The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Part 10

The smallest insect village has become familiar to me: I know each fruit-branch where the Praying Mantis[4] perches; each bush where the pale Italian Cricket[5] strums amid the calmness of the summer nights; each downy plant sc.r.a.ped by the Anthidium, that maker of cotton bags; each cl.u.s.ter of lilac worked by the Megachile, the Leaf-cutter.

[Footnote 4: Cf. _The Life of the Gra.s.shopper_: chaps. vi. to ix.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. _idem_: chap. xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]

If cruising among the nooks and corners of the garden do not suffice, a longer voyage shows ample profit. I double the cape of the neighbouring hedges and, at a few hundred yards, enter into relations with the Sacred Beetle,[6] the Capricorn, the Geotrupes,[7] the Copris,[8] the Decticus,[9] the Cricket,[10] the Green Gra.s.shopper,[11] in short, with a host of tribes the telling of whose story would exhaust a lifetime. Certainly, I have enough and even too much to do with my near neighbours, without leaving home to rove in distant lands.

[Footnote 6: Cf. _The Sacred Beetle and Others_, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps i. to vi.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 7: Cf. _idem_: chaps. xii. to xiv.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 8: Cf. _idem_: chaps. ix. and xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 9: Cf. _The Life of the Gra.s.shopper_: chaps. xi. to xiii.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 10: Cf. _idem_: chaps. xv. and xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 11: Cf. _idem_: chap. xiv.--_Translator's Note_.]

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

This explains the extreme penury of history outside the dry descriptions of the nomenclator. Overwhelming us with its numbers, the exotic insect nearly always preserves the secret of its manners.

Nevertheless, it were well to compare what happens under our eyes with that which happens elsewhere; it were excellent to see how, in the same guild of workers, the fundamental instinct varies with climatic conditions.

Then my longing to travel returns, vainer to-day than ever, unless one could find a seat on that carpet of which we read in the _Arabian Nights_, the famous carpet whereon one had but to sit to be carried whithersoever he pleased. O marvellous conveyance, far preferable to Xavier de Maistre's post-chaise! If I could only find just a little corner on it, with a return-ticket!

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

It is done; thanks to this first-rate collaborator, I have my seat on the magic carpet. Behold me in the pampas of the Argentine Republic, eager to draw a parallel between the industry of the Serignan[12]

Dung-beetles and that of their rivals in the western hemisphere.

[Footnote 12: Serignan, in Provence, where the author ended his days.--_Translator's Note_.]

A glorious beginning! An accidental find procures me, to begin with, the Splendid Phanaeus (_P. splendidulus_), who combines a coppery effulgence with the sparkling green of the emerald. One is quite astonished to see so rich a gem load its basket with ordure. It is the jewel on the dung-hill. The corselet of the male is grooved with a wide hollow and he sports a pair of sharp-edged pinions on his shoulders; on his forehead he plants a horn which vies with that of the Spanish Copris. While equally rich in metallic splendour, his mate has no fantastic embellishments, which are an exclusive prerogative of masculine dandyism among the Dung-beetles of La Plata as among our own.

Now what can the gorgeous foreigner do? Precisely what the Lunary Copris[13] does with us. Settling, like the other, under a flat cake of Cow-dung, the South American Beetle kneads egg-shaped loaves underground. Not a thing is forgotten: the round belly with the largest volume and the smallest surface; the hard rind which acts as a preservative against premature desiccation; the terminal nipple where the egg is lodged in a hatching-chamber; and, at the end of the nipple, the felt stopper which admits the air needed by the germ.

[Footnote: 13: Cf. _The Sacred Beetle and Others_: chap.

xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]

All these things I have seen here and I see over there, almost at the other end of the world. Life, ruled by inflexible logic, repeats itself in its works, for what is true in one lat.i.tude cannot be false in another. We go very far afield in search of a new spectacle to meditate upon; and we have an inexhaustible specimen before our eyes, between the walls of our enclosure.

Settled under the sumptuous dish dropped by the Ox, the Phanaeus, one would think, ought to make the very best use of it and to stock her burrow with a number of ovoids, after the example of the Lunary Copris. She does nothing of the sort, preferring to roam from one find to the other and to take from each the wherewithal to model a single pellet, which is left to itself for the soil to incubate. She is not driven to practise economy even when she is working the produce of the Sheep far from the pastures of the Argentine.

Can this be because the jewel of the pampas dispenses with the father's collaboration? I dare not follow up the argument, for the Spanish Copris would give me the lie, by showing me the mother occupied alone in settling the family and nevertheless stocking her one pit with a number of pellets. Each has her share of customs the secret of which escapes us.

The two next, _Megathopa bicolor_ and _M. intermedia_, have certain points of resemblance with the Sacred Beetle, for whose ebon hue they subst.i.tute a blue black. The first besides brightens his corselet with magnificent copper reflections. With their long legs, their forehead with its radiating denticulations and their flattened wing-cases, they are fairly successful smaller editions of the famous pill-roller.

They also share her talent. The work of both is once again a sort of pear, but constructed in a more ingenious fas.h.i.+on, with an almost conical neck and without any elegant curves. From the point of view of beauty, it falls short of the Sacred Beetle's work. Considering the tools, which have ample free play and are well adapted for clasping, I expected something better from the two modellers. No matter: the work of the Megathopae conforms with the fundamental art of the other pill-rollers.

A fourth, _Bolbites onitoides_, compensates us for repet.i.tions which, it is true, widen the scope of the problem but teach us nothing new.

She is a handsome Beetle with a metallic costume, green or copper-red according as the light happens to fall. Her four-cornered shape and her long, toothed fore-legs make her resemble our Onites.[14]

[Footnote 14: Cf. _The Sacred Beetle and Others_: chap.

xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]

In her, the Dung-beetles' guild reveals itself under a very unexpected aspect. We know insects that knead soft loaves; and here are some which, to keep their bread fresh, discover ceramics and become potters, working clay in which they pack the food of the larvae. Before my housekeeper, before any of us, they knew how, with the aid of a round jar, to keep the provisions from drying during the summer heats.

The work of the Bolbites is an ovoid, hardly differing in shape from that of the Copres; but this is where the ingenuity of the American insect s.h.i.+nes forth. The inner ma.s.s, the usual dung-cake furnished by the Cow or the Sheep, is covered with a perfectly h.o.m.ogeneous and continuous coating of clay, which makes a piece of solid pottery impervious to evaporation.

The earthen pot is exactly filled by its contents, without the slightest interval along the line of junction. This detail tells us the worker's method. The jar is moulded on the provisions. After the food-pellet has been formed in the ordinary baker's fas.h.i.+on and the egg laid in its hatching-chamber, the Bolbites takes some armfuls of the clay near at hand, applies it to the foodstuff and presses it down. When the work is finished and smoothed to perfection with indefatigable patience, the tiny pot, built up piecemeal, looks as though made with the wheel and rivals our own earthenware in regularity.

The hatching-chamber, in which the egg lies, is, as usual, contrived in the nipple at the end of the pear. How will the germ and the young larva manage to breathe under that clay casing, which intercepts the access of the air?

Have no fears: the pot-maker knows quite well how matters stand. She takes good care not to close the top with the plastic earth which supplied her with the walls. At some distance from the tip of the nipple, the clay ceases to play its part and makes way for fibrous particles, for tiny sc.r.a.ps of undigested fodder, which, arranged one above the other with a certain order, form a sort of thatched roof over the egg. The inward and outward pa.s.sage of the air is a.s.sured through this coa.r.s.e screen.

One is set thinking in the presence of this layer of clay, which protects the fresh provisions, and this vent-hole stopped with a truss of straw, which admits the air freely, while defending the entrance.

There is the eternal question, if we do not rise above the commonplace: how did the insect acquire so wise an art?

Not one fails in obeying those two laws, the safety of the egg and ready ventilation; not one, not even the next on my list, whose talent opens up a new horizon: I am now speaking of Lacordaire's Gromphas.

Let not this repellant name of Gromphas (the old sow) give us a wrong notion of the insect. On the contrary, it is, like the last, an elegant Dung-beetle, dark-bronze, thickset, square-shaped like our Bison Onitis[15] and almost as large. It also practises the same industry, at least as regards the general effect of the work.

[Footnote 15: Cf. _The Sacred Beetle and Others_: chap.

xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]

Its burrow branches into a small number of cylindrical cells, forming the homes of as many larvae. For each of these the provisions consist of a parcel of Cow-dung, about an inch deep. The material is carefully packed and fills the bottom of the cavity, just as a soft paste would do when pressed down in a mould. Until now the work is similar to that of the Bison Onitis; but the resemblance goes no farther and is replaced by profound and curious differences, having no connection with what the Dung-beetles of our own parts show us.

As we know, our sausage-makers, Onites and Geotrupes alike, place the egg at the lower end of their cylinder, in a cell contrived in the very midst of the ma.s.s of foodstuffs. Their rival in the pampas adopts a diametrically opposite method: she places the egg above the victuals, at the upper end of the sausage. In order to feed, the grub does not have to work upwards; on the contrary, it works downwards.

More remarkable still: the egg does not lie immediately on top of the provisions; it is installed in a clay chamber with a wall about one-twelfth of an inch in thickness. This wall forms an hermetically-sealed lid, curves into a cup and then rises and bends over to make a vaulted ceiling.

The germ is thus enclosed in a mineral box, having no connection with the provision-store, which is kept strictly shut. The newborn grub must employ the first efforts of its teeth to break the seals, to cut through the clay floor and to make a trap-door which will take it to the underlying cake.

A rough beginning for the feeble mandible, even though the material to be bored through is a fine clay. Other grubs bite at once into a soft bread which surrounds them on every side; this one, on leaving the egg, has to make a breach in a wall before taking nourishment.

Of what use are these obstacles? I do not doubt that they have their purpose. If the grub is born at the bottom of a closed pot, if it has to chew through brick to reach the larder, I feel sure that certain conditions of its well-being demand this. But what conditions? To become acquainted with them would call for an examination on the spot; and all the data that I possess are a few nests, lifeless things very difficult to interrogate. However, it is possible to catch a glimpse of one or two points.

The Gromphas' burrow is shallow; those little cylinders, her loaves, are greatly exposed to drought. Over there, as here, the drying up of the victuals const.i.tutes a mortal danger. To avert this peril, by far the most sensible course is to enclose the food in absolutely shut vessels.

Well, the receptacle is dug in very fine, h.o.m.ogeneous, water-tight earth, with not a bit of gravel, not an atom of sand in it. Together with the lid that forms the bottom of its round chamber, in which the egg is lodged, this cavity becomes an urn whose contents are safe from drought for a long time, even under a scorching sun. However late the hatching, the new-born grub, on finding the lid, will have under its teeth provisions as fresh as though they dated from that very day.

The clay food-pit, with its closely-fitting lid, is an excellent method, than which our agricultural experts have discovered no better way of preserving fodder; but it possesses one drawback: to reach the stack of food, the grub has first to open a pa.s.sage through the floor of its chamber. Instead of the pap called for by its weakly stomach, it begins by finding a brick to chew.

The rude task would be avoided if the egg lay directly on top of the victuals, inside the case itself. Here our logic is at fault: it forgets an essential point, which the insect is careful not to disregard. The germ breathes. Its development requires air; and the perfectly-closed clay urn does not allow any air to enter. The grub has to be born outside the pot.

Agreed. But, in the matter of breathing, the egg is no better off for being shut up, on top of the provisions, in a clay casket quite as air-tight as the jar itself. Examine the thing more closely, however, and you will receive a satisfactory reply. The walls of the hatching-chamber are carefully glazed inside. The mother has taken meticulous pains to give them a stucco-like finish. The vaulted ceiling alone is rugged, because the building-tool now works from the outside and is unable to reach the inner surface of the lid and smooth it. Moreover, in the centre of this curved and embossed ceiling, a small opening has been made. This is the air-hole, which allows of gaseous exchanges between the atmosphere inside the box and that outside.

If it were entirely free, this opening would be dangerous: some plunderer might take advantage of it to enter the casket. The mother foresees the risk. She blocks the breathing-hole with a plug made of the ravelled vegetable fibres of the Cow-dung, a stopper which is eminently permeable. It is an exact repet.i.tion of that which the various modellers have shown us at the top of their calabashes and pears. All of them are acquainted with the nice secret of the felt stopper as a means of ventilating the egg in a water-tight enclosure.

Your name is not an attractive one, my pretty Dung-beetle of the pampas, but your industrial methods are most remarkable. I know some among your fellow-countrymen, however, who surpa.s.s you in ingenuity.