THE MASON-BEES
By J. Henri Fabre
Translated By Alexander Teixeira De Mattos
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
This volume contains all the essays on the Chalicodomae, or Mason-bees proper, which so greatly enhance the interest of the early volumes of the "Souvenirs entomologiques." I have also included an essay on the author's Cats and one on Red Ants—the only study of Ants comprised in the "Souvenirs"—both of which bear upon the sense of direction possessed by the Bees. Those treating of the Osmiae, who are also Mason-Bees, although not usually known by that name, will be found in a separate volume, which I have called "Bramble-bees and Others" and in which I have collected all that Fabre has written on such other Wild Bees as the Megachiles, or Leaf-cutters, the Cotton-bees, the Resin-bees and the Halicti.
The essays entitled "The Mason-bees, Experiments" and "Exchanging the Nests" form the last three chapters of "Insect Life", translated by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori" and published by Messrs. Macmillan, who, with the greatest courtesy and kindness have given me their permission to include a new translation of these chapters in the present volume. They did so without fee or consideration of any kind, merely on my representation that it would be a great pity if this uniform edition of Fabre's Works should be rendered incomplete because certain essays formed part of volumes of extracts previously published in this country. Their generosity is almost unparalleled in my experience; and I wish to thank them publicly for it in the name of the author, of the French publishers and of the English and American publishers, as well as in my own.
Some of the chapters have appeared in England in the "Daily Mail", the "Fortnightly Review" and the "English Review"; some in America in "Good Housekeeping" and the "Youth's Companion"; others now see the light in English for the first time.
I have again to thank Miss Frances Rodwell for the invaluable assistance which she has given me in the work of translation and in the less interesting and more tedious department of research.
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.
Chelsea, 1914.
Contents
CHAPTER 1. THE MASON-BEES.
Reaumur (Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757), inventor of the Reaumur thermometer and author of "Memoires pour servir a l'histoire naturelle des insectes."—Translator's Note.) devoted one of his papers to the story of the Chalicodoma of the Walls, whom he calls the Mason-bee. I propose to go on with the story, to complete it and especially to consider it from a point of view wholly neglected by that eminent observer. And, first of all, I am tempted to tell how I made this Bee's acquaintance.
It was when I first began to teach, about 1843. I had left the normal school at Vaucluse some months before, with my diploma and all the simple enthusiasm of my eighteen years, and had been sent to Carpentras, there to manage the primary school attached to the college. It was a strange school, upon my word, notwithstanding its pompous title of 'upper'; a sort of huge cellar oozing with the perpetual damp engendered by a well backing on it in the street outside. For light there was the open door, when the weather permitted, and a narrow prison-window, with iron bars and lozenge panes set in lead. By way of benches there was a plank fastened to the wall all round the room, while in the middle was a chair bereft of its straw, a black-board and a stick of chalk.
Morning and evening, at the sound of the bell, there came rushing in some fifty young imps who, having shown themselves hopeless dunces with their Cornelius Nepos, had been relegated, in the phrase of the day, to 'a few good years of French.' Those who had found mensa too much for them came to me to get a smattering of grammar. Children and strapping lads were there, mixed up together, at very different educational stages, but all incorrigibly agreed to play tricks upon the master, the boy master who was no older than some of them, or even younger.
To the little ones I gave their first lessons in reading; the intermediate ones I showed how they should hold their pen to write a few lines of dictation on their knees; to the big ones I revealed the secrets of fractions and even the mysteries of Euclid. And to keep this restless crowd in order, to give each mind work in accordance with its strength, to keep attention aroused and lastly to expel dullness from the gloomy room, whose walls dripped melancholy even more than dampness, my one resource was my tongue, my one weapon my stick of chalk.
For that matter, there was the same contempt in the other classes for all that was not Latin or Greek. One instance will be enough to show how things then stood with the teaching of physics, the science which occupies so large a place to-day. The principal of the college was a first-rate man, the worthy Abbe X., who, not caring to dispense beans and bacon himself, had left the commissariat-department to a relative and had undertaken to teach the boys physics.
Let us attend one of his lessons. The subject is the barometer. The establishment happens to possess one, an old apparatus, covered with dust, hanging on the wall beyond the reach of profane hands and bearing on its face, in large letters, the words stormy, rain, fair.
'The barometer,' says the good abbe, addressing his pupils, whom, in patriarchal fashion, he calls by their Christian names, 'the barometer tells us if the weather will be good or bad. You see the words written on the face—stormy, rain—do you see, Bastien?'
'Yes, I see,' says Bastien, the most mischievous of the lot.
He has been looking through his book and knows more about the barometer than his teacher does.
'It consists,' the abbe continues, 'of a bent glass tube filled with mercury, which rises and falls according to the weather. The shorter leg of this tube is open; the other...the other...well, we'll see. Here, Bastien, you're the tallest, get up on the chair and just feel with your finger if the long leg is open or closed. I can't remember for certain.'
Bastien climbs on the chair, stands as high as he can on tip-toe and fumbles with his finger at the top of the long column. Then, with a discreet smile spreading under the silky hairs of his dawning moustache:
'Yes,' he says, 'that's it. The long leg is open at the top. There, I can feel the hole.'
And Bastien, to confirm his mendacious statement, keeps wriggling his forefinger at the top of the tube, while his fellow-conspirators suppress their enjoyment as best they can.
'That will do,' says the unconscious abbe. 'You can get down, Bastien. Take a note of it, boys: the longer leg of the barometer is open; take a note of it. It's a thing you might forget; I had forgotten it myself.'
Thus was physics taught. Things improved, however: a master came and came to stay, one who knew that the long leg of the barometer is closed. I myself secured tables on which my pupils were able to write instead of scribbling on their knees; and, as my class was daily increasing in numbers, it ended by being divided into two. As soon as I had an assistant to look after the younger boys, things assumed a different aspect.
Among the subjects taught, one in particular appealed to both masters and pupils. This was open-air geometry, practical surveying. The college had none of the necessary outfit; but, with my fat pay—seven hundred francs a year, if you please!—I could not hesitate over the expense. A surveyor's chain and stakes, arrows, level, square and compass were bought with my money. A microscopic graphometer, not much larger than the palm of one's hand and costing perhaps five francs, was provided by the establishment. There was no tripod to it; and I had one made. In short, my equipment was complete.
And so, when May came, once every week we left the gloomy school-room for the fields. It was a regular holiday. The boys disputed for the honour of carrying the stakes, divided into bundles of three; and more than one shoulder, as we walked through the town, felt the reflected glory of those erudite rods. I myself—why conceal the fact?—was not without a certain satisfaction as I piously carried that most delicate and precious apparatus, the historic five-franc graphometer. The scene of operations was an untilled, flinty plain, a harmas, as we call it in the district. (Cf. "The Life of the Fly", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 1.—Translator's Note.) Here, no curtain of green hedges or shrubs prevented me from keeping an eye upon my staff; here—an indispensable condition—I had not the irresistible temptation of the unripe apricots to fear for my scholars. The plain stretched far and wide, covered with nothing but flowering thyme and rounded pebbles. There was ample scope for every imaginable polygon; trapezes and triangles could be combined in all sorts of ways. The inaccessible distances had ample elbow-room; and there was even an old ruin, once a pigeon-house, that lent its perpendicular to the graphometer's performances.
Well, from the very first day, my attention was attracted by something suspicious. If I sent one of the boys to plant a stake, I would see him stop frequently on his way, bend down, stand up again, look about and stoop once more, neglecting his straight line and his signals. Another, who was told to pick up the arrows, would forget the iron pin and take up a pebble instead; and a third deaf to the measurements of angles, would crumble a clod of earth between his fingers. Most of them were caught licking a bit of straw. The polygon came to a full stop, the diagonals suffered. What could the mystery be?
I enquired; and everything was explained. A born searcher and observer, the scholar had long known what the master had not yet heard of, namely, that there was a big black Bee who made clay nests on the pebbles in the harmas. These nests contained honey; and my surveyors used to open them and empty the cells with a straw. The honey, although rather strong-flavoured, was most acceptable. I acquired a taste for it myself and joined the nest-hunters, putting off the polygon till later. It was thus that I first saw Reaumur's Mason-bee, knowing nothing of her history and nothing of her historian.
The magnificent Bee herself, with her dark-violet wings and black-velvet raiment, her rustic edifices on the sun-blistered pebbles amid the thyme, her honey, providing a diversion from the severities of the compass and the square, all made a great impression on my mind; and I wanted to know more than I had learnt from the schoolboys, which was just how to rob the cells of their honey with a straw. As it happened, my bookseller had a gorgeous work on insects for sale. It was called "Histoire naturelle des animaux articules", by de Castelnau (Francis Comte de Castelnau de la Porte (1812-1880), the naturalist and traveller. Castelnau was born in London and died at Melbourne.—Translator's Note.), E. Blanchard (Emile Blanchard (born 1820), author of various works on insects, Spiders, etc.—Translator's Note.) and Lucas (Pierre Hippolyte Lucas (born 1815), author of works on Moths and Butterflies, Crustaceans, etc.—Translator's Note.), and boasted a multitude of most attractive illustrations; but the price of it, the price of it! No matter: was not my splendid income supposed to cover everything, food for the mind as well as food for the body? Anything extra that I gave to the one I could save upon the other; a method of balancing painfully familiar to those who look to science for their livelihood. The purchase was effected. That day my professional emoluments were severely strained: I devoted a month's salary to the acquisition of the book. I had to resort to miracles of economy for some time to come before making up the enormous deficit.
The book was devoured; there is no other word for it. In it, I learnt the name of my black Bee; I read for the first time various details of the habits of insects; I found, surrounded in my eyes with a sort of halo, the revered names of Reaumur, Huber (Francois Huber (1750-1831), the Swiss naturalist, author of "Nouvelles observations sur les abeilles." He early became blind from excessive study and conducted his scientific work thereafter with the aid of his wife.—Translator's Note.) and Leon Dufour (Jean Marie Leon Dufour (1780-1865), an army surgeon who served with distinction in several campaigns, and subsequently practised as a doctor in the Landes, where he attained great eminence as a naturalist. Fabre often refers to him as the Wizard of the Landes. Cf. "The Life of the Spider", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 1; and "The Life of the Fly": chapter 1.—Translator's Note.); and, while I turned over the pages for the hundredth time, a voice within me seemed to whisper:
'You also shall be of their company!'
Ah, fond illusions, what has come of you? (The present essay is one of the earliest in the "Souvenirs Entomologiques."—Translator's Note.)
But let us banish these recollections, at once sweet and sad, and speak of the doings of our black Bee. Chalicodoma, meaning a house of pebbles, concrete or mortar, would be a most satisfactory title, were it not that it has an odd sound to any one unfamiliar with Greek. The name is given to Bees who build their cells with materials similar to those which we employ for our own dwellings. The work of these insects is masonry; only it is turned out by a rustic mason more used to hard clay than to hewn stone. Reaumur, who knew nothing of scientific classification—a fact which makes many of his papers very difficult to understand—named the worker after her work and called our builders in dried clay Mason-bees, which describes them exactly.
We have two of them in our district: the Chalicodoma of the Walls (Chalicodoma muraria), whose history Reaumur gives us in a masterly fashion; and the Sicilian Chalicodoma (C. sicula) (For reasons that will become apparent after the reader has learnt their habits, the author also speaks of the Mason-bee of the Walls and the Sicilian Mason-bee as the Mason-bee of the Pebbles and the Mason-bee of the Sheds respectively. Cf. Chapter 4 footnote.—Translator's Note.), who is not peculiar to the land of Etna, as her name might suggest, but is also found in Greece, in Algeria and in the south of France, particularly in the department of Vaucluse, where she is one of the commonest Bees to be seen in the month of May. In the first species the two sexes are so unlike in colouring that a novice, surprised at observing them come out of the same nest, would at first take them for strangers to each other. The female is of a splendid velvety black, with dark-violet wings. In the male, the black velvet is replaced by a rather bright brick-red fleece. The second species, which is much smaller, does not show this contrast of colour: the two sexes wear the same costume, a general mixture of brown, red and grey, while the tips of the wings, washed with violet on a bronzed ground, recall, but only faintly, the rich purple of the first species. Both begin their labours at the same period, in the early part of May.
As Reaumur tells us, the Chalicodoma of the Walls in the northern provinces selects a wall directly facing the sun and one not covered with plaster, which might come off and imperil the future of the cells. She confides her buildings only to solid foundations, such as bare stones. I find her equally prudent in the south; but, for some reason which I do not know, she here generally prefers some other base to the stone of a wall. A rounded pebble, often hardly larger than one's fist, one of those cobbles with which the waters of the glacial period covered the terraces of the Rhone Valley, forms the most popular support. The extreme abundance of these sites might easily influence the Bee's choice: all our less elevated uplands, all our arid, thyme-clad grounds are nothing but water-worn stones cemented with red earth. In the valleys, the Chalicodoma has also the pebbles of the mountain-streams at her disposal. Near Orange, for instance, her favourite spots are the alluvia of the Aygues, with their carpets of smooth pebbles no longer visited by the waters. Lastly, if a cobble be wanting, the Mason-bee will establish her nest on any sort of stone, on a mile-stone or a boundary-wall.
The Sicilian Chalicodoma has an even greater variety of choice. Her most cherished site is the lower surface of the projecting tiles of a roof. There is not a cottage in the fields, however small, but shelters her nests under the eaves. Here, each spring, she settles in populous colonies, whose masonry, handed down from one generation to the next and enlarged year by year, ends by covering considerable surfaces. I have seen some of these nests, under the tiles of a shed, spreading over an area of five or six square yards. When the colony was hard at work, the busy, buzzing crowd was enough to make one giddy. The under side of a balcony also pleases the Mason-bee, as does the embrasure of a disused window, especially if it is closed by a blind whose slats allow her a free passage. But these are popular resorts, where hundreds and thousands of workers labour, each for herself. If she be alone, which happens pretty often, the Sicilian Mason-bee instals herself in the first little nook handy, provided that it supplies a solid foundation and warmth. As for the nature of this foundation, she does not seem to mind. I have seen her build on the bare stone, on bricks, on the wood of a shutter and even on the window-panes of a shed. One thing only does not suit her: the plaster of our houses. She is as prudent as her kinswoman and would fear the ruin of her cells, if she entrusted them to a support which might possibly fall.
Lastly, for reasons which I am still unable to explain to my own satisfaction, the Sicilian Mason-bee often changes the position of her building entirely, turning her heavy house of clay, which would seem to require the solid support of a rock, into an aerial dwelling. A hedge-shrub of any kind whatever—hawthorn, pomegranate, Christ's thorn—provides her with a foundation, usually as high as a man's head. The holm-oak and the elm give her a greater altitude. She chooses in the bushy clump a twig no thicker than a straw; and on this narrow base she constructs her edifice with the same mortar that she would employ under a balcony or the ledge of a roof. When finished, the nest is a ball of earth, bisected by the twig. It is the size of an apricot when the work of a single insect and of one's fist if several have collaborated; but this latter case is rare.
Both Bees use the same materials: calcareous clay, mingled with a little sand and kneaded into a paste with the mason's own saliva. Damp places, which would facilitate the quarrying and reduce the expenditure of saliva for mixing the mortar, are scorned by the Mason-bees, who refuse fresh earth for building even as our own builders refuse plaster and lime that have long lost their setting-properties. These materials, when soaked with pure moisture, would not hold properly. What is wanted is a dry dust, which greedily absorbs the disgorged saliva and forms with the latter's albuminous elements a sort of readily-hardening Roman cement, something in short resembling the cement which we obtain with quicklime and white of egg.
The mortar-quarry which the Sicilian Mason-bee prefers to work is a frequented highway, whose metal of chalky flints, crushed by the passing wheels, has become a smooth surface, like a continuous flagstone. Whether settling on a twig in a hedge or fixing her abode under the eaves of some rural dwelling, she always goes for her building-materials to the nearest path or road, without allowing herself to be distracted from her business by the constant traffic of people and cattle. You should see the active Bee at work when the road is dazzling white under the rays of a hot sun. Between the adjoining farm, which is the building-yard, and the road, in which the mortar is prepared, we hear the deep hum of the Bees perpetually crossing one another as they go to and fro. The air seems traversed by incessant trails of smoke, so straight and rapid is the worker's flight. Those on the way to the nest carry tiny pellets of mortar, the size of small shot; those who return at once settle on the driest and hardest spots. Their whole body aquiver, they scrape with the tips of their mandibles and rake with their front tarsi to extract atoms of earth and grains of sand, which, rolled between their teeth, become impregnated with saliva and form a solid mass. The work is pursued so vigorously that the worker lets herself be crushed under the feet of the passers-by rather than abandon her task.
On the other hand, the Mason-bee of the Walls, who seeks solitude, far from human habitations, rarely shows herself on the beaten paths, perhaps because these are too far from the places where she builds. So long as she can find dry earth, rich in small gravel, near the pebble chosen as the site of her nest, that is all she asks.
The Bee may either build an entirely new nest on a site as yet unoccupied, or she may use the cells of an old nest, after repairing them. Let us consider the former case first. After selecting her pebble, the Mason-bee of the Walls arrives with a little ball of mortar in her mandibles and lays it in a circular pad on the surface of the stone. The fore-legs and above all the mandibles, which are the mason's chief tools, work the material, which is kept plastic by the salivary fluid as this is gradually disgorged. In order to consolidate the clay, angular bits of gravel, the size of a lentil, are inserted separately, but only on the outside, in the as yet soft mass. This is the foundation of the structure. Fresh layers follow, until the cell has attained the desired height of two or three centimetres. (Three-quarters of an inch to one inch.—Translator's Note.)
Man's masonry is formed of stones laid one above the other and cemented together with lime. The Chalicodoma's work can bear comparison with ours. To economise labour and mortar, the Bee employs coarse materials, big pieces of gravel, which to her represent hewn stones. She chooses them carefully one by one, picks out the hardest bits, generally with corners which, fitting one into the other, give mutual support and contribute to the solidity of the whole. Layers of mortar, sparingly applied, hold them together. The outside of the cell thus assumes the appearance of a piece of rustic architecture, in which the stones project with their natural irregularities; but the inside, which requires a more even surface in order not to hurt the larva's tender skin, is covered with a coat of pure mortar. This inner whitewash, however, is put on without any attempt at art, indeed one might say that it is ladled on in great splashes; and the grub takes care, after finishing its mess of honey, to make itself a cocoon and hang the rude walls of its abode with silk. On the other hand, the Anthophorae and the Halicti, two species of Wild Bees whose grubs weave no cocoon, delicately glaze the inside of their earthen cells and give them the gloss of polished ivory.
The structure, whose axis is nearly always vertical and whose orifice faces upwards so as not to let the honey escape, varies a little in shape according to the supporting base. When set on a horizontal surface, it rises like a little oval tower; when fixed against an upright or slanting surface, it resembles the half of a thimble divided from top to bottom. In this case, the support itself, the pebble, completes the outer wall.
When the cell is finished, the Bee at once sets to work to victual it. The flowers round about, especially those of the yellow broom (Genista scoparia), which in May deck the pebbly borders of the mountain streams with gold, supply her with sugary liquid and pollen. She comes with her crop swollen with honey and her belly yellowed underneath with pollen dust. She dives head first into the cell; and for a few moments you see some spasmodic jerks which show that she is disgorging the honey-syrup. After emptying her crop, she comes out of the cell, only to go in again at once, but this time backwards. The Bee now brushes the lower side of her abdomen with her two hind-legs and rids herself of her load of pollen. Once more she comes out and once more goes in head first. It is a question of stirring the materials, with her mandibles for a spoon, and making the whole into a homogeneous mixture. This mixing-operation is not repeated after every journey: it takes place only at long intervals, when a considerable quantity of material has been accumulated.
The victualling is complete when the cell is half full. An egg must now be laid on the top of the paste and the house must be closed. All this is done without delay. The cover consists of a lid of pure mortar, which the Bee builds by degrees, working from the circumference to the centre. Two days at most appeared to me to be enough for everything, provided that no bad weather—rain or merely clouds—came to interrupt the labour. Then a second cell is built, backing on the first and provisioned in the same manner. A third, a fourth, and so on follow, each supplied with honey and an egg and closed before the foundations of the next are laid. Each task begun is continued until it is quite finished; the Bee never commences a new cell until the four processes needed for the construction of its predecessor are completed: the building, the victualling, the laying of the egg and the closing of the cell.
As the Mason-bee of the Walls always works by herself on the pebble which she has chosen and even shows herself very jealous of her site when her neighbours alight upon it, the number of cells set back to back upon one pebble is not large, usually varying between six and ten. Do some eight grubs represent the Bee's whole family? Or does she afterwards go and establish a more numerous progeny on other boulders? The surface of the same stone is spacious enough to provide a support for further cells if the number of eggs called for them; the Bee could build there very comfortably, without hunting for another site, without leaving the pebble to which she is attached by habit and long acquaintance. It seems to me therefore, exceedingly probable that the family is a small one and that it is all installed on the one stone, at any rate when the Mason-bee is building a new home.
The six to ten cells composing the cluster are certainly a solid dwelling, with their rustic gravel covering; but the thickness of their walls and lids, two millimetres (.078 inch—Translator's Note.) at most, seems hardly sufficient to protect the grubs against the inclemencies of the weather. Set on its pebble in the open air, without any sort of shelter, the nest will have to undergo the heat of summer, which will turn each cell into a stifling furnace, followed by the autumn rains, which will slowly wear away the stonework, and by the winter frosts, which will crumble what the rains have respected. However hard the cement may be, can it possibly resist all these agents of destruction? And, even if it does resist, will not the grubs, sheltered by too thin a wall, have to suffer from excess of heat in summer and of cold in winter?
Without arguing all this out, the Bee nevertheless acts wisely. When all the cells are finished, she builds a thick cover over the group, formed of a material, impermeable to water and a bad conductor of heat, which acts as a protection at the same time against damp, heat and cold. This material is the usual mortar, made of earth mixed with saliva, but on this occasion with no small stones in it. The Bee applies it pellet by pellet, trowelful by trowelful, to the depth of a centimetre (.39 inch—Translator's Note.) over the cluster of cells, which disappear entirely under the clay covering. When this is done, the nest has the shape of a rough dome, equal in size to half an orange. One would take it for a round lump of mud which had been thrown and half crushed against a stone and had then dried where it was. Nothing outside betrays the contents, no semblance of cells, no semblance of work. To the inexperienced eye, it is a chance splash of mud and nothing more.
This outer covering dries as quickly as do our hydraulic cements; and the nest is now almost as hard as a stone. It takes a knife with a strong blade to break open the edifice. And I would add, in conclusion, that, under its final form, the nest in no way recalls the original work, so much so that one would imagine the cells of the start, those elegant turrets covered with stucco-work, and the dome of the finish, looking like a mere lump of mud, to be the product of two different species. But scrape away the crust of cement and we shall easily recognize the cells below and their layers of tiny pebbles.
Instead of building a brand-new nest, on a hitherto unoccupied boulder, the Mason-bee of the Walls is always glad to make use of the old nests which have lasted through the year without suffering any damage worth mentioning. The mortar dome has remained very much what it was at the beginning, thanks to the solidity of the masonry, only it is perforated with a number of round holes, corresponding with the chambers, the cells inhabited by past generations of larvae. Dwellings such as these, which need only a little repair to put them in good condition, save a great deal of time and trouble; and the Mason-bees look out for them and do not decide to build new nests except when the old ones are wanting.
From one and the same dome there issue several inhabitants, brothers and sisters, ruddy males and black females, all the offspring of the same Bee. The males lead a careless existence, know nothing of work and do not return to the clay houses except for a brief moment to woo the ladies; nor do they reck of the deserted cabin. What they want is the nectar in the flower-cups, not mortar to mix between their mandibles. There remain the young mothers, who alone are charged with the future of the family. To which of them will the inheritance of the old nest revert? As sisters, they have equal rights to it: so our code would decide, since the day when it shook itself free of the old savage right of primogeniture. But the Mason-bees have not yet got beyond the primitive basis of property, the right of the first occupant.
When, therefore, the laying-time is at hand, the Bee takes possession of the first vacant nest that suits her and settles there; and woe to any sister or neighbour who shall henceforth dare to contest her ownership. Hot pursuits and fierce blows will soon put the newcomer to flight. Of the various cells that yawn like so many wells around the dome, only one is needed at the moment; but the Bee rightly calculates that the others will be useful presently for the other eggs; and she watches them all with jealous vigilance to drive away possible visitors. Indeed I do not remember ever seeing two Masons working on the same pebble.
The task is now very simple. The Bee examines the old cell to see what parts require repairing. She tears off the strips of cocoon hanging from the walls, removes the fragments of clay that fell from the ceiling when pierced by the last inhabitant to make her exit, gives a coat of mortar to the dilapidated parts, mends the opening a little; and that is all. Next come the storing, the laying of the eggs and the closing of the chamber. When all the cells, one after the other, are thus furnished, the outer cover, the mortar dome, receives a few repairs if it needs them; and the thing is done.
The Sicilian Mason-bee prefers company to a solitary life and establishes herself in her hundreds, very often in many thousands, under the tiles of a shed or the edge of a roof. These do not constitute a true society, with common interests to which all attend, but a mere gathering, where each works for herself and is not concerned with the rest, in short, a throng of workers recalling the swarm of a hive only by their numbers and their eagerness. The mortar employed is the same as that of the Mason-bee of the Walls, equally unyielding and waterproof, but thinner and without pebbles. The old nests are used first. Every free chamber is repaired, stocked and sealed up. But the old cells are far from sufficient for the population, which increases rapidly from year to year. Then, on the surface of the nest, whose chambers are hidden under the old general mortar covering, new cells are built, as the needs of the laying-time call for them. They are placed horizontally, or nearly so, side by side, with no attempt at orderly arrangement. Each architect has plenty of elbow-room and builds as and where she pleases, on the one condition that she does not hamper her neighbours' work; otherwise she can look out for rough handling from the parties interested. The cells, therefore, accumulate at random in this workyard where there is no organization. Their shape is that of a thimble divided down the middle; and their walls are completed either by the adjoining cells or by the surface of the old nest. Outside, they are rough and display successive layers of knotted cords corresponding with the different courses of mortar. Inside, the walls are flat without being smooth; later on, the grub's cocoon will make up for any lack of polish.
Each cell, as built, is stocked and walled up immediately, as we have seen with the Mason-bee of the Walls. This work goes on throughout the best part of May. All the eggs are laid at last; and then the Bees, without drawing distinctions between what does and what does not belong to them, set to work in common on a general protection for the colony. This is a thick coat of mortar, which fills up the gaps and covers all the cells. In the end, the common nest presents the appearance of a wide expanse of dry mud, with very irregular protuberances, thicker in the middle, the original nucleus of the establishment, thinner at the edges, where as yet there are only newly built cells, and varying greatly in dimensions according to the number of workers and therefore to the age of the nest first founded. Some of these nests are hardly larger than one's hand, while others occupy the greater part of the projecting edge of a roof and are measured by square yards.
When working alone, which is not unusual, on the shutter of a disused window, on a stone, or on a twig in some hedge, the Sicilian Chalicodoma behaves in just the same way. For instance, should she settle on a twig, the Bee begins by solidly cementing the base of her cell to the slight foundation. Next, the building rises, taking the form of a little upright turret. This first cell, when victualled and sealed, is followed by another, having as its support, in addition to the twig, the cells already built. From six to ten chambers are thus grouped side by side. Lastly, one coat of mortar covers everything, including the twig itself, which provides a firm mainstay for the whole.
CHAPTER 2. EXPERIMENTS.
As the nests of the Mason-bee of the Walls are erected on small-sized pebbles, which can be easily carried wherever you like and moved about from one place to another, without disturbing either the work of the builder or the repose of the occupants of the cells, they lend themselves readily to practical experiment, the only method that can throw a little light on the nature of instinct. To study the insect's mental faculties to any purpose, it is not enough for the observer to be able to profit by some happy combination of circumstances: he must know how to produce other combinations, vary them as much as possible and test them by substitution and interchange. Lastly, to provide science with a solid basis of facts, he must experiment. In this way, the evidence of formal records will one day dispel the fantastic legends with which our books are crowded: the Sacred Beetle (A Dung-beetle who rolls the manure of cattle into balls for his own consumption and that of his young. Cf. "Insect Life", by J.H. Fabre, translated by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori": chapters 1 and 2; and "The Life and Love of the Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 1 to 4.—Translator's Note.) calling on his comrades to lend a helping hand in dragging his pellet out of a rut; the Sphex (A species of Hunting Wasp. Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 6 to 12.—Translator's Note.) cutting up her Fly so as to be able to carry him despite the obstacle of the wind; and all the other fallacies which are the stock-in-trade of those who wish to see in the animal world what is not really there. In this way, again, materials will be prepared which will one day be worked up by the hand of a master and consign hasty and unfounded theories to oblivion.
Reaumur, as a rule, confines himself to stating facts as he sees them in the normal course of events and does not try to probe deeper into the insect's ingenuity by means of artificially produced conditions. In his time, everything had yet to be done; and the harvest was so great that the illustrious harvester went straight to what was most urgent, the gathering of the crop, and left his successors to examine the grain and the ear in detail. Nevertheless, in connection with the Chalicodoma of the Walls, he mentions an experiment made by his friend, Duhamel. (Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1781), a distinguished writer on botany and agriculture.—Translator's Note.) He tells us how a Mason-bee's nest was enclosed in a glass funnel, the mouth of which was covered merely with a bit of gauze. From it there issued three males, who, after vanquishing mortar as hard as stone, either never thought of piercing the flimsy gauze or else deemed the work beyond their strength. The three Bees died under the funnel. Reaumur adds that insects generally know only how to do what they have to do in the ordinary course of nature.
The experiment does not satisfy me, for two reasons: first, to ask workers equipped with tools for cutting clay as hard as granite to cut a piece of gauze does not strike me as a happy inspiration; you cannot expect a navvy's pick-axe to do the same work as a dressmaker's scissors. Secondly, the transparent glass prison seems to me ill-chosen. As soon as the insect has made a passage through the thickness of its earthen dome, it finds itself in broad daylight; and to it daylight means the final deliverance, means liberty. It strikes against an invisible obstacle, the glass; and to it glass is nothing at all and yet an obstruction. On the far side, it sees free space, bathed in sunshine. It wears itself out in efforts to fly there, unable to understand the futile nature of its attempts against that strange barrier which it cannot see. It perishes, at last, of exhaustion, without, in its obstinacy, giving a glance at the gauze closing the conical chimney. The experiment must be renewed under better conditions.
The obstacle which I select is ordinary brown paper, stout enough to keep the insect in the dark and thin enough not to offer serious resistance to the prisoner's efforts. As there is a great difference, in so far as the actual nature of the barrier is concerned, between a paper partition and a clay ceiling, let us begin by enquiring if the Mason-bee of the Walls knows how or rather is able to make her way through one of these partitions. The mandibles are pickaxes suitable for breaking through hard mortar: are they also scissors capable of cutting a thin membrane? This is the point to look into first of all.
In February, by which time the insect is in its perfect state, I take a certain number of cocoons, without damaging them, from their cells and insert them each in a separate stump of reed, closed at one end by the natural wall of the node and open at the other. These pieces of reed represent the cells of the nest. The cocoons are introduced with the insect's head turned towards the opening. Lastly, my artificial cells are closed in different ways. Some receive a stopper of kneaded clay, which, when dry, will correspond in thickness and consistency with the mortar ceiling of the natural nest. Others are plugged with a cylinder of sorghum, at least a centimetre (.39 inch—Translator's Note.) thick; and the remainder with a disk of brown paper solidly fastened by the edge. All these bits of reed are placed side by side in a box, standing upright, with the roof of my making at the top. The insects, therefore, are in the exact position which they occupied in the nest. To open a passage, they must do what they would have done without my interference, they must break through the wall situated above their heads. I shelter the whole under a wide bell-glass and wait for the month of May, the period of the deliverance.
The results far exceed my anticipations. The clay stopper, the work of my fingers, is perforated with a round hole, differing in no wise from that which the Mason-bee contrives through her native mortar dome. The vegetable barrier, new to my prisoners, namely, the sorghum cylinder, also opens with a neat orifice, which might have been the work of a punch. Lastly, the brown-paper cover allows the Bee to make her exit not by bursting through, by making a violent rent, but once more by a clearly defined round hole. My Bees therefore are capable of a task for which they were not born; to come out of their reed cells they do what probably none of their race did before them; they perforate the wall of sorghum-pith, they make a hole in the paper barrier, just as they would have pierced their natural clay ceiling. When the moment comes to free themselves, the nature of the impediment does not stop them, provided that it be not beyond their strength; and henceforth the argument of incapacity cannot be raised when a mere paper barrier is in question.
In addition to the cells made out of bits of reed, I put under the bell-glass, at the same time, two nests which are intact and still resting on their pebbles. To one of them I have attached a sheet of brown paper pressed close against the mortar dome. In order to come out, the insect will have to pierce first the dome and then the paper, which follows without any intervening space. Over the other, I have placed a little brown paper cone, gummed to the pebble. There is here, therefore, as in the first case, a double wall—a clay partition and a paper partition—with this difference, that the two walls do not come immediately after each other, but are separated by an empty space of about a centimetre at the bottom, increasing as the cone rises.
The results of these two experiments are quite different. The Bees in the nest to which a sheet of paper was tightly stuck come out by piercing the two enclosures, of which the outer wall, the paper wrapper, is perforated with a very clean round hole, as we have already seen in the reed cells closed with a lid of the same material. We thus become aware, for the second time, that, when the Mason-bee is stopped by a paper barrier, the reason is not her incapacity to overcome the obstacle. On the other hand, the occupants of the nest covered with the cone, after making their way through the earthen dome, finding the sheet of paper at some distance, do not even try to perforate this obstacle, which they would have conquered so easily had it been fastened to the nest. They die under the cover without making any attempt to escape. Even so did Reaumur's Bees perish in the glass funnel, where their liberty depended only upon their cutting through a bit of gauze.
This fact strikes me as rich in inferences. What! Here are sturdy insects, to whom boring through granite is mere play, to whom a stopper of soft wood and a paper partition are walls quite easy to perforate despite the novelty of the material; and yet these vigorous housebreakers allow themselves to perish stupidly in the prison of a paper bag, which they could have torn open with one stroke of their mandibles! They are capable of tearing it, but they do not dream of doing so! There can be only one explanation of this suicidal inaction. The insect is well-endowed with tools and instinctive faculties for accomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act of emerging from the cocoon and from the cell. Its mandibles provide it with scissors, file, pick-axe and lever wherewith to cut, gnaw through and demolish either its cocoon and its mortar enclosure or any other not too obstinate barrier substituted for the natural covering of the nest. Moreover—and this is an important proviso, except for which the outfit would be useless—it has, I will not say the will to use those tools, but a secret stimulus inviting it to employ them. When the hour for the emergence arrives, this stimulus is aroused and the insect sets to work to bore a passage. It little cares in this case whether the material to be pierced be the natural mortar, sorghum-pith, or paper: the lid that holds it imprisoned does not resist for long. Nor even does it care if the obstacle be increased in thickness and a paper wall be added outside the wall of clay: the two barriers, with no interval between them, form but one to the Bee, who passes through them because the act of getting out is still one act and one only. With the paper cone, whose wall is a little way off, the conditions are changed, though the total thickness of wall is really the same. Once outside its earthen abode, the insect has done all that it was destined to do in order to release itself; to move freely on the mortar dome represents to it the end of the release, the end of the act of boring. Around the nest a new barrier appears, the wall made by the paper bag; but, in order to pierce this, the insect would have to repeat the act which it has just accomplished, the act which it is not intended to perform more than once in its life; it would, in short, have to make into a double act that which by nature is a single one; and the insect cannot do this, for the sole reason that it has not the wish to. The Mason-bee perishes for lack of the smallest gleam of intelligence. And this is the singular intellect in which it is the fashion nowadays to see a germ of human reason! The fashion will pass and the facts remain, bringing us back to the good old notions of the soul and its immortal destinies.
Reaumur tells us how his friend Duhamel, having seized a Mason-bee with a forceps when she had half entered the cell, head foremost, to fill it with pollen-paste, carried her to a closet at some distance from the spot where he captured her. The Bee got away from him in this closet and flew out through the window. Duhamel made straight for the nest. The Mason arrived almost as soon as he did and renewed her work. She only seemed a little wilder, says the narrator, in conclusion.
Why were you not here with me, revered master, on the banks of the Aygues, which is a vast expanse of pebbles for three-fourths of the year and a mighty torrent when it rains? I should have shown you something infinitely better than the fugitive escaping from the forceps. You would have witnessed—and in so doing, would have shared my surprise—not the brief flight of the Mason who, carried to the nearest room, releases herself and forthwith returns to her nest in that familiar neighbourhood, but long journeys through unknown country. You would have seen the Bee whom I carried to a great distance from her home, to quite unfamiliar ground, find her way back with a geographical sense of which the Swallow, the Martin and the Carrier-pigeon would not have been ashamed; and you would have asked yourself, as I did, what incomprehensible knowledge of the local map guides that mother seeking her nest.
To come to facts: it is a matter of repeating with the Mason-bee of the Walls my former experiments with the Cerceris-wasps (Cf. "Insect Life": chapter 19.—Translator's Note.), of carrying the insect, in the dark, a long way from its nest, marking it and then leaving it to its own resources. In case any one should wish to try the experiment for himself, I make him a present of my manner of operation, which may save him time at the outset. The insect intended for a long journey must obviously be handled with certain precautions. There must be no forceps employed, no pincers, which might maim a wing, strain it and weaken the power of flight. While the Bee is in her cell, absorbed in her work, I place a small glass test-tube over it. The Mason, when she flies away, rushes into the tube, which enables me, without touching her, to transfer her at once into a screw of paper. This I quickly close. A tin box, an ordinary botanizing-case, serves to convey the prisoners, each in her separate paper bag.
The most delicate business, that of marking each captive before setting her free, is left to be done on the spot selected for the starting-point. I use finely-powdered chalk, steeped in a strong solution of gum arabic. The mixture, applied to some part of the insect with a straw, leaves a white patch, which soon dries and adheres to the fleece. When a particular Mason-bee has to be marked so as to distinguish her from another in short experiments, such as I shall describe presently, I confine myself to touching the tip of the abdomen with my straw while the insect is half in the cell, head downwards. The slight touch is not noticed by the Bee, who continues her work quite undisturbed; but the mark is not very deep and moreover it is in a rather bad place for any prolonged experiment, for the Bee is constantly brushing her belly to detach the pollen and is sure to rub it off sooner or later. I therefore make another one, dropping the sticky chalk right in the middle of the thorax, between the wings.
It is hardly possible to wear gloves at this work: the fingers need all their deftness to take up the restless Bee delicately and to overpower her without rough pressure. It is easily seen that, though the job may yield no other profit, you are at least sure of being stung. The sting can be avoided with a little dexterity, but not always. You have to put up with it. In any case, the Mason-bee's sting is far less painful than that of the Hive-bee. The white spot is dropped on the thorax; the Mason flies off; and the mark dries on the journey.
I start with two Mason-bees of the Walls working at their nests on the pebbles in the alluvia of the Aygues, not far from Serignan. I carry them home with me to Orange, where I release them after marking them. According to the ordnance-survey map, the distance is about two and a half miles as the crow flies. The captives are set at liberty in the evening, at a time when the Bees begin to leave off work for the day. It is therefore probable that my two Bees will spend their night in the neighbourhood.
Next morning, I go to the nests. The weather is still too cool and the works are suspended. When the dew has gone, the Masons begin work. I see one, but without a white spot, bringing pollen to one of the nests which had been occupied by the travellers whom I am expecting. She is a stranger who, finding the cell whose owner I myself had exiled untenanted, has installed herself there and made it her property, not knowing that it is already the property of another. She has perhaps been victualling it since yesterday evening. Close upon ten o'clock, when the heat is at its full, the mistress of the house suddenly arrives: her title-deeds as the original occupant are inscribed for me in undeniable characters on her thorax white with chalk. Here is one of my travellers back.
Over waving corn, over fields all pink with sainfoin, she has covered the two miles and a half; and here she is, back at the nest, after foraging on the way, for the doughty creature arrives with her abdomen yellow with pollen. To come home again from the verge of the horizon is wonderful in itself; to come home with a well-filled pollen-brush is superlative economy. A journey, even a forced journey, always becomes a foraging-expedition.
She finds the stranger in the nest:
'What's this? I'll teach you!'
And the owner falls furiously upon the intruder, who possibly was meaning no harm. A hot chase in mid-air now takes place between the two Masons. From time to time, they hover almost without movement, face to face, with only a couple of inches separating them, and here, doubtless measuring forces with their eyes, they buzz insults at each other. Then they go back and alight on the nest in dispute, first one, then the other. I expect to see them come to blows, to make them draw their stings. But my hopes are disappointed: the duties of maternity speak in too imperious a voice for them to risk their lives and wipe out the insult in a mortal duel. The whole thing is confined to hostile demonstrations and a few insignificant cuffs.
Nevertheless, the real proprietress seems to derive double courage and double strength from the feeling that she is in her rights. She takes up a permanent position on the nest and receives the other, each time that she ventures to approach, with an angry quiver of her wings, an unmistakable sign of her righteous indignation. The stranger, at last discouraged, retires from the field. Forthwith the Mason resumes her work, as actively as though she had not just undergone the hardships of a long journey.
One more word on these quarrels about property. It is not unusual, when one Mason-bee is away on an expedition, for another, some homeless vagabond, to call at the nest, take a fancy to it and set to work on it, sometimes at the same cell, sometimes at the next, if there are several vacant, which is generally the case in the old nests. The first occupier, on her return, never fails to drive away the intruder, who always ends by being turned out, so keen and invincible is the mistress' sense of ownership. Reversing the savage Prussian maxim, 'Might is right,' among the Mason-bees right is might, for there is no other explanation of the invariable retreat of the usurper, whose strength is not a whit inferior to that of the real owner. If she is less bold, this is because she has not the tremendous moral support of knowing herself in the right, which makes itself respected, among equals, even in the brute creation.
The second of my travellers does not reappear, either on the day when the first arrived or on the following days. I decide upon another experiment, on this occasion with five subjects. The starting-place is the same; and the place of arrival, the distance, the time of day, all remain unchanged. Of the five with whom I experiment, I find three at their nests next day; the two others are missing.
It is therefore fully established that the Mason-bee of the Walls, carried to a distance of two and a half miles and released at a place which she has certainly never seen before, is able to return to the nest. But why do first one out of two and then two out of five fail to join their fellows? What one can do cannot another do? Is there a difference in the faculty that guides them over unknown ground? Or is it not rather a difference in flying-power? I remember that my Bees did not all start off with the same vigour. Some were hardly out of my fingers before they darted furiously into the air, where I at once lost sight of them, whereas the others came dropping down a few yards away from me, after a short flight. The latter, it seems certain, must have suffered on the journey, perhaps from the heat concentrated in the furnace of my box. Or I may have hurt the articulation of the wings in marking them, an operation difficult to perform when you are guarding against stings. These are maimed, feeble creatures, who will linger in the sainfoin-fields close by, and not the powerful aviators required by the journey.
The experiment must be tried again, taking count only of the Bees who start off straight from between my fingers with a clean, vigorous flight. The waverers, the laggards who stop almost at once on some bush shall be left out of the reckoning. Moreover, I will do my best to estimate the time taken in returning to the nest. For an experiment of this kind, I need plenty of subjects, as the weak and the maimed, of whom there may be many, are to be disregarded. The Mason-bee of the Walls is unable to supply me with the requisite number: there are not enough of her; and I am anxious not to interfere too much with the little Aygues-side colony, for whom I have other experiments in view. Fortunately, I have at my own place, under the eaves of a shed, a magnificent nest of Chalicodoma sicula in full activity. I can draw to whatever extent I please on the populous city. The insect is small, less than half the size of C. muraria, but no matter: it will deserve all the more credit if it can traverse the two miles and a half in store for it and find its way back to the nest. I take forty Bees, isolating them, as usual, in screws of paper.
In order to reach the nest, I place a ladder against the wall: it will be used by my daughter Aglae and will enable her to mark the exact moment of the return of the first Bee. I set the clock on the mantelpiece and my watch at the same time, so that we may compare the instant of departure and of arrival. Things being thus arranged, I carry off my forty captives and go to the identical spot where C. muraria works, in the pebbly bed of the Aygues. The trip will have a double object: to observe Reaumur's Mason and to set the Sicilian Mason at liberty. The latter, therefore, will also have two and a half miles to travel home.
At last my prisoners are released, all of them being first marked with a big white dot in the middle of the thorax.
You do not come off scot-free when handling one after the other forty wrathful Bees, who promptly unsheathe and brandish their poisoned stings. The stab is but too often given before the mark is made. My smarting fingers make movements of self-defence which my will is not always able to control. I take hold with greater precaution for myself than for the insect; I sometimes squeeze harder than I ought to if I am to spare my travellers. To experiment so as to lift, if possible, a tiny corner of the veil of truth is a fine and noble thing, a mighty stimulant in the face of danger; but still one may be excused for displaying some impatience when it is a matter of receiving forty stings in one's fingers at one short sitting. If any man should reproach me for being too careless with my thumbs, I would suggest that he should have a try: he can then judge for himself the pleasures of the situation.
To cut a long story short, either through the fatigue of the journey, or through my fingers pressing too hard and perhaps injuring some articulations, only twenty out of my forty Bees start with a bold, vigorous flight. The others, unable to keep their balance, wander about on the nearest bit of grass or remain on the osier-shoots on which I have placed them, refusing to fly even when I tickle them with a straw. These weaklings, these cripples, these incapables injured by my fingers must be struck off my list. Those who started with an unhesitating flight number about twenty. That is ample.
At the actual moment of departure, there is nothing definite about the direction taken, none of that straight flight to the nest which the Cerceris-wasps once showed me in similar circumstances. As soon as they are liberated, the Mason-bees flee as though scared, some in one direction, some in exactly the opposite direction. Nevertheless, as far as their impetuous flight allows, I seem to perceive a quick return on the part of those Bees who have started flying towards a point opposite to their home; and the majority appear to me to be making for those blue distances where their nest lies. I leave this question with certain doubts which are inevitable in the case of insects which I cannot follow with my eyes for more than twenty yards.
Hitherto, the operation has been favoured by calm weather; but now things become complicated. The heat is stifling and the sky becomes stormy. A stiff breeze springs up, blowing from the south, the very direction which my Bees must take to return to the nest. Can they overcome this opposing current and cleave the aerial torrent with their wings? If they try, they will have to fly close to the ground, as I now see the Bees do who continue their foraging; but soaring to lofty regions, whence they can obtain a clear view of the country, is, so it seems to me, prohibited. I am therefore very apprehensive as to the success of my experiment when I return to Orange, after first trying to steal some fresh secret from the Aygues Mason-bee of the Pebbles.
I have scarcely reached the house before Aglae greets me, her cheeks flushed with excitement:
'Two!' she cries. 'Two came back at twenty minutes to three, with a load of pollen under their bellies!'
A friend of mine had appeared upon the scene, a grave man of the law, who on hearing what was happening, had neglected code and stamped paper and insisted upon also being present at the arrival of my Carrier-pigeons. The result interested him more than his case about a party-wall. Under a tropical sun, in a furnace heat reflected from the wall of the shed, every five minutes he climbed the ladder bare-headed, with no other protection against sunstroke than his thatch of thick, grey locks. Instead of the one observer whom I had posted, I found two good pairs of eyes watching the Bees' return.
I had released my insects at about two o'clock; and the first arrivals returned to the nest at twenty minutes to three. They had therefore taken less than three-quarters of an hour to cover the two miles and a half, a very striking result, especially when we remember that the Bees did some foraging on the road, as was proved by the yellow pollen on their bellies, and that, on the other hand, the travellers' flight must have been hindered by the wind blowing against them. Three more came home before my eyes, each with her load of pollen, an outward and visible sign of the work done on the journey. As it was growing late, our observations had to cease. When the sun goes down, the Mason-bees leave the nest and take refuge somewhere or other, perhaps under the tiles of the roofs, or in little corners of the walls. I could not reckon on the arrival of the others before work was resumed, in the full sunshine.
Next day, when the sun recalled the scattered workers to the nest, I took a fresh census of Bees with a white spot on the thorax. My success exceeded all my hopes: I counted fifteen, fifteen of the transported prisoners of the day before, storing their cells or building as though nothing out of the way had happened. The weather had become more and more threatening; and now the storm burst and was followed by a succession of rainy days which prevented me from continuing.
The experiment suffices as it stands. Of some twenty Bees who had seemed fit to make the long journey when I released them, fifteen at least had returned: two within the first hour, three in the course of the evening and the rest next morning. They had returned in spite of having the wind against them and—a graver difficulty still—in spite of being unacquainted with the locality to which I had transported them. There is, in fact, no doubt that they were setting eyes for the first time on those osier-beds of the Aygues which I had selected as the starting-point. Never would they have travelled so far afield of their own accord, for everything that they want for building and victualling under the roof of my shed is within easy reach. The path at the foot of the wall supplies the mortar; the flowery meadows surrounding my house furnish nectar and pollen. Economical of their time as they are, they do not go flying two miles and a half in search of what abounds at a few yards from the nest. Besides, I see them daily taking their building-materials from the path and gathering their harvest on the wild-flowers, especially on the meadow sage. To all appearance, their expeditions do not cover more than a radius of a hundred yards or so. Then how did my exiles return? What guided them? It was certainly not memory, but some special faculty which we must content ourselves with recognizing by its astonishing effects without pretending to explain it, so greatly does it transcend our own psychology.
CHAPTER 3. EXCHANGING THE NESTS.
Let us continue our series of tests with the Mason-bee of the Walls. Thanks to its position on a pebble which we can move at will, the nest of this Bee lends itself to most interesting experiments. Here is the first: I shift a nest from its place, that is to say, I carry the pebble which serves as its support to a spot two yards away. As the edifice and its base form but one, the removal is performed without the smallest disturbance of the cells. I lay the boulder in an exposed place where it is well in view, as it was on its original site. The Bee returning from her harvest cannot fail to see it.
In a few minutes, the owner arrives and goes straight to where the nest stood. She hovers gracefully over the vacant site, examines and alights upon the exact spot where the stone used to lie. Here she walks about for a long time, making persistent searches; then the Bee takes wing and flies away to some distance. Her absence is of short duration. Here she is back again. The search is resumed, walking and flying, and always on the site which the nest occupied at first. A fresh fit of exasperation, that is to say, an abrupt flight across the osier-bed, is followed by a fresh return and a renewal of the vain search, always upon the mark left by the shifted pebble. These sudden departures, these prompt returns, these persevering inspections of the deserted spot continue for a long time, a very long time, before the Mason is convinced that her nest is gone. She has certainly seen it, has seen it over and over again in its new position, for sometimes she has flown only a few inches above it; but she takes no notice of it. To her, it is not her nest, but the property of another Bee.
Often the experiment ends without so much as a single visit to the boulder which I have moved two or three yards away: the Bee goes off and does not return. If the distance be less, a yard for instance, the Mason sooner or later alights on the stone which supports her abode. She inspects the cell which she was building or provisioning a little while before, repeatedly dips her head into it, examines the surface of the pebble step by step and, after long hesitations, goes and resumes her search on the site where the home ought to be. The nest that is no longer in its natural place is definitely abandoned, even though it be but a yard away from the original spot. Vainly does the Bee settle on it time after time: she cannot recognize it as hers. I was convinced of this on finding it, several days after the experiment, in just the same condition as when I moved it. The open cell half-filled with honey was still open and was surrendering its contents to the pillaging Ants; the cell that was building had remained unfinished, with not a single layer added to it. The Bee, obviously, may have returned to it; but she had not resumed work upon it. The transplanted dwelling was abandoned for good and all.
I will not deduce the strange paradox that the Mason-bee, though capable of finding her nest from the verge of the horizon, is incapable of finding it at a yard's distance: I interpret the occurrence as meaning something quite different. The proper inference appears to me to be this: the Bee retains a rooted impression of the site occupied by the nest and returns to it with unwearying persistence even when the nest is gone. But she has only a very vague notion of the nest itself. She does not recognize the masonry which she herself has erected and kneaded with her saliva; she does not know the pollen-paste which she herself has stored. In vain she inspects her cell, her own handiwork; she abandons it, refusing to acknowledge it as hers, once the spot whereon the pebble rests is changed.
Insect memory, it must be confessed, is a strange one, displaying such lucidity in its general acquaintance with locality and such limitations in its knowledge of the dwelling. I feel inclined to call it topographical instinct: it grasps the map of the country and not the beloved nest, the home itself. The Bembex-wasps (Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 16 to 19.—Translator's Note.) have already led us to a like conclusion. When the nest is laid open, these Wasps become wholly indifferent to the family, to the grub writhing in agony in the sun. They do not recognize it. What they do recognize, what they seek and find with marvellous precision, is the site of the entrance-door of which nothing at all is left, not even the threshold.
If any doubts remained as to the incapacity of the Mason-bee of the Walls to know her nest other than by the place which the pebble occupies on the ground, here is something to remove them: for the nest of one Mason-bee, I substitute that of another, resembling it as closely as possible in respect to both masonry and storage. This exchange and those of which I shall speak presently are of course made in the owner's absence. The Bee settles without hesitation in this nest which is not hers, but which stands where the other did. If she was building, I offer her a cell in process of building. She continues the masonry with the same care and the same zeal as if the work already done were her own work. If she was fetching honey and pollen, I offer her a partly-provisioned cell. She continues her journeys, with honey in her crop and pollen under her belly, to finish filling another's warehouse. The Bee, therefore, does not suspect the exchange; she does not distinguish between what is her property and what is not; she imagines that she is still working at the cell which is really hers.
After leaving her for a time in possession of the strange nest, I give her back her own. This fresh change passes unperceived by the Bee: the work is continued in the cell restored to her at the point which it had reached in the substituted cell. I once more replace it by the strange nest; and again the insect persists in continuing its labour. By thus constantly interchanging the strange nest and the proper nest, without altering the actual site, I thoroughly convinced myself of the Bee's inability to discriminate between what is her work and what is not. Whether the cell belong to her or to another, she labours at it with equal zest, so long as the basis of the edifice, the pebble, continues to occupy its original position.
The experiment receives an added interest if we employ two neighbouring nests the work on which is about equally advanced. I move each to where the other stood. They are not much more than thirty inches a part. In spite of their being so near to each other that it is quite possible for the insects to see both homes at once and choose between them, each Bee, on arriving, settles immediately on the substituted nest and continues her work there. Change the two nests as often as you please and you shall see the two Mason-bees keep to the site which they selected and labour in turn now at their own cell and now at the other's.
One might think that the cause of this confusion lies in a close resemblance between the two nests, for at the start, little expecting the results which I was to obtain, I used to choose the nests which I interchanged as much alike as possible, for fear of disheartening the Bees. I need not have taken this precaution: I was giving the insect credit for a perspicacity which it does not possess. Indeed, I now take two nests which are extremely unlike each other, the only point of resemblance being that, in each case, the toiler finds a cell in which she can continue the work which she is actually doing. The first is an old nest whose dome is perforated with eight holes, the apertures of the cells of the previous generation. One of these cells has been repaired; and the Bee is busy storing it. The second is a nest of recent construction, which has not received its mortar dome and consists of a single cell with its stucco covering. Here too the insect is busy hoarding pollen-paste. No two nests could present greater differences: one with its eight empty chambers and its spreading clay dome; the other with its single bare cell, at most the size of an acorn.
Well, the two Mason-bees do not hesitate long in front of these exchanged nests, not three feet away from each other. Each makes for the site of her late home. One, the original owner of the old nest, finds nothing but a solitary cell. She rapidly inspects the pebble and, without further formalities, first plunges her head into the strange cell, to disgorge honey, and then her abdomen, to deposit pollen. And this is not an action due to the imperative need of ridding herself as quickly as possible, no matter where, of an irksome load, for the Bee flies off and soon comes back again with a fresh supply of provender, which she stores away carefully. This carrying of provisions to another's larder is repeated as often as I permit it. The other Bee, finding instead of her one cell a roomy structure consisting of eight apartments, is at first not a little embarrassed. Which of the eight cells is the right one? In which is the heap of paste on which she had begun? The Bee therefore visits the chambers one by one, dives right down to the bottom and ends by finding what she seeks, that is to say, what was in her nest when she started on her last journey, the nucleus of a store of food. Thenceforward she behaves like her neighbour and goes on carrying honey and pollen to the warehouse which is not of her constructing.
Restore the nests to their original places, exchange them yet once again and both Bees, after a short hesitation which the great difference between the two nests is enough to explain, will pursue the work in the cell of her own making and in the strange cell alternately. At last the egg is laid and the sanctuary closed, no matter what nest happens to be occupied at the moment when the provisioning reaches completion. These incidents are sufficient to show why I hesitate to give the name of memory to the singular faculty that brings the insect back to her nest with such unerring precision and yet does not allow her to distinguish her work from some one else's, however great the difference may be.
We will now experiment with Chalicodoma muraria from another psychological point of view. Here is a Mason-bee building; she is at work on the first course of her cell. I give her in exchange a cell not only finished as a structure, but also filled nearly to the top with honey. I have just stolen it from its owner, who would not have been long before laying her egg in it. What will the Mason do in the presence of this munificent gift, which saves her the trouble of building and harvesting? She will leave the mortar no doubt, finish storing the Bee-bread, lay her egg and seal up. A mistake, an utter mistake: our logic is not the logic of the insect, which obeys an inevitable, unconscious prompting. It has no choice as to what it shall do; it cannot discriminate between what is and what is not advisable; it glides, as it were, down an irresistible slope prepared beforehand to bring it to a definite end. This is what the facts that still remain to be stated proclaim with no uncertain voice.
The Bee who was building and to whom I offer a cell ready-built and full of honey does not lay aside her mortar for that. She was doing mason's work; and, once on that tack, guided by the unconscious impulse, she has to keep masoning, even though her labour be useless, superfluous and opposed to her interests. The cell which I give her is certainly perfect, looked upon as a building, in the opinion of the master-builder herself, since the Bee from whom I took it was completing the provision of honey. To touch it up, especially to add to it, is useless and, what is more, absurd. No matter: the Bee who was masoning will mason. On the aperture of the honey-store she lays a first course of mortar, followed by another and yet another, until at last the cell is a third taller then the regulation height. The masonry-task is now done, not as perfectly, it is true, as if the Bee had gone on with the cell whose foundations she was laying at the moment when I exchanged the nests, but still to an extent which is more than enough to prove the overpowering impulse which the builder obeys. Next comes the victualling, which is also cut short, lest the honey-store swelled by the joint contributions of the two Bees should overflow. Thus the Mason-bee who is beginning to build and to whom we give a complete cell, a cell filled with honey, makes no change in the order of her work: she builds first and then victuals. Only she shortens her work, her instinct warning her that the height of the cell and the quantity of honey are beginning to assume extravagant proportions.
The converse is equally conclusive. To a Mason-bee engaged in victualling I give a nest with a cell only just begun and not at all fit to receive the paste. This cell, with its last course still wet with its builder's saliva, may or may not be accompanied by other cells recently closed up, each with its honey and its egg. The Bee, finding this in the place of her half-filled honey-store, is greatly perplexed what to do when she comes with her harvest to this unfinished, shallow cup, in which there is no place to put the honey. She inspects it, measures it with her eyes, tries it with her antennae and recognizes its insufficient capacity. She hesitates for a long time, goes away, comes back, flies away again and soon returns, eager to deposit her treasure. The insect's embarrassment is most evident; and I cannot help saying, inwardly:
'Get some mortar, get some mortar and finish making the warehouse. It will only take you a few moments; and you will have a cupboard of the right depth.'
The Bee thinks differently: she was storing her cell and she must go on storing, come what may. Never will she bring herself to lay aside the pollen-brush for the trowel; never will she suspend the foraging which is occupying her at this moment to begin the work of construction which is not yet due. She will rather go in search of a strange cell, in the desired condition, and slip in there to deposit her honey, at the risk of meeting with a warm reception from the irate owner. She goes off, in fact, to try her luck. I wish her success, being myself the cause of this desperate act. My curiosity has turned an honest worker into a robber.
Things may take a still more serious turn, so invincible, so imperious is the desire to have the booty stored in a safe place without delay. The uncompleted cell which the Bee refuses to accept instead of her own finished warehouse, half-filled with honey, is often, as I said, accompanied by other cells, not long closed, each containing its Bee-bread and its egg. In this case, I have sometimes, though not always, witnessed the following: when once the Bee realises the shortcomings of the unfinished nest, she begins to gnaw the clay lid closing one of the adjoining cells. She softens a part of the mortar cover with saliva and patiently, atom by atom, digs through the hard wall. It is very slow work. A good half-hour elapses before the tiny cavity is large enough to admit a pin's head. I wait longer still. Then I lose patience; and, fully convinced that the Bee is trying to open the store-room, I decide to help her to shorten the work. The upper part of the cell comes away with it, leaving the edges badly broken. In my awkwardness, I have turned an elegant vase into a wretched cracked pot.
I was right in my conjecture: the Bee's intention was to break open the door. Straight away, without heeding the raggedness of the orifice, she settles down in the cell which I have opened for her. Time after time, she fetches honey and pollen, though the larder is already fully stocked. Lastly, she lays her egg in this cell which already contains an egg that is not hers, having done which she closes the broken aperture to the best of her ability. So this purveyor had neither the knowledge nor the power to bow to the inevitable. I had made it impossible for her to go on with her purveying, unless she first completed the unfinished cell substituted for her own. But she did not retreat before that impossible task. She accomplished her work, but in the absurdest way: by injuriously trespassing upon another's property, by continuing to store provisions in a cupboard already full to overflowing, by laying her egg in a cell in which the real owner had already laid and lastly by hurriedly closing an orifice that called for serious repairs. What better proof could be wished of the irresistible propensity which the insect obeys?
Lastly, there are certain swift and consecutive actions so closely interlinked that the performance of the second demands a previous repetition of the first, even when this action has become useless. I have already described how the Yellow-winged Sphex (Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 6 to 9.—Translator's Note.) persists in descending into her burrow alone, after depositing at its edge the Cricket whom I maliciously at once remove. Her repeated discomfitures do not make her abandon the preliminary inspection of the home, an inspection which becomes quite useless when renewed for the tenth or twentieth time. The Mason-bee of the Walls shows us, under another form, a similar repetition of an act which is useless in itself, but which is the compulsory preface to the act that follows. When arriving with her provisions, the Bee performs a twofold operation of storing. First, she dives head foremost into the cell, to disgorge the contents of her crop; next, she comes out and at once goes in again backwards, to brush her abdomen and rub off the load of pollen. At the moment when the insect is about to enter the cell tail first, I push her aside gently with a straw. The second act is thus prevented. The Bee now begins the whole performance over again, that is to say, she once more dives head first to the bottom of the cell, though she has nothing left to disgorge, as her crop has just been emptied. When this is done, it is the belly's turn. I instantly push her aside again. The insect repeats its proceedings, still entering head first; I also repeat my touch of the straw. And this can go on as long as the observer pleases. Pushed aside at the moment when she is about to insert her abdomen into the cell, the Bee goes back to the opening and persists in going down head first to begin with. Sometimes, she descends to the bottom, sometimes only half-way, sometimes again she only pretends to descend, just bending her head into the aperture; but, whether completed or not, this action, for which there is no longer any motive, since the honey has already been disgorged, invariably precedes the entrance backwards to deposit the pollen. It is almost the movement of a machine whose works are only set going when the driving-wheel begins to revolve.
CHAPTER 4. MORE ENQUIRIES INTO MASON-BEES.
This chapter was to have taken the form of a letter addressed to Charles Darwin, the illustrious naturalist who now lies buried beside Newton in Westminster Abbey. It was my task to report to him the result of some experiments which he had suggested to me in the course of our correspondence: a very pleasant task, for, though facts, as I see them, disincline me to accept his theories, I have none the less the deepest veneration for his noble character and his scientific honesty. I was drafting my letter when the sad news reached me: Darwin was dead; after searching the mighty question of origins, he was now grappling with the last and darkest problem of the hereafter. (Darwin died at Down, in Kent, on the 19th of April 1882.—Translator's Note.) I therefore abandon the epistolary form, which would be unwarranted in view of that grave at Westminster. A free and impersonal statement shall set forth what I intended to relate in a more academic manner.
One thing, above all, had struck the English scientist on reading the first volume of my "Souvenirs entomologiques", namely, the Mason-bees' faculty of knowing the way back to their nests after being carried to great distances from home. What sort of compass do they employ on their return journeys? What sense guides them? The profound observer thereupon spoke of an experiment which he had always longed to make with Pigeons and which he had always neglected making, absorbed as he was by other interests. This experiment, he thought, I might attempt with my Bees. Substitute the insect for the bird; and the problem remained the same. I quote from his letter the passage referring to the trial which he wished made:
'Allow me to make a suggestion in relation to your wonderful account of insects finding their way home. I formerly wished to try it with pigeons; namely, to carry the insects in their paper cornets about a hundred paces in the opposite direction to that which you intended ultimately to carry them, but before turning round to return, to put the insects in a circular box with an axle which could be made to revolve very rapidly first in one direction and then in another, so as to destroy for a time all sense of direction in the insects. I have sometimes imagined that animals may feel in which direction they were at the first start carried.'
This method of experimenting seemed to me very ingeniously conceived. Before going west, I walk eastwards. In the darkness of their paper bags, the mere fact that I am moving them gives my prisoners a sense of the direction in which I am taking them. If nothing happened to disturb this first impression, the insect would be guided by it in returning. This would explain the homing of my Mason-bees carried to a distance of two or three miles amid strange surroundings. But, when the insects have been sufficiently impressed by their conveyance to the east, there comes the rapid twirl, first this way round, then that. Bewildered by all these revolutions first in one direction and then in another, the insect does not know that I have turned round and remains under its original impression. I am now taking it to the west, when it believes itself to be still travelling towards the east. Under the influence of this impression; the insect is bound to lose its bearings. When set free, it will fly in the opposite direction to its home, which it will never find again.
This result seemed to me the more probable inasmuch as the statements of the country-folk around me were all of a nature to confirm my hopes. Favier (The author's gardener and factotum. Cf. "The Life of the Fly": chapter 4.—Translator's Note.), the very man for this sort of information, was the first to put me on the track. He told me that, when people want to move a Cat from one farm to another at some distance, they place the animal in a bag which they twirl rapidly at the moment of starting, thus preventing the animal from returning to the house which it has quitted. Many others, besides Favier, described the same practice to me. According to them, this twirling round in a bag was an infallible expedient: the bewildered Cat never returned. I communicated what I had learnt to England, I wrote to the sage of Down and told him how the peasant had anticipated the researches of science. Charles Darwin was amazed; so was I; and we both of us almost reckoned on a success.
These preliminaries took place in the winter; I had plenty of time to prepare for the experiment which was to be made in the following May.
'Favier,' I said, one day, to my assistant, 'I shall want some of those nests. Go and ask our next-door neighbour's leave and climb to the roof of his shed, with some new tiles and some mortar, which you can fetch from the builder's. Take a dozen tiles from the roof, those with the biggest nests on them, and put the new ones in their place.'
Things were done accordingly. My neighbour assented with a good grace to the exchange of tiles, for he himself is obliged, from time to time, to demolish the work of the Mason-bee, unless he would risk seeing his roof fall in sooner or later. I was merely forestalling a repair which became more urgent every year. That same evening, I was in possession of twelve magnificent rectangular blocks of nest, each lying on the convex surface of a tile, that is to say, on the surface looking towards the inside of the shed. I had the curiosity to weigh the largest: it turned the scale at thirty-five pounds. Now the roof whence it came was covered with similar masses, adjoining one another, over a stretch of some seventy tiles. Reckoning only half the weight, so as to strike an average between the largest and the smallest lumps, we find the total weight of the Bee's masonry to amount to three-quarters of a ton. And, even so, people tell me that they have seen this beaten elsewhere. Leave the Mason-bee to her own devices, in the spot that suits her; allow the work of many generations to accumulate; and, one fine day, the roof will break down under the extra burden. Let the nests grow old; let them fall to pieces when the damp gets into them; and you will have chunks tumbling on your head big enough to crack your skull. There you see the work of a very little-known insect. (The insect is so little known that I made a serious mistake when treating of it in the first volume of these "Souvenirs." Under my erroneous denomination of Chalicodoma sicula are really comprised two species, one building its nests in our dwellings and particularly under the tiles of outhouses, the other building its nests on the branches of shrubs. The first species has received various names, which are, in order of priority: Chalicodoma pyrenaica, LEP. (Megachile); Chalicodoma pyrrhopeza, GERSTACKER; Chalicodoma rufitarsis, GIRAUD. It is a pity that the name occupying the first place should lend itself to misconception. I hesitate to apply the epithet of Pyrenean to an insect which is much less common in the Pyrenees than in my own district. I shall call it the Chalicodoma, or Mason-bee, of the Sheds. There is no objection to the use of this name in a book where the reader prefers lucidity to the tyranny of systematic entomology. The second species, that which builds its nests on the branches, is Chalicodoma rufescens, J. PEREZ. For a like reason, I shall call it the Chalicodoma of the Shrubs. I owe these corrections to the kindness of Professor Jean Perez, of Bordeaux, who is so well-versed in the lore of Wasps and Bees.—Author's Note.)
These treasures were insufficient, not in regard to quantity, but in regard to quality, for the main object which I had in view. They came from the nearest house, separated from mine by a little field planted with corn and olive-trees. I had reason to fear that the insects issuing from those nests might be hereditarily influenced by their ancestors, who had lived in the shed for many a long year. The Bee, when carried to a distance, would perhaps come back, guided by the inveterate family habit; she would find the shed of her lineal predecessors and thence, without difficulty, reach her nest. As it is the fashion nowadays to assign a prominent part to these hereditary influences, I must eliminate them from my experiments. I want strange Bees, brought from afar, whose return to the place of their birth can in no way assist their return to the nest transplanted to another site.
Favier took the business in hand. He had discovered on the banks of the Aygues, at some miles from the village, a deserted hut where the Mason-bees had established themselves in a numerous colony. He proposed to take the wheelbarrow, in which to move the blocks of cells; but I objected: the jolting of the vehicle over the rough paths might jeopardise the contents of the cells. A basket carried on the shoulder was deemed safer. Favier took a man to help him and set out. The expedition provided me with four well-stocked tiles. It was all that the two men were able to carry between them; and even then I had to stand treat on their arrival: they were utterly exhausted. Le Vaillant tells us of a nest of Republicans (Social Weaver-birds.—Translator's Note.) with which he loaded a wagon drawn by two oxen. My Mason-bee vies with the South-African bird: a yoke of Oxen would not have been too many to move the whole of that nest from the banks of the Aygues.
The next thing is to place my tiles. I want to have them under my eyes, in a position where I can watch them easily and save myself the worries of earlier days: going up and down ladders, standing for hours at a stretch on a narrow rung that hurt the soles of my feet and risking sunstroke up against a scorching wall. Moreover, it is necessary that my guests should feel almost as much at home with me as where they come from. I must make life pleasant for them, if I should have them grow attached to the new dwelling. And I happen to have the very thing for them.
Under the leads of my house is a wide arch, the sides of which get the sun, while the back remains in the shade. There is something for everybody: the shade for me, the sunlight for my boarders. We fasten a stout hook to each tile and hang it on the wall, on a level with our eyes. Half my nests are on the right, half on the left. The general effect is rather original. Any one walking in and seeing my show for the first time begins by taking it for a display of smoked provisions, gammons of some outlandish bacon curing in the sun. On perceiving his mistake, he falls into raptures at these new hives of mine. The news spreads through the village and more than one pokes fun at it. They look upon me as a keeper of hybrid Bees:
'I wonder what he's going to make out of that!' say they.
My hives are in full swing before the end of April. When the work is at its height, the swarm becomes a little eddying, buzzing cloud. The arch is a much-frequented passage: it leads to a store-room for various household provisions. The members of my family bully me at first for establishing this dangerous commonwealth within the precincts of our home. They dare not go to fetch things: they would have to pass through a swarm of Bees; and then...look out for stings! There is nothing for it but to prove, once and for all, that the danger does not exist, that mine is a most peaceable Bee, incapable of stinging so long as she is not startled. I bring my face close to one of the clay nests, so as almost to touch it, while it is black with Masons at work; I let my fingers wander through the ranks, I put a few Bees on my hand, I stand in the thick of the whirling crowd and never a prick do I receive. I have long known their peaceful character. Time was when I used to share the common fears, when I hesitated before venturing into a swarm of Anthophorae or Chalicodomae; nowadays, I have quite got over those terrors. If you do not tease the insect, the thought of hurting you will never occur to it. At the worst, a single specimen, prompted by curiosity rather than anger, will come and hover in front of your face, examining you with some persistency, but employing a buzz as her only threat. Let her be: her scrutiny is quite friendly.
After a few demonstrations, my household were reassured: all, old and young, moved in and out of the arch as though there were nothing unusual about it. My Bees, far from remaining an object of dread, became an object of diversion; every one took pleasure in watching the progress of their ingenious work. I was careful not to divulge the secret to strangers. If any one, coming on business, passed outside the arch while I was standing before the hanging nests, some such brief dialogue as the following would take place:
'So they know you; that's why they don't sting you?'
'They certainly know me.'
'And me?'
'Oh, you; that's another matter!'
Whereupon the intruder would keep at a respectful distance, which was what I wanted.
It is time that we thought of experimenting. The Mason-bees intended for the journey must be marked with a sign whereby I may know them. A solution of gum arabic, thickened with a colouring-powder, red, blue or some other shade, is the material which I use to mark my travellers. The variety in hue will save me from confusing the subjects of my different experiments.
When making my former investigations, I used to mark the Bees at the place where I set them free. For this operation, the insects had to be held in the fingers one after the other; and I was thus exposed to frequent stings, which smarted all the more for being constantly repeated. The consequence was that I was not always quite able to control my fingers and thumbs, to the great detriment of my travellers; for I could easily warp their wing-joints and thus weaken their flight. It was worth while improving the method of operation, both in my own interest and in that of the insect. I must mark the Bee, carry her to a distance and release her, without taking her in my fingers, without once touching her. The experiment was bound to gain by these nice precautions. I will describe the method which I adopted.
The Bee is so much engrossed in her work when she buries her abdomen in the cell and rids herself of her load of pollen, or when she is building, that it is easy, at such times, without alarming her, to mark the upper side of the thorax with a straw dipped in the coloured glue. The insect is not disturbed by that slight touch. It flies off; it returns laden with mortar or pollen. You allow these trips to be repeated until the mark on the thorax is quite dry, which soon happens in the hot sun necessary to the Bee's labours. The next thing is to catch her and imprison her in a paper bag, still without touching her. Nothing could be easier. You place a small test-tube over the Bee engrossed in her work; the insect, on leaving, rushes into it and is thence transferred to the paper bag, which is forthwith closed and placed in the tin box that will serve as a conveyance for the whole party. When releasing the Bees, all you have to do is open the bags. The whole performance is thus effected without once giving that distressing squeeze of the fingers.
Another question remains to be solved before we go further. What time-limit shall I allow for this census of the Bees that return to the nest? Let me explain what I mean. The dot which I have made in the middle of the thorax with a touch of my sticky straw is not very permanent: it merely adheres to the hairs. At the same time, it would have been no more lasting if I had held the insect in my fingers. Now the Bee often brushes her back: she dusts it each time she leaves the galleries; besides, she is always rubbing her coat against the walls of the cell, which she has to enter and to leave each time that she brings honey. A Mason-bee, so smartly dressed at the start, at the end of her work is in rags; her fur is all worn bare and as tattered as a mechanic's overall.
Furthermore, in bad weather, the Mason-bee of the Walls spends the days and nights in one of the cells of her dome, suspended head downwards. The Mason-bee of the Sheds, as long as there are vacant galleries, does very nearly the same: she takes shelter in the galleries, but with her head at the entrance. Once those old habitations are in use, however, and the building of new cells begun, she selects another retreat. In the harmas (The piece of enclosed waste ground on which the author studies his insects in their natural state. Cf. "The Life of the Fly": chapter 1.—Translator's Note.), as I have said elsewhere, are stone heaps, intended for building the surrounding wall. This is where my Chalicodomae pass the night. Piled up promiscuously, both sexes together, they sleep in numerous companies, in crevices between two stones laid closely one on top of the other. Some of these companies number as many as a couple of hundred. The most common dormitory is a narrow groove. Here they all huddle, as far forward as possible, with their backs in the groove. I see some lying flat on their backs, like people asleep. Should bad weather come on, should the sky cloud over, should the north-wind whistle, they do not stir out.
With all these things to take into consideration, I cannot expect my dot on the Bee's thorax to last any length of time. By day, the constant brushing and the rubbing against the partitions of the galleries soon wipe it off; at night, things are worse still, in the narrow sleeping-room where the Mason-bees take refuge by the hundred. After a night spent in the crevice between two stones, it is not advisable to trust to the mark made yesterday. Therefore, the counting of the number of Bees that return to the nest must be taken in hand at once; tomorrow would be too late. And so, as it would be impossible for me to recognize those of my subjects whose dots had disappeared during the night, I will take into account only the Bees that return on the same day.
The question of the rotary machine remains. Darwin advised me to use a circular box with an axle and a handle. I have nothing of the kind in the house. It will be simpler and quite as effective to employ the method of the countryman who tries to lose his Cat by swinging him in a bag. My insects, each one placed by itself in a paper cornet (A cornet is simply the old 'sugar-bag,' the funnel-shaped paper bag so common on the continent and still used occasionally by small grocers and tobacconists in England.—Translator's Note.) or screw, shall be placed in a tin box; the screws of paper shall be wedged in so as to avoid collisions during the rotation; lastly, the box shall be tied to a cord and I will whirl the whole thing round like a sling. With this contrivance, it will be quite easy to obtain any rate of speed that I wish, any variety of inverse movements that I consider likely to make my captives lose their bearings. I can whirl my sling first in one direction and then in another, turn and turn about; I can slacken or increase the pace; if I like, I can make it describe figures of eight, combined with circles; if I spin on my heels at the same time, I am able to make the process still more complicated by compelling my sling to trace every known curve. That is what I shall do.
On the 2nd of May 1880, I make a white mark on the thorax of ten Mason-bees busied with various tasks: some are exploring the slabs of clay in order to select a site; others are brick-laying; others are garnering stores. When the mark is dry, I catch them and pack them as I have described. I first carry them a quarter of a mile in the opposite direction to the one which I intend to take. A path skirting my house favours this preliminary manoeuvre; I have every hope of being alone when the time comes to make play with my sling. There is a way-side cross at the end; I stop at the foot of the cross. Here I swing my Bees in every direction. Now, while I am making the box describe inverse circles and loops, while I am pirouetting on my heels to achieve the various curves, up comes a woman from the village and stares at me. Oh, how she stares at me, what a look she gives me! At the foot of the cross! Acting in such a silly way! People talked about it. It was sheer witchcraft. Had I not dug up a dead body, only a few days before? Yes, I had been to a prehistoric burial-place, I had taken from it a pair of venerable, well-developed tibias, a set of funerary vessels and a few shoulders of horse, placed there as a viaticum for the great journey. I had done this thing; and people knew it. And now, to crown all, the man of evil reputation is found at the foot of a cross indulging in unhallowed antics.
No matter—and it shows no small courage on my part—the gyrations are duly accomplished in the presence of this unexpected witness. Then I retrace my steps and walk westward of Serignan. I take the least-frequented paths, I cut across country so as, if possible, to avoid a second meeting. It would be the last straw if I were seen opening my paper bags and letting loose my insects! When half-way, to make my experiment more decisive still, I repeat the rotation, in as complicated a fashion as before. I repeat it for the third time at the spot chosen for the release.
I am at the end of a flint-strewn plain, with here and there a scanty curtain of almond-trees and holm-oaks. Walking at a good pace, I have taken thirty minutes to cover the ground in a straight line. The distance therefore is, roughly, two miles. It is a fine day, under a clear sky, with a very light breeze blowing from the north. I sit down on the ground, facing the south, so that the insects may be free to take either the direction of their nest or the opposite one. I let them loose at a quarter past two. When the bags are opened, the Bees, for the most part, circle several times around me and then dart off impetuously in the direction of Serignan, as far as I can judge. It is not easy to watch them, because they fly off suddenly, after going two or three times round my body, a suspicious-looking object which they wish, apparently, to reconnoitre before starting. A quarter of an hour later, my eldest daughter, Antonia, who is on the look-out beside the nests, sees the first traveller arrive. On my return, in the course of the evening, two others come back. Total: three home on the same day, out of ten scattered abroad.
I resume the experiment next morning. I mark ten Mason-bees with red, which will enable me to distinguish them from those who returned on the day before and from those who may still return with the white spot uneffaced. The same precautions, the same rotations, the same localities as on the first occasion; only, I make no rotation on the way, confining myself to swinging my box round on leaving and on arriving. The insects are released at a quarter past eleven. I preferred the forenoon, as this was the busiest time at the works. One Bee was seen by Antonia to be back at the nest by twenty minutes past eleven. Supposing her to be the first let loose, it took her just five minutes to cover the distance. But there is nothing to tell me that it is not another, in which case she needed less. It is the fastest speed that I have succeeded in noting. I myself am back at twelve and, within a short time, catch three others. I see no more during the rest of the evening. Total: four home, out of ten.
The 4th of May is a very bright, calm, warm day, weather highly propitious for my experiments. I take fifty Chalicodomae marked with blue. The distance to be travelled remains the same. I make the first rotation after carrying my insects a few hundred steps in the direction opposite to that which I finally take; in addition, three rotations on the road; a fifth rotation at the place where they are set free. If they do not lose their bearings this time, it will not be for lack of twisting and turning. I begin to open my screws of paper at twenty minutes past nine. It is rather early, for which reason my Bees, on recovering their liberty, remain for a moment undecided and lazy; but, after a short sunbath on a stone where I place them, they take wing. I am sitting on the ground, facing the south, with Serignan on my left and Piolenc on my right. When the flight is not too swift to allow me to perceive the direction taken, I see my released captives disappear to my left. A few, but only a few, go south; two or three go west, or to right of me. I do not speak of the north, against which I act as a screen. All told, the great majority take the left, that is to say, the direction of the nest. The last is released at twenty minutes to ten. One of the fifty travellers has lost her mark in the paper bag. I deduct her from the total, leaving forty-nine.
According to Antonia, who watches the home-coming, the earliest arrivals appeared at twenty-five minutes to ten, say fifteen minutes after the first was set free. By twelve o'clock mid-day, there are eleven back; and, by four o'clock in the evening, seventeen. That ends the census. Total: seventeen, out of forty-nine.
I resolved upon a fourth experiment, on the 14th of May. The weather is glorious, with a light northerly breeze. I take twenty Mason-bees, marked in pink, at eight o'clock in the morning. Rotations at the start, after a preliminary backing in a direction opposite to that which I intend to take; two rotations on the road; a fourth on arriving. All those whose flight I am able to follow with my eyes turn to my left, that is to say, towards Serignan. Yet I had taken care to leave the choice free between the two opposite directions: in particular, I had sent away my Dog, who was on my right. To-day, the Bees do not circle round me: some fly away at once; the others, the greater number, feeling giddy perhaps after the pitching of the journey and the rolling of the sling, alight on the ground a few yards away, seem to wait until they are somewhat recovered and then fly off to the left. I perceived this to be the general flight, whenever I was able to observe at all. I was back at a quarter to ten. Two Bees with pink marks were there before me, of whom one was engaged in building, with her pellet of mortar in her mandibles. By one o'clock in the afternoon there were seven arrivals; I saw no more during the rest of the day. Total: seven out of twenty.
Let us be satisfied with this: the experiment has been repeated often enough, but it does not conclude as Darwin hoped, as I myself hoped, especially after what I had been told about the Cat. In vain, adopting the advice given, do I carry my insects first in the opposite direction to the place at which I intend to release them; in vain, when about to retrace my steps, do I twirl my sling with every complication in the way of whirls and twists that I am able to imagine; in vain, thinking to increase the difficulties, do I repeat the rotation as often as five times over: at the start, on the road, on arriving; it makes no difference: the Mason-bees return; and the proportion of returns on the same day fluctuates between thirty and forty per cent. It goes to my heart to abandon an idea suggested by so famous a man of science and cherished all the more readily inasmuch as I thought it likely to provide a final solution. The facts are there, more eloquent than any number of ingenious views; and the problem remains as mysterious as ever.
In the following year, 1881, I began experimenting again, but in a different way. Hitherto, I had worked on the level. To return to the nest, my lost Bees had only to cross slight obstacles, the hedges and spinneys of the tilled fields. To-day, I propose to add to the difficulties of distance those of the ground to be traversed. Discontinuing all my backing- and whirling-tactics, things which I recognize as useless, I think of releasing my Chalicodomae in the thick of the Serignan Woods. How will they escape from that labyrinth, where, in the early days, I needed a compass to find my way? Moreover, I shall have an assistant with me, a pair of eyes younger than mine and better-fitted to follow my insects' first flight. That immediate start in the direction of the nest has already been repeated very often and is beginning to interest me more than the return itself. A pharmaceutical student, spending a few days with my parents, shall be my eyewitness. With him, I shall feel at ease; science and he are no strangers.
The trip to the woods takes place on the 16th of May. The weather is hot and hints at a coming storm. There is a perceptible breeze from the south, but not enough to upset my travellers. Forty Mason-bees are caught. To shorten the preparations, because of the distance, I do not mark them while they are on the nests; I shall mark them at the starting-point, as I release them. It is the old method, prolific of stings; but I prefer it to-day, in order to save time. It takes me an hour to reach the place. The distance, therefore, allowing for windings, is about three miles.
The site selected must permit me to recognize the direction of the insects' first flight. I choose a clearing in the middle of the copses. All around is a great expanse of dense woods, shutting out the horizon on every side; on the south, in the direction of the nests, a curtain of hills rises to a height of some three hundred feet above the spot at which I stand. The wind is not strong, but it is blowing in the opposite direction to that which my insects will have to take in order to reach their home. I turn my back on Serignan, so that, when leaving my fingers, the Bees, to return to the nest, will be obliged to fly sideways, to right and left of me; I mark the insects and release them one by one. I begin operations at twenty minutes past ten.
One half of the Bees seem rather indolent, flutter about for a while, drop to the ground, appear to recover their spirits and then start off. The other half show greater decision. Although the insects have to fight against the soft wind that is blowing from the south, they make straight for the nest. All go south, after describing a few circles, a few loops, around us. There is no exception in the case of any of those whose departure we are able to follow. The fact is noted by myself and my colleague beyond dispute or doubt. My Mason-bees head for the south as though some compass told them which way the wind was blowing.
I am back at twelve o'clock. None of the strays is at the nest; but, a few minutes later, I catch two. At two o'clock, the number has increased to nine. But now the sky clouds over, the wind freshens and the storm is approaching. We can no longer rely on any further arrivals. Total: nine out of forty, or twenty-two per cent.
The proportion is smaller than in the former cases, when it varied between thirty and forty per cent. Must we attribute this result to the difficulties to be overcome? Can the Mason-bees have lost their way in the maze of the forest? It is safer not to give an opinion: other causes intervened which may have decreased the number of those who returned. I marked the insects at the starting-place; I handled them; and I am not prepared to say that they were all in the best of condition on leaving my stung and smarting fingers. Besides, the sky has become overcast, a storm is imminent. In the month of May, so variable, so fickle, in my part of the world, we can hardly ever count on a whole day of fine weather. A splendid morning is swiftly followed by a fitful afternoon; and my experiments with Mason-bees have often suffered by these variations. All things considered, I am inclined to think that the homeward journey across the forest and the mountain is effected just as readily as across the corn-fields and the plain.
I have one last resource left whereby to try and put my Bees out of their latitude. I will first take them to a great distance; then, describing a wide curve, I will return by another road and release my captives when I am near enough to the village, say, about two miles. A conveyance is necessary, this time. My collaborator of the day in the woods offers me the use of his gig. The two of us set off, with fifteen Mason-bees, along the road to Orange, until we come to the viaduct. Here, on the right, is the straight ribbon of the old Roman road, the Via Domitia. We take it, driving north towards the Uchaux Mountains, the classic home of superb Turonian fossils. We next turn back towards Serignan, by the Piolenc Road. A halt is made by the stretch of country known as Font-Claire, the distance from which to the village is about one mile and five furlongs. The reader can easily follow my route on the ordnance-survey map; and he will see that the loop described measures not far short of five miles and a half.
At the same time, Favier came and joined me at Font-Claire, by the direct road, the one that runs through Piolenc. He brought with him fifteen Mason-bees, intended for purposes of comparison with mine. I am therefore in possession of two sets of insects. Fifteen, marked in pink, have taken the five-mile bend; fifteen, marked in blue, have come by the straight road, the shortest road for returning to the nest. The weather is warm, exceedingly bright and very calm; I could not hope for a better day for my experiment. The insects are given their freedom at mid-day.
At five o'clock, the arrivals number seven of the pink Mason-bees, whom I thought that I had bewildered by a long and circuitous drive, and six of the blue Mason-bees, who came to Font-Claire by the direct route. The two proportions, forty-six and forty per cent., are almost equal; and the slight excess in favour of the insects that went the roundabout way is evidently an accidental result which we need not take into consideration. The bend described cannot have helped them to find their way home; but it has also certainly not hampered them.
There is no need of further proof. The intricate movements of a rotation such as I have described; the obstacle of hills and woods; the pitfalls of a road which moves on, moves back and returns after making a wide circuit: none of these is able to disconcert the Chalicodomae or prevent them from going back to the nest.
I had written to Charles Darwin telling him of my first, negative results, those obtained by swinging the Bees in a box. He expected a success and was much surprised at the failure. Had he had time to experiment with his Pigeons, they would have behaved just like my Bees; the preliminary twirling would not have affected them. The problem called for another method; and what he proposed was this:
'To place the insect within an induction coil, so as to disturb any magnetic or diamagnetic sensibility which it seems just possible that they may possess.'
To treat an insect as you would a magnetic needle and to subject it to the current from an induction coil in order to disturb its magnetism or diamagnetism appeared to me, I must confess, a curious notion, worthy of an imagination in the last ditch. I have but little confidence in our physics, when they pretend to explain life; nevertheless, my respect for the great man would have made me resort to the induction-coils, if I had possessed the necessary apparatus. But my village boasts no scientific resources: if I want an electric spark, I am reduced to rubbing a sheet of paper on my knees. My physics cupboard contains a magnet; and that is about all. When this penury was realised, another method was suggested, simpler than the first and more certain in its results, as Darwin himself considered:
'To make a very thin needle into a magnet; then breaking it into very short pieces, which would still be magnetic, and fastening one of these pieces with some cement on the thorax of the insects to be experimented on. I believe that such a little magnet, from its close proximity to the nervous system of the insect, would affect it more than would the terrestrial currents.'
There is still the same idea of turning the insect into a sort of bar magnet. The terrestrial currents guide it when returning to the nest. It becomes a living compass which, withdrawn from the action of the earth by the proximity of a loadstone, loses its sense of direction. With a tiny magnet fastened on its thorax, parallel with the nervous system and more powerful than the terrestrial magnetism by reason of its comparative nearness, the insect will lose its bearings. Naturally, in setting down these lines, I take shelter behind the mighty reputation of the learned begetter of the idea. It would not be accepted as serious coming from a humble person like myself. Obscurity cannot afford these audacious theories.
The experiment seems easy; it is not beyond the means at my disposal. Let us attempt it. I magnetise a very fine needle by rubbing it with my bar magnet; I retain only the slenderest part, the point, some five or six millimetres long. (.2 to.23 inch.—Translator's Note.) This broken piece is a perfect magnet: it attracts and repels another magnetised needle hanging from a thread. I am a little puzzled as to the best way to fasten it on the insect's thorax. My assistant of the moment, the pharmaceutical student, requisitions all the adhesives in his laboratory. The best is a sort of cerecloth which he prepares specially with a very fine material. It possesses the advantage that it can be softened at the bowl of one's pipe when the time comes to operate out of doors.
I cut out of this cerecloth a small square the size of the Bee's thorax; and I insert the magnetised point through a few threads of the material. All that we now have to do is to soften the gum a little and then dab the thing at once on the Mason-bee's back, so that the broken needle runs parallel with the spine. Other engines of the same kind are prepared and due note taken of their poles, so as to enable me to point the south pole at the insect's head in some cases and at the opposite end in others.
My assistant and I begin by rehearsing the performance; we must have a little practice before trying the experiment away from home. Besides, I want to see how the insect will behave in its magnetic harness. I take a Mason-bee at work in her cell, which I mark. I carry her to my study, at the other end of the house. The magnetised outfit is fastened on the thorax; and the insect is let go. The moment she is free, the Bee drops to the ground and rolls about, like a mad thing, on the floor of the room. She resumes her flight, flops down again, turns over on her side, on her back, knocks against the things in her way, buzzes noisily, flings herself about desperately and ends by darting through the open window in headlong flight.
What does it all mean? The magnet appears to have a curious effect on my patient's system! What a fuss she makes! How terrified she is! The Bee seemed utterly distraught at losing her bearings under the influence of my knavish tricks. Let us go to the nests and see what happens. We have not long to wait: my insect returns, but rid of its magnetic tackle. I recognize it by the traces of gum that still cling to the hair of the thorax. It goes back to its cell and resumes its labours.
Always on my guard when searching the unknown, unwilling to draw conclusions before weighing the arguments for and against, I feel doubt creeping in upon me with regard to what I have seen. Was it really the magnetic influence that disturbed my Bee so strangely? When she struggled and kicked on the floor, fighting wildly with both legs and wings, when she fled in terror, was she under the sway of the magnet fastened on her back? Can my appliance have thwarted the guiding influence of the terrestrial currents on her nervous system? Or was her distress merely the result of an unwonted harness? This is what remains to be seen and that without delay.
I construct a new apparatus, but provide it with a short straw in place of the magnet. The insect carrying it on its back rolls on the ground, kicks and flings herself about like the first, until the irksome contrivance is removed, taking with it a part of the fur on the thorax. The straw produces the same effects as the magnet, in other words, magnetism had nothing to do with what happened. My invention, in both cases alike, is a cumbrous tackle of which the Bee tries to rid herself at once by every possible means. To look to her for normal actions so long as she carries an apparatus, magnetized or not, upon her back is the same as expecting to study the natural habits of a Dog after tying a kettle to his tail.
The experiment with the magnet is impracticable. What would it tell us if the insect consented to it? In my opinion, it would tell us nothing. In the matter of the homing instinct, a magnet would have no more influence than a bit of straw.
CHAPTER 5. THE STORY OF MY CATS.
If this swinging-process fails entirely when its object is to make the insect lose its bearings, what influence can it have upon the Cat? Is the method of whirling the animal round in a bag, to prevent its return, worthy of confidence? I believed in it at first, so close-allied was it to the hopeful idea suggested by the great Darwin. But my faith is now shaken: my experience with the insect makes me doubtful of the Cat. If the former returns after being whirled, why should not the latter? I therefore embark upon fresh experiments.
And, first of all, to what extent does the Cat deserve his reputation of being able to return to the beloved home, to the scenes of his amorous exploits on the tiles and in the hay-lofts? The most curious facts are told of his instinct; children's books on natural history abound with feats that do the greatest credit to his prowess as a pilgrim. I do not attach much importance to these stories: they come from casual observers, uncritical folk given to exaggeration. It is not everybody who can talk about animals correctly. When some one not of the craft gets on the subject and says to me, 'Such or such an animal is black,' I begin by finding out if it does not happen to be white; and many a time the truth is discovered in the converse proposition. Men come to me and sing the praises of the Cat as a travelling-expert. Well and good: we will now look upon the Cat as a poor traveller. And that would be the extent of my knowledge if I had only the evidence of books and of people unaccustomed to the scruples of scientific examination. Fortunately, I am acquainted with a few incidents that will stand the test of my incredulity. The Cat really deserves his reputation as a discerning pilgrim. Let us relate these incidents.
One day—it was at Avignon—there appeared upon the garden-wall a wretched-looking Cat, with matted coat and protruding ribs, so thin that his back was a mere jagged ridge. He was mewing with hunger. My children, at that time very young, took pity on his misery. Bread soaked in milk was offered him at the end of a reed. He took it. And the mouthfuls succeeded one another to such good purpose that he was sated and went off, heedless of the 'Puss! Puss!' of his compassionate friends. Hunger returned; and the starveling reappeared in his wall-top refectory. He received the same fare of bread soaked in milk, the same soft words. He allowed himself to be tempted. He came down from the wall. The children were able to stroke his back. Goodness, how thin he was!
It was the great topic of conversation. We discussed it at table: we would tame the vagabond, we would keep him, we would make him a bed of hay. It was a most important matter: I can see to this day, I shall always see the council of rattleheads deliberating on the Cat's fate. They were not satisfied until the savage animal remained. Soon he grew into a magnificent Tom. His large round head, his muscular legs, his reddish fur, flecked with darker patches, reminded one of a little jaguar. He was christened Ginger because of his tawny hue. A mate joined him later, picked up in almost similar circumstances. Such was the origin of my series of Gingers, which I have retained for little short of twenty years through the vicissitudes of my various removals.
The first of these removals took place in 1870. A little earlier, a minister who has left a lasting memory in the University, that fine man, Victor Duruy (Jean Victor Duruy (1811-1894), author of a number of historical works, including a well-known "Histoire des Romains", and minister of public instruction under Napoleon III. from 1863 to 1869. Cf. "The Life of the Fly": chapter 20.—Translator's Note.), had instituted classes for the secondary education of girls. This was the beginning, as far as was then possible, of the burning question of to-day. I very gladly lent my humble aid to this labour of light. I was put to teach physical and natural science. I had faith and was not sparing of work, with the result that I rarely faced a more attentive or interested audience. The days on which the lessons fell were red-letter days, especially when the lesson was botany and the table disappeared from view under the treasures of the neighbouring conservatories.
That was going too far. In fact, you can see how heinous my crime was: I taught those young persons what air and water are; whence the lightning comes and the thunder; by what device our thoughts are transmitted across the seas and continents by means of a metal wire; why fire burns and why we breathe; how a seed puts forth shoots and how a flower blossoms: all eminently hateful things in the eyes of some people, whose feeble eyes are dazzled by the light of day.
The little lamp must be put out as quickly as possible and measures taken to get rid of the officious person who strove to keep it alight. The scheme was darkly plotted with the old maids who owned my house and who saw the abomination of desolation in these new educational methods. I had no written agreement to protect me. The bailiff appeared with a notice on stamped paper. It baldly informed that I must move out within four weeks from date, failing which the law would turn my goods and chattels into the street. I had hurriedly to provide myself with a dwelling. The first house which we found happened to be at Orange. Thus was my exodus from Avignon effected.
We were somewhat anxious about the moving of the Cats. We were all of us attached to them and should have thought it nothing short of criminal to abandon the poor creatures, whom we had so often petted, to distress and probably to thoughtless persecution. The shes and the kittens would travel without any trouble: all you have to do is to put them in a basket; they will keep quiet on the journey. But the old Tom-cats were a serious problem. I had two: the head of the family, the patriarch; and one of his descendants, quite as strong as himself. We decided to take the grandsire, if he consented to come, and to leave the grandson behind, after finding him a home.
My friend Dr. Loriol offered to take charge of the forsaken one. The animal was carried to him at nightfall in a closed hamper. Hardly were we seated at the evening-meal, talking of the good fortune of our Tom-cat, when we saw a dripping mass jump through the window. The shapeless bundle came and rubbed itself against our legs, purring with happiness. It was the Cat.
I learnt his story next day. On arriving at Dr. Loriol's, he was locked up in a bedroom. The moment he saw himself a prisoner in the unfamiliar room, he began to jump about wildly on the furniture, against the window-panes, among the ornaments on the mantelpiece, threatening to make short work of everything. Mme. Loriol was frightened by the little lunatic; she hastened to open the window; and the Cat leapt out among the passers-by. A few minutes later, he was back at home. And it was no easy matter: he had to cross the town almost from end to end; he had to make his way through a long labyrinth of crowded streets, amid a thousand dangers, including first boys and next dogs; lastly—and this perhaps was an even more serious obstacle—he had to pass over the Sorgue, a river running through Avignon. There were bridges at hand, many, in fact; but the animal, taking the shortest cut, had used none of them, bravely jumping into the water, as its streaming fur showed. I had pity on the poor Cat, so faithful to his home. We agreed to do our utmost to take him with us. We were spared the worry: a few days later, he was found lying stiff and stark under a shrub in the garden. The plucky animal had fallen a victim to some stupid act of spite. Some one had poisoned him for me. Who? It is not likely that it was a friend!
There remained the old Cat. He was not indoors when we started; he was prowling round the hay-lofts of the neighbourhood. The carrier was promised an extra ten francs if he brought the Cat to Orange with one of the loads which he had still to convey. On his last journey he brought him stowed away under the driver's seat. I scarcely knew my old Tom when we opened the moving prison in which he had been confined since the day before. He came out looking a most alarming beast, scratching and spitting, with bristling hair, bloodshot eyes, lips white with foam. I thought him mad and watched him closely for a time. I was wrong: it was merely the fright of a bewildered animal. Had there been trouble with the carrier when he was caught? Did he have a bad time on the journey? History is silent on both points. What I do know is that the very nature of the Cat seemed changed: there was no more friendly purring, no more rubbing against our legs; nothing but a wild expression and the deepest gloom. Kind treatment could not soothe him. For a few weeks longer, he dragged his wretched existence from corner to corner; then, one day, I found him lying dead in the ashes on the hearth. Grief, with the help of old age, had killed him. Would he have gone back to Avignon, had he had the strength? I would not venture to affirm it. But, at least, I think it very remarkable that an animal should let itself die of home-sickness because the infirmities of age prevent it from returning to its old haunts.
What the patriarch could not attempt, we shall see another do, over a much shorter distance, I admit. A fresh move is resolved upon, that I may have, at length, the peace and quiet essential to my work. This time, I hope that it will be the last. I leave Orange for Serignan.
The family of Gingers has been renewed: the old ones have passed away, new ones have come, including a full-grown Tom, worthy in all respects of his ancestors. He alone will give us some difficulty; the others, the babies and the mothers, can be removed without trouble. We put them into baskets. The Tom has one to himself, so that the peace may be kept. The journey is made by carriage, in company with my family. Nothing striking happens before our arrival. Released from their hampers, the females inspect the new home, explore the rooms one by one; with their pink noses they recognize the furniture: they find their own seats, their own tables, their own arm-chairs; but the surroundings are different. They give little surprised miaows and questioning glances. A few caresses and a saucer of milk allay all their apprehensions; and, by the next day, the mother Cats are acclimatised.
It is a different matter with the Tom. We house him in the attics, where he will find ample room for his capers; we keep him company, to relieve the weariness of captivity; we take him a double portion of plates to lick; from time to time, we place him in touch with some of his family, to show him that he is not alone in the house; we pay him a host of attentions, in the hope of making him forget Orange. He appears, in fact, to forget it: he is gentle under the hand that pets him, he comes when called, purrs, arches his back. It is well: a week of seclusion and kindly treatment have banished all notions of returning. Let us give him his liberty. He goes down to the kitchen, stands by the table like the others, goes out into the garden, under the watchful eye of Aglae, who does not lose sight of him; he prowls all around with the most innocent air. He comes back. Victory! The Tom-cat will not run away.
Next morning:
'Puss! Puss!'
Not a sign of him! We hunt, we call. Nothing. Oh, the hypocrite, the hypocrite! How he has tricked us! He has gone, he is at Orange. None of those about me can believe in this venturesome pilgrimage. I declare that the deserter is at this moment at Orange mewing outside the empty house.
Aglae and Claire went to Orange. They found the Cat, as I said they would, and brought him back in a hamper. His paws and belly were covered with red clay; and yet the weather was dry, there was no mud. The Cat, therefore, must have got wet crossing the Aygues torrent; and the moist fur had kept the red earth of the fields through which he passed. The distance from Serignan to Orange, in a straight line, is four and a half miles. There are two bridges over the Aygues, one above and one below that line, some distance away. The Cat took neither the one nor the other: his instinct told him the shortest road and he followed that road, as his belly, covered with red mud, proved. He crossed the torrent in May, at a time when the rivers run high; he overcame his repugnance to water in order to return to his beloved home. The Avignon Tom did the same when crossing the Sorgue.
The deserter was reinstated in his attic at Serignan. He stayed there for a fortnight; and at last we let him out. Twenty-four hours had not elapsed before he was back at Orange. We had to abandon him to his unhappy fate. A neighbour living out in the country, near my former house, told me that he saw him one day hiding behind a hedge with a rabbit in his mouth. Once no longer provided with food, he, accustomed to all the sweets of a Cat's existence, turned poacher, taking toll of the farm-yards round about my old home. I heard no more of him. He came to a bad end, no doubt: he had become a robber and must have met with a robber's fate.
The experiment has been made and here is the conclusion, twice proved. Full-grown Cats can find their way home, in spite of the distance and their complete ignorance of the intervening ground. They have, in their own fashion, the instinct of my Mason-bees. A second point remains to be cleared up, that of the swinging motion in the bag. Are they thrown out of their latitude by this stratagem, are or they not? I was thinking of making some experiments, when more precise information arrived and taught me that it was not necessary. The first who acquainted me with the method of the revolving bag was telling the story told him by a second person, who repeated the story of a third, a story related on the authority of a fourth; and so on. None had tried it, none had seen it for himself. It is a tradition of the country-side. One and all extol it as an infallible method, without, for the most part, having attempted it. And the reason which they give for its success is, in their eyes, conclusive. If, say they, we ourselves are blind-folded and then spin round for a few seconds, we no longer know where we are. Even so with the Cat carried off in the darkness of the swinging bag. They argue from man to the animal, just as others argue from the animal to man: a faulty method in either case, if there really be two distinct psychic worlds.
The belief would not be so deep-rooted in the peasant's mind, if facts had not from time to time confirmed it. But we may assume that, in successful cases, the Cats made to lose their bearings were young and unemancipated animals. With those neophytes, a drop of milk is enough to dispel the grief of exile. They do not return home, whether they have been whirled in a bag or not. People have thought it as well to subject them to the whirling operation by way of an additional precaution; and the method has received the credit of a success that has nothing to do with it. In order to test the method properly, it should have been tried on a full-grown Cat, a genuine Tom.
I did in the end get the evidence which I wanted on this point. Intelligent and trustworthy people, not given to jumping to conclusions, have told me that they have tried the trick of the swinging bag to keep Cats from returning to their homes. None of them succeeded when the animal was full-grown. Though carried to a great distance, into another house, and subjected to a conscientious series of revolutions, the Cat always came back. I have in mind more particularly a destroyer of the Goldfish in a fountain, who, when transported from Serignan to Piolenc, according to the time-honoured method, returned to his fish; who, when carried into the mountain and left in the woods, returned once more. The bag and the swinging round proved of no avail; and the miscreant had to be put to death. I have verified a fair number of similar instances, all under most favourable conditions. The evidence is unanimous: the revolving motion never keeps the adult Cat from returning home. The popular belief, which I found so seductive at first, is a country prejudice, based upon imperfect observation. We must, therefore, abandon Darwin's idea when trying to explain the homing of the Cat as well as of the Mason-bee.
CHAPTER 6. THE RED ANTS.
The Pigeon transported for hundreds of miles is able to find his way back to his Dove-cot; the Swallow, returning from his winter quarters in Africa, crosses the sea and once more takes possession of the old nest. What guides them on these long journeys? Is it sight? An observer of supreme intelligence, one who, though surpassed by others in the knowledge of the stuffed animal under a glass case, is almost unrivalled in his knowledge of the live animal in its wild state, Toussenel (Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885), the author of a number of interesting and valuable works on ornithology.—Translator's Note.), the admirable writer of "L'Esprit des betes", speaks of sight and meteorology as the Carrier-pigeon's guides:
'The French bird,' he says, 'knows by experience that the cold weather comes from the north, the hot from the south, the dry from the east and the wet from the west. That is enough meteorological knowledge to tell him the cardinal points and to direct his flight. The Pigeon taken in a closed basket from Brussels to Toulouse has certainly no means of reading the map of the route with his eyes; but no one can prevent him from feeling, by the warmth of the atmosphere, that he is pursuing the road to the south. When restored to liberty at Toulouse, he already knows that the direction which he must follow to regain his Dove-cot is the direction of the north. Therefore he wings straight in that direction and does not stop until he nears those latitudes where the mean temperature is that of the zone which he inhabits. If he does not find his home at the first onset, it is because he has borne a little too much to the right or to the left. In any case, it takes him but a few hours' search in an easterly or westerly direction to correct his mistake.'
The explanation is a tempting one when the journey is taken north and south; but it does not apply to a journey east and west, on the same isothermal line. Besides, it has this defect, that it does not admit of generalization. One cannot talk of sight and still less of the influence of a change of climate when a Cat returns home, from one end of a town to the other, threading his way through a labyrinth of streets and alleys which he sees for the first time. Nor is it sight that guides my Mason-bees, especially when they are let loose in the thick of a wood. Their low flight, eight or nine feet above the ground, does not allow them to take a panoramic view nor to gather the lie of the land. What need have they of topography? Their hesitation is short-lived: after describing a few narrow circles around the experimenter, they start in the direction of the nest, despite the cover of the forest, despite the screen of a tall chain of hills which they cross by mounting the slope at no great height from the ground. Sight enables them to avoid obstacles, without giving them a general idea of their road. Nor has meteorology aught to do with the case: the climate has not varied in those few miles of transit. My Mason-bees have not learnt from any experience of heat, cold, dryness and damp: an existence of a few weeks' duration does not allow of this. And, even if they knew all about the four cardinal points, there is no difference in climate between the spot where their nest lies and the spot at which they are released; so that does not help them to settle the direction in which they are to travel.
To explain these many mysteries, we are driven therefore to appeal to yet another mystery, that is to say, a special sense denied to mankind. Charles Darwin, whose weighty authority no one will gainsay, arrives at the same conclusion. To ask if the animal be not impressed by the terrestrial currents, to enquire if it be not influenced by the close proximity of a magnetic needle: what is this but the recognition of a magnetic sense? Do we possess a similar faculty? I am speaking, of course, of the magnetism of the physicists and not of the magnetism of the Mesmers and Cagliostros. Assuredly we possess nothing remotely like it. What need would the mariner have of a compass, were he himself a compass?
And this is what the great scientist acknowledges: a special sense, so foreign to our organism that we are not able to form a conception of it, guides the Pigeon, the Swallow, the Cat, the Mason-bee and a host of others when away from home. Whether this sense be magnetic or no I will not take upon myself to decide; I am content to have helped, in no small degree, to establish its existence. A new sense added to our number: what an acquisition, what a source of progress! Why are we deprived of it? It would have been a fine weapon and of great service in the struggle for life. If, as is contended, the whole of the animal kingdom, including man, is derived from a single mould, the original cell, and becomes self-evolved in the course of time, favouring the best-endowed and leaving the less well-endowed to perish, how comes it that this wonderful sense is the portion of a humble few and that it has left no trace in man, the culminating achievement of the zoological progression? Our precursors were very ill-advised to let so magnificent an inheritance go: it was better worth keeping than a vertebra of the coccyx or a hair of the moustache.
Does not the fact that this sense has not been handed down to us point to a flaw in the pedigree? I submit the little problem to the evolutionists; and I should much like to know what their protoplasm and their nucleus have to say to it.
Is this unknown sense localized in a particular part of the Wasp and the Bee? Is it exercised by means of a special organ? We immediately think of the antennae. The antennae are what we always fall back upon when the insect's actions are not quite clear to us; we gladly put down to them whatever is most necessary to our arguments. For that matter, I had plenty of fairly good reasons for suspecting them of containing the sense of direction. When the Hairy Ammophila (A Sand-wasp who hunts the Grey Worm, or Caterpillar of the Turnip-moth, to serve as food for her grubs. For other varieties of the Ammophila, cf. "Insect Life": chapter 15.—Translator's Note.) is searching for the Grey Worm, it is with her antennae, those tiny fingers continually fumbling at the soil, that she seems to recognize the presence of the underground prey. Could not those inquisitive filaments, which seem to guide the insect when hunting, also guide it when travelling? This remained to be seen; and I did see.
I took some Mason-bees and amputated their antennae with the scissors, as closely as I could. These maimed ones were then carried to a distance and released. They returned to the nest with as little difficulty as the others. I once experimented in the same way with the largest of our Cerceres (Cerceris tuberculata) (Another Hunting Wasp, who feeds her young on Weevils. Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 4 and 5.—Translator's Note.); and the Weevil-huntress returned to her galleries. This rids us of one hypothesis: the sense of direction is not exercised by the antennae. Then where is its seat? I do not know.
What I do know is that the Mason-bees without antennae, though they go back to the cells, do not resume work. They persist in flying in front of their masonry, they alight on the clay cup, they perch on the rim of the cell and there, seemingly pensive and forlorn, stand for a long time contemplating the work which will never be finished; they go off, they come back, they drive away any importunate neighbour, but they fetch and carry no more honey or mortar. The next day, they do not appear. Deprived of her tools, the worker loses all heart in her task. When the Mason-bee is building, the antennae are constantly feeling, fumbling and exploring, superintending, as it were, the finishing touches given to the work. They are her instruments of precision; they represent the builder's compasses, square, level and plumb-line.
Hitherto my experiments have been confined to the females, who are much more faithful to the nest by virtue of their maternal responsibilities. What would the males do if they were taken from home? I have no great confidence in these swains who, for a few days, form a tumultuous throng outside the nests, wait for the females to emerge, quarrel for their possession, amid endless brawls, and then disappear when the works are in full swing. What care they, I ask myself, about returning to the natal nest rather than settling elsewhere, provided that they find some recipient for their amatory declarations? I was mistaken: the males do return to the nest. It is true that, in view of their lack of strength, I did not subject them to a long journey: about half a mile or so. Nevertheless, this represented to them a distant expedition, an unknown country; for I do not see them go on long excursions. By day, they visit the nests or the flowers in the garden; at night, they take refuge in the old galleries or in the interstices of the stone-heaps in the harmas.
The same nests are frequented by two Osmia-bees (Osmia tricornis and Osmia Latreillii), who build their cells in the galleries left at their disposal by the Chalicodomae. The most numerous is the first, the Three-horned Osmia. It was a splendid opportunity to try and discover to what extent the sense of direction may be regarded as general in the Bees and Wasps; and I took advantage of it. Well, the Osmiae (Osmia tricornis), both male and female, can find their way back to the nest. My experiments were made very quickly, with small numbers and over short distances; but the results agreed so closely with the others that I was convinced. All told, the return to the nest, including my earlier attempts, was verified in the case of four species: the Chalicodoma of the Sheds, the Chalicodoma of the Walls, the Three-horned Osmia and the Great or Warted Cerceris (Cerceris tuberculata). ("Insect Life": chapter 19.—Translator's Note.) Shall I generalize without reserve and allow all the Hymenoptera (The Hymenoptera are an order of insects having four membranous wings and include the Bees, Wasps, Ants, Saw-flies and Ichneumon-flies.—Translator's Note.) this faculty of finding their way in unknown country? I shall do nothing of the kind; for here, to my knowledge, is a contradictory and very significant result.
Among the treasures of my harmas-laboratory, I place in the first rank an Ant-hill of Polyergus rufescens, the celebrated Red Ant, the slave-hunting Amazon. Unable to rear her family, incapable of seeking her food, of taking it even when it is within her reach, she needs servants who feed her and undertake the duties of housekeeping. The Red Ants make a practice of stealing children to wait on the community. They ransack the neighbouring Ant-hills, the home of a different species; they carry away nymphs, which soon attain maturity in the strange house and become willing and industrious servants.
When the hot weather of June and July sets in, I often see the Amazons leave their barracks of an afternoon and start on an expedition. The column measures five or six yards in length. If nothing worthy of attention be met upon the road, the ranks are fairly well maintained; but, at the first suspicion of an Ant-hill, the vanguard halts and deploys in a swarming throng, which is increased by the others as they come up hurriedly. Scouts are sent out; the Amazons recognize that they are on a wrong track; and the column forms again. It resumes its march, crosses the garden-paths, disappears from sight in the grass, reappears farther on, threads its way through the heaps of dead leaves, comes out again and continues its search. At last, a nest of Black Ants is discovered. The Red Ants hasten down to the dormitories where the nymphs lie and soon emerge with their booty. Then we have, at the gates of the underground city, a bewildering scrimmage between the defending blacks and the attacking reds. The struggle is too unequal to remain indecisive. Victory falls to the reds, who race back to their abode, each with her prize, a swaddled nymph, dangling from her mandibles. The reader who is not acquainted with these slave-raiding habits would be greatly interested in the story of the Amazons. I relinquish it, with much regret: it would take us too far from our subject, namely, the return to the nest.
The distance covered by the nymph-stealing column varies: it all depends on whether Black Ants are plentiful in the neighbourhood. At times, ten or twenty yards suffice; at others, it requires fifty, a hundred or more. I once saw the expedition go beyond the garden. The Amazons scaled the surrounding wall, which was thirteen feet high at that point, climbed over it and went on a little farther, into a cornfield. As for the route taken, this is a matter of indifference to the marching column. Bare ground, thick grass, a heap of dead leaves or stones, brickwork, a clump of shrubs: all are crossed without any marked preference for one sort of road rather than another.
What is rigidly fixed is the path home, which follows the outward track in all its windings and all its crossings, however difficult. Laden with their plunder, the Red Ants return to the nest by the same road, often an exceedingly complicated one, which the exigencies of the chase compelled them to take originally. They repass each spot which they passed at first; and this is to them a matter of such imperative necessity that no additional fatigue nor even the gravest danger can make them alter the track.
Let us suppose that they have crossed a thick heap of dead leaves, representing to them a path beset with yawning gulfs, where every moment some one falls, where many are exhausted as they struggle out of the hollows and reach the heights by means of swaying bridges, emerging at last from the labyrinth of lanes. No matter: on their return, they will not fail, though weighed down with their burden, once more to struggle through that weary maze. To avoid all this fatigue, they would have but to swerve slightly from the original path, for the good, smooth road is there, hardly a step away. This little deviation never occurs to them.
I came upon them one day when they were on one of their raids. They were marching along the inner edge of the stone-work of the garden-pond, where I have replaced the old batrachians by a colony of Gold-fish. The wind was blowing very hard from the north and, taking the column in flank, sent whole rows of the Ants flying into the water. The fish hurried up; they watched the performance and gobbled up the drowning insects. It was a difficult bit; and the column was decimated before it had passed. I expected to see the return journey made by another road, which would wind round and avoid the fatal cliff. Not at all. The nymph-laden band resumed the parlous path and the Goldfish received a double windfall: the Ants and their prizes. Rather than alter its track, the column was decimated a second time.
It is not easy to find the way home again after a distant expedition, during which there have been various sorties, nearly always by different paths; and this difficulty makes it absolutely necessary for the Amazons to return by the same road by which they went. The insect has no choice of route, if it would not be lost on the way: it must come back by the track which it knows and which it has lately travelled. The Processionary Caterpillars, when they leave their nest and go to another branch, on another tree, in search of a type of leaf more to their taste, carpet the course with silk and are able to return home by following the threads stretched along their road. This is the most elementary method open to the insect liable to stray on its excursions: a silken path brings it home again. The Processionaries, with their unsophisticated traffic-laws, are very different from the Mason-bees and others, who have a special sense to guide them.
The Amazon, though belonging to the Hymenopteron clan, herself possesses rather limited homing-faculties, as witness her compulsory return by her former trail. Can she imitate, to a certain extent, the Processionaries' method, that is to say, does she leave, along the road traversed, not a series of conducting threads, for she is not equipped for that work, but some odorous emanation, for instance some formic scent, which would allow her to guide herself by means of the olfactory sense? This view is pretty generally accepted. The Ants, people say, are guided by the sense of smell; and this sense of smell appears to have its seat in the antennae, which we see in continual palpitation. It is doubtless very reprehensible, but I must admit that the theory does not inspire me with overwhelming enthusiasm. In the first place, I have my suspicions about a sense of smell seated in the antennae: I have given my reasons before; and, next, I hope to prove by experiment that the Red Ants are not guided by a scent of any kind.
To lie in wait for my Amazons, for whole afternoons on end, often unsuccessfully, meant taking up too much of my time. I engaged an assistant whose hours were not so much occupied as mine. It was my grand-daughter Lucie, a little rogue who liked to hear my stories of the Ants. She had been present at the great battle between the reds and blacks and was much impressed by the rape of the long-clothes babies. Well-coached in her exalted functions, very proud of already serving that august lady, Science, my little Lucie would wander about the garden, when the weather seemed propitious, and keep an eye on the Red Ants, having been commissioned to reconnoitre carefully the road to the pillaged Ant-hill. She had given proof of her zeal; I could rely upon it.
One day, while I was spinning out my daily quota of prose, there came a banging at my study-door:
'It's I, Lucie! Come quick: the reds have gone into the blacks' house. Come quick!'
'And do you know the road they took?'
'Yes, I marked it.'
'What! Marked it? How?'
'I did what Hop-o'-my-Thumb did: I scattered little white stones along the road.'
I hurried out. Things had happened as my six-year-old colleague said. Lucie had secured her provision of pebbles in advance and, on seeing the Amazon regiment leave barracks, had followed them step by step and placed her stones at intervals along the road covered. The Ants had made their raid and were beginning to return along the track of tell-tale pebbles. The distance to the nest was about a hundred paces, which gave me time to make preparations for an experiment previously contemplated.
I take a big broom and sweep the track for about a yard across. The dusty particles on the surface are thus removed and replaced by others. If they were tainted with any odorous effluvia, their absence will throw the Ants off the track. I divide the road, in this way, at four different points, a few feet a part.
The column arrives at the first section. The hesitation of the Ants is evident. Some recede and then return, only to recede once more; others wander along the edge of the cutting; others disperse sideways and seem to be trying to skirt the unknown country. The head of the column, at first closed up to a width of a foot or so, now scatters to three or four yards. But fresh arrivals gather in their numbers before the obstacle; they form a mighty array, an undecided horde. At last, a few Ants venture into the swept zone and others follow, while a few have meantime gone ahead and recovered the track by a circuitous route. At the other cuttings, there are the same halts, the same hesitations; nevertheless, they are crossed, either in a straight line or by going round. In spite of my snares, the Ants manage to return to the nest; and that by way of the little stones.
The result of the experiment seems to argue in favour of the sense of smell. Four times over, there are manifest hesitations wherever the road is swept. Though the return takes place, nevertheless, along the original track, this may be due to the uneven work of the broom, which has left certain particles of the scented dust in position. The Ants who went round the cleared portion may have been guided by the sweepings removed to either side. Before, therefore, pronouncing judgment for or against the sense of smell, it were well to renew the experiment under better conditions and to remove everything containing a vestige of scent.
A few days later, when I have definitely decided on my plan, Lucie resumes her watch and soon comes to tell me of a sortie. I was counting on it, for the Amazons rarely miss an expedition during the hot and sultry afternoons of June and July, especially when the weather threatens storm. Hop-o'-my-Thumb's pebbles once more mark out the road, on which I choose the point best-suited to my schemes.
A garden-hose is fixed to one of the feeders of the pond; the sluice is opened; and the Ants' path is cut by a continuous torrent, two or three feet wide and of unlimited length. The sheet of water flows swiftly and plentifully at first, so as to wash the ground well and remove anything that may possess a scent. This thorough washing lasts for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then, when the Ants draw near, returning from the plunder, I let the water flow more slowly and reduce its depth, so as not to overtax the strength of the insects. Now we have an obstacle which the Amazons must surmount, if it is absolutely necessary for them to follow the first trail.
This time, the hesitation lasts long and the stragglers have time to come up with the head of the column. Nevertheless, an attempt is made to cross the torrent by means of a few bits of gravel projecting above the water; then, failing to find bottom, the more reckless of the Ants are swept off their feet and, without loosing hold of their prizes, drift away, land on some shoal, regain the bank and renew their search for a ford. A few straws borne on the waters stop and become so many shaky bridges on which the Ants climb. Dry olive-leaves are converted into rafts, each with its load of passengers. The more venturesome, partly by their own efforts, partly by good luck, reach the opposite bank without adventitious aid. I see some who, dragged by the current to one or the other bank, two or three yards off, seem very much concerned as to what they shall do next. Amid this disorder, amid the dangers of drowning, not one lets go her booty. She would not dream of doing so: death sooner than that! In a word, the torrent is crossed somehow or other along the regular track.
The scent of the road cannot be the cause of this, it seems to me, for the torrent not only washed the ground some time beforehand but also pours fresh water on it all the time that the crossing is taking place. Let us now see what will happen when the formic scent, if there really be one on the trail, is replaced by another, much stronger odour, one perceptible to our own sense of smell, which the first is not, at least not under present conditions.
I wait for a third sortie and, at one point in the road taken by the Ants, rub the ground with some handfuls of freshly gathered mint. I cover the track, a little farther on, with the leaves of the same plant. The Ants, on their return, cross the section over which the mint was rubbed without apparently giving it a thought; they hesitate in front of the section heaped up with leaves and then go straight on.
After these two experiments, first with the torrent of water which washes away all traces of smell from the ground and then with the mint which changes the smell, I think that we are no longer at liberty to quote scent as the guide of the Ants that return to the nest by the road which they took at starting. Further tests will tell us more about it.
Without interfering with the soil, I now lay across the track some large sheets of paper, newspapers, keeping them in position with a few small stones. In front of this carpet, which completely alters the appearance of the road, without removing any sort of scent that it may possess, the Ants hesitate even longer than before any of my other snares, including the torrent. They are compelled to make manifold attempts, reconnaissances to right and left, forward movements and repeated retreats, before venturing altogether into the unknown zone. The paper straits are crossed at last and the march resumed as usual.
Another ambush awaits the Amazons some distance farther on. I have divided the track by a thin layer of yellow sand, the ground itself being grey. This change of colour alone is enough for a moment to disconcert the Ants, who again hesitate in the same way, though not for so long, as they did before the paper. Eventually, this obstacle is overcome like the others.
As neither the stretch of sand nor the stretch of paper got rid of any scented effluvia with which the trail may have been impregnated, it is patent that, as the Ants hesitated and stopped in the same way as before, they find their way not by sense of smell, but really and truly by sense of sight; for, every time that I alter the appearance of the track in any way whatever—whether by my destructive broom, my streaming water, my green mint, my paper carpet or my golden sand—the returning column calls a halt, hesitates and attempts to account for the changes that have taken place. Yes, it is sight, but a very dull sight, whose horizon is altered by the shifting of a few bits of gravel. To this short sight, a strip of paper, a bed of mint-leaves, a layer of yellow sand, a stream of water, a furrow made by the broom, or even lesser modifications are enough to transform the landscape; and the regiment, eager to reach home as fast as it can with its loot, halts uneasily on beholding this unfamiliar scenery. If the doubtful zones are at length passed, it is due to the fact that fresh attempts are constantly being made to cross the doctored strips and that at last a few Ants recognize well-known spots beyond them. The others, relying on their clearer-sighted sisters, follow.
Sight would not be enough, if the Amazon had not also at her service a correct memory for places. The memory of an Ant! What can that be? In what does it resemble ours? I have no answers to these questions; but a few words will enable me to prove that the insect has a very exact and persistent recollection of places which it has once visited. Here is something which I have often witnessed. It sometimes happens that the plundered Ant-hill offers the Amazons a richer spoil than the invading column is able to carry away. Or, again, the region visited is rich in Ant-hills. Another raid is necessary, to exploit the site thoroughly. In such cases, a second expedition takes place, sometimes on the next day, sometimes two or three days later. This time, the column does no reconnoitring on the way: it goes straight to the spot known to abound in nymphs and travels by the identical path which it followed before. It has sometimes happened that I have marked with small stones, for a distance of twenty yards, the road pursued a couple of days earlier and have then found the Amazons proceeding by the same route, stone by stone:
'They will go first here and then there,' I said, according to the position of the guide-stones.
And they would, in fact, go first here and then there, skirting my line of pebbles, without any noticeable deviation.
Can one believe that odoriferous emanations diffused along the route are going to last for several days? No one would dare to suggest it. It must, therefore, be sight that directs the Amazons, sight assisted by a memory for places. And this memory is tenacious enough to retain the impression until the next day and later; it is scrupulously faithful, for it guides the column by the same path as on the day before, across the thousand irregularities of the ground.
How will the Amazon behave when the locality is unknown to her? Apart from topographical memory, which cannot serve her here, the region in which I imagine her being still unexplored, does the Ant possess the Mason-bee's sense of direction, at least within modest limits, and is she able thus to regain her Ant-hill or her marching column?
The different parts of the garden are not all visited by the marauding legions to the same extent: the north side is exploited by preference, doubtless because the forays in that direction are more productive. The Amazons, therefore, generally direct their troops north of their barracks; I seldom see them in the south. This part of the garden is, if not wholly unknown, at least much less familiar to them than the other. Having said that, let us observe the conduct of the strayed Ant.
I take up my position near the Ant-hill; and, when the column returns from the slave-raid, I force an Ant to step on a leaf which I hold out to her. Without touching her, I carry her two or three paces away from her regiment: no more than that, but in a southerly direction. It is enough to put her astray, to make her lose her bearings entirely. I see the Amazon, now replaced on the ground, wander about at random, still, I need hardly say, with her booty in her mandibles; I see her hurry away from her comrades, thinking that she is rejoining them; I see her retrace her steps, turn aside again, try to the right, try to the left and grope in a host of directions, without succeeding in finding her whereabouts. The pugnacious, strong-jawed slave-hunter is utterly lost two steps away from her party. I have in mind certain strays who, after half an hour's searching, had not succeeded in recovering the route and were going farther and farther from it, still carrying the nymph in their teeth. What became of them? What did they do with their spoil? I had not the patience to follow those dull-witted marauders to the end.
Let us repeat the experiment, but place the Amazon to the north. After more or less prolonged hesitations, after a search now in this direction, now in that, the Ant succeeds in finding her column. She knows the locality.
Here, of a surety, is a Hymenopteron deprived of that sense of direction which other Hymenoptera enjoy. She has in her favour a memory for places and nothing more. A deviation amounting to two or three of our strides is enough to make her lose her way and to keep her from returning to her people, whereas miles across unknown country will not foil the Mason-bee. I expressed my surprise, just now, that man was deprived of a wonderful sense wherewith certain animals are endowed. The enormous distance between the two things compared might furnish matter for discussion. In the present case, the distance no longer exists: we have to do with two insects very near akin, two Hymenoptera. Why, if they issue from the same mould, has one a sense which the other has not, an additional sense, constituting a much more overpowering factor than the structural details? I will wait until the evolutionists condescend to give me a valid reason.
To return to this memory for places whose tenacity and fidelity I have just recognized: to what degree does it consent to retain impressions? Does the Amazon require repeated journeys in order to learn her geography, or is a single expedition enough for her? Are the line followed and the places visited engraved on her memory from the first? The Red Ant does not lend herself to the tests that might furnish the reply: the experimenter is unable to decide whether the path followed by the expeditionary column is being covered for the first time, nor is it in his power to compel the legion to adopt this or that different road. When the Amazons go out to plunder the Ant-hills, they take the direction which they please; and we are not allowed to interfere with their march. Let us turn to other Hymenoptera for information.
I select the Pompili, whose habits we shall study in detail in a later chapter. (For the Wasp known as the Pompilus, or Ringed Calicurgus, cf. "The Life and Love of the Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 12.—Translator's Note.) They are hunters of Spiders and diggers of burrows. The game, the food of the coming larva, is first caught and paralysed; the home is excavated afterwards. As the heavy prey would be a grave encumbrance to the Wasp in search of a convenient site, the Spider is placed high up, on a tuft of grass or brushwood, out of the reach of marauders, especially Ants, who might damage the precious morsel in the lawful owner's absence. After fixing her booty on the verdant pinnacle, the Pompilus casts around for a favourable spot and digs her burrow. During the process of excavation, she returns from time to time to her Spider; she nibbles at the prize, feels, touches it here and there, as though taking stock of its plumpness and congratulating herself on the plentiful provender; then she returns to her burrow and goes on digging. Should anything alarm or distress her, she does not merely inspect her Spider: she also brings her a little closer to her work-yard, but never fails to lay her on the top of a tuft of verdure. These are the manoeuvres of which I can avail myself to gauge the elasticity of the Wasp's memory.
While the Pompilus is at work on the burrow, I seize the prey and place it in an exposed spot, half a yard away from its original position. The Pompilus soon leaves the hole to enquire after her booty and goes straight to the spot where she left it. This sureness of direction, this faithful memory for places can be explained by repeated previous visits. I know nothing of what has happened beforehand. Let us take no notice of this first expedition; the others will be more conclusive. For the moment, the Pompilus, without the least hesitation, finds the tuft of grass whereon her prey was lying. Then come marches and counter-marches upon that tuft, minute explorations and frequent returns to the exact spot where the Spider was deposited. At last, convinced that the prize is no longer there, the Wasp makes a leisurely survey of the neighbourhood, feeling the ground with her antennae as she goes. The Spider is descried in the exposed spot where I had placed her. Surprise on the part of the Pompilus, who goes forward and then suddenly steps back with a start:
'Is it alive?' she seems to ask. 'Is it dead? Is it really my Spider? Let us be wary!'
The hesitation does not last long: the huntress grabs her victim, drags her backwards and places her, still high up, on a second tuft of herbage, two or three steps away from the first. She then goes back to the burrow and digs for a while. For the second time, I remove the Spider and lay her at some distance, on the bare ground. This is the moment to judge of the Wasp's memory. Two tufts of grass have served as temporary resting-places for the game. The first, to which she returned with such precision, the Wasp may have learnt to know by a more or less thorough examination, by reiterated visits that escaped my eye; but the second has certainly made but a slight impression on her memory. She adopted it without any studied choice; she stopped there just long enough to hoist her Spider to the top; she saw it for the first time and saw it hurriedly, in passing. Is that rapid glance enough to provide an exact recollection? Besides, there are now two localities to be modelled in the insect's memory: the first shelf may easily be confused with the second. To which will the Pompilus go?
We shall soon find out: here she comes, leaving the burrow to pay a fresh visit to the Spider. She runs straight to the second tuft, where she hunts about for a long time for her absent prey. She knows that it was there, when last seen, and not elsewhere; she persists in looking for it there and does not once think of going back to the first perch. The first tuft of grass no longer counts; the second alone interests her. And then the search in the neighbourhood begins again.
On finding her game on the bare spot where I myself have placed it, the Pompilus quickly deposits the Spider on a third tuft of grass; and the experiment is renewed. This time, the Pompilus hurries to the third tuft when she comes to look after her Spider; she hurries to it without hesitation, without confusing it in any way with the first two, which she scorns to visit, so sure is her memory. I do the same thing a couple of times more; and the insect always returns to the last perch, without worrying about the others. I stand amazed at the memory of that pigmy. She need but catch a single hurried glimpse of a spot that differs in no wise from a host of others in order to remember it quite well, notwithstanding the fact that, as a miner relentlessly pursuing her underground labours, she has other matters to occupy her mind. Could our own memory always vie with hers? It is very doubtful. Allow the Red Ant the same sort of memory; and her peregrinations, her returns to the nest by the same road are no longer difficult to explain.
Tests of this kind have furnished me with some other results worthy of mention. When convinced, by untiring explorations, that her prey is no longer on the tuft where she laid it, the Pompilus, as we were saying, looks for it in the neighbourhood and finds it pretty easily, for I am careful to put it in an exposed place. Let us increase the difficulty to some extent. I dig the tip of my finger into the ground and lay the Spider in the little hole thus obtained, covering her with a tiny leaf. Now the Wasp, while in quest of her lost prey, happens to walk over this leaf, to pass it again and again without suspecting that the Spider lies beneath, for she goes and continues her vain search farther off. Her guide, therefore is not scent, but sight. Nevertheless, she is constantly feeling the ground with her antennae. What can be the function of those organs? I do not know, although I assert that they are not olfactory organs. The Ammophila, in search of her Grey Worm, had already led me to make the same assertion; I now obtain an experimental proof which seems to me decisive. I would add that the Pompilus has very short sight: often she passes within a couple of inches of her Spider without seeing her.
CHAPTER 7. SOME REFLECTIONS UPON INSECT PSYCHOLOGY.
The laudator temperis acti is out of favour just now: the world is on the move. Yes, but sometimes it moves backwards. When I was a boy, our twopenny textbooks told us that man was a reasoning animal; nowadays, there are learned volumes to prove to us that human reason is but a higher rung in the ladder whose foot reaches down to the bottommost depths of animal life. There is the greater and the lesser; there are all the intermediary rounds; but nowhere does it break off and start afresh. It begins with zero in the glair of a cell and ascends until we come to the mighty brain of a Newton. The noble faculty of which we were so proud is a zoological attribute. All have a larger or smaller share of it, from the live atom to the anthropoid ape, that hideous caricature of man.
It always struck me that those who held this levelling theory made facts say more than they really meant; it struck me that, in order to obtain their plain, they were lowering the mountain-peak, man, and elevating the valley, the animal. Now this levelling of theirs needed proofs, to my mind; and, as I found none in their books, or at any rate only doubtful and highly debatable ones, I did my own observing, in order to arrive at a definite conviction; I sought; I experimented.
To speak with any certainty, it behoves us not to go beyond what we really know. I am beginning to have a passable acquaintance with insects, after spending some forty years in their company. Let us question the insect, then: not the first that comes along, but the most gifted, the Hymenopteron. I am giving my opponents every advantage. Where will they find a creature more richly endowed with talent? It would seem as though, in creating it, nature had delighted in bestowing the greatest amount of industry upon the smallest body of matter. Can the bird, wonderful architect that it is, compare its work with that masterpiece of higher geometry, the edifice of the Bee? The Hymenopteron rivals man himself. We build towns, the Bee erects cities; we have servants, the Ant has hers; we rear domestic animals, she rears her sugar-yielding insects; we herd cattle, she herds her milch-cows, the Aphides; we have abolished slavery, whereas she continues her nigger-traffic.
Well, does this superior, this privileged being reason? Reader, do not smile: this is a most serious matter, well worthy of our consideration. To devote our attention to animals is to plunge at once into the vexed question of who we are and whence we come. What, then, passes in that little Hymenopteron brain? Has it faculties akin to ours, has it the power of thought? What a problem, if we could only solve it; what a chapter of psychology, if we could only write it! But, at our very first questionings, the mysterious will rise up, impenetrable: we may be convinced of that. We are incapable of knowing ourselves; what will it be if we try to fathom the intellect of others? Let us be content if we succeed in gleaning a few grains of truth.
What is reason? Philosophy would give us learned definitions. Let us be modest and keep to the simplest: we are only treating of animals. Reason is the faculty that connects the effect with its cause and directs the act by conforming it to the needs of the accidental. Within these limits, are animals capable of reasoning? Are they able to connect a 'because' with a 'why' and afterwards to regulate their behaviour accordingly? Are they able to change their line of conduct when faced with an emergency?
History has but few data likely to be of use to us here; and those which we find scattered in various authors are seldom able to withstand a severe examination. One of the most remarkable of which I know is supplied by Erasmus Darwin, in his book entitled "Zoonomia." It tells of a Wasp that has just caught and killed a big Fly. The wind is blowing; and the huntress, hampered in her flight by the great area presented by her prize, alights on the ground to amputate the abdomen, the head and the wings; she flies away, carrying with her only the thorax, which gives less hold to the wind. If we keep to the bald facts, this does, I admit, give a semblance of reason. The Wasp appears to grasp the relation between cause and effect. The effect is the resistance experienced in the flight; the cause is the dimensions of the prey contending with the air. Hence the logical conclusion: those dimensions must be lessened; the abdomen, the head and, above all, the wings must be chopped off; and the resistance will be decreased. (I would gladly, if I were able, cancel some rather hasty lines which I allowed myself to pen in the first volume of these "Souvenirs" but scripta manent. All that I can do is to make amends now, in this note, for the error into which I fell. Relying on Lacordaire, who quotes this instance from Erasmus Darwin in his own "Introduction a l'entomologie", I believed that a Sphex was given as the heroine of the story. How could I do otherwise, not having the original text in front of me? How could I suspect that an entomologist of Lacordaire's standing should be capable of such a blunder as to substitute a Sphex for a Common Wasp? Great was my perplexity, in the face of this evidence! A Sphex capturing a Fly was an impossibility; and I blamed the British scientist accordingly. But what insect was it that Erasmus Darwin saw? Calling logic to my aid, I declared that it was a Wasp; and I could not have hit the mark more truly. Charles Darwin, in fact, informed me afterwards that his grandfather wrote 'a Wasp' in his "Zoonomia." Though the correction did credit to my intelligence, I none the less deeply regretted my mistake, for I had uttered suspicions of the observer's powers of discernment, unjust suspicions which the translator's inaccuracy led me into entertaining. May this note serve to mitigate the harshness of the strictures provoked by my overtaxed credulity! I do not scruple to attack ideas which I consider false; but Heaven forfend that I should ever attack those who uphold them!—Author's Note.)
But does this concatenation of ideas, rudimentary though it be, really take place within the insect's brain? I am convinced of the contrary; and my proofs are unanswerable. In the first volume of these "Souvenirs" (Cf. "Insect Life": chapter 9.—Translator's Note.), I demonstrated by experiment that Erasmus Darwin's Wasp was but obeying her instinct, which is to cut up the captured game and to keep only the most nourishing part, the thorax. Whether the day be perfectly calm or whether the wind blow, whether she be in the shelter of a dense thicket or in the open, I see the Wasp proceed to separate the succulent from the tough; I see her reject the legs, the wings, the head and the abdomen, retaining only the breast as pap for her larvae. Then what value has this dissection as an argument in favour of the insect's reasoning-powers when the wind blows? It has no value at all, for it would take place just the same in absolutely calm weather. Erasmus Darwin jumped too quickly to his conclusion, which was the outcome of his mental bias and not of the logic of things. If he had first enquired into the Wasp's habits, he would not have brought forward as a serious argument an incident which had no connection with the important question of animal reason.
I have reverted to this case to show the difficulties that beset the man who confines himself to casual observations, however carefully carried out. One should never rely upon a lucky chance, which may not occur again. We must multiply our observations, check them one with the other; we must create incidents, looking into preceding ones, finding out succeeding ones and working out the relation between them all: then and not till then, with extreme caution, are we entitled to express a few views worthy of credence. Nowhere do I find data collected under such conditions; for which reason, however much I might wish it, it is impossible for me to bring the evidence of others in support of the few conclusions which I myself have formed.
My Mason-bees, with their nests hanging on the walls of the arch which I have mentioned, lent themselves to continuous experiment better than any other Hymenopteron. I had them there, at my house, under my eyes, at all hours of the day, as long as I wished. I was free to follow their actions in full detail and to carry out successfully any experiment, however long. Moreover, their numbers allowed me to repeat my attempts until I was perfectly convinced. The Mason-bees, therefore, shall supply me with the materials for this chapter also.
A few words, before I begin, about the works. The Mason-bee of the Sheds utilizes, first of all, the old galleries of the clay nest, a part of which she good-naturedly abandons to two Osmiae, her free tenants: the Three-horned Osmia and Latreille's Osmia. These old corridors, which save labour, are in great demand; but there are not many vacant, as the more precocious Osmiae have already taken possession of most of them; and therefore the building of new cells soon begins. These cells are cemented to the surface of the nest, which thus increases in thickness every year. The edifice of cells is not built all at once: mortar and honey alternate repeatedly. The masonry starts with a sort of little swallow's nest, a half-cup or thimble, whose circumference is completed by the wall against which it rests. Picture the cup of an acorn cut in two and stuck to the surface of the nest: there you have the receptacle in a stage sufficiently advanced to take a first instalment of honey.
The Bee thereupon leaves the mortar and busies herself with harvesting. After a few foraging-trips, the work of building is resumed; and some new rows of bricks raise the edge of the basin, which becomes capable of receiving a larger stock of provisions. Then comes another change of business: the mason once more becomes a harvester. A little later, the harvester is again a mason; and these alternations continue until the cell is of the regulation height and holds the amount of honey required for the larva's food. Thus come, turn and turn about, more or less numerous according to the occupation in hand, journeys to the dry and barren path, where the cement is gathered and mixed, and journeys to the flowers, where the Bee's crop is crammed with honey and her belly powdered with pollen.
At last comes the time for laying. We see the Bee arrive with a pellet of mortar. She gives a glance at the cell to enquire if everything is in order; she inserts her abdomen; and the egg is laid. Then and there the mother seals up the home: with her pellet of cement she closes the orifice and manages so well with the material that the lid receives its permanent form at this first sitting; it has only to be thickened and strengthened with fresh layers, a work which is less urgent and will be done by and by. What does appear to be an urgent necessity is the closing of the cell immediately after the egg has been religiously deposited therein, so that there may be no danger from evilly-disposed visitors during the mother's absence. The Bee must have serious reasons for thus hurrying on the closing of the cell. What would happen if, after laying her egg, she left the house open and went to the cement-pit to fetch the wherewithal to block the door? Some thief might drop in and substitute her own egg for the Mason-bee's. We shall see that our suspicions are not uncalled-for. One thing is certain, that the Mason never lays without having in her mandibles the pellet of mortar required for the immediate construction of the lid of the nest. The precious egg must not for a single instant remain exposed to the cupidity of marauders.
To these particulars I will add a few general observations which will make what follows easier to understand. So long as its circumstances are normal, the insect's actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be attained. What could be more logical, for instance, than the devices employed by the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey (Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 3 to 12 and 15 to 17.—Translator's Note.) so that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no wise imperilling that larva's safety? It is preeminently rational; we ourselves could think of nothing better; and yet the Wasp's action is not prompted by reason. If she thought out her surgery, she would be our superior. It will never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivisections. Therefore, so long as it does not depart from the path mapped out for it, the insect can perform the most sagacious actions without entitling us in the least to attribute these to the dictates of reason.
What would happen in an emergency? Here we must distinguish carefully between two classes of emergency, or we shall be liable to grievous error. First, in accidents occurring in the course of the insect's occupation at the moment. In these circumstances, the creature is capable of remedying the accident; it continues, under a similar form, its actual task; it remains, in short; in the same psychic condition. In the second case, the accident is connected with a more remote occupation; it relates to a completed task with which, under normal conditions, the insect is no longer concerned. To meet this emergency, the creature would have to retrace its psychic course; it would have to do all over again what it has just finished, before turning its attention to anything else. Is the insect capable of this? Will it be able to leave the present and return to the past? Will it decide to hark back to a task that is much more pressing than the one on which it was engaged? If it did all this, then we should really have evidence of a modicum of reason. The question shall be settled by experiment.
We will begin by taking a few incidents that come under the first heading. A Mason-bee has finished the initial layer of the covering of the cell. She has gone in search of a second pellet of mortar wherewith to strengthen her work. In her absence, I prick the lid with a needle and widen the hole thus made, until it is half the size of the opening. The insect returns and repairs the damage. It was originally engaged on the lid and is merely continuing its work in mending that lid.
A second is still at her first row of bricks. The cell as yet is no more than a shallow cup, containing no provisions. I make a big hole in the bottom of the cup and the Bee hastens to stop the breach. She was busy building and turned aside a moment to do more building. Her repairs are the continuation of the work on which she was engaged.
A third has laid her egg and closed the cell. While she is gone in search of a fresh supply of cement to strengthen the door, I make a large aperture immediately below the lid, too high up to allow the honey to escape. The insect, on arriving with its mortar intended for a different task, sees its broken jar and soon puts the damage right. I have rarely witnessed such a sensible performance. Nevertheless, all things considered, let us not be too lavish of our praises. The insect was busy closing up. On its return, it sees a crack, representing in its eyes a bad join which it had overlooked; it completes its actual task by improving the join.
The conclusion to be drawn from these three instances, which I select from a large number of others, more or less similar, is that the insect is able to cope with emergencies, provided that the new action be not outside the course of its actual work at the moment. Shall we say then that reason directs it? Why should we? The insect persists in the same psychic course, it continues its action, it does what it was doing before, it corrects what to it appears but a careless flaw in the work of the moment.
Here, moreover, is something which would change our estimate entirely, if it ever occurred to us to look upon these repaired breaches as a work dictated by reason. Let us turn to the second class of emergency referred to above: let us imagine, first, cells similar to those in the second experiment, that is to say, only half-finished, in the form of a shallow cup, but already containing honey. I make a hole in the bottom, through which the provisions ooze and run to waste. Their owners are harvesting. Let us imagine, on the other hand, cells very nearly finished and almost completely provisioned. I perforate the bottom in the same way and let out the honey, which drips through gradually. The owners of these are building.
Judging by what has gone before, the reader will perhaps expect to see immediate repairs, urgent repairs, for the safety of the future larva is at stake. Let him dismiss any such illusion: more and more journeys are undertaken, now in quest of food, now in quest of mortar; but not one of the Mason-bees troubles about the disastrous breach. The harvester goes on harvesting; the busy bricklayer proceeds with her next row of bricks, as though nothing out of the way had happened. Lastly, if the injured cells are high enough and contain enough provisions, the Bee lays her eggs, puts a door to the house and passes on to another house, without doing aught to remedy the leakage of the honey. Two or three days later, those cells have lost all their contents, which now form a long trail on the surface of the nest.
Is it through lack of intelligence that the Bee allows her honey to go to waste? May it not rather be through helplessness? It might happen that the sort of mortar which the Mason has at her disposal will not set on the edges of a hole that is sticky with honey. The honey may prevent the cement from adjusting itself to the orifice, in which case the insect's inertness would merely be resignation to an irreparable evil. Let us look into the matter before drawing inferences. With my forceps, I deprive the Bee of her pellet of mortar and apply it to the hole whence the honey is escaping. My attempt at repairing meets with the fullest success, though I do not pretend to compete with the Mason in dexterity. For a piece of work done by a man's hand it is quite creditable. My dab of mortar fits nicely into the mutilated wall; it hardens as usual; and the escape of honey ceases. This is quite satisfactory. What would it be had the work been done by the insect, equipped with its tools of exquisite precision? When the Mason-bee refrains, therefore, this is not due to helplessness on her part, nor to any defect in the material employed.
Another objection presents itself. We are going too far perhaps in admitting this concatenation of ideas in the insect's mind, in expecting it to argue that the honey is running away because the cell has a hole in it and that to save it from being wasted the hole must be stopped. So much logic perhaps exceeds the powers of its poor little brain. Then, again, the hole is not seen; it is hidden by the honey trickling through. The cause of that stream of honey is an unknown cause; and to trace the loss of the liquid home to that cause, to the hole in the receptacle, is too lofty a piece of reasoning for the insect.
A cell in the rudimentary cup-stage and containing no provisions has a hole, three or four millimetres (.11 to.15 inch.—Translator's Note.) wide, made in it at the bottom. A few moments later, this orifice is stopped by the Mason. We have already witnessed a similar patching. The insect, having finished, starts foraging. I reopen the hole at the same place. The pollen runs through the aperture and falls to the ground as the Bee is rubbing off her first load in the cell. The damage is undoubtedly observed. When plunging her head into the cup to take stock of what she has stored, the Bee puts her antennae into the artificial hole: she sounds it, she explores it, she cannot fail to perceive it.
I see the two feelers quivering outside the hole. The insect notices the breach in the wall: that is certain. It flies off. Will it bring back mortar from its present journey to repair the injured jar as it did just now?
Not at all. It returns with provisions, it disgorges its honey, it rubs off its pollen, it mixes the material. The sticky and almost solid mass fills up the opening and oozes through with difficulty. I roll a spill of paper and free the hole, which remains open and shows daylight distinctly in both directions. I sweep the place clear over and over again, whenever this becomes necessary because new provisions are brought; I clean the opening sometimes in the Bee's absence, sometimes in her presence, while she is busy mixing her paste. The unusual happenings in the warehouse plundered from below cannot escape her any more than the ever-open breach at the bottom of the cell. Nevertheless, for three consecutive hours, I witness this strange sight: the Bee, full of active zeal for the task in hand, omits to plug this vessel of the Danaides. She persists in trying to fill her cracked receptacle, whence the provisions disappear as soon as stored away. She constantly alternates between builder's and harvester's work; she raises the edges of the cell with fresh rows of bricks; she brings provisions which I continue to abstract, so as to leave the breach always visible. She makes thirty-two journeys before my eyes, now for mortar, now for honey, and not once does she bethink herself of stopping the leakage at the bottom of her jar.
At five o'clock in the evening, the works cease. They are resumed on the morrow. This time, I neglect to clean out my artificial orifice and leave the victuals gradually to ooze out by themselves. At length, the egg is laid and the door sealed up, without anything being done by the Bee in the matter of the disastrous breach. And yet to plug the hole were an easy matter for her: a pellet of her mortar would suffice. Besides, while the cup was still empty, did she not instantly close the hole which I had made? Why are not those early repairs of hers repeated? It clearly shows the creature's inability to retrace the course of its actions, however slightly. At the time of the first breach, the cup was empty and the insect was laying the first rows of bricks. The accident produced through my agency concerned the part of the work which occupied the Bee at the actual moment; it was a flaw in the building, such as can occur naturally in new courses of masonry, which have not had time to harden. In correcting that flaw, the Mason did not go outside her usual work.
But, once the provisioning begins, the cup is finished for good and all; and, come what may, the insect will not touch it again. The harvester will go on harvesting, though the pollen trickle to the ground through the drain. To plug the hole would imply a change of occupation of which the insect is incapable for the moment. It is the honey's turn and not the mortar's. The rule upon this point is invariable. A moment comes, presently, when the harvesting is interrupted and the masoning resumed. The edifice must be raised a storey higher. Will the Bee, once more a builder, mixing fresh cement, now attend to the leakage at the bottom? No more than before. What occupies her at present is the new floor, whose brickwork would be repaired at once, if it sustained a damage; but the bottom storey is too old a part of the business, it is ancient history; and the worker will not put a further touch to it, even though it be in serious danger.
For the rest, the present and the following storeys will all have the same fate. Carefully watched by the insect as long as they are in process of building, they are forgotten and allowed to go to ruin once they are actually built. Here is a striking instance: in a cell which has attained its full height, I make a window, almost as large as the natural opening, and place it about half-way up, above the honey. The Bee brings provisions for some time longer and then lays her egg. Through my big window, I see the egg deposited on the victuals. The insect next works at the cover, to which it gives the finishing touches with a series of little taps, administered with infinite care, while the breach remains yawning. On the lid, it scrupulously stops up every pore that could admit so much as an atom; but it leaves the great opening that places the house at the mercy of the first-comer. It goes to that breach repeatedly, puts in its head, examines it, explores it with its antennae, nibbles the edges of it. And that is all. The mutilated cell shall stay as it is, with never a dab of mortar. The threatened part dates too far back for the Bee to think of troubling about it.