123

mould. The lower extremity is romided off like the
bottom of the burrow itself ; at the lower end of the
sausage is the hatching-chamber, a round cavity which
could hold a fair-sized hazel-nut. The respiratory needs
of the germ demand that the side-walls should be thin
enough to allow easy access to the air. Inside, I catch
the gleam of a greenish, semi-fluid plaster, a dainty
which the mother has disgorged to form the first mouth-
fuls of the budding worm.

In this round hole lies the egg, without adhering in
any way to the surrounding walls. It is a white, elong-
ated ellipsoid and is of remarkable bulk in proportion
to the insect. In the case of Geotrupes Stercorarius, it
measures seven to eight millimetres in length by four in
its greatest width. ^ The egg of Geotrupes Hypocrita is
a little smaller.

* '27 to -31 X -IS inch.— Translator's Note.

MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS

CHAPTER X

MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS

To describe the insect that forms the subject of this
chapter, scientific nomenclature joins two formidable
names : that of the ^linotaur, Minos' bull fed on human
flesh in the crypts of the Cretan labyrinth ; and that of
Typhosus, one of the giants, sons of Terra, who tried to
scale the heavens. Thanks to the clue of thread which
he received from Minos' daughter Ariadne, Theseus the
Athenian found the IMmotaur, slew him and made his
escape, safe and sound, after delivering his country for
ever from the dreadful tribute destined for the monster's
food.

Typhoeus, struck by a thunderbolt on his heaped-up
mountains, was hurled under Mount Etija. He is there
still. His breath is the smoke of the volcano. When
he coughs, he spits out streams of lava ; when he shifts
his position from one shoulder to the other, he puts Sicily
aflutter ; he shakes her with an earthquake.

It is not unpleasant to find an echo of these old fables
in the history of animals. Mythological denominations,
so resonant and pleasing to the ear, entail no incon-
sistencies with reality, a fault that is not always avoided
by the terms compiled wholly of data gathered from the
lexicon. When vague analogies, in addition, connect
the fabled with the historical, then surnames and fore-

127

128 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

names both become very happy. Such is the case with
Minotam'us Typhoeus (Lin.).

It is the name given to a fair-sized blade coleopteron,
closely related to the Earth-borers, the Geotrupes. He is
a peaceable, inoffensive creature, but even better-horned
than ]\Imos' bull. None among our harness-loving insects
wears so threatening an armour. The male carries on
his corselet a sheaf consistmg of three steeled spears,
parallel to one another and jutting forward. Imagine
him the size of a bull ; and Theseus liunseK, if he met him
in the fields, would hardly dare to face his terrible trident.

The Typhoeus of the legend had the ambition to sack
the home of the gods by stacking one upon the other a
pile of mountains torn from their base ; the Typhoeus of
the naturahsts does not climb : he descends ; he bores
the ground to enormous depths. The first, with a move-
ment of the shoulder, sets a province heaving ; the
second, with a thrust of its chine, makes his mole-hill
tremble as Etna trembles when he stirs who lies buried
within her depths.

Such is the insect wherewith we are concerned.

But what is the use of this historj^ what the use of all
this mmute research ? I well know that it will not pro-
duce a fall in the price of pepper, a rise in that of crates
of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of this kmd,
which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to
face intent upon one another's extermination. The
insect does not aim at so much glor3^ It confines itself
to showing us Ufe in the inexhaustible variety of its mani-
festations ; it helps us to decipher in some small measure
the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves.

The insect is easy to obtain, cheap to feed and not
repulsive to examine organically ; and it lends itself far

MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS 129

better than the higher animals to the investigations of
our curiosity. Besides, the others are our near neigh-
bours and do but repeat a somewhat monotonous theme,
whereas the insect, with its unparalleled wealth of in-
stincts, habits and structure, reveals a new world to us,
much as though we were conferring with the natives of
another planet. This is the reason that makes me con-
stantly renew my unwearied relations with the insect
and hold it in such high esteem.

Minotaurus Typhosus favours the open sandy places
where, on their way to the grazing-ground, the flocks of
sheep scatter their trails of black pellets which constitute
his regulation fare. Couples jointly addicted to nest-
building begin to meet in the first days of March. The
two sexes, until then isolated in surface-burrows, are now
associated for a long time to come.

Do the husband and wife recognize each other among
their fellows ? Are they mutually faithful ? Cases of
breach of matrimony are very rare, 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 oblige him to come
outside. As will be seen presently, he is, throughout his
life, the purveyor of victuals and the person entrusted
with the carriage of the rubbish. Alone, at different
hours of the day, he flings out of doors the earth throwTi
up by the mother's excavations ; alone he explores the
vicinity of the home at night, in quest of the pellets
whereof his sons' loaves shall be kneaded.

Sometimes, two burrows are side by side. Cannot the
collector of provisions, on returning home, easily mistake
the door and enter another's house ? On his walks
abroad, does he never happen to meet ladies taking the

130 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

air who have not yet settled down ; and is he, then, not
forgetful of his first mate and ready for divorce 1 The
question deserved to be examined. I tried to solve it
in the manner that follows.

Two couples are taken from the ground at a time when
the excavations are in full swing. Indelible marks, con-
trived with the point of a needle on the lower edge of the
elytra, will enable me to distmguish them one from the
other. The four subjects of my experiment are distributed
at random, one by one, over the surface of a sandy area
a couple of spans thick. A soil of this depth will be
sufficient for the excavations of a night. In case pro-
visions should be needed, a handful of sheep-droppings
is served. A large reversed earthen pan covers the arena,
prevents escape and produces the darkness favourable to
mental concentration.

The next mornmg provides a splendid response. There
are two burrows m the establishment, no more ; the
couples have formed again as they were : each Jack has
his Jill. A second experiment, made next day, and a
third meet with the same success : those marked with a
point are together, those not marked are together, at the
bottom of the gallery.

Five times more, day after day, I make them set up
house anew. Things now begm to be spoilt. Sometimes,
each of the four that are being experimented on settles
apart ; sometimes, the same burrow contains the two
males or the two females ; sometimes, the same crypt
receives the two sexes, but diiierently associated from
what they were at the start. I have abused my powers
of repetition. Henceforth disorder reigns. My daily
shufflings have demoralized the bm-rowers ; a crumbling
home, always requiring to be begun afresh, has put an

MINOTAURUS TYPHOEUS 131

end to lawful associations. 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
alarms, time after time repeated, had not yet tangled the
delicate connecting thread, seem to point to a certain
constancy in the Minotaurus household. He and she
know each other, find each other in the tumult of events
which my mischievous doings force upon them ; they
show each other a mutual fidelity, a very unusual quality
in the insect class, which is but too prone to forget its
matrimonial obligations.

We recognize one another by our speech, by the sound,
the inflection of our voices. They, on the other hand,
are dumb, deprived of aU 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,
at his moony periods, lifts his nose in the air, sniffs the
breeze and jumps over the garden-walls, eager to obey
the distant and magical convocation ; he puts me in mind
of the Great Peacock IMoth, who swiftly covers several
miles to pay his homage to the new-hatched maid.

The comparison, however, is far from perfect. The
dog and the big Moth get wind of the wedding before
they know the bride. IMinotaurus, on the other hand, has
no experience of long pilgrimages, yet makes his way, in
a brief circuit, to her whom he has already visited ; he
knows her, he distinguishes her from the others by certain
emanations, certain individual scents 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 would have taught us things worth knowing about
its feats of smell.

132 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Now how is the work divided in this household ? To
discover this is not one of those easy undertakings for
which the point of a knife suffices. He who proposes to
visit the burrowing insect at home must have recourse
to arduous sapping. We have here to do not with
the apartment of the Sacred Beetle, the Copris or the
others, which is soon laid bare with a mere pocket-
trowel : w^e have to do with a pit the bottom of
which can be reached onlj^ with a stout spade, sturdily
wielded for hours at a stretch. And, if the sun be
at all hot, one returns from the drudgery utterly ex-
hausted.

Oh, my poor joints, grown rusty with age ! To suspect
the existence of a fine problem underground and not to
be able to dig ! The zeal survives, as ardent as in the
days when I used to pull down the spongy slopes beloved
by the Anthophora ; the love of research has not abated,
but the strength is lacking. Luckily, I have an assistant,
in the shape of my son Paul, who lends me the vigour of
his wrists and the suppleness of his loins. I am the
head, he is the arm.

The rest of the famDy, including the mother — and she

not the least eager — usually go with us. One cannot

have too many eyes when the pit becomes deep and one

has to observe from a distance the minute documents

exhumed by the spade. What the one misses the other

perceives. Huber,^ when he went blind, studied the bee

through the intermediary of a clear-sighted and devoted

adjutrix. I am even better-ofE than the great Swiss

naturalist. My sight, which is stiU fairly good, although

exceedingly tired, is aided by the deep-seeing eyes of all

1 Francois Huber (1750-1831), the Swiss naturalist. He early
became blind from excessive study and conducted his scientific work
thereafter with the aid of his wife. — Translator's Note.

PLATE VI

Minotaurus Typhceus, male and female.
Excavating Minotaurus' burrow.

MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS 133

my family. I owe to them the fact that I am able to
pursue my researches : let me thank them here.

We are on the spot early in the morning. We soon find
a burrow with a large mole-hill formed of cylindrical
stoppers forced out in one lump by blows of the rammer.
We clear away the mound and a pit of great depth opens
below it. A useful reed, gathered on the way, serves me
as a guide, diving lower and lower down. At last, at
about five feet, the reed touches bottom. We are there,
we have reached Minotaurus' chamber.

The pocket-trowel prudently lays things bare and we
see the occupants appear : the male first and, a little
lower, the female. When the couple are removed, a dark,
circular patch shows : this is the end of the column of
victuals. Careful now and let us dig gently ! What we
have to do is to cut away the central clod at the bottom
of the vat, to isolate 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 it ! We possess the couple and their nest. A
morning of arduous digging has procured us those
treasures : Paul's steaming back could tell us at the price
of what efforts.

This depth of five feet is not and could not be constant ;
numbers of causes induce it to vary, such as the degree
of freshness and consistency of the soil traversed, the
insect's passion for work and the time available, according
to the more or less remote date of the laying. I have
seen burrows go a Httle lower ; I have seen others reach
barely three feet. In any case, Minotaurus, to settle his
family, requires a lodging of exaggerated depth, such as
is dug by no other burrowing insect of my acquaintance.
Presently we shall have to ask ourselves what are the

134 THE LIFE AND L0^^ OF THE INSECT

imperious needs that oblige the collector of sheep-
droppings to reside so low down in the earth.

Before leaving the spot, let us note a fact the evidence
of which 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 the nature whereof we are
not yet able to specify. This detail, observed repeatedly
in the different burrows excavated, seems to show that
each of the two fellow-workers has a fixed place.

The mother, more skilled in nursery matters, occupies
the lower floor. She alone digs, versed as she is in the
properties of the perpendicular, which economizes work
while giving the greatest depth. She is the engineer,
always in touch with the working-face of the gallery. The
other is her journeyman-mason. He is stationed at the
back, 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 her baker's
boy. He fetches 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 their invariable position
in the tubular home. The future will tell us if these con-
jectures represent the reality as it is.

For the moment, let us make ourselves at home and
examine at leisure the central clod so laboriously acquired.
It contains preserved foodstuffs in the shape of a sausage
nearly as long and thick as one's finger. This is composed
of a dark, compact matter, arranged in layers, which we
recognize as the sheep-pellets reduced to morsels. Some-
times, the dough is fine and almost homogeneous from
one end of the cylmder to the other ; more often, the

MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS 135

piece is a sort of hardbake, in which large fragments are
held together by a cement of amalgam. The baker
apparently varies the more or less finished confection of
her pastry according to the time at her disposal.

The thing is closely moulded in the terminal pocket of
the burrow, where the walls are smoother and more
carefully fashioned than in the rest of the pit. The point
of the knife easily strips it of the surrounding earth,
which peels like a rind or bark. In this way, I obtain
the food-cylinder free of any earthy blemish.

Having done this, let us look into the matter of the
egg ; for the pastry has certainly been manipulated in
view of a grub. Guided by what I learnt some time ago
from the Geotrupes, who lodge the egg at the lower end
of their pudding, in a special recess contrived in the very
heart of the provisions, I expect to find Minotaurus' egg
right at the bottom of the sausage. I am ill-informed.
The egg sought for is not at the expected end, nor at
the other end, nor at any point whatever of the victuals.

A search outside the provisions shows it me at last.
It is below the food, in the sand itself, deprived of all
the finikin cares dear to mothers. There is here not a
smooth-walled cell, such as the delicate epidermis of the
new-born grub would seem to call for, but a rough cavity,
the result of a mere landsHp rather than of maternal
industry. The worm is to be hatched in this rude berth,
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.

With insects held captive in an apparatus of my
invention, I have succeeded in tracing the construction
of that sausage. The father goes out and selects a pellet
whose length is greater than the diameter of the pit. He

136 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

conveys it to the mouth, either backwards, by draggmg
it with his forefeet, or straight ahead, by rolling it along
with little strokes of his shield. He reaches the edge of
the hole. Will he hurl the lump down the precipice
with one last push ? Not at all : he has plans that are
incompatible with a violent fall.

He enters, embracing the pellet with his legs and
taking care to introduce it b}- one end. On reaching a
certain distance from the bottom, he has only to slant the
piece shghtly to make it find a support at its two ends
against the walls of the channel : this because of the
greater length of its main axis. He thus obtains a sort of
temporary flooring suited to receive the burden of two
or three pellets. The whole forms the workshop in which
the father means to do his task without disturbing the
mother, who is fully engaged below. It is the mill whence
will be lowered the semoUna for making the cakes.

The miller is well-equipped for his work. Look at his
trident. On the soHd basis of the corselet stand three
sharp spears, the two outer ones long, the middle one
short, all three pointing forwards. What purpose does
this weapon serve ? At first sight, one would take it for
a masculme decoration, one of so many others, of very
varied forms, worn by the corporation of Dung-beetles.
Well, it is something more than an ornament : Minotaurus
turns his gaud into a tool.

The three unequal points describe a concave arch,
wide enough to admit a spherical sheep-dropping. Stand-
ing on his imperfect and shaky floor, which demands the
employment of his four hmd-legs, propped against the
w^alls of the perpendicular channel, how will Minotaurus
manage to keep the elusive olive in position and break
it up ? Let us watch him at work.

PLATE YII

w ;.. , .

■-•:...^. r^-i''^-:-

^

The Minotaiuns couple eiiKayerl on miller's and halcer's work.

MINOTAURUS TYPHGEUS 137

Stooping a little, he digs his fork into the piece, thence-
forth rendered stationary, for it is caught between the
prongs of the implement. The fore-legs are free ; with
their toothed armlets they can saw the morsel, lacerate it
and reduce it to particles which gradually fall through
the crevices of the flooring and reach the mother below.

The substance which the miller sends scooting do-wn is
not a flour passed through the bolting-machine, but a
coarse grain, a mixture of pulverized remnants and of
pieces hardly ground at all. Incomplete though it be,
this preliminary trituration is of the greatest assistance
to the mother in her tedious job of bread-making : it
shortens the work and allows the best and the middling
to be separated straight away. When everything, in-
cluding the floor itself, is ground to powder, the horned
miller returns to the upper air, gathers a fresh harvest
and recommences his shredding labours at leisure.

Nor is the baker inactive in her laboratory. She collects
the remnants pouring do-wn around her, subdivides them
yet further, refines them and makes her selection : this,
the tenderer part, for the central crumb ; that, tougher,
for the crust of the loaf. Turning this way and that, she
pats the material with the battledore of her flattened
arms ; she arranges it in layers, which presently she
compresses by stamping on them where they lie, much
after the manner of a vine-grower treading his vintage.
Rendered firm and compact, the mass will keep better
and longer.

After some ten days of this united labour, the couple at
last obtain the long, cylindiical loaf. The father has done
the grmding, the mother the kneading.

I have even succeeded in watching the digging of this
very deep burrow, thanks to a complicated series of

18

138 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

artifices which it would take too long to set forth here.
The mother is at the bottom of the pit : she alone attacks
the workmg-face, she alone digs. The male keeps at the
back of his spouse. He gradually collects the rubbish
and makes a load of it which he lifts with his three-
pronged fork and hoists outside with much exhausting
labour.

This is the moment to recapitulate Minotaurus' merits.
When the great colds are over, he sets out in quest of a
mate, buries himself with her and thenceforth remains
faithful to her, despite his frequent excursions out of
doors and the meetings to which these are likely to lead.
With indefatigable zeal, he assists the burrower, herself
destined never to leave her home until the emancipation
of the family. For a month and more, he loads the
rubbish of the excavation on his forked hod ; he hoists it
outside and remains ever patient, never disheartened by
his arduous feats of climbing. He leaves the compara-
tively easy work of the excavatmg rake to the mother
and keeps the more troublesome task, the exhausting
carriage through a narrow, very high and perpendicular
gallery, for himself.

Next, the navvy turns himself into a collector of food-
stuffs ; he goes after provisions, he gathers the where-
withal for his sons to live upon. To facilitate the work
of his mate, who shreds, stratifies and compresses the
preserves, he once more changes his trade and becomes a
miller. At some distance from the bottom, he bruises
and crumbles the matter found hardened by the sun ; he
makes it into semolina and flour that gradually pour down
into the maternal bakery. Lastly, worn out by his efforts,
he leaves the house and goes to die outside, at a distance,
in the open air. He has gallantly performed his duty as

MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS 139

a paterfamilias; he has spent himself without stint to
secure the prosperity of his kith and kin.

The mother, on her side, allows nothing to divert her
from her housekeeping. Throughout her working life, she
never leaves her home : domi mansit, as the ancients used
to say, speaking of their model matrons ; dotni mansit,
kneading her cylindrical loaves, filling them with an egg,
watching them until the exodus arrives. When the day
comes for the autumnal merry-makings, she at last
returns to the surface, accompanied by the young people,
who disperse at will to feast in the regions frequented
by the sheep. Thereupon, having nothing left to do, the
devoted mother perishes.

Yes, amid the general indifference of fathers for their
sons, Minotaurus displays a very remarkable zeal where
his family are concerned. Forgetful of himself, refusing
to be led away by the delights of spring, when it would
be so pleasant to see a little country, to banquet with his
fellows, to tease and flirt with his fair neighbours, he
sticks to his work underground and wears himself out so
as to leave a fortune to his descendants. Here is one
who, when he stiffens his legs for the last time, is well
entitled to say :

" I have done my duty ; I have worked."

THE TWO-BANDED SCOLIA

I

CHAPTER XI

THE TWO-BANDED SCOLIA

If strength were to take precedence of other zoological
attributes, the Scoli?e would reign in the first rank, in
the order of the Hymenoptera. Some of them can be
compared in size with the little orange-crested northern
Wren, the Kinglet, who comes down to us, to visit the
maggoty buds, at the time of the first autumnal mists.
The largest, the most imposing of our sting-carriers, the
Humble-bee, the Hornet, cut a poor figure beside certain
Scolise. Among this group of giants, my region boasts
the Common or Garden ScoUa (Scolia Hortorum, van der
Lmd), who exceeds four centimetres^ in length and
measures ten^ from tip to tip of her outstretched wmgs,
and the Hemorrhoidal ScoHa (Scolia Hemorrhoidalis, van
der Lind). who vies in dimensions with the Garden Scolia
and is distmguished from her, in the main, by the brush
of red bristles at the tip of her belly.

A black livery, with broad yellow patches ; tough wings
amber as an onion-skin and shot with purple reflections ;
coarse, knotted legs, bristling with rugged hairs ; a
massive build ; a powerful head, helmeted with a hard
skull ; a stiff and clumsy gait ; a short, silent flight, devoid
of soaring qualities : this, in few words, describes the

^ 1^ inches. — Translator's Note.

* 4 inches. — Translator' 3 Note.

143

144 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

appearance of the female, powerfully equipped for her
severe task. That love-lorn idler, the male, is more
gracefully horned, more daintily clad, more elegantly
shaped, without altogether losing the character of sturdi-
ness which is the predommant feature in his mate.

It is not without qualms that the insect-collector finds
himself for the first time in the presence of the Garden
Scolia. How is he to capture the commanding brute,
how to protect himself against its sting ? If the effect
of the sting be in proportion to the Hymenopteron's size,
then a prick from the Scolia is something to be dreaded.
The Hornet, once he lugs out, hurts us atrociously. What,
then, would it be like if one were stabbed by this colossus ?
The prospect of a swelling the size of your fist and as
painful as though it were blistered by a red-hot iron
passes through your mind, just as you are about to cast
the net. And you refrain, you beat a retreat, only too
glad not to have aroused the attention of the dangerous
animal.

Yes, I confess to liavmg quailed before my first Scoliae,
eager though I was to enrich my incipient collection with
this glorious msect. Smarting recollections left behind
by the Wasp and the Hornet had something to say to this
excessive prudence. I say excessive, for to-day, taught
by long experience, I have got the better of my former
fears and, if I see a Scolia resting on a thistle-head, I have
no scruples about taking her in the tips of my fingers,
with no precaution of any kind, threatening though her
aspect be. My pluck is only apparent, as I am pleased to
inform the novice at Hymenopteron-hunting. The Scoliae
are very peaceful. Their sting is an implement of work
much rather than a weapon of war : they use it to paralyze
the prey intended for their family ; and only in the last

THE TWO-BANDED SCOLIA 145

extremity do they employ it in their o-^vn defence. More-
over, the lack of suppleness in their movements enables
one nearly always to avoid the sting ; and, lastly, if one
were stmig, the pain of the prick is almost insignificant.
This absence of a bitter smart in the poison is a pretty
constant fact among the game-hmiting Hymenoptera,
whose weapon is a surgical lancet intended for the most
delicate phj^^siological operations.

Among the other Scoliae of my district, I will mention
the middle-sized Two-banded ScoHa (Scolia Bifasciata,
van der Lind), whom I see yearly, in September, ex-
ploiting the manure-heaps of dead leaves arranged, for her
benefit, in a corner of my yard. Let us watch her
performance comfortably indoors.

After the Cerceris, it is well to study others, hunting
an unarmed prey, a prey vulnerable at all points save
the skull, but giving only a single prick with the sting.
Of these two conditions, the Scolise fulfilled one, with their
regulation game, the soft grub of Cetonia, Oryctes or
Anoxia, according to their species. Did they fulfil the
second ? I was convinced beforehand, judging from the
anatomy of the victims, with its concentrated nervous
system, that the sting was imsheathed but once ; I even
foresaw the point in which the weapon must be thrust.

These were statements dictated by the anatomist's
scalpel, without the least direct proof from observed
facts. Stratagems accomplished underground escaped
the eye and seemed to me bound always to escape it.
How, indeed, could one hope that an animal whose art
is practised in the darkness of a manure-heap should be
persuaded to work in the full light of day ? I did not
reckon on it in the least. Nevertheless, for conscience'
sake, I tried putting the Scolia in touch with her quarry

19

146 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

under glass. And it was well that I did so, for my success
was in the m verse ratio to my expectations. Never did
beast of prey show greater zeal in attacking under artificial
conditions. Every insect experimented upon rewarded
me, sooner or later, for my patience. Let us watch Scolia
Bifasciata at work, operating on her Cetonia grub.

The captive grub tries to escape its terrible neighbour.
Turned over on its back according to its custom, it shufiies
along eagerly, going round and round the glass arena.
Soon, the Scolia's attention is aroused and is evinced by
continual little taps of the tips of its antennae upon the
table, which now represents the customary soil. The
Hymenopteron falls upon her prey and attacks the mon-
strous meal by the hmder end. She climbs upon the
Cetonia, using the abdominal extremity as a lever. The
assaulted grub does nothing but scud all the faster on
its back, without rolling itself into a defensive posture.
The Scolia reaches the front part, after falls and accidents
that vary greatly, according to the degree of tolerance
of the grub, her temporary mount. With her mandibles,
she nips a point on the upper surface of the thorax ; she
places herself across the grub, curves herself into an arch
and tries to touch with the point of her belly the region
where the sting is to be darted. The arch is a little too
short to embrace almost the whole circuit of the corpulent
prey, for which reason the efforts and attempts are made
over and over again, at great length. The tip of the
abdomen makes untold exertions, applies itself here,
there and elsewhere and, as yet, stops nowhere. This
tenacious seairching in itself proves the importance which
the paralyzer attaches to the spot at which its bistoury
is to enter.

Meanwhile, the grub continues to move along on its

PLATE YIII

%;.

>

^r^-

J

H

-^J

%

I

1. The Common or Garden Scolia. 2. The T\vc-ba7idcd Scolia,

3. Grub of Cetonia Aurata progressing on its back.

4. The Two-banded Scolia paralyzing a Cetonia grub.

5. Cetonia grubs progressing on their backs, with their le^s in the

air ; two are in a resting position, rolled up.

THE TVVO-BANDED SCOLIA 147

back. Suddenly, it buckles and, with a jerk of the head,
flings the enemy to a distance. Undaunted by all her
failures, the Hymenopteron stands up, brushes her wings
and recommences the assault of the colossus, almost
always by clambering on the grub by the rear extremity.
At last, after any number of fruitless attempts, the Scolia
succeeds in attaining the proper position. She lies across
the grub ; her mandibles hold a point of the thorax on
the dorsal face tight-gripped ; her body, curved into an
arch, passes under the grub and reaches the neighbour-
hood of the neck with the tip of the belly. Placed in
grave danger, the Cetonia twists, buckles, unbuckles,
turns and -WTithes. The ScoUa does not interfere. Hold-
ing her victim in a close embrace, she turns ^vith it, allows
herself to be dragged above, below, aside, at the mercy
of the contortions. So fierce is her determination that I
am now able to remove the glass bell and watch the
details of the drama in the open.

Soon, notwithstanding the tumult, the tip of the Scolia's
belly feels that the suitable point is found. Then and
not till then is the dart unsheathed. It is driven home.
The thing is done. The grub, but now active and swollen,
suddenly becomes inert and hmp. It is paralyzed.
Henceforth, all movement ceases, save in the antennae
and mouth-pieces, v/hich will continue for a long time to
declare a remnant of life.

The place of the wound has never varied in the series
of struggles under the glass bell : it occupies the middle
of the dividing line between the prothorax and the meso-
thorax, on the ventral surface. Let us observe that the
Cerceris, who operates upon Weevils, which insects have a
concentrated nervous chain like that of the Cetonia grub,
inserts her sting at the same point. The similarity of the

148 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

nervous organization occasions a similarity of method.
Let us observe also that the sting of the ScoUa remains
for some time in the wound and rummages with a pro-
nounced persistency. To judge by the movements of
the tip of the abdomen, one would say that the weapon
is exploring and selecting. Free to turn about as it
pleases within narrow limits, the sting's point is probably
searching for the little bundle of nerves which it must
prick, or at least sprinkle with poison, in order to obtain
a withering paralysis.

I will not end my report of the duel without relating a
few more facts, of minor importance. The Two-banded
Scolia is an ardent persecutor of the Cetonia. At one
sitting, the same mother stabs three grubs, one after the
other, before my eyes. She refuses the fourth, perhaps
through fatigue, or because her poison-phial is exhausted.
Her refusal is but temporary. The next day, she begins
anew and paralyzes two worms ; the following day again,
but with a zeal that diminishes from day to day.

The other predatory insects that go on long hunting-
expeditions embrace the prey which they have rendered
lifeless, drag it, convey it, each in its own fashion, and,
laden with their burden, long try to escape from the
bell and to reach the burrow. Disheartened by vain
attempts, they abandon it at last. The Scolia does not
move her prey, which lies indefinitely on its back at the
spot of sacrifice. After drawing her dagger from the
wound, she leaves her victim alone and starts fluttering
against the walls of the bell, without troubling about it
further. Things must happen in the same way in the
manure-heap, under normal conditions. The paralyzed
morsel is not carried elsewhither, to a special cellar : where
the struggle occurred, there it receives, on its spread

THE TWO-BANDED SCOLIA 149

belly, the egg whence the consumer of the succulent
dainty will presently emerge. This saves the expense of
a house. It goes without saying that the Scolia does not
lay under glass : the mother is too prudent to expose her
egg to the dangers of the open air.

A second detail strikes me : the fierce persistency of the
Scolia. I have seen the fight prolonged for a good quarter
of an hour, with frequent alternations of successes and
reverses, before the Hymenopteron achieved the requisite
position and reached with the tip of her belly the point
at which the sting must enter. During her assaults,
which are resumed as soon as repelled, the aggressor
repeatedly applies the extremity of her abdomen against
the grub, but without unsheathing ; for I should perceive
this by the start of the animal injured by the prick. The
Scolia, therefore, does not sting the Cetonia anywhere
until the desired point offers beneath the weapon. The
fact that no wounds are made elsewhere is not in any way
due to the structure of the grub, which is soft and pene-
trable at all points, except the skull. The spot sought by
the sting is no less well-protected than the others by
the dermal WTapper.

In the struggle, the Scolia, curved archwise, is some-
times caught in the vice of the Cetonia, which forcibly
contracts and buckles itself. Heedless of the rough
embrace, the Hymenopteron does not let go with either
her teeth or her ventral tip. Then follows a confused
scuffle between the two locked insects, of which first
one and next the other is on the top. When the grub
succeeds in ridding itself of its enemy, it unrolls itself
afresh, stretches itself at full length and proceeds to paddle
along on its back with all possible speed. Its defensive
artifices amount to no more than this. At an earlier

150 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

period, when I had not yet seen for myself and was
obhged to take probabiUty for my guide, I was wilHng to
grant it the trick of the hedgehog, who rolls himself into
a ball and defies the dog. I thought that, doubled up,
with a force which mj^ fingers had some difiiculty in over-
coming, it would in like manner defy the Scolia, who was
powerless to unroU it and disdainful of any point but
that of her choice. I wished the grub to possess and I
believed that it did possess this very simple and efficacious
means of defence. But I had too great confidence in its
ingenuity. Instead of copying the hedgehog and remain-
ing contracted, it flees with its belly in the air ; foolishlj^
it adopts the very posture which allows the Scolia to
make the assault and to reach the point at which the
fatal blow is struck.

Let us pass on to others. I have just captured an
Interrupted Scolia (Colpa Interrupta, Latr.), explormg the
sands, no doubt in quest of game. It is important to make
use of her as soon as may be, before her ardour has
been cooled by the tedium of captivity. I know her prey,
the grub of Anoxia Australis ; I know, from my old
habits of diggmg, the spots beloved by the worm : the
sand-dunes heaped by the wind at the foot of the rose-
mary-shrubs on the slopes of the neighbouring hills. It
will be hard work findmg it, for nothing is rarer than a
common thmg, when it is needed m a hurry. I call in
the aid of my father, an old man of ninety, but still
straight as a wand. Shouldering a shovel and a three-
pronged luchet, we set out under a sun in which you could
cook an egg. Exerting our feeble powers in turns, we
cut a trench in the sand where I hope to find the Anoxia.
My hopes are not disappointed. In the sweat of my brow
— never was truer word spoken — after shifting and sifting

THE TWO-BANDED SCOLIA 151

through my fingers at least two cubic yards of sandy soil,
I am the fortunate possessor of two grubs. Had I not
wanted them, I should have dug them up by the handful !
However, my lean and costly harvest is sufficient for the
moment. To-morrow, I shall send stronger arms to
continue the digging.

And now let us repay ourselves for our trouble by
witnessing the drama under glass. Heavy and clumsy
in her ways, the Scolia moves slowly round the arena.
At the sight of the game, her attention wakes up. The
fight is heralded by the same preparations as those dis-
played by the Two-banded ScoUa : the Hymenopteron
polishes her wmgs and taps the table with the tips of her
antennae. And now, up, lads, and at 'em ! The attack
begins. Unfit to move over a flat surface, because of
its short, weak legs ; lacking, moreover, the Cetonia's
eccentric means of locomotion on its back, the big-bellied
worm does not dream of running away : it rolls itself up.
The Scolia, with her powerful nippers, grabs its skin, now
at once place, now at another. Buckled into an arch whose
two ends almost meet, she strives to thrust the tip of her
belly into the narrow opening of the volute formed by the
grub. The fight is conducted quite calmly, without hard
blows and with varying fortunes. It represents the
obstinate attempt of a live split ring trymg to slip one of
its ends into another live spHt ring, which displays an
equal obstinacy in remaining closed. The Scolia holds the
game in subjection with her legs and mandibles ; she
makes her attempt first on one side and then on the other,
without succeeding in unrolling the torus, which becomes
the more contracted the more it feels itself in danger.
The actual circumstances make the operation difficult :
the prey sHps and rolls over the table, when the insect

152 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

goes for it too briskly ; points of support are wanting
and the sting cannot reach the desired spot ; for over
an hour, one vain attempt follows upon the other, divided
by spells of rest, during which the two adversaries look
like two narrow rings wound one inside the other.

What ought the sturdy Cetonia grub to do in order to
defy the Two-banded Scolia, who is nothing Hke so strong
as her victim ? Imitate the Anoxia, of course, and remain
rolled up like a hedgehog until the enemy retreats. It
tries to flee, unrolls itself and thus causes its own undoing.
The other does not budge from its defensive posture and
resists successfully. Is this due to acquired prudence ?
No, but to the impossibility of acting otherwise on the
pohshed surface of a table. Heavy, obese, weak-legged,
bent into a hook after the manner of the common white
maggot, the Anoxia grub is unable to shift its position on
a smooth surface ; it flounders painfully, lying on its
side. What it wants is the shifting soil wherein, using
its mandibles as a spade, it digs and buries itself.

Let us try if sand will shorten the battle, of which the
end does not j^et seem in sight after an hour's waiting.
I lightly sprinkle the arena. The attack is resumed more
fiercely than ever. The grub, feeling the sand, its natural
dwelling-place, now also tries to shp away, the reckless
one ! What did I tell you ? Its torus does not represent
acquired prudence, but the necessity of the moment. The
harsh experience of past misfortunes has not yet taught
it the precious advantage which it would derive from its
volute kept closed as long as danger lasts. Besides,
not all are equally cautious on the firm support of my
table. The biggest even seem ignorant of what they
understood so well in their youth : the art of self-defence
by rollmg one's self in a ball.

THE TWO-BANDED SCOLIA 153

I take up my story again with a fine-sized quarry, less
liable to slip under the vScolia's pushes. The grub, when
assailed, does not curl up, does not contract into a ring,
like its predecessor, which was younger and but half its size.
It tosses about clumsily, lying on its side, half -opened.
Its only attempt at defence is to wriggle ; it opens, closes
and reopens its big mandibular hooks. The Scolia grabs
it at random, winds her rough, hairy legs around it and, for
nearly fifteen minutes, strives her hardest atop of the rich
dainty.

At last, after a series of not very riotous affrays, the
favourable position is gained, the propitious moment
arrives and the sting is planted in the grub's thorax, at a
central spot, under the neck and level with the fore-legs.
The effect is instantaneous : total inertia, save in the
appendages of the head, the antennae and mouth-pieces.
I find the same results, the same prick at a precise, in-
variable spot, among my different operators, captured
from time to time with a successful stroke of the net.

Let us say, in conclusion, that the attack delivered
by the Interrupted Scolia is much less fiery than that of
her two-banded sister. This rough, sand-digging Hymen-
opteron has a clumsy gait and stifE, almost automatic
movements. She does not easily repeat her dagger-
thrust. Most of those with whom I experimented refused
a second victim on the day after their exploits and on the
folio whig day. Half -asleep, they grew excited only
when stimulated through my teasing them with a straw.
Nor does the Tw'o-banded Scolia, that more agile, more
enthusiastic huntress, invariably unsheath when invited
so to do. All those Nimrods are liable to moments of
inaction which the presence of a new prey will not succeed
in disturbing.

20

154 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

The Scolise have taught me no more than I have said,
for lack of subjects belonging to other species. No
matter : the results obtained constitute, to my mind, no
small triumph. After seeing the Scoliae at work, I said
to myself, guided merely by the anatomical structure of
the victims, that the grubs of Cetonia, of Anoxia, of
Orj'ctes must be paralyzed with a single prick of the
sting ; I even specified the point at which the dagger
had to strilie, a central pomt in the immediate neighbour-
hood of the fore-legs. Of the three kinds of sacrificers,
two allowed me to be present at their surgical operation,
which the third, I am certain, will not contradict. In
both cases, a single blow of the lancet ; in both cases, an
moculation with the poison at the place settled in advance.
No calculator in an observatory could show greater
accuracy in foretelling the position of his planet. An idea
may be considered proved when it attains this mathe-
matical anticipation of the future, this positive know-
ledge of the unknown. When will the extollers of chance
achieve a like success ? Order calls for order ; and chance
has no rule.

THE RINGED CALICURGUS

CHAPTER XII

THE RINGED CALICURGUS

The non-cuirassed victims, pervious to the sting over
almost the whole of their body, such as Common Cater-
pillars and "Land-surveying" Caterpillars, Cetonia and
Anoxia grubs, whose sole means of defence, apart from
their mandibles, consists in rollings and contortions, sum-
moned another prey to ray glass bell : the Spider, almost
as ill-protected, but armed with formidable poison-fangs.
How, more particularly, does the Ringed Cahcurgus, or
Pompilus, set to work to deal with the black-bellied
Tarantula, the terrible Lycosa Narbonnensis, who slays
mole and sparrow with a bite and imperils the life of
man ? How does the bold Pompilus overcome an adver-
sary stronger than herself, better-endowed in virulence
of poison and capable of making a meal of her assailant ?
Among the hunting insects, none faces such dispro-
portionate contests, in which appearances seem to
point to the aggressor as the prey and to the prey as
the aggressor.

The problem deserved patient study. True, judging
by the Spider's structure, I anticipated a single stab in
the centre of the thorax ; but this did not explain the vic-
tory of the Hymenopteron, emerging safe and sound from
her encounter with a quarry of that description. The
matter must be looked into. The chief difficulty is the

157

158 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

scarcity of the Calicurgus. To obtain the Tarantula is
easy enough : the part of the neighbouring upland as yet
untilled by the vine-planters supplies me with as many
as I need. To capture the Calicurgus is a different story.
I count upon her so little that I consider a special
search quite useless. To look for one would, perhaps,
be the very way not to find one. Let us leave it to
chance to decide whether I shall have one or not.

I have one. I caught her unexpectedly on the jflowers.
The next day, I lay in a stock of half-a-dozen Tarantulas.
Perhaps I shall be able to use them one after the other,
in repeated duels. On my return from my expedition
in search of Lycosae, chance smiles upon me again and
gratifies my desires to the full. A second Calicurgus
presents herself before my net : she is dragging her heavy,
paralyzed Arachnid by the leg, in the dust of the high-
road. I set great store by my find : there is an urgency
about laying the egg ; and I believe that the mother will
accept an exchange without much hesitation.

So behold my two captives, each under a glass bell
with her Tarantula. I am all eyes. What a drama I
may expect, in a moment ! I wait, anxiously. . . . But
. . . but. . . what is this ? Which of the two is the at-
tacker ? Which of the two the attacked ? The char-
acters seem inverted. The Calicurgus, unfit for climbing
up the smooth walls of the bell, strides along the outer
circumference of the arena. With proud, swift gait and
quivering wings and antennae, she comes and goes. She
soon sets eyes upon the Lycosa, marches up to her with-
out the least sign of fear, turns around her and seems
about to seize one of her legs. But, at that moment, the
Tarantula rises almost perpendicularly, using her four
hind-legs to stand upon and her four front-legs erect.

THE RINGED CALICURGUS 159

outspread, ready to thrust and parry. The poison-fangs
yawn wide : a drop of venom hangs from their point.
The mere sight of them makes my flesh creep. In this
terrible attitude, presenting her powerful chest and the
black velvet of her belly to her enemy, the Arachnid
overawes the Pompilus, who abruptly turns to the right-
about and retreats. The Lycosa then closes her case
of poisoned daggers and returns to her natural position,
standing on her eight legs ; but, at the least aggressive
movement on the part of the Hymenopteron, she resumes
her threatening posture.

Nay, she does better : suddenly, she leaps and flings
herself upon the Calicurgus, grapples with her nimbly
and gnaws her with her fangs. The other, without reply-
ing with her sting, releases herself and emerges unscathed
from the fierce encounter. Time after time, I witness
the attack ; and nothing serious ever happens to the
Hymenopteron, who quickly extricates herself and seems
to have felt nothing. Her manoeuvres are resumed as
boldly and swiftly as at the start.

Does this mean that the creature escaping from the
terrible fangs is mvuhierable ? Obviously not. A real
bite would be fatal to her. Big, tough Acridians suc-
cumb : why should not she, with her delicate organiza-
tion, succumb as well ? The Arachnid's daggers, there-
fore, make vain feints ; their points do not enter the
antagonist's flesh. If the blows were real, I should see
bleeding wounds, I should see the fangs closed for a
moment upon the point seized, whereas all my watchful-
ness fails to perceive anything of the sort. Are the fangs
powerless, then, to pierce the Calicurgus' envelope ? Not
that either. I have seen them go through the corselet
of the Acridians, which possesses much greater resisting

160 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

power and which cracks like a broken breastplate. Once
more, whence comes this strange immunity of the Cali-
curgus between the legs and under the daggers of the
Tarantula ? I do not know. At a time when she is in
mortal danger m front of her enemy, the Lycosa threatens
her with her fangs and cannot bring herself to bite, pre-
vented by a reluctance which I do not undertake to
explain.

Seemg that I am obtaining nothing but alarms and
scrimmages devoid of seriousness, I decide to alter the
conditions of the prize-ring and to make it resemble more
closely the natural state. My work-table is but a poor
substitute for the soil ; besides, the Arachnid has not
her stronghold, her burrow, which maybe plays a part
of some importance in both attack and defence. A
stump of reed is stuck perpendicularly in a large pan
filled with earth. This shall represent the Lycosa's pit.
In the middle, I plant a few heads of echinops, made appe-
tizing with honey, as a refectory for the Pompilus ; a
pair of Crickets, renewed as soon as consumed, shall keep
up the strength of the Tarantula. This comfortable
abode, exposed to the sun, receives the two captives
under a woven-wire cover, well-ventilated and suitable for
a long staj'.

My artifices lead to no result ; the session ends without
business done. A day passes, two days, three days ; and
still nothing. The Calicurgus is unremitting in her atten-
tions to the honej^ed thistle-heads ; the Tarantula calmly
nibbles away at her Cricket. If the other comes within
reach of her, she quickly draws herself up and, with a
gesture, orders her to be off. The artificial burrow, the
recd-stump, fulfils its purpose nicely. Lycosa and Cali-
curgus take refuge in it by turns, but without quarrelling.

THE RINGED CALICURGUS IGl

And that is all. The drama of which the prologue
promised so well now seems to me indefinitely postponed.

A last resource remains ; and I base great hopes upon
it. This is to move my Calicurgi to the very spot of their
investigations and to instal them at the door of the
Arachnid's house, above the natural burrow. I take the
field with an apparatus which I am draggmg for the first
time into the open, consisting of a glass cover, another
of woven wire, together with the different instruments
necessary to handle and shift my irascible and dangerous
subjects. My search for burrows among the pebbles and
the tufts of thyme and lavender soon meets with success.

Here is a splendid one. The insertion of a straw in-
forms me that it is inhabited by a Tarantula of a size
suited to my plans. I sweep and flatten down the neigh-
bourhood of the orifice to receive the wire bell, under
which I place a Pompilus. This is a fitting moment to
light one's pipe and wait, stretched on the pebbles. . . .
A further disappointment ! Half an hour passes and the
Hymenopteron confines herself to turnmg round the wne,
as she did in my study. Not a sign of cupidity on her
part in the presence of that burrow at the bottom of
which I see the Tarantula's diamond eyes gleammg.

The wire-work enclosure is replaced by one of glass,
the walls of which cannot be scaled, thus obligmg the
insect to remain on the ground and at last to take notice
of the pit, which it seems to ignore. This time, we are
more successful. After a few strolls round the circuit,
the Calicurgus casts eyes upon the cavity that yawns
beneath her feet. She goes do^^Ti it. This boldness
staggers me. I should never have dared expect as much
as that. To fling yourself suddenly upon the Tarantula
when she is outside her domain is all very well ; but to

21

162 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

plunge into the lair when the terrible animal is waiting
for you there with her double poisoned dagger ! What
will come of this temerity ? A flutter of wings rises
from the depths. Run to earth in her private apart-
ments, the Lycosa is doubtless struggling with the in-
truder. That noise of wings is the song of victory of the
Calicurgus, unless, indeed, it be her death-song. The
murderer may well be the murdered. Which of the two
will emerge from below alive ?

It is the Lj'cosa, who hurriedly scampers out and takes
up her stand at the entrance to the burrow in her position
of defence, with her fangs open and her four front-legs
outstretched. Is the other stabbed ? Not at all, for
she comes out forthwith, not without receiving a cuflf, as
she passes, from the Arachnid, who at once returns to
her den. Dislodged from the basement a second and a
third time, the Tarantula alwaj^s comes up again with-
out a wound, always waits for the invader on the door-
sill, administers punishment and pops in again. In vain
I alternate my two Pompili and change the burrow : I
do not succeed in seeing anything more. Certain condi-
tions, which my stratagems fail to realize, are lacking to
the fulfilment of the drama.

Discouraged by the repetition of my fruitless experi-
ments, I throw up the game, having gained, however, a
fact of some value : the Calicurgus descends, without the
least fear, into the Tarantula's den and turns her out. I
imagine that things happen in the same way outside my
bells. Evicted from her home, the Arachnid is more
timorous and lends herself better to the attack. Besides,
in the constraint of a narrow burrow, the operator would
not be able to wield her lancet with the precision which
her plans demand. The bold incursion shows us once again,
more clearly than the hand-to-hand encounters on my

PLATE IX

1. Lycosa Narhonensis.
3. Ammophila Hirsuta.
5. Scroll of Bhynchites Vitis.

i. The Kinged Calicurgus.

4. Ammophila Sahulosa.

6. Scroll of lihi/ndiites Popu.'i.

THE RINGED CALICURGUS 163

table, the Lycosa's reluctance to drive her fangs into her
adversary. When the two are face to face at the bottom
of the lair, that surely would be the time of times to
have a word with the enemy. The Tarantula is at home ;
every nook and corner of the bastion is familiar to her.
The intruder is constrained in her movements ; she does
not know her way about. Quick, a bite, my poor Lycosa,
and your persecutor's done for ! You refrain, I know
not why ; and your reluctance is the rash one's salvation.
The silly sheep does not reply to the butcher's knife
with a butt from his horned forehead. Can you be the
sheep of the Calicurgus ?

My two subjects are once more installed in my study,
under their wire domes, with the bed of sand, the reed-
stump burrow and renewed honey. They here find their
first Lycosae, feeding on crickets. The cohabitation ex-
tends over three weeks, without other incidents than
scrimmages and threatenings, which become rarer from
day to day. No serious hostility on either side. At last,
the Calicurgi die : their day is past. A pitiful ending to
a spirited start.

Shall I abandon the problem ? Oh, no ! It is not
the first that has been unable to deter me from an
eagerly-cherished plan. Fortune favours the persevering.
She proves this by offering me, in September, a fortnight
after the death of my Tarantula-hunters, a different Cali-
curgus, captured for the first time. It is Calicurgus
Curra, clad in the same showy style as her predecessors
and almost of the same size.

I know nothing about the new-comer : I wonder what
she would like. A spider, that is certain : but which ?
A huntress of her build calls for big game : perhaps the
Silky Epeira, perhaps the Banded Epeira, the two fattest
Arachnids in the country, next to the Tarantula. The

1G4 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

first hangs her great vertical web, in which the Crickets
are caught, from one brake of brushwood to the next.
I shall find her in the copses on the adjacent hills. The
other stretches hers across the ditches and little water-
courses frequented by the Dragon-flies. I shall find her
near the Aygues, on the bank of the irrigation-canals fed
by that torrent. Two excursions procure me the two
Epeirae. Next day, I offer them together to my captive,
who shall choose according to her tastes.

The choice is soon made : Epeira Fasciata obtains the
preference. But she does not yield ^^^dthout protest.
At the Hymenopteron's approach, she draws herself up
and assumes a defensive attitude copied from that of the
Lycosa. The Calicurgus does not mind the threats :
under her harlequm attire, she is quick to strike and
swift of foot. A few brisk cuffs are exchanged and the
Epeira lies overturned on her back. The Calicurgus is
on top of her, belly to belly, head to head ; with her legs,
she overpowers the Arachnid's legs ; with her mandibles,
she grips the cephalothorax. She curves her abdomen
vigorously, bringing it underneath ; she draws her sting
and . . .

One moment, reader, if j-ou please. Where is the sting
going to penetrate ? According to what we have learnt
from the other paralyzers, it will be in the chest, to de-
stroy the movement of the legs. You think so ? I be-
lieved it too. Well, without wasting time in apologizing
for our very excusable common error, let us confess that
the animal is cleverer than we are. It knows how to
make certain of success by means of a preparatory trick
which you and I had not thought of. Oh, what a school
is that of the animals ! Is it not a fact that, before
striking the adversary, it is wise to take steps not to be
hit yourself ? Calicurgus Scurra does not disregard this

THE RINGED CALICURGUS 165

counsel of prudence. The Epeira carries under her throat
two sharp daggers, with a drop of poison at the tip ; the
Calicurgus is lost if the Arachnid bite her. Neverthe-
less, her anaesthetizing operation requires perfect security
of the lancet. What is to be done in this peril, which
would perplex the most confident surgeon ? We must
first disarm the patient and operate upon him later.

Behold, the Cahcurgus' sting, aimed from back to
front, enters the Epeira's mouth, with minute precautions
and emphatic persistency. Upon the instant, the poison-
fangs close limply and the formidable prey is rendered
harmless. The Hymenopteron's abdomen then extends
its arch and drives in the needle behind the fourth pair
of legs, on the median line, almost at the juncture of the
belly. The skin is thinner and more easily penetrable at
this spot than elsewhere. The rest of the chest is covered
with a firm breast-plate, which the sting would perhaps
not succeed in perforating. The nerve-centres, the seat
of the movement of the legs, are situated a little higher
than the wounded spot ; but the aiming of the weapon
from back to front enables it to reach them. This last
blow produces paralysis of the eight legs together.

To enlarge upon the proceeding would spoil the elo-
quence of this manoeuvre. Fu-st, for the protection of
the operator, a stab in the mouth, that fearsomely armed
point, to be dreaded above all others ; next, for the pro-
tection of the grub, a second stab in the nerve-centres of
the thorax, to destroy all movement. I suspected indeed
that the sacrificers of powerful Arachnids were endowed
with special talents ; but I was far from expecting their
daring logic, which disarms before it paralyzes. This
must also be the scheme followed by the Tarantula-
huntress, who refused to disclose her secret under my
bells. I know her method now, divulged as it is by a

m

166 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

colleague. She turns the horrible Lycosa on her back,
deadens her daggers by stinging her in the mouth and then,
with a single prick of the needle, contrives the paralysis
of the legs at her ease.

I examine the Epeira immediately after the operation
and the Tarantula when the Calicurgus drags her by one
leg to her burrow, at the foot of a wall. For a little
while longer, a minute at most, the Epeira convulsively
moves her legs. As long as these dying quivers last, the
Pompilus does not let go of her prey. She seems to be
watching the progress of the paralysis. With the tip of
her mandibles, she repeatedly explores the mouth of the
Arachnid, as though to make sure that the poison-fangs
are really harmless. Next, all becomes quiet ; and the
Calicurgus makes ready to drag her prey elsewhither. It
is then that I take possession of it.

What strikes me first of all is the absolute inertness of
the fangs, which I tickle with a straw without succeeding
in rousing them from their torpor. The feelers, on the
contrary, the feelers, their immediate neighbours, move
backwards and forwards the moment I touch them. I
put the Epeira away safely in a flask and subject her to a
fresh examination a week later. Irritability has returned
in part. Under the stimulus of the straw, I see the limbs
move a little, especially the lower joints, legs and tharsi.
The feelers are even more irritable and mobile. These
various movements, however, are devoid of vigour or
coordination ; and the Spider cannot use them to turn
herself and still less to shift her position. As for the
poison-fangs, I stimulate them in vain ; I do not succeed
in inducing them to open, or even to move. They are,
therefore, profoundly paralyzed and in a special manner.
I thought as much, at the beginning, from the peculiar
persistency displayed by the dart in stinging the mouth.

THE RINGED CALICUGRUS 167

At the end of September, almost a month after the
operation, the Epeira is in the same condition, neither
dead nor ahve : the feelers still quiver at the touch of
the straw ; and nothing else stirs. Finally, after six or
seven weeks of lethargy, real death supervenes, together
with its companion, corruption.

The Tarantula of the Ringed Calicurgus, whom I steal
from her o\Mier while she is dragging her along, offers the
same peculiarities for my inspection. The poison-fangs
absolutely refuse to be irritated by the tickling of the
straw, a fresh proof added to that of analogy to show
that the Lycosa, like the Epeira, has been stung in the
mouth. The feelers, on the other hand, are and for weeks
remain exceedingly irritable and mobile. I insist upon
this point, the interest of which will soon become apparent.

It was not possible for me to obtain a second attack
from my Calicurgus Scurra : the tedium of captivity
injured the exercise of her talents. Besides, the Epeira
had occasionally something to say to this refusal : a
certain stratagem of war twice employed before my eyes
could easily rout the aggressor. Let me describe the
thing, if only to raise a little in our esteem those silly
Arachnids, who, provided with weapons of perfection, dare
not use them against their feebler, but pluckier assailant.

The Epeira occupies the wall of the woven-wire en-
closure, with her eight legs sprawling over the treUis-
work ; the Calicurgus moves about under the top of the
dome. Panic-stricken at the sight of the enemy, the
spider drops to the ground, with her belly in the air and
her legs bunched up. The other goes to her, takes hold
of her, examines her and places herself in a position to
sting her in the mouth. But she does not unsheathe her
dart. I see her leaning attentively over the poison-fangs,
as though to enquire mto the nature of the terrible

168 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

machinery ; and then she moves away. The spider re-
mains motionless, so much so that I beUeve her dead,
paralyzed without my knowing it, at a moment when I
was not looking. I take her out of the volery to examine
her at my ease. But no sooner is she laid upon the table
than she comes to life and promptly scurries away. The
trickster was shamming for dead under the Calicurgus'
dagger and so artfully that I was taken in by her. She
hoodwinked one cleverer than myself, the Calicurgus,
who inspected her very closely and did not consider a
dead body worthy of her steel. Perhaps the simpleton
already noticed a " high " smell, like the bear in the fable.
This trick, if trick there be, appears to me to turn most
often to the disadvantage of the Arachnid : Tarantula,
Epeira or another, as the case may be. The Calicurgus,
who has just thrown her on her back, after a brisk
wi'estling-match, knows well enough that the insect on
the ground is not dead. The Spider, thinking to protect
herself, shams the lifelessness of a corpse ; the assailant
takes advantage of this to strike her most dangerous
blow, the stab in the mouth. If the poison-tipped fangs
were to open then, to snap, to bite in their despair, the
Calicurgus would never dare expose the tip of her stomach
to their mortal sting. The pretence of death is just what
causes the success of the huntress in her risky operation.
We are told, 0 ingenuous Epeirse, that the struggle for
life coujiselled you to adopt that inert attitude in your
own defence. Well, the struggle for life has shown her-
self a very bad counsellor. You would do better to
believe in common sense and learn, by degrees, at your
cost, that a quick parry-and-thrust, especially when your
resources permit of it, is still the best way of strikmg
awe into the enemy.

THE OLD A\ EEVILS

22

CHAPTER XIII

THE OLD WEEVILS

In winter, when the insect enjoys an enforced rest, the
study of numismatics procures me some delightful
moments. I love to interrogate its metal disks, the
records of the petty things which men call history. In
this soil of Provence, where the Greek planted the olive-
tree and the Roman planted the law, the peasant finds
coins, scattered more or less everywhere, when he turns
his sod. He brings them to me and consults me as to
their pecuniary value, never as to their meaning.

What matters to him the inscription on his treasure-
trove ! Men suffered of yore, they suffer to-day, they
will suffer in the future : to him, all history is summed
up in that ! The rest is sheer futility, a pastime of the
idle.

I do not possess this lofty philosophy of indifference
to things of the past. I scratch the piece of money
with my finger-nail, I carefully strip it of its earthy rind,
I examine it with the magnifying-glass, I try to decipher
its legend. And my satisfaction is no small one when
the little round bronze or silver disk has spoken. For
then I have read a page of humanity, not in books, which
are witnesses open to suspicion, but in records which
are, in a manner, living and which were contemporary
with the persons and the facts.

171

172 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

This bit of silver, flattened by the blow of the punch,
talks to me of the Vocontii :^ " VOOC . . . VOCVNT," says
the inscription. It comes from the little neighbouring town
of Vaison, where Pliny the Naturalist sometimes went to
spend a holiday. Here, perhaps, at the table of his host,
the celebrated compiler, he learnt to appreciate the bec-
cafico, famous among the epicures of Rome and still
renowned to-day, under the name of grasset, among our
Provengal gastronomers. It is a shame that my bit of
silver says nothing of these events, more memorable
than a battle.

It shows, on one side, a head and, on the other, a
galloping horse, all barbarously inaccurate. A child try-
ing its hand for the first time with the point of a pebble
on the fresh mortar of the walls would produce no more
shapeless design. Nay, of a surety, those gallant Allo-
broges were no artists.

How greatly superior to them were the foreigners from
Phocsea ! Here is a drachma of the Massalietes :^
MASSAAIHTON. On the obverse, a head of Diana of
Ephesus, chub-faced, full-cheeked, thick-lipped. A re-
ceding forehead, surmounted by a diadem ; an abundant
head of hair, streaming down the neck in a cascade of
curls ; heavy ear-drops, a necklace of pearls, a bow slung
over the shoulder. Thus was the idol decked by the
hands of the pious maidens of Syria. To tell the truth,
it is not beautiful. It is sumptuous, if j'ou will, and
preferable, after all, to the ass's ears which the beauties

* The Vocontii inhabited the Viennaise, between the Allobroges on
the north, the Caturiges and the estates of King Cottius on the east
the Cavares on the west, and the Memini and Vulgientes on the south.
Vasio (Vocontia), now Vaison, was their capital. — Translator's Note.

- From MassaUa, the ancient name of Marseilles, of which Phocasa,
m Asia Minor, was the mother city. — Translator's Note.

THE OLD WEEVILS 173

of our days wear perched upon their heads. What a
singular freak is fashion, so fruitful in the means of
uglification ! Business knows nothing of beauty, says
this divinity of the traders ; it prefers the profitable,
embellished with luxury. Thus speaks the drachma.

On the reverse, a lion clawing the earth and roaring
wide-mouthed. Not of to-day alone is the savagery
that symbolizes power under the form of some formidable
brute, as though evil were the supreme expression of
strength. The eagle, the lion and other bandits often
figure on the reverse of coins. But the reality is not
sufficient ; the imagmation invents monstrosities : the
centaur, the dragon, the hippogriff, the unicorn, the
double-headed eagle. Are the inventors of these emblems
really superior to the redskin who celebrates the prowess
of his scalping-knife with a bear's paw, an eagle's wing or
a jaguar's tooth stuck into his scalp-lock ? We may
safely doubt it.

How preferable to these heraldic horrors is the reverse
of our own silver coinage brought into circulation of
late years ! It shows us a sower who, with a nimble
hand, at sunrise, fills the furrow with the good seed
of thought. It is very simple and it is great ; it makes
us think.

The Marseilles drachma has for its sole merit its magni-
ficent relief. The artist who made the dies was a master
of the graver's tool ; but he lacked the breath of inspira-
tion. The chub-faced Diana is a rakes' wench and no
better.

Here is the NAMASAT of the Volscae, which became the
colony of Nimes. Side by side, profiles of Augustus and
his minister Agrippa. The former, with his hard brow,
his flat skull, his grasping, broken nose, inspires me with

174 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

but little confidence, notwithstanding what gentle Virgil
wTote of him :

Deus nobis haec otia fecit.

It is success that makes gods. Had he not succeeded
in his criminal projects, Augustus the divine would have
remained Octavius the scoundrel.

His minister pleases me better. He was a great shifter
of stones, who, with his building operations, his aqueducts,
his roads, came to civilize the rustic Volscse a little. Not
far from my village, a splendid road crosses the plain in
a straight line, starting from the banks of the Aygues,
and climbs up yonder, tedious in its monotonous length,
to cross the Serignan hills, under the protection of a
powerful O'pjndiim, which, much later, became the old
castle, the Castelas. It is a section of Agrippa's Road,
which joined Marseilles and Vienne. The majestic ribbon,
twenty centuries old, is still frequented. We no longer
see the little brown foot-soldier of the Roman legions
upon it ; in his stead, we see the peasant going to market
at Orange, with his flock of sheep or his drove of unruly
porkers. And I prefer the latter.

Let us turn over the green-crusted penny. " COL.
NEM.,"^ colony of Nimes, the reverse tells us. The in-
scription is accompanied by a crocodile chained to a palm-
tree from w^iich hang crowns. It is an emblem of Egypt,
conquered by the veterans who founded the colony.
The beast of the Nile gnashes its teeth at the foot of the
familiar tree. It speaks to us of Antony, the rip ; it
tells us of Cleopatra, whose nose, had it been an inch
shorter, would have changed the face of the world.
Thanks to the memories which it awakens, the scaly-
rumped reptile becomes a superb historical lesson.

^ Nemansus, the Latin name of Nimes. — Translator^ s Note.

THE OLD WEEVILS 175

In this way, the great lessons of the numismatical science
of metals could follow one another for many a day and
be constantly varied without leaving my near neighbour-
hood. But there is another science of numismatics, far
superior and less costly, which, with its medals, the fossils,
tells us the history of life. I speak of the numismatics
of stones.

My very window-ledge, the confidant of bygone ages,
talks to me of a vanished world. It is, literally speaking,
an ossuary, each particle of which retains the imprint of
past lives. That block of stone has lived. Spines of
sea-urchins, teeth and vertebra of fish, broken pieces of
shells, shivers of madrepores form a pulp of dead exist-
ences. Examined ashlar by ashlar, my house would
resolve itself into a reliquary, a rag-fair of things that
were alive in the days of old.

The rocky layer from which building-materials are
derived in these parts covers, with its mighty shell, the
greater portion of the neighbouring upland. Here the
quarry-man has dug for none knows how many centuries,
since the time when Agrippa hewed cyclopean flags to
form the stages and fagade of the Orange theatre. And
here, daily, the pick-axe uncovers curious fossils. The
most remarkable of these are teeth, wonderfully polished
in the heart of their rough veinstone, bright with enamel
as though still in a fresh state. Some of them are most
formidable, triangular, finely jagged at the edges, almost
as large as one's hand. What an insatiable abyss, a jaw
armed with such a set of teeth in manifold rows, placed
stepwise almost to the back of the gullet ; what mouth-
fuls, snapped up and lacerated by those serrate shears !
You are seized with a shiver merely at the imaginary
reconstruction of that awful implement of destruction !

176 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

The monster thus equipped as a prince of death be-
longed to the order of SquaHdae. Paleontology calls him
Carcharodon Megalodon. The shark of to-day, the terror
of the seas, gives an approximate idea of him, m so far
as the dwarf can give an idea of the giant.

Other Squali abound in the same stone, all fierce
gullets. It contains Oxyrhinee (Oxyrhina Xiphodon,
Agass.), with teeth shaped like pointed cleavers ; Hemi-
pristes (Hemipristis Serra, Agass.), whose jaws are fur-
nished with curved and toothed Malay creeses ; Lamiae
(Lamia Denticulata, Agass.), whose mouths bristle with
flexuous, steeled daggers, flattened on one side, convex
on the other ; Notidani (Notidanus Primigenius, Agass.),
whose sunk teeth are crowned with radiate indentations.

This dental arsenal, the eloquent witness of the old
butcheries, can hold its own with the Crocodile of Nimes,
the Diana of Marseilles, the Horse of Vaison. With its
panoply of carnage, it teUs me how extermination came
at all times to lop off the surplus of Ufe ; it says :

" On the very spot where you stand meditating upon
a shiver of stone, an arm of the sea once stretched, filled
with truculent devourers and peaceable victims. A long
gulf occupied the future site of the Rhone Valley. Its
billows broke at no great distance from your dwelling."

Here, in fact, are the cliffs of the bank, in such a state
of preservation that, on concentrating my thoughts, I
seem to hear the thunder of the waves. Sea-urchins,
Lithodomi, Petricolse, Pholaidids have left their sig-
natures upon the rock : hemispherical recesses large
enough to contain one's fist, round cells, cabins mth a
narrow conduit-pipe through which the recluse received
the incoming water, constantly renewed and laden with
nourishment. Sometimes, the erstwhile occupant is there,

THE OLD WEEVILS 177

mineralized, intact to the tiniest details of his striae
and scales, a frail ornament ; more often, he has dis-
appeared, dissolved, and his house has filled with a fine
sea mud, hardened into a chalky kernel.

In this quiet inlet, some eddy has collected and
drowned at the bottom of the mire, now turned into
marl, enormous heaps of shells, of every shape and size.
It is a molluscs' burying-groimd, with hills for tumuH.
I dig up oysters a cubit long and weighmg five or six
pomids apiece. One could shovel up, in the immense
pile, Scallops, Cones, Cytheridae, Mactridse, Murices,
TurritellidsB, Mitridse and others too numerous, too
innumerable to mention. You stand stupefied before
the vital ardour of the daj^s of old, which was able to
supply such a pile of relics in a mere nook of earth.

The necropolis of shells tells us, besides, that time, that
patient renewer of the order of things, has mown down
not only the individual, a precarious being, but also the
species. Nowadays, the neighbouring sea, the Mediter-
ranean, has almost nothmg identical with the population
of the vanished gulf. To find a few features of similarity
between the present and the past, we should have to seek
them in the tropical seas. The climate, therefore, has
become colder ; the sun is slowly becoming extinguished ;
the species are dying out. Thus speak the numismatics
of the stones on my window-ledge.

Without leaving my field of observation, so modest, so
limited and 3'et so rich, let us once more consult the stone
and, this time, on the subject of the insect. The country
round Apt abounds in a strange rock that breaks off in
thin plates, similar to sheets of whitish cardboard. It
burns with a sooty flame and a bituminous smell ; and it
was deposited at the bottom of great lakes haunted by

23

178 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

crocodiles and giant tortoises. Those lakes no human
eye has ever seen. Their basins have been replaced by
the ridges of the hills ; their muds, peacefully deposited
in thin courses, have become mighty banks of rock.

Let us break off a slab and subdivide it into sheets
with the point of a knife, a work as easy as separating the
superposed layers of a piece of paste- or mill-board. In so
doing, we are exammiiig a volume taken from the library
of the mountains, we are turning the pages of a magnifi-
cently illustrated book. It is a manuscript of nature, far
superior to the Egyptian papjTus. On almost every page
are diagrams ; nay, better : realities converted into pie-
tures.

On this page are fish, grouped at random. One might
take them for a dish fried in oil. Back-bones, fins,
vertebral luiks, bones of the head, crystal of the eye
turned to a black globule, everything is there, in its
natural arrangement. One thing alone is absent : the
flesh. No matter : our dish of gudgeons looks so good
that we feel an inclination to scratch off a bit with our
finger and taste this supramillenary preserve. Let us
indulge our fancy and put between our teeth a morsel
of this mineral fry seasoned with petroleum.

There is no inscription to the picture. Reflection
makes good the deficiency. It says to us :

" These fishes lived here, in large numbers, in peaceful
waters. Suddenly, swells came and asphyxiated them
in their mud-thickened waves. Buried forthwith in the
mire and thus rescued from the agents of destruction,
they have passed through time, will pass through it
indefinitely, under the cover of their winding-sheet."

The same swells brought from the adjacent rain-swept
shores a host of refuse, both vegetable and animal, so

THE OLD WEEVILS 179

much so that the lacustrian deposit talks to us also of
things on land. It is a general record of the life of the
time.

Let us turn a page of our slab, or rather our album.
Here are winged seeds, leaves drawn in brown prmts.
The stone herbal vies in botanical accuracy with a
normal herbal. It repeats what the shells had already
told us : the world is changing, the sun is losing its
strength. The vegetation of modern Provence is not
what it was in former days ; it no longer includes palm-
trees, camphor-yielding laurels, tufted araucarias and
many other trees and shrubs whose equivalents belong
to the torrid regions.

Continue to turn the pages. We now come to the
insects. The most frequent are the Diptera, of middling
size, often very humble flies and gnats. The teeth of
the great Squali astonished us by their soft polish amid
the roughness of their challvy veinstone. What shall we
say of these frail midges preserved intact in their marly
shrine ? The frail creature, which our fingers could not
grasp without crushing it, lies undeformed beneath the
weight of the mountains !

The six slender legs, which the least thing is enough to
disjoint, here lie spread upon the stone, correct in shape
and arrangement, in the attitude of the insect at rest.
There is nothing lacking, not even the tiny double claws
of the extremities. Here are the two wings, imfurled.
The fine net-work of their nervures can be studied under
the lens as clearly as in the Dipteron of the collections,
stuck upon its pin. The antennary tufts have lost
none of their subtle elegance ; the belly gives us the
number of the rings, edged with a row of atoms that
were cilia.

180 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

The carcase of a mastodont, defying time in its sandy
bed, already astonishes us : a gnat of exquisite delicacy,
preserved intact in the thickness of the rock, staggers our
imagination.

Certainly, the Mosquito, carried by the rising swells, did
not come from far away. Before his arrival, the hurly-
burly of a thread of water must have reduced him to that
annihilation to which he was so near. He lived on the
shores of the lake. Killed by the joys of a morning — the
old age of gnats — he fell from the top of his reed, was
forthwith drowned and disappeared in the muddy cata-
combs.

Who are those others, those dumpy ones, with hard,
convex elytra, the most numerous next to the Diptera ?
Their small heads, prolonged into a snout, tell us plainly.
They are proboscidian Coleoptera, Rhynchophora, or, in
less hard terms. Weevils. There are small ones, middling
ones, large ones, similar in dimensions to their counter-
parts of to-day.

Their attitudes on the chaUiy slab are not as correct as
those of the Mosquito. The legs are entangled anyhow ;
the beak, the rostrum is at one time hidden under the
chest, at another projects forward. Some show it in
profile ; others — more frequent these — stretch it to one
side, as the result of a twist in the neck.

These dislocated, contorted insects did not receive the
swift and peaceful burial of the Dipteron. Though sundry
of them may have lived on the plants on the banks,
the others, the majority, come from the surrounding
neighbourhood, brought by the rains, which warped their
joints in crossing such obstacles as branches and stones.
A stout armour has kept the body unscathed, but the
delicate articulations of the members have given way

THE OLD WEEVILS 181

to some extent ; and the miry winding-sheet received
the drowned Beetles as the disorder of the passage left
them.

These strangers, come perhaps from afar, supply us
with precious information. They tell us that, whereas
the banks of the lake had the Mosquito as the chief
representative of the insect class, the woods had the
Weevil.

Outside the snout-carrying family, the sheets of my
Apt rock show me hardly anything more, especially in
the order of the Coleoptera. Where are the other ter-
restrial groups, the Carabus, the Dung-beetle, the Capri-
corn, which the wash of the rains, indifferent as to its
harvests, would have brought to the lake even as it did
the Weevil ? There is not the least vestige of those
tribes, so prosperous to-day.

Where are the Hydrophilus, the Gyrinus, the Dj^tiscus,
all inhabitants of the water ? These lacustrians had a
great chance of coming down to us mummified between
two sheets of marl. If there were any in those days, they
lived in the lake, whose muds would have preserved these
horn-clad insects even more perfectly than the little fishes
and especially than the Dipteron. Well, of those aquatic
Coleoptera there is no trace either.

Where were they, where were those missing from the
geological reliquary ? Where were they of the thickets,
of the green-sward, of the worm-eaten trunks : Capricorns,
borers of wood ; Sacred Beetles, workers in dung ; Carabi,
disembowellers of game ? One and all were in the limbo
of the time to come. The present of that period did not
possess them : the future awaited them. The Weevil,
therefore, if I may credit the modest records which I
am free to consult, is the oldest of the Coleoptera.

182 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Life, at the start, fashioned oddities which would be
screaming discords in the present harmony of things.
When it invented the Saurian, it revelled at first in
monsters fifteen and twenty yards long. It placed horns
on their noses and eyes, paved their backs with fantastic
scales, hollowed their necks into spiny wallets, wherein
their heads withdrew as into a hood. It even tried,
though not with great success, to give them wings.
After these horrors, the procreating ardour calmed down
and produced the charming green Lizard of our hedges.

When it invented the bird, it filled its beak with the
pointed teeth of the reptile and appended a long, feathered
tail unto its rump. These undetermined and revoltingly
ugly creatures were the distant prelude to the Robin
Redbreast and the Dove.

All these primitives are noted for a very small skull,
an idiot's brain. The biute of antiquity is, first and fore-
most, an atrocious machine for snapping, with a stomach
for digesting. The intellect does not count as yet. That
will come later.

The Weevil, in his fashion, to a certain extent, repeats
these aberrations. See the extravagant appendage to
his little head. It is here a short, thick snout ; there a
sturdy beak, round or cut four-square ; elsewhere a crazy
reed, thin as a hair, long as the body and longer. At the
tip of this egregious instrument, in the terminal mouth-
piece, are the fine shears of the mandibles ; on the sides,
the antennae, with their first joints set in a groove.

What is the use of this beak, this snout, this caricature
of a nose ? Where did the insect find the model ?
Nowhere. The Weevil is its inventor and retains the
monopoly. Outside his family, no Coleopteron mdulges
in these buccal eccentricities.

THE OLD WEE\n[LS 183

Observe, also, the smallness of the head, a bulb that
hardly swells be^'ond the base of the snout. What can
it have inside ? A very poor nervous equipment, the sign
of exceedingly limited instincts. Before seeing them at
work, we make small account of these microcephali, in
respect of intelligence ; w^e class them among the obtuse,
among creatures bereft of working capacity. These sur-
mises will not be very largely upset.

Though the Curculio be but little glorified by his talents,
this is no reason for scorning him. As we learn from the
lacustrian schists, he was in the van of the insects with the
armoured wing-cases ; he was long stages ahead of the
workers in incubation within the limits of possibility.
He speaks to us of primitive forms, sometimes so quaint ;
he is, in his own little world, what the bird with the
toothed jaws and the Saurian with the horned eyebrows
are in a higher world.

In ever-thriving legions, he has been handed down to us
without changmg his characteristics. He is to-day as he
was in the old times of the continents : the prints in the
chalky slates proclaim the fact aloud. Under any such
print, I would venture to write the name of the genus,
sometimes even of the species.

Permanence of instinct must go with permanence of
form. By consulting the modern Curculionid, therefore,
we shall obtain a very approximate chapter upon the
biology of his predecessors, at the time when Provence
had great lakes filled with crocodiles and palm-trees on
their banks wherewith to shade them. The history of
the present will teach us the history of the past.

CHAPTER XIV

LEAF-ROLLERS

The attainments of the Curculionid mother are, generally
speakmg, limited to insertmg her eggs at places where
the grubs will find suitable nourishment and occasionally
varying the diet with a botanical judgment of marvellous
certainty. She displays little or no industry. The
niceties of the feeding-bottle or the baby-linen do not
concern her. To this rough conception of the duties of
maternity, I know but one exception, the attribute of
certain Weevils, who, in order to endow their young with
an alimentary preserve, possess the art of rolling a leaf,
which serves as board and lodgmg in one.

Among these manufacturers of vegetable sausages, the
most skilful is the Poplar Weevil (Rhynchites Populi,
Lin.), who is modest in proportions, but resplendent m
attire. Her back is clad in gleaming gold and copper ;
her back is mdigo blue. Would you see her at work,
you need but visit the lower twigs of the common black
poplar, at the edge of the meadows, about the end of
May.

Whereas, up at the top, the fond spring breezes shake
the majestic green distaff and set the leaves quivering on
their flattened stalks, down below, in a zone of calmer air,
the tender shoots of the year remain quiescent. Here,
especially, far from the wind-tossed heights opposed to

184

LEAF-ROLLERS 185

labour, the Rhynchites works. And, as the workshop
is just at a man's height, nothing is more easy than to
observe the roller's actions.

Easy, yes, but distressing, under a blazing sun, if one
would follow the insect in all the detail of its methods and
the progress of its work. Moreover, this involves a great
deal of walking, which takes up time ; and, again, it is not
favourable to precise observations, which require an in-
definite amount of leisure and assiduous visits at all hours
of the day. It would, therefore, be greatly preferable to
study the animal comfortably at home ; but it is above
all things necessary that she should lend herself to this
plan.

The Rhynchites fulfils the condition excellently well.
She is a peaceable enthusiast and works on my table with
the same zest as in her poplar-tree. A few tender shoots,
planted in fresh sand, under a woven-wire cover, and
renewed as soon as they begin to fade, take the place of
the tree in my study. The Weevil, not in the least
intimidated, devotes herself to her industry even under
the lens of my magnifying-glass and supplies me with as
many scrolls as I could wish for.

Let us watch her at work. She picks the leaf which
she proposes to roll from the young shoots sprouting in
sheaves at the base of the trunk, but picks it not among
the lower leaves, which are already the correct green and
of a firm texture, nor yet among the terminal leaves,
which are in a fair way of growing. Above, they are too
young, not wide enough ; below, they are too old, too
tough, too hard to manage.

The leaf selected belongs to the intermediate rows. As
yet of a doubtful green, in which yellow predominates,
soft and glossy with varnish, it has, or has very nearly,

24

186 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

the final dimensions. Its denticulations swell into deli-
cate glandular pads, whence oozes a little of the viscous
matter that tars the buds at the moment when their
bracts become disjoined.

A word now on the equipment in respect of tools.
The legs are supplied with double claws shaped like the
meat -hooks of a steel-yard. The lower side of the tarsi
carries a thick tuft of white bristles. Thus shod, the
insect clambers very nimbly up the most slippery
vertical walls ; it can stand and run like a fly, with
its back downwards, on the ceiling of a glass beU.
This characteristic alone is enough to suggest the
subtle sense of equilibrium which the Weevil's work will
demand.

The curved and powerful beak or rostrum, without
bemg exaggerated in size, spreads at the tip into a spatula
ending in a pair of fine, shear-like mandibles. It makes
an excellent bodkin, which plays the first or leading part
in the whole work. The leaf, in fact, cannot be rolled
in its actual condition. It is a live blade which, owmg
to the afflux of the sap and the tonicity of the tissues,
would resume its flat formation in proportion as the
msect endeavoured to curve it. The dwarf insect has
not the strength to master a piece of these dimensions,
to roll it up so long as it retains the elasticity of life.
This is evident to our eyes ; it is evident also to the eyes
of the Weevil.

How is she to obtain the degree of inert suppleness
required in the circumstances ? We ourselves would
say :

" We must pluck the leaf, let it fall to the earth,
and manipulate it on the ground when it is rightly
withered."

LEAF-ROLLERS 187

The Curculionid is cleverer than we at this sort of
business and does not share our opinion. What she
says to herself is :

" On the ground, amid the obstruction of the grass,
my labours would be impracticable. I want elbow-room ;
I want the thing to hang in the air, where there are
no obstacles of any kind. And there is a more serious
consideration : my grub would refuse a rank, dried-up
sausage ; it insists on food that retains a certain fresh-
ness. The scroll which I intend for its consumption
must be not a dead leaf, but an impaired leaf, not
altogether deprived of the juices with which the tree
supplies it. I must wean my joint, but not kill it out-
right, so that the dying leaf may remain in its place for
the few days during which the extreme youth of the
worm lasts."

The mother, therefore, having made her selection, takes
up her stand on the stalk of the leaf and there patiently
drives in her rostrum, turning it with a persistency that
denotes the great importance of this thrust of the bodkin.
A little wound opens, a fairly deep wound, which soon
becomes a point of mortification.

It is done : the sap-conduits are cut and allow only a
scanty proportion to ooze through to the edge. At the
injured point, the leaf gives way under the weight ; it
bends vertically, withers a little and soon acquires the
requisite flexibility. The moment has come to work it.

That bodkin-thrust represents, although much less
scientifically, the prick of the hunting Hymenopteron's
sting. The latter wants for her offspring a prey now
dead, now paralyzed ; she knows, with the thorough-
ness of a consummate anatomist, at what points it
behoves her to insert the sting to obtain either sudden

188 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

death or merely a cessation of movement. The Rhyn-
chites requires for her young a leaf rendered flexible
ad Jioc, half-alive, paralyzed in a fashion, a leaf that can
easily be shaped into a scroll ; she is wonderfully familiar
with the little leaf-stalk, the petiole, in which the vessels
that dispense the foliaceous energy are collected in a tiny
bundle ; and she inserts her drill there, there only and
never any elsewhere. Thus, at one blow, without much
trouble, she effects the ruin of the aqueduct. Where
can the beaked insect have learnt her astute trade as a
drier-up of wells ?

The leaf of the poplar is an irregular rhombus, a spear-
head whose sides widen into pointed pinions. The
manufacture of the scroll begins with one of those two
lateral corners, the right or left indifferently. Notwith-
standing the hanging posture of the leaf, which makes
the upper or lower surface equally easy of access, the
insect never fails to take its position on the upper side.
It has its reasons, dictated by the laws of mechanics.
The upper surface of the piece, which is smoother and
more flexible, has to form the inside of the scroll ; the
lower surface, which has greater elasticity because of its
powerful veins, must occupy the outside. The statics of
the small-brained Weevil agree with those of the scientists.

See her at work. She stands on the rolling-line, with
three of her legs on the part already rolled and the three
opposite on the part stiU free. Solidly fixed, on both
sides, with her claws and tufts, she obtains a purchase
with the legs on the one side, while making her effort with
the legs on the other. The two halves of the machine
alternate like motors, so that, at one time, the formed
cylinder rolls over the free blade and, at another, the
free blade moves and is laid upon the scroll already made.

LEAF-ROLLERS 189

There is nothing regular, however, about these alterna-
tions, which depend upon circumstances known to the
animal alone. Perhaps they merely afford a means of
resting for a little while without stopping a work that
does not allow of interruption. In the same way, our
two hands mutually relieve each other by taking it in
turns to carry the burden.

It is impossible to form an exact image of the diffi-
culty overcome, without watching, for hours on end, the
obstinate straining of the legs, which tremble with ex-
haustion and threaten to spoil everything if one of
them let go at the wrong moment, or without seeing
with what prudence the roller never releases one claw
until the five others are firmly fixed. On the one side
are three points of support, on the other three points of
traction ; and the six are shifted, one by one, little by
little, without for a moment allowing their connected
mechanical system to flag. A single instant of forgetful-
ness or weariness would cause the rebellious piece to
unroll its scroll and escape from the manipulator's grasp.

The work is accomplished, moreover, in an uncomfort-
able position. The leaf hangs very much on the slant or
even vertically. Its surface is varnished, is smooth as
glass. But the worker is shod accordingly. With her
tufted soles, she scales the polished perpendicular ; with
her twelve meat-hooks, she tackles the slippery floor.
Yet this fine set of tools does not rid the operation of all
its difficulties. I find it no easy matter to follow the
progress of the rolling with the magnifying-glass. The
hands of a watch do not move more slowly. The
insect stands for a long time, at the same point, with
its claws firmly fixed ; it is waiting for the leaf to be
mastered and to cease resistance. Here, of course, there

190 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

is no gumming-process to catch hold and keep the fresh
surfaces glued together. The stability depends purely
upon the flexion acquired. And so it is not unusual for
the elasticity of the piece to overcome the efforts of the
worker and partly to unroll the more or less forward
work. Stubbornly, with the same impassive slowness,
the insect begins all over again, replaces the insubordinate
piece. No, the Weevil is not one to allow herself to be
upset by failure : she knows too well what patience and
time will do.

The Rhynchites usually works backwards. When her
line is finished, she is careful not to abandon the fold
which she has just made and return to the starting-
point to begin another. The part last folded is not yet
fastened sufficiently ; if left to itself too soon, it might
easily rebel and flatten out again. The insect, there-
fore, persists at this extreme point, which is more ex-
posed than the rest ; and then, without letting go,
makes her way backwards to the other end, still with
patient slowness. In this way, an added firmness is
imparted to the fold ; and the next fold is prepared.
At the end of the line there is a fresh prolonged halt,
followed by a fresh backward motion. Even so does the
husbandman's plough-share alternate its work on the
furrows.

Less frequently, when, no doubt, the leaf is found to
be so limp as to entail no risk, the insect abandons the
fold which it has just made, without going over it again
in the opposite direction, and quickly scrambles to the
starting-point to contrive a new one.

There we are at last. Coming and going from top to
bottom and from bottom to top, the insect, by dint of
stubborn dexterity, has rolled its leaf. It is now on the

LEAF-ROLLERS 191

extreme edge of the border, at the lateral corner opposite
to that whereat the work commenced. This is the key-
stone upon which the stability of the rest depends. The
Rhynchites redoubles her cares and patience. With
the end of her rostrum, expanded spatulawise, she
presses, at one point after the other, the edge to be
fixed, even as the tailor presses the recalcitrant edges
of a seam with his iron. For a long, a very long time,
without moving, she pushes and pushes, awaiting the
proper adhesion. Point by point, the whole of the
corner welt is fastidiously sealed.

How is adhesion obtained ? If only some thread or
other were brought into play, one would readily look upon
the rostrum as a sewing-machine planting its needle
perpendicularly into the stuff. But the comparison is
not allowable : there is no filament employed in the
work. The explanation of the adherence lies elsewhere.

The leaf is young, we said ; the fine pads of its denticula-
tions are glands whence ooze liquid beads of glue. These
drops of viscous matter are the gum, the sealing-wax.
With the pressure of its beak, the insect makes it gush
more plentifully from the glands. It then has only to
hold the signet in position and wait for the impress to
acquire consistency. Taken all round, it is our method
of sealing a letter. If it hold ever so little, the leaf,
losing its elasticity gradually as it withers, will soon
cease to fly back and will of itself retain the scroll-form
imposed upon it.

The work is done. It is a cigar of the diameter of a
thick straw and about an inch long. It hangs perpen-
dicularly from the end of the bruised and bent stalk. It
has taken the whole of a day to make. After a short
spell of rest, the mother tackles a second leaf and, working

192 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

by night, obtains another scroll. Two in twenty-four
hours are as much as the most diligent can achieve.

Now what is the roller's object ? Would she go to the
length of preparing preserves for her own use ? Obviously
not : no insect, where itself alone is concerned, devotes
such care and patience to the preparation of food. It
is only in view of the family that it hoards so indus-
triously. The Rh^mchites' cigar forms the future dowry.

Let us unroll it. Here, between the layers of the scroll,
is an egg ; often there are two, three, or even four. They
are oval, pale-yellow and like fine drops of amber. Their
adhesion to the leaf is very slight ; the least jerk loosens
them. They are distributed without order, pushed more
or less deeply in the thickness of the cigar and always
isolated, singly. We find them in the centre of the scroll,
almost at the corner where the roUmg begins ; we come
upon them between the different layers and even near
the edge which is sealed in glue with the signet of the
rostrum.

Without interrupting her work on the scroll, without
relaxmg the tension of her claws, the mother has laid
them between the lips of the fold in formation, as she felt
them coming, one by one, duly matured, at the end of
her oviduct. She procreates in the midst of her toil in
the factory, between the wheels of the machine that would
be thrown out of gear if she snatched a moment's rest.
Manufacture and laying go hand-in-hand. Short-lived,
with but two or three weeks before her and an expensive
family to settle, the Rhynchites would fear to waste her
time in churching.

This is not all : on the same leaf, not far from the scroll
that is being laboriously rolled, we almost always find the
male. What is he doing there, the idler ? Is he watching

LEAF-ROLLERS 193

the work as a mere inquisitive onlooker, who happened to
be passing and stopped to see the machinery go round ?
Is he interested in the business ? Does he ever feel
inclined to lend a helping hand, in case of need ?

One would say so. From time to time, I see him take
his stand behind the manufacturer, in the groove of the
fold, hang on to the cylinder and join for a little in the
work. But this is done without zeal and awkwardly. Half
a turn of the wheel, or hardly ; and that's enough for him.
After all, it is not his business. He moves away, to the
other end of the leaf ; he waits, he looks on.

Let us give him credit for this attempt : paternal
assistance in the settling of the family is very rare among
insects ; let us congratulate him on the help he gives, but
not beyond measure : his was an interested aid. It is
to him a means of declaruig his flame and urging his
merits.

And, in fact, after several refusals, notwithstanding the
advances made by a brief collaboration at the scroll, the
impatient one is accepted. Things happen in the work-
yard. For ten minutes, the rolling is suspended ; but
the workwoman's legs, stubbornly contracted, are careful
not to let go : were their effort to cease, the scroll would
unroll at once. There must be no interruption of work
for this brief diversion, the animal's only pleasure.

The stopping of the machine, which is always held tight
so as to keep the recalcitrant roll in subjection, does not
last long. The male withdraws to a slight distance,
without quitting the leaf, and the task is resumed. Sooner
or later, before the seals are put upon the work, a new
visit is paid by the dawdler, who, under pretence of
assisting, plants his claws for a moment into the rolling
piece, plucks up courage and renews his exploits with the

25

194 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

same vigour as though nothmg had yet happened. And
this is repeated three or four times during the making of a
single cigar, so much so that one asks one's self whether
the depositing of each germ does not demand the direct
cooperation of the insatiable suitor.

Accordmg to entomological rules, once the fun is over,
everything should relapse into calmness and each mother
should to work at those cigars without further disturbance.
In this case, the general law relents. I have never seen a
scroll shaped without a male lurking in the neighbour-
hood ; and, when I have had the patience to wait, I have
always witnessed manifold pairings. These weddings
repeated for each germ puzzle me. Where, relymg on
the books, I expected uniformity, I find uncertainty.

This is not an isolated case. I will mention a second
and one that is even more striking. It is supplied by the
Capricorn (Cerambyx Heros). I bring up a few couples
in the volery, with sliced pears for food and oak billets
wherein to lay the eggs. Pairing-time lasts during nearly
the whole of July. For four weeks, the great horned one
does nothing but mount his companion, who, gripped
by her rider, wanders at will and, with the tip of her
oviduct, selects the fissures in the bark best-suited to
receive the eggs.

At long intervals, the Cerambyx alights and goes to
refresh himself with a piece of pear. Then, suddenly, he
stamps his feet as though he had gone mad ; he returns
with a frantic rush, clambers into the saddle and resumes
his position, of which he makes free use at all hours of
the night and day.

At the moment when an egg is being deposited, he
keeps quiet : with his hairy tongue, he polishes the back
of the egg-layer, which is a Capricorn's way of caressing ;

LEAF-ROLLERS 195

but, the instant after, he renews his attempts, which are
usually crowned with success. There is no end to it !

The pairing continues in this manner for a month : it
does not cease until the ovaries are exhausted. Then,
mutually worn out, having nothing more to do on the
trunk of the oak, husband and wife separate, languish for
a few days and die.

What conclusion are we to draw from this extraordinary
persistency in the Cerambyx, the Rhynchites and many
others ? Simply this : our truths are but provisional ;
assailed by the truths of to-morrow, they become en-
tangled with so many contradictory facts that the last
word of knowledge is doubt.

In the spring, while the leaves of the poplar are being
worked into scrolls, another Rhynchites, she also gor-
geously attired, makes cigars of the leaves of the vine.
She is a little stouter, of a metallic gold-green turning
to blue. Were she but larger, the splendid Vine Weevil
would occupy a very respectable place among the gems of
entomology.

To attract our eyes, she has something better than
the brilliancy of her appearance : she has her industry,
which makes her hated by the vine-grower, so jealous of
his property. The peasant knows her ; he even speaks of
her by a special name, an honour rarely bestowed in the
world of the smaller animals.

The rural vocabulary is rich where plants, but very
poor where insects are concerned. A couple of dozen
words, inextricably confused owing to their general
character, represent the whole of entomological nomen-
clature in the Provengal idiom, which becomes so expres-
sive and so fertile the moment it has to do with any
sort of vegetation, sometimes even with a poor blade of

196 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

grass which one would believe known to the botanist

alone.

The man of the soil is interested first and foremost in
the plant, the great foster-mother ; the rest leaves him
indifferent. Magnificent adornment, curious habits,
marvels of instinct : all these say nothing to him. But
to touch his vme, to eat grass that doesn't belong to one :
what a heinous crime ! Quick, give the malefactor a
nickname, to serve as a penal collar !

This time, the Provengal peasant has gone out of his
way to invent a special t\ ord : he calls the cigar -roller
the Becaru. Here the scientific expression and the rural
expression agree fully. Bhyncliiies and Becaru are exact
equivalents : each refers to the insect's long beak.

The Vine Weevil adopts the same method in her work
as her cousin of the poplar. The leaf is first pricked with
the rostrum at a spot in the stalk, which provokes a
stoppage of the sap and flexibility in the withered blade.
The rolling begins at the comer of one of the lower lobes,
with the smooth, green upper surface within and the
cottony strongly-veined lower surface without.

But the great width of the leaf and its deep indentations
hardly ever allow of regular work from one end to the
other. Abrupt folds occur instead and repeatedly alter
the direction of the rolling, leaving now the green and
now the cottony surface on the outside, without any
appreciable order or arrangement, as though by chance.
The poplar-leaf, with its simple form and its moderate
size, gives a neat scroll ; the vine-leaf, with its cumber-
some girth and its complicated outline, produces a shape-
less cigar, an untidy parcel.

THE HALICTI

CHAPTER XV

THE HALICTI

Do you know the Halicti ? Perhaps not. There is no
great harm done : it is quite possible to enjoy the few
pleasures of life without knowing the Halicti. Neverthe-
less, when questioned with persistence, those humble
creatures with no history can tell us some very singular
things ; and their acquaintance is not to be disdained
if we desire to enlarge our ideas a little upon the be-
wildering rabble of this world. Smce we have nothing
better to do, let us look into these Halicti. They are
worth the trouble.

How shall we recognize them ? They are manufac-
turers of honey, generally slimmer and slenderer than the
Bee of our hives. They constitute a numerous group
that varies greatly in size and colouring. Some there
are that exceed the dimensions of the Common Wasp ;
others might be compared with the Domestic Fly, or are
even smaller. In the midst of this variety, which forms
the despair of the novice, one characteristic remains
invariable. Every Halictus carries the plainly -legible
certificate of her guild.

Look at the last ring, at the tip of the belly, on the
dorsal surface. If your capture be an Halictus, there will
be here a smooth and shiny line, a narrow groove along
which the sting slides up and down when the insect is

199

200 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

on the defensive. This slide for the unsheathed weapon
denotes some member of the Halictus tribe, without dis-
tinction of size or colour. No elsewhere, in the sting-
bearing order, is this original sort of groove in use. It
is the distinctive mark, the blazon of the family.

The works begm in April, discreetly and betrayed only
by tiny mounds of fresh earth. There is no animation
in the work-yards. The labourers show themselves very
seldom, so busy are they at the bottom of their pits. At
moments, here and there, the summit of a mole-hill moves
and tumbles down the slopes of the cone : it is a worker
commg up with her armful of rubbish and shooting it
outside, without showing herself in the open. Nothmg
more for the moment.

May arrives, gay with flowers and sunshine. The
navvies of April have turned themselves into harvesters.
At every moment, I see them settling, all befioured
with yellow, atop of the mole-hills turned into craters.
The largest is Halictus Zebrus (Walck), whom I often
see building her nest in the walks of my garden.
Let us watch her closely. When provisioning-time
begins, a parasite arrives, coming I know not whence.
She will make us witness an unbridled act of brigandage.

In May, I visit my most populous colony daily, at ten
o'clock in the morning, when the victualling-operations
are in full swing. Seated on a low chair m the sun, with
my back bent and my arms upon my knees, I watch,
without moving, until dinner-time. What attracts me
is a parasite, a trumpery Gnat, the daring tyrant of
the Halictus.

Has the jade a name ? I like to thmk so, without,
however, caring to waste my time in enquiries that can
have little interest for the reader. Facts clearly stated

THE HALICTI 201

are preferable to the dry minutiae of nomenclature. Let
me content myself with giving a brief description of the
culprit. She is a Dipteron five millimetres long.^ Eyes,
dark red ; face, white. Corselet, ashy grey, with five
rows of fine black dots, which are the roots of stiff bristles
pointing backwards. Greyish belly, pale below. Black
legs.

She abounds in the colony under observation. Crouch-
ing in the sun, near a burrow, she waits. As soon as the
Halictus arrives from the harvest, her legs yellow with
pollen, she darts forth and pursues her, keeping behind
her in all the turns of her wavering flight. At last, the
Hymenoptcron suddenly dives indoors. No less sud-
denly, the other settles on the mole-hill, quite close to the
entrance. Motionless, with her head turned towards the
front-door, she waits for the Bee to finish her business.
The latter reappears at last and. for a few seconds, stands
on the threshold of her dwellmg, with her head and thorax
outside the hole. The Gnat, on her side, does not stir.

Often, they are face to face, separated by a space no
wider than a finger's breadth. Neither of them shows
the least excitement. The Halictus — judging, at least,
by her tranquillity — takes no notice of the parasite
lying in wait for her ; the parasite, on the other hand,
displays no fear of being punished for her audacity.
She remams imperturbable, she, the dwarf, in the presence
of the colossus who could crush her with a blow of one
of her legs.

In vain I peer to discover some sign of apprehension on
either side : nothing in the Halictus points to a knowledge
of the danger run by her family ; nor does anything in
the Dipteron betray the dread of a severe correctim.

^ 2 inch. — Translator's Note.

26

202 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Plunderer and plundered stare at each other for a moment ;
and that is all.

If she liked, the genial giantess could rip up with
her claw the little bandit that ruins her home ; she
could crunch her with her mandibles, pink her with her
stiletto. She does nothing of the sort, but leaves the
brigand in peace, to sit quite close, motionless, with her
red eyes fixed on the threshold of the house. Why this
fatuous clemency ?

The Bee departs. Forthwith, the Gnat walks in, with
no more ceremony than if she were entering her own place.
She now chooses among the victualled cells at her ease,
for they are all open ; she leisurely settles her eggs.
No one will disturb her until the Bee's return. To dust
one's legs with pollen, to distend one's crop with syrup
is a work that takes long a-doing ; and the intruder,
therefore, has time to spare wherein to commit her felony.
Moreover, her chronometer is well-regulated and gives
the exact measure of the length of absence. When
the Halictus comes back from the fields, the Gnat has
decamped. In some favourable spot, not far from the
burrow, she awaits the opportunity for a fresh misdeed.

What would happen if a parasite were surprised in
her work by the Bee ? Nothing serious. I have seen
them, greatly daring, follow the Halictus right into the
cave and remain there for some time while the mixture
of pollen and honey is being prepared. Unable to make
use of the paste so long as the harvester is kneading it,
they go back to the open air and wait on the threshold
for the Bee to come out. They return to the sunlight,
unfiustered, with calm steps : a clear proof that they have
suffered no unpleasantness in the depths where the
Halictus works.

THE HALICTI 203

A tap on the Gnat's neck if she become too enterprising
in the neighbourhood of the cake : that is all that the lady
of the house seems to allow herself, to drive away the
intruder. There is no serious afifray between the robber
and the robbed. This is apparent from the bold and
undamaged aspect of the dwarf who returns from visit-
ing the giantess engaged down in the burrow.

The Bee, when she comes home, whether laden with
provisions or not, hesitates for a while ; in a series of rapid
zigzags, she moves backwards and forwards, to and fro,
at a short distance from the ground. This intricate
flight at first suggests the idea that the Hymenopteron is
trying to lead her persecutress astray by means of an
inextricable net- work of marches and counter-marches.
That would certainly be a prudent move on her part ; but
so much wisdom appears to be denied her.

Her perturbation does not concern the enemy, but
rather the difficulty of finding her dwelling, amid the con-
fusion of the mole-hills encroaching one upon the other
and the disorder of the lanes of the hamlet, which,
owing to landslips of fresh rubbish, alter in appearance
from one day to the next. Her hesitation is manifest,
for she often blunders and alights at the entrance to a
burrow that is not hers. The mistake is at once perceived
from the petty details of the doorway.

The investigation is resumed with the same flight in
swing-like curves, intermingled with sudden excursions
to a distance. At last, the burrow is recognized. The
Halictus dives into it with a rush ; but, however prompt
her disappearance underground, the Gnat is there, perched
on the threshold, with her eyes turned to the entrance,
waiting for the Bee to come out, so that she may visit
the honey-jars in her turn.

204 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

When the house-owner ascends, the other draws back
a little, just enough to leave a free passage and no more.
Whj^ should she put herself out ? The meeting is so peaceful
that, short of further information, one would not suspect
the presence face to face of a destroyer and destroyed.
Far from being intimidated by the sudden arrival of the
Halictus, the Gnat pays hardly any attention ; and, in
the same way, the Halictus takes no notice of her per-
secutress, unless the bandit pursue her and worry her
on the wing. Then, with a sudden bend, the Hymenop-
teron makes off.

The parasite of the Halictus is in a difficult position.
The homing Bee has her booty of honey in her crop and her
harvest of flour on the brushes of her legs : the first is
inaccessible to the thief ; the second is in the form of
powder and devoid of stable support. And even then
it is quite insufficient. To collect the wherewithal to
knead the round loaf, the journeys have to be repeated.
When the necessary amount is obtained, the Halictus will
pound it with the tip of her mandibles and shape it with
her feet into a globule. The Dipteron's egg, were it
present among the materials, would certainly be in danger
during this manipulation.

The alien egg, therefore, must be laid on the made
bread ; and, as the preparation takes place underground,
the parasite is under the forced necessity of going down
to the Halictus. With inconceivable daring, she does
go down, even when the Bee is there. Whether through
cowardice or foolish indulgence, the dispossessed insect
lets the other have its way.

The object of the Gnat, with her tenacious lying-in-wait
and her reckless burglaries, is not to feed herself at the
harvester's expense : she could find the wherewithal to live

THE HALICTI 205

on in the flowers, with much less trouble than her thieving
trade involves. The most, I think, that she can allow
herself to do in the Halictus' cellars is demurely to taste
the victuals, in order to ascertain their quality. Her
great, her sole business is to settle her family. The stolen
goods are not for herself, but for her sous.

Let us dig up the pollen-loaves. We shall find them
most often crumbled with no regard to economy, simply
abandoned to waste. We shall see two or three maggots,
with pointed mouths, moving in the yellow flour scattered
over the floor of the cell. These are the Dipteron's
progeny. With them we sometimes find the lawful
owner, the worm of the Halictus, but stunted and ema-
ciated with fasting. His gluttonous companions, without
otherwise molesting him. deprive him of the best of
everything. The wretched starveling dwindles, shrivels
and disappears with little delay. His corpse, a mere
atom, blended with the remaining provisions, supplies the
maggots with one mouthful the more.

And what does the mother Halictus do in this disaster ?
She is free to visit her grubs at any moment ; she has but
to put her head into the passage of the house : she cannot
fail to be apprised of their distress. The squandered loaf,
the disorder of swarming vermin are events easily recog-
nized. Why does she not take the intruders by the skin
of the belly ? To crush them with a bite of her mandibles,
to fling them out of doors were the business of a second.
And the foolish creature never thinks of it, leaves the
famishers in peace !

She does worse. When the time of the nymphosis
comes, the Halictus mother goes to the cells rifled by the
parasite and closes them with an earthen plug as carefully
as she does the rest. This final barricade, an excellent

206 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

precaution when the box is occupied by an Halictus in
course of metamorphosis, becomes a screammg absurdity
when the Dipteron has passed that way. Instinct does
not hesitate in the face of this incongruity : it seals up
emptiness. I say, emptiness, because the crafty maggot
hastens to decamp the instant that the victuals are
consumed, as though it foresaw an insuperable obstacle
for the coming Fly : it quits the cell before the Hymenop-
teron closes it.

To rascally guile the parasite adds prudence. All,
until there is none of them left, abandon the clay homes
which would be their undoing, once the entrance was
plugged up. The earthy retreat, so grateful to the tender
skin, thanks to its polished coatmg, so free from humidity,
thanks to its waterproof glaze, ought, one would think,
to make an excellent waiting-place. The maggots will
have none of it. Lest they should find themselves walled
in when they become frail Gnats, they go away and dis-
perse in the neighbourhood of the ascending pit.

My digging operations, in fact, always reveal the pupae
outside the cells, never inside. I find them enshrined, one
by one, in the body of the clayey earth, in a narrow niche
which the emigrant worm has contrived to make for
itself. Next spring, when the hour comes for leaving, the
adult insect has but to creep through the rubbish, which is
easy work.

Another and no less imperative reason compels this
change of abode on the parasite's part. In July, a second
generation of the Halictus is procreated. The Dipteron,
reduced, on her side, to a single brood, remains in the
pupa state and awaits the spring of the following year
before effecting her transformation. The honey-gatherer
resumes her work in the natal hamlet ; she avails herself

THE HALTCTI 207

of the pits and cells constructed in the spring, saving no
little time thereby. The whole elaborate structure has
remained in good condition. It needs but a few repairs
to make the old house habitable.

Now what would happen if the Bee, so intent upon
cleanliness, were to find a pupa in the cell which she is
sweeping ? She would treat the cumbersome object as
she would a piece of old plaster. It would be no more
to her than any other refuse, a bit of gravel, which, seized
with the mandibles, crushed perhaps, would be sent to
join the rubbish-heap outside. Once removed from the
soil and exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, the
pupa would inevitably perish.

I admire this lucid foresight of the maggot, which
foregoes the comfort of the moment for the security of the
future. Two dangers threaten it : to be immured in a
casket whence the Fly can never issue ; or else to die out
of doors, from the harsh effects of the air, when the Bee
sweeps out the restored cells. To avoid this two-fold
peril, it absconds before the door is closed, before the
Halictus sets her house in order in July.

Let us now see what comes of the parasite's intrusion.
In the course of June, when peace is established in the
Halictus' home, I dig up my largest colony, comprising
some fifty burrows, thoroughly. Not an atom of the
underground distress shall escape my eye. There are
four of us engaged in sifting the excavated earth through
our fingers. What one has examined another takes up
and examines in his turn ; and then another and another
yet. The returns are heart-rending. We do not succeed
in finding one single nymph of the Hahctus. The popu-
lous city has perished in its entirety ; and its place has
been taken by the Dipteron. The latter superabounds

208 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

in the form of pupaj, which I collect in order to trace their
evolution.

The year runs its course ; and the little russet
barrels, into which the original maggots have hardened
and contracted, remain stationary. They are seeds en-
dowed with latent life. The heats of July do not rouse
them from their torpor. In that month, the period of
the second generation of the Halictus, there is a sort of
truce of God : the parasite rests and the Bee works in
peace. If hostilities were to be resumed straight away,
as murderous in summer as they were in spring, the
progeny of the Halictus, over-endangered, might possibly
disappear. The lull of the second brood puts things in
order once more.

In April, when Halictus Zebrus, in search of a good
place for her burrows, wanders with a wavering flight
through the garden-walks, the parasite, on its side,
hastens to hatch. Oh, the precise, the terrible agreement
betw^een those two calendars, the calendar of the perse-
cutor and the persecuted ! At the very moment when
the Bee comes out, here is the Gnat : her work of extermi-
nation by famine is ready to begin all over again.

Were this an isolated case, one's thoughts would not
dwell upon it : an Halictus more or less in the world
makes little difference in the general balance. But, alas,
brigandage in all its forms is the rule in the eternal con-
fhct of Uving things ! From the lowest to the liighest,
every producer is imposed upon by the unproductive.
Man himself, whose exceptional rank ought to raise him
above such pettiness, excels in this ferocious eagerness.
He says to himself that business means getting hold of
the money of other people, even as the Gnat says to herself
that business means getting hold of the Halictus' honey.

THE HALICTI 209

And, to play the brigand to better purpose, he invents war,
the art of killing wholesale and of doing with glory that
which, when done on a smaller scale, leads to the gallows.

Shall we never behold the reahzation of that sublime
dream which is sung on Sundays in the smallest village
church : Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra jmx liominihus
bonce voluntatis / If war affected humanity alone, perhaps
the future would have peace in store for us, seeing that
generous minds are working for it with might and main ;
but the scourge also rages in the brute, which, in its
obstinate way, will never listen to reason. Once the evil
is laid down as a general condition, it perhaps becomes
incurable. Life in the future, there is every cause to
fear, will be what it is to-day, a perpetual massacre.

Whereupon, by a desperate effort of the imagination,
one pictures to one's self a giant capable of juggling
with the planets. He is irresistible strength ; he is also
law and justice. He knows of our battles, our butcheries,
our farm-burnings, our towTi-burnings, our brutal
triumphs ; he knows our explosives, our shells, our
torpedo-boats, our iron-clad s and all our cunning engines
of destruction ; he knows as well the appalling extent of
the appetites among all creatures, downn to the very
lowest. Well, if that just, that mighty one held the
earth under his thumb, would he hesitate whether he
ought to crush it ?

He would not hesitate. He would let things take their
course. He would say to himseff :

" The old belief is right ; the earth is a rotten nut,
gnawed by the vermin of evil. It is a barbarous essay, a
painful stage towards a kindlier destiny. Let it be :
order and justice are waiting at the end."

27

CHAPTER XVI

THE HALICTI : THE PORTRESS

The home dug by the sohtary Bee in early spring remains,
when summer comes, the joint inheritance of the members
of the family. There were ten cells, or thereabouts,
underground. Now from these cells there have issued
none but females. This is the rule among the three
species of Halicti. They have two generations in each
year. That of the spring consists of females only ; that
of the summer comprises both males and females, in
almost equal numbers.

The household, therefore, if not reduced by accidents,
especially by the famine-producing Gnat, would consist of
half-a-score of sisters, nothing but sisters, all equally
industrious and all capable of procreating without a
nuptial partner. On the other hand, the maternal
dwelling is no hovel ; far from it : the entrance -gallery,
the principal room of the house, will serve very well, after
a few odds and ends of refuse have been swept away.
This will bo so much gained in time, ever precious to
the Bee. The cells at the bottom, the clay cabins, are
also nearly intact. To make use of them, it will be
enough to freshen up the stucco with the polisher of the
tongue.

Well, which of the survivors, all equally entitled to the
succession, will inherit the house ? There are six of

210

THE HALICTI 211

them, seven, or more, according to the chances of
mortaUty. To whose share will the maternal dwelhng
fall?

There is no quarrel between the interested parties.
The mansion is recognized as common property without
dispute. The sister Bees come and go peacefully through
the same door, attend to their business, pass and let the
others pass. Down at the bottom of the pit, each has her
little demesne, her group of cells dug at the cost of fresh
toil, when the old ones, now insufficient in number, are
occupied. In these recesses, the rights of individual pro-
perty prevail : each mother works privately, jealous of her
belongings and her isolation. Every elsewhere, traffic is
free to all.

The exits and entrances in the working fortress provide
a spectacle of the highest interest. A harvester arrives
from the fields, the brushes of her legs dusted with pollen.
If the door be open, the Bee at once dives undergromid.
To tarry on the threshold would mean waste of time ;
and the business is urgent. Sometimes, several appear
upon the scene almost at the same moment. The passage
is too narrow for two, especially when they have to avoid
any inopportune contact that would make the floury
burden fall to the floor. The nearest to the opening enters
quickly. The others, drawn up on the threshold in the
order of their arrival, respectful of one another's rights,
await their turn. As soon as the first disappears, the
second follows after her and is herself swiftly followed by
the third and then the others, one by one.

Sometimes, again, there is a meeting between a Bee
about to come out and a Bee about to go in. Then the
latter draws back a little and makes way for the former.
The pohteness is reciprocal. I see some who, when on

212 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

the point of emerging from the pit, go down again
and leave the passage free for the one who has just
arrived. Thanks to this mutual spirit of accommo-
dation, the traffic of the household proceeds without
impediment.

Let us keep our eyes open. There is something
better than the well-preserved order of the entrances.
When an Halictus appears, returning from her round
of the flowers, we see a sort of trap-door, which closed
the house, suddenly fall and give a free passage. As
soon as the new arrival has entered, the trap rises back
into its place, almost level with the ground, and closes
the door anew. The same thing happens when the Bees
go out. At a request from within, the trap descends, the
door opens and the Bee flies away. The outlet is closed
forthwith.

What can this shutter be which, descending or ascending
in the cylinder of the pit, after the fashion of a piston,
opens and closes the house at each departure and at each
arrival ? It is an Halictus, who has become the portress
of the estabhshment. With her large head, she makes
an impassable barrier at the top of the entrance-hail.
If any one belonging to the house wants to go in or out,
she " pulls the cord," that is to say, she withdraws to a
spot where the gallery widens and leaves room for two.
The other passes. She then at once returns to the orifice
and blocks it with the top of her head. Motionless, ever
on the look-out, she does not leave her post save to drive
away importunate visitors.

Let us profit by her brief appearances outside. We
recognize in her an Halictus similar to the others, who
are now busy harvesting ; but the top of her head is bald
and her dress is dingy and threadbare. The handsome

THE HALICTI 213

striped belts, alternately brown and ruddy-brown, have
almost vanished from her half-stripped back. Her old,
tattered clothes, well-worn with work, explain the
matter clearly.

The Bee who mounts guard and performs the office of
a portress at the entrance to the burrow is older than
the others. She is the foundress of the estabhshment, the
mother of the actual workers, the grandmother of tlie
present grubs. In the spring-time of her hfe, three
months ago, she wore herself out in solitary works.
Now that her ovaries are dried up, she takes a well-earned
rest. No, rest is hardly the word. She still works, she
assists the household to the best of her power. Incapable
of being a mother for the second time, she becomes a
portress, opens the door to the members of her family
and makes strangers keep their distance.

The suspicious kid, looking through the chink, said to
the wolf :

" Show me a white foot, or I shan't open the door."

No less suspicious, the grandmother says to each
comer :

" Show me the yellow foot of an Hahctus, or you won't
be let in."

None is admitted to the dwelUng unless she be recog-
nized as a member of the family.

See for yourself. Near the burrow passes an Ant, an
unscrupulous adventuress, who would not be sorry to
know the meaning of the honeyed fragrance that rises
from the bottom of the cellar.

" Be off, or mind yourself !" says the portress, with a
movement of her neck.

As a rule, the threat suffices. The Ant decamps.
Should she insist, the watcher leaves her sentry-box,

214 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

flings herself upon the saucy jade, buffets her and drives
her away. The moment the punishment has been ad-
ministered, she returns on guard and resumes her
sentry-go.

Next comes the turn of a Leaf-cutter (Megachile Albo-
cincta, Perez), who, unskilled in the art of burrowing,
utilizes, after the manner of her kind, the old galleries
dug by others. Those of Hahctus Zebrus suit her very
well, when the terrible Gnat of spring has left them
vacant for lack of heirs. Seeking for a home wherein to
stack her robinia-leaf honey -pots, she often makes a flying
inspection of my colonies of Hahcti. A burrow seems to
take her fancy ; but, before she sets foot on earth, her
buzzing is noticed by the watchwoman, who suddenly
darts out and makes a few gestures on the threshold of
her door. That is all. The Leaf -cutter has understood.
She removes herself.

Sometimes, the Megachile has time to alight and insert
her head into the mouth of the pit. In a moment, the
portress is there, comes a little higher and bars the way.
Follows a not very serious contest. The stranger quickly
recognizes the rights of the first occupant and, without
insisting, goes to seek an abode elsewhere.

A consummate marauder (CseHoxys Caudata, Spinola), a
parasite of the Megachile, receives a sound drubbing under
my eyes. She thought, the scatter-brain, that she was
entering the Leaf-cutter's establishment ! She soon finds
out her error ; she meets the portress Halictus, who ad-
ministers a severe correction. She makes off at full speed.
And so with the others who, by mistake or ambition, seek
to enter the burrow.

The same intolerance exists among grandmothers.
About the middle of July, when the animation of the

THE HALICTI 215

colony is at its height, two categories of Halicti are easily
distinguishable : the young mothers and the old. The
former, much more numerous, brisk of movement and
smartly arrayed, come and go unceasingly from the
burrows to the fields and from the fields to the burrows.
The latter, faded and dispirited, wander idly from hole to
hole. They look as though they had lost their way and
were incapable of finding their homes. Who are these
vagabonds ? I see afflicted ones bereft of a family
through the act of the odious spring Gnat. Many
burrows have gone under altogether. At the awakening
of summer, the mother found herself alone. She left her
empty house and set off in search of a dwelHng where
there were cradles to defend, a guard to mount. But
those fortunate nests already have their overseer, the
foundress, who, jealous of her rights, gives her unemployed
neighbour a cold reception. One sentry is enough ; two
would simply block the narrow guard-room.

I am privileged at times to witness a fight between two
grandmothers. When the tramp in quest of employment
appears outside the door, the lawful occupant does not
move from her post, does not withdraw into the passage,
as she would before an HaUctus returning from the fields.
Far from making way, she threatens with her feet and
mandibles. The other hits back, tries to enter notwith-
standing. Cuffs are exchanged. The fray ends by the
defeat of the stranger, who goes off to pick a quarrel
elsewhere.

These httle scenes afford us a gfimpse of certain details
of the highest interest in the manners of Hahctus Zebrus,
The mother who builds her nest in the spring no longer
leaves her home, once her works are finished. Shut up
at the bottom of the burrow, busied with the minute cares

216 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

of housekeeping, or else drowsing, she waits for her
daughters to come out. When, in the summer heats, the
life of the colony recommences, having naught to do
outside as a harvester, she stands sentry at the entrance
to the hall, so as to let none in save the workers of the
home, her own daughters. She wards off the ill-inten-
tioned. None can enter without the door-keeper's con-
sent.

There is nothing to tell us that the watcher at moments
deserts her post. I never see her leave her house to go
and refresh herself at the flowers. Her age and her
sedentary occupation, which imphes no great fatigue,
relieve her perhaps of the need of nourishment. Perhaps,
also, the young ones returning from pillage disgorge a
drop of the contents of their crops for her benefit,
from time to time. Fed or not, the old one no longer
goes out.

But what she does need is the joys of an active family.
Many are deprived of these. The Dipteron's burglary
has destroyed the household. The sorely-tried Bees then
abandon the deserted burrow. It is these who, ragged
and careworn, wander through the hamlet. They move
in short flights ; more often, they remain motionless. It
is they who, embittered in their natures, offer violence to
their acquaintances and seek to dislodge them. They
grow rarer and more languid from day to day ; then they
disappear for good. What has become of them ? The
little grey lizard had his eye on them : they are easy
mouthfuls.

Those settled in their own demesne, those who guard
the honey-factory wherein their daughters, the heiresses
of the maternal establishment, work display a wonderful
vigilance. The more I visit them, the more I admire

THE HALICTI 217

them. In the cool hours of the early morning, when the
harvesters, not finding the pollen-flour sufficiently ripened
by the sun, remain indoors, I see the portresses at
their posts, at the top of the gallery. Here, motionless,
their heads flush with the earth, they bar the door to all
invaders. If I look at them too closely, they retreat a
little way and, in the shadow, await the indiscreet
observer's departure.

I return when the harvest is in full swing, between eight
o'clock and twelve. There is now, as the Halicti go in or
out, a succession of prompt descents to open the door
and ascents to close it. The portress is in the busy
exercise of her functions.

In the afternoon, the heat is too great, the workers do
not go to the fields. Retiring to the bottom of the house,
they varnish the new cells, they bake the round \o»i that
is to receive the egg. The grandmother is still upstairs,
stopping the door with her bald head. For her, there is
no nap during the stifling hours : the general safety
will not allow of it.

I come back again at night-fall, or even later. By the
hght of a lantern, I rebehold the overseer, as zealous and
assiduous as in the day-time. The others are resting, but
not she, for fear, apparently, of nocturnal dangers known
to herself alone. Does she nevertheless end by descending
to the quiet of the floor below ? It seems probable, so
essential must rest be, after the fatigue of such a watch !

It is evident that, guarded in this manner, the burrow is
exempt from calamities similar to those which, too often,
dispeople it in May. Let the Gnat come now, if she dare,
to steal the Halictus' loaves ! Her audacity, her stubborn
lurking ways will not conceal her from the watchful one,
who will put her to flight with a threatening gesture or, if

28

218 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

she persist, crush her with her nippers. She will not como ;
and wo know the reason : until spring returns, she is
underground in the pupa state.

But, in her absence, there is no lack, among the Muscid
rabble, of further sweaters of other insects' labour. There
are parasites for every sort of business, for every sort of
theft. And j-et my daily visits do not catch one of these
in the neighbourhood of the July burrows. How well the
rascals know their trade ! How well-aware are they of
the guard who keeps watch at the Halictus' door ! There
is no foul deed possible nowadays ; and the result is that
no jMuscid puts in an appearance and the tribulations of
last spring are not repeated.

The grandmother who, dispensed by age from maternal
worries, mounts guard at the entrance of the home
and watches over the safety of the family tells us of
sudden births in the genesis of the instincts ; she shows
us an immediate capacity which nothing, either in her
own past conduct or in the actions of her daughters,
could have led us to suspect. Timorous in her prime, in
the month of May, when she lived alone in the burrow of
her making, she has become gifted, in her decline, with a
superb contempt of danger and dares, in her impotence,
what she never dared do in her strength.

Formerly, when her tyrant, the Gnat, entered her
home in her presence, or, more often, stood at the entrance,
face to face with herself, the silly Bee did not stir, did
not even threaten the red-eyed bandit, the dwarf whose
doom she could so easily have sealed. Was it terror on
her part ? No, for she attended to her duties with her
usual punctiliousness ; no, for the strong do not allow
themselves to be thus petrified by the weak. It was
ignorance of the danger, it was sheer foolishness.

THE HALICTI 219

And behold, to-day, the ignoramus of three months
ago, without serving any apprenticeship, knows the peril,
knows it well. Every stranger that appears is kept at a
distance, without distinction of size or race. If the
threatening gesture be not enough, the keeper sallies forth
and flings herself upon the persistent one. Poltroonery
has developed into courage.

How has this change been brought about ? I should
like to picture the Halictus gaining wisdom from the mis-
fortunes of spring and capable thenceforth of looking out
for danger ; I would gladly credit her with having learnt
in the stern school of experience the advantages of a
guard. I must give up the idea. If, by dint of gradual
little acts of progress, the Bee has gradually achieved
the glorious invention of a portress, how comes it that the
fear of thieves is intermittent ? It is true that, alone, in
May, she cannot stand permanently at her door : the
business of the house takes precedence of everything.
But she ought, at least, as soon as her offspring are perse-
cuted, to know the parasite and give chase when, at every
moment, she finds her almost under her feet and oven
in her house. Yet she pays no attention to her.

The harsh trials of the ancestors, therefore, have be-
queathed naught to her of a nature to alter her placid
character ; and her own tribulations have nothing to say
to the sudden awakening of her vigilance in July. Like
ourselves, the animal has its joys and its troubles. It
uses the former eagerly ; it bothers but little about the
latter, which is, when all is said, the best way of realizing
an animal enjoyment of life. To mitigate these troubles
and protect the progeny there is the inspiration of the
instinct, which is able to give a portress to the Halictus
without the counsels of experience.

220 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

When the victualHng is finished, when the Halicti no
longer sally forth on harvesting intent nor return all
floured over with their burden, the old Bee is still at her
post, as vigilant as ever. The final preparations for the
brood are made below ; the cells are closed. The door is
kept until everything is finished. Then grandmother and
mothers leave the house. Exhausted by the performance
of their duty, they go, somewhere or other, to die.

In September appears the second generation, comprising
both males and females.

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION

\

CHAPTER XVII

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION

The Scorpion is an uncommunicative insect, occult in
his manners and unpleasant to deal with, so much so that
his history, apart from the findings of anatomy, is re-
duced to little or nothing. The scalpel of the masters
has made us acquainted with his organic structure ; but,
so far as I know, no observer has thought of interviewing
him, with any sort of persistence, on the subject of his
private habits. Ripped up, after a preliminary macera-
tion in alcohol, he is very well-known indeed ; acting
within the domain of his instincts, he is hardly known at
all. And yet none of the segmented animals were more
deserving of a detailed biography. He has at all times
struck the popular imagination, even to the point of
being numbered among the signs of the zodiac.

Fear made the gods, said Lucretius. Deified by terror,
the Scorpion is glorified in the sky by a constellation and
in the almanac by the symbol for the month of October.
Let us try to make him speak.

Before housing my animals, let us give a brief descrip-
tion of them. The common Black Scorpion (Scorpio Euro-
paeus, Lin.), distributed over the greater part of South
Europe, is known to all. He frequents the dark spots
near our dwelling-places ; on rainy days in autumn, he
makes his way into our houses, sometimes even under

223

I

224 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

our bed-clothes. The hateful animal causes us more
fright than damage. Although not unusual in my present
abode, his visits have never had consequences of the least
seriousness. The weird beast, overrated in reputation,
is repulsive rather than dangerous.

Much more to be feared and much less well-known
generall}^ is the Languedocian Scorpion, isolated in
the Mediterranean provinces. Far from seeking our
dwelling-houses, he keeps out of the way, in untilled
solitudes. Beside the Black Scorpion, he is a giant who,
when full-grown, measures eight to nine centimetres in
length.^ His colouring is that of pale, withered straw.

The tail, which is really the animal's belly, is a series
of five prismatic joints, like little kegs whose staves
meet in undulating ridges resembling strings of beads.
Similar cords cover the arms and fore-arms of the claws
and divide them into long facets. Others run sinuously
along the back and imitate the joints of a cuirass, the
pieces of \^ hich might have been collected by a capricious
milling-punch. These bead-like projections produce a
fiercely robust armour, which is characteristic of the
Languedocian Scorpion. It is as though the animal had
been fasliioned out of chips with blows of the adze.

The tail ends in a sixth joint, which is vesicular and
smooth. This is the gourd in which the poison, a for-
midable fluid resembUng water in appearance, is elaborated
and held in reserve. A curved, brown and very sharp
sting ends the apparatus. A pore, visible only under the
lens, opens at some distance from the point. Through
this, the venomous humour is injected into the puncture.
The sting is very hard and very sharp-pointed. Holding
it between the tips of my fingers, I can push it through

*■ 3 to 3^ inches. — Translator's Note.

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 225

a sheet of cardboard as easily as though I were using a
needle.

Owing to its powerful curve, the sting points downwards
when the tail is held in a straight line. To use his weapon,
the Scorpion must therefore raise it, turn it round and
strike upwards. In fact, this is his invariable practice.
The tail bends over the animal's back and comes forward
before pinking the adversary held down with the claws.
The animal, for that matter, is almost always in this
posture : whether in motion or at rest, he curves his tail
over his chine. He very rarely drags it slackened in a
straight line.

The pincers, buccal hands suggesting the claws of
the Crayfish, are organs of battle and information.
When moving forwards, the animal holds them in front
of him, with the fingers opened, to take stock of things
encountered on the way. When he wants to stab, the
claws catch the adversary and hold him motionless,
while the sting operates above the assailant's back.
Lastly, when he has to nibble a morsel for any length
of time, they serve as hands and keep the prey within
reach of the mouth. They are never used for walking,
for support or for the work of excavation.

That falls to the real legs. These are abruptly trun-
cated and end in a group of little curved, moveable claws,
faced by a short, fine point, which, in a manner of speak-
ing, serves as a thumb. The stump is finished off with
rough bristles. The whole constitutes an excellent grap-
nel, which explains the Scorpion's capacity for roaming
round the trellis-work of my wire beUs, for standing there
ver}^ long in a reversed position and, lastly, for clambering
up a vertical wall, notwithstanding his clumsiness and

awkwardness.

2d

226 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Below, immediately after the legs, are the combs,
strange organs, an exclusive attribute of the Scorpions.
They owe their name to their structure, consisting of a
long row of scales arranged close together in the manner
of the teeth of our ordinary combs. The anatomists are
inclined to ascribe to these the functions of a gearing-
apparatus capable of keeping the couple connected at
the moment of pairing.

In order to observe their domestic manners, I lodge
my captives in a large glass volery, with big potsherds to
serve them as a refuge. There are a couple of dozen
Scorpions, all told. In April, when the Swallow returns
to us and the Cuckoo sounds his first note, a revolution
takes place among my hitherto peaceable Scorpions.
Several of them, in the colonies which I have established
in the open air, in my garden, go wandering about at night
and do not return to their homes. A more serious
matter : often, under the same piece of crockery, are two
Scorpions, of whom one is in the act of devouring the
other. Is it a matter of burglary among insects of the
same order, who, faUing into vagabond ways at the com-
mencement of the fine weather, thoughtlessly enter their
neighbours' houses and there meet with their undoing,
unless they be the stronger ? One would almost think
it, so calmly is the intruder eaten up, for days at a
time and by small mouthfuls, even as an ordinary prey
would be.

Now here is something to give us a hint. The devoured
are invariably of middling size. Their lighter shade of
colouring, their less protuberant bellies mark them as
males, always males. The others, larger, more paunchy,
and a little darker in shade, do not end in this unhappy
fashion. So it is probably not a case of brawls between

PLATE X

o

o
o

02

o

tD

TPIE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 227

neighbours who, jealous of their soHtude, soon settle the
doom of any visitor and eat him afterwards, a radical
means of putting a stop to further indiscretions ; it is
rather a question of nuptial rites tragically performed by
the matron after pairing.

Spring returns once more. I have prepared the largo
glass cage in advance and peopled it with five-and-twenty
inhabitants, each with his bit of earthenware. From
mid-April onwards, every evening, towards night-fall,
between seven and nine o'clock, groat animation reigns
within this crystal palace. That which seemed deserted
by day now becomes a joyous scene. As soon as supper
is finished, the whole household runs out to look at it.
A lantern hung outside the panes allows us to follow
events.

It is our diversion after the worries of the day ; it is
our play-house. In this theatre of simple folk, the per-
formances are so interesting that, the moment the lantern
is lighted, we all, old and young, come and take our seats
in the pit : all, including even Tom, the house-dog. Tom,
it is true, indifferent to Scorpion affairs, like the genuine
philosopher that he is, lies down at our feet and dozes,
but only with one eye, keeping the other always open on
his friends, the children.

Let me try to give the reader an idea of what happens.
A numerous assembly soon gathers near the glass panes in
the zone discreetly ht by the lantern. Every elsewhere,
here, there, single Scorpions walk about and, attracted
by the hght, leave the shade and hasten to the illumin-
ated festival. The very moths betray no greater readi-
ness to flutter to the rays of our lamps. The newcomers
mingle with the crowd, while others, tired with their
diversions, withdraw into the shade, snatch a few

228 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

moments' rest and then impetuously return upon the
scene.

These hideous devotees of gaiety provide a dance not
wliolly unattractive. Some come from afar : gravely they
emerge from out the darkness ; then, suddenly, with a
rush as swdft and easy as a slide, they join the crowd, in
the light. Their agility reminds one of mice scudding
with short steps. They seek one another and fly pre-
cipitately as soon as they touch, as though they had
mutually burnt their fingers. Others, after tumbling
about a little with their play-fellows, make off hur-
riedly, wildly. They take fresh courage in the dark and
return.

At times, there is a brisk tumult : a confused mass of
swarming legs, snapping claws, tails curving and clashing,
threatening or fondling, it is hard to say which. In the
affray, under favourable conditions, double specks light
up and gleam like carbuncles. One would take them for
eyes that shoot flashing glances ; in reality they are two
polished, reflecting facets, wliicli occupy the front of the
head. All, large and small alike, take part in the brawl ;
it might be a battle to the death, a general massacre ; and
it is just a wanton frolic. Even so do kittens bemaul
each other. Soon, the group disperses ; all make off
from all sorts of places, without a scratch, without a
sprain.

Behold the fugitives collecting once more before the
lantern. They pass and pass again ; they come and go,
often meet front to front. He who is in the greatest hurry
walks over the back of the other, who lets him have his
way without any protest but a movement of the crupper.
It is no time for blows : at most, two Scorpions meeting
will exchange a cuff, that is to say, a rap of the caudal

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 229

staff. In their society, this friendly thump, in which
the point of the sting plays no part, is a sort of a fisticuff
in frequent use.

There are better things than mingled legs and bran-
dished tails : there are sometimes poses of the highest
originality. Front to front and claws drawn back, two
wrestlers assume the acrobat's " straight bend," that is
to say, resting only on the fore-quarters, they raise the
whole back of the body, so much so that the chest dis-
plays the four little lung-sacs uncovered. Then the tails,
held vertically erect in a straight line, exchange mutual
rubs, glide one over the other, while their extremities
are hooked together and repeatedly fastened and un-
fastened. Suddenly, the friendly pyramid falls to pieces
and each runs off hurriedly, without ceremony.

What were those two wTestlers trying to do, in their
eccentric posture ? Was it a set-to between two rivals ?
It would seem not, so peaceful is the encounter. My
subsequent observations were to tell me that this was
the mutual teasing of a betrothed couple. To declare
his flame, the Scorpion does the straight bend.

To continue as I have begun and give a homogeneous
picture of the thousand tiny particulars gathered day by
day would have its advantages : the story would be
sooner told ; but, at the same time, deprived of its details,
which vary greatly between one observation and tho
next and are difficult to group, it would be less interesting.
Nothing must be neglected in the relation of manners so
strange and as yet so little known. At the risk of repeat-
ing one's self here and there, it is preferable to adhere
to chronological order and to tell the story by fragments,
as one's observations reveal fresh facts. Order will
emerge from this disorder ; for each of the more remark-

230 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

able evenings supplies some feature that corroborates
and completes those which go before. I will therefore
continue my narration in the form of a diary,

25 April, 1904.— Hullo ! What is this, which I have
not yet seen ? My eyes, ever on the watch, look upon
the affair for the first time. Two Scorpions face each
other, with claws outstretched and fingers clasped.
It is a question of a friendly grasp of the hand and not
the prelude of a battle, for the two partners behave
to each other in the most peaceful way. There is one
of either sex. One is paunchy and browner than the
other : that is the female ; the other is comparatively
slim and pale : that is the male. With their tails prettily
curled, the couple stroll with measured steps along the
pane. The male is ahead and walks backwards, without
jolt or jerk, without any resistance to overcome. The
female follows obedientl3^ clasped by her finger-tips and
face to face with her leader.

The stroll has halts that alter nothing in the manner
of the tie ; it is resumed, now here, now there, from end
to end of the enclosure. Nothing shows the object which
the strollers have in view. They loiter, they dawdle, they
most certainly exchange ogling glances. Even so, in
my village, on Sundays, after vespers, do the youth
of both sexes saunter along the hedges, every Jack with
his Jill.

Often they tack about. It is always the male who
decides which fresh direction the pair shall take. With-
out releasing her hands, he turns gracefully to the left
or right about and places himself side bj' side with his
companion. Then, for a moment, with his tail laid flat,
he strokes her spine. The other stands motionless,
impassive.

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 231

For over an hour, without tiring, I watch those inter-
minable comings and goings. A part of the household
lends me its eyes in the presence of the strange sight
which no one in the world has yet seen, at least with a
vision capable of observing. In spite of the lateness of
the hour, so upsetting to our habits, our attention is
concentrated and no essential thing escapes us.

At last, at about ten o'clock, an event happens. The
male has lit upon a potsherd the shelter of which seems
to suit him. He releases his companion with one hand,
with one alone, and, continuing to hold her with the other,
he scratches with his legs and sweeps with his tail. A
grotto opens. He enters and, slowly, without violence,
drags the patient Scorpioness after him. Soon, both have
disappeared. A plug of sand closes the dwelUng. The
couple are at home.

To disturb them would bo a blunder : I should bo
interfering too soon, at an inopportune moment, if I
tried at once to see what was happening below. The
preliminary stages may last for the best part of the night ;
and it does not do for me, who have turned eighty, to sit
up so late. I feel my legs giving way ; and my eyes
seem full of sand. Let us go to sleep.

All night long, I dream of Scorpions. They crawl under
my bed-clothes, they pass over my face ; and I am not
particularly excited, so many curious things do I see in
my imagination. The next morning, at day-break, I
raise the stoneware. The female is alone. Of the male
there is no trace, either in the home or in the neighbour-
hood. First disappointment, to be followed by many
others.

10 May. — It is nearly seven o'clock in the evening ; the
sky is overcast with signs of an approaching shower.

232 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Under one of the potsherds is a motionless couple, face
to face, with linked fingers. Cautiously I raise the pot-
sherd and leave the occupants uncovered, so as to study
the results of the interview at my ease. The darkness of
the night falls and nothing, it seems to me, mil disturb
the calm of the home deprived of its roof. A brisk
shower compels me to retire. They, under the lid of the
cage, have no need to take shelter against the rain.
What will they do, left to their business as they are,
but deprived of a canopy to their alcove ?

An hour later, the rain ceases and I return to my
Scorpions. They are gone. They have taken up their
abode under a neighbouring potsherd. Still with their
fingers linked, the female is outside and the male indoors,
preparing the home. At intervals of ten minutes, the
members of my family relieve one another, so as not to
lose the exact moment of the pairing, which appears to
me to be imminent. Useless cares : at eight o'clock, it
being now quite dark, the couple, dissatisfied with the
spot, set out on a fresh ramble, hand in hand, and go
in search elsewhere. The male, walking backwards,
leads the march, chooses the dwelling as he pleases ; the
female follows with docility. It is an exact repetition
of what I saw on the 25th of April. At last, a tile is found
to suit them. The male goes in first, but, this time,
without letting go of his companion for a moment, with
one hand or the other. The nuptial chamber is pre-
pared with a few sweeps of the tail. Gently drawn
towards him, the Scorpioness enters in the wake of her
guide.

I visit them a couple of hours later, thinking that I
have given them time enough to finish their preparations.
I raise the potsherd. They are there in the same posture,

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 233

face to face and hand in hand. I shall see no more
to-day.

The next day, nothing new either. One in front of
the other, meditatively, without stirring a limb, the
gossips, holding each other by the finger-tips, continue
their endless interview under the feile. In the evening,
at sunset, after sitting linked together for four-and-
twenty hours, the couple separate. He goes away from
the tile, she remains ; and matters have not advanced by
an inch.

This observation gives us two facts to remember.
After the stroll to celebrate the betrothal, the couple
need the mystery and quiet of a shelter. Never would
the nuptial conclusion take place in the open air, amid
the busthng crowd, in sight of all. Remove the roof of
the house, by night or day, with all possible discretion ;
and the husband and wife, who seem absorbed in
meditation, march off in search of another spot. Also,
the stay under the cover of a stone is a long one : we
have just seen it spun out to twenty-four hours and
even then without a decisive result.

12 May. — ^What will this evening's watch teach us ?
The weather is calm and hot, favourable to nocturnal
pastimes. A couple has formed : I did not witness the
start. This time the male is greatly inferior in size to
his corpulent mate. Nevertheless, the skinny wight per-
forms his duty gallantly. Walking backwards, according
to rule, with his tail rolled trumpetwise, he marches the
fat Scorpioness around the glass ramparts. After one
circuit follows another, sometimes in the same, sometimes
in the opposite direction.

Stops are frequent. Then the two foreheads touch,
bend a little to left and right, as if there were whispers

30

234 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

exchanged in each otlier's ears. The Uttle fore-legs flutter
in fevered caresses. What are they saying to each other ?
How shall we translate their silent epithalamium into
words ?

The whole household turns out to see this curious
group, which our presence in no way disturbs. The pair
are pronounced to be "pretty"; and the expression is
not exaggerated. Semi-translucent and shining in the
light of the lantern, they seem carved out of a block of
yellow amber. Their arms outstretched, their tails rolled
into graceful volutes, they wander on with a slow move-
ment and with measured tread.

Nothing puts them out. Should some vagabond,
taking the evening air and keeping to the wall Uke them-
selves, meet them on their way, he stands aside — for he
understands these delicate matters — and leaves them a
free passage. Lastly, the shelter of a tile receives the
strolling pair, the male entering first and backwards :
that goes without saying. It is nine o'clock.

The idyll of the evening is followed, during the night,
by a hideous tragedy. Next morning, we find the Scor-
pioness under the potsherd of the previous day. The little
male is by her side, but slain and more or less devoured.
He lacks the head, a claw, a pair of legs. I place the
corpse in the open, on the threshold of the home. All day
long, the recluse does not touch it. When night returns,
she goes out and, meeting the defunct on her passage,
carries him off to a distance to give him a decent funeral,
that is to finish eating him.

This act of cannibalism agrees with what the open-air
colony showed me last year. From time to time, I would
find, under the stones, a pot-belhed female making a
comfortable ritual meal off her companion of the night.

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 235

I suspected that the male, if he did not break loose in time,
once his functions were fulfilled, was devoured, wholly or
partly, according to the matron's appetite. I now have
the certain proof before my eyes. Yesterday, I saw the
couple enter their home after the usual preliminary, the
stroll ; and, this morning, under the same tile, at the
moment of my visit, the bride is consuming her mate.

We are entitled to believe that the poor wretch has at-
tained his ends. Were he still necessary to the brood,
he would not yet be eaten. The actual couple have
therefore been quick about the business, whereas I see
others fail to finish after provocations and contemplations
exceeding in duration the time which it takes the hour-
hand to go twice round the clock. Circumstances which
it is impossible to state with precision — the condition of
the atmosphere, perhaps, the electric tension, the tempera-
ture, the individual ardour of the couple — to a large
extent accelerate or delay the finale of the pairing ; and
this is what constitutes the serious difficulty for the ob-
server anxious to seize the exact moment whereat the
as yet uncertain function of the combs might be revealed.

14 May. — It is certainly not hunger that sets my
animals in commotion night after night. The quest of
food has nothing to say to their evening rounds. I have
served up a varied bill of fare to the busy crowd, a fare
chosen from that which they appear to Hke best. It
includes tender morsels in the shape of young Crickets ;
small Locusts, fleshier and in better condition than the
Acridians ; Moths minus their wings. In a more advanced
season, I add Dragon-flies, a highly-appreciated dish, as
is proved by their equivalent, the full-groAvn Ant-lion,
of whom I often find the scraps, the wings, in the Scor-
pions' cave.

236 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

This luxurious game leaves them indifferent ; none of
them pays attention to it. Amid the hubbub, the Crickets
hop, the Moths beat the ground with the stumps of their
wings, the Dragon-flies quiver ; and the passers-by take
no notice. They tread them underfoot, they topple them
over, they push them away with a stroke of the tail ;
in short, they absolutely refuse to look at them. They
have other business in hand.

Almost all of them move along the glass wall. Some
of them obstinately attempt to scale it : they hoist them-
selves on their tails, fall down, try again elsewhere.
With their outstretched fists they knock against the
pane ; they want to get away at all costs. And yet the
grounds are large enough, there is room for all ; the walks
Iviid themselves to long strolls. No matter : they want
to roam afar. If they were free, they would disperse in
every direction. Last year, at the same time, the
colonists of the enclosure left the village and I never saw
them again.

The spring pairing-season enjoins journeys upon them.
The shy hermits of yesterday now leave their cells and
go on love's pilgrimage ; heedless of food, they set out in
quest of their kind. Among the stones of their terri-
tory there must be choice spots at which meetings take
place, at which assemblies are held. If I were not afraid
of breaking my legs, at night, over the rocky obstacles
of their hills, I should love to assist at their matrimonial
festivals, amid the delights of liberty. What do they
do up there, on their bare slopes ? Much the same,
apparently, as in the glass enclosure. Having made
their choice of a bride, they take her about, for a long
stretch of time, hand in hand, through the tufts of
lavender. If they miss the attractions of my lantern,

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 237

they have the moon, that incomparable lamp, to light
them.

20 May. — The sight of the first invitation to a stroll is
not an event upon which we can count every evening.
Several emerge from under their stones already hnked
in couples. In this concatenation of clasped fingers, they
have passed the whole day, motionless, one in front of
the other and meditating. When night comes, they
resume, without separating for a moment, the walk
around the glass begun on the evening before, or even
earlier. No one knows when or how the junction was
effected. Others meet unawares in sequestered passages
difficult of inspection. By the time that I see them, it
is too late : the equipage is on the wa\'.

To-day, chance favours me. The acquaintance is made
before my eyes, in the full light of the lantern. A frisky,
sprightly male, in his hurried rush through the crowd, sud-
denly finds himself face to face with a passer-by who takes
his fancy. She does not say no ; and things go quickly.

The foreheads touch, the claws work ; the tails swing
with a wide movement : they stand up vertically, hook
together at the tips and softly stroke each other with a
slow caress. The two animals perform the acrobat's
" straight bend," in the manner already described. Soon,
the raised bodies collapse ; fingers are clasped and the
couple starts on its stroll without more ado. The pyra-
midal pose, therefore, is really the prelude to the har-
nessing. The pose, it is true, is not rare between two
individuals of the same sex who meet ; but it is then
less correct and, above all, less marked by ceremony.
At such times, we find movements of impatience, instead
of friendly excitations ; the tails strike in lieu of caressing
each other.

238 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Let us watch the male, who hurries away backwards,
very proud of his conquest. Other females are met, who
form an audience and look on inquisitively, perhaps
enviously. One of them flings herself upon the ravished
bride, embraces her -^ith her legs and makes an effort
to stop the equipage. The male exhausts himself in
attempts to overcome this resistance ; in vain he shakes,
in vain he pulls : the thing won't go. Undistressed by
the accident, he throws up the game. A neighbour is
there, close by. Cutting parley short, this time with-
out any further declaration, he takes her hands and
invites her to a stroll. She protests, releases herself and
runs aM'av.

From among the group of onlookers, a second is
solicited, in the same free and easy manner. She accepts,
but there is nothing to tell us that she will not escape
from her seducer on the way. But what does the cox-
comb care ? There are more where she came from !
And what does he want, when all is said ? The first-
comer !

This first-comer he ends by finding, for here he is,
leading his conquest by the hand. He passes into the
belt of light. Exerting all his strength, he makes jerky
movements of drawing towards him, if the other refuse
to come, but behaves with gentleness, when he obtains a
docile obedience. Pauses, sometimes rather prolonged,
are frequent.

Then the male indulges in curious exercises. Bringing
his claws, or let us say, his arms towards him and then
again stretching them straight out, he compels the female
to play a similar alternate game. The two of them form a
system of jointed rods, or lazy-tongs, opening and closing
their quadrilateral turn and turn about. After this

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 239

gymnastic drill, the mechanism contracts and remains
stationary.

The foreheads now touch ; the two mouths come
together with tender effusions. The word " kisses "
comes to one's mind to express these caresses. It is not
applicable ; for head, face, lips, cheeks, all are missing.
The animal, clipped as though with the pruning shears,
has not even a muzzle. Where we look for a face we are
confronted with a dead wall of hideous jaws.

And to the Scorpion this represents the supremely
beautiful ! With his fore-legs, more delicate, more agile
than the others, he pats the horrible mask, which in his
eyes is an exquisite little face ; voluptuously he gnaws
and tickles with his lower jaws the equally hideous mouth
opposite. It is all superb in its tenderness and simplicity.
The Dove is said to have invented the kiss. But I know
that he had a fore-runner in the Scorpion.

Dulcinea lets her admirer have his way and remains pas-
sive, not without a secret longing to slip off. But how is
she to set about it ? It is quite easy. The Scorpioness
makes a cudgel of her tail and brings it down with a
bang upon the \^Tists of her too-ardent wooer, who there
and then lets go. The match is broken off, for the time
being. To-morrow, the sulking-fit will be over and
things will resume their course.

25 May. — This blow of the cudgel teaches us that the
docile companion revealed by the first observations is
capable of whims, of obstinate refusals, of sudden
divorces. Let us give an example.

This evening, he and she, a seemly couple, are out for
a stroll. A tile is found and appears to suit. Letting
go with one claw, so as to have some freedom of action,
the male works with his legs and tail to clear the entrance.

240 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

He goes in. By degrees, as the dwelling is dug out, the
female follows liim, meekly and gently, so one would
think.

Soon, the place and time perhaps not suiting her, she
reappears and half- emerges, backwards. She struggles
against her abductor, who, on his side, pulls her to him,
without, as yet, showing himself. A lively contest
ensues, one making every effort outside the cabin, the
other inside. They go backwards and forwards by turns ;
and success is undecided. At last, with, a sudden exer-
tion, the Scorpioness drags her companion out.

The unbroken team is in the open ; the walk is resumed.
For a good hour, they veer to one side along the pane,
veer back to the other and then return to the tile of just
now, to the exact same tile. As the way is already open,
the male enters without delaj- and pulls like mad. Out-
side, the Scorpioness resists. Stiffening her legs, which
plough the soil, and buttressing her tail against the arch
of the tile, she refuses to go in. I like this resistance.
What would the pairing be without the playful toying
of the preludes ?

Under the stone, however, the ravisher insists and con-
trives to such good purpose that the rebel obeys. She
enters. It has just struck ten. If I have to sit up for
the rest of the night, I will wait for the result ; I shall
turn the potsherd at the fitting moment to catch a glimpse
of what is happening underneath. Good opportunities
are rare : let us make the most of this one. What shall I
see ?

Fothing at all. In half an hour or less, the refractory
one frees herself, issues from the shelter and flees. The
other at once runs up from the back of the cabin, stops
on the threshold and looks out. His beauty has escaped

PLATE XI

1. Nuptial allurements, showing " the straight bend."

2. The wedding stroll.

3. The couple enter the nuptial dwelling.

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 241

him. He has been jilted. Sheepishly, he returns indoors.
I follow his example.

June sets in. For fear of a disturbance caused by too
brilliant an illumination, I have hitherto kept the lantern
hung outside, at some distance from the pane. The in^
sufficient light does not allow me to observe certain
details as to the manner in which the couple are linked
when strolling. Do they both play an active part
in the scheme of the clasped hands ? Are their fingers
interUnked alternately ? Or does only one of the pair
act ; and, if so, which ? Let us ascertain exactly ; the
thing is not without importance.

I place the lantern inside, in the centre of the cage.
There is a good light everywhere. Far from being scared,
the Scorpions gain in gladness. They hasten up around
the beacon ; some even try to climb it, so as to be nearer
the flamo. They succeed in doing so by means of the
frames containing the glass squares. They hang on to
the edges of the tin strips and stubbornly, heedless of
slipping, end by reaching the top. There, motionless, lying
partly on the glass, partly on the support of the metal
casing, they gaze the whole evening long, fascinated by the
glory of the wick. They remind me of the Great Peacock
Moths that used to hang in ecstasy under the reflector of
my lamp.

At the foot of the beacon, in the full hght, a couple
loses no time in doing the straight bend. The two
fence prettily with their tails and then go a-s trolling.
The male alone acts. With the two fingers of each claw,
he has seized the two fingers of the corresponding claw
of the Scorpioness in a bunch. He alone exerts himself
and squeezes ; he alone is at liberty to break the team
when he likes : he has but to open his pincers. The

31

242 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

female cannot do so ; she is a prisoner, handcuffed by
her seducer.

In rather infrequent cases, one can see even finer
things. I have caught the Scorpion dragging his sweet-
heart by the two fore-arms ; I have seen him pull her
by one leg and by the tail. She had resisted the advances
of the outstretched hand ; and the bully, forgetful of all
reserve, had thrown her on her side and clawed hold of
her at random. The thing is quite clear : we have to
do with a regular rape, abduction with violence. Even
so did Romulus' youths rape the Sabine women.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORnON I THE FAMILY

Book-knowledge is a poor resource in the problems of
life ; assiduous converse with facts is preferable here to
the best-stocked hbrary. In many cases, ignorance is a
good thing : the mind retains its freedom of investigation
and does not stray along roads that lead nowhither,
suggested by one's reading. I have experienced this
once again.

An anatomical monograph — the work, indeed, of a
master — had told me that the Languedocian Scorpion
is big with young in September. Oh, how much better
should I have done not to consult it ! The thing happens
much earlier, at least in my part of the country ; and, as
the rearing does not last long, I should have seen nothing,
had I tarried for September. A third year of observation,
tiresome to wait for, would have become necessary, in
order at last to witness a sight which I foresaw to be of
the highest interest. But for exceptional curcumstances,
I should have allowed the fleeting opportunity to pass,
lost a year and perhaps even abandoned the subject.

Yes, ignorance can have its advantages ; the now is
found far from the beaten track. One of our most illus-
trious masters, little suspecting the lesson he was giving
me, taught me that some time since. One fine day,
Pasteur rang unexpectedly at my front-door : the same

213

244 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

who was soon to acquire such world-wide celebrity. His
name was familiar to me. I had read the scholar's fine
work on the dissj^metry of tartaric acid ; I had followed
with the greatest interest his researches on the generation
of Infusoria.

Each period has its scientific crotchet : to-day, we have
transformism ; at that time, they had spontaneous genera-
tion. With his balloons made sterile or fecund at will,
with his experiments so magnificent in their severity and
simplicity, Pasteur gave the death-blow to the lunacy
which pretended to see life springing from a chemical
conflict in the seat of putrefaction.

In the midst of this contest so victoriously elucidated,
I welcomed my distinguished visitor as best I could. The
savant came to me first of all for certain particulars. I
owed this signal honour to my standing as his colleague
in physics and chemistry. Oh, such a poor, obscure
colleague !

Pasteur's tour through the Avignon region had seri-
ciculture for its object. For some years, the silk-worm
nurseries had been in confusion, ravaged by unknown
plagues. The worms, for no appreciable reason, were
falling into a putrid deliquescence, hardening, so to speak,
into plaster sugar-plums. The downcast peasant saw
one of his chief crops disappearing ; after much care and
trouble, he had to fling his nurseries on the dung-heap.

A few words were exchanged on the prevaiHng blight ;
and then, without further preamble, my visitor said :

" I should like to see some cocoons. I have never seen
any ; I know them only by name. Could you get me some ?"

" Nothing easier. My landlord happens to sell co-
coons ; and he Uves in the next house. If you will wait a
moment, I will bring you what you want."

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 245

Four steps took me to my neighbour's, where I crammed
my pockets with cocoons. I came back and handed them
to the savant. He took one, turned and turned it
between his fingers ; he examined it curiously, as one
would a strange object from the other end of the world.
He put it to his ear and shook it :

"Why, it makes a noise!" he said, quite surprised.
" There's something inside !"

" Of course there is."

" What is it ?"

" The chrysahs."

" How do you mean, the chrysalis ?"

" I mean the sort of mummy into which the caterpillar
changes before becoming a moth."

" And has every cocoon one of those things in-
side it ?"

" Obviously. It is to protect the chrysalis that the
caterpillar spins."

" Really !"

And, without more words, the cocoons passed into the
pocket of the savant, who was to instruct himself at
his leisure touching that great novelty, the chrysalis. I
was struck by this magnificent assurance. Pasteur had
come to regenerate the silk -worm, while knowing nothing
about caterpillars, cocoons, chrysalises or metamorphoses.
The ancient gymnasts came naked to the fight. The
talented combatant of the plague of our silk-worm
nurseries hastened to the battle like\sase naked, that is
to say, destitute of the simplest notions about the insect
which he was to deliver from danger. I was staggered ;
nay, more, I was wonderstruck.

I was not so much amazed by what followed. Pasteur
was occupied at the time with another question, that

246 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

of the improvement of wine by heating. Suddenly
changing the conversation :

" Show me your cellar." he said.

I ! I show mj" cellar, my private cellar, poor I, who,
in those days, with my pitiful teacher's salary, could
not indulge in the luxury of a Uttle wine and brewed
myself a sort of small cider by setting a handful of moist
sugar and some apples already steeped in spoilt cider to
ferment in a cask ! My cellar ! Show my cellar ! Why
not my barrels, my cobwebbed bottles, each labelled with
it s age and vintage ! My cellar !

Full of confusion, I avoided the request and tried to
turn the conversation. But he persisted :

" Show me your cellar, please."

There was no resisting such firmness. I pointed with
my finger to a comer in the Ivitchen where stood a chair
with no seat to it ; and, on that chair, a demi-jolm con-
taining two or three gallons :

" That's my cellar, sir."

"Is that your cellar ?"

" I have no other."

" Is that all ?"

" Yes, that is all, alas !"

" ReaUy !"

Not a word more ; nothing further from the savant.
Pasteur, that was evident, had never tasted the highly-
spiced dish which the vulgar call la vache enragee. Though
my cellar — the dilajjidated chair and the more than half-
empty demi-john — said nothing about the fermentation
to be combated by heating, it spoke eloquently of another
thing which my illustrious visitor seemed not to under-
stand. A microbe escaped from it and a very terrible
microbe : that of ill-fortmie strangling good-'s^nll.

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 247

In spite of the unlucky introduction of the cellar, I
remain none the less struck by his serene assurance. He
knows nothing of the transformation of insects ; he has
just seen a cocoon for the first time and learnt that there
is something inside that cocoon, the rough draft of the
moth that shall be ; he is ignorant of what is known to
the meanest school-boy of our southern parts ; and this
novice, whose artless questions surprise me so greatly, is
about to revolutionize the hygiene of the silk-worm
nurseries. In the same way, he will revolutionize medi-
cine and general hygiene.

His weapon is thought, heedless of details and soaring
over the whole question. What cares he for metamor-
phoses, larvae, nymphae, cocoons, pupse, chrysalises and
the thousand and one little secrets of entomology ! For the
purposes of his problem, perhaps, it is just as well to be
ignorant of all that. Ideas retain their independence
and their daring flight more easily ; movements are freer,
when released from the leading-strings of the known.

Encouraged by the magnificent example of the cocoons
rattling in Pasteur's astonished ears, I have made it a
rule to adopt the method of ignorance in my investigations
into instincts. I read very little. Instead of turning the
pages of books, an expensive proceeding quite beyond
my means, instead of consulting other people, I persist
in obstinately interviewing my subject until I succeed
in makmg him speak. I know nothing. So much the
better : my queries will be all the freer, now in this direc-
tion, now in the opposite, according to the fights obtained.
And if, by chance, I do open a book, I take care to
leave a pigeon-hole in my mind A\dde open to doubt ;
for the soil which I am clearmg bristles with weeds aiid
brambles.

248 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

For lack of taking this precaution, I very nearly lost
a year. Relying on what I had read, I did not look for
the family of the Languedocian Scorpion until Septem-
ber ; and I obtained it quite unexpectedly in July. This
difference between the real and the anticipated date I
ascribe to the disparity of the climate : I make my
observations in Provence and my informant, Leon
Dufour, made his in Spain. Notwithstanding the
master's high authority, I ought to have been on my
guard. I was not ; and I should have lost the oppor-
tunity if, as luck would have it, the Common Black
Scorpion had not taught me. Ah, how right was Pasteur
not to know the chrysalis !

The Common Scorpion, smaller and much less active
than the other, was brought up, for purposes of compari-
son, in humble glass jars that stood on the table in my
study. The modest apparatus did not take up much room
and were easy to examine ; and I made a point of visiting
them dail}'. Every mornmg, before sitting down to
blacken a few pages of my diary with prose, I invariably
lifted the piece of cardboard which I used to shelter my
boarders and enquired into the happenmgs of the night.
These daily visits were not so feasible in the large glass
cage, whose numerous dwellings required a general over-
throw, if they were to be examined one by one and then
methodically replaced in condition as discovered. With
my jars of Black Scorpions, the inspection was the
matter of a moment.

It was well for me that I always had this auxiliary
establishment before my eyes. On the 22nd of July, at
six o'clock in the morning, raising the cardboard screen,
I found the mother beneath it, with her little ones grouped
on her chine like a sort of white mantlet. I experienced

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 249

one of those seconds of sweet contentment which, at
intervals, reward the long-suffering observer. For the first
time, I had before my eyes the fine spectacle of the
Scorpioness clad in her young. The delivery was quite
recent ; it must have taken place during the night ; for,
on the previous evening, the mother was bare.

Further successes awaited me : on the next day, a second
mother is whitened with her brood ; the day after that,
two others at a time are in the same condition. That
makes four. It is more than my ambition hoped for.
With four families of Scorpions and a few quiet days
before me, I can find sweets in life.

All the more so as fortune loads me with her favours.
Ever since the first discovery in the jars, I have been
thinking of the glass cage and asking myself whether the
Languedocian Scorpion might not be as precocious as
her black sister. Let us go quick and see.

I turn over the twenty -five tiles. A glorious success !
I feel one of those hot waves of enthusiasm with which
I was familiar at twenty rush through my old veins.
Under three of the lot of tiles, I find a mother burdened
with her family. One has little ones already shooting
up, about a week old, as the sequel of my observa-
tions informed me ; the two others have borne their
children recently, in the course of last night, as is proved
by certain remnants jealously guarded under the paunch.
We shall see presently what those remnants represent.

July runs to an end, August and September pass
and nothing more occurs to swell my collection. The
period of the family, therefore, for both Scorpions is
the second fortnight in July. From that time onward,
everything is finished. And yet, among my guests in the
glass cage, there remain females as big and fat as those

32

250 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

from whom I have obtained an offspring. I reckoned on
these too for an increase in the population ; all the appear-
ances authorized me to do so. Winter comes and none of
them has answered my expectations. The business, which
seemed close at hand, has been put off to next year : a
fresh proof of long pregnancy, very singular in the case
of an animal of an inferior order .

I transfer each mother and her product, separately,
into medium-sized receptacles, which facihtate the niceties
of the observation. At the early hour of my visit, those
brought to bed during the night have still a part of the
brood sheltered under their belly. Pushing the mother
aside with a straw, I discover, amid the heap of young
not yet hoisted on the maternal back, objects that utterly
upset all that the books have taught me on this subject.
The Scorpions, they say, are viviparous. The learned
expression lacks exactitude : the young do not see the
light directly with the formation which we know of.

And this must be so. How would you have the out-
stretched claws, the sprawling legs, the shrivelled tails
go through the maternal passages ? The cumbrous little
animal could never pass through the narrow outlets. It
must needs come into the world packed up and sparing of
space.

The remnants found under the mothers, in fact, show
me eggs, real eggs, similar, or very nearly, to those which
anatomy extracts from the ovaries at an advanced stage
of pregnancy. The little animal, economically com-
pressed to the dimensions of a grain of rice, has its tail
laid along its belly, its claws flattened against its chest,
its legs pressed to its sides, so that the small, easy-gliding,
oval lump leaves not the smallest protuberance. On the
forehead, dots of an intense black mark the eyes. The

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 251

tiny insect floats in a drop of transparent moisture, which
is for the moment its world, its atmosphere, contained
by a peUicle of exquisite delicacy.

These objects are really eggs. There were thirty or
forty of them, at first, in the Languedocian Scorpion's
litter ; not quite so many in the Black Scorpion's. Inter-
fering too late in the nocturnal lying-in, I am present at
the finish. The little that remains, however, is sufficient
to convince me. The Scorpion is in realit}^ oviparous ;
only her eggs hatch very speedily and the liberation of the
young follows ver}- soon after the lajdng.

Now how does this liberation take place ? I enjoy the
remarkable privilege of witnessing it. I see the mother
with the point of her mandibles delicately seizing, lacer-
ating, tearing off and lastly swallowing the membrane of
the egg. She strips her new-bom offspring with the fas-
tidious care and fondness of the sheep and the cat when
eating the fetal wrappers. Not a scratch on that scarce-
formed flesh, not a strain, in spite of the clumsiness of the
tool employed.

I cannot get over my surprise : the Scorpion has initi-
ated the living into acts of maternity bordering on our
own. In the distant days of the coal vegetation, when
the first Scorpion appeared, the gentle passions of child-
birth were already preparing. The egg, the equivalent
of the long-sleeping seed, the egg. as already possessed
by the reptile and the fish and later to be possessed by the
bird and almost the whole body of insects, was the con-
temporary of an infinitel}^ more delicate organism which
ushered in the viviparousnoss of the higher animals. The
incubation of the germ did not take place outside, in the
heart of the threatening conflict of things ; it was accom-
plished in the mother's womb.

252 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

The progressive movements of life know no gradual
stages, from fair to good, from good to excellent ; they
proceed by leaps and bounds, in some cases advancing,
in some recoiling. The ocean has its ebb and flow. Life,
that other ocean, more unfathomable than the ocean of
the waters, has its ebb and flow likewise. Will it have
any others ? Who can say that it will ? Who can say
that it will not ?

If the sheep were not to assist by svyallowing the wrappers
after picking them up with her lips, never would the
lamb succeed in extricating itself from its swaddUng-
clothes. In the same way, the little Scorpion calls for
its mother's aid. I see some that, c&ught in stickiness,
move about helplessly in the half -torn ovarian sac and are
unable to free themselves. It wants a touch of the
mother's teeth to complete the deliverance. It is doubt-
ful even whether the young insect contributes to effect
the laceration. Its weakness is of no avail against that
other weakness, the natal envelope, though this be as
slender as the inner integument of an onion-skin.

The young chick has a temporary callosity at the end
of its beak, which it uses to peck, to break the shell. The
young Scorpion, condensed to the dimensions of a grain
of rice to economize space, waits inertly for help from
without. The mother has to do everything. She works
with such a will that the accessories of childbirth dis-
appear altogether, even the few sterile eggs being swept
away with the others in the general flow. Not a remnant
lingers behind of the now useless tatters ; everything has
returned to the mother's stomach ; and the spot of ground
that has received the laying is swept absolutely clear.

So here we have the young nicely wiped, clean and free.
They are white. Their length, from the forehead to the

PLATE XII

1. The Langucdocian Scorpion devouring a cricket.

2. After pairing-time : the female feasting on her Scorpion.

3. The mother and her familj-, with emancipation-time at hand.

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 253

tip of the tail, measures nine millimetres^ in the Langue-
docian Scorpion and four^ in the Black. As the Uberating
toilet is completed, they climb, first one and then the
other, on the maternal spine, hoisting themselves, with-
out excessive haste, along the claws, which the Scorpion
keeps flat on the ground, in order to facilitate the ascent.
Close-grouped one against the other, entangled at random,
they form a continuous cloth on the mother's back.
With the aid of their little claws, they are pretty firmly
settled. One finds some difficulty in sweeping them away
with the point of a hair pencil without more or less hurting
the feeble creatures. In this state, neither steed nor
burden budges : it is the fit moment for exper mien ting.

The Scorpion, clad in her young assembled to form a
white muslin mantlet, is a spectacle worthy of attention.
She remains motionless, with her tail curled on high. If
I bring a rush of straw too near the family, she at once
lifts her two claws in an angry attitude, rarely adopted
in her own defence. The two fists are raised in a sparring
posture, the nippers open wide, ready to thrust and parry.
The tail is seldom brandished : to loosen it suddenly
would give a shock to the spine and perhaps make a part
of the burden fall to the ground. The bold, sudden,
imposing menace of the fists suffices.

My curiosity takes no notice of it. I push off one of the
little ones and place it facing its mother, at a finger's
breadth away. The mother does not seem to trouble
about the accident : motionless she was, motionless she
remains. Why excite herself about that shp ? The
fallen child will be quite able to manage for itself. It
gesticulates, it moves about ; and then, finding one of

^ '85 inch. — Translator s Note,
' '15 inch. — Translator' s Note.

254 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

the maternal claws ^^itliin its reach, it clambers up pretty
nimbly and joins the crowd of its brothers. It resumes
its seat in the saddle, but without, by a long way, dis-
playing the agility of the Lycosa's sons, who are expert
riders, versed in the art of vaulting on horseback.

The test is repeated on a larger scale. This time, I
sweep a part of the load to the ground ; the little ones
are scattered, to no verj^ great distance. There is a some-
what prolonged moment of hesitation. While the brats
wander about, without quite kno^^ing where to go, the
mother at last becomes alarmed at the state of things.
With her two arms — I am speaking of the chelae — with
her two arms joined in a semi-circle, she rakes and
gathers the sand so as to bring the strayers to her. This
is done awkwardly, clumsily-, with no precautions against
accidental crushing. The Hen, with a soft clucking call,
makes the wandering chicks return to the pale ; the
Scorpion collects her family with a sweep of the rake.
All are safe and sound nevertheless. As soon as they
come in contact with the mother, they climb up and form
themselves again into a dorsal group.

Strangers are admitted to this group, as well as the
legitimate offspring. If. with the camel-hair broom, I
dislodge a mother's family, wholly or in part, and place
it within reach of a second mother, herself carrjdng her
family', the latter will collect the young ones by arm-
fuls, as she would her own offspring, and very kindly
allow the newcomers to mount upon her back. One
would say that she adopts them, were the expression
not too ambitious. There is no adoption. It is the same
bUndness as that of the Lycosa, who is incapable of dis-
tinguishing between her own family and the family of
others, and v> olcomes all that swarms about her legs.

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 255

I expected to come upon excursions similar to those of
the Lycosa, whom it is not unusual to meet scouring
the heath with her pack of children on her back. The
Scorpion knows nothing of these diversions. Once she
becomes a mother, for some time she does not leave her
home, not even in the evening, at the hour when others
sally forth to frohc. Barricaded in her cell, not troubling
to eat, she watches over the upbringing of her young.

As a matter of fact, those frail creatures have a delicate
test to undergo : they have, one might say, to be born a
second time. They prepare for it by immobility and by
an inward labour not unlike that which turns the larva
into the perfect insect. In spite of their fairly correct
appearance as Scorpions, the young ones have rather
indistinct features, which look as though seen through a
mist. One is inchned to credit them with a sort of
child's smock, which they must throw off in order to
become slim and acquire a definite shape.

Eight days spent without moving, on the mother's back,
are necessary to this work. Then there takes place an
excoriation which I hesitate to describe by the expression
" casting of the skm," so greatly does it differ from the
true casting of the skin, undergone later at repeated in-
tervals. For the latter, the skin splits over the thorax ;
and the animal emerges through this single fissure, leaving
a dry cast garment behind it, similar in shape to the
Scorpion that has just thrown it off. The empty mould
retains the exact outhne of the moulded animal.

But, this time, it is something different. I place a few
young ones in course of excoriation on a sheet of glass.
They are motionless, sorely tried, it seems, almost spent.
The skin bursts, without special lines of cleavage ; it
tears at one and the same time in front, behind, at the

256 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

sides ; the legs come out of their gaiters, the claws leave
their gauntlets, the tail quits its scabbard. The cast skin
falls in rags on every side at a time. It is a flaying with-
out order and in tatters. When it is done, the flayed
insects present the normal appearance of Scorpions.
They have also acquired agility. Although still pale in
tint, they are nimble, quick to set foot to earth in order
to run and play near the mother. The most striking part
of this progress is the brisk growth. The young of the
Languedocian Scorpion measured nine millimetres in
length ; they now measure fourteen.^ Those of the Black
Scorpion have gro\Mi from four to six or seven millimetres. ^
The length increases by one half, which nearly trebles the
volume.

Surprised at this sudden growth, one asks one's self
what the cause can be ; for the little ones have taken no
food. The weight has not increased : on the contrary, it
ha-s diminished ; for we must remember that the skin has
been cast. The volume grows, but not the bulk. It is
therefore a distension up to a certain point and may be
compared with that of inorganic bodies under the influ-
ence of heat. A secret change takes place, which groups
the hving molecules into a more spacious combination ;
and the volume increases without the addition of fresh
materials. One who, possessed of a fine patience and
suitably equipped, cared to follow the rapid changes
of this architecture would, I think, reap a harvest of
some value. I, in my penury, abandon the problem to
others.

The remains of the excoriation are white strips, silky
rags, which; so far from falling to the ground, attach them-

1 -3.5 increased to '55 inch. — Translator's Note.

2 -15 increased to -235 or '275 inch. — Translator's Note,

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 25''

selves to the back of the Scorpion, especially near the
basal segments of the legs, and there tangle themselves
into a soft carpet on which the lately-flayed insects
rest. The steed now carries a saddle-cloth well-adapted
to hold her restless riders in position. Whether these
have to alight or to remount, the layer of tatters, now
become a solid harness, affords supports for rapid evolu-
tions.

When I topple over the family with a slight stroke of
the camel-hair pencil, it is amusing to see how quickly
the unhorsed ones resume their seat in the saddle. The
fringes of the housings are grasped, the tail is used as
a lover and, with a bound, the horseman is in his place.
This curious carpet, a real boarding-netting which allows
of easy scaling, lasts, without dislocations, for nearly a
week, that is to say, until the emancipation. Then it
comes off of its own accord, either as a whole or piecemeal,
and nothing remains of it when the young are scattered
around.

Meantime, signs of the colouring appear ; the tail and
belly are tinged with saffron, the claws assume the soft
brilliancy of transparent amber. Youth beautifies all
things. The little Languedocian Scorpions are really
splendid. If they remained thus, if they did not carry a
poison-still, soon to become threatening, they would bo
pretty creatures which one would find a pleasure in
rearing. Soon the wish for emancipation awakens in
them. They gladly descend from the mother's back to
frolic merrily in the neighbourhood. If they stray too
far, the mother cautions them and brings them back
again by sweeping the rake of her arms over the sand.

At dozing -time, the sight furnished by the Scorpioness
is almost as good as that of the hen and her chicks resting.

33

258 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Most of the young ones are on the ground, pressed close
against the mother ; a few are stationed on the white
saddle-cloth, a delightful cushion. There are some who
clamber up the mother's tail, perch on the top of the bend
and seem to delight in looking down from that point
of vantage upon the crowd. More acrobats arrive,
who dislodge them and take their places. All want their
share in the curiosities provided by the gazebo.

The bulk of the family is around the mother ; there is
a constant swarm of brats that crawl under the belly and
there squat, leaving their forehead, with the gleaming
black eye-points, outside. The more restless prefer the
mother's legs, which to them represent a gymnasium ;
they here swing as on a trapeze. Next, at their leisure,
the whole troop climb up to the spine again, resume their
places, settle down ; and nothing more stirs, neither
mother nor little ones.

This period wherein the emancipation is matured and
prepared lasts for a week, exactly as long as the strange
labour that trebles the volume without food. The family
remains upon the mother's back for a fortnight, all told.
The Lycosa carries her young for six or seven months,
during which time they are always active and hvely,
although unfed. What do those of the Scorpion eat,
at least after the excoriation that has given them
agility and a new Ufe ? Does the mother invite them
to her meals and reserve the tenderest morsels of her
repasts for them ? She invites nobody ; she reserves
nothing.

I serve her a Cricket, chosen among the small game
that seems to me best-suited to the delicate nature of her
sons. While she gnaws the morsel, without troubling in
the least about her surroundings, one of the little ones

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION 259

slips down her spine, crawls along her forehead and loans
over to see what is happening. He touches the jaws with
the tip of his leg ; then briskly he retreats, startled. Ho
goes away ; and he is well-advised. The abyss engaged in
the work of mastication, so far from reserving him a
mouthful, might perhaps snap him up and swallow him
JV'ithout giving him a further thought.

A second is hanging on behind the Cricket, of whom
the mother is munching the front. He nibbles, he pulls,
eager for a bib. His perseverance comes to nothing : the
fare is too tough.

I have seen it pretty often : the appetite awakens ;
the young would gladly accept food, if the mother took
the least care to offer them any, especially food adjusted
to the weakness of their stomachs ; but she just eats for
herself and that is all.

What do you want, 0 my pretty little Scorpions, who
have provided me with such delightful moments ? You
want to go away, to some distant place, in search of
victuals, of the tiniest of tiny beasties. I can see it by
your restless roving. You run away from tho mother,
who, on hor side, ceases to know you. You are strong
enough ; the hour has come to disperse.

If I knew exactly the infinitesimal game that suited
you and if I had sufficient time to procure it for you, I
should love to continue your upbringing ; but not among
tho potsherds of the native cage, in the company of your
elders. I know their intolerant spirit. The ogres would
eat you up, my children. Your own mothers would not
spare you. You are strangers to them henceforth.
Next year, at the wedding-season, they would eat you,
the jealous creatures ! You had better go ; prudence
demands it.

260 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Where could I lodge you and how could I feed you ?
The best thing is to say good-bye, not without a certain
regret on my part. One of these days, I will take you
and scatter you in your territory, the rock-strewn slope
where the sun is so hot. There you will find brothers and
sisters who, hardly larger than yourselves, are already
leading solitary Hves, under their little stones, sometimes
no bigger than a thumb-nail. There you will learn the
hard struggle for life better than you would with me.

INDEX

Anoxia, 145
Anoxia Australia, 150
Anthidium, 100
Anthophora, 132
Aphodians, 35, 79
Apids, 113
Arachnids, 158, 161
Argentine Republic, 101

Becaru, 196
Butterflies, 113

CaUcurgus, 158

Curra, 163
,, Ringed, 157

Capricorn, 100, 181, 194
Carabids, 113, 181
Carcharodon Megalodon, 173
Caterpillars, Common, 157
Cerambyx, 194
Cerceris, 145
Cetonia, 145
Cockchafer, 51
Coleoptera, 49, 180
Copris, Spanish, 64
Crayfish, 225
Cricket, 100

„ Italian, 100
Curculionids, 183, 187

Dectus, 100

Dermestes, 114

Diptera, 90, 179, 180, 201

Dufour, Leon, 248
Dung-beetles, 3, 29, 42, passim
Dynastes Hercules, 90
Dytiscus, 181

Epeira, Banded, 163
,, Fasciata, 164
„ Silky, 163

Flies, 114

Geotnipes, 28, 84, 117

,, Hypocrita, 117

,, Mutator, 117

,, Stercorarius, 117

,, Sylvaticus, 117

Gnat, 218

Grasshopjer, Green, 100

Gyrinus, 181

Halictus Zebrus, 200, 214
HorapoUo, 52
Huber, 132
Hydrophilus, 181
Hymenoptera, 1, 2, 103, 143, 157.
187

Judulian, Brother, 101

Lamias, 176
Latreille, 52
Leaf -cutter. 214
Lithodomi, 176

261

262 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT

Lizard, 182
Lycosa, 254

,, Narbonnensis, 157

Maistre, Xavier de, 99
Megachile, 100, 214
Minotaurus Typhceus, 91
Mosquito, 181
Moth, Great Peacock, 131
Mulsant, 53
Muscidis, 218

Necrophores, 103, 114
Notidani, 176

Onitis Olivieri, 102

Onthophagus, 80

Ovatus, 103
Taurus. SO, 81, 88
,, Vacca, 91

Oryctes, 145

Oxyrhin;e, 176

Pasteur, 243
Pentamera, 49
Petricolge, 170
Phan^us Milo, 101
Pholaidids, 176
Pliny, 172
Pompilus, 157

Poplar Weevil, 184
Praying Mantis, 100

Rhynchites, 185, 188, 190, 191
Rhyncliophora, 180
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 99

Sacred Beetle, 5, 18, 23, 29, 37,

41, 44, 49, 50, 52, 57
Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 99
Saurians, 182
Scarab, 7, 28, 31, 37, 48, 49, 52, 57

,, Pharaonic, 54
Scolia, Hemorrhoidal, 143

,, Hortorum, 143

,, Interrupted, 150

,, Two-banded, 145
Scorpion, Black, 223, 224
,, Common, 248
,, Languedocian, 224, 243
Sea-urchins. 176
Silphids, 114
Sisyphus, 84
Squali, 179
Squalidse, 176

Tarantula, 157, 158

Vine Weevil, 195

Weevils, 90, 180. 181

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unpiofiiable reading. • ■ . The chief difference between this book and most others on
Nature-study is the prominence which it gives to geological subjects. . . . Copiously
illustrated." — Athenceum.

" Mr. Hall's agreeable, interesting, and instructive volume. . . . It should attract not only
young people, but anyone looking for an easy introduction to Nature-study."— i'co^.fwaw.

"Comprehensive though it is, it has been planned on clear and simple lines. The terms
used are, to begin with, non-scientific, though leading by natural, simple process to the
proper scientific words. . . . The author writes in a free, bright, and fascinating style ; the
book is equally fitted for use by teachers, or for study by the young people themselves." —
A berdeen Free Press.

"An ideal natural history book. . . . Ought to be in every school library in the three
kingdoms. . . . No one can read it without feeling the lure of N.-iture-study." — Review 0/
Reviews.

"Mr. Hall's excellent volume introduces readers to practically every branch of Nature-
study. . . . His descriptions are invariably clear, and the various subjects raised are well
managed. . . . The volume is good value in every way." — Bookman.

" The book is primarily intended for young folks, but it is of equal value to adults, and it is
of fascinating interest to people of all ages. . . . A very acceptaUe work."— IVesUrn Mai/.
" This fascinating volume." — Dundee Advertiser,

HOW TO USE THE MICROSCOPE

Containing 20 full-page Illustrations from Photo-micrographs, and many
Line Drawings in the text.

Large crown 8vo., bound in cloth
{By post, 1/9) PRICE t/6 NET {By post, 1/9)

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

" There are many cheap books on the n-.icroscope before the public, but we do not know
a better than the one now under consideration." — Scottish NaturaList.

" It is, however, the work of an expert, and its simplicity and clearness are the result of
a thorough mastery of the subject." — Scottish Field.

" Elaborate explanations are carefully avoided, but the re.ider who patiently works through
the several chapters will have an accurate and scientific knowledge of microscopic possi-
bilities."— Pat/ Ma^t Gazette. ^

" The text contains a wealth of useful advice and instruction. . . . We heartily recom-
mend the book." — Entomologist.

PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

By M. D. HAVILAND

WILD LIFE ON THE WING

Containing 8 full-page Illustrations and 50 Smaller Drawings in the Text

by Patten Wilson

Large square crown 8vo., cloth, gilt top

{By post, 5'^} PRICE S/b net {By post, 5l^)

These stories of bird life bv field, wood, and moor will be read with much
zest by all nature-lovers They are brightly written and are the outcome
of close observation and much practical knowledge of natural history.
One learns not only the secrets of bird-life, but incidentally much about the
animals that prey on it. We sympathize with the water-hen hatching out
its eggs on a subsiding pool with a vixen waiting to reach her ; we are
relieved when the peregrine falcon escapes from its human captor ; and
we read with interest of the last heron of Ballongarry and of all the super-
stition it aroused in the mind of the old Irish keeper.

Besides the adventures of the water-hen, the falcon, and the heron, there
are equally stirring stories of the crow, the woodcock, the redwing, and
the pheasant.

SOAfE PJiESS OPINIONS

"Stories of bird-life, showing much close observation and practical knowledge, as well as
a bright and pleasant fancy." — Ladies' Field.

" Its feathered heroes and heroines are denizens of our own country, and their lives are
depicted with the intimacy born of close ob.^ervation." — Truth.

" The author artfully combines instruction with adventure stories by land, air, and sea," —
Westminster Gazette.

" A very charming little series of nature stories. Each story consists of the narrative of
some particular bird, whose life history, with its joys and sorrows, its dangers and its lucky
escapes, is set forth as faithfully as man can tell it." Sporting and Dramatic News.

"Under the guidance of Mr. Havil.ind, the reader discovers a whole world of livins,
struggling creatures, and is led to manifest in them a sympathetic interest never felt before."
— Aberdeen Daily J ournal.

By FRANK FINN, B.A., F.Z.A.

TALKS ABOUT BIRDS

Containing 36 Illustrations, 16 of which are full-page in Colour

Small square demy 8vo., cloth, gilt top

PRICE 6/»

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

"It is written in a most interesting style, and is sure to captivate intelligent boys and
girls.' — Western Mtrning News.

" Of exceptional interest and worth, as being on quite unustial lines." — Aberdeen Fret
Press.

" The author writes for young people a book that will interest them and prove a fascinating
introduction to the study of ornithology." — Frteman s Journa.1.

PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK. 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

By C. VON WYSS

GARDENS IN THEIR SEASONS

Containing 58 Illustrations, 32 of which are in Colour

Crown 4to., canvas boards, with Picture in Colour on the cover

PRICE 1/6

SOME, PRESS OPINION'S

" The little folk who are tempted from the gay pictures to the attractive letterpress which
describes them, will meet here one of those born gardeners of the seeds of knowledge, who
become as children themselves to open out to the little ones a g'impse of the poetry of
earth. " ' — A thenauni.

" A most attractive volume, which can hardly fail to prove very popular with the young
readers for whom it is intended." — Bookseller.

" It deals interestingly with life of the garden, the life of the birds and insects as well as
of the plants and flowers. As a help to Nature-study the book ought to be very useful, and
as a gift-book for either girl or boy it would certainly be found suitable." — H'ovian Teacher.

BEASTS AND BIRDS

Containing 55 Illustrations, 31 of which are in Colour

Crown 4to., canvas boards, with Picture in Colour on the cover

PRICE l/g

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

" Th'.s is described as a Nature Book for boys and girls, and would make a charming and
welcome gift for children who are just old enough to learn about, and be interested in animal',.
A short account of animals and their haunts and customs is given in simple straightforward
language, and the profuse illustrations, both plain and coloured, with which the book is fur-
nished, help to make the subject additionally clear and attractive." — Sunday Times.

"Those children who are fond of animals could hardly receive a more pleasing gift."

Birmingham Gazette.

" As entertaining as it is instructive, and delightfully illustrated in colours and black and
white." — Manchester Courier.

"In simple and yet glowing words the author introduces us to the 'Beasts and Birds,'
and the glamour of the pictures is sustained as .ve read about them." — School Nature-Study.

PDBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5 AND 6, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

"PEEPS AT NATURE"

Edited by the Rev. CHARLES A. HALL, F.R.M.S.

Each containing 16 full-page Illustrations, 8 of which are in Colour. Large
crown Svo., cloth, with Picture in Colour on the cover

{Post free, 1/9) PRICE 1 /g NET PER VOLUME {Post free, 1/9)

LIST OF VOLUMES

WILD FLOWERS AND THEIR WONDERFUL
WAYS

By the Rev. Charles A. Hall, F.R.M.S.

BIRD LIFE OF THE SEASONS

By W. Percival Westell, F.L.S.

BRITISH LAND MAMMALS

By A. NicoL Simpson, F.Z.S.

BRITISH FERNS, CLUB-MOSSES, AND HORSE-
TAILS

By Daniel Ferguson, M.A.

BRITISH BUTTERFLIES

By A. M. Stewart.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GARDEN

By W. Percival Westell, F.L.S.

ROMANCE OF THE ROCKS

By the Rev. Charles A. Hall, F.R.M.S.

THE NATURALIST AT THE SEASHORE

By Richard Elmhirst, F.L.S., Superintendent of the Millport
Marine Biological Station.

BRITISH REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS

By A. NicoL Simpson, F.Z.S.

POND LIFE

By the Rev. Charles A, Hall, F.R.M.S.

COMMON BRITISH MOTHS

By A. M. Stewart.

COMMON BRITISH BEETLES

By the Rev. Charles A. Hall, F.R.M.S.

PEEPS AT THE HEAVENS

By the Rev. James Baikie, F.R.A.S. Containing 16 Full-page
Illustrations (8 in Colour). Cloth, Picture Cover. Price l/dnet.

published by ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, \V.

LIFE STORIES OF ANIMALS

Each volume containing 8 full-page Illustrations in Colour, with
Coloured Picture on cover. Large crown 8vo., cloth

PRICE 3/6 EACH

Volumes in the Series

THE BLACK BEAR THE LION

By H. Perry-Robinson By Agnes Herbert

'^"^ ^^"^ THF RAT

By Violet Hunt r ;^M A h

By G. M. A. Hewett
THE DOG

By G. E. Mitton THE SQUIRREL

THE FOWL By T. C. Bridges

^^■'• ^- """' THE TIGER

THE FOX By Lt.-Col. A. F. Mockler-

By J. C. Tregarthen Ferryman

NOTE

The keen interest of the young people of- to-day in Nature,
particularly as exemplified in animals and their habits, is a very
encouraging and noticeable sign of improved upbringing. Children
of nearly all ages are thrilled with the life stories of animals told by
themselves, such as those in this series of volumes. To read of the
squirrel from the squirrel's point of view makes that dainty little
animal s life and habits of intense interest the next time a woodland
walk gives young or old a chance of seeing a little streak of brown
fur slipping along a branch. Although animal autobiographies of
this character are written mainly for the young, and are eagerly read
by boys and girls who are just beyond fairy stones, there is no doubt
that older folk get interested directly they have glanced at a page or
two. This means that the animal's point of view, set do^vn by a
writer who really knows his subject, is always fresh and interesting.
It was Mr. Kipling who told us that the jungle-folk call the two-
legged creatures who carry guns "the man pack," and it was
Mr. Grant Allen who stirred one to sympathize with the maternal
earwig ; and this series of nine books, each illustrated with clever
pictures in colour by artists of repute, will make the world more
interesting to many young folk.

PUBLISHED BV ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

By CONSTANCE INNES POCOCK

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF THE
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

Containing 32 full-page Illustrations from Photographs and a Frontispiece

in Colour

Small square demy 8vo., cloth, gilt top

{By post. 5'4) PRICE 5/. NET (By post, sk)

SOME PKESS OPINIONS

" This handsoms book, with its innumerable illustrations, will be of the greatest interest to
any student of animal life. We congratulate the authoress on the pleasing and learned
manner in which she discourses on the different animals ; their characteristics and habits
she has evidently studied minutely." — British IVeekly.

" A book of peculiar charm." — Manchester Guardian.

" As the wife of the Superintendent of the Gardens, the author has had excellent oppor-
tunity for observing the captives in Regent's Park, and her notes and descriptions, not only
of the more showy animals, but of the more retiring specimens, are remarkably interesting." —
Truth.

"A valuable and handsome souvenir of a visit to that fascinating place." — Christian
World.

" The book is full of anecdotes and tit-bits from the Zoo world, and will form a very
welcome present to any lover of animals." — Nottingham Guardian.

By AGNES HERBERT,
Author of "The Lion" in the "Life Stories of Animals" Series

THE MOOSE

Containing 8 full-page Illustrations by Patten Wilson

Small square demy 8vo. , cloth, gilt top

(By /-OS/, 54) PRICE 5. NET (By post, 5/4)

SOME P/^ESS OPINIONS

" Written with knowledge and sympathy, and the insight compounded of the two." —
Evening Standard.

" One of the most fascinating of wild animals, the life of the Moose is so little known to
the majority of people that this story of his life is of the greatest interest." — Sunday Times.

" In Miss Herbert's book the Moose is drawn so vividly that the reader seems to see bini
palpitating with life, and follows his career with interest right to its tragic close." — Dundee
Advertiser.

" Natural history has seldom been presented in a more fascinating manner than that chosen
by Miss Herbert, whose book will be read with delight by both old and young." — The Sphere.

"Miss Herbert knows him as he is in his haunts, and she presents him with remarkable
clearness and insight. The illustrations by Patten Wilson admirably supplement the author's
vivid narrative, showing many typical scenes, including the pathetic incident of the death of
the Moose cow, the hero's mother." — Nottingham Guardian.

PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK. 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.