UCSB LIBRARY MORE BEETLES BOOKS BY J. HENRI FABRE THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER THE LIFE OF THE FLY THE MASON-BEES BRAMBLE-BEES AND OTHERS THE HUNTING WASPS THE LIFE OF THE CATERPILLAR THE LIFE OF THE GRASSHOPPER THE SACRED BEETLE AND OTHERS THE MASON-WASPS THE GLOW-WORM AND OTHER BEETLES MORE HUNTING WASPS THE LIFE OF THE WEEVIL MORE BEETLES MORE BEETLES BY J. HENRI FABRE TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS FELLOW OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IW U. H. A. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE This, if we count The Life of the Weevil as the third, is the fourth and last volume on Beetles in the Collected English Edition of Fabre's entomological works. The first was entitled The Sacred Beetle and Others; the second The Glow-worm and Other Beetles. Of the fourteen chapters, part of the four devoted to the Minotaur appeared, in an abbreviated form, in The Life and Love of the Insect, prepared by myself for Messrs. Adam and Charles Black and published in America by the Macmillan Co. Similarly, The Pine Cockchafer and the two chapters on the Gold Beetles occur in Mr. Fisher Unwin's Social Life in the Insect World (published in America by the Century Co.), translated by Mr. Bernard Miall, whom I take this oppor- tunity of thanking for his assistance in the translation of the present volume. These seven chapters are included in the Collected Edition by arrangement with the publishers named. ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS. CHELSEA, 29 September, 1921. CONTENTS TRA> CHAPTI I fSLATOR's NOTE . ... :E THE CETONL/E PAGE V I II SAPRINI, DERMESTES AND OTHERS 34 III THE BEADED TROX 55 IV MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS : THE BURROW 72 v MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS: FIRST TEMPTS AT OBSERVATION . 98 VI MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS: FUR- THER OBSERVATIONS . 125 VII MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS: MORAL- ITY 152 VIII THE ERGATES; THE COSSUS . 172 IX THE PINE COCKCHAFER . 194 X XI THE VEGETARIAN INSECTS . THE DWARFS . . . . 215 238 XII SOME ANOMALIES . . . 255 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XIII THE GOLD BEETLES : THEIR FOOD . 278 XIV THE GOLD BEETLES: THEIR NUP- TIAL HABITS 299 INDEX 317 MORE BEETLES CHAPTER I THE CETONLE MY hermitage boasts a long, wide lilac- walk. When May is here and the two rows of bushes, bending beneath their load of clustering blooms, form pointed arches overhead, this walk becomes a chapel, in which the loveliest festival of the year is celebrated beneath the kisses of the morning sun: a peaceful festival, with no flags flap- ping at the windows, no expenditure of gun- powder, no drunken squabbles; a festival of simple creatures disturbed neither by the harsh brass band of the dance nor by the shouts of the crowd acclaiming the amateur who has just won a silk handkerchief at the hop, skip and jump. Vulgar delights of drinks and crackers, how far removed are you from this solemn celebration! I am one of the worshippers in the chapel of the lilacs. MV orison, which cannot be translated into words, is a tender and inti- mate emotion. Devoutly I make my sta- tions from one column of verdure to another, More Beetles telling step by step my observer's rosary. My prayer is an "Oh!" of admiration. To this delicious festival pilgrims have hastened, to gain the Lenten indulgences and to slake their thirst. Here, dipping their tongues by turns into the holy-water stoup of the same flower, are the Anthophora x and her tyrant the Melecta.2 Robber and vic- tim sip their nectar like good neighbours. There is no ill-feeling between them. Both attend to their own affairs in peace. They seem not to know each other. The Osmiae,3 clad in black-and-red velvet, dust their ventral brushes with pollen and make hoards of meal in the reeds round about. Here are the Eristales,4 noisy, giddy-pated insects, whose wings shimmer in the sun like scales of mica. Drunk with syrup, they withdraw from the festival and sleep off their debauch in the shadow of a leaf. 1 One of the wild Bees. Cf. The Mason-bees, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mat- tos: chap, viii; and Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mat- tos: chaps, ii., iv. and vii. — Translator's Note. 2 A parasitic Bee. Cf. The Mason-bees: chap. viii. — Translator's Note. 3 For these wild bees, cf. Bramble-bees and others: passim. — Translator's Note. 4 Drone-flies. — Translator's Note. 2 The Cetoniae These others are Wasps, Polistes,1 hot- tempered swashbucklers. When these intol- erant creatures are abroad, peaceful insects withdraw and establish themselves else- where. Even the Hive-Bee, predominating in numbers and ever ready to unsheathe her sting, makes way for them, busy as she is gathering in the harvest. These thick-set, richly variegated Moths are Sesiae, with wings not dusted with scales throughout. The bare zones, like so much transparent gauze, contrast with the covered zones and are an added beauty. The sober sets off the magnificent. Here is a crazy swarm, eddying, receding, returning, rising and falling. It is the ballet of the common Butterfly-folk, the Cabbage Butterflies,2 all white, with black, eye-shaped dots. They flirt in mid-air, pursuing and pressing their attentions on one another, un- til, weary of frolic, now one, now another of the dancers alights once more upon the 1 Cf. The Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, trans- lated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. vii. ; and The Mason-Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, ix and x. — Trans- lator's Note. 2 Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xiv. — Translator's Note. 3 More Beetles lilacs, quenching her thirst from the am- phorae of the flowers. While the proboscis dives down the narrow throat of the blos- som, sucking the nectar at the base, the wings, gently fluttering, are raised above the back, expanding anew and again standing erect. Almost as numerous but less sudden in flight, because of his wide-spreading wings, is the Machaon, the magnificent Swallow- tail Butterfly, with the orange spots and the blue crescents. The children have come to join me. They are enraptured by this elegant crea- ture, which always escapes their pouncing hands and flies a little farther to taste the nectar of the flowers while moving its wings after the fashion of the Cabbage Butterfly. If the pump is working quietly in the sun- light, if the syrup is rising easily, this gentle fanning of the wings is in all these Butter- flies a sign of satisfaction. A catch! Anna, the youngest of the whole household, gives up all hope of cap- turing the Swallow-tails, who never wait for her nimble little hand to seize them. She has found something more to her liking. It is the Cetonia. The handsome insect has The Cetoniae not yet recovered from the chill of morning; it lies slumbering all golden on the lilac- blossoms, unconscious of danger, incapable of flight. It is plentiful. Five or six are quickly caught. I intervene, so that the rest may be left in peace. The booty is placed in a box, with a bed of blossoms. Presently, during the heat of the day, the Cetonia, with a long thread tied to one leg, will fly in circles round the little girl's head. Childhood is pitiless because it does not understand, for nothing is more cruel than ignorance. None of my madcaps will heed the sufferings of the insect, a melancholy galley-slave chained to a cannon-ball. These artless minds find amusement in torture. J dare not always call them to order, for I admit that I on my side am also guilty, though I am ripened by experience, to some extent civilized and beginning to know a thing or two. They inflict suffering for the sake of amusement anx! I for the sake of in- formation: is it not really the same thing? Is there a very definite line of demarcation between the experiments of knowledge and the puerilities of childhood? I cannot see it. 5 More Beetles Human barbarity in the past employed the rack to force a prisoner to speak. Am I anything but a torturer when I interro- gate my insects and put them to the rack to wrest some secret from them? Let Anna get such pleasure as she can out of her pris- oners, for I am meditating something worse. The Cetonia has things to reveal to us, things that will interest us, beyond a doubt. Let us try to obtain these revela- tions. We cannot, of course, do so without serious inconvenience to the insect. So be it; and now let us proceed: we will silence our kindly scruples for the sake of the story. Among the guests at the festival of the lilacs the Cetonia deserves to be most hon- ourably mentioned. He is of a good size, which lends itself to observation. Though deficient in elegance with his massive, square- cut build, he has splendour in his favour: the gleam of copper, the flash of gold, or the austere magnificence of bronze as it leaves the brass-founder's burnisher. He is a regular frequenter of my enclosure, a neighbour, and will therefore spare me the trips which are beginning to tell upon me. Lastly — and this is an excellent quality when one wishes to be understood by all 6 The Cetoniae one's readers — he is known to everybody, if not by his classic name,1 at least as an object that often meets the eye. Who has not seen him, like a great em- erald lying at the heart of a rose, whose tender blush he enhances by the richness of his jewellery? In this voluptuous bed of stamens and petals he is encrusted, motion- less; he remains there night and day, intoxi- cated by the heady fragrance, drunk with nectar. It needs the stimulus of fierce sun- light to arouse him from his bliss and set him soaring with a buzzing flight. To watch the idle Beetle in his sybaritic bed, without further information, one would hardly suspect him of gluttony. What nourishment can he find on a rose or a clus- ter of hawthorn-blossom? At most a tiny drop of sugary exudation, for he does not browse upon the petals, still less upon the foliage. And can this, a mere nothing, sat- isfy that big body? I hesitate to believe it. In the first week of August I placed in a cage fifteen Cetoniae that had just burst their shells in my rearing-jars. Bronze 1 The Cetonia is also known as the Rose-chafer (C. aurata). Cf. More Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: Trans- lator's Note. 7 More Beetles above an,d violet underneath, they belong to the species C. metallica, FAB. I provide them, according to the resources of the day, with pears, plums, melon or grapes. It is a joy to see them feast. Once at table they do not budge. Not a movement, not even a shifting of the feet. With their heads in the fruit-pulp, often with their bod- ies completely submerged, they sip and swal- low night and day, in the darkness, in the sunlight, without a break. Surfeited with sweets, the guzzlers hold on. Collapsing under the table, that is to say, under the deli- quescent fruit, they still lick their lips, in the blissful drowsiness of a child that drops asleep with its slice of bread and jam at its lips. There is no sportiveness in their orgy, even when the sun shines fiercely into the cage. All activity is suspended; the time is wholly devoted to the joys of the stomach. In this torrid heat it is so pleasant to lie under the greengage, oozing with juice ! With such good things at hand, why go fly- ing across the fields where everything is parched? None dreams of such a thing. There is no scaling of the walls of the cage, The Cetoniae no sudden unfurling of the wings in an at- tempt to escape. This life of junketing has already lasted a fortnight without producing satiety. Such a protracted banquet is not frequent; we do not find it even in the Dung-beetles, who are zealous eaters. When the Sacred Beetle, spinning his little unbroken cord of intesti- nal refuse, has remained a whole day on a tasty morsel, it is the most that the gorman- dizer can allow himself.1 But my Cetoniae have been feasting on the sweets of the plum and pear for a full fortnight; and there is no sign yet that they have had enough. When will the orgy make way for the wed- ding and the cares of the future? Well, there will be no wedding and no family-cares this year. These are put off till next year: a singular postponement, quite at variance with the usual custom, which is to be extremely expeditious in these important matters. It is the season of fruits; and the Cetonia, a passionate glutton, means to enjoy these good things without 1 Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, i to vii. and in particular chap. iv. — Translator's Note. 9 More Beetles being diverted from them by the worries of egg-laying. The gardens offer the luscious pear and the wrinkled fig, its eye moist with syrup. The greedy creature takes posses- sion of them and becomes oblivious to all else. However, the dog-days are becoming more and more pitiless. Day after day, another load of brushwood, as our peasants say, is added to the furnace of the sun. Ex- cessive heat, like cold, produces a suspension of life. To kill the time, creatures that are grilled or frozen go to sleep. The Ceto- niae in my breeding-cage bury themselves in the sand, a couple of inches down. The sweetest fruits no longer tempt them: it is too hot. It takes the moderate temperature of Sep- tember to wake them from their torpor. At this season they reappear on the surface; they settle down to my bits of melon-rind, or slake their thirst at a small bunch of grapes, but soberly, taking only short draughts. The hunger-fits of early days and the interminable filling of the belly have gone for ever. Now comes the cold weather. Again my captives disappear underground. Here they pass the winter, protected only by a layer of 10 The Cetoniae sand a few inches in depth. Under this slight covering, in their wooden shelter, ex- posed to all the winds of heaven, they are not endangered by the severe frosts. I thought them susceptible to cold, but I find that they bear the hardships of the winter remarkably well. They have retained the robust constitution of the larvae, which I used to find, to my astonishment, lying stiff and stark in a block of frozen snow, yet return- ing to life when carefully thawed. March is not over before signs of life re- appear. My buried Beetles emerge, climb up the wire trellis, wandering about if the sun is kind, going back into the sand if the air grows colder. What am I to give them? There is no fruit. I serve them some honey in a paper dish. They go to it without any marked assiduity. Let us fin,d something more to their taste. I offer them some dates. The exotic fruit, a delicious pulp in a thin skin, suits them very well, despite its novelty: they could set no greater store by pears or figs. The dates bring us to the end of April, the time of the first cherries. We have now returned to the regulation diet, the fruits of the country. A very mod- erate consumption takes place: the hour is More Beetles past for feats of gastric prowess. Very soon my boarders grow indifferent to food. I surprise them in nuptial embraces, a sign that egg-laying is near at hand. In antici- pation of events, I have placed in the cage, level with the soil, a pot full of dead, half- rotten leaves. About the summer solstice I see them enter it, one by one, remaining in it for some little time. Then, having fin- ished their business, they return to the sur- face. For a week or two longer, they wan- der about, finally hiding themselves in the sand, at no great depth, and dying. Their successors are in the pot of rotten leaves. Before the en,d of June I find, in the tepid mass, plenty of recent eggs and very young larvae. I now have the explanation of a peculiarity which caused me some con- fusion at the time of my earlier studies. When rummaging through the big heap of leaf-mould which, in a shady corner of the garden, provides me yearly with a rich col- ony of Cetoniae, I used to find, under my trowel, in July and August, intact cocoons which woul,d soon split open under the thrust of the insect inside; I also found the adult Cetonia, who had emerged from her strong-box that very day, and quite close to 12 The Cetoniae these I would find very young larvae, which had only just made their appearance. I had before my eyes the crazy paradox of children born before their parents. The breeding-cage has cleared up these obscure points completely. It has taught me that the Cetonia, in the adult form, lives through a whole year and the summer of the following year. The cocoon is broken during the summer heats of July and August. The regular thing would be, provided the season were propitious, to think at once of the family, after indulging in a few nuptial frolics. This is the general rule among other insects. For them the present form is an efflorescence of brief duration, which the needs of the future employ as quickly as may. The Cetonia does not display this haste. She was a gross eater in her days of pot-bel- lied grubhood; she remains a gross eater be- neath the splendour of her adult cuirass. She spends her life, so long as the heat is not too overwhelming, in the jam-factory of the orchard: apricots, pears, peaches, figs and plums. Lingering over her meal, she for- gets all else and defers her egg-laying to the following year. 13 More Beetles After the torpor of hibernation in some place of shelter, she reappears with the first days of spring. But there is no fruit now; and last year's glutton, who, for that mat- ter, has become a frugal eater, whether by necessity or by temperament, has no other resource than the niggardly drinking-bar of the flowers. When June has come, she sows her eggs in a heap of vegetable mould, be- side the chrysalids whence the adult insect will emerge a little later. This being so, unless we are in the secret, we behold the mad spectacle of the egg preceding the mother that lays it. Among the Cetoniae that make their ap- pearance in the course of the same year we must therefore distinguish two generations. Those of the spring, the inhabitants of the roses, have lived through the winter. They must lay their eggs in June and then die. Those of the autumn, passionate fruit-lovers, have recently left their nymphal dwellings. They will hibernate and will lay their eggs about the middle of the following summer. We have come to the longest days of the year; this is the moment. In the shadow of the pines, against the wall of the enclosure, stands a heap some cubic yards in volume, 14 The Cetoniae formed of all the rubbish of the garden and particularly of dead leaves collected at the time of their fall. This is the compost-fac- tory which supplies the needs of my potted plants. Now this bank of corruption, warmed by the slow decomposition which is working in it, is a paradise for the Cetoniae in their larval state. The fat grub swarms there, finding abundant provender in the shape of fermented vegetable matter and an agreeable warmth, even in the heart of the winter. Four species live here, thriving admirably, despite the annoyance which my curiosity causes them. The most numerous is the Metallic Cetonia (C. metallica, FAB.). This is the insect that provides me with the greater part of my data. The others are the common Golden Cetonia, or Rose-chafer (C. aurata, LINN.), the Dark-brown Ceto- nia (C. morio, FAB.) and lastly the small Funeral-pall Cetonia (C. stictica, LINN.).1 Let us inspect the heap about nine or ten o'clock in the morning. We must be dili- gent and patient, for the advent of the lay- ing mothers is subject to capricious delays 1 This Beetle, also known as C. Oxythyrea, MULS., is black and, in the males, covered with white spots, sug- gesting a pall. — Translator's Note. 15 More Beetles and often makes us wait in vain. Chance favours us. Here is a Metallic Cetonia dropping in from some neighbouring spot. In wide circles she flies once or twice over the heap; she inspects the lie of the land from above and selects a point easy of ac- cess. Whoosh! She pounces upon it, digs with her head and legs and forthwith makes her way in. Which way will she go? At first the sense of hearing tells us of the direction followed: we hear a rustling of withered leaves as long as the insect is work- ing through the dry outer layer. Then nothing but silence: the Cetonia has reached the moist centre of the heap. Here and here only must the laying take place, so that the grub emerging from the egg may find soft food at hand without seeking for it. Let us leave the mother to her task and re- turn a couple of hours later. But first let us reflect upon what has just occurred. A magnificent insect, a living gem of goldsmith's work, was slumbering just now at the heart of a rose, on the satin of its petals, in the sweetness of its scent. And now this voluptuary in her golden tunic, this sipper of ambrosia, suddenly leaves her flower and buries herself in corruption; she 16 The Cetonis abandons the sumptuous hammock, fragrant of attar, to burrow in nauseous filth. Whence this sudden depravity? She knows that her grub will regale itelf on what she herself abhors; and overcoming her repugnance, not even giving it a thought, she takes the plunge. Is she actuated by the memory of her larval days? But what memory of food can she have after a year's interval, above all after an absolute remould- ing of her organism? To draw the Ceto- nia hither, to make her come from the rose to this putrid heap, there is something better than the memory of the belly; there is a blind, irresistible impulse, which acts in the most logical manner under cover of a seem- ing insanity. Let us now return to the heap of leaf- mould. The rustle of the withered leaves has informed us approximately: we know in what direction to make our search, a minute and hesitating search, for we have to follow the mother's trail. Nevertheless, guided by the materials thrust aside on the insect's passage, we reach our goal. The eggs are found, scattered without order, always singly, with no preparatory measures. It is enough that there should be close at hand 17 More Beetles soft vegetable matter, suitably fermented. The egg is an ivory globule, departing only slightly from the spherical form and measuring nearly three millimetres l in di- ameter. The hatching takes place twelve days later. The grub is white, bristling with short, sparse hairs. When laid bare and removed from its leaf-mould, it crawls upon its back, that is to say, it possesses the curious method of locomotion character- istic of its race. With its earliest wriggles it proclaims the art of walking on its back, with its legs in the air. Nothing is easier than to rear this grub. A thin box, which hinders evaporation and keeps the provisions fresh, receives the nurseling together with a selection of fer- mented leaves, gathered from the heap of mould. This is enough: my charge thrives and undergoes its transformation in the following year, provided I take care to renew the victuals from time to time. No entomo- logical rearing gives less trouble than that of the Cetonia-larva, with its robust appetite and its vigorous constitution. Its growth is rapid. At the beginning of August, four weeks after hatching, the grub 1 .117 inch. — Translator's Note. 18 The Cetoniae has reached half its final size. The idea occurs to me to estimate its consumption of food by means of the stercoral granules which collect in the box from the time of its first mouthful. I find, 1 1,978 cubic milli- metres j1 that is to say, in one month the grub has digested a volume of matter equivalent to several thousand times its own initial bulk. The Cetonia-grub is a mill that is always grinding dead vegetable substances into meal; it is a crushing-machine of great efficiency, which night and day, almost all the year round, shreds and powders the matter which fermentation has already re- duced to tatters. In the rotting heap the fibres and veins of the leaves would remain intact indefinitely. The grub takes posses- sion of these refractory remnants; with its excellent shears it tears and minces them very small; it dissolves them, reducing them to a paste in the intestines, and adds them, henceforth capable of being used, to the riches of the soil. In the larval stage, the Cetonia is a most active manufacturer of leaf-mould. When the metamorphosis occurs and I review the results of my insect-rearing for the last time, 1 733 cubic inches. — Translator's Note. 19 More Beetles I am shocked by the amount of eating which my gormandizers have done in the course of their lives; it can be measured by the bowlful. The Cetonia-larva is worth attention from another point of view. It is a corpulent grub, an inch long, with a convex back and a flat belly. The dorsal surface is wrinkled with thick folds, on which the sparse hairs stand erect like the bristles of a brush; the ventral surface is smooth, covered with a fine skin,. through which the ample wallet of ordure shows as a brown patch. The legs are very well-shaped, but are small, feeble and out of proportion to the rest of the body. The creature is given to coiling itself into a closed ring. This is a posture of repose, or rather of anxiety and defence. At such times the living coil contracts so violently that we fear to see it burst open and void its entrails when we seek to unroll it by force. When no longer molested, the grub unrolls itself, straightens out and makes haste to escape. Then a surprise awaits us. If placed upon the table, the harassed creature travels on its back with its legs in the air, inactive. 20 The Cetoniae This extravagant method, contrary to the accepted usages of locomotion, appears at first sight an accident, a chance manoeuvre of the bewildered animal. Not at all: it is a normal manoeuvre; and the grub knows no other. You turn it over on its belly, hoping to see it progress in the customary fashion. Your attempts are useless : obstinately it lies down on its back again, obstinately it crawls along in a reversed position. Nothing will persuade it to walk on its legs. Either it will remain motionless, coiled into a circle, or, straightening itself out, it will travel up- side down. This is its way of doing things. Leave it undisturbed on the table. It sets off, longing to bury itself in the soil and escape from its tormentor. Its progress is by no means slow. The dorsal pads, actu- ated by a powerful layer of muscle, give it a hold even on a smooth surface, thanks to their brush-like tufts of hair. They are ambulacra which, by their multiplicity, exert a vigorous traction. The moving mechanism is apt to roll from side to side. By reason of the rounded form of the back, the grub sometimes turns turtle. The accident is not serious. With a heave of its loins, the capsized grub at once More Beetles recovers its balance and resumes its dorsal crawl, accompanied by a gentle swaying to right and left. It also pitches to and fro. The prow of the vessel, the larva's head, rises and falls in measured oscillations. The mandibles open and bite at space, appar- ently trying to seize some support which is lacking. Let us give it this support: not in the leaf- mould, whose opacity would hide what I want to see, but in a transparent medium. I happen to have what I need, a glass tube of some length, open at both ends and of a gradually diminishing calibre. At the large end the grub enters comfortably; at the other end it finds a very tight fit. As long as the tube is more than wide enough, the grub moves along on its back. Then it enters a part of the tube whose cali- bre is equal to that of its body. From this moment the locomotion loses its abnormal character. No matter what its position, whether the belly is uppermost, undermost or to one side, the grub advances. I see the muscular waves of the dorsal pads moving with a beautiful regularity, like the ripples spreading over a calm sheet of water which has been disturbed by the fall of a pebble. 22 The Cetoniae I see the bristles bowing and standing up again like corn waving in the wind. The head oscillates evenly. The tips of the mandibles are used as a crutch which measures the paces in advance and gives sta- bility by obtaining a purchase of the walls. In all the positions, which I vary at will by turning the tube between my fingers, the legs remain inactive even when they touch the supporting surface. Their part in loco- motion is almost nil. What use, then, can they be? We shall see presently. The transparent channel in which the larva is worming its way tells us what hap- pens in the heart of the heap of garden- mould. Supported on every side at once, close-sheathed in the substance traversed, the grub progresses in the normal position as often as in the reversed position and even oftener. By virtue of its dorsal waves, which come into contact with the surround- ing materials in every direction, it moves back or belly uppermost, indifferently. Here are no longer fantastic exceptions; matters return to their habitual order; if we could see the grub ambling through the heap of rotting leaves, we should- not regard it as in any way peculiar. 23 More Beetles But, when we expose it on the table, we perceive a glaring anomaly, which disap- pears upon reflection. Support is lacking on every side save from below. The dorsal pads, the principal ambulacra, take contact with this one surface; and the .animal straightway walks upside down. The Ceto- nia-grub surprises us by the strangeness of its locomotion merely because we are observ- ing it outside its usual environment. It is thus that the other corpulent, short-legged grubs would travel — the grubs of the Cock- chafer, the Oryctes l or the Anoxia-beetle — were it possible to unroll them entirely and to straighten out the crook of their mighty paunches. In June, which is laying-season, the old larvae that have lived through the winter make their preparations for the transforma- tion. The nymphal caskets are contempo- rary with the ivory globules from which the new generation will emerge. Although rudely made, the Cetonia-cocoons are not without a certain elegance. They are ovoids almost the size of a Pigeon's egg. Those of the Funeral-pall Cetonia, the smallest of the species inhabiting my heap of leaf- 1 The Rhinoceros-Beetle.— Translator's Note. 24 The Cetoniae mould, are very much smaller, hardly larger than a cherry. All, however, have the same shape and the same appearance, so much so that, with the exception of the small cocoons of the Fu- neral-pall Cetonia, I cannot distinguish one from the other. Here the work tells me nothing of the worker; I must wait until the adults come out to name my discoveries cor- rectly. However, as a general rule, subject to many exceptions, the cocoons of the Gol- den Cetonia have an outside facing of the insect's droppings, set close together with- out any definite arrangement. Those of the Metallic Cetonia and the Dark-brown Ceto- nia are covered with remnants of decayed leaves. We must regard these differences as re- sulting merely from the materials that sur- round the grub at the moment when it is building its cocoon and not from a special method of construction. It seems to me that the Golden Cetonia likes building in the midst of its old dejecta, now hard gran- ules, while the other two prefer cleaner spots. Hence, no doubt, the diversity of the outer layer. In the case of the three larger Cetoniae, 25 More Beetles the cocoons are free, that is to say, they do not adhere to a fixed base; they are con- structed without a special foundation. The Funeral-pall Cetonia has other methods. If it finds in the leaf-mould a little stone, no larger than a finger-nail, it will by preference build its hut on this; but, if there is no little stone, it can quite well dispense with it and build as the others do, without any firm sup- port. The inside of the cocoon is smooth as stucco, as is required by the delicate skin first of the grub, then of the nymph. The wall is tough, resisting the pressure of the finger. It consists of a brown, homogeneous material, of a nature which at first is diffi- cult to determine. It must have been a smooth paste which the grub worked in its own fashion, even as the potter works his clay. Does the ceramic art of the Cetonia like- wise employ some sort of fuller's earth? So we should judge from the books, which agree in regarding the cocoons of the Cock- chafer, the Oryctes, the Cetonia and other Beetles as earthy structures. The books, which are generally compilations and not collections of facts directly observed, do not 26 The Cetoniae inspire me with much confidence. In this instance my doubts are increased, for the Cetonia-larva could not find the necessary clay within a short radius, in the midst of the decayed leaves around it. I myself, digging this way and that in the heap, should be greatly put to it to collect enough plastic material to fill a thimble. What of the grub, which no longer stirs from its place when the time has come to shut itself up in a cocoon? It can gather only immediately around it. And what does it find? Solely remains of leaves, humus, a bad mortar that does not set. The con- clusion is inevitable: the grub must have other resources. To divulge these resources will perhaps expose me to the foolish accusation of un- blushing realism. Certain ideas shock us though they are quite straightforward and consistent with the sacred simplicity of things. Nature has not our scruples: she makes direct for her goal, heedless of our approval and our dislike. Let us silence a delicacy which seems out of place: we must ourselves become animals to a certain small extent, if we wish to understand the beau- tiful economy of animal industry. Let us 27 More Beetles gloss over things as best we can, but let us not shrink from the truth. The Cetonia-larva is about to build itself a strong-box in which the transformation, the most delicate of tasks, will be accom- plished; it is about to erect itself an enclosing wall, I might almost say, to spin itself a co- coon. The caterpillar, to weave its cocoon withal, has silk-tubes and a spinneret. The Cetonia-larva, which cannot make use of outside things, has nothing at all, it would seem. But this is a mistake. Its poverty is only apparent. Like the caterpillar, it has secret reserves of building-materials; it has even a spinneret, but at the other end of its body. Its store of cement is its intestine. The grub was a mighty evacuator in its active period, as is proved by the brown granules which it has scattered in profusion along its road. As the transformation ap- proached, it became more moderate; it be- gan to save up, amassing a hoard of paste of a most fine and binding quality. Observe the tip of its belly as it withdraws from the world. You will see a wide dark patch. This is the bag of cement showing through its skin. This store, so well provided, tells us plainly in what the artisan specializes: The Cetoniae the Cetonia-larva works exclusively in fsecal masonry. If proofs were needed, here they are. I isolate some larvae which have attained their full maturity and are ready to build, in small jars, placing one in each. As building needs a support, I provide each jar with some slight contents, which can easily be removed. One receives some cotton-wool, chopped small with the scissors; another some bits of paper, the size of a lentil; a third some pars- ley-seed; a fourth some radish-seed. I use whatever comes to hand, without preference for this or that. The larvae do not hesitate to bury them- selves in these surroundings, which their race has never frequented. There is here no earthy matter, such as we should expect to find used in the construction of the co- coons; there is no clay to be collected. Everything is perfectly clean. If the grub builds, it can only do so with mortar from its own factory. But will it build? To be sure it will and supremely well. In a few days' time I have magnificent co- coons, as strong as those that I extracted from the leaf-mould. They are, moreover, much prettier in appearance. In the flask 29 More Beetles containing cotton-wool, they are clad in a fluffy fleece ; in that containing bits of paper, they are covered with white tiles, as though they had been snowed upon; in those contain- ing radish or parsley-seed they have the look of nutmegs embellished with an accurate milling. This time the work is really beau- tiful. When human artifice assists the tal- ent of the stercoral artist, the result is a pretty toy. The outer wrapper of paper scales, seeds or tufts of cotton-wool adheres fairly well. Beneath it is the real wall, consisting entirely of brown cement. The regularity of the shell gives us at first the idea of an inten- tional arrangement. The same idea occurs to us if we consider the cocoon of the Golden Cetonia, which is often prettily adorned with a rubble of droppings. It looks as though the grub collected from all around such building-stones as suit its purpose and en- crusted them piecemeal in the mortar to give greater strength to the work. But this is not so at all. There is no mosaic-work. With its round rump the larva presses back the shifting material on every side; it adjusts it, levels it by simple pressure and then fixes it, at one point after another, 30 The Cetoniae by means of its mortar. Thus it obtains an egg-shaped cavity which it reinforces at leisure with fresh layers of plaster, until its excremental reserves are exhausted. Every- thing that is reached by the trickling of the cement sets like concrete and henceforth forms part of the wall, without any further intervention by the builder. To follow the grub through the whole course of its labours is impracticable: it works under a roof, protected from our indiscretion. But we can at least surprise the essential secret of its method. I select a cocoon whose softness indicates that the work is not yet completed. I make a mod- erate hole in it. If it were too wide, the breach would discourage the occupant and would make it impossible for the grub to repair its shattered roof, not for lack of materials, but for want of support. Let us make a cautious incision with the point of a penknife and look. The grub is rolled into a hook which is almost closed. Feeling uneasy, it puts its head to the sky- light which I have opened and investigates what has happened. The accident is soon perceived. Thereupon the hook closes en- tirely, the opposite poles of the grub come 31 More Beetles into mutual contact and then and there the builder is in possession of a pellet of cement which the stercoral factory has that moment furnished. To display such prompt obedi- ence the intestine must certainly be pecu- liarly obliging. That of the Cetonia-larva is very highly so; directly it is called upon to act, it acts. Now the true function of the legs is re- vealed. Of no use for walking, they become precious auxiliaries when the time comes for building. They are tiny hands that seize the piece gathered by the mandibles, turn it over and over, and hold it while the mason subdivides it and applies it economically. The pincers of the mandibles serve as a trowel. They cut bit after bit from the lump, chewing and kneading the material and then spreading it on the edge of the breach. The forehead presses and smooths it as it is laid. When the supply of the moment is ex- hausted, the grub, coiling itself again into a closed hook, will obtain a further piece from its warehouse, which remains obedient to its orders. The little that the breach allows us to see — for it is pretty quickly repaired— tells 32 The Cetoniae us what goes on under ordinary conditions. Without the aid of sight, we see the grub evacuating at intervals and renewing its store of cement ; we can follow it as it gath- ers the clod with the tips of its mandibles, squeezing it with its legs, dividing it to its liking and spreading it with its mouth and forehead on the weak spots of the wall. A rolling motion of the rump gives it a polish. Without borrowing any extraneous mate- rials, the builder finds within itself the buil- ding-stones of its edifice. A similar stercoral talent is the portion of other big-bellied larvae, which wear around their abdomen a wide brown sash, the insignia of their craft. With the con- tents of their intestinal wallet they build the hut in which metamorphosis takes place. All tells us of the high economy which knows the secret of turning the abject into the decent and of producing from a box of ordure the Golden Cetonia, the guest of the roses and the glory of the spring. 33 CHAPTER II SAPRINI, DERMESTES AND OTHERS npWENTY thousand, Reaumur l tells us, •*• twenty thousand embryos in the body of the Grey Flesh-fly! 2 Twenty thousand! What does she want with this formidable family? With offspring that reproduce themselves several times in a year, does she intend to dominate the world? She would be capable of it. Speaking of the Bluebot- tle,3 who is far less prolific, Linnaeus 4 al- ready wrote : "Three Flies consume the carcase of a Horse as quickly as a Lion could do it." What could not the other accomplish? 1 Rene Antoine Ferthault de Reaumur (1683-1757), the French physicist and naturalist, inventor of the Reaumur thermometer and author of Memoires pour savoir a I'histoire naturelle des insectes. — Translator's Note. 2 Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, trans- lated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. x. — Trans- lator's Note. 8 Cf. idem: chaps, xiv. to xvi. — Translator's Note. 4 Carolus Linnaeus (Karl von Linne, 1707-1778), the celebrated Swedish botanist and naturalist. — Translator's Note. 34 Saprini, Dermestes and Others Reaumur reassures us: "Despite such amazing fertility," he says, "these sorts of Flies are not commoner than others which resemble them and in whose ovaries we find only two eggs. The mag- gots of the former are seemingly destined to feed other insects, which very few of them escape." Now which are the insects charged with this task of extirpation? The master sus- pects their existence ; he guesses that they are there, without having had the occasion to ob- serve them. My retting-vats provide me with the means of filling up this historical gap; they show me the consumers at their appointed task of thinning out the obtrusive maggot. Let me record this tragic business. A larger Adder is liquefying, thanks to the solvent dribbled by the teeming vermin. The earthenware dish becomes a porringer full of cadaveric fluid whence the reptile's backbone emerges spiral-wise. The scaly sheath swells up and throbs in gentle undula- tions, as though an internal tide were lifting the skin with its ebb and flow. Gangs of workers pass to and fro between skin and muscle, seeking a suitable spot for their ac- tivities. A few of them show themselves 35 More Beetles for a moment between the disjointed scales. Surprised by the light, they dart forth their pointed heads and at once pop in again. Close beside them, in the gaps between the spiral coils, the highly-flavoured broth lies in stagnant channels. Here the greater part are feeding in shoals, motionless, packed to- gether, with their bud-shaped breathing- holes expanded on the surface of the liquid. Their numbers are indefinite and immense, defying computation. Many strangers take part in the maggots' banquet. The first to hasten to it are the Saprini, lovers of corruption, as their name implies. They arrive at the same time as the Luciliae,1 before the flesh liquefies. They take up their positions, inspect the body, tease one another in the sunshine, dis- appear under the corpse. The time has not yet come for a good square meal. They wait. Despite their habit of dwelling in fetid surroundings, the Saprini are pretty insects. Well-armoured, thickset, moving by fits and starts with short, quick steps, they glisten like beads of jet. On their shoulders are 1 Or Greenbottles. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap, ix.— Translator's Note. 36 Saprini, Dermestes and Others chevron-like stripes which the classifier notes to mark where he stands in the midst of this specific variety; they temper the brilliance of their black wing-cases with stippled spaces which diffuse the light. Some 'display pol- ished, shimmering patches on a dull-bronze background chased as though with the graver's tool. Sometimes the sombre ebony costume is embellished with brightly-col- oured ornaments. The Spotted Saprinus decorates each wing-case with a splendid orange crescent. In short, considered merely from the assthetic point of view, these little undertakers' assistants are by no means de- void of merit. They cut an excellent figure in the glass cases of our collections. But one should see them above all at work. The Snake is submerged in the broth of its liquefied flesh. The maggots are legion. With their diadem-like valves gently opening and closing, they lie, spread like a field of flowers on the pool of meat- extract. The hour has come for the Sa- prini to begin feasting. Busily bustling to and fro on the parts that are still uncovered, they scale the reefs and promontories formed by the reptile's coils and from these points, protected 37 More Beetles against the perilous flood, they fish for their favourite titbit. Here is a grub near the bank, one not too large and for that reason all the more tender. One of the gluttons sees it, cautiously approaches the depths, snaps with his mandibles and pulls, uproot- ing his prey. The plump little sausage emerges, wriggling. As soon as it is on dry land, the victim is disembowelled and rap- turously crunched up. Not a scrap is left. The morsel is often shared, two collabora- tors tugging in opposite directions, but with- out a scuffle. Maggot-fishing is carried on in this way at every point of the shore. The catch is not abundant, for most of the fry are some distance from the mainland, in deep waters where the Saprini do not venture. They never risk wetting their feet. However, the tide withdraws by degrees, absorbed by the sand and evaporated by the sun. The grubs retreat under the corpse; the Saprini follow them. The massacre becomes general. A few days later, we remove the Snake. There are no maggots left. Nor are there any in the sand, making ready for the meta- morphosis. The horde has disappeared: it has been eaten. Saprini, Dermestes and Others The extermination is so complete that, to obtain pupae, I have to resort to rearing them in private, guarding the larvae against the invasion of the Saprini. The earthen- ware pans in the open air, though thoroughly searched, never yield me any, however num- erous the maggots were at the outset. Dur- ing my earlier experiments, when as yet I had no suspicion of the massacre, I could not get over my surprise when, after noting an abundance of vermin under this or that piece of carrion a few days before, I no longer found anything, even in the sand. I should have concluded that the occupants had mi- grated in a body, had it been permissible to imagine a maggot making a long journey through a waterless world. The Saprini, those lovers of fat sausages are entrusted with the task of thinning out the Grey Fly, of whose twenty thousand off- spring only a few will survive, just enough to maintain the race within proper limits. They flock about the dead Mole or Adder; but, kept at a distance by the too liquid sanies and, for that matter, able to live on a few frugal mouthfuls, they wait until the maggots' work is finished. Then, the lique- faction of the corpse completed, they slaugh- 39 More Beetles ter the liquidators. To purge the soil swiftly of life's offal, the scavenging maggot multiplies its legions; then, having itself be- come a peril by reason of its numbers, it dis- appears, exterminated, when its cleansing task is done. In my district, I obtain nine species of Saprini, some found under carrion, others under dung. I give their names in a foot- note.1 The first four species hasten to my earthenware pans, but the most numerous and most assiduous, those on whom the bulk of the work falls, are S. subnitidus and 5. detersus. They arrive as early as April, at the same time as the Luciliae, whose off- spring they ravage with the same zeal as that of the Grey Fly. Both of them abound in my charnel-pits until the torrid sun of the dog-days puts an end to the invasion of the Flies by drying up the exposed carrion too quickly. They reappear in September, with the first cool breezes of autumn. Flesh or fish, fur, feather or reptile, every- thing suits them because it also attracts the 1 Under carrion: S. subnitidus, DE MARS: S. detersus ILLIO.: S. maculatus, Ros. : S. eeneus, FAB. — Author's Note. Under dung: S. speculifer, Latr.: S. virescens, PAYK.: S. metallescens, ERICH: S. furvus, ERICH: S. rotundatus, ILLIG.— Author's Note. 40 Saprini, Dermestes and Others maggot, their favourite meat. While waiting for the vermin to grow, they take a few sips of the sanies; but these are scarcely more than an appetizer in prepara- tion for the great feast, when the wriggling grubs are fattened to a turn. Seeing them so active, one at first pictures them as occupied with family-cares. So I believed; and I was wrong. Under the car- rion in my necrotic laboratory, there is never an egg belonging to them, never a larva. The family must be established elsewhere, in the dung-hills and dust-heaps apparently. I have, in fact, found their nymphs, which are easily recognized, in March, on the floor of a poultry-run saturated with the drop- pings of the fowls. The adults visit my ret- ting-pans to feast upon the maggot. When their mission is accomplished, in the late autumn, they seem to return to the filth un- der whose shelter the generation is prepared which, as soon as winter is over, hastens to the dead bodies of animals to moderate the excesses of the Sarcophagae 1 and the Luciliae. The labours of the Fly do not satisfy the requirements of hygiene. When the soil 1 S, carnaria is the Grey Flesh-fly. — Translator's Note. 41 More Beetles has drunk the cadaveric extract elaborated by the grubs, a great deal remains that can- not be liquefied or dried up by the heat. Other workers are needed, who treat the mummified carcase anew, nibbling at the shrivelled muscles and tendons until the relics are reduced to a heap of bones as clean as ivory. The Dermestes are charged with this long labour of gnawing. Two species come to my earthenware pans at the same time as the Saprini: D. undulatus, BRAHM., and D. Frischii, KUGEL. The first, striped with fine, snow-white, wavy lines on a black ground, has a red corselet speckled with brown spots; the second, the larger of the two, is dull black all over, with the sides of the corselet powdered ashen grey. Both wear white flannel underneath, which forms a violent contrast with the rest of the cos- tume and seems inconsistent with the insect's calling. The Necrophorus,1 the burier of the dead, has already shown us this propensity for soft stuffs and the clash of discordant colours. He covers his breast with a waistcoat of nan- 1Or Burying-beetle. Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, xi and xii. — Translator's Note. 42 Saprini, Dermestes and Others keen flannel, decorates his wing-cases with red stripes and sports an orange club at the tip of his antennae. The Wavy Dermestes, wearing a leopard-skin cape and a jerkin striped with ermine, could almost, humble though he be, rival the elegance of this mighty undertaker. Both of them numerous, the two Dermes- tes come to my earthenware receptacles with a common aim; to dissect the dead body to the bone and to feed on what the maggots have left. If the work of these is not com- pleted, if the lower surface of the corpse is still oozing, they wait, gathered on the edges of the pan or clinging in long rows to the cords by which it is slung. In their tumul- tuous impatience, falls are frequent, which throw the clumsy insect on its back and for a moment reveal the white flannel of the belly. The thoughtless Beetle soon re- covers his feet, runs away and once more climbs the strings. In the kindly sunshine, frequent pairings occur, which is another way of killing time. There are no fights for the best places and the best morsels. The banquet is plentiful; there is room for all. At last the victuals are in the requisite' 43 More Beetles condition; the maggots have disappeared, carried off by the Saprini; these last are themselves becoming scarce and are repair- ing elsewhither in search of another hoard of vermin. The Dermestes take possession of the corpse and remain indefinitely, even during the cruel dog-days, when the exces- sive heat and drought have put all else to flight. Under cover of the dried-up car- case, in the shadow of the Mole's fur, which makes an impenetrable screen, they nibble and gnaw and clip as long as a scrap of edible matter remains on the bones. And the work of consuming goes fast, for one of the Beetles, Frisch's Dermestes, is surrounded by her family, who are endowed with the same appetites. Parents and lar- val offspring of all ages feast higgledy-pig- gledy, insatiably. As for the Wavy Derm- estes, the other's collaborator in the dissec- tion of corpses, I do not know where she lays her eggs. My pans have taught me nothing in this respect. As against that, they tell me a great deal about the larva of the other Dermestes. All through the spring an,d the greater part of the summer the adult abounds beneath my carcases, accompanied by the youngsters, 44 Saprini, Dermestes and Others ugly creatures covered with wild bristle of dark hairs. The pitch-black back has a red stripe running down the middle from end to end. The white-leaded lower surface al- ready promises the white flannel of matur- ity. The penultimate segment is armed, above, with two curved points. These are grapnels, which enable the grub to slip swiftly through the interstices of the bones. The exploited carcase seems deserted, so quiet is everything outside. Lift it up. In- stantly what liveliness, what confusion ! Surprised by the sudden rush of light, the hairy-backed larvae dive under the remains, wriggling their way into the crevices of the skeleton ; the adults, whose movements are less supple, run to and fro in their distress, burying themselves as best they can, or flying off. Leave them to their darkness: they will resume the interrupted work and, some time in July, we shall find their nymphs with no other shelter than the remnants of the corpse. Although the Dermestes disdains to bur- row underground in order to undergo their transformation, finding sufficient protection beneath the remains of the wasted corpse, this is by no means the case with the Silpha, 45 More Beetles another exploiter of the dead. Two species visit my pans : S. rugosa, LINN, and S. sinuata, FAB. Although assiduously fre- quented by both species, my appliances tell me nothing definite about the history of these two habitual associates of the Dermes- tes and the Saprinus. Perhaps I took up the matter too late. At the end of the winter, indeed, I find beneath a toad the family of the Wrinkled Silpha. It consists of some thirty naked larvse, glossy, black, flat and tapering to a point. The abdominal segments end on either side in a spike aimed backwards. The penultimate segment has short, brist- ling filaments. Hidden in the shadow of the disembowelled toad, these larvae are nibbling the dry meat, long toasted in the sun. About the first week in May, they repair underground, where each of them digs itself a spherical recess. The nymphs are con- tinually on the alert. At the slightest dis- turbance, they twirl their pointed abdomen, brandishing it to and fro with a rapid whirl- ing motion. At the end of the same month, the adults leave the soil. Equally precocious, it would seem, are the insects that come to 46 Saprini, Dermestes and Others my pans, to eat their fill but not to reproduce their species. Family cares are postponed to a later season, to the end of autumn. I shall mention but briefly the Necro- phorus (N. vestigator, HERCH.), whose feats I have described elsewhere.1 He comes to my apparatus, of course, but with- out making a long stay, the carcases being as a rule too large for his burying-methods. For that matter, I myself would thwart his enterprises if it did suit him. I want to see not burials but operations in the open air. If the sexton is persistent, I dissuade him by pestering him. Let us pass on to others. Who is this, assiduous visitor, but appearing only in small parties, hardly more than four or five at a time? It is an Hemipteron,2 a slender Bug, with red wings and with stout, toothed thighs to its hind-legs; it is the Spurred Aly- dus (A. calcaratus, LINN.J, a near kins- woman of the Reduvius, so interesting be- cause of her explosive egg.3 She too has 1 Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chaps, xi. and xii. — Translator's Note. 2 An order of insects consisting mainly of Bugs. — Translator's Note. 3 The essay on the Masked Reduvius will appear in the following volume, the last volume of the series. — Translator's Note. 47 More Beetles an appetite for game, but how moderate compared with the other's! I see her wan- dering over my specimens in search of a de- nuded bone bleached by the sun. After finding a suitable point she applies the tip of her rostrum to it and for some time remains motionless. With her rigid implement, fine as a horse- hair, what can she extract from that bone? I ask myself in vain, so dry does the surface exploited appear to be. Perhaps she col- lects the vestiges of grease left by the Derm- estes' conscientious tooth. Quite a secon- dary worker, she gleans where others have reaped. I should have liked to follow this bone-sucker's habits more closely and above all to obtain her eggs, in the hope of dis- covering some little mechanical secret at the moment of hatching. My attempts failed. When imprisoned in a glass jar with the victuals which she requires, the Alydus al- lows herself to pine away from one day to the next. She needs to fly in freedom over the neighbouring rosemary-bushes, after her sojourn in the retting-vats. We will close this list of undertakers' assistants with the Staphylini,1 the tribe with 1Or Rove-beetles. — Translator's Note. 48 Saprini, Dermestes and Others the short wing-cases. Two species, both inmates of dung-hills, haunt my earthen-ware pans: Aleochara fuscipes, FAB., and Staphy- linus maxillosus, LINN. My attention is drawn rather to the latter, the family giantess. Barred with ash-grey velvet on a black ground, the Big-jawed Staphylinus reaches me only in small numbers, always one by one. She flies up hastily, perhaps from the stables hard by. She alights, coils her belly, opens her pincers and dives impetuously into the Mole's fur. Then, with her powerful nip- pers, she punctures the skin, now blue and distended by gases. The sanies oozes out. The glutton greedily eats her fill; and that is all. Soon she departs, as suddenly as she came. I have not had the good fortune to see anything further. The big Staphylinus has- tens to my pans only to feast upon a highly seasoned dish. Her family dwelling must be in the 'dung-hills about the stables of the neighbourhood. I should have much liked to see her make her home in my charnel-pits. The Staphylinus is a curious creature in- deed. Her short wing-cases, covering just the top of her shoulders, her fierce mandi- 49 More Beetles bles, overlapping like a meat-hook, and her long, naked abdomen, which she lifts and brandishes in the air, make her a being apart, of alarming aspect. I should like to learn something of her larva. As I cannot do this with the Beetle that visits my Moles, I apply myself to a kindred species, as. nearly as possible her equivalent in respect of size. In winter, when I raise the stones beside the foot-paths, I often come across the larva of the Stinking Staphylinus (S. olens, MULL.), or Devil's Coach-horse. The ugly animal, which is not very different in shape from the adult, measures about an inch in length. The head and thorax are a fine, glossy black; the abdomen is brown and bristles with sparse hairs. The cranium is flat; the mandibles are black an.d very sharp, opening in a ferocious crescent whose width is more than twice the diameter of the head. The mere sight of these curved daggers en- ables us to guess the highwayman's habits. The creature's most singular implement is the end of the intestine, which is covered with a horny substance prolonged into a stiff tube standing at right angles to the axis of the body. This member is an instrument of locomotion, an anal crutch. In walking, so Saprini, Dermestes and Others the animal presses the tip of this crutch to the ground and thrusts backwards as with a lever, while the legs struggle forward. Dore,1 the famous illustrator of extrava- gant notions, conceived a similar system. He shows us somewhere a legless cripple seated in a bowl supported by a pivot and working himself along on his hands. The artist's grotesque imagination might well have been inspired by the grotesque appear- ance of the insect. Even among its own kind, the crutched in- sect is a bad neighbour. Very rarely do I find two larvae under the same stone; and, when this happens, one of the two is always in a pitiful state: the other is devouring it as if it were its ordinary game. Let us watch this conflict of two cannibals, each thirsting for the other's blood. In the arena furnished by a tumbler con- taining some moist sand, I place two larvae of equal strength. The moment they face each other, they suddenly rear up, bending their bodies backwards, with the six legs in the air, hooks of the mandibles wide open and the anal crutch firmly fixed. They look 1 Gustave Dore (1833-1883), the French illustrator of Dante, Rabelais, La Fontaine and many others. — Trans- lator's Note. 51 More Beetles magnificently audacious in this posture of at- tack and defence. This above all is the best moment for recognizing the great ad- vantage of the pivot at the tail. Though in danger of being disembowelled by its ad- versary, the larva has no other support than the tip of the abdomen and the terminal tube. The six legs play no part in sustain- ing it; they wave in the air, all six free and ready to clasp the enemy. The two adversaries are standing face to face. Which of the two will eat the other? Chance decides. Mutual threats are fol- lowed by a hand-to-hand struggle. The fight does not last long. Favoured by the hazards of the fray, or perhaps timing its blows more accurately, one seizes the other by the scruff of the neck. It is done: any resistance on the part of the vanquished is impossible ; blood flows and murder has been committed. When all movement has ceased, the victor devours the slain, leaving only the unpleasantly hard skin. Is this frenzy for killing among creatures of the same species due to cannibalism en- forced by starvation ? I really do not think so. When well-fed to begin with, rich, moreover, in the victuals which I lavish upon 52 Saprini, Dermestes and Others them, these miscreants are as prone as ever to butcher their kith and kin. In vain I overwhelm them with choice morsels : succu- lent sausages in the shape of young Anoxia- larvae ; 1 Vitrinae,2 tiny molluscs which I give them half-crushed, to spare the banqueters the trouble of extracting them from the shell. As soon as they are confronted, the two bandits, which have just been feasting on a prey as bulky as themselves, stand up, challenging each other and snapping at each other until one of the two is dead. Then follows the odious meal. To eat the mur- dered kinsman is, it seems, the usual thing. The Mantis 3 who, in captivity, preys upon her mates has the madness of the rut- ting beast as her excuse. The fierce, jealous creature can find no better way of getting rid of her rivals than to eat them, provided she be the stronger. This procreative deprav- ity is found much higher in the scale. The Cat and the Rabbit notably are prone to de- vour the young family which might stand in the way of their unslaked passions. 1 The Anoxia is a Beetle akin to the Cockchafer. — Translator's Note. 2 A genus of Land-Snails. — Translator's Note. 3 Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, vi. to ix. — Translator's Note. S3 More Beetles In my glass jars and under the flat stones in the fields the Devil's Coach-horse has no such excuse. Thanks to its larval state, it is utterly indifferent to the disorders atten- dant on the pairing. Those of its fellows which it encounters are not its amorous ri- vals. And yet without more ado they seize and slay one another. A fight to the death decides which is to be the consumed and which the consumer. In our language we have the word anthro- pophagi to denote the horrible eating of man by man; we have nothing to express a simi- lar act in animals of the same species. A proverbial phrase would even seem to say that such a term is uncalled for, except where man is concerned, that baffling admix- ture of nobility and baseness. Wolf does not eat Wolf, says the wisdom of the na- tions. Well, here we have the larva of the Stinking Staphylinus giving the lie to the proverb. What a morality. In this connection, I should have wished to consult the Big-jawed Staphylinus when she came to visit my high- ly-seasoned Moles, my putrefying Snakes. But she always refused to divulge her secrets, withdrawing from the charnel-pit once she had filled her maw. CHAPTER III THE BEADED TROX " I 'HE Fly has deserved well of hygiene. -•• The first to come to the dead Mole, she left behind her a garrison of scavengers which, without dissecting-instruments, whether lancets or scalpels, set to work upon the corpse. The most urgent matter was to sterilize the carcase, to extract from it such substances as are readily corrupted, the source of rapid and dangerous putrescence. And this is what the maggot has been doing. From its pointed mouth, for ever poking and rummaging, it dribbled forth a solvent as effective as any in my laboratory; with this reagent it dissolved the flesh and vis- cera, or at least reduced them to a thick liquid broth. Gradually the soil is saturated with the fertilizing moisture, which the plant will soon restore to the laboratory of living chemistry. When her mission is completed, the Fly herself becomes a danger, because of her ex- 55 More Beetles cessive numbers. In order to perform their pressing task more quickly, the mag- gots operate in legions. If not checked, they would encumber the world. The bal- ance of things in general demands their dis- appearance. Then, in due season, the ex- terminator arrives, the Saprinus doting on fat sausages, the slow-trotting Beetle in black armour who massacres the vermin and leaves only enough survivors to maintain the race. The Mole is now a dried-up mummy, but is harmful if affected by moisture. This remnant also has to disappear. The Derm- estes is entrusted with the task. She estab- lishes herself beneath the remains in com- pany with the Silpha, her collaborator. With her patient tooth she files, rasps and disarticulates as long as a scrap of cartilage is left to gnaw. She is greatly assisted by her starveling larvae, who are lither in the back and therefore able to slip into narrow crevices. By the time the Dermestes has finished, my pans contain so many heaps of bones, a conglomeration of Snakes' vertebrae ar- ranged in a row, Moles' jaws, with their fine, insectivorous teeth, Frogs' toe-and-fin- 56 The Beaded Trox ger-joints, radiating like knotty sticks, Rab- bits' skulls overlapping their powerful inci- sors, all white and clean enough to arouse the envy of the people who prepare our ana- tomical specimens. Yes, working one on the soft parts and then the other on the hard, the maggot and the Dermestes have performed a meritori- ous task. There is no longer any pestilen- tial filth, any dangerous effluvia. The resi- due, mostly of a chalky nature, if it still of- fends the eye, is at least capable of vitiating the air, the first aliment of life. General hygiene is satisfied. Besides his bones, the Mole has left the tatters of his fur; the Snake has been flayed in tatters like the skin which boiling water strips from a fleshy root. The Fly's solvent was powerless to affect these refractory sub- stances; the Dermestes refused them. Will these epidermic shreds remain unutilized? Certainly not. Nature, the sublime econo- mist, takes good care that all things return to the treasury of her works. Not an atom must be allowed to go astray. Others will come, frugal and patient pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, and will garner the Mole's fur, hair by hair, to cover 57 More Beetles themselves, to clothe themselves with it; there will be some, we may be sure, that will feast upon the Snake's cast scales. These are the Tineas, the humble caterpillars of no less humble Moths. Everything suits them in the way of ani- mal clothing: bristles, hair, scales, horn, fur, feather; but for their labours they need dark- ness and repose. In the sunshine and bustle of the open air they refuse the relics in my pans; they wait until a gust of wind sweeps the charnel-pits and carries the Mole's vel- vety down or the reptile's parchment into a shady corner. Then, infallibly, the cast-off garments of the dead will disappear. As for the bones, the atmospheric agencies, hav- ing plenty of time, will crumble and disinte- grate them in good time. If I wish to hasten the end of the epi- dermic remains disdained by the Dermestes, I have only to keep them in a dry place, in the dark. Before long the Moth will come to exploit them. They infest my house. I had received the skin of a Rattlesnake from Guiana. The horrible specimen, rolled into a bundle, reached me intact, with its poison- fangs, the mere sight of which makes one shudder, and its alarm of rattling rings. In 58 The Beaded Trox the Carib country it had been steeped in a poison which should have ensured its preser- vation for an indefinite length of time. A useless precaution: the Moths have invaded the thing; they are gnawing at the Rattle- snake's skin and find the unusual dish, here eaten for the first time, excellent. More familiar victuals, such as the skin of our na- tive Snake, tanned by the maggots and the sun, would be exploited with even greater enthusiasm. And any relics of what has once lived are visited by specialists who come hurrying up to work upon dead matter and restore it to circulation under new forms. Among them are some whose peculiar specialty shows us with what scrupulous economy the waste material of life is utilized. Such is the Beaded Trox (T. perlatus, SCRIBA), a humble Beetle, no larger than a cherry-stone at most, black all over and decorated on the wing-cases with rows of protuberances which have earned it the epithet of beaded. Not to know the Trox is quite excusable, for the insect has never been much talked about. It is an obscure creature, over- looked by the historian. When impaled in a collector's box, it ranks close to the Dung- 59 More Beetles Beetles, just after the Geotrupes.1 Its mean and earthy attire denotes a digger. But what precisely is its calling? Like many others, I did not know, when an ac- cidental discovery enlightened me and taught me that the beaded insect deserves some- thing better than a mere compartment in the collector's necropolis. February was drawing to a close. The weather was mild and the sun warm. We had gone off in a family party, with the children's lunch, an apple and a chunk of bread, in the basket, to see the almond trees in bloom. When lunch-time came, we were resting under some great oaks, when Anna, the youngest of the household, always on the watch for "beasties" with her six-year- old eyes, called to me from a distance of a few yards: "A beastie !" she cried. "Two, three, four of them! And such pretty ones! Come and look, papa, come and look!" I ran up to her. The child had dug into the sand, to no great depth, with a bit of stick, and was breaking up a sort of rag of 1 Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, xii. to xiv. — Translator's Note. 60 The Beaded Trox fur. I produced my pocket trowel and joined her in the task; and in a moment I possessed a dozen Trox-beetles, most of whom I found in a filthy tangle of fur and broken bones. They were working away at it and apparently feeding on it. I had dis- turbed them at their banquet. What could this mess be? That was the fundamental question to be solved. Bril- lat-Sayarin x declared as an axiom : "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." 'If I wish to know the Trox, I must first enquire what she eats. Reader, pity the sor- rows of the naturalist! Behold me scruti- nizing, meditating, conjecturing, my mind set in a whirl by an unspeakable problem, a ster- coral problem. Whom am I to hold responsible for this fibrous lump, in which I seem to distinguish Rabbit's fur as the chief ingredient? The probabilities point to the dog. Rabbits abound on the Serignan hills; they even en- joy a certain reputation among our epicures. The village sportsmen hunt them assiduously; and their Dogs, those poachers heedless of iAnthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), the author of La Physiologic du Gout. — Translator's Note. 61 More Beetles licences and of the police, do not fail to harry them on their own account, at all sea- sons, close or open. Two of them are known to me by report : Mirate and Flambard. They meet by ap- pointment of a morning in the market-place, exchange an inquisitive glance, inspect each other with the three regulation turns, lift a leg against the wall . . . and off they go ! For the best part of the morning you can hear them on the neighbouring hill-sides, giving vent to short, sharp yelps, close on the heels of a Rabbit who scampers from thicket to thicket, with his little white scut in the air. At last they return home : the re- sult of the expedition may be read on their bloody chaps: the Rabbit was eaten on the spot, just as it was, skin and all. Does this really explain the substance on which my Trox-beetles were living? It seems to me that it does. Henceforth it would appear an easy matter to rear them. I install the insects in a large earthenware pan with a bed of sand and a wire-gauze cover. The provisions consist of Dog-drop- pings, dried on the road-mender's stone- heaps beside the highway. My menagerie absolutely refuse to look at them. I have 62 The Beaded Trox made a mistake. Then what does it want? It is under hairy ordure that I find the insect, always there and never any else- where. Rarely does a lump of this rough felt fail to conceal a few of them. Under their tight-fitting wing-cases, they have only quite rudimentary wings, unsuited to flight. These short-legged creatures hasten to the titbit and gather about it on foot. They come from afar, from all points of the com- pass, guided by the scent. Once more, what is the origin of this felt, which has a strong enough stench in the fresh state to attract its consumers from such a distance? At last I have my answer. Investigations patiently pursued on the slopes of the hills, above all near the farms, furnish me with a decisive piece of evidence. This is a mass of filth, full of fur and Trox-beetles, like the others, but this time a regular nugget, all glittering with wing-cases of the Golden Carabus.1 Eureka! Never did Dog, even though starving, feed on Beetles, least of all on acrid Carabi. Only the Fox, in time of dearth, accepts such food, in the absence of anything better. Later on he makes up for 1 Or True Ground-beetles. Cf. Chapters XIV and XV of the present volume. — Translator's Note. 63 More Beetles it with Rabbits, slaughtering them by night, when his rivals, Mirate and Flambard, are resting from their labours. The fur from which the Fox's stomach can derive no benefit has its votaries. In the natural state, as it grows on the skins which provide the hat-maker with felt, it suits the Moth; unsuccessfully worked by the carnivore's intestine and seasoned with faecal matter, it delights the Beaded Trox. There are all sorts of tastes in this world, so that nothing may be lost. The menagerie under the wire-gauze (dome, when supplied with the requisite diet of Rabbit's fur pickled by an attempt at digestion, fares very well. Moreover, the food is collected without difficulty. The Fox is only too common in my neighbourhood. I can easily find his furry excreta on the tangled paths which he frequents at night when going his round of the farms. My Trox-beetles have plenty to eat Not endowed with a nomadic tempera- ment and abundantly provided for, they seem very well satisfied with the arrange- ments made on their behalf. By day, they remain on the heaj) of victuals; feeding at leisure, without moving. If I approach the 64 The Beaded Trox wire-gauze cover, they instantly drop down; then, recovering from their excitement, they hide under the heap. There is nothing striking in the habits of these pacific crea- tures, unless it be the pairing, which drags on for two months, frequently broken off, frequently resumed, often a passing fancy. It is never finished. At the end of April I proceed to search under the heap of provisions. The eggs are distributed very near the surface in the moist sand, singly, without cells or any prep- aration by the mother. They are white and globular, about the size of small bird- shot. I find that they are very bulky in com- parison with the size of the insect. Their number is not great. Ten at most is the al- lowance for one mother, as far as I can judge. The larvae soon appear and develop rather quickly. They are naked, cylindri- cal grubs, dull white, curved into a hook like the Dung-beetles', but without the knapsack in which the latter reserve the cement for plastering the interior of the emptied loaf and preserving the victuals from desiccation. The head is powerful and glossy black; there is a brown streak on either side of the first 65 More Beetles thoracic segment ; the legs and mandibles are strongly made. Classed close beside the Dung-eaters, the Trox-beetles form a genus of boorish habits, far removed from the domestic fondness of the Scarabaeus, the Copris l and the others. With them there are no longer provisions stored away beforehand, no rations kneaded for the larva's benefit. The least industri- ous of the Dung-beetles, the Onthophagi,2 for example, pack into the bottom of a pit a short sausage, selected from the best part of the exploited heap; in the dish thus pro- vided they contrive a hatching-chamber, in which the egg is daintily lodged. Thanks to the mother's care, often, also, to the father's, the new-born grub finds itself pro- vided with all it could wish. It is a privi- leged creature, spared the asperities of life. The Trox, on the other hand, has a harsh and pitiless training. The grub has to find board and lodging at its own cost and peril, a serious question even for a consumer of Fox-dung. The mother scatters her eggs 1 For the Scarabaeus, or Sacred Beetle, the Broad- nefcked Scarab, the Spanish Copris and the Lunary Copris, cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chaps, i to x. and xvi. — Translator's Note. 2Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chaps, xi., xvii. and xviii. — Translator's Nt>ie. 66 The Beaded Trox under the furry ordure. Her foresight in the interest of her young goes no further. The cake that nourishes her will feed her family likewise. It is large and will be enough for all. In order to follow the first actions of the grubs, I set apart a few eggs, singly, in a glass tube. At the bottom is a column of moist sand; above this is a store of food taken from that part of the Vulpine excre- ment which is richest in Rabbit's fur. Hatched by day, the grub at first attends to its lodging. It digs, hollowing itself a re- treat in the sand, a short, vertical shaft into which a few scraps of the fostering felt are dragged afterwards. As and when the pro- visions are consumed, the grub returns to the surface to collect more. The manoeuvres of the grubs in the chief establishment, the earthenware pan with the wire-gauze cover, begin and are continued in the same fashion. Under cover of the heap exploited in common, the larvae have dug themselves a vertical shaft apiece, the length of a man's finger and the diameter of a thick pencil. At the bottom of the dwelling there is no mass of victuals stored up in advance, such as the abundance on the surface would 67 More Beetles permit. Instead of hoarding, the Trox- larvas live from day to day, I surprise them, above all in the evening, discreetly climbing to the top, scraping the heap above their pit, collecting a shaggy armful and im- mediately climbing down again tail fore- most. They do not reappear so long as the little bale of fur holds out. When their provisions are finished and their appetite re- turns, they make a fresh ascent and a fresh collection. This frequent coming and going in the shaft threatens sooner or later to bring down the sandy wall. Here we see renewed the industry of the Geotrupes couples, who have a way of plastering the wall of their pit with dung in order to avoid its collapsing while the material of the huge sausage is being amassed on repeated journeys; only, with the Trox, it is the larva itself that un- dertakes the work of consolidation. From end to end it lines its gallery with the same felt on which it feeds. In three or four weeks' time, all the hairy materials of the heap have disappeared un- derground, dragged by the larvae to the bot- tom of their burrows. On the surface of the soil nothing is left except the remains 68 The Beaded Trox of the bones. The adults have gone to earth and are dead or dying. Their time is over. I obtain the first nymphs at midsum- mer. A glass receptacle shows them to me slowly turning round and round and polish- ing with their backs the earthy wall of their cell, a simple, oval cavity. By the middle of July the perfect insect has matured. Not yet defiled by the dirt of its calling, it is really magnificent in its ebony cuirass, its strings of large beads sur- mounted by white hairs, its hinder and mid- dle tarsi shod with bright red. It comes up to the surface, finds the Fox's dejecta, set- tles down and from now onward is a filthy scavenger. Once torpid in the sand, under the heap of ordure which serves it as a roof, it will pass the winter there and resume its labours in the spring. When all is said, the Trox is a somewhat uninteresting insect. One single point in her history deserves to be remembered, namely, her predilection for what the Fox's stomach has refused. I know another in- stance of these peculiar tastes. The Owl, when he has caught a Field-mouse, stuns her with a blow of his beak on the back of the neck and swallows her whole. It is for the 69 More Beetles digestive pouch to bone and skin her and sift the bad from the good. When the se- lection is made — as it is, most admirably — the bird, with a shrug of its body, gets rid of the indigestible stuff; it vomits a pellet of bones and fur. Now, just like the furry mass evacuated by the Fox, these balls of filth have their votaries. I have just seen one of them at work. This is the Choleva tristis, PANZ., a dwarf related to the family of the Silphae. Is the fur of a Rabbit or a Field-mouse such a very precious thing, then, that it has special exploiters appointed to work at it again after the Fox's intestine and the Owl's crop have been unable to break it up and use it? Yes, this fur has a certain value. Nature's treasury claims it for fresh pur- poses with such an imperious voice that our own industries, which in their fashion are endowed with a terrific power, of digestion, cannot guarantee us the protracted posses- sion of what was a scrap of fluff. Cloth comes from the Sheep. It has been worked up by the teeth of machinery at the spinner's and the weaver's; it has been steeped in chemicals at the dyer's; it has passed through worse ordeals than an at- 70 The Beaded Trox tempt to digest it. Is it now safe from attack? No: the Moth vie with us for its possession. Poor swallow-tail coat of mine, of supple broadcloth, companion of my drudgery x and witness of my poverty, I abandon you with- out regret for the peasant's jacket; you are reposing in a drawer, with a few bags of camphorated lavender; the housewife keeps an eye on you and shakes you from time to time. Useless pains! You will perish by the Clothes-moths, as the Mole perished by the maggot, the Snake by the Dermestes and we ourselves by. ... Let us not dig that last pit of all before the hour has struck. Everything must return to the ren- ovating crucible into which death is contin- ually pouring materials to ensure the con- tinual blossoming of life. 1 This is a reference to the days when the author was a provincial schoolmaster. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chaps, xiii., xiv., xix., and xx. — Translator's Note. 71 CHAPTER IV MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS : THE BURROW 'TPO describe the insect which forms the ••• subject of this chapter, scientific nomen- clature has combined two formidable names : that of the Minotaur, Minos' Bull fed on human flesh in the windings of the Cretan labyrinth, and that of Typhon or Typhceus, one of the giants, sons of Terra, who at- tempted to scale heaven. Thanks to the clue of thread which he received from Mi- nos' daughter Ariadne, Theseus the Athen- ian found the Minotaur, slew him, and came out safe and sound, after delivering his country for ever from the dreadful tribute destined for the monster's food. Typhoeus, struck by a thunder-bolt on his piled-up mountains, was hurled into the flanks of Etna. He is still there. His breath is the smoke of the volcano. When he coughs, he spews forth streams of lava; when he shifts his weight from shoulder to 72 The Burrow shoulder, he puts all Sicily in a flutter: he shakes her with an earthquake. It is not unpleasing to find an echo of these old fables in natural history. Mytho- logical names, so resonant and grateful to the ear, do not entail any contradiction with reality, a defect not always avoided by terms entirely built up of data derived from the lexicon. When, moreover, vague analogies connect the fabulous with the historical, then the happiest surnames and forenames are obtained. Minotaurus Typhceus LIN. is an instance in point. It is the name given to a fair-sized black Beetle, closely related to the earth-borers, the Geotrupes.1 This is a peaceable, inoffensive creature, but even better provided with horns than Minos' Bull. None among our armour-loving insects wears so threatening a panoply. The male carries on his corselet a bundle of three sharp spears, parallel and pointed forwards. Imagine him the size of a Bull: Theseus himself, if he met him in the fields, would not dare to face his terrible trident. The Typhoeus of the legend had the am- bition to sack the home of the gods by stack- 1 The Beetle under consideration is known to some nomenclators as Geotrupes Typhoeus. — Translator's Note. 73 More Beetles ing one atop of the other a pile of mountains wrenched from their base; the Typhoeus of the naturalists does not climb: he descends; he bores the soil to enormous depths. The first, with a heave of the shoulder, set a province trembling; the second, with a thrust of his back, makes his little mound quake as Etna quakes when he who lies buried beneath her stirs. Such is the insect which I propose to study to-day, penetrating as far as may be into the secret sources of its actions. The few par- ticulars which I have already gained, during the long period of my acquaintance with it, make me suspect habits worthy of a fuller record. But what is the use of this record, what the use of all this minute research? I well know that it will not bring about a fall in the price of pepper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages or other serious events of this sort, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent upon ex- terminating one another. The insect does not aspire to so much glory. It confines it- self to showing us life in all the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to 74 The Burrow decipher in some small measure the obscur- est book of all, the book of ourselves. Insects are easy to obtain, by no means burdensome to feed and not repulsive when subjected to a physical examination; and they lend themselves far better than the higher animals to our curious investigations. Be- sides, the others are our near kinsfolk and do but repeat a somewhat monotonous theme, whereas insects, with their unparalleled wealth of instincts, habits and structure, re- veal a new world to us, much as though we were conferring with the natives of another planet. This is why I hold insects in such high esteem and constantly renew my untir- ing relations with them. Minotaurus Typhaeus affects the open sandy places where the flocks of Sheep, on their way to the pasture, scatter their trails of black pellets, which constitute his daily food. In their absence, he also accepts the tiny products of the Rabbit, which are easy to gather, for the timid rodent, perhaps afraid of scattering broadcast the evidences of his whereabouts, always goes to some ac- customed spot surrounded by tufts of thyme, to deposit his droppings. 75 More Beetles These to the Minotaur represent victuals of inferior quality, utilized, in the absence of anything better, for his own nourishment, but not served to his family. He prefers those supplied by the flock. Were it a matter of naming him according to his tastes, we should have to call him the assiduous col- lector of Sheep-droppings. This pastoral predilection did not escape the old observers, one of whom speaks of him as the Sheep Sca- rab, Scarabteus ovinus. The burrows, which may be recognized by the little mound that surmounts them first become numerous in autumn, when the rains have at last come to moisten the soil parched by the scorching heat of summer. Then the young of this year emerge slowly from underground and for the first time come out to enjoy the light; then, for a few weeks, they feast in temporary marquees; and next they begin to hoard with a view to the winter. Let us inspect the dwelling: an easy task, for which a simple pocket-trowel will suffice. The mansion occupied in the late autumn is a shaft as wide as a man's finger and about nine inches deep. There is no special cham- ber, but a sunk pit, as perpendicular as the 76 The Burrow inequalities of the soil will allow it to be. The owner, now of one sex, now of the other, is at the bottom, always alone. The time to settle down and establish a family not having yet arrived,, each of them lives like an anchorite and thinks only of his own wel- fare. Above the hermit a vertical column of Sheep-droppings blocks the dwelling. There is often enough to fill the palm of one's hand. How did the Minotaur acquire so much wealth? He amasses it easily, being spared the worry of seeking it, for he is always careful to install himself near a copious def- ecation. He gleans on the very threshold of his door. When he thinks fit, especially at night, he chooses from the heap of pellets one to suit him. Using his clypeus as a le- ver, he loosens it below; rolling it gently, he brings it to the orifice of the pit, where the booty is swallowed up. More follow, one by one, all easily handled because of the olive-like shape. They roll like casks trundled by the cooper. When the Sacred Beetle proposes to go banqueting underground far from the mad- ding crowd, he packs his share of victuals into a ball; he gives it its spherical form, 77 More Beetles that best adapted to transport. The Mino- taur, though also versed in the mechanics of rolling, has no occasion to make these prepa- rations : the Sheep saves him the trouble by modelling fragments which are easily moved. At last, satisfied with his harvest, the gleaner goes indoors. What will he do with his treasure? Feed on it, that goes without saying, until the cold and its con- sequent torpor stay the appetite. But eat- ing is not everything. In the winter, certain precautions become essential in a retreat of only middling depth. When December draws nigh, already we find a few mounds as large as those of spring. They corre- spond with burrows running down three feet or more. In these deeply buried crypts there is always a female who, sheltered from the rough weather outside, is frugally nib- bling at her scanty provender. Dwellings like these, with an equable temperature, are still rare. The majority, always occupied by a single inhabitant, whether male or female, are barely nine inches deep. As a rule, they are padded with a thick blanket, obtained from dry pel- lets, crumbled and reduced to shreds. We may take it that this fibrous mass, which is 78 The Burrow eminently fitted to retain the heat, has a good deal to do with the hermit's comfort in severe weather. In the late autumn, the Minotaur hoards so that he may take refuge in a felt mattress when the cold really sets in. Couples addicted to nest-building in con- cert begin to meet in the early days of March. The two sexes, hitherto isolated in burrows near the surface, are now associated for a long time to come. Where does the meeting take place, where is the agreement to collaborate concluded? One fact, to be- gin with, attracts my attention. At the end of autumn, as in winter, females abound as frequently as the males. When March comes, I find hardly any, so much so that I despair of properly stocking the cage in which I propose to observe the insects' habits. To fifteen males I unearth three fe- males at most. What has become of the latter, so numerous in the beginning? True, I am excavating the burrows most readily accessible to my pocket-trowel. Per- haps the secret of the absentees lies at the bottom of those retreats which are more difficult to inspect. Let us appeal to arms, suppler and stronger than my own; let us take a spade and dig deep into the soil. I 79 More Beetles am rewarded for my perseverance; Females are found at last, as many as I could wish. They are alone, without provisions, at the bottom of a perpendicular gallery whose depth would discourage any one not endowed with exemplary patience. Everything is now explained. From the time of the spring awakening and even some- times at the end of autumn, before they have made the acquaintance of their collabora- tors, the valiant future mothers set to work, choosing a good place and sinking a shaft which, if it does not yet attain the requisite depth, will at least be the starting-point of more considerable works. It is in these shafts, more or less advanced, that the suitors come in search of the workers, at the secret hours of the twilight. Some- times there are several of them. It is not uncommon to find two or three gathered round the same bride. As one is enough, the others decamp and pursue their quest elsewhere, as soon as the lady's choice and perhaps a bit of a skirmish have concluded the matter. The quarrels among these pacific crea- tures cannot be very serious. A little grap- pling with the legs, whose toothed shanks 80 The Burrow grate upon the rigid harness; a few tumbles provoked by blows of the trident : the strife amounts to no more than this. When the superfluous wooers are gone, the pairing takes place, the household is established; and then and there bonds are contracted which are remarkably enduring. Are these bonds never dissolved? Do the husband and wife recognize each other among their fellows? Are they mutually faithful? Cases of connubial disloyalty are very rare, are in fact unknown, on the part of the mother, who has long ceased to leave the house; on the other hand, they are fre- quent on the part of the father, whose duties often compel him to go abroad. As we shall see presently, he is throughout his life the purveyor of victuals, the person ap- pointed to cart away the rubbish. Single- handed, at different hours of the day, he shoots out of doors the earth thrown up by the mother's excavations; single-handed he explores the surroundings of the house at night, in quest of pellets whereof to knead the children's loaves. Sometimes two burrows are side by side. May not the collector of provisions, on re- turning home, easily mistake the door and 81 More Beetles enter another's house? On his walks abroad, does he never happen to meet ladies taking the air who have not yet settled down and then, forgetful of his first mate, does he not qualify for divorce? The question was worth looking into. I have tried to solve it in the following manner. I take two couples from the ground when the excavations are in full swing. Indelible marks, scratched with a needle on the lower edge of the wing-cases, will enable me to dis- tinguish them one from the other. The four objects of my experiment are distrib- uted at random, singly, over the surface of a sandy space some eighteen inches deep. Soil of this depth will be sufficient for the excavations of a night. In case provisions should be needed, I supply a handful of Sheep-droppings. A large earthenware pan, turned upside down, covers the arena, pre- vents escape and affords the darkness fa- vourable to peaceful concentration. Next day, I obtain splendid results. There are two burrows in the settlement and no more; the couples have formed again as they were : each Jack has recovered his Jill. A second experiment, made next day, and yet a third meet with the same success: the 82 The Burrow marked couples are together, those not marked are together, at the bottom of the shaft. Five times more, day after day, I make them set up house anew. Things now be- gin to go amiss. Sometimes each of my four subjects settles down apart from the rest; sometimes the same burrow contains the two males or the two females; sometimes the same vault receives the two sexes, but associated otherwise than in the beginning. I have repeated the experiment too often. Henceforth, disorder reigns. My daily shufflings have demoralized the diggers; a crumbling house that has constantly to be begun afresh has put an end to lawful unions. Respectable married life becomes impossible from the moment when the house falls in from day to day. No matter: the first three experiments, made when scares, time after time renewed, had not yet tangled the delicate connecting thread, seem to point to a certain constancy in the Minotaur's household. The male and female recognize each other, find each other in the confusion of events which my mischievous doings force upon them; they exhibit a mutual fidelity, a very unusual 83 More Beetles quality in the insect class, which is but too prone to forget its matrimonial obligations. How do they recognize each other? We recognize one another by our facial features, which vary so greatly in different individuals, notwithstanding their common likeness. They, to tell the truth, have no faces; there is no expression beneath their rigid masks. Besides, things happen in profound dark- ness. The sensd of sight therefore does not count at all. We recognize one another by our speech, by the tone, the inflection of our voices. They are dumb, deprived of all means of vocal appeal. There remains the sense of smell. Minotaurus finding his mate makes me think of my friend Tom, the house-dog, who, when the moon stirs his emotions, lifts his nose in the air, sniffs the breeze and jumps the garden-walls, eager to obey the remote and magical summons; he puts me in mind of the Great Peacock Moth,1 who hastens from miles afield to pay his respects to the newly-hatched maid. The comparison, however, is far from being complete, the Dog and the big Moth 1 Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xi. — Translator's Note. • 84 The Burrow get wind of the wedding before they know the bride. The Minotaur, on the contrary, has no experience of long pilgrimages and makes his way, within a short radius, to her whom he has already frequented; he recog- nizes her, he distinguishes her from the others by certain emanations, certain indi- vidual secrets inappreciable to any save the enamoured swain. Of what do these efflu- via consist? The insect did not tell me; and that is a pity, for it might have taught us things worth knowing about its powers of smell. Now how is the work divided in this household? To discover this is no easy un- dertaking, for which the point of a penknife will suffice. He who proposes to inspect the burrowing insect in its home must resort to exhausting excavations. We have not here the chamber of the Sacred Beetle, the Copris or other Beetles, which is uncovered with- out trouble with a mere pocket-trowel; we have a shaft whose floor can be reached only with a stout spade, manfully wielded for hours at a stretch. And, if the sun be at all hot, you return from your drudgery, feel- ing utterly worn out. Oh, my poor joints, grown rusty with age ! 85 More Beetles To suspect the existence of a beautiful problem underground and to be unable to dig! The zeal survives, as ardent as in the days when I used to demolish the spongy slopes beloved of the Anthophorae ; 1 the love of research has not abated; but my strength fails me. Fortunately I have an assistant in the person of my son Paul, who lends me the vigour of his wrists and the suppleness of his back. I am the head, he is the arm. The rest of the family, including the mother — and she not the least eager — usu- ally go with us. You cannot employ too many eyes when the pit becomes deep and you have to observe from a distance the tiny objects unearthed by the spade. What one overlooks another will detect. Huber,2 when he was blind, studied the Bees through the intermediary of a clear-sighted and de- voted helper. I am even better off than the great Swiss naturalist. My sight, which is still fairly good though much worn, is as- 1 A genus of wild Bees. Cf. Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, iv. and vii. and passim. — Translator's Note. 2 Franqois Huber (1750-1831), the Swiss naturalist, author of Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles. He early became blind from excessive study and thereafter conducted his scientific work with the aid of his wife. — Translator's Note. 86 The Burrow sisted by the perspicacious eyes of all my family. I owe it to them that I am able to continue my research-work: let me thank them here and now. We are on the spot early in the morning. We find a burrow with a large mound formed of cylindrical plugs forced out as though by blows of the hammer. We clear away this hillock and a pit opens below it. A good, long reed, gathered on the way, is inserted in the hole. Pushed farther home, as the surface soil is cleared away, it will serve us as a guide. The soil is quite loose, unmixed with peb- bles, which are obnoxious to the digging in- sect that loves the perpendicular and especially obnoxious to the cutting edge of the exploring spade. It consists solely of sand cemented with a little clay. The dig- ging would therefore be easy, if one had not to reach depths in which tools become ex- tremely difficult to handle unless the whole area is overturned. The following method gives good results without unduly increasing the volume of earth removed, a procedure to which the owner might object. A space of roughly a yard in radius is attacked around the shaft. As the guiding 87 More Beetles reed is laid bare, we push it lower in. It began by going about nine inches under- ground, it is now eighteen inches down. Soon it becomes impracticable to remove the earth with the spade, which is hampered by lack of room. We have to go on o,ur knees, collect the rubbish in both hands and toss it outside. The more we do so, the deeper the hole becomes, increasing the already enormous difficulty. A moment arrives when, to continue, we are obliged to lie flat on our stomachs and dip the front of our bodies into the hole, as far as our more or less supple waists allow. Each dip flings up a good handful of earth. And the reed goes lower and lower, without giving any indication of an immediate check. It is impossible for my son to continue in this fashion, despite his youthful elasticity. To reach the bottom of the disheartening cavity, he lowers the level of the sustaining soil. A cut is made at one side of the circu- lar pit, giving just enough space to admit his two knees. This is a shelf, a ledge, which will be lowered as we go on. The work is resumed, this time more actively; but the reed, when we consult it, descends, descends to a great depth. The Burrow We lower the supporting shelf still more and employ the spade again. When the rub- bish is removed, the excavation is more than three feet deep. Are we there at last? Not at all : the terrible reed dives still lower down. Let us sink the ledge again and con- tinue. Perseverance is rewarded. At four feet and a half, the reed touches the ob- stacle; it goes no farther. Victory! The task is done: we have reached the Mino- taur's chamber. The pocket-trowel discreetly lays it bare and the occupants appear: first the male, and, a little lower down, the female. When the couple are removed, a dark, cir- cular patch is seen: this is the top of the column of provisions. Let us be careful : dig gently! What we have to do is to cut away the central clod at the bottom of the pit, to separate it from the surrounding earth and then, slipping the trowel under- neath and using it as a lever, to extract the block all in a lump. There ! That's done ! We have the couple and their nest. A morning of arduous digging has procured us these treasures: Paul's broiling back can tell us at the cost of what efforts. This depth of nearly five feet is not and 89 More Beetles could not be uniform: there are many causes that induce it to vary, such as the degree of moisture and consistency in the soil tra- versed, the insect's passion for work and the time available, according to the more or less remote date of the egg-laying. I have seen burrows dip a little deeper; I have seen others reach not quite three feet. In any case, MinotauruSj to settle his family, re- quires a lodging of extravagant depth, such as is dug by no other burrower of my ac- quaintance. Presently we shall have to ask ourselves what imperious needs oblige the collector of Sheep-droppings to dwell at such depths. Before leaving the spot, let us note a fact whose evidence will be of value later. The female was right at the bottom of the bur- row; above her, at some distance, was the male : both were struck motionless with fright in the midst of an occupation whose nature we are as yet hardly able to specify. This detail, observed repeatedly in the dif- ferent burrows dug up, seems to show that each of the two fellow-workers has a def- inite place. The mother, more skilled in nursery mat- ters, occupies the lower floor. She alone 90 The Burrow digs, versed as she is in the properties of the perpendicular, which economizes labour while giving the greatest depth. She is the engineer, always in touch with the working- face of the shaft. The other is her labourer. He is stationed in the rear, ready to load the rubbish on his horny hod. Later, the excavatrix becomes a baker: she kneads the cakes for the children into cylinders; the father is then the baker's boy. He brings her from outside the wherewithal for making flour. As in every well-regulated house- hold, the mother is minister of the interior, the father minister of the exterior. This would explain the invariable position in their cylindrical home. The future will tell us if these conjectures truly correspond with the reality. For the moment, let us examine at our leisure, in the comfort of our own home, the central clod, so laboriously acquired. It contains a preserved foodstuff in the shape of a sausage nearly as long and as thick as a man's finger. This is composed of a dark, compact material, arranged in layers, which we recognize as the Sheep-pellets reduced to small crumbs. Sometimes the dough is fine and almost homogeneous from one end of 91 More Beetles the cylinder to the other; more often the piece is a sort of hardbake, in which large fragments are held together by an amalga- mation of cement. The baker apparently varies the more or less careful composition of her confectionery according to the time at her disposal. The stuff is tightly packed into the closed end of the burrow, where the walls are smoother and more elaborately treated than in the rest of the shaft. The point of the knife easily rids it of the surrounding earth, which peels off like a rind. In this way I obtain the food-cylinder free from any earthy stain. When this is done, let us enquire into the matter of the egg, for this pastry has cer- tainly been manipulated for the sake of a grub. Guided by what I learnt in the old days from the Geotrupes, who lodge the egg at the lower end of their black-pudding, in a special recess contrived in the very heart of the provisions, I look to find the egg of the Minotaur, their near kinsmen, in a hatching-chamber right at the bottom of the sausage. I am mistaken. The egg sought for is not at the spot anticipated, nor at the 92 The Burrow other end, nor in any part whatsoever of the victuals. A search outside the provisions reveals it me at last. It is below the food, in the sand itself, and has benefited by none of the meticulous cares wherein mothers excel. There is here not a smooth-walled chamber, such as the delicate skin of the new-born larva would seem to demand, but a rough, irregular cavity, the result of a mere falling in rather than of material ingenuity. The grub is to be hatched in this rude crib, at some distance from its provisions. To reach the food, it will have to demolish and pass through a ceiling of sand some millime- tres thick. As regards her offspring, the Minotaur mother is an expert in the art of sausage-making, but she knows nothing at all of the endearments of the cradle. Anxious to watch the hatching and observe the growth of the larva, I install my find in cells reproducing as nearly as may be the natural conditions. A glass tube closed at one end of the same diameter as the burrow receives first a bed of moist sand to repre- sent the original soil. On the surface of this layer I place the egg. A little of the same sand forms the ceiling through which 93 More Beetles the new-born grub must pass to reach the provisions. There are none other than the regulation sausage, rid of its earthy rind. A few careful strokes of the rammer make it occupy the available space. Lastly, a plug of wet, but not dripping cotton-wool fills up the cell completely. This will be a source of permanent moisture, similar to that of the depths in which the mother establishes her family. The provisions will thus re- main soft, in accordance with the youthful consumer's needs. This softness of the food and the flavour produced by the fermentation due to mois- ture probably have somthing to say to the instinct to bore deeply at the time of egg- laying. What do the father and mother really want? Do they dig to ensure their own welfare]? Do they go so low down in order to find an agreeable temperature and moisture when the fierce summer heat pre- vails? Not at all. Endowed with a robust constitution and loving the sun's kisses as other insects do, they both inhabit, until the family is founded, a modest dwelling in a convenient position. Not even the inclem- encies of winter drive them to seek a better shelter. 94 The Burrow At nesting-time it is another matter. They descend to a great depth underground. Why? Because their family, which is hatched about June, must find soft food awaiting it at a time when the heat of sum- mer will bake the soil hard as a brick. The tiny sausage, if it lay at a depth of ten or twenty inches, would become hard as horn and uneatable ; and the grub, incapable of bit- ing into the tough ration, would perish. It is important therefore that the victuals should be cellared at a depth where the most violent heat of the sun cannot lead to desiccation. Many other food-packers know the risks of excessive dryness. Each has his own method of warding off the danger. The Geotrupes makes his home under the volu- minous heap dropped by the Mule, an excel- lent obstacle to speedy desiccation. Besides, he works in autumn, the season of frequent showers ; moreover, he gives his product the shape of a big roly-poly, of which the middle part, the only part used, gives up its mois- ture very slowly. For these several reasons, he digs burrows of medium depth. The Sacred Beetle likewise attaches no value to remote retreats. He houses his off- spring in vaults at no great distance from the 95 More Beetles surface of the soil; but he makes amends by fashioning the victuals into a ball : he knows that round tins keep their contents moist. The Copris does very much the same with his ovoids. So with the others, the Sisyphus,1 the Gymnopleurus.2 The Minotaur alone takes an enormous dive underground. There are different reasons that call for this. Here is a second, more imperious even than the first. The dung-workers all go for recent materials, fully endowed with their toothsome and plastic qualities. To this system of baking the Minotaur makes a stronger exception : what he needs is old, dry, arid stuff. I have never seen him, either in my cages or in the open country, gather pel- lets quite recently ejected. He wants them dried by long exposure to the sun's rays. But, to suit the grub, the hard food has to simmer for a long time and to improve by keeping, in surroundings saturated with moisture. So the coarse whole-meal bread is replaced by the bun. The laboratory in which the children's food is prepared must therefore be a very deep-seated factory, which can never be entered by the drought 1 The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap, x., Cf. v— Translator's Note. 2 Cf. idem, chap. viii. — Translator's Note. 96 The Burrow of summer however long prolonged. Here succulence and flavour are imparted to dry materials which no other member of the stercoral guild thinks of employing, for lack of an annealing-chamber, of which Mino- taurus possesses the monopoly. And, the better to fulfil his mission in life, he also possesses an instinct to bore to enormous depths. The nature of the victuals makes an incomparable well-sinker of the three- pronged Dung-beetle; his talents have been determined by a hard crust. 97 CHAPTER V MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS : FIRST ATTEMPTS AT OBSERVATION LONG ago, the Minotaur's cousins, the Geotrupes, afforded me a delightfully unusual spectacle, that of a prolonged associ- ation in pairs, a real domestic couple, work- ing in common for the children's welfare. Philemon and Baucis, as I used to call them, prepared their board and lodging with equal ardour. Philemon, the sturdier of the two, compressed the food by pushing it with his fore-arms; Baucis explored the heap on the surface, picking out the best part and lower- ing by the armful the wherewithal to manu- facture the enormous sausage. It was mag- nificent to see the mother sifting and the father compressing. A cloud overshadowed this exquisite pic- ture. My subjects occupied a cage wherein any inspection demanded an excavation on my part, discreetly conducted, it is true, but enough to startle the labourers and make 98 First Attempts at Observation them stop work. With unsparing patience, I thus obtained a series of snapshots which the logic of things, that delicate cinema- tographer, afterwards combined to form a living scene. I wished for more than this: I should have liked to observe the couple in continuous action, from the beginning to the end of their task. I had to abandon the idea, so impossible did it seem to me to ob- serve the mysterious underground happen- ings without perturbing excavations. To-day, my ambition to achieve the im- possible has returned. The Minotaur pro- claims himself a rival of the Geotrupes; he even appears to be their superior. I pro- pose to follow his actions underground, at a depth of a yard and more, completely at my ease, without in any way distracting the insect from its occupations. To do this I shall need the eyes of a Lynx, which are said to be capable of piercing the opaquest night, whereas I have only my ingenuity to fall back upon in endeavouring to see plainly in the dark. Let us see what it can do. To begin with, the direction of the burrow enables me to foresee that my plan is not altogether absurd. When digging her nest, the Minotaur descends perpendicularly. If 99 More Beetles she worked at random, following all sorts of directions, excavation would demand an infinite area of soil, out of all proportion to the means at my disposal. Well, her inva- riable adherence to the perpendicular in- forms me that I need not trouble about the quantity of sand available, but only about the depth of the bed. In these conditions, the undertaking is not unreasonable. As good luck will have it, I possess a glass tube which has long been diverted from chemistry and placed at the service of entomology. It is a yard or more in length, and over an inch in width. If fixed in a ver- tical position, it will do, I think, for the Minotaur's shaft. I close one end with a plug and fill the tube with a mixture of fine sand and moist clay soil, packing the mix- ture in layers with a ramrod. This column will be the plot of ground allotted to the digger to work in. But it must be kept upright and completed with different accessories essential to success- ful operation. For this purpose, three bam- boo canes are planted in the earth contained in a large flower-pot. Joined at their tips, they form a tripod, a frame supporting the whole structure. The tube is set up in the First Attempts at Observation centre of the triangular base. A small earthenware pie-dish with a hole made in the bottom, receives the open upper end, which projects a little and holds a layer of earth that comes level with the brim. This will represent, around the mouth of the shaft, the space in which the insect can attend to its business, either to shoot the rubbish from the shaft or to gather the provisions round about. Lastly, a glass bell, fitting into the dish, prevents escape and preserves the slight quantity of moisture needed. A few supporting strings and bits of wire keep the whole thing firmly fixed. We must not overlook one most im- portant detail. The diameter of the tube is about twice that of the natural burrow. Therefore, if the insect digs along the axis and in an exactly perpendicular direction, it will have at its disposal more than the re- quired width. It will obtain a channel lined on every side by a wall of sand a few milli- metres thick. We may however assume that the digger, knowing nothing of geomet- rical precision and ignorant of the condi- tions provided for it, will take no account of the axis and will deviate from it to one side or the other. Moreover, the least ad- 101 More Beetles ditional resistance in the substance traversed will cause the Beetle to turn aside slightly, now hither, now thither. Consequently the glass wall will be completely denuded at sun- dry points; windows will be formed, chinks upon which I rely to make observation pos- sible, but which will be hateful to the dark- ness-loving workers. To make sure of these windows and save the insect from them, I sheath the tube in a few cardboard sheaths which can be gently slipped up and down and which fit inside one another. With this arrangement, I shall be able, when required, and without distracting the insect from its work, to create alter- nately, by a simple movement of the thumb, a little light for myself and darkness for the Beetle. The distribution of the movable sheaths, which slip up or down as needed, will allow the tube to be examined from end to end as and when the accidents of boring open up new windows. A last precaution is necessary. If I merely put the couple simply in the dish surmounted by the bell-glass, it is probable that the prisoners will not realize what a small portion of the soil is available for dig- First Attempts at Observation ging. It will be best for me to teach them the right spot in the centre of an impreg- nable area. For this purpose, I leave the top of the tube empty to a depth of a few fingers'-breadths; and, as a glass wall would be impossible to climb, I provide this part with a lift, that is to say, I line it with wire- gauze. When this is done, the two insects, male and female, unearthed together from their natural burrow, are inserted into this entrance-hall, where they will find their fa- miliar environment, the sandy soil. With a little food scattered about the pit, it will be enough, I hope, to make them like their pecu- liar lodging. What results shall I obtain with my rustic apparatus, so long planned by the fireside during the winter evenings? Certainly it is not much to look at; it would gain a poor reception in the laboratories that are con- stantly perfecting their equipment. It is peasant's work, a clumsy combination of common objects. I agree; but let us re- member that, in the pursuit of truth, the poor and simple are by no means inferior to the most magnificent. My arrangement of three bamboo canes has given me delight- 103 More Beetles ful moments; it has provided me with some fascinating glimpses which I will try to set forth. In March, at the time of the great nest- building excavations, I dig up a couple in the fields. I install them in my apparatus. In case provisions should be needed as a re- storative during the laborious sinking of the shaft, I place a few Sheep-droppings under the glass bell, near the mouth of the tube. The trick of the empty entrance-hall, calcu- lated to bring the prisoners into immediate touch with the workable column of earth, succeeds to perfection. Soon after their in- stallation, the captives have recovered from their excitement and are diligently at work. They were taken from their home in the full ardour of excavation and they continue in my garden the task which I interrupted. It is true that I changed the site of their workshop as quickly as I could return from their place of origin, which was not far away. Their zeal has not had time to grow cold. They were digging just before removal and they continue to dig. Time is pressing; the pair will not willingly down tools, even after an upheaval which one would think must have demoralized them. 104 First Attempts at Observation As I anticipated, the digging assumes an eccentric direction, producing in the sandy wall a few gaps in which the glass is laid bare. These peep-holes are none too satis- factory as regards my plans; while some of them permit of clear observation, the greater number are obscured by an earthy veil. Be- sides, they are not permanent. New ones open daily, while others close. These con- tinual variations are due to the rubbish which, laboriously hoisted outside, rubs against the wall, plastering or denuding this point or that. I take advantage of these fortuitous openings to examine as best I may, when the light falls at a favourable angle, the interesting things happening inside the tube. I see over and over again, at my leisure, as often as I please and over a protracted period, what the exhausting inspection of the natural burrows showed me in rare and fleeting glimpses. The mother is always ahead, in the post of honour, at the working- face. Alone she toils and moils, with her clypeus; alone she scrapes and digs, with the harrow of her toothed arms: her mate never relieves her. The father is always in the rear, very busy too, but on another job. His 105 More Beetles task it is to carry the loosened soil outside and to clear up as the pioneer goes deeper and deeper. This labour of his is no slight affair, as we may judge from the mound which he throws up when plying his trade in the mead- ows. It is a big heap of earthen plugs, of cylinders mostly measuring an inch in length. You need only examine the pieces to see that the navvy handles blocks of Cy- clopean dimensions. He does not carry off the excavated soil fragment by fragment; he ejects it in huge agglomerations. What should we think of a miner who was obliged to hoist to the surface, to a height of some hundreds of feet, an over- poweringly heavy hod of coal up a narrow, perpendicular shaft which could be climbed only by the use of his knees and elbows? The Minotaur father's ordinary task is the equivalent of this feat of strength. He performs it with great dexterity. How does he manage to do it? Our bamboo tri- pod will tell us. From time to time, ,the denuded points of the tube afford me a glimpse of his doings. He is stationed at the digger's heels, raking the loosened soil towards him by the armful. 1 06 First Attempts at Observation He kneads it, as its moisture enables him to do, he works it up into a plug which he thrusts back into the shaft. Then the plug begins to move. The load precedes him; and he pushes it from behind with his three- pronged fork. The work of transport would be a magnificent sight did the acci- dental peep-holes in the gallery lend them- selves better to our curiosity. Unfor- tunately, they are few and small and none too clear. Let us try to devise something better. In a dimly-lit corner of my study I hang perpendicularly a glass tube of smaller cal- ibre than the first. I leave it as it is, un- provided with an opaque sheath. At the bottom is a nine-inch column of earth. All the rest is empty and may be easily observed, if the Minotaurs consent to work under such disadvantageous conditions. Provided that the experiment be not unduly prolonged, they do consent and very readily, so im- perious is the need of a burrow as laying- time draws nigh. I extract from the soil a couple engaged in excavating their natural shaft and place them in the glass tube. Next morning I find them continuing their interrupted business 107 More Beetles in broad daylight. Seated a little way off, in the shadow of the corner in which the ap- paratus hangs, I watch the operation, amazed by what I see. The mother digs. The father, at some distance, waits until the heap of rubbish is beginning to hamper the worker's movements. Then he approaches. By small armfuls he draws towards him and slips beneath his abdomen the shifted earth, which, being plastic, forms into a ball under the pressure of the hind-legs. The Beetle now turns about beneath the load. With the trident driven into the bundle, as a pitchfork is driven into a truss of hay, before tossing it into the loft, the fore-legs, with their wide, toothed shanks, gripping the load and preventing it from crumbling, he pushes with all his might. And cheerily 1 The thing moves and as- cends, very slowly, it is true, but still it as- cends ! How is it done, seeing that the too smooth surface of the glass acts as an ab- solute check to the upward movement? The insurmountable difficulty has been provided for. I selected a clay soil likely to leave a trace of its passage. With the cart before the horse, the load itself sands the road and makes it practicable; in rubbing 1 08 First Attempts at Observation past every portion of the wall, it leaves particles of earth which constitute so many points of purchase. Therefore, as he pushes his burden upwards, the Beetle finds behind it a roughened surface which affords him a footing as he climbs. This, after all, is all he needs, though it involves occasional slips and efforts to re- tain his balance, which are unknown in the natural shaft. When he comes to a certain distance from the opening, he leaves his clod, which, shaped by the tube, remains in its place, motionless. He returns to the bottom, not by allowing himself to fall sud- denly, but gradually and carefully, by means of the footholds by which he made his way up. A second pellet is hoisted up and welded to the first. A third follows. At length, with a last effort, he pushes out the whole thing in a single plug. This fractional division is a judicious method. Because of the enormous amount of friction in the narrow and uneven natural shaft, the Beetle would never succeed in hoisting the great cylinders of his mound in one lump ; he carries them up in loads which are not beyond his powers and which are afterwards joined and welded together. 109 More Beetles I am inclined to believe that this work of assembling the component parts is per- formed in the slightly sloping vestibule which usually precedes the perpendicular shaft. Here no doubt the successive clods are com- pressed into one very heavy cylinder, which is yet easily moved along an almost hori- zontal road. Then the Minotaur, with a last thrust of his trident, pushes out the lump, which joins the others on the sides of the mound. They are like so many blocks of hewn stone forbidding access to the home. The rubbish thus suitably moulded provides a Cyclopean system of fortification. In the glass tube, the climbing is such difficult work that the insect is soon dis- couraged. The frail footholds left by the load crumble and fall off, swept away by the tarsi vainly seeking a support; and the tube again becomes smooth over wide extents of its surface. The climber ends by giving up struggling against the impossible; he aban- dons his bundle and drops to the bottom. The works cease henceforth; the couple have recognized the treachery of their strange dwelling. Both of them try to get away. Their uneasiness is betrayed by con- tinual attempts to escape. I set them free. 1 10 First Attempts at Observation They have told me all that they were able to tell me in conditions so favourable to me and so bad for themselves. To return to the large apparatus, where the work is proceeding correctly. The bor- ing, begun in March, finishes by the middle of April. From this time onward, my daily visits no longer show me on the top of the mound a plug of fresh earth, marking a re- cent ejection of rubbish. It must therefore take two or three weeks at least to excavate the dwelling. My ob- servations in the open even lead me to think that a month or longer is not excessive. My two captives, disturbed in the midst of their earlier labours and pressed for time by the lateness of the season, cut short this work, which for that matter they were unable to continue when the cork stopper appeared at the bottom of the tube as an insuperable ob- stacle. The others, working in freedom, have an unlimited depth of sand at their dis- posal. They have plenty of leisure, if they start work in good time. Even before the end of February we see plenty of mounds. Later, these will mark the sites of shafts four or five feet deep. Such pits as these require a full month's labour, if not more. More Beetles Now what do the two well-sinkers eat, during this long period, to keep up their strength? Nothing, absolutely nothing, we are told by the two guests in my apparatus. Neither of them appears looking for food on the surface of the pie-dish. The mother does not leave the bottom for a moment; the father alone goes up and down. When he comes up, it is always with a load of rubbish. I am warned of his arrival by the hillock which shakes and partly crumbles under the impetus of the navvy and his load; but the Beetle himself does not appear, for the mouth of the erupting cone remains closed by the plug ejected. Everything happens in secret, sheltered from the indiscretion of the light. In the same way, in the fields, any burrow in process of construction re- mains closed until it is quite finished. This, it is true, does not prove the abso- lute absence of provisions, for the father might go out at night, collect a few pellets in the neighbourhood of the shaft, push them in, go indoors again and shut up the house. In this way the couple would have enough bread in the larder to last them for a few days. This explanation must be abandoned, 1 12 First Attempts at Observation as we are definitely taught by what happens in my rearing-appliance. Foreseeing a need of food, I had supplied the dish with a few droppings. When the excavation-works were finished, I found these pellets untouched and undiminished in num- ber. The father, supposing him to go strolling about at night, could not fail to see them. He had taken no notice of them. The peasants in my neighbourhood, rude tillers of the soil, have four meals a day. At early dawn, on rising, a hunk of bread and a few dried figs, for a snack, as they put it. In the fields, at nine o'clock, the wife brings the soup and its complement of ancho- vies and olives, which give a man an honest thirst. On the stroke of two, in the shade of a hedge, lunch is taken from the wallet, consisting of almonds and bread and cheese. This is followed by a sleep in the hottest part of the day. When night falls, they go home, where the housewife has made ready a salad of lettuces and a dish of fried pota- toes seasoned with onions. All told, a great deal of eating to a moderate amount of work. Ah, how greatly superior is the Minotaur ! "3 More Beetles For a month and longer, without taking any food, he works like a madman and is always fit and strong. If I told my neighbours, the chawbacons, that in a certain world the la- bourer does a month's hard work without a bite of food, they would reply with an in- credulous guffaw. If I say as much to the chewers of ideas, perhaps I shall scandalize them. No matter: let me repeat what the Mino- taur told me. The chemical energy derived from nourishment is not the only origin of animal activity. As a source of life there is something better than digested food. What? How can I tell? Apparently the effluvia, known or unknown, emanating from the sun and transformed by the organism into a mechanical equivalent. So we were told before by the Scorpion and the Spider;1 So we are told now by the Minotaur, who is more convincing with his arduous calling. He does not eat, yet he is a frantic worker. The insect world is fruitful in surprises. The three-pronged Dung-beetle, an accom- plished faster and nevertheless a remarkable labourer, sets us a magnificent problem. Is 1Cf. The Life of the Spider: thap. v. The essays on the Scorpion will appear in the next, the concluding volume of the series. — Translator's Note. "4 First Attempts at Observation it not possible that on distant planets, goverened by another sun, green, blue, yel- low or red, life might be exempt from the ignominy of the stomach, that lamentable source of atrocities, and maintain its activ- ities merely with the aid of the radiations flooding that corner of the universe? Shall we ever know? I sincerely hope so, our earth being but a stage towards a better world, in which true happiness might well lie in fathoming more and more deeply the unfathomable secret of things. Let us leave these nebulous heights and return to the workaday question of the Mino- taur's affairs. The burrow is ready; it is time to establish the family. I am apprised of this by seeing the father for the first time venture abroad in the daylight. He is very busy exploring the expanse of the dish. What is he looking for? He seems to be seeking provisions for the coming brood. This is the moment to interfere. To facilitate observation, I make a clean sweep. I clear the site of its mound, under which lie buried the victuals which I deemed necessary at the outset, but which have re- mained untouched. These old pellets, soiled with earth, are discarded and replaced by More Beetles others, a dozen in number, distributed around the mouth of the shaft. There are, as I say, precisely twelve, arranged in groups of three, which will make it easier and quicker for me to count them daily through the haze covering the bell. A moderate wa- tering, effected from time to time on the bor- der of soil which surrounds the bell and keeps it in position, produces a humid atmo- sphere inside the apparatus similar to that of the depths favoured by the Minotaur. This element of success should not be omitted. Lastly, I keep a current account in which I enter day by day the pieces stored away. There were twelve at the beginning. If these are exhausted, we shall replace them as often as may be necessary. I have not to wait long for the results of my preparations. That same evening, watching from a distance, I catch sight of the father leaving his home. He makes for the pellets, chooses one that suits him and, with little taps of his head, rolls it as he might roll a barVel. I steal up softly to observe the action. Forthwith the Beetle, timid to excess, abandons his morsel and dives down the shaft. The distrustful fellow has seen me; he has perceived some enormous and 116 First Attempts at Observation suspicious-looking thing moving near at hand. This is more than enough to alarm him and make him postpone his harvesting. He will not reappear until perfect quiet is restored. I now know : he who wishes to watch the gathering of the provisions must display the utmost patience and discretion. I accept the facts : I will be discreet and patient. On the following days, at different hours, I try again, silently and slyly, until success re- wards me for my assiduous vigil. Again and again I see the Minotaur go his harvesting rounds. It is always the male and the male alone that comes out and goes in quest of supplies; the mother never, never on any account, shows herself, being ab- sorbed in other occupations at the bottom of the burrow. The provisions are transported sparingly. Down below, it seems, the culi- nary preparations are minute and deliberate ; the housewife must be given time to work up the morsels lowered to her before we bring others which would encumber the workshop and hinder the manipulation. In ten days, beginning with the I3th of April, the date on which the male leaves home for the first time, I count twenty-three pellets 117 More Beetles stored away, say an average of a little over two in the twenty-four hours. In all, ten days' harvesting and two dozen morsels to manufacture the sausage which will form the ration of one grub. Let us try to catch a glimpse of the couple's behaviour in private. In this con- nection I can have recourse to two methods, which, if employed in alternation and with perseverance, may give me the much-desired spectacle in a fragmentary form. In the first place, there is a large tripod. The narrow column of earth affords, as we know, incidental peep-holes, situated at different heights. I avail myself of these to take a glance at what happens inside. In the sec- ond place, a perpendicular, uncovered tube, the same which I used when investigating the climbing, receives a couple removed from the ground a few hours before, while actively engaged on preparing the foodstuffs. I quite expect that my device will fail to have any lasting effect. Soon demoralized by the peculiarity of their new residence, the two insects will refuse to work, will be- come restless and wish to get away. No matter: before their nest-building ardour dies down, they may be able to supply me 118 First Attempts at Observation with valuable details. On combining the facts collected by means of the two methods, I obtain the following data. The father goes out and selects a pellet whose length is greater than the diameter of the pit. He conveys it to the mouth, either backwards, by dragging it with his fore-feet, or straight ahead, by rolling it with little thrusts of his clypeus. He reaches the edge of the hole. Will he fling the lump down the precipice with one last push? Not at all: he has plans that are incompat- ible with a violent fall. He enters, clasping the pellet with his legs and taking care to insert it by one end. On reaching a certain distance from the bottom, he has only to slant the piece slightly to make it find a support at its two ends against the walls of the shaft: this because of the greater length of its main axis. He thus obtains a sort of temporary flooring able to bear the load of two or three pellets. The whole forms the workshop in which the father will perform his task without dis- turbing the mother, who is herself engaged below. It is the mill whence will be lowered the meal for making the cakes. The miller is well-equipped for his work. 119 More Beetles Look at his trident. On the solid founda- tion 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 mere masculine decoration, the corporation of Dung-beetles boasting many such, of various forms. Well, it is something more than an orna- ment: the Minotaur turns his gaud into a tool. The three points of unequal length de- scribe a concave arc, wide enough to admit a spherical dropping. Standing on his in- complete and quaking floor, which demands the employment of his four hind-legs, propped against the walls of the shaft, how will the Beetle manage to keep the slippery pellet in position and break it up? Let us watch him at work. Stooping a little, he drives his fork into the piece, which is thenceforth rendered sta- tionary, for it is held in the crescent-shaped jaws of the implement. The fore-legs are free ; with their toothed shanks they can saw the morsel, shred it and reduce it to frag- ments which gradually fall through the gaps in the flooring and reach the mother below. First Attempts at Observation The substance which the miller shoots down is not a flour passed through the bolt- ing-sieve, but rather a coarse meal, a mix- ture of pulverized remnants and of pieces hardly ground at all. Incomplete though it be, this preliminary grinding will be of the greatest assistance to the mother in her te- dious job of bread-making: it will shorten the work and allow the best and the second best to be separated forthwith. When everything on the upper story, including the floor itself, is ground to powder, the horned miller returns to the open air, gathers a fresh harvest and starts his work of crumbling anew entirely at his leisure. Nor is the baker inactive in her kitchen. She collects the remnants pouring down around her, subdivides them yet further, re- fines them and sorts them. This, the ten- derer part, for the central crumb; that, tougher, for the crust of the loaf. Turning this way and that, she pats the material with the battledor'e of her flat arms; she arranges it in layers, which presently she compresses by stamping on them where they lie, much after the manner of a vintager treading his grapes. Rendered firm and compact, the mass will keep better. After some ten days More Beetles of this united labour, the couple at last ob- tain the long, cylindrical loaf. The father has done the grinding, the mother the kneading. On the 24th of April, everything being now in order, the male leaves the tube of my apparatus. He roams about in the bell- glass, heedless of my presence, he who was at first so timid and apt to dive down the shaft at the first sight of me. He is indif- ferent to food. A few pellets remain on the surface. He comes upon them at every mo- ment; he disdainfully passes them by. He has but one wish, to get away as fast as he can. This is shown by his restless march- ing and countermarching, by his continual attempts to scale the glass wall. He tumbles over, recovers his footing and begins all over again indefinitely, giving not a thought to the burrow, which he will never re-enter. I let the desperate Beetle exhaust himself for twenty-four hours in vain attempts at escape. Let us come to his assistance now and restore his freedom. Or rather no, for this would mean that We should lose sight of him and remain ignorant of the ob- ject of his perturbation. I have a very large unoccupied rearing-cage. I house the First Attempts at Observation Minotaur in this cage, where he will have plenty of flying-room, choice victuals and sun- light. Next morning, in spite of all these luxuries, I find him lying on his back, with his legs stiff and stark. He is dead. The gallant fellow, having fulfilled his duties as the father of a family, felt his strength fail- ing him; and this was the cause of his rest- lessness. He was anxious to go and die by himself, far away, so as not to defile the home with a corpse and trouble the widow in her subsequent operations. I admire this stoical resignation on the insect's part. If it were an isolated, casual instance, re- sulting perhaps from a defective installation, there would be no reason to dwell upon the Beetle who met with his death in my appara- tus. But here is something that complicates matters. In the open fields, when May is at hand, I often happen upon Minotaurs shrivelling in the sun; and these corpses are those of males, always males, with very few exceptions. Another and a very significant detail is supplied by a cage in which I several times tried to rear the insect. As the bed of soil, some eighteen inches thick, was not deep enough, the prisoners absolutely refused to 123 . More Beetles build their nests in it. Apart from this, the other, usual operations were pursued accord- ing to rule. Well, from the end of April onwards, the males ascend to the surface, one at a time. For a couple of days they wan- der about the trellis-work, anxious to get away. At last they tumble off, lie on their backs and slowly give up the ghost. Age has killed them. In the first week of June, I dig up the soil in the cage from top to bottom. Of the fif- teen males who were there at the beginning, hardly one remains. All have died; all the females survive. The harsh law is there- fore inevitable. After helping with his hod in the lengthy task of sinking the shaft, after amassing, suitable provisions and grinding the meal, the industrious trident-bearer goes away to die far from home. 124 CHAPTER VI MINOTAURUS TYPHQEUS : FURTHER OBSERVATIONS THE bamboo tripod, so alien in its ar- rangement to the Minotaur's habits, might well have been the cause, in part, of the father's premature decease. In the glass tube, only one cylindrical cake alone was pre- pared. Evidently this was not enough. Two at least are needed to maintain the species in the actual state; more would be needed, as many as possible, for increased prosperity. But in my apparatus there is no room, unless the food-cylinders are super- imposed and piled in columns, a mistake which the mother would never commit. Superimposed stories would afterwards make the emergence of the offspring diffi- cult. In their eagerness to reach the light, the oldest, grown sufficiently mature and oc- cupying the foot of the column, would topple over and lacerate the late arrivals, who are 125 More Beetles not yet ready to occupy the top. For a quiet, exodus it is important that the shaft should be free from one end to the other. The several cavities must therefore be grouped side by side and communicate, each by a lateral passage, with the common ascension- shaft. Long ago, the Bison Ortis 1 showed us his preserves, the rations of so many grubs, arranged near the bottom of the burrow. A short passage connected each of the chambers with the vertical shaft. The cells were all grouped on one landing. Probably the Minotaur adopts a similar system. Indeed, when I go digging in the fields, a little late in the season, when the father is already dead, my trowel unearths a second chamber, with an egg and provisions, at some distance from the main chamber, which it- self contains an egg and is duly victualled. Another excavation gives me two eccentric cells. The arrangement is the same in each case, in the blind alley of the burrow and in its annexes: at the base, in the sand, is an egg; above it are the victuals, packed into a column. 1 Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. xvi. — Trans- lator's Note. 126 Further Observations It may be asssumed that, if the difficulty of wielding the spade at the bottom of a fun- nel had not exceeded my assistant's patience and flexibility, similar excavations, repeated throughout the proper season, would have added to the number of cells served by the same shaft. How many are there altogether? Four or five or six? I do not know exactly. A moderate number, in any case. And this is bound to be so. The hoarders of food for the family are not excessively fruitful. They have no time to bequeath supplies to a numerous brood. The rearing-apparatus in the bamboo tri- pod has a surprise in store for me. I in- spect it after the father's departure and de- cease. There is certainly a column of pro- visions similar to that which I dig up in the fields; but these provisions are not accom- panied by an egg, either at the base or else- where. The table is served and the con- sumer is not present. Can it be that the mother is reluctant to populate the incon- venient abode which I force upon her? Ap- parently not, for she would not first have kneaded the long loaf, if that loaf was to have proved useless. When desisting from 127 More Beetles laying because of a defective home, she would have abstained from baking a cake that would serve no purpose. Besides, the same fact recurs under nor- mal conditions. In my dozen excavations in the fields — that their number was no greater must be attributed to the difficulty of the operation — the egg was lacking in three instances. The larder was deserted. No laying had taken place; and the provisions were there, manipulated in the usual fash- ion. What I suspect is that the mother, not feeling in her ovaries germs ripened to the requisite degree, none the less labours to provide a store of food with her collabora- tor. She knows that the horned dandy, the enthusiastic helper, will disappear ere long, worn out by toil and time. She makes the most of his zeal and his energies before being deprived of them. Thus food is prepared in the cellar to be used afterwards by the mother, now a widow. To these provisions which are all the better in that they have been improved by fermentation, the mother will return, moving them and piling them up in a lateral cell, but this time with an egg under the heap. Thus provided for and enabled 128 Further Observations to carry on alone, the widow that is to be will do the rest. The father may now die; the household will not suffer unduly. The father's premature end may well be caused by the melancholy due to inaction. He is a hard worker easily upset by the bore- dom of inactivity. In my apparatus, he pines away, after the first cake has been made, because the workshop is brought to a compulsory standstill, the rest of the glass having no accommodation for superimposed cells, which later would hinder the emergence of the family. For lack of space, the mother ceases to lay eggs; and the father, having nothing more to do, departs to die outside. Idleness has killed him. In the open, the space underground is in- definite; it allows such a group of cells as is needed by the mother's fruitfulness to be formed at the bottom of the shaft; but an- other difficulty arises, and a most serious one. When I myself am the purveyor, there is no fear of famine. I enquire daily into the state of the stores and I renew as required the available provisions scattered over the surface. My prisoners, without being over- loaded, are always in the midst of plenty. It is a very different matter in the fields. 129 More Beetles The Sheep is not so lavish that she always drops at one spot the number of pellets needed by the Minotaur, two hundred and more, as my subsequent observations will testify. An emission of three or four dozen may be regarded as a good many. The ru- minant moves on and continues its distribu- tion elsewhere. Now the pill-gatherer is not of a roaming disposition. I cannot picture him going far in quest of the wherewithal to endow his off- spring. How could he find his way again, after a long expedition, and come back home, pushing with his feet the pellets which he had picked up one by one? That flight and scent combined may enable him to light upon windfalls at a great distance for his own re- fection, I am quite ready to admit : the sober eater needs but little food; and, besides, the matter is not urgent. But, when nest-build- ing is in question, the need is felt of great numbers of pellets, very quickly obtained. The Beetle, it is true, has taken care to es- tablish himself near as copious a heap as possible. At night, he goes the rounds out- side his dwelling, gathering the pellets almost on his threshold; he will even continue his search at a distance of some feet, in familiar 130 Further Observations places, where he cannot go astray. But there comes a time when nothing is left in the neighbourhood ; everything has been har- vested. The hoarder, who cannot bear distant ex- peditions, thereupon perishes of inaction; he quits the home where henceforth there is no more work for him. Having nothing left to do for want of materials, the roller, the bruiser of pills dies out of doors, in the open air. This is my explanation of the males found dead on the surface when May comes. They are the disconsolate victims of their passion for work. They abandon life the moment life becomes useless. If my conjecture is well-founded, it must be possible for me to prolong the existence of these pessimists by placing gradually at the workers' disposal as many pellets as they can wish for. It occurs to me to load the Minotaur with favours; I propose to create on his behalf a paradise where droppings abound, where the sugar-plums will be re- newed as and when those already there are lowered into the cellar. Moreover, this de- lightful land will have a sandy soil, kept moist to the requisite degree; a depth equal to that of the usual burrows; and lastly am- 131 More Beetles pie space to allow several cabins to be grouped at the bottom, one beside the other. My calculations result in the structure which I will now describe. With strips of boarding a good finger's-breadth thick, which will later reduce evaporation, the carpenter builds me a square, hollow prism, measuring some 56 inches in height. Three of its sides are permanently fastened with nails; the fourth consists of three shutters of equal size held in place by screws. This arrange- ment will enable me to inspect at will the top, the bottom or the middle part of the appara- tus without shaking the contents. The in- ner side of the prism measures nearly 4 in- ches each way. The lower end is closed; the upper end is free and has a ledge on which rests a wide, projecting tray, repre- senting the surroundings of the natural bur- row. The tray is covered by a wire-gauze dome. The hollow column is filled with moist sandy earth, suitably packed. The tray itself receives a layer of the earth, a finger's-breadth in depth. There is one indispensable condition to be observed : the earthy contents of the appara- tus must not get dry. The thickness of the planks prevents this partly; but it is not 132 Further Observations enough, especially during the heat of sum- mer. With this purpose in view, the bottom third of the long prism stands in a large flower-pot, filled with earth, which I keep damp by watering it in moderation. A slight absorption of the surrounding mois- ture through the wood will prevent the con- tents from becoming parched. The same contrivance ensures the steadiness of the apparatus, which, firmly implanted in a heavy base, will withstand the onslaughts of the wind, if need be, all the year round. The middle third is wrapped in a thick coat of rags which the watering-can moistens almost daily. Lastly, the top third is bare; but the layer of earth on the tray, subjected by me to pretty frequent artificial rains, transmits a little moisture to it. By means of these various devices, I obtain a column of earth, neither swamped nor parched, of the kind which the Minotaur requires for his nest building. Had I lent an ear to my ambitious plans, I should have had a dozen of these appliances constructed, so many questions were there to be solved; but it is a troublesome business, far beyond the means of my personal ingenu- ity; and impecuniosity, that terrible evil of 133 More Beetles which Panurge complained, curbs my desire for apparatus. I allowed myself two and no more. When they were stocked, I kept them during the winter in a small green-house, for fear of frost in a mass of earth of no great volume. At the bottom of his natural gal- lery, the Minotaur need not dread the severe cold: he is protected by a wall of unlimited thickness. In the narrow quarters of my divisioning, he would have undergone the sorest trials. When the warm weather had come, I set up my two columns in the open air, and a few steps from my door. Standing side by side, they form a sort of pylon, of a strange order of architecture. Not a member of the household passes them without a glance. My own visits are assiduous, especially in the evening and the morning, when the night work begins and when it is finished. What happy moments I have spent, on the lookout near my pylon, watching and meditating! Here are the facts: about the middle of December, I install in each of my two appli- ances a female, selected from among those which best lend themselves to my designs. At this time of the year, the sexes remain 134 Further Observations apart. The males live in burrows of mid- dling depth ; the females go down rather lower. Some of these strenuous workers have already, without the aid of a helper, completed or very nearly completed the well required for the laying. On the loth of De- cember, I unearth one of them at a depth of almost four feet. These early diggers are not what I want. Wishing to observe the work when in full swing, I choose subjects buried not too low down in the fields. In the centre of the column of earth in each apparatus, I make a shallow hole, which marks the beginning of the burrow. I drop the prisoner down it; and this is enough to accustom her to the place. A re- corded number of Sheep-droppings are dis- tributed around the opening. Henceforth things proceed of themselves: I have merely to renew the provisions when the need arises. The cold season is spent in the balmy at- mosphere of a green-house; and nothing re- markable happens. A small mound is formed, hardly big enough to fill the hollow of my hand. The hour has not yet come for serious operations, In the middle of February, when the al- mond trees begin to blossom, the weather is More Beetles very mild. It is no longer winter, and it is not yet spring; the sun is pleasant in the day- time and at night there is a certain charm in the blaze of a few logs upon the hearth. On the rosemary bushes in the garden, already displaying their wealth of liliaceous flowers, the Bees are gathering booty, the red-bellied Osmiee are humming, while the big grey Lo- custs stand twirling their great wings and proclaiming their joy of life. This delicious season of awakening spring should be to the Minotaurs' liking. I marry my captives : I give each of them a mate, a magnificent horned male, brought home from the fields. The household is set up during the night; and without delay the couple get to work in earnest. The co-oper- ation has given fresh life to the workshop. Before this, the males, leading solitary lives in short burrows, used commonly to doze, not caring to gather pellets or to sink shafts of any depth; the females for the most part displayed no greater industry; the burrows remained superficial, the mounds compara- tively flat, the harvest unproductive. As soon as the household is established, they dig deeply, and hoard plentifully. In twice twenty-four hours, the expulsion of rubbish 136 Further Observations has hidden the home beneath a dome-shaped heap of earthly plugs nine inches in width; moreover, a dozen droppings have been sent down into the cellar. This activity is maintained for three months or longer, broken by intervals of repose of varying duration, which are ap- parently rendered necessary by the opera- tions of the miller and baker. The female never appears outside the burrow; it is al- ways the male who emerges and sets out upon his quest, sometimes when twilight falls, more often at a later hour of the night. The crop varies greatly, though I take care to keep the part around the burrow properly supplied. At one time, two or three pellets are enough; at another, as many as twenty are collected in a single night. The gleaner seems to be influenced by the atmospheric conditions. The harvest is usually most active when the sky looks threatening, as though preparing for a storm that fails to materialize, or when I myself create rain by watering the tray of my appa- ratus. In dry weather, on the contrary, whole weeks pass without the slightest at- tempts at storing. As June draws nigh, feeling his end at 137 More Beetles hand, the gallant fellow redoubles his ar- dour; he wishes before he dies to leave his family abundantly provided for. With a not always well-timed enthusiasm, the prod- igal heaps pellet upon pellet, to the pitch of encumbering the burrow and making the mother's business difficult to carry on. Ex- cessive wealth is an incubus. The thought- less Beetle recognizes the fact at last and ejects the superfluous food from the shaft. On the first day of June, in one of my ap- pliances, the sum of pellets sent down amounts to 239, a number that speaks well for the trident-bearer's industry. My rec- ord of the droppings, kept as strictly as a banker's account, confirms the enormous re- sult. I am overjoyed by the treasure of the Minotaurs' ; but, a few days later, an unex- pected issue alarms me. One morning I find the mother dead. She has come up to breathe her last on the surface. It appears to be the rule that neither of the pair shall die in the children's home. It is at a dis- tance, in the open air, that the father and mother meet their end. This reversal of the normal order of de- cease, the mother dying before the father, calls for enquiry. I inspect the inside of the Further Observations apparatus by unscrewing the three movable shutters. My precautions against dryness have been fully successful. The uppermost third of the column of sand has retained a certain moisture which gives firmness and prevents any landslips. The middle third, with its sheath of wet rags, is even more moist. Here the victuals are heaped up in a well-stored granary; the male is there, brisk and energetic. In the lowest third, which stands in the wet earth of a large flower-pot, the plasticity is as great as that which my spade encounters in the deep natural burrow. Everything seems to be in order; and yet there is not a trace of nest- building at the bottom of the shaft; there are no sausages prepared or even preparing. All the pellets are untouched. It is quite obvious : the mother has refused to lay and consequently the father has re- frained from grinding. Directly the knead- ing of loaves is discontinued, meal becomes useless. The harvest is none the less plen- tiful, in view of future events. The 239 pel- lets to which my notes bear witness are there, in their original condition and divided into several heaps. The shaft is not straight; it has spiral slopes, it has landings communi- 139 More Beetles eating with little warehouses. Here are kept in reserve, at every level of the shaft, treasures which the mother will be able to employ even after the hoarder's decease. Pending the arrival of the eggs and the preparation of the loaves on the offsprings' behalf, the zealous father keeps on collect- ing, storing a little of the food at the bot- tom of his dwelling and a great deal more in lateral chambers, distributed over several floors. But the eggs are wanting. What can the reason be? I begin by perceiving that the shaft runs down to the bottom of the appa- ratus, which is 55 inches high. It stops suddenly at the board which closes the bot- tom of the prism. This insuperable ob- stacle shows signs of attempted erosion. The mother, therefore, dug as long as dig- ging was possible; then, coming to a barrier against which all her efforts failed, she climbed back to the surface, worn out and disheartened, having nothing left to do but die, for lack of an establishment to suit her. Could she not lodge her eggs at the bot- tom of the prism, where a degree of moisture is maintained equal to that of the natural burrows? Perhaps not. In my part of the 140 Further Observations world, we had a very peculiar spring in this year 1906. It snowed hard on the 22nd and 23rd of March. Never in this district had I seen so heavy and especially so late a fall of snow. It was followed by an endless drought, which turned the country into a dust-heap. In the apparatus, in which my watchful care maintained the requisite moisture, the mother Minotaur seemed protected against this calamity. There is nothing to tell us, however, that she was not fully cognizant, through the thickness of the planks, of what was happening, or rather about to happen, outside. Gifted with an exquisite sense of atmosphere, she had a presentiment of the terrible drought, fatal to grubs lodged too near the surface. Being unable to reach the deep places recommended by instinct, she died without laying her eggs. I see no other reason than this distrustful meteorology capable of accounting for the facts. The second apparatus, two days after the installation of the couple, provides me with a grievous surprise. The mother, for no apparent cause, leaves the house, goes to earth in the sand on the tray and does not budge, heedless of the cell where her horned 141 More Beetles mate awaits her. Seven times over, at one day's interval, do I carry her home, drop- ping her head foremost down the shaft. It is of no avail: she climbs back persistently during the night, makes off and goes to earth as far away as possible. If the trellis work of the cover did not restrain her flight, she would run away for good, seeking another husband elsewhere. Can the first be dead? Not at all. I find him hale and hearty as ever in the upper level of the pit. Can these stubborn attempts at escape on the part of the mother, so stay-at-home by nature, be caused by incompatibility of tem- per? Why not? The female worker goes away because the male worker does not please her. It was I myself who made the match, which was subject to the hazard of my discoveries; and the suitor has not found favour. If things had happened according to rule, the bride would have made a choice, accepting this one and refusing that, guided by merits of which she alone could judge. When a couple plan a long life together, they do not lightly enter into indissoluble bonds. This at least is the opinion of the Minotaur family. That others, the vast majority, should 142 Further Observations become friends, fall out and make it up again, in sudden and fortuitous encounters, is a matter of no consequence. Life is short; they enjoy it as best they may, with- out being too particular. But here we have the true household, enduring and laborious. How is it possible to toil in double harness for the welfare of the offspring without mutual sympathy? We have already seen the Minotaur couple recognizing each other and coming together again amid the con- fusion resulting from the upheaval of two adjoining burrows; here we find it subject to quite as sensitive a repugnance. The ill- mated bride sulks; she means to get away at all costs. As the divorce seems destined to be in- definitely prolonged, despite the calls to order which I repeat day after day for a week by restoring the female to her burrow, I end by changing the male. I replace him by another, no better — and no worse-look- ing than was the first. Henceforth matters resume their normal course and all is as well as can be. The shaft is deepened, the out- side mound is raised, the provisions are stored away, the factory of preserved food- stuffs is in full swing. 143 More Beetles On the 2nd of June, the total number of pellets carried down amounts to 225. It is a splendid hoard. Shortly after, the father dies of old age. I find him near the mouth of the burrow, convulsively clutching his last pellet which he had not had time to carry down. The malady of age has surprised him in the midst of his labours, has struck him down on the harvest-field. The widow continues her domestic work. To the riches amassed by the deceased, she adds, by her own activity, in the course of the month, thirty more pellets, making in all, since the foundation of the household, 255. Then comes the great heat, which favours idleness and slumber. The mother does not show herself any longer. What does she do down below, in her cool cellar? Like the Copris mother apparently, she looks after her brood, going from cell to cell, sounding the cakes, investigating what is happening inside. It would be an act of barbarism to disturb her. We will wait till she comes out, accompanied by her offspring. Let us profit by this long interval of rest to set forth the little that I have gathered from my attempts at rearing the Minotaur in a glass tube on the regulation diet. The 144 Further Observations egg takes about four weeks to hatch. The first that I find, dating from the I7th of April, gives birth to a grub on the I5th of May. This slow process of hatching can be due only to an insufficiency of heat in the early spring : underground, at a depth of five feet, the temperature hardly varies. For that matter, we shall see the larva likewise taking its time and going through the whole summer before changing into the adult insect. It is so snug inside a sausage, in a cellar free from atmospheric variations, far from the hurly-burly of the outer world, where rejoicings are not unattended by dan- ger; it is so sweet to do nothing, to indulge in digestive slumbers! Why hurry? The bustle of active life will come but too soon. The Minotaurs seem to hold that opinion : they prolong as far as may be the bliss of infancy. The grub which has just been born in the sand pegs away with its legs and mandibles, strains and heaves with its rump, makes it- self a passage and, from one day to the next, reaches the provisions piled up above it. In the glass tube in which I rear it I see it climbing, slipping into crevices, making a selection from the food about it and caprici- 145 More Beetles ously tasting on this side and on that. It coils and uncoils, it wriggles about, it sways to and fro. It is happy. So am I, to see it satisfied and glistening with health. I shall be able to watch its progress to the end. In a couple of months' time, now ascend- ing, now descending through its column of food and stopping at the best places, it is a handsome larva, well-shaped, neither fat nor spare, not unlike the Cetonia-grub in appear- ance. Its hind-legs have none of the shock- ing irregularity that used to surprise me so greatly when I was studying the family of the Geotrupes. The grub of the last-named has hind-legs weaker than the rest, twisted, unfit for walk- ing and turned over on its back. It is born a cripple. The grub of the Minotaur, de- spite the close analogy between the two dung- workers, is exempt from this infirmity. Its third pair of legs is no less accurate in shape and arrangement than the two other pairs. Why is the Geotrupes knock-kneed at birth and his close kinsman perfect? This is one of those little secrets of which it is only fit- ting that we should know how to admit our ignorance. The larval stage ends in the last days of 146 Further Observations August. Under the grub's digestive efforts, the food-column, while retaining its form and its dimensions, has been converted into a paste whose origin it would be impossible to recognize. There is not a crumb left in which the microscope can detect a fibre. The Sheep had already divided the vegetable matter very finely; the grub, an incomparable triturator, has taken the aforesaid matter and subdivided it yet further, grinding it after a fashion. In this way it extracts and uses the nutritive particles of which the Sheep's fourfold stomach is unable to take advantage. To dig itself a cell in this unctuous mass ought, according to our logic, to suit the grub, desirous of a yielding mattress for the nymph to lie on. We are mistaken in our suppositions. The grub retreats to the lower end of its column, retires into the sand where the hatching took place and there makes itself a hard, rough cavity. This aberration, which takes no account of the future nymph, and its delicate skin, would be likely to surprise us if the homely dwelling were not subjected to improvement. The hermit's wallet has retained a part of the digestive residues, residues destined to 147 More Beetles disappear completely, for at the moment of the nymphosis the body must be free of any impurity. With this cement, which has un- dergone a prolonged refining in the intestine, the grub plasters its sandy wall. Using its round rump as a trowel, it smooths, polishes and repolishes the layer of stucco, until the rude cell of the start becomes a velvet-lined chamber. All is ready for the stripping that releases the nymph. This nymph has peculiarities deserving special mention. The male's tri- dent, in particular, is already, both in shape and size, what it will be in the adult Beetle. At last, when October is at hand, I obtain the perfect insect. The total period of develop- ment, beginning with the egg, has lasted five months. Let us return to the Minotaur mother who is provided with 255 pellets, 225 of which were amassed by the male, before he went out to die, and 30 by the widow herself. When the great heat comes, she no longer shows herself at all, detained at the bottom of the shaft by her domestic duties. In spite of my impatience to know what is going on indoors, I wait, keeping ever on the watch. At last October brings the first rains, so 148 Further Observations greatly wished for by the husbandman and the Dung-beetle alike. Recent mounds be- come numerous in the fields. This is the season of autumnal rejoicings, when the soil, which has been like a cinder all the summer, recovers its moisture and is covered with green grass to which the shepherd leads his flock; it is the festival of the Minotaur, the exodus of the youngsters who, for the first time, enter into the joys of the daylight, among the sugar-plums dropped by the Sheep in the pastures. However, nothing appears under the cover of my apparatus. It is no use waiting any longer, the season is too far advanced. I take the pylon to pieces. The mother is dead; she is even in tatters, a sign of an end already remote. I find her at the top of the vertical shaft, not far from the orifice. This position seems to show that, when her work was done, the mother climbed up to die out of doors as the father had done before her. A sudden and final break-down overcame her on the way, almost at her door. I expected something better; I pictured her coming out accompanied by her offspring: the plucky creature deserved to see her fam- ily revelling in the last fine days of the year. 149 More Beetles I do not abandon this idea of mine. If the mother did not come out with the young- sters, there must have been — and in fact there were, as we shall see — important rea- sons for it. Right at the bottom of the column of sand, in the part which is coolest thanks to the large, frequently watered flower-pot, are eight sausages, eight portions of preserved food admirably worked into a fine paste. These are grouped in different stories, close together and each communica- ting with the main corridor by a short pas- sage. Since each of these sausages was a ration, the brood amounts to eight. This restricted family was anticipated. When rearing becomes a costly matter, the mothers wisely limit their fecundity. But here is an unexpected state of affairs : the food-cylinders contain no adult, not even a nymph; they have nothing but grubs in them, though these are glossy with health and almost fat enough to clamour for nym- phosis. This check in their development arouses surprise, at a time when the new generation is full-grown, leaves the native homestead and is beginning to dig the win- ter burrows. The Minotaur mother's sur- prise must have exceeded my own. Weary 150 Further Observations of waiting for her offspring, she decided to set out by herself before her strength was completely exhausted, lest she should block the ascending shaft. A spasm, due to the inexorable toxin of old age, struck her down almost on the threshold of the dwelling. The reason for this abnormal prolonga- tion of the larval state escapes me. Perhaps it should be attributed to some hygienic flaw in my rearing-apparatus. It is obvious that all my care was unable to realize fully the conditions of well-being which the grubs would have found in the dampness of a deep, unlimited soil. Within a narrow prism of sand, too much exposed to the variations of temperature and humidity, feeding did not take place with the customary appetite and growth was slower in consequence. After all, these belated larvae appear to be in first- rate fettle. I expect to see them undergo their transformation at the end of the winter. Like the young shoots whose development is interrupted by the inclemency of the sea- son, they await the stimulus of spring. 151 CHAPTER VII MINOTAURUS TYPHCEUS : MORALITY THIS is the moment to recapitulate the Minotaur's merits. When the severe cold is over, he sets forth in quest of a mate, buries himself with her and thenceforth re- mains faithful to her, despite his frequent trips 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 emancipa- tion of the family. For a month and longer, he loads the rubbish of the excavation on his forked hod; he carries it up outside and re- mains ever patient, never disheartened by his arduous feats of climbing. He leaves the easy work of the excavating rake to the mother and reserves for himself the more troublesome task, the exhausting transport through a narrow, perpendicular shaft of great depth. Next, the navvy becomes a collector of foodstuffs; he goes catering and gathers the 152 Morality wherewithal for his children to live upon. To ease the work of his mate, who shreds and compresses the preserved foodstuffs, packing it away in layers, he once more changes his trade and becomes a miller. At some distance from the bottom, he bruises and crumbles the materials found hardened by the sun; he makes them into a meal and flour which gradually pour down into the ma- ternal bake-house. Lastly, worn out by his efforts, he leaves the home and goes out to die at a distance, in the open air. He has gallantly performed his duty as the head of a family; he has spent himself without stint to secure the prosperity of his off- spring. The mother, on her side, allows nothing to divert her from her housekeeping. Throughout her working life, she never goes out: dom'i mansit, as the ancients used to say of their model matrons: she stays at home, kneading her cylindrical loaves, filling them with an egg, watching them until the exodus arrives. When the time comes for the au- tumnal merry-making, she at last returns to the surface, accompanied by her youngsters, who disperse at will to feast in places fre- quented by the Sheep. Thereupon, having 153, More Beetles nothing left to do, the devoted creature perishes. Yes, amid the general indifference of the fathers towards their offspring, Minotaurus displays a most remarkable zeal where his family is concerned. Forgetful of himself, refusing to be led away by the rapturous de- lights of spring, at a time when it would be so pleasant to see a little of the country, to feast among his fellows, to tease and flirt with his fair neighbours, he sticks to his work underground and wears himself out to leave a fortune to his family. Here is one who, when his limbs stiffen in death, is well en- titled to say: "I have done my duty; I have worked." Now whence did this industrious labourer derive his self-abnegation and his ardour for the welfare of his young? Men tell us that he acquired them by a slow progress from middling to good, from good to excellent. Fortuitous circumstances, hostile one day, favourable the next, have taught him what he knows. He has learnt, as man does, by experience: he too develops, progresses and improves himself. In his little Dung-beetle brain, the lessons of the past leave lasting impressions which, Morality matured by time, ripen into more considered actions. Necessity is the supreme inspirer of the instincts. Spurred by necessity, the animal is its own artisan; by its own energies it has made itself as we know it, with its im- plements and its trade. Its habits, its capa- city and dexterity are integrals of infinite mi- nuteness acquired on the illimitable path of time. Such is the argument of the theorists, an argument sufficiently imposing to allure any independent mind, did not the empty reso- nance of words usurp the full sonority of reality. Let us question the Minotaur about all this. To be sure, he will not reveal to us the origin of instinct; he will leave the problem as obscure as ever; but he will at least be able to cast a glimmer into some little corner; and any light, however faint, even the flickering light of a taper, must be welcome in the dark tavern into which the animal leads us. The Minotaur works exclusively with Sheep-droppings; for the purposes of his family, he needs them dry, toughened to the consistency of horn by long exposure to the sun. This choice seems very strange, when we remember that other stercoral collectors 155 More Beetles insist upon fresh products. The Sacred Beetle, the Copris, the Onthophagus i1 not one of these, nor any of the others, cares for this sort of provender. All, whether large or small, whether modellers of pears or manufacturers of sausages, absolutely re- quire plastic materials, retaining their full flavour. The trident-bearer needs the pastoral olive, the Sheep's sugar-plum drained of all its juices. There is room in this world for tastes of every kind; the wisest thing is not to discuss them. Nevertheless, one would like to know why, when he is surrounded by such abundance of tender and succulent vict- uals, deriving from the Sheep or elsewhere, the three-pronged Dung-beetle selects what the others scornfully refuse. If he has not an innate predilection for this diet, how did he come to throw over the excellent, in which he had the right to share with the rest, and adopt the inferior, which is not employed elsewhere? We will not labour the point. It amounts to this, that somehow the dry pellets have fallen to the Minotaur's share. This detail admitted, the rest unfolds itself with insis- !€£. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chaps, xi., xvii. and xviii. — Translator's Note. 156 Morality tent logic. Necessity, the instigator of prog- ress, seems to have gradually trained the male Minotaur in his functions as a collabo- rator. The father of yore, an idler, as is the rule among insects, has become an ardent worker because, what with one experiment after another, the race has benefited. What does he do with his harvest? He soberly feeds on it, when the moisture in the burrow has somewhat softened the thankless morsels; he cards great quantities of them into a felt in which he buries himself in the winter to shield himself against the cold. B.ut these are the lesser uses of his plunder; the main thing is the future of the family. Now the grub, whose stomach is at first so squeamish, would never bite into such snacks as these, if they were left untouched. If they are to be accepted and relished, they must be subjected to a refining which will give them tenderness and flavour. In what laboratory is the cooking to be done? Ob- viously underground, the only place where an equable moisture prevails, free from the unwholesome excess of humidity. Thus the quality of the food gives rise to the burrow. And this burrow has to be deep, very deep, 157 More Beetles in order that the scorching heat of summer may never reach them and render them use- less by drying them up. The grub develops slowly; it will not attain the adult form until September. In its underground home, it has to brave with impunity the hottest and driest period of the year, without running the risk of finding its bread too stale. A depth of five feet is not too much to save the grub and its food from the fiery floods of sunlight in the dog-days. The mother has the strength to dig a pit of this kind by herself, however deep it may be. No one will come to her assistance in her untiring work of excavation; but at the same time the rubbish has to be shot outside, so that the shaft may be always clear. This is needed first for the going and coming dur- ing the storage of victuals and later for the easy emergence of the offspring. Boring and carrying would be too much for a single worker : the warm season would be too short for such a task. Thus, there- upon, long prepared by the events of each successive year, a flash of light penetrates the Dung-beetle's brain. The father says to himself: 158 Morality "Let's lend a hand. It will make things go faster and better. I have three horns which I will use as a hod. I propose to offer my services to the digger and to hoist the loosened soil to the surface." Working in double harness is invented; the household is founded. Other cares, no less urgent, confirm the agreement. The Minotaur's victuals, those compact morsels, have first to be broken up, bruised and re- duced to particles which will lend themselves better to the elaboration of the final cake. After passing through the mill, the material must be carefully compressed into a cylinder, in which fermentation will complete the de- velopment of the requisite qualities. The whole business Is a slow and meticulous work. To shorten it, therefore, and to make the most of the fine weather, they set up in couples. The father collects the raw mate- rials outside. On the upper floor, he turns his harvest into meal. On the lower floor, the mother receives the grist, sifts it and packs it into a column, gently patting down each layer. She kneads the dough for which her mate furnishes the flour. She wqrjts at the kneading-trough, he at the mill. Thus, by sharing the labour, they hasten the result 159 More Beetles and make the very utmost of the brief time at their disposal. So far, all is well. Had they learnt their trade in the school of the centuries, through experiments of their own devising which proved successful from time to time, they would behave no differently. But now things begin to go awry. There is a reverse to the medal which proclaims the contrary of what we read on the obverse. The cake that has just been prepared is the ration of one grub, absolutely of one alone. The prosperity of the race calls for more. Well, what happens? This, that the father leaves the house as soon as the first ration is prepared; the assistant deserts the baker and goes off to die at a distance. The excava- tions made in the meadows at the beginning of April always give me the two sexes : the father at the top of the house, engaged in shaping the pellets; the mother down at the bottom, working on the stacked provisions. A little later, the mother, is always alone: the father has disappeared. As the laying is not over, the survivor has to continue the work unaided. True, the deep burrow, which cost so much time and trouble, is ready; so is the cell of the first- 160 Morality born of the family; but the others have to be provided for and it would be advantageous to rear as many of them as possible. The installation of each demands that the female, who until now has led a sedentary life, should often venture abroad. The stay-at-home becomes an out-of-doors collector; she gath- ers the pellets in the neighbourhood, brings them to the pit, stores them, breaks them up, kneads them and packs them into cylinders. And it is at this moment of maternal activ- ity that the father abandons the home ! He excuses himself on the score of his decrep- itude. He lacks not good-will but life itself. Reluctantly he retires, worn out with years. We might reply : "Considering that the successive stages of evolution have made you invent first house- keeping in common, a sublime discovery, and then the deep cellar, tending to keep the pre- serves in good condition during the summer; the grinding-process which gives plasticity and prevents dryness; and the packing into sausages, in which the materials ferment and improve : considering all this, could not that same evolution teach you to prolong your life for a few weeks? With the aid of a most carefully conducted selection, the affair does 161 More Beetles not strike me as impracticable. In one of my appliances, the male held out until June, after placing a treasure-house of pellets at his mate's disposal." He in like manner would be entitled to say: "The Sheep is not always very generous. The crops are lean around the burrow; and, when I have rolled the few available victuals into the burrow, I soon pine away, worn out by unemployment. If my colleague survived till June in a scientific apparatus, it was be- cause he was surrounded by inexhaustible riches. The power of storing as much as he pleased made life sweet to him; the certainty of work lengthened his days. I am not as well-provided for as he and I allow myself to die of boredom when I have finished gath- ering the poor harvest in my neighbour- hood." "Very well; but you have wings, you are able to fly. Why do you not go some dis- tance away? You would find enough to sat- isfy your passion for hoarding. But you don't do this. Why? Because time has not taught you the fruitful device of making excursions a few steps from your home. How is it that, in order to assist your mate till the end of her labours, you have not yet 162 Morality learnt to keep up your courage for a few days longer and glean a little farther all a- round your home? ... If evolution which, as they say, has instructed you in your diffi- cult trade, has nevertheless allowed you to remain in ignorance of these highly impor- tant details, which are easy to carry out after a short apprenticeship, the reason is because it has taught you nothing at all, whether housekeeping, burrowing or baking. Your evolution is a permanent affair. You move about within a circle with a fixed radius; you are and always will be what you were when the first pellet was lowered into the cellar." All this explains nothing. True; but to know how not to know at least gives a stabb equilibrium and repose to our restless curios- ity. We are very near the precipice of the unknowable. That precipice should be en- graved with what Dante inscribes on the gate of his Inferno: "Lasciate ogni speranza" Yes, let all of us who, when we take the atom by assault, imagine that we are storm- ing the universe: let us abandon all hope here. The sanctuary of origin will not be opened for us. In vain do we seek to fathom the riddle of life: we shall never attain 163 More Beetles the exact truth. The hook of theory catches nothing but illusions, acclaimed to-day as the last word of knowledge, rejected as false to- morrow and replaced by others which are sooner or later seen to be erroneous in their turn. Where then is this truth? Does it, like the asymptote of the geometricians, re- cede into infinity, pursued by our curiosity, which always draws nearer to it without ever reaching it? This comparison would be suitable were our knowledge a curve of uniform devel- opment; but it goes forwards and backwards, up and down, twists and turns, approaches its asymptote and then suddenly runs away from it. It may chance to cross it, but only unconsciously. The full knowledge of the truth escapes it. Be this as it may, the Minotaur couple, in so far as our casual observations enable us to see, are remarkably zealous where the family is concerned. We should have to go high indeed in the animal series to find simi- lar instances. Furred and feathered life will afford us hardly any equivalents. If such things occurred, not in the Dung- beetle world but in our own, we should speak of them as pertaining to a very fine morality. 164 Morality The expression would be out of place here. Animals have no morality. It is known to man alone, who formulates it and improves upon it gradually in the light of his con- science, that sensitive mirror in which is con- centrated all that is best within us. The advance of this improvement, the loftiest of all, is extremely slow. Cain, the first murderer, after slaying his brother, re- flected a little, we are told. Was this re- morse on his part? Apparently not, but rather apprehension of a hand stronger than his own. The fear of punishment to reward the crime was the beginning of wisdom. And this fear was justified, for Cain's suc- cessors were singularly skilled in the art of constructing homicidal engines. After the fist came the stick, the club, the stone thrown by the sling. Progress brought the flint arrow-head and ax and later the bronze sword, the iron pike, the steel blade. Chem- istry took a hand in the business and must be awarded the palm for extermination. In our own day, the wolves of Manchuria could tell us what orgies of human flesh they owe to improved explosives. What has the future in store for us? One dares not think of it. Piling at the roots of 165 More Beetles our mountains, picrate on dynamite, pan- clactite on fulminate and other explosives a thousand times more powerful, which sci- ence, ever in progress, will not fail to invent, shall we end by blowing up the planet? Thrown into confusion by the shock, will the ragged splinters of the terrestrial clod whirl away in vortices like that of the asteroids, the apparent ruins of a vanished world? This would be the end of all great and noble things, but it would be the end also of much that is ugly and much that is pitiful. In our day, with materialism in full sway, we have physics working precisely at demol- ishing matter. It pulverizes the atom, sub- tilizing it until it disappears, transformed into energy. The tangible and visible mass is only appearance; in reality all is force. If the knowledge of the future succeeded in harking back on a large scale to the primor- dial origins of matter, a few slabs of rock, suddenly disintegrated into energy, would dislocate the glove into a chaos of forces. Then Gilbert's * great word-picture would be realized: 1 Nicolas Joseph Laurent Gilbert (1751-1780), a satirical poet, many strophes of whose Adieux & la Vie have become classic. — Translator's Note. 166 Morality "Et d'ailes et de faux depouille desormais, Sur les mondes detruits le temps dort, immobile." 1 But do not rely overmuch on these heroic remedies. Let us take Candide's 2 advice and cultivate our garden; let us water our cabbage-patch and accept things as they are. Nature, a ruthless wet-nurse, knows no- thing of pity. After pampering her charges, she takes them by the foot, whirls them round her head and dashes them to pieces against a rock. This is her way of dimin- ishing the burden of her excessive fertility. Death, well and good; but of what use is pain? When a mad Dog endangers the public safety, do we speak of inflicting atro- cious sufferings upon him? We put a bullet into him ; we do not torture him : we defend our own lives. In the old days, however, the law, with a great parade of ermine and red gowns, used to draw and quarter criminals, to break them on the wheel, to roast them at the stake, to burn them in a brimstone shirt: it pretended to expiate the crime by the horror of the torture. Morality has 1 "And thenceforth, of his wings and scythe despoiled, Time sleeps, unmoving on the worlds destroyed." 2 Voltaire's story of that name. — Translator's Note. 167 More Beetles made great strides since then; in our time, a more enlightened conscience compels us to treat the wrong-doer with the same clemency that we show to the mad Dog. We put an end to his existence without any stupid re- finements of cruelty. It even seems as though a day would come when legal murder will disappear from our codes: instead of killing the criminal, we shall strive to cure his infirmity. We shall fight the virus of crime as we fight that of yellow fever or of the plague. But when may we expect to see this absolute respect for human life? Will it take hundreds and thousands of years to come into being? Possibly. Conscience is so slow in emerging from its slough. Ever since there have been men on this earth, morality has been far from saying its last word even on the subject of the family, that pre-eminently hallowed group. The ancient paterfamilias is a despot in his own house. He rules over his household as over the herd in his demesne; he has rights of life and death over his children, disposes of them at will, barters them in exchange for others, sells them into slavery, brings them up for his own sake and not for theirs. 168 Morality Primitive legislation displays a revolting bru- tality in this respect. Things have improved considerably since then, though the ancient barbarism has not been wholly abolished. Is there any lack of people among ourselves to whom morality is reduced to a fear of the police? Could we not find many who rear their children, as we breed Rabbits, to make a profit out of them? It has been necessary to formulate the promptings of conscience into a strict law in order to save the child, up to the age of thir- teen, from the hell of the factories where the poor little fellow's future was destroyed for a few halfpence a day. Though animals have no morality, which is a thing troublesome to acquire and always undergoing improvement in the brains of the philosophers, they have their command- ments, laid down in the beginning, immu- table, imperious and as deeply imprinted in their being as the need to breathe and eat. At the head of the commandments stands maternal solicitude. Since life's primary ob- ject is the continuation of life, it is also essen- tial that the fragile beginnings of existence should be made possible. It is the mother's duty to see to this. 169 More Beetles No mother neglects this duty. The dull- est at least lay their germs in propitious places, where the new-born offspring will of themselves find the wherewithal to live. The best-endowed suckle, spoon-feed or store food for their children, build nests, cells or nurseries, often masterpieces of exquisite del- icacy. But as a rule, especially in the insect class, the fathers become indifferent to their progeny. We, who have not yet laid aside all our old savagery, do the same to a small extent. The decalogue orders us to honour our father and mother. This would be perfect, if it were not silent as to the duties of the father towards his sons. It speaks as once the tyrant of the family clan used to speak, the paterfamilias, referring everything to himself and caring but little for others. It took a long time to make people understand that the present owes itself to the future and that the father's first duty is to prepare the sons for the harsh struggles of life. Others, among the humblest, have out- stripped it. Prompted by an unconscious in- spiration, they straightway resolved the pa- ternal problem, which among us is still ob- scure. The Minotaur father in particular, 170 Morality if he had a vote in these grave matters, would amend our decalogue. He would move to add, in simple lines imitated from our catechism: "Bring up your children in the way they should do." 171 CHAPTER VIII THE ERGATES ; THE COSSUS THIS is Shrove Tuesday, a relic of the saturnalia of old; and I have it in my mind to do some strange cooking, which would have delighted the soul of a Roman gourmet. When I let my imagination run away with me, I want my folly to achieve some measure of notoriety. I must have witnesses, connoisseurs who will be able, each in his fashion, to appreciate the merits of an unknown fare of which none but the classical scholar has ever heard before. A question so serious must be debated in council. There will be eight of us: my family, to begin with, and then two friends, probably the only persons in the village in whose pres- ence I may venture on these eccentricities of the table without provoking comments on what would be regarded as a depraved taste. One of them is the schoolmaster. Let us call him by his name, Julian, as he has no ob- 172 The Ergates; the Cossus jection and is not afraid of what foolish people will say if ever they get to hear of our banquet. He is a man of liberal views and scientific training, whose mind is always open to admit the truth in any guise. The second, Marius Guigne, is blind. A joiner by trade, he wields his saw and plane in the blackest darkness with as sure a hand as any skilled craftsman who enjoys the full use of his eyes can exercise in broad daylight. He lost his sight when a boy, after knowing the blessings of the sunshine and the miracles of colour. To make up for the perpetual gloom in which he lives, he has acquired a gentle and ever-cheerful philosophy, a pas- sionate desire to fill as best he can the gaps left by his meagre primary education, an ear exquisitely refined in musical matters and a sensitiveness of skin which is very unusual in fingers hardened by the labour of the carpen- ter's shop. When he and I are talking, if he wants to know something about this or that geometrical property, he holds out his hand to me, wide open. It is our black-board. 1 trace with my forefinger the figure to be con- structed and accompany the light contact with a short explanation. That is enough to make him understand the idea which the 173 More Beetles plane, the saw and the lathe will translate into actuality. On Sunday afternoons, especially in win- ter, when three or four logs blazing on the hearth afford a pleasant change from the fierce blast of the mistral, these two meet at my house. We three form the village Athe- naeum, the rustic Academy where everything is discussed except the hateful subject, poli- tics. Philosophy, morals, literature, philol- ogy, science, history, numismatics, archae- ology by turns furnish matter for our ex- change of ideas, in accordance with the un- foreseen twists of the conversation. At one of these gatherings, which lighten my soli- tude, today's dinner was plotted. The un- usual dish consists of Cossi, a famous deli- cacy in the days of antiquity. The Romans, when they had devoured their fill of nations, besotted by excessive lux- ury, took to eating worms. Pliny tells us: "Romanis in hoc luxuria esse coepit, prae- grandesque roborum vermes delicatiore sunt in cibo; cossus vacant" 1 What are these worms exactly? The Latin naturalist is not very explicit; he tells 1 "Luxury had reached such a pitch among the Romans that they looked upon the huge worms of the oak as a delicacy; they called them Cossi." 174 The Ergates; the Cossus us nothing at all except that they live in the trunks of oaks. No matter: with this de- tail we cannot go astray. The worm in ques- tion is the larva of the Great Capricorn (Cerambyx heros).1 A frequent inmate of the oak, it is, in fact, a lusty grub and at- tracts one's attention by its resemblance to a fat, white sausage. But the expression pragrandesque roborum vermes should, to my thinking, be generalized a little. Pliny was no precisian. Having occasion to speak of a big worm, he mentions that of the oak, the commonest of the larger ones; and he overlooks the others or takes them for granted, probably failing to distinguish them from the first. Let us not keep too strictly to the tree mentioned in the Latin text, but consider what the old author had really in mind when he spoke of these worms. We shall find other worms no less worthy of the title of Cossus than the Oak-worm, for instance the worm of the chestnut-tree, the larva of the Stag-beetle. One indispensable condition must be ful- filled to earn the celebrated name: the grub 1 Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chap. vii. — Translator's Note. 175 More Beetles must be plump, of a good size and not too re- pulsive in appearance. Now by a curious freak of scientific nomenclature it happens that the name of Cossus has been allotted to the mighty caterpillar x whose galleries honeycomb old willows : a hideous, malodor- ous creature, the colour of wine-lees. No gullet, not even a Roman's, would have dared to swallow anything so loathsome. The Cossus of the modern naturalists is cer- tainly not that of the epicures of old. In addition to the larvae of the Capricorn and the Stag-beetle, which have been identi- fied by the writers with Pliny's famous worm, I know another which, in my opinion, would fulfil the requisite conditions even better. I will tell you how I discovered it. The short-sighted law of the land has nothing to say to the slayer of noble trees, the unimaginative fool who, for a handful of crown-pieces, pillages the stately woods, lays bare the countryside, dries up the clouds and turns the soil into a parching slag-heap. There was in my neighbourhood a magnifi- cent clump of pine-trees, the joy of the Black- bird, the Thrush, the Jay, and other passers- by, of whom I was one and not the least as- 1 Cossus ligniperda, the caterpillar of Xylentes cossus, the Great Goat-moth. — Translator's Note. 176 The Ergates; the Cossus siduous. The owner had it cut down. Two or three years after the massacre, I visited the spot. The pines had disappeared, converted into timber and firewood; nothing remained but the enormous stumps, which were too diffi- cult to extract. They were doomed to rot where they stood. Not only had the weather left its marks upon them, but their interior was full of wide galleries, the signs of a vigorous population completing the work of death begun by man. It struck me that it would be as well to enquire what was swarming inside them. The landlord had made the most of his coppice; he left it to me to make the most of the ideas which it sug- gested, since these had no value for him. One fine afternoon in winter, all my family foregather and, with my son Paul wielding a heavy implement, we proceed to break up a couple of stumps. The wood, hard and dry outside, has been transformed inside into very soft layers, like slabs of touchwood. In the midst of this moist, warm decay, a worm as thick as my thumb abounds. Never have I seen a fatter one. Its ivory whiteness is pleasing to the eye and its satin-like delicacy is soft to the touch. 177 More Beetles If we can for once emancipate ourselves from gastronomic prejudices, it is even appe- tizing, resembling as it does a translucent bag filled to bursting-point with fresh butter. At the sight of it, an idea occurs to us : this must be the Cossus, the true Cossus, far superior to the coarse grub of the Capricorn. Why not try the much-vaunted fare? Here is a capital opportunity, which perhaps will never occur again. We gather a plentiful crop, therefore, in the first place so that we may study the grub, whose shape proclaims it to be the larva of a Longicorn, or Long-horned Beetle, and in the second place to investigate the culinary problem. We want to know what insect exactly is represented by this larva; we also want to discover the edible value of the Cossus. It is Shrove Tuesday, a propi- tious date for such extravagances of the table. I know not with what sauce the Cossus was eaten in the days of the Caesars; no Aepicus l of the period has bequeathed us any informa- tion in this respect. Ortolans are roasted skewered on a spit; to add the seasoning of 1 Marcus Gabius Apicus, a famous Roman epicure who lived in the days of Augustus and Tiberius. — (Translator's Note. 178 The Ergates; the Cossus any complicated dressing would be a profana- tion. Let us do the same with the Cossi, those Ortolans of entomology. Stuck in a row on a skewer, they are grilled over red- hot charcoal. A pinch of salt, the necessary condiment of our meats, is the only extran- eous relish. The roast turns a golden brown, shrivels slowly and sheds a few oily tears, which take fire on touching the coal and burn with a fine white flame. The dish is ready. Let us serve it hot. Encouraged by my example, my fam- ily bravely attack their skewerfuls. The schoolmaster hesitates, a victim to his fancy, which pictures the fat worms of a moment ago crawling about his plate. He picks out the smallest ones, as less likely to provoke unpleasant reminiscences. The blind man is not so much at the mercy of his imagination, gives his undivided attention to the dish be- fore him and eats with every sign of satis- faction. All are of one opinion. The joint is juicy, tender, and very savoury. The taste re- minds one a little of burnt almonds flavoured with the merest suggestion of vanilla. In short, the dish of worms is pronounced to be most agreeable, one might even say first-rate. 179 More Beetles What would it not be if the art of the ancient epicures had been lavished on its cooking! The skin alone leaves something to be de- sired: it is very tough. One might describe the new dish as the daintiest of force-meat, wrapped in parchment; the inside is delicious, but the outside defies the teeth. I offer it to my Cat: she refuses it, though she is very fond of sausage-skin. The two Dogs, my assiduous acolytes at dinner-time, refuse it likewise, refuse it obstinately, certainly not because cf its hard texture, for their omniv- orous gullets are sublimely indifferent to dif- ficulties of deglutition. But their subtle sense of smell recognizes in the proffered morsel something unfamiliar, something ab- solutely unknown to all their race; and, after sniffing at it, they draw back as suspiciously as though I had offered them a mustard-sand- wich. It is too new to them. They remind me of the innocent wonder of my neighbours, the women of the village, when they pass in front of the fishwives' stalls at Orange on market-days. Here are bas- kets filled with Shell-fish, others with Craw- fish, others with Sea-urchins. "Eh," they ask one another, "are those things meant to be eaten? And how? 180 The Ergates; the Cossus Roast or boiled? You wouldn't catch me tackling that stuff." And, vastly surprised that there should be people capable of making a meal off anything so loathly, they turn aside from the Sea- urchin. Even so do my Cat and my Dogs. With them as with ourselves, exceptional food needs an apprenticeship. To the little that he has to say about the Cossus, Pliny adds: "Etiam farina saginati, hi quoque altiles sunt," which means that the worms were fattened with meal to improve their flavour. The recipe startled me at first, all the more so as the old naturalist is much given to this system of fattening. He tells us of one Fulvius Hirpinus who invented the art of rearing Snails, so highly esteemed by the gormandizers of the day. The herd destined to be fattened were placed in a park surrounded by water to prevent escape and furnished with earthenware vases to serve as shelters. Fed on a paste of flour and syrupy wine, the Snails became enormous. Not- withstanding all my respect for the venerable naturalist, I cannot believe that molluscs thrive so remarkably when put on a diet of flour and syrupy wine. These are childish exaggerations, which were inevitable at first, 181 More Beetles when the scientific spirit of research had not yet come into being. Pliny artlessly repeats the talk of the country folk of his day. I have much the same doubts about the Cossi that put on flesh when fed with meal. Still, the result is less incredible than that alleged to take place in the Snail-park. As a scrupulous observer, let me test the method. I put a few grubs taken from the pines in a glass jar full of flour. They receive no other food. I expected to see the larvae, smothered in that fine dust, dying quickly, either suffocated by the obstruction of their air-holes or perishing for lack of suitable nourishment. Great was my mistake. Pliny was right : the Cossi thrive in the flour and feed heartily on it. I have before me some that have spent a year in this environment. They eat their way through it, scooping out corridors and leaving behind them a brown paste, the waste product of their digestive organs. That they are actually fatter I cannot state for a fact; but at least they have a magnifi- cent appearance, no less imposing than that of others which were kept in jars filled with scraps of their native tree-stumps. The flour is amply sufficient, if not to fatten them, 182 The Ergates; the Cossus at least to keep them in excellent condition. Enough of the Cossus and my crazy skewers. If I have studied the question so closely, it cettainly has not been with .the hope of enriching our bills of fare. No, that was not my object, even though Brillat- Savarin1 has said that "the invention of a new dish is a greater benefit to humanity than the discovery of an asteroid.". The scarcity of the pine-tree's plump inhabitants and the repugnance with which the vast ma- jority of us view any sort of vermin will al- ways prevent my new comestible from becom- ing a common article of diet. It is probable even that it will remain a mere curiosity, which people will take on trust without veri- fying its qualities. Not everybody has the needful independence of stomach to appre- ciate the merits of a worm. Still less, so far as I was concerned, was the bait of a dainty dish the motive. My sober tastes are not easily tempted. A hand- ful of cherries is more to my liking than all the preparations of our cookery-books. My sole desire was to throw light upon a point of 1Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), the famous French gastronomer, author of La Physiologie du gout. — Translator's Note. 183 More Beetles natural history. Have I succeeded? It may well be that I have. Let us now consider the metamorphoses of the grub; let us strive to obtain the adult form, so as to determine the nature of our subject, which has hitherto remained name- less. The rearing presents no difficulty whatever. I install my plump larvae, straight from the pine-tree, in flower-pots of ordinary size. I provide them with a goodly heap of scraps from their old home, the tree- stump, choosing by preference the central layers, which have rotted into soft flakes of touchwood. The grubs creep in and out of the well- stocked refectory at their own sweet will; they crawl lazily up and down or stand still, gnawing all the time. I need pay no further attention to them, provided the victuals re- main fresh. With this rough and ready treat I have kept them in first-rate condition for a couple of years. My boarders have all the happy tranquillity that comes from an untroubled digestion; and they know nothing of home-sickness. In the first week of July, I catch sight of a grub wiggling vigorously, turning round and round. This exercise is to give suppleness in 184 The Ergates; the Cossus view of the coming moult. The violent gymnastics take place in a large apartment of no special structure, without cement or glaze. The big grub, by rolling its rump to and fro, has simply pushed back all around it the powdery ligneous matter produced by its crumbled or even digested provisions. It has compressed and felted it together; and, as I have taken care to keep the material suitably moist, it sets into a fairly solid and remarkably smooth wall. It is a stucco made of wood-pulp. A few days later, in stiflingly hot weather, the grub sheds its skin. The moult is effec- ted at night and I am therefore unable to witness it; but next morning I have the newly-divested clothing at my disposal. The skin has been split open on the thorax up to the first segment, which has released itself, bringing the head with it. Through this nar- row dorsal fissure, the nymph has issued by alternately stretching and contracting, so that the cast skin forms a crumpled bag, which is almost intact. On the day of its deliverance, the nymph is a magnificent white, whiter than alabaster, whiter than ivory. Add a slight transpar- ency to the substance of our superfine stearin 185 More Beetles candles and you will have something nearly resembling that budding flesh in process of crystallization. The arrangement of the limbs is faultlessly symmetrical. The folded legs make one think of arms crossed upon the Breast in a sacerdotal attitude. Our painters have no better symbol for representing mystic res- ignation to the hand of destiny. Joined to- gether, the tarsi form two long, knotted cords that lie along the nymph's sides like a priest's stole. The wings and wing-cases, fitting by pairs into a common sheath, are flattened into wide paddles like flakes of talc. In front, the antennae are bent into elegant crosiers and then slip under the knees of the first pair of legs and rest their tips on the wing-paddles. The sides of the corselet project slightly, like a head-dress recalling the spreading white caps of our French nuns. My children, when I show them this won- derful creature, find a very happy phrase to describe it: "It's a little girl making her first com- munion," they say, "a little girl in her white veil." What a lovely gem, if it were permanent and incorruptible! An artist seeking for a 186 The Ergates; the Cossus decorative subject would find an exquisite model here. And this gem moves. At the least disturbance, it fidgets about on its back, very much like a Gudgeon laid high and dry on the river-bank. Feeling itself in danger, the terrified creature strives to make itself terrifying. Next day, the nymph is clouded with a faint smoky tint. The work of a final trans- formation begins and is continued for a fort- night. At last, towards the end of July, the nymphal garment is reduced to shreds, torn by the movements of the stretching and wa- ving limbs. The full-grown insect appears, clad in rusty-red and white. The colour soon becomes darker and gradually changes to black. The insect has completed its de- velopment. I recognize it as the naturalists' Ergates faber, which, translated into the vernacular, means "the journeyman blacksmith." If any one knows why this long-horned Beetle, this lover of old pine-stumps, is called a working blacksmith, I will thank him to tell me. The Ergates is a magnificent insect, vying with the Great Capricorn in size, but with broader wing-cases and a slightly flatter body. 187 More Beetles The male carries on his corselet two broad, triangular, glistening facets. These con- stitute his blazon and serve no other purpose than that of masculine adornment. I have tried to observe by lantern-light — for the insect is nocturnal in its habits — the nuptial charms of the blazoned Beetle of the pines in his native surroundings. My son Paul went all over the ravaged plantation, lantern in hand, between ten and eleven at night; he explored the old stumps one by one. The expedition led to nothing; no Ergates was seen, of either sex. We need not regret this failure: by rearing the insects in the cages we learn the most interesting details of the business. I take the Beetles born in my study and install them, in isolated couples, under spa- cious wire-gauze dish-covers placed over stacks of refuse from the decayed pine- stumps. By way of food, I serve them with pears cut into quarters, small bunches of grapes and slices of melon, all favourite dainties of the Great Capricorn. The captives rarely show themselves by day; they remain concealed under the heap of chips. They come out at night and sol- emnly stroll to and fro, now on the wire 188 The Ergates; the Cossus trellis, now on the pile of wood that rep- resents the pine-stump to which they must hasten when the egg-laying season arrives. Never do they touch the provisions, though these are kept fresh by almost daily re- newals; never do they nibble at the fruit, at the dainties in which the Capricorn delights. They scorn to eat. Worse still: apparently they disdain to pair. I watch them every evening for nearly a month. What melancholy lovers ! There is no eagerness on the part of the male, no impetuous hurry to woo his mate; no teasing on the part of the female to stimulate her backward swain. Each shuns the other's company; and, when they do meet, they merely maim each other. Under all my wire covers, five in number, sooner or later I find either the male or the female, some- times both, the poorer by a few legs or one or both antennae. The cut is so clean that it might be the work of a pruning-shears. The sharp edge of the mandibles, which are shaped like cleavers, explains this hacking. I myself, if I get my fingers caught, am bitten till the blood comes. What kind of creatures are these, among whom the sexes cannot meet without mutilat- 189 More Beetles ing each other, these savages with their fe- rocious embraces, whose caresses are sheer mangling! For blows to be exchanged be- tween males, in the fierce brawl for the pos- session of the bride, is an everyday occur- rence : it is the rule among the greater part of the animal creation. But here the female herself is sorely ill-treated, perhaps after having been the first to begin. "Ah, you've damaged my plume!" says the journeyman blacksmith. "All right, I'll break your leg for you. Take that 1" More reprisals follow. The shears are brought into action on either side, and the fight produces a pair of cripples. If the housing were inadequate, one could put down this brutality to the terrified hust- ling of a mob of maddened creatures; but one can no longer do so when a roomy cage leaves the two captives ample space for their noctur- nal rambles. They lack nothing in the wire dome but liberty of flight. Could this dep- rivation tend to embitter their character? How far removed are they from the Common Capricorn! He, though he form one of a dozen huddled under the same dish-cover, for a month on end, without any neighbours' quarrel, bestrides his companion, and, from 190 The Ergates; the Cossus time to time, caresses her with a lick of his tongue on her back. Other people, other customs. I know one who rivals the insect of the pines in that barbarous propensity for mutilating its fellows. This is the JEgo- soma (M. scabricorne, FAB.), who likewise is a lover of darkness and sports a pair of long horns. His grub lives in the wood of old willows hollow with age. The adult is a handsome insect, attired in bright brown and bearing a pair of very fierce antennae. With the Capricorn and Ergates, he is the most noteworthy of all the Longicorns in the matter of size. In July, at about eleven o'clock on a warm, still night, I find him crouching flat on the inside of the cavernous willows or oftener on the outside, on the rough bark of the trunk. The males occur pretty frequently. Motion- less, undismayed by the sudden flashes of my lantern, they await the coming of the females lurking in the deep crevices of the decayed wood. The ^Egosoma also is armed with power- ful shears, with mandibular cleavers which are very useful to the new-formed adult for hewing a way out, but which become a crying abuse among insects of the same family, 191 More Beetles when addicted to chopping off each other's legs and antennae. If I do not isolate my subjects one by one in strong paper bags, I am certain, on returning from my nocturnal expeditions, to find none but cripples in my box. The mandibular knife has done furi- ous execution on the way. Almost all the insects are the poorer by at least a leg. In the wire cage, with chips of old willow- wood for a refuge and figs, pears and other fruits for food, they are less intolerant. For three or four days, my captives betray great excitement at nightfall. They run swiftly along the trellised dome, quarrelling as they go, hiring one another, striking at one another with their cleavers. In the ab- sence of females, almost undiscoverable at the time of my visits, which are possibly not late enough, I have not been able to observe their nuptials; but I have seen acts of brutal- ity that tell me something of what I want to know. No less expert in chopping off legs than his kinsman of the pines, the ^Egosoma should also be somewhat deficient in gallan- try. I picture him beating his wife and crip- pling her a little, not without himself receiv- ing his share of wounds. If these were Longicorn affairs, the scan- 192 The Ergates; the Cossus dal would not be far-reaching; but, alas, we also have our domestic quarrels! The Beetle explains his by his nocturnal habits: the light makes for milder manners ; the dark- ness tends to deprave them. The result is worse when the soul is in darkness; and the lout who thrashes his wife is a child of the gloom. 193 CHAPTER IX THE PINE COCKCHAFER IN writing Pine Cockchafer at the head of this chapter, I am guilty of a deliberate heresy: the insect's orthodox name is Fuller Cockchafer (Melolontha fullo, LIN.). We must not be fastidious, I know, in matters of nomenclature. Make a noise of some sort, give it a Latin termination and you will have, as far as euphony goes, the equivalent of many of the labels pasted in the entomolo- gist's specimen-boxes. The cacophony would be excusable if the barbarous expression signi- fied nothing else than the creature intended; but, generally speaking, this name possesses, hidden among its Greek or other roots, a cer- tain meaning in which the novice hopes to find a little information. He will be woefully disappointed. The scientific term refers to subtleties difficult to grasp and of very slight importance. Too often it leads him astray, suggesting views which have naught in common with the truth 194 The Pine Cockchafer as we know it from observation. Sometimes the errors are flagrant; sometimes the al- lusions are grotesque and imbecile. Pro- vided that they have a decent sound, how greatly preferable are locutions in which en- tomology finds nothing to dissect! Fullo would be one of these, if the word had not a first sense which at once occurs to the mind. This Latin expression means a "fuller," one who "fulls" cloth under run- ning water, dressing it and ridding it of the stiffness of the weaving. What connection has the Cockchafer who forms the subject of this chapter with the working fuller? You may rack your brains in vain : no acceptable answer will come. The term fullo, applied to an insect, oc- curs in Pliny. In one chapter the igreat naturalist treats of remedies for jaundice, fevers and dropsy. A little of everything plays its part in this pharmacopoeia: a black Dog's longest tooth; a Mouse's nose wrapped in a pink rag; a green Lizard's right eye torn from the living reptile and placed in a kid-skin bag; a Snake's heart, torn out with the left hand; the four joints of a Scor- pion's tail, including the sting, wrapped up in a black cloth, provided that for three days 195 More Beetles the patient can see neither the remedy nor him that applied it; and many other extrav- agances. We close the book, alarmed by the slough of absurdities whence the art of healing has come down to us. In this medley of inanities, the forerunner of medicine, the fuller makes his appearance. The text says : "Tertium qul vocatur fullo, albis guttis, dissectum utrique lacerto adalligant." To treat fevers, we must divide the Ful- ler Beetle into two parts and fasten one half to the right arm and the other half to the left. Now what did the ancient naturalist mean by this term Fuller Beetle? We do not know exactly. The description albis guttis, white spots, would fit the white-flecked Pine- chafer pretty well, but it is not enough to make us certain. Pliny himself seems to have been none too sure of his wonderful cure. In his time, men's eyes had not yet learnt how to look at the insect. The crea- tures were too small; they were fit amuse- ment for children, who would tie them to the end of a long thread and make them run 196 The Pine Cockchafer round in a circle, but they were unworthy the attention of a self-respecting man. Pliny apparently got the word from the country-folk, always poor observers and in- clined to bestow extravagant names. The scholar accepted the rustic locution, the work perhaps of a childish imagination, and ap- plied it as a makeshift, without further en- quiries. The word has come down to us a fragment of antiquity; our modern natural- ists have adopted it; and this is how one of our handsomest insects became the Fuller. The majesty of the centuries has consecrated the strange appellation. In spite of all my respect for ancient lan- guages, the term Fuller does not appeal to me because in the circumstances it is non- sensical. Common sense should take pre- cedence of the aberrations of nomenclature. Why not say Pine Cockchafer, in memory of the beloved tree, the paradise of the insect during the two or three weeks of its aerial life? It would be very simple; nothing could be more natural: a very good reason for putting it last of all. We have to wander a long time in the night of absurdity before reaching the radi- 197 More Beetles ant light of truth. All our sciences bear witness to this, even the science of number. Try to add a column of figures written in Roman numerals : you will abandon the task, stupefied by the confusion of the symbols, and you will realize how great a revolution was made in arithmetic by the invention of the figure nought. Like the egg of Colum- bus, it was indeed a very small thing, but it had to be thought of. Until the future casts the unfortunate Ful- ler into oblivion, we will say Pine Cock- chafer, so far as we are concerned. Using this name, no one can make a mistake: our insect frequents the pine-tree only. It has a handsome and portly appearance, vying with that of Oryctes nasicornis.1 Its cos- tume, though not boasting the metallic splendour dear to the Carabus,2 the Bupre- stis,3 and the Cetonia, is at least unusually elegant. A black or brown ground is thickly strewn with capricious spots of white velvet. It is at the same time modest and magnificent. By way of plumes, the male wears at the iThe Rhinoceros Beetle. Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chap. xiii. — Translator's Note. 2 Cf. Chapters xiii. and xiv. of the present volume. — Translator's Note. 3 Cf. The Glo 217, ^66 228 Fox, 64, 67, 70, 75, 299 318 Index Frlsch's Dermtstes, 44 Fuller Beetle, (see Pine Cockchafer) Fulvius Hirpinus, 181 Funeral-pall Cetonia, 15, 24, 25, 26 Galium verum, 228 Garden Spider, 209 Gardener, The, (see Gold Beetle) Geotrupes, 60, 68, 73, 92, 95, 98, 99, 146, 223, 256, 258, 273 Gerards's Spurge, 226, 228 Gilbert, Nkholas, J & L, 1 66 Gold Beetle, 278-312 Golden Carabus, 63, 216 Golden Cetonia, 15, 25, 30, 33 Golden Rhynchites, 216 Grasshoppers, 227, 313 Great Capricorn, 175, 176, 178, 187, 188, 189, 191, 203, 209, 234, 235 Great Peacock Moth, 288, 293 Green Grasshopper, 313 Grey Flesh-Fly, 34, 39, 40, 41 Grey Slug, 289 Guele, 270 Gueule-de-loup, (see Snap- dragon) Gum-succory, (see Chron- drilla jubcea) Gymnopleurui, 96, 259, 261 H Half-spotted Scarab, 358 Halictus zebra, 265 Hedgehog, (see Tiger- Moth) Helexaspersa, (see Snail) Hemipteron, 47, 48 Henbane, 224 Hive-bee, 3 Huber, Frangois, 86 Hunting Wasp, 242 I Inca Lily, 273 Iris Beetle, 273 Iris-weevil, 216, 262 J Journeyman Blacksmith, (see Ergates) Languedocian Scorpion, 309, 3i3 Legumonosa-, 211, 228 Leopard Moth, 229 Les Cloches de Corneville, 208, 209 linnams, 34 Locusts, 136, 227, 263, 273, 317 Longicorn, 178, 191, 192, 235, 264, 265, 273 Long Horned Beetle, (see Longicorn) Lucilitf, 40, 41 Lumbricus terestris, (set Earthworm) 319 Index M Machaon, (see Swallowtail Butterfly) Mantis, 24, 53, 216, 314 Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, 268 Me die ago falcata, (see Yellow Medick) Melecta, 2 Melolantha fullo, (ste Pine Cockchafer) Metallic Cetonia, 8, 15, 16, 25 Minotaur, (see Minotaurus Typhoeus) Minotaurus Typhoeus, 72- 171, 238, 246 Minos's Bull, 72 Mole, 44, 49, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 Mont Ventoux, 263, 312 • Moths, 3, 58, 224, 225, 229, 264, 287, 288, 290, 293 Mufle, 270 Muflier, (see Snap-dragon) Myoditfs sudbipteus, 265, 273 N Necrophorus, (see Burying- beetle) Necydalis major, 264, 265, 273 Nut-weevil, 216 Nux vomica, 226 N. vestigator, (see Burying Beetle) Oak-worm, 175 Onthophagi, (see Dung Beetle) Orange-berried Nightshade, 225 Ortalons, 178, 179 Oryctes nasicornis, (see Rhinoceros Beetle) Osmia, 2 Panurge, 134 Pedestrian Locust, 273 Personatae, 272 Pezzotettyx pedestris, 263 Philemon, 98 Pierio Caterpillar, 289 Pine Bombyx, 286 Pine Caterpillar, 278 Pine Cockchafer, 194-214 Pine Processionary, (see Pine Bombyx) P. laciniatum, (set Cut- leaved Podospermum) Pliny, 174, 176, 181, 182, 195, 196, 197 Pock-marked Scarab, 258 Polistes, 3 Praying Mantis, 303, 309, 3»3 Protozoan, 236 Psyches, 264 Pterotheca nemansensis, 228 Pubiaces, 228 Rabbit, 64, 67, 70, 75 Reaumer, Rene A. F. de, 34, 35, 225 Reduvius, 47 Rhinoceros Beetle, n, 24, 25, 198, 212 Rosacese, 229 Rose, 267 320 Index Rose-chafer, (see Golden Cetonia) Rose-scented Aromia, 204 Roover Beetle, (see Staphy- lini) S Saprini, 34-42 Sarcophaga, 41 Sardine, 297 Saperdae, 235, 237 S. carnarla, (see Grey- Flesh-fly), 34, 39, 40, 41 Scorpion, 114, 309, 313 Scarabus, 66, 247, 258, 259, 261, 273 Scalary Saperda, 229 S. detersus, 40 Serignan, 247 Sesiae, 3 Shagreen Saperda, 229 Sheep Scarab, (see Mino- taurus Typhceus) Silpha, 45, 46 Sisyphus, 96, 261 Slug, 216, 289, 299 Small Capricorn, 204, 208, 228, 231, 235, 264, 293 Snapdragon, 270 Spanish corpris, 203 melongena, (see Egg Spider, 114, 209 Spotted Larinus, 216 Spotted Sapera, 229 Spotted Saprinus, 37 Spurred Alydus, 47, 48 Spurge, 225, 226, 288 Spurge Hawk-Moth, 225, 288 S. rugosa, 46 S. sinuaia, 46 Stag-beetle, 175, 176, 199 Staphylini, 48, 49, 50, 54, 266, 273 Staphylinus maxillossus, 49, 54 Stercoraceous Gestrupes, 218, 219 , Stinking Staphylinus, 50, 54 S. subnitidus, 40 Subterranean Vetch, (see Double-Fruited Vetch S. villosum, (see Orange- berried Nightshade) Swallowtail Butterfly, 4 Te Theseus, 72, 73 73 S. meiongena, (see r,ss Tiger-Moth, 287 _ Fjfnt) Timor cha tenfbricosia, Snail, 294, 295, 296, 298, 303, 3io, 314 S. nigrum, (see Black-ber- ried Nightshade) Solanum lycopersicum, (see Tomato) Solanacea, 224 Solanum, 225 5. o/