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+Project Gutenberg's Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Social Life in the Insect World
+
+Author: J. H. Fabre
+
+Translator: Bernard Miall
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2006 [EBook #18350]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Louise Pryor, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  SOCIAL LIFE
+  IN THE INSECT WORLD
+
+  BY
+  J. H. FABRE
+
+  TRANSLATED BY
+  BERNARD MIALL
+
+  WITH 14 ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  LONDON
+  T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
+  ADELPHI TERRACE
+
+
+  _First Edition_                                              1911
+
+  _Second Impression_                                          1912
+
+  _Third Impression_                                           1912
+
+  _Fourth Impression_                                          1913
+
+  _Fifth Impression_                                           1913
+
+  _Sixth Impression_                                           1915
+
+  _Seventh Impression_                                         1916
+
+  _Eighth Impression_                                          1916
+
+  _Ninth Impression_                                           1917
+
+  _Tenth Impression_                                           1918
+
+  _Eleventh Impression_                                        1918
+
+  _Twelfth Impression_                                         1919
+
+  (_All rights reserved_)
+
+
+  [Illustration: 1. THE MANTIS. A DUEL BETWEEN FEMALES.
+
+  2. THE MANTIS DEVOURING A CRICKET.
+
+  3. THE MANTIS DEVOURING HER MATE.
+
+  4. THE MANTIS IN HER ATTITUDE OF PRAYER.
+
+  5. THE MANTIS IN HER "SPECTRAL" ATTITUDE.
+
+  (See p. 76.)]
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I                                                          PAGE
+
+  THE FABLE OF THE CIGALE AND THE ANT                                  1
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THE CIGALE LEAVES ITS BURROW                                        17
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  THE SONG OF THE CIGALE                                              31
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  THE CIGALE. THE EGGS AND THEIR HATCHING                             45
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  THE MANTIS. THE CHASE                                               68
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  THE MANTIS. COURTSHIP                                               79
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE MANTIS. THE NEST                                                86
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  THE GOLDEN GARDENER. ITS NUTRIMENT                                 102
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  THE GOLDEN GARDENER. COURTSHIP                                     111
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  THE FIELD CRICKET                                                  120
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+  THE ITALIAN CRICKET                                                130
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+  THE SISYPHUS BEETLE. THE INSTINCT OF PATERNITY                     136
+
+  CHAPTER XIII
+
+  A BEE-HUNTER: THE _PHILANTHUS AVIPORUS_                            150
+
+  CHAPTER XIV
+
+  THE GREAT PEACOCK, OR EMPEROR MOTH                                 179
+
+  CHAPTER XV
+
+  THE OAK EGGAR, OR BANDED MONK                                      202
+
+  CHAPTER XVI
+
+  A TRUFFLE-HUNTER: THE _BOLBOCERAS GALLICUS_                        217
+
+  CHAPTER XVII
+
+  THE ELEPHANT-BEETLE                                                238
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  THE PEA-WEEVIL                                                     258
+
+  CHAPTER XIX
+
+  AN INVADER: THE HARICOT-WEEVIL                                     282
+
+  CHAPTER XX
+
+  THE GREY LOCUST                                                    300
+
+  CHAPTER XXI
+
+  THE PINE-CHAFER                                                    317
+
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  THE MANTIS: A DUEL BETWEEN FEMALES; DEVOURING
+  A CRICKET; DEVOURING HER MATE; IN HER ATTITUDE
+  OF PRAYER; IN HER "SPECTRAL" ATTITUDE                      _Frontispiece_
+
+
+  DURING THE DROUGHTS OF SUMMER THIRSTING INSECTS,
+  AND NOTABLY THE ANT, FLOCK TO THE DRINKING-PLACES
+  OF THE CIGALE                                                        8
+
+  THE CIGALE AND THE EMPTY PUPA-SKIN                                  28
+
+  THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW. THE CIGALE OF
+  THE FLOWERING ASH, MALE AND FEMALE                                  36
+
+  THE CIGALE LAYING HER EGGS. THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER,
+  THE FALSE CIGALE OF THE NORTH,
+  DEVOURING THE TRUE CIGALE, A DWELLER IN
+  THE SOUTH                                                           48
+
+  THE NEST OF THE PRAYING MANTIS; TRANSVERSE SECTION
+  OF THE SAME; NEST OF EMPUSA PAUPERATA;
+  TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME; VERTICAL
+  SECTION OF THE SAME; NEST OF THE GREY MANTIS;
+  SCHEFFER'S SISYPHUS (see Chap. XII.); PELLET OF
+  THE SISYPHUS; PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS, WITH
+  DEJECTA OF THE LARVA FORCED THROUGH THE
+  WALLS                                                               88
+
+  THE MANTIS DEVOURING THE MALE IN THE ACT OF
+  MATING; THE MANTIS COMPLETING HER NEST;
+  GOLDEN SCARABÆI CUTTING UP A LOB-WORM                               90
+
+  THE GOLDEN GARDENER: THE MATING SEASON OVER,
+  THE MALES ARE EVISCERATED BY THE FEMALES                           114
+
+  THE FIELD-CRICKET: A DUEL BETWEEN RIVALS; THE
+  DEFEATED RIVAL RETIRES, INSULTED BY THE
+  VICTOR                                                             124
+
+  THE ITALIAN CRICKET                                                132
+
+  THE GREAT PEACOCK OR EMPEROR MOTH                                  180
+
+  THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH. THE PILGRIMS DIVERTED
+  BY THE LIGHT OF A LAMP                                             196
+
+  THE GREY LOCUST; THE NERVATURES OF THE WING;
+  THE BALANINUS FALLEN A VICTIM TO THE LENGTH
+  OF HER PROBOSCIS                                                   244
+
+  THE PINE-CHAFER (_MELOLONTHA FULLO_)                               318
+
+
+
+
+SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FABLE OF THE CIGALE AND THE ANT
+
+
+Fame is the daughter of Legend. In the world of creatures, as in the
+world of men, the story precedes and outlives history. There are many
+instances of the fact that if an insect attract our attention for this
+reason or that, it is given a place in those legends of the people whose
+last care is truth.
+
+For example, who is there that does not, at least by hearsay, know the
+Cigale? Where in the entomological world shall we find a more famous
+reputation? Her fame as an impassioned singer, careless of the future,
+was the subject of our earliest lessons in repetition. In short, easily
+remembered lines of verse, we learned how she was destitute when the
+winter winds arrived, and how she went begging for food to the Ant, her
+neighbour. A poor welcome she received, the would-be borrower!--a
+welcome that has become proverbial, and her chief title to celebrity.
+The petty malice of the two short lines--
+
+  Vous chantiez! j'en suis bien aise,
+  Eh bien, dansez maintenant!
+
+has done more to immortalise the insect than her skill as a musician.
+"You sang! I am very glad to hear it! Now you can dance!" The words
+lodge in the childish memory, never to be forgotten. To most
+Englishmen--to most Frenchmen even--the song of the Cigale is unknown,
+for she dwells in the country of the olive-tree; but we all know of the
+treatment she received at the hands of the Ant. On such trifles does
+Fame depend! A legend of very dubious value, its moral as bad as its
+natural history; a nurse's tale whose only merit is its brevity; such is
+the basis of a reputation which will survive the wreck of centuries no
+less surely than the tale of Puss-in-Boots and of Little Red
+Riding-Hood.
+
+The child is the best guardian of tradition, the great conservative.
+Custom and tradition become indestructible when confided to the archives
+of his memory. To the child we owe the celebrity of the Cigale, of whose
+misfortunes he has babbled during his first lessons in recitation. It is
+he who will preserve for future generations the absurd nonsense of which
+the body of the fable is constructed; the Cigale will always be hungry
+when the cold comes, although there were never Cigales in winter; she
+will always beg alms in the shape of a few grains of wheat, a diet
+absolutely incompatible with her delicate capillary "tongue"; and in
+desperation she will hunt for flies and grubs, although she never eats.
+
+Whom shall we hold responsible for these strange mistakes? La Fontaine,
+who in most of his fables charms us with his exquisite fineness of
+observation, has here been ill-inspired. His earlier subjects he knew
+down to the ground: the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Stag, the Crow, the
+Rat, the Ferret, and so many others, whose actions and manners he
+describes with a delightful precision of detail. These are inhabitants
+of his own country; neighbours, fellow-parishioners. Their life, private
+and public, is lived under his eyes; but the Cigale is a stranger to the
+haunts of Jack Rabbit. La Fontaine had never seen nor heard her. For him
+the celebrated songstress was certainly a grasshopper.
+
+Grandville, whose pencil rivals the author's pen, has fallen into the
+same error. In his illustration to the fable we see the Ant dressed like
+a busy housewife. On her threshold, beside her full sacks of wheat, she
+disdainfully turns her back upon the would-be borrower, who holds out
+her claw--pardon, her hand. With a wide coachman's hat, a guitar under
+her arm, and a skirt wrapped about her knees by the gale, there stands
+the second personage of the fable, the perfect portrait of a
+grasshopper. Grandville knew no more than La Fontaine of the true
+Cigale; he has beautifully expressed the general confusion.
+
+But La Fontaine, in this abbreviated history, is only the echo of
+another fabulist. The legend of the Cigale and the cold welcome of the
+Ant is as old as selfishness: as old as the world. The children of
+Athens, going to school with their baskets of rush-work stuffed with
+figs and olives, were already repeating the story under their breath, as
+a lesson to be repeated to the teacher. "In winter," they used to say,
+"the Ants were putting their damp food to dry in the sun. There came a
+starving Cigale to beg from them. She begged for a few grains. The
+greedy misers replied: 'You sang in the summer, now dance in the
+winter.'" This, although somewhat more arid, is precisely La Fontaine's
+story, and is contrary to the facts.
+
+Yet the story comes to us from Greece, which is, like the South of
+France, the home of the olive-tree and the Cigale. Was Æsop really its
+author, as tradition would have it? It is doubtful, and by no means a
+matter of importance; at all events, the author was a Greek, and a
+compatriot of the Cigale, which must have been perfectly familiar to
+him. There is not a single peasant in my village so blind as to be
+unaware of the total absence of Cigales in winter; and every tiller of
+the soil, every gardener, is familiar with the first phase of the
+insect, the larva, which his spade is perpetually discovering when he
+banks up the olives at the approach of the cold weather, and he knows,
+having seen it a thousand times by the edge of the country paths, how in
+summer this larva issues from the earth from a little round well of its
+own making; how it climbs a twig or a stem of grass, turns upon its
+back, climbs out of its skin, drier now than parchment, and becomes the
+Cigale; a creature of a fresh grass-green colour which is rapidly
+replaced by brown.
+
+We cannot suppose that the Greek peasant was so much less intelligent
+than the Provençal that he can have failed to see what the least
+observant must have noticed. He knew what my rustic neighbours know so
+well. The scribe, whoever he may have been, who was responsible for the
+fable was in the best possible circumstances for correct knowledge of
+the subject. Whence, then, arose the errors of his tale?
+
+Less excusably than La Fontaine, the Greek fabulist wrote of the Cigale
+of the books, instead of interrogating the living Cigale, whose cymbals
+were resounding on every side; careless of the real, he followed
+tradition. He himself echoed a more ancient narrative; he repeated some
+legend that had reached him from India, the venerable mother of
+civilisations. We do not know precisely what story the reed-pen of the
+Hindoo may have confided to writing, in order to show the perils of a
+life without foresight; but it is probable that the little animal drama
+was nearer the truth than the conversation between the Cigale and the
+Ant. India, the friend of animals, was incapable of such a mistake.
+Everything seems to suggest that the principal personage of the original
+fable was not the Cigale of the Midi, but some other creature, an insect
+if you will, whose manners corresponded to the adopted text.
+
+Imported into Greece, after long centuries during which, on the banks of
+the Indus, it made the wise reflect and the children laugh, the ancient
+anecdote, perhaps as old as the first piece of advice that a father of a
+family ever gave in respect of economy, transmitted more or less
+faithfully from one memory to another, must have suffered alteration in
+its details, as is the fate of all such legends, which the passage of
+time adapts to the circumstance of time and place.
+
+The Greek, not finding in his country the insect of which the Hindoo
+spoke, introduced the Cigale, as in Paris, the modern Athens, the Cigale
+has been replaced by the Grasshopper. The mistake was made; henceforth
+indelible. Entrusted as it is to the memory of childhood, error will
+prevail against the truth that lies before our eyes.
+
+Let us seek to rehabilitate the songstress so calumniated by the fable.
+She is, I grant you, an importunate neighbour. Every summer she takes up
+her station in hundreds before my door, attracted thither by the verdure
+of two great plane-trees; and there, from sunrise to sunset, she hammers
+on my brain with her strident symphony. With this deafening concert
+thought is impossible; the mind is in a whirl, is seized with vertigo,
+unable to concentrate itself. If I have not profited by the early
+morning hours the day is lost.
+
+Ah! Creature possessed, the plague of my dwelling, which I hoped would
+be so peaceful!--the Athenians, they say, used to hang you up in a
+little cage, the better to enjoy your song. One were well enough, during
+the drowsiness of digestion; but hundreds, roaring all at once,
+assaulting the hearing until thought recoils--this indeed is torture!
+You put forward, as excuse, your rights as the first occupant. Before my
+arrival the two plane-trees were yours without reserve; it is I who have
+intruded, have thrust myself into their shade. I confess it: yet muffle
+your cymbals, moderate your arpeggi, for the sake of your historian! The
+truth rejects what the fabulist tells us as an absurd invention. That
+there are sometimes dealings between the Cigale and the Ant is perfectly
+correct; but these dealings are the reverse of those described in the
+fable. They depend not upon the initiative of the former; for the Cigale
+never required the help of others in order to make her living: on the
+contrary, they are due to the Ant, the greedy exploiter of others, who
+fills her granaries with every edible she can find. At no time does the
+Cigale plead starvation at the doors of the ant-hills, faithfully
+promising a return of principal and interest; the Ant on the contrary,
+harassed by drought, begs of the songstress. Begs, do I say! Borrowing
+and repayment are no part of the manners of this land-pirate. She
+exploits the Cigale; she impudently robs her. Let us consider this
+theft; a curious point of history as yet unknown.
+
+In July, during the stifling hours of the afternoon, when the insect
+peoples, frantic with drought, wander hither and thither, vainly seeking
+to quench their thirst at the faded, exhausted flowers, the Cigale makes
+light of the general aridity. With her rostrum, a delicate augur, she
+broaches a cask of her inexhaustible store. Crouching, always singing,
+on the twig of a suitable shrub or bush, she perforates the firm, glossy
+rind, distended by the sap which the sun has matured. Plunging her
+proboscis into the bung-hole, she drinks deliciously, motionless, and
+wrapt in meditation, abandoned to the charms of syrup and of song.
+
+Let us watch her awhile. Perhaps we shall witness unlooked-for
+wretchedness and want. For there are many thirsty creatures wandering
+hither and thither; and at last they discover the Cigale's private well,
+betrayed by the oozing sap upon the brink. They gather round it, at
+first with a certain amount of constraint, confining themselves to
+lapping the extravasated liquor. I have seen, crowding around the
+honeyed perforation, wasps, flies, earwigs, Sphinx-moths, Pompilidæ,
+rose-chafers, and, above all, ants.
+
+The smallest, in order to reach the well, slip under the belly of the
+Cigale, who kindly raises herself on her claws, leaving room for the
+importunate ones to pass. The larger, stamping with impatience, quickly
+snatch a mouthful, withdraw, take a turn on the neighbouring twigs, and
+then return, this time more enterprising. Envy grows keener; those who
+but now were cautious become turbulent and aggressive, and would
+willingly drive from the spring the well-sinker who has caused it to
+flow.
+
+In this crowd of brigands the most aggressive are the ants. I have seen
+them nibbling the ends of the Cigale's claws; I have caught them tugging
+the ends of her wings, climbing on her back, tickling her antennæ. One
+audacious individual so far forgot himself under my eyes as to seize her
+proboscis, endeavouring to extract it from the well!
+
+Thus hustled by these dwarfs, and at the end of her patience, the
+giantess finally abandons the well. She flies away, throwing a jet of
+liquid excrement over her tormentors as she goes. But what cares the Ant
+for this expression of sovereign contempt? She is left in possession of
+the spring--only too soon exhausted when the pump is removed that made
+it flow. There is little left, but that little is sweet. So much to the
+good; she can wait for another drink, attained in the same manner, as
+soon as the occasion presents itself.
+
+[Illustration: DURING THE DROUGHTS OF SUMMER THIRSTING INSECTS, AND
+NOTABLY THE ANT, FLOCK TO THE DRINKING-PLACES OF THE CIGALE.]
+
+As we see, reality completely reverses the action described by the
+fable. The shameless beggar, who does not hesitate at theft, is the Ant;
+the industrious worker, willingly sharing her goods with the suffering,
+is the Cigale. Yet another detail, and the reversal of the fable is
+further emphasised. After five or six weeks of gaiety, the songstress
+falls from the tree, exhausted by the fever of life. The sun shrivels
+her body; the feet of the passers-by crush it. A bandit always in search
+of booty, the Ant discovers the remains. She divides the rich find,
+dissects it, and cuts it up into tiny fragments, which go to swell her
+stock of provisions. It is not uncommon to see a dying Cigale, whose
+wings are still trembling in the dust, drawn and quartered by a gang of
+knackers. Her body is black with them. After this instance of
+cannibalism the truth of the relations between the two insects is
+obvious.
+
+Antiquity held the Cigale in high esteem. The Greek Béranger, Anacreon,
+devoted an ode to her, in which his praise of her is singularly
+exaggerated. "Thou art almost like unto the Gods," he says. The reasons
+which he has given for this apotheosis are none of the best. They
+consist in these three privileges: [Greek: gêgenês, apathês,
+hanaimosarke]; born of the earth, insensible to pain, bloodless. We will
+not reproach the poet for these mistakes; they were then generally
+believed, and were perpetuated long afterwards, until the exploring eye
+of scientific observation was directed upon them. And in minor poetry,
+whose principal merit lies in rhythm and harmony, we must not look at
+things too closely.
+
+Even in our days, the Provençal poets, who know the Cigale as Anacreon
+never did, are scarcely more careful of the truth in celebrating the
+insect which they have taken for their emblem. A friend of mine, an
+eager observer and a scrupulous realist, does not deserve this reproach.
+He gives me permission to take from his pigeon-holes the following
+Provençal poem, in which the relations between the Cigale and the Ant
+are expounded with all the rigour of science. I leave to him the
+responsibility for his poetic images and his moral reflections, blossoms
+unknown to my naturalist's garden; but I can swear to the truth of all
+he says, for it corresponds with what I see each summer on the
+lilac-trees of my garden.
+
+
+        LA CIGALO E LA FOURNIGO.
+
+                   I.
+
+  Jour de Dièu, queto caud! Bèu tèms pèr la Cigalo,
+    Que, trefoulido, se regalo
+  D'uno raisso de fio; bèu tèms per la meissoun.
+    Dins lis erso d'or, lou segaire,
+  Ren plega, pitre au vent, rustico e canto gaire;
+  Dins soun gousiè, la set estranglo la cansoun.
+
+  Tèms benesi pèr tu. Dounc, ardit! cigaleto,
+    Fai-lei brusi, ti chimbaleto,
+  E brandusso lou ventre à creba ti mirau.
+    L'Ome enterin mando le daio,
+  Que vai balin-balan de longo e que dardaio
+  L'ulau de soun acié sus li rous espigau.
+
+  Plèn d'aigo pèr la péiro e tampouna d'erbiho
+    Lou coufié sus l'anco pendiho.
+  Si la péiro es au frès dins soun estui de bos,
+    E se de longo es abèurado,
+  L'Ome barbelo au fio d'aqueli souleiado
+  Que fan bouli de fes la mesoulo dis os.
+
+  Tu, Cigalo, as un biais pèr la set: dins la rusco
+    Tendro e jutouso d'uno busco,
+  L'aguio de toun bè cabusso e cavo un pous.
+    Lou siro monto pèr la draio.
+  T'amourres à la fon melicouso que raio,
+  E dou sourgènt sucra bèves lou teta-dous.
+
+  Mai pas toujour en pas. Oh! que nàni; de laire,
+    Vesin, vesino o barrulaire,
+  T'an vist cava lou pous. An set; vènon, doulènt,
+    Te prène un degout pèr si tasso.
+  Mesfiso-te, ma bello: aqueli curo-biasso,
+  Umble d'abord, soun lèu de gusas insoulènt.
+
+  Quiston un chicouloun di rèn, pièi de ti resto
+    Soun plus countènt, ausson la testo
+  E volon tout: L'auran. Sis arpioun en rastèu
+    Te gatihoun lou bout de l'alo.
+  Sus tu larjo esquinasso es un mounto-davalo;
+  T'aganton pèr lou bè, li bano, lis artèu;
+
+  Tiron d'eici, d'eilà. L'impaciènci te gagno.
+    Pst! pst! d'un giscle de pissagno
+  Aspèrges l'assemblado e quites lou ramèu.
+    T'en vas bèn liuen de la racaio,
+  Que t'a rauba lou pous, e ris, e se gougaio,
+  E se lipo li brego enviscado de mèu.
+
+  Or d'aqueli boumian abèura sens fatigo,
+    Lou mai tihous es la fournigo.
+  Mousco, cabrian, guespo e tavan embana,
+    Espeloufi de touto meno,
+  Costo-en-long qu'à toun pous lou soulcias ameno,
+  N'an pas soun testardige à te faire enana.
+
+  Pèr l'esquicha l'artèu, te coutiga lou mourre,
+    Te pessuga lou nas, pèr courre
+  A l'oumbro du toun ventre, osco! degun la vau.
+    Lou marrit-pèu prend pèr escalo
+  Uno patto e te monto, ardido, sus lis alo,
+  E s'espasso, insoulènto, e vai d'amont, d'avau.
+
+
+                  II.
+
+    Aro veici qu'es pas de crèire.
+    Ancian tèms, nous dison li rèire,
+  Un jour d'ivèr; la fam te prenguè. Lou front bas
+    E d'escoundoun anères vèire,
+  Dins si grand magasin, la fournigo, eilàbas.
+
+  L'endrudido au soulèu secavo,
+    Avans de lis escoundre en cavo,
+  Si blad qu'aviè mousi l'eigagno de la niue.
+    Quand èron lest lis ensacavo.
+  Tu survènes alor, emé de plour is iue.
+
+    Iè disés: "Fai bèn fre; l'aurasso
+    D'un caire à l'autre me tirasso
+  Avanido de fam. A toun riche mouloun
+    Leisso-me prène pèr ma biasso.
+  Te lou rendrai segur au bèu tèms di meloun.
+
+    "Presto-me un pan de gran." Mai, bouto,
+    Se cresès que l'autro t'escouto,
+  T'enganes. Di gros sa, rèn de rèn sara tièu.
+    "Vai-t'en plus liuen rascla de bouto;
+  Crebo de fam l'ivèr, tu que cantes l'estièu."
+
+    Ansin charro la fablo antico
+    Pèr nous counséia la pratico
+  Di sarro-piastro, urous de nousa li cordoun
+    De si bourso.--Que la coulico
+  Rousiguè la tripaio en aqueli coudoun!
+
+    Me fai susa, lou fabulisto,
+    Quand dis que l'ivèr vas en quisto
+  De mousco, verme, gran, tu que manges jamai.
+    De blad! Que n'en fariès, ma fisto!
+  As ta fon melicouso e demandes rèn mai.
+
+    Que t'enchau l'ivèr! Ta famiho
+    A la sousto en terro soumiho,
+  Et tu dormes la som que n'a ges de revèi;
+    Toun cadabre toumbo en douliho.
+  Un jour, en tafurant, la fournigo lou véi,
+
+    De tu magro péu dessecado
+    La marriasso fai becado;
+  Te curo lou perus, te chapouto à moucèu,
+    T'encafourno pèr car-salado,
+  Requisto prouvisioun, l'ivèr, en tèms de neu.
+
+                 III.
+
+       Vaqui l'istori veritablo
+       Bèn liuen dôu conte de la fablo.
+       Que n'en pensas, canèu de sort!
+       --O rammaissaire de dardeno
+       Det croucu, boumbudo bedeno
+  Que gouvernas lou mounde emé lou coffre-fort,
+
+       Fasès courre lou bru, canaio,
+       Que l'artisto jamai travaio
+       E dèu pati, lou bedigas.
+       Teisas-vous dounc: quand di lambrusco
+       La Cigalo a cava la rusco,
+  Raubas soun bèure, e pièi, morto, la rousigas.
+
+So speaks my friend in the expressive Provençal idiom, rehabilitating
+the creature so libelled by the fabulist.
+
+Translated with a little necessary freedom, the English of it is as
+follows:--
+
+                  I.
+
+  Fine weather for the Cigale! God, what heat!
+     Half drunken with her joy, she feasts
+  In a hail of fire. Pays for the harvest meet;
+     A golden sea the reaper breasts,
+  Loins bent, throat bare; silent, he labours long,
+  For thirst within his throat has stilled the song.
+
+  A blessed time for thee, little Cigale.
+     Thy little cymbals shake and sound,
+  Shake, shake thy stomach till thy mirrors fall!
+     Man meanwhile swings his scythe around;
+  Continually back and forth it veers,
+  Flashing its steel amidst the ruddy ears.
+
+  Grass-plugged, with water for the grinder full,
+    A flask is hung upon his hip;
+  The stone within its wooden trough is cool,
+    Free all the day to sip and sip;
+  But man is gasping in the fiery sun,
+  That makes his very marrow melt and run.
+
+  Thou, Cigale, hast a cure for thirst: the bark,
+    Tender and juicy, of the bough.
+  Thy beak, a very needle, stabs it. Mark
+    The narrow passage welling now;
+  The sugared stream is flowing, thee beside,
+  Who drinkest of the flood, the honeyed tide.
+
+  Not in peace always; nay, for thieves arrive,
+    Neighbours and wives, or wanderers vile;
+  They saw thee sink the well, and ill they thrive
+    Thirsting; they seek to drink awhile;
+  Beauty, beware! the wallet-snatcher's face,
+  Humble at first, grows insolent apace.
+
+  They seek the merest drop; thy leavings take;
+    Soon discontent, their heads they toss;
+  They crave for all, and all will have. They rake
+    Their claws thy folded wings across;
+  Thy back a mountain, up and down each goes;
+  They seize thee by the beak, the horns, the toes.
+
+  This way and that they pull. Impatient thou:
+    Pst! Pst! a jet of nauseous taste
+  O'er the assembly sprinklest. Leave the bough
+    And fly the rascals thus disgraced,
+  Who stole thy well, and with malicious pleasure
+  Now lick their honey'd lips, and feed at leisure.
+
+  See these Bohemians without labour fed!
+    The ant the worst of all the crew--
+  Fly, drone, wasp, beetle too with horned head,
+    All of them sharpers thro' and thro',
+  Idlers the sun drew to thy well apace--
+  None more than she was eager for thy place,
+
+  More apt thy face to tickle, toe to tread,
+    Or nose to pinch, and then to run
+  Under the shade thine ample belly spread;
+    Or climb thy leg for ladder; sun
+  Herself audacious on thy wings, and go
+  Most insolently o'er thee to and fro.
+
+
+                  II.
+
+  Now comes a tale that no one should believe.
+    In other times, the ancients say,
+  The winter came, and hunger made thee grieve.
+    Thou didst in secret see one day
+  The ant below the ground her treasure store away.
+
+  The wealthy ant was drying in the sun
+    Her corn the dew had wet by night,
+  Ere storing it again; and one by one
+    She filled her sacks as it dried aright.
+  Thou camest then, and tears bedimmed thy sight,
+
+  Saying: "'Tis very cold; the bitter bise
+    Blows me this way and that to-day.
+  I die of hunger. Of your riches please
+    Fill me my bag, and I'll repay,
+  When summer and its melons come this way.
+
+  "Lend me a little corn." Go to, go to!
+    Think you the ant will lend an ear?
+  You are deceived. Great sacks, but nought for you!
+    "Be off, and scrape some barrel clear!
+  You sing of summer: starve, for winter's here!"
+
+  'Tis thus the ancient fable sings
+    To teach us all the prudence ripe
+  Of farthing-snatchers, glad to knot the string
+    That tie their purses. May the gripe
+  Of colic twist the guts of all such tripe!
+
+  He angers me, this fable-teller does,
+    Saying in winter thou dost seek
+  Flies, grubs, corn--thou dost never eat like us!
+    --Corn! Couldst thou eat it, with thy beak?
+  Thou hast thy fountain with its honey'd reek.
+
+  To thee what matters winter? Underground
+    Slumber thy children, sheltered; thou
+  The sleep that knows no waking sleepest sound.
+    Thy body, fallen from the bough,
+  Crumbles; the questing ant has found thee now.
+
+  The wicked ant of thy poor withered hide
+    A banquet makes; in little bits
+  She cuts thee up, and empties thine inside,
+    And stores thee where in wealth she sits:
+  Choice diet when the winter numbs the wits.
+
+
+                 III.
+
+  Here is the tale related duly,
+  And little resembling the fable, truly!
+  Hoarders of farthings, I know, deuce take it.
+  It isn't the story as you would make it!
+  Crook-fingers, big-bellies, what do you say,
+  Who govern the world with the cash-box--hey?
+
+  You have spread the story, with shrug and smirk,
+  That the artist ne'er does a stroke of work;
+  And so let him suffer, the imbecile!
+  Be you silent! 'Tis you, I think,
+  When the Cigale pierces the vine to drink,
+  Drive her away, her drink to steal;
+  And when she is dead--you make your meal!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CIGALE LEAVES ITS BURROW
+
+
+The first Cigales appear about the summer solstice. Along the beaten
+paths, calcined by the sun, hardened by the passage of frequent feet, we
+see little circular orifices almost large enough to admit the thumb.
+These are the holes by which the larvæ of the Cigale have come up from
+the depths to undergo metamorphosis. We see them more or less
+everywhere, except in fields where the soil has been disturbed by
+ploughing. Their usual position is in the driest and hottest situations,
+especially by the sides of roads or the borders of footpaths. Powerfully
+equipped for the purpose, able at need to pierce the turf or sun-dried
+clay, the larva, upon leaving the earth, seems to prefer the hardest
+spots.
+
+A garden alley, converted into a little Arabia Petræa by reflection from
+a wall facing the south, abounds in such holes. During the last days of
+June I have made an examination of these recently abandoned pits. The
+soil is so compact that I needed a pick to tackle it.
+
+The orifices are round, and close upon an inch in diameter. There is
+absolutely no debris round them; no earth thrown up from within. This is
+always the case; the holes of the Cigales are never surrounded by
+dumping-heaps, as are the burrows of the Geotrupes, another notable
+excavator. The way in which the work is done is responsible for this
+difference. The dung-beetle works from without inwards; she begins to
+dig at the mouth of the burrow, and afterwards re-ascends and
+accumulates the excavated material on the surface. The larva of the
+Cigale, on the contrary, works outward from within, upward from below;
+it opens the door of exit at the last moment, so that it is not free for
+the discharge of excavated material until the work is done. The first
+enters and raises a little rubbish-heap at the threshold of her burrow;
+the second emerges, and cannot, while working, pile up its rubbish on a
+threshold which as yet has no existence.
+
+The burrow of the Cigale descends about fifteen inches. It is
+cylindrical, slightly twisted, according to the exigencies of the soil,
+and always approaches the vertical, or the direction of the shortest
+passage. It is perfectly free along its entire length. We shall search
+in vain for the rubbish which such an excavation must apparently
+produce; we shall find nothing of the sort. The burrow terminates in a
+cul-de-sac, in a fairly roomy chamber with unbroken walls, which shows
+not the least vestige of communication with any other burrow or
+prolongation of the shaft.
+
+Taking its length and diameter into account, we find the excavation has
+a total volume of about twelve cubic inches. What becomes of the earth
+which is removed?
+
+Sunk in a very dry, crumbling soil, we should expect the shaft and the
+chamber at the bottom to have soft, powdery walls, subject to petty
+landslips, if no work were done but that of excavation. On the contrary,
+the walls are neatly daubed, plastered with a sort of clay-like mortar.
+They are not precisely smooth, indeed they are distinctly rough; but
+their irregularities are covered with a layer of plaster, and the
+crumbling material, soaked in some glutinous liquid and dried, is held
+firmly in place.
+
+The larva can climb up and down, ascend nearly to the surface, and go
+down into its chamber of refuge, without bringing down, with his claws,
+the continual falls of material which would block the burrow, make
+ascent a matter of difficulty, and retreat impossible. The miner shores
+up his galleries with uprights and cross-timbers; the builder of
+underground railways supports the sides and roofs of his tunnels with a
+lining of brick or masonry or segments of iron tube; the larva of the
+Cigale, no less prudent an engineer, plasters the walls of its burrow
+with cement, so that the passage is always free and ready for use.
+
+If I surprise the creature just as it is emerging from the soil in order
+to gain a neighbouring bough and there undergo transformation, I see it
+immediately make a prudent retreat, descending to the bottom of its
+burrow without the slightest difficulty--a proof that even when about to
+be abandoned for ever the refuge is not encumbered with rubbish.
+
+The ascending shaft is not a hurried piece of work, scamped by a
+creature impatient to reach the sunlight. It is a true dwelling, in
+which the larva may make a long stay. The plastered walls betray as
+much. Such precautions would be useless in the case of a simple exit
+abandoned as soon as made. We cannot doubt that the burrow is a kind of
+meteorological observatory, and that its inhabitant takes note of the
+weather without. Buried underground at a depth of twelve or fifteen
+inches, the larva, when ripe for escape, could hardly judge whether the
+meteorological conditions were favourable. The subterranean climate
+varies too little, changes too slowly, and would not afford it the
+precise information required for the most important action of its
+life--the escape into the sunshine at the time of metamorphosis.
+
+Patiently, for weeks, perhaps for months, it digs, clears, and
+strengthens a vertical shaft, leaving only a layer of earth a finger's
+breadth in thickness to isolate it from the outer world. At the bottom
+it prepares a carefully built recess. This is its refuge, its place of
+waiting, where it reposes in peace if its observations decide it to
+postpone its final departure. At the least sign of fine weather it
+climbs to the top of its burrow, sounds the outer world through the thin
+layer of earth which covers the shaft, and informs itself of the
+temperature and humidity of the outer air.
+
+If things are not going well--if there are threats of a flood or the
+dreaded _bise_--events of mortal gravity when the delicate insect issues
+from its cerements--the prudent creature re-descends to the bottom of
+its burrow for a longer wait. If, on the contrary, the state of the
+atmosphere is favourable, the roof is broken through by a few strokes of
+its claws, and the larva emerges from its tunnel.
+
+Everything seems to prove that the burrow of the Cigale is a
+waiting-room, a meteorological station, in which the larva makes a
+prolonged stay; sometimes hoisting itself to the neighbourhood of the
+surface in order to ascertain the external climate; sometimes retiring
+to the depths the better to shelter itself. This explains the chamber
+at the base of the shaft, and the necessity of a cement to hold the
+walls together, for otherwise the creature's continual comings and
+goings would result in a landslip.
+
+A matter less easy of explanation is the complete disappearance of the
+material which originally filled the excavated space. Where are the
+twelve cubic inches of earth that represent the average volume of the
+original contents of the shaft? There is not a trace of this material
+outside, nor inside either. And how, in a soil as dry as a cinder, is
+the plaster made with which the walls are covered?
+
+Larvæ which burrow in wood, such as those of Capricornis and Buprestes,
+will apparently answer our first question. They make their way through
+the substance of a tree-trunk, boring their galleries by the simple
+method of eating the material in front of them. Detached by their
+mandibles, fragment by fragment, the material is digested. It passes
+from end to end through the body of the pioneer, yields during its
+passage its meagre nutritive principles, and accumulates behind it,
+obstructing the passage, by which the larva will never return. The work
+of extreme division, effected partly by the mandibles and partly by the
+stomach, makes the digested material more compact than the intact wood,
+from which it follows that there is always a little free space at the
+head of the gallery, in which the caterpillar works and lives; it is not
+of any great length, but just suffices for the movements of the
+prisoner.
+
+Must not the larva of the Cigale bore its passage in some such fashion?
+I do not mean that the results of excavation pass through its body--for
+earth, even the softest mould, could form no possible part of its diet.
+But is not the material detached simply thrust back behind the excavator
+as the work progresses?
+
+The Cigale passes four years under ground. This long life is not spent,
+of course, at the bottom of the well I have just described; that is
+merely a resting-place preparatory to its appearance on the face of the
+earth. The larva comes from elsewhere; doubtless from a considerable
+distance. It is a vagabond, roaming from one root to another and
+implanting its rostrum. When it moves, either to flee from the upper
+layers of the soil, which in winter become too cold, or to install
+itself upon a more juicy root, it makes a road by rejecting behind it
+the material broken up by the teeth of its picks. That this is its
+method is incontestable.
+
+As with the larvæ of Capricornis and Buprestes, it is enough for the
+traveller to have around it the small amount of free space necessitated
+by its movements. Moist, soft, and easily compressible soil is to the
+larva of the Cigale what digested wood-pulp is to the others. It is
+compressed without difficulty, and so leaves a vacant space.
+
+The difficulty is that sometimes the burrow of exit from the
+waiting-place is driven through a very arid soil, which is extremely
+refractory to compression so long as it retains its aridity. That the
+larva, when commencing the excavation of its burrow, has already thrust
+part of the detached material into a previously made gallery, now filled
+up and disappeared, is probable enough, although nothing in the actual
+condition of things goes to support the theory; but if we consider the
+capacity of the shaft and the extreme difficulty of making room for such
+a volume of debris, we feel dubious once more; for to hide such a
+quantity of earth a considerable empty space would be necessary, which
+could only be obtained by the disposal of more debris. Thus we are
+caught in a vicious circle. The mere packing of the powdered earth
+rejected behind the excavator would not account for so large a void. The
+Cigale must have a special method of disposing of the waste earth. Let
+us see if we can discover the secret.
+
+Let us examine a larva at the moment of emerging from the soil. It is
+almost always more or less smeared with mud, sometimes dried, sometimes
+moist. The implements of excavation, the claws of the fore-feet, have
+their points covered by little globules of mortar; the others bear
+leggings of mud; the back is spotted with clay. One is reminded of a
+scavenger who has been scooping up mud all day. This condition is the
+more striking in that the insect comes from an absolutely dry soil. We
+should expect to see it dusty; we find it muddy.
+
+One more step, and the problem of the well is solved. I exhume a larva
+which is working at its gallery of exit. Chance postpones this piece of
+luck, which I cannot expect to achieve at once, since nothing on the
+surface guides my search. But at last I am rewarded, and the larva is
+just beginning its excavation. An inch of tunnel, free of all waste or
+rubbish, and at the bottom the chamber, the place of rest; so far has
+the work proceeded. And the worker--in what condition is it? Let us see.
+
+The larva is much paler in colour than those which I have caught as they
+emerged. The large eyes in particular are whitish, cloudy, blurred, and
+apparently blind. What would be the use of sight underground? The eyes
+of the larvæ leaving their burrows are black and shining, and evidently
+capable of sight. When it issues into the sunlight the future Cigale
+must find, often at some distance from its burrow, a suitable twig from
+which to hang during its metamorphosis, so that sight is obviously of
+the greatest utility. The maturity of the eyes, attained during the time
+of preparation before deliverance, proves that the larva, far from
+boring its tunnel in haste, has spent a long time labouring at it.
+
+What else do we notice? The blind, pale larva is far more voluminous
+than in the mature state; it is swollen with liquid as though it had
+dropsy. Taken in the fingers, a limpid serum oozes from the hinder part
+of the body, which moistens the whole surface. Is this fluid, evacuated
+by the intestine, a product of urinary secretion--simply the contents of
+a stomach nourished entirely upon sap? I will not attempt to decide, but
+for convenience will content myself with calling it urine.
+
+Well, this fountain of urine is the key to the enigma. As it digs and
+advances the larva waters the powdery debris and converts it into a
+paste, which is immediately applied to the walls by the pressure of the
+abdomen. Aridity is followed by plasticity. The mud thus obtained
+penetrates the interstices of the rough soil; the more liquid portion
+enters the substance of the soil by infiltration; the remainder becomes
+tightly packed and fills up the inequalities of the walls. Thus the
+insect obtains an empty tunnel, with no loose waste, as all the loosened
+soil is utilised on the spot, converted into a mortar which is more
+compact and homogeneous than the soil through which the shaft is
+driven.
+
+Thus the larva works in the midst of a coating of mud, which is the
+cause of its dirtiness, so astonishing when we see it issue from an
+excessively dry soil. The perfect insect, although henceforth liberated
+from the work of a sapper and miner, does not entirely abandon the use
+of urine as a weapon, employing it as a means of defence. Too closely
+observed it throws a jet of liquid upon the importunate enemy and flies
+away. In both its forms the Cigale, in spite of its dry temperament, is
+a famous irrigator.
+
+Dropsical as it is, the larva cannot contain sufficient liquid to
+moisten and convert into easily compressible mud the long column of
+earth which must be removed from the burrow. The reservoir becomes
+exhausted, and the provision must be renewed. Where, and how? I think I
+can answer the question.
+
+The few burrows uncovered along their entirety, with the meticulous care
+such a task demands, have revealed at the bottom, encrusted in the wall
+of the terminal chamber, a living root, sometimes of the thickness of a
+pencil, sometimes no bigger than a straw. The visible portion of this
+root is only a fraction of an inch in length; the rest is hidden by the
+surrounding earth. Is the presence of this source of sap fortuitous? Or
+is it the result of deliberate choice on the part of the larva? I
+incline towards the second alternative, so repeatedly was the presence
+of a root verified, at least when my search was skilfully conducted.
+
+Yes, the Cigale, digging its chamber, the nucleus of the future shaft,
+seeks out the immediate neighbourhood of a small living root; it lays
+bare a certain portion, which forms part of the wall, without
+projecting. This living spot in the wall is the fountain where the
+supply of moisture is renewed. When its reservoir is exhausted by the
+conversion of dry dust into mud the miner descends to its chamber,
+thrusts its proboscis into the root, and drinks deep from the vat built
+into the wall. Its organs well filled, it re-ascends. It resumes work,
+damping the hard soil the better to remove it with its talons, reducing
+the debris to mud, in order to pack it tightly around it and obtain a
+free passage. In this manner the shaft is driven upwards; logic and the
+facts of the case, in the absence of direct observation, justify the
+assertion.
+
+If the root were to fail, and the reservoir of the intestine were
+exhausted, what would happen? The following experiment will inform us: a
+larva is caught as it leaves the earth. I place it at the bottom of a
+test-tube, and cover it with a column of dry earth, which is rather
+lightly packed. This column is about six inches in height. The larva has
+just left an excavation three times as deep, made in soil of the same
+kind, but offering a far greater resistance. Buried under this short
+column of powdery earth, will it be able to gain the surface? If its
+strength hold out the issue should be certain; having but lately made
+its way through the hard earth, this obstacle should be easily removed.
+
+But I am not so sure. In removing the stopper which divided it from the
+outside world, the larva has expended its final store of liquid. The
+cistern is dry, and in default of a living root there is no means of
+replenishing it. My suspicions are well founded. For three days the
+prisoner struggles desperately, but cannot ascend by so much as an inch.
+It is impossible to fix the material removed in the absence of
+moisture; as soon as it is thrust aside it slips back again. The labour
+has no visible result; it is a labour of Sisyphus, always to be
+commenced anew. On the fourth day the creature succumbs.
+
+With the intestines full the result is very different.
+
+I make the same experiment with an insect which is only beginning its
+work of liberation. It is swollen with fluid, which oozes from it and
+moistens the whole body. Its task is easy; the overlying earth offers
+little resistance. A small quantity of liquid from the intestines
+converts it into mud; forms a sticky paste which can be thrust aside
+with the assurance that it will remain where it is placed. The shaft is
+gradually opened; very unevenly, to be sure, and it is almost choked up
+behind the insect as it climbs upwards. It seems as though the creature
+recognises the impossibility of renewing its store of liquid, and so
+economises the little it possesses, using only just so much as is
+necessary in order to escape as quickly as possible from surroundings
+which are strange to its inherited instincts. This parsimony is so well
+judged that the insect gains the surface at the end of twelve days.
+
+The gate of issue is opened and left gaping, like a hole made with an
+augur. For some little time the larva wanders about the neighbourhood of
+its burrow, seeking an eyrie on some low-growing bush or tuft of thyme,
+on a stem of grass or grain, or the twig of a shrub. Once found, it
+climbs and firmly clasps its support, the head upwards, while the talons
+of the fore feet close with an unyielding grip. The other claws, if the
+direction of the twig is convenient, assist in supporting it; otherwise
+the claws of the two fore legs will suffice. There follows a moment of
+repose, while the supporting limbs stiffen in an unbreakable hold. Then
+the thorax splits along the back, and through the fissure the insect
+slowly emerges. The whole process lasts perhaps half an hour.
+
+There is the adult insect, freed of its mask, and how different from
+what it was but how! The wings are heavy, moist, transparent, with
+nervures of a tender green. The thorax is barely clouded with brown. All
+the rest of the body is a pale green, whitish in places. Heat and a
+prolonged air-bath are necessary to harden and colour the fragile
+creature. Some two hours pass without any perceptible change. Hanging to
+its deserted shell by the two fore limbs, the Cigale sways to the least
+breath of air, still feeble and still green. Finally, the brown colour
+appears and rapidly covers the whole body; the change of colour is
+completed in half an hour. Fastening upon its chosen twig at nine
+o'clock in the morning, the Cigale flies away under my eyes at half-past
+twelve.
+
+The empty shell remains, intact except for the fissure in the back;
+clasping the twig so firmly that the winds of autumn do not always
+succeed in detaching it. For some months yet and even during the winter
+you will often find these forsaken skins hanging from the twigs in the
+precise attitude assumed by the larva at the moment of metamorphosis.
+They are of a horny texture, not unlike dry parchment, and do not
+readily decay.
+
+I could gather some wonderful information regarding the Cigale were I to
+listen to all that my neighbours, the peasants, tell me. I will give one
+instance of rustic natural history.
+
+[Illustration: THE CIGALE AND THE EMPTY PUPA-SKIN.]
+
+Are you afflicted with any kidney trouble, or are you swollen with
+dropsy, or have you need of some powerful diuretic? The village
+pharmacopoeia is unanimous in recommending the Cigale as a sovereign
+remedy. The insects in the adult form are collected in summer. They are
+strung into necklaces which are dried in the sun and carefully preserved
+in some cupboard or drawer. A good housewife would consider it imprudent
+to allow July to pass without threading a few of these insects.
+
+Do you suffer from any nephritic irritation or from stricture? Drink an
+infusion of Cigales. Nothing, they say, is more effectual. I must take
+this opportunity of thanking the good soul who once upon a time, so I
+was afterwards informed, made me drink such a concoction unawares for
+the cure of some such trouble; but I still remain incredulous. I have
+been greatly struck by the fact that the ancient physician of Anazarbus
+used to recommend the same remedy. Dioscorides tells us: _Cicadæ, quae
+inassatae manduntur, vesicae doloribus prosunt_. Since the distant days
+of this patriarch of _materia medica_ the Provençal peasant has retained
+his faith in the remedy revealed to him by the Greeks, who came from
+Phocæa with the olive, the fig, and the vine. Only one thing is changed:
+Dioscorides advises us to eat the Cigales roasted, but now they are
+boiled, and the decoction is administered as medicine. The explanation
+which is given of the diuretic properties of the insect is a marvel of
+ingenuousness. The Cigale, as every one knows who has tried to catch it,
+throws a jet of liquid excrement in one's face as it flies away. It
+therefore endows us with its faculties of evacuation. Thus Dioscorides
+and his contemporaries must have reasoned; so reasons the peasant of
+Provence to-day.
+
+What would you say, worthy neighbours, if you knew of the virtues of the
+larva, which is able to mix sufficient mortar with its urine to build a
+meteorological station and a shaft connecting with the outer world? Your
+powers should equal those of Rabelais' Gargantua, who, seated upon the
+towers of Notre Dame, drowned so many thousands of the inquisitive
+Parisians.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SONG OF THE CIGALE
+
+
+Where I live I can capture five species of Cigale, the two principal
+species being the common Cigale and the variety which lives on the
+flowering ash. Both of these are widely distributed and are the only
+species known to the country folk. The larger of the two is the common
+Cigale. Let me briefly describe the mechanism with which it produces its
+familiar note.
+
+On the under side of the body of the male, immediately behind the
+posterior limbs, are two wide semicircular plates which slightly overlap
+one another, the right hand lying over the left hand plate. These are
+the shutters, the lids, the dampers of the musical-box. Let us remove
+them. To the right and left lie two spacious cavities which are known in
+Provençal as the chapels (_li capello_). Together they form the church
+(_la glèiso_). Their forward limit is formed by a creamy yellow
+membrane, soft and thin; the hinder limit by a dry membrane coloured
+like a soap bubble and known in Provençal as the mirror (_mirau_).
+
+The church, the mirrors, and the dampers are commonly regarded as the
+organs which produce the cry of the Cigale. Of a singer out of breath
+one says that he has broken his mirrors (_a li mirau creba_). The same
+phrase is used of a poet without inspiration. Acoustics give the lie to
+the popular belief. You may break the mirrors, remove the covers with a
+snip of the scissors, and tear the yellow anterior membrane, but these
+mutilations do not silence the song of the Cigale; they merely change
+its quality and weaken it. The chapels are resonators; they do not
+produce the sound, but merely reinforce it by the vibration of their
+anterior and posterior membranes; while the sound is modified by the
+dampers as they are opened more or less widely.
+
+The actual source of the sound is elsewhere, and is somewhat difficult
+for a novice to find. On the outer wall of either chapel, at the ridge
+formed by the junction of back and belly, is a tiny aperture with a
+horny circumference masked by the overlapping damper. We will call this
+the window. This opening gives access to a cavity or sound-chamber,
+deeper than the "chapels," but of much smaller capacity. Immediately
+behind the attachment of the posterior wings is a slight protuberance,
+almost egg-shaped, which is distinguishable, on account of its dull
+black colour, from the neighbouring integuments, which are covered with
+a silvery down. This protuberance is the outer wall of the
+sound-chamber.
+
+Let us cut it boldly away. We shall then lay bare the mechanism which
+produces the sound, the _cymbal_. This is a small dry, white membrane,
+oval in shape, convex on the outer side, and crossed along its larger
+diameter by a bundle of three or four brown nervures, which give it
+elasticity. Its entire circumference is rigidly fixed. Let us suppose
+that this convex scale is pulled out of shape from the interior, so
+that it is slightly flattened and as quickly released; it will
+immediately regain its original convexity owing to the elasticity of the
+nervures. From this oscillation a ticking sound will result.
+
+Twenty years ago all Paris was buying a silly toy, called, I think, the
+cricket or _cri-cri_. It was a short slip of steel fixed by one end to a
+metallic base. Pressed out of shape by the thumb and released, it
+yielded a very distressing, tinkling _click_. Nothing else was needed to
+take the popular mind by storm. The "cricket" had its day of glory.
+Oblivion has executed justice upon it so effectually that I fear I shall
+not be understood when I recall this celebrated device.
+
+The membranous cymbal and the steel cricket are analogous instruments.
+Both produce a sound by reason of the rapid deformation and recovery of
+an elastic substance--in one case a convex membrane; in the other a slip
+of steel. The "cricket" was bent out of shape by the thumb. How is the
+convexity of the cymbals altered? Let us return to the "church" and
+break down the yellow curtain which closes the front of each chapel. Two
+thick muscular pillars are visible, of a pale orange colour; they join
+at an angle, forming a ~V~, of which the point lies on the median line
+of the insect, against the lower face of the thorax. Each of these
+pillars of flesh terminates suddenly at its upper extremity, as though
+cut short, and from the truncated portion rises a short, slender tendon,
+which is attached laterally to the corresponding cymbal.
+
+There is the whole mechanism, no less simple than that of the steel
+"cricket." The two muscular columns contract and relax, shorten and
+lengthen. By means of its terminal thread each sounds its cymbal, by
+depressing it and immediately releasing it, when its own elasticity
+makes it spring back into shape. These two vibrating scales are the
+source of the Cigale's cry.
+
+Do you wish to convince yourself of the efficiency of this mechanism?
+Take a Cigale but newly dead and make it sing. Nothing is simpler. Seize
+one of these muscular columns with the forceps and pull it in a series
+of careful jerks. The extinct _cri-cri_ comes to life again; at each
+jerk there is a clash of the cymbal. The sound is feeble, to be sure,
+deprived of the amplitude which the living performer is able to give it
+by means of his resonating chambers; none the less, the fundamental
+element of the song is produced by this anatomist's trick.
+
+Would you, on the other hand, silence a living Cigale?--that obstinate
+melomaniac, who, seized in the fingers, deplores his misfortune as
+loquaciously as ever he sang the joys of freedom in his tree? It is
+useless to violate his chapels, to break his mirrors; the atrocious
+mutilation would not quiet him. But introduce a needle by the lateral
+aperture which we have named the "window" and prick the cymbal at the
+bottom of the sound-box. A little touch and the perforated cymbal is
+silent. A similar operation on the other side of the insect and the
+insect is dumb, though otherwise as vigorous as before and without any
+perceptible wound. Any one not in the secret would be amazed at the
+result of my pin-prick, when the destruction of the mirrors and the
+other dependencies of the "church" do not cause silence. A tiny
+perforation of no importance to the insect is more effectual than
+evisceration.
+
+The dampers, which are rigid and solidly built, are motionless. It is
+the abdomen itself which, by rising and falling, opens or closes the
+doors of the "church." When the abdomen is lowered the dampers exactly
+cover the chapels as well as the windows of the sound-boxes. The sound
+is then muted, muffled, diminished. When the abdomen rises the chapels
+are open, the windows unobstructed, and the sound acquires its full
+volume. The rapid oscillations of the abdomen, synchronising with the
+contractions of the motor muscles of the cymbals, determine the changing
+volume of the sound, which seems to be caused by rapidly repeated
+strokes of a fiddlestick.
+
+If the weather is calm and hot, towards mid-day the song of the Cigale
+is divided into strophes of several seconds' duration, which are
+separated by brief intervals of silence. The strophe begins suddenly. In
+a rapid crescendo, the abdomen oscillating with increasing rapidity, it
+acquires its maximum volume; it remains for a few seconds at the same
+degree of intensity, then becomes weaker by degrees, and degenerates
+into a shake, which decreases as the abdomen returns to rest. With the
+last pulsations of the belly comes silence; the length of the silent
+interval varies according to the state of the atmosphere. Then, of a
+sudden, begins a new strophe, a monotonous repetition of the first; and
+so on indefinitely.
+
+It often happens, especially during the hours of the sultry afternoons,
+that the insect, intoxicated with sunlight, shortens and even suppresses
+the intervals of silence. The song is then continuous, but always with
+an alternation of crescendo and diminuendo. The first notes are heard
+about seven or eight o'clock in the morning, and the orchestra ceases
+only when the twilight fails, about eight o'clock at night. The concert
+lasts a whole round of the clock. But if the sky is grey and the wind
+chilly the Cigale is silent.
+
+The second species, only half the size of the common Cigale, is known in
+Provence as the _Cacan_; the name, being a fairly exact imitation of the
+sound emitted by the insect. This is the Cigale of the flowering ash,
+far more alert and far more suspicious than the common species. Its
+harsh, loud song consists of a series of cries--_can! can! can!
+can!_--with no intervals of silence subdividing the poem into stanzas.
+Thanks to its monotony and its harsh shrillness, it is a most odious
+sound, especially when the orchestra consists of hundreds of performers,
+as is often the case in my two plane-trees during the dog-days. It is as
+though a heap of dry walnuts were being shaken up in a bag until the
+shells broke. This painful concert, which is a real torment, offers only
+one compensation: the Cigale of the flowering ash does not begin his
+song so early as the common Cigale, and does not sing so late in the
+evening.
+
+Although constructed on the same fundamental principles, the vocal
+organs exhibit a number of peculiarities which give the song its special
+character. The sound-box is lacking, which suppresses the entrance to
+it, or the window. The cymbal is uncovered, and is visible just behind
+the attachment of the hinder wing. It is, as before, a dry white scale,
+convex on the outside, and crossed by a bundle of fine reddish-brown
+nervures.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW.
+
+2. THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW.
+
+3. THE CIGALE OF THE FLOWERING ASH, MALE AND FEMALE.]
+
+From the forward side of the first segment of the abdomen project two
+short, wide, tongue-shaped projections, the free extremities of which
+rest on the cymbals. These tongues may be compared to the blade of a
+watchman's rattle, only instead of engaging with the teeth of a rotating
+wheel they touch the nervures of the vibrating cymbal. From this fact, I
+imagine, results the harsh, grating quality of the cry. It is hardly
+possible to verify the fact by holding the insect in the fingers; the
+terrified _Cacan_ does not go on singing his usual song.
+
+The dampers do not overlap; on the contrary, they are separated by a
+fairly wide interval. With the rigid tongues, appendages of the abdomen,
+they half shelter the cymbals, half of which is completely bare. Under
+the pressure of the finger the abdomen opens a little at its
+articulation with the thorax. But the insect is motionless when it
+sings; there is nothing of the rapid vibrations of the belly which
+modulate the song of the common Cigale. The chapels are very small;
+almost negligible as resonators. There are mirrors, as in the common
+Cigale, but they are very small; scarcely a twenty-fifth of an inch in
+diameter. In short, the resonating mechanism, so highly developed in the
+common Cigale, is here extremely rudimentary. How then is the feeble
+vibration of the cymbals re-enforced until it becomes intolerable?
+
+This species of Cigale is a ventriloquist. If we examine the abdomen by
+transmitted light, we shall see that the anterior two-thirds of the
+abdomen are translucent. With a snip of the scissors we will cut off the
+posterior third, to which are relegated, reduced to the strictly
+indispensable, the organs necessary to the propagation of the species
+and the preservation of the individual. The rest of the abdomen presents
+a spacious cavity, and consists simply of the integuments of the walls,
+except on the dorsal side, which is lined with a thin muscular layer,
+and supports a fine digestive canal, almost a thread. This large cavity,
+equal to nearly half the total volume of the insect, is thus almost
+absolutely empty. At the back are seen the two motor muscles of the
+cymbals, two muscular columns arranged like the limbs of a ~V~. To right
+and left of the point of this ~V~ shine the tiny mirrors; and between
+the two branches of muscle the empty cavity is prolonged into the depths
+of the thorax.
+
+This empty abdomen with its thoracic annex forms an enormous resonator,
+such as no other performer in our countryside can boast of. If I close
+with my finger the orifice of the truncated abdomen the sound becomes
+flatter, in conformity with the laws affecting musical resonators; if I
+fit into the aperture of the open body a tube or trumpet of paper the
+sound grows louder as well as deeper. With a paper cone corresponding
+to the pitch of the note, with its large end held in the mouth of a
+test-tube acting as a resonator, we have no longer the cry of the
+Cigale, but almost the bellowing of a bull. My little children,
+coming up to me by chance at the moment of this acoustic experiment,
+fled in terror.
+
+The grating quality of the sound appears to be due to the little tongues
+which press on the nervures of the vibrating cymbals; the cause of its
+intensity is of course the ample resonator in the abdomen. We must admit
+that one must truly have a real passion for song before one would empty
+one's chest and stomach in order to make room for a musical-box. The
+necessary vital organs are extremely small, confined to a mere corner of
+the body, in order to increase the amplitude of the resonating cavity.
+Song comes first of all; other matters take the second rank.
+
+It is lucky that the _Cacan_ does not follow the laws of evolution. If,
+more enthusiastic in each generation, it could acquire, in the course of
+progress, a ventral resonator comparable to my paper trumpets, the South
+of France would sooner or later become uninhabitable, and the _Cacan_
+would have Provence to itself.
+
+After the details already given concerning the common Cigale it is
+hardly needful to tell you how the insupportable _Cacan_ can be reduced
+to silence. The cymbals are plainly visible on the exterior. Pierce them
+with the point of a needle, and immediately you have perfect silence. If
+only there were, in my plane-trees, among the insects which carry
+gimlets, some friends of silence like myself, who would devote
+themselves to such a task! But no: a note would be lacking in the
+majestic symphony of harvest-tide.
+
+We are now familiar with the structure of the musical organ of the
+Cigale. Now the question arises: What is the object of these musical
+orgies? The reply seems obvious: they are the call of the males inviting
+their mates; they constitute a lovers' cantata.
+
+I am going to consider this reply, which is certainly a very natural
+one. For thirty years the common Cigale and his unmusical friend the
+_Cacan_ have thrust their society upon me. For two months every summer I
+have them under my eyes, and their voice in my ears. If I do not listen
+to them very willingly I observe them with considerable zeal. I see
+them ranged in rows on the smooth rind of the plane-trees, all with
+their heads uppermost, the two sexes mingled, and only a few inches
+apart.
+
+The proboscis thrust into the bark, they drink, motionless. As the sun
+moves, and with it the shadow, they also move round the branch with slow
+lateral steps, so as to keep upon that side which is most brilliantly
+illuminated, most fiercely heated. Whether the proboscis is at work or
+not the song is never interrupted.
+
+Now are we to take their interminable chant for a passionate love-song?
+I hesitate. In this gathering the two sexes are side by side. One does
+not spend months in calling a person who is at one's elbow. Moreover, I
+have never seen a female rush into the midst of even the most deafening
+orchestra. Sight is a sufficient prelude to marriage, for their sight is
+excellent. There is no need for the lover to make an everlasting
+declaration, for his mistress is his next-door neighbour.
+
+Is the song a means of charming, of touching the hard of heart? I doubt
+it. I observe no sign of satisfaction in the females; I have never seen
+them tremble or sway upon their feet, though their lovers have clashed
+their cymbals with the most deafening vigour.
+
+My neighbours the peasants say that at harvest-time the Cigale sings to
+them: _Sego, sego, sego!_ (Reap, reap, reap!) to encourage them in their
+work. Harvesters of ideas and of ears of grain, we follow the same
+calling; the latter produce food for the stomach, the former food for
+the mind. Thus I understand their explanation and welcome it as an
+example of gracious simplicity.
+
+Science asks for a better explanation, but finds in the insect a world
+which is closed to us. There is no possibility of foreseeing, or even
+of suggesting the impression produced by this clashing of cymbals upon
+those who inspire it. The most I can say is that their impassive
+exterior seems to denote a complete indifference. I do not insist that
+this is so; the intimate feelings of the insect are an insoluble
+mystery.
+
+Another reason for doubt is this: all creatures affected by song have
+acute hearing, and this sense of hearing, a vigilant sentinel, should
+give warning of danger at the slightest sound. The birds have an
+exquisite delicacy of hearing. If a leaf stirs among the branches, if
+two passers-by exchange a word, they are suddenly silent, anxious, and
+on their guard. But the Cigale is far from sharing in such emotions. It
+has excellent sight. Its great faceted eyes inform it of all that
+happens to right and left; its three stemmata, like little ruby
+telescopes, explore the sky above its head. If it sees us coming it is
+silent at once, and flies away. But let us get behind the branch on
+which it is singing; let us manoeuvre so as to avoid the five centres
+of vision, and then let us speak, whistle, clap the hands, beat two
+stones together. For far less a bird which could not see you would stop
+its song and fly away terrified. The Cigale imperturbably continues to
+sing as if nothing had occurred.
+
+Of my experiences of this kind I will mention only one, the most
+remarkable of many.
+
+I borrowed the municipal artillery; that is, the iron boxes which are
+charged with gunpowder on the day of the patron saint. The artilleryman
+was delighted to load them for the benefit of the Cigales, and to fire
+them off for me before my house. There were two of these boxes stuffed
+full of powder as though for the most solemn rejoicing. Never was
+politician making his electoral progress favoured with a bigger charge.
+To prevent damage to my windows the sashes were all left open. The two
+engines of detonation were placed at the foot of the plane-trees before
+my door, no precautions being taken to mask them. The Cigales singing in
+the branches above could not see what was happening below.
+
+There were six of us, spectators and auditors. We waited for a moment of
+relative quiet. The number of singers was counted by each of us, as well
+as the volume and rhythm of the song. We stood ready, our ears attentive
+to the aerial orchestra. The box exploded with a clap of thunder.
+
+No disturbance ensued above. The number of performers was the same, the
+rhythm the same, the volume the same. The six witnesses were unanimous:
+the loud explosion had not modified the song of the Cigales in the
+least. The second box gave an identical result.
+
+What are we to conclude from this persistence of the orchestra, its lack
+of surprise or alarm at the firing of a charge? Shall we conclude that
+the Cigale is deaf? I am not going to venture so far as that; but if any
+one bolder than myself were to make the assertion I really do not know
+what reasons I could invoke to disprove it. I should at least be forced
+to admit that it is very hard of hearing, and that we may well apply to
+it the homely and familiar phrase: to shout like a deaf man.
+
+When the blue-winged cricket, basking on the pebbles of some country
+footpath, grows deliciously intoxicated with the heat of the sun and
+rubs its great posterior thighs against the roughened edge of its
+wing-covers; when the green tree-frog swells its throat in the foliage
+of the bushes, distending it to form a resonant cavity when the rain is
+imminent, is it calling to its absent mate? By no means. The efforts of
+the former produce a scarcely perceptible stridulation; the palpitating
+throat of the latter is as ineffectual; and the desired one does not
+come.
+
+Does the insect really require to emit these resounding effusions, these
+vociferous avowals, in order to declare its passion? Consult the immense
+majority whom the conjunction of the sexes leaves silent. In the violin
+of the grasshopper, the bagpipe of the tree-frog, and the cymbals of the
+_Cacan_ I see only their peculiar means of expressing the joy of living,
+the universal joy which every species of animal expresses after its
+kind.
+
+If you were to tell me that the Cigales play on their noisy instruments
+careless of the sound produced, and merely for the pleasure of feeling
+themselves alive, just as we rub our hands in a moment of satisfaction,
+I should not be particularly shocked. That there is a secondary object
+in their conceit, in which the silent sex is interested, is very
+possible and very natural, but it is not as yet proven.[1]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE CIGALE. THE EGGS AND THEIR HATCHING
+
+
+The Cigale confides its eggs to dry, slender twigs. All the branches
+examined by Réaumur which bore such eggs were branches of the mulberry:
+a proof that the person entrusted with the search for these eggs in the
+neighbourhood of Avignon did not bring much variety to his quest. I find
+these eggs not only on the mulberry-tree, but on the peach, the cherry,
+the willow, the Japanese privet, and other trees. But these are
+exceptions; what the Cigale really prefers is a slender twig of a
+thickness varying from that of a straw to that of a pencil. It should
+have a thin woody layer and plenty of pith. If these conditions are
+fulfilled the species matters little. I should pass in review all the
+semi-ligneous plants of the country were I to catalogue the various
+supports which are utilised by the gravid female.
+
+Its chosen twig never lies along the ground; it is always in a more or
+less vertical position. It is usually growing in its natural position,
+but is sometimes detached; in the latter case it will by chance have
+fallen so that it retains its upright position. The insect prefers a
+long, smooth, regular twig which can receive the whole of its eggs. The
+best batches of eggs which I have found have been laid upon twigs of
+the _Spartium junceum_, which are like straws stuffed with pith, and
+especially on the upper twigs of the _Asphodelus cerasiferus_, which
+rises nearly a yard from the ground before ramifying.
+
+It is essential that the support, no matter what its nature, should be
+dead and perfectly dry.
+
+The first operation performed by the Cigale consists in making a series
+of slight lacerations, such as one might make with the point of a pin,
+which, if plunged obliquely downwards into the twig, would tear the
+woody fibres and would compress them so as to form a slight
+protuberance.
+
+If the twig is irregular in shape, or if several Cigales have been
+working successively at the same point, the distribution of the
+punctures is confused; the eye wanders, incapable of recognising the
+order of their succession or the work of the individual. One
+characteristic is always present, namely, the oblique direction of the
+woody fragment which is raised by the perforation, showing that the
+Cigale always works in an upright position and plunges its rostrum
+downwards in the direction of the twig.
+
+If the twig is regular, smooth, and conveniently long the perforations
+are almost equidistant and lie very nearly in a straight line. Their
+number varies; it is small when the mother, disturbed in her operations,
+has flown away to continue her work elsewhere; but they number thirty or
+forty, more or less, when they contain the whole of her eggs.
+
+Each one of the perforations is the entrance to an oblique tunnel, which
+is bored in the medullary sheath of the twig. The aperture is not
+closed, except by the bunch of woody fibres, which, parted at the moment
+when the eggs are laid, recover themselves when the double saw of the
+oviduct is removed. Sometimes, but by no means always, you may see
+between the fibres a tiny glistening patch like a touch of dried white
+of egg. This is only an insignificant trace of some albuminous secretion
+accompanying the egg or facilitating the work of the double saw of the
+oviduct.
+
+Immediately below the aperture of the perforation is the egg chamber: a
+short, tunnel-shaped cavity which occupies almost the whole distance
+between one opening and that lying below it. Sometimes the separating
+partition is lacking, and the various chambers run into one another, so
+that the eggs, although introduced by the various apertures, are
+arranged in an uninterrupted row. This arrangement, however, is not the
+most usual.
+
+The contents of the chambers vary greatly. I find in each from six to
+fifteen eggs. The average is ten. The total number of chambers varying
+from thirty to forty, it follows that the Cigale lays from three to four
+hundred eggs. Réaumur arrived at the same figures from an examination of
+the ovaries.
+
+This is truly a fine family, capable by sheer force of numbers of
+surviving the most serious dangers. I do not see that the adult Cigale
+is exposed to greater dangers than any other insect: its eye is
+vigilant, its departure sudden, and its flight rapid; and it inhabits
+heights at which the prowling brigands of the turf are not to be feared.
+The sparrow, it is true, will greedily devour it. From time to time he
+will deliberately and meditatively descend upon the plane-trees from the
+neighbouring roof and snatch up the singer, who squeaks despairingly. A
+few blows of the beak and the Cigale is cut into quarters, delicious
+morsels for the nestlings. But how often does the bird return without
+his prey! The Cigale, foreseeing his attack, empties its intestine in
+the eyes of its assailant and flies away.
+
+But the Cigale has a far more terrible enemy than the sparrow. This is
+the green grasshopper. It is late, and the Cigales are silent. Drowsy
+with light and heat, they have exhausted themselves in producing their
+symphonies all day long. Night has come, and with it repose; but a
+repose frequently troubled. In the thick foliage of the plane-trees
+there is a sudden sound like a cry of anguish, short and strident. It is
+the despairing lamentation of the Cigale surprised in the silence by the
+grasshopper, that ardent hunter of the night, which leaps upon the
+Cigale, seizes it by the flank, tears it open, and devours the contents
+of the stomach. After the orgy of music comes night and assassination.
+
+I obtained an insight into this tragedy in the following manner: I was
+walking up and down before my door at daybreak when something fell from
+the neighbouring plane-tree uttering shrill squeaks. I ran to see what
+it was. I found a green grasshopper eviscerating a struggling Cigale. In
+vain did the latter squeak and gesticulate; the other never loosed its
+hold, but plunged its head into the entrails of the victim and removed
+them by little mouthfuls.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE CIGALE LAYING HER EGGS.
+
+2. THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER, THE FALSE CIGALE OF THE NORTH, DEVOURING THE
+TRUE CIGALE, A DWELLER IN THE SOUTH.]
+
+This was instructive. The attack was delivered high up above my head, in
+the early morning, while the Cigale was resting; and the struggles of
+the unfortunate creature as it was dissected alive had resulted in the
+fall of assailant and assailed together. Since then I have often been
+the witness of similar assassinations.
+
+I have even seen the grasshopper, full of audacity, launch itself in
+pursuit of the Cigale, who fled in terror. So the sparrow-hawk pursues
+the skylark in the open sky. But the bird of prey is less ferocious than
+the insect; it pursues a creature smaller than itself. The locust, on
+the contrary, assails a colossus, far larger and far more vigorous than
+its enemy; yet the result is a foregone conclusion, in spite of this
+disproportion. With its powerful mandibles, like pincers of steel, the
+grasshopper rarely fails to eviscerate its captive, which, being
+weaponless, can only shriek and struggle.
+
+The Cigale is an easy prey during its hours of somnolence. Every Cigale
+encountered by the ferocious grasshopper on its nocturnal round must
+miserably perish. Thus are explained those sudden squeaks of anguish
+which are sometimes heard in the boughs during the hours of the night
+and early morning, although the cymbals have long been silent. The
+sea-green bandit has fallen upon some slumbering Cigale. When I wished
+to rear some green grasshoppers I had not far to seek for the diet of my
+pensioners; I fed them on Cigales, of which enormous numbers were
+consumed in my breeding-cages. It is therefore an established fact that
+the green grasshopper, the false Cigale of the North, will eagerly
+devour the true Cigale, the inhabitant of the Midi.
+
+But it is neither the sparrow nor the green grasshopper that has forced
+the Cigale to produce such a vast number of offspring. The real danger
+is elsewhere, as we shall see. The risk is enormous at the moment of
+hatching and also when the egg is laid.
+
+Two or three weeks after its escape from the earth--that is, about the
+middle of July--the Cigale begins to lay. In order to observe the
+process without trusting too much to chance, I took certain precautions
+which would, I felt sure, prove successful. The dry Asphodelus is the
+support preferred by the insect, as previous observations had assured
+me. It was also the plant which best lent itself to my experiments, on
+account of its long, smooth stems. Now, during the first years of my
+residence in the South I replaced the thistles in my paddock by other
+native plants of a less stubborn and prickly species. Among the new
+occupants was the asphodel. This was precisely what I needed for my
+experiments. I left the dry stems of the preceding year in place, and
+when the breeding season arrived I inspected them daily.
+
+I had not long to wait. As early as July 15th I found as many Cigales as
+I could wish on the stems of the asphodel, all in process of laying. The
+gravid female is always solitary. Each mother has her twig to herself,
+and is in no danger of being disturbed during the delicate operation of
+laying. When the first occupant has departed another may take her place,
+and so on indefinitely. There is abundance of room for all; but each
+prefers to be alone as her turn arrives. There is, however, no
+unpleasantness of any kind; everything passes most peacefully. If a
+female Cigale finds a place which has been already taken she flies away
+and seeks another twig directly she discovers her mistake.
+
+The gravid female always retains an upright position at this time, as
+indeed she does at other times. She is so absorbed in her task that she
+may readily be watched, even through a magnifying glass. The ovipositor,
+which is about four-tenths of an inch in length, is plunged obliquely
+and up to the hilt into the twig. So perfect is the tool that the
+operation is by no means troublesome. We see the Cigale tremble
+slightly, dilating and contracting the extremity of the abdomen in
+frequent palpitations. This is all that can be seen. The boring
+instrument, consisting of a double saw, alternately rises and sinks in
+the rind of the twig with a gentle, almost imperceptible movement.
+Nothing in particular occurs during the process of laying the eggs. The
+insect is motionless, and hardly ten minutes elapse between the first
+cut of the ovipositor and the filling of the egg-chamber with eggs.
+
+The ovipositor is then withdrawn with methodical deliberation, in order
+that it may not be strained or bent. The egg-chamber closes of its own
+accord as the woody fibres which have been displaced return to their
+position, and the Cigale climbs a little higher, moving upwards in a
+straight line, by about the length of its ovipositor. It then makes
+another puncture and a fresh chamber for another ten or twelve eggs. In
+this way it scales the twig from bottom to top.
+
+These facts being understood, we are able to explain the remarkable
+arrangement of the eggs. The openings in the rind of the twig are
+practically equidistant, since each time the Cigale moves upward it is
+by a given length, namely, that of the ovipositor. Very rapid in flight,
+she is a very idle walker. At the most you may see her, on the living
+twig from which she is drinking, moving at a slow, almost solemn pace,
+to gain a more sunny point close at hand. On the dry twig in which she
+deposits her eggs she observes the same formal habits, and even
+exaggerates them, in view of the importance of the operation. She moves
+as little as possible, just so far as she must in order to avoid running
+two adjacent egg-chambers into one. The extent of each movement upwards
+is approximately determined by the depth of the perforation.
+
+The apertures are arranged in a straight line when their number is not
+very large. Why, indeed, should the insect wander to right or to left
+upon a twig which presents the same surface all over? A lover of the
+sun, she chooses that side of the twig which is most exposed to it. So
+long as she feels the heat, her supreme joy, upon her back, she will
+take good care not to change the position which she finds so delightful
+for another in which the sun would fall upon her less directly.
+
+The process of depositing the eggs is a lengthy one when it is carried
+out entirely on the same twig. Counting ten minutes for each
+egg-chamber, the full series of forty would represent a period of six or
+seven hours. The sun will of course move through a considerable distance
+before the Cigale can finish her work. In such cases the series of
+apertures follows a spiral curve. The insect turns round the stalk as
+the sun turns.
+
+Very often as the Cigale is absorbed in her maternal task a diminutive
+fly, also full of eggs, busily exterminates the Cigale's eggs as fast as
+they are laid.
+
+This insect was known to Réaumur. In nearly all the twigs examined he
+found its grub, the cause of a misunderstanding at the beginning of his
+researches. But he did not, could not see the audacious insect at work.
+It is one of the Chalcididæ, about one-fifth or one-sixth of an inch in
+length; entirely black, with knotty antennæ, which are slightly thicker
+towards their extremities. The unsheathed ovipositor is implanted in the
+under portion of the abdomen, about the middle, and at right angles to
+the axis of the body, as in the case of the Leucospis, the pest of the
+apiary. Not having taken the precaution to capture it, I do not know
+what name the entomologists have bestowed upon it, or even if this dwarf
+exterminator of the Cigale has as yet been catalogued. What I am
+familiar with is its calm temerity, its impudent audacity in the
+presence of the colossus who could crush it with a foot. I have seen as
+many as three at once exploiting the unfortunate female. They keep close
+behind the Cigale, working busily with their probes, or waiting until
+their victim deposits her eggs.
+
+The Cigale fills one of her egg-chambers and climbs a little higher in
+order to bore another hole. One of the bandits runs to the abandoned
+station, and there, almost under the claws of the giant, and without the
+least nervousness, as if it were accomplishing some meritorious action,
+it unsheathes its probe and thrusts it into the column of eggs, not by
+the open aperture, which is bristling with broken fibres, but by a
+lateral fissure. The probes works slowly, as the wood is almost intact.
+The Cigale has time to fill the adjacent chamber.
+
+As soon as she has finished one of these midges, the very same that has
+been performing its task below her, replaces her and introduces its
+disastrous egg. By the time the Cigale departs, her ovaries empty, the
+majority of the egg-chambers have thus received the alien egg which will
+work the destruction of their contents. A small, quick-hatching grub,
+richly nourished on a dozen eggs, will replace the family of the Cigale.
+
+The experience of centuries has taught the Cigale nothing. With her
+excellent eyesight she must be able to perceive these terrible sappers
+as they hover about her, meditating their crime. Too peaceable giantess!
+if you see them why do you not seize them in your talons, crush the
+pigmies at their work, so that you may proceed with your travail in
+security? But no, you will leave them untouched; you cannot modify your
+instincts, even to alleviate your maternal misfortunes.
+
+The eggs of the common Cigale are of a shining ivory white. Conical at
+the ends, and elongated in form, they might be compared in shape to the
+weaver's shuttle. Their length is about one-tenth of an inch, their
+diameter about one-fiftieth. They are packed in a row, slightly
+overlapping one another. The eggs of the Cacan are slightly smaller, and
+are assembled in regular groups which remind one of microscopical
+bundles of cigars. We will consider the eggs of the common Cigale to the
+exclusion of the others, as their history is the history of all.
+
+September is not yet over when the shining white as of ivory gives way
+to the yellow hue of cheese. During the first days of October you may
+see, at the forward end of the egg, two tiny points of chestnut brown,
+which are the eyes of the embryo in formation. These two shining eyes,
+which almost seem to gaze at one, and the cone-shaped head of the egg,
+give it the look of a tiny fish without fins--a fish for whom half a
+nut-shell would make a capacious aquarium.
+
+About the same time I notice frequently, on the asphodels in the paddock
+and on those of the neighbouring hills, certain indications that the
+eggs have recently hatched out. There are certain cast-off articles of
+clothing, certain rags and tatters, left on the threshold of the
+egg-chamber by the new-born grubs as they leave it and hurry in search
+of a new lodging. We shall see in a moment what these vestiges mean.
+
+But in spite of my visits, which were so assiduous as to deserve
+success, I had never contrived to see the young Cigales emerge from
+their egg-chambers. My domestic researches had been pursued in vain. Two
+years running I had collected, in boxes, tubes, and bottles, a hundred
+twigs of every kind which were peopled by the eggs of the Cigale; but
+not one had shown me what I so desired to witness: the issue of the
+new-born Cigales.
+
+Réaumur experienced the same disappointment. He tells us how all the
+eggs supplied by his friends were abortive, even when he placed them in
+a glass tube thrust under his armpit, in order to keep them at a high
+temperature. No, venerable master! neither the temperate shelter of our
+studies and laboratories, nor the incubating warmth of our bodies is
+sufficient here; we need the supreme stimulant, the kiss of the sun;
+after the cool of the mornings, which are already sharp, the sudden
+blaze of the superb autumn weather, the last endearments of summer.
+
+It was under such circumstances, when a blazing sun followed a cold
+night, that I found the signs of completed incubation; but I always came
+too late; the young Cigales had departed. At most I sometimes found one
+hanging by a thread to its natal stem and struggling in the air. I
+supposed it to be caught in a thread of gossamer, or some shred of
+cobweb.
+
+At last, on the 27th of October, despairing of success, I gathered some
+asphodels from the orchard, and the armful of dry twigs in which the
+Cigales had laid their eggs was taken up to my study. Before giving up
+all hope I proposed once more to examine the egg-chambers and their
+contents. The morning was cold, and the first fire of the season had
+been lit in my room. I placed my little bundle on a chair before the
+fire, but without any intention of testing the effect of the heat of the
+flames upon the concealed eggs. The twigs, which I was about to cut
+open, one by one, were placed there to be within easy reach of my hand,
+and for no other reason.
+
+Then, while I was examining a split twig with my magnifying-glass, the
+phenomenon which I had given up all hope of observing took place under
+my eyes. My bundle of twigs was suddenly alive; scores and scores of the
+young larvæ were emerging from their egg-chambers. Their numbers were
+such that my ambition as observer was amply satisfied. The eggs were
+ripe, on the point of hatching, and the warmth of the fire, bright and
+penetrating, had the effect of sunlight in the open. I was quick to
+profit by the unexpected piece of good fortune.
+
+At the orifice of the egg-chamber, among the torn fibres of the bark, a
+little cone-shaped body is visible, with two black eye-spots; in
+appearance it is precisely like the fore portion of the butter-coloured
+egg; or, as I have said, like the fore portion of a tiny fish. You would
+think that an egg had been somehow displaced, had been removed from the
+bottom of the chamber to its aperture. An egg to move in this narrow
+passage! a walking egg! No, that is impossible; eggs "do not do such
+things!" This is some mistake. We will break open the twig, and the
+mystery is unveiled. The actual eggs are where they always were, though
+they are slightly disarranged. They are empty, reduced to the condition
+of transparent skins, split wide open at the upper end. From them has
+issued the singular organism whose most notable characteristics are as
+follows:--
+
+In its general form, the configuration of the head and the great black
+eyes, the creature, still more than the egg, has the appearance of an
+extremely minute fish. A simulacrum of a ventral fin increases the
+resemblance. This apparent fin in reality consists of the two
+fore-limbs, which, packed in a special sheath, are bent backwards,
+stretched out against one another in a straight line. Its small degree
+of mobility must enable the grub to escape from the egg-shell and, with
+greater difficulty, from the woody tunnel leading to the open air.
+Moving outwards a little from the body, and then moving back again, this
+lever serves as a means of progression, its terminal hooks being already
+fairly strong. The four other feet are still covered by the common
+envelope, and are absolutely inert. It is the same with the antennæ,
+which can scarcely be seen through the magnifying-glass. The organism
+which has issued from the egg is a boat-shaped body with a fin-shaped
+limb pointing backwards on the ventral face, formed by the junction of
+the two fore-limbs. The segmentation of the body is very clear,
+especially on the abdomen. The whole body is perfectly smooth, without
+the least suspicion of hair.
+
+What name are we to give to this initial phase of the Cigale--a phase so
+strange, so unforeseen, and hitherto unsuspected? Must I amalgamate some
+more or less appropriate words of Greek and fabricate a portentous
+nomenclature? No, for I feel sure that barbarous alien phrases are only
+a hindrance to science. I will call it simply the _primary larva_, as I
+have done in the case of the Meloides, the Leucospis, and the Anthrax.
+
+The form of the primary larva of the Cigale is eminently adapted to its
+conditions and facilitates its escape. The tunnel in which the egg is
+hatched is very narrow, leaving only just room for passage. Moreover,
+the eggs are arranged in a row, not end to end, but partially
+overlapping. The larva escaping from the hinder ranks has to squeeze
+past the empty shells, still in position, of the eggs which have already
+hatched, so that the narrowness of the passage is increased by the empty
+egg-shells. Under these conditions the larva as it will be presently,
+when it has torn its temporary wrappings, would be unable to effect the
+difficult passage. With the encumbrance of antennæ, with long limbs
+spreading far out from the axis of the body, with curved, pointed talons
+which hook themselves into their medium of support, everything would
+militate against a prompt liberation. The eggs in one chamber hatch
+almost simultaneously. It is therefore essential that the first-born
+larvæ should hurry out of their shelter as quickly as possible, leaving
+the passage free for those behind them. Hence the boat-like shape, the
+smooth hairless body without projections, which easily squeezes its way
+past obstructions. The primary larva, with its various appendages
+closely wrapped against its body by a common sheath, with its fish-like
+form and its single and only partially movable limb, is perfectly
+adapted to make the difficult passage to the outer air.
+
+This phase is of short duration. Here, for instance, a migrating larva
+shows its head, with its big black eyes, and raises the broken fibres of
+the entrance. It gradually works itself forward, but so slowly that the
+magnifying-glass scarcely reveals its progress. At the end of half an
+hour at the shortest we see the entire body of the creature; but the
+orifice by which it is escaping still holds it by the hinder end of the
+body.
+
+Then, without further delay, the coat which it wears for this rough
+piece of work begins to split, and the larva skins itself, coming out of
+its wrappings head first. It is then the normal larva; the only form
+known to Réaumur. The rejected coat forms a suspensory thread, expanding
+at its free end to form a little cup. In this cup is inserted the end of
+the abdomen of the larva, which, before allowing itself to fall to
+earth, takes a sun-bath, grows harder, stretches itself, and tries its
+strength, lightly swinging at the end of its life-line.
+
+This little flea, as Réaumur calls it, first white, then amber-coloured,
+is precisely the larva which will delve in the earth. The antennæ, of
+fair length, are free and waving to and fro; the limbs are bending at
+their articulations; the fore-limbs, which are relatively powerful, open
+and shut their talons. I can scarcely think of any more curious
+spectacle than that of this tiny gymnast hanging by its tail, swinging
+to the faintest breath, and preparing in the air for its entry into the
+world. It hangs there for a variable period; some larvæ let themselves
+fall at the end of half an hour; others spend hours in their
+long-stemmed cup; some even remain suspended until the following day.
+
+Whether soon or late, the fall of the larva leaves suspended the thread
+by which it hung, the wrappings of the primary larva. When all the brood
+have disappeared, the aperture of the nest is thus hung with a branch of
+fine, short threads, twisted and knotted together, like dried white of
+egg. Each thread is expanded into a tiny cup at its free end. These are
+very delicate and ephemeral relics, which perish at a touch. The least
+wind quickly blows them away.
+
+Let us return to the larva. Sooner or later, as we have seen, it falls
+to the ground, either by accident or intention. The tiny creature, no
+bigger than a flea, has preserved its tender newly-hatched flesh from
+contact with the rough earth by hanging in the air until its tissues
+have hardened. Now it plunges into the troubles of life.
+
+I foresee a thousand dangers ahead. A mere breath of wind may carry this
+atom away, and cast it on that inaccessible rock in the midst of a rut
+in the road which still contains a little water; or on the sand, the
+region of famine where nothing grows; or upon a soil of clay, too
+tenacious to be tunnelled. These mortal accidents are frequent, for
+gusts of wind are frequent in the windy and already severe weather of
+the end of October.
+
+This delicate organism requires a very soft soil, which can easily be
+entered, so that it may immediately obtain a suitable shelter. The cold
+days are coming; soon the frosts will be here. To wander on the surface
+would expose it to grave perils. It must contrive without delay to
+descend into the earth, and that to no trivial depth. This is the unique
+and imperative condition of safety, and in many cases it is impossible
+of realisation. What use are the claws of this tiny flea against rock,
+sandstone, or hardened clay? The creature must perish if it cannot find
+a subterranean refuge in good time.
+
+Everything goes to show that the necessity of this first foothold on the
+soil, subject as it is to so many accidents, is the cause of the great
+mortality in the Cigale family. The little black parasite, the destroyer
+of eggs, in itself evokes the necessity of a large batch of eggs; and
+the difficulty which the larva experiences in effecting a safe lodgment
+in the earth is yet another explanation of the fact that the maintenance
+of the race at its proper strength requires a batch of three or four
+hundred eggs from each mother. Subject to many accidents, the Cigale is
+fertile to excess. By the prodigality of her ovaries she conjures the
+host of perils which threaten her offspring.
+
+During the rest of my experiment I can at least spare the larvæ the
+worst difficulties of their first establishment underground. I take some
+soil from the heath, which is very soft and almost black, and I pass it
+through a fine sieve. Its colour will enable me more easily to find the
+tiny fair-skinned larvæ when I wish to inform myself of passing events;
+its lightness makes it a suitable refuge for such weak and fragile
+beings. I pack it Pretty firmly in a glass vase; I plant in it a little
+tuft of thyme; I sow in it a few grains of wheat. There is no hole at
+the bottom of the vase, although there should be one for the benefit of
+the thyme and the corn; but the captives would find it and escape by it.
+The plantation and the crop will suffer from this lack of drainage, but
+at least I am sure of recovering my larvæ with the help of patience and
+a magnifying-glass. Moreover, I shall go gently in the matter of
+irrigation, giving only just enough water to save the plants from
+perishing.
+
+When all is in order, and when the wheat is beginning to shoot, I place
+six young larvæ of the Cigale on the surface of the soil. The tiny
+creatures begin to pace hither and thither; they soon explore the
+surface of their world, and some try vainly to climb the sides of the
+vase. Not one of them seems inclined to bury itself; so that I ask
+myself anxiously what can be the object of their prolonged and active
+explorations. Two hours go by, but their wanderings continue.
+
+What do they want? Food? I offer them some tiny bulbs with bundles of
+sprouting roots, a few fragments of leaves and some fresh blades of
+grass. Nothing tempts them; nothing brings them to a standstill.
+Apparently they are seeking for a favourable point before descending
+into the earth. But there is no need for this hesitating exploration on
+the soil I have prepared for them; the whole area, or so it seems to me,
+lends itself excellently to the operations which I am expecting to see
+them commence. Yet apparently it will not answer the purpose.
+
+Under natural conditions a little wandering might well be indispensable.
+Spots as soft as my bed of earth from the roots of the briar-heather,
+purged of all hard bodies and finely sifted, are rare in nature. Coarse
+soils are more usual, on which the tiny creatures could make no
+impression. The larva must wander at hazard, must make a pilgrimage of
+indefinite duration before finding a favourable place. Very many, no
+doubt, perish, exhausted by their fruitless search. A voyage of
+exploration in a country a few inches wide evidently forms part of the
+curriculum of young Cigales. In my glass prison, so luxuriously
+furnished, this pilgrimage is useless. Never mind: it must be
+accomplished according to the consecrated rites.
+
+At last my wanderers grow less excited. I see them attack the earth with
+the curved talons of their fore-limbs, digging their claws into it and
+making such an excavation as the point of a thick needle would enter.
+With a magnifying-glass I watch their picks at work. I see their talons
+raking atom after atom of earth to the surface. In a few minutes there
+is a little gaping well. The larva climbs downwards and buries itself,
+henceforth invisible.
+
+On the morrow I turn out the contents of the vase without breaking the
+mould, which is held together by the roots of the thyme and the wheat. I
+find all my larvæ at the bottom, arrested by the glass. In twenty-four
+hours they had sunk themselves through the entire thickness of the
+earth--a matter of some four inches. But for obstacle at the bottom they
+would have sunk even further.
+
+On the way they have probably encountered the rootlets of my little
+plantation. Did they halt in order to take a little nourishment by
+implanting their proboscis? This is hardly probable, for a few rootlets
+were pressed against the bottom of the glass, but none of my prisoners
+were feeding. Perhaps the shock of reversing the pot detached them.
+
+It is obvious that underground there is no other nourishment for them
+than the sap of roots. Adult or larva, the Cigale is a strict
+vegetarian. As an adult insect it drinks the sap of twigs and branches;
+as a larva it sucks the sap of roots. But at what stage does it take the
+first sip? That I do not know as yet, but the foregoing experiment seems
+to show that the newly hatched larva is in greater haste to burrow deep
+into the soil, so as to obtain shelter from the coming winter, than to
+station itself at the roots encountered in its passage downwards.
+
+I replace the mass of soil in the vase, and the six exhumed larvæ are
+once more placed on the surface of the soil. This time they commence to
+dig at once, and have soon disappeared. Finally the vase is placed in my
+study window, where it will be subject to the influences, good and ill,
+of the outer air.
+
+A month later, at the end of November, I pay the young Cigales a second
+visit. They are crouching, isolated at the bottom of the mould. They do
+not adhere to the roots; they have not grown; their appearance has not
+altered. Such as they were at the beginning of the experiment, such they
+are now, but rather less active. Does not this lack of growth during
+November, the mildest month of winter, prove that no nourishment is
+taken until the spring?
+
+The young Sitares, which are also very minute, directly they issue from
+the egg at the entrance of the tubes of the Anthrophorus, remain
+motionless, assembled in a heap, and pass the whole of the winter in a
+state of complete abstinence. The young Cigales apparently behave in a
+very similar fashion. Once they have burrowed to such depths as will
+safeguard them from the frosts they sleep in solitude in their winter
+quarters, and await the return of spring before piercing some
+neighbouring root and taking their first repast.
+
+I have tried unsuccessfully to confirm these deductions by observation.
+In April I unpotted my plant of thyme for the third time. I broke up the
+mould and spread it under the magnifying-glass. It was like looking for
+needles in a haystack; but at last I recovered my little Cigales. They
+were dead, perhaps of cold, in spite of the bell-glass with which I had
+covered the pot, or perhaps of starvation, if the thyme was not a
+suitable food-plant. I give up the problem as too difficult of solution.
+
+To rear such larvæ successfully one would require a deep, extensive bed
+of earth which would shelter them from the winter cold; and, as I do not
+know what roots they prefer, a varied vegetation, so that the little
+creatures could choose according to their taste. These conditions are by
+no means impracticable, but how, in the large earthy mass, containing at
+least a cubic yard of soil, should we recover the atoms I had so much
+trouble to find in a handful of black soil from the heath? Moreover,
+such a laborious search would certainly detach the larva from its root.
+
+The early subterranean life of the Cigale escapes us. That of the
+maturer larva is no better known. Nothing is more common, while digging
+in the fields to any depth, to find these impetuous excavators under the
+spade; but to surprise them fixed upon the roots which incontestably
+nourish them is quite another matter. The disturbance of the soil warns
+the larva of danger. It withdraws its proboscis in order to retreat
+along its galleries, and when the spade uncovers it has ceased to feed.
+
+If the hazards of field-work, with its inevitable disturbance of the
+larvæ, cannot teach us anything of their subterranean habits, we can at
+least learn something of the duration of the larval stage. Some obliging
+farmers, who were making some deep excavations in March, were good
+enough to collect for me all the larvæ, large and small, unearthed in
+the course of their labour. The total collection amounted to several
+hundreds. They were divided, by very clearly marked differences of size,
+into three categories: the large larvæ, with rudiments of wings, such as
+those larvæ caught upon leaving the earth possess; the medium-sized, and
+the small. Each of these stages must correspond to a different age. To
+these we may add the larvæ produced by the last hatching of eggs,
+creatures too minute to be noticed by my rustic helpers, and we obtain
+four years as the probable term of the larvæ underground.
+
+The length of their aerial existence is more easily computed. I hear the
+first Cigales about the summer solstice. A month later the orchestra has
+attained its full power. A very few late singers execute their feeble
+solos until the middle of September. This is the end of the concert. As
+all the larvæ do not issue from the ground at the same time, it is
+evident that the singers of September are not contemporary with those
+that began to sing at the solstice. Taking the average between these two
+dates, we get five weeks as the probable duration of the Cigales' life
+on earth.
+
+Four years of hard labour underground, and a month of feasting in the
+sun; such is the life of the Cigale. Do not let us again reproach the
+adult insect with his triumphant delirium. For four years, in the
+darkness he has worn a dirty parchment overall; for four years he has
+mined the soil with his talons, and now the mud-stained sapper is
+suddenly clad in the finest raiment, and provided with wings that rival
+the bird's; moreover, he is drunken with heat and flooded with light,
+the supreme terrestrial joy. His cymbals will never suffice to celebrate
+such felicity, so well earned although so ephemeral.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MANTIS.--THE CHASE
+
+
+There is another creature of the Midi which is quite as curious and
+interesting as the Cigale, but much less famous, as it is voiceless. If
+Providence had provided it with cymbals, which are a prime element of
+popularity, it would soon have eclipsed the renown of the celebrated
+singer, so strange is its shape, and so peculiar its manners. It is
+called by the Provençals _lou Prègo-Diéu_, the creature which prays to
+God. Its official name is the Praying Mantis (_Mantis religiosa_, Lin.).
+
+For once the language of science and the vocabulary of the peasant
+agree. Both represent the Mantis as a priestess delivering oracles, or
+an ascetic in a mystic ecstasy. The comparison is a matter of antiquity.
+The ancient Greeks called the insect [Greek: Mantis], the divine, the
+prophet. The worker in the fields is never slow in perceiving analogies;
+he will always generously supplement the vagueness of the facts. He has
+seen, on the sun-burned herbage of the meadows, an insect of commanding
+appearance, drawn up in majestic attitude. He has noticed its wide,
+delicate wings of green, trailing behind it like long linen veils; he
+has seen its fore-limbs, its arms, so to speak, raised towards to the
+sky in a gesture of invocation. This was enough: popular imagination
+has done the rest; so that since the period of classical antiquity the
+bushes have been peopled with priestesses emitting oracles and nuns in
+prayer.
+
+Good people, how very far astray your childlike simplicity has led you!
+These attitudes of prayer conceal the most atrocious habits; these
+supplicating arms are lethal weapons; these fingers tell no rosaries,
+but help to exterminate the unfortunate passer-by. It is an exception
+that we should never look for in the vegetarian family of the
+Orthoptera, but the Mantis lives exclusively upon living prey. It is the
+tiger of the peaceful insect peoples; the ogre in ambush which demands a
+tribute of living flesh. If it only had sufficient strength its
+blood-thirsty appetites, and its horrible perfection of concealment
+would make it the terror of the countryside. The _Prègo-Diéu_ would
+become a Satanic vampire.
+
+Apart from its lethal weapon the Mantis has nothing about it to inspire
+apprehension. It does not lack a certain appearance of graciousness,
+with its slender body, its elegant waist-line, its tender green
+colouring, and its long gauzy wings. No ferocious jaws, opening like
+shears; on the contrary, a fine pointed muzzle which seems to be made
+for billing and cooing. Thanks to a flexible neck, set freely upon the
+thorax, the head can turn to right or left as on a pivot, bow, or raise
+itself high in the air. Alone among insects, the Mantis is able to
+direct its gaze; it inspects and examines; it has almost a physiognomy.
+
+There is a very great contrast between the body as a whole, which has a
+perfectly peaceable aspect, and the murderous fore-limbs. The haunch of
+the fore-limb is unusually long and powerful. Its object is to throw
+forward the living trap which does not wait for the victim, but goes in
+search of it. The snare is embellished with a certain amount of
+ornamentation. On the inner face the base of the haunch is decorated
+with a pretty black spot relieved by smaller spots of white, and a few
+rows of fine pearly spots complete the ornamentation.
+
+The thigh, still longer, like a flattened spindle, carries on the
+forward half of the lower face a double row of steely spines. The
+innermost row contains a dozen, alternately long and black and short and
+green. This alternation of unequal lengths makes the weapon more
+effectual for holding. The outer row is simpler, having only four teeth.
+Finally, three needle-like spikes, the longest of all, rise behind the
+double series of spikes. In short, the thigh is a saw with two parallel
+edges, separated by a groove in which the foreleg lies when folded.
+
+The foreleg, which is attached to the thigh by a very flexible
+articulation, is also a double-edged saw, but the teeth are smaller,
+more numerous, and closer than those of the thigh. It terminates in a
+strong hook, the point of which is as sharp as the finest needle: a hook
+which is fluted underneath and has a double blade like a pruning-knife.
+
+A weapon admirably adapted for piercing and tearing, this hook has
+sometimes left me with visible remembrances. Caught in turn by the
+creature which I had just captured, and not having both hands free, I
+have often been obliged to get a second person to free me from my
+tenacious captive! To free oneself by violence without disengaging the
+firmly implanted talons would result in lacerations such as the thorns
+of a rosebush will produce. None of our insects is so inconvenient to
+handle. The Mantis digs its knife-blades into your flesh, pierces you
+with its needles, seizes you as in a vice, and renders self-defence
+almost impossible if, wishing to take your quarry alive, you refrain
+from crushing it out of existence.
+
+When the Mantis is in repose its weapons are folded and pressed against
+the thorax, and are perfectly inoffensive in appearance. The insect is
+apparently praying. But let a victim come within reach, and the attitude
+of prayer is promptly abandoned. Suddenly unfolded, the three long
+joints of the deadly fore-limbs shoot out their terminal talons, which
+strike the victim and drag it backwards between the two saw-blades of
+the thighs. The vice closes with a movement like that of the forearm
+upon the upper arm, and all is over; crickets, grasshoppers, and even
+more powerful insects, once seized in this trap with its four rows of
+teeth, are lost irreparably. Their frantic struggles will never release
+the hold of this terrible engine of destruction.
+
+The habits of the Mantis cannot be continuously studied in the freedom
+of the fields; the insect must be domesticated. There is no difficulty
+here; the Mantis is quite indifferent to imprisonment under glass,
+provided it is well fed. Offer it a tasty diet, feed it daily, and it
+will feel but little regret for its native thickets.
+
+For cages I use a dozen large covers of wire gauze, such as are used in
+the larder to protect meat from the flies. Each rests upon a tray full
+of sand. A dry tuft of thyme and a flat stone on which the eggs may be
+laid later on complete the furnishing of such a dwelling. These cages
+are placed in a row on the large table in my entomological laboratory,
+where the sun shines on them during the greater part of the day. There
+I install my captives; some singly, some in groups.
+
+It is in the latter half of August that I begin to meet with the adult
+insect on the faded herbage and the brambles at the roadside. The
+females, whose bellies are already swollen, are more numerous every day.
+Their slender companions, on the other hand, are somewhat rare, and I
+often have some trouble in completing my couples; whose relations will
+finally be terminated by a tragic consummation. But we will reserve
+these amenities for a later time, and will consider the females first.
+
+They are tremendous eaters, so that their entertainment, when it lasts
+for some months is not without difficulties. Their provisions must be
+renewed every day, for the greater part are disdainfully tasted and
+thrown aside. On its native bushes I trust the Mantis is more
+economical. Game is not too abundant, so that she doubtless devours her
+prey to the last atom; but in my cages it is always at hand. Often,
+after a few mouthfuls, the insect will drop the juicy morsel without
+displaying any further interest in it. Such is the ennui of captivity!
+
+To provide them with a luxurious table I have to call in assistants. Two
+or three of the juvenile unemployed of my neighbourhood, bribed by
+slices of bread and jam or of melon, search morning and evening on the
+neighbouring lawns, where they fill their game-bags, little cases made
+from sections of reeds, with living grasshoppers and crickets. On my own
+part, I make a daily tour of the paddock, net in hand, with the object
+of obtaining some choice dish for my guests.
+
+These particular captures are destined to show me just how far the
+vigour and audacity of the Mantis will lead it. They include the large
+grey cricket (_Pachytylus cinerascens_, Fab.), which is larger than the
+creature which devours it; the white-faced Decticus, armed with powerful
+mandibles from which it is wise to guard one's fingers; the grotesque
+Truxalis, wearing a pyramidal mitre on its head; and the Ephippigera of
+the vineyards, which clashes its cymbals and carries a sabre at the end
+of its barrel-shaped abdomen. To this assortment of disobliging
+creatures let us add two horrors: the silky Epeirus, whose disc-shaped
+scalloped abdomen is as big as a shilling, and the crowned Epeirus,
+which is horribly hairy and corpulent.
+
+I cannot doubt that the Mantis attacks such adversaries in a state of
+nature when I see it, under my wire-gauze covers, boldly give battle to
+whatever is placed before it. Lying in wait among the bushes it must
+profit by the prizes bestowed upon it by hazard, as in its cage it
+profits by the wealth of diet due to my generosity. The hunting of such
+big game as I offer, which is full of danger, must form part of the
+creature's usual life, though it may be only an occasional pastime,
+perhaps to the great regret of the Mantis.
+
+Crickets of all kinds, butterflies, bees, large flies of many species,
+and other insects of moderate size: such is the prey that we habitually
+find in the embrace of the murderous arms of the Mantis. But in my cages
+I have never known the audacious huntress to recoil before any other
+insect. Grey cricket, Decticus, Epeirus or Truxalis, sooner or later all
+are harpooned, held motionless between the saw-edges of the arms, and
+deliciously crunched at leisure. The process deserves a detailed
+description.
+
+At the sight of a great cricket, which thoughtlessly approaches along
+the wire-work of the cover, the Mantis, shaken by a convulsive start,
+suddenly assumes a most terrifying posture. An electric shock would not
+produce a more immediate result. The transition is so sudden, the
+mimicry so threatening, that the unaccustomed observer will draw back
+his hand, as though at some unknown danger. Seasoned as I am, I myself
+must confess to being startled on occasions when my thoughts have been
+elsewhere. The creature spreads out like a fan actuated by a spring, or
+a fantastic Jack-in-the-box.
+
+The wing-covers open, and are thrust obliquely aside; the wings spring
+to their full width, standing up like parallel screens of transparent
+gauze, forming a pyramidal prominence which dominates the back; the end
+of the abdomen curls upwards crosier-wise, then falls and unbends itself
+with a sort of swishing noise, a _pouf! pouf!_ like the sound emitted by
+the feathers of a strutting turkey-cock. One is reminded of the puffing
+of a startled adder.
+
+Proudly straddling on its four hind-claws, the insect holds its long
+body almost vertical. The murderous fore-limbs, at first folded and
+pressed against one another on the thorax, open to their full extent,
+forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillæ ornamented with
+rows of pearls, and a black spot with a central point of white. These
+two eyes, faintly recalling those of the peacock's tail, and the fine
+ebony embossments, are part of the blazonry of conflict, concealed upon
+ordinary occasions. Their jewels are only assumed when they make
+themselves terrible and superb for battle.
+
+Motionless in its weird position, the Mantis surveys the acridian, its
+gaze fixed upon it, its head turning gently as on a pivot as the other
+changes place. The object of this mimicry seems evident; the Mantis
+wishes to terrorise its powerful prey, to paralyse it with fright; for
+if not demoralised by fear the quarry might prove too dangerous.
+
+Does it really terrify its prey? Under the shining head of the Decticus,
+behind the long face of the cricket, who is to say what is passing? No
+sign of emotion can reveal itself upon these immovable masks. Yet it
+seems certain that the threatened creature is aware of its danger. It
+sees, springing up before it, a terrible spectral form with talons
+outstretched, ready to fall upon it; it feels itself face to face with
+death, and fails to flee while yet there is time. The creature that
+excels in leaping, and might so easily escape from the threatening
+claws, the wonderful jumper with the prodigious thighs, remains
+crouching stupidly in its place, or even approaches the enemy with
+deliberate steps.[2]
+
+It is said that young birds, paralysed with terror by the gaping mouth
+of a serpent, or fascinated by its gaze, will allow themselves to be
+snatched from the nest, incapable of movement. The cricket will often
+behave in almost the same way. Once within reach of the enchantress, the
+grappling-hooks are thrown, the fangs strike, the double saws close
+together and hold the victim in a vice. Vainly the captive struggles;
+his mandibles chew the air, his desperate kicks meet with no resistance.
+He has met with his fate. The Mantis refolds her wings, the standard of
+battle; she resumes her normal pose, and the meal commences.
+
+In attacking the Truxalis and the Ephippigera, less dangerous game than
+the grey cricket and the Decticus, the spectral pose is less imposing
+and of shorter duration. It is often enough to throw forward the talons;
+this is so in the case of the Epeirus, which is seized by the middle of
+the body, without a thought of its venomous claws. With the smaller
+crickets, which are the customary diet in my cages as at liberty, the
+Mantis rarely employs her means of intimidation; she merely seizes the
+heedless passer-by as she lies in wait.
+
+When the insect to be captured may present some serious resistance, the
+Mantis is thus equipped with a pose which terrifies or perplexes,
+fascinates or absorbs the prey, while it enables her talons to strike
+with greater certainty. Her gins close on a demoralised victim,
+incapable of or unready for defence. She freezes the quarry with fear or
+amazement by suddenly assuming the attitude of a spectre.
+
+The wings play an important part in this fantastic pose. They are very
+wide, green on the outer edge, but colourless and transparent elsewhere.
+Numerous nervures, spreading out fan-wise, cross them in the direction
+of their length. Others, transversal but finer, cut the first at right
+angles, forming with them a multitude of meshes. In the spectral
+attitude the wings are outspread and erected in two parallel planes
+which are almost in contact, like the wings of butterflies in repose.
+Between the two the end of the abdomen rapidly curls and uncurls. From
+the rubbing of the belly against the network of nervures proceeds the
+species of puffing sound which I have compared to the hissing of an
+adder in a posture of defence. To imitate this curious sound it is
+enough rapidly to stroke the upper face of an outstretched wing with the
+tip of the finger-nail.
+
+In a moment of hunger, after a fast of some days, the large grey
+cricket, which is as large as the Mantis or larger, will be entirely
+consumed with the exception of the wings, which are too dry. Two hours
+are sufficient for the completion of this enormous meal. Such an orgy is
+rare. I have witnessed it two or three times, always asking myself where
+the gluttonous creature found room for so much food, and how it
+contrived to reverse in its own favour the axiom that the content is
+less than that which contains it. I can only admire the privileges of a
+stomach in which matter is digested immediately upon entrance, dissolved
+and made away with.
+
+The usual diet of the Mantis under my wire cages consists of crickets of
+different species and varying greatly in size. It is interesting to
+watch the Mantis nibbling at its cricket, which it holds in the vice
+formed by its murderous fore-limbs. In spite of the fine-pointed muzzle,
+which hardly seems made for such ferocity, the entire insect disappears
+excepting the wings, of which only the base, which is slightly fleshy,
+is consumed. Legs, claws, horny integuments, all else is eaten.
+Sometimes the great hinder thigh is seized by the knuckle, carried to
+the mouth, tasted, and crunched with a little air of satisfaction. The
+swollen thigh of the cricket might well be a choice "cut" for the
+Mantis, as a leg of lamb is for us!
+
+The attack on the victim begins at the back of the neck or base of the
+head. While one of the murderous talons holds the quarry gripped by the
+middle of the body, the other presses the head downwards, so that the
+articulation between the back and the neck is stretched and opens
+slightly. The snout of the Mantis gnaws and burrows into this undefended
+spot with a certain persistence, and a large wound is opened in the
+neck. At the lesion of the cephalic ganglions the struggles of the
+cricket grow less, and the victim becomes a motionless corpse. Thence,
+unrestricted in its movements, this beast of prey chooses its mouthfuls
+at leisure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MANTIS.--COURTSHIP
+
+
+The little we have seen of the customs of the Mantis does not square
+very well with the popular name for the insect. From the term
+_Prègo-Diéu_ we should expect a peaceful placid creature, devoutly
+self-absorbed; and we find a cannibal, a ferocious spectre, biting open
+the heads of its captives after demoralising them with terror. But we
+have yet to learn the worst. The customs of the Mantis in connection
+with its own kin are more atrocious even than those of the spiders, who
+bear an ill repute in this respect.
+
+To reduce the number of cages on my big laboratory table, to give myself
+a little more room, while still maintaining a respectable menagerie, I
+installed several females under one cover. There was sufficient space in
+the common lodging and room for the captives to move about, though for
+that matter they are not fond of movement, being heavy in the abdomen.
+Crouching motionless against the wire work of the cover, they will
+digest their food or await a passing victim. They lived, in short, just
+as they lived on their native bushes.
+
+Communal life has its dangers. When the hay is low in the manger
+donkeys grow quarrelsome, although usually so pacific. My guests might
+well, in a season of dearth, have lost their tempers and begun to fight
+one another; but I was careful to keep the cages well provided with
+crickets, which were renewed twice a day. If civil war broke out famine
+could not be urged in excuse.
+
+At the outset matters did not go badly. The company lived in peace, each
+Mantis pouncing upon and eating whatever came her way, without
+interfering with her neighbours. But this period of concord was of brief
+duration. The bellies of the insects grew fuller: the eggs ripened in
+their ovaries: the time of courtship and the laying season was
+approaching. Then a kind of jealous rage seized the females, although no
+male was present to arouse such feminine rivalry. The swelling of the
+ovaries perverted my flock, and infected them with an insane desire to
+devour one another. There were threats, horrid encounters, and cannibal
+feasts. Once more the spectral pose was seen, the hissing of the wings,
+and the terrible gesture of the talons outstretched and raised above the
+head. The females could not have looked more terrible before a grey
+cricket or a Decticus. Without any motives that I could see, two
+neighbours suddenly arose in the attitude of conflict. They turned their
+heads to the right and the left, provoking one another, insulting one
+another. The _pouf! pouf!_ of the wings rubbed by the abdomen sounded
+the charge. Although the duel was to terminate at the first scratch,
+without any more serious consequence, the murderous talons, at first
+folded, open like the leaves of a book, and are extended laterally to
+protect the long waist and abdomen. The pose is superb, but less
+terrific than that assumed when the fight is to be to the death.
+
+Then one of the grappling-hooks with a sudden spring flies out and
+strikes the rival; with the same suddenness it flies back and assumes a
+position of guard. The adversary replies with a riposte. The fencing
+reminds one not a little of two cats boxing one another's ears. At the
+first sign of blood on the soft abdomen, or even at the slightest wound,
+one admits herself to be conquered and retires. The other refurls her
+battle standard and goes elsewhere to meditate the capture of a cricket,
+apparently calm, but in reality ready to recommence the quarrel.
+
+Very often the matter turns out more tragically. In duels to the death
+the pose of attack is assumed in all its beauty. The murderous talons
+unfold and rise in the air. Woe to the vanquished! for the victor seizes
+her in her vice-like grip and at once commences to eat her; beginning,
+needless to say, at the back of the neck. The odious meal proceeds as
+calmly as if it were merely a matter of munching a grasshopper; and the
+survivor enjoys her sister quite as much as lawful game. The spectators
+do not protest, being only too willing to do the like on the first
+occasion.
+
+Ferocious creatures! It is said that even wolves do not eat one another.
+The Mantis is not so scrupulous; she will eat her fellows when her
+favourite quarry, the cricket, is attainable and abundant.
+
+These observations reach a yet more revolting extreme. Let us inquire
+into the habits of the insect at breeding time, and to avoid the
+confusion of a crowd let us isolate the couples under different covers.
+Thus each pair will have their own dwelling, where nothing can trouble
+their honeymoon. We will not forget to provide them with abundant food;
+there shall not be the excuse of hunger for what is to follow.
+
+We are near the end of August. The male Mantis, a slender and elegant
+lover, judges the time to be propitious. He makes eyes at his powerful
+companion; he turns his head towards her; he bows his neck and raises
+his thorax. His little pointed face almost seems to wear an expression.
+For a long time he stands thus motionless, in contemplation of the
+desired one. The latter, as though indifferent, does not stir. Yet the
+lover has seized upon a sign of consent: a sign of which I do not know
+the secret. He approaches: suddenly he erects his wings, which are
+shaken with a convulsive tremor.
+
+This is his declaration. He throws himself timidly on the back of his
+corpulent companion; he clings to her desperately, and steadies himself.
+The prelude to the embrace is generally lengthy, and the embrace will
+sometimes last for five or six hours.
+
+Nothing worthy of notice occurs during this time. Finally the two
+separate, but they are soon to be made one flesh in a much more intimate
+fashion. If the poor lover is loved by his mistress as the giver of
+fertility, she also loves him as the choicest of game. During the day,
+or at latest on the morrow, he is seized by his companion, who first
+gnaws through the back of his neck, according to use and wont, and then
+methodically devours him, mouthful by mouthful, leaving only the wings.
+Here we have no case of jealousy, but simply a depraved taste.
+
+I had the curiosity to wonder how a second male would be received by a
+newly fecundated female. The result of my inquiry was scandalous. The
+Mantis in only too many cases is never sated with embraces and conjugal
+feasts. After a rest, of variable duration, whether the eggs have been
+laid or not, a second male is welcomed and devoured like the first. A
+third succeeds him, does his duty, and affords yet another meal. A
+fourth suffers a like fate. In the course of two weeks I have seen the
+same Mantis treat seven husbands in this fashion. She admitted all to
+her embraces, and all paid for the nuptial ecstasy with their lives.
+
+There are exceptions, but such orgies are frequent. On very hot days,
+when the atmospheric tension is high, they are almost the general rule.
+At such times the Mantis is all nerves. Under covers which contain large
+households the females devour one another more frequently than ever;
+under the covers which contain isolated couples the males are devoured
+more eagerly than usual when their office has been fulfilled.
+
+I might urge, in mitigation of these conjugal atrocities, that the
+Mantis does not commit them when at liberty. The male, his function once
+fulfilled, surely has time to wander off, to escape far away, to flee
+the terrible spouse, for in my cages he is given a respite, often of a
+whole day. What really happens by the roadside and in the thickets I do
+not know; chance, a poor schoolmistress, has never instructed me
+concerning the love-affairs of the Mantis when at liberty. I am obliged
+to watch events in my laboratory, where the captives, enjoying plenty of
+sunshine, well nourished, and comfortably lodged, do not seem in any way
+to suffer from nostalgia. They should behave there as they behave under
+normal conditions.
+
+Alas! the facts force me to reject the statement that the males have
+time to escape; for I once surprised a male, apparently in the
+performance of his vital functions, holding the female tightly
+embraced--but he had no head, no neck, scarcely any thorax! The female,
+her head turned over her shoulder, was peacefully browsing on the
+remains of her lover! And the masculine remnant, firmly anchored,
+continued its duty!
+
+Love, it is said, is stronger than death! Taken literally, never has an
+aphorism received a more striking confirmation. Here was a creature
+decapitated, amputated as far as the middle of the thorax; a corpse
+which still struggled to give life. It would not relax its hold until
+the abdomen itself, the seat of the organs of procreation, was attacked.
+
+The custom of eating the lover after the consummation of the nuptials,
+of making a meal of the exhausted pigmy, who is henceforth good for
+nothing, is not so difficult to understand, since insects can hardly be
+accused of sentimentality; but to devour him during the act surpasses
+anything that the most morbid mind could imagine. I have seen the thing
+with my own eyes, and I have not yet recovered from my surprise.
+
+Could this unfortunate creature have fled and saved himself, being thus
+attacked in the performance of his functions? No. We must conclude that
+the loves of the Mantis are fully as tragic, perhaps even more so, than
+those of the spider. I do not deny that the limited area of the cage may
+favour the massacre of the males; but the cause of such butchering must
+be sought elsewhere. It is perhaps a reminiscence of the carboniferous
+period when the insect world gradually took shape through prodigious
+procreation. The Orthoptera, of which the Mantes form a branch, are the
+first-born of the insect world.
+
+Uncouth, incomplete in their transformation, they wandered amidst the
+arborescent foliage, already flourishing when none of the insects sprung
+of more complex forms of metamorphosis were as yet in existence: neither
+butterflies, beetles, flies, nor bees. Manners were not gentle in those
+epochs, which were full of the lust to destroy in order to produce; and
+the Mantis, a feeble memory of those ancient ghosts, might well preserve
+the customs of an earlier age. The utilisation of the males as food is a
+custom in the case of other members of the Mantis family. It is, I must
+admit, a general habit. The little grey Mantis, so small and looking so
+harmless in her cage, which never seeks to harm her neighbours in spite
+of her crowded quarters, falls upon her male and devours him as
+ferociously as the Praying Mantis. I have worn myself out in trying to
+procure the indispensable complements to my female specimens. No sooner
+is my capture, strongly winged, vigorous and alert, introduced into the
+cage than he is seized, more often than not, by one of the females who
+no longer have need of his assistance and devoured. Once the ovaries are
+satisfied the two species of Mantis conceive an antipathy for the male;
+or rather they regard him merely as a particularly tasty species of
+game.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MANTIS.--THE NEST
+
+
+Let us take a more pleasant aspect of the insect whose loves are so
+tragic. Its nest is a marvel. In scientific language it is known as the
+_ootek_, or the "egg-box." I shall not make use of this barbarous
+expression. As one does not speak of the "egg-box" of the titmouse,
+meaning "the nest of the titmouse," why should I invoke the box in
+speaking of the Mantis? It may look more scientific; but that does not
+interest me.
+
+The nest of the Praying Mantis may be found almost everywhere in places
+exposed to the sun: on stones, wood, vine stocks, the twigs of bushes,
+stems of dried grass, and even on products of human industry, such as
+fragments of brick, rags of heavy cloth, and pieces of old boots. Any
+support will suffice, so long as it offers inequalities to which the
+base of the nest may adhere, and so provide a solid foundation. The
+usual dimensions of the nest are one and a half inches long by
+three-quarters of an inch wide, or a trifle larger. The colour is a pale
+tan, like that of a grain of wheat. Brought in contact with a flame the
+nest burns readily, and emits an odour like that of burning silk. The
+material of the nest is in fact a substance similar to silk, but instead
+of being drawn into a thread it is allowed to harden while a mass of
+spongy foam. If the nest is fixed on a branch the base creeps round it,
+envelops the neighbouring twigs, and assumes a variable shape according
+to the accidents of support; if it is fixed on a flat surface the under
+side, which is always moulded by the support, is itself flat. The nest
+then takes the form of a demi-ellipsoid, or, in other words, half an egg
+cut longitudinally; more or less obtuse at one end, but pointed at the
+other, and sometimes ending in a short curved tail.
+
+In all cases the upper face is convex and regular. In it we can
+distinguish three well-marked and longitudinal zones. The middle zone,
+which is narrower than the others, is composed of thin plates arranged
+in couples, and overlapping like the tiles of a roof. The edges of these
+plates are free, leaving two parallel series of fissures by which the
+young can issue when the eggs are hatched. In a nest recently abandoned
+this zone is covered with fine cast-off skins which shiver at the least
+breath, and soon disappear when exposed to the open air. I will call
+this zone the zone of issue, as it is only along this bell that the
+young can escape, being set free by those that have preceded them.
+
+In all other directions the cradle of this numerous family presents an
+unbroken wall. The two lateral zones, which occupy the greater part of
+the demi-ellipsoid, have a perfect continuity of surface. The little
+Mantes, which are very feeble when first hatched, could not possibly
+make their way through the tenacious substance of the walls. On the
+interior of these walls are a number of fine transverse furrows, signs
+of the various layers in which the mass of eggs is disposed.
+
+Let us cut the nest in half transversely. We shall then see that the
+mass of eggs constitutes an elongated core, of very firm consistency,
+surrounded as to the bottom and sides by a thick porous rind, like
+solidified foam. Above the eggs are the curved plates, which are set
+very closely and have little freedom; their edges constituting the zone
+of issue, where they form a double series of small overlapping scales.
+
+The eggs are set in a yellowish medium of horny appearance. They are
+arranged in layers, in lines forming arcs of a circle, with the cephalic
+extremities converging towards the zone of issue. This orientation tells
+us of the method of delivery. The newly-born larvæ will slip into the
+interval between two adjacent flaps or leaves, which form a prolongation
+of the core; they will then find a narrow passage, none too easy to
+effect, but sufficient, having regard to the curious provision which we
+shall deal with directly; they will then reach the zone of issue. There,
+under the overlapping scales, two passages of exit open for each layer
+of eggs. Half the larvæ will issue by the right-hand passage, half by
+that on the left hand. This process is repeated for each layer, from end
+to end of the nest.
+
+Let us sum up those structural details, which are not easily grasped
+unless one has the nest before one. Lying along the axis of the nest,
+and in shape like a date-stone, is the mass of eggs, grouped in layers.
+A protective rind, a kind of solidified foam, envelops this core, except
+at the top, along the central line, where the porous rind is replaced by
+thin overlapping leaves. The free edges of these leaves form the
+exterior of the zone of issue; they overlap one another, forming two
+series of scales, leaving two exits, in the shape of narrow crevices,
+for each layer of eggs.
+
+[Illustration: 1. NEST OF THE PRAYING MANTIS.
+
+2. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME.
+
+3, 3a. NEST OF EMPUSA PAUPERATA.
+
+4. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME.
+
+5. VERTICAL SELECTION OF THE SAME.
+
+6. NEST OF THE GREY MANTIS.
+
+7. SCHEFFER'S SISYPHUS (see Chap. XII.)
+
+8. PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS.
+
+9. PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS WITH DEJECTA OF THE LARVA FORCED THROUGH THE
+WALLS.]
+
+
+To be present at the construction of the nest--to learn how the Mantis
+contrives to build so complex a structure--such was the main point of my
+researches. I succeeded, not without difficulty, as the eggs are laid
+without warning and nearly always at night. After a great deal of futile
+endeavour, chance at last favoured me. On the 5th of September one of my
+guests, fecundated on the 29th of August, began to make her preparations
+under my eyes, at four o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+One remark before proceeding: all the nests I have obtained in the
+laboratory--and I have obtained a good number--have without exception
+been built upon the wire gauze of the covers. I have been careful to
+provide the insects with roughened stones and tufts of thyme, both being
+very commonly used as foundations in the open fields. The captives have
+always preferred the network of wire gauze, which affords a perfectly
+firm foundation, as the soft material of the nest becomes incrusted upon
+the meshes as it hardens.
+
+In natural conditions the nests are never in any way sheltered; they
+support the inclemencies of winter, resist rain, wind, frost, and snow,
+without becoming detached. It is true that the female always selects an
+uneven support on which the foundations of the nest can be shaped, thus
+obtaining a firm hold. The site chosen is always the best obtainable
+within reach, and the wire gauze is constantly adopted as the best
+foundation obtainable in the cages.
+
+The only Mantis that I was able to observe at the moment of laying her
+eggs worked upside-down, clinging to the wire near the top of the cover.
+My presence, my magnifying-glass, my investigations did not disturb her
+in the least, so absorbed was she in her labours. I was able to lift up
+the dome of wire gauze, tilt it, reverse it, turn it over and reverse it
+again, without causing the insect to delay her task for a moment. I was
+able, with my tweezers, to raise the long wings in order to observe
+rather more closely what was taking place beneath them; the Mantis took
+absolutely no notice of me. So far all was well; the female did not
+move, and lent herself impassively to all the indiscretions of the
+observer. Nevertheless, matters did not proceed as I had wished, so
+rapid was the operation and so difficult observation.
+
+The end of the abdomen is constantly immersed in a blob of foam, which
+does not allow one to grasp the details of the process very clearly.
+This foam is of a greyish white, slightly viscous, and almost like
+soapsuds. At the moment of its appearance it adheres slightly to the end
+of a straw plunged into it. Two minutes later it is solidified and no
+longer adheres to the straw. In a short time its consistency is that of
+the substance of an old nest.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE MANTIS DEVOURING THE MALE IN THE ACT OF MATING.
+
+2. THE MANTIS COMPLETING HER NEST.
+
+3. GOLDEN SCARABÆI CUTTING UP A LOB-WORM.]
+
+The foamy mass consists chiefly of air imprisoned in minute bubbles.
+This air, which gives the nest a volume very much greater than that of
+the abdomen of the Mantis, evidently does not issue from the insect
+although the foam appears at the orifice of the genital organs; it is
+borrowed from the atmosphere. The Mantis builds more especially with
+air, which is eminently adapted to protect the nest against changes
+of temperature. She emits a glutinous substance like the liquid
+secretion of silk-worms, and with this composition, mixed
+instantaneously with the outer air, she produces the foam of which the
+nest is constructed.
+
+She whips the secretion as we whip white of egg, in order to make it
+rise and stiffen. The extremity of the abdomen opens in a long cleft,
+forming two lateral ladles which open and shut with a rapid, incessant
+movement, beating the viscous liquid and converting it into foam as it
+is secreted. Beside the two oscillating ladles we see the internal
+organs rising and falling, protruding and retreating like a piston-rod,
+but it is impossible to observe the precise nature of their action,
+bathed as they are in the opaque blob of foam.
+
+The end of the abdomen, continually palpitating, rapidly closing and
+opening its valves, oscillates right and left like a pendulum. From each
+of these oscillations results a layer of eggs in the interior, and a
+transversal crevice on the exterior. As it advances in the arc
+described, suddenly, and at frequent intervals, it plunges deeper into
+the foam, as though burying something at the bottom of the frothy mass.
+Each time it does so an egg is doubtless deposited; but the operation is
+so rapid, and takes place under conditions so unfavourable for
+observation, that I have never once been enabled to see the oviduct at
+work. I can only judge of the advent of the eggs by the movements of the
+end of the abdomen, which is immersed more deeply with a sudden plunging
+movement.
+
+At the same time the viscous composition is emitted in intermittent
+waves, and is beaten into a foam by the terminal valves. The foam thus
+obtained spreads itself over the sides and at the base of the layer of
+eggs, and projects through the meshes of the wire gauze as a result of
+the pressure of the abdomen. Thus the spongy envelope is progressively
+created as the ovaries are gradually emptied.
+
+I imagine, although I cannot speak as the result of direct observation,
+that for the central core, where the eggs are surrounded by a material
+more homogeneous than that of the outer shell, the Mantis must employ
+her secretion as it emerges, without beating it into a foam. The layer
+of eggs once deposited, the two valves would produce the foam required
+to envelop the eggs. It is extremely difficult, however, to guess what
+occurs beneath the veil of foam-like secretion.
+
+In a recent nest the zone of issue is surrounded by a layer of finely
+porous matter, of a pure matt, almost chalky white, which contrasts
+distinctly with the remainder of the nest, which is of a dirty white. It
+resembles the icing composition made by confectioners with whipped white
+of egg, sugar, and starch, for the ornamentation of cakes.
+
+This snowy border is easily crumbled and easily detached. When it
+disappears the zone of issue is clearly defined, with its double series
+of leaves with free edges. Exposure to the weather, wind, and rain
+result in its disappearance, fragment by fragment, so that old nests
+preserve no trace of it.
+
+At first sight one is tempted to regard this snowy substance as of a
+different material to the rest of the nest. But does the Mantis really
+employ two secretions? No. Anatomy, in the first place, assures us of
+the unity of the materials of the nest. The organ which secretes the
+substance of the nest consists of cylindrical tubes, having a curious
+tangled appearance, which are arranged in two groups of twenty each.
+They are all filled with a colourless, viscous fluid, which is precisely
+similar in appearance in all parts of the organ. There is no indication
+of any organ or secretion which could produce a chalky coloration.
+
+Moreover, the method by which the snowy band is formed rejects the idea
+of a different material. We see the two caudal appendices of the Mantis
+sweeping the surface of the foamy mass, and skimming, so to speak, the
+cream of the cream, gathering it together, and retaining it along the
+hump of the nest in such a way as to form a band like a ribbon of icing.
+What remains after this scouring process, or what oozes from the band
+before it has set, spreads over the sides of the nest in a thin layer of
+bubbles so fine that they cannot be distinguished without the aid of a
+lens.
+
+We often see a torrent of muddy water, full of clay in suspension,
+covered with great streaks and masses of foam. On this fundamental foam,
+so to call it, which is soiled with earthy matters, we see here and
+there masses of a beautiful white foam, in which the bubbles are much
+smaller. A process of selection results from variations in density, and
+here and there we see foam white as snow resting on the dirty foam from
+which it is produced. Something of the kind occurs when the Mantis
+builds her nest. The two appendices whip the viscous secretion of the
+glands into foam. The lightest portion, whose bubbles are of the
+greatest tenuity, which is white on account of its finer porosity, rises
+to the surface, where the caudal filaments sweep it up and gather it
+into the snowy ribbon which runs along the summit of the nest.
+
+So far, with a little patience, observation is possible and yields a
+satisfactory result. It becomes impossible in the matter of the complex
+central zone, where the exits for the larvæ are contrived through the
+double series of overlapping leaves. The little I have been able to
+learn amounts to this: The end of the abdomen, deeply cleft in a
+horizontal direction, forms a kind of fork, of which the upper extremity
+remains almost motionless, while the lower continuously oscillates,
+producing the foam and depositing the eggs. The creation of the central
+zone is certainly the work of the upper extremity.
+
+It is always to be seen in the continuation of this central zone, in the
+midst of the fine white foam gathered up by the caudal filaments. The
+latter delimit the zone, one working on either side, feeling the edges
+of the belt, and apparently testing it and judging its progress. These
+two filaments are like two long fingers of exquisite sensitiveness,
+which direct the difficult operation.
+
+But how are the two series of scales obtained, and the fissures, the
+gates of exit which they shelter? I do not know; I cannot even imagine.
+I leave the end of the problem to others.
+
+What a wonderful mechanism is this, that has the power to emit and to
+form, so quickly and methodically, the horny medium of the central
+kernel, the foam which forms the protective walls, the white creamy foam
+of the ribbon which runs along the central zone, the eggs, and the
+fecundating liquid, while at the same time it constructs the overlapping
+leaves, the imbricated scales, and the alternating series of open
+fissures! We are lost in the face of such a wonder. Yet how easily the
+work is performed! Clinging to the wire gauze, forming, so to speak, the
+axis of her nest, the Mantis barely moves. She bestows not a glance on
+the marvel which is growing behind her; her limbs are used only for
+support; they take no part in the building of the nest. The nest is
+built, if we may say so, automatically. It is not the result of industry
+and the cunning of instinct; it is a purely mechanical task, which is
+conditioned by the implements, by the organisation of the insect. The
+nest, complex though it is in structure, results solely from the
+functioning of the organs, as in our human industries a host of objects
+are mechanically fashioned whose perfection puts the dexterity of the
+fingers to shame.
+
+From another point of view the nest of the Mantis is even more
+remarkable. It forms an excellent application of one of the most
+valuable lessons of physical science in the matter of the conservation
+of heat. The Mantis has outstripped humanity in her knowledge of thermic
+nonconductors or insulators.
+
+The famous physicist Rumford was responsible for a very pretty
+experiment designed to demonstrate the low conductivity of air where
+heat other than radiant heat is concerned. The famous scientist
+surrounded a frozen cheese by a mass of foam consisting of well-beaten
+eggs. The whole was exposed to the heat of an oven. In a few minutes a
+light omelette was obtained, piping hot, but the cheese in the centre
+was as cold as at the outset. The air imprisoned in the bubbles of the
+surrounding froth accounts for the phenomenon. Extremely refractory to
+heat, it had absorbed the heat of the oven and had prevented it from
+reaching the frozen substance in the centre of the omelette.
+
+Now, what does the Mantis do? Precisely what Rumford did; she whips her
+albumen to obtain a soufflée, a froth composed of myriads of tiny
+air-bubbles, which will protect the germs of life contained in the
+central core. It is true that her aim is reversed; the coagulated foam
+of the nest is a safeguard against cold, not against heat, but what will
+afford protection from the one will afford protection from the other; so
+that Rumford, had he wished, might equally well have maintained a hot
+body at a high temperature in a refrigerator.
+
+Rumford understood the athermic properties of a blanket of air-cells,
+thanks to the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors and his own
+studies and experiments. How is it that the Mantis, for who knows how
+many ages, has been able to outstrip our physicists in this problem in
+calorics? How did she learn to surround her eggs with this mass of
+solidifying froth, so that it was able, although fixed to a bough or a
+stone without other shelter, to brave with impunity the rigours of
+winter?
+
+The other Mantes found in my neighbourhood, which are the only species
+of which I can speak with full knowledge, employ or omit the envelope of
+solidifying froth accordingly as the eggs are or are not intended to
+survive the winter. The little Grey Mantis (_Ameles decolor_), which
+differs so widely from the Praying Mantis in that the wings of the
+female are almost completely absent, builds a nest hardly as large as a
+cherry-stone, and covers it skilfully with a porous rind. Why this
+cellular envelope? Because the nest of the _Ameles_, like that of the
+Praying Mantis, has to endure through the winter, fixed to a stone or a
+twig, and is thus exposed to the full severity of the dangerous season.
+
+The _Empusa pauperata_, on the other hand (one of the strangest of
+European insects), builds a nest as small as that of the _Ameles_,
+although the insect itself is as large as the Praying Mantis. This nest
+is quite a small structure, composed of a small number of cells,
+arranged side by side in three or four series, sloping together at the
+neck. Here there is a complete absence of the porous envelope, although
+the nest is exposed to the weather, like the previous examples, affixed
+to some twig or fragment of rock. The lack of the insulating rind is a
+sign of different climatic conditions. The eggs of the _Empusa_ hatch
+shortly after they are laid, in warm and sunny weather. Not being
+exposed to the asperities of the winter, they need no protection other
+than the thin egg-cases themselves.
+
+Are these nice and reasonable precautions, which rival the experiment of
+Rumford, a fortuitous result?--one of the innumerable combinations which
+fall from the urn of chance? If so, let us not recoil before the absurd:
+let us allow that the blindness of chance is gifted with marvellous
+foresight.
+
+The Praying Mantis commences her nest at the blunter extremity, and
+completes it at the pointed tail. The latter is often prolonged in a
+sort of promontory, in which the insect expends the last drop of
+glutinous liquid as she stretches herself after her task. A sitting of
+two hours, more or less, without interruption, is required for the total
+accomplishment of the work. Directly the period of labour is over, the
+mother withdraws, indifferent henceforth to her completed task. I have
+watched her, half expecting to see her return, to discover some
+tenderness for the cradle of her family. But no: not a trace of maternal
+pleasure. The work is done, and concerns her no longer. Crickets
+approach; one of them even squats upon the nest. The Mantis takes no
+notice of them. They are peaceful intruders, to be sure; but even were
+they dangerous, did they threaten to rifle the nest, would she attack
+them and drive them away? Her impassive demeanour convinces me that she
+would not. What is the nest to her? She is no longer conscious of it.
+
+I have spoken of the many embraces to which the Praying Mantis submits,
+and of the tragic end of the male, who is almost invariably devoured as
+though a lawful prey. In the space of a fortnight I have known the same
+female to adventure upon matrimony no less than seven times. Each time
+the readily consoled widow devoured her mate. Such habits point to
+frequent laying; and we find the appearance confirmed, though not as a
+general rule. Some of my females gave me one nest only; others two, the
+second as capacious as the first. The most fruitful of all produced
+three; of these the two first were of normal dimensions, while the third
+was about half the usual size.
+
+From this we can reckon the productivity of the insect's ovaries. From
+the transverse fissures of the median zone of the nest it is easy to
+estimate the layers of eggs; but these layers contain more or fewer eggs
+according to their position in the middle of the nest or near the ends.
+The numbers contained by the widest and narrowest layers will give us
+an approximate average. I find that a nest of fair size contains about
+four hundred eggs. Thus the maker of the three nests, of which the last
+was half as large as the others, produced no less than a thousand eggs;
+eight hundred were deposited in the larger nests and two or three
+hundred in the smaller. Truly a fine family, but a thought ungainly,
+were it not that only a few of its members can survive.
+
+Of a fair size, of curious structure, and well in evidence on its twig
+or stone, the nest of the Praying Mantis could hardly escape the
+attention of the Provençal peasant. It is well known in the country
+districts, where it goes by the name of _tigno_; it even enjoys a
+certain celebrity. But no one seems to be aware of its origin. It is
+always a surprise to my rustic neighbours when they learn that the
+well-known _tigno_ is the nest of the common Mantis, the _Prègo-Diéu_.
+This ignorance may well proceed from the nocturnal habits of the Mantis.
+No one has caught the insect at work upon her nest in the silence of the
+night. The link between the artificer and the work is missing, although
+both are well known to the villager.
+
+No matter: the singular object exists; it catches the eye, it attracts
+attention. It must therefore be good for something; it must possess
+virtue of some kind. So in all ages have the simple reasoned, in the
+childlike hope of finding in the unfamiliar an alleviation of their
+sorrows.
+
+By general agreement the rural pharmacopoeia of Provence pronounces
+the _tigno_ to be the best of remedies against chilblains. The method of
+employment is of the simplest. The nest is cut in two, squeezed and the
+affected part is rubbed with the cut surface as the juices flow from
+it. This specific, I am told, is sovereign. All sufferers from blue and
+swollen fingers should without fail, according to traditional usage,
+have recourse to the _tigno_.
+
+Is it really efficacious? Despite the general belief, I venture to doubt
+it, after fruitless experiments on my own fingers and those of other
+members of my household during the winter of 1895, when the severe and
+persistent cold produced an abundant crop of chilblains. None of us,
+treated with the celebrated unguent, observed the swelling to diminish;
+none of us found that the pain and discomfort was in the least assuaged
+by the sticky varnish formed by the juices of the crushed _tigno_. It is
+not easy to believe that others are more successful, but the popular
+renown of the specific survives in spite of all, probably thanks to a
+simple accident of identity between the name of the remedy and that of
+the infirmity: the Provençal for "chilblain" is _tigno_. From the moment
+when the chilblain and the nest of the Mantis were known by the same
+name were not the virtues of the latter obvious? So are reputations
+created.
+
+In my own village, and doubtless to some extent throughout the Midi, the
+_tigno_--the nest of the Mantis, not the chilblain--is also reputed as a
+marvellous cure for toothache. It is enough to carry it upon the person
+to be free of that lamentable affection. Women wise in such matters
+gather them beneath a propitious moon, and preserve them piously in some
+corner of the clothes-press or wardrobe. They sew them in the lining of
+the pocket, lest they should be pulled out with the handkerchief and
+lost; they will grant the loan of them to a neighbour tormented by some
+refractory molar. "Lend me thy _tigno_: I am suffering martyrdom!" begs
+the owner of a swollen face.--"Don't on any account lose it!" says the
+lender: "I haven't another, and we aren't at the right time of moon!"
+
+We will not laugh at the credulous victim; many a remedy triumphantly
+puffed on the latter pages of the newspapers and magazines is no more
+effectual. Moreover, this rural simplicity is surpassed by certain old
+books which form the tomb of the science of a past age. An English
+naturalist of the sixteenth century, the well-known physician, Thomas
+Moffat, informs us that children lost in the country would inquire their
+way of the Mantis. The insect consulted would extend a limb, indicating
+the direction to be taken, and, says the author, scarcely ever was the
+insect mistaken. This pretty story is told in Latin, with an adorable
+simplicity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GOLDEN GARDENER.--ITS NUTRIMENT
+
+
+In writing the first lines of this chapter I am reminded of the
+slaughter-pens of Chicago; of those horrible meat factories which in the
+course of the year cut up one million and eighty thousand bullocks and
+seventeen hundred thousand swine, which enter a train of machinery alive
+and issue transformed into cans of preserved meat, sausages, lard, and
+rolled hams. I am reminded of these establishments because the beetle I
+am about to speak of will show us a compatible celerity of butchery.
+
+In a spacious, glazed insectorium I have twenty-five Carabi aurati. At
+present they are motionless, lying beneath a piece of board which I gave
+them for shelter. Their bellies cooled by the sand, their backs warmed
+by the board, which is visited by the sun, they slumber and digest their
+food. By good luck I chance upon a procession of pine-caterpillars, in
+process of descending from their tree in search of a spot suitable for
+burial, the prelude to the phase of the subterranean chrysalis. Here is
+an excellent flock for the slaughter-house of the Carabi.
+
+I capture them and place them in the insectorium. The procession is
+quickly re-formed; the caterpillars, to the number of perhaps a hundred
+and fifty, move forward in an undulating line. They pass near the piece
+of board, one following the other like the pigs at Chicago. The moment
+is propitious. I cry Havoc! and let loose the dogs of war: that is to
+say, I remove the plank.
+
+The sleepers immediately awake, scenting the abundant prey. One of them
+runs forward; three, four, follow; the whole assembly is aroused; those
+who are buried emerge; the whole band of cut-throats falls upon the
+passing flock. It is a sight never to be forgotten. The mandibles of the
+beetles are at work in all directions; the procession is attacked in the
+van, in the rear, in the centre; the victims are wounded on the back or
+the belly at random. The furry skins are gaping with wounds; their
+contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment,
+the needles of the pine-tree; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with
+loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and
+gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet unwounded are digging desperately
+in the attempt to take refuge underground. Not one succeeds. They are
+scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them and destroys them
+by an eviscerating wound.
+
+If this massacre did not occur in a dumb world we should hear all the
+horrible tumult of the slaughter-houses of Chicago. But only the ear of
+the mind can hear the shrieks and lamentations of the eviscerated
+victims. For myself, I possess this ear, and am full of remorse for
+having provoked such sufferings.
+
+Now the beetles are rummaging in all directions through the heap of
+dead and dying, each tugging and tearing at a morsel which he carries
+off to swallow in peace, away from the inquisitive eyes of his fellows.
+This mouthful disposed of, another is hastily cut from the body of some
+victim, and the process is repeated so long as there are bodies left. In
+a few minutes the procession is reduced to a few shreds of still
+palpitating flesh.
+
+There were a hundred and fifty caterpillars; the butchers were
+twenty-five. This amounts to six victims dispatched by each beetle. If
+the insect had nothing to do but to kill, like the knackers in the meat
+factories, and if the staff numbered a hundred--a very modest figure as
+compared with the staff of a lard or bacon factory--then the total
+number of victims, in a day of ten hours, would be thirty-six thousand.
+No Chicago "cannery" ever rivalled such a result.
+
+The speed of assassination is the more remarkable when we consider the
+difficulties of attack. The beetle has no endless chain to seize its
+victim by one leg, hoist it up, and swing it along to the butcher's
+knife; it has no sliding plank to hold the victim's head beneath the
+pole-axe of the knacker; it has to fall upon its prey, overpower it, and
+avoid its feet and its mandibles. Moreover, the beetle eats its prey on
+the spot as it kills. What slaughter there would be if the insect
+confined itself to killing!
+
+What do we learn from the slaughter-houses of Chicago and the fate of
+the beetle's victims? This: That the man of elevated morality is so far
+a very rare exception. Under the skin of the civilised being there lurks
+almost always the ancestor, the savage contemporary of the cave-bear.
+True humanity does not yet exist; it is growing, little by little,
+created by the ferment of the centuries and the dictates of conscience;
+but it progresses towards the highest with heartbreaking slowness.
+
+It was only yesterday that slavery finally disappeared: the basis of the
+ancient social organism; only yesterday was it realised that man, even
+though black, is really man and deserves to be treated accordingly.
+
+What formerly was woman? She was what she is to-day in the East: a
+gentle animal without a soul. The question was long discussed by the
+learned. The great divine of the seventeenth century, Bossuet himself,
+regarded woman as the diminutive of man. The proof was in the origin of
+Eve: she was the superfluous bone, the thirteenth rib which Adam
+possessed in the beginning. It has at last been admitted that woman
+possesses a soul like our own, but even superior in tenderness and
+devotion. She has been allowed to educate herself, which she has done at
+least as zealously as her coadjutor. But the law, that gloomy cavern
+which is still the lurking-place of so many barbarities, continues to
+regard her as an incapable and a minor. The law in turn will finally
+surrender to the truth.
+
+The abolition of slavery and the education of woman: these are two
+enormous strides upon the path of moral progress. Our descendants will
+go farther. They will see, with a lucidity capable of piercing every
+obstacle, that war is the most hopeless of all absurdities. That our
+conquerors, victors of battles and destroyers of nations, are detestable
+scourges; that a clasp of the hand is preferable to a rifle-shot; that
+the happiest people is not that which possesses the largest battalions,
+but that which labours in peace and produces abundantly; and that the
+amenities of existence do not necessitate the existence of frontiers,
+beyond which we meet with all the annoyances of the custom-house, with
+its officials who search our pockets and rifle our luggage.
+
+Our descendants will see this and many other marvels which to-day are
+extravagant dreams. To what ideal height will the process of evolution
+lead mankind? To no very magnificent height, it is to be feared. We are
+afflicted by an indelible taint, a kind of original sin, if we may call
+sin a state of things with which our will has nothing to do. We are made
+after a certain pattern and we can do nothing to change ourselves. We
+are marked with the mark of the beast, the taint of the belly, the
+inexhaustible source of bestiality.
+
+The intestine rules the world. In the midst of our most serious affairs
+there intrudes the imperious question of bread and butter. So long as
+there are stomachs to digest--and as yet we are unable to dispense with
+them--we must find the wherewithal to fill them, and the powerful will
+live by the sufferings of the weak. Life is a void that only death can
+fill. Hence the endless butchery by which man nourishes himself, no less
+than beetles and other creatures; hence the perpetual holocausts which
+make of this earth a knacker's yard, beside which the slaughter-houses
+of Chicago are as nothing.
+
+But the feasters are legion, and the feast is not abundant in
+proportion. Those that have not are envious of those that have; the
+hungry bare their teeth at the satisfied. Then follows the battle for
+the right of possession. Man raises armies; to defend his harvests, his
+granaries, and his cellars, he resorts to warfare. When shall we see the
+end of it? Alas, and many times alas! As long as there are wolves in the
+world there must be watch-dogs to defend the flock.
+
+This train of thought has led us far away from our beetles. Let us
+return to them. What was my motive in provoking the massacre of this
+peaceful procession of caterpillars who were on the point of self-burial
+when I gave them over to the butchers? Was it to enjoy the spectacle of
+a frenzied massacre? By no means; I have always pitied the sufferings of
+animals, and the smallest life is worthy of respect. To overcome this
+pity there needed the exigencies of scientific research--exigencies
+which are often cruel.
+
+In this case the subject of research was the habits of the Carabus
+auratus, the little vermin-killer of our gardens, who is therefore
+vulgarly known as the Gardener Beetle. How far is this title deserved?
+What game does the Gardener Beetle hunt? From what vermin does he free
+our beds and borders? His dealings with the procession of
+pine-caterpillars promise much. Let us continue our inquiry.
+
+On various occasions about the end of April the gardens afford me the
+sight of such processions, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. I
+capture them and place them in the vivarium. Bloodshed commences the
+moment the banquet is served. The caterpillars are eviscerated; each by
+a single beetle, or by several simultaneously. In less than fifteen
+minutes the flock is completely exterminated. Nothing remains but a few
+shapeless fragments, which are carried hither and thither, to be
+consumed at leisure under the shelter of the wooden board. One well-fed
+beetle decamps, his booty in his jaws, hoping to finish his feast in
+peace. He is met by companions who are attracted by the morsel hanging
+from the mandibles of the fugitive, and audaciously attempt to rob him.
+First two, then three, they all endeavour to deprive the legitimate
+owner of his prize. Each seizes the fragment, tugs at it, commences to
+swallow it without further ado. There is no actual battle; no violent
+assaults, as in the case of dogs disputing a bone. Their efforts are
+confined to the attempted theft. If the legitimate owner retains his
+hold they consume his booty in common, mandibles to mandibles, until the
+fragment is torn or bitten through, and each retires with his mouthful.
+
+As I found to my cost in bygone experiments, the pine-caterpillar wields
+a violently corrosive poison, which produces a painful rash upon the
+hands. It must therefore, one would think, form a somewhat highly
+seasoned diet. The beetles, however, delight in it. No matter how many
+flocks I provide them with, they are all consumed. But no one, that I
+know of, has ever found the Golden Gardener and its larva in the silken
+cocoons of the Bombyx. I do not expect ever to make such a discovery.
+These cocoons are inhabited only in winter, when the Gardener is
+indifferent to food, and lies torpid in the earth. In April, however,
+when the processions of larvæ are seeking a suitable site for burial and
+metamorphosis, the Gardener should profit largely by its good fortune
+should it by any chance encounter them.
+
+The furry nature of the victim does not in the least incommode the
+beetle; but the hairiest of all our caterpillars, the Hedgehog
+Caterpillar, with its undulating mane, partly red and partly black, does
+seem to be too much for the beetle. Day after day it wanders about the
+vivarium in company with the assassins. The latter apparently ignore its
+presence. From time to time one of them will halt, stroll round the
+hairy creature, examine it, and try to penetrate the tangled fleece.
+Immediately repulsed by the long, dense palisade of hairs, he retires
+without inflicting a wound, and the caterpillar proceeds upon its way
+with undulating mane, in pride and security.
+
+But this state of things cannot last. In a hungry moment, emboldened
+moreover by the presence of his fellows, the cowardly creature decides
+upon a serious attack. There are four of them; they industriously attack
+the caterpillar, which finally succumbs, assaulted before and behind. It
+is eviscerated and swallowed as greedily as though it were a defenceless
+grub.
+
+According to the hazard of discovery, I provision my menagerie with
+various caterpillars, some smooth and others hairy. All are accepted
+with the utmost eagerness, so long as they are of average size as
+compared with the beetles themselves. If too small they are despised, as
+they would not yield a sufficient mouthful. If they are too large the
+beetle is unable to handle them. The caterpillars of the Sphinx moth and
+the Great Peacock moth, for example, would fall an easy prey to the
+beetle were it not that at the first bite of the assailant the intended
+victim, by a contortion of its powerful flanks, sends the former
+flying. After several attacks, all of which end by the beetle being
+flung back to some considerable distance, the insect regretfully
+abandons his prey. I have kept two strong and lively caterpillars for a
+fortnight in the cage of my golden beetles, and nothing more serious
+occurred. The trick of the suddenly extended posterior was too much for
+the ferocious mandibles.
+
+The chief utility of the Golden Gardener lies in its extermination of
+all caterpillars that are not too powerful to attack. It has one
+limitation, however: it is not a climber. It hunts on the ground; never
+in the foliage overhead. I have never seen it exploring the twigs of
+even the smallest of bushes. When caged it pays no attention to the most
+enticing caterpillars if the latter take refuge in a tuft of thyme, at a
+few inches above the ground. This is a great pity. If only the beetle
+could climb how rapidly three or four would rid our cabbages of that
+grievous pest, the larva of the white cabbage butterfly! Alas! the best
+have always some failing, some vice.
+
+To exterminate caterpillars: that is the true vocation of the Golden
+Gardener. It is annoying that it can give us but little or no assistance
+in ridding us of another plague of the kitchen-garden: the snail. The
+slime of the snail is offensive to the beetle; it is safe from the
+latter unless crippled, half crushed, or projecting from the shell. Its
+relatives, however, do not share this dislike. The horny Procrustes, the
+great Scarabicus, entirely black and larger than the Carabus, attacks
+the snail most valiantly, and empties its shell to the bottom, in spite
+of the desperate secretion of slime. It is a pity that the Procrustes is
+not more frequently found in our gardens; it would be an excellent
+gardener's assistant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE GOLDEN GARDENER--COURTSHIP
+
+
+It is generally recognized that the Carabus auratus is an active
+exterminator of caterpillars; on this account in particular it deserves
+its title of Gardener Beetle; it is the vigilant policeman of our
+kitchen-gardens, our flower-beds and herbaceous borders. If my inquiries
+add nothing to its established reputation in this respect, they will
+nevertheless, in the following pages, show the insect in a light as yet
+unsuspected. The ferocious beast of prey, the ogre who devours all
+creatures that are not too strong for him, is himself killed and eaten:
+by his fellows, and by many others.
+
+Standing one day in the shadow of the plane-trees that grow before my
+door, I see a Golden Gardener go by as if on pressing business. The
+pilgrim is well met; he will go to swell the contents of my vivarium. In
+capturing him I notice that the extremities of the wing-covers are
+slightly damaged. Is this the result of a struggle between rivals? There
+is nothing to tell me. The essential thing is that the insect should not
+be handicapped by any serious injury. Inspected, and found to be without
+any serious wound and fit for service, it is introduced into the glass
+dwelling of its twenty-five future companions.
+
+Next day I look for the new inmate. It is dead. Its comrades have
+attacked it during the night and have cleaned out its abdomen,
+insufficiently protected by the damaged wing-covers. The operation has
+been performed very cleanly, without any dismemberment. Claws, head,
+corselet, all are correctly in place; the abdomen only has a gaping
+wound through which its contents have been removed. What remains is a
+kind of golden shell, formed of the two conjoined elytra. The shell of
+an oyster emptied of its inmate is not more empty.
+
+This result astonishes me, for I have taken good care that the cage
+should never be long without food. The snail, the pine-cockchafer, the
+Praying Mantis, the lob-worm, the caterpillar, and other favourite
+insects, have all been given in alternation and in sufficient
+quantities. In devouring a brother whose damaged armour lent itself to
+any easy attack my beetles had not the excuse of hunger.
+
+Is it their custom to kill the wounded and to eviscerate such of their
+fellows as suffer damage? Pity is unknown among insects. At the sight of
+the desperate struggles of a crippled fellow-creature none of the same
+family will cry a halt, none will attempt to come to its aid. Among the
+carnivorous insects the matter may develop to a tragic termination. With
+them, the passers-by will often run to the cripple. But do they do so in
+order to help it? By no means: merely to taste its flesh, and, if they
+find it agreeable, to perform the most radical cure of its ills by
+devouring it.
+
+It is possible, therefore, that the Gardener with the injured
+wing-covers had tempted his fellows by the sight of his imperfectly
+covered back. They saw in their defenceless comrade a permissible
+subject for dissection. But do they respect one another when there is no
+previous wound? At first there was every appearance that their relations
+were perfectly pacific. During their sanguinary meals there is never a
+scuffle between the feasters; nothing but mere mouth-to-mouth thefts.
+There are no quarrels during the long siestas in the shelter of the
+board. Half buried in the cool earth, my twenty-five subjects slumber
+and digest their food in peace; they lie sociably near one another, each
+in his little trench. If I raise the plank they awake and are off,
+running hither and thither, constantly encountering one another without
+hostilities.
+
+The profoundest peace is reigning, and to all appearances will last for
+ever, when in the early days of June I find a dead Gardener. Its limbs
+are intact; it is reduced to the condition of a mere golden husk; like
+the defenceless beetle I have already spoken of, it is as empty as an
+oyster-shell. Let us examine the remains. All is intact, save the huge
+breach in the abdomen. So the insect was sound and unhurt when the
+others attacked it.
+
+A few days pass, and another Gardener is killed and dealt with as
+before, with no disorder in the component pieces of its armour. Let us
+place the dead insect on its belly; it is to all appearances untouched.
+Place it on its back; it is hollow, and has no trace of flesh left
+beneath its carapace. A little later, and I find another empty relic;
+then another, and yet another, until the population of my menagerie is
+rapidly shrinking. If this insensate massacre continues I shall soon
+find my cage depopulated.
+
+Are my beetles hoary with age? Do they die a natural death, and do the
+survivors then clean out the bodies? Or is the population being reduced
+at the expense of sound and healthy insects? It is not easy to elucidate
+the matter, since the atrocities are commonly perpetrated in the night.
+But, finally, with vigilance, on two occasions, I surprise the beetles
+at their work in the light of day.
+
+Towards the middle of June a female attacks a male before my eyes. The
+male is recognisable by his slightly smaller size. The operation
+commences. Raising the ends of the wing-covers, the assailant seizes her
+victim by the extremity of the abdomen, from the dorsal side. She pulls
+at him furiously, eagerly munching with her mandibles. The victim, who
+is in the prime of life, does not defend himself, nor turn upon his
+assailant. He pulls his hardest in the opposite direction to free
+himself from those terrible fangs; he advances and recoils as he is
+overpowered by or overpowers the assassin; and there his resistance
+ends. The struggle lasts a quarter of an hour. Other beetles, passing
+by, call a halt, and seem to say "My turn next!" Finally, redoubling his
+efforts, the male frees himself and flies. If he had not succeeded in
+escaping the ferocious female would undoubtedly have eviscerated him.
+
+[Illustration: THE GOLDEN GARDENER: THE MATING SEASON OVER, THE MALES
+ARE EVISCERATED BY THE FEMALES.]
+
+A few days later I witness a similar scene, but this time the tragedy is
+played to the end. Once more it is a female who seizes a male from
+behind. With no other protest except his futile efforts to escape, the
+victim is forced to submit. The skin finally yields; the wound
+enlarges, and the viscera are removed and devoured by the matron, who
+empties the carapace, her head buried in the body of her late companion.
+The legs of the miserable victim tremble, announcing the end. The
+murderess takes no notice; she continues to rummage as far as she can
+reach for the narrowing of the thorax. Nothing is left but the closed
+boat-shaped wing-covers and the fore parts of the body. The empty shell
+is left lying on the scene of the tragedy.
+
+In this way must have perished the beetles--always males--whose remains
+I find in the cage from time to time; thus the survivors also will
+perish. Between the middle of June and the 1st of August the inhabitants
+of the cage, twenty-five in number at the outset, are reduced to five,
+all of whom are females. All the males, to the number of twenty, have
+disappeared, eviscerated and completely emptied. And by whom? Apparently
+by the females.
+
+That this is the case is attested in the first place by the two assaults
+of which I was perchance the witness; on two occasions, in broad
+daylight, I saw the female devouring the male, having opened the abdomen
+under the wing-covers, or having at least attempted to do so. As for the
+rest of the massacres, although direct observation was lacking, I had
+one very valuable piece of evidence. As we have seen, the victim does
+not retaliate, does not defend himself, but simply tries to escape by
+pulling himself away.
+
+If it were a matter of an ordinary fight, a conflict such as might arise
+in the struggle for life, the creature attacked would obviously
+retaliate, since he is perfectly well able to do so; in an ordinary
+conflict he would meet force by force, and return bite for bite. His
+strength would enable him to come well out of a struggle, but the
+foolish creature allows himself to be devoured without retaliating. It
+seems as though an invincible repugnance prevents him from offering
+resistance and in turn devouring the devourer. This tolerance reminds
+one of the scorpion of Languedoc, which on the termination of the
+hymeneal rites allows the female to devour him without attempting to
+employ his weapon, the venomous dagger which would form a formidable
+defence; it reminds us also of the male of the Praying Mantis, which
+still embraces the female though reduced to a headless trunk, while the
+latter devours him by small mouthfuls, with no rebellion or defence on
+his part. There are other examples of hymeneal rites to which the male
+offers no resistance.
+
+The males of my menagerie of Gardeners, one and all eviscerated, speak
+of similar customs. They are the victims of the females when the latter
+have no further use for them. For four months, from April to August, the
+insects pair off continually; sometimes tentatively, but usually the
+mating is effective. The business of mating is all but endless for these
+fiery spirits.
+
+The Gardener is prompt and businesslike in his affairs of the heart. In
+the midst of the crowd, with no preliminary courtship, the male throws
+himself upon the female. The female thus embraced raises her head a
+trifle as a sign of acquiescence, while the cavalier beats the back of
+her neck with his antennæ. The embrace is brief, and they abruptly
+separate; after a little refreshment the two parties are ready for other
+adventures, and yet others, so long as there are males available. After
+the feast, a brief and primitive wooing; after the wooing, the feast; in
+such delights the life of the Gardener passes.
+
+The females of my collection were in no proper ratio to the number of
+aspiring lovers; there were five females to twenty males. No matter;
+there was no rivalry, no hustling; all went peacefully and sooner or
+later each was satisfied.
+
+I should have preferred a better proportioned assembly. Chance, not
+choice, had given me that at my disposal. In the early spring I had
+collected all the Gardeners I could find under the stones of the
+neighbourhood, without distinguishing the sexes, for they are not easy
+to recognise merely by external characteristics. Later on I learned by
+watching them that a slight excess of size was the distinctive sign of
+the female. My menagerie, so ill-proportioned in the matter of sex, was
+therefore the result of chance. I do not suppose this preponderance of
+males exists in natural conditions. On the other hand, one never sees
+such numerous groups at liberty, in the shelter of the same stone. The
+Gardener lives an almost solitary life; it is rarely that one finds two
+or three beneath the same object of shelter. The gathering in my
+menagerie was thus exceptional, although it did not lead to confusion.
+There is plenty of room in the glass cage for excursions to a distance
+and for all their habitual manoeuvres. Those who wish for solitude can
+obtain it; those who wish for company need not seek it.
+
+For the rest, captivity cannot lie heavily on them; that is proved by
+their frequent feasts, their constant mating. They could not thrive
+better in the open; perhaps not so well, for food is less abundant under
+natural conditions. In the matter of well-being the prisoners are in a
+normal condition, favourable to the maintenance of their usual habits.
+
+It is true that encounters of beetle with beetle are more frequent here
+than in the open. Hence, no doubt, arise more opportunities for the
+females to persecute the males whom they no longer require; to fall upon
+them from the rear and eviscerate them. This pursuit of their onetime
+lovers is aggravated by their confined quarters; but it certainly is not
+caused thereby, for such customs are not suddenly originated.
+
+The mating season over, the female encountering a male in the open must
+evidently regard him as fair game, and devour him as the termination of
+the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones, but have never
+chanced upon this spectacle, but what has occurred in my menagerie is
+sufficient to convince me. What a world these beetles live in, where the
+matron devours her mate so soon as her fertility delivers her from the
+need of him! And how lightly the males must be regarded by custom, to be
+served in this manner!
+
+Is this practice of post-matrimonial cannibalism a general custom in the
+insect world? For the moment, I can recollect only three characteristic
+examples: those of the Praying Mantis, the Golden Gardener, and the
+scorpion of Languedoc. An analogous yet less brutal practice--for the
+victim is defunct before he is eaten--is a characteristic of the Locust
+family. The female of the white-faced Decticus will eagerly devour the
+body of her dead mate, as will the Green Grasshopper.
+
+To a certain extent this custom is excused by the nature of the insect's
+diet; the Decticus and the Grasshopper are essentially carnivorous.
+Encountering a dead body of their own species, a female will devour it,
+even if it be the body of her latest mate.
+
+But what are we to say in palliation of the vegetarians? At the approach
+of the breeding season, before the eggs are laid, the Ephippigera turns
+upon her still living mate, disembowels him, and eats as much of him as
+her appetite will allow.
+
+The cheerful Cricket shows herself in a new light at this season; she
+attacks the mate who lately wooed her with such impassioned serenades;
+she tears his wings, breaks his musical thighs, and even swallows a few
+mouthfuls of the instrumentalist. It is probable that this deadly
+aversion of the female for the male at the end of the mating season is
+fairly common, especially among the carnivorous insects. But what is the
+object of this atrocious custom? That is a question I shall not fail to
+answer when circumstances permit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FIELD-CRICKET
+
+
+The breeding of Crickets demands no particular preparations. A little
+patience is enough--patience, which according to Buffon is genius; but
+which I, more modestly, will call the superlative virtue of the
+observer. In April, May, or later we may establish isolated couples in
+ordinary flower-pots containing a layer of beaten earth. Their diet will
+consist of a leaf of lettuce renewed from time to time. The pot must be
+covered with a square of glass to prevent the escape of the inmates.
+
+I have gathered some very curious data from these makeshift appliances,
+which may be used with and as a substitute for the cages of wire gauze,
+although the latter are preferable. We shall return to the point
+presently. For the moment let us watch the process of breeding, taking
+care that the critical hour does not escape us.
+
+It was during the first week of June that my assiduous visits were at
+last repaid. I surprised the female motionless, with the oviduct planted
+vertically in the soil. Heedless of the indiscreet visitor, she remained
+for a long time stationed at the same point. Finally she withdrew her
+oviduct, and effaced, though without particular care, the traces of the
+hole in which her eggs were deposited, rested for a moment, walked
+away, and repeated the operation; not once, but many times, first here,
+then there, all over the area at her disposal. Her behaviour was
+precisely the same as that of the Decticus, except that her movements
+were more deliberate. At the end of twenty-four hours her eggs were
+apparently all laid. For greater certainty I waited a couple of days
+longer.
+
+I then examined the earth in the pot. The eggs, of a straw-yellow, are
+cylindrical in form, with rounded ends, and measure about one-tenth of
+an inch in length. They are placed singly in the soil, in a
+perpendicular position.
+
+I have found them over the whole area of the pot, at a depth of a
+twelfth of an inch. As closely as the difficulties of the operation will
+allow, I have estimated the eggs of a single female, upon passing the
+earth through a sieve, at five or six hundred. Such a family will
+certainly undergo an energetic pruning before very long.
+
+The egg of the Cricket is a curiosity, a tiny mechanical marvel. After
+hatching it appears as a sheath of opaque white, open at the summit,
+where there is a round and very regular aperture, to the edge of which
+adheres a little valve like a skull-cap which forms the lid. Instead of
+breaking at random under the thrusts or the cuts of the new-formed
+larva, it opens of itself along a line of least resistance which occurs
+expressly for the purpose. The curious process of the actual hatching
+should be observed.
+
+A fortnight after the egg is laid two large eye-marks, round and of a
+reddish black, are seen to darken the forward extremity of the egg.
+Next, a little above these two points, and right at the end of the
+cylinder, a tiny circular capsule or swelling is seen. This marks the
+line of rupture, which is now preparing. Presently the translucency of
+the egg allows us to observe the fine segmentation of the tiny inmate.
+Now is the moment to redouble our vigilance and to multiply our visits,
+especially during the earlier part of the day.
+
+Fortune favours the patient, and rewards my assiduity Round the little
+capsule changes of infinite delicacy have prepared the line of least
+resistance. The end of the egg, pushed by the head of the inmate,
+becomes detached, rises, and falls aside like the top of a tiny phial.
+The Cricket issues like a Jack-in-the-box.
+
+When the Cricket has departed the shell remains distended, smooth,
+intact, of the purest white, with the circular lid hanging to the mouth
+of the door of exit. The egg of the bird breaks clumsily under the blows
+of a wart-like excrescence which is formed expressly upon the beak of
+the unborn bird; the egg of the Cricket, of a far superior structure,
+opens like an ivory casket. The pressure of the inmate's head is
+sufficient to work the hinge.
+
+The moment he is deprived of his white tunic, the young Cricket, pale
+all over, almost white, begins to struggle against the overlying soil.
+He strikes it with his mandibles; he sweeps it aside, kicking it
+backwards and downwards; and being of a powdery quality, which offers no
+particular resistance, he soon arrives at the surface, and henceforth
+knows the joys of the sun, and the perils of intercourse with the
+living; a tiny, feeble creature, little larger than a flea. His colour
+deepens. In twenty-four hours he assumes a splendid ebony black which
+rivals that of the adult insect. Of his original pallor he retains only
+a white girdle which encircles the thorax and reminds one of the
+leading-string of an infant.
+
+Very much on the alert, he sounds his surroundings with his long
+vibrating antennæ; he toddles and leaps along with a vigour which his
+future obesity will no longer permit.
+
+This is the age of stomach troubles. What are we to give him to eat? I
+do not know. I offer him adult diet--the tender leaves of a lettuce. He
+disdains to bite it; or perhaps his bites escape me, so tiny would they
+be.
+
+In a few days, what with my ten households, I see myself loaded with
+family cares. What shall I do with my five or six thousand Crickets, an
+attractive flock, to be sure, but one I cannot bring up in my ignorance
+of the treatment required? I will give you liberty, gentle creatures! I
+will confide you to the sovereign nurse and schoolmistress, Nature!
+
+It is done. Here and there about my orchard, in the most favourable
+localities, I loose my legions. What a concert I shall have before my
+door next year if all goes well! But no! There will probably be silence,
+for the terrible extermination will follow which corresponds with the
+fertility of the mother. A few couples only may survive: that is the
+most we can hope.
+
+The first to come to the living feast and the most eager at the
+slaughter are the little grey lizard and the ant. I am afraid this
+latter, hateful filibuster that it is, will not leave me a single
+Cricket in my garden. It falls upon the tiny Crickets, eviscerates them,
+and devours them with frantic greed.
+
+Satanic creature! And to think that we place it in the front rank of
+the insect world! The books celebrate its virtues and never tire of its
+praises; the naturalists hold it in high esteem and add to its
+reputation daily; so true is it of animals, as of man, that of the
+various means of living in history the most certain is to do harm to
+others.
+
+Every one knows the _Bousier_ (dung-beetle) and the Necrophorus, those
+lively murderers; the gnat, the drinker of blood; the wasp, the
+irascible bully with the poisoned dagger; and the ant, the maleficent
+creature which in the villages of the South of France saps and imperils
+the rafters and ceilings of a dwelling with the same energy it brings to
+the eating of a fig. I need say no more; human history is full of
+similar examples of the useful misunderstood and undervalued and the
+calamitous glorified.
+
+What with the ants and other exterminating forces, the massacre was so
+great that the colonies of Crickets in my orchard, so numerous at the
+outset, were so far decimated that I could not continue my observations,
+but had to resort to the outside world for further information.
+
+In August, among the detritus of decaying leaves, in little oases whose
+turf is not burned by the sun, I find the young Cricket has already
+grown to a considerable size; he is all black, like the adult, without a
+vestige of the white cincture of the early days. He has no domicile. The
+shelter of a dead leaf, the cover afforded by a flat stone is
+sufficient; he is a nomad, and careless where he takes his repose.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE FIELD-CRICKET. A DUEL BETWEEN RIVALS.
+
+2. THE FIELD-CRICKET. THE DEFEATED RIVAL RETIRES, INSULTED BY THE
+VICTOR.]
+
+Not until the end of October, when the first frosts are at hand, does
+the work of burrowing commence. The operation is very simple, as far as
+I can tell from what I have learned from the insect in captivity. The
+burrow is never made at a bare or conspicuous point; it is always
+commenced under the shelter of a faded leaf of lettuce, the remains of
+the food provided. This takes the place of the curtain of grass so
+necessary to preserve the mysterious privacy of the establishment.
+
+The little miner scratches with his fore-claws, but also makes use of
+the pincers of his mandibles in order to remove pieces of grit or gravel
+of any size. I see him stamping with his powerful hinder limbs, which
+are provided with a double row of spines; I see him raking and sweeping
+backwards the excavated material, and spreading it out in an inclined
+plane. This is his whole method.
+
+At first the work goes forward merrily. The excavator disappears under
+the easily excavated soil of his prison after two hours' labour. At
+intervals he returns to the orifice, always tail first, and always
+raking and sweeping. If fatigue overcomes him he rests on the threshold
+of his burrow, his head projecting outwards, his antennæ gently
+vibrating. Presently he re-enters his tunnel and sets to work again with
+his pincers and rakes. Presently his periods of repose grow longer and
+tire my patience.
+
+The most important part of the work is now completed. Once the burrow
+has attained a depth of a couple of inches, it forms a sufficient
+shelter for the needs of the moment. The rest will be the work of time;
+a labour resumed at will, for a short time daily. The burrow will be
+made deeper and wider as the growth of the inmate and the inclemency of
+the season demand. Even in winter, if the weather is mild, and the sun
+smiles upon the threshold of his dwelling, one may sometimes surprise
+the Cricket thrusting out small quantities of loosened earth, a sign of
+enlargement and of further burrowing. In the midst of the joys of spring
+the cares of the house still continue; it is constantly restored and
+perfected until the death of the occupant.
+
+April comes to an end, and the song of the Cricket commences. At first
+we hear only timid and occasional solos; but very soon there is a
+general symphony, when every scrap of turf has its performer. I am
+inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the choristers of spring.
+In the waste lands of Provence, when the thyme and the lavender are in
+flower, the Cricket mingles his note with that of the crested lark,
+which ascends like a lyrical firework, its throat swelling with music,
+to its invisible station in the clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias
+upon the plain below. From the ground the chorus of the Crickets
+replies. It is monotonous and artless, yet how well it harmonises, in
+its very simplicity, with the rustic gaiety of a world renewed! It is
+the hosanna of the awakening, the alleluia of the germinating seed and
+the sprouting blade. To which of the two performers should the palm be
+given? I should award it to the Cricket; he triumphs by force of numbers
+and his never-ceasing note. The lark hushes her song, that the blue-grey
+fields of lavender, swinging their aromatic censers before the sun, may
+hear the Cricket alone at his humble, solemn celebration.
+
+But here the anatomist intervenes, roughly demanding of the Cricket:
+"Show me your instrument, the source of your music!" Like all things of
+real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that
+of the locusts; there is the toothed fiddlestick and the vibrating
+tympanum.
+
+The right wing-cover overlaps the left and almost completely covers it,
+except for the sudden fold which encases the insect's flank. This
+arrangement is the reverse of that exhibited by the green grasshopper,
+the Decticus, the Ephippigera, and their relations. The Cricket is
+right-handed, the others left-handed. The two wing-covers have the same
+structure. To know one is to know the other. Let us examine that on the
+right hand.
+
+It is almost flat on the back, but suddenly folds over at the side, the
+turn being almost at right angles. This lateral fold encloses the flank
+of the abdomen and is covered with fine oblique and parallel nervures.
+The powerful nervures of the dorsal portion of the wing-cover are of the
+deepest black, and their general effect is that of a complicated design,
+not unlike a tangle of Arabic caligraphy.
+
+Seen by transmitted light the wing-cover is of a very pale reddish
+colour, excepting two large adjacent spaces, one of which, the larger
+and anterior, is triangular in shape, while the other, the smaller and
+posterior, is oval. Each space is surrounded by a strong nervure and
+goffered by slight wrinkles or depressions. These two spaces represent
+the mirror of the locust tribe; they constitute the sonorous area. The
+substance of the wing-cover is finer here than elsewhere, and shows
+traces of iridescent though somewhat smoky colour.
+
+These are parts of an admirable instrument, greatly superior to that of
+the Decticus. The five hundred prisms of the bow biting upon the ridges
+of the wing-cover opposed to it set all four tympanums vibrating at
+once; the lower pair by direct friction, the upper pair by the vibration
+of the wing-cover itself. What a powerful sound results! The Decticus,
+endowed with only one indifferent "mirror," can be heard only at a few
+paces; the Cricket, the possessor of four vibratory areas, can be heard
+at a hundred yards.
+
+The Cricket rivals the Cigale in loudness, but his note has not the
+displeasing, raucous quality of the latter. Better still: he has the
+gift of expression, for he can sing loud or soft. The wing-covers, as we
+have seen, are prolonged in a deep fold over each flank. These folds are
+the dampers, which, as they are pressed downwards or slightly raised,
+modify the intensity of the sound, and according to the extent of their
+contact with the soft abdomen now muffle the song to a _mezza voce_ and
+now let it sound _fortissimo_.
+
+Peace reigns in the cage until the warlike instinct of the mating period
+breaks out. These duels between rivals are frequent and lively, but not
+very serious. The two rivals rise up against one another, biting at one
+another's heads--these solid, fang-proof helmets--roll each other over,
+pick themselves up, and separate. The vanquished Cricket scuttles off as
+fast as he can; the victor insults him by a couple of triumphant and
+boastful chirps; then, moderating his tone, he tacks and veers about the
+desired one.
+
+The lover proceeds to make himself smart. Hooking one of his antennæ
+towards him with one of his free claws, he takes it between his
+mandibles in order to curl it and moisten it with saliva. With his long
+hind legs, spurred and laced with red, he stamps with impatience and
+kicks out at nothing. Emotion renders him silent. His wing-covers are
+nevertheless in rapid motion, but are no longer sounding, or at most
+emit but an unrhythmical rubbing sound.
+
+Presumptuous declaration! The female Cricket does not run to hide
+herself in the folds of her lettuce leaves; but she lifts the curtain a
+little, and looks out, and wishes to be seen:--
+
+  _Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri._
+
+She flies towards the brake, but hopes first to be perceived, said the
+poet of the delightful eclogue, two thousand years ago. Sacred
+provocations of lovers, are they not in all ages the same?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE ITALIAN CRICKET
+
+
+My house shelters no specimens of the domestic Cricket, the guest of
+bakeries and rustic hearths. But although in my village the chinks under
+the hearthstones are mute, the nights of summer are musical with a
+singer little known in the North. The sunny hours of spring have their
+singer, the Field-Cricket of which I have written; while in the summer,
+during the stillness of the night, we hear the note of the Italian
+Cricket, the _OEcanthus pellucens_, Scop. One diurnal and one
+nocturnal, between them they share the kindly half of the year. When the
+Field-Cricket ceases to sing it is not long before the other begins its
+serenade.
+
+The Italian Cricket has not the black costume and heavy shape
+characteristic of the family. It is, on the contrary, a slender, weakly
+creature; its colour very pale, indeed almost white, as is natural in
+view of its nocturnal habits. In handling it one is afraid of crushing
+it between the fingers. It lives an aerial existence; on shrubs and
+bushes of all kinds, on tall herbage and grasses, and rarely descends to
+the earth. Its song, the pleasant voice of the calm, hot evenings from
+July to October, commences at sunset and continues for the greater part
+of the night.
+
+This song is familiar to all Provençals; for the least patch of thicket
+or tuft of grasses has its group of instrumentalists. It resounds even
+in the granaries, into which the insect strays, attracted thither by the
+fodder. But no one, so mysterious are the manners of the pallid Cricket,
+knows exactly what is the source of the serenade, which is often, though
+quite erroneously, attributed to the common field-cricket, which at this
+period is silent and as yet quite young.
+
+The song consists of a _Gri-i-i, Gri-i-i_, a slow, gentle note, rendered
+more expressive by a slight tremor. Hearing it, one divines the extreme
+tenuity and the amplitude of the vibrating membranes. If the insect is
+not in any way disturbed as it sits in the low foliage, the note does
+not vary, but at the least noise the performer becomes a ventriloquist.
+First of all you hear it there, close by, in front of you, and the next
+moment you hear it over there, twenty yards away; the double note
+decreased in volume by the distance.
+
+You go forward. Nothing is there. The sound proceeds again from its
+original point. But no--it is not there; it is to the left now--unless
+it is to the right--or behind.... Complete confusion! It is impossible
+to detect, by means of the ear, the direction from which the chirp
+really comes. Much patience and many precautions will be required before
+you can capture the insect by the light of the lantern. A few specimens
+caught under these conditions and placed in a cage have taught me the
+little I know concerning the musician who so perfectly deceives our
+ears.
+
+The wing-covers are both formed of a dry, broad membrane, diaphanous and
+as fine as the white skin on the outside of an onion, which is capable
+of vibrating over its whole area. Their shape is that of the segment of
+a circle, cut away at the upper end. This segment is bent at a right
+angle along a strong longitudinal nervure, and descends on the outer
+side in a flap which encloses the insect's flank when in the attitude of
+repose.
+
+The right wing-cover overlaps the left. Its inner edge carries, on the
+under side, near the base, a callosity from which five radiating
+nervures proceed; two of them upwards and two downwards, while the fifth
+runs approximately at right angles to these. This last nervure, which is
+of a slightly reddish hue, is the fundamental element of the musical
+device; it is, in short, the bow, the fiddlestick, as is proved by the
+fine notches which run across it. The rest of the wing-cover shows a few
+more nervures of less importance, which hold the membrane stretched
+tight, but do not form part of the friction apparatus.
+
+The left or lower wing-cover is of similar structure, with the
+difference that the bow, the callosity, and the nervures occupy the
+upper face. It will be found that the two bows--that is, the toothed or
+indented nervures--cross one another obliquely.
+
+When the note has its full volume, the wing-covers are well raised above
+the body like a wide gauzy sail, only touching along the internal edges.
+The two bows, the toothed nervures, engage obliquely one with the other,
+and their mutual friction causes the sonorous vibration of the two
+stretched membranes.
+
+[Illustration: THE ITALIAN CRICKET.]
+
+The sound can be modified accordingly as the strokes of each bow bear
+upon the callosity, which is itself serrated or wrinkled, or on one of
+the four smooth radiating nervures. Thus in part are explained the
+illusions produced by a sound which seems to come first from one point,
+then from another, when the timid insect is alarmed.
+
+The production of loud or soft resounding or muffled notes, which gives
+the illusion of distance, the principal element in the art of the
+ventriloquist, has another and easily discovered source. To produce the
+loud, open sounds the wing-covers are fully lifted; to produce the
+muted, muffled notes they are lowered. When lowered their outer edges
+press more or less lightly on the soft flanks of the insect, thus
+diminishing the vibratory area and damping the sound.
+
+The gentle touch of a finger-tip muffles the sharp, loud ringing of a
+glass tumbler or "musical-glass" and changes it into a veiled,
+indefinite sound which seems to come from a distance. The White Cricket
+knows this secret of acoustics. It misleads those that seek it by
+pressing the edge of its vibrating membranes to the soft flesh of its
+abdomen. Our musical instruments have their dampers; that of the
+_OEcanthus pellucens_ rivals and surpasses them in simplicity of means
+and perfection of results.
+
+The Field-Cricket and its relatives also vary the volume of their song
+by raising or lowering the elytra so as to enclose the abdomen in a
+varying degree, but none of them can obtain by this method results so
+deceptive as those produced by the Italian Cricket.
+
+To this illusion of distance, which is a source of perpetually renewed
+surprise, evoked by the slightest sound of our footsteps, we must add
+the purity of the sound, and its soft tremolo. I know of no insect voice
+more gracious, more limpid, in the profound peace of the nights of
+August. How many times, _per amica silentia lunæ_, have I lain upon the
+ground, in the shelter of a clump of rosemary, to listen to the
+delicious concert!
+
+The nocturnal Cricket sings continually in the gardens. Each tuft of the
+red-flowered cistus has its band of musicians, and each bush of fragrant
+lavender. The shrubs and the terebinth-trees contain their orchestras.
+With its clear, sweet voice, all this tiny world is questioning,
+replying, from bush to bush, from tree to tree; or rather, indifferent
+to the songs of others, each little being is singing his joys to himself
+alone.
+
+Above my head the constellation of Cygnus stretches its great cross
+along the Milky Way; below, all around me, palpitates the insect
+symphony. The atom telling of its joys makes me forget the spectacle of
+the stars. We know nothing of these celestial eyes which gaze upon us,
+cold and calm, with scintillations like the blinking of eyelids.
+
+Science tells us of their distance, their speeds, their masses, their
+volumes; it burdens us with stupendous numbers and stupefies us with
+immensities; but it does not succeed in moving us. And why? Because it
+lacks the great secret: the secret of life. What is there, up there?
+What do these suns warm? Worlds analogous to ours, says reason; planets
+on which life is evolving in an endless variety of forms. A superb
+conception of the universe, but after all a pure conception, not based
+upon patent facts and infallible testimony at the disposal of one and
+all. The probable, even the extremely probable, is not the obvious, the
+evident, which forces itself irresistibly and leaves no room for doubt.
+
+But in your company, O my Crickets, I feel the thrill of life, the soul
+of our native lump of earth; and for this reason, as I lean against the
+hedge of rosemary, I bestow only an absent glance upon the constellation
+of Cygnus, but give all my attention to your serenade. A little animated
+slime, capable of pleasure and pain, surpasses in interest the universe
+of dead matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SISYPHUS BEETLE.--THE INSTINCT OF PATERNITY
+
+
+The duties of paternity are seldom imposed on any but the higher
+animals. They are most notable in the bird; and the furry peoples acquit
+themselves honourably. Lower in the scale we find in the father a
+general indifference as to the fate of the family. Very few insects form
+exceptions to this rule. Although all are imbued with a mating instinct
+that is almost frenzied, nearly all, when the passion of the moment is
+appeased, terminate then and there their domestic relations, and
+withdraw, indifferent to the brood, which has to look after itself as
+best it may.
+
+This paternal coldness, which would be odious in the higher walks of
+animal life, where the weakness of the young demands prolonged
+assistance, has in the insect world the excuse that the new-born young
+are comparatively robust, and are able, without help, to fill their
+mouths and stomachs, provided they find themselves in propitious
+surroundings. All that the prosperity of the race demands of the
+Pierides, or Cabbage Butterflies, is that they should deposit their eggs
+on the leaves of the cabbage; what purpose would be served by the
+instincts of a father? The botanical instinct of the mother needs no
+assistance. At the period of laying the father would be in the way. Let
+him pursue his flirtations elsewhere; the laying of eggs is a serious
+business.
+
+In the case of the majority of insects the process of education is
+unknown, or summary in the extreme. The insect has only to select a
+grazing-ground upon which its family will establish itself the moment it
+is hatched; or a site which will allow the young to find their proper
+sustenance for themselves. There is no need of a father in these various
+cases. After mating, the discarded male, who is henceforth useless,
+drags out a lingering existence of a few days, and finally perishes
+without having given the slightest assistance in the work of installing
+his offspring.
+
+But matters are not everywhere so primitive as this. There are tribes in
+which an inheritance is prepared for the family which will assure it
+both of food and of shelter in advance. The Hymenoptera in particular
+are past-masters in the provision of cellars, jars, and other utensils
+in which the honey-paste destined for the young is stored; they are
+perfect in the art of excavating storehouses of food for their grubs.
+
+This stupendous labour of construction and provisioning, this labour
+that absorbs the insect's whole life, is the work of the mother only,
+who wears herself out at her task. The father, intoxicated with
+sunlight, lies idle on the threshold of the workshop, watching the
+heroic female at her work, and regards himself as excused from all
+labour when he has plagued his neighbours a little.
+
+Does he never perform useful work? Why does he not follow the example
+of the swallows, each of whom brings a fair share of the straw and
+mortar for the building of the nest and the midges for the young brood?
+No, he does nothing; perhaps alleging the excuse of his relative
+weakness. But this is a poor excuse; for to cut out little circles from
+a leaf, to rake a little cotton from a downy plant, or to gather a
+little mortar from a muddy spot, would hardly be a task beyond his
+powers. He might very well collaborate, at least as labourer; he could
+at least gather together the materials for the more intelligent mother
+to place in position. The true motive of his idleness is ineptitude.
+
+It is a curious thing that the Hymenoptera, the most skilful of all
+industrial insects, know nothing of paternal labour. The male of the
+genus, in whom we should expect the requirements of the young to develop
+the highest aptitudes, is as useless as a butterfly, whose family costs
+so little to establish. The actual distribution of instinct upsets our
+most reasonable previsions.
+
+It upsets our expectations so completely that we are surprised to find
+in the dung-beetle the noble prerogative which is lacking in the bee
+tribe. The mates of several species of dung-beetle keep house together
+and know the worth of mutual labour. Consider the male and female
+Geotrupes, which prepare together the patrimony of their larvæ; in their
+case the father assists his companion with the pressure of his robust
+body in the manufacture of their balls of compressed nutriment. These
+domestic habits are astonishing amidst the general isolation.
+
+To this example, hitherto unique, my continual researches in this
+direction permit me to-day to add three others which are fully as
+interesting. All three are members of the corporation of dung-beetles. I
+will relate their habits, but briefly, as in many respects their history
+is the same as that of the Sacred Scarabæus, the Spanish Copris, and
+others.
+
+The first example is the Sisyphus beetle (_Sisyphus Schæfferi_, Lin.),
+the smallest and most industrious of our pill-makers. It has no equal in
+lively agility, grotesque somersaults, and sudden tumbles down the
+impossible paths or over the impracticable obstacles to which its
+obstinacy is perpetually leading it. In allusion to these frantic
+gymnastics Latreille has given the insect the name of Sisyphus, after
+the celebrated inmate of the classic Hades. This unhappy spirit
+underwent terrible exertions in his efforts to heave to the top of a
+mountain an enormous rock, which always escaped him at the moment of
+attaining the summit, and rolled back to the foot of the slope. Begin
+again, poor Sisyphus, begin again, begin again always! Your torments
+will never cease until the rock is firmly placed upon the summit of the
+mountain.
+
+I like this myth. It is, in a way, the history of many of us; not odious
+scoundrels worthy of eternal torments, but worthy and laborious folk,
+useful to their neighbours. One crime alone is theirs to expiate: the
+crime of poverty. Half a century or more ago, for my own part, I left
+many blood-stained tatters on the crags of the inhospitable mountain; I
+sweated, strained every nerve, exhausted my veins, spent without
+reckoning my reserves of energy, in order to carry upward and lodge in
+a place of security that crushing burden, my daily bread; and hardly was
+the load balanced but it once more slipped downwards, fell, and was
+engulfed. Begin again, poor Sisyphus; begin again, until your burden,
+falling for the last time, shall crush your head and set you free at
+length.
+
+The Sisyphus of the naturalists knows nothing of these tribulations.
+Agile and lively, careless of slope or precipice, he trundles his load,
+which is sometimes food for himself, sometimes for his offspring. He is
+very rare hereabouts; I should never have succeeded in obtaining a
+sufficient number of specimens for my purpose but for an assistant whom
+I may opportunely present to the reader, for he will be mentioned again
+in these recitals.
+
+This is my son, little Paul, aged seven. An assiduous companion of the
+chase, he knows better than any one of his age the secrets of the
+Cigale, the Cricket, and especially of the dung-beetle, his great
+delight. At a distance of twenty yards his clear sight distinguishes the
+refuse-tip of a beetle's burrow from a chance lump of earth; his fine
+ear will catch the chirping of a grasshopper inaudible to me. He lends
+me his sight and hearing, and I in return make him free of my thoughts,
+which he welcomes attentively, raising his wide blue eyes questioningly
+to mine.
+
+What an adorable thing is the first blossoming of the intellect! Best of
+all ages is that when the candid curiosity awakens and commences to
+acquire knowledge of every kind. Little Paul has his own insectorium, in
+which the Scarabæus makes his balls; his garden, the size of a
+handkerchief, in which he grows haricot beans, which are often dug up to
+see if the little roots are growing longer; his plantation, containing
+four oak-trees an inch in height, to which the acorns still adhere.
+These serve as diversions after the arid study of grammar, which goes
+forward none the worse on that account.
+
+What beautiful and useful knowledge the teaching of natural history
+might put into childish heads, if only science would consider the very
+young; if our barracks of universities would only combine the lifeless
+study of books with the living study of the fields; if only the red tape
+of the curriculum, so dear to bureaucrats, would not strangle all
+willing initiative. Little Paul and I will study as much as possible in
+the open country, among the rosemary bushes and arbutus. There we shall
+gain vigour of body and of mind; we shall find the true and the
+beautiful better than in school-books.
+
+To-day the blackboard has a rest; it is a holiday. We rise early, in
+view of the intended expedition; so early that we must set out fasting.
+But no matter; when we are hungry we shall rest in the shade, and you
+will find in my knapsack the usual viaticum--apples and a crust of
+bread. The month of May is near; the Sisyphus should have appeared. Now
+we must explore at the foot of the mountain, the scanty pastures through
+which the herds have passed; we must break with our fingers, one by one,
+the cakes of sheep-dung dried by the sun, but still retaining a spot of
+moisture in the centre. There we shall find Sisyphus, cowering and
+waiting until the evening for fresher pasturage.
+
+Possessed of this secret, which I learned from previous fortuitous
+discoveries, little Paul immediately becomes a master in the art of
+dislodging the beetle. He shows such zeal, has such an instinct for
+likely hiding-places, that after a brief search I am rich beyond my
+ambitions. Behold me the owner of six couples of Sisyphus beetles: an
+unheard-of number, which I had never hoped to obtain.
+
+For their maintenance a wire-gauze cover suffices, with a bed of sand
+and diet to their taste. They are very small, scarcely larger than a
+cherry-stone. Their shape is extremely curious. The body is dumpy,
+tapering to an acorn-shaped posterior; the legs are very long,
+resembling those of the spider when outspread; the hinder legs are
+disproportionately long and curved, being thus excellently adapted to
+enlace and press the little pilule of dung.
+
+Mating takes place towards the beginning of May, on the surface of the
+soil, among the remains of the sheep-dung on which the beetles have been
+feeding. Soon the moment for establishing the family arrives. With equal
+zeal the two partners take part in the kneading, transport, and baking
+of the food for their offspring. With the file-like forelegs a morsel of
+convenient size is shaped from the piece of dung placed in the cage.
+Father and mother manipulate the piece together, striking it blows with
+their claws, compressing it, and shaping it into a ball about the size
+of a big pea.
+
+As in the case of the _Scarabæus sacer_, the exact spherical form is
+produced without the mechanical device of rolling the ball. Before it is
+moved, even before it is cut loose from its point of support, the
+fragment is modelled into the shape of a sphere. The beetle as geometer
+is aware of the form best adapted to the long preservation of preserved
+foods.
+
+The ball is soon ready. It must now be forced to acquire, by means of a
+vigorous rolling, the crust which will protect the interior from a too
+rapid evaporation. The mother, recognisable by her slightly robuster
+body, takes the place of honour in front. Her long hinder legs on the
+soil, her forelegs on the ball, she drags it towards her as she walks
+backwards. The father pushes behind, moving tail first, his head held
+low. This is exactly the method of the Scarabæus beetles, which also
+work in couples, though for another object. The Sisyphus beetles harness
+themselves to provide an inheritance for their larvæ; the larger insects
+are concerned in obtaining the material for a banquet which the two
+chance-met partners will consume underground.
+
+The couple set off, with no definite goal ahead, across the
+irregularities of the soil, which cannot be avoided by a leader who
+hauls backwards. But even if the Sisyphus saw the obstacles she would
+not try to evade them: witness her obstinate endeavour to drag her load
+up the wire gauze of her cage!
+
+A hopeless undertaking! Fixing her hinder claws in the meshes of the
+wire gauze the mother drags her burden towards her; then, enlacing it
+with her legs, she holds it suspended. The father, finding no purchase
+for his legs, clutches the ball, grows on to it, so to speak, thus
+adding his weight to that of the burden, and awaits events. The effort
+is too great to last. Ball and beetle fall together. The mother, from
+above, gazes a moment in surprise, and suddenly lets herself fall, only
+to re-embrace the ball and recommence her impracticable efforts to scale
+the wall. After many tumbles the attempt is at last abandoned.
+
+Even on level ground the task is not without its difficulties. At every
+moment the load swerves on the summit of a pebble, a fragment of gravel;
+the team are overturned, and lie on their backs, kicking their legs in
+the air. This is a mere nothing. They pick themselves up and resume
+their positions, always quick and lively. The accidents which so often
+throw them on their backs seem to cause them no concern; one would even
+think they were invited. The pilule has to be matured, given a proper
+consistency. In these conditions falls, shocks, blows, and jolts might
+well enter into the programme. This mad trundling lasts for hours and
+hours.
+
+Finally, the mother, considering that the matter has been brought to a
+satisfactory conclusion, departs in search of a favourable place for
+storage. The father, crouched upon the treasure, waits. If the absence
+of his companion is prolonged he amuses himself by rapidly whirling the
+pill between his hind legs, which are raised in the air. He juggles with
+the precious burden; he tests its perfections between his curved legs,
+calliper-wise. Seeing him frisking in this joyful occupation, who can
+doubt that he experiences all the satisfactions of a father assured of
+the future of his family? It is I, he seems to say, it is I who have
+made this loaf, so beautifully round; it is I who have made the hard
+crust to preserve the soft dough; it is I who have baked it for my sons!
+And he raises on high, in the sight of all, this magnificent testimonial
+of his labours.
+
+But now the mother has chosen the site. A shallow pit is made, the mere
+commencement of the projected burrow. The ball is pushed and pulled
+until it is close at hand. The father, a vigilant watchman, still
+retains his hold, while the mother digs with claws and head. Soon the
+pit is deep enough to receive the ball; she cannot dispense with the
+close contact of the sacred object; she must feel it bobbing behind her,
+against her back, safe from all parasites and robbers, before she can
+decide to burrow further. She fears what might happen to the precious
+loaf if it were abandoned at the threshold of the burrow until the
+completion of the dwelling. There is no lack of midges and tiny
+dung-beetles--Aphodiinæ--which might take possession of it. It is only
+prudent to be distrustful.
+
+So the ball is introduced into the pit, half in and half out of the
+mouth of the burrow. The mother, below, clasps and pulls; the father,
+above, moderates the jolts and prevents it from rolling. All goes well.
+Digging is resumed, and the descent continues, always with the same
+prudence; one beetle dragging the load, the other regulating its descent
+and clearing away all rubbish that might hinder the operation. A few
+more efforts, and the ball disappears underground with the two miners.
+What follows will be, for a time at least, only a repetition of what we
+have seen. Let us wait half a day or so.
+
+If our vigilance is not relaxed we shall see the father regain the
+surface alone, and crouch in the sand near the mouth of the burrow.
+Retained by duties in the performance of which her companion can be of
+no assistance, the mother habitually delays her reappearance until the
+following day. When she finally emerges the father wakes up, leaves his
+hiding place, and rejoins her. The reunited couple return to their
+pasturage, refresh themselves, and then cut out another ball of dung.
+As before, both share the work; the hewing and shaping, the transport,
+and the burial in ensilage.
+
+This conjugal fidelity is delightful; but is it really the rule? I
+should not dare to affirm that it is. There must be flighty individuals
+who, in the confusion under a large cake of droppings, forget the fair
+confectioners for whom they have worked as journeymen, and devote
+themselves to the services of others, encountered by chance; there must
+be temporary unions, and divorces after the burial of a single pellet.
+No matter: the little I myself have seen gives me a high opinion of the
+domestic morals of the Sisyphus.
+
+Let us consider these domestic habits a little further before coming to
+the contents of the burrow. The father works fully as hard as the mother
+at the extraction and modelling of the pellet which is destined to be
+the inheritance of a larva; he shares in the work of transport, even if
+he plays a secondary part; he watches over the pellet when the mother is
+absent, seeking for a suitable site for the excavation of the cellar; he
+helps in the work of digging; he carries away the rubbish from the
+burrow; finally, to crown all these qualities, he is in a great measure
+faithful to his spouse.
+
+The Scarabæus exhibits some of these characteristics. He also assists
+his spouse in the preparation of pellets of dung; he also assists her to
+transport the pellets, the pair facing each other and the female going
+backwards. But as I have stated already, the motive of this mutual
+service is selfish; the two partners labour only for their own good. The
+feast is for themselves alone. In the labours that concern the family
+the female Scarabæus receives no assistance. Alone she moulds her
+sphere, extracts it from the lump and rolls it backwards, with her back
+to her task, in the position adopted by the male Sisyphus; alone she
+excavates her burrow, and alone she buries the fruit of her labour.
+Oblivious of the gravid mother and the future brood, the male gives her
+no assistance in her exhausting task. How different to the little
+pellet-maker, the Sisyphus!
+
+It is now time to visit the burrow. At no very great depth we find a
+narrow chamber, just large enough for the mother to move around at her
+work. Its very exiguity proves that the male cannot remain underground;
+so soon as the chamber is ready he must retire in order to leave the
+female room to move. We have, in fact, seen that he returns to the
+surface long before the female.
+
+The contents of the cellar consist of a single pellet, a masterpiece of
+plastic art. It is a miniature reproduction of the pear-shaped ball of
+the Scarabæus, a reproduction whose very smallness gives an added value
+to the polish of the surface and the beauty of its curves. Its larger
+diameter varies from half to three-quarters of an inch. It is the most
+elegant product of the dung-beetle's art.
+
+But this perfection is of brief duration. Very soon the little "pear"
+becomes covered with gnarled excrescences, black and twisted, which
+disfigure it like so many warts. Part of the surface, which is otherwise
+intact, disappears under a shapeless mass. The origin of these knotted
+excrescences completely deceived me at first. I suspected some
+cryptogamic vegetation, some _Spheriæcæa_, for example, recognisable by
+its black, knotted, incrusted growth. It was the larva that showed me my
+mistake.
+
+The larva is a maggot curved like a hook, carrying on its back an ample
+pouch or hunch, forming part of its alimentary canal. The reserve of
+excreta in this hunch enables it to seal accidental perforations of the
+shell of its lodging with an instantaneous jet of mortar. These sudden
+emissions, like little worm-casts, are also practised by the Scarabæus,
+but the latter rarely makes use of them.
+
+The larvæ of the various dung-beetles utilise their alimentary residues
+in rough-casting their houses, which by their dimensions lend themselves
+to this method of disposal, while evading the necessity of opening
+temporary windows by which the ordure can be expelled. Whether for lack
+of sufficient room, or for other reasons which escape me, the larva of
+the Sisyphus, having employed a certain amount in the smoothing of the
+interior, ejects the rest of its digestive products from its dwelling.
+
+Let us examine one of these "pears" when the inmate is already partly
+grown. Sooner or later we shall see a spot of moisture appear at some
+point on the surface; the wall softens, becomes thinner, and then,
+through the softened shell, a jet of dark green excreta rises and falls
+back upon itself in corkscrew convolutions. One excrescence the more has
+been formed; as it dries it becomes black.
+
+What has occurred? The larva has opened a temporary breach in the wall
+of its shell; and through this orifice, in which a slight thickness of
+the outer glaze still remains, it has expelled the excess of mortar
+which it could not employ within. This practice of forming oubliettes in
+the shell of its prison does not endanger the grub, as they are
+immediately closed, and hermetically sealed by the base of the jet,
+which is compressed as by a stroke of a trowel. The stopper is so
+quickly put in place that the contents remain moist in spite of the
+frequent breaches made in the shell of the "pear." There is no danger of
+an influx of the dry outer air.
+
+The Sisyphus seems to be aware of the peril which later on, in the
+dog-days, will threaten its "pear," small as it is, and so near the
+surface of the ground. It is extremely precocious. It labours in April
+and May when the air is mild. In the first fortnight of July, before the
+terrible dog-days have arrived, the members of its family break their
+shells and set forth in search of the heap of droppings which will
+furnish them with food and lodging during the fierce days of summer.
+Then come the short but pleasant days of autumn, the retreat underground
+and the winter torpor, the awakening of spring, and finally the cycle is
+closed by the festival of pellet-making.
+
+One word more as to the fertility of the Sisyphus. My six couples under
+the wire-gauze cover furnished me with fifty-seven inhabited pellets.
+This gives an average of more than nine to each couple; a figure which
+the _Scarabæus sacer_ is far from attaining. To what should we attribute
+this superior fertility? I can only see one cause: the fact that the
+male works as valiantly as the female. Family cares too great for the
+strength of one are not too heavy when there are two to support them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A BEE-HUNTER: THE _PHILANTHUS AVIPORUS_
+
+
+To encounter among the Hymenoptera, those ardent lovers of flowers, a
+species which goes a-hunting on its own account is, to say the least of
+it, astonishing. That the larder of the larvæ should be provisioned with
+captured prey is natural enough; but that the provider, whose diet is
+honey, should itself devour its captives is a fact both unexpected and
+difficult to comprehend. We are surprised that a drinker of nectar
+should become a drinker of blood. But our surprise abates if we consider
+the matter closely. The double diet is more apparent than real; the
+stomach which fills itself with the nectar of flowers does not gorge
+itself with flesh. When she perforates the rump of her victim the
+Odynerus does not touch the flesh, which is a diet absolutely contrary
+to her tastes; she confines herself to drinking the defensive liquid
+which the grub distils at the end of its intestine. For her this liquid
+is doubtless a beverage of delicious flavour, with which she relieves
+from time to time her staple diet of the honey distilled by flowers,
+some highly spiced condiment, appetiser or aperient, or perhaps--who
+knows?--a substitute for honey. Although the qualities of the liquid
+escape me, I see at least that Odynerus cares nothing for the rest.
+Once the pouch is emptied the larva is abandoned as useless offal, a
+certain sign of non-carnivorous appetites. Under these conditions the
+persecutor of Chrysomela can no longer be regarded as guilty of an
+unnatural double dietary.
+
+We may even wonder whether other species also are not apt to draw some
+direct profit from the hunting imposed upon them by the needs of the
+family. The procedure of Odynerus in opening the anal pouch is so far
+removed from the usual that we should not anticipate many imitators; it
+is a secondary detail, and impracticable with game of a different kind.
+But there may well be a certain amount of variety in the means of direct
+utilisation. Why, for example, when the victim which has just been
+paralysed or rendered insensible by stinging contains in the stomach a
+delicious meal, semi-liquid or liquid in consistency, should the hunter
+scruple to rob the half-living body and force it to disgorge without
+injuring the quality of its flesh? There may well be robbers of the
+moribund, attracted not by their flesh but by the appetising contents of
+their stomachs.
+
+As a matter of fact there are such, and they are numerous. In the first
+rank we may cite that hunter of the domestic bee, _Philanthus aviporus_
+(Latreille). For a long time I suspected Philanthus of committing such
+acts of brigandage for her own benefit, having many times surprised her
+gluttonously licking the honey-smeared mouth of the bee; I suspected
+that her hunting of the bee was not undertaken entirely for the benefit
+of her larvæ. The suspicion was worth experimental confirmation. At the
+time I was interested in another question also: I wanted to study,
+absolutely at leisure, the methods by which the various predatory
+species dealt with their victims. In the case of Philanthus I made use
+of the improvised cage already described; and Philanthus it was who
+furnished me with my first data on the subject. She responded to my
+hopes with such energy that I thought myself in possession of an
+unequalled method of observation, by means of which I could witness
+again and again, to satiety even, incidents of a kind so difficult to
+surprise in a state of nature. Alas! the early days of my acquaintance
+with Philanthus promised me more than the future had in store for me!
+Not to anticipate, however, let us place under the bell-glass the hunter
+and the game. I recommend the experiment to whomsoever would witness the
+perfection with which the predatory Hymenoptera use their stings. The
+result is not in doubt and the waiting is short; the moment the prey is
+perceived in an attitude favourable to her designs, the bandit rushes at
+it, and all is over. In detail, the tragedy develops as follows:
+
+I place under a bell-glass a Philanthus and two or three domestic bees.
+The prisoners climb the glass walls, on the more strongly lighted side;
+they ascend, descend, and seek to escape; the polished, vertical surface
+is for them quite easy to walk upon. They presently quiet down, and the
+brigand begins to notice her surroundings. The antennæ point forward,
+seeking information; the hinder legs are drawn up with a slight
+trembling, as of greed and rapacity, in the thighs; the head turns to
+the right and the left, and follows the evolutions of the bees against
+the glass. The posture of the scoundrelly insect is strikingly
+expressive; one reads in it the brutal desires of a creature in ambush,
+the cunning patience that postpones attack. The choice is made, and
+Philanthus throws herself upon her victim.
+
+Turn by turn tumbled and tumbling, the two insects roll over and over.
+But the struggle soon quiets down, and the assassin commences to plunder
+her prize. I have seen her adopt two methods. In the first, more usual
+than the other, the bee is lying on the ground, upon its back, and
+Philanthus, mouth to mouth and abdomen to abdomen, clasps it with her
+six legs, while she seizes its neck in her mandibles. The abdomen is
+then curved forward and gropes for a moment for the desired spot in the
+upper part of the thorax, which it finally reaches. The sting plunges
+into the victim, remains in the wound for a moment, and all is over.
+Without loosing the victim, which is still tightly clasped, the murderer
+restores her abdomen to the normal position and holds it pressed against
+that of the bee.
+
+By the second method Philanthus operates standing upright. Resting on
+the hinder feet and the extremity of the folded wings, she rises proudly
+to a vertical position, holding the bee facing her by her four anterior
+claws. In order to get the bee into the proper position for the final
+stroke, she swings the poor creature round and back again with the
+careless roughness of a child dandling a doll. Her pose is magnificent,
+solidly based upon her sustaining tripod, the two posterior thighs and
+the end of the wings, she flexes the abdomen forwards and upwards, and,
+as before, stings the bee in the upper part of the thorax. The
+originality of her pose at the moment of striking surpasses anything I
+have ever witnessed.
+
+The love of knowledge in matters of natural history is not without its
+cruelties. To make absolutely certain of the point attained by the
+sting, and to inform myself completely concerning this horrible talent
+for murder, I have provoked I dare not confess how many assassinations
+in captivity. Without a single exception, the bee has always been stung
+in the throat. In the preparations for the final blow the extremity of
+the abdomen may of course touch here and there, at different points of
+the thorax or abdomen, but it never remains there, nor is the sting
+unsheathed, as may easily be seen. Once the struggle has commenced the
+Philanthus is so absorbed in her operations that I can remove the glass
+cover and follow every detail of the drama with my magnifying-glass.
+
+The invariable situation of the wound being proved, I bend back the head
+of the bee, so as to open the articulation. I see under what we may call
+the chin of the bee a white spot, hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch
+square, where the horny integuments are lacking, and the fine skin is
+exposed uncovered. It is there, always there, in that tiny defect in the
+bee's armour, that the sting is inserted. Why is this point attacked
+rather than another? Is it the only point that is vulnerable? Stretch
+open the articulation of the corselet to the rear of the first pair of
+legs. There you will see an area of defenceless skin, fully as delicate
+as that of the throat, but much more extensive. The horny armour of the
+bee has no larger breach. If the Philanthus were guided solely by
+considerations of vulnerability she would certainly strike there,
+instead of insistently seeking the narrow breach in the throat. The
+sting would not grope or hesitate, it would find its mark at the first
+attempt. No; the poisoned thrust is not conditioned by mechanical
+considerations; the murderer disdains the wide breach in the corselet
+and prefers the lesser one beneath the chin, for purely logical reasons
+which we will now attempt to elicit.
+
+The moment the bee is stung I release it from the aggressor. I am struck
+in the first place by the sudden inertia of the antennæ and the various
+members of the mouth; organs which continue to move for so long a time
+in the victims of most predatory creatures. I see none of the
+indications with which my previous studies of paralysed victims have
+made me familiar: the antennæ slowly waving, the mandibles opening and
+closing, the palpæ trembling for days, for weeks, even for months. The
+thighs tremble for a minute or two at most; and the struggle is over.
+Henceforth there is complete immobility. The significance of this sudden
+inertia is forced upon me: the Philanthus has stabbed the cervical
+ganglions. Hence the sudden immobility of all the organs of the head:
+hence the real, not the apparent death of the bee. The Philanthus does
+not paralyse merely, but kills.
+
+This is one step gained. The murderer chooses the point below the chin
+as the point of attack, in order to reach the principal centres of
+innervation, the cephalic ganglions, and thus to abolish life at a
+single blow. The vital centres being poisoned, immediate death must
+follow. If the object of the Philanthus were merely to cause paralysis
+she would plunge her sting into the defective corselet, as does the
+Cerceris in attacking the weevil, whose armour is quite unlike the
+bee's. Her aim is to kill outright, as we shall presently see; she wants
+a corpse, not a paralytic. We must admit that her technique is
+admirable; our human murderers could do no better.
+
+Her posture of attack, which is very different to that of the
+paralysers, is infallibly fatal to the victim. Whether she delivers the
+attack in the erect position or prone, she holds the bee before her,
+head to head and thorax to thorax. In this position it suffices to flex
+the abdomen in order to reach the joint of the neck, and to plunge the
+sting obliquely upwards into the head of the captive. If the bee were
+seized in the inverse position, or if the sting were to go slightly
+astray, the results would be totally different; the sting, penetrating
+the bee in a downward direction, would poison the first thoracic
+ganglion and provoke a partial paralysis only. What art, to destroy a
+miserable bee! In what fencing-school did the slayer learn that terrible
+upward thrust beneath the chin? And as she has learned it, how is it
+that her victim, so learned in matters of architecture, so conversant
+with the politics of Socialism, has so far learned nothing in her own
+defence? As vigorous as the aggressor, she also carries a rapier, which
+is even more formidable and more painful in its results--at all events,
+when my finger is the victim! For centuries and centuries Philanthus has
+stored her cellars with the corpses of bees, yet the innocent victim
+submits, and the annual decimation of her race has not taught her how to
+deliver herself from the scourge by a well-directed thrust. I am afraid
+I shall never succeed in understanding how it is that the assailant has
+acquired her genius for sudden murder while the assailed, better armed
+and no less powerful, uses her dagger at random, and so far without
+effect. If the one has learned something from the prolonged exercise of
+the attack, then the other should also have learned something from the
+prolonged exercise of defence, for attack and defence are of equal
+significance in the struggle for life. Among the theorists of our day,
+is there any so far-sighted as to be able to solve this enigma?
+
+I will take this opportunity of presenting a second point which
+embarrasses me; it is the carelessness--it is worse than that--the
+imbecility of the bee in the presence of the Philanthus. One would
+naturally suppose that the persecuted insect, gradually instructed by
+family misfortune, would exhibit anxiety at the approach of the
+ravisher, and would at least try to escape. But in my bell-glasses or
+wire-gauze cages I see nothing of the kind. Once the first excitement
+due to imprisonment has passed the bee takes next to no notice of its
+terrible neighbour. I have seen it side by side with Philanthus on the
+same flower; assassin and future victim were drinking from the same
+goblet. I have seen it stupidly coming to inquire what the stranger
+might be, as the latter crouched watching on the floor. When the
+murderer springs it is usually upon some bee which passes before her,
+and throws itself, so to speak, into her clutches; either thoughtlessly
+or out of curiosity. There is no frantic terror, no sign of anxiety, no
+tendency to escape. How is it that the experience of centuries, which is
+said to teach so much to the lower creatures, has not taught the bee
+even the beginning of apine wisdom: a deep-rooted horror of the
+Philanthus? Does the bee count upon its sting? But the unhappy creature
+is no fencer; it thrusts without method, at random. Nevertheless, let us
+watch it at the final and fatal moment.
+
+When the ravisher brings her sting into play the bee also uses its
+sting, and with fury. I see the point thrusting now in this direction,
+now in that; but in empty air, or grazing and slipping over the
+convexity of the murderer's back, which is violently flexed. These blows
+have no serious results. In the position assumed by the two as they
+struggle the abdomen of the Philanthus is inside and that of the bee
+outside; thus the sting of the latter has under its point only the
+dorsal face of the enemy, which is convex and slippery, and almost
+invulnerable, so well is it armoured. There is no breach there by which
+the sting might possibly enter; and the operation takes place with the
+certainty of a skilful surgeon using the lancet, despite the indignant
+protests of the patient.
+
+The fatal stroke once delivered, the murderer remains for some time on
+the body of the victim, clasping it face to face, for reasons that we
+must now consider. It may be that the position is perilous for
+Philanthus. The posture of attack and self-protection is abandoned, and
+the ventral area, more vulnerable than the back, is exposed to the sting
+of the bee. Now the dead bee retains for some minutes the reflex use of
+the sting, as I know to my cost: for removing the bee too soon from the
+aggressor, and handling it carelessly, I have received a most effectual
+sting. In her long embrace of the poisoned bee, how does Philanthus
+avoid this sting, which does not willingly give up its life without
+vengeance? Are there not sometimes unexpected accidents? Perhaps.
+
+Here is a fact which encourages me in this belief. I had placed under
+the bell-glass at the same time four bees and as many Eristales, in
+order to judge of the entomological knowledge of Philanthus as
+exemplified in the distinction of species. Reciprocal quarrels broke out
+among the heterogeneous group. Suddenly, in the midst of the tumult,
+the killer is killed. Who has struck the blow? Certainly not the
+turbulent but pacific Eristales; it was one of the bees, which by chance
+had thrust truly in the mellay. When and how? I do not know. This
+accident is unique in my experience; but it throws a light upon the
+question. The bee is capable of withstanding its adversary; it can, with
+a thrust of its envenomed needle, kill the would-be killer. That it does
+not defend itself more skilfully when it falls into the hands of its
+enemy is due to ignorance of fencing, not to the weakness of the arm.
+And here again arises, more insistently than before, the question I
+asked but now: how is it that the Philanthus has learned for purposes of
+attack what the bee has not learned for purposes of defence. To this
+difficulty I see only one reply: the one knows without having learned
+and the other does not know, being incapable of learning.
+
+Let us now examine the motives which induce the Philanthus to kill its
+bee instead of paralysing it. The murder once committed, it does not
+release its victim for a moment, but holding it tightly clasped with its
+six legs pressed against its body, it commences to ravage the corpse. I
+see it with the utmost brutality rooting with its mandibles in the
+articulation of the neck, and often also in the more ample articulation
+of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs; perfectly aware of the
+fine membrane in that part, although it does not take advantage of the
+fact when employing its sting, although this vulnerable point is the
+more accessible of the two breaches in the bee's armour. I see it
+squeezing the bee's stomach, compressing it with its own abdomen,
+crushing it as in a vice. The brutality of this manipulation is
+striking; it shows that there is no more need of care and skill. The
+bee is a corpse, and a little extra pushing and squeezing will not
+deteriorate its quality as food, provided there is no effusion of blood;
+and however rough the treatment, I have never been able to discover the
+slightest wound.
+
+These various manipulations, above all the compression of the throat,
+lead to the desired result: the honey in the stomach of the bee ascends
+to the mouth. I see the drops of honey welling out, lapped up by the
+glutton as soon as they appear. The bandit greedily takes in its mouth
+the extended and sugared tongue of the dead insect; then once more it
+presses the neck and the thorax, and once more applies the pressure of
+its abdomen to the honey-sac of the bee. The honey oozes forth and is
+instantly licked up. This odious meal at the expense of the corpse is
+taken in a truly sybaritic attitude: the Philanthus lies upon its side
+with the bee between its legs. This atrocious meal lasts often half an
+hour and longer. Finally the exhausted corpse is abandoned; regretfully,
+it seems, for from time to time I have seen the ogre return to the feast
+and repeat its manipulation of the body. After taking a turn round the
+top of the bell-glass the robber of the dead returns to the victim,
+squeezes it once more, and licks its mouth until the last trace of honey
+has disappeared.
+
+The frantic passion of the Philanthus for the honey of the bee is
+betrayed in another fashion. When the first victim has been exhausted I
+have introduced a second bee, which has been promptly stabbed under the
+chin and squeezed as before in order to extract its honey. A third has
+suffered the same fate without appeasing the bandit. I have offered a
+fourth, a fifth; all are accepted. My notes record that a Philanthus
+sacrificed six bees in succession before my eyes, and emptied them all
+of honey in the approved manner. The killing came to an end not because
+the glutton was satiated, but because my functions as provider were
+becoming troublesome; the dry month of August leaves but few insects in
+the flowerless garden. Six bees emptied of their honey--what a
+gluttonous meal! Yet the famishing creature would doubtless have
+welcomed a copious addition thereto had I had the means of furnishing
+it!
+
+We need not regret the failure of bees upon this occasion; for what I
+have already written is sufficient testimony of the singular habits of
+this murderer of bees. I am far from denying that the Philanthus has
+honest methods of earning its living; I see it among the flowers, no
+less assiduous than the rest of the Hymenoptera, peacefully drinking
+from their cups of nectar. The male, indeed, being stingless, knows no
+other means of supporting himself. The mothers, without neglecting the
+flowers as a general thing, live by brigandage as well. It is said of
+the Labba, that pirate of the seas, that it pounces upon sea-birds as
+they rise from the waves with captured fish in their beaks. With a blow
+of the beak delivered in the hollow of the stomach, the aggressor forces
+the victim to drop its prey, and promptly catches it as it falls. The
+victim at least escapes with nothing worse than a blow at the base of
+the neck. The Philanthus, less scrupulous, falls upon the bee, stabs it
+to death and makes it disgorge in order to nourish herself upon its
+honey.
+
+Nourish, I say, and I do not withdraw the expression. To support my
+statement I have better reasons than those already presented. In the
+cages in which various predatory Hymenoptera whose warlike habits I am
+studying are confined, waiting until I have procured the desired
+prey--not always an easy proceeding--I have planted a few heads of
+flowers and a couple of thistle-heads sprinkled with drops of honey,
+renewed at need. On these my captives feed. In the case of the
+Philanthus the honeyed flowers, although welcomed, are not
+indispensable. It is enough if from time to time I place in the cage a
+few living bees. Half a dozen a day is about the proper allowance. With
+no other diet than the honey extracted from their victims I keep my
+specimens of Philanthus for a fortnight and three weeks.
+
+So much is plain: in a state of freedom, when occasion offers, the
+Philanthus must kill on her own account as she does in captivity. The
+Odynerus asks nothing of the Chrysomela but a simple condiment, the
+aromatic juice of the anal pouch; the Philanthus demands a full diet, or
+at least a notable supplement thereto, in the form of the contents of
+the stomach. What a hecatomb of bees must not a colony of these pirates
+sacrifice for their personal consumption, to say nothing of their stores
+of provisions! I recommend the Philanthus to the vengeance of apiarists.
+
+For the moment we will not look further into the original causes of the
+crime. Let us consider matters as we know them, with all their real or
+apparent atrocity. In order to nourish herself the Philanthus levies
+tribute upon the crop of the bee. This being granted, let us consider
+the method of the aggressor more closely. She does not paralyse its
+captives according to the customary rites of the predatory insects; she
+kills them. Why? To the eyes of understanding the necessity of a sudden
+death is as clear as day. Without eviscerating the bee, which would
+result in the deterioration of its flesh considered as food for the
+larvæ; without having recourse to the bloody extirpation of the stomach,
+the Philanthus intends to obtain its honey. By skilful manipulation, by
+cunning massage, she must somehow make the bee disgorge. Suppose the bee
+stung in the rear of the corselet and paralysed. It is deprived of
+locomotion, but not of vitality. The digestive apparatus, in particular,
+retains in full, or at least in part, its normal energies, as is proved
+by the frequent dejections of paralysed victims so long as the intestine
+is not emptied; a fact notably exemplified by the victims of the Sphex
+family; helpless creatures which I have before now kept alive for forty
+days with the aid of a little sugared water. Well! without therapeutic
+means, without emetics or stomach-pumps, how is a stomach intact and in
+good order to be persuaded to yield up its contents? That of the bee,
+jealous of its treasure, will lend itself to such treatment less readily
+than another. Paralysed, the creature is inert; but there are always
+internal energies and organic resistances which will not yield to the
+pressure of the manipulator. In vain would the Philanthus gnaw at the
+throat and squeeze the flanks; the honey would not return to the mouth
+as long as a trace of life kept the stomach closed.
+
+Matters are different with a corpse. The springs relax; the muscles
+yield; the resistance of the stomach ceases, and the vessels containing
+the honey are emptied by the pressure of the thief. We see, therefore,
+that the Philanthus is obliged to inflict a sudden death which
+instantly destroys the contractile power of the organs. Where shall the
+deadly blow be delivered? The slayer knows better than we, when she
+pierces the victim beneath the chin. Through the narrow breach in the
+throat the cerebral ganglions are reached and immediate death ensues.
+
+The examination of these acts of brigandage is not sufficient in view of
+my incorrigible habit of following every reply by another query, until
+the granite wall of the unknowable rises before me. Although the
+Philanthus is skilled in forcing the bee to disgorge, in emptying the
+crop distended with honey, this diabolical skill cannot be merely an
+alimentary resource, above all when in common with other insects she has
+access to the refectory of the flowers. I cannot regard her talents as
+inspired solely by the desire of a meal obtained by the labour of
+emptying the stomach of another insect. Something must surely escape us
+here: the real reason for emptying the stomach. Perhaps a respectable
+reason is concealed by the horrors I have recorded. What is it?
+
+Every one will understand the vagueness which fills the observer's mind
+in respect of such a question as this. The reader has the right to be
+doubtful. I will spare him my suspicions, my gropings for the truth, and
+the checks encountered in the search, and give him the results of my
+long inquiry. Everything has its appropriate and harmonious reason. I am
+too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus commits her
+profanation of corpses merely to satisfy her appetite. What does the
+empty stomach mean? May it not--Yes!--But, after all, who knows? Well,
+let us follow up the scent.
+
+The first care of the mothers is the welfare of the family. So far all
+we know of the Philanthus concerns her talent for murder. Let us
+consider her as a mother. We have seen her hunt on her own account; let
+us now watch her hunt for her offspring, for the race. Nothing is
+simpler than to distinguish between the two kinds of hunting. When the
+insect wants a few good mouthfuls of honey and nothing else, she
+abandons the bee contemptuously when she has emptied its stomach. It is
+so much valueless waste, which will shrivel where it lies and be
+dissected by ants. If, on the other hand, she intends to place it in the
+larder as a provision for her larvæ, she clasps it with her two
+intermediate legs, and, walking on the other four, drags it to and fro
+along the edge of the bell-glass in search of an exit so that she may
+fly off with her prey. Having recognised the circular wall as
+impassable, she climbs its sides, now holding the bee in her mandibles
+by the antennæ, clinging as she climbs to the vertical polished surface
+with all six feet. She gains the summit of the glass, stays for a little
+while in the flask-like cavity of the terminal button or handle, returns
+to the ground, and resumes her circuit of the glass and her climbing,
+relinquishing the bee only after an obstinate attempt to escape with it.
+The persistence with which the Philanthus retains her clasp upon the
+encumbering burden shows plainly that the game would go straight to the
+larder were the insect at liberty.
+
+Those bees intended for the larvæ are stung under the chin like the
+others; they are true corpses; they are manipulated, squeezed, exhausted
+of their honey, just as the others. There is no difference in the method
+of capture nor in their after-treatment.
+
+As captivity might possibly result in a few anomalies of action, I
+decided to inquire how matters went forward in the open. In the
+neighbourhood of some colonies of Philanthidæ I lay in wait, watching
+for perhaps a longer time than the question justified, as it was already
+settled by what occurred in captivity. My scrupulous watching at various
+times was rewarded. The majority of the hunters immediately entered
+their nests, carrying the bees pressed against their bodies; some halted
+on the neighbouring undergrowth; and these I saw treating the bee in the
+usual manner, and lapping the honey from its mouth. After these
+preparations the corpse was placed in the larder. All doubt was thus
+destroyed: the bees provided for the larvæ are previously carefully
+emptied of their honey.
+
+Since we are dealing with the subject, let us take the opportunity of
+inquiring into the customs of the Philanthus in a state of freedom.
+Making use of her victims when absolutely lifeless, so that they would
+putrefy in the course of a few days, this hunter of bees cannot adopt
+the customs of certain insects which paralyse their prey, and fill their
+cellars before laying an egg. She must surely be obliged to follow the
+method of the Bembex, whose larva receives, at intervals, the necessary
+nourishment; the amount increasing as the larva grows. The facts confirm
+this deduction. I spoke just now of the tediousness of my watching when
+watching the colonies of the Philanthus. It was perhaps even more
+tedious than when I was keeping an eye upon the Bembex. Before the
+burrows of _Cerceris tuberculus_ and other devourers of the weevil, and
+before that of the yellow-winged Sphex, the slayer of crickets, there
+is plenty of distraction, owing to the busy movements of the community.
+The mothers have scarcely entered the nest before they are off again,
+returning quickly with fresh prey, only to set out once more. The going
+and coming is almost continuous until the storehouse is full.
+
+The burrows of the Philanthus know nothing of such animation, even in a
+populous colony. In vain my vigils prolonged themselves into whole
+mornings or afternoons, and only very rarely does the mother who has
+entered with a bee set forth upon a second expedition. Two captures by
+the same huntress is the most that I have seen in my long watches. Once
+the family is provided with sufficient food for the moment the mother
+postpones further hunting trips until hunting becomes necessary, and
+busies herself with digging and burrowing in her underground dwelling.
+Little cells are excavated, and I see the rubbish from them gradually
+pushed up to the surface. With that exception there is no sign of
+activity; it is as though the burrow were deserted.
+
+To lay the nest bare is not easy. The burrow penetrates to a depth of
+about three feet in a compact soil; sometimes in a vertical, sometimes
+in a horizontal direction. The spade and pick, wielded by hands more
+vigorous but less expert than my own, are indispensable; but the conduct
+of the excavation is anything but satisfactory. At the extremity of the
+long gallery--it seems as though the straw I use for sounding would
+never reach the end--we finally discover the cells, egg-shaped cavities
+with the longer axis horizontal. Their number and their mutual
+disposition escape me.
+
+Some already contain the cocoon--slender and translucid, like that of
+the Cerceris, and, like it, recalling the shape of certain
+homoeopathic phials, with oval bodies surmounted by a tapering neck.
+By the extremity of the neck, which is blackened and hardened by the
+dejecta of the larvæ, the cocoon is fixed to the end of the cell without
+any other support. It reminds one of a short club, planted by the end of
+the handle, in a line with the horizontal axis of the cell. Other cells
+contain the larva in a stage more or less advanced. The grub is eating
+the last victim proffered; around it lie the remains of food already
+consumed. Others, again, show me a bee, a single bee, still intact, and
+having an egg deposited on the under-side of the thorax. This bee
+represents the first instalment of rations; others will follow as the
+grub matures. My expectations are thus confirmed; as with Bembex, slayer
+of Diptera, so Philanthus, killer of bees, lays her egg upon the first
+body stored, and completes, at intervals, the provisioning of the cells.
+
+The problem of the dead bee is elucidated; there remains the other
+problem, of incomparable interest--Why, before they are given over to
+the larvæ, are the bees robbed of their honey? I have said, and I
+repeat, that the killing and emptying of the bee cannot be explained
+solely by the gluttony of the Philanthus. To rob the worker of its booty
+is nothing; such things are seen every day; but to slaughter it in order
+to empty its stomach--no, gluttony cannot be the only motive. And as the
+bees placed in the cells are squeezed dry no less than the others, the
+idea occurs to me that as a beefsteak garnished with _confitures_ is not
+to every one's taste, so the bee sweetened with honey may well be
+distasteful or even harmful to the larvæ of the Philanthus. What would
+the grub do if, replete with blood and flesh, it were to find under its
+mandibles the honey-bag of the bee?--if, gnawing at random, it were to
+open the bees stomach and so drench its game with syrup? Would it
+approve of the mixture? Would the little ogre pass without repugnance
+from the gamey flavour of a corpse to the scent of flowers? To affirm or
+deny is useless. We must see. Let us see.
+
+I take the young larvæ of the Philanthus, already well matured, but
+instead of serving them with the provisions buried in their cells I
+offer them game of my own catching--bees that have filled themselves
+with nectar among the rosemary bushes. My bees, killed by crushing the
+head, are thankfully accepted, and at first I see nothing to justify my
+suspicions. Then my nurslings languish, show themselves disdainful of
+their food, give a negligent bite here and there, and finally, one and
+all, die beside their uncompleted meal. All my attempts miscarry; not
+once do I succeed in rearing my larvæ as far as the stage of spinning
+the cocoon. Yet I am no novice in my duties as dry-nurse. How many
+pupils have passed through my hands and have reached the final stage in
+my old sardine-boxes as well as in their native burrows! I shall draw no
+conclusions from this check, which my scruples may attribute to some
+unknown cause. Perhaps the atmosphere of my cabinet and the dryness of
+the sand serving them for a bed have been too much for my nurslings,
+whose tender skins are used to the warm moisture of the subsoil. Let us
+try another method.
+
+To decide positively whether honey is or is not repugnant to the grubs
+of the Philanthus was hardly practicable by the method just explained.
+The first meals consisted of flesh, and after that nothing in
+particular occurred. The honey is encountered later, when the bee is
+largely consumed. If hesitation and repugnance were manifested at this
+point they came too late to be conclusive; the sickness of the larvæ
+might be due to other causes, known or unknown. We must offer honey at
+the very beginning, before artificial rearing has spoilt the grub's
+appetite. To offer pure honey would, of course, be useless; no
+carnivorous creature would touch it, even were it starving. I must
+spread the honey on meat; that is, I must smear the dead bee with honey,
+lightly varnishing it with a camel's-hair brush.
+
+Under these conditions the problem is solved with the first few
+mouthfuls. The grub, having bitten on the honeyed bee, draws back as
+though disgusted; hesitates for a long time; then, urged by hunger,
+begins again; tries first on one side, then on another; in the end it
+refuses to touch the bee again. For a few days it pines upon its
+rations, which are almost intact, then dies. As many as are subjected to
+the same treatment perish in the same way.
+
+Do they simply die of hunger in the presence of food which their
+appetites reject, or are they poisoned by the small amount of honey
+absorbed at the first bites? I cannot say; but, whether poisonous or
+merely repugnant, the bee smeared with honey is always fatal to them; a
+fact which explains more clearly than the unfavourable circumstances of
+the former experiment my lack of success with the freshly killed bees.
+
+This refusal to touch honey, whether poisonous or repugnant, is
+connected with principles of alimentation too general to be a
+gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus grub. Other carnivorous
+larvæ--at least in the series of the Hymenoptera--must share it. Let us
+experiment. The method need not be changed. I exhume the larvæ when in a
+state of medium growth, to avoid the vicissitudes of extreme youth; I
+collect the bodies of the grubs and insects which form their natural
+diet and smear each body with honey, in which condition I return them to
+the larvæ. A distinction is apparent: all the larvæ are not equally
+suited to my experiment. Those larvæ must be rejected which are
+nourished upon one single corpulent insect, as is that of the Scolia.
+The grub attacks its prey at a determined point, plunges its head and
+neck into the body of the insect, skilfully divides the entrails in
+order to keep the remains fresh until its meal is ended, and does not
+emerge from the opening until all is consumed but the empty skin.
+
+To interrupt the larva with the object of smearing the interior of its
+prey with honey is doubly objectionable; I might extinguish the
+lingering vitality which keeps putrefaction at bay in the victim, and I
+might confuse the delicate art of the larva, which might not be able to
+recover the lode at which it was working or to distinguish between those
+parts which are lawfully and properly eaten and those which must not be
+consumed until a later period. As I have shown in a previous volume, the
+grub of the Scolia has taught me much in this respect. The only larvæ
+acceptable for this experiment are those which are fed on a number of
+small insects, which are attacked without any special art, dismembered
+at random, and quickly consumed. Among such larvæ I have experimented
+with those provided by chance--those of various Bembeces, fed on
+Diptera; those of the Palaris, whose diet consists of a large variety of
+Hymenoptera; those of the Tachytus, provided with young crickets; those
+of the Odynerus, fed upon larvæ of the Chrysomela; those of the
+sand-dwelling Cerceris, endowed with a hecatomb of weevils. As will be
+seen, both consumers and consumed offer plenty of variety. Well, in
+every case their proper diet, seasoned with honey, is fatal. Whether
+poisoned or disgusted, they all die in a few days.
+
+A strange result! Honey, the nectar of the flowers, the sole diet of the
+apiary under its two forms and the sole nourishment of the predatory
+insect in its adult phase, is for the larva of the same insect an object
+of insurmountable disgust, and probably a poison. The transfiguration of
+the chrysalis surprises me less than this inversion of the appetite.
+What change occurs in the stomach of the insect that the adult should
+passionately seek that which the larva refuses under peril of death? It
+is no question of organic debility unable to support a diet too
+substantial, too hard, or too highly spiced. The grubs which consume the
+larva of the Cetoniæ, for example (the Rose-chafers), those which feed
+upon the leathery cricket, and those whose diet is rich in nitrobenzine,
+must assuredly have complacent gullets and adaptable stomachs. Yet these
+robust eaters die of hunger or poison for no greater cause than a drop
+of syrup, the lightest diet imaginable, adapted to the weakness of
+extreme youth, and a delicacy to the adult! What a gulf of obscurity in
+the stomach of a miserable worm!
+
+These gastronomic experiments called for a counter-proof. The
+carnivorous grub is killed by honey. Is the honey-fed grub, inversely,
+killed by carnivorous diet? Here, again, we must make certain
+exceptions, observe a certain choice, as in the previous experiments. It
+would obviously be courting a flat refusal to offer a heap of young
+crickets to the larvæ of the Anthophorus and the Osmia, for example; the
+honey-fed grub would not bite such food. It would be absolutely useless
+to make such an experiment. We must find the equivalent of the bee
+smeared with honey; that is, we must offer the larva its ordinary food
+with a mixture of animal matter added. I shall experiment with albumen,
+as provided by the egg of the hen; albumen being an isomer of fibrine,
+which is the principal element of all flesh diet.
+
+_Osmia tricornis_ will lend itself to my experiment better than any
+other insect on account of its dry honey, or bee-bread, which is largely
+formed of flowery pollen. I knead it with the albumen, graduating the
+dose of the latter so that its weight largely exceeds that of the
+bee-bread. Thus I obtain pastes of various degrees of consistency, but
+all firm enough to support the larva without danger of immersion. With
+too fluid a mixture there would be a danger of death by drowning.
+Finally, on each cake of albuminous paste I install a larva of medium
+growth.
+
+This diet is not distasteful; far from it. The grubs attack it without
+hesitation and devour it with every appearance of a normal appetite.
+Matters could not go better if the food had not been modified according
+to my recipes. All is eaten; even the portions which I feared contained
+an excessive proportion of albumen. Moreover--a matter of still greater
+importance--the larvæ of the Osmia fed in this manner attain their
+normal growth and spin their cocoons, from which adults issue in the
+following year. Despite the albuminous diet the cycle of evolution
+completes itself without mishap.
+
+What are we to conclude from all this? I confess I am embarrassed. _Omne
+vivum ex ovo_, says the physiologist. All animals are carnivorous in
+their first beginnings; they are formed and nourished at the expense of
+the egg, in which albumen predominates. The highest, the mammals, adhere
+to this diet for a considerable time; they live by the maternal milk,
+rich in casein, another isomer of albumen. The gramnivorous nestling is
+fed first upon worms and grubs, which are best adapted to the delicacy
+of its stomach; many newly born creatures among the lower orders, being
+immediately left to their own devices, live on animal diet. In this way
+the original method of alimentation is continued--the method which
+builds flesh out of flesh and makes blood out of blood with no chemical
+processes but those of simple reconstruction. In maturity, when the
+stomach is more robust, a vegetable diet may be adopted, involving a
+more complex chemistry, although the food itself is more easily
+obtained. To milk succeeds fodder; to the worm, seeds and grain; to the
+dead or paralysed insects of the natal burrow, the nectar of flowers.
+
+Here is a partial explanation of the double system of the Hymenoptera
+with their carnivorous larvæ--the system of dead or paralysed insects
+followed by honey. But here the point of interrogation, already
+encountered elsewhere, erects itself once again. Why is the larva of
+the Osmia, which thrives upon albumen, actually fed upon honey during
+its early life? Why is a vegetable diet the rule in the hives of bees
+from the very commencement, when the other members of the same series
+live upon animal food?
+
+If I were a "transformist" how I should delight in this question! Yes, I
+should say: yes, by the fact of its germ every animal is originally
+carnivorous. The insect in particular makes a beginning with albuminoid
+materials. Many larvæ adhere to the alimentation present in the egg, as
+do many adult insects also. But the struggle to fill the belly, which is
+actually the struggle for life, demands something better than the
+precarious chances of the chase. Man, at first an eager hunter of game,
+collected flocks and became a shepherd in order to profit by his
+possessions in time of dearth. Further progress inspired him to till the
+earth and sow; a method which assured him of a certain living. Evolution
+from the defective to the mediocre, and from the mediocre to the
+abundant, has led to the resources of agriculture.
+
+The lower animals have preceded us on the way of progress. The ancestors
+of the Philanthus, in the remote ages of the lacustrian tertiary
+formations, lived by capturing prey in both phases--both as larvæ and as
+adults; they hunted for their own benefit as well as for the family.
+They did not confine themselves to emptying the stomach of the bee, as
+do their descendants to-day; they devoured the victim entire. From
+beginning to end they remained carnivorous. Later there were fortunate
+innovators, whose race supplanted the more conservative element, who
+discovered an inexhaustible source of nourishment, to be obtained
+without painful search or dangerous conflict: the saccharine exudation
+of the flowers. The wasteful system of living upon prey, by no means
+favourable to large populations, has been preserved for the feeble
+larvæ; but the vigorous adult has abandoned it for an easier and more
+prosperous existence. Thus the Philanthus of our own days was gradually
+developed; thus was formed the double system of nourishment practised by
+the various predatory insects which we know.
+
+The bee has done still better; from the moment of leaving the egg it
+dispenses completely with chance-won aliments. It has invented honey,
+the food of its larvæ. Renouncing the chase for ever, and becoming
+exclusively agricultural, this insect has acquired a degree of moral and
+physical prosperity that the predatory species are far from sharing.
+Hence the flourishing colonies of the Anthophoræ, the Osmiæ, the Euceræ,
+the Halicti, and other makers of honey, while the hunters of prey work
+in isolation; hence the societies in which the bee displays its
+admirable talents, the supreme expression of instinct.
+
+This is what I should say if I were a "transformist." All this is a
+chain of highly logical deductions, and it hangs together with a certain
+air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist"
+arguments which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a present
+of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least
+regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound
+ignorance of the origin of the twofold system of diet.
+
+One thing I do see more clearly after all my experiments and research:
+the tactics of the Philanthus. As a witness of its ferocious feasting,
+the true motive of which was unknown to me, I treated it to all the
+unfavourable epithets I could think of; called it assassin, bandit,
+pirate, robber of the dead. Ignorance is always abusive; the man who
+does not know is full of violent affirmations and malign
+interpretations. Undeceived by the facts, I hasten to apologise and
+express my esteem for the Philanthus. In emptying the stomach of the bee
+the mother is performing the most praiseworthy of all duties; she is
+guarding her family against poison. If she sometimes kills on her own
+account and abandons the body after exhausting it of honey, I dare not
+call her action a crime. When the habit has once been formed of emptying
+the bee's crop for the best of motives, the temptation is great to do so
+with no other excuse than hunger. Moreover--who can say?--perhaps there
+is always some afterthought that the larvæ might profit by the
+sacrifice. Although not carried into effect the intention excuses the
+act.
+
+I therefore withdraw my abusive epithets in order to express my
+admiration of the creature's maternal logic. Honey would be harmful to
+the grubs. How does the mother know that honey, in which she herself
+delights, is noxious to her young? To this question our knowledge has no
+reply. But honey, as we have seen, would endanger the lives of the
+grubs. The bees must therefore be emptied of honey before they are fed
+to them. The process must be effected without wounding the victim, for
+the larva must receive the latter fresh and moist; and this would be
+impracticable if the insect were paralysed on account of the natural
+resistance of the organs. The bee must therefore be killed outright
+instead of being paralysed, otherwise the honey could not be removed.
+Instantaneous death can be assured only by a lesion of the primordial
+centre of life. The sting must therefore pierce the cervical ganglions;
+the centre of innervation upon which the rest of the organism is
+dependent. This can only be reached in one way: through the neck. Here
+it is that the sting will be inserted; and here it is inserted in a
+breach in the armour no larger than a pin's head. Suppress a single link
+of this closely knit chain, and the Philanthus reared upon the flesh of
+bees becomes an impossibility.
+
+That honey is fatal to larvæ is a fact pregnant with consequences.
+Various predatory insects feed their young with honey-makers. Such, to
+my knowledge, are the _Philanthus coronatus_, Fabr., which stores its
+burrows with the large Halictus; the _Philanthus raptor_, Lep., which
+chases all the smaller Halictus indifferently, being itself a small
+insect; the _Cerceris ornata_, Fabr., which also kills Halictus; and the
+_Polaris flavipes_, Fabr., which by a strange eclecticism fills its
+cells with specimens of most of the Hymenoptera which are not beyond its
+powers. What do these four huntresses, and others of similar habits, do
+with their victims when the crops of the latter are full of honey? They
+must follow the example of the Philanthus or their offspring would
+perish; they must squeeze and manipulate the dead bee until it yields up
+its honey. Everything goes to prove as much; but for the actual
+observation of what would be a notable proof of my theory I must trust
+to the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE GREAT PEACOCK, OR EMPEROR MOTH
+
+
+It was a memorable night! I will name it the Night of the Great Peacock.
+Who does not know this superb moth, the largest of all our European
+butterflies[3] with its livery of chestnut velvet and its collar of
+white fur? The greys and browns of the wings are crossed by a paler
+zig-zag, and bordered with smoky white; and in the centre of each wing
+is a round spot, a great eye with a black pupil and variegated iris,
+resolving into concentric arcs of black, white, chestnut, and purplish
+red.
+
+Not less remarkable is the caterpillar. Its colour is a vague yellow. On
+the summit of thinly sown tubercles crowned with a palisade of black
+hairs are set pearls of a turquoise-blue. The burly brown cocoon, which
+is notable for its curious tunnel of exit, like an eel-pot, is always
+found at the base of an old almond-tree, adhering to the bark. The
+foliage of the same tree nourishes the caterpillar.
+
+On the morning of the 6th of May a female emerged from her cocoon in my
+presence on my laboratory table. I cloistered her immediately, all damp
+with the moisture of metamorphosis, in a cover of wire gauze. I had no
+particular intentions regarding her; I imprisoned her from mere habit;
+the habit of an observer always on the alert for what may happen.
+
+I was richly rewarded. About nine o'clock that evening, when the
+household was going to bed, there was a sudden hubbub in the room next
+to mine. Little Paul, half undressed, was rushing to and fro, running,
+jumping, stamping, and overturning the chairs as if possessed. I heard
+him call me. "Come quick!" he shrieked; "come and see these butterflies!
+Big as birds! The room's full of them!"
+
+I ran. There was that which justified the child's enthusiasm and his
+hardly hyperbolical exclamation. It was an invasion of giant
+butterflies; an invasion hitherto unexampled in our house. Four were
+already caught and placed in a bird-cage. Others--numbers of them--were
+flying across the ceiling.
+
+This astonishing sight recalled the prisoner of the morning to my mind.
+"Put on your togs, kiddy!" I told my son; "put down your cage, and come
+with me. We shall see something worth seeing."
+
+We had to go downstairs to reach my study, which occupies the right wing
+of the house. In the kitchen we met the servant; she too was bewildered
+by the state of affairs. She was pursuing the huge butterflies with her
+apron, having taken them at first for bats.
+
+It seemed as though the Great Peacock had taken possession of my whole
+house, more or less. What would it be upstairs, where the prisoner was,
+the cause of this invasion? Happily one of the two study windows had
+been left ajar; the road was open.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT PEACOCK OR EMPEROR MOTH.]
+
+Candle in hand, we entered the room. What we saw is unforgettable. With
+a soft _flic-flac_ the great night-moths were flying round the
+wire-gauze cover, alighting, taking flight, returning, mounting to the
+ceiling, re-descending. They rushed at the candle and extinguished it
+with a flap of the wing; they fluttered on our shoulders, clung to our
+clothing, grazed our faces. My study had become a cave of a necromancer,
+the darkness alive with creatures of the night! Little Paul, to reassure
+himself, held my hand much tighter than usual.
+
+How many were there? About twenty. To these add those which had strayed
+into the kitchen, the nursery, and other rooms in the house, and the
+total must have been nearly forty. It was a memorable sight--the Night
+of the Great Peacock! Come from all points of the compass, warned I know
+not how, here were forty lovers eager to do homage to the maiden
+princess that morning born in the sacred precincts of my study.
+
+For the time being I troubled the swarm of pretenders no further. The
+flame of the candle endangered the visitors; they threw themselves into
+it stupidly and singed themselves slightly. On the morrow we could
+resume our study of them, and make certain carefully devised
+experiments.
+
+To clear the ground a little for what is to follow, let me speak of what
+was repeated every night during the eight nights my observations lasted.
+Every night, when it was quite dark, between eight and ten o'clock, the
+butterflies arrived one by one. The weather was stormy; the sky heavily
+clouded; the darkness was so profound that out of doors, in the garden
+and away from the trees, one could scarcely see one's hand before one's
+face.
+
+In addition to such darkness as this there were certain difficulties of
+access. The house is hidden by great plane-trees; an alley densely
+bordered with lilacs and rose-trees make a kind of outer vestibule to
+the entrance; it is protected from the _mistral_ by groups of pines and
+screens of cypress. A thicket of evergreen shrubs forms a rampart at a
+few paces from the door. It was across this maze of leafage, and in
+absolute darkness, that the butterflies had to find their way in order
+to attain the end of their pilgrimage.
+
+Under such conditions the screech-owl would not dare to forsake its
+hollow in the olive-tree. The butterfly, better endowed with its faceted
+eyes than the owl with its single pupils, goes forward without
+hesitation, and threads the obstacles without contact. So well it
+directs its tortuous flight that, in spite of all the obstacles to be
+evaded, it arrives in a state of perfect freshness, its great wings
+intact, without the slightest flaw. The darkness is light enough for the
+butterfly.
+
+Even if we suppose it to be sensitive to rays unknown to the ordinary
+retina, this extraordinary sight could not be the sense that warns the
+butterfly at a distance and brings it hastening to the bride. Distance
+and the objects interposed make the suggestion absurd.
+
+Moreover, apart from illusory refractions, of which there is no question
+here, the indications of light are precise; one goes straight to the
+object seen. But the butterfly was sometimes mistaken: not in the
+general direction, but concerning the precise position of the attractive
+object. I have mentioned that the nursery on the other side of the house
+to my study, which was the actual goal of the visitors, was full of
+butterflies before a light was taken into it. These were certainly
+incorrectly informed. In the kitchen there was the same crowd of
+seekers gone astray; but there the light of a lamp, an irresistible
+attraction to nocturnal insects, might have diverted the pilgrims.
+
+Let us consider only such areas as were in darkness. There the pilgrims
+were numerous. I found them almost everywhere in the neighbourhood of
+their goal. When the captive was in my study the butterflies did not all
+enter by the open window, the direct and easy way, the captive being
+only a few yards from the window. Several penetrated the house
+downstairs, wandered through the hall, and reached the staircase, which
+was barred at the top by a closed door.
+
+These data show us that the visitors to the wedding-feast did not go
+straight to their goal as they would have done were they attracted by
+any kind of luminous radiations, whether known or unknown to our
+physical science. Something other than radiant energy warned them at a
+distance, led them to the neighbourhood of the precise spot, and left
+the final discovery to be made after a vague and hesitating search. The
+senses of hearing and smell warn us very much in this way; they are not
+precise guides when we try to determine exactly the point of origin of a
+sound or smell.
+
+What sense is it that informs this great butterfly of the whereabouts of
+his mate, and leads him wandering through the night? What organ does
+this sense affect? One suspects the antennæ; in the male butterfly they
+actually seem to be sounding, interrogating empty space with their long
+feathery plumes. Are these splendid plumes merely items of finery, or do
+they really play a part in the perception of the effluvia which guide
+the lover? It seemed easy, on the occasion I spoke of, to devise a
+conclusive experiment.
+
+On the morrow of the invasion I found in my study eight of my nocturnal
+visitors. They were perched, motionless, upon the cross-mouldings of the
+second window, which had remained closed. The others, having concluded
+their ballet by about ten o'clock at night, had left as they had
+entered, by the other window, which was left open night and day. These
+eight persevering lovers were just what I required for my experiment.
+
+With a sharp pair of scissors, and without otherwise touching the
+butterflies, I cut off their antennæ near the base. The victims barely
+noticed the operation. None moved; there was scarcely a flutter of the
+wings. Their condition was excellent; the wound did not seem to be in
+the least serious. They were not perturbed by physical suffering, and
+would therefore be all the better adapted to my designs. They passed the
+rest of the day in placid immobility on the cross-bars of the window.
+
+A few other arrangements were still to be made. In particular it was
+necessary to change the scene; not to leave the female under the eyes of
+the mutilated butterflies at the moment of resuming their nocturnal
+flight; the difficulty of the search must not be lessened. I therefore
+removed the cage and its captive, and placed it under a porch on the
+other side of the house, at a distance of some fifty paces from my
+study.
+
+At nightfall I went for a last time to inspect my eight victims. Six had
+left by the open window; two still remained, but they had fallen on the
+floor, and no longer had the strength to recover themselves if turned
+over on their backs. They were exhausted, dying. Do not accuse my
+surgery, however. Such early decease was observed repeatedly, with no
+intervention on my part.
+
+Six, in better condition, had departed. Would they return to the call
+that attracted them the night before? Deprived of their antennæ, would
+they be able to find the captive, now placed at a considerable distance
+from her original position?
+
+The cage was in darkness, almost in the open air. From time to time I
+visited it with a net and lantern. The visitors were captured,
+inspected, and immediately released in a neighbouring room, of which I
+closed the door. This gradual elimination allowed me to count the
+visitors exactly without danger of counting the same butterfly more than
+once. Moreover, the provisional prison, large and bare, in no wise
+harmed or endangered the prisoners; they found a quiet retreat there and
+ample space. Similar precautions were taken during the rest of my
+experiments.
+
+After half-past ten no more arrived. The reception was over. Total,
+twenty-five males captured, of which one only was deprived of its
+antennæ. So of the six operated on earlier in the day, which were strong
+enough to leave my study and fly back to the fields, only one had
+returned to the cage. A poor result, in which I could place no
+confidence as proving whether the antennæ did or did not play a
+directing part. It was necessary to begin again upon a larger scale.
+
+Next morning I visited the prisoners of the day before. What I saw was
+not encouraging. A large number were scattered on the ground, almost
+inert. Taken between the fingers, several of them gave scarcely a sign
+of life. Little was to be hoped from these, it would seem. Still, I
+determined to try; perhaps they would regain their vigour at the lover's
+hour.
+
+The twenty-four prisoners were all subjected to the amputation of their
+antennæ. The one operated on the day before was put aside as dying or
+nearly so. Finally the door of the prison was left open for the rest of
+the day. Those might leave who could; those could join in the carnival
+who were able. In order to put those that might leave the room to the
+test of a search, the cage, which they must otherwise have encountered
+at the threshold, was again removed, and placed in a room of the
+opposite wing, on the ground floor. There was of course free access to
+this room.
+
+Of the twenty-four lacking their antennæ sixteen only left the room.
+Eight were powerless to do so; they were dying. Of the sixteen, how many
+returned to the cage that night? Not one. My captives that night were
+only seven, all new-comers, all wearing antennæ. This result seemed to
+prove that the amputation of the antennæ was a matter of serious
+significance. But it would not do to conclude as yet: one doubt
+remained.
+
+"A fine state I am in! How shall I dare to appear before the other
+dogs?" said Mouflard, the puppy whose ears had been pitilessly docked.
+Had my butterflies apprehensions similar to Master Mouflard's? Deprived
+of their beautiful plumes, were they ashamed to appear in the midst of
+their rivals, and to prefer their suits? Was it confusion on their part,
+or want of guidance? Was it not rather exhaustion after an attempt
+exceeding the duration of an ephemeral passion? Experience would show
+me.
+
+On the fourth night I took fourteen new-comers and set them apart as
+they came in a room in which they spent the night. On the morrow,
+profiting by their diurnal immobility, I removed a little of the hair
+from the centre of the corselet or neck. This slight tonsure did not
+inconvenience the insects, so easily was the silky fur removed, nor did
+it deprive them of any organ which might later on be necessary in the
+search for the female. To them it was nothing; for me it was the
+unmistakable sign of a repeated visit.
+
+This time there were none incapable of flight. At night the fourteen
+shavelings escaped into the open air. The cage, of course, was again in
+a new place. In two hours I captured twenty butterflies, of whom two
+were tonsured; no more. As for those whose antennæ I had amputated the
+night before, not one reappeared. Their nuptial period was over.
+
+Of fourteen marked by the tonsure two only returned. Why did the other
+twelve fail to appear, although furnished with their supposed guides,
+their antennæ? To this I can see only one reply: that the Great Peacock
+is promptly exhausted by the ardours of the mating season.
+
+With a view to mating, the sole end of its life, the great moth is
+endowed with a marvellous prerogative. It has the power to discover the
+object of its desire in spite of distance, in spite of obstacles. A few
+hours, for two or three nights, are given to its search, its nuptial
+flights. If it cannot profit by them, all is ended; the compass fails,
+the lamp expires. What profit could life hold henceforth? Stoically the
+creature withdraws into a corner and sleeps the last sleep, the end of
+illusions and the end of suffering.
+
+The Great Peacock exists as a butterfly only to perpetuate itself. It
+knows nothing of food. While so many others, joyful banqueters, fly from
+flower to flower, unrolling their spiral trunks to plunge them into
+honeyed blossoms, this incomparable ascetic, completely freed from the
+servitude of the stomach, has no means of restoring its strength. Its
+buccal members are mere vestiges, useless simulacra, not real organs
+able to perform their duties. Not a sip of honey can ever enter its
+stomach; a magnificent prerogative, if it is not long enjoyed. If the
+lamp is to burn it must be filled with oil. The Great Peacock renounces
+the joys of the palate; but with them it surrenders long life. Two or
+three nights--just long enough to allow the couple to meet and mate--and
+all is over; the great butterfly is dead.
+
+What, then, is meant by the non-appearance of those whose antennæ I
+removed? Did they prove that the lack of antennæ rendered them incapable
+of finding the cage in which the prisoner waited? By no means. Like
+those marked with the tonsure, which had undergone no damaging
+operation, they proved only that their time was finished. Mutilated or
+intact, they could do no more on account of age, and their absence meant
+nothing. Owing to the delay inseparable from the experiment, the part
+played by the antennæ escaped me. It was doubtful before; it remained
+doubtful.
+
+My prisoner under the wire-gauze cover lived for eight days. Every night
+she attracted a swarm of visitors, now to one part of the house, now to
+another. I caught them with the net and released them as soon as
+captured in a closed room, where they passed the night. On the next day
+they were marked, by means of a slight tonsure on the thorax.
+
+The total number of butterflies attracted on these eight nights amounted
+to a hundred and fifty; a stupendous number when I consider what
+searches I had to undertake during the two following years in order to
+collect the specimens necessary to the continuation of my investigation.
+Without being absolutely undiscoverable, in my immediate neighbourhood
+the cocoons of the Great Peacock are at least extremely rare, as the
+trees on which they are found are not common. For two winters I visited
+all the decrepit almond-trees at hand, inspected them all at the base of
+the trunk, under the jungle of stubborn grasses and undergrowth that
+surrounded them; and how often I returned with empty hands! Thus my
+hundred and fifty butterflies had come from some little distance;
+perhaps from a radius of a mile and a quarter or more. How did they
+learn of what was happening in my study?
+
+Three agents of information affect the senses at a distance: sight,
+sound, and smell. Can we speak of vision in this connection? Sight could
+very well guide the arrivals once they had entered the open window; but
+how could it help them out of doors, among unfamiliar surroundings? Even
+the fabulous eye of the lynx, which could see through walls, would not
+be sufficient; we should have to imagine a keenness of vision capable of
+annihilating leagues of space. It is needless to discuss the matter
+further; sight cannot be the guiding sense.
+
+Sound is equally out of the question. The big-bodied creature capable of
+calling her mates from such a distance is absolutely mute, even to the
+most sensitive ear. Does she perhaps emit vibrations of such delicacy or
+rapidity that only the most sensitive microphone could appreciate them?
+The idea is barely possible; but let us remember that the visitors must
+have been warned at distances of some thousands of yards. Under these
+conditions it is useless to think of acoustics.
+
+Smell remains. Scent, better than any other impression in the domain of
+our senses, would explain the invasion of butterflies, and their
+difficulty at the very last in immediately finding the object of their
+search. Are there effluvia analogous to what we call odour: effluvia of
+extreme subtlety, absolutely imperceptible to us, yet capable of
+stimulating a sense-organ far more sensitive than our own? A simple
+experiment suggested itself. I would mask these effluvia, stifle them
+under a powerful, tenacious odour, which would take complete possession
+of the sense-organ and neutralise the less powerful impression.
+
+I began by sprinkling naphthaline in the room intended for the reception
+of the males that evening. Beside the female, inside the wire-gauze
+cover, I placed a large capsule full of the same substance. When the
+hour of the nocturnal visit arrived I had only to stand at the door of
+the room to smell a smell as of a gas-works. Well, my artifice failed.
+The butterflies arrived as usual, entered the room, traversed its
+gas-laden atmosphere, and made for the wire-gauze cover with the same
+certainty as in a room full of fresh air.
+
+My confidence in the olfactory theory was shaken. Moreover, I could not
+continue my experiments. On the ninth day, exhausted by her fruitless
+period of waiting, the female died, having first deposited her barren
+eggs upon the woven wire of her cage. Lacking a female, nothing could be
+done until the following year.
+
+I determined next time to take suitable precautions and to make all
+preparations for repeating at will the experiments already made and
+others which I had in mind. I set to work at once, without delay.
+
+In the summer I began to buy caterpillars at a halfpenny apiece.
+
+The market was in the hands of some neighbouring urchins, my habitual
+providers. On Friday, free of the terrors of grammar, they scoured the
+fields, finding from time to time the Great Peacock caterpillar, and
+bringing it to me clinging to the end of a stick. They did not dare to
+touch it, poor little imps! They were thunderstruck at my audacity when
+I seized it in my fingers as they would the familiar silkworm.
+
+Reared upon twigs of the almond-tree, my menagerie soon provided me with
+magnificent cocoons. In winter assiduous search at the base of the
+native trees completed my collection. Friends interested in my
+researches came to my aid. Finally, after some trouble, what with an
+open market, commercial negotiations, and searching, at the cost of many
+scratches, in the undergrowth, I became the owner of an assortment of
+cocoons of which twelve, larger and heavier than the rest, announced
+that they were those of females.
+
+Disappointment awaited me. May arrived; a capricious month which set my
+preparations at naught, troublesome as these had been. Winter returned.
+The _mistral_ shrieked, tore the budding leaves of the plane-trees, and
+scattered them over the ground. It was cold as December. We had to
+light fires in the evening, and resume the heavy clothes we had begun to
+leave off.
+
+My butterflies were too sorely tried. They emerged late and were torpid.
+Around my cages, in which the females waited--to-day one, to-morrow
+another, according to the order of their birth--few males or none came
+from without. Yet there were some in the neighbourhood, for those with
+large antennæ which issued from my collection of cocoons were placed in
+the garden directly they had emerged, and were recognised. Whether
+neighbours or strangers, very few came, and those without enthusiasm.
+For a moment they entered, then disappeared and did not reappear. The
+lovers were as cold as the season.
+
+Perhaps, too, the low temperature was unfavourable to the informing
+effluvia, which might well be increased by heat and lessened by cold as
+is the case with many odours. My year was lost. Research is
+disappointing work when the experimenter is the slave of the return and
+the caprices of a brief season of the year.
+
+For the third time I began again. I reared caterpillars; I scoured the
+country in search of cocoons. When May returned I was tolerably
+provided. The season was fine, responding to my hopes. I foresaw the
+affluence of butterflies which had so impressed me at the outset, when
+the famous invasion occurred which was the origin of my experiments.
+
+Every night, by squadrons of twelve, twenty, or more, the visitors
+appeared. The female, a strapping, big-bellied matron, clung to the
+woven wire of the cover. There was no movement on her part; not even a
+flutter of the wings. One would have thought her indifferent to all
+that occurred. No odour was emitted that was perceptible to the most
+sensitive nostrils of the household; no sound that the keenest ears of
+the household could perceive. Motionless, recollected, she waited.
+
+The males, by twos, by threes and more, fluttered upon the dome of the
+cover, scouring over it quickly in all directions, beating it
+continually with the ends of their wings. There were no conflicts
+between rivals. Each did his best to penetrate the enclosure, without
+betraying any sign of jealousy of the others. Tiring of their fruitless
+attempts, they would fly away and join the dance of the gyrating crowd.
+Some, in despair, would escape by the open window: new-comers would
+replace them: and until ten o'clock or thereabouts the wire dome of the
+cover would be the scene of continual attempts at approach, incessantly
+commencing, quickly wearying, quickly resumed.
+
+Every night the position of the cage was changed. I placed it north of
+the house and south; on the ground-floor and the first floor; in the
+right wing of the house, or fifty yards away in the left wing; in the
+open air, or hidden in some distant room. All these sudden removals,
+devised to put the seekers off the scent, troubled them not at all. My
+time and my pains were wasted, so far as deceiving them was concerned.
+
+The memory of places has no part in the finding of the female. For
+instance, the day before the cage was installed in a certain room. The
+males visited the room and fluttered about the cage for a couple of
+hours, and some even passed the night there. On the following day, at
+sunset, when I moved the cage, all were out of doors. Although their
+lives are so ephemeral, the youngest were ready to resume their
+nocturnal expeditions a second and even a third time. Where did they
+first go, these veterans of a day?
+
+They knew precisely where the cage had been the night before. One would
+have expected them to return to it, guided by memory; and that not
+finding it they would go out to continue their search elsewhere. No;
+contrary to my expectation, nothing of the kind appeared. None came to
+the spot which had been so crowded the night before; none paid even a
+passing visit. The room was recognised as an empty room, with no
+previous examination, such as would apparently be necessary to
+contradict the memory of the place. A more positive guide than memory
+called them elsewhere.
+
+Hitherto the female was always visible, behind the meshes of the
+wire-gauze cover. The visitors, seeing plainly in the dark night, must
+have been able to see her by the vague luminosity of what for us is the
+dark. What would happen if I imprisoned her in an opaque receptacle?
+Would not such a receptacle arrest or set free the informing effluvia
+according to its nature?
+
+Practical physics has given us wireless telegraphy by means of the
+Hertzian vibrations of the ether. Had the Great Peacock butterfly
+outstripped and anticipated mankind in this direction? In order to
+disturb the whole surrounding neighbourhood, to warn pretenders at a
+distance of a mile or more, does the newly emerged female make use of
+electric or magnetic waves, known or unknown, that a screen of one
+material would arrest while another would allow them to pass? In a word,
+does she, after her fashion, employ a system of wireless telegraphy? I
+see nothing impossible in this; insects are responsible for many
+inventions equally marvellous.
+
+Accordingly I lodged the female in boxes of various materials; boxes of
+tin-plate, wood, and cardboard. All were hermetically closed, even
+sealed with a greasy paste. I also used a glass bell resting upon a
+base-plate of glass.
+
+Under these conditions not a male arrived; not one, though the warmth
+and quiet of the evening were propitious. Whatever its nature, whether
+of glass, metal, card, or wood, the closed receptacle was evidently an
+insuperable obstacle to the warning effluvia.
+
+A layer of cotton-wool two fingers in thickness had the same result. I
+placed the female in a large glass jar, and laced a piece of thin cotton
+batting over the mouth for a cover; this again guarded the secret of my
+laboratory. Not a male appeared.
+
+But when I placed the females in boxes which were imperfectly closed, or
+which had chinks in their sides, or even hid them in a drawer or a
+cupboard, I found the males arrived in numbers as great as when the
+object of their search lay in the cage of open wire-work freely exposed
+on a table. I have a vivid memory of one evening when the recluse was
+hidden in a hat-box at the bottom of a wall-cupboard. The arrivals went
+straight to the closed doors, and beat them with their wings, _toc-toc_,
+trying to enter. Wandering pilgrims, come from I know not where, across
+fields and meadows, they knew perfectly what was behind the doors of the
+cupboard.
+
+So we must abandon the idea that the butterfly has any means of
+communication comparable to our wireless telegraphy, as any kind of
+screen, whether a good or a bad conductor, completely stops the signals
+of the female. To give them free passage and allow them to penetrate to
+a distance one condition is indispensable: the enclosure in which the
+captive is confined must not be hermetically sealed; there must be a
+communication between it and the outer air. This again points to the
+probability of an odour, although this is contradicted by my experiment
+with the naphthaline.
+
+My cocoons were all hatched, and the problem was still obscure. Should I
+begin all over again in the fourth year? I did not do so, for the reason
+that it is difficult to observe a nocturnal butterfly if one wishes to
+follow it in all its intimate actions. The lover needs no light to
+attain his ends; but my imperfect human vision cannot penetrate the
+darkness. I should require a candle at least, and a candle would be
+constantly extinguished by the revolving swarm. A lantern would obviate
+these eclipses, but its doubtful light, interspersed with heavy shadows,
+by no means commends it to the scruples of an observer, who must see,
+and see well.
+
+Moreover, the light of a lamp diverts the butterflies from their object,
+distracts them from their affairs, and seriously compromises the success
+of the observer. The moment they enter, they rush frantically at the
+flame, singe their down, and thereupon, terrified by the heat, are of no
+profit to the observer. If, instead of being roasted, they are held at a
+distance by an envelope of glass, they press as closely as they can to
+the flame, and remain motionless, hypnotised.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH. THE PILGRIMS DIVERTED BY THE
+LIGHT OF A LAMP.]
+
+One night, the female being in the dining-room, on the table, facing the
+open window, a petroleum lamp, furnished with a large reflector in
+opaline glass, was hanging from the ceiling. The arrivals alighted on
+the dome of the wire-gauze cover, crowding eagerly about the
+prisoner; others, saluting her in passing, flew to the lamp, circled
+round it a few times, and then, fascinated by the luminous splendour
+radiating from the opal cone of light, clung there motionless under the
+reflector. Already the children were raising their hands to seize them.
+"Leave them," I said, "leave them. Let us be hospitable: do not disturb
+the pilgrims who have come to the tabernacle of the light."
+
+During the whole evening not one of them moved. Next day they were still
+there. The intoxication of the light had made them forget the
+intoxication of love.
+
+With creatures so madly in love with the light precise and prolonged
+experimentation is impracticable the moment the observer requires
+artificial light. I renounced the Great Peacock and its nocturnal
+habits. I required a butterfly with different habits; equally notable as
+a lover, but seeking out the beloved by day.
+
+Before going on to speak of my experiments with a subject fulfilling
+these conditions, let me break the chronological order of my record in
+order to say a few words concerning another insect, which appeared after
+I had completed these inquiries. I refer to the Lesser Peacock (_Attacus
+pavonia minor_, Lin.).
+
+Some one brought me, from what locality I do not know, a superb cocoon
+enveloped in an ample wrapping of white silk. From this covering, which
+lay in large irregular folds, the chrysalis was easily detached; in
+shape like that of the Great Peacock, but considerably less in size. The
+anterior extremity, which is defended by an arrangement of fine twigs,
+converging, and free at the converging ends, forming a device not unlike
+an eel-pot, which presents access to the chrysalis while allowing the
+butterfly to emerge without breaking the defence, indicated a relative
+of the great nocturnal butterfly; the silk-work denoted a spinning
+caterpillar.
+
+Towards the end of March this curious cocoon yielded up a female of the
+Lesser Peacock, which was immediately sequestered under a wire-gauze
+cover in my study. I opened the window to allow news of the event to
+reach the surrounding country, and left it open so that such visitors as
+presented themselves should find free access to the cage. The captive
+clung to the wire gauze and did not move for a week.
+
+She was a superb creature, this prisoner of mine, with her suit of brown
+velvet, crossed by undulating lines. The neck was surrounded by white
+fur; there was a carmine spot at the extremity of the upper wings, and
+four great eyes in which were grouped, in concentric crescents, black,
+white, red, and yellow ochre: almost the colouring of the Great Peacock,
+but more vivid. Three or four times in my life I had encountered this
+butterfly, so remarkable for its size and its costume. The cocoon I had
+recently seen for the first time; the male I had never seen. I only knew
+that, according to the books, it was half the size of the female, and
+less vividly coloured, with orange-yellow on the lower wings.
+
+Would he appear, the elegant unknown, with waving plumes; the butterfly
+I had never yet seen, so rare does the Lesser Peacock seem to be in our
+country? Would he, in some distant hedge, receive warning of the bride
+who waited on my study table? I dared to hope it, and I was right. He
+arrived even sooner than I had hoped.
+
+Noon struck as we were sitting down to table, when little Paul, delayed
+by his absorption in the expected event, suddenly ran to rejoin us, his
+cheeks glowing. Between his fingers we saw the fluttering wings of a
+handsome butterfly, caught but a moment before, while it was hovering in
+front of my study. He showed it me, questioning me with his eyes.
+
+"Aha!" I cried, "this is precisely the pilgrim we are waiting for. Fold
+your napkin and come and see what happens. We will dine later."
+
+Dinner was forgotten before the marvels that came to pass. With
+inconceivable punctuality the butterflies hastened to meet the magical
+call of the captive. With tortuous flight they arrived one by one. All
+came from the north. This detail is significant. A week earlier there
+had been a savage return of the winter. The _bise_ blew tempestuously,
+killing the early almond blossom. It was one of those ferocious storms
+which in the South commonly serve as a prelude to the spring. But the
+temperature had now suddenly softened, although the wind still blew from
+the north.
+
+Now on this first occasion all the butterflies hastening to the prisoner
+entered the garden from the north. They followed the direction of the
+wind; not one flew against it. If their guide was a sense of smell like
+ours, if they were guided by fragrant atoms suspended in the air, they
+should have arrived in the opposite direction. Coming from the south, we
+might believe them to be warned by effluvia carried on the wind; coming
+from the north in time of _mistral_, that resistless sweeper of earth
+and air, how can we suppose that they had perceived, at a remote
+distance, what we will call an odour? The idea of a flow of odoriferous
+atoms in a direction contrary to that of the aerial torrent seems to me
+inadmissible.
+
+For two hours, under a radiant sun, the visitors came and went before
+the outer wall of the study. Most of them sought for a long time,
+exploring the wall, flying on a level with the ground. To see them thus
+hesitating you would say that they were puzzled to find the exact
+position of the lure which called them. Although they had come from such
+a distance without a mistake, they seemed imperfectly informed once they
+were on the spot. Nevertheless, sooner or later they entered the room
+and saluted the captive, without showing any great ardour. At two
+o'clock all was over. Ten butterflies had arrived.
+
+During the whole week, and always about noon, at the hour of the
+brightest sunlight, the butterflies arrived, but in decreasing numbers.
+The total approached forty. I thought it useless to repeat experiments
+which would add nothing to what I had already learned. I will confine
+myself to stating two facts. In the first place, the Lesser Peacock is
+diurnal; that is to say, it celebrates its mating under the dazzling
+brilliance of noon. It needs the full force of the sunlight. The Great
+Peacock, on the contrary, which it so closely resembles both in its
+adult form and the work of its caterpillar, requires the darkness of the
+first hours of the night. Who can explain this strange contrast in
+habits?
+
+In the second place, a powerful current of air, sweeping away in a
+contrary direction all particles that might inform the sense of smell,
+does not prevent the butterflies from arriving from a direction opposite
+to that taken by the effluvial stream, as we understand such matters.
+
+To continue: I needed a diurnal moth or butterfly: not the Lesser
+Peacock, which came too late, when I had nothing to ask of it, but
+another, no matter what, provided it was a prompt guest at the wedding
+feast. Was I to find such an insect?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE OAK EGGAR, OR BANDED MONK
+
+
+Yes: I was to find it. I even had it already in my possession. An urchin
+of seven years, with an alert countenance, not washed every day, bare
+feet, and dilapidated breeches supported by a piece of string, who
+frequented the house as a dealer in turnips and tomatoes, arrived one
+day with his basket of vegetables. Having received the few halfpence
+expected by his mother as the price of the garden-stuff, and having
+counted them one by one into the hollow of his hand, he took from his
+pocket an object which he had discovered the day before beneath a hedge
+when gathering greenstuff for his rabbits.
+
+"And this--will you have this?" he said, handing me the object. "Why,
+certainly I will have it. Try to find me more, as many as you can, and
+on Sunday you shall have lots of rides on the wooden horses. In the
+meantime here is a penny for you. Don't forget it when you make up your
+accounts; don't mix it with your turnip-money; put it by itself."
+Beaming with satisfaction at such wealth, little touzle-head promised to
+search industriously, already foreseeing a fortune.
+
+When he had gone I examined the thing. It was worth examination. It was
+a fine cocoon, thick and with blunt ends, very like a silkworm's cocoon,
+firm to the touch and of a tawny colour. A brief reference to the
+text-books almost convinced me that this was a cocoon of the _Bombyx
+quercus_.[4] If so, what a find! I could continue my inquiry and perhaps
+confirm what my study of the Great Peacock had made me suspect.
+
+The Bombyx of the oak-tree is, in fact, a classic moth; indeed, there is
+no entomological text-book but speaks of its exploits at mating-time. It
+is said that a female emerged from the pupa in captivity, in the
+interior of an apartment, and even in a closed box. It was far from the
+country, amidst the tumult of a large city. Nevertheless, the event was
+known to those concerned in the woods and meadows. Guided by some
+mysterious compass, the males arrived, hastening from the distant
+fields; they went to the box, fluttered against it, and flew to and fro
+in the room.
+
+These marvels I had learned by reading; but to see such a thing with
+one's own eyes, and at the same time to devise experiments, is quite
+another thing. What had my penny bargain in store for me? Would the
+famous Bombyx issue from it?
+
+Let us call it by its other name, the Banded Monk. This original name of
+Monk was suggested by the costume of the male; a monk's robe of a modest
+rusty red. But in the case of the female the brown fustian gives place
+to a beautiful velvet, with a pale transversal band and little white
+eyes on the fore pair of wings.
+
+The Monk is not a common butterfly which can be caught by any one who
+takes out a net at the proper season. I have never seen it around our
+village or in the solitude of my grounds during a residence of twenty
+years. It is true that I am not a fervent butterfly-catcher; the dead
+insect of the collector's cabinet has little interest for me; I must
+have it living, in the exercise of its functions. But although I have
+not the collector's zeal I have an attentive eye to all that flies or
+crawls in the fields. A butterfly so remarkable for its size and
+colouring would never have escaped my notice had I encountered it.
+
+The little searcher whom I had enticed by a promise of rides upon wooden
+horses never made a second find. For three years I requisitioned friends
+and neighbours, and especially their children, sharp-sighted snappers-up
+of trifles; I myself hunted often under heaps of withered leaves; I
+inspected stone-heaps and visited hollow tree-trunks. Useless pains; the
+precious cocoon was not to be found. It is enough to say that the Banded
+Monk is extremely rare in my neighbourhood. The importance of this fact
+will presently appear.
+
+As I suspected, my cocoon was truly that of the celebrated Oak Eggar. On
+the 20th of August a female emerged from it: corpulent, big-bellied,
+coloured like the male, but lighter in hue. I placed her under the usual
+wire cover in the centre of my laboratory table, littered as it was with
+books, bottles, trays, boxes, test-tubes, and other apparatus. I have
+explained the situation in speaking of the Great Peacock. Two windows
+light the room, both opening on the garden. One was closed, the other
+open day and night. The butterfly was placed in the shade, between the
+lines of the two windows, at a distance of 12 or 15 feet.
+
+The rest of that day and the next went by without any occurrence worthy
+of notice. Hanging by the feet to the front of the wire cover, on the
+side nearest to the light, the prisoner was motionless, inert. There was
+no oscillation of the wings, no tremor of the antennæ, the female of the
+Great Peacock behaved in a similar fashion.
+
+The female Bombyx gradually matured, her tender tissues gradually
+becoming firmer. By some process of which our scientists have not the
+least idea she elaborated a mysterious lure which would bring her lovers
+from the four corners of the sky. What was happening in this big-bellied
+body; what transmutations were accomplished, thus to affect the whole
+countryside?
+
+On the third day the bride was ready. The festival opened brilliantly. I
+was in the garden, already despairing of success, for the days were
+passing and nothing had occurred, when towards three in the afternoon,
+the weather being very hot and the sun radiant, I perceived a crowd of
+butterflies gyrating in the embrasure of the open window.
+
+The lovers had at last come to visit their lady. Some were emerging from
+the room, others were entering it; others, clinging to the wall of the
+house, were resting as though exhausted by a long journey. I could see
+others approaching in the distance, flying over the walls, over the
+screens of cypress. They came from all directions, but at last with
+decreasing frequency. I had missed the opening of the convocation, and
+now the gathering was almost complete.
+
+I went indoors and upstairs. This time, in full daylight and without
+losing a detail, I witnessed once more the astonishing spectacle to
+which the great nocturnal butterfly had first introduced me. The study
+contained a cloud of males, which I estimated, at a glance, as being
+about sixty in number, so far as the movement and confusion allowed me
+to count them at all. After circling a few times over the cage many of
+them went to the open window, but returned immediately to recommence
+their evolutions. The most eager alighted on the cover, trampling on one
+another, jostling one another, trying to get the best places. On the
+other side of the barrier the captive, her great body hanging against
+the wire, waited immovable. She betrayed not a sign of emotion in the
+face of this turbulent swarm.
+
+Going and entering, perched on the cover or fluttering round the room,
+for more than three hours they continued their frenzied saraband. But
+the sun was sinking, and the temperature was slowly falling. The ardour
+of the butterflies also cooled. Many went out not to return. Others took
+up their positions to wait for the gaieties of the following day; they
+clung to the cross-bars of the closed window as the males of the Great
+Peacock had done. The rejoicings were over for the day. They would
+certainly be renewed on the morrow, since the courtship was without
+result on account of the barrier of the wire-gauze cover.
+
+But, alas I to my great disappointment, they were not resumed, and the
+fault was mine. Late in the day a Praying Mantis was brought to me,
+which merited attention on account of its exceptionally small size.
+Preoccupied with the events of the afternoon, and absent-minded, I
+hastily placed the predatory insect under the same cover as the moth.
+It did not occur to me for a moment that this cohabitation could lead to
+any harm. The Mantis was so slender, and the other so corpulent!
+
+Alas! I little knew the fury of carnage animating the creature that
+wielded those tiny grappling-irons! Next morning I met with a
+disagreeable surprise: I found the little Mantis devouring the great
+moth. The head and the fore part of the thorax had already disappeared.
+Horrible creature! at what an evil hour you came to me! Goodbye to my
+researches, the plans which I had caressed all night in my imagination!
+For three years for lack of a subject, I was unable to resume them.
+
+Bad luck, however, was not to make me forget the little I had learned.
+On one single occasion about sixty males had arrived. Considering the
+rarity of the Oak Eggar, and remembering the years of fruitless search
+on the part of my helpers and myself, this number was no less than
+stupefying. The undiscoverable had suddenly become multitudinous at the
+call of the female.
+
+Whence did they come? From all sides, and undoubtedly from considerable
+distances. During my prolonged searches every bush and thicket and heap
+of stones in my neighbourhood had become familiar to me, and I can
+assert that the Oak Eggar was not to be found there. For such a swarm to
+collect as I found in my laboratory the moths must have come from all
+directions, from the whole district, and within a radius that I dare not
+guess at.
+
+Three years went by and by chance two more cocoons of the Monk or Oak
+Eggar again fell into my hands. Both produced females, at an interval of
+a few days towards the middle of August; so that I was able to vary and
+repeat my experiments.
+
+I rapidly repeated the experiments which had given me such positive
+results in the instance of the Great Peacock moth. The pilgrims of the
+day were no less skilful at finding their mates than the pilgrims of the
+night. They laughed at all my tricks. Infallibly they found the
+prisoners in their wire-gauze prisons, no matter in what part of the
+house they were placed; they discovered them in the depths of a
+wall-cupboard; they divined the secret of all manner of boxes, provided
+these were not rigorously air-tight. They came no longer when the box
+was hermetically sealed. So far this was only a repetition of the feats
+of the Great Peacock.
+
+A box perfectly closed, so that the air contained therein had no
+communication with the external atmosphere, left the male in complete
+ignorance of the recluse. Not a single one arrived, even when the box
+was exposed and plain to see on the window-sill. Thus the idea of
+strongly scented effluvia, which are cut off by screens of wood, metal,
+card, glass, or what not, returns with double force.
+
+I have shown that the great nocturnal moth was not thrown off the scent
+by the powerful odour of naphthaline, which I thought would mask the
+extra-subtle emanations of the female, which were imperceptible to human
+olfactory organs. I repeated the experiment with the Oak Eggar. This
+time I used all the resources of scent and stench that my knowledge of
+drugs would permit.
+
+A dozen saucers were arranged, some in the interior of the wire-gauze
+cover, the prison of the female, and some around it, in an unbroken
+circle. Some contained naphthaline; others the essential oil of
+spike-lavender; others petroleum, and others a solution of alkaline
+sulphur giving off a stench of rotten eggs. Short of asphyxiating the
+prisoner I could do no more. These arrangements were made in the
+morning, so that the room should be saturated when the congregation of
+lovers should arrive.
+
+In the afternoon the laboratory was filled with the most abominable
+stench, in which the penetrating aroma of spike-lavender and the stink
+of sulphuretted hydrogen were predominant. I must add that tobacco was
+habitually smoked in this room, and in abundance. The concerted odours
+of a gas-works, a smoking-room, a perfumery, a petroleum well, and a
+chemical factory--would they succeed in confusing the male moths?
+
+By no means. About three o'clock the moths arrived in as great numbers
+as usual. They went straight to the cage, which I had covered with a
+thick cloth in order to add to their difficulties. Seeing nothing when
+once they had entered, and immersed in an extraordinary atmosphere in
+which any subtle fragrance should have been annihilated, they
+nevertheless made straight for the prisoner, and attempted to reach her
+by burrowing under the linen cloth. My artifice had no result.
+
+After this set-back, so obvious in its consequences, which only repeated
+the lesson of the experiments made with naphthaline when my subject was
+the Great Peacock, I ought logically to have abandoned the theory that
+the moths are guided to their wedding festivities by means of strongly
+scented effluvia. That I did not do so was due to a fortuitous
+observation. Chance often has a surprise in store which sets us on the
+right road when we have been seeking it in vain.
+
+One afternoon, while trying to determine whether sight plays any part in
+the search for the female once the males had entered the room, I placed
+the female in a bell-glass and gave her a slender twig of oak with
+withered leaves as a support. The glass was set upon a table facing the
+open window. Upon entering the room the moths could not fail to see the
+prisoner, as she stood directly in the way. The tray, containing a layer
+of sand, on which the female had passed the preceding day and night,
+covered with a wire-gauze dish-cover, was in my way. Without
+premeditation I placed it at the other end of the room on the floor, in
+a corner where there was but little light. It was a dozen yards away
+from the window.
+
+The result of these preparations entirely upset my preconceived ideas.
+None of the arrivals stopped at the bell-glass, where the female was
+plainly to be seen, the light falling full upon her prison. Not a
+glance, not an inquiry. They all flew to the further end of the room,
+into the dark corner where I had placed the tray and the empty
+dish-cover.
+
+They alighted on the wire dome, explored it persistently, beating their
+wings and jostling one another. All the afternoon, until sunset, the
+moths danced about the empty cage the same saraband that the actual
+presence of the female had previously evoked. Finally they departed: not
+all, for there were some that would not go, held by some magical
+attractive force.
+
+Truly a strange result! The moths collected where there was apparently
+nothing to attract them, and remained there, unpersuaded by the sense of
+sight; they passed the bell-glass actually containing the female without
+halting for a moment, although she must have been seen by many of the
+moths both going and coming. Maddened by a lure, they paid no attention
+to the reality.
+
+What was the lure that so deceived them? All the preceding night and all
+the morning the female had remained under the wire-gauze cover;
+sometimes clinging to the wire-work, sometimes resting on the sand in
+the tray. Whatever she touched--above all, apparently, with her
+distended abdomen--was impregnated, as a result of long contact, with a
+certain emanation. This was her lure, her love-philtre; this it was that
+revolutionised the Oak Eggar world. The sand retained it for some time
+and diffused the effluvium in turn.
+
+They passed by the glass prison in which the female was then confined
+and hastened to the meshes of wire and the sand on which the magic
+philtre had been poured; they crowded round the deserted chamber where
+nothing of the magician remained but the odorous testimony of her
+sojourn.
+
+The irresistible philtre requires time for its elaboration. I conceive
+of it as an exhalation which is given off during courtship and gradually
+saturates whatever is in contact with the motionless body of the female.
+If the bell-glass was placed directly on the table, or, still better, on
+a square of glass, the communication between the inside and the outside
+was insufficient, and the males, perceiving no odour, did not arrive so
+long as that condition of things obtained. It was plain that this
+failure of transmission was not due to the action of the glass as a
+screen simply, for if I established a free communication between the
+interior of the bell-glass and the open air by supporting it on three
+small blocks, the moths did not collect round it at once, although there
+were plenty in the room; but in the course of half an hour or so the
+feminine alembic began to operate, and the visitors crowded round the
+bell-glass as usual.
+
+In possession of these data and this unexpected enlightenment I varied
+the experiments, but all pointed to the same conclusion. In the morning
+I established the female under the usual wire-gauze cover. For support I
+gave her a little twig of oak as before. There, motionless as if dead,
+she crouched for hours, half buried in the dry leaves, which would thus
+become impregnated with her emanations.
+
+When the hour of the daily visits drew near I removed the twig, which
+was by then thoroughly saturated with the emanations, and laid it on a
+chair not far from the open window. On the other hand I left the female
+under the cover, plainly exposed on the table in the middle of the room.
+
+The moths arrived as usual: first one, then two, then three, and
+presently five and six. They entered, flew out again, re-entered,
+mounted, descended, came and went, always in the neighbourhood of the
+window, not far from which was the chair on which the twig lay. None
+made for the large table, on which, a few steps further from the window,
+the female awaited them in the wire-gauze cover. They hesitated, that
+was plain; they were still seeking.
+
+Finally they found. And what did they find? Simply the twig, which that
+morning had served the ample matron as bed. Their wings rapidly
+fluttering, they alighted on the foliage; they explored it over and
+under, probed it, raised it, and displaced it so that the twig finally
+fell to the floor. None the less they continued to probe between the
+leaves. Under the buffets and the draught of their wings and the
+clutches of their eager feet the little bundle of leaves ran along the
+floor like a scrap of paper patted by the paws of a cat.
+
+While the twig was sliding away with its band of investigators two new
+arrivals appeared. The chair lay in their path. They stopped at it and
+searched eagerly at the very spot on which the twig had been lying. But
+with these, as with the others, the real object of their desires was
+there, close by, under a wire cover which was not even veiled. None took
+any note of it. On the floor, a handful of butterflies were still
+hustling the bunch of leaves on which the female had reposed that
+morning; others, on the chair, were still examining the spot where the
+twig had lain. The sun sank, and the hour of departure struck. Moreover,
+the emanations were growing feebler, were evaporating. Without more ado
+the visitors left. We bade them goodbye till the morrow.
+
+The following tests showed me that the leaf-covered twig which
+accidentally enlightened me might be replaced by any other substance.
+Some time before the visitors were expected I placed the female on a bed
+of cloth or flannel, card or paper. I even subjected her to the rigours
+of a camp-bed of wood, glass, marble, and metal. All these objects,
+after a contact of sufficient duration, had the same attraction for the
+males as the female moth herself. They retained this property for a
+longer or shorter time, according to their nature. Cardboard, flannel,
+dust, sand, and porous objects retained it longest. Metals, marble, and
+glass, on the contrary, quickly lost their efficacy. Finally, anything
+on which the female had rested communicated its virtues by contact;
+witness the butterflies crowding on the straw-bottomed chair after the
+twig fell to the ground.
+
+Using one of the most favourable materials--flannel, for example--I
+witnessed a curious sight. I placed a morsel of flannel on which the
+mother moth had been lying all the morning at the bottom of a long
+test-tube or narrow-necked bottle, just permitting of the passage of a
+male moth. The visitors entered the vessels, struggled, and did not know
+how to extricate themselves. I had devised a trap by means of which I
+could exterminate the tribe. Delivering the prisoners, and removing the
+flannel, which I placed in a perfectly closed box, I found that they
+re-entered the trap; attracted by the effluvia that the flannel had
+communicated to the glass.
+
+I was now convinced. To call the moths of the countryside to the
+wedding-feast, to warn them at a distance and to guide them the nubile
+female emits an odour of extreme subtlety, imperceptible to our own
+olfactory sense-organs. Even with their noses touching the moth, none of
+my household has been able to perceive the faintest odour; not even the
+youngest, whose sensibility is as yet unvitiated.
+
+This scent readily impregnates any object on which the female rests for
+any length of time, when this object becomes a centre of attraction as
+active as the moth herself until the effluvium is evaporated.
+
+Nothing visible betrays the lure. On a sheet of paper, a recent
+resting-place, around which the visitors had crowded, there was no
+visible trace, no moisture; the surface was as clean as before the
+impregnation.
+
+The product is elaborated slowly, and must accumulate a little before it
+reveals its full power. Taken from her couch and placed elsewhere the
+female loses her attractiveness for the moment and is an object of
+indifference; it is to the resting-place, saturated by long contact,
+that the arrivals fly. But the female soon regains her power.
+
+The emission of the warning effluvium is more or less delayed according
+to the species. The recently metamorphosed female must mature a little
+and her organs must settle to their work. Born in the morning, the
+female of the Great Peacock moth sometimes has visitors the night of the
+same day; but more often on the second day, after a preparation of forty
+hours or so. The Oak Eggar does not publish her banns of marriage before
+the third or fourth day.
+
+Let us return for a moment to the problematical function of the antennæ.
+The male Oak Eggar has a sumptuous pair, as has the Great Peacock or
+Emperor Moth. Are we to regard these silky "feelers" as a kind of
+directing compass?--I resumed, but without attaching much importance to
+the matter, my previous experiment of amputation. None of those operated
+on returned. Do not let us draw conclusions from that fact alone. We saw
+in the case of the Great Peacock that more serious reasons than the
+truncation of the antennæ made return as a rule impossible.
+
+Moreover, a second Bombyx or Eggar, the Clover Moth, very like the Oak
+Eggar, and like it superbly plumed, poses us a very difficult problem.
+It is fairly abundant around my home; even in the orchard I find its
+cocoon, which is easily confounded with that of the Oak Eggar. I was at
+first deceived by the resemblance. From six cocoons, which I expected to
+yield Oak Eggars, I obtained, about the end of August, six females of
+the other species. Well: about these six females, born in my house,
+never a male appeared, although they were undoubtedly present in the
+neighbourhood.
+
+If the ample and feathery antennæ are truly sense-organs, which receive
+information of distant objects, why were not my richly plumed neighbours
+aware of what was passing in my study? Why did their feathery "feelers"
+leave them in ignorance of events which would have brought flocks of the
+other Eggar? Once more, the organ does not determine the aptitude. One
+individual or species is gifted, but another is not, despite an organic
+equality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A TRUFFLE-HUNTER: THE _BOLBOCERAS GALLICUS_
+
+
+In the matter of physics we hear of nothing to-day but the Röntgen rays,
+which penetrate opaque bodies and photograph the invisible. A splendid
+discovery; but nothing very remarkable as compared with the surprises
+reserved for us by the future, when, better instructed as to the why and
+wherefore of things than now, and supplementing our feeble senses by
+means of science, we shall succeed in rivalling, however imperfectly,
+the sensorial acuteness of the lower animals.
+
+How enviable, in how many cases, is the superiority of the beasts! It
+makes us realise the insufficiency of our impressions, and the very
+indifferent efficacy of our sense-organs; it proclaims realities which
+amaze us, so far are they beyond our own attributes.
+
+A miserable caterpillar, the Processional caterpillar, found on the
+pine-tree, has its back covered with meteorological spiracles which
+sense the coming weather and foretell the storm; the bird of prey, that
+incomparable watchman, sees the fallen mule from the heights of the
+clouds; the blind bats guided their flight without collision through the
+inextricable labyrinth of threads devised by Spallanzani; the carrier
+pigeon, at a hundred leagues from home, infallibly regains its loft
+across immensities which it has never known; and within the limits of
+its more modest powers a bee, the Chalicodoma, also adventures into the
+unknown, accomplishing its long journey and returning to its group of
+cells.
+
+Those who have never seen a dog seeking truffles have missed one of the
+finest achievements of the olfactory sense. Absorbed in his duties, the
+animal goes forward, scenting the wind, at a moderate pace. He stops,
+questions the soil with his nostrils, and, without excitement, scratches
+the earth a few times with one paw. "There it is, master!" his eyes seem
+to say: "there it is! On the faith of a dog, there are truffles here!"
+
+He says truly. The master digs at the point indicated. If the spade goes
+astray the dog corrects the digger, sniffing at the bottom of the hole.
+Have no fear that stones and roots will confuse him; in spite of depth
+and obstacles, the truffle will be found. A dog's nose cannot lie.
+
+I have referred to the dog's speciality as a subtle sense of smell. That
+is certainly what I mean, if you will understand by that that the nasal
+passages of the animal are the seat of the perceptive organ; but is the
+thing perceived always a simple smell in the vulgar acceptation of the
+term--an effluvium such as our own senses perceive? I have certain
+reasons for doubting this, which I will proceed to relate.
+
+On various occasions I have had the good fortune to accompany a
+truffle-dog of first-class capacities on his rounds. Certainly there was
+not much outside show about him, this artist that I so desired to see at
+work; a dog of doubtful breed, placid and meditative; uncouth,
+ungroomed, and quite inadmissible to the intimacies of the hearthrug.
+Talent and poverty are often mated.
+
+His master, a celebrated _rabassier_[5] of the village, being convinced
+that my object was not to steal his professional secrets, and so sooner
+or later to set up in business as a competitor, admitted me of his
+company, a favour of which he was not prodigal. From the moment of his
+regarding me not as an apprentice, but merely as a curious spectator,
+who drew and wrote about subterranean vegetable affairs, but had no wish
+to carry to market my bagful of these glories of the Christmas goose,
+the excellent man lent himself generously to my designs.
+
+It was agreed between us that the dog should act according to his own
+instincts, receiving the customary reward, after each discovery, no
+matter what its size, of a crust of bread the size of a finger-nail.
+Every spot scratched by his paw should be excavated, and the object
+indicated was to be extracted without reference to its marketable value.
+In no case was the experience of the master to intervene in order to
+divert the dog from a spot where the general aspect of things indicated
+that no commercial results need be expected, for I was more concerned
+with the miserable specimens unfit for the market than with the choice
+specimens, though of course the latter were welcomed.
+
+Thus conducted, this subterranean botanising was extremely fruitful.
+With that perspicacious nose of his the dog obtained for me both large
+and small, fresh and putrid, odorous and inodorous, fragrant and
+offensive. I was amazed at my collection, which comprised the greater
+number of the hypogenous fungi of the neighbourhood.
+
+What a variety of structure, and above all of odour, the primordial
+quality in this question of scent! There were some that had no
+appreciable scent beyond a vague fungoid flavour, more or less common to
+all. Others smelt of turnips, of sour cabbage; some were fetid,
+sufficiently so to make the house of the collector noisome. Only the
+true truffle possessed the aroma dear to epicures. If odour, as we
+understand it, is the dog's only guide, how does he manage to follow
+that guide amidst all these totally different odours? Is he warned of
+the contents of the subsoil by a general emanation, by that fungoid
+effluvium common to all the species? Thus a somewhat embarrassing
+question arises.
+
+I paid special attention to the ordinary toadstools and mushrooms, which
+announced their near advent by cracking the surface of the soil. Now
+these points, where my eyes divined the cryptogam pushing back the soil
+with its button-like heads, these points, where the ordinary fungoid
+odour was certainly very pronounced, were never selected by the dog. He
+passed them disdainfully, without a sniff, without a stroke of the paw.
+Yet the fungi were underground, and their odour was similar to that I
+have already referred to.
+
+I came back from my outings with the conviction that the truffle-finding
+nose has some better guide than odour such as we with our sense-organs
+conceive it. It must perceive effluvia of another order as well;
+entirely mysterious to us, and therefore not utilised. Light has its
+dark rays--rays without effect upon our retinas, but not apparently on
+all. Why should not the domain of smell have its secret emanations,
+unknown to our senses and perceptible to a different sense-organ?
+
+If the scent of the dog leaves us perplexed in the sense that we cannot
+possibly say precisely, cannot even suspect what it is that the dog
+perceives, at least it is clear that it would be erroneous to refer
+everything to human standards. The world of sensations is far larger
+than the limits of our own sensibility. What numbers of facts relating
+to the interplay of natural forces must escape us for want of
+sufficiently sensitive organs!
+
+The unknown--that inexhaustible field in which the men of the future
+will try their strength--has harvests in store for us beside which our
+present knowledge would show as no more than a wretched gleaning. Under
+the sickle of science will one day fall the sheaves whose grain would
+appear to-day as senseless paradoxes. Scientific dreams? No, if you
+please, but undeniable positive realities, affirmed by the brute
+creation, which in certain respects has so great an advantage over us.
+
+Despite his long practice of his calling, despite the scent of the
+object he was seeking, the _rabassier_ could not divine the presence of
+the truffle, which ripens in winter under the soil, at a depth of a foot
+or two; he must have the help of a dog or a pig, whose scent is able to
+discover the secrets of the soil. These secrets are known to various
+insects even better than to our two auxiliaries. They have in
+exceptional perfection the power of discovering the tubers on which
+their larvæ are nourished.
+
+From truffles dug up in a spoiled condition, peopled with vermin, and
+placed in that condition, with a bed of fresh sand, in a glass jar, I
+have in the past obtained a small red beetle, known as the
+truffle-beetle (_Anisotoma cinnamomea_, Panz.), and various Diptera,
+among which is a Sapromyzon which, by its sluggish flight and its
+fragile form, recalls the _Scatophaga scybalaria_, the yellow velvety
+fly which is found in human excrement in the autumn. The latter finds
+its refuge on the surface of the soil, at the foot of a wall or hedge or
+under a bush; but how does the former know just where the truffle lies
+under the soil, or at what depth? To penetrate to that depth, or to seek
+in the subsoil, is impossible. Its fragile limbs, barely able to move a
+grain of sand, its extended wings, which would bar all progress in a
+narrow passage, and its costume of bristling silken pile, which would
+prevent it from slipping through crevices, all make such a task
+impossible. The Sapromyzon is forced to lay its eggs on the surface of
+the soil, but it does so on the precise spot which overlies the truffle,
+for the grubs would perish if they had to wander at random in search of
+their provender, the truffle being always thinly sown.
+
+The truffle fly is informed by the sense of smell of the points
+favourable to its maternal plans; it has the talents of the truffle-dog,
+and doubtless in a higher degree, for it knows naturally, without having
+been taught, what its rival only acquires through an artificial
+education.
+
+It would be not uninteresting to follow the Sapromyzon in its search in
+the open woods. Such a feat did not strike me as particularly possible;
+the insect is rare, flies off quickly when alarmed, and is lost to
+view. To observe it closely under such conditions would mean a loss of
+time and an assiduity of which I do not feel capable. Another
+truffle-hunter will show us what we could hardly learn from the fly.
+
+This is a pretty little black beetle, with a pale, velvety abdomen; a
+spherical insect, as large as a biggish cherry-stone. Its official title
+is _Bolboceras gallicus_, Muls. By rubbing the end of the abdomen
+against the edge of the wing-cases it produces a gentle chirping sound
+like the cheeping of nestlings when the mother-bird returns to the nest
+with food. The male wears a graceful horn on his head; a duplicate, in
+little, of that of the _Copris hispanus_.
+
+Deceived by this horn, I at first took the insect for a member of the
+corporation of dung-beetles, and as such I reared it in captivity. I
+offered it the kind of diet most appreciated by its supposed relatives,
+but never, never would it touch such food. For whom did I take it? Fie
+upon me! To offer ordure to an epicure! It required, if not precisely
+the truffle known to our _chefs_ and _gourmets_, at least its
+equivalent.
+
+This characteristic I grasped only after patient investigation. At the
+southern foot of the hills of Sérignan, not far from the village, is a
+wood of maritime pines alternating with rows of cypress. There, towards
+Toussaint, after the autumnal rains, you may find an abundance of the
+mushrooms or "toadstools" that affect the conifers; especially the
+delicious Lactaris, which turns green if the points are rubbed and drips
+blood if broken. In the warm days of autumn this is the favourite
+promenade of the members of my household, being distant enough to
+exercise their young legs, but near enough not to fatigue them.
+
+There one finds and sees all manner of things: old magpies' nests, great
+bundles of twigs; jays, wrangling after filling their crops with the
+acorns of the neighbouring oaks; rabbits, whose little white upturned
+scuts go bobbing away through the rosemary bushes; dung-beetles, which
+are storing food for the winter and throwing up their rubbish on the
+threshold of their burrows. And then the fine sand, soft to the touch,
+easily tunnelled, easily excavated or built into tiny huts which we
+thatch with moss and surmount with the end of a reed for a chimney; and
+the delicious meal of apples, and the sound of the æolian harps which
+softly whisper among the boughs of the pines!
+
+For the children it is a real paradise, where they can receive the
+reward of well-learned lessons. The grown-ups also can share in the
+enjoyment. As for myself, for long years I have watched two insects
+which are found there without getting to the bottom of their domestic
+secrets. One is the _Minotaurus typhæus_, whose male carries on his
+corselet three spines which point forward. The old writers called him
+the Phalangist, on account of his armour, which is comparable to the
+three ranks of lances of the Macedonian phalanx.
+
+This is a robust creature, heedless of the winter. All during the cold
+season, whenever the weather relents a little, it issues discreetly from
+its lodging, at nightfall, and gathers, in the immediate neighbourhood
+of its dwelling, a few fragments of sheep-dung and ancient olives which
+the summer suns have dried. It stacks them in a row at the end of its
+burrow, closes the door, and consumes them. When the food is broken up
+and exhausted of its meagre juices it returns to the surface and renews
+its store. Thus the winter passes, famine being unknown unless the
+weather is exceptionally hard.
+
+The second insect which I have observed for so long among the pines is
+the Bolboceras. Its burrows, scattered here and there, higgledy-piggledy
+with those of the Minotaur, are easy to recognise. The burrow of the
+Phalangist is surmounted by a voluminous rubbish-dump, the materials of
+which are piled in the form of a cylinder as long as the finger. Each of
+these dumps is a load of refuse and rubbish pushed outward by the little
+sapper, which shoulders it up from below. The orifice is closed whenever
+the insect is at home, enlarging its tunnel or peacefully enjoying the
+contents of its larder.
+
+The lodging of the Bolboceras is open and surrounded simply by a mound
+of sand. Its depth is not great; a foot or hardly more. It descends
+vertically in an easily shifted soil. It is therefore easy to inspect
+it, if we take care first of all to dig a trench so that the wall of the
+burrow may be afterwards cut away, slice by slice, with the blade of a
+knife. The burrow is thus laid bare along its whole extent, from the
+surface to the bottom, until nothing remains of it but a
+demi-cylindrical groove.
+
+Often the violated dwelling is empty. The insect has departed in the
+night, having finished its business there. It is a nomad, a
+night-walker, which leaves its dwelling without regret and easily
+acquires another. Often, on the other hand, the insect will be found at
+the bottom of the burrow; sometimes a male, sometimes a female, but
+always alone. The two sexes, equally zealous in excavating their
+burrows, work apart without collaboration. This is no family mansion for
+the rearing of offspring; it is a temporary dwelling, made by each
+insect for its own benefit.
+
+Sometimes the burrow contains nothing but the well-sinker surprised at
+its work: sometimes--and not rarely--the hermit will be found embracing
+a small subterranean fungus, entire or partly consumed. It presses it
+convulsively to its bosom and will not be parted from it. This is the
+insect's booty: its worldly wealth. Scattered crumbs inform us that we
+have surprised the beetle at a feast.
+
+Let us deprive the insect of its booty. We find a sort of irregular,
+rugged, purse-like object, varying in size from the largeness of a pea
+to that of a cherry. The exterior is reddish, covered with fine warts,
+having an appearance not unlike shagreen; the interior, which has no
+communication with the exterior, is smooth and white. The pores, ovoidal
+and diaphanous, are contained, in groups of eight, in long capsules.
+From these characteristics we recognise an underground cryptogam, known
+to the botanists as _Hydnocystis arenaria_, and a relation of the
+truffle.
+
+This discovery begins to throw a light on the habits of the Bolboceras
+and the cause of its burrows, so frequently renewed. In the calm of the
+twilight the little truffle-hunter goes abroad, chirping softly to
+encourage itself. It explores the soil, and interrogates it as to its
+contents, exactly as does the truffle-gatherer's dog. The sense of smell
+warns it that the desired object is beneath it, covered by a few inches
+of sand. Certain of the precise point where the treasure lies, it sinks
+a well vertically downwards, and infallibly reaches it. So long as there
+is food left it does not again leave the burrow. It feasts happily at
+the bottom of its well, heedless of the open or imperfectly closed
+burrow.
+
+When no more food is left it removes in search of further booty, which
+becomes the occasion of another burrow, this too in its turn to be
+abandoned. So many truffles eaten necessitate so many burrows, which are
+mere dining-rooms or pilgrim's larders. Thus pass the autumn and the
+spring, the seasons of the _Hydnocystis_, in the pleasures of the table
+and removal from one house to another.
+
+To study the insect _rabassier_ in my own house I had to obtain a small
+store of its favourite food. To seek it myself, by digging at random,
+would have resulted merely in waste of time; the little cryptogam is not
+so common that I could hope to find it without a guide. The
+truffle-hunter must have his dog; my guide should be the Bolboceras
+itself. Behold me, then, a _rabassier_ of a kind hitherto unknown. I
+have told my secret, although I fear my original teacher will laugh at
+me if he ever hears of my singular form of competition.
+
+The subterranean fungi grow only at certain points, but they are often
+found in groups. Now, the beetle has passed this way; with its subtle
+sense of smell it has recognised the ground as favourable; for its
+burrows are numerous. Let us dig, then, in the neighbourhood of these
+holes. The sign is reliable; in a few hours, thanks to the signs of the
+Bolboceras, I obtain a handful of specimens of the _Hydnocystis_. It is
+the first time I have ever found this fungus in the ground. Let us now
+capture the insect--an easy matter, for we have only to excavate the
+burrows.
+
+The same evening I begin my experiments. A wide earthen pan is filled
+with fresh sand which has been passed through a sieve. With the aid of a
+stick the thickness of a finger I make six vertical holes in the sand:
+they are conveniently far apart, and are eight inches in depth. A
+_Hydnocystis_ is placed at the bottom of each; a fine straw is then
+inserted, to show me the precise position later. Finally the six holes
+are filled with sand which is beaten down so that all is firm. When the
+surface is perfectly level, and everywhere the same, except for the six
+straws, which mean nothing to the insect, I release my beetles, covering
+them with a wire-gauze cover. They are eight in number.
+
+At first I see nothing but the inevitable fatigue due to the incidents
+of exhumation, transport, and confinement in a strange place. My exiles
+try to escape: they climb the wire walls, and finally all take to earth
+at the edge of their enclosure. Night comes, and all is quiet. Two hours
+later I pay my prisoners a last visit. Three are still buried under a
+thin layer of sand. The other five have sunk each a vertical well at the
+very foot of the straws which indicate the position of the buried fungi.
+Next morning the sixth straw has its burrow like the rest.
+
+It is time to see what is happening underground. The sand is
+methodically removed in vertical slices. At the bottom of each burrow is
+a Bolboceras engaged in eating its truffle.
+
+Let us repeat the experiment with the partly eaten fungi. The result is
+the same. In one short night the food is divined under its covering of
+sand and attained by means of a burrow which descends as straight as a
+plumb-line to the point where the fungus lies. There has been no
+hesitation, no trial excavations which have nearly discovered the object
+of search. This is proved by the surface of the soil, which is
+everywhere just as I left it when smoothing it down. The insect could
+not make more directly for the objective if guided by the sense of
+sight; it digs always at the foot of the straw, my private sign. The
+truffle-dog, sniffing the ground in search of truffles, hardly attains
+this degree of precision.
+
+Does the _Hydnocystis_ possess a very keen odour, such as we should
+expect to give an unmistakable warning to the senses of the consumer? By
+no means. To our own sense of smell it is a neutral sort of object, with
+no appreciable scent whatever. A little pebble taken from the soil would
+affect our senses quite as strongly with its vague savour of fresh
+earth. As a finder of underground fungi the Bolboceras is the rival of
+the dog. It would be the superior of the dog if it could generalise; it
+is, however, a rigid specialist, recognising nothing but the
+_Hydnocystis_. No other fungus, to my knowledge, either attracts it or
+induces it to dig.[6]
+
+Both dog and beetle are very near the subsoil which they scrutinise; the
+object they seek is at no great depth. At a greater depth neither dog
+nor insect could perceive such subtle effluvia, nor even the odour of
+the truffle. To attract insect or animal at a great distance powerful
+odours are necessary, such as our grosser senses can perceive. Then the
+exploiters of the odorous substance hasten from afar off and from all
+directions.
+
+If for purposes of study I require specimens of such insects as dissect
+dead bodies I expose a dead mole to the sunlight in a distant corner of
+my orchard. As soon as the creature is swollen with the gases of
+putrefaction, and the fur commences to fall from the greenish skin, a
+host of insects arrive--Silphidæ, Dermestes, Horn-beetles, and
+Necrophori--of which not a single specimen could ever be obtained in my
+garden or even in the neighbourhood without the use of such a bait.
+
+They have been warned by the sense of smell, although far away in all
+directions, while I myself can escape from the stench by recoiling a few
+paces. In comparison with their sense of smell mine is miserable; but in
+this case, both for me and for them, there is really what our language
+calls an odour.
+
+I can do still better with the flower of the Serpent Arum (_Arum
+dracunculus_), so noteworthy both for its form and its incomparable
+stench. Imagine a wide lanceolated blade of a vinous purple, some twenty
+inches in length, which is twisted at the base into an ovoid purse about
+the size of a hen's egg. Through the opening of this capsule rises the
+central column, a long club of a livid green, surrounded at the base by
+two rings, one of ovaries and the other of stamens. Such, briefly, is
+the flower or rather the inflorescence of the Serpent Arum.
+
+For two days it exhales a horrible stench of putrid flesh; a dead dog
+could not produce such a terrible odour. Set free by the sun and the
+wind, it is odious, intolerable. Let us brave the infected atmosphere
+and approach; we shall witness a curious spectacle.
+
+Warned by the stench, which travels far and wide, a host of insects are
+flying hither; such insects as dissect the corpses of frogs, adders,
+lizards, hedgehogs, moles and field-mice--creatures that the peasant
+finds beneath his spade and throws disembowelled on the path. They fall
+upon the great leaf, whose livid purple gives it the appearance of a
+strip of putrid flesh; they dance with impatience, intoxicated by the
+corpse-like odour which to them is so delicious; they roll down its
+steep face and are engulfed in the capsule. After a few hours of hot
+sunlight the receptacle is full.
+
+Let us look into the capsule through the narrow opening. Nowhere else
+could you see such a mob of insects. It is a delirious mixture of backs
+and bellies, wing-covers and legs, which swarms and rolls upon itself,
+rising and falling, seething and boiling, shaken by continual
+convulsions, clicking and squeaking with a sound of entangled
+articulations. It is a bacchanal, a general access of delirium tremens.
+
+A few, but only a few, emerge from the mass. By the central mast or the
+walls of the purse they climb to the opening. Do they wish to take
+flight and escape? By no means. On the threshold of the cavity, while
+already almost at liberty, they allow themselves to fall into the
+whirlpool, retaken by their madness. The lure is irresistible. None will
+break free from the swarm until the evening, or perhaps the next day,
+when the heady fumes will have evaporated. Then the units of the swarm
+disengage themselves from their mutual embraces, and slowly, as though
+regretfully, take flight and depart. At the bottom of this devil's purse
+remains a heap of the dead and dying, of severed limbs and wing-covers
+torn off; the inevitable sequels of the frantic orgy. Soon the woodlice,
+earwigs, and ants will appear to prey upon the injured.
+
+What are these insects doing? Were they the prisoners of the flower,
+converted into a trap which allowed them to enter but prevented their
+escape by means of a palisade of converging hairs? No, they were not
+prisoners; they had full liberty to escape, as is proved by the final
+exodus, which is in no way impeded. Deceived by a fallacious odour, were
+they endeavouring to lay and establish their eggs as they would have
+done under the shelter of a corpse? No; there is no trace of eggs in the
+purse of the Arum. They came convoked by the odour of a decaying body,
+their supreme delight; an intoxication seized them, and they rushed into
+the eddying swarm to take part in a festival of carrion-eaters.
+
+I was anxious to count the number of those attracted. At the height of
+the bacchanal I emptied the purse into a bottle. Intoxicated as they
+were, many would escape my census, and I wished to ensure its accuracy.
+A few drops of carbon bisulphide quieted the swarm. The census proved
+that there were more than four hundred insects in the purse of the Arum.
+The collection consisted entirely of two species--Dermestes and
+Saprinidæ--both eager prospectors of carrion and animal detritus during
+the spring.
+
+My friend Bull, an honest dog all his lifetime if ever there was one,
+amongst other eccentricities had the following: finding in the dust of
+the road the shrivelled body of a mole, flattened by the feet of
+pedestrians, mummified by the heat of the sun, he would slide himself
+over it, from the tip of his nose to the root of his tail, he would rub
+himself against it deliciously over and over again, shaken with nervous
+spasms, and roll upon it first in one direction, then in the other.
+
+It was his sachet of musk, his flask of eau-de-Cologne. Perfumed to his
+liking, he would rise, shake himself, and proceed on his way, delighted
+with his toilet. Do not let us scold him, and above all do not let us
+discuss the matter. There are all kinds of tastes in a world.
+
+Why should there not be insects with similar habits among the amateurs
+of corpse-like savours? We see Dermestes and Saprinidæ hastening to the
+arum-flower. All day long they writhe and wriggle in a swarm, although
+perfectly free to escape; numbers perish in the tumultuous orgy. They
+are not retained by the desire of food, for the arum provides them with
+nothing eatable; they do not come to breed, for they take care not to
+establish their grubs in that place of famine. What are these frenzied
+creatures doing? Apparently they are intoxicated with fetidity, as was
+Bull when he rolled on the putrid body of a mole.
+
+This intoxication draws them from all parts of the neighbourhood,
+perhaps over considerable distances; how far we do not know. The
+Necrophori, in quest of a place where to establish their family, travel
+great distances to find the corpses of small animals, informed by such
+odours as offend our own senses at a considerable distance.
+
+The _Hydnocystis_, the food of the Bolboceras, emits no such brutal
+emanations as these, which readily diffuse themselves through space; it
+is inodorous, at least to our senses. The insect which seeks it does not
+come from a distance; it inhabits the places wherein the cryptogam is
+found. Faint as are the effluvia of this subterranean fungus, the
+prospecting epicure, being specially equipped, perceives them with the
+greatest ease; but then he operates at close range, from the surface of
+the soil. The truffle-dog is in the same case; he searches with his nose
+to the ground. The true truffle, however, the essential object of his
+search, possesses a fairly vivid odour.
+
+But what are we to say of the Great Peacock moth and the Oak Eggar, both
+of which find their captive female? They come from the confines of the
+horizon. What do they perceive at that distance? Is it really an odour
+such as we perceive and understand? I cannot bring myself to believe it.
+
+The dog finds the truffle by smelling the earth quite close to the
+tuber; but he finds his master at great distances by following his
+footsteps, which he recognises by their scent. Yet can he find the
+truffle at a hundred yards? or his master, in the complete absence of a
+trail? No. With all his fineness of scent, the dog is incapable of such
+feats as are realised by the moth, which is embarrassed neither by
+distance nor the absence of a trail.
+
+It is admitted that odour, such as affects our olfactory sense, consists
+of molecules emanating from the body whose odour is perceived. The
+odorous material becomes diffused through the air to which it
+communicates its agreeable or disagreeable aroma. Odour and taste are to
+a certain extent the same; in both there is contact between the material
+particles causing the impression and the sensitive papillæ affected by
+the impression.
+
+That the Serpent Arum should elaborate a powerful essence which
+impregnates the atmosphere and makes it noisome is perfectly simple and
+comprehensible. Thus the Dermestes and Saprinidæ, those lovers of
+corpse-like odours, are warned by molecular diffusion. In the same way
+the putrid frog emits and disseminates around it atoms of putrescence
+which travel to a considerable distance and so attract and delight the
+Necrophorus, the carrion-beetle.
+
+But in the case of the Great Peacock or the Oak Eggar, what molecules
+are actually disengaged? None, according to our sense of smell. And yet
+this lure, to which the males hasten so speedily, must saturate with its
+molecules an enormous hemisphere of air--a hemisphere some miles in
+diameter! What the atrocious fetor of the Arum cannot do the absence of
+odour accomplishes! However divisible matter may be, the mind refuses
+such conclusions. It would be to redden a lake with a grain of carmine;
+to fill space with a mere nothing.
+
+Moreover, where my laboratory was previously saturated with powerful
+odours which should have overcome and annihilated any particularly
+delicate effluvium, the male moths arrived without the least indication
+of confusion or delay.
+
+A loud noise stifles a feeble note and prevents it from being heard; a
+brilliant light eclipses a feeble glimmer. Heavy waves overcome and
+obliterate ripples. In the two cases cited we have waves of the same
+nature. But a clap of thunder does not diminish the feeblest jet of
+light; the dazzling glory of the sun will not muffle the slightest
+sound. Of different natures, light and sound do not mutually interact.
+
+My experiment with spike-lavender, naphthaline, and other odours seems
+to prove that odour proceeds from two sources. For emission substitute
+undulation, and the problem of the Great Peacock moth is explained.
+Without any material emanation a luminous point shakes the ether with
+its vibrations and fills with light a sphere of indefinite magnitude.
+So, or in some such manner, must the warning effluvium of the mother Oak
+Eggar operate. The moth does not emit molecules; but something about it
+vibrates, causing waves capable of propagation to distances incompatible
+with an actual diffusion of matter.
+
+From this point of view, smell would have two domains--that of particles
+dissolved in the air and that of etheric waves.[7] The former domain
+alone is known to us. It is also known to the insect. It is this that
+warns the Saprinidæ of the fetid arum, the Silphidæ and the Necrophori
+of the putrid mole.
+
+The second category of odour, far superior in its action through space,
+escapes us completely, because we lack the essential sensory equipment.
+The Great Peacock moth and the Oak Eggar know it at the time of their
+nuptial festivities. Many others must share it in differing degrees,
+according to the exigencies of their way of life.
+
+Like light, odour has its X-rays. Let science, instructed by the insect,
+one day give us a radiograph sensitive to odours, and this artificial
+nose will open a new world of marvels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ELEPHANT-BEETLE
+
+
+Some of our machines have extraordinary-looking mechanisms, which remain
+inexplicable so long as they are seen in repose. But wait until the
+whole is in motion; then the uncouth-looking contrivance, with its
+cog-wheels interacting and its connecting-rods oscillating, will reveal
+the ingenious combination in which all things are skilfully disposed to
+produce the desired effects. It is the same with certain insects; with
+certain weevils, for instance, and notably with the Acorn-beetles or
+Balanini, which are adapted, as their name denotes, to the exploitation
+of acorns, nuts, and other similar fruits.
+
+The most remarkable, in my part of France, is the Acorn Elephant
+(_Balaninus elephas_, Sch.). It is well named; the very name evokes a
+mental picture of the insect. It is a living caricature, this beetle
+with the prodigious snout. The latter is no thicker than a horsehair,
+reddish in colour, almost rectilinear, and of such length that in order
+not to stumble the insect is forced to carry it stiffly outstretched
+like a lance in rest. What is the use of this embarrassing pike, this
+ridiculous snout?
+
+Here I can see some reader shrug his shoulders. Well, if the only end of
+life is to make money by hook or by crook, such questions are certainly
+ridiculous.
+
+Happily there are some to whom nothing in the majestic riddle of the
+universe is little. They know of what humble materials the bread of
+thought is kneaded; a nutriment no less necessary than the bread made
+from wheat; and they know that both labourers and inquirers nourish the
+world with an accumulation of crumbs.
+
+Let us take pity on the question, and proceed. Without seeing it at
+work, we already suspect that the fantastic beak of the Balaninus is a
+drill analogous to those which we ourselves use in order to perforate
+hard materials. Two diamond-points, the mandibles, form the terminal
+armature of the drill. Like the Larinidæ, but under conditions of
+greater difficulty, the Curculionidæ must use the implement in order to
+prepare the way for the installation of their eggs.
+
+But however well founded our suspicion may be, it is not a certitude. I
+can only discover the secret by watching the insect at work.
+
+Chance, the servant of those that patiently solicit it, grants me a
+sight of the acorn-beetle at work, in the earlier half of October. My
+surprise is great, for at this late season all industrial activity is as
+a rule at an end. The first touch of cold and the entomological season
+is over.
+
+To-day, moreover, it is wild weather; the _bise_ is moaning, glacial,
+cracking one's lips. One needs a robust faith to go out on such a day in
+order to inspect the thickets. Yet if the beetle with the long beak
+exploits the acorns, as I think it does, the time presses if I am to
+catch it at its work. The acorns, still green, have acquired their full
+growth. In two or three weeks they will attain the chestnut brown of
+perfect maturity, quickly followed by their fall.
+
+My seemingly futile pilgrimage ends in success. On the evergreen oaks I
+surprise a Balaninus with the trunk half sunk in an acorn. Careful
+observation is impossible while the branches are shaken by the
+_mistral_. I detach the twig and lay it gently upon the ground. The
+insect takes no notice of its removal; it continues its work. I crouch
+beside it, sheltered from the storm behind a mass of underwood, and
+watch operations.
+
+Shod with adhesive sandals which later on, in my laboratory, will allow
+it rapidly to climb a vertical sheet of glass, the elephant-beetle is
+solidly established on the smooth, steep curvature of the acorn. It is
+working its drill. Slowly and awkwardly it moves around its implanted
+weapon, describing a semicircle whose centre is the point of the drill,
+and then another semicircle in the reverse direction. This is repeated
+over and over again; the movement, in short, is identical with that we
+give to a bradawl when boring a hole in a plank.
+
+Little by little the rostrum sinks into the acorn. At the end of an hour
+it has entirely disappeared. A short period of repose follows, and
+finally the instrument is withdrawn. What is going to happen next?
+Nothing on this occasion. The Balaninus abandons its work and solemnly
+retires, disappearing among the withered leaves. For the day there is
+nothing more to be learned.
+
+But my interest is now awakened. On calm days, more favourable to the
+entomologist, I return to the woods, and I soon have sufficient insects
+to people my laboratory cages. Foreseeing a serious difficulty in the
+slowness with which the beetle labours, I prefer to study them indoors,
+with the unlimited leisure only to be found in one's own home.
+
+The precaution is fortunate. If I had tried to continue as I began, and
+to observe the Balaninus in the liberty of the woods, I should never,
+even with the greatest good fortune, have had the patience to follow to
+the end the choice of the acorn, the boring of the hole, and the laying
+of the eggs, so meticulously deliberate is the insect in all its
+affairs; as the reader will soon be able to judge.
+
+Three species of oak-tree compose the copse inhabited by the Balaninus:
+the evergreen oak and the pubescent oak, which would become fine trees
+if the woodman would give them time, and the kermes oak, a mere scrubby
+bush. The first species, which is the most abundant of the three, is
+that preferred by the Balaninus. The acorn is firm, elongated, and of
+moderate size; the cup is covered with little warts. The acorns of the
+pubescent oak are usually stunted, short, wrinkled, and fluted, and
+subject to premature fall. The aridity of the hills of Sérignan is
+unfavourable to them. The Acorn-beetles accept them only in default of
+something better.
+
+The kermes, a dwarf oak, a ridiculous tree which a man can jump over,
+surprises me by the wealth of its acorns, which are large, ovoidal
+growths, the cup being covered with scales. The Balaninus could not make
+a better choice; the acorn affords a safe, strong dwelling and a
+capacious storehouse of food.
+
+A few twigs from these three trees, well provided with acorns, are
+arranged under the domes of some of my wire-gauze covers, the ends being
+plunged into a glass of water which will keep them fresh. A suitable
+number of couples are then introduced into the cages; and the latter are
+placed at the windows of my study, where they obtain the direct sunlight
+for the greater part of the day. Let us now arm ourselves with patience,
+and keep a constant watch upon events. We shall be rewarded; the
+exploitation of the acorn deserves to be seen.
+
+Matters do not drag on for very long. Two days after these preparations
+I arrive at the precise moment when the task is commenced. The mother,
+larger than the male, and equipped with a longer drill, is inspecting
+her acorn, doubtless with a view to depositing her eggs.
+
+She goes over it step by step, from the point to the stem, both above
+and below. On the warty cup progression is easy; over the rest of the
+surface it would be impossible, were not the soles of her feet shod with
+adhesive pads, which enable her to retain her hold in any position.
+Without the least uncertainty of footing, the insect walks with equal
+facility over the top or bottom or up the sides of the slippery fruit.
+
+The choice is made; the acorn is recognised as being of good quality.
+The time has come to sink the hole. On account of its excessive length
+it is not easy to manoeuvre the beak. To obtain the best mechanical
+effect the instrument must be applied perpendicularly to the convex
+surface of the acorn, and the embarrassing implement which is carried in
+front of the insect when the latter is not at work must now be held in
+such a position as to be beneath the worker.
+
+To obtain this result the insect rears herself upon her hind legs,
+supporting herself upon the tripod formed by the end of the wing-covers
+and the posterior tarsi. It would be hard to imagine anything more
+curious than this little carpenter, as she stands upright and brings her
+nasal bradawl down towards her body.
+
+Now the drill is held plumb against the surface, and the boring
+commences. The method is that I witnessed in the wood on the day of the
+storm. Very slowly the insect veers round from right to left, then from
+left to right. Her drill is not a spiral gimlet which will sink itself
+by a constant rotary motion; it is a bradawl, or rather a trochar, which
+progresses by little bites, by alternative erosion, first in one
+direction, then the other.
+
+Before continuing, let me record an accident which is too striking to be
+passed over. On various occasions I have found the insect dead in the
+midst of its task. The body is in an extraordinary position, which would
+be laughable if death were not always a serious thing, above all when it
+comes suddenly, in the midst of labour.
+
+The drill is implanted in the acorn just a little beyond the tip; the
+work was only commenced. At the top of the drill, at right angles to it,
+the Balaninus is suspended in the air, far from the supporting surface
+of the acorn. It is dried, mummified, dead I know not how long. The legs
+are rigid and contracted under the body. Even if they retained the
+flexibility and the power of extension that were theirs in life, they
+would fall far short of the surface of the acorn. What then has
+happened, that this unhappy insect should be impaled like a specimen
+beetle with a pin through its head?
+
+An accident of the workshop is responsible. On account of the length of
+its implement the beetle commences her work standing upright, supported
+by the two hind-legs. Imagine a slip, a false step on the part of the
+two adhesive feet; the unfortunate creature will immediately lose her
+footing, dragged by the elasticity of the snout, which she was forced to
+bend somewhat at the beginning. Torn away from her foothold, the
+suspended insect vainly struggles in air; nowhere can her feet, those
+safety anchors, find a hold. She starves at the end of her snout, for
+lack of foothold whereby to extricate herself. Like the artisans in our
+factories, the elephant-beetle is sometimes the victim of her tools. Let
+us wish her good luck, and sure feet, careful not to slip, and proceed.
+
+On this occasion all goes well, but so slowly that the descent of the
+drill, even when amplified by the magnifying-glass, cannot be perceived.
+The insect veers round perpetually, rests, and resumes her work. An hour
+passes, two hours, wearying the observer by their sustained attention;
+for I wish to witness the precise moment when the beetle withdraws her
+drill, turns round, and deposits her egg in the mouth of the orifice.
+This, at least, is how I foresee the event.
+
+Two hours go by, exhausting my patience. I call the household to my aid.
+Three of us take turns, keeping an uninterrupted watch upon the
+persevering creature whose secret I intend at any cost to discover.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE GREY LOCUST.
+
+1'. THE NERVATURES OF THE WING.
+
+2. THE BALANINUS FALLEN A VICTIM TO THE LENGTH OF HER PROBOSCIS.]
+
+It was well that I called in helpers to lend me their eyes and their
+attention. After eight hours--eight interminable hours, when it was
+nearly night, the sentinel on the watch calls me. The insect appears to
+have finished. She does, in fact, very cautiously withdraw her beak, as
+though fearing to slip. Once the tool is withdrawn she holds it pointing
+directly in front of her.
+
+The moment has come.... Alas, no! Once more I am cheated; my eight hours
+of observation have been fruitless. The Balaninus decamps; abandons her
+acorn without laying her eggs. I was certainly right to distrust the
+result of observation in the open woods. Such concentration among the
+oaks, exposed to the sun, wind, and rain would have been an intolerable
+task.
+
+During the whole of October, with the aid of such helpers as are needed,
+I remark a number of borings, not followed by the laying of eggs. The
+duration of the observer's task varies greatly. It usually amounts to a
+couple of hours; sometimes it exceeds half the day.
+
+With what object are these perforations made, so laborious and yet so
+often unused? Let us first of all discover the position of the egg, and
+the first mouthfuls taken by the grub, and perhaps the reply will be
+found.
+
+The peopled acorns remain on the oak, held in their cups as though
+nothing had occurred to the detriment of the cotyledons. With a little
+attention they may be readily recognised. Not far from the cup, on the
+smooth, still green envelope of the acorn a little point is visible; a
+tiny needle-prick. A narrow brown aureole, the product of mortification,
+is not long in appearing. This marks the opening of the hole. Sometimes,
+but more rarely, the hole is drilled through the cup itself.
+
+Let us select those acorns which have been recently perforated: that is
+to say, those in which the perforation is not yet surrounded by the
+brown ring which appears in course of time. Let us shell them. Many
+contain nothing out of the way; the Balaninus has bored them but has not
+laid her eggs in them. They resemble the acorns which for hours and
+hours were drilled in my laboratory but not utilised. Many, on the
+contrary, contain an egg.
+
+Now however distant the entrance of the bore may be, this egg is always
+at the bottom of the acorn, within the cup, at the base of the
+cotyledonary matter. The cup furnishes a thin film like swan-skin which
+imbibes the sapid exudations from the stem, the source of nourishment. I
+have seen a young grub, hatched under my eyes, eat as his first
+mouthfuls this tender cottony layer, which is moist and flavoured with
+tannin.
+
+Such nutriment, juicy and easy of digestion, like all nascent organic
+matter, is only found in this particular spot; and it is only there,
+between the cup and the base of the cotyledons, that the elephant-beetle
+establishes her egg. The insect knows to a nicety the position of the
+portions best adapted to the feeble stomach of the newly hatched larva.
+
+Above this is the tougher nutriment of the cotyledons. Refreshed by its
+first meal, the grub proceeds to attack this; not directly, but in the
+tunnel bored by the mother, which is littered with tiny crumbs and
+half-masticated shavings. With this light mealy diet the strength of the
+grub increases, and it then plunges directly into the substance of the
+acorn.
+
+These data explain the tactics of the gravid mother. What is her object
+when, before proceeding to sink her hole, she inspects her acorn, from
+above, below, before and behind, with such meticulous care? She is
+making sure that the acorn is not already occupied. The larder is amply
+stored, but it does not contain enough for two. Never in fact, have I
+found two larvæ in the same acorn. One only, always only one, digests
+the copious meal and converts it into a greenish dust before leaving it
+and descending to the ground. Only an insignificant shell remains
+uneaten. The rule is, to each grub one acorn.
+
+Before trusting the egg to the acorn it is therefore essential to
+subject it to a thorough examination, to discover whether it already has
+an occupant. This possible occupant would be at the base of the acorn,
+under the cover of the cup. Nothing could be more secret than this
+hiding-place. Not an eye could divine the inhabitant if the surface of
+the acorn did not bear the mark of a tiny perforation.
+
+This mark, just visible, is my guide. Its presence tells me that the
+acorn is inhabited, or at least that it has been prepared for the
+reception of the egg; its absence tells me that the acorn has not yet
+been appropriated. The elephant-beetle undoubtedly draws the same
+conclusions.
+
+I see matters from on high, with a comprehensive glance, assisted at
+will by the magnifying-glass. I turn the acorn between my fingers for a
+moment, and the inspection is concluded. The beetle, investigating the
+acorn at close quarters, is often obliged to scrutinise practically the
+entire surface before detecting the tell-tale spot. Moreover, the
+welfare of her family demands a far more careful search than does my
+curiosity. This is the reason for her prolonged and deliberate
+examination.
+
+The search is concluded; the acorn is recognised as unoccupied. The
+drill is applied to the surface and rotated for hours; then, very often,
+the insect departs, disdaining the result of her work. Why such
+protracted efforts? Was the beetle piercing the fruit merely to obtain
+drink and refreshment? Was the beak thrust into the depths of the base
+merely to obtain, from the choicer parts, a few sips of nutritious sap?
+Was the whole undertaking merely a matter of personal nourishment?
+
+At first I believed this to be the solution, though surprised at the
+display of so much perseverance rewarded by the merest sip. The
+behaviour of the males, however, forced me to abandon this idea. They
+also possess the long beak, and could readily make such perforations if
+they wished; yet I have never seen one take up his stand upon an acorn
+and work at it with his augur. Then why this fruitless labour? A mere
+nothing suffices these abstemious creatures. A superficial operation
+performed upon the surface of a tender leaf yields them sufficient
+sustenance.
+
+If the males, the unoccupied males who have leisure to enjoy the
+pleasures of the palate, ask no more than the sap of the leaf, how
+should the mothers, busied with the affairs of the breeding-season, find
+time to waste upon such dearly bought pleasures as the inner juices of
+the acorn? No, the acorn is not perforated for the purpose of drinking
+its juices. It is possible that once the beak is deeply sunk, the female
+may take a mouthful or two, but it is certain that food and drink are
+not the objects in view.
+
+At last I begin to foresee the solution of the problem. The egg, as I
+have said, is always at the base of the acorn, in the midst of a soft
+cottony layer which is moistened by the sap which oozes from the stalk.
+The grub, upon hatching out, being as yet incapable of attacking the
+firm substance of the cotyledons, masticates the delicate felt-like
+layer at the base of the cup and is nourished by its juices.
+
+But as the acorn matures this layer becomes more solid in its
+consistency. The soft tissues harden; the moist tissues dry up. There is
+a period during which the acorn fulfils to perfection the conditions
+most conducive to the welfare of the grub. At an earlier period matters
+would not have reached the desired stage; at a later period the acorn
+would be too mature.
+
+The exterior of the acorn gives no indication whatever of the progress
+of this internal cookery. In order not to inflict unsuitable food on the
+grub, the mother beetle, not sufficiently informed by the look of the
+acorn, is thus obliged to taste, at the end of her trunk, the tissues at
+the base of the cup.
+
+The nurse, before giving her charge a spoonful of broth, tests it by
+tasting it. In the same way the mother beetle plunges her trunk into the
+base of the cup, to test the contents before bestowing them upon her
+offspring. If the food is recognised as being satisfactory the egg is
+laid; if not, the perforation is abandoned without more ado. This
+explains the perforations which serve no purpose, in spite of so much
+labour; the tissues at the base of the cup, being carefully tested, are
+not found to be in the required condition. The elephant-beetles are
+difficult to please and take infinite pains when the first mouthful of
+the grub is in question. To place the egg in a position where the
+new-born grub will find light and juicy and easily digested nutriment is
+not enough for those far-seeing mothers; their cares look beyond this
+point. An intermediary period is desirable, which will lead the little
+larva from the delicacies of its first hours to the diet of hard acorn.
+This intermediary period is passed in the gallery, the work of the
+maternal beak. There it finds the crumbs, the shavings bitten off by the
+chisels of the rostrum. Moreover, the walls of the tunnel, which are
+softened by mortification, are better suited than the rest of the acorn
+to the tender mandibles of the larva.
+
+Before setting to work on the cotyledons the grub does, in fact,
+commence upon the contents and walls of this tiny passage. It first
+consumes the shavings lying loose in the passage; it devours the brown
+fragments adhering to the walls; finally, being now sufficiently
+strengthened, it attacks the body of the acorn, plunges into it, and
+disappears. The stomach is ready; the rest is a blissful feast.
+
+This intermediary tunnel must be of a certain length, in order to
+satisfy the needs of infancy, so the mother must labour at the work of
+drilling. If the perforation were made solely with the purpose of
+tasting the material at the base of the acorn and recognising its degree
+of maturity, the operation might be very much shorter, since the hole
+could be sunk through the cup itself from a point close to the base.
+This fact is not unrecognised; I have on occasion found the insect
+perforating the scaly cup.
+
+In such a proceeding I see the attempt of a gravid mother pressed for
+time to obtain prompt information. If the acorn is suitable the boring
+will be recommenced at a more distant point, through the surface of the
+acorn itself. When an egg is to be laid the rule is to bore the hole
+from a point as distant as is practicable from the base--as far, in
+short, as the length of the rostrum will permit.
+
+What is the object of this long perforation, which often occupies more
+than half the day? Why this tenacious perseverance when, not far from
+the stalk, at the cost of much less time and fatigue, the rostrum could
+attain the desired point--the living spring from which the new-born grub
+is to drink? The mother has her own reasons for toiling in this manner;
+in doing thus she still attains the necessary point, the base of the
+acorn, and at the same time--a most valuable result--she prepares for
+the grub a long tube of fine, easily digested meal.
+
+But these are trivialities! Not so, if you please, but high and
+important matters, speaking to us of the infinite pains which preside
+over the preservation of the least of things; witnesses of a superior
+logic which regulates the smallest details.
+
+The Balaninus, so happily inspired as a mother, has her place in the
+world and is worthy of notice. So, at least, thinks the blackbird, which
+gladly makes a meal of the insect with the long beak when fruits grow
+rare at the end of autumn. It makes a small mouthful, but a tasty, and
+is a pleasant change after such olives as yet withstand the cold.
+
+And what without the blackbird and its rivalry of song were the
+reawakening of the woods in spring? Were man to disappear, annihilated
+by his own foolish errors, the festival of the life-bringing season
+would be no less worthily observed, celebrated by the fluting of the
+yellow-billed songster.
+
+To the meritorious rôle of regaling the blackbird, the minstrel of the
+forest, the Balaninus adds another--that of moderating the superfluity
+of vegetation. Like all the mighty who are worthy of their strength, the
+oak is generous; it produces acorns by the bushel. What could the earth
+do with such prodigality? The forest would stifle itself for want of
+room; excess would ruin the necessary.
+
+But no sooner is this abundance of food produced than there is an influx
+from every side of consumers only too eager to abate this inordinate
+production. The field-mouse, a native of the woods, stores acorns in a
+gravel-heap near its hay-lined nest. A stranger, the jay, comes in
+flocks from far away, warned I know not how. For some weeks it flies
+feasting from oak to oak, giving vent to its joys and its emotions in a
+voice like that of a strangling cat; then, its mission accomplished, it
+returns to the North whence it came.
+
+The Balaninus has anticipated them all. The mother confided her eggs to
+the acorns while yet they were green. These have now fallen to earth,
+brown before their time, and pierced by a round hole through which the
+larva has escaped after devouring the contents. Under one single oak a
+basket might easily be filled with these ruined shells. More than the
+jay, more than the field-mouse, the elephant-beetle has contributed to
+reduce the superfluity of acorns.
+
+Presently man arrives, busied in the interest of his pig. In my village
+it is quite an important event when the municipal hoardings announce the
+day for opening the municipal woods for the gathering of acorns. The
+more zealous visit the woods the day before and select the best places.
+Next day, at daybreak, the whole family is there. The father beats the
+upper branches with a pole; the mother, wearing a heavy hempen apron
+which enables her to force her way through the stubborn undergrowth,
+gathers those within reach of the hand, while the children collect those
+scattered upon the ground. First the small baskets are filled, then the
+big _corbeilles_, and then the sacks.
+
+After the field-mouse, the jay, the weevil, and so many others have
+taken toll comes man, calculating how many pounds of bacon-fat his
+harvest will be worth. One regret mingles with the cheer of the
+occasion; it is to see so many acorns scattered on the ground which are
+pierced, spoiled, good for nothing. And man curses the author of this
+destruction; to hear him you would think the forest is meant for him
+alone, and that the oaks bear acorns only for the sake of his pig.
+
+My friend, I would say to him, the forest guard cannot take legal
+proceedings against the offender, and it is just as well, for our
+egoism, which is inclined to see in the acorn only a garland of
+sausages, would have annoying results. The oak calls the whole world to
+enjoy its fruits. We take the larger part because we are the stronger.
+That is our only right.
+
+More important than our rights is the equitable division of the fruits
+of the earth between the various consumers, great and little, all of
+whom play their part in this world. If it is good that the blackbird
+should flute and rejoice in the burgeoning of the spring, then it is no
+bad thing that acorns should be worm-eaten. In the acorn the dessert of
+the blackbird is prepared; the Balaninus, the tasty mouthful that puts
+flesh upon his flanks and music into his throat.
+
+Let the blackbird sing, and let us return to the eggs of the
+Curculionidæ. We know where the egg is--at the base of the acorn,
+because the tenderest and most juicy tissues of the fruit are there. But
+how did it get there, so far from the point of entry? A very trifling
+question, it is true; puerile even, if you will. Do not let us disdain
+to ask it; science is made of these puerilities.
+
+The first man to rub a piece of amber on his sleeve and to find that it
+thereupon attracted fragments of chaff had certainly no vision of the
+electric marvels of our days. He was amusing himself in a childlike
+manner. Repeated, tested, and probed in every imaginable way, the
+child's experiment has become one of the forces of the world.
+
+The observer must neglect nothing; for he never knows what may develop
+out of the humblest fact. So again we will ask: by what process did the
+egg of the elephant-beetle reach a point so far from the orifice in the
+acorn?
+
+To one who was not already aware of the position of the egg, but knew
+that the grub attacked the base of the acorn first, the solution of that
+fact would be as follows: the egg is laid at the entrance of the tunnel,
+at the surface, and the grub, crawling down the gallery sunk by the
+mother, gains of its own accord this distant point where its infant diet
+is to be found.
+
+Before I had sufficient data this was my own belief; but the mistake was
+soon exposed. I plucked an acorn just as the mother withdrew, after
+having for a moment applied the tip of the abdomen to the orifice of the
+passage just opened by her rostrum. The egg, so it seemed, must be
+there, at the entrance of the passage.... But no, it was not! It was at
+the other extremity of the passage! If I dared, I would say it had
+dropped like a stone into a well.
+
+That idea we must abandon at once; the passage is extremely narrow and
+encumbered with shavings, so that such a thing would be impossible.
+Moreover, according to the direction of the stem, accordingly as it
+pointed upwards or downwards, the egg would have to fall downwards in
+one acorn and upwards in another.
+
+A second explanation suggests itself, not less perilous. It might be
+said: "The cuckoo lays her egg on the grass, no matter where; she lifts
+it in her beak and places it in the nearest appropriate nest." Might not
+the Balaninus follow an analogous method? Does she employ the rostrum to
+place the egg in its position at the base of the acorn? I cannot see
+that the insect has any other implement capable of reaching this remote
+hiding-place.
+
+Nevertheless, we must hastily reject such an absurd explanation as a
+last, desperate resort. The elephant-beetle certainly does not lay its
+egg in the open and seize it in its beak. If it did so the delicate ovum
+would certainly be destroyed, crushed in the attempt to thrust it down a
+narrow passage half choked with debris.
+
+This is very perplexing. My embarrassment will be shared by all readers
+who are acquainted with the structure of the elephant-beetle. The
+grasshopper has a sabre, an oviscapt which plunges into the earth and
+sows the eggs at the desired depth; the Leuscopis has a probe which
+finds its way through the masonry of the mason-bee and lays the egg in
+the cocoon of the great somnolent larva; but the Balaninus has none of
+these swords, daggers, or pikes; she has nothing but the tip of her
+abdomen. Yet she has only to apply that abdominal extremity to the
+opening of the passage, and the egg is immediately lodged at the very
+bottom.
+
+Anatomy will give us the answer to the riddle, which is otherwise
+indecipherable. I open the body of a gravid female. There, before my
+eyes, is something that takes my breath away. There, occupying the whole
+length of the body, is an extraordinary device; a red, horny, rigid rod;
+I had almost said a rostrum, so greatly does it resemble the implement
+which the insect carries on his head. It is a tube, fine as a horsehair,
+slightly enlarged at the free extremity, like an old-fashioned
+blunderbuss, and expanding to form an egg-shaped capsule at the point of
+origin.
+
+This is the oviduct, and its dimensions are the same as those of the
+rostrum. As far as the perforating beak can plunge, so far the oviscapt,
+the interior rostrum, will reach. When working upon her acorn the female
+chooses the point of attack so that the two complementary instruments
+can each of them reach the desired point at the base of the acorn.
+
+The matter now explains itself. The work of drilling completed, the
+gallery ready, the mother turns and places the tip of the abdomen
+against the orifice. She extrudes the internal mechanism, which easily
+passes through the loose debris of the boring. No sign of the probe
+appears, so quickly and discreetly does it work; nor is any trace of it
+to be seen when, the egg having been properly deposited, the implement
+ascends and returns to the abdomen. It is over, and the mother departs,
+and we have not caught a glimpse of her internal mechanism.
+
+Was I not right to insist? An apparently insignificant fact has led to
+the authentic proof of a fact that the Larinidæ had already made me
+suspect. The long-beaked weevils have an internal probe, an abdominal
+rostrum, which nothing in their external appearance betrays; they
+possess, among the hidden organs of the abdomen, the counterpart of the
+grasshopper's sabre and the ichneumon's dagger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE PEA-WEEVIL--_BRUCHUS PISI_
+
+
+Peas are held in high esteem by mankind. From remote ages man has
+endeavoured, by careful culture, to produce larger, tenderer, and
+sweeter varieties. Of an adaptable character, under careful treatment
+the plant has evolved in a docile fashion, and has ended by giving us
+what the ambition of the gardener desired. To-day we have gone far
+beyond the yield of the Varrons and Columelles, and further still beyond
+the original pea; from the wild seeds confided to the soil by the first
+man who thought to scratch up the surface of the earth, perhaps with the
+half-jaw of a cave-bear, whose powerful canine tooth would serve him as
+a ploughshare!
+
+Where is it, this original pea, in the world of spontaneous vegetation?
+Our own country has nothing resembling it. Is it to be found elsewhere?
+On this point botany is silent, or replies only with vague
+probabilities.
+
+We find the same ignorance elsewhere on the subject of the majority of
+our alimentary vegetables. Whence comes wheat, the blessed grain which
+gives us bread? No one knows. You will not find it here, except in the
+care of man; nor will you find it abroad. In the East, the birthplace
+of agriculture, no botanist has ever encountered the sacred ear growing
+of itself on unbroken soil.
+
+Barley, oats, and rye, the turnip and the beet, the beetroot, the
+carrot, the pumpkin, and so many other vegetable products, leave us in
+the same perplexity; their point of departure is unknown to us, or at
+most suspected behind the impenetrable cloud of the centuries. Nature
+delivered them to us in the full vigour of the thing untamed, when their
+value as food was indifferent, as to-day she offers us the sloe, the
+bullace, the blackberry, the crab; she gave them to us in the state of
+imperfect sketches, for us to fill out and complete; it was for our
+skill and our labour patiently to induce the nourishing pulp which was
+the earliest form of capital, whose interest is always increasing in the
+primordial bank of the tiller of the soil.
+
+As storehouses of food the cereal and the vegetable are, for the greater
+part, the work of man. The fundamental species, a poor resource in their
+original state, we borrowed as they were from the natural treasury of
+the vegetable world; the perfected race, rich in alimentary materials,
+is the result of our art.
+
+If wheat, peas, and all the rest are indispensable to us, our care, by a
+just return, is absolutely necessary to them. Such as our needs have
+made them, incapable of resistance in the bitter struggle for survival,
+these vegetables, left to themselves without culture, would rapidly
+disappear, despite the numerical abundance of their seeds, as the
+foolish sheep would disappear were there no more sheep-folds.
+
+They are our work, but not always our exclusive property. Wherever food
+is amassed, the consumers collect from the four corners of the sky; they
+invite themselves to the feast of abundance, and the richer the food the
+greater their numbers. Man, who alone is capable of inducing agrarian
+abundance, is by that very fact the giver of an immense banquet at which
+legions of feasters take their place. By creating more juicy and more
+generous fruits he calls to his enclosures, despite himself, thousands
+and thousands of hungry creatures, against whose appetites his
+prohibitions are helpless. The more he produces, the larger is the
+tribute demanded of him. Wholesale agriculture and vegetable abundance
+favour our rival the insect.
+
+This is the immanent law. Nature, with an equal zeal, offers her mighty
+breast to all her nurslings alike; to those who live by the goods of
+others no less than to the producers. For us, who plough, sow, and reap,
+and weary ourselves with labour, she ripens the wheat; she ripens it
+also for the little Calender-beetle, which, although exempted from the
+labour of the fields, enters our granaries none the less, and there,
+with its pointed beak, nibbles our wheat, grain by grain, to the husk.
+
+For us, who dig, weed, and water, bent with fatigue and burned by the
+sun, she swells the pods of the pea; she swells them also for the
+weevil, which does no gardener's work, yet takes its share of the
+harvest at its own hour, when the earth is joyful with the new life of
+spring.
+
+Let us follow the manoeuvres of this insect which takes its tithe of
+the green pea. I, a benevolent ratepayer, will allow it to take its
+dues; it is precisely to benefit it that I have sown a few rows of the
+beloved plant in a corner of my garden. Without other invitation on my
+part than this modest expenditure of seed-peas it arrives punctually
+during the month of May. It has learned that this stony soil, rebellious
+to the culture of the kitchen-gardener, is bearing peas for the first
+time. In all haste therefore it has hurried, an agent of the
+entomological revenue system, to demand its dues.
+
+Whence does it come? It is impossible to say precisely. It has come from
+some shelter, somewhere, in which it has passed the winter in a state of
+torpor. The plane-tree, which sheds its rind during the heats of the
+summer, furnishes an excellent refuge for homeless insects under its
+partly detached sheets of bark.
+
+I have often found our weevil in such a winter refuge. Sheltered under
+the dead covering of the plane, or otherwise protected while the winter
+lasts, it awakens from its torpor at the first touch of a kindly sun.
+The almanack of the instincts has aroused it; it knows as well as the
+gardener when the pea-vines are in flower, and seeks its favourite
+plant, journeying thither from every side, running with quick, short
+steps, or nimbly flying.
+
+A small head, a fine snout, a costume of ashen grey sprinkled with
+brown, flattened wing-covers, a dumpy, compact body, with two large
+black dots on the rear segment--such is the summary portrait of my
+visitor. The middle of May approaches, and with it the van of the
+invasion.
+
+They settle on the flowers, which are not unlike white-winged
+butterflies. I see them at the base of the blossom or inside the cavity
+of the "keel" of the flower, but the majority explore the petals and
+take possession of them. The time for laying the eggs has not yet
+arrived. The morning is mild; the sun is warm without being oppressive.
+It is the moment of nuptial flights; the time of rejoicing in the
+splendour of the sunshine. Everywhere are creatures rejoicing to be
+alive. Couples come together, part, and re-form. When towards noon the
+heat becomes too great, the weevils retire into the shadow, taking
+refuge singly in the folds of the flowers whose secret corners they know
+so well. To-morrow will be another day of festival, and the next day
+also, until the pods, emerging from the shelter of the "keel" of the
+flower, are plainly visible, enlarging from day to day.
+
+A few gravid females, more pressed for time than the others, confide
+their eggs to the growing pod, flat and meagre as it issues from its
+floral sheath. These hastily laid batches of eggs, expelled perhaps by
+the exigencies of an ovary incapable of further delay, seem to me in
+serious danger; for the seed in which the grub must establish itself is
+as yet no more than a tender speck of green, without firmness and
+without any farinaceous tissue. No larva could possible find sufficient
+nourishment there, unless it waited for the pea to mature.
+
+But is the grub capable of fasting for any length of time when once
+hatched? It is doubtful. The little I have seen tells me that the
+new-born grub must establish itself in the midst of its food as quickly
+as possible, and that it perishes unless it can do so. I am therefore of
+opinion that such eggs as are deposited in immature pods are lost.
+However, the race will hardly suffer by such a loss, so fertile is the
+little beetle. We shall see directly how prodigal the female is of her
+eggs, the majority of which are destined to perish.
+
+The important part of the maternal task is completed by the end of May,
+when the shells are swollen by the expanding peas, which have reached
+their final growth, or are but little short of it. I was anxious to see
+the female Bruchus at work in her quality of Curculionid, as our
+classification declares her.[8] The other weevils are Rhyncophora,
+beaked insects, armed with a drill with which to prepare the hole in
+which the egg is laid. The Bruchus possesses only a short snout or
+muzzle, excellently adapted for eating soft tissues, but valueless as a
+drill.
+
+The method of installing the family is consequently absolutely
+different. There are no industrious preparations as with the Balinidæ,
+the Larinidæ, and the Rhynchitides. Not being equipped with a long
+oviscapt, the mother sows her eggs in the open, with no protection
+against the heat of the sun and the variations of temperature. Nothing
+could be simpler, and nothing more perilous to the eggs, in the absence
+of special characteristics which would enable them to resist the
+alternate trials of heat and cold, moisture and drought.
+
+In the caressing sunlight of ten o'clock in the morning the mother runs
+up and down the chosen pod, first on one side, then on the other, with a
+jerky, capricious, unmethodical gait. She repeatedly extrudes a short
+oviduct, which oscillates right and left as though to graze the skin of
+the pod. An egg follows, which is abandoned as soon as laid.
+
+A hasty touch of the oviduct, first here, then there, on the green skin
+of the pea-pod, and that is all. The egg is left there, unprotected, in
+the full sunlight. No choice of position is made such as might assist
+the grub when it seeks to penetrate its larder. Some eggs are laid on
+the swellings created by the peas beneath; others in the barren valleys
+which separate them. The first are close to the peas, the second at some
+distance from them. In short, the eggs of the Bruchus are laid at
+random, as though on the wing.
+
+We observe a still more serious vice: the number of eggs is out of all
+proportion to the number of peas in the pod. Let us note at the outset
+that each grub requires one pea; it is the necessary ration, and is
+largely sufficient to one larva, but is not enough for several, nor even
+for two. One pea to each grub, neither more nor less, is the
+unchangeable rule.
+
+We should expect to find signs of a procreative economy which would
+impel the female to take into account the number of peas contained in
+the pod which she has just explored; we might expect her to set a
+numerical limit on her eggs in conformity with that of the peas
+available. But no such limit is observed. The rule of one pea to one
+grub is always contradicted by the multiplicity of consumers.
+
+My observations are unanimous on this point. The number of eggs
+deposited on one pod always exceeds the number of peas available, and
+often to a scandalous degree. However meagre the contents of the pod
+there is a superabundance of consumers. Dividing the sum of the eggs
+upon such or such a pod by that of the peas contained therein, I find
+there are five to eight claimants for each pea; I have found ten, and
+there is no reason why this prodigality should not go still further.
+Many are called, but few are chosen! What is to become of all these
+supernumeraries, perforce excluded from the banquet for want of space?
+
+The eggs are of a fairly bright amber yellow, cylindrical in form,
+smooth, and rounded at the ends. Their length is at most a twenty-fifth
+of an inch. Each is affixed to the pod by means of a slight network of
+threads of coagulated albumen. Neither wind nor rain can loosen their
+hold.
+
+The mother not infrequently emits them two at a time, one above the
+other; not infrequently, also, the uppermost of the two eggs hatches
+before the other, while the latter fades and perishes. What was lacking
+to this egg, that it should fail to produce a grub? Perhaps a bath of
+sunlight; the incubating heat of which the outer egg has robbed it.
+Whether on account of the fact that it is shadowed by the other egg, or
+for other reasons, the elder of the eggs in a group of two rarely
+follows the normal course, but perishes on the pod, dead without having
+lived.
+
+There are exceptions to this premature end; sometimes the two eggs
+develop equally well; but such cases are exceptional, so that the
+Bruchid family would be reduced to about half its dimensions if the
+binary system were the rule. To the detriment of our peas and to the
+advantage of the beetle, the eggs are commonly laid one by one and in
+isolation.
+
+A recent emergence is shown by a little sinuous ribbon-like mark, pale
+or whitish, where the skin of the pod is raised and withered, which
+starts from the egg and is the work of the new-born larva; a
+sub-epidermic tunnel along which the grub works its way, while seeking a
+point from which it can escape into a pea. This point once attained, the
+larva, which is scarcely a twenty-fifth of an inch in length, and is
+white with a black head, perforates the envelope and plunges into the
+capacious hollow of the pod.
+
+It has reached the peas and crawls upon the nearest. I have observed it
+with the magnifier. Having explored the green globe, its new world, it
+begins to sink a well perpendicularly into the sphere. I have often seen
+it half-way in, wriggling its tail in the effort to work the quicker. In
+a short time the grub disappears and is at home. The point of entry,
+minute, but always easily recognisable by its brown coloration on the
+pale green background of the pea, has no fixed location; it may be at
+almost any point on the surface of the pea, but an exception is usually
+made of the lower half; that is, the hemisphere whose pole is formed by
+the supporting stem.
+
+It is precisely in this portion that the germ is found, which will not
+be eaten by the larva, and will remain capable of developing into a
+plant, in spite of the large aperture made by the emergence of the adult
+insect. Why is this particular portion left untouched? What are the
+motives that safeguard the germ?
+
+It goes without saying that the Bruchus is not considering the gardener.
+The pea is meant for it and for no one else. In refusing the few bites
+that would lead to the death of the seed, it has no intention of
+limiting its destruction. It abstains from other motives.
+
+Let us remark that the peas touch laterally, and are pressed one
+against the other, so that the grub, when searching for a point of
+attack, cannot circulate at will. Let us also note that the lower pole
+expands into the umbilical excrescence, which is less easy of
+perforation than those parts protected by the skin alone. It is even
+possible that the umbilicum, whose organisation differs from that of the
+rest of the pea, contains a peculiar sap that is distasteful to the
+little grub.
+
+Such, doubtless, is the reason why the peas exploited by the Bruchus are
+still able to germinate. They are damaged, but not dead, because the
+invasion was conducted from the free hemisphere, a portion less
+vulnerable and more easy of access. Moreover, as the pea in its entirety
+is too large for a single grub to consume, the consumption is limited to
+the portion preferred by the consumer, and this portion is not the
+essential portion of the pea.
+
+With other conditions, with very much smaller or very much larger seeds,
+we shall observe very different results. If too small, the germ will
+perish, gnawed like the rest by the insufficiently provisioned inmate;
+if too large, the abundance of food will permit of several inmates.
+Exploited in the absence of the pea, the cultivated vetch and the broad
+bean afford us an excellent example; the smaller seed, of which all but
+the skin is devoured, is left incapable of germination; but the large
+bean, even though it may have held a number of grubs, is still capable
+of sprouting.
+
+Knowing that the pod always exhibits a number of eggs greatly in excess
+of the enclosed peas, and that each pea is the exclusive property of one
+grub, we naturally ask what becomes of the superfluous grubs. Do they
+perish outside when the more precocious have one by one taken their
+places in their vegetable larder? or do they succumb to the intolerant
+teeth of the first occupants? Neither explanation is correct. Let us
+relate the facts.
+
+On all old peas--they are at this stage dry--from which the adult
+Bruchus has emerged, leaving a large round hole of exit, the
+magnifying-glass will show a variable number of fine reddish
+punctuations, perforated in the centre. What are these spots, of which I
+count five, six, and even more on a single pea? It is impossible to be
+mistaken: they are the points of entry of as many grubs. Several grubs
+have entered the pea, but of the whole group only one has survived,
+fattened, and attained the adult age. And the others? We shall see.
+
+At the end of May, and in June, the period of egg-laying, let us inspect
+the still green and tender peas. Nearly all the peas invaded show us the
+multiple perforations already observed on the dry peas abandoned by the
+weevils. Does this actually mean that there are several grubs in the
+pea? Yes. Skin the peas in question, separate the cotyledons, and break
+them up as may be necessary. We shall discover several grubs, extremely
+youthful, curled up comma-wise, fat and lively, each in a little round
+niche in the body of the pea.
+
+Peace and welfare seem to reign in the little community. There is no
+quarrelling, no jealousy between neighbours. The feast has commenced;
+food is abundant, and the feasters are separated one from another by the
+walls of uneaten substance. With this isolation in separate cells no
+conflicts need be feared; no sudden bite of the mandibles, whether
+intentional or accidental. All the occupants enjoy the same rights of
+property, the same appetite, and the same strength. How does this
+communal feast terminate?
+
+Having first opened them, I place a number of peas which are found to be
+well peopled in a glass test-tube. I open others daily. In this way I
+keep myself informed as to the progress of the various larvæ. At first
+nothing noteworthy is to be seen. Isolated in its narrow chamber, each
+grub nibbles the substance around it, peacefully and parsimoniously. It
+is still very small; a mere speck of food is a feast; but the contents
+of one pea will not suffice the whole number to the end. Famine is
+ahead, and all but one must perish.
+
+Soon, indeed, the aspect of things is entirely changed. One of the
+grubs--that which occupies the central position in the pea--begins to
+grow more quickly than the others. Scarcely has it surpassed the others
+in size when the latter cease to eat, and no longer attempt to burrow
+forwards. They lie motionless and resigned; they die that gentle death
+which comes to unconscious lives. Henceforth the entire pea belongs to
+the sole survivor. Now what has happened that these lives around the
+privileged one should be thus annihilated? In default of a satisfactory
+reply, I will propose a suggestion.
+
+In the centre of the pea, less ripened than the rest of the seed by the
+chemistry of the sun, may there not be a softer pulp, of a quality
+better adapted to the infantile digestion of the grub? There, perhaps,
+being nourished by tenderer, sweeter, and perhaps more tasty tissues,
+the stomach becomes more vigorous, until it is fit to undertake less
+easily digested food. A nursling is fed on milk before proceeding to
+bread and broth. May not the central portion of the pea be the
+feeding-bottle of the Bruchid?
+
+With equal rights, fired by an equal ambition, all the occupants of the
+pea bore their way towards the delicious morsel. The journey is
+laborious, and the grubs must rest frequently in their provisional
+niches. They rest; while resting they frugally gnaw the riper tissues
+surrounding them; they gnaw rather to open a way than to fill their
+stomachs.
+
+Finally one of the excavators, favoured by the direction taken, attains
+the central portion. It establishes itself there, and all is over; the
+others have only to die. How are they warned that the place is taken? Do
+they hear their brother gnawing at the walls of his lodging? can they
+feel the vibration set up by his nibbling mandibles? Something of the
+kind must happen, for from that moment they make no attempt to burrow
+further. Without struggling against the fortunate winner, without
+seeking to dislodge him, those which are beaten in the race give
+themselves up to death. I admire this candid resignation on the part of
+the departed.
+
+Another condition--that of space--is also present as a factor. The
+pea-weevil is the largest of our Bruchidæ. When it attains the adult
+stage it requires a certain amplitude of lodging, which the other
+weevils do not require in the same degree. A pea provides it with a
+sufficiently spacious cell; nevertheless, the cohabitation of two in one
+pea would be impossible; there would be no room, even were the two to
+put up with a certain discomfort. Hence the necessity of an inevitable
+decimation, which will suppress all the competitors save one.
+
+Now the superior volume of the broad bean, which is almost as much
+beloved by the weevil as the pea, can lodge a considerable community,
+and the solitary can live as a cenobite. Without encroaching on the
+domain of their neighbours, five or six or more can find room in the one
+bean.
+
+Moreover, each grub can find its infant diet; that is, that layer which,
+remote from the surface, hardens only gradually and remains full of sap
+until a comparatively late period. This inner layer represents the crumb
+of a loaf, the rest of the bean being the crust.
+
+In the pea, a sphere of much less capacity, it occupies the central
+portion; a limited point at which the grub develops, and lacking which
+it perishes; but in the bean it lines the wide adjoining faces of the
+two flattened cotyledons. No matter where the point of attack is made,
+the grub has only to bore straight down when it quickly reaches the
+softer tissues. What is the result? I have counted the eggs adhering to
+a bean-pod and the beans included in the pod, and comparing the two
+figures I find that there is plenty of room for the whole family at the
+rate of five or six dwellers in each bean. No superfluous larvæ perish
+of hunger when barely issued from the egg; all have their share of the
+ample provision; all live and prosper. The abundance of food balances
+the prodigal fertility of the mother.
+
+If the Bruchus were always to adopt the broad bean for the establishment
+of her family I could well understand the exuberant allowance of eggs to
+one pod; a rich food-stuff easily obtained evokes a large batch of
+eggs. But the case of the pea perplexes me. By what aberration does the
+mother abandon her children to starvation on this totally insufficient
+vegetable? Why so many grubs to each pea when one pea is sufficient only
+for one grub?
+
+Matters are not so arranged in the general balance-sheet of life. A
+certain foresight seems to rule over the ovary so that the number of
+mouths is in proportion to the abundance or scarcity of the food
+consumed. The Scarabæus, the Sphex, the Necrophorus, and other insects
+which prepare and preserve alimentary provision for their families, are
+all of a narrowly limited fertility, because the balls of dung, the dead
+or paralysed insects, or the buried corpses of animals on which their
+offspring are nourished are provided only at the cost of laborious
+efforts.
+
+The ordinary bluebottle, on the contrary, which lays her eggs upon
+butcher's meat or carrion, lays them in enormous batches. Trusting in
+the inexhaustible riches represented by the corpse, she is prodigal of
+offspring, and takes no account of numbers. In other cases the provision
+is acquired by audacious brigandage, which exposes the newly born
+offspring to a thousand mortal accidents. In such cases the mother
+balances the chances of destruction by an exaggerated flux of eggs. Such
+is the case with the Meloides, which, stealing the goods of others under
+conditions of the greatest peril, are accordingly endowed with a
+prodigious fertility.
+
+The Bruchus knows neither the fatigues of the laborious, obliged to
+limit the size of her family, nor the misfortunes of the parasite,
+obliged to produce an exaggerated number of offspring. Without painful
+search, entirely at her ease, merely moving in the sunshine over her
+favourite plant, she can ensure a sufficient provision for each of her
+offspring; she can do so, yet is foolish enough to over-populate the pod
+of the pea; a nursery insufficiently provided, in which the great
+majority will perish of starvation. This ineptitude is a thing I cannot
+understand: it clashes too completely with the habitual foresight of the
+maternal instinct.
+
+I am inclined to believe that the pea is not the original food plant of
+the Bruchus. The original plant must rather have been the bean, one seed
+of which is capable of supporting half a dozen or more larvæ. With the
+larger cotyledon the crying disproportion between the number of eggs and
+the available provision disappears.
+
+Moreover, it is indubitable that the bean is of earlier date than the
+pea. Its exceptional size and its agreeable flavour would certainly have
+attracted the attention of man from the remotest periods. The bean is a
+ready-made mouthful, and would be of the greatest value to the hungry
+tribe. Primitive man would at an early date have sown it beside his
+wattled hut. Coming from Central Asia by long stages, their wagons drawn
+by shaggy oxen and rolling on the circular discs cut from the trunks of
+trees, the early immigrants would have brought to our virgin land, first
+the bean, then the pea, and finally the cereal, that best of safeguards
+against famine. They taught us the care of herds, and the use of bronze,
+the material of the first metal implement. Thus the dawn of civilisation
+arose over France. With the bean did those ancient teachers also
+involuntarily bring us the insect which to-day disputes it with us? It
+is doubtful; the Bruchidæ seem to be indigenous. At all events, I find
+them levying tribute from various indigenous plants, wild vegetables
+which have never tempted the appetite of man. They abound in particular
+upon the great forest vetch (_Lathyrus latifolius_), with its
+magnificent heads of flowers and long handsome pods. The seeds are not
+large, being indeed smaller than the garden pea; but eaten to the very
+skin, as they invariably are, each is sufficient to the needs of its
+grub.
+
+We must not fail to note their number. I have counted more than twenty
+in a single pod, a number unknown in the case of the pea, even in the
+most prolific varieties. Consequently this superb vetch is in general
+able to nourish without much loss the family confided to its pod.
+
+Where the forest vetch is lacking, the Bruchus, none the less, bestows
+its habitual prodigality of eggs upon another vegetable of similar
+flavour, but incapable of nourishing all the grubs: for the example, the
+travelling vetch (_Vicia peregrina_) or the cultivated vetch (_Vicia
+sativa_). The number of eggs remains high even upon insufficient pods,
+because the original food-plant offered a copious provision, both in the
+multiplicity and the size of the seeds. If the Bruchus is really a
+stranger, let us regard the bean as the original food-plant; if
+indigenous, the large vetch.
+
+Sometime in the remote past we received the pea, growing it at first in
+the prehistoric vegetable garden which already supplied the bean. It was
+found a better article of diet than the broad bean, which to-day, after
+such good service, is comparatively neglected. The weevil was of the
+same opinion as man, and without entirely forgetting the bean and the
+vetch it established the greater part of its tribe upon the pea, which
+from century to century was more widely cultivated. To-day we have to
+share our peas: the Bruchidæ take what they need, and bestow their
+leavings on us.
+
+This prosperity of the insect which is the offspring of the abundance
+and quality of our garden products is from another point of view
+equivalent to decadence. For the weevil, as for ourselves, progress in
+matters of food and drink is not always beneficial. The race would
+profit better if it remained frugal. On the bean and the vetch the
+Bruchus founded colonies in which the infant mortality was low. There
+was room for all. On the pea-vine, delicious though its fruits may be,
+the greater part of its offspring die of starvation. The rations are
+few, and the hungry mouths are multitudinous.
+
+We will linger over this problem no longer. Let us observe the grub
+which has now become the sole tenant of the pea by the death of its
+brothers. It has had no part in their death; chance has favoured it,
+that is all. In the centre of the pea, a wealthy solitude, it performs
+the duty of a grub; the sole duty of eating. It nibbles the walls
+enclosing it, enlarging its lodgment, which is always entirely filled by
+its corpulent body. It is well shaped, fat, and shining with health. If
+I disturb it, it turns gently in its niche and sways its head. This is
+its manner of complaining of my importunities. Let us leave it in peace.
+
+It profits so greatly and so swiftly by its position that by the time
+the dog-days have come it is already preparing for its approaching
+liberation. The adult is not sufficiently well equipped to open for
+itself a way out through the pea, which is now completely hardened. The
+larva knows of this future helplessness, and with consummate art
+provides for its release. With its powerful mandibles it bores a channel
+of exit, exactly round, with extremely clean-cut sides. The most skilful
+ivory-carver could do no better.
+
+To prepare the door of exit in advance is not enough; the grub must also
+provide for the tranquillity essential to the delicate processes of
+nymphosis. An intruder might enter by the open door and injure the
+helpless nymph. This passage must therefore remain closed. But how?
+
+As the grub bores the passage of exit it consumes the farinaceous matter
+without leaving a crumb. Having come to the skin of the pea it stops
+short. This membrane, semi-translucid, is the door to the chamber of
+metamorphosis, its protection against the evil intentions of external
+creatures.
+
+It is also the only obstacle which the adult will encounter at the
+moment of exit. To lessen the difficulty of opening it the grub takes
+the precaution of gnawing at the inner side of the skin, all round the
+circumference, so as to make a line of least resistance. The perfect
+insect will only have to heave with its shoulder and strike a few blows
+with its head in order to raise the circular door and knock it off like
+the lid of a box. The passage of exit shows through the diaphanous skin
+of the pea as a large circular spot, which is darkened by the obscurity
+of the interior. What passes behind it is invisible, hidden as it is
+behind a sort of ground glass window.
+
+A pretty invention, this little closed porthole, this barricade against
+the invader, this trap-door raised by a push when the time has come for
+the hermit to enter the world. Shall we credit it to the Bruchus? Did
+the ingenious insect conceive the undertaking? Did it think out a plan
+and work out a scheme of its own devising? This would be no small
+triumph for the brain of a weevil. Before coming to a conclusion let us
+try an experiment.
+
+I deprive certain occupied peas of their skin, and I dry them with
+abnormal rapidity, placing them in glass test-tubes. The grubs prosper
+as well as in the intact peas. At the proper time the preparations for
+emergence are made.
+
+If the grub acts on its own inspiration, if it ceases to prolong its
+boring directly it recognises that the outer coating, auscultated from
+time to time, is sufficiently thin, what will it do under the conditions
+of the present test? Feeling itself at the requisite distance from the
+surface it will stop boring; it will respect the outer layer of the bare
+pea, and will thus obtain the indispensable protecting screen.
+
+Nothing of the kind occurs. In every case the passage is completely
+excavated; the entrance gapes wide open, as large and as carefully
+executed as though the skin of the pea were in its place. Reasons of
+security have failed to modify the usual method of work. This open
+lodging has no defence against the enemy; but the grub exhibits no
+anxiety on this score.
+
+Neither is it thinking of the outer enemy when it bores down to the skin
+when the pea is intact, and then stops short. It suddenly stops because
+the innutritious skin is not to its taste. We ourselves remove the
+parchment-like skins from a mess of pease-pudding, as from a culinary
+point of view they are so much waste matter. The larva of the Bruchus,
+like ourselves, dislikes the skin of the pea. It stops short at the
+horny covering, simply because it is checked by an uneatable substance.
+From this aversion a little miracle arises; but the insect has no sense
+of logic; it is passively obedient to the superior logic of facts. It
+obeys its instinct, as unconscious of its act as is a crystal when it
+assembles, in exquisite order, its battalions of atoms.
+
+Sooner or later during the month of August we see a shadowy circle form
+on each inhabited pea; but only one on each seed. These circles of
+shadow mark the doors of exit. Most of them open in September. The lid,
+as though cut out with a punch, detaches itself cleanly and falls to the
+ground, leaving the orifice free. The Bruchus emerges, freshly clad, in
+its final form.
+
+The weather is delightful. Flowers are abundant, awakened by the summer
+showers; and the weevils visit them in the lovely autumn weather. Then,
+when the cold sets in, they take up their winter quarters in any
+suitable retreat. Others, still numerous, are less hasty in quitting the
+native seed. They remain within during the whole winter, sheltered
+behind the trap-door, which they take care not to touch. The door of the
+cell will not open on its hinges, or, to be exact, will not yield along
+the line of least resistance, until the warm days return. Then the late
+arrivals will leave their shelter and rejoin the more impatient, and
+both will be ready for work when the pea-vines are in flower.
+
+To take a general view of the instincts in their inexhaustible variety
+is, for the observer, the great attraction of the entomological world;
+for nowhere do we gain a clearer sight of the wonderful way in which the
+processes of life are ordered. Thus regarded entomology is not, I know,
+to the taste of everybody; the simple creature absorbed in the doings
+and habits of insects is held in low esteem. To the terrible
+utilitarian, a bushel of peas preserved from the weevil is of more
+importance than a volume of observations which bring no immediate
+profit.
+
+Yet who has told you, O man of little faith, that what is useless to-day
+will not be useful to-morrow? If we learn the customs of insects or
+animals we shall understand better how to protect our goods. Do not
+despise disinterested knowledge, or you may rue the day. It is by the
+accumulation of ideas, whether immediately applicable or otherwise, that
+humanity has done, and will continue to do, better to-day than
+yesterday, and better to-morrow than to-day. If we live on peas and
+beans, which we dispute with the weevil, we also live by knowledge, that
+mighty kneading-trough in which the bread of progress is mixed and
+leavened. Knowledge is well worth a few beans.
+
+Among other things, knowledge tells us: "The seedsman need not go to the
+expense of waging war upon the weevil. When the peas arrive in the
+granary, the harm is already done; it is irreparable, but not
+transmissible. The untouched peas have nothing to fear from the
+neighbourhood of those which have been attacked, however long the
+mixture is left. From the latter the weevils will issue when their time
+has come; they will fly away from the storehouse if escape is possible;
+if not, they will perish without in any way attacking the sound peas. No
+eggs, no new generation will ever be seen upon or within the dried peas
+in the storehouse; there the adult weevil can work no further mischief."
+
+The Bruchus is not a sedentary inhabitant of granaries: it requires the
+open air, the sun, the liberty of the fields. Frugal in everything, it
+absolutely disdains the hard tissues of the vegetable; its tiny mouth is
+content with a few honeyed mouthfuls, enjoyed upon the flowers. The
+larvæ, on the other hand, require the tender tissues of the green pea
+growing in the pod. For these reasons the granary knows no final
+multiplication on the part of the despoiler.
+
+The origin of the evil is in the kitchen-garden. It is there that we
+ought to keep a watch on the misdeeds of the Bruchus, were it not for
+the fact that we are nearly always weaponless when it comes to fighting
+an insect. Indestructible by reason of its numbers, its small size, and
+its cunning, the little creature laughs at the anger of man. The
+gardener curses it, but the weevil is not disturbed: it imperturbably
+continues its trade of levying tribute. Happily we have assistants more
+patient and more clear-sighted than ourselves.
+
+During the first week of August, when the mature Bruchus begins to
+emerge, I notice a little Chalcidian, the protector of our peas. In my
+rearing-cages it issues under my eyes in abundance from the peas
+infested by the grub of the weevil. The female has a reddish head and
+thorax; the abdomen is black, with a long augur-like oviscapt. The male,
+a little smaller, is black. Both sexes have reddish claws and
+thread-like antennæ.
+
+In order to escape from the pea the slayer of the weevil makes an
+opening in the centre of the circular trap-door which the grub of the
+weevil prepared in view of its future deliverance. The slain has
+prepared the way for the slayer. After this detail the rest may be
+divined.
+
+When the preliminaries to the metamorphosis are completed, when the
+passage of escape is bored and furnished with its lid of superficial
+membrane, the female Chalcidian arrives in a busy mood. She inspects the
+peas, still on the vine, and enclosed in their pods; she auscultates
+them with her antennæ; she discovers, hidden under the general envelope,
+the weak points in the epidermic covering of the peas. Then, applying
+her oviscapt, she thrusts it through the side of the pod and perforates
+the circular trap-door. However far withdrawn into the centre of the
+pea, the Bruchus, whether larvæ or nymph, is reached by the long
+oviduct. It receives an egg in its tender flesh, and the thing is done.
+Without possibility of defence, since it is by now a somnolent grub or a
+helpless pupa, the embryo weevil is eaten until nothing but skin
+remains. What a pity that we cannot at will assist the multiplication of
+this eager exterminator! Alas! our assistants have got us in a vicious
+circle, for if we wished to obtain the help of any great number of
+Chalcidians we should be obliged in the first place to breed a
+multiplicity of Bruchidæ.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AN INVADER.--THE HARICOT-WEEVIL
+
+
+If there is one vegetable on earth that more than any other is a gift of
+the gods, it is the haricot bean. It has all the virtues: it forms a
+soft paste upon the tongue; it is extremely palatable, abundant,
+inexpensive, and highly nutritious. It is a vegetable meat which,
+without being bloody and repulsive, is the equivalent of the horrors
+outspread upon the butcher's slab. To recall its services the more
+emphatically, the Provençal idiom calls it the _gounflo-gus_--the filler
+of the poor.
+
+Blessed Bean, consoler of the wretched, right well indeed do you fill
+the labourer, the honest, skilful worker who has drawn a low number in
+the crazy lottery of life. Kindly Haricot, with three drops of oil and a
+dash of vinegar you were the favourite dish of my young years; and even
+now, in the evening of my days, you are welcome to my humble porringer.
+We shall be friends to the last.
+
+To-day it is not my intention to sing your merits; I wish simply to ask
+you a question, being curious: What is the country of your origin? Did
+you come from Central Asia with the broad bean and the pea? Did you make
+part of that collection of seeds which the first pioneers of culture
+brought us from their gardens? Were you known to antiquity?
+
+Here the insect, an impartial and well-informed witness, answers: "No;
+in our country antiquity was not acquainted with the haricot. The
+precious vegetable came hither by the same road as the broad bean. It is
+a foreigner, and of comparatively recent introduction into Europe."
+
+The reply of the insect merits serious examination, supported as it is
+by extremely plausible arguments. Here are the facts. For years
+attentive to matters agricultural, I had never seen haricots attacked by
+any insect whatever; not even by the Bruchidæ, the licensed robbers of
+leguminous seeds.
+
+On this point I have questioned my peasant neighbours. They are men of
+the extremest vigilance in all that concerns their crops. To steal their
+property is an abominable crime, swiftly discovered. Moreover, the
+housewife, who individually examines all beans intended for the
+saucepan, would inevitably find the malefactor.
+
+All those I have spoken to replied to my questions with a smile in which
+I read their lack of faith in my knowledge of insects. "Sir," they said,
+"you must know that there are never grubs in the haricot bean. It is a
+blessed vegetable, respected by the weevil. The pea, the broad bean, the
+vetch, and the chick-pea all have their vermin; but the haricot, _lou
+gounflo-gus_, never. What should we do, poor folk as we are, if the
+_Courcoussoun_ robbed us of it?"
+
+The fact is that the weevil despises the haricot; a very curious dislike
+if we consider how industriously the other vegetables of the same family
+are attacked. All, even the beggarly lentil, are eagerly exploited;
+whilst the haricot, so tempting both as to size and flavour, remains
+untouched. It is incomprehensible. Why should the Bruchus, which without
+hesitation passes from the excellent to the indifferent, and from the
+indifferent to the excellent, disdain this particularly toothsome seed?
+It leaves the forest vetch for the pea, and the pea for the broad bean,
+as pleased with the small as with the large, yet the temptations of the
+haricot bean leave it indifferent. Why?
+
+Apparently because the haricot is unknown to it. The other leguminous
+plants, whether native or of Oriental origin, have been familiar to it
+for centuries; it has tested their virtues year by year, and, confiding
+in the lessons of the past, it bases its forethought for the future upon
+ancient custom. The haricot is avoided as a newcomer, whose merits it
+has not yet learned.
+
+The insect emphatically informs us that with us the haricot is of recent
+date. It has come to us from a distant country: and assuredly from the
+New World. Every edible vegetable attracts its consumers. If it had
+originated in the Old World the haricot would have had its licensed
+consumers, as have the pea, the lentil, and the broad bean. The smallest
+leguminous seed, if barely bigger than a pin's head, nourishes its
+weevil; a dwarf which patiently nibbles it and excavates a dwelling; but
+the plump, delicious haricot is spared.
+
+This astonishing immunity can have only one explanation: like the potato
+and the maize-plant, the haricot is a gift of the New World. It arrived
+in Europe without the company of the insect which exploits it in its
+native country; it has found in our fields another world of insects,
+which have despised it because they did not know it. Similarly the
+potato and the ear of maize are untouched in France unless their
+American consumers are accidentally imported with them.
+
+The verdict of the insect is confirmed by the negative testimony of the
+ancient classics; the haricot never appears on the table of the Greek or
+Roman peasant. In the second Eclogue of Virgil Thestylis prepares the
+repast of the harvesters:--
+
+  Thestylis et rapido fessis messoribus æstu
+  Allia serpyllumque herbas contundit olentes.
+
+This mixture is the equivalent of the _aïoli_, dear to the Provençal
+palate. It sounds very well in verse, but is not very substantial. On
+such an occasion men would look for that fundamental dish, the plate of
+red haricots, seasoned with chopped onions. All in good time; this at
+least would ballast the stomach. Thus refreshed in the open air,
+listening to the song of the cigales, the gang of harvesters would take
+their mid-day rest and gently digest their meal in the shadows of the
+sheaves. Our modern Thestylis, differing little from her classic sister,
+would take good care not to forget the _gounflo-gus_, that economical
+resource of large appetites. The Thestylis of the past did not think of
+providing it because she did not know it.
+
+The same author shows us Tityrus offering a night's hospitality to his
+friend Meliboeus, who has been driven from his property by the
+soldiers of Octavius, and goes limping behind his flock of goats. We
+shall have, says Tityrus, chestnuts, cheese, and fruits. History does
+not say if Meliboeus allowed himself to be tempted. It is a pity; for
+during the frugal meal we might have learned in a more explicit fashion
+that the shepherds of the ancient world were not acquainted with the
+haricot.
+
+Ovid tells us, in a delightful passage, of the manner in which Philemon
+and Baucis received the gods unawares as guests in their humble cottage.
+On the three-legged table, which was levelled by means of a potsherd
+under one of the legs, they served cabbage soup, rusty bacon, eggs
+poached for a minute in the hot cinders, cornel-berries pickled in
+brine, honey, and fruits. In this rustic abundance one dish was lacking;
+an essential dish, which the Baucis of our countryside would never
+forget. After bacon soup would follow the obligatory plate of haricots.
+Why did Ovid, so prodigal of detail, neglect to mention a dish so
+appropriate to the occasion? The reply is the same as before: because he
+did not know of it.
+
+In vain have I recapitulated all that my reading has taught me
+concerning the rustic dietary of ancient times; I can recollect no
+mention of the haricot. The worker in the vineyard and the harvester
+have their lupins, broad beans, peas, and lentils, but never the bean of
+beans, the haricot.
+
+The haricot has a reputation of another kind. It is a source of
+flatulence; you eat it, as the saying is, and then you take a walk. It
+lends itself to the gross pleasantries loved of the populace; especially
+when they are formulated by the shameless genius of an Aristophanes or a
+Plautus. What merriment over a simple allusion to the sonorous bean,
+what guffaws from the throats of Athenian sailors or Roman porters! Did
+the two masters, in the unfettered gaiety of a language less reserved
+than our own, ever mention the virtues of the haricot? No; they are
+absolutely silent concerning the trumpet-voiced vegetable.
+
+The name of the bean is a matter for reflection. It is of an unfamiliar
+sound, having no affinity with our language. By its unlikeness to our
+native combinations of sounds, it makes one think of the West Indies or
+South America, as do _caoutchouc_ and _cacao_. Does the word as a matter
+of fact come from the American Indians? Did we receive, together with
+the vegetable, the name by which it is known in its native country?
+Perhaps; but how are we to know? Haricot, fantastic haricot, you set us
+a curious philological problem.
+
+It is also known in French as _faséole_, or _flageolet_. The Provençal
+calls it _faioù_ and _favioù_; the Catalan, _fayol_; the Spaniard,
+_faseolo_; the Portuguese, _feyâo_; the Italian, _fagiuolo_. Here I am
+on familiar ground: the languages of the Latin family have preserved,
+with the inevitable modifications, the ancient word _faseolus_.
+
+Now, if I consult my dictionary I find: _faselus_, _faseolus_,
+_phaseolus_, haricot. Learned lexicographer, permit me to remark that
+your translation is incorrect: _faselus_, _faseolus_ cannot mean
+haricot. The incontestable proof is in the Georgics, where Virgil tells
+us at what season we must sow the _faselus_. He says:--
+
+  Si vero viciamque seres vilemque faselum ...
+  Haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes;
+  Incipe, et ad medias sementem extende pruinas.
+
+Nothing is clearer than the precept of the poet who was so admirably
+familiar with all matters agricultural; the sowing of the _faselus_ must
+be commenced when the constellation of Bootes disappears at the set of
+sun, that is, in October; and it is to be continued until the middle of
+the winter.
+
+These conditions put the haricot out of the running: it is a delicate
+plant, which would never survive the lightest frost. Winter would be
+fatal to it, even under Italian skies. More refractory to cold on
+account of the country of their origin, peas, broad beans, and vetches,
+and other leguminous plants have nothing to fear from an autumn sowing,
+and prosper during the winter provided the climate be fairly mild.
+
+What then is represented by the _faselus_ of the Georgics, that
+problematical vegetable which has transmitted its name to the haricot in
+the Latin tongues? Remembering that the contemptuous epithet _vilis_ is
+used by the poet in qualification, I am strongly inclined to regard it
+as the cultivated vetch, the big square pea, the little-valued _jaïsso_
+of the Provençal peasant.
+
+The problem of the haricot stood thus, almost elucidated by the
+testimony of the insect world alone, when an unexpected witness gave me
+the last word of the enigma. It was once again a poet, and a famous
+poet, M. José-Maria de Heredia, who came to the aid of the naturalist.
+Without suspecting the service he was rendering, a friend of mine, the
+village schoolmaster, lent me a magazine[9] in which I read the
+following conversation between the master-sonneteer and a lady
+journalist, who was anxious to know which of his own works he preferred.
+
+"What would you have me say?" said the poet.
+
+"I do not know what to say, I do not know which sonnet I prefer; I have
+taken horrible pains with all of them.... But you, which do you prefer?"
+
+"My dear master, how can I choose out of so many jewels, when each one
+is perfect in its beauty? You flash pearls, emeralds, and rubies before
+my astonished eyes: how should I decide to prefer the emerald to the
+pearl? I am transported by admiration of the whole necklace."
+
+"Well, as for me, there is something I am more proud of than of all my
+sonnets, and which has done much more for my reputation than my verses."
+
+I opened my eyes wide, "What is that?" I asked. The master looked at me
+mischievously; then, with that beautiful light in his eyes which fires
+his youthful countenance, he said triumphantly--
+
+"It is my discovery of the etymology of the word haricot!"
+
+I was so amazed that I forgot to laugh.
+
+"I am perfectly serious in telling you this."
+
+"I know, my dear master, of your reputation for profound scholarship:
+but to imagine, on that account, that you were famed for your discovery
+of the etymology of haricot--I should never have expected it! Will you
+tell me how you made the discovery?"
+
+"Willingly. See now: I found some information respecting the haricot
+while studying that fine seventeenth-century work of natural history by
+Hernandez: _De Historia plantarum novi orbis_. The word haricot was
+unknown in France until the seventeenth century: people used the word
+_feve_ or _phaséol_: in Mexican, _ayacot_. Thirty species of haricot
+were cultivated in Mexico before the conquest. They are still known as
+_ayacot_, especially the red haricot, spotted with black or violet. One
+day at the house of Gaston Paris I met a famous scholar. Hearing my
+name, he rushed at me and asked if it was I who had discovered the
+etymology of the word haricot. He was absolutely ignorant of the fact
+that I had written verses and published the _Trophées_."--
+
+A very pretty whim, to count the jewellery of his famous sonnets as
+second in importance to the nomenclature of a vegetable! I in my turn
+was delighted with his _ayacot_. How right I was to suspect the
+outlandish word of American Indian origin! How right the insect was, in
+testifying, in its own fashion, that the precious bean came to us from
+the New World! While still retaining its original name--or something
+sufficiently like it--the bean of Montezuma, the Aztec _ayacot_, has
+migrated from Mexico to the kitchen-gardens of Europe.
+
+But it has reached us without the company of its licensed consumer; for
+there must assuredly be a weevil in its native country which levies
+tribute on its nourishing tissues. Our native bean-eaters have mistaken
+the stranger; they have not had time as yet to grow familiar with it, or
+to appreciate its merits; they have prudently abstained from touching
+the _ayacot_, whose novelty awoke suspicion. Until our own days the
+Mexican bean remained untouched: unlike our other leguminous seeds,
+which are all eagerly exploited by the weevil.
+
+This state of affairs could not last. If our own fields do not contain
+the insect amateur of the haricot the New World knows it well enough. By
+the road of commercial exchange, sooner or later some worm-eaten sack
+of haricots must bring it to Europe. The invasion is inevitable.
+
+According to documents now before me, indeed, it has already taken
+place. Three or four years ago I received from Maillane, in the
+Bouches-du-Rhône, what I sought in vain in my own neighbourhood,
+although I questioned many a farmer and housewife, and astonished them
+by my questions. No one had ever seen the pest of the haricot; no one
+had ever heard of it. Friends who knew of my inquiries sent me from
+Maillane, as I have said, information that gave great satisfaction to my
+naturalist's curiosity. It was accompanied by a measure of haricots
+which were utterly and outrageously spoiled; every bean was riddled with
+holes, changed into a kind of sponge. Within them swarmed innumerable
+weevils, which recalled, by their diminutive size, the lentil-weevil,
+_Bruchus lenti_.
+
+The senders told me of the loss experienced at Maillane. The odious
+little creature, they said, had destroyed the greater portion of the
+harvest. A veritable plague, such as had never before been known, had
+fallen upon the haricots, leaving the housewife barely a handful to put
+in the saucepan. Of the habits of the creature and its way of going to
+work nothing was known. It was for me to discover them by means of
+experiment.
+
+Quick, then, let us experiment! The circumstances favour me. We are in
+the middle of June, and in my garden there is a bed of early haricots;
+the black Belgian haricots, sown for use in the kitchen. Since I must
+sacrifice the toothsome vegetable, let us loose the terrible destroyer
+on the mass of verdure. The development of the plant is at the
+requisite stage, if I may go by what the _Bruchus pisi_ has already
+taught me; the flowers are abundant, and the pods are equally so; still
+green, and of all sizes.
+
+I place on a plate two or three handfuls of the infested haricots, and
+set the populous heap in the full sunlight by the edge of my bed of
+beans. I can imagine what will happen. Those insects which are already
+free, and those which the stimulus of the sunshine will presently
+liberate, will emerge and take to their wings. Finding the maternal
+haricot close at hand they will take possession of the vines. I shall
+see them exploring pods and flowers, and before very long they will lay
+their eggs. That is how the pea-weevil would behave under similar
+conditions.
+
+But no: to my surprise and confusion, matters do not fall out as I
+foresaw. For a few minutes the insects bustle about in the sunlight,
+opening and closing their wing-covers to ease the mechanism of flight;
+then one by one they fly away, mounting in the luminous air; they grow
+smaller and smaller to the sight, and are quickly lost to view. My
+persevering attentions have not met with the slightest success; not one
+of the weevils has settled on my haricots.
+
+When the joys of liberty have been tasted will they return--to-night,
+to-morrow, or later? No, they do not return. All that week, at
+favourable hours, I inspect the rows of beans pod by pod, flower by
+flower; but never a Bruchus do I see, nor even an egg. Yet the season is
+propitious, for at this very moment the mothers imprisoned in my jars
+lay a profusion of eggs upon the dry haricots.
+
+Next season I try again. I have at my disposal two other beds, which I
+have sown with the late haricot, the red haricot; partly for the use of
+the household, but principally for the benefit of the weevil. Arranged
+in convenient rows, the two crops will be ready, one in August and one
+in September or later.
+
+With the red haricot I repeat the experiment already essayed with the
+black haricot. On several occasions, in suitable weather, I release
+large numbers of weevils from my glass jars, the general headquarters of
+the tribe. On each occasion the result is plainly negative. All through
+the season, until both crops are exhausted, I repeat my search almost
+daily; but I can never discover a single pod infested, nor even a single
+weevil perching on leaf or flower.
+
+Certainly the inspection has not been at fault. The household is warned
+to respect certain rows of beans which I have reserved for myself. It is
+also requested to keep a look-out for eggs on all the pods gathered. I
+myself examine with a magnifying-glass all the haricots coming from my
+own or from neighbouring gardens before handing them over to the
+housewife to be shelled. All my trouble is wasted: there is not an egg
+to be seen.
+
+To these experiments in the open air I add others performed under glass.
+I place, in some tall, narrow bottles, fresh haricot pods hanging from
+their stems; some green, others mottled with crimson, and containing
+seeds not far from mature. Each bottle is finally given a population of
+weevils. This time I obtain some eggs, but I am no further advanced;
+they are laid on the sides of the bottles, but not on the pods.
+Nevertheless, they hatch. For a few days I see the grubs wandering
+about, exploring the pods and the glass with equal zeal. Finally one
+and all perish without touching the food provided.
+
+The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is obvious: the young and
+tender haricot is not the proper diet. Unlike the _Bruchus pisi_, the
+female of the haricot-weevil refuses to trust her family to beans that
+are not hardened by age and desiccation; she refused to settle on my
+bean-patch because the food she required was not to be found there. What
+does she require? Evidently the mature, dry, hard haricot, which falls
+to earth with the sound of a small pebble. I hasten to satisfy her. I
+place in the bottles some very mature, horny pods, thoroughly desiccated
+by exposure to the sun. This time the family prospers, the grubs
+perforate the dry shell, reach the beans, penetrate them, and henceforth
+all goes well.
+
+To judge by appearances, then, the weevil invades the granary. The beans
+are left standing in the fields until both plants and pods, shrivelled
+by the sun, are completely desiccated. The process of beating the pods
+to loosen and separate the beans is thus greatly facilitated. It is then
+that the weevil, finding matters to suit her, commences to lay her eggs.
+By storing his crop a little late the peasant stores the pest as well.
+
+But the weevil more especially attacks the haricot when warehoused. Like
+the Calander-beetle, which nibbles the wheat in our granaries but
+despises the cereal while still on the stalk, it abhors the bean while
+tender, and prefers to establish itself in the peace and darkness of the
+storehouse. It is a formidable enemy to the merchant rather than to the
+peasant.
+
+What a fury of destruction once the ravager is installed in the
+vegetable treasure-house! My bottles give abundant evidence of this. One
+single haricot bean shelters a numerous family; often as many as twenty
+members. And not one generation only exploits the bean, but three or
+four in the year. So long as the skin of the bean contains any edible
+matter, so long do new consumers establish themselves within it, so that
+the haricot finally becomes a mere shell stuffed with excreta. The skin,
+despised by the grubs, is a mere sac, pierced with holes as many as the
+inhabitants that have deserted it; the ruin is complete.
+
+The _Bruchus pisi_, a solitary hermit, consumes only so much of the pea
+as will leave a cell for the nymph; the rest remains intact, so that the
+pea may be sown, or it will even serve as food, if we can overcome our
+repugnance. The American insect knows nothing of these limitations; it
+empties the haricot completely and leaves a skinful of filth that I have
+seen the pigs refuse. America is anything but considerate when she sends
+us her entomological pests. We owe the Phylloxera to America; the
+Phylloxera, that calamitous insect against which our vine-growers wage
+incessant war: and to-day she is sending us the haricot-weevil, which
+threatens to be a plague of the future. A few experiments gave me some
+idea of the peril of such an invasion.
+
+For nearly three years there have stood, on my laboratory table, some
+dozens of jars and bottles covered with pieces of gauze which prevent
+escape while permitting of a constant ventilation. These are the cages
+of my menagerie. In them I rear the haricot-weevil, varying the system
+of education at will. Amongst other things I have learned that this
+insect, far from being exclusive in its choice, will accommodate itself
+to most of our leguminous foods.
+
+All the haricots suit it, black and white, red and variegated, large and
+small; those of the latest crop and those which have been many years in
+stock and are almost completely refractory to boiling water. The loose
+beans are attacked by preference, as being easier to invade, but when
+the loose beans are not available those in the natural shelter of their
+pods are attacked with equal zest. However dry and parchment-like the
+pods, the grubs have no difficulty in attaining the seeds. When attacked
+in the field or garden, the bean is attacked in this way through the
+pod. The bean known in Provence as the blind haricot--_lou faioù
+borgné_--a bean with a long pod, which is marked with a black spot at
+the navel, which has the look of a closed and blackened eye, is also
+greatly appreciated; indeed, I fancy my little guests show an obvious
+preference for this particular bean.
+
+So far, nothing abnormal; the Bruchus does not wander beyond the limits
+of the botanical family _Phaseolus_. But here is a characteristic that
+increases the peril, and shows us this lover of beans in an unexpected
+light. Without the slightest hesitation it accepts the dry pea, the
+bean, the vetch, the tare, and the chick-pea; it goes from one to the
+other, always satisfied; its offspring live and prosper in all these
+seeds as well as in the haricot. Only the lentil is refused, perhaps on
+account of its insufficient volume. The American weevil is a formidable
+experimentalist.
+
+The peril would be much greater did the insect pass from leguminous
+seeds to cereals, as at first I feared it might. But it does not do so;
+imprisoned in my bottles together with a handful of wheat, barley, rice,
+or maize, the Bruchus invariably perished and left no offspring. The
+result was the same with oleaginous seeds: such as castor-oil and
+sunflower. Nothing outside the bean family is of any use to the Bruchus.
+Thus limited, its portion is none the less considerable, and it uses and
+abuses it with the utmost energy. The eggs are white, slender, and
+cylindrical. There is no method in their distribution, no choice in
+their deposition. The mother lays them singly or in little groups, on
+the walls of the jar as well as on the haricots. In her negligence she
+will even lay them on maize, coffee, castor-oil seeds, and other seeds,
+on which the newly born grubs will promptly perish, not finding them to
+their taste. What place has maternal foresight here? Abandoned no matter
+where in the heap of seeds, the eggs are always in place, as it is left
+to the grub to search and to find the points of invasion.
+
+In five days at most the egg is hatched. A little white creature with a
+red-brown head emerges. It is a mere speck of a creature, just visible
+to the naked eye. Its body is thickened forward, to give more strength
+to its implements--its mandibles--which have to perforate the hard
+substance of the dry bean, which is as tough as wood. The larvæ of the
+Buprestis and the Capricornis, which burrow in the trunks of trees, are
+similarly shaped. Directly it issues from the egg the wriggling creature
+makes off at random with an activity we should hardly expect in one so
+young. It wanders hither and thither, eager to find food and shelter as
+soon as possible.
+
+Within twenty-four hours it has usually attained both. I see the tiny
+grub perforate the horny skin that covers the cotyledons; I watch its
+efforts; I surprise it sunk half-way in the commencement of a burrow, at
+the mouth of which is a white floury powder, the waste from the
+mandibles. It works its way inward and buries itself in the heart of the
+seed. It will emerge in the adult form in the course of about five
+weeks, so rapid is its evolution.
+
+This hasty development allows of several generations in the year. I have
+recorded four. On the other hand, one isolated couple has furnished me
+with a family of eighty. Consider only the half of this
+number--supposing the sexes to be equal in number--and at the end of a
+year the couples issued from this original pair would be represented by
+the fortieth power of forty; in larvæ they would represent the frightful
+total of more than five millions. What a mountain of haricots would be
+ravaged by such a legion!
+
+The industry of the larvæ reminds us at every point what we have learned
+from the _Bruchus pisi_. Each grub excavates a lodging in the mass of
+the bean, respecting the epidermis, and preparing a circular trap-door
+which the adult can easily open with a push at the moment of emergence.
+At the termination of the larval phase the lodgements are betrayed on
+the surface of the bean by so many shadowy circles. Finally the lid
+falls, the insect leaves its cell, and the haricot remains pierced by as
+many holes as it has nourished grubs.
+
+Extremely frugal, satisfied with a little farinaceous powder, the adults
+seem by no means anxious to abandon the native heap or bin so long as
+there are beans untouched. They mate in the interstices of the heap;
+the mothers sow their eggs at random; the young larvæ establish
+themselves some in beans that are so far intact, some in beans which are
+perforated but not yet exhausted; and all through the summer the
+operations of breeding are repeated once in every five weeks. The last
+generation of the year--that of September or October--sleeps in its
+cells until the warm weather returns.
+
+If the haricot pest were ever to threaten us seriously it would not be
+very difficult to wage a war of extermination against it. Its habits
+teach us what tactics we ought to follow. It exploits the dried and
+gathered crop in the granary or the storehouse. If it is difficult to
+attack it in the open it would also be useless. The greater part of its
+affairs are managed elsewhere, in our storehouses. The enemy establishes
+itself under our roof and is ready to our hand. By means of insecticides
+defence should be relatively easy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE GREY LOCUST
+
+
+I have just witnessed a moving spectacle: the last moult of a locust;
+the emergence of the adult from its larval envelope. It was magnificent.
+I am speaking of the Grey Locust, the colossus among our acridians,[10]
+which is often seen among the vines in September when the grapes are
+gathered. By its size--and it grows as long as a man's finger--it lends
+itself to observation better than any other of its tribe.
+
+The larva, disgustingly fat, like a rude sketch of the perfect insect,
+is commonly of a tender green; but it is sometimes of a bluish green, a
+dirty yellow, or a ruddy brown, or even an ashen grey, like the grey of
+the adult cricket. The corselet is strongly keeled and indented, and is
+sprinkled with fine white spots. As powerful as in the adult insect, the
+hind-leg has a corpulent haunch, streaked with red, and a long shin like
+a two-edged saw.
+
+The elytra, which in a few days will extend far beyond the tip of the
+abdomen, are at present too small triangular wing-like appendages,
+touching along their upper edges, and continuing and emphasising the
+keel or ridge of the corselet. Their free ends stick up like the gable
+of a house. They remind one of the skirts of a coat, the maker of which
+has been ludicrously stingy with the cloth, as they merely cover the
+creature's nakedness at the small of the back. Underneath there are two
+narrow appendages, the germs of the wings, which are even smaller than
+the elytra. The sumptuous, elegant sails of to-morrow are now mere rags,
+so miserly in their dimensions as to be absolutely grotesque. What will
+emerge from these miserable coverings? A miracle of grace and amplitude.
+
+Let us observe the whole process in detail. Feeling itself ripe for
+transformation, the insect climbs up the wire-gauze cover by means of
+its hinder and intermediate limbs. The fore-limbs are folded and crossed
+on the breast, and are not employed in supporting the insect, which
+hangs in a reversed position, the back downwards. The triangular
+winglets, the sheaths of the elytra, open along their line of juncture
+and separate laterally; the two narrow blades, which contain the wings,
+rise in the centre of the interval and slightly diverge. The proper
+position for the process of moulting has now been assumed and the proper
+stability assured.
+
+The first thing to do is to burst the old skin. Behind the corselet,
+under the pointed roof of the prothorax, a series of pulsations is
+produced by alternate inflation and deflation. A similar state of
+affairs is visible in front of the neck, and probably under the entire
+surface of the yielding carapace. The fineness of the membrane at the
+articulations enables us to perceive it at these unarmoured points, but
+the cuirass of the corselet conceals it in the central portion.
+
+At these points the circulatory reserves of the insect are pulsing in
+tidal onsets. Their gradual increase is betrayed by pulsations like
+those of a hydraulic ram. Distended by this rush of humours, by this
+injection in which the organism concentrates all its forces, the outer
+skin finally splits along the line of least resistance which the subtle
+previsions of life have prepared. The fissure extends the whole length
+of the corselet, opening precisely along the ridge of the keel, as
+though the two symmetrical halves had been soldered together.
+Unbreakable elsewhere, the envelope has yielded at this median point,
+which had remained weaker than the rest of the sheath. The fissure runs
+back a little way until it reaches a point between the attachments of
+the wings; on the head it runs forward as far as the base of the
+antennæ, when it sends a short ramification right and left.
+
+Through this breach the back is seen; quite soft, and very pale, with
+scarcely a tinge of grey. Slowly it curves upwards and becomes more and
+more strongly hunched; at last it is free.
+
+The head follows, withdrawing itself from its mask, which remains in
+place, intact in the smallest detail, but looking very strange with its
+great unseeing glassy eyes. The sheaths of the antennæ, without a
+wrinkle, without the least derangement, and in their natural place, hang
+over this dead, translucid face.
+
+In emerging from their narrow sheaths, which clasped them so tightly and
+precisely, the thread-like antennæ have evidently met with no
+resistance, or the sheaths would have been turned inside out, or
+crumpled out of shape, or wrinkled at least. Without harming the jointed
+or knotted covers, the contents, of equal volume and equally knotty,
+have slipped out as easily as though they were smooth, slippery objects
+sliding out of a loose sheath. The method of extraction is still more
+astonishing in the case of the hind-legs.
+
+It is now, however, the turn of the front and intermediate pairs of
+legs. They pull out of their gauntlets and leggings without the least
+hitch; nothing is torn, nothing buckled; the outer skin is not even
+crumpled, and all the tissues remain in their natural position. The
+insect is now hanging from the dome of the cover solely by the claws of
+the long hind-legs. It hangs in an almost vertical position, the head
+downwards, swinging like a pendulum if I touch the cover. Four tiny,
+steely claws are its only support. If they gave or unclasped themselves
+the insect would be lost, as it is as yet unable to unfurl its enormous
+wings; but even had the wings emerged they could not grip the air in
+time to save the creature from the consequences of a fall. But the four
+claws hold fast; life, before withdrawing from them, left them rigidly
+contracted, so that they should support without yielding the struggles
+and withdrawals to follow.
+
+Now the wing-covers and wings emerge. These are four narrow strips,
+vaguely seamed and furrowed, like strings of rolled tissue-paper. They
+are barely a quarter of their final length.
+
+They are so soft that they bend under their own weight, and hang down
+the creature's sides in the reverse of their normal position. The free
+extremities, which normally point backwards, are now pointing towards
+the cricket's head as it hangs reversed. The organs of future flight are
+like four leaves of withered foliage shattered by a terrific rainstorm.
+
+A profound transformation is necessary to bring the wings to their final
+perfection. The inner changes are already at work; liquids are
+solidifying; albuminous secretions are bringing order out of chaos; but
+so far no outward sign betrays what is happening in the mysterious
+laboratory of the organism. All seems inert and lifeless.
+
+In the meantime the posterior limbs disengage themselves. The great
+haunches become visible, streaked on the inner faces with a pale rose,
+which rapidly turns to a vivid crimson. Emergence is easy, the thick and
+muscular upper portion of the haunch preparing the way for the narrower
+part of the limb.
+
+It is otherwise with the shank. This, in the adult insect, is armed
+along its whole length by a double series of stiff, steely spines.
+Moreover, the lower extremity is terminated by four strong spurs. The
+shank forms a veritable saw, but with two parallel sets of teeth; and it
+is so strongly made that it may well be compared, the question of size
+apart, to the great saw of a quarry-man.
+
+The shank of the larva has the same structure, so that the object to be
+extracted is enclosed in a scabbard as awkwardly shaped as itself. Each
+spur is enclosed in a similar spur; each tooth engages in the hollow of
+a similar tooth, and the sheath is so closely moulded upon the shank
+that a no more intimate contact could be obtained by replacing the
+envelope by a layer of varnish applied with a brush.
+
+Nevertheless the tibia, long and narrow as it is, issues from its sheath
+without catching or sticking anywhere. If I had not repeatedly seen the
+operation I could not believe it possible; for the discarded sheath is
+absolutely intact from end to end. Neither the terminal spurs nor the
+double rows of spines do the slightest damage to the delicate mould. The
+long-toothed saw leaves the delicate sheath unbroken, although a puff of
+the breath is enough to tear it; the ferocious spurs slip out of it
+without leaving so much as a scratch.
+
+I was far from expecting such a result. Having the spiny weapons of the
+legs in mind, I imagined that those limbs would moult in scales and
+patches, or that the sheathing would rub off like a dead scarf-skin. How
+completely the reality surpassed my anticipations!
+
+From the spurs and spines of the sheath, which is as thin as the finest
+gold-beaters' skin, the spurs and spines of the leg, which make it a
+most formidable weapon, capable of cutting a piece of soft wood, emerge
+without the slightest display of violence, without a hitch of any kind;
+and the empty skin remains in place. Still clinging by its claws to the
+top of the wire cover, it is untorn, unwrinkled, uncreased. Even the
+magnifying-glass fails to show a trace of rough usage. Such as the skin
+was before the cricket left it, so it is now. The legging of dead skin
+remains in its smallest details the exact replica of the living limb.
+
+If any one asked you to extract a saw from a scabbard exactly moulded
+upon the steel, and to conduct the operation without the slightest
+degree of tearing or scratching, you would laugh at the flagrant
+impossibility of the task. But life makes light of such absurdities; it
+has its methods of performing the impossible when such methods are
+required. The leg of the locust affords us such an instance.
+
+Hard as it is when once free of its sheath, the serrated tibia would
+absolutely refuse to leave the latter, so closely does it fit, unless it
+were torn to pieces. Yet the difficulty must be evaded, for it is
+indispensable that the sheaths of the legs should remain intact, in
+order to afford a firm support until the insect is completely
+extricated.
+
+The leg in process of liberation is not the leg with which the locust
+makes its leaps; it has not as yet the rigidity which it will soon
+acquire. It is soft, and eminently flexible. In those portions which the
+progress of the moult exposes to view I see the legs bend under the mere
+weight of the suspended insect when I tilt the supporting cover. They
+are as flexible as two strips of elastic indiarubber. Yet even now
+consolidation is progressing, for in a few minutes the proper rigidity
+will be acquired.
+
+Further along the limbs, in the portions which the sheathing still
+conceals, the legs are certainly softer still, and in the state of
+exquisite plasticity--I had almost said fluidity--which allows them to
+pass through narrow passages almost as a liquid flows.
+
+The teeth of the saws are already there, but have nothing of their
+imminent rigidity. With the point of a pen-knife I can partially uncover
+a leg and extract the spines from their serrated mould. They are germs
+of spines; flexible buds which bend under the slightest pressure and
+resume their position the moment the pressure is removed.
+
+These needles point backwards as the leg is drawn out of the sheath; but
+they re-erect themselves and solidify as they emerge. I am witnessing
+not the mere removal of leggings from limbs already clad in finished
+armour, but a kind of creation which amazes one by its promptitude.
+
+Very much in the same way, but with far less delicate precision, the
+claws of the crayfish, at the period of the moult, withdraw the soft
+flesh of their double fingers from their stony sheath.
+
+Finally the long stilt-like legs are free. They are folded gently
+against the furrowed thighs, thus to mature undisturbed. The abdomen
+begins to emerge. Its fine tunic-like covering splits, and wrinkles, but
+still encloses the extremity of the abdomen, which adheres to the
+moulted skin for some little time longer. With the exception of this one
+point the entire insect is now uncovered.
+
+It hangs head downwards, like a pendulum, supported by the talons of the
+now empty leg-cases. During the whole of the lengthy and meticulous
+process the four talons have never yielded. The whole operation has been
+conducted with the utmost delicacy and prudence.
+
+The insect hangs motionless, held by the tip of the abdomen. The abdomen
+is disproportionately distended; swollen, apparently, by the reserve of
+organisable humours which the expansion of the wings and wing-covers
+will presently employ. Meanwhile the creature rests and recovers from
+its exertions. Twenty minutes of waiting elapse.
+
+Then, exerting the muscles of the back, the suspended insect raises
+itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin
+above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a
+trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the
+loins. This gymnastic feat accomplished, the rest is easy.
+
+With the purchase thus obtained the insect rises a little and reaches
+the wire gauze, the equivalent of the twig which would be chosen for the
+site of the transformation in the open fields. It holds to this with the
+four anterior limbs. Then the tip of the abdomen is finally liberated,
+and suddenly, shaken by the final struggle, the empty skin falls to the
+ground.
+
+This fall is interesting, and reminds me of the persistence with which
+the empty husk of the Cigale braves the winds of winter, without falling
+from its supporting twig. The transfiguration of the locust takes place
+very much as does that of the Cigale. How is it then that the acridian
+trusts to a hold so easily broken?
+
+The talons of the skin hold firmly so long as the labour of escape
+continues, although one would expect it to shake the firmest grip; yet
+they yield at the slightest shock when the labour is terminated. There
+is evidently a condition of highly unstable equilibrium; showing once
+more with what delicate precision the insect escapes from its sheath.
+
+For want of a better term I said "escape." But the word is ill chosen;
+for it implies a certain amount of violence, and no violence must be
+employed, on account of the instability of equilibrium already
+mentioned. If the insect, shaken by a sudden effort, were to lose its
+hold, it would be all up with it. It would slowly shrivel on the spot;
+or at best its wings, unable to expand, would remain as miserable scraps
+of tissue. The locust does not tear itself away from its sheath; it
+delicately insinuates itself out of it--I had almost said flows. It is
+as though it were expelled by a gentle pressure.
+
+Let us return to the wings and elytra, which have made no apparent
+progress since their emergence from their sheaths. They are still mere
+stumps, with fine longitudinal seams; almost like little ropes'-ends.
+Their expansion, which will occupy more than three hours, is reserved
+for the end, when the insect is completely moulted and in its normal
+position.
+
+We have just seen the insect turn head uppermost. This reversal causes
+the wings and elytra to fall into their natural position. Extremely
+flexible, and yielding to their own weight, they had previously drooped
+backwards with their free extremities pointing towards the head of the
+insect as it hung reversed.
+
+Now, still by reason of their own weight, their position is rectified
+and they point in the normal direction. They are no longer curved like
+the petals of a flower; they no longer point the wrong way; but they
+retain the same miserable aspect.
+
+In its perfect state the wing is like a fan. A radiating bundle of
+strong nervures runs through it in the direction of its length and forms
+the framework of the fan, which is readily furled and unfurled. The
+intervals are crossed by innumerable cross-nervures of slighter
+substance, which make of the whole a network of rectangular meshes. The
+elytrum, which is heavier and much less extensive, repeats this
+structure.
+
+At present nothing of this mesh-work is visible. Nothing can be seen but
+a few wrinkles, a few flexuous furrows, which announce that the stumps
+are bundles of tissue cunningly folded and reduced to the smallest
+possible volume.
+
+The expansion of the wing begins near the shoulder. Where nothing
+precise could be distinguished at the outset we soon perceive a
+diaphanous surface subdivided into meshes of beautiful precision.
+
+Little by little, with a deliberation that escapes the magnifier, this
+area increases its bounds, at the expense of the shapeless bundle at the
+end of the wing. In vain I let my eyes rest on the spot where the
+expanding network meets the still shapeless bundle; I can distinguish
+nothing. But wait a little, and the fine-meshed tissues will appear with
+perfect distinctness.
+
+To judge from this first examination, one would guess that an
+organisable fluid is rapidly congealing into a network of nervures; one
+seems to be watching a process of crystallisation comparable, in its
+rapidity, to that of a saturated saline solution as seen through a
+microscope. But no; this is not what is actually happening. Life does
+not do its work so abruptly.
+
+I detach a half-developed wing and bring it under the powerful eye of
+the microscope. This time I am satisfied. On the confines of the
+transparent network, where an extension of that network seems to be
+gradually weaving itself out of nothing, I can see that the meshes are
+really already in existence. I can plainly recognise the longitudinal
+nervures, which are already stiff; and I can also see--pale, and without
+relief--the transverse nervures. I find them all in the terminal stump,
+and am able to spread out a few of its folds under the microscope.
+
+It is obvious that the wing is not a tissue in the process of making,
+through which the procreative energy of the vital juices is shooting its
+shuttle; it is a tissue already complete. To be perfect it lacks only
+expansion and rigidity, just as a piece of lace or linen needs only to
+be ironed.
+
+In three hours or more the explanation is complete. The wings and elytra
+stand erect over the locust's back like an immense set of sails; at
+first colourless, then of a tender green, like the freshly expanded
+wings of the Cigale. I am amazed at their expanse when I think of the
+miserable stumps from which they have expanded. How did so much material
+contrive to occupy so little space?
+
+There is a story of a grain of hemp-seed that contained all the
+body-linen of a princess. Here we have something even more astonishing.
+The hemp-seed of the story needed long years to germinate, to multiply,
+and at last to give the quantity of hemp required for the trousseau of a
+princess; but the germ of the locust's wing has expanded to a
+magnificent sail in a few short hours.
+
+Slowly the superb erection composed of the four flat fan-like pinions
+assumes rigidity and colour. By to-morrow the colour will have attained
+the requisite shade. For the first time the wings close fan-wise and lie
+down in their places; the elytra bend over at their outer edges, forming
+a flange which lies snugly over the flanks. The transformation is
+complete. Now the great locust has only to harden its tissues a little
+longer and to tan the grey of its costume in the ecstasy of the
+sunshine. Let us leave it to its happiness, and return to an earlier
+moment.
+
+The four stumps which emerge from their coverings shortly after the
+rupture of the corselet along its median line contain, as we have seen,
+the wings and elytra with their innumerable nervures. If not perfect,
+at least the general plan is complete, with all its innumerable details.
+To expand these miserable bundles and convert them into an ample set of
+sails it is enough that the organism, acting like a force-pump, should
+force into the channels already prepared a stream of humours kept in
+reserve for this moment and this purpose, the most laborious of the
+whole process. As the capillary channels are prepared in advance a
+slight injection of fluid is sufficient to cause expansion.
+
+But what were these four bundles of tissue while still enclosed in their
+sheaths? Are the wing-sheaths and the triangular winglets of the larva
+the moulds whose folds, wrinkles, and sinuosities form their contents in
+their own image, and so weave the network of the future wings and
+wing-covers?
+
+Were they really moulds we might for a moment be satisfied. We might
+tell ourselves: It is quite a simple matter that the thing moulded
+should conform to the cavity of the mould. But the simplicity is only
+apparent, for the mould in its turn must somewhere derive the requisite
+and inextricable complexity. We need not go so far back; we should only
+be in darkness. Let us keep to the observable facts.
+
+I examine with a magnifying-glass one of the triangular coat-tails of a
+larva on the point of transformation. I see a bundle of moderately
+strong nervures radiating fan-wise. I see other nervures in the
+intervals, pale and very fine. Finally, still more delicate, and running
+transversely, a number of very short nervures complete the pattern.
+
+Certainly this resembles a rough sketch of the future wing-case; but
+how different from the mature structure! The disposition of the
+radiating nervures, the skeleton of the structure, is not at all the
+same; the network formed by the cross-nervures gives no idea whatever of
+the complex final arrangement. The rudimentary is succeeded by the
+infinitely complex; the clumsy by the infinitely perfect, and the same
+is true of the sheath of the wing and the final condition of its
+contents, the perfect wing.
+
+It is perfectly evident, when we have the preparatory as well as the
+final condition of the wing before our eyes, that the wing-sheath of the
+larva is not a simple mould which elaborates the tissue enclosed in its
+own image and fashions the wing after the complexities of its own
+cavity.
+
+The future wing is not contained in the sheath as a bundle, which will
+astonish us, when expanded, by the extent and extreme complication of
+its surface. Or, to speak more exactly, it is there, but in a potential
+state. Before becoming an actual thing it is a virtual thing which is
+not yet, but is capable of becoming. It is there as the oak is inside
+the acorn.
+
+A fine transparent cushion limits the free edge of the embryo wing and
+the embryo wing-case. Under a powerful microscope we can perceive
+therein a few doubtful lineaments of the future lace-work. This might
+well be the factory in which life will shortly set its materials in
+movement. Nothing more is visible; nothing that will make us foresee the
+prodigious network in which each mesh must have its form and place
+predetermined with geometrical exactitude.
+
+In order that the organisable material can shape itself as a sheet of
+gauze and describe the inextricable labyrinth of the nervuration, there
+must be something better and more wonderful than a mould. There is a
+prototypical plan, an ideal pattern, which imposes a precise position
+upon each atom of the tissue. Before the material commences to circulate
+the configuration is already virtually traced, the courses of the
+plastic currents are already mapped out. The stones of our buildings
+co-ordinate according to the considered plan of the architect; they form
+an ideal assemblage before they exist as a concrete assemblage.
+
+Similarly, the wing of a cricket, that wonderful piece of lace-work
+emerging from a tiny sheath, speaks to us of another Architect, the
+author of the plans according to which life labours.
+
+The genesis of living creatures offers to our contemplation an infinity
+of wonders far greater than this matter of a locust's wing; but in
+general they pass unperceived, obscured as they are by the veil of time.
+
+Time, in the deliberation of mysteries, deprives us of the most
+astonishing of spectacles except our spirits be endowed with a tenacious
+patience. Here by exception the fact is accomplished with a swiftness
+that forces the attention.
+
+Whosoever would gain, without wearisome delays, a glimpse of the
+inconceivable dexterity with which the forces of life can labour, has
+only to consider the great locust of the vineyard. The insect will show
+him that which is hidden from our curiosity by extreme deliberation in
+the germinating seed, the opening leaf, and the budding flower. We
+cannot see the grass grow; but we can watch the growth of the locust's
+wings.
+
+Amazement seizes upon us before this sublime phantasmagoria of the grain
+of hemp which in a few hours has been transmuted into the finest cloth.
+What a mighty artist is Life, shooting her shuttle to weave the wings of
+the locust--one of those insignificant insects of whom long ago Pliny
+said: _In his tam parcis, ferè nullis, quae vis, quae sapientia, quam
+inextricabilis perfectio!_
+
+How truly was the old naturalist inspired! Let us repeat with him: "What
+power, what wisdom, what inconceivable perfection in this least of
+secrets that the vineyard locust has shown us!"
+
+I have heard that a learned inquirer, for whom life is only a conflict
+of physical and chemical forces, does not despair of one day obtaining
+artificially organisable matter--_protoplasm_, as the official jargon
+has it. If it were in my power I should hasten to satisfy this ambitious
+gentleman.
+
+But so be it: you have really prepared protoplasm. By force of
+meditation, profound study, minute care, impregnable patience, your
+desire is realised: you have extracted from your apparatus an albuminous
+slime, easily corruptible and stinking like the devil at the end of a
+few days: in short, a nastiness. What are you going to do with it?
+
+Organise something? Will you give it the structure of a living edifice?
+Will you inject it with a hypodermic syringe between two impalpable
+plates to obtain were it only the wing of a fly?
+
+That is very much what the locust does. It injects its protoplasm
+between the two surfaces of an embryo organ, and the material forms a
+wing-cover, because it finds as guide the ideal archetype of which I
+spoke but now. It is controlled in the labyrinth of its course by a
+device anterior to the injection: anterior to the material itself.
+
+This archetype, the co-ordinator of forms; this primordial regulator;
+have you got it on the end of your syringe? No! Then throw away your
+product. Life will never spring from that chemical filth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE PINE-CHAFER
+
+
+The orthodox denomination of this insect is _Melolontha fullo_, Lin. It
+does not answer, I am very well aware, to be difficult in matters of
+nomenclature; make a noise of some sort, affix a Latin termination, and
+you will have, as far as euphony goes, the equivalent of many of the
+tickets pasted in the entomologist's specimen boxes. The cacophony would
+be excusable if the barbarous term signified nothing but the creature
+signified; but as a rule this name possesses, hidden in its Greek or
+other roots, a certain meaning in which the novice hopes to find
+instruction.
+
+The hope is a delusion. The learned term refers to subtleties difficult
+to comprehend, and of very indifferent importance. Too often it leads
+the student astray, giving him glimpses that have nothing whatever in
+common with the truth as we know it from observation. Very often the
+errors implied by such names are flagrant; sometimes the allusions are
+ridiculous, grotesque, or merely imbecile. So long as they have a decent
+sound, how infinitely preferable are locutions in which etymology finds
+nothing to dissect! Of such would be the word _fullo_, were it not that
+it already has a meaning which immediately occurs to the mind. This
+Latin expression means a _fuller_; a person who kneads and presses cloth
+under a stream of water, making it flexible and ridding it of the
+asperities of weaving. What connection has the subject of this chapter
+with the fuller of cloth? I may puzzle my head in vain: no acceptable
+reply will occur to me.
+
+The term _fullo_ as applied to an insect is found in Pliny. In one
+chapter the great naturalist treats of remedies against jaundice,
+fevers, and dropsy. A little of everything enters into this antique
+pharmacy: the longest tooth of a black dog; the nose of a mouse wrapped
+in a pink cloth; the right eye of a green lizard torn from the living
+animal and placed in a bag of kid-skin; the heart of a serpent, cut out
+with the left hand; the four articulations of the tail of a scorpion,
+including the dart, wrapped tightly in a black cloth, so that for three
+days the sick man can see neither the remedy nor him that applies it;
+and a number of other extravagances. We may well close the book, alarmed
+at the slough of the imbecility whence the art of healing has come down
+to us.
+
+In the midst of these imbecilities, the preludes of medicine, we find a
+mention of the "fuller." _Tertium qui vocatur fullo, albis guttis,
+dissectum utrique lacerto adalligant_, says the text. To treat fevers
+divide the fuller beetle in two parts and apply half under the right arm
+and half under the left.
+
+[Illustration: THE PINE-CHAFER.
+
+(_Melolontha fullo._)]
+
+Now what did the ancient naturalist mean by the term "fuller beetle"? We
+do not precisely know. The qualification _albis guttis_, white spots,
+would fit the Pine-chafer well enough, but it is not sufficient to
+make us certain. Pliny himself does not seem to have been very certain
+of the identity of the remedy. In his time men's eyes had not yet
+learned to see the insect world. Insects were too small; they were well
+enough for amusing children, who would tie them to the end of a long
+thread and make them walk in circles, but they were not worthy of
+occupying the attention of a self-respecting man.
+
+Pliny apparently derived the word from the country-folk, always poor
+observers and inclined to extravagant denominations. The scholar
+accepted the rural locution, the work perhaps of the imagination of
+childhood, and applied it at hazard without informing himself more
+particularly. The word came down to us embalmed with age; our modern
+naturalists have accepted it, and thus one of our handsomest insects has
+become the "fuller." The majesty of antiquity has consecrated the
+strange appellation.
+
+In spite of all my respect for the antique, I cannot myself accept the
+term "fuller," because under the circumstances it is absurd. Common
+sense should be considered before the aberrations of nomenclature. Why
+not call our subject the Pine-chafer, in reference to the beloved tree,
+the paradise of the insect during the two or three weeks of its aerial
+life? Nothing could be simpler, or more appropriate, to give the better
+reason last.
+
+We have to wander for ages in the night of absurdity before we reach the
+radiant light of the truth. All our sciences witness to this fact; even
+the science of numbers. Try to add a column of Roman figures; you will
+abandon the task, stupefied by the confusion of symbols; and will
+recognise what a revolution was made in arithmetic by the discovery of
+the zero. Like the egg of Columbus, it was a very little thing, but it
+had to be thought of.
+
+While hoping that the future will sink the unfortunate "fuller" in
+oblivion, we will use the term "pine chafer" between ourselves. Under
+that name no one can possibly mistake the insect in question, which
+frequents the pine-tree only.
+
+It has a handsome and dignified appearance, rivalling that of _Oryctes
+nasicornis_. Its costume, if it has not the metallic splendour dear to
+the Scarabæi, the Buprestes and the rose-beetles, is at least unusually
+elegant. A black or chestnut background is thickly sown with
+capriciously shaped spots of white velvet; a fashion both modest and
+handsome.
+
+The male bears at the end of his short antennæ a kind of plume
+consisting of seven large superimposed plates or leaves, which, opening
+and closing like the sticks of a fan, betray the emotions that possess
+him. At first sight it seems that this magnificent foliage must form a
+sense-organ of great perfection, capable of perceiving subtle odours, or
+almost inaudible vibrations of the air, or other phenomena to which our
+senses fail to respond; but the female warns us that we must not place
+too much reliance on such ideas; for although her maternal duties demand
+a degree of impressionability at least as great as that of the male, yet
+the plumes of her antennæ are extremely meagre, containing only six
+narrow leaves.
+
+What then is the use of the enormous fan-like structure of the male
+antennæ? The seven-leaved apparatus is for the Pine-chafer what his long
+vibrating horns are to the Cerambyx and the panoply of the head to the
+Onthophagus and the forked antlers of the mandibles to the Stag-beetle.
+Each decks himself after his manner in these nuptial extravagances.
+
+This handsome chafer appears towards the summer solstice, almost
+simultaneously with the first Cigales. The punctuality of its appearance
+gives it a place in the entomological calendar, which is no less
+punctual than that of the seasons. When the longest days come, those
+days which seem endless and gild the harvests, it never fails to hasten
+to its tree. The fires of St. John, reminiscences of the festivals of
+the Sun, which the children light in the village streets, are not more
+punctual in their date.
+
+At this season, in the hours of twilight, the Pine-chafer comes every
+evening if the weather is fine, to visit the pine-trees in the garden. I
+follow its evolutions with my eyes. With a silent flight, not without
+spirit, the males especially wheel and wheel about, extending their
+great antennary plumes; they go to and fro, to and fro, a procession of
+flying shadows upon the pale blue of the sky in which the last light of
+day is dying. They settle, take flight again, and once more resume their
+busy rounds. What are they doing up there during the fortnight of their
+festival?
+
+The answer is evident: they are courting their mates, and they continue
+to render their homage until the fall of night. In the morning both
+males and females commonly occupy the lower branches. They lie there
+isolated, motionless, indifferent to passing events. They do not avoid
+the hand about to seize them. Most of them are hanging by their hind
+legs and nibbling the pine-needles; they seem to be gently drowsing with
+the needles at their mouths. When twilight returns they resume their
+frolics.
+
+To watch these frolics in the tops of the trees is hardly possible; let
+us try to observe them in captivity. Four pairs are collected in the
+morning and placed, with some twigs off the pine-tree, in a spacious;
+cage. The sight is hardly worth my attention; deprived of the
+possibility of flight, the insects cannot behave as in the open. At most
+I see a male from time to time approaching his beloved; he spreads out
+the leaves of his antennæ, and agitates them so that they shiver
+slightly; he is perhaps informing himself if he is welcome. Thereupon he
+puts on his finest airs and exhibits his attainments. It is a useless
+display; the female is motionless, as though insensible to these
+demonstrations. Captivity has sorrows that are hard to overcome. This
+was all that I was able to see. Mating, it appears, must take place
+during the later hours of the night, so that I missed the propitious
+moment.
+
+One detail in particular interested me. The Pine-chafer emits a musical
+note. The female is as gifted as the male. Does the lover make use of
+his faculty as a means of seduction and appeal? Does the female answer
+the chirp of her _innamorata_ by a similar chirp? That this may be so
+under normal conditions, amidst the foliage of the pines, is extremely
+probable; but I can make no assertion, as I have never heard anything of
+the kind either among the pines or in my laboratory.
+
+The sound is produced by the extremity of the abdomen, which gently
+rises and falls, rubbing, as it does so, with its last few segments, the
+hinder edge of the wing-covers, which are held firm and motionless.
+There is no special equipment on the rubbing surface nor on the surface
+rubbed. The magnifying-glass looks in vain for the fine striations
+usually found in the musical instruments of the insect world. All is
+smooth on either hand. How then is the sound engendered?
+
+Rub the end of the moistened finger on a strip of glass, or a
+window-pane, and you will obtain a very audible sound, somewhat
+analogous to that emitted by the chafer. Better still, use a scrap of
+indiarubber to rub the glass with, and you will reproduce with some
+fidelity the sound in question. If the proper rhythm is observed the
+imitation is so successful that one might well be deceived by it.
+
+In the musical apparatus of the Pine-chafer the pad of the finger-tip
+and the scrap of indiarubber are represented by the soft abdomen of the
+insect, and the glass is represented by the blade of the wing-cover,
+which forms a thin, rigid plate, easily set in vibration. The
+sound-mechanism of the Pine-chafer is thus of the very simplest
+description.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  A
+
+  Acorn-Weevil, _see_ Elephant-Beetle
+
+  Ameles, _see_ Mantis, the Grey
+
+  Anacreon, on the Cigale, 9
+
+  Ant, fable of the Cigale and the, 1-16
+    Devours the Cigale, 9
+    Robs the Cigale, 8
+
+  Arum, Serpent or Putrid, the, attracts and captures insects by means
+    of its offensive effluvia, 230-2
+
+
+  B
+
+  _Balaninus_, _see_ Elephant-Beetle
+
+  Bean, ancestry of, 258-9
+
+  Bean, _see_ Haricot
+
+  Bean-Weevil, _see_ Weevil
+
+  Bees, victims of Philanthus, _see_ latter
+
+  Bembex, 168, 172
+
+  Bolboceras Gallicus, 217-37
+    Appearance of, 223
+    Habits and diet, 226-30
+    Lodging of, 225
+
+  _Bruchus pisi_, see Pea-Weevil
+
+  _Bruchus lenti_, see Lentil-Weevil
+
+  Buprestes, 21
+
+
+  C
+
+  _Cacan_, the, 36-9
+
+  Capricornis, 21-2
+
+  Cerceris, 172, 178
+
+  Chrysomela, 151, 172
+
+  Cigale, the, 1-67
+    Burrow of the, 17-30
+    Deafness of the, 41-3
+    Diet, 7
+    Eggs of the, 45-67
+    Eggs, hatching of, 61-7
+    Eggs, method of laying, 50-4
+    Enemies of the, 47-50
+    Excavation, method of, 23-7
+    Fable of Ant and, 1-16
+    Larva of the, 17-30
+    Larva, habits of, 61-7
+    Mechanism of sound, 31-4
+    Pupa, emergence from, 28
+    Song of the, 2, 6, 31-44
+    Species of, 31-6
+
+  Cigalo e la Fournigo (Provençal poem), 10-16
+
+  Cricket, Field, the, 120-9
+    Eggs of, 120-2
+    Excavations of, 124-5
+    Fertility of, 123
+    Song of, 126-8
+
+  Cricket, Italian, the, 130-5
+    Appearance of, 130
+    Song of, 131-4
+
+
+  D
+
+  Dermestes, victims of arum, 232
+
+  Dioscorides on the Cigale, 29
+
+  Diptera, 168, 172
+
+  Dog, its love of stenches, 233
+    Scent of the, 220-22
+    A truffle-hunter, 218-20
+
+
+  E
+
+  Elephant-Beetle (Balaninus or Acorn-Weevil), 238-57
+    Boring acorns, habit of, 240-4
+    Eggs, method of laying, 245, 254-7
+    Motives in boring, 246-50
+    Snout of, 238-9
+
+  Emperor Moth, _see_ Great Peacock Moth
+
+  _Empusa pauperata_, _see_ Mantis
+
+  Eucores, 176
+
+
+  G
+
+  Golden Gardener, the, 102-19
+    Cannibal habits of, 111-19
+    Courtship of, 103-10
+    Ferocity of, 101-4, 108-10
+    Nutriment of, 102-10
+    Vermin killer, as a, 107
+
+  Grandville, illustrates La Fontaine's fables, 2
+
+
+  H
+
+  Halictus, 176, 178
+
+  Haricot bean, the, 282-9
+
+  Haricot-Weevil, the, _see_ Weevil
+
+  Heredia, J.-M. de, 287-90
+
+  Hydnocystus, a fungus, 228
+
+  Hymenoptera, habits of, 137-8, 150, 162, 171-2, 175-6
+
+
+  L
+
+  La Fontaine, fable of the Cigale and the Ant, 3
+
+  Locust, Grey, the, 300-16
+    Larva of, 300
+    Metamorphosis of, 300-9
+    Wing, formation of, 309-15
+
+
+  M
+
+  Mantis, the _Empusa pauperata_, 97
+
+  Mantis, the Grey, 96
+
+  Mantis, the Praying, 68-101
+    Cannibalism of, 82-5
+    Courtship, 79-83
+    Hunter, as, 68-78
+    Nest of, 86-101
+
+  _Melolontha fullo_, _see_ Pine-chafer
+
+  Minotaur, 225
+
+
+  O
+
+  Oak Eggar, the, 202-16, 234-7
+    Experiments as to sense of smell in males, 208-15
+    Swarming of males during the mating season, 204-15
+
+  Odynerus, 150-1, 172
+
+  Osmia tricornis, 173, 175
+
+
+  P
+
+  Pea, ancestry of the, 258-9
+
+  Pea-Weevil, _see_ Weevil
+
+  Peacock Moth, the Great, 179-201, 234-7
+    Appearance of, 179
+    Experiments as to sense of smell in males, 184-97
+  Invasion of house by males, 180-1
+    Swarming of males, 181-3
+
+  Peacock Moth, the Lesser, 197-201
+
+  Phalangist, the, 225
+
+  _Philanthus aviporus_, 150-178
+    Cocoon of, 168
+    Diet of, 150-1
+    Larvæ of, 168
+    Methods of killing and robbing bees, 151-160
+    Motives of robbery, 163-78
+    Nest of, 167
+
+  _Philanthus coronatus_, 178
+
+  _Philanthus raptor_, 178
+
+  Pine-chafer, the, 317-23
+    Appearance of, 320
+    Cry of, 322-3
+    Habits of, 321
+    Medical qualities of, supposed, 318-19
+    Name, origin of Latin, 317-18
+
+  Pliny, on the Pine-chafer, 318-19
+
+
+  S
+
+  Saprinidæ, victims of arum, 233
+
+  Sapromyzon, the, 222
+
+  Scarabæus, _see_ Golden Scarabæus
+
+  Scent in Insects, _see_ Peacock Moth,
+    Oak Eggar, Bolboceras Gallicus, arum, putrid
+
+  Scolia, 171
+
+  Sisyphus, legend of, 139
+
+  Sisyphus Beetle, the, 136-49
+    Burrow of, 143
+    Larva of, 147-9
+    Mating of, 142-3
+    Paternal instinct of 142-6
+    Pellet of, 142-9
+
+
+  T
+
+  Tachytus, 172
+
+  _Tigno_, nest of Mantis, 99-101
+
+  Truffle-Beetle, 222
+
+  Truffle-Dog, 218-20
+
+
+  W
+
+  Weevil, Acorn, _see_ Elephant-Beetle
+
+  Weevil, the Lentil, 291
+
+  Weevil, the Haricot, 282-94
+    Habits of, 291-6
+    Invasion of, 284
+    Larvæ, 297-9
+
+  Weevil, the Pea, 258-81, 295
+    Description of, 261
+    Enemy, its chief, 280-1
+    Habits, 261-5
+      (Deductions to be drawn from), 273-4
+  Larvæ of, 268-71, 275-6
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Whether the Cigale is absolutely deaf or not, it is certain
+that one Cigale would be able to perceive another's cry. The vibrations
+of the male Cigale's cry would cause a resonance, a vibration, in the
+body cavities of other male Cigales, and to a lesser extent in the
+smaller cavities in the bodies of the females. Other sounds would cause
+a slight shock, if loud enough, but not a perceptible vibration May not
+this vibration--felt as in a cathedral we feel the vibrations of the
+organ-pipes in the bones of the chest and head or on the covers of the
+hymn-book in our hands--serve to keep the insects together, and enable
+the females to keep within sight of the males? The sight of an insect is
+in one sense poor--it consists of a kind of mosaic picture, and for one
+insect to distinguish another clearly the distance between them must not
+be very great. Certain gregarious birds and fish whose colouring is
+protective have a habit of showing their white bellies as they swerve on
+changing their direction. These signals help to keep the flock together.
+The white scut of the rabbit and of certain deer is a signal for other
+deer or rabbits to follow a frightened flock. It is obviously to the
+advantage of the Cigale to follow a gregarious habit, if only for
+purposes of propagation, for this would be facilitated by the sexes
+keeping together, and, deaf or otherwise, the vibrations of its cry
+would enable it to do so. It would be easy to show _a priori_ that the
+perception of such vibrations must cause the insect pleasure, as they
+stimulate a nervous structure attuned to the perception or capable of
+the production of certain complex vibrations. The discord of the cry is
+caused by the fact that it consists of a number of vibrations of
+different pitch. Some would set the contents of the male resonating
+cavities in vibration; others would affect the less regular cavities in
+the thorax of the female. We might compare the Cigale's cry to a
+sheep-bell. That it is felt and not heard explains its loudness and its
+grating quality. A Cigale with the resonating cavities destroyed would
+possibly be lost. The experiment is worth trying.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 2: It is not easy to understand why the Mantis should paralyse
+the cricket with terror while the latter will immediately escape when
+threatened by other enemies. As many species of Mantis exactly mimic
+sticks and leaves when motionless for purposes of defence, is it not
+possible that they mimic their surroundings for purposes of offence as
+well? It is easy and natural to say that the Mantis presents a
+terrifying aspect. It does to us, by association; but how can we say
+that it represents anything of the sort to the probably hypnotic or
+automatic consciousness of the cricket? What does it really represent,
+as seen from below? A twig, terminating in a bud, with two branching
+twigs growing from it, and a harmless nondescript fly or butterfly
+perched on the back of it. The combination of a familiar sight and a
+threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As
+for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move instantaneously is
+the next best thing to not moving at all. It is less likely to startle
+than a slow movement. Twigs which have been bent get suddenly released
+in the natural course of events; they do not move slowly. The
+instantaneous appearance of a twig where no twig was before may possibly
+give the victim pause; it may halt out of caution, not out of
+terror.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 3: The word "butterfly" is here used, as is the French
+_papillon_, as a general term for all Lepidoptera; the insect in
+question is of course a moth.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Now classified as _Lasiocampa quercus_.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Rabasso_ is the Provençal name for the truffle; hence a
+truffle-hunter is known as a _rabassier_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Since these lines were written I have found it consuming
+one of the true tuberaceæ, the _Tuber Requienii_, Tul., of the size of a
+cherry.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The difficulty in conceiving this theory lies in the fact
+that the waves travel in straight lines. On the other hand, matter in a
+state of degradation may expel particles highly energised and of
+enormous velocity. Most antennæ are covered with hairs of inconceivable
+fineness; others may contain cavities of almost infinite minuteness. Is
+it not thinkable that they are able to detect, in the gaseous
+atmosphere, floating particles that are not gaseous? This would not
+prevent the specialisation of antennæ as mere feelers in some insects
+and crustaceans. The difficulty of such a supposition lies in the
+fact of discrimination; but if we did not possess a sense of taste or
+smell discrimination would seem inconceivable in their case
+also.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 8: This classification is now superseded; the Pea and Bean
+Weevils--_Bruchus pisi_ and _Bruchus lenti_--are classed as Bruchidæ, in
+the series of Phytophaga. Most of the other weevils are classed as
+Curculionidæ, series Rhyncophora.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 9: The Christmas number (_Noël_) of the _Annales politiques
+et littéraires: Les Enfants jugés par leurs pères_, 1901.]
+
+[Footnote 10: The American usage is to call acridians grasshoppers and
+Locustidæ locusts. The English usage is to call Locustidæ grasshoppers
+and acridians locusts. The Biblical locust is an acridian.]
+
+
+
+
+  Demy 8vo, Cloth, 10/6 net
+
+  FABRE: POET OF SCIENCE
+
+  By G. V. LEGROS
+  With a Photogravure Frontispiece
+
+     This biography is based upon long acquaintance and access to family
+     letters, and is a striking record of a wonderful life.
+
+     "Stands out as a really sound, sympathetic, and artistic piece of
+     work.... The simple story of the life-work of an observer of nature
+     in general, and of insects in particular, is unfolded in a manner
+     which makes it as fascinating as a romance."--The Times.
+
+     "A rare biography."--Saturday Review.
+
+     "It is a prose poem on a great scientist, his simple life and
+     remarkable work."--Daily Graphic.
+
+     "Dr. Legros gives us a sympathetic insight into the life and work
+     of the poet scientist, and a just record of a great man."--Daily
+     Express.
+
+     "Dr. Legros gives us an exceptionally vivid picture of the man, his
+     toil and trials, his characteristics, and his ways of
+     life."--Everyman.
+
+     "A book so packed with charm we have rarely opened."--Evening
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre
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+Project Gutenberg's Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+
+Title: Social Life in the Insect World
+
+Author: J. H. Fabre
+
+Translator: Bernard Miall
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2006 [EBook #18350]
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD ***
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+Produced by Louise Pryor, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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+</pre>
+
+
+  <h1>SOCIAL LIFE</h1>
+  <h1>IN THE INSECT WORLD</h1>
+
+  <h4>BY</h4>
+  <h2>J. H. FABRE</h2>
+
+  <h4>Translated by</h4>
+  <h3>BERNARD MIALL</h3>
+
+  <h4>WITH 14 ILLUSTRATIONS</h4>
+
+  <p class='center'>LONDON<br />
+  T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.<br />
+  ADELPHI TERRACE</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="List of reprints.">
+<tr><td align='left'><i>First Edition</i></td><td align='left'>1911</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Second Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1912</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Third Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1912</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Fourth Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1913</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Fifth Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1913</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Sixth Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1915</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Seventh Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1916</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Eighth Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1916</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Ninth Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1917</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Tenth Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1918</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Eleventh Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1918</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><i>Twelfth Impression</i></td><td align='left'>1919</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class='center'>(<i>All rights reserved</i>)</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img-front.jpg" alt="THE MANTIS." title="THE MANTIS." /></div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="Legend for frontispiece.">
+<tr><td align='left'><b>1. THE MANTIS. A DUEL BETWEEN FEMALES.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>2. THE MANTIS DEVOURING A CRICKET.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>3. THE MANTIS DEVOURING HER MATE.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>4. THE MANTIS IN HER ATTITUDE OF PRAYER.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><b>5. THE MANTIS IN HER "SPECTRAL" ATTITUDE.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href='#Page_76'><b>(See p. 76.)</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents.">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I&mdash;THE FABLE OF THE CIGALE AND THE ANT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II&mdash;THE CIGALE LEAVES ITS BURROW</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III&mdash;THE SONG OF THE CIGALE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV&mdash;THE CIGALE. THE EGGS AND THEIR HATCHING</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V&mdash;THE MANTIS. THE CHASE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI&mdash;THE MANTIS. COURTSHIP</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII&mdash;THE MANTIS. THE NEST</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII&mdash;THE GOLDEN GARDENER. ITS NUTRIMENT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX&mdash;THE GOLDEN GARDENER. COURTSHIP</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X&mdash;THE FIELD CRICKET</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE ITALIAN CRICKET</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII&mdash;THE SISYPHUS BEETLE. THE INSTINCT OF PATERNITY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII&mdash;A BEE-HUNTER: THE <i>PHILANTHUS AVIPORUS</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV&mdash;THE GREAT PEACOCK, OR EMPEROR MOTH</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV&mdash;THE OAK EGGAR, OR BANDED MONK</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI&mdash;A TRUFFLE-HUNTER: THE <i>BOLBOCERAS GALLICUS</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII&mdash;THE ELEPHANT-BEETLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII&mdash;THE PEA-WEEVIL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX&mdash;AN INVADER: THE HARICOT-WEEVIL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX&mdash;THE GREY LOCUST</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI&mdash;THE PINE-CHAFER</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations.">
+<tr><td align='left'>THE MANTIS: A DUEL BETWEEN FEMALES; DEVOURING</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A CRICKET; DEVOURING HER MATE; IN HER ATTITUDE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>OF PRAYER; IN HER "SPECTRAL" ATTITUDE</td><td align='right'><a href='#frontis'><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>DURING THE DROUGHTS OF SUMMER THIRSTING INSECTS,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>AND NOTABLY THE ANT, FLOCK TO THE DRINKING-PLACES</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>OF THE CIGALE</td><td align='right'><a href='#cigale'>8</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE CIGALE AND THE EMPTY PUPA-SKIN</td><td align='right'><a href='#cigale2'>28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW. THE CIGALE OF</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE FLOWERING ASH, MALE AND FEMALE</td><td align='right'><a href='#cigale3'>36</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE CIGALE LAYING HER EGGS. THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE FALSE CIGALE OF THE NORTH,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>DEVOURING THE TRUE CIGALE, A DWELLER IN</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE SOUTH</td><td align='right'><a href='#cigale4'>48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE NEST OF THE PRAYING MANTIS; TRANSVERSE SECTION</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>OF THE SAME; NEST OF EMPUSA PAUPERATA;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME; VERTICAL</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>SECTION OF THE SAME; NEST OF THE GREY MANTIS;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>SCHEFFER'S SISYPHUS (see Chap. XII.); PELLET OF</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE SISYPHUS; PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS, WITH</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>DEJECTA OF THE LARVA FORCED THROUGH THE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>WALLS</td><td align='right'><a href='#mantis'>88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE MANTIS DEVOURING THE MALE IN THE ACT OF</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>MATING; THE MANTIS COMPLETING HER NEST;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>GOLDEN SCARAB&AElig;I CUTTING UP A LOB-WORM</td><td align='right'><a href='#mantis2'>90</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE GOLDEN GARDENER: THE MATING SEASON OVER,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE MALES ARE EVISCERATED BY THE FEMALES</td><td align='right'><a href='#gardener'>114</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE FIELD-CRICKET: A DUEL BETWEEN RIVALS; THE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>DEFEATED RIVAL RETIRES, INSULTED BY THE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VICTOR</td><td align='right'><a href='#fieldcricket'>124</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE ITALIAN CRICKET</td><td align='right'><a href='#italiancricket'>132</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE GREAT PEACOCK OR EMPEROR MOTH</td><td align='right'><a href='#peacock'>180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH. THE PILGRIMS DIVERTED</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>BY THE LIGHT OF A LAMP</td><td align='right'><a href='#peacock2'>196</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE GREY LOCUST; THE NERVATURES OF THE WING;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE BALANINUS FALLEN A VICTIM TO THE LENGTH</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>OF HER PROBOSCIS</td><td align='right'><a href='#locust'>244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE PINE-CHAFER (<i>MELOLONTHA FULLO</i>)</td><td align='right'><a href='#chafer'>318</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /><br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h1>SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD<br /><br /></h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FABLE OF THE CIGALE AND THE ANT</h3>
+
+
+<p>Fame is the daughter of Legend. In the world of creatures, as in the
+world of men, the story precedes and outlives history. There are many
+instances of the fact that if an insect attract our attention for this
+reason or that, it is given a place in those legends of the people whose
+last care is truth.</p>
+
+<p>For example, who is there that does not, at least by hearsay, know the
+Cigale? Where in the entomological world shall we find a more famous
+reputation? Her fame as an impassioned singer, careless of the future,
+was the subject of our earliest lessons in repetition. In short, easily
+remembered lines of verse, we learned how she was destitute when the
+winter winds arrived, and how she went begging for food to the Ant, her
+neighbour. A poor welcome she received, the would-be borrower!&mdash;a
+welcome that has become proverbial, and her chief title to celebrity.
+The petty malice of the two short lines&mdash;</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="Two short lines.">
+<tr><td align='left'>Vous chantiez! j'en suis bien aise,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Eh bien, dansez maintenant!</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>has done more to immortalise the insect than her skill as a musician.
+"You sang! I am very glad to hear it! Now you can dance!" The words
+lodge in the childish memory, never to be forgotten. To most
+Englishmen&mdash;to most Frenchmen even&mdash;the song of the Cigale is unknown,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>for she dwells in the country of the olive-tree; but we all know of the
+treatment she received at the hands of the Ant. On such trifles does
+Fame depend! A legend of very dubious value, its moral as bad as its
+natural history; a nurse's tale whose only merit is its brevity; such is
+the basis of a reputation which will survive the wreck of centuries no
+less surely than the tale of Puss-in-Boots and of Little Red
+Riding-Hood.</p>
+
+<p>The child is the best guardian of tradition, the great conservative.
+Custom and tradition become indestructible when confided to the archives
+of his memory. To the child we owe the celebrity of the Cigale, of whose
+misfortunes he has babbled during his first lessons in recitation. It is
+he who will preserve for future generations the absurd nonsense of which
+the body of the fable is constructed; the Cigale will always be hungry
+when the cold comes, although there were never Cigales in winter; she
+will always beg alms in the shape of a few grains of wheat, a diet
+absolutely incompatible with her delicate capillary "tongue"; and in
+desperation she will hunt for flies and grubs, although she never eats.</p>
+
+<p>Whom shall we hold responsible for these strange mistakes? La Fontaine,
+who in most of his fables charms us with his exquisite fineness of
+observation, has here been ill-inspired. His earlier subjects he knew
+down to the ground: the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Stag, the Crow, the
+Rat, the Ferret, and so many others, whose actions and manners he
+describes with a delightful precision of detail. These are inhabitants
+of his own country; neighbours, fellow-parishioners. Their life, private
+and public, is lived under his eyes; but the Cigale is a stranger to the
+haunts of Jack Rabbit. La Fontaine had never seen nor heard her. For him
+the celebrated songstress was certainly a grasshopper.</p>
+
+<p>Grandville, whose pencil rivals the author's pen, has fallen into the
+same error. In his illustration to the fable we see the Ant dressed like
+a busy housewife. On her threshold, beside her full sacks of wheat, she
+disdainfully turns her back upon the would-be borrower, who holds out
+her claw&mdash;pardon, her hand. With a wide coachman's hat, a guitar under
+her arm, and a skirt wrapped about her knees by the gale, there stands
+the second personage of the fable, the perfect portrait of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>grasshopper. Grandville knew no more than La Fontaine of the true
+Cigale; he has beautifully expressed the general confusion.</p>
+
+<p>But La Fontaine, in this abbreviated history, is only the echo of
+another fabulist. The legend of the Cigale and the cold welcome of the
+Ant is as old as selfishness: as old as the world. The children of
+Athens, going to school with their baskets of rush-work stuffed with
+figs and olives, were already repeating the story under their breath, as
+a lesson to be repeated to the teacher. "In winter," they used to say,
+"the Ants were putting their damp food to dry in the sun. There came a
+starving Cigale to beg from them. She begged for a few grains. The
+greedy misers replied: 'You sang in the summer, now dance in the
+winter.'" This, although somewhat more arid, is precisely La Fontaine's
+story, and is contrary to the facts.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the story comes to us from Greece, which is, like the South of
+France, the home of the olive-tree and the Cigale. Was &AElig;sop really its
+author, as tradition would have it? It is doubtful, and by no means a
+matter of importance; at all events, the author was a Greek, and a
+compatriot of the Cigale, which must have been perfectly familiar to
+him. There is not a single peasant in my village so blind as to be
+unaware of the total absence of Cigales in winter; and every tiller of
+the soil, every gardener, is familiar with the first phase of the
+insect, the larva, which his spade is perpetually discovering when he
+banks up the olives at the approach of the cold weather, and he knows,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>having seen it a thousand times by the edge of the country paths, how in
+summer this larva issues from the earth from a little round well of its
+own making; how it climbs a twig or a stem of grass, turns upon its
+back, climbs out of its skin, drier now than parchment, and becomes the
+Cigale; a creature of a fresh grass-green colour which is rapidly
+replaced by brown.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot suppose that the Greek peasant was so much less intelligent
+than the Proven&ccedil;al that he can have failed to see what the least
+observant must have noticed. He knew what my rustic neighbours know so
+well. The scribe, whoever he may have been, who was responsible for the
+fable was in the best possible circumstances for correct knowledge of
+the subject. Whence, then, arose the errors of his tale?</p>
+
+<p>Less excusably than La Fontaine, the Greek fabulist wrote of the Cigale
+of the books, instead of interrogating the living Cigale, whose cymbals
+were resounding on every side; careless of the real, he followed
+tradition. He himself echoed a more ancient narrative; he repeated some
+legend that had reached him from India, the venerable mother of
+civilisations. We do not know precisely what story the reed-pen of the
+Hindoo may have confided to writing, in order to show the perils of a
+life without foresight; but it is probable that the little animal drama
+was nearer the truth than the conversation between the Cigale and the
+Ant. India, the friend of animals, was incapable of such a mistake.
+Everything seems to suggest that the principal personage of the original
+fable was not the Cigale of the Midi, but some other creature, an insect
+if you will, whose manners corresponded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> to the adopted text.</p>
+
+<p>Imported into Greece, after long centuries during which, on the banks of
+the Indus, it made the wise reflect and the children laugh, the ancient
+anecdote, perhaps as old as the first piece of advice that a father of a
+family ever gave in respect of economy, transmitted more or less
+faithfully from one memory to another, must have suffered alteration in
+its details, as is the fate of all such legends, which the passage of
+time adapts to the circumstance of time and place.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek, not finding in his country the insect of which the Hindoo
+spoke, introduced the Cigale, as in Paris, the modern Athens, the Cigale
+has been replaced by the Grasshopper. The mistake was made; henceforth
+indelible. Entrusted as it is to the memory of childhood, error will
+prevail against the truth that lies before our eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Let us seek to rehabilitate the songstress so calumniated by the fable.
+She is, I grant you, an importunate neighbour. Every summer she takes up
+her station in hundreds before my door, attracted thither by the verdure
+of two great plane-trees; and there, from sunrise to sunset, she hammers
+on my brain with her strident symphony. With this deafening concert
+thought is impossible; the mind is in a whirl, is seized with vertigo,
+unable to concentrate itself. If I have not profited by the early
+morning hours the day is lost.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! Creature possessed, the plague of my dwelling, which I hoped would
+be so peaceful!&mdash;the Athenians, they say, used to hang you up in a
+little cage, the better to enjoy your song. One were well enough, during
+the drowsiness of digestion; but hundreds, roaring all at once,
+assaulting the hearing until thought recoils&mdash;this indeed is torture!
+You put forward, as excuse, your rights as the first occupant. Before my
+arrival the two plane-trees were yours without reserve;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> it is I who have
+intruded, have thrust myself into their shade. I confess it: yet muffle
+your cymbals, moderate your arpeggi, for the sake of your historian! The
+truth rejects what the fabulist tells us as an absurd invention. That
+there are sometimes dealings between the Cigale and the Ant is perfectly
+correct; but these dealings are the reverse of those described in the
+fable. They depend not upon the initiative of the former; for the Cigale
+never required the help of others in order to make her living: on the
+contrary, they are due to the Ant, the greedy exploiter of others, who
+fills her granaries with every edible she can find. At no time does the
+Cigale plead starvation at the doors of the ant-hills, faithfully
+promising a return of principal and interest; the Ant on the contrary,
+harassed by drought, begs of the songstress. Begs, do I say! Borrowing
+and repayment are no part of the manners of this land-pirate. She
+exploits the Cigale; she impudently robs her. Let us consider this
+theft; a curious point of history as yet unknown.</p>
+
+<p>In July, during the stifling hours of the afternoon, when the insect
+peoples, frantic with drought, wander hither and thither, vainly seeking
+to quench their thirst at the faded, exhausted flowers, the Cigale makes
+light of the general aridity. With her rostrum, a delicate augur, she
+broaches a cask of her inexhaustible store. Crouching, always singing,
+on the twig of a suitable shrub or bush, she perforates the firm, glossy
+rind, distended by the sap which the sun has matured. Plunging her
+proboscis into the bung-hole, she drinks deliciously, motionless, and
+wrapt in meditation, abandoned to the charms of syrup and of song.</p>
+
+<p>Let us watch her awhile. Per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>haps we shall witness unlooked-for
+wretchedness and want. For there are many thirsty creatures wandering
+hither and thither; and at last they discover the Cigale's private well,
+betrayed by the oozing sap upon the brink. They gather round it, at
+first with a certain amount of constraint, confining themselves to
+lapping the extravasated liquor. I have seen, crowding around the
+honeyed perforation, wasps, flies, earwigs, Sphinx-moths, Pompilid&aelig;,
+rose-chafers, and, above all, ants.</p>
+
+<p>The smallest, in order to reach the well, slip under the belly of the
+Cigale, who kindly raises herself on her claws, leaving room for the
+importunate ones to pass. The larger, stamping with impatience, quickly
+snatch a mouthful, withdraw, take a turn on the neighbouring twigs, and
+then return, this time more enterprising. Envy grows keener; those who
+but now were cautious become turbulent and aggressive, and would
+willingly drive from the spring the well-sinker who has caused it to
+flow.</p>
+
+<p>In this crowd of brigands the most aggressive are the ants. I have seen
+them nibbling the ends of the Cigale's claws; I have caught them tugging
+the ends of her wings, climbing on her back, tickling her antenn&aelig;. One
+audacious individual so far forgot himself under my eyes as to seize her
+proboscis, endeavouring to extract it from the well!</p>
+
+<p>Thus hustled by these dwarfs, and at the end of her patience, the
+giantess finally abandons the well. She flies away, throwing a jet of
+liquid excrement over her tormentors as she goes. But what cares the Ant
+for this expression of soverei<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>gn contempt? She is left in possession of
+the spring&mdash;only too soon exhausted when the pump is removed that made
+it flow. There is little left, but that little is sweet. So much to the
+good; she can wait for another drink, attained in the same manner, as
+soon as the occasion presents itself.</p>
+
+<p><a name="cigale" id="cigale"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img-008.jpg" alt="THE CIGALE." title="THE CIGALE." /></div>
+<h4>DURING THE DROUGHTS OF SUMMER THIRSTING INSECTS, AND
+NOTABLY THE ANT, FLOCK TO THE DRINKING-PLACES OF THE CIGALE.</h4>
+
+<p>As we see, reality completely reverses the action described by the
+fable. The shameless beggar, who does not hesitate at theft, is the Ant;
+the industrious worker, willingly sharing her goods with the suffering,
+is the Cigale. Yet another detail, and the reversal of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> fable is
+further emphasised. After five or six weeks of gaiety, the songstress
+falls from the tree, exhausted by the fever of life. The sun shrivels
+her body; the feet of the passers-by crush it. A bandit always in search
+of booty, the Ant discovers the remains. She divides the rich find,
+dissects it, and cuts it up into tiny fragments, which go to swell her
+stock of provisions. It is not uncommon to see a dying Cigale, whose
+wings are still trembling in the dust, drawn and quartered by a gang of
+knackers. Her body is black with them. After this instance of
+cannibalism the truth of the relations between the two insects is
+obvious.</p>
+
+<p>Antiquity held the Cigale in high esteem. The Greek B&eacute;ranger, Anacreon,
+devoted an ode to her, in which his praise of her is singularly
+exaggerated. "Thou art almost like unto the Gods," he says. The reasons
+which he has given for this apotheosis are none of the best. They
+consist in these three privileges: &#947;&#951;&#947;&#949;&#957;&#7969;&#987;, &#7937;&#960;&#945;&#952;&#7969;&#987;, &#7937;&#957;&#945;&#953;&#956;&#8001;&#963;&#945;&#961;&#954;&#949;; born of the earth, insensible to pain, bloodless. We will
+not reproach the poet for these mistakes; they were then generally
+believed, and were perpetuated long afterwards, until the exploring eye
+of scientific observation was directed upon them. And in minor poetry,
+whose principal merit lies in rhythm and harmony, we must not look at
+things too closely.</p>
+
+<p>Even in our days, the Proven&ccedil;al poets, who know the Cigale as Anacreon
+never did, are scarcely more careful of the truth in celebrating the
+insect which they have taken for their emblem. A friend of mine, an
+eager observer and a scrupulous realist, does not deserve this reproach.
+He gives me permission to take from his pigeon-holes the following
+Proven&ccedil;al poem, in which the relations between the Cigale and the Ant
+are expounded with all the rigour of science. I leave to him the
+responsibility for his poetic images and his moral reflections, blossoms
+unknown to my naturalist's garden; but I can swear to the truth of all
+he says, for it corresponds with what I see each summer on the
+lilac-trees of my garden.<br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><b>LA CIGALO E LA FOURNIGO.</b></span><br /><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">I.</span><br /><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Jour de Di&egrave;u, queto caud! B&egrave;u t&egrave;ms p&egrave;r la Cigalo,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Que, trefoulido, se regalo</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">D'uno raisso de fio; b&egrave;u t&egrave;ms per la meissoun.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dins lis erso d'or, lou segaire,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ren plega, pitre au vent, rustico e canto gaire;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dins soun gousi&egrave;, la set estranglo la cansoun.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">T&egrave;ms benesi p&egrave;r tu. Dounc, ardit! cigaleto,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Fai-lei brusi, ti chimbaleto,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E brandusso lou ventre &agrave; creba ti mirau.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">L'Ome enterin mando le daio,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Que vai balin-balan de longo e que dardaio</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">L'ulau de soun aci&eacute; sus li rous espigau.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pl&egrave;n d'aigo p&egrave;r la p&eacute;iro e tampouna d'erbiho</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lou coufi&eacute; sus l'anco pendiho.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Si la p&eacute;iro es au fr&egrave;s dins soun estui de bos,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">E se de longo es ab&egrave;urado,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">L'Ome barbelo au fio d'aqueli souleiado</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Que fan bouli de fes la mesoulo dis os.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tu, Cigalo, as un biais p&egrave;r la set: dins la rusco</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tendro e jutouso d'uno busco,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">L'aguio de toun b&egrave; cabusso e cavo un pous.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lou siro monto p&egrave;r la draio.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">T'amourres &agrave; la fon melicouso que raio,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E dou sourg&egrave;nt sucra b&egrave;ves lou teta-dous.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mai pas toujour en pas. Oh! que n&agrave;ni; de laire,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Vesin, vesino o barrulaire,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">T'an vist cava lou pous. An set; v&egrave;non, doul&egrave;nt,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Te pr&egrave;ne un degout p&egrave;r si tasso.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mesfiso-te, ma bello: aqueli curo-biasso,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Umble d'abord, soun l&egrave;u de gusas insoul&egrave;nt.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Quiston un chicouloun di r&egrave;n, pi&egrave;i de ti resto</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Soun plus count&egrave;nt, ausson la testo</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E volon tout: L'auran. Sis arpioun en rast&egrave;u</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Te gatihoun lou bout de l'alo.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sus tu larjo esquinasso es un mounto-davalo;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">T'aganton p&egrave;r lou b&egrave;, li bano, lis art&egrave;u;</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tiron d'eici, d'eil&agrave;. L'impaci&egrave;nci te gagno.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pst! pst! d'un giscle de pissagno</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Asp&egrave;rges l'assemblado e quites lou ram&egrave;u.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">T'en vas b&egrave;n liuen de la racaio,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Que t'a rauba lou pous, e ris, e se gougaio,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E se lipo li brego enviscado de m&egrave;u.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or d'aqueli boumian ab&egrave;ura sens fatigo,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lou mai tihous es la fournigo.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mousco, cabrian, guespo e tavan embana,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Espeloufi de touto meno,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Costo-en-long qu'&agrave; toun pous lou soulcias ameno,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">N'an pas soun testardige &agrave; te faire enana.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">P&egrave;r l'esquicha l'art&egrave;u, te coutiga lou mourre,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Te pessuga lou nas, p&egrave;r courre</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A l'oumbro du toun ventre, osco! degun la vau.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lou marrit-p&egrave;u prend p&egrave;r escalo</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Uno patto e te monto, ardido, sus lis alo,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E s'espasso, insoul&egrave;nto, e vai d'amont, d'avau.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">II.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Aro veici qu'es pas de cr&egrave;ire.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ancian t&egrave;ms, nous dison li r&egrave;ire,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Un jour d'iv&egrave;r; la fam te prengu&egrave;. Lou front bas</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">E d'escoundoun an&egrave;res v&egrave;ire,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dins si grand magasin, la fournigo, eil&agrave;bas.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">L'endrudido au soul&egrave;u secavo,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Avans de lis escoundre en cavo,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Si blad qu'avi&egrave; mousi l'eigagno de la niue.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Quand &egrave;ron lest lis ensacavo.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tu surv&egrave;nes alor, em&eacute; de plour is iue.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I&egrave; dis&eacute;s: "Fai b&egrave;n fre; l'aurasso</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">D'un caire &agrave; l'autre me tirasso</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Avanido de fam. A toun riche mouloun</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Leisso-me pr&egrave;ne p&egrave;r ma biasso.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Te lou rendrai segur au b&egrave;u t&egrave;ms di meloun.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Presto-me un pan de gran." Mai, bouto,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Se cres&egrave;s que l'autro t'escouto,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">T'enganes. Di gros sa, r&egrave;n de r&egrave;n sara ti&egrave;u.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Vai-t'en plus liuen rascla de bouto;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crebo de fam l'iv&egrave;r, tu que cantes l'esti&egrave;u."</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ansin charro la fablo antico</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">P&egrave;r nous couns&eacute;ia la pratico</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Di sarro-piastro, urous de nousa li cordoun</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">De si bourso.&mdash;Que la coulico</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rousigu&egrave; la tripaio en aqueli coudoun!</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Me fai susa, lou fabulisto,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Quand dis que l'iv&egrave;r vas en quisto</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">De mousco, verme, gran, tu que manges jamai.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">De blad! Que n'en fari&egrave;s, ma fisto!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As ta fon melicouso e demandes r&egrave;n mai.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Que t'enchau l'iv&egrave;r! Ta famiho</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A la sousto en terro soumiho,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Et tu dormes la som que n'a ges de rev&egrave;i;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Toun cadabre toumbo en douliho.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Un jour, en tafurant, la fournigo lou v&eacute;i,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">De tu magro p&eacute;u dessecado</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">La marriasso fai becado;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Te curo lou perus, te chapouto &agrave; mouc&egrave;u,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">T'encafourno p&egrave;r car-salado,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Requisto prouvisioun, l'iv&egrave;r, en t&egrave;ms de neu.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">III.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Vaqui l'istori veritablo</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">B&egrave;n liuen d&ocirc;u conte de la fablo.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Que n'en pensas, can&egrave;u de sort!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">&mdash;O rammaissaire de dardeno</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Det croucu, boumbudo bedeno</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Que gouvernas lou mounde em&eacute; lou coffre-fort,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Fas&egrave;s courre lou bru, canaio,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Que l'artisto jamai travaio</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">E d&egrave;u pati, lou bedigas.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Teisas-vous dounc: quand di lambrusco</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">La Cigalo a cava la rusco,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Raubas soun b&egrave;ure, e pi&egrave;i, morto, la rousigas.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>So speaks my friend in the expressive Proven&ccedil;al idiom, rehabilitating
+the creature so libelled by the fabulist.</p>
+
+<p>Translated with a little necessary freedom, the English of it is as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">I.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fine weather for the Cigale! God, what heat!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Half drunken with her joy, she feasts</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In a hail of fire. Pays for the harvest meet;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A golden sea the reaper breasts,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Loins bent, throat bare; silent, he labours long,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For thirst within his throat has stilled the song.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A blessed time for thee, little Cigale.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thy little cymbals shake and sound,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shake, shake thy stomach till thy mirrors fall!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Man meanwhile swings his scythe around;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Continually back and forth it veers,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flashing its steel amidst the ruddy ears.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grass-plugged, with water for the grinder full,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A flask is hung upon his hip;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The stone within its wooden trough is cool,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Free all the day to sip and sip;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But man is gasping in the fiery sun,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That makes his very marrow melt and run.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou, Cigale, hast a cure for thirst: the bark,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tender and juicy, of the bough.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy beak, a very needle, stabs it. Mark</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The narrow passage welling now;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sugared stream is flowing, thee beside,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who drinkest of the flood, the honeyed tide.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not in peace always; nay, for thieves arrive,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Neighbours and wives, or wanderers vile;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">They saw thee sink the well, and ill they thrive</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thirsting; they seek to drink awhile;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beauty, beware! the wallet-snatcher's face,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Humble at first, grows insolent apace.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They seek the merest drop; thy leavings take;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Soon discontent, their heads they toss;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They crave for all, and all will have. They rake</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Their claws thy folded wings across;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy back a mountain, up and down each goes;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They seize thee by the beak, the horns, the toes.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This way and that they pull. Impatient thou:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pst! Pst! a jet of nauseous taste</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O'er the assembly sprinklest. Leave the bough</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And fly the rascals thus disgraced,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who stole thy well, and with malicious pleasure</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now lick their honey'd lips, and feed at leisure.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">See these Bohemians without labour fed!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The ant the worst of all the crew&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fly, drone, wasp, beetle too with horned head,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">All of them sharpers thro' and thro',</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Idlers the sun drew to thy well apace&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">None more than she was eager for thy place,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">More apt thy face to tickle, toe to tread,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or nose to pinch, and then to run</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Under the shade thine ample belly spread;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or climb thy leg for ladder; sun</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Herself audacious on thy wings, and go</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Most insolently o'er thee to and fro.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">II.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now comes a tale that no one should believe.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In other times, the ancients say,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The winter came, and hunger made thee grieve.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thou didst in secret see one day</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The ant below the ground her treasure store away.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wealthy ant was drying in the sun</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Her corn the dew had wet by night,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ere storing it again; and one by one</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She filled her sacks as it dried aright.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou camest then, and tears bedimmed thy sight,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saying: "'Tis very cold; the bitter bise</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Blows me this way and that to-day.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I die of hunger. Of your riches please</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Fill me my bag, and I'll repay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When summer and its melons come this way.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Lend me a little corn." Go to, go to!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Think you the ant will lend an ear?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You are deceived. Great sacks, but nought for you!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Be off, and scrape some barrel clear!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You sing of summer: starve, for winter's here!"</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Tis thus the ancient fable sings</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To teach us all the prudence ripe</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of farthing-snatchers, glad to knot the string</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That tie their purses. May the gripe</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of colic twist the guts of all such tripe!</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He angers me, this fable-teller does,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Saying in winter thou dost seek</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flies, grubs, corn&mdash;thou dost never eat like us!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&mdash;Corn! Couldst thou eat it, with thy beak?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou hast thy fountain with its honey'd reek.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To thee what matters winter? Underground</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Slumber thy children, sheltered; thou</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sleep that knows no waking sleepest sound.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thy body, fallen from the bough,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crumbles; the questing ant has found thee now.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wicked ant of thy poor withered hide</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A banquet makes; in little bits</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She cuts thee up, and empties thine inside,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And stores thee where in wealth she sits:</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Choice diet when the winter numbs the wits.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">III.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Here is the tale related duly,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And little resembling the fable, truly!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hoarders of farthings, I know, deuce take it.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It isn't the story as you would make it!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crook-fingers, big-bellies, what do you say,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who govern the world with the cash-box&mdash;hey?</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You have spread the story, with shrug and smirk,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That the artist ne'er does a stroke of work;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And so let him suffer, the imbecile!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Be you silent! 'Tis you, I think,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the Cigale pierces the vine to drink,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Drive her away, her drink to steal;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And when she is dead&mdash;you make your meal!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CIGALE LEAVES ITS BURROW</h3>
+
+
+<p>The first Cigales appear about the summer solstice. Along the beaten
+paths, calcined by the sun, hardened by the passage of frequent feet, we
+see little circular orifices almost large enough to admit the thumb.
+These are the holes by which the larv&aelig; of the Cigale have come up from
+the depths to undergo metamorphosis. We see them more or less
+everywhere, except in fields where the soil has been disturbed by
+ploughing. Their usual position is in the driest and hottest situations,
+especially by the sides of roads or the borders of footpaths. Powerfully
+equipped for the purpose, able at need to pierce the turf or sun-dried
+clay, the larva, upon leaving the earth, seems to prefer the hardest
+spots.</p>
+
+<p>A garden alley, converted into a little Arabia Petr&aelig;a by reflection from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>a wall facing the south, abounds in such holes. During the last days of
+June I have made an examination of these recently abandoned pits. The
+soil is so compact that I needed a pick to tackle it.</p>
+
+<p>The orifices are round, and close upon an inch in diameter. There is
+absolutely no debris round them; no earth thrown up from within. This is
+always the case; the holes of the Cigales are never surrounded by
+dumping-heaps, as are the burrows of the Geotrupes, another notable
+excavator. The way in which the work is done is responsible for this
+difference. The dung-beetle works from without inwards; she begins to
+dig at the mouth of the burrow, and afterwards re-ascends and
+accumulates the excavated material on the surface. The larva of the
+Cigale, on the contrary, works outward from within, upward from below;
+it opens the door of exit at the last moment, so that it is not free for
+the discharge of excavated material until the work is done. The first
+enters and raises a little rubbish-heap at the threshold of her burrow;
+the second emerges, and cannot, while working, pile up its rubbish on a
+threshold which as yet has no existence.</p>
+
+<p>The burrow of the Cigale descends about fifteen inches. It is
+cylindrical, slightly twisted, according to the exigencies of the soil,
+and always approaches the vertical, or the direction of the shortest
+passage. It is perfectly free along its entire length. We shall search
+in vain for the rubbish which such an excavation must apparently
+produce; we shall find nothing of the sort. The burrow terminates in a
+cul-de-sac, in a fairly roomy chamber with unbroken walls, which shows
+not the least vestige of communication with any other burrow or
+prolongation of the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>Taking its length and diameter into account, we find the excavation has
+a total volume of about twelve cubic inches. What becomes of the earth
+which is removed?</p>
+
+<p>Sunk in a very dry, crumbling soil, we should expect the shaft and the
+chamber at the bottom to have soft, powdery walls, subject to petty
+landslips, if no work were done but that of excavation. On the contrary,
+the walls are neatly daubed, plastered with a sort of clay-like mortar.
+They are not precisely smooth, indeed they are distinctly rough; but
+their irregularities are covered with a layer of plaster, and the
+crumbling material, soaked in some glutinous liquid and dried, is held
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>firmly in place.</p>
+
+<p>The larva can climb up and down, ascend nearly to the surface, and go
+down into its chamber of refuge, without bringing down, with his claws,
+the continual falls of material which would block the burrow, make
+ascent a matter of difficulty, and retreat impossible. The miner shores
+up his galleries with uprights and cross-timbers; the builder of
+underground railways supports the sides and roofs of his tunnels with a
+lining of brick or masonry or segments of iron tube; the larva of the
+Cigale, no less prudent an engineer, plasters the walls of its burrow
+with cement, so that the passage is always free and ready for use.</p>
+
+<p>If I surprise the creature just as it is emerging from the soil in order
+to gain a neighbouring bough and there undergo transformation, I see it
+immediately make a prudent retreat, descending to the bottom of its
+burrow without the slightest difficulty&mdash;a proof that even when about to
+be abandoned for ever the refuge is not encumbered with rubbish.</p>
+
+<p>The ascending shaft is not a hurried piece of work, scamped by a
+creature impatient to reach the sunlight. It is a true dwelling, in
+which the larva may make a long stay. The plastered walls betray as
+much. Such precautions would be useless in the case of a simple exit
+abandoned as soon as made. We cannot doubt that the burrow is a kind of
+meteorological observatory, and that its inhabitant takes note of the
+weather without. Buried underground at a depth of twelve or fifteen
+inches, the larva, when ripe for escape, could hardly judge whether the
+meteorological conditions were favourable. The subterranean climate
+varies too little, changes too slowly, and would not afford it the
+precise information required for the most important action of its
+life&mdash;the escape into the sunshine at the time of metamorphosis.</p>
+
+<p>Patiently, for weeks, perhaps for months, it digs, clears, and
+strengthens a vertical shaft, leaving only a layer of earth a finger's
+breadth in thickness to isolate it from the outer world. At the bottom
+it prepares a carefully built recess. This is its refuge, its place of
+waiting, where it reposes in peace if its observations decide it to
+postpone its final departure. At the least sign of fine weather it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>climbs to the top of its burrow, sounds the outer world through the thin
+layer of earth which covers the shaft, and informs itself of the
+temperature and humidity of the outer air.</p>
+
+<p>If things are not going well&mdash;if there are threats of a flood or the
+dreaded <i>bise</i>&mdash;events of mortal gravity when the delicate insect issues
+from its cerements&mdash;the prudent creature re-descends to the bottom of
+its burrow for a longer wait. If, on the contrary, the state of the
+atmosphere is favourable, the roof is broken through by a few strokes of
+its claws, and the larva emerges from its tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>Everything seems to prove that the burrow of the Cigale is a
+waiting-room, a meteorological station, in which the larva makes a
+prolonged stay; sometimes hoisting itself to the neighbourhood of the
+surface in order to ascertain the external climate; sometimes retiring
+to the depths the better to shelter itself. This explains the chamber
+at the base of the shaft, and the necessity of a cement to hold the
+walls together, for otherwise the creature's continual comings and
+goings would result in a landslip.</p>
+
+<p>A matter less easy of explanation is the complete disappearance of the
+material which originally filled the excavated space. Where are the
+twelve cubic inches of earth that represent the average volume of the
+original contents of the shaft? There is not a trace of this material
+outside, nor inside either. And how, in a soil as dry as a cinder, is
+the plaster made with which the walls are covered?</p>
+
+<p>Larv&aelig; which burrow in wood, such as those of Capricornis and Buprestes,
+will apparently answer our first question. They make their way through
+the substance of a tree-trunk, boring their galleries by the simp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>le
+method of eating the material in front of them. Detached by their
+mandibles, fragment by fragment, the material is digested. It passes
+from end to end through the body of the pioneer, yields during its
+passage its meagre nutritive principles, and accumulates behind it,
+obstructing the passage, by which the larva will never return. The work
+of extreme division, effected partly by the mandibles and partly by the
+stomach, makes the digested material more compact than the intact wood,
+from which it follows that there is always a little free space at the
+head of the gallery, in which the caterpillar works and lives; it is not
+of any great length, but just suffices for the movements of the
+prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>Must not the larva of the Cigale bore its passage in some such fashion?
+I do not mean that the results of excavation pass through its body&mdash;for
+earth, even the softest mould, could form no possible part of its diet.
+But is not the material detached simply thrust back behind the excavator
+as the work progresses?</p>
+
+<p>The Cigale passes four years under ground. This long life is not spent,
+of course, at the bottom of the well I have just described; that is
+merely a resting-place preparatory to its appearance on the face of the
+earth. The larva comes from elsewhere; doubtless from a considerable
+distance. It is a vagabond, roaming from one root to another and
+implanting its rostrum. When it moves, either to flee from the upper
+layers of the soil, which in winter become too cold, or to install
+itself upon a more juicy root, it makes a road by rejecting behind it
+the material broken up by the teeth of its picks. That this is its
+method is incontestable.</p>
+
+<p>As <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>with the larv&aelig; of Capricornis and Buprestes, it is enough for the
+traveller to have around it the small amount of free space necessitated
+by its movements. Moist, soft, and easily compressible soil is to the
+larva of the Cigale what digested wood-pulp is to the others. It is
+compressed without difficulty, and so leaves a vacant space.</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty is that sometimes the burrow of exit from the
+waiting-place is driven through a very arid soil, which is extremely
+refractory to compression so long as it retains its aridity. That the
+larva, when commencing the excavation of its burrow, has already thrust
+part of the detached material into a previously made gallery, now filled
+up and disappeared, is probable enough, although nothing in the actual
+condition of things goes to support the theory; but if we consider the
+capacity of the shaft and the extreme difficulty of making room for such
+a volume of debris, we feel dubious once more; for to hide such a
+quantity of earth a considerable empty space would be necessary, which
+could only be obtained by the disposal of more debris. Thus we are
+caught in a vicious circle. The mere packing of the powdered earth
+rejected behind the excavator would not account for so large a void. The
+Cigale must have a special method of disposing of the waste earth. Let
+us see if we can discover the secret.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine a larva at the moment of emerging from the soil. It is
+almost always more or less smeared with mud, sometimes dried, sometimes
+moist. The implements of excavation, the claws of the fore-feet, have
+their points covered by little globules of mortar; the others bear
+leggings of mud; the back is spotted with clay. One is reminded of a
+scavenger who has been scooping up mud all day. This condition is the
+more striking in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> that the insect comes from an absolutely dry soil. We
+should expect to see it dusty; we find it muddy.</p>
+
+<p>One more step, and the problem of the well is solved. I exhume a larva
+which is working at its gallery of exit. Chance postpones this piece of
+luck, which I cannot expect to achieve at once, since nothing on the
+surface guides my search. But at last I am rewarded, and the larva is
+just beginning its excavation. An inch of tunnel, free of all waste or
+rubbish, and at the bottom the chamber, the place of rest; so far has
+the work proceeded. And the worker&mdash;in what condition is it? Let us see.</p>
+
+<p>The larva is much paler in colour than those which I have caught as they
+emerged. The large eyes in particular are whitish, cloudy, blurred, and
+apparently blind. What would be the use of sight underground? The eyes
+of the larv&aelig; leaving their burrows are black and shining, and evidently
+capable of sight. When it issues into the sunlight the future Cigale
+must find, often at some distance from its burrow, a suitable twig from
+which to hang during its metamorphosis, so that sight is obviously of
+the greatest utility. The maturity of the eyes, attained during the time
+of preparation before deliverance, proves that the larva, far from
+boring its tunnel in haste, has spent a long time labouring at it.</p>
+
+<p>What else do we notice? The blind, pale larva is far more voluminous
+than in the mature state; it is swollen with liquid as though it had
+dropsy. Taken in the fingers, a limpid serum oozes from the hinder part
+of the body, which moistens the whole surface. Is this fluid, evacuated
+by the intestine, a product of urinary secretion&mdash;simply the contents of
+a stomach nourished entirely upon sap? I will not attempt to decide, but
+for convenience will content myself with calling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> it urine.</p>
+
+<p>Well, this fountain of urine is the key to the enigma. As it digs and
+advances the larva waters the powdery debris and converts it into a
+paste, which is immediately applied to the walls by the pressure of the
+abdomen. Aridity is followed by plasticity. The mud thus obtained
+penetrates the interstices of the rough soil; the more liquid portion
+enters the substance of the soil by infiltration; the remainder becomes
+tightly packed and fills up the inequalities of the walls. Thus the
+insect obtains an empty tunnel, with no loose waste, as all the loosened
+soil is utilised on the spot, converted into a mortar which is more
+compact and homogeneous than the soil through which the shaft is
+driven.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the larva works in the midst of a coating of mud, which is the
+cause of its dirtiness, so astonishing when we see it issue from an
+excessively dry soil. The perfect insect, although henceforth liberated
+from the work of a sapper and miner, does not entirely abandon the use
+of urine as a weapon, employing it as a means of defence. Too closely
+observed it throws a jet of liquid upon the importunate enemy and flies
+away. In both its forms the Cigale, in spite of its dry temperament, is
+a famous irrigator.</p>
+
+<p>Dropsical as it is, the larva cannot contain sufficient liquid to
+moisten and convert into easily compressible mud the long column of
+earth which must be removed from the burrow. The reservoir becomes
+exhausted, and the provision must be renewed. Where, and how? I think I
+can answer the question.</p>
+
+<p>The few burrows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> uncovered along their entirety, with the meticulous care
+such a task demands, have revealed at the bottom, encrusted in the wall
+of the terminal chamber, a living root, sometimes of the thickness of a
+pencil, sometimes no bigger than a straw. The visible portion of this
+root is only a fraction of an inch in length; the rest is hidden by the
+surrounding earth. Is the presence of this source of sap fortuitous? Or
+is it the result of deliberate choice on the part of the larva? I
+incline towards the second alternative, so repeatedly was the presence
+of a root verified, at least when my search was skilfully conducted.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the Cigale, digging its chamber, the nucleus of the future shaft,
+seeks out the immediate neighbourhood of a small living root; it lays
+bare a certain portion, which forms part of the wall, without
+projecting. This living spot in the wall is the fountain where the
+supply of moisture is renewed. When its reservoir is exhausted by the
+conversion of dry dust into mud the miner descends to its chamber,
+thrusts its proboscis into the root, and drinks deep from the vat built
+into the wall. Its organs well filled, it re-ascends. It resumes work,
+damping the hard soil the better to remove it with its talons, reducing
+the debris to mud, in order to pack it tightly around it and obtain a
+free passage. In this manner the shaft is driven upwards; logic and the
+facts of the case, in the absence of direct observation, justify the
+assertion.</p>
+
+<p>If the root were to fail, and the reservoir of the intestine were
+exhausted, what would happen? The following experiment will inform us: a
+larva is caught as it leaves the earth. I place it at the bottom of a
+test-tube, and cover it with a column of dry earth, which is rather
+lightly packed. This column is about six inches in height. The larva has
+j<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>ust left an excavation three times as deep, made in soil of the same
+kind, but offering a far greater resistance. Buried under this short
+column of powdery earth, will it be able to gain the surface? If its
+strength hold out the issue should be certain; having but lately made
+its way through the hard earth, this obstacle should be easily removed.</p>
+
+<p>But I am not so sure. In removing the stopper which divided it from the
+outside world, the larva has expended its final store of liquid. The
+cistern is dry, and in default of a living root there is no means of
+replenishing it. My suspicions are well founded. For three days the
+prisoner struggles desperately, but cannot ascend by so much as an inch.
+It is impossible to fix the material removed in the absence of
+moisture; as soon as it is thrust aside it slips back again. The labour
+has no visible result; it is a labour of Sisyphus, always to be
+commenced anew. On the fourth day the creature succumbs.</p>
+
+<p>With the intestines full the result is very different.</p>
+
+<p>I make the same experiment with an insect which is only beginning its
+work of liberation. It is swollen with fluid, which oozes from it and
+moistens the whole body. Its task is easy; the overlying earth offers
+little resistance. A small quantity of liquid from the intestines
+converts it into mud; forms a sticky paste which can be thrust aside
+with the assurance that it will remain where it is placed. The shaft is
+gradually opened; very unevenly, to be sure, and it is almost choked up
+behind the insect as it climbs upwards. It seems as though the creature
+recognises the impossibility of renewing its store of liquid, and so
+economises<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> the little it possesses, using only just so much as is
+necessary in order to escape as quickly as possible from surroundings
+which are strange to its inherited instincts. This parsimony is so well
+judged that the insect gains the surface at the end of twelve days.</p>
+
+<p>The gate of issue is opened and left gaping, like a hole made with an
+augur. For some little time the larva wanders about the neighbourhood of
+its burrow, seeking an eyrie on some low-growing bush or tuft of thyme,
+on a stem of grass or grain, or the twig of a shrub. Once found, it
+climbs and firmly clasps its support, the head upwards, while the talons
+of the fore feet close with an unyielding grip. The other claws, if the
+direction of the twig is convenient, assist in supporting it; otherwise
+the claws of the two fore legs will suffice. There follows a moment of
+repose, while the supporting limbs stiffen in an unbreakable hold. Then
+the thorax splits along the back, and through the fissure the insect
+slowly emerges. The whole process lasts perhaps half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>There is the adult insect, freed of its mask, and how different from
+what it was but how! The wings are heavy, moist, transparent, with
+nervures of a tender green. The thorax is barely clouded with brown. All
+the rest of the body is a pale green, whitish in places. Heat and a
+prolonged air-bath are necessary to harden and colour the fragile
+creature. Some two hours pass without any perceptible change. Hanging to
+its deserted shell by the two fore limbs, the Cigale sways to the least
+breath of air, still feeble and still green. Finally, the brown colour
+appears and rapidly covers the whole body; the change of colour is
+completed in half an hour. Fastening upon its chosen twig at nine
+o'clock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> in the morning, the Cigale flies away under my eyes at half-past
+twelve.</p>
+
+<p>The empty shell remains, intact except for the fissure in the back;
+clasping the twig so firmly that the winds of autumn do not always
+succeed in detaching it. For some months yet and even during the winter
+you will often find these forsaken skins hanging from the twigs in the
+precise attitude assumed by the larva at the moment of metamorphosis.
+They are of a horny texture, not unlike dry parchment, and do not
+readily decay.</p>
+
+<p>I could gather some wonderful information regarding the Cigale were I to
+listen to all that my neighbours, the peasants, tell me. I will give one
+instance of rustic natural history.</p>
+
+<p><a name="cigale2" id="cigale2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img-028.jpg" alt="THE CIGALE" title="THE CIGALE" /></div>
+<h4>THE CIGALE AND THE EMPTY PUPA-SKIN.</h4>
+
+<p>Are you afflicted with any kidney trouble, or are you swollen with
+dropsy, or have you need of some powerful diuretic? The village
+pharmacop&oelig;ia is unanimous in recommending the Cigale as a sovereign
+remedy. The insects in the adult form are collected in summer. They are
+strung into necklaces which are dried in the sun and carefully preserved
+in some cupboard or drawer. A good housewife would consider it imprudent
+to allow July to pass without threading a few of these insects.</p>
+
+<p>Do you suffer from any nephritic irritation or from stricture? Drink an
+infusion of Cigales. Nothing, they say, is more effectual. I must take
+this opportunity of thanking the good soul who once upon a time, so I
+was afterwards informed, made me drink such a concoction unawares for
+the cure of some such trouble; but I still remain incredulous. I have
+been greatly struck by the fact that the ancient physician of Anazarbus
+used to recommend the same remedy. Dioscorides tells us: <i>Cicad&aelig;, quae
+inassatae manduntur, vesicae doloribus prosunt</i>. Since the distant days
+of this patriarch of <i>materia medica</i> the Proven&ccedil;al peasant has retained
+his faith in the remedy revealed to him by the Greeks, who came from
+Phoc&aelig;a with the olive, the fig, and the vine. Only one thing is changed:
+Dioscorides advises us to eat the Cigales roasted, but now they are
+boiled, and the decoction is administered as medicine. The explanation
+which is given of the diuretic properties of the insect is a marvel of
+ingenuousness. The Cigale, as every one knows who has tried to catch it,
+throws a jet of liquid excrement in one's face as it flies away. It
+therefore endows us with its faculties of evacuation. Thus Dioscorides
+and his contemporaries must have reasoned; so reasons the peasant of
+Provence to-day.</p>
+
+<p>What would you say, worthy neighbours, if you knew of the virtues of the
+larva, which is able to mix sufficient mortar with its urine to build a
+meteorological station and a shaft connecting with the outer world? Your
+powers should equal those of Rabelais' Gargantua, who, seated upon the
+towers of Notre Dame, drowned so many thousands of the inquisitive
+Parisians.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SONG OF THE CIGALE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Where I live I can capture five species of Cigale, the two principal
+species being the common Cigale and the variety which lives on the
+flowering ash. Both of these are widely distributed and are the only
+species known to the country folk. The larger of the two is the common
+Cigale. Let me briefly describe the mechanism with which it produces its
+familiar note.</p>
+
+<p>On the under side of the body of the male, immediately behind the
+posterior limbs, are two wide semicircular plates which slightly overlap
+one another, the right hand lying over the left hand plate. These are
+the shutters, the lids, the dampers of the musical-box. Let us remove
+them. To the right and left lie two spacious cavities which are known in
+Proven&ccedil;al as the chapels (<i>li capello</i>). Together they form the church
+(<i>la gl&egrave;iso</i>). Their forward limit is formed by a creamy yellow
+membrane, soft and thin; the hinder limit by a dry membrane coloured
+like a soap bubble and known in Proven&ccedil;al as the mirror (<i>mirau</i>).</p>
+
+<p>The church, the mirrors, and the dampers are commonly regarded as the
+organs which produce the cry of the Cigale. Of a singer out of breath
+one says that he has broken his mirrors (<i>a li mirau creba</i>). The same
+phrase is used of a poet without inspiration. Acoustics give the lie to
+the popular belief. You may break the mirrors, remove the covers with a
+snip of the scissors, and tear the yellow anterior membrane, but these
+mutilations do not silence the song of the Cigale; they merely change
+its quality and weaken it. The chapels are resonators; they do not
+pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>duce the sound, but merely reinforce it by the vibration of their
+anterior and posterior membranes; while the sound is modified by the
+dampers as they are opened more or less widely.</p>
+
+<p>The actual source of the sound is elsewhere, and is somewhat difficult
+for a novice to find. On the outer wall of either chapel, at the ridge
+formed by the junction of back and belly, is a tiny aperture with a
+horny circumference masked by the overlapping damper. We will call this
+the window. This opening gives access to a cavity or sound-chamber,
+deeper than the "chapels," but of much smaller capacity. Immediately
+behind the attachment of the posterior wings is a slight protuberance,
+almost egg-shaped, which is distinguishable, on account of its dull
+black colour, from the neighbouring integuments, which are covered with
+a silvery down. This protuberance is the outer wall of the
+sound-chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Let us cut it boldly away. We shall then lay bare the mechanism which
+produces the sound, the <i>cymbal</i>. This is a small dry, white membrane,
+oval in shape, convex on the outer side, and crossed along its larger
+diameter by a bundle of three or four brown nervures, which give it
+elasticity. Its entire circumference is rigidly fixed. Let us suppose
+that this convex scale is pulled out of shape from the interior, so
+that it is slightly flattened and as quickly released; it will
+immediately regain its original convexity owing to the elasticity of the
+nervures. From this oscillation a ticking sound will result.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty years ago all Paris was buying a silly toy, called, I think, the
+cricket or <i>cri-cri</i>. It was a short slip of steel fixed by one end to a
+metallic base. Pressed out of shape<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> by the thumb and released, it
+yielded a very distressing, tinkling <i>click</i>. Nothing else was needed to
+take the popular mind by storm. The "cricket" had its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> day of glory.
+Oblivion has executed justice upon it so effectually that I fear I shall
+not be understood when I recall this celebrated device.</p>
+
+<p>The membranous cymbal and the steel cricket are analogous instruments.
+Both produce a sound by reason of the rapid deformation and recovery of
+an elastic substance&mdash;in one case a convex membrane; in the other a slip
+of steel. The "cricket" was bent out of shape by the thumb. How is the
+convexity of the cymbals altered? Let us return to the "church" and
+break down the yellow curtain which closes the front of each chapel. Two
+thick muscular pillars are visible, of a pale orange colour; they join
+at an angle, forming a <b>V</b>, of which the point lies on the median line
+of the insect, against the lower face of the thorax. Each of these
+pillars of flesh terminates suddenly at its upper extremity, as though
+cut short, and from the truncated portion rises a short, slender tendon,
+which is attached laterally to the corresponding cymbal.</p>
+
+<p>There is the whole mechanism, no less simple than that of the steel
+"cricket." The two muscular columns contract and relax, shorten and
+lengthen. By means of its terminal thread each sounds its cymbal, by
+depressing it and immediately releasing it, when its own elasticity
+makes it spring back into shape. These two vibrating scales are the
+source of the Cigale's cry.</p>
+
+<p>Do you wish to convince yourself of the efficiency of this mechanism?
+Take a Cigale but newly dead and make it sing. Nothing is simpler. Seize
+one of these muscular columns with the forceps and pull it in a series
+of careful jerks. The extinct <i>cri-cri</i> comes to life again; at each
+jerk there is a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>clash of the cymbal. The sound is feeble, to be sure,
+deprived of the amplitude which the living performer is able to give it
+by means of his resonating chambers; none the less, the fundamental
+element of the song is produced by this anatomist's trick.</p>
+
+<p>Would you, on the other hand, silence a living Cigale?&mdash;that obstinate
+melomaniac, who, seized in the fingers, deplores his misfortune as
+loquacious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>ly as ever he sang the joys of freedom in his tree? It is
+useless to violate his chapels, to break his mirrors; the atrocious
+mutilation would not quiet him. But introduce a needle by the lateral
+aperture which we have named the "window" and prick the cymbal at the
+bottom of the sound-box. A little touch and the perforated cymbal is
+silent. A similar operation on the other side of the insect and the
+insect is dumb, though otherwise as vigorous as before and without any
+perceptible wound. Any one not in the secret would be amazed at the
+result of my pin-prick, when the destruction of the mirrors and the
+other dependencies of the "church" do not cause silence. A tiny
+perforation of no importance to the insect is more effectual than
+evisceration.</p>
+
+<p>The dampers, which are rigid and solidly built, are motionless. It is
+the abdomen itself which, by rising and falling, opens or closes the
+doors of the "church." When the abdomen is lowered the dampers exactly
+cover the chapels as well as the windows of the sound-boxes. The sound
+is then muted, muffled, diminished. When the abdomen rises the chapels
+are open, the windows unobstructed, and the sound acquires its full
+volume. The rapid oscillations of the abdomen, synchronising with the
+contractions of the motor muscles of the cymbals, determine the changing
+volume of the sound, which seems to be caused by rapidly repeated
+strokes of a fiddlestick.</p>
+
+<p>If the weather is calm and hot, towards mid-day the song of the Cigale
+is divided into strophes of several seconds' duration, which are
+separated by brief intervals of silence. The strophe begins suddenly. In
+a rapid crescendo, the abdomen oscillating with increasing rapidity, it
+acquires its maximum volume; it remains for a few seconds at the same
+degree o<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>f intensity, then becomes weaker by degrees, and degenerates
+into a shake, which decreases as the abdomen returns to rest. With the
+last pulsations of the belly comes silence; the length of the silent
+interval varies according to the state of the atmosphere. Then, of a
+sudden, begins a new strophe, a monotonous repetition of the first; and
+so on indefinitely.</p>
+
+<p>It often happens, especially during the hours of the sultry afternoons,
+that the insect, intoxicated with sunlight, shortens and even suppresses
+the intervals of silence. The song is then continuous, but always with
+an alternation of crescendo and diminuendo. The first notes are heard
+about seven or eight o'clock in the morning, and the orchestra ceases
+only when the twilight fails, about eight o'clock at night. The concert
+lasts a whole round of the clock. But if the sky is grey and the wind
+chilly the Cigale is silent.</p>
+
+<p>The second species, only half the size of the common Cigale, is known in
+Provence as the <i>Cacan</i>; the name, being a fairly exact imitation of the
+sound emitted by the insect. This is the Cigale of the flowering ash,
+far more alert and far more suspicious than the common species. Its
+harsh, loud song consists of a series of cries&mdash;<i>can! can! can!
+can!</i>&mdash;with no intervals of silence subdividing the poem into stanzas.
+Thanks to its monotony and its harsh shrillness, it is a most odious
+sound, especially when the orchestra consists of hundreds of performers,
+as is often the case in my two plane-trees during the dog-days. It is as
+though a heap of dry walnuts were being shaken up in a bag until the
+shells broke. This painful concert, which is a real torment, offers only
+one compensation: the Cigale of the flo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>wering ash does not begin his
+song so early as the common Cigale, and does not sing so late in the
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>Although constructed on the same fundamental principles, the vocal
+organs exhibit a number of peculiarities which give the song its special
+character. The sound-box is lacking, which suppresses the entrance to
+it, or the window. The cymbal is uncovered, and is visible just behind
+the attachment of the hinder wing. It is, as before, a dry white scale,
+convex on the outside, and crossed by a bundle of fine reddish-brown
+nervures.</p>
+
+<p><a name="cigale3" id="cigale3"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-036.jpg"
+             alt="THE ADULT CIGALE." /><br />
+         <b>1. THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW.</b><br />
+<b>2. THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW.</b><br />
+<b>3. THE CIGALE OF THE FLOWERING ASH, MALE AND FEMALE.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>From the forward side of the first segment of the abdomen project two
+short, wide, tongue-shaped projections, the free extremities of which
+rest on the cymbals. These tongues may be compared to the blade of a
+watchman's rattle, only instead of engaging with the teeth of a rotating
+wheel they touch the nervures of the vibrating cymbal. From this fact, I
+imagine, results the harsh, grating quality of the cry. It is hardly
+possible to verify the fact by holding the insect in the fingers; the
+terrified <i>Cacan</i> does not go on singing his usual song.</p>
+
+<p>The dampers do not overlap; on the contrary, they are separated by a
+fairly wide interval. With the rigid tongues, appendages of the abdomen,
+they half shelter the cymbals, half of which is completely bare. Under
+the pressure of the finger the abdomen opens a little at its
+articulation with the thorax. But the insect is motionless when it
+sings; there is nothing of the rapid vibrations of the belly which
+modulate the song of the common Cigale. The chapels are very small;
+almost negligible as resonators. There are mirrors, as in the common
+Cigale, but they are very small; scarcely a twenty-fifth of an inch in
+diameter. In short, the resonating mechanism, so highly developed in the
+common Cigale, is here extremely rudimentary. How then is the feeble
+vibration of the cymbals re-enforced until it becomes intolerable?</p>
+
+<p>This species of Cigale is a ventriloquist. If we examine the abdomen by
+transmitted light, we shall see that the anterior two-thirds of the
+abdomen are translucent. With a snip of the scissors we will cut off the
+posterior third, to which are relegated, reduced to the strictly
+indispensable, the organs necessary to the propagation of the species
+and the preservation of the individual. The rest of the abdomen presents
+a spacious cavity, and consists simply of the integuments of the walls,
+except on the dorsal side, which is lined with a thin muscular layer,
+and supports a fine digestive canal, almost a thread. This large cavity,
+equal to nearly half the total volume of the insect, is thus almost
+absolutely empty. At the back are seen the two motor muscles of the
+cymbals, two muscular columns arranged like the limbs of a <b>V</b>. To right
+and left of the point of this <b>V</b> shine the tiny mirrors; and between
+the two branches of muscle the empty cavity is prolonged into the depths
+of the thorax.</p>
+
+<p>This empty abdomen with its thoracic annex forms an enormous resonator,
+such as no other performer in our countryside can boast of. If I close
+with my finger the orifice of the truncated abdomen the sound becomes
+flatter, in conformity with the laws affecting musical resonators; if I
+fit into the aperture of the open body a tube or trumpet of paper the
+sound grows louder as well as deeper. With a paper cone corresponding to
+the pitch of the note, with its large end held in the mouth of a
+test-tube acting as a resonator, we have no longer the cry of the
+Cigale, but almost the bellowing of a bull. My little children, coming
+up to me by chance at the moment of this acoustic experiment, fled in
+terror.</p>
+
+<p>The grating quality of the sound appears to be due to the little tongues
+which press on the nervures of the vibrating cymbals; the cause of its
+intensity is of course the ample resonator in the abdomen. We must admit
+that one must truly have a real passion for song before one would empty
+one's chest and stomach in order to make room for a musical-box. The
+necessary vital organs are extremely small, confined to a mere corner of
+the body, in order to increase the amplitude of the resonating cavity.
+Song comes first of all; other matters take the second rank.</p>
+
+<p>It is lucky that the <i>Cacan</i> does not follow the laws of evolution. If,
+more enthusiastic in each generation, it could acquire, in the course of
+progress, a ventral resonator comparable to my paper trumpets, the South
+of France would sooner or later become uninhabitable, and the <i>Cacan</i>
+would have Provence to itself.</p>
+
+<p>After the details already given concerning the common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> Cigale it is
+hardly needful to tell you how the insupportable <i>Cacan</i> can be reduced
+to silence. The cymbals are plainly visible on the exterior. Pierce them
+with the point of a needle, and immediately you have perfect silence. If
+only there were, in my plane-trees, among the insects which carry
+gimlets, some friends of silence like myself, who would devote
+themselves to such a task! But no: a note would be lacking in the
+majestic symphony of harvest-tide.</p>
+
+<p>We are now familiar with the structure of the musical organ of the
+Cigale. Now the question arises: What is the object of these musical
+orgies? The reply seems obvious: they are the call of the males inviting
+their mates; they constitute a lovers' cantata.</p>
+
+<p>I am going to consider this reply, which is certainly a very natural
+one. For thirty years the common Cigale and his unmusical friend the
+<i>Cacan</i> have thrust their society upon me. For two months every summer I
+have them under my eyes, and their voice in my ears. If I do not listen
+to them very willingly I observe them with considerable zeal. I see
+them ranged in rows on the smooth rind of the plane-trees, all with
+their heads uppermost, the two sexes mingled, and only a few inches
+apart.</p>
+
+<p>The proboscis thrust into the bark, they drink, motionless. As the sun
+moves, and with it the shadow, they also move round the branch with slow
+lateral steps, so as to keep upon that side which is most brilliantly
+illuminated, most fiercely heated. Whether the proboscis is at work or
+not the song is never interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>Now are we to take their interminable chant for a passionate love-song?
+I hesitate. In this gathering the two sexes are side by side. One does
+not spend months in calling a person who is at one's elbow. Moreover, I
+have never seen a female rush into the midst of even the most deafening
+orchestra. Sight is a sufficient prelude to marriage, for their sight is
+excellent. There is no need for the lover to make an everlasting
+declaration, for his mistress is his next-door neigh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>b<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>our.</p>
+
+<p>Is the song a means of charming, of touching the hard of heart? I doubt
+it. I observe no sign of satisfaction in the females; I have never seen
+them tremble or sway upon their feet, though their lovers have clashed
+their cymbals with the most deafening vigour.</p>
+
+<p>My neighbours the peasants say that at harvest-time the Cigale sings to
+them: <i>Sego, sego, sego!</i> (Reap, reap, reap!) to encourage them in their
+work. Harvesters of ideas and of ears of grain, we follow the same
+calling; the latter produce food for the stomach, the former food for
+the mind. Thus I understand their explanation and welcome it as an
+example of gracious simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>Science asks for a better explanation, but finds in the insect a world
+which is closed to us. There is no possibility of foreseeing, or even
+of suggesting the impression produced by this clashing of cymbals upon
+those who inspire it. The most I can say is that their impassive
+exterior seems to denote a complete indifference. I do not insist that
+this is so; the intimate feelings of the insect are an insoluble
+mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Another reason for doubt is this: all creatures affected by song have
+acute hearing, and this sense of hearing, a vigilant sentinel, should
+give warning of danger at the slightest sound. The birds have an
+exquisite delicacy of hearing. If a leaf stirs among the branches, if
+two passers-by exchange a word, they are s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>uddenly silent, anxious, and
+on their guard. But the Cigale is far from sharing in such emotions. It
+has excellent sight. Its great faceted eyes inform it of all that
+happens to right and left; its three stemmata, like little ruby
+telescopes, explore the sky above its head. If it sees us coming it is
+silent at once, and flies away. But let us get behind the branch on
+which it is singing; let us man&oelig;uvre so as to avoid the five centres
+of vision, and then let us speak, whistle, clap the hands, beat two
+stones together. For far less a bird which could not see you would stop
+its song and fly away terrified. The Cigale imperturbably continues to
+sing as if nothing had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>Of my experiences of this kind I will mention only one, the most
+remarkable of many.</p>
+
+<p>I borrowed the municipal artillery; that is, the iron boxes which are
+charged with gunpowder on the day of the patron saint. The artilleryman
+was delighted to load them for the benefit of the Cigales, and to fire
+them off for me before my house. There were two of these boxes stuffed
+full of powder as though for the most solemn rejoicing. Never was
+politician making his electoral progress favoured with a bigger charge.
+To prevent damage to my windows the sashes were all left open. The two
+engines of detonation were placed at the foot of the plane-trees before
+my door, no precautions being taken to mask them. The Cigales singing in
+the branches above could not see what was happening below.</p>
+
+<p>There were six of us, spectators and auditors. We waited for a moment of
+relative quiet. The number of singers was counted by each of us, as well
+as the volume and rhythm of the son<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>g. We stood ready, our ears attentive
+to the aerial orchestra. The box exploded with a clap of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>No disturbance ensued above. The number of performers was the same, the
+rhythm the same, the volume the same. The six witnesses were unanimous:
+the loud explosion had not modified the song of the Cigales in the
+least. The second box gave an identical result.</p>
+
+<p>What are we to conclude from this persistence of the orchestra, its lack
+of surprise or alarm at the firing of a charge? Shall we conclude that
+the Cigale is deaf? I am not going to venture so far as that; but if any
+one bolder than myself were to make the assertion I really do not know
+what reasons I could invoke to disprove it. I should at least be forced
+to admit that it is very hard of hearing, and that we may well apply to
+it the homely and familiar phrase: to shout like a deaf man.</p>
+
+<p>When the blue-winged cricket, basking on the pebbles of some country
+footpath, grows deliciously intoxicated with the heat of the sun and
+rubs its great posterior thighs against the roughened edge of its
+wing-covers; when the green tree-frog swells its throat in the foliage
+of the bushes, distending it to form a resonant cavity when the rain is
+imminent, is it calling to its absent mate? By no means. The efforts of
+the former produce a scarcely perceptible stridulation; the palpitating
+throat of the latter is as ineffectual; and the desired one does not
+come.</p>
+
+<p>Does the insect really require to emit these resounding effusions, these
+vociferous avowals, in order to declare its passion? Consult the immense
+majority whom the conjunction of the sexes leaves silent. In the violin
+of the grasshopper, the bagpipe of the tree-fr<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>og, and the cymbals of the
+<i>Cacan</i> I see only their peculiar means of expressing the joy of living,
+the universal joy which every species of animal expresses after its
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>If you were to tell me that the Cigales play on their noisy instruments
+careless of the sound produced, and merely for the pleasure of feeling
+themselves alive, just as we rub our hands in a moment of satisfaction,
+I should not be particularly shocked. That there is a secondary object
+in their conceit, in which the silent sex is interested, is very
+possible and very natural, but it is not as yet proven.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CIGALE. THE EGGS AND THEIR HATCHING</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Cigale confides its eggs to dry, slender twigs. All the branches
+examined by R&eacute;aumur which bore such eggs were branches of the mulberry:
+a proof that the person entrusted with the search for these eggs in the
+neighbourhood of Avignon did not bring much variety to his quest. I find
+these eggs not only on the mulberry-tree, but on the peach, the cherry,
+the willow, the Japanese privet, and other trees. But these are
+exceptions; what the Cigale really prefers is a slender twig of a
+thickness varying from that of a straw to that of a pencil. It should
+have a thin woody layer and plenty of pith. If these conditions are
+fulfilled the species matters little. I should pass in review all the
+semi-ligneous plants of the country were I to catalogue the various
+supports which are utilised by the gravid female.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+<p>Its chosen twig never lies along the ground; it is always in a more or
+less vertical position. It is usually growing in its natural position,
+but is sometimes detached; in the latter case it will by chance have
+fallen so that it retains its upright position. The insect prefers a
+long, smooth, regular twig which can receive the whole of its eggs. The
+best batches of eggs which I have found have been laid upon twigs of
+the <i>Spartium junceum</i>, which are like straws stuffed with pith, and
+especially on the upper twigs of the <i>Asphodelus cerasiferus</i>, which
+rises nearly a yard from the ground before ramifying.</p>
+
+<p>It is essential that the support, no matter what its nature, should be
+dead and perfectly dry.</p>
+
+<p>The first operation performed by the Cigale consists in making a series
+of slight lacerations, such as one might make with the point of a pin,
+which, if plunged obliquely downwards into the twig, would tear the
+woody fibres and would compress them so as to form a slight
+protuberance.</p>
+
+<p>If the twig is irregular in shape, or if several Cigales have been
+working successively at the same point, the distribution of the
+punctures is confused; the eye wanders, incapable of recognising the
+order of their succession or the work of the individual. One
+characteristic is always present, namely, the oblique direction of the
+woody fragment which is raised by the perforation, showing that the
+Cigale always works in an upright position and plunges its rostrum
+downwards in the direction of the twig.</p>
+
+<p>If the twig is regular, smooth, and conveniently long the perforations
+are almost equidistant and lie very nearly i<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>n a straight line. Their
+number varies; it is small when the mother, disturbed in her operations,
+has flown away to continue her work elsewhere; but they number thirty or
+forty, more or less, when they contain the whole of her eggs.</p>
+
+<p>Each one of the perforations is the entrance to an oblique tunnel, which
+is bored in the medullary sheath of the twig. The aperture is not
+closed, except by the bunch of woody fibres, which, parted at the moment
+when the eggs are laid, recover themselves when the double saw of the
+oviduct is removed. Sometimes, but by no means always, you may see
+between the fibres a tiny glistening patch like a touch of dried white
+of egg. This is only an insignificant trace of some albuminous secretion
+accompanying the egg or facilitating the work of the double saw of the
+oviduct.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately below the aperture of the perforation is the egg chamber: a
+short, tunnel-shaped cavity which occupies almost the whole distance
+between one opening and that lying below it. Sometimes the separating
+partition is lacking, and the various chambers run into one another, so
+that the eggs, although introduced by the various apertures, are
+arranged in an uninterrupted row. This arrangement, however, is not the
+most usual.</p>
+
+<p>The contents of the chambers vary greatly. I find in each from six to
+fifteen eggs. The average is ten. The total number of chambers varying
+from thirty to forty, it follows that the Cigale lays from three to four
+hundred eggs. R&eacute;aumur arrived at the same figures from an examination of
+the ovaries.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This is truly a fine family, capable by sheer force of numbers of
+surviving the most serious dangers. I do not see that the adult Cigale
+is exposed to greater dangers than any other insect: its eye is
+vigilant, its departure sudden, and its flight rapid; and it inhabits
+heights at which the prowling brigands of the turf are not to be feared.
+The sparrow, it is true, will greedily devour it. From time to time he
+will deliberately and meditatively descend upon the plane-trees from the
+neighbouring roof and snatch up the singer, who squeaks despairingly. A
+few blows of the beak and the Cigale is cut into quarters, delicious
+morsels for the nestlings. But how often does the bird return without
+his prey! The Cigale, foreseeing his attack, empties its intestine in
+the eyes of its assailant and flies away.</p>
+
+<p>But the Cigale has a far more terrible enemy than the sparrow. This is
+the green grasshopper. It is late, and the Cigales are silent. Drowsy
+with light and heat, they have exhausted themselves in producing their
+symphonies all day long. Night has come, and with it repose; but a
+repose frequently troubled. In the thick foliage of the plane-trees
+there is a sudden sound like a cry of anguish, short and strident. It is
+the despairing lamentation of the Cigale surprised in the silence by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+grasshopper, that ardent hunter of the night, which leaps upon the
+Cigale, seizes it by the flank, tears it open, and devours the contents
+of the stomach. After the orgy of music comes night and assassination.</p>
+
+<p>I obtained an insight into this tragedy in the following manner: I was
+walking up and down before my door at daybreak when something fell from
+the neighbouring plane-tree uttering shrill squeaks. I ran to see what
+it was. I found a green grasshopper eviscerating a struggling Cigale. In
+vain did the latter squeak and gesticulate; the other never loosed its
+hold, but plunged its head into the entrails of the victim and removed
+them by little mouthfuls.</p>
+
+<p><a name="cigale4" id="cigale4"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-048.jpg"
+             alt="THE CIGALE and THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER." /><br />
+         <b>1. THE CIGALE LAYING HER EGGS.</b><br />
+<b>2. THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER, THE FALSE CIGALE OF THE NORTH,</b><br />
+<b>DEVOURING THE TRUE CIGALE, A DWELLER IN THE SOUTH.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>This was instructive. The attack was delivered high up above my head, in
+the early morning, while the Cigale was resting; and the struggles of
+the unfortunate creature as it was dissected alive had resulted in the
+fall of assailant and assailed together. Since then I have often been
+the witness of similar assassinations.</p>
+
+<p>I have even seen the grasshopper, full of audacity, launch itself in
+pursuit of the Cigale, who fled in terror. So the sparrow-hawk pursues
+the skylark in the open sky. But the bird of prey is less ferocious than
+the insect; it pursues a creature smaller than itself. The locust, on
+the contrary, assails a colossus, far larger and far more vigorous than
+its enemy; yet the result is a foregone conclusion, in spite of this
+disproportion. With its powerful mandibles, like pincers of steel, the
+grasshopper rarely fails to eviscerate its captive, which, being
+weaponless, can only shriek and struggle.</p>
+
+<p>The Cigale is an easy prey during its hours of somnolence. Every Cigale
+encountered by the ferocious grasshopper on its nocturnal round must
+miserably perish. Thus are explained those sudden squeaks of anguish
+which are sometimes heard in the boughs during the hours of the night
+and early morning, although the cymbals have long been silent. The
+sea-green bandit has fallen upon some slumbering Cigale. When I wished
+to rear some green grasshoppers I had not far to seek for the diet of my
+pensioners; I fed them on Cigales, of which enormous numbers were
+consumed in my breeding-cages. It is therefore an established fact that
+the green grasshopper, the false Cigale of the North, will eagerly
+devour the true Cigale, the inhabitant of the Midi.</p>
+
+<p>But it is neither the sparrow nor the green grasshopper that has forced
+the Cigale to produce such a vast number of offspring. The real danger
+is elsewhere, as we shall see. The risk is enormous at the moment of
+hatching and also when the egg is laid.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three weeks after its escape from the earth&mdash;that is, about the
+middle of July&mdash;the Cigale begins to lay. In order to observe the
+process without trusting too much to chance, I took certain precautions
+which would, I felt sure, prove successful. The dry Asphodelus is the
+support preferred by the insect, as previous observations had assured
+me. It was also the plant which best lent itself to my experiments, on
+account of its long, smooth stems. Now, during the first years of my
+residence in the South I replaced the thistles in my paddock by other
+native plants of a less stubborn and prickly species. Among the new
+occupants was the asphodel. This was precisely what I needed for my
+experiments. I left the dry stems of the preceding year in place, and
+when the breeding season arrived I inspected them daily.</p>
+
+<p>I had not long to wait. As early as July 15th I found as many Cigales as
+I could wish on the stems of the asphodel, all in process of laying. The
+gravid female is always solitary. Each mother has her twig to herself,
+and is in no danger of being disturbed during the delicate operation of
+laying. When the first occupant has departed another may take her place,
+and so on indefinitely. There is abundance of room for all; but each
+prefers to be alone as her turn arrives. There is, however, no
+unpleasantness of any kind; everything passes most peacefully. If a
+female Cigale finds a place which has been already taken she flies away
+and seeks another twig directly she discovers her mistake.</p>
+
+<p>The gravid female always retains an upright position at this time, as
+indeed she does at other times. She is so absorbed in her task that she
+may readily be watched, even through a magnifying glass. The ovipositor,
+which is about four-tenths of an inch in length, is plunged obliquely
+and up to the hilt into the twig. So perfect is the tool that the
+operation is by no means troublesome. We see the Cigale tremble
+slightly, dilating and contracting the extremity of the abdomen in
+frequent palpitations. This is all that can be seen. The boring
+instrument, consisting of a double saw, alternately rises and sinks in
+the rind of the twig with a gentle, almost imperceptible movement.
+Nothing in particular occurs during the process of laying the eggs. The
+insect is motionless, and hardly ten minutes elapse between the first
+cut of the ovipositor and the filling of the egg-chamber with eggs.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+<p>The ovipositor is then withdrawn with methodical deliberation, in order
+that it may not be strained or bent. The egg-chamber closes of its own
+accord as the woody fibres which have been displaced return to their
+position, and the Cigale climbs a little higher, moving upwards in a
+straight line, by about the length of its ovipositor. It then makes
+another puncture and a fresh chamber for another ten or twelve eggs. In
+this way it scales the twig from bottom to top.</p>
+
+<p>These facts being understood, we are able to explain the remarkable
+arrangement of the eggs. The openings in the rind of the twig are
+practically equidistant, since each time the Cigale moves upward it is
+by a given length, namely, that of the ovipositor. Very rapid in flight,
+she is a very idle walker. At the most you may see her, on the living
+twig from which she is drinking, moving at a slow, almost solemn pace,
+to gain a more sunny point close at hand. On the dry twig in which she
+deposits her eggs she observes the same formal habits, and even
+exaggerates them, in view of the importance of the operation. She moves
+as little as possible, just so far as she must in order to avoid running
+two adjacent egg-chambers into one. The extent of each movement upwards
+is approximately determined by the depth of the perforation.</p>
+
+<p>The apertures are arranged in a straight line when their number is not
+very large. Why, indeed, should the insect wander to right or to left
+upon a twig which presents the same surface all over? A lover of the
+sun, she chooses that side of the twig which is most exposed to it. So
+long as she feels the heat, her supreme joy, upon her back, she will
+take good care not to change the position which she finds so delightful
+for another in which the sun would fall upon her less directly.</p>
+
+<p>The process of depositing the eggs is a lengthy one when it is carried
+out entirely on the same twig. Counting ten minutes for each
+egg-chamber, the full series of forty would represent a period of six or
+seven hours. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>un will of course move through a considerable distance
+before the Cigale can finish her work. In such cases the series of
+apertures follows a spiral curve. The insect turns round the stalk as
+the sun turns.</p>
+
+<p>Very often as the Cigale is absorbed in her maternal task a diminutive
+fly, also full of eggs, busily exterminates the Cigale's eggs as fast as
+they are laid.</p>
+
+<p>This insect was known to R&eacute;aumur. In nearly all the twigs examined he
+found its grub, the cause of a misunderstanding at the beginning of his
+researches. But he did not, could not see the audacious insect at work.
+It is one of the Chalcidid&aelig;, about one-fifth or one-sixth of an inch in
+length; entirely black, with knotty antenn&aelig;, which are slightly thicker
+towards their extremities. The unsheathed ovipositor is implanted in the
+under portion of the abdomen, about the middle, and at right angles to
+the axis of the body, as in the case of the Leucospis, the pest of the
+apiary. Not having taken the precaution to capture it, I do not know
+what name the entomologists have bestowed upon it, or even if this dwarf
+exterminator of the Cigale has as yet been catalogued. What I am
+familiar with is its calm temerity, its impudent audacity in the
+presence of the colossus who could crush it with a foot. I have seen as
+many as three at once exploiting the unfortunate female. They keep close
+behind the Cigale, working busily with their probes, or waiting until
+their victim deposits her eggs.</p>
+
+<p>The Cigale fills one of her egg-chambers and climbs a little higher in
+order to bore another hole. One of the bandits runs to the abandoned
+station, and there, almost under the cl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>aws of the giant, and without the
+least nervousness, as if it were accomplishing some meritorious action,
+it unsheathes its probe and thrusts it into the column of eggs, not by
+the open aperture, which is bristling with broken fibres, but by a
+lateral fissure. The probes works slowly, as the wood is almost intact.
+The Cigale has time to fill the adjacent chamber.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as she has finished one of these midges, the very same that has
+been performing its task below her, replaces her and introduces its
+disastrous egg. By the time the Cigale departs, her ovaries empty, the
+majority of the egg-chambers have thus received the alien egg which will
+work the destruction of their contents. A small, quick-hatching grub,
+richly nourished on a dozen eggs, will replace the family of the Cigale.</p>
+
+<p>The experience of centuries has taught the Cigale nothing. With her
+excellent eyesight she must be able to perceive these terrible sappers
+as they hover about her, meditating their crime. Too peaceable giantess!
+if you see them why do you not seize them in your talons, crush the
+pigmies at their work, so that you may proceed with your travail in
+security? But no, you will leave them untouched; you cannot modify your
+instincts, even to alleviate your maternal misfortunes.</p>
+
+<p>The eggs of the common Cigale are of a shining ivory white. Conical at
+the ends, and elongated in form, they might be compared in shape to the
+weaver's shuttle. Their length is about one-tenth of an inch, their
+diameter about one-fiftieth. They are packed in a row, slightly
+overlapping one another. The eggs of the Cacan are slightly smaller, and
+are assembled in regular groups which remind one of microscopical
+bundles of cigars. We will consider the eggs of the common Cigale to the
+exclu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>sion of the others, as their history is the history of all.</p>
+
+<p>September is not yet over when the shining white as of ivory gives way
+to the yellow hue of cheese. During the first days of October you may
+see, at the forward end of the egg, two tiny points of chestnut brown,
+which are the eyes of the embryo in formation. These two shining eyes,
+which almost seem to gaze at one, and the cone-shaped head of the egg,
+give it the look of a tiny fish without fins&mdash;a fish for whom half a
+nut-shell would make a capacious aquarium.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time I notice frequently, on the asphodels in the paddock
+and on those of the neighbouring hills, certain indications that the
+eggs have recently hatched out. There are certain cast-off articles of
+clothing, certain rags and tatters, left on the threshold of the
+egg-chamber by the new-born grubs as they leave it and hurry in search
+of a new lodging. We shall see in a moment what these vestiges mean.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of my visits, which were so assiduous as to deserve
+success, I had never contrived to see the young Cigales emerge from
+their egg-chambers. My domestic researches had been pursued in vain. Two
+years running I had collected, in boxes, tubes, and bottles, a hundred
+twigs of every kind which were peopled by the eggs of the Cigale; but
+not one had shown me what I so desired to witness: the issue of the
+new-born Cigales.</p>
+
+<p>R&eacute;aumur experienced the same disappointment. He tells us how all the
+eggs supplied by his friends were abortive, even when he placed them in
+a glass tub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>e thrust under his armpit, in order to keep them at a high
+temperature. No, venerable master! neither the temperate shelter of our
+studies and laboratories, nor the incubating warmth of our bodies is
+sufficient here; we need the supreme stimulant, the kiss of the sun;
+after the cool of the mornings, which are already sharp, the sudden
+blaze of the superb autumn weather, the last endearments of summer.</p>
+
+<p>It was under such circumstances, when a blazing sun followed a cold
+night, that I found the signs of completed incubation; but I always came
+too late; the young Cigales had departed. At most I sometimes found one
+hanging by a thread to its natal stem and struggling in the air. I
+supposed it to be caught in a thread of gossamer, or some shred of
+cobweb.</p>
+
+<p>At last, on the 27th of October, despairing of success, I gathered some
+asphodels from the orchard, and the armful of dry twigs in which the
+Cigales had laid their eggs was taken up to my study. Before giving up
+all hope I proposed once more to examine the egg-chambers and their
+contents. The morning was cold, and the first fire of the season had
+been lit in my room. I placed my little bundle on a chair before the
+fire, but without any intention of testing the effect of the heat of the
+flames upon the concealed eggs. The twigs, which I was about to cut
+open, one by one, were placed there to be within easy reach of my hand,
+and for no other reason.</p>
+
+<p>Then, while I was examining a split twig with my magnifying-glass, the
+phenomenon which I had given up all hope of observing took place under
+my eyes. My bundle of twigs was suddenly alive; scores and scores of the
+young larv&aelig; were emerging from their egg-chambers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Their numbers were
+such that my ambition as observer was amply satisfied. The eggs were
+ripe, on the point of hatching, and the warmth of the fire, bright and
+penetrating, had the effect of sunlight in the open. I was quick to
+profit by the unexpected piece of good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>At the orifice of the egg-chamber, among the torn fibres of the bark, a
+little cone-shaped body is visible, with two black eye-spots; in
+appearance it is precisely like the fore portion of the butter-coloured
+egg; or, as I have said, like the fore portion of a tiny fish. You would
+think that an egg had been somehow displaced, had been removed from the
+bottom of the chamber to its aperture. An egg to move in this narrow
+passage! a walking egg! No, that is impossible; eggs "do not do such
+things!" This is some mistake. We will break open the twig, and the
+mystery is unveiled. The actual eggs are where they always were, though
+they are slightly disarranged. They are empty, reduced to the condition
+of transparent skins, split wide open at the upper end. From them has
+issued the singular organism whose most notable characteristics are as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>In its general form, the configuration of the head and the great black
+eyes, the creature, still more than the egg, has the appearance of an
+extremely minute fish. A simulacrum of a ventral fin increases the
+resemblance. This apparent fin in reality consists of the two
+fore-limbs, which, packed in a special sheath, are bent backwards,
+stretched out against one another in a straight line. Its small degree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+of mobility must enable the grub to escape from the egg-shell and, with
+greater difficulty, from the woody tunnel leading to the open air.
+Moving outwards a little from the body, and then moving back again, this
+lever serves as a means of progression, its terminal hooks being already
+fairly strong. The four other feet are still covered by the common
+envelope, and are absolutely inert. It is the same with the antenn&aelig;,
+which can scarcely be seen through the magnifying-glass. The organism
+which has issued from the egg is a boat-shaped body with a fin-shaped
+limb pointing backwards on the ventral face, formed by the junction of
+the two fore-limbs. The segmentation of the body is very clear,
+especially on the abdomen. The whole body is perfectly smooth, without
+the least suspicion of hair.</p>
+
+<p>What name are we to give to this initial phase of the Cigale&mdash;a phase so
+strange, so unforeseen, and hitherto unsuspected? Must I amalgamate some
+more or less appropriate words of Greek and fabricate a portentous
+nomenclature? No, for I feel sure that barbarous alien phrases are only
+a hindrance to science. I will call it simply the <i>primary larva</i>, as I
+have done in the case of the Meloides, the Leucospis, and the Anthrax.</p>
+
+<p>The form of the primary larva of the Cigale is eminently adapted to its
+conditions and facilitates its escape. The tunnel in which the egg is
+hatched is very narrow, leaving only just room for passage. Moreover,
+the eggs are arranged in a row, not end to end, but partially
+overlapping. The larva escaping from the hinder ranks has to squeeze
+past the empty shells, st<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>ill in position, of the eggs which have already
+hatched, so that the narrowness of the passage is increased by the empty
+egg-shells. Under these conditions the larva as it will be presently,
+when it has torn its temporary wrappings, would be unable to effect the
+difficult passage. With the encumbrance of antenn&aelig;, with long limbs
+spreading far out from the axis of the body, with curved, pointed talons
+which hook themselves into their medium of support, everything would
+militate against a prompt liberation. The eggs in one chamber hatch
+almost simultaneously. It is therefore essential that the first-born
+larv&aelig; should hurry out of their shelter as quickly as possible, leaving
+the passage free for those behind them. Hence the boat-like shape, the
+smooth hairless body without projections, which easily squeezes its way
+past obstructions. The primary larva, with its various appendages
+closely wrapped against its body by a common sheath, with its fish-like
+form and its single and only partially movable limb, is perfectly
+adapted to make the difficult passage to the outer air.</p>
+
+<p>This phase is of short duration. Here, for instance, a migrating larva
+shows its head, with its big black eyes, and raises the broken fibres of
+the entrance. It gradually works itself forward, but so slowly that the
+magnifying-glass scarcely reveals its progress. At the end of half an
+hour at the shortest we see the entire body of the creature; but the
+orifice by which it is escaping still holds it by the hinder end of the
+body.</p>
+
+<p>Then, without further delay, the coat which it wears for this rough
+piece of work begins to split, and the larva skins itself, coming out of
+its wrappings head first. It is then the normal larva; the only form
+known to R&eacute;aumur. The rejected coat forms a suspen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>sory thread, expanding
+at its free end to form a little cup. In this cup is inserted the end of
+the abdomen of the larva, which, before allowing itself to fall to
+earth, takes a sun-bath, grows harder, stretches itself, and tries its
+strength, lightly swinging at the end of its life-line.</p>
+
+<p>This little flea, as R&eacute;aumur calls it, first white, then amber-coloured,
+is precisely the larva which will delve in the earth. The antenn&aelig;, of
+fair length, are free and waving to and fro; the limbs are bending at
+their articulations; the fore-limbs, which are relatively powerful, open
+and shut their talons. I can scarcely think of any more curious
+spectacle than that of this tiny gymnast hanging by its tail, swinging
+to the faintest breath, and preparing in the air for its entry into the
+world. It hangs there for a variable period; some larv&aelig; let themselves
+fall at the end of half an hour; others spend hours in their
+long-stemmed cup; some even remain suspended until the following day.</p>
+
+<p>Whether soon or late, the fall of the larva leaves suspended the thread
+by which it hung, the wrappings of the primary larva. When all the brood
+have disappeared, the aperture of the nest is thus hung with a branch of
+fine, short threads, twisted and knotted together, like dried white of
+egg. Each thread is expanded into a tiny cup at its free end. These are
+very delicate and ephemeral relics, which perish at a touch. The least
+wind quickly blows them away.</p>
+
+<p>Let us return to the larva. Sooner or later, as we have seen, it falls
+to the ground, either by accident or intention. The tiny creature, no
+bigger than a flea, has preserved its tender newly-hatched flesh from
+contact with the rough earth by hanging in t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>he air until its tissues
+have hardened. Now it plunges into the troubles of life.</p>
+
+<p>I foresee a thousand dangers ahead. A mere breath of wind may carry this
+atom away, and cast it on that inaccessible rock in the midst of a rut
+in the road which still contains a little water; or on the sand, the
+region of famine where nothing grows; or upon a soil of clay, too
+tenacious to be tunnelled. These mortal accidents are frequent, for
+gusts of wind are frequent in the windy and already severe weather of
+the end of October.</p>
+
+<p>This delicate organism requires a very soft soil, which can easily be
+entered, so that it may immediately obtain a suitable shelter. The cold
+days are coming; soon the frosts will be here. To wander on the surface
+would expose it to grave perils. It must contrive without delay to
+descend into the earth, and that to no trivial depth. This is the unique
+and imperative condition of safety, and in many cases it is impossible
+of realisation. What use are the claws of this tiny flea against rock,
+sandstone, or hardened clay? The creature must perish if it cannot find
+a subterranean refuge in good time.</p>
+
+<p>Everything goes to show that the necessity of this first foothold on the
+soil, subject as it is to so many accidents, is the cause of the great
+mortality in the Cigale family. The little black parasite, the destroyer
+of eggs, in itself evokes the necessity of a large batch of eggs; and
+the difficulty which the larva experiences in effecting a safe lodgment
+in the earth is yet another explanation of the fact that the maintenance
+of the race at its proper stre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>ngth requires a batch of three or four
+hundred eggs from each mother. Subject to many accidents, the Cigale is
+fertile to excess. By the prodigality of her ovaries she conjures the
+host of perils which threaten her offspring.</p>
+
+<p>During the rest of my experiment I can at least spare the larv&aelig; the
+worst difficulties of their first establishment underground. I take some
+soil from the heath, which is very soft and almost black, and I pass it
+through a fine sieve. Its colour will enable me more easily to find the
+tiny fair-skinned larv&aelig; when I wish to inform myself of passing events;
+its lightness makes it a suitable refuge for such weak and fragile
+beings. I pack it Pretty firmly in a glass vase; I plant in it a little
+tuft of thyme; I sow in it a few grains of wheat. There is no hole at
+the bottom of the vase, although there should be one for the benefit of
+the thyme and the corn; but the captives would find it and escape by it.
+The plantation and the crop will suffer from this lack of drainage, but
+at least I am sure of recovering my larv&aelig; with the help of patience and
+a magnifying-glass. Moreover, I shall go gently in the matter of
+irrigation, giving only just enough water to save the plants from
+perishing.</p>
+
+<p>When all is in order, and when the wheat is beginning to shoot, I place
+six young larv&aelig; of the Cigale on the surface of the soil. The tiny
+creatures begin to pace hither and thither; they soon explore the
+surface of their world, and some try vainly to climb the sides of the
+vase. Not one of them seems inclined to bury itself; so that I ask
+myself anxiously what can be the object of their prolonged and active
+explorations. Two hours go by, but their wanderings continue.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+<p>What do they want? Food? I offer them some tiny bulbs with bundles of
+sprouting roots, a few fragments of leaves and some fresh blades of
+grass. Nothing tempts them; nothing brings them to a standstill.
+Apparently they are seeking for a favourable point before descending
+into the earth. But there is no need for this hesitating exploration on
+the soil I have prepared for them; the whole area, or so it seems to me,
+lends itself excellently to the operations which I am expecting to see
+them commence. Yet apparently it will not answer the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Under natural conditions a little wandering might well be indispensable.
+Spots as soft as my bed of earth from the roots of the briar-heather,
+purged of all hard bodies and finely sifted, are rare in nature. Coarse
+soils are more usual, on which the tiny creatures could make no
+impression. The larva must wander at hazard, must make a pilgrimage of
+indefinite duration before finding a favourable place. Very many, no
+doubt, perish, exhausted by their fruitless search. A voyage of
+exploration in a country a few inches wide evidently forms part of the
+curriculum of young Cigales. In my glass prison, so luxuriously
+furnished, this pilgrimage is useless. Never mind: it must be
+accomplished according to the consecrated rites.</p>
+
+<p>At last my wanderers grow less excited. I see them attack the earth with
+the curved talons of their fore-limbs, digging their claws into it and
+making such an excavation as the point of a thick needle would enter.
+With a magnifying-glass I watch their picks at work. I see their talons
+raking atom after atom of earth to the surface. In a few minutes there
+is a little gaping well. The larva climbs downwards and buries itself,
+henceforth invisible.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+<p>On the morrow I turn out the contents of the vase without breaking the
+mould, which is held together by the roots of the thyme and the wheat. I
+find all my larv&aelig; at the bottom, arrested by the glass. In twenty-four
+hours they had sunk themselves through the entire thickness of the
+earth&mdash;a matter of some four inches. But for obstacle at the bottom they
+would have sunk even further.</p>
+
+<p>On the way they have probably encountered the rootlets of my little
+plantation. Did they halt in order to take a little nourishment by
+implanting their proboscis? This is hardly probable, for a few rootlets
+were pressed against the bottom of the glass, but none of my prisoners
+were feeding. Perhaps the shock of reversing the pot detached them.</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that underground there is no other nourishment for them
+than the sap of roots. Adult or larva, the Cigale is a strict
+vegetarian. As an adult insect it drinks the sap of twigs and branches;
+as a larva it sucks the sap of roots. But at what stage does it take the
+first sip? That I do not know as yet, but the foregoing experiment seems
+to show that the newly hatched larva is in greater haste to burrow deep
+into the soil, so as to obtain shelter from the coming winter, than to
+station itself at the roots encountered in its passage downwards.</p>
+
+<p>I replace the mass of soil in the vase, and the six exhumed larv&aelig; are
+once more placed on the surface of the soil. This time they commence to
+dig at once, and have soon disappeared. Finally the vase is placed in my
+study window, where it will be subject to the influences, good and ill,
+of the outer air.</p>
+
+<p>A month later, at the end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> of November, I pay the young Cigales a second
+visit. They are crouching, isolated at the bottom of the mould. They do
+not adhere to the roots; they have not grown; their appearance has not
+altered. Such as they were at the beginning of the experiment, such they
+are now, but rather less active. Does not this lack of growth during
+November, the mildest month of winter, prove that no nourishment is
+taken until the spring?</p>
+
+<p>The young Sitares, which are also very minute, directly they issue from
+the egg at the entrance of the tubes of the Anthrophorus, remain
+motionless, assembled in a heap, and pass the whole of the winter in a
+state of complete abstinence. The young Cigales apparently behave in a
+very similar fashion. Once they have burrowed to such depths as will
+safeguard them from the frosts they sleep in solitude in their winter
+quarters, and await the return of spring before piercing some
+neighbouring root and taking their first repast.</p>
+
+<p>I have tried unsuccessfully to confirm these deductions by observation.
+In April I unpotted my plant of thyme for the third time. I broke up the
+mould and spread it under the magnifying-glass. It was like looking for
+needles in a haystack; but at last I recovered my little Cigales. They
+were dead, perhaps of cold, in spite of the bell-glass with which I had
+covered the pot, or perhaps of starvation, if the thyme was not a
+suitable food-plant. I give up the problem as too difficult of solution.</p>
+
+<p>To rear such larv&aelig; successfully one would require a deep, extensive bed
+of earth which would shelter them from the winter cold; and, as I do not
+know what roots they prefer, a varied vegetat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>ion, so that the little
+creatures could choose according to their taste. These conditions are by
+no means impracticable, but how, in the large earthy mass, containing at
+least a cubic yard of soil, should we recover the atoms I had so much
+trouble to find in a handful of black soil from the heath? Moreover,
+such a laborious search would certainly detach the larva from its root.</p>
+
+<p>The early subterranean life of the Cigale escapes us. That of the
+maturer larva is no better known. Nothing is more common, while digging
+in the fields to any depth, to find these impetuous excavators under the
+spade; but to surprise them fixed upon the roots which incontestably
+nourish them is quite another matter. The disturbance of the soil warns
+the larva of danger. It withdraws its proboscis in order to retreat
+along its galleries, and when the spade uncovers it has ceased to feed.</p>
+
+<p>If the hazards of field-work, with its inevitable disturbance of the
+larv&aelig;, cannot teach us anything of their subterranean habits, we can at
+least learn something of the duration of the larval stage. Some obliging
+farmers, who were making some deep excavations in March, were good
+enough to collect for me all the larv&aelig;, large and small, unearthed in
+the course of their labour. The total collection amounted to several
+hundreds. They were divided, by very clearly marked differences of size,
+into three categories: the large larv&aelig;, with rudiments of wings, such as
+those larv&aelig; caught upon leaving the earth possess; the medium-sized, and
+the small. Each of these stages must correspond to a different age. To
+these we may add the larv&aelig; produced by the last hatching of eggs,
+creatures too minute to be noticed by my rustic helpers, and we obtain
+four years as the probable term of the larv&aelig; underground.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+<p>The length of their aerial existence is more easily computed. I hear the
+first Cigales about the summer solstice. A month later the orchestra has
+attained its full power. A very few late singers execute their feeble
+solos until the middle of September. This is the end of the concert. As
+all the larv&aelig; do not issue from the ground at the same time, it is
+evident that the singers of September are not contemporary with those
+that began to sing at the solstice. Taking the average between these two
+dates, we get five weeks as the probable duration of the Cigales' life
+on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Four years of hard labour underground, and a month of feasting in the
+sun; such is the life of the Cigale. Do not let us again reproach the
+adult insect with his triumphant delirium. For four years, in the
+darkness he has worn a dirty parchment overall; for four years he has
+mined the soil with his talons, and now the mud-stained sapper is
+suddenly clad in the finest raiment, and provided with wings that rival
+the bird's; moreover, he is drunken with heat and flooded with light,
+the supreme terrestrial joy. His cymbals will never suffice to celebrate
+such felicity, so well earned although so ephemeral.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MANTIS.&mdash;THE CHASE</h3>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is another creature of the Midi which is quite as curious and
+interesting as the Cigale, but much less famous, as it is voiceless. If
+Providence had provided it with cymbals, which are a prime element of
+popularity, it would soon have eclipsed the renown of the celebrated
+singer, so strange is its shape, and so peculiar its manners. It is
+called by the Proven&ccedil;als <i>lou Pr&egrave;go-Di&eacute;u</i>, the creature which prays to
+God. Its official name is the Praying Mantis (<i>Mantis religiosa</i>, Lin.).</p>
+
+<p>For once the language of science and the vocabulary of the peasant
+agree. Both represent the Mantis as a priestess delivering oracles, or
+an ascetic in a mystic ecstasy. The comparison is a matter of antiquity.
+The ancient Greeks called the insect &#924;&#7937;&#957;&#964;&#953;&#987;, the divine, the
+prophet. The worker in the fields is never slow in perceiving analogies;
+he will always generously supplement the vagueness of the facts. He has
+seen, on the sun-burned herbage of the meadows, an insect of commanding
+appearance, drawn up in majestic attitude. He has noticed its wide,
+delicate wings of green, trailing behind it like long linen veils; he
+has seen its fore-limbs, its arms, so to speak, raised towards to the
+sky in a gesture of invocation. This was enough: popular imagination
+has done the rest; so that since the period of classical antiquity the
+bushes have been peopled with priestesses emitting oracles and nuns in
+prayer.</p>
+
+<p>Good people, how very far astray your childlike simplicity has led you!
+These attitudes of prayer conceal the most atrocious habits; these
+supplicating arms are lethal weapons; these fingers tell no rosaries,
+but help to exterminate the unfortunate passer-by. It is an exception
+that we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>should never look for in the vegetarian family of the
+Orthoptera, but the Mantis lives exclusively upon living prey. It is the
+tiger of the peaceful insect peoples; the ogre in ambush which demands a
+tribute of living flesh. If it only had sufficient strength its
+blood-thirsty appetites, and its horrible perfection of concealment
+would make it the terror of the countryside. The <i>Pr&egrave;go-Di&eacute;u</i> would
+become a Satanic vampire.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from its lethal weapon the Mantis has nothing about it to inspire
+apprehension. It does not lack a certain appearance of graciousness,
+with its slender body, its elegant waist-line, its tender green
+colouring, and its long gauzy wings. No ferocious jaws, opening like
+shears; on the contrary, a fine pointed muzzle which seems to be made
+for billing and cooing. Thanks to a flexible neck, set freely upon the
+thorax, the head can turn to right or left as on a pivot, bow, or raise
+itself high in the air. Alone among insects, the Mantis is able to
+direct its gaze; it inspects and examines; it has almost a physiognomy.</p>
+
+<p>There is a very great contrast between the body as a whole, which has a
+perfectly peaceable aspect, and the murderous fore-limbs. The haunch of
+the fore-limb is unusually long and powerful. Its object is to throw
+forward the living trap which does not wait for the victim, but goes in
+search of it. The snare is embellished with a certain amount of
+ornamentation. On the inner face the base of the haunch is decorated
+with a pretty black spot relieved by smaller spots of white, and a few
+rows of fine pearly spots complete the ornamentation.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+<p>The thigh, still longer, like a flattened spindle, carries on the
+forward half of the lower face a double row of steely spines. The
+innermost row contains a dozen, alternately long and black and short and
+green. This alternation of unequal lengths makes the weapon more
+effectual for holding. The outer row is simpler, having only four teeth.
+Finally, three needle-like spikes, the longest of all, rise behind the
+double series of spikes. In short, the thigh is a saw with two parallel
+edges, separated by a groove in which the foreleg lies when folded.</p>
+
+<p>The foreleg, which is attached to the thigh by a very flexible
+articulation, is also a double-edged saw, but the teeth are smaller,
+more numerous, and closer than those of the thigh. It terminates in a
+strong hook, the point of which is as sharp as the finest needle: a hook
+which is fluted underneath and has a double blade like a pruning-knife.</p>
+
+<p>A weapon admirably adapted for piercing and tearing, this hook has
+sometimes left me with visible remembrances. Caught in turn by the
+creature which I had just captured, and not having both hands free, I
+have often been obliged to get a second person to free me from my
+tenacious captive! To free oneself by violence without disengaging the
+firmly implanted talons would result in lacerations such as the thorns
+of a rosebush will produce. None of our insects is so inconvenient to
+handle. The Mantis digs its knife-blades into your flesh, pierces you
+with its needles, seizes you as in a vice, and renders self-defence
+almost impossible if, wishing to take your quarry alive, you refrain
+from crushing it out of existence.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+<p>When the Mantis is in repose its weapons are folded and pressed against
+the thorax, and are perfectly inoffensive in appearance. The insect is
+apparently praying. But let a victim come within reach, and the attitude
+of prayer is promptly abandoned. Suddenly unfolded, the three long
+joints of the deadly fore-limbs shoot out their terminal talons, which
+strike the victim and drag it backwards between the two saw-blades of
+the thighs. The vice closes with a movement like that of the forearm
+upon the upper arm, and all is over; crickets, grasshoppers, and even
+more powerful insects, once seized in this trap with its four rows of
+teeth, are lost irreparably. Their frantic struggles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> will never release
+the hold of this terrible engine of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The habits of the Mantis cannot be continuously studied in the freedom
+of the fields; the insect must be domesticated. There is no difficulty
+here; the Mantis is quite indifferent to imprisonment under glass,
+provided it is well fed. Offer it a tasty diet, feed it daily, and it
+will feel but little regret for its native thickets.</p>
+
+<p>For cages I use a dozen large covers of wire gauze, such as are used in
+the larder to protect meat from the flies. Each rests upon a tray full
+of sand. A dry tuft of thyme and a flat stone on which the eggs may be
+laid later on complete the furnishing of such a dwelling. These cages
+are placed in a row on the large table in my entomological laboratory,
+where the sun shines on them during the greater part of the day. There
+I install my captives; some singly, some in groups.</p>
+
+<p>It is in the latter half of August that I begin to meet with the adult
+insect on the faded herbage and the brambles at the roadside. The
+females, whose bellies are already swollen, are more numerous every day.
+Their slender companions, on the other hand, are somewhat rare, and I
+often have some trouble in completing my couples; whose relations will
+finally be terminated by a tragic consummation. But we will reserve
+these amenities for a later time, and will consider the females first.</p>
+
+<p>They are tremendous eaters, so that their entertainment, when it lasts
+for some months is not without difficulties. Their provisions must be
+renewed every day, for the greater part are disdainfully tasted and
+thrown a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>side. On its native bushes I trust the Mantis is more
+economical. Game is not too abundant, so that she doubtless devours her
+prey to the last atom; but in my cages it is always at hand. Often,
+after a few mouthfuls, the insect will drop the juicy morsel without
+displaying any further interest in it. Such is the ennui of captivity!</p>
+
+<p>To provide them with a luxurious table I have to call in assistants. Two
+or three of the juvenile unemployed of my neighbourhood, bribed by
+slices of bread and jam or of melon, search morning and evening on the
+neighbouring lawns, where they fill their game-bags, little cases made
+from sections of reeds, with living grasshoppers and crickets. On my own
+part, I make a daily tour of the paddock, net in hand, with the object
+of obtaining some choice dish for my guests.</p>
+
+<p>These particular captures are destined to show me just how far the
+vigour and audacity of the Mantis will lead it. They include the large
+grey cricket (<i>Pachytylus cinerascens</i>, Fab.), which is larger than the
+creature which devours it; the white-faced Decticus, armed with powerful
+mandibles from which it is wise to guard one's fingers; the grotesque
+Truxalis, wearing a pyramidal mitre on its head; and the Ephippigera of
+the vineyards, which clashes its cymbals and carries a sabre at the end
+of its barrel-shaped abdomen. To this assortment of disobliging
+creatures let us add two horrors: the silky Epeirus, whose disc-shaped
+scalloped abdomen is as big as a shilling, and the crowned Epeirus,
+which is horribly hairy and corpulent.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot doubt that the Mantis attacks such adversaries in a state of
+nature when I see it, under my wire-gauze covers, boldly give battle to
+whatever is placed before it. Lying in wait among the bushes it must
+profit by the prizes bestowed upon it by hazard, as in its cage it
+profits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> by the wealth of diet due to my generosity. The hunting of such
+big game as I offer, which is full of danger, must form part of the
+creature's usual life, though it may be only an occasional pastime,
+perhaps to the great regret of the Mantis.</p>
+
+<p>Crickets of all kinds, butterflies, bees, large flies of many species,
+and other insects of moderate size: such is the prey that we habitually
+find in the embrace of the murderous arms of the Mantis. But in my cages
+I have never known the audacious huntress to recoil before any other
+insect. Grey cricket, Decticus, Epeirus or Truxalis, sooner or later all
+are harpooned, held motionless between the saw-edges of the arms, and
+deliciously crunched at leisure. The process deserves a detailed
+description.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of a great cricket, which thoughtlessly approaches along
+the wire-work of the cover, the Mantis, shaken by a convulsive start,
+suddenly assumes a most terrifying posture. An electric shock would not
+produce a more immediate result. The transition is so sudden, the
+mimicry so threatening, that the unaccustomed observer will draw back
+his hand, as though at some unknown danger. Seasoned as I am, I myself
+must confess to being startled on occasions when my thoughts have been
+elsewhere. The creature spreads out like a fan actuated by a spring, or
+a fantastic Jack-in-the-box.</p>
+
+<p>The wing-covers open, and are thrust obliquely aside; the wings spring
+to their full width, standing up like parallel screens of transparent
+gauze, forming a pyramidal prominence which dominates the back; the end
+of the abdomen curls upward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>s crosier-wise, then falls and unbends itself
+with a sort of swishing noise, a <i>pouf! pouf!</i> like the sound emitted by
+the feathers of a strutting turkey-cock. One is reminded of the puffing
+of a startled adder.</p>
+
+<p>Proudly straddling on its four hind-claws, the insect holds its long
+body almost vertical. The murderous fore-limbs, at first folded and
+pressed against one another on the thorax, open to their full extent,
+forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axill&aelig; ornamented with
+rows of pearls, and a black spot with a central point of white. These
+two eyes, faintly recalling those of the peacock's tail, and the fine
+ebony embossments, are part of the blazonry of conflict, concealed upon
+ordinary occasions. Their jewels are only assumed when they make
+themselves terrible and superb for battle.</p>
+
+<p>Motionless in its weird position, the Mantis surveys the acridian, its
+gaze fixed upon it, its head turning gently as on a pivot as the other
+changes place. The object of this mimicry seems evident; the Mantis
+wishes to terrorise its powerful prey, to paralyse it with fright; for
+if not demoralised by fear the quarry might prove too dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Does it really terrify its prey? Under the shining head of the Decticus,
+behind the long face of the cricket, who is to say what is passing? No
+sign of emotion can reveal itself upon these immovable masks. Yet it
+seems certain that the threatened creature is aware of its danger. It
+sees, springing up before it, a terrible spectral form with talons
+outstretched, ready to fall upon it; it feels itself face to face with
+death, and fails to flee while yet there is time. The creature that
+excels in leaping, and might so easily escape from the threatening
+claws, the wonderful jumper <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>with the prodigious thighs, remains
+crouching stupidly in its place, or even approaches the enemy with
+deliberate steps.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is said that young birds, paralysed with terror by the gaping mouth
+of a serpent, or fascinated by its gaze, will allow themselves to be
+snatched from the nest, incapable of movement. The cricket will often
+behave in almost the same way. Once within reach of the enchantress, the
+grappling-hooks are thrown, the fangs strike, the double saws close
+together and hold the victim in a vice. Vainly the captive struggles;
+his mandibles chew the air, his desperate kicks meet with no resistance.
+He has met with his fate. The Mantis refolds her wings, the standard of
+battle; she resumes her normal pose, and the meal commences.</p>
+
+<p>In attacking the Truxalis and the Ephippigera, less dangerous game than
+the grey cricket and the Decticus, the spectral pose is less imposing
+and of shorter duration. It is often enough to throw forward the talons;
+this is so in the case of the Epeirus, which is seized by the middle of
+the body, without a thought of its venomous claws. With the smaller
+crickets, which are the customary diet in my cages as at liberty, the
+Mantis rarely employs her means of intimidation; she merely seizes the
+heedless passer-by as she lies in wait.</p>
+
+<p>When the insect to be captured may present some serious resistance, the
+Mantis is thus equipped with a pose which terrifies or perplexes,
+fascinates or absorbs the prey, while it enables her talons to strike
+with greater certainty. Her gins close on a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>demoralised victim,
+incapable of or unready for defence. She freezes the quarry with fear or
+amazement by suddenly assuming the attitude of a spectre.</p>
+
+<p>The wings play an important part in this fantastic pose. They are very
+wide, green on the outer edge, but colourless and transparent elsewhere.
+Numerous nervures, spreading out fan-wise, cross them in the direction
+of their length. Others, transversal but finer, cut the first at right
+angles, forming with them a multitude of meshes. In the spectral
+attitude the wings are outspread and erected in two parallel planes
+which are almost in contact, like the wings of butterflies in repose.
+Between the two the end of the abdomen rapidly curls and uncurls. From
+the rubbing of the belly against the network of nervures proceeds the
+species of puffing sound which I have compared to the hissing of an
+adder in a posture of defence. To imitate this curious sound it is
+enough rapidly to stroke the upper face of an outstretched wing with the
+tip of the finger-nail.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment of hunger, after a fast of some days, the large grey
+cricket, which is as large as the Mantis or larger, will be entirely
+consumed with the exception of the wings, which are too dry. Two hours
+are sufficient for the completion of this enormous meal. Such an orgy is
+rare. I have witnessed it two or three times, always asking myself where
+the gluttonous creature found room for so much food, and how it
+contrived to reverse in its own favour the axiom that the content is
+less than that which contains it. I can only admire the privileges of a
+stomach in which matter is digested immediately upon entrance, dissolved
+and made away with.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+<p>The usual diet of the Mantis under my wire cages consists of crickets of
+different species and varying greatly in size. It is interesting to
+watch the Mantis nibbling at its cricket, which it holds in the vice
+formed by its murderous fore-limbs. In spite of the fine-pointed muzzle,
+which hardly seems made for such ferocity, the entire insect disappears
+excepting the wings, of which only the base, which is slightly fleshy,
+is consumed. Legs, claws, horny integuments, all else is eaten.
+Sometimes the great hinder thigh is seized by the knuckle, carried to
+the mouth, tasted, and crunched with a little air of satisfaction. The
+swollen thigh of the cricket might well be a choice "cut" for the
+Mantis, as a leg of lamb is for us!</p>
+
+<p>The attack on the victim begins at the back of the neck or base of the
+head. While one of the murderous talons holds the quarry gripped by the
+middle of the body, the other presses the head downwards, so that the
+articulation between the back and the neck is stretched and opens
+slightly. The snout of the Mantis gnaws and burrows into this undefended
+spot with a certain persistence, and a large wound is opened in the
+neck. At the lesion of the cephalic ganglions the struggles of the
+cricket grow less, and the victim becomes a motionless corpse. Thence,
+unrestricted in its movements, this beast of prey chooses its mouthfuls
+at leisure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MANTIS.&mdash;COURTSHIP<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The little we have seen of the customs of the Mantis does not square
+very well with the popular name for the insect. From the term
+<i>Pr&egrave;go-Di&eacute;u</i> we should expect a peaceful placid creature, devoutly
+self-absorbed; and we find a cannibal, a ferocious spectre, biting open
+the heads of its captives after demoralising them with terror. But we
+have yet to learn the worst. The customs of the Mantis in connection
+with its own kin are more atrocious even than those of the spiders, who
+bear an ill repute in this respect.</p>
+
+<p>To reduce the number of cages on my big laboratory table, to give myself
+a little more room, while still maintaining a respectable menagerie, I
+installed several females under one cover. There was sufficient space in
+the common lodging and room for the captives to move about, though for
+that matter they are not fond of movement, being heavy in the abdomen.
+Crouching motionless against the wire work of the cover, they will
+digest their food or await a passing victim. They lived, in short, just
+as they lived on their native bushes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Communal life has its dangers. When the hay is low in the manger
+donkeys grow quarrelsome, although usually so pacific. My guests might
+well, in a season of dearth, have lost their tempers and begun to fight
+one another; but I was careful to keep the cages well provided with
+crickets, which were renewed twice a day. If civil war broke out famine
+could not be urged in excuse.</p>
+
+<p>At the outset matters did not go badly. The company lived in peace, each
+Mantis pouncing upon and eating whatever came her way, without
+interfering with her neighbours. But this period of concord was of brief
+duration. The bellies of the insects grew fuller: the eggs ripened in
+their ovaries: the time of courtship and the laying season was
+approaching. Then a kind of jealous rage seized the females, although no
+male was present to arouse such feminine rivalry. The swelling of the
+ovaries perverted my flock, and infected them with an insane desire to
+devour one another. There were threats, horrid encounters, and cannibal
+feasts. Once more the spectral pose was seen, the hissing of the wings,
+and the terrible gesture of the talons outstretched and raised above the
+head. The females could not have looked more terrible before a grey
+cricket or a Decticus. Without any motives that I could see, two
+neighbours suddenly arose in the attitude of conflict. They turned their
+heads to the right an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>d the left, provoking one another, insulting one
+another. The <i>pouf! pouf!</i> of the wings rubbed by the abdomen sounded
+the charge. Although the duel was to terminate at the first scratch,
+without any more serious consequence, the murderous talons, at first
+folded, open like the leaves of a book, and are extended laterally to
+protect the long waist and abdomen. The pose is superb, but less
+terrific than that assumed when the fight is to be to the death.</p>
+
+<p>Then one of the grappling-hooks with a sudden spring flies out and
+strikes the rival; with the same suddenness it flies back and assumes a
+position of guard. The adversary replies with a riposte. The fencing
+reminds one not a little of two cats boxing one another's ears. At the
+first sign of blood on the soft abdomen, or even at the slightest wound,
+one admits herself to be conquered and retires. The other refurls her
+battle standard and goes elsewhere to meditate the capture of a cricket,
+apparently calm, but in reality ready to recommence the quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>Very often the matter turns out more tragically. In duels to the death
+the pose of attack is assumed in all its beauty. The murderous talons
+unfold and rise in the air. Woe to the vanquished! for the victor seizes
+her in her vice-like grip and at once commences to eat her; beginning,
+needless to say, at the back of the neck. The odious meal proceeds as
+calmly as if it were merely a matter of munching a grasshopper; and the
+survivor enjoys her sister quite as much as lawful game. The spectators
+do not protest, being only too willing to do the like on the first
+occasion.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+<p>Ferocious creatures! It is said that even wolves do not eat one another.
+The Mantis is not so scrupulous; she will eat her fellows when her
+favourite quarry, the cricket, is attainable and abundant.</p>
+
+<p>These observations reach a yet more revolting extreme. Let us inquire
+into the habits of the insect at breeding time, and to avoid the
+confusion of a crowd let us isolate the couples under different covers.
+Thus each pair will have their own dwelling, where nothing can trouble
+their honeymoon. We will not forget to provide them with abundant food;
+there shall not be the excuse of hunger for what is to follow.</p>
+
+<p>We are near the end of August. The male Mantis, a slender and elegant
+lover, judges the time to be propitious. He makes eyes at his powerful
+companion; he turns his head towards her; he bows his neck and raises
+his thorax. His little pointed face almost seems to wear an expression.
+For a long time he stands thus motionless, in contemplation of the
+desired one. The latter, as though indifferent, does not stir. Yet the
+lover has seized upon a sign of consent: a sign of which I do not know
+the secret. He approaches: suddenly he erects his wings, which are
+shaken with a convulsive tremor.</p>
+
+<p>This is his declaration. He throws himself timidly on the back of his
+corpulent companion; he clings to her desperately, and steadies himself.
+The prelude to the embrace is generally lengthy, and the embrace will
+sometimes l<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>ast for five or six hours.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing worthy of notice occurs during this time. Finally the two
+separate, but they are soon to be made one flesh in a much more intimate
+fashion. If the poor lover is loved by his mistress as the giver of
+fertility, she also loves him as the choicest of game. During the day,
+or at latest on the morrow, he is seized by his companion, who first
+gnaws through the back of his neck, according to use and wont, and then
+methodically devours him, mouthful by mouthful, leaving only the wings.
+Here we have no case of jealousy, but simply a depraved taste.</p>
+
+<p>I had the curiosity to wonder how a second male would be received by a
+newly fecundated female. The result of my inquiry was scandalous. The
+Mantis in only too many cases is never sated with embraces and conjugal
+feasts. After a rest, of variable duration, whether the eggs have been
+laid or not, a second male is welcomed and devoured like the first. A
+third succeeds him, does his duty, and affords yet another meal. A
+fourth suffers a like fate. In the course of two weeks I have seen the
+same Mantis treat seven husbands in this fashion. She admitted all to
+her embraces, and all paid for the nuptial ecstasy with their lives.</p>
+
+<p>There are exceptions, but such orgies are frequent. On very hot days,
+when the atmospheric tension is high, they are almost the general rule.
+At such times the Mantis is all nerves. Under covers which contain large
+households the females devour one another more frequently than ever;
+under the covers which contain isolated couples the males are devoured
+more eagerly than usual when their office has been fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>I might urge, in mitigation of these conjugal atrocit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>ies, that the
+Mantis does not commit them when at liberty. The male, his function once
+fulfilled, surely has time to wander off, to escape far away, to flee
+the terrible spouse, for in my cages he is given a respite, often of a
+whole day. What really happens by the roadside and in the thickets I do
+not know; chance, a poor schoolmistress, has never instructed me
+concerning the love-affairs of the Mantis when at liberty. I am obliged
+to watch events in my laboratory, where the captives, enjoying plenty of
+sunshine, well nourished, and comfortably lodged, do not seem in any way
+to suffer from nostalgia. They should behave there as they behave under
+normal conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! the facts force me to reject the statement that the males have
+time to escape; for I once surprised a male, apparently in the
+performance of his vital functions, holding the female tightly
+embraced&mdash;but he had no head, no neck, scarcely any thorax! The female,
+her head turned over her shoulder, was peacefully browsing on the
+remains of her lover! And the masculine remnant, firmly anchored,
+continued its duty!</p>
+
+<p>Love, it is said, is stronger than death! Taken literally, never has an
+aphorism received a more striking confirmation. Here was a creature
+decapitated, amputated as far as the middle of the thorax; a corpse
+which still struggled to give life. It would not relax its hold until
+the abdomen itself, the seat of the organs of procreation, was attacked.</p>
+
+<p>The custom of eating the lover <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>after the consummation of the nuptials,
+of making a meal of the exhausted pigmy, who is henceforth good for
+nothing, is not so difficult to understand, since insects can hardly be
+accused of sentimentality; but to devour him during the act surpasses
+anything that the most morbid mind could imagine. I have seen the thing
+with my own eyes, and I have not yet recovered from my surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Could this unfortunate creature have fled and saved himself, being thus
+attacked in the performance of his functions? No. We must conclude that
+the loves of the Mantis are fully as tragic, perhaps even more so, than
+those of the spider. I do not deny that the limited area of the cage may
+favour the massacre of the males; but the cause of such butchering must
+be sought elsewhere. It is perhaps a reminiscence of the carboniferous
+period when the insect world gradually took shape through prodigious
+procreation. The Orthoptera, of which the Mantes form a branch, are the
+first-born of the insect world.</p>
+
+<p>Uncouth, incomplete in their transformation, they wandered amidst the
+arborescent foliage, already flourishing when none of the insects sprung
+of more complex forms of metamorphosis were as yet in existence: neither
+butterflies, beetles, flies, nor bees. Manners were not gentle in those
+epochs, which were full of the lust to destroy in order to produce; and
+the Mantis, a feeble memory of those ancient ghosts, might well preserve
+the customs of an earlier age. The utilisation of the males as food is a
+custom in the case of other members of the Mantis family. It is, I must
+admit, a general habit. The little grey Mantis, so small and looking so
+harmless in her cage, which never seeks to harm her neighbours in spite
+of her crowded quarters, falls upon her male and devours him as
+ferociously as the Praying Mantis. I have worn myself out in trying to
+procure the indispensable complements to my female specimens. No sooner
+is my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> capture, strongly winged, vigorous and alert, introduced into the
+cage than he is seized, more often than not, by one of the females who
+no longer have need of his assistance and devoured. Once the ovaries are
+satisfied the two species of Mantis conceive an antipathy for the male;
+or rather they regard him merely as a particularly tasty species of
+game.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MANTIS.&mdash;THE NEST</h3>
+
+
+<p>Let us take a more pleasant aspect of the insect whose loves are so
+tragic. Its nest is a marvel. In scientific language it is known as the
+<i>ootek</i>, or the "egg-box." I shall not make use of this barbarous
+expression. As one does not speak of the "egg-box" of the titmouse,
+meaning "the nest of the titmouse," why should I invoke the box in
+speaking of the Mantis? It may look more scientific; but that does not
+interest me.</p>
+
+<p>The nest of the Praying Mantis may be found almost everywhere in places
+exposed to the sun: on stones, wood, vine stocks, the twigs of bushes,
+stems of dried grass, and even on products of human industry, such as
+fragments of brick, rags of heavy cloth, and pieces of old boots. Any
+support will suffice, so long as it offers inequalities to which the
+base of the nest may adhere, and so provide a solid foundation. The
+usual dim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>ensions of the nest are one and a half inches long by
+three-quarters of an inch wide, or a trifle larger. The colour is a pale
+tan, like that of a grain of wheat. Brought in contact with a flame the
+nest burns readily, and emits an odour like that of burning silk. The
+material of the nest is in fact a substance similar to silk, but instead
+of being drawn into a thread it is allowed to harden while a mass of
+spongy foam. If the nest is fixed on a branch the base creeps round it,
+envelops the neighbouring twigs, and assumes a variable shape according
+to the accidents of support; if it is fixed on a flat surface the under
+side, which is always moulded by the support, is itself flat. The nest
+then takes the form of a demi-ellipsoid, or, in other words, half an egg
+cut longitudinally; more or less obtuse at one end, but pointed at the
+other, and sometimes ending in a short curved tail.</p>
+
+<p>In all cases the upper face is convex and regular. In it we can
+distinguish three well-marked and longitudinal zones. The middle zone,
+which is narrower than the others, is composed of thin plates arranged
+in couples, and overlapping like the tiles of a roof. The edges of these
+plates are free, leaving two parallel series of fissures by which the
+young can issue when the eggs are hatched. In a nest recently abandoned
+this zone is covered with fine cast-off skins which shiver at the least
+breath, and soon disappear when exposed to the open air. I will call
+this zone the zone of issue, as it is only along this bell that the
+young can escape, being set free by those that have preceded them.</p>
+
+<p>In all other directions the cradle of this numerous family presents an
+unbroken wall. The two lateral zones, which occupy the greater part of
+the demi-ellipsoid, have a perfect continuity of surface<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>. The little
+Mantes, which are very feeble when first hatched, could not possibly
+make their way through the tenacious substance of the walls. On the
+interior of these walls are a number of fine transverse furrows, signs
+of the various layers in which the mass of eggs is disposed.</p>
+
+<p>Let us cut the nest in half transversely. We shall then see that the
+mass of eggs constitutes an elongated core, of very firm consistency,
+surrounded as to the bottom and sides by a thick porous rind, like
+solidified foam. Above the eggs are the curved plates, which are set
+very closely and have little freedom; their edges constituting the zone
+of issue, where they form a double series of small overlapping scales.</p>
+
+<p>The eggs are set in a yellowish medium of horny appearance. They are
+arranged in layers, in lines forming arcs of a circle, with the cephalic
+extremities converging towards the zone of issue. This orientation tells
+us of the method of delivery. The newly-born larv&aelig; will slip into the
+interval between two adjacent flaps or leaves, which form a prolongation
+of the core; they will then find a narrow passage, none too easy to
+effect, but sufficient, having regard to the curious provision which we
+shall deal with directly; they will then reach the zone of issue. There,
+under the overlapping scales, two passages of exit open for each layer
+of eggs. Half the larv&aelig; will issue by the right-hand passage, half by
+that on the left hand. This process is repeated for each layer, from end
+to end of the nest.</p>
+
+<p>Let us sum up those structural details, which are not easily grasped
+unless one has the nest before one. Lying along the axis of the nest,
+and in shape like a date-stone, is the ma<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>ss of eggs, grouped in layers.
+A protective rind, a kind of solidified foam, envelops this core, except
+at the top, along the central line, where the porous rind is replaced by
+thin overlapping leaves. The free edges of these leaves form the
+exterior of the zone of issue; they overlap one another, forming two
+series of scales, leaving two exits, in the shape of narrow crevices,
+for each layer of eggs.</p>
+
+<p><a name="mantis" id="mantis"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-088.jpg"
+             alt="NEST OF THE PRAYING MANTIS." /><br />
+       <b><br />1. NEST OF THE PRAYING MANTIS.</b>
+<b><br />2. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME.</b>
+<b>3, 3a. NEST OF EMPUSA PAUPERATA.</b><br />
+<b>4. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME.</b><br />
+<b>5. VERTICAL SELECTION OF THE SAME.</b><br />
+<b>6. NEST OF THE GREY MANTIS.</b><br />
+<b>7. SCHEFFER'S SISYPHUS (see Chap. XII.)</b><br />
+<b>8. PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS.</b><br />
+<b>9. PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS WITH DEJECTA OF THE LARVA<br />FORCED THROUGH THE
+WALLS.</b>
+    </div>
+
+
+<p>To be present at the construction of the nest&mdash;to learn how the Mantis
+contrives to build so complex a structure&mdash;such was the main point of my
+researches. I succeeded, not without difficulty, as the eggs are laid
+without warning and nearly always at night. After a great deal of futile
+endeavour, chance at last favoured me. On the 5th of September one of my
+guests, fecundated on the 29th of August, began to make her preparations
+under my eyes, at four o'clock in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>One remark before proceeding: all the nests I have obtained in the
+laboratory&mdash;and I have obtained a good number&mdash;have without exception
+been built upon the wire gauze of the covers. I have been careful to
+provide the insects with roughened stones and tufts of thyme, both being
+very commonly used as foundations in the open fields. The captives have
+always preferred the network of wire gauze, which affords a perfectly
+firm foundation, as the soft material of the nest becomes incrusted upon
+the meshes as it hardens.</p>
+
+<p>In natural conditions the nests are never in any way sheltered; they
+support the inclemencies of winter, resist rain, wind, frost, and snow,
+without becoming detached. It is true that the female always selects an
+uneven support on which the foundations of the nest can be shaped, thus
+obtaining a firm hold. The site chosen is always the best obtainable
+within reach, and the wire gauze is constantly adopted as the best
+foundation obtainable in the cages.</p>
+
+<p>The only Mantis that I was able to observe at the moment of laying her
+eggs worked upside-down, clinging to the wire near the top of the cover.
+My presence, my magnifying-glass, my investigations did not disturb her
+in the least, so absorbed was she in her labours. I was able to lift up
+the dome of wire gauze, tilt it, reverse it, turn it over and reverse it
+again, without causing the insect to delay her task for a moment. I was
+able, with my tweezers, to raise the long wings in order to observe
+rather more closely what was taking place beneath them; the Mantis took
+absolutely no notice of me. So far all was well; the female did not
+move, and lent herself impassively to all the indiscretions of the
+observer. Nevertheless, matters did not proceed as I had wished, so
+rapid was the operation and so difficult observation.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the abdomen is constantly immersed in a blob of foam, which
+does not allow one to grasp the details of the process very clearly.
+This foam is of a greyish white, slightly viscous, and almost like
+soapsuds. At the moment of its appearance it adheres slightly to the end
+of a straw plunged into it. Two minutes later it is solidified and no
+longer adheres to the straw. In a short time its consistency is that of
+the substance of an old nest.</p>
+
+<p><a name="mantis2" id="mantis2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-090.jpg"
+             alt="THE MANTIS." /><br />
+         <b>1. THE MANTIS DEVOURING THE MALE IN THE ACT OF MATING.</b><br />
+<b>2. THE MANTIS COMPLETING HER NEST.</b><br />
+<b>3. GOLDEN SCARAB&AElig;I CUTTING UP A LOB-WORM.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>The foamy mass consists chiefly of air imprisoned in minute bubbles.
+This air, which gives the nest a volume very much greater than that of
+the abdomen of the Mantis, evidently does not issue from the insect
+although the foam appears at the orifice of the genital organs; it is
+borrowed from the atmosphere. The Mantis builds more especially with
+air, which is eminently adapted to protect the nest against changes
+of temperature. She emits a glutinous substance like the liquid
+secretion of silk-worms, and with this composition, mixed
+instantaneously with the outer air, she produces the foam of which the
+nest is constructed.</p>
+
+<p>She whips the secretion as we whip white of egg, in order to make it
+rise and stiffen. The extremity of the abdomen opens in a long cleft,
+forming two lateral ladles which open and shut with a rapid, incessant
+movement, beating the viscous liquid and converting it into foam as it
+is secreted. Beside the two oscillating ladles we see the internal
+organs rising and falling, protruding and retreating like a piston-rod,
+but it is impossible to observe the precise nature of their action,
+bathed as they are in the opaque blob of foam.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the abdomen, continually palpitating, rapidly closing and
+opening its valves, oscillates right and left like a pendulum. From each
+of these oscillations results a layer of eggs in the interior, and a
+transversal crevice on the exterior. As it advances in the arc
+described, suddenly, and at frequent intervals, it plunges deeper into
+the foam,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> as though burying something at the bottom of the frothy mass.
+Each time it does so an egg is doubtless deposited; but the operation is
+so rapid, and takes place under conditions so unfavourable for
+observation, that I have never once been enabled to see the oviduct at
+work. I can only judge of the advent of the eggs by the movements of the
+end of the abdomen, which is immersed more deeply with a sudden plunging
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the viscous composition is emitted in intermittent
+waves, and is beaten into a foam by the terminal valves. The foam thus
+obtained spreads itself over the sides and at the base of the layer of
+eggs, and projects through the meshes of the wire gauze as a result of
+the pressure of the abdomen. Thus the spongy envelope is progressively
+created as the ovaries are gradually emptied.</p>
+
+<p>I imagine, although I cannot speak as the result of direct observation,
+that for the central core, where the eggs are surrounded by a material
+more homogeneous than that of the outer shell, the Mantis must employ
+her secretion as it emerges, without beating it into a foam. The layer
+of eggs once deposited, the two valves would produce the foam required
+to envelop the eggs. It is extremely difficult, however, to guess what
+occurs beneath the veil of foam-like secretion.</p>
+
+<p>In a recent nest the zone of issue is surrounded by a layer of finely
+porous matter, of a pure matt, almost chalky white, which contrasts
+distinctly with the remainder of the nest, which is of a dirty white. It
+resembles the icing composition made by confectioners with whipped white
+of egg, sugar, and starch, for the ornamentation of cakes.</p>
+
+<p>This snowy border is easily crumbled and easily detached. When it
+disappears the zone of issue is clearly defined, with its double series
+of leaves with free edges. Exposure to the weather, wind, and rain
+result in its disappearance, fragment by fragment, so that old nests
+preserve no trace of it.</p>
+
+<p>At first sight one is tempted to regard this snowy substance as of a
+different material to the rest of the nest. But does the Mantis really
+employ two secretions? No. Anatomy, in the first place, assures us of
+the unity of the materials of the nest. The organ which secretes the
+substance of the nest consists of cylindrical tubes, having a curious
+tangled appearance, which are arranged in two groups of twenty each.
+They are all filled with a colourless, viscous fluid, which is precisely
+similar in appearance in all parts of the organ. There is no indication
+of any organ or secretion which could produce a chalky coloration.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the method by which the snowy band is formed rejects the idea
+of a different material. We see the two caudal appendices of the Mantis
+sweeping the surface of the foamy mass, and skimming, so to speak, the
+cream of the cream, gathering it together, and retai<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>ning it along the
+hump of the nest in such a way as to form a band like a ribbon of icing.
+What remains after this scouring process, or what oozes from the band
+before it has set, spreads over the sides of the nest in a thin layer of
+bubbles so fine that they cannot be distinguished without the aid of a
+lens.</p>
+
+<p>We often see a torrent of muddy water, full of clay in suspension,
+covered with great streaks and masses of foam. On this fundamental foam,
+so to call it, which is soiled with earthy matters, we see here and
+there masses of a beautiful white foam, in which the bubbles are much
+smaller. A process of selection results from variations in density, and
+here and there we see foam white as snow resting on the dirty foam from
+which it is produced. Something of the kind occurs when the Mantis
+builds her nest. The two appendices whip the viscous secretion of the
+glands into foam. The lightest portion, whose bubbles are of the
+greatest tenuity, which is white on account of its finer porosity, rises
+to the surface, where the caudal filaments sweep it up and gather it
+into the snowy ribbon which runs along the summit of the nest.</p>
+
+<p>So far, with a little patience, observation is possible and yields a
+satisfactory result. It becomes impossible in the matter of the complex
+central zone, where the exits for the larv&aelig; are contrived through the
+double series of overlapping leaves. The little I have been able to
+learn amounts to this: The end of the abdomen, deeply cleft in a
+horizontal direction, forms a kind of fork, of which the upper extremity
+remains almost motionless, while the lower continuously oscillates,
+producing the foam and depositing the eggs. The creation of the central
+zone is certainly the work of the upper extremity.</p>
+
+<p>It is always to be seen in the continuation of this central zone, in the
+midst of the fine white foam gathered up by the caudal filaments. The
+latter delimit the zone, one working on either side, feeling the ed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>ges
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>of the belt, and apparently testing it and judging its progress. These
+two filaments are like two long fingers of exquisite sensitiveness,
+which direct the difficult operation.</p>
+
+<p>But how are the two series of scales obtained, and the fissures, the
+gates of exit which they shelter? I do not know; I cannot even imagine.
+I leave the end of the problem to others.</p>
+
+<p>What a wonderful mechanism is this, that has the power to emit and to
+form, so quickly and methodically, the horny medium of the central
+kernel, the foam which forms the protective walls, the white creamy foam
+of the ribbon which runs along the central zone, the eggs, and the
+fecundating liquid, while at the same time it constructs the overlapping
+leaves, the imbricated scales, and the alternating series of open
+fissures! We are lost in the face of such a wonder. Yet how easily the
+work is performed! Clinging to the wire gauze, forming, so to speak, the
+axis of her nest, the Mantis barely moves. She bestows not a glance on
+the marvel which is growing behind her; her limbs are used only for
+support; they take no part in the building of the nest. The nest is
+built, if we may say so, automatically. It is not the result of industry
+and the cunning of instinct; it is a purely mechanical task, which is
+conditioned by the implements, by the organisation of the insect. The
+nest, complex though it is in structure, results solely from the
+functioning of the organs, as in our human industries a host of objects
+are mechanically fashioned whose perfection puts the dexterity of the
+fingers to shame.</p>
+
+<p>From another point of view the nest of the Mantis is even more
+remarkable. It forms an excellent application of one of the most
+valuable lessons of phy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>sical science in the matter of the conservation
+of heat. The Mantis has outstripped humanity in her knowledge of thermic
+nonconductors or insulators.</p>
+
+<p>The famous physicist Rumford was responsible for a very pretty
+experiment designed to demonstrate the low conductivity of air where
+heat other than radiant heat is concerned. The famous scientist
+surrounded a frozen cheese by a mass of foam consisting of well-beaten
+eggs. The whole was exposed to the heat of an oven. In a few minutes a
+light omelette was obtained, piping hot, but the cheese in the centre
+was as cold as at the outset. The air imprisoned in the bubbles of the
+surrounding froth accounts for the phenomenon. Extremely refractory to
+heat, it had absorbed the heat of the oven and had prevented it from
+reaching the frozen substance in the centre of the omelette.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what does the Mantis do? Precisely what Rumford did; she whips her
+albumen to obtain a souffl&eacute;e, a froth composed of myriads of tiny
+air-bubbles, which will protect the germs of life contained in the
+central core. It is true that her aim is reversed; the coagulated foam
+of the nest is a safeguard against cold, not against heat, but what will
+afford protection from the one will afford protection from the other; so
+that Rumford, had he wished, might equally well have maintained a hot
+body at a high temperature in a refrigerator.</p>
+
+<p>Rumford understood the athermic properties of a blanket of air-cells,
+thanks to the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors and his own
+studies and experiments. How is it that the Mantis, for who knows how
+many ages, has been able to outstrip our physicists in this problem in
+calorics? How did she learn to surround her eggs with this mass <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>of
+solidifying froth, so that it was able, although fixed to a bough or a
+stone without other shelter, to brave with impunity the rigours of
+winter?</p>
+
+<p>The other Mantes found in my neighbourhood, which are the only species
+of which I can speak with full knowledge, employ or omit the envelope of
+solidifying froth accordingly as the eggs are or are not intended to
+survive the winter. The little Grey Mantis (<i>Ameles decolor</i>), which
+differs so widely from the Praying Mantis in that the wings of the
+female are almost completely absent, builds a nest hardly as large as a
+cherry-stone, and covers it skilfully with a porous rind. Why this
+cellular envelope? Because the nest of the <i>Ameles</i>, like that of the
+Praying Mantis, has to endure through the winter, fixed to a stone or a
+twig, and is thus exposed to the full severity of the dangerous season.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Empusa pauperata</i>, on the other hand (one of the strangest of
+European insects), builds a nest as small as that of the <i>Ameles</i>,
+although the insect itself is as large as the Praying Mantis. This nest
+is quite a small structure, composed of a small number of cells,
+arranged side by side in three or four series, sloping together at the
+neck. Here there is a complete absence of the porous envelope, although
+the nest is exposed to the weather, like the previous examples, affixed
+to some twig or fragment of rock. The lack of the insulating rind is a
+sign of different climatic conditions. The eggs of the <i>Empusa</i> hatch
+shortly after they are laid, in warm and sunny weather. Not being
+exposed to the asperities of the winter, they need no protection other
+than the thin egg-cases themselves.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+<p>Are these nice and reasonable precautions, which rival the experiment of
+Rumford, a fortuitous result?&mdash;one of the innumerable combinations which
+fall from the urn of chance? If so, let us not recoil before the absurd:
+let us allow that the blindness of chance is gifted with marvellous
+foresight.</p>
+
+<p>The Praying Mantis commences her nest at the blunter extremity, and
+completes it at the pointed tail. The latter is often prolonged in a
+sort of promontory, in which the insect expends the last drop of
+glutinous liquid as she stretches herself after her task. A sitting of
+two hours, more or less, without interruption, is required for the total
+accomplishment of the work. Directly the period of labour is over, the
+mother withdraws, indifferent henceforth to her completed task. I have
+watched her, half expecting to see her return, to discover some
+tenderness for the cradle of her family. But no: not a trace of maternal
+pleasure. The work is done, and concerns her no longer. Crickets
+approach; one of them even squats upon the nest. The Mantis takes no
+notice of them. They are peaceful intruders, to be sure; but even were
+they dangerous, did they threaten to rifle the nest, would she attack
+them and drive them away? Her impassive demeanour convinces me that she
+would not. What is the nest to her? She is no longer conscious of it.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the many embraces to which the Praying Mantis submits,
+and of the tragic end of the male, who is almost invariably devoured as
+though a lawful prey. In the space of a fortnight I have known the same
+female to adventure upon matrimony no less than seven times. Each time
+the readily consoled widow devoured her mate. Such habits point to
+frequent laying; and we find t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>he appearance confirmed, though not as a
+general rule. Some of my females gave me one nest only; others two, the
+second as capacious as the first. The most fruitful of all produced
+three; of these the two first were of normal dimensions, while the third
+was about half the usual size.</p>
+
+<p>From this we can reckon the productivity of the insect's ovaries. From
+the transverse fissures of the median zone of the nest it is easy to
+estimate the layers of eggs; but these layers contain more or fewer eggs
+according to their position in the middle of the nest or near the ends.
+The numbers contained by the widest and narrowest layers will give us
+an approximate average. I find that a nest of fair size contains about
+four hundred eggs. Thus the maker of the three nests, of which the last
+was half as large as the others, produced no less than a thousand eggs;
+eight hundred were deposited in the larger nests and two or three
+hundred in the smaller. Truly a fine family, but a thought ungainly,
+were it not that only a few of its members can survive.</p>
+
+<p>Of a fair size, of curious structure, and well in evidence on its twig
+or stone, the nest of the Praying Mantis could hardly escape the
+attention of the Proven&ccedil;al peasant. It is well known in the country
+districts, where it goes by the name of <i>tigno</i>; it even enjoys a
+certain celebrity. But no one seems to be aware of its origin. It is
+always a surprise to my rustic neighbours when they learn that the
+well-known <i>tigno</i> is the nest of the common Mantis, the <i>Pr&egrave;go-Di&eacute;u</i>.
+This ignorance may well proceed from the nocturnal habits of the Mantis.
+No one has caught the insect at work upon her nest in the silence of the
+night. The link between the artificer and the work is missing, although
+both are well known to the villager.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No matter: the singular object exists; it catches the eye, it attracts
+attention. It must therefore be good for something; it must possess
+virtue of some kind. So in all ages have the simple reasoned, in the
+childlike hope of finding in the unfamiliar an alleviation of their
+sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>By general agreement the rural pharmacop&oelig;ia of Provence pronounces
+the <i>tigno</i> to be the best of remedies against chilblains. The method of
+employment is of the simplest. The nest is cut in two, squeezed and the
+affected part is rubbed with the cut surface as the juices flow from
+it. This specific, I am told, is sovereign. All sufferers from blue and
+swollen fingers should without fail, according to traditional usage,
+have recourse to the <i>tigno</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Is it really efficacious? Despite the general belief, I venture to doubt
+it, after fruitless experiments on my own fingers and those of other
+members of my household during the winter of 1895, when the severe and
+persistent cold produced an abundant crop of chilblains. None of us,
+treated with the celebrated unguent, observed the swelling to diminish;
+none of us found that the pain and discomfort was in the least assuaged
+by the sticky varnish formed by the juices of the crushed <i>tigno</i>. It is
+not easy to believe that others are more successful, but the popular
+renown of the specific survives in spite of all, probably thanks to a
+simple accident of identity between the name of the remedy and that of
+the infirmity: the Proven&ccedil;al for "chilblain" is <i>tigno</i>. From the moment
+when the chilblain and the nest of the Mantis were known by the same
+name were not the virtues of the latter obvious? So are reputations
+created<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p>In my own village, and doubtless to some extent throughout the Midi, the
+<i>tigno</i>&mdash;the nest of the Mantis, not the chilblain&mdash;is also reputed as a
+marvellous cure for toothache. It is enough to carry it upon the person
+to be free of that lamentable affection. Women wise in such matters
+gather them beneath a propitious moon, and preserve them piously in some
+corner of the clothes-press or wardrobe. They sew them in the lining of
+the pocket, lest they should be pulled out with the handkerchief and
+lost; they will grant the loan of them to a neighbour tormented by some
+refractory molar. "Lend me thy <i>tigno</i>: I am suffering martyrdom!" begs
+the owner of a swollen face.&mdash;"Don't on any account lose it!" says the
+lender: "I haven't another, and we aren't at the right time of moon!"</p>
+
+<p>We will not laugh at the credulous victim; many a remedy triumphantly
+puffed on the latter pages of the newspapers and magazines is no more
+effectual. Moreover, this rural simplicity is surpassed by certain old
+books which form the tomb of the science of a past age. An English
+naturalist of the sixteenth century, the well-known physician, Thomas
+Moffat, informs us that children lost in the country would inquire their
+way of the Mantis. The insect consulted would extend a limb, indicating
+the direction to be taken, and, says the author, scarcely ever was the
+insect mistaken. This pretty story is told in Latin, with an adorable
+simplicity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GOLDEN GARDENER.&mdash;ITS NUTRIMENT</h3>
+
+
+<p>In writing the first lines of this chapter I am reminded of the
+slaughter-pens of Chicago; of those horrible meat factories which in the
+course of the year cut up one million and eighty thousand bullocks and
+seventeen hundred thousand swine, which enter a train of machinery alive
+and issue transformed into cans of preserved meat, sausages, lard, and
+rolled hams. I am reminded of these establishments because the beetle I
+am about to speak of will show us a compatible celerity of butchery.</p>
+
+<p>In a spacious, glazed insectorium I have twenty-five Carabi aurati. At
+present they are motionless, lying beneath a piece of board which I gave
+them for shelter. Their bellies cooled by the sand, their backs warmed
+by the board, which is visited by the sun, they slumber and digest their
+food. By good luck I chance upon a procession of pine-caterpillars, in
+process of descending from their tree in search of a spot suitable for
+burial, the prelude to the phase of the subterranean chrysalis. Here is
+an excellent flock for the slaughter-house of the Carabi.</p>
+
+<p>I capture them and place them in the insectorium. The procession is
+quickly re-formed; the caterpillars, to the number of perhaps a hundred
+and fifty, move forward in an undulating line. They pass near the piece
+of board, one following the other l<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>ike the pigs at Chicago. The moment
+is propitious. I cry Havoc! and let loose the dogs of war: that is to
+say, I remove the plank.</p>
+
+<p>The sleepers immediately awake, scenting the abundant prey. One of them
+runs forward; three, four, follow; the whole assembly is aroused; those
+who are buried emerge; the whole band of cut-throats falls upon the
+passing flock. It is a sight never to be forgotten. The mandibles of the
+beetles are at work in all directions; the procession is attacked in the
+van, in the rear, in the centre; the victims are wounded on the back or
+the belly at random. The furry skins are gaping with wounds; their
+contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment,
+the needles of the pine-tree; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with
+loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and
+gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet unwounded are digging desperately
+in the attempt to take refuge underground. Not one succeeds. They are
+scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them and destroys them
+by an eviscerating wound.</p>
+
+<p>If this massacre did not occur in a dumb world we should hear all the
+horrible tumult of the slaughter-houses of Chicago. But only the ear of
+the mind can hear the shrieks and lamentations of the eviscerated
+victims. For myself, I possess this ear, and am full of remorse for
+having provoked such sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>Now the beetles are rummaging in all directions through the heap of
+dead and dying, each tugging and tearing at a morsel which he carries
+off to swallow in peace, away from the inquisitive eyes of his fellows.
+This mouthful disposed of, another is hastily cut from the body of some
+victim, and the process is repeated so long as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>there are bodies left. In
+a few minutes the procession is reduced to a few shreds of still
+palpitating flesh.</p>
+
+<p>There were a hundred and fifty caterpillars; the butchers were
+twenty-five. This amounts to six victims dispatched by each beetle. If
+the insect had nothing to do but to kill, like the knackers in the meat
+factories, and if the staff numbered a hundred&mdash;a very modest figure as
+compared with the staff of a lard or bacon factory&mdash;then the total
+number of victims, in a day of ten hours, would be thirty-six thousand.
+No Chicago "cannery" ever rivalled such a result.</p>
+
+<p>The speed of assassination is the more remarkable when we consider the
+difficulties of attack. The beetle has no endless chain to seize its
+victim by one leg, hoist it up, and swing it along to the butcher's
+knife; it has no sliding plank to hold the victim's head beneath the
+pole-axe of the knacker; it has to fall upon its prey, overpower it, and
+avoid its feet and its mandibles. Moreover, the beetle eats its prey on
+the spot as it kills. What slaughter there would be if the insect
+confined itself to killing!</p>
+
+<p>What do we learn from the slaughter-houses of Chicago and the fate of
+the beetle's victims? This: That the man of elevated morality is so far
+a very rare exception. Under the skin of the civilised being there lurks
+almost always the ancestor, the savage contemporary of the cave-bear.
+True humanity does not yet exist; it is growing, little by little,
+created by the ferment of the centuries and the dictates of conscience;
+but it progresses towards the highest with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>heartbreaking slowness.</p>
+
+<p>It was only yesterday that slavery finally disappeared: the basis of the
+ancient social organism; only yesterday was it realised that man, even
+though black, is really man and deserves to be treated accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>What formerly was woman? She was what she is to-day in the East: a
+gentle animal without a soul. The question was long discussed by the
+learned. The great divine of the seventeenth century, Bossuet himself,
+regarded woman as the diminutive of man. The proof was in the origin of
+Eve: she was the superfluous bone, the thirteenth rib which Adam
+possessed in the beginning. It has at last been admitted that woman
+possesses a soul like our own, but even superior in tenderness and
+devotion. She has been allowed to educate herself, which she has done at
+least as ze<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>alously as her coadjutor. But the law, that gloomy cavern
+which is still the lurking-place of so many barbarities, continues to
+regard her as an incapable and a minor. The law in turn will finally
+surrender to the truth.</p>
+
+<p>The abolition of slavery and the education of woman: these are two
+enormous strides upon the path of moral progress. Our descendants will
+go farther. They will see, with a lucidity capable of piercing every
+obstacle, that war is the most hopeless of all absurdities. That our
+conquerors, victors of battles and destroyers of nations, are detestable
+scourges; that a clasp of the hand is preferable to a rifle-shot; that
+the happiest people is not that which possesses the largest battalions,
+but that which labours in peace and produces abundantly; and that the
+amenities of existence do not necessitate the existence of frontiers,
+beyond which we meet with all the annoyances of the custom-house, with
+its officials who search our pockets and rifle our luggage.</p>
+
+<p>Our descendants will see this and many other marvels which to-day are
+extravagant dreams. To what ideal height will the process of evolution
+lead mankind? To no very magnificent height, it is to be feared. We are
+afflicted by an indelible taint, a kind of original sin, if we may call
+sin a state of things with which our will has nothing to do. We are made
+after a certain pattern and we can do nothing to change ourselves. We
+are marked with the mark of the beast, the taint of the belly, the
+inexhaustible source of bestiality.</p>
+
+<p>The intestine rules the world. In the midst of our most serious affairs
+there intrudes the imperious question of bread and b<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>utter. So long as
+there are stomachs to digest&mdash;and as yet we are unable to dispense with
+them&mdash;we must find the wherewithal to fill them, and the powerful will
+live by the sufferings of the weak. Life is a void that only death can
+fill. Hence the endless butchery by which man nourishes himself, no less
+than beetles and other creatures; hence the perpetual holocausts which
+make of this earth a knacker's yard, beside which the slaughter-houses
+of Chicago are as nothing.</p>
+
+<p>But the feasters are legion, and the feast is not abundant in
+proportion. Those that have not are envious of those that have; the
+hungry bare their teeth at the satisfied. Then follows the battle for
+the right of possession. Man raises armies; to defend his harvests, his
+granaries, and his cellars, he resorts to warfare. When shall we see the
+end of it? Alas, and many times alas! As long as there are wolves in the
+world there must be watch-dogs to defend the flock.</p>
+
+<p>This train of thought has led us far away from our beetles. Let us
+return to them. What was my motive in provoking the massacre of this
+peaceful procession of caterpillars who were on the point of self-burial
+when I gave them over to the butchers? Was it to enjoy the spectacle of
+a frenzied massacre? By no means; I have always pitied the sufferings of
+animals, and the smallest life is worthy of respect. To overcome this
+pity there needed the exigencies of scientific research&mdash;exigencies
+which are often cruel.</p>
+
+<p>In this case the subject of research was the habits of the Carabus
+auratus, the little vermin-killer of our gardens, who is therefore
+vulgarly known as the Gardener Beetle. How far is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>this title deserved?
+What game does the Gardener Beetle hunt? From what vermin does he free
+our beds and borders? His dealings with the procession of
+pine-caterpillars promise much. Let us continue our inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>On various occasions about the end of April the gardens afford me the
+sight of such processions, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. I
+capture them and place them in the vivarium. Bloodshed commences the
+moment the banquet is served. The caterpillars are eviscerated; each by
+a single beetle, or by several simultaneously. In less than fifteen
+minutes the flock is completely exterminated. Nothing remains but a few
+shapeless fragments, which are carried hither and thither, to be
+consumed at leisure under the shelter of the wooden board. One well-fed
+beetle decamps, his booty in his jaws, hoping to finish his feast in
+peace. He is met by companions who are attracted by the morsel hanging
+from the mandibles of the fugitive, and audaciously attempt to rob him.
+First two, then three, they all endeavour to deprive the legitimate
+owner of his prize. Each seizes the fragment, tugs at it, commences to
+swallow it without further ado. There is no actual battle; no violent
+assaults, as in the case of dogs disputing a bone. Their efforts are
+confined to the attempted theft. If the legitimate owner retains his
+hold they consume his booty in common, mandibles to mandibles, until the
+fragment is torn or bitten through, and each retires with his mouthful.</p>
+
+<p>As I found to my cost in bygone experiments, the pine-caterpillar wields
+a violently corrosive poison, which produces a painful rash upon the
+hands. It must therefore, one would think, form a somewhat highly
+seasoned diet. The beetles, however, delight in it. No matter how many
+flocks I provide them with, they are a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>ll consumed. But no one, that I
+know of, has ever found the Golden Gardener and its larva in the silken
+cocoons of the Bombyx. I do not expect ever to make such a discovery.
+These cocoons are inhabited only in winter, when the Gardener is
+indifferent to food, and lies torpid in the earth. In April, however,
+when the processions of larv&aelig; are seeking a suitable site for burial and
+metamorphosis, the Gardener should profit largely by its good fortune
+should it by any chance encounter them.</p>
+
+<p>The furry nature of the victim does not in the least incommode the
+beetle; but the hairiest of all our caterpillars, the Hedgehog
+Caterpillar, with its undulating mane, partly red and partly black, does
+seem to be too much for the beetle. Day after day it wanders about the
+vivarium in company with the assassins. The latter apparently ignore its
+presence. From time to time one of them will halt, stroll round the
+hairy creature, examine it, and try to penetrate the tangled fleece.
+Immediately repulsed by the long, dense palisade of hairs, he retires
+without inflicting a wound, and the caterpillar proceeds upon its way
+with undulating mane, in pride and security.</p>
+
+<p>But this state of things cannot last. In a hungry moment, emboldened
+moreover by the presence of his fellows, the cowardly creature decides
+upon a serious attack. There are four of them; they industriously attack
+the caterpillar, which finally succumbs, assaulted before and behind. It
+is eviscerated and swallowed as greedily as though it were a defenceless
+grub.</p>
+
+<p>According<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> to the hazard of discovery, I provision my menagerie with
+various caterpillars, some smooth and others hairy. All are accepted
+with the utmost eagerness, so long as they are of average size as
+compared with the beetles themselves. If too small they are despised, as
+they would not yield a sufficient mouthful. If they are too large the
+beetle is unable to handle them. The caterpillars of the Sphinx moth and
+the Great Peacock moth, for example, would fall an easy prey to the
+beetle were it not that at the first bite of the assailant the intended
+victim, by a contortion of its powerful flanks, sends the former
+flying. After several attacks, all of which end by the beetle being
+flung back to some considerable distance, the insect regretfully
+abandons his prey. I have kept two strong and lively caterpillars for a
+fortnight in the cage of my golden beetles, and nothing more serious
+occurred. The trick of the suddenly extended posterior was too much for
+the ferocious mandibles.</p>
+
+<p>The chief utility of the Golden Gardener lies in its extermination of
+all caterpillars that are not too powerful to attack. It has one
+limitation, however: it is not a climber. It hunts on the ground; never
+in the foliage overhead. I have never seen it exploring the twigs of
+even the smallest of bushes. When caged it pays no attention to the most
+enticing caterpillars if the latter take refuge in a tuft of thyme, at a
+few inches above the ground. This is a great pity. If only the beetle
+could climb how rapidly three or four would rid our cabbages of that
+grievous pest, the larva of the white cabbage butterfly! Alas! the best
+have always some failing, some vice.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+<p>To exterminate caterpillars: that is the true vocation of the Golden
+Gardener. It is annoying that it can give us but little or no assistance
+in ridding us of another plague of the kitchen-garden: the snail. The
+slime of the snail is offensive to the beetle; it is safe from the
+latter unless crippled, half crushed, or projecting from the shell. Its
+relatives, however, do not share this dislike. The horny Procrustes, the
+great Scarabicus, entirely black and larger than the Carabus, attacks
+the snail most valiantly, and empties its shell to the bottom, in spite
+of the desperate secretion of slime. It is a pity that the Procrustes is
+not more frequently found in our gardens; it would be an excellent
+gardener's assistant.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GOLDEN GARDENER&mdash;COURTSHIP</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is generally recognized that the Carabus auratus is an active
+exterminator of caterpillars; on this account in particular it deserves
+its title of Gardener Beetle; it is the vigilant policeman of our
+kitchen-gardens, our flower-beds and herbaceous borders. If my inquiries
+add nothing to its established reputation in this respect, they will
+nevertheless, in the following pages, show the insect in a light as yet
+unsuspected. The ferocious beast of prey, the ogre who devours all
+creatures that are not too str<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>ong for him, is himself killed and eaten:
+by his fellows, and by many others.</p>
+
+<p>Standing one day in the shadow of the plane-trees that grow before my
+door, I see a Golden Gardener go by as if on pressing business. The
+pilgrim is well met; he will go to swell the contents of my vivarium. In
+capturing him I notice that the extremities of the wing-covers are
+slightly damaged. Is this the result of a struggle between rivals? There
+is nothing to tell me. The essential thing is that the insect should not
+be handicapped by any serious injury. Inspected, and found to be without
+any serious wound and fit for service, it is introduced into the glass
+dwelling of its twenty-five future companions.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I look for the new inmate. It is dead. Its comrades have
+attacked it during the night and have cleaned out its abdomen,
+insufficiently protected by the damaged wing-covers. The operation has
+been performed very cleanly, without any dismemberment. Claws, head,
+corselet, all are correctly in place; the abdomen only has a gaping
+wound through which its contents have been removed. What remains is a
+kind of golden shell, formed of the two conjoined elytra. The shell of
+an oyster emptied of its inmate is not more empty.</p>
+
+<p>This result astonishes me, for I have taken good care that the cage
+should never be long without food. The snail, the pine-cockchafer, the
+Praying Mantis, the lob-worm, the caterpillar, and other favourite
+insects, have all been given in alternation and i<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>n sufficient
+quantities. In devouring a brother whose damaged armour lent itself to
+any easy attack my beetles had not the excuse of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Is it their custom to kill the wounded and to eviscerate such of their
+fellows as suffer damage? Pity is unknown among insects. At the sight of
+the desperate struggles of a crippled fellow-creature none of the same
+family will cry a halt, none will attempt to come to its aid. Among the
+carnivorous insects the matter may develop to a tragic termination. With
+them, the passers-by will often run to the cripple. But do they do so in
+order to help it? By no means: merely to taste its flesh, and, if they
+find it agreeable, to perform the most radical cure of its ills by
+devouring it.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible, therefore, that the Gardener with the injured
+wing-covers had tempted his fellows by the sight of his imperfectly
+covered back. They saw in their defenceless comrade a permissible
+subject for dissection. But do they respect one another when there is no
+previous wound? At first there was every appearance that their relations
+were perfectly pacific. During their sanguinary meals there is never a
+scuffle between the feasters; nothing but mere mouth-to-mouth thefts.
+There are no quarrels during the long siestas in the shelter of the
+board. Half buried in the cool earth, my twenty-five subjects slumber
+and digest their food in peace; they lie sociably near one another, each
+in his little trench. If I raise the plank they awake and are off,
+running hither and thither, constantly encountering one another without
+hostilities.</p>
+
+<p>The profoundest peace is reigning, and to all appearances will last for
+ever, when in the early days of June I find a dead Garden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>er. Its limbs
+are intact; it is reduced to the condition of a mere golden husk; like
+the defenceless beetle I have already spoken of, it is as empty as an
+oyster-shell. Let us examine the remains. All is intact, save the huge
+breach in the abdomen. So the insect was sound and unhurt when the
+others attacked it.</p>
+
+<p>A few days pass, and another Gardener is killed and dealt with as
+before, with no disorder in the component pieces of its armour. Let us
+place the dead insect on its belly; it is to all appearances untouched.
+Place it on its back; it is hollow, and has no trace of flesh left
+beneath its carapace. A little later, and I find another empty relic;
+then another, and yet another, until the population of my menagerie is
+rapidly shrinking. If this insensate massacre continues I shall soon
+find my cage depopulated.</p>
+
+<p>Are my beetles hoary with age? Do they die a natural death, and do the
+survivors then clean out the bodies? Or is the population being reduced
+at the expense of sound and healthy insects? It is not easy to elucidate
+the matter, since the atrocities are commonly perpetrated in the night.
+But, finally, with vigilance, on two occasions, I surprise the beetles
+at their work in the light of day.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the middle of June a female attacks a male before my eyes. The
+male is recognisable by his slightly smaller size. The operation
+commences. Raising the ends of the wing-covers, the assailant seizes her
+victim by the extremity of the abdomen, from the dorsal side. She pulls
+at him furiously, eagerly munching with her mandibles. The victim, who
+is in the prime of life, does not defend himself, nor turn upon his
+assailant. He pulls h<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>is hardest in the opposite direction to free
+himself from those terrible fangs; he advances and recoils as he is
+overpowered by or overpowers the assassin; and there his resistance
+ends. The struggle lasts a quarter of an hour. Other beetles, passing
+by, call a halt, and seem to say "My turn next!" Finally, redoubling his
+efforts, the male frees himself and flies. If he had not succeeded in
+escaping the ferocious female would undoubtedly have eviscerated him.</p>
+
+<p><a name="gardener" id="gardener"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-114.jpg"
+             alt="THE GOLDEN GARDENER." /><br />
+         <b>THE GOLDEN GARDENER: THE MATING SEASON OVER, THE MALES<br />
+ARE EVISCERATED BY THE FEMALES.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>A few days later I witness a similar scene, but this time the tragedy is
+played to the end. Once more it is a female who seizes a male from
+behind. With no other protest except his futile efforts to escape, the
+victim is forced to submit. The skin finally yields; the wound
+enlarges, and the viscera are removed and devoured by the matron, who
+empties the carapace, her head buried in the body of her late companion.
+The legs of the miserable victim tremble, announcing the end. The
+murderess takes no notice; she continues to rummage as far as she can
+reach for the narrowing of the thorax. Nothing is left but the closed
+boat-shaped wing-covers and the fore parts of the body. The empty shell
+is left lying on the scene of the tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>In this way must have perished the beetles&mdash;always males&mdash;whose remains
+I find in the cage from time to time; thus the survivors also will
+perish. Between the middle of June and the 1st of August the inhabitants
+of the cage, twenty-five in number at the outset, are reduced to five,
+all of whom are females. All the males, to the number of twenty, have
+disappeared, eviscerated and completely emptied. And by whom? Apparently
+by the females.</p>
+
+<p>That this is the case is attested in the first place by the two assaults
+of which I was perchance the witness; on two occasions, in broad
+daylight, I saw the female devouring the male, having opened the abdomen
+under the wing-covers, or having at least attempted to do so. As for the
+rest of the massacres, although direct observation was lacking, I had
+one very valuable piece of evidence. As we have seen, the victim does
+not retaliate, does not defend himself, but simply tries to escape by
+pulling himself away.</p>
+
+<p>If it were a matter of an ordinary fight, a conflict such as might arise
+in the struggle for life, the creature attacked would obviously
+retaliate, since he is perfectly well able to do so; in an ordinary
+conflict he would meet force by force, and return bite for bite. His
+strength would enable him to come well out of a struggle, but the
+foolish creature allows himself to be devoured without retaliating. It
+seems as though an invincible repugnance prevents him from offering
+resistance and in turn devouring the devourer. This tolerance reminds
+one of the scorpion of Languedoc, which on the termination of the
+hymeneal rites allows the female to devour him without attempting to
+employ his weapon, the venomous dagger which would form a formidable
+defence; it reminds us also of the male of the Praying Mantis, which
+still embraces the female though reduced to a headless trunk, while the
+latter devours him by small mouthfuls, with no rebellion or defence on
+his part. There are other examples of hymeneal rites to which the male
+offers no resistance.</p>
+
+<p>The males of my menagerie of Gardeners, one and all eviscerated, speak
+of similar customs. They are the victims of the females when the latter
+have no further use for them. For four months, from April to August, the
+insects pair off continually; sometimes tentatively, but usually the
+mating is effective. The business of mating is all but endless for these
+fiery spirits.</p>
+
+<p>The Gardener is prompt and businesslike in his affairs of the heart. In
+the midst of the crowd, with no preliminary courtship, the male throws
+himself upon the female. The female thus embraced raises her head a
+trifle as a sign of acquiescence, while the cavalier beats the back of
+her neck with his antenn&aelig;. The embrace is brief, and they abruptly
+separate; after a little refreshment the two parties are ready for other
+adventures, and yet others, so long as there are males available. After
+the feast, a brief and primitive wooing; after the wooing, the feast; in
+such delights the life of the Gardener passes.</p>
+
+<p>The females of my collection were in no proper ratio to the number of
+aspiring lovers; there were five females to twenty males. No matter;
+there was no rivalry, no hustling; all went peacefully and sooner or
+later each was satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>I should have preferred a better proportioned assembly. Chance, not
+choice, had given me that at my disposal. In the early spring I had
+collected all the Gardeners I could find under the stones of the
+neighbourhood, without distinguishing the sexes, for they are not easy
+to recognise merely by external characteristics. Later on I learned by
+watching them that a sligh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>t excess of size was the distinctive sign of
+the female. My menagerie, so ill-proportioned in the matter of sex, was
+therefore the result of chance. I do not suppose this preponderance of
+males exists in natural conditions. On the other hand, one never sees
+such numerous groups at liberty, in the shelter of the same stone. The
+Gardener lives an almost solitary life; it is rarely that one finds two
+or three beneath the same object of shelter. The gathering in my
+menagerie was thus exceptional, although it did not lead to confusion.
+There is plenty of room in the glass cage for excursions to a distance
+and for all their habitual man&oelig;uvres. Those who wish for solitude can
+obtain it; those who wish for company need not seek it.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest, captivity cannot lie heavily on them; that is proved by
+their frequent feasts, their constant mating. They could not thrive
+better in the open; perhaps not so well, for food is less abundant under
+natural conditions. In the matter of well-being the prisoners are in a
+normal condition, favourable to the maintenance of their usual habits.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that encounters of beetle with beetle are more frequent here
+than in the open. Hence, no doubt, arise more opportunities for the
+females to persecute the males whom they no longer require; to fall upon
+them from the rear and eviscerate them. This pursuit of their onetime
+lovers is aggravated by their confined quarters; but it certainly is not
+caused thereby, for such customs are not suddenly originated.</p>
+
+<p>The mating season over, the female encountering a male in the open must
+evidently regard him as fair game, and devour him as the termination of
+the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones, but have never
+chanced upon this spectacle, but what has occurred in my menagerie is
+sufficient to convince me. What a world these beetles live in, where the
+matron devours her mate so soon as her fertility delivers her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>from the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>need of him! And how lightly the males must be regarded by custom, to be
+served in this manner!</p>
+
+<p>Is this practice of post-matrimonial cannibalism a general custom in the
+insect world? For the moment, I can recollect only three characteristic
+examples: those of the Praying Mantis, the Golden Gardener, and the
+scorpion of Languedoc. An analogous yet less brutal practice&mdash;for the
+victim is defunct before he is eaten&mdash;is a characteristic of the Locust
+family. The female of the white-faced Decticus will eagerly devour the
+body of her dead mate, as will the Green Grasshopper.</p>
+
+<p>To a certain extent this custom is excused by the nature of the insect's
+diet; the Decticus and the Grasshopper are essentially carnivorous.
+Encountering a dead body of their own species, a female will devour it,
+even if it be the body of her latest mate.</p>
+
+<p>But what are we to say in palliation of the vegetarians? At the approach
+of the breeding season, before the eggs are laid, the Ephippigera turns
+upon her still living mate, disembowels him, and eats as much of him as
+her appetite will allow.</p>
+
+<p>The cheerful Cricket shows herself in a new light at this season; she
+attacks the mate who lately wooed her with such impassioned serenades;
+she tears his wings, breaks his musical thighs, and even swallows a few
+mouthfuls of the instrumentalist. It is probable that this deadly
+aversion of the female for the male at the end of the mating season is
+fairly common, especially among the carnivorous insects. But what is the
+object of this atrocious custom? That is a question I shall not fail to
+answer when circu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>mstances permit.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FIELD-CRICKET</h3>
+
+
+<p>The breeding of Crickets demands no particular preparations. A little
+patience is enough&mdash;patience, which according to Buffon is genius; but
+which I, more modestly, will call the superlative virtue of the
+observer. In April, May, or later we may establish isolated couples in
+ordinary flower-pots containing a layer of beaten earth. Their diet will
+consist of a leaf of lettuce renewed from time to time. The pot must be
+covered with a square of glass to prevent the escape of the inmates.</p>
+
+<p>I have gathered some very curious data from these makeshift appliances,
+which may be used with and as a substitute for the cages of wire gauze,
+although the latter are preferable. We shall return to the point
+presently. For the moment let us watch the process of breeding, taking
+care that the critical hour does not escape us.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the first week of June that my assiduous visits were at
+last repaid. I surprised the female motionless, with the oviduct planted
+vertically in the soil. Heedless of the indiscreet visitor, she remained
+for a long time stationed at the same point. Finally she withdrew her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+oviduct, and effaced, though without particular care, the traces of the
+hole in which her eggs were deposited, rested for a moment, walked
+away, and repeated the operation; not once, but many times, first here,
+then there, all over the area at her disposal. Her behaviour was
+precisely the same as that of the Decticus, except that her movements
+were more deliberate. At the end of twenty-four hours her eggs were
+apparently all laid. For greater certainty I waited a couple of days
+longer.</p>
+
+<p>I then examined the earth in the pot. The eggs, of a straw-yellow, are
+cylindrical in form, with rounded ends, and measure about one-tenth of
+an inch in length. They are placed singly in the soil, in a
+perpendicular position.</p>
+
+<p>I have found them over the whole area of the pot, at a depth of a
+twelfth of an inch. As closely as the difficulties of the operation will
+allow, I have estimated the eggs of a single female, upon passing the
+earth through a sieve, at five or six hundred. Such a family will
+certainly undergo an energetic pruning before very long.</p>
+
+<p>The egg of the Cricket is a curiosity, a tiny mechanical marvel. After
+hatching it appears as a sheath of opaque white, open at the summit,
+where there is a round and very regular aperture, to the edge of which
+adheres a little valve like a skull-cap which forms the lid. Instead of
+breaking at random under the thrusts or the cuts of the new-formed
+larva, it opens of itself along a line of least resistance which occurs
+expressly for the purpose. The curious process of the actual hatching
+should be observed.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+<p>A fortnight after the egg is laid two large eye-marks, round and of a
+reddish black, are seen to darken the forward extremity of the egg.
+Next, a little above these two points, and right at the end of the
+cylinder, a tiny circular capsule or swelling is seen. This marks the
+line of rupture, which is now preparing. Presently the translucency of
+the egg allows us to observe the fine segmentation of the tiny inmate.
+Now is the moment to redouble our vigilance and to multiply our visits,
+especially during the earlier part of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Fortune favours the patient, and rewards my assiduity Round the little
+capsule changes of infinite delicacy have prepared the line of least
+resistance. The end of the egg, pushed by the head of the inmate,
+becomes detached, rises, and falls aside like the top of a tiny phial.
+The Cricket issues like a Jack-in-the-box.</p>
+
+<p>When the Cricket has departed the shell remains distended, smooth,
+intact, of the purest white, with the circular lid hanging to the mouth
+of the door of exit. The egg of the bird breaks clumsily under the blows
+of a wart-like excrescence which is formed expressly upon the beak of
+the unborn bird; the egg of the Cricket, of a far superior structure,
+opens like an ivory casket. The pressure of the inmate's head is
+sufficient to work the hinge.</p>
+
+<p>The moment he is deprived of his white tunic, the young Cricket, pale
+all over, almost white, begins to struggle against the overlying soil.
+He strikes it with his mandibles; he sweeps it aside, kicking it
+backwards and downwards; and being of a powdery quality, which offers no
+particular resistance, he soon a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>rrives at the surface, and henceforth
+knows the joys of the sun, and the perils of intercourse with the
+living; a tiny, feeble creature, little larger than a flea. His colour
+deepens. In twenty-four hours he assumes a splendid ebony black which
+rivals that of the adult insect. Of his original pallor he retains only
+a white girdle which encircles the thorax and reminds one of the
+leading-string of an infant.</p>
+
+<p>Very much on the alert, he sounds his surroundings with his long
+vibrating antenn&aelig;; he toddles and leaps along with a vigour which his
+future obesity will no longer permit.</p>
+
+<p>This is the age of stomach troubles. What are we to give him to eat? I
+do not know. I offer him adult diet&mdash;the tender leaves of a lettuce. He
+disdains to bite it; or perhaps his bites escape me, so tiny would they
+be.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+<p>In a few days, what with my ten households, I see myself loaded with
+family cares. What shall I do with my five or six thousand Crickets, an
+attractive flock, to be sure, but one I cannot bring up in my ignorance
+of the treatment required? I will give you liberty, gentle creatures! I
+will confide you to the sovereign nurse and schoolmistress, Nature!</p>
+
+<p>It is done. Here and there about my orchard, in the most favourable
+localities, I loose my legions. What a concert I shall have before my
+door next year if all goes well! But no! There will probably be silence,
+for the terrible extermination will follow which corresponds with the
+fertility of the mother. A few couples only may survive: that is the
+most we can hope.</p>
+
+<p>The first to come to the living feast and the most eager at the
+slaughter are the little grey lizard and the ant. I am afraid this
+latter, hateful filibuster that it is, will not leave me a single
+Cricket in my garden. It falls upon the tiny Crickets, eviscerates them,
+and devours them with frantic greed.</p>
+
+<p>Satanic creature! And to think that we place it in the front rank of
+the insect world! The books celebrate its virtues and never tire of its
+praises; the naturalists hold it in high esteem and add to its
+reputation daily; so true is it of animals, as of man, that of the
+various means of living in history the most certain is to do harm to
+others.</p>
+
+<p>Every one knows the <i>Bousier</i> (dung-beetle) and the Necrophorus, those
+lively murderers; the gnat, the drinker of blood; the wasp, the
+irascible bully with the poisoned dagg<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>er; and the ant, the maleficent
+creature which in the villages of the South of France saps and imperils
+the rafters and ceilings of a dwelling with the same energy it brings to
+the eating of a fig. I need say no more; human history is full of
+similar examples of the useful misunderstood and undervalued and the
+calamitous glorified.</p>
+
+<p>What with the ants and other exterminating forces, the massacre was so
+great that the colonies of Crickets in my orchard, so numerous at the
+outset, were so far decimated that I could not continue my observations,
+but had to resort to the outside world for further information.</p>
+
+<p>In August, among the detritus of decaying leaves, in little oases whose
+turf is not burned by the sun, I find the young Cricket has already
+grown to a considerable size; he is all black, like the adult, without a
+vestige of the white cincture of the early days. He has no domicile. The
+shelter of a dead leaf, the cover afforded by a flat stone is
+sufficient; he is a nomad, and careless where he takes his repose.</p>
+
+<p><a name="fieldcricket" id="fieldcricket"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-124.jpg"
+             alt="THE FIELD-CRICKET." /><br />
+         <b>1. THE FIELD-CRICKET. A DUEL BETWEEN RIVALS.</b><br />
+<b>2. THE FIELD-CRICKET. THE DEFEATED RIVAL RETIRES,<br />INSULTED BY THE
+VICTOR.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>Not until the end of October, when the first frosts are at hand, does
+the work of burrowing commence. The operation is very simple, as far as
+I can tell from what I have learned from the insect in captivity. The
+burrow is never made at a bare or conspicuous point; it is always
+commenced under the shelter of a faded leaf of lettuce, the remains of
+the food provided. This takes the place of the curtain of grass so
+necessary to preserve the mysterious privacy of the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>The little miner scratches with his fore-claws, but also makes use of
+the pincers of his mandibles in order to remove pieces of grit or gravel
+of any size. I see him stamping with his powerful hinder limbs, which
+are provided with a double row of spines; I see him raking and sweeping
+backwards the excavated material, and spreading it out in an inclined
+plane. This is his whole method.</p>
+
+<p>At first the work goes forward merrily. The excavator disappears under
+the easily excavated soil of his prison after two hours' labour. At
+intervals he returns to the orifice, always tail first, and always
+raking and sweeping. If fatigue overcomes him he rests on the threshold
+of his burrow, his head projecting outwards, his antenn&aelig; gently
+vibrating. Presently he re-enters his tunnel and sets to work again with
+his pincers and rakes. Presently his periods of repose grow longer and
+tire my patience.</p>
+
+<p>The most important part of the work is now completed. Once the burrow
+has attained a depth of a couple of inches, it forms a sufficient
+shelter for the needs of the moment. The rest will be the work of time;
+a labour resumed at will, for a short time daily. The burrow will be
+made deeper and wider as the growth of the inmate and the inclemency of
+the season demand. Even in winter, if the weather is mild, and the sun
+smiles upon the threshold of his dwelling, one may sometimes surprise
+the Cricket thrusting out small quantities of loosened earth, a sign of
+enlargement and of further burrowing. In the midst of the joys of spring
+the cares of the house still continue; it is constantly restored and
+perfected until the death of the occupant.</p>
+
+<p>April comes to an end, and the song of the Cricket commences. At first
+we hear only timid and occasional solos; but very soon there is a
+general symphony, when every scrap of turf has its performer. I am
+inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the choristers of spring.
+In the waste lands of Provence, when the thyme and the lavender are in
+flower, the Cricket mingles his note with that of the crested lark,
+which ascends like a lyrical firework, its throat swelling with music,
+to its invisible station in the clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias
+upon the plain below. From the ground the chorus of the Crickets
+replies. It is monotonous and artless, yet how well it harmonises, in
+its very simplicity, with the rustic gaiety of a world renewed! It is
+the hosanna of the awakening, the alleluia of the germinating seed and
+the sprouting blade. To which of the two performers should the palm be
+given? I should award it to the Cricket; he triumphs by force of numbers
+and his never-ceasing note. The lark hushes her song, that the blue-grey
+fields of lavender, swinging their aromatic censers before the sun, may
+hear the Cricket alone at his humble, solemn celebration.</p>
+
+<p>But here the anatomist intervenes, roughly demanding of the Cricket:
+"Show me your instrument, the source of your music!" Like all things of
+real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that
+of the locusts; there is the toothed fiddlestick and the vibrating
+tympanum.</p>
+
+<p>The right wing-cover overlaps the left and almost completely covers it,
+except for the sudden fold which encases the insect's flank. This
+arrangement is the reverse of that exhibited by the green grasshopper,
+the Decticus, the Ephippigera, and their relations. The Cricket is
+right-handed, the others left-handed. The two wing-covers have the same
+structure. To know one is to know the other. Let us examine that on the
+right hand.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+<p>It is almost flat on the back, but suddenly folds over at the side, the
+turn being almost at right angles. This lateral fold encloses the flank
+of the abdomen and is covered with fine oblique and parallel nervures.
+The powerful nervures of the dorsal portion of the wing-cover are of the
+deepest black, and their general effect is that of a complicated design,
+not unlike a tangle of Arabic caligraphy.</p>
+
+<p>Seen by transmitted light the wing-cover is of a very pale reddish
+colour, excepting two large adjacent spaces, one of which, the larger
+and anterior, is triangular in shape, while the other, the smaller and
+posterior, is oval. Each space is surrounded by a strong nervure and
+goffered by slight wrinkles or depressions. These two spaces represent
+the mirror of the locust tribe; they constitute the sonorous area. The
+substance of the wing-cover is finer here than elsewhere, and shows
+traces of iridescent though somewhat smoky colour.</p>
+
+<p>These are parts of an admirable instrument, greatly superior to that of
+the Decticus. The five hundred prisms of the bow biting upon the ridges
+of the wing-cover opposed to it set all four tympanums vibrating at
+once; the lower pair by direct friction, the upper pair by the vibration
+of the wing-cover itself. What a powerful sound results! The Decticus,
+endowed with only one indifferent "mirror," can be heard only at a few
+paces; the Cricket, the possessor of four vibratory areas, can be heard
+at a hundred yards.</p>
+
+<p>The Cricket rivals the Cigale in loudness, but his note has not the
+displeasing, raucous quality of the latter. Better still: he has the
+gift of expression, for he can sing loud or soft. The wing-covers, as we
+have seen, are prolonged in a deep fold over each flank. These folds are
+the dampers, which, as they are pressed downwards or slightly raised,
+modify the intensity of the sound, and according to the extent of their
+contact with the soft abdomen now muffle the song to a <i>mezza voce</i> and
+now let it sound <i>fortissimo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Peace reigns in the cage until the warlike instinct of the mating per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>iod
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>breaks out. These duels between rivals are frequent and lively, but not
+very serious. The two rivals rise up against one another, biting at one
+another's heads&mdash;these solid, fang-proof helmets&mdash;roll each other over,
+pick themselves up, and separate. The vanquished Cricket scuttles off as
+fast as he can; the victor insults him by a couple of triumphant and
+boastful chirps; then, moderating his tone, he tacks and veers about the
+desired one.</p>
+
+<p>The lover proceeds to make himself smart. Hooking one of his antenn&aelig;
+towards him with one of his free claws, he takes it between his
+mandibles in order to curl it and moisten it with saliva. With his long
+hind legs, spurred and laced with red, he stamps with impatience and
+kicks out at nothing. Emotion renders him silent. His wing-covers are
+nevertheless in rapid motion, but are no longer sounding, or at most
+emit but an unrhythmical rubbing sound.</p>
+
+<p>Presumptuous declaration! The female Cricket does not run to hide
+herself in the folds of her lettuce leaves; but she lifts the curtain a
+little, and looks out, and wishes to be seen:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>She flies towards the brake, but hopes first to be perceived, said the
+poet of the delightful eclogue, two thousand years ago. Sacred
+provocations of lovers, are they not in all ages the same?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ITALIAN CRICKET</h3>
+
+
+<p>My house shelters no specimens of the domestic Cricket, the guest of
+bakeries and rustic hearths. But although in my village the chinks under
+the hearthstones are mute, the nights of summer are musical with a
+singer little known in the North. The sunny hours of spring have their
+singer, the Field-Cricket of which I have written; while in the summer,
+during the stillness of the night, we hear the note of the Italian
+Cricket, the <i>&OElig;canthus pellucens</i>, Scop. One diurnal and one
+nocturnal, between them they share the kindly half of the year. When the
+Field-Cricket ceases to sing it is not long before the other begins its
+serenade.</p>
+
+<p>The Italian Cricket has not the black costume and heavy shape
+characteristic of the family. It is, on the contrary, a slender, weakly
+creature; its colour very pale, indeed almost white, as is natural in
+view of its nocturnal habits. In handling it one is afraid of crushing
+it between the fingers. It lives an aerial existence; on shrubs and
+bushes of all kinds, on tall herbage and grasses, and rarely descends to
+the earth. Its song, the pleasant voice of the calm, hot evenings from
+July to October, commences at sunset and continues for the greater part
+of the ni<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>ght.</p>
+
+<p>This song is familiar to all Proven&ccedil;als; for the least patch of thicket
+or tuft of grasses has its group of instrumentalists. It resounds even
+in the granaries, into which the insect strays, attracted thither by the
+fodder. But no one, so mysterious are the manners of the pallid Cricket,
+knows exactly what is the source of the serenade, which is often, though
+quite erroneously, attributed to the common field-cricket, which at this
+period is silent and as yet quite young.</p>
+
+<p>The song consists of a <i>Gri-i-i, Gri-i-i</i>, a slow, gentle note, rendered
+more expressive by a slight tremor. Hearing it, one divines the extreme
+tenuity and the amplitude of the vibrating membranes. If the insect is
+not in any way disturbed as it sits in the low foliage, the note does
+not vary, but at the least noise the performer becomes a ventriloquist.
+First of all you hear it there, close by, in front of you, and the next
+moment you hear it over there, twenty yards away; the double note
+decreased in volume by the distance.</p>
+
+<p>You go forward. Nothing is there. The sound proceeds again from its
+original point. But no&mdash;it is not there; it is to the left now&mdash;unless
+it is to the right&mdash;or behind.... Complete confusion! It is impossible
+to detect, by means of the ear, the direction from which the chirp
+really comes. Much patience and many precautions will be required before
+you can capture the insect by the light of the lantern. A few specimens
+caught under these conditions and placed in a cage have taught me the
+little I know concerning the musician who so perfectly deceives our
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>The wing-covers are both formed of a dry, broad membrane, diaphanous and
+as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> fine as the white skin on the outside of an onion, which is capable
+of vibrating over its whole area. Their shape is that of the segment of
+a circle, cut away at the upper end. This segment is bent at a right
+angle along a strong longitudinal nervure, and descends on the outer
+side in a flap which encloses the insect's flank when in the attitude of
+repose.</p>
+
+<p>The right wing-cover overlaps the left. Its inner edge carries, on the
+under side, near the base, a callosity from which five radiating
+nervures proceed; two of them upwards and two downwards, while the fifth
+runs approximately at right angles to these. This last nervure, which is
+of a slightly reddish hue, is the fundamental element of the musical
+device; it is, in short, the bow, the fiddlestick, as is proved by the
+fine notches which run across it. The rest of the wing-cover shows a few
+more nervures of less importance, which hold the membrane stretched
+tight, but do not form part of the friction apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>The left or lower wing-cover is of similar structure, with the
+difference that the bow, the callosity, and the nervures occupy the
+upper face. It will be found that the two bows&mdash;that is, the toothed or
+indented nervures&mdash;cross one another obliquely.</p>
+
+<p>When the note has its full volume, the wing-covers are well raised above
+the body like a wide gauzy sail, only touching along the internal edges.
+The two bows, the toothed nervures, engage obliquely one with the other,
+and their mutual friction causes the sonorous vibration of the two
+stretched membranes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="italiancricket" id="italiancricket"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-132.jpg"
+             alt="THE ITALIAN CRICKET." /><br />
+         <b>THE ITALIAN CRICKET.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sound can be modified accordingly as the strokes of each bow bear
+upon the callosity, which is itself serrated or wrinkled, or on one of
+the four smooth radiating nervures. Thus in part are explained the
+illusions produced by a sound which seems to come first from one point,
+then from another, when the timid insect is alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>The production of loud or soft resounding or muffled notes, which gives
+the illusion of distance, the principal element in the art of the
+ventriloquist, has another and easily discovered source. To produce the
+loud, open sounds the wing-covers are fully lifted; to produce the
+muted, muffled notes they are lowered. When lowered their outer edges
+press more or less lightly on the soft flanks of the insect, thus
+diminishing the vibratory area and damping the sound.</p>
+
+<p>The gentle touch of a finger-tip muffles the sharp, loud ringing of a
+glass tumbler or "musical-glass" and changes it into a veiled,
+indefinite sound which seems to come from a distance. The White Cricket
+knows this secret of acoustics. It misleads those that seek it by
+pressing the edge of its vibrating membranes to the soft flesh of its
+abdomen. Our musical instruments have their dampers; that of the
+<i>&OElig;canthus pellucens</i> rivals and surpasses them in simplicity of means
+and perfection of results.</p>
+
+<p>The Field-Cricket and its relatives also vary the volume of their song
+by raising or lowering the elytra so as to enclose the abdomen in a
+varying degree, but none of them can obtain by this method results so
+deceptive as those produced by the Italian Cricket.</p>
+
+<p>To this illusion of distance, which is a source of perpetually renewed
+surprise, evoked by the slightest sound of our footsteps, we must add
+the purity of the sound, and its soft tremolo. I know of no insect voice
+more gracious, more limpid, in the profound peace of the nights of
+August. How many times, <i>per amica silentia lun&aelig;</i>, have I lain upon the
+ground, in the shelter of a clump of rosemary, to listen to the
+delicious concert!</p>
+
+<p>The nocturnal Cricket sings continually in the gardens. Each tuft of the
+red-flowered cistus has its band of musicians, and each bush of fragrant
+lavender. The shrubs and the terebinth-trees contain their orchestras.
+With its clear, sweet voice, all this tiny world is questioning,
+replying, from bush to bush, from tree to tree; or rather, indifferent
+to the songs of others, each little being is singing his joys to himself
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>Above my head the constellation of Cygnus stretches its great cross
+along the Milky Way; below, all around me, palpitates the insect
+symphony. The atom telling of its joys makes me forget the spectacle of
+the stars. We know nothing of these celestial eyes which gaze upon us,
+cold and calm, with scintillations like the blinking of eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>Science tells us of their distance, their speeds, their masses, their
+volumes; it burdens us with stupendous numbers and stupefies us with
+immensities; but it does not succeed in moving us. And why? Because it
+lacks the great secret: the secret of life. What is there, up there?
+What do these suns warm? Worlds analogous to ours, says reason; planets
+on which life is evolving in an endless variety of forms. A superb
+conception of the universe, but after all a pure conception, not based
+upon patent facts and infallible testimony at the disposal of one and
+all. The probable, even the extremely probable, is not the obvious, the
+evident, which forces itself irresistibly and leaves no room for doubt.</p>
+
+<p>But in your company, O my Crickets, I feel the thrill of life, the soul
+of our native lump of earth; and for this reason, as I lean against the
+hedge of rosemary, I bestow only an absent glance upon the constellation
+of Cygnus, but give all my attention to your serenade. A little animated
+slime, capable of pleasure and pain, surpasses in interest the universe
+of dead matter.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SISYPHUS BEETLE.&mdash;THE INSTINCT OF PATERNITY</h3>
+
+
+<p>The duties of paternity are seldom imposed on any but the higher
+animals. They are most notable in the bird; and the furry peoples acquit
+themselves honourably. Lower in the scale we find in the father a
+general indifference as to the fate of the family. Very few insects form
+exceptions to this rule. Although all are imbued with a mating instinct
+that is almost frenzied, nearly all, when the passion of the moment is
+appeased, terminate then and there their domestic relations, and
+withdraw, indifferent to the brood, which has to look after itself as
+best it may.</p>
+
+<p>This paternal coldness, which would be odious in the higher walks of
+animal life, where the weakness of the young demands prolonged
+assistance, has in the insect world the excuse that the new-born young
+are comparatively robust, and are able, without help, to fill their
+mouths and stomachs, provided they find themselves in propitious
+surroundings. All that the prosperity of the race demands of the
+Pierides, or Cabbage Butterflies, is that they should deposit their eggs
+on the leaves of the cabbage; what purpose would be served by the
+instincts of a father? The botanical instinct of the mother needs no
+assistance. At the period of laying the father would be in the way. Let
+him pursue his flirtations elsewhere; the laying of eggs is a serious
+business.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the majority of insects the process of education is
+unknown, or summary in the extreme. The insect has only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>to select a
+grazing-ground upon which its family will establish itself the moment it
+is hatched; or a site which will allow the young to find their proper
+sustenance for themselves. There is no need of a father in these various
+cases. After mating, the discarded male, who is henceforth useless,
+drags out a lingering existence of a few days, and finally perishes
+without having given the slightest assistance in the work of installing
+his offspring.</p>
+
+<p>But matters are not everywhere so primitive as this. There are tribes in
+which an inheritance is prepared for the family which will assure it
+both of food and of shelter in advance. The Hymenoptera in particular
+are past-masters in the provision of cellars, jars, and other utensils
+in which the honey-paste destined for the young is stored; they are
+perfect in the art of excavating storehouses of food for their grubs.</p>
+
+<p>This stupendous labour of construction and provisioning, this labour
+that absorbs the insect's whole life, is the work of the mother only,
+who wears herself out at her task. The father, intoxicated with
+sunlight, lies idle on the threshold of the workshop, watching the
+heroic female at her work, and regards himself as excused from all
+labour when he has plagued his neighbours a little.</p>
+
+<p>Does he never perform useful work? Why does he not follow the example
+of the swallows, each of whom brings a fair share of the straw and
+mortar for the building of the nest and the midges for the young brood?
+No, he does nothing; perhaps alleging the excuse of his relative
+weakness. But this is a poor excuse; for to cut out little circles from
+a leaf, to rake a little cotton from a downy plant, or to gather a
+little mortar from a muddy spot, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>would hardly be a task beyond his
+powers. He might very well collaborate, at least as labourer; he could
+at least gather together the materials for the more intelligent mother
+to place in position. The true motive of his idleness is ineptitude.</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious thing that the Hymenoptera, the most skilful of all
+industrial insects, know nothing of paternal labour. The male of the
+genus, in whom we should expect the requirements of the young to develop
+the highest aptitudes, is as useless as a butterfly, whose family costs
+so little to establish. The actual distribution of instinct upsets our
+most reasonable previsions.</p>
+
+<p>It upsets our expectations so completely that we are surprised to find
+in the dung-beetle the noble prerogative which is lacking in the bee
+tribe. The mates of several species of dung-beetle keep house together
+and know the worth of mutual labour. Consider the male and female
+Geotrupes, which prepare together the patrimony of their larv&aelig;; in their
+case the father assists his companion with the pressure of his robust
+body in the manufacture of their balls of compressed nutriment. These
+domestic habits are astonishing amidst the general isolation.</p>
+
+<p>To this example, hitherto unique, my continual researches in this
+direction permit me to-day to add three others which are fully as
+interesting. All three are members of the corporation of dung-beetles. I
+will relate their habits, but briefly, as in many respects their history
+is the same as that of the Sacred Scarab&aelig;us, the Spanish Copris, and
+others.</p>
+
+<p>The first example is the Sisyphus beetle (<i>Sisy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>phus</i> <i>Sch&aelig;fferi</i>, Lin.),
+the smallest and most industrious of our pill-makers. It has no equal in
+lively agility, grotesque somersaults, and sudden tumbles down the
+impossible paths or over the impracticable obstacles to which its
+obstinacy is perpetually leading it. In allusion to these frantic
+gymnastics Latreille has given the insect the name of Sisyphus, after
+the celebrated inmate of the classic Hades. This unhappy spirit
+underwent terrible exertions in his efforts to heave to the top of a
+mountain an enormous rock, which always escaped him at the moment of
+attaining the s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>ummit, and rolled back to the foot of the slope. Begin
+again, poor Sisyphus, begin again, begin again always! Your torments
+will never cease until the rock is firmly placed upon the summit of the
+mountain.</p>
+
+<p>I like this myth. It is, in a way, the history of many of us; not odious
+scoundrels worthy of eternal torments, but worthy and laborious folk,
+useful to their neighbours. One crime alone is theirs to expiate: the
+crime of poverty. Half a century or more ago, for my own part, I left
+many blood-stained tatters on the crags of the inhospitable mountain; I
+sweated, strained every nerve, exhausted my veins, spent without
+reckoning my reserves of energy, in order to carry upward and lodge in
+a place of security that crushing burden, my daily bread; and hardly was
+the load balanced but it once more slipped downwards, fell, and was
+engulfed. Begin again, poor Sisyphus; begin again, until your burden,
+falling for the last time, shall crush your head and set you free at
+length.</p>
+
+<p>The Sisyphus of the naturalists knows nothing of these tribulations.
+Agile and lively, careless of slope or precipice, he trundles his load,
+which is sometimes food for himself, sometimes for his offspring. He is
+very rare hereabouts; I should never have succeeded in obtaining a
+sufficient number of specimens for my purpose but for an assistant whom
+I may opportunely present to the reader, for he will be mentioned again
+in these recitals.</p>
+
+<p>This is my son, little Paul, aged seven. An assiduous companion of the
+chase, he knows better than any one of his age the secrets of the
+Cigale, the Cricket, and e<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>specially of the dung-beetle, his great
+delight. At a distance of twenty yards his clear sight distinguishes the
+refuse-tip of a beetle's burrow from a chance lump of earth; his fine
+ear will catch the chirping of a grasshopper inaudible to me. He lends
+me his sight and hearing, and I in return make him free of my thoughts,
+which he welcomes attentively, raising his wide blue eyes questioningly
+to mine.</p>
+
+<p>What an adorable thing is the first blossoming of the intellect! Best of
+all ages is that when the candid curiosity awakens and commences to
+acquire knowledge of every kind. Little Paul has his own insectorium, in
+which the Scarab&aelig;us makes his balls; his garden, the size of a
+handkerchief, in which he grows haricot beans, which are often dug up to
+see if the little roots are growing longer; his plantation, containing
+four oak-trees an inch in height, to which the acorns still adhere.
+These serve as diversions after the arid study of grammar, which goes
+forward none the worse on that account.</p>
+
+<p>What beautiful and useful knowledge the teaching of natural history
+might put into childish heads, if only science would consider the very
+young; if our barracks of universities would only combine the lifeless
+study of books with the living study of the fields; if only the red tape
+of the curriculum, so dear to bureaucrats, would not strangle all
+willing initiative. Little Paul and I will study as much as possible in
+the open country, among the rosemary bushes and arbutus. There we shall
+gain vigour of body and of mind; we shall find the true and the
+beautiful better than in school-books.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the blackboard has a rest; it is a holiday. We rise early, in
+view of the intended expedition; so early that we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> must set out fasting.
+But no matter; when we are hungry we shall rest in the shade, and you
+will find in my knapsack the usual viaticum&mdash;apples and a crust of
+bread. The month of May is near; the Sisyphus should have appeared. Now
+we must explore at the foot of the mountain, the scanty pastures through
+which the herds have passed; we must break with our fingers, one by one,
+the cakes of sheep-dung dried by the sun, but still retaining a spot of
+moisture in the centre. There we shall find Sisyphus, cowering and
+waiting until the evening for fresher pasturage.</p>
+
+<p>Possessed of this secret, which I learned from previous fortuitous
+discoveries, little Paul immediately becomes a master in the art of
+dislodging the beetle. He shows such zeal, has such an instinct for
+likely hiding-places, that after a brief search I am rich beyond my
+ambitions. Behold me the owner of six couples of Sisyphus beetles: an
+unheard-of number, which I had never hoped to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>For their maintenance a wire-gauze cover suffices, with a bed of sand
+and diet to their taste. They are very small, scarcely larger than a
+cherry-stone. Their shape is extremely curious. The body is dumpy,
+tapering to an acorn-shaped posterior; the legs are very long,
+resembling those of the spider when outspread; the hinder legs are
+disproportionately long and curved, being thus excellently adapted to
+enlace and press the little pilule of dung.</p>
+
+<p>Mating takes place towards the beginning of May, on the surfa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>ce of the
+soil, among the remains of the sheep-dung on which the beetles have been
+feeding. Soon the moment for establishing the family arrives. With equal
+zeal the two partners take part in the kneading, transport, and baking
+of the food for their offspring. With the file-like forelegs a morsel of
+convenient size is shaped from the piece of dung placed in the cage.
+Father and mother manipulate the piece together, striking it blows with
+their claws, compressing it, and shaping it into a ball about the size
+of a big pea.</p>
+
+<p>As in the case of the <i>Scarab&aelig;us sacer</i>, the exact spherical form is
+produced without the mechanical device of rolling the ball. Before it is
+moved, even before it is cut loose from its point of support, the
+fragment is modelled into the shape of a sphere. The beetle as geometer
+is aware of the form best adapted to the long preservation of preserved
+foods.</p>
+
+<p>The ball is soon ready. It must now be forced to acquire, by means of a
+vigorous rolling, the crust which will protect the interior from a too
+rapid evaporation. The mother, recognisable by her slightly robuster
+body, takes the place of honour in front. Her long hinder legs on the
+soil, her forelegs on the ball, she drags it towards her as she walks
+backwards. The father pushes behind, moving tail first, his head held
+low. This is exactly the method of the Scarab&aelig;us beetles, which also
+work in couples, though for another object. The Sisyphus beetles harness
+themselves to provide an inheritance for their larv&aelig;; the larger insects
+are concerned in obtaining the material for a banquet which the two
+chance-met partners will consume underground.</p>
+
+<p>The couple set off, with no definite goal ahead, across the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+irregularities of the soil, which cannot be avoided by a leader who
+hauls backwards. But even if the Sisyphus saw the obstacles she would
+not try to evade them: witness her obstinate endeavour to drag her load
+up the wire gauze of her cage!</p>
+
+<p>A hopeless undertaking! Fixing her hinder claws in the meshes of the
+wire gauze the mother drags her burden towards her; then, enlacing it
+with her legs, she holds it suspended. The father, finding no purchase
+for his legs, clutches the ball, grows on to it, so to speak, thus
+adding his weight to that of the burden, and awaits events. The effort
+is too great to last. Ball and beetle fall together. The mother, from
+above, gazes a moment in surprise, and suddenly lets herself fall, only
+to re-embrace the ball and recommence her impracticable efforts to scale
+the wall. After many tumbles the attempt is at last abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>Even on level ground the task is not without its difficulties. At every
+moment the load swerves on the summit of a pebble, a fragment of gravel;
+the team are overturned, and lie on their backs, kicking their legs in
+the air. This is a mere nothing. They pick themselves up and resume
+their positions, always quick and lively. The accidents which so often
+throw them on their backs seem to cause them no concern; one would even
+think they were invited. The pilule has to be matured, given a proper
+consistency. In these conditions falls, shocks, blows, and jolts might
+well enter into the programme. This mad trundling lasts for hours and
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the mother, considering that the matter has been brought to a
+satisfactory conclusion, departs in search of a favourable place for
+storage. The father, crouched upon the treasure, waits. If the absence
+of his companion <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>is prolonged he amuses himself by rapidly whirling the
+pill between his hind legs, which are raised in the air. He juggles with
+the precious burden; he tests its perfections between his curved legs,
+calliper-wise. Seeing him frisking in this joyful occupation, who can
+doubt that he experiences all the satisfactions of a father assured of
+the future of his family? It is I, he seems to say, it is I who have
+made this loaf, so beautifully round; it is I who have made the hard
+crust to preserve the soft dough; it is I who have baked it for my sons!
+And he raises on high, in the sight of all, this magnificent testimonial
+of his labours.</p>
+
+<p>But now the mother has chosen the site. A shallow pit is made, the mere
+commencement of the projected burrow. The ball is pushed and pulled
+until it is close at hand. The father, a vigilant watchman, still
+retains his hold, while the mother digs with claws and head. Soon the
+pit is deep enough to receive the ball; she cannot dispense with the
+close contact of the sacred object; she must feel it bobbing behind her,
+against her back, safe from all parasites and robbers, before she can
+decide to burrow further. She fears what might happen to the precious
+loaf if it were abandoned at the threshold of the burrow until the
+completion of the dwelling. There is no lack of midges and tiny
+dung-beetles&mdash;Aphodiin&aelig;&mdash;which might take possession of it. It is only
+prudent to be distrustful.</p>
+
+<p>So the ball is introduced into the pit, half in and half out of the
+mouth of the burrow. The mother, below, clasps and pulls; the father,
+above, moderates the jolts and prevents it from rolling. All goes well.
+Digging is resumed, and the descent continues, always with the same
+prudence; one beetle dragging t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>he load, the other regulating its descent
+and clearing away all rubbish that might hinder the operation. A few
+more efforts, and the ball disappears underground with the two miners.
+What follows will be, for a time at least, only a repetition of what we
+have seen. Let us wait half a day or so.</p>
+
+<p>If our vigilance is not relaxed we shall see the father regain the
+surface alone, and crouch in the sand near the mouth of the burrow.
+Retained by duties in the performance of which her companion can be of
+no assistance, the mother habitually delays her reappearance until the
+following day. When she finally emerges the father wakes up, leaves his
+hiding place, and rejoins her. The reunited couple return to their
+pasturage, refresh themselves, and then cut out another ball of dung.
+As before, both share the work; the hewing and shaping, the transport,
+and the burial in ensilage.</p>
+
+<p>This conjugal fidelity is delightful; but is it really the rule? I
+should not dare to affirm that it is. There must be flighty individuals
+who, in the confusion under a large cake of droppings, forget the fair
+confectioners for whom they have worked as journeymen, and devote
+themselves to the services of others, encountered by chance; there must
+be temporary unions, and divorces after the burial of a single pellet.
+No matter: the little I myself have seen gives me a high opinion of the
+domestic morals of the Sisyphus.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider these domestic habits a little further before coming to
+the contents of the burrow. The father works fully as hard as the mother
+at the extraction and modelling of the pellet which is destined to be
+the in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>heritance of a larva; he shares in the work of transport, even if
+he plays a secondary part; he watches over the pellet when the mother is
+absent, seeking for a suitable site for the excavation of the cellar; he
+helps in the work of digging; he carries away the rubbish from the
+burrow; finally, to crown all these qualities, he is in a great measure
+faithful to his spouse.</p>
+
+<p>The Scarab&aelig;us exhibits some of these characteristics. He also assists
+his spouse in the preparation of pellets of dung; he also assists her to
+transport the pellets, the pair facing each other and the female going
+backwards. But as I have stated already, the motive of this mutual
+service is selfish; the two partners labour only for their own good. The
+feast is for themselves alone. In the labours that concern the family
+the female Scarab&aelig;us receives no assistance. Alone she moulds her
+sphere, extracts it from the lump and rolls it backwards, with her back
+to her task, in the position adopted by the male Sisyphus; alone she
+excavates her burrow, and alone she buries the fruit of her labour.
+Oblivious of the gravid mother and the future brood, the male gives her
+no assistance in her exhausting task. How different to the little
+pellet-maker, the Sisyphus!</p>
+
+<p>It is now time to visit the burrow. At no very great depth we find a
+narrow chamber, just large enough for the mother to move around at her
+work. Its very exiguity proves that the male cannot remain underground;
+so soon as the chamber is ready he must retire in order to leave the
+female room to move. We have, in fact, seen that he returns to the
+surface long before the female.</p>
+
+<p>The contents of the cellar consist of a single pellet, a maste<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>rpiece of
+plastic art. It is a miniature reproduction of the pear-shaped ball of
+the Scarab&aelig;us, a reproduction whose very smallness gives an added value
+to the polish of the surface and the beauty of its curves. Its larger
+diameter varies from half to three-quarters of an inch. It is the most
+elegant product of the dung-beetle's art.</p>
+
+<p>But this perfection is of brief duration. Very soon the little "pear"
+becomes covered with gnarled excrescences, black and twisted, which
+disfigure it like so many warts. Part of the surface, which is otherwise
+intact, disappears under a shapeless mass. The origin of these knotted
+excrescences completely deceived me at first. I suspected some
+cryptogamic vegetation, some <i>Spheri&aelig;c&aelig;a</i>, for example, recognisable by
+its black, knotted, incrusted growth. It was the larva that showed me my
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>The larva is a maggot curved like a hook, carrying on its back an ample
+pouch or hunch, forming part of its alimentary canal. The reserve of
+excreta in this hunch enables it to seal accidental perforations of the
+shell of its lodging with an instantaneous jet of mortar. These sudden
+emissions, like little worm-casts, are also practised by the Scarab&aelig;us,
+but the latter rarely makes use of them.</p>
+
+<p>The larv&aelig; of the various dung-beetles utilise their alimentary residues
+in rough-casting their houses, which by their dimensions lend themselves
+to this method of disposal, while evading the necessity of opening
+temporary windows by which the ordure can be expelled. Whether for lack
+of sufficient room, or for other reasons which escape me, the larva of
+the Sisyphus, having employed a certain amount in the smoothing of the
+interior, ejects <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>the rest of its digestive products from its dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine one of these "pears" when the inmate is already partly
+grown. Sooner or later we shall see a spot of moisture appear at some
+point on the surface; the wall softens, becomes thinner, and then,
+through the softened shell, a jet of dark green excreta rises and falls
+back upon itself in corkscrew convolutions. One excrescence the more has
+been formed; as it dries it becomes black.</p>
+
+<p>What has occurred? The larva has opened a temporary breach in the wall
+of its shell; and through this orifice, in which a slight thickness of
+the outer glaze still remains, it has expelled the excess of mortar
+which it could not employ within. This practice of forming oubliettes in
+the shell of its prison does not endanger the grub, as they are
+immediately closed, and hermetically sealed by the base of the jet,
+which is compressed as by a stroke of a trowel. The stopper is so
+quickly put in place that the contents remain moist in spite of the
+frequent breaches made in the shell of the "pear." There is no danger of
+an influx of the dry outer air.</p>
+
+<p>The Sisyphus seems to be aware of the peril which later on, in the
+dog-days, will threaten its "pear," small as it is, and so near the
+surface of the ground. It is extremely precocious. It labours in April
+and May when the air is mild. In the first fortnight of July, before the
+terrible dog-days have arrived, the members of its family break their
+shells and set forth in search of the heap of droppings which will
+furnish them with food and lodging during the fierce days of summer.
+Then come the short but pleasant days of autumn, the retreat underground
+an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>d the winter torpor, the awakening of spring, and finally the cycle is
+closed by the festival of pellet-making.</p>
+
+<p>One word more as to the fertility of the Sisyphus. My six couples under
+the wire-gauze cover furnished me with fifty-seven inhabited pellets.
+This gives an average of more than nine to each couple; a figure which
+the <i>Scarab&aelig;us sacer</i> is far from attaining. To what should we attribute
+this superior fertility? I can only see one cause: the fact that the
+male works as valiantly as the female. Family cares too great for the
+strength of one are not too heavy when there are two to support them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>A BEE-HUNTER: THE <i>PHILANTHUS AVIPORUS</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>To encounter among the Hymenoptera, those ardent lovers of flowers, a
+species which goes a-hunting on its own account is, to say the least of
+it, astonishing. That the larder of the larv&aelig; should be provisioned with
+captured prey is natural enough; but that the provider, whose diet is
+honey, should itself devour its captives is a fact both unexpected and
+difficult to comprehend. We are surprised that a drinker of nectar
+should become a drinker of blood. But our surprise abates if we consider
+the matter closely. The double diet is more apparent than real; the
+stomach which fills itself with the nectar of flowers does not gorge
+itself with flesh. When she perforates the rump of her victim the
+Odyneru<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>s does not touch the flesh, which is a diet absolutely contrary
+to her tastes; she confines herself to drinking the defensive liquid
+which the grub distils at the end of its intestine. For her this liquid
+is doubtless a beverage of delicious flavour, with which she relieves
+from time to time her staple diet of the honey distilled by flowers,
+some highly spiced condiment, appetiser or aperient, or perhaps&mdash;who
+knows?&mdash;a substitute for honey. Although the qualities of the liquid
+escape me, I see at least that Odynerus cares nothing for the rest.
+Once the pouch is emptied the larva is abandoned as useless offal, a
+certain sign of non-carnivorous appetites. Under these conditions the
+persecutor of Chrysomela can no longer be regarded as guilty of an
+unnatural double dietary.</p>
+
+<p>We may even wonder whether other species also are not apt to draw some
+direct profit from the hunting imposed upon them by the needs of the
+family. The procedure of Odynerus in opening the anal pouch is so far
+removed from the usual that we should not anticipate many imitators; it
+is a secondary detail, and impracticable with game of a different kind.
+But there may well be a certain amount of variety in the means of direct
+utilisation. Why, for example, when the victim which has just been
+paralysed or rendered insensible by stinging contains in the stomach a
+delicious meal, semi-liquid or liquid in consistency, should the hunter
+scruple to rob the half-living body and force it to disgorge without
+injuring the quality of its flesh? There may well be robbers of the
+moribund, attracted not by their flesh but by the appetising contents of
+their stomachs.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact there are such, and they are numerous. In the first
+rank we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>may cite that hunter of the domestic bee, <i>Philanthus aviporus</i>
+(Latreille). For a long time I suspected Philanthus of committing such
+acts of brigandage for her own benefit, having many times surprised her
+gluttonously licking the honey-smeared mouth of the bee; I suspected
+that her hunting of the bee was not undertaken entirely for the benefit
+of her larv&aelig;. The suspicion was worth experimental confirmation. At the
+time I was interested in another question also: I wanted to study,
+absolutely at leisure, the methods by which the various predatory
+species dealt with their victims. In the case of Philanthus I made use
+of the improvised cage already described; and Philanthus it was who
+furnished me with my first data on the subject. She responded to my
+hopes with such energy that I thought myself in possession of an
+unequalled method of observation, by means of which I could witness
+again and again, to satiety even, incidents of a kind so difficult to
+surprise in a state of nature. Alas! the early days of my acquaintance
+with Philanthus promised me more than the future had in store for me!
+Not to anticipate, however, let us place under the bell-glass the hunter
+and the game. I recommend the experiment to whomsoever would witness the
+perfection with which the predatory Hymenoptera use their stings. The
+result is not in doubt and the waiting is short; the moment the prey is
+perceived in an attitude favourable to her designs, the bandit rushes at
+it, and all is over. In detail, the tragedy develops as follows:</p>
+
+<p>I place under a bell-glass a Philanthus and two or three domestic bees.
+The prisoners climb the glass walls, on the more strongly lighted side;
+they ascend, descend, and seek to escape; the polished, vertical surface
+is for them quite easy to walk upon. They presently quiet down, and the
+brigand begins to notice her surroundings. The antenn&aelig; point forward,
+seeking information; the hinder legs are draw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>n up with a slight
+trembling, as of greed and rapacity, in the thighs; the head turns to
+the right and the left, and follows the evolutions of the bees against
+the glass. The posture of the scoundrelly insect is strikingly
+expressive; one reads in it the brutal desires of a creature in ambush,
+the cunning patience that postpones attack. The choice is made, and
+Philanthus throws herself upon her victim.</p>
+
+<p>Turn by turn tumbled and tumbling, the two insects roll over and over.
+But the struggle soon quiets down, and the assassin commences to plunder
+her prize. I have seen her adopt two methods. In the first, more usual
+than the other, the bee is lying on the ground, upon its back, and
+Philanthus, mouth to mouth and abdomen to abdomen, clasps it with her
+six legs, while she seizes its neck in her mandibles. The abdomen is
+then curved forward and gropes for a moment for the desired spot in the
+upper part of the thorax, which it finally reaches. The sting plunges
+into the victim, remains in the wound for a moment, and all is over.
+Without loosing the victim, which is still tightly clasped, the murderer
+restores her abdomen to the normal position and holds it pressed against
+that of the bee.</p>
+
+<p>By the second method Philanthus operates standing upright. Resting on
+the hinder feet and the extremity of the folded wings, she rises proudly
+to a vertical position, holding the bee facing her by her four anterior
+claws. In order to get the bee into the proper position for the final<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+stroke, she swings the poor creature round and back again with the
+careless roughness of a child dandling a doll. Her pose is magnificent,
+solidly based upon her sustaining tripod, the two posterior thighs and
+the end of the wings, she flexes the abdomen forwards and upwards, and,
+as before, stings the bee in the upper part of the thorax. The
+originality of her pose at the moment of striking surpasses anything I
+have ever witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>The love of knowledge in matters of natural history is not without its
+cruelties. To make absolutely certain of the point attained by the
+sting, and to inform myself completely concerning this horrible talent
+for murder, I have provoked I dare not confess how many assassinations
+in captivity. Without a single exception, the bee has always been stung
+in the throat. In the preparations for the final blow the extremity of
+the abdomen may of course touch here and there, at different points of
+the thorax or abdomen, but it never remains there, nor is the sting
+unsheathed, as may easily be seen. Once the struggle has commenced the
+Philanthus is so absorbed in her operations that I can remove the glass
+cover and follow every detail of the drama with my magnifying-glass.</p>
+
+<p>The invariable situation of the wound being proved, I bend back the head
+of the bee, so as to open the articulation. I see under what we may call
+the chin of the bee a white spot, hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch
+square, where the horny integuments are lacking, and the fine skin is
+exposed uncovered. It is there, always there, in that tiny defect in the
+bee's armour, that the sting is inserted. Why is this point attacked
+rather than another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>? Is it the only point that is vulnerable? Stretch
+open the articulation of the corselet to the rear of the first pair of
+legs. There you will see an area of defenceless skin, fully as delicate
+as that of the throat, but much more extensive. The horny armour of the
+bee has no larger breach. If the Philanthus were guided solely by
+considerations of vulnerability she would certainly strike there,
+instead of insistently seeking the narrow breach in the throat. The
+sting would not grope or hesitate, it would find its mark at the first
+attempt. No; the poisoned thrust is not conditioned by mechanical
+considerations; the murderer disdains the wide breach in the corselet
+and prefers the lesser one beneath the chin, for purely logical reasons
+which we will now attempt to elicit.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the bee is stung I release it from the aggressor. I am struck
+in the first place by the sudden inertia of the antenn&aelig; and the various
+members of the mouth; organs which continue to move for so long a time
+in the victims of most predatory creatures. I see none of the
+indications with which my previous studies of paralysed victims have
+made me familiar: the antenn&aelig; slowly waving, the mandibles opening and
+closing, the palp&aelig; trembling for days, for weeks, even for months. The
+thighs tremble for a minute or two at most; and the struggle is over.
+Henceforth there is complete immobility. The significance of this sudden
+inertia is forced upon me: the Philanthus has stabbed the cervical
+ganglions. Hence the sudden immobility of all the organs of the head:
+hence the real, not the apparent death of the bee. The Philanthus does
+not paralyse merely, but kills.</p>
+
+<p>This is one step gained. The murderer chooses the point below the chin
+as the point of attack<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>, in order to reach the principal centres of
+innervation, the cephalic ganglions, and thus to abolish life at a
+single blow. The vital centres being poisoned, immediate death must
+follow. If the object of the Philanthus were merely to cause paralysis
+she would plunge her sting into the defective corselet, as does the
+Cerceris in attacking the weevil, whose armour is quite unlike the
+bee's. Her aim is to kill outright, as we shall presently see; she wants
+a corpse, not a paralytic. We must admit that her technique is
+admirable; our human murderers could do no better.</p>
+
+<p>Her posture of attack, which is very different to that of the
+paralysers, is infallibly fatal to the victim. Whether she delivers the
+attack in the erect position or prone, she holds the bee before her,
+head to head and thorax to thorax. In this position it suffices to flex
+the abdomen in order to reach the joint of the neck, and to plunge the
+sting obliquely upwards into the head of the captive. If the bee were
+seized in the inverse position, or if the sting were to go slightly
+astray, the results would be totally different; the sting, penetrating
+the bee in a downward direction, would poison the first thoracic
+ganglion and provoke a partial paralysis only. What art, to destroy a
+miserable bee! In what fencing-school did the slayer learn that terrible
+upward thrust beneath the chin? And as she has learned it, how is it
+that her victim, so learned in matters of architecture, so conversant
+with the politics of Socialism, has so far learned nothing in her own
+defence? As vigorous as the aggressor, she also carries a rapier, which
+is even more formidable and more painful in its results&mdash;at all events,
+when my finger is the victim! <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>For centuries and centuries Philanthus has
+stored her cellars with the corpses of bees, yet the innocent victim
+submits, and the annual decimation of her race has not taught her how to
+deliver herself from the scourge by a well-directed thrust. I am afraid
+I shall never succeed in understanding how it is that the assailant has
+acquired her genius for sudden murder while the assailed, better armed
+and no less powerful, uses her dagger at random, and so far without
+effect. If the one has learned something from the prolonged exercise of
+the attack, then the other should also have learned something from the
+prolonged exercise of defence, for attack and defence are of equal
+significance in the struggle for life. Among the theorists of our day,
+is there any so far-sighted as to be able to solve this enigma?</p>
+
+<p>I will take this opportunity of presenting a second point which
+embarrasses me; it is the carelessness&mdash;it is worse than that&mdash;the
+imbecility of the bee in the presence of the Philanthus. One would
+naturally suppose that the persecuted insect, gradually instructed by
+family misfortune, would exhibit anxiety at the approach of the
+ravisher, and would at least try to escape. But in my bell-glasses or
+wire-gauze cages I see nothing of the kind. Once the first excitement
+due to imprisonment has passed the bee takes next to no notice of its
+terrible neighbour. I have seen it side by side with Philanthus on the
+same flower; assassin and future victim were drinking from the same
+goblet. I have seen it stupidly coming to inquire what the stranger
+might be, as the latter crouched watching on the floor. When the
+murderer springs it is usually upon some bee which passes before her,
+and throws itself, so to speak, into her clutches; either thoughtlessly
+or out of curiosity. There is no frantic terror, no sign of anxiety, no
+tendency to escape. How is it that the experience of centuries, which is
+said to teach so much to the lower creat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>ures, has not taught the bee
+even the beginning of apine wisdom: a deep-rooted horror of the
+Philanthus? Does the bee count upon its sting? But the unhappy creature
+is no fencer; it thrusts without method, at random. Nevertheless, let us
+watch it at the final and fatal moment.</p>
+
+<p>When the ravisher brings her sting into play the bee also uses its
+sting, and with fury. I see the point thrusting now in this direction,
+now in that; but in empty air, or grazing and slipping over the
+convexity of the murderer's back, which is violently flexed. These blows
+have no serious results. In the position assumed by the two as they
+struggle the abdomen of the Philanthus is inside and that of the bee
+outside; thus the sting of the latter has under its point only the
+dorsal face of the enemy, which is convex and slippery, and almost
+invulnerable, so well is it armoured. There is no breach there by which
+the sting might possibly enter; and the operation takes place with the
+certainty of a skilful surgeon using the lancet, despite the indignant
+protests of the patient.</p>
+
+<p>The fatal stroke once delivered, the murderer remains for some time on
+the body of the victim, clasping it face to face, for reasons that we
+must now consider. It may be that the position is perilous for
+Philanthus. The posture of attack and self-protection is abandoned, and
+the ventral area, more vulnerable than the back, is exposed to the sting
+of the bee. Now the dead bee retains for some minutes the reflex use of
+the sting, as I know to my cost: for removing the bee too soon from the
+aggressor, and handling it c<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>arelessly, I have received a most effectual
+sting. In her long embrace of the poisoned bee, how does Philanthus
+avoid this sting, which does not willingly give up its life without
+vengeance? Are there not sometimes unexpected accidents? Perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a fact which encourages me in this belief. I had placed under
+the bell-glass at the same time four bees and as many Eristales, in
+order to judge of the entomological knowledge of Philanthus as
+exemplified in the distinction of species. Reciprocal quarrels broke out
+among the heterogeneous group. Suddenly, in the midst of the tumult,
+the killer is killed. Who has struck the blow? Certainly not the
+turbulent but pacific Eristales; it was one of the bees, which by chance
+had thrust truly in the mellay. When and how? I do not know. This
+accident is unique in my experience; but it throws a light upon the
+question. The bee is capable of withstanding its adversary; it can, with
+a thrust of its envenomed needle, kill the would-be killer. That it does
+not defend itself more skilfully when it falls into the hands of its
+enemy is due to ignorance of fencing, not to the weakness of the arm.
+And here again arises, more insistently than before, the question I
+asked but now: how is it that the Philanthus has learned for purposes of
+attack what the bee has not learned for purposes of defence. To this
+difficulty I see only one reply: the one knows without having learned
+and the other does not know, being incapable of learning.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now examine the motives which induce the Philanthus to kill its
+bee instead of paralysing it. The murder once committed, it does not
+release its victim for a moment, but holding it tightly clasped with its
+six legs pressed against its body, it commences to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> ravage the corpse. I
+see it with the utmost brutality rooting with its mandibles in the
+articulation of the neck, and often also in the more ample articulation
+of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs; perfectly aware of the
+fine membrane in that part, although it does not take advantage of the
+fact when employing its sting, although this vulnerable point is the
+more accessible of the two breaches in the bee's armour. I see it
+squeezing the bee's stomach, compressing it with its own abdomen,
+crushing it as in a vice. The brutality of this manipulation is
+striking; it shows that there is no more need of care and skill. The
+bee is a corpse, and a little extra pushing and squeezing will not
+deteriorate its quality as food, provided there is no effusion of blood;
+and however rough the treatment, I have never been able to discover the
+slightest wound.</p>
+
+<p>These various manipulations, above all the compression of the throat,
+lead to the desired result: the honey in the stomach of the bee ascends
+to the mouth. I see the drops of honey welling out, lapped up by the
+glutton as soon as they appear. The bandit greedily takes in its mouth
+the extended and sugared tongue of the dead insect; then once more it
+presses the neck and the thorax, and once more applies the pressure of
+its abdomen to the honey-sac of the bee. The honey oozes forth and is
+instantly licked up. This odious meal at the expense of the corpse is
+taken in a truly sybaritic attitude: the Philanthus lies upon its side
+with the bee between its legs. This atrocious meal lasts often half an
+hour and longer. Finally the exhausted corpse is abandoned; regretfully,
+it seems, for from time to time I have seen the ogre return to the feast
+and repeat its manipulation of the body. Afte<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>r taking a turn round the
+top of the bell-glass the robber of the dead returns to the victim,
+squeezes it once more, and licks its mouth until the last trace of honey
+has disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The frantic passion of the Philanthus for the honey of the bee is
+betrayed in another fashion. When the first victim has been exhausted I
+have introduced a second bee, which has been promptly stabbed under the
+chin and squeezed as before in order to extract its honey. A third has
+suffered the same fate without appeasing the bandit. I have offered a
+fourth, a fifth; all are accepted. My notes record that a Philanthus
+sacrificed six bees in succession before my eyes, and emptied them all
+of honey in the approved manner. The killing came to an end not because
+the glutton was satiated, but because my functions as provider were
+becoming troublesome; the dry month of August leaves but few insects in
+the flowerless garden. Six bees emptied of their honey&mdash;what a
+gluttonous meal! Yet the famishing creature would doubtless have
+welcomed a copious addition thereto had I had the means of furnishing
+it!</p>
+
+<p>We need not regret the failure of bees upon this occasion; for what I
+have already written is sufficient testimony of the singular habits of
+this murderer of bees. I am far from denying that the Philanthus has
+honest methods of earning its living; I see it among the flowers, no
+less assiduous than the rest of the Hymenoptera, peacefully drinking
+from their cups of nectar. The male, indeed, being stingless, knows no
+other means of supporting himself. The mothers, without neglecting the
+flowers as a general thing, live by briganda<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>ge as well. It is said of
+the Labba, that pirate of the seas, that it pounces upon sea-birds as
+they rise from the waves with captured fish in their beaks. With a blow
+of the beak delivered in the hollow of the stomach, the aggressor forces
+the victim to drop its prey, and promptly catches it as it falls. The
+victim at least escapes with nothing worse than a blow at the base of
+the neck. The Philanthus, less scrupulous, falls upon the bee, stabs it
+to death and makes it disgorge in order to nourish herself upon its
+honey.</p>
+
+<p>Nourish, I say, and I do not withdraw the expression. To support my
+statement I have better reasons than those already presented. In the
+cages in which various predatory Hymenoptera whose warlike habits I am
+studying are confined, waiting until I have procured the desired
+prey&mdash;not always an easy proceeding&mdash;I have planted a few heads of
+flowers and a couple of thistle-heads sprinkled with drops of honey,
+renewed at need. On these my captives feed. In the case of the
+Philanthus the honeyed flowers, although welcomed, are not
+indispensable. It is enough if from time to time I place in the cage a
+few living bees. Half a dozen a day is about the proper allowance. With
+no other diet than the honey extracted from their victims I keep my
+specimens of Philanthus for a fortnight and three weeks.</p>
+
+<p>So much is plain: in a state of freedom, when occasion offers, the
+Philanthus must kill on her own account as she does in captivity. The
+Odynerus asks nothing of the Chrysomela but a simple condiment, the
+aromatic juice of the anal pouch; the Philanthus demands a full diet, or
+at least a notable supplement thereto, in the form of the contents of
+the stomach. What a hecatomb of bees must not a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> colony of these pirates
+sacrifice for their personal consumption, to say nothing of their stores
+of provisions! I recommend the Philanthus to the vengeance of apiarists.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment we will not look further into the original causes of the
+crime. Let us consider matters as we know them, with all their real or
+apparent atrocity. In order to nourish herself the Philanthus levies
+tribute upon the crop of the bee. This being granted, let us consider
+the method of the aggressor more closely. She does not paralyse its
+captives according to the customary rites of the predatory insects; she
+kills them. Why? To the eyes of understanding the necessity of a sudden
+death is as clear as day. Without eviscerating the bee, which would
+result in the deterioration of its flesh considered as food for the
+larv&aelig;; without having recourse to the bloody extirpation of the stomach,
+the Philanthus intends to obtain its honey. By skilful manipulation, by
+cunning massage, she must somehow make the bee disgorge. Suppose the bee
+stung in the rear of the corselet and paralysed. It is deprived of
+locomotion, but not of vitality. The digestive apparatus, in particular,
+retains in full, or at least in part, its normal energies, as is proved
+by the frequent dejections of paralysed victims so long as the intestine
+is not emptied; a fact notably exemplified by the victims of the Sphex
+family; helpless creatures which I have before now kept alive for forty
+days with the aid of a little sugared water. Well! without therapeutic
+means, without emetics or stomach-pumps, how is a stomach intact and in
+good order to be persuaded to yield up its contents? That of the bee,
+jealous of its treasure, will lend itself to such treatment less readily
+than another. Paralysed, the creature is inert; but there are always
+internal ene<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>rgies and organic resistances which will not yield to the
+pressure of the manipulator. In vain would the Philanthus gnaw at the
+throat and squeeze the flanks; the honey would not return to the mouth
+as long as a trace of life kept the stomach closed.</p>
+
+<p>Matters are different with a corpse. The springs relax; the muscles
+yield; the resistance of the stomach ceases, and the vessels containing
+the honey are emptied by the pressure of the thief. We see, therefore,
+that the Philanthus is obliged to inflict a sudden death which
+instantly destroys the contractile power of the organs. Where shall the
+deadly blow be delivered? The slayer knows better than we, when she
+pierces the victim beneath the chin. Through the narrow breach in the
+throat the cerebral ganglions are reached and immediate death ensues.</p>
+
+<p>The examination of these acts of brigandage is not sufficient in view of
+my incorrigible habit of following every reply by another query, until
+the granite wall of the unknowable rises before me. Although the
+Philanthus is skilled in forcing the bee to disgorge, in emptying the
+crop distended with honey, this diabolical skill cannot be merely an
+alimentary resource, above all when in common with other insects she has
+access to the refectory of the flowers. I cannot regard her talents as
+inspired solely by the desire of a meal obtained by the labour of
+emptying the stomach of another insect. Something must surely escape us
+here: the real reason for emptying the stomach. Perhaps a respectable
+reason is concealed by the horrors I have recorded. What is it?</p>
+
+<p>Every one will understand the vagueness which fills the observer's mind
+in respect of such a question as this. The reader has the right to be
+doubtful. I will spare him my suspici<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>ons, my gropings for the truth, and
+the checks encountered in the search, and give him the results of my
+long inquiry. Everything has its appropriate and harmonious reason. I am
+too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus commits her
+profanation of corpses merely to satisfy her appetite. What does the
+empty stomach mean? May it not&mdash;Yes!&mdash;But, after all, who knows? Well,
+let us follow up the scent.</p>
+
+<p>The first care of the mothers is the welfare of the family. So far all
+we know of the Philanthus concerns her talent for murder. Let us
+consider her as a mother. We have seen her hunt on her own account; let
+us now watch her hunt for her offspring, for the race. Nothing is
+simpler than to distinguish between the two kinds of hunting. When the
+insect wants a few good mouthfuls of honey and nothing else, she
+abandons the bee contemptuously when she has emptied its stomach. It is
+so much valueless waste, which will shrivel where it lies and be
+dissected by ants. If, on the other hand, she intends to place it in the
+larder as a provision for her larv&aelig;, she clasps it with her two
+intermediate legs, and, walking on the other four, drags it to and fro
+along the edge of the bell-glass in search of an exit so that she may
+fly off with her prey. Having recognised the circular wall as
+impassable, she climbs its sides, now holding the bee in her mandibles
+by the antenn&aelig;, clinging as she climbs to the vertical polished surface
+with all six feet. She gains the summit of the glass, stays for a little
+while in the flask-like cavity of the terminal button or handle, returns
+to the ground, and resumes her circuit of the glass and her climbing,
+relinquishing the bee only after an obstinate attempt to escape with it.
+The persistence with which the Philanthus retains her clasp upon the
+encumbering burden shows plainly tha<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>t the game would go straight to the
+larder were the insect at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Those bees intended for the larv&aelig; are stung under the chin like the
+others; they are true corpses; they are manipulated, squeezed, exhausted
+of their honey, just as the others. There is no difference in the method
+of capture nor in their after-treatment.</p>
+
+<p>As captivity might possibly result in a few anomalies of action, I
+decided to inquire how matters went forward in the open. In the
+neighbourhood of some colonies of Philanthid&aelig; I lay in wait, watching
+for perhaps a longer time than the question justified, as it was already
+settled by what occurred in captivity. My scrupulous watching at various
+times was rewarded. The majority of the hunters immediately entered
+their nests, carrying the bees pressed against their bodies; some halted
+on the neighbouring undergrowth; and these I saw treating the bee in the
+usual manner, and lapping the honey from its mouth. After these
+preparations the corpse was placed in the larder. All doubt was thus
+destroyed: the bees provided for the larv&aelig; are previously carefully
+emptied of their honey.</p>
+
+<p>Since we are dealing with the subject, let us take the opportunity of
+inquiring into the customs of the Philanthus in a state of freedom.
+Making use of her victims when absolutely lifeless, so that they would
+putrefy in the course of a few days, this hunter of bees cannot adopt
+the customs of certain insects which paralyse their prey, and fill their
+cellars before laying an egg. She must surely be obliged to follow the
+method of the Bembe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>x, whose larva receives, at intervals, the necessary
+nourishment; the amount increasing as the larva grows. The facts confirm
+this deduction. I spoke just now of the tediousness of my watching when
+watching the colonies of the Philanthus. It was perhaps even more
+tedious than when I was keeping an eye upon the Bembex. Before the
+burrows of <i>Cerceris tuberculus</i> and other devourers of the weevil, and
+before that of the yellow-winged Sphex, the slayer of crickets, there
+is plenty of distraction, owing to the busy movements of the community.
+The mothers have scarcely entered the nest before they are off again,
+returning quickly with fresh prey, only to set out once more. The going
+and coming is almost continuous until the storehouse is full.</p>
+
+<p>The burrows of the Philanthus know nothing of such animation, even in a
+populous colony. In vain my vigils prolonged themselves into whole
+mornings or afternoons, and only very rarely does the mother who has
+entered with a bee set forth upon a second expedition. Two captures by
+the same huntress is the most that I have seen in my long watches. Once
+the family is provided with sufficient food for the moment the mother
+postpones further hunting trips until hunting becomes necessary, and
+busies herself with digging and burrowing in her underground dwelling.
+Little cells are excavated, and I see the rubbish from them gradually
+pushed up to the surface. With that exception there is no sign of
+activity; it is as though the burrow were deserted.</p>
+
+<p>To lay the nest bare is not easy. The burrow penetrates to a depth of
+about three feet in a compact soil; sometimes in a vertical, sometimes
+in a hori<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>zontal direction. The spade and pick, wielded by hands more
+vigorous but less expert than my own, are indispensable; but the conduct
+of the excavation is anything but satisfactory. At the extremity of the
+long gallery&mdash;it seems as though the straw I use for sounding would
+never reach the end&mdash;we finally discover the cells, egg-shaped cavities
+with the longer axis horizontal. Their number and their mutual
+disposition escape me.</p>
+
+<p>Some already contain the cocoon&mdash;slender and translucid, like that of
+the Cerceris, and, like it, recalling the shape of certain
+hom&oelig;opathic phials, with oval bodies surmounted by a tapering neck.
+By the extremity of the neck, which is blackened and hardened by the
+dejecta of the larv&aelig;, the cocoon is fixed to the end of the cell without
+any other support. It reminds one of a short club, planted by the end of
+the handle, in a line with the horizontal axis of the cell. Other cells
+contain the larva in a stage more or less advanced. The grub is eating
+the last victim proffered; around it lie the remains of food already
+consumed. Others, again, show me a bee, a single bee, still intact, and
+having an egg deposited on the under-side of the thorax. This bee
+represents the first instalment of rations; others will follow as the
+grub matures. My expectations are thus confirmed; as with Bembex, slayer
+of Diptera, so Philanthus, killer of bees, lays her egg upon the first
+body stored, and completes, at intervals, the provisioning of the cells.</p>
+
+<p>The problem of the dead bee is elucidated; there remains the other
+problem, of incomparable in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>terest&mdash;Why, before they are given over to
+the larv&aelig;, are the bees robbed of their honey? I have said, and I
+repeat, that the killing and emptying of the bee cannot be explained
+solely by the gluttony of the Philanthus. To rob the worker of its booty
+is nothing; such things are seen every day; but to slaughter it in order
+to empty its stomach&mdash;no, gluttony cannot be the only motive. And as the
+bees placed in the cells are squeezed dry no less than the others, the
+idea occurs to me that as a beefsteak garnished with <i>confitures</i> is not
+to every one's taste, so the bee sweetened with honey may well be
+distasteful or even harmful to the larv&aelig; of the Philanthus. What would
+the grub do if, replete with blood and flesh, it were to find under its
+mandibles the honey-bag of the bee?&mdash;if, gnawing at random, it were to
+open the bees stomach and so drench its game with syrup? Would it
+approve of the mixture? Would the little ogre pass without repugnance
+from the gamey flavour of a corpse to the scent of flowers? To affirm or
+deny is useless. We must see. Let us see.</p>
+
+<p>I take the young larv&aelig; of the Philanthus, already well matured, but
+instead of serving them with the provisions buried in their cells I
+offer them game of my own catching&mdash;bees that have filled themselves
+with nectar among the rosemary bushes. My bees, killed by crushing the
+head, are thankfully accepted, and at first I see nothing to justify my
+suspicions. Then my nurslings languish, show themselves disdainful of
+their food, give a negligent bite here and there, and finally, one and
+all, die beside their uncompleted meal. All my attempts miscarry; not
+once do I succeed in rearing my larv&aelig; as far as the stage of spinning
+the cocoon. Yet I am no novice in my duties as dry-nurse. How many
+pupils have passed through my hands and have reached the final stage in
+my old sardine-boxes as well as in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> native burrows! I shall draw no
+conclusions from this check, which my scruples may attribute to some
+unknown cause. Perhaps the atmosphere of my cabinet and the dryness of
+the sand serving them for a bed have been too much for my nurslings,
+whose tender skins are used to the warm moisture of the subsoil. Let us
+try another method.</p>
+
+<p>To decide positively whether honey is or is not repugnant to the grubs
+of the Philanthus was hardly practicable by the method just explained.
+The first meals consisted of flesh, and after that nothing in
+particular occurred. The honey is encountered later, when the bee is
+largely consumed. If hesitation and repugnance were manifested at this
+point they came too late to be conclusive; the sickness of the larv&aelig;
+might be due to other causes, known or unknown. We must offer honey at
+the very beginning, before artificial rearing has spoilt the grub's
+appetite. To offer pure honey would, of course, be useless; no
+carnivorous creature would touch it, even were it starving. I must
+spread the honey on meat; that is, I must smear the dead bee with honey,
+lightly varnishing it with a camel's-hair brush.</p>
+
+<p>Under these conditions the problem is solved with the first few
+mouthfuls. The grub, having bitten on the honeyed bee, draws back as
+though disgusted; hesitates for a long time; then, urged by hunger,
+begins again; tries first on one side, then on another; in the end it
+refuses to touch the bee again. For a few days it pines upon its
+rations, which are almost intact, then dies. As many as are subjected to
+the same treatment perish in the same way.</p>
+
+<p>Do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> they simply die of hunger in the presence of food which their
+appetites reject, or are they poisoned by the small amount of honey
+absorbed at the first bites? I cannot say; but, whether poisonous or
+merely repugnant, the bee smeared with honey is always fatal to them; a
+fact which explains more clearly than the unfavourable circumstances of
+the former experiment my lack of success with the freshly killed bees.</p>
+
+<p>This refusal to touch honey, whether poisonous or repugnant, is
+connected with principles of alimentation too general to be a
+gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus grub. Other carnivorous
+larv&aelig;&mdash;at least in the series of the Hymenoptera&mdash;must share it. Let us
+experiment. The method need not be changed. I exhume the larv&aelig; when in a
+state of medium growth, to avoid the vicissitudes of extreme youth; I
+collect the bodies of the grubs and insects which form their natural
+diet and smear each body with honey, in which condition I return them to
+the larv&aelig;. A distinction is apparent: all the larv&aelig; are not equally
+suited to my experiment. Those larv&aelig; must be rejected which are
+nourished upon one single corpulent insect, as is that of the Scolia.
+The grub attacks its prey at a determined point, plunges its head and
+neck into the body of the insect, skilfully divides the entrails in
+order to keep the remains fresh until its meal is ended, and does not
+emerge from the opening until all is consumed but the empty skin.</p>
+
+<p>To interrupt the larva with the object of smearing the interior of its
+prey with honey is doubly objectionable; I might extinguish the
+lingering vitality which keeps putrefaction at bay in the victim, and I
+might confuse the delicate art of the larva, which might not be able to
+recover the lode at which it was working or to distinguish between those
+parts which are lawfully and properly eat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>en and those which must not be
+consumed until a later period. As I have shown in a previous volume, the
+grub of the Scolia has taught me much in this respect. The only larv&aelig;
+acceptable for this experiment are those which are fed on a number of
+small insects, which are attacked without any special art, dismembered
+at random, and quickly consumed. Among such larv&aelig; I have experimented
+with those provided by chance&mdash;those of various Bembeces, fed on
+Diptera; those of the Palaris, whose diet consists of a large variety of
+Hymenoptera; those of the Tachytus, provided with young crickets; those
+of the Odynerus, fed upon larv&aelig; of the Chrysomela; those of the
+sand-dwelling Cerceris, endowed with a hecatomb of weevils. As will be
+seen, both consumers and consumed offer plenty of variety. Well, in
+every case their proper diet, seasoned with honey, is fatal. Whether
+poisoned or disgusted, they all die in a few days.</p>
+
+<p>A strange result! Honey, the nectar of the flowers, the sole diet of the
+apiary under its two forms and the sole nourishment of the predatory
+insect in its adult phase, is for the larva of the same insect an object
+of insurmountable disgust, and probably a poison. The transfiguration of
+the chrysalis surprises me less than this inversion of the appetite.
+What change occurs in the stomach of the insect that the adult should
+passionately seek that which the larva refuses under peril of death? It
+is no question of organic debility unable to support a diet too
+substantial, too hard, or too highly spiced. The grubs which consume the
+larva of the Cetoni&aelig;, for example (the Rose-chafers), those which feed
+upon the leathery cricket, and those whose diet is rich in nitrobenzine,
+must assuredly have complacent gullets and adaptable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>stomachs. Yet these
+robust eaters die of hunger or poison for no greater cause than a drop
+of syrup, the lightest diet imaginable, adapted to the weakness of
+extreme youth, and a delicacy to the adult! What a gulf of obscurity in
+the stomach of a miserable worm!</p>
+
+<p>These gastronomic experiments called for a counter-proof. The
+carnivorous grub is killed by honey. Is the honey-fed grub, inversely,
+killed by carnivorous diet? Here, again, we must make certain
+exceptions, observe a certain choice, as in the previous experiments. It
+would obviously be courting a flat refusal to offer a heap of young
+crickets to the larv&aelig; of the Anthophorus and the Osmia, for example; the
+honey-fed grub would not bite such food. It would be absolutely useless
+to make such an experiment. We must find the equivalent of the bee
+smeared with honey; that is, we must offer the larva its ordinary food
+with a mixture of animal matter added. I shall experiment with albumen,
+as provided by the egg of the hen; albumen being an isomer of fibrine,
+which is the principal element of all flesh diet.</p>
+
+<p><i>Osmia tricornis</i> will lend itself to my experiment better than any
+other insect on account of its dry honey, or bee-bread, which is largely
+formed of flowery pollen. I knead it with the albumen, graduating the
+dose of the latter so that its weight largely exceeds that of the
+bee-bread. Thus I obtain pastes of various degrees of consistency, but
+all firm enough to support the larva without danger of immersion. With
+too fluid a mixture there would be a danger of death by drowning.
+Finally, on each cake of albuminous paste I install a larva of medium
+growth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This diet is not distasteful; far from it. The grubs attack it without
+hesitation and devour it with every appearance of a normal appetite.
+Matters could not go better if the food had not been modified according
+to my recipes. All is eaten; even the portions which I feared contained
+an excessive proportion of albumen. Moreover&mdash;a matter of still greater
+importance&mdash;the larv&aelig; of the Osmia fed in this manner attain their
+normal growth and spin their cocoons, from which adults issue in the
+following year. Despite the albuminous diet the cycle of evolution
+completes itself without mishap.</p>
+
+<p>What are we to conclude from all this? I confess I am embarrassed. <i>Omne
+vivum ex ovo</i>, says the physiologist. All animals are carnivorous in
+their first beginnings; they are formed and nourished at the expense of
+the egg, in which albumen predominates. The highest, the mammals, adhere
+to this diet for a considerable time; they live by the maternal milk,
+rich in casein, another isomer of albumen. The gramnivorous nestling is
+fed first upon worms and grubs, which are best adapted to the delicacy
+of its stomach; many newly born creatures among the lower orders, being
+immediately left to their own devices, live on animal diet. In this way
+the original method of alimentation is continued&mdash;the method which
+builds flesh out of flesh and makes blood out of blood with no chemical
+processes but those of simple reconstruction. In maturity, when the
+stomach is more robust, a vegetable diet may be adopted, involving a
+more complex chemistry, although the food itself is more easily
+obtained. To milk succeeds fodder; to the worm, seeds and grain; to the
+dead or paralysed insects of the natal burrow, the nectar of flowers.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+<p>Here is a partial explanation of the double system of the Hymenoptera
+with their carnivorous larv&aelig;&mdash;the system of dead or paralysed insects
+followed by honey. But here the point of interrogation, already
+encountered elsewhere, erects itself once again. Why is the larva of
+the Osmia, which thrives upon albumen, actually fed upon honey during
+its early life? Why is a vegetable diet the rule in the hives of bees
+from the very commencement, when the other members of the same series
+live upon animal food?</p>
+
+<p>If I were a "transformist" how I should delight in this question! Yes, I
+should say: yes, by the fact of its germ every animal is originally
+carnivorous. The insect in particular makes a beginning with albuminoid
+materials. Many larv&aelig; adhere to the alimentation present in the egg, as
+do many adult insects also. But the struggle to fill the belly, which is
+actually the struggle for life, demands something better than the
+precarious chances of the chase. Man, at first an eager hunter of game,
+collected flocks and became a shepherd in order to profit by his
+possessions in time of dearth. Further progress inspired him to till the
+earth and sow; a method which assured him of a certain living. Evolution
+from the defective to the mediocre, and from the mediocre to the
+abundant, has led to the resources of agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>The lower animals have preceded us on the way of progress. The ancestors
+of the Philanthus, in the remote ages of the lacustrian tertiary
+formations, lived by c<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>apturing prey in both phases&mdash;both as larv&aelig; and as
+adults; they hunted for their own benefit as well as for the family.
+They did not confine themselves to emptying the stomach of the bee, as
+do their descendants to-day; they devoured the victim entire. From
+beginning to end they remained carnivorous. Later there were fortunate
+innovators, whose race supplanted the more conservative element, who
+discovered an inexhaustible source of nourishment, to be obtained
+without painful search or dangerous conflict: the saccharine exudation
+of the flowers. The wasteful system of living upon prey, by no means
+favourable to large populations, has been preserved for the feeble
+larv&aelig;; but the vigorous adult has abandoned it for an easier and more
+prosperous existence. Thus the Philanthus of our own days was gradually
+developed; thus was formed the double system of nourishment practised by
+the various predatory insects which we know.</p>
+
+<p>The bee has done still better; from the moment of leaving the egg it
+dispenses completely with chance-won aliments. It has invented honey,
+the food of its larv&aelig;. Renouncing the chase for ever, and becoming
+exclusively agricultural, this insect has acquired a degree of moral and
+physical prosperity that the predatory species are far from sharing.
+Hence the flourishing colonies of the Anthophor&aelig;, the Osmi&aelig;, the Eucer&aelig;,
+the Halicti, and other makers of honey, while the hunters of prey work
+in isolation; hence the societies in which the bee displays its
+admirable talents, the supreme expression of instinct.</p>
+
+<p>This is what I should say if I were a "transformist." All this is a
+chain of highly logical deductions, and it hangs toget<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>her with a certain
+air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist"
+arguments which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a present
+of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least
+regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound
+ignorance of the origin of the twofold system of diet.</p>
+
+<p>One thing I do see more clearly after all my experiments and research:
+the tactics of the Philanthus. As a witness of its ferocious feasting,
+the true motive of which was unknown to me, I treated it to all the
+unfavourable epithets I could think of; called it assassin, bandit,
+pirate, robber of the dead. Ignorance is always abusive; the man who
+does not know is full of violent affirmations and malign
+interpretations. Undeceived by the facts, I hasten to apologise and
+express my esteem for the Philanthus. In emptying the stomach of the bee
+the mother is performing the most praiseworthy of all duties; she is
+guarding her family against poison. If she sometimes kills on her own
+account and abandons the body after exhausting it of honey, I dare not
+call her action a crime. When the habit has once been formed of emptying
+the bee's crop for the best of motives, the temptation is great to do so
+with no other excuse than hunger. Moreover&mdash;who can say?&mdash;perhaps there
+is always some afterthought that the larv&aelig; might profit by the
+sacrifice. Although not carried into effect the intention excuses the
+act.</p>
+
+<p>I therefore withdraw my abusive epithets in order to express my
+admiration of the creature's maternal logic. Honey would be harmful to
+the grubs. How does the mother know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> that honey, in which she herself
+delights, is noxious to her young? To this question our knowledge has no
+reply. But honey, as we have seen, would endanger the lives of the
+grubs. The bees must therefore be emptied of honey before they are fed
+to them. The process must be effected without wounding the victim, for
+the larva must receive the latter fresh and moist; and this would be
+impracticable if the insect were paralysed on account of the natural
+resistance of the organs. The bee must therefore be killed outright
+instead of being paralysed, otherwise the honey could not be removed.
+Instantaneous death can be assured only by a lesion of the primordial
+centre of life. The sting must therefore pierce the cervical ganglions;
+the centre of innervation upon which the rest of the organism is
+dependent. This can only be reached in one way: through the neck. Here
+it is that the sting will be inserted; and here it is inserted in a
+breach in the armour no larger than a pin's head. Suppress a single link
+of this closely knit chain, and the Philanthus reared upon the flesh of
+bees becomes an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>That honey is fatal to larv&aelig; is a fact pregnant with consequences.
+Various predatory insects feed their young with honey-makers. Such, to
+my knowledge, are the <i>Philanthus coronatus</i>, Fabr., which stores its
+burrows with the large Halictus; the <i>Philanthus raptor</i>, Lep., which
+chases all the smaller Halictus indifferently, being itself a small
+insect; the <i>Cerceris ornata</i>, Fabr., which also kills Halictus; and the
+<i>Polaris flavipes</i>, Fabr., which by a strange eclecticism fills its
+cells with specimens of most of the Hymenoptera which are not beyond its
+powers. Wha<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>t do these four huntresses, and others of similar habits, do
+with their victims when the crops of the latter are full of honey? They
+must follow the example of the Philanthus or their offspring would
+perish; they must squeeze and manipulate the dead bee until it yields up
+its honey. Everything goes to prove as much; but for the actual
+observation of what would be a notable proof of my theory I must trust
+to the future.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREAT PEACOCK, OR EMPEROR MOTH</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was a memorable night! I will name it the Night of the Great Peacock.
+Who does not know this superb moth, the largest of all our European
+butterflies<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> with its livery of chestnut velvet and its collar of
+white fur? The greys and browns of the wings are crossed by a paler
+zig-zag, and bordered with smoky white; and in the centre of each wing
+is a round spot, a great eye with a black pupil and variegated iris,
+resolving into concentric arcs of black, white, chestnut, and purplish
+red.</p>
+
+<p>Not less remarkable is the caterpillar. Its colour is a vague yellow. On
+the summit of thinly sown tubercles crowned with a palisade of black
+hairs are set pearls of a t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>urquoise-blue. The burly brown cocoon, which
+is notable for its curious tunnel of exit, like an eel-pot, is always
+found at the base of an old almond-tree, adhering to the bark. The
+foliage of the same tree nourishes the caterpillar.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the 6th of May a female emerged from her cocoon in my
+presence on my laboratory table. I cloistered her immediately, all damp
+with the moisture of metamorphosis, in a cover of wire gauze. I had no
+particular intentions regarding her; I imprisoned her from mere habit;
+the habit of an observer always on the alert for what may happen.</p>
+
+<p>I was richly rewarded. About nine o'clock that evening, when the
+household was going to bed, there was a sudden hubbub in the room next
+to mine. Little Paul, half undressed, was rushing to and fro, running,
+jumping, stamping, and overturning the chairs as if possessed. I heard
+him call me. "Come quick!" he shrieked; "come and see these butterflies!
+Big as birds! The room's full of them!"</p>
+
+<p>I ran. There was that which justified the child's enthusiasm and his
+hardly hyperbolical exclamation. It was an invasion of giant
+butterflies; an invasion hitherto unexampled in our house. Four were
+already caught and placed in a bird-cage. Others&mdash;numbers of them&mdash;were
+flying across the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>This astonishing sight recalled the prisoner of the morning to my mind.
+"Put on your togs, kiddy!" I told my son; "put down your cage, and come
+with me. We shall see something worth seeing."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+<p>We had to go downstairs to reach my study, which occupies the right wing
+of the house. In the kitchen we met the servant; she too was bewildered
+by the state of affairs. She was pursuing the huge butterflies with her
+apron, having taken them at first for bats.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as though the Great Peacock had taken possession of my whole
+house, more or less. What would it be upstairs, where the prisoner was,
+the cause of this invasion? Happily one of the two study windows had
+been left ajar; the road was open.</p>
+
+<p><a name="peacock" id="peacock"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-180.jpg"
+             alt="THE GREAT PEACOCK OR EMPEROR MOTH." /><br />
+         <b>THE GREAT PEACOCK OR EMPEROR MOTH.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>Candle in hand, we entered the room. What we saw is unforgettable. With
+a soft <i>flic-flac</i> the great night-moths were flying round the
+wire-gauze cover, alighting, taking flight, returning, mounting to the
+ceiling, re-descending. They rushed at the candle and extinguished it
+with a flap of the wing; they fluttered on our shoulders, clung to our
+clothing, grazed our faces. My study had become a cave of a necromancer,
+the darkness alive with creatures of the night! Little Paul, to reassure
+himself, held my hand much tighter than usual.</p>
+
+<p>How many were there? About twenty. To these add those which had strayed
+into the kitchen, the nursery, and other rooms in the house, and the
+total must have been nearly forty. It was a memorable sight&mdash;the Night
+of the Great Peacock! Come from all points of the compass, warned I know
+not how, here were forty lovers eager to do homage to the maiden
+princess that morning born in the sacred precincts of my study.</p>
+
+<p>For the time being I troubled the swarm of pretenders no further. The
+flame of the candle endangered the visitors; they threw themselves into
+it stupidly and singed themselves slightly. On the morrow we could
+resume our study of them, and make certain carefully devised
+experiments.</p>
+
+<p>To clear the ground a little for what is to follow, let me speak of what
+was repeated every night during the eight nights my observations lasted.
+Every night, when it was quite dark, between eight and ten o'clock, the
+butterflies arrived one by one. The weather was stormy; the sky heavily
+clouded; the darkness was so profound that out of doors, in the garden
+and away from the trees, one could scarcely see one's hand before one's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to such darkness as this there were certain difficulties of
+access. The house is hidden by great plane-trees; an alley densely
+bordered with lilacs and rose-trees make a kind of outer vestibule to
+the entrance; it is protected from the <i>mistral</i> by groups of pines and
+screens of cypress. A thicket of evergreen shrubs forms a rampart at a
+few paces from the door. It was across this maze of leafage, and in
+absolute darkness, that the butterflies had to find their way in order
+to attain the end of their pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>Under such conditions the screech-owl would not dare to forsake its
+hollow in the olive-tree. The butterfly, better endowed with its faceted
+eyes than the owl with its single pupils, goes forward without
+hesitation, and threads the obstacles without contact. So well it
+directs its tortuous flight that, in spite of all the obstacles to be
+evaded, it arrives in a state of perfect freshness, its great wings
+intact, without the slightest flaw. The darkness is light enough for the
+butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>Even if we suppose it to be sensitive to rays unknown to the ordinary
+retina, this extraordinary sight could not be the sense that warns the
+butterfly at a distance and brings it hastening to the bride. Distance
+and the objects interposed make the suggestion absurd.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, apart from illusory refractions, of which there is no question
+here, the indications of light are precise; one goes straight to the
+object seen. But the butterfly was sometimes mistaken: not in the
+general direction, but concerning the precise position of the attractive
+object. I have mentioned that the nursery on the other side of the house
+to my study, which was the actual goal of the visitors, was full of
+butterflies before a light was taken into it. These were certainly
+incorrectly informed. In the kitchen there was the same crowd of
+seekers gone astray; but there the light of a lamp, an irresistible
+attraction to nocturnal insects, might have diverted the pilgrims.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider only such areas as were in darkness. There the pilgrims
+were numerous. I found them almost everywhere in the neighbourhood of
+their goal. When the captive was in my study the butterflies did not all
+enter by the open window, the direct and easy way, the captive being
+only a few yards from the window. Several penetrated <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>the house
+downstairs, wandered through the hall, and reached the staircase, which
+was barred at the top by a closed door.</p>
+
+<p>These data show us that the visitors to the wedding-feast did not go
+straight to their goal as they would have done were they attracted by
+any kind of luminous radiations, whether known or unknown to our
+physical science. Something other than radiant energy warned them at a
+distance, led them to the neighbourhood of the precise spot, and left
+the final discovery to be made after a vague and hesitating search. The
+senses of hearing and smell warn us very much in this way; they are not
+precise guides when we try to determine exactly the point of origin of a
+sound or smell.</p>
+
+<p>What sense is it that informs this great butterfly of the whereabouts of
+his mate, and leads him wandering through the night? What organ does
+this sense affect? One suspects the antenn&aelig;; in the male butterfly they
+actually seem to be sounding, interrogating empty space with their long
+feathery plumes. Are these splendid plumes merely items of finery, or do
+they really play a part in the perception of the effluvia which guide
+the lover? It seemed easy, on the occasion I spoke of, to devise a
+conclusive experiment.</p>
+
+<p>On the morrow of the invasion I found in my study eight of my nocturnal
+visitors. They were perched, motionless, upon the cross-mouldings of the
+second window, which had remained closed. The others, having concluded
+their ballet by about ten o'clock at night, had left as they had
+entered, by the other window, which was left open night and day. These
+eight persevering lovers were just what I required for my experiment.</p>
+
+<p>With a sharp pair of scissors, and without otherwise touching the
+butterflies, I cut off their antenn&aelig; near the base. The victims barely
+noticed the operation. None moved; there was scarcely a flutter of the
+wings. Their condition was excellent; the wou<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>n<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>d did not seem to be in
+the least serious. They were not perturbed by physical suffering, and
+would therefore be all the better adapted to my designs. They passed the
+rest of the day in placid immobility on the cross-bars of the window.</p>
+
+<p>A few other arrangements were still to be made. In particular it was
+necessary to change the scene; not to leave the female under the eyes of
+the mutilated butterflies at the moment of resuming their nocturnal
+flight; the difficulty of the search must not be lessened. I therefore
+removed the cage and its captive, and placed it under a porch on the
+other side of the house, at a distance of some fifty paces from my
+study.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall I went for a last time to inspect my eight victims. Six had
+left by the open window; two still remained, but they had fallen on the
+floor, and no longer had the strength to recover themselves if turned
+over on their backs. They were exhausted, dying. Do not accuse my
+surgery, however. Such early decease was observed repeatedly, with no
+intervention on my part.</p>
+
+<p>Six, in better condition, had departed. Would they return to the call
+that attracted them the night before? Deprived of their antenn&aelig;, would
+they be able to find the captive, now placed at a considerable distance
+from her original position?</p>
+
+<p>The cage was in darkness, almost in the open air. From time to time I
+visited it with a net and lantern. The visitors were captured,
+inspected, and immediately released in a neighbouring room, of which I
+closed the door. This gradual elimination allowed me to count the
+visitors exactly without danger of counting the same butterfly more than
+once. Moreover, the provisional pris<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>on, large and bare, in no wise
+harmed or endangered the prisoners; they found a quiet retreat there and
+ample space. Similar precautions were taken during the rest of my
+experiments.</p>
+
+<p>After half-past ten no more arrived. The reception was over. Total,
+twenty-five males captured, of which one only was deprived of its
+antenn&aelig;. So of the six operated on earlier in the day, which were strong
+enough to leave my study and fly back to the fields, only one had
+returned to the cage. A poor result, in which I could place no
+confidence as proving whether the antenn&aelig; did or did not play a
+directing part. It was necessary to begin again upon a larger scale.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning I visited the prisoners of the day before. What I saw was
+not encouraging. A large number were scattered on the ground, almost
+inert. Taken between the fingers, several of them gave scarcely a sign
+of life. Little was to be hoped from these, it would seem. Still, I
+determined to try; perhaps they would regain their vigour at the lover's
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>The twenty-four prisoners were all subjected to the amputation of their
+antenn&aelig;. The one operated on the day before was put aside as dying or
+nearly so. Finally the door of the prison was left open for the rest of
+the day. Those might leave who could; those could join in the carnival
+who were able. In order to put those that might leave the room to the
+test of a search, the cage, which they must otherwise have encountered
+at the threshold, was again removed, and placed in a room of the
+opposite wing, on the ground floor. There was of course free access to
+this room.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+<p>Of the twenty-four lacking their antenn&aelig; sixteen only left the room.
+Eight were powerless to do so; they were dying. Of the sixteen, how many
+returned to the cage that night? Not one. My captives that night were
+only seven, all new-comers, all wearing antenn&aelig;. This result seemed to
+prove that the amputation of the antenn&aelig; was a matter of serious
+significance. But it would not do to conclude as yet: one doubt
+remained.</p>
+
+<p>"A fine state I am in! How shall I dare to appear before the other
+dogs?" said Mouflard, the puppy whose ears had been pitilessly docked.
+Had my butterflies apprehensions similar to Master Mouflard's? Deprived
+of their beautiful plumes, were they ashamed to appear in the midst of
+their rivals, and to prefer their suits? Was it confusion on their part,
+or want of guidance? Was it not rather exhaustion after an attempt
+exceeding the duration of an ephemeral passion? Experience would show
+me.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth night I took fourteen new-comers and set them apart as
+they came in a room in which they spent the night. On the morrow,
+profiting by their diurnal immobility, I removed a little of the hair
+from the centre of the corselet or neck. This slight tonsure did not
+inconvenience the insects, so easily was the silky fur removed, nor did
+it deprive them of any organ which might later on be necessary in the
+search for the female. To them it was nothing; for me it was the
+unmistakable sign of a repeated visit.</p>
+
+<p>This time there were none incapable of flight. At night the fourteen
+shavelings escaped into the open air. The cage, of course, was again in
+a new place. In two ho<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>urs I captured twenty butterflies, of whom two
+were tonsured; no more. As for those whose antenn&aelig; I had amputated the
+night before, not one reappeared. Their nuptial period was over.</p>
+
+<p>Of fourteen marked by the tonsure two only returned. Why did the other
+twelve fail to appear, although furnished with their supposed guides,
+their antenn&aelig;? To this I can see only one reply: that the Great Peacock
+is promptly exhausted by the ardours of the mating season.</p>
+
+<p>With a view to mating, the sole end of its life, the great moth is
+endowed with a marvellous prerogative. It has the power to discover the
+object of its desire in spite of distance, in spite of obstacles. A few
+hours, for two or three nights, are given to its search, its nuptial
+flights. If it cannot profit by them, all is ended; the compass fails,
+the lamp expires. What profit could life hold henceforth? Stoically the
+creature withdraws into a corner and sleeps the last sleep, the end of
+illusions and the end of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>The Great Peacock exists as a butterfly only to perpetuate itself. It
+knows nothing of food. While so many others, joyful banqueters, fly from
+flower to flower, unrolling their spiral trunks to plunge them into
+honeyed blossoms, this incomparable ascetic, completely freed from the
+servitude of the stomach, has no means of restoring its strength. Its
+buccal members are mere vestiges, useless simulacra, not real organs
+able to perform their duties. Not a sip of honey can ever enter its
+stomach; a magnificent prerogative, if it is not long enjoyed. If the
+lamp is to burn it must be filled with oil. The Great Peacock renounces
+the joys of the palate; but with them it surrenders long life. Two or
+three nights&mdash;just long enough to allow the couple to m<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>eet and mate&mdash;and
+all is over; the great butterfly is dead.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is meant by the non-appearance of those whose antenn&aelig; I
+removed? Did they prove that the lack of antenn&aelig; rendered them incapable
+of finding the cage in which the prisoner waited? By no means. Like
+those marked with the tonsure, which had undergone no damaging
+operation, they proved only that their time was finished. Mutilated or
+intact, they could do no more on account of age, and their absence meant
+nothing. Owing to the delay inseparable from the experiment, the part
+played by the antenn&aelig; escaped me. It was doubtful before; it remained
+doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>My prisoner under the wire-gauze cover lived for eight days. Every night
+she attracted a swarm of visitors, now to one part of the house, now to
+another. I caught them with the net and released them as soon as
+captured in a closed room, where they passed the night. On the next day
+they were marked, by means of a slight tonsure on the thorax.</p>
+
+<p>The total number of butterflies attracted on these eight nights amounted
+to a hundred and fifty; a stupendous number when I consider what
+searches I had to undertake during the two following years in order to
+collect the specimens necessary to the continuation of my investigation.
+Without being absolutely undiscoverable, in my immediate neighbourhood
+the cocoons of the Great Peacock are at least extremely rare, as the
+trees on which they are found are not common. For two winters I visited
+all the decrepit almond-trees at hand, inspected them all at the base of
+the trunk, under the jungle of stubborn grasses and undergrowth that
+surrounded them; and how often I returned with empty hands! Thus my
+hundred and fifty butterflies had come from some little distance;
+perhaps from a radius of a mile and a quarter or more. How did th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>ey
+learn of what was happening in my study?</p>
+
+<p>Three agents of information affect the senses at a distance: sight,
+sound, and smell. Can we speak of vision in this connection? Sight could
+very well guide the arrivals once they had entered the open window; but
+how could it help them out of doors, among unfamiliar surroundings? Even
+the fabulous eye of the lynx, which could see through walls, would not
+be sufficient; we should have to imagine a keenness of vision capable of
+annihilating leagues of space. It is needless to discuss the matter
+further; sight cannot be the guiding sense.</p>
+
+<p>Sound is equally out of the question. The big-bodied creature capable of
+calling her mates from such a distance is absolutely mute, even to the
+most sensitive ear. Does she perhaps emit vibrations of such delicacy or
+rapidity that only the most sensitive microphone could appreciate them?
+The idea is barely possible; but let us remember that the visitors must
+have been warned at distances of some thousands of yards. Under these
+conditions it is useless to think of acoustics.</p>
+
+<p>Smell remains. Scent, better than any other impression in the domain of
+our senses, would explain the invasion of butterflies, and their
+difficulty at the very last in immediately finding the object of their
+search. Are there effluvia analogous to what we call odour: effluvia of
+extreme subtlety, absolutely imperceptible to us, yet capable of
+stimulating a sense-organ far more sensitive than our own? A simple
+experiment suggested itself. I would mask these effluvia, stifle them
+under a powerful, tenacious odour, which would take complete possession
+of the sense-organ and neutralise the less powerful impression.</p>
+
+<p>I began by sprinkling naphthaline in the room intended for the reception
+of the males that evening. Beside the female, inside <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>the wire-gauze
+cover, I placed a large capsule full of the same substance. When the
+hour of the nocturnal visit arrived I had only to stand at the door of
+the room to smell a smell as of a gas-works. Well, my artifice failed.
+The butterflies arrived as usual, entered the room, traversed its
+gas-laden atmosphere, and made for the wire-gauze cover with the same
+certainty as in a room full of fresh air.</p>
+
+<p>My confidence in the olfactory theory was shaken. Moreover, I could not
+continue my experiments. On the ninth day, exhausted by her fruitless
+period of waiting, the female died, having first deposited her barren
+eggs upon the woven wire of her cage. Lacking a female, nothing could be
+done until the following year.</p>
+
+<p>I determined next time to take suitable precautions and to make all
+preparations for repeating at will the experiments already made and
+others which I had in mind. I set to work at once, without delay.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer I began to buy caterpillars at a halfpenny apiece.</p>
+
+<p>The market was in the hands of some neighbouring urchins, my habitual
+providers. On Friday, free of the terrors of grammar, they scoured the
+fields, finding from time to time the Great Peacock caterpillar, and
+bringing it to me clinging to the end of a stick. They did not dare to
+touch it, poor little imps! They were thunderstruck at my audacity when
+I seized it in my fingers as they would the familiar silkworm.</p>
+
+<p>Reared upon twigs of the almond-tre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>e, my menagerie soon provided me with
+magnificent cocoons. In winter assiduous search at the base of the
+native trees completed my collection. Friends interested in my
+researches came to my aid. Finally, after some trouble, what with an
+open market, commercial negotiations, and searching, at the cost of many
+scratches, in the undergrowth, I became the owner of an assortment of
+cocoons of which twelve, larger and heavier than the rest, announced
+that they were those of females.</p>
+
+<p>Disappointment awaited me. May arrived; a capricious month which set my
+preparations at naught, troublesome as these had been. Winter returned.
+The <i>mistral</i> shrieked, tore the budding leaves of the plane-trees, and
+scattered them over the ground. It was cold as December. We had to
+light fires in the evening, and resume the heavy clothes we had begun to
+leave off.</p>
+
+<p>My butterflies were too sorely tried. They emerged late and were torpid.
+Around my cages, in which the females waited&mdash;to-day one, to-morrow
+another, according to the order of their birth&mdash;few males or none came
+from without. Yet there were some in the neighbourhood, for those with
+large antenn&aelig; which issued from my collection of cocoons were placed in
+the garden directly they had emerged, and were recognised. Whether
+neighbours or strangers, very few came, and those without enthusiasm.
+For a moment they entered, then disappeared and did not reappear. The
+lovers were as cold as the season.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, too, the low temperature was unfavourable to the informing
+effluvia, which might well be increased by heat and lessened by cold as
+is the case with many odours. My year was lost. Researc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>h is
+disappointing work when the experimenter is the slave of the return and
+the caprices of a brief season of the year.</p>
+
+<p>For the third time I began again. I reared caterpillars; I scoured the
+country in search of cocoons. When May returned I was tolerably
+provided. The season was fine, responding to my hopes. I foresaw the
+affluence of butterflies which had so impressed me at the outset, when
+the famous invasion occurred which was the origin of my experiments.</p>
+
+<p>Every night, by squadrons of twelve, twenty, or more, the visitors
+appeared. The female, a strapping, big-bellied matron, clung to the
+woven wire of the cover. There was no movement on her part; not even a
+flutter of the wings. One would have thought her indifferent to all
+that occurred. No odour was emitted that was perceptible to the most
+sensitive nostrils of the household; no sound that the keenest ears of
+the household could perceive. Motionless, recollected, she waited.</p>
+
+<p>The males, by twos, by threes and more, fluttered upon the dome of the
+cover, scouring over it quickly in all directions, beating it
+continually with the ends of their wings. There were no conflicts
+between rivals. Each did his best to penetrate the enclosure, without
+betraying any sign of jealousy of the others. Tiring of their fruitless
+attempts, they would fly away and join the dance of the gyrating crowd.
+Some, in despair, would escape by the open window: new-comers would
+replace them: and until ten o'clock or thereabouts the wire dome of the
+cover would be the scene of continual attempts at approach, incessantly
+commencing, quickly wearying, quickly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>resumed.</p>
+
+<p>Every night the position of the cage was changed. I placed it north of
+the house and south; on the ground-floor and the first floor; in the
+right wing of the house, or fifty yards away in the left wing; in the
+open air, or hidden in some distant room. All these sudden removals,
+devised to put the seekers off the scent, troubled them not at all. My
+time and my pains were wasted, so far as deceiving them was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>The memory of places has no part in the finding of the female. For
+instance, the day before the cage was installed in a certain room. The
+males visited the room and fluttered about the cage for a couple of
+hours, and some even passed the night there. On the following day, at
+sunset, when I moved the cage, all were out of doors. Although their
+lives are so ephemeral, the youngest were ready to resume their
+nocturnal expeditions a second and even a third time. Where did they
+first go, these veterans of a day?</p>
+
+<p>They knew precisely where the cage had been the night before. One would
+have expected them to return to it, guided by memory; and that not
+finding it they would go out to continue their search elsewhere. No;
+contrary to my expectation, nothing of the kind appeared. None came to
+the spot which had been so crowded the night before; none paid even a
+passing visit. The room was recognised as an empty room, with no
+previous examination, such as would apparently be necessary to
+contradict the memory of the place. A more positive guide than memory
+called them elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>the female was always visible, behind the meshes of the
+wire-gauze cover. The visitors, seeing plainly in the dark night, must
+have been able to see her by the vague luminosity of what for us is the
+dark. What would happen if I imprisoned her in an opaque receptacle?
+Would not such a receptacle arrest or set free the informing effluvia
+according to its nature?</p>
+
+<p>Practical physics has given us wireless telegraphy by means of the
+Hertzian vibrations of the ether. Had the Great Peacock butterfly
+outstripped and anticipated mankind in this direction? In order to
+disturb the whole surrounding neighbourhood, to warn pretenders at a
+distance of a mile or more, does the newly emerged female make use of
+electric or magnetic waves, known or unknown, that a screen of one
+material would arrest while another would allow them to pass? In a word,
+does she, after her fashion, employ a system of wireless telegraphy? I
+see nothing impossible in this; insects are responsible for many
+inventions equally marvellous.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly I lodged the female in boxes of various materials; boxes of
+tin-plate, wood, and cardboard. All were hermetically closed, even
+sealed with a greasy paste. I also used a glass bell resting upon a
+base-plate of glass.</p>
+
+<p>Under these conditions not a male arrived; not one, though the warmth
+and quiet of the evening were propitious. Whatever its nature, whether
+of glass, metal, card, or wood, the closed receptacle was evidently an
+insuperable obstacle to the warning effluvia.</p>
+
+<p>A layer of cotton-wool two fingers in thickness had the same result. I
+placed the female in a large glass jar, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> laced a piece of thin cotton
+batting over the mouth for a cover; this again guarded the secret of my
+laboratory. Not a male appeared.</p>
+
+<p>But when I placed the females in boxes which were imperfectly closed, or
+which had chinks in their sides, or even hid them in a drawer or a
+cupboard, I found the males arrived in numbers as great as when the
+object of their search lay in the cage of open wire-work freely exposed
+on a table. I have a vivid memory of one evening when the recluse was
+hidden in a hat-box at the bottom of a wall-cupboard. The arrivals went
+straight to the closed doors, and beat them with their wings, <i>toc-toc</i>,
+trying to enter. Wandering pilgrims, come from I know not where, across
+fields and meadows, they knew perfectly what was behind the doors of the
+cupboard.</p>
+
+<p>So we must abandon the idea that the butterfly has any means of
+communication comparable to our wireless telegraphy, as any kind of
+screen, whether a good or a bad conductor, completely stops the signals
+of the female. To give them free passage and allow them to penetrate to
+a distance one condition is indispensable: the enclosure in which the
+captive is confined must not be hermetically sealed; there must be a
+communication between it and the outer air. This again points to the
+probability of an odour, although this is contradicted by my experiment
+with the naphthaline.</p>
+
+<p>My cocoons were all hatched, and the problem was still obscure. Should I
+begin all over again in the fourth year? I did not do so, for the reason
+that it is difficult to observe a nocturnal butterfly if one wishes to
+follow it in all its intimate actions. The lover needs no light to
+attain his ends; but my imperfect human vision cannot penetr<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>ate the
+darkness. I should require a candle at least, and a candle would be
+constantly extinguished by the revolving swarm. A lantern would obviate
+these eclipses, but its doubtful light, interspersed with heavy shadows,
+by no means commends it to the scruples of an observer, who must see,
+and see well.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the light of a lamp diverts the butterflies from their object,
+distracts them from their affairs, and seriously compromises the success
+of the observer. The moment they enter, they rush frantically at the
+flame, singe their down, and thereupon, terrified by the heat, are of no
+profit to the observer. If, instead of being roasted, they are held at a
+distance by an envelope of glass, they press as closely as they can to
+the flame, and remain motionless, hypnotised.</p>
+
+<p><a name="peacock2" id="peacock2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-196.jpg"
+             alt="THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH." /><br />
+         <b>THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH. THE PILGRIMS<br />DIVERTED BY THE
+LIGHT OF A LAMP.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>One night, the female being in the dining-room, on the table, facing the
+open window, a petroleum lamp, furnished with a large reflector in
+opaline glass, was hanging from the ceiling. The arrivals alighted on
+the dome of the wire-gauze cover, crowding eagerly about the
+prisoner; others, saluting her in passing, flew to the lamp, circled
+round it a few times, and then, fascinated by the luminous splendour
+radiating from the opal cone of light, clung there motionless under the
+reflector. Already the children were raising their hands to seize them.
+"Leave them," I said, "leave them. Let us be hospitable: do not disturb
+the pilgrims who have come to the tabernacle of the light."</p>
+
+<p>During the whole evening not one of them moved. Next day they were still
+there. The intoxication of the light had made them forget the
+intoxication of love.</p>
+
+<p>With creatures so madly in love with the light precise and prolonged
+experimentation is impracticable the moment the observer requires
+artificial light. I renounced the Great Peacock and its nocturnal
+habits. I required a butterfly with different habits; equally notable as
+a lover, but seeking out the beloved by day.</p>
+
+<p>Before going on to speak of my experiments with a subject fulfilling
+these conditions, let me break the chronological order of my record in
+order to say a few words concerning another insect, which appeared after
+I had completed these inquiries. I refer to the Lesser Peacock (<i>Attacus
+pavonia minor</i>, Lin.).</p>
+
+<p>Some one brought me, from what locality I do not know, a superb cocoon
+enveloped in an ample wrapping of white silk. From this covering, which
+lay in large irregular folds, the chrysalis was easily detached; in
+shape like that of the Great Peacock, but considerably less in size. The
+anterior extremity, which is defended by an arrangement of fine twigs,
+converging, and free at the converging ends, forming a device not unlike
+an eel-pot, which presents access to the chrysalis while allowing the
+butterfly to emerge without breaking the defence, indicated a relative
+of the great nocturnal butterfly; the silk-work denoted a spinning
+caterpillar.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of March this curious cocoon yielded up a female of the
+Lesser Peacock, which was immediately sequestered under a wire-gauze
+cover in my study. I opened the window to allow news of the event to
+reach the surrounding country, and left it open so that such visitors as
+presented themselves should find free access to the cage. The captive
+clung to the wire gauze and did not move for a week.</p>
+
+<p>She was a superb creature, this prisoner of mine, with her suit of brown
+velvet, crossed by undulating lines. The neck was surrounded by white
+fur; there was a carmine spot at the extremity of the upper wings, and
+four great eyes in which were grouped, in concentric crescents, black,
+white, red, and yellow ochre: almost the colouring of the Great Peacock,
+but more vivid. Three or four times in my life I had encountered this
+butterfly, so remarkable for its size and its costume. The cocoon I had
+recently seen for the first time; the male I had never seen. I only knew
+that, according to the books, it was half the size of the female, and
+less vividly coloured, with orange-yellow on the lower wings.</p>
+
+<p>Would he appear, the elegant unknown, with waving plumes; the butterfly
+I had never yet seen, so rare does the Lesser Peacock seem to be in our
+country? Would he, in some distant hedge, receive warning of the bride
+who waited on my study table? I dared to hope it, and I was right. He
+arrived even sooner than I had hoped.</p>
+
+<p>Noon struck as we were sitting down to table, when little Paul, delayed
+by his absorption in the expected event, suddenly ran to rejoin us, his
+cheeks glowing. Between his fingers we saw the fluttering wings of a
+handsome butterfly, caught but a moment before, while it was hovering in
+front of my study. He showed it me, questioning me with his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Aha!" I cried, "this is precisely the pilgrim we are waiting for. Fold
+your napkin and come and see what happens. We will dine later."</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was forgotten before the marvels that came to pass.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> With
+inconceivable punctuality the butterflies hastened to meet the magical
+call of the captive. With tortuous flight they arrived one by one. All
+came from the north. This detail is significant. A week earlier there
+had been a savage return of the winter. The <i>bise</i> blew tempestuously,
+killing the early almond blossom. It was one of those ferocious storms
+which in the South commonly serve as a prelude to the spring. But the
+temperature had now suddenly softened, although the wind still blew from
+the north.</p>
+
+<p>Now on this first occasion all the butterflies hastening to the prisoner
+entered the garden from the north. They followed the direction of the
+wind; not one flew against it. If their guide was a sense of smell like
+ours, if they were guided by fragrant atoms suspended in the air, they
+should have arrived in the opposite direction. Coming from the south, we
+might believe them to be warned by effluvia carried on the wind; coming
+from the north in time of <i>mistral</i>, that resistless sweeper of earth
+and air, how can we suppose that they had perceived, at a remote
+distance, what we will call an odour? The idea of a flow of odoriferous
+atoms in a direction contrary to that of the aerial torrent seems to me
+inadmissible.</p>
+
+<p>For two hours, under a radiant sun, the visitors came and went before
+the outer wall of the study. Most of them sought for a long time,
+exploring the wall, flying on a level with the ground. To see them thus
+hesitating you would say that they were puzzled to find the exact
+position of the lure which called them. Although they had come from such
+a distance without a mistake, they seemed imperfectly informed once they
+were on the spot. Nevertheless, sooner or later they entered the room
+and saluted the captive, without showing any great ardour. At two
+o'clock all was over. Ten butterflies had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole week, and always about noon, at the hou<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>r<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> of the
+brightest sunlight, the butterflies arrived, but in decreasing numbers.
+The total approached forty. I thought it useless to repeat experiments
+which would add nothing to what I had already learned. I will confine
+myself to stating two facts. In the first place, the Lesser Peacock is
+diurnal; that is to say, it celebrates its mating under the dazzling
+brilliance of noon. It needs the full force of the sunlight. The Great
+Peacock, on the contrary, which it so closely resembles both in its
+adult form and the work of its caterpillar, requires the darkness of the
+first hours of the night. Who can explain this strange contrast in
+habits?</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, a powerful current of air, sweeping away in a
+contrary direction all particles that might inform the sense of smell,
+does not prevent the butterflies from arriving from a direction opposite
+to that taken by the effluvial stream, as we understand such matters.</p>
+
+<p>To continue: I needed a diurnal moth or butterfly: not the Lesser
+Peacock, which came too late, when I had nothing to ask of it, but
+another, no matter what, provided it was a prompt guest at the wedding
+feast. Was I to find such an insect?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE OAK EGGAR, OR BANDED MONK</h3>
+
+
+<p>Yes: I was to find it. I even had it already in my posse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>ssion. An urchin
+of seven years, with an alert countenance, not washed every day, bare
+feet, and dilapidated breeches supported by a piece of string, who
+frequented the house as a dealer in turnips and tomatoes, arrived one
+day with his basket of vegetables. Having received the few halfpence
+expected by his mother as the price of the garden-stuff, and having
+counted them one by one into the hollow of his hand, he took from his
+pocket an object which he had discovered the day before beneath a hedge
+when gathering greenstuff for his rabbits.</p>
+
+<p>"And this&mdash;will you have this?" he said, handing me the object. "Why,
+certainly I will have it. Try to find me more, as many as you can, and
+on Sunday you shall have lots of rides on the wooden horses. In the
+meantime here is a penny for you. Don't forget it when you make up your
+accounts; don't mix it with your turnip-money; put it by itself."
+Beaming with satisfaction at such wealth, little touzle-head promised to
+search industriously, already foreseeing a fortune.</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone I examined the thing. It was worth examination. It was
+a fine cocoon, thick and with blunt ends, very like a silkworm's cocoon,
+firm to the touch and of a tawny colour. A brief reference to the
+text-books almost convinced me that this was a cocoon of the <i>Bombyx
+quercus</i>.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> If so, what a find! I could continue my inquiry and perhaps
+confirm what my study of the Great Peacock had made me suspect.</p>
+
+<p>The Bombyx of the oak-tree is, in fact, a classic moth; indeed, there is
+no entomological text-book but speaks of its exploits at mating-time. It
+is said that a female emerged from th<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>e pupa in captivity, in the
+interior of an apartment, and even in a closed box. It was far from the
+country, amidst the tumult of a large city. Nevertheless, the event was
+known to those concerned in the woods and meadows. Guided by some
+mysterious compass, the males arrived, hastening from the distant
+fields; they went to the box, fluttered against it, and flew to and fro
+in the room.</p>
+
+<p>These marvels I had learned by reading; but to see such a thing with
+one's own eyes, and at the same time to devise experiments, is quite
+another thing. What had my penny bargain in store for me? Would the
+famous Bombyx issue from it?</p>
+
+<p>Let us call it by its other name, the Banded Monk. This original name of
+Monk was suggested by the costume of the male; a monk's robe of a modest
+rusty red. But in the case of the female the brown fustian gives place
+to a beautiful velvet, with a pale transversal band and little white
+eyes on the fore pair of wings.</p>
+
+<p>The Monk is not a common butterfly which can be caught by any one who
+takes out a net at the proper season. I have never seen it around our
+village or in the solitude of my grounds during a residence of twenty
+years. It is true that I am not a fervent butterfly-catcher; the dead
+insect of the collector's cabinet has little interest for me; I must
+have it living, in the exercise of its functions. But although I have
+not the collector's zeal I have an attentive eye to all that flies or
+crawls in the fields. A butterfly so remarkable for its size and
+colouring would never have escaped my notice had I encountered it.</p>
+
+<p>The little searcher whom I had enticed by a promise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> of rides upon wooden
+horses never made a second find. For three years I requisitioned friends
+and neighbours, and especially their children, sharp-sighted snappers-up
+of trifles; I myself hunted often under heaps of withered leaves; I
+inspected stone-heaps and visited hollow tree-trunks. Useless pains; the
+precious cocoon was not to be found. It is enough to say that the Banded
+Monk is extremely rare in my neighbourhood. The importance of this fact
+will presently appear.</p>
+
+<p>As I suspected, my cocoon was truly that of the celebrated Oak Eggar. On
+the 20th of August a female emerged from it: corpulent, big-bellied,
+coloured like the male, but lighter in hue. I placed her under the usual
+wire cover in the centre of my laboratory table, littered as it was with
+books, bottles, trays, boxes, test-tubes, and other apparatus. I have
+explained the situation in speaking of the Great Peacock. Two windows
+light the room, both opening on the garden. One was closed, the other
+open day and night. The butterfly was placed in the shade, between the
+lines of the two windows, at a distance of 12 or 15 feet.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of that day and the next went by without any occurrence worthy
+of notice. Hanging by the feet to the front of the wire cover, on the
+side nearest to the light, the prisoner was motionless, inert. There was
+no oscillation of the wings, no tremor of the antenn&aelig;, the female of the
+Great Peacock behaved in a similar fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The female Bombyx gradually matured, her tender tissues gradually
+becoming firmer. By some process of which our scientists have not the
+least idea she elaborated a mysterious lure which would bring her lovers
+from the four corners of the sky. What was happening in this big-bellied
+body; what transmutations were accomplished, thus to affect the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+countryside?</p>
+
+<p>On the third day the bride was ready. The festival opened brilliantly. I
+was in the garden, already despairing of success, for the days were
+passing and nothing had occurred, wh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>en towards three in the afternoon,
+the weather being very hot and the sun radiant, I perceived a crowd of
+butterflies gyrating in the embrasure of the open window.</p>
+
+<p>The lovers had at last come to visit their lady. Some were emerging from
+the room, others were entering it; others, clinging to the wall of the
+house, were resting as though exhausted by a long journey. I could see
+others approaching in the distance, flying over the walls, over the
+screens of cypress. They came from all directions, but at last with
+decreasing frequency. I had missed the opening of the convocation, and
+now the gathering was almost complete.</p>
+
+<p>I went indoors and upstairs. This time, in full daylight and without
+losing a detail, I witnessed once more the astonishing spectacle to
+which the great nocturnal butterfly had first introduced me. The study
+contained a cloud of males, which I estimated, at a glance, as being
+about sixty in number, so far as the movement and confusion allowed me
+to count them at all. After circling a few times over the cage many of
+them went to the open window, but returned immediately to recommence
+their evolutions. The most eager alighted on the cover, trampling on one
+another, jostling one another, trying to get the best places. On the
+other side of the barrier the captive, her great body hanging against
+the wire, waited immovable. She betrayed not a sign of emotion in the
+face of this turbulent swarm.</p>
+
+<p>Going and entering, perched on the cover or fluttering round the room,
+for more than three hours they continued their frenzied saraband. But
+the sun was sinking, and the temperature was slowly falling. The ardour
+of the butterflies also cooled. Many went out no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>t to return. Others took
+up their positions to wait for the gaieties of the following day; they
+clung to the cross-bars of the closed window as the males of the Great
+Peacock had done. The rejoicings were over for the day. They would
+certainly be renewed on the morrow, since the courtship was without
+result on account of the barrier of the wire-gauze cover.</p>
+
+<p>But, alas I to my great disappointment, they were not resumed, and the
+fault was mine. Late in the day a Praying Mantis was brought to me,
+which merited attention on account of its exceptionally small size.
+Preoccupied with the events of the afternoon, and absent-minded, I
+hastily placed the predatory insect under the same cover as the moth.
+It did not occur to me for a moment that this cohabitation could lead to
+any harm. The Mantis was so slender, and the other so corpulent!</p>
+
+<p>Alas! I little knew the fury of carnage animating the creature that
+wielded those tiny grappling-irons! Next morning I met with a
+disagreeable surprise: I found the little Mantis devouring the great
+moth. The head and the fore part of the thorax had already disappeared.
+Horrible creature! at what an evil hour you came to me! Goodbye to my
+researches, the plans which I had caressed all night in my imagination!
+For three years for lack of a subject, I was unable to resume them.</p>
+
+<p>Bad luck, however, was not to make me forget the little I had learned.
+On one single occasion about sixty males had arrived. Considering the
+rarity of the Oak Eggar, and remembering the years of fruitless search
+on the part of my helpers and myself, this number was no less than
+stupefying. The undiscoverable had suddenly become multitudinous at the
+call of the female.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<p>Whence did they come? From all sides, and undoubtedly from considerable
+distances. During my prolonged searches every bush and thicket and heap
+of stones in my neighbourhood had become familiar to me, and I can
+assert that the Oak Eggar was not to be found there. For such a swarm to
+collect as I found in my laboratory the moths must have come from all
+directions, from the whole district, and within a radius that I dare not
+guess at.</p>
+
+<p>Three years went by and by chance two more cocoons of the Monk or Oak
+Eggar again fell into my hands. Both produced females, at an interval of
+a few days towards the middle of August; so that I was able to vary and
+repeat my experiments.</p>
+
+<p>I rapidly repeated the experiments which had given me such positive
+results in the instance of the Great Peacock moth. The pilgrims of the
+day were no less skilful at finding their mates than the pilgrims of the
+night. They laughed at all my tricks. Infallibly they found the
+prisoners in their wire-gauze prisons, no matter in what part of the
+house they were placed; they discovered them in the depths of a
+wall-cupboard; they divined the secret of all manner of boxes, provided
+these were not rigorously air-tight. They came no longer when the box
+was hermetically sealed. So far this was only a repetition of the feats
+of the Great Peacock.</p>
+
+<p>A box perfectly closed, so that the air contained therein had no
+communication with the external atmosphere, left the male<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> in complete
+ignorance of the recluse. Not a single one arrived, even when the box
+was exposed and plain to see on the window-sill. Thus the idea of
+strongly scented effluvia, which are cut off by screens of wood, metal,
+card, glass, or what not, returns with double force.</p>
+
+<p>I have shown that the great nocturnal moth was not thrown off the scent
+by the powerful odour of naphthaline, which I thought would mask the
+extra-subtle emanations of the female, which were imperceptible to human
+olfactory organs. I repeated the experiment with the Oak Eggar. This
+time I used all the resources of scent and stench that my knowledge of
+drugs would permit.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen saucers were arranged, some in the interior of the wire-gauze
+cover, the prison of the female, and some around it, in an unbroken
+circle. Some contained naphthaline; others the essential oil of
+spike-lavender; others petroleum, and others a solution of alkaline
+sulphur giving off a stench of rotten eggs. Short of asphyxiating the
+prisoner I could do no more. These arrangements were made in the
+morning, so that the room should be saturated when the congregation of
+lovers should arrive.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon the laboratory was filled with the most abominable
+stench, in which the penetrating aroma of spike-lavender and the stink
+of sulphuretted hydrogen were predominant. I must add that tobacco was
+habitually smoked in this room, and in abundance. The concerted odours
+of a gas-works, a smoking-room, a perfumery, a petroleum well, and a
+chemical factory&mdash;would they succeed in confusing the male moths?</p>
+
+<p>By no means. About three o'clock the moths arrived in as great numbers
+as usual. They went straight to t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>he cage, which I had covered with a
+thick cloth in order to add to their difficulties. Seeing nothing when
+once they had entered, and immersed in an extraordinary atmosphere in
+which any subtle fragrance should have been annihilated, they
+nevertheless made straight for the prisoner, and attempted to reach her
+by burrowing under the linen cloth. My artifice had no result.</p>
+
+<p>After this set-back, so obvious in its consequences, which only repeated
+the lesson of the experiments made with naphthaline when my subject was
+the Great Peacock, I ought logically to have abandoned the theory that
+the moths are guided to their wedding festivities by means of strongly
+scented effluvia. That I did not do so was due to a fortuitous
+observation. Chance often has a surprise in store which sets us on the
+right road when we have been seeking it in vain.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, while trying to determine whether sight plays any part in
+the search for the female once the males had entered the room, I placed
+the female in a bell-glass and gave her a slender twig of oak with
+withered leaves as a support. The glass was set upon a table facing the
+open window. Upon entering the room the moths could not fail to see the
+prisoner, as she stood directly in the way. The tray, containing a layer
+of sand, on which the female had passed the preceding day and night,
+covered with a wire-gauze dish-cover, was in my way. Without
+premeditation I placed it at the other end of the room on the floor, in
+a corner where there was but little light. It was a dozen yards away
+from the window.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+<p>The result of these preparations entirely upset my preconceived ideas.
+None of the arrivals stopped at the bell-glass, where the female was
+plainly to be seen, the light falling full upon her prison. Not a
+glance, not an inquiry. They all flew to the further end of the room,
+into the dark corner where I had placed the tray and the empty
+dish-cover.</p>
+
+<p>They alighted on the wire dome, explored it persistently, beating their
+wings and jostling one another. All the afternoon, until sunset, the
+moths danced about the empty cage the same saraband that the actual
+presence of the female had previously evoked. Finally they departed: not
+all, for there were some that would not go, held by some magical
+attractive force.</p>
+
+<p>Truly a strange result! The moths collected where there was apparently
+nothing to attract them, and remained there, unpersuaded by the sense of
+sight; they passed the bell-glass actually containing the female without
+halting for a moment, although she must have been seen by many of the
+moths both going and coming. Maddened by a lure, they paid no attention
+to the reality.</p>
+
+<p>What was the lure that so deceived them? All the preceding night and all
+the morning the female had remained under the wire-gauze cover;
+sometimes clinging to the wire-work, sometimes resting on the sand in
+the tray. Whatever she touched&mdash;above all, apparently, with her
+distended abdomen&mdash;was impregnated, as a result of long contact, with a
+certain emanation. This was her lure, her love-philtre; this it was that
+revolutionised the Oak Eggar world. The sand retained it for some time
+and diffus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>ed the effluvium in turn.</p>
+
+<p>They passed by the glass prison in which the female was then confined
+and hastened to the meshes of wire and the sand on which the magic
+philtre had been poured; they crowded round the deserted chamber where
+nothing of the magician remained but the odorous testimony of her
+sojourn.</p>
+
+<p>The irresistible philtre requires time for its elaboration. I conceive
+of it as an exhalation which is given off during courtship and gradually
+saturates whatever is in contact with the motionless body of the female.
+If the bell-glass was placed directly on the table, or, still better, on
+a square of glass, the communication between the inside and the outside
+was insufficient, and the males, perceiving no odour, did not arrive so
+long as that condition of things obtained. It was plain that this
+failure of transmission was not due to the action of the glass as a
+screen simply, for if I established a free communication between the
+interior of the bell-glass and the open air by supporting it on three
+small blocks, the moths did not collect round it at once, although there
+were plenty in the room; but in the course of half an hour or so the
+feminine alembic began to operate, and the visitors crowded round the
+bell-glass as usual.</p>
+
+<p>In possession of these data and this unexpected enlightenment I varied
+the experiments, but all pointed to the same conclusion. In the morning
+I established the female under the usual wire-gauze cover. For support I
+gave her a little twig of oak as before. There, motionless as if dead,
+she crouched for hours, half buried in the dry leaves, which would thus
+become impregnated with her emanations.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+<p>When the hour of the daily visits drew near I removed the twig, which
+was by then thoroughly saturated with the emanations, and laid it on a
+chair not far from the open window. On the other hand I left the female
+under the cover, plainly exposed on the table in the middle of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The moths arrived as usual: first one, then two, then three, and
+presently five and six. They entered, flew out again, re-entered,
+mounted, descended, came and went, always in the neighbourhood of the
+window, not far from which was the chair on which the twig lay. None
+made for the large table, on which, a few steps further from the window,
+the female awaited them in the wire-gauze cover. They hesitated, that
+was plain; they were still seeking.</p>
+
+<p>Finally they found. And what did they find? Simply the twig, which that
+morning had served the ample matron as bed. Their wings rapidly
+fluttering, they alighted on the foliage; they explored it over and
+under, probed it, raised it, and displaced it so that the twig finally
+fell to the floor. None the less they continued to probe between the
+leaves. Under the buffets and the draught of their wings and the
+clutches of their eager feet the little bundle of leaves ran along the
+floor like a scrap of paper patted by the paws of a cat.</p>
+
+<p>While the twig was sliding away with its band of investigators two new
+arrivals appeared. The chair lay in their path. They stopped at it and
+searched eagerly at the very spot on which the twig had been lying. But
+with these, as with the others, the real object of their desires was
+there, close by, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>under a wire cover which was not even veiled. None took
+any note of it. On the floor, a handful of butterflies were still
+hustling the bunch of leaves on which the female had reposed that
+morning; others, on the chair, were still examining the spot where the
+twig had lain. The sun sank, and the hour of departure struck. Moreover,
+the emanations were growing feebler, were evaporating. Without more ado
+the visitors left. We bade them goodbye till the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>The following tests showed me that the leaf-covered twig which
+accidentally enlightened me might be replaced by any other substance.
+Some time before the visitors were expected I placed the female on a bed
+of cloth or flannel, card or paper. I even subjected her to the rigours
+of a camp-bed of wood, glass, marble, and metal. All these objects,
+after a contact of sufficient duration, had the same attraction for the
+males as the female moth herself. They retained this property for a
+longer or shorter time, according to their nature. Cardboard, flannel,
+dust, sand, and porous objects retained it longest. Metals, marble, and
+glass, on the contrary, quickly lost their efficacy. Finally, anything
+on which the female had rested communicated its virtues by contact;
+witness the butterflies crowding on the straw-bottomed chair after the
+twig fell to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Using one of the most favourable materials&mdash;flannel, for example&mdash;I
+witnessed a curious sight. I placed a morsel of flannel on which the
+mother moth had been lying all the morning at the bottom of a long
+test-tube or narrow-necked bottle, just permitting of the passage of a
+male moth. The visitors entered the vessels, struggled, and did not know
+how to extricate themselves. I had devised a trap by means of which I
+could exterminate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> the tribe. Delivering the prisoners, and removing the
+flannel, which I placed in a perfectly closed box, I found that they
+re-entered the trap; attracted by the effluvia that the flannel had
+communicated to the glass.</p>
+
+<p>I was now convinced. To call the moths of the countryside to the
+wedding-feast, to warn them at a distance and to guide them the nubile
+female emits an odour of extreme subtlety, imperceptible to our own
+olfactory sense-organs. Even with their noses touching the moth, none of
+my household has been able to perceive the faintest odour; not even the
+youngest, whose sensibility is as yet unvitiated.</p>
+
+<p>This scent readily impregnates any object on which the female rests for
+any length of time, when this object becomes a centre of attraction as
+active as the moth herself until the effluvium is evaporated.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing visible betrays the lure. On a sheet of paper, a recent
+resting-place, around which the visitors had crowded, there was no
+visible trace, no moisture; the surface was as clean as before the
+impregnation.</p>
+
+<p>The product is elaborated slowly, and must accumulate a little before it
+reveals its full power. Taken from her couch and placed elsewhere the
+female loses her attractiveness for the moment and is an object of
+indifference; it is to the resting-place, saturated by long contact,
+that the arrivals fly. But the female soon regains her power.</p>
+
+<p>The emission of the warning effluvium is more or less delayed according
+to the species. The recently metamorphosed female must mature a little
+and her organs must settl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>e to their work. Born in the morning, the
+female of the Great Peacock moth sometimes has visitors the night of the
+same day; but more often on the second day, after a preparation of forty
+hours or so. The Oak Eggar does not publish her banns of marriage before
+the third or fourth day.</p>
+
+<p>Let us return for a moment to the problematical function of the antenn&aelig;.
+The male Oak Eggar has a sumptuous pair, as has the Great Peacock or
+Emperor Moth. Are we to regard these silky "feelers" as a kind of
+directing compass?&mdash;I resumed, but without attaching much importance to
+the matter, my previous experiment of amputation. None of those operated
+on returned. Do not let us draw conclusions from that fact alone. We saw
+in the case of the Great Peacock that more serious reasons than the
+truncation of the antenn&aelig; made return as a rule impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, a second Bombyx or Eggar, the Clover Moth, very like the Oak
+Eggar, and like it superbly plumed, poses us a very difficult problem.
+It is fairly abundant around my home; even in the orchard I find its
+cocoon, which is easily confounded with that of the Oak Eggar. I was at
+first deceived by the resemblance. From six cocoons, which I expected to
+yield Oak Eggars, I obtained, about the end of August, six females of
+the other species. Well: about these six females, born in my house,
+never a male appeared, although they were undoubtedly present in the
+neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>If the ample and feathery antenn&aelig; are truly sense-organs, which receive
+information of distant objects, why were not my richly plumed neighbours
+aware of what was passing in my stud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>y? Why did their feathery "feelers"
+leave them in ignorance of events which would have brought flocks of the
+other Eggar? Once more, the organ does not determine the aptitude. One
+individual or species is gifted, but another is not, despite an organic
+equality.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>A TRUFFLE-HUNTER: THE <i>BOLBOCERAS GALLICUS</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the matter of physics we hear of nothing to-day but the R&ouml;ntgen rays,
+which penetrate opaque bodies and photograph the invisible. A splendid
+discovery; but nothing very remarkable as compared with the surprises
+reserved for us by the future, when, better instructed as to the why and
+wherefore of things than now, and supplementing our feeble senses by
+means of science, we shall succeed in rivalling, however imperfectly,
+the sensorial acuteness of the lower animals.</p>
+
+<p>How enviable, in how many cases, is the superiority of the beasts! It
+makes us realise the insufficiency of our impressions, and the very
+indifferent efficacy of our sense-organs; it proclaims realities which
+amaze us, so far are they beyond our own attributes.</p>
+
+<p>A miserable caterpillar, the Processional caterpillar, found on the
+pine-tree, has its back covered with mete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>orological spiracles which
+sense the coming weather and foretell the storm; the bird of prey, that
+incomparable watchman, sees the fallen mule from the heights of the
+clouds; the blind bats guided their flight without collision through the
+inextricable labyrinth of threads devised by Spallanzani; the carrier
+pigeon, at a hundred leagues from home, infallibly regains its loft
+across immensities which it has never known; and within the limits of
+its more modest powers a bee, the Chalicodoma, also adventures into the
+unknown, accomplishing its long journey and returning to its group of
+cells.</p>
+
+<p>Those who have never seen a dog seeking truffles have missed one of the
+finest achievements of the olfactory sense. Absorbed in his duties, the
+animal goes forward, scenting the wind, at a moderate pace. He stops,
+questions the soil with his nostrils, and, without excitement, scratches
+the earth a few times with one paw. "There it is, master!" his eyes seem
+to say: "there it is! On the faith of a dog, there are truffles here!"</p>
+
+<p>He says truly. The master digs at the point indicated. If the spade goes
+astray the dog corrects the digger, sniffing at the bottom of the hole.
+Have no fear that stones and roots will confuse him; in spite of depth
+and obstacles, the truffle will be found. A dog's nose cannot lie.</p>
+
+<p>I have referred to the dog's speciality as a subtle sense of smell. That
+is certainly what I mean, if you will understand by that that the nasal
+passages of the animal are the seat of the perceptive organ; but is the
+thing perceived always a simple smell in the vulgar acceptation of the
+term&mdash;an effluvium such as our own senses perceive? I have certain
+reasons for doubting this, which I will proceed to relate.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+<p>On various occasions I have had the good fortune to accompany a
+truffle-dog of first-class capacities on his rounds. Certainly there was
+not much outside show about him, this artist that I so desired to see at
+work; a dog of doubtful breed, placid and meditative; uncouth,
+ungroomed, and quite inadmissible to the intimacies of the hearthrug.
+Talent and poverty are often mated.</p>
+
+<p>His master, a celebrated <i>rabassier</i><a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> of the village, being convinced
+that my object was not to steal his professional secrets, and so sooner
+or later to set up in business as a competitor, admitted me of his
+company, a favour of which he was not prodigal. From the moment of his
+regarding me not as an apprentice, but merely as a curious spectator,
+who drew and wrote about subterranean vegetable affairs, but had no wish
+to carry to market my bagful of these glories of the Christmas goose,
+the excellent man lent himself generously to my designs.</p>
+
+<p>It was agreed between us that the dog should act according to his own
+instincts, receiving the customary reward, after each discovery, no
+matter what its size, of a crust of bread the size of a finger-nail.
+Every spot scratched by his paw should be excavated, and the object
+indicated was to be extracted without reference to its marketable value.
+In no case was the experience of the master to intervene in order to
+divert the dog from a spot where the general aspect of things indicated
+that no commercial results need be expected, for I was more concerned
+with the miserable specimens unfit for the market than with the choice
+specimens, though of course the latter were welcomed.</p>
+
+<p>Thus conducted, this subterranean botanising was extremely fruitful.
+With that perspicacious nose of his the dog obtained for me both <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>large
+and small, fresh and putrid, odorous and inodorous, fragrant and
+offensive. I was amazed at my collection, which comprised the greater
+number of the hypogenous fungi of the neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>What a variety of structure, and above all of odour, the primordial
+quality in this question of scent! There were some that had no
+appreciable scent beyond a vague fungoid flavour, more or less common to
+all. Others smelt of turnips, of sour cabbage; some were fetid,
+sufficiently so to make the house of the collector noisome. Only the
+true truffle possessed the aroma dear to epicures. If odour, as we
+understand it, is the dog's only guide, how does he manage to follow
+that guide amidst all these totally different odours? Is he warned of
+the contents of the subsoil by a general emanation, by that fungoid
+effluvium common to all the species? Thus a somewhat embarrassing
+question arises.</p>
+
+<p>I paid special attention to the ordinary toadstools and mushrooms, which
+announced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> their near advent by cracking the surface of the soil. Now
+these points, where my eyes divined the cryptogam pushing back the soil
+with its button-like heads, these points, where the ordinary fungoid
+odour was certainly very pronounced, were never selected by the dog. He
+passed them disdainfully, without a sniff, without a stroke of the paw.
+Yet the fungi were underground, and their odour was similar to that I
+have already referred to.</p>
+
+<p>I came back from my outings with the conviction that the truffle-finding
+nose has some better guide than odour such as we with our sense-organs
+conceive it. It must perceive effluvia of another order as well;
+entirely mysterious to us, and therefore not utilised. Light has its
+dark rays&mdash;rays without effect upon our retinas, but not apparently on
+all. Why should not the domain of smell have its secret emanations,
+unknown to our senses and perceptible to a different sense-organ?</p>
+
+<p>If the scent of the dog leaves us perplexed in the sense that we cannot
+possibly say precisely, cannot even suspect what it is that the dog
+perceives, at least it is clear that it would be erroneous to refer
+everything to human standards. The world of sensations is far larger
+than the limits of our own sensibility. What numbers of facts relating
+to the interplay of natural forces must escape us for want of
+sufficiently sensitive organs!</p>
+
+<p>The unknown&mdash;that inexhaustible field in which the men of the future
+will try their strength&mdash;has harvests in store for us beside which our
+present knowledge would show as no more than a wretched gleaning. Under
+the sickle of science will one day fall the sheaves whose grain would
+appear to-day as senseless paradoxes. Scientific dreams? No, if you
+please, but undeniab<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>le positive realities, affirmed by the brute
+creation, which in certain respects has so great an advantage over us.</p>
+
+<p>Despite his long practice of his calling, despite the scent of the
+object he was seeking, the <i>rabassier</i> could not divine the presence of
+the truffle, which ripens in winter under the soil, at a depth of a foot
+or two; he must have the help of a dog or a pig, whose scent is able to
+discover the secrets of the soil. These secrets are known to various
+insects even better than to our two auxiliaries. They have in
+exceptional perfection the power of discovering the tubers on which
+their larv&aelig; are nourished.</p>
+
+<p>From truffles dug up in a spoiled condition, peopled with vermin, and
+placed in that condition, with a bed of fresh sand, in a glass jar, I
+have in the past obtained a small red beetle, known as the
+truffle-beetle (<i>Anisotoma cinnamomea</i>, Panz.), and various Diptera,
+among which is a Sapromyzon which, by its sluggish flight and its
+fragile form, recalls the <i>Scatophaga scybalaria</i>, the yellow velvety
+fly which is found in human excrement in the autumn. The latter finds
+its refuge on the surface of the soil, at the foot of a wall or hedge or
+under a bush; but how does the former know just where the truffle lies
+under the soil, or at what depth? To penetrate to that depth, or to seek
+in the subsoil, is impossible. Its fragile limbs, barely able to move a
+grain of sand, its extended wings, which would bar all progress in a
+narrow passage, and its costume of bristling silken pile, which would
+prevent it from slipping through crevices, all make such a task
+impossible. The Sapromyzon is forced to lay its eggs on the surface of
+the soil, but it does so on the precise spot which overlies the truffle,
+for the grubs would perish if they had to wander at random in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>search of
+their provender, the truffle being always thinly sown.</p>
+
+<p>The truffle fly is informed by the sense of smell of the points
+favourable to its maternal plans; it has the talents of the truffle-dog,
+and doubtless in a higher degree, for it knows naturally, without having
+been taught, what its rival only acquires through an artificial
+education.</p>
+
+<p>It would be not uninteresting to follow the Sapromyzon in its search in
+the open woods. Such a feat did not strike me as particularly possible;
+the insect is rare, flies off quickly when alarmed, and is lost to
+view. To observe it closely under such conditions would mean a loss of
+time and an assiduity of which I do not feel capable. Another
+truffle-hunter will show us what we could hardly learn from the fly.</p>
+
+<p>This is a pretty little black beetle, with a pale, velvety abdomen; a
+spherical insect, as large as a biggish cherry-stone. Its official title
+is <i>Bolboceras gallicus</i>, Muls. By rubbing the end of the abdomen
+against the edge of the wing-cases it produces a gentle chirping sound
+like the cheeping of nestlings when the mother-bird returns to the nest
+with food. The male wears a graceful horn on his head; a duplicate, in
+little, of that of the <i>Copris hispanus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Deceived by this horn, I at first took the insect for a member of the
+corporation of dung-beetles, and as such I reared it in captivity. I
+offered it the kind of diet most appreciated by its supposed rel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>atives,
+but never, never would it touch such food. For whom did I take it? Fie
+upon me! To offer ordure to an epicure! It required, if not precisely
+the truffle known to our <i>chefs</i> and <i>gourmets</i>, at least its
+equivalent.</p>
+
+<p>This characteristic I grasped only after patient investigation. At the
+southern foot of the hills of S&eacute;rignan, not far from the village, is a
+wood of maritime pines alternating with rows of cypress. There, towards
+Toussaint, after the autumnal rains, you may find an abundance of the
+mushrooms or "toadstools" that affect the conifers; especially the
+delicious Lactaris, which turns green if the points are rubbed and drips
+blood if broken. In the warm days of autumn this is the favourite
+promenade of the members of my household, being distant enough to
+exercise their young legs, but near enough not to fatigue them.</p>
+
+<p>There one finds and sees all manner of things: old magpies' nests, great
+bundles of twigs; jays, wrangling after filling their crops with the
+acorns of the neighbouring oaks; rabbits, whose little white upturned
+scuts go bobbing away through the rosemary bushes; dung-beetles, which
+are storing food for the winter and throwing up their rubbish on the
+threshold of their burrows. And then the fine sand, soft to the touch,
+easily tunnelled, easily excavated or built into tiny huts which we
+thatch with moss and surmount with the end of a reed for a chimney; and
+the delicious meal of apples, and the sound of the &aelig;olian harps which
+softly whisper among the boughs of the pines!</p>
+
+<p>For the children it is a real paradise, where they can receive the
+reward of well-learned lessons. The grown-ups also can share<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> in the
+enjoyment. As for myself, for long years I have watched two insects
+which are found there without getting to the bottom of their domestic
+secrets. One is the <i>Minotaurus typh&aelig;us</i>, whose male carries on his
+corselet three spines which point forward. The old writers called him
+the Phalangist, on account of his armour, which is comparable to the
+three ranks of lances of the Macedonian phalanx.</p>
+
+<p>This is a robust creature, heedless of the winter. All during the cold
+season, whenever the weather relents a little, it issues discreetly from
+its lodging, at nightfall, and gathers, in the immediate neighbourhood
+of its dwelling, a few fragments of sheep-dung and ancient olives which
+the summer suns have dried. It stacks them in a row at the end of its
+burrow, closes the door, and consumes them. When the food is broken up
+and exhausted of its meagre juices it returns to the surface and renews
+its store. Thus the winter passes, famine being unknown unless the
+weather is exceptionally hard.</p>
+
+<p>The second insect which I have observed for so long among the pines is
+the Bolboceras. Its burrows, scattered here and there, higgledy-piggledy
+with those of the Minotaur, are easy to recognise. The burrow of the
+Phalangist is surmounted by a voluminous rubbish-dump, the materials of
+which are piled in the form of a cylinder as long as the finger. Each of
+these dumps is a load of refuse and rubbish pushed outward by the little
+sapper, which shoulders it up from below. The orifice is closed whenever
+the insect is at home, enlarging its tunnel or peacefully enjoying the
+contents of its larder.</p>
+
+<p>The lodging of the Bolboceras is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> open and surrounded simply by a mound
+of sand. Its depth is not great; a foot or hardly more. It descends
+vertically in an easily shifted soil. It is therefore easy to inspect
+it, if we take care first of all to dig a trench so that the wall of the
+burrow may be afterwards cut away, slice by slice, with the blade of a
+knife. The burrow is thus laid bare along its whole extent, from the
+surface to the bottom, until nothing remains of it but a
+demi-cylindrical groove.</p>
+
+<p>Often the violated dwelling is empty. The insect has departed in the
+night, having finished its business there. It is a nomad, a
+night-walker, which leaves its dwelling without regret and easily
+acquires another. Often, on the other hand, the insect will be found at
+the bottom of the burrow; sometimes a male, sometimes a female, but
+always alone. The two sexes, equally zealous in excavating their
+burrows, work apart without collaboration. This is no family mansion for
+the rearing of offspring; it is a temporary dwelling, made by each
+insect for its own benefit.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the burrow contains nothing but the well-sinker surprised at
+its work: sometimes&mdash;and not rarely&mdash;the hermit will be found embracing
+a small subterranean fungus, entire or partly consumed. It presses it
+convulsively to its bosom and will not be parted from it. This is the
+insect's booty: its worldly wealth. Scattered crumbs inform us that we
+have surprised the beetle at a feast.</p>
+
+<p>Let us deprive the insect of its booty. We find a sort of irregular,
+rugged, purse-like object, varying in size from the largeness of a pea
+to that of a cherry. The exterior is reddish, covered with fine warts,
+having an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>appearance not unlike shagreen; the interior, which has no
+communication with the exterior, is smooth and white. The pores, ovoidal
+and diaphanous, are contained, in groups of eight, in long capsules.
+From these characteristics we recognise an underground cryptogam, known
+to the botanists as <i>Hydnocystis arenaria</i>, and a relation of the
+truffle.</p>
+
+<p>This discovery begins to throw a light on the habits of the Bolboceras
+and the cause of its burrows, so frequently renewed. In the calm of the
+twilight the little truffle-hunter goes abroad, chirping softly to
+encourage itself. It explores the soil, and interrogates it as to its
+contents, exactly as does the truffle-gatherer's dog. The sense of smell
+warns it that the desired object is beneath it, covered by a few inches
+of sand. Certain of the precise point where the treasure lies, it sinks
+a well vertically downwards, and infallibly reaches it. So long as there
+is food left it does not again leave the burrow. It feasts happily at
+the bottom of its well, heedless of the open or imperfectly closed
+burrow.</p>
+
+<p>When no more food is left it removes in search of further booty, which
+becomes the occasion of another burrow, this too in its turn to be
+abandoned. So many truffles eaten necessitate so many burrows, which are
+mere dining-rooms or pilgrim's larders. Thus pass the autumn and the
+spring, the seasons of the <i>Hydnocystis</i>, in the pleasures of the table
+and removal from one house to another.</p>
+
+<p>To study the insect <i>rabassier</i> in my own house I had to obtain a small
+store of its favourite food. To seek it myself, by digging at random,
+would have resulted merely in waste <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>of time; the little cryptogam is not
+so common that I could hope to find it without a guide. The
+truffle-hunter must have his dog; my guide should be the Bolboceras
+itself. Behold me, then, a <i>rabassier</i> of a kind hitherto unknown. I
+have told my secret, although I fear my original teacher will laugh at
+me if he ever hears of my singular form of competition.</p>
+
+<p>The subterranean fungi grow only at certain points, but they are often
+found in groups. Now, the beetle has passed this way; with its subtle
+sense of smell it has recognised the ground as favourable; for its
+burrows are numerous. Let us dig, then, in the neighbourhood of these
+holes. The sign is reliable; in a few hours, thanks to the signs of the
+Bolboceras, I obtain a handful of specimens of the <i>Hydnocystis</i>. It is
+the first time I have ever found this fungus in the ground. Let us now
+capture the insect&mdash;an easy matter, for we have only to excavate the
+burrows.</p>
+
+<p>The same evening I begin my experiments. A wide earthen pan is filled
+with fresh sand which has been passed through a sieve. With the aid of a
+stick the thickness of a finger I make six vertical holes in the sand:
+they are conveniently far apart, and are eight inches in depth. A
+<i>Hydnocystis</i> is placed at the bottom of each; a fine straw is then
+inserted, to show me the precise position later. Finally the six holes
+are filled with sand which is beaten down so that all is firm. When the
+surface is perfectly level, and everywhere the same, except for the six
+straws, which mean nothing to the insect, I release my beetles, covering
+them with a wire-gauze cover. They are eight in nu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>mber.</p>
+
+<p>At first I see nothing but the inevitable fatigue due to the incidents
+of exhumation, transport, and confinement in a strange place. My exiles
+try to escape: they climb the wire walls, and finally all take to earth
+at the edge of their enclosure. Night comes, and all is quiet. Two hours
+later I pay my prisoners a last visit. Three are still buried under a
+thin layer of sand. The other five have sunk each a vertical well at the
+very foot of the straws which indicate the position of the buried fungi.
+Next morning the sixth straw has its burrow like the rest.</p>
+
+<p>It is time to see what is happening underground. The sand is
+methodically removed in vertical slices. At the bottom of each burrow is
+a Bolboceras engaged in eating its truffle.</p>
+
+<p>Let us repeat the experiment with the partly eaten fungi. The result is
+the same. In one short night the food is divined under its covering of
+sand and attained by means of a burrow which descends as straight as a
+plumb-line to the point where the fungus lies. There has been no
+hesitation, no trial excavations which have nearly discovered the object
+of search. This is proved by the surface of the soil, which is
+everywhere just as I left it when smoothing it down. The insect could
+not make more directly for the objective if guided by the sense of
+sight; it digs always at the foot of the straw, my private sign. The
+truffle-dog, sniffing the ground in search of truffles, hardly attains
+this degree of precision.</p>
+
+<p>Does the <i>Hydnocystis</i> possess a very keen odour, such as we should
+expect to give an unmistakable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> warning to the senses of the consumer? By
+no means. To our own sense of smell it is a neutral sort of object, with
+no appreciable scent whatever. A little pebble taken from the soil would
+affect our senses quite as strongly with its vague savour of fresh
+earth. As a finder of underground fungi the Bolboceras is the rival of
+the dog. It would be the superior of the dog if it could generalise; it
+is, however, a rigid specialist, recognising nothing but the
+<i>Hydnocystis</i>. No other fungus, to my knowledge, either attracts it or
+induces it to dig.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Both dog and beetle are very near the subsoil which they scrutinise; the
+object they seek is at no great depth. At a greater depth neither dog
+nor insect could perceive such subtle effluvia, nor even the odour of
+the truffle. To attract insect or animal at a great distance powerful
+odours are necessary, such as our grosser senses can perceive. Then the
+exploiters of the odorous substance hasten from afar off and from all
+directions.</p>
+
+<p>If for purposes of study I require specimens of such insects as dissect
+dead bodies I expose a dead mole to the sunlight in a distant corner of
+my orchard. As soon as the creature is swollen with the gases of
+putrefaction, and the fur commences to fall from the greenish skin, a
+host of insects arrive&mdash;Silphid&aelig;, Dermestes, Horn-beetles, and
+Necrophori&mdash;of which not a single specimen could ever be obtained in my
+garden or even in the neighbourhood without the use of such a bait.</p>
+
+<p>They have been warned by the sense of smell, although far away in all
+directions, while I myself can escape from the stench by recoiling a few
+paces. In comparison with their sense of smell mine is m<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>iserable; but in
+this case, both for me and for them, there is really what our language
+calls an odour.</p>
+
+<p>I can do still better with the flower of the Serpent Arum (<i>Arum
+dracunculus</i>), so noteworthy both for its form and its incomparable
+stench. Imagine a wide lanceolated blade of a vinous purple, some twenty
+inches in length, which is twisted at the base into an ovoid purse about
+the size of a hen's egg. Through the opening of this capsule rises the
+central column, a long club of a livid green, surrounded at the base by
+two rings, one of ovaries and the other of stamens. Such, briefly, is
+the flower or rather the inflorescence of the Serpent Arum.</p>
+
+<p>For two days it exhales a horrible stench of putrid flesh; a dead dog
+could not produce such a terrible odour. Set free by the sun and the
+wind, it is odious, intolerable. Let us brave the infected atmosphere
+and approach; we shall witness a curious spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>Warned by the stench, which travels far and wide, a host of insects are
+flying hither; such insects as dissect the corpses of frogs, adders,
+lizards, hedgehogs, moles and field-mice&mdash;creatures that the peasant
+finds beneath his spade and throws disembowelled on the path. They fall
+upon the great leaf, whose livid purple gives it the appearance of a
+strip of putrid flesh; they dance with impatience, intoxicated by the
+corpse-like odour which to them is so delicious; they roll down its
+steep face and are engulfed in the capsule. After a few hours of hot
+sunlight the receptacle is full.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+<p>Let us look into the capsule through the narrow opening. Nowhere else
+could you see such a mob of insects. It is a delirious mixture of backs
+and bellies, wing-covers and legs, which swarms and rolls upon itself,
+rising and falling, seething and boiling, shaken by continual
+convulsions, clicking and squeaking with a sound of entangled
+articulations. It is a bacchanal, a general access of delirium tremens.</p>
+
+<p>A few, but only a few, emerge from the mass. By the central mast or the
+walls of the purse they climb to the opening. Do they wish to take
+flight and escape? By no means. On the threshold of the cavity, while
+already almost at liberty, they allow themselves to fall into the
+whirlpool, retaken by their madness. The lure is irresistible. None will
+break free from the swarm until the evening, or perhaps the next day,
+when the heady fumes will have evaporated. Then the units of the swarm
+disengage themselves from their mutual embraces, and slowly, as though
+regretfully, take flight and depart. At the bottom of this devil's purse
+remains a heap of the dead and dying, of severed limbs and wing-covers
+torn off; the inevitable sequels of the frantic orgy. Soon the woodlice,
+earwigs, and ants will appear to prey upon the injured.</p>
+
+<p>What are these insects doing? Were they the prisoners of the flower,
+converted into a trap which allowed them to enter but prevented their
+escape by means of a palisade of converging hairs? No, they were not
+prisoners; they had full liberty to escape, as is proved by the final
+exodus, which is in no way impeded. Deceived by a fallacious odour, were
+they endeavouring to lay and establish their eggs as they would have
+done under the shelter of a corpse? No; there is no trace of eggs in the
+purse of the Arum. They came convoked by the odour <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>of a decaying body,
+their supreme delight; an intoxication seized them, and they rushed into
+the eddying swarm to take part in a festival of carrion-eaters.</p>
+
+<p>I was anxious to count the number of those attracted. At the height of
+the bacchanal I emptied the purse into a bottle. Intoxicated as they
+were, many would escape my census, and I wished to ensure its accuracy.
+A few drops of carbon bisulphide quieted the swarm. The census proved
+that there were more than four hundred insects in the purse of the Arum.
+The collection consisted entirely of two species&mdash;Dermestes and
+Saprinid&aelig;&mdash;both eager prospectors of carrion and animal detritus during
+the spring.</p>
+
+<p>My friend Bull, an honest dog all his lifetime if ever there was one,
+amongst other eccentricities had the following: finding in the dust of
+the road the shrivelled body of a mole, flattened by the feet of
+pedestrians, mummified by the heat of the sun, he would slide himself
+over it, from the tip of his nose to the root of his tail, he would rub
+himself against it deliciously over and over again, shaken with nervous
+spasms, and roll upon it first in one direction, then in the other.</p>
+
+<p>It was his sachet of musk, his flask of eau-de-Cologne. Perfumed to his
+liking, he would rise, shake himself, and proceed on his way, delighted
+with his toilet. Do not let us scold him, and above all do not let us
+discuss the matter. There are all kinds of tastes in a world.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+<p>Why should there not be insects with similar habits among the amateurs
+of corpse-like savours? We see Dermestes and Saprinid&aelig; hastening to the
+arum-flower. All day long they writhe and wriggle in a swarm, although
+perfectly free to escape; numbers perish in the tumultuous orgy. They
+are not retained by the desire of food, for the arum provides them with
+nothing eatable; they do not come to breed, for they take care not to
+establish their grubs in that place of famine. What are these frenzied
+creatures doing? Apparently they are intoxicated with fetidity, as was
+Bull when he rolled on the putrid body of a mole.</p>
+
+<p>This intoxication draws them from all parts of the neighbourhood,
+perhaps over considerable distances; how far we do not know. The
+Necrophori, in quest of a place where to establish their family, travel
+great distances to find the corpses of small animals, informed by such
+odours as offend our own senses at a considerable distance.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Hydnocystis</i>, the food of the Bolboceras, emits no such brutal
+emanations as these, which readily diffuse themselves through space; it
+is inodorous, at least to our senses. The insect which seeks it does not
+come from a distance; it inhabits the places wherein the cryptogam is
+found. Faint as are the effluvia of this subterranean fungus, the
+prospecting epicure, being specially equipped, perceives them with the
+greatest ease; but then he operates at close range, from the surface of
+the soil. The truffle-dog is in the same case; he searches with his nose
+to the ground. The true truffle, however, the essential object of his
+search, possesses a fairly vivid odour.</p>
+
+<p>But what are we to say of the Great Peacock moth and the Oak Eggar, both
+of which find their captive female? They come from the confines of the
+hor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>izon. What do they perceive at that distance? Is it really an odour
+such as we perceive and understand? I cannot bring myself to believe it.</p>
+
+<p>The dog finds the truffle by smelling the earth quite close to the
+tuber; but he finds his master at great distances by following his
+footsteps, which he recognises by their scent. Yet can he find the
+truffle at a hundred yards? or his master, in the complete absence of a
+trail? No. With all his fineness of scent, the dog is incapable of such
+feats as are realised by the moth, which is embarrassed neither by
+distance nor the absence of a trail.</p>
+
+<p>It is admitted that odour, such as affects our olfactory sense, consists
+of molecules emanating from the body whose odour is perceived. The
+odorous material becomes diffused through the air to which it
+communicates its agreeable or disagreeable aroma. Odour and taste are to
+a certain extent the same; in both there is contact between the material
+particles causing the impression and the sensitive papill&aelig; affected by
+the impression.</p>
+
+<p>That the Serpent Arum should elaborate a powerful essence which
+impregnates the atmosphere and makes it noisome is perfectly simple and
+comprehensible. Thus the Dermestes and Saprinid&aelig;, those lovers of
+corpse-like odours, are warned by molecular diffusion. In the same way
+the putrid frog emits and disseminates around it atoms of putrescence
+which travel to a considerable distance and so attract and delight the
+Necrophorus, the carrion-beetle.</p>
+
+<p>But in the case of the Great Peacock or the Oak Eggar, what molecules
+are actually disengaged? None, according t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>o our sense of smell. And yet
+this lure, to which the males hasten so speedily, must saturate with its
+molecules an enormous hemisphere of air&mdash;a hemisphere some miles in
+diameter! What the atrocious fetor of the Arum cannot do the absence of
+odour accomplishes! However divisible matter may be, the mind refuses
+such conclusions. It would be to redden a lake with a grain of carmine;
+to fill space with a mere nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, where my laboratory was previously saturated with powerful
+odours which should have overcome and annihilated any particularly
+delicate effluvium, the male moths arrived without the least indication
+of confusion or delay.</p>
+
+<p>A loud noise stifles a feeble note and prevents it from being heard; a
+brilliant light eclipses a feeble glimmer. Heavy waves overcome and
+obliterate ripples. In the two cases cited we have waves of the same
+nature. But a clap of thunder does not diminish the feeblest jet of
+light; the dazzling glory of the sun will not muffle the slightest
+sound. Of different natures, light and sound do not mutually interact.</p>
+
+<p>My experiment with spike-lavender, naphthaline, and other odours seems
+to prove that odour proceeds from two sources. For emission substitute
+undulation, and the problem of the Great Peacock moth is explained.
+Without any material emanation a luminous point shakes the ether with
+its vibrations and fills with light a sphere of indefinite magnitude.
+So, or in some such manner, must the warning effluvium of the mother Oak
+Eggar oper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>ate. The moth does not emit molecules; but something about it
+vibrates, causing waves capable of propagation to distances incompatible
+with an actual diffusion of matter.</p>
+
+<p>From this point of view, smell would have two domains&mdash;that of particles
+dissolved in the air and that of etheric waves.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The former domain
+alone is known to us. It is also known to the insect. It is this that
+warns the Saprinid&aelig; of the fetid arum, the Silphid&aelig; and the Necrophori
+of the putrid mole.</p>
+
+<p>The second category of odour, far superior in its action through space,
+escapes us completely, because we lack the essential sensory equipment.
+The Great Peacock moth and the Oak Eggar know it at the time of their
+nuptial festivities. Many others must share it in differing degrees,
+according to the exigencies of their way of life.</p>
+
+<p>Like light, odour has its X-rays. Let science, instructed by the insect,
+one day give us a radiograph sensitive to odours, and this artificial
+nose will open a new world of marvels.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ELEPHANT-BEETLE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Some of our machines have extraordin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>ary-looking mechanisms, which remain
+inexplicable so long as they are seen in repose. But wait until the
+whole is in motion; then the uncouth-looking contrivance, with its
+cog-wheels interacting and its connecting-rods oscillating, will reveal
+the ingenious combination in which all things are skilfully disposed to
+produce the desired effects. It is the same with certain insects; with
+certain weevils, for instance, and notably with the Acorn-beetles or
+Balanini, which are adapted, as their name denotes, to the exploitation
+of acorns, nuts, and other similar fruits.</p>
+
+<p>The most remarkable, in my part of France, is the Acorn Elephant
+(<i>Balaninus elephas</i>, Sch.). It is well named; the very name evokes a
+mental picture of the insect. It is a living caricature, this beetle
+with the prodigious snout. The latter is no thicker than a horsehair,
+reddish in colour, almost rectilinear, and of such length that in order
+not to stumble the insect is forced to carry it stiffly outstretched
+like a lance in rest. What is the use of this embarrassing pike, this
+ridiculous snout?</p>
+
+<p>Here I can see some reader shrug his shoulders. Well, if the only end of
+life is to make money by hook or by crook, such questions are certainly
+ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>Happily there are some to whom nothing in the majestic riddle of the
+universe is little. They know of what humble materials the bread of
+thought is kneaded; a nutriment no less necessary than the bread made
+from wheat; and they know that both labourers and inquirers nourish the
+world with an accumulation of crumbs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take pity on the question, and proceed. Without seeing it at
+work, we already suspect that the fantastic beak of the Balaninus is a
+drill analogous to those which we ourselves use in order to perforate
+hard materials. Two diamond-points, the mandibles, form the terminal
+armature of the drill. Like the Larinid&aelig;, but under conditions of
+greater difficulty, the Curculionid&aelig; must use the implement in order to
+prepare the way for the installation of their eggs.</p>
+
+<p>But however well founded our suspicion may be, it is not a certitude. I
+can only discover the secret by watching the insect at work.</p>
+
+<p>Chance, the servant of those that patiently solicit it, grants me a
+sight of the acorn-beetle at work, in the earlier half of October. My
+surprise is great, for at this late season all industrial activity is as
+a rule at an end. The first touch of cold and the entomological season
+is over.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, moreover, it is wild weather; the <i>bise</i> is moaning, glacial,
+cracking one's lips. One needs a robust faith to go out on such a day in
+order to inspect the thickets. Yet if the beetle with the long beak
+exploits the acorns, as I think it does, the time presses if I am to
+catch it at its work. The acorns, still green, have acquired their full
+growth. In two or three weeks they will attain the chestnut brown of
+perfect maturity, quickly followed by their fall.</p>
+
+<p>My seemingly futile pilgrimage ends in success. On the evergreen oaks I
+surprise a Balaninus with the trunk half sunk in an acorn. Careful
+observation is impossible while the branches are shaken by the
+<i>mistral</i>. I deta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>ch the twig and lay it gently upon the ground. The
+insect takes no notice of its removal; it continues its work. I crouch
+beside it, sheltered from the storm behind a mass of underwood, and
+watch operations.</p>
+
+<p>Shod with adhesive sandals which later on, in my laboratory, will allow
+it rapidly to climb a vertical sheet of glass, the elephant-beetle is
+solidly established on the smooth, steep curvature of the acorn. It is
+working its drill. Slowly and awkwardly it moves around its implanted
+weapon, describing a semicircle whose centre is the point of the drill,
+and then another semicircle in the reverse direction. This is repeated
+over and over again; the movement, in short, is identical with that we
+give to a bradawl when boring a hole in a plank.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little the rostrum sinks into the acorn. At the end of an hour
+it has entirely disappeared. A short period of repose follows, and
+finally the instrument is withdrawn. What is going to happen next?
+Nothing on this occasion. The Balaninus abandons its work and solemnly
+retires, disappearing among the withered leaves. For the day there is
+nothing more to be learned.</p>
+
+<p>But my interes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>t is now awakened. On calm days, more favourable to the
+entomologist, I return to the woods, and I soon have sufficient insects
+to people my laboratory cages. Foreseeing a serious difficulty in the
+slowness with which the beetle labours, I prefer to study them indoors,
+with the unlimited leisure only to be found in one's own home.</p>
+
+<p>The precaution is fortunate. If I had tried to continue as I began, and
+to observe the Balaninus in the liberty of the woods, I should never,
+even with the greatest good fortune, have had the patience to follow to
+the end the choice of the acorn, the boring of the hole, and the laying
+of the eggs, so meticulously deliberate is the insect in all its
+affairs; as the reader will soon be able to judge.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+<p>Three species of oak-tree compose the copse inhabited by the Balaninus:
+the evergreen oak and the pubescent oak, which would become fine trees
+if the woodman would give them time, and the kermes oak, a mere scrubby
+bush. The first species, which is the most abundant of the three, is
+that preferred by the Balaninus. The acorn is firm, elongated, and of
+moderate size; the cup is covered with little warts. The acorns of the
+pubescent oak are usually stunted, short, wrinkled, and fluted, and
+subject to premature fall. The aridity of the hills of S&eacute;rignan is
+unfavourable to them. The Acorn-beetles accept them only in default of
+something better.</p>
+
+<p>The kermes, a dwarf oak, a ridiculous tree which a man can jump over,
+surprises me by the wealth of its acorns, which are large, ovoidal
+growths, the cup being covered with scales. The Balaninus could not make
+a better choice; the acorn affords a safe, strong dwelling and a
+capacious storehouse of food.</p>
+
+<p>A few twigs from these three trees, well provided with acorns, are
+arranged under the domes of some of my wire-gauze covers, the ends being
+plunged into a glass of water which will keep them fresh. A suitable
+number of couples are then introduced into the cages; and the latter are
+placed at the windows of my study, where they obtain the direct sunlight
+for the greater part of the day. Let us now arm ourselves with patience,
+and keep a constant watch upon events. We shall be rewarded; the
+exploitation of the acorn deserves to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Matters do not dr<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>ag on for very long. Two days after these preparations
+I arrive at the precise moment when the task is commenced. The mother,
+larger than the male, and equipped with a longer drill, is inspecting
+her acorn, doubtless with a view to depositing her eggs.</p>
+
+<p>She goes over it step by step, from the point to the stem, both above
+and below. On the warty cup progression is easy; over the rest of the
+surface it would be impossible, were not the soles of her feet shod with
+adhesive pads, which enable her to retain her hold in any position.
+Without the least uncertainty of footing, the insect walks with equal
+facility over the top or bottom or up the sides of the slippery fruit.</p>
+
+<p>The choice is made; the acorn is recognised as being of good quality.
+The time has come to sink the hole. On account of its excessive length
+it is not easy to man&oelig;uvre the beak. To obtain the best mechanical
+effect the instrument must be applied perpendicularly to the convex
+surface of the acorn, and the embarrassing implement which is carried in
+front of the insect when the latter is not at work must now be held in
+such a position as to be beneath the worker.</p>
+
+<p>To obtain this result the insect rears herself upon her hind legs,
+supporting herself upon the tripod formed by the end of the wing-covers
+and the posterior tarsi. It would be hard to imagine anything more
+curious than this little carpenter, as she stands upright and brings her
+nasal bradawl down towards her body.</p>
+
+<p>Now the drill is held plumb against the surface, and the boring
+commences. The method is that I witnessed in the wood on the day of the
+storm. Very slowly the insect veers round from right to left, then from
+left to right. Her drill is not a spiral gimlet which will sink itself
+by a constant rotary motion; it is a bradawl, or rather a trochar, which
+progresses by li<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>ttle bites, by alternative erosion, first in one
+direction, then the other.</p>
+
+<p>Before continuing, let me record an accident which is too striking to be
+passed over. On various occasions I have found the insect dead in the
+midst of its task. The body is in an extraordinary position, which would
+be laughable if death were not always a serious thing, above all when it
+comes suddenly, in the midst of labour.</p>
+
+<p>The drill is implanted in the acorn just a little beyond the tip; the
+work was only commenced. At the top of the drill, at right angles to it,
+the Balaninus is suspended in the air, far from the supporting surface
+of the acorn. It is dried, mummified, dead I know not how long. The legs
+are rigid and contracted under the body. Even if they retained the
+flexibility and the power of extension that were theirs in life, they
+would fall far short of the surface of the acorn. What then has
+happened, that this unhappy insect should be impaled like a specimen
+beetle with a pin through its head?</p>
+
+<p>An accident of the workshop is responsible. On account of the length of
+its implement the beetle commences her work standing upright, supported
+by the two hind-legs. Imagine a slip, a false step on the part of the
+two adhesive feet; the unfortunate creature will immediately lose her
+footing, dragged by the elasticity of the snout, which she was forced to
+bend somewhat at the beginning. Torn away from her foothold, the
+suspended insect vainly struggles in air; nowhere can her feet, those
+safety anchors, find a hold. She starves at the end of her snout, for
+lack of foothold whereby to extricate herself. Like the artisans in our
+factories, the elephant-bee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>tle is sometimes the victim of her tools. Let
+us wish her good luck, and sure feet, careful not to slip, and proceed.</p>
+
+<p>On this occasion all goes well, but so slowly that the descent of the
+drill, even when amplified by the magnifying-glass, cannot be perceived.
+The insect veers round perpetually, rests, and resumes her work. An hour
+passes, two hours, wearying the observer by their sustained attention;
+for I wish to witness the precise moment when the beetle withdraws her
+drill, turns round, and deposits her egg in the mouth of the orifice.
+This, at least, is how I foresee the event.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours go by, exhausting my patience. I call the household to my aid.
+Three of us take turns, keeping an uninterrupted watch upon the
+persevering creature whose secret I intend at any cost to discover.</p>
+
+<p><a name="locust" id="locust"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-244.jpg"
+             alt="THE GREY LOCUST." /><br />
+         <b>1. THE GREY LOCUST.</b><br />
+<b>1'. THE NERVATURES OF THE WING.</b><br />
+<b>2. THE BALANINUS FALLEN A VICTIM TO THE LENGTH OF HER<br />PROBOSCIS.</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>It was well that I called in helpers to lend me their eyes and their
+attention. After eight hours&mdash;eight interminable hours, when it was
+nearly night, the sentinel on the watch calls me. The insect appears to
+have finished. She does, in fact, very cautiously withdraw her beak, as
+though fearing to slip. Once the tool is withdrawn she holds it pointing
+directly in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>The moment has come.... Alas, no! Once more I am cheated; my eight hours
+of observation have been fruitless. The Balaninus decamps; abandons her
+acorn without laying her eggs. I was certainly right to distrust the
+result of observation in the open woods. Such concentration among the
+oaks, exposed to the sun, wind, and rain would have been an intolerable
+task.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole of October, with the aid of such helpers as are needed,
+I remark a number of borings, not followed by the laying of eggs. The
+duration of the observer's task varies greatly. It usually amounts to a
+couple of hours; sometimes it exceeds half the day.</p>
+
+<p>With what object are these perforations made, so laborious and yet so
+often unused? Let us first of all discover the position of the egg, and
+the first mouthfuls taken by the grub, and perhaps the reply will be
+found.</p>
+
+<p>The peopled acorns remain on the oak, held in their cups as though
+nothing had occurred to the detriment of the cotyledons. With a little
+attention they may be readily recognised. Not far from the cup, on the
+smooth, still green envelope of the acorn a little point is visible; a
+tiny needle-prick. A narrow brown aureole, the product of mortification,
+is not long in appearing. This marks the opening of the hole. Sometimes,
+but more rarely, the hole is drilled through the cup itself.</p>
+
+<p>Let us select those acorns which have been recently perforated: that is
+to say, those in which the perforation is not yet surrounded by the
+brown ring which appears in course of time. Let us shell them. Many
+contain nothing out of the way; the Balaninus has bored them but has not
+laid her eggs in them. They resemble the acorns which for hours and
+hours were drilled in my laboratory but not utilised. Many, on the
+contrary, contain an egg.</p>
+
+<p>Now however distant the entrance of the bore may be, this egg is always
+at the bottom of the acorn, within the cup, at the base of the
+cotyledonary matter. The cup furnishes a thin film like swan-skin which
+imbibes the sapid exudations from the stem, the source of nourishment. I
+have seen a young grub, hatched under my eyes, eat as his first
+mouthfuls this tender cottony layer, which is moist and flavoured with
+tannin.</p>
+
+<p>Such nutriment, juicy and easy of digestion, like all nascent organic
+matter, is only found in this particular spot; and it is only there,
+between the cup and the base of the cotyledons, that the elephant-beetle
+establishes her egg. The insect knows to a nicety the position of the
+portions best adapted to the feeble stomach of the newly hatched larva.</p>
+
+<p>Above this is the tougher nutriment of the cotyledons. Refreshed by its
+first meal, the grub proceeds to attack this; not directly, but in the
+tunnel bored by the mother, which is littered with tiny crumbs and
+half-masticated shavings. With this light mealy diet the strength of the
+grub increases, and it then plunges directly into the substance of the
+acorn.</p>
+
+<p>These data explain the tactics of the gravid mother. What is her object
+when, before proceeding to sink her hole, she inspects her acorn, from
+above, below, before and behind, with such meticulous care? She is
+making sure that the acorn is not already occupied. The larder is amply
+stored, but it does not contain enough for two. Never in fact, have I
+found two larv&aelig; in the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> acorn. One only, always only one, digests
+the copious meal and converts it into a greenish dust before leaving it
+and descending to the ground. Only an insignificant shell remains
+uneaten. The rule is, to each grub one acorn.</p>
+
+<p>Before trusting the egg to the acorn it is therefore essential to
+subject it to a thorough examination, to discover whether it already has
+an occupant. This possible occupant would be at the base of the acorn,
+under the cover of the cup. Nothing could be more secret than this
+hiding-place. Not an eye could divine the inhabitant if the surface of
+the acorn did not bear the mark of a tiny perforation.</p>
+
+<p>This mark, just visible, is my guide. Its presence tells me that the
+acorn is inhabited, or at least that it has been prepared for the
+reception of the egg; its absence tells me that the acorn has not yet
+been appropriated. The elephant-beetle undoubtedly draws the same
+conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>I see matters from on high, with a comprehensive glance, assisted at
+will by the magnifying-glass. I turn the acorn between my fingers for a
+moment, and the inspection is concluded. The beetle, investigating the
+acorn at close quarters, is often obliged to scrutinise practically the
+entire surface before detecting the tell-tale spot. Moreover, the
+welfare of her family demands a far more careful search than does my
+curiosity. This is the reason for her prolonged and deliberate
+examination.</p>
+
+<p>The search is concluded; the acorn is recognised as unoccupied. The
+drill is applied to the surface and rotated for hours; then, very often,
+the insect departs, disdaining the result of her work. Why such
+protracted efforts? Was the beetle piercing the fruit merely to obtain
+drink and refreshment? Was the beak thrust into the depths of the base
+merely to obtain, from the choicer parts, a few sips of nutritious sap?
+Was the whole undertaking merely a matter of personal nourishment?</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+<p>At first I believed this to be the solution, though surprised at the
+display of so much perseverance rewarded by the merest sip. The
+behaviour of the males, however, forced me to abandon this idea. They
+also possess the long beak, and could readily make such perforations if
+they wished; yet I have never seen one take up his stand upon an acorn
+and work at it with his augur. Then why this fruitless labour? A mere
+nothing suffices these abstemious creatures. A superficial operation
+performed upon the surface of a tender leaf yields them sufficient
+sustenance.</p>
+
+<p>If the males, the unoccupied males who have leisure to enjoy the
+pleasures of the palate, ask no more than the sap of the leaf, how
+should the mothers, busied with the affairs of the breeding-season, find
+time to waste upon such dearly bought pleasures as the inner juices of
+the acorn? No, the acorn is not perforated for the purpose of drinking
+its juices. It is possible that once the beak is deeply sunk, the female
+may take a mouthful or two, but it is certain that food and drink are
+not the objects in view.</p>
+
+<p>At last I begin to foresee the solution of the problem. The egg, as I
+have said, is always at the base of the acorn, in the midst of a soft
+cottony layer which is moistened by the sap which oozes from the stalk.
+The grub, upon hatching out, being as yet incapable of attacking the
+firm substance of the cotyledons, masticates the delicate felt-like
+layer at the base of the cup and is nourished by its juices.</p>
+
+<p>But as the acorn matures this layer becomes more solid in its
+consistency. The soft tissues harden; the moist tissues dry up. There is
+a period during which the acorn fulfils to perfection the conditions
+most conducive to the welfare of the grub. At an earlier period matters
+would not have reached the desired stage; at a later period the acorn
+would be too mature.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The exterior of the acorn gives no indication whatever of the progress
+of this internal cookery. In order not to inflict unsuitable food on the
+grub, the mother beetle, not sufficiently informed by the look of the
+acorn, is thus obliged to taste, at the end of her trunk, the tissues at
+the base of the cup.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse, before giving her charge a spoonful of broth, tests it by
+tasting it. In the same way the mother beetle plunges her trunk into the
+base of the cup, to test the contents before bestowing them upon her
+offspring. If the food is recognised as being satisfactory the egg is
+laid; if not, the perforation is abandoned without more ado. This
+explains the perforations which serve no purpose, in spite of so much
+labour; the tissues at the base of the cup, being carefully tested, are
+not found to be in the required condition. The elephant-beetles are
+difficult to please and take infinite pains when the first mouthful of
+the grub is in question. To place the egg in a position where the
+new-born grub will find light and juicy and easily digested nutriment is
+not enough for those far-seeing mothers; their cares look beyond this
+point. An intermediary period is desirable, which will lead the little
+larva from the delicacies of its first hours to the diet of hard acorn.
+This intermediary period is passed in the gallery, the work of the
+maternal beak. There it finds the crumbs, the shavings bitten off by the
+chisels of the rostrum. Moreover, the walls of the tunnel, which are
+softened by mortification, are better suited than the rest of the acorn
+to the tender mandibles of the larva.</p>
+
+<p>Before setting to work on the cotyledons the grub does, in fact,
+commence upon the contents and walls of this tiny passage. It first
+consumes the shavings lying loose i<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>n the passage; it devours the brown
+fragments adhering to the walls; finally, being now sufficiently
+strengthened, it attacks the body of the acorn, plunges into it, and
+disappears. The stomach is ready; the rest is a blissful feast.</p>
+
+<p>This intermediary tunnel must be of a certain length, in order to
+satisfy the needs of infancy, so the mother must labour at the work of
+drilling. If the perforation were made solely with the purpose of
+tasting the material at the base of the acorn and recognising its degree
+of maturity, the operation might be very much shorter, since the hole
+could be sunk through the cup itself from a point close to the base.
+This fact is not unrecognised; I have on occasion found the insect
+perforating the scaly cup.</p>
+
+<p>In such a proceeding I see the attempt of a gravid mother pressed for
+time to obtain prompt information. If the acorn is suitable the boring
+will be recommenced at a more distant point, through the surface of the
+acorn itself. When an egg is to be laid the rule is to bore the hole
+from a point as distant as is practicable from the base&mdash;as far, in
+short, as the length of the rostrum will permit.</p>
+
+<p>What is the object of this long perforation, which often occupies more
+than half the day? Why this tenacious perseverance when, not far from
+the stalk, at the cost of much less time and fatigue, the rostrum could
+attain the desired point&mdash;the living spring from which the new-born grub
+is to drink? The mother has her own reasons for toiling in this manner;
+in doing thus she still attains the necessary point, the base of the
+acorn, and at the same time&mdash;a most valuable result&mdash;she prepares for
+the grub a long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> tube of fine, easily digested meal.</p>
+
+<p>But these are trivialities! Not so, if you please, but high and
+important matters, speaking to us of the infinite pains which preside
+over the preservation of the least of things; witnesses of a superior
+logic which regulates the smallest details.</p>
+
+<p>The Balaninus, so happily inspired as a mother, has her place in the
+world and is worthy of notice. So, at least, thinks the blackbird, which
+gladly makes a meal of the insect with the long beak when fruits grow
+rare at the end of autumn. It makes a small mouthful, but a tasty, and
+is a pleasant change after such olives as yet withstand the cold.</p>
+
+<p>And what without the blackbird and its rivalry of song were the
+reawakening of the woods in spring? Were man to disappear, annihilated
+by his own foolish errors, the festival of the life-bringing season
+would be no less worthily observed, celebrated by the fluting of the
+yellow-billed songster.</p>
+
+<p>To the meritorious r&ocirc;le of regaling the blackbird, the minstrel of the
+forest, the Balaninus adds another&mdash;that of moderating the superfluity
+of vegetation. Like all the mighty who are worthy of their strength, the
+oak is generous; it produces acorns by the bushel. What could the earth
+do with such prodigality? The forest would stifle itself for want of
+room; excess would ruin the necessary.</p>
+
+<p>But no sooner is this abundance of food produced than there is an influx
+from every side of consumers only too eager to abate this inordinate
+production. The field-mo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>use, a native of the woods, stores acorns in a
+gravel-heap near its hay-lined nest. A stranger, the jay, comes in
+flocks from far away, warned I know not how. For some weeks it flies
+feasting from oak to oak, giving vent to its joys and its emotions in a
+voice like that of a strangling cat; then, its mission accomplished, it
+returns to the North whence it came.</p>
+
+<p>The Balaninus has anticipated them all. The mother confided her eggs to
+the acorns while yet they were green. These have now fallen to earth,
+brown before their time, and pierced by a round hole through which the
+larva has escaped after devouring the contents. Under one single oak a
+basket might easily be filled with these ruined shells. More than the
+jay, more than the field-mouse, the elephant-beetle has contributed to
+reduce the superfluity of acorns.</p>
+
+<p>Presently man arrives, busied in the interest of his pig. In my village
+it is quite an important event when the municipal hoardings announce the
+day for opening the municipal woods for the gathering of acorns. The
+more zealous visit the woods the day before and select the best places.
+Next day, at daybreak, the whole family is there. The father beats the
+upper branches with a pole; the mother, wearing a heavy hempen apron
+which enables her to force her way through the stubborn undergrowth,
+gathers those within reach of the hand, while the children collect those
+scattered upon the ground. First the small baskets are filled, then the
+big <i>corbeilles</i>, and then the sacks.</p>
+
+<p>After the field-mouse, the jay, the weevil, and so many others have
+taken toll comes man, calculating how many pounds of bacon-fat his
+harvest will be worth. One regret mingles with the cheer of the
+occasion; it is to see so many acorns scattered on the ground which are
+pierced, spoiled, good for nothing. And man curses the aut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>hor of this
+destruction; to hear him you would think the forest is meant for him
+alone, and that the oaks bear acorns only for the sake of his pig.</p>
+
+<p>My friend, I would say to him, the forest guard cannot take legal
+proceedings against the offender, and it is just as well, for our
+egoism, which is inclined to see in the acorn only a garland of
+sausages, would have annoying results. The oak calls the whole world to
+enjoy its fruits. We take the larger part because we are the stronger.
+That is our only right.</p>
+
+<p>More important than our rights is the equitable division of the fruits
+of the earth between the various consumers, great and little, all of
+whom play their part in this world. If it is good that the blackbird
+should flute and rejoice in the burgeoning of the spring, then it is no
+bad thing that acorns should be worm-eaten. In the acorn the dessert of
+the blackbird is prepared; the Balaninus, the tasty mouthful that puts
+flesh upon his flanks and music into his throat.</p>
+
+<p>Let the blackbird sing, and let us return to the eggs of the
+Curculionid&aelig;. We know where the egg is&mdash;at the base of the acorn,
+because the tenderest and most juicy tissues of the fruit are there. But
+how did it get there, so far from the point of entry? A very trifling
+question, it is true; puerile even, if you will. Do not let us disdain
+to ask it; science is made of these puerilities.</p>
+
+<p>The first man to rub a piece of amber on his sleeve and to find that it
+thereupon attracted fragments of chaff had certainly no vision of the
+electric marvels of our days. He was amusing himself in a childlike
+manner. Repeated, tested, and probed in every imaginable way, the
+child's experiment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>has become one of the forces of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The observer must neglect nothing; for he never knows what may develop
+out of the humblest fact. So again we will ask: by what process did the
+egg of the elephant-beetle reach a point so far from the orifice in the
+acorn?</p>
+
+<p>To one who was not already aware of the position of the egg, but knew
+that the grub attacked the base of the acorn first, the solution of that
+fact would be as follows: the egg is laid at the entrance of the tunnel,
+at the surface, and the grub, crawling down the gallery sunk by the
+mother, gains of its own accord this distant point where its infant diet
+is to be found.</p>
+
+<p>Before I had sufficient data this was my own belief; but the mistake was
+soon exposed. I plucked an acorn just as the mother withdrew, after
+having for a moment applied the tip of the abdomen to the orifice of the
+passage just opened by her rostrum. The egg, so it seemed, must be
+there, at the entrance of the passage.... But no, it was not! It was at
+the other extremity of the passage! If I dared, I would say it had
+dropped like a stone into a well.</p>
+
+<p>That idea we must abandon at once; the passage is extremely narrow and
+encumbered with shavings, so that such a thing would be impossible.
+Moreover, according to the direction of the stem, accordingly as it
+pointed upwards or downwards, the egg would have to fall downwards in
+one acorn and upwards in another.</p>
+
+<p>A second explanation suggests itself, not less perilous. It might be
+said: "The cuckoo lays <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>her egg on the grass, no matter where; she lifts
+it in her beak and places it in the nearest appropriate nest." Might not
+the Balaninus follow an analogous method? Does she employ the rostrum to
+place the egg in its position at the base of the acorn? I cannot see
+that the insect has any other implement capable of reaching this remote
+hiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, we must hastily reject such an absurd explanation as a
+last, desperate resort. The elephant-beetle certainly does not lay its
+egg in the open and seize it in its beak. If it did so the delicate ovum
+would certainly be destroyed, crushed in the attempt to thrust it down a
+narrow passage half choked with debris.</p>
+
+<p>This is very perplexing. My embarrassment will be shared by all readers
+who are acquainted with the structure of the elephant-beetle. The
+grasshopper has a sabre, an oviscapt which plunges into the earth and
+sows the eggs at the desired depth; the Leuscopis has a probe which
+finds its way through the masonry of the mason-bee and lays the egg in
+the cocoon of the great somnolent larva; but the Balaninus has none of
+these swords, daggers, or pikes; she has nothing but the tip of her
+abdomen. Yet she has only to apply that abdominal extremity to the
+opening of the passage, and the egg is immediately lodged at the very
+bottom.</p>
+
+<p>Anatomy will give us the answer to the riddle, which is otherwise
+indecipherable. I open the body of a gravid female. There, before my
+eyes, is something that takes my breath away. There, occupying the whole
+length of the body, is an extraordinary device; a red, horny, rigid rod;
+I had almost said a rostrum, so greatly does it resemble the implement
+which the insect carries on his head. It is a tube, fine as a h<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>orsehair,
+slightly enlarged at the free extremity, like an old-fashioned
+blunderbuss, and expanding to form an egg-shaped capsule at the point of
+origin.</p>
+
+<p>This is the oviduct, and its dimensions are the same as those of the
+rostrum. As far as the perforating beak can plunge, so far the oviscapt,
+the interior rostrum, will reach. When working upon her acorn the female
+chooses the point of attack so that the two complementary instruments
+can each of them reach the desired point at the base of the acorn.</p>
+
+<p>The matter now explains itself. The work of drilling completed, the
+gallery ready, the mother turns and places the tip of the abdomen
+against the orifice. She extrudes the internal mechanism, which easily
+passes through the loose debris of the boring. No sign of the probe
+appears, so quickly and discreetly does it work; nor is any trace of it
+to be seen when, the egg having been properly deposited, the implement
+ascends and returns to the abdomen. It is over, and the mother departs,
+and we have not caught a glimpse of her internal mechanism.</p>
+
+<p>Was I not right to insist? An apparently insignificant fact has led to
+the authentic proof of a fact that the Larinid&aelig; had already made me
+suspect. The long-beaked weevils have an internal probe, an abdominal
+rostrum, which nothing in their external appearance betrays; they
+possess, among the hidden organs of the abdomen, the counterpart of the
+grasshopper's sabre and the ichneumon's dagger.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PEA-WEEVIL&mdash;<i>BRUCHUS PISI</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Peas are held in high esteem by mankind. From remote ages man has
+endeavoured, by careful culture, to produce larger, tenderer, and
+sweeter varieties. Of an adaptable character, under careful treatment
+the plant has evolved in a docile fashion, and has ended by giving us
+what the ambition of the gardener desired. To-day we have gone far
+beyond the yield of the Varrons and Columelles, and further still beyond
+the original pea; from the wild seeds confided to the soil by the first
+man who thought to scratch up the surface of the earth, perhaps with the
+half-jaw of a cave-bear, whose powerful canine tooth would serve him as
+a ploughshare!</p>
+
+<p>Where is it, this original pea, in the world of spontaneous vegetation?
+Our own country has nothing resembling it. Is it to be found elsewhere?
+On this point botany is silent, or replies only with vague
+probabilities.</p>
+
+<p>We find the same ignorance elsewhere on the subject of the majority of
+our alimentary vegetables. Whence comes wheat, the blessed grain which
+gives us bread? No one knows. You will not find it here, except in the
+care of man; nor will you find it abroad. In the East, the birthplace
+of agriculture, no botanist has ever encountered the sacred ear growing
+of itself on unbroken soil.</p>
+
+<p>Barley, oats, and rye, the turnip and the beet, the beetroot, the
+carrot, the pumpkin, and so many other vegetable products, leave us in
+the same perplexity; their point of departure is unknown to us, or at
+most suspected behind the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>impenetrable cloud of the centuries. Nature
+delivered them to us in the full vigour of the thing untamed, when their
+value as food was indifferent, as to-day she offers us the sloe, the
+bullace, the blackberry, the crab; she gave them to us in the state of
+imperfect sketches, for us to fill out and complete; it was for our
+skill and our labour patiently to induce the nourishing pulp which was
+the earliest form of capital, whose interest is always increasing in the
+primordial bank of the tiller of the soil.</p>
+
+<p>As storehouses of food the cereal and the vegetable are, for the greater
+part, the work of man. The fundamental species, a poor resource in their
+original state, we borrowed as they were from the natural treasury of
+the vegetable world; the perfected race, rich in alimentary materials,
+is the result of our art.</p>
+
+<p>If wheat, peas, and all the rest are indispensable to us, our care, by a
+just return, is absolutely necessary to them. Such as our needs have
+made them, incapable of resistance in the bitter struggle for survival,
+these vegetables, left to themselves without culture, would rapidly
+disappear, despite the numerical abundance of their seeds, as the
+foolish sheep would disappear were there no more sheep-folds.</p>
+
+<p>They are our work, but not always our exclusive property. Wherever food
+is amassed, the consumers collect from the four corners of the sky; they
+invite themselves to the feast of abundance, and the richer the food the
+greater their numbers. Man, who alone is capable of inducing agrarian
+abundance, is by that very fact the giver of an immense banquet at which
+legions of feasters take their place. By creating more juicy and more
+generous fruits he calls to his enclosures, despite himself, thousands
+and thousands of hungry creatures, against whose appetites his
+prohibitions are helpless. The more he produces, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>the larger is the
+tribute demanded of him. Wholesale agriculture and vegetable abundance
+favour our rival the insect.</p>
+
+<p>This is the immanent law. Nature, with an equal zeal, offers her mighty
+breast to all her nurslings alike; to those who live by the goods of
+others no less than to the producers. For us, who plough, sow, and reap,
+and weary ourselves with labour, she ripens the wheat; she ripens it
+also for the little Calender-beetle, which, although exempted from the
+labour of the fields, enters our granaries none the less, and there,
+with its pointed beak, nibbles our wheat, grain by grain, to the husk.</p>
+
+<p>For us, who dig, weed, and water, bent with fatigue and burned by the
+sun, she swells the pods of the pea; she swells them also for the
+weevil, which does no gardener's work, yet takes its share of the
+harvest at its own hour, when the earth is joyful with the new life of
+spring.</p>
+
+<p>Let us follow the man&oelig;uvres of this insect which takes its tithe of
+the green pea. I, a benevolent ratepayer, will allow it to take its
+dues; it is precisely to benefit it that I have sown a few rows of the
+beloved plant in a corner of my garden. Without other invitation on my
+part than this modest expenditure of seed-peas it arrives punctually
+during the month of May. It has learned that this stony soil, rebellious
+to the culture of the kitchen-gardener, is bearing peas for the first
+time. In all haste therefore it has hurried, an agent of the
+entomological revenue system, to demand its dues.</p>
+
+<p>Whence does it come? It is impossible to say precisely. It has come from
+some shelter, somewhere, in which it has passed the winter in a state of
+torpor. The plane-tree, which sheds it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>s rind during the heats of the
+summer, furnishes an excellent refuge for homeless insects under its
+partly detached sheets of bark.</p>
+
+<p>I have often found our weevil in such a winter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>refuge. Sheltered under
+the dead covering of the plane, or otherwise protected while the winter
+lasts, it awakens from its torpor at the first touch of a kindly sun.
+The almanack of the instincts has aroused it; it knows as well as the
+gardener when the pea-vines are in flower, and seeks its favourite
+plant, journeying thither from every side, running with quick, short
+steps, or nimbly flying.</p>
+
+<p>A small head, a fine snout, a costume of ashen grey sprinkled with
+brown, flattened wing-covers, a dumpy, compact body, with two large
+black dots on the rear segment&mdash;such is the summary portrait of my
+visitor. The middle of May approaches, and with it the van of the
+invasion.</p>
+
+<p>They settle on the flowers, which are not unlike white-winged
+butterflies. I see them at the base of the blossom or inside the cavity
+of the "keel" of the flower, but the majority explore the petals and
+take possession of them. The time for laying the eggs has not yet
+arrived. The morning is mild; the sun is warm without being oppressive.
+It is the moment of nuptial flights; the time of rejoicing in the
+splendour of the sunshine. Everywhere are creatures rejoicing to be
+alive. Couples come together, part, and re-form. When towards noon the
+heat becomes too great, the weevils retire into the shadow, taking
+refuge singly in the folds of the flowers whose secret corners they know
+so well. To-morrow will be another day of festival, and the next day
+also, until the pods, emerging from the shelter of the "keel" of the
+flower, are plainly visible, enlarging from day to day.</p>
+
+<p>A few gravid females, more pressed for time than the others, confide
+their eggs to the growing pod, flat and meagre as it i<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>ssues from its
+floral sheath. These hastily laid batches of eggs, expelled perhaps by
+the exigencies of an ovary incapable of further delay, seem to me in
+serious danger; for the seed in which the grub must establish itself is
+as yet no more than a tender speck of green, without firmness and
+without any farinaceous tissue. No larva could possible find sufficient
+nourishment there, unless it waited for the pea to mature.</p>
+
+<p>But is the grub capable of fasting for any length of time when once
+hatched? It is doubtful. The little I have seen tells me that the
+new-born grub must establish itself in the midst of its food as quickly
+as possible, and that it perishes unless it can do so. I am therefore of
+opinion that such eggs as are deposited in immature pods are lost.
+However, the race will hardly suffer by such a loss, so fertile is the
+little beetle. We shall see directly how prodigal the female is of her
+eggs, the majority of which are destined to perish.</p>
+
+<p>The important part of the maternal task is completed by the end of May,
+when the shells are swollen by the expanding peas, which have reached
+their final growth, or are but little short of it. I was anxious to see
+the female Bruchus at work in her quality of Curculionid, as our
+classification declares her.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> The other weevils are Rhyncophora,
+beaked insects, armed with a drill with which to prepare the hole in
+which the egg is laid. The Bruchus possesses only a short snout or
+muzzle, excellently adapted for eating soft tissues, but valueless as a
+drill.</p>
+
+<p>The method of installing the family is consequently absolutely
+different. There are no industrious preparations as with the Balinid&aelig;,
+the Larinid&aelig;, and the Rhynchitides. Not being equi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>pped with a long
+oviscapt, the mother sows her eggs in the open, with no protection
+against the heat of the sun and the variations of temperature. Nothing
+could be simpler, and nothing more perilous to the eggs, in the absence
+of special characteristics which would enable them to resist the
+alternate trials of heat and cold, moisture and drought.</p>
+
+<p>In the caressing sunlight of ten o'clock in the morning the mother runs
+up and down the chosen pod, first on one side, then on the other, with a
+jerky, capricious, unmethodical gait. She repeatedly extrudes a short
+oviduct, which oscillates right and left as though to graze the skin of
+the pod. An egg follows, which is abandoned as soon as laid.</p>
+
+<p>A hasty touch of the oviduct, first here, then there, on the green skin
+of the pea-pod, and that is all. The egg is left there, unprotected, in
+the full sunlight. No choice of position is made such as might assist
+the grub when it seeks to penetrate its larder. Some eggs are laid on
+the swellings created by the peas beneath; others in the barren valleys
+which separate them. The first are close to the peas, the second at some
+distance from them. In short, the eggs of the Bruchus are laid at
+random, as though on the wing.</p>
+
+<p>We observe a still more serious vice: the number of eggs is out of all
+proportion to the number of peas in the pod. Let us note at the outset
+that each grub requires one pea; it is the necessary ration, and is
+largely sufficient to one larva, but is not enough for several, nor even
+for two. One pea to each grub, neither more nor less, is the
+unchangeable rule.</p>
+
+<p>We shou<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>ld expect to find signs of a procreative economy which would
+impel the female to take into account the number of peas contained in
+the pod which she has just explored; we might expect her to set a
+numerical limit on her eggs in conformity with that of the peas
+available. But no such limit is observed. The rule of one pea to one
+grub is always contradicted by the multiplicity of consumers.</p>
+
+<p>My observations are unanimous on this point. The number of eggs
+deposited on one pod always exceeds the number of peas available, and
+often to a scandalous degree. However meagre the contents of the pod
+there is a superabundance of consumers. Dividing the sum of the eggs
+upon such or such a pod by that of the peas contained therein, I find
+there are five to eight claimants for each pea; I have found ten, and
+there is no reason why this prodigality should not go still further.
+Many are called, but few are chosen! What is to become of all these
+supernumeraries, perforce excluded from the banquet for want of space?</p>
+
+<p>The eggs are of a fairly bright amber yellow, cylindrical in form,
+smooth, and rounded at the ends. Their length is at most a twenty-fifth
+of an inch. Each is affixed to the pod by means of a slight network of
+threads of coagulated albumen. Neither wind nor rain can loosen their
+hold.</p>
+
+<p>The mother not infrequently emits them two at a time, one above the
+other; not infrequently, also, the uppermost of the two eggs hatches
+before the other, while the latter fades and perishes. What was lacking
+to this egg, that it should fail to produce a grub? Perhaps a bath of
+sunlight; the incubating heat of which the outer egg has robbed it.
+Whether on account of the fact that it is shadowed by the other egg, or
+for other reasons, the elder of the eggs in a group of two rarely
+follows the normal course, but perishes on the pod, dead without having
+lived.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are exceptions to this premature end; sometimes the two eggs
+develop equally well; but such cases are exceptional, so that the
+Bruchid family would be reduced to about half its dimensions if the
+binary system were the rule. To the detriment of our peas and to the
+advantage of the beetle, the eggs are commonly laid one by one and in
+isolation.</p>
+
+<p>A recent emergence is shown by a little sinuous ribbon-like mark, pale
+or whitish, where the skin of the pod is raised and withered, which
+starts from the egg and is the work of the new-born larva; a
+sub-epidermic tunnel along which the grub works its way, while seeking a
+point from which it can escape into a pea. This point once attained, the
+larva, which is scarcely a twenty-fifth of an inch in length, and is
+white with a black head, perforates the envelope and plunges into the
+capacious hollow of the pod.</p>
+
+<p>It has reached the peas and crawls upon the nearest. I have observed it
+with the magnifier. Having explored the green globe, its new world, it
+begins to sink a well perpendicularly into the sphere. I have often seen
+it half-way in, wriggling its tail in the effort to work the quicker. In
+a short time the grub disappears and is at home. The point of entry,
+minute, but always easily recognisable by its brown coloration on the
+pale green background of the pea, has no fixed location; it may be at
+almost any point on the surface of the pea, but an exception is usually
+made of the lower half; that is, the hemisphere who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>se pole is formed by
+the supporting stem.</p>
+
+<p>It is precisely in this portion that the germ is found, which will not
+be eaten by the larva, and will remain capable of developing into a
+plant, in spite of the large aperture made by the emergence of the adult
+insect. Why is this particular portion left untouched? What are the
+motives that safeguard the germ?</p>
+
+<p>It goes without saying that the Bruchus is not considering the gardener.
+The pea is meant for it and for no one else. In refusing the few bites
+that would lead to the death of the seed, it has no intention of
+limiting its destruction. It abstains from other motives.</p>
+
+<p>Let us remark that the peas touch laterally, and are pressed one
+against the other, so that the grub, when searching for a point of
+attack, cannot circulate at will. Let us also note that the lower pole
+expands into the umbilical excrescence, which is less easy of
+perforation than those parts protected by the skin alone. It is even
+possible that the umbilicum, whose organisation differs from that of the
+rest of the pea, contains a peculiar sap that is distasteful to the
+little grub.</p>
+
+<p>Such, doubtless, is the reason why the peas exploited by the Bruchus are
+still able to germinate. They are damaged, but not dead, because the
+invasion was conducted from the free hemisphere, a portion l<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>ess
+vulnerable and more easy of access. Moreover, as the pea in its entirety
+is too large for a single grub to consume, the consumption is limited to
+the portion preferred by the consumer, and this portion is not the
+essential portion of the pea.</p>
+
+<p>With other conditions, with very much smaller or very much larger seeds,
+we shall observe very different results. If too small, the germ will
+perish, gnawed like the rest by the insufficiently provisioned inmate;
+if too large, the abundance of food will permit of several inmates.
+Exploited in the absence of the pea, the cultivated vetch and the broad
+bean afford us an excellent example; the smaller seed, of which all but
+the skin is devoured, is left incapable of germination; but the large
+bean, even though it may have held a number of grubs, is still capable
+of sprouting.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing that the pod always exhibits a number of eggs greatly in excess
+of the enclosed peas, and that each pea is the exclusive property of one
+grub, we naturally ask what becomes of the superfluous grubs. Do they
+perish outside when the more precocious have one by one taken their
+places in their vegetable larder? or do they succumb to the intolerant
+teeth of the first occupants? Neither explanation is correct. Let us
+relate the facts.</p>
+
+<p>On all old peas&mdash;they are at this stage dry&mdash;from which the adult
+Bruchus has emerged, leaving a large round hole of exit, the
+magnifying-glass will show a variable number of fine reddish
+punctuations, perforated in the centre. What are these spots, of which I
+count five, six, and even more on a single pea? It is impossible to be
+mistaken: they are the points of entry of as many grubs. Several grubs
+have entered the pea, but of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>whole group only one has survived,
+fattened, and attained the adult age. And the others? We shall see.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of May, and in June, the period of egg-laying, let us inspect
+the still green and tender peas. Nearly all the peas invaded show us the
+multiple perforations already observed on the dry peas abandoned by the
+weevils. Does this actually mean that there are several grubs in the
+pea? Yes. Skin the peas in question, separate the cotyledons, and break
+them up as may be necessary. We shall discover several grubs, extremely
+youthful, curled up comma-wise, fat and lively, each in a little round
+niche in the body of the pea.</p>
+
+<p>Peace and welfare seem to reign in the little community. There is no
+quarrelling, no jealousy between neighbours. The feast has commenced;
+food is abundant, and the feasters are separated one from another by the
+walls of uneaten substance. With this isolation in separate cells no
+conflicts need be feared; no sudden bite of the mandibles, whether
+intentional or accidental. All the occupants enjoy the same rights of
+property, the same appetite, and the same strength. How does this
+communal feast terminate?</p>
+
+<p>Having first opened them, I place a number of peas which are found to be
+well peopled in a glass test-tube. I open others daily. In this way I
+keep myself informed as to the progress of the various larv&aelig;. At first
+nothing noteworthy is to be seen. Isolated in its narrow chamber, each
+grub nibbles the substance around it, peacefully and parsimoniously. It
+is still very small; a mere speck of food is a feast; but the contents
+of one pea will not suffice the whole number to the end. Famine is
+ahead, and all but one must perish.</p>
+
+<p>Soon, indeed, the aspect o<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>f things is entirely changed. One of the
+grubs&mdash;that which occupies the central position in the pea&mdash;begins to
+grow more quickly than the others. Scarcely has it surpassed the others
+in size when the latter cease to eat, and no longer attempt to burrow
+forwards. They lie motionless and resigned; they die that gentle death
+which comes to unconscious lives. Henceforth the entire pea belongs to
+the sole survivor. Now what has happened that these lives around the
+privileged one should be thus annihilated? In default of a satisfactory
+reply, I will propose a suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the pea, less ripened than the rest of the seed by the
+chemistry of the sun, may there not be a softer pulp, of a quality
+better adapted to the infantile digestion of the grub? There, perhaps,
+being nourished by tenderer, sweeter, and perhaps more tasty tissues,
+the stomach becomes more vigorous, until it is fit to undertake less
+easily digested food. A nursling is fed on milk before proceeding to
+bread and broth. May not the central portion of the pea be the
+feeding-bottle of the Bruchid?</p>
+
+<p>With equal rights, fired by an equal ambition, all the occupants of the
+pea bore their way towards the delicious morsel. The journey is
+laborious, and the grubs must rest frequently in their provisional
+niches. They rest; while resting they frugally gnaw the riper tissues
+surrounding them; they gnaw rather to open a way than to fill their
+stomachs.</p>
+
+<p>Finally one of the excavators, favoured by the direction taken, attains
+the central portion. It establishes itself there, and all is over; the
+others have only to die. How are they warned that the place is taken? Do
+they hear their brother gnawing at the walls of his lod<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>ging? can they
+feel the vibration set up by his nibbling mandibles? Something of the
+kind must happen, for from that moment they make no attempt to burrow
+further. Without struggling against the fortunate winner, without
+seeking to dislodge him, those which are beaten in the race give
+themselves up to death. I admire this candid resignation on the part of
+the departed.</p>
+
+<p>Another condition&mdash;that of space&mdash;is also present as a factor. The
+pea-weevil is the largest of our Bruchid&aelig;. When it attains the adult
+stage it requires a certain amplitude of lodging, which the other
+weevils do not require in the same degree. A pea provides it with a
+sufficiently spacious cell; nevertheless, the cohabitation of two in one
+pea would be impossible; there would be no room, even were the two to
+put up with a certain discomfort. Hence the necessity of an inevitable
+decimation, which will suppress all the competitors save one.</p>
+
+<p>Now the superior volume of the broad bean, which is almost as much
+beloved by the weevil as the pea, can lodge a considerable community,
+and the solitary can live as a cenobite. Without encroaching on the
+domain of their neighbours, five or six or more can find room in the one
+bean.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, each grub can find its infant diet; that is, that layer which,
+remote from the surface, hardens only gradually and remains full of sap
+until a comparatively late period. This inner layer represents the crumb
+of a loaf, the rest of the bean being the crust.</p>
+
+<p>In the pea, a sphere of much less capacity, it occupies the central
+portion; a limited point at which the grub develops, and lack<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>ing which
+it perishes; but in the bean it lines the wide adjoining faces of the
+two flattened cotyledons. No matter where the point of attack is made,
+the grub has only to bore straight down when it quickly reaches the
+softer tissues. What is the result? I have counted the eggs adhering to
+a bean-pod and the beans included in the pod, and comparing the two
+figures I find that there is plenty of room for the whole family at the
+rate of five or six dwellers in each bean. No superfluous larv&aelig; perish
+of hunger when barely issued from the egg; all have their share of the
+ample provision; all live and prosper. The abundance of food balances
+the prodigal fertility of the mother.</p>
+
+<p>If the Bruchus were always to adopt the broad bean for the establishment
+of her family I could well understand the exuberant allowance of eggs to
+one pod; a rich food-stuff easily obtained evokes a large batch of
+eggs. But the case of the pea perplexes me. By what aberration does the
+mother abandon her children to starvation on this totally insufficient
+vegetable? Why so many grubs to each pea when one pea is sufficient only
+for one grub?</p>
+
+<p>Matters are not so arranged in the general balance-sheet of life. A
+certain foresight seems to rule over the ovary so that the number of
+mouths is in proportion to the abundance or scarcity of the food
+consumed. The Scarab&aelig;us, the Sphex, the Necrophorus, and other insects
+which prepare and preserve alimentary provision for their families, are
+all of a narrowly limited fertility, because the balls of dung, the dead
+or paralysed insects, or the buried corpses of animals on which their
+offspring are nourished are provided <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>only at the cost of laborious
+efforts.</p>
+
+<p>The ordinary bluebottle, on the contrary, which lays her eggs upon
+butcher's meat or carrion, lays them in enormous batches. Trusting in
+the inexhaustible riches represented by the corpse, she is prodigal of
+offspring, and takes no account of numbers. In other cases the provision
+is acquired by audacious brigandage, which exposes the newly born
+offspring to a thousand mortal accidents. In such cases the mother
+balances the chances of destruction by an exaggerated flux of eggs. Such
+is the case with the Meloides, which, stealing the goods of others under
+conditions of the greatest peril, are accordingly endowed with a
+prodigious fertility.</p>
+
+<p>The Bruchus knows neither the fatigues of the laborious, obliged to
+limit the size of her family, nor the misfortunes of the parasite,
+obliged to produce an exaggerated number of offspring. Without painful
+search, entirely at her ease, merely moving in the sunshine over her
+favourite plant, she can ensure a sufficient provision for each of her
+offspring; she can do so, yet is foolish enough to over-populate the pod
+of the pea; a nursery insufficiently provided, in which the great
+majority will perish of starvation. This ineptitude is a thing I cannot
+understand: it clashes too completely with the habitual foresight of the
+maternal instinct.</p>
+
+<p>I am inclined to believe that the pea is not the original food plant of
+the Bruchus. The original plant must rather have been the bean, one seed
+of which is capable of supporting half a dozen or more larv&aelig;. With the
+larger cotyledon the crying disproportion between the number of eggs and
+the available provision disappears.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it is indubitable that the bean is of earlier date than the
+pea. Its exceptional size and its agreeable flavour would certainly have
+attracted the attention of man from the remotest periods. The bean is a
+ready-made mouthful, and would be of the greatest value to the hungry
+tribe. Primitive man would at an early date have sown it beside his
+wattled hut. Coming from Central Asia by long stages, their wagons drawn
+by shaggy oxen and rolling on the circular discs cut from the trunks of
+trees, the early immigrants would have brought to our virgin land, first
+the bean, then the pea, and finally the cereal, that best of safeguards
+against famine. They taught us the care of herds, and the use of bronze,
+the material of the first metal implement. Thus the dawn of civilisation
+arose over France. With the bean did those ancient teachers also
+involuntarily bring us the insect which to-day disputes it with us? It
+is doubtful; the Bruchid&aelig; seem to be indigenous. At all events, I find
+them levying tribute from various indigenous plants, wild vegetables
+which have never tempted the appetite of man. They abound in particular
+upon the great forest vetch (<i>Lathyrus latifolius</i>), with its
+magnificent heads of flowers and long handsome pods. The seeds are not
+large, being indeed smaller than the garden pea; but eaten to the very
+skin, as they invariably are, each is sufficient to the needs of its
+grub.</p>
+
+<p>We must not fail to note their number. I have counted more than twenty
+in a single pod, a number unknown in the case of the pea, even in the
+most prolific varieties. Consequently this superb vetch is in general
+able to nourish without much loss the family confided to its pod.</p>
+
+<p>Where the forest vetc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>h is lacking, the Bruchus, none the less, bestows
+its habitual prodigality of eggs upon another vegetable of similar
+flavour, but incapable of nourishing all the grubs: for the example, the
+travelling vetch (<i>Vicia peregrina</i>) or the cultivated vetch (<i>Vicia
+sativa</i>). The number of eggs remains high even upon insufficient pods,
+because the original food-plant offered a copious provision, both in the
+multiplicity and the size of the seeds. If the Bruchus is really a
+stranger, let us regard the bean as the original food-plant; if
+indigenous, the large vetch.</p>
+
+<p>Sometime in the remote past we received the pea, growing it at first in
+the prehistoric vegetable garden which already supplied the bean. It was
+found a better article of diet than the broad bean, which to-day, after
+such good service, is comparatively neglected. The weevil was of the
+same opinion as man, and without entirely forgetting the bean and the
+vetch it established the greater part of its tribe upon the pea, which
+from century to century was more widely cultivated. To-day we have to
+share our peas: the Bruchid&aelig; take what they need, and bestow their
+leavings on us.</p>
+
+<p>This prosperity of the insect which is the offspring of the abundance
+and quality of our garden products is from another point of view
+equivalent to decadence. For the weevil, as for ourselves, progress in
+matters of food and drink is not always beneficial. The race would
+profit better if it remained frugal. On the bean and the vetch the
+Bruchus founded colonies in which the infant mortality was low. There
+was room for all. On the pea-vine, delicious though its fruits may be,
+the greater part of its offspring die of starvation. The rations are
+few, and the hungry mouths are multitudinous.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+<p>We will linger over this problem no longer. Let us observe the grub
+which has now become the sole tenant of the pea by the death of its
+brothers. It has had no part in their death; chance has favoured it,
+that is all. In the centre of the pea, a wealthy solitude, it performs
+the duty of a grub; the sole duty of eating. It nibbles the walls
+enclosing it, enlarging its lodgment, which is always entirely filled by
+its corpulent body. It is well shaped, fat, and shining with health. If
+I disturb it, it turns gently in its niche and sways its head. This is
+its manner of complaining of my importunities. Let us leave it in peace.</p>
+
+<p>It profits so greatly and so swiftly by its position that by the time
+the dog-days have come it is already preparing for its approaching
+liberation. The adult is not sufficiently well equipped to open for
+itself a way out through the pea, which is now completely hardened. The
+larva knows of this future helplessness, and with consummate art
+provides for its release. With its powerful mandibles it bores a channel
+of exit, exactly round, with extremely clean-cut sides. The most skilful
+ivory-carver could do no better.</p>
+
+<p>To prepare the door of exit in advance is not enough; the grub must also
+provide for the tranquillity essential to the delicate processes of
+nymphosis. An intruder might enter by the open door and injure the
+helpless nymph. This passage must therefore remain closed. But how?</p>
+
+<p>As the grub bores the passage of exit it consumes the farinaceous matter
+without leaving a crumb. Having come to the skin of the pea it stops
+short. This membrane, semi-translucid, is the door to the chamber of
+metamorphosis, its protection against the evil intentions of external
+creatures.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is also the only obstacle which the adult will encounter at the
+moment of exit. To lessen the difficulty of opening it the grub takes
+the precaution of gnawing at the inner side of the skin, all round the
+circumference, so as to make a line of least resistance. The perfect
+insect will only have to heave with its shoulder and strike a few blows
+with its head in order to raise the circular door and knock it off like
+the lid of a box. The passage of exit shows through the diaphanous skin
+of the pea as a large circular spot, which is darkened by the obscurity
+of the interior. What passes behind it is invisible, hidden as it is
+behind a sort of ground glass window.</p>
+
+<p>A pretty invention, this little closed porthole, this barricade against
+the invader, this trap-door raised by a push when the time has come for
+the hermit to enter the world. Shall we credit it to the Bruchus? Did
+the ingenious insect conceive the undertaking? Did it think out a plan
+and work out a scheme of its own devising? This would be no small
+triumph for the brain of a weevil. Before coming to a conclusion let us
+try an experiment.</p>
+
+<p>I deprive certain occupied peas of their skin, and I dry them with
+abnormal rapidity, placing them in glass test-tubes. The grubs prosper
+as well as in the intact peas. At the proper time the preparations for
+emergence are made.</p>
+
+<p>If the grub acts on its own inspiration, if it ceases to prolong its
+boring directly it recognises that the outer coating, auscultated from
+time to time, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> sufficiently thin, what will it do under the conditions
+of the present test? Feeling itself at the requisite distance from the
+surface it will stop boring; it will respect the outer layer of the bare
+pea, and will thus obtain the indispensable protecting screen.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of the kind occurs. In every case the passage is completely
+excavated; the entrance gapes wide open, as large and as carefully
+executed as though the skin of the pea were in its place. Reasons of
+security have failed to modify the usual method of work. This open
+lodging has no defence against the enemy; but the grub exhibits no
+anxiety on this score.</p>
+
+<p>Neither is it thinking of the outer enemy when it bores down to the skin
+when the pea is intact, and then stops short. It suddenly stops because
+the innutritious skin is not to its taste. We ourselves remove the
+parchment-like skins from a mess of pease-pudding, as from a culinary
+point of view they are so much waste matter. The larva of the Bruchus,
+like ourselves, dislikes the skin of the pea. It stops short at the
+horny covering, simply because it is checked by an uneatable substance.
+From this aversion a little miracle arises; but the insect has no sense
+of logic; it is passively obedient to the superior logic of facts. It
+obeys its instinct, as unconscious of its act as is a crystal when it
+assembles, in exquisite order, its battalions of atoms.</p>
+
+<p>Sooner or later during the month of August we see a shadowy circle form
+on each inhabited pea; but only one on each seed. These circles of
+shadow mark the doors of exit. Most of them open in September. The lid,
+as though cut out with a punch, detaches itself cleanly and falls to the
+ground, leaving the orifice free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>. The Bruchus emerges, freshly clad, in
+its final form.</p>
+
+<p>The weather is delightful. Flowers are abundant, awakened by the summer
+showers; and the weevils visit them in the lovely autumn weather. Then,
+when the cold sets in, they take up their winter quarters in any
+suitable retreat. Others, still numerous, are less hasty in quitting the
+native seed. They remain within during the whole winter, sheltered
+behind the trap-door, which they take care not to touch. The door of the
+cell will not open on its hinges, or, to be exact, will not yield along
+the line of least resistance, until the warm days return. Then the late
+arrivals will leave their shelter and rejoin the more impatient, and
+both will be ready for work when the pea-vines are in flower.</p>
+
+<p>To take a general view of the instincts in their inexhaustible variety
+is, for the observer, the great attraction of the entomological world;
+for nowhere do we gain a clearer sight of the wonderful way in which the
+processes of life are ordered. Thus regarded entomology is not, I know,
+to the taste of everybody; the simple creature absorbed in the doings
+and habits of insects is held in low esteem. To the terrible
+utilitarian, a bushel of peas preserved from the weevil is of more
+importance than a volume of observations which bring no immediate
+profit.</p>
+
+<p>Yet who has told you, O man of little faith, that what is useless to-day
+will not be useful to-morrow? If we learn the customs of insects or
+animals we shall understand better how to protect our goods. Do not
+despise disinterested knowledge, or you may rue the day. It is by the
+accumulation of ideas, whether immediately applicable or otherwise, that
+humanity has don<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>e, and will continue to do, better to-day than
+yesterday, and better to-morrow than to-day. If we live on peas and
+beans, which we dispute with the weevil, we also live by knowledge, that
+mighty kneading-trough in which the bread of progress is mixed and
+leavened. Knowledge is well worth a few beans.</p>
+
+<p>Among other things, knowledge tells us: "The seedsman need not go to the
+expense of waging war upon the weevil. When the peas arrive in the
+granary, the harm is already done; it is irreparable, but not
+transmissible. The untouched peas have nothing to fear from the
+neighbourhood of those which have been attacked, however long the
+mixture is left. From the latter the weevils will issue when their time
+has come; they will fly away from the storehouse if escape is possible;
+if not, they will perish without in any way attacking the sound peas. No
+eggs, no new generation will ever be seen upon or within the dried peas
+in the storehouse; there the adult weevil can work no further mischief."</p>
+
+<p>The Bruchus is not a sedentary inhabitant of granaries: it requires the
+open air, the sun, the liberty of the fields. Frugal in everything, it
+absolutely disdains the hard tissues of the vegetable; its tiny mouth is
+content with a few honeyed mouthfuls, enjoyed upon the flowers. The
+larv&aelig;, on the other hand, require the tender tissues of the green pea
+growing in the pod. For these reasons the granary knows no final
+multiplication on the part of the despoiler.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of the evil is in the kitchen-garden. It is there that we
+ought to keep a watch on the misdeeds of the Bruchus, were it not for
+the fact that we are nearly always weaponless when it comes to fighting
+an insect. Indestructible by reason of its numbers, its small size, and
+its cunning, the little creature laughs at the anger of man. The
+gardener curses it, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> the weevil is not disturbed: it imperturbably
+continues its trade of levying tribute. Happily we have assistants more
+patient and more clear-sighted than ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>During the first week of August, when the mature Bruchus begins to
+emerge, I notice a little Chalcidian, the protector of our peas. In my
+rearing-cages it issues under my eyes in abundance from the peas
+infested by the grub of the weevil. The female has a reddish head and
+thorax; the abdomen is black, with a long augur-like oviscapt. The male,
+a little smaller, is black. Both sexes have reddish claws and
+thread-like antenn&aelig;.</p>
+
+<p>In order to escape from the pea the slayer of the weevil makes an
+opening in the centre of the circular trap-door which the grub of the
+weevil prepared in view of its future deliverance. The slain has
+prepared the way for the slayer. After this detail the rest may be
+divined.</p>
+
+<p>When the preliminaries to the metamorphosis are completed, when the
+passage of escape is bored and furnished with its lid of superficial
+membrane, the female Chalcidian arrives in a busy mood. She inspects the
+peas, still on the vine, and enclosed in their pods; she auscultates
+them with her antenn&aelig;; she discovers, hidden under the general envelope,
+the weak points in the epidermic covering of the peas. Then, applying
+her oviscapt, she thrusts it through the side of the pod and perforates
+the circular trap-door. However far withdrawn into the centre of the
+pea, the Bruchus, whether larv&aelig; or nymph, is reached by the long
+oviduct. It receives an egg in its tender flesh, and the thing is done.
+Without possibility of defence, since it is by now a somnolent grub or a
+helpless pupa, the embryo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> weevil is eaten until nothing but skin
+remains. What a pity that we cannot at will assist the multiplication of
+this eager exterminator! Alas! our assistants have got us in a vicious
+circle, for if we wished to obtain the help of any great number of
+Chalcidians we should be obliged in the first place to breed a
+multiplicity of Bruchid&aelig;.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>AN INVADER.&mdash;THE HARICOT-WEEVIL</h3>
+
+
+<p>If there is one vegetable on earth that more than any other is a gift of
+the gods, it is the haricot bean. It has all the virtues: it forms a
+soft paste upon the tongue; it is extremely palatable, abundant,
+inexpensive, and highly nutritious. It is a vegetable meat which,
+without being bloody and repulsive, is the equivalent of the horrors
+outspread upon the butcher's slab. To recall its services the more
+emphatically, the Proven&ccedil;al idiom calls it the <i>gounflo-gus</i>&mdash;the filler
+of the poor.</p>
+
+<p>Blessed Bean, consoler of the wretched, right well indeed do you fill
+the labourer, the honest, skilful worker who has drawn a low number in
+the crazy lottery of life. Kindly Haricot, with thr<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>ee drops of oil and a
+dash of vinegar you were the favourite dish of my young years; and even
+now, in the evening of my days, you are welcome to my humble porringer.
+We shall be friends to the last.</p>
+
+<p>To-day it is not my intention to sing your merits; I wish simply to ask
+you a question, being curious: What is the country of your origin? Did
+you come from Central Asia with the broad bean and the pea? Did you make
+part of that collection of seeds which the first pioneers of culture
+brought us from their gardens? Were you known to antiquity?</p>
+
+<p>Here the insect, an impartial and well-informed witness, answers: "No;
+in our country antiquity was not acquainted with the haricot. The
+precious vegetable came hither by the same road as the broad bean. It is
+a foreigner, and of comparatively recent introduction into Europe."</p>
+
+<p>The reply of the insect merits serious examination, supported as it is
+by extremely plausible arguments. Here are the facts. For years
+attentive to matters agricultural, I had never seen haricots attacked by
+any insect whatever; not even by the Bruchid&aelig;, the licensed robbers of
+leguminous seeds.</p>
+
+<p>On this point I have questioned my peasant neighbours. They are men of
+the extremest vigilance in all that concerns their crops. To steal their
+property is an abominable crime, swiftly discovered. Moreover, the
+housewife, who individually examines all beans intended for the
+saucepan, would inevitably find the malefactor.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+<p>All those I have spoken to replied to my questions with a smile in which
+I read their lack of faith in my knowledge of insects. "Sir," they said,
+"you must know that there are never grubs in the haricot bean. It is a
+blessed vegetable, respected by the weevil. The pea, the broad bean, the
+vetch, and the chick-pea all have their vermin; but the haricot, <i>lou
+gounflo-gus</i>, never. What should we do, poor folk as we are, if the
+<i>Courcoussoun</i> robbed us of it?"</p>
+
+<p>The fact is that the weevil despises the haricot; a very curious dislike
+if we consider how industriously the other vegetables of the same family
+are attacked. All, even the beggarly lentil, are eagerly exploited;
+whilst the haricot, so tempting both as to size and flavour, remains
+untouched. It is incomprehensible. Why should the Bruchus, which without
+hesitation passes from the excellent to the indifferent, and from the
+indifferent to the excellent, disdain this particularly toothsome seed?
+It leaves the forest vetch for the pea, and the pea for the broad bean,
+as pleased with the small as with the large, yet the temptations of the
+haricot bean leave it indifferent. Why?</p>
+
+<p>Apparently because the haricot is unknown to it. The other leguminous
+plants, whether native or of Oriental origin, have been familiar to it
+for centuries; it has tested their virtues year by year, and, confiding
+in the lessons of the past, it bases its forethought for the future upon
+ancient custom. The haricot is avoided as a newcomer, whose merits it
+has not yet learned.</p>
+
+<p>The insect emphatically informs us that with us the haricot is of recent
+date. It has come to us fr<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>om a distant country: and assuredly from the
+New World. Every edible vegetable attracts its consumers. If it had
+originated in the Old World the haricot would have had its licensed
+consumers, as have the pea, the lentil, and the broad bean. The smallest
+leguminous seed, if barely bigger than a pin's head, nourishes its
+weevil; a dwarf which patiently nibbles it and excavates a dwelling; but
+the plump, delicious haricot is spared.</p>
+
+<p>This astonishing immunity can have only one explanation: like the potato
+and the maize-plant, the haricot is a gift of the New World. It arrived
+in Europe without the company of the insect which exploits it in its
+native country; it has found in our fields another world of insects,
+which have despised it because they did not know it. Similarly the
+potato and the ear of maize are untouched in France unless their
+American consumers are accidentally imported with them.</p>
+
+<p>The verdict of the insect is confirmed by the negative testimony of the
+ancient classics; the haricot never appears on the table of the Greek or
+Roman peasant. In the second Eclogue of Virgil Thestylis prepares the
+repast of the harvesters:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thestylis et rapido fessis messoribus &aelig;stu</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Allia serpyllumque herbas contundit olentes.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This mixture is the equivalent of the <i>a&iuml;oli</i>, dear to the Proven&ccedil;al
+palate. It sounds very well in verse, but is not very substantial. On
+such an occasion men would look for that fundamental dish, the plate of
+red haricots, seasoned with chopped onions. All in good time; this at
+least would ballast the stomach. Thus refreshed in the open air,
+listening to the song of the cigales, the gang of harvesters would take
+their mid-day rest and gently digest their meal in the shadows of the
+sheaves. Our modern Thestylis, differing little from her classic sister,
+would take good care not to forget the <i>gounflo-gus</i>, that economical
+resource of large appetites. The Thestylis of the past did not think of
+providing it because she did not know it.</p>
+
+<p>The same author shows us Tityrus offering a night's hospitality to his
+friend Melib&oelig;us, who has been driven from his property by the
+soldiers of Octavius, and goes limping behind his flock of goats. We
+shall have, says Tityrus, chestnuts, cheese, and fruits. History does
+not say if Melib&oelig;us allowed himself to be tempted. It is a pity; for
+during the frugal meal we might have learned in a more explicit fashion
+that the shepherds of the ancient world were not acquainted with the
+haricot.</p>
+
+<p>Ovid tells us, in a delightful passage, of the manner in which Philemon
+and Baucis received the gods unawares as guests in their humble cottage.
+On the three-legged table, which was levelled by means of a potsherd
+under one of the legs, they served cabbage soup, rusty bacon, eggs
+poached for a minute in the hot cinders, cornel-berries pickled in
+brine, honey, and fruits. In this rustic abundance one dish was lacking;
+an essential dish, which the Baucis of our count<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>ryside would never
+forget. After bacon soup would follow the obligatory plate of haricots.
+Why did Ovid, so prodigal of detail, neglect to mention a dish so
+appropriate to the occasion? The reply is the same as before: because he
+did not know of it.</p>
+
+<p>In vain have I recapitulated all that my reading has taught me
+concerning the rustic dietary of ancient times; I can recollect no
+mention of the haricot. The worker in the vineyard and the harvester
+have their lupins, broad beans, peas, and lentils, but never the bean of
+beans, the haricot.</p>
+
+<p>The haricot has a reputation of another kind. It is a source of
+flatulence; you eat it, as the saying is, and then you take a walk. It
+lends itself to the gross pleasantries loved of the populace; especially
+when they are formulated by the shameless genius of an Aristophanes or a
+Plautus. What merriment over a simple allusion to the sonorous bean,
+what guffaws from the throats of Athenian sailors or Roman porters! Did
+the two masters, in the unfettered gaiety of a language less reserved
+than our own, ever mention the virtues of the haricot? No; they are
+absolutely silent concerning the trumpet-voiced vegetable.</p>
+
+<p>The name of the bean is a matter for reflection. It is of an unfamiliar
+sound, having no affinity with our language. By its unlikeness to our
+native combinations of sounds, it makes one think of the West Indies or
+South America, as do <i>caoutchouc</i> and <i>cacao</i>. Does the word as a matter
+of fact come from the American Indians? Did we receive, together with
+the vegetable, the name by which it is known in its native country?
+Perhaps; but how are we to know? Haricot, fantastic haricot, you set us
+a curious philological problem.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p>
+<p>It is also known in French as <i>fas&eacute;ole</i>, or <i>flageolet</i>. The Proven&ccedil;al
+calls it <i>faio&ugrave;</i> and <i>favio&ugrave;</i>; the Catalan, <i>fayol</i>; the Spaniard,
+<i>faseolo</i>; the Portuguese, <i>fey&acirc;o</i>; the Italian, <i>fagiuolo</i>. Here I am
+on familiar ground: the languages of the Latin family have preserved,
+with the inevitable modifications, the ancient word <i>faseolus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if I consult my dictionary I find: <i>faselus</i>, <i>faseolus</i>,
+<i>phaseolus</i>, haricot. Learned lexicographer, permit me to remark that
+your translation is incorrect: <i>faselus</i>, <i>faseolus</i> cannot mean
+haricot. The incontestable proof is in the Georgics, where Virgil tells
+us at what season we must sow the <i>faselus</i>. He says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Si vero viciamque seres vilemque faselum ...</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Incipe, et ad medias sementem extende pruinas.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is clearer than the precept of the poet who was so admirably
+familiar with all matters agricultural; the sowing of the <i>faselus</i> must
+be commenced when the constellation of Bootes disappears at the set of
+sun, that is, in October; and it is to be continued until the middle of
+the winter.</p>
+
+<p>These conditions put the haricot out of the running: it is a delicate
+plant, which would never survive the lightest frost. Winter would be
+fatal to it, even under Italian skies. More refractory to cold on
+account of the country of their origin, peas, broad beans, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>and vetches,
+and other leguminous plants have nothing to fear from an autumn sowing,
+and prosper during the winter provided the climate be fairly mild.</p>
+
+<p>What then is represented by the <i>faselus</i> of the Georgics, that
+problematical vegetable which has transmitted its name to the haricot in
+the Latin tongues? Remembering that the contemptuous epithet <i>vilis</i> is
+used by the poet in qualification, I am strongly inclined to regard it
+as the cultivated vetch, the big square pea, the little-valued <i>ja&iuml;sso</i>
+of the Proven&ccedil;al peasant.</p>
+
+<p>The problem of the haricot stood thus, almost elucidated by the
+testimony of the insect world alone, when an unexpected witness gave me
+the last word of the enigma. It was once again a poet, and a famous
+poet, M. Jos&eacute;-Maria de Heredia, who came to the aid of the naturalist.
+Without suspecting the service he was rendering, a friend of mine, the
+village schoolmaster, lent me a magazine<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> in which I read the
+following conversation between the master-sonneteer and a lady
+journalist, who was anxious to know which of his own works he preferred.</p>
+
+<p>"What would you have me say?" said the poet.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what to say, I do not know which sonnet I prefer; I have
+taken horrible pains with all of them.... But you, which do you prefer?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear master, how can I choose out of so many jewels, when each one
+is perfect in its beauty? You flash pearls, emeralds, and rubies before
+my astonished eyes: how should I decide to prefer the emerald to the
+pearl? I am transported by admiration of the whole necklace."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as for me, there is something I am more proud of than of all my
+sonnets, and which has done much more for my reputation tha<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>n my verses."</p>
+
+<p>I opened my eyes wide, "What is that?" I asked. The master looked at me
+mischievously; then, with that beautiful light in his eyes which fires
+his youthful countenance, he said triumphantly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is my discovery of the etymology of the word haricot!"</p>
+
+<p>I was so amazed that I forgot to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I am perfectly serious in telling you this."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, my dear master, of your reputation for profound scholarship:
+but to imagine, on that account, that you were famed for your discovery
+of the etymology of haricot&mdash;I should never have expected it! Will you
+tell me how you made the discovery?"</p>
+
+<p>"Willingly. See now: I found some information respecting the haricot
+while studying that fine seventeenth-century work of natural history by
+Hernandez: <i>De Historia plantarum novi orbis</i>. The word haricot was
+unknown in France until the seventeenth century: people used the word
+<i>feve</i> or <i>phas&eacute;ol</i>: in Mexican, <i>ayacot</i>. Thirty species of haricot
+were cultivated in Mexico before the conquest. They are still known as
+<i>ayacot</i>, especially the red haricot, spotted with black or violet. One
+day at the house of Gaston Paris I met a famous scholar. Hearing my
+name, he rushed at me and asked if it was I who had discovered the
+etymology of the word haricot. He was absolutely ignorant of the fact
+that I had written verses and published the <i>Troph&eacute;es</i>."&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A very pretty whim, to count the jewellery of his famous son<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>nets as
+second in importance to the nomenclature of a vegetable! I in my turn
+was delighted with his <i>ayacot</i>. How right I was to suspect the
+outlandish word of American Indian origin! How right the insect was, in
+testifying, in its own fashion, that the precious bean came to us from
+the New World! While still retaining its original name&mdash;or something
+sufficiently like it&mdash;the bean of Montezuma, the Aztec <i>ayacot</i>, has
+migrated from Mexico to the kitchen-gardens of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But it has reached us without the company of its licensed consumer; for
+there must assuredly be a weevil in its native country which levies
+tribute on its nourishing tissues. Our native bean-eaters have mistaken
+the stranger; they have not had time as yet to grow familiar with it, or
+to appreciate its merits; they have prudently abstained from touching
+the <i>ayacot</i>, whose novelty awoke suspicion. Until our own days the
+Mexican bean remained untouched: unlike our other leguminous seeds,
+which are all eagerly exploited by the weevil.</p>
+
+<p>This state of affairs could not last. If our own fields do not contain
+the insect amateur of the haricot the New World knows it well enough. By
+the road of commercial exchange, sooner or later some worm-eaten sack
+of haricots must bring it to Europe. The invasion is inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>According to documents now before me, indeed, it has already taken
+place. Three or four years ago I received from Maillane, in the
+Bouches-du-Rh&ocirc;ne, what I sought in vain in my own neighbourhood,
+although I questioned many a farmer and housewife, and astonished them
+by my questions. No one had ever seen the pest of the haricot; no one
+had ever heard of it. Friends who knew of my inquiries sent me from
+Maillane, as I have said, information that gave great satisfaction to my
+naturalist's curiosity. It was accompanied by a measure of haricots
+which were utterly and outrageously spoiled; every bean was riddled with
+holes, changed into a kind of sponge. Within them swarmed innumerable
+weevils, which re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>called, by their diminutive size, the lentil-weevil,
+<i>Bruchus lenti</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The senders told me of the loss experienced at Maillane. The odious
+little creature, they said, had destroyed the greater portion of the
+harvest. A veritable plague, such as had never before been known, had
+fallen upon the haricots, leaving the housewife barely a handful to put
+in the saucepan. Of the habits of the creature and its way of going to
+work nothing was known. It was for me to discover them by means of
+experiment.</p>
+
+<p>Quick, then, let us experiment! The circumstances favour me. We are in
+the middle of June, and in my garden there is a bed of early haricots;
+the black Belgian haricots, sown for use in the kitchen. Since I must
+sacrifice the toothsome vegetable, let us loose the terrible destroyer
+on the mass of verdure. The development of the plant is at the
+requisite stage, if I may go by what the <i>Bruchus pisi</i> has already
+taught me; the flowers are abundant, and the pods are equally so; still
+green, and of all sizes.</p>
+
+<p>I place on a plate two or three handfuls of the infested haricots, and
+set the populous heap in the full sunlight by the edge of my bed of
+beans. I can imagine what will happen. Those insects which are already
+free, and those which the stimulus of the sunshine will presently
+liberate, will emerge and take to their wings. Finding the maternal
+haricot close at hand they will take possession of the vines. I shall
+see them exploring pods and flowers, and before very long they will lay
+their eggs. That is how the pea-weevil would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>have under similar
+conditions.</p>
+
+<p>But no: to my surprise and confusion, matters do not fall out as I
+foresaw. For a few minutes the insects bustle about in the sunlight,
+opening and closing their wing-covers to ease the mechanism of flight;
+then one by one they fly away, mounting in the luminous air; they grow
+smaller and smaller to the sight, and are quickly lost to view. My
+persevering attentions have not met with the slightest success; not one
+of the weevils has settled on my haricots.</p>
+
+<p>When the joys of liberty have been tasted will they return&mdash;to-night,
+to-morrow, or later? No, they do not return. All that week, at
+favourable hours, I inspect the rows of beans pod by pod, flower by
+flower; but never a Bruchus do I see, nor even an egg. Yet the season is
+propitious, for at this very moment the mothers imprisoned in my jars
+lay a profusion of eggs upon the dry haricots.</p>
+
+<p>Next season I try again. I have at my disposal two other beds, which I
+have sown with the late haricot, the red haricot; partly for the use of
+the household, but principally for the benefit of the weevil. Arranged
+in convenient rows, the two crops will be ready, one in August and one
+in September or later.</p>
+
+<p>With the red haricot I repeat the experiment already essayed with the
+black haricot. On several occasions, in suitable weather, I release
+large numbers of weevils from my glass jars, the general headquarters of
+the tribe. On each occasion the result is plainly negative. All through
+the season, until both crops are exhausted, I repeat my search almost
+daily; but I can never discover a single pod infested, nor even a single
+weevil perching on leaf or flower.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly the inspection has not been at fault. The household is warned
+to respect certain rows o<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>f beans which I have reserved for myself. It is
+also requested to keep a look-out for eggs on all the pods gathered. I
+myself examine with a magnifying-glass all the haricots coming from my
+own or from neighbouring gardens before handing them over to the
+housewife to be shelled. All my trouble is wasted: there is not an egg
+to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>To these experiments in the open air I add others performed under glass.
+I place, in some tall, narrow bottles, fresh haricot pods hanging from
+their stems; some green, others mottled with crimson, and containing
+seeds not far from mature. Each bottle is finally given a population of
+weevils. This time I obtain some eggs, but I am no further advanced;
+they are laid on the sides of the bottles, but not on the pods.
+Nevertheless, they hatch. For a few days I see the grubs wandering
+about, exploring the pods and the glass with equal zeal. Finally one
+and all perish without touching the food provided.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is obvious: the young and
+tender haricot is not the proper diet. Unlike the <i>Bruchus pisi</i>, the
+female of the haricot-weevil refuses to trust her family to beans that
+are not hardened by age and desiccation; she refused to settle on my
+bean-patch because the food she required was not to be found there. What
+does she require? Evidently the mature, dry, hard haricot, which falls
+to earth with the sound of a small pebble. I hasten to satisfy her. I
+place in the bottles some very mature, horny pods, thoroughly desiccated
+by exposure to the sun. This time the family prospers, the grubs
+perforate the dry shell, reach the beans, penetrate them, and henceforth
+all goes well.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To judge by appearances, then, the weevil invades the granary. The beans
+are left standing in the fields until both plants and pods, shrivelled
+by the sun, are completely desiccated. The process of beating the pods
+to loosen and separate the beans is thus greatly facilitated. It is then
+that the weevil, finding matters to suit her, commences to lay her eggs.
+By storing his crop a little late the peasant stores the pest as well.</p>
+
+<p>But the weevil more especially attacks the haricot when warehoused. Like
+the Calander-beetle, which nibbles the wheat in our granaries but
+despises the cereal while still on the stalk, it abhors the bean while
+tender, and prefers to establish itself in the peace and darkness of the
+storehouse. It is a formidable enemy to the merchant rather than to the
+peasant.</p>
+
+<p>What a fury of destruction once the ravager is installed in the
+vegetable treasure-house! My bottles give abundant evidence of this. One
+single haricot bean shelters a numerous family; often as many as twenty
+members. And not one generation only exploits the bean, but three or
+four in the year. So long as the skin of the bean contains any edible
+matter, so long do new consumers establish themselves within it, so that
+the haricot finally becomes a mere shell stuffed with excreta. The skin,
+despised by the grubs, is a mere sac, pierced with holes as many as the
+inhabitants that have deserted it; the ruin is complete.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Bruchus pisi</i>, a solitary hermit, consumes only so much of the pea
+as will leave a cell for the nymph; the rest remains intact, so that the
+pea may be sown, or it will even serve as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>food, if we can overcome our
+repugnance. The American insect knows nothing of these limitations; it
+empties the haricot completely and leaves a skinful of filth that I have
+seen the pigs refuse. America is anything but considerate when she sends
+us her entomological pests. We owe the Phylloxera to America; the
+Phylloxera, that calamitous insect against which our vine-growers wage
+incessant war: and to-day she is sending us the haricot-weevil, which
+threatens to be a plague of the future. A few experiments gave me some
+idea of the peril of such an invasion.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly three years there have stood, on my laboratory table, some
+dozens of jars and bottles covered with pieces of gauze which prevent
+escape while permitting of a constant ventilation. These are the cages
+of my menagerie. In them I rear the haricot-weevil, varying the system
+of education at will. Amongst other things I have learned that this
+insect, far from being exclusive in its choice, will accommodate itself
+to most of our leguminous foods.</p>
+
+<p>All the haricots suit it, black and white, red and variegated, large and
+small; those of the latest crop and those which have been many years in
+stock and are almost completely refractory to boiling water. The loose
+beans are attacked by preference, as being easier to invade, but when
+the loose beans are not available those in the natural shelter of their
+pods are attacked with equal zest. However dry and parchment-like the
+pods, the grubs have no difficulty in attaining the seeds. When attacked
+in the field or garden, the bean is attacked in this way through the
+pod. The bean known in Provence as the blind haricot&mdash;<i>lou faio&ugrave;
+borgn&eacute;</i>&mdash;a bean with a long pod, which is marked with a black spot at
+the navel, which has the look of a closed and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>blackened eye, is also
+greatly appreciated; indeed, I fancy my little guests show an obvious
+preference for this particular bean.</p>
+
+<p>So far, nothing abnormal; the Bruchus does not wander beyond the limits
+of the botanical family <i>Phaseolus</i>. But here is a characteristic that
+increases the peril, and shows us this lover of beans in an unexpected
+light. Without the slightest hesitation it accepts the dry pea, the
+bean, the vetch, the tare, and the chick-pea; it goes from one to the
+other, always satisfied; its offspring live and prosper in all these
+seeds as well as in the haricot. Only the lentil is refused, perhaps on
+account of its insufficient volume. The American weevil is a formidable
+experimentalist.</p>
+
+<p>The peril would be much greater did the insect pass from leguminous
+seeds to cereals, as at first I feared it might. But it does not do so;
+imprisoned in my bottles together with a handful of wheat, barley, rice,
+or maize, the Bruchus invariably perished and left no offspring. The
+result was the same with oleaginous seeds: such as castor-oil and
+sunflower. Nothing outside the bean family is of any use to the Bruchus.
+Thus limited, its portion is none the less considerable, and it uses and
+abuses it with the utmost energy. The eggs are white, slender, and
+cylindrical. There is no method in their distribution, no choice in
+their deposition. The mother lays them singly or in little groups, on
+the walls of the jar as well as on the haricots. In her negligence she
+will even lay them on maize, coffee, castor-oil seeds, and other seeds,
+on which the newly born grubs will promptly perish, not finding them to
+their taste. What place has maternal foresight here? Abandoned no matter
+where in the heap of seeds, the eggs are always in place, as it is left
+to the grub to search and to find the points of invasion.</p>
+
+<p>In fiv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>e days at most the egg is hatched. A little white creature with a
+red-brown head emerges. It is a mere speck of a creature, just visible
+to the naked eye. Its body is thickened forward, to give more strength
+to its implements&mdash;its mandibles&mdash;which have to perforate the hard
+substance of the dry bean, which is as tough as wood. The larv&aelig; of the
+Buprestis and the Capricornis, which burrow in the trunks of trees, are
+similarly shaped. Directly it issues from the egg the wriggling creature
+makes off at random with an activity we should hardly expect in one so
+young. It wanders hither and thither, eager to find food and shelter as
+soon as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Within twenty-four hours it has usually attained both. I see the tiny
+grub perforate the horny skin that covers the cotyledons; I watch its
+efforts; I surprise it sunk half-way in the commencement of a burrow, at
+the mouth of which is a white floury powder, the waste from the
+mandibles. It works its way inward and buries itself in the heart of the
+seed. It will emerge in the adult form in the course of about five
+weeks, so rapid is its evolution.</p>
+
+<p>This hasty development allows of several generations in the year. I have
+recorded four. On the other hand, one isolated couple has furnished me
+with a family of eighty. Consider only the half of this
+number&mdash;supposing the sexes to be equal in number&mdash;and at the end of a
+year the couples issued from this original pair would be represented by
+the fortieth power of forty; in larv&aelig; they would represent the frightful
+total of more than five millions. What a mountain of haricots would be
+ravaged by such a legion!</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+<p>The industry of the larv&aelig; reminds us at every point what we have learned
+from the <i>Bruchus pisi</i>. Each grub excavates a lodging in the mass of
+the bean, respecting the epidermis, and preparing a circular trap-door
+which the adult can easily open with a push at the moment of emergence.
+At the termination of the larval phase the lodgements are betrayed on
+the surface of the bean by so many shadowy circles. Finally the lid
+falls, the insect leaves its cell, and the haricot remains pierced by as
+many holes as it has nourished grubs.</p>
+
+<p>Extremely frugal, satisfied with a little farinaceous powder, the adults
+seem by no means anxious to abandon the native heap or bin so long as
+there are beans untouched. They mate in the interstices of the heap;
+the mothers sow their eggs at random; the young larv&aelig; establish
+themselves some in beans that are so far intact, some in beans which are
+perforated but not yet exhausted; and all through the summer the
+operations of breeding are repeated once in every five weeks. The last
+generation of the year&mdash;that of September or October&mdash;sleeps in its
+cells until the warm weather returns.</p>
+
+<p>If the haricot pest were ever to threaten us seriously it would not be
+very difficult to wage a war of extermination against it. Its habits
+teach us what tactics we ought to follow. It exploits the dried and
+gathered crop in the granary or the storehouse. If it is difficult to
+attack it in the open it would also be useless. The greater part of its
+affairs are managed elsewhere, in our storehouses. The enemy establishes
+itself under our roof and is ready to our hand. By means of insecticides
+defence should be relatively easy.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREY LOCUST</h3>
+
+
+<p>I have just witnessed a moving spectacle: the last moult of a locust;
+the emergence of the adult from its larval envelope. It was magnificent.
+I am speaking of the Grey Locust, the colossus among our acridians,<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+which is often seen among the vines in September when the grapes are
+gathered. By its size&mdash;and it grows as long as a man's finger&mdash;it lends
+itself to observation better than any other of its tribe.</p>
+
+<p>The larva, disgustingly fat, like a rude sketch of the perfect insect,
+is commonly of a tender green; but it is sometimes of a bluish green, a
+dirty yellow, or a ruddy brown, or even an ashen grey, like the grey of
+the adult cricket. The corselet is strongly keeled and indented, and is
+sprinkled with fine white spots. As powerful as in the adult insect, the
+hind-leg has a corpulent haunch, streaked with red, and a long shin like
+a two-edged saw.</p>
+
+<p>The elytra, which in a few days will extend far beyond the tip of the
+abdomen, are at present too small triangular wing-like appendages,
+touching along their upper edges, and continuing and emphasising the
+keel or ridge of the corselet. Their free ends stick up like the gable
+of a house. They remind one of the skirts of a coat, the maker of which
+has been ludicrously stingy with the clot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>h, as they merely cover the
+creature's nakedness at the small of the back. Underneath there are two
+narrow appendages, the germs of the wings, which are even smaller than
+the elytra. The sumptuous, elegant sails of to-morrow are now mere rags,
+so miserly in their dimensions as to be absolutely grotesque. What will
+emerge from these miserable coverings? A miracle of grace and amplitude.</p>
+
+<p>Let us observe the whole process in detail. Feeling itself ripe for
+transformation, the insect climbs up the wire-gauze cover by means of
+its hinder and intermediate limbs. The fore-limbs are folded and crossed
+on the breast, and are not employed in supporting the insect, which
+hangs in a reversed position, the back downwards. The triangular
+winglets, the sheaths of the elytra, open along their line of juncture
+and separate laterally; the two narrow blades, which contain the wings,
+rise in the centre of the interval and slightly diverge. The proper
+position for the process of moulting has now been assumed and the proper
+stability assured.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing to do is to burst the old skin. Behind the corselet,
+under the pointed roof of the prothorax, a series of pulsations is
+produced by alternate inflation and deflation. A similar state of
+affairs is visible in front of the neck, and probably under the entire
+surface of the yielding carapace. The fineness of the membrane at the
+articulations enables us to perceive it at these unarmoured points, but
+the cuirass of the corselet conceals it in the central portion.</p>
+
+<p>At these points the circulatory reserves of the insect are pulsing in
+tidal onsets. Their gradual increase is betrayed by pulsa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>tions like
+those of a hydraulic ram. Distended by this rush of humours, by this
+injection in which the organism concentrates all its forces, the outer
+skin finally splits along the line of least resistance which the subtle
+previsions of life have prepared. The fissure extends the whole length
+of the corselet, opening precisely along the ridge of the keel, as
+though the two symmetrical halves had been soldered together.
+Unbreakable elsewhere, the envelope has yielded at this median point,
+which had remained weaker than the rest of the sheath. The fissure runs
+back a little way until it reaches a point between the attachments of
+the wings; on the head it runs forward as far as the base of the
+antenn&aelig;, when it sends a short ramification right and left.</p>
+
+<p>Through this breach the back is seen; quite soft, and very pale, with
+scarcely a tinge of grey. Slowly it curves upwards and becomes more and
+more strongly hunched; at last it is free.</p>
+
+<p>The head follows, withdrawing itself from its mask, which remains in
+place, intact in the smallest detail, but looking very strange with its
+great unseeing glassy eyes. The sheaths of the antenn&aelig;, without a
+wrinkle, without the least derangement, and in their natural place, hang
+over this dead, translucid face.</p>
+
+<p>In emerging from their narrow sheaths, which clasped them so tightly and
+precisely, the thread-like antenn&aelig; have evidently met with no
+resistance, or the sheaths would have been turned inside out, or
+crumpled out of shape, or wrinkled at least. Without harming the jointed
+or knotted covers, the contents, of equal volume and equally knotty,
+have slipped out as easily as though they were smooth, slippery obje<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>cts
+sliding out of a loose sheath. The method of extraction is still more
+astonishing in the case of the hind-legs.</p>
+
+<p>It is now, however, the turn of the front and intermediate pairs of
+legs. They pull out of their gauntlets and leggings without the least
+hitch; nothing is torn, nothing buckled; the outer skin is not even
+crumpled, and all the tissues remain in their natural position. The
+insect is now hanging from the dome of the cover solely by the claws of
+the long hind-legs. It hangs in an almost vertical position, the head
+downwards, swinging like a pendulum if I touch the cover. Four tiny,
+steely claws are its only support. If they gave or unclasped themselves
+the insect would be lost, as it is as yet unable to unfurl its enormous
+wings; but even had the wings emerged they could not grip the air in
+time to save the creature from the consequences of a fall. But the four
+claws hold fast; life, before with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>drawing from them, left them rigidly
+contracted, so that they should support without yielding the struggles
+and withdrawals to follow.</p>
+
+<p>Now the wing-covers and wings emerge. These are four narrow strips,
+vaguely seamed and furrowed, like strings of rolled tissue-paper. They
+are barely a quarter of their final length.</p>
+
+<p>They are so soft that they bend under their own weight, and hang down
+the creature's sides in the reverse of their normal position. The free
+extremities, which normally point backwards, are now pointing towards
+the cricket's head as it hangs reversed. The organs of future flight are
+like four leaves of withered foliage shattered by a terrific rainstorm.</p>
+
+<p>A profound transformation is necessary to bring the wings to their final
+perfection. The inner changes are already at work; liquids are
+solidifying; albuminous secretions are bringing order out of chaos; but
+so far no outward sign betrays what is happening in the mysterious
+laboratory of the organism. All seems inert and lifeless.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the posterior limbs disengage themselves. The great
+haunches become visible, streaked on the inner faces with a pale rose,
+which rapidly turns to a vivid crimson. Emergence is easy, the thick and
+muscular upper portion of the haunch preparing the way for the narrower
+part of the limb.</p>
+
+<p>It is otherwise with the shank. This, in the adult insect, is armed
+along its whole length by a double series of stiff, steely spines.
+Moreover, the lower extremity is terminated by four strong spurs. The
+shank forms a veritable saw, but with two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> parallel sets of teeth; and it
+is so strongly made that it may well be compared, the question of size
+apart, to the great saw of a quarry-man.</p>
+
+<p>The shank of the larva has the same structure, so that the object to be
+extracted is enclosed in a scabbard as awkwardly shaped as itself. Each
+spur is enclosed in a similar spur; each tooth engages in the hollow of
+a similar tooth, and the sheath is so closely moulded upon the shank
+that a no more intimate contact could be obtained by replacing the
+envelope by a layer of varnish applied with a brush.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the tibia, long and narrow as it is, issues from its sheath
+without catching or sticking anywhere. If I had not repeatedly seen the
+operation I could not believe it possible; for the discarded sheath is
+absolutely intact from end to end. Neither the terminal spurs nor the
+double rows of spines do the slightest damage to the delicate mould. The
+long-toothed saw leaves the delicate sheath unbroken, although a puff of
+the breath is enough to tear it; the ferocious spurs slip out of it
+without leaving so much as a scratch.</p>
+
+<p>I was far from expecting such a result. Having the spiny weapons of the
+legs in mind, I imagined that those limbs would moult in scales and
+patches, or that the sheathing would rub off like a dead scarf-skin. How
+completely the reality surpassed my anticipations!</p>
+
+<p>From the spurs and spines of the sheath, which is as thin as the finest
+gold-beaters' skin, the spurs and spines of the leg, which make it a
+most formidable weapon, capable of cutting a piece of sof<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>t wood, emerge
+without the slightest display of violence, without a hitch of any kind;
+and the empty skin remains in place. Still clinging by its claws to the
+top of the wire cover, it is untorn, unwrinkled, uncreased. Even the
+magnifying-glass fails to show a trace of rough usage. Such as the skin
+was before the cricket left it, so it is now. The legging of dead skin
+remains in its smallest details the exact replica of the living limb.</p>
+
+<p>If any one asked you to extract a saw from a scabbard exactly moulded
+upon the steel, and to conduct the operation without the slightest
+degree of tearing or scratching, you would laugh at the flagrant
+impossibility of the task. But life makes light of such absurdities; it
+has its methods of performing the impossible when such methods are
+required. The leg of the locust affords us such an instance.</p>
+
+<p>Hard as it is when once free of its sheath, the serrated tibia would
+absolutely refuse to leave the latter, so closely does it fit, unless it
+were torn to pieces. Yet the difficulty must be evaded, for it is
+indispensable that the sheaths of the legs should remain intact, in
+order to afford a firm support until the insect is completely
+extricated.</p>
+
+<p>The leg in process of liberation is not the leg with which the locust
+makes its leaps; it has not as yet the rigidity which it will soon
+acquire. It is soft, and eminently flexible. In those portions which the
+progress of the moult exposes to view I see the legs bend under the mere
+weight of the suspended insect when I tilt the supporting cover. They
+are as flexible as two strips of elastic indiarubber. Yet even now
+consolidation is progressing, for in a few minut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>es the proper rigidity
+will be acquired.</p>
+
+<p>Further along the limbs, in the portions which the sheathing still
+conceals, the legs are certainly softer still, and in the state of
+exquisite plasticity&mdash;I had almost said fluidity&mdash;which allows them to
+pass through narrow passages almost as a liquid flows.</p>
+
+<p>The teeth of the saws are already there, but have nothing of their
+imminent rigidity. With the point of a pen-knife I can partially uncover
+a leg and extract the spines from their serrated mould. They are germs
+of spines; flexible buds which bend under the slightest pressure and
+resume their position the moment the pressure is removed.</p>
+
+<p>These needles point backwards as the leg is drawn out of the sheath; but
+they re-erect themselves and solidify as they emerge. I am witnessing
+not the mere removal of leggings from limbs already clad in finished
+armour, but a kind of creation which amazes one by its promptitude.</p>
+
+<p>Very much in the same way, but with far less delicate precision, the
+claws of the crayfish, at the period of the moult, withdraw the soft
+flesh of their double fingers from their stony sheath.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the long stilt-like legs are free. They are folded gently
+against the furrowed thighs, thus to mature undisturbed. The abdomen
+begins to emerge. Its fine tunic-like covering splits, and wrinkles, but
+still encloses the extremity of the abdomen, which adheres to the
+moulted skin for some little time longer. With the exception of this one
+point the entire insect is now uncovered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It hangs head downwards, like a pendulum, supported by the talons of the
+now empty leg-cases. During the whole of the lengthy and meticulous
+process the four talons have never yielded. The whole operation has been
+conducted with the utmost delicacy and prudence.</p>
+
+<p>The insect hangs motionless, held by the tip of the abdomen. The abdomen
+is disproportionately distended; swollen, apparently, by the reserve of
+organisable humours which the expansion of the wings and wing-covers
+will presently employ. Meanwhile the creature rests and recovers from
+its exertions. Twenty minutes of waiting elapse.</p>
+
+<p>Then, exerting the muscles of the back, the suspended insect raises
+itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin
+above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a
+trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the
+loins. This gymnastic feat accomplished, the rest is easy.</p>
+
+<p>With the purchase thus obtained the insect rises a little and reaches
+the wire gauze, the equivalent of the twig which would be chosen for the
+site of the transformation in the open fields. It holds to this with the
+four anterior limbs. Then the tip of the abdomen is finally liberated,
+and suddenly, shaken by the final struggle, the empty skin falls to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>This fall is interesting, and reminds me of the persistence with which
+the empty husk of the Cigale braves the winds of winter, without falling
+from its supporting twig. The transfiguration of the locust takes place
+very much as does that of the Cigale. How is it then that the acridian
+trusts to a hold so e<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>asily broken?</p>
+
+<p>The talons of the skin hold firmly so long as the labour of escape
+continues, although one would expect it to shake the firmest grip; yet
+they yield at the slightest shock when the labour is terminated. There
+is evidently a condition of highly unstable equilibrium; showing once
+more with what delicate precision the insect escapes from its sheath.</p>
+
+<p>For want of a better term I said "escape." But the word is ill chosen;
+for it implies a certain amount of violence, and no violence must be
+employed, on account of the instability of equilibrium already
+mentioned. If the insect, shaken by a sudden effort, were to lose its
+hold, it would be all up with it. It would slowly shrivel on the spot;
+or at best its wings, unable to expand, would remain as miserable scraps
+of tissue. The locust does not tear itself away from its sheath; it
+delicately insinuates itself out of it&mdash;I had almost said flows. It is
+as though it were expelled by a gentle pressure.</p>
+
+<p>Let us return to the wings and elytra, which have made no apparent
+progress since their emergence from their sheaths. They are still mere
+stumps, with fine longitudinal seams; almost like little ropes'-ends.
+Their expansion, which will occupy more than three hours, is reserved
+for the end, when the insect is completely moulted and in its normal
+position.</p>
+
+<p>We have just seen the insect turn head uppermost. This reversal causes
+the wings and elytra to fall into their natural position. Extremely
+flexible, and yielding to their own weight, they had previou<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>sly drooped
+backwards with their free extremities pointing towards the head of the
+insect as it hung reversed.</p>
+
+<p>Now, still by reason of their own weight, their position is rectified
+and they point in the normal direction. They are no longer curved like
+the petals of a flower; they no longer point the wrong way; but they
+retain the same miserable aspect.</p>
+
+<p>In its perfect state the wing is like a fan. A radiating bundle of
+strong nervures runs through it in the direction of its length and forms
+the framework of the fan, which is readily furled and unfurled. The
+intervals are crossed by innumerable cross-nervures of slighter
+substance, which make of the whole a network of rectangular meshes. The
+elytrum, which is heavier and much less extensive, repeats this
+structure.</p>
+
+<p>At present nothing of this mesh-work is visible. Nothing can be seen but
+a few wrinkles, a few flexuous furrows, which announce that the stumps
+are bundles of tissue cunningly folded and reduced to the smallest
+possible volume.</p>
+
+<p>The expansion of the wing begins near the shoulder. Where nothing
+precise could be distinguished at the outset we soon perceive a
+diaphanous surface subdivided into meshes of beautiful precision.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, with a deliberation that escapes the magnifier, this
+area increases its bounds, at the expense of the shapeless bundle at the
+end of the wing. In vain I let my eyes rest on the spot where the
+expanding network meets the still shapeless bundle; I can distinguish
+nothing. But wait a little, and the fine-meshed tissues will appear with
+perfect distinctness.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p>
+<p>To judge from this first examination, one would guess that an
+organisable fluid is rapidly congealing into a network of nervures; one
+seems to be watching a process of crystallisation comparable, in its
+rapidity, to that of a saturated saline solution as seen through a
+microscope. But no; this is not what is actually happening. Life does
+not do its work so abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>I detach a half-developed wing and bring it under the powerful eye of
+the microscope. This time I am satisfied. On the confines of the
+transparent network, where an extension of that network seems to be
+gradually weaving itself out of nothing, I can see that the meshes are
+really already in existence. I can plainly recognise the longitudinal
+nervures, which are already stiff; and I can also see&mdash;pale, and without
+relief&mdash;the transverse nervures. I find them all in the terminal stump,
+and am able to spread out a few of its folds under the microscope.</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that the wing is not a tissue in the process of making,
+through which the procreative energy of the vital juices is shooting its
+shuttle; it is a tissue already complete. To be perfect it lacks only
+expansion and rigidity, just as a piece of lace or linen needs only to
+be ironed.</p>
+
+<p>In three hours or more the explanation is complete. The wings and elytra
+stand erect over the locust's back like an immense set of sails; at
+first colourless, then of a tender green, like the freshly expanded
+wings of the Cigale. I am amazed at their expanse when I think of the
+miserable stumps from which they have expanded. How did so much material
+contrive to occupy so little space?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is a story of a grain of hemp-seed that contained all the
+body-linen of a princess. Here we have something even more astonishing.
+The hemp-seed of the story needed long years to germinate, to multiply,
+and at last to give the quantity of hemp required for the trousseau of a
+princess; but the germ of the locust's wing has expanded to a
+magnificent sail in a few short hours.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the superb erection composed of the four flat fan-like pinions
+assumes rigidity and colour. By to-morrow the colour will have attained
+the requisite shade. For the first time the wings close fan-wise and lie
+down in their places; the elytra bend over at their outer edges, forming
+a flange which lies snugly over the flanks. The transformation is
+complete. Now the great locust has only to harden its tissues a little
+longer and to tan the grey of its costume in the ecstasy of the
+sunshine. Let us leave it to its happiness, and return to an earlier
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>The four stumps which emerge from their coverings shortly after the
+rupture of the corselet along its median line contain, as we have seen,
+the wings and elytra with their innumerable nervures. If not perfect,
+at least the general plan is complete, with all its innumerable details.
+To expand these miserable bundles and convert them into an ample set of
+sails it is enough that the organism, acting like a force-pump, should
+force into the channels already prepared a stream of humours kept in
+reserve for this moment and this purpose, the most laborious of the
+whole process. As the capillary channels are prepared in advance a
+slight injection of fluid is sufficient to cause expansion.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p>
+<p>But what were these four bundles of tissue while still enclosed in their
+sheaths? Are the wing-sheaths and the triangular winglets of the larva
+the moulds whose folds, wrinkles, and sinuosities form their contents in
+their own image, and so weave the network of the future wings and
+wing-covers?</p>
+
+<p>Were they really moulds we might for a moment be satisfied. We might
+tell ourselves: It is quite a simple matter that the thing moulded
+should conform to the cavity of the mould. But the simplicity is only
+apparent, for the mould in its turn must somewhere derive the requisite
+and inextricable complexity. We need not go so far back; we should only
+be in darkness. Let us keep to the observable facts.</p>
+
+<p>I examine with a magnifying-glass one of the triangular coat-tails of a
+larva on the point of transformation. I see a bundle of moderately
+strong nervures radiating fan-wise. I see other nervures in the
+intervals, pale and very fine. Finally, still more delicate, and running
+transversely, a number of very short nervures complete the pattern.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly this resembles a rough sketch of the future wing-case; but
+how different from the mature structure! The disposition of the
+radiating nervures, the skeleton of the structure, is not at all the
+same; the network formed by the cross-nervures gives no idea whatever of
+the complex final arrangement. The rudimentary is succeeded by the
+infinitely complex; the clumsy by the infinitely perfect, and the same
+is true of the sheath of the wing and the final condition of its
+contents, the perfect wing.</p>
+
+<p>It is perfectly evident, when we have the preparatory as well as the
+final condition of the wing before our eyes, that the wing-sheath of the
+larva is not a simple mould which elaborates the tissue enclosed in its
+own image and fashions the wing after the complexities of its own
+cavity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The future wing is not contained in the sheath as a bundle, which will
+astonish us, when expanded, by the extent and extreme complication of
+its surface. Or, to speak more exactly, it is there, but in a potential
+state. Before becoming an actual thing it is a virtual thing which is
+not yet, but is capable of becoming. It is there as the oak is inside
+the acorn.</p>
+
+<p>A fine transparent cushion limits the free edge of the embryo wing and
+the embryo wing-case. Under a powerful microscope we can perceive
+therein a few doubtful lineaments of the future lace-work. This might
+well be the factory in which life will shortly set its materials in
+movement. Nothing more is visible; nothing that will make us foresee the
+prodigious network in which each mesh must have its form and place
+predetermined with geometrical exactitude.</p>
+
+<p>In order that the organisable material can shape itself as a sheet of
+gauze and describe the inextricable labyrinth of the nervuration, there
+must be something better and more wonderful than a mould. There is a
+prototypical plan, an ideal pattern, which imposes a precise position
+upon each atom of the tissue. Before the material commences to circulate
+the configuration is already virtually traced, the courses of the
+plastic currents are already mapped out. The stones of our buildings
+co-ordinate according to the considered plan of the architect; they form
+an ideal assemblage before they exist as a concrete assemblage.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly, the wing of a cricket, that wonderful piece of lace-work
+emerging from a tiny sheath, speaks to us of another Architect, the
+author of the plans according to which life labours.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+<p>The genesis of living creatures offers to our contemplation an infinity
+of wonders far greater than this matter of a locust's wing; but in
+general they pass unperceived, obscured as they are by the veil of time.</p>
+
+<p>Time, in the deliberation of mysteries, deprives us of the most
+astonishing of spectacles except our spirits be endowed with a tenacious
+patience. Here by exception the fact is accomplished with a swiftness
+that forces the attention.</p>
+
+<p>Whosoever would gain, without wearisome delays, a glimpse of the
+inconceivable dexterity with which the forces of life can labour, has
+only to consider the great locust of the vineyard. The insect will show
+him that which is hidden from our curiosity by extreme deliberation in
+the germinating seed, the opening leaf, and the budding flower. We
+cannot see the grass grow; but we can watch the growth of the locust's
+wings.</p>
+
+<p>Amazement seizes upon us before this sublime phantasmagoria of the grain
+of hemp which in a few hours has been transmuted into the finest cloth.
+What a mighty artist is Life, shooting her shuttle to weave the wings of
+the locust&mdash;one of those insignificant insects of whom long ago Pliny
+said: <i>In his tam parcis, fer&egrave; nullis, quae vis, quae sapientia, quam
+inextricabilis perfectio!</i></p>
+
+<p>How truly was the old naturalist inspired! Let us repeat with him: "What
+power, what wisdom, what inconceivable perfection in this least of
+secrets that the vineyard locust has shown us!"</p>
+
+<p>I have heard that a learn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>ed inquirer, for whom life is only a conflict
+of physical and chemical forces, does not despair of one day obtaining
+artificially organisable matter&mdash;<i>protoplasm</i>, as the official jargon
+has it. If it were in my power I should hasten to satisfy this ambitious
+gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>But so be it: you have really prepared protoplasm. By force of
+meditation, profound study, minute care, impregnable patience, your
+desire is realised: you have extracted from your apparatus an albuminous
+slime, easily corruptible and stinking like the devil at the end of a
+few days: in short, a nastiness. What are you going to do with it?</p>
+
+<p>Organise something? Will you give it the structure of a living edifice?
+Will you inject it with a hypodermic syringe between two impalpable
+plates to obtain were it only the wing of a fly?</p>
+
+<p>That is very much what the locust does. It injects its protoplasm
+between the two surfaces of an embryo organ, and the material forms a
+wing-cover, because it finds as guide the ideal archetype of which I
+spoke but now. It is controlled in the labyrinth of its course by a
+device anterior to the injection: anterior to the material itself.</p>
+
+<p>This archetype, the co-ordinator of forms; this primordial regulator;
+have you got it on the end of your syringe? No! Then throw away your
+product. Life will never spring from that chemical filth.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PINE-CHAFER</h3>
+
+
+<p>The orthodox denomination of this insect is <i>Melolontha fullo</i>, Lin. It
+does not answer, I am very well aware, to be difficult in matters of
+nomenclature; make a noise of some sort, affix a Latin termination, and
+you will have, as far as euphony goes, the equivalent of many of the
+tickets pasted in the entomologist's specimen boxes. The cacophony would
+be excusable if the barbarous term signified nothing but the creature
+signified; but as a rule this name possesses, hidden in its Greek or
+other roots, a certain meaning in which the novice hopes to find
+instruction.</p>
+
+<p>The hope is a delusion. The learned term refers to subtleties difficult
+to comprehend, and of very indifferent importance. Too often it leads
+the student astray, giving him glimpses that have nothing whatever in
+common with the truth as we know it from observation. Very often the
+errors implied by such names are flagrant; sometimes the allusions are
+ridiculous, grotesque, or merely imbecile. So long as they have a decent
+sound, how infinitely preferable are locutions in which etymology finds
+nothing to dissect! Of such would be the word <i>fullo</i>, were it not that
+it already has a meaning which immediately occurs to the mind. This
+Latin expression means a <i>fuller</i>; a person who kneads and presses cloth
+under a stream of water, making it flexible and ridding it of the
+asperities of weaving. What connection has the subject of this chapter
+with the fuller of cloth? I may puzzle my head in vain: no acceptable
+reply will occur to me.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
+<p>The term <i>fullo</i> as applied to an insect is found in Pliny. In one
+chapter the great naturalist treats of remedies against jaundice,
+fevers, and dropsy. A little of everything enters into this antique
+pharmacy: the longest tooth of a black dog; the nose of a mouse wrapped
+in a pink cloth; the right eye of a green lizard torn from the living
+animal and placed in a bag of kid-skin; the heart of a serpent, cut out
+with the left hand; the four articulations of the tail of a scorpion,
+including the dart, wrapped tightly in a black cloth, so that for three
+days the sick man can see neither the remedy nor him that applies it;
+and a number of other extravagances. We may well close the book, alarmed
+at the slough of the imbecility whence the art of healing has come down
+to us.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of these imbecilities, the preludes of medicine, we find a
+mention of the "fuller." <i>Tertium qui vocatur fullo, albis guttis,
+dissectum utrique lacerto adalligant</i>, says the text. To treat fevers
+divide the fuller beetle in two parts and apply half under the right arm
+and half under the left.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chafer" id="chafer"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img-318.jpg"
+             alt="THE PINE-CHAFER." /><br />
+         <b>THE PINE-CHAFER.<br />(<i>Melolontha fullo.</i>)</b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>Now what did the ancient naturalist mean by the term "fuller beetle"? We
+do not precisely know. The qualification <i>albis guttis</i>, white spots,
+would fit the Pine-chafer well enough, but it is not sufficient to
+make us certain. Pliny himself does not seem to have been very certain
+of the identity of the remedy. In his time men's eyes had not yet
+learne<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>d to see the insect world. Insects were too small; they were well
+enough for amusing children, who would tie them to the end of a long
+thread and make them walk in circles, but they were not worthy of
+occupying the attention of a self-respecting man.</p>
+
+<p>Pliny apparently derived the word from the country-folk, always poor
+observers and inclined to extravagant denominations. The scholar
+accepted the rural locution, the work perhaps of the imagination of
+childhood, and applied it at hazard without informing himself more
+particularly. The word came down to us embalmed with age; our modern
+naturalists have accepted it, and thus one of our handsomest insects has
+become the "fuller." The majesty of antiquity has consecrated the
+strange appellation.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of all my respect for the antique, I cannot myself accept the
+term "fuller," because under the circumstances it is absurd. Common
+sense should be considered before the aberrations of nomenclature. Why
+not call our subject the Pine-chafer, in reference to the beloved tree,
+the paradise of the insect during the two or three weeks of its aerial
+life? Nothing could be simpler, or more appropriate, to give the better
+reason last.</p>
+
+<p>We have to wander for ages in the night of absurdity before we reach the
+radiant light of the truth. All our sciences witness to this fact; even
+the science of numbers. Try to add a column of Roman figures; you will
+abandon the task, stupefied by the confusion of symbols; and will
+recognise what a revolution was made in arithmetic by the discovery of
+the zero. Like the egg of Columbus, it was a very little thing, but it
+had to be thought of.</p>
+
+<p>While hoping that the future will sink the unfortunate "fuller" in
+oblivion, we will use the term "pine chafer" between ourselves. Under
+that name no one can possibly mistake the insect in question, which
+frequents the pine-tree only.</p>
+
+<p>It has a handsome and dignified appearance, rivalling that of <i>Oryctes
+nasicornis</i>. Its costume, if it has not the metallic splendour dear to
+the Scarab&aelig;i, the Buprestes and the rose-beetles, is at least unusually
+elegant. A black or chestnut background is thickly sown with
+capriciously shaped spots of white velvet; a fashion both modest and
+handsome.</p>
+
+<p>The male bears at the end of his short antenn&aelig; a kind of plume
+consisting of seven large superimposed plates or leaves, which, opening
+and closing like the sticks of a fan, betray the emotions that possess
+him. At first sight it seems that this magnificent foliage must form a
+sense-organ of great perfection, capable of perceiving subtle odours, or
+almost inaudible vibrations of the air, or other phenomena to which our
+senses fail to respond; but the female warns us that we must not place
+too much reliance on such ideas; for although her maternal duties demand
+a degree of impressionability at least as great as that of the male, yet
+the plumes of her antenn&aelig; are extremely meagre, containing only six
+narrow leaves.</p>
+
+<p>What then is the use of the enormous fan-like structure of the male
+antenn&aelig;? The seven-leaved apparatus is for the Pine-chafer what his long
+vibrating horns are to the Cerambyx and the panoply of the head to the
+Onthophagus and the forked antlers of the mandibles to the Stag-beetle.
+Each decks himself after his manner in these nuptial extravagances.</p>
+
+<p>This handsome chafer appears towards the summer solstice, almost
+simultaneously with the first Cigales. The punctuality of its appearance
+gives it a place in the entomological calendar, which is no less
+punctual than that of the seasons. When the longest days come, those
+days which seem endless and gild the harvests, it never fails to ha<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>sten
+to its tree. The fires of St. John, reminiscences of the festivals of
+the Sun, which the children light in the village streets, are not more
+punctual in their date.</p>
+
+<p>At this season, in the hours of twilight, the Pine-chafer comes every
+evening if the weather is fine, to visit the pine-trees in the garden. I
+follow its evolutions with my eyes. With a silent flight, not without
+spirit, the males especially wheel and wheel about, extending their
+great antennary plumes; they go to and fro, to and fro, a procession of
+flying shadows upon the pale blue of the sky in which the last light of
+day is dying. They settle, take flight again, and once more resume their
+busy rounds. What are they doing up there during the fortnight of their
+festival?</p>
+
+<p>The answer is evident: they are courting their mates, and they continue
+to render their homage until the fall of night. In the morning both
+males and females commonly occupy the lower branches. They lie there
+isolated, motionless, indifferent to passing events. They do not avoid
+the hand about to seize them. Most of them are hanging by their hind
+legs and nibbling the pine-needles; they seem to be gently drowsing with
+the needles at their mouths. When twilight returns they resume their
+frolics.</p>
+
+<p>To watch these frolics in the tops of the trees is hardly possible; let
+us try to observe them in captivity. Four pairs are collected in the
+morning and placed, with some twigs off the pine-tree, in a spacious;
+cage. The sight is hardly worth my attention; deprived of the
+possibility of flight, the insects cannot behave as in the open. At most
+I see a male from time to time approaching his beloved; he spreads out
+the leaves of his antenn&aelig;, and agitates them so that they shiver
+slightly; he is perhaps informing himself if he is welcome. Thereupon he
+puts on his finest airs and exhibits his attainments. It is a useless
+display; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>he female is motionless, as though insensible to these
+demonstrations. Captivity has sorrows that are hard to overcome. This
+was all that I was able to see. Mating, it appears, must take place
+during the later hours of the night, so that I missed the propitious
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>One detail in particular interested me. The Pine-chafer emits a musical
+note. The female is as gifted as the male. Does the lover make use of
+his faculty as a means of seduction and appeal? Does the female answer
+the chirp of her <i>innamorata</i> by a similar chirp? That this may be so
+under normal conditions, amidst the foliage of the pines, is extremely
+probable; but I can make no assertion, as I have never heard anything of
+the kind either among the pines or in my laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>The sound is produced by the extremity of the abdomen, which gently
+rises and falls, rubbing, as it does so, with its last few segments, the
+hinder edge of the wing-covers, which are held firm and motionless.
+There is no special equipment on the rubbing surface nor on the surface
+rubbed. The magnifying-glass looks in vain for the fine striations
+usually found in the musical instruments of the insect world. All is
+smooth on either hand. How then is the sound engendered?</p>
+
+<p>Rub the end of the moistened finger on a strip of glass, or a
+window-pane, and you will obtain a very audible sound, somewhat
+analogous to that emitted by the chafer. Better still, use a scrap of
+indiarubber to rub the glass with, and you will reproduce with some
+fidelity the sound in question. If the proper rhythm is observed the
+imitation is so successful that one might well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> be deceived by it.</p>
+
+<p>In the musical apparatus of the Pine-chafer the pad of the finger-tip
+and the scrap of indiarubber are represented by the soft abdomen of the
+insect, and the glass is represented by the blade of the wing-cover,
+which forms a thin, rigid plate, easily set in vibration. The
+sound-mechanism of the Pine-chafer is thus of the very simplest
+description.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Acorn-Weevil, <i>see</i> Elephant-Beetle</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ameles, <i>see</i> Mantis, the Grey</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Anacreon, on the Cigale, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ant, fable of the Cigale and the, <a href='#Page_1'>1-16</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Devours the Cigale, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Robs the Cigale, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Arum, Serpent or Putrid, the, attracts and captures insects by means</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of its offensive effluvia, <a href='#Page_230'>230-2</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">B</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Balaninus</i>, <i>see</i> Elephant-Beetle</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bean, ancestry of, <a href='#Page_258'>258-9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bean, <i>see</i> Haricot</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bean-Weevil, <i>see</i> Weevil</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bees, victims of Philanthus, <i>see</i> latter</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bembex, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bolboceras Gallicus, <a href='#Page_217'>217-37</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Appearance of, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Habits and diet, <a href='#Page_226'>226030</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lodging of, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Bruchus pisi</i>, see Pea-Weevil</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Bruchus lenti</i>, see Lentil-Weevil</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Buprestes, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">C</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Cacan</i>, the, <a href='#Page_36'>36-9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Capricornis, <a href='#Page_21'>21-2</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cerceris, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chrysomela, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cigale, the, <a href='#Page_1'>1-67</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Burrow of the, <a href='#Page_17'>17-30</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Deafness of the, <a href='#Page_41'>41-3</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Diet, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Eggs of the, <a href='#Page_45'>45-67</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Eggs, hatching of, <a href='#Page_61'>61-7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Eggs, method of laying, <a href='#Page_50'>50-4</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Enemies of the, <a href='#Page_47'>47-50</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Excavation, method of, <a href='#Page_23'>23-7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Fable of Ant and, <a href='#Page_1'>1-16</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Larva of the, <a href='#Page_17'>17-30</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Larva, habits of, <a href='#Page_61'>61-7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mechanism of sound, <a href='#Page_31'>31-4</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pupa, emergence from, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Song of the, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_31'>31-44</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Species of, <a href='#Page_31'>31-6</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cigalo e la Fournigo (Proven&ccedil;al poem), <a href='#Page_10'>10-16</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cricket, Field, the, <a href='#Page_120'>120-9</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Eggs of, <a href='#Page_120'>120-2</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Excavations of, <a href='#Page_124'>124-5</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Fertility of, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Song of, <a href='#Page_126'>126-8</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cricket, Italian, the, <a href='#Page_130'>130-5</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Appearance of, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Song of, <a href='#Page_131'>131-4</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">D</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dermestes, victims of arum, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dioscorides on the Cigale, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Diptera, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dog, its love of stenches, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Scent of the, <a href='#Page_220'>220-22</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A truffle-hunter, <a href='#Page_218'>218-20</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Elephant-Beetle (Balaninus or Acorn-Weevil), <a href='#Page_238'>238-57</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Boring acorns, habit of, <a href='#Page_240'>240-4</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Eggs, method of laying, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_254'>245-7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Motives in boring, <a href='#Page_246'>246-50</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Snout of, <a href='#Page_238'>238-9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Emperor Moth, <i>see</i> Great Peacock Moth</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Empusa pauperata</i>, <i>see</i> Mantis</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Eucores, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">G</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Golden Gardener, the, <a href='#Page_102'>102-19</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cannibal habits of, <a href='#Page_111'>111-19</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Courtship of, <a href='#Page_103'>103-10</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ferocity of, <a href='#Page_101'>101-4</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108-10</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nutriment of, <a href='#Page_102'>102-10</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Vermin killer, as a, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grandville, illustrates La Fontaine's fables, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">H</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Halictus, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Haricot bean, the, <a href='#Page_282'>282-9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Haricot-Weevil, the, <i>see</i> Weevil</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Heredia, J. M. de, <a href='#Page_287'>287-90</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hydnocystus, a fungus, <a href='#Page_228'>228</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hymenoptera, habits of, <a href='#Page_137'>137-8</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171-2</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175-6</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">L</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">La Fontaine, fable of the Cigale and the Ant, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Locust, Grey, the, <a href='#Page_300'>300-16</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Larva of, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Metamorphosis of, <a href='#Page_300'>300-9</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wing, formation of, <a href='#Page_309'>309-15</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">M</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mantis, the <i>Empusa pauperata</i>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mantis, the Grey, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mantis, the Praying, <a href='#Page_68'>68-101</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cannibalism of, <a href='#Page_82'>82-5</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Courtship, <a href='#Page_79'>79-83</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Hunter, as, <a href='#Page_68'>68-78</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nest of, <a href='#Page_86'>86-101</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Melolontha fullo</i>, <i>see</i> Pine-chafer</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Minotaur, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oak Eggar, the, <a href='#Page_202'>202-16</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234-7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Experiments as to sense of smell in males, <a href='#Page_208'>208-15</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Swarming of males during the mating season, <a href='#Page_204'>204-15</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Odynerus, <a href='#Page_150'>150-1</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Osmia tricornis, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">P</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pea, ancestry of the, <a href='#Page_258'>258-9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pea-Weevil, <i>see</i> Weevil</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peacock Moth, the Great, <a href='#Page_179'>179-201</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234-7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Appearance of, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Experiments as to sense of smell in males, <a href='#Page_184'>184-97</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Invasion of house by males, <a href='#Page_180'>180-1</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Swarming of males, <a href='#Page_181'>181-3</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peacock Moth, the Lesser, <a href='#Page_197'>197-201</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Phalangist, the, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Philanthus aviporus</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150-178</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cocoon of, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Diet of, <a href='#Page_150'>150-1</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Larv&aelig; of, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Methods of killing and robbing bees, <a href='#Page_151'>151-160</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Motives of robbery, <a href='#Page_163'>163-78</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nest of, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Philanthus coronatus</i>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Philanthus raptor</i>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pine-chafer, the, <a href='#Page_317'>317-23</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Appearance of, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cry of, <a href='#Page_322'>322-3</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Habits of, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Medical qualities of, supposed, <a href='#Page_318'>318-19</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Name, origin of Latin, <a href='#Page_317'>317-18</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pliny, on the Pine-chafer, <a href='#Page_318'>318-19</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">S</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saprinid&aelig;, victims of arum, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sapromyzon, the, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scarab&aelig;us, <i>see</i> Golden Scarab&aelig;us</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scent in Insects, <i>see</i> Peacock Moth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Oak Eggar, Bolboceras Gallicus, arum, putrid</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scolia, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sisyphus, legend of, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sisyphus Beetle, the, <a href='#Page_136'>136-49</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Burrow of, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Larva of, <a href='#Page_147'>147-9</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mating of, <a href='#Page_142'>142-3</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Paternal instinct of <a href='#Page_142'>142-6</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pellet of, <a href='#Page_142'>142-9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">T</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tachytus, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Tigno</i>, nest of Mantis, <a href='#Page_99'>99-101</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Truffle-Beetle, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Truffle-Dog, <a href='#Page_218'>218-20</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">W</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Weevil, Acorn, <i>see</i> Elephant-Beetle</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Weevil, the Lentil, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Weevil, the Haricot, <a href='#Page_282'>282-94</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Habits of, <a href='#Page_291'>291-6</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Invasion of, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Larv&aelig;, <a href='#Page_297'>297-9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Weevil, the Pea, <a href='#Page_258'>258-81</a>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Description of, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Enemy, its chief, <a href='#Page_280'>280-1</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Habits, <a href='#Page_261'>261-5</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">(Deductions to be drawn from), <a href='#Page_273'>273-4</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Larv&aelig; of, <a href='#Page_268'>268-71</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275-6</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<div class="footnotes">
+<div class="footnote">
+<h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2>
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Whether the Cigale is absolutely deaf or not, it is certain
+that one Cigale would be able to perceive another's cry. The vibrations
+of the male Cigale's cry would cause a resonance, a vibration, in the
+body cavities of other male Cigales, and to a lesser extent in the
+smaller cavities in the bodies of the females. Other sounds would cause
+a slight shock, if loud enough, but not a perceptible vibration May not
+this vibration&mdash;felt as in a cathedral we feel the vibrations of the
+organ-pipes in the bones of the chest and head or on the covers of the
+hymn-book in our hands&mdash;serve to keep the insects together, and enable
+the females to keep within sight of the males? The sight of an insect is
+in one sense poor&mdash;it consists of a kind of mosaic picture, and for one
+insect to distinguish another clearly the distance between them must not
+be very great. Certain gregarious birds and fish whose colouring is
+protective have a habit of showing their white bellies as they swerve on
+changing their direction. These signals help to keep the flock together.
+The white scut of the rabbit and of certain deer is a signal for other
+deer or rabbits to follow a frightened flock. It is obviously to the
+advantage of the Cigale to follow a gregarious habit, if only for
+purposes of propagation, for this would be facilitated by the sexes
+keeping together, and, deaf or otherwise, the vibrations of its cry
+would enable it to do so. It would be easy to show <i>a priori</i> that the
+perception of such vibrations must cause the insect pleasure, as they
+stimulate a nervous structure attuned to the perception or capable of
+the production of certain complex vibrations. The discord of the cry is
+caused by the fact that it consists of a number of vibrations of
+different pitch. Some would set the contents of the male resonating
+cavities in vibration; others would affect the less regular cavities in
+the thorax of the female. We might compare the Cigale's cry to a
+sheep-bell. That it is felt and not heard explains its loudness and its
+grating quality. A Cigale with the resonating cavities destroyed would
+possibly be lost. The experiment is worth trying.&mdash;[<span class="smcap">Trans</span>.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> It is not easy to understand why the Mantis should paralyse
+the cricket with terror while the latter will immediately escape when
+threatened by other enemies. As many species of Mantis exactly mimic
+sticks and leaves when motionless for purposes of defence, is it not
+possible that they mimic their surroundings for purposes of offence as
+well? It is easy and natural to say that the Mantis presents a
+terrifying aspect. It does to us, by association; but how can we say
+that it represents anything of the sort to the probably hypnotic or
+automatic consciousness of the cricket? What does it really represent,
+as seen from below? A twig, terminating in a bud, with two branching
+twigs growing from it, and a harmless nondescript fly or butterfly
+perched on the back of it. The combination of a familiar sight and a
+threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As
+for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move instantaneously is
+the next best thing to not moving at all. It is less likely to startle
+than a slow movement. Twigs which have been bent get suddenly released
+in the natural course of events; they do not move slowly. The
+instantaneous appearance of a twig where no twig was before may possibly
+give the victim pause; it may halt out of caution, not out of
+terror.&mdash;[<span class="smcap">Trans.</span>]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The word "butterfly" is here used, as is the French
+<i>papillon</i>, as a general term for all Lepidoptera; the insect in
+question is of course a moth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Now classified as <i>Lasiocampa quercus</i>.&mdash;[<span class="smcap">Trans.</span>]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Rabasso</i> is the Proven&ccedil;al name for the truffle; hence a
+truffle-hunter is known as a <i>rabassier</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Since these lines were written I have found it consuming
+one of the true tuberace&aelig;, the <i>Tuber Requienii</i>, Tul., of the size of a
+cherry.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The difficulty in conceiving this theory lies in the fact
+that the waves travel in straight lines. On the other hand, matter in a
+state of degradation may expel particles highly energised and of
+enormous velocity. Most antenn&aelig; are covered with hairs of inconceivable
+fineness; others may contain cavities of almost infinite minuteness. Is
+it not thinkable that they are able to detect, in the gaseous
+atmosphere, floating particles that are not gaseous? This would not
+prevent the specialisation of antenn&aelig; as mere feelers in some insects
+and crustaceans. The difficulty of such a supposition lies in the
+fact of discrimination; but if we did not possess a sense of taste or
+smell discrimination would seem inconceivable in their case
+also.&mdash;[<span class="smcap">Trans.</span>]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> This classification is now superseded; the Pea and Bean
+Weevils&mdash;<i>Bruchus pisi</i> and <i>Bruchus lenti</i>&mdash;are classed as Bruchid&aelig;, in
+the series of Phytophaga. Most of the other weevils are classed as
+Curculionid&aelig;, series Rhyncophora.&mdash;[<span class="smcap">Trans.</span>]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The Christmas number (<i>No&euml;l</i>) of the <i>Annales politiques
+et litt&eacute;raires: Les Enfants jug&eacute;s par leurs p&egrave;res</i>, 1901.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The American usage is to call acridians grasshoppers and
+Locustid&aelig; locusts. The English usage is to call Locustid&aelig; grasshoppers
+and acridians locusts. The Biblical locust is an acridian.</p></div></div>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<p class='center'>
+Demy 8vo, Cloth, 10/6 net</p>
+
+<h2>FABRE: POET OF SCIENCE</h2>
+
+<h3>By G. V. LEGROS</h3>
+<p class='center'>With a Photogravure Frontispiece</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This biography is based upon long acquaintance and access to family
+letters, and is a striking record of a wonderful life.</p>
+
+<p>"Stands out as a really sound, sympathetic, and artistic piece of
+work.... The simple story of the life-work of an observer of nature
+in general, and of insects in particular, is unfolded in a manner
+which makes it as fascinating as a romance."&mdash;The Times.</p>
+
+<p>"A rare biography."&mdash;Saturday Review.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a prose poem on a great scientist, his simple life and
+remarkable work."&mdash;Daily Graphic.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Legros gives us a sympathetic insight into the life and work
+of the poet scientist, and a just record of a great man."&mdash;Daily
+Express.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Legros gives us an exceptionally vivid picture of the man, his
+toil and trials, his characteristics, and his ways of
+life."&mdash;Everyman.</p>
+
+<p>"A book so packed with charm we have rarely opened."&mdash;Evening
+Standard.</p></div>
+
+<p class='center'>
+<i>Printed in Great Britain by</i><br />
+UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED<br />
+WOKING AND LONDON
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre
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+Project Gutenberg's Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Social Life in the Insect World
+
+Author: J. H. Fabre
+
+Translator: Bernard Miall
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2006 [EBook #18350]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Louise Pryor, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  SOCIAL LIFE
+  IN THE INSECT WORLD
+
+  BY
+  J. H. FABRE
+
+  TRANSLATED BY
+  BERNARD MIALL
+
+  WITH 14 ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  LONDON
+  T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
+  ADELPHI TERRACE
+
+
+  _First Edition_                                              1911
+
+  _Second Impression_                                          1912
+
+  _Third Impression_                                           1912
+
+  _Fourth Impression_                                          1913
+
+  _Fifth Impression_                                           1913
+
+  _Sixth Impression_                                           1915
+
+  _Seventh Impression_                                         1916
+
+  _Eighth Impression_                                          1916
+
+  _Ninth Impression_                                           1917
+
+  _Tenth Impression_                                           1918
+
+  _Eleventh Impression_                                        1918
+
+  _Twelfth Impression_                                         1919
+
+  (_All rights reserved_)
+
+
+  [Illustration: 1. THE MANTIS. A DUEL BETWEEN FEMALES.
+
+  2. THE MANTIS DEVOURING A CRICKET.
+
+  3. THE MANTIS DEVOURING HER MATE.
+
+  4. THE MANTIS IN HER ATTITUDE OF PRAYER.
+
+  5. THE MANTIS IN HER "SPECTRAL" ATTITUDE.
+
+  (See p. 76.)]
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I                                                          PAGE
+
+  THE FABLE OF THE CIGALE AND THE ANT                                  1
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THE CIGALE LEAVES ITS BURROW                                        17
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  THE SONG OF THE CIGALE                                              31
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  THE CIGALE. THE EGGS AND THEIR HATCHING                             45
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  THE MANTIS. THE CHASE                                               68
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  THE MANTIS. COURTSHIP                                               79
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE MANTIS. THE NEST                                                86
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  THE GOLDEN GARDENER. ITS NUTRIMENT                                 102
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  THE GOLDEN GARDENER. COURTSHIP                                     111
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  THE FIELD CRICKET                                                  120
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+  THE ITALIAN CRICKET                                                130
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+  THE SISYPHUS BEETLE. THE INSTINCT OF PATERNITY                     136
+
+  CHAPTER XIII
+
+  A BEE-HUNTER: THE _PHILANTHUS AVIPORUS_                            150
+
+  CHAPTER XIV
+
+  THE GREAT PEACOCK, OR EMPEROR MOTH                                 179
+
+  CHAPTER XV
+
+  THE OAK EGGAR, OR BANDED MONK                                      202
+
+  CHAPTER XVI
+
+  A TRUFFLE-HUNTER: THE _BOLBOCERAS GALLICUS_                        217
+
+  CHAPTER XVII
+
+  THE ELEPHANT-BEETLE                                                238
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  THE PEA-WEEVIL                                                     258
+
+  CHAPTER XIX
+
+  AN INVADER: THE HARICOT-WEEVIL                                     282
+
+  CHAPTER XX
+
+  THE GREY LOCUST                                                    300
+
+  CHAPTER XXI
+
+  THE PINE-CHAFER                                                    317
+
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  THE MANTIS: A DUEL BETWEEN FEMALES; DEVOURING
+  A CRICKET; DEVOURING HER MATE; IN HER ATTITUDE
+  OF PRAYER; IN HER "SPECTRAL" ATTITUDE                      _Frontispiece_
+
+
+  DURING THE DROUGHTS OF SUMMER THIRSTING INSECTS,
+  AND NOTABLY THE ANT, FLOCK TO THE DRINKING-PLACES
+  OF THE CIGALE                                                        8
+
+  THE CIGALE AND THE EMPTY PUPA-SKIN                                  28
+
+  THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW. THE CIGALE OF
+  THE FLOWERING ASH, MALE AND FEMALE                                  36
+
+  THE CIGALE LAYING HER EGGS. THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER,
+  THE FALSE CIGALE OF THE NORTH,
+  DEVOURING THE TRUE CIGALE, A DWELLER IN
+  THE SOUTH                                                           48
+
+  THE NEST OF THE PRAYING MANTIS; TRANSVERSE SECTION
+  OF THE SAME; NEST OF EMPUSA PAUPERATA;
+  TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME; VERTICAL
+  SECTION OF THE SAME; NEST OF THE GREY MANTIS;
+  SCHEFFER'S SISYPHUS (see Chap. XII.); PELLET OF
+  THE SISYPHUS; PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS, WITH
+  DEJECTA OF THE LARVA FORCED THROUGH THE
+  WALLS                                                               88
+
+  THE MANTIS DEVOURING THE MALE IN THE ACT OF
+  MATING; THE MANTIS COMPLETING HER NEST;
+  GOLDEN SCARABAEI CUTTING UP A LOB-WORM                               90
+
+  THE GOLDEN GARDENER: THE MATING SEASON OVER,
+  THE MALES ARE EVISCERATED BY THE FEMALES                           114
+
+  THE FIELD-CRICKET: A DUEL BETWEEN RIVALS; THE
+  DEFEATED RIVAL RETIRES, INSULTED BY THE
+  VICTOR                                                             124
+
+  THE ITALIAN CRICKET                                                132
+
+  THE GREAT PEACOCK OR EMPEROR MOTH                                  180
+
+  THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH. THE PILGRIMS DIVERTED
+  BY THE LIGHT OF A LAMP                                             196
+
+  THE GREY LOCUST; THE NERVATURES OF THE WING;
+  THE BALANINUS FALLEN A VICTIM TO THE LENGTH
+  OF HER PROBOSCIS                                                   244
+
+  THE PINE-CHAFER (_MELOLONTHA FULLO_)                               318
+
+
+
+
+SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FABLE OF THE CIGALE AND THE ANT
+
+
+Fame is the daughter of Legend. In the world of creatures, as in the
+world of men, the story precedes and outlives history. There are many
+instances of the fact that if an insect attract our attention for this
+reason or that, it is given a place in those legends of the people whose
+last care is truth.
+
+For example, who is there that does not, at least by hearsay, know the
+Cigale? Where in the entomological world shall we find a more famous
+reputation? Her fame as an impassioned singer, careless of the future,
+was the subject of our earliest lessons in repetition. In short, easily
+remembered lines of verse, we learned how she was destitute when the
+winter winds arrived, and how she went begging for food to the Ant, her
+neighbour. A poor welcome she received, the would-be borrower!--a
+welcome that has become proverbial, and her chief title to celebrity.
+The petty malice of the two short lines--
+
+  Vous chantiez! j'en suis bien aise,
+  Eh bien, dansez maintenant!
+
+has done more to immortalise the insect than her skill as a musician.
+"You sang! I am very glad to hear it! Now you can dance!" The words
+lodge in the childish memory, never to be forgotten. To most
+Englishmen--to most Frenchmen even--the song of the Cigale is unknown,
+for she dwells in the country of the olive-tree; but we all know of the
+treatment she received at the hands of the Ant. On such trifles does
+Fame depend! A legend of very dubious value, its moral as bad as its
+natural history; a nurse's tale whose only merit is its brevity; such is
+the basis of a reputation which will survive the wreck of centuries no
+less surely than the tale of Puss-in-Boots and of Little Red
+Riding-Hood.
+
+The child is the best guardian of tradition, the great conservative.
+Custom and tradition become indestructible when confided to the archives
+of his memory. To the child we owe the celebrity of the Cigale, of whose
+misfortunes he has babbled during his first lessons in recitation. It is
+he who will preserve for future generations the absurd nonsense of which
+the body of the fable is constructed; the Cigale will always be hungry
+when the cold comes, although there were never Cigales in winter; she
+will always beg alms in the shape of a few grains of wheat, a diet
+absolutely incompatible with her delicate capillary "tongue"; and in
+desperation she will hunt for flies and grubs, although she never eats.
+
+Whom shall we hold responsible for these strange mistakes? La Fontaine,
+who in most of his fables charms us with his exquisite fineness of
+observation, has here been ill-inspired. His earlier subjects he knew
+down to the ground: the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Stag, the Crow, the
+Rat, the Ferret, and so many others, whose actions and manners he
+describes with a delightful precision of detail. These are inhabitants
+of his own country; neighbours, fellow-parishioners. Their life, private
+and public, is lived under his eyes; but the Cigale is a stranger to the
+haunts of Jack Rabbit. La Fontaine had never seen nor heard her. For him
+the celebrated songstress was certainly a grasshopper.
+
+Grandville, whose pencil rivals the author's pen, has fallen into the
+same error. In his illustration to the fable we see the Ant dressed like
+a busy housewife. On her threshold, beside her full sacks of wheat, she
+disdainfully turns her back upon the would-be borrower, who holds out
+her claw--pardon, her hand. With a wide coachman's hat, a guitar under
+her arm, and a skirt wrapped about her knees by the gale, there stands
+the second personage of the fable, the perfect portrait of a
+grasshopper. Grandville knew no more than La Fontaine of the true
+Cigale; he has beautifully expressed the general confusion.
+
+But La Fontaine, in this abbreviated history, is only the echo of
+another fabulist. The legend of the Cigale and the cold welcome of the
+Ant is as old as selfishness: as old as the world. The children of
+Athens, going to school with their baskets of rush-work stuffed with
+figs and olives, were already repeating the story under their breath, as
+a lesson to be repeated to the teacher. "In winter," they used to say,
+"the Ants were putting their damp food to dry in the sun. There came a
+starving Cigale to beg from them. She begged for a few grains. The
+greedy misers replied: 'You sang in the summer, now dance in the
+winter.'" This, although somewhat more arid, is precisely La Fontaine's
+story, and is contrary to the facts.
+
+Yet the story comes to us from Greece, which is, like the South of
+France, the home of the olive-tree and the Cigale. Was AEsop really its
+author, as tradition would have it? It is doubtful, and by no means a
+matter of importance; at all events, the author was a Greek, and a
+compatriot of the Cigale, which must have been perfectly familiar to
+him. There is not a single peasant in my village so blind as to be
+unaware of the total absence of Cigales in winter; and every tiller of
+the soil, every gardener, is familiar with the first phase of the
+insect, the larva, which his spade is perpetually discovering when he
+banks up the olives at the approach of the cold weather, and he knows,
+having seen it a thousand times by the edge of the country paths, how in
+summer this larva issues from the earth from a little round well of its
+own making; how it climbs a twig or a stem of grass, turns upon its
+back, climbs out of its skin, drier now than parchment, and becomes the
+Cigale; a creature of a fresh grass-green colour which is rapidly
+replaced by brown.
+
+We cannot suppose that the Greek peasant was so much less intelligent
+than the Provencal that he can have failed to see what the least
+observant must have noticed. He knew what my rustic neighbours know so
+well. The scribe, whoever he may have been, who was responsible for the
+fable was in the best possible circumstances for correct knowledge of
+the subject. Whence, then, arose the errors of his tale?
+
+Less excusably than La Fontaine, the Greek fabulist wrote of the Cigale
+of the books, instead of interrogating the living Cigale, whose cymbals
+were resounding on every side; careless of the real, he followed
+tradition. He himself echoed a more ancient narrative; he repeated some
+legend that had reached him from India, the venerable mother of
+civilisations. We do not know precisely what story the reed-pen of the
+Hindoo may have confided to writing, in order to show the perils of a
+life without foresight; but it is probable that the little animal drama
+was nearer the truth than the conversation between the Cigale and the
+Ant. India, the friend of animals, was incapable of such a mistake.
+Everything seems to suggest that the principal personage of the original
+fable was not the Cigale of the Midi, but some other creature, an insect
+if you will, whose manners corresponded to the adopted text.
+
+Imported into Greece, after long centuries during which, on the banks of
+the Indus, it made the wise reflect and the children laugh, the ancient
+anecdote, perhaps as old as the first piece of advice that a father of a
+family ever gave in respect of economy, transmitted more or less
+faithfully from one memory to another, must have suffered alteration in
+its details, as is the fate of all such legends, which the passage of
+time adapts to the circumstance of time and place.
+
+The Greek, not finding in his country the insect of which the Hindoo
+spoke, introduced the Cigale, as in Paris, the modern Athens, the Cigale
+has been replaced by the Grasshopper. The mistake was made; henceforth
+indelible. Entrusted as it is to the memory of childhood, error will
+prevail against the truth that lies before our eyes.
+
+Let us seek to rehabilitate the songstress so calumniated by the fable.
+She is, I grant you, an importunate neighbour. Every summer she takes up
+her station in hundreds before my door, attracted thither by the verdure
+of two great plane-trees; and there, from sunrise to sunset, she hammers
+on my brain with her strident symphony. With this deafening concert
+thought is impossible; the mind is in a whirl, is seized with vertigo,
+unable to concentrate itself. If I have not profited by the early
+morning hours the day is lost.
+
+Ah! Creature possessed, the plague of my dwelling, which I hoped would
+be so peaceful!--the Athenians, they say, used to hang you up in a
+little cage, the better to enjoy your song. One were well enough, during
+the drowsiness of digestion; but hundreds, roaring all at once,
+assaulting the hearing until thought recoils--this indeed is torture!
+You put forward, as excuse, your rights as the first occupant. Before my
+arrival the two plane-trees were yours without reserve; it is I who have
+intruded, have thrust myself into their shade. I confess it: yet muffle
+your cymbals, moderate your arpeggi, for the sake of your historian! The
+truth rejects what the fabulist tells us as an absurd invention. That
+there are sometimes dealings between the Cigale and the Ant is perfectly
+correct; but these dealings are the reverse of those described in the
+fable. They depend not upon the initiative of the former; for the Cigale
+never required the help of others in order to make her living: on the
+contrary, they are due to the Ant, the greedy exploiter of others, who
+fills her granaries with every edible she can find. At no time does the
+Cigale plead starvation at the doors of the ant-hills, faithfully
+promising a return of principal and interest; the Ant on the contrary,
+harassed by drought, begs of the songstress. Begs, do I say! Borrowing
+and repayment are no part of the manners of this land-pirate. She
+exploits the Cigale; she impudently robs her. Let us consider this
+theft; a curious point of history as yet unknown.
+
+In July, during the stifling hours of the afternoon, when the insect
+peoples, frantic with drought, wander hither and thither, vainly seeking
+to quench their thirst at the faded, exhausted flowers, the Cigale makes
+light of the general aridity. With her rostrum, a delicate augur, she
+broaches a cask of her inexhaustible store. Crouching, always singing,
+on the twig of a suitable shrub or bush, she perforates the firm, glossy
+rind, distended by the sap which the sun has matured. Plunging her
+proboscis into the bung-hole, she drinks deliciously, motionless, and
+wrapt in meditation, abandoned to the charms of syrup and of song.
+
+Let us watch her awhile. Perhaps we shall witness unlooked-for
+wretchedness and want. For there are many thirsty creatures wandering
+hither and thither; and at last they discover the Cigale's private well,
+betrayed by the oozing sap upon the brink. They gather round it, at
+first with a certain amount of constraint, confining themselves to
+lapping the extravasated liquor. I have seen, crowding around the
+honeyed perforation, wasps, flies, earwigs, Sphinx-moths, Pompilidae,
+rose-chafers, and, above all, ants.
+
+The smallest, in order to reach the well, slip under the belly of the
+Cigale, who kindly raises herself on her claws, leaving room for the
+importunate ones to pass. The larger, stamping with impatience, quickly
+snatch a mouthful, withdraw, take a turn on the neighbouring twigs, and
+then return, this time more enterprising. Envy grows keener; those who
+but now were cautious become turbulent and aggressive, and would
+willingly drive from the spring the well-sinker who has caused it to
+flow.
+
+In this crowd of brigands the most aggressive are the ants. I have seen
+them nibbling the ends of the Cigale's claws; I have caught them tugging
+the ends of her wings, climbing on her back, tickling her antennae. One
+audacious individual so far forgot himself under my eyes as to seize her
+proboscis, endeavouring to extract it from the well!
+
+Thus hustled by these dwarfs, and at the end of her patience, the
+giantess finally abandons the well. She flies away, throwing a jet of
+liquid excrement over her tormentors as she goes. But what cares the Ant
+for this expression of sovereign contempt? She is left in possession of
+the spring--only too soon exhausted when the pump is removed that made
+it flow. There is little left, but that little is sweet. So much to the
+good; she can wait for another drink, attained in the same manner, as
+soon as the occasion presents itself.
+
+[Illustration: DURING THE DROUGHTS OF SUMMER THIRSTING INSECTS, AND
+NOTABLY THE ANT, FLOCK TO THE DRINKING-PLACES OF THE CIGALE.]
+
+As we see, reality completely reverses the action described by the
+fable. The shameless beggar, who does not hesitate at theft, is the Ant;
+the industrious worker, willingly sharing her goods with the suffering,
+is the Cigale. Yet another detail, and the reversal of the fable is
+further emphasised. After five or six weeks of gaiety, the songstress
+falls from the tree, exhausted by the fever of life. The sun shrivels
+her body; the feet of the passers-by crush it. A bandit always in search
+of booty, the Ant discovers the remains. She divides the rich find,
+dissects it, and cuts it up into tiny fragments, which go to swell her
+stock of provisions. It is not uncommon to see a dying Cigale, whose
+wings are still trembling in the dust, drawn and quartered by a gang of
+knackers. Her body is black with them. After this instance of
+cannibalism the truth of the relations between the two insects is
+obvious.
+
+Antiquity held the Cigale in high esteem. The Greek Beranger, Anacreon,
+devoted an ode to her, in which his praise of her is singularly
+exaggerated. "Thou art almost like unto the Gods," he says. The reasons
+which he has given for this apotheosis are none of the best. They
+consist in these three privileges: [Greek: gegenes, apathes,
+hanaimosarke]; born of the earth, insensible to pain, bloodless. We will
+not reproach the poet for these mistakes; they were then generally
+believed, and were perpetuated long afterwards, until the exploring eye
+of scientific observation was directed upon them. And in minor poetry,
+whose principal merit lies in rhythm and harmony, we must not look at
+things too closely.
+
+Even in our days, the Provencal poets, who know the Cigale as Anacreon
+never did, are scarcely more careful of the truth in celebrating the
+insect which they have taken for their emblem. A friend of mine, an
+eager observer and a scrupulous realist, does not deserve this reproach.
+He gives me permission to take from his pigeon-holes the following
+Provencal poem, in which the relations between the Cigale and the Ant
+are expounded with all the rigour of science. I leave to him the
+responsibility for his poetic images and his moral reflections, blossoms
+unknown to my naturalist's garden; but I can swear to the truth of all
+he says, for it corresponds with what I see each summer on the
+lilac-trees of my garden.
+
+
+        LA CIGALO E LA FOURNIGO.
+
+                   I.
+
+  Jour de Dieu, queto caud! Beu tems per la Cigalo,
+    Que, trefoulido, se regalo
+  D'uno raisso de fio; beu tems per la meissoun.
+    Dins lis erso d'or, lou segaire,
+  Ren plega, pitre au vent, rustico e canto gaire;
+  Dins soun gousie, la set estranglo la cansoun.
+
+  Tems benesi per tu. Dounc, ardit! cigaleto,
+    Fai-lei brusi, ti chimbaleto,
+  E brandusso lou ventre a creba ti mirau.
+    L'Ome enterin mando le daio,
+  Que vai balin-balan de longo e que dardaio
+  L'ulau de soun acie sus li rous espigau.
+
+  Plen d'aigo per la peiro e tampouna d'erbiho
+    Lou coufie sus l'anco pendiho.
+  Si la peiro es au fres dins soun estui de bos,
+    E se de longo es abeurado,
+  L'Ome barbelo au fio d'aqueli souleiado
+  Que fan bouli de fes la mesoulo dis os.
+
+  Tu, Cigalo, as un biais per la set: dins la rusco
+    Tendro e jutouso d'uno busco,
+  L'aguio de toun be cabusso e cavo un pous.
+    Lou siro monto per la draio.
+  T'amourres a la fon melicouso que raio,
+  E dou sourgent sucra beves lou teta-dous.
+
+  Mai pas toujour en pas. Oh! que nani; de laire,
+    Vesin, vesino o barrulaire,
+  T'an vist cava lou pous. An set; venon, doulent,
+    Te prene un degout per si tasso.
+  Mesfiso-te, ma bello: aqueli curo-biasso,
+  Umble d'abord, soun leu de gusas insoulent.
+
+  Quiston un chicouloun di ren, piei de ti resto
+    Soun plus countent, ausson la testo
+  E volon tout: L'auran. Sis arpioun en rasteu
+    Te gatihoun lou bout de l'alo.
+  Sus tu larjo esquinasso es un mounto-davalo;
+  T'aganton per lou be, li bano, lis arteu;
+
+  Tiron d'eici, d'eila. L'impacienci te gagno.
+    Pst! pst! d'un giscle de pissagno
+  Asperges l'assemblado e quites lou rameu.
+    T'en vas ben liuen de la racaio,
+  Que t'a rauba lou pous, e ris, e se gougaio,
+  E se lipo li brego enviscado de meu.
+
+  Or d'aqueli boumian abeura sens fatigo,
+    Lou mai tihous es la fournigo.
+  Mousco, cabrian, guespo e tavan embana,
+    Espeloufi de touto meno,
+  Costo-en-long qu'a toun pous lou soulcias ameno,
+  N'an pas soun testardige a te faire enana.
+
+  Per l'esquicha l'arteu, te coutiga lou mourre,
+    Te pessuga lou nas, per courre
+  A l'oumbro du toun ventre, osco! degun la vau.
+    Lou marrit-peu prend per escalo
+  Uno patto e te monto, ardido, sus lis alo,
+  E s'espasso, insoulento, e vai d'amont, d'avau.
+
+
+                  II.
+
+    Aro veici qu'es pas de creire.
+    Ancian tems, nous dison li reire,
+  Un jour d'iver; la fam te prengue. Lou front bas
+    E d'escoundoun aneres veire,
+  Dins si grand magasin, la fournigo, eilabas.
+
+  L'endrudido au souleu secavo,
+    Avans de lis escoundre en cavo,
+  Si blad qu'avie mousi l'eigagno de la niue.
+    Quand eron lest lis ensacavo.
+  Tu survenes alor, eme de plour is iue.
+
+    Ie dises: "Fai ben fre; l'aurasso
+    D'un caire a l'autre me tirasso
+  Avanido de fam. A toun riche mouloun
+    Leisso-me prene per ma biasso.
+  Te lou rendrai segur au beu tems di meloun.
+
+    "Presto-me un pan de gran." Mai, bouto,
+    Se creses que l'autro t'escouto,
+  T'enganes. Di gros sa, ren de ren sara tieu.
+    "Vai-t'en plus liuen rascla de bouto;
+  Crebo de fam l'iver, tu que cantes l'estieu."
+
+    Ansin charro la fablo antico
+    Per nous counseia la pratico
+  Di sarro-piastro, urous de nousa li cordoun
+    De si bourso.--Que la coulico
+  Rousigue la tripaio en aqueli coudoun!
+
+    Me fai susa, lou fabulisto,
+    Quand dis que l'iver vas en quisto
+  De mousco, verme, gran, tu que manges jamai.
+    De blad! Que n'en faries, ma fisto!
+  As ta fon melicouso e demandes ren mai.
+
+    Que t'enchau l'iver! Ta famiho
+    A la sousto en terro soumiho,
+  Et tu dormes la som que n'a ges de revei;
+    Toun cadabre toumbo en douliho.
+  Un jour, en tafurant, la fournigo lou vei,
+
+    De tu magro peu dessecado
+    La marriasso fai becado;
+  Te curo lou perus, te chapouto a mouceu,
+    T'encafourno per car-salado,
+  Requisto prouvisioun, l'iver, en tems de neu.
+
+                 III.
+
+       Vaqui l'istori veritablo
+       Ben liuen dou conte de la fablo.
+       Que n'en pensas, caneu de sort!
+       --O rammaissaire de dardeno
+       Det croucu, boumbudo bedeno
+  Que gouvernas lou mounde eme lou coffre-fort,
+
+       Fases courre lou bru, canaio,
+       Que l'artisto jamai travaio
+       E deu pati, lou bedigas.
+       Teisas-vous dounc: quand di lambrusco
+       La Cigalo a cava la rusco,
+  Raubas soun beure, e piei, morto, la rousigas.
+
+So speaks my friend in the expressive Provencal idiom, rehabilitating
+the creature so libelled by the fabulist.
+
+Translated with a little necessary freedom, the English of it is as
+follows:--
+
+                  I.
+
+  Fine weather for the Cigale! God, what heat!
+     Half drunken with her joy, she feasts
+  In a hail of fire. Pays for the harvest meet;
+     A golden sea the reaper breasts,
+  Loins bent, throat bare; silent, he labours long,
+  For thirst within his throat has stilled the song.
+
+  A blessed time for thee, little Cigale.
+     Thy little cymbals shake and sound,
+  Shake, shake thy stomach till thy mirrors fall!
+     Man meanwhile swings his scythe around;
+  Continually back and forth it veers,
+  Flashing its steel amidst the ruddy ears.
+
+  Grass-plugged, with water for the grinder full,
+    A flask is hung upon his hip;
+  The stone within its wooden trough is cool,
+    Free all the day to sip and sip;
+  But man is gasping in the fiery sun,
+  That makes his very marrow melt and run.
+
+  Thou, Cigale, hast a cure for thirst: the bark,
+    Tender and juicy, of the bough.
+  Thy beak, a very needle, stabs it. Mark
+    The narrow passage welling now;
+  The sugared stream is flowing, thee beside,
+  Who drinkest of the flood, the honeyed tide.
+
+  Not in peace always; nay, for thieves arrive,
+    Neighbours and wives, or wanderers vile;
+  They saw thee sink the well, and ill they thrive
+    Thirsting; they seek to drink awhile;
+  Beauty, beware! the wallet-snatcher's face,
+  Humble at first, grows insolent apace.
+
+  They seek the merest drop; thy leavings take;
+    Soon discontent, their heads they toss;
+  They crave for all, and all will have. They rake
+    Their claws thy folded wings across;
+  Thy back a mountain, up and down each goes;
+  They seize thee by the beak, the horns, the toes.
+
+  This way and that they pull. Impatient thou:
+    Pst! Pst! a jet of nauseous taste
+  O'er the assembly sprinklest. Leave the bough
+    And fly the rascals thus disgraced,
+  Who stole thy well, and with malicious pleasure
+  Now lick their honey'd lips, and feed at leisure.
+
+  See these Bohemians without labour fed!
+    The ant the worst of all the crew--
+  Fly, drone, wasp, beetle too with horned head,
+    All of them sharpers thro' and thro',
+  Idlers the sun drew to thy well apace--
+  None more than she was eager for thy place,
+
+  More apt thy face to tickle, toe to tread,
+    Or nose to pinch, and then to run
+  Under the shade thine ample belly spread;
+    Or climb thy leg for ladder; sun
+  Herself audacious on thy wings, and go
+  Most insolently o'er thee to and fro.
+
+
+                  II.
+
+  Now comes a tale that no one should believe.
+    In other times, the ancients say,
+  The winter came, and hunger made thee grieve.
+    Thou didst in secret see one day
+  The ant below the ground her treasure store away.
+
+  The wealthy ant was drying in the sun
+    Her corn the dew had wet by night,
+  Ere storing it again; and one by one
+    She filled her sacks as it dried aright.
+  Thou camest then, and tears bedimmed thy sight,
+
+  Saying: "'Tis very cold; the bitter bise
+    Blows me this way and that to-day.
+  I die of hunger. Of your riches please
+    Fill me my bag, and I'll repay,
+  When summer and its melons come this way.
+
+  "Lend me a little corn." Go to, go to!
+    Think you the ant will lend an ear?
+  You are deceived. Great sacks, but nought for you!
+    "Be off, and scrape some barrel clear!
+  You sing of summer: starve, for winter's here!"
+
+  'Tis thus the ancient fable sings
+    To teach us all the prudence ripe
+  Of farthing-snatchers, glad to knot the string
+    That tie their purses. May the gripe
+  Of colic twist the guts of all such tripe!
+
+  He angers me, this fable-teller does,
+    Saying in winter thou dost seek
+  Flies, grubs, corn--thou dost never eat like us!
+    --Corn! Couldst thou eat it, with thy beak?
+  Thou hast thy fountain with its honey'd reek.
+
+  To thee what matters winter? Underground
+    Slumber thy children, sheltered; thou
+  The sleep that knows no waking sleepest sound.
+    Thy body, fallen from the bough,
+  Crumbles; the questing ant has found thee now.
+
+  The wicked ant of thy poor withered hide
+    A banquet makes; in little bits
+  She cuts thee up, and empties thine inside,
+    And stores thee where in wealth she sits:
+  Choice diet when the winter numbs the wits.
+
+
+                 III.
+
+  Here is the tale related duly,
+  And little resembling the fable, truly!
+  Hoarders of farthings, I know, deuce take it.
+  It isn't the story as you would make it!
+  Crook-fingers, big-bellies, what do you say,
+  Who govern the world with the cash-box--hey?
+
+  You have spread the story, with shrug and smirk,
+  That the artist ne'er does a stroke of work;
+  And so let him suffer, the imbecile!
+  Be you silent! 'Tis you, I think,
+  When the Cigale pierces the vine to drink,
+  Drive her away, her drink to steal;
+  And when she is dead--you make your meal!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CIGALE LEAVES ITS BURROW
+
+
+The first Cigales appear about the summer solstice. Along the beaten
+paths, calcined by the sun, hardened by the passage of frequent feet, we
+see little circular orifices almost large enough to admit the thumb.
+These are the holes by which the larvae of the Cigale have come up from
+the depths to undergo metamorphosis. We see them more or less
+everywhere, except in fields where the soil has been disturbed by
+ploughing. Their usual position is in the driest and hottest situations,
+especially by the sides of roads or the borders of footpaths. Powerfully
+equipped for the purpose, able at need to pierce the turf or sun-dried
+clay, the larva, upon leaving the earth, seems to prefer the hardest
+spots.
+
+A garden alley, converted into a little Arabia Petraea by reflection from
+a wall facing the south, abounds in such holes. During the last days of
+June I have made an examination of these recently abandoned pits. The
+soil is so compact that I needed a pick to tackle it.
+
+The orifices are round, and close upon an inch in diameter. There is
+absolutely no debris round them; no earth thrown up from within. This is
+always the case; the holes of the Cigales are never surrounded by
+dumping-heaps, as are the burrows of the Geotrupes, another notable
+excavator. The way in which the work is done is responsible for this
+difference. The dung-beetle works from without inwards; she begins to
+dig at the mouth of the burrow, and afterwards re-ascends and
+accumulates the excavated material on the surface. The larva of the
+Cigale, on the contrary, works outward from within, upward from below;
+it opens the door of exit at the last moment, so that it is not free for
+the discharge of excavated material until the work is done. The first
+enters and raises a little rubbish-heap at the threshold of her burrow;
+the second emerges, and cannot, while working, pile up its rubbish on a
+threshold which as yet has no existence.
+
+The burrow of the Cigale descends about fifteen inches. It is
+cylindrical, slightly twisted, according to the exigencies of the soil,
+and always approaches the vertical, or the direction of the shortest
+passage. It is perfectly free along its entire length. We shall search
+in vain for the rubbish which such an excavation must apparently
+produce; we shall find nothing of the sort. The burrow terminates in a
+cul-de-sac, in a fairly roomy chamber with unbroken walls, which shows
+not the least vestige of communication with any other burrow or
+prolongation of the shaft.
+
+Taking its length and diameter into account, we find the excavation has
+a total volume of about twelve cubic inches. What becomes of the earth
+which is removed?
+
+Sunk in a very dry, crumbling soil, we should expect the shaft and the
+chamber at the bottom to have soft, powdery walls, subject to petty
+landslips, if no work were done but that of excavation. On the contrary,
+the walls are neatly daubed, plastered with a sort of clay-like mortar.
+They are not precisely smooth, indeed they are distinctly rough; but
+their irregularities are covered with a layer of plaster, and the
+crumbling material, soaked in some glutinous liquid and dried, is held
+firmly in place.
+
+The larva can climb up and down, ascend nearly to the surface, and go
+down into its chamber of refuge, without bringing down, with his claws,
+the continual falls of material which would block the burrow, make
+ascent a matter of difficulty, and retreat impossible. The miner shores
+up his galleries with uprights and cross-timbers; the builder of
+underground railways supports the sides and roofs of his tunnels with a
+lining of brick or masonry or segments of iron tube; the larva of the
+Cigale, no less prudent an engineer, plasters the walls of its burrow
+with cement, so that the passage is always free and ready for use.
+
+If I surprise the creature just as it is emerging from the soil in order
+to gain a neighbouring bough and there undergo transformation, I see it
+immediately make a prudent retreat, descending to the bottom of its
+burrow without the slightest difficulty--a proof that even when about to
+be abandoned for ever the refuge is not encumbered with rubbish.
+
+The ascending shaft is not a hurried piece of work, scamped by a
+creature impatient to reach the sunlight. It is a true dwelling, in
+which the larva may make a long stay. The plastered walls betray as
+much. Such precautions would be useless in the case of a simple exit
+abandoned as soon as made. We cannot doubt that the burrow is a kind of
+meteorological observatory, and that its inhabitant takes note of the
+weather without. Buried underground at a depth of twelve or fifteen
+inches, the larva, when ripe for escape, could hardly judge whether the
+meteorological conditions were favourable. The subterranean climate
+varies too little, changes too slowly, and would not afford it the
+precise information required for the most important action of its
+life--the escape into the sunshine at the time of metamorphosis.
+
+Patiently, for weeks, perhaps for months, it digs, clears, and
+strengthens a vertical shaft, leaving only a layer of earth a finger's
+breadth in thickness to isolate it from the outer world. At the bottom
+it prepares a carefully built recess. This is its refuge, its place of
+waiting, where it reposes in peace if its observations decide it to
+postpone its final departure. At the least sign of fine weather it
+climbs to the top of its burrow, sounds the outer world through the thin
+layer of earth which covers the shaft, and informs itself of the
+temperature and humidity of the outer air.
+
+If things are not going well--if there are threats of a flood or the
+dreaded _bise_--events of mortal gravity when the delicate insect issues
+from its cerements--the prudent creature re-descends to the bottom of
+its burrow for a longer wait. If, on the contrary, the state of the
+atmosphere is favourable, the roof is broken through by a few strokes of
+its claws, and the larva emerges from its tunnel.
+
+Everything seems to prove that the burrow of the Cigale is a
+waiting-room, a meteorological station, in which the larva makes a
+prolonged stay; sometimes hoisting itself to the neighbourhood of the
+surface in order to ascertain the external climate; sometimes retiring
+to the depths the better to shelter itself. This explains the chamber
+at the base of the shaft, and the necessity of a cement to hold the
+walls together, for otherwise the creature's continual comings and
+goings would result in a landslip.
+
+A matter less easy of explanation is the complete disappearance of the
+material which originally filled the excavated space. Where are the
+twelve cubic inches of earth that represent the average volume of the
+original contents of the shaft? There is not a trace of this material
+outside, nor inside either. And how, in a soil as dry as a cinder, is
+the plaster made with which the walls are covered?
+
+Larvae which burrow in wood, such as those of Capricornis and Buprestes,
+will apparently answer our first question. They make their way through
+the substance of a tree-trunk, boring their galleries by the simple
+method of eating the material in front of them. Detached by their
+mandibles, fragment by fragment, the material is digested. It passes
+from end to end through the body of the pioneer, yields during its
+passage its meagre nutritive principles, and accumulates behind it,
+obstructing the passage, by which the larva will never return. The work
+of extreme division, effected partly by the mandibles and partly by the
+stomach, makes the digested material more compact than the intact wood,
+from which it follows that there is always a little free space at the
+head of the gallery, in which the caterpillar works and lives; it is not
+of any great length, but just suffices for the movements of the
+prisoner.
+
+Must not the larva of the Cigale bore its passage in some such fashion?
+I do not mean that the results of excavation pass through its body--for
+earth, even the softest mould, could form no possible part of its diet.
+But is not the material detached simply thrust back behind the excavator
+as the work progresses?
+
+The Cigale passes four years under ground. This long life is not spent,
+of course, at the bottom of the well I have just described; that is
+merely a resting-place preparatory to its appearance on the face of the
+earth. The larva comes from elsewhere; doubtless from a considerable
+distance. It is a vagabond, roaming from one root to another and
+implanting its rostrum. When it moves, either to flee from the upper
+layers of the soil, which in winter become too cold, or to install
+itself upon a more juicy root, it makes a road by rejecting behind it
+the material broken up by the teeth of its picks. That this is its
+method is incontestable.
+
+As with the larvae of Capricornis and Buprestes, it is enough for the
+traveller to have around it the small amount of free space necessitated
+by its movements. Moist, soft, and easily compressible soil is to the
+larva of the Cigale what digested wood-pulp is to the others. It is
+compressed without difficulty, and so leaves a vacant space.
+
+The difficulty is that sometimes the burrow of exit from the
+waiting-place is driven through a very arid soil, which is extremely
+refractory to compression so long as it retains its aridity. That the
+larva, when commencing the excavation of its burrow, has already thrust
+part of the detached material into a previously made gallery, now filled
+up and disappeared, is probable enough, although nothing in the actual
+condition of things goes to support the theory; but if we consider the
+capacity of the shaft and the extreme difficulty of making room for such
+a volume of debris, we feel dubious once more; for to hide such a
+quantity of earth a considerable empty space would be necessary, which
+could only be obtained by the disposal of more debris. Thus we are
+caught in a vicious circle. The mere packing of the powdered earth
+rejected behind the excavator would not account for so large a void. The
+Cigale must have a special method of disposing of the waste earth. Let
+us see if we can discover the secret.
+
+Let us examine a larva at the moment of emerging from the soil. It is
+almost always more or less smeared with mud, sometimes dried, sometimes
+moist. The implements of excavation, the claws of the fore-feet, have
+their points covered by little globules of mortar; the others bear
+leggings of mud; the back is spotted with clay. One is reminded of a
+scavenger who has been scooping up mud all day. This condition is the
+more striking in that the insect comes from an absolutely dry soil. We
+should expect to see it dusty; we find it muddy.
+
+One more step, and the problem of the well is solved. I exhume a larva
+which is working at its gallery of exit. Chance postpones this piece of
+luck, which I cannot expect to achieve at once, since nothing on the
+surface guides my search. But at last I am rewarded, and the larva is
+just beginning its excavation. An inch of tunnel, free of all waste or
+rubbish, and at the bottom the chamber, the place of rest; so far has
+the work proceeded. And the worker--in what condition is it? Let us see.
+
+The larva is much paler in colour than those which I have caught as they
+emerged. The large eyes in particular are whitish, cloudy, blurred, and
+apparently blind. What would be the use of sight underground? The eyes
+of the larvae leaving their burrows are black and shining, and evidently
+capable of sight. When it issues into the sunlight the future Cigale
+must find, often at some distance from its burrow, a suitable twig from
+which to hang during its metamorphosis, so that sight is obviously of
+the greatest utility. The maturity of the eyes, attained during the time
+of preparation before deliverance, proves that the larva, far from
+boring its tunnel in haste, has spent a long time labouring at it.
+
+What else do we notice? The blind, pale larva is far more voluminous
+than in the mature state; it is swollen with liquid as though it had
+dropsy. Taken in the fingers, a limpid serum oozes from the hinder part
+of the body, which moistens the whole surface. Is this fluid, evacuated
+by the intestine, a product of urinary secretion--simply the contents of
+a stomach nourished entirely upon sap? I will not attempt to decide, but
+for convenience will content myself with calling it urine.
+
+Well, this fountain of urine is the key to the enigma. As it digs and
+advances the larva waters the powdery debris and converts it into a
+paste, which is immediately applied to the walls by the pressure of the
+abdomen. Aridity is followed by plasticity. The mud thus obtained
+penetrates the interstices of the rough soil; the more liquid portion
+enters the substance of the soil by infiltration; the remainder becomes
+tightly packed and fills up the inequalities of the walls. Thus the
+insect obtains an empty tunnel, with no loose waste, as all the loosened
+soil is utilised on the spot, converted into a mortar which is more
+compact and homogeneous than the soil through which the shaft is
+driven.
+
+Thus the larva works in the midst of a coating of mud, which is the
+cause of its dirtiness, so astonishing when we see it issue from an
+excessively dry soil. The perfect insect, although henceforth liberated
+from the work of a sapper and miner, does not entirely abandon the use
+of urine as a weapon, employing it as a means of defence. Too closely
+observed it throws a jet of liquid upon the importunate enemy and flies
+away. In both its forms the Cigale, in spite of its dry temperament, is
+a famous irrigator.
+
+Dropsical as it is, the larva cannot contain sufficient liquid to
+moisten and convert into easily compressible mud the long column of
+earth which must be removed from the burrow. The reservoir becomes
+exhausted, and the provision must be renewed. Where, and how? I think I
+can answer the question.
+
+The few burrows uncovered along their entirety, with the meticulous care
+such a task demands, have revealed at the bottom, encrusted in the wall
+of the terminal chamber, a living root, sometimes of the thickness of a
+pencil, sometimes no bigger than a straw. The visible portion of this
+root is only a fraction of an inch in length; the rest is hidden by the
+surrounding earth. Is the presence of this source of sap fortuitous? Or
+is it the result of deliberate choice on the part of the larva? I
+incline towards the second alternative, so repeatedly was the presence
+of a root verified, at least when my search was skilfully conducted.
+
+Yes, the Cigale, digging its chamber, the nucleus of the future shaft,
+seeks out the immediate neighbourhood of a small living root; it lays
+bare a certain portion, which forms part of the wall, without
+projecting. This living spot in the wall is the fountain where the
+supply of moisture is renewed. When its reservoir is exhausted by the
+conversion of dry dust into mud the miner descends to its chamber,
+thrusts its proboscis into the root, and drinks deep from the vat built
+into the wall. Its organs well filled, it re-ascends. It resumes work,
+damping the hard soil the better to remove it with its talons, reducing
+the debris to mud, in order to pack it tightly around it and obtain a
+free passage. In this manner the shaft is driven upwards; logic and the
+facts of the case, in the absence of direct observation, justify the
+assertion.
+
+If the root were to fail, and the reservoir of the intestine were
+exhausted, what would happen? The following experiment will inform us: a
+larva is caught as it leaves the earth. I place it at the bottom of a
+test-tube, and cover it with a column of dry earth, which is rather
+lightly packed. This column is about six inches in height. The larva has
+just left an excavation three times as deep, made in soil of the same
+kind, but offering a far greater resistance. Buried under this short
+column of powdery earth, will it be able to gain the surface? If its
+strength hold out the issue should be certain; having but lately made
+its way through the hard earth, this obstacle should be easily removed.
+
+But I am not so sure. In removing the stopper which divided it from the
+outside world, the larva has expended its final store of liquid. The
+cistern is dry, and in default of a living root there is no means of
+replenishing it. My suspicions are well founded. For three days the
+prisoner struggles desperately, but cannot ascend by so much as an inch.
+It is impossible to fix the material removed in the absence of
+moisture; as soon as it is thrust aside it slips back again. The labour
+has no visible result; it is a labour of Sisyphus, always to be
+commenced anew. On the fourth day the creature succumbs.
+
+With the intestines full the result is very different.
+
+I make the same experiment with an insect which is only beginning its
+work of liberation. It is swollen with fluid, which oozes from it and
+moistens the whole body. Its task is easy; the overlying earth offers
+little resistance. A small quantity of liquid from the intestines
+converts it into mud; forms a sticky paste which can be thrust aside
+with the assurance that it will remain where it is placed. The shaft is
+gradually opened; very unevenly, to be sure, and it is almost choked up
+behind the insect as it climbs upwards. It seems as though the creature
+recognises the impossibility of renewing its store of liquid, and so
+economises the little it possesses, using only just so much as is
+necessary in order to escape as quickly as possible from surroundings
+which are strange to its inherited instincts. This parsimony is so well
+judged that the insect gains the surface at the end of twelve days.
+
+The gate of issue is opened and left gaping, like a hole made with an
+augur. For some little time the larva wanders about the neighbourhood of
+its burrow, seeking an eyrie on some low-growing bush or tuft of thyme,
+on a stem of grass or grain, or the twig of a shrub. Once found, it
+climbs and firmly clasps its support, the head upwards, while the talons
+of the fore feet close with an unyielding grip. The other claws, if the
+direction of the twig is convenient, assist in supporting it; otherwise
+the claws of the two fore legs will suffice. There follows a moment of
+repose, while the supporting limbs stiffen in an unbreakable hold. Then
+the thorax splits along the back, and through the fissure the insect
+slowly emerges. The whole process lasts perhaps half an hour.
+
+There is the adult insect, freed of its mask, and how different from
+what it was but how! The wings are heavy, moist, transparent, with
+nervures of a tender green. The thorax is barely clouded with brown. All
+the rest of the body is a pale green, whitish in places. Heat and a
+prolonged air-bath are necessary to harden and colour the fragile
+creature. Some two hours pass without any perceptible change. Hanging to
+its deserted shell by the two fore limbs, the Cigale sways to the least
+breath of air, still feeble and still green. Finally, the brown colour
+appears and rapidly covers the whole body; the change of colour is
+completed in half an hour. Fastening upon its chosen twig at nine
+o'clock in the morning, the Cigale flies away under my eyes at half-past
+twelve.
+
+The empty shell remains, intact except for the fissure in the back;
+clasping the twig so firmly that the winds of autumn do not always
+succeed in detaching it. For some months yet and even during the winter
+you will often find these forsaken skins hanging from the twigs in the
+precise attitude assumed by the larva at the moment of metamorphosis.
+They are of a horny texture, not unlike dry parchment, and do not
+readily decay.
+
+I could gather some wonderful information regarding the Cigale were I to
+listen to all that my neighbours, the peasants, tell me. I will give one
+instance of rustic natural history.
+
+[Illustration: THE CIGALE AND THE EMPTY PUPA-SKIN.]
+
+Are you afflicted with any kidney trouble, or are you swollen with
+dropsy, or have you need of some powerful diuretic? The village
+pharmacopoeia is unanimous in recommending the Cigale as a sovereign
+remedy. The insects in the adult form are collected in summer. They are
+strung into necklaces which are dried in the sun and carefully preserved
+in some cupboard or drawer. A good housewife would consider it imprudent
+to allow July to pass without threading a few of these insects.
+
+Do you suffer from any nephritic irritation or from stricture? Drink an
+infusion of Cigales. Nothing, they say, is more effectual. I must take
+this opportunity of thanking the good soul who once upon a time, so I
+was afterwards informed, made me drink such a concoction unawares for
+the cure of some such trouble; but I still remain incredulous. I have
+been greatly struck by the fact that the ancient physician of Anazarbus
+used to recommend the same remedy. Dioscorides tells us: _Cicadae, quae
+inassatae manduntur, vesicae doloribus prosunt_. Since the distant days
+of this patriarch of _materia medica_ the Provencal peasant has retained
+his faith in the remedy revealed to him by the Greeks, who came from
+Phocaea with the olive, the fig, and the vine. Only one thing is changed:
+Dioscorides advises us to eat the Cigales roasted, but now they are
+boiled, and the decoction is administered as medicine. The explanation
+which is given of the diuretic properties of the insect is a marvel of
+ingenuousness. The Cigale, as every one knows who has tried to catch it,
+throws a jet of liquid excrement in one's face as it flies away. It
+therefore endows us with its faculties of evacuation. Thus Dioscorides
+and his contemporaries must have reasoned; so reasons the peasant of
+Provence to-day.
+
+What would you say, worthy neighbours, if you knew of the virtues of the
+larva, which is able to mix sufficient mortar with its urine to build a
+meteorological station and a shaft connecting with the outer world? Your
+powers should equal those of Rabelais' Gargantua, who, seated upon the
+towers of Notre Dame, drowned so many thousands of the inquisitive
+Parisians.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SONG OF THE CIGALE
+
+
+Where I live I can capture five species of Cigale, the two principal
+species being the common Cigale and the variety which lives on the
+flowering ash. Both of these are widely distributed and are the only
+species known to the country folk. The larger of the two is the common
+Cigale. Let me briefly describe the mechanism with which it produces its
+familiar note.
+
+On the under side of the body of the male, immediately behind the
+posterior limbs, are two wide semicircular plates which slightly overlap
+one another, the right hand lying over the left hand plate. These are
+the shutters, the lids, the dampers of the musical-box. Let us remove
+them. To the right and left lie two spacious cavities which are known in
+Provencal as the chapels (_li capello_). Together they form the church
+(_la gleiso_). Their forward limit is formed by a creamy yellow
+membrane, soft and thin; the hinder limit by a dry membrane coloured
+like a soap bubble and known in Provencal as the mirror (_mirau_).
+
+The church, the mirrors, and the dampers are commonly regarded as the
+organs which produce the cry of the Cigale. Of a singer out of breath
+one says that he has broken his mirrors (_a li mirau creba_). The same
+phrase is used of a poet without inspiration. Acoustics give the lie to
+the popular belief. You may break the mirrors, remove the covers with a
+snip of the scissors, and tear the yellow anterior membrane, but these
+mutilations do not silence the song of the Cigale; they merely change
+its quality and weaken it. The chapels are resonators; they do not
+produce the sound, but merely reinforce it by the vibration of their
+anterior and posterior membranes; while the sound is modified by the
+dampers as they are opened more or less widely.
+
+The actual source of the sound is elsewhere, and is somewhat difficult
+for a novice to find. On the outer wall of either chapel, at the ridge
+formed by the junction of back and belly, is a tiny aperture with a
+horny circumference masked by the overlapping damper. We will call this
+the window. This opening gives access to a cavity or sound-chamber,
+deeper than the "chapels," but of much smaller capacity. Immediately
+behind the attachment of the posterior wings is a slight protuberance,
+almost egg-shaped, which is distinguishable, on account of its dull
+black colour, from the neighbouring integuments, which are covered with
+a silvery down. This protuberance is the outer wall of the
+sound-chamber.
+
+Let us cut it boldly away. We shall then lay bare the mechanism which
+produces the sound, the _cymbal_. This is a small dry, white membrane,
+oval in shape, convex on the outer side, and crossed along its larger
+diameter by a bundle of three or four brown nervures, which give it
+elasticity. Its entire circumference is rigidly fixed. Let us suppose
+that this convex scale is pulled out of shape from the interior, so
+that it is slightly flattened and as quickly released; it will
+immediately regain its original convexity owing to the elasticity of the
+nervures. From this oscillation a ticking sound will result.
+
+Twenty years ago all Paris was buying a silly toy, called, I think, the
+cricket or _cri-cri_. It was a short slip of steel fixed by one end to a
+metallic base. Pressed out of shape by the thumb and released, it
+yielded a very distressing, tinkling _click_. Nothing else was needed to
+take the popular mind by storm. The "cricket" had its day of glory.
+Oblivion has executed justice upon it so effectually that I fear I shall
+not be understood when I recall this celebrated device.
+
+The membranous cymbal and the steel cricket are analogous instruments.
+Both produce a sound by reason of the rapid deformation and recovery of
+an elastic substance--in one case a convex membrane; in the other a slip
+of steel. The "cricket" was bent out of shape by the thumb. How is the
+convexity of the cymbals altered? Let us return to the "church" and
+break down the yellow curtain which closes the front of each chapel. Two
+thick muscular pillars are visible, of a pale orange colour; they join
+at an angle, forming a ~V~, of which the point lies on the median line
+of the insect, against the lower face of the thorax. Each of these
+pillars of flesh terminates suddenly at its upper extremity, as though
+cut short, and from the truncated portion rises a short, slender tendon,
+which is attached laterally to the corresponding cymbal.
+
+There is the whole mechanism, no less simple than that of the steel
+"cricket." The two muscular columns contract and relax, shorten and
+lengthen. By means of its terminal thread each sounds its cymbal, by
+depressing it and immediately releasing it, when its own elasticity
+makes it spring back into shape. These two vibrating scales are the
+source of the Cigale's cry.
+
+Do you wish to convince yourself of the efficiency of this mechanism?
+Take a Cigale but newly dead and make it sing. Nothing is simpler. Seize
+one of these muscular columns with the forceps and pull it in a series
+of careful jerks. The extinct _cri-cri_ comes to life again; at each
+jerk there is a clash of the cymbal. The sound is feeble, to be sure,
+deprived of the amplitude which the living performer is able to give it
+by means of his resonating chambers; none the less, the fundamental
+element of the song is produced by this anatomist's trick.
+
+Would you, on the other hand, silence a living Cigale?--that obstinate
+melomaniac, who, seized in the fingers, deplores his misfortune as
+loquaciously as ever he sang the joys of freedom in his tree? It is
+useless to violate his chapels, to break his mirrors; the atrocious
+mutilation would not quiet him. But introduce a needle by the lateral
+aperture which we have named the "window" and prick the cymbal at the
+bottom of the sound-box. A little touch and the perforated cymbal is
+silent. A similar operation on the other side of the insect and the
+insect is dumb, though otherwise as vigorous as before and without any
+perceptible wound. Any one not in the secret would be amazed at the
+result of my pin-prick, when the destruction of the mirrors and the
+other dependencies of the "church" do not cause silence. A tiny
+perforation of no importance to the insect is more effectual than
+evisceration.
+
+The dampers, which are rigid and solidly built, are motionless. It is
+the abdomen itself which, by rising and falling, opens or closes the
+doors of the "church." When the abdomen is lowered the dampers exactly
+cover the chapels as well as the windows of the sound-boxes. The sound
+is then muted, muffled, diminished. When the abdomen rises the chapels
+are open, the windows unobstructed, and the sound acquires its full
+volume. The rapid oscillations of the abdomen, synchronising with the
+contractions of the motor muscles of the cymbals, determine the changing
+volume of the sound, which seems to be caused by rapidly repeated
+strokes of a fiddlestick.
+
+If the weather is calm and hot, towards mid-day the song of the Cigale
+is divided into strophes of several seconds' duration, which are
+separated by brief intervals of silence. The strophe begins suddenly. In
+a rapid crescendo, the abdomen oscillating with increasing rapidity, it
+acquires its maximum volume; it remains for a few seconds at the same
+degree of intensity, then becomes weaker by degrees, and degenerates
+into a shake, which decreases as the abdomen returns to rest. With the
+last pulsations of the belly comes silence; the length of the silent
+interval varies according to the state of the atmosphere. Then, of a
+sudden, begins a new strophe, a monotonous repetition of the first; and
+so on indefinitely.
+
+It often happens, especially during the hours of the sultry afternoons,
+that the insect, intoxicated with sunlight, shortens and even suppresses
+the intervals of silence. The song is then continuous, but always with
+an alternation of crescendo and diminuendo. The first notes are heard
+about seven or eight o'clock in the morning, and the orchestra ceases
+only when the twilight fails, about eight o'clock at night. The concert
+lasts a whole round of the clock. But if the sky is grey and the wind
+chilly the Cigale is silent.
+
+The second species, only half the size of the common Cigale, is known in
+Provence as the _Cacan_; the name, being a fairly exact imitation of the
+sound emitted by the insect. This is the Cigale of the flowering ash,
+far more alert and far more suspicious than the common species. Its
+harsh, loud song consists of a series of cries--_can! can! can!
+can!_--with no intervals of silence subdividing the poem into stanzas.
+Thanks to its monotony and its harsh shrillness, it is a most odious
+sound, especially when the orchestra consists of hundreds of performers,
+as is often the case in my two plane-trees during the dog-days. It is as
+though a heap of dry walnuts were being shaken up in a bag until the
+shells broke. This painful concert, which is a real torment, offers only
+one compensation: the Cigale of the flowering ash does not begin his
+song so early as the common Cigale, and does not sing so late in the
+evening.
+
+Although constructed on the same fundamental principles, the vocal
+organs exhibit a number of peculiarities which give the song its special
+character. The sound-box is lacking, which suppresses the entrance to
+it, or the window. The cymbal is uncovered, and is visible just behind
+the attachment of the hinder wing. It is, as before, a dry white scale,
+convex on the outside, and crossed by a bundle of fine reddish-brown
+nervures.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW.
+
+2. THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW.
+
+3. THE CIGALE OF THE FLOWERING ASH, MALE AND FEMALE.]
+
+From the forward side of the first segment of the abdomen project two
+short, wide, tongue-shaped projections, the free extremities of which
+rest on the cymbals. These tongues may be compared to the blade of a
+watchman's rattle, only instead of engaging with the teeth of a rotating
+wheel they touch the nervures of the vibrating cymbal. From this fact, I
+imagine, results the harsh, grating quality of the cry. It is hardly
+possible to verify the fact by holding the insect in the fingers; the
+terrified _Cacan_ does not go on singing his usual song.
+
+The dampers do not overlap; on the contrary, they are separated by a
+fairly wide interval. With the rigid tongues, appendages of the abdomen,
+they half shelter the cymbals, half of which is completely bare. Under
+the pressure of the finger the abdomen opens a little at its
+articulation with the thorax. But the insect is motionless when it
+sings; there is nothing of the rapid vibrations of the belly which
+modulate the song of the common Cigale. The chapels are very small;
+almost negligible as resonators. There are mirrors, as in the common
+Cigale, but they are very small; scarcely a twenty-fifth of an inch in
+diameter. In short, the resonating mechanism, so highly developed in the
+common Cigale, is here extremely rudimentary. How then is the feeble
+vibration of the cymbals re-enforced until it becomes intolerable?
+
+This species of Cigale is a ventriloquist. If we examine the abdomen by
+transmitted light, we shall see that the anterior two-thirds of the
+abdomen are translucent. With a snip of the scissors we will cut off the
+posterior third, to which are relegated, reduced to the strictly
+indispensable, the organs necessary to the propagation of the species
+and the preservation of the individual. The rest of the abdomen presents
+a spacious cavity, and consists simply of the integuments of the walls,
+except on the dorsal side, which is lined with a thin muscular layer,
+and supports a fine digestive canal, almost a thread. This large cavity,
+equal to nearly half the total volume of the insect, is thus almost
+absolutely empty. At the back are seen the two motor muscles of the
+cymbals, two muscular columns arranged like the limbs of a ~V~. To right
+and left of the point of this ~V~ shine the tiny mirrors; and between
+the two branches of muscle the empty cavity is prolonged into the depths
+of the thorax.
+
+This empty abdomen with its thoracic annex forms an enormous resonator,
+such as no other performer in our countryside can boast of. If I close
+with my finger the orifice of the truncated abdomen the sound becomes
+flatter, in conformity with the laws affecting musical resonators; if I
+fit into the aperture of the open body a tube or trumpet of paper the
+sound grows louder as well as deeper. With a paper cone corresponding
+to the pitch of the note, with its large end held in the mouth of a
+test-tube acting as a resonator, we have no longer the cry of the
+Cigale, but almost the bellowing of a bull. My little children,
+coming up to me by chance at the moment of this acoustic experiment,
+fled in terror.
+
+The grating quality of the sound appears to be due to the little tongues
+which press on the nervures of the vibrating cymbals; the cause of its
+intensity is of course the ample resonator in the abdomen. We must admit
+that one must truly have a real passion for song before one would empty
+one's chest and stomach in order to make room for a musical-box. The
+necessary vital organs are extremely small, confined to a mere corner of
+the body, in order to increase the amplitude of the resonating cavity.
+Song comes first of all; other matters take the second rank.
+
+It is lucky that the _Cacan_ does not follow the laws of evolution. If,
+more enthusiastic in each generation, it could acquire, in the course of
+progress, a ventral resonator comparable to my paper trumpets, the South
+of France would sooner or later become uninhabitable, and the _Cacan_
+would have Provence to itself.
+
+After the details already given concerning the common Cigale it is
+hardly needful to tell you how the insupportable _Cacan_ can be reduced
+to silence. The cymbals are plainly visible on the exterior. Pierce them
+with the point of a needle, and immediately you have perfect silence. If
+only there were, in my plane-trees, among the insects which carry
+gimlets, some friends of silence like myself, who would devote
+themselves to such a task! But no: a note would be lacking in the
+majestic symphony of harvest-tide.
+
+We are now familiar with the structure of the musical organ of the
+Cigale. Now the question arises: What is the object of these musical
+orgies? The reply seems obvious: they are the call of the males inviting
+their mates; they constitute a lovers' cantata.
+
+I am going to consider this reply, which is certainly a very natural
+one. For thirty years the common Cigale and his unmusical friend the
+_Cacan_ have thrust their society upon me. For two months every summer I
+have them under my eyes, and their voice in my ears. If I do not listen
+to them very willingly I observe them with considerable zeal. I see
+them ranged in rows on the smooth rind of the plane-trees, all with
+their heads uppermost, the two sexes mingled, and only a few inches
+apart.
+
+The proboscis thrust into the bark, they drink, motionless. As the sun
+moves, and with it the shadow, they also move round the branch with slow
+lateral steps, so as to keep upon that side which is most brilliantly
+illuminated, most fiercely heated. Whether the proboscis is at work or
+not the song is never interrupted.
+
+Now are we to take their interminable chant for a passionate love-song?
+I hesitate. In this gathering the two sexes are side by side. One does
+not spend months in calling a person who is at one's elbow. Moreover, I
+have never seen a female rush into the midst of even the most deafening
+orchestra. Sight is a sufficient prelude to marriage, for their sight is
+excellent. There is no need for the lover to make an everlasting
+declaration, for his mistress is his next-door neighbour.
+
+Is the song a means of charming, of touching the hard of heart? I doubt
+it. I observe no sign of satisfaction in the females; I have never seen
+them tremble or sway upon their feet, though their lovers have clashed
+their cymbals with the most deafening vigour.
+
+My neighbours the peasants say that at harvest-time the Cigale sings to
+them: _Sego, sego, sego!_ (Reap, reap, reap!) to encourage them in their
+work. Harvesters of ideas and of ears of grain, we follow the same
+calling; the latter produce food for the stomach, the former food for
+the mind. Thus I understand their explanation and welcome it as an
+example of gracious simplicity.
+
+Science asks for a better explanation, but finds in the insect a world
+which is closed to us. There is no possibility of foreseeing, or even
+of suggesting the impression produced by this clashing of cymbals upon
+those who inspire it. The most I can say is that their impassive
+exterior seems to denote a complete indifference. I do not insist that
+this is so; the intimate feelings of the insect are an insoluble
+mystery.
+
+Another reason for doubt is this: all creatures affected by song have
+acute hearing, and this sense of hearing, a vigilant sentinel, should
+give warning of danger at the slightest sound. The birds have an
+exquisite delicacy of hearing. If a leaf stirs among the branches, if
+two passers-by exchange a word, they are suddenly silent, anxious, and
+on their guard. But the Cigale is far from sharing in such emotions. It
+has excellent sight. Its great faceted eyes inform it of all that
+happens to right and left; its three stemmata, like little ruby
+telescopes, explore the sky above its head. If it sees us coming it is
+silent at once, and flies away. But let us get behind the branch on
+which it is singing; let us manoeuvre so as to avoid the five centres
+of vision, and then let us speak, whistle, clap the hands, beat two
+stones together. For far less a bird which could not see you would stop
+its song and fly away terrified. The Cigale imperturbably continues to
+sing as if nothing had occurred.
+
+Of my experiences of this kind I will mention only one, the most
+remarkable of many.
+
+I borrowed the municipal artillery; that is, the iron boxes which are
+charged with gunpowder on the day of the patron saint. The artilleryman
+was delighted to load them for the benefit of the Cigales, and to fire
+them off for me before my house. There were two of these boxes stuffed
+full of powder as though for the most solemn rejoicing. Never was
+politician making his electoral progress favoured with a bigger charge.
+To prevent damage to my windows the sashes were all left open. The two
+engines of detonation were placed at the foot of the plane-trees before
+my door, no precautions being taken to mask them. The Cigales singing in
+the branches above could not see what was happening below.
+
+There were six of us, spectators and auditors. We waited for a moment of
+relative quiet. The number of singers was counted by each of us, as well
+as the volume and rhythm of the song. We stood ready, our ears attentive
+to the aerial orchestra. The box exploded with a clap of thunder.
+
+No disturbance ensued above. The number of performers was the same, the
+rhythm the same, the volume the same. The six witnesses were unanimous:
+the loud explosion had not modified the song of the Cigales in the
+least. The second box gave an identical result.
+
+What are we to conclude from this persistence of the orchestra, its lack
+of surprise or alarm at the firing of a charge? Shall we conclude that
+the Cigale is deaf? I am not going to venture so far as that; but if any
+one bolder than myself were to make the assertion I really do not know
+what reasons I could invoke to disprove it. I should at least be forced
+to admit that it is very hard of hearing, and that we may well apply to
+it the homely and familiar phrase: to shout like a deaf man.
+
+When the blue-winged cricket, basking on the pebbles of some country
+footpath, grows deliciously intoxicated with the heat of the sun and
+rubs its great posterior thighs against the roughened edge of its
+wing-covers; when the green tree-frog swells its throat in the foliage
+of the bushes, distending it to form a resonant cavity when the rain is
+imminent, is it calling to its absent mate? By no means. The efforts of
+the former produce a scarcely perceptible stridulation; the palpitating
+throat of the latter is as ineffectual; and the desired one does not
+come.
+
+Does the insect really require to emit these resounding effusions, these
+vociferous avowals, in order to declare its passion? Consult the immense
+majority whom the conjunction of the sexes leaves silent. In the violin
+of the grasshopper, the bagpipe of the tree-frog, and the cymbals of the
+_Cacan_ I see only their peculiar means of expressing the joy of living,
+the universal joy which every species of animal expresses after its
+kind.
+
+If you were to tell me that the Cigales play on their noisy instruments
+careless of the sound produced, and merely for the pleasure of feeling
+themselves alive, just as we rub our hands in a moment of satisfaction,
+I should not be particularly shocked. That there is a secondary object
+in their conceit, in which the silent sex is interested, is very
+possible and very natural, but it is not as yet proven.[1]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE CIGALE. THE EGGS AND THEIR HATCHING
+
+
+The Cigale confides its eggs to dry, slender twigs. All the branches
+examined by Reaumur which bore such eggs were branches of the mulberry:
+a proof that the person entrusted with the search for these eggs in the
+neighbourhood of Avignon did not bring much variety to his quest. I find
+these eggs not only on the mulberry-tree, but on the peach, the cherry,
+the willow, the Japanese privet, and other trees. But these are
+exceptions; what the Cigale really prefers is a slender twig of a
+thickness varying from that of a straw to that of a pencil. It should
+have a thin woody layer and plenty of pith. If these conditions are
+fulfilled the species matters little. I should pass in review all the
+semi-ligneous plants of the country were I to catalogue the various
+supports which are utilised by the gravid female.
+
+Its chosen twig never lies along the ground; it is always in a more or
+less vertical position. It is usually growing in its natural position,
+but is sometimes detached; in the latter case it will by chance have
+fallen so that it retains its upright position. The insect prefers a
+long, smooth, regular twig which can receive the whole of its eggs. The
+best batches of eggs which I have found have been laid upon twigs of
+the _Spartium junceum_, which are like straws stuffed with pith, and
+especially on the upper twigs of the _Asphodelus cerasiferus_, which
+rises nearly a yard from the ground before ramifying.
+
+It is essential that the support, no matter what its nature, should be
+dead and perfectly dry.
+
+The first operation performed by the Cigale consists in making a series
+of slight lacerations, such as one might make with the point of a pin,
+which, if plunged obliquely downwards into the twig, would tear the
+woody fibres and would compress them so as to form a slight
+protuberance.
+
+If the twig is irregular in shape, or if several Cigales have been
+working successively at the same point, the distribution of the
+punctures is confused; the eye wanders, incapable of recognising the
+order of their succession or the work of the individual. One
+characteristic is always present, namely, the oblique direction of the
+woody fragment which is raised by the perforation, showing that the
+Cigale always works in an upright position and plunges its rostrum
+downwards in the direction of the twig.
+
+If the twig is regular, smooth, and conveniently long the perforations
+are almost equidistant and lie very nearly in a straight line. Their
+number varies; it is small when the mother, disturbed in her operations,
+has flown away to continue her work elsewhere; but they number thirty or
+forty, more or less, when they contain the whole of her eggs.
+
+Each one of the perforations is the entrance to an oblique tunnel, which
+is bored in the medullary sheath of the twig. The aperture is not
+closed, except by the bunch of woody fibres, which, parted at the moment
+when the eggs are laid, recover themselves when the double saw of the
+oviduct is removed. Sometimes, but by no means always, you may see
+between the fibres a tiny glistening patch like a touch of dried white
+of egg. This is only an insignificant trace of some albuminous secretion
+accompanying the egg or facilitating the work of the double saw of the
+oviduct.
+
+Immediately below the aperture of the perforation is the egg chamber: a
+short, tunnel-shaped cavity which occupies almost the whole distance
+between one opening and that lying below it. Sometimes the separating
+partition is lacking, and the various chambers run into one another, so
+that the eggs, although introduced by the various apertures, are
+arranged in an uninterrupted row. This arrangement, however, is not the
+most usual.
+
+The contents of the chambers vary greatly. I find in each from six to
+fifteen eggs. The average is ten. The total number of chambers varying
+from thirty to forty, it follows that the Cigale lays from three to four
+hundred eggs. Reaumur arrived at the same figures from an examination of
+the ovaries.
+
+This is truly a fine family, capable by sheer force of numbers of
+surviving the most serious dangers. I do not see that the adult Cigale
+is exposed to greater dangers than any other insect: its eye is
+vigilant, its departure sudden, and its flight rapid; and it inhabits
+heights at which the prowling brigands of the turf are not to be feared.
+The sparrow, it is true, will greedily devour it. From time to time he
+will deliberately and meditatively descend upon the plane-trees from the
+neighbouring roof and snatch up the singer, who squeaks despairingly. A
+few blows of the beak and the Cigale is cut into quarters, delicious
+morsels for the nestlings. But how often does the bird return without
+his prey! The Cigale, foreseeing his attack, empties its intestine in
+the eyes of its assailant and flies away.
+
+But the Cigale has a far more terrible enemy than the sparrow. This is
+the green grasshopper. It is late, and the Cigales are silent. Drowsy
+with light and heat, they have exhausted themselves in producing their
+symphonies all day long. Night has come, and with it repose; but a
+repose frequently troubled. In the thick foliage of the plane-trees
+there is a sudden sound like a cry of anguish, short and strident. It is
+the despairing lamentation of the Cigale surprised in the silence by the
+grasshopper, that ardent hunter of the night, which leaps upon the
+Cigale, seizes it by the flank, tears it open, and devours the contents
+of the stomach. After the orgy of music comes night and assassination.
+
+I obtained an insight into this tragedy in the following manner: I was
+walking up and down before my door at daybreak when something fell from
+the neighbouring plane-tree uttering shrill squeaks. I ran to see what
+it was. I found a green grasshopper eviscerating a struggling Cigale. In
+vain did the latter squeak and gesticulate; the other never loosed its
+hold, but plunged its head into the entrails of the victim and removed
+them by little mouthfuls.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE CIGALE LAYING HER EGGS.
+
+2. THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER, THE FALSE CIGALE OF THE NORTH, DEVOURING THE
+TRUE CIGALE, A DWELLER IN THE SOUTH.]
+
+This was instructive. The attack was delivered high up above my head, in
+the early morning, while the Cigale was resting; and the struggles of
+the unfortunate creature as it was dissected alive had resulted in the
+fall of assailant and assailed together. Since then I have often been
+the witness of similar assassinations.
+
+I have even seen the grasshopper, full of audacity, launch itself in
+pursuit of the Cigale, who fled in terror. So the sparrow-hawk pursues
+the skylark in the open sky. But the bird of prey is less ferocious than
+the insect; it pursues a creature smaller than itself. The locust, on
+the contrary, assails a colossus, far larger and far more vigorous than
+its enemy; yet the result is a foregone conclusion, in spite of this
+disproportion. With its powerful mandibles, like pincers of steel, the
+grasshopper rarely fails to eviscerate its captive, which, being
+weaponless, can only shriek and struggle.
+
+The Cigale is an easy prey during its hours of somnolence. Every Cigale
+encountered by the ferocious grasshopper on its nocturnal round must
+miserably perish. Thus are explained those sudden squeaks of anguish
+which are sometimes heard in the boughs during the hours of the night
+and early morning, although the cymbals have long been silent. The
+sea-green bandit has fallen upon some slumbering Cigale. When I wished
+to rear some green grasshoppers I had not far to seek for the diet of my
+pensioners; I fed them on Cigales, of which enormous numbers were
+consumed in my breeding-cages. It is therefore an established fact that
+the green grasshopper, the false Cigale of the North, will eagerly
+devour the true Cigale, the inhabitant of the Midi.
+
+But it is neither the sparrow nor the green grasshopper that has forced
+the Cigale to produce such a vast number of offspring. The real danger
+is elsewhere, as we shall see. The risk is enormous at the moment of
+hatching and also when the egg is laid.
+
+Two or three weeks after its escape from the earth--that is, about the
+middle of July--the Cigale begins to lay. In order to observe the
+process without trusting too much to chance, I took certain precautions
+which would, I felt sure, prove successful. The dry Asphodelus is the
+support preferred by the insect, as previous observations had assured
+me. It was also the plant which best lent itself to my experiments, on
+account of its long, smooth stems. Now, during the first years of my
+residence in the South I replaced the thistles in my paddock by other
+native plants of a less stubborn and prickly species. Among the new
+occupants was the asphodel. This was precisely what I needed for my
+experiments. I left the dry stems of the preceding year in place, and
+when the breeding season arrived I inspected them daily.
+
+I had not long to wait. As early as July 15th I found as many Cigales as
+I could wish on the stems of the asphodel, all in process of laying. The
+gravid female is always solitary. Each mother has her twig to herself,
+and is in no danger of being disturbed during the delicate operation of
+laying. When the first occupant has departed another may take her place,
+and so on indefinitely. There is abundance of room for all; but each
+prefers to be alone as her turn arrives. There is, however, no
+unpleasantness of any kind; everything passes most peacefully. If a
+female Cigale finds a place which has been already taken she flies away
+and seeks another twig directly she discovers her mistake.
+
+The gravid female always retains an upright position at this time, as
+indeed she does at other times. She is so absorbed in her task that she
+may readily be watched, even through a magnifying glass. The ovipositor,
+which is about four-tenths of an inch in length, is plunged obliquely
+and up to the hilt into the twig. So perfect is the tool that the
+operation is by no means troublesome. We see the Cigale tremble
+slightly, dilating and contracting the extremity of the abdomen in
+frequent palpitations. This is all that can be seen. The boring
+instrument, consisting of a double saw, alternately rises and sinks in
+the rind of the twig with a gentle, almost imperceptible movement.
+Nothing in particular occurs during the process of laying the eggs. The
+insect is motionless, and hardly ten minutes elapse between the first
+cut of the ovipositor and the filling of the egg-chamber with eggs.
+
+The ovipositor is then withdrawn with methodical deliberation, in order
+that it may not be strained or bent. The egg-chamber closes of its own
+accord as the woody fibres which have been displaced return to their
+position, and the Cigale climbs a little higher, moving upwards in a
+straight line, by about the length of its ovipositor. It then makes
+another puncture and a fresh chamber for another ten or twelve eggs. In
+this way it scales the twig from bottom to top.
+
+These facts being understood, we are able to explain the remarkable
+arrangement of the eggs. The openings in the rind of the twig are
+practically equidistant, since each time the Cigale moves upward it is
+by a given length, namely, that of the ovipositor. Very rapid in flight,
+she is a very idle walker. At the most you may see her, on the living
+twig from which she is drinking, moving at a slow, almost solemn pace,
+to gain a more sunny point close at hand. On the dry twig in which she
+deposits her eggs she observes the same formal habits, and even
+exaggerates them, in view of the importance of the operation. She moves
+as little as possible, just so far as she must in order to avoid running
+two adjacent egg-chambers into one. The extent of each movement upwards
+is approximately determined by the depth of the perforation.
+
+The apertures are arranged in a straight line when their number is not
+very large. Why, indeed, should the insect wander to right or to left
+upon a twig which presents the same surface all over? A lover of the
+sun, she chooses that side of the twig which is most exposed to it. So
+long as she feels the heat, her supreme joy, upon her back, she will
+take good care not to change the position which she finds so delightful
+for another in which the sun would fall upon her less directly.
+
+The process of depositing the eggs is a lengthy one when it is carried
+out entirely on the same twig. Counting ten minutes for each
+egg-chamber, the full series of forty would represent a period of six or
+seven hours. The sun will of course move through a considerable distance
+before the Cigale can finish her work. In such cases the series of
+apertures follows a spiral curve. The insect turns round the stalk as
+the sun turns.
+
+Very often as the Cigale is absorbed in her maternal task a diminutive
+fly, also full of eggs, busily exterminates the Cigale's eggs as fast as
+they are laid.
+
+This insect was known to Reaumur. In nearly all the twigs examined he
+found its grub, the cause of a misunderstanding at the beginning of his
+researches. But he did not, could not see the audacious insect at work.
+It is one of the Chalcididae, about one-fifth or one-sixth of an inch in
+length; entirely black, with knotty antennae, which are slightly thicker
+towards their extremities. The unsheathed ovipositor is implanted in the
+under portion of the abdomen, about the middle, and at right angles to
+the axis of the body, as in the case of the Leucospis, the pest of the
+apiary. Not having taken the precaution to capture it, I do not know
+what name the entomologists have bestowed upon it, or even if this dwarf
+exterminator of the Cigale has as yet been catalogued. What I am
+familiar with is its calm temerity, its impudent audacity in the
+presence of the colossus who could crush it with a foot. I have seen as
+many as three at once exploiting the unfortunate female. They keep close
+behind the Cigale, working busily with their probes, or waiting until
+their victim deposits her eggs.
+
+The Cigale fills one of her egg-chambers and climbs a little higher in
+order to bore another hole. One of the bandits runs to the abandoned
+station, and there, almost under the claws of the giant, and without the
+least nervousness, as if it were accomplishing some meritorious action,
+it unsheathes its probe and thrusts it into the column of eggs, not by
+the open aperture, which is bristling with broken fibres, but by a
+lateral fissure. The probes works slowly, as the wood is almost intact.
+The Cigale has time to fill the adjacent chamber.
+
+As soon as she has finished one of these midges, the very same that has
+been performing its task below her, replaces her and introduces its
+disastrous egg. By the time the Cigale departs, her ovaries empty, the
+majority of the egg-chambers have thus received the alien egg which will
+work the destruction of their contents. A small, quick-hatching grub,
+richly nourished on a dozen eggs, will replace the family of the Cigale.
+
+The experience of centuries has taught the Cigale nothing. With her
+excellent eyesight she must be able to perceive these terrible sappers
+as they hover about her, meditating their crime. Too peaceable giantess!
+if you see them why do you not seize them in your talons, crush the
+pigmies at their work, so that you may proceed with your travail in
+security? But no, you will leave them untouched; you cannot modify your
+instincts, even to alleviate your maternal misfortunes.
+
+The eggs of the common Cigale are of a shining ivory white. Conical at
+the ends, and elongated in form, they might be compared in shape to the
+weaver's shuttle. Their length is about one-tenth of an inch, their
+diameter about one-fiftieth. They are packed in a row, slightly
+overlapping one another. The eggs of the Cacan are slightly smaller, and
+are assembled in regular groups which remind one of microscopical
+bundles of cigars. We will consider the eggs of the common Cigale to the
+exclusion of the others, as their history is the history of all.
+
+September is not yet over when the shining white as of ivory gives way
+to the yellow hue of cheese. During the first days of October you may
+see, at the forward end of the egg, two tiny points of chestnut brown,
+which are the eyes of the embryo in formation. These two shining eyes,
+which almost seem to gaze at one, and the cone-shaped head of the egg,
+give it the look of a tiny fish without fins--a fish for whom half a
+nut-shell would make a capacious aquarium.
+
+About the same time I notice frequently, on the asphodels in the paddock
+and on those of the neighbouring hills, certain indications that the
+eggs have recently hatched out. There are certain cast-off articles of
+clothing, certain rags and tatters, left on the threshold of the
+egg-chamber by the new-born grubs as they leave it and hurry in search
+of a new lodging. We shall see in a moment what these vestiges mean.
+
+But in spite of my visits, which were so assiduous as to deserve
+success, I had never contrived to see the young Cigales emerge from
+their egg-chambers. My domestic researches had been pursued in vain. Two
+years running I had collected, in boxes, tubes, and bottles, a hundred
+twigs of every kind which were peopled by the eggs of the Cigale; but
+not one had shown me what I so desired to witness: the issue of the
+new-born Cigales.
+
+Reaumur experienced the same disappointment. He tells us how all the
+eggs supplied by his friends were abortive, even when he placed them in
+a glass tube thrust under his armpit, in order to keep them at a high
+temperature. No, venerable master! neither the temperate shelter of our
+studies and laboratories, nor the incubating warmth of our bodies is
+sufficient here; we need the supreme stimulant, the kiss of the sun;
+after the cool of the mornings, which are already sharp, the sudden
+blaze of the superb autumn weather, the last endearments of summer.
+
+It was under such circumstances, when a blazing sun followed a cold
+night, that I found the signs of completed incubation; but I always came
+too late; the young Cigales had departed. At most I sometimes found one
+hanging by a thread to its natal stem and struggling in the air. I
+supposed it to be caught in a thread of gossamer, or some shred of
+cobweb.
+
+At last, on the 27th of October, despairing of success, I gathered some
+asphodels from the orchard, and the armful of dry twigs in which the
+Cigales had laid their eggs was taken up to my study. Before giving up
+all hope I proposed once more to examine the egg-chambers and their
+contents. The morning was cold, and the first fire of the season had
+been lit in my room. I placed my little bundle on a chair before the
+fire, but without any intention of testing the effect of the heat of the
+flames upon the concealed eggs. The twigs, which I was about to cut
+open, one by one, were placed there to be within easy reach of my hand,
+and for no other reason.
+
+Then, while I was examining a split twig with my magnifying-glass, the
+phenomenon which I had given up all hope of observing took place under
+my eyes. My bundle of twigs was suddenly alive; scores and scores of the
+young larvae were emerging from their egg-chambers. Their numbers were
+such that my ambition as observer was amply satisfied. The eggs were
+ripe, on the point of hatching, and the warmth of the fire, bright and
+penetrating, had the effect of sunlight in the open. I was quick to
+profit by the unexpected piece of good fortune.
+
+At the orifice of the egg-chamber, among the torn fibres of the bark, a
+little cone-shaped body is visible, with two black eye-spots; in
+appearance it is precisely like the fore portion of the butter-coloured
+egg; or, as I have said, like the fore portion of a tiny fish. You would
+think that an egg had been somehow displaced, had been removed from the
+bottom of the chamber to its aperture. An egg to move in this narrow
+passage! a walking egg! No, that is impossible; eggs "do not do such
+things!" This is some mistake. We will break open the twig, and the
+mystery is unveiled. The actual eggs are where they always were, though
+they are slightly disarranged. They are empty, reduced to the condition
+of transparent skins, split wide open at the upper end. From them has
+issued the singular organism whose most notable characteristics are as
+follows:--
+
+In its general form, the configuration of the head and the great black
+eyes, the creature, still more than the egg, has the appearance of an
+extremely minute fish. A simulacrum of a ventral fin increases the
+resemblance. This apparent fin in reality consists of the two
+fore-limbs, which, packed in a special sheath, are bent backwards,
+stretched out against one another in a straight line. Its small degree
+of mobility must enable the grub to escape from the egg-shell and, with
+greater difficulty, from the woody tunnel leading to the open air.
+Moving outwards a little from the body, and then moving back again, this
+lever serves as a means of progression, its terminal hooks being already
+fairly strong. The four other feet are still covered by the common
+envelope, and are absolutely inert. It is the same with the antennae,
+which can scarcely be seen through the magnifying-glass. The organism
+which has issued from the egg is a boat-shaped body with a fin-shaped
+limb pointing backwards on the ventral face, formed by the junction of
+the two fore-limbs. The segmentation of the body is very clear,
+especially on the abdomen. The whole body is perfectly smooth, without
+the least suspicion of hair.
+
+What name are we to give to this initial phase of the Cigale--a phase so
+strange, so unforeseen, and hitherto unsuspected? Must I amalgamate some
+more or less appropriate words of Greek and fabricate a portentous
+nomenclature? No, for I feel sure that barbarous alien phrases are only
+a hindrance to science. I will call it simply the _primary larva_, as I
+have done in the case of the Meloides, the Leucospis, and the Anthrax.
+
+The form of the primary larva of the Cigale is eminently adapted to its
+conditions and facilitates its escape. The tunnel in which the egg is
+hatched is very narrow, leaving only just room for passage. Moreover,
+the eggs are arranged in a row, not end to end, but partially
+overlapping. The larva escaping from the hinder ranks has to squeeze
+past the empty shells, still in position, of the eggs which have already
+hatched, so that the narrowness of the passage is increased by the empty
+egg-shells. Under these conditions the larva as it will be presently,
+when it has torn its temporary wrappings, would be unable to effect the
+difficult passage. With the encumbrance of antennae, with long limbs
+spreading far out from the axis of the body, with curved, pointed talons
+which hook themselves into their medium of support, everything would
+militate against a prompt liberation. The eggs in one chamber hatch
+almost simultaneously. It is therefore essential that the first-born
+larvae should hurry out of their shelter as quickly as possible, leaving
+the passage free for those behind them. Hence the boat-like shape, the
+smooth hairless body without projections, which easily squeezes its way
+past obstructions. The primary larva, with its various appendages
+closely wrapped against its body by a common sheath, with its fish-like
+form and its single and only partially movable limb, is perfectly
+adapted to make the difficult passage to the outer air.
+
+This phase is of short duration. Here, for instance, a migrating larva
+shows its head, with its big black eyes, and raises the broken fibres of
+the entrance. It gradually works itself forward, but so slowly that the
+magnifying-glass scarcely reveals its progress. At the end of half an
+hour at the shortest we see the entire body of the creature; but the
+orifice by which it is escaping still holds it by the hinder end of the
+body.
+
+Then, without further delay, the coat which it wears for this rough
+piece of work begins to split, and the larva skins itself, coming out of
+its wrappings head first. It is then the normal larva; the only form
+known to Reaumur. The rejected coat forms a suspensory thread, expanding
+at its free end to form a little cup. In this cup is inserted the end of
+the abdomen of the larva, which, before allowing itself to fall to
+earth, takes a sun-bath, grows harder, stretches itself, and tries its
+strength, lightly swinging at the end of its life-line.
+
+This little flea, as Reaumur calls it, first white, then amber-coloured,
+is precisely the larva which will delve in the earth. The antennae, of
+fair length, are free and waving to and fro; the limbs are bending at
+their articulations; the fore-limbs, which are relatively powerful, open
+and shut their talons. I can scarcely think of any more curious
+spectacle than that of this tiny gymnast hanging by its tail, swinging
+to the faintest breath, and preparing in the air for its entry into the
+world. It hangs there for a variable period; some larvae let themselves
+fall at the end of half an hour; others spend hours in their
+long-stemmed cup; some even remain suspended until the following day.
+
+Whether soon or late, the fall of the larva leaves suspended the thread
+by which it hung, the wrappings of the primary larva. When all the brood
+have disappeared, the aperture of the nest is thus hung with a branch of
+fine, short threads, twisted and knotted together, like dried white of
+egg. Each thread is expanded into a tiny cup at its free end. These are
+very delicate and ephemeral relics, which perish at a touch. The least
+wind quickly blows them away.
+
+Let us return to the larva. Sooner or later, as we have seen, it falls
+to the ground, either by accident or intention. The tiny creature, no
+bigger than a flea, has preserved its tender newly-hatched flesh from
+contact with the rough earth by hanging in the air until its tissues
+have hardened. Now it plunges into the troubles of life.
+
+I foresee a thousand dangers ahead. A mere breath of wind may carry this
+atom away, and cast it on that inaccessible rock in the midst of a rut
+in the road which still contains a little water; or on the sand, the
+region of famine where nothing grows; or upon a soil of clay, too
+tenacious to be tunnelled. These mortal accidents are frequent, for
+gusts of wind are frequent in the windy and already severe weather of
+the end of October.
+
+This delicate organism requires a very soft soil, which can easily be
+entered, so that it may immediately obtain a suitable shelter. The cold
+days are coming; soon the frosts will be here. To wander on the surface
+would expose it to grave perils. It must contrive without delay to
+descend into the earth, and that to no trivial depth. This is the unique
+and imperative condition of safety, and in many cases it is impossible
+of realisation. What use are the claws of this tiny flea against rock,
+sandstone, or hardened clay? The creature must perish if it cannot find
+a subterranean refuge in good time.
+
+Everything goes to show that the necessity of this first foothold on the
+soil, subject as it is to so many accidents, is the cause of the great
+mortality in the Cigale family. The little black parasite, the destroyer
+of eggs, in itself evokes the necessity of a large batch of eggs; and
+the difficulty which the larva experiences in effecting a safe lodgment
+in the earth is yet another explanation of the fact that the maintenance
+of the race at its proper strength requires a batch of three or four
+hundred eggs from each mother. Subject to many accidents, the Cigale is
+fertile to excess. By the prodigality of her ovaries she conjures the
+host of perils which threaten her offspring.
+
+During the rest of my experiment I can at least spare the larvae the
+worst difficulties of their first establishment underground. I take some
+soil from the heath, which is very soft and almost black, and I pass it
+through a fine sieve. Its colour will enable me more easily to find the
+tiny fair-skinned larvae when I wish to inform myself of passing events;
+its lightness makes it a suitable refuge for such weak and fragile
+beings. I pack it Pretty firmly in a glass vase; I plant in it a little
+tuft of thyme; I sow in it a few grains of wheat. There is no hole at
+the bottom of the vase, although there should be one for the benefit of
+the thyme and the corn; but the captives would find it and escape by it.
+The plantation and the crop will suffer from this lack of drainage, but
+at least I am sure of recovering my larvae with the help of patience and
+a magnifying-glass. Moreover, I shall go gently in the matter of
+irrigation, giving only just enough water to save the plants from
+perishing.
+
+When all is in order, and when the wheat is beginning to shoot, I place
+six young larvae of the Cigale on the surface of the soil. The tiny
+creatures begin to pace hither and thither; they soon explore the
+surface of their world, and some try vainly to climb the sides of the
+vase. Not one of them seems inclined to bury itself; so that I ask
+myself anxiously what can be the object of their prolonged and active
+explorations. Two hours go by, but their wanderings continue.
+
+What do they want? Food? I offer them some tiny bulbs with bundles of
+sprouting roots, a few fragments of leaves and some fresh blades of
+grass. Nothing tempts them; nothing brings them to a standstill.
+Apparently they are seeking for a favourable point before descending
+into the earth. But there is no need for this hesitating exploration on
+the soil I have prepared for them; the whole area, or so it seems to me,
+lends itself excellently to the operations which I am expecting to see
+them commence. Yet apparently it will not answer the purpose.
+
+Under natural conditions a little wandering might well be indispensable.
+Spots as soft as my bed of earth from the roots of the briar-heather,
+purged of all hard bodies and finely sifted, are rare in nature. Coarse
+soils are more usual, on which the tiny creatures could make no
+impression. The larva must wander at hazard, must make a pilgrimage of
+indefinite duration before finding a favourable place. Very many, no
+doubt, perish, exhausted by their fruitless search. A voyage of
+exploration in a country a few inches wide evidently forms part of the
+curriculum of young Cigales. In my glass prison, so luxuriously
+furnished, this pilgrimage is useless. Never mind: it must be
+accomplished according to the consecrated rites.
+
+At last my wanderers grow less excited. I see them attack the earth with
+the curved talons of their fore-limbs, digging their claws into it and
+making such an excavation as the point of a thick needle would enter.
+With a magnifying-glass I watch their picks at work. I see their talons
+raking atom after atom of earth to the surface. In a few minutes there
+is a little gaping well. The larva climbs downwards and buries itself,
+henceforth invisible.
+
+On the morrow I turn out the contents of the vase without breaking the
+mould, which is held together by the roots of the thyme and the wheat. I
+find all my larvae at the bottom, arrested by the glass. In twenty-four
+hours they had sunk themselves through the entire thickness of the
+earth--a matter of some four inches. But for obstacle at the bottom they
+would have sunk even further.
+
+On the way they have probably encountered the rootlets of my little
+plantation. Did they halt in order to take a little nourishment by
+implanting their proboscis? This is hardly probable, for a few rootlets
+were pressed against the bottom of the glass, but none of my prisoners
+were feeding. Perhaps the shock of reversing the pot detached them.
+
+It is obvious that underground there is no other nourishment for them
+than the sap of roots. Adult or larva, the Cigale is a strict
+vegetarian. As an adult insect it drinks the sap of twigs and branches;
+as a larva it sucks the sap of roots. But at what stage does it take the
+first sip? That I do not know as yet, but the foregoing experiment seems
+to show that the newly hatched larva is in greater haste to burrow deep
+into the soil, so as to obtain shelter from the coming winter, than to
+station itself at the roots encountered in its passage downwards.
+
+I replace the mass of soil in the vase, and the six exhumed larvae are
+once more placed on the surface of the soil. This time they commence to
+dig at once, and have soon disappeared. Finally the vase is placed in my
+study window, where it will be subject to the influences, good and ill,
+of the outer air.
+
+A month later, at the end of November, I pay the young Cigales a second
+visit. They are crouching, isolated at the bottom of the mould. They do
+not adhere to the roots; they have not grown; their appearance has not
+altered. Such as they were at the beginning of the experiment, such they
+are now, but rather less active. Does not this lack of growth during
+November, the mildest month of winter, prove that no nourishment is
+taken until the spring?
+
+The young Sitares, which are also very minute, directly they issue from
+the egg at the entrance of the tubes of the Anthrophorus, remain
+motionless, assembled in a heap, and pass the whole of the winter in a
+state of complete abstinence. The young Cigales apparently behave in a
+very similar fashion. Once they have burrowed to such depths as will
+safeguard them from the frosts they sleep in solitude in their winter
+quarters, and await the return of spring before piercing some
+neighbouring root and taking their first repast.
+
+I have tried unsuccessfully to confirm these deductions by observation.
+In April I unpotted my plant of thyme for the third time. I broke up the
+mould and spread it under the magnifying-glass. It was like looking for
+needles in a haystack; but at last I recovered my little Cigales. They
+were dead, perhaps of cold, in spite of the bell-glass with which I had
+covered the pot, or perhaps of starvation, if the thyme was not a
+suitable food-plant. I give up the problem as too difficult of solution.
+
+To rear such larvae successfully one would require a deep, extensive bed
+of earth which would shelter them from the winter cold; and, as I do not
+know what roots they prefer, a varied vegetation, so that the little
+creatures could choose according to their taste. These conditions are by
+no means impracticable, but how, in the large earthy mass, containing at
+least a cubic yard of soil, should we recover the atoms I had so much
+trouble to find in a handful of black soil from the heath? Moreover,
+such a laborious search would certainly detach the larva from its root.
+
+The early subterranean life of the Cigale escapes us. That of the
+maturer larva is no better known. Nothing is more common, while digging
+in the fields to any depth, to find these impetuous excavators under the
+spade; but to surprise them fixed upon the roots which incontestably
+nourish them is quite another matter. The disturbance of the soil warns
+the larva of danger. It withdraws its proboscis in order to retreat
+along its galleries, and when the spade uncovers it has ceased to feed.
+
+If the hazards of field-work, with its inevitable disturbance of the
+larvae, cannot teach us anything of their subterranean habits, we can at
+least learn something of the duration of the larval stage. Some obliging
+farmers, who were making some deep excavations in March, were good
+enough to collect for me all the larvae, large and small, unearthed in
+the course of their labour. The total collection amounted to several
+hundreds. They were divided, by very clearly marked differences of size,
+into three categories: the large larvae, with rudiments of wings, such as
+those larvae caught upon leaving the earth possess; the medium-sized, and
+the small. Each of these stages must correspond to a different age. To
+these we may add the larvae produced by the last hatching of eggs,
+creatures too minute to be noticed by my rustic helpers, and we obtain
+four years as the probable term of the larvae underground.
+
+The length of their aerial existence is more easily computed. I hear the
+first Cigales about the summer solstice. A month later the orchestra has
+attained its full power. A very few late singers execute their feeble
+solos until the middle of September. This is the end of the concert. As
+all the larvae do not issue from the ground at the same time, it is
+evident that the singers of September are not contemporary with those
+that began to sing at the solstice. Taking the average between these two
+dates, we get five weeks as the probable duration of the Cigales' life
+on earth.
+
+Four years of hard labour underground, and a month of feasting in the
+sun; such is the life of the Cigale. Do not let us again reproach the
+adult insect with his triumphant delirium. For four years, in the
+darkness he has worn a dirty parchment overall; for four years he has
+mined the soil with his talons, and now the mud-stained sapper is
+suddenly clad in the finest raiment, and provided with wings that rival
+the bird's; moreover, he is drunken with heat and flooded with light,
+the supreme terrestrial joy. His cymbals will never suffice to celebrate
+such felicity, so well earned although so ephemeral.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MANTIS.--THE CHASE
+
+
+There is another creature of the Midi which is quite as curious and
+interesting as the Cigale, but much less famous, as it is voiceless. If
+Providence had provided it with cymbals, which are a prime element of
+popularity, it would soon have eclipsed the renown of the celebrated
+singer, so strange is its shape, and so peculiar its manners. It is
+called by the Provencals _lou Prego-Dieu_, the creature which prays to
+God. Its official name is the Praying Mantis (_Mantis religiosa_, Lin.).
+
+For once the language of science and the vocabulary of the peasant
+agree. Both represent the Mantis as a priestess delivering oracles, or
+an ascetic in a mystic ecstasy. The comparison is a matter of antiquity.
+The ancient Greeks called the insect [Greek: Mantis], the divine, the
+prophet. The worker in the fields is never slow in perceiving analogies;
+he will always generously supplement the vagueness of the facts. He has
+seen, on the sun-burned herbage of the meadows, an insect of commanding
+appearance, drawn up in majestic attitude. He has noticed its wide,
+delicate wings of green, trailing behind it like long linen veils; he
+has seen its fore-limbs, its arms, so to speak, raised towards to the
+sky in a gesture of invocation. This was enough: popular imagination
+has done the rest; so that since the period of classical antiquity the
+bushes have been peopled with priestesses emitting oracles and nuns in
+prayer.
+
+Good people, how very far astray your childlike simplicity has led you!
+These attitudes of prayer conceal the most atrocious habits; these
+supplicating arms are lethal weapons; these fingers tell no rosaries,
+but help to exterminate the unfortunate passer-by. It is an exception
+that we should never look for in the vegetarian family of the
+Orthoptera, but the Mantis lives exclusively upon living prey. It is the
+tiger of the peaceful insect peoples; the ogre in ambush which demands a
+tribute of living flesh. If it only had sufficient strength its
+blood-thirsty appetites, and its horrible perfection of concealment
+would make it the terror of the countryside. The _Prego-Dieu_ would
+become a Satanic vampire.
+
+Apart from its lethal weapon the Mantis has nothing about it to inspire
+apprehension. It does not lack a certain appearance of graciousness,
+with its slender body, its elegant waist-line, its tender green
+colouring, and its long gauzy wings. No ferocious jaws, opening like
+shears; on the contrary, a fine pointed muzzle which seems to be made
+for billing and cooing. Thanks to a flexible neck, set freely upon the
+thorax, the head can turn to right or left as on a pivot, bow, or raise
+itself high in the air. Alone among insects, the Mantis is able to
+direct its gaze; it inspects and examines; it has almost a physiognomy.
+
+There is a very great contrast between the body as a whole, which has a
+perfectly peaceable aspect, and the murderous fore-limbs. The haunch of
+the fore-limb is unusually long and powerful. Its object is to throw
+forward the living trap which does not wait for the victim, but goes in
+search of it. The snare is embellished with a certain amount of
+ornamentation. On the inner face the base of the haunch is decorated
+with a pretty black spot relieved by smaller spots of white, and a few
+rows of fine pearly spots complete the ornamentation.
+
+The thigh, still longer, like a flattened spindle, carries on the
+forward half of the lower face a double row of steely spines. The
+innermost row contains a dozen, alternately long and black and short and
+green. This alternation of unequal lengths makes the weapon more
+effectual for holding. The outer row is simpler, having only four teeth.
+Finally, three needle-like spikes, the longest of all, rise behind the
+double series of spikes. In short, the thigh is a saw with two parallel
+edges, separated by a groove in which the foreleg lies when folded.
+
+The foreleg, which is attached to the thigh by a very flexible
+articulation, is also a double-edged saw, but the teeth are smaller,
+more numerous, and closer than those of the thigh. It terminates in a
+strong hook, the point of which is as sharp as the finest needle: a hook
+which is fluted underneath and has a double blade like a pruning-knife.
+
+A weapon admirably adapted for piercing and tearing, this hook has
+sometimes left me with visible remembrances. Caught in turn by the
+creature which I had just captured, and not having both hands free, I
+have often been obliged to get a second person to free me from my
+tenacious captive! To free oneself by violence without disengaging the
+firmly implanted talons would result in lacerations such as the thorns
+of a rosebush will produce. None of our insects is so inconvenient to
+handle. The Mantis digs its knife-blades into your flesh, pierces you
+with its needles, seizes you as in a vice, and renders self-defence
+almost impossible if, wishing to take your quarry alive, you refrain
+from crushing it out of existence.
+
+When the Mantis is in repose its weapons are folded and pressed against
+the thorax, and are perfectly inoffensive in appearance. The insect is
+apparently praying. But let a victim come within reach, and the attitude
+of prayer is promptly abandoned. Suddenly unfolded, the three long
+joints of the deadly fore-limbs shoot out their terminal talons, which
+strike the victim and drag it backwards between the two saw-blades of
+the thighs. The vice closes with a movement like that of the forearm
+upon the upper arm, and all is over; crickets, grasshoppers, and even
+more powerful insects, once seized in this trap with its four rows of
+teeth, are lost irreparably. Their frantic struggles will never release
+the hold of this terrible engine of destruction.
+
+The habits of the Mantis cannot be continuously studied in the freedom
+of the fields; the insect must be domesticated. There is no difficulty
+here; the Mantis is quite indifferent to imprisonment under glass,
+provided it is well fed. Offer it a tasty diet, feed it daily, and it
+will feel but little regret for its native thickets.
+
+For cages I use a dozen large covers of wire gauze, such as are used in
+the larder to protect meat from the flies. Each rests upon a tray full
+of sand. A dry tuft of thyme and a flat stone on which the eggs may be
+laid later on complete the furnishing of such a dwelling. These cages
+are placed in a row on the large table in my entomological laboratory,
+where the sun shines on them during the greater part of the day. There
+I install my captives; some singly, some in groups.
+
+It is in the latter half of August that I begin to meet with the adult
+insect on the faded herbage and the brambles at the roadside. The
+females, whose bellies are already swollen, are more numerous every day.
+Their slender companions, on the other hand, are somewhat rare, and I
+often have some trouble in completing my couples; whose relations will
+finally be terminated by a tragic consummation. But we will reserve
+these amenities for a later time, and will consider the females first.
+
+They are tremendous eaters, so that their entertainment, when it lasts
+for some months is not without difficulties. Their provisions must be
+renewed every day, for the greater part are disdainfully tasted and
+thrown aside. On its native bushes I trust the Mantis is more
+economical. Game is not too abundant, so that she doubtless devours her
+prey to the last atom; but in my cages it is always at hand. Often,
+after a few mouthfuls, the insect will drop the juicy morsel without
+displaying any further interest in it. Such is the ennui of captivity!
+
+To provide them with a luxurious table I have to call in assistants. Two
+or three of the juvenile unemployed of my neighbourhood, bribed by
+slices of bread and jam or of melon, search morning and evening on the
+neighbouring lawns, where they fill their game-bags, little cases made
+from sections of reeds, with living grasshoppers and crickets. On my own
+part, I make a daily tour of the paddock, net in hand, with the object
+of obtaining some choice dish for my guests.
+
+These particular captures are destined to show me just how far the
+vigour and audacity of the Mantis will lead it. They include the large
+grey cricket (_Pachytylus cinerascens_, Fab.), which is larger than the
+creature which devours it; the white-faced Decticus, armed with powerful
+mandibles from which it is wise to guard one's fingers; the grotesque
+Truxalis, wearing a pyramidal mitre on its head; and the Ephippigera of
+the vineyards, which clashes its cymbals and carries a sabre at the end
+of its barrel-shaped abdomen. To this assortment of disobliging
+creatures let us add two horrors: the silky Epeirus, whose disc-shaped
+scalloped abdomen is as big as a shilling, and the crowned Epeirus,
+which is horribly hairy and corpulent.
+
+I cannot doubt that the Mantis attacks such adversaries in a state of
+nature when I see it, under my wire-gauze covers, boldly give battle to
+whatever is placed before it. Lying in wait among the bushes it must
+profit by the prizes bestowed upon it by hazard, as in its cage it
+profits by the wealth of diet due to my generosity. The hunting of such
+big game as I offer, which is full of danger, must form part of the
+creature's usual life, though it may be only an occasional pastime,
+perhaps to the great regret of the Mantis.
+
+Crickets of all kinds, butterflies, bees, large flies of many species,
+and other insects of moderate size: such is the prey that we habitually
+find in the embrace of the murderous arms of the Mantis. But in my cages
+I have never known the audacious huntress to recoil before any other
+insect. Grey cricket, Decticus, Epeirus or Truxalis, sooner or later all
+are harpooned, held motionless between the saw-edges of the arms, and
+deliciously crunched at leisure. The process deserves a detailed
+description.
+
+At the sight of a great cricket, which thoughtlessly approaches along
+the wire-work of the cover, the Mantis, shaken by a convulsive start,
+suddenly assumes a most terrifying posture. An electric shock would not
+produce a more immediate result. The transition is so sudden, the
+mimicry so threatening, that the unaccustomed observer will draw back
+his hand, as though at some unknown danger. Seasoned as I am, I myself
+must confess to being startled on occasions when my thoughts have been
+elsewhere. The creature spreads out like a fan actuated by a spring, or
+a fantastic Jack-in-the-box.
+
+The wing-covers open, and are thrust obliquely aside; the wings spring
+to their full width, standing up like parallel screens of transparent
+gauze, forming a pyramidal prominence which dominates the back; the end
+of the abdomen curls upwards crosier-wise, then falls and unbends itself
+with a sort of swishing noise, a _pouf! pouf!_ like the sound emitted by
+the feathers of a strutting turkey-cock. One is reminded of the puffing
+of a startled adder.
+
+Proudly straddling on its four hind-claws, the insect holds its long
+body almost vertical. The murderous fore-limbs, at first folded and
+pressed against one another on the thorax, open to their full extent,
+forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillae ornamented with
+rows of pearls, and a black spot with a central point of white. These
+two eyes, faintly recalling those of the peacock's tail, and the fine
+ebony embossments, are part of the blazonry of conflict, concealed upon
+ordinary occasions. Their jewels are only assumed when they make
+themselves terrible and superb for battle.
+
+Motionless in its weird position, the Mantis surveys the acridian, its
+gaze fixed upon it, its head turning gently as on a pivot as the other
+changes place. The object of this mimicry seems evident; the Mantis
+wishes to terrorise its powerful prey, to paralyse it with fright; for
+if not demoralised by fear the quarry might prove too dangerous.
+
+Does it really terrify its prey? Under the shining head of the Decticus,
+behind the long face of the cricket, who is to say what is passing? No
+sign of emotion can reveal itself upon these immovable masks. Yet it
+seems certain that the threatened creature is aware of its danger. It
+sees, springing up before it, a terrible spectral form with talons
+outstretched, ready to fall upon it; it feels itself face to face with
+death, and fails to flee while yet there is time. The creature that
+excels in leaping, and might so easily escape from the threatening
+claws, the wonderful jumper with the prodigious thighs, remains
+crouching stupidly in its place, or even approaches the enemy with
+deliberate steps.[2]
+
+It is said that young birds, paralysed with terror by the gaping mouth
+of a serpent, or fascinated by its gaze, will allow themselves to be
+snatched from the nest, incapable of movement. The cricket will often
+behave in almost the same way. Once within reach of the enchantress, the
+grappling-hooks are thrown, the fangs strike, the double saws close
+together and hold the victim in a vice. Vainly the captive struggles;
+his mandibles chew the air, his desperate kicks meet with no resistance.
+He has met with his fate. The Mantis refolds her wings, the standard of
+battle; she resumes her normal pose, and the meal commences.
+
+In attacking the Truxalis and the Ephippigera, less dangerous game than
+the grey cricket and the Decticus, the spectral pose is less imposing
+and of shorter duration. It is often enough to throw forward the talons;
+this is so in the case of the Epeirus, which is seized by the middle of
+the body, without a thought of its venomous claws. With the smaller
+crickets, which are the customary diet in my cages as at liberty, the
+Mantis rarely employs her means of intimidation; she merely seizes the
+heedless passer-by as she lies in wait.
+
+When the insect to be captured may present some serious resistance, the
+Mantis is thus equipped with a pose which terrifies or perplexes,
+fascinates or absorbs the prey, while it enables her talons to strike
+with greater certainty. Her gins close on a demoralised victim,
+incapable of or unready for defence. She freezes the quarry with fear or
+amazement by suddenly assuming the attitude of a spectre.
+
+The wings play an important part in this fantastic pose. They are very
+wide, green on the outer edge, but colourless and transparent elsewhere.
+Numerous nervures, spreading out fan-wise, cross them in the direction
+of their length. Others, transversal but finer, cut the first at right
+angles, forming with them a multitude of meshes. In the spectral
+attitude the wings are outspread and erected in two parallel planes
+which are almost in contact, like the wings of butterflies in repose.
+Between the two the end of the abdomen rapidly curls and uncurls. From
+the rubbing of the belly against the network of nervures proceeds the
+species of puffing sound which I have compared to the hissing of an
+adder in a posture of defence. To imitate this curious sound it is
+enough rapidly to stroke the upper face of an outstretched wing with the
+tip of the finger-nail.
+
+In a moment of hunger, after a fast of some days, the large grey
+cricket, which is as large as the Mantis or larger, will be entirely
+consumed with the exception of the wings, which are too dry. Two hours
+are sufficient for the completion of this enormous meal. Such an orgy is
+rare. I have witnessed it two or three times, always asking myself where
+the gluttonous creature found room for so much food, and how it
+contrived to reverse in its own favour the axiom that the content is
+less than that which contains it. I can only admire the privileges of a
+stomach in which matter is digested immediately upon entrance, dissolved
+and made away with.
+
+The usual diet of the Mantis under my wire cages consists of crickets of
+different species and varying greatly in size. It is interesting to
+watch the Mantis nibbling at its cricket, which it holds in the vice
+formed by its murderous fore-limbs. In spite of the fine-pointed muzzle,
+which hardly seems made for such ferocity, the entire insect disappears
+excepting the wings, of which only the base, which is slightly fleshy,
+is consumed. Legs, claws, horny integuments, all else is eaten.
+Sometimes the great hinder thigh is seized by the knuckle, carried to
+the mouth, tasted, and crunched with a little air of satisfaction. The
+swollen thigh of the cricket might well be a choice "cut" for the
+Mantis, as a leg of lamb is for us!
+
+The attack on the victim begins at the back of the neck or base of the
+head. While one of the murderous talons holds the quarry gripped by the
+middle of the body, the other presses the head downwards, so that the
+articulation between the back and the neck is stretched and opens
+slightly. The snout of the Mantis gnaws and burrows into this undefended
+spot with a certain persistence, and a large wound is opened in the
+neck. At the lesion of the cephalic ganglions the struggles of the
+cricket grow less, and the victim becomes a motionless corpse. Thence,
+unrestricted in its movements, this beast of prey chooses its mouthfuls
+at leisure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MANTIS.--COURTSHIP
+
+
+The little we have seen of the customs of the Mantis does not square
+very well with the popular name for the insect. From the term
+_Prego-Dieu_ we should expect a peaceful placid creature, devoutly
+self-absorbed; and we find a cannibal, a ferocious spectre, biting open
+the heads of its captives after demoralising them with terror. But we
+have yet to learn the worst. The customs of the Mantis in connection
+with its own kin are more atrocious even than those of the spiders, who
+bear an ill repute in this respect.
+
+To reduce the number of cages on my big laboratory table, to give myself
+a little more room, while still maintaining a respectable menagerie, I
+installed several females under one cover. There was sufficient space in
+the common lodging and room for the captives to move about, though for
+that matter they are not fond of movement, being heavy in the abdomen.
+Crouching motionless against the wire work of the cover, they will
+digest their food or await a passing victim. They lived, in short, just
+as they lived on their native bushes.
+
+Communal life has its dangers. When the hay is low in the manger
+donkeys grow quarrelsome, although usually so pacific. My guests might
+well, in a season of dearth, have lost their tempers and begun to fight
+one another; but I was careful to keep the cages well provided with
+crickets, which were renewed twice a day. If civil war broke out famine
+could not be urged in excuse.
+
+At the outset matters did not go badly. The company lived in peace, each
+Mantis pouncing upon and eating whatever came her way, without
+interfering with her neighbours. But this period of concord was of brief
+duration. The bellies of the insects grew fuller: the eggs ripened in
+their ovaries: the time of courtship and the laying season was
+approaching. Then a kind of jealous rage seized the females, although no
+male was present to arouse such feminine rivalry. The swelling of the
+ovaries perverted my flock, and infected them with an insane desire to
+devour one another. There were threats, horrid encounters, and cannibal
+feasts. Once more the spectral pose was seen, the hissing of the wings,
+and the terrible gesture of the talons outstretched and raised above the
+head. The females could not have looked more terrible before a grey
+cricket or a Decticus. Without any motives that I could see, two
+neighbours suddenly arose in the attitude of conflict. They turned their
+heads to the right and the left, provoking one another, insulting one
+another. The _pouf! pouf!_ of the wings rubbed by the abdomen sounded
+the charge. Although the duel was to terminate at the first scratch,
+without any more serious consequence, the murderous talons, at first
+folded, open like the leaves of a book, and are extended laterally to
+protect the long waist and abdomen. The pose is superb, but less
+terrific than that assumed when the fight is to be to the death.
+
+Then one of the grappling-hooks with a sudden spring flies out and
+strikes the rival; with the same suddenness it flies back and assumes a
+position of guard. The adversary replies with a riposte. The fencing
+reminds one not a little of two cats boxing one another's ears. At the
+first sign of blood on the soft abdomen, or even at the slightest wound,
+one admits herself to be conquered and retires. The other refurls her
+battle standard and goes elsewhere to meditate the capture of a cricket,
+apparently calm, but in reality ready to recommence the quarrel.
+
+Very often the matter turns out more tragically. In duels to the death
+the pose of attack is assumed in all its beauty. The murderous talons
+unfold and rise in the air. Woe to the vanquished! for the victor seizes
+her in her vice-like grip and at once commences to eat her; beginning,
+needless to say, at the back of the neck. The odious meal proceeds as
+calmly as if it were merely a matter of munching a grasshopper; and the
+survivor enjoys her sister quite as much as lawful game. The spectators
+do not protest, being only too willing to do the like on the first
+occasion.
+
+Ferocious creatures! It is said that even wolves do not eat one another.
+The Mantis is not so scrupulous; she will eat her fellows when her
+favourite quarry, the cricket, is attainable and abundant.
+
+These observations reach a yet more revolting extreme. Let us inquire
+into the habits of the insect at breeding time, and to avoid the
+confusion of a crowd let us isolate the couples under different covers.
+Thus each pair will have their own dwelling, where nothing can trouble
+their honeymoon. We will not forget to provide them with abundant food;
+there shall not be the excuse of hunger for what is to follow.
+
+We are near the end of August. The male Mantis, a slender and elegant
+lover, judges the time to be propitious. He makes eyes at his powerful
+companion; he turns his head towards her; he bows his neck and raises
+his thorax. His little pointed face almost seems to wear an expression.
+For a long time he stands thus motionless, in contemplation of the
+desired one. The latter, as though indifferent, does not stir. Yet the
+lover has seized upon a sign of consent: a sign of which I do not know
+the secret. He approaches: suddenly he erects his wings, which are
+shaken with a convulsive tremor.
+
+This is his declaration. He throws himself timidly on the back of his
+corpulent companion; he clings to her desperately, and steadies himself.
+The prelude to the embrace is generally lengthy, and the embrace will
+sometimes last for five or six hours.
+
+Nothing worthy of notice occurs during this time. Finally the two
+separate, but they are soon to be made one flesh in a much more intimate
+fashion. If the poor lover is loved by his mistress as the giver of
+fertility, she also loves him as the choicest of game. During the day,
+or at latest on the morrow, he is seized by his companion, who first
+gnaws through the back of his neck, according to use and wont, and then
+methodically devours him, mouthful by mouthful, leaving only the wings.
+Here we have no case of jealousy, but simply a depraved taste.
+
+I had the curiosity to wonder how a second male would be received by a
+newly fecundated female. The result of my inquiry was scandalous. The
+Mantis in only too many cases is never sated with embraces and conjugal
+feasts. After a rest, of variable duration, whether the eggs have been
+laid or not, a second male is welcomed and devoured like the first. A
+third succeeds him, does his duty, and affords yet another meal. A
+fourth suffers a like fate. In the course of two weeks I have seen the
+same Mantis treat seven husbands in this fashion. She admitted all to
+her embraces, and all paid for the nuptial ecstasy with their lives.
+
+There are exceptions, but such orgies are frequent. On very hot days,
+when the atmospheric tension is high, they are almost the general rule.
+At such times the Mantis is all nerves. Under covers which contain large
+households the females devour one another more frequently than ever;
+under the covers which contain isolated couples the males are devoured
+more eagerly than usual when their office has been fulfilled.
+
+I might urge, in mitigation of these conjugal atrocities, that the
+Mantis does not commit them when at liberty. The male, his function once
+fulfilled, surely has time to wander off, to escape far away, to flee
+the terrible spouse, for in my cages he is given a respite, often of a
+whole day. What really happens by the roadside and in the thickets I do
+not know; chance, a poor schoolmistress, has never instructed me
+concerning the love-affairs of the Mantis when at liberty. I am obliged
+to watch events in my laboratory, where the captives, enjoying plenty of
+sunshine, well nourished, and comfortably lodged, do not seem in any way
+to suffer from nostalgia. They should behave there as they behave under
+normal conditions.
+
+Alas! the facts force me to reject the statement that the males have
+time to escape; for I once surprised a male, apparently in the
+performance of his vital functions, holding the female tightly
+embraced--but he had no head, no neck, scarcely any thorax! The female,
+her head turned over her shoulder, was peacefully browsing on the
+remains of her lover! And the masculine remnant, firmly anchored,
+continued its duty!
+
+Love, it is said, is stronger than death! Taken literally, never has an
+aphorism received a more striking confirmation. Here was a creature
+decapitated, amputated as far as the middle of the thorax; a corpse
+which still struggled to give life. It would not relax its hold until
+the abdomen itself, the seat of the organs of procreation, was attacked.
+
+The custom of eating the lover after the consummation of the nuptials,
+of making a meal of the exhausted pigmy, who is henceforth good for
+nothing, is not so difficult to understand, since insects can hardly be
+accused of sentimentality; but to devour him during the act surpasses
+anything that the most morbid mind could imagine. I have seen the thing
+with my own eyes, and I have not yet recovered from my surprise.
+
+Could this unfortunate creature have fled and saved himself, being thus
+attacked in the performance of his functions? No. We must conclude that
+the loves of the Mantis are fully as tragic, perhaps even more so, than
+those of the spider. I do not deny that the limited area of the cage may
+favour the massacre of the males; but the cause of such butchering must
+be sought elsewhere. It is perhaps a reminiscence of the carboniferous
+period when the insect world gradually took shape through prodigious
+procreation. The Orthoptera, of which the Mantes form a branch, are the
+first-born of the insect world.
+
+Uncouth, incomplete in their transformation, they wandered amidst the
+arborescent foliage, already flourishing when none of the insects sprung
+of more complex forms of metamorphosis were as yet in existence: neither
+butterflies, beetles, flies, nor bees. Manners were not gentle in those
+epochs, which were full of the lust to destroy in order to produce; and
+the Mantis, a feeble memory of those ancient ghosts, might well preserve
+the customs of an earlier age. The utilisation of the males as food is a
+custom in the case of other members of the Mantis family. It is, I must
+admit, a general habit. The little grey Mantis, so small and looking so
+harmless in her cage, which never seeks to harm her neighbours in spite
+of her crowded quarters, falls upon her male and devours him as
+ferociously as the Praying Mantis. I have worn myself out in trying to
+procure the indispensable complements to my female specimens. No sooner
+is my capture, strongly winged, vigorous and alert, introduced into the
+cage than he is seized, more often than not, by one of the females who
+no longer have need of his assistance and devoured. Once the ovaries are
+satisfied the two species of Mantis conceive an antipathy for the male;
+or rather they regard him merely as a particularly tasty species of
+game.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MANTIS.--THE NEST
+
+
+Let us take a more pleasant aspect of the insect whose loves are so
+tragic. Its nest is a marvel. In scientific language it is known as the
+_ootek_, or the "egg-box." I shall not make use of this barbarous
+expression. As one does not speak of the "egg-box" of the titmouse,
+meaning "the nest of the titmouse," why should I invoke the box in
+speaking of the Mantis? It may look more scientific; but that does not
+interest me.
+
+The nest of the Praying Mantis may be found almost everywhere in places
+exposed to the sun: on stones, wood, vine stocks, the twigs of bushes,
+stems of dried grass, and even on products of human industry, such as
+fragments of brick, rags of heavy cloth, and pieces of old boots. Any
+support will suffice, so long as it offers inequalities to which the
+base of the nest may adhere, and so provide a solid foundation. The
+usual dimensions of the nest are one and a half inches long by
+three-quarters of an inch wide, or a trifle larger. The colour is a pale
+tan, like that of a grain of wheat. Brought in contact with a flame the
+nest burns readily, and emits an odour like that of burning silk. The
+material of the nest is in fact a substance similar to silk, but instead
+of being drawn into a thread it is allowed to harden while a mass of
+spongy foam. If the nest is fixed on a branch the base creeps round it,
+envelops the neighbouring twigs, and assumes a variable shape according
+to the accidents of support; if it is fixed on a flat surface the under
+side, which is always moulded by the support, is itself flat. The nest
+then takes the form of a demi-ellipsoid, or, in other words, half an egg
+cut longitudinally; more or less obtuse at one end, but pointed at the
+other, and sometimes ending in a short curved tail.
+
+In all cases the upper face is convex and regular. In it we can
+distinguish three well-marked and longitudinal zones. The middle zone,
+which is narrower than the others, is composed of thin plates arranged
+in couples, and overlapping like the tiles of a roof. The edges of these
+plates are free, leaving two parallel series of fissures by which the
+young can issue when the eggs are hatched. In a nest recently abandoned
+this zone is covered with fine cast-off skins which shiver at the least
+breath, and soon disappear when exposed to the open air. I will call
+this zone the zone of issue, as it is only along this bell that the
+young can escape, being set free by those that have preceded them.
+
+In all other directions the cradle of this numerous family presents an
+unbroken wall. The two lateral zones, which occupy the greater part of
+the demi-ellipsoid, have a perfect continuity of surface. The little
+Mantes, which are very feeble when first hatched, could not possibly
+make their way through the tenacious substance of the walls. On the
+interior of these walls are a number of fine transverse furrows, signs
+of the various layers in which the mass of eggs is disposed.
+
+Let us cut the nest in half transversely. We shall then see that the
+mass of eggs constitutes an elongated core, of very firm consistency,
+surrounded as to the bottom and sides by a thick porous rind, like
+solidified foam. Above the eggs are the curved plates, which are set
+very closely and have little freedom; their edges constituting the zone
+of issue, where they form a double series of small overlapping scales.
+
+The eggs are set in a yellowish medium of horny appearance. They are
+arranged in layers, in lines forming arcs of a circle, with the cephalic
+extremities converging towards the zone of issue. This orientation tells
+us of the method of delivery. The newly-born larvae will slip into the
+interval between two adjacent flaps or leaves, which form a prolongation
+of the core; they will then find a narrow passage, none too easy to
+effect, but sufficient, having regard to the curious provision which we
+shall deal with directly; they will then reach the zone of issue. There,
+under the overlapping scales, two passages of exit open for each layer
+of eggs. Half the larvae will issue by the right-hand passage, half by
+that on the left hand. This process is repeated for each layer, from end
+to end of the nest.
+
+Let us sum up those structural details, which are not easily grasped
+unless one has the nest before one. Lying along the axis of the nest,
+and in shape like a date-stone, is the mass of eggs, grouped in layers.
+A protective rind, a kind of solidified foam, envelops this core, except
+at the top, along the central line, where the porous rind is replaced by
+thin overlapping leaves. The free edges of these leaves form the
+exterior of the zone of issue; they overlap one another, forming two
+series of scales, leaving two exits, in the shape of narrow crevices,
+for each layer of eggs.
+
+[Illustration: 1. NEST OF THE PRAYING MANTIS.
+
+2. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME.
+
+3, 3a. NEST OF EMPUSA PAUPERATA.
+
+4. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SAME.
+
+5. VERTICAL SELECTION OF THE SAME.
+
+6. NEST OF THE GREY MANTIS.
+
+7. SCHEFFER'S SISYPHUS (see Chap. XII.)
+
+8. PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS.
+
+9. PELLET OF THE SISYPHUS WITH DEJECTA OF THE LARVA FORCED THROUGH THE
+WALLS.]
+
+
+To be present at the construction of the nest--to learn how the Mantis
+contrives to build so complex a structure--such was the main point of my
+researches. I succeeded, not without difficulty, as the eggs are laid
+without warning and nearly always at night. After a great deal of futile
+endeavour, chance at last favoured me. On the 5th of September one of my
+guests, fecundated on the 29th of August, began to make her preparations
+under my eyes, at four o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+One remark before proceeding: all the nests I have obtained in the
+laboratory--and I have obtained a good number--have without exception
+been built upon the wire gauze of the covers. I have been careful to
+provide the insects with roughened stones and tufts of thyme, both being
+very commonly used as foundations in the open fields. The captives have
+always preferred the network of wire gauze, which affords a perfectly
+firm foundation, as the soft material of the nest becomes incrusted upon
+the meshes as it hardens.
+
+In natural conditions the nests are never in any way sheltered; they
+support the inclemencies of winter, resist rain, wind, frost, and snow,
+without becoming detached. It is true that the female always selects an
+uneven support on which the foundations of the nest can be shaped, thus
+obtaining a firm hold. The site chosen is always the best obtainable
+within reach, and the wire gauze is constantly adopted as the best
+foundation obtainable in the cages.
+
+The only Mantis that I was able to observe at the moment of laying her
+eggs worked upside-down, clinging to the wire near the top of the cover.
+My presence, my magnifying-glass, my investigations did not disturb her
+in the least, so absorbed was she in her labours. I was able to lift up
+the dome of wire gauze, tilt it, reverse it, turn it over and reverse it
+again, without causing the insect to delay her task for a moment. I was
+able, with my tweezers, to raise the long wings in order to observe
+rather more closely what was taking place beneath them; the Mantis took
+absolutely no notice of me. So far all was well; the female did not
+move, and lent herself impassively to all the indiscretions of the
+observer. Nevertheless, matters did not proceed as I had wished, so
+rapid was the operation and so difficult observation.
+
+The end of the abdomen is constantly immersed in a blob of foam, which
+does not allow one to grasp the details of the process very clearly.
+This foam is of a greyish white, slightly viscous, and almost like
+soapsuds. At the moment of its appearance it adheres slightly to the end
+of a straw plunged into it. Two minutes later it is solidified and no
+longer adheres to the straw. In a short time its consistency is that of
+the substance of an old nest.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE MANTIS DEVOURING THE MALE IN THE ACT OF MATING.
+
+2. THE MANTIS COMPLETING HER NEST.
+
+3. GOLDEN SCARABAEI CUTTING UP A LOB-WORM.]
+
+The foamy mass consists chiefly of air imprisoned in minute bubbles.
+This air, which gives the nest a volume very much greater than that of
+the abdomen of the Mantis, evidently does not issue from the insect
+although the foam appears at the orifice of the genital organs; it is
+borrowed from the atmosphere. The Mantis builds more especially with
+air, which is eminently adapted to protect the nest against changes
+of temperature. She emits a glutinous substance like the liquid
+secretion of silk-worms, and with this composition, mixed
+instantaneously with the outer air, she produces the foam of which the
+nest is constructed.
+
+She whips the secretion as we whip white of egg, in order to make it
+rise and stiffen. The extremity of the abdomen opens in a long cleft,
+forming two lateral ladles which open and shut with a rapid, incessant
+movement, beating the viscous liquid and converting it into foam as it
+is secreted. Beside the two oscillating ladles we see the internal
+organs rising and falling, protruding and retreating like a piston-rod,
+but it is impossible to observe the precise nature of their action,
+bathed as they are in the opaque blob of foam.
+
+The end of the abdomen, continually palpitating, rapidly closing and
+opening its valves, oscillates right and left like a pendulum. From each
+of these oscillations results a layer of eggs in the interior, and a
+transversal crevice on the exterior. As it advances in the arc
+described, suddenly, and at frequent intervals, it plunges deeper into
+the foam, as though burying something at the bottom of the frothy mass.
+Each time it does so an egg is doubtless deposited; but the operation is
+so rapid, and takes place under conditions so unfavourable for
+observation, that I have never once been enabled to see the oviduct at
+work. I can only judge of the advent of the eggs by the movements of the
+end of the abdomen, which is immersed more deeply with a sudden plunging
+movement.
+
+At the same time the viscous composition is emitted in intermittent
+waves, and is beaten into a foam by the terminal valves. The foam thus
+obtained spreads itself over the sides and at the base of the layer of
+eggs, and projects through the meshes of the wire gauze as a result of
+the pressure of the abdomen. Thus the spongy envelope is progressively
+created as the ovaries are gradually emptied.
+
+I imagine, although I cannot speak as the result of direct observation,
+that for the central core, where the eggs are surrounded by a material
+more homogeneous than that of the outer shell, the Mantis must employ
+her secretion as it emerges, without beating it into a foam. The layer
+of eggs once deposited, the two valves would produce the foam required
+to envelop the eggs. It is extremely difficult, however, to guess what
+occurs beneath the veil of foam-like secretion.
+
+In a recent nest the zone of issue is surrounded by a layer of finely
+porous matter, of a pure matt, almost chalky white, which contrasts
+distinctly with the remainder of the nest, which is of a dirty white. It
+resembles the icing composition made by confectioners with whipped white
+of egg, sugar, and starch, for the ornamentation of cakes.
+
+This snowy border is easily crumbled and easily detached. When it
+disappears the zone of issue is clearly defined, with its double series
+of leaves with free edges. Exposure to the weather, wind, and rain
+result in its disappearance, fragment by fragment, so that old nests
+preserve no trace of it.
+
+At first sight one is tempted to regard this snowy substance as of a
+different material to the rest of the nest. But does the Mantis really
+employ two secretions? No. Anatomy, in the first place, assures us of
+the unity of the materials of the nest. The organ which secretes the
+substance of the nest consists of cylindrical tubes, having a curious
+tangled appearance, which are arranged in two groups of twenty each.
+They are all filled with a colourless, viscous fluid, which is precisely
+similar in appearance in all parts of the organ. There is no indication
+of any organ or secretion which could produce a chalky coloration.
+
+Moreover, the method by which the snowy band is formed rejects the idea
+of a different material. We see the two caudal appendices of the Mantis
+sweeping the surface of the foamy mass, and skimming, so to speak, the
+cream of the cream, gathering it together, and retaining it along the
+hump of the nest in such a way as to form a band like a ribbon of icing.
+What remains after this scouring process, or what oozes from the band
+before it has set, spreads over the sides of the nest in a thin layer of
+bubbles so fine that they cannot be distinguished without the aid of a
+lens.
+
+We often see a torrent of muddy water, full of clay in suspension,
+covered with great streaks and masses of foam. On this fundamental foam,
+so to call it, which is soiled with earthy matters, we see here and
+there masses of a beautiful white foam, in which the bubbles are much
+smaller. A process of selection results from variations in density, and
+here and there we see foam white as snow resting on the dirty foam from
+which it is produced. Something of the kind occurs when the Mantis
+builds her nest. The two appendices whip the viscous secretion of the
+glands into foam. The lightest portion, whose bubbles are of the
+greatest tenuity, which is white on account of its finer porosity, rises
+to the surface, where the caudal filaments sweep it up and gather it
+into the snowy ribbon which runs along the summit of the nest.
+
+So far, with a little patience, observation is possible and yields a
+satisfactory result. It becomes impossible in the matter of the complex
+central zone, where the exits for the larvae are contrived through the
+double series of overlapping leaves. The little I have been able to
+learn amounts to this: The end of the abdomen, deeply cleft in a
+horizontal direction, forms a kind of fork, of which the upper extremity
+remains almost motionless, while the lower continuously oscillates,
+producing the foam and depositing the eggs. The creation of the central
+zone is certainly the work of the upper extremity.
+
+It is always to be seen in the continuation of this central zone, in the
+midst of the fine white foam gathered up by the caudal filaments. The
+latter delimit the zone, one working on either side, feeling the edges
+of the belt, and apparently testing it and judging its progress. These
+two filaments are like two long fingers of exquisite sensitiveness,
+which direct the difficult operation.
+
+But how are the two series of scales obtained, and the fissures, the
+gates of exit which they shelter? I do not know; I cannot even imagine.
+I leave the end of the problem to others.
+
+What a wonderful mechanism is this, that has the power to emit and to
+form, so quickly and methodically, the horny medium of the central
+kernel, the foam which forms the protective walls, the white creamy foam
+of the ribbon which runs along the central zone, the eggs, and the
+fecundating liquid, while at the same time it constructs the overlapping
+leaves, the imbricated scales, and the alternating series of open
+fissures! We are lost in the face of such a wonder. Yet how easily the
+work is performed! Clinging to the wire gauze, forming, so to speak, the
+axis of her nest, the Mantis barely moves. She bestows not a glance on
+the marvel which is growing behind her; her limbs are used only for
+support; they take no part in the building of the nest. The nest is
+built, if we may say so, automatically. It is not the result of industry
+and the cunning of instinct; it is a purely mechanical task, which is
+conditioned by the implements, by the organisation of the insect. The
+nest, complex though it is in structure, results solely from the
+functioning of the organs, as in our human industries a host of objects
+are mechanically fashioned whose perfection puts the dexterity of the
+fingers to shame.
+
+From another point of view the nest of the Mantis is even more
+remarkable. It forms an excellent application of one of the most
+valuable lessons of physical science in the matter of the conservation
+of heat. The Mantis has outstripped humanity in her knowledge of thermic
+nonconductors or insulators.
+
+The famous physicist Rumford was responsible for a very pretty
+experiment designed to demonstrate the low conductivity of air where
+heat other than radiant heat is concerned. The famous scientist
+surrounded a frozen cheese by a mass of foam consisting of well-beaten
+eggs. The whole was exposed to the heat of an oven. In a few minutes a
+light omelette was obtained, piping hot, but the cheese in the centre
+was as cold as at the outset. The air imprisoned in the bubbles of the
+surrounding froth accounts for the phenomenon. Extremely refractory to
+heat, it had absorbed the heat of the oven and had prevented it from
+reaching the frozen substance in the centre of the omelette.
+
+Now, what does the Mantis do? Precisely what Rumford did; she whips her
+albumen to obtain a soufflee, a froth composed of myriads of tiny
+air-bubbles, which will protect the germs of life contained in the
+central core. It is true that her aim is reversed; the coagulated foam
+of the nest is a safeguard against cold, not against heat, but what will
+afford protection from the one will afford protection from the other; so
+that Rumford, had he wished, might equally well have maintained a hot
+body at a high temperature in a refrigerator.
+
+Rumford understood the athermic properties of a blanket of air-cells,
+thanks to the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors and his own
+studies and experiments. How is it that the Mantis, for who knows how
+many ages, has been able to outstrip our physicists in this problem in
+calorics? How did she learn to surround her eggs with this mass of
+solidifying froth, so that it was able, although fixed to a bough or a
+stone without other shelter, to brave with impunity the rigours of
+winter?
+
+The other Mantes found in my neighbourhood, which are the only species
+of which I can speak with full knowledge, employ or omit the envelope of
+solidifying froth accordingly as the eggs are or are not intended to
+survive the winter. The little Grey Mantis (_Ameles decolor_), which
+differs so widely from the Praying Mantis in that the wings of the
+female are almost completely absent, builds a nest hardly as large as a
+cherry-stone, and covers it skilfully with a porous rind. Why this
+cellular envelope? Because the nest of the _Ameles_, like that of the
+Praying Mantis, has to endure through the winter, fixed to a stone or a
+twig, and is thus exposed to the full severity of the dangerous season.
+
+The _Empusa pauperata_, on the other hand (one of the strangest of
+European insects), builds a nest as small as that of the _Ameles_,
+although the insect itself is as large as the Praying Mantis. This nest
+is quite a small structure, composed of a small number of cells,
+arranged side by side in three or four series, sloping together at the
+neck. Here there is a complete absence of the porous envelope, although
+the nest is exposed to the weather, like the previous examples, affixed
+to some twig or fragment of rock. The lack of the insulating rind is a
+sign of different climatic conditions. The eggs of the _Empusa_ hatch
+shortly after they are laid, in warm and sunny weather. Not being
+exposed to the asperities of the winter, they need no protection other
+than the thin egg-cases themselves.
+
+Are these nice and reasonable precautions, which rival the experiment of
+Rumford, a fortuitous result?--one of the innumerable combinations which
+fall from the urn of chance? If so, let us not recoil before the absurd:
+let us allow that the blindness of chance is gifted with marvellous
+foresight.
+
+The Praying Mantis commences her nest at the blunter extremity, and
+completes it at the pointed tail. The latter is often prolonged in a
+sort of promontory, in which the insect expends the last drop of
+glutinous liquid as she stretches herself after her task. A sitting of
+two hours, more or less, without interruption, is required for the total
+accomplishment of the work. Directly the period of labour is over, the
+mother withdraws, indifferent henceforth to her completed task. I have
+watched her, half expecting to see her return, to discover some
+tenderness for the cradle of her family. But no: not a trace of maternal
+pleasure. The work is done, and concerns her no longer. Crickets
+approach; one of them even squats upon the nest. The Mantis takes no
+notice of them. They are peaceful intruders, to be sure; but even were
+they dangerous, did they threaten to rifle the nest, would she attack
+them and drive them away? Her impassive demeanour convinces me that she
+would not. What is the nest to her? She is no longer conscious of it.
+
+I have spoken of the many embraces to which the Praying Mantis submits,
+and of the tragic end of the male, who is almost invariably devoured as
+though a lawful prey. In the space of a fortnight I have known the same
+female to adventure upon matrimony no less than seven times. Each time
+the readily consoled widow devoured her mate. Such habits point to
+frequent laying; and we find the appearance confirmed, though not as a
+general rule. Some of my females gave me one nest only; others two, the
+second as capacious as the first. The most fruitful of all produced
+three; of these the two first were of normal dimensions, while the third
+was about half the usual size.
+
+From this we can reckon the productivity of the insect's ovaries. From
+the transverse fissures of the median zone of the nest it is easy to
+estimate the layers of eggs; but these layers contain more or fewer eggs
+according to their position in the middle of the nest or near the ends.
+The numbers contained by the widest and narrowest layers will give us
+an approximate average. I find that a nest of fair size contains about
+four hundred eggs. Thus the maker of the three nests, of which the last
+was half as large as the others, produced no less than a thousand eggs;
+eight hundred were deposited in the larger nests and two or three
+hundred in the smaller. Truly a fine family, but a thought ungainly,
+were it not that only a few of its members can survive.
+
+Of a fair size, of curious structure, and well in evidence on its twig
+or stone, the nest of the Praying Mantis could hardly escape the
+attention of the Provencal peasant. It is well known in the country
+districts, where it goes by the name of _tigno_; it even enjoys a
+certain celebrity. But no one seems to be aware of its origin. It is
+always a surprise to my rustic neighbours when they learn that the
+well-known _tigno_ is the nest of the common Mantis, the _Prego-Dieu_.
+This ignorance may well proceed from the nocturnal habits of the Mantis.
+No one has caught the insect at work upon her nest in the silence of the
+night. The link between the artificer and the work is missing, although
+both are well known to the villager.
+
+No matter: the singular object exists; it catches the eye, it attracts
+attention. It must therefore be good for something; it must possess
+virtue of some kind. So in all ages have the simple reasoned, in the
+childlike hope of finding in the unfamiliar an alleviation of their
+sorrows.
+
+By general agreement the rural pharmacopoeia of Provence pronounces
+the _tigno_ to be the best of remedies against chilblains. The method of
+employment is of the simplest. The nest is cut in two, squeezed and the
+affected part is rubbed with the cut surface as the juices flow from
+it. This specific, I am told, is sovereign. All sufferers from blue and
+swollen fingers should without fail, according to traditional usage,
+have recourse to the _tigno_.
+
+Is it really efficacious? Despite the general belief, I venture to doubt
+it, after fruitless experiments on my own fingers and those of other
+members of my household during the winter of 1895, when the severe and
+persistent cold produced an abundant crop of chilblains. None of us,
+treated with the celebrated unguent, observed the swelling to diminish;
+none of us found that the pain and discomfort was in the least assuaged
+by the sticky varnish formed by the juices of the crushed _tigno_. It is
+not easy to believe that others are more successful, but the popular
+renown of the specific survives in spite of all, probably thanks to a
+simple accident of identity between the name of the remedy and that of
+the infirmity: the Provencal for "chilblain" is _tigno_. From the moment
+when the chilblain and the nest of the Mantis were known by the same
+name were not the virtues of the latter obvious? So are reputations
+created.
+
+In my own village, and doubtless to some extent throughout the Midi, the
+_tigno_--the nest of the Mantis, not the chilblain--is also reputed as a
+marvellous cure for toothache. It is enough to carry it upon the person
+to be free of that lamentable affection. Women wise in such matters
+gather them beneath a propitious moon, and preserve them piously in some
+corner of the clothes-press or wardrobe. They sew them in the lining of
+the pocket, lest they should be pulled out with the handkerchief and
+lost; they will grant the loan of them to a neighbour tormented by some
+refractory molar. "Lend me thy _tigno_: I am suffering martyrdom!" begs
+the owner of a swollen face.--"Don't on any account lose it!" says the
+lender: "I haven't another, and we aren't at the right time of moon!"
+
+We will not laugh at the credulous victim; many a remedy triumphantly
+puffed on the latter pages of the newspapers and magazines is no more
+effectual. Moreover, this rural simplicity is surpassed by certain old
+books which form the tomb of the science of a past age. An English
+naturalist of the sixteenth century, the well-known physician, Thomas
+Moffat, informs us that children lost in the country would inquire their
+way of the Mantis. The insect consulted would extend a limb, indicating
+the direction to be taken, and, says the author, scarcely ever was the
+insect mistaken. This pretty story is told in Latin, with an adorable
+simplicity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GOLDEN GARDENER.--ITS NUTRIMENT
+
+
+In writing the first lines of this chapter I am reminded of the
+slaughter-pens of Chicago; of those horrible meat factories which in the
+course of the year cut up one million and eighty thousand bullocks and
+seventeen hundred thousand swine, which enter a train of machinery alive
+and issue transformed into cans of preserved meat, sausages, lard, and
+rolled hams. I am reminded of these establishments because the beetle I
+am about to speak of will show us a compatible celerity of butchery.
+
+In a spacious, glazed insectorium I have twenty-five Carabi aurati. At
+present they are motionless, lying beneath a piece of board which I gave
+them for shelter. Their bellies cooled by the sand, their backs warmed
+by the board, which is visited by the sun, they slumber and digest their
+food. By good luck I chance upon a procession of pine-caterpillars, in
+process of descending from their tree in search of a spot suitable for
+burial, the prelude to the phase of the subterranean chrysalis. Here is
+an excellent flock for the slaughter-house of the Carabi.
+
+I capture them and place them in the insectorium. The procession is
+quickly re-formed; the caterpillars, to the number of perhaps a hundred
+and fifty, move forward in an undulating line. They pass near the piece
+of board, one following the other like the pigs at Chicago. The moment
+is propitious. I cry Havoc! and let loose the dogs of war: that is to
+say, I remove the plank.
+
+The sleepers immediately awake, scenting the abundant prey. One of them
+runs forward; three, four, follow; the whole assembly is aroused; those
+who are buried emerge; the whole band of cut-throats falls upon the
+passing flock. It is a sight never to be forgotten. The mandibles of the
+beetles are at work in all directions; the procession is attacked in the
+van, in the rear, in the centre; the victims are wounded on the back or
+the belly at random. The furry skins are gaping with wounds; their
+contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment,
+the needles of the pine-tree; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with
+loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and
+gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet unwounded are digging desperately
+in the attempt to take refuge underground. Not one succeeds. They are
+scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them and destroys them
+by an eviscerating wound.
+
+If this massacre did not occur in a dumb world we should hear all the
+horrible tumult of the slaughter-houses of Chicago. But only the ear of
+the mind can hear the shrieks and lamentations of the eviscerated
+victims. For myself, I possess this ear, and am full of remorse for
+having provoked such sufferings.
+
+Now the beetles are rummaging in all directions through the heap of
+dead and dying, each tugging and tearing at a morsel which he carries
+off to swallow in peace, away from the inquisitive eyes of his fellows.
+This mouthful disposed of, another is hastily cut from the body of some
+victim, and the process is repeated so long as there are bodies left. In
+a few minutes the procession is reduced to a few shreds of still
+palpitating flesh.
+
+There were a hundred and fifty caterpillars; the butchers were
+twenty-five. This amounts to six victims dispatched by each beetle. If
+the insect had nothing to do but to kill, like the knackers in the meat
+factories, and if the staff numbered a hundred--a very modest figure as
+compared with the staff of a lard or bacon factory--then the total
+number of victims, in a day of ten hours, would be thirty-six thousand.
+No Chicago "cannery" ever rivalled such a result.
+
+The speed of assassination is the more remarkable when we consider the
+difficulties of attack. The beetle has no endless chain to seize its
+victim by one leg, hoist it up, and swing it along to the butcher's
+knife; it has no sliding plank to hold the victim's head beneath the
+pole-axe of the knacker; it has to fall upon its prey, overpower it, and
+avoid its feet and its mandibles. Moreover, the beetle eats its prey on
+the spot as it kills. What slaughter there would be if the insect
+confined itself to killing!
+
+What do we learn from the slaughter-houses of Chicago and the fate of
+the beetle's victims? This: That the man of elevated morality is so far
+a very rare exception. Under the skin of the civilised being there lurks
+almost always the ancestor, the savage contemporary of the cave-bear.
+True humanity does not yet exist; it is growing, little by little,
+created by the ferment of the centuries and the dictates of conscience;
+but it progresses towards the highest with heartbreaking slowness.
+
+It was only yesterday that slavery finally disappeared: the basis of the
+ancient social organism; only yesterday was it realised that man, even
+though black, is really man and deserves to be treated accordingly.
+
+What formerly was woman? She was what she is to-day in the East: a
+gentle animal without a soul. The question was long discussed by the
+learned. The great divine of the seventeenth century, Bossuet himself,
+regarded woman as the diminutive of man. The proof was in the origin of
+Eve: she was the superfluous bone, the thirteenth rib which Adam
+possessed in the beginning. It has at last been admitted that woman
+possesses a soul like our own, but even superior in tenderness and
+devotion. She has been allowed to educate herself, which she has done at
+least as zealously as her coadjutor. But the law, that gloomy cavern
+which is still the lurking-place of so many barbarities, continues to
+regard her as an incapable and a minor. The law in turn will finally
+surrender to the truth.
+
+The abolition of slavery and the education of woman: these are two
+enormous strides upon the path of moral progress. Our descendants will
+go farther. They will see, with a lucidity capable of piercing every
+obstacle, that war is the most hopeless of all absurdities. That our
+conquerors, victors of battles and destroyers of nations, are detestable
+scourges; that a clasp of the hand is preferable to a rifle-shot; that
+the happiest people is not that which possesses the largest battalions,
+but that which labours in peace and produces abundantly; and that the
+amenities of existence do not necessitate the existence of frontiers,
+beyond which we meet with all the annoyances of the custom-house, with
+its officials who search our pockets and rifle our luggage.
+
+Our descendants will see this and many other marvels which to-day are
+extravagant dreams. To what ideal height will the process of evolution
+lead mankind? To no very magnificent height, it is to be feared. We are
+afflicted by an indelible taint, a kind of original sin, if we may call
+sin a state of things with which our will has nothing to do. We are made
+after a certain pattern and we can do nothing to change ourselves. We
+are marked with the mark of the beast, the taint of the belly, the
+inexhaustible source of bestiality.
+
+The intestine rules the world. In the midst of our most serious affairs
+there intrudes the imperious question of bread and butter. So long as
+there are stomachs to digest--and as yet we are unable to dispense with
+them--we must find the wherewithal to fill them, and the powerful will
+live by the sufferings of the weak. Life is a void that only death can
+fill. Hence the endless butchery by which man nourishes himself, no less
+than beetles and other creatures; hence the perpetual holocausts which
+make of this earth a knacker's yard, beside which the slaughter-houses
+of Chicago are as nothing.
+
+But the feasters are legion, and the feast is not abundant in
+proportion. Those that have not are envious of those that have; the
+hungry bare their teeth at the satisfied. Then follows the battle for
+the right of possession. Man raises armies; to defend his harvests, his
+granaries, and his cellars, he resorts to warfare. When shall we see the
+end of it? Alas, and many times alas! As long as there are wolves in the
+world there must be watch-dogs to defend the flock.
+
+This train of thought has led us far away from our beetles. Let us
+return to them. What was my motive in provoking the massacre of this
+peaceful procession of caterpillars who were on the point of self-burial
+when I gave them over to the butchers? Was it to enjoy the spectacle of
+a frenzied massacre? By no means; I have always pitied the sufferings of
+animals, and the smallest life is worthy of respect. To overcome this
+pity there needed the exigencies of scientific research--exigencies
+which are often cruel.
+
+In this case the subject of research was the habits of the Carabus
+auratus, the little vermin-killer of our gardens, who is therefore
+vulgarly known as the Gardener Beetle. How far is this title deserved?
+What game does the Gardener Beetle hunt? From what vermin does he free
+our beds and borders? His dealings with the procession of
+pine-caterpillars promise much. Let us continue our inquiry.
+
+On various occasions about the end of April the gardens afford me the
+sight of such processions, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. I
+capture them and place them in the vivarium. Bloodshed commences the
+moment the banquet is served. The caterpillars are eviscerated; each by
+a single beetle, or by several simultaneously. In less than fifteen
+minutes the flock is completely exterminated. Nothing remains but a few
+shapeless fragments, which are carried hither and thither, to be
+consumed at leisure under the shelter of the wooden board. One well-fed
+beetle decamps, his booty in his jaws, hoping to finish his feast in
+peace. He is met by companions who are attracted by the morsel hanging
+from the mandibles of the fugitive, and audaciously attempt to rob him.
+First two, then three, they all endeavour to deprive the legitimate
+owner of his prize. Each seizes the fragment, tugs at it, commences to
+swallow it without further ado. There is no actual battle; no violent
+assaults, as in the case of dogs disputing a bone. Their efforts are
+confined to the attempted theft. If the legitimate owner retains his
+hold they consume his booty in common, mandibles to mandibles, until the
+fragment is torn or bitten through, and each retires with his mouthful.
+
+As I found to my cost in bygone experiments, the pine-caterpillar wields
+a violently corrosive poison, which produces a painful rash upon the
+hands. It must therefore, one would think, form a somewhat highly
+seasoned diet. The beetles, however, delight in it. No matter how many
+flocks I provide them with, they are all consumed. But no one, that I
+know of, has ever found the Golden Gardener and its larva in the silken
+cocoons of the Bombyx. I do not expect ever to make such a discovery.
+These cocoons are inhabited only in winter, when the Gardener is
+indifferent to food, and lies torpid in the earth. In April, however,
+when the processions of larvae are seeking a suitable site for burial and
+metamorphosis, the Gardener should profit largely by its good fortune
+should it by any chance encounter them.
+
+The furry nature of the victim does not in the least incommode the
+beetle; but the hairiest of all our caterpillars, the Hedgehog
+Caterpillar, with its undulating mane, partly red and partly black, does
+seem to be too much for the beetle. Day after day it wanders about the
+vivarium in company with the assassins. The latter apparently ignore its
+presence. From time to time one of them will halt, stroll round the
+hairy creature, examine it, and try to penetrate the tangled fleece.
+Immediately repulsed by the long, dense palisade of hairs, he retires
+without inflicting a wound, and the caterpillar proceeds upon its way
+with undulating mane, in pride and security.
+
+But this state of things cannot last. In a hungry moment, emboldened
+moreover by the presence of his fellows, the cowardly creature decides
+upon a serious attack. There are four of them; they industriously attack
+the caterpillar, which finally succumbs, assaulted before and behind. It
+is eviscerated and swallowed as greedily as though it were a defenceless
+grub.
+
+According to the hazard of discovery, I provision my menagerie with
+various caterpillars, some smooth and others hairy. All are accepted
+with the utmost eagerness, so long as they are of average size as
+compared with the beetles themselves. If too small they are despised, as
+they would not yield a sufficient mouthful. If they are too large the
+beetle is unable to handle them. The caterpillars of the Sphinx moth and
+the Great Peacock moth, for example, would fall an easy prey to the
+beetle were it not that at the first bite of the assailant the intended
+victim, by a contortion of its powerful flanks, sends the former
+flying. After several attacks, all of which end by the beetle being
+flung back to some considerable distance, the insect regretfully
+abandons his prey. I have kept two strong and lively caterpillars for a
+fortnight in the cage of my golden beetles, and nothing more serious
+occurred. The trick of the suddenly extended posterior was too much for
+the ferocious mandibles.
+
+The chief utility of the Golden Gardener lies in its extermination of
+all caterpillars that are not too powerful to attack. It has one
+limitation, however: it is not a climber. It hunts on the ground; never
+in the foliage overhead. I have never seen it exploring the twigs of
+even the smallest of bushes. When caged it pays no attention to the most
+enticing caterpillars if the latter take refuge in a tuft of thyme, at a
+few inches above the ground. This is a great pity. If only the beetle
+could climb how rapidly three or four would rid our cabbages of that
+grievous pest, the larva of the white cabbage butterfly! Alas! the best
+have always some failing, some vice.
+
+To exterminate caterpillars: that is the true vocation of the Golden
+Gardener. It is annoying that it can give us but little or no assistance
+in ridding us of another plague of the kitchen-garden: the snail. The
+slime of the snail is offensive to the beetle; it is safe from the
+latter unless crippled, half crushed, or projecting from the shell. Its
+relatives, however, do not share this dislike. The horny Procrustes, the
+great Scarabicus, entirely black and larger than the Carabus, attacks
+the snail most valiantly, and empties its shell to the bottom, in spite
+of the desperate secretion of slime. It is a pity that the Procrustes is
+not more frequently found in our gardens; it would be an excellent
+gardener's assistant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE GOLDEN GARDENER--COURTSHIP
+
+
+It is generally recognized that the Carabus auratus is an active
+exterminator of caterpillars; on this account in particular it deserves
+its title of Gardener Beetle; it is the vigilant policeman of our
+kitchen-gardens, our flower-beds and herbaceous borders. If my inquiries
+add nothing to its established reputation in this respect, they will
+nevertheless, in the following pages, show the insect in a light as yet
+unsuspected. The ferocious beast of prey, the ogre who devours all
+creatures that are not too strong for him, is himself killed and eaten:
+by his fellows, and by many others.
+
+Standing one day in the shadow of the plane-trees that grow before my
+door, I see a Golden Gardener go by as if on pressing business. The
+pilgrim is well met; he will go to swell the contents of my vivarium. In
+capturing him I notice that the extremities of the wing-covers are
+slightly damaged. Is this the result of a struggle between rivals? There
+is nothing to tell me. The essential thing is that the insect should not
+be handicapped by any serious injury. Inspected, and found to be without
+any serious wound and fit for service, it is introduced into the glass
+dwelling of its twenty-five future companions.
+
+Next day I look for the new inmate. It is dead. Its comrades have
+attacked it during the night and have cleaned out its abdomen,
+insufficiently protected by the damaged wing-covers. The operation has
+been performed very cleanly, without any dismemberment. Claws, head,
+corselet, all are correctly in place; the abdomen only has a gaping
+wound through which its contents have been removed. What remains is a
+kind of golden shell, formed of the two conjoined elytra. The shell of
+an oyster emptied of its inmate is not more empty.
+
+This result astonishes me, for I have taken good care that the cage
+should never be long without food. The snail, the pine-cockchafer, the
+Praying Mantis, the lob-worm, the caterpillar, and other favourite
+insects, have all been given in alternation and in sufficient
+quantities. In devouring a brother whose damaged armour lent itself to
+any easy attack my beetles had not the excuse of hunger.
+
+Is it their custom to kill the wounded and to eviscerate such of their
+fellows as suffer damage? Pity is unknown among insects. At the sight of
+the desperate struggles of a crippled fellow-creature none of the same
+family will cry a halt, none will attempt to come to its aid. Among the
+carnivorous insects the matter may develop to a tragic termination. With
+them, the passers-by will often run to the cripple. But do they do so in
+order to help it? By no means: merely to taste its flesh, and, if they
+find it agreeable, to perform the most radical cure of its ills by
+devouring it.
+
+It is possible, therefore, that the Gardener with the injured
+wing-covers had tempted his fellows by the sight of his imperfectly
+covered back. They saw in their defenceless comrade a permissible
+subject for dissection. But do they respect one another when there is no
+previous wound? At first there was every appearance that their relations
+were perfectly pacific. During their sanguinary meals there is never a
+scuffle between the feasters; nothing but mere mouth-to-mouth thefts.
+There are no quarrels during the long siestas in the shelter of the
+board. Half buried in the cool earth, my twenty-five subjects slumber
+and digest their food in peace; they lie sociably near one another, each
+in his little trench. If I raise the plank they awake and are off,
+running hither and thither, constantly encountering one another without
+hostilities.
+
+The profoundest peace is reigning, and to all appearances will last for
+ever, when in the early days of June I find a dead Gardener. Its limbs
+are intact; it is reduced to the condition of a mere golden husk; like
+the defenceless beetle I have already spoken of, it is as empty as an
+oyster-shell. Let us examine the remains. All is intact, save the huge
+breach in the abdomen. So the insect was sound and unhurt when the
+others attacked it.
+
+A few days pass, and another Gardener is killed and dealt with as
+before, with no disorder in the component pieces of its armour. Let us
+place the dead insect on its belly; it is to all appearances untouched.
+Place it on its back; it is hollow, and has no trace of flesh left
+beneath its carapace. A little later, and I find another empty relic;
+then another, and yet another, until the population of my menagerie is
+rapidly shrinking. If this insensate massacre continues I shall soon
+find my cage depopulated.
+
+Are my beetles hoary with age? Do they die a natural death, and do the
+survivors then clean out the bodies? Or is the population being reduced
+at the expense of sound and healthy insects? It is not easy to elucidate
+the matter, since the atrocities are commonly perpetrated in the night.
+But, finally, with vigilance, on two occasions, I surprise the beetles
+at their work in the light of day.
+
+Towards the middle of June a female attacks a male before my eyes. The
+male is recognisable by his slightly smaller size. The operation
+commences. Raising the ends of the wing-covers, the assailant seizes her
+victim by the extremity of the abdomen, from the dorsal side. She pulls
+at him furiously, eagerly munching with her mandibles. The victim, who
+is in the prime of life, does not defend himself, nor turn upon his
+assailant. He pulls his hardest in the opposite direction to free
+himself from those terrible fangs; he advances and recoils as he is
+overpowered by or overpowers the assassin; and there his resistance
+ends. The struggle lasts a quarter of an hour. Other beetles, passing
+by, call a halt, and seem to say "My turn next!" Finally, redoubling his
+efforts, the male frees himself and flies. If he had not succeeded in
+escaping the ferocious female would undoubtedly have eviscerated him.
+
+[Illustration: THE GOLDEN GARDENER: THE MATING SEASON OVER, THE MALES
+ARE EVISCERATED BY THE FEMALES.]
+
+A few days later I witness a similar scene, but this time the tragedy is
+played to the end. Once more it is a female who seizes a male from
+behind. With no other protest except his futile efforts to escape, the
+victim is forced to submit. The skin finally yields; the wound
+enlarges, and the viscera are removed and devoured by the matron, who
+empties the carapace, her head buried in the body of her late companion.
+The legs of the miserable victim tremble, announcing the end. The
+murderess takes no notice; she continues to rummage as far as she can
+reach for the narrowing of the thorax. Nothing is left but the closed
+boat-shaped wing-covers and the fore parts of the body. The empty shell
+is left lying on the scene of the tragedy.
+
+In this way must have perished the beetles--always males--whose remains
+I find in the cage from time to time; thus the survivors also will
+perish. Between the middle of June and the 1st of August the inhabitants
+of the cage, twenty-five in number at the outset, are reduced to five,
+all of whom are females. All the males, to the number of twenty, have
+disappeared, eviscerated and completely emptied. And by whom? Apparently
+by the females.
+
+That this is the case is attested in the first place by the two assaults
+of which I was perchance the witness; on two occasions, in broad
+daylight, I saw the female devouring the male, having opened the abdomen
+under the wing-covers, or having at least attempted to do so. As for the
+rest of the massacres, although direct observation was lacking, I had
+one very valuable piece of evidence. As we have seen, the victim does
+not retaliate, does not defend himself, but simply tries to escape by
+pulling himself away.
+
+If it were a matter of an ordinary fight, a conflict such as might arise
+in the struggle for life, the creature attacked would obviously
+retaliate, since he is perfectly well able to do so; in an ordinary
+conflict he would meet force by force, and return bite for bite. His
+strength would enable him to come well out of a struggle, but the
+foolish creature allows himself to be devoured without retaliating. It
+seems as though an invincible repugnance prevents him from offering
+resistance and in turn devouring the devourer. This tolerance reminds
+one of the scorpion of Languedoc, which on the termination of the
+hymeneal rites allows the female to devour him without attempting to
+employ his weapon, the venomous dagger which would form a formidable
+defence; it reminds us also of the male of the Praying Mantis, which
+still embraces the female though reduced to a headless trunk, while the
+latter devours him by small mouthfuls, with no rebellion or defence on
+his part. There are other examples of hymeneal rites to which the male
+offers no resistance.
+
+The males of my menagerie of Gardeners, one and all eviscerated, speak
+of similar customs. They are the victims of the females when the latter
+have no further use for them. For four months, from April to August, the
+insects pair off continually; sometimes tentatively, but usually the
+mating is effective. The business of mating is all but endless for these
+fiery spirits.
+
+The Gardener is prompt and businesslike in his affairs of the heart. In
+the midst of the crowd, with no preliminary courtship, the male throws
+himself upon the female. The female thus embraced raises her head a
+trifle as a sign of acquiescence, while the cavalier beats the back of
+her neck with his antennae. The embrace is brief, and they abruptly
+separate; after a little refreshment the two parties are ready for other
+adventures, and yet others, so long as there are males available. After
+the feast, a brief and primitive wooing; after the wooing, the feast; in
+such delights the life of the Gardener passes.
+
+The females of my collection were in no proper ratio to the number of
+aspiring lovers; there were five females to twenty males. No matter;
+there was no rivalry, no hustling; all went peacefully and sooner or
+later each was satisfied.
+
+I should have preferred a better proportioned assembly. Chance, not
+choice, had given me that at my disposal. In the early spring I had
+collected all the Gardeners I could find under the stones of the
+neighbourhood, without distinguishing the sexes, for they are not easy
+to recognise merely by external characteristics. Later on I learned by
+watching them that a slight excess of size was the distinctive sign of
+the female. My menagerie, so ill-proportioned in the matter of sex, was
+therefore the result of chance. I do not suppose this preponderance of
+males exists in natural conditions. On the other hand, one never sees
+such numerous groups at liberty, in the shelter of the same stone. The
+Gardener lives an almost solitary life; it is rarely that one finds two
+or three beneath the same object of shelter. The gathering in my
+menagerie was thus exceptional, although it did not lead to confusion.
+There is plenty of room in the glass cage for excursions to a distance
+and for all their habitual manoeuvres. Those who wish for solitude can
+obtain it; those who wish for company need not seek it.
+
+For the rest, captivity cannot lie heavily on them; that is proved by
+their frequent feasts, their constant mating. They could not thrive
+better in the open; perhaps not so well, for food is less abundant under
+natural conditions. In the matter of well-being the prisoners are in a
+normal condition, favourable to the maintenance of their usual habits.
+
+It is true that encounters of beetle with beetle are more frequent here
+than in the open. Hence, no doubt, arise more opportunities for the
+females to persecute the males whom they no longer require; to fall upon
+them from the rear and eviscerate them. This pursuit of their onetime
+lovers is aggravated by their confined quarters; but it certainly is not
+caused thereby, for such customs are not suddenly originated.
+
+The mating season over, the female encountering a male in the open must
+evidently regard him as fair game, and devour him as the termination of
+the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones, but have never
+chanced upon this spectacle, but what has occurred in my menagerie is
+sufficient to convince me. What a world these beetles live in, where the
+matron devours her mate so soon as her fertility delivers her from the
+need of him! And how lightly the males must be regarded by custom, to be
+served in this manner!
+
+Is this practice of post-matrimonial cannibalism a general custom in the
+insect world? For the moment, I can recollect only three characteristic
+examples: those of the Praying Mantis, the Golden Gardener, and the
+scorpion of Languedoc. An analogous yet less brutal practice--for the
+victim is defunct before he is eaten--is a characteristic of the Locust
+family. The female of the white-faced Decticus will eagerly devour the
+body of her dead mate, as will the Green Grasshopper.
+
+To a certain extent this custom is excused by the nature of the insect's
+diet; the Decticus and the Grasshopper are essentially carnivorous.
+Encountering a dead body of their own species, a female will devour it,
+even if it be the body of her latest mate.
+
+But what are we to say in palliation of the vegetarians? At the approach
+of the breeding season, before the eggs are laid, the Ephippigera turns
+upon her still living mate, disembowels him, and eats as much of him as
+her appetite will allow.
+
+The cheerful Cricket shows herself in a new light at this season; she
+attacks the mate who lately wooed her with such impassioned serenades;
+she tears his wings, breaks his musical thighs, and even swallows a few
+mouthfuls of the instrumentalist. It is probable that this deadly
+aversion of the female for the male at the end of the mating season is
+fairly common, especially among the carnivorous insects. But what is the
+object of this atrocious custom? That is a question I shall not fail to
+answer when circumstances permit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FIELD-CRICKET
+
+
+The breeding of Crickets demands no particular preparations. A little
+patience is enough--patience, which according to Buffon is genius; but
+which I, more modestly, will call the superlative virtue of the
+observer. In April, May, or later we may establish isolated couples in
+ordinary flower-pots containing a layer of beaten earth. Their diet will
+consist of a leaf of lettuce renewed from time to time. The pot must be
+covered with a square of glass to prevent the escape of the inmates.
+
+I have gathered some very curious data from these makeshift appliances,
+which may be used with and as a substitute for the cages of wire gauze,
+although the latter are preferable. We shall return to the point
+presently. For the moment let us watch the process of breeding, taking
+care that the critical hour does not escape us.
+
+It was during the first week of June that my assiduous visits were at
+last repaid. I surprised the female motionless, with the oviduct planted
+vertically in the soil. Heedless of the indiscreet visitor, she remained
+for a long time stationed at the same point. Finally she withdrew her
+oviduct, and effaced, though without particular care, the traces of the
+hole in which her eggs were deposited, rested for a moment, walked
+away, and repeated the operation; not once, but many times, first here,
+then there, all over the area at her disposal. Her behaviour was
+precisely the same as that of the Decticus, except that her movements
+were more deliberate. At the end of twenty-four hours her eggs were
+apparently all laid. For greater certainty I waited a couple of days
+longer.
+
+I then examined the earth in the pot. The eggs, of a straw-yellow, are
+cylindrical in form, with rounded ends, and measure about one-tenth of
+an inch in length. They are placed singly in the soil, in a
+perpendicular position.
+
+I have found them over the whole area of the pot, at a depth of a
+twelfth of an inch. As closely as the difficulties of the operation will
+allow, I have estimated the eggs of a single female, upon passing the
+earth through a sieve, at five or six hundred. Such a family will
+certainly undergo an energetic pruning before very long.
+
+The egg of the Cricket is a curiosity, a tiny mechanical marvel. After
+hatching it appears as a sheath of opaque white, open at the summit,
+where there is a round and very regular aperture, to the edge of which
+adheres a little valve like a skull-cap which forms the lid. Instead of
+breaking at random under the thrusts or the cuts of the new-formed
+larva, it opens of itself along a line of least resistance which occurs
+expressly for the purpose. The curious process of the actual hatching
+should be observed.
+
+A fortnight after the egg is laid two large eye-marks, round and of a
+reddish black, are seen to darken the forward extremity of the egg.
+Next, a little above these two points, and right at the end of the
+cylinder, a tiny circular capsule or swelling is seen. This marks the
+line of rupture, which is now preparing. Presently the translucency of
+the egg allows us to observe the fine segmentation of the tiny inmate.
+Now is the moment to redouble our vigilance and to multiply our visits,
+especially during the earlier part of the day.
+
+Fortune favours the patient, and rewards my assiduity Round the little
+capsule changes of infinite delicacy have prepared the line of least
+resistance. The end of the egg, pushed by the head of the inmate,
+becomes detached, rises, and falls aside like the top of a tiny phial.
+The Cricket issues like a Jack-in-the-box.
+
+When the Cricket has departed the shell remains distended, smooth,
+intact, of the purest white, with the circular lid hanging to the mouth
+of the door of exit. The egg of the bird breaks clumsily under the blows
+of a wart-like excrescence which is formed expressly upon the beak of
+the unborn bird; the egg of the Cricket, of a far superior structure,
+opens like an ivory casket. The pressure of the inmate's head is
+sufficient to work the hinge.
+
+The moment he is deprived of his white tunic, the young Cricket, pale
+all over, almost white, begins to struggle against the overlying soil.
+He strikes it with his mandibles; he sweeps it aside, kicking it
+backwards and downwards; and being of a powdery quality, which offers no
+particular resistance, he soon arrives at the surface, and henceforth
+knows the joys of the sun, and the perils of intercourse with the
+living; a tiny, feeble creature, little larger than a flea. His colour
+deepens. In twenty-four hours he assumes a splendid ebony black which
+rivals that of the adult insect. Of his original pallor he retains only
+a white girdle which encircles the thorax and reminds one of the
+leading-string of an infant.
+
+Very much on the alert, he sounds his surroundings with his long
+vibrating antennae; he toddles and leaps along with a vigour which his
+future obesity will no longer permit.
+
+This is the age of stomach troubles. What are we to give him to eat? I
+do not know. I offer him adult diet--the tender leaves of a lettuce. He
+disdains to bite it; or perhaps his bites escape me, so tiny would they
+be.
+
+In a few days, what with my ten households, I see myself loaded with
+family cares. What shall I do with my five or six thousand Crickets, an
+attractive flock, to be sure, but one I cannot bring up in my ignorance
+of the treatment required? I will give you liberty, gentle creatures! I
+will confide you to the sovereign nurse and schoolmistress, Nature!
+
+It is done. Here and there about my orchard, in the most favourable
+localities, I loose my legions. What a concert I shall have before my
+door next year if all goes well! But no! There will probably be silence,
+for the terrible extermination will follow which corresponds with the
+fertility of the mother. A few couples only may survive: that is the
+most we can hope.
+
+The first to come to the living feast and the most eager at the
+slaughter are the little grey lizard and the ant. I am afraid this
+latter, hateful filibuster that it is, will not leave me a single
+Cricket in my garden. It falls upon the tiny Crickets, eviscerates them,
+and devours them with frantic greed.
+
+Satanic creature! And to think that we place it in the front rank of
+the insect world! The books celebrate its virtues and never tire of its
+praises; the naturalists hold it in high esteem and add to its
+reputation daily; so true is it of animals, as of man, that of the
+various means of living in history the most certain is to do harm to
+others.
+
+Every one knows the _Bousier_ (dung-beetle) and the Necrophorus, those
+lively murderers; the gnat, the drinker of blood; the wasp, the
+irascible bully with the poisoned dagger; and the ant, the maleficent
+creature which in the villages of the South of France saps and imperils
+the rafters and ceilings of a dwelling with the same energy it brings to
+the eating of a fig. I need say no more; human history is full of
+similar examples of the useful misunderstood and undervalued and the
+calamitous glorified.
+
+What with the ants and other exterminating forces, the massacre was so
+great that the colonies of Crickets in my orchard, so numerous at the
+outset, were so far decimated that I could not continue my observations,
+but had to resort to the outside world for further information.
+
+In August, among the detritus of decaying leaves, in little oases whose
+turf is not burned by the sun, I find the young Cricket has already
+grown to a considerable size; he is all black, like the adult, without a
+vestige of the white cincture of the early days. He has no domicile. The
+shelter of a dead leaf, the cover afforded by a flat stone is
+sufficient; he is a nomad, and careless where he takes his repose.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE FIELD-CRICKET. A DUEL BETWEEN RIVALS.
+
+2. THE FIELD-CRICKET. THE DEFEATED RIVAL RETIRES, INSULTED BY THE
+VICTOR.]
+
+Not until the end of October, when the first frosts are at hand, does
+the work of burrowing commence. The operation is very simple, as far as
+I can tell from what I have learned from the insect in captivity. The
+burrow is never made at a bare or conspicuous point; it is always
+commenced under the shelter of a faded leaf of lettuce, the remains of
+the food provided. This takes the place of the curtain of grass so
+necessary to preserve the mysterious privacy of the establishment.
+
+The little miner scratches with his fore-claws, but also makes use of
+the pincers of his mandibles in order to remove pieces of grit or gravel
+of any size. I see him stamping with his powerful hinder limbs, which
+are provided with a double row of spines; I see him raking and sweeping
+backwards the excavated material, and spreading it out in an inclined
+plane. This is his whole method.
+
+At first the work goes forward merrily. The excavator disappears under
+the easily excavated soil of his prison after two hours' labour. At
+intervals he returns to the orifice, always tail first, and always
+raking and sweeping. If fatigue overcomes him he rests on the threshold
+of his burrow, his head projecting outwards, his antennae gently
+vibrating. Presently he re-enters his tunnel and sets to work again with
+his pincers and rakes. Presently his periods of repose grow longer and
+tire my patience.
+
+The most important part of the work is now completed. Once the burrow
+has attained a depth of a couple of inches, it forms a sufficient
+shelter for the needs of the moment. The rest will be the work of time;
+a labour resumed at will, for a short time daily. The burrow will be
+made deeper and wider as the growth of the inmate and the inclemency of
+the season demand. Even in winter, if the weather is mild, and the sun
+smiles upon the threshold of his dwelling, one may sometimes surprise
+the Cricket thrusting out small quantities of loosened earth, a sign of
+enlargement and of further burrowing. In the midst of the joys of spring
+the cares of the house still continue; it is constantly restored and
+perfected until the death of the occupant.
+
+April comes to an end, and the song of the Cricket commences. At first
+we hear only timid and occasional solos; but very soon there is a
+general symphony, when every scrap of turf has its performer. I am
+inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the choristers of spring.
+In the waste lands of Provence, when the thyme and the lavender are in
+flower, the Cricket mingles his note with that of the crested lark,
+which ascends like a lyrical firework, its throat swelling with music,
+to its invisible station in the clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias
+upon the plain below. From the ground the chorus of the Crickets
+replies. It is monotonous and artless, yet how well it harmonises, in
+its very simplicity, with the rustic gaiety of a world renewed! It is
+the hosanna of the awakening, the alleluia of the germinating seed and
+the sprouting blade. To which of the two performers should the palm be
+given? I should award it to the Cricket; he triumphs by force of numbers
+and his never-ceasing note. The lark hushes her song, that the blue-grey
+fields of lavender, swinging their aromatic censers before the sun, may
+hear the Cricket alone at his humble, solemn celebration.
+
+But here the anatomist intervenes, roughly demanding of the Cricket:
+"Show me your instrument, the source of your music!" Like all things of
+real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that
+of the locusts; there is the toothed fiddlestick and the vibrating
+tympanum.
+
+The right wing-cover overlaps the left and almost completely covers it,
+except for the sudden fold which encases the insect's flank. This
+arrangement is the reverse of that exhibited by the green grasshopper,
+the Decticus, the Ephippigera, and their relations. The Cricket is
+right-handed, the others left-handed. The two wing-covers have the same
+structure. To know one is to know the other. Let us examine that on the
+right hand.
+
+It is almost flat on the back, but suddenly folds over at the side, the
+turn being almost at right angles. This lateral fold encloses the flank
+of the abdomen and is covered with fine oblique and parallel nervures.
+The powerful nervures of the dorsal portion of the wing-cover are of the
+deepest black, and their general effect is that of a complicated design,
+not unlike a tangle of Arabic caligraphy.
+
+Seen by transmitted light the wing-cover is of a very pale reddish
+colour, excepting two large adjacent spaces, one of which, the larger
+and anterior, is triangular in shape, while the other, the smaller and
+posterior, is oval. Each space is surrounded by a strong nervure and
+goffered by slight wrinkles or depressions. These two spaces represent
+the mirror of the locust tribe; they constitute the sonorous area. The
+substance of the wing-cover is finer here than elsewhere, and shows
+traces of iridescent though somewhat smoky colour.
+
+These are parts of an admirable instrument, greatly superior to that of
+the Decticus. The five hundred prisms of the bow biting upon the ridges
+of the wing-cover opposed to it set all four tympanums vibrating at
+once; the lower pair by direct friction, the upper pair by the vibration
+of the wing-cover itself. What a powerful sound results! The Decticus,
+endowed with only one indifferent "mirror," can be heard only at a few
+paces; the Cricket, the possessor of four vibratory areas, can be heard
+at a hundred yards.
+
+The Cricket rivals the Cigale in loudness, but his note has not the
+displeasing, raucous quality of the latter. Better still: he has the
+gift of expression, for he can sing loud or soft. The wing-covers, as we
+have seen, are prolonged in a deep fold over each flank. These folds are
+the dampers, which, as they are pressed downwards or slightly raised,
+modify the intensity of the sound, and according to the extent of their
+contact with the soft abdomen now muffle the song to a _mezza voce_ and
+now let it sound _fortissimo_.
+
+Peace reigns in the cage until the warlike instinct of the mating period
+breaks out. These duels between rivals are frequent and lively, but not
+very serious. The two rivals rise up against one another, biting at one
+another's heads--these solid, fang-proof helmets--roll each other over,
+pick themselves up, and separate. The vanquished Cricket scuttles off as
+fast as he can; the victor insults him by a couple of triumphant and
+boastful chirps; then, moderating his tone, he tacks and veers about the
+desired one.
+
+The lover proceeds to make himself smart. Hooking one of his antennae
+towards him with one of his free claws, he takes it between his
+mandibles in order to curl it and moisten it with saliva. With his long
+hind legs, spurred and laced with red, he stamps with impatience and
+kicks out at nothing. Emotion renders him silent. His wing-covers are
+nevertheless in rapid motion, but are no longer sounding, or at most
+emit but an unrhythmical rubbing sound.
+
+Presumptuous declaration! The female Cricket does not run to hide
+herself in the folds of her lettuce leaves; but she lifts the curtain a
+little, and looks out, and wishes to be seen:--
+
+  _Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri._
+
+She flies towards the brake, but hopes first to be perceived, said the
+poet of the delightful eclogue, two thousand years ago. Sacred
+provocations of lovers, are they not in all ages the same?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE ITALIAN CRICKET
+
+
+My house shelters no specimens of the domestic Cricket, the guest of
+bakeries and rustic hearths. But although in my village the chinks under
+the hearthstones are mute, the nights of summer are musical with a
+singer little known in the North. The sunny hours of spring have their
+singer, the Field-Cricket of which I have written; while in the summer,
+during the stillness of the night, we hear the note of the Italian
+Cricket, the _OEcanthus pellucens_, Scop. One diurnal and one
+nocturnal, between them they share the kindly half of the year. When the
+Field-Cricket ceases to sing it is not long before the other begins its
+serenade.
+
+The Italian Cricket has not the black costume and heavy shape
+characteristic of the family. It is, on the contrary, a slender, weakly
+creature; its colour very pale, indeed almost white, as is natural in
+view of its nocturnal habits. In handling it one is afraid of crushing
+it between the fingers. It lives an aerial existence; on shrubs and
+bushes of all kinds, on tall herbage and grasses, and rarely descends to
+the earth. Its song, the pleasant voice of the calm, hot evenings from
+July to October, commences at sunset and continues for the greater part
+of the night.
+
+This song is familiar to all Provencals; for the least patch of thicket
+or tuft of grasses has its group of instrumentalists. It resounds even
+in the granaries, into which the insect strays, attracted thither by the
+fodder. But no one, so mysterious are the manners of the pallid Cricket,
+knows exactly what is the source of the serenade, which is often, though
+quite erroneously, attributed to the common field-cricket, which at this
+period is silent and as yet quite young.
+
+The song consists of a _Gri-i-i, Gri-i-i_, a slow, gentle note, rendered
+more expressive by a slight tremor. Hearing it, one divines the extreme
+tenuity and the amplitude of the vibrating membranes. If the insect is
+not in any way disturbed as it sits in the low foliage, the note does
+not vary, but at the least noise the performer becomes a ventriloquist.
+First of all you hear it there, close by, in front of you, and the next
+moment you hear it over there, twenty yards away; the double note
+decreased in volume by the distance.
+
+You go forward. Nothing is there. The sound proceeds again from its
+original point. But no--it is not there; it is to the left now--unless
+it is to the right--or behind.... Complete confusion! It is impossible
+to detect, by means of the ear, the direction from which the chirp
+really comes. Much patience and many precautions will be required before
+you can capture the insect by the light of the lantern. A few specimens
+caught under these conditions and placed in a cage have taught me the
+little I know concerning the musician who so perfectly deceives our
+ears.
+
+The wing-covers are both formed of a dry, broad membrane, diaphanous and
+as fine as the white skin on the outside of an onion, which is capable
+of vibrating over its whole area. Their shape is that of the segment of
+a circle, cut away at the upper end. This segment is bent at a right
+angle along a strong longitudinal nervure, and descends on the outer
+side in a flap which encloses the insect's flank when in the attitude of
+repose.
+
+The right wing-cover overlaps the left. Its inner edge carries, on the
+under side, near the base, a callosity from which five radiating
+nervures proceed; two of them upwards and two downwards, while the fifth
+runs approximately at right angles to these. This last nervure, which is
+of a slightly reddish hue, is the fundamental element of the musical
+device; it is, in short, the bow, the fiddlestick, as is proved by the
+fine notches which run across it. The rest of the wing-cover shows a few
+more nervures of less importance, which hold the membrane stretched
+tight, but do not form part of the friction apparatus.
+
+The left or lower wing-cover is of similar structure, with the
+difference that the bow, the callosity, and the nervures occupy the
+upper face. It will be found that the two bows--that is, the toothed or
+indented nervures--cross one another obliquely.
+
+When the note has its full volume, the wing-covers are well raised above
+the body like a wide gauzy sail, only touching along the internal edges.
+The two bows, the toothed nervures, engage obliquely one with the other,
+and their mutual friction causes the sonorous vibration of the two
+stretched membranes.
+
+[Illustration: THE ITALIAN CRICKET.]
+
+The sound can be modified accordingly as the strokes of each bow bear
+upon the callosity, which is itself serrated or wrinkled, or on one of
+the four smooth radiating nervures. Thus in part are explained the
+illusions produced by a sound which seems to come first from one point,
+then from another, when the timid insect is alarmed.
+
+The production of loud or soft resounding or muffled notes, which gives
+the illusion of distance, the principal element in the art of the
+ventriloquist, has another and easily discovered source. To produce the
+loud, open sounds the wing-covers are fully lifted; to produce the
+muted, muffled notes they are lowered. When lowered their outer edges
+press more or less lightly on the soft flanks of the insect, thus
+diminishing the vibratory area and damping the sound.
+
+The gentle touch of a finger-tip muffles the sharp, loud ringing of a
+glass tumbler or "musical-glass" and changes it into a veiled,
+indefinite sound which seems to come from a distance. The White Cricket
+knows this secret of acoustics. It misleads those that seek it by
+pressing the edge of its vibrating membranes to the soft flesh of its
+abdomen. Our musical instruments have their dampers; that of the
+_OEcanthus pellucens_ rivals and surpasses them in simplicity of means
+and perfection of results.
+
+The Field-Cricket and its relatives also vary the volume of their song
+by raising or lowering the elytra so as to enclose the abdomen in a
+varying degree, but none of them can obtain by this method results so
+deceptive as those produced by the Italian Cricket.
+
+To this illusion of distance, which is a source of perpetually renewed
+surprise, evoked by the slightest sound of our footsteps, we must add
+the purity of the sound, and its soft tremolo. I know of no insect voice
+more gracious, more limpid, in the profound peace of the nights of
+August. How many times, _per amica silentia lunae_, have I lain upon the
+ground, in the shelter of a clump of rosemary, to listen to the
+delicious concert!
+
+The nocturnal Cricket sings continually in the gardens. Each tuft of the
+red-flowered cistus has its band of musicians, and each bush of fragrant
+lavender. The shrubs and the terebinth-trees contain their orchestras.
+With its clear, sweet voice, all this tiny world is questioning,
+replying, from bush to bush, from tree to tree; or rather, indifferent
+to the songs of others, each little being is singing his joys to himself
+alone.
+
+Above my head the constellation of Cygnus stretches its great cross
+along the Milky Way; below, all around me, palpitates the insect
+symphony. The atom telling of its joys makes me forget the spectacle of
+the stars. We know nothing of these celestial eyes which gaze upon us,
+cold and calm, with scintillations like the blinking of eyelids.
+
+Science tells us of their distance, their speeds, their masses, their
+volumes; it burdens us with stupendous numbers and stupefies us with
+immensities; but it does not succeed in moving us. And why? Because it
+lacks the great secret: the secret of life. What is there, up there?
+What do these suns warm? Worlds analogous to ours, says reason; planets
+on which life is evolving in an endless variety of forms. A superb
+conception of the universe, but after all a pure conception, not based
+upon patent facts and infallible testimony at the disposal of one and
+all. The probable, even the extremely probable, is not the obvious, the
+evident, which forces itself irresistibly and leaves no room for doubt.
+
+But in your company, O my Crickets, I feel the thrill of life, the soul
+of our native lump of earth; and for this reason, as I lean against the
+hedge of rosemary, I bestow only an absent glance upon the constellation
+of Cygnus, but give all my attention to your serenade. A little animated
+slime, capable of pleasure and pain, surpasses in interest the universe
+of dead matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SISYPHUS BEETLE.--THE INSTINCT OF PATERNITY
+
+
+The duties of paternity are seldom imposed on any but the higher
+animals. They are most notable in the bird; and the furry peoples acquit
+themselves honourably. Lower in the scale we find in the father a
+general indifference as to the fate of the family. Very few insects form
+exceptions to this rule. Although all are imbued with a mating instinct
+that is almost frenzied, nearly all, when the passion of the moment is
+appeased, terminate then and there their domestic relations, and
+withdraw, indifferent to the brood, which has to look after itself as
+best it may.
+
+This paternal coldness, which would be odious in the higher walks of
+animal life, where the weakness of the young demands prolonged
+assistance, has in the insect world the excuse that the new-born young
+are comparatively robust, and are able, without help, to fill their
+mouths and stomachs, provided they find themselves in propitious
+surroundings. All that the prosperity of the race demands of the
+Pierides, or Cabbage Butterflies, is that they should deposit their eggs
+on the leaves of the cabbage; what purpose would be served by the
+instincts of a father? The botanical instinct of the mother needs no
+assistance. At the period of laying the father would be in the way. Let
+him pursue his flirtations elsewhere; the laying of eggs is a serious
+business.
+
+In the case of the majority of insects the process of education is
+unknown, or summary in the extreme. The insect has only to select a
+grazing-ground upon which its family will establish itself the moment it
+is hatched; or a site which will allow the young to find their proper
+sustenance for themselves. There is no need of a father in these various
+cases. After mating, the discarded male, who is henceforth useless,
+drags out a lingering existence of a few days, and finally perishes
+without having given the slightest assistance in the work of installing
+his offspring.
+
+But matters are not everywhere so primitive as this. There are tribes in
+which an inheritance is prepared for the family which will assure it
+both of food and of shelter in advance. The Hymenoptera in particular
+are past-masters in the provision of cellars, jars, and other utensils
+in which the honey-paste destined for the young is stored; they are
+perfect in the art of excavating storehouses of food for their grubs.
+
+This stupendous labour of construction and provisioning, this labour
+that absorbs the insect's whole life, is the work of the mother only,
+who wears herself out at her task. The father, intoxicated with
+sunlight, lies idle on the threshold of the workshop, watching the
+heroic female at her work, and regards himself as excused from all
+labour when he has plagued his neighbours a little.
+
+Does he never perform useful work? Why does he not follow the example
+of the swallows, each of whom brings a fair share of the straw and
+mortar for the building of the nest and the midges for the young brood?
+No, he does nothing; perhaps alleging the excuse of his relative
+weakness. But this is a poor excuse; for to cut out little circles from
+a leaf, to rake a little cotton from a downy plant, or to gather a
+little mortar from a muddy spot, would hardly be a task beyond his
+powers. He might very well collaborate, at least as labourer; he could
+at least gather together the materials for the more intelligent mother
+to place in position. The true motive of his idleness is ineptitude.
+
+It is a curious thing that the Hymenoptera, the most skilful of all
+industrial insects, know nothing of paternal labour. The male of the
+genus, in whom we should expect the requirements of the young to develop
+the highest aptitudes, is as useless as a butterfly, whose family costs
+so little to establish. The actual distribution of instinct upsets our
+most reasonable previsions.
+
+It upsets our expectations so completely that we are surprised to find
+in the dung-beetle the noble prerogative which is lacking in the bee
+tribe. The mates of several species of dung-beetle keep house together
+and know the worth of mutual labour. Consider the male and female
+Geotrupes, which prepare together the patrimony of their larvae; in their
+case the father assists his companion with the pressure of his robust
+body in the manufacture of their balls of compressed nutriment. These
+domestic habits are astonishing amidst the general isolation.
+
+To this example, hitherto unique, my continual researches in this
+direction permit me to-day to add three others which are fully as
+interesting. All three are members of the corporation of dung-beetles. I
+will relate their habits, but briefly, as in many respects their history
+is the same as that of the Sacred Scarabaeus, the Spanish Copris, and
+others.
+
+The first example is the Sisyphus beetle (_Sisyphus Schaefferi_, Lin.),
+the smallest and most industrious of our pill-makers. It has no equal in
+lively agility, grotesque somersaults, and sudden tumbles down the
+impossible paths or over the impracticable obstacles to which its
+obstinacy is perpetually leading it. In allusion to these frantic
+gymnastics Latreille has given the insect the name of Sisyphus, after
+the celebrated inmate of the classic Hades. This unhappy spirit
+underwent terrible exertions in his efforts to heave to the top of a
+mountain an enormous rock, which always escaped him at the moment of
+attaining the summit, and rolled back to the foot of the slope. Begin
+again, poor Sisyphus, begin again, begin again always! Your torments
+will never cease until the rock is firmly placed upon the summit of the
+mountain.
+
+I like this myth. It is, in a way, the history of many of us; not odious
+scoundrels worthy of eternal torments, but worthy and laborious folk,
+useful to their neighbours. One crime alone is theirs to expiate: the
+crime of poverty. Half a century or more ago, for my own part, I left
+many blood-stained tatters on the crags of the inhospitable mountain; I
+sweated, strained every nerve, exhausted my veins, spent without
+reckoning my reserves of energy, in order to carry upward and lodge in
+a place of security that crushing burden, my daily bread; and hardly was
+the load balanced but it once more slipped downwards, fell, and was
+engulfed. Begin again, poor Sisyphus; begin again, until your burden,
+falling for the last time, shall crush your head and set you free at
+length.
+
+The Sisyphus of the naturalists knows nothing of these tribulations.
+Agile and lively, careless of slope or precipice, he trundles his load,
+which is sometimes food for himself, sometimes for his offspring. He is
+very rare hereabouts; I should never have succeeded in obtaining a
+sufficient number of specimens for my purpose but for an assistant whom
+I may opportunely present to the reader, for he will be mentioned again
+in these recitals.
+
+This is my son, little Paul, aged seven. An assiduous companion of the
+chase, he knows better than any one of his age the secrets of the
+Cigale, the Cricket, and especially of the dung-beetle, his great
+delight. At a distance of twenty yards his clear sight distinguishes the
+refuse-tip of a beetle's burrow from a chance lump of earth; his fine
+ear will catch the chirping of a grasshopper inaudible to me. He lends
+me his sight and hearing, and I in return make him free of my thoughts,
+which he welcomes attentively, raising his wide blue eyes questioningly
+to mine.
+
+What an adorable thing is the first blossoming of the intellect! Best of
+all ages is that when the candid curiosity awakens and commences to
+acquire knowledge of every kind. Little Paul has his own insectorium, in
+which the Scarabaeus makes his balls; his garden, the size of a
+handkerchief, in which he grows haricot beans, which are often dug up to
+see if the little roots are growing longer; his plantation, containing
+four oak-trees an inch in height, to which the acorns still adhere.
+These serve as diversions after the arid study of grammar, which goes
+forward none the worse on that account.
+
+What beautiful and useful knowledge the teaching of natural history
+might put into childish heads, if only science would consider the very
+young; if our barracks of universities would only combine the lifeless
+study of books with the living study of the fields; if only the red tape
+of the curriculum, so dear to bureaucrats, would not strangle all
+willing initiative. Little Paul and I will study as much as possible in
+the open country, among the rosemary bushes and arbutus. There we shall
+gain vigour of body and of mind; we shall find the true and the
+beautiful better than in school-books.
+
+To-day the blackboard has a rest; it is a holiday. We rise early, in
+view of the intended expedition; so early that we must set out fasting.
+But no matter; when we are hungry we shall rest in the shade, and you
+will find in my knapsack the usual viaticum--apples and a crust of
+bread. The month of May is near; the Sisyphus should have appeared. Now
+we must explore at the foot of the mountain, the scanty pastures through
+which the herds have passed; we must break with our fingers, one by one,
+the cakes of sheep-dung dried by the sun, but still retaining a spot of
+moisture in the centre. There we shall find Sisyphus, cowering and
+waiting until the evening for fresher pasturage.
+
+Possessed of this secret, which I learned from previous fortuitous
+discoveries, little Paul immediately becomes a master in the art of
+dislodging the beetle. He shows such zeal, has such an instinct for
+likely hiding-places, that after a brief search I am rich beyond my
+ambitions. Behold me the owner of six couples of Sisyphus beetles: an
+unheard-of number, which I had never hoped to obtain.
+
+For their maintenance a wire-gauze cover suffices, with a bed of sand
+and diet to their taste. They are very small, scarcely larger than a
+cherry-stone. Their shape is extremely curious. The body is dumpy,
+tapering to an acorn-shaped posterior; the legs are very long,
+resembling those of the spider when outspread; the hinder legs are
+disproportionately long and curved, being thus excellently adapted to
+enlace and press the little pilule of dung.
+
+Mating takes place towards the beginning of May, on the surface of the
+soil, among the remains of the sheep-dung on which the beetles have been
+feeding. Soon the moment for establishing the family arrives. With equal
+zeal the two partners take part in the kneading, transport, and baking
+of the food for their offspring. With the file-like forelegs a morsel of
+convenient size is shaped from the piece of dung placed in the cage.
+Father and mother manipulate the piece together, striking it blows with
+their claws, compressing it, and shaping it into a ball about the size
+of a big pea.
+
+As in the case of the _Scarabaeus sacer_, the exact spherical form is
+produced without the mechanical device of rolling the ball. Before it is
+moved, even before it is cut loose from its point of support, the
+fragment is modelled into the shape of a sphere. The beetle as geometer
+is aware of the form best adapted to the long preservation of preserved
+foods.
+
+The ball is soon ready. It must now be forced to acquire, by means of a
+vigorous rolling, the crust which will protect the interior from a too
+rapid evaporation. The mother, recognisable by her slightly robuster
+body, takes the place of honour in front. Her long hinder legs on the
+soil, her forelegs on the ball, she drags it towards her as she walks
+backwards. The father pushes behind, moving tail first, his head held
+low. This is exactly the method of the Scarabaeus beetles, which also
+work in couples, though for another object. The Sisyphus beetles harness
+themselves to provide an inheritance for their larvae; the larger insects
+are concerned in obtaining the material for a banquet which the two
+chance-met partners will consume underground.
+
+The couple set off, with no definite goal ahead, across the
+irregularities of the soil, which cannot be avoided by a leader who
+hauls backwards. But even if the Sisyphus saw the obstacles she would
+not try to evade them: witness her obstinate endeavour to drag her load
+up the wire gauze of her cage!
+
+A hopeless undertaking! Fixing her hinder claws in the meshes of the
+wire gauze the mother drags her burden towards her; then, enlacing it
+with her legs, she holds it suspended. The father, finding no purchase
+for his legs, clutches the ball, grows on to it, so to speak, thus
+adding his weight to that of the burden, and awaits events. The effort
+is too great to last. Ball and beetle fall together. The mother, from
+above, gazes a moment in surprise, and suddenly lets herself fall, only
+to re-embrace the ball and recommence her impracticable efforts to scale
+the wall. After many tumbles the attempt is at last abandoned.
+
+Even on level ground the task is not without its difficulties. At every
+moment the load swerves on the summit of a pebble, a fragment of gravel;
+the team are overturned, and lie on their backs, kicking their legs in
+the air. This is a mere nothing. They pick themselves up and resume
+their positions, always quick and lively. The accidents which so often
+throw them on their backs seem to cause them no concern; one would even
+think they were invited. The pilule has to be matured, given a proper
+consistency. In these conditions falls, shocks, blows, and jolts might
+well enter into the programme. This mad trundling lasts for hours and
+hours.
+
+Finally, the mother, considering that the matter has been brought to a
+satisfactory conclusion, departs in search of a favourable place for
+storage. The father, crouched upon the treasure, waits. If the absence
+of his companion is prolonged he amuses himself by rapidly whirling the
+pill between his hind legs, which are raised in the air. He juggles with
+the precious burden; he tests its perfections between his curved legs,
+calliper-wise. Seeing him frisking in this joyful occupation, who can
+doubt that he experiences all the satisfactions of a father assured of
+the future of his family? It is I, he seems to say, it is I who have
+made this loaf, so beautifully round; it is I who have made the hard
+crust to preserve the soft dough; it is I who have baked it for my sons!
+And he raises on high, in the sight of all, this magnificent testimonial
+of his labours.
+
+But now the mother has chosen the site. A shallow pit is made, the mere
+commencement of the projected burrow. The ball is pushed and pulled
+until it is close at hand. The father, a vigilant watchman, still
+retains his hold, while the mother digs with claws and head. Soon the
+pit is deep enough to receive the ball; she cannot dispense with the
+close contact of the sacred object; she must feel it bobbing behind her,
+against her back, safe from all parasites and robbers, before she can
+decide to burrow further. She fears what might happen to the precious
+loaf if it were abandoned at the threshold of the burrow until the
+completion of the dwelling. There is no lack of midges and tiny
+dung-beetles--Aphodiinae--which might take possession of it. It is only
+prudent to be distrustful.
+
+So the ball is introduced into the pit, half in and half out of the
+mouth of the burrow. The mother, below, clasps and pulls; the father,
+above, moderates the jolts and prevents it from rolling. All goes well.
+Digging is resumed, and the descent continues, always with the same
+prudence; one beetle dragging the load, the other regulating its descent
+and clearing away all rubbish that might hinder the operation. A few
+more efforts, and the ball disappears underground with the two miners.
+What follows will be, for a time at least, only a repetition of what we
+have seen. Let us wait half a day or so.
+
+If our vigilance is not relaxed we shall see the father regain the
+surface alone, and crouch in the sand near the mouth of the burrow.
+Retained by duties in the performance of which her companion can be of
+no assistance, the mother habitually delays her reappearance until the
+following day. When she finally emerges the father wakes up, leaves his
+hiding place, and rejoins her. The reunited couple return to their
+pasturage, refresh themselves, and then cut out another ball of dung.
+As before, both share the work; the hewing and shaping, the transport,
+and the burial in ensilage.
+
+This conjugal fidelity is delightful; but is it really the rule? I
+should not dare to affirm that it is. There must be flighty individuals
+who, in the confusion under a large cake of droppings, forget the fair
+confectioners for whom they have worked as journeymen, and devote
+themselves to the services of others, encountered by chance; there must
+be temporary unions, and divorces after the burial of a single pellet.
+No matter: the little I myself have seen gives me a high opinion of the
+domestic morals of the Sisyphus.
+
+Let us consider these domestic habits a little further before coming to
+the contents of the burrow. The father works fully as hard as the mother
+at the extraction and modelling of the pellet which is destined to be
+the inheritance of a larva; he shares in the work of transport, even if
+he plays a secondary part; he watches over the pellet when the mother is
+absent, seeking for a suitable site for the excavation of the cellar; he
+helps in the work of digging; he carries away the rubbish from the
+burrow; finally, to crown all these qualities, he is in a great measure
+faithful to his spouse.
+
+The Scarabaeus exhibits some of these characteristics. He also assists
+his spouse in the preparation of pellets of dung; he also assists her to
+transport the pellets, the pair facing each other and the female going
+backwards. But as I have stated already, the motive of this mutual
+service is selfish; the two partners labour only for their own good. The
+feast is for themselves alone. In the labours that concern the family
+the female Scarabaeus receives no assistance. Alone she moulds her
+sphere, extracts it from the lump and rolls it backwards, with her back
+to her task, in the position adopted by the male Sisyphus; alone she
+excavates her burrow, and alone she buries the fruit of her labour.
+Oblivious of the gravid mother and the future brood, the male gives her
+no assistance in her exhausting task. How different to the little
+pellet-maker, the Sisyphus!
+
+It is now time to visit the burrow. At no very great depth we find a
+narrow chamber, just large enough for the mother to move around at her
+work. Its very exiguity proves that the male cannot remain underground;
+so soon as the chamber is ready he must retire in order to leave the
+female room to move. We have, in fact, seen that he returns to the
+surface long before the female.
+
+The contents of the cellar consist of a single pellet, a masterpiece of
+plastic art. It is a miniature reproduction of the pear-shaped ball of
+the Scarabaeus, a reproduction whose very smallness gives an added value
+to the polish of the surface and the beauty of its curves. Its larger
+diameter varies from half to three-quarters of an inch. It is the most
+elegant product of the dung-beetle's art.
+
+But this perfection is of brief duration. Very soon the little "pear"
+becomes covered with gnarled excrescences, black and twisted, which
+disfigure it like so many warts. Part of the surface, which is otherwise
+intact, disappears under a shapeless mass. The origin of these knotted
+excrescences completely deceived me at first. I suspected some
+cryptogamic vegetation, some _Spheriaecaea_, for example, recognisable by
+its black, knotted, incrusted growth. It was the larva that showed me my
+mistake.
+
+The larva is a maggot curved like a hook, carrying on its back an ample
+pouch or hunch, forming part of its alimentary canal. The reserve of
+excreta in this hunch enables it to seal accidental perforations of the
+shell of its lodging with an instantaneous jet of mortar. These sudden
+emissions, like little worm-casts, are also practised by the Scarabaeus,
+but the latter rarely makes use of them.
+
+The larvae of the various dung-beetles utilise their alimentary residues
+in rough-casting their houses, which by their dimensions lend themselves
+to this method of disposal, while evading the necessity of opening
+temporary windows by which the ordure can be expelled. Whether for lack
+of sufficient room, or for other reasons which escape me, the larva of
+the Sisyphus, having employed a certain amount in the smoothing of the
+interior, ejects the rest of its digestive products from its dwelling.
+
+Let us examine one of these "pears" when the inmate is already partly
+grown. Sooner or later we shall see a spot of moisture appear at some
+point on the surface; the wall softens, becomes thinner, and then,
+through the softened shell, a jet of dark green excreta rises and falls
+back upon itself in corkscrew convolutions. One excrescence the more has
+been formed; as it dries it becomes black.
+
+What has occurred? The larva has opened a temporary breach in the wall
+of its shell; and through this orifice, in which a slight thickness of
+the outer glaze still remains, it has expelled the excess of mortar
+which it could not employ within. This practice of forming oubliettes in
+the shell of its prison does not endanger the grub, as they are
+immediately closed, and hermetically sealed by the base of the jet,
+which is compressed as by a stroke of a trowel. The stopper is so
+quickly put in place that the contents remain moist in spite of the
+frequent breaches made in the shell of the "pear." There is no danger of
+an influx of the dry outer air.
+
+The Sisyphus seems to be aware of the peril which later on, in the
+dog-days, will threaten its "pear," small as it is, and so near the
+surface of the ground. It is extremely precocious. It labours in April
+and May when the air is mild. In the first fortnight of July, before the
+terrible dog-days have arrived, the members of its family break their
+shells and set forth in search of the heap of droppings which will
+furnish them with food and lodging during the fierce days of summer.
+Then come the short but pleasant days of autumn, the retreat underground
+and the winter torpor, the awakening of spring, and finally the cycle is
+closed by the festival of pellet-making.
+
+One word more as to the fertility of the Sisyphus. My six couples under
+the wire-gauze cover furnished me with fifty-seven inhabited pellets.
+This gives an average of more than nine to each couple; a figure which
+the _Scarabaeus sacer_ is far from attaining. To what should we attribute
+this superior fertility? I can only see one cause: the fact that the
+male works as valiantly as the female. Family cares too great for the
+strength of one are not too heavy when there are two to support them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A BEE-HUNTER: THE _PHILANTHUS AVIPORUS_
+
+
+To encounter among the Hymenoptera, those ardent lovers of flowers, a
+species which goes a-hunting on its own account is, to say the least of
+it, astonishing. That the larder of the larvae should be provisioned with
+captured prey is natural enough; but that the provider, whose diet is
+honey, should itself devour its captives is a fact both unexpected and
+difficult to comprehend. We are surprised that a drinker of nectar
+should become a drinker of blood. But our surprise abates if we consider
+the matter closely. The double diet is more apparent than real; the
+stomach which fills itself with the nectar of flowers does not gorge
+itself with flesh. When she perforates the rump of her victim the
+Odynerus does not touch the flesh, which is a diet absolutely contrary
+to her tastes; she confines herself to drinking the defensive liquid
+which the grub distils at the end of its intestine. For her this liquid
+is doubtless a beverage of delicious flavour, with which she relieves
+from time to time her staple diet of the honey distilled by flowers,
+some highly spiced condiment, appetiser or aperient, or perhaps--who
+knows?--a substitute for honey. Although the qualities of the liquid
+escape me, I see at least that Odynerus cares nothing for the rest.
+Once the pouch is emptied the larva is abandoned as useless offal, a
+certain sign of non-carnivorous appetites. Under these conditions the
+persecutor of Chrysomela can no longer be regarded as guilty of an
+unnatural double dietary.
+
+We may even wonder whether other species also are not apt to draw some
+direct profit from the hunting imposed upon them by the needs of the
+family. The procedure of Odynerus in opening the anal pouch is so far
+removed from the usual that we should not anticipate many imitators; it
+is a secondary detail, and impracticable with game of a different kind.
+But there may well be a certain amount of variety in the means of direct
+utilisation. Why, for example, when the victim which has just been
+paralysed or rendered insensible by stinging contains in the stomach a
+delicious meal, semi-liquid or liquid in consistency, should the hunter
+scruple to rob the half-living body and force it to disgorge without
+injuring the quality of its flesh? There may well be robbers of the
+moribund, attracted not by their flesh but by the appetising contents of
+their stomachs.
+
+As a matter of fact there are such, and they are numerous. In the first
+rank we may cite that hunter of the domestic bee, _Philanthus aviporus_
+(Latreille). For a long time I suspected Philanthus of committing such
+acts of brigandage for her own benefit, having many times surprised her
+gluttonously licking the honey-smeared mouth of the bee; I suspected
+that her hunting of the bee was not undertaken entirely for the benefit
+of her larvae. The suspicion was worth experimental confirmation. At the
+time I was interested in another question also: I wanted to study,
+absolutely at leisure, the methods by which the various predatory
+species dealt with their victims. In the case of Philanthus I made use
+of the improvised cage already described; and Philanthus it was who
+furnished me with my first data on the subject. She responded to my
+hopes with such energy that I thought myself in possession of an
+unequalled method of observation, by means of which I could witness
+again and again, to satiety even, incidents of a kind so difficult to
+surprise in a state of nature. Alas! the early days of my acquaintance
+with Philanthus promised me more than the future had in store for me!
+Not to anticipate, however, let us place under the bell-glass the hunter
+and the game. I recommend the experiment to whomsoever would witness the
+perfection with which the predatory Hymenoptera use their stings. The
+result is not in doubt and the waiting is short; the moment the prey is
+perceived in an attitude favourable to her designs, the bandit rushes at
+it, and all is over. In detail, the tragedy develops as follows:
+
+I place under a bell-glass a Philanthus and two or three domestic bees.
+The prisoners climb the glass walls, on the more strongly lighted side;
+they ascend, descend, and seek to escape; the polished, vertical surface
+is for them quite easy to walk upon. They presently quiet down, and the
+brigand begins to notice her surroundings. The antennae point forward,
+seeking information; the hinder legs are drawn up with a slight
+trembling, as of greed and rapacity, in the thighs; the head turns to
+the right and the left, and follows the evolutions of the bees against
+the glass. The posture of the scoundrelly insect is strikingly
+expressive; one reads in it the brutal desires of a creature in ambush,
+the cunning patience that postpones attack. The choice is made, and
+Philanthus throws herself upon her victim.
+
+Turn by turn tumbled and tumbling, the two insects roll over and over.
+But the struggle soon quiets down, and the assassin commences to plunder
+her prize. I have seen her adopt two methods. In the first, more usual
+than the other, the bee is lying on the ground, upon its back, and
+Philanthus, mouth to mouth and abdomen to abdomen, clasps it with her
+six legs, while she seizes its neck in her mandibles. The abdomen is
+then curved forward and gropes for a moment for the desired spot in the
+upper part of the thorax, which it finally reaches. The sting plunges
+into the victim, remains in the wound for a moment, and all is over.
+Without loosing the victim, which is still tightly clasped, the murderer
+restores her abdomen to the normal position and holds it pressed against
+that of the bee.
+
+By the second method Philanthus operates standing upright. Resting on
+the hinder feet and the extremity of the folded wings, she rises proudly
+to a vertical position, holding the bee facing her by her four anterior
+claws. In order to get the bee into the proper position for the final
+stroke, she swings the poor creature round and back again with the
+careless roughness of a child dandling a doll. Her pose is magnificent,
+solidly based upon her sustaining tripod, the two posterior thighs and
+the end of the wings, she flexes the abdomen forwards and upwards, and,
+as before, stings the bee in the upper part of the thorax. The
+originality of her pose at the moment of striking surpasses anything I
+have ever witnessed.
+
+The love of knowledge in matters of natural history is not without its
+cruelties. To make absolutely certain of the point attained by the
+sting, and to inform myself completely concerning this horrible talent
+for murder, I have provoked I dare not confess how many assassinations
+in captivity. Without a single exception, the bee has always been stung
+in the throat. In the preparations for the final blow the extremity of
+the abdomen may of course touch here and there, at different points of
+the thorax or abdomen, but it never remains there, nor is the sting
+unsheathed, as may easily be seen. Once the struggle has commenced the
+Philanthus is so absorbed in her operations that I can remove the glass
+cover and follow every detail of the drama with my magnifying-glass.
+
+The invariable situation of the wound being proved, I bend back the head
+of the bee, so as to open the articulation. I see under what we may call
+the chin of the bee a white spot, hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch
+square, where the horny integuments are lacking, and the fine skin is
+exposed uncovered. It is there, always there, in that tiny defect in the
+bee's armour, that the sting is inserted. Why is this point attacked
+rather than another? Is it the only point that is vulnerable? Stretch
+open the articulation of the corselet to the rear of the first pair of
+legs. There you will see an area of defenceless skin, fully as delicate
+as that of the throat, but much more extensive. The horny armour of the
+bee has no larger breach. If the Philanthus were guided solely by
+considerations of vulnerability she would certainly strike there,
+instead of insistently seeking the narrow breach in the throat. The
+sting would not grope or hesitate, it would find its mark at the first
+attempt. No; the poisoned thrust is not conditioned by mechanical
+considerations; the murderer disdains the wide breach in the corselet
+and prefers the lesser one beneath the chin, for purely logical reasons
+which we will now attempt to elicit.
+
+The moment the bee is stung I release it from the aggressor. I am struck
+in the first place by the sudden inertia of the antennae and the various
+members of the mouth; organs which continue to move for so long a time
+in the victims of most predatory creatures. I see none of the
+indications with which my previous studies of paralysed victims have
+made me familiar: the antennae slowly waving, the mandibles opening and
+closing, the palpae trembling for days, for weeks, even for months. The
+thighs tremble for a minute or two at most; and the struggle is over.
+Henceforth there is complete immobility. The significance of this sudden
+inertia is forced upon me: the Philanthus has stabbed the cervical
+ganglions. Hence the sudden immobility of all the organs of the head:
+hence the real, not the apparent death of the bee. The Philanthus does
+not paralyse merely, but kills.
+
+This is one step gained. The murderer chooses the point below the chin
+as the point of attack, in order to reach the principal centres of
+innervation, the cephalic ganglions, and thus to abolish life at a
+single blow. The vital centres being poisoned, immediate death must
+follow. If the object of the Philanthus were merely to cause paralysis
+she would plunge her sting into the defective corselet, as does the
+Cerceris in attacking the weevil, whose armour is quite unlike the
+bee's. Her aim is to kill outright, as we shall presently see; she wants
+a corpse, not a paralytic. We must admit that her technique is
+admirable; our human murderers could do no better.
+
+Her posture of attack, which is very different to that of the
+paralysers, is infallibly fatal to the victim. Whether she delivers the
+attack in the erect position or prone, she holds the bee before her,
+head to head and thorax to thorax. In this position it suffices to flex
+the abdomen in order to reach the joint of the neck, and to plunge the
+sting obliquely upwards into the head of the captive. If the bee were
+seized in the inverse position, or if the sting were to go slightly
+astray, the results would be totally different; the sting, penetrating
+the bee in a downward direction, would poison the first thoracic
+ganglion and provoke a partial paralysis only. What art, to destroy a
+miserable bee! In what fencing-school did the slayer learn that terrible
+upward thrust beneath the chin? And as she has learned it, how is it
+that her victim, so learned in matters of architecture, so conversant
+with the politics of Socialism, has so far learned nothing in her own
+defence? As vigorous as the aggressor, she also carries a rapier, which
+is even more formidable and more painful in its results--at all events,
+when my finger is the victim! For centuries and centuries Philanthus has
+stored her cellars with the corpses of bees, yet the innocent victim
+submits, and the annual decimation of her race has not taught her how to
+deliver herself from the scourge by a well-directed thrust. I am afraid
+I shall never succeed in understanding how it is that the assailant has
+acquired her genius for sudden murder while the assailed, better armed
+and no less powerful, uses her dagger at random, and so far without
+effect. If the one has learned something from the prolonged exercise of
+the attack, then the other should also have learned something from the
+prolonged exercise of defence, for attack and defence are of equal
+significance in the struggle for life. Among the theorists of our day,
+is there any so far-sighted as to be able to solve this enigma?
+
+I will take this opportunity of presenting a second point which
+embarrasses me; it is the carelessness--it is worse than that--the
+imbecility of the bee in the presence of the Philanthus. One would
+naturally suppose that the persecuted insect, gradually instructed by
+family misfortune, would exhibit anxiety at the approach of the
+ravisher, and would at least try to escape. But in my bell-glasses or
+wire-gauze cages I see nothing of the kind. Once the first excitement
+due to imprisonment has passed the bee takes next to no notice of its
+terrible neighbour. I have seen it side by side with Philanthus on the
+same flower; assassin and future victim were drinking from the same
+goblet. I have seen it stupidly coming to inquire what the stranger
+might be, as the latter crouched watching on the floor. When the
+murderer springs it is usually upon some bee which passes before her,
+and throws itself, so to speak, into her clutches; either thoughtlessly
+or out of curiosity. There is no frantic terror, no sign of anxiety, no
+tendency to escape. How is it that the experience of centuries, which is
+said to teach so much to the lower creatures, has not taught the bee
+even the beginning of apine wisdom: a deep-rooted horror of the
+Philanthus? Does the bee count upon its sting? But the unhappy creature
+is no fencer; it thrusts without method, at random. Nevertheless, let us
+watch it at the final and fatal moment.
+
+When the ravisher brings her sting into play the bee also uses its
+sting, and with fury. I see the point thrusting now in this direction,
+now in that; but in empty air, or grazing and slipping over the
+convexity of the murderer's back, which is violently flexed. These blows
+have no serious results. In the position assumed by the two as they
+struggle the abdomen of the Philanthus is inside and that of the bee
+outside; thus the sting of the latter has under its point only the
+dorsal face of the enemy, which is convex and slippery, and almost
+invulnerable, so well is it armoured. There is no breach there by which
+the sting might possibly enter; and the operation takes place with the
+certainty of a skilful surgeon using the lancet, despite the indignant
+protests of the patient.
+
+The fatal stroke once delivered, the murderer remains for some time on
+the body of the victim, clasping it face to face, for reasons that we
+must now consider. It may be that the position is perilous for
+Philanthus. The posture of attack and self-protection is abandoned, and
+the ventral area, more vulnerable than the back, is exposed to the sting
+of the bee. Now the dead bee retains for some minutes the reflex use of
+the sting, as I know to my cost: for removing the bee too soon from the
+aggressor, and handling it carelessly, I have received a most effectual
+sting. In her long embrace of the poisoned bee, how does Philanthus
+avoid this sting, which does not willingly give up its life without
+vengeance? Are there not sometimes unexpected accidents? Perhaps.
+
+Here is a fact which encourages me in this belief. I had placed under
+the bell-glass at the same time four bees and as many Eristales, in
+order to judge of the entomological knowledge of Philanthus as
+exemplified in the distinction of species. Reciprocal quarrels broke out
+among the heterogeneous group. Suddenly, in the midst of the tumult,
+the killer is killed. Who has struck the blow? Certainly not the
+turbulent but pacific Eristales; it was one of the bees, which by chance
+had thrust truly in the mellay. When and how? I do not know. This
+accident is unique in my experience; but it throws a light upon the
+question. The bee is capable of withstanding its adversary; it can, with
+a thrust of its envenomed needle, kill the would-be killer. That it does
+not defend itself more skilfully when it falls into the hands of its
+enemy is due to ignorance of fencing, not to the weakness of the arm.
+And here again arises, more insistently than before, the question I
+asked but now: how is it that the Philanthus has learned for purposes of
+attack what the bee has not learned for purposes of defence. To this
+difficulty I see only one reply: the one knows without having learned
+and the other does not know, being incapable of learning.
+
+Let us now examine the motives which induce the Philanthus to kill its
+bee instead of paralysing it. The murder once committed, it does not
+release its victim for a moment, but holding it tightly clasped with its
+six legs pressed against its body, it commences to ravage the corpse. I
+see it with the utmost brutality rooting with its mandibles in the
+articulation of the neck, and often also in the more ample articulation
+of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs; perfectly aware of the
+fine membrane in that part, although it does not take advantage of the
+fact when employing its sting, although this vulnerable point is the
+more accessible of the two breaches in the bee's armour. I see it
+squeezing the bee's stomach, compressing it with its own abdomen,
+crushing it as in a vice. The brutality of this manipulation is
+striking; it shows that there is no more need of care and skill. The
+bee is a corpse, and a little extra pushing and squeezing will not
+deteriorate its quality as food, provided there is no effusion of blood;
+and however rough the treatment, I have never been able to discover the
+slightest wound.
+
+These various manipulations, above all the compression of the throat,
+lead to the desired result: the honey in the stomach of the bee ascends
+to the mouth. I see the drops of honey welling out, lapped up by the
+glutton as soon as they appear. The bandit greedily takes in its mouth
+the extended and sugared tongue of the dead insect; then once more it
+presses the neck and the thorax, and once more applies the pressure of
+its abdomen to the honey-sac of the bee. The honey oozes forth and is
+instantly licked up. This odious meal at the expense of the corpse is
+taken in a truly sybaritic attitude: the Philanthus lies upon its side
+with the bee between its legs. This atrocious meal lasts often half an
+hour and longer. Finally the exhausted corpse is abandoned; regretfully,
+it seems, for from time to time I have seen the ogre return to the feast
+and repeat its manipulation of the body. After taking a turn round the
+top of the bell-glass the robber of the dead returns to the victim,
+squeezes it once more, and licks its mouth until the last trace of honey
+has disappeared.
+
+The frantic passion of the Philanthus for the honey of the bee is
+betrayed in another fashion. When the first victim has been exhausted I
+have introduced a second bee, which has been promptly stabbed under the
+chin and squeezed as before in order to extract its honey. A third has
+suffered the same fate without appeasing the bandit. I have offered a
+fourth, a fifth; all are accepted. My notes record that a Philanthus
+sacrificed six bees in succession before my eyes, and emptied them all
+of honey in the approved manner. The killing came to an end not because
+the glutton was satiated, but because my functions as provider were
+becoming troublesome; the dry month of August leaves but few insects in
+the flowerless garden. Six bees emptied of their honey--what a
+gluttonous meal! Yet the famishing creature would doubtless have
+welcomed a copious addition thereto had I had the means of furnishing
+it!
+
+We need not regret the failure of bees upon this occasion; for what I
+have already written is sufficient testimony of the singular habits of
+this murderer of bees. I am far from denying that the Philanthus has
+honest methods of earning its living; I see it among the flowers, no
+less assiduous than the rest of the Hymenoptera, peacefully drinking
+from their cups of nectar. The male, indeed, being stingless, knows no
+other means of supporting himself. The mothers, without neglecting the
+flowers as a general thing, live by brigandage as well. It is said of
+the Labba, that pirate of the seas, that it pounces upon sea-birds as
+they rise from the waves with captured fish in their beaks. With a blow
+of the beak delivered in the hollow of the stomach, the aggressor forces
+the victim to drop its prey, and promptly catches it as it falls. The
+victim at least escapes with nothing worse than a blow at the base of
+the neck. The Philanthus, less scrupulous, falls upon the bee, stabs it
+to death and makes it disgorge in order to nourish herself upon its
+honey.
+
+Nourish, I say, and I do not withdraw the expression. To support my
+statement I have better reasons than those already presented. In the
+cages in which various predatory Hymenoptera whose warlike habits I am
+studying are confined, waiting until I have procured the desired
+prey--not always an easy proceeding--I have planted a few heads of
+flowers and a couple of thistle-heads sprinkled with drops of honey,
+renewed at need. On these my captives feed. In the case of the
+Philanthus the honeyed flowers, although welcomed, are not
+indispensable. It is enough if from time to time I place in the cage a
+few living bees. Half a dozen a day is about the proper allowance. With
+no other diet than the honey extracted from their victims I keep my
+specimens of Philanthus for a fortnight and three weeks.
+
+So much is plain: in a state of freedom, when occasion offers, the
+Philanthus must kill on her own account as she does in captivity. The
+Odynerus asks nothing of the Chrysomela but a simple condiment, the
+aromatic juice of the anal pouch; the Philanthus demands a full diet, or
+at least a notable supplement thereto, in the form of the contents of
+the stomach. What a hecatomb of bees must not a colony of these pirates
+sacrifice for their personal consumption, to say nothing of their stores
+of provisions! I recommend the Philanthus to the vengeance of apiarists.
+
+For the moment we will not look further into the original causes of the
+crime. Let us consider matters as we know them, with all their real or
+apparent atrocity. In order to nourish herself the Philanthus levies
+tribute upon the crop of the bee. This being granted, let us consider
+the method of the aggressor more closely. She does not paralyse its
+captives according to the customary rites of the predatory insects; she
+kills them. Why? To the eyes of understanding the necessity of a sudden
+death is as clear as day. Without eviscerating the bee, which would
+result in the deterioration of its flesh considered as food for the
+larvae; without having recourse to the bloody extirpation of the stomach,
+the Philanthus intends to obtain its honey. By skilful manipulation, by
+cunning massage, she must somehow make the bee disgorge. Suppose the bee
+stung in the rear of the corselet and paralysed. It is deprived of
+locomotion, but not of vitality. The digestive apparatus, in particular,
+retains in full, or at least in part, its normal energies, as is proved
+by the frequent dejections of paralysed victims so long as the intestine
+is not emptied; a fact notably exemplified by the victims of the Sphex
+family; helpless creatures which I have before now kept alive for forty
+days with the aid of a little sugared water. Well! without therapeutic
+means, without emetics or stomach-pumps, how is a stomach intact and in
+good order to be persuaded to yield up its contents? That of the bee,
+jealous of its treasure, will lend itself to such treatment less readily
+than another. Paralysed, the creature is inert; but there are always
+internal energies and organic resistances which will not yield to the
+pressure of the manipulator. In vain would the Philanthus gnaw at the
+throat and squeeze the flanks; the honey would not return to the mouth
+as long as a trace of life kept the stomach closed.
+
+Matters are different with a corpse. The springs relax; the muscles
+yield; the resistance of the stomach ceases, and the vessels containing
+the honey are emptied by the pressure of the thief. We see, therefore,
+that the Philanthus is obliged to inflict a sudden death which
+instantly destroys the contractile power of the organs. Where shall the
+deadly blow be delivered? The slayer knows better than we, when she
+pierces the victim beneath the chin. Through the narrow breach in the
+throat the cerebral ganglions are reached and immediate death ensues.
+
+The examination of these acts of brigandage is not sufficient in view of
+my incorrigible habit of following every reply by another query, until
+the granite wall of the unknowable rises before me. Although the
+Philanthus is skilled in forcing the bee to disgorge, in emptying the
+crop distended with honey, this diabolical skill cannot be merely an
+alimentary resource, above all when in common with other insects she has
+access to the refectory of the flowers. I cannot regard her talents as
+inspired solely by the desire of a meal obtained by the labour of
+emptying the stomach of another insect. Something must surely escape us
+here: the real reason for emptying the stomach. Perhaps a respectable
+reason is concealed by the horrors I have recorded. What is it?
+
+Every one will understand the vagueness which fills the observer's mind
+in respect of such a question as this. The reader has the right to be
+doubtful. I will spare him my suspicions, my gropings for the truth, and
+the checks encountered in the search, and give him the results of my
+long inquiry. Everything has its appropriate and harmonious reason. I am
+too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus commits her
+profanation of corpses merely to satisfy her appetite. What does the
+empty stomach mean? May it not--Yes!--But, after all, who knows? Well,
+let us follow up the scent.
+
+The first care of the mothers is the welfare of the family. So far all
+we know of the Philanthus concerns her talent for murder. Let us
+consider her as a mother. We have seen her hunt on her own account; let
+us now watch her hunt for her offspring, for the race. Nothing is
+simpler than to distinguish between the two kinds of hunting. When the
+insect wants a few good mouthfuls of honey and nothing else, she
+abandons the bee contemptuously when she has emptied its stomach. It is
+so much valueless waste, which will shrivel where it lies and be
+dissected by ants. If, on the other hand, she intends to place it in the
+larder as a provision for her larvae, she clasps it with her two
+intermediate legs, and, walking on the other four, drags it to and fro
+along the edge of the bell-glass in search of an exit so that she may
+fly off with her prey. Having recognised the circular wall as
+impassable, she climbs its sides, now holding the bee in her mandibles
+by the antennae, clinging as she climbs to the vertical polished surface
+with all six feet. She gains the summit of the glass, stays for a little
+while in the flask-like cavity of the terminal button or handle, returns
+to the ground, and resumes her circuit of the glass and her climbing,
+relinquishing the bee only after an obstinate attempt to escape with it.
+The persistence with which the Philanthus retains her clasp upon the
+encumbering burden shows plainly that the game would go straight to the
+larder were the insect at liberty.
+
+Those bees intended for the larvae are stung under the chin like the
+others; they are true corpses; they are manipulated, squeezed, exhausted
+of their honey, just as the others. There is no difference in the method
+of capture nor in their after-treatment.
+
+As captivity might possibly result in a few anomalies of action, I
+decided to inquire how matters went forward in the open. In the
+neighbourhood of some colonies of Philanthidae I lay in wait, watching
+for perhaps a longer time than the question justified, as it was already
+settled by what occurred in captivity. My scrupulous watching at various
+times was rewarded. The majority of the hunters immediately entered
+their nests, carrying the bees pressed against their bodies; some halted
+on the neighbouring undergrowth; and these I saw treating the bee in the
+usual manner, and lapping the honey from its mouth. After these
+preparations the corpse was placed in the larder. All doubt was thus
+destroyed: the bees provided for the larvae are previously carefully
+emptied of their honey.
+
+Since we are dealing with the subject, let us take the opportunity of
+inquiring into the customs of the Philanthus in a state of freedom.
+Making use of her victims when absolutely lifeless, so that they would
+putrefy in the course of a few days, this hunter of bees cannot adopt
+the customs of certain insects which paralyse their prey, and fill their
+cellars before laying an egg. She must surely be obliged to follow the
+method of the Bembex, whose larva receives, at intervals, the necessary
+nourishment; the amount increasing as the larva grows. The facts confirm
+this deduction. I spoke just now of the tediousness of my watching when
+watching the colonies of the Philanthus. It was perhaps even more
+tedious than when I was keeping an eye upon the Bembex. Before the
+burrows of _Cerceris tuberculus_ and other devourers of the weevil, and
+before that of the yellow-winged Sphex, the slayer of crickets, there
+is plenty of distraction, owing to the busy movements of the community.
+The mothers have scarcely entered the nest before they are off again,
+returning quickly with fresh prey, only to set out once more. The going
+and coming is almost continuous until the storehouse is full.
+
+The burrows of the Philanthus know nothing of such animation, even in a
+populous colony. In vain my vigils prolonged themselves into whole
+mornings or afternoons, and only very rarely does the mother who has
+entered with a bee set forth upon a second expedition. Two captures by
+the same huntress is the most that I have seen in my long watches. Once
+the family is provided with sufficient food for the moment the mother
+postpones further hunting trips until hunting becomes necessary, and
+busies herself with digging and burrowing in her underground dwelling.
+Little cells are excavated, and I see the rubbish from them gradually
+pushed up to the surface. With that exception there is no sign of
+activity; it is as though the burrow were deserted.
+
+To lay the nest bare is not easy. The burrow penetrates to a depth of
+about three feet in a compact soil; sometimes in a vertical, sometimes
+in a horizontal direction. The spade and pick, wielded by hands more
+vigorous but less expert than my own, are indispensable; but the conduct
+of the excavation is anything but satisfactory. At the extremity of the
+long gallery--it seems as though the straw I use for sounding would
+never reach the end--we finally discover the cells, egg-shaped cavities
+with the longer axis horizontal. Their number and their mutual
+disposition escape me.
+
+Some already contain the cocoon--slender and translucid, like that of
+the Cerceris, and, like it, recalling the shape of certain
+homoeopathic phials, with oval bodies surmounted by a tapering neck.
+By the extremity of the neck, which is blackened and hardened by the
+dejecta of the larvae, the cocoon is fixed to the end of the cell without
+any other support. It reminds one of a short club, planted by the end of
+the handle, in a line with the horizontal axis of the cell. Other cells
+contain the larva in a stage more or less advanced. The grub is eating
+the last victim proffered; around it lie the remains of food already
+consumed. Others, again, show me a bee, a single bee, still intact, and
+having an egg deposited on the under-side of the thorax. This bee
+represents the first instalment of rations; others will follow as the
+grub matures. My expectations are thus confirmed; as with Bembex, slayer
+of Diptera, so Philanthus, killer of bees, lays her egg upon the first
+body stored, and completes, at intervals, the provisioning of the cells.
+
+The problem of the dead bee is elucidated; there remains the other
+problem, of incomparable interest--Why, before they are given over to
+the larvae, are the bees robbed of their honey? I have said, and I
+repeat, that the killing and emptying of the bee cannot be explained
+solely by the gluttony of the Philanthus. To rob the worker of its booty
+is nothing; such things are seen every day; but to slaughter it in order
+to empty its stomach--no, gluttony cannot be the only motive. And as the
+bees placed in the cells are squeezed dry no less than the others, the
+idea occurs to me that as a beefsteak garnished with _confitures_ is not
+to every one's taste, so the bee sweetened with honey may well be
+distasteful or even harmful to the larvae of the Philanthus. What would
+the grub do if, replete with blood and flesh, it were to find under its
+mandibles the honey-bag of the bee?--if, gnawing at random, it were to
+open the bees stomach and so drench its game with syrup? Would it
+approve of the mixture? Would the little ogre pass without repugnance
+from the gamey flavour of a corpse to the scent of flowers? To affirm or
+deny is useless. We must see. Let us see.
+
+I take the young larvae of the Philanthus, already well matured, but
+instead of serving them with the provisions buried in their cells I
+offer them game of my own catching--bees that have filled themselves
+with nectar among the rosemary bushes. My bees, killed by crushing the
+head, are thankfully accepted, and at first I see nothing to justify my
+suspicions. Then my nurslings languish, show themselves disdainful of
+their food, give a negligent bite here and there, and finally, one and
+all, die beside their uncompleted meal. All my attempts miscarry; not
+once do I succeed in rearing my larvae as far as the stage of spinning
+the cocoon. Yet I am no novice in my duties as dry-nurse. How many
+pupils have passed through my hands and have reached the final stage in
+my old sardine-boxes as well as in their native burrows! I shall draw no
+conclusions from this check, which my scruples may attribute to some
+unknown cause. Perhaps the atmosphere of my cabinet and the dryness of
+the sand serving them for a bed have been too much for my nurslings,
+whose tender skins are used to the warm moisture of the subsoil. Let us
+try another method.
+
+To decide positively whether honey is or is not repugnant to the grubs
+of the Philanthus was hardly practicable by the method just explained.
+The first meals consisted of flesh, and after that nothing in
+particular occurred. The honey is encountered later, when the bee is
+largely consumed. If hesitation and repugnance were manifested at this
+point they came too late to be conclusive; the sickness of the larvae
+might be due to other causes, known or unknown. We must offer honey at
+the very beginning, before artificial rearing has spoilt the grub's
+appetite. To offer pure honey would, of course, be useless; no
+carnivorous creature would touch it, even were it starving. I must
+spread the honey on meat; that is, I must smear the dead bee with honey,
+lightly varnishing it with a camel's-hair brush.
+
+Under these conditions the problem is solved with the first few
+mouthfuls. The grub, having bitten on the honeyed bee, draws back as
+though disgusted; hesitates for a long time; then, urged by hunger,
+begins again; tries first on one side, then on another; in the end it
+refuses to touch the bee again. For a few days it pines upon its
+rations, which are almost intact, then dies. As many as are subjected to
+the same treatment perish in the same way.
+
+Do they simply die of hunger in the presence of food which their
+appetites reject, or are they poisoned by the small amount of honey
+absorbed at the first bites? I cannot say; but, whether poisonous or
+merely repugnant, the bee smeared with honey is always fatal to them; a
+fact which explains more clearly than the unfavourable circumstances of
+the former experiment my lack of success with the freshly killed bees.
+
+This refusal to touch honey, whether poisonous or repugnant, is
+connected with principles of alimentation too general to be a
+gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus grub. Other carnivorous
+larvae--at least in the series of the Hymenoptera--must share it. Let us
+experiment. The method need not be changed. I exhume the larvae when in a
+state of medium growth, to avoid the vicissitudes of extreme youth; I
+collect the bodies of the grubs and insects which form their natural
+diet and smear each body with honey, in which condition I return them to
+the larvae. A distinction is apparent: all the larvae are not equally
+suited to my experiment. Those larvae must be rejected which are
+nourished upon one single corpulent insect, as is that of the Scolia.
+The grub attacks its prey at a determined point, plunges its head and
+neck into the body of the insect, skilfully divides the entrails in
+order to keep the remains fresh until its meal is ended, and does not
+emerge from the opening until all is consumed but the empty skin.
+
+To interrupt the larva with the object of smearing the interior of its
+prey with honey is doubly objectionable; I might extinguish the
+lingering vitality which keeps putrefaction at bay in the victim, and I
+might confuse the delicate art of the larva, which might not be able to
+recover the lode at which it was working or to distinguish between those
+parts which are lawfully and properly eaten and those which must not be
+consumed until a later period. As I have shown in a previous volume, the
+grub of the Scolia has taught me much in this respect. The only larvae
+acceptable for this experiment are those which are fed on a number of
+small insects, which are attacked without any special art, dismembered
+at random, and quickly consumed. Among such larvae I have experimented
+with those provided by chance--those of various Bembeces, fed on
+Diptera; those of the Palaris, whose diet consists of a large variety of
+Hymenoptera; those of the Tachytus, provided with young crickets; those
+of the Odynerus, fed upon larvae of the Chrysomela; those of the
+sand-dwelling Cerceris, endowed with a hecatomb of weevils. As will be
+seen, both consumers and consumed offer plenty of variety. Well, in
+every case their proper diet, seasoned with honey, is fatal. Whether
+poisoned or disgusted, they all die in a few days.
+
+A strange result! Honey, the nectar of the flowers, the sole diet of the
+apiary under its two forms and the sole nourishment of the predatory
+insect in its adult phase, is for the larva of the same insect an object
+of insurmountable disgust, and probably a poison. The transfiguration of
+the chrysalis surprises me less than this inversion of the appetite.
+What change occurs in the stomach of the insect that the adult should
+passionately seek that which the larva refuses under peril of death? It
+is no question of organic debility unable to support a diet too
+substantial, too hard, or too highly spiced. The grubs which consume the
+larva of the Cetoniae, for example (the Rose-chafers), those which feed
+upon the leathery cricket, and those whose diet is rich in nitrobenzine,
+must assuredly have complacent gullets and adaptable stomachs. Yet these
+robust eaters die of hunger or poison for no greater cause than a drop
+of syrup, the lightest diet imaginable, adapted to the weakness of
+extreme youth, and a delicacy to the adult! What a gulf of obscurity in
+the stomach of a miserable worm!
+
+These gastronomic experiments called for a counter-proof. The
+carnivorous grub is killed by honey. Is the honey-fed grub, inversely,
+killed by carnivorous diet? Here, again, we must make certain
+exceptions, observe a certain choice, as in the previous experiments. It
+would obviously be courting a flat refusal to offer a heap of young
+crickets to the larvae of the Anthophorus and the Osmia, for example; the
+honey-fed grub would not bite such food. It would be absolutely useless
+to make such an experiment. We must find the equivalent of the bee
+smeared with honey; that is, we must offer the larva its ordinary food
+with a mixture of animal matter added. I shall experiment with albumen,
+as provided by the egg of the hen; albumen being an isomer of fibrine,
+which is the principal element of all flesh diet.
+
+_Osmia tricornis_ will lend itself to my experiment better than any
+other insect on account of its dry honey, or bee-bread, which is largely
+formed of flowery pollen. I knead it with the albumen, graduating the
+dose of the latter so that its weight largely exceeds that of the
+bee-bread. Thus I obtain pastes of various degrees of consistency, but
+all firm enough to support the larva without danger of immersion. With
+too fluid a mixture there would be a danger of death by drowning.
+Finally, on each cake of albuminous paste I install a larva of medium
+growth.
+
+This diet is not distasteful; far from it. The grubs attack it without
+hesitation and devour it with every appearance of a normal appetite.
+Matters could not go better if the food had not been modified according
+to my recipes. All is eaten; even the portions which I feared contained
+an excessive proportion of albumen. Moreover--a matter of still greater
+importance--the larvae of the Osmia fed in this manner attain their
+normal growth and spin their cocoons, from which adults issue in the
+following year. Despite the albuminous diet the cycle of evolution
+completes itself without mishap.
+
+What are we to conclude from all this? I confess I am embarrassed. _Omne
+vivum ex ovo_, says the physiologist. All animals are carnivorous in
+their first beginnings; they are formed and nourished at the expense of
+the egg, in which albumen predominates. The highest, the mammals, adhere
+to this diet for a considerable time; they live by the maternal milk,
+rich in casein, another isomer of albumen. The gramnivorous nestling is
+fed first upon worms and grubs, which are best adapted to the delicacy
+of its stomach; many newly born creatures among the lower orders, being
+immediately left to their own devices, live on animal diet. In this way
+the original method of alimentation is continued--the method which
+builds flesh out of flesh and makes blood out of blood with no chemical
+processes but those of simple reconstruction. In maturity, when the
+stomach is more robust, a vegetable diet may be adopted, involving a
+more complex chemistry, although the food itself is more easily
+obtained. To milk succeeds fodder; to the worm, seeds and grain; to the
+dead or paralysed insects of the natal burrow, the nectar of flowers.
+
+Here is a partial explanation of the double system of the Hymenoptera
+with their carnivorous larvae--the system of dead or paralysed insects
+followed by honey. But here the point of interrogation, already
+encountered elsewhere, erects itself once again. Why is the larva of
+the Osmia, which thrives upon albumen, actually fed upon honey during
+its early life? Why is a vegetable diet the rule in the hives of bees
+from the very commencement, when the other members of the same series
+live upon animal food?
+
+If I were a "transformist" how I should delight in this question! Yes, I
+should say: yes, by the fact of its germ every animal is originally
+carnivorous. The insect in particular makes a beginning with albuminoid
+materials. Many larvae adhere to the alimentation present in the egg, as
+do many adult insects also. But the struggle to fill the belly, which is
+actually the struggle for life, demands something better than the
+precarious chances of the chase. Man, at first an eager hunter of game,
+collected flocks and became a shepherd in order to profit by his
+possessions in time of dearth. Further progress inspired him to till the
+earth and sow; a method which assured him of a certain living. Evolution
+from the defective to the mediocre, and from the mediocre to the
+abundant, has led to the resources of agriculture.
+
+The lower animals have preceded us on the way of progress. The ancestors
+of the Philanthus, in the remote ages of the lacustrian tertiary
+formations, lived by capturing prey in both phases--both as larvae and as
+adults; they hunted for their own benefit as well as for the family.
+They did not confine themselves to emptying the stomach of the bee, as
+do their descendants to-day; they devoured the victim entire. From
+beginning to end they remained carnivorous. Later there were fortunate
+innovators, whose race supplanted the more conservative element, who
+discovered an inexhaustible source of nourishment, to be obtained
+without painful search or dangerous conflict: the saccharine exudation
+of the flowers. The wasteful system of living upon prey, by no means
+favourable to large populations, has been preserved for the feeble
+larvae; but the vigorous adult has abandoned it for an easier and more
+prosperous existence. Thus the Philanthus of our own days was gradually
+developed; thus was formed the double system of nourishment practised by
+the various predatory insects which we know.
+
+The bee has done still better; from the moment of leaving the egg it
+dispenses completely with chance-won aliments. It has invented honey,
+the food of its larvae. Renouncing the chase for ever, and becoming
+exclusively agricultural, this insect has acquired a degree of moral and
+physical prosperity that the predatory species are far from sharing.
+Hence the flourishing colonies of the Anthophorae, the Osmiae, the Eucerae,
+the Halicti, and other makers of honey, while the hunters of prey work
+in isolation; hence the societies in which the bee displays its
+admirable talents, the supreme expression of instinct.
+
+This is what I should say if I were a "transformist." All this is a
+chain of highly logical deductions, and it hangs together with a certain
+air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist"
+arguments which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a present
+of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least
+regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound
+ignorance of the origin of the twofold system of diet.
+
+One thing I do see more clearly after all my experiments and research:
+the tactics of the Philanthus. As a witness of its ferocious feasting,
+the true motive of which was unknown to me, I treated it to all the
+unfavourable epithets I could think of; called it assassin, bandit,
+pirate, robber of the dead. Ignorance is always abusive; the man who
+does not know is full of violent affirmations and malign
+interpretations. Undeceived by the facts, I hasten to apologise and
+express my esteem for the Philanthus. In emptying the stomach of the bee
+the mother is performing the most praiseworthy of all duties; she is
+guarding her family against poison. If she sometimes kills on her own
+account and abandons the body after exhausting it of honey, I dare not
+call her action a crime. When the habit has once been formed of emptying
+the bee's crop for the best of motives, the temptation is great to do so
+with no other excuse than hunger. Moreover--who can say?--perhaps there
+is always some afterthought that the larvae might profit by the
+sacrifice. Although not carried into effect the intention excuses the
+act.
+
+I therefore withdraw my abusive epithets in order to express my
+admiration of the creature's maternal logic. Honey would be harmful to
+the grubs. How does the mother know that honey, in which she herself
+delights, is noxious to her young? To this question our knowledge has no
+reply. But honey, as we have seen, would endanger the lives of the
+grubs. The bees must therefore be emptied of honey before they are fed
+to them. The process must be effected without wounding the victim, for
+the larva must receive the latter fresh and moist; and this would be
+impracticable if the insect were paralysed on account of the natural
+resistance of the organs. The bee must therefore be killed outright
+instead of being paralysed, otherwise the honey could not be removed.
+Instantaneous death can be assured only by a lesion of the primordial
+centre of life. The sting must therefore pierce the cervical ganglions;
+the centre of innervation upon which the rest of the organism is
+dependent. This can only be reached in one way: through the neck. Here
+it is that the sting will be inserted; and here it is inserted in a
+breach in the armour no larger than a pin's head. Suppress a single link
+of this closely knit chain, and the Philanthus reared upon the flesh of
+bees becomes an impossibility.
+
+That honey is fatal to larvae is a fact pregnant with consequences.
+Various predatory insects feed their young with honey-makers. Such, to
+my knowledge, are the _Philanthus coronatus_, Fabr., which stores its
+burrows with the large Halictus; the _Philanthus raptor_, Lep., which
+chases all the smaller Halictus indifferently, being itself a small
+insect; the _Cerceris ornata_, Fabr., which also kills Halictus; and the
+_Polaris flavipes_, Fabr., which by a strange eclecticism fills its
+cells with specimens of most of the Hymenoptera which are not beyond its
+powers. What do these four huntresses, and others of similar habits, do
+with their victims when the crops of the latter are full of honey? They
+must follow the example of the Philanthus or their offspring would
+perish; they must squeeze and manipulate the dead bee until it yields up
+its honey. Everything goes to prove as much; but for the actual
+observation of what would be a notable proof of my theory I must trust
+to the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE GREAT PEACOCK, OR EMPEROR MOTH
+
+
+It was a memorable night! I will name it the Night of the Great Peacock.
+Who does not know this superb moth, the largest of all our European
+butterflies[3] with its livery of chestnut velvet and its collar of
+white fur? The greys and browns of the wings are crossed by a paler
+zig-zag, and bordered with smoky white; and in the centre of each wing
+is a round spot, a great eye with a black pupil and variegated iris,
+resolving into concentric arcs of black, white, chestnut, and purplish
+red.
+
+Not less remarkable is the caterpillar. Its colour is a vague yellow. On
+the summit of thinly sown tubercles crowned with a palisade of black
+hairs are set pearls of a turquoise-blue. The burly brown cocoon, which
+is notable for its curious tunnel of exit, like an eel-pot, is always
+found at the base of an old almond-tree, adhering to the bark. The
+foliage of the same tree nourishes the caterpillar.
+
+On the morning of the 6th of May a female emerged from her cocoon in my
+presence on my laboratory table. I cloistered her immediately, all damp
+with the moisture of metamorphosis, in a cover of wire gauze. I had no
+particular intentions regarding her; I imprisoned her from mere habit;
+the habit of an observer always on the alert for what may happen.
+
+I was richly rewarded. About nine o'clock that evening, when the
+household was going to bed, there was a sudden hubbub in the room next
+to mine. Little Paul, half undressed, was rushing to and fro, running,
+jumping, stamping, and overturning the chairs as if possessed. I heard
+him call me. "Come quick!" he shrieked; "come and see these butterflies!
+Big as birds! The room's full of them!"
+
+I ran. There was that which justified the child's enthusiasm and his
+hardly hyperbolical exclamation. It was an invasion of giant
+butterflies; an invasion hitherto unexampled in our house. Four were
+already caught and placed in a bird-cage. Others--numbers of them--were
+flying across the ceiling.
+
+This astonishing sight recalled the prisoner of the morning to my mind.
+"Put on your togs, kiddy!" I told my son; "put down your cage, and come
+with me. We shall see something worth seeing."
+
+We had to go downstairs to reach my study, which occupies the right wing
+of the house. In the kitchen we met the servant; she too was bewildered
+by the state of affairs. She was pursuing the huge butterflies with her
+apron, having taken them at first for bats.
+
+It seemed as though the Great Peacock had taken possession of my whole
+house, more or less. What would it be upstairs, where the prisoner was,
+the cause of this invasion? Happily one of the two study windows had
+been left ajar; the road was open.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT PEACOCK OR EMPEROR MOTH.]
+
+Candle in hand, we entered the room. What we saw is unforgettable. With
+a soft _flic-flac_ the great night-moths were flying round the
+wire-gauze cover, alighting, taking flight, returning, mounting to the
+ceiling, re-descending. They rushed at the candle and extinguished it
+with a flap of the wing; they fluttered on our shoulders, clung to our
+clothing, grazed our faces. My study had become a cave of a necromancer,
+the darkness alive with creatures of the night! Little Paul, to reassure
+himself, held my hand much tighter than usual.
+
+How many were there? About twenty. To these add those which had strayed
+into the kitchen, the nursery, and other rooms in the house, and the
+total must have been nearly forty. It was a memorable sight--the Night
+of the Great Peacock! Come from all points of the compass, warned I know
+not how, here were forty lovers eager to do homage to the maiden
+princess that morning born in the sacred precincts of my study.
+
+For the time being I troubled the swarm of pretenders no further. The
+flame of the candle endangered the visitors; they threw themselves into
+it stupidly and singed themselves slightly. On the morrow we could
+resume our study of them, and make certain carefully devised
+experiments.
+
+To clear the ground a little for what is to follow, let me speak of what
+was repeated every night during the eight nights my observations lasted.
+Every night, when it was quite dark, between eight and ten o'clock, the
+butterflies arrived one by one. The weather was stormy; the sky heavily
+clouded; the darkness was so profound that out of doors, in the garden
+and away from the trees, one could scarcely see one's hand before one's
+face.
+
+In addition to such darkness as this there were certain difficulties of
+access. The house is hidden by great plane-trees; an alley densely
+bordered with lilacs and rose-trees make a kind of outer vestibule to
+the entrance; it is protected from the _mistral_ by groups of pines and
+screens of cypress. A thicket of evergreen shrubs forms a rampart at a
+few paces from the door. It was across this maze of leafage, and in
+absolute darkness, that the butterflies had to find their way in order
+to attain the end of their pilgrimage.
+
+Under such conditions the screech-owl would not dare to forsake its
+hollow in the olive-tree. The butterfly, better endowed with its faceted
+eyes than the owl with its single pupils, goes forward without
+hesitation, and threads the obstacles without contact. So well it
+directs its tortuous flight that, in spite of all the obstacles to be
+evaded, it arrives in a state of perfect freshness, its great wings
+intact, without the slightest flaw. The darkness is light enough for the
+butterfly.
+
+Even if we suppose it to be sensitive to rays unknown to the ordinary
+retina, this extraordinary sight could not be the sense that warns the
+butterfly at a distance and brings it hastening to the bride. Distance
+and the objects interposed make the suggestion absurd.
+
+Moreover, apart from illusory refractions, of which there is no question
+here, the indications of light are precise; one goes straight to the
+object seen. But the butterfly was sometimes mistaken: not in the
+general direction, but concerning the precise position of the attractive
+object. I have mentioned that the nursery on the other side of the house
+to my study, which was the actual goal of the visitors, was full of
+butterflies before a light was taken into it. These were certainly
+incorrectly informed. In the kitchen there was the same crowd of
+seekers gone astray; but there the light of a lamp, an irresistible
+attraction to nocturnal insects, might have diverted the pilgrims.
+
+Let us consider only such areas as were in darkness. There the pilgrims
+were numerous. I found them almost everywhere in the neighbourhood of
+their goal. When the captive was in my study the butterflies did not all
+enter by the open window, the direct and easy way, the captive being
+only a few yards from the window. Several penetrated the house
+downstairs, wandered through the hall, and reached the staircase, which
+was barred at the top by a closed door.
+
+These data show us that the visitors to the wedding-feast did not go
+straight to their goal as they would have done were they attracted by
+any kind of luminous radiations, whether known or unknown to our
+physical science. Something other than radiant energy warned them at a
+distance, led them to the neighbourhood of the precise spot, and left
+the final discovery to be made after a vague and hesitating search. The
+senses of hearing and smell warn us very much in this way; they are not
+precise guides when we try to determine exactly the point of origin of a
+sound or smell.
+
+What sense is it that informs this great butterfly of the whereabouts of
+his mate, and leads him wandering through the night? What organ does
+this sense affect? One suspects the antennae; in the male butterfly they
+actually seem to be sounding, interrogating empty space with their long
+feathery plumes. Are these splendid plumes merely items of finery, or do
+they really play a part in the perception of the effluvia which guide
+the lover? It seemed easy, on the occasion I spoke of, to devise a
+conclusive experiment.
+
+On the morrow of the invasion I found in my study eight of my nocturnal
+visitors. They were perched, motionless, upon the cross-mouldings of the
+second window, which had remained closed. The others, having concluded
+their ballet by about ten o'clock at night, had left as they had
+entered, by the other window, which was left open night and day. These
+eight persevering lovers were just what I required for my experiment.
+
+With a sharp pair of scissors, and without otherwise touching the
+butterflies, I cut off their antennae near the base. The victims barely
+noticed the operation. None moved; there was scarcely a flutter of the
+wings. Their condition was excellent; the wound did not seem to be in
+the least serious. They were not perturbed by physical suffering, and
+would therefore be all the better adapted to my designs. They passed the
+rest of the day in placid immobility on the cross-bars of the window.
+
+A few other arrangements were still to be made. In particular it was
+necessary to change the scene; not to leave the female under the eyes of
+the mutilated butterflies at the moment of resuming their nocturnal
+flight; the difficulty of the search must not be lessened. I therefore
+removed the cage and its captive, and placed it under a porch on the
+other side of the house, at a distance of some fifty paces from my
+study.
+
+At nightfall I went for a last time to inspect my eight victims. Six had
+left by the open window; two still remained, but they had fallen on the
+floor, and no longer had the strength to recover themselves if turned
+over on their backs. They were exhausted, dying. Do not accuse my
+surgery, however. Such early decease was observed repeatedly, with no
+intervention on my part.
+
+Six, in better condition, had departed. Would they return to the call
+that attracted them the night before? Deprived of their antennae, would
+they be able to find the captive, now placed at a considerable distance
+from her original position?
+
+The cage was in darkness, almost in the open air. From time to time I
+visited it with a net and lantern. The visitors were captured,
+inspected, and immediately released in a neighbouring room, of which I
+closed the door. This gradual elimination allowed me to count the
+visitors exactly without danger of counting the same butterfly more than
+once. Moreover, the provisional prison, large and bare, in no wise
+harmed or endangered the prisoners; they found a quiet retreat there and
+ample space. Similar precautions were taken during the rest of my
+experiments.
+
+After half-past ten no more arrived. The reception was over. Total,
+twenty-five males captured, of which one only was deprived of its
+antennae. So of the six operated on earlier in the day, which were strong
+enough to leave my study and fly back to the fields, only one had
+returned to the cage. A poor result, in which I could place no
+confidence as proving whether the antennae did or did not play a
+directing part. It was necessary to begin again upon a larger scale.
+
+Next morning I visited the prisoners of the day before. What I saw was
+not encouraging. A large number were scattered on the ground, almost
+inert. Taken between the fingers, several of them gave scarcely a sign
+of life. Little was to be hoped from these, it would seem. Still, I
+determined to try; perhaps they would regain their vigour at the lover's
+hour.
+
+The twenty-four prisoners were all subjected to the amputation of their
+antennae. The one operated on the day before was put aside as dying or
+nearly so. Finally the door of the prison was left open for the rest of
+the day. Those might leave who could; those could join in the carnival
+who were able. In order to put those that might leave the room to the
+test of a search, the cage, which they must otherwise have encountered
+at the threshold, was again removed, and placed in a room of the
+opposite wing, on the ground floor. There was of course free access to
+this room.
+
+Of the twenty-four lacking their antennae sixteen only left the room.
+Eight were powerless to do so; they were dying. Of the sixteen, how many
+returned to the cage that night? Not one. My captives that night were
+only seven, all new-comers, all wearing antennae. This result seemed to
+prove that the amputation of the antennae was a matter of serious
+significance. But it would not do to conclude as yet: one doubt
+remained.
+
+"A fine state I am in! How shall I dare to appear before the other
+dogs?" said Mouflard, the puppy whose ears had been pitilessly docked.
+Had my butterflies apprehensions similar to Master Mouflard's? Deprived
+of their beautiful plumes, were they ashamed to appear in the midst of
+their rivals, and to prefer their suits? Was it confusion on their part,
+or want of guidance? Was it not rather exhaustion after an attempt
+exceeding the duration of an ephemeral passion? Experience would show
+me.
+
+On the fourth night I took fourteen new-comers and set them apart as
+they came in a room in which they spent the night. On the morrow,
+profiting by their diurnal immobility, I removed a little of the hair
+from the centre of the corselet or neck. This slight tonsure did not
+inconvenience the insects, so easily was the silky fur removed, nor did
+it deprive them of any organ which might later on be necessary in the
+search for the female. To them it was nothing; for me it was the
+unmistakable sign of a repeated visit.
+
+This time there were none incapable of flight. At night the fourteen
+shavelings escaped into the open air. The cage, of course, was again in
+a new place. In two hours I captured twenty butterflies, of whom two
+were tonsured; no more. As for those whose antennae I had amputated the
+night before, not one reappeared. Their nuptial period was over.
+
+Of fourteen marked by the tonsure two only returned. Why did the other
+twelve fail to appear, although furnished with their supposed guides,
+their antennae? To this I can see only one reply: that the Great Peacock
+is promptly exhausted by the ardours of the mating season.
+
+With a view to mating, the sole end of its life, the great moth is
+endowed with a marvellous prerogative. It has the power to discover the
+object of its desire in spite of distance, in spite of obstacles. A few
+hours, for two or three nights, are given to its search, its nuptial
+flights. If it cannot profit by them, all is ended; the compass fails,
+the lamp expires. What profit could life hold henceforth? Stoically the
+creature withdraws into a corner and sleeps the last sleep, the end of
+illusions and the end of suffering.
+
+The Great Peacock exists as a butterfly only to perpetuate itself. It
+knows nothing of food. While so many others, joyful banqueters, fly from
+flower to flower, unrolling their spiral trunks to plunge them into
+honeyed blossoms, this incomparable ascetic, completely freed from the
+servitude of the stomach, has no means of restoring its strength. Its
+buccal members are mere vestiges, useless simulacra, not real organs
+able to perform their duties. Not a sip of honey can ever enter its
+stomach; a magnificent prerogative, if it is not long enjoyed. If the
+lamp is to burn it must be filled with oil. The Great Peacock renounces
+the joys of the palate; but with them it surrenders long life. Two or
+three nights--just long enough to allow the couple to meet and mate--and
+all is over; the great butterfly is dead.
+
+What, then, is meant by the non-appearance of those whose antennae I
+removed? Did they prove that the lack of antennae rendered them incapable
+of finding the cage in which the prisoner waited? By no means. Like
+those marked with the tonsure, which had undergone no damaging
+operation, they proved only that their time was finished. Mutilated or
+intact, they could do no more on account of age, and their absence meant
+nothing. Owing to the delay inseparable from the experiment, the part
+played by the antennae escaped me. It was doubtful before; it remained
+doubtful.
+
+My prisoner under the wire-gauze cover lived for eight days. Every night
+she attracted a swarm of visitors, now to one part of the house, now to
+another. I caught them with the net and released them as soon as
+captured in a closed room, where they passed the night. On the next day
+they were marked, by means of a slight tonsure on the thorax.
+
+The total number of butterflies attracted on these eight nights amounted
+to a hundred and fifty; a stupendous number when I consider what
+searches I had to undertake during the two following years in order to
+collect the specimens necessary to the continuation of my investigation.
+Without being absolutely undiscoverable, in my immediate neighbourhood
+the cocoons of the Great Peacock are at least extremely rare, as the
+trees on which they are found are not common. For two winters I visited
+all the decrepit almond-trees at hand, inspected them all at the base of
+the trunk, under the jungle of stubborn grasses and undergrowth that
+surrounded them; and how often I returned with empty hands! Thus my
+hundred and fifty butterflies had come from some little distance;
+perhaps from a radius of a mile and a quarter or more. How did they
+learn of what was happening in my study?
+
+Three agents of information affect the senses at a distance: sight,
+sound, and smell. Can we speak of vision in this connection? Sight could
+very well guide the arrivals once they had entered the open window; but
+how could it help them out of doors, among unfamiliar surroundings? Even
+the fabulous eye of the lynx, which could see through walls, would not
+be sufficient; we should have to imagine a keenness of vision capable of
+annihilating leagues of space. It is needless to discuss the matter
+further; sight cannot be the guiding sense.
+
+Sound is equally out of the question. The big-bodied creature capable of
+calling her mates from such a distance is absolutely mute, even to the
+most sensitive ear. Does she perhaps emit vibrations of such delicacy or
+rapidity that only the most sensitive microphone could appreciate them?
+The idea is barely possible; but let us remember that the visitors must
+have been warned at distances of some thousands of yards. Under these
+conditions it is useless to think of acoustics.
+
+Smell remains. Scent, better than any other impression in the domain of
+our senses, would explain the invasion of butterflies, and their
+difficulty at the very last in immediately finding the object of their
+search. Are there effluvia analogous to what we call odour: effluvia of
+extreme subtlety, absolutely imperceptible to us, yet capable of
+stimulating a sense-organ far more sensitive than our own? A simple
+experiment suggested itself. I would mask these effluvia, stifle them
+under a powerful, tenacious odour, which would take complete possession
+of the sense-organ and neutralise the less powerful impression.
+
+I began by sprinkling naphthaline in the room intended for the reception
+of the males that evening. Beside the female, inside the wire-gauze
+cover, I placed a large capsule full of the same substance. When the
+hour of the nocturnal visit arrived I had only to stand at the door of
+the room to smell a smell as of a gas-works. Well, my artifice failed.
+The butterflies arrived as usual, entered the room, traversed its
+gas-laden atmosphere, and made for the wire-gauze cover with the same
+certainty as in a room full of fresh air.
+
+My confidence in the olfactory theory was shaken. Moreover, I could not
+continue my experiments. On the ninth day, exhausted by her fruitless
+period of waiting, the female died, having first deposited her barren
+eggs upon the woven wire of her cage. Lacking a female, nothing could be
+done until the following year.
+
+I determined next time to take suitable precautions and to make all
+preparations for repeating at will the experiments already made and
+others which I had in mind. I set to work at once, without delay.
+
+In the summer I began to buy caterpillars at a halfpenny apiece.
+
+The market was in the hands of some neighbouring urchins, my habitual
+providers. On Friday, free of the terrors of grammar, they scoured the
+fields, finding from time to time the Great Peacock caterpillar, and
+bringing it to me clinging to the end of a stick. They did not dare to
+touch it, poor little imps! They were thunderstruck at my audacity when
+I seized it in my fingers as they would the familiar silkworm.
+
+Reared upon twigs of the almond-tree, my menagerie soon provided me with
+magnificent cocoons. In winter assiduous search at the base of the
+native trees completed my collection. Friends interested in my
+researches came to my aid. Finally, after some trouble, what with an
+open market, commercial negotiations, and searching, at the cost of many
+scratches, in the undergrowth, I became the owner of an assortment of
+cocoons of which twelve, larger and heavier than the rest, announced
+that they were those of females.
+
+Disappointment awaited me. May arrived; a capricious month which set my
+preparations at naught, troublesome as these had been. Winter returned.
+The _mistral_ shrieked, tore the budding leaves of the plane-trees, and
+scattered them over the ground. It was cold as December. We had to
+light fires in the evening, and resume the heavy clothes we had begun to
+leave off.
+
+My butterflies were too sorely tried. They emerged late and were torpid.
+Around my cages, in which the females waited--to-day one, to-morrow
+another, according to the order of their birth--few males or none came
+from without. Yet there were some in the neighbourhood, for those with
+large antennae which issued from my collection of cocoons were placed in
+the garden directly they had emerged, and were recognised. Whether
+neighbours or strangers, very few came, and those without enthusiasm.
+For a moment they entered, then disappeared and did not reappear. The
+lovers were as cold as the season.
+
+Perhaps, too, the low temperature was unfavourable to the informing
+effluvia, which might well be increased by heat and lessened by cold as
+is the case with many odours. My year was lost. Research is
+disappointing work when the experimenter is the slave of the return and
+the caprices of a brief season of the year.
+
+For the third time I began again. I reared caterpillars; I scoured the
+country in search of cocoons. When May returned I was tolerably
+provided. The season was fine, responding to my hopes. I foresaw the
+affluence of butterflies which had so impressed me at the outset, when
+the famous invasion occurred which was the origin of my experiments.
+
+Every night, by squadrons of twelve, twenty, or more, the visitors
+appeared. The female, a strapping, big-bellied matron, clung to the
+woven wire of the cover. There was no movement on her part; not even a
+flutter of the wings. One would have thought her indifferent to all
+that occurred. No odour was emitted that was perceptible to the most
+sensitive nostrils of the household; no sound that the keenest ears of
+the household could perceive. Motionless, recollected, she waited.
+
+The males, by twos, by threes and more, fluttered upon the dome of the
+cover, scouring over it quickly in all directions, beating it
+continually with the ends of their wings. There were no conflicts
+between rivals. Each did his best to penetrate the enclosure, without
+betraying any sign of jealousy of the others. Tiring of their fruitless
+attempts, they would fly away and join the dance of the gyrating crowd.
+Some, in despair, would escape by the open window: new-comers would
+replace them: and until ten o'clock or thereabouts the wire dome of the
+cover would be the scene of continual attempts at approach, incessantly
+commencing, quickly wearying, quickly resumed.
+
+Every night the position of the cage was changed. I placed it north of
+the house and south; on the ground-floor and the first floor; in the
+right wing of the house, or fifty yards away in the left wing; in the
+open air, or hidden in some distant room. All these sudden removals,
+devised to put the seekers off the scent, troubled them not at all. My
+time and my pains were wasted, so far as deceiving them was concerned.
+
+The memory of places has no part in the finding of the female. For
+instance, the day before the cage was installed in a certain room. The
+males visited the room and fluttered about the cage for a couple of
+hours, and some even passed the night there. On the following day, at
+sunset, when I moved the cage, all were out of doors. Although their
+lives are so ephemeral, the youngest were ready to resume their
+nocturnal expeditions a second and even a third time. Where did they
+first go, these veterans of a day?
+
+They knew precisely where the cage had been the night before. One would
+have expected them to return to it, guided by memory; and that not
+finding it they would go out to continue their search elsewhere. No;
+contrary to my expectation, nothing of the kind appeared. None came to
+the spot which had been so crowded the night before; none paid even a
+passing visit. The room was recognised as an empty room, with no
+previous examination, such as would apparently be necessary to
+contradict the memory of the place. A more positive guide than memory
+called them elsewhere.
+
+Hitherto the female was always visible, behind the meshes of the
+wire-gauze cover. The visitors, seeing plainly in the dark night, must
+have been able to see her by the vague luminosity of what for us is the
+dark. What would happen if I imprisoned her in an opaque receptacle?
+Would not such a receptacle arrest or set free the informing effluvia
+according to its nature?
+
+Practical physics has given us wireless telegraphy by means of the
+Hertzian vibrations of the ether. Had the Great Peacock butterfly
+outstripped and anticipated mankind in this direction? In order to
+disturb the whole surrounding neighbourhood, to warn pretenders at a
+distance of a mile or more, does the newly emerged female make use of
+electric or magnetic waves, known or unknown, that a screen of one
+material would arrest while another would allow them to pass? In a word,
+does she, after her fashion, employ a system of wireless telegraphy? I
+see nothing impossible in this; insects are responsible for many
+inventions equally marvellous.
+
+Accordingly I lodged the female in boxes of various materials; boxes of
+tin-plate, wood, and cardboard. All were hermetically closed, even
+sealed with a greasy paste. I also used a glass bell resting upon a
+base-plate of glass.
+
+Under these conditions not a male arrived; not one, though the warmth
+and quiet of the evening were propitious. Whatever its nature, whether
+of glass, metal, card, or wood, the closed receptacle was evidently an
+insuperable obstacle to the warning effluvia.
+
+A layer of cotton-wool two fingers in thickness had the same result. I
+placed the female in a large glass jar, and laced a piece of thin cotton
+batting over the mouth for a cover; this again guarded the secret of my
+laboratory. Not a male appeared.
+
+But when I placed the females in boxes which were imperfectly closed, or
+which had chinks in their sides, or even hid them in a drawer or a
+cupboard, I found the males arrived in numbers as great as when the
+object of their search lay in the cage of open wire-work freely exposed
+on a table. I have a vivid memory of one evening when the recluse was
+hidden in a hat-box at the bottom of a wall-cupboard. The arrivals went
+straight to the closed doors, and beat them with their wings, _toc-toc_,
+trying to enter. Wandering pilgrims, come from I know not where, across
+fields and meadows, they knew perfectly what was behind the doors of the
+cupboard.
+
+So we must abandon the idea that the butterfly has any means of
+communication comparable to our wireless telegraphy, as any kind of
+screen, whether a good or a bad conductor, completely stops the signals
+of the female. To give them free passage and allow them to penetrate to
+a distance one condition is indispensable: the enclosure in which the
+captive is confined must not be hermetically sealed; there must be a
+communication between it and the outer air. This again points to the
+probability of an odour, although this is contradicted by my experiment
+with the naphthaline.
+
+My cocoons were all hatched, and the problem was still obscure. Should I
+begin all over again in the fourth year? I did not do so, for the reason
+that it is difficult to observe a nocturnal butterfly if one wishes to
+follow it in all its intimate actions. The lover needs no light to
+attain his ends; but my imperfect human vision cannot penetrate the
+darkness. I should require a candle at least, and a candle would be
+constantly extinguished by the revolving swarm. A lantern would obviate
+these eclipses, but its doubtful light, interspersed with heavy shadows,
+by no means commends it to the scruples of an observer, who must see,
+and see well.
+
+Moreover, the light of a lamp diverts the butterflies from their object,
+distracts them from their affairs, and seriously compromises the success
+of the observer. The moment they enter, they rush frantically at the
+flame, singe their down, and thereupon, terrified by the heat, are of no
+profit to the observer. If, instead of being roasted, they are held at a
+distance by an envelope of glass, they press as closely as they can to
+the flame, and remain motionless, hypnotised.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH. THE PILGRIMS DIVERTED BY THE
+LIGHT OF A LAMP.]
+
+One night, the female being in the dining-room, on the table, facing the
+open window, a petroleum lamp, furnished with a large reflector in
+opaline glass, was hanging from the ceiling. The arrivals alighted on
+the dome of the wire-gauze cover, crowding eagerly about the
+prisoner; others, saluting her in passing, flew to the lamp, circled
+round it a few times, and then, fascinated by the luminous splendour
+radiating from the opal cone of light, clung there motionless under the
+reflector. Already the children were raising their hands to seize them.
+"Leave them," I said, "leave them. Let us be hospitable: do not disturb
+the pilgrims who have come to the tabernacle of the light."
+
+During the whole evening not one of them moved. Next day they were still
+there. The intoxication of the light had made them forget the
+intoxication of love.
+
+With creatures so madly in love with the light precise and prolonged
+experimentation is impracticable the moment the observer requires
+artificial light. I renounced the Great Peacock and its nocturnal
+habits. I required a butterfly with different habits; equally notable as
+a lover, but seeking out the beloved by day.
+
+Before going on to speak of my experiments with a subject fulfilling
+these conditions, let me break the chronological order of my record in
+order to say a few words concerning another insect, which appeared after
+I had completed these inquiries. I refer to the Lesser Peacock (_Attacus
+pavonia minor_, Lin.).
+
+Some one brought me, from what locality I do not know, a superb cocoon
+enveloped in an ample wrapping of white silk. From this covering, which
+lay in large irregular folds, the chrysalis was easily detached; in
+shape like that of the Great Peacock, but considerably less in size. The
+anterior extremity, which is defended by an arrangement of fine twigs,
+converging, and free at the converging ends, forming a device not unlike
+an eel-pot, which presents access to the chrysalis while allowing the
+butterfly to emerge without breaking the defence, indicated a relative
+of the great nocturnal butterfly; the silk-work denoted a spinning
+caterpillar.
+
+Towards the end of March this curious cocoon yielded up a female of the
+Lesser Peacock, which was immediately sequestered under a wire-gauze
+cover in my study. I opened the window to allow news of the event to
+reach the surrounding country, and left it open so that such visitors as
+presented themselves should find free access to the cage. The captive
+clung to the wire gauze and did not move for a week.
+
+She was a superb creature, this prisoner of mine, with her suit of brown
+velvet, crossed by undulating lines. The neck was surrounded by white
+fur; there was a carmine spot at the extremity of the upper wings, and
+four great eyes in which were grouped, in concentric crescents, black,
+white, red, and yellow ochre: almost the colouring of the Great Peacock,
+but more vivid. Three or four times in my life I had encountered this
+butterfly, so remarkable for its size and its costume. The cocoon I had
+recently seen for the first time; the male I had never seen. I only knew
+that, according to the books, it was half the size of the female, and
+less vividly coloured, with orange-yellow on the lower wings.
+
+Would he appear, the elegant unknown, with waving plumes; the butterfly
+I had never yet seen, so rare does the Lesser Peacock seem to be in our
+country? Would he, in some distant hedge, receive warning of the bride
+who waited on my study table? I dared to hope it, and I was right. He
+arrived even sooner than I had hoped.
+
+Noon struck as we were sitting down to table, when little Paul, delayed
+by his absorption in the expected event, suddenly ran to rejoin us, his
+cheeks glowing. Between his fingers we saw the fluttering wings of a
+handsome butterfly, caught but a moment before, while it was hovering in
+front of my study. He showed it me, questioning me with his eyes.
+
+"Aha!" I cried, "this is precisely the pilgrim we are waiting for. Fold
+your napkin and come and see what happens. We will dine later."
+
+Dinner was forgotten before the marvels that came to pass. With
+inconceivable punctuality the butterflies hastened to meet the magical
+call of the captive. With tortuous flight they arrived one by one. All
+came from the north. This detail is significant. A week earlier there
+had been a savage return of the winter. The _bise_ blew tempestuously,
+killing the early almond blossom. It was one of those ferocious storms
+which in the South commonly serve as a prelude to the spring. But the
+temperature had now suddenly softened, although the wind still blew from
+the north.
+
+Now on this first occasion all the butterflies hastening to the prisoner
+entered the garden from the north. They followed the direction of the
+wind; not one flew against it. If their guide was a sense of smell like
+ours, if they were guided by fragrant atoms suspended in the air, they
+should have arrived in the opposite direction. Coming from the south, we
+might believe them to be warned by effluvia carried on the wind; coming
+from the north in time of _mistral_, that resistless sweeper of earth
+and air, how can we suppose that they had perceived, at a remote
+distance, what we will call an odour? The idea of a flow of odoriferous
+atoms in a direction contrary to that of the aerial torrent seems to me
+inadmissible.
+
+For two hours, under a radiant sun, the visitors came and went before
+the outer wall of the study. Most of them sought for a long time,
+exploring the wall, flying on a level with the ground. To see them thus
+hesitating you would say that they were puzzled to find the exact
+position of the lure which called them. Although they had come from such
+a distance without a mistake, they seemed imperfectly informed once they
+were on the spot. Nevertheless, sooner or later they entered the room
+and saluted the captive, without showing any great ardour. At two
+o'clock all was over. Ten butterflies had arrived.
+
+During the whole week, and always about noon, at the hour of the
+brightest sunlight, the butterflies arrived, but in decreasing numbers.
+The total approached forty. I thought it useless to repeat experiments
+which would add nothing to what I had already learned. I will confine
+myself to stating two facts. In the first place, the Lesser Peacock is
+diurnal; that is to say, it celebrates its mating under the dazzling
+brilliance of noon. It needs the full force of the sunlight. The Great
+Peacock, on the contrary, which it so closely resembles both in its
+adult form and the work of its caterpillar, requires the darkness of the
+first hours of the night. Who can explain this strange contrast in
+habits?
+
+In the second place, a powerful current of air, sweeping away in a
+contrary direction all particles that might inform the sense of smell,
+does not prevent the butterflies from arriving from a direction opposite
+to that taken by the effluvial stream, as we understand such matters.
+
+To continue: I needed a diurnal moth or butterfly: not the Lesser
+Peacock, which came too late, when I had nothing to ask of it, but
+another, no matter what, provided it was a prompt guest at the wedding
+feast. Was I to find such an insect?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE OAK EGGAR, OR BANDED MONK
+
+
+Yes: I was to find it. I even had it already in my possession. An urchin
+of seven years, with an alert countenance, not washed every day, bare
+feet, and dilapidated breeches supported by a piece of string, who
+frequented the house as a dealer in turnips and tomatoes, arrived one
+day with his basket of vegetables. Having received the few halfpence
+expected by his mother as the price of the garden-stuff, and having
+counted them one by one into the hollow of his hand, he took from his
+pocket an object which he had discovered the day before beneath a hedge
+when gathering greenstuff for his rabbits.
+
+"And this--will you have this?" he said, handing me the object. "Why,
+certainly I will have it. Try to find me more, as many as you can, and
+on Sunday you shall have lots of rides on the wooden horses. In the
+meantime here is a penny for you. Don't forget it when you make up your
+accounts; don't mix it with your turnip-money; put it by itself."
+Beaming with satisfaction at such wealth, little touzle-head promised to
+search industriously, already foreseeing a fortune.
+
+When he had gone I examined the thing. It was worth examination. It was
+a fine cocoon, thick and with blunt ends, very like a silkworm's cocoon,
+firm to the touch and of a tawny colour. A brief reference to the
+text-books almost convinced me that this was a cocoon of the _Bombyx
+quercus_.[4] If so, what a find! I could continue my inquiry and perhaps
+confirm what my study of the Great Peacock had made me suspect.
+
+The Bombyx of the oak-tree is, in fact, a classic moth; indeed, there is
+no entomological text-book but speaks of its exploits at mating-time. It
+is said that a female emerged from the pupa in captivity, in the
+interior of an apartment, and even in a closed box. It was far from the
+country, amidst the tumult of a large city. Nevertheless, the event was
+known to those concerned in the woods and meadows. Guided by some
+mysterious compass, the males arrived, hastening from the distant
+fields; they went to the box, fluttered against it, and flew to and fro
+in the room.
+
+These marvels I had learned by reading; but to see such a thing with
+one's own eyes, and at the same time to devise experiments, is quite
+another thing. What had my penny bargain in store for me? Would the
+famous Bombyx issue from it?
+
+Let us call it by its other name, the Banded Monk. This original name of
+Monk was suggested by the costume of the male; a monk's robe of a modest
+rusty red. But in the case of the female the brown fustian gives place
+to a beautiful velvet, with a pale transversal band and little white
+eyes on the fore pair of wings.
+
+The Monk is not a common butterfly which can be caught by any one who
+takes out a net at the proper season. I have never seen it around our
+village or in the solitude of my grounds during a residence of twenty
+years. It is true that I am not a fervent butterfly-catcher; the dead
+insect of the collector's cabinet has little interest for me; I must
+have it living, in the exercise of its functions. But although I have
+not the collector's zeal I have an attentive eye to all that flies or
+crawls in the fields. A butterfly so remarkable for its size and
+colouring would never have escaped my notice had I encountered it.
+
+The little searcher whom I had enticed by a promise of rides upon wooden
+horses never made a second find. For three years I requisitioned friends
+and neighbours, and especially their children, sharp-sighted snappers-up
+of trifles; I myself hunted often under heaps of withered leaves; I
+inspected stone-heaps and visited hollow tree-trunks. Useless pains; the
+precious cocoon was not to be found. It is enough to say that the Banded
+Monk is extremely rare in my neighbourhood. The importance of this fact
+will presently appear.
+
+As I suspected, my cocoon was truly that of the celebrated Oak Eggar. On
+the 20th of August a female emerged from it: corpulent, big-bellied,
+coloured like the male, but lighter in hue. I placed her under the usual
+wire cover in the centre of my laboratory table, littered as it was with
+books, bottles, trays, boxes, test-tubes, and other apparatus. I have
+explained the situation in speaking of the Great Peacock. Two windows
+light the room, both opening on the garden. One was closed, the other
+open day and night. The butterfly was placed in the shade, between the
+lines of the two windows, at a distance of 12 or 15 feet.
+
+The rest of that day and the next went by without any occurrence worthy
+of notice. Hanging by the feet to the front of the wire cover, on the
+side nearest to the light, the prisoner was motionless, inert. There was
+no oscillation of the wings, no tremor of the antennae, the female of the
+Great Peacock behaved in a similar fashion.
+
+The female Bombyx gradually matured, her tender tissues gradually
+becoming firmer. By some process of which our scientists have not the
+least idea she elaborated a mysterious lure which would bring her lovers
+from the four corners of the sky. What was happening in this big-bellied
+body; what transmutations were accomplished, thus to affect the whole
+countryside?
+
+On the third day the bride was ready. The festival opened brilliantly. I
+was in the garden, already despairing of success, for the days were
+passing and nothing had occurred, when towards three in the afternoon,
+the weather being very hot and the sun radiant, I perceived a crowd of
+butterflies gyrating in the embrasure of the open window.
+
+The lovers had at last come to visit their lady. Some were emerging from
+the room, others were entering it; others, clinging to the wall of the
+house, were resting as though exhausted by a long journey. I could see
+others approaching in the distance, flying over the walls, over the
+screens of cypress. They came from all directions, but at last with
+decreasing frequency. I had missed the opening of the convocation, and
+now the gathering was almost complete.
+
+I went indoors and upstairs. This time, in full daylight and without
+losing a detail, I witnessed once more the astonishing spectacle to
+which the great nocturnal butterfly had first introduced me. The study
+contained a cloud of males, which I estimated, at a glance, as being
+about sixty in number, so far as the movement and confusion allowed me
+to count them at all. After circling a few times over the cage many of
+them went to the open window, but returned immediately to recommence
+their evolutions. The most eager alighted on the cover, trampling on one
+another, jostling one another, trying to get the best places. On the
+other side of the barrier the captive, her great body hanging against
+the wire, waited immovable. She betrayed not a sign of emotion in the
+face of this turbulent swarm.
+
+Going and entering, perched on the cover or fluttering round the room,
+for more than three hours they continued their frenzied saraband. But
+the sun was sinking, and the temperature was slowly falling. The ardour
+of the butterflies also cooled. Many went out not to return. Others took
+up their positions to wait for the gaieties of the following day; they
+clung to the cross-bars of the closed window as the males of the Great
+Peacock had done. The rejoicings were over for the day. They would
+certainly be renewed on the morrow, since the courtship was without
+result on account of the barrier of the wire-gauze cover.
+
+But, alas I to my great disappointment, they were not resumed, and the
+fault was mine. Late in the day a Praying Mantis was brought to me,
+which merited attention on account of its exceptionally small size.
+Preoccupied with the events of the afternoon, and absent-minded, I
+hastily placed the predatory insect under the same cover as the moth.
+It did not occur to me for a moment that this cohabitation could lead to
+any harm. The Mantis was so slender, and the other so corpulent!
+
+Alas! I little knew the fury of carnage animating the creature that
+wielded those tiny grappling-irons! Next morning I met with a
+disagreeable surprise: I found the little Mantis devouring the great
+moth. The head and the fore part of the thorax had already disappeared.
+Horrible creature! at what an evil hour you came to me! Goodbye to my
+researches, the plans which I had caressed all night in my imagination!
+For three years for lack of a subject, I was unable to resume them.
+
+Bad luck, however, was not to make me forget the little I had learned.
+On one single occasion about sixty males had arrived. Considering the
+rarity of the Oak Eggar, and remembering the years of fruitless search
+on the part of my helpers and myself, this number was no less than
+stupefying. The undiscoverable had suddenly become multitudinous at the
+call of the female.
+
+Whence did they come? From all sides, and undoubtedly from considerable
+distances. During my prolonged searches every bush and thicket and heap
+of stones in my neighbourhood had become familiar to me, and I can
+assert that the Oak Eggar was not to be found there. For such a swarm to
+collect as I found in my laboratory the moths must have come from all
+directions, from the whole district, and within a radius that I dare not
+guess at.
+
+Three years went by and by chance two more cocoons of the Monk or Oak
+Eggar again fell into my hands. Both produced females, at an interval of
+a few days towards the middle of August; so that I was able to vary and
+repeat my experiments.
+
+I rapidly repeated the experiments which had given me such positive
+results in the instance of the Great Peacock moth. The pilgrims of the
+day were no less skilful at finding their mates than the pilgrims of the
+night. They laughed at all my tricks. Infallibly they found the
+prisoners in their wire-gauze prisons, no matter in what part of the
+house they were placed; they discovered them in the depths of a
+wall-cupboard; they divined the secret of all manner of boxes, provided
+these were not rigorously air-tight. They came no longer when the box
+was hermetically sealed. So far this was only a repetition of the feats
+of the Great Peacock.
+
+A box perfectly closed, so that the air contained therein had no
+communication with the external atmosphere, left the male in complete
+ignorance of the recluse. Not a single one arrived, even when the box
+was exposed and plain to see on the window-sill. Thus the idea of
+strongly scented effluvia, which are cut off by screens of wood, metal,
+card, glass, or what not, returns with double force.
+
+I have shown that the great nocturnal moth was not thrown off the scent
+by the powerful odour of naphthaline, which I thought would mask the
+extra-subtle emanations of the female, which were imperceptible to human
+olfactory organs. I repeated the experiment with the Oak Eggar. This
+time I used all the resources of scent and stench that my knowledge of
+drugs would permit.
+
+A dozen saucers were arranged, some in the interior of the wire-gauze
+cover, the prison of the female, and some around it, in an unbroken
+circle. Some contained naphthaline; others the essential oil of
+spike-lavender; others petroleum, and others a solution of alkaline
+sulphur giving off a stench of rotten eggs. Short of asphyxiating the
+prisoner I could do no more. These arrangements were made in the
+morning, so that the room should be saturated when the congregation of
+lovers should arrive.
+
+In the afternoon the laboratory was filled with the most abominable
+stench, in which the penetrating aroma of spike-lavender and the stink
+of sulphuretted hydrogen were predominant. I must add that tobacco was
+habitually smoked in this room, and in abundance. The concerted odours
+of a gas-works, a smoking-room, a perfumery, a petroleum well, and a
+chemical factory--would they succeed in confusing the male moths?
+
+By no means. About three o'clock the moths arrived in as great numbers
+as usual. They went straight to the cage, which I had covered with a
+thick cloth in order to add to their difficulties. Seeing nothing when
+once they had entered, and immersed in an extraordinary atmosphere in
+which any subtle fragrance should have been annihilated, they
+nevertheless made straight for the prisoner, and attempted to reach her
+by burrowing under the linen cloth. My artifice had no result.
+
+After this set-back, so obvious in its consequences, which only repeated
+the lesson of the experiments made with naphthaline when my subject was
+the Great Peacock, I ought logically to have abandoned the theory that
+the moths are guided to their wedding festivities by means of strongly
+scented effluvia. That I did not do so was due to a fortuitous
+observation. Chance often has a surprise in store which sets us on the
+right road when we have been seeking it in vain.
+
+One afternoon, while trying to determine whether sight plays any part in
+the search for the female once the males had entered the room, I placed
+the female in a bell-glass and gave her a slender twig of oak with
+withered leaves as a support. The glass was set upon a table facing the
+open window. Upon entering the room the moths could not fail to see the
+prisoner, as she stood directly in the way. The tray, containing a layer
+of sand, on which the female had passed the preceding day and night,
+covered with a wire-gauze dish-cover, was in my way. Without
+premeditation I placed it at the other end of the room on the floor, in
+a corner where there was but little light. It was a dozen yards away
+from the window.
+
+The result of these preparations entirely upset my preconceived ideas.
+None of the arrivals stopped at the bell-glass, where the female was
+plainly to be seen, the light falling full upon her prison. Not a
+glance, not an inquiry. They all flew to the further end of the room,
+into the dark corner where I had placed the tray and the empty
+dish-cover.
+
+They alighted on the wire dome, explored it persistently, beating their
+wings and jostling one another. All the afternoon, until sunset, the
+moths danced about the empty cage the same saraband that the actual
+presence of the female had previously evoked. Finally they departed: not
+all, for there were some that would not go, held by some magical
+attractive force.
+
+Truly a strange result! The moths collected where there was apparently
+nothing to attract them, and remained there, unpersuaded by the sense of
+sight; they passed the bell-glass actually containing the female without
+halting for a moment, although she must have been seen by many of the
+moths both going and coming. Maddened by a lure, they paid no attention
+to the reality.
+
+What was the lure that so deceived them? All the preceding night and all
+the morning the female had remained under the wire-gauze cover;
+sometimes clinging to the wire-work, sometimes resting on the sand in
+the tray. Whatever she touched--above all, apparently, with her
+distended abdomen--was impregnated, as a result of long contact, with a
+certain emanation. This was her lure, her love-philtre; this it was that
+revolutionised the Oak Eggar world. The sand retained it for some time
+and diffused the effluvium in turn.
+
+They passed by the glass prison in which the female was then confined
+and hastened to the meshes of wire and the sand on which the magic
+philtre had been poured; they crowded round the deserted chamber where
+nothing of the magician remained but the odorous testimony of her
+sojourn.
+
+The irresistible philtre requires time for its elaboration. I conceive
+of it as an exhalation which is given off during courtship and gradually
+saturates whatever is in contact with the motionless body of the female.
+If the bell-glass was placed directly on the table, or, still better, on
+a square of glass, the communication between the inside and the outside
+was insufficient, and the males, perceiving no odour, did not arrive so
+long as that condition of things obtained. It was plain that this
+failure of transmission was not due to the action of the glass as a
+screen simply, for if I established a free communication between the
+interior of the bell-glass and the open air by supporting it on three
+small blocks, the moths did not collect round it at once, although there
+were plenty in the room; but in the course of half an hour or so the
+feminine alembic began to operate, and the visitors crowded round the
+bell-glass as usual.
+
+In possession of these data and this unexpected enlightenment I varied
+the experiments, but all pointed to the same conclusion. In the morning
+I established the female under the usual wire-gauze cover. For support I
+gave her a little twig of oak as before. There, motionless as if dead,
+she crouched for hours, half buried in the dry leaves, which would thus
+become impregnated with her emanations.
+
+When the hour of the daily visits drew near I removed the twig, which
+was by then thoroughly saturated with the emanations, and laid it on a
+chair not far from the open window. On the other hand I left the female
+under the cover, plainly exposed on the table in the middle of the room.
+
+The moths arrived as usual: first one, then two, then three, and
+presently five and six. They entered, flew out again, re-entered,
+mounted, descended, came and went, always in the neighbourhood of the
+window, not far from which was the chair on which the twig lay. None
+made for the large table, on which, a few steps further from the window,
+the female awaited them in the wire-gauze cover. They hesitated, that
+was plain; they were still seeking.
+
+Finally they found. And what did they find? Simply the twig, which that
+morning had served the ample matron as bed. Their wings rapidly
+fluttering, they alighted on the foliage; they explored it over and
+under, probed it, raised it, and displaced it so that the twig finally
+fell to the floor. None the less they continued to probe between the
+leaves. Under the buffets and the draught of their wings and the
+clutches of their eager feet the little bundle of leaves ran along the
+floor like a scrap of paper patted by the paws of a cat.
+
+While the twig was sliding away with its band of investigators two new
+arrivals appeared. The chair lay in their path. They stopped at it and
+searched eagerly at the very spot on which the twig had been lying. But
+with these, as with the others, the real object of their desires was
+there, close by, under a wire cover which was not even veiled. None took
+any note of it. On the floor, a handful of butterflies were still
+hustling the bunch of leaves on which the female had reposed that
+morning; others, on the chair, were still examining the spot where the
+twig had lain. The sun sank, and the hour of departure struck. Moreover,
+the emanations were growing feebler, were evaporating. Without more ado
+the visitors left. We bade them goodbye till the morrow.
+
+The following tests showed me that the leaf-covered twig which
+accidentally enlightened me might be replaced by any other substance.
+Some time before the visitors were expected I placed the female on a bed
+of cloth or flannel, card or paper. I even subjected her to the rigours
+of a camp-bed of wood, glass, marble, and metal. All these objects,
+after a contact of sufficient duration, had the same attraction for the
+males as the female moth herself. They retained this property for a
+longer or shorter time, according to their nature. Cardboard, flannel,
+dust, sand, and porous objects retained it longest. Metals, marble, and
+glass, on the contrary, quickly lost their efficacy. Finally, anything
+on which the female had rested communicated its virtues by contact;
+witness the butterflies crowding on the straw-bottomed chair after the
+twig fell to the ground.
+
+Using one of the most favourable materials--flannel, for example--I
+witnessed a curious sight. I placed a morsel of flannel on which the
+mother moth had been lying all the morning at the bottom of a long
+test-tube or narrow-necked bottle, just permitting of the passage of a
+male moth. The visitors entered the vessels, struggled, and did not know
+how to extricate themselves. I had devised a trap by means of which I
+could exterminate the tribe. Delivering the prisoners, and removing the
+flannel, which I placed in a perfectly closed box, I found that they
+re-entered the trap; attracted by the effluvia that the flannel had
+communicated to the glass.
+
+I was now convinced. To call the moths of the countryside to the
+wedding-feast, to warn them at a distance and to guide them the nubile
+female emits an odour of extreme subtlety, imperceptible to our own
+olfactory sense-organs. Even with their noses touching the moth, none of
+my household has been able to perceive the faintest odour; not even the
+youngest, whose sensibility is as yet unvitiated.
+
+This scent readily impregnates any object on which the female rests for
+any length of time, when this object becomes a centre of attraction as
+active as the moth herself until the effluvium is evaporated.
+
+Nothing visible betrays the lure. On a sheet of paper, a recent
+resting-place, around which the visitors had crowded, there was no
+visible trace, no moisture; the surface was as clean as before the
+impregnation.
+
+The product is elaborated slowly, and must accumulate a little before it
+reveals its full power. Taken from her couch and placed elsewhere the
+female loses her attractiveness for the moment and is an object of
+indifference; it is to the resting-place, saturated by long contact,
+that the arrivals fly. But the female soon regains her power.
+
+The emission of the warning effluvium is more or less delayed according
+to the species. The recently metamorphosed female must mature a little
+and her organs must settle to their work. Born in the morning, the
+female of the Great Peacock moth sometimes has visitors the night of the
+same day; but more often on the second day, after a preparation of forty
+hours or so. The Oak Eggar does not publish her banns of marriage before
+the third or fourth day.
+
+Let us return for a moment to the problematical function of the antennae.
+The male Oak Eggar has a sumptuous pair, as has the Great Peacock or
+Emperor Moth. Are we to regard these silky "feelers" as a kind of
+directing compass?--I resumed, but without attaching much importance to
+the matter, my previous experiment of amputation. None of those operated
+on returned. Do not let us draw conclusions from that fact alone. We saw
+in the case of the Great Peacock that more serious reasons than the
+truncation of the antennae made return as a rule impossible.
+
+Moreover, a second Bombyx or Eggar, the Clover Moth, very like the Oak
+Eggar, and like it superbly plumed, poses us a very difficult problem.
+It is fairly abundant around my home; even in the orchard I find its
+cocoon, which is easily confounded with that of the Oak Eggar. I was at
+first deceived by the resemblance. From six cocoons, which I expected to
+yield Oak Eggars, I obtained, about the end of August, six females of
+the other species. Well: about these six females, born in my house,
+never a male appeared, although they were undoubtedly present in the
+neighbourhood.
+
+If the ample and feathery antennae are truly sense-organs, which receive
+information of distant objects, why were not my richly plumed neighbours
+aware of what was passing in my study? Why did their feathery "feelers"
+leave them in ignorance of events which would have brought flocks of the
+other Eggar? Once more, the organ does not determine the aptitude. One
+individual or species is gifted, but another is not, despite an organic
+equality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A TRUFFLE-HUNTER: THE _BOLBOCERAS GALLICUS_
+
+
+In the matter of physics we hear of nothing to-day but the Roentgen rays,
+which penetrate opaque bodies and photograph the invisible. A splendid
+discovery; but nothing very remarkable as compared with the surprises
+reserved for us by the future, when, better instructed as to the why and
+wherefore of things than now, and supplementing our feeble senses by
+means of science, we shall succeed in rivalling, however imperfectly,
+the sensorial acuteness of the lower animals.
+
+How enviable, in how many cases, is the superiority of the beasts! It
+makes us realise the insufficiency of our impressions, and the very
+indifferent efficacy of our sense-organs; it proclaims realities which
+amaze us, so far are they beyond our own attributes.
+
+A miserable caterpillar, the Processional caterpillar, found on the
+pine-tree, has its back covered with meteorological spiracles which
+sense the coming weather and foretell the storm; the bird of prey, that
+incomparable watchman, sees the fallen mule from the heights of the
+clouds; the blind bats guided their flight without collision through the
+inextricable labyrinth of threads devised by Spallanzani; the carrier
+pigeon, at a hundred leagues from home, infallibly regains its loft
+across immensities which it has never known; and within the limits of
+its more modest powers a bee, the Chalicodoma, also adventures into the
+unknown, accomplishing its long journey and returning to its group of
+cells.
+
+Those who have never seen a dog seeking truffles have missed one of the
+finest achievements of the olfactory sense. Absorbed in his duties, the
+animal goes forward, scenting the wind, at a moderate pace. He stops,
+questions the soil with his nostrils, and, without excitement, scratches
+the earth a few times with one paw. "There it is, master!" his eyes seem
+to say: "there it is! On the faith of a dog, there are truffles here!"
+
+He says truly. The master digs at the point indicated. If the spade goes
+astray the dog corrects the digger, sniffing at the bottom of the hole.
+Have no fear that stones and roots will confuse him; in spite of depth
+and obstacles, the truffle will be found. A dog's nose cannot lie.
+
+I have referred to the dog's speciality as a subtle sense of smell. That
+is certainly what I mean, if you will understand by that that the nasal
+passages of the animal are the seat of the perceptive organ; but is the
+thing perceived always a simple smell in the vulgar acceptation of the
+term--an effluvium such as our own senses perceive? I have certain
+reasons for doubting this, which I will proceed to relate.
+
+On various occasions I have had the good fortune to accompany a
+truffle-dog of first-class capacities on his rounds. Certainly there was
+not much outside show about him, this artist that I so desired to see at
+work; a dog of doubtful breed, placid and meditative; uncouth,
+ungroomed, and quite inadmissible to the intimacies of the hearthrug.
+Talent and poverty are often mated.
+
+His master, a celebrated _rabassier_[5] of the village, being convinced
+that my object was not to steal his professional secrets, and so sooner
+or later to set up in business as a competitor, admitted me of his
+company, a favour of which he was not prodigal. From the moment of his
+regarding me not as an apprentice, but merely as a curious spectator,
+who drew and wrote about subterranean vegetable affairs, but had no wish
+to carry to market my bagful of these glories of the Christmas goose,
+the excellent man lent himself generously to my designs.
+
+It was agreed between us that the dog should act according to his own
+instincts, receiving the customary reward, after each discovery, no
+matter what its size, of a crust of bread the size of a finger-nail.
+Every spot scratched by his paw should be excavated, and the object
+indicated was to be extracted without reference to its marketable value.
+In no case was the experience of the master to intervene in order to
+divert the dog from a spot where the general aspect of things indicated
+that no commercial results need be expected, for I was more concerned
+with the miserable specimens unfit for the market than with the choice
+specimens, though of course the latter were welcomed.
+
+Thus conducted, this subterranean botanising was extremely fruitful.
+With that perspicacious nose of his the dog obtained for me both large
+and small, fresh and putrid, odorous and inodorous, fragrant and
+offensive. I was amazed at my collection, which comprised the greater
+number of the hypogenous fungi of the neighbourhood.
+
+What a variety of structure, and above all of odour, the primordial
+quality in this question of scent! There were some that had no
+appreciable scent beyond a vague fungoid flavour, more or less common to
+all. Others smelt of turnips, of sour cabbage; some were fetid,
+sufficiently so to make the house of the collector noisome. Only the
+true truffle possessed the aroma dear to epicures. If odour, as we
+understand it, is the dog's only guide, how does he manage to follow
+that guide amidst all these totally different odours? Is he warned of
+the contents of the subsoil by a general emanation, by that fungoid
+effluvium common to all the species? Thus a somewhat embarrassing
+question arises.
+
+I paid special attention to the ordinary toadstools and mushrooms, which
+announced their near advent by cracking the surface of the soil. Now
+these points, where my eyes divined the cryptogam pushing back the soil
+with its button-like heads, these points, where the ordinary fungoid
+odour was certainly very pronounced, were never selected by the dog. He
+passed them disdainfully, without a sniff, without a stroke of the paw.
+Yet the fungi were underground, and their odour was similar to that I
+have already referred to.
+
+I came back from my outings with the conviction that the truffle-finding
+nose has some better guide than odour such as we with our sense-organs
+conceive it. It must perceive effluvia of another order as well;
+entirely mysterious to us, and therefore not utilised. Light has its
+dark rays--rays without effect upon our retinas, but not apparently on
+all. Why should not the domain of smell have its secret emanations,
+unknown to our senses and perceptible to a different sense-organ?
+
+If the scent of the dog leaves us perplexed in the sense that we cannot
+possibly say precisely, cannot even suspect what it is that the dog
+perceives, at least it is clear that it would be erroneous to refer
+everything to human standards. The world of sensations is far larger
+than the limits of our own sensibility. What numbers of facts relating
+to the interplay of natural forces must escape us for want of
+sufficiently sensitive organs!
+
+The unknown--that inexhaustible field in which the men of the future
+will try their strength--has harvests in store for us beside which our
+present knowledge would show as no more than a wretched gleaning. Under
+the sickle of science will one day fall the sheaves whose grain would
+appear to-day as senseless paradoxes. Scientific dreams? No, if you
+please, but undeniable positive realities, affirmed by the brute
+creation, which in certain respects has so great an advantage over us.
+
+Despite his long practice of his calling, despite the scent of the
+object he was seeking, the _rabassier_ could not divine the presence of
+the truffle, which ripens in winter under the soil, at a depth of a foot
+or two; he must have the help of a dog or a pig, whose scent is able to
+discover the secrets of the soil. These secrets are known to various
+insects even better than to our two auxiliaries. They have in
+exceptional perfection the power of discovering the tubers on which
+their larvae are nourished.
+
+From truffles dug up in a spoiled condition, peopled with vermin, and
+placed in that condition, with a bed of fresh sand, in a glass jar, I
+have in the past obtained a small red beetle, known as the
+truffle-beetle (_Anisotoma cinnamomea_, Panz.), and various Diptera,
+among which is a Sapromyzon which, by its sluggish flight and its
+fragile form, recalls the _Scatophaga scybalaria_, the yellow velvety
+fly which is found in human excrement in the autumn. The latter finds
+its refuge on the surface of the soil, at the foot of a wall or hedge or
+under a bush; but how does the former know just where the truffle lies
+under the soil, or at what depth? To penetrate to that depth, or to seek
+in the subsoil, is impossible. Its fragile limbs, barely able to move a
+grain of sand, its extended wings, which would bar all progress in a
+narrow passage, and its costume of bristling silken pile, which would
+prevent it from slipping through crevices, all make such a task
+impossible. The Sapromyzon is forced to lay its eggs on the surface of
+the soil, but it does so on the precise spot which overlies the truffle,
+for the grubs would perish if they had to wander at random in search of
+their provender, the truffle being always thinly sown.
+
+The truffle fly is informed by the sense of smell of the points
+favourable to its maternal plans; it has the talents of the truffle-dog,
+and doubtless in a higher degree, for it knows naturally, without having
+been taught, what its rival only acquires through an artificial
+education.
+
+It would be not uninteresting to follow the Sapromyzon in its search in
+the open woods. Such a feat did not strike me as particularly possible;
+the insect is rare, flies off quickly when alarmed, and is lost to
+view. To observe it closely under such conditions would mean a loss of
+time and an assiduity of which I do not feel capable. Another
+truffle-hunter will show us what we could hardly learn from the fly.
+
+This is a pretty little black beetle, with a pale, velvety abdomen; a
+spherical insect, as large as a biggish cherry-stone. Its official title
+is _Bolboceras gallicus_, Muls. By rubbing the end of the abdomen
+against the edge of the wing-cases it produces a gentle chirping sound
+like the cheeping of nestlings when the mother-bird returns to the nest
+with food. The male wears a graceful horn on his head; a duplicate, in
+little, of that of the _Copris hispanus_.
+
+Deceived by this horn, I at first took the insect for a member of the
+corporation of dung-beetles, and as such I reared it in captivity. I
+offered it the kind of diet most appreciated by its supposed relatives,
+but never, never would it touch such food. For whom did I take it? Fie
+upon me! To offer ordure to an epicure! It required, if not precisely
+the truffle known to our _chefs_ and _gourmets_, at least its
+equivalent.
+
+This characteristic I grasped only after patient investigation. At the
+southern foot of the hills of Serignan, not far from the village, is a
+wood of maritime pines alternating with rows of cypress. There, towards
+Toussaint, after the autumnal rains, you may find an abundance of the
+mushrooms or "toadstools" that affect the conifers; especially the
+delicious Lactaris, which turns green if the points are rubbed and drips
+blood if broken. In the warm days of autumn this is the favourite
+promenade of the members of my household, being distant enough to
+exercise their young legs, but near enough not to fatigue them.
+
+There one finds and sees all manner of things: old magpies' nests, great
+bundles of twigs; jays, wrangling after filling their crops with the
+acorns of the neighbouring oaks; rabbits, whose little white upturned
+scuts go bobbing away through the rosemary bushes; dung-beetles, which
+are storing food for the winter and throwing up their rubbish on the
+threshold of their burrows. And then the fine sand, soft to the touch,
+easily tunnelled, easily excavated or built into tiny huts which we
+thatch with moss and surmount with the end of a reed for a chimney; and
+the delicious meal of apples, and the sound of the aeolian harps which
+softly whisper among the boughs of the pines!
+
+For the children it is a real paradise, where they can receive the
+reward of well-learned lessons. The grown-ups also can share in the
+enjoyment. As for myself, for long years I have watched two insects
+which are found there without getting to the bottom of their domestic
+secrets. One is the _Minotaurus typhaeus_, whose male carries on his
+corselet three spines which point forward. The old writers called him
+the Phalangist, on account of his armour, which is comparable to the
+three ranks of lances of the Macedonian phalanx.
+
+This is a robust creature, heedless of the winter. All during the cold
+season, whenever the weather relents a little, it issues discreetly from
+its lodging, at nightfall, and gathers, in the immediate neighbourhood
+of its dwelling, a few fragments of sheep-dung and ancient olives which
+the summer suns have dried. It stacks them in a row at the end of its
+burrow, closes the door, and consumes them. When the food is broken up
+and exhausted of its meagre juices it returns to the surface and renews
+its store. Thus the winter passes, famine being unknown unless the
+weather is exceptionally hard.
+
+The second insect which I have observed for so long among the pines is
+the Bolboceras. Its burrows, scattered here and there, higgledy-piggledy
+with those of the Minotaur, are easy to recognise. The burrow of the
+Phalangist is surmounted by a voluminous rubbish-dump, the materials of
+which are piled in the form of a cylinder as long as the finger. Each of
+these dumps is a load of refuse and rubbish pushed outward by the little
+sapper, which shoulders it up from below. The orifice is closed whenever
+the insect is at home, enlarging its tunnel or peacefully enjoying the
+contents of its larder.
+
+The lodging of the Bolboceras is open and surrounded simply by a mound
+of sand. Its depth is not great; a foot or hardly more. It descends
+vertically in an easily shifted soil. It is therefore easy to inspect
+it, if we take care first of all to dig a trench so that the wall of the
+burrow may be afterwards cut away, slice by slice, with the blade of a
+knife. The burrow is thus laid bare along its whole extent, from the
+surface to the bottom, until nothing remains of it but a
+demi-cylindrical groove.
+
+Often the violated dwelling is empty. The insect has departed in the
+night, having finished its business there. It is a nomad, a
+night-walker, which leaves its dwelling without regret and easily
+acquires another. Often, on the other hand, the insect will be found at
+the bottom of the burrow; sometimes a male, sometimes a female, but
+always alone. The two sexes, equally zealous in excavating their
+burrows, work apart without collaboration. This is no family mansion for
+the rearing of offspring; it is a temporary dwelling, made by each
+insect for its own benefit.
+
+Sometimes the burrow contains nothing but the well-sinker surprised at
+its work: sometimes--and not rarely--the hermit will be found embracing
+a small subterranean fungus, entire or partly consumed. It presses it
+convulsively to its bosom and will not be parted from it. This is the
+insect's booty: its worldly wealth. Scattered crumbs inform us that we
+have surprised the beetle at a feast.
+
+Let us deprive the insect of its booty. We find a sort of irregular,
+rugged, purse-like object, varying in size from the largeness of a pea
+to that of a cherry. The exterior is reddish, covered with fine warts,
+having an appearance not unlike shagreen; the interior, which has no
+communication with the exterior, is smooth and white. The pores, ovoidal
+and diaphanous, are contained, in groups of eight, in long capsules.
+From these characteristics we recognise an underground cryptogam, known
+to the botanists as _Hydnocystis arenaria_, and a relation of the
+truffle.
+
+This discovery begins to throw a light on the habits of the Bolboceras
+and the cause of its burrows, so frequently renewed. In the calm of the
+twilight the little truffle-hunter goes abroad, chirping softly to
+encourage itself. It explores the soil, and interrogates it as to its
+contents, exactly as does the truffle-gatherer's dog. The sense of smell
+warns it that the desired object is beneath it, covered by a few inches
+of sand. Certain of the precise point where the treasure lies, it sinks
+a well vertically downwards, and infallibly reaches it. So long as there
+is food left it does not again leave the burrow. It feasts happily at
+the bottom of its well, heedless of the open or imperfectly closed
+burrow.
+
+When no more food is left it removes in search of further booty, which
+becomes the occasion of another burrow, this too in its turn to be
+abandoned. So many truffles eaten necessitate so many burrows, which are
+mere dining-rooms or pilgrim's larders. Thus pass the autumn and the
+spring, the seasons of the _Hydnocystis_, in the pleasures of the table
+and removal from one house to another.
+
+To study the insect _rabassier_ in my own house I had to obtain a small
+store of its favourite food. To seek it myself, by digging at random,
+would have resulted merely in waste of time; the little cryptogam is not
+so common that I could hope to find it without a guide. The
+truffle-hunter must have his dog; my guide should be the Bolboceras
+itself. Behold me, then, a _rabassier_ of a kind hitherto unknown. I
+have told my secret, although I fear my original teacher will laugh at
+me if he ever hears of my singular form of competition.
+
+The subterranean fungi grow only at certain points, but they are often
+found in groups. Now, the beetle has passed this way; with its subtle
+sense of smell it has recognised the ground as favourable; for its
+burrows are numerous. Let us dig, then, in the neighbourhood of these
+holes. The sign is reliable; in a few hours, thanks to the signs of the
+Bolboceras, I obtain a handful of specimens of the _Hydnocystis_. It is
+the first time I have ever found this fungus in the ground. Let us now
+capture the insect--an easy matter, for we have only to excavate the
+burrows.
+
+The same evening I begin my experiments. A wide earthen pan is filled
+with fresh sand which has been passed through a sieve. With the aid of a
+stick the thickness of a finger I make six vertical holes in the sand:
+they are conveniently far apart, and are eight inches in depth. A
+_Hydnocystis_ is placed at the bottom of each; a fine straw is then
+inserted, to show me the precise position later. Finally the six holes
+are filled with sand which is beaten down so that all is firm. When the
+surface is perfectly level, and everywhere the same, except for the six
+straws, which mean nothing to the insect, I release my beetles, covering
+them with a wire-gauze cover. They are eight in number.
+
+At first I see nothing but the inevitable fatigue due to the incidents
+of exhumation, transport, and confinement in a strange place. My exiles
+try to escape: they climb the wire walls, and finally all take to earth
+at the edge of their enclosure. Night comes, and all is quiet. Two hours
+later I pay my prisoners a last visit. Three are still buried under a
+thin layer of sand. The other five have sunk each a vertical well at the
+very foot of the straws which indicate the position of the buried fungi.
+Next morning the sixth straw has its burrow like the rest.
+
+It is time to see what is happening underground. The sand is
+methodically removed in vertical slices. At the bottom of each burrow is
+a Bolboceras engaged in eating its truffle.
+
+Let us repeat the experiment with the partly eaten fungi. The result is
+the same. In one short night the food is divined under its covering of
+sand and attained by means of a burrow which descends as straight as a
+plumb-line to the point where the fungus lies. There has been no
+hesitation, no trial excavations which have nearly discovered the object
+of search. This is proved by the surface of the soil, which is
+everywhere just as I left it when smoothing it down. The insect could
+not make more directly for the objective if guided by the sense of
+sight; it digs always at the foot of the straw, my private sign. The
+truffle-dog, sniffing the ground in search of truffles, hardly attains
+this degree of precision.
+
+Does the _Hydnocystis_ possess a very keen odour, such as we should
+expect to give an unmistakable warning to the senses of the consumer? By
+no means. To our own sense of smell it is a neutral sort of object, with
+no appreciable scent whatever. A little pebble taken from the soil would
+affect our senses quite as strongly with its vague savour of fresh
+earth. As a finder of underground fungi the Bolboceras is the rival of
+the dog. It would be the superior of the dog if it could generalise; it
+is, however, a rigid specialist, recognising nothing but the
+_Hydnocystis_. No other fungus, to my knowledge, either attracts it or
+induces it to dig.[6]
+
+Both dog and beetle are very near the subsoil which they scrutinise; the
+object they seek is at no great depth. At a greater depth neither dog
+nor insect could perceive such subtle effluvia, nor even the odour of
+the truffle. To attract insect or animal at a great distance powerful
+odours are necessary, such as our grosser senses can perceive. Then the
+exploiters of the odorous substance hasten from afar off and from all
+directions.
+
+If for purposes of study I require specimens of such insects as dissect
+dead bodies I expose a dead mole to the sunlight in a distant corner of
+my orchard. As soon as the creature is swollen with the gases of
+putrefaction, and the fur commences to fall from the greenish skin, a
+host of insects arrive--Silphidae, Dermestes, Horn-beetles, and
+Necrophori--of which not a single specimen could ever be obtained in my
+garden or even in the neighbourhood without the use of such a bait.
+
+They have been warned by the sense of smell, although far away in all
+directions, while I myself can escape from the stench by recoiling a few
+paces. In comparison with their sense of smell mine is miserable; but in
+this case, both for me and for them, there is really what our language
+calls an odour.
+
+I can do still better with the flower of the Serpent Arum (_Arum
+dracunculus_), so noteworthy both for its form and its incomparable
+stench. Imagine a wide lanceolated blade of a vinous purple, some twenty
+inches in length, which is twisted at the base into an ovoid purse about
+the size of a hen's egg. Through the opening of this capsule rises the
+central column, a long club of a livid green, surrounded at the base by
+two rings, one of ovaries and the other of stamens. Such, briefly, is
+the flower or rather the inflorescence of the Serpent Arum.
+
+For two days it exhales a horrible stench of putrid flesh; a dead dog
+could not produce such a terrible odour. Set free by the sun and the
+wind, it is odious, intolerable. Let us brave the infected atmosphere
+and approach; we shall witness a curious spectacle.
+
+Warned by the stench, which travels far and wide, a host of insects are
+flying hither; such insects as dissect the corpses of frogs, adders,
+lizards, hedgehogs, moles and field-mice--creatures that the peasant
+finds beneath his spade and throws disembowelled on the path. They fall
+upon the great leaf, whose livid purple gives it the appearance of a
+strip of putrid flesh; they dance with impatience, intoxicated by the
+corpse-like odour which to them is so delicious; they roll down its
+steep face and are engulfed in the capsule. After a few hours of hot
+sunlight the receptacle is full.
+
+Let us look into the capsule through the narrow opening. Nowhere else
+could you see such a mob of insects. It is a delirious mixture of backs
+and bellies, wing-covers and legs, which swarms and rolls upon itself,
+rising and falling, seething and boiling, shaken by continual
+convulsions, clicking and squeaking with a sound of entangled
+articulations. It is a bacchanal, a general access of delirium tremens.
+
+A few, but only a few, emerge from the mass. By the central mast or the
+walls of the purse they climb to the opening. Do they wish to take
+flight and escape? By no means. On the threshold of the cavity, while
+already almost at liberty, they allow themselves to fall into the
+whirlpool, retaken by their madness. The lure is irresistible. None will
+break free from the swarm until the evening, or perhaps the next day,
+when the heady fumes will have evaporated. Then the units of the swarm
+disengage themselves from their mutual embraces, and slowly, as though
+regretfully, take flight and depart. At the bottom of this devil's purse
+remains a heap of the dead and dying, of severed limbs and wing-covers
+torn off; the inevitable sequels of the frantic orgy. Soon the woodlice,
+earwigs, and ants will appear to prey upon the injured.
+
+What are these insects doing? Were they the prisoners of the flower,
+converted into a trap which allowed them to enter but prevented their
+escape by means of a palisade of converging hairs? No, they were not
+prisoners; they had full liberty to escape, as is proved by the final
+exodus, which is in no way impeded. Deceived by a fallacious odour, were
+they endeavouring to lay and establish their eggs as they would have
+done under the shelter of a corpse? No; there is no trace of eggs in the
+purse of the Arum. They came convoked by the odour of a decaying body,
+their supreme delight; an intoxication seized them, and they rushed into
+the eddying swarm to take part in a festival of carrion-eaters.
+
+I was anxious to count the number of those attracted. At the height of
+the bacchanal I emptied the purse into a bottle. Intoxicated as they
+were, many would escape my census, and I wished to ensure its accuracy.
+A few drops of carbon bisulphide quieted the swarm. The census proved
+that there were more than four hundred insects in the purse of the Arum.
+The collection consisted entirely of two species--Dermestes and
+Saprinidae--both eager prospectors of carrion and animal detritus during
+the spring.
+
+My friend Bull, an honest dog all his lifetime if ever there was one,
+amongst other eccentricities had the following: finding in the dust of
+the road the shrivelled body of a mole, flattened by the feet of
+pedestrians, mummified by the heat of the sun, he would slide himself
+over it, from the tip of his nose to the root of his tail, he would rub
+himself against it deliciously over and over again, shaken with nervous
+spasms, and roll upon it first in one direction, then in the other.
+
+It was his sachet of musk, his flask of eau-de-Cologne. Perfumed to his
+liking, he would rise, shake himself, and proceed on his way, delighted
+with his toilet. Do not let us scold him, and above all do not let us
+discuss the matter. There are all kinds of tastes in a world.
+
+Why should there not be insects with similar habits among the amateurs
+of corpse-like savours? We see Dermestes and Saprinidae hastening to the
+arum-flower. All day long they writhe and wriggle in a swarm, although
+perfectly free to escape; numbers perish in the tumultuous orgy. They
+are not retained by the desire of food, for the arum provides them with
+nothing eatable; they do not come to breed, for they take care not to
+establish their grubs in that place of famine. What are these frenzied
+creatures doing? Apparently they are intoxicated with fetidity, as was
+Bull when he rolled on the putrid body of a mole.
+
+This intoxication draws them from all parts of the neighbourhood,
+perhaps over considerable distances; how far we do not know. The
+Necrophori, in quest of a place where to establish their family, travel
+great distances to find the corpses of small animals, informed by such
+odours as offend our own senses at a considerable distance.
+
+The _Hydnocystis_, the food of the Bolboceras, emits no such brutal
+emanations as these, which readily diffuse themselves through space; it
+is inodorous, at least to our senses. The insect which seeks it does not
+come from a distance; it inhabits the places wherein the cryptogam is
+found. Faint as are the effluvia of this subterranean fungus, the
+prospecting epicure, being specially equipped, perceives them with the
+greatest ease; but then he operates at close range, from the surface of
+the soil. The truffle-dog is in the same case; he searches with his nose
+to the ground. The true truffle, however, the essential object of his
+search, possesses a fairly vivid odour.
+
+But what are we to say of the Great Peacock moth and the Oak Eggar, both
+of which find their captive female? They come from the confines of the
+horizon. What do they perceive at that distance? Is it really an odour
+such as we perceive and understand? I cannot bring myself to believe it.
+
+The dog finds the truffle by smelling the earth quite close to the
+tuber; but he finds his master at great distances by following his
+footsteps, which he recognises by their scent. Yet can he find the
+truffle at a hundred yards? or his master, in the complete absence of a
+trail? No. With all his fineness of scent, the dog is incapable of such
+feats as are realised by the moth, which is embarrassed neither by
+distance nor the absence of a trail.
+
+It is admitted that odour, such as affects our olfactory sense, consists
+of molecules emanating from the body whose odour is perceived. The
+odorous material becomes diffused through the air to which it
+communicates its agreeable or disagreeable aroma. Odour and taste are to
+a certain extent the same; in both there is contact between the material
+particles causing the impression and the sensitive papillae affected by
+the impression.
+
+That the Serpent Arum should elaborate a powerful essence which
+impregnates the atmosphere and makes it noisome is perfectly simple and
+comprehensible. Thus the Dermestes and Saprinidae, those lovers of
+corpse-like odours, are warned by molecular diffusion. In the same way
+the putrid frog emits and disseminates around it atoms of putrescence
+which travel to a considerable distance and so attract and delight the
+Necrophorus, the carrion-beetle.
+
+But in the case of the Great Peacock or the Oak Eggar, what molecules
+are actually disengaged? None, according to our sense of smell. And yet
+this lure, to which the males hasten so speedily, must saturate with its
+molecules an enormous hemisphere of air--a hemisphere some miles in
+diameter! What the atrocious fetor of the Arum cannot do the absence of
+odour accomplishes! However divisible matter may be, the mind refuses
+such conclusions. It would be to redden a lake with a grain of carmine;
+to fill space with a mere nothing.
+
+Moreover, where my laboratory was previously saturated with powerful
+odours which should have overcome and annihilated any particularly
+delicate effluvium, the male moths arrived without the least indication
+of confusion or delay.
+
+A loud noise stifles a feeble note and prevents it from being heard; a
+brilliant light eclipses a feeble glimmer. Heavy waves overcome and
+obliterate ripples. In the two cases cited we have waves of the same
+nature. But a clap of thunder does not diminish the feeblest jet of
+light; the dazzling glory of the sun will not muffle the slightest
+sound. Of different natures, light and sound do not mutually interact.
+
+My experiment with spike-lavender, naphthaline, and other odours seems
+to prove that odour proceeds from two sources. For emission substitute
+undulation, and the problem of the Great Peacock moth is explained.
+Without any material emanation a luminous point shakes the ether with
+its vibrations and fills with light a sphere of indefinite magnitude.
+So, or in some such manner, must the warning effluvium of the mother Oak
+Eggar operate. The moth does not emit molecules; but something about it
+vibrates, causing waves capable of propagation to distances incompatible
+with an actual diffusion of matter.
+
+From this point of view, smell would have two domains--that of particles
+dissolved in the air and that of etheric waves.[7] The former domain
+alone is known to us. It is also known to the insect. It is this that
+warns the Saprinidae of the fetid arum, the Silphidae and the Necrophori
+of the putrid mole.
+
+The second category of odour, far superior in its action through space,
+escapes us completely, because we lack the essential sensory equipment.
+The Great Peacock moth and the Oak Eggar know it at the time of their
+nuptial festivities. Many others must share it in differing degrees,
+according to the exigencies of their way of life.
+
+Like light, odour has its X-rays. Let science, instructed by the insect,
+one day give us a radiograph sensitive to odours, and this artificial
+nose will open a new world of marvels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ELEPHANT-BEETLE
+
+
+Some of our machines have extraordinary-looking mechanisms, which remain
+inexplicable so long as they are seen in repose. But wait until the
+whole is in motion; then the uncouth-looking contrivance, with its
+cog-wheels interacting and its connecting-rods oscillating, will reveal
+the ingenious combination in which all things are skilfully disposed to
+produce the desired effects. It is the same with certain insects; with
+certain weevils, for instance, and notably with the Acorn-beetles or
+Balanini, which are adapted, as their name denotes, to the exploitation
+of acorns, nuts, and other similar fruits.
+
+The most remarkable, in my part of France, is the Acorn Elephant
+(_Balaninus elephas_, Sch.). It is well named; the very name evokes a
+mental picture of the insect. It is a living caricature, this beetle
+with the prodigious snout. The latter is no thicker than a horsehair,
+reddish in colour, almost rectilinear, and of such length that in order
+not to stumble the insect is forced to carry it stiffly outstretched
+like a lance in rest. What is the use of this embarrassing pike, this
+ridiculous snout?
+
+Here I can see some reader shrug his shoulders. Well, if the only end of
+life is to make money by hook or by crook, such questions are certainly
+ridiculous.
+
+Happily there are some to whom nothing in the majestic riddle of the
+universe is little. They know of what humble materials the bread of
+thought is kneaded; a nutriment no less necessary than the bread made
+from wheat; and they know that both labourers and inquirers nourish the
+world with an accumulation of crumbs.
+
+Let us take pity on the question, and proceed. Without seeing it at
+work, we already suspect that the fantastic beak of the Balaninus is a
+drill analogous to those which we ourselves use in order to perforate
+hard materials. Two diamond-points, the mandibles, form the terminal
+armature of the drill. Like the Larinidae, but under conditions of
+greater difficulty, the Curculionidae must use the implement in order to
+prepare the way for the installation of their eggs.
+
+But however well founded our suspicion may be, it is not a certitude. I
+can only discover the secret by watching the insect at work.
+
+Chance, the servant of those that patiently solicit it, grants me a
+sight of the acorn-beetle at work, in the earlier half of October. My
+surprise is great, for at this late season all industrial activity is as
+a rule at an end. The first touch of cold and the entomological season
+is over.
+
+To-day, moreover, it is wild weather; the _bise_ is moaning, glacial,
+cracking one's lips. One needs a robust faith to go out on such a day in
+order to inspect the thickets. Yet if the beetle with the long beak
+exploits the acorns, as I think it does, the time presses if I am to
+catch it at its work. The acorns, still green, have acquired their full
+growth. In two or three weeks they will attain the chestnut brown of
+perfect maturity, quickly followed by their fall.
+
+My seemingly futile pilgrimage ends in success. On the evergreen oaks I
+surprise a Balaninus with the trunk half sunk in an acorn. Careful
+observation is impossible while the branches are shaken by the
+_mistral_. I detach the twig and lay it gently upon the ground. The
+insect takes no notice of its removal; it continues its work. I crouch
+beside it, sheltered from the storm behind a mass of underwood, and
+watch operations.
+
+Shod with adhesive sandals which later on, in my laboratory, will allow
+it rapidly to climb a vertical sheet of glass, the elephant-beetle is
+solidly established on the smooth, steep curvature of the acorn. It is
+working its drill. Slowly and awkwardly it moves around its implanted
+weapon, describing a semicircle whose centre is the point of the drill,
+and then another semicircle in the reverse direction. This is repeated
+over and over again; the movement, in short, is identical with that we
+give to a bradawl when boring a hole in a plank.
+
+Little by little the rostrum sinks into the acorn. At the end of an hour
+it has entirely disappeared. A short period of repose follows, and
+finally the instrument is withdrawn. What is going to happen next?
+Nothing on this occasion. The Balaninus abandons its work and solemnly
+retires, disappearing among the withered leaves. For the day there is
+nothing more to be learned.
+
+But my interest is now awakened. On calm days, more favourable to the
+entomologist, I return to the woods, and I soon have sufficient insects
+to people my laboratory cages. Foreseeing a serious difficulty in the
+slowness with which the beetle labours, I prefer to study them indoors,
+with the unlimited leisure only to be found in one's own home.
+
+The precaution is fortunate. If I had tried to continue as I began, and
+to observe the Balaninus in the liberty of the woods, I should never,
+even with the greatest good fortune, have had the patience to follow to
+the end the choice of the acorn, the boring of the hole, and the laying
+of the eggs, so meticulously deliberate is the insect in all its
+affairs; as the reader will soon be able to judge.
+
+Three species of oak-tree compose the copse inhabited by the Balaninus:
+the evergreen oak and the pubescent oak, which would become fine trees
+if the woodman would give them time, and the kermes oak, a mere scrubby
+bush. The first species, which is the most abundant of the three, is
+that preferred by the Balaninus. The acorn is firm, elongated, and of
+moderate size; the cup is covered with little warts. The acorns of the
+pubescent oak are usually stunted, short, wrinkled, and fluted, and
+subject to premature fall. The aridity of the hills of Serignan is
+unfavourable to them. The Acorn-beetles accept them only in default of
+something better.
+
+The kermes, a dwarf oak, a ridiculous tree which a man can jump over,
+surprises me by the wealth of its acorns, which are large, ovoidal
+growths, the cup being covered with scales. The Balaninus could not make
+a better choice; the acorn affords a safe, strong dwelling and a
+capacious storehouse of food.
+
+A few twigs from these three trees, well provided with acorns, are
+arranged under the domes of some of my wire-gauze covers, the ends being
+plunged into a glass of water which will keep them fresh. A suitable
+number of couples are then introduced into the cages; and the latter are
+placed at the windows of my study, where they obtain the direct sunlight
+for the greater part of the day. Let us now arm ourselves with patience,
+and keep a constant watch upon events. We shall be rewarded; the
+exploitation of the acorn deserves to be seen.
+
+Matters do not drag on for very long. Two days after these preparations
+I arrive at the precise moment when the task is commenced. The mother,
+larger than the male, and equipped with a longer drill, is inspecting
+her acorn, doubtless with a view to depositing her eggs.
+
+She goes over it step by step, from the point to the stem, both above
+and below. On the warty cup progression is easy; over the rest of the
+surface it would be impossible, were not the soles of her feet shod with
+adhesive pads, which enable her to retain her hold in any position.
+Without the least uncertainty of footing, the insect walks with equal
+facility over the top or bottom or up the sides of the slippery fruit.
+
+The choice is made; the acorn is recognised as being of good quality.
+The time has come to sink the hole. On account of its excessive length
+it is not easy to manoeuvre the beak. To obtain the best mechanical
+effect the instrument must be applied perpendicularly to the convex
+surface of the acorn, and the embarrassing implement which is carried in
+front of the insect when the latter is not at work must now be held in
+such a position as to be beneath the worker.
+
+To obtain this result the insect rears herself upon her hind legs,
+supporting herself upon the tripod formed by the end of the wing-covers
+and the posterior tarsi. It would be hard to imagine anything more
+curious than this little carpenter, as she stands upright and brings her
+nasal bradawl down towards her body.
+
+Now the drill is held plumb against the surface, and the boring
+commences. The method is that I witnessed in the wood on the day of the
+storm. Very slowly the insect veers round from right to left, then from
+left to right. Her drill is not a spiral gimlet which will sink itself
+by a constant rotary motion; it is a bradawl, or rather a trochar, which
+progresses by little bites, by alternative erosion, first in one
+direction, then the other.
+
+Before continuing, let me record an accident which is too striking to be
+passed over. On various occasions I have found the insect dead in the
+midst of its task. The body is in an extraordinary position, which would
+be laughable if death were not always a serious thing, above all when it
+comes suddenly, in the midst of labour.
+
+The drill is implanted in the acorn just a little beyond the tip; the
+work was only commenced. At the top of the drill, at right angles to it,
+the Balaninus is suspended in the air, far from the supporting surface
+of the acorn. It is dried, mummified, dead I know not how long. The legs
+are rigid and contracted under the body. Even if they retained the
+flexibility and the power of extension that were theirs in life, they
+would fall far short of the surface of the acorn. What then has
+happened, that this unhappy insect should be impaled like a specimen
+beetle with a pin through its head?
+
+An accident of the workshop is responsible. On account of the length of
+its implement the beetle commences her work standing upright, supported
+by the two hind-legs. Imagine a slip, a false step on the part of the
+two adhesive feet; the unfortunate creature will immediately lose her
+footing, dragged by the elasticity of the snout, which she was forced to
+bend somewhat at the beginning. Torn away from her foothold, the
+suspended insect vainly struggles in air; nowhere can her feet, those
+safety anchors, find a hold. She starves at the end of her snout, for
+lack of foothold whereby to extricate herself. Like the artisans in our
+factories, the elephant-beetle is sometimes the victim of her tools. Let
+us wish her good luck, and sure feet, careful not to slip, and proceed.
+
+On this occasion all goes well, but so slowly that the descent of the
+drill, even when amplified by the magnifying-glass, cannot be perceived.
+The insect veers round perpetually, rests, and resumes her work. An hour
+passes, two hours, wearying the observer by their sustained attention;
+for I wish to witness the precise moment when the beetle withdraws her
+drill, turns round, and deposits her egg in the mouth of the orifice.
+This, at least, is how I foresee the event.
+
+Two hours go by, exhausting my patience. I call the household to my aid.
+Three of us take turns, keeping an uninterrupted watch upon the
+persevering creature whose secret I intend at any cost to discover.
+
+[Illustration: 1. THE GREY LOCUST.
+
+1'. THE NERVATURES OF THE WING.
+
+2. THE BALANINUS FALLEN A VICTIM TO THE LENGTH OF HER PROBOSCIS.]
+
+It was well that I called in helpers to lend me their eyes and their
+attention. After eight hours--eight interminable hours, when it was
+nearly night, the sentinel on the watch calls me. The insect appears to
+have finished. She does, in fact, very cautiously withdraw her beak, as
+though fearing to slip. Once the tool is withdrawn she holds it pointing
+directly in front of her.
+
+The moment has come.... Alas, no! Once more I am cheated; my eight hours
+of observation have been fruitless. The Balaninus decamps; abandons her
+acorn without laying her eggs. I was certainly right to distrust the
+result of observation in the open woods. Such concentration among the
+oaks, exposed to the sun, wind, and rain would have been an intolerable
+task.
+
+During the whole of October, with the aid of such helpers as are needed,
+I remark a number of borings, not followed by the laying of eggs. The
+duration of the observer's task varies greatly. It usually amounts to a
+couple of hours; sometimes it exceeds half the day.
+
+With what object are these perforations made, so laborious and yet so
+often unused? Let us first of all discover the position of the egg, and
+the first mouthfuls taken by the grub, and perhaps the reply will be
+found.
+
+The peopled acorns remain on the oak, held in their cups as though
+nothing had occurred to the detriment of the cotyledons. With a little
+attention they may be readily recognised. Not far from the cup, on the
+smooth, still green envelope of the acorn a little point is visible; a
+tiny needle-prick. A narrow brown aureole, the product of mortification,
+is not long in appearing. This marks the opening of the hole. Sometimes,
+but more rarely, the hole is drilled through the cup itself.
+
+Let us select those acorns which have been recently perforated: that is
+to say, those in which the perforation is not yet surrounded by the
+brown ring which appears in course of time. Let us shell them. Many
+contain nothing out of the way; the Balaninus has bored them but has not
+laid her eggs in them. They resemble the acorns which for hours and
+hours were drilled in my laboratory but not utilised. Many, on the
+contrary, contain an egg.
+
+Now however distant the entrance of the bore may be, this egg is always
+at the bottom of the acorn, within the cup, at the base of the
+cotyledonary matter. The cup furnishes a thin film like swan-skin which
+imbibes the sapid exudations from the stem, the source of nourishment. I
+have seen a young grub, hatched under my eyes, eat as his first
+mouthfuls this tender cottony layer, which is moist and flavoured with
+tannin.
+
+Such nutriment, juicy and easy of digestion, like all nascent organic
+matter, is only found in this particular spot; and it is only there,
+between the cup and the base of the cotyledons, that the elephant-beetle
+establishes her egg. The insect knows to a nicety the position of the
+portions best adapted to the feeble stomach of the newly hatched larva.
+
+Above this is the tougher nutriment of the cotyledons. Refreshed by its
+first meal, the grub proceeds to attack this; not directly, but in the
+tunnel bored by the mother, which is littered with tiny crumbs and
+half-masticated shavings. With this light mealy diet the strength of the
+grub increases, and it then plunges directly into the substance of the
+acorn.
+
+These data explain the tactics of the gravid mother. What is her object
+when, before proceeding to sink her hole, she inspects her acorn, from
+above, below, before and behind, with such meticulous care? She is
+making sure that the acorn is not already occupied. The larder is amply
+stored, but it does not contain enough for two. Never in fact, have I
+found two larvae in the same acorn. One only, always only one, digests
+the copious meal and converts it into a greenish dust before leaving it
+and descending to the ground. Only an insignificant shell remains
+uneaten. The rule is, to each grub one acorn.
+
+Before trusting the egg to the acorn it is therefore essential to
+subject it to a thorough examination, to discover whether it already has
+an occupant. This possible occupant would be at the base of the acorn,
+under the cover of the cup. Nothing could be more secret than this
+hiding-place. Not an eye could divine the inhabitant if the surface of
+the acorn did not bear the mark of a tiny perforation.
+
+This mark, just visible, is my guide. Its presence tells me that the
+acorn is inhabited, or at least that it has been prepared for the
+reception of the egg; its absence tells me that the acorn has not yet
+been appropriated. The elephant-beetle undoubtedly draws the same
+conclusions.
+
+I see matters from on high, with a comprehensive glance, assisted at
+will by the magnifying-glass. I turn the acorn between my fingers for a
+moment, and the inspection is concluded. The beetle, investigating the
+acorn at close quarters, is often obliged to scrutinise practically the
+entire surface before detecting the tell-tale spot. Moreover, the
+welfare of her family demands a far more careful search than does my
+curiosity. This is the reason for her prolonged and deliberate
+examination.
+
+The search is concluded; the acorn is recognised as unoccupied. The
+drill is applied to the surface and rotated for hours; then, very often,
+the insect departs, disdaining the result of her work. Why such
+protracted efforts? Was the beetle piercing the fruit merely to obtain
+drink and refreshment? Was the beak thrust into the depths of the base
+merely to obtain, from the choicer parts, a few sips of nutritious sap?
+Was the whole undertaking merely a matter of personal nourishment?
+
+At first I believed this to be the solution, though surprised at the
+display of so much perseverance rewarded by the merest sip. The
+behaviour of the males, however, forced me to abandon this idea. They
+also possess the long beak, and could readily make such perforations if
+they wished; yet I have never seen one take up his stand upon an acorn
+and work at it with his augur. Then why this fruitless labour? A mere
+nothing suffices these abstemious creatures. A superficial operation
+performed upon the surface of a tender leaf yields them sufficient
+sustenance.
+
+If the males, the unoccupied males who have leisure to enjoy the
+pleasures of the palate, ask no more than the sap of the leaf, how
+should the mothers, busied with the affairs of the breeding-season, find
+time to waste upon such dearly bought pleasures as the inner juices of
+the acorn? No, the acorn is not perforated for the purpose of drinking
+its juices. It is possible that once the beak is deeply sunk, the female
+may take a mouthful or two, but it is certain that food and drink are
+not the objects in view.
+
+At last I begin to foresee the solution of the problem. The egg, as I
+have said, is always at the base of the acorn, in the midst of a soft
+cottony layer which is moistened by the sap which oozes from the stalk.
+The grub, upon hatching out, being as yet incapable of attacking the
+firm substance of the cotyledons, masticates the delicate felt-like
+layer at the base of the cup and is nourished by its juices.
+
+But as the acorn matures this layer becomes more solid in its
+consistency. The soft tissues harden; the moist tissues dry up. There is
+a period during which the acorn fulfils to perfection the conditions
+most conducive to the welfare of the grub. At an earlier period matters
+would not have reached the desired stage; at a later period the acorn
+would be too mature.
+
+The exterior of the acorn gives no indication whatever of the progress
+of this internal cookery. In order not to inflict unsuitable food on the
+grub, the mother beetle, not sufficiently informed by the look of the
+acorn, is thus obliged to taste, at the end of her trunk, the tissues at
+the base of the cup.
+
+The nurse, before giving her charge a spoonful of broth, tests it by
+tasting it. In the same way the mother beetle plunges her trunk into the
+base of the cup, to test the contents before bestowing them upon her
+offspring. If the food is recognised as being satisfactory the egg is
+laid; if not, the perforation is abandoned without more ado. This
+explains the perforations which serve no purpose, in spite of so much
+labour; the tissues at the base of the cup, being carefully tested, are
+not found to be in the required condition. The elephant-beetles are
+difficult to please and take infinite pains when the first mouthful of
+the grub is in question. To place the egg in a position where the
+new-born grub will find light and juicy and easily digested nutriment is
+not enough for those far-seeing mothers; their cares look beyond this
+point. An intermediary period is desirable, which will lead the little
+larva from the delicacies of its first hours to the diet of hard acorn.
+This intermediary period is passed in the gallery, the work of the
+maternal beak. There it finds the crumbs, the shavings bitten off by the
+chisels of the rostrum. Moreover, the walls of the tunnel, which are
+softened by mortification, are better suited than the rest of the acorn
+to the tender mandibles of the larva.
+
+Before setting to work on the cotyledons the grub does, in fact,
+commence upon the contents and walls of this tiny passage. It first
+consumes the shavings lying loose in the passage; it devours the brown
+fragments adhering to the walls; finally, being now sufficiently
+strengthened, it attacks the body of the acorn, plunges into it, and
+disappears. The stomach is ready; the rest is a blissful feast.
+
+This intermediary tunnel must be of a certain length, in order to
+satisfy the needs of infancy, so the mother must labour at the work of
+drilling. If the perforation were made solely with the purpose of
+tasting the material at the base of the acorn and recognising its degree
+of maturity, the operation might be very much shorter, since the hole
+could be sunk through the cup itself from a point close to the base.
+This fact is not unrecognised; I have on occasion found the insect
+perforating the scaly cup.
+
+In such a proceeding I see the attempt of a gravid mother pressed for
+time to obtain prompt information. If the acorn is suitable the boring
+will be recommenced at a more distant point, through the surface of the
+acorn itself. When an egg is to be laid the rule is to bore the hole
+from a point as distant as is practicable from the base--as far, in
+short, as the length of the rostrum will permit.
+
+What is the object of this long perforation, which often occupies more
+than half the day? Why this tenacious perseverance when, not far from
+the stalk, at the cost of much less time and fatigue, the rostrum could
+attain the desired point--the living spring from which the new-born grub
+is to drink? The mother has her own reasons for toiling in this manner;
+in doing thus she still attains the necessary point, the base of the
+acorn, and at the same time--a most valuable result--she prepares for
+the grub a long tube of fine, easily digested meal.
+
+But these are trivialities! Not so, if you please, but high and
+important matters, speaking to us of the infinite pains which preside
+over the preservation of the least of things; witnesses of a superior
+logic which regulates the smallest details.
+
+The Balaninus, so happily inspired as a mother, has her place in the
+world and is worthy of notice. So, at least, thinks the blackbird, which
+gladly makes a meal of the insect with the long beak when fruits grow
+rare at the end of autumn. It makes a small mouthful, but a tasty, and
+is a pleasant change after such olives as yet withstand the cold.
+
+And what without the blackbird and its rivalry of song were the
+reawakening of the woods in spring? Were man to disappear, annihilated
+by his own foolish errors, the festival of the life-bringing season
+would be no less worthily observed, celebrated by the fluting of the
+yellow-billed songster.
+
+To the meritorious role of regaling the blackbird, the minstrel of the
+forest, the Balaninus adds another--that of moderating the superfluity
+of vegetation. Like all the mighty who are worthy of their strength, the
+oak is generous; it produces acorns by the bushel. What could the earth
+do with such prodigality? The forest would stifle itself for want of
+room; excess would ruin the necessary.
+
+But no sooner is this abundance of food produced than there is an influx
+from every side of consumers only too eager to abate this inordinate
+production. The field-mouse, a native of the woods, stores acorns in a
+gravel-heap near its hay-lined nest. A stranger, the jay, comes in
+flocks from far away, warned I know not how. For some weeks it flies
+feasting from oak to oak, giving vent to its joys and its emotions in a
+voice like that of a strangling cat; then, its mission accomplished, it
+returns to the North whence it came.
+
+The Balaninus has anticipated them all. The mother confided her eggs to
+the acorns while yet they were green. These have now fallen to earth,
+brown before their time, and pierced by a round hole through which the
+larva has escaped after devouring the contents. Under one single oak a
+basket might easily be filled with these ruined shells. More than the
+jay, more than the field-mouse, the elephant-beetle has contributed to
+reduce the superfluity of acorns.
+
+Presently man arrives, busied in the interest of his pig. In my village
+it is quite an important event when the municipal hoardings announce the
+day for opening the municipal woods for the gathering of acorns. The
+more zealous visit the woods the day before and select the best places.
+Next day, at daybreak, the whole family is there. The father beats the
+upper branches with a pole; the mother, wearing a heavy hempen apron
+which enables her to force her way through the stubborn undergrowth,
+gathers those within reach of the hand, while the children collect those
+scattered upon the ground. First the small baskets are filled, then the
+big _corbeilles_, and then the sacks.
+
+After the field-mouse, the jay, the weevil, and so many others have
+taken toll comes man, calculating how many pounds of bacon-fat his
+harvest will be worth. One regret mingles with the cheer of the
+occasion; it is to see so many acorns scattered on the ground which are
+pierced, spoiled, good for nothing. And man curses the author of this
+destruction; to hear him you would think the forest is meant for him
+alone, and that the oaks bear acorns only for the sake of his pig.
+
+My friend, I would say to him, the forest guard cannot take legal
+proceedings against the offender, and it is just as well, for our
+egoism, which is inclined to see in the acorn only a garland of
+sausages, would have annoying results. The oak calls the whole world to
+enjoy its fruits. We take the larger part because we are the stronger.
+That is our only right.
+
+More important than our rights is the equitable division of the fruits
+of the earth between the various consumers, great and little, all of
+whom play their part in this world. If it is good that the blackbird
+should flute and rejoice in the burgeoning of the spring, then it is no
+bad thing that acorns should be worm-eaten. In the acorn the dessert of
+the blackbird is prepared; the Balaninus, the tasty mouthful that puts
+flesh upon his flanks and music into his throat.
+
+Let the blackbird sing, and let us return to the eggs of the
+Curculionidae. We know where the egg is--at the base of the acorn,
+because the tenderest and most juicy tissues of the fruit are there. But
+how did it get there, so far from the point of entry? A very trifling
+question, it is true; puerile even, if you will. Do not let us disdain
+to ask it; science is made of these puerilities.
+
+The first man to rub a piece of amber on his sleeve and to find that it
+thereupon attracted fragments of chaff had certainly no vision of the
+electric marvels of our days. He was amusing himself in a childlike
+manner. Repeated, tested, and probed in every imaginable way, the
+child's experiment has become one of the forces of the world.
+
+The observer must neglect nothing; for he never knows what may develop
+out of the humblest fact. So again we will ask: by what process did the
+egg of the elephant-beetle reach a point so far from the orifice in the
+acorn?
+
+To one who was not already aware of the position of the egg, but knew
+that the grub attacked the base of the acorn first, the solution of that
+fact would be as follows: the egg is laid at the entrance of the tunnel,
+at the surface, and the grub, crawling down the gallery sunk by the
+mother, gains of its own accord this distant point where its infant diet
+is to be found.
+
+Before I had sufficient data this was my own belief; but the mistake was
+soon exposed. I plucked an acorn just as the mother withdrew, after
+having for a moment applied the tip of the abdomen to the orifice of the
+passage just opened by her rostrum. The egg, so it seemed, must be
+there, at the entrance of the passage.... But no, it was not! It was at
+the other extremity of the passage! If I dared, I would say it had
+dropped like a stone into a well.
+
+That idea we must abandon at once; the passage is extremely narrow and
+encumbered with shavings, so that such a thing would be impossible.
+Moreover, according to the direction of the stem, accordingly as it
+pointed upwards or downwards, the egg would have to fall downwards in
+one acorn and upwards in another.
+
+A second explanation suggests itself, not less perilous. It might be
+said: "The cuckoo lays her egg on the grass, no matter where; she lifts
+it in her beak and places it in the nearest appropriate nest." Might not
+the Balaninus follow an analogous method? Does she employ the rostrum to
+place the egg in its position at the base of the acorn? I cannot see
+that the insect has any other implement capable of reaching this remote
+hiding-place.
+
+Nevertheless, we must hastily reject such an absurd explanation as a
+last, desperate resort. The elephant-beetle certainly does not lay its
+egg in the open and seize it in its beak. If it did so the delicate ovum
+would certainly be destroyed, crushed in the attempt to thrust it down a
+narrow passage half choked with debris.
+
+This is very perplexing. My embarrassment will be shared by all readers
+who are acquainted with the structure of the elephant-beetle. The
+grasshopper has a sabre, an oviscapt which plunges into the earth and
+sows the eggs at the desired depth; the Leuscopis has a probe which
+finds its way through the masonry of the mason-bee and lays the egg in
+the cocoon of the great somnolent larva; but the Balaninus has none of
+these swords, daggers, or pikes; she has nothing but the tip of her
+abdomen. Yet she has only to apply that abdominal extremity to the
+opening of the passage, and the egg is immediately lodged at the very
+bottom.
+
+Anatomy will give us the answer to the riddle, which is otherwise
+indecipherable. I open the body of a gravid female. There, before my
+eyes, is something that takes my breath away. There, occupying the whole
+length of the body, is an extraordinary device; a red, horny, rigid rod;
+I had almost said a rostrum, so greatly does it resemble the implement
+which the insect carries on his head. It is a tube, fine as a horsehair,
+slightly enlarged at the free extremity, like an old-fashioned
+blunderbuss, and expanding to form an egg-shaped capsule at the point of
+origin.
+
+This is the oviduct, and its dimensions are the same as those of the
+rostrum. As far as the perforating beak can plunge, so far the oviscapt,
+the interior rostrum, will reach. When working upon her acorn the female
+chooses the point of attack so that the two complementary instruments
+can each of them reach the desired point at the base of the acorn.
+
+The matter now explains itself. The work of drilling completed, the
+gallery ready, the mother turns and places the tip of the abdomen
+against the orifice. She extrudes the internal mechanism, which easily
+passes through the loose debris of the boring. No sign of the probe
+appears, so quickly and discreetly does it work; nor is any trace of it
+to be seen when, the egg having been properly deposited, the implement
+ascends and returns to the abdomen. It is over, and the mother departs,
+and we have not caught a glimpse of her internal mechanism.
+
+Was I not right to insist? An apparently insignificant fact has led to
+the authentic proof of a fact that the Larinidae had already made me
+suspect. The long-beaked weevils have an internal probe, an abdominal
+rostrum, which nothing in their external appearance betrays; they
+possess, among the hidden organs of the abdomen, the counterpart of the
+grasshopper's sabre and the ichneumon's dagger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE PEA-WEEVIL--_BRUCHUS PISI_
+
+
+Peas are held in high esteem by mankind. From remote ages man has
+endeavoured, by careful culture, to produce larger, tenderer, and
+sweeter varieties. Of an adaptable character, under careful treatment
+the plant has evolved in a docile fashion, and has ended by giving us
+what the ambition of the gardener desired. To-day we have gone far
+beyond the yield of the Varrons and Columelles, and further still beyond
+the original pea; from the wild seeds confided to the soil by the first
+man who thought to scratch up the surface of the earth, perhaps with the
+half-jaw of a cave-bear, whose powerful canine tooth would serve him as
+a ploughshare!
+
+Where is it, this original pea, in the world of spontaneous vegetation?
+Our own country has nothing resembling it. Is it to be found elsewhere?
+On this point botany is silent, or replies only with vague
+probabilities.
+
+We find the same ignorance elsewhere on the subject of the majority of
+our alimentary vegetables. Whence comes wheat, the blessed grain which
+gives us bread? No one knows. You will not find it here, except in the
+care of man; nor will you find it abroad. In the East, the birthplace
+of agriculture, no botanist has ever encountered the sacred ear growing
+of itself on unbroken soil.
+
+Barley, oats, and rye, the turnip and the beet, the beetroot, the
+carrot, the pumpkin, and so many other vegetable products, leave us in
+the same perplexity; their point of departure is unknown to us, or at
+most suspected behind the impenetrable cloud of the centuries. Nature
+delivered them to us in the full vigour of the thing untamed, when their
+value as food was indifferent, as to-day she offers us the sloe, the
+bullace, the blackberry, the crab; she gave them to us in the state of
+imperfect sketches, for us to fill out and complete; it was for our
+skill and our labour patiently to induce the nourishing pulp which was
+the earliest form of capital, whose interest is always increasing in the
+primordial bank of the tiller of the soil.
+
+As storehouses of food the cereal and the vegetable are, for the greater
+part, the work of man. The fundamental species, a poor resource in their
+original state, we borrowed as they were from the natural treasury of
+the vegetable world; the perfected race, rich in alimentary materials,
+is the result of our art.
+
+If wheat, peas, and all the rest are indispensable to us, our care, by a
+just return, is absolutely necessary to them. Such as our needs have
+made them, incapable of resistance in the bitter struggle for survival,
+these vegetables, left to themselves without culture, would rapidly
+disappear, despite the numerical abundance of their seeds, as the
+foolish sheep would disappear were there no more sheep-folds.
+
+They are our work, but not always our exclusive property. Wherever food
+is amassed, the consumers collect from the four corners of the sky; they
+invite themselves to the feast of abundance, and the richer the food the
+greater their numbers. Man, who alone is capable of inducing agrarian
+abundance, is by that very fact the giver of an immense banquet at which
+legions of feasters take their place. By creating more juicy and more
+generous fruits he calls to his enclosures, despite himself, thousands
+and thousands of hungry creatures, against whose appetites his
+prohibitions are helpless. The more he produces, the larger is the
+tribute demanded of him. Wholesale agriculture and vegetable abundance
+favour our rival the insect.
+
+This is the immanent law. Nature, with an equal zeal, offers her mighty
+breast to all her nurslings alike; to those who live by the goods of
+others no less than to the producers. For us, who plough, sow, and reap,
+and weary ourselves with labour, she ripens the wheat; she ripens it
+also for the little Calender-beetle, which, although exempted from the
+labour of the fields, enters our granaries none the less, and there,
+with its pointed beak, nibbles our wheat, grain by grain, to the husk.
+
+For us, who dig, weed, and water, bent with fatigue and burned by the
+sun, she swells the pods of the pea; she swells them also for the
+weevil, which does no gardener's work, yet takes its share of the
+harvest at its own hour, when the earth is joyful with the new life of
+spring.
+
+Let us follow the manoeuvres of this insect which takes its tithe of
+the green pea. I, a benevolent ratepayer, will allow it to take its
+dues; it is precisely to benefit it that I have sown a few rows of the
+beloved plant in a corner of my garden. Without other invitation on my
+part than this modest expenditure of seed-peas it arrives punctually
+during the month of May. It has learned that this stony soil, rebellious
+to the culture of the kitchen-gardener, is bearing peas for the first
+time. In all haste therefore it has hurried, an agent of the
+entomological revenue system, to demand its dues.
+
+Whence does it come? It is impossible to say precisely. It has come from
+some shelter, somewhere, in which it has passed the winter in a state of
+torpor. The plane-tree, which sheds its rind during the heats of the
+summer, furnishes an excellent refuge for homeless insects under its
+partly detached sheets of bark.
+
+I have often found our weevil in such a winter refuge. Sheltered under
+the dead covering of the plane, or otherwise protected while the winter
+lasts, it awakens from its torpor at the first touch of a kindly sun.
+The almanack of the instincts has aroused it; it knows as well as the
+gardener when the pea-vines are in flower, and seeks its favourite
+plant, journeying thither from every side, running with quick, short
+steps, or nimbly flying.
+
+A small head, a fine snout, a costume of ashen grey sprinkled with
+brown, flattened wing-covers, a dumpy, compact body, with two large
+black dots on the rear segment--such is the summary portrait of my
+visitor. The middle of May approaches, and with it the van of the
+invasion.
+
+They settle on the flowers, which are not unlike white-winged
+butterflies. I see them at the base of the blossom or inside the cavity
+of the "keel" of the flower, but the majority explore the petals and
+take possession of them. The time for laying the eggs has not yet
+arrived. The morning is mild; the sun is warm without being oppressive.
+It is the moment of nuptial flights; the time of rejoicing in the
+splendour of the sunshine. Everywhere are creatures rejoicing to be
+alive. Couples come together, part, and re-form. When towards noon the
+heat becomes too great, the weevils retire into the shadow, taking
+refuge singly in the folds of the flowers whose secret corners they know
+so well. To-morrow will be another day of festival, and the next day
+also, until the pods, emerging from the shelter of the "keel" of the
+flower, are plainly visible, enlarging from day to day.
+
+A few gravid females, more pressed for time than the others, confide
+their eggs to the growing pod, flat and meagre as it issues from its
+floral sheath. These hastily laid batches of eggs, expelled perhaps by
+the exigencies of an ovary incapable of further delay, seem to me in
+serious danger; for the seed in which the grub must establish itself is
+as yet no more than a tender speck of green, without firmness and
+without any farinaceous tissue. No larva could possible find sufficient
+nourishment there, unless it waited for the pea to mature.
+
+But is the grub capable of fasting for any length of time when once
+hatched? It is doubtful. The little I have seen tells me that the
+new-born grub must establish itself in the midst of its food as quickly
+as possible, and that it perishes unless it can do so. I am therefore of
+opinion that such eggs as are deposited in immature pods are lost.
+However, the race will hardly suffer by such a loss, so fertile is the
+little beetle. We shall see directly how prodigal the female is of her
+eggs, the majority of which are destined to perish.
+
+The important part of the maternal task is completed by the end of May,
+when the shells are swollen by the expanding peas, which have reached
+their final growth, or are but little short of it. I was anxious to see
+the female Bruchus at work in her quality of Curculionid, as our
+classification declares her.[8] The other weevils are Rhyncophora,
+beaked insects, armed with a drill with which to prepare the hole in
+which the egg is laid. The Bruchus possesses only a short snout or
+muzzle, excellently adapted for eating soft tissues, but valueless as a
+drill.
+
+The method of installing the family is consequently absolutely
+different. There are no industrious preparations as with the Balinidae,
+the Larinidae, and the Rhynchitides. Not being equipped with a long
+oviscapt, the mother sows her eggs in the open, with no protection
+against the heat of the sun and the variations of temperature. Nothing
+could be simpler, and nothing more perilous to the eggs, in the absence
+of special characteristics which would enable them to resist the
+alternate trials of heat and cold, moisture and drought.
+
+In the caressing sunlight of ten o'clock in the morning the mother runs
+up and down the chosen pod, first on one side, then on the other, with a
+jerky, capricious, unmethodical gait. She repeatedly extrudes a short
+oviduct, which oscillates right and left as though to graze the skin of
+the pod. An egg follows, which is abandoned as soon as laid.
+
+A hasty touch of the oviduct, first here, then there, on the green skin
+of the pea-pod, and that is all. The egg is left there, unprotected, in
+the full sunlight. No choice of position is made such as might assist
+the grub when it seeks to penetrate its larder. Some eggs are laid on
+the swellings created by the peas beneath; others in the barren valleys
+which separate them. The first are close to the peas, the second at some
+distance from them. In short, the eggs of the Bruchus are laid at
+random, as though on the wing.
+
+We observe a still more serious vice: the number of eggs is out of all
+proportion to the number of peas in the pod. Let us note at the outset
+that each grub requires one pea; it is the necessary ration, and is
+largely sufficient to one larva, but is not enough for several, nor even
+for two. One pea to each grub, neither more nor less, is the
+unchangeable rule.
+
+We should expect to find signs of a procreative economy which would
+impel the female to take into account the number of peas contained in
+the pod which she has just explored; we might expect her to set a
+numerical limit on her eggs in conformity with that of the peas
+available. But no such limit is observed. The rule of one pea to one
+grub is always contradicted by the multiplicity of consumers.
+
+My observations are unanimous on this point. The number of eggs
+deposited on one pod always exceeds the number of peas available, and
+often to a scandalous degree. However meagre the contents of the pod
+there is a superabundance of consumers. Dividing the sum of the eggs
+upon such or such a pod by that of the peas contained therein, I find
+there are five to eight claimants for each pea; I have found ten, and
+there is no reason why this prodigality should not go still further.
+Many are called, but few are chosen! What is to become of all these
+supernumeraries, perforce excluded from the banquet for want of space?
+
+The eggs are of a fairly bright amber yellow, cylindrical in form,
+smooth, and rounded at the ends. Their length is at most a twenty-fifth
+of an inch. Each is affixed to the pod by means of a slight network of
+threads of coagulated albumen. Neither wind nor rain can loosen their
+hold.
+
+The mother not infrequently emits them two at a time, one above the
+other; not infrequently, also, the uppermost of the two eggs hatches
+before the other, while the latter fades and perishes. What was lacking
+to this egg, that it should fail to produce a grub? Perhaps a bath of
+sunlight; the incubating heat of which the outer egg has robbed it.
+Whether on account of the fact that it is shadowed by the other egg, or
+for other reasons, the elder of the eggs in a group of two rarely
+follows the normal course, but perishes on the pod, dead without having
+lived.
+
+There are exceptions to this premature end; sometimes the two eggs
+develop equally well; but such cases are exceptional, so that the
+Bruchid family would be reduced to about half its dimensions if the
+binary system were the rule. To the detriment of our peas and to the
+advantage of the beetle, the eggs are commonly laid one by one and in
+isolation.
+
+A recent emergence is shown by a little sinuous ribbon-like mark, pale
+or whitish, where the skin of the pod is raised and withered, which
+starts from the egg and is the work of the new-born larva; a
+sub-epidermic tunnel along which the grub works its way, while seeking a
+point from which it can escape into a pea. This point once attained, the
+larva, which is scarcely a twenty-fifth of an inch in length, and is
+white with a black head, perforates the envelope and plunges into the
+capacious hollow of the pod.
+
+It has reached the peas and crawls upon the nearest. I have observed it
+with the magnifier. Having explored the green globe, its new world, it
+begins to sink a well perpendicularly into the sphere. I have often seen
+it half-way in, wriggling its tail in the effort to work the quicker. In
+a short time the grub disappears and is at home. The point of entry,
+minute, but always easily recognisable by its brown coloration on the
+pale green background of the pea, has no fixed location; it may be at
+almost any point on the surface of the pea, but an exception is usually
+made of the lower half; that is, the hemisphere whose pole is formed by
+the supporting stem.
+
+It is precisely in this portion that the germ is found, which will not
+be eaten by the larva, and will remain capable of developing into a
+plant, in spite of the large aperture made by the emergence of the adult
+insect. Why is this particular portion left untouched? What are the
+motives that safeguard the germ?
+
+It goes without saying that the Bruchus is not considering the gardener.
+The pea is meant for it and for no one else. In refusing the few bites
+that would lead to the death of the seed, it has no intention of
+limiting its destruction. It abstains from other motives.
+
+Let us remark that the peas touch laterally, and are pressed one
+against the other, so that the grub, when searching for a point of
+attack, cannot circulate at will. Let us also note that the lower pole
+expands into the umbilical excrescence, which is less easy of
+perforation than those parts protected by the skin alone. It is even
+possible that the umbilicum, whose organisation differs from that of the
+rest of the pea, contains a peculiar sap that is distasteful to the
+little grub.
+
+Such, doubtless, is the reason why the peas exploited by the Bruchus are
+still able to germinate. They are damaged, but not dead, because the
+invasion was conducted from the free hemisphere, a portion less
+vulnerable and more easy of access. Moreover, as the pea in its entirety
+is too large for a single grub to consume, the consumption is limited to
+the portion preferred by the consumer, and this portion is not the
+essential portion of the pea.
+
+With other conditions, with very much smaller or very much larger seeds,
+we shall observe very different results. If too small, the germ will
+perish, gnawed like the rest by the insufficiently provisioned inmate;
+if too large, the abundance of food will permit of several inmates.
+Exploited in the absence of the pea, the cultivated vetch and the broad
+bean afford us an excellent example; the smaller seed, of which all but
+the skin is devoured, is left incapable of germination; but the large
+bean, even though it may have held a number of grubs, is still capable
+of sprouting.
+
+Knowing that the pod always exhibits a number of eggs greatly in excess
+of the enclosed peas, and that each pea is the exclusive property of one
+grub, we naturally ask what becomes of the superfluous grubs. Do they
+perish outside when the more precocious have one by one taken their
+places in their vegetable larder? or do they succumb to the intolerant
+teeth of the first occupants? Neither explanation is correct. Let us
+relate the facts.
+
+On all old peas--they are at this stage dry--from which the adult
+Bruchus has emerged, leaving a large round hole of exit, the
+magnifying-glass will show a variable number of fine reddish
+punctuations, perforated in the centre. What are these spots, of which I
+count five, six, and even more on a single pea? It is impossible to be
+mistaken: they are the points of entry of as many grubs. Several grubs
+have entered the pea, but of the whole group only one has survived,
+fattened, and attained the adult age. And the others? We shall see.
+
+At the end of May, and in June, the period of egg-laying, let us inspect
+the still green and tender peas. Nearly all the peas invaded show us the
+multiple perforations already observed on the dry peas abandoned by the
+weevils. Does this actually mean that there are several grubs in the
+pea? Yes. Skin the peas in question, separate the cotyledons, and break
+them up as may be necessary. We shall discover several grubs, extremely
+youthful, curled up comma-wise, fat and lively, each in a little round
+niche in the body of the pea.
+
+Peace and welfare seem to reign in the little community. There is no
+quarrelling, no jealousy between neighbours. The feast has commenced;
+food is abundant, and the feasters are separated one from another by the
+walls of uneaten substance. With this isolation in separate cells no
+conflicts need be feared; no sudden bite of the mandibles, whether
+intentional or accidental. All the occupants enjoy the same rights of
+property, the same appetite, and the same strength. How does this
+communal feast terminate?
+
+Having first opened them, I place a number of peas which are found to be
+well peopled in a glass test-tube. I open others daily. In this way I
+keep myself informed as to the progress of the various larvae. At first
+nothing noteworthy is to be seen. Isolated in its narrow chamber, each
+grub nibbles the substance around it, peacefully and parsimoniously. It
+is still very small; a mere speck of food is a feast; but the contents
+of one pea will not suffice the whole number to the end. Famine is
+ahead, and all but one must perish.
+
+Soon, indeed, the aspect of things is entirely changed. One of the
+grubs--that which occupies the central position in the pea--begins to
+grow more quickly than the others. Scarcely has it surpassed the others
+in size when the latter cease to eat, and no longer attempt to burrow
+forwards. They lie motionless and resigned; they die that gentle death
+which comes to unconscious lives. Henceforth the entire pea belongs to
+the sole survivor. Now what has happened that these lives around the
+privileged one should be thus annihilated? In default of a satisfactory
+reply, I will propose a suggestion.
+
+In the centre of the pea, less ripened than the rest of the seed by the
+chemistry of the sun, may there not be a softer pulp, of a quality
+better adapted to the infantile digestion of the grub? There, perhaps,
+being nourished by tenderer, sweeter, and perhaps more tasty tissues,
+the stomach becomes more vigorous, until it is fit to undertake less
+easily digested food. A nursling is fed on milk before proceeding to
+bread and broth. May not the central portion of the pea be the
+feeding-bottle of the Bruchid?
+
+With equal rights, fired by an equal ambition, all the occupants of the
+pea bore their way towards the delicious morsel. The journey is
+laborious, and the grubs must rest frequently in their provisional
+niches. They rest; while resting they frugally gnaw the riper tissues
+surrounding them; they gnaw rather to open a way than to fill their
+stomachs.
+
+Finally one of the excavators, favoured by the direction taken, attains
+the central portion. It establishes itself there, and all is over; the
+others have only to die. How are they warned that the place is taken? Do
+they hear their brother gnawing at the walls of his lodging? can they
+feel the vibration set up by his nibbling mandibles? Something of the
+kind must happen, for from that moment they make no attempt to burrow
+further. Without struggling against the fortunate winner, without
+seeking to dislodge him, those which are beaten in the race give
+themselves up to death. I admire this candid resignation on the part of
+the departed.
+
+Another condition--that of space--is also present as a factor. The
+pea-weevil is the largest of our Bruchidae. When it attains the adult
+stage it requires a certain amplitude of lodging, which the other
+weevils do not require in the same degree. A pea provides it with a
+sufficiently spacious cell; nevertheless, the cohabitation of two in one
+pea would be impossible; there would be no room, even were the two to
+put up with a certain discomfort. Hence the necessity of an inevitable
+decimation, which will suppress all the competitors save one.
+
+Now the superior volume of the broad bean, which is almost as much
+beloved by the weevil as the pea, can lodge a considerable community,
+and the solitary can live as a cenobite. Without encroaching on the
+domain of their neighbours, five or six or more can find room in the one
+bean.
+
+Moreover, each grub can find its infant diet; that is, that layer which,
+remote from the surface, hardens only gradually and remains full of sap
+until a comparatively late period. This inner layer represents the crumb
+of a loaf, the rest of the bean being the crust.
+
+In the pea, a sphere of much less capacity, it occupies the central
+portion; a limited point at which the grub develops, and lacking which
+it perishes; but in the bean it lines the wide adjoining faces of the
+two flattened cotyledons. No matter where the point of attack is made,
+the grub has only to bore straight down when it quickly reaches the
+softer tissues. What is the result? I have counted the eggs adhering to
+a bean-pod and the beans included in the pod, and comparing the two
+figures I find that there is plenty of room for the whole family at the
+rate of five or six dwellers in each bean. No superfluous larvae perish
+of hunger when barely issued from the egg; all have their share of the
+ample provision; all live and prosper. The abundance of food balances
+the prodigal fertility of the mother.
+
+If the Bruchus were always to adopt the broad bean for the establishment
+of her family I could well understand the exuberant allowance of eggs to
+one pod; a rich food-stuff easily obtained evokes a large batch of
+eggs. But the case of the pea perplexes me. By what aberration does the
+mother abandon her children to starvation on this totally insufficient
+vegetable? Why so many grubs to each pea when one pea is sufficient only
+for one grub?
+
+Matters are not so arranged in the general balance-sheet of life. A
+certain foresight seems to rule over the ovary so that the number of
+mouths is in proportion to the abundance or scarcity of the food
+consumed. The Scarabaeus, the Sphex, the Necrophorus, and other insects
+which prepare and preserve alimentary provision for their families, are
+all of a narrowly limited fertility, because the balls of dung, the dead
+or paralysed insects, or the buried corpses of animals on which their
+offspring are nourished are provided only at the cost of laborious
+efforts.
+
+The ordinary bluebottle, on the contrary, which lays her eggs upon
+butcher's meat or carrion, lays them in enormous batches. Trusting in
+the inexhaustible riches represented by the corpse, she is prodigal of
+offspring, and takes no account of numbers. In other cases the provision
+is acquired by audacious brigandage, which exposes the newly born
+offspring to a thousand mortal accidents. In such cases the mother
+balances the chances of destruction by an exaggerated flux of eggs. Such
+is the case with the Meloides, which, stealing the goods of others under
+conditions of the greatest peril, are accordingly endowed with a
+prodigious fertility.
+
+The Bruchus knows neither the fatigues of the laborious, obliged to
+limit the size of her family, nor the misfortunes of the parasite,
+obliged to produce an exaggerated number of offspring. Without painful
+search, entirely at her ease, merely moving in the sunshine over her
+favourite plant, she can ensure a sufficient provision for each of her
+offspring; she can do so, yet is foolish enough to over-populate the pod
+of the pea; a nursery insufficiently provided, in which the great
+majority will perish of starvation. This ineptitude is a thing I cannot
+understand: it clashes too completely with the habitual foresight of the
+maternal instinct.
+
+I am inclined to believe that the pea is not the original food plant of
+the Bruchus. The original plant must rather have been the bean, one seed
+of which is capable of supporting half a dozen or more larvae. With the
+larger cotyledon the crying disproportion between the number of eggs and
+the available provision disappears.
+
+Moreover, it is indubitable that the bean is of earlier date than the
+pea. Its exceptional size and its agreeable flavour would certainly have
+attracted the attention of man from the remotest periods. The bean is a
+ready-made mouthful, and would be of the greatest value to the hungry
+tribe. Primitive man would at an early date have sown it beside his
+wattled hut. Coming from Central Asia by long stages, their wagons drawn
+by shaggy oxen and rolling on the circular discs cut from the trunks of
+trees, the early immigrants would have brought to our virgin land, first
+the bean, then the pea, and finally the cereal, that best of safeguards
+against famine. They taught us the care of herds, and the use of bronze,
+the material of the first metal implement. Thus the dawn of civilisation
+arose over France. With the bean did those ancient teachers also
+involuntarily bring us the insect which to-day disputes it with us? It
+is doubtful; the Bruchidae seem to be indigenous. At all events, I find
+them levying tribute from various indigenous plants, wild vegetables
+which have never tempted the appetite of man. They abound in particular
+upon the great forest vetch (_Lathyrus latifolius_), with its
+magnificent heads of flowers and long handsome pods. The seeds are not
+large, being indeed smaller than the garden pea; but eaten to the very
+skin, as they invariably are, each is sufficient to the needs of its
+grub.
+
+We must not fail to note their number. I have counted more than twenty
+in a single pod, a number unknown in the case of the pea, even in the
+most prolific varieties. Consequently this superb vetch is in general
+able to nourish without much loss the family confided to its pod.
+
+Where the forest vetch is lacking, the Bruchus, none the less, bestows
+its habitual prodigality of eggs upon another vegetable of similar
+flavour, but incapable of nourishing all the grubs: for the example, the
+travelling vetch (_Vicia peregrina_) or the cultivated vetch (_Vicia
+sativa_). The number of eggs remains high even upon insufficient pods,
+because the original food-plant offered a copious provision, both in the
+multiplicity and the size of the seeds. If the Bruchus is really a
+stranger, let us regard the bean as the original food-plant; if
+indigenous, the large vetch.
+
+Sometime in the remote past we received the pea, growing it at first in
+the prehistoric vegetable garden which already supplied the bean. It was
+found a better article of diet than the broad bean, which to-day, after
+such good service, is comparatively neglected. The weevil was of the
+same opinion as man, and without entirely forgetting the bean and the
+vetch it established the greater part of its tribe upon the pea, which
+from century to century was more widely cultivated. To-day we have to
+share our peas: the Bruchidae take what they need, and bestow their
+leavings on us.
+
+This prosperity of the insect which is the offspring of the abundance
+and quality of our garden products is from another point of view
+equivalent to decadence. For the weevil, as for ourselves, progress in
+matters of food and drink is not always beneficial. The race would
+profit better if it remained frugal. On the bean and the vetch the
+Bruchus founded colonies in which the infant mortality was low. There
+was room for all. On the pea-vine, delicious though its fruits may be,
+the greater part of its offspring die of starvation. The rations are
+few, and the hungry mouths are multitudinous.
+
+We will linger over this problem no longer. Let us observe the grub
+which has now become the sole tenant of the pea by the death of its
+brothers. It has had no part in their death; chance has favoured it,
+that is all. In the centre of the pea, a wealthy solitude, it performs
+the duty of a grub; the sole duty of eating. It nibbles the walls
+enclosing it, enlarging its lodgment, which is always entirely filled by
+its corpulent body. It is well shaped, fat, and shining with health. If
+I disturb it, it turns gently in its niche and sways its head. This is
+its manner of complaining of my importunities. Let us leave it in peace.
+
+It profits so greatly and so swiftly by its position that by the time
+the dog-days have come it is already preparing for its approaching
+liberation. The adult is not sufficiently well equipped to open for
+itself a way out through the pea, which is now completely hardened. The
+larva knows of this future helplessness, and with consummate art
+provides for its release. With its powerful mandibles it bores a channel
+of exit, exactly round, with extremely clean-cut sides. The most skilful
+ivory-carver could do no better.
+
+To prepare the door of exit in advance is not enough; the grub must also
+provide for the tranquillity essential to the delicate processes of
+nymphosis. An intruder might enter by the open door and injure the
+helpless nymph. This passage must therefore remain closed. But how?
+
+As the grub bores the passage of exit it consumes the farinaceous matter
+without leaving a crumb. Having come to the skin of the pea it stops
+short. This membrane, semi-translucid, is the door to the chamber of
+metamorphosis, its protection against the evil intentions of external
+creatures.
+
+It is also the only obstacle which the adult will encounter at the
+moment of exit. To lessen the difficulty of opening it the grub takes
+the precaution of gnawing at the inner side of the skin, all round the
+circumference, so as to make a line of least resistance. The perfect
+insect will only have to heave with its shoulder and strike a few blows
+with its head in order to raise the circular door and knock it off like
+the lid of a box. The passage of exit shows through the diaphanous skin
+of the pea as a large circular spot, which is darkened by the obscurity
+of the interior. What passes behind it is invisible, hidden as it is
+behind a sort of ground glass window.
+
+A pretty invention, this little closed porthole, this barricade against
+the invader, this trap-door raised by a push when the time has come for
+the hermit to enter the world. Shall we credit it to the Bruchus? Did
+the ingenious insect conceive the undertaking? Did it think out a plan
+and work out a scheme of its own devising? This would be no small
+triumph for the brain of a weevil. Before coming to a conclusion let us
+try an experiment.
+
+I deprive certain occupied peas of their skin, and I dry them with
+abnormal rapidity, placing them in glass test-tubes. The grubs prosper
+as well as in the intact peas. At the proper time the preparations for
+emergence are made.
+
+If the grub acts on its own inspiration, if it ceases to prolong its
+boring directly it recognises that the outer coating, auscultated from
+time to time, is sufficiently thin, what will it do under the conditions
+of the present test? Feeling itself at the requisite distance from the
+surface it will stop boring; it will respect the outer layer of the bare
+pea, and will thus obtain the indispensable protecting screen.
+
+Nothing of the kind occurs. In every case the passage is completely
+excavated; the entrance gapes wide open, as large and as carefully
+executed as though the skin of the pea were in its place. Reasons of
+security have failed to modify the usual method of work. This open
+lodging has no defence against the enemy; but the grub exhibits no
+anxiety on this score.
+
+Neither is it thinking of the outer enemy when it bores down to the skin
+when the pea is intact, and then stops short. It suddenly stops because
+the innutritious skin is not to its taste. We ourselves remove the
+parchment-like skins from a mess of pease-pudding, as from a culinary
+point of view they are so much waste matter. The larva of the Bruchus,
+like ourselves, dislikes the skin of the pea. It stops short at the
+horny covering, simply because it is checked by an uneatable substance.
+From this aversion a little miracle arises; but the insect has no sense
+of logic; it is passively obedient to the superior logic of facts. It
+obeys its instinct, as unconscious of its act as is a crystal when it
+assembles, in exquisite order, its battalions of atoms.
+
+Sooner or later during the month of August we see a shadowy circle form
+on each inhabited pea; but only one on each seed. These circles of
+shadow mark the doors of exit. Most of them open in September. The lid,
+as though cut out with a punch, detaches itself cleanly and falls to the
+ground, leaving the orifice free. The Bruchus emerges, freshly clad, in
+its final form.
+
+The weather is delightful. Flowers are abundant, awakened by the summer
+showers; and the weevils visit them in the lovely autumn weather. Then,
+when the cold sets in, they take up their winter quarters in any
+suitable retreat. Others, still numerous, are less hasty in quitting the
+native seed. They remain within during the whole winter, sheltered
+behind the trap-door, which they take care not to touch. The door of the
+cell will not open on its hinges, or, to be exact, will not yield along
+the line of least resistance, until the warm days return. Then the late
+arrivals will leave their shelter and rejoin the more impatient, and
+both will be ready for work when the pea-vines are in flower.
+
+To take a general view of the instincts in their inexhaustible variety
+is, for the observer, the great attraction of the entomological world;
+for nowhere do we gain a clearer sight of the wonderful way in which the
+processes of life are ordered. Thus regarded entomology is not, I know,
+to the taste of everybody; the simple creature absorbed in the doings
+and habits of insects is held in low esteem. To the terrible
+utilitarian, a bushel of peas preserved from the weevil is of more
+importance than a volume of observations which bring no immediate
+profit.
+
+Yet who has told you, O man of little faith, that what is useless to-day
+will not be useful to-morrow? If we learn the customs of insects or
+animals we shall understand better how to protect our goods. Do not
+despise disinterested knowledge, or you may rue the day. It is by the
+accumulation of ideas, whether immediately applicable or otherwise, that
+humanity has done, and will continue to do, better to-day than
+yesterday, and better to-morrow than to-day. If we live on peas and
+beans, which we dispute with the weevil, we also live by knowledge, that
+mighty kneading-trough in which the bread of progress is mixed and
+leavened. Knowledge is well worth a few beans.
+
+Among other things, knowledge tells us: "The seedsman need not go to the
+expense of waging war upon the weevil. When the peas arrive in the
+granary, the harm is already done; it is irreparable, but not
+transmissible. The untouched peas have nothing to fear from the
+neighbourhood of those which have been attacked, however long the
+mixture is left. From the latter the weevils will issue when their time
+has come; they will fly away from the storehouse if escape is possible;
+if not, they will perish without in any way attacking the sound peas. No
+eggs, no new generation will ever be seen upon or within the dried peas
+in the storehouse; there the adult weevil can work no further mischief."
+
+The Bruchus is not a sedentary inhabitant of granaries: it requires the
+open air, the sun, the liberty of the fields. Frugal in everything, it
+absolutely disdains the hard tissues of the vegetable; its tiny mouth is
+content with a few honeyed mouthfuls, enjoyed upon the flowers. The
+larvae, on the other hand, require the tender tissues of the green pea
+growing in the pod. For these reasons the granary knows no final
+multiplication on the part of the despoiler.
+
+The origin of the evil is in the kitchen-garden. It is there that we
+ought to keep a watch on the misdeeds of the Bruchus, were it not for
+the fact that we are nearly always weaponless when it comes to fighting
+an insect. Indestructible by reason of its numbers, its small size, and
+its cunning, the little creature laughs at the anger of man. The
+gardener curses it, but the weevil is not disturbed: it imperturbably
+continues its trade of levying tribute. Happily we have assistants more
+patient and more clear-sighted than ourselves.
+
+During the first week of August, when the mature Bruchus begins to
+emerge, I notice a little Chalcidian, the protector of our peas. In my
+rearing-cages it issues under my eyes in abundance from the peas
+infested by the grub of the weevil. The female has a reddish head and
+thorax; the abdomen is black, with a long augur-like oviscapt. The male,
+a little smaller, is black. Both sexes have reddish claws and
+thread-like antennae.
+
+In order to escape from the pea the slayer of the weevil makes an
+opening in the centre of the circular trap-door which the grub of the
+weevil prepared in view of its future deliverance. The slain has
+prepared the way for the slayer. After this detail the rest may be
+divined.
+
+When the preliminaries to the metamorphosis are completed, when the
+passage of escape is bored and furnished with its lid of superficial
+membrane, the female Chalcidian arrives in a busy mood. She inspects the
+peas, still on the vine, and enclosed in their pods; she auscultates
+them with her antennae; she discovers, hidden under the general envelope,
+the weak points in the epidermic covering of the peas. Then, applying
+her oviscapt, she thrusts it through the side of the pod and perforates
+the circular trap-door. However far withdrawn into the centre of the
+pea, the Bruchus, whether larvae or nymph, is reached by the long
+oviduct. It receives an egg in its tender flesh, and the thing is done.
+Without possibility of defence, since it is by now a somnolent grub or a
+helpless pupa, the embryo weevil is eaten until nothing but skin
+remains. What a pity that we cannot at will assist the multiplication of
+this eager exterminator! Alas! our assistants have got us in a vicious
+circle, for if we wished to obtain the help of any great number of
+Chalcidians we should be obliged in the first place to breed a
+multiplicity of Bruchidae.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AN INVADER.--THE HARICOT-WEEVIL
+
+
+If there is one vegetable on earth that more than any other is a gift of
+the gods, it is the haricot bean. It has all the virtues: it forms a
+soft paste upon the tongue; it is extremely palatable, abundant,
+inexpensive, and highly nutritious. It is a vegetable meat which,
+without being bloody and repulsive, is the equivalent of the horrors
+outspread upon the butcher's slab. To recall its services the more
+emphatically, the Provencal idiom calls it the _gounflo-gus_--the filler
+of the poor.
+
+Blessed Bean, consoler of the wretched, right well indeed do you fill
+the labourer, the honest, skilful worker who has drawn a low number in
+the crazy lottery of life. Kindly Haricot, with three drops of oil and a
+dash of vinegar you were the favourite dish of my young years; and even
+now, in the evening of my days, you are welcome to my humble porringer.
+We shall be friends to the last.
+
+To-day it is not my intention to sing your merits; I wish simply to ask
+you a question, being curious: What is the country of your origin? Did
+you come from Central Asia with the broad bean and the pea? Did you make
+part of that collection of seeds which the first pioneers of culture
+brought us from their gardens? Were you known to antiquity?
+
+Here the insect, an impartial and well-informed witness, answers: "No;
+in our country antiquity was not acquainted with the haricot. The
+precious vegetable came hither by the same road as the broad bean. It is
+a foreigner, and of comparatively recent introduction into Europe."
+
+The reply of the insect merits serious examination, supported as it is
+by extremely plausible arguments. Here are the facts. For years
+attentive to matters agricultural, I had never seen haricots attacked by
+any insect whatever; not even by the Bruchidae, the licensed robbers of
+leguminous seeds.
+
+On this point I have questioned my peasant neighbours. They are men of
+the extremest vigilance in all that concerns their crops. To steal their
+property is an abominable crime, swiftly discovered. Moreover, the
+housewife, who individually examines all beans intended for the
+saucepan, would inevitably find the malefactor.
+
+All those I have spoken to replied to my questions with a smile in which
+I read their lack of faith in my knowledge of insects. "Sir," they said,
+"you must know that there are never grubs in the haricot bean. It is a
+blessed vegetable, respected by the weevil. The pea, the broad bean, the
+vetch, and the chick-pea all have their vermin; but the haricot, _lou
+gounflo-gus_, never. What should we do, poor folk as we are, if the
+_Courcoussoun_ robbed us of it?"
+
+The fact is that the weevil despises the haricot; a very curious dislike
+if we consider how industriously the other vegetables of the same family
+are attacked. All, even the beggarly lentil, are eagerly exploited;
+whilst the haricot, so tempting both as to size and flavour, remains
+untouched. It is incomprehensible. Why should the Bruchus, which without
+hesitation passes from the excellent to the indifferent, and from the
+indifferent to the excellent, disdain this particularly toothsome seed?
+It leaves the forest vetch for the pea, and the pea for the broad bean,
+as pleased with the small as with the large, yet the temptations of the
+haricot bean leave it indifferent. Why?
+
+Apparently because the haricot is unknown to it. The other leguminous
+plants, whether native or of Oriental origin, have been familiar to it
+for centuries; it has tested their virtues year by year, and, confiding
+in the lessons of the past, it bases its forethought for the future upon
+ancient custom. The haricot is avoided as a newcomer, whose merits it
+has not yet learned.
+
+The insect emphatically informs us that with us the haricot is of recent
+date. It has come to us from a distant country: and assuredly from the
+New World. Every edible vegetable attracts its consumers. If it had
+originated in the Old World the haricot would have had its licensed
+consumers, as have the pea, the lentil, and the broad bean. The smallest
+leguminous seed, if barely bigger than a pin's head, nourishes its
+weevil; a dwarf which patiently nibbles it and excavates a dwelling; but
+the plump, delicious haricot is spared.
+
+This astonishing immunity can have only one explanation: like the potato
+and the maize-plant, the haricot is a gift of the New World. It arrived
+in Europe without the company of the insect which exploits it in its
+native country; it has found in our fields another world of insects,
+which have despised it because they did not know it. Similarly the
+potato and the ear of maize are untouched in France unless their
+American consumers are accidentally imported with them.
+
+The verdict of the insect is confirmed by the negative testimony of the
+ancient classics; the haricot never appears on the table of the Greek or
+Roman peasant. In the second Eclogue of Virgil Thestylis prepares the
+repast of the harvesters:--
+
+  Thestylis et rapido fessis messoribus aestu
+  Allia serpyllumque herbas contundit olentes.
+
+This mixture is the equivalent of the _aioli_, dear to the Provencal
+palate. It sounds very well in verse, but is not very substantial. On
+such an occasion men would look for that fundamental dish, the plate of
+red haricots, seasoned with chopped onions. All in good time; this at
+least would ballast the stomach. Thus refreshed in the open air,
+listening to the song of the cigales, the gang of harvesters would take
+their mid-day rest and gently digest their meal in the shadows of the
+sheaves. Our modern Thestylis, differing little from her classic sister,
+would take good care not to forget the _gounflo-gus_, that economical
+resource of large appetites. The Thestylis of the past did not think of
+providing it because she did not know it.
+
+The same author shows us Tityrus offering a night's hospitality to his
+friend Meliboeus, who has been driven from his property by the
+soldiers of Octavius, and goes limping behind his flock of goats. We
+shall have, says Tityrus, chestnuts, cheese, and fruits. History does
+not say if Meliboeus allowed himself to be tempted. It is a pity; for
+during the frugal meal we might have learned in a more explicit fashion
+that the shepherds of the ancient world were not acquainted with the
+haricot.
+
+Ovid tells us, in a delightful passage, of the manner in which Philemon
+and Baucis received the gods unawares as guests in their humble cottage.
+On the three-legged table, which was levelled by means of a potsherd
+under one of the legs, they served cabbage soup, rusty bacon, eggs
+poached for a minute in the hot cinders, cornel-berries pickled in
+brine, honey, and fruits. In this rustic abundance one dish was lacking;
+an essential dish, which the Baucis of our countryside would never
+forget. After bacon soup would follow the obligatory plate of haricots.
+Why did Ovid, so prodigal of detail, neglect to mention a dish so
+appropriate to the occasion? The reply is the same as before: because he
+did not know of it.
+
+In vain have I recapitulated all that my reading has taught me
+concerning the rustic dietary of ancient times; I can recollect no
+mention of the haricot. The worker in the vineyard and the harvester
+have their lupins, broad beans, peas, and lentils, but never the bean of
+beans, the haricot.
+
+The haricot has a reputation of another kind. It is a source of
+flatulence; you eat it, as the saying is, and then you take a walk. It
+lends itself to the gross pleasantries loved of the populace; especially
+when they are formulated by the shameless genius of an Aristophanes or a
+Plautus. What merriment over a simple allusion to the sonorous bean,
+what guffaws from the throats of Athenian sailors or Roman porters! Did
+the two masters, in the unfettered gaiety of a language less reserved
+than our own, ever mention the virtues of the haricot? No; they are
+absolutely silent concerning the trumpet-voiced vegetable.
+
+The name of the bean is a matter for reflection. It is of an unfamiliar
+sound, having no affinity with our language. By its unlikeness to our
+native combinations of sounds, it makes one think of the West Indies or
+South America, as do _caoutchouc_ and _cacao_. Does the word as a matter
+of fact come from the American Indians? Did we receive, together with
+the vegetable, the name by which it is known in its native country?
+Perhaps; but how are we to know? Haricot, fantastic haricot, you set us
+a curious philological problem.
+
+It is also known in French as _faseole_, or _flageolet_. The Provencal
+calls it _faiou_ and _faviou_; the Catalan, _fayol_; the Spaniard,
+_faseolo_; the Portuguese, _feyao_; the Italian, _fagiuolo_. Here I am
+on familiar ground: the languages of the Latin family have preserved,
+with the inevitable modifications, the ancient word _faseolus_.
+
+Now, if I consult my dictionary I find: _faselus_, _faseolus_,
+_phaseolus_, haricot. Learned lexicographer, permit me to remark that
+your translation is incorrect: _faselus_, _faseolus_ cannot mean
+haricot. The incontestable proof is in the Georgics, where Virgil tells
+us at what season we must sow the _faselus_. He says:--
+
+  Si vero viciamque seres vilemque faselum ...
+  Haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes;
+  Incipe, et ad medias sementem extende pruinas.
+
+Nothing is clearer than the precept of the poet who was so admirably
+familiar with all matters agricultural; the sowing of the _faselus_ must
+be commenced when the constellation of Bootes disappears at the set of
+sun, that is, in October; and it is to be continued until the middle of
+the winter.
+
+These conditions put the haricot out of the running: it is a delicate
+plant, which would never survive the lightest frost. Winter would be
+fatal to it, even under Italian skies. More refractory to cold on
+account of the country of their origin, peas, broad beans, and vetches,
+and other leguminous plants have nothing to fear from an autumn sowing,
+and prosper during the winter provided the climate be fairly mild.
+
+What then is represented by the _faselus_ of the Georgics, that
+problematical vegetable which has transmitted its name to the haricot in
+the Latin tongues? Remembering that the contemptuous epithet _vilis_ is
+used by the poet in qualification, I am strongly inclined to regard it
+as the cultivated vetch, the big square pea, the little-valued _jaisso_
+of the Provencal peasant.
+
+The problem of the haricot stood thus, almost elucidated by the
+testimony of the insect world alone, when an unexpected witness gave me
+the last word of the enigma. It was once again a poet, and a famous
+poet, M. Jose-Maria de Heredia, who came to the aid of the naturalist.
+Without suspecting the service he was rendering, a friend of mine, the
+village schoolmaster, lent me a magazine[9] in which I read the
+following conversation between the master-sonneteer and a lady
+journalist, who was anxious to know which of his own works he preferred.
+
+"What would you have me say?" said the poet.
+
+"I do not know what to say, I do not know which sonnet I prefer; I have
+taken horrible pains with all of them.... But you, which do you prefer?"
+
+"My dear master, how can I choose out of so many jewels, when each one
+is perfect in its beauty? You flash pearls, emeralds, and rubies before
+my astonished eyes: how should I decide to prefer the emerald to the
+pearl? I am transported by admiration of the whole necklace."
+
+"Well, as for me, there is something I am more proud of than of all my
+sonnets, and which has done much more for my reputation than my verses."
+
+I opened my eyes wide, "What is that?" I asked. The master looked at me
+mischievously; then, with that beautiful light in his eyes which fires
+his youthful countenance, he said triumphantly--
+
+"It is my discovery of the etymology of the word haricot!"
+
+I was so amazed that I forgot to laugh.
+
+"I am perfectly serious in telling you this."
+
+"I know, my dear master, of your reputation for profound scholarship:
+but to imagine, on that account, that you were famed for your discovery
+of the etymology of haricot--I should never have expected it! Will you
+tell me how you made the discovery?"
+
+"Willingly. See now: I found some information respecting the haricot
+while studying that fine seventeenth-century work of natural history by
+Hernandez: _De Historia plantarum novi orbis_. The word haricot was
+unknown in France until the seventeenth century: people used the word
+_feve_ or _phaseol_: in Mexican, _ayacot_. Thirty species of haricot
+were cultivated in Mexico before the conquest. They are still known as
+_ayacot_, especially the red haricot, spotted with black or violet. One
+day at the house of Gaston Paris I met a famous scholar. Hearing my
+name, he rushed at me and asked if it was I who had discovered the
+etymology of the word haricot. He was absolutely ignorant of the fact
+that I had written verses and published the _Trophees_."--
+
+A very pretty whim, to count the jewellery of his famous sonnets as
+second in importance to the nomenclature of a vegetable! I in my turn
+was delighted with his _ayacot_. How right I was to suspect the
+outlandish word of American Indian origin! How right the insect was, in
+testifying, in its own fashion, that the precious bean came to us from
+the New World! While still retaining its original name--or something
+sufficiently like it--the bean of Montezuma, the Aztec _ayacot_, has
+migrated from Mexico to the kitchen-gardens of Europe.
+
+But it has reached us without the company of its licensed consumer; for
+there must assuredly be a weevil in its native country which levies
+tribute on its nourishing tissues. Our native bean-eaters have mistaken
+the stranger; they have not had time as yet to grow familiar with it, or
+to appreciate its merits; they have prudently abstained from touching
+the _ayacot_, whose novelty awoke suspicion. Until our own days the
+Mexican bean remained untouched: unlike our other leguminous seeds,
+which are all eagerly exploited by the weevil.
+
+This state of affairs could not last. If our own fields do not contain
+the insect amateur of the haricot the New World knows it well enough. By
+the road of commercial exchange, sooner or later some worm-eaten sack
+of haricots must bring it to Europe. The invasion is inevitable.
+
+According to documents now before me, indeed, it has already taken
+place. Three or four years ago I received from Maillane, in the
+Bouches-du-Rhone, what I sought in vain in my own neighbourhood,
+although I questioned many a farmer and housewife, and astonished them
+by my questions. No one had ever seen the pest of the haricot; no one
+had ever heard of it. Friends who knew of my inquiries sent me from
+Maillane, as I have said, information that gave great satisfaction to my
+naturalist's curiosity. It was accompanied by a measure of haricots
+which were utterly and outrageously spoiled; every bean was riddled with
+holes, changed into a kind of sponge. Within them swarmed innumerable
+weevils, which recalled, by their diminutive size, the lentil-weevil,
+_Bruchus lenti_.
+
+The senders told me of the loss experienced at Maillane. The odious
+little creature, they said, had destroyed the greater portion of the
+harvest. A veritable plague, such as had never before been known, had
+fallen upon the haricots, leaving the housewife barely a handful to put
+in the saucepan. Of the habits of the creature and its way of going to
+work nothing was known. It was for me to discover them by means of
+experiment.
+
+Quick, then, let us experiment! The circumstances favour me. We are in
+the middle of June, and in my garden there is a bed of early haricots;
+the black Belgian haricots, sown for use in the kitchen. Since I must
+sacrifice the toothsome vegetable, let us loose the terrible destroyer
+on the mass of verdure. The development of the plant is at the
+requisite stage, if I may go by what the _Bruchus pisi_ has already
+taught me; the flowers are abundant, and the pods are equally so; still
+green, and of all sizes.
+
+I place on a plate two or three handfuls of the infested haricots, and
+set the populous heap in the full sunlight by the edge of my bed of
+beans. I can imagine what will happen. Those insects which are already
+free, and those which the stimulus of the sunshine will presently
+liberate, will emerge and take to their wings. Finding the maternal
+haricot close at hand they will take possession of the vines. I shall
+see them exploring pods and flowers, and before very long they will lay
+their eggs. That is how the pea-weevil would behave under similar
+conditions.
+
+But no: to my surprise and confusion, matters do not fall out as I
+foresaw. For a few minutes the insects bustle about in the sunlight,
+opening and closing their wing-covers to ease the mechanism of flight;
+then one by one they fly away, mounting in the luminous air; they grow
+smaller and smaller to the sight, and are quickly lost to view. My
+persevering attentions have not met with the slightest success; not one
+of the weevils has settled on my haricots.
+
+When the joys of liberty have been tasted will they return--to-night,
+to-morrow, or later? No, they do not return. All that week, at
+favourable hours, I inspect the rows of beans pod by pod, flower by
+flower; but never a Bruchus do I see, nor even an egg. Yet the season is
+propitious, for at this very moment the mothers imprisoned in my jars
+lay a profusion of eggs upon the dry haricots.
+
+Next season I try again. I have at my disposal two other beds, which I
+have sown with the late haricot, the red haricot; partly for the use of
+the household, but principally for the benefit of the weevil. Arranged
+in convenient rows, the two crops will be ready, one in August and one
+in September or later.
+
+With the red haricot I repeat the experiment already essayed with the
+black haricot. On several occasions, in suitable weather, I release
+large numbers of weevils from my glass jars, the general headquarters of
+the tribe. On each occasion the result is plainly negative. All through
+the season, until both crops are exhausted, I repeat my search almost
+daily; but I can never discover a single pod infested, nor even a single
+weevil perching on leaf or flower.
+
+Certainly the inspection has not been at fault. The household is warned
+to respect certain rows of beans which I have reserved for myself. It is
+also requested to keep a look-out for eggs on all the pods gathered. I
+myself examine with a magnifying-glass all the haricots coming from my
+own or from neighbouring gardens before handing them over to the
+housewife to be shelled. All my trouble is wasted: there is not an egg
+to be seen.
+
+To these experiments in the open air I add others performed under glass.
+I place, in some tall, narrow bottles, fresh haricot pods hanging from
+their stems; some green, others mottled with crimson, and containing
+seeds not far from mature. Each bottle is finally given a population of
+weevils. This time I obtain some eggs, but I am no further advanced;
+they are laid on the sides of the bottles, but not on the pods.
+Nevertheless, they hatch. For a few days I see the grubs wandering
+about, exploring the pods and the glass with equal zeal. Finally one
+and all perish without touching the food provided.
+
+The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is obvious: the young and
+tender haricot is not the proper diet. Unlike the _Bruchus pisi_, the
+female of the haricot-weevil refuses to trust her family to beans that
+are not hardened by age and desiccation; she refused to settle on my
+bean-patch because the food she required was not to be found there. What
+does she require? Evidently the mature, dry, hard haricot, which falls
+to earth with the sound of a small pebble. I hasten to satisfy her. I
+place in the bottles some very mature, horny pods, thoroughly desiccated
+by exposure to the sun. This time the family prospers, the grubs
+perforate the dry shell, reach the beans, penetrate them, and henceforth
+all goes well.
+
+To judge by appearances, then, the weevil invades the granary. The beans
+are left standing in the fields until both plants and pods, shrivelled
+by the sun, are completely desiccated. The process of beating the pods
+to loosen and separate the beans is thus greatly facilitated. It is then
+that the weevil, finding matters to suit her, commences to lay her eggs.
+By storing his crop a little late the peasant stores the pest as well.
+
+But the weevil more especially attacks the haricot when warehoused. Like
+the Calander-beetle, which nibbles the wheat in our granaries but
+despises the cereal while still on the stalk, it abhors the bean while
+tender, and prefers to establish itself in the peace and darkness of the
+storehouse. It is a formidable enemy to the merchant rather than to the
+peasant.
+
+What a fury of destruction once the ravager is installed in the
+vegetable treasure-house! My bottles give abundant evidence of this. One
+single haricot bean shelters a numerous family; often as many as twenty
+members. And not one generation only exploits the bean, but three or
+four in the year. So long as the skin of the bean contains any edible
+matter, so long do new consumers establish themselves within it, so that
+the haricot finally becomes a mere shell stuffed with excreta. The skin,
+despised by the grubs, is a mere sac, pierced with holes as many as the
+inhabitants that have deserted it; the ruin is complete.
+
+The _Bruchus pisi_, a solitary hermit, consumes only so much of the pea
+as will leave a cell for the nymph; the rest remains intact, so that the
+pea may be sown, or it will even serve as food, if we can overcome our
+repugnance. The American insect knows nothing of these limitations; it
+empties the haricot completely and leaves a skinful of filth that I have
+seen the pigs refuse. America is anything but considerate when she sends
+us her entomological pests. We owe the Phylloxera to America; the
+Phylloxera, that calamitous insect against which our vine-growers wage
+incessant war: and to-day she is sending us the haricot-weevil, which
+threatens to be a plague of the future. A few experiments gave me some
+idea of the peril of such an invasion.
+
+For nearly three years there have stood, on my laboratory table, some
+dozens of jars and bottles covered with pieces of gauze which prevent
+escape while permitting of a constant ventilation. These are the cages
+of my menagerie. In them I rear the haricot-weevil, varying the system
+of education at will. Amongst other things I have learned that this
+insect, far from being exclusive in its choice, will accommodate itself
+to most of our leguminous foods.
+
+All the haricots suit it, black and white, red and variegated, large and
+small; those of the latest crop and those which have been many years in
+stock and are almost completely refractory to boiling water. The loose
+beans are attacked by preference, as being easier to invade, but when
+the loose beans are not available those in the natural shelter of their
+pods are attacked with equal zest. However dry and parchment-like the
+pods, the grubs have no difficulty in attaining the seeds. When attacked
+in the field or garden, the bean is attacked in this way through the
+pod. The bean known in Provence as the blind haricot--_lou faiou
+borgne_--a bean with a long pod, which is marked with a black spot at
+the navel, which has the look of a closed and blackened eye, is also
+greatly appreciated; indeed, I fancy my little guests show an obvious
+preference for this particular bean.
+
+So far, nothing abnormal; the Bruchus does not wander beyond the limits
+of the botanical family _Phaseolus_. But here is a characteristic that
+increases the peril, and shows us this lover of beans in an unexpected
+light. Without the slightest hesitation it accepts the dry pea, the
+bean, the vetch, the tare, and the chick-pea; it goes from one to the
+other, always satisfied; its offspring live and prosper in all these
+seeds as well as in the haricot. Only the lentil is refused, perhaps on
+account of its insufficient volume. The American weevil is a formidable
+experimentalist.
+
+The peril would be much greater did the insect pass from leguminous
+seeds to cereals, as at first I feared it might. But it does not do so;
+imprisoned in my bottles together with a handful of wheat, barley, rice,
+or maize, the Bruchus invariably perished and left no offspring. The
+result was the same with oleaginous seeds: such as castor-oil and
+sunflower. Nothing outside the bean family is of any use to the Bruchus.
+Thus limited, its portion is none the less considerable, and it uses and
+abuses it with the utmost energy. The eggs are white, slender, and
+cylindrical. There is no method in their distribution, no choice in
+their deposition. The mother lays them singly or in little groups, on
+the walls of the jar as well as on the haricots. In her negligence she
+will even lay them on maize, coffee, castor-oil seeds, and other seeds,
+on which the newly born grubs will promptly perish, not finding them to
+their taste. What place has maternal foresight here? Abandoned no matter
+where in the heap of seeds, the eggs are always in place, as it is left
+to the grub to search and to find the points of invasion.
+
+In five days at most the egg is hatched. A little white creature with a
+red-brown head emerges. It is a mere speck of a creature, just visible
+to the naked eye. Its body is thickened forward, to give more strength
+to its implements--its mandibles--which have to perforate the hard
+substance of the dry bean, which is as tough as wood. The larvae of the
+Buprestis and the Capricornis, which burrow in the trunks of trees, are
+similarly shaped. Directly it issues from the egg the wriggling creature
+makes off at random with an activity we should hardly expect in one so
+young. It wanders hither and thither, eager to find food and shelter as
+soon as possible.
+
+Within twenty-four hours it has usually attained both. I see the tiny
+grub perforate the horny skin that covers the cotyledons; I watch its
+efforts; I surprise it sunk half-way in the commencement of a burrow, at
+the mouth of which is a white floury powder, the waste from the
+mandibles. It works its way inward and buries itself in the heart of the
+seed. It will emerge in the adult form in the course of about five
+weeks, so rapid is its evolution.
+
+This hasty development allows of several generations in the year. I have
+recorded four. On the other hand, one isolated couple has furnished me
+with a family of eighty. Consider only the half of this
+number--supposing the sexes to be equal in number--and at the end of a
+year the couples issued from this original pair would be represented by
+the fortieth power of forty; in larvae they would represent the frightful
+total of more than five millions. What a mountain of haricots would be
+ravaged by such a legion!
+
+The industry of the larvae reminds us at every point what we have learned
+from the _Bruchus pisi_. Each grub excavates a lodging in the mass of
+the bean, respecting the epidermis, and preparing a circular trap-door
+which the adult can easily open with a push at the moment of emergence.
+At the termination of the larval phase the lodgements are betrayed on
+the surface of the bean by so many shadowy circles. Finally the lid
+falls, the insect leaves its cell, and the haricot remains pierced by as
+many holes as it has nourished grubs.
+
+Extremely frugal, satisfied with a little farinaceous powder, the adults
+seem by no means anxious to abandon the native heap or bin so long as
+there are beans untouched. They mate in the interstices of the heap;
+the mothers sow their eggs at random; the young larvae establish
+themselves some in beans that are so far intact, some in beans which are
+perforated but not yet exhausted; and all through the summer the
+operations of breeding are repeated once in every five weeks. The last
+generation of the year--that of September or October--sleeps in its
+cells until the warm weather returns.
+
+If the haricot pest were ever to threaten us seriously it would not be
+very difficult to wage a war of extermination against it. Its habits
+teach us what tactics we ought to follow. It exploits the dried and
+gathered crop in the granary or the storehouse. If it is difficult to
+attack it in the open it would also be useless. The greater part of its
+affairs are managed elsewhere, in our storehouses. The enemy establishes
+itself under our roof and is ready to our hand. By means of insecticides
+defence should be relatively easy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE GREY LOCUST
+
+
+I have just witnessed a moving spectacle: the last moult of a locust;
+the emergence of the adult from its larval envelope. It was magnificent.
+I am speaking of the Grey Locust, the colossus among our acridians,[10]
+which is often seen among the vines in September when the grapes are
+gathered. By its size--and it grows as long as a man's finger--it lends
+itself to observation better than any other of its tribe.
+
+The larva, disgustingly fat, like a rude sketch of the perfect insect,
+is commonly of a tender green; but it is sometimes of a bluish green, a
+dirty yellow, or a ruddy brown, or even an ashen grey, like the grey of
+the adult cricket. The corselet is strongly keeled and indented, and is
+sprinkled with fine white spots. As powerful as in the adult insect, the
+hind-leg has a corpulent haunch, streaked with red, and a long shin like
+a two-edged saw.
+
+The elytra, which in a few days will extend far beyond the tip of the
+abdomen, are at present too small triangular wing-like appendages,
+touching along their upper edges, and continuing and emphasising the
+keel or ridge of the corselet. Their free ends stick up like the gable
+of a house. They remind one of the skirts of a coat, the maker of which
+has been ludicrously stingy with the cloth, as they merely cover the
+creature's nakedness at the small of the back. Underneath there are two
+narrow appendages, the germs of the wings, which are even smaller than
+the elytra. The sumptuous, elegant sails of to-morrow are now mere rags,
+so miserly in their dimensions as to be absolutely grotesque. What will
+emerge from these miserable coverings? A miracle of grace and amplitude.
+
+Let us observe the whole process in detail. Feeling itself ripe for
+transformation, the insect climbs up the wire-gauze cover by means of
+its hinder and intermediate limbs. The fore-limbs are folded and crossed
+on the breast, and are not employed in supporting the insect, which
+hangs in a reversed position, the back downwards. The triangular
+winglets, the sheaths of the elytra, open along their line of juncture
+and separate laterally; the two narrow blades, which contain the wings,
+rise in the centre of the interval and slightly diverge. The proper
+position for the process of moulting has now been assumed and the proper
+stability assured.
+
+The first thing to do is to burst the old skin. Behind the corselet,
+under the pointed roof of the prothorax, a series of pulsations is
+produced by alternate inflation and deflation. A similar state of
+affairs is visible in front of the neck, and probably under the entire
+surface of the yielding carapace. The fineness of the membrane at the
+articulations enables us to perceive it at these unarmoured points, but
+the cuirass of the corselet conceals it in the central portion.
+
+At these points the circulatory reserves of the insect are pulsing in
+tidal onsets. Their gradual increase is betrayed by pulsations like
+those of a hydraulic ram. Distended by this rush of humours, by this
+injection in which the organism concentrates all its forces, the outer
+skin finally splits along the line of least resistance which the subtle
+previsions of life have prepared. The fissure extends the whole length
+of the corselet, opening precisely along the ridge of the keel, as
+though the two symmetrical halves had been soldered together.
+Unbreakable elsewhere, the envelope has yielded at this median point,
+which had remained weaker than the rest of the sheath. The fissure runs
+back a little way until it reaches a point between the attachments of
+the wings; on the head it runs forward as far as the base of the
+antennae, when it sends a short ramification right and left.
+
+Through this breach the back is seen; quite soft, and very pale, with
+scarcely a tinge of grey. Slowly it curves upwards and becomes more and
+more strongly hunched; at last it is free.
+
+The head follows, withdrawing itself from its mask, which remains in
+place, intact in the smallest detail, but looking very strange with its
+great unseeing glassy eyes. The sheaths of the antennae, without a
+wrinkle, without the least derangement, and in their natural place, hang
+over this dead, translucid face.
+
+In emerging from their narrow sheaths, which clasped them so tightly and
+precisely, the thread-like antennae have evidently met with no
+resistance, or the sheaths would have been turned inside out, or
+crumpled out of shape, or wrinkled at least. Without harming the jointed
+or knotted covers, the contents, of equal volume and equally knotty,
+have slipped out as easily as though they were smooth, slippery objects
+sliding out of a loose sheath. The method of extraction is still more
+astonishing in the case of the hind-legs.
+
+It is now, however, the turn of the front and intermediate pairs of
+legs. They pull out of their gauntlets and leggings without the least
+hitch; nothing is torn, nothing buckled; the outer skin is not even
+crumpled, and all the tissues remain in their natural position. The
+insect is now hanging from the dome of the cover solely by the claws of
+the long hind-legs. It hangs in an almost vertical position, the head
+downwards, swinging like a pendulum if I touch the cover. Four tiny,
+steely claws are its only support. If they gave or unclasped themselves
+the insect would be lost, as it is as yet unable to unfurl its enormous
+wings; but even had the wings emerged they could not grip the air in
+time to save the creature from the consequences of a fall. But the four
+claws hold fast; life, before withdrawing from them, left them rigidly
+contracted, so that they should support without yielding the struggles
+and withdrawals to follow.
+
+Now the wing-covers and wings emerge. These are four narrow strips,
+vaguely seamed and furrowed, like strings of rolled tissue-paper. They
+are barely a quarter of their final length.
+
+They are so soft that they bend under their own weight, and hang down
+the creature's sides in the reverse of their normal position. The free
+extremities, which normally point backwards, are now pointing towards
+the cricket's head as it hangs reversed. The organs of future flight are
+like four leaves of withered foliage shattered by a terrific rainstorm.
+
+A profound transformation is necessary to bring the wings to their final
+perfection. The inner changes are already at work; liquids are
+solidifying; albuminous secretions are bringing order out of chaos; but
+so far no outward sign betrays what is happening in the mysterious
+laboratory of the organism. All seems inert and lifeless.
+
+In the meantime the posterior limbs disengage themselves. The great
+haunches become visible, streaked on the inner faces with a pale rose,
+which rapidly turns to a vivid crimson. Emergence is easy, the thick and
+muscular upper portion of the haunch preparing the way for the narrower
+part of the limb.
+
+It is otherwise with the shank. This, in the adult insect, is armed
+along its whole length by a double series of stiff, steely spines.
+Moreover, the lower extremity is terminated by four strong spurs. The
+shank forms a veritable saw, but with two parallel sets of teeth; and it
+is so strongly made that it may well be compared, the question of size
+apart, to the great saw of a quarry-man.
+
+The shank of the larva has the same structure, so that the object to be
+extracted is enclosed in a scabbard as awkwardly shaped as itself. Each
+spur is enclosed in a similar spur; each tooth engages in the hollow of
+a similar tooth, and the sheath is so closely moulded upon the shank
+that a no more intimate contact could be obtained by replacing the
+envelope by a layer of varnish applied with a brush.
+
+Nevertheless the tibia, long and narrow as it is, issues from its sheath
+without catching or sticking anywhere. If I had not repeatedly seen the
+operation I could not believe it possible; for the discarded sheath is
+absolutely intact from end to end. Neither the terminal spurs nor the
+double rows of spines do the slightest damage to the delicate mould. The
+long-toothed saw leaves the delicate sheath unbroken, although a puff of
+the breath is enough to tear it; the ferocious spurs slip out of it
+without leaving so much as a scratch.
+
+I was far from expecting such a result. Having the spiny weapons of the
+legs in mind, I imagined that those limbs would moult in scales and
+patches, or that the sheathing would rub off like a dead scarf-skin. How
+completely the reality surpassed my anticipations!
+
+From the spurs and spines of the sheath, which is as thin as the finest
+gold-beaters' skin, the spurs and spines of the leg, which make it a
+most formidable weapon, capable of cutting a piece of soft wood, emerge
+without the slightest display of violence, without a hitch of any kind;
+and the empty skin remains in place. Still clinging by its claws to the
+top of the wire cover, it is untorn, unwrinkled, uncreased. Even the
+magnifying-glass fails to show a trace of rough usage. Such as the skin
+was before the cricket left it, so it is now. The legging of dead skin
+remains in its smallest details the exact replica of the living limb.
+
+If any one asked you to extract a saw from a scabbard exactly moulded
+upon the steel, and to conduct the operation without the slightest
+degree of tearing or scratching, you would laugh at the flagrant
+impossibility of the task. But life makes light of such absurdities; it
+has its methods of performing the impossible when such methods are
+required. The leg of the locust affords us such an instance.
+
+Hard as it is when once free of its sheath, the serrated tibia would
+absolutely refuse to leave the latter, so closely does it fit, unless it
+were torn to pieces. Yet the difficulty must be evaded, for it is
+indispensable that the sheaths of the legs should remain intact, in
+order to afford a firm support until the insect is completely
+extricated.
+
+The leg in process of liberation is not the leg with which the locust
+makes its leaps; it has not as yet the rigidity which it will soon
+acquire. It is soft, and eminently flexible. In those portions which the
+progress of the moult exposes to view I see the legs bend under the mere
+weight of the suspended insect when I tilt the supporting cover. They
+are as flexible as two strips of elastic indiarubber. Yet even now
+consolidation is progressing, for in a few minutes the proper rigidity
+will be acquired.
+
+Further along the limbs, in the portions which the sheathing still
+conceals, the legs are certainly softer still, and in the state of
+exquisite plasticity--I had almost said fluidity--which allows them to
+pass through narrow passages almost as a liquid flows.
+
+The teeth of the saws are already there, but have nothing of their
+imminent rigidity. With the point of a pen-knife I can partially uncover
+a leg and extract the spines from their serrated mould. They are germs
+of spines; flexible buds which bend under the slightest pressure and
+resume their position the moment the pressure is removed.
+
+These needles point backwards as the leg is drawn out of the sheath; but
+they re-erect themselves and solidify as they emerge. I am witnessing
+not the mere removal of leggings from limbs already clad in finished
+armour, but a kind of creation which amazes one by its promptitude.
+
+Very much in the same way, but with far less delicate precision, the
+claws of the crayfish, at the period of the moult, withdraw the soft
+flesh of their double fingers from their stony sheath.
+
+Finally the long stilt-like legs are free. They are folded gently
+against the furrowed thighs, thus to mature undisturbed. The abdomen
+begins to emerge. Its fine tunic-like covering splits, and wrinkles, but
+still encloses the extremity of the abdomen, which adheres to the
+moulted skin for some little time longer. With the exception of this one
+point the entire insect is now uncovered.
+
+It hangs head downwards, like a pendulum, supported by the talons of the
+now empty leg-cases. During the whole of the lengthy and meticulous
+process the four talons have never yielded. The whole operation has been
+conducted with the utmost delicacy and prudence.
+
+The insect hangs motionless, held by the tip of the abdomen. The abdomen
+is disproportionately distended; swollen, apparently, by the reserve of
+organisable humours which the expansion of the wings and wing-covers
+will presently employ. Meanwhile the creature rests and recovers from
+its exertions. Twenty minutes of waiting elapse.
+
+Then, exerting the muscles of the back, the suspended insect raises
+itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin
+above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a
+trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the
+loins. This gymnastic feat accomplished, the rest is easy.
+
+With the purchase thus obtained the insect rises a little and reaches
+the wire gauze, the equivalent of the twig which would be chosen for the
+site of the transformation in the open fields. It holds to this with the
+four anterior limbs. Then the tip of the abdomen is finally liberated,
+and suddenly, shaken by the final struggle, the empty skin falls to the
+ground.
+
+This fall is interesting, and reminds me of the persistence with which
+the empty husk of the Cigale braves the winds of winter, without falling
+from its supporting twig. The transfiguration of the locust takes place
+very much as does that of the Cigale. How is it then that the acridian
+trusts to a hold so easily broken?
+
+The talons of the skin hold firmly so long as the labour of escape
+continues, although one would expect it to shake the firmest grip; yet
+they yield at the slightest shock when the labour is terminated. There
+is evidently a condition of highly unstable equilibrium; showing once
+more with what delicate precision the insect escapes from its sheath.
+
+For want of a better term I said "escape." But the word is ill chosen;
+for it implies a certain amount of violence, and no violence must be
+employed, on account of the instability of equilibrium already
+mentioned. If the insect, shaken by a sudden effort, were to lose its
+hold, it would be all up with it. It would slowly shrivel on the spot;
+or at best its wings, unable to expand, would remain as miserable scraps
+of tissue. The locust does not tear itself away from its sheath; it
+delicately insinuates itself out of it--I had almost said flows. It is
+as though it were expelled by a gentle pressure.
+
+Let us return to the wings and elytra, which have made no apparent
+progress since their emergence from their sheaths. They are still mere
+stumps, with fine longitudinal seams; almost like little ropes'-ends.
+Their expansion, which will occupy more than three hours, is reserved
+for the end, when the insect is completely moulted and in its normal
+position.
+
+We have just seen the insect turn head uppermost. This reversal causes
+the wings and elytra to fall into their natural position. Extremely
+flexible, and yielding to their own weight, they had previously drooped
+backwards with their free extremities pointing towards the head of the
+insect as it hung reversed.
+
+Now, still by reason of their own weight, their position is rectified
+and they point in the normal direction. They are no longer curved like
+the petals of a flower; they no longer point the wrong way; but they
+retain the same miserable aspect.
+
+In its perfect state the wing is like a fan. A radiating bundle of
+strong nervures runs through it in the direction of its length and forms
+the framework of the fan, which is readily furled and unfurled. The
+intervals are crossed by innumerable cross-nervures of slighter
+substance, which make of the whole a network of rectangular meshes. The
+elytrum, which is heavier and much less extensive, repeats this
+structure.
+
+At present nothing of this mesh-work is visible. Nothing can be seen but
+a few wrinkles, a few flexuous furrows, which announce that the stumps
+are bundles of tissue cunningly folded and reduced to the smallest
+possible volume.
+
+The expansion of the wing begins near the shoulder. Where nothing
+precise could be distinguished at the outset we soon perceive a
+diaphanous surface subdivided into meshes of beautiful precision.
+
+Little by little, with a deliberation that escapes the magnifier, this
+area increases its bounds, at the expense of the shapeless bundle at the
+end of the wing. In vain I let my eyes rest on the spot where the
+expanding network meets the still shapeless bundle; I can distinguish
+nothing. But wait a little, and the fine-meshed tissues will appear with
+perfect distinctness.
+
+To judge from this first examination, one would guess that an
+organisable fluid is rapidly congealing into a network of nervures; one
+seems to be watching a process of crystallisation comparable, in its
+rapidity, to that of a saturated saline solution as seen through a
+microscope. But no; this is not what is actually happening. Life does
+not do its work so abruptly.
+
+I detach a half-developed wing and bring it under the powerful eye of
+the microscope. This time I am satisfied. On the confines of the
+transparent network, where an extension of that network seems to be
+gradually weaving itself out of nothing, I can see that the meshes are
+really already in existence. I can plainly recognise the longitudinal
+nervures, which are already stiff; and I can also see--pale, and without
+relief--the transverse nervures. I find them all in the terminal stump,
+and am able to spread out a few of its folds under the microscope.
+
+It is obvious that the wing is not a tissue in the process of making,
+through which the procreative energy of the vital juices is shooting its
+shuttle; it is a tissue already complete. To be perfect it lacks only
+expansion and rigidity, just as a piece of lace or linen needs only to
+be ironed.
+
+In three hours or more the explanation is complete. The wings and elytra
+stand erect over the locust's back like an immense set of sails; at
+first colourless, then of a tender green, like the freshly expanded
+wings of the Cigale. I am amazed at their expanse when I think of the
+miserable stumps from which they have expanded. How did so much material
+contrive to occupy so little space?
+
+There is a story of a grain of hemp-seed that contained all the
+body-linen of a princess. Here we have something even more astonishing.
+The hemp-seed of the story needed long years to germinate, to multiply,
+and at last to give the quantity of hemp required for the trousseau of a
+princess; but the germ of the locust's wing has expanded to a
+magnificent sail in a few short hours.
+
+Slowly the superb erection composed of the four flat fan-like pinions
+assumes rigidity and colour. By to-morrow the colour will have attained
+the requisite shade. For the first time the wings close fan-wise and lie
+down in their places; the elytra bend over at their outer edges, forming
+a flange which lies snugly over the flanks. The transformation is
+complete. Now the great locust has only to harden its tissues a little
+longer and to tan the grey of its costume in the ecstasy of the
+sunshine. Let us leave it to its happiness, and return to an earlier
+moment.
+
+The four stumps which emerge from their coverings shortly after the
+rupture of the corselet along its median line contain, as we have seen,
+the wings and elytra with their innumerable nervures. If not perfect,
+at least the general plan is complete, with all its innumerable details.
+To expand these miserable bundles and convert them into an ample set of
+sails it is enough that the organism, acting like a force-pump, should
+force into the channels already prepared a stream of humours kept in
+reserve for this moment and this purpose, the most laborious of the
+whole process. As the capillary channels are prepared in advance a
+slight injection of fluid is sufficient to cause expansion.
+
+But what were these four bundles of tissue while still enclosed in their
+sheaths? Are the wing-sheaths and the triangular winglets of the larva
+the moulds whose folds, wrinkles, and sinuosities form their contents in
+their own image, and so weave the network of the future wings and
+wing-covers?
+
+Were they really moulds we might for a moment be satisfied. We might
+tell ourselves: It is quite a simple matter that the thing moulded
+should conform to the cavity of the mould. But the simplicity is only
+apparent, for the mould in its turn must somewhere derive the requisite
+and inextricable complexity. We need not go so far back; we should only
+be in darkness. Let us keep to the observable facts.
+
+I examine with a magnifying-glass one of the triangular coat-tails of a
+larva on the point of transformation. I see a bundle of moderately
+strong nervures radiating fan-wise. I see other nervures in the
+intervals, pale and very fine. Finally, still more delicate, and running
+transversely, a number of very short nervures complete the pattern.
+
+Certainly this resembles a rough sketch of the future wing-case; but
+how different from the mature structure! The disposition of the
+radiating nervures, the skeleton of the structure, is not at all the
+same; the network formed by the cross-nervures gives no idea whatever of
+the complex final arrangement. The rudimentary is succeeded by the
+infinitely complex; the clumsy by the infinitely perfect, and the same
+is true of the sheath of the wing and the final condition of its
+contents, the perfect wing.
+
+It is perfectly evident, when we have the preparatory as well as the
+final condition of the wing before our eyes, that the wing-sheath of the
+larva is not a simple mould which elaborates the tissue enclosed in its
+own image and fashions the wing after the complexities of its own
+cavity.
+
+The future wing is not contained in the sheath as a bundle, which will
+astonish us, when expanded, by the extent and extreme complication of
+its surface. Or, to speak more exactly, it is there, but in a potential
+state. Before becoming an actual thing it is a virtual thing which is
+not yet, but is capable of becoming. It is there as the oak is inside
+the acorn.
+
+A fine transparent cushion limits the free edge of the embryo wing and
+the embryo wing-case. Under a powerful microscope we can perceive
+therein a few doubtful lineaments of the future lace-work. This might
+well be the factory in which life will shortly set its materials in
+movement. Nothing more is visible; nothing that will make us foresee the
+prodigious network in which each mesh must have its form and place
+predetermined with geometrical exactitude.
+
+In order that the organisable material can shape itself as a sheet of
+gauze and describe the inextricable labyrinth of the nervuration, there
+must be something better and more wonderful than a mould. There is a
+prototypical plan, an ideal pattern, which imposes a precise position
+upon each atom of the tissue. Before the material commences to circulate
+the configuration is already virtually traced, the courses of the
+plastic currents are already mapped out. The stones of our buildings
+co-ordinate according to the considered plan of the architect; they form
+an ideal assemblage before they exist as a concrete assemblage.
+
+Similarly, the wing of a cricket, that wonderful piece of lace-work
+emerging from a tiny sheath, speaks to us of another Architect, the
+author of the plans according to which life labours.
+
+The genesis of living creatures offers to our contemplation an infinity
+of wonders far greater than this matter of a locust's wing; but in
+general they pass unperceived, obscured as they are by the veil of time.
+
+Time, in the deliberation of mysteries, deprives us of the most
+astonishing of spectacles except our spirits be endowed with a tenacious
+patience. Here by exception the fact is accomplished with a swiftness
+that forces the attention.
+
+Whosoever would gain, without wearisome delays, a glimpse of the
+inconceivable dexterity with which the forces of life can labour, has
+only to consider the great locust of the vineyard. The insect will show
+him that which is hidden from our curiosity by extreme deliberation in
+the germinating seed, the opening leaf, and the budding flower. We
+cannot see the grass grow; but we can watch the growth of the locust's
+wings.
+
+Amazement seizes upon us before this sublime phantasmagoria of the grain
+of hemp which in a few hours has been transmuted into the finest cloth.
+What a mighty artist is Life, shooting her shuttle to weave the wings of
+the locust--one of those insignificant insects of whom long ago Pliny
+said: _In his tam parcis, fere nullis, quae vis, quae sapientia, quam
+inextricabilis perfectio!_
+
+How truly was the old naturalist inspired! Let us repeat with him: "What
+power, what wisdom, what inconceivable perfection in this least of
+secrets that the vineyard locust has shown us!"
+
+I have heard that a learned inquirer, for whom life is only a conflict
+of physical and chemical forces, does not despair of one day obtaining
+artificially organisable matter--_protoplasm_, as the official jargon
+has it. If it were in my power I should hasten to satisfy this ambitious
+gentleman.
+
+But so be it: you have really prepared protoplasm. By force of
+meditation, profound study, minute care, impregnable patience, your
+desire is realised: you have extracted from your apparatus an albuminous
+slime, easily corruptible and stinking like the devil at the end of a
+few days: in short, a nastiness. What are you going to do with it?
+
+Organise something? Will you give it the structure of a living edifice?
+Will you inject it with a hypodermic syringe between two impalpable
+plates to obtain were it only the wing of a fly?
+
+That is very much what the locust does. It injects its protoplasm
+between the two surfaces of an embryo organ, and the material forms a
+wing-cover, because it finds as guide the ideal archetype of which I
+spoke but now. It is controlled in the labyrinth of its course by a
+device anterior to the injection: anterior to the material itself.
+
+This archetype, the co-ordinator of forms; this primordial regulator;
+have you got it on the end of your syringe? No! Then throw away your
+product. Life will never spring from that chemical filth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE PINE-CHAFER
+
+
+The orthodox denomination of this insect is _Melolontha fullo_, Lin. It
+does not answer, I am very well aware, to be difficult in matters of
+nomenclature; make a noise of some sort, affix a Latin termination, and
+you will have, as far as euphony goes, the equivalent of many of the
+tickets pasted in the entomologist's specimen boxes. The cacophony would
+be excusable if the barbarous term signified nothing but the creature
+signified; but as a rule this name possesses, hidden in its Greek or
+other roots, a certain meaning in which the novice hopes to find
+instruction.
+
+The hope is a delusion. The learned term refers to subtleties difficult
+to comprehend, and of very indifferent importance. Too often it leads
+the student astray, giving him glimpses that have nothing whatever in
+common with the truth as we know it from observation. Very often the
+errors implied by such names are flagrant; sometimes the allusions are
+ridiculous, grotesque, or merely imbecile. So long as they have a decent
+sound, how infinitely preferable are locutions in which etymology finds
+nothing to dissect! Of such would be the word _fullo_, were it not that
+it already has a meaning which immediately occurs to the mind. This
+Latin expression means a _fuller_; a person who kneads and presses cloth
+under a stream of water, making it flexible and ridding it of the
+asperities of weaving. What connection has the subject of this chapter
+with the fuller of cloth? I may puzzle my head in vain: no acceptable
+reply will occur to me.
+
+The term _fullo_ as applied to an insect is found in Pliny. In one
+chapter the great naturalist treats of remedies against jaundice,
+fevers, and dropsy. A little of everything enters into this antique
+pharmacy: the longest tooth of a black dog; the nose of a mouse wrapped
+in a pink cloth; the right eye of a green lizard torn from the living
+animal and placed in a bag of kid-skin; the heart of a serpent, cut out
+with the left hand; the four articulations of the tail of a scorpion,
+including the dart, wrapped tightly in a black cloth, so that for three
+days the sick man can see neither the remedy nor him that applies it;
+and a number of other extravagances. We may well close the book, alarmed
+at the slough of the imbecility whence the art of healing has come down
+to us.
+
+In the midst of these imbecilities, the preludes of medicine, we find a
+mention of the "fuller." _Tertium qui vocatur fullo, albis guttis,
+dissectum utrique lacerto adalligant_, says the text. To treat fevers
+divide the fuller beetle in two parts and apply half under the right arm
+and half under the left.
+
+[Illustration: THE PINE-CHAFER.
+
+(_Melolontha fullo._)]
+
+Now what did the ancient naturalist mean by the term "fuller beetle"? We
+do not precisely know. The qualification _albis guttis_, white spots,
+would fit the Pine-chafer well enough, but it is not sufficient to
+make us certain. Pliny himself does not seem to have been very certain
+of the identity of the remedy. In his time men's eyes had not yet
+learned to see the insect world. Insects were too small; they were well
+enough for amusing children, who would tie them to the end of a long
+thread and make them walk in circles, but they were not worthy of
+occupying the attention of a self-respecting man.
+
+Pliny apparently derived the word from the country-folk, always poor
+observers and inclined to extravagant denominations. The scholar
+accepted the rural locution, the work perhaps of the imagination of
+childhood, and applied it at hazard without informing himself more
+particularly. The word came down to us embalmed with age; our modern
+naturalists have accepted it, and thus one of our handsomest insects has
+become the "fuller." The majesty of antiquity has consecrated the
+strange appellation.
+
+In spite of all my respect for the antique, I cannot myself accept the
+term "fuller," because under the circumstances it is absurd. Common
+sense should be considered before the aberrations of nomenclature. Why
+not call our subject the Pine-chafer, in reference to the beloved tree,
+the paradise of the insect during the two or three weeks of its aerial
+life? Nothing could be simpler, or more appropriate, to give the better
+reason last.
+
+We have to wander for ages in the night of absurdity before we reach the
+radiant light of the truth. All our sciences witness to this fact; even
+the science of numbers. Try to add a column of Roman figures; you will
+abandon the task, stupefied by the confusion of symbols; and will
+recognise what a revolution was made in arithmetic by the discovery of
+the zero. Like the egg of Columbus, it was a very little thing, but it
+had to be thought of.
+
+While hoping that the future will sink the unfortunate "fuller" in
+oblivion, we will use the term "pine chafer" between ourselves. Under
+that name no one can possibly mistake the insect in question, which
+frequents the pine-tree only.
+
+It has a handsome and dignified appearance, rivalling that of _Oryctes
+nasicornis_. Its costume, if it has not the metallic splendour dear to
+the Scarabaei, the Buprestes and the rose-beetles, is at least unusually
+elegant. A black or chestnut background is thickly sown with
+capriciously shaped spots of white velvet; a fashion both modest and
+handsome.
+
+The male bears at the end of his short antennae a kind of plume
+consisting of seven large superimposed plates or leaves, which, opening
+and closing like the sticks of a fan, betray the emotions that possess
+him. At first sight it seems that this magnificent foliage must form a
+sense-organ of great perfection, capable of perceiving subtle odours, or
+almost inaudible vibrations of the air, or other phenomena to which our
+senses fail to respond; but the female warns us that we must not place
+too much reliance on such ideas; for although her maternal duties demand
+a degree of impressionability at least as great as that of the male, yet
+the plumes of her antennae are extremely meagre, containing only six
+narrow leaves.
+
+What then is the use of the enormous fan-like structure of the male
+antennae? The seven-leaved apparatus is for the Pine-chafer what his long
+vibrating horns are to the Cerambyx and the panoply of the head to the
+Onthophagus and the forked antlers of the mandibles to the Stag-beetle.
+Each decks himself after his manner in these nuptial extravagances.
+
+This handsome chafer appears towards the summer solstice, almost
+simultaneously with the first Cigales. The punctuality of its appearance
+gives it a place in the entomological calendar, which is no less
+punctual than that of the seasons. When the longest days come, those
+days which seem endless and gild the harvests, it never fails to hasten
+to its tree. The fires of St. John, reminiscences of the festivals of
+the Sun, which the children light in the village streets, are not more
+punctual in their date.
+
+At this season, in the hours of twilight, the Pine-chafer comes every
+evening if the weather is fine, to visit the pine-trees in the garden. I
+follow its evolutions with my eyes. With a silent flight, not without
+spirit, the males especially wheel and wheel about, extending their
+great antennary plumes; they go to and fro, to and fro, a procession of
+flying shadows upon the pale blue of the sky in which the last light of
+day is dying. They settle, take flight again, and once more resume their
+busy rounds. What are they doing up there during the fortnight of their
+festival?
+
+The answer is evident: they are courting their mates, and they continue
+to render their homage until the fall of night. In the morning both
+males and females commonly occupy the lower branches. They lie there
+isolated, motionless, indifferent to passing events. They do not avoid
+the hand about to seize them. Most of them are hanging by their hind
+legs and nibbling the pine-needles; they seem to be gently drowsing with
+the needles at their mouths. When twilight returns they resume their
+frolics.
+
+To watch these frolics in the tops of the trees is hardly possible; let
+us try to observe them in captivity. Four pairs are collected in the
+morning and placed, with some twigs off the pine-tree, in a spacious;
+cage. The sight is hardly worth my attention; deprived of the
+possibility of flight, the insects cannot behave as in the open. At most
+I see a male from time to time approaching his beloved; he spreads out
+the leaves of his antennae, and agitates them so that they shiver
+slightly; he is perhaps informing himself if he is welcome. Thereupon he
+puts on his finest airs and exhibits his attainments. It is a useless
+display; the female is motionless, as though insensible to these
+demonstrations. Captivity has sorrows that are hard to overcome. This
+was all that I was able to see. Mating, it appears, must take place
+during the later hours of the night, so that I missed the propitious
+moment.
+
+One detail in particular interested me. The Pine-chafer emits a musical
+note. The female is as gifted as the male. Does the lover make use of
+his faculty as a means of seduction and appeal? Does the female answer
+the chirp of her _innamorata_ by a similar chirp? That this may be so
+under normal conditions, amidst the foliage of the pines, is extremely
+probable; but I can make no assertion, as I have never heard anything of
+the kind either among the pines or in my laboratory.
+
+The sound is produced by the extremity of the abdomen, which gently
+rises and falls, rubbing, as it does so, with its last few segments, the
+hinder edge of the wing-covers, which are held firm and motionless.
+There is no special equipment on the rubbing surface nor on the surface
+rubbed. The magnifying-glass looks in vain for the fine striations
+usually found in the musical instruments of the insect world. All is
+smooth on either hand. How then is the sound engendered?
+
+Rub the end of the moistened finger on a strip of glass, or a
+window-pane, and you will obtain a very audible sound, somewhat
+analogous to that emitted by the chafer. Better still, use a scrap of
+indiarubber to rub the glass with, and you will reproduce with some
+fidelity the sound in question. If the proper rhythm is observed the
+imitation is so successful that one might well be deceived by it.
+
+In the musical apparatus of the Pine-chafer the pad of the finger-tip
+and the scrap of indiarubber are represented by the soft abdomen of the
+insect, and the glass is represented by the blade of the wing-cover,
+which forms a thin, rigid plate, easily set in vibration. The
+sound-mechanism of the Pine-chafer is thus of the very simplest
+description.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  A
+
+  Acorn-Weevil, _see_ Elephant-Beetle
+
+  Ameles, _see_ Mantis, the Grey
+
+  Anacreon, on the Cigale, 9
+
+  Ant, fable of the Cigale and the, 1-16
+    Devours the Cigale, 9
+    Robs the Cigale, 8
+
+  Arum, Serpent or Putrid, the, attracts and captures insects by means
+    of its offensive effluvia, 230-2
+
+
+  B
+
+  _Balaninus_, _see_ Elephant-Beetle
+
+  Bean, ancestry of, 258-9
+
+  Bean, _see_ Haricot
+
+  Bean-Weevil, _see_ Weevil
+
+  Bees, victims of Philanthus, _see_ latter
+
+  Bembex, 168, 172
+
+  Bolboceras Gallicus, 217-37
+    Appearance of, 223
+    Habits and diet, 226-30
+    Lodging of, 225
+
+  _Bruchus pisi_, see Pea-Weevil
+
+  _Bruchus lenti_, see Lentil-Weevil
+
+  Buprestes, 21
+
+
+  C
+
+  _Cacan_, the, 36-9
+
+  Capricornis, 21-2
+
+  Cerceris, 172, 178
+
+  Chrysomela, 151, 172
+
+  Cigale, the, 1-67
+    Burrow of the, 17-30
+    Deafness of the, 41-3
+    Diet, 7
+    Eggs of the, 45-67
+    Eggs, hatching of, 61-7
+    Eggs, method of laying, 50-4
+    Enemies of the, 47-50
+    Excavation, method of, 23-7
+    Fable of Ant and, 1-16
+    Larva of the, 17-30
+    Larva, habits of, 61-7
+    Mechanism of sound, 31-4
+    Pupa, emergence from, 28
+    Song of the, 2, 6, 31-44
+    Species of, 31-6
+
+  Cigalo e la Fournigo (Provencal poem), 10-16
+
+  Cricket, Field, the, 120-9
+    Eggs of, 120-2
+    Excavations of, 124-5
+    Fertility of, 123
+    Song of, 126-8
+
+  Cricket, Italian, the, 130-5
+    Appearance of, 130
+    Song of, 131-4
+
+
+  D
+
+  Dermestes, victims of arum, 232
+
+  Dioscorides on the Cigale, 29
+
+  Diptera, 168, 172
+
+  Dog, its love of stenches, 233
+    Scent of the, 220-22
+    A truffle-hunter, 218-20
+
+
+  E
+
+  Elephant-Beetle (Balaninus or Acorn-Weevil), 238-57
+    Boring acorns, habit of, 240-4
+    Eggs, method of laying, 245, 254-7
+    Motives in boring, 246-50
+    Snout of, 238-9
+
+  Emperor Moth, _see_ Great Peacock Moth
+
+  _Empusa pauperata_, _see_ Mantis
+
+  Eucores, 176
+
+
+  G
+
+  Golden Gardener, the, 102-19
+    Cannibal habits of, 111-19
+    Courtship of, 103-10
+    Ferocity of, 101-4, 108-10
+    Nutriment of, 102-10
+    Vermin killer, as a, 107
+
+  Grandville, illustrates La Fontaine's fables, 2
+
+
+  H
+
+  Halictus, 176, 178
+
+  Haricot bean, the, 282-9
+
+  Haricot-Weevil, the, _see_ Weevil
+
+  Heredia, J.-M. de, 287-90
+
+  Hydnocystus, a fungus, 228
+
+  Hymenoptera, habits of, 137-8, 150, 162, 171-2, 175-6
+
+
+  L
+
+  La Fontaine, fable of the Cigale and the Ant, 3
+
+  Locust, Grey, the, 300-16
+    Larva of, 300
+    Metamorphosis of, 300-9
+    Wing, formation of, 309-15
+
+
+  M
+
+  Mantis, the _Empusa pauperata_, 97
+
+  Mantis, the Grey, 96
+
+  Mantis, the Praying, 68-101
+    Cannibalism of, 82-5
+    Courtship, 79-83
+    Hunter, as, 68-78
+    Nest of, 86-101
+
+  _Melolontha fullo_, _see_ Pine-chafer
+
+  Minotaur, 225
+
+
+  O
+
+  Oak Eggar, the, 202-16, 234-7
+    Experiments as to sense of smell in males, 208-15
+    Swarming of males during the mating season, 204-15
+
+  Odynerus, 150-1, 172
+
+  Osmia tricornis, 173, 175
+
+
+  P
+
+  Pea, ancestry of the, 258-9
+
+  Pea-Weevil, _see_ Weevil
+
+  Peacock Moth, the Great, 179-201, 234-7
+    Appearance of, 179
+    Experiments as to sense of smell in males, 184-97
+  Invasion of house by males, 180-1
+    Swarming of males, 181-3
+
+  Peacock Moth, the Lesser, 197-201
+
+  Phalangist, the, 225
+
+  _Philanthus aviporus_, 150-178
+    Cocoon of, 168
+    Diet of, 150-1
+    Larvae of, 168
+    Methods of killing and robbing bees, 151-160
+    Motives of robbery, 163-78
+    Nest of, 167
+
+  _Philanthus coronatus_, 178
+
+  _Philanthus raptor_, 178
+
+  Pine-chafer, the, 317-23
+    Appearance of, 320
+    Cry of, 322-3
+    Habits of, 321
+    Medical qualities of, supposed, 318-19
+    Name, origin of Latin, 317-18
+
+  Pliny, on the Pine-chafer, 318-19
+
+
+  S
+
+  Saprinidae, victims of arum, 233
+
+  Sapromyzon, the, 222
+
+  Scarabaeus, _see_ Golden Scarabaeus
+
+  Scent in Insects, _see_ Peacock Moth,
+    Oak Eggar, Bolboceras Gallicus, arum, putrid
+
+  Scolia, 171
+
+  Sisyphus, legend of, 139
+
+  Sisyphus Beetle, the, 136-49
+    Burrow of, 143
+    Larva of, 147-9
+    Mating of, 142-3
+    Paternal instinct of 142-6
+    Pellet of, 142-9
+
+
+  T
+
+  Tachytus, 172
+
+  _Tigno_, nest of Mantis, 99-101
+
+  Truffle-Beetle, 222
+
+  Truffle-Dog, 218-20
+
+
+  W
+
+  Weevil, Acorn, _see_ Elephant-Beetle
+
+  Weevil, the Lentil, 291
+
+  Weevil, the Haricot, 282-94
+    Habits of, 291-6
+    Invasion of, 284
+    Larvae, 297-9
+
+  Weevil, the Pea, 258-81, 295
+    Description of, 261
+    Enemy, its chief, 280-1
+    Habits, 261-5
+      (Deductions to be drawn from), 273-4
+  Larvae of, 268-71, 275-6
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Whether the Cigale is absolutely deaf or not, it is certain
+that one Cigale would be able to perceive another's cry. The vibrations
+of the male Cigale's cry would cause a resonance, a vibration, in the
+body cavities of other male Cigales, and to a lesser extent in the
+smaller cavities in the bodies of the females. Other sounds would cause
+a slight shock, if loud enough, but not a perceptible vibration May not
+this vibration--felt as in a cathedral we feel the vibrations of the
+organ-pipes in the bones of the chest and head or on the covers of the
+hymn-book in our hands--serve to keep the insects together, and enable
+the females to keep within sight of the males? The sight of an insect is
+in one sense poor--it consists of a kind of mosaic picture, and for one
+insect to distinguish another clearly the distance between them must not
+be very great. Certain gregarious birds and fish whose colouring is
+protective have a habit of showing their white bellies as they swerve on
+changing their direction. These signals help to keep the flock together.
+The white scut of the rabbit and of certain deer is a signal for other
+deer or rabbits to follow a frightened flock. It is obviously to the
+advantage of the Cigale to follow a gregarious habit, if only for
+purposes of propagation, for this would be facilitated by the sexes
+keeping together, and, deaf or otherwise, the vibrations of its cry
+would enable it to do so. It would be easy to show _a priori_ that the
+perception of such vibrations must cause the insect pleasure, as they
+stimulate a nervous structure attuned to the perception or capable of
+the production of certain complex vibrations. The discord of the cry is
+caused by the fact that it consists of a number of vibrations of
+different pitch. Some would set the contents of the male resonating
+cavities in vibration; others would affect the less regular cavities in
+the thorax of the female. We might compare the Cigale's cry to a
+sheep-bell. That it is felt and not heard explains its loudness and its
+grating quality. A Cigale with the resonating cavities destroyed would
+possibly be lost. The experiment is worth trying.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 2: It is not easy to understand why the Mantis should paralyse
+the cricket with terror while the latter will immediately escape when
+threatened by other enemies. As many species of Mantis exactly mimic
+sticks and leaves when motionless for purposes of defence, is it not
+possible that they mimic their surroundings for purposes of offence as
+well? It is easy and natural to say that the Mantis presents a
+terrifying aspect. It does to us, by association; but how can we say
+that it represents anything of the sort to the probably hypnotic or
+automatic consciousness of the cricket? What does it really represent,
+as seen from below? A twig, terminating in a bud, with two branching
+twigs growing from it, and a harmless nondescript fly or butterfly
+perched on the back of it. The combination of a familiar sight and a
+threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As
+for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move instantaneously is
+the next best thing to not moving at all. It is less likely to startle
+than a slow movement. Twigs which have been bent get suddenly released
+in the natural course of events; they do not move slowly. The
+instantaneous appearance of a twig where no twig was before may possibly
+give the victim pause; it may halt out of caution, not out of
+terror.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 3: The word "butterfly" is here used, as is the French
+_papillon_, as a general term for all Lepidoptera; the insect in
+question is of course a moth.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Now classified as _Lasiocampa quercus_.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Rabasso_ is the Provencal name for the truffle; hence a
+truffle-hunter is known as a _rabassier_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Since these lines were written I have found it consuming
+one of the true tuberaceae, the _Tuber Requienii_, Tul., of the size of a
+cherry.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The difficulty in conceiving this theory lies in the fact
+that the waves travel in straight lines. On the other hand, matter in a
+state of degradation may expel particles highly energised and of
+enormous velocity. Most antennae are covered with hairs of inconceivable
+fineness; others may contain cavities of almost infinite minuteness. Is
+it not thinkable that they are able to detect, in the gaseous
+atmosphere, floating particles that are not gaseous? This would not
+prevent the specialisation of antennae as mere feelers in some insects
+and crustaceans. The difficulty of such a supposition lies in the
+fact of discrimination; but if we did not possess a sense of taste or
+smell discrimination would seem inconceivable in their case
+also.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 8: This classification is now superseded; the Pea and Bean
+Weevils--_Bruchus pisi_ and _Bruchus lenti_--are classed as Bruchidae, in
+the series of Phytophaga. Most of the other weevils are classed as
+Curculionidae, series Rhyncophora.--[TRANS.]]
+
+[Footnote 9: The Christmas number (_Noel_) of the _Annales politiques
+et litteraires: Les Enfants juges par leurs peres_, 1901.]
+
+[Footnote 10: The American usage is to call acridians grasshoppers and
+Locustidae locusts. The English usage is to call Locustidae grasshoppers
+and acridians locusts. The Biblical locust is an acridian.]
+
+
+
+
+  Demy 8vo, Cloth, 10/6 net
+
+  FABRE: POET OF SCIENCE
+
+  By G. V. LEGROS
+  With a Photogravure Frontispiece
+
+     This biography is based upon long acquaintance and access to family
+     letters, and is a striking record of a wonderful life.
+
+     "Stands out as a really sound, sympathetic, and artistic piece of
+     work.... The simple story of the life-work of an observer of nature
+     in general, and of insects in particular, is unfolded in a manner
+     which makes it as fascinating as a romance."--The Times.
+
+     "A rare biography."--Saturday Review.
+
+     "It is a prose poem on a great scientist, his simple life and
+     remarkable work."--Daily Graphic.
+
+     "Dr. Legros gives us a sympathetic insight into the life and work
+     of the poet scientist, and a just record of a great man."--Daily
+     Express.
+
+     "Dr. Legros gives us an exceptionally vivid picture of the man, his
+     toil and trials, his characteristics, and his ways of
+     life."--Everyman.
+
+     "A book so packed with charm we have rarely opened."--Evening
+     Standard.
+
+
+    _Printed in Great Britain by_
+    UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
+    WOKING AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre
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