Social Life in the Insect World

CHAPTER XIX

Blessed Bean, consoler of the wretched, right well indeed do you fill the labourer, the honest, skilful worker who has drawn a low number in the crazy lottery of life. Kindly Haricot, with three drops of oil and a dash of vinegar you were the favourite dish of my young years; and even now, in the evening of my days, you are welcome to my humble porringer. We shall be friends to the last.

To-day it is not my intention to sing your merits; I wish simply to ask you a question, being curious: What is the country of your origin? Did you come from Central Asia with the broad bean and the pea? Did you make part of that collection of seeds which the first pioneers of culture brought us from their gardens? Were you known to antiquity?

Here the insect, an impartial and well-informed witness, answers: "No; in our country antiquity was not acquainted with the haricot. The precious vegetable came hither by the same road as the broad bean. It is a foreigner, and of comparatively recent introduction into Europe."

The reply of the insect merits serious examination, supported as it is by extremely plausible arguments. Here are the facts. For years attentive to matters agricultural, I had never seen haricots attacked by any insect whatever; not even by the Bruchidæ, the licensed robbers of leguminous seeds.

On this point I have questioned my peasant neighbours. They are men of the extremest vigilance in all that concerns their crops. To steal their property is an abominable crime, swiftly discovered. Moreover, the housewife, who individually examines all beans intended for the saucepan, would inevitably find the malefactor.

All those I have spoken to replied to my questions with a smile in which I read their lack of faith in my knowledge of insects. "Sir," they said, "you must know that there are never grubs in the haricot bean. It is a blessed vegetable, respected by the weevil. The pea, the broad bean, the vetch, and the chick-pea all have their vermin; but the haricot, lou gounflo-gus, never. What should we do, poor folk as we are, if the Courcoussoun robbed us of it?"

The fact is that the weevil despises the haricot; a very curious dislike if we consider how industriously the other vegetables of the same family are attacked. All, even the beggarly lentil, are eagerly exploited; whilst the haricot, so tempting both as to size and flavour, remains untouched. It is incomprehensible. Why should the Bruchus, which without hesitation passes from the excellent to the indifferent, and from the indifferent to the excellent, disdain this particularly toothsome seed? It leaves the forest vetch for the pea, and the pea for the broad bean, as pleased with the small as with the large, yet the temptations of the haricot bean leave it indifferent. Why?

Apparently because the haricot is unknown to it. The other leguminous plants, whether native or of Oriental origin, have been familiar to it for centuries; it has tested their virtues year by year, and, confiding in the lessons of the past, it bases its forethought for the future upon ancient custom. The haricot is avoided as a newcomer, whose merits it has not yet learned.

The insect emphatically informs us that with us the haricot is of recent date. It has come to us from a distant country: and assuredly from the New World. Every edible vegetable attracts its consumers. If it had originated in the Old World the haricot would have had its licensed consumers, as have the pea, the lentil, and the broad bean. The smallest leguminous seed, if barely bigger than a pin's head, nourishes its weevil; a dwarf which patiently nibbles it and excavates a dwelling; but the plump, delicious haricot is spared.

This astonishing immunity can have only one explanation: like the potato and the maize-plant, the haricot is a gift of the New World. It arrived in Europe without the company of the insect which exploits it in its native country; it has found in our fields another world of insects, which have despised it because they did not know it. Similarly the potato and the ear of maize are untouched in France unless their American consumers are accidentally imported with them.

The verdict of the insect is confirmed by the negative testimony of the ancient classics; the haricot never appears on the table of the Greek or Roman peasant. In the second Eclogue of Virgil Thestylis prepares the repast of the harvesters:—

Thestylis et rapido fessis messoribus æstu
Allia serpyllumque herbas contundit olentes.

This mixture is the equivalent of the aïoli, dear to the Provençal palate. It sounds very well in verse, but is not very substantial. On such an occasion men would look for that fundamental dish, the plate of red haricots, seasoned with chopped onions. All in good time; this at least would ballast the stomach. Thus refreshed in the open air, listening to the song of the cigales, the gang of harvesters would take their mid-day rest and gently digest their meal in the shadows of the sheaves. Our modern Thestylis, differing little from her classic sister, would take good care not to forget the gounflo-gus, that economical resource of large appetites. The Thestylis of the past did not think of providing it because she did not know it.

The same author shows us Tityrus offering a night's hospitality to his friend Melibœus, who has been driven from his property by the soldiers of Octavius, and goes limping behind his flock of goats. We shall have, says Tityrus, chestnuts, cheese, and fruits. History does not say if Melibœus allowed himself to be tempted. It is a pity; for during the frugal meal we might have learned in a more explicit fashion that the shepherds of the ancient world were not acquainted with the haricot.

Ovid tells us, in a delightful passage, of the manner in which Philemon and Baucis received the gods unawares as guests in their humble cottage. On the three-legged table, which was levelled by means of a potsherd under one of the legs, they served cabbage soup, rusty bacon, eggs poached for a minute in the hot cinders, cornel-berries pickled in brine, honey, and fruits. In this rustic abundance one dish was lacking; an essential dish, which the Baucis of our countryside would never forget. After bacon soup would follow the obligatory plate of haricots. Why did Ovid, so prodigal of detail, neglect to mention a dish so appropriate to the occasion? The reply is the same as before: because he did not know of it.

In vain have I recapitulated all that my reading has taught me concerning the rustic dietary of ancient times; I can recollect no mention of the haricot. The worker in the vineyard and the harvester have their lupins, broad beans, peas, and lentils, but never the bean of beans, the haricot.

The haricot has a reputation of another kind. It is a source of flatulence; you eat it, as the saying is, and then you take a walk. It lends itself to the gross pleasantries loved of the populace; especially when they are formulated by the shameless genius of an Aristophanes or a Plautus. What merriment over a simple allusion to the sonorous bean, what guffaws from the throats of Athenian sailors or Roman porters! Did the two masters, in the unfettered gaiety of a language less reserved than our own, ever mention the virtues of the haricot? No; they are absolutely silent concerning the trumpet-voiced vegetable.

The name of the bean is a matter for reflection. It is of an unfamiliar sound, having no affinity with our language. By its unlikeness to our native combinations of sounds, it makes one think of the West Indies or South America, as do caoutchouc and cacao. Does the word as a matter of fact come from the American Indians? Did we receive, together with the vegetable, the name by which it is known in its native country? Perhaps; but how are we to know? Haricot, fantastic haricot, you set us a curious philological problem.

It is also known in French as faséole, or flageolet. The Provençal calls it faioù and favioù; the Catalan, fayol; the Spaniard, faseolo; the Portuguese, feyâo; the Italian, fagiuolo. Here I am on familiar ground: the languages of the Latin family have preserved, with the inevitable modifications, the ancient word faseolus.

Now, if I consult my dictionary I find: faselus, faseolus, phaseolus, haricot. Learned lexicographer, permit me to remark that your translation is incorrect: faselus, faseolus cannot mean haricot. The incontestable proof is in the Georgics, where Virgil tells us at what season we must sow the faselus. He says:—

Si vero viciamque seres vilemque faselum ...
Haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes;
Incipe, et ad medias sementem extende pruinas.

Nothing is clearer than the precept of the poet who was so admirably familiar with all matters agricultural; the sowing of the faselus must be commenced when the constellation of Bootes disappears at the set of sun, that is, in October; and it is to be continued until the middle of the winter.

These conditions put the haricot out of the running: it is a delicate plant, which would never survive the lightest frost. Winter would be fatal to it, even under Italian skies. More refractory to cold on account of the country of their origin, peas, broad beans, and vetches, and other leguminous plants have nothing to fear from an autumn sowing, and prosper during the winter provided the climate be fairly mild.

What then is represented by the faselus of the Georgics, that problematical vegetable which has transmitted its name to the haricot in the Latin tongues? Remembering that the contemptuous epithet vilis is used by the poet in qualification, I am strongly inclined to regard it as the cultivated vetch, the big square pea, the little-valued jaïsso of the Provençal peasant.

The problem of the haricot stood thus, almost elucidated by the testimony of the insect world alone, when an unexpected witness gave me the last word of the enigma. It was once again a poet, and a famous poet, M. José-Maria de Heredia, who came to the aid of the naturalist. Without suspecting the service he was rendering, a friend of mine, the village schoolmaster, lent me a magazine[9] in which I read the following conversation between the master-sonneteer and a lady journalist, who was anxious to know which of his own works he preferred.

"What would you have me say?" said the poet.

"I do not know what to say, I do not know which sonnet I prefer; I have taken horrible pains with all of them.... But you, which do you prefer?"

"My dear master, how can I choose out of so many jewels, when each one is perfect in its beauty? You flash pearls, emeralds, and rubies before my astonished eyes: how should I decide to prefer the emerald to the pearl? I am transported by admiration of the whole necklace."

"Well, as for me, there is something I am more proud of than of all my sonnets, and which has done much more for my reputation than my verses."

I opened my eyes wide, "What is that?" I asked. The master looked at me mischievously; then, with that beautiful light in his eyes which fires his youthful countenance, he said triumphantly—

"It is my discovery of the etymology of the word haricot!"

I was so amazed that I forgot to laugh.

"I am perfectly serious in telling you this."

"I know, my dear master, of your reputation for profound scholarship: but to imagine, on that account, that you were famed for your discovery of the etymology of haricot—I should never have expected it! Will you tell me how you made the discovery?"

"Willingly. See now: I found some information respecting the haricot while studying that fine seventeenth-century work of natural history by Hernandez: De Historia plantarum novi orbis. The word haricot was unknown in France until the seventeenth century: people used the word feve or phaséol: in Mexican, ayacot. Thirty species of haricot were cultivated in Mexico before the conquest. They are still known as ayacot, especially the red haricot, spotted with black or violet. One day at the house of Gaston Paris I met a famous scholar. Hearing my name, he rushed at me and asked if it was I who had discovered the etymology of the word haricot. He was absolutely ignorant of the fact that I had written verses and published the Trophées."—

A very pretty whim, to count the jewellery of his famous sonnets as second in importance to the nomenclature of a vegetable! I in my turn was delighted with his ayacot. How right I was to suspect the outlandish word of American Indian origin! How right the insect was, in testifying, in its own fashion, that the precious bean came to us from the New World! While still retaining its original name—or something sufficiently like it—the bean of Montezuma, the Aztec ayacot, has migrated from Mexico to the kitchen-gardens of Europe.

But it has reached us without the company of its licensed consumer; for there must assuredly be a weevil in its native country which levies tribute on its nourishing tissues. Our native bean-eaters have mistaken the stranger; they have not had time as yet to grow familiar with it, or to appreciate its merits; they have prudently abstained from touching the ayacot, whose novelty awoke suspicion. Until our own days the Mexican bean remained untouched: unlike our other leguminous seeds, which are all eagerly exploited by the weevil.

This state of affairs could not last. If our own fields do not contain the insect amateur of the haricot the New World knows it well enough. By the road of commercial exchange, sooner or later some worm-eaten sack of haricots must bring it to Europe. The invasion is inevitable.

According to documents now before me, indeed, it has already taken place. Three or four years ago I received from Maillane, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, what I sought in vain in my own neighbourhood, although I questioned many a farmer and housewife, and astonished them by my questions. No one had ever seen the pest of the haricot; no one had ever heard of it. Friends who knew of my inquiries sent me from Maillane, as I have said, information that gave great satisfaction to my naturalist's curiosity. It was accompanied by a measure of haricots which were utterly and outrageously spoiled; every bean was riddled with holes, changed into a kind of sponge. Within them swarmed innumerable weevils, which recalled, by their diminutive size, the lentil-weevil, Bruchus lenti.

The senders told me of the loss experienced at Maillane. The odious little creature, they said, had destroyed the greater portion of the harvest. A veritable plague, such as had never before been known, had fallen upon the haricots, leaving the housewife barely a handful to put in the saucepan. Of the habits of the creature and its way of going to work nothing was known. It was for me to discover them by means of experiment.

Quick, then, let us experiment! The circumstances favour me. We are in the middle of June, and in my garden there is a bed of early haricots; the black Belgian haricots, sown for use in the kitchen. Since I must sacrifice the toothsome vegetable, let us loose the terrible destroyer on the mass of verdure. The development of the plant is at the requisite stage, if I may go by what the Bruchus pisi has already taught me; the flowers are abundant, and the pods are equally so; still green, and of all sizes.

I place on a plate two or three handfuls of the infested haricots, and set the populous heap in the full sunlight by the edge of my bed of beans. I can imagine what will happen. Those insects which are already free, and those which the stimulus of the sunshine will presently liberate, will emerge and take to their wings. Finding the maternal haricot close at hand they will take possession of the vines. I shall see them exploring pods and flowers, and before very long they will lay their eggs. That is how the pea-weevil would behave under similar conditions.

But no: to my surprise and confusion, matters do not fall out as I foresaw. For a few minutes the insects bustle about in the sunlight, opening and closing their wing-covers to ease the mechanism of flight; then one by one they fly away, mounting in the luminous air; they grow smaller and smaller to the sight, and are quickly lost to view. My persevering attentions have not met with the slightest success; not one of the weevils has settled on my haricots.

When the joys of liberty have been tasted will they return—to-night, to-morrow, or later? No, they do not return. All that week, at favourable hours, I inspect the rows of beans pod by pod, flower by flower; but never a Bruchus do I see, nor even an egg. Yet the season is propitious, for at this very moment the mothers imprisoned in my jars lay a profusion of eggs upon the dry haricots.

Next season I try again. I have at my disposal two other beds, which I have sown with the late haricot, the red haricot; partly for the use of the household, but principally for the benefit of the weevil. Arranged in convenient rows, the two crops will be ready, one in August and one in September or later.

With the red haricot I repeat the experiment already essayed with the black haricot. On several occasions, in suitable weather, I release large numbers of weevils from my glass jars, the general headquarters of the tribe. On each occasion the result is plainly negative. All through the season, until both crops are exhausted, I repeat my search almost daily; but I can never discover a single pod infested, nor even a single weevil perching on leaf or flower.

Certainly the inspection has not been at fault. The household is warned to respect certain rows of beans which I have reserved for myself. It is also requested to keep a look-out for eggs on all the pods gathered. I myself examine with a magnifying-glass all the haricots coming from my own or from neighbouring gardens before handing them over to the housewife to be shelled. All my trouble is wasted: there is not an egg to be seen.

To these experiments in the open air I add others performed under glass. I place, in some tall, narrow bottles, fresh haricot pods hanging from their stems; some green, others mottled with crimson, and containing seeds not far from mature. Each bottle is finally given a population of weevils. This time I obtain some eggs, but I am no further advanced; they are laid on the sides of the bottles, but not on the pods. Nevertheless, they hatch. For a few days I see the grubs wandering about, exploring the pods and the glass with equal zeal. Finally one and all perish without touching the food provided.

The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is obvious: the young and tender haricot is not the proper diet. Unlike the Bruchus pisi, the female of the haricot-weevil refuses to trust her family to beans that are not hardened by age and desiccation; she refused to settle on my bean-patch because the food she required was not to be found there. What does she require? Evidently the mature, dry, hard haricot, which falls to earth with the sound of a small pebble. I hasten to satisfy her. I place in the bottles some very mature, horny pods, thoroughly desiccated by exposure to the sun. This time the family prospers, the grubs perforate the dry shell, reach the beans, penetrate them, and henceforth all goes well.

To judge by appearances, then, the weevil invades the granary. The beans are left standing in the fields until both plants and pods, shrivelled by the sun, are completely desiccated. The process of beating the pods to loosen and separate the beans is thus greatly facilitated. It is then that the weevil, finding matters to suit her, commences to lay her eggs. By storing his crop a little late the peasant stores the pest as well.

But the weevil more especially attacks the haricot when warehoused. Like the Calander-beetle, which nibbles the wheat in our granaries but despises the cereal while still on the stalk, it abhors the bean while tender, and prefers to establish itself in the peace and darkness of the storehouse. It is a formidable enemy to the merchant rather than to the peasant.

What a fury of destruction once the ravager is installed in the vegetable treasure-house! My bottles give abundant evidence of this. One single haricot bean shelters a numerous family; often as many as twenty members. And not one generation only exploits the bean, but three or four in the year. So long as the skin of the bean contains any edible matter, so long do new consumers establish themselves within it, so that the haricot finally becomes a mere shell stuffed with excreta. The skin, despised by the grubs, is a mere sac, pierced with holes as many as the inhabitants that have deserted it; the ruin is complete.

The Bruchus pisi, a solitary hermit, consumes only so much of the pea as will leave a cell for the nymph; the rest remains intact, so that the pea may be sown, or it will even serve as food, if we can overcome our repugnance. The American insect knows nothing of these limitations; it empties the haricot completely and leaves a skinful of filth that I have seen the pigs refuse. America is anything but considerate when she sends us her entomological pests. We owe the Phylloxera to America; the Phylloxera, that calamitous insect against which our vine-growers wage incessant war: and to-day she is sending us the haricot-weevil, which threatens to be a plague of the future. A few experiments gave me some idea of the peril of such an invasion.

For nearly three years there have stood, on my laboratory table, some dozens of jars and bottles covered with pieces of gauze which prevent escape while permitting of a constant ventilation. These are the cages of my menagerie. In them I rear the haricot-weevil, varying the system of education at will. Amongst other things I have learned that this insect, far from being exclusive in its choice, will accommodate itself to most of our leguminous foods.

All the haricots suit it, black and white, red and variegated, large and small; those of the latest crop and those which have been many years in stock and are almost completely refractory to boiling water. The loose beans are attacked by preference, as being easier to invade, but when the loose beans are not available those in the natural shelter of their pods are attacked with equal zest. However dry and parchment-like the pods, the grubs have no difficulty in attaining the seeds. When attacked in the field or garden, the bean is attacked in this way through the pod. The bean known in Provence as the blind haricot—lou faioù borgné—a bean with a long pod, which is marked with a black spot at the navel, which has the look of a closed and blackened eye, is also greatly appreciated; indeed, I fancy my little guests show an obvious preference for this particular bean.

So far, nothing abnormal; the Bruchus does not wander beyond the limits of the botanical family Phaseolus. But here is a characteristic that increases the peril, and shows us this lover of beans in an unexpected light. Without the slightest hesitation it accepts the dry pea, the bean, the vetch, the tare, and the chick-pea; it goes from one to the other, always satisfied; its offspring live and prosper in all these seeds as well as in the haricot. Only the lentil is refused, perhaps on account of its insufficient volume. The American weevil is a formidable experimentalist.

The peril would be much greater did the insect pass from leguminous seeds to cereals, as at first I feared it might. But it does not do so; imprisoned in my bottles together with a handful of wheat, barley, rice, or maize, the Bruchus invariably perished and left no offspring. The result was the same with oleaginous seeds: such as castor-oil and sunflower. Nothing outside the bean family is of any use to the Bruchus. Thus limited, its portion is none the less considerable, and it uses and abuses it with the utmost energy. The eggs are white, slender, and cylindrical. There is no method in their distribution, no choice in their deposition. The mother lays them singly or in little groups, on the walls of the jar as well as on the haricots. In her negligence she will even lay them on maize, coffee, castor-oil seeds, and other seeds, on which the newly born grubs will promptly perish, not finding them to their taste. What place has maternal foresight here? Abandoned no matter where in the heap of seeds, the eggs are always in place, as it is left to the grub to search and to find the points of invasion.

In five days at most the egg is hatched. A little white creature with a red-brown head emerges. It is a mere speck of a creature, just visible to the naked eye. Its body is thickened forward, to give more strength to its implements—its mandibles—which have to perforate the hard substance of the dry bean, which is as tough as wood. The larvæ of the Buprestis and the Capricornis, which burrow in the trunks of trees, are similarly shaped. Directly it issues from the egg the wriggling creature makes off at random with an activity we should hardly expect in one so young. It wanders hither and thither, eager to find food and shelter as soon as possible.

Within twenty-four hours it has usually attained both. I see the tiny grub perforate the horny skin that covers the cotyledons; I watch its efforts; I surprise it sunk half-way in the commencement of a burrow, at the mouth of which is a white floury powder, the waste from the mandibles. It works its way inward and buries itself in the heart of the seed. It will emerge in the adult form in the course of about five weeks, so rapid is its evolution.

This hasty development allows of several generations in the year. I have recorded four. On the other hand, one isolated couple has furnished me with a family of eighty. Consider only the half of this number—supposing the sexes to be equal in number—and at the end of a year the couples issued from this original pair would be represented by the fortieth power of forty; in larvæ they would represent the frightful total of more than five millions. What a mountain of haricots would be ravaged by such a legion!

The industry of the larvæ reminds us at every point what we have learned from the Bruchus pisi. Each grub excavates a lodging in the mass of the bean, respecting the epidermis, and preparing a circular trap-door which the adult can easily open with a push at the moment of emergence. At the termination of the larval phase the lodgements are betrayed on the surface of the bean by so many shadowy circles. Finally the lid falls, the insect leaves its cell, and the haricot remains pierced by as many holes as it has nourished grubs.

Extremely frugal, satisfied with a little farinaceous powder, the adults seem by no means anxious to abandon the native heap or bin so long as there are beans untouched. They mate in the interstices of the heap; the mothers sow their eggs at random; the young larvæ establish themselves some in beans that are so far intact, some in beans which are perforated but not yet exhausted; and all through the summer the operations of breeding are repeated once in every five weeks. The last generation of the year—that of September or October—sleeps in its cells until the warm weather returns.

If the haricot pest were ever to threaten us seriously it would not be very difficult to wage a war of extermination against it. Its habits teach us what tactics we ought to follow. It exploits the dried and gathered crop in the granary or the storehouse. If it is difficult to attack it in the open it would also be useless. The greater part of its affairs are managed elsewhere, in our storehouses. The enemy establishes itself under our roof and is ready to our hand. By means of insecticides defence should be relatively easy.

CHAPTER XX

I have just witnessed a moving spectacle: the last moult of a locust; the emergence of the adult from its larval envelope. It was magnificent. I am speaking of the Grey Locust, the colossus among our acridians,[10] which is often seen among the vines in September when the grapes are gathered. By its size—and it grows as long as a man's finger—it lends itself to observation better than any other of its tribe.

The larva, disgustingly fat, like a rude sketch of the perfect insect, is commonly of a tender green; but it is sometimes of a bluish green, a dirty yellow, or a ruddy brown, or even an ashen grey, like the grey of the adult cricket. The corselet is strongly keeled and indented, and is sprinkled with fine white spots. As powerful as in the adult insect, the hind-leg has a corpulent haunch, streaked with red, and a long shin like a two-edged saw.

The elytra, which in a few days will extend far beyond the tip of the abdomen, are at present too small triangular wing-like appendages, touching along their upper edges, and continuing and emphasising the keel or ridge of the corselet. Their free ends stick up like the gable of a house. They remind one of the skirts of a coat, the maker of which has been ludicrously stingy with the cloth, as they merely cover the creature's nakedness at the small of the back. Underneath there are two narrow appendages, the germs of the wings, which are even smaller than the elytra. The sumptuous, elegant sails of to-morrow are now mere rags, so miserly in their dimensions as to be absolutely grotesque. What will emerge from these miserable coverings? A miracle of grace and amplitude.

Let us observe the whole process in detail. Feeling itself ripe for transformation, the insect climbs up the wire-gauze cover by means of its hinder and intermediate limbs. The fore-limbs are folded and crossed on the breast, and are not employed in supporting the insect, which hangs in a reversed position, the back downwards. The triangular winglets, the sheaths of the elytra, open along their line of juncture and separate laterally; the two narrow blades, which contain the wings, rise in the centre of the interval and slightly diverge. The proper position for the process of moulting has now been assumed and the proper stability assured.

The first thing to do is to burst the old skin. Behind the corselet, under the pointed roof of the prothorax, a series of pulsations is produced by alternate inflation and deflation. A similar state of affairs is visible in front of the neck, and probably under the entire surface of the yielding carapace. The fineness of the membrane at the articulations enables us to perceive it at these unarmoured points, but the cuirass of the corselet conceals it in the central portion.

At these points the circulatory reserves of the insect are pulsing in tidal onsets. Their gradual increase is betrayed by pulsations like those of a hydraulic ram. Distended by this rush of humours, by this injection in which the organism concentrates all its forces, the outer skin finally splits along the line of least resistance which the subtle previsions of life have prepared. The fissure extends the whole length of the corselet, opening precisely along the ridge of the keel, as though the two symmetrical halves had been soldered together. Unbreakable elsewhere, the envelope has yielded at this median point, which had remained weaker than the rest of the sheath. The fissure runs back a little way until it reaches a point between the attachments of the wings; on the head it runs forward as far as the base of the antennæ, when it sends a short ramification right and left.

Through this breach the back is seen; quite soft, and very pale, with scarcely a tinge of grey. Slowly it curves upwards and becomes more and more strongly hunched; at last it is free.

The head follows, withdrawing itself from its mask, which remains in place, intact in the smallest detail, but looking very strange with its great unseeing glassy eyes. The sheaths of the antennæ, without a wrinkle, without the least derangement, and in their natural place, hang over this dead, translucid face.

In emerging from their narrow sheaths, which clasped them so tightly and precisely, the thread-like antennæ have evidently met with no resistance, or the sheaths would have been turned inside out, or crumpled out of shape, or wrinkled at least. Without harming the jointed or knotted covers, the contents, of equal volume and equally knotty, have slipped out as easily as though they were smooth, slippery objects sliding out of a loose sheath. The method of extraction is still more astonishing in the case of the hind-legs.

It is now, however, the turn of the front and intermediate pairs of legs. They pull out of their gauntlets and leggings without the least hitch; nothing is torn, nothing buckled; the outer skin is not even crumpled, and all the tissues remain in their natural position. The insect is now hanging from the dome of the cover solely by the claws of the long hind-legs. It hangs in an almost vertical position, the head downwards, swinging like a pendulum if I touch the cover. Four tiny, steely claws are its only support. If they gave or unclasped themselves the insect would be lost, as it is as yet unable to unfurl its enormous wings; but even had the wings emerged they could not grip the air in time to save the creature from the consequences of a fall. But the four claws hold fast; life, before withdrawing from them, left them rigidly contracted, so that they should support without yielding the struggles and withdrawals to follow.

Now the wing-covers and wings emerge. These are four narrow strips, vaguely seamed and furrowed, like strings of rolled tissue-paper. They are barely a quarter of their final length.

They are so soft that they bend under their own weight, and hang down the creature's sides in the reverse of their normal position. The free extremities, which normally point backwards, are now pointing towards the cricket's head as it hangs reversed. The organs of future flight are like four leaves of withered foliage shattered by a terrific rainstorm.

A profound transformation is necessary to bring the wings to their final perfection. The inner changes are already at work; liquids are solidifying; albuminous secretions are bringing order out of chaos; but so far no outward sign betrays what is happening in the mysterious laboratory of the organism. All seems inert and lifeless.

In the meantime the posterior limbs disengage themselves. The great haunches become visible, streaked on the inner faces with a pale rose, which rapidly turns to a vivid crimson. Emergence is easy, the thick and muscular upper portion of the haunch preparing the way for the narrower part of the limb.

It is otherwise with the shank. This, in the adult insect, is armed along its whole length by a double series of stiff, steely spines. Moreover, the lower extremity is terminated by four strong spurs. The shank forms a veritable saw, but with two parallel sets of teeth; and it is so strongly made that it may well be compared, the question of size apart, to the great saw of a quarry-man.

The shank of the larva has the same structure, so that the object to be extracted is enclosed in a scabbard as awkwardly shaped as itself. Each spur is enclosed in a similar spur; each tooth engages in the hollow of a similar tooth, and the sheath is so closely moulded upon the shank that a no more intimate contact could be obtained by replacing the envelope by a layer of varnish applied with a brush.

Nevertheless the tibia, long and narrow as it is, issues from its sheath without catching or sticking anywhere. If I had not repeatedly seen the operation I could not believe it possible; for the discarded sheath is absolutely intact from end to end. Neither the terminal spurs nor the double rows of spines do the slightest damage to the delicate mould. The long-toothed saw leaves the delicate sheath unbroken, although a puff of the breath is enough to tear it; the ferocious spurs slip out of it without leaving so much as a scratch.

I was far from expecting such a result. Having the spiny weapons of the legs in mind, I imagined that those limbs would moult in scales and patches, or that the sheathing would rub off like a dead scarf-skin. How completely the reality surpassed my anticipations!

From the spurs and spines of the sheath, which is as thin as the finest gold-beaters' skin, the spurs and spines of the leg, which make it a most formidable weapon, capable of cutting a piece of soft wood, emerge without the slightest display of violence, without a hitch of any kind; and the empty skin remains in place. Still clinging by its claws to the top of the wire cover, it is untorn, unwrinkled, uncreased. Even the magnifying-glass fails to show a trace of rough usage. Such as the skin was before the cricket left it, so it is now. The legging of dead skin remains in its smallest details the exact replica of the living limb.

If any one asked you to extract a saw from a scabbard exactly moulded upon the steel, and to conduct the operation without the slightest degree of tearing or scratching, you would laugh at the flagrant impossibility of the task. But life makes light of such absurdities; it has its methods of performing the impossible when such methods are required. The leg of the locust affords us such an instance.

Hard as it is when once free of its sheath, the serrated tibia would absolutely refuse to leave the latter, so closely does it fit, unless it were torn to pieces. Yet the difficulty must be evaded, for it is indispensable that the sheaths of the legs should remain intact, in order to afford a firm support until the insect is completely extricated.

The leg in process of liberation is not the leg with which the locust makes its leaps; it has not as yet the rigidity which it will soon acquire. It is soft, and eminently flexible. In those portions which the progress of the moult exposes to view I see the legs bend under the mere weight of the suspended insect when I tilt the supporting cover. They are as flexible as two strips of elastic indiarubber. Yet even now consolidation is progressing, for in a few minutes the proper rigidity will be acquired.

Further along the limbs, in the portions which the sheathing still conceals, the legs are certainly softer still, and in the state of exquisite plasticity—I had almost said fluidity—which allows them to pass through narrow passages almost as a liquid flows.

The teeth of the saws are already there, but have nothing of their imminent rigidity. With the point of a pen-knife I can partially uncover a leg and extract the spines from their serrated mould. They are germs of spines; flexible buds which bend under the slightest pressure and resume their position the moment the pressure is removed.

These needles point backwards as the leg is drawn out of the sheath; but they re-erect themselves and solidify as they emerge. I am witnessing not the mere removal of leggings from limbs already clad in finished armour, but a kind of creation which amazes one by its promptitude.

Very much in the same way, but with far less delicate precision, the claws of the crayfish, at the period of the moult, withdraw the soft flesh of their double fingers from their stony sheath.

Finally the long stilt-like legs are free. They are folded gently against the furrowed thighs, thus to mature undisturbed. The abdomen begins to emerge. Its fine tunic-like covering splits, and wrinkles, but still encloses the extremity of the abdomen, which adheres to the moulted skin for some little time longer. With the exception of this one point the entire insect is now uncovered.

It hangs head downwards, like a pendulum, supported by the talons of the now empty leg-cases. During the whole of the lengthy and meticulous process the four talons have never yielded. The whole operation has been conducted with the utmost delicacy and prudence.

The insect hangs motionless, held by the tip of the abdomen. The abdomen is disproportionately distended; swollen, apparently, by the reserve of organisable humours which the expansion of the wings and wing-covers will presently employ. Meanwhile the creature rests and recovers from its exertions. Twenty minutes of waiting elapse.

Then, exerting the muscles of the back, the suspended insect raises itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the loins. This gymnastic feat accomplished, the rest is easy.

With the purchase thus obtained the insect rises a little and reaches the wire gauze, the equivalent of the twig which would be chosen for the site of the transformation in the open fields. It holds to this with the four anterior limbs. Then the tip of the abdomen is finally liberated, and suddenly, shaken by the final struggle, the empty skin falls to the ground.

This fall is interesting, and reminds me of the persistence with which the empty husk of the Cigale braves the winds of winter, without falling from its supporting twig. The transfiguration of the locust takes place very much as does that of the Cigale. How is it then that the acridian trusts to a hold so easily broken?

The talons of the skin hold firmly so long as the labour of escape continues, although one would expect it to shake the firmest grip; yet they yield at the slightest shock when the labour is terminated. There is evidently a condition of highly unstable equilibrium; showing once more with what delicate precision the insect escapes from its sheath.

For want of a better term I said "escape." But the word is ill chosen; for it implies a certain amount of violence, and no violence must be employed, on account of the instability of equilibrium already mentioned. If the insect, shaken by a sudden effort, were to lose its hold, it would be all up with it. It would slowly shrivel on the spot; or at best its wings, unable to expand, would remain as miserable scraps of tissue. The locust does not tear itself away from its sheath; it delicately insinuates itself out of it—I had almost said flows. It is as though it were expelled by a gentle pressure.

Let us return to the wings and elytra, which have made no apparent progress since their emergence from their sheaths. They are still mere stumps, with fine longitudinal seams; almost like little ropes'-ends. Their expansion, which will occupy more than three hours, is reserved for the end, when the insect is completely moulted and in its normal position.

We have just seen the insect turn head uppermost. This reversal causes the wings and elytra to fall into their natural position. Extremely flexible, and yielding to their own weight, they had previously drooped backwards with their free extremities pointing towards the head of the insect as it hung reversed.

Now, still by reason of their own weight, their position is rectified and they point in the normal direction. They are no longer curved like the petals of a flower; they no longer point the wrong way; but they retain the same miserable aspect.

In its perfect state the wing is like a fan. A radiating bundle of strong nervures runs through it in the direction of its length and forms the framework of the fan, which is readily furled and unfurled. The intervals are crossed by innumerable cross-nervures of slighter substance, which make of the whole a network of rectangular meshes. The elytrum, which is heavier and much less extensive, repeats this structure.

At present nothing of this mesh-work is visible. Nothing can be seen but a few wrinkles, a few flexuous furrows, which announce that the stumps are bundles of tissue cunningly folded and reduced to the smallest possible volume.

The expansion of the wing begins near the shoulder. Where nothing precise could be distinguished at the outset we soon perceive a diaphanous surface subdivided into meshes of beautiful precision.

Little by little, with a deliberation that escapes the magnifier, this area increases its bounds, at the expense of the shapeless bundle at the end of the wing. In vain I let my eyes rest on the spot where the expanding network meets the still shapeless bundle; I can distinguish nothing. But wait a little, and the fine-meshed tissues will appear with perfect distinctness.

To judge from this first examination, one would guess that an organisable fluid is rapidly congealing into a network of nervures; one seems to be watching a process of crystallisation comparable, in its rapidity, to that of a saturated saline solution as seen through a microscope. But no; this is not what is actually happening. Life does not do its work so abruptly.

I detach a half-developed wing and bring it under the powerful eye of the microscope. This time I am satisfied. On the confines of the transparent network, where an extension of that network seems to be gradually weaving itself out of nothing, I can see that the meshes are really already in existence. I can plainly recognise the longitudinal nervures, which are already stiff; and I can also see—pale, and without relief—the transverse nervures. I find them all in the terminal stump, and am able to spread out a few of its folds under the microscope.

It is obvious that the wing is not a tissue in the process of making, through which the procreative energy of the vital juices is shooting its shuttle; it is a tissue already complete. To be perfect it lacks only expansion and rigidity, just as a piece of lace or linen needs only to be ironed.

In three hours or more the explanation is complete. The wings and elytra stand erect over the locust's back like an immense set of sails; at first colourless, then of a tender green, like the freshly expanded wings of the Cigale. I am amazed at their expanse when I think of the miserable stumps from which they have expanded. How did so much material contrive to occupy so little space?

There is a story of a grain of hemp-seed that contained all the body-linen of a princess. Here we have something even more astonishing. The hemp-seed of the story needed long years to germinate, to multiply, and at last to give the quantity of hemp required for the trousseau of a princess; but the germ of the locust's wing has expanded to a magnificent sail in a few short hours.

Slowly the superb erection composed of the four flat fan-like pinions assumes rigidity and colour. By to-morrow the colour will have attained the requisite shade. For the first time the wings close fan-wise and lie down in their places; the elytra bend over at their outer edges, forming a flange which lies snugly over the flanks. The transformation is complete. Now the great locust has only to harden its tissues a little longer and to tan the grey of its costume in the ecstasy of the sunshine. Let us leave it to its happiness, and return to an earlier moment.

The four stumps which emerge from their coverings shortly after the rupture of the corselet along its median line contain, as we have seen, the wings and elytra with their innumerable nervures. If not perfect, at least the general plan is complete, with all its innumerable details. To expand these miserable bundles and convert them into an ample set of sails it is enough that the organism, acting like a force-pump, should force into the channels already prepared a stream of humours kept in reserve for this moment and this purpose, the most laborious of the whole process. As the capillary channels are prepared in advance a slight injection of fluid is sufficient to cause expansion.

But what were these four bundles of tissue while still enclosed in their sheaths? Are the wing-sheaths and the triangular winglets of the larva the moulds whose folds, wrinkles, and sinuosities form their contents in their own image, and so weave the network of the future wings and wing-covers?

Were they really moulds we might for a moment be satisfied. We might tell ourselves: It is quite a simple matter that the thing moulded should conform to the cavity of the mould. But the simplicity is only apparent, for the mould in its turn must somewhere derive the requisite and inextricable complexity. We need not go so far back; we should only be in darkness. Let us keep to the observable facts.

I examine with a magnifying-glass one of the triangular coat-tails of a larva on the point of transformation. I see a bundle of moderately strong nervures radiating fan-wise. I see other nervures in the intervals, pale and very fine. Finally, still more delicate, and running transversely, a number of very short nervures complete the pattern.

Certainly this resembles a rough sketch of the future wing-case; but how different from the mature structure! The disposition of the radiating nervures, the skeleton of the structure, is not at all the same; the network formed by the cross-nervures gives no idea whatever of the complex final arrangement. The rudimentary is succeeded by the infinitely complex; the clumsy by the infinitely perfect, and the same is true of the sheath of the wing and the final condition of its contents, the perfect wing.

It is perfectly evident, when we have the preparatory as well as the final condition of the wing before our eyes, that the wing-sheath of the larva is not a simple mould which elaborates the tissue enclosed in its own image and fashions the wing after the complexities of its own cavity.

The future wing is not contained in the sheath as a bundle, which will astonish us, when expanded, by the extent and extreme complication of its surface. Or, to speak more exactly, it is there, but in a potential state. Before becoming an actual thing it is a virtual thing which is not yet, but is capable of becoming. It is there as the oak is inside the acorn.

A fine transparent cushion limits the free edge of the embryo wing and the embryo wing-case. Under a powerful microscope we can perceive therein a few doubtful lineaments of the future lace-work. This might well be the factory in which life will shortly set its materials in movement. Nothing more is visible; nothing that will make us foresee the prodigious network in which each mesh must have its form and place predetermined with geometrical exactitude.

In order that the organisable material can shape itself as a sheet of gauze and describe the inextricable labyrinth of the nervuration, there must be something better and more wonderful than a mould. There is a prototypical plan, an ideal pattern, which imposes a precise position upon each atom of the tissue. Before the material commences to circulate the configuration is already virtually traced, the courses of the plastic currents are already mapped out. The stones of our buildings co-ordinate according to the considered plan of the architect; they form an ideal assemblage before they exist as a concrete assemblage.

Similarly, the wing of a cricket, that wonderful piece of lace-work emerging from a tiny sheath, speaks to us of another Architect, the author of the plans according to which life labours.

The genesis of living creatures offers to our contemplation an infinity of wonders far greater than this matter of a locust's wing; but in general they pass unperceived, obscured as they are by the veil of time.

Time, in the deliberation of mysteries, deprives us of the most astonishing of spectacles except our spirits be endowed with a tenacious patience. Here by exception the fact is accomplished with a swiftness that forces the attention.

Whosoever would gain, without wearisome delays, a glimpse of the inconceivable dexterity with which the forces of life can labour, has only to consider the great locust of the vineyard. The insect will show him that which is hidden from our curiosity by extreme deliberation in the germinating seed, the opening leaf, and the budding flower. We cannot see the grass grow; but we can watch the growth of the locust's wings.

Amazement seizes upon us before this sublime phantasmagoria of the grain of hemp which in a few hours has been transmuted into the finest cloth. What a mighty artist is Life, shooting her shuttle to weave the wings of the locust—one of those insignificant insects of whom long ago Pliny said: In his tam parcis, ferè nullis, quae vis, quae sapientia, quam inextricabilis perfectio!

How truly was the old naturalist inspired! Let us repeat with him: "What power, what wisdom, what inconceivable perfection in this least of secrets that the vineyard locust has shown us!"

I have heard that a learned inquirer, for whom life is only a conflict of physical and chemical forces, does not despair of one day obtaining artificially organisable matter—protoplasm, as the official jargon has it. If it were in my power I should hasten to satisfy this ambitious gentleman.

But so be it: you have really prepared protoplasm. By force of meditation, profound study, minute care, impregnable patience, your desire is realised: you have extracted from your apparatus an albuminous slime, easily corruptible and stinking like the devil at the end of a few days: in short, a nastiness. What are you going to do with it?

Organise something? Will you give it the structure of a living edifice? Will you inject it with a hypodermic syringe between two impalpable plates to obtain were it only the wing of a fly?

That is very much what the locust does. It injects its protoplasm between the two surfaces of an embryo organ, and the material forms a wing-cover, because it finds as guide the ideal archetype of which I spoke but now. It is controlled in the labyrinth of its course by a device anterior to the injection: anterior to the material itself.

This archetype, the co-ordinator of forms; this primordial regulator; have you got it on the end of your syringe? No! Then throw away your product. Life will never spring from that chemical filth.

CHAPTER XXI

The term fullo as applied to an insect is found in Pliny. In one chapter the great naturalist treats of remedies against jaundice, fevers, and dropsy. A little of everything enters into this antique pharmacy: the longest tooth of a black dog; the nose of a mouse wrapped in a pink cloth; the right eye of a green lizard torn from the living animal and placed in a bag of kid-skin; the heart of a serpent, cut out with the left hand; the four articulations of the tail of a scorpion, including the dart, wrapped tightly in a black cloth, so that for three days the sick man can see neither the remedy nor him that applies it; and a number of other extravagances. We may well close the book, alarmed at the slough of the imbecility whence the art of healing has come down to us.

In the midst of these imbecilities, the preludes of medicine, we find a mention of the "fuller." Tertium qui vocatur fullo, albis guttis, dissectum utrique lacerto adalligant, says the text. To treat fevers divide the fuller beetle in two parts and apply half under the right arm and half under the left.