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Thomas Fisher
Rare Book Library

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

THE PURSUIT

See page 158.

THE INSECT

JULES MICHELET.

WITH 140 ILLUSTRATIONS BY GIACOMELLI.'

ILLUSTRATOR OF “ THE BIRD.”

LONDON:

T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW

EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.

_ ♦

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JttjK

HE INSECT ” is one of the four remarkable works in which the late
M. Michelet embodied the results of a loving and persevering study
of Nature. These works are absolutely unique ; the poetry of
Science was never before illustrated on so large a scale, or with so
much vividness of fancy, or in so eloquent a style. The aspects of
Nature were never before examined with so strong an enthusiasm or so definite
an individuality, — with so eager a desire to identify them with the feelings,
hopes, and aspirations of humanity. Michelet approached his subject neither
as philosopher nor as poet, but yet with something of the spirit of both. His
philosophy and poetry, however, were both subordinate to his ardent sympathy
with what he conceived to be the soul, the personality of Nature ; and whether
his attention was directed to the life of ocean, the bird, the insect, or the
mountain-plant, he still sought for some evidence of its special and distinct
existence, with thoughts and emotions, as it were, and a character of its own.
It was almost as if he saw in Nature a likeness to, and a kinship with,
humanity. No doubt, in expressing these views he was occasionally led into
a certain extravagance, and his enthusiasm not infrequently outran or over¬
mastered his judgment. He lacked the profound insight and sober reflection
of Wordsworth, and accuracy of detail was often sacrificed for the sake of a
brilliant generalization. But, after making due allowance for defects insepar¬
able, perhaps, from a genius rather passionate and impulsive than analytic and
self-composed, it must be admitted that the lover of Nature has cause to be
grateful for the fine fancies, rich illustrations, and suggestive analogies crowded
into the books we speak of.

A recent writer, M. Monod,* has pronounced upon them an animated
eulogium : — “ Scientific men may discover in these books errors, inaccuracies,
and exaggerations ; but, in spite of all, they have shown that the physical

* Macmillan' 8 Magazine, July 1874, pp. 231, 232.

PREFACE.

sciences, though accused of withering the soul, and robbing Nature of poetry
and life of enchantment, contain the elements of a profound and varied
poetry, that never loses its charm, because it is not dependent on the caprices
of taste and fashion, but has its source in the unchangeable reality of things.
Many have said that science will drive out religion and poetry ; Michelet finds
in every branch of science the demonstration of a new faith, revealing to
him a harmony till then unperceived, centred in the supreme unity of the
Divine mind and of the Absolute Being.”

Whether the reader endorses this high eulogium or not, he will certainly,
in “ The Insect,” as in “ The Bird,” find a new stimulus to the study of Nature,
and a fresh proof of the power and fancy of one of the greatest of modern
French writers.

Of the present translation, it is necessary only to say that it has been
executed with a conscientious adherence to the original, and with an effort to
preserve, as far as possible, its peculiarities of style. If it should be thought
that in the attempt something of freedom and fluency has been sacrificed, it is
hoped the critic will acknowledge that something of faithfulness has been gained.
The author of “ The Insect ” took much interest in the presentation of it and
its companions to the English reader in an English dress, and was pleased to
express his approval of the manner in which the Translator had accomplished
his task.

It remains to be added that the exquisite Illustrations, by M. H. Giacomelli,
have all been specially drawn and engraved for the English edition.

W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS.

Contents.

INTRODUCTION.

I. THE LIVING INFINITE,

II. OUR STUDIES AT PARIS AND IN SWITZERLAND, ...

III. OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU,

IV. OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU (CONTINUED), ...

BOOK I.— METAMORPHOSIS.'

I. TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD,

II. COMPASSION, ...

III. WORLD-BUILDERS,

IV. LOVE AND DEATH,

V. THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS,

VI. THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS, ...

VII. THE PIICENIX,

109

119

BOOK II. -MISSION AND ARTS OF THE INSECT.

I. SWAMMERDAM, .. ... ... ... ... ... ... .. 129

II. THE MICROSCOPE: — HAS THE INSECT A PHYSIOGNOMY? ... ... .. ... 143

III. THE INSECT AS THE AGENT OF NATURE IN THE ACCELERATION OF DEATH AND LIFE, 155

IV. THE INSECT AS MAN’S AUXILIARY, ... ... ... ... .. ... 165

V. A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR, . ... .. ... ... 175

VI. THE SILKWORM, ... .. ... ... ... ... ... ... 185

VII. INSTRUMENTS OF THE INSECT : AND ITS CHEMICAL ENERGIES, AS IN THE COCHINEAL

AND THE CANTHARIDES, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 193

VIII. ON THE RENOVATION OF OUR ARTS BY THE STUDY OF THE INSECT, ... .. 201

IX. THE SPIDER— INDUSTRY— THE STOPPAGE, . . • .. . ..211

X. THE HOME AND LOVES OF THE SPIDER, .. ... .. ... ... 223

CONTENTS.

viii

BOOK III. -COMMUNITIES OF INSECTS

I. THE CITY IN THE SHADOWS : THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS,

II. THE ANTS: — THEIR DOMESTIC ECONOMY — THEIR NUPTIALS.

III. THE ANTS: — THEIR FLOCKS AND THEIR SLAVES,

IV. THE ANTS:— CIVIL WAR— EXTERMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY,

V. THE WASPS: THEIR FURY OF IMPROVISATION,

VI. “THE BEES” OF VIRGIL,

VII. THE BEE IN THE FIELDS,

VIII. THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS: THE CITY, ..

IX. HOW THE BEES CREATE THE PEOPLE AND THE COMMON MOTHER,

235

245

259

271

283

293

301

311

321

333

341

CONCLUSION,
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES,
ANALYSIS OF SUBJECTS,

363

DRAWN

illustrations.

BY H. GIACOMELLI.

The Pursuit,

A Home among the Mountains — Lucerne, ..
On the Watch,

Border — Amongst the Flowers,

Border — Insect Life,

Border — Mailed Insects,

Border — Bees and Beetles,

Border — Grasshoppers and Beetles, ..
Tailpiece— Naturalist’s “Traps,”

Border — Caterpillars,

Tailpiece — The Author’s Implements,

The Forest of Fontainebleau, ..

The Woodpecker, ..

Tailpiece — Flowers,

Fallen Fruit,

Horned Beetles,

The Childhood’s Home of Madame Michelet,
Tailpiece — Insect Prey, ..

A Winged Intruder,

War ! .

Between Chillon and Clarens,

The Field — Various Insects,

Tailpiece — An Etherized Prisoner,
World-Builders,

Polyzoa, •

“Food for Fishes,”

Coral Island,

Tailpiece — Shells,

Sunshine and Shade,

Engraved by
Rouget,
Sargent,
Berveiller,
Berveiller,
Berveiller,
M6aulle,
Mdaulle,
M&aidle,
Berveiller,
Coste,
Ansseau,
Rouget,
Berveiller,
Morison,
Whymper,
Miaulle,
Rouget,
Mdaulle,
Sargent,
Miaulle,
Jonnard,
Berveiller,
M&aulle,
Miaulle,
Jonnard,
Jonnard,
IVhymper,
Jonnard,
Jonnard,

Page

Frontispiece

20
21
22
22
23
35
39
46
52

. . 55

57
59
63
65
67

72
75
77
79
S2

85
87

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Love and Death,

In the Wood,

Gathering Sweets, ..

Tailpiece — A Shady Nook,

Nest oe Humble-Bee,

“The Chilly One,” ..

Tailpiece — Cocoon, ..

The Dragon-Fly,

The Sacred Beetle of the Egyptians,
Butterflies and Flowers,

Tailpiece — Chrysalids,

The Phcenix, ..

Seeking the Light,

A Winged Warrior,

The Imperial Weevil,

Tailpiece — The Weevil on the Mountain-top,
Swammerdam,

Dutch Landscape, ..

“Melancholy Meads,”

On the Dutch Coast — A Coming Storm,
Tailpiece — The Task,

Under the Microscope,

A Philosopher’s “Den,” ..

Tailpiece — A Finished Task,

A Coleopterous Giant,

An Agent of Nature,

“Bhinoceros-like Cuirassiers,”

Tailpiece — Horned Beetle,

Man’s Auxiliary,

Carabidas,

Hunting the Enemy,

Tailpiece — The Pilgrim Locust,

Aerial Beauties,

The Acrocinus,

Streaked Taupin, and Earwig,

Buprestidans,

Tailpiece — Butterfly and Flower,

Insect Manufacturers,

The Dead-Leaf Moth,

Cocoons,

Tailpiece — A Prisoner,

Long-horned Beetle,

Insects and their Weapons,

Tailpiece — Cat and Cantharides,

Engraved by Page

Miaulle . S9

Sargent, . . . . . • 91

Bervciller, .. .. . . 92

. . Morison, .. . . . . 95

Rouget, .. .. •• 97

Sargent, . . . . • • 99

Berveiller, .. .. ■ . 105

Jonnard, .. .. 107

Jonnard, .. .. .. 109

.. Jonnard, .. .. .. 112

Sargent, .. .. .. 115

.. M&aulle, .. . .. 117

Whymper, .. .. . . 119

Berveiller, . . . . . . 122

Berveiller, . . . . . . 123

Morison, . . . . . 124

. . Mdaulle, .. .. . ■ 127

. . Mdaulle, .. . . . . 129

Ansscau, .. .. .. 132

.. M6aulle, .. .. .. 137

. Ansseau, .. . . . . 139

, . Miaulle, .. .. . • HI

.. Coste, .. .. .. 143

.. Ansseau, .. .. .. 151

.. • Miaulle, . 153

Rouget, .. .. .. 155

. M6aulle, .. .. . . 159

. . Miaulle, . . . . . . 162

. . Rouget, . . . . . . 163

. . Jonnard, .. . .. 165

. , Ansseau, . . .. .. 168

. . Ansseau, .. . . . . 172

. Sargent, .. .. .. 173

.. Whymper , .. .. .. 175

Ansseau, .. . . . . 176

. . Coste, . . . . . . 179

. . Berveiller, .. . . . . 182

.. Mdaulle, .. .. .. 183

. . Sargent, .. . . . . 185

.. Jonnard, .. .. .. 188

.. Jonnard, .. .. .. 189

. . M6aulle, .. .. .. 191

M6aulle, .. .. . . 193

.. Ansseau, .. .. .. 197

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A Thing op Beauty,

Engraved by

Jonnard,

Pagt

199

Leaf-Rollers,

Berveiller,

. •

201

Grasshopper of Guiana, ..

Ansseau,

• •

203

Cassida,

Coste,

• .

205

Tailpiece — Insects “ Fantastic and Wonderful,”

• •

M&aulle,

• V

• •

207

The Spider, ..

Rouget,

209

Aquatic Spiders,

J onnard,

211

On the Look-out,

Berveiller,

216

Blue-Bottle Flies and Beetle,

Ansseau,

217

Tailpiece — Bird-catching Spider,

Berveiller,

219

The Garden Spider,

Jonnard,

221

Trap-door Spider and House,

Sargent,

223

Spider and Butterfly,

M&aulle,

226

Tailpiece — The Musical Spider,

Ansseau,

230

The City in the Shadows,

M&aulle,

233

Ruins caused by the Termites in Valencia,

M&aulle,

235

Tailpiece — Termites (Soldier, Worker, and Female) from

the Coast of Guinea,

Berveiller,

241

Ants at Work,

Rouget,

243

The Nuptials of the Ants,

Jonnard,

245

Nest of Russet Ants,

Rouget,

249

Carpenter Ants,

Berveiller,

253

Tailpiece — Ants and Flowers, ..

Jonnard,

255

A Migration of Ants,

Rouget,

257

Roses, Grubs, and Ants, ..

Whymper,

259

A Feast for the Ants,

Berveiller,

266

Tailpiece — Honey-making Ants,

Ansseau,

263

The Nightingale — “Dreaming and Listening,”

Rouget,

269

Bramble and Ants,

Berveiller,

271

Tailpiece— The Unhappy Fugitive,

Berveiller,

2S0

The Home of the Wasps,

Rouget,

281

Polystes and their Nests,

Berveiller,

283

Eumenes domiformes and their Nests,

Sargent,

287

Tailpiece — Wasp and Fruit,

M&aulle,

289

A Tomb at Pere-Lachaise,

Sargent,

291

The Living and the Dead,

Berveiller,

293

Tailpiece — Virgilian Bees,

Berveiller,

29S

The Bee in the Fields, ..

Berveiller,

299

Bees and Wild Flowers, ..

Berveiller,

301

Bees and Blossoms,

Berveiller,

305

Tailpiece — Drone Bee,

Berveiller,

308

“Busy Bees,”

M&aulle,

309

The Sphinx Atropos,

M&aulle,

311

Tailpiece— A Winged Brigand — The Sphinx Atropos,

M&aulle,

317

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xii

Bees on the Wing, ..

Engraved by

Miaulle,

Page

319

Inside the Hive,

Berveiller,

321

Bees in Search of a Natural Hive, ..

Jonnard,

326

Tailpiece — Queen-Bee,

Berveiller,

329

The Praying-Mantis, and other Insects,

Berveiller,

331

Lady-Birds and Grain,

Miaulle,

333

Butterfly and Moth,

Jonnard,

334

The Stag-Beetle,

Miaulle,

335

Tailpiece — The Author’s Visitors,

Berveiller,

338

Book, Flowers, and Insects,

Berveiller,

339

Stag-Beetle,

Sargent,

341

Carabus Auratus, ..

Sargent,

345

A Sacrifice to Science,

Mdaulle,

346

Horned Centrote and Globular Bocydie,

Sargent,

347

Beetle,

Miaulle,

348

Caterpillar and Leaf,

Sargent,

348

Butterfly and Flower, ..

Sargent,

350

Bhinoceros-horned Beetle, ..

Mdaulle,

351

Birds and Lady-Bird,

Berveiller,

351

Wasp, ..

Morison,

352

T uft-horned Beetle,

• •

Morison,

353

Garden Spider

•-

•

Morison,

354

Termite: Long-sheathed Nymph,

••

• •

Ansseau,

354

Rhinoceros-horned Beetle,

• •

. •

Morison,

356

Dragon-Fly and Ants,

• •

Ansseau,

356

Wasps, ..

Berveiller,

357

Bees,

••

Ansseau,

358

Bird and Butterfly,

• •

• #

Berveiller ,

362

Introduction.

A HOME AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.

THE LIVING INFINITE.

We have followed the Bird in all its liberties of
flight, and space, and light; but the Earth which
we quitted would not quit us. The sweet melodies
of the winged world could not prevent us from
hearing the murmur of an infinite world of shadow
and silence, which, wanting the speech of man, ex¬
presses itself, nevertheless, with eloquent force, by
means of a myriad mute tongues.

A universal appeal made to us simultaneously by
all Nature, from the depths of Earth and Sea, from
the bosom of every plant, from the very air which
we breathe.

The eloquent appeal of the ingenious arts of the Insect, of its

powers of love so vividly manifested through its wings and colours,

VOICES OF NATURE

in the brilliant scintillation with which it en¬
kindles our nisdits.

An appeal which becomes frightful from the
number of those who make it. What is the little
tribe of Birds, or that of Quadrupeds, compared
with them ? All the animal species, all the various
forms of life, brought face to face with this one
family, disappear, and are as nothing. Put the world
on one side, and on the other the Insect World; the
latter has the advantage.

Our collections contain about one hundred thou¬
sand species. But taking into consideration that
every plant at the least nourishes three, we obtain
the result, according to the number of known plants,
of three hundred and sixty thousand species of in¬
sects ! And each, be it remembered, of prodigious
fecundity.

Now call to mind that every creature nourishes
other creatures on its surface, in the thickness of its
solids, in its fluids, and in its blood; that each insect
is a little world inhabited by insects ; and that these
again have parasites of their own.

Is this all ? No ; in the masses men have sup¬
posed to be mineral or inorganic, animals are now
revealed to us of which it would take a thousand
millions to form one inch in thickness, — the which do
not the less present us with a rough sketch or outline
of the Insect, and have a right to be spoken of as
insects commenced. And what are the numbers of these ? A single
species accumulates the Apennines out of its debris, and with its atoms

MAN AND THE BIRD,

lias raised up that enormous backbone of America,
the Cordilleras.

Having arrived at this point, we think our review
is ended. Patience ! The molluscs, which in the
Southern Seas have created so many islands, — which
literally pave, as recent soundings have shown, the
twelve hundred leagues of Ocean separating us from
America, — these molluscs are qualified by many
naturalists with the name of embryo insects ; so that
their fertile tribes form, as it were, a dependency of
the higher race, — candidates, one might say, for the
rank of Insect.

This is sublime. The reason that, nevertheless,
makes me regret the little world of Birds, — those
charming companions which bore me aloft on their
wings not long ago, — is not their harmonious concerts,
is not even the spectacle of their airy and sublime life
— but because they understood me !

We comprehended and we loved one another; we
interchanged our languages. I spoke for the Bird,
and the Bird sang for me.

Having fallen from heaven at the threshold of the
sombre kingdom, and in the presence of the mute and
mysterious sons of night, what language am I to
invent, and what signs of intelligence ? How am I to
exercise my wits to discover a mode of communicating
with them ? My voice and gestures do but drive
them away. There is no glance of recognition in their eyes; no
emotion visible on their inscrutable mask. Under its warrior-

THE INSECT AN ENIGMA.

s <5-*

cuirass the Insect remains impenetrable. Does its
heart — for it has one — beat after the fashion of mine ?
Its senses are infinitely subtle, but do they resemble
my senses ? It seems as if they still remained apart,
unknown, ay, and without a name.

It escapes us; Nature has created for it, with
respect to man, a perpetual alibi. If she reveals it
to us for a moment in a single gleam of love, she hides
it for years in the depths of the shadowy earth or in
the discreet bosom of the oaks. And even when dis¬
covered, captured, opened, dissected, and examined by
a microscope in every detail, it still remains to us an

enigma.

reassuring

And an enigma of by no means
character, — whose singularity almost scandalizes, while
it so confuses our ideas. What shall we say of a
being which breathes through its side and flanks ?
of a paradoxical walker, which, contrary to all other
organisms, presents its back to the earth and its belly
to the sky ? In many respects, we may look upon
the insect as a creature of contradictions.

Add, moreover, that its littleness contributes to
the misunderstanding. Every organ appears to us
fantastic and threatening, because our weak eyes do
not see it with sufficient clearness to be able to
explain its structure and utility. What is imperfectly
seen always perplexes ; and therefore provisionally,
we kill it ! And it is so little, too, that we do not
trouble ourselves to be just towards it.

We are in no want of systems. We could willingly accept the

THE INSECT’S DEFENCE.

■

definitive decree of a German dreamer, who sums h
up the whole matter in a word : “ The good God made »
the world ; but the devil made the insect ! ”

The Insect, nevertheless, does not look upon itself
as vanquished. To the systems of the philosopher
and the terror of the child (which are, perhaps, both
the same thing), this is its answer : —

In the first place, that Justice is universal, that
size has nothing to do with Right; that if one could
suppose the Right to be unequal in its application,
and the Universal Love to incline the balance, it
would be on the side of the little.

It says that it would be absurd to judge by the
figure, to condemn organs of whose uses we are ignor¬
ant, which are principally the tools of special profes¬
sions, the instruments of a hundred trades ; that it, the
insect, is the great destroyer and fabricator, the most
industrious of artisans, the energetic workman of life.

And, finally, it says (this pretension will perhaps
appear most arrogant), that if we judge by visible
signs, by works and results, it is It, among all beings,
which loves most truly. Love endows it with wings,
with a marvellous iris of colours, and even with visible
flames. Love is for it the instantaneous or approaching
death, with an astonishing second sight of maternity
which continues over the orphan an ingenious super¬
intendence. And lastly, the maternal genius extends
so far, that, surpassing and eclipsing the rare associa¬
tions of birds and quadrupeds, it has enabled the Insect to create
republics and establish cities !

THE INTERPRETER BETWEEN MAN AND THE INSECT.

I admit that this weighty plea has made an im¬
pression on me.

If thou toilest and lovest, 0 Insect, whatever may
be thy aspect, I cannot separate myself from thee. We
are truly somewhat akin. For what am I myself, but
a worker ? What has been my greatest happiness in
this world ?

Our communion of action and destiny will open my
heart, and give me a new sense with which to under¬
stand thy silence. Love — the divine force which cir¬
culates in all things, like an universal soul — is the
interpreter through whose agency our insects discourse
and understand each other without speech.

>> %

a STUDENT OF HISTORY.

II.

OUR STUDIES AT PARIS AND IN SWITZERLAND.

In the prolonged perusal of naturalists and travellers
by which we prepared ourselves for writing “ The
Bird,” and for which nothing less was required than
the patience of a solitary woman, we gathered on the
way a number of facts and details which presented the
Insect to our eyes under the most varied aspects. The
Insect appeared to us incessantly in company with the
Bird, — here like a harmony, there as an antagonism, —
but too often in profile, and as a subordinate being.

I was in the middle of the sixteenth century, and
while engaged for about three years in historical
studies, my knowledge on this point was collected only
by means of extracts, readings, and conversations every
evening. The various elements of this grand study I
acquired through the medium of a soul eminently gentle
towards the things of nature, and generously given to
love the weak ; whose loyal and patient affection, inde¬
finitely extending curiosity, picked up, so to speak, like
the ant, and as so many grains of sand, the materials
which we found less frequently in the more important
works than in an infinity of memoirs and scattered
dissertations.

To live long, steadfastly, for ever, — this it is which
renders weak spirits strong. Such a perseverance of
tion is not less necessary when one wishes to put aside

WOMAN AS AN OBSERVER.

enter upon a course of observation, of long and
delicate studies of life. I am not surprised that Made¬
moiselle Jurine contributed so largely to her father’s
astonishing discoveries respecting bees, nor that
Madame Merian, as the fruit of her far-off wanderings,
has bequeathed to us her wise and beautiful book of
drawings of the Insects of Guiana. The eyes and hands
of women, so delicate and well adapted for dealing with
tiny objects, are eminently appropriate for such pur¬
suits as these. They have also a greater respect for,
attention to, and condescension towards trifling exist¬
ences, than man exhibits. Though poetical, they are
less poets, and impose less upon the Real the tyranny
of their thought. They are more docile towards it,
do not dominate over it, submit themselves to it, and
do not bestow on these little beings the rapid and
often disdainful glance of the higher life. And when,
with all this, they are patient also, they may well
become excellent observers, and miniature Reaumurs.

Feminine qualities are specially needful in micro¬
scopical studies. To succeed in these, one must become
somewhat of a woman. The microscope is amusing at
a first hasty glance ; but if one would make a serious
use of it, it demands a certain amount of dexterity,
patient tact, and especially leisure, — considerable leis¬
ure, — full liberty of time, — in order that one may
indefinitely repeat the same observations, and examine
the same object on different days, in the pure light of
morning, in the warm ray of noon, and occasionally even at a later
hour. For certain objects which we must regard as a whole are best

THE AUTHOR AT MONTREUX

seen through a single lens ; others only through a
transparency, by illuminating them beneath the mirror
of the microscope. Others, insignificant or common¬
place by day, grow marvellous in the evening, when
the focus of the instrument concentrates the lisdit.

To conclude: their study demands — what in the
present age one least possesses — an isolation from the
world, a point beyond time ; the support of a blame¬
less curiosity, and of a constant and reverent love of
these imperceptible existences. Theirs is a kind of
virginal and solitary maternity.

I was not released from my absorption in that
terrible sixteenth century until the spring of 1856.

“ The Bird ” had also made its appearance. I sought
an interval of rest, and established myself at Mon-
treux, near Clarens, on the Lake of Geneva. But this
most delightful locality, awakening in me a keen per¬
ception of Nature, did not restore my tranquillity. I
was still too much affected by the bloody story I had
been narrating. A flame burned within me which
nothing could extinguish. I rambled along the roads,
with my cup of fir-wood, tasting the water at ever}^
fountain — all so fresh and so pure ! — and demanding of
them if any possessed the property of effacing the
bitternesses of the Past and Present, and which, out
of so many springs, might prove to me a Lethe.

At length I found, at about half a league from
Lucerne, an old convent transformed into a hostelry,
where I selected for my study the parlour, a very spacious apartment,
which, through its seven windows opening on the mountains, the lake,

ley

A MOUNTAIN LAKE.

and the town — a threefold prospect — afforded me
a magnificent light at all hours. From morning to
evening the sun remained faithful to me, and revolved
around my microscope, set in the middle of the cham¬
ber. The beautiful lake, shining in front and on every
side, is not that which afterwards, when hemmed in
by the heights, and furious and violent, will be called
the Lake of Uri. But the firs which everywhere over¬
hang the landscape warn you not to place too much
reliance on the season, — inform you that you are resid¬
ing in a cold country. In numerous things, moreover,
you find a certain barbarous savagery prevailing. It
is from the very south the breath of winter blows.
In front of me, and my constant companion, arose, on
the farther shore, the gloomy Pilatus, a barren moun¬
tain with keen razor-like edges; and over its black
shoulder gleamed, at ten leagues distant, the snow-
white Virgin and the Silver Peak (the Jungfrau and
the Silberhorn).

The country is very beautiful and very fresh in
July, but frequently, in September, is already cold.
You perceive above and behind you, at an enormous
elevation, an ocean of water suspended. This is the
main reservoir whence issue the great European reser¬
voirs ; the mass of St. Gothard, a table-land measuring
ten leagues in every direction, which from one ex¬
tremity pours out the Rhine, from another the Rhone,
from a third the Reuss, and towards the south the
Ticino. You do not see this reservoir — except a little of its out¬
line — but you feel it. Do you wish for water ? Come hither.

' «$.

INFLUENCE OF THE ALPS.

V,-*

a'Vf*

Drink ; it is the grandest cup which quenches the
thirst of humanity.

I began to feel less athirst. In the middle of
summer the nights were cold, the mornings and even- ^
ings fresh. Those spotless snows, which I gazed at so
eagerly and with insatiable eyes, purified me, it seemed,
from the long, dusty, sun-burned, blood-besprinkled,
and sublime, but also sometimes miry, revolutions of
history. I recovered a little my equilibrium between
the drama of the world and the eternal epopea.

What can be more divine than these Alps ? Else¬
where I have called them “ the common altar of
Europe.” And wherefore ? Not on account of their
height, — a little higher, or a little lower, one is no
nearer heaven, — but because the grand harmony, else¬
where vague, is palpable here. The solidarity of life,
the circulation of nature, the beneficent concord of the
elements, — all is visible. It kindles a glorious illumi¬
nation.

Each chain filters from its glacier, as a revelation
of the inaccessible zone, a torrent which, concentrated,
tranquillized and purified in an ample lake, — translated
into pure and azure water, — emerges as a great river,
and diffuses everywhere the soul of the Alps. From
these innumerable waters reascend to the mountains
the mists which renew the treasure of their glaciers.

All is in such perfect sympathy, and the perspectives |VA^

are so noble, that the lakes and their rivers still reflect or
survey, as they wander afar, the grave assemblage of the mountains, the
upper snows, the sublime virgin peaks of which they are an emanation.

NATURE AND THE SOUL.

They face, they explain one another, harmonize
with and love one another. But in what austerity !
In their mutual love we recognize an identity of the
strongest contrasts, — fixity and fluidity, rapidity and
eternity, the snows above the verdure, forebodings of
winter in summer.

Hence results a prudent nature, a general sagacity
in the things themselves. One enjoys without forget¬
ting that one’s enjoyment will not be of long dura¬
tion. But the heart is not the less moved by a world
of such seriousness and purity. This brevity attracts,
and this austerity takes one captive. From the gleam¬
ing snows to the lakes, from the woods to the rivers
and to the fresh emerald meads, a sovereign virginity
predominates over the whole country.

Such localities are for all the seasons of life. Old
age grows strengthened by its association with nature,
and greets without melancholy the grand shadows
falling from the mountains. And hearts still young,
which feel only the morning and the dawn, expand
to the charming joys of religious tenderness, — tender¬
ness for the Soul of the world, tenderness for its smallest
infants.

The favourite place for our walks, and our usual
studio, was a small grove of firs situated at a tolerable
elevation above the lake, in the rear of the rock of
Seeberg. We ascended thither by two routes doubly,
illuminated by the mighty radiance of the splendid
mirror in which the four cantons are reflected. No landscape can be
more gentle, if we look towards Lucerne ; none more serious or solemn,

A FOREST LANDSCAPE.

in the direction of St. Gothard and the amphitheatre
of mountains. But all this grandeur and brightness
terminated suddenly at the first step we took beneath
our firs. It was as if one had reached the end of the
world. The light lessened ; sounds seemed subdued ;
life itself appeared absent.

Such, at the first glance, is the customary effect
of the woods. But at the second all is changed. The
suffocation, or at least subordination, imposed by the
fir upon all those plants which would fain grow in
its shade, lets light into the depths; and when the
eyes have become accustomed to this kind of gloaming,
we see considerably further, and distinguish much
more clearly, than in the inextricable labyrinth of ordi¬
nary forests where everything acts as an obstruction.

The spectacle first presented to us under the noble
funereal pillars — the pillars, may we not say ? of a
stately temple — was a spectacle of death ; not of a sad¬
dening death, but of a death rich, adorned, and grace¬
ful, such as Nature frequently vouchsafes to plants. At
every step the old trunks of trees, felled but not up¬
rooted, were clothed in an incomparable velvety green,

— a tissue superbly woven of fine mosses soft to the
touch, which delighted the eye by their changing
aspects, their reflexes, and their shifting gleams.

But where was the animal life of the forest ? Our
ears soon grew accustomed to recognize and divine its
presence. I do not refer to the whistle of the tomtits,
or the strange laughter of the woodpecker, the evident lord of the place.
I am thinking of a different people, against whom the birds wage war.

VOICES OF THE FOREST

V i

A great hum and murmur, sufficiently loud to
drown the noise of a brook, warned us that the forest
was haunted by wasps. Already we had discovered
their fort, whence more than one endeavoured to lead
us astray, suspecting our steps, and obviously ill-dis¬
posed towards us.

In the very localities least frequented by the wasps,
light, hoarse, internal rustlings seemed to issue from
the trees. Were these the voices of their genii, their
Dryads? No, indeed; but of their mysterious enemies,
the mighty populace of the shadows, which, following
up the veins of the trunk and penetrating its entire
extent, work out for themselves, with patient teeth,
innumerable ways and channels and galleries. Some¬
times nearly a hundred thousand scolyti* * (for such is
their name) are found in a single tree. The sickly fir
is at length reduced by their teeth to the- condition
of a piece of delicate lace- work. Yet the bark remains
intact, and deludes us with the phantom of life.

How does the tree defend itself? Sometimes by
its sap, which, while preserving its strength, asphyxi¬
ates the enemy ; but more frequently it is assisted by
a friend, a physician, from without — the woodpecker
— which carefully auscultates it, taps and strikes it
with its strong hammer, and with persevering ardour
watches for and pursues the nibbling colony.

Is this internal combat between the two lives, the

animal and the vegetable, really understood ? Of this
cannot be sure, and there are times when I think myself deceived.

* A genus of Cokoptera.

A HIDDEN WORLD

In that silence which was not silence, a something
— I know not what — assured us that the dead forest
was in truth alive, and on the point of breaking forth
into speech. We entered it full of hope, and believ¬
ing that we should discover some secret. We felt
certain that to our inquiring spirit a great manifold
Spirit was about to reply. Though fatigued by the
walk, and in an infirm state of health, I felt great
pleasure in the search I had undertaken in these pallid
glooms. I loved to see before me a person deeply moved,
and enthusiastically smitten by their great mysteries.

Stick in hand, she advanced into this fantastic twi¬
light, interrogating the sombre forest, and seeking, as
it were, the Virgilian “ golden bough.”

I was about to quit the scene, and seat myself in
a sunny opening, when at length a more successful
sounding in one of the ancient trunks brought to
light a world whose existence no one would have
suspected.

At the summit of this trunk, cut oft* within a foot
of the ground, you could very easily distinguish the
works wrought by the scolyti and weevils, the former
inhabitants of the tree, in conformity to the concentric
arrangement of the sap. But all this belonged to
ancient history; a different condition of things now
existed. These miserable scolyti had perished, having
undergone, like their tree, the energetic action of a
great chemical transformation which excluded all life.

All life, except one, and that the keenest — a consuming and burned-
up life, it seems — the life of those beings powerful under an infinitely

AN IMMENSE EDIFICE.

little form, in which one might have readily con¬
cluded that a black flame, shining fitfully, had con¬
sumed all that was material, and reserved only what
was spiritual.

The coup cle theatre was violent, and the immense
swarming had its effect. A vivid and unwonted joy
agitated the much-moved hand that had made the
happy discovery ; and in proportion to the full
revelation of its greatness, a wild vertigo passed
from the distracted people to the author of this great
ruin. The walls of the city fell down, and revealed
the interior of the edifice ; innumerable halls and
galleries were laid bare ; generally four to five inches
in length, and about half an inch in height, — a
height certainly quite sufficient, and even majestic, if
we take into account the size of the members of the
community.

A true palace, or rather a vast and superb city;
limited in breadth, but to what depth may it not
penetrate the earth ? It is said that some have been
found which, perseveringly excavated, have numbered
no fewer than seven hundred stories. Thebes and
Nineveh were insignificant ! Babylon and Babel alone
might have sustained, in their audaciously towering
piles, a comparison with these shadowy Babels which
continually expanded in the abyss.

But more astonishing than the grandeur is the
interior aspect of these habitations : without, all damp,
and mossy, and overgrown with tiny cryptogams ; within, an astonish¬
ing dryness, and an admirable cleanliness — every partition firm though

WORKING FOR THE FUTURE.

soft, just as if it had been tapestried with cotton
velvet, very heavy and lustreless. Is this black velvet ;
produced from the wood itself, after undergoing power¬
ful modification, or by an extremely delicate layer of
microscopic fungi which may have been established
in the tree while it was still moist, and before it re¬
ceived its all-powerful necromancers ? The agent of the
transformation betrayed itself directly : each separate
cell, if closely smelt, betrayed the pungent odour of
formic acid, by means of which the busy race had *
effected the metamorphosis of its abode, had burned
it and purified it with its flame, had dried it and ren¬
dered it wholesome with its useful poison.

It is this acid also which, undoubtedly, had ac¬
celerated and assisted the enormous and colossal labour,
had opened the way to the tiny efforts of those inde¬
fatigable sculptors whose chisels are their teeth. Yet
even in this case there can be no question but that
it must have occupied a considerable time. Successive
generations had very probably passed their lives in
the tree, working always on the same plan and in
the same direction. The image of the projected and
longed-for city — the hope of creating a secure fortress,
a noble and massive acropolis — had for long years
sustained the hearts of the courageous citizens. Ah,
what would life be worth if one laboured only for one’s-
self! Let us look forward to the future. The first-
comers who spent their lives in the tree, and from
their internal reservoir drew and exhausted the juices that excavated

u i/ph ]

I' -X>-

it, could have enjoyed but for a very brief time a habitation so melan-

THE END OF A DREAM.

vV-'-

choly, and so steeped, as yet, in pestiferous damps and
protracted rains ; but they thought of future genera¬
tions, and reverenced posterity.

Alas, I am much afraid that the sanguine dream
is ended ! It is not that a child’s stick, held by a
young and womanly hand, has penetrated to the very
bottom of the structure carried so deeply into the
earth ; but that the exterior defences, which protected
and closed up the whole, and kept off the rains, have
been removed and scattered abroad. And lo ! the great
autumnal floods pouring down from the Rhigi, Mont
Pilate, and the St. Gothard, the father of rivers, —
floating above the forests in heavy mists or descend¬
ing in torrents, — will swamp for ever the internal
recesses. And what flame, or what burning life, can
the inhabitants oppose to these repeated invasions of
the waters, to rebuild their palace and purify it again ?

Seated on a fir, I eyed it steadfastly, and as I
gazed I dreamed. Though accustomed to the fall of
empires and republics, its ruins flung me into an ocean
of thought. A wave, and then another wave rose,
and throbbed in my heart. The verse of Homer hung
upon my lips, —

“ And even Troy shall see its day of doom.”

What could I do for this ravaged world, this half-
ruined city ? What for this great laborious insect
race, which all living tribes pursue, or devour, or
despise, and which nevertheless reveals to us the strongest images of
unselfish love, of public devotion, and the social sense in its keenest

THE BEGINNING OF A BOOK.

energy ? One thing : to comprehend it, — to explain it,
if I could, — to pour light upon it, and supply it with
a generous interpretation.

My wife and I returned home dreaming and

%j O'

understanding one another without speaking. What
had previously been an amusement, a curiosity, and a
study, thenceforth became a Book.

THE LIVING INFINITE.

III.

OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU.

I feel no surprise that, our great initiator into the
Insect World, Swammerdam, recoiled in affright when
the microscope first afforded him a glimpse of it.

For the name of its inhabitants is, the Living
Infinite.

Upwards of two hundred years men have laboured,
simplifying in one direction, and complicating in
another. The excellent treatises written upon this
subject leave, among a multitude of partial illumina¬
tions, a certain feeling of being dazzled. Such is the
impression which their study for some time produced
upon us.

Ought I to flatter myself that I can render it
clearer than my masters have done ? By no means.
But I discovered, through the incident which took
place at Lucerne, and others of later date, that our
enthusiastic and sympathetic ignorance could pene¬
trate further, perhaps, into the meaning of the insect
life than has been the lot of many scientific classiflca-
tors.

The thought pursued me during the winter, but I
could not verify any experiment at Paris ; it was only
at Fontainebleau that I worked out the truly simple
formula about to be submitted to the -reader, and obtained some tran¬
quillity of mind, so far as this subject was concerned.

AT FONTAINEBLEAU

The place admirably favoured the then condition
of my soul. All the painful circumstances of the time,
by driving me back upon myself, increased my con¬
centration. We constituted for ourselves a perfect
solitude. Our chamber became for us an entire city.

And outside there was nothing but a ring of wood,
then tolerably small, which we traversed on foot:

This ring oppressed me a little in the great heats,
when the sun shone reflected on the sandstone. But
in these dry hot days the thought does not grow
enfeebled. I could follow up and investigate mine
with sequence and perseverance, enjoying — what is
rare enough in life — a grand harmonious unity of ideas
and sentiments, which I was by no means anxious to
vary, but rather to deepen.

I went forth alone at noonday, and walked some
distance into the dull, dumb, and sandy forest, which
was without whisper and without voice. I carried
thither my theme, and trusted to attain its meaning
in that infinite of sand overlaid by an infinite of
leaves. But how much vaster that infinite of animated
life, the abyss of imperceptible organisms into which
I was fain to descend !

All that Senancour says of Fontainebleau is true
so far as relates to the vague dreamer who brings
with him no prevailing thought. Yes; the landscape
“ is generally on a small scale, dull, low, and solitary
without being wild.” Animals are seldom met with,
except in a few kids whose number is easily counted. Birds are not
numerous. Few or no springs are visible ; and the apparent absence of

7 1

A REMARKABLE LOCALITY.

water has a specially depressing effect on the Alpine
traveller, who still recalls the freshness of the innumer¬
able fountains of the Alps, and still has before his eyes
the radiance of those delightful and sublime minors
— their lakes. There, all is clear and luminous in the
waters and the snows. Here, all is obscure. This
small angle, sequestered as it were from the rest of
France, is an enigma. It shows you the dead sand¬
stones without a trace of life ; it shows you, particu¬
larly to-day, the newly-planted pines, which suffer
nothing living under their shade. To discover what
lies concealed beneath this outer mask, you must have
recourse to the divining-rod, the hazel- wand. Revolve
it, and you shall find. But what is this divining-rod ?
A study or a love ; any passion which lights up the
inner world.

The power of this locality does not lie in its
historical, any more than in its artistic associations.'*
The chateau distracts one’s attention from the
forest by its abundant variety of memories and epochs ;
but it fails to increase the impression. Nature is the
true fairy in this strange, sombre, fantastic, and sterile

region.

Observe that wherever the forest assumes an aspect
of grandeur, either through the extent of its vista or
the loftiness of its trees, it resembles all other forests.
The truly magnificent towering beeches of Bas-Breau

* It contains, however, three notable things : one magnificent, the Hall of Henry II. ; one
marvellous, the Little Gallery of I rancis I. ; and one sublime, the four colossi, the incompar¬
able relics of a lost art, that of sculpture in sandstone.

THE FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU

ITS PECULIAR FASCINATION.

seem to me, in spite of tlieir stately bearing and
smooth shining bark, a thing I have seen elsewhere.
The place is original only where it is low, gloomy
rock; where it bears evidence of the struggle of the
sandstone, the twisted tree, the perseverance of the
elm, or the courageous effort of the oak.

Many persons have remained here fascinated and
enthralled. Coming only for a month, they have
lingered until death. To the enchanting scene they
have addressed the lover’s speech to his beloved : —
“ Let me live, let me die with thee ! ” — Tecum vivere
amem, tecum obeam libens.

It is a curious fact that every individual finds
here what he most delights in: Saint Louis, the
Thebaid of which he dreamed ; while Henry IV., who
cared for nothing but pleasure, exclaimed, “ My de¬
licious deserts ! ” The poor mystical exile, Kosciusko,*
felt the attraction of his Lithuanian forests, and here
took root. A man of stone, of flint, — the Breton
Maud’huys, — saw here the image of his native Brittany,
and built up, stone upon stone, the most original book
written upon Fontainebleau.

It is a region of power, which you cannot enter with
impunity. Some persons lose in it their wits, undergo
a strange metamorphosis, and like Bottom, in Windsor
Forest, see themselves adorned with ass’s ears. For
the forest is a person : has its lovers and its detrac-

c iS

* The Polish hero who unavailingly struggled to secure his country’s freedom, but was
crushed by the power of Russia : —

“ And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell ! ”

INDIVIDUALITY OF THE FOREST.

<fx'

tors — some curse it, others bless it. A foolish dreamer
wrote of it, on a rock near Nemours, “ I will possess
thee, cmel stepmother!” And her lover, the old soldier
Denecourt, who bestowed on her all that he had in
the world, called her “ My adored !” *

Some one has said to me : “ Is she not the Viola
of Shakespeare, with her dubious but always charming
aspect ; now a maiden, and now a cavalier ? Or his
young page, Rosalind, after she appears as a laughing
damsel ?” No: the contrasts are much greater.

For the fairy here has countless faces. She has
the cold Alpine plants, and yet she shelters the most
delicate flora. Austere in winter and spring, she ter¬
rifies you with the rugged rocks which, in autumn,
she conceals under a crimson mantle of foliage. She
has at her disposal, for a daily change, the delicate
tissue of floating gauze which Lantara never fails to
spread over it in all his pictures. With her belt of
forest she arrests on every side the light mists, and
gaily weaves them into veils, and scarfs, and girdles ;
into all kinds of delicate disguises. You would think
the heavy masses of sandstone invariable ; yet they
change their aspects, their colours — I was going to say
their form — every hour. The little chain, for example,
known as the Rock of Avon, had saluted us in the
morning with the breath of the heather, the cheeriest
ray of the dawn, an enchanting aurora which tinted

* It is impossible to be grateful enough for all that M. Denecourt has clone ; he has rendered
the place accessible by everybody, even the poorest, who are no longer in need of guides. —
Author.

THE CHANGE OF A DAY.

with rose hues the sandstone ; all nature seemed to
smile, and to harmonize with the innocent studies of
a devout and poetic soul. When we returned there
in the evening, the capricious fairy had changed
everything. Those pines, which had welcomed us
under their airy canopy, had suddenly grown wild and
fierce, and resounded with strange noises, with lamen¬
tations of sinister augury. Those shrubs, which in the
morning had graciously invited the white robe to pause
beside them and gather their berries or flowers, now
seemed to conceal in their copses an undefinable some¬
thing of ill omen — robbers, it might be, or sorcerers !

But greater still the transformation in those rocks,
which had courteously received us, and bidden us be
seated. Is it the evening, or is it a coming storm,
which has changed them ? I know not ; but there
they are, metamorphosed into gloomy sphinxes, into
elephants prostrate on the earth, into mammoths, and
other monsters of the old worlds which have ceased
to exist. They are now at rest, it is true ; but are
they not about to rise ? However this may be, the
evening comes on apace; let us advance. My wife
presses close to my arm.

Does not our forest deserve the name of the Shake¬
spearian comedy, “ As You Like It ” ?

No; to deal justly with it, we must own that its
entertaining metamorphosis, and all its changes to the
eye, are absolutely external. Movable in its leaves
and mists, fugitive in its shifting sands, it has a firmer foundation than
perhaps any other forest, and a power of fixity which communicates

EVER THE SAME

itself to the soul, and invites it to grow strong;
to search out and seek within its own nature what¬
ever it possesses of the inscrutable. Do not linger too
long over its fantastic accidents. Without it says,
“ As You Like It;” within , “ Ever and for ever.”

Its beauty is that of the profound, faithful, and
tender heart, which does not the less vary its exquisite
grace, though it may daily repeat the words of Charles
d’Orleans :

“ Who can ever weary of her?

Still her beauty she renews. ”

These ideas occurred to me one day as, seated upon
Mont Ussy, I looked across Fontainebleau. I compre¬
hended how, in this confined and ordinary region — in
this apparent chaos of rocks, and trees, and sandstone —
prevailed a tolerable degree of order, which necessarily
concealed within it a mystery not obvious at the first
glance.

As a whole, it is almost a circle of hills and forests,
all dry on the surface ; but the sandstone is very per¬
vious, and the sand filtrates with great facility. And
the unseen waters descend in all directions to a great
reservoir which occupies the depths.

Storms are frequent here, but do not spread very
far. We may nearly always expect them, for the forest
detains and arrests them, preserves for itself the wealth
of suspended waters, transmitting them to the lower
grounds after they have been sifted through the leaves,
the woods, and the sands. All this occurs below, without the process
ever becoming visible.

THE “GENIUS LOCI.”

Dig, and you shall find.

There lies the charm, the vitality of the genius locii

The word “ genius ” conveys too great an idea of
fixity, and that of “ fairy ” is more appropriate. Who
shall describe the mystery of this profound hidden
basin ? this simple and attractive delusion, which,
while promising only dryness, faithfully stores up
underneath the treasure of its waters ?

An eminent Italian artist has given expression to it
in the paintings which adorn the Hall of Henry II
It is the Nemorosa, the Wood-Nymph, with hands full
of wild -flowers, hiding beneath a rugged rock, but sub¬
dued and dreamy, and with eyes swimming tearfully.

In the course of our labours, and especially on days
when fell a fine soft rain, we frequently appreciated
this sentiment. It prevailed around us like a concen¬
tration of nature. In the deep silence we could hear
only our beating hearts, the pendulum of the clock, or
the occasional cry of the swallow passing above our
heads.

Calmed, but not lulled asleep, with clearer brain
and keener eye than before, we penetrated further into
the shadowy world of the atom, to discover its actual
nature ; the light, and especially the love, which is
the true legitimate sovereign of this lower world ; the
tongue, the eloquent voice, by which it appeals to the
upper world.

<T'£

i&8

SOUNDS OF NATURE.

Frequently the heavy hammer of the quarryman,
falling and falling on the sandstone, resounds in the
distance with a hoarse, dull echo.

And finally, if you listen attentively, you catch a
significant hum, and see, at your feet, legions of ants, —
countless populations, the true inhabitants of the place,
speeding over the withered and falling leaves.

So many images are these of persistent toil, which
blend with the fanciful a serious gravity. Each in his
own way digs and digs. And do thou too pursue thy work, and
exhume and stir up thy thought.

■A

IV.

OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU.

( Continued .)

Even in its hours of silence, the forest occasionally
finds a voice, a sound, or a murmur, which recalls to
you the remembrance of life.

Sometimes the laborious woodpecker, laboriously
toiling at its task of excavating the oak, cheers itself
with its singular cry.

A PLACE FOR THOUGHT.

It is an admirable place to cure you of the great
malady of the day — its shiftiness, its empty agitation.

The time does not know its own disease ; men say that
they are clogged and cloyed, when they have scarcely
skimmed the surface. They set out with the delusive
notion that the best of everything is superficial and
external, and that it is sufficient to put their lips to
the cup. But the surface is frequently froth. Lower
down, and within, lies the elixir of life. We must
penetrate deeper, and mingle more intimately with
things, willingly and by habit, so as to discover their
harmony, in which lies true happiness and strength.

The real misfortune, the moral misery, is our want of
concentration.

I love those spots which confine and limit the field
of thought. Here, in this narrow circle of hill and
wood, every change is purely external and wholly
optical. With so many points of shelter, the winds,
necessarily, do not greatly vary. The fixity of the
atmosphere furnishes us with a moral basis. I am not
certain that our ideas would here be strongly stimu¬
lated ; but he who comes with them fully aroused may
long preserve and cherish them, without any interrup¬
tion of his dream ; may seize and relish all the outer
accidents, as well as the inner mysteries. The soul
may here put forth its roots, and find that the true,
the exquisite sense of life, is not to skim the surface,
but to study, and probe, and enjoy the depth.

This spot admonishes thought. The sandstone, fixed and motion¬
less beneath the mobility of the leaves, is eloquent enough in its very

LESSON OF THE OAKS.

■ silence. Since when has it been planted here ? Ah,
what ages ago, since, despite its hardness, the rain has
succeeded in excavating it ! No other force has pre¬
vailed against it. Such as it was, even so it is; and
thus it seems to say to the heart, “Persevere !”

Apparently it should be strong enough to exclude
all vegetable life. But the heroic oaks will not be
denied, and, being condemned to live there, have suc¬
ceeded in defiance of every obstacle. With their
twisted roots, and with their strong talons that have
seized upon the rock, they too, after their fashion,
eloquently exclaim, “ Persevere ! ” The invincible trees,
struggling all the more bravely the greater the resistance
they meet with, have, on the unimpeded side, plunged so
much the more deeply into the bowels of the earth, and
drawn from it incalculable forces. One of them, the
poor old giant named Charlemagne, worn-out, under¬
mined, thunder-stricken, after so many centuries and
so many trials, is still so vigorous in its loins, that in a
solitary branch it has all the appearance of carrying a
great oak with outstretched arms.

Between this sandstone and these oaks one may
profit largely. Nor is man, if you find him here at
work, a less useful teacher. The valiant quarry men
whom I encountered battling against the rock with
monstrous hammers which seem never made for the
hand of man, I could willingly believe to possess the
resistant force of the sandstone and the iron heart of
the oak. And this is undoubtedly true, so far as concerns the soul and
the will. But the body has less power of endurance. Few quarrymen

»o

THE LIFE OF THE FOREST.

live beyond forty years of age ; and those first carried
off are invariably the most skilful and ardent at their
work.

All the life of the forest centres in the quarrymen
and the ants. Formerly it had the bees also. They
were very numerous, and may still be met with in
the direction of Franchart. But they have greatly
decreased in numbers since the planting of so many
pines and Northern trees, which kill everything with
their shade, and in many places have exterminated
the heather and the flowers. On the other hand, the
yellow ants, which prefer for their materials the
prickles and catkins of the pines, appear to prosper.

No forest, perhaps, is richer in every species of ants.

These, then, are the true inhabitants, the true soul
of the desert ; the ants toiling in the sand, the quarry-
men working in the sandstone. Both are of the same
race ; the men are ants on the surface, and the ants
are men below.

I admired the resemblance in their destiny, in their
laborious patience, in their admirable perseverance.

The sandstone is a very refractory and rebellious
substance, and often splitting badly, subjects the poor
workmen to severe disappointments. Those especially
who are forced by a protracted winter to return to the
quarry before the end of the bad weather, find the
hard and yet porous blocks excessively damp and half
frozen. As a result, they have numerous ill-wrought
stones, and a mass of waste. However, they do not lose their courage
and without murmuring recommence their painful toil.

FOREST LABOURS

The ants teach us a similar lesson of patience.
The breeders of birds and game incessantly damage;
overthrow, and carry away the immense works which
have occupied them for a whole season. Incessantly
they begin them anew with heroic ardour.

We constantly paid them a visit, and learned to
sympathize with them more and more. Their patient
procedures, their active and concentrated life, is, in
truth, more like that of the artisan than the winged
existence of the bird which formerly occupied our
attention. That free inheritor of the day, that favourite
of Nature, soars so high above man! To what may I
compare my long laborious career ? I have, indeed,
caught glimpses of the sky, and sometimes heard the
songs of the birds above ; but, on the whole, my exist¬
ence, the indefatigable labour which chains me to my
task, much more nearly resembles the modest com¬
munities of the ant and the bee.

At first sight, the labours of their comrades, the
quarrymen, are not very agreeable to contemplate.
So many spoiled and badly quarried stones, so many
fragments, so much dust and sand, have in them
nothing attractive. It is but a field of ruin which is
displayed before you. But what does Nature think
of it ? To judge by the eagerness with which the
plants take possession of the sand, mingle with it, and
convert it into a soil for their use, Nature is happy
enough to see all this substance, which, while for thou¬

sands of years retained in the sandstone, did not enter into circulation,
returning into the mobility of the Universal Life. That fortunate battle

NATURE AND THE INDIVIDUAL

between man and the rock draws, at length, the
captive element from its long enchantment. The grass
seizes upon it ; the tree seizes upon it ; the animals
seize upon it. All this sand, in which the rock never
fails to end eventually, becomes permeable to the
activity of a vast subterranean world.

Nothing aroused in my mind a greater number of
dreams, no spectacle threw me back more directly upon
myself. For I, too, through some degree of poverty or
sluggishness, I have long been rebellious like this
sandstone, upon which, frequently, nothing can make
an impression, or which, splitting cross- wise, yields
but irregular, shapeless fragments and useless refuse.

It needed History, with its weighty iron hammer, to
disengage me from myself, to separate me from my
own obstacles, to shatter and release me.

A severe enfranchisement ! What have I not lost of
myself, in return for the few stones I have contributed
to the great monument of the future ! Sometimes,
doubly stricken by the past and the present, I have
felt as if I were crumbling into pieces — what say I ? —
into powder, into dust ; and at times I have seen my¬
self, as I see the bottom of yonder quarry, a mass of
sand and rubbish.

Nevertheless, it is through these elements, througli
an undefinable sap hidden in the bosom of the flint,
that all-powerful Nature has worked out my renova¬
tion. With a little grass and heather binding up
what History and the world had crushed, she has said, smilingly :
“You creature, you are Time. I am Nature, the everlasting.”

BMP'

A NEW ENTERPRISE.

Thus, then, observe the rough quarry, bristling
„with the debris of ages, which grows green, once more
reproduces, and attires itself in a garb of such foliage as
it never knew before man applied the iron to it. “ A
wild winter vegetation I Black firs ! Melancholy birch-
trees!” But with all the gloominess mingles the white
hawthorn blossom.

What I have so eagerly craved, and yearned for,
in my long years of silence, when I was as an arid
block and a man of stone, was the fluid nature of the
sap and its capacity of expansion. My tardy youth
longed to dilate my lingering soul. Yesterday, I gave
to the world “ The Bird,” an impulse of the heart
towards light. To-day, the same force compels me, on
the other hand, to descend below the earth, and em¬
bark along with you on the great living sea of meta¬
morphoses. A world of mysteries and gloom, it is
true ; but where, nevertheless, the most penetrating
light is thrown on the two cherished treasures of the
soul — Immortality and Love.

$00k the Jfirst.

METAMORPHOSIS.

I - TERROR

AND

REPUGNANCE

CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER I.

TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD *

“ Winter, summer, and nearly all the fine days
of the year, had passed since the departure of
my father for Louisiana, from which he was not
fated to return. Our country-house had remained
deserted. My mother, full of sad presentiments,
and fearing herself to revisit it, sent me there,
one afternoon, with my brothers, to gather some
fruit.

« And I went, — cherishing, I must own, a kind of illusion, and almost

* This fragment of a domestic journal was originally intended for insertion in
[It is from the pen of Madame Michelet.]

“The Bird.”

4 B

THE EMPTY CHAMBER.

believing I should be received on the paternal threshold by the beloved
arms.

“ Deeply agitated, I crossed the approach to the domain, and with a
spring arrived opposite the door which my father had so often opened
with that ineffable smile I still can see.

“ A child, and yet already a young girl, at that age of the imagina¬
tion when dreams are so powerful, I opposed the obstinate need of my
heart to the certain fact. I waited a moment on the threshold with a
strange anxiety ; the strength of my faith would fain have conquered
the sad reality. But the door remained closed.

“ Then, with a trembling hand, I opened it myself to find at least
his shadow within. But that, too, had disappeared. An obscure
world, hostile to the light, had glided into that asylum, and I was, so
to speak, enveloped in it.

“ His little black table — a poor family relic — and the shelves of
his bookcase creaked at intervals beneath the teeth of the worm.
The chamber had already put on an air of antiquity. Great motion¬
less spiders, — guardians, as it were, of the place, — had threaded and
tapestried the empty alcove. Woodlice and millipeds ran and clam¬
bered hither and thither, seeking a refuge under the panellings.

“ The strange and unforeseen physiognomy of the place afflicted me
so keenly that I fell back upon myself, and exclaimed, as the tears
flowed down my cheeks, — ‘ 0 my father! where are you ? ’

“ From that moment I could perceive nothing but the desolateness of
the scene ; and everywhere, in the court, in the garden, I found the new
and silent guests who had taken possession of our places.

“ Already the gathering mist of evening mingled with the last rays
of the sun, and the slugs, tempted by the warm damp air, emerged in
crowds from the leaves which strewed the garden- walks. They fared
forth, slowly but surely, to feast on the fallen fruit. Clouds of wasps
revelled in audacious pillage, tearing to pieces with their keen teeth
our finest peaches and most luscious grapes.

“ Our apple-trees, formerly so productive, were covered with net¬
work woven by the caterpillars, and offered us nothing but yellow
foliage. In less than a year they had grown aged.

WEAPONS AND TOOLS.

“ I had never before been brought in contact with a world like this.
My father’s vigilance, and still more successfully, the assistance of the
little birds, had preserved us from it. So, in my experience, and with
a heart overcome by the spectacle of so much ruin, I cursed those
whom one ought not to curse, because all creatures are from God.

“ Later in life, but much later, I understood the designs of Provi¬
dence. When man is absent the insect ought to take his place, so that
everything may pass through the great crucible, to be renewed or
purified.”

Such is the fear, such the instinctive repugnance of the child. But
we are all children, and even Philosophy, despite its longing after
universal sympathy, cannot guard against similar impressions. The
apparatus of fantastic weapons with which the insect is usually armed
seems to it a menace against man.

Living in a world of strife, it is imperative that the insect should
be born in mail of proof, and the insects of the Tropics are frequently
terrible to the eye.

Yet a considerable number of these terrifying weapons, pincers,
hooks, saws, pikes, augers, screws, rollers, and dentilated teeth, — the
formidable arsenal which gives them the appearance of veterans setting
out for the battle-field, — prove, if we examine them rightly, to be the
pacific tools with which they gain their livelihood, the implements with
which they do their regular work. Here the artisan carries his work¬
shop with him. He is at once the workman and the manufacturer.
What should we say of our human operatives, if they marched ever
bristling with the steel and old iron they make use of in their labours ?
They would appear to us very strange and monstrous, and would even
fill our minds with fear.

The insect, as we shall hereafter see, is a warrior through circum¬
stances, through the necessities of self-defence or appetite, but generally
he is before all and above all industrial. There is not a single species
which may not be classified according to its work, and ranged under
the banner of a guild of trades.

The great achievement of the artist, or, to use the language of our

NATUKE AND THE INSECT-LIFE.

ancient corporations, the test- work of this workman, by which he proves
himself to be a master, is the cradle. In the Insect World, as the mother
generally dies in giving birth to her child, it is important to provide
an ingenious asylum which shall protect and support the orphan, and
supply the mother’s place. So difficult a work requires tools and im¬
plements which seem to us inexplicable. This, which you compare to
a medieval poignard, to the subtly treacherous weapon of the Italian
bravo, is, on the contrary, an instrument of love and maternity.

For the rest, Nature is so far from sharing our prejudices, dislikes,
and childish apprehensions, that she seems specially to care for and
protect the gnawing species which injuriously interfere with the
economy of our small farms and plantations, but which, on the other
hand, lend valuable assistance in maintaining the balance of species and
keeping down the vegetable accumulation of certain climates. She
preserves with watchful anxiety the caterpillars which we destroy. In
the case of the oak-grub, she is mindful to glaze over or varnish its
eggs, so that, concealed under the withered leaf, and beaten by winds
and rains, they may safely brave the winter. The crawling worms
make their appearance clothed in and defended by a thick furry garb,
which deceives their enemies, until, transformed into moths, they fly
to and fro in happy freedom under cover of the night.

For some she invents still greater precautions. Essential agents,
undoubtedly, in the transformation of life, they possess, beyond all
others, the guarantees of existence which secure them, infallibly, an
immortality of race.

The grubs, for instance, alternately viviparous and oviparous,
spring into full life in the summer, that they may the more quickly set
to work, but are produced in autumn in the shape of an egg, that they
may the better endure the cold of winter. Finally, their generous
mother reserves for this beloved species an unheard-of gift, — that a
moment of love shall give them the fecundity of forty generations !

Creatures so highly privileged have evidently some task to execute,
some great and important mission which renders them indispensable,
and makes them an essential part of the harmony of the world. Suns
are necessary, but so also are gnats. Grand is the order of the Milky

IMPORTANCE OF THE INSECT.

Way, and no less so that of the bee-hive. Who knows but that the
life of the stars may be of minor importance ? I see that some of them
vanish, and God dispenses with them. But no genus of the Insect
World ever fails to answer to the summons. If a single species of
ants should disappear, their loss would be serious, and cause a dangerous
gap in the universal economy.

CHAPTER II.

COMPASSION.

One day, into the studio of the painter Gros entered
a pupil of his, a handsome and careless young man,
who had thought it clever to pin to his hat a beauti¬
ful butterfly, which, having just been captured, was

still struggling painfully. The artist,
indignant, broke out into a violent
passion. “ What, wretch I” he cried,
“ is this your feeling for the Beau¬
tiful ? You find an exquisite

creature, and can make no better use of it than to crucify and kill it
barbarously ! Begone, begone, and return here no more ! Never again
make your appearance in my presence !”

A MORNING VISITOR.

This speech will not surprise those who are acquainted with the
great master’s vivid sensibility, and his reverence for the Beautiful.
What is more astonishing is that an anatomist, a man living with the
scalpel always in his hand — Lyonnet — should speak in the same sense,
and so speak in reference to insects which are to ordinary observers the
least interesting. That able and patient man has opened up, as we
know, an entirely new channel for science by his colossal investigation
of the willow-grub, from which we learn that the muscular development
of the insect is identical with that of the higher animals. Lyonnet con¬
gratulates himself that he was able to bring his prolonged labours to a
conclusion without killing more than eight or nine individuals of the
species he wished to describe.

A noble result of study ! In fathoming life by this persevering toil,
far from growing coldly indifferent, he became more intensely sympa¬
thetic. The minute details of the infinitely little had revealed to him
the sources of the keen sensibility which Nature has hidden everywhere.
He had found it existing at the bottom of the animal scale, and thus
he acquired a due reverence for every form of life.

We are sometimes disquieted, repelled, and dismayed by insects
exactly in proportion to our ignorance. Nevertheless almost every
species, especially in our European climates, is perfectly harmless. But
we suspect the unknown; and we are apt to kill those with which
we are not acquainted, by way of acquiring knowledge.

I remember that, one morning in June, about four o’clock, when
the sun was already high in the heavens, I was aroused somewhat
abruptly, though still much fatigued and very sleepy. I was living in
the country, and my chamber, which faced the east, having neither
curtain nor shutter, the sun’s rays fell full upon my bed. A magnificent
drone, I do not know how, had made its way into the room, and joyously
fluttered and buzzed in the sunshine. I grew weary of the noise. I
arose, and thinking he wished to sally forth, threw open the window.
But no ; such was not his intention. The morning, though beautiful,
was very fresh and damp : he preferred to remain indoors, in a more
genial temperature, which dried and warmed him. Without, it was
four A.M.; within, it was already noon. He acted precisely as I should

THE FOLLY OF A MOMENT.

have done, and would not depart. Willing to give him time, I left the
window open, and returned to my bed ; but I could not sleep. The
fresh air from without entering into the room, my drone entered further
and further, and buzzed about and around. The obstinate and impor¬
tunate guest excited in me an angry feeling, and I started up, deter¬
mined to expel him by main force. A handkerchief was my weapon,
but undoubtedly I made use of it very unskilfully. I stunned, con¬
fused, and frightened the drone; he whirled round and round in a dizzy
fit, but thought less than ever of quitting the chamber. My impatience
increased: I pursued him with greater, with too great impetuosity. He
fell on the window-sill, and there he lay.

Was he dead, or stunned ? I would not close the window, thinking
that in the latter case the air might revive him, and he would fly away.
Meanwhile, by no means satisfied with what I had done, I threw m}^-
self on my bed. On the whole, it was his own fault. Why did he
not escape ? Such was my first reflection ; but afterwards I grew more
severe in self-judgment, and accused my impatience. So great is the
tyranny of man, he can endure nothing. Like all kings, this lord of
creation is impetuous, and at the slightest contradiction breaks out
into a fury, and kills.

Very beautiful was the morning; fresh, and yet, by degrees,
growing almost warm ; a happy mixture of temperature, proper to that
delightful country and that season of the year : it was Normandy, and
the month of June. The peculiar characteristic of this month, distin¬
guishing it from all those thfit follow, is, that it gives birth to the
innocent species which live on vegetable food, but to none of the
murderous races which need a living prey, — that it breeds flies, but
not spiders. Death has not yet begun, and love reigns everywhere.
All these ideas occurred to me, but proved by no means agreeable;
for at this blessed, sacred time, when a universal confidence prevails,
I had already hilled : man alone had broken the peace of God.
The thought was very bitter. Whether the victim was great or
small, mattered but little; the dead was always the dead. And it

was without any serious occasion, without provocation, that I had

5 b

A FORTUNATE ESCAPE.

brutally disturbed the sweet harmony of Spring, and spoiled the
universal idyl.

While revolving all these thoughts, I glanced occasionally from my
bed towards the window, and watched if the drone did not stir a little,
if he were really dead. Unhappily he gave not a sign : his immobility
was complete.

This lasted for half-an-hour, or about three-quarters ; then suddenly
— without, so far as I could see, the slightest preliminary movement —
my drone arose with a strong and steady flight, and without the
slightest hesitancy, as if nothing had befallen him. He passed out into
the garden, which by that time was thoroughly warmed and filled with
sunshine.

I confess that I found in his escape a happiness and a relief ; but as
for my drone, he had never lost heart. I perceived that he had thought
in his tiny prudence that if, by the least sign, he had betrayed his
returning vitality, his executioner would have finished him. Accord¬
ingly, he imitated death with wonderful fidelity, waiting until he had
quite recovered his strength and breath, — until his wings, dry and
warm, were fully ready to carry him away ; and then, at one leap, he
was off, without saying adieu.

It was during a journey in Switzerland, — in the land of the Hallers,
the Huberts, and the Bonnets, — that we began to study seriously ; no
longer contenting ourselves with collections which onty displayed the
exterior, but determined on examining the inner organs with microscope
and scalpel. Then also we committed our first crimes.

I have no need to say that this preoccupation, this emotion — far
more dramatic than one would have supposed — interfered with our
journey. The sublime, enchanting, and solemn scenes of Switzerland
lost, no doubt, their due power over us. But life — suffering life (and
we were compelled to make it suffer) — diverted our thoughts. The
hymn or eternal epopea of these infinitely great could scarcely vie with
the drama of our infinitely little organisms. A fly hid from us the
Alps ; the agony of a beetle, which was ten days dying, veiled Mont
Blanc from our gaze ; in the anatomy of an ant we forgot the Jungfrau.

THE DAWN OF DAY.

It matters not ; for who shall rightly determine what is really great
or little ? Everything is great, everything important, everything equal
in the bosom of nature and the impartiality of universal love. And
where is it more perceptible than in the infinite travail of the little
organic world on which our eyes were fixed ? To lift them towards
the mountains, or lower them towards the insects, was one and the
same thing.

EXTRACT FROM MADAME MICHELET’S JOURNAL.

“ On the 20tli of July, a very hot day, but freshened nevertheless
by the morning breeze which disported on the lake between Chillon
and Clarens, I went out for a walk alone, my husband remaining in¬

doors to write. The sun shot athwart our valleys of the Pays de Yaud,
and poured his full splendour on the opposite mountains of Savoy. The
lake, already illumined, reflected the sharp ridges of the rocks, whose
base, clothed in pastures, lends life and freshness to its borders.

“ By-and-by the sun turned, and the scene changed. A warm ray of
light penetrated beyond Chillon, the long defile of the Valais, illuminated
the pointed Dent du Midi, and coloured in vapour the summit of the
remote St. Bernard. But to this scene of glory I preferred the morning
hour, when our Montreux reposed in shadow. It was the hour of divine
service at its little church, whose terrace, half-way down the slope,
propped up by sharp acclivities, wooded, and therefore obscure, pours
out the crystal waters on the thirsty vineyards lying below. Beneath
the terrace a beautiful mossy grot, glittering with stalactites, preserves

THE WIFE’S RETREAT.

a delightful feeling of freshness. The fane
above, surrounded by hospitable wooden seats ;
a small library (a second temple), whence the
vine-dressers borrow books ; and, finally, a
pretty fountain, combine in a graceful little
picture, . austerely charming. At morning
especially, in the half-misty veil which fore¬
tokens a day of heat, this beautiful spot has
all the effect of a religious thought, concen¬
tring in itself, and yet extended over that
immense panorama which the mind embraces,
admires, and blesses.

“ I frequently resorted thither, ascending
the first slope of the mountain, solitary, and
enriched with flowers. I took with me a
book, and yet I never read. The prospect
was too absorbing. Whether the eye ranged
afar over the level mirror of the lake, and
the rocks of Meillerie, with their forests,
meadows, and precipices ; or hovered close at
hand about the nest of Clarens and the low
towers of Chillon ; or, finally, returned to the
pretty villas, with their green lattices, of our
' friends the physician and the pastor,* in
whose company my husband laboured; — I
remained there in a kind of dream, and my
1 heart, deeply moved, felt the sweetness of a
holy harmony.

“ But soon I discovered that I was not
utterly alone. Bees, or drones, which had also
. risen early, were alread}^ at work, seeking in

* It was our good fortune to reside, while at Montreux —
the most beautiful spot on the wide earth— with a very estimable and rare individual, whom I
should have thought of Italian or Spanish birth, if I had not known her to be a Genevese, and
the sister of the able and enthusiastic historian of Geneva. Next door lived an eminent physi¬
cian, of simple character, but all the more learned in natural studies.

AN INSECT-CAPTIVE.

the cups of the flowers the honey distilled beneath the dew, penetrat¬
ing into the depths of the campanulas, or skilfully gliding into the
mysterious corolla of the charming Venus’s Slipper. Brilliant cicindelas
opened the hunt after the gnats, while more unwieldy tribes sought
their livelihood at the bottom of the herbage.

“ On this day, then, the 20th of July, allowing my glance to fall
mechanically at my feet, and withdrawing my eyes for a moment from the
too luminous picture, I saw with astonishment a scene which vividly
contrasted with this attractive and holy spot, — an atrocious warlike
struggle. The insect-giant which we call the stag-beetle, one of the
largest of European species, a black shining mass, whose horns bristle
with superb crescent-wise pincers, had seized upon a beetle of far
inferior size. Nevertheless, the two enemies being equally provided
with admirable defensive arms, after the fashion of the corselets, armlets,
and cuisses of our ancient knights, the struggle was long and fierce. Both
belonged to the murderous race which prey on little insects, — were
powerful lords in the habit of devouring their vassals. Whichever had
fallen victim in the fray, the Lilliputian people had certainly applauded.
However, the blind instinctive movement which leads us, in such cases,
to separate the combatants, induced me to interfere ; and with the point
of my umbrella, skilfully, delicately, and without wounding the two
antagonists, I compelled the stronger of the two to release its grasp.”

The captive thus secured was, without form of trial, adjudged to
undergo our investigations as a punishment for his fratricidal voracity.
Our system, however, is not to impale the insect, — a horrible punish¬
ment and a pitiful spectacle which has no end; for a month afterwards, ay,
and more, you will see the poor transfixed wretches writhing in agony.
Ether generally kills them rapidly, and apparently painlessly. Well,
then, we etherized our prisoner largely. In a moment he spun round
and fell : we thought him finished. An hour or two passed, and lo ! he
was once more alive, once more upright on trembling feet, and attempt¬
ing to walk ; he fell, and again he rose. But, to tell the truth, his gait
was like that of a drunken man. A child would have laughed at it.
We had no desire to laugh, being obliged to poison him a second time.

LOVE AND DEATH.

A stronger dose was accordingly administered ; but in vain, — he came
again to himself. It was a curious circumstance ; but it certainly
seemed as if this kind of intoxication, while weakening and almost
paralyzing the faculties of motion, had all the more keenly excited the
nerves, and what we may call the amorous faculties. The use he
sought to make of his vacillating step and last efforts was to join a
female of his species which we had found lying dead, and placed upon
the table. He felt her with his palpi and trembling arms. He con¬
trived to turn her over, and tumbled about (very probably he could not
see) to assure himself whether she was alive. He would not part from
her : one would have sworn that he had undertaken, though dying, to
resuscitate the dead. It was a fantastic, a gloomy, and yet, for one
who knows at heart that all nature is identical, a touching spectacle.

It afflicted us greatly ; we attempted to shorten it by the help of
the ether, and to separate this Juliet from her Romeo. But the in¬
domitable male laughed at all our poisons, and dismally dragged him¬
self along. We shut him up in a large box, where he did not die until
after a considerable period, and incredibly large doses. His punish¬
ment — and, reader, you may justly call it ours — endured for fully
fifteen days.

This robust, enduring being, with his inextinguishable flame of life,
threw us into a prolonged reverie.

On our first dabbling in bloodshed, Nature had wished to show us,
and with a master’s hand, the strange and unconquerable energy with
which she has endowed life. “ Love is strong as death.” Where do we
find this saying? In the Bible. Yes; and it is also the eternal Bible.
For what more powerfully consecrates existence, and renders it sympa¬
thetic, reverend, and sacred ? And how great a pity it is, then, to cut
it short at the divine moment when every being has its share of God !

We excused ourselves by saying that this insect, which lives six
years in a single night, could have spread its wings beneath the sky but
two months longer, — just long enough to perpetuate its race. We
deprived it, therefore, of a very little time — a month out of six or
seven years.

Yes ; but that month was the epoch to which all its life had tended.

USURPING THE PLACE OF DESTINY.

Previously it had only vegetated ; but then, it could really have lived
and reigned, powerful and joyous. Long an insect, in that hour it
would have become almost a bird, a son of the flower-enamelled earth
and the genial light. We had acted like the Parcse, which delight in
cutting the thread of our lives at the very moment of happiness !

Ill _ WORLD-BUILDERS

CHAPTER III.

There is a world under this world, above, below, and
all around it, of which we have no suspicion.

Occasionally, indeed, we catch a faint murmur, a
sound, and thereupon we say, “ It is a trifle, it is
nothing.” But this nothing is the Infinite.

The Infinite of the invisible life, the silent life, the
world of night and of the inner earth, of the shadowy
ocean, — the unseen creatures of the air which we
breathe, or which, mingling in the fluids we drink,
circulate within us unperceived.

An immensely powerful world, which in its details
we scorn, but which at intervals affrights us, when it
stands revealed before our eyes in one of its grand
unforeseen manifestations.

The navigator, for example, who at night sees the
ocean shimmering with lustre and wreathing garlands
of fire, is at first diverted by the spectacle. He sails
ten leagues ; the garland is indefinitely prolonged ; it stirs, and twists,
and knots itself in harmony with the motions of the wave ; it becomes

THE LAST OF THE LITTLE.

a monstrous serpent ever extending its sinuous length to thirty, ay,
and forty leagues. Yet all this is but a dance of imperceptible
animalcules ! What are their numbers ? At this question the im¬
agination starts back aghast; it perceives in the distance a nature of
gigantic force, of terrific wealth, but possessing little relation to the
other, the well-ordered, and, in a certain degree, economical nature, of
the higher life.

It is impossible to speak of insects or molluscs without naming
these animalcules, which seem to be their rough outline, and in the
extreme simplicity of their organism already foretoken, indicate, and
prepare for them. With a good microscope you can discern these
miniatures of the insect, which simulate their organism and mimic
their movements. When you are able to distinguish the Rotifers,
you think that in the aggregations and in the tentacles of their mouth
you recognize them as little polypes. The Rliizopods, though almost
imperceptible, are furnished, nevertheless, with good solid carapaces,
which are equally as good a protection for them as their great shells
are for the molluscs, the oyster and the snail. The microscopic Tardi-
gradce are, in fact, closely connected with insects, and the Acarina
with worms.

What are these least of the little ? Simply the architects or
builders of the globe which we inhabit. With their bodies and their
remains they have prepared the soil now echoing under our feet.
Whether their tiny shells be still distinguishable, or whether they have
been decomposed into chalk, they are not the less the foundation of
immense portions of our earth. A single bed of this chalk stretches
from Paris to Tours ; that is, for fifty miles. Another, of enormous
breadth, spreads over all Champagne. Pure chalk, or Spanish white,
which we find everywhere, is composed of pounded shells.

And it is these most minute of organisms which have wrought the
grandest of works. The imperceptible rhizopod has built for itself a
nobler monument than the Pyramids ; nothing less than Central Italy,
a notable portion of the chain of the Apennines. But even this was too
insignificant: the colossal masses of Chili, the prodigious Cordilleras,
which look down upon the world at their feet, are the funeral monu-

THE WORLD OF THE UNSEEN.

ment wherein this impalpable — I had almost said invisible — organism
has interred the remains of its vanished race.

A bygone world, hidden beneath the present and upper world in
the profundities of life or the obscurity of time !

What might it not tell us, if God would give it speech, and permit
it to recall all that it has done or is doing for us ! What just demands
might not the elementary plants, the imperfect animals whose dust has
fashioned for our use the fertile crust of the globe, that noble theatre of
life, address to us ! “ While you were still asleep,” might say the ferns,
“ we alone, by transforming and purifying the previously irrespirable
air, created after thousands upon thousands of years the earth now
blooming with the corn and the rose ! We accumulated that subter¬
ranean treasure of enormous coal-beds which warms your hearth ; and
that one mass, among others, a hundred leagues in length, which feeds
the great forge of the world from London to Newcastle.”

“ We,” the imperceptibles might say, — the obscure and unnamed
animalcules despised or ignored by man, — “ we are thy guardians, have
laid out thy fields, and built thy dwelling-places. It is not the great
fossil rhinoceros or mastodon whose bones have made thy soil ; it is
our work — or rather, it is ourselves. Thy cities, thy Louvres, and thy
Capitols are constructed with our debris. Life itself in its essence, in
that sparkling beverage by which France diffuses joy over all the earth,
whence comes it ? From arid hills where the vine thrives in the white
dust that once was ive, and absorbs the concealed warmth of our prior
existences.”

The demand made upon us would be a lengthened one ; restitution
impossible. These dead myriads, having nourished with their lime the
various articles that form our sustenance, have passed into our very
being. Others also would put forth a claim. The very pebble, the
hard flint, once lived, and now nourishes life.

Great was the astonishment in Europe when a Berlin professor —
Ehrenberg — informed us that the silicious stone, so sharp, rough, and
brittle, the tripoli with which metals are polished, is neither more
nor less than an aggregation of dead animalcules, an accumulation of

the shells of infusoria of a terrible diminutiveness. So small is the

WORKERS STILL AT WORK

creature I speak of, that it takes one hun¬
dred and eighty-seven millions to weigh a

grain.

wM'i

The labours of the unseen architects
of the globe, admired by our men of science
in extinct species, travellers have dis¬
covered revived in living species. They
have surprised, in our own day, immense
laboratories in permanent activity, of
beings invisible in themselves, or appar¬
ently powerless, but really of boundless
capacity of toil, if we judge by its results.
What death accomplishes for life, life itself
relates. Numbers of tiny organisms be¬
come by their present works the interpre¬
ters and historians of their vanished pre¬
decessors.

These, like the latter, with their struc¬
tures, or their debris , build up islands in
the sea, and construct immense banks of
reefs, which, gradually joining together,
will become new lands. Without eroinof
further than Sicily, we find among the
madrepores, that cover its coasts torn by
volcanic fires, a little animal, the zoophyte,
which has accomplished a task man would
never have dared to undertake. He con¬
trives to move forward by protecting his
soft body with a shield of stone which
he incessantly secretes. Continuously de¬
veloping the tubes which in succession
afford him shelter, he entirely fills up the
empty spaces left by the madrepores or
ges over the intervals between the reefs, and connects them
another; finally, he creates a passage in defiles previously

MANUFACTURE OF CHALK.

impassable. In due time this builder will have accomplished the
colossal task of a causeway all around the island in its circumference
of a hundred and eighty leagues.

But it is more particularly in the vast Southern Ocean that these
works are prosecuted on a grand scale by the polypes of the lime, the
corallines, and madrepores of every kind ; an animal vegetation worthy
of comparison with the labour of the mosses in a peat-moor, which con¬
tinue to flourish in their upper growth while the lower are transformed
and decomposed. Exactly like these vegetables, the polypes, and even
their production, the coral, while still soft and tender, frequently become
the nourishment of worms and fishes which feed and browse upon them
like our cattle, derive their sustenance from them, and return them in
the shape of chalk, without the slightest indication of a previous exist¬
ence ! Recently English seamen have discovered at the bottom of
the sea this manufacture of chalk, which is incessantly passing from
the living into the inorganic condition.

But these destructive causes do not prevent the polypes from im¬
perturbably carrying on their gigantic labours, incessantly elevating the
islands and solid barriers which are so skilfully adapted to resist the
oceanic action. They divide the work among themselves according to
their species. The idlest execute their share in the quiet waters, or in
the great depths, remotest from the light ; others, under the sunshine,
among the very breakers of which they eventually become the masters.

Soft, gelatinous, elastic, adhering to their support, the stony and
porous mass ; they deaden the fury of the boiling waters which would
wear out the granite, and split the rock into fragments.

Under the mild trade-winds which prevail in the tropic climates,
the sea would uniformly flow with a tranquil tide if it did not en¬
counter these living ramparts, which force it back upon itself, scatter
its waves in spray, and vex it with everlasting torment.

That the waters should assault them is their fate. But they inflict
no injury upon them ; and in truth it is on their behalf they toil. Their
violence does not wear them, but it wears the reef, and detaches in
atoms the lime on which they live and with which they build. This
lime, absorbed by them and animalized, changes into a hundred sparkl-

THE CORAL ISLAND.

ing, living, active flowers, which are identical with our polypes, and
form quite an analogous world enamelling the ocean-bed.

On the margin of these islands, — which are generally circular, like a
ring, — accumulates a layer of vegetable wealth, which speedily grows
green, and embellishes itself with the only tree that can endure salt¬
water, the cocoa-nut palm. This, then, is the humus ; the life which
will for ever continue to develop. The fresh springs and fountains will
next make their appearance, invited and fed by the vegetation.

Such is the original type of a young world which in due time will
be inhabited. The cocoa-palm will have its insects ; the birds will pause
on its boughs ; men will gather its fruit. Wrecked ships and floating
timbers, propelled by the sea, will bring there after awhile tenants
of every kind.

Some of these islands, when extended, enlarged, and solidified,
measure not less than twenty-five miles in circumference. Many are
larger still ; fertile, inhabited, and populous, like the Maldives.

The ambition of their architects might rest contented, you would
think, with these vast creations. But to insure their fixity, they

SUBMARINE MASONRY.

have increased tlieir extent. The buttresses by which they strengthen
their work at the bottom of the sea being prolonged and elevated,
expand into banks, which link the isles to each other over an immense
area. Along the line of burning life, in the tropic zone, these inde¬
fatigable builders have daringly intersected the sea and worked athwart
its currents, and already are arresting the courses of our navigators.

New Caledonia is now surrounded by a reef of 145 leagues in length.
The chain of the Maidive Islands measures 480 English miles. To the
east of New Holland stretches a bank of polypes over 360 leagues, 127
of these without interruption. Finally, in the Pacific Ocean the mass
known as the Dangerous Archipelago is about 400 leagues in length by
150 in breadth.

If they continue after this fashion, incessantly connecting their
various piles of submarine masonry, they will perhaps realize the pro¬
phecy of Kirby, who discerned in the coral isles and reefs the possibility
of a new world — a brilliant and fertile world; and in the course of
centuries may accomplish the formation of a causeway, an immense
bridge, connecting Asia with America.

IY _ LOVE

AND

DEATH

LOVE AND DEATH.

Above the infinite elementary life, — that quasi-
vegetable life in which generation is but, as it were,
a-budding, — begins the distinct, individual, and
complete organism whose strongly centralized
electric network of nerves is able to sympathize
directly with the rapid energy of its acts and re¬
solutions.

However humble the insect may seem in appear¬
ance, it is from the first independent of the immov¬
able, expectant existence of all the inferior races.
It is born entirely free from that communistic
fatalism which merges the being of each in the life
of all. It exists independently; it moves, goes,
comes, advances or returns, changes its determina¬
tion or its direction at pleasure, or in obedience
to its wants, appetites, and caprices. It suffices
for itself ; it foresees, provides, defends, and boldly confronts the most
unexpected chances.

LIFE IN DEATH.

In this, then, do we not discern, as it were, a first glimpse of per¬
sonality ?

The individual stands out from the mass. He shows himself all
at once admirably provided with the instruments necessary for the
support and sustenance of the individual existence. He is born greedy
and absorbent. But this very absorbingness is exactly the service
which Nature expects of him. It is his mission to purify and disen¬
cumber the world; to clear it of morbid or extinct animal matter,
which acts as an obstacle to the growth of life ; to save the latter
from the consequences of its excessive fecundity, the danger of its
abundance.

No other being, as we shall prove, exercises so great an influence
upon our globe; no other throws itself into the condition of general
existence with so vital an energy. But this extraordinary strength, in
such disproportion to the size, bulk, and weight of the insect, is subject
to a severe law ; the rapid, absolute, and complete renewal, at each
generation, of the individual.

Love implies death. To engender and to beget is to die. He who
is born, by the very act of his birth kills.

This is a sentence common to all beings, but carried out upon none
more literally than upon the insect.

In the first place, it is death for the father to love. It is indis¬
pensable that he should surrender all his powers, and exhaust the
best part of his vitality ; that he should perish in himself, to revive in
him to whom he shall have transmitted his germ of resurrection.

And for the mother, too, in most of the insect species, the condem¬
nation is the same. She will love, give birth, and speedily die. Love
for her shall not have its prize and recompense. She shall not see her
sons. She shall not enjoy the consolations of death in seeing herself
survive in her image.

A great and harsh difference between this mother and the mothers
of superior animals ! The woman — or the female of the mammal — as a
rule cherishes in her own body her beloved treasure, warms it with
her own flame, and feeds it with her love. How envious would be the
insect-mother, if she knew of this supreme maternal happiness ! But

MOTHER AND CHILD.

she must seek of an ungenial nature, must demand of some other
being — tree, plant, fruit, or perhaps the earth itself — that it will con¬
descend to continue the work of her maternity. This is rigorous, but it
is not cruel. Let us look at it seriously. If death separate the mother
and the child, it is because they cannot live together; because they
are strongly sundered by the opposite conditions of life and nutrition.
The child, at first a lowly grub, larva, or worm, an obscure miner, a
concealed nocturnal worker, must for a long time continue to feed
upon the coarsest food, and sometimes even on death itself. She, the

I ” ' %

mother, who, winged and transfigured, has mounted to a higher life,
and lives solely on the honied sweets of flowers, — how could she accus¬
tom herself to the shades, and the useful but abject circumstances in
which her offspring grows strong ? That which is salutary and vital
for the tenebrous child of the earth would be fatal to an aerial mother,
who has already fluttered in the warmth and genial light of heaven.

It is needful for the due development of the child that its mother
should provide it with a triple or quadruple cradle, and there deposit

A MARVEL OF MATERNAL PROVISION.

it; not neglected, and without succour, but furnished with its first

aliment — an aliment light and fitted for its
feebleness, which it can find on its waking
up into life. This done, she closes the door,
seals it, and voluntarily excludes and inter¬
dicts herself from returning thither. Thence¬
forth she must cede her rights to the univer¬
sal mother, who shall replace her — Nature.

That in such a cradle the child should live
commodiously, — that from its own body it
should draw out a silky covering to line its
plastic prison, — that finally, when sufficiently
strong, it should issue forth under the influence
of the heat, — this is self-explanatory, and we
admire without being astonished. But what
really excites our wonder is, that the mother,
— a butterfly, or perhaps a beetle, — after the
numerous changes through which she has
passed, after her numerous sloughings, transi¬
tory slumbers, and metamorphoses, should
remember, for her offspring’s behoof, the place
or plant where formerly she herself was
nourished, and grew, and took her point of
departure ! It is a marvel which confounds
the mind. Those creatures apparently the
most heedless — the ffy, or light-headed
butterfly — at the moment when approaching
death brightens them with the radiance of
love, collect, as it were, their thoughts, and
seem to revive their recollections. Then,
without lapse or error, they flee away; and
lo ! the plant which was their own early
residence, their birthplace, and their cradle,
shall again become their home, and protect their offspring !

All at once they show themselves prudent, foreseeing, and skilful.

THE TOIL OF THE MOTHER.

To obtain an entrance to this asylum, they practise unknown arts and
display incredible address. How is this ? What happens ? Some¬
times their weapons of war, diverted to other uses, become instruments
of love ; sometimes new and hitherto concealed apparatus, — frequently
of an extremely complex character, — make their appearance ; and yet
all for this solitary act, for this single day.

A curious book has been written on the mechanism and infinitely
varied instrumentation with which insects are provided for the dis¬
charge of the maternal duty. Their implements are often charming
from their precision, delicacy, and subtlety. It will suffice to particu¬
larize that of the rose-bush aphis, — so well described by Reaumur, as a
saw whose two blades act in an inverse direction, and whose teeth are
each a set of teeth.

O unheard-of power of Love ! Whether this divine workman
prepares for them their tiny tools, or whether he inspires them to
fashion their own by the effort and vehemency of the burning maternal
desire, it matters not : you see them duly fabricated, and acting when
wanted in a wholly unexpected manner.

It is a simple task for the tribes of sociable insects which labour
with the assistance and protection of a numerous republic; but it is
infinitely arduous and painful for the solitary mothers, who, without
auxiliary, spouse, or friend, undertake enormous enterprises, and fre¬
quently raise constructions which might be the work of giants, — such
as the nest of the mason- wasp. One is lost in astonishment at the
amount of patience and strength of will required for so colossal an
edifice.

This excessive toil ages the mother in a few days. She wears her¬
self out, yet does not enjoy the fruit. Frequently the elaborate cradle
serves for another. Too frequently a usurping stranger seizes upon it,
profits by the meritorious work, and establishes there its progeny,
which will not only consume the provision of the rightful tenant, but
feed also on the unfortunate tenant himself!

Who will not bestow a glance of pity on this great work, and a
result of such uncertain character ?

In the burning days of July, when the narrow belt of forests sur-

A MOTHER-BEE’S LABOURS.

rounding Fontainebleau concentrated upon it the summer heats, we were
astonished at the incessant and continuous labour, despite the indo¬
lence of the season, of a solitary bee which was ever going and coming.
Her indefatigable journeys always brought her near some vases of
camelias and rose-bays. I saw her, still fair and shapely, of a beautiful
brown mingled with black, returning, at regular intervals of about
five minutes, with woven fragments of leaves, which she introduced
through a deep aperture into the soil of the vase where she had made
her nest.

For three days she worked with undiminished ardour. There were
no signs that she took the least food : constantly at her work, she
appeared to have already abandoned all care for her own life.

Her preoccupation was so great and her activity so eager that we
were able to approach her very closely. Nothing frightened her; so
that we could establish ourselves at our ease near her little nest, and
observe her with as much patience as she herself brought to her
work.

On the fourth morning we found the opening closed, and we saw
her no more. She had completed her task. Exhausted, but rejoicing
at its conclusion, she had retired undoubtedly to some obscure recess
to await her destiny.

We proceeded delicately to loosen the soil around the sides of the
vase, in order to examine into what she had done.

At the bottom, resembling in shape a couple of thimbles, lay two
cradles, and in these cradles two little ones. All the care had been for
them : so many young, so many cells.

Each was composed of six-and- twenty fragments of leaves. Reau¬
mur, in a similar nest, counted but sixteen. Six of these fragments,
which closed up the entrance, were perfectly round, — a remarkable
fact, if we bear in mind that the instrument which achieved the work
was by no means appropriate to it. Yet they were as accurately
finished off as if done by a punch.

The other portions of leaf, cut into ovals, and carefully placed one
upon another in due accordance with the contour of the nest, resembled
so many roofs designed by the indefatigable mother as a protection

THE NYMPHS OF FONTAINEBLEAU.

against the wind and rain. At the bottom lay a little honey ; the last
and tender legacy of the mother, bequeathed by her to those whom she
had abandoned for ever.

We shall enjoy the satisfaction of seeing them weave their winter
shelter. It will be pleasanter for them under our roof than at the
bottom of the vase. The mother’s intentions will be carefully carried
out. Adopted, tended, and removed to Paris, the nymphs of Fontaine¬
bleau will take, one fine morning in spring, their flight above our
windows, and, as young bees, will be able to gather, if not the honey
of the heather, at least that of the Luxembourg.

THE

ORPHAN

ITS FEEBLENESS

We have told the easiest and pleasantest story to
relate, the story of the privileged creature for whom
its mother has duly provided, and who is nourished
and clothed by her efforts. But many — in truth, the
greatest number — enter life destitute and necessitous.
They fall naked into the great world.

Poverty the audacious, necessity the ingenious, the
severe internal travail of hunger and desire, stimulate
and develop the energetic organs which come to their
assistance.

What organs ? The great Swammerdam, the martyr
of patience, was the first to distinguish them. With
a piercing eye, examining the newly-hatched egg, —
that dubious foundation ! — he seized the opening linea¬
ments of life, and marked in them the profound and de¬
cisive characters which make the mystery of the insect.
He saw the little creature, with its gelatinous body, push forward

* La Frileusc,- -literally, “The chilly one.”

100

PHYSIOLOGICAL INQUIRIES.

its mandible or jaws, — a distinct and complete organ, placed in front of
the mouth, and visibly intended to nourish and protect the still feeble
being.

Behind this active apparatus he detected on the sides of the body
a passive apparatus, a series of tiny mouths or valves (the stigmata )
which await the air, and open to receive it.

Ingenious precautions ! The orphan born completely naked, and
launched into life unprotected to undergo the most toilsome metamor¬
phoses,* is rendered competent for the task only by eating greedily
from the moment of its birth, absorbing and devouring ! It must eat
always and everywhere, even in the least respirable atmosphere, and in
unhealthy and deadly places. It is for this reason nature has endowed
it with a slower, and, if I may so speak, a more suspicious circulation
and respiration, than that of the superior creatures which live only in
pure air. In these creatures, as in man, the blood continually flows to
meet the air and be vivified by it. In the insect, on the contrary, the
protecting apparatus which guards its lateral mouths are disposed in
such a manner as to be able always to moderate, sift, and, if need be,
exclude, the invading atmosphere. One is overcome with surprise by the
infinite variety of the combinations designed for this end, the numerous
mechanical and chemical arts of the most complicated character. To
receive and yet not receive, to breathe without breathing, to preserve
the control of what must nevertheless be a passive function, to trust
and yet mistrust, to surrender and yet protect, is the difficult problem
which life here proposed to itself, and of which it has found innumer¬
able solutions. To give air to a grub ! Behold, arrogant humanity,
which callest thyself the -centre of all things, the most laborious effort
that has engrossed the powers of nature !

Its circulation resembles that of the embryo in the bosom of its
mother. But how much less favourable the condition of the insect !
The foetus is in immediate contact with the world through the soft
maternal medium. The motherless insect embryo does not swim, like
the other, in a sea of milk. It is cradled in the rude mould of the
universal life; it travels therein at great peril, on the rude earth, from
shock to shock.

THE CHILD OF NIGHT.

101

This fact the moderns have recognized, — the insect is an embryo.
But who would suppose that this very circumstance would doom it to
death ? How rude a contradiction ! An embryo launched into the thick
of the fray, to be the victim of all — of birds, and even of insects. An
embryo armed, it is true ; and nothing is stranger than to see the soft
grubs brandishing their threatening jaws, while their feeble body,
deprived of all defence, is exposed on every side.

Flight offers them but few chances ; their best protection is night.
And therefore they shun the light, — they live as they can under the
ground, in the wood, or at least beneath the leaf. If this be true of the
larvse, the grubs, of what we call worms, we may say the same of the
insect. For its first period (that of the larva) endures a considerable
time, though its life as a nymph, and finally its third period, last but a
very brief while. Numerous species (May-bugs, stag-beetles, and the
like) have three to six years of a tenebrous existence, and only three
months under the sun.

Even the insects which live longest in the sun, like the bees and the
ants, work willingly in obscurity ; are partial to the shadows of their
hives and ant-hills.

We may assert as a general rule that the insect is the child of night.

Most insects shun the day. But how can they avoid the air ?
Even in hot countries, the contact of the variable atmosphere with a
live nude body, whose epidermis is not yet hardened, becomes infinitely
painful. In our severe climates, each breath of air must produce the
sensation of piercing arrows, of a million of fine needles. What would
it be, 0 Heaven, for a poor human foetus to issue, after a week or a
fortnight, from its mother’s womb, and instead of peacefully under¬
going the transformations which strengthen it, to be subjected to them
in a naked condition and in open day ? What would be its sensations on
quitting its soft asylum, and falling into the cold air ? Yet such must
be those of the insect, when, soft, feeble, assailable, and penetrable
everywhere, still almost floating and gelatinous to the eye, it ex¬
periences the cold, and the wind, and the shock of so many painful
accidents.

Certain clothed species are a little better protected. Some are

7 b

102

THE MOTHER OF INVENTION.

lodged in the heart of a fruit. Others (bees and ants) form a protecting
community ; but the immense majority are born solitary and naked.

Some of our readers, always well clothed and warmed, will say, I am
sure, that cold is an excellent thing, which stimulates the appetite and

strengthens the frame. But those who have been poor will very well

•

understand my preceding observations. For my part, recollections of
my childhood convince me that cold is, in all truth, a punishment ; you
cannot get accustomed to it ; its prolongation does not render its effect
less severe. How keen a joy I felt (in rigorous winters) at each thaw
which released me from my agitated, terrified, and uneasy condition,
and secured the happy re-establishment of the internal harmony !

I do not deny, however, that cold may not be a powerful tonic,
which sharpens and braces up the mind, and draws from it fresh
efforts of invention. Cold, as well as hunger — and perhaps hunger
especially — is the great stimulus of the arts ; hunger weakens, cold
strengthens.

It is the powerful inspirer of infinite swarms of those chilly crea¬
tures which seek before all things, as soon as they are born, the means
of covering themselves. They are not in want of food; nature has
everywhere prepaied for them an ample banquet. All the vegetable
kingdom, and a great part of the animal, are at their disposal ; they
might live tender and indolent, as the child sleeps at its ease on the
maternal placenta which nourishes its slothfulness. But the cold irri¬
tates them ; the cold damp air deadens and paralyzes their entrails ;
finally, the light wounds them. They can enjoy no repose until they
have secured a shelter. In the lowest grade of life the smallest
grub becomes an artist, and by weaving, and spinning, and carving has
soon contrived a robe, and, as with a second skin over her too sensi¬
tive epidermis, has covered her suffering nakedness. Happy she who
finds herself placed at the outset on a prepared soil, a cloth of warm
wool, a fine fur : she does not fail to make in hot haste, according to
our human fashion, a pretty paletot fitted to her figure ; which, never¬
theless, she leaves a little loose, like economical mothers for their young
growing children, in whose case the garb too large to-day will be tight
and well-fitting to-morrow.

INDUSTRIES OF INSECTS.

103

Those who on their birth come in contact with chill green leaves,
and their lustrous glaze, are still more industrious. They practise arts
which astonish the observer. Some raise enormous masses with imper¬
ceptible cables, and by mechanical processes analogous to those which
were employed in removing and rearing the obelisk of the Place de
la Concorde. Others cut out figures purposedly irregular, which the
seam afterwards fits into its harmonious ensemble.

Every industrial corporation may be found represented in this
little world : tailors, weavers, felters, spinners, miners, and the like.
And in each corporation you meet with species working each after its
peculiar fashion, by the various processes appropriate to it.

The tailors work from a pattern. They mark out on the leaf a
suitable piece; which they remove, and lay upon another leaf; tack it,
cut out a second on the first model, and stitch them together. This
done, with their scaly head they flatten the ribs, just as the tailor
smooths down the seams with his iron. Then they line this coat,
which they carry about with them, with the very finest silk.

Others work in mosaic, others in marquetry and veneering. After
having woven the robe, they disguise it by artistically gluing to it a
variety of surrounding materials. The aquatic insects, for example,
embellish theirs with moss, lentils, mussels, or little snails.

The miners erect galleries between a couple of leaves, and roam
about in them, constructing places of exit and ingress in their subter¬
ranean abodes.

The labour is great. But among all the species an admirable justice
prevails. Whoso works hard while a child, does little when an adult ;
and vice versa. The bee, which in the larva state is richly fed by
its parents, and always carried about and cradled, is destined hereafter
to an exceedingly laborious life.

On the contrary, another insect which, as a grub, has toiled, and
woven, and spun, will having nothing to do in its later life but whisper
love-phrases to the rose. I am speaking of Sir Butterfly.

For the great majority, hard work is for infancy, for the larva
or the grub ; work twofold and excessive. On the one hand, the
constant, urgent, and pressing search after the food craved for by an

104

SUFFERING BRINGS STRENGTH.

immense internal need; the necessity of recruiting and renewing
its energies, of restoring the inherited organs, and developing new
ones.

The existence of these poor motherless creatures is divided between
two severe conditions : toil, and growth through disease.

For their moultings, or sloughings, are, in effect, a disease.

The painful moment having arrived for the little creature to change
its clothing, a clothing which clings to its flesh, it is seized with illness,
abandons its leaf, and creeps languidly to some solitary asylum. If
you saw it in such a soft, inert, and withered condition, so different
from its natural state, you would say it was on the point of death.
And many do, indeed, succumb at this laborious crisis.

Passive, and suspended to a branch, it waits until nature shall com¬
plete its work, — until its epidermis be detached from the second skin
beneath, recalling it to all the energies of life.

It is then that you see the garb, which was formerly so brilliant,
dry up and harden like a thenceforth useless thing, carried hither and
thither by the wind.

But before it will yield and separate, the invalid, despite of its
weakness, must twist in every direction, and writhe, and swell, and
contract, and employ all the efforts of a being in its strongest moments.

At length it has conquered ; the old sheath is rent ; and I see the
insect free, but bathed in sweat.

Do not touch it yet, for the slightest pressure will wound. Of this
it is aware, and lies perfectly motionless. It is pale, and almost swoon¬
ing ; it must wait patiently, before beginning to move, till its skin is
less sensitive and its limbs are much firmer. Soon, fortunately, it will
be invigorated by its food ; it feels a terrible hunger, which restores its
strength and prepares it for another sloughing. Such is its destiny.
It is condemned to deliver itself continually in a series of accouche-
ments, until it finally attains its latest transformation.

If either the exertion or the pain inspire it with a transient gleam
of thought, it would say, on each painful occasion : “ Now it is ended !
I have finished my task ; I will rest in peace ; this is my last change.”
To which Nature would respond: “Not yet! not yet! Thou art not

WORK BEFORE SLEEP.

105

yet engendered. What art thou ? Nothing but a larva, a mask which
is about to fall.”

What ! A mask ! and yet it wills and toils, strives and suffers, and
sometimes seems more advanced than will be the being produced from
it ! So much industry and skill imprisoned in a skin which will imme¬
diately dry up and be blown away by the breeze !

However this may be, it is seized one morning by an undefinable
kind of irritability and disquiet, — by a mysterious impulse which
excites it to undertake a new task. You would say that within itself
another self exists, moving, and stirring, and following up a distinct
purpose, and yearning to become — what ? does it know ? This I can¬
not assert ; but after awhile you may see it acting, and acting sagaci¬
ously, as if inspired by a perfect knowledge. Its presentiment of the
slumber which will shortly seize upon it, paralyze its forces, and sur¬
render it helplessly to all its enemies, incites it to the sudden display
of a novel activity. “Let us work well ! Let us work quickly! For
soon I shall sleep soundly.”

YI.— THE MUMMY,

NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.

HIIIHIPlIlllllllllllllll ill

<riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!iiin

CHAPTER VI.

THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.

Let us respect the childhood of the world. Let us
pardon the early ages for the consolations and hopes
which they drew from the strange drama represented
by the Insect, the thoughts of immortality which
grave Egypt founded upon it. This drama tran¬
quillized more hearts and wiped away more tears
than all the mysteries of Canopus or the revels of
Eleusis.

When the mourning widow, the eternal Isis,
ever reproducing herself in eternal anguish, was
snatched from her beloved Osiris, she reposed her
hope of a future reunion on the sacred beetle,
and hushed her sobs.

in a ;ir,iDinTTTTTr» mnnHirrmniiTiiii um mminrini mu

■in.1 amiuuniinun u

mimmnnnnmnnmtniii

What is death ? What is life ? What is the awakening, or what

the slumber ? Do vou not see this little miracle, this dumb confidant of

4/ •

THE MIRACULOUS IN NATURE.

the grave, which makes us the mock of destiny ? It sleeps in the egg,
and afterwards sleeps again in the nymph. It is thrice born; and it
dies thrice — as larva, nymph, and beetle. In each of these existences
the larva or mask is the prefigurement of the succeeding existence. It
prepares, begets, and hatches itself. From the most repulsive sepulchre
it emerges sparkling. On the dust it shines ; on the gray Egyptian
plain, in its season of aridity, it shimmers, and eclipses everything.
Its jewelled wing mirrors the all-powerful sun.

Where was it ? In the foul shadow, in night and death. A be¬
nignant Power has summoned it forth, and will yet do much more for
this beloved organism ! Sweet, tender ray ! The hope was surely
founded upon justice, on the impartial love of the Creator of all life.

Has modern science swept away the ancient poesy ? Has it com¬
pletely eliminated the miraculous from nature ?

The inaugurate of this science, Swammerdam, has discovered that
the grub already contains the nymph ; nay more, even the butterfly.
In the grub he has detected the rudiment of the wing and proboscis
of the future being.

This is not all. Malpighi saw the nymph of the silkworm in its
virgin slumber, already furnished with the attributes of its coming
maternity , — containing the eggs which, as a butterfly, it would
fecundate.

And yet again, this is not all. Reaumur, in the oak-grub, in a grub
scarcely a few hours old , found the eggs of the future butterfly. In
other words, the infant insect, at that very stage when the grub itself,
as Harvey points out, is simply a mobile egg, already possesses eggs
and children.

It is the identity of three beings. It seems as if there could be no
intermediary deaths ; one single life is continuous^ carried on.

MULTUM IN PARVO.

113

All this seems clear, does it not ? The ancient mystery has perished ?
Man has discovered, in its fulness, the secret of things ?

Reaumur does not think so ; Reaumur himself, who has guided us
so far. In recording his observations he does not appear satisfied, and
confesses “ that they still leave very much to be desired.”*

In truth, it is a thing to confound and almost to terrify the imagi¬
nation, to think that a grub, at the outset no bigger than a thread,
should include in itself all the elements of its moultings and meta¬
morphoses ; should contain its triple, and even octuple envelopes ; nay
more, the sheath or case of its nympha and its complete butterfly, all
folded up one in another, with an immense apparatus of vessels, respira¬
tory and digestive, of nerves for feeling and muscles for moving ! A
prodigious system of anatomy ! first traced out in complete detail in
Lyonnet’s colossal work on the willow-grub. The twofold monster,
endowed with a strong grub-stomach for the destruction of innumer¬
able hard leaves, will possess ere long a light and delicate apparatus
for extracting the honey of flowers. And yet the clothed creature,
which contains in its organism a complete silk-manufactory, will almost
immediately sweep away the complex system.

One knows the gentle manoeuvres by which nature conducts the
young of the higher animals from the embryonic existence to the
independent life, adapting the old organs to new functions. Here, this
is not done. It is not a simple change of condition. The destination
is not merely different, but contrary, with a violent contrast. There¬
fore, instruments fitted for an entirely novel existence are required, and
the abolition and definitive sacrifice of the primitive organism.

The revolution, which for all other beings is so well concealed, is here
entirely thrown open. And we are enabled to scrutinize with our eyes
this astonishing tour de force in numerous grubs which undergo the
great change in the light of day, suspended to the branch of a tree by
a silken cable.

The effort is worthy of our admiration and pity. To see yonder
nymph, short and feeble, soft and gelatinous, without arms or paws,
contriving, by the skill with which it expands and contracts its rings,

* Reaumur, “ Histoire des Insectes,” tome i., p. 351.

112

A SERIES OF CHANGES

to escape from the heavy and rough machine
which it was at first, flinging aside its limbs,
setting free its head, and — one hardly dares
to record the fact — throwing off its body,
and rejecting many of its principal internal
organs !

This little body, when it has thus escaped
from its long heavy mask (living, nevertheless,
but a moment since, a life full of energy), will
dangle, and grow dry, and skilfully ascend to
its silken fastening. There it prepares to fix
itself in its new “Me” as a nymph, while its
former “Me,” tossed about by the wind, is
speedily driven I know not whither.

All is, and ought to be, changed. The legs
will not again be the legs. It will need
lighter organs. What can the child of the air,
which can balance on the point of a blade of
grass, do with those coarse short feet, armed
with hooks, vent-holes, and so many heavy
implements ?

The head will not be the head; at least,
the enormous apparatus of mandibles will
disappear, and also that of the muscles by
which they were energetically moved. All is
thrown aside with the mask. A colossal
change ! From a masticator the animal be¬
comes a sucker. A flexible proboscis emerges.

If anything in the grub appeared of a
fundamental character, it was the digestive
apparatus. Ah, well ! this basis of its being
is no more. The absorbing throat — the power¬
ful stomach — the greedy entrails, — all are sup¬
pressed, or reduced nearly to nothing. What would they avail the
new being which, in certain species of butterflies, dispenses with

A NEW METAMORPHOSIS.

113

sustenance, has no mouth but by agreement, and is so completely freed
from digestion that frequently it has not even an inferior orifice ? It
abandons without difficulty its thenceforth useless furniture, and ex¬
pectorates the skin of its stomach !

This is grand and magnificent, — no spectacle is grander ! F or life
at such a point to change, to dominate over the organs, to rise victorious,
so entirely free of the ancient Ego ! To those who have revealed to us
such a prodigy of transfiguration, from the bottom of my heart I say,
“ Thanks !”

How marvellous the security in this being which abandons every¬
thing, which unhesitatingly dismisses its strong and solid existence, the
complicated organism which just now was itself ’ its own individuality !
We call it its larva, its mask; but why? The personality seems at
least as energetic in the vigorous grub as in the delicate butterfly.
And, therefore, it is most indubitably its individual being which it
courageously leaves to shrivel up and perish, to become — what ?
Nothing reassuring, nothing but a little, soft, whitish substance.

Open the nymph soon after it has spun its cocoon : in its shroud you
shall find nothing but a kind of milky fluid, wherein you see, or fancy
you see, certain dubious lineaments. After awhile you may, with a
fine needle, separate these I know not what, — and figure to yourself
that they are the limbs of the future butterfly. A frightful lacuna !
For many species a moment occurs when nothing of the old any longer
appears, and nothing of the new as yet has come. When iEson, cut in
pieces, was thrown, in order to rejuvenate him, into the caldron of
Medea, you would have found, on groping there, the limbs of JEson.
But here there is nothing parallel.

Trustfully, nevertheless, the mummy surrounds its body with its
bands, docilely accepting the shadows, the inertness, and the captivity of
the sepulchre. It feels in itself a force, a raison d'etre, a causa vivendi,
— a reason for living; still. And what reason ? What cause ? The
vitality accumulated by its previous toil. All that, like a laborious
grub, it has accumulated, is its obstacle to death, — its incapability of
perishing, — the reason why it will immediately live again; and not

only live, but with a light and tender existence, whose facility is

114

RETAINING THE INDIVIDUALITY.

proportioned exactly to the efforts which it makes in its anterior
condition of life.

Admirable compensation ! When penetrating so deep down into life,
I expected to encounter certain physical fatalities. And I found justice,
immortality, and hope.

Yes, antiquity was right, and modern science is right. It is death,
and yet it is not death ; let us call it if you will partial death. Is
death ever otherwise ? Is it not a new birth ?

Throughout my life I have remarked that each day I died and was
born again ; I have undergone many painful strugglings and laborious
transformations. One more does not astonish me. Many and many
times I have passed from the larva into the chrysalis, and into a more
complete condition; the which, after awhile, incomplete under other
relations, has put me in the way of accomplishing a new circle of
metamorphoses.

All this from me to me, but not less from me to those who were
still me, who loved me, or made me, or, so long as I lived, whom I made.
These, too, have been, or will be, my metamorphoses. Sometimes, a
certain intonation or gesture which I detect makes me exclaim : — “ Ah !
this is a gesture or a tone of my father.” I had not foreseen it, and
if I had foreseen it, it would not have occurred ; reflection had changed
all; but, not thinking of it, I employed it. A tender emotion, a holy
impulse seized me, when I felt my father thus living in myself. Are
wTe two ? Were we one ? Oh ! it was my chrysalis. And I — I play
the same part for those who shall follow me, my children, or the children
of my thought. I know, I feel, that besides the bases which I derived
from my father, my ancestors and masters, besides the inheritance of
artist-historian which I shall bequeath to others, germs existed within
me which were never developed. Another, and perchance a better,
man was within me, who has not arisen. Why were not the loftier
germs which might have made me great, and the powerful wings of
which I have sometimes felt myself possessed, displayed in life and
action ?

These germs, though put aside, remain to me ; too late for expansion
in this life, perhaps, but in another, — who knows ?

MAN IN HIS CHRYSALID.

115

An ingenious philosopher has remarked that if the human embryo,
while imprisoned in the maternal bosom, might reason, it would say: —
“I see myself endowed with organs of which here I can make no use,
— limbs which do not move, a stomach, and teeth which do not eat.
Patience ! these organs convince me that nature calls me elsewhere ; a
time will come when I shall have another residence, a life in which all
these implements will find employment. They are standing still, they
are waiting. I am but the chrysalis of a man !”

VII. —THE

PHCENIX

CHAPTER VII.

THE PHCENIX.

The drama is complete. From the gray or blackish
mummy which just now lay before you dried and
shrivelled, you see the new creature, the resuscitated,
the phoenix, blithely escaping, to shine resplendent
in all the glory of youth.

The very reverse of our destiny : commencing
with bright and butterfly days, in
later life we crawl and languish ;
while the insect commences with
years of gloom, and from a long life
of obscurity emerges into the youth
in which it dies glorified.

Let us be present at this departure. The warm breath of spring

120

NATURE’S INEXHAUSTIBLE PROVISIONS.

has awakened the plants; its banquet is prepared. More than one
flower, awaiting it, secretes its honey. It delays, because to-day that
impenetrable envelope which ensured its safety becomes for a moment
its obstacle. Enfeebled and fatigued by so great a transformation,
how shall it break through the too solid cradle which threatens to
suffocate it ?

Some species — as, for example, the ants — experience so great a diffi¬
culty, that the captive, probably, would never effect its release but for
the opportune assistance of some power which, from without, hastens
to extricate it, to deliver it (so to speak), and separate it from the
trammels of its swaddling-clothes. Fortunate difficulty ! which creates
the bond between the two ages, attaches the liberator to the child she
has delivered, and herself begins its education and society !

But, for the majority of insects, the liberator is no other than
Nature. This mother, inexhaustible in tenderness and invention, gives
to the little one the key which will open the barrier, pierce the prison,
and introduce it to daylight and liberty.

“ What key ? — and how ? ” say you. “ How can this soft and fluid
being contrive to seize upon a firm, compact tissue, frequently doubled
and immured by the alluvial accumulation of a protracted winter ? ”

The circumstance embarrasses us greatly, but Nature is not
troubled. Means of the utmost simplicity suffice her ; she eludes, and
sports with, the difficulty. The butterfly of the silkworm, for instance,
at the critical moment finds a file — where ? — in its eye ! This eye, with
numerous facets, has a fine diamond point, which files through and
severs the silken prison.

Another, the cockchafer, shut up underground, suddenly discovers
that it is a perfect mechanician. Of its whole body it makes a lever.
Its posterior extremity furnishes it with a strong-pointed auger. It
sinks solidly, anchors, and makes fast. From this point cVa/ppui it
derives an enormous force, and with its robust shoulders uplifts the
heavy clod, enlarges the aperture, finds at length the light, extends
its unwieldy apparatus of wings and wing-cases, and flies like a gnat.

Another deformed (or shapeless) miner, the mole-cricket, would never
reach the surface if, to reascend from the depth of the earth, it had not

SEEKING THE LIGHT.

12]

two enormous Lands, or rather two powerful rakes, which open up its
way. Though hideous, it is not the less sensitive to the influence of
spring, but it takes the precaution of never exposing its strange figure
save to the doubtful rays of the moon. Its plaintive cry singularly
affects the female ; she yields to it, and makes her appearance, but to
return again into the night and confide to the protecting shade the hope
of her posterity.

A frail aquatic insect, the gnat, on this important day assumes the

daring mission of the navigator. It makes fresh use of its demitted

envelope, and turns it into a bark. In this it stands upright, extends

its new wings for sails, glides along the wave, and very frequently

without shipwreck reaches the shore ; where, when dried, the same

wings will bear it off to the chase and the pursuit of pleasure. In an
♦

hour it appears a complete master of all these novel arts. It is the
peculiarity of love to know without having been taught.

Love is winged. Mythology is perfectly in the right. This is veri¬
fied in the proper sense and without metaphor. In one brief moment,
Nature displays a restless anxiety to fly towards the beloved object.
All creatures rise above their own level, all mount towards the light, on
the pinions of desire. The internal fire is also revealed in glowing
colours. Every one decorates his person, every one wishes to please.

The butterfly apparently looks upon you with the great velvety eyes
which adorn its wings. Beetles of every species, like mobile stones,
astonish by their brilliant reflexes, their burning vivacities. Finally,
from the bosom of the shadows bursts the flame of love, naked and
unveiled, in flashing stars !

At such a moment it accomplishes the strangest transformations,
and from the humblest masks issue, in violent contrast, the superbest
individuals.

A dull larva of the morass, which lives only by stratagem, becomes
the brilliant amazon, the agile winged warrior, called Demoiselle
(i libellula ). It is the only creature of its tribe which expresses the
complete liberty of flight, holding the same rank among insects as the
swallow among birds. Who has not followed with attentive gaze its
thousand varied movements, its turns, and returns, and the infinite

122

EFFECT OF THE INNER LIFE.

circles which it makes with azure and emerald wings on the meadow
or over the waters ? A flight apparently capricious ; but not really so,
for it is a chase, a rapid and elegant extermination of myriads of insects.
What seems to you a pastime, is the greedy absorption with which
this brilliant creature of war feeds its season of love.

Do not believe that these riches are simply the gifts of genial climates;
that these glittering festal garments which they assume to love and die
in are only the sheen of the sun, the all-powerful decorator, which with
its rays intensifies the enamel and gems we admire upon their wings.
Another sun — a sun which shines for the whole earth, even for the ice-
regions of the pole — profits them far more considerably. It exalts in
them the inner life, evokes all their powers, and, on the given day, calls
forth the supreme flower. Yonder scintillating colours are their visible
energies which become speaking and eloquent. It is the pride of a
complete life, which, having attained its climax, displays its energy in
triumph, wishes to expand and diffuse; it is the tradition of desire, the
imperious prayer and urgent appeal to the beloved objects.

In pale and temperate climates, you will meet with those brilliant
liveries which one would think belonged to the tropics. Who, under
our gloomy and variable sky, has not seen the sparkling Spanish fly ?
Even in the fatal deserts where summer beams but for an instant, as
if in despite of the sun, — in despite of the poor and naked earth, — love
supports some beings of a sumptuous splendour, of opulent raiment and
rich decoration. Miserable Siberia sees the princes and great lords of

UBIQUITY OF INSECT LIFE.

123

the Insect World simultaneously displaying their grandeur. The tyran¬
nical Russian climate cannot prevent enor¬
mous beetles, pitiless hunters, fiercer than
Ivan the Terrible, from appearing in green,
black, violet, or deep blue morocco, shaded
with purple sapphires. While some, usurp¬
ing the ancient copes consecrated to the
czars and the porphyrogeniti, stalk to and
fro in robes of purple, broidered with Byzan¬
tine gold.

In our neighbouring Siberias, I mean our
lofty mountains, — under the hailstorms, for
instance, of the Pyrenean glaciers, — without
being discouraged by their rude blows, fly
noble insects, of exquisite appearance, the
rosalia in a mantle of pearl-gray satin, spotted
with black velvet.

Among the lofty Alps, at the Grindelwalcl.

— the formidable descent where that glacier
comes to us, and you may touch its aiguilles ,
and its keen breath freezes you — I once ad¬
mired a timid but touching protestation of
love. Among some miserable birches, martyr
trees, which undergo an eternal chastisement,
a poor little plant, elegant and delicate, per¬
sists in flowering, with a rose-liued blossom,
but a violet rose, not un worth v of the mourn-
ful region. The brother of this tragical rose

o o

is a very tiny insect which, all feeble as it is,
mounts higher than any other species, and
is found shivering among the lofty snows of
Mont Blanc. There, above you, is only the
heaven, and, beneath, the vast shroud of ice.

The poetic creature has assumed exactly two tints: the celestial blue
of its wings, incredibly delicate, seems lightly kindled with the white

124

ON THE MOUNTAIN-SUMMIT,

powder of the hoar-frost. The storms and avalanches which overthrow'
the rocks awaken in it no sensations of terror. Under the breath of
the terrible giant, in his ice-bristling beard and formidable frown, it,
the little one, flies daringly, as if conscious that this king of the ever¬
lasting winters would hesitate to destroy the last winged flower of love
which, in his realm of death, preserves for him a reflection of heaven.

§oo\i the <§>eontb.

■+

MISSION AND ARTS OF THE INSECT.

SWAMMERDAM

CHAPTER I.

SWAMMERDAM,

■r= -

What was known of the Infinite prior to
1600 ? Nothing whatever. Nothing of the
infinitely great; nothing of the infinitely
little. The celebrated page of Pascal, very
frequently cited upon this subject, is the frank
astonishment of a humanity so old and yet
so young, which begins to be aware of its
prodigious ignorance, opens its eyes to the
Real, and awakens between two abysses.

No one forgets that in 1610 Galileo, having
received from Holland a magnifying lens, con¬
structed the telescope, elevated it in position,

and saw the firmament. But it is less generally known that Swam¬
merdam, seizing, with the instinct of genius, on the imperfect micro¬
scope, directed it to the lower world, and was the first to detect the

130

GALILEO AND SWAMMERDAM.

living infinite, the world of animated atoms ! These great men suc¬
ceeded one another. At the epoch of the famous Italians death (1642)
was born the Hollander, the Galileo of the infinitely little (1637).

An astounding revolution ! The abyss of life was unfolded in its
profundity with myriads upon myriads of unknown beings and fan¬
tastic organizations of which men had not even dared to dream. But
the most surprising circumstance is, that the very method of the
sciences underwent a total change. Hitherto men had relied upon
their senses. The severest observation invoked their testimony, and
they thought that no appeal could lie from their judgment. But now
behold experiment and the senses themselves, rectified by a powerful
auxiliary, confess that not only have they concealed from us the
greater part of things, but that, in those they have laid bare, they have
every moment been mistaken !

Nothing is more curious than to observe the very opposite impres¬
sions produced by these two revolutions upon their authors. Galileo
before the infinite of heaven, where all appeared harmonious and mar¬
vellously ordered, felt more of joy than of surprise ; he announced his
discoveries to Europe in a style of the greatest enthusiasm. Swammer¬
dam, before the infinite of the microscopic world, seemed overcome with
terror. He recoiled before the spectacle of Nature at war, devouring her
very self. He grew perturbed ; he seemed to fear that all his ideas and
beliefs would be overthrown : a melancholy and singular condition,
which, added to his incessant labours, shortened his days. Let us pause
awhile to dwell upon this creator of science, who was also its martyr.

The eminent physician Boerhaave, who, a hundred years after Swam¬
merdam’s time, published with pious care his “ Bible of Nature,” gave
utterance to a surprising observation, which sets one a-dreaming : —

“ He had an ardent imagination of impassioned melancholy, which
raised him to the sublime.”

Thus, this surpassing master in all the works of patient inquiry,
this insatiable observer of the most minute details, who pursued Nature
so far into the imperceptible, was a poetic soul, a man of imagination,
one of those mournful spirits who groan after nothing less than the
infinite, and die because they fail to conquer it.

SWAMMERDAM’S EARLY YEARS.

131

His was a remarkable combination of mental endowments which, at
the first glance, seem opposed to one another : a love of the great, and
a taste for the subtlest researches ; a sublimity of aim, and that ob¬
stinacy of analysis which would subdivide the atom, and yet never
cry, “ Hold, enough ! ” But, in reality, are these qualities of so contra¬
dictory a nature ? By no means. Men whose hearts are filled with
the love of Nature will declare that they harmonize admirably.
Nothing great and nothing little. For the lover a simple hair is worth
as much as, frequently more than, a world.

He was born in a cabinet of natural history ; and his birth decided
his destiny. The cabinet, formed by his father, an apothecary of
Amsterdam, was a pell-mell, a chaos. The child wished to arrange
it, and drew up a catalogue of it. A modest ambition led him from
point to point, until he became the greatest naturalist of the century.

His father was one of the zealot collectors who then became common
in Holland — insatiable treasurers of diverse rarities. It was not with
pictures — though Bembrandt was then in his glory — it was not with
antiquities, that he filled his house. But all that the ships brought
back from the two Indies of minerals, plants, fantastic and extra¬
ordinary animals, he acquired at any cost, and heaped up in piles.
These marvels of the unknown world, contrasting by their splendour
and tropical magnificence with the gloomy climate which received
them and the pale sea of the North, aroused in the young Hollander’s
mind a lively curiosity and a passionate devotion to Nature.

A very good Dutch painter has drawn a charming picture of the
young Grotius : a universal scholar at twelve years of age, surrounded
by folios, maps, charts, and all the appliances of learning. How much
I should have preferred that the same artist — or rather the all-powerful
magician, Bembrandt — had revealed to us the mysterious study, that
brilliant chaos of the three kingdoms, and the young Swammerdam
endeavouring to grasp the grand enigma !

The crowds and prodigious movement of Amsterdam favoured his
solitude. The Babylons of commerce are for the thinker profound
deserts. In that dumb ocean of men of mercantile activity, on the
border of sluggish canals, he lived almost like Bobinson Crusoe in his

132

THE LANDSCAPES OF HOLLAND.

island. Isolated even in the midst of liis family, who could not com¬
prehend him, he seldom emerged from his cabinet, and descended on
the fewest possible occasions into the paternal shop.

His sole recreation was to go in search of insects in the little soil
which Holland offers above the waters. The melancholy meads,
covered with Paul Potter’s herds, possess, in the moist warmth of the
summer, a great variety of animal life. The traveller is much im¬
pressed when he sees the crane, the stork, and the crow, elsewhere
hostile, reconciled here bv the abundance of their food, which they
frequently hunt in company on terms of perfect accord. Hence the
landscape acquires a peculiar charm. The cattle assume an air of placid

security which they do not elsewhere exhibit. The summer is short,
and early assumes the gravity of autumn. Man and Nature — all
appears of a pacific character, harmonized in a great moral sweetness
and remarkable seriousness of mood.

Enthusiastic collector as his father was, he grieved to see the youth
of Swammerdam thus employed. It had been his ambition to make of
his son a renowned minister who should shine in controversy, and an
eloquent preacher. But his son seemed daily to grow more dumb.
The chagrined father lowered his views from glory to money. In that
golden city, so feverish and so diseased, no career is more lucrative
than that of a physician. But here arose another difficulty. Swam¬
merdam threw himself heartily into his medical studies ; but on con¬
dition that he created them — as yet they did not exist. Therefore, the
basis on which he desired to rest them was the preliminary creation of

SWAMMERDAM’S INVENTIONS.

133

the natural sciences. How cure the sick man unless you understood the
healthy ? And how understand the latter without studying side by side
the inferior animals which translate and explain disease ? But can one
see into such delicate mysteries with the eye alone ? Does not the feeble¬
ness of the sense of vision lead us astray ? The serious creation of
science would suppose a reform of our senses and the creation of optics.

A veritable creation ! Look at the microscope. Is it a simple
spy-glass ? To the eyes which the instrument possessed, Swammerdam
added two arms, one of which bears the glass and the other the object.
He himself says, in reference to his more difficult investigations, “ that
he had attempted to obtain the assistance of another person, but that
such assistance proved, in fact, an obstacle.” It was for this reason
that he organized a dumb man of copper, a discreet servant ready for
every work ; thanks to whom the observer disposes of supplementary
hands and numerous eyes of different degrees of power. In the same
manner as the birds expand or contract their visual organs, either to
grasp objects in a whole or to scrutinize with searching glance the
smallest detail, Swammerdam created the method of successive enlarge¬
ment; the art of employing lenses of different sizes and varying cur¬
vature, which permit the observer to see en masse, and to study each
separate portion, and finally to survey the whole for the purpose of
properly replacing the details and reconstituting the general harmony.

Was this all ? No. To observe dead bodies, time is required ; but
then time robs us of them. Death, which seemingly conduces to study
by its immobility, is deceitful ; it fixes the mask for a moment, and the
object beneath melts away. Now came a new creation of Swammer¬
dam’s. He not only taught us to see and investigate, but he devised
means for our permanent investigation. By preservative injections he
fixed these ephemeral objects; he compelled time to halt, and forced
death to endure. The Czar Peter, who, a long time afterwards, sawT
in the dissecting-room of one of Swammerdam’s disciples the beautiful
body, supple and fresh, of a little child, with its exquisite carnation tint,
thought that the rose was living, and could not be prevented from
embracing it.

All this is soon said ; but it was long to do. How many attempts !

9 B

134

THE RECOMPENSE OF PATIENCE.

What miracles of patience, of delicacy, of skilful management ! In
exact proportion as one descends the scale of littleness, the insufficiency
of our means proves more and more embarrassing. We can touch
nothing without breaking it. Our large fingers will hold no more :
they cast a shadow, they throw obstacles in our way. Our instru¬
ments are too coarse to seize upon such atoms ; therefore we refine
them. But then how can we put the invisible point in an invisible
object ? The two terms in sight avoid us. Only one single passion —
the unconquerable love of life and Nature, the undefinable, indescrib¬
able tenderness, a feminine sensibility directed by a masculine, scientific
genius — could succeed in so great an aim. Our Hollander loved the
tiny creatures. He dreaded wounding them so much that he spared
the scalpel. He avoided as far as he could the steel, and preferred the
firm but nevertheless the delicate ivory. He fashioned in it infinitely
small instruments, sharpened by aid of the microscope, which would
not work rapidly, and compelled the student to make his observations
with due patience.

His tender respect for Nature found its reward. While still a
youth, and a simple student at Leyden University, he had two strong
holds upon her in her highest and lowest manifestations. He was the
first to see and understand the maternity of the insect and the human
maternity. The latter subject, so delicate and yet so grand — in which
he laboured conjointly with his master at Leyden — I put aside : let us
dwell upon the former. He dissected and described the ovaries of the
bee: found them in the pretended “king;” and proved that she was
a queen, or rather a mother. In like manner he explained the mater¬
nity of the ant; an all-important discoveiy, which revealed the true
mystery of the superior insect, and initiated us into the real char¬
acter of these societies, which are not monarchies, but maternal repub¬
lics and vast public nurseries, each of which raises up a people.

The most general fact in the life of insects, and the great law of
their existence, is the Metamorphosis. Changes which in other creatures
are obscure, are in them exceedingly conspicuous. The three ages
of the insect appear to be three creatures. Who would have dared to
assert that the grub, with its heavy luxuriance of digestive organs and

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.

135

its great liairy feet, was identical with a winged and ethereal being,
the butterfly ?

He dared to say, and by the most delicate anatomy he demonstrated,
that the larva, the pupa, and the butterfly represented three conditions
of the same individual, three natural and legitimate evolutions of its life.

How did learned Europe welcome this novel science of meta¬
morphoses ? That was the question. Swammerdam, young and with¬
out authority, without any position in the academy or university,
lived in his cabinet. Scarcely anything of his works was published
during his life, nor even fifty years afterwards, so that his discoveries
might circulate and advantage all, rather than himself and his fame.

Holland remained indifferent. Eminent professors in the Uni¬
versity of Leyden were opposed to him ; and took umbrage at the fact
that a simple student placed himself by his discoveries on a level
with them, or even above them.

The miserable and necessitous condition in which his father left
him was not calculated to recommend him greatly in a country like
Holland. In his costly labours he was supported by the generosity of
his friends. At Leyden it was Van Horn, his professor of anatomy,
who defrayed all his expenses.

At this epoch two illustrious academies were founded, — the Royal
Society of London and the Academie des Sciences of Paris. But the
former, specially inspired by the genius of Harvey, a pupil of Padua,
turned its gaze towards Italy, and addressed its inquiries to the dis¬
tinguished and very accurate observer, Malpighi, who furnished at its
request the anatomy of the silkworm. I know not why the English¬
men turned aside from Holland, and did not also interrogate the genius
of Swammerdam.

He was honoured only in France. It was here, in the neighbourhood
of Paris, that he made the first public demonstration of his discovery.
His friend Thevenot, the famous traveller and publisher of travels,
collected around him at Issy different classes of savants , linguists,
orientalists, and, before all, inquiring students of Nature. Such was
the origin of the Academie des Sciences. One might justly say that
the revelation of the illustrious Hollander inaugurated its cradle.

136

ILLNESS OF SWAMMERDAM.

A Frenchman rescued from the hands of the Inquisition the last
manuscripts of Galileo. A Frenchman also — Thevenot — supported
Swammerdam with his purse and credit. He was desirous of estab¬
lishing him at Paris. On the other hand, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany
invited him to Florence. But the fate of Galileo was too strong a
warning. Even in France there was little safety. The mystic Morin
was burned at Paris in 1664 ; the very year in which Moliere performed
the first acts of his “ Tartuffe.” Swammerdam, who was then residing
there, might have been present at both spectacles.

He himself, notwithstanding his positivism, showed very singular
tendencies towards mysticism. The more deeply he entered into
details, the more eagerly did he long to reascend to the general source
of love and life ; an impotent effort which consumed him. Already,
at the age of thirty-two, excessive toil, chagrin, and religious melan¬
choly had brought him almost to the grave. From his early years he
had suffered from the fevers so common in Holland, that land of swamp
and morass, and had not paid due attention to them. He studied
with his microscope every day from dawn till noon; the remainder
of the day he wrote. And for his studies he preferred the summer
days, with their strong light and burning sunshine. Then he would
remain, with his head bare that he might not lose the smallest ray,
frequently until deluged and bathed in sweat. His eyesight grew
very weak.

He was already in a feeble condition when, in 1669, he published in
a preliminary essay the principle of the metamorphosis of insects. He
was sure of being immortal ; but so much the more in danger of dying
of hunger. His father thenceforth withdrew from him all assistance.
Swammerdam by his discoveries (as of the lymphatic vessels and
hernias) had very considerably promoted the progress of medicine, and
even of surgery ; but he was not a physician. From a spirit of
obedience he had attempted to practise : he could not continue, and
fell ill. He was now without a home. His father shut up his house,
retired to live with his son-in-law, and bade Swammerdam provide for
himself, and lodge where he would. A wealthy friend had often
solicited him to reside with him. When expelled from the paternal

“AMONG TEARS AND SOBS.”

137

roof, lie made an effort to seek out this friend and remind him of his
offer ; but he remembered it no longer.

Misfortunes now accumulated upon his head. Poor and infirm, and
dragging himself along the streets of Amsterdam with a large collection
which he knew not where to store away, he received another terrible
shock — the ruin of his country. The earth sunk under his feet.

It was the fatal year of 1672, when Holland seemed crushed by the
invasion of Louis XIY. Assuredly his fatherland had not spoiled
Swammerdam; but nevertheless it was the native home of science, of
free reason, the asylum of human thought. And lo ! she sank, engulfed
by the hosts of the French ; engulfed in the ocean which she had sum¬
moned to her assistance. She lived only by committing suicide. Did
she live ? Yes ; but to be thenceforth no more than the shadow of her
former greatness.

The infinite melancholy of such a change has had its painter and
its poet in Ruysdael, who was born and who died in Swammerdam’s
time, and, like him, at the age of forty. When I contemplate in the
Louvre the inestimable picture which that Museum possesses of him,
the one leads me to think of the other. The little man who followed

the gloomy route of the dunes at the approach of the storm reminds
me of my insect-hunter ; and the sublime marine picture of the pali¬
sade in the red-brown waters, chafing so terribly, and electrified by
the tempest, seems a dramatic expression of the moral tempests which
poor Swammerdam experienced when he wrote “The Ephemera” —
“ amoncr tears and sobs.”

138

DEATH OF SWAMMERDAM.

The Ephemera is the fly which is born but to die, living a single
hour of love.

But Swammerdam did not enjoy that hour ; and it seems as if he
spent his too brief life in a state of complete isolation. At the age of
thirty-six he was already drawing near his end. The depths of
imagination and universal tenderness in his nature could not be
alimented by the barren controversies of the age. In this condition
there accidentally fell into his hand an unknown work, — a woman’s
book. This sweet voice spoke to his very soul, and somewhat con¬
soled him. It was one of the opuscula of a celebrated mystic of that
age, Mademoiselle Bourignon.

Poor as was Swammerdam, he undertook a pilgrimage to Germany,
where she resided, and went to see his consoler. He found in the jour¬
ney a very real assistance in escaping at the least from his contention
with the savants , his rivals, in forgetting every collision, and in remit¬
ting to God alone his defence and his discoveries.

He longed to withdraw himself into a profound solitude. For this
purpose it was necessary lie should dispose of the dear and precious
cabinet on which he had spent his days, in which he had enshrined his
heart, and which had at length become a portion of himself. He must
tear himself from it. At this cost he calculated that he would obtain
a revenue sufficient for his wants; but the very loss and separation he
longed for he could not undergo. Neither in Holland nor in France
could buyers be found for the cabinet. Perhaps the wealthy amateurs,
who think of nothing but empty eclat , did not find in it the glittering
species which give us a child’s pleasure. The great inventor’s collec¬
tion offered things more serious : the logical order and arrangement
of his discoveries ; that eloquent and living method which had guided
his genius to new achievements. Alas ! it perished, scattered abroad.

Having been for a long time ill, in 1680, either through weakness, or
a disgust for life and men, he shut himself up, and would not go out any
more. He bequeathed his manuscripts to his faithful and life-long
friend, whom, when dying, he himself styled the “ incomparable,” — the
Frenchman Thevenot. He died aged forty-three.

What really killed him ? His own science. The too abrupt revela-

PAUSING- ON THE BRINK.

139

tion wounded and seized upon him. If Pascal saw an imaginary abyss
opening before him, what would happen to this Dutch Pascal, who saw
the real abyss and the limitless profundity of the unexpected world ?
It was not a matter of a decreasing scale of abstract greatnesses or of
inorganic atoms, but of the successive envelopment and prodigious
movements of beings which are the one in the other. For the little we
see, each animal is a tiny planet, a small world inhabited by animals
still more diminutive, which in their turn are inhabited by others very
much smaller. And this, too, without end or rest, except from the
powerlessness of our senses and the imperfection of optical science.

All men now began to fathom, and incessantly toil in, that infinity
which the hand of Swammerdam had opened up to them. From that
time Europe laboured therein with diverse aims. Leuwenhoek, pre¬
cipitating himself upon it, discovered and conquered new worlds. The
Italian positivist, Malpighi, showed perhaps the highest boldness. He
proved that the insect has a heart — a heart which beats like man’s.
Some venture even to endow it with a soul. Swammerdam, who
was living then, was terrified by the fact. He drew back affrighted
from the declivity; he wished to keep his footing, and was fain to
doubt the existence of the heart.

It seemed to him that the science to which he had given the first
impulse, which he had launched on the flood of his discoveries, was
conducting him to something great and terrible which he shrank from
seeing : like one who, adrift on the enormous sea of fresh water which
dashes headlong in the Niagara Falls, perceives himself impelled by a
calm but invincible and mighty movement — whither ? He will not,
and he dare not, think !

n _ THE MICROSCOPE

THE MICROSCOPE : — HAS THE INSECT A PHYSIOGNOMY ?

Armed with that sixth sense which man has achieved
for himself, I can move forward, at pleasure, in any
direction. It is in my power to track out, to reach,
to compute the spheres, and gravitate with them in
their vast orbits. But I feel much more strongly
attracted towards the other abyss — that of the in¬
finitely little. In its atoms I discover an intensity of
energy which charms and astounds me. And I my¬
self, what am I but an atom ? Neither Jupiter nor
Sirius, those enormous globes at so great a distance

^ A / &

from, and possessing so little sympathy with me, will teach me
the secret of terrestrial life. But these, on the contrary, surround
and press upon me, injure me or lend me their assistance. If they

144

ABOUT THE MICROSCOPE.

are not of my own kind, they are at all events associated with
me.

Ay, fatally associated.

And yet I cannot fly from them : swarms haunt the very air which
I breathe, — what do I say ? float in the fluids of my body. It is my
interest to know them. But my sovereign interest is to escape from
my deplorable and wretched ignorance, and not to quit this world until
I have peered into the infinite.

Full of such ideas, I addressed myself to one of the philosophers of
the present day who have made the greatest and most successful use
of the microscope, — the celebrated Dr. Robin. Under his direction, I
purchased from the skilful optician Nachet an excellent instrument,
and planted myself before my window on a very beautiful day.

I have said it, — the microscope is much more than a mere magni¬
fying glass. It is an aid, a servant who has hands to supplement your
own — eyes, and movable eyes, which by their changes enable you to
see an object at a suitable magnitude, and either in detail or as a whole.
You perfectly understand the all-absorbing attraction which it exer¬
cises ; however great the fatigue it causes, you cannot separate your¬
self from it. Its dtfbut, as we have seen, was signalized by its slaying
its creator, Swammerdam. How many workmen has it not since de¬
prived, if not of life, at least of sight ? The first of the two Hubers
became blind at a comparatively early age. The illustrious author of
the great work on the cockchafer, M. Strauss, is nearly so. Our pallid
but enthusiastic Robin is already on the same descent, but pursues his
studies without pause. The seduction is too potent. Who can renounce
the truth, after once beholding it ? Who can willingly return into the
world of errors wherein men exist ? Better not to see at all, than
always to see things falsely.

Behold me, then, face to face with my little man of copper. I lost
not an instant in interrogating the oracle. And its first and somewhat
rough reply respecting the two objects I presented was : —

One was the human hand, white and delicate, — the left hand, the
idler, and that of a person who did no work.

The other, a spider’s foot.

WHAT IT REVEALED.

145

To the naked eye the former object seemed agreeable enough ; the
other, a tiny, obscure blade, of a dirty brown, and somewhat repulsive.

In the microscope the effect was precisely the opposite. In the
spider’s foot, easily cleansed of a few downy spots, appeared a magnifi¬
cent comb of the most beautiful shell, which, far from being dirty, by
its extreme polish was rendered incapable of being soiled ; everything
glided off it. This object would seem to serve two ends : that of a very
delicate hand, through which the spinner, in rising or descending, suffers
its thread to glide ; and that of a comb, with which the attentive
labourer holds its stuff, while at work, in the required position, until
the woven threads — more like a cloud — grow firm and strong, are dried
by the air, and no longer fall back floating and wavy, but useless.

As for the human hand, the part exposed under the microscope
seemed, even with the smallest lens, a vague and immense substance,
incomprehensible through its very coarseness.

Even with a medium lens, of only twelve or fifteen times magnify¬
ing power, it seemed to be a yellowish, reddish tissue, coarse and dry,
ill-woven, — a kind of wiry taffeta, in which each mesh was irregularly
puffed up.

N othing could be more humiliating !

This pitiless judge, pitiless even in its treatment of the flowers, be¬
haves with terrible severity towards the human flower. The freshest and
most charming will act wisely in not attempting the experiment. She
would shudder at herself. Her dimples would deepen into abysses ! The
light down of the peach which crowns her beautiful skin with the bloom
of delicacy would show like rough thickets, or rather like savage forests.

After my first experiment, I felt that the too truthful oracle not only
altered our ideas of proportion, but of appearances, colours, forms —
transfiguring everything, in fact, from the false to the true.

Let us be resigned. Whatever the organ of truth may tell us, 1
thank it, and I will welcome it though it declare me to be a monster.
But such is not the case. If it change with some severity our notions
of the surface, on the other hand it reveals to us worlds of truly un¬
bounded beauty beneath it. A hundred things in anatomy which seem

horrible to the unassisted sight, acquire a touching and impressive

14G

AN INSECT’S WING.

delicacy, and a poetical charm which approaches the sublime. This is
not the place for discussing such a subject. But a mere drop of blood,
of a brickdust-red by no means agreeable to the naked eye, heavy, thick,
and opaque, if you look at it when dry, under the magnifying glass,
presents to you a delicious rose-bloom arborescence, with delicate rami¬
fications as fine and subtle as those of the coral are coarse and dull.

But let us keep to our insects. Let us select the most miserable —
the wonderfully little butterfly of the clothes-moth, that dirty white
butterfly which seems the lowest of created beings. Take only his
wing. Nay, far less, only a little dust, the light powder which covers
his win a;. You are astounded at seeing that Nature, exhausting the
most ingenious industry in order that this offcast of creation may fly
at his ease, and without fatigue, has scattered over his wing, not dust,
but a multitude of tiny balloons. Or, if you prefer it, so many para¬
chutes, most convenient instruments for flight, which, when opened,
sustain the little aeronaut without fatigue and for an indefinite period ;
which, as they are more or less expanded, enable it to rise or sink ; and
when folded up, permit of its remaining quiet. The least of the butter¬
flies, thus supported, has a faculty of flight as unlimited as the noblest
bird of heaven.

We grow keenly interested in these curious apparatus, which have
anticipated our human inventions. We observe their strange and
surprising modes of action, as we would observe the inhabitants of an¬
other planet, if they were miraculously transported thither. But what
we most yearn to see, what we burn to detect, is some reflection from
within , some gleam of the torch which is concealed in their inner
existence, some appearance of thought. Have they a physiognomy ?
Can I seize in their strange visage any trace of an intelligence which,
judging by their works, so closely resembles our own ? Of the expres¬
sion which touches me in the eye of the dog, and of other animals
related to me, shall I detect nothing in the bee, the ant, in those
ingenious beings, those creators, which accomplish so many things the
dog cannot accomplish ?

A clever man once said to me : “ As a boy I was very partial to
insects ; I searched about for caterpillars, and made a collection of them.

THE STUDENT IN HIS SOLITUDE.

147

I was especially curious to look in their faces, but never succeeded.
All that I could distinguish was confused, dull, melancholy. This dis¬
couraged me. I left off making collections.”

I was but a child in this new study ; that is, I was fresh to it, and
curious. My special anxiety was to interrogate the countenance of
the dumb little world, and to surprise there, in default of voice, the
silent thought. Thought ? At least, the dream, the obscure and float¬
ing instinct.

I addressed myself to the ant ; an humble being in form and colour,
but endowed with a prodigious amount of social instinct and of the
educational capacity; not to speak of its quickness of resource, of the
promptitude with which it confronts perils, and chances, and embarrass¬
ments.

I take then an ant of the commonest species — a neutral ant — one
of the workers who are relieved from the wants of love, and in whom
therefore the sex, diminished to a minimum for the advantage of
labour, develops so much more powerfully its extraordinary instinct;
who alone perform all the diverse trades of the little community, and
are purveyors, nurses, architects, and inventors.

I selected a very fine, serene, and luminous day — not luminous with
the glare of summer, but the calm radiance of autumn (1st September
1856). I was alone, in a state of perfect silence and repose, and in that
complete forgetfulness of the world which is so rarely obtained. After
the manifold agitations of the past and present, my heart for a moment
was at peace.

Never was I more ready to hear the mute voices which do not
address themselves to the ear, to penetrate in a calm and benevolent
spirit the mystery of the little world which on every side surrounds
us, and yet has hitherto remained out of our reach and apart from our
communicati ons.

Alone with my ant, armed with a tolerably good lens, with a mag¬
nifying power of twelve, I placed it delicately on a large sheet of fine
white paper which covered nearly the whole table.

With the microscope I could have seen but a part and not the
whole. A very considerable enlargement would also have exaggerated

148

“ INTERVIEWING ” AN ANT.

the merely secondary details — such as the scanty hairs with which the
ant is provided. Finally, its mobility would not have suffered me to
keep it in the focus of the microscope ; but the lens, as easily shifted as
itself, followed it in all its motions.

Not, however, without some difficulty. It was lively, alert, dis¬
quieted, and impatient to quit the table. I was looking at it in the
middle of the sheet, when it was already nearly at the edge. I was
obliged to etherize it a little, so as to stupefy it, and render it less
uneasy.

It appeared very clean, and highly varnished. Though a neuter,
and not a female, its belly wTas rather large, and was joined to the chest
by two small swellings. From the chest the head, which was strong
and nearly round, detached itself cleanly and distinctly.

This head, seen as it were en masse , resembled a bird’s. But instead
of a beak it had a circular prolongation, in which, on attentive examina¬
tion, I detected the reunion of two tiny crescents joined at the point.
These were its teeth, or mandibles, which do not operate like ours, from
above to below, but horizontally and sideways. The insect employs its
mandibles for the most widely different purposes ; they are not only its
weapons and instruments of mastication, but the tools it uses for every
art, supplying the place of hands in masonry, plastering, carving, and
in lifting and transplanting burdens which are frequently of enormous
weight.

It was well for it that its body was wrapped in a complete coat of
mail. The ether affected it but slightly, and only stupefied it. After
a moment’s immobility it partly recovered, and made a few movements
like those of an intoxicated person, or as if it were affected with a
fit of vertigo. It seemed to say, “ Where am I ? ” and endeavoured to
make out the ground where it was walking, the great sheet of white
paper. It attempted a few tottering steps, tumbling first on one side
and then on the other. It carried before it a couple of instruments
which at first I took to be feet, but which I found, on more careful
inspection, were wholly different.

They sprang from a point near either eye, and, like the eyes, were
evidently instruments of observation. These antennae, as they are

ORGANIZATION OF THE ANT.

149

called, long, delicate, yet robust, and vibrating at the slightest touch,
are fleshy, articulated in twenty pieces, and disposed one in another.
They form an instrument admirably adapted for feeling and groping.
But it is useful in many other ways : by means of it the ants transmit
in a second very complicated advices, as, for instance, when they change
their course and retire, or suddenly take a wholly different road ; evi¬
dently they have a language like that of the telegraph. This supposed
marvellous organ of touch is more probably a species of hearing appa¬
ratus, and so mobile that it quivers at the slightest vibrations of the
air, and feels every wave of sound.

The perfect accord of every movement of the delicate and subtle
tactile and telegraphic apparatus, the strong head, in fine, which seem¬
ingly thinks , completed the illusion. Its attitudes, its gropings, its
efforts to obtain a knowledge of the situation, showed precisely what
we should have been under similar circumstances. Shakespeare’s Queen
Mab, in her nut-shell chariot, occurred to my mind. And more, the
chronicles of the Hubers ; those impressive and almost terrifying nar¬
ratives which would lead us to believe that the ants are far advanced
in a knowledge of good and evil.

It turned its back upon me obstinately, as if it dreaded to see its
persecutor. It looked upon me as a horrible giant, and, despite its
semi-intoxicated condition, made constant and energetic efforts to
escape me, and place itself in security.

I brought it back very softly and cautiously. But I could not
make it show me its face. Its antipathy and its terror, undoubtedly,
were too powerful. I therefore decided to take hold of it with a small
pair of pincers, and to keep it on its back, using as little pressure as
possible. The pressure, though light, acting on the small lateral
orifices (or stigmata) through which it breathes, was infinitely painful,
to judge . from the resistance it offered. With its minute claws and
mandibles it held the pincers so firmly that I could hear the air vibrate
with every motion. I hastily profited by the painful position in which
I had placed my ant ; I looked it in the face.

150

A COMPLEX APPARATUS.

That which is most disconcerting, and gives it a peculiar appear¬
ance, are the teeth or mandibles placed outside the mouth, and springing,
one on the right side, the other on the left, in a horizontal direction, so
as to meet together : ours are vertical. These projecting teeth seem to
offer battle, though, as I have said, they are also used for pacific pur¬
poses, and serve as hands.

Behind the teeth may be seen several little threads or palpi at the
entrance of the mouth ; which are, in reality, the little hands of the mouth ,
— feeling, and handling, and turning over whatever is brought there.

In front emerge the antennae, the other hands ; but these are set
externally, are mobile and susceptible to an excess, — in a word, electric
hands.

Behind the head, at the chest, commence the paws or feet, two in
front of great dexterity, and rightly named by Kirby the arms.

An apparatus of such complexity, placed in the fore part of the
body, cannot fail to obscure and overcloud its physiognomy. What
would be the case with our own, if from our eyes and mouth six hands
started, to say nothing of those which proceed from the shoulders, and
of four others placed lower down ?

The whole is intended for action and defence. The face which the
insect shows is its resisting skull, its bony case, which cannot move.
This frames, encloses, and fixes the eyes, which are also immovable ;
but, being exterior and multiple, motion is not necessary : those of the
ant are divided into fifty facets, which reveal everything to it either
in front or rear. Thus, then, its sight is admirable, but it cannot look.
No external muscle sets the mask in motion. And, therefore, it has
no physiognomy.

But, in compensation, its pantomime was extremely expressive, — I
may even say, very pathetic. On discovering that it was so feeble and
incapable of walking, it did exactly what prudent and sagacious man
would have done, and attempted to recover its energies by the very
means which we should have employed. It commenced a methodical
friction of its entire body, from above to below. Seated like a little
monkey, it skilfully made use of its arms or anterior feet in such a
manner as to rub its back and side. Occasionally it returned to its

INNER ‘LIFE OF THE INSECT.

151

head, took it between its two hands, as if it would fain have shaken it
clear of the fatal intoxication which rendered it so little able to provide
for its own safety. One would have said it was questioning itself,
collecting its thoughts, and saying, as we do after a bad dream, “ Is it
true, or is it false ? — Poor head ! — Alas ! what ails thee, then ? ”

At that moment I felt that we were living in two worlds, and that
there were no means of understanding each other. How could I re¬
assure it ? My language, that of the voice ; its, that of the antennae.
Not one of my words could obtain access to the electric telegraph
which served as its organ of hearing.

The continuous bony case which envelops its body isolates the
insect from us, and conceals us from the insect. It has a heart which
beats like ours ; but we cannot see its pulsations beneath its thick coat
of mail. It does not even command that wordless lano’uao*e which

O O

touches us in so many dumb beings. It is wholly wrapped up in
mystery and silence.

It breathes, or rather imbibes air, through the sides, not through the
face or head. No palpitation or respiratory movement can be detected
in it. Therefore, how should it speak, how complain ? Of all our lan¬
guages it has not one ; it makes a sound, but does not possess a voice.

Is the fixed and immovable mask, thus condemned to perpetual
silence, that of a monster or a spectre ? No. After watching its move¬
ments, its numerous actions indicative of reflection, its arts so much
more advanced than those of the larger animals, we are not unwilling
to believe that in this head exists a personality. And from the highest
to the lowest in the scale of life, we recognize an identity of organization.

Ill _ THE INSECT, THE AGENT

OF NATURE

CHAPTER III.

THE INSECT AS THE AGENT OF NATURE IN THE
ACCELERATION OF DEATH AND LIFE.

The insect lias not my languages. He neither speaks
by voice nor physiognomy. In what manner, then,
does he express himself ?

He speaks by his energies.

1st. By the immense destructive influence he exer¬
cises on the superabundance of Nature, on a

swarm of lingering or morbid lives which he
© ©

hastens to sweep away.

\\ \ '

Vi .

•f$ H

Vo >.

2nd. He speaks also by his visible energies, especially in the
moment of love, his colours, his fires, his poisons (many of which are
among our therapeutic agents).

156

THE ENEMY OF NATURE.

3rd. He speaks by his arts, which might fecundate our human in¬
ventions.

This is the subject of our second book.

Let us first attack the point where he wounds us most, and seems
the auxiliary of death : his immense, ardent, and indefatigable work of
destruction. Let us contemplate him in history, and begin at the re¬
motest epoch.

In answer to our littlenesses, our disgusts, our terrors, to the narrow
and egotistical judgments which we bring to bear upon such subjects,
we must recall the great and necessary reactions of Nature.

It has not advanced with the order of a continuous flood, but with
refluxes and recoils back upon itself, which have enabled it to compass
a perfect harmony. Our short-sighted survey, frequently arrested by
these apparently retrograde movements, grows alarmed, takes fright,
and misconceives the character of the whole.

It is peculiar to the Infinite Love, which is continuously creating,
to raise every created thing to the Infinite. But in this very infinity,
it stimulates a creation of antagonisms which shall reduce the extent of
the preceding. If we see it produce monstrous destroyers, be sure that
they are destined, as a remedy and a repression, to check some monsters
of fecundity.

The herbivorous insects have had the task of keeping under the
alarming vegetable accumulations of the primeval world.

But these herbivora exceeding all law and all reason, the insect¬
ivorous insects were created to confine them within limits.

The latter, robust and terrible, the tyrants of creation by their
weapons and their wings, would have been the conquerors of the con¬
querors, and have driven to extremities the feebler species, if, above all
the insect world and its weak powers of flight, had not risen on
mighty wing a superior tyrant — the Bird. The haughty libellula was
carried off by the swallow.

By these successive agencies of destruction, however, production has
not been suppressed, but restrained, and the species balanced in such
wise that all endure and live. The more a species is pruned, the more

DESTROYERS AND DESTROYED.

157

fertile it becomes. Does it exceed ? Immediately the superabundance
is equilibrized by the new fecundity which is given to its destroyers.

Ye men of this lingering epoch, — sons of the lean and sober West
— brought up in the little, close, carefully tended, pared, and picked
gardens, which you call “wide cultivation,” — enlarge, I pray you, your
conceptions ; extend them, and endeavour to imagine something greater
than these petty corners, if you would comprehend anything of the
earth’s primitive forces ; of the abundance and superabundance which
she displayed when, soaked with warm mists, her bosom heaved with
the glow of her first youth.

The hotter countries of our present globe still show something
of this profusion, though in a pale decay. Africa, which over the
greater portion of its area has lost its waters, preserves as a souvenir
in its happier zones that enormous and swollen herb, or herbaceous
tree, the baobab. The inextricable forests of Guiana and Brazil, in
their labyrinthine chaotic confusion of wild plants which, without rule
or measure, envelop and choke the colossal trees, corrupt them, and
bury them in their debris , are but imperfect images of the great ancient
Chaos. The only beings impure enough to endure its impurity and
breathe its deadly exhalations, are great-bellied reptiles, unwieldy frogs,
green caymans, and serpents swollen with filth and venom. And such
would have been the inhabitants of earth. Unable to draw breath in
the horrible suffocation, she could never have given forth that pure air
in which man alone can live.

Accordingly, from on high pounced down the bird, and, plunging
into the gulf, carried back to the sky on the tops of the lofty forests
some one of these monsters. But its incessant struggle would have
been vain against their abominable fecundity, if, from below, myriads
of nibblers had not lightened the accumulation, cleansed the frightful
lairs, and thrown open to the arrows of the sun the filth under which
earth was panting. The humblest insects accomplished the gigantic
work which made earth inhabitable : they devoured chaos.

“ Small means,” you say, “ and great results ! How could these little
beings come to the aid of an infinity?” You would not cherish the
doubt, if you had been ever a witness of the awakening of the silk-

158

THE BIRD AND THE INSECT.

worms, when, one morning, they are hatched with that vast hunger no
abundance of leaves can satisfy. Their proprietor has supposed himself
in a position to content them with a rich and beautiful plantation of
mulberry-trees; but it counts for nothing. You supply them with
forests, and they still ask for more. At a distance of twenty or thirty
yards you hear a strange uninterrupted buzzing ; a murmur like that
of brooks incessantly flowing, and incessantly grinding and wearing
out the pebbles. Nor are you mistaken : it is a brook, a torrent, a
boundless river of living matter, which, under the grand mechanism
of so many minute instruments, sounds, and resounds, and murmurs,
passing from the vegetable life to that of insects, and softly but in¬
vincibly bases itself on animality.

To return to the primeval age. The most terrible destroyers, the
most implacable assailants, which penetrated the lowermost rottenness
of the great chaos, which at a higher level delivered the tree from the
pressure of its parasites, and finally mounted to its branches, and
brightened up the livid shadows, — these were the benefactors of species
yet to come. Their uninterrupted work of unconquerable destruction
reduced within reasonable limits the excess in which Nature was almost
lost. They opened up splendid, free, and unencumbered spaces ; and
the monsters, banished from the gulf where they swarmed, grew more
and more barren, and by that great revelation of the forest were exposed
to the child of Light, — the Bird.

A profound agreement and genial fellowship were established be¬
tween the latter and his protagonist, the child of Night, the Insect,
which had throAvn open the abyss, and delivered into his power the
enemy. Consider, moreover, that in proportion as an exuberant nourish¬
ment fortified and exalted the insect, when its blood was intoxicated
by so many burning plants, a ferocity previously unknown prevailed,
and the fiercer and bolder species no longer limited themselves to
undermining the retreats of the monsters, but attacked the monsters
also. Stings, augers, cupping-glasses, trenchant teeth, sharpened pincers,
an arsenal of unknown and as yet unnamed arms, came into existence,
were elongated and whetted for assault upon the living matter. They
were needed. They proved to be the lancet which cut the putrescent

COLEOPTEROUS GIANTS.

159

- ^ ov

t '

^N.

sore of the rising world. This latter had nourished
and multiplied the feebly animalized myriads of torpid
worms and pale-blooded larvae, a ghastly and also the
lowest life, which gained by passing through that burn¬
ing crucible of keen existence, the superior insect-race.

I know nothing upon earth which seems stronger,
firmer, more durable, and more formidable than those
miniature rhinoceros-like cuirassiers, which traverse earth
as quickly as the great mammal traverses it heavily and
slowly. The carabi, the galeritas, the stag-beetles, which
carry with so much ease armour far more formidable than
that of the Middle Ages, reassure us only by their size.

Here strength is relatively formidable. Were a man pro- \
portionally strong, he might take in his arms the obelisk
of Luxor.

Vast energies of absorption, concentrating in these
insects enormous foci of forces, translated themselves into
the light by the energies of colour. To these, in species
where life was more elevated, succeeded the moral energies. The
superbly barbarous heroes, the scarabcei, were exterminated by the
modest citizen-species, the ants and bees, in which the secret of beauty
was harmony.

Such is the whole history of insects. But to whatever height our
inquiries may conduct us, let us not mistake the point of departure,

160

“LEX SANITATIS.”

— tlie useful nibblers and miners, which have elaborated and prepared
the globe.

Is their work terminated ? By no means. Immense zones remain
in what may still be called an ancient condition, condemned to a terrible
and unwholesome fecundity. In the centre of America the richest
forests of the world seem ever to repel the approach of man, who enters
them only to die. His arms, enfeebled by fever, have not even strength
enough to collect their treasures. If a tree fall across his path, it
becomes an insurmountable obstacle to the indifferent adventurer. He
turns aside, and you may trace his circuit through the tall herbage.
Fortunately the termites do not recoil so easily. If they find them¬
selves confronted by a tree, they do not avoid it, do not turn its flank.
They attack it bravely in the front, set to work as many labourers as
are necessary — millions, perhaps : in two or three days the tree is
devoured, and the road open.

The great law of nature, and in these countries the law of safety,
is the rapid destruction of everything decaying, languishing, stagnant,
and therefore injurious ; its ardent purification in the crucible of life.
And that crucible is, before all things, the insect. We must not blame
its fury of absorption. Who thinks of accusing the flame ? The flame
is worthy of reproach only when it does not burn. And, in like manner,
that living fire, the insect, is created to devour. Necessity demands that
it should be eager, cruel, blind, and of an implacable appetite. It can
have no sobriety, no moderation, no pity. All the virtues of man and
of superior beings would be nonsense which one cannot even imagine.
Can you conceive of an insect with the sensibility and tenderness of
the dog ? which should weep like the beaver ? which should nourish
the aspirations and poetry of the nightingale ? or, finally, the compas¬
sionateness of man ? Such an insect would be incapable ; thoroughly
unfit for its profession as the anatomist, dissector, and destroyer — we
may say, more justly, the universal medium of nature, which, pre¬
cipitating death by suppressing long periods of decay, in this way
accelerates the brilliant return of life. Thus disembarrassed and free,
it says, with a savage pleasure, “ No maladies, no old age ! Shame upon

SANITARY INSPECTORS.

161

all decay ! Hail to eternal youth ! Let every creature die which lives
beyond a day !”

Observe that the furious eagerness of the winged insects, which
seem to be the agents of death, is frequently a cause of life. By an
incessant persecution of the sick flocks, enfeebled by hot damp airs,
they ensure their safety. Otherwise they would remain stupidly re¬
signed, and hour after hour grow less capable of motion, gloomier and
more morbid in the bonds of fever, until they could rise no more.
The inexorable spur knows, however, the secret of putting them on their
legs ; though with trembling limbs, they take to flight ; the insect never
quits them, presses them, urges them, and conducts them, bleeding, to
the wholesome regions of the dry lands and the living waters, where,
growing discontented, their furious guide abandons them, and returns
to the pestilent vapours, to its realm of death.

In the Soudan, in Africa, a little insect, the Nam fly, directs with a
sovereign authority the migrations of the flocks. In the dry season it
rages against the camel ; it audaciously ventures into the ear of the
elephant. The giant is resistlessly driven forward by its winged shep¬
herds, to escape the fires of the south, and to seek the fresh winds of the
north. On the other hand, the oxen, through its management, remain
with their Arab master peacefully in the genial southern pastures.

The most terrible of insects — the great Guiana ants — are valued
precisely for their devouring power. Without them, no effectual means
would exist of thoroughly cleansing the homes of man of all the obscure
broods which infest the shadows, and swarm in the timbers and frame¬
work, in the most imperceptible crevices. One morning the black
army appears at the door of the house : an army of sanitary inspectors.
Man retires, gives place to them, and evacuates his dwelling. “ Enter,
ladies ; come and go at your pleasure ; make yourselves quite at home.”
It would not be safe for the owner to remain, since it is a law with
these scrupulous visitors to leave no living thing in the track of their
march. In the first place, every insect, — the largest as well as the
minutest, — and their eggs, however well-concealed, perish. Then the

smaller animals — frogs, adders, field-mice ; — none escape. The place is

162

USES OF THE SPIDER.

thoroughly cleansed, for the smallest remains are conscientiously
devoured.

The great spiders of the Antilles, without piquing themselves on

accomplishing a work of purification so terrible and so complete, labour

nevertheless very industriously to secure the cleanliness of human

habitations. They will not suffer any disgusting insect to exist. They

are excellent servants — much cleaner than the slaves. Therefore men

value them, and purchase them as indispensable domestics. Markets

exist where spiders are regularly bought and sold.

In Siberia, the spider enjoys the consideration to which it can
everywhere put forward so many claims. That region of the farthest
North, whose very brief summer is not the less infested with gnats and
flies, finds a benefactor in the useful insect which industriously hunts the
swarms for man’s advantage. Its consummate prudence, its superior
ability, its prescience of atmospheric variations and climatic phases,
have so exalted the idea which the Siberians have formed of it, that
many of their tribes refer the creation of the world to a gigantic spider.

CHAPTER IV.

THE INSECT AS MAN’S AUXILIARY.

A hunter of* small birds, in an ingenious academical
memoir, gives utterance to the following paradox : “ Their
recent multiplication is the cause of the disease in the
vine and the potato.”

How should this be ? The disease, which first broke
out in September 1845, is produced, says the author, by
microscopic animalcules and parasitical vegetation previ¬
ously destroyed by the insects. But these insect-pro¬
tectors of agriculture perished, devoured by birds, in
1844. The fatal law passed in the May of that year, for
the protection of the birds, must have multiplied them to such a
degree, that the insects, driven out and destroyed by them, could no
longer afford to our plants the succour which defended them against

their invisible enemies.

11 B

166

A FALSE HYPOTHESIS.

This hypothesis, supported with much wit and ability, and ap¬
parently grounded on facts and dates, rests wholly on one basis, and if
it fails, crumbles to the ground.

It supposes that the birds have been efficaciously protected by the
law, and that, in twelve years, they have been so able to multiply as
to become masters of the field, the tyrants and exterminators of the
useful insect-species, and that, in fine, the latter have unfortunately
almost disappeared.

To this three replies may be given : —

1st. The birds have 7iot multiplied. We must not go for the truth
to the Bulletin des Lois (the Statute-book), but to fowlers and bird-
catchers. And they reply : — “ So many birds have been destroyed
since the enactment of the law for their benefit, that in certain countries
sport has actually become impossible, because there are no more to
kill.”

In Provence, in the very localities where the gnats are insupport¬
able (and the birds, therefore, most precious), — in the Camargue, — the
sportsmen, in default of edible birds, now kill the swallows. They
place themselves on the watch at the points where the winged legions
pass in files, and slaughter several victims at one discharge.

2nd. The insects have by no means been destroyed by the birds.
Ask of the agriculturists what species has disappeared. Let them search
ever so keenly, and they will not find that a solitary species has
diminished. On the contrary, in the years referred to we have seen
them increase, and grow, and flourish, and nothing prevents them from
making war at their pleasure on the invisible animalcules.

Not an insect-species is wanting; but, on the contrary, some careful
observers tell us, in their books on Hunting or Natural Histoiy, that
numerous species of birds will soon become extinct.

3rd. Birds are not, as the author of the memoir calls them, “ un¬
intelligent assassins.” Far from this, they kill by preference the most
injurious insects. The time at which they carry on a really murderous
war is when they are feeding their young. But what do they feed

THE BIRD’S WORK OF DESTRUCTION.

167

them with ? With very few insectivorous insects; the latter, armed
and mailed — carabi and stag-beetles — covered with metallic scales,
equipped with hooks and pincers, of an indestructible vitality, would be
a horrible food for the young of the warbler, who, before such a pro¬
vision, would assuredly take to flight. This is not the kind of aliment
the sagacious mother seeks for her offspring ; but soft and, as it were,
milky insects, fat and succulent larvse, fine little tender caterpillars, —
all herbivorous, fructivorous, and leguminivorous animals ; exactly
those which do the greatest mischief in our fields and gardens.

Accordingly, the great labour of the bird against the insect pre¬
cisely coincides with the labour of the husbandman.

For the rest, we are far from saying, as the author referred to makes
us say, that the bird is the sole purifier of creation. One must be
blind, and indeed senseless, not to see that he shares this mission with
the insect. The action, too, of the latter is undoubtedly more efficaci¬
ous in the pursuit of a world of living atoms, which the insect, whose
eyes are microscopes, detects and pounces upon in numerous obscure
corners, inaccessible to the bird. The bird, on the other hand, is the
essential purifier of everything demanding long-sightedness and the
power of flight, — as, for example, the frightful clouds of invisible ani¬
malcules which float and swim in the air, and therefore pass into our
lungs.

As a rule, the equilibrium of species is desirable. All are more or less
useful. We willingly join with the author of the paper referred to in
the wish that those insects which prey upon the smaller species might
be specially distinguished and spared. The peasant destroys them in¬
discriminately, without knowing that by killing, for instance, the
dragon-fly (or libellula) — the brilliant murderess which slays a thou¬
sand insects daily — he is helping the latter : becomes the auxiliary of
the insects, the preserver and propagator of the enemies which devour
his substance. The terrible cicindela does not fly so high, but with its
crossed daggers, or rather the two scimitars which serve it for jaws,
accomplishes a swift and almost incredible havoc among the smaller
insects. Take care, then, and respect it. Do not listen to the child
who is dazzled by the beauty of its wings, nor, to please him, impale

168

LABOURS OF THE INSECT

on the needle-point your admirable insect-hunter, the efficacious auxil¬
iary of the agriculturist !

The carabi, — immense warrior-tribes armed
to the very teeth, and displaying an ardent
activity beneath their heavy coats of mail, —
are the true guardians of your fields ; and day
and night, without holiday or repose, protect
your crops. They themselves never touch the
smallest blade or seed. Their sole occupation
is to capture thieves, and they ask for no
other reward than the thieves’ bodies.

Others toil underground. The innocent
lobworm, which pierces and stirs up the soil,
gets ready in a marvellously excellent manner
the muddy and clayey earths which are de¬
ficient in evaporation. Others, in company
with the mole, hunt far down in the depths
the cruel enemy of agriculture, the horribly
voracious larva of the destructive cockchafer,
which, for three years, has been preying on
the roots beneath the surface.

The insectivorous insects put forth undeni¬
able claims to the protection of man, whose
allies they are. But even among the lier-
bivora there are useful destroyers of harmful
plants. The useless, pungent, and in every
sense disagreeable nettle, which scarcely a
single quadruped will deign to touch, fifty
species of insects, in fellowship with our¬
selves, labour to destroy.

A very beautiful class of insects, some rich
in outward garb, and others in intelligence,
are the Necrojphori , which render us the important service of clearing
away all dead matter from the soil. Nature, which finds them so

INSECT-SCAVENGERS.

169

useful, has treated them truly as her favourites, honouring them with
splendid costumes, and making them both industrious and ingenious
in the discharge of their functions. It is a remarkable circumstance
that, notwithstanding their sinister office, they are far from being wild,
but are very sociable if the need arises, and understand how to unite
their forces, combine their energies, and act in concert. In brief, — these
honest undertakers and grave-diggers are the brilliant aristocracy of
the insect nation.

It is evident that Nature’s ideas are not the same as ours. She
loads the most useful with rewards, whatever the nature of their work.
For instance, the Geotrupes, which clears away the dung, is clothed in
sapphire in payment of its service. The celebrated Coleopteron of Egypt,
the sacred Ateuchus of the tombs,* appears glorified with an emerald
aureola.

Who shall describe all the services rendered by these scavengers ?
Yet we are not just in our dealings with them. It happened to me,
one April, when I was about to transplant to my garden some
dahlias which had passed the winter in the orchard, to discover
that the humidity of the air of Nantes, and the compact and im-
porous clayey soil, had rotted the tubers. A bevy of insects were at
Avork upon them, and usefully engaged in purging this shocking
centre of dissolution. The gardener was very indignant, and ready
enough to accuse them of the evil which they were endeavouring to
remedy.

The enemy of damp gardens, the snail ( Helix ), is pursued by an
insect, j* the Drylus, which lies in wait for it, and, the better to hunt it
up, mounts on its back, and makes it carry him, seizes a favourable
opportunity, and on the snail re-entering its shell, enters also, lives with
it and upon it. A snail lasts him about a fortnight. Then he passes
on to another and a larger, and then to a third still larger. He requires
three in all. In the third, as he is about to change into a pupa, the
drylus makes the place clean, and, to sleep conveniently, seizes on the
substantial house of the enemy which has nourished him.

* The Ateuchus sacer, or Sacred Scarabteus of the Egyptians.

f The larva of the Drylus Jiavescens.

170

A NEW DISH FOR EPICURES.

There could be no more useful task than to enlighten the peasant
on the distinction that ought to be made between insects useful to
agriculture and insects which are noxious; or those which may be
turned to advantage in various sciences, — and especially in Chemistry,
— which, it is probable, will yet discover unexpected resources in beings
endowed with so copious and intense a vitality. In this respect, a very
honourable work of initiation has been undertaken by the eminent
naturalist who has so skilfully organized the museum at Rouen. All
his pupils have preserved a grateful recollection of their teacher ; and
it is to one of them I owe the following summary of an original and
instructive lecture on the Insect as Food.

“ A prejudice much to be regretted, and a ridiculous fastidiousness,
has debarred our Western peoples from one of the richest and most
exquisite sources of nourishment. What right have they who devour
tainted game, and unclean birds, — what right have the lovers of the
oyster, that slimy mollusc, to reject the nourishment supplied by the
Insect World ?

“ Burgundy has the good sense to pro tit, without any feeling of
silly disgust, by the excellent mollusc which peoples its vineyards, — I
mean the snail, — which is very good with butter and salads, and a
dish as wholesome for the chest as it is agreeable to the mouth and
profitable to the stomach.

“A celebrated savant — Lalande — dared to take a step further in
advance, and to venture upon the caterpillar, rising thus another step
above our prejudices. It is to him we owe our knowledge of the fact-
that the caterpillar tastes like almonds, and the spider like hazel-nuts.
He addicted himself to the latter, which he found more delicate.” — I
should think so. In every sense, the spider is a superior being.

“ Many insects are so nutritious and savoury that they have been
specially selected by ladies as a diet likely to renew their life, beauty,
and youth. The Romans of the Later Empire recovered the ample out¬
lines of the Cornelias of the Commonwealth by the use of the Cossus *
The sultanas of the East, of those voluptuous lands where love seeks

* The Goat-Moth Caterpillar.

THE MANNA OF NATURE.

171

the rounded, swelling figure, make their slaves bring them a supply of
Blaps * and idling in their gardens, to the music of leaping fountains,
imbibe from the succulent insect an eternal youthfulness.

“ In Brazil, the Portuguese extracts from the Malalis of the bamboo,
when the tree wears its nuptial flower, a kind of fresh butter for the
table ; and eats the ants in sweetmeats, at the moment that their wings
uplift them on the breeze like an aspiration of love.

“ But generally the insect, apart from its real value, has been hunted
by the peasants whose tillage it destroyed. It plundered them of their
food, and, in revenge, they themselves have fed upon it. The terrible
locust, whose vast increase has so often imperilled the East, has been,
on that very account, the more eagerly pursued and devoured by the
Orientals. The story runs that the Caliph Omar, when seated at his
family table, observing a locust alight there, read inscribed upon its
wing : — ‘ We hatch nine and ninety eggs ; if we laid a hundred, we
should devastate the world.’

“ Fortunately the locust is the manna of Asia. Who does not
know that the prophets, musing in the caves of Carmel, ate nothing
else ? The Mohammedan anchorites adopted the same regime. One
day a person said to Omar : — ‘ What think you of locusts ? ’ ‘ That I

would fain have a. basketful.’ Soon afterwards the supply failed him.
It was with difficulty his servant found a single insect ; whereupon he,
delighted and grateful, exclaimed, ‘ Allah is great ! ’

“ Even at the present day locusts are sold throughout the East, and
are eaten in the caf^ as a dessert and a delicacy. Ships are loaded
with them, and they are bought and sold by the cask.

“ Here, then, we have insects exceptionally nutritious and sub¬
stantial. What prevents us from making use of them ? What scruple
hinders us from active and useful reprisals against them ? ”

At this part of his discourse, the orator found his audience, consist¬
ing mainly of intelligent Norman peasants, wrapped in deep attention,
as at those points of the debates of the British Parliament when the
accustomed cry arises of “Hear ! Hear ! ”

* The women of Egypt, it is said, eat the Blaps sulcata cooked with butter.

172

EAT, OK BE EATEN

He had foreseen such a moment ; and having loaded his table with
some of the insects most dreaded by agriculturists, he seized them,
crunched them, and swallowed them gravely, with this strong speech,
which will not be without fruit : — “ They have eaten us : let us eat
them ! ”

V.—A

PHANTASMAGORIA OF

LIGHT

AND COLOUR.

A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.

If the insect does not and will not speak to us, are we
to suppose that it does not express the burning inten¬
sity of the life within it ?

No living creature reveals itself more clearly;
though only from itself to its kind, from insect to
insect. They are bound up in themselves ; are a
sealed world, which has no outward expression, and
no language except for its own members.

For all ordinary purposes, an electric telegraph
exists in their antennas. But the great, the eloquent
language is manifested among them towards the close
of their existence, — for one brief moment, it is true, —
a moment announcing the approach of death, yet the grand festival
of love.

They speak through the rare attractions with which they are
invested, — through the wing, the flight, the airy existence,-- -through

176

COLOURING OF INSECTS.

tlie fancy which possesses them (says good Du Tertre) of becoming
birds. They speak through their brilliant hieroglyphics of colours and

W ^ V
\ ( x v*

>H *

ic;

fantastic designs, their strange coquetry of
extraordinary toilets. They speak in their
very lustre, and some species reveal their
inner flame by a visible torch.

They lavish with royal magnificence their
last days. And wherefore should they
economize, when to-morrow they die ?
Break forth then, 0 life of splendour !
Sparkle, ye gold and emeralds, and sap¬
phires and rubies ! And let that incande¬
scent ardour, that torrent of existence, that
cataract of profuse radiance, be poured out
in one common, rapid flood 1

There is not space in our museums for
the proper display of the prodigious, the
unbounded variety of decoration with which
Nature has, mother-like, sought to glorify
the hymeneal of the insect and to empara-
dise its nuptials. A distinguished amateur
having had the patience to show me in due
succession genus after genus, species after
species, the whole of his immense collection,
I was astounded — in truth, I was stupefied
— almost terrified by the inexhaustible
energy — I was going to say fury — of inven¬
tion which Nature displayed. I was over¬
come — I closed my eyes, and begged for a
truce; my brain was dizzied and blinded,
and became confused. But she, she would
not let me go; she inundated and over¬
whelmed me with beautiful beings, with fantastic beings, with admir¬
able monsters, with wings of fire, and cuirasses of emerald, clad in a
hundred kinds of enamel, armed with singular apparatus — no less

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AG A ^
^ > Av

LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS.

177

brilliant than formidable ; some in embrowned steel, shot with yellow
— others in silken hoods, embroidered with black velvet; these with
fine dashes of tawny silk on a rich mahogany ground ; those in pome¬
granate-coloured velvet lit up with gold ; others in luminous, indescrib¬
able azures, relieved by jet-black beads; and others, again, bright in
metallic streaks alternating with heavy velvet.

It was as if they wished to say : —

“We in ourselves are the whole of Nature. If she perishes, we shall
enact a drama, and personate all her creations. For if you look for
rich furry garb, behold us here in mantles such as a Russian czarina
never wore. Do you wish for feathers ? behold us radiant in plumage
which the humming-bird cannot equal ; or if you prefer leaves, we can
imitate them so as to deceive your eye. Even wood — in fact, all kinds
of substances — there is nothing which we cannot imitate. Take, I pray
you, this little twig, and hold it in your hand, — it is an insect !”

Then I was fairly conquered. I made a humble reverence to a
people so redoubtable ; with a burning brain I issued from the magic
cave ; and for a long time afterwards the sparkling scintillating masks
danced and whirled around me, pursuing me, and maintaining on my
retina their wild, strange revel.

And yet I had seen them only in cases and in boxes, as dead as in
nature they were ardent and restless. What would have been my
impression if I had seen them alive, and in motion, — especially in the
burning climes where they abound and superabound, — where every¬
thing is in harmony with them, — where the air, the water, the flora,
impregnated with prolific flames, rival the keen ardour of the animal
hosts in the madness of love, of production precipitated and incessantly
renewed by impatient death ?

The American forests of Brazil and Guiana are the formidable fur¬
naces in which the great exchange of life is uninterruptedly carried
on. The fantastic faery of the vegetable kingdom is in accord with
that of the animated forces. Savage, harsh, and plaintive cries — not
songs — form the woodland concert. Strange voices of birds, in the
woods and the savannahs, relieve each other, — hoarse and vibrating,

but regular, as if to mark the hours. They are the clock of the desert.

178

CREATURES OF PREY.

Some by day, others by night; and perfectly distinct also at each of
the three periods of the day, — morn, and noon, and evening. They
disquiet the traveller, inasmuch as they reproduce our human voices or
sounds, and seem ironical or mocking. One cries, another whistles,
another sighs. This strikes like an alarm, that like a hammer, while
a third imitates the tones of a bagpipe. The vast plains re-echo the
mighty voice of the cariama. And that of the serpent-conqueror, the
courageous kamichi, harsh and strong, echoing over the marshes, makes
the savage tremble, for he thinks he hears the spirits passing.

At evening, with the song of 'the grasshoppers, the croaking of the
frogs, the shriek of the owls, and the lamentations of the vampires,
mingles the howl of the apes ; until a hiss, which seems drawn from a
wounded bosom, silences all, and spreads a universal terror, because it
indicates the presence of the sharp-clawed prowler, the swift jaguar.

In these forests there is nothing to reassure you. Yonder green and
peaceful waters, whence ever and anon proceeds the sound of half-
choked sighs, — you place your foot upon them, and with terror dis¬
cover that they are solid ! that the surface is composed of great alli¬
gators, with their greenish backs resembling breadths of moss or aquatic
herbs ! Let a living creature appear, and immediately they raise their
heads and put themselves in motion; you behold the strange assem¬
blage rise from the slime in all their horror ! But is this all ? — Even
these monsters which reign on the surface have their tyrants over them.
The piranga, or razor-fish, as swift as the cayman is unwieldy, severs
with its saw-like teeth the latter’s tail, and carries it off before it can
wheel round. The cayman, nearly always mutilated in this manner,
would perish, if its cuirass did not prevent its enemy from dissecting it.
The same terrible anatomist, with a flash of its scalpel, cuts down as it
passes the bird which skims the waves. Aquatic birds which have
been wounded by it are frequently caught. And what, then, of the
quadrupeds ? The most powerful are devoured. A horrible combat is
waged without pause in the deep waters, — in the waters living and
overflowing with life, but with death also, — where is realized to the
letter a rapid and furious suicide of Nature, — Nature devouring in order
to re-create itself !

WONDERS OF INSECT LIFE.

179

The insects in fury and beauty are worthy of this scene. The
exalted vitality, revealed among the gadflies
and the mosquitoes, by their thirst of blood,
is shown in other species by their enchant¬
ing colours, their caprices of design, their
singularities of form, which either astonish us
or terrify. The Buprestis imperialism proud
of its green cuirass powdered all over with
dust of gold, seems to have passed through
the bowels of the metalliferous earth, and
enriched itself on the way. The Buprestis
chrysochlorus, of a yellower green, flutters to
and fro like a mounted gem. The Arlequin
of Guiana, — a gigantic mower, armed with
tremendous antennse and prodigious legs to
traverse the innumerable obstacles offered by
the tall herbage, — is marked with black com¬
mas on a yellow ground, with inexplicable
hieroglyphs, — a being doubly strange and
doubly enigmatic. It singularly reminds us
of the texture of Indian stuffs, where, for
the sake of harmonizing colours not usually
brought side by side, the artist traces a
number of wavy and broken lines, which
soften and blend them into complete accord.

Those gentle and social insects, the
butterflies, covering the banks with their
winged tribes, transform the whole prairie
into an enchanting flowery carpet. The
butterfly of butterflies, the glorious butterfly
of Brazil, of a rich azure lit up by shifting
gleams, softly hovers, in the warm hours,
above the waters crowned by the imperial
dome of the blossomy forests. A pacific and splendid creature, it
seems the innocent king of all the puissant nature. Others, scarcely

180

ZONES OF FIRE.

less beautiful, follow in its train ; and ever and ever more the glorious
host, in floating azure, follows the current of the stream.

Such, then, are the tongues of Love ; for the boundless rainbow of
all these colours is simply its varied expression. And for what pur¬
pose, if love itself ought to appear without an intermediary ?

Already, in our colder lands, the timid glow-worm, motionless under
the hedgerow, suffers its little lamp to shine and guide through the
night the lover to his love.

In Italy it moves to and fro, and its flame has acquired wings. I
was much struck by it, at the hot springs of Acqui, in Piedmont,
where sulphur everywhere prevails ; the wild dance of the tiny lights
seemed stimulated by the fires lurking in the entrails of the earth. In
Brazil the very leaves overflow with phosphorus. How should aught
be wanting for the illumination of the bridal -joy of the insect ? That
marvel, under the tropics, glitters everywhere and enchants everything.
Two hundred species are known, which Nature has gifted with the
poetic faculty of breathing forth flame, and charming their great festival
with the poesy of light.

A graceful German lady, Mademoiselle Merian, having been trans¬
planted to these zones of fire, has related in naive language the alarm
which she experienced on seeing their insect wonders. The daughter
and grand-daughter of excellent and laborious engravers, herself an
artist and of well-informed mind, she has produced, in Latin, Dutch, and
French, an admirable and picturesque work on the Insects of Surinam.
The learned lady, in an exemplary life of misfortunes and virtues, had
but one weakness (who has not one ?) — the love of Nature. She quitted
Germany for Holland, attracted by its unique and brilliant collections
of the treasures of the two worlds. Then, as these did not suffice her,
she visited Guiana, where she painted for several years. She combined
in the same picture, — an excellent method, — the insect, the plant on
which it lives, and the reptile which lives on the insect. Thoroughly
conscientious, she sought out and posed her formidable models, of which,
nevertheless, she was much afraid. Once, when the Indian savages had
brought her a basket of insects, she was sleeping after her work. But
in her chaste slumber she was disturbed by a strange dream. She

THE LIFE OF THE FIRE-FLIES.

181

thought she heard a harp, a melody of love. The melody grew in¬
flamed ; it was no longer a song, but an intoxication. All the room
seemed filled with fire. She woke, and found her dream was true.
The basket was the lyre, the basket was the volcano. She quickly saw
that the volcano did not burn. The captives were fire-flies (fulgores) ;
their song was an epithalamium, and their flame the flame of love.

In the tropical countries the stranger generally travels by night to
avoid the heat. But he would not dare to enter the populous shadows
of the forest-depths, were he not reassured by the luminous insects
which he sees dancing and fluttering in the distance, and anon planted
on the neighbouring bushes. He takes them for his companions, and
fixes them in his shoes, partly to show him the path, and partly to keep
off serpents. And when the morning breaks, he gratefully and care¬
fully replaces them among the thickets, and restores them to their
amorous work. There is a pretty Indian proverb : “ Carry away the
fire-fly, but return it to the place from which thou carriedst it.”

Who can fail to be affected by their flame ? It follows the move¬
ment of life, it flares and wanes in cadence with the ebb and flow ol
our respiration ; it beats in exact accord with the rhythm of our heart.
It expands or contracts in harmony with it, and the trouble of its
emotion agitates also that tremendous torch.

What lies at the bottom ? the visible desire, the effort to please and
to be loved, translated in a hundred different manners by the eloquence
of light. One, of an unrivalled blue, with a head of rubies, outvies with
its scintillation the red-hot coal. Another, of a more melancholy cast,
plunges into a sombre red. A third, of flame-coloured yellow, fading
and passing into green, seems to express the languors, swoons, and
storms of the violent loves of the South.

The ardent daughter of Spain, rendered more impassioned by the
American sky, puts her hand on the creature of the flame, and seizes
upon it as her own. She makes it a talisman, a jewel, and a victim.
Burning, she places it on her burning bosom, where it must soon perish.

There is no purpose to which she does not turn it. By a triumph
of audacious coquetry, linking the insects with silk, or imprisoning

182

WREATHED AND GIRDLED WITH FIRE

them in gauze, she wreathes the animated flames in glowing necklaces,
and rolls them around her waist in girdles of fire. The queens of the
ball are crowned with an infernal diadem of living topazes, of throbbing
emeralds, which flicker or gleam (through suffering or love ?). A
brilliant but funereal decoration, of sinister magnetism, whose charm
is enhanced by a sentiment of death. They dance ; the waning flame
associates its tender gleams with the languishing glances of a deep
black eye. They dance ; without end and without reason, without
pity or remembrance of the amorous light dying and fading on their
bosom, and having no power to say: “Replace me where you captured

VI _ THE

SILKWORM

“ The ideal of the human arts of spinning and
weaving,”— said to me one day a Southerner (a
manufacturer, but a man of imagination), — “the
ideal which we always follow is a woman’s beauti¬
ful hair ! Oh, how far are the softest wools or finest
cotton from approaching it ! At what an enormous
distance does all, and ever will all, our progress leave
us ! We drag ourselves onward, a long, long way in
the rear, and enviously regard that supreme perfection
which Nature daily realizes as a mere matter of
pastime.

“ That delicate, yet strong and tenacious hair,
vibrating with an exquisite sonority which goes from
the ear to the heart, and yet withal so soft, warm, luminous, and
electrical — is the flower of the human flower.

“ Men fruitlessly dispute respecting the merits of colour. What

'IP

f ' W
\ \ ^

186

AN INSECT MANUFACTURER.

does it matter ? The brilliant black contains and promises the flame ;
the blonde displays it with the splendours of the Golden Fleece. The
sunny brown appropriates the very sun, makes use of it, blends it
with its mirages, floats, and undulates, and incessantly varies in its
streaming reflexes, now smiles with light, now deepens into gloom,
always deceives, and, whatever we may say, deceives us most delight-
fully.

“ The principal, the infinite effort of human industry, has combined
all possible means for the improvement of cotton. Between the Vosges
and the Rhine, the rare agreement of capital, machinery, the arts of
design, and the chemical sciences, has produced those splendid Indian
products of Alsace, to which England herself does honour by purchasing
them. Alas ! all this cannot disguise the original poverty of the
ungrateful tissue which men have so richly embellished. If the woman
who in her vanity clothes her form in these materials, and thinks her
beauty heightened by them, would loosen her tresses about her, and
unroll their waves over the indigent richness of our most sheeny
cottons, what would occur ? How they would be humiliated !

“ Sir, we must own the truth ; there is only one thing worthy of
being placed side by side with woman’s hair. Only one manufacturer
can contend against it. That manufacturer is an insect, — the modest
silkworm.”

A peculiar charm attends the labours of the silkworm ; it ennobles
everything which surrounds it. In traversing our rudest provinces,
the valleys of the Ardeche, where all is rocky, — where the mulberry
and the chestnut seem to dispense with earth, to live upon air and
pebbles, — where low stone houses sadden the eyes by their gray tints,
— everywhere I saw at the door, under a kind of arcade, two or three
charming brunettes, with ivory teeth, who smiled on the wayfarer, and
continued spinning their silken gold. The wayfarer said to them in a
low voice, as the carriage bore him away : — “ What a pity, innocent
fairies, that the gold may not be for you ! That instead of being dis¬
guised with a useless colour, and disfigured by art, it does not retain its
natural hue, and shine on the person of its beautiful spinners ! How

ANCIENT CELEBRITY OF SILK.

187

much better the royal tissue would become you than the grandes
dames!”

A mere glance at the silkworm convinces you that it is no more a
native of Europe than any other sweet thing. All that is soft and
exquisite springs from the East. Our West, that hardy soldier, black¬
smith, and miner, is good only to dig. It is good mother Asia, dis¬
dained by her rude son, who has bestowed upon him the treasures
which seem to concentrate the essence of the globe. With the Arab
horse and the nightingale, she has given him coffee, and sugar, and silk,
— the revivifiers of existence and the true ornament of love.

When silk first arrived at Rome, the empresses felt that previously
they had been no better than plebeians. They compared it, as far as
its soft lustre was concerned, to the pearls of the Orient, paying for it,
wi tli out haggling, the price of pearls and gold.

China esteemed it of such high value, that, to preserve the monopoly,
she inflicted the penalty of death on any persons who dared to export
the silkworm. It was only at the utmost peril, and by concealing it in
a hollow cane, that men succeeded in carrying it to Byzantium, whence
it passed to the West.

In the Middle Age, the age of indigence and barren disputes, when
wool was the luxury of the rich, and the poor wore serge in winter,
no attention was paid to silk, and its manufacture was exclusively con¬
fined to Italy.

It is the gold of the silkworms of Verona which, in Giorgione, at the
mighty outcome of the Venetian art, and in the strong Titian, the master
of masters, enriches with a ruddy radiance their beautiful blondes and
brunettes, the sovereign beauties of the world.

On the other hand, in an age of decadence, when Spain and Flanders
had waned, the melancholy artist who preferred to paint the beauty
which years had marked, — the fading flower, — the fruit too early
pierced and unnaturally ripened, — Van Dyck, clothed with white silk,
like a consoling beam of moonlight, his languishing and drooping
signoras. Under the soft folds of their satins they still trouble hearts
with vain dreams and regrets.

The woman who possessed the secret of preserving her charms to

188

SILK IN FRANCE.

kV ^

life1”

i'VlK \

|W‘ -

the last decline of old age, whose cypher everywhere inscribed teaches

us that Love can conquer Time, Diana de
Poitiers, in her profound art, did exactly the
opposite of what our imprudent ladies do,
who, incessantly changing, as if to amuse
the passer-by, leave no trace upon the soul,
and produce no permanent impression. She
permitted the Irises to delectate themselves
with their fugitive rainbow; but, like the
celestial Dian, always wore the same costume,
black or white, and invariably of silk.

It was to please her that Henry II. wore
the first pair of silk stockings, and the fine
silken close-fitting vest, which indicated all
the gracefulness of a muscular yet slender
figure. We know how ardent an enthusiasm
Henry IV., at a later period, showed in pro¬
moting the growth of the silk-manufacture,
planting mulberry-trees everywhere, — along
the highways, in the market-places, in the
courts of his palaces, and even in the gardens
of the Tuileries. Coloured silks, for decora¬
tion and furniture, and silks with flowered
designs, were soon afterwards manufactured
at Lyons, which provided all Europe with
them.

Shall I say it, however ? These coloured
and ornamented silks do not by any means
produce a great and profound effect. Silk
in its natural state, and not even tinted, is in
much more intimate sympathy with woman
and beauty. Amber and pearls, the latter
slightly yellow, with rich falls of lace, the
latter not too yellow, are the only suitable

ff ^

wv \V '« /

v A • • -

accompaniments of silk.

A GARMENT FOR BEAUTY.

189

For silk is a noble and in nowise pretentious attire, which lends a
subdued charm to the exuberant liveliness of youth, and clothes declin¬
ing beauty with its most tender and touching radiance.

A genuine mystery attends it which is not without attraction.
Colour or gloss? Cotton has its peculiar gloss, and, when fitly pre¬
pared, often acquires an agreeable freshness. Silk is not properly
glossy, but luminous, — with a soft electrical light, which harmonizes
naturally with the electricity of the woman. A living tissue, it em¬
braces willingly the living person.

Oriental ladies, before they foolishly adopted our Western customs,,
wore but two kinds of stuff : underneath, the real cashmere (of so fine
a texture that a large shawl might be passed through a finger-ring) ;,
and above, a beautiful tunic of silk of a pale blonde, or rather straw
colour, with a gleam or flash of magnetic amber.

These two articles were less garments than friends, — gentle slaves,.
— supple and charming flatterers : the cashmere warm, caressing, and
pliant, enfolding the bather lovingly when she emerged from her bath ;
the silk tunic, on the contrary, light and aerial, only not too diaphanous.
Its blonde whiteness agreed most admirably with the colour of her skin;
one might indeed have very justly said that it had imbibed that colour
through its constant intimacy and accustomed tenderness. Inferior to
the skin, undoubtedly, yet it seemed related to it; or rather it became in
the end a part of the body, and, as it were, melted into it, like a dream
which informs our whole existence, and cannot be separated from it.

YII

INSTRUMENTS OF

THE INSECT

CHAPTER VII.

INSTRUMENTS OF THE INSECT : AND ITS
CHEMICAL ENERGIES,

AS IN THE COCHINEAL AND THE CANTHARIDES.

Have I insisted too much upon my theme ? No ;
I have reached its very depths, its most important
details.

Silk is not a particular, but a general view or
aspect of it, for nearly every insect produces silk.

Hitherto we have dealt with only one

kind of silk, — that of the bombyx, and indeed that of a species of

bombyx which is not very fertile. Let us hope that the meritorious

Society of Acclimatization will introduce here the Chinese bombyx

( Attacus ), which lives on the dwarf oak, whose strong and cheap

194

THE INSECT AS A WARRIOR.

silk might be used as clothing for the poor. All classes thenceforth
might wear a material warm, light, impervious, solid; and not only
so, but beautiful, brilliant, and noble. Such a change would be
equivalent, in my eyes, to the general ennoblement and transfigura¬
tion of the people.

Reaumur long ago asserted that numerous chrysalides would furnish
a beautiful silk. The spider would yield a substance both delicate and
tenacious, — as witness the admirable veil of spider’s silk preserved in
the Paris Museum.

The delicate Arachne, whose light thread resembles a fleecy cloud, —
which is nevertheless so strong, as it issues from the spinnerets, —
Arachne is pre-eminently the spinner. But, as a general rule, the insect
is the weaver, and wholly devoted to that feminine art. I was about
to say, the insect is a woman.

In our vocabulary “ feminine ” means feeble ; but in the Insect World
it is the synonym of strength and energy. It is, — as is the case with
maternity everywhere, — it is for the purpose of defending and nourish¬
ing the child, of provisioning the cradle in which the orphan will remain
alone, — it is for this purpose specially that the insect is a warrior, and
furnished with formidable weapons.

As far as concerns the instruments which pierce, and cut, and saw,
the insect, in spite of all our progress, is perhaps a little in advance of
man to-day. The instinct of maternity, the need of providing for its
child — the future orphan — the protecting shelter of the hardest bodies,
has evidently inspired it to make extraordinary efforts for the develop¬
ment and refinement of its tools. A few, in their fantastical character,
have as yet no analogues in any of our factories.

Long before Reaumur organized the thermometer, the ants, for the
protection of their delicate, hygrometrical, and susceptible eggs, divided
their habitations into a series of thirty or forty stories, — lowering or
raising the tiny creatures to the degree of warmth, dryness, or humidity,
which the temperature of the day and of the hour of the day rendered
necessary. Thus they formed an infallible thermometer, on which one
might rely with as much certainty as on that of the philosophers.

In the comparisons between human and insect industry, the differ-

THE SCIENCES OF THE INSECT WORLD.

195

ences which we remark belong not so much to the methods as to the
speciality of their wants and situation. The insect aptly varies the
application of its arts. For example: the spider which, in its network-
trap, improvised every day, lightens its work by a mixture of gluing
and spinning, follows quite a different process in the important labour
of fabricating the soft, warm, and durable cocoons which are intended
to receive its young. The nest would seem to be partly spun and
partly felted, like the majority of birds’ nests.

We know that from the water-spider man derived the idea of the
diving-bell ; but it is not generally known that an ingenious Norman
peasant has succeeded in imitating perfectly the operations of the larva
of the syrphes, which, by means of an extremely prolonged respiratory
apparatus, preserves a communication with the pure and wholesome air,
even while working at the bottom of the most putrid waters.

It seems, then, that in the Insect World exist a complete pharmacy,
chemistry, and perfumery. Have our sciences been sufficiently atten¬
tive to this fact ? The potent vitality which gives an extraordinary
force to the muscles of such tiny creatures, seems also to endow their
liquids with active properties and burning energies which the large
animals do not possess. Many, for defensive purposes, are gifted with
caustic secretions — which they eject the moment you approach — or with
fulminating powders. Others with poison, which flows as soon as the
sting has been thrust in. Some possess, in addition, an art of magne¬
tizing or etherizing their enemy; and others, like certain ants which
work in damp, woody places, season their abodes by burning them, as
it were, with potent formic acid.

The entire genus of the Cerccmbyx (or Long-horned Beetle) exhale
a strong, rose-like odour, which is smelt at a distance, is lasting, and
endures after the creature’s death. Even among the Carnivora, ay, and
among the Coprophagi, we meet with perfumed insects, or, at all events,
with insects which, when in danger of being captured, endeavour to
deceive you, or implore pity, by emitting agreeable odours.

Others shine with admirable colours. The deep reds of the Nopal
Coccus have furnished the purple of kings.

196

INSECTS AND THEIR WEAPONS.

By a skilful mixture, we also obtain from the cochineal the pre¬
eminently gay and radiant colour, carmine, with its innumerable tints
and rosy shades.

A sovereign art with the insect is to carry on its sting, and concen¬
trate at a particular point, the liquids which flow in the plant, in the
living being. It is the very art of irritation. Its applications are in¬
numerable in medicine and industry; tints, paintings, varied ornaments,
a hundred fantastic and beautiful things come to us from the sting
of the galls, the excrescences and gibbosities which they so skilfully
raise.

The cochineal insect, while engaged in extracting by this process
from exotic vegetables the envelope of solid green in which it will
spend its prolonged period of rest, furnishes us with the red of reds,
the scarlet of lake, which will colour varnishes, and wax, and a multi¬
tude of objects.

In health or illness, the stings of insects upon the living flesh are
violent irritants for disturbing or re-establishing the course of life. In
these there is nothing mediocre. A few, without sting, burn you by
their internal acridity.

Who has not seen on the dusty plain, before the thirsty harvest, the
cantharides, with its emerald enamel, abruptly crossing the footpath
with a wild and agitated movement ! Burning elixir of existence,
where love transforms itself into a poison, — it is not with impunity
that we make use of it medicinally. That medieval pharmacy, which
was so dangerous to man, is not without peril, it seems, for the animals
themselves. A very intelligent but eccentrically ardent cat, which I
kept for a long time, among its other caprices of violence loved to hunt
the cantharides. It seemed attracted by the acridity of the beautiful
insect, as the moth is by the flame. It was an intoxication. But when,
hunting it through the flowers, she had seized and crushed her danger¬
ous victim, the latter appeared to take its revenge.

The inflammable feline nature, stimulated by the fiery sting, broke
out in cries, in excesses of fury, in strange leaps and bounds. She
expiated her orgie of fire by terrible sufferings.

But, on the contrary, another insect, the bamboo-worm, or malalis,

EATING THE MALALIS

197

provides you, if you first remove its head, which is a deadly poison, with
an exquisite eream, the sweet and soporific influence of which, say the
Brazilian Indians, lulls love asleep. For two days and nights, the
young maiden who has tasted of it, crouching under the blossomy tree,
feels all the more powerfully in her soul the depth of the virgin forests,
and the mystery of those fresh glades which have never seen the sun,
nor echoed to the step of man, nor known any intruder but the lonely
great blue butterfly. And yet she is not alone : love quenches her
thirst with the most delicious fruits.

ON THE INNOVATION OF OUR ARTS BY
THE STUDY OF THE INSECT.

The Arts properly so called, the Fine Arts, should
profit much more than the Industrial, by the study
of insects. The goldsmith and the lapidary would do
well to seek in them models and instruction. The
soft insects, the flies, specially possess in their eyes
truly magical irises, with which no casket of gems can
bear comparison. In passing from one species to
another, and even, if I mistake not, from one individual
to another, new combinations may be observed. Remark
that the flies with brilliant wings are not always the
most richly endowed, as far as their optical organs are
concerned. Take the dull, gray, dusty, odious horse-fly,
which lives on warm blood ; its eye, to the magnifying-
glass, offers the strange faery spectacle of a- mosaic of jewels, such as all
the art of Froment-Meurice has scarcely invented.

202

THE EYE AND THE MICROSCOPE.

If you descend still lower, insects which do not live, like this fly,
upon living but upon dead matter, ordure, and decomposition, astonish
us by the richness of their reflections, which our enamel ought to
endeavour to reproduce. The dunghill beetle, an ungainly black in¬
sect if we look only at the upper part of its body, is, underneath, of a
deep sapphire-blue which no kingly diadem ever equalled ! And what
shall we say of the son of the dead, of the Egyptian scarabseus, — a
living emerald, but far superior to that jewel in the gravity, opulence,
and magic of its lustre ? The imagination is impressed, and one does
not feel astonished that a people so tender and devout, so in love
with death, so full of the dreams of eternity, took for a symbol
the little miraculous animal, — a burning jet of life springing from the
grave !

A certain skill in examination, and a choice of day and of light, are
necessary. You cannot properly study the insect of the tropics and
that of our colder climates on the same day or at the same hour. The
former should be examined only in favourable weather, under a pure
sky and a strong sun, — a vivid and genial ray, analogous to the light
which bathes it in its own country. The other, frequently uninterest¬
ing to the naked eye, but of great beauty under the microscope, may
reserve its grand illuminating effects for the evening, or for artificial
light. Little is promised by the cockchafer, at first sight so coarse and
prosaic in appearance. Yet its scaly wing, when submitted to the
focus of the microscope, and well lighted up beneath the little mirror,
so that it is seen by transparency, presents a noble winter stuff, a dead
leaf, where meander veins of a very beautiful brown. And in the
evening it becomes quite another thing : the yellowish part of the
scale has got the best of it, and in the light shines forth like gold — (a
poor comparison !) — the strange, magical gold of paradise, which we
dream of for the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem, or for the robes ol
light worn by saints and spirits before the Throne ! A sun softer and
tenderer than the orb of day, and one which, we know not why, charms
and affects the heart.

A strange mirage ! And yet nothing but a cockchafer’s wing !

Perhaps it may next be an insect which neither by day nor night,

ENIGMAS AND THEIR MEANING.

203

neither to the naked eye nor under the microscope, could excite a feel¬
ing of interest; hut if you take the trouble to lift up, with a delicate
and patient scalpel, the laminae which com¬
pose the thickness of its scaly wing, you
will find there, in most instances, a variety
of unexpected designs, sometimes vegetable
curves, — sometimes airy ramifications, —
sometimes angular striated figures, like
hieroglyphics, which remind you of certain
Oriental languages ; and compose, in truth,
a genuine necromancer’s book, that can
neither be referred to, nor compared with,
any known form.

These singular characters, while strongly
attracting the eye and disquieting the
mind, are fully worthy of the interest they
excite. What they express, and give utter¬
ance to, in their emphatic language, is the
circulation of life. Some are tubes through
which the air enters the wing, and distends
it for flight; others are tiny veins where
circulate the powerful liquids that endow
the imperceptible organism with its colours
and its energy.

The most attractive forms are living
forms. Take a drop of blood, and submit it
to the microscope. This drop, as it spreads,
rewards you with a delightful arborescence,

— with the delicacy and lightness of certain
winter trees, when revealed in their actual
figure, and no longer encumbered with leaves.

Thus, ^Nature’s infinite potency of beauty is not limited to the
surface, as antiquity supposed. It does not trouble itself about human
eyesight, but labours for its own behoof, and on its own work. From
the surface to the interior, it frequently increases in beauty as in

204

THE CICINDELA EXAMINED.

depth. It invests with surpassing loveliness things which are absol¬
utely hidden, and which death alone can unveil. Sometimes, as if
to contradict and confound our ideas, it clothes in ravishing forms
the organs which, from our point of view, accomplish the vilest
functions. I am thinking of the exquisite beauty and delicate tender¬
ness of that coral-tree which incessantly pours out the chyle of our
intestines.

To return to the insects : beauty abounds in them both externally
and internally. One need not search far in order to discover it. Take an
insect, not very rare, which I constantly meet with on the sandy soil
of Fontainebleau, in localities well open to the sun. Take — but not
without precaution, for it is well armed — the brilliant cicindela. Even
to the naked eye it is an agreeable object; but under the microscope it
appears to be perhaps the richest and the most varied which art could
study. These are truly surprising creatures ! Each individual differs ;
all are enamelled, and decorated to an excess, without resembling one
another. In each, if taken and separately studied, new discoveries may
be made.

It is the ardent and murderous hunter of other insects, and endowed
with formidable weapons, — having for its two anterior mandibles a
couple of sickles which close in upon one another, and transfix deeply,
on both sides, their unfortunate victim. Its rich and living aliment
apparently communicates to the cicindela its glowing colours. Its
entire body is embellished with them. On the wings, a changeful
besprinkling of peacock’s eyes. On the fore parts, numerous meanders,
diversely and softly shaded, are trailed over a dark ground. Abdo¬
men and legs are glazed with such rich hues that no enamel can sustain
a comparison with them ; the eye can scarcely endure their vivacity.
The singular thing is, that beside these enamels you find the dead tones
of flowers and the butterfly’s wing. To all these various elements add
some singularities, which you would suppose to be the work of human
art, in the Oriental styles, Persian and Turkish, or as in the Indian
shawl, where the colours, slightly subdued, have found an admirable
basis * time having gradually lent a grave tone to their sweet harmony.

WONDERFUL INSECT-WINGS.

205

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Frankly, is there aught approaching such a degree of excellence in
our human arts ? How great the necessity o,N V1

that, in their apparently fatigued and languid
condition, they should gain life and strength
from these living sources !

In general, instead of going straight to
Nature, to the inexhaustible fountain of
beauty and invention, they have solicited
help from the erudition, the history, and
the antiquity of man.

We have copied ancient jewels; some¬
times those of the barbarous peoples which
first procured them from our own merchants.

We have copied the old robes and the stuffs
of our ancestors. We have copied, especially,
the painted-glass windows of Gothic archi¬
tecture, whose colours and forms have been
selected haphazard, and transplanted to
objects utterly discordant and unsuitable, —
as, for instance, to shawls !

If we were desirous of comprehending
and rehabilitating these ancient windows, we
might have taken a lesson from the enamels
of certain scarabaei. Seen beneath the micro¬
scope, they present very analogous effects,
simply because they possess the same ele¬
ments of beauty. The thirteenth century
glass- windows (you may see them at Bourges,
and especially in the Museum of that city)
were double. The light therefore remained
in them, did not pass through them, gave
them the magical effects of precious stones.

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And of a similar character are those insect y v

wings composed of numerous leaves, between which you may detect,

with the microscope, a network of mysterious hieroglyphics.

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206

LEARNING FROM AN INSECT.

Gothic, so little in harmony with either our wants or our ideas,
has passed out of our furniture, but it still lingers in the shawl-manu¬
facture ; a rich and costly industry, which, having once adopted the
fantastic method of imitating in opaque wools those windows whose
transparency was their special merit, can hardly emancipate itself from
the bondage.

Men have not consulted women. In order to weave complex
designs, heap up a medley of arches and oriels, and condemn our wives
to carry churches on their backs, men have provided a heavy ground¬
work of the stoutest wools ; the whole being despatched from London
and Paris to be servilely woven by the Indians who have unlearned
their own arts.

Our intelligent Parisian merchants, who have reluctantly followed
in the path traced out for them by the great producers, may very well
escape from these rich and heavy styles. Let some one lose patience,
and turning his back on the copyists of antique absurdities, go to
Nature herself in search of advice, — to the great insect collections and
the conservatories of the Jardin des Plantes.

Nature, being feminine, will tell him that if he would fitly decorate
his sister in the soft and airy tissue of the ancient cashmere, he must
delineate thereupon — not the towers of Notre-Dame,* but a hundred
charming creatures — that little, but, if you will, very common marvel
of the cicindela, in which all styles are combined ; — or the purple
scarabseus glorified in its lily; — or the emerald chrysomela, which
this very morning I found sensually reposing at the bottom of a
rose.

Do I mean that you should copy these ? Not at all. I should call
these living creatures, in their robe of love, from which they derive
all their charm, an animated aureola, which cannot be translated.
We must be content to love and contemplate them, to draw our
inspiration from them, to convert them into ideal forms, and new
rainbows of colours, and exquisite posies of blossoms. Thus trans-

* Notre-Dame is the metropolitan cathedral of Paris.

FANTASTIC FANCIES

207

formed, they will become, not what they are in Nature, but fantastic
and wonderful, — as the child who pants for them sees them in its
slumber, or the maiden yearning after a beautiful attire, or as the
young wife when dreaming of them in her hours of waiting.

IX - THE SPIDER.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE SPIDER — INDUSTRY — THE STOPPAGE.

Before we pass on to those insect communities
with which the latter portion of this volume will
be occupied, let us speak here of a solitary in¬
dividual.

Higher, and yet lower, than the insect, the
spider is separated from it by its organization,
but connected with it by its instincts, wants, and
food.

A being strongly specialized in two particulars,
it is excluded from the great classes of the animal
kingdom, and stands isolated, as it were, in crea¬
tion.

In the fertile countries of the tropics, where game abounds, it lives
with its fellows. Some are said to weave around a tree one immense
net, common to all, whose avenues they guard in perfect agreement.

212

BRANDED WITH UGLINESS.

Nay more : having frequent occasion to deal with powerful insects, and
even little birds, they co-operate in the hour of peril, and lend each
other, as it were, a helping hand.

But this gregarious mode of living is wholly exceptional, confined
to certain species, and peculiarly favoured climates. Everywhere else
the spider, through its organism and the fatality of its life, assumes the
character of the hunter, of the savage, who, living upon uncertain prey,
remains envious, mistrustful, exclusive, and solitary.

But remember that it does not resemble the ordinary hunter, who
gets quit with his journeys, his exertions, and his activity. The
spider’s hunt costs it dearly, if I may venture to say so, and demands
an incessant outlay. Every day, every hour, it must draw from its own
substance the essential element of the network which is to provide it
with food and renew that substance. Accordingly, it starves in order
to nourish, and exhausts in order to recruit itself; it grows lean on
the dubious hope of afterwards growing fat. Its life is a lottery,
remitted to the risk of a thousand unforeseen contingencies. Hence, it
cannot fail to develop into an unquiet creature, sympathizing but
coldly with its kind, in whom it sees possible competitors, — in a word,
it is a fatally egotistical animal. And were it not so, it would perish.

The worst of it is, as far as the poor creature is concerned, that it
is profoundly *igly. It is not one of those which, ugly to the naked
eye, are rehabilitated by the microscope. The overwhelming speciality
of its career has the effect, as we see among men, of attenuating one
limb, exaggerating another, and prevents anything like harmony : the
blacksmith is frequently a hunchback. In the same manner the spider
is pot-bellied. Nature has sacrificed everything to its function, its
wants, and the industrial apparatus which will satisfy those wants. It
is an artisan, a rope-maker, a spinner, and a weaver. Do not look at
its figure, but at the product of its art. It is not only a spinner, but
a spinning-mill.

Concentrated and circular, with eight feet around its body, and
eight vigilant eyes in its head, it causes astonishment by the eccentric
prominency of its enormous belly. An ignoble feature, wherein the
careless observer reads the result of gormandising ! Alas, it is just the

THE WORKER AND THE SPIDER.

213

contrary ! This big belly is its workshop, its magazine, the pouch
where the rope-maker carries in front of it the material of the thread
which it winds and unwinds ; but as it fills this pouch with nothing
but its very substance, it enlarges only at the expense of itself, and by
dint of extreme sobriety. And you shall often see it, though emaciated
in every limb, retaining full and expanded the treasure which is the
indispensable element of its labour, the hope of its industry, and its
only chance of a future. A true type of the man of industry ! “ If I

fast to-day,” it says, “I shall eat perhaps to-morrow; but if my
material runs short, all is over, — my stomach must rest and fast for
ever I ”

My first relations with the spider were nothing less than agreeable.
In my poverty-blighted childhood, while I toiled alone (as I have said
in my book on “ The People ”) in the then ruinous and desolate printing-
office of my father, the temporary workshop was in a kind of cellar,
sufficiently well lighted, — being a cellar in the boulevard where my
family resided, but on the ground-floor so far as concerned the adjoining
street. Through a large grated window the mid-day sun obliquely
lighted up the sombre case where I put together my little leaden letters.
There, at the angle of the wall, I distinctly perceived a prudent spider,
which, supposing the stray sunbeam would bring some imprudent fly
for its breakfast, drew near my case. This sunbeam, falling not in its
comer but nearer me, was a natural temptation to invite its closer
approach. In spite of my innate disgust, I admired the progressive
ratio of timid, slow, and prudent experiment by which it ascertained
the character of him to whose mercy it virtually confided its very
existence. It watched me closely with all its eight eyes, and pro¬
pounded to itself the problem, “ Is he, or is he not, an enemy ? ”

Without analyzing its figure, or very clearly distinguishing its eyes,
I felt that I was observed and watched ; and apparently this observa¬
tion, in the long run, proved favourable to me. By the instinct of
work, perhaps (whicli is very great in its species), it perceived that I
was really a peaceful labourer, and that I was busy, like itself, in
weaving my cobweb. However this may be, it abandoned its strata¬
gems and precautions with a quick decision, as if adopting an adven-

14 b

214

THE TWO FRIENDS.

turous and somewhat perilous step. Not without grace it descended
upon its thread, and planted itself resolutely on our respective frontier
— the edge of my case, favoured, at that moment, with a golden ray of
the sickly sun.

I was divided between two sentiments. I confess that I did not
relish so close an intimacy, — the figure of such a friend pleased me but
little; on the other hand, this prudent and observant being, which
certainly did not lavish its confidence, seemed to say to me : “ Where¬
fore should I not enjoy a little of thy sun ? So different in nature, we
have nevertheless arrived together from our necessitous toil and cold
obscurity at this sweet banquet of light. Let us take heart, and
fraternize. This ray which you permit me to share, receive it from
me, and preserve it. In another half century, it will kindle up your
winter.”

As the little black fairy said this in its own language, whispering
low, very low — in fact, it could not be lower (for it is thus that fairies
speak) — I marked the effect of it vaguely, and it slumbered in my
mind. The circumstance, however, was recalled for a brief while some
years ago ; and again, after a long interval, it has been revived on this
very day, when for the first time I record and explain it.

On the former occasion, after a domestic affliction, I was spending my
holidays in Paris, and I went daily alone to walk in my little garden in
the Rue des Postes. My family were in the country. Mechanically I
remarked the beautiful concentric stars which the spiders had woven
round my trees, and wliich they repaired and remade incessantly with a
laudable industry, giving themselves immense trouble to preserve my
small stock of fruits and grapes, and relieving myself from the impor¬
tunity of flies and the stings of gnats. They reminded me of the black
domestic spider which, in my childhood, had entered into conversation
with me. These latter were very different. Daughters of air and
light, always exposed, always before the eyes of men, without other
shelter than the surface of a leaf, where they may easily be captured,
they are unable to cultivate the reserve or diplomacy of my old
acquaintance. All their work is visible, all their little mystery open
to the wind, and their persons at everybody’s discretion; they have

THE SPIDER AND ITS WEBS.

215

no other protection than what may be afforded them through com¬
passion, or in consideration of a well-understood interest in the posi¬
tive services which they render.

Those which suspend their nests to the branches of trees, like those
which suspend them to our windows, display an evident design to
place themselves in the wind, where a current of air may waft the in¬
sects to them, or in the path of a ray of light in which the gnat may
float and whirl. The web does not fall vertically, for such a position
would restrict it to one current ; the spider, like an able seaman, gives it
a great obliquity, and thus secures a couple of currents, or even more.

From the extremity of its belly, four screw-plates or tubercles,
which can be drawn in or out (like telescopes), eject by their move¬
ment a very little cloud, that increases in size from minute to minute.
This cloud is composed of threads of an infinite tenuity ; each tubercle
secretes a thousand, and the four, by combining together their four
thousand threads, make the unique and tolerably strong thread of
which the web is woven.

Mark well, that the threads of the intelligent manufacturer are not
all alike, but of different strength and quality according to their des¬
tination. Some are dry for warping, others viscous for gluing. The
tissues of the nest intended for the reception of the new-born are of a
cottony material, while those which will enwrap the cocoon containing
the eggs possess all the resistant power necessary for the safety of the
latter.

When the spider has produced a sufficient quantity of thread to
undertake a web, it voluntarily glides from an elevated point, and un¬
winds its skein. There it remains suspended, and afterwards reascend¬
ing to its starting-point by the assistance of its tiny cordage, moves
towards another point ; and continues to trace in this manner a series of
radii all diverging from the same centre.

The skein stretched, it is busied next in weaving the woof by cross¬
ing the thread. Running from radius to radius, it touches each with
its tubercles, which fasten to it the circular border. The whole is not
a compact tissue, but a veritable network, so geometrically proportioned
that all the meshes of the circle are invariably of the same size.

216

“WITH PRUDENCE AND PATIENCE.”

This web, woven out of itself, living and vibrating, is much more
than an instrument; it is a part of its being. Itself of a circular form,
the spider seems to expand within this circle, and prolong the fila¬
ments of its nerves to the radiating threads which it weaves. In the

centre of its web lies its greatest force for attack or defence. Out of
that centre it is timid ; a fly will make it recoil. The web is its
electric telegraph, responding to the lightest touch, and revealing the
presence of an imperceptible and almost imponderable victim ; while,
at the same time, being slightly viscous in substance, it retains the
prey, or delays and entangles a dangerous enemy.

In windy weather, the continual agitation of the web prevents it
from giving an account of what transpires, and the spider then remains
at the centre. But usually it keeps near its machinery, hidden under
a leaf, that it may not terrify its victims, or fall a prey to any of its
numerous foes.

Prudence and patience, rather than courage, are its characteristics.
Its experience is too great, it has undergone too many accidents and
misadventures, it is too much accustomed to the severities of fate, to
indulge in any surpassing audacity. It is afraid even of an ant. The
latter, often a mischievous individual, a restless and rugged rodent, and
afraid of nothing, frequently persists in exploring the strange woof, of
which it can make nothing. The spider accordingly gives way to it,
— whether it fears the acid of the ant, which burns like aquafortis, or

THE HUNTER’S ENEMIES.

217

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whether, like a good artisan, it calculates that a long and obstinate
struggle will cost it more time than will the
manufacture of another web. Therefore, with¬
out yielding to the slightest susceptibility of
self-love, it allows the ant to strut about,

and takes up its post a little further off.

r r , : *

Every animal lives by depredation. Nature
is ever devouring itself ; but the prey is not
always sought and merited by a patient in¬
dustry deserving of respect. No being, how¬
ever, is so much the plaything of fate as the
spider. Like every good workman, it has a
twofold value : in its work and its person.

An infinity of insects — the murderous cardbus,
or the libellula, an elegant and splendid
assassin — have only their bodies and their
weapons, and spend their lives joyously in
killing. Others possess secure and easily de¬
fended asylums, where they have cause to fear
few dangers. The field-spider has neither the
one nor the other advantage. It is in the posi¬
tion of the respectable operative, who, through
his small and ill-guaranteed fortune, attracts
or tempts cupidity or insolence. The lizard
from below, the squirrel from above, hunt
the feeble hunter. The inert frog darts at it
the viscous tongue, which glues it and renders
it immovable. It is the felicity of the
swallow, in her graceful circle, to carry off,
without injuring, the spider and his web ; and
all birds look upon it as a great dainty or an
excellent medicine. The nightingale, faith¬
ful, like all great singers, to a certain hygiene, prescribes for herself, as
an occasional purgative, a spider.

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218

THE SPIDER AND ITS LIFE.

Even if slie be not swallowed up herself, if the instrument of her
trade is destroyed, the consequences are the same. Should the web be
undone blow upon blow, a somewhat protracted fast renders it unable
to secrete a fresh supply of thread, and it soon perishes of hunger. It
is constantly confined in this vicious circle : —

To spin, it requires food ;

To feed, it must spin.

Its thread, for the spider as for the Parcse, is that of destiny.

We once made the experiment of removing three times running a
spider’s web. Three times, in six hours, it replaced it, with admirable
patience, and without abating one jot of hope. The experiment was a
cruel one, and we now reproach ourselves for it. We meet with too
many poor unfortunates, whom accidents of this kind have thrown
out of work, and who are thenceforth too exhausted to resume their
industry. One sees them, like living skeletons, attempting fruitlessly
a different trade, in which they succeed but poorly, and mournfully
envying the long legs of the field-spiders, which gain their living i*y
incessant travelling.

When people speak of the eager gluttony of the spider, they forget
that it must either eat a double quantity, or soon perish : eat to recruit
its body, and eat to renew its thread.

Three circumstances contribute to wear it out : the ardour of in¬
cessant work, its nervous susceptibility — which is carried to an extreme
— and its twofold respiratory system.

For it has not only the passive respiration -of the insect, which re¬
ceives, or submits to, the air introduced through its stigmata; it has
also a kind of active respiration, analogous to the play of the lungs in
the higher animals. It takes the air and masters it, transforms and
decomposes it, and incessantly renews it. If you do but examine its
movements, you feel that it is something more than an insect; the
vital glow traverses its frame in a rapid circulation ; the heart beats
very differently from what it does in the fly or butterfly.

But its superiority is its peril. The insect braves with impunity
the strongest odours and mephitic miasmas. The spider cannot endure
them. Instantly affected by them, it falls into convulsions, struggles,

A REMINISCENCE.

219

and expires. I saw this incident one day at Lucerne. Chloroform,
whose action the stag-beetle had endured for fourteen days without suc¬
cumbing, immediately — at the first contact — overpowered the spider.
Yet the victim was a large one, and I found it engaged in eating a gnat.

I wished to experiment, and poured on it a single drop. The effect
was terrible. Nothing more pitiful could be seen in a case of human
asphyxia. It tumbled over, raised itself, and then swooned; all its
supports failed it, and its limbs appeared disjointed. One thing was
very pathetic — that in this supreme moment the fecundity of its bosom ,
became apparent; in its agony, its tubercles sent forth their little
cloudy woof, so that you might have believed it to be working even
in death.

I felt oppressed, and in the hope that the fresh air would perhaps
revive it, I placed it on my window-sill ; but it was no longer itself.

I know not how the effect was produced ; but it seemed to have melted
away, and nothing of it remained but its skeleton. The vanished sub¬
stance had left but its shadow, which the wind bore away to the
neighbouring lake.

X _ THE HOME

AND

LOVES

OF THE

SPIDER

CHAPTER X.

THE HOME AND LOVES OF THE SPIDER.

The spider greatly surpasses all other soli¬
tary-living insects. It not only possesses
its nest, its ambush, its temporary hunt¬
ing-station ; it has (or, at least, certain
species have) a regular house, a house of a
very complex description : a vestibule, and
a sleeping-chamber, and a mode of egress in
the rear; and, finally, a door which is a
very triumph of art, for it closes of itself,
falling back by its own weight.

The door ! It is this which is want-

AoS AKSE T l .SC

ino- even in the grand cities of the bees and the ants ; these industrial

£3 O

republics have never hitherto attained to so lofty a climax.

224

HOME OF THE SPIDER.

The ants have just reached the point at which most of our African
tribes have halted. Every evening they shut up their dwelling-places
with immense labour — renewed daily — and by a little, unsubstantial
lattice- work, which does not relieve them from the necessity of plant¬
ing sentinels. It is true, however, that these great, valiant, and well-
armed peoples have no fear of invasion, and, like Lacedsemon, need
neither walls nor ditches. Their proud intrepidity has set limits to
their industry.

On the other hand, the poor artisan which lives by itself, and is
always exhausted by the incessant toil of spinning and weaving, cannot
rely upon its valour. It has need, in certain countries and under
certain alarming conditions, of profound ingenuity, and has discovered
this little miracle of prudence and combination, which eclipses both the
savage and the insect. I do not refer to the great animals, none of
which, except the beaver, are very industrious.

In the neighbourhood of Lucerne we for the first time saw the
house of the spider (the Agelena). It was a kind of sheath, and very
well made, with a vestibule facing the south, which expanded outward
like a funnel. This exterior portion, forming a little sunny retreat,
was the snare and the citadel. The lady of the house stationed herself
quite at the bottom of the funnel; but behind this very bottom, at
the lower extremity of the case or sheath, was constructed a back
apartment, small and very secure, in a white substantial cocoon. In
this she trusted so completely, that while we detached the silken cables
which moored the entire edifice to the bush, she made no attempt to
escape. We had neither destroyed nor damaged, but simply detached
the dwelling, and on the day following we found it repaired and
moored to the bush on every side. The exposure was no longer so
favourable ; but, undoubtedly, the workman, in an advanced season of
the year (in September, and under the Alps), did not possess the re¬
sources for recommencing this grand summer- work.

In the Brazilian forests a little spider has its case suspended exactly
in the centre of its web; and thither it hurries at the slightest approach
of danger, and has no sooner entered, says Swainson, than the door
suddenly closes behind it by a spring.

A MIRACLE OF PATIENCE.

225

But the masterpiece of the genus is seen, especially in Corsica, in
the laborious Mygale. Its residence is a kind of well, industriously
walled round, with smooth and polished sides, and a double tapestry, —
a coarse strong hanging on the earthward front, and a fine satiny hang¬
ing in the interior. The orifice of the well is closed by a door. This
door is a disc, much larger at the top than at the bottom, and let into
a groove in such a manner as to shut hermetically. The disc, which is
not more than three lines thick, contains, nevertheless, thirty double
woofs, and between the woofs intervene the same number of coats or
layers of earth, — so that the entire door is really composed of sixty
doors. Here, in truth, is a miracle of patience ; but observe, too, the
ingenuity, — all these doors of network and earth clamp into one
another. The thread-doors at one point are prolonged to the wall,
fastening the door to the wall as by a hinge. This door opens out¬
wardly when the spider raises it to go forth, and closes by its own
weight. But the enemy might eventually succeed in opening it.
This has been anticipated. On the side opposite the hinge some small
holes are worked in the door ; to these the spider clings, and becomes
a living bolt.*

What would happen if this astonishing artisan, placed in peculiar

and trying circumstances (like the bees under Huber’s experiments),

were called upon to vary its art and devise a novelty? Could it do so ?
Has it the intelligence, the resource, and, at need, the power of inno¬
vation which the superior insects display under certain conditions ? It
would be worth while to make the experiment. This, at all events, is
certain, that the simple Epeiras (our garden-spiders) know very well,
when deprived of the necessaiy space for extending their geometrical
curtain, how to construct one of irregular design, decreasing in propor¬
tion to the restrictions of their area.

Experiments, moreover, are difficult. The spider is so nervous, that
the fear which makes it an artist can also paralyze and utterly con¬
found it. Its. web alone gives it courage. Out of its web, everything
makes it tremble. In captivity, having no web, it actually flees before
its prey, and has not the resolution to confront a fly.

* See the works of Audouin and Walckenaer.

226

ALWAYS IN SUSPENSE.

§3

Its miserable condition of passive expectancy fully explains its

character. To wait, while acting, running,
fighting, is to cheat both time and hunger ;
but to remain there immovable, to be unable
to stir from fear of alarming your prey, to
watch it coming; nearer and nearer but
eventually escaping, and to suffer from an
empty stomach ! To be a witness of the
ISH endless, heedless dances of the fly, which,
in the sunbeam, amuses and balances itself
for hours without responding to the avid
prayers of the tempter which whispers,
“ Come, little one ! Come, my darling ! ” is
a terrible punishment, a series of hopes and
disappointments.

It pursues its gay measure, and thinks
nothing of the sufferer.

The fatal inquiry, “Shall I dine?” re¬
turns, and lacerates its bowels. Then comes
the more ominous reflection : “ If I do not
Hlli dine to-day, no more thread ! And far less,
then, may I hope to dine to-morrow!”

From all this results a suffering, restless,
but prodigiously wary and attentive being,
which detects not only the slightest con¬
tact, but the slightest noise. The spider is
only too sensitive. A very little disturb¬
ance seems to overthrow its self-control. It
apparently faints; you see it suddenly fall
from its position, struck down by fear.

This sensitiveness, as you will readily
believe, is especially displayed in the
spider’s maternal condition. However
miserable and avaricious in its nature, it is tender, liberal, and generous

M‘« |l ‘i i.,i i !|ilh<

MASTERPIECES OF INDUSTRIOUS SKILL.

227

towards its young. While the birds of prey — the winged hunters
which have so many resources — drive away their young at a very
early age, look upon them as greedy competitors, and force them by
blows of their beaks to dwell afar from the domain which they
reserve as their own, the spider is not contented with carrying its
eggs in the cocoon, but, in certain species, nourishes them when
living and greedy, guards them, bears them on its back ; or else she
makes them walk, holding them by a thread ; if danger threatens, she
draws in the thread, they leap upon her, and she saves them. If she
cannot do so, she will perish. Some there are which, rather than
abandon their offspring, will suffer themselves to be swallowed up in
the gulf of the ant-lion. Others, of a slow species, which, when unable
to save them, make no effort to escape, but allow themselves to be
captured also.

Their nests are frequently masterpieces. At Interlaken, in Swit¬
zerland, I have admired their long soft tubes, warm in the interior, and
well-lined, — externally, disguised with much skill by an artistic pell-
mell of small bits of leaf, tiny twigs, and fragments of gray plaster, so
as to melt perfectly into the colour of the wall supporting them. But
this was nothing in comparison with a work of art which I have here
at Fontainebleau.

On the 22nd of July 1857, 1 discovered in an outhouse a very pretty
round basket, about an inch across, made of all kinds of materials, and,
as it had nothing to fear from rain, without any cover. It was very
gracefully suspended to a beam by some elegant silken threads, which
I should call little hands, such as are possessed by the climbing plants.
Within, brooding on its eggs with a constant incubation, might be seen
a spider. It never stirred, except, perhaps, for a moment at night, in
quest of food. Never was there any animal so timid. At the gentlest
approaches fear made it fly, and almost fall. Once when we disturbed
it a little abruptly, it was seized with such an excess of terror that it
did not recover for an entire day. It sat for six weeks, and, but for
these perturbations, would perhaps have remained much longer.

An admirable mother, — an ingenious and delicate artist, — before all
things a female, — a female nervous and timid to the highest degree,

228

THE TYRANT OF NATURE.

this strange sensitive creature explained to me perfectly the very
opposite sentiments with which the spider inspires us, — those of repul¬
sion and attraction. We start away from it, and yet we draw near to
it. It is so coarse, and yet, at the same time, so prodigiously sensitive !
It breathes as we do. And the delicate tubercle which secretes its
silk, like a milky cloud (as the microscope shows us), is the most
feminine organ which exists, perhaps, in nature.

Alas, it is alone ! Except a few species (mygales) in which the
father renders some assistance to the mother, it expects no help.
The male, after its moment of love, becomes, indeed, an enemy. Cruel
consequences of misery ! It perceives that its children are capable of
furnishing it with food. But the mother, who is bigger than he, makes
a similar reflection, — thinks that the eater is eatable, — and frequently
crunches her spouse.

These atrocious events never happen, I am confident, in climates
where ease and abundance do not deprave their natural disposition.
But in our well-peopled countries, with game very rare, and competition
of extreme violence, these unfortunates act towards one another like
the wretched castaways on the raft of the Medusa.

A cruel tyrant, the stomach, dominates over all nature, and van¬
quishes even love. Passion, in an anxious and restless being like the
spider, is very mistrustful. At the height of his devotion, the lean and
feeble male dares only approach the majestic lady with a timid rever¬
ence and the utmost reserve. He advances, he retires, he watches ;
he seems to ask himself if he has at all succeeded in subduing the
haughty creature. He resorts to the timid methods of a slow
magnetism, and especially to an extreme patience. He puts little
faith in the first signs, and does not willingly yield his confidence.
And, finally, when the adored object shows herself sensible of his
sincerity, and grows ardent in her expansion of soul, he does not so
wholly trust in her but what he will escape, and fly with all his
speed, at some sudden impulse, and under the influence of an indescrib¬
able panic.

Such is the terrible idyl of the dusky lovers of our ceilings. Among

MUSICAL SPIDERS.

229

our garclen-spiders less suspicion seems to exist. Nature softens hearts,
and rugged industrialism itself grows smoother in rustic life. We see
some upon our trees which behave tolerably well to their husbands, and
do not too often remember that they are competitors in the chase. They
permit them to reside in the same locality, although a little apart, and
keeping them at a distance. A light partition separates them. The
princess consents that he may live under her roof, and on the ground-
floor, while she lives on the first story, — keeping him below and in
subjection, so that he may not presume to think himself the king, but
only the 'prince consort , and the husband of the queen.

Have they any sympathies beyond their own race ? So some
authorities have asserted, and I believe it. They are isolated from us
far less than the true insects. They live in our houses, have an interest
in knowing us, and seem to observe us. They pay great attention to
voices and sounds, and have a marvellous perception of them. If they
have not the insect-organs of hearing (which would seem to be the
antennse), it is because they are all antennae. Their excessive vigilance,
and the nervous irradiation which makes itself felt everywhere among
them, endow them with the keenest receptivity.

Much has been said about the musical spider of Pellisson. Another
and less-known anecdote is not less striking. One of those little
victims which are trained into virtuosi before they are ripe of age, —
Berthome, illustrious in 1800, — owed his astonishing successes to the
savage confinement in which he was forced to work. At eight he
astounded and stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin. In
his perpetual solitude he had a comrade whom no one suspected, — a
spider. It was lodged at first in a quiet corner, but it gave itself
license to advance from the corner to the music-stand, from the
music-stand to the child, even climbing upon the mobile arm which
held the bow. There, a palpitating and breathless amateur, it
paused and listened. It was an audience in itself. The artist
needed nothing more to fill him with inspiration and double his
energy.

230

A CATASTROPHE.

Unfortunately the child had a stepmother, who, one day, intro¬
ducing an amateur into the sanctuary, saw the sensible animal at its
post. A blow from her slipper annihilated the auditory. The child
fell swooning to the ground, was ill for three months, and died, — heart¬
broken !

iBook the ‘tHhirb.

COMMUNITIES OF INSECTS.

I _ THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS

CHAPTER I.

THE CITY IN THE SHADOWS: THE TERMITES,
OR WHITE ANTS.

M. de Prefontaine (cited by Huber, in his
work on “ The Ants”) relates that, when
travelling in Guiana, he saw a party of negroes
besieging certain fantastic edifices which he
calls ant-hills. They did not venture to attack
them except from a distance, and with firearms ;
having first taken the precaution, moreover,
to dig a little trench and fill it with water, to
check the progress of the beleaguered army
and drown its battalions, if the}^ adventured a
sortie.

These edifices are not the habitations of Ants, but of Termites,
— quite a different species of insect; which are found not only in

236

A TERMITE-HILL.

Guiana, but in Africa, New Holland, and in the prairies of North
America.

A host of travellers have described them. But the standard and
most instructive authority is that of Smeathman, which now lies be¬
fore us, enriched with excellent plates. The drawings are taken from
the termite-hills of Africa.

Figure to yourself a mound of earth, about twelve feet high (some
have been discovered measuring twenty), which, from a distance, might
easily be mistaken for a negro’s hut. Approach it, and you will at
once detect that it is the product of a higher art. Its curious form
is that of a pointed dome ; or, if you like, of an obtuse and preponder¬
ating obelisk. For support, the dome or obelisk has four, five, or six
cupolas from five to six feet high ; and against these are propped up
below some small bell-like structures, nearly two feet in elevation.
The whole might well be taken for a kind of Oriental cathedral, the
principal spire of which had a double cincture of minarets, decreasing
in height ; the said whole being of extreme solidity, and composed of
a compact clay, which, when burnt, makes the best bricks. Not only
may several men stand upon it without injury, but even the wild bulls
station themselves on its summit as sentinels to watch, through the
high grasses of the plain, that the lion or panther does not surprise
the herd.

Nevertheless, this dome is hollow, and the inferior platform which
supports it is itself supported by a semi-liollow construction formed by
the junction of four arches (two to three feet in span), — arches of
a very substantial design, being pointed, ogival, and in a kind of Gothic
style. Lower still extends a number of passages or corridors, plastered
spaces which one might call saloons, and finally, convenient, spacious,
and heal thy lodgings, capable of receiving a large population ; in brief,
quite a subterranean city.

A broad spiral passage winds and rises gradually in the thickness
of the edifice, which has no opening, no door, no window ; the vomi¬
tories are disguised and at a distance, terminating afar in the plain.

It is the most considerable and important work which displays the
genius of insects; a labour of infinite patience and of daring art. We

A WONDERFUL DOME.

237

must not forget that these walls, which time has hardened, were very
friable at first, and always crumbling. To raise this Titanic edifice to
such a height, a continuity of effort was absolutely requisite, and a
succession of provisional constructions, demolished one after the other
when they had served their purpose. The masons commenced with
the exterior pyramids, a foot and a foot and a half in height; then
with those of the second rank. But the latter being solid and indu¬
rated, they intrepidly undermined their base to make room for the
passages, the windows, and the spiral staircase. The same operation
was carried out beneath the dome, which was excavated with great
labour, and in such a manner that the great hollow vault, in conjunc¬
tion with its lower platform, rested on the narrow vaults of the four
arches forming the centre and foundation of the edifice.

Observe that this dome is self-sustaining, and that its substructions,
strictly speaking, would amply suffice for its support; the lateral
pyramids being only its not indispensable auxiliaries. Here, then, we
find the principle of a true, honest, and courageous art, which, relying
on itself and its calculations, requires no assistance from external sup¬
ports, and needs neither props nor buttresses. It is exactly the system
of Brunelleschi.

Who has carried the art to such a climax ? We must own that it
is the supreme of usefulness. The sharpened dome, the belfries or
needles, are admirably arranged so as to resist the terrible rain-storms
of the tropics. The dome keeps off the water, and assists it to flow
away rapidly. If it cracked, the platform on which it leans would
throw the water, as from a roof, on to the exterior enceinte , which
would carry it to the ground. Hollow like a kiln, it quickly gets
warmed, and absorbs the heat; duly communicating it to the subter¬
ranean passages to hatch the eggs, and promote the comfort of a race
which, being wholly naked, prefers an elevated temperature.

It is a masterpiece of art, precisely because it is a masterpiece of
utility. The beautiful and the useful admirably harmonize. Now one
would wish to know who are these astonishing artists : we hardly
dare to confess that they are the objects of our entire contempt.

238

WORKERS IN THE DARK.

V arious names have been bestowed upon them ; among others, that
of termites: and again, that of wood-ants, — a designation not very
accurate, for the ants are their enemies, and their body, being ex¬
ceedingly soft, is exactly the opposite of the dry hard body of the ant.

They have been also called wood-lice ; and they seem, in truth, a
soft and feeble kind of vermin, which are crushed without resistance.
Magnificent irony of Creation, which thus exalts the humblest forms of
life ! The Memphis, the Babylon, the true Capitol of the insects, is built
— by whom ? By lice ! Though their luxury of jaws, and their four
stages of teeth, make them admirable rodents, nevertheless, if we except
their elite , the soldiers, they have no important weapons. Their teeth,
made to gnaw, are powerless in combat. The destiny of the termites
is plain; spite of the formidable names which have been given to
their species ( bellicosus , mordax, atrox ), they are simply workers.

Every other insect is stronger than they are ; or at least harder,
better protected, and more completely armed. All, especially the ants,
hunt them, and devour them by myriads. Birds greedily pursue them ;
the poultry-yards absorb them in frightful quantities. All (even man,
who cooks them) find them of an agreeable taste ; and the negro can
never be satiated with them.

They work without seeing their work. They have no eyes, at
least none which are visible. Very probably, the darkness in which
they live destroys their ocular organs, as is the case with a species of
duck found in the subterranean lakes of Carinthia. The rare species
of termites which venture forth into the daylight have very conspicu¬
ous and perfectly formed eyes.

The darkness and the persecution to which they are exposed under
the light, seem to have developed their singular industry. Against that
world of day which shows them so bitter a hostility, they have built,
as they have been able, this little world of the shadows, in which they
exercise their arts. They issue forth only in search of food, and the
gum and other substances of which they make their magazines.

Their attachment is extreme for these cities of darkness. They
defend them obstinately. The first blow that is given each resists in
his own fashion ; the workmen plastering the interior with a kind of

THE PALLADIUM OF THE STATE.

239

mortar which closes up the holes, the soldiers attacking the assailants
and drawing blood with their sharp pincers, clinging to the wound, and
suffering themselves to be crushed rather than let go. A naked man
(like the negro) shrinks under these bites, grows discouraged, and is
conquered.

If you still persist, if you penetrate, you admire the palace, its
circuits, its corridors, its aerial bridges, the halls or saloons where the
population lodge, the nurseries for the eggs, the caves, cellars, or
magazines. But, above all, search to the centre. There lurks the
mystery of this little world ; there is its palladium, its idol, incessantly
surrounded by the cares of an enthusiastic crowd. A strange and
shocking object, which is not the less obeyed, and visibly adored !

It is the queen, or common mother, frightfully fecund, from whose
body issues an uninterrupted flood of about sixty eggs per minute, or
eighty thousand eggs per day !

You can conceive of nothing more fantastic. These strange crea¬
tures, which we compare to vermin, have nevertheless their moment
of supreme poesy, their hour of love ; for a moment their wings uplift
them, and almost immediately they sink. The couples thus bereft,
having neither refuge nor strength, and no means of resistance, are a
prey for all the insects, — a manna upon which they straightway throw
themselves. The working termites, which have neither love nor wings,
endeavour to save a couple of the victims, welcome them, — weak, and
fallen, and wretched as they are, — and make them monarchs.

They remove them to the centre of the city, and establish them in
the saloon on which all the apartments and corridors abut. There
they are revived, recruited, and nourished day and night; and the
female gradually assumes an enormous size, until in body and stomach
she is two thousand times larger than her natural condition, — though,
by a hideous contrast, the head does not increase. For the rest, immov¬
able, and therefore captive, the doors through which she entered have
become infinitely too narrow to admit of the egress of such a monster.
Accordingly, there she will remain, pouring out, until she splits asunder,
that torrent of living matter which the termites day and night collect,
and which, to-morrow, will be the People.

240

REMARKABLE FECUNDITY.

This soft and whitish-looking creature, a stomach rather than a
being, is at least of the size of the human thumb : a traveller pretends
to have seen one as large as a crab.

The bigger she is, the more fertile, the more inexhaustible, this
terrible mother of lice seems the more enthusiastically worshipped by
her fanatical vermin. She appears to be their ideal, their poetry, their
ecstasy. If you carry them off, with a fragment, a ruin of the city,
you may see them, under a glass shade, instantly set to work to build
an arch for the protection of the mother’s venerated head, to recon¬
struct her royal hall, which will become, if the materials be sufficient,
the centre and basis of the resuscitated community.

I am not astonished, let me add, at the extravagant love which
they show towards this instrument of fecundity. If every other race
did not jointly labour to destroy them, this truly prodigious mother
would make them masters of the world, — nay, what do I say ? — its
only inhabitants. The fish alone would survive ; but the insect world
would perish. It suffices to remember that the queen-bee takes a year
to accomplish what the termite mother accomplishes in a day. Through
her means they would swallow up Everybody ; but they are feeble and
savoury, and it is Everybody which swallows up them.

When the species of termites which live and dwell in the woods
unfortunately approach near our habitations, there is no means of
arresting their ravages. They work with a truly incredible vigour
and rapidity. They have been known in one night to eat their way
through the leg of a table, then through the thickness of the table
itself, descending through the leg on the opposite side.

The reader can easily imagine the effect produced by such toil as
this on the joists and framework of a house. The worst of it is, that
a long time may elapse before their ravages are detected. We continue
to rely upon supports which suddenly, one fine morning, crumble away;
we sleep peacefully under roofs which to-morrow will cease to exist.

The town of Valencia, in New Grenada, undermined by the sub¬
terranean galleries these insects have excavated in the earth, is now
literally suspended upon their dangerous catacombs.

We have ourselves seen, at Kochelle, the formidable beginnings of

RAVAGES OF THE TERMITES

241

the ravages they executed in the timber- work of a quarter of the town
where they were introduced by foreign ships. Whole buildings are
found eaten up, though apparently sound, — all the wood hollowed and
tunnelled, even to the banisters of the staircase : do not rest upon
them, or they will yield and give way under your hand. These terrible
nibblers seem willing, however, to confine themselves to one district of
the town, and not to invade the remainder. Otherwise, this historical
city, important still through its marine and its commerce, would be
reduced to the condition of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

II. — INSECTS

WORK

The ants enjoy a superiority over all other insects,
inasmuch as they are less specialized by their mode
' of life, their nourishment, and the instruments of their
industry. Generally, they adapt themselves to all
conditions, and work in all climates ; nor in all Nature
do more energetic agents in purification and
cleansing exist. They are, so to say, the facto¬
tums of Nature.

The termites, at least the majority
? of them, work in the darkness, under
the earth ; the ants both above and
below.

Like the termites, they build, at least in tropical countries, the

most remarkable edifices, — domes under which their chrysalides enjoy

16 B

246

AN INVASION OF ANTS.

the warmth of the sun without being injured by its scorching rays.
But these are not fortresses ; the ants have no need of them ; for in
the tropical regions they are the sovereigns and tyrants of all other
beings. The exterminating carabi , the invading necrophori, which
play among us, as insects, the role of the eagle and the vulture, scarcely
venture to make their appearance in the burning latitudes where the
ants hold sway. Everything which lies on the earth’s surface they
immediately devour. Lund, in his Memoire sur les Fourmis, says that
he had scarcely time to pick up a bird which he had seen drop. The
ants were already on the spot, and had seized upon it. The sanitary
police is performed by them with an implacable and energetic exactitude.

The great ants of the South are much more savage than our
European species; and feeling themselves sovereigns and mistresses,
feared by all, dreading none, they march forward imperturbably, with¬
out suffering any obstacle to divert their course. If a house stand in
their way, they enter, and all that is alive within it — even the enor¬
mous, venomous, and formidable spiders, ay, and small mammiferous
animals also — is devoured. Men give place to them. And if you
cannot quit your house, you have reason to fear their invasion. Once,
at Barbadoes, a long column was seen defiling for several days in
formidable numbers. All the earth was black with them, and the
torrent poured forward straight in the direction of the houses. They
were crushed by hundreds, without heeding their losses; myriads
were destroyed, but they continued to advance. No wall, no ditch,
was of any service ; water even could not arrest their progress : for it
is known that they construct living bridges, by fastening on to one
another in clusters and garlands. Fortunately, the plan was adopted
of sowing the ground in advance of them with numerous tiny vol¬
canoes, small heaps of gunpowder, which were fired at intervals beneath
them, and exploding, swept away whole files, and dispersed the rest,
— covering them with fire and smoke, and blinding them with dust.
This scheme proved successful. At least, the ants turned aside a little,
and moved in a different direction.

Linnaeus calls the termites the scourge of the two Indies ; and we

INGENUITY OF CARPENTER-ANTS.

247

might equally well bestow this appellation on the ants, if we considered
only the havoc they commit among the labours and cultivation of man.
In a few hours they strip a large orangery, denuding it of every leaf.
In a single night they devastate a field of cotton, manioc, or sugar-cane.
Behold their crimes ! Their virtues ? they destroy to a still greater
extent all things that might prove hurtful to man, and but for them
certain countries would be uninhabitable.

As for our European species, I cannot see that they do the slightest
harm, either to man, or to the plants he cultivates. Far from it, they
deliver him from an infinity of little insects. I have frequently seen
long files of them, with each carrying in his mouth a very small grub
as a contribution to the food stores of the republic. Such a picture
should ensure them the benedictions of every honourable agriculturist.

The mason-ants, which work in and entirely under the earth, are
difficult to observe. But the “ carpenters ” may be easily followed, at
least in the upper part of their constructions. The cupola of their
edifice being subject to dilapidation, they are constantly under a
necessity of repairing and re-excavating it. With the small amount of
soil which they make use of, they mix the leaves and spines of the fir,
and the catkins of the pine. If they meet with a bent, twisted, and
knotty twig, it is a treasure; they employ it as an arcade, or, better
still, as an ogive ; for the pointed arch is the most solid. The numerous
avenues which lead to the surface spread out in radii like a fan ; they
start from a concentric point, and extend to the circumference. The
mass of the edifice is divided into low but spacious apartments. The
largest is in the centre and under the dome; it is also the most
elevated, and destined, apparently, for public communications. There,
at all hours, you will find a knot of busy citizens, who, by the rapid
contact of their antennae (a kind of electric telegraph) seem to relate
to one another the news, and exchange opinions or mutual directions.
It is a kind of forum.

There is nothing more curious than to observe the various occupa¬
tions and movements of this great people. While some, as purveyors,
go in search of grubs, hunt insects, or collect materials, others, seden-

248

WAITING ON THE YOUNG.

tary in their habits, attend entirely to domestic cares and the education
of the young. An immense and an incessant occupation, if we may
judge from the continual movement of the nurses round the cradles.
Let but a raindrop fall, or a single sunbeam penetrate, and a general
stir takes place, a general removal of all the children of the colony,
and this with an ardour which never wearies. You may see them
tenderly taking up the big children — which weigh as much as them¬
selves — and transferring them from stage to stage, to rest them in a
convenient position.

This scale of heat, extending over forty degrees, what is it but a
thermometer ?

But more remains. The cares of alimentation, of what one might call
“ suckling,” are much more complicated than among the bees. The eggs
must receive a nourishing humidity from the mouth of the nurses. The
larvae take the beakful. And the young one which has worn through
its husk and become a nymph, would not have strength enough to
emerge from it if the attentive guardians were not at hand to open the
husk, release the little tenant, and initiate it into the light. In the arti¬
ficial ant-hills, which we have procured for the sake of closer examina¬
tion, we have even succeeded in observing a circumstance which Huber
regrets he had been unable to discover.

Some light movements which the infant communicates to its swad¬
dling-clothes give warning that its hour is come. We took great
pleasure in watching the nurses seated upon their hind limbs like
little motionless, upright fairies, plainly discerning under the silent veil
the first yearning for liberty.

As in every superior race, the young comes into the world weak,
and frail, and incapable of effort. Its first steps are so infirm that at
every movement it falls upon its knees. It requires, as it were, to be
kept in leading-strings. Its great vitality is only shown by an inces¬
sant demand for food. Therefore, when the heat is great, and numer¬
ous swaddling-husks must be opened daily, the new-born are all lodged
in the same part of the city.

One day, however, I saw a young ant thrust forth its head, still
somewhat pale, at a gate of the city, then step across the threshold,

.NEST OF RUSSET ANTS.

A MODE OF INTERCOMMUNICATION.

251

and march along the summit of the ant-hill. The escapade, however,
was not long permitted. A nurse encountering the fugitive, seized it
by the top of its head, and conducted it gently towards a neighbouring
entrance.

The child resisted ; it suffered itself to be dragged along, and on
the way coming in contact with a small piece of wood, profited by it
to stiffen itself, and exhaust its conductor’s strength. The latter,
always keeping its temper, let go for a moment, executed a flank
movement, and then returned to the charge, until its nursling, tired
out, was compelled to yield obedience.

As soon as the young are strong enough, they have to be brought
acquainted with the interior labyrinth of the city, the suburbs, the
avenues which lead to the outer world, and the neighbouring roads.
Then they are trained to hunt, are accustomed to provide for them¬
selves, to live haphazard and upon little or any kind of food. Tem¬
perance is the basis of the whole commonwealth.

The ant, not being fastidious, but accepting all descriptions of
food, is from this very cause the less anxious, restless, and selfish. It
is very wrong to call it a miser. Far from being so, it seems solely
intent upon multiplying in its city the number of its co-partners. In
its generous maternal care of those whom it has not begotten, in its
solicitude for those little ones of yesterday which to-day become young
citizens, originates a feeling quite novel and very rare among insects, —
that of fraternity. (See the works of Latreille and Huber.)

The obscurest and most curious point of their education is, undoubt¬
edly, the communication of language, which reminds the observer of
the forms of freemasonry. It enables them to transmit really compli¬
cated directions to their legions, and to change in a moment the march
of a whole column, the action of an entire populace.

This language principally consists in the touch of the antennae, or
in a light collision of the mandibles. They urge (or perhaps persuade)
by blows of the head against the thorax. Finally, they sometimes
carry off the auditor, who makes no resistance, and transport him to
some designated place or object. In this case, which undoubtedly is
both difficult to believe and explain, the convinced auditor unites with

252

AN INTERESTING SPECTACLE.

the other, and both together carry off other witnesses, which in their
turn perform upon others — the number continually increasing — the
same operation. Our parliamentary phrases, “ to carry away the
crowd,” “ to transport the hearer,” are by no means mere metaphors
amonof the ants !

To this lively gesticulation they join many other scarcely explicable
movements, — such as cavalcades, in which they march mounted one
upon another, exchanging gay defiances and light blows upon the
cheeks. Then they rear themselves upright, and contend by couples,
seizing upon a leg, a mandible, or an antenna. Naturalists have
spoken of these as their pastimes, but I know not what to think.
Among so busy, and obviously serious a family, this gymnastic exer¬
cise has perhaps a hygienic object which we do not understand.

We had so well managed our prisoners that they had become habi¬
tuated to their new domicile, and toiled under our eyes as they would
have done in their own city. They rebuilt for themselves a small
town in miniature, with gates whose number they carefully augmented,
especially on very hot days, for the purpose of giving air to their little
ones, whom they took care to place near the openings.

In the evening they conscientiously proceeded, according to their
invariable custom, to shut up the gates, as if always afraid of some
nocturnal invasion of idle vagabonds. A spectacle of deep interest,
which we frequently took occasion to enjoy in front of the great
swarming ant-hills.

Nor could there be a more varied picture ; on all sides, and at great
distances, you might see them coming in long files, each bearing some
little article, — one a long straw, another a pretty pine nut-cup, or (ac¬
cording to the country) a black needle-like leaf of the fir-tree. These,
like little woodcutters returning at close of day, brought back imper¬
ceptible bundles of twigs; others, which seemed empty-handed, were
but the more heavily loaded, having just taken prisoners some wood-
lice, which they carried home for the evening meal of the little ones.

At the approaches of the city, the points where the ascent com¬
menced, it was a pleasure to see the vigour, the zeal, and the ardour

A NATION OF WORKERS.

253

with which they dragged up such heavy materials. If one let go,
exhausted, two or three others succeeded. And the joist or beam, full
of animation, and apparently alive, gradually ascended. Skill and
foresight supplied the want of strength. If checked at any particular
point, they turned and advanced in a somewhat different direction,
ascending a little higher than was necessary ; then they let down the
weight exactly over the opening which they wished to conceal ; a quick
light movement made the mass pirouette, and it fell into its place.

Numerous problems in statics and mechanics were solved by a
felicitous audacity and with a great economy of effort. By degrees
all was secured. The vast dome, embracing with a soft and delicate
curve a great nation of workers in its lawful repose, offered nothing to
the sight, neither door nor window, and appeared to be a simple heap
of tiny fragments of fir. Do I mean that all slumbered in full con¬
fidence ? It would be wrong to think so. A few sentinels wandered
to and fro ; at the lightest touch of a switch, or the rustle of a leaf,
the guards would issue forth, perambulate the exterior of their city,
and when reassured would re-enter, but, undoubtedly, to continue their
watch, and remain upon duty.

The most surprising scene at which any one can be present is a
marriage of ants.

Of all follies, as everybody knows, the worst are those of the wise.
The honourable, economical, and respectable republic accordingly pre¬
sents (one single day yearly, it is true) a prodigious spectacle — of love ?

254

AN IDYLLIC POEM.

of madness ? — we do not know, but certainly of vertigo, and to speak
plainly, of terror. M. Huber saw in it the appearance of a national
holiday. What a holiday ! And what a scene of intoxication ! But
no ; nothing human can give an idea of this boiling effervescence.

I w^atched it on one occasion, between six and seven o’clock in the
evening. The day had been one of heavy showers and warm gleams
of light. The horizon was lowering, and yet the air calm. It was
Nature’s pause before resuming her storms of rain.

Upon a low sloping roof I saw descend quite a deluge of winged
insects, which seemed stunned, confused, delirious. To describe their
agitation, their disorderly movements, their somersaults and shocks to
arrive more quickly at the goal, would be impossible. Many rested,
and loved. The greater number whirled round and round without
stopping. All were so eager to live, that their very eagerness proved
an obstacle. This feverish desire produced a feeling of alarm.

A terrible idyllic poem !

It was impossible to make out what they wished. Were they
enjoying a festival of love ? Were they devouring one another ?
Right through this distraught multitude of fiances who had lost their
senses passed other and wingless ants, which threw themselves with¬
out mercy on the most embarrassed individuals, bit them, and treated
them so severely, that we thought we could see them crunching the
lovers. But no ! They wanted nothing more than to force them to
obey, and to recall them to their senses. Their vivid pantomime was
the counsel of prudence translated into action. The wingless ants
were the wise and irreproachable nurses, who, having no children,
bring up those of the others, and bear all the burden of the toil and
management of the city.

These virgins maintained a surveillance over the amorous and
slothful, and rigidly inspected the marriage-festival as a public act,
which, every year, renews the nation. Their natural fear was lest the
winged fools should be wooed and won elsewhere, and create other
tribes, without any thought of the parent community.

Numbers of the winged ones submitted, and allowed themselves to

IN THE MORNING.

255

be carried below towards their country and virtue. But many tore
themselves away, and flew afar, obedient only to the dictates of love
and caprice.

It was an astonishing vision, a fantastic dream, which can never
be forgotten.

In the morning nothing remained as a memorial of the excesses of
the preceding evening, except the fragments of some severed wings,
in which no one could have divined the trace of a unique soiree
d’amour.

HI — THE ANTS! THEIR FLOCKS AND THEIR SLAVES

CHAPTER III.

THE ANTS: — THEIR FLOCKS AND THEIR SLAVES.

When I learned for the first time, from the pages of
Huber, the strange and prodigious fact that certain ants
keep slaves, I was greatly astonished — as everybody has
been by this singular revelation — but I was especially
saddened and wounded.

What ! I turn aside from the history of man in
search of innocence. I hope at least to discover among
the brute creation the even-handed justice of nature, the
primitive rectitude of the plan of creation. I seek in
this people, whom I had previously loved and esteemed
for their laboriousness and temperateness, the severe and
touching image of republican virtues — and I find among them this
thing without a name !

2C0

HUBER OF THE ANTS.

What a joy, what a triumph for the partisans of slavery, for all the
friends of evil ! Hell and tyranny, laugh ye, and make merry ! A
black spot is revealed in the brightness of Nature.

I had flung aside Huber, and no book had ever seemed to me more
hateful. Pardon, illustrious observer ! your grandfather and your
father had enraptured and charmed me. The first of the clan — Huber,
the great historian of the bees — has inspired with new warmth the
religion of man, and lifted up his heart. But Huber of the ants has
broken mine.

It was, nevertheless, a duty to resume my perusal of his work, and
examine it more attentively. An immoral, a Machiavellian, and a per¬
verse insect is worthy of investigation.

But, in the first place, let us make a distinction. A portion of these
pretended slaves may only be cattle.

It is enough to look at the ants, thin to .an excess, brilliant, and
varnished, to conclude that they are the driest and most parched of
beings. Their singular acridity has been established by chemical re¬
searches, and science has contrived to extract the mordant formic acid
from their bodies. Sometimes, when they are in peril, they hurl it at
their enemies like a venom. Not a few species employ it in drying,
blackening, and almost burning the trees where they establish their
abodes. Is not a substance so corrosive for others equally dangerous to
themselves ? I should be tempted to think so, and to this extreme
acridity should attribute their greediness for honey and other lubricat¬
ing substances. I submit my hypothesis to the consideration of the
scientific.

The ants of Mexico, in a specially favoured climate, have two classes
of workmen, — one charged with the duty of seeking provisions; the
other, inactive and sedentary, entrusted with the work of elaborating
them, and making out of them a kind of honey for the common nourish¬
ment.

The ants of our temperate climates, for the most part incapable of
making honey, satisfy their imperative need of it by licking the
honey-dew found upon certain grubs, which, without labour, by the
mere fact of their organization, extract saccharine juices from all species

A STRANGE GRAZING-FIELD.

261

of plants. The transmission of this honey to the ants is effected
quietly, and, as it were, by mutual agreement.

It operates by a kind of titillation or gentle traction, such as we
exercise upon the cow. These grubs, placed at the extreme limit of
animal life — viviparous in summer, oviparous in autumn — are very
humble creatures, and prodigiously inferior in intelligence to the
ants. The magnifying-glass reveals them to the observer as always
bent, and always engaged in feeding. Their attitude is that of the
cattle. They are, in truth, the milch-cows of the ants ; and that
they may always profit by them, the latter frequently transport
them to their ant-hill, where they live together on admirably
good terms. The ants take great care of the grubs, superintend
the incubation, and nourish the adults with their favourite vege¬
tables.

In situations where great difficulty would be experienced in trans¬
porting and installing them, they empark them on the ground by
throwing up around their field of pasture a fence of twigs and cylinders
of earth. This may justly be termed the grazing- field, the chalet of
the ants; which repair to it at certain hours to milk their herds, and
sometimes carry their young thither for the easier distribution of the
food. I am frequently present, especially in the evening, at these
Dutch-like scenes, which have hitherto found no Paul Potter among
the ants to depict them.

Observe that these grubs, whether transported to the ant-hill or em-
parked on their favourite feeding-ground, possess the inestimable ad¬
vantage of having their safety guaranteed by the redoubtable republic.
The “ lion of the grubs ” (as a small worm is called), and other wild
beasts, if they dared approach the herd, would feel very cruelly their
strong mandibles and burning formic acid.

So far, then, we have no reproach to make; the grubs are cattle,
and not slaves. The ants do exactly what we do; they make use of
the privilege of superior beings, but exercise it with more gentleness
and management than does man.

But we now come to a more delicate consideration. There are two

kinds of ants, of a tolerable size, but otherwise of no peculiar distinc-

17 B

262

WAR AMONG THE ANTS.

tion, which employ as servants, nurses, and cooks, certain small ants
endowed with more skill and ingenuity.

This strange fact, which ought apparently to change our ideas
of animal morality, was discovered early in the present century.
Pierre Huber, the son of the celebrated observer of the manners and
habits of bees, walking one day in a field near Geneva, saw on the
ground a strong detachment of reddish-coloured ants on the march, and
bethought himself of following them. On the flanks of the column, as
if to dress its ranks, a few speed to and fro in eager haste. After march¬
ing for about a quarter of an hour, they halt before an ant-hill belong¬
ing to the small black ant, and a desperate struggle takes place at its
gates.

A small number of the blacks offer a brave resistance ; but the great
majority of the people thus assailed flee through the gates remotest
from the scene of combat, carrying away their young. It was just
these which were the cause of the strife ; what the blacks most justly
feared was the theft of their offspring. And soon the assailants, who
had succeeded in penetrating into the city, might be seen emerging
from it loaded with the young black progeny. It was an exact resem¬
blance of a descent of slave-dealers on the coast of Africa.

The red ants, encumbered with their living booty, left the unfor¬
tunate city in the desolation of its great loss, and resumed the road to
their own habitation, whither their astonished and almost breathless
observer followed them. But how was his astonishment augmented
when, at the threshold of the red ants’ community, a small population
of black ants came forward to receive the plunder, welcoming with
visible joy these children of their own race, which, undoubtedly, would
perpetuate it in the foreign land.

This, then, is a mixed city, where the strong warrior-ants live in a
perfectly good understanding with the little blacks. But what do
the latter ? Huber speedily discovered that, in effect, they do every¬
thing. They alone build ; they alone bring up the young red ants and
the captives of their own species ; they alone administer the affairs of
the community, provide its supplies of food, wait upon and nourish
their red masters, who, like great infant giants, indolently allow their

SLAVES AND THEIR SERVITUDE.

2G3

little attendants to feed them at the mouth. No other occupations are
theirs but war, theft, and kidnapping. No other movements in the
intervals than to wander about lazily, and bask in the sunshine at the
door of their barracks.

The most curious circumstance is, that these civilized helots really
love their great barbarous warriors, and carefully tend their children,
gladly and cheerfully perform their tasks of servitude, and, more, en¬
courage the extension of their slavery and the abduction of the little
blacks. Does not all this wear the appearance of a free adhesion to the
established order of things ?

And who knows but that the joy and pride of governing the strong
and tyrannizing over their tyrants, may be for the little blacks an
inner liberty — an exquisite and sovereign freedom — far superior to any
pleasure they could have derived from the equality of their native
country ?

Huber made an experiment. He was desirous of observing what
would be the result if the great red ants found themselves without
servants, and if they would know how to supply their own wants. He
thought, perhaps, that the degenerate creatures might be inspired and
uplifted by the maternal love which is so strong among the ants.

He put a few into a glass case, and with them some nymphs. In¬
stinctively they began to move them about and to cradle them after
their fashion ; but soon discovered (big and robust as they, neverthe¬
less, were) that the weight was too much for them ; they accordingly
left them on the ground, and coolly abandoned them. In truth, they
abandoned themselves. Huber put some honey for them in a corner,
so that they had nothing to do but to take it. Miserable the degrada¬
tion, cruel the punishment with which slavery afflicts the enslavers !
They did not touch it ; they seemed to know nothing ; they had become
so grossly ignorant and indolent that they could no longer feed them¬
selves. Some of them died from starvation, with food before them !

Huber, to complete the experiment, then introduced into the case
one black ant. The presence of this sagacious helot changed the face
of things, and re-established life and order. He went straight to the

O J O

honey ; he fed the great dying simpletons ; he dug a hole in the ground,

264

WHAT THE AUTHOR SAW.

placed in it the eggs, prepared the incubation, watched over the nymphs
(or maillots), and restored to life and happiness the little people, who,
becoming industrious in their turn, seconded the efforts of their nurse.
Felicitous influence of genius ! A single individual had re-created the
city.

The observer then understood that with such a superiority of in¬
telligence these helots might, in reality, wear the chains of servitude
very lightly, and perhaps govern their masters. A persevering study
proved to him that such was, indeed, the case. The little blacks in
many things carry a moral authority whose signs are very visible;
they do not, for example, permit the great red ants to go out alone on
useless expeditions, and compel them to return into the city. Nor are
they even at liberty to go out in a body, if their wise little helots do
not think the weather favourable, if they fear a storm, or if the day is
far advanced. When an excursion proves unsuccessful, and they return
without children, the little blacks are stationed at the gates of the city
to forbid their ingress, and send them back to the combat ; nay more,
you may see them take the cowards by the collar, and force them to
retrace their route.

( I \

These are astounding facts ; but such as they are, they were seen by
our illustrious observer. He could not trust his eyes, and summoned
one of the greatest naturalists of Sweden — M. Jurine — to his side, to
make new investigations, and decide whether he had been deceived.
This witness, and others who afterwards pursued the same course of
experiments, found that his discoveries were entirely accurate.

Yet — shall I dare to confess it ? — after all these weighty testimonies
I still doubted. Let me say, I hoped that the fact, without being
absolutely false, had not been correctly observed. But on a certain
occasion I saw it — with my own eyes saw it — in the park of Fontaine¬
bleau. I was accompanied by an illustrious philosopher, an excellent
observer, and he too saw exactly what I saw.

It was half-past four in the afternoon of a very warm day. From
a pile of stones emerged a column of from four to five hundred red or
reddish ants, precisely the same colour as the wing-cases of the gnat.
They marched rapidly towards a piece of turf, kept in order by their

A TERRIBLE RAZZIA.

265

sergeants or “ pivot-men,” whom we saw on the flanks, and who would
not permit any one to straggle. (This is a circumstance known to
everybody who has seen a file of ants on the march.) But the novel
and astonishing thing to me was, that gradually those who were at the
head drew near to each other, and advanced only by turning; they
passed and repassed the whirling crowd, describing concentric circles;
a manoeuvre evidently fit to produce enthusiasm, and to augment
energy, — each, by contact, electrifying himself with the ardour of all.

Suddenly the revolving mass seemed to sink and disappear. There
was no sign of ant-hills in the turf; but after a while we detected an
almost imperceptible orifice, through which we saw them vanish in less
time than it takes me to write these words. We asked ourselves if
it was an entrance to their domicile ; if they had re-entered their
city. In a minute at the utmost they gave us a reply, and showed us
our mistake. They issued in a throng, each carrying a nymph on its
mandibles.

From the short time they had taken, it was evident that they had a
previous knowledge of the localities, the place where the eggs were
deposited, the time when they were to assemble, and the degree of re¬
sistance they had to expect. Perhaps it was not their first journey.

The little blacks on whom the red ants made this razzia sallied out
in considerable numbers ; and I truly pitied them. They did not
attempt to fight. They seemed frightened and stunned. They only
endeavoured to delay the ravishers by clinging to them. A red ant was
thus arrested ; but another red one, who was free, relieved him of his
burden, and thereupon the black ant relaxed his grasp. In fine, it
was a pitiful scene for the blacks. They offered no serious resistance.
The five hundred red ants succeeded in carrying off nearly three
hundred children. At two or three feet from the hole, the blacks
ceased to pursue them, abandoned all hope, and resigned themselves
to their fate. All this did not occupy ten minutes between the
departure and the return. The two parties were very unequal. It
was evidently a facile abuse of strength, — very probably an outrage
often repeated, — a tyranny of the great, who levied a tribute of
children from their poor little neighbours.

266

THREE CLASSES OF THE POPULATION.

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Let us now endeavour to understand this shocking and hideous
€l fact. It is peculiar to certain species; it is a

particular incident, an exceptional case, yet
related on the whole to a general law of the
life of the ants. Their societies are founded
on the principle of the division of labour ,
and the speciality of functions. The ant¬
hill, in its normal state, comprehends, as we
know, three classes : —

1st. The great multitude, composed of
laborious virgins, who confine themselves to
the love of the children of the common¬
wealth, and perform all the work of the com¬
munity ;

2nd. The fecund females, feeble, soft, and
unintelligent; and,

3rd. Some little shrivelled males, who are
born only to die.

The first class is, in truth and reality,
the people. But in this people you find two
industrial divisions, two great bodies of
workmen. The one executes all the more
arduous tasks, such as the transportation
of heavy burdens, and the far and perilous
hunt after provisions, — and, at need, carry on
war. The other, nearly always at home, re¬
ceives the materials, superintends the domes¬
tic economy, and undertakes the principal
duty of the republic, — the education of the

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young.

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The two corporations, that of the pur¬
veyors and warriors, — that of the nurses and
tutors, — are, in every tribe, of unequal size,
but identical in species, colour, and organization.

Between the big warriors and. the little industrials the moral

ICbvyv •"

i w

'X X-

POSSIBLE MIGRATIONS OF THE ANTS.

267

equality seems perfect. If there were any difference, we should say
that the class of the little ants, who build up the city and train up the
people, is the more important, the life, genius, and soul of the state ;
the one which of itself could, at need, constitute the republic.

M. Huber has discovered two species (the red-brown and red) who
do not possess this essential class, this fundamental element of the ant
communities. It would not surprise us if the accessory or warrior class
were wanting. But here, in reality, it is the basis which we find de¬
ficient, — the vital foundation, — the raison d'etre. We are, therefore,
not so much astonished at the depraved resource by which these red
ants subsist, as at the monstrous lacuna which compels them to
adopt it.

There is a mystery in the matter which we cannot at present ex¬
plain, but which would probably be cleared up if we could arrive at a
knowledge of the general history of the species, its changes, and migra¬
tions. Who does not know the modification effected in animals, both
externally and internally, in their forms and their manners, by the dis¬
placements they undergo ? Who, for example, would recognize the
brother of our bull-dog — of the St. Bernard — of the giant dog of Persia,
which could strangle lions — in that abortion, the Havannah dog, so
weak and frail, that even in a torrid climate Nature has clothed it with
a thick fleece, which conceals it, and converts it into an enigma ?

The animal, when transplanted, may become a monster.

The ants also may have had their revolutions, their moral and
physical changes, in proportion as the globe, everywhere becoming in¬
habitable, has favoured their migrations. Several species, in the beauti¬
ful American climates, have preserved the honey-making industry ; our
own are ignorant of it, and are compelled to have recourse to the grubs;
thence arises an art and a progress, — the art of breeding, preserving,
and pasturing cattle.

Some species may have advanced, others retrograded. And it is
thus I should explain the kidnapping habits of the red ants. Probably
they belong to expatriated and demoralized classes — fragments of de¬
cayed communities which have lost their arts, — and which could not
live but for this barbarous and desperate method of slavery. They

268

BRUTE FORCE AND INTELLECT

no longer possess the artistic and teaching class, without which all
peoples perish. Reduced to a military career, they could not live two
days if they did not take unto themselves slaves. Therefore, that they
may not perish, they carry off the little black ants, which tend them,
it is true, but also govern them. And this not only in the city itself,
but in its external relations, — deciding or adjourning their expeditions,
and regulating their campaigns; while the red, far from regulating the
affairs of peace, do not seem even to comprehend them.

Singular triumph of intelligence ! Invincible power of genius !

IV _ EXTERMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY

CHAPTER IV.

THE ANTS: — CIVIL WAR — EXTERMINATION
OF THE COMMUNITY.

It is the tyrant’s punishment that he could not,
even if he would, easily deliver his captive. So
long as my nightingale sings, I know that he cares
little for his cage, and I bear his captivity lightly ;
but when the time of song has gone by, I share
his melancholy, and the question again and again
p recurs to my mind, “ How can I release him ? ”
He no longer knows how to fly ; in truth, is almost
without wings. If I set him free, he would
perish before he had gone a couple of

steps. The liberties which he takes at Paris in a large chamber, and
here, at Fontainebleau, in a small garden, are, really, of but little im¬
portance. He does not profit by them ; almost always remains con-

272

THE CLOD AND ITS TENANTS.

cealed in a gooseberry-bush, dreaming and listening. The strains he
hears, — the lively songs of the warblers, the voices of love and mater¬
nity, — augment, I believe, his sadness ; so much so, that here, in the
open air, under the blue sky, enjoying a relative degree of freedom, he
loses his appetite, and will eat no longer. We bethought ourselves of
giving him his natural diet, and of feeding him with the insects on
which he lives in the woods. But here is another difficulty. Who
would not shrink from hunting after and carrying living victims to be
devoured ? We preferred to give him insects in futuro, the eggs of
insects, and inert sleeping nymph se. We carried on a traffic in them
at Fontainebleau, where our aristocratic pheasants, a feudal race, do
not deign to eat anything but ants’ eggs.

On the evening of the 8th of June, there was brought to me from
the forest a great clod of earth, mixed with dry twigs, and especially
with tiny debris of the Northern trees, such as the needles of the firs,
or little prickly leaves resembling thorns.

In the midst, the inhabitants pell-mell, of every size and grade, eggs,
larvrn, nymphae, diminutive artisans, great ants, which seemed to be
warriors and defenders ; finally, a few females which had just assumed
their wedding garments, the wings which they wear for the moment of
love. Thus it turned out to be a very complete specimen of the re¬
public, varied, but well distinguished by one identical sign, — all this
brownish-coloured populace having on their corselets a dull red spot.
As for the classes and professions of the ants, they were easily charac¬
terized by their very habitations, notwithstanding the general confusion.
They were carpenter-ants, of the species which prop the upper stories
of their buildings with timber framework.

Though their situation was so completely altered, my ants were in
no wise prostrated. They continued their different tasks, of which the
principal was, to protect the eggs and nymph se from the action of a too
powerful sun.

The general commotion had flung them out of their subterranean
cradles, and exposed them on the surface. The little ants busied
themselves actively in rectifying the disorder. The great ones went
and came, and circled about a great earthen vase which contained the

A NEW COMMUNITY.

273

dismembered fragment of the republic. They marched with a firm step,
and recoiled before no obstacles. We could not frighten them. If we
placed in their way any impediment, — a bit of twig or our finger, — they
crouched upon their loins, manoeuvred with great address their tiny
arms, and patted us like a young kitten.

In their revolutions around our vase, they encountered upon the
sand some ashy-black ants which had taken possession of our garden,
and constructed underneath its soil a large establishment. The latter
do not have recourse to timber, but build in masonry, — cementing
the earth with their saliva, and drying and seasoning it with their
formic acid.

The spot was rendered peculiarly agreeable to them by its rose
trees, apple and peach trees, which furnished them with abundant
herds of gnats, that they might extract honey-dew for themselves and
their little ones.

The rencontre was not very friendly. Though among the big car¬
penters were some ants of a sufficiently diminutive stature, they wholly
differed from the black through their long legs and the red-spotted
corselet. They were pitiless. Perhaps they suspected the blacks had
been sent out as spies, to explore the ground, and lay snares for the
emigrant colony which had just been disembarked. At all events, the
big carpenters slew the little masons.

The act was followed by terrible and wholly unexpected results.
Our vase was unfortunately placed near an apple-tree covered with
those woolly grubs which are the despair of the gardener and the joy
of the ants. Our masons had just taken possession of the precious
sugary herd, and encamped themselves in the very roots of the tree,
within reach of the invaluable booty. There they were, under the
ground, a complete nation, an infinite number.

The massacre took place about twelve o’clock. At a quarter past
eleven, or a little later, all the black legions were warned, aroused,
erect, and ascending from their subterraneous habitations, poured out
through every gate. The sand was hidden beneath the long black
columns ; our paths were all alive. The sun, shining full upon the little

garden, stimulated and burned up the multitude, which only quickened

274

THE TWO ARMIES.

their pace. Living always underground, they have necessarily a very
susceptible brain. The furious heat, and especially their fear lest the
invading giants should pounce upon their families, impelled them to
confront death unflinchingly.

And a death which seemed certain ; for each of the big carpenters,
as far as size and thews were concerned, was well worth eight or ten of
the little masons. At the first collision we saw a big ant fall upon a
brown dwarf, and annihilate it at one blow.

The masons, however, had the advantage of numbers. But what
of that ? Suppose the front ranks were checked in the assault, and
perished, — then the second, then the third, — if the army, still advanc¬
ing, did but furnish the enemy with new victims ? Such was our appre¬
hension. All our fear was for the little aborigines of our garden, dis¬
turbed by that invasion of a foreign people which we had brought upon
them, — a people ill-bred and brutal, which, without any provocation,
had marked their first arrival by slaughtering the inhabitants of the
country.

But it must be acknowledged that we had compared only the
material forces of the two armies, and had not taken into account their
moral strength.

We recognized at the first onset an astonishing amount of skill and
intelligence on the part of the little blacks. By sixes, they seized
upon one of their gigantic opponents, each holding and neutralizing a
claw ; then two leaped on its back, and firmly grasped its antennae,
until the giant, bound in every limb, was reduced to an inert body.
It seemed to lose its senses ; to grow dull and stupid ; no longer to be
conscious of its enormous superiority of strength. Others then rushed
to the attack, and, without incurring any danger, stabbed him above
and below.

The scene, regarded from a near point of view, was fright¬
ful. Whatever admiration the little ones merited for their heroic
courage, their fury made one shudder. It was impossible to see
without a feeling of pity these poor garotted giants, dragged miser¬
ably to and fro, — fired at from right and left, — floating as in an
open sea on these billows of rage and impetuosity, — blind, power-

THE ATTACK ANI) THE DEFENCE.

275

less, and incapable of resistance, — like lambs beneath the butcher’s
knife.

We longed to separate them. But how was it to be done ? We
were in the presence of infinity. A man’s strength was nothing when
tested against such multitudes. We might have proceeded to the
extremity of a universal deluge, — a moment’s noyacle * — but even this
would have proved insufficient. They would not have let go their
death-grasp ; and when the torrent had flowed by, the massacre would
have continued. The sole remedy, and an atrocious one — worse even
than the evil — would have been to have burned alive, with a wisp of
flaming straw, the two contending hosts, the conquerors and the
conquered.

We were particularly struck by the fact that, after all, it was only
a very few of the big ants that were garotted and captured ; and that
if those which remained free had fallen upon the assailants, they might
easily have wrought a frightful carnage, their action being so rapid,
and one blow inflicting death. But no such idea occurred to them.
They ran hither and thither in a panic of fear, and rushed into the very
throes of danger, into the thickest press of the hostile masses. Alas,
they were not only vanquished, but seemed to have lost their senses !
While the little ants, feeling themselves at home, on their native soil,
showed so firm a front, the gigantic foreigners, — without any stake in
the ground, — a desperate fragment of an annihilated city, — wholly
ignorant of the country whither they had been transplanted, — recog¬
nized that everything was antagonistic to them, that a snare was hidden
at every step, that no refuge was open to their scattered forces. Ah,
woful condition of a people whose fatherland has perished, and who
have lost their gods I

Yes, I excuse them. We ourselves were almost terrified at the sight
of those legions of death, — that formidable army of little black skeletons
which had all escaladed the earthen vase, and in that confined region,

* The wholesale droAvnings which took place at L-yons during the Reign of Tei'ror were
known as noyades. —Translator.

276

KIDNAPPING THE YOUNG.

choked and burning, crowded and furious, mounted one upon another.
As the discomfiture of the giants became a thing assured, horrible appe¬
tites were revealed among the blacks. An opportune moment arrived.
It was a dramatic stroke ! In their mute but terribly eloquent panto¬
mime, we heard this cry : “ Their young ones are fat !”

The gluttonous army of the lean threw themselves on the children.
The latter, belonging to a superior race, were sufficiently heavy ; and
more, their oblong nymph-like envelope, round and smooth, offered no
points of vantage. Two, three, four little blacks, by combining their
efforts, succeeded, though not without difficulty, in carrying a single
one of these up the smooth sides of the earthen vase. Then they came
abruptly to a terrible resolve, — to seize upon the maillots , to bear off
the naked children. It was no easy matter, for the little one clung
stoutly, and its interwoven limbs were, so to speak, soldered together ;
in such wise that this violent and sudden development could only be
effected by severe wounds, — in fact, by quartering them. The black
ants then carried them off, torn and palpitating.

At the commencement of this kidnapping of children, we had ex¬
pected to see some such spectacle as a razzia of slaves, which is only
too common among both men and ants. But we now understood that
something more was meditated. In drawing them cruelly from their
outer coat, which is to them the very necessity of life, it became too
evident that their captors cared very little whether they lived or did
not live. It was for their flesh they seized them ; as a tender prey for
the young ones they had left at home, the fat children being delivered
up alive to the furious appetites of the lean !

To understand the horror of the scene, you must know the true
nature of the large eggs of the ants, — improperly called eggs, but in
reality their nymphs or chrysalides, — diminutive organized ants which,
under a thin veil, strengthen their tender, delicate, and still soft
existence. They remain in this envelope for the purpose of accomplish¬
ing a progress of successive solidification and colouring.

The very fine and wonderfully soft web which they weave for
themselves is, as we know, of a dull white, lightly shaded with a deli¬
cate yellow, which, when stronger, turns into a nankeen tint. Open

A PHILOSOPHER’S EXPERIMENT.

277

it shortly before the emergence of the perfect insect, and you find a
being of exactly the same colour, all folded and rolled up in itself like
the human embryo in its mother’s womb. When stretched out, the
aspect of the future ant is easily recognized, but it singularly differs
from it in character : the head is quite innocent ; lift up the antennae,
which, in this condition, resemble ears, and the young white head
reminds you of that of a little white rabbit. The eyes alone, — two black
points, — marked with sufficient prominency, indicate the next stage of
colouring. For the rest, there is nothing to forewarn you that this
little, weak, and denuded animal, so touching and so interesting, will
become in a few days the black being so full of energy, so keen with
life, so fierce in blood, which will traverse the earth in a fury of labour
and burning activity.

One comprehends that in this stage of existence the milky and suc¬
culent nymphs of the ants will prove a very appetizing dish for the
bird, and for the infinite number of creatures which hunt them
greedily.

I have dissected only one nymph in the last days of its nymph-period,
and when near its time of hatching. But that one was sufficient. The
sight (seen through a lens of twelve times magnifying power) was very
painful. The being was completely formed, and already black on the
belly, yellow on the corselet. The head was intelligent, like that of an
old ant, but pale, and changing from yellow to black. Still weak and
heavy, and seized, as it were, with vertigo, it rolled from right to left,
and from left to right, with a singular effect of somnolence and pain.
You might have supposed it to be saying: “Ah me ! so soon ! Why
hast thou called me so cruelly, before the proper hour, from my soft
cradle to the harsh drudgery of life ? But it is all at end for me !” It
struggled nevertheless to confront the unknown chances of its novel
situation, and to disengage its trammelled limbs. The antennse were
already perfectly free, and stirred about in their anxiety to discern the
new world ; this cerebral organ revealed very plainly the disquietude
and agitation of the brain. Its greatest perplexity arose from its
failure to release its two arms (or anterior limbs). It laboured violently
to do so. They were glued to the body by an indescribable something

278

A CRUEL CHANGE.

which might be called a pale blood, and one sweated to see the poor
little creature, already prudent and timid, unable to complete its offen¬
sive arrangements, and to extricate (apparently to snatch or pluck away)
its two bleeding arms.

I have explained this at some length, in order to make the reader
understand the passionate interest felt by the ants in the little balls
which, to our eyes, seem so insignificant. Beneath its soft and trans¬
parent tissue they feel the infant palpitating under its two touching
forms, — the creature, denuded and innocent, which dreameth still — the
creature already formed and intelligent, perceiving everything, but
incapable of self-defence, and, before it sees the light, disturbed by all
the fears and agitations of existence.

The most painful shock for the young of the insects is the sudden
cold ; at least, the nudity, the exposure to the air and light. This is so
antipathetic and painful to them, that in certain species it is the source
of their arts and their most ingenious devices. The eggs and nymphs
of the ants in their tiny transparent swaddling-robe, — and still more
the larvae which are deprived of it, — feel with an excessive sensibility
every atmospheric variation. Hence the delicate and continual atten¬
tions of their nurses in carrying them from place to place, in translat¬
ing them from one to another of the well-contrived steps of their thirty
or forty stories, in protecting their dear little chilly charge from cold,
damp, or excessive heat. A degree more or less means for it life or
death.

It is a cruel and tragical change for these children of love, spoiled
hitherto with excessive indulgence, and tended with greater care than
any princess, when they are abruptly deprived of their garments, —
stripped, with blows from pincers, teeth, and claws, — and despoiled by
the hands of the executioner. Suddenly exposed to the burning sun,
dragged hither, pushed thither, rolled over all the roughnesses of a coarse
sandy soil, — sensible, infinitely sensible, in their new condition of naked¬
ness, to the shocks, blows, and rude somersaults which their violent
enemies do not spare them !

In towns captured by a furious .enemy, it has happened that the

THE SUDDEN MASSACRE.

279

tombs of the dead have been desecrated. But here, we behold the
exhumation of the living, — the despoiling of innocent and all vulner¬
able creatures, poor bits of skinless flesh, to whom the very lightest
touch had been a sufficient agony !

This immense execution upon the population and their young was
hurried over so rapidly, that at three o’clock in the afternoon nearly
all was ended ; the city was sacked and depopulated in every corner,
and its future beyond all hope of a resurrection.

We thought that some fugitive might still be lurking in conceal¬
ment; that perhaps the conquerors would abandon the desert if we
transported them, with the destroyed city, into a paved coach-yard
outside the garden ; that then would awake in them the remembrance
of their family, to whom, moreover, they could carry nothing more to
be devoured. Our expectation was realized.

On the morning of the 10th of June we saw them scattered along all
the roads which led towards their dwelling-place, at the other end of
the garden. But the destiny of the vanquished seemed accomplished.
The dead and silent city was nothing but a cemetery, where, with the
exception of a few scattered bodies, could only be seen some dead wood,
some old pods of Northern trees, and their gloomy aiguilles (pines and
once-green firs), not less dead than the city itself.

I confess that such a vengeance, so disproportionate to the act which
was its cause or pretext, excited in me a strong feeling of indignation,
and my heart, changing sides, was completely alienated from those little
black barbarians.

So, observing that some of them, still implacable, were promenading
among the ruins, I sent them rudely flying over its walls (that is,
the edges of the vase). In vain it was gently pointed out to me that
these blacks had been provoked, that they had shown the greatest
courage, having braved so great a peril that their destruction might
almost have been predicted. They were cruel and savage but heroic
tribes, like the Iroquois, the Hurons, the revengeful heroes who formerly
peopled the forests of the Mississippi and Canada. These reasons were
good, but did not calm me. I felt too keenly the enormity of the
crime. Without wishing to annihilate them, I confess that if these

280

THE EMPTY VASE.

ferocious blacks had chanced to come under mv foot I should not have
turned aside.

The unfortunate empty vase continually reminded me of what had
occurred, and held me as by a spell. On the evening of the 11th we
were still seated on the ground before it, with Our chin in our hand,
completely absorbed in thought. Our gaze plunged into its depths.
We persisted in longing for a sign of life to appear upon its perfect
immobility, a something which might still say that all was not finished.
This firm resolve seemed to have the potency of an evocation, and as
if our desires had recalled to daylight some miserable spirit of the
widowed city, one of the victims which had escaped made its appear¬
ance, and hurried headlong away from the field of death. And we
perceived that it carried a cradle.

Night came, and it was in a completely strange locality, surrounded
by enemies. A few holes, which one might mistake for places of refuge,
were precisely the mouths opening into the Inferno of the blacks. The
unhappy fugitive, with its misfortune increased by the burden of its
infant, ran distractedly, and without knowing whither. I followed it
with my eyes and heart, until the darkness concealed it from me.

CHAPTER V.

THE WASPS : THEIR FURY OF IMPROVISATION.

When the wasp on a summer’s day enters at the win¬
dow, with its loud, aggressive, and menacing zou ! zou !
zou ! everybody is on his guard. The child trembles,
the mother suspends her work, even the husband lifts
his eyes: “Insolent, impudent intruder!” and he arms
himself with a handkerchief.

Meanwhile, the superb insect, having flown into
every corner, and cast around the room a rapid and
scornful glance, departs with a loud noise, not conde¬
scending to notice the unfriendly welcome accorded to
him. His only reflection has been this : “ A paltry
house ! Not a fruit, not a spider, not a fly, not the
smallest bit of meat !”

Then he makes a descent on the shop of the country butcher:

284

DEFENSIO VESPARUM.

“ Butcher, my custom is yours. I am desirous of dealing with you.
Do not hesitate, foolish miser. Cut me a good slice of meat, and I will
pay you for it; I will kill all your flesh-flies. Let us agree to be
friends. We are both born to kill.”

The slow dull animals of the genus Man are much scandalized at
the proceedings of the wasp. It acts, it does not talk. But if it
deigned to speak, its apology would be simple. A word would suffice.
It is the being on whom Nature imposes the terrible destiny of sup¬
pressing time. We speak of the ephemera which lives a few hours :
the period is sufficient for a creature that does nothing. The true
ephemera is the wasp. In a brief six months’ summer (not more than
four months of full activity) it has to accomplish, not only the cycle of
the individual life — to be born, to eat, to love, to die — but, what is far
more onerous, the cycle of a prolonged social life, the most complicated
which any insect is required to perform. What the bee leisurely elabo¬
rates in several years, the wasp must realize immediately. Much more
tha^n the bee ! For the latter makes its honeycombs in a completed
house (the hive, the hollow of the rock, the trunk of a tree) ; but the
wasp must improvise without as within, the ramparts of the city no
less than the city itself.

Four months to create everything, to make and unmake a people,
and a people of lofty organization !

Learn, ye idle races which mutter that in fourscore years ye have
no time, learn to despise it. It is a purely relative affair. There is
never any time for the flat-bellied snail, were it to crawl through cen¬
turies. There is always time for heroic activity, firm will, and resolute
energy.

The wasp dies. Its city of thirty thousand souls, improvised by a
revolution, as by a thundering stroke of genius and courage, subsists
as a testimony to its labours. Solid, eminently substantial, conscien¬
tiously wrought, and seemingly intended for eternity !

Let us note the starting-point.

A miserable fly, which in winter has survived the destruction of
its race, issues all a-dust from its hiding-place. Thank Heaven, it is the

A LABORIOUS RACE.

285

spring-time ! Does it seek to enjoy the sun ? No, it will not allow
itself a day’s repose. What is its first duty ? To love with a rapid
and burning love, to go straight to its goal, to seize and take up as
it passes that vital force which will create an entire people. Love on
the wing, — no delay, — everything made to bear on the great social
aim !

Savage and alone, with its idea and its hope, this mother of the
future commonwealth creates in the first place its citizens, some thou¬
sands upon thousands of labourers. You have already learned that
among insects every worker is a female. These too are workers, but
the harsh necessities of toil suppress in them their sex. They love
with a lofty devotion. The austere virgin looks for no other spouse
than the community.

The chain of ardent labour is continued from the mother to her
daughters. Her task was to beget : it is theirs to build. The fury of
improvisation is the same in them, however, as it was in her. Accord¬
ing to the region and the climate, the tribe, the species, and the work
vary. Here they will excavate underground the cave in which they
construct their edifice, isolating it from the soil, and preserving it from
damp. There they suspend it in the air, and build it of strong coarse
pasteboard to defy the heaviest rains. To make this paper or paste¬
board, they hasten to the forest, where they select some thoroughly
prepared wood, which has been long soaking, and has been already
steeped by Nature just as we steep flax. Then within, with a strong
sharp tooth (for theirs are not the graceful probosces of bees intended
to kiss flowers), they gnaw, and tear, and loosen, and sever the rebelli¬
ous filaments, pound them into pulp as we do the linen rags, and
knead them with a heavy tongue. After the paste has been mixed
with a viscous and adhesive saliva, it is spread out into thin layers.
With teeth closed like a press, the work is completed. The elementary
substance of the pasteboard is prepared.

A second industry now commences. The paper manufacturer is
transformed into a mason. It has not the beaver’s tail to serve as a
trowel, but with the American wasp a sort of palette on the leg serves
the same purpose. The operation is not the same here as in Guiana.

28G

THE PASTEBOARD CITY.

The mason of Cayenne, having built up the walls, has only to suspend
to them a succession of floors or platforms, following in that dry hot
land the type of our human habitations. But the European mason,
working with pasteboard, in a damp climate, where even in the
summer heavy rains are frequent, adopts a different plan : a house
within a house , a hive completely isolated from the envelope which
encloses it. This is the most successful device for an ardent and chilly
people, whose life-flame needs careful guarding.

As it is without, so it is within. As the house, so too the inha¬
bitant. We men are not yet sufficiently acquainted with the influence
exercised upon our moral dispositions by our habitations. This dupli¬
cation of walls, this potent envelopment of a people so completely shut
up under its strong twofold enclosure, largely contributes to the unity
of the commonwealth.

Observe another singularity : shall we call it a trivial one ? No ;
to the serious observer it is of importance. The city has two gates ;
its people enter by the one, and pass out by the other, so that no con¬
fusion can take place, and no collision between the ingressing and
egressing crowds. This plan is adopted by all people who economize
time, and wish to transact their business expeditiously. In London,
the rule is the same as with the wasps : on the one side those who are
coming, on the other those who are going ; each person keeps to the
right; these take one footpath, those another. No such impediment is
met with in the Strand as the idlers of our Hue Vivienne, who inces¬
santly convert themselves into a serious obstacle, and swim laboriously
in the confusion they create.

But to return to our subject.

What is the object of these constructions ? Is this robust being,
endowed with such an intensity of vital force, more afraid of the air
than numbers of delicate insects, — than the nervous spider, which has
only a house of thread, or even lives under a leaf ? Therein lies the
lofty mystery of life for the higher insect. It is this which stimulates
the universal genius of the ant either above ground or under ground.
It is this which inspires the activity, the persevering toil and economy

SELF-SACRIFICE OF THE WASP.

287

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liV

of the bee. What, then, is it ? The love of the future, — the yearning
to perpetuate and eternize that which one loves.

All their love centres in their offspring.

To love the child and the future ; to toil
in view of time and of that which as yet is
not ; to exhaust their vitality and die of work,
that posterity may have less cause to labour,

— a noble ideal, assuredly, of society, wherever
it may be. One can well understand it in those
who have time before them, and a life to make
use of, like men and bees. But that this insect
which has no time, which perishes in the even¬
ing, should love the time that will never be its
own, should immolate its little life for the sake
of the life that is to come, should devote to the
child of to-morrow its solitary day, is a sacrifice
peculiar to the wasp : it is original and sublime !

There is not a minute to lose ; and the
mother incessantly increases the burden. Be¬
sides the female workers, she produces some few
males who do not work, whose little and very
brief function scarcely prevails as an excuse for
their inactivity. Among those tragical and
serious insect-races, Nature, as if to divert her¬
self a moment by a comical distraction, has
made the poor little males ordinarily squat and
obese, innocent little Falstaffs, who are guarded
like a seraglio of unimportant servants. The
caricature is complete in the case of the male
bee, which, alleging that it neither knows how
to glean abroad nor to build at home, passes
the time in humming before its bee-hive (like
our young cigar-smoking idlers).

Among the wasps life is so tense, burning, and keen, that the very
males, slothful as they may be, dare not abandon themselves to com¬

ps *

felm.

;w l

i Jk v ' .
%\ *

288

AN EXTENSIVE HOUSEHOLD.

plete indolence. Yonder ladies, who do not jest, and who have stings
of which the males are deprived, might look upon their idleness sourly,
and stir them up with dagger-thrusts. So they have conceived the idea
of working without work; they have the air of doing something, — a
small part of the domestic labour, cleaning, and sweeping. If any one
dies, the ceremony of interment provides them with a pretence ; with
the effort of carrying a slight weight they sweat and groan, and several
put their shoulders together. In a word, they are very ridiculous.
And I am confident that their terrible companions laugh at them.

Theirs truly is an onerous undertaking. Twenty or thirty thousand
mouths to feed, is a very extensive household. If they were only gifted
with the prudent activity of bees, their community would perish of
famine. What they need is a violent, furious, murderous rapidity, — all
the appearances of an immense gluttony, — all the love and devotion
which Sparta had for the art of thieving. But the secret of their
power, which is plainly discernible in them if we observe them but a
moment, is their magnificent insolence, their superb contempt for all
other beings, and their firm conviction that the whole world is their
inheritance. If we consider, it is true, their wonderful energy, com¬
pared with which lions and tigers are mere races of sheep, — and their
prodigious yearly effort of improvisation, — and, finally, their absolute
devotion to the public welfare, — we shall not find in all nature creatures
relatively of greater power, nor which possess a clearer right to value
themselves highly.

Our modern minds, however, find a difficulty in admiring _the
violence of the antique virtues. Their boundless love of the common¬
wealth is pushed to an almost criminal excess. Who has not marked
with how ferocious an ardour they hunt the bees ! Yet certain species
of wasps can make honey; but only in fine climates, which, know¬
ing no winter, allow the wasps an interval of peaceful labour. Here
the case is different. Their life, cut short in six months, compels them
to resort to measures of cruel simplicity. Honey is needed for their
children. Thereupon they attack the bee, and take it prisoner ; with
their pliable body, whose waist is a mere thread, they so curve the
extremity as to stab the prisoner underneath with their deadly sting;

A GENERAL EUTHANASIA.

289

when thus stricken, the wasp saws it with three strokes of its teeth, and
leaves the head and corselet to palpitate for some time longer, while the
belly, filled with honey, the barbarian carries off as a gift for its young.

It feels no remorse. The death of others apparently does not cause
a pang to this creature, which knows that it too will die to-morrow.

What do I say ?

Our virgins of Tauris do not wait until Nature lays upon them
her heavy hand and the ignoble leaden shroud of winter. They have
borne the sword ; they will die by the sword. The republic ends in a
general massacre. The children, recently, ay, and still, so dear, are
slain ; dilatory children whom cold and want would kill to-morrow ;
their sisters, aunts, and affectionate nurses securing them at least the
advantage of dying by the hands of those who love them. This latter
gift, a speedy death, is freely bestowed on numerous unfortunates who
had no thought of soliciting it, — on little useless males, even on young
workers who were born late, and cannot boast of a constitution suffi¬
ciently strong to resist the winter.

Let it not be said that the heroic race of wasps is ever seen to
request the humiliating hospitality of the smoky roofs of man, and, for
the sake of living a little longer, to expose its melancholy remains in
the shambles of a spider’s web ! No, children ! No, sisters ! Die !
The republic is immortal. Some one of us, favoured by the yearly
miracle and great lottery of Nature, will be called upon to recommence
the entire work. And if but one remains, it is enough. Should the
world perish, a single true heart would suffice to re-create it.

CHAPTER VI.

“ THE BEES” OF VIRGIL.

All modem writers have triumphed over the
ignorance displayed by the poet Virgil in his
fable of Aristseus, who draws life out of the
womb of death, and causes his bees to spring
from the entrails of immolated bulls.* But, for

* The passage to which Michelet refers is found in the
fourth book of the Georgies , and is thus translated by Dry-
den : —

“ The secret in an easy method lies ;

Select four brawny bulls for sacrifice,

Which on Lycseus graze, without a guide ;

Add four fair heifers yet in yoke untried :

I'1 or these, four altars in their temple rear,

And then adore the woodland powers with prayer.

From the slain victims pour the streaming blood,
And leave their bodies in the shady wood :

Nine mornings thence, Lethean poppy bring,

T’ appease the manes of the poet’s king :

294

VIRGIL AND HIS “BEES.”

myself, I have never laughed at it. I know, I feel, that every word
of this great sacred poet has a weighty value, an authority which
I would designate as that of an augur and a pontiff. And the fourth
book of the Georgies , particularly, was a holy work, issuing from the
inmost recesses of the heart. It was a pious homage rendered to
sorrow and to friendship; an eulogium on the proscribed Gallus,
Virgil’s dearest friend. This eulogium, undoubtedly, was struck out
by the prudent Maecenas ; and Virgil then substituted his Resurrection
of the Bees : a song full of immortality, which, in the mystery of
Nature’s transformations, embodies our highest hope, that death is not
a death, but the beginning of a new life.

Would he have descended to the empty pleasure of inserting a
popular fable in that consecrated portion of his poem which had been
occupied by his friend’s name ? I will never believe it. The fable, if
it be one, must necessarily possess some serious foundation, and a
truthful side. We are not dealing here with the worldly poet, the
urbane singer, like Horace, the elegant favourite of Rome. It is not
the charming improvisatore of the court of Augustus, the gay and in¬
discreet Ovid, who betrays the loves of the gods. Virgil is the child of
Earth, the pure and noble figure of the old Italian peasant, the religious
interrogator, the reverently simple interpreter of the secrets of Nature.

And, to propitiate his offended pride,

A fatted calf and a black ewe provide :

This finished, to the former woods repair.

His mother’s precepts he performs with care ;

The temple visits, and adores with prayer.

Four altars raises, from his herds he calls,

For slaughter, four the fairest of his bulls ;

Four heifers from his female store he took,

All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke.

Nine mornings thence, with sacrifice and prayers,
The powers atoned, he to the grove repairs.

Behold a prodigy ! for, from within
The broken bowels, and the bloated skin,

A buzzing noise of bees his ears alarms,

Straight issue through the sides assaulting swarms ;
Dark as a cloud they make a wheeling flight,

Then on a neighbouring tree, descending light :
Like a large cluster of black grapes they show,

And make a large dependence from the bough.”

IN THE CEMETERY.

295

But he may be mistaken in his words, — that he may have ill-applied
the names, — this is not impossible ; but so far as the facts are concerned,
it is an entirely different matter : whatever he describes, I firmly be¬
lieve he saw.

An accident threw me into the way of understanding the poet’s
intention. On a certain memorable day, my wife and I repaired to
the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, to visit before winter the burial-places
of my family, the tomb which reunites my father and his grandson.
This latter had been born to me in the very year which terminated the
first half of the present century, and I had named him Lazarus in my
devout hope of the Awakening of the Nations. I had imagined that
I saw upon his countenance a gleam, as it were, of the strong and
tender thoughts which throbbed in my heart at that last moment of
my teaching. Oh, vanity of human hopes ! This flower of my autumn,
which I yearned to animate with the potent vitality that had been of
too tardy development in myself, disappeared almost in the act of birth.
And there was no help but to deposit my child at the feet of my father,
who had already been four years dead. Two cypresses which I then
planted in that ill-omened nook of clay have acquired in the brief in¬
terval an extraordinary growth. Two, nay, three times taller than my¬
self, they clothe their vigorous branches with a young, rich foliage which
ever points towards heaven. If, with an effort, you lower them, they
rear themselves again, in all their pride and strength, flourishing with
a marvellous pith, as if they had drank from the earth where I planted
them the precious treasure of my past and my unconquerable aspiration.

While revolving these thoughts I ascended the hill, and before
arriving at the tomb, which is situated in the upper alle}q I made this
observation, — that though I had on so many occasions frequented this
melancholy and beautiful spot, having been in earlier life the most
assiduous visitor of the dead, I had scarcely ever seen any insects in
the Pere-Lachaise. Hardly even at the great epoch of the flowers,
when everything is covered with bloom, and numbers of the old de¬
serted sepulchres are embowered in roses, I had not remarked that
animal life abounded there as it abounds elsewhere. Very few birds,
and very few insects. Why ? I could not say.

296

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD.

While making this reflection, we had finished climbing the hill ; we
stood in front of the tomb. And there, with admiration, with a species
of astonishment, I found a surprising contradiction of what I had just
been saying.

About a score of very brilliant bees hovered above the little garden-
plot, — which was narrow as a shroud, stripped of bloom and bare of
flowers, and saddened by the influence of the season. In the whole
cemetery remained only the last autumnal flowers, — some withering
and half-leafless Bengal roses. The spot where we stood, full of new
buildings, masonry, and plaster, was an Arabia Deserta. Finally, on
the tomb, towards the head of the grandfather, flourished only a few
sickly white asters, and over my child the cypresses. It must needs
have been that these asters, in their cold clayey soil, nourished either
by the whispers of the air or the spirits of the earth, treasured up
a modicum of honey, since the little gleaners resorted thither for their
harvest.

I am not superstitious. I believe in but one miracle, the constant
miracle of the Providence of Nature. I experienced nevertheless how
powerfully the mind may be affected by a lively surprise of the heart.
I felt an emotion of gratefulness at the sight of the mysterious little
creatures animating this solitude, whither, alas ! I myself came but
rarely. The increasing absorption of my work, in which day pressed
upon day, — the palpitating flame of the forge where one forges more
and more quickly, in the doubt whether one will be living to-morrow, —
all this kept us further from the tombs than in the days of our dreamy
youth. I was much affected by seeing my place supplied. In my
absence the bees peopled and vivified the spot, consoled, and perhaps
rejoiced my dead. My father may have smiled on them in his kindly
indulgence ; they may have been the happiness and first delight of my
child.

Selfish motives could not have led them thither ; there was so little
for them to take. Nevertheless, when we suspended to the cypress-
boughs the garlands of immortelles we had brought with us, they were
curious enough to ascertain if there was any treasure in the new

BEES, AND NOT BEES.

207

flowers. The hard, prickly corolla soon repulsed them, and sent them
back to the faded asters. I felt very sad, and said to them : — “ Late,
very late, my friends, you come, and to the tomb of the poor ! Why
am I not able to recompense yon with a banquet of friendship, which
should sustain and warm you during the first cold breezes, already
blowing on these icy heights, so exposed to the northern wind ! ”

As if they had understood me, their movements afforded an exact
reply. Some I saw, with their little limbs skilfully bent forward, rub¬
bing their backs in the sun ; they longed to absorb into every vein its
genial radiance. They made the most of that brief hour when the sun
revolves too quickly ; one scarcely feels it before it has gone ! Their
significant gesture plainly said : — “ Oh, what a cold morning we have
had ! Let us make haste ! In less than an hour commences the
equally inclement evening, the frozen night, — nay, who knows ? the
winter ! and then our death is at hand.”

They were still full of life, however ; marvellously trim and bright, —
I may even say radiant, — under their illuminated wings, all shot with
gold. I never saw more beautiful insects ; insects more clearly inspired
by a higher life. One thing embarrassed me ; namely, that they were
too handsome, and too shining, inasmuch as they did not wear their
industrial attire, their velvety coat, their pincers, and their brushes.
And, finally, I discovered another circumstance : that they had not the
four wings of the bee, but only two.

I perceived my mistake. It was these insects which had deceived
Virgil. Like myself, he thought them bees, and so he erroneously
called them. Reaumur confesses that for a moment even he was de¬
ceived by them.

But the fact related by Virgil is not inaccurate. We can understand
how keenly it would impress the minds of the ancients, and how they
would see in it a type of resurrection. They seem the daughters of
death. Of the three ages of their existence, they spend the first in
morbid and deadly waters, fatal to all other creatures, which permit
the escape of the residuum of life in dissolution ; with ingenious tender¬
ness, Nature there preserves them, maintains them alive, and enables
them to breathe in the very midst of death.

298

HAPPY INSECTS.

Their second period is passed under the earth, — in the shades, —
where they sleep their chrysalis-like slumber.

But when once they have quitted the place of sepulture, they are fully
compensated for their previous abasement; a light aerial life, exempt
from the bee’s incessant toil, and glorified by golden wings, such as the
latter never boasts of, is bestowed upon them, with the gift, moreover,
of gentle manners. Innocent, and without stings, they live their season
of love under the sun and among the flowers. Far from blushing at
their origin, — these noble Yirgilian bees ! — they do not disdain the
flowers of the cemetery, they keep company with the dead, and for
the living collect that honey of the soul, — the hope of the future !

— ♦♦

VII

THE

BEE

THE FIELDS

CHAPTER VII.

THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.

“ When the plant attains to the flower, the climax
of its existence, — when it assumes its symmetrical
outlines, its perfumes, its colours, and a certain
degree of animal irritability, — it emerges from its
condition of isolation, and connects itself more
closely with the great Whole. But it remains fixed
in one place, without any reciprocation of love.
The animal, on the contrary, is movement

itself, and manifests its joy in living by its capricious mobility. Then
the captive plant casts a glance of amicable confidence on the animal’s

302

THE PLANT AND THE INSECT.

life of freedom, offers it the abundance of its substance, and for sole
reward expects that it will achieve its fecundation. Then, too, as an
elder brother might do, the animal assists the plant, and affords it in
its dependent state the succour of liberty. But, for this purpose, the
animal must be completely free, I would say winged, bound up with
the vegetable life which was its kindly nurse. Behold the insect,
love’s messenger and mediator to the plants, their propagator, and the
zealous instrument of their fertilization.

“ With a maternal care, the plant provides a place in its own body
where the insect’s egg may be developed. It nourishes the young
larva which as yet is incapable of action, but which, in due time,
emerging from its vegetation in the egg, will move freely to and fro,
and seek its own sustenance. The creative fecundity of the plant
easily replaces whatever the insect has extracted from it ; and thus
both animal and plant harmoniously attain to the climax of existence.

“ The animal, from its low sphere of nutrition, rises to a more ele¬
vated sphere, the pure need of motion, and the pursuit of love. The
plant, it is true, does not soar so high ; but its flower is a bright
dream of a higher state of being, — a dream which, though fugitive,
proceeds, by means of its fruits, to secure the conservation of the
species. The blossoming plant and the winged insect reach, as if by
concert, an analogous development, manifested by their colours, their
beautiful symmetrical forms, and their refinement of substance. Papil¬
ionaceous flowers, for instance, might almost be called insects-become-
plants.

“ This harmonic existence marches forward with the same rhythm
as the moments of the day. Each flower to whose juice an insect is
assigned expands at the hour when its life is most intense, and shuts at
the hour of its repose. Thus they feel their unity ; love attracts them
one towards the other. Here the plant plays the part of the female,
the fixed basis of creation, absorbed in nature. The insect resembles
the tiny male who frees himself from earth and curvets in the air;
recalled, nevertheless, by the plant to the oneness of the terrestrial
whole. It is a winged anther, which diffuses life among the flowers.” *

* Burdach, bk. ii., c. 3.

THE PLANT AND THE INSECT.

303

What the wind accomplishes hap-hazard, flinging abroad in caprici¬
ous showers the generative elements, the insect performs through love,
— the direct love of its species, the indirect and confused love of the
amiable auxiliary which welcomes and nourishes it, which will here¬
after nourish also its eggs and continue its maternal work. Its action,
therefore, is not external and superficial, like that of the wind ; it is
internal and penetrating. The ardent, curious insect will not suffer
itself to be checked by the light and trivial obstacles with which
vegetable modesty surrounds the threshold of its mysteries ; it boldly
dashes aside the veil, and enters into the inmost economy of the
flower. It seizes, it pillages, and it carries away, assured that all it
does will be approved. The flower, in its powerless expansion, rejoices
only too keenly in the deeds of these thievish liberators, who will
transport its desire whither it would fain transport itself. “ Take,” she
says, “ and take yet more ! ” The insect then exhausts its utmost
effort ; each of its hairs becomes a tiny magnetic dart, which attracts
and wishes to attract. Would that it might be enveloped in these
points, and over all its surface (like the lightning conductor) concen¬
trate this treasure of vegetable electricity ! Such is its aspiration. An
aspiration realized in the higher insect, in the bee, which bristles every¬
where with a magnetic apparatus, — the bee, predestined by the tools
peculiar to it, both to its little individual industry of honey-making,
and to the grand, general, universal industry of the fecundation of
plants.

It is an admirable creature, and what the great physiologist has
just said of the loves of the flower and the insect applies particularly
to it ; except with this notable distinction on the part of the bee, that
it robs the flower only of that noble luxuriance of life which it lavishes
upon love. The bee does not establish its cradle in the plant that
the young may thence derive its sole sustenance, and gradually devour
its nurse. Instead of depositing its egg, and exposing it to the hazards
of the vegetable existence, as the butterfly does with its future cater¬
pillar, the bee economizes the plant, and, without attacking it, borrows
from it the precious materials which its art works up into palaces of
alabaster, amber, or of gold, where its children will in due time repose.

304

THE SEASON OF LABOUR.

The innocency of the bee is one of its lofty attributes, no less than
its miraculous art. Its sting is simply a defensive and indispensable
weapon, not against man — with whom, of its own accord, it does not
wage war — but against the cruel wasps, its terrible enemies. The
bee, on the other hand, injures none. It does not live by death; its
inoffensive life does not demand the sacrifice of other lives. It stimu¬
lates innumerable existences ; it vivifies and fecundates them. There
is no uncultivated desert, no wild, bare region which it does not ani¬
mate, — where it does not infuse fresh vigour into the languishing
vegetation, urging the plants to bud, watching over and inspecting
them. It reproaches them with their slothfulness ; and as soon as they
open to the influence of love — these poor dumb virgins ! — it establishes
between them the requisite interpreters, carries off in its murmurs
their pollen and perfume, and harmonizes the aromas which are their
blossoms of thought.

This process begins in the month of March. When an uncertain
but already potent sun reawakes the sleeping sap, the tiny flowers of
the fields, the wild violet, the Easter-daisy of the sward, the buttercup
of the hedgerow, the precocious gillyflower, expanding, perfume the air.
But their expansion lasts only for a moment. Barely open at noon, by
three o’clock they fold themselves up again, and veil their shivering
stamens. In this brief interval of gentle heat you may see a little
wan-looking creature, completely clad but very chilly, which also
ventures to unfurl its wings. The bee quits its city, in the knowledge
that the manna is ready for it and its little ones.

A little matter then, it is true, but most cradles are empty at this
epoch. The great fecundity of the mother bee still lurks concealed in
her bosom. The regular and rapid incubation, which might suffice to
create a world, will not commence until a much later period, — the
sunny time of May.

How admirable is this agreement ! Most of the shivering flowers,
like the shivering bee, wait a more equable season before they bare to
the sun their corolla, too delicate to endure the caprices of April.

It is pleasant to watch the intercourse between these charming
creatures. The docile flower inclines and yields to the insect’s unquiet

WHAT THE BEE DOES.

305

movements. The shrine which it had closed against the winds, and
the inquisitive glance, it opens to the beloved
bee, which, impregnated by it, speeds afar on
her message of love. The delicious precau¬
tions which Nature has taken to veil from
profane eyes the mysteries enacted therein,
do not delay for a moment the audacious
seeker, who is completely at home, so to
speak, and has no fear of being considered
an intruder. One flower, for example, is
protected by a couple of petals which join
together in the form of an arch (as, for in¬
stance, the iris on the border of the waters,
which in this manner defends from the rain
its delicate little lovers). Another, like the
sweet-pea, dons a kind of helmet, whose vizor
must be lifted by its suitor.

The bee takes its stand at the bottom of
these recesses worthy of the fairies, covered
with the softest tapestry, under fantastic
pavilions, with walls of topaz, and roofs of
sapphire. Paltry comparisons these, for they
are borrowed from dead gems, while the
flowers live, and feel, and desire, and wait.

And if the happy conqueror of the little
hidden kingdoms, — if the imperious violator
of their innocent barriers, the insect, mingles
and confuses everything, they readily whisper
its pardon, overwhelm it with their sweet¬
nesses, and load it with their honey.

There are favoured localities, and there
are happy hours, where and when the bee,
while gathering its harvest, accomplishes—
chaste toiler !■ — myriads of marriages. On the coasts, for example, and
in the immediate neighbourhood of the savage sea, where one would

306

THE SOUL OF THE BLOSSOM.

hardly expect to meet with such pacific idyls, should there be but one
shadowy, secure, and warm recess, Nature never fails, in the warm and
humid mildness of that maternal retreat, to create a little chosen
world; and there the flower distils to the bee its sweetest nectar, —
there the bee assuages the impetuous yearning of the flower.

Genial, bland, and still is the hour which precedes the evening.
Caressed by the last rays of the sun, whose warmth it preserves
within its bosom, besprinkled in its corolla by the light and already
radiant mist, the flower becomes conscious of two lives and a twofold
electricity ; it is urged to love, and it loves ! The stamens blaze forth,
and scatter abroad their cloud of incense. Then at that charming and
sacred hour let the mediatrix come ; let the Samaritan bee appear !
Let her collect the sweet odours dispersed by the evening breeze ; let
her redivide them with wise forethought, giving here and taking
there ! The blossoms are no longer solitary ; through the agency of
the bee, the meadow has been converted into a society where all
understand and all love each other, initiated into the hymeneal rites
by their friendly little high-priest.

It is not a less important duty for the bee to rise at an early hour
and be present at the moment when the flower — which has slumbered
under the penetrating dew (exhaled by its divine master, father, and
lover, the sun) — awakes, and recovers its consciousness. Struck by
the sympathetic beam, it no longer resists; it gives up the softened
essence of its choicest sweetness ; it becomes, as it were, a tiny fountain,
which distils honey drop by drop. Opportunely comes the bee; its
work here is very nearly completed : the sweet treasure, finely prepared
in that hour of perfection, will entail but little labour. It bears it off

to its children : “ Eat : it is the soul of the blossom.”

✓

But in the noonday heat will she remain inactive ? The burning
sun and dry air have withered up the blossoms of the plain. But those
of the woods, sheltered by the fresh cool shades, present their cups
brimming over; those of the murmurous brooks, and' silent and deep
marshes, are then instinct with vitality. The forget-me'-not dreams,
and weeps tiny tears of nectar. Even the white water-lily, in her
pale virginity, yields a rare treasure of love.

IN COLD WEATHER.

307

“ Night does not injure the bee, but cold is extremely harmful.
Such is her conscientiousness, that, in order to avoid losing a day’s
labour in our brief summers, she takes too little heed of the sudden
returns of winter, of the sharp caprices of the north wind, which some¬
times visit us on the finest days. Insects of inferior intelligence, but
also less industrious, perfectly understand the secret of escaping its
influence. In their prudent idleness they say to one another, ‘ To¬
morrow ! Let us keep holiday ! ’ And they patiently wait for one,
or two, or more days, until the wicked spirit of the north has aban¬
doned its evil mood. But those who have charge of others, who have
a large family to maintain, — those who know that a mild winter may
chance to keep their offering awake, and, accordingly, famished, will
hesitate before they take a single day’s repose.

“And, therefore, on the cold mornings of a June not less bleak than
March, they do not fear to rush boldly into the fields. But they are
more valiant than robust ; the cold catches them, and I have known them
drag their limbs to my windows, faltering and half-paralyzed. They
have made no attempt to escape ; they have suffered themselves to be
taken prisoners. They were in a scared condition ; still bearing the signs
of their courageous and indefatigable work, impregnated with the dust
of flowers, and their little baskets loaded and overloaded with pollen.
They seemed to say: — AVe are no sluggards. On the contrary, in the
cold hours of morning, when many are still asleep, we have already
completed a day’s work. But, alas, the times are so hard, and the north
wind is so keen ! Behold us half-frozen. A moment’s hospitality, I
pray you.’

“ Who would not respect the misfortune of such blameless and over-
eager workers ? I lent them not only a roof, and the warmth of an
apartment closed to the wind and open to the sun, but immediately
improvised for them a friendly repast. Where ? At the bottom of a
sugar-basin.

“ The chilly creatures, having revived at a genial beam their lost
warmth, and restored to a good condition all the little electric world of
hairs with which they bristle, began the exploration of their temporary
prison, and were agreeably surprised to find the crystal a dining-hall

308

FAREWELL. AND THANKS.

With a good appetite, seating themselves at the table, they attacked a
fragment of sugar, and sucked up with their proboscis all the sweetness
they could find. When they had finished their repast, and were com¬
pletely restored, were fluttering to and fro, demanding the way out, I
set them free, without causing them to lose one moment of a day
already far advanced. Writh a rapid flight, charmed by the noonday
sun, they returned to their occupations, distinctly humming: — ‘Fare¬
well, madam, and many thanks ! ’ ”

VIII _ THE BEES

AS ARCHITECTS

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS : THE CITY.

If the wasp’s nest resemble Sparta, the bee-hive is the
veritable Athens of the Insect World. There, all is art.
The people — the artist-elite of the people — incessantly
create two things; on the one hand, the City, the
country, — on the other, the Universal Mother, whose
task it is not only to perpetuate the race, but to become
its idol, its fetish , the living god of the community.

The bees share with the wasps, the ants, and all
the sociable insects, the disinterested life of aunts and
sisters, — laborious virgins, who devote themselves en¬
tirely to an adoptive maternity.

But from these analogous peoples the bee differs in
the necessity it is under of creating a national idol, the
love of which impels it to work.

All this has been long misunderstood. It was at first supposed that
this State was a monarchy, that it possessed a king. Not at all; the king

312

THE POLITY OF THE BEE-HIVE.

is a female. Thereupon one is driven to say, This female is a queen.
Another error. Not only does she not govern, or reign, or control, but
in certain conjunctions she is governed, and sometimes even placed in
private confinement. She is at once something more and something less
than a queen. She is an object of legal and public adoration; I should
say legal and constitutional, for this adoration is not so blind but that
the idol, in some cases, as we shall see, may be treated very severely.

“ Then, at bottom, the government will be democratic ? ” Yes ; if we
take into consideration the unanimous devotion of the people, the spon¬
taneous labour of everybody. No one commands. But, nevertheless,
you can clearly see that in every higher work an intelligent body of
the elite , an aristocracy of artists, takes the lead. The city is not built
or organized by the entire people, but by a special class, a kind of
guild or corporation. While the mob of bees seeks the common nour¬
ishment abroad, certain much larger bees, the wax-makers, elaborate
the wax, prepare it, shape it, and skilfully make use of it. Like the
medieval freemasons, this respectable corporation of architects toils
and builds on the principles of a profound geometry. Like those of the
old days, they are the masters of the living stone. But our worthy
bees are far more deserving of the title ! The materials which they
employ they have made, have elaborated by their vital action, and vivi¬
fied with their internal juices.

Neither the honey nor the wax is a vegetable substance. Those
little light bees which go in quest of the essence of the flowers bring it
back already transformed and enriched by their virginal life. Sweet
and pure, it passes from their mouth to the mouth of their elder sisters.
These, the grave wax-makers, having received the aliment vivified and
endowed with the charming sweetness which is, as it were, the soul of
the race, elaborate it in their turn, and communicate to it their own
peculiar life, — solidity. Wise and sedentary, they work up the liquid
into a sedentary honey, a honey of the second quality, a kind of reflected
honey. This is not all : the substance twice elaborated, and twice
penetrated with animal juice, they incessantly moisten with their
saliva, when using it so as to render it softer for working, but more
tenacious afterwards.

HOW THE WORK IS BEGUN.

313

Was I wrong, then, in saying that this construction is truly one of
“ the living stones ” ? There is not an atom of the materials which
is not three times impregnated with life. Who shall say of yonder hive
whether the flower or the bee has furnished the greater part ? The
latter has certainly contributed an important share. Here, the home of
the people is the people’s substance and visible soul ; from themselves
they have extracted their city, and their city is, in truth, themselves.
Bee and hive, it is one and the same thing.

But let us observe them at work.

Alone, in the centre of the still empty and to be created hive, the
learned wax-maker advances. From beneath its wings it delicately
extracts a thin slab of wax, and conveys it to its mouth, where it is
well kneaded and pounded, and drawn out into the shape of a ribbon.
Eight strips are in this wise furnished, wrought, and absorbed ; and the
result is eight little blocks, which the bee lays down as the first beams
of the future edifice, the foundations of the new city.

Others continue the work without moving too far from the place
where it was begun. If any unintelligent labourer does not follow the
prescribed plan, the mistress-bees, experienced and accomplished, are
on the spot to detect any error, and immediately remedy it.

In the solid mass, well placed and skilfully squared, where such
numbers have harmoniously deposited their contribution of wax, an
excavation must now be made, and some degree of form attained. A
single bee again detaches herself from the crowd, and with her horny
tongue, teeth, and paws, she contrives to hollow out the solid matter
like a reversed vault. When fatigued she retires, and others take up
the work of modelling. In couples they shape off and thin the walls.
The only point to be remembered is a skilful management of their thick¬
ness. But how do they appreciate this ? Who or what warns them
the moment a stroke too much would break an opening in the parti¬
tion ? They never take the trouble to make a tour of their work and
examine it from the other side. Their eyes are useless to them ; they
judge of everything by their antennae, which are their plumb-line and
compass. They feel about, and by an infinitely delicate touch recog¬
nize the elasticity of the wax, perhaps by the sound it renders, and

314

HOW THE WORK GOES ON.

determine whether it is safe to excavate it, or whether they must stop
short, and not push their mining operations further.

The building, as everybody knows, is destined to serve two ends.
The cells are generally used in summer as cradles, in winter as maga¬
zines of pollen and honey, — a granary of abundance for the republic.
Each vessel is closed and sealed with a waxen lid, a cloture religiously
respected by all the people, who take for their subsistence only a single
comb, — and when that comb is finished pass on to another, but always
with extreme reserve and sobriety.

It has been said and repeated that the construction is absolutely
uniform. Buffon goes so far as to pretend that the cell is but the iden¬
tical form of the bee, which posts itself in the wax, and by the friction
of its body, a blind manoeuvre, obtains an impress of itself, a hollow, an
identical cell. A baseless hypothesis, which the least reflection would
show to be improbable, even if observation did not contradict it.

In reality, their work is extremely various, and diversified in
numerous different ways.

In the first place, the combs are pierced in the centre by corridors or
little tunnels, which do away with the necessity of traversing two sides.
Economists in everything, the bees are specially economical of time.

Secondly, the form of the cells is by no means identical. They
prefer the hexagon, — the form which is best adapted to secure the
greatest possible number of cells in the smallest area. But they do not
slavishly bind themselves to this form. The first comb which they
attach to the framework would cling to it very insecurely, and only by
its projecting edges, if it were composed of six-sided cells. They there¬
fore make it with five sides only; and fashion it of pentagonal cells
with broad bases, which attach themselves solidly to the wood on a con¬
tinuous line. The whole is agglutinated and sealed, not with wax, but
with their gum, or propolis, which, as it dries, becomes hard as iron.

The great royal cellules, or cradles of the future mothers, which may
be seen by the side of the combs, are not six-sided, but of the form of
an oblong egg, — which secures the royal favourites considerable ease,
and a great facility of development.

Finally, you may, with a little attention, detect important differ-

INGENUITY OF THE WORKERS.

315

ences among the ordinary hexagonal cells, though at the first glance
they all seem alike. They are small for the industrious gleaners, larger
for the artistic wax-makers, and largest for the males. This size is
generally obtained by means of a little rounded fragment which is
deposited in the bottom, and renders it slightly circular, — I was about
to say pot-bellied ( ventru ). As the house, so the tenant ; the male will
come into the world a squat, obese figure, — predestined to this form by
that of its cradle.

Thus, of their own accord, they vary the configuration and extent
of the cellules. And they vary them yet more, according to the
obstacles they encounter. If room be denied them, they reduce the
size of their hexagons in due proportion and with extreme address.
This fact Huber verified by some ingenious experiments. He bethought
himself of deranging their operations by placing, instead of wood, a
plate of glass against the wall of the hive where they were building up
their cells. From the distance they saw this smooth shining crystal, to
which nothing could be fixed ; and taking their measures accordingly,
they curved their cake in such a manner that it went past the glass
and joined on to the wood. But, to carry out the alteration, it became
necessary to change the diameter of the cells ; to enlarge that of the
convex portion, and diminish that of the concave. A delicate pro¬
blem ! and yet it was readily solved by the skilful architects.

In mid- winter, says Huber again, in their season of inertia, an over¬
heavy slab of wax fell away, but was checked en route by the cakes
beneath. An avalanche seemed imminent ! But the bees invented
buttresses and barriers in strong mastic, which, supporting the fallen
cake and propping up the sides of the hive, prevented the dangerous
ruin from dragging down the inner edifice. Then, to prevent the
occurrence of similar misfortunes, they created some novel architectural
works in the shape of flying buttresses, bulwarks, pillars, cross-beams,
and the like.

Novel ! Ay, this is a sufficient refutation of Buffon’s theory. That
machines or automata could invent, is a thing not easily explicable.
Yet the sovereign authority of this great dictator of natural history
would have prevailed, perhaps, over facts and over observation, if,

315

A SHAMELESS BRIGAND.

towards the close of the last century, the bees themselves, by an unfore¬
seen stroke, had not definitively cut the Gordian knot.

It was about the epoch of the American, and shortly before the out¬
break of the French, Revolution. An unknown creature then made its
appearance over all Europe, — of a frightful figure, — a great strong
nocturnal butterfly, marked very plainly in tawny-gray, with a hideous
death’s head. This sinister being, which none had seen before, alarmed
every countryside, and seemed an omen of the most terrible misfortunes.
Yet, in truth, those who were terrified by it had brought it into Europe.
It had come in the grub condition with its natal plant, the American
potato, — the fashionable vegetable which Parmentier extolled, Louis XYI.
protected, and which spread in all directions. The savants baptized the
insect with a somewhat horrifying name — the Sphinx Atropos.

And terrible indeed was this new creature, but only for the honey.
Of this it was remorselessly greedy, and to attain it was capable of
everything. A hive of thirty thousand bees could not daunt it. In
the depths of night, the rapacious monster, profiting by the hour when
the approaches to the city are less carefully guarded, with a gloomy but
subdued sound, as if stifled by the soft down which covers it (and all
other nocturnal insects), invaded the hive, swooped down on the combs,
devoured and plundered, gutted and destroyed the magazines, and slew
the infant bees. In vain they awoke, and flew to arms; their sting
could not penetrate through the soft elastic padding which clothed the
sphinx, — like the cotton armour worn by the Mexicans in the days of
Cortez, and impenetrable by Spanish weapons.

Huber meditated on the best means of protecting his bees against
this shameless brigand. Should it be by gratings, or doors ? And how ?
He could not determine. The most skilfully devised barriers have
always the inconvenience of impeding the great movement of ingress
and egress, which takes place at the threshold of the hive. Their im¬
patience regarded as intolerable the obstructions, which could not fail
to embarrass them, and against which they might break their wings.

One morning, Huber’s faithful assistant, who seconded him in his
experiments, brought information that the bees themselves had already
solved the problem. In different hives they had conceived and attempted

HOW HE WAS DEFEATED

317

various systems of defence and fortification. Here they constructed a
wall of wax, with narrow loopholes, through which the great enemy
could not pass. There, by a more ingenious expedient, without creating
a single impediment, they built up some inter-crossing arcades at the
gates, or tiny cloisters one behind the other, but running in different
directions, — that is to say, to the void left by the first corresponded
the substance of the second. Thus was secured a number of openings
for the impatient buzzing crowd, which might go in and out as usual,
with no other difficulty than that of moving in a slightly zigzag
fashion. At the same time, a complete barrier was obtained against the
great and big enemy, which could no longer enter with expanded wings,
nor even glide uninjured through the narrow corridors.

It was the coup cVetat of the brute creation, the revolution of the
insects, executed by the bees, not only against their plunderers, but
against the calumniators who had denied their intelligence. The
theorists who had refused to believe in it, the Malebranches and the
Buffons, were compelled to own themselves beaten. They had to adopt
the reserve of eminent observers, like Swammerdam and Reaumur, who,
far from questioning the genius of insects, furnish us with numerous
facts in proof of its flexibility, of its rising to the measure of great
dangers, of its scorn of routine, and of its power to make unexpected
progress under certain circumstances.

IX. — THE BEES

THE WING

CHAPTER IX.

HOW THE BEES CREATE THE PEOPLE AND
THE COMMON MOTHER.

In the life of the bees, all things are brought to bear
on the welfare of the infant. Let ns see, then, this
object of love. Let ns see what is lying at the bottom
of the cell ; her who has just been created, the little
virgin of toil.

She is born in a condition of singular purity; so
much so that she is not even provided with the organ
of the inferior necessities. On a delicate mixture of
honey and flower dust, which is constantly renewed,
you see nothing at first but a comma, then a C, a
spiral. But she already lives, is organized, and active;
so that on the eighth day, like a skilful spinner, she
weaves her network of metamorphosis.

Her nurses, that she may enjoy a complete repose
at the sacred moment, take the precaution to close
up her cell ; erecting over it a little dome, velvety, and of a tawny
colour. For ten days she is a nymph, enveloped in a veil of exceeding

322

THE BEE, AND ITS ORGANISATION.

whiteness and great delicacy, through which you can discern a minia¬
ture of mouth, eyes, wings, and feet. Twenty-one days suffice for her
development. Then she scratches an opening in the little dome, and
thrusts through it her head; next, with her fore-feet resting on the
rim, she strenuously endeavours to disengage her whole body. It is a
great effort; but the honey is close at hand to recruit her energies.
At the first cell she falls in with she plunges into it her proboscis,
and initiates herself into life.

She is still humid, gray, and very weak. So she hastens to get dry
in the sun, to harden her soft and rumpled wings. There she is wel¬
comed by her numerous kinswomen, who stroke and lick her amorously,
and bestow on her a maternal kiss.

No creature is more richly endowed with implements, or more
obviously intended for an industrial speciality. Each organ reads her
its lesson, and informs her what she has to do. Lighted by five eyes
and guided by a couple of antennae, she carries in front, projecting
beyond her mouth, an unique and marvellous instrument of taste, — the
proboscis, or long external tongue, — which is of peculiar delicacy, and
partly hairy that it may the more readily absorb and imbibe. Pro¬
tected, when at rest, by a beautiful scaly sheath, the proboscis puts
forth its fine point to touch a liquid ; and this point wetted, draws it
back into its mouth, where lies the internal tongue, a subtle judge of
sensation, and the final authority.

To this delicate apparatus add some coarser attributes which indi¬
cate their own uses : hairs on every side to catch up the dust of the
flowers, brushes on the thighs to sweep together the scattered harvest,
and panniers to compress it into pellets of many colours. All these
conjoined form the insignia of her trade. — Go, my daughter, and become
a reaper !

Thou wilt desire nothing else, and thou wilt be fit for nothing else.
The fairy virgins who prepared thy cradle, and feed thee daily, will
bring thee up to be what they have been. Sober, laborious, and sterile,
they practise a rigid economy ; in them and in thee they maintain
the pure flame of virginity by fasting, or at least by very scanty
nourishment, while they banquet splendidly the future mother, though

THE CHILD OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

323

still a child, and are lavish towards the numerous, and, for the most
part, useless tribe of males.

It is here we reach the fundamental strata of the City, the aristoc¬
racy of devotion and intelligence. The wax-makers, or bee-architects,
if they consulted the wishes of the living queen, would never train up
an heiress to her throne. She is blindly jealous, and as soon as the
successor is born would have her put to death. They do not listen.
Those firm sage heads, remembering that we all die, take counsel on
the necessity of perpetuating the race. And, accordingly, by the side of
the cells, or close little cradles which receive all the children of the
republic, they build some spacious chambers, fifteen, nay, twenty times
larger, in which the ordinary egg, favoured by the conditions of ease
and liberty, may enlarge and develop at will all its natural faculties.
The more certainly to ensure the superior growth of the chosen egg,
they prodigalize upon it a stronger and more generous food, which
shall give full liberty to its sex, and endow it with fecundity. Such
is the efficacy of this potent liquor, that if the nurses accidentally let
fall a drop or two on the neighbouring cradles, the little bees, rejoicing
in the chance, participate in the queen-mother’s fecundity, although
in an inferior degree.

Madam,

Kings I have made, but never willed to be one.

[J’ai fait des rois, madame, et n’ai pas voulu l’etre.]

This dramatic line perfectly characterizes the disinterestedness of
these prudent nurses. They bestow all the world’s gifts on their
favourite, — a beautiful and ample habitation, a superior regimen, and
that paradise of women — motherhood !

To the others, on the contrary, — to their sisters, who are born
resembling them, — narrow cradles, coarse food, incessant work, and
pain ! These will go into the fields to sweat for the people and
the mother ; those, confined at home, will build incessantly, and
attend to the young. No recreation is allowed to them; I do not
think they have, like the ants, fetes and gymnastic games. Their
entire feast will be labour (from which the queen-mother is excused).

324

THE QUEEN-BEE.

To one alone they give love, and for themselves preserve nothing but
wisdom.

The characteristic attribute of this child of grace, of whom the
whole multitude is enamoured, is certain beautiful long legs of gold,
or rather of transparent amber, of a gilded yellow. This rich colour
lends nobility to her belly, and is also found on the edge of her dorsal
rings. Elegant, svelte , and noble, she is freed from the drudgery
of dragging the industrial apparatus which overloads the worker, —
brushes and panniers. Like all the bees, she carries a sword, — I mean
the sting, — but never uses it except in a personal combat ; nor has she
many occasions, being so surrounded, beset, and overwhelmed with an
excess of love.

This mother is very timorous, a trifle is sufficient to terrify her; at
the slightest danger she takes to flight, and conceals herself at the
bottom of the hive. Her head is not very large, and the unique func¬
tion which so distinguishes her, is not one of those which tend to
expand the brain. The others have more opportunity of acquiring
knowledge and varying their accomplishments. The little gleaners
gather a wide experience of the country and of life. The bee-architects,
who, moreover, attend to -a thousand unforeseen domestic affairs, are
compelled to think and develop their intelligence. The mother has but
two duties to fulfil.

On a sunny day in spring, about three hours after noon, she issues
forth, and out of a myriad males or more she selects a spouse, carries
him off a moment on her wings, and then rejects him, mutilated ; he
does not survive his felicity. She re-enters her hive, and all is ended.
She is impregnated for four years, the ordinary term of her existence.
No loves can be briefer or more chaste. All her toil, by day and night,
without distinction of season, — except for three months of lethargy in
rigorous winters, — is to lay eggs everywhere, and without cessation.
She flies from cellule to cellule, and in each deposits an egg. Nothing
more is required of her. She was born for this destiny, and her people
prosper in proportion to her fecundity. If she fell barren, all would
languish, — as well as the activity, the labour, and the love which

RIVALS NEAR THE THRONE.

325

every one bestows upon her. The sentiment displayed towards
her is not so much of a personal character as the idea of utility,
of the preservation and perpetuity of the people, which very visibly
prevails.

This mother, say our authors, has a somewhat giddy head. Like
all individuals who have nothing to do, she is volatile and capricious.
At the end of a year’s incubation and sedentary life in the depths of
the hive, a desire seizes her for the open air, to see a little of the world,
to visit new countries. She has, nevertheless, a more serious motive
than they sa}^. She sees the spacious chambers which are being built
for the young mothers who will replace her. She feels that her rivals
are concealed there, and grows fiercely jealous. Incessantly she prowls
around, and but for the assiduous guard which protects them, and
keeps her away, she would dart her sting through the thin partitions.
Conceive, then, what must be her rage when the young captives, igno¬
rant of her fury and their danger, make imprudent efforts to escape
from their cradles, hum and sing aloud their little cicala song, which
is peculiar to the mother of the bees, and so clearly announces to the
queen the presence of the pretenders ? The foresight of the bees, which,
to guard against all accidents, has thus reared up the young mothers,
involves them then in difficulty. A frightful combat impends, a whole¬
sale massacre ; the old queen-mother, were she allowed, would not
spare one of those odious females. Separation is preferable to civil war.
The aged sovereign, agitated and distraught, runs everywhere, and
seems to say : “ Let those who love me, follow me.” She raises a song
of departure, and all labour is suspended.

Determined to follow her, numbers of the bees make the necessary
preparations, and eat a supply of food which will last them several
days. The excessive agitation is manifested by a sudden change of
temperature; from 28° C., the heat of the hive mounts up to 30° or 32°,
— a condition of things intolerable to the bees, for to respire easily is a
peculiar feature of their organization. In the extreme heat they are
all bathed in sweat. Therefore they must either set out or die. The
mother sallies forth, and they rush headlong after her. They buzz and
whirl for a moment round the abandoned home, and then dart a

326

A MIGRATION TO A COLONY.

little further away, describing in the air the most fantastic and incre¬
dible flights. The air is darkened with
them. At length some settle upon the
branch of a neighbouring tree, then
numerous others take their places, along
with the queen. They cling to one
another, and droop downwards in a large
cluster. Tranquillity is re-established.
The other bee communities having taken
the alarm, and fearing the invasion of
the fugitives, have guarded their gates,
and reinforced their ordinary posts ; but
now, seeing them settled, they breathe
freely, and return to their occupations.

Meanwhile some prudent and faithful
messengers are despatched from the cluster
to examine the neighbouring localities best
adapted for a new establishment. M.
Debeauvoys was the first to observe this
act of prudence, this special and prudent
mission of inspection for the information
and guidance of the new colony. A hollow
tree, or a cavity in the rock, protected
from the north wind, and near a brook
where they can conveniently drink, are
the conditions which weigh most with our
prudent emigrants. A hive fully prepared
and already furnished with honey they
do not regard with indifference. They are
very decisive in their movements, being-
directed b}^ an excellent sense.

Shall we affirm that they have quitted
without regret the native land where they
toiled so successfully ? And that, having
once forsaken it, they think of it no more ? By no means. The

A COMBAT A OU TRANCE.

327

mother especially, — “giddy” as they call her, — has her fancies for
return, and twice — nay, thrice — persists in going back, carrying with
her the too devoted colony.

What would befall if, in these home- visits, she found herself face to
face with the new queen whom the non-emigrating people have substi¬
tuted in her place ? There would be a combat. And this, too, happens
without emigration, when, spite of all the efforts that are made to
prevent her, a young mother, having forced her way through the wall
of her apartment, reveals to the old queen the detested object of her
jealousy. A duel then infallibly takes place. However, as each knows
the other to be armed with a mortal dart, their natural cowardice would
moderate their fury, and limit the struggle to a few harmless shocks,
and an innocent wrestle, like the pugilistic display of paid athletes.
But the people who gather round and look on from a near point of
view are very grave, and mean the affair to be so. Division in the
community would be the greatest of all evils. Moreover, they are so
economical and temperate for themselves, so parsimonious for others,
that they take into consideration, I am sure, the enormous cost that
would result from the establishment of a couple of queens. Each one
of them, royally nourished as they are, is a serious trouble to the
republic. The State would be ruined if it had to pay a double budget.
Therefore one of them must die. And hence arises a strange spectacle,
completely characteristic of the singular spirit of this people : the
object of adoration, recently gorged, and brushed, and caressed, — if she
recoil, is led back to the combat, is impelled and driven into it, until
one of the two antagonists contrives to leap upon the other, and from
its bended and superjacent abdomen plunges into the latter’s entrails
the irremissible poignard.

Unity is thus secured. The survivor, who, if conquered, would have
been flung aside without regret, now that she is victorious becomes the
idol and living deitv of the commonwealth ; but let her remember, on
the express condition of perpetuating the people and proving continu¬
ously prolific.

Let us suppose a deplorable misfortune, — that every mother has
perished. What then becomes of the orphaned world ? Does it fall,

328

THE MOTHER OF THE PEOPLE.

as some have asserted, into complete demoralization ? Does such a
calamity entail a furious anarchy, a universal pillage of the people
by the people themselves ? By no means, says M. Debeauvoys. A few
hours of trouble, pain, wrath, and apparent delirium follow. The bees
flutter to and fro in great agitation, and suspend their work ; for a
moment they even neglect the nurslings. But a people so grave and
dignified at bottom soon resume their dignity, and remember what they
owe to themselves. The mother is dead ? Long live the mother !
We know how to create another. What we were yesterday, so are we
to-day.

The last will be first. They turn to the youngest child of the people,
who has barely opened her shell, who has not had time to undergo the
confinement of a narrow cradle, who has not yet grown lean on the
scanty fare of an artisan. This fare is not honey, but merely the dust
of flowers which naturalists call bees' bread. Those who have been
previously fed upon poorer fare will remain little ; they no longer
possess the faculty of transformation.

But this young bee, so soft and so tender, will become whatever
you will ; and in order that she may develop into a true female, a bee
of love, and a prolific mother, what is necessary ? Liberty. Let them
provide her with a vast cradle where her young life may float, and
agitate, and develop, at ease. It will cost three cradles destroyed to
provide for hers, and the lives of three infants, who will perish before
birth ; but what matter, if in a year she supplies the nation with ten
thousand ?

The consecration of the mother of the people is that living nourish¬
ment which the people extract from themselves, and in which they
mingle their bee-sweetness with the balmy essence of the flowers. A
strong and noble nourishment, rich in the intoxicating perfume of aro¬
matic herbs, richer in the virginal love concentrated upon it by thirty
thousand sisters for the behoof of the marvellous child who belongs to
them all.

On the third day the child sees its cradle extended by an ornament
intended to make it still freer, — a pyramid reversed. On the fifth only
do they seal it up, to the intent that she may sleep peacefully, and

A LOYAL COMMUNITY

329

accomplish her metamorphosis in peace. And then the anxiety
increases. They guard the beloved sleeper who will be to-morrow the
common soul, and will inspire by her love the labours of the people.
They guard her, and they wait upon her, but with the haughty dignity
of a people who adore only their own handiwork, chosen by them,
nourished by them, created by them, and to be unmade by them. It
is their pride that at need they know how to create a god.

■s.

' .

Conclusion.

The bee and the ant reveal to us the lofty har¬
mony of the insect.

Both, in their high intelligence, are of superior
rank as artists, architects, and the like. The bee
is more, a geometer; the ant is before all remark¬
able as an educator.

The ant is frankly and strongly republican,
having no need of a living and visible symbol of
the community, lightly esteeming and governing
with sufficient rudeness the soft and feeble females
who perpetuate the race. The bee, on the other
hand, more tender apparently, or less reasoning and
more imaginative, finds a moral support in the wor¬
ship of the common mother. For her community
of virgins it is, so to speak, a religion of love.

Among both the ants and bees maternity is the social principle;
but fraternity also takes root, flourishes, and springs to a glorious
stature.

334

THE WORLD OF THE LITTLE.

Our book, begun in a profound obscurity, terminates in a fulness of
light.

To form a correct judgment of insects, you must examine and esti¬
mate their achievements and their societies. If their organization rank
so low as has been said, so much the more are they to be admired for
accomplishing such noble works with such inferior organs.

Observe that the most advanced works are executed by those (as,
for example, the ants) who have no special implements to facilitate
them, but must supply the want by skill and invention.

Were they not so diminutive, what consideration we should extend
to their arts and labours ! Comparing the cities of the termites with
the cabins of the negro, the subterranean galleries of the ants with
the little excavations of our Tourangeaux of the Loire, how we should
dwell on the superior skill of the insects ! Is it stature, then, which
changes your moral judgments ? What are the proportions which will
merit your esteem ?

Let us add, that if this book do not modify the opinion of the
reader, it has greatly modified our own. This, in the course of our
labour, has undergone a considerable change. We thought we were
going to study things , and found them lives.

REVERENCE FOR LIFE.

335

Close daily observation, initiating us into their ways and habits, de¬
veloped in our minds a sentiment which animated our study, but also
complicated it, — respect for their persons and lives.

“ What say you ? An ant’s existence ? Nature holds them cheaply,
renews them incessantly, prodigalizes lives, sacrifices them to one
another.”

Yes, but because she makes them. She bestows life and withdraws
it ; has the secret of their destinies, and that of the compensations in
the course of possible progress. But as for us, we have no power over
them, except to make them suffer.

This is a grave reflection. We are not talking here of any childish
sensibility. On the contrary, neither children nor men of science
cherish any such feeling. But a man — man accustomed to reason with
himself and estimate his acts — will not lightly deprive any creature of
that gift of life which it is utterly out of his power to confer on the
most insignificant.

This consideration impressed us strongly. And at first a person, a
woman, more impressionable and. more scrupulous than myself, who
had come hither with the design of making a collection of the insects
of Fontainebleau, hesitated, deferred the task; and then, having interro¬
gated her conscience, felt compelled to renounce it. Without uttering a
word of censure upon scientific collections, which are absolutely indis¬
pensable, it is certain that we ought not to find a pastime in death.
Note that many of these creatures are much less important in form and

336

AN ASYLUM FOR WANDERERS.

colour than by attitude and movement, which cannot be preserved at
the extremity of a pin !

Our first discussion of this kind was in reference to the fate of a
very remarkable butterfly (a sphinx, if I mistake not), which we caught
in a net to examine for a moment. I had admired it for several days,
coming and going among the flowers, — not, like most of its race, flying
hap-hazard, but choosing them discreetly, and then, with a very fine,
very long and arrowy proboscis, sucking by small sips, and very quickly
withdrawing, as if acted upon by a steel spring. The movement was
one of incomparable grace, of coquettish sobriety; just as if it said:
“ Enough for to-day, — enough ! But, to-morrow ! ” I have never seen
anything more graceful.

It is only a gray butterfly, and not at all remarkable. Who that
sees it dead would divine that, in charming nimbleness, it is the
favourite of Nature, in which she has exhausted all her grace ?

We opened the net. And not long afterwards we had the plea¬
sure of seeing the same butterfly, which, in bad weather, came one
evening to take shelter with us, and found a resting-place in our
chamber. In the morning, wishful to enjoy the sunshine, it flew
away.

I ought to add, moreover, that all the shipwrecked unfortunates of
the latter end of autumn, guided by a very sure but very surprising
instinct, willingly came to our house, — some on a temporary visit, others
to remain with us. A young bullfinch, in a bad condition, and who
had evidently met with more than one adventure, arrived all be¬
wildered, and even on the first day ate from our hands. The same
thing happened with a still more miserable creature, — a little tiny red-
tail, which had been barbarously deprived of its head-feathers that it
might be sold for a nightingale. This creature, so ill-treated by men,
which might justly have been afraid of them, not only took at the
very first the seed from our hands and lips, but would not sleep except
on the mistress’s finger.

As for insects, their domestication is impossible. But many, never-

A NOVEL VISITOR.

337

tlieless, seem able to live with man, to appreciate peaceable people and
mildness of character. Last winter, two pretty red lad}r-birds had
taken up their residence on our table, among our books and papers,
which were being constantly moved about. What to give them, we
knew not ; they passed the whole season without eating, or appearing
to receive any injury. The warmth of the apartment seemed agreeable
to them.

A strong September wind is now blowing, and, this very day, has
cast in upon us a beautiful reddish-coloured caterpillar. Though she
had not come of her own accord, but in spite of herself, we felt that
we ought to respect misfortune. We did not know from what plant
she had been torn, but supposed from her motions that she had been
carried away at the moment she had begun to spin. We presented her
with a variety of leaves ; but none of them pleased her taste. She
moved to and fro, displaying an extraordinary agitation. We sup¬
posed she wished to find rest upon a branch, but the rain fell in torrents.
As many caterpillars and larvse work underground, we brought it some
earth. But this, too, was useless. Thinking she might like a web
at a time when she was engaged in weaving, we placed her on the
lace- work of a cushion which lay in the window; but the lace was
cold and coarse, and did not please her. Moreover, the wind, the little
wind which entered, would have cruelly frozen her during a whole
winter. Finally, by a feminine marvel of intuition, we concluded that,
since she was about to weave silk, she would like the silk-velvet lining
of our microscope.

Plainly, it was the very thing she herself would have chosen. In¬
stalled in the evening, by the morning she had made herself at home in
this soft, warm, and sheltered place. She had already spun, and hastily
extended her threads to right and left, as if fearing she might be
disturbed. Then, during the day, her work having been respected, she
saw that she had miscalculated her measurements, and that her cocoon
was too short ; she destroyed a third of it, to resume the fabric from
that point on better proportions.

388

LIFE VERSUS SCIENCE.

Behold, then, microscope, and scalpel, and all our instruments ex¬
pelled. What could we do ? The confiding animal had taken up a
position at our fireside, and would not withdraw from it. Life had
driven out Science. Grave study, wait ! for awhile thou art adjourned.
During the winter we respected the sleep of the chrysalis.

lUnsiraiiiH JJotcs

Ifhtstratita Jlotes.

The Meaning of this Book. — It lias sprung wholly from the
heart. Nothing has been given up to the intellect, nothing to
systems. We have abstained from entering into scientific
disputes.

If the following formula should seem to you too
systematic, pass over it. We have not sought to em¬
body a dogma in it. We would only simplify, if pos¬
sible, the point of view, and place it in the reader’s
power to embrace the whole significance of the book.

NOTE 1.

The point of departure is violent. It is the gigantic and necessary war
waged by the insect upon all morbid or encumbering life that might prove an

342

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

obstacle to life. A terrible war, an infernal toil, which ensures the safety of
the world.

This powerful accelerator of the universal passage should destroy like fire.
But to secure the sharpness of action such a mission requires, it is necessary
that its own transformations be accelerated, its life compressed ; that from love
to death, and death to love, it revolve in a burning circle. However brief may
be this circle, it cannot be accomplished but at the cost of painful metamor¬
phoses, which resemble a series of successive deaths.

Among most insects, marriage means the death of the father ; maternity,
the death of the mother. Thus the generations pass away without knowing
one another. The mother loves her daughter, anticipates her birth, often
immolates herself for her sake, but will never see her.

This cruel contradiction, this harsh denial which Nature opposes to the
most pathetic aspirations of love, apparently inflames and irritates it. It gives
everything unreservedly, knowing that it is for death. It draws from it two
powers ; on the one hand, unheard tongues of light and colour , ravishing phan¬
tasmagorias, in which love is not translated, but expands in rays, and pharos-
fires, and torches, and burning sparks. It is the appeal to the rapid present, the
lightning and the thunder of happiness. But the love of the to come, the fore¬
seeing tenderness for that which not yet is, is expressed in another fashion by
the astonishingly complex and ingenious creation of a storehouse of imple¬
ments, whence all our mechanical arts have derived their most perfect models.
Usually this grand apparatus of tools serves but for a day ; it enables them at
the moment they forsake the orphan to improvise the cradle which shall con¬
tinue the mother, shall perpetuate the incubation when the mother ceases to
exist.

But how 1 Must she indeed perish 1 Can there be no exception to the
pitiless law ] In hot climates, especially, many mothers may survive. What
if these mothers united together to deceive destiny, by associating so many brief
existences in one common and lasting life in which their children should find
an eternal mother ?

How shall we elude death ? — Let us create society.

The society of mothers. The insect is essentially a female and a mother.
The male is an exception, a secondary accident, — frequently, too, an abortion,
a caricature of an insect.

The dream of the female — maternity, and the safety of her child — the
preservation of the future — leads her to create the community, which secures
her own safety.

This society can only perpetuate itself by ensuring its existence against the
season of sterility. Hence results a need of accumulation. Hence proceed
labour and economy.

ASSOCIATION AMONG INSECTS.

343

But Nature, eluded by the effort and the toil, — I was going to say, tli6
virtue, — does not lose its rights. Beaten on the one side, on the other it re¬
acts upon the commonwealth, and grievously oppresses it. This self-protecting
society, while rescuing immense multitudes from death and prolonging the
common existence, multiplies the mouths to be fed, and is often overloaded.
If its members would not die of famine, they must live on a very scanty
regimen, must preserve alive a limited number of fertile females, and condemn
the majority, or nearly the whole of the females to celibacy. Beared for
virginity and labour, sterilized from the cradle in their maternal powers, they
are by no means of barren intellect. The extinction of certain faculties seems
to strengthen the others.

Such is the institution, ingeniously severe, of aunts or adoptive mothers.
With too little sexual feeling to desire love, they possess enough to wish for
children, to love and adopt them. They are both less than mothers, and more
than mothers. Should invasion or ruin befall the hive or the ant-hill, the true
mothers consult their own safety in flight ; the devoted aunts or sisters know
no other thought but that of saving the children.

Elevated by this factitious maternity and disinterested love above itself, the
insect surpasses all other creatures,— even those which, like the mammals, are

evidently superior in organization. It teaches us that organism is not every¬
thing, and that there is a potency in life which acts strongly beyond the range
and in despite of the organs. Those species which, like the ants, have no
special instruments to facilitate their work, are invariably the most advanced.

The noblest work of the world, the most elevated goal to which its inhabi¬
tants tend, is the community, — by which I mean a society strongly consoli¬
dated. The only being, besides Man, who seems to reach this goal, is un¬
doubtedly the Insect.

No other creature approaches it. The most sublime and charming, the
Bird, is, through these very qualities, also the most individual. Its society
is the family ; its community, the nest ; its associations are only collocations of
nests for the sake of security. Those mammals which approach us so nearly,
and impress us so strongly by their advanced organisation, — I mean, the
beaver, — show wonderful powers of combination for the execution of their task ;
but, when the work is done, they retire to their own houses and families,
isolated by the very tenderness of their domestic affections. The assembly of
the beavers is, as it were, a colony of builders and engineers, where each one
lives apart ; but they are not citizens, and it is not a city.

The city is only to be found in the insect world. Separated from man by
many degrees in organism, the insect approaches him more closely than any
other being in the supreme work of his life, — which is, to live for the many. It

344

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

lias not those touching signs of close relationship which render the higher
animals so interesting to us. It has no blood ; it has no milk. But I recog¬
nize it as akin by one loftier attribute : it has the social sense.

An ignorant dogmatism had long asserted that the very perfection of these
insect-societies depended on their automatism. But modern observation has
proved, that if the conditions are varied, and unforeseen obstacles and diffi¬
culties placed in their way, they confront them with vigour and calm sense,
and with the resources of an unfettered ingenuity.

It is a world of method , which, at need, can show itself unrestrained.

A world which, presently, in its original mission of combat and destruction,
seemed to us an atrociously fatal force ; but which afterwards, by the influence
of its maternal devotion, became a world of social harmony, preaching a lofty
morality.

But is maternity all % No; the community of life introduces the insect to
the threshold of a still higher rank of sentiments. Even among those which
are isolated — among the necrophori, for example, and the pilulary scarabsei —
fraternal co-operation has a beginning. They render mutual services, and fly
to the assistance of one another, co-operating in certain works. Among the
sociable insects the feeling is carried to a considerable height ; the bees feed
one another, mouth to mouth, and stint themselves to supply their sisters. A
very safe, and by no means romantic observer, saw an ant dressing the wound
of another ant which had lost an antenna, by pouring on it some honey-dew to
close it up and protect it from the air.

See now how far we have advanced from our starting-point, where the
insect appeared to us a pure voracious element, a machine of absorption.

A great, a sublime metamorphosis, more marvellous than that of the
moultings and transformations which guided the egg, the grub, the nymph, to
the assumption of wings.

It is a world strange to man, but singularly parallel to our own, though
having no mutual mode of communication. We invent scarcely anything

which has not previously — -though for a long time unknown to us — been in-

vented by the insect.

What have the great animals discovered! Nothing. Apparently their
warmth of life, and their red blood, obscure their mental light.

On the contrary, the insect world, free from a heavy apparatus of flesh and
blood intoxication, more subtly sensitive, and moved by a nervous electricity,
seems a frightful world of spirits.

Frightful! No. If terror sit at the threshold of science, safety is found
in its penetralia. At the first glance the living energy of the invisible may
startle us ; and with a shudder of alarm we may contemplate in the animalcule

UNIVERSAL SYMPATHY OF ANIMAL LIFE.

346

the likeness, some flashes of the individuality, or a certain undefinable some¬
thing which seems like a counterfeit, of man.

These gleams, which so troubled the great Swammerdam, and made him
recoil with dread, are precisely the circumstances that give me encouragement.
Yes; all see, all feel, and all love : a miracle truly religious ! In the material
infinite which deepens under my eyes, I recognize, for my reassurance, a
moral infinite. The individuality hitherto claimed as a monopoly by the
pride of the chosen species, I see generously extended to all, and conferred
even upon the least. The gulf of life would have seemed to me deserted,
desolate, barren, and godless, had I not everywhere discovered the warmth and
tenderness of the Universal Love.

NOTE 2.

Our Authorities. — In a book which puts forward no scientific pretensions,
the book of an unlearned writer dedicated to unlearned readers, we do not
hesitate to confess that our method of study was very indirect. If we had
commenced with subtle classificators or minute anatomists, or with dry manuals
of instruction, perhaps we should have been checked at the first step. But
we approached this science on its attractive side — through the great historians
of the insect, who have united the delineation of its habits with the description
of its organs. Our mind had received a strong and decisive blow (if we may

34G

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

so speak) from the books of the two Hubers on the Bees and the Ants. The
impression was so great, that thereafter we read with interest what one does
not usually read continuously, Reaumur’s six quarto volumes of Memoires — an
immortal book, which must always be a standard authority. Neither the
contemptuous reaction of BufFon, nor the anatomical works, of superior exact¬
ness on special points, which have since been produced, should cause it to be
forgotten. Reaumur was, as it were, the central point of our studies, and
from him we went back to the illustrious masters of the seventeenth century,
Swammerdam and Malpighi ; next, we descended to those of the eighteenth,
the Lyonnets, Bonnets, and Geers ; finally, to our modern writers, Latreille,
Dumeril, Lepelletier, Blanchard, — to the fertile and audacious school of the
Geoffrey Saint-Hilaires and the Audouins, gloriously supported by Ampere
and Goethe. While profiting by the noble treatises which sum up the main
results of the science, like those of Lacordaire, we by no means neglected the
admirable monographs of the present century, — those of Leon Dufour (scattered
through the Annales des Sciences Naturelles , and other collections), the grand
work of Walckenaer on the Spiders, the colossal labour of Strauss on the
Cockchafer — a monument of the first class, which can only be compared to
Lyonnet’s treatise on the Caterpillar. As for details drawn from travellers,
we shall hereafter have an opportunity of referring to them. We shall also
acknowledge our debt to foreign writers, — to Kirby, Smeathman, Lund, and
others. For the anatomy of the insect, as for general anatomy, we cannot too
strongly recommend the admirable and usefully enlarged specimens prepared
by our excellent master, Dr. Auzoux.

NOTE 3.— Book i., Chap. iii.

On Insect Embryos , Invisible Animalcules , Infusorias as the Predecessors or
Forerunners of the Insect , Ac. — The work of the vermets has been observed, in
Sicily, by M. de Quatrefages. — As for the microscopic fossils, the infusorias,
&c., their great coup de theatre has been Ehrenberg’s discovery. See his
Memoires in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles , Second Series, vols. i., ii.,

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

3 17

vi., vii., viii. In volume i., p. 134, for 1834, lie specifies the point at which
Cuvier left the science, and how much his discovery has added to it.

Upon the living world, upon the processes at present in operation for the
creation of little spheres, on those humble constructors who accomplish such
great things, we owe all our information to the English voyagers, the Nelsons,*
the Darwins, and others. They are minute and very simple observers, generally
timid in their assertions, which have been of the boldest character, they having
seen the very heart of the mystery, and caught Nature in the act. Read
Darwin (whose researches have been most ably summed up by Sir Charles
Lyell) for information on the prodigious manufacture of chalk, divided alter¬
nately between the fishes and the polypes, which are building up islands with
it, and will soon construct continents.

England alone, that immense poulpe whose arms enfold the earth, and who
incessantly feels and examines it, could observe it thoroughly in its distant
solitudes, where at its ease it continues its everlasting procreation. The
great theories formerly advanced in explanation of the cataclysms, epochs, and
revolutions of the earth, will lose, perhaps, something of their importance.
For we know now that everything is in a state of constant change.

Does Europe perceive that quite a complete literature has sprung from
Great Britain in the last twenty years 1 I describe it as an immense com¬
mission of inquiry into the condition of the globe, undertaken by the English.
They alone could do it. And why ? Because other nations travel, but only the
English reside. They daily recommence at all points of the earth the life-
study of a Robinson Crusoe : and this is done by a crowd of isolated observers,
led abroad by commercial speculation, and hence so much the less systematical
in their inquiries.

* “Nous devons tout aux navigateurs Anglais, aux Nelson, aux Darwin,” etc.

348

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

NOTE 4.— Book i., Chap. iv.

(Love and Death.) On the Female Apparatus. — Reaumur, — and, in fact,
every writer, — has admired the manner in which the weapons of war become
the instruments of maternal love. M. Lacase, in a very beautiful thesis, the
result of independent observations, and a continuation of the analogous works
of an eminent master, Leon Dufour, has treated this subject with great
anatomical preciseness. An original and important point of his labour is,
undoubtedly, his demonstration, conformably to the views of Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire, Serres, Audouin, and others, “ that the very various armours which
prolong the abdomen imply the modification, or even the sacrifice, of one or
two of its posterior rings.” Thus Nature apparently operates upon a fixed
amount of substance, only increasing one part at the expense of others, which
are shortened or transformed.

NOTE 5.— Book i., Chap. v.

The Chilly Offspring of the Insect. — “ But,” the reader will exclaim, “ what
labour ! How terrible a law of continuous efforts to be imposed on young beings,
as yet but ill provided with tools, and without that superb arsenal of imple-

ments which at a later stage we admire in the insect. How protracted are
the means devised for their defence, which would be much sooner accomplished

ANATOMY OF THE INSECT.

349

if they were born less soft, a little firmer, and somewliat less impression¬
able.”

Yes; but in that case they would be just so far unfitted for the essential
circumstance which ensures their development. Nature wishes them to be
soft, ay, and very soft, that they may more easily undergo the moultings and
painful changes which are imperative upon them, — which moultings, if the
insect-substance were hard, would inflict upon it the most severe injuries.
By instinct they are aware of this, and dread extremely lest their bodies
should harden. The processionary caterpillars, for example, though covered
thickly with hair, conceal themselves from the sun under ample curtains. And
they are also mindful to issue forth only in the evening, when the damp and
misty air may preserve their salutary humidity.

NOTE 6.— Book i.. Chap. vii.

The Appearance of the Perfect Insect. — The anatomy of the insect has been
the theme of one of the greatest disputes of our time. Some one having
visited Goethe, soon after the French Revolution of July 1830: — “Well,
well,” inquired the illustrious sage, “ have they settled the question 1 ” And
as the traveller seemed to think he referred to the political question, “ Oh, it
is something of far greater importance ! ” said Goethe ; “I refer to the great
duel between Cuvier and Geoffroy.”

The world took part in it. Strauss and others remained faithful to Cuvier.
The great physicist Ampere, in an anonymous article inserted in the first
volume of the Annales des Sciences Naturelles , adopted the opinions of Geoffroy,
Audouin, and Serres, and even expressed them with a juvenile audacity that
these anatomists, in their modesty, had not displayed.

All the complex details of their proceedings had been extracted and pre¬
pared [by Madame Michelet] for the present volume with a patience and
persevering love such as could be inspired only by a true and tender re¬
ligion of Nature. Barbarian that I am, I must sacrifice this arduous labour,
which, perhaps, would not be much relished by the public to whom I address
myself.

The place which the insect occupies in the animal creation is very clearly
defined in Lacordaire’s excellent resume : — “ Equal to the vertebrates in the
energy of its muscular fibre, scarcely inferior to them in the organization of
its digestive canal, superior even to the bird by the quantity of its respiration,
it falls below the molluscs through the imperfection of its system of circulation.
Its nervous system is less concentrated than that of many of the Crustacea.”
(Lacordaire, vol. ii., p. 2.)

350

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

Has the insect a brain ? It is a disputed question. The nervous appar¬
atus which, in the molluscs, has not found, so far, a centre, tends, it is true,
in the insect, towards centralization. Two longitudinal strings of nerves,
which run through the entire length of the body, abut on the nerves of the
head, which are not massed as in the higher animal. In the wasp, however,
has been discovered a firm, whitish substance, strongly resembling the brain.
But this would seem exceptional. Even in the head of insects remarkable for
their intelligence, you will find only simple nervous ganglions, not differing in
any respect from those which compose the two threads.

This inferiority of organization does but render more surprising the
superiority of the insect in art and sociability to all other animals, even to the
principal mammals (with a single exception). Here at the highest point of
the ladder, there at the lowest, it occupies, on the whole, a middle place ; and
is, as it were, in the scale of existence, an energetic mediator between life and
death.

NOTE 7.— Book ii., Chap. i.

Swammerdam. — We refer to the inaugurator and martvr of our science, the
creator of the instrument which has enabled men to follow up his discoveries, —
a great inventor in many senses, — specially for the preparation of anatomical
specimens. The reader should study his Biblia Naturae , in Boerhaave’s edition,
ornamented with fine illustrations (two vols. folio), and not in the incomplete
French abridgment, published in the Memoires of the Academy of Dijon,
which gives the scientific results, but no trace of the man.

THE INSECT AS MAN’S AUXILIARY.

351

We do not undertake to write the history of Entomology. A good
abridgment will be found at the end of M. Th. Lacordaire’s Introduction a
1' Entomologie.

NOTE 8.— Eook ii., Chap. iv.

The Insect as Man's Auxiliary. — The ingenious work which I here con¬
fute, and which, assuredly, cannot be read with gratification, is entitled, — Les
Insectes, ou Reflexions d'un amateur de la chasse aux petits oiseaux, par E.
Gand, Lecture faite d V Academic d' Amiens (26th December 1856).

A remark which I make a few pages further on, in reference to the neces¬
sity of a popular teaching of natural history, well deserves to gain attention.
The wealth and morality of the world would be doubled if this teaching could
be universal. M. Emile Blanchard’s important work, Zoologie Agricole (in
folio, 1854), gives the very useful history of the principal insects injurious to
our ordinary or ornamental plants. M. Pouchet, in his excellent Memoire
on the Cockchafer, enumerates the principal authors who have described the
destructive insects. The United States Congress has entrusted to Mr. Harris
the preparation of a history of them.

NOTE 9.— Book ii., Chap. v.

Light and Colour. — My description of tropical climates is borrowed from
a large number of travellers, — Humboldt, Azara, Auguste, Saint-Hilaire,
Castelneau, Weddell, Charles Waterton, and others. For Brazil and Guiana,

352

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

I have been greatly indebted to the exceeding courtesy of M. Ferdinand Denis,
whose knowledge of those countries is so perfect.

Paris possesses several fine collections of insects, besides that of the
Museum. One of the best- known is Doctor Bois Duval’s (lepidoptera). An
establishment exclusively devoted to the sale of insects may be found at No. 17
Due des Saints-Peres. The magnificent collection to which I refer on page
176, is that of M. Doue, who most readily showed it to us, and explained it
with infinite complaisance.

The anecdote which concludes chapter xii. ( The Ornament of Living Flames)
is related, in reference to the women of Santa Cruz in Bolivia, by the always
accurate Dr. Weddell. The Indian phrase, “ Replace it whence thou borrowedst
it,” is recorded by Waterton.

NOTE 10.— Book ii., Chap. viii.

Renovation of Human Arts by Study of the Insect. — Who has not seen that
for a long time the art of decoration has made no progress, does but incessantly
repeat itself1? When a particular subject has lasted ten years, men think to
rejuvenate it with a few variations. In a life of half a century I have several
times seen this rotation of fashion, which would appear singularly monotonous
if we did not possess in so high a degree the gift of forgetfulness.

The decorative aid;, instead of seeking its renovation in the things of old,
would profit greatly by drawing its inspiration from the infinity of beauties
distributed throughout Nature. They abound and superabound : —

1st, In the highly accented forms of tropical plants. Ours only produce
their effect in masses, and on a grand scale.

2nd, In those of a great number of the lower animals, radiata, and others ;
in many of the little floating molluscs, living and imperceptible flowers, the
design of which, when enlarged, might suggest some very original ideas.

3rd, In certain parts of the most despised creatures ; as, for example, in
the eyes of the fly.

ON THE SPIDER.

353

4 tli, In the forms, designs, and colours one detects in the thickness of the
living tissue ; as, for example, on lifting with the scalpel the strata of the wing-
sheath of the beetles. Nature, which has so embellished the surface, has
hidden, perhaps, still more beauty in the depth. Nothing is finer than the
vital fluids, when seen in the mobility of their circulation, and in the delicate
canals where that circulation is accomplished and defined. They speak to us
less eloquently, and impress us less forcibly by the splendour of the glittering
leaves among which they circulate, than by the expressive forms in which we
divine the mystery of their life. These are their visible energies.

NOTE 11.— Book ii., Chaps, ix. and x.

The Spider. — These two chapters are mainly the result of our own observa¬
tions. We have profited, however, by several authorities; especially by the
capital and classical work, the grand labour of Walckenaer, — which is of
importance both for the description, classification, and moral history of the
Spiders.

Azara tells us that in Paraguay the natives spin the cocoon of a great orange-
coloured spider fully an inch in diameter. Sir George Staunton, the English
ambassador to China, in his “Travels in Java” (vol. i., p. 343) informs us that
the epeiras of Asia weave such stout webs that they can only be cut with a
sharp-edged instrument ; at the Bermudas, their webs are capable of arresting
the progress of a bird as big as a thrush (Bichard Stafford, Coll. Acad.,
ii., p. 156).

Doctor Lemercier, our learned bibliographer, has lent to me (from his
personal collection) a rare and very clever brochure by Quatrefages on the
hygrometrical sensibility of spiders, on their prescience of variations of the
temperature — which we might very well turn to advantage — and on the skilful
exposure of their webs.

The formation of their beautiful and poetical autumn-webs, which are

354

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

called Virgin! s Threads , is very clearly explained by Des Etang, in the Memoir es
de la Societe Agricole de Troyes , for 1839.

In reference to tlie spider’s most terrible enemy, the ichneumon, some
curious details are given in the fourth volume of the Memoirs of the American
Society. In order to preserve it for its little ones, it does not kill its victim,
but, if one may so speak, etherizes it by pricking it, and distilling into the
wound a venom which apparently paralyzes it.

My remarks on the terror of the male in his amorous advances are based
upon those of De Geer, and Lepelletier, in the Nouveau Bulletin de la Societe
Philomathique, pt. 07, p. 257.

Finally, the master- work of the spider, the ingeniously constructed house
and door of the Mygale of Corsica, has been completely described and drawn
by an observer whom one can trust implicitly, — Audouin (followed by Walcke-
naer, and others).

NOTE 12.— Book iii., Chap. l.

The Termites. — The beautiful illustrations of Smeathman would merit
reproduction, and the translation of his book (ed. 1784), now very rarely met
with, ought to be reprinted. The interesting additional details collected by

Azara, Auguste, Saint-Hilaire, Castelneau, and others, might be added, so as
to make a complete monograph.

It is by no means a matter of slight import to recognize that the true and

ON THE ANTS.

355

grand principle of art, so long misunderstood in tlie Middle Ages, lias been
always followed to the very letter by creatures of so low an order, in their
surprising constructions.

Tlie fact I have related in reference to the subterranean mining of
Valencia by the termites, will be found in Humboldt’s “ Travels in Equinoctial
America.”

As for La Rochelle, read the interesting chapter in M. de Quatrefages’
/Souvenirs Tun Naturaliste.

NOTE 13.— Book iii., Chap. ii.

The Ants. — The migrations of the tropical ants, say Azara and Lacordaire,
sometimes last over two or three days. They are to be compared in continuous¬
ness and frightful numbers only to the clouds of pigeons which, in North
America, obscure the sky for several days in succession (see Audubon). Lund
( Annates des Sciences Naturelles, 1831, vol. xxiii., p. 113) gives a curious picture
of these ant-migrations. They are terribly warlike, and the Americans amuse
themselves by opposing in a duel the visiting ant (Atta) to the Araraa ant.
The latter, though the weaker, prevails through the potency of its poison.

As for our European ants, my brother-in-law, M. Hippolyte Mialaret,
transmits to me a curious fact, which, I believe, has not before been observed.
He gave them a medley of various kinds of grain, — wheat, barley, rye, — which
they employed in their buildings. Having opened the ant-hill, he found the
grains carefully classified, and distributed on different stories, — wheat, for
example, on the second, barley on the third, — the different kinds being nowhere
mixed.

An excellent Italian dissertation by M. Giuseppe Gene would induce one
to believe Huber mistaken in his assertion that the mother ant can by her
unaided self found a community. After her fecundation she retires into a
corner, where she plucks off her wings, and waits. There some prowling ants
discover, feel, and recognize her, her and her eggs sown on the ground, with
much prudence and even visible mistrust. Afterwards they explore the
country round about with an infinite circumspection, always coming back to
the mother, and hesitating long before they decide. At length, their numbers
increasing, they definitively adopt her, and set to work.

The indomitable perseverance of the ants is celebrated in a beautiful
Oriental legend of I know not what Asiatic prince, — Tamerlane, I believe.
Beaten and defeated several times in one campaign, he was seated, almost
despairing, in the depth of his tent. An ant mounted the side. Several
times he made it drop, but it invariably reascended. He was curious to see
how long it would persevere, and twenty-four times threw it to the ground

356

ILLU STKATIYE NOTES.

without discouraging it. Then he grew tired, and moreover he was full of
admiration. The ant conquered. So he said: “Let us imitate it. We too
will conquer as the ant has done.” But for the ant, the hero had missed the
Empire of Asia.

NOTE 14.— Book iii., Chap. iii.

Flocks of the Ants. — Nearly every plant nourishes grubs, which are embel¬
lished with the most varied, and frequently the most dazzling colours. The
rose-tree aphis, when I examined it through a microscope, seemed to me of a
very pleasant bright green. Thrown on its back, it displayed a very big belly,
and a very small ungainly head, which appeared to be neither more nor less
than a sucker, while it agitated all its limbs. On the whole, I took it to be an
innocent creature, which should inspire no repugnant feeling. One can under¬
stand how the ants absorb the honey-dew upon its body. (See Bonnet and
others, in reference to their prodigious fecundity.)

NOTE 15.— Book iii., Chap. v.

The Wasps. — Before speaking of this terrible species, in which, perhaps, we
see revealed the loftiest energy of nature, I ought to have spoken of its modest
neighbour, the drone. Beaumur, who is not sufficiently known as a writer,
and who frequently displays much grace of style, says, very pleasingly, that
the poor drones, in their rough little societies, when compared with the
royal communities of the wasps and bees, are mere rustics or savages, and

AN ARISTOCRACY OF ARTISTS.

357

their nests so many hamlets, but that we find a pleasure, even after having
visited great capitals, in resting our eyes on the simplicity of villages and
villagers. (Reaumur, Memoires , vol. vi., p. iii. preface, and p. 4 text.) Not¬
withstanding their simplicity, the drones are industrious, and have their cha¬
racteristic manners and virtues. The poor males, so despised elsewhere, are
more happily employed here in a society where the lofty speciality of art, not
being so strikingly developed in the females, proves less humiliating ; they are
almost the equals of their spouses, who do not massacre them, as the wasps
and bees do their destined husbands.

NOTE 16.— Book iii., Chap. viii.

The Wax-making Bees. An Aristocracy of Artists. — I here follow, in the
main, the authority of M. Debeauvoys, in his Guide de VApiculteur (“ The
Bee-keeper’s Manual”), ed. 1853. In this little but important book he has
made the all-important distinction which escaped Huber’s notice, and separated
the great wax-making architects from the little gleaners and nurses. But I
ask his permission to trust rather to M. Dujardin on the general character of
the bees. They are, undoubtedly, choleric, and of a very dry temperament ;
the liqueurs and perfumes of the flowers excite them, and compel them
frequently to quench their thirst. But in themselves they are sufficiently
gentle, and can even be tamed. M. Dujardin, having renewed every day
the provisions of a poor hive, was readily recognized by the bees, who flew
towards him, and ran over his hands without stinging him. The annual de¬
struction which they consummate of their males is a common law with them ;
the wasps, and other necessitous tribes, living in dread of famine at the epoch
when the flowers disappear. In America they are looked upon as the sign of
civilization. The Indians see in the bee the type of the white race, and in the
buffalo the precursor of the red. (Washington Irving, “ Tour in the Prairies.

The bees, as sisters and aunts, remind one of the Germany of Tacitus : —
lC The aunt is there held in higher esteem than the mother.” It must have
resembled a country of bees.

358

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

M. Pouchet, whom I have already cited several times, has been good
enough to furnish me with a very interesting anecdote of the mason-bees : — -
“ In Egypt and Nubia, which I traversed some few months ago, these
hymenoptera and their buildings are so abundant that the ceilings of certain
temples and those of some hypogea are entirely covered with them, and they
absolutely mask the sculptures and hieroglyphics. These nests frequently
form there a succession of layers ; and in certain localities they are super¬
imposed one upon another in sufficient numbers to form a kind of stalactite
suspended to the vaulted roofs of the monuments. In their construction the
bee makes use of Nile mud only ; and when she has deposited therein her
progeny, she seals them up with a delicately wrought cover, which the young
bee, after having undergone its various metamorphoses, lifts off and flies away.
But these nests are often broken up by a species of lizard, which, by means of
its singularly sharp nails, climbs to the ceilings. There it wages incessant war
against the mason-bees while they are building their nests, or rather it may be
seen crashing through the walls to devour their young progeny.”

NOTE 17.— Conclusion, p. 337.

A Feminine Intuition. — A great question of method which the future will
clear up, is, to know how far woman will one day master the sciences of life,
and to what extent the study of these sciences will be shared between the two
sexes. If sympathy for animals, long and patient tenderness, the persevering
observation of the delicatest objects, were the only qualities which this study
demanded, it would seem as if woman ought to make the best naturalist. But
the life-sciences have another and a far gloomier aspect, which repels and
affrights ; and it is so, because they are at the same time the sciences of death.

However, in this very century, the grand and leading discovery, all-impor¬
tant for the knowledge of the higher insects, belongs to a maiden, the daughter
of a scientific naturalist of French Switzerland, Mademoiselle Jurine. She has
found that the bee-workers, who were thought to be neuters (of neither the
one nor the other sex), were really females, attenuated by their exceedingly

SYBILLE DE MEKIAN.

359

narrow cradles and inferior regimen. Now, as these workers form nearly the
whole people (except five or six bred as queens, and a few hundred males), it
follows that the hive of twenty or thirty thousand bees is female. Thus the pre¬
dominance of the feminine sex, the general law of insect life, has obtained its
supreme confirmation. There are no neuters ; neither among the bees, nor the
ants, nor all the superior tribes of insects. The males are a small exception, a
secondary accident. I feel able to assert that, on the whole, the insect is female.

Mademoiselle Jurine’s discovery has also revealed to us the true character
of the maternity of adoption, an admirably original characteristic of these
insects, and the elevated law of disinterestedness and sacrifice which is the
ennoblement of their communities.

An undoubtedly inferior, but still distinguished merit to that of accom¬
plishing great discoveries, is that of representing animals to us by pen or
pencil in their true forms, their movements, and the general harmony of the
things with which they are associated. No art seems to belong more naturally
to woman. A woman has commenced it.

The illustrious Audubon has won just admiration for his representation of
the bird in its complete harmonies, its animal and vegetable medium, on the
plants which feed, near the enemy which assails it. But it has been too gene¬
rally forgotten that the model of his harmonious paintings, which present us
with so true a picture of life, was furnished by a woman, Sybille de Merian.
Her handsome volume ( Metamorphose des Insectes de Surinam , folio, in three
languages, ed. 1705), was the first in which this admirable method was in¬
vented and skilfully applied.

She is called “ Mademoiselle ,” though she was married. The name of
“ dame ” was in her time still restricted to women of noble birth. And she
remains “ Mademoiselle;” is never cited except under her maiden name. Her
books, from their pure science and great perseverance, give one the idea of a
person lifted above the world of persons, and wholly devoted to art and nature.

I have dedicated to her a word or two, but without speaking of her life.
A native of Bale, the daughter, sister, and mother of celebrated engravers, and
herself an excellent painter of flowers upon velvet, she long resided at Frank¬
fort and Nurenberg. She experienced great misfortunes, her husband being
ruined and having separated from her. She then sought refuge in a mystical
society, analogous to that which had formerly consoled Swammerdam. The
religious spark of the new science, the theology of insects, as a contemporary
terms it, here produced a strong impression on her mind. She was acquainted
with Swammerdam’s great idea, the unity of metamorphoses, and with that
which Malpighi had flung in the face of astonished Europe in his book on
the silkworm : “ Insects have a heart.”

What ! they have a heart, like us ! Which, like ours, throbs and stirs at

360

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

the impulse of their desires, tlieir fears, or their passions ! How touching an
idea ! How well adapted to influence a woman ! — But is this a fact 1
Many long denied it, but doubt has been impossible since the truth was
demonstrated in 1824 in M. Strauss’s treatise on “ The Cockchafer.”

Madame de Merian, then, started from the silkworm. But her curiosity and
artistic eagerness embraced everything. Contrasted with her dull and sombre
Germany, Holland, with its rich American and Oriental collections, appeared to
her like the great museum of the tropics. There she established herself, and with
her pencil made its collections her own. Those faery cemeteries, glittering with
the beauty of the dead, did but whet in her the desire to investigate life in
the region where it most luxuriates. At the age of fifty-four she set out for
Guiana ; and, during a two years’ residence in its dangerous climate; collected
the drawings and paintings which were to inaugurate art in natural bistory.

In this branch of labour, the stumbling-block of the artist, who is an artist
and nothing more, is that he may do very well, but make Nature coquettish,
add the pretty to the beautiful, and flourish those graces and daintinesses which
secure for a scientific treatise the favour of fashionable ladies. Nothing of this
kind is discernible in the work of Sybille de Merian, but on every page a noble
vigour, a masculine gravity, a courageous simplicity. At the same time, a close
inspection, especially of the illustrations coloured by her own hand, discovers
in the softness, breadth, and fulness of the plants, their lustrous and velvety
freshness, — the tones either dead or enamelled, and, as it were, flowered, which
the insects offer, — the tender, conscientious hand of a woman who has laboured
upon the whole with a reverence inspired by love.

We have seen (p. 180), in our chapter on the Fire-Flies , the astonishment
of the timid German in a world so new, when the savages brought her its living
materials, — venomous herbs, lizards, and snakes, and fantastic serpents. But
the very strangeness of this nature, the emotions of the painter trembling
before her models, the restless attention with which she sought to seize the
changeful physiognomy and mysterious manners, while keenly agitating her
heart, did but awaken her genius. Never satisfied by her representations
of fugitive realities, she believed she could make each insect properly known
only by painting it under all its forms (caterpillar, nymph, butterfly). And
this not contenting her, she placed beneath it the vegetable on which it fed, and
by its side the lizard, serpent, or spider which fed upon it. Thus, the mutu¬
ality and exchange of nature was clearly shown ; you saw clearly that formid¬
able circulation, which, in tropical climates, is so rapid. Each of those fine
plates, so harmonious and so complete, instructs not only by its truthful details,
but inspires a profound sympathy with life, which is a very different and much
more valuable teaching.

One thing strikes me, which, however, this love explains. She has painted

WOMAN AND SCIENCE.

361

side by side those creatures which devour one another. They draw close
together, each faces its antagonist, and you conclude that a frightful duel is
imminent. But she has generally concealed the tragic struggle. She has
shrunk from painting death.

How much more terrible would have been her task had she advanced
further, had she opened and dissected her models, and forced her feminine
pencil to the lugubrious painting of anatomical detail !

And here we recognize the precise limit at which women are arrested in
the study of the natural sciences. They are incapable of confronting it on
both sides. Michael Angelo has finely said : — “ Death and life are but one.
They are the work of the same master and the same hand.” But women do
not submit. Between them and death no compact is possible. This is very
easily understood ; they themselves are, life in all its prolific charm. They are
born to give it. Whatever breaks the charm is a horror to them. Death, and
especially pain, are not only antipathic, but almost incomprehensible. They
feel that only happiness and joy should attend upon woman. Pain inflicted
by a woman’s hand appears to them very j ustly as a horrible contradiction.

In the natural sciences there are three things they may master, the three
things of life : the. incubation of the new being, — that is, the tenderness of its
earliest care ; the education , the nourishment (to speak as our fathers did) of
tl*e young adults ; finally, the observation of manners, and the subtle intelli¬
gence of means of inter-communication with all species. By the aid of these
three woman’s arts, man may conciliate and gradually appropriate the inferior
species, and even many of the insect species. To them belong entirely the
arts of domestication. If childhood were less cruel, or at least not harshly
insensible, it might share these womanly cares. For Woman, as a soft and
tender child, full of pity, is the mediator of all nature.

But as for death, as for pain, as for the lights which science draws from
them, do not speak of them to Woman. Here she halts, leaves you on the
road, and will go no further forward.

She asserts — and the assertion may appear of some real weight, even to
the sedatest minds — that science, of late years, has marched by two contrary
roads : on the one hand, demonstrating by the study of manners and of organs
that animals are not a world apart, but far more like ourselves than had been
generally supposed ; and on the other, when it has so clearly proved their great
resemblance, and consequently their capacity of suffering, it ordains that we
shall inflict upon them the most exquisite and most cruelly protracted agonies.

Science, on this terrible side, closes itself more and more against women.
Nature, while inviting them to penetrate it, checks them at the same time
by their excessive tenderness of feeling, and by the reverence for life with
which she herself has inspired them.

3G2

LAST WORDS.

Of all creatures, insects seemed the least worthy of being trained (or
domesticated). They were sought only for their colours. Nevertheless, who¬
ever sees in the pursuit nothing but a simple pleasure, will perhaps reflect for
a moment when he learns that impaled insects frequently endure their torture
for whole years ! (See Lemahoux, and, particularly, the excellent Bulletin de
la Societe Protectrice des Animaux, September and October 185G.)

In proportion as women understand the maternal instincts of the creatures
I have described, their infinite tenderness, and their ingenious prevision for the
objects of their love, it will become impossible for mothers to immolate these
mothers, and put them to the torture !

§D<tst ell orbs.

The originating sentiment of the studies of which this book is the outcome,
is also that which induced their suspension. Their primary attraction was
found in Huber’s revelation, in his vivid manifestation of the individuality
of the insect. But that which at the first glance had seemed so paradoxical
and incredible, was discovered, when verified, to fall below the reality. The
spectacle of so many labours and efforts for the common good, the sight of all
these meritorious existences, imposes a duty upon our conscience, and renders
it more and more difficult to treat as a thing the being which wills, and toils,
and loves !

- ♦♦ -

INTRODUCTION.

I. THE LIVING INFINITE.

The writer is moved by the voices of the Insect World, ... ... ... . .. ... 17

Which leads him to reflect on its infinite numbers, ... . ... 18

He refers to his loving study of the Bird, ... ... . 19

But the Bird had a language ; has the Insect ? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 19

In many respects, it is an enigma which Man cannot read, .. ... ... . . ... 20

The Insect, however, has much to plead in self-defence, . ... 21

And between it and Man the interpreter must be Love, ... ... ... ... ... 22

II. OUR STUDIES AT PARIS AND IN SWITZERLAND.

How the writer was assisted by his wife in his study of the Insect, . ... ... 23

Woman is well adapted for such a study ; and why ? . 24

Her tact, delicate touch, and fine perception fit her for microscopical investigations, ... 24

The writer seeks a retirement near Lucerne, . . . 25

The surrounding scenery is described, . . 26

And he bursts into a glowing panegyric on the Alps, . ... ... ... 27

He discourses on the communion between Nature and the human soul, . ... 2S

This leads him to a description of a forest scene, ... ... ... ... ... ... . 29

In which he recognizes the presence of the insect life, ... . ... 30

A constant conflict is maintained between the insect and the plant, the latter being aided

by the bird, . ... ... ... ... . ... 30

In the forest, then, lurks a hidden world, ... ... ... ... . ... ... 31

The interior of an ant-hill is suddenly revealed, ... ... ... ... ... ... 32

And the effects become visible of the formic acid, . ... ... 33

Reflections suggested by the ruined ant-hill, ... . ... ... 34

III. OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU.

The writer resolves to attempt an explanation of the Insect World, . . 36

For such a task Fontainebleau offers peculiar facilities, . 37

A description is given of the characteristics of the place, ... ... .. ... ... 38

It has had a peculiar charm for many illustrious men, . . ... ... 41

Its individuality is distinct, . . . . . . 42

In the course of a day it presents various changes, . . . 43

Yet throughout all a certain sameness is preserved, ... ... .44

This is expressed by the “ genius loci,” . ... . .. . 45

The voices of the forest, ... ... . ... . ... 46

Its suitability as a place for reflection, . . . . 47

Its suggestiveness ; the very oaks enforce a lesson of perseverance, ... ... ... 48

Its life centres in its quarrymen and its ants, ... .. ... ... . .. .. ... 49

The contrast between their several labours, ... .. .. . . . 50

Nature and the Individual, ... . ... ... ... . .. 51

The writer enters upon the composition of the present book, . . ... 52

864

ANALYSIS OF SUBJECTS.

BOOK THE FIRST. — METAMORPHOSIS.

CHAPTER I. - TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.

Extract from a Journal written by Madame Michelet, . 57

In which she describes a visit to the home of her childhood, ... ... . ... 58

Painful impressions XDroduced by the ravages of the insect, ... ... . ... 59

The Avriter comments on the repugnance with which the insect is viewed by childhood, 60
This repugnance is not shared by Nature, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 61

Which protects and facilitates it in its work, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 62

On account of its vast importance, . ... ... ... . . 63

CHAPTER II. — COMPASSION.

The artist Gros reproached a young man for cruelty towards a butterfly,

Lyonnet, the naturalist, equally insisted on tenderness towards even the lowest forms of
life, ... . . . .

The writer records his adventure Avith a drone, which he though he had killed, in a moment
of petulance,

His happiness on seeing the insect revive, ...

Begins to study the insect seriously on a Swiss tour, .

Another extract from Madame Michelet’s Journal, .

In Avhich is described the author’s retreat at Montreux, on the shore of the Lake of
Geneva, . . ... . .

In one of her walks she observes a combat betAveen a stag-beetle and a beetle of inferior
size,

The stag-beetle is captured for the purpose of examination,

Effect produced upon it by the vapour of ether, ... ... ... .

Regret expressed at having terminated its existence, .

CHAPTER III. - WORLD-BUILDERS.

The world outside the terrestrial world,

The Avorld of the infinitely little ; the architects of ocean,

The immense Avorks accomplished by the lower organisms,

They build up reefs, banks, islands, ...

The manufacture of chalk described,

How a coral-island is gradually developed, ...

Examples of the labours of the coral animals,

... 83
83, 84
... 85

CHAPTER IV. — LOVE AND DEATH.

Above these organisms in the scale of creation comes the insect, . ... ... 89

Its individuality is explained ; its mode of reproduction, ... ... ... ... ... 90

The insect-mother dies in producing her offspring, ... . ... ... ... 91

But with extraordinary sagacity has provided for its support and protection, . 92

Examples given of this Avonderful maternal prevision, . ... ... ... ... 93

The labours of the mother-bee explained, . . ... ... . 94

Reference to the “ Nymphs of Fontainebleau,” . ... ... ... ... ... 95

CHAPTER V. — THE ORPHAN : ITS FEEBLENESS.

The insect enters upon life naked and necessitous, ... .

But all its wants have been carefully anticipated, .

Night, however, is the great protection of the embryo, ... .

How it endeavours to guard against cold, . .. .

In its necessities originate its various industries, .

After a time comes its season of trial, . ... ... .

Of Avhich it exhibits a marvellous presentiment, and for which it assiduously prepares,

... 99
... 100
... 101
... 102
... 103
... 104
... 105

CHAPTER VI. - THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS

The meaning of the insect to the ancient Egyptians, . . 109

The beetle Avas regarded as a symbol of Eternity, ... ... .. ... ... ... 110

Has modern science SAvept aside the ancient poetry ? ... ... ... . ... 110

That it is not so, is shoAvn by Reaumur’s discoveries, . Ill

Which shoAV us the marvellous changes the insect undergoes, . 112

ANALYSIS OF SUBJECTS. 365

And how in each stage of growth the next is prefigured, . ... ... .. 113

However numerous or great the changes, the individuality is preserved, ... ... ... 114

A future life is provided for, as in the case of the human embryo . . 115

CHAPTER VII. - THE PHCENIX.

Out of gloom and obscurity emerges light, ... . ... ... . ... 119

The metamorphosis takes place, but the insect is not at a loss, ... ... 120

Nature furnishes each species with all its needs for the new life, ... . 121

Its vital intensity is revealed by the brightness of its colouring, , . ... 122

Insects of gay attire are found in every region, ... ... ... ... ... . 123

Even among the snows of the Alpine peaks, ... ... ... ... .,. . . 124

BOOK THE SECOND.— MISSION AND ARTS OF THE INSECT.

CHAPTER I. — SWAMMERDAM.

The secret of the Insect World first discovered by Swammerdam . 129

A comparison instituted between him and Galileo, . 130

His early years, his favourite occupations, and his collections of insects, . 131, 132

To assist him in his investigations he invented the microscope, ... . 133

His patient labours rewarded by great discoveries, ... ... . ... ... 134

Yet in his own country he was not honoured ; it was in France that his work met with

due appreciation, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 135

Ardent devotion to science brings on premature decay, ... ... . ... .. 136

Dark clouds overcast his later years, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 137

He died at the age of three and forty, ... ... ... ... . . . • ... ... ... 138

His work is carried on by Leuwenhoek and Malpighi, ... ... ... ... .. ... 139

CHAPTER II. - THE MICROSCOPE : HAS THE INSECT A PHYSIOGNOMY l

In the infinitely little lurks a great attraction for man, ... ... ... ... ... ... 143

Hence its study should be systematically undertaken, ... ... . ... 144

Michelet applies himself to his microscope, . ... . ... 145

And examines the structure of an insect’s wing, . .. ... 146

Next, he studies the organization of the ant, ... ... . ... ... 147

He describes what he saw, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . 148

A complex apparatus, both for action and defence, . ... . ... 150

What it is which separates us from the insect, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 151

CHAPTER III. — THE INSECT AS THE AGENT OF NATURE IN THE
ACCELERATION OF DEATH AND LIFE.

The language of the insect in its immense energy, ... ... ... ... ... ... 155

A glance is directed at the order of Nature, ... ... . ... . 156

And it is shown that all forms of life must be kept within certain limits, . . 156

Hence, one race preys upon another, and all Nature is a scene of incessant combat, ... 157
In this work of destruction, and purification, the Bird and the Insect play an important
part, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 158

The Coleoptera bring their surprising energies to the task, ... ... ... . 159

The insect-tribes are therefore great sanitary agents, ... ... ... ... ... ... 160

The great Guiana ants afford an illustration, . ... . 161

And the beneficent labours of the spider have secured the respect of the Siberians, ... 162

CHAPTER IV. - THE INSECT AS MAN’S AUXILIARY.

The want of insect-labour induced the potato disease, . . ... ... 165

Such is the dictum of an author, who thinks that the multiplication of small birds has
been destructive to insect-life ; but no such multiplication of birds has taken place,

nor any such destruction of insects, ... . . ... 165,166

The Bird and the Insect are the joint purifiers of creation, ... . . ... 167

Some species of insects should' be carefully preserved, . ... ... 167

A sketch is given of their multifarious labours, ... ... . 168

Of the services rendered by the scavenger-insects, . 169

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ANALYSIS OF SUBJECTS.

Of the value of certain insects as food, . 170

As, for instance, in the case of the locust, ... . .. . . 171

The law of retaliation illustrated. -. . . 172

* ,

CHAPTER V. - A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.

How does the insect express its intensity of vital force ? ... . ... 175

In various ways, but specially through its glowing hues, . 176

Which are displayed with a profusion that astonishes and almost overcomes the observer, 177

But are not inconsistent with an ingenious mimicry . ... ... . 177

A diversion is made to the tropical forest, . ... . ... ... ... 178

Where the insect life is seen in its most splendid developments, . . . ... 179

Like winged flames they haunt the leafy shades, . 180

The fire-fly lights up the gloom, and also furnishes woman’s beauty with a living orna¬
ment, . . . . 181, 182

CHAPTER VI. — THE SILKWORM.

The exquisite structure of a woman’s hair enlarged upon, ... . . 185

What can compare with it ? Only the silkworm’s thread, ... ... . ... 186

Peculiar charm attending the silkworm’s labours, ... . . 186

And the preciousness of the silken product, ... ... . 187

Something is said about the use of silk in Mediaeval France, ... . 188

And on its excellence and fitness as a garment for Beauty, ... ... . 189

CHAPTER VII. - INSTRUMENTS OF THE INSECT : AND ITS CHEMICAL ENERGIES,

AS IN THE COCHINEAL AND THE CANTHAR1DES.

Hitherto the writer has treated ordy of the silk of the bombyx, ... ... ... ... 193

He now commends the culture of other silk-spinning species, . ... ... ... 194

And is led to speak of the ingenious instruments with which insects are provided, ... 194

And of their general powers and properties, ... . ... ... ... ... 195

Something is said about their weapons, . ... ... 196

And the malalis is spoken of, ... . . . ... ... ... 197

CHAPTER VIII. — ON THE RENOVATION OF OUR ARTS BY THE STUDY OF THE INSECT.

The Fine Arts would profit by a close study of the insect, ... . . ... 201

Much might be learned, for instance, from the cockchafer’s wing, . ... ... 202

Nature is full of suggestive beauty, ... ... . ... ... ... . 203

Observe the enamels of the cicindela, ... . ... ... . ... 204

And those of the scarabaei, . ... ... . ... 205

Instead of copying from antique absurdities, go then to the insect-collector’s cabinet, ... 206
And its treasures will inspire the artist with new ideas, . 207

CHAPTER IX. — THE SPIDER — INDUSTRY — STANDING STILL.

We come to the consideration of the spider, . . 211

Whose life is a lottery, and which is branded with ugliness, ... ... ... . 212

It is, however, the type of the persevering worker, ... . . 213

An anecdote in illustration of its character, . 214

Its web, and the mode of its construction, described, . 215

Prudence and patience the characteristics of the spider, ... ... . 216

All animals live by prey, and the spider has its foes, . 217

Its existence is confined within a narrow circle, ... ... ... . ... ... 218

And is easily terminated, . ... ... ... . . 219

CHAPTER X. - THE HOME AND LOVES OF THE SPIDER.

Admirable construction of its web, . 223

A glance at the retreat of the Agelena, ... . . 224

Still greater ingenuity is shown by the Mygale, . . 225

In the web lurks the weaver, always expectant, . . . 226

A sensitive being, and subject to fancies of terror, . ... . 227

In his moments of love he is timorous and suspicious, . 228

How he is affected by musical sounds, . ... 229

ANALYSIS OF SUBJECTS.

307

BOOK THE THIRD. — COMMUNITIES OF INSECTS.

CHAPTER I. - THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS.

The habitations of the termites, erroneously called White Ants, described, both externally

and internally, . 235, 236

A wonderful degree of skill shown in the erection of the great dome, . 237

Yet the builders labour under specially difficult circumstances, . 238

Their queen’s fecundity ; her offspring are tenderly treated, . 239

Their numbers would be a terror to man, were they not checked by many enemies, ... 240
An illustration is given of their terrible ravages, . 241

CHAPTER II. — THE ANTS : — THEIR DOMESTIC ECONOMY — THEIR NUPTIALS.
Value of the ants as purifying and cleansing agents,

An incident at Barbadoes,

The carpenter-ants, and their ingenuity, described, .

Singular affection which they display for the young, .

They watch over them with incessant vigilance ; their mode of intercommunication,

A picture is given of the economy of an ant-hill, .

In their labours the ants solve numerous problems by sheer intuition, .

Their nuptials described as an idyllic poem, .

What remained in the morning, .

245

246

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251

252

253

254

255

CHAPTER III. — THE ANTS : THEIR FLOCKS AND THEIR SLAVES.
The writer’s pain at discovering among the ants the existence of slavery,

Considerations which induced him to continue his studies, .

He finds that the ants keep their “ herds of cattle,”

And discovers a reason for their apparent encouragement of slavery,

Mixed communities of ants ; workers and warriors,

The workers are in reality the masters, though they seem to be slaves,

A campaign described ; red against black, .

Ant-societies regulated on the principle of division of labour, ...

Their species undergo modifications in special circumstances, .

The influence of intellect over brute force exemplified, ...

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CHAPTER IV. — THE ANTS : CIVIL WAR — EXTERMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY.

It is the punishment of the tyrant that he cannot readily set free his captive, . 271

The caged nightingale, and the clod of earth, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 272

This clod proves to contain a republic of carpenter-ants, ... ... ... ... ... 272

An effort is made to found a new community ; difficulties in the way, . 273

An encounter between the carpenter-ants and some mason-ants, ... ... ... ... 274

In which the victory is on the side of the Little, . ... 275

Who carry off the young of the conquered, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 276

A digression comments on the helplessness of the nymph, or larva, ... ... ... ... 277

And points out its exceeding suffering in the hands of a victorious enemy, ... ... ... 278

The writer is shocked by the relentless cruelty of the conquerors, . 279

Who have left but one poor fugitive to mourn the death of his companions, ... ... 2S0

CHAPTER V. — THE WASPS : THEIR FURY OF IMPROVISATION.

Sensation caused by the intrusion of a wasp, .

A panegyric on a much-abused insect, . .

Excessive industry of the wasp, .

It works, first, as a paper manufacturer ; and next, as a mason, .

It builds its city with curious forethought and ingenuity, .

The mother-wasp, a remarkable example of self-sacrifice, .

Wasps distinguished by their patriotic enthusiasm, .

At the approach of winter they dissolve the commonwealth, .

CHAPTER VI. — “THE BEES” OF VIRGIL.

The Virgilian fable of Aristaeus misunderstood, .

Intended by the poet as a parable of immortality, .

The writer was accidentally led to an understanding of its true significance,

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808

ANALYSIS OF SUBJECTS.

A visit to the cemetery of Pbre-Lachaise, ... . . ... .. 295

Here certain lonely graves were haunted by a flight of bees, ... . ... ... 296

Yet they were not true bees ; they were two-winged, . 297

They were “ the Bees ” of which Virgil had sung, . . . 298

CHAPTER VII. — THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.

Contrast between the Plant and the Animal, . 301

Yet the one life in some points approaches the other, and a certain sympathy exists

between the flower and the winged insect, ... ... ... ... ... . 302

What the flower owes to the bee, ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... 303

And how far the bee is indebted to the flower, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 303

A panegyric upon the bee, which gives new life to vegetation, ... ... . 304

The bee’s visit to the flower, and what takes place, ... ... . . 305

It gives and it receives ; evening and morning, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 306

How the bee suffers from cold, keen airs, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 307

Farewell, madam, and many thanks ! ” ... ... . ... ... ... ... 308

CHAPTER VIII. — THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS : THE CITY.

Artistic character of the bee-hive, . ... . ... 311

Its government democratic, or a modified constitutional monarchy, ... . ... 312

The writer traces the foundation and erection of the hive, . . ... 313

Its division into cells, and their differences of construction, ... ... ... ... ... 314

The thoughtful skill of the builders illustrated, . ... . ... 315

As in their improvised defence against the ravages of the Sphinx Atropos, ... ... ... 316

Which may be accepted as a proof of the intelligence of insects as distinguished from
instinct, ... ... . . . 317

CHAPTER IX. — HOW THE BEES CREATE THE PEOPLE AND THE COMMON MOTHER.

Care of the bee for the nymph, or larva, . 321

As it grows, so does its wonderful organization develop, ... ... ... ... ... 322

Special care bestowed on the future queen, . . ... . 3£3

The queen bee has attributes of its own, . ... ... ... 324

Her rage, when she becomes aware of the existence of possible rivals, ... ... ... 325

The community divided between the old love and the new, ... ... ... ... ... 325

An emigration takes place, ... ... 1 . . 325

And a new commonwealth is established, ... ... ... ... • ... ... ... ... 326

Sometimes the old queen and the new encounter one another, ... .. . ... 327

In which case a deadly combat ensues, ... . ... ... ... 328

And the victor becomes the idol of the people, . ... . ... ... 328

If both perish, the community, in a state of great excitement, proceed to feed and bring

up another, . ... . . . 329

Whom they will guard with loving loyalty, ... .. ... ... .. ... ... 329

CONCLUSION.

A comparison, and a contrast, between the bee and the ant, ... ... ... ... ... 333

All insects teach certain noteworthy lessons, ... . ... . 334

And, primarily, a reverence for life, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 335

Various anecdotes from the writer’s own experience are here brought forward, in defence
of the thesis that life is more precious than science, . 336

Illustrative Notes,

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