[[Contents]]

[[Contents]]

THE LIFE OF THE SCORPION

[[Contents]]

BOOKS BY J. HENRI FABRE

[[Contents]]

THE LIFE
OF THE SCORPION

BY
J. HENRI FABRE
TRANSLATED BY
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
FELLOW OF ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON
AND
Bernard Miall

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1923

[[Contents]]

Copyright, 1923,
By DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, Inc.

First printing, June, 1923
Second printing, November, 1923

PRINTED IN U. S. A.
VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC.
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

[[Contents]]

CONTENTS

[[1]]

THE LIFE OF THE SCORPION

[[3]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER I

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE DWELLING

The Scorpion is an uncommunicative creature, secret in his practices and disagreeable to deal with, so that his history, apart from anatomical detail, amounts to little or nothing. The scalpel of the experts has made us acquainted with his organic structure; but no observer, as far as I know, has thought of interviewing him, with any sort of persistence, on the subject of his private habits. Ripped up, after being steeped in spirits of wine, he is very well-known; acting within the domain of his instincts, he is hardly known at all. And yet none of the segmented animals is more deserving of a detailed biography. He has at all times appealed to the popular imagination, even to the point of figuring among the signs of the zodiac. Fear made the gods, said Lucretius. Deified by terror, [[4]]the Scorpion is immortalized in the sky by a constellation and in the almanac by the symbol for the month of October.

I made the acquaintance of the Languedocian Scorpion (Scorpio occitanus, LAT) half a century ago, in the Villeneuve hills, on the far side of the Rhone, opposite Avignon. When the thrice-blessed Thursday[1] came, from morning till night I used to turn over the stones in quest of the Scolopendra,[2] the chief subject of the thesis which I was preparing for my doctor’s degree. Sometimes, instead of that magnificent horror, the mighty Myriapod, I would find, under the raised stone, another and no less unpleasant recluse. It was he. With his tail turned over his back and a drop of poison gleaming at the end of the sting, he lay displaying his pincers at the entrance to a burrow. Br-r-r-r! Have done with the formidable creature! The stone fell back into its place. [[5]]

Utterly tired out, I used to return from my excursions rich in Scolopendræ and richer still in those illusions which paint the future rose-colour when we first begin to bite freely into the bread of knowledge. Science! The witch! I used to come home with joy in my heart: I had found some Centipedes. What more was needed to complete my ingenuous happiness? I carried off the Scolopendræ and left the Scorpions behind, not without a secret feeling that a day would come when I should have to concern myself with them.

Fifty years have elapsed; and that day has come. It behoves me, after the Spiders,[3] his near neighbours in organization, to cross-examine my old acquaintance, chief of the Arachnids in our district. It so happens that the Languedocian Scorpion abounds in my neighbourhood; nowhere have I seen him so plentiful as on the Sérignan hills, with their sunny, rocky slopes beloved by the arbutus and the arborescent heath. There the chilly creature finds a sub-tropical temperature and also a sandy soil, easy to [[6]]dig. This is, I think, as far as he goes towards the north.

His favourite spots are the bare expanses poor in vegetation, where the rock, outcropping in vertical strata, is baked by the sun and worn by the wind and rain until it ends by crumbling into flakes. He is usually found in colonies at quite a distance from one another, as though the members of a single family, migrating in all directions, were becoming a tribe. It is not sociability, it is anything but that. Excessively intolerant and passionately devoted to solitude, they continually occupy their shelters alone. In vain do I seek them out: I never find two of them under the same stone; or, to be more accurate, when there are two, one is engaged in eating the other. We shall have occasion to see the savage hermit ending the nuptial festivities in this fashion.

The lodging is very rough and ready. Let us turn over the stones, which are generally flat and fairly large. The Scorpion’s presence is indicated by a cavity as wide as the neck of a quart bottle and a few inches deep. In stooping, we commonly see the master of the house on the threshold of his [[7]]dwelling, with his pincers outspread and his tail in the posture of defence. At other times, when he owns a deeper cell, the hermit is invisible. We have to use a small pocket-trowel to bring him out into the light of day. Here he is, lifting or brandishing his weapon. ’Ware fingers!

I take him by the tail with a pair of tweezers and slip him, head foremost, into a stout paper bag, which will isolate him from the other prisoners. The whole of my formidable harvest goes into a tin box. In this way both the collecting and the transport are carried out with perfect safety.

Before housing my animals, let me briefly describe them. The common Black Scorpion (Scorpio europæus, LINN.) is known to all. He frequents the dark holes and corners near our dwelling-places; on rainy days in autumn he makes his way indoors, sometimes even under our bed-clothes. The odious animal causes us more fright than damage. Although not rare in my present abode, the results of its visits are never in the least serious. The weird beast, overrated in reputation, is repulsive rather than dangerous. [[8]]

Much more to be feared and much less well-known generally is the Languedocian Scorpion, resident in the Mediterranean provinces. Far from seeking our habitations, he lives apart, in the untilled solitudes. Beside the Black Scorpion he is a giant who, when full-grown, measures three to three and a half inches in length. His colouring is the yellow of faded straw.

The tail, which is really the animal’s abdomen, is a series of five prismatic segments, shaped like little kegs whose staves meet in undulating ridges resembling strings of beads. Similar cords cover the arms and fore-arms of the nippers and divide them into long facets. Others meander along the back like the joints of a cuirass whose seams are adorned with a freakish milled edging. These bead-like protuberances give the Scorpion’s armour a fierce and robustious appearance which is characteristic of the Languedocian Scorpion. It is as though the animal were fashioned out of chips hewn with an adze.

The tail ends in a sixth joint, which is smooth and vesicular. This is the gourd in which the poison, a formidable fluid resembling [[9]]water in appearance, is elaborated and held in reserve. A dark, curved and very sharp sting completes the apparatus. A pore, visible only under the lens, opens at some distance from the point. Through this the venomous liquid is injected into the puncture. The sting is very hard and very sharp. Holding it between my finger-tips, I can push it through a sheet of cardboard as easily as if I were using a needle.

Owing to its bold curve, the sting points downwards when the tail is extended in a straight line. To make use of his weapon, therefore, the Scorpion must raise it, turn it over and strike upwards. This, in fact, is his invariable practice. In order to pink the adversary subdued by the nippers, the tail is arched over the animal’s back and brought forward. The Scorpion, for that matter, is almost always in this position: whether in motion or at rest, he arches his tail over his back. He very rarely drags it behind him, relaxed into a straight line.

The pincers, those buccal hands recalling the claws of the Crayfish, are organs of battle and of information. When moving forwards, the Scorpion holds them in front of [[10]]him, with the two fingers opened, to take stock of objects encountered on the way. When he wants to stab an enemy, the pincers seize the foe and hold him motionless, while the sting is brought into play over the assailant’s back. Lastly, when he wishes to nibble a tit-bit at leisure, they serve as hands and hold the prey within the reach of the mouth. They are never used for walking, for stability or for excavation.

That is the function of the real legs. These are suddenly truncated and end in a group of short, movable claws, faced by a short, fine point, which, to some extent, serves as a thumb. The stump is finished off with rough bristles. The whole constitutes an excellent grapnel, which explains the Scorpion’s aptitude for roaming over the trellis-work of my wire-gauze covers, for making long halts there, motionless and upside down, and, lastly, for scrambling along a vertical wall, notwithstanding his clumsiness and weight.

Underneath, just behind the legs, are the combs, those strange organs, an exclusive attribute of the Scorpions. They owe their name to their structure, consisting of a long [[11]]row of plates, set close together like the teeth of a hair-comb. The anatomists are inclined to ascribe to them the functions of a clutch intended to hold the couple bound together at the moment of pairing. We will leave it at that until we are better informed, provided that the specimens which I propose to rear tell me their secret.

On the other hand, I know of another function, which is very easily observed when the Scorpion meanders, belly uppermost, over the wire trellis of my dish-covers. When he is at rest, the two combs are laid flat on the abdomen, behind the legs. The moment he begins to walk, they stick out on either side, at right angles to the body, like the naked wings of an unfledged nestling. They sway gently up and down, reminding us of the balancing-pole of an inexperienced rope-dancer.[4] If the Scorpion stops, they are at once retracted, fall back upon the belly and cease to move: if he resumes his walk, they are at once extended and again begin their gentle oscillation. The animal [[12]]therefore seems to use them at least as a balancing mechanism.

The eyes, eight in number, are divided into three groups. In the middle of that weird segment which is at once head and thorax, two large and very convex eyes gleam side by side, reminding us of the Lycosa’s[5] superb lenses; they are apparently in both instances for use at close range, because of their great convexity. A ridge of protuberances arranged in a wavy line serves as an eyebrow and gives them a fierce appearance. Their axis, which is almost horizontal, can hardly allow them more than lateral vision.

The same remark applies to two other groups, each composed of three eyes, which are very small and placed much farther forward, nearly on the edge of the sudden truncation that forms an arch above the mouth. On both right and left the three tiny lenses are set in a short straight line, their axis pointing laterally. On the whole, both the small and the large eyes are so arranged that [[13]]it can by no means be easy for the animal to obtain a clear view ahead.

Extremely short-sighted and squinting outrageously, how does the Scorpion manage to steer himself? Like a blind man, he gropes his way: he guides himself with his hands, that is to say, his pincers, which he carries outstretched, with the fingers open, to sound the space before him. Watch two Scorpions wandering in the open air in my rearing-cages. A meeting would be disagreeable, sometimes even dangerous for them. Nevertheless, the one behind always goes ahead as though he did not perceive his neighbour; but, as soon as he touches the other ever so little with his pincers, he at once gives a sudden start, a sign of surprise and uneasiness, followed at once by a retreat and a change of direction. To recognize the irascible one thus overhauled, he had to touch him.

Let us now instal our prisoners. I shall never learn all I want to know by turning over stones and making chance observations on the adjacent hills: I must resort to keeping the animals in captivity, the only manner of inducing them to reveal their domestic [[14]]habits. What rearing-method shall I employ? One in particular appeals to me, one which will leave the creature its full liberty, which will relieve me of the cares of catering and which will enable me to inspect my captives at any hour of the day, from year’s end to year’s end. This seems to me an excellent means, far superior to the others, so much so that I reckon on a magnificent success.

It is a question of establishing within my own grounds, in the open air, a hamlet of Scorpions, by cunning securing for them the same conditions of well-being which they enjoyed at home. In the first days of January, I found my colony right at the end of the harmas,[6] in the quiet corner exposed to the sun and sheltered from the north wind by a thick rosemary-hedge. The ground, a mixture of pebbles and red clayey soil, is unsuitable. Considering the temperament of my charges, great stay-at-homes from what I can see, this is easily remedied. For each of my colonists I dig a hole, of a gallon or [[15]]two in capacity, and fill it with sandy earth similar to that of the original site. I pack this earth lightly, which will give it the consistence needed for digging without land-slips, and in it I contrived a short entrance-passage, the beginning of the excavation which the Scorpion will not fail to make in order to obtain a cell in conformity with his tastes. A wide flat stone covers and overlaps the whole. Opposite the passage of my own making, I scoop out a hollow: this is the entrance-door.

In front of the hollow I place a Scorpion, taken that moment from the paper bag in which he has just been conveyed from the mountain. Seeing a retreat similar to those with which he is familiar, he goes in of his own accord and does not show himself again. In this way I establish the hamlet, consisting of some twenty inhabitants, all adults. The dwellings, placed at a suitable distance from one another, to avoid the quarrels liable to occur among neighbours, are arranged in a row on a stretch of ground cleared with the rake. It will be easy for me to observe events at a glance, even at night, by the light of a lantern. As to food, I need not trouble [[16]]about that. My guests will find their own provisions, for the spot is quite as well-stocked with game as that from which I brought them.

The colonies in the paddock are not enough. Certain observations call for minute attention which is incompatible with the disturbances out of doors. A second menagerie is set up, this time on the large table in my study, a table around which I have already covered and am still covering so many miles in pursuit of stubborn knowledge. Bring up the big earthenware pans, my usual apparatus! Filled with sifted sandy earth, each receives two broad potsherds, which, half buried, form a ceiling and represent the refuge under the stones. The establishment is surrounded by the dome of a wire-gauze cover.

Here I house the Scorpions, two by two and of different sexes, as far as I am able to judge. No outward characteristic that I know of distinguishes the males from the females. I take the big bellied specimens for females and the less obese for males. As age intervenes with its variations of stoutness, mistakes are inevitable, unless I first [[17]]open the subject’s paunch, a procedure which would cut short any attempt at rearing. We will allow ourselves to be guided by size, since we have no other means of judging, and house the Scorpions two by two, one corpulent and brown, the other less obese and of a lighter colour. There are certain to be some actual couples among the number.

Here are a few details for the benefit of whoso may care one day to take up similar studies. An animal-breeder’s trade calls for apprenticeship; the experience of others is not unhelpful, especially when the animals in question are dangerous to deal with. It would never do inadvertently to lay a hand on one of my present prisoners who had escaped from his cage and lay skulking among the utensils littering the table. Serious precautions must be taken by those who propose to spend whole years in the company of such neighbours. They are as follows:

The trellis-work dome is fitted deep into the pan and touches the earthenware bottom. Between the two there is a circular space which I fill with clay soil, packed while wet. So fitted, the wire cover is quite immovable; the apparatus runs no risk of coming to [[18]]pieces and yielding a way of escape. On the other hand, if the Scorpions dig deeply on the edges of the earthy space at their disposal, they come upon either the wire-gauze or the pottery, both of which are insuperable obstacles. So we need have no fear of escape.

But this is not enough. While we have to see to our own safety, we must also think of the captives’ welfare. The dwelling is hygienic and easy to carry into the sun or the shade, as the observation of the moment may demand; but it does not contain the victuals with which the Scorpions, frugal though they be, cannot dispense indefinitely. With a view to feeding them without moving the cover, the trellis-work is pierced at the top with a small opening through which I slip the live game, caught from day to day as needed. After this has been served, a plug of cotton-wool closes the buttery hatch.

My caged specimens, soon after their installation, enable me to watch their work as excavators even better than the occupants of the open-air community, for whom my trowel has prepared an entrance-passage beneath the stones. The Languedocian [[19]]Scorpion is master of craft; he knows how to house himself in a cell of his own making. In order to establish themselves, each of my interned prisoners has at his disposal a wide, curved potsherd, which, set firmly in the sand, provides the foundation of a grotto, a simple arched fissure. The Scorpion has only to dig beneath this and lodge himself as comfortably as he can.

The excavator does not dally long, especially in the sun, whose glare annoys him. Steadying himself on his fourth pair of legs, the Scorpion rakes the ground with the three other pairs: he turns it over, reducing it to a loose dust with a graceful agility that reminds us of a Dog scratching a hole in which to bury a bone. After the brisk twirling of the legs comes the touch of the broom. With his tail laid flat and relaxed to the utmost, he pushes back the earthy mass, making the same movement as does our elbow when thrusting an obstacle aside. If the rubbish thus shot back be not sufficiently out of the way, the sweeper returns, repeats the process and finishes the job.

Observe that the pincers, notwithstanding their strength, never take part in the digging, [[20]]even to the extent of extracting a grain of sand. They are reserved for feeding, fighting, and, above all, enquiry, and would lose the exquisite sensitiveness of their fingers if used for that heavy task. In this way the legs and tail, in repeated alternations, scratch the soil and thrust the rubbish outside. At last the worker disappears beneath the potsherd. A mound of sand obstructs the entrance to the vault. At moments we see it shaking and partly slipping, signs that the work is still going on with a further shooting of rubbish, until the cell attains a suitable size. When the hermit wants to go out, he will, without difficulty push back the crumbling barricade.

The Black Scorpion of our houses has not this capacity for making himself a crypt. He is found in the mortar collected at the bottom of walls, the woodwork disjointed by the damp, the rubbish-heaps in dark places, but he restricts himself to using these refuges as he finds them, being unable to improve the hiding-place by his own industry. He does not know how to dig. This ignorance is apparently due to his feeble broom, his smooth, slender tail, very different from [[21]]the Languedocian’s, which is powerful and armed with knotty protuberances.

In the open air, the colony in the enclosure finds a lodging modelled by my care. Under the flat stones where I have contrived to outline a cell in the sandy earth, each of them at once disappears and labours to complete the work, as I perceived by the mound heaped upon the threshold. Wait a few more days and lift the stone: at a depth of three or four inches we see the lair, the burrow, occupied at night and open also by day, when the weather is bad. Sometimes a sudden bend widens the recess into a spacious chamber. In front of the mansion, immediately under the stone, is the entrance-hall.

This, by day, in the hours of blazing sunshine, is where the solitary prefers to be, in the blessed heat gently shaded by the stone. When turned out of this hot bath, his supreme felicity, he brandishes his knotty tail and swiftly retreats indoors, out of reach of the light and of our eyes. Replace the stone and come back fifteen minutes later: we shall find him once more on the threshold of the cavern, where it is so pleasant when a generous sun warms the roof. [[22]]

The cold season is thus passed in a very monotonous fashion. Both in the hamlet of the enclosure and the menagerie of the cages, the Scorpions go out neither by day nor at night, as I observe by the barricade of sand which remains untouched at the entrance to the home. Are they torpid? Not a bit of it! My frequent visits show them always ready for action, with curved and threatening tails. If the weather grows cooler, they retreat to the bottom of their burrows; if it is fine, they return to the threshold to warm their backs by the touch of the sunny stone. Nothing more for the moment: the anchorite’s life is spent in long spells of meditation, either in the cool moist crypt or under the porch of the house, behind the sandy barricade.

In the course of April a sudden change takes place. In the cages, the shelter of the potsherds is abandoned. Gravely the occupants roam around the arena, clamber up the trellis and stand there, even by day. Several of them sleep out and do not go home again, preferring the out-of-door distractions to soft slumbers in the alcove under ground. [[23]]

In the hamlet in the enclosure, events are more serious. Some of the inhabitants, selected from the smaller, leave the house at night and go wandering without my knowing what becomes of them. I expect to see them return at the end of their stroll, for no other part of the paddock has stones to suit them. Well, not one comes home; all that have gone have disappeared for good. Soon the big ones also display the same vagabond mood; and at last the emigration becomes so active that a moment is at hand when I shall have nothing left of my free colony. Farewell to my lovingly cherished plans! The open-air community, on which I based my fondest hopes, becomes rapidly depopulated; its inhabitants make off, vanish I know not whither. All my seeking fails to recover a single one of the runaways.

Great ill calls for great remedies. I need an insuperable precinct, much more extensive than that of the cages, which establishments do not give scope to the pastimes of my specimens. I have a forcing-frame in which some fleshy plants are stored during the winter. It goes to a depth of three feet into the ground. The brick work is plastered and [[24]]smoothed with all the care that the mason’s trowel and wet rag can give it. I cover the bottom with fine sand and large flat stones distributed here and there. Having made these preparations, I instal inside the frame, each under his own stone, the remaining Scorpions, and those which I have captured this very morning complete my collection. With the aid of this vertical barrier shall I this time retain my specimens and see what interests me so greatly?

I shall see nothing at all. Next morning, all of them, old and new, have disappeared. There were twenty of them: and not one remains. Had I reflected ever so little, I should have expected this. At the season of persistent rain, in the autumn, how often have I not found the Black Scorpion hiding in the crevices of the windows? Fleeing the dampness of his usual retreats, the dark corners of the yards, he has clambered up to me by scaling the front wall to the height of the first storey. The slight roughness of the plaster was enough to enable his grapnels to make the perpendicular ascent.

Despite his corpulence, the Languedocian is as good a climber as the Black Scorpion. [[25]]I have a proof of it before my eyes. A barrier three feet high, as smooth as a wash of common mortar can make it, has not stopped one of my captives. In a single night, the whole band has decamped from the frame.

Rearing in the open air, even within walls, is recognized as being impracticable: the lack of discipline in the flock nullifies the shepherd’s devices. One resource alone remains, that of internment under cover. Thus the year ends, with some ten pans standing on the large table in my study. Out of doors is prohibited: those night prowlers, the cats, seeing something move about in my appliances, would upset everything.

On the other hand, the population is restricted under each cover and amounts to two or three inhabitants at most. There is no space. In the absence of a sufficiency of neighbours and also of the violent exposure to the sun which they enjoyed on their native hills, the prisoners on my table seem smitten with home-sickness and hardly respond to my expectations. Cowering under their potsherds or hanging to the trellis, most of them [[26]]slumber, dreaming of liberty. The small results which I obtain from my bored specimens is far from satisfying me. I want something more than this. The close of the year is spent in gleaning petty facts and making plans for a better establishment.

The outcome of these plans is a glazed prison whose panes will give no hold to the grapnels and will make climbing impossible. The joiner builds me a frame, the glazier completes the work. I myself varnish the woodwork, so as to make the uprights very slippery. The structure looks like four window-frames placed side by side and put together to form a rectangle. The bottom is a flooring with a layer of sand. A lid covers it altogether when the weather is cold and especially when the rain threatens a flood, which would have disastrous effects on this undrained ground. It is raised more or less high according to the state of the day. The enclosure has ample room for two dozen chambers, each with its potsherd and its occupant. Moreover, wide alleys and spacious cross-roads allow long walks to be taken without hindrance.

Well, at the very moment when I believe [[27]]myself to have solved the housing-question satisfactorily, I perceive that the glazed park will not retain its population long, if I do not invent a remedy. The glass stops short any attempt at scaling: for lack of adhesive sandals, the Scorpions cannot grip a surface of this kind. They flounder against the panes, it is true, and raise themselves to their full length on the support of their tail: an excellent buttress, but they have hardly left the ground before they fall back again, heavily.

Things go wrong in respect of the wooden uprights, though these are made as narrow as possible and varnished with particular care. The stubborn climbers clamber little by little along these smooth tracks; they halt from time to time, clinging to the greasy pole, and then resume the difficult ascent. I surprise some who have reached the top and are on the point of escaping. My tweezers replace them in the fold. As the ventilation of the home demands that the lid should remain raised during the greater part of the day, the place would soon be wholly deserted if I did not see to it.

I think of greasing the uprights with a [[28]]mixture of oil and soap. This restrains the fugitives slightly, without succeeding in stopping them. Their delicate little claws manage to sink into the pores of the wood through the substance coating it and the ascent begins anew. Let us try a non-porous obstacle. I hang the walls with glazed paper. This time the difficulty is insurmountable for the big, pot-bellied ones; it is not quite so effective with regard to the others, who, being nimbler in their gait, try to hoist themselves up and often succeed in doing so. I get the better of them only by glossing the glazed paper with soot.

Henceforth there are no more escapes, though attempts at flight continue. Coming after the experiment with the forcing-frames, these feats of prowess on slippery surfaces tell us all there is to learn about an aptitude which the animal’s corpulence was far from leading us to suspect. Like his black colleague who enters our houses, the Languedocian Scorpion is a skilled climber.

Behold me then the owner of three establishments, each possessing its advantages and its defects: the free colony at the end of the paddock; the wire-gauze cages in my study; [[29]]and lastly the glazed rock-garden. I shall consult them turn and turn about, especially the last. To the evidence supplied in this manner we will add the rare data gathered from stones turned over on the original sites. The Scorpions’ luxurious Crystal Palace, now the leading curiosity of my home, stands all the year round in the open air, on a bench at a few steps from my door. Not a member of the family passes it without a glance. Taciturn creatures, shall I succeed in making you speak? [[30]]

[1] Thursday is a whole holiday in the French schools. At this time the author was a schoolmaster at Avignon. Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. xix and xx.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] Scolopendra cingulata, the centipede.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] Cf. The Life of the Spider, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4] More recent opinion conceives the comb or picten as originally the respiratory organ of an aquatic ancestor of Scorpio, now probably serving as a guide or clasper when pairing.—“B. W.” [↑]

[5] For the Narbonne Lycosa, or Black-bellied Tarantula, cf. The Life of the Spider: chaps. i and iii to vi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] The enclosed paddock, or piece of waste land, in which the author used to study his insects in their natural state. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap. i.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER II

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: FOOD

I begin by learning that, despite his terrible weapon, a likely token of brigandage and gluttony, the Languedocian Scorpion is an extremely frugal eater. When I visit him at home, among the pebbles of the adjacent hills, I carefully ransack his haunts in the hope of coming upon the remains of an ogre’s feast, and I come upon nothing more than the crumbs of a hermit’s collation: in fact, as a rule, I find nothing at all. A few green wing-cases belonging to some Tree bug; wings of the adult Ant-lion; dismembered segments of a puny Locust: these make up my list.

The hamlet in the paddock, assiduously consulted, tells me more. After the fashion of a valetudinarian who lives on a diet and eats at stated hours, the Scorpion has his feeding-season. For six or seven months, from October till April, he does not leave his dwelling, though always fit and ready to [[31]]wield his tail. During this period, if I put any sort of food within his reach, he sweeps it out of the burrow with the back of his tail and pays it no further attention.

It is at the end of March that the first cravings of the stomach are aroused. At this season, on inspecting the cabins, I sometimes find one or other of my specimens quietly gnawing at a capture, a meagre Myriapod, such as a Cryptops or Lithobius. For that matter, the frequency of the item is far from making up for its smallness; and it is long before the consumer of the scanty morsel finds himself in possession of a second.

I expected something better:

“A brute like that,” I said to myself, “so well armed for battle, cannot be content with trifles. We do not load our pea-shooters with a charge of dynamite to bring down a Sparrow: that awful sting was never meant to stab a humble little animal. The Scorpion’s food must be some powerful quarry.”

I was wrong. Terribly equipped for fighting though he be, the Scorpion is an indifferent hunter. [[32]]

He is a poltroon into the bargain. A little Mantis, come into being that same day and encountered on the road, fills him with dismay. A Cabbage Butterfly[1] puts him to flight merely by beating the ground with her clipped wings: the harmless cripple overawes his cowardice. It needs the stimulus of hunger to persuade him to attack.

What am I to give him, when his appetite begins to awaken in April? Like the Spiders, he requires a live prey, seasoned with blood that is not yet congealed: he requires a morsel quivering in the throes of death. He never eats a corpse. The game, moreover, must be tender and of small size. Thinking to give him a treat, in the early days of my experience as a rearer of Scorpions, I offered him Locusts, picking out the biggest. He obstinately refused them. They were too tough, and, besides, too difficult to handle, owing to their kicks, which demoralize the coward.

I try the Field Cricket,[2] with a belly as plump and luscious as a pat of butter. I [[33]]drop half-a-dozen into the glazed enclosure, with a leaf of lettuce which will console them for the horrors of the lions’ den. The singers seem not to heed their terrible neighbours; they sing their little songs and nibble at their salad. If a strolling Scorpion appears upon the scene, they look at him: they point their slender antennæ in his direction, without any other sign of perturbation at the approach of the passing monster. He, on his side, draws back as soon as he sees them: he is afraid of getting into trouble with these strangers. Should he touch one of them with the tip of his pincers, forthwith he flees, overcome with terror. The six Crickets spend a month with the wild beasts and none takes note of them. They are too big, too fat. My six patients are restored to freedom as safe and sound as when they entered the cage.

I serve up Woodlice, Glomeres,[3] Iuli, all the rabble of the rocks beloved of the Scorpion; I make a trial with Asidæ[4] and Opatra which, assiduous lurkers under the stones in the actual places frequented by the [[34]]hunters, might well be the customary game; I offer Clythra-beetles,[5] gathered on the brushwood beside the burrows, and Cicindelæ[6] captured on the sand in my guests’ very domain: nothing, absolutely nothing is accepted, apparently because of the ungrateful exterior.

Where shall I find that modest mouthful, at once tender and savoury? Chance provides me with it. In May I am visited by a Beetle with soft wing-cases, Omophlus lepturoides, a finger’s-breadth long. He arrived suddenly in the enclosure in swarms. Around an ilex all yellow with catkins there is a whirling cloud of Beetles, flying, settling, sipping sweets and frantically attending to their love-affairs. This life of revelry lasts a fortnight: then they all disappear in caravans going one knows not whither. On behalf of my boarders, we will levy on these nomads, who look to me as though they would be suitable. I was right in my assumption. After a long, a very long wait, I see the Scorpion make a meal. Here he [[35]]comes, stealthily advancing towards the insect motionless on the ground. He does not hunt his quarry: he gathers it in. There is neither hurry nor contest, no movement of the tail, no use of the poisoned weapon. The Scorpion placidly grabs the morsel with his two-fingered hands; the pincers bend back, carry it to the mouth and then both hold it until it is all consumed. The insect that is being eaten, full of life, struggles between the mandibles, to the resentment of the eater, who likes to nibble quietly.

Then the dart bends down before the mouth; very gently it pricks the insect once or twice and paralyses it. The mastication is resumed and the sting continues to tap, as though the consumer were swallowing the morsel a forkful at a time.

At last the insect, patiently chewed and chewed again for hours on end, has become a dry pellet which the stomach would refuse; but this residue has entered the gullet so far that the sated Scorpion cannot always reject it directly. The intervention of the pincers is required to extricate it. One of them seizes the pill with the finger-tips, daintily extracts it from the throat and drops it to [[36]]the ground. The meal is finished: it will not be repeated for a long time to come.

A great improvement on the wire-gauze covers, the large glazed cage, full of animation in the evening twilight, provides me with abundant information touching this strange frugality. In April and May, essentially the season of festive assemblies and banquets, I provision the place lavishly with game. At this time my lilac-walk abounds with Cabbage Butterflies and Swallowtails. Caught in the net, their wings partly amputated, a dozen of these Butterflies are let loose in the establishment, whence their maimed condition will prevent them from escaping.

In the evening, at about eight o’clock, the wild beasts leave their lairs. They stop for a moment on the threshold of their potsherds to enquire into the state of things; then, gathering from more or less all directions, they begin to stroll to and fro, with their tails now uplifted now trailing behind them with the tip always curling upwards. The mood of the moment and the objects encountered determine the posture. The discreet [[37]]light of a lantern hung outside the panes allows me to watch events.

The mutilated Butterflies whirl in short flights over the ground. Through this desperately fluttering mob the Scorpions pass to and fro, knocking them over and trampling on them, without taking further notice of them. Sometimes, in the hazards of this scrimmage, one of the cripples settles on the ogre’s back. He does not mind these familiarities, makes no protest and carries his unaccustomed rider up and down. Some of the heedless creatures fling themselves under the strollers’ pincers; others actually touch the horrible mouth. It makes no difference: the Scorpions disdain their food.

A similar experiment is repeated nightly, so long as Pieres abound on the lilac-bushes. My catering leads to very little. From time to time, however, I witness a capture. A Butterfly fluttering on the ground is grabbed by one of the promenaders. The Scorpion quickly snaps her up without a pause and goes his way, with his pincers still groping and held before him like a pair of distraught arms. This time, the hands do not keep the [[38]]morsel within reach of the mouth, being otherwise occupied in reconnoitring the path followed: it is the mandibles only that carry the booty. The Butterfly, eaten alive, desperately flaps what is left of her wings. She produces the impression of a white plume waving on the crest of the savage victor. If the captive’s struggles become excessively inconvenient, the spoiler, still walking along and munching, quiets her with little pats of his sting. At last he flings the prize away. What has he eaten? Just the head, no more.

Less often, others hasten to convey the booty to their lairs beneath the potsherds. Here the meal will be taken far from the madding crowd. Others, after securing their capture, withdraw to a corner of the enclosure and refresh themselves in the open, with their belly on the sand.

A week later, after a certain number of these incidents, I inspect the place and examine the caves one by one, to ascertain the amount of provisions consumed. The wings, those uneatable leavings, will enlighten me in this respect. Well, save for rare exceptions, there are no wings detached [[39]]from the corpses. Nearly all the Butterflies are intact; they have dried up without being eaten. A few of them, three or four, have been decapitated. The results of my conscientious investigations are limited to this. During a week, in the full swing of activity, a tiny mouthful has been enough for these head-eaters. There are twenty-five of them in my establishment, twenty-five sated with a crumb.

To them the Butterfly must be an almost unknown fare. It is doubtful whether, down in their rocky labyrinths, they ever capture such game, which loves tall blossoms and sinuous flights. Unfamiliar with this quarry, they may disdain it, merely taking a bite in the absence of food more to their taste. Now what can they find in their wild, sun-parched territory?

Locusts apparently. Crickets, a horde that is never lacking wherever there is a blade of grass to nibble. It is on these that I rely by preference when the season of the Pieres and other ordinary Butterflies closes. The paddock then abounds in Crickets and Locusts, a very youthful generation, clad only in a short jacket. These are surely the [[40]]proper diet for my Scorpions, with their love of tender mouthfuls. Some are green, others grey; some fat, others thin; some are mounted on stilts, others are squat and short-shanked. The consumers can make their choice amid this varied assortment.

At nightfall, in the area faintly lighted by the lantern, I distribute my crop of Locusts, who are fairly quiet at this late hour. The Scorpions lose no time in making their appearance. The living manna is wriggling all about them. At the least tap, the nearest strollers decamp; they find things too exciting. It is an exact repetition of the experiments with the Butterflies: none sets any store by the tit-bits, most certainly seen and even touched, for the Scorpions often encounter them and walk on them.

I see a Locust who, as luck will have it, has got caught in the fingers of a passing Scorpion; and the latter is too good-natured even to close his pincers. Ever so gentle a squeeze would put him in possession of an excellent head of game; and heedlessly he allows it to slip away. I see a little Green Locust hoisted by accident on the back of a promenader, a terrible mount that carries [[41]]her quietly, without dreaming of harming her. A hundred times I witness face-to-face meetings, defensive retreats, swishes of the tail that sweep aside the heedless creature encountered on the highway, but never any serious hand-to-hand fighting, still less pursuit. It is only at rare intervals that my daily observations show me one or other of my frugal eaters in possession of a Locust.

At pairing-time, in April and May, a sudden change of behaviour turns the sober Scorpion into a glutton and makes her indulge in scandalous orgies. At this season I often come upon a Scorpion in the enclosure, under her tile, devouring one of her own kind in perfect quietude, as she might devour an ordinary head of game. Everything goes down, except, as a rule, the tail, which remains hanging for whole days from the sated creature’s jaws and is finally rejected as though with regret. It may be presumed that the poison-phial at the end of the joint has something to do with this refusal. Perhaps the toxic fluid has a flavour which is unpleasant to the consumer’s taste.

Apart from this remnant, the devoured Scorpion disappears entirely into a belly [[42]]whose capacity seems inferior in bulk to the things swallowed. It takes a very obliging stomach to find room for such a dish. Before being chewed and packed away, the contents must be larger than the container. Now these Gargantuan banquets are not normal reflections but matrimonial rites, to which we shall have occasion to return. They take place only in the mating-season: and the animals devoured are always males.

I shall not therefore enter these Scorpions who die victims of their embraces on the list of normal victuals. What we see here is the aberrations of an animal at rutting-time, wedding-orgies worthy of figuring beside the tragic nuptials of the Praying Mantis.[7] Nor shall I enter the feasts provoked by my artifices, when I confront the Scorpion with a powerful adversary and worry the two combatants in my eagerness to see the duel. Thus exasperated, the Scorpion defends himself and stabs; then, in the intoxication of his victory, he eats the fallen foe, in so far as his swallowing-faculties permit. This is his manner of celebrating his triumph. [[43]]Never, but for my intervention, would he have dared to attack such an enemy; never would he have bitten into such a bulky prey.

Apart from these banquets, which are too exceptional to be taken into account, I note none but frugal collations. My vigilance is perhaps at fault; it might well be that the consumption is greater at late hours of the night, in the absence of witnesses; and therefore, before granting the Scorpion a certificate for extreme moderation in diet, I appeal to the following experiment, which will give us a definite reply.

Early in autumn, four medium-sized specimens are installed separately, each in a saucer furnished with a layer of fine sand and a potsherd. A pane of glass closes the receptacle, prevents the escape of the skilful climbers and allows the sun to enliven the dwelling. Without keeping out the air, the lid is enough to prevent any small game, such as Clothes-moths or Mosquitoes, from entering the enclosed space. The four saucers are deposited in a conservatory where a tropical temperature holds sway for the greater part of the day. No provisions are served by me, nor will the least mouthful [[44]]ever arrive from the outside, unless it be some vagrom Ant. In this total absence of provisions, what will become of the interned Scorpions?

Always brisk and lively without a scrap of food, they go to earth under the potsherd. They rummage about and dig themselves a burrow closed by a barrier of sand. From time to time, especially in the evening twilight, they issue from their lair, take a short stroll and then go home again, behaving just as though they had been fed.

When the cold sets in, though it is not freezing in the green-house, the prisoners no longer leave their home, which has been dug a little deeper in anticipation of the severe weather. Their health, for that matter, continues excellent. When I inspect them, as my curiosity often prompts me to do, I find them always fit and ready to repair the burrow which I have disturbed.

Winter ends without mishap. There is nothing unusual in this: the cold season, while suspending activity, moderates or even does away with the need for refection. But the heat returns and, with it, the need of food, which calls for provisions. Now [[45]]what do the fasters do while their kinsmen in the glass cage are restoring their strength with Butterflies and Locusts? Are they languid and anæmic? Not at all.

Quite as vigorous as those who have been feeding, they brandish their gnarled tails and reply to my teasing with threatening gestures. If I worry them too much, they run away quickly along the circumference of the saucer. Famine does not seem to have tried them. This cannot go on indefinitely. About the middle of June, three of the captives die; the fourth holds out till July. It has taken nine months of absolute abstinence to put an end to their activity.

Another test is arranged for very young specimens, about a couple of months old. They measure about an inch in length, from the forehead to the tip of the tail. Their colouring is brighter than that of the adults; the pincers in particular look as though they were carved out of amber and coral. The future horror has his attractive points in early youth.—I find them under the stones from October onwards. Invariably solitary like their elders, they dig themselves, under the chosen shelter, a little hole barricaded by [[46]]a sandy mound consisting of the rubbish of the excavations. When taken from their retreat, they run along nimbly, curving their tails over their backs and brandishing their fragile stings.

In October I place four of them in as many tumblers closed with a muslin veil, an insuperable obstacle to any tiny prey coming from the outside. The prisoners have for digging purposes a finger’s-breadth of fine sand and as shelter a small disk of cardboard. Well, these little fellows undergo abstinence as pluckily as the adults and are still active and restless in the months of May and June.

These two experiments prove to us that the Scorpion, while retaining his activity, is capable of dispensing with food during three fourths of the year. It must therefore take a long time to make him corpulent.

A caterpillar that lives only a few days is continually browsing to accumulate the substance of the future Butterfly; its voracious appetite makes up for the shortness of the banquet. How does the Scorpion contrive to hoard so much matter out of crumbs so few and far between? With him the accumulation [[47]]of tissue must be the work of exceptional longevity.

It is not very difficult to arrive at an approximate estimate of his length of life. The stones turned over at different periods give us the answer as clearly as the archives of a record-office would do. I find, in respect of size, five classes of Scorpions. The smallest measure two-thirds of an inch in length; the largest four inches. Between these two extremes, three sizes are quite distinctly discernible.

Beyond a doubt, each of these categories corresponds with a year’s difference in age, perhaps even more, for each stage seems to be a protracted one; at all events the progress in size is hardly perceptible, at the end of a year, in the specimens in my rearing-cages. The Languedocian Scorpion therefore boasts the prerogative of a green old age: he lives five years and probably longer. He has ample time, as we see, to wax fat on scraps.

To grow big is not everything: activity is essential. The scraps will be repeated, it is true, but always so sparingly and at such distant intervals that we begin to wonder [[48]]what part eating really plays in this instance. My prisoners, large and small, subjected to a strict fast, give especial cause for reflection. Whenever I disturb their repose—and my curiosity deprives itself of few opportunities—they move about briskly, brandishing their tails, delving the sand, sweeping it, shifting it; in short, they expend many kilogram-metres of energy, to use the technical expression; and this goes on for eight or nine months.

In performing this work what do they expend on materials? Nothing. From the first day of their imprisonment all food is cut off. The thought occurs to the mind of nutritive reserves, of adipose savings accumulated in the organism. The animal, according to this, in order to balance the expenditure of energy, would live upon itself.

With portly adults the explanation would be valid in a certain measure; but I have subjected lean specimens, of medium age, to the test; I have selected young ones, just beginning life. What can these small Scorpions have in their bellies? What do they possess that can be transformed into motor [[49]]energy by vital oxidation? The scalpel cannot find it and the imagination refuses to appraise it, so great is the disproportion between the amount of work accomplished and the worker’s bulk. If the whole animal were before all a combustible and were to burn to the last atom, the total sum of heat emitted would still be far from equivalent to the total sum of the mechanical effects. Our factories cannot keep an engine going, all the year round, with a lump of coal as its whole provision.

My Scorpions hardly seem to consume even this lump of fuel. After a long and rigorous abstinence, they are as fresh and brightly-coloured, as glossy with health as at the beginning of the experiment.

We can understand the Snail, sunk in a deep inertia and contracted within his shell, whose opening he has closed with a chalky lid or a parchment cover: he no longer eats, but neither does he see; he exists on his reserves by slowing down his vital processes to the lowest possible limits. The Scorpion, always moving about, despite the excessive prolongation of the fast, is beyond our comprehension. [[50]]

For the third time in the course of our studies, with reference to the young first of the Lycosa[8], then of the Clotho Spider[9], and now of the Scorpion, we are led back to the same suspicion. Is it a fact that animals of an organization very different from our own, deprived of an individual temperature determined by an active oxidation, are governed by biological laws which are immutable in the whole series of living creatures? Need movement in them be always the result of combustion for which eating would furnish the materials? Might they not derive their activity, at least in part, from the circumambient energies, heat, electricity, light and so on, varying modes of the same motive power?

These energies are the soul of the world, the unfathomable vortex which sets the material universe in motion. Would it then be paradoxical to picture the animal in certain cases as a highly perfected accumulator, capable of collecting the circumambient heat, of transmuting it in its tissues into a mechanical equivalent and of returning [[51]]it in the form of motion? This would suggest a possibility that the animal might perform work in the absence of energizing matter absorbed as food.

Ah, life made a superb discovery when, in prehistoric times, it invented the Scorpion! To work without eating: what an incomparable gift, had it become general! What miseries, what horrors would be abolished, if we were freed from the tyranny of the stomach! Why was this wonderful attempt not continued, why was it not perfected in creatures of a higher order? What a pity that the initial example was not followed in an ever-increasing progression! Then perhaps to-day, exempted from the ignominious hunt for food, thought, the loftiest and most delicate expression of activity, would restore itself after fatigue with a ray of sunshine.

Of this gift of yore, full of unrealized promises, certain constituents have nevertheless been disseminated throughout the animal kingdom. We ourselves live by solar radiation; we derive part of our energy from it. The Arab, supporting existence on a handful of dates, is no less active than [[52]]the man of the north, gorged with meat and beer; though he does not fill his stomach so plentifully, he has a bigger share in the banquet of the sun.

All things considered then, the Scorpion must derive the main part of his energizing food from the circumambient warmth. As for the plastic food indispensable to physical growth, its turn comes, a little sooner or later, announced by a moult. The stiff tunic splits along the back; the animal slips gently out of its cast clothes, which have become too tight. Then comes the imperious call for food, were it only to make good the cost of the new skin. Henceforth, if the fast continues, my prisoners, especially the smaller ones, die before long. [[53]]

[1] Or Large White Butterfly. Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xiv.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. xv and xvi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] Pill-Millipedes.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4] Worm-like Millipedes.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[5] Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. Chaps. xv and xvi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] Tiger-Beetles.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[7] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. vi to ix and in particular chap. vii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[8] Cf. The Life of the Spider: chap vi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[9] Cf. idem: chap. xvi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER III

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE POISON

In attacking small game, his usual fare, the Scorpion hardly uses his weapon. He seizes the insect with his two pincers and thus holds it the whole time within reach of his mouth, which nibbles slowly. Sometimes, if the victim struggles and disturbs the repast, the tail comes curving down and, with a series of little taps, deprives the patient of the power of movement. When all is said, the sting plays but a very subordinate part in the acquisition of food.

It is really of no use to the animal except in a moment of danger, face to face with an enemy. I do not know against what foes the formidable beast may have to defend itself. Who among the frequenters of the stony wastes would venture to attack it? Though I do not know on what occasions, in the normal course of things, the Scorpion [[54]]is obliged to take measures of defence. I can at least resort to artifice and arrange encounters which will force him to fight in grim earnest. To judge of the violence of his poison, I propose to place him in the presence of various powerful foes, without leaving the domain of entomology.

A Languedocian Scorpion and a Narbonne Lycosa are put into a large jar, with a layer of sand at the bottom, which affords a less slippery foothold than the glass. The two are similarly equipped with poisonous fangs. Which of the two will gain the upper hand and eat the other? While the Lycosa is the less powerful, she has the advantage of agility, which enables her to leap on her adversary and attack him unexpectedly. Before the defender, who is slow in countering, is able to adopt the fighting attitude, the other will deliver her stroke and flee before the brandished sting. The chances would seem to favour the active Spider.

The events do not correspond with these probabilities. So soon as she perceives the enemy, the Lycosa stands half-erect, opens her fangs, on which a drop of poison is gathering, and boldly waits. The Scorpion approaches [[55]]with short steps, extending his pincers in front of him. With his two-fingered hands he seizes and holds the Spider, who protests desperately, opening and closing her fangs without being able to bite, kept as she is at a distance. The struggle becomes impossible with such an adversary, armed with long pincers which hold the foe helpless at arm’s length and prevent her approach.

Without any sort of contest, therefore, the Scorpion curves his tail, brings it down in front of his forehead and drives the sting, entirely at his ease, into the victim’s black breast. This is not the instantaneous thrust of the Wasps and the other four-winged fighters: to make the weapon penetrate requires a certain effort. The knotted tail pushes, swaying slightly: it turns the sting to and fro as we twist a pointed tool with our fingers to make it enter a hard substance. When the hole is made, the sting lingers in the wound for a moment, doubtless to allow time for a larger dose of virus to escape. The result is overwhelming. No sooner is the sturdy Lycosa stung than she draws up her legs. She is dead. [[56]]

I have treated myself to this stirring spectacle with half-a-dozen victims. What the first experiment showed me the others repeated. There is always the instant attack by the Scorpion the moment he sees the Lycosa, always the tactics of the tongs holding the enemy at a distance, always the sudden death of the spitted Spider. If I crushed the animal underfoot, the inertia produced would be no more immediate. It is as though the Lycosa had been struck dead by lightning.

To eat the vanquished enemy is the rule, all the more inasmuch as the plump Spider is a magnificent prey, such as but rarely falls to the Scorpion’s lot in his usual hunting-grounds. Then and there, without delay, he sits down to his meal, commencing with the head, his customary routine with any sort of game. Motionless, he crunches and swallows, in tiny mouthfuls. Everything is consumed, excepting a few joints of the legs, which are tough morsels. The Gargantuan feast lasts for twenty-four hours.

When the banquet is over, we wonder how the dish has managed to disappear into a belly hardly larger than the thing eaten. [[57]]Those who are exposed to interminable fasts, and are compelled to gorge themselves to excess when the occasion offers, must have special digestive powers.

If the Scorpion attacks the Lycosa, who would be capable of making a serious defence were she to rush upon the enemy, instead of proudly standing with her breast uncovered, what will be the fate of the meek Epeiræ?[1] All, even the largest, the Angular, the Banded, and the Silky Epeira, are fiercely attacked, all the more since these poor spinners, demoralized by fear, do not even try to fling their hanks of cord, which so promptly paralyse the assailant. In their webs, with a lavish discharge of snares, they would master the ferocious Mantis,[2] the formidable Hornet, or the big Locust, that expert kicker. Away from their own homes, faced by an enemy and not a victim, they utterly forget their potent methods of binding the foe. When stung, they all instantly succumb, struck dead like the Lycosa; [[58]]and the Scorpion feasts upon them.

Under the stone, the Spider-lover never meets the Lycosa or the Epeiræ, who frequent other regions; but he may, at long intervals, find other Spiders, addicted like himself to sheltering in rocky refuges, and notably the timid Clotho.[3] He is therefore pretty familiar with this sort of game, and any fair-sized Spider suits him, provided that he be hungry.

I suspect him of being by no means indifferent to the capture of a Praying Mantis, another highly meritorious dish. Certainly he does not go in search of her on the bushes, the usual resort of this ravenous insect: his means of climbing, which are excellently adapted to scaling a wall, would never permit him to walk on the wavering support of the leaves. He must strike when the mother is pregnant, towards the end of the summer. As a matter of fact, I fairly often find the nest of the Praying Mantis fastened to the lower surface of the lumps of stone haunted by the Scorpion.

The highwayman may make his approach, [[59]]in quest of victuals, on a peaceful night, just when the labouring mother is whipping the froth of her egg-filled casket.[4] What happens then I have never witnessed; probably I never shall: it would be asking too much of luck. Let us fill the gap by artificial means.

In the cock-pit of an earthenware dish, I provoke a duel between a Scorpion and a Mantis, both selected of a good size. If necessary, I stimulate them, urge them to the encounter. I already know that not all the blows of the tail take effect: very often they are mere raps on the head. Sparing of his poison and scorning to sting when there is no pressing need, the Scorpion repels the intruder with a sudden back stroke of the tail, without using the needle. In our various experiments we will count only the blows which draw blood in proof that the sting has penetrated.

When seized with the tweezers, the Mantis instantly adopts the spectral attitude,[5] with the saw-toothed legs open and the wings displayed like an heraldic crest. [[60]]This scare-crow attitude, so far from succeeding, makes the attack all the easier: the sting plunges into the base, between the two lethal limbs, and lingers for some time in the wound. When it is withdrawn, there is still a drop of poison oozing at the tip.

Then and there the Mantis draws up her legs in the throes of death. The belly heaves, the caudal appendages wave by fits and starts, the tarsi give faint quivers. On the other hand, the lethal legs, the antennæ, and the mouth-parts are motionless. This condition is followed, in less than fifteen minutes, by complete inertia.

The Scorpion does not think out his blows; he strikes at random any point within reach. This time he has stabbed a part which is eminently vulnerable, because of the proximity of the principal nerve-centres; he has stung the Mantis in the breast, between the lethal legs, precisely where the Mantis-killing Tachytes[6] wounds her victim with the object of paralysing it. The act is fortuitous and not intentional: the lout is not an expert anatomist like the Wasp. As luck [[61]]would have it, death was instantaneous. What would happen if the sting were delivered in another, less dangerous part of the body?

I change the operator, to make sure that the poison-phial is charged. I shall take the same precaution in the various subsequent encounters: each fresh victim will have a fresh executioner, whose full powers have been restored by a long rest.

The Mantis, another powerful matron, stands half-erect, turns her head[7] and looks at him warily over her shoulder. She assumes her spectral attitude, with puffing sounds produced by rubbing the wings together. Her boldness at first succeeds: she manages to seize her adversary’s tail with her toothed fore-arms. As long as she holds tight, the Scorpion is disarmed and unable to hurt her.

But fatigue supervenes, enhanced by terror. The Mantis had seized the tail brandished in front of her as she might have harpooned any other part of the body, without doubting the efficiency of her manœuvre. [[62]]The poor simpleton opens her trap. She is lost. The Scorpion stings her in the abdomen, not far from the third pair of legs. Complete collapse ensues, like that of a piece of clockwork whose mainspring is broken.

It is not in my power to obtain stings at this or that point as I choose: the irascible Scorpion does not lend himself to the liberty of attempting to guide his weapon. I make the most of the various instances that occur in the hazards of the contest. Some of them are worth recording, because of the great distance from the centres of innervation.

This time the Mantis is stung on one of the lethal limbs, in the fine-skinned joint of the arm and fore-arm. This results in immediate inertia of the limb affected and soon after of the second. The other legs curl up: there are pulsations of the abdomen; and absolute immobility quickly follows. Death is almost instantaneous.

Another is stung in the joint between the shank and the thigh of one of the middle legs. Suddenly the four hind-legs fold back; the wings which the insect had not [[63]]outspread at the moment of the attack, are unfurled convulsively, as in the spectral attitude, and remain outspread even after death. The murderous legs flounder about in disorder: they clutch, they open, they close again; the antennæ move, the palpi tremble, the abdomen throbs, the caudal appendages wave to and fro. Another fifteen minutes of this tumultuous death-struggle: and all is still; the Mantis is no more.

And so in all the instances in which my curiosity, greatly excited by the stirring aspect of the tragedy, indulges whatever the point attacked, whether near the nerve-centres or farther away, the Mantis always succumbs, sometimes instantly, sometimes after a few minutes’ convulsions. Rattlesnakes, Vipers, Puff-adders and other venomous Snakes of dreadful renown do not kill their victims more promptly.

At first I regarded this as due to a highly-strung organism, which is all the more sensitive and vulnerable because it is better equipped. Picked creatures both, said I to myself, the Spider and the Mantis die instantaneously from an injury which a ruder creature would endure for hours and days, [[64]]perhaps even without any great inconvenience. Let us then try the Mole-cricket, the detested Taiocebo of the Provençal gardener. A strange beast indeed is this root-cutter; powerful, too, clumsy and of a lower type. When you grip it firmly in your hand, it makes you let go by digging into your skin with the toothed toes of its hind-legs, copied from the Mole’s.

When brought into contact in a narrow arena, Scorpion and Mole-cricket look each other in the face and seem to recognize each other. Can there have been encounters between them from time to time? It is very doubtful. The Mole-cricket is an inmate of our gardens, of rich soil in which green vegetables convoke underground vermin; the Scorpion is faithful to the sun-scorched slopes on which dry grasses find it difficult to grow. Meetings are hardly probable between the inhabitants of barren and of fruitful soil.

Though unknown to each other, they none the less realize the gravity of the danger confronting them. With no provocation from me, the Scorpion rushes at the Mole-cricket, who, for her part, assumes an aggressive [[65]]posture, with her shears ready to disembowel her foe. Rubbing her upper wings together, she entones a sort of war-song, a dull buzzing. The Scorpion does not leave her time to finish her ditty; he brings his tail into play. The Mole-cricket’s thorax bears a stout, arched cuirass encasing the back. To the rear of this impenetrable armour there is a deep crease, covered with fine skin. It is here that the sting enters. Forthwith, without more ado, the monster is overthrown; she collapses, as though struck by lightning.

Disorderly movements follow. The digging-legs are paralysed; they no longer grip at the straw which I hold out to them. The others thresh to and fro, stretch out and flex themselves again; the four palpi with the large, fleshy tufts meet in a bunch, separate, come together again and pat the object which I place within their reach; the antennæ wave feebly; the belly throbs with deep pulsations. Gradually, these death-throes decrease in violence. At length, in a couple of hours’ time, the tarsi, the last to die, cease quivering. The clumsy creature has succumbed no less completely than the Lycosa [[66]]and the Mantis, but after a longer death-struggle.

It remains to be ascertained whether the stab under the armour of the thorax does not possess a special efficiency, because of the proximity of the nerve-centres. I repeat the experiment with other patients and other operators. Sometimes the sting enters the chink in the armour; more often it touches some part of the abdomen. In this case, even though the stab is delivered at the extreme tip, the result is always sudden death. The only perceptible difference is that, instead of being instantly paralyzed, the digging-legs continue for some time to struggle like the rest. When struck by the Scorpion in any part whatever, the Mole-cricket therefore is always mortally wounded; the powerful insect gives up the ghost after a few convulsive struggles.

Now comes the turn of the Grey Locust,[8] the largest and most active of our Acridians. The Scorpion appears perturbed by the proximity of this turbulent kicker. The Locust, on her side, would be only too well [[67]]pleased to get away. She hops and bumps against the pane of glass with which I have covered the arena to prevent escape. From time to time she drops on the back of the Scorpion, who flees to avoid this sudden fall. At last, losing patience, the runaway stings the Locust in the belly.

The shock must be of extraordinary violence, for one of the big-haunched legs immediately falls off, through one of those spontaneous disarticulations to which Locusts and Grasshoppers are addicted at desperate moments. The other is paralyzed. Stretched straight out and up, it is no longer able to obtain a purchase on the ground. The Locust’s hopping-days are over. Meanwhile, the four front legs make disorderly movements and are incapable of progression. When laid on its side, the insect nevertheless turns over and resumes the normal position, all but the large hind-leg, which is still impotent and sticking into the air.

Fifteen minutes pass; and the insect falls, never to rise again. The spasms, the stretching of the legs, the quivering of the tarsi, the waving of the antennæ continue [[68]]for a long time yet. This condition, becoming more and more aggravated, may last till next day; but sometimes the inertia is complete in less than an hour.

Another powerful Acridian, the Tryxalis[9], with the immensely long shanks and the sugar-loaf head, ends like the Locust: her death-agony lasts some hours. Among the sword-bearers, the Grasshoppers, I have seen this gradual paralysis, which is not yet death, but which is no longer life, prolonged for a week. This time the subject is the Vine Ephippiger.[10]

The pot-bellied creature has been stung in the abdomen. There are cries of distress from the cymbals at the moment of the wound; and the insect falls on its side, with all the appearances of imminent death. Nevertheless the wounded Ephippiger makes a fight for it. At the end of two days, she is kicking so hard with her ataxic legs, incapable of locomotion, that the idea occurs to me to come to her assistance and doctor her up a little. I administer as a [[69]]cordial, on the tip of a straw, some grape-juice, which is readily accepted.

It seems as though the draught is effectual; the insect appears to be recovering. Nothing of the sort, alas! On the seventh day after the sting, the patient dies. The Scorpion’s sting is inexorable, for any insect, even of the strongest. One dies on the spot; another lingers for days; but all succumb in the end. Even though my Ephippiger were to survive for a week, I should know better than to ascribe this to my doctoring with grape-juice: the Grasshopper’s long resistance must be attributed to her temperament.

We must consider above all things the gravity of the wound, which varies greatly according to the dose of poison injected. It is not in my power to regulate its emission: besides, the Scorpion is freakish in the flow of the poison from his phial: in one case he is stingy, and in another prodigal. For this reason the discrepancy is great between the data furnished by the Ephippiger. My notes speak of subjects succumbing after a brief interval, whereas others, more numerous, take a long time to die. [[70]]

Generally, the Grasshoppers resist better than the Locusts. The Ephippiger bears witness to this and, next to her, so does the White-faced Decticus,[11] the chief of the sword-bearing clan. The insect with the large mandibles and the ivory head is stabbed near the middle of the abdomen, on the dorsal surface. The wounded Decticus, apparently not gravely injured, walks about and tries to hop. Half an hour later, however, the poison is working. The abdomen is convulsed, curves into a wide hook and, with its open gap, incapable of closing, plows through the rough surface of the soil. The proud creature has become a pitiful cripple. Six hours later, the insect is lying on its side. It exhausts itself in unsuccessful attempts to rise on its feet. Little by little, the crisis subsides. On the second day, the Decticus is dead, really dead: not a limb stirs.

Late in the afternoon, the great black-and-yellow Dragon-fly flies to and fro in a straight line, swiftly and silently, along the hedges. She is the corsair who levies tribute [[71]]on all who navigate those peaceful waters. Her ardent life, her fiery activity point to a more delicate nervous system than that of the Locust, the placid ruminant of the pastures. And in fact, when stung by the Scorpion, she dies almost as quickly as the Praying Mantis.

The Cicada,[12] another spendthrift of energy, who from morning till night, in the dog-days, never ceases singing by jerking his abdomen up and down, beating time to the cadence of his cymbals, likewise dies very speedily. Talents have to be paid for: where the dull-witted hold out, the gifted succumb.

The large Beetles, in their horny armour, are invulnerable. Never will the Scorpion, a clumsy fencer who lunges at random, find the narrow joints in their breast-plates. As for piercing the hard wrapper at some spot or another, this would need a protracted effort, which the patient would hardly permit in the scuffle of his defence. Besides, these boring-tactics are unknown to the brutal Scorpion, who delivers a sudden stab. [[72]]

One region alone lends itself to the sudden onslaught of the sting. This is the upper surface of the abdomen, which is quite soft and protected by the wing-cases. I uncover this region by holding up the wings and wing-cases with a pair of tweezers; or again I first remove both with the scissors. This mutilation is not a serious matter and would not prevent the patient from surviving quite a long time. The insect is presented to the Scorpion in this condition. It is chosen among the largest, Oryctes,[13] Capricorn,[14] Scarab,[15] Carabus,[16] Cetonia,[17] Cockchafer,[18] Geotrupes.[19]

All perish by the sting, but the length of the death-struggle varies very greatly. To [[73]]give a few examples: after convulsive stretching of the limbs, the Scarab Beetle hoists himself on his legs as high as he can, hunches his back and marks time, for lack of co-ordination in the locomotor mechanism. He capsizes, incapable of recovering his footing; he kicks wildly. At length, in a few hours, immobility sets in; the insect is dead.

The Capricorns, Cerambyx heros, who lives in the oak, and C. cerdo, who lives in the hawthorn and the cherry-laurel, begin in the same way with a sort of cataleptic fit which sometimes lasts for a fairly long time. To some of them death does not come until the next day; others are unable to hold out for more than three or four hours.

The result is the same with the Cetonia or Rose-chafer, the Common Cockchafer, and the magnificently antlered Pine-chafer.[20]

A pitiful sight is that of the Golden Carabus, or Gold Beetle,[21] dying of the sting. Unable to stand on its legs convulsively extended into stilts, the insect tumbles over, picks itself up again, again falls down and [[74]]again hoists itself to its feet, only to fall once more. The tip of the intestine, with its horny armour, sticks out and swells as though the creature were about to discharge its entrails; the crop belches a black torrent that swamps the head; the golden wing-cases, lifting their cuirass, reveal the poor nudities of the abdomen. Next morning, the tarsi are still quivering. Death is not far off. The swarthy Procrustes, the Gold Beetles’s near kinsman, comes to his end in the same wretched fashion. To him we shall return.

Would you, on the other hand, see a stoic, who knows how to die decently? Make the Scorpion sting Oryctes nasicornis, commonly known as the Rhinoceros. None of our beetles equals him for hardy bearing. Despite the horn on his nose, he is a peace-lover, dwelling, during his larval period, in old olive-stumps. When stabbed by the Scorpion, he seems at first to feel nothing. He walks about soberly, as usual, and keeps his balance.

But suddenly the atrocious poison works. The legs no longer obey with their customary [[75]]accuracy; the wounded Beetle staggers and falls on his back. He will never rise again. Lying in this posture for three or four days, with no struggle beyond some vague dying movements, he very quietly gives up the ghost.

How do the Moths and Butterflies behave in their turn? These delicate creatures must be very sensitive to the sting; I am persuaded of it before I put them to the test. Nevertheless, as scrupulous observers, let us experiment. A Swallowtail and a Vulcan perish the moment they are stung. I expected it. The Spurge Hawk-moth and the Striped Hawk-moth offer no more resistance: they too suffer sudden death, just like the Dragon-fly, the Lycosa and the Mantis.

But, to my great surprise, the Great Peacock Moth seems invulnerable. True, the attack is difficult to deliver. The sting goes astray in the soft down, which at each stroke flies away in flocks. Despite repeated blows, I am not sure whether the sting has actually struck home. I accordingly strip the abdomen laying bare the skin. After taking this precaution, I plainly see the weapon driven [[76]]in. Penetration is now indubitable; it was preceded by other, more doubtful stabs; and yet the big Moth remains impassive.

I place her under a wire-gauze cover standing on the table. She grips the trellis-work and remains there all day long without moving. The wings, outspread to their full width, give not a quiver. Next morning there is no change: the victim of the operation is still hanging to the wires by the hooks of her front tarsi. I remove her and lay her on the table, with her belly uppermost. The big body shakes with rapid tremors. Is this the end?

Not at all. The apparently dying Moth revives, flaps her wings and with a sudden effort, recovers her feet. She climbs up the trellis and again hangs from it. In the afternoon, I lay her on her back for the second time. The wings are actuated by a gentle movement, almost a shudder, as a result of which the prostrate insect glides over the table. It climbs up the trellis again and all movement ceases.

Let us leave the poor Moth in peace: when she is really no more, she will drop off. [[77]]Well, the fall does not take place until the fourth day after the sting or stings. Life is exhausted. The deceased is a female. The force of maternity, stronger than any mortal terror, postpones death’s hour: the Moth laid her eggs before she died.

Should we entertain the very natural thought of attributing this long resistance to the colossus’ powerful constitution, the frail product of our Silkworm nurseries, the Mulberry Bombyx, would tell us that we must seek the cause elsewhere. He, the infirm dwarf who has just the strength to beat his wings and flutter round his female, offers no less resistance to the sting than the Great Peacock. The reason for this passivity is probably as follows:

The Great Peacock and the Mulberry-moth are incomplete entities, very different from the Hawk-moth, that ardent explorer of corollas in the gloaming, and the Swallowtail Butterfly and the Mulberry-moth, those untiring pilgrims to the chapel of flowers. They have no mouth implements; they take no nourishment. Deprived of the stimulus of food, they live but a few days, long enough [[78]]to lay fertile eggs. This diminished vitality must go with a no less delicate and consequently less fragile organism.

Let us descend a few steps in the series of the segmented animals and question the uncouth Millipede. The Scorpion knows him. The colony in the enclosure has shown me the Scorpion feeding on the Cryptops and the Lithobius, the result of his hunting. These to him are harmless mouthfuls, incapable of defence. I propose to-day to place him in touch with the Great Centipede known as the Scolopendra (Smorsitans), the mightiest of our Myriapods.

The dragon with the twenty-two pairs of legs is no stranger to him. I have sometimes found the two together under the same stone. The Scorpion was at home; the other roaming about at night, had taken temporary shelter there. No regrettable incident had ensued from their cohabitation. Is this always so? We shall see.

I confront the two horrors with each other in a large glass jar containing sand. The Centipede goes round and round, hugging the wall of the arena. He is an undulating ribbon, a finger’s breadth wide, four or five [[79]]inches long and ringed with greenish rings on an amber-coloured ground. The long, vibrating antennæ sound the space before him; their tips, sensitive as a finger, encounter the motionless Scorpion. The startled animal instantly turns tail. His circuit brings him back to the foe. There is a fresh contact, followed by a fresh flight.

But the Scorpion is now on his guard, with his arched tail advanced and his pincers open. When the Centipede returns to the dangerous point of his circular track, he is seized with the claws, in the neighbourhood of the head. In vain does the long, flexible animal twine and twist; imperturbably, the Scorpion grips it more firmly than ever with his pincers; and no jerks, windings or unwindings succeed in making him let go.

Meanwhile the sting is at work. Three and four times over it is driven into the sides of the Myriapod, who, for his part, opens wide his poison-fangs and strives to bite, without succeeding in doing so, for the front part of his body is held in the stubborn pincers. The hinder part alone struggles and wriggles, coils and uncoils. These efforts are useless. Kept at a distance by the long [[80]]tongs, the Scolopendra’s poisoned fangs are unable to act. I have seen many insect battles; I know none more horrible than that between these two monstrosities. It is enough to make your flesh creep.

A lull enables me to part the combatants and isolate them. The Centipede licks his bleeding wounds and recovers his strength in a few hours. As for the Scorpion, he has suffered no damage. Next day, a fresh assault is delivered. Three times in succession the Myriapod is stabbed, till the blood flows. Then, fearing reprisals, the Scorpion withdraws, as though frightened by his victory. The wounded animal does not strike back and continues its circular flight. This is enough for to-day. I surround the jar with a cardboard cylinder. When darkness is thus produced, they will both keep quiet.

What happens afterwards, especially at night, I do not know. Probably the battle begins all over again and further thrusts of the sting are delivered. At any rate the Centipede is much weaker on the third day. On the fourth, he is dying. The Scorpion watches him without yet daring to devour him. At last, when there is no more movement, [[81]]the huge quarry is cut up; the head and then the first two segments are eaten. The dish is too copious; the remainder will go bad and be wasted. His exclusive taste for fresh meat will prevent the Scorpion from touching it.

Though stung seven times and oftener, the Centipede does not die until the fourth day; stung once only, the powerful Lycosa perishes that very instant. Death comes almost as quickly to the Praying Mantis, the Sacred Beetle, the Mole-cricket and other hardy specimens which, if impaled by the collector, would kick and struggle for weeks on the cork slab. Any insect stabbed by the sting finds itself forthwith in a parlous plight; the longest-lived are dead within twenty-four hours; and here we have the Centipedes, pinked seven times over, holding out for four days and perhaps dying from loss of blood as much as from the effects of the poison.

Why these points of difference? Apparently they are a matter of organisation. Life is an equilibrium whose stability varies according to the position in the hierarchy. At the top of the ladder, a fall is easy; at the bottom, there is a firm foothold. The [[82]]finely-organised insect succumbs, whereas the coarser Millipede resists. Is this really the explanation? The Mole-cricket leaves us undecided. He, the boor, perishes just as quickly as do those refined creatures, the Butterfly and the Mantis. No, we do not yet know the secret which the Scorpion conceals in the phial at the end of his tail. [[83]]

[1] Or Garden Spiders. Cf. The Life of the Spider: chaps. ix to xiv. and appendix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. vi to ix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] Cf. The Life of the Spider: chap. xvi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xviii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[5] Cf. idem: chap. vii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] Cf. More Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. viii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[7] The Mantes are the only insects that can turn their heads to right or left. Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. vi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[8] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. xviii and xix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[9] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xviii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[10] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. xiii and xiv.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[11] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. xi to xiii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[12] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. i to v.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[13] Oryctes Nasicornis, the Rhinoceros Beetle.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[14] The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chap. vii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[15] The Scarabæi include the Sacred Beetle, the Copris and other Dung-beetles. Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. i to x.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[16] Or Gold Beetle. Cf. More Beetles, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. xiii and xi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[17] Or Rose-chafer. Cf. idem: chap. i.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[18] Cf. idem: chap. ix.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[19] Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chaps. xii to xiv.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[20] Cf. More Beetles: chap. i.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[21] Cf. idem: chaps. xiii and xiv.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IV

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: THE IMMUNITY OF LARVÆ

So little do we possess the Scorpion’s secret that unexpected facts crop up that strangely complicate the problem. The study of life brings us these surprises. Repeated experiments, with mutually consistent results, seem to justify our formulation of a rule when, suddenly, important exceptions arise, compelling us to follow a fresh path, directly opposed to the first, and leading us to doubt which is the last stage on the road to knowledge. After labouring long and patiently, like an ox yoked to the plow, we have to plant a note of interrogation at the end of the field which we thought that we had made ready for sowing, without any hope of a final answer. One question leads to another.

To-day the Cetonia-larvæ have forced upon me a similar change of opinion. It was at the end of November, late in the year, [[84]]when the adult insect was becoming scarce. At this season of dearth, for lack of anything better wherewith to continue my experiments, I thought of resorting to the grubs of the Cetonia, grubs which abound all the year through in a heap of dead leaves in a corner of the enclosure. The naturalist who questions animals is necessarily a torturer: there is no other means of making them speak. A host of questions therefore sends my curiosity rummaging, as a regular thing, in that heap of leaf-mould. Every physiological laboratory has its appointed victims: the Frog, the Guinea-pig, even the Dog. The Cetonia-larva suffices for my rustic work-shop. I add the humble grub to the noble series of victims of whose suffering our knowledge is born.

The advanced and already cold season has not slackened the Scorpion’s activity; the fat grub, on its part, in the warm moisture of the decayed leaves, has retained all the suppleness of its back. Both are in perfect condition. I bring them face to face.

The attack is not spontaneous. The larva flees obstinately, turned over on its back, skirting the wall of the cage. The [[85]]Scorpion remains motionless and looks on; he draws to one side and makes way when the circular track brings the creature in his direction. It is not a prey to his liking, still less a dangerous adversary; and killing merely for killing’s sake is not one of his vices. If I did not interfere, the peaceful encounter might continue indefinitely.

I worry the two of them, bring them into contact, irritate them with a bit of a straw, to such good purposes that my devices look like an attack on the part of the grub. The poor topsy-turvy creature is certainly not dreaming of fighting; it is a natural coward which, when in danger, curls up and refuses to move. Unaware of my tricks with the straw, the Scorpion ascribes to his innocent neighbour the annoyance of which I alone am the cause. He waves his sting on high and stabs. The blow has struck home, for the wound bleeds.

Relying on what the adult Cetonia showed me, I expect to see convulsions, the preludes of death. But what is this? When left to itself, the grub uncoils itself and makes off; it travels on its back neither faster nor slower than usual, as though it had not been [[86]]wounded. Laid on the heap of leaf-mould, it swiftly dives down, without appearing in the least injured. I go to look at it a couple of hours later. It is as vigorous as before the experiment. Its state of health is the same the next day. What are we to make of this rebel? In its adult form, it would have dropped dead; in its larval form, it is indomitable. The wound was deep, since it bleeds, but perhaps the sting omitted to inject any poison, in which case it is a harmless prick, a negligible accident for the sturdy grub. We must try again.

The same subject is stung a second time, by another Scorpion. The result agrees with the first. The wounded grub ambles along on its back entirely at its ease; it dips down into the layer of rotten leaves and quietly resumes eating. The poisoned stab has not affected it.

This immunity cannot be an exceptional instance; there are no privileged individuals among the Cetoniæ; any other subject of the same species ought to prove equally refractory. I unearth twelve larvæ and have them stung, some of them twice or thrice [[87]]in quick succession. All wriggle a little at the moment when the dirk enters; all lick the bleeding spot if they can reach it with their mouth and then quietly recover from their excitement. They amble along, with their legs in the air; they burrow down into the heart of the leaf-mould. I inspect them next day, the day after and the following days. The poison does not seem to have endangered them in any way.

They look so fit that I conceive a hope of rearing them. In this I succeed to perfection, without further trouble than that of renewing from time to time the provision of rotten leaves. The following year, in June, the twelve that have been subjected to the atrocious sting weave their cocoons and undergo metamorphosis. The Scorpion’s stab has caused them no worse damage than a slight itching at the moment when the sting entered the belly.

This curious result reminds me of what Lenz tells us on the subject of the Hedgehog:

“I had a mother Hedgehog,” he writes, “who was suckling her young. I threw a [[88]]large Viper into her box. The Hedgehog soon felt that he was there, for she is guided by the sense of smell and not of sight. She got up, went fearlessly to the Snake and sniffed at him from head to foot, especially about the mouth. The Viper hissed and bit her several times on the snout and lips. As though to make fun of her feeble assailant, she contented herself with licking her wounds, continued her inspection and was once more bitten, but this time in the tongue. At last, she seized the Viper by the head, which she crunched between her jaws, together with the poison-fangs and glands. Then she devoured half the reptile, after which she returned to lie down beside her young and give them to suck. That evening she ate another Viper and what remained of the first. Her health was not affected thereby, nor was that of the little Hedgehogs; her wounds did not even swell.

“Two days later, there was a new Viper and a new fight. The Hedgehog went up to the reptile and smelt it. Opening her jaws and erecting her poison-fangs, the Viper rushed upon her, bit her in the upper lip and remained hanging there for a time. [[89]]The Hedgehog shook him off and, though bitten ten times in the muzzle and twenty times elsewhere, amidst the prickles, she seized him by the head and devoured him slowly, notwithstanding his contortions. This time again neither the mother nor the sucklings seemed unwell.”

It is said that Mithridates, King of Pontus, to fortify his constitution against the dangerous potions with which his enemies attempted to destroy him, accustomed himself to different poisons. By degrees he inured his stomach against venom. Can the Hedgehog, that new Mithridates, in her quality as a Snake-eater, have acquired her immunity by gradual use and wont? Or is it not rather in her case, an original aptitude? When for the first time she bit into the reptile’s head, did she not already possess the predisposition necessary to her safety?

She did, the Cetonia-larva tells us for our answer. If any members of the insect clan has to provide itself with defensive means against the Scorpion’s attacks, it is certainly not the grub that dwells amid vegetable [[90]]decay. The two do not frequent the same places, which makes meetings almost impossible. On the larva’s part, therefore, there is no increasing tolerance of the poison. The first to find themselves in the Scorpion’s presence are perhaps those which I myself place there. Nevertheless, without preparations of any kind, behold the grub refractory to the sting. It possesses, from the first, powers of resistance to the poison which is quite as surprising as that of the reptile-eater.

That the Hedgehog, the appointed exterminator of Vipers, should be endowed with the prerogatives essential to her calling is strictly logical. In the same way, the Bee-eater, the handsomest bird of Mediterranean provinces, crams his crop with impunity with live Wasps; in the same way, the Cuckoo suffers from no irritation when he fills his stomach with a barbed wire entanglement of stinging hairs from the Processionary Caterpillar.[1] The function exercised will have it so.

But why need the larva of the Cetonia [[91]]safeguard itself against the Scorpion, whom she probably never meets? We dare not believe in privileges; rather do we suspect a general aptitude. The Cetonia-larva resists the Scorpion’s sting, not as a Cetonia, but as a grub, a preparatory phase on the way to a higher organization. If so, all the larvæ, in a greater or lesser degree, according to their robustness, must possess similar powers of resistance.

What does experiment say on the subject? It behooves us to exempt from the test the weaker grubs, of a delicate constitution. To them a mere prick, without the aid of the poison, would mean a serious and often fatal wound. The point of a needle would gravely injure them. What would it be with the brutal stiletto, even though not poisoned? What we need is a few corpulent grubs which would think little of a perforated belly.

And here I have the very thing I want. An old olive-stump softened underground by decay, provides me with the larva of the Rhinoceros Beetle. It is a plump sausage, as thick as a man’s thumb. When stung by the Scorpion, the paunchy grub glides among [[92]]the scraps of decayed olive-wood with which I have furnished a glass jar; heedless of its mishap, it works its jaws so lustily that, eight months later, having thrived and waxed fat, it is preparing its cell for the metamorphosis. It has passed through the dreadful ordeal unscathed.

As for the adult insect, we have already seen what it does. Stung on the upper surface of the abdomen, under the lifted wing-cases, the colossus soon topples over and feebly kicks its legs about in the air. All movement ceases in three or four days at most. The powerful creature dies; its grub loses nothing in either strength or appetite.

This instance of correct prevision on my part is confirmed by a number of others. In front of my door are two old cherry-laurels, magnificently green at all times of the year. A Capricorn is ruining them for me. This is the little Cerambyx cerdo, the usual inhabitant of the hawthorn. The aroma of prussic acid, instead of repelling him, attracts him; the horned dandy is well acquainted with it, thanks to his long experience of the clusters of the hawthorn-blossoms with their searching smell. This alien [[93]]tree suits him so well for establishing his family that the axe will have to intervene if I want to save what remains.

I cut down the boughs that have suffered most damage. From one limb split into fragments I obtain a dozen of the Capricorn’s larvæ. My inspection of the neighbouring hedge-rows provides me with the perfect insect. And now we’ll have it out together, O destroyer of my leafy arbour! You shall make amends to me for your misdeeds; you shall die by the Scorpion.

The adults indeed succumb; but the larvæ resist. Lodged in a glass jar, with tiny morsels of the demolished tree, they quietly resume their gnawing. If the provisions do not dry up, the grubs wounded by the Scorpion complete their larval life without accident.

The Capricorn of the Oak, Cerambyx heros, behaves in a like fashion. The great horn-wearer perishes; his grub does not mind the sting a jot, for, when restored to its place in the gallery, it tunnels the wood as it did before and completes its development.

The result is the same with the Common Cockchafer. The stabbed insect dies in a [[94]]few minutes; the White Worm,[2] on the contrary, holds out, goes underground and climbs back to the surface to gnaw the lettuce-stalk which I have given it. If my patience as an insect-rearer did not tire, the victim of the accident, from which it quickly recovers, would become a Cockchafer, as may be seen from the paunch sleek and glossy with health.

A near kinsman of the Stag-beetle, Dorcus parallelopipedus, whose larva I find in an old tamarisk-stump, adds his evidence to that of the above: the adult insect dies, the larva resists. These instances are sufficient; there is no need to continue on these lines.

Cetonia-, Oryctes-, Capricorn-, Cockchafer- and Dorcus-grubs are fat creatures, addicted to a vegetarian diet. Do these plump larvæ owe their immunity to the nature of their victuals? Or, on the other hand, can the fatty stratum, in which the reserves of these insatiable eaters accumulate, neutralize the virulence of the sting? Let us enquire of some lean flesh-eaters.

I choose the largest of our Ground-Beetles, [[95]]Procrusies coriaceus, a saturnine hunter whom I meet at the foot of the walls, disembowelling a Snail. A bold highwayman and built for fighting, he welds his wing-cases into an inviolable cuirass. I pare away a little of his armour behind, in order to render accessible to the Scorpion’s sting the only penetrable part, the upper surface of the abdomen.

We see a repetition of the Gold Beetle’s wretched end. The fight against the agonies of the sting would strike us with horror, if things were happening in a higher world. Thus struggles a Dog tortured by the municipal sausage seasoned with strychnine. At first the wounded Beetle scurries off desperately. Suddenly, he stops and raises himself high on his stiffened legs; he lifts his hinder part, lowers his head and supports himself on his mandibles as though about to turn a somersault. A jolt topples him over. He falls; quickly he stands up again and resumes his unnatural attitude. To look at him you would say that his joints were controlled by wires. He is like an automaton worked by a jerky spring. Another shake, another fall, another recovery: and this goes [[96]]on for twenty minutes or so. At last the demented Beetle collapses on his back and does not get up again, though his limbs continue to move. Next morning he is absolutely motionless.

And what of the larva? Well, though destitute of the layer of fat which would seem to protect the grubs of the Cetonia, the Oryctes and the others, the meagre grub of the Procrustes is so little harmed by the Scorpion’s sting that, a fortnight after the ordeal, it buries itself in the ground and digs itself a cell in which the transformation is effected. Lastly, not long after, the adult emerges from the soil in perfect health. Therefore neither the diet nor the degree of stoutness is responsible for this immunity.

Nor is the place occupied in the entomological series, as the Moths will tell us, now that the Beetles have spoken. The first to be questioned is the Zeuzera, whose caterpillar has a calamitous effect upon various trees and shrubs. I take a mother at the moment when she is slipping her long ovipositor into the crevices in the bark of a lilac-tree, to lay her eggs. She is magnificent in her white costume adorned with [[97]]steel-blue spots.[3] I place her at the Scorpion’s mercy. The business is not protracted. No sooner is the Zeuzera stung than she dies, with no disordered motions. Death is gentle to her.

And the caterpillar? After the prick, the caterpillar is as well as before. Restored to the gallery whence I extracted it by splitting its lilac-branch, it works away busily as usual: I can see this by the sawdust ejected through the orifice of the cell. The chrysalis and the Moth come in the summer, according to rule.

The Silkworm, which I am able to procure in such numbers as I require from the nurseries at the farms hard by, lends itself much better to experiment. At the end of May, when the rearing is nearly finished, I cause a couple of dozen to be stung. The worms have a fine, chubby skin, into which the sting each time enters easily, producing a copious hemorrhage. The little table on which my curiosity drives me to perpetrate these barbarities is soon covered with splashes of blood like drops of liquid amber. [[98]]

When restored to their litter of mulberry-leaves, the wounded almost at once set to browsing with their usual appetite. Ten days later, all, from the first to the last, weave their cocoons, which are perfectly normal in shape and thickness. Lastly, from these cocoons, without any losses, emerge Moths whom we shall presently question in another connection. For the moment it is proved that the Silkworm resists the Scorpion’s sting. As for the Moth herself, we know what becomes of her. She succumbs slowly, it it true, after the manner of the Great Peacock; but at all events she succumbs: the sting is always fatal.

The Spurge Hawk-moth gives the same answer: the Moth dies quickly: the caterpillar defies the sting, eats its fill and then goes underground itself into a chrysalis under a coarse veil of sand and silk. Nevertheless, among the number operated upon, there are some which are stabbed to death, perhaps because of the multiplicity of their wounds. The skin offers a certain resistance to perforation and the discharge of blood remains uncertain, leaving me undecided as to the efficiency of the stab. I was [[99]]obliged to prolong the struggle until the evidence was complete and it is probable that I sometimes went too far. The caterpillar which, if pricked but once, would have withstood the ordeal as sturdily as the Silkworm perishes from an overdose.

The mighty, turquoise-bedecked caterpillar of the Great Peacock supplies me with very definite results. When pricked till the blood comes and then replaced on its grazing-ground, the branch of almond, it completes its development and accurately spins its ingenious cocoon.

The Dipteron[4] and the Hymenopteron[5] should be worth examination. Like the Moth and the Beetle, they undergo a general remoulding through the action of the metamorphosis; but they are small-sized and for the most part could not be easily manipulated were my tweezers to present them to the sting. Their delicate larvæ would die merely of the perforation of the skin. Let us question only the giants. [[100]]

These latter include various Orthoptera,[6] the Tryxalis, the Grey Locust, the White-faced Decticus, the Mole-cricket, the Mantis. As we have already seen, all these succumb when struck by the Scorpion’s sting. Now, in their group, the complete development essential to the festival of the pairing is preceded by a transition-form which, without being actually larval, and presenting no likeness whatever to the adult, constitutes an inferior stage, a step towards the marriageable.

The Grey Locust, as we see him on the vine at vintage-time, does not yet possess his magnificent network wings, nor his leathery wing-cases; he possesses only their rudiments, reduced to skimpy coat-tails. The Mole-cricket, who ends by displaying an ample set of wings, which fold back into a sharp tail and enclose the tip of the abdomen, has at first only ungainly stumps, fastened to the upper part of the back.

We behold the same sign of juvenile inferiority in the young Tryxalis, the young Decticus and the others. These mighty, [[101]]aerial sailing-craft of the future have their canvas enclosed in the germ, in mean-looking sheaths. As for the rest, the insect is, from the beginning, very nearly what it will be in all the fullness of its finery. Age develops and does not transform the Orthopteron.

Now are these incomplete insects, with wing-stumps in the place of wings, are these young insects capable of withstanding the Scorpion’s sting as do the true larvæ, the babes of the Oryctes and the Capricorn, the caterpillar of the Hawk-moth and the Bombyx? If the generous sap of youth is an adequate preservative, we ought to find immunity here. We find nothing of the sort. With wings or without, old or young, the Mole-cricket perishes. The Mantis, the Locust, the Tryxalis, whether adult or incomplete, perish likewise.

In the matter of resistance to the Scorpion’s poison we are therefore led to class insects in two categories: on the one hand, those which undergo a real transformation, accompanied by an alteration of the whole organism; on the other hand, those which undergo only secondary modifications. In [[102]]the first division, the larva resists and the adult dies; in the second, death invariably ensues.

What reason can we discover for this difference? Experiment shows us first that resistance to the sting increases as the nature of the victim becomes less highly organized. The Lycosa, the Epeira, the Mantis, all exceedingly sensitive to impressions, succumb on the instant, as though struck by lightning; the Gold Beetle and the Procrustes, those strenuous livers, are seized forthwith with convulsions similar to those produced by strychnine; the Sacred Beetle, a spirited pill-roller, prances in a sort of St. Vitus’ dance. On the other hand, the sluggish Oryctes, the lazy Cetonia, both lovers of protracted slumbers in the heart of the roses, bear their misfortunes patiently and fidget feebly for whole days on end before giving up the ghost. Beneath them is the Acridian, the Locust, the essential rustic. Lower still comes the Centipede, an inferior being, roughly organized. It is evident therefore that the venom acts more quickly or more slowly according to the patient’s nervous constitution. [[103]]

Let us consider separately the insects of a superior order, subject to complete transformations. The word metamorphosis applied to them means a change of form. Now is it only the shape that changes when the caterpillar turns into a Moth, or when the grub in the leaf-mould becomes a Cetonia? More than this occurs and much more, as the Scorpion’s sting informs us.

A profound and comprehensive renewal is effected in the vital statics of the metamorphosed insect; the substance, which is actually still the same, enters into fusion, subtilizes its atomic structure and becomes liable to sensory vibrations which are the first appanage of the nubile specimen. The armour of the wing-cases, the blades, tufts and quivering stems of the antennæ, the legs fit for running and wings fit for flying: all these are magnificent and yet all these are nothing.

Something else towers high above them. The transformed insect has acquired a new life, more active and richer in sensations. A second birth has taken place in which all is renewed, in the invisible and intangible even more than in the material domain. It is more than a molecular rearrangement; it [[104]]is the development of aptitudes unknown in the past. The larva, generally a mere scrap of intestine, lived a placid and very monotonous existence and lo, in view of the future instincts, metamorphosis revolutionizes its substance, distils its humours and refines the centres of energy atom by atom. An enormous leap is made towards progress, but the new state has not the sturdy equilibrium of the first, perfection has been gained at the cost of stability; and so the insect dies of an ordeal which the grub would support with impunity.

With the Acridians and the Orthoptera in general, conditions are quite different. Here there is no real metamorphosis, utterly changing the structure, the mode of life and the habits. The insect remains, all its life long, very much what it was on leaving the egg. It is born in a shape which the future will hardly modify, with habits which will not be altered by time. It undergoes no renovation, no sudden growth. In its infancy already it possesses the temperament of the adult; and as such it is deprived of the immunity enjoyed by rudimentary organisms. [[105]]

Exempted from a probationary period in the grub state, the short-coated Locust suffers from the drawbacks of a too rapid development. He perishes as quickly as the adult, whom he resembles in all but a few details.

I will not deny that the explanation which I have given may not be the right one; and I will not insist upon it. A cast of the net into the depths of the unknown does not always bring up to the surface the correct idea, a very rare catch. A far-reaching fact is acquired nevertheless, even though it remain unexplained. Metamorphosis modifies the organic substance to the degree of changing its innermost properties. The Scorpion’s poison, a reagent of transcendental chemistry, distinguishes the flesh of the larva from that of the adult; it is kindly to the first and deadly to the second.

This curious result raises a question which is not alien to the vainglorious theories affecting attenuated viruses, serums and vaccines. A larva subject to complete metamorphosis is stung by the Scorpion; we might readily say that it has been vaccinated, in the sense that it has been inoculated with [[106]]a virus fatal under the future conditions, but tolerable in its effects in the present stage. The patient does not seem affected by the sting; it begins to eat again and continues its larval work as usual.

The virus, however, cannot fail to act, in one way or another, on the animal’s blood or nerves. Might it not lessen the vulnerability which results from the transformation? Can the adult be rendered immune by a habit acquired during the larval stage? Might it be able to resist the virus as Mithridates was able to resist poison? In short, is the insect with a complete metamorphosis whose larva has been stung capable of itself withstanding the sting? That is the question.

The confirmatory arguments are so urgent that we are at first tempted to answer:

“Yes, the adult will resist.”

But we will leave experiment to speak for itself. With this object preparations are made with four sets of subjects. The first consists of twelve Cetonia-larvæ, which, after being stung in October, have been revaccinated, that is to say, stung a second time, in May. The second set is also composed [[107]]of twelve Cetonia-larvæ, but these have been stung once only, in May. Four chrysalids of the Spurge Hawk-moth form the third. They belong to caterpillars stung once, in June. Lastly, I have some cocoons spun by the Silkworm whose vaccination, attended by a flow of blood, I have described above. The Scorpion will once more play his part with each lot after the hatching has taken place.

The Silkworm Moth is the first to respond to my impatience. The Moth is there in two or three weeks’ time, bustling about in readiness for the pairing. The stab received as a caterpillar has not cooled his ardour in the very least. I subject him to the test. The attack is laboured and the blow is not clearly struck. No matter: all those attacked perish after a death-struggle lasting a day or two. The previous vaccination has made no difference to the result: they succumbed before and they succumb after.

But these are feeble witnesses, on whom it is not wise to rely. I shall achieve more, I feel convinced, with the Hawk-moths and especially with those sturdy subjects the Cetoniæ. [[108]]Well, the Hawk-moths whose caterpillars have received the virus which theoretically should render them immune retain their normal vulnerability: when attacked by the sting, they succumb instantly, exactly like the others, who did not at the larval age undergo a preventative inoculation.

Perhaps the number of days elapsing between the stinging of the caterpillar and of the moth was not sufficient to enable the virus to act upon the organism to the requisite degree. It might need a longer space of time to bring about the inward modifications caused by the action of the poison on the insect’s organism. The Cetonia-larvæ will perhaps be able to dispense with this period.

I have a set of twelve of them, stung twice over, first in October and then in May. The perfect insect bursts its cocoon at the end of July. Ten months therefore have elapsed since the first sting and three months since the second. Is the adult now immune?

Not at all. When subjected to the Scorpion, my twelve vaccinated specimens all perish, no more and no less quickly than their fellows who were born quietly in their heap of rotten leaves. Twelve others, pricked [[109]]only once, in May, succumb with the same promptness. In the case of both sets, my devices, which inspired me with confidence at first, miscarry pitifully, to my extreme confusion.

I try another method, that of transfusion of blood, which is related to serotherapy. Since it resists the Scorpion’s sting, the larva of the Cetonia must have blood endowed with special qualities, apt to neutralize the virulence of the poison. If transferred from the larva to the adult, might not this blood communicate its qualities and render the perfect insect invulnerable?

I give a Cetonia-grub a superficial wound with the point of a needle. The blood spouts forth abundantly. I collect it in a watch-glass. A glass tube of small diameter, drawn out to a sharp point, serves as an injector. I charge it by suction with the fluid collected, varying the dose from a cubic millimetre to ten and twenty times as much. By blowing into the tube I transfer the liquid into some point of the adult Cetonia, particularly on the ventral surface, where a needle has prepared the way for the fragile injector. The insect stands the operation [[110]]very well. The richer by a little larval blood and not seriously wounded, it presents every appearance of blooming health.

Now what comes of this treatment? Nothing at all. I wait a day or two to give the injected fluids time to diffuse and act. The Cetonia is then presented to the Scorpion. Veil your face, O foolish physiologist: the creature perishes as it would have done before your presumptuous attempts at surgery. We cannot manipulate animals as we can the reagents of chemistry. [[111]]

[1] Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar: chaps. i to vi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[2] The grub of the Cockchafer.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[3] This is Z. Æsculi, also known as the Wood Leopard Moth.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[4] The Diptera are the order of insects comprising the Flies, Mosquitoes, Gnats and Fleas.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[5] The Hymenoptera are the order including the Bees, Wasps, Ants, Ichneumon-flies, Sawflies, Gall-flies, etc.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[6] The order comprising the Grasshoppers, Locusts, Crickets, Cockroaches, Mantes and Earwigs.—Translator’s Note. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER V