The Life and Love of the Insect

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THE LIFE AND LOVE
OF THE INSECT

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AGENTS

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PLATE I

• 1. The Sacred Beetle.
• 2. The Sacred Beetle rolling his pill.
• 3. Rolling the pill to the eating burrow.

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THE
LIFE AND LOVE
OF THE INSECT

BY
J. HENRI FABRE
TRANSLATED BY
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1911

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TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

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

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

Fabre’s Souvenirs Entomologiques form ten volumes, containing two to three hundred essays in all. The present book is a translation of the greater part of a volume of selected essays, comprising, in addition to those here presented, three that appeared in a volume entitled Insect Life and published ten years ago by Messrs. Macmillan, in a version from the able pen of [[vi]]the author of Mademoiselle Mori. This volume contained also the first of the four articles descriptive of the habits of the Sacred Beetle; and the publishers desire me to express their thanks to Messrs. Macmillan for permission to include in The Life and Love of the Insect a variant of that first chapter from Insect Life. The omission of three essays included in the French volume of selections explains the absence of reference to certain insects represented in some of the photographic plates.

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

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.

Chelsea, 11 July, 1911. [[vii]]

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CONTENTS

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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THE SACRED BEETLE

[[1]]

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THE LIFE AND LOVE OF
THE INSECT

CHAPTER I

THE SACRED BEETLE

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

The most worthy of our attention in this respect are the Hymenoptera, upon whom the cares of maternity devolve in their fulness. All these favourites of instinct prepare board and lodging for their offspring. They become past masters in a host of industries for the sake of a family which their faceted eyes never behold and [[2]]which, nevertheless, the maternal foresight knows quite well. One becomes a manufacturer of cotton goods and mills cotton-wool bottles; another sets up as a basket-maker and weaves hampers out of scraps of flowers; a third turns mason and builds rooms of cement and domes of road-metal; a fourth starts a pottery-works, in which the clay is kneaded into shapely vases and jars and bulging pots; yet another adopts the calling of a pitman and digs mysterious warm, moist passages underground. A thousand trades similar to ours and often even unknown to our industrial system are employed in the preparation of the abode. Next come the victuals of the expected nurslings: piles of honey, loaves of pollen, stores of preserved game, cunningly paralyzed. In such works as these, having the future of the family for their exclusive object, the highest manifestations of the instinct are displayed under the impulse of maternity.

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

While the Hymenoptera, so extremely thoughtful of their progeny, fill us with wonder, the others, which abandon theirs to the chances of good luck or bad, must seem [[3]]to us, by comparison, of but little interest. These others form almost the entirety; at least, to my knowledge, among the fauna of our country-sides, there is only one other instance of insects preparing board and lodging for their family, as do the gatherers of honey and the buriers of baskets full of game.

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

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

They are the sedulous guests of our herds, for which reason several of them emit a mild flavour of benzoic acid, the aromatic of the sheepfolds. Their pastoral habits have impressed the nomenclators, who, too often, alas, careless of euphony, have changed their note this time and headed their descriptions with such names as Melibæus, Tityrus, Amyntas, Corydon, Mopsus and Alexis. [[4]]We have here the whole series of bucolic denominations made famous by the poets of antiquity. Virgil’s eclogues have lent their vocabulary for the Dung-beetles’ glorification.

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

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

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

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

For his own needs, the Beetle is less fastidious and contents himself with a wholesale selection. The notched shield scoops and digs, eliminates and gathers somewhat at random. The fore-legs play a mighty part in the work. They are flattened, curved into the segment of a circle, supplied with powerful nervures and armed on the outside with five sturdy teeth. If a powerful effort be needed to remove an obstacle or to force a way through the thickest part of the heap, the Dung-beetle makes [[6]]play with his elbows, that is to say, he flings his toothed legs to right and left and clears a semi-circular space with a vigorous thrust of the rake. Room once made, a different kind of work is found for these same limbs: they collect armfuls of the material raked together by the shield and push it under the insect’s belly, between the four hind-legs. These are shaped for the turner’s trade. The legs, especially the last two, are long and slender, slightly bowed and ending in a very sharp claw. One has but to look at them to recognize a pair of spherical compasses capable of embracing a globular body in their curved branches and improving its form. In fact, their mission is to shape the ball.

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

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

The provisions are made. The next thing is to withdraw [[7]]from the fray and carry the victuals to a fitting place. Here the most striking characteristics of the Scarab begin to show themselves. The Dung-beetle sets out without delay; he embraces the sphere with his two long hind-legs, whose terminal claws, planted in the mass, serve as rotatory pivots; he obtains a purchase with the middle pair of legs; and, using the armlets of his fore-legs for leverage, he travels backwards with his load, bending his body, with his head down and his hinder part in the air. The hind-legs, the principal factor in the machinery, move continually, coming and going, shifting the claws to change the axis of rotation, maintain the equilibrium of the load and push it on by alternate thrusts to right and left. In this way, the ball finds itself touching the ground by turns with every point of its surface, a process which perfects its shape and gives an even consistency to its outer layer by means of pressure uniformly divided.

And now, cheerily! It moves, it rolls; we shall get there, though not without accident. Here is a first difficult step: the Beetle is wending his way athwart a slope and the heavy mass tends to follow the incline; but the insect, for reasons best known to itself, prefers to cut across this natural road, a bold plan which a false step or a grain of sand disturbing the balance may defeat. The false step is made; the ball rolls to the bottom of the valley; and the insect, toppled over by the impetus of its load, kicks about, gets up on its legs again and hastens to harness itself once more. The mechanism is working better than ever. But look out, you scatterbrain! Follow the dip of the valley: that will save you labour and mishap; the road is good and level; your ball will roll quite easily. Not a bit of it! The insect prepares once more to mount the slope that was already [[8]]its undoing. Perhaps it suits it to return to the heights. Against that I have nothing to say: the Scarab’s opinion is more far-seeing than mine as to the advisability of keeping to lofty regions. But, at least, take this path, which will lead you up by a gentle incline! Not at all! If he find himself near some very steep slope, impossible to climb, that is what the obstinate fellow prefers. And now begins a labour of Sisyphus. The ball, that enormous burden, is painfully hoisted, step by step, with infinite precautions, to a certain height, always backwards. I ask myself by what static miracle so great a mass can be kept upon the slope. Oh! An ill-planned movement frustrates all this toil: the ball comes down, dragging the beetle with it! The escalade is repeated, soon to be followed by another fall. The attempt is renewed, better-managed this time at the difficult points; a confounded grass-root, the cause of the previous tumbles, is carefully turned. We are almost there; but gently, gently! The ascent is dangerous and a mere nothing may yet spoil all. For see, a leg slips on a smooth bit of gravel! Down come ball and Dung-beetle, all mixed up together. And the Beetle begins over again, with indefatigable persistency. Ten times, a score of times, he will attempt the thankless ascent, until his obstinacy vanquishes all obstacles, or until, recognizing the uselessness of his efforts, he takes to the level road.

The Scarab does not always push his precious ball alone: sometimes he takes a partner; or, to be accurate, the partner takes him. This is how the thing usually happens: once his ball is ready, a Dung-beetle issues from the crowd and leaves the work-yard, pushing his spoil behind him. A neighbour, one of the newcomers, whose own task is hardly begun, suddenly drops his work and [[9]]runs to the ball now rolling, to lend a hand to the lucky owner, who seems to accept the proffered aid kindly. Henceforth, the two cronies work as partners. Each does his best to push the pellet to a place of safety. Was a compact really concluded in the work-yard, a tacit agreement to share the cake between them? While one was kneading and moulding the ball, was the other tapping rich veins whence to extract choice materials and add them to the common store? I have never observed such a collaboration; I have always seen each Dung-beetle occupied solely with his own affairs in the works. The last-comer, therefore, has no acquired rights.

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

Pour monter notre menage, hélas! comment feront-nous?

Toi devant et moi derrière, nous pousserons le tonneau.[1]

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

Neither community of family nor community of toil! Then what is the motive for this apparent partnership? It is just simply an attempt at robbery. The eager fellow-worker, under the deceitful pretence of lending a helpful hand, nurses the scheme of purloining the ball at [[10]]the first opportunity. To make one’s own ball at the heap implies drudgery and patience; to steal one ready-made, or at least to foist one’s self as a guest, is a much easier matter. Should the owner’s vigilance slacken, you can run away with the treasure; should you be too closely watched, you can sit down to table uninvited, pleading services rendered. It is, “Heads I win, tails you lose,” in these tactics, so that pillage is exercised as one of the most lucrative of trades. Some go to work craftily, in the way I have just described: they come to the aid of a comrade who has not the least need of them and hide a most indelicate greed under the cloak of charitable assistance. Others, bolder perhaps, more confident in their strength, go straight to the goal and commit robbery with violence.

Scenes are constantly happening such as this: a Scarab walks off, peacefully and alone, rolling his ball, his lawful property, acquired by conscientious work. Another comes flying up, I know not whence, drops down heavily, folds his smoky wings under their elytra and, with the back of his toothed armlets, knocks over the owner, who is powerless to ward off the attack in his harnessed posture. While the dispossessed one struggles to his feet, the other perches himself atop the ball, the best position from which to repel the assailant. With his armlets folded under his breast, ready at all points, he awaits events. The victim of the theft moves round the ball, seeking a favourable spot at which to attempt the assault; the thief spins round on the roof of the citadel, constantly facing him. If the first raise himself in order to scale the wall, the second gives him a cuff that stretches him on his back. Safe at the top of his fortress, the besieged Beetle would baffle his adversary’s attempts indefinitely, [[11]]if the latter did not change his tactics to recover his property. Sapping is brought into play to bring down the citadel with the garrison. The ball, shaken from below, staggers and rolls, carrying with it the robber, who makes violent efforts to maintain his position on the top. This he succeeds in doing, though not always, thanks to hurried feats of gymnastics that enable him to regain a level from which the rolling of his support tends to drive him. Should a false movement bring him to the ground, the chances become equal and the struggle turns into a wrestling-match. Robber and robbed grapple at close quarters, breast to breast. Their legs twist and untwist, their joints intertwine, their horny armour clashes and grinds with the rasping sound of filed metal. Then that one of the two who succeeds in throwing his adversary and releasing himself hurriedly takes up a position on the top of the ball. The siege is renewed, now by the robber, now by the robbed, as the chances of the hand-to-hand conflict may have determined. The former, no doubt a hardy filibuster and adventurer, often has the best of the fight. Then, after two or three defeats, the ejected Beetle wearies and returns philosophically to the heap, there to make himself a new pellet. As for the other, with all fear of a surprise at an end, he harnesses himself to the conquered ball and pushes it whither he pleases. I have sometimes seen a third thief appear upon the scene and rob the robber. Nor can I honestly say that I was sorry.

I ask myself in vain what Proudhon[2] introduced into Beetle-morality the daring paradox that “property is based on plunder,” or what diplomatist taught Dung-beetles the savage maxim that “might is right.” I have [[12]]no facts whereby to trace the origin of these spoliations which have become a custom, of this abuse of strength to capture a lump of ordure. All that I can say is that theft is in general use among the Scarab tribe. These Dung-rollers rob one another among themselves with a calm effrontery of which I know no other instance. I leave it to future observers to elucidate this curious problem in animal psychology and I return to the two partners rolling their ball in concert.

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

The efforts of the couple are not always very harmonious, the more so as the helper has his back to the road to be traversed, while the owner’s view is impeded by the load. Hence arise constant accidents, absurd tumbles, taken cheerfully and in good part: each picks himself up quickly and resumes the same position as before. On level ground, this system of draught does not correspond with the dynamic force expended, for [[13]]lack of precision in the combined movements: the Scarab at the back would do as well and better if left to himself. And so the helper, after giving a proof of his good-will at the risk of disturbing the mechanism, decides to keep still, without, of course, abandoning the precious ball, which he already looks upon as his: finding is keeping; a ball touched is a ball gained. He will commit no such imprudence: the other might give him the slip!

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

But a steep ascent heaves in sight and gives him a fine part to play. He now, on the stiff slope, takes the lead, holding the heavy mass with his toothed arms, while his mate seeks a purchase to hoist the load a little higher. Thus, by a combination of well-managed efforts, the one above gripping, the one below pushing, I have seen them together mount acclivities where the stubborn determination of one alone would have come to naught. But not all have the same zeal at these difficult moments: there are some who, on slopes where their assistance is most needed, seem not in the least aware of the difficulties to overcome. While the unhappy Sisyphus exhausts himself in endeavours to pass the dangerous place, the other quietly leaves him to do his best and, himself encrusted on the ball, rolls down with it, when it comes to grief, and is hoisted up with it anew. [[14]]

Let us suppose the Scarab fortunate enough to have found a loyal partner; or, better still, let us suppose that he has met no self-invited colleague. The burrow is ready. It is a cavity dug in soft earth, usually in sand, shallow, the size of one’s fist and communicating with the outside by a short channel just large enough for the passage of the ball. As soon as the provisions are safely housed, the Scarab shuts himself in by stopping up the entrance to his dwelling with rubbish reserved for the purpose in a corner. Once the door is closed, no sign outside betrays the banqueting-hall. And, now, welcome mirth and jollity! All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds! The table is sumptuously laid; the ceiling tempers the heat of the sun and allows but a mild, moist heat to penetrate; the calm, the darkness, the concert of the crickets overhead all favour the digestive functions. So great has been my illusion that I have caught myself listening at the door, expecting to hear the revellers burst into that famous snatch from the opera of Galatée:[3]

Ah! qu’il est doux de ne rien faire

Quand tout s’agite autour de nous.[4]

Who would dare disturb the bliss of such a banquet? But the wish to learn is capable of all things; and I had the courage. I will set down here the result of my violations of the sanctity of domestic life: the ball by itself fills almost the whole of the room; the rich repast rises from floor to ceiling. A narrow passage runs between it and the walls. Here sit the banqueters, two at [[15]]most, very often but one, belly to table, back to the wall. Once the seat is chosen, no one stirs; all the vital forces are absorbed by the digestive faculties. No little movements, which might cause the loss of a mouthful; no dainty toying with the food, which might cause the waste of some. Everything has to pass, properly and in order. To see them so pensively seated around a ball of dung, one would think that they were aware of their task as scavengers of the earth and that they consciously devoted themselves to that marvellous chemistry which out of filth brings forth the flower, the joy of our eyes, and the Beetles’ elytra, the ornament of our lawns in spring. For the purpose of this transcendental work, which is to turn into live matter the residue discarded by the horse and the mule, despite the perfection of their digestive organs, the Dung-beetle must needs be specially equipped. And, in point of fact, anatomy compels us to admire the prodigious length of his intestine, which, folded and refolded upon itself, slowly elaborates the materials in its profuse circuits and exhausts them to the very last serviceable atom. From that whence the stomach of the herbivorous animal has been able to extract nothing, this powerful alembic wrings riches that, at a mere touch, turn into ebon armour in the Sacred Scarab and a breast-plate of gold and rubies in other Dung-beetles.

Now this wonderful metamorphosis of ordure has to be accomplished in the shortest possible time: the general health demands it. And so the Scarab is endowed with matchless digestive powers. Once housed in the company of food, day and night he will not cease eating and digesting until the provisions be exhausted. It is easy, with a little practice, to bring up the Scarab in captivity, in a volery. In this way, I obtained the following evidence, [[16]]which will tell us of the high digestive capacity of the famous Dung-beetle.

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

Once round the clock and more, for a single sitting at table, is a fine display of gormandizing in itself; but here is something much better by way of rapidity of digestion. While, in front of the insect, the matter is being continuously chewed and swallowed, behind it, with equal continuity, the matter reappears, stripped of its nutritive particles and spun into a little black cord, similar to a cobbler’s thread. The Scarab never evacuates except at table, so quickly are his digestive labours performed. The apparatus begins to work at the first few mouthfuls; it ceases its office soon after the last. Without a break from beginning to end of the meal and always hanging to the discharging orifice, the thin cord is piled in a [[17]]heap which is easy to unroll so long as it is not dried up.

The thing works with the regularity of a chronometer. Every minute, or, rather, to be accurate, every four-and-fifty seconds, an eruption takes place and the thread is lengthened by three to four millimetres.[5] At long intervals, I employ the pincers, unfasten the cord and unroll the heap along a graduated rule, to estimate the produce. The total measurement for twelve hours is 2·88 metres.[6] As the meal and its necessary complement, the work of the digestive apparatus, went on for some time longer after my last visit, paid at eight o’clock in the evening by the light of a lantern, it follows that my subject must have spun an unbroken stercoraceous cord well over three yards in length.

Given the diameter and the length of the thread, it is easy to calculate its volume. Nor is it difficult to arrive at the exact volume of the insect by measuring the amount of water which it displaces when immersed in a narrow cylinder. The figures thus obtained are not uninteresting: they tell us that, at a single festive sitting, in a dozen hours, the Scarab digests very nearly its own volume in food. What a stomach! And especially what a rapidity, what a power of digestion! From the first mouthfuls, the residuum forms itself into a thread that stretches, stretches out indefinitely as long as the meal lasts. In that amazing laboratory, which perhaps never puts up its shutters, unless it be when victuals are lacking, the material only passes through, is worked upon at once by the reagents in the stomach and at once exhausted. We may well believe that a crucible so quick to purify dirt plays its part in the general hygiene. [[18]]

[1]

“When you and I start housekeeping, alas, what shall we do?

You in front and I behind, we’ll shove the tub along!”

[2] Jean Baptiste Victor Proudhon (1758–1838), author of De la distinction des biens, Traité du domaine public, etc.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] A light opera, with music by Victor Masse and libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré (1852).—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4]

“Ah, how sweet is far niente,

When round us throbs the busy world!”

[5] ·11 to ·15 inches.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] Close upon 9½ feet.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER II

THE SACRED BEETLE: THE PEAR

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

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

The children come round me; they look at the treasure-trove with longing eyes; they would like to add it to the contents of their toy-box. It is much prettier in shape than an agate marble, much more graceful than an ivory egg or a box-wood top. The material, it is true, seems none too nicely chosen; but it is firm to the touch and very artistically curved. In any case, the little pear discovered underground must not go to swell the collection of nursery treasures until we have found out more about it. [[19]]

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

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

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

Scarabæus’ burrow is soon found: it is recognizable by the recent mole-hill that surmounts it. My companion digs with a vigorous wrist. I have lent him my little pocket-trowel, the light, but workmanlike tool which, incorrigible earth-scraper that I am, I seldom omit to take with me when I go out. I lie down, the better to see the arrangement and furnishing of the hypogeum in process of excavation; and I am all eyes. The [[20]]shepherd uses the trowel as a lever and, with his free hand, pushes back the rubbish.

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

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

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

PLATE II

Burrow and pear-shaped ball of the Sacred Beetle.

[[21]]

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

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

This stercoral bread has its main axis lying in a horizontal position. Its shape and size remind one exactly of those little poires de Saint-Jean which, thanks to their bright colouring, their flavour and their early ripeness, [[22]]delight the children’s tribe. The bulk varies within narrow limits. The largest dimensions are 45 millimetres in length by 30 millimetres in width;[1] the smallest are 35 millimetres by 28.[2]

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

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

Whereas coarse bread, crammed with bits of hay, is good enough for the mother, she becomes more dainty where her family are concerned. She now wants fine pastry, rich in nourishment and easily digested; she now wants the ovine manna: not that which the sheep of a dry habit scatters in trails of black olives, but that which, [[23]]elaborated in a less parched intestine, is kneaded into biscuits all of a piece. That is the material required, the dough exclusively used. It is no longer the poor and stringy produce of the horse, but an unctuous, plastic, homogeneous thing, soaked through and through with nourishing juices. Its plasticity, its delicacy are admirably adapted to the artistic work of the pear, while its alimentary qualities suit the weak stomach of the newborn progeny. Little though the bulk be, the grub will here find sufficient food.

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

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

All this seemed so very reasonable that I allowed myself to be led away by it. In the first pear which I explored, slender layer by slender layer, with the blade of a penknife, I looked for the egg in the centre of the paunch, feeling almost certain of finding it there. To my great surprise, it was not there. Instead of being hollow, the [[24]]centre of the pear is full and consists of one continuous, homogeneous alimentary mass.

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

Fig. 1.—Section of the Sacred Beetle’s pill, showing the egg and the hatching-chamber.

But where? Why, in the narrow part of the pear, in the neck, right at the end. Let us cut this neck lengthwise, taking the necessary precautions, so as not to damage the contents. It is hollowed into a recess with polished and shiny walls. This is the tabernacle of the germ, the hatching-chamber. The egg, which is very large in proportion to the size of the layer, is a long white oval, about 10 millimetres in length by 5 millimetres in its greatest width.[3] A slight empty space separates it on all sides from the chamber-walls. There is no contact with these walls, save at the rear end, which adheres to the top of the recess. Lying horizontally, following the normal position of the pear, the whole of it, excepting the point of attachment, rests upon an air-mattress, most elastic and warmest of beds. Let [[25]]us observe also that the top of the nipple, instead of being smooth and compact like the rest of the pear, is formed of a felt of particles of scrapings, which allows the air sufficient access for the breathing-needs of the egg.

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

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

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

A grave danger threatens the Sacred Beetle in its grub state: the drying-up of the food. The crypt in which [[26]]the larval life is spent has a layer of earth, some third of an inch thick, for a ceiling. Of what avail is this slender screen against the canicular heat that burns the soil, baking it like a brick to a far greater depth? The grub’s abode at such times acquires a scorching temperature; when I thrust my hand into it, I feel the moist heat of a Turkish bath.

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

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

The drying-up of the victuals is, we say, fatal to it. This is proved by the grubs found baked in their oven; it is also proved, in a more precise fashion, by the following experiment. In July, the period of active nidification, I place in wooden or cardboard boxes a dozen pears dug up, that morning, from the native spot. These [[27]]boxes, carefully closed, are put away in the dark, in my study, where the same temperature reigns as outside. Well, in none of them is the infant reared: sometimes the egg shrivels; sometimes the worm is hatched, but very soon dies. On the other hand, in tin boxes or glass receptacles, things go very well: not one attempt at rearing fails.

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

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

The Sacred Beetle goes further still: she becomes a geometrician capable of solving a fine problem of minimum [[28]]values. All other conditions remaining equal, the evaporation is obviously in proportion to the extent of the evaporating surface. The alimentary mass must therefore be given the smallest possible surface, in order by so much to decrease the waste of moisture; nevertheless, this smallest surface must unite the largest aggregate of nutritive materials, so that the worm may find sufficient nourishment. Now which is the form that encloses the greatest bulk within the smallest superficial area? Geometry answers, the sphere.

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

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

Supplied with the tools which it possesses, the insect would be capable of obtaining other forms of a less dainty curve than its pear-shaped work. It could, for instance, make the coarse cylinder, the sausage in use among the Geotrupes; simplifying the work to the utmost, it could leave the morsel without any settled form, just as it [[29]]happened to find it. Things would proceed all the faster and would leave more time for playing in the sun. But no: the Scarab adopts exclusively the sphere, so difficult in its precision; she acts as though she knew the laws of evaporation and geometry from A to Z.

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

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

These conditions, air and warmth, are so fundamental that no Dung-beetle neglects them. The nutritive hoards [[30]]vary in form, as we shall have occasion to perceive: in addition to the pear, such shapes as the cylinder, the ovoid, the pill and the thimble are adopted, according to the species of the manipulator; but, amid this diversity of outline, one feature of the first importance remains constant, which is the egg lodged in a hatching-chamber close to the surface, providing an excellent means for the easy access of air and warmth. And the most gifted in this delicate art is the Sacred Beetle with her pear.

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

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

Thus the requisite conditions are fulfilled: the provisions, gathered into a ball, keep fresh; the egg, protected by its slender, cylindrical sheath, receives the influence of air and warmth without impediment. The [[31]]strictly needful has been obtained; but it is very ugly. The practical has not troubled about the beautiful.

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

The Scarab does exactly what the laws of æsthetics dictate to ourselves. Can she, too, have a sense of beauty? Is she able to appreciate the elegance of her pear? Certainly, she does not see it: she manipulates it in profound darkness. But she touches it. A poor touch hers, rudely clad in horn, yet not insensible, after all, to nicely-drawn outlines! [[32]]

[1] 1·8 × 1·4 inches.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] 1·4 × 1·1 inches.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] ·4 × ·2 inches.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER III

THE SACRED BEETLE: THE MODELLING

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

To produce his masterpiece, the sculptor retires to his den. Even so the Sacred Beetle. She shuts herself down in her crypt, to model, in contemplative seclusion, the materials introduced. Two opportunities offer for obtaining the block to be worked. In the one case, the Scarab gathers from the heap, according to the method which we know, a choice block, which is kneaded into a ball on the spot and which is already spherical before it is set in motion. Were it only a question of provisions intended for her own meals, she would never act otherwise. [[33]]

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

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

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

Whether the storing without preliminary ball or conveyance be achieved in the fields or in my voleries, the final result is most striking. One day, I see a shapeless lump disappear into the crypt. The next day, or the day after, I visit the workshop and find the artist face [[34]]to face with her work. The uncouth mass of the start, the loose shreds introduced by armfuls have become a pear of perfect accuracy and conscientious finish.

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

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

Let us now return to the usual case, in the open. The materials then come from a distance and are introduced into the burrow in the form of a ball covered with soil on every part of its surface. What will the insect do with this sphere which contains the paunch of the future pear ready-made? The answer would present no serious difficulty if, limiting my ambition to the results obtained, I sacrificed the means employed. It would be [[35]]enough for me, as I have often done, to capture the mother in her burrow with her ball and carry one and all home, to my animal laboratory, to watch events at first hand.

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

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

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

Oftener still, the ball is thrust by the mother into the [[36]]earth of the jar just as I took it from the burrow, with the wrinkled covering which it acquired in rolling across country during the journey from the place where it was found to the spot where the insect intended to use it. In that case, I find it at the bottom of my jar converted into a pear, itself wrinkled and encrusted with earth and sand over the whole of its surface, thus proving that the pear-shaped outline has not demanded a general recasting of the mass, inside as well as out, but has been obtained by simple pressure and by drawing out the neck.

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

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

PLATE III

1. The Sacred Beetle pushing away and overturning a thieving friend who tries to force his assistance upon him.

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

[[37]]

The arrangements made are as follows: I once more take the large glass jar. I cover the bottom with a layer of earth a few inches in thickness. To obtain the transparent workshop necessary for my observations, I fix a tripod on the earthy layer and, on this support, a decimetre[1] high, I place a round deal slab of the same diameter as the jar. The glass-walled chamber thus marked out will represent the roomy crypt in which the insect works. In the edge of the deal slab, a hollow is cut, large enough to permit of the passage of the Sacred Beetle and her ball. Lastly, above this screen, I heap a layer of earth as deep as the jar allows.

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

Things being thus arranged, I go in search of a mother lately removed from her natural lodging with her ball. A morning is enough to provide me with what I need. I place the mother and her ball on the surface of the upper layer of earth; I cap the apparatus with its cardboard sheath; and I wait. The insect, stubborn at [[38]]its work so long as the egg is not deposited, will dig itself a new burrow, dragging its ball with it as it goes; it will pass through the upper layer of earth, which is not sufficiently thick; it will come upon the deal board, an obstacle similar to the broken stones that often bar its passage in the course of its normal excavations; it will investigate the cause of the impediment and, finding the opening, will descend through this trap-door to the lower compartment, which, being free and roomy, will represent to the insect the crypt whence I have just removed it. Thus prophesies my foresight. But all this takes time; and I must wait for the morrow to satisfy my impatient curiosity.

The hour has come: let us go and see. The study-door was left open yesterday: the mere sound of the door-handle might stop my distrustful worker. By way of greater precaution, before entering, I put on silent slippers. And——whoosh! The cylinder is removed. Capital! My expectations are fully justified.

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

My sudden, brief visit gives us a first insight into the mysterious work. The ball, at first exactly spherical, now has a stout pad circumscribing a sort of shallow [[39]]crater. The work reminds me, in greatly reduced proportions, of certain prehistoric pots, with round bellies, thick lips around the mouth and a neck strangled by a narrow groove. This rude outline of a pear tells us of the insect’s method, a method identical with that of Pleistoscene man ignorant of the potter’s wheel.

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

Fig. 2.—The Sacred Beetle’s pill dug out cupwise to receive the egg.

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

The work has progressed. The crater has become deeper; the thick lips have disappeared, are thinner, closer together, drawn out into the neck of a pear. The object, however, has not changed its place. Its position, its aspect are exactly as I noted them before. The [[40]]side that lay on the ground is still at the bottom, at the same point; the side that faced upwards is still at the top; the crater that lay on my right has been replaced by the neck, still on my right. Whence comes a conclusion completely confirming my previous statements: no rolling; mere pressure, which kneads and moulds.

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

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

With this clumsy equipment, excellently adapted to coarse work though it be, how does the Scarab obtain the natal dwelling, the oval nest so daintily polished and glazed within? Does the foot, a regular saw, fitted with enormous teeth, begin to rival the painter’s brush in delicacy from the moment when it is inserted through the narrow orifice of the sack? Why not? I have said elsewhere and this is the occasion to repeat it: [[41]]the tool does not make the workman. The insect exerts its gifts as a specialist with any kind of tool wherewith it is supplied. It can saw with a plane or plane with a saw, like the model workman of whom Franklin tells us. The same strong-toothed rake with which the Sacred Beetle rips the earth is used by her as a trowel and brush wherewith to glaze the stucco of the chamber in which the grub will be born.

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

Why this arrangement at the extreme pole, a very curious exception, when every elsewhere the pear has received the powerful blows of the insect’s foot? The hind-end of the egg rests against this plug, which, were it pressed down and driven in, would transmit the pressure to the germ and imperil its safety. The mother, aware of the risk, blocks up the hole without ramming the stopper: the air in the hatching-chamber is thus more easily renewed; and the egg escapes the dangerous concussion of the compressing paddle. [[42]]

[1] 3·9 inches.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IV

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

The hatching-chamber is an oval recess about one centimetre[1] in diameter. The egg is fixed at the bottom of this recess. It is cylindrical in shape, rounded at both ends, yellowish-white in colour and having nearly the bulk of a grain of wheat, but shorter. The inner wall of the recess is plastered with a greenish-brown matter, shiny, half-fluid, a real cream destined to form the first mouthfuls of the grub. In order to produce this delicate fare, does the mother select the quintessence of the ordure? The appearance of the mess tells me differently and assures me that it is a broth elaborated in the maternal stomach. The Pigeon softens the corn in her crop and turns it into a sort of milk-diet which she afterwards disgorges for her brood. The Dung-beetle has the same fond ways: she half-digests selected viands and disgorges them as a fine pap, with which she hangs the walls of the nest wherein her egg is laid. In this manner, the grub, when hatched, finds an easily-digested food that soon strengthens its stomach and allows it to attack the underlying layers, which are less daintily prepared.

A progressive change of diet is here made manifest. On leaving the egg, the feeble little grub licks the fine [[43]]sop on the walls of its lodging. There is not much of it, but it is strengthening and possesses a high nourishing value. The pap of tender childhood is followed by the pottage of the weaned nursling.

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

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

What a mistake was mine! I am not too greatly thunderstruck, however: in the exercise of its defensive skill, the animal often employs methods which our imagination would not dare to contemplate. It is not the head that is presented at the breach, after the preliminary twisting: it is the opposite extremity. The grub does not bring an armful of its alimentary dough, [[44]]gathered by scraping the walls: it excretes upon the aperture to be closed; a much more economical proceeding. Sparingly measured out, the rations must not be wasted: there is just enough to live upon. Besides, the cement is of better quality; it soon sets. Lastly, the urgent repairs are more quickly effected, if the intestines lend their kindly aid.

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

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

As soon as the plastic gush is laid down in a lump, the levelling and compressing instrument sets to work to introduce the cement well into the irregularities of the breach, to push it right through the thickness of the ruined portion, to give it consistency, to level it. After this [[45]]stroke of the trowel, the grub turns round: it comes and bangs and pushes the work with its wide forehead and improves it with the tip of its mandibles. Wait a quarter of an hour and the repaired portion will be as firm as the rest of the shell, so quickly does the cement set. Outside, the repairs are betrayed by the rough prominence of the material forced outwards, which remains inaccessible to the trowel; but, inside, there is no trace of the breakage: the usual polish has been restored at the injured spot. A plasterer stopping a hole in a wall in our rooms could produce no better piece of work.

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

On reaching home, I have found the pear put out of shape, no doubt, and seamed with scars, but just as solid as ever. During the walk, the grub had restored its ruined dwelling to condition. Cement injected into the cracks joined the pieces together; inside, a thick plastering strengthened the inner wall, so much so that the repaired shell was quite as good as the untouched shell, but for the irregularity of the outside. In its artistically-mended stronghold, the worm found the peace essential to its existence. [[46]]

Let us now give a brief description of the grub, without stopping to enumerate the articulations of the palpi and antennæ, irksome details of no immediate interest. It is a fat worm and has a fine, white skin, with pale slate-coloured reflections proceeding from the digestive organs, which are visible transparently. Bent into a broken arch or hook, it is not unlike the grub of the Cockchafer, but has a much more ungainly figure, for, on its back, at the sudden bend of the hook, the third, fourth and fifth segments of the abdomen swell into an enormous protuberance, a tumour, a pouch so prominent that the skin seems on the point of bursting under the pressure of the contents. This is the animal’s most striking feature: the fact that it carries a wallet.

Fig. 3.—Grub of the Sacred Beetle.

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

Let us also mention the terminal trowel, the last segment lopped into a slanting disk and rimmed with a fleshy pad. In the centre of this inclined plane is the open stercoral gash, which thus, by a very unusual inversion, [[47]]occupies the upper surface. An enormous hump and a trowel: that gives you the animal in two words.

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

We must not finish the history of the grub without saying a few words on its internal structure. Anatomy will show us the works wherein the cement employed in so original a manner is manufactured. The stomach or chylific ventricle is a long, thick cylinder, starting from the creature’s neck after a very short gullet. It measures about three times the length of the animal. In its last quarter, it carries a voluminous lateral pouch distended by the food. This is a subsidiary stomach in which the supplies are stored so as to yield their nutritive principles more thoroughly. The chylific ventricle is much too long to lie straight in the grub’s bowels and bends back upon itself, in front of its appendix, in the form of a large loop occupying the dorsal surface. It is to contain this loop and the lateral pouch that the back is swollen into a protuberance. The grub’s wallet is, therefore, a second paunch, an annexe, as it were, of the stomach, which is itself incapable of holding the voluminous digestive apparatus. Four very fine, very long tubulures, irregularly entwined, four Malpighian vessels mark the limits of the chylific ventricle. [[48]]

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

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

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

In this marvel, so severe and dignified in shape and colouring, one point above all captivates me and gives me at last the solution of a far-reaching problem. Are the front-legs furnished with a tarsus, yes or no? This is the great business that makes me forget the jewel for the sake of a structural detail. Let us then return to a subject that excited me in my early days; for the answer [[49]]has come at last, late, it is true, but certain and indisputable.

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

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

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

If the evidence of the nymph were not sufficient, there [[50]]would be that of the perfect insect which, casting its rejected mummy-clothes and moving for the first time in its shell, wields fingerless armlets. The fact, therefore, is established for certain: the Sacred Beetle is born maimed; his mutilation dates from his birth.

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

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

The Sacred Beetle is not a climber, but an ordinary pedestrian, supporting himself upon the point of an iron-shod stick, by which I mean the stout spine or prickle wherewith the tip of the leg is armed. He does not have to hold on by his claws to some hanging branch, as does [[51]]the Cockchafer. And it would therefore, meseems, be entirely to his advantage to rid himself of the four remaining fingers, projecting sideways, idle on the march, inactive in the construction and carriage of the ball. Yes, that would mean progress, for the simple reason that the less hold one gives to the enemy the better. It remains to be seen if chance ever produces this state of things.

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

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

And these cripples form a race; they spend the bad season underground; they wake up in the spring, return to the surface and take part, for a second, sometimes even for a third time, in life’s great festival. Their descendants ought to profit by an improvement which [[52]]has been renewed year by year, ever since Scarabs came into the world, and which has certainly had time to become fixed and to convert itself into a settled habit. But they do nothing of the sort. Every Sacred Beetle that breaks his shell, with not one exception, is endowed with the four tarsi prescribed by rule.

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

Then what is the cause of the original mutilation of the Scarab? I will confess plainly that I know nothing at all about it. Nevertheless, those two maimed members are very strange: so strange, in the endless order of insects, that they have exposed the masters, the greatest masters, to lamentable blunders. Let us listen first to Latreille,[2] the prince of descriptive entomologists. In his account of the insects which ancient Egypt painted or carved upon her monuments,[3] he quotes the writings of Horapollo, an unique document which has been preserved for us in the papyri for the glorification of the sacred insect:

“One would feel tempted at first,” he says, “to set down as fiction what Horapollo says of the number of that Scarab’s fingers. According to him, there are thirty. Nevertheless, this computation, judged by the way in which he looks at the tarsus, is perfectly correct, for this part consists of five joints; and, if we take each of them for a finger, the legs being six in number and each ending [[53]]in a five-jointed tarsus, the Sacred Beetles obviously have thirty fingers.”

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

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

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

Before answering this evolutionary objection, I will wait for some one to show me a natural Scarab of Horapollo’s [[54]]date. The hypogea which so religiously guard the cat, the ibis and the crocodile must also contain the sacred insect. All that I have at my disposal is a few figures representing the Sacred Beetle as we find him engraved on the monuments or carved in fine stone as an amulet for the mummies. The ancient artist is remarkably faithful in the execution of the whole; but his graver, his chisel have not troubled about details so insignificant as those of the tarsi.

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

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

In particular, he writes as follows:

“The Scarab buries her ball in the ground, where she remains hidden for twenty-eight days, a space of time [[55]]equal to that of a revolution of the moon, during which period the offspring of the Scarab quickens. On the twenty-ninth day, which the insect knows to be that of the conjunction of the sun and moon and of the birth of the world, it opens the ball and throws it into the water. From this ball issue animals that are Scarabs.”

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

Antiquity knew nothing of the wonders of the metamorphosis. To antiquity, a grub was a worm born of corruption. The poor creature had no future to lift it from its abject condition: as worm it appeared and as worm it had to disappear. It was not a mask under which a superior form of life was being elaborated; it was a definite entity, supremely contemptible and doomed soon to return to the rottenness that gave it birth.

To the Egyptian author, therefore, the Scarab’s larva was unknown. And if, by chance, he had had before his eyes the shell of the insect inhabited by a fat, big-bellied worm, he would never have suspected in the foul and ugly animal the sober beauty of the future Scarab. According to the ideas of the time, ideas long maintained, the sacred insect had neither father nor mother: an error excusable in the midst of the simplicity of the [[56]]ancients, for here the two sexes are outwardly indistinguishable. It was born of the ordure that formed its ball; and from its birth dated the appearance of the nymph, that amber gem displaying, in a perfectly recognizable form, the features of the full-grown insect.

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

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

At last, the Scarab is fully matured. Awaking within [[57]]him is the delicious restlessness of an approaching liberty. He, hitherto the son of the darkness, foresees the gladness of the light. His longing is great to burst the shell, to emerge from below ground and come into the sun; but the difficulty of liberating himself is far from small. Will he escape from the natal cradle, now become an odious prison? Or will he not escape? It depends.

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

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

I come to the assistance of a pair of them by myself opening a loop-hole with the point of a knife. According to my idea, this first breach will help the egress of the [[58]]recluse by offering him a place to start upon, an exit that only needs widening. But not at all: these favoured ones advance no quicker with their work than the rest.

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

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

For the second time, Horapollo was right. Certainly, it is not the mother, as the old author says, who throws her ball into the water: it is the clouds that provide the liberating ablution, the rain that facilitates the ultimate release. In the natural state, things must happen as in my experiments. In August, in a burnt soil, under a thin screen of earth, the shells, baked like bricks, are for most of the time as hard as pebbles. It is impossible for the insect to wear out its casket and escape from it. But, should a shower come upon the scene—that life-giving baptism which the seed of the plant and the [[59]]family of the Scarab alike await within the ashes of the soil—should a little rain fall, soon the fields will present the appearance of a resurrection.

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

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

But let us drop the jargon of antiquity and its shreds of truth; let us not neglect the first acts of the Sacred Beetle on leaving his shell; let us be present at his prentice steps in the open-air life. In August, I break the casket in which I hear the helpless prisoner fretting. The insect, the only one of its species, is placed in a volery. Provisions are fresh and plentiful. This is the moment, I say to myself, when we take refreshment after so long an abstinence. Well, I am wrong: the new recruit sets no store by the victuals, notwithstanding [[60]]my invitations, my appeals to the appetizing heap. What he wants above all is the joys of light. He climbs the metal trellis, sets himself in the sun and there, motionless, takes his fill of its beams.

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

At last, the insect goes to the victuals. A ball is constructed according to all the rules. There is no apprenticeship, no first attempt: the spherical form is obtained as regularly as though after long practice. A burrow is dug wherein to eat in peace the lately-kneaded bread. Here we find the novice thoroughly versed in his art. No experience, however prolonged, will add anything to his talents. [[61]]

[1] ·39 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] Pierre André Latreille (1762–1833), one of the founders of entomological science.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] Mémoires du Muséum d’histoire naturelle, vol. v., p. 249.—Author’s Note. [↑]

THE SPANISH COPRIS

[[63]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER V

THE SPANISH COPRIS

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

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

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

Setting aside the neck of the pear and the jutting tip of the ovoid, details the interpretation of which presents quite other difficulties, there remains the most important mass as regards bulk, the globular mass, a repetition of that which the insect makes outside the burrow; there [[64]]remains the ball with which the Sacred Beetle plays in the sun, sometimes without making any other use of it.

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

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

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

The Copris is, in point of fact, of a sedentary habit. [[65]]Once he has found his provisions, at night or in the evening twilight, he digs a burrow under the heap. It is a rough cave, large enough to hold a big apple. Here is introduced, piecemeal, the matter forming the roof or, at least, lying on the door-sill; here is engulfed, without definite shape, an enormous supply of victuals, bearing eloquent witness to the insect’s gluttony. As long as the hoard lasts, the Copris, engrossed in the pleasures of the table, does not return to the surface. The hermitage is not abandoned until the larder is emptied, when the insect recommences its nocturnal searches, finds a new treasure and digs itself a new temporary establishment.

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

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

You see: no journey, no carting, no preparations. The cake is carried down to the cellar by armfuls and at the identical spot where it is lying. The insect repeats, with an eye to its grubs, what it did when working for itself. As for the burrow, which is marked by a large mole-hill, it is a roomy cave dug at a depth of some [[66]]twenty centimetres.[1] I observe a greater width, a greater perfection than in the temporary abodes occupied by the Copris at times of revelry.

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

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

A distance of two or three inches separates him from the heap. It is a serious matter for him to venture so far. He would have preferred the victuals exactly over his door, forming a roof to the house. This would avoid his having to go out, always a source of anxiety. I have decided otherwise. To facilitate my observations, I have placed the victuals just on one side. Little by little, the alarmist grows accustomed to the open air and accustomed to my presence, which, for that matter, I [[67]]render as discreet as possible. The taking down of the armfuls is repeated indefinitely. They are always shapeless scraps, morsels such as one might pick off with a small pair of pincers.

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

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

I suspect that both sexes take part in the master work: at least, I often come upon the couple in the burrows destined for the laying. The roomy and luxurious apartment was no doubt once the wedding-hall; the marriage was consummated under the great vault to the building of which the swain has contributed: a [[68]]gallant way of declaring his ardour. I also suspect the husband of lending a hand to his partner with the harvesting and the storing. From what I have gathered, he too, strong as he is, collects his armfuls and goes down into the crypt. The minute and tricky work goes much faster with two helping. But, once the house is well supplied, he retires discreetly, returns to the surface and goes and settles down elsewhere, leaving the mother to her delicate functions. His part in the family-mansion is ended.

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

This sumptuous lump, a real Twelfth-Night cake, has no fixed shape. I come across some that are ovoid, suggesting a turkey’s egg in form and size; I find some that are a flattened ellipsoid, similar to the common onion; I discover some that are almost round, reminding one of a Dutch cheese; I see some that are circular and slightly raised on the upper surface, like the loaves of the Provençal rustic or, better still, the fougasso à l’iôu[2] wherewith the Easter festival is celebrated. In every case, the surface is smooth and regularly curved.

There is no mistaking what has happened: the mother has collected and kneaded into one lump the numerous fragments brought down one after the other; out of all those particles she has made a homogeneous piece, by dint of mashing them, amalgamating them, stamping [[69]]on them. I repeatedly surprise the baker on the top of the colossal loaf beside which the Sacred Beetle’s pill cuts so poor a figure: she goes strolling about on the convex surface, which sometimes measures a decimetre[3] across; she pats the mass, consolidates it, levels it. I can give but a glance at the curious scene. As soon as she is perceived, the pastry-cook slides down the curved slope and huddles out of sight beneath the pie.

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

I employ two methods, each fitted to instruct me as to certain particulars. Whenever the voleries supply me with a few large cakes, I move these, with the mother, and place them in my study. The receptacles are of two sorts, according to whether I want light or darkness. For light, I employ glass jars with a diameter more or less the same as that of the burrows, say about a dozen centimetres.[4] At the bottom of each is a thin layer of fresh sand, quite insufficient to allow the Copris to bury herself in it, but convenient, nevertheless, to save the insect from the slippery footing provided by the glass and to give it the illusion of a soil similar to that of which I have deprived it. On this layer the jar receives the mother and her loaf.

I need hardly say that the startled insect would not [[70]]undertake anything under conditions of light, however softly modulated. It demands complete obscurity, which I produce by means of a cardboard box encasing the cylinder. By carefully raising this box a little, I am able, presently, when I feel inclined, to surprise the captive at her work and even to follow her doings for a time. The method, the reader will see, is much simpler than that which I used when I wished to see the Sacred Beetle engaged in modelling her pear. The easier-going mood of the Copris lends itself to this simplification, which would be none too successful with the other. A dozen of these eclipsed apparatus are thus arranged on the large table in the laboratory. Any one seeing the set would take them for an assortment of groceries in whity-brown paper bags.

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

What do the glass jars covered with an opaque sheath teach us? They teach us much, of a most interesting character, and this to begin with: the big loaf does not owe its curve—which is always regular, notwithstanding its varying form—to any rolling process. The inspection of the natural burrow has already told us that so large [[71]]a mass could not have been rolled into a cavity of which it fills almost the whole space. Besides, the strength of the insect would be unequal to moving so great a load.

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

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

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

It is done. The baker’s man divides his lump into smaller lumps, each of which will become a loaf. The [[72]]Copris acts likewise. By means of a circular gash made with the cleaver of the shield and the saw of the fore-legs, she separates from the main body a section of the prescribed size. For this stroke of the trencher, no hesitation is needed, no after-touches that add or subtract. Off-hand and with a plain, decisive cut, a lump is obtained of the requisite bulk.

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

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

PLATE IV

1 and 2. The Spanish Copris, male and female.

3. The pair jointly kneading the big loaf, which, divided into egg-shaped pills, will furnish provisions for each grub of the brood.

4. The mother alone in her burrow: five pills are already finished; a sixth is in process of construction.

The insect continues for a long time yet to improve and lovingly to polish its sphere, gently passing its foot to and fro until the least protuberance has disappeared. Its finikin after-touches look as though they would never [[73]]be done. Towards the end of the second day, however, the globe is pronounced right and proper. The mother climbs to the dome of her edifice and there, still by simple pressure, hollows out a shallow crater. In this basin the egg is laid.

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

Fig. 6.—The Spanish Copris’s pill dug out cupwise to receive the egg.

Fig. 7.—The Spanish Copris’s pill: section showing the hatching-chamber and the egg.

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

From time to time, the work of closing is suspended. The mother, motionless, with lowered forehead, seems to auscultate the underlying cavity, to listen to what is happening within. All’s well, it seems; and the patient labour is resumed: a fine scraping of the sides towards [[74]]the summit, which tapers a little and lengthens out. In this way, an ovoid with the small end uppermost replaces the original sphere. Under the more or less projecting nipple is the hatching-chamber, with the egg. Twenty-four hours more are spent in this minute work. Total: four times round the clock and sometimes longer to construct the sphere, hollow it out basinwise, lay the egg and shut it in by transforming the sphere into an ovoid.

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