The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles

CHAPTER XV

You do not imitate the unfamiliar; you do not counterfeit a thing of which you know nothing: that is obvious. The simulation of death, therefore, implies a certain knowledge of death.

Well, has the insect, or rather, has any kind of animal, a presentiment that its life cannot last for ever? Does the perturbing problem of an end occur to its dense brain? I have associated a great deal with animals, I have lived on intimate terms with them and I have never observed anything to justify me in saying yes. The animal, with its humbler destiny, is spared that apprehension of the hour of death which constitutes at once our torment and our greatness.

Moreover, this glimpse of the inevitable destruction calls for a certain maturity of mind and, for that reason, is rather late in developing. I had a touching example of it this very week.

A pretty little Kitten, the joy of all the household, after languidly dragging itself about for a couple of days, died in the night. Next morning the children found it lying stark in its basket. General affliction. Anna, especially, a little girl of four, considered with a pensive glance the little friend with which she had so often played. She petted it, called it, offered it a drop of milk in a cup:

"Kitty won't play," said the child. "She doesn't want my breakfast any more. She's asleep. I've never seen her sleep like this before. When will she wake up?"

Has the insect the signal honour of knowing what we do not know in our early childhood, at a time when thought is already manifesting itself, far superior, however feeble it be, to the dull understanding of the animal? Has it the power to foresee an ending, an attribute which in its case would be inconvenient and useless? Before deciding, let us consult, not the abstruse theories of science, a doubtful guide, but the Turkey, an eminently truthful one.

I recall one of the most vivid memories that remain to me from my brief sojourn at the Royal College of Rodez. So they called it then; to-day they call it a grammar-school; what improvement as the world grows older!

This miraculous catch, the object of such shouts of triumph when it succeeded, was very rarely vouchsafed to us: the Loach, the rascal, saw the fork coming and with three strokes of his tail disappeared!

We found compensation in the apple-trees in the neighbouring pastures. The apple has from all time been the urchin's delight, above all when plucked from a tree which does not belong to him. Our pockets were soon crammed with the forbidden fruit.

Another distraction awaited us. Flocks of Turkeys were not rare, roaming at their own sweet will and gobbling up the Locusts around the farms. If no watcher hove in sight, we had great sport. Each of us would seize a Turkey, tuck her head under her wing, rock it in this attitude for a moment and then place her on the ground, lying on her side. The bird no longer budged. The whole flock of Turkeys was subjected to our hypnotic handling; and the meadow assumed the aspect of a battle-field strewn with the dead and dying.

O delightful days when we put the Turkeys to sleep, can I recover the skill which I then possessed? To-day it is no longer the playful trick of a schoolboy; it is a matter of serious research. I happen to have the very subject that I need: a Turkey-hen, doomed soon to be the victim of our Christmas merry-making. I repeat with her the method of manipulation which I employed so successfully on the banks of the Aveyron. I tuck her head well under her wing and, molding it in this attitude with both hands, I rock the bird gently up and down for a couple of minutes.

We need not be afraid: she is waking; she stands up, staggering a little, it is true, with drooping tail and a shamefaced expression. That soon passes off; not a trace of it remains. In a few moments the bird is once more what it was before the experiment.

Now for the Goose. I have none. The gardener next door trusts me with his. She is brought to my house, which she fills with her trumpeting as she waddles about. Shortly afterwards there is absolute silence: the web-footed Amazon is lying on the ground, with her head tucked under her wing. Her immobility is as profound and as prolonged as that of the Turkey and the Guinea-fowl.

It is the Hen's turn now and the Duck's. They too succumb, but, so it seems to me, less persistently. Can it be that my hypnotic tricks are less efficacious with small birds than with large ones? To judge by the Pigeon, this may well be so. He yields to my art only to the extent of two minutes' sleep. A still smaller bird, a Greenfinch, is even more refractory: all that I obtain from him is a few seconds' drowsiness.

We will leave on one side, as insufficiently investigated, the influence of the bodily mass and remember only this fact, that it is possible, by a very simple artifice, to reduce a bird to a condition of apparent death. Do my Goose, my Turkey and the others resort to trickery with the object of deceiving their tormentor? It is certain that none of them thinks of shamming dead; they are actually immersed in a deep torpor; in a word, they are hypnotized.

These facts have long been known; they are perhaps the first in date in the science of hypnosis or artificial sleep. How did we, the little Rodez schoolboys, learn the secret of the Turkey's slumber? It was certainly not in our books. Coming from no one knows where, indestructible as everything that enters into children's games, it was handed down, from time immemorial, from one initiate to another.

I have just been practising on insects tricks which to all appearances are as puerile as those which we practised on the Turkeys in the days when the farmer's wife used to run after us cracking her whip. Do not laugh: a serious problem looms behind this artlessness.

My insects' condition bears a strange resemblance to that of my poultry. Both present the image of death, inertia, the contraction of convulsed limbs. In both again the immobility is dispelled before its time by the agency of a stimulus, by sound in the case of the bird, by light in that of the insect. Silence, darkness and tranquillity prolong it. Its duration varies greatly in different species and appears to increase with corpulence.

The insect's return to the active state presents certain peculiarities which are well worthy of attention. The key to the problem lies here. Let us return for a moment to the patients who have been subjected to the ordeal of ether. These are really hypnotized. They do not remain motionless by way of a ruse, there is no doubt upon that point; they are actually on the threshold of death; and, if I did not take them in good time out of the flask in which a few drops of ether have been evaporated, they would never recover from the torpor whose last stage is death.

Now what symptoms herald their return to activity? We know the symptoms: the tarsi tremble, the palpi quiver, the antennæ wave to and fro. A man emerging from a deep sleep stretches his limbs, yawns and rubs his eyes. The insect awaking from the etheric sleep likewise has its own fashion of marking its recovery of consciousness: it flutters its tiny digits and the more mobile of its organs.

If the creature were really shamming, what need would it have of these minute preliminaries to the awakening? Once the danger has disappeared, or is deemed to have done so, why does the insect not swiftly get upon its feet, to make off as quickly as possible, instead of dallying with untimely pretences? I am quite sure that, once the Bear was gone, the comrade who had shammed dead under the animal's nose did not think of wasting time in stretching himself or rubbing his eyes. He jumped up at once and took to his heels.

A shock which disturbs its nerve-centres, an abrupt fright which seizes upon it reduce it to a state of somnolence like that of the bird which is swung for a second or two with its head under its wing. A sudden terror sometimes deprives us human beings of the power of movement, sometimes kills us. Why should not the insect's organism, so delicate and subtle, give way beneath the grip of fear and momentarily succumb? If the emotion be slight, the insect shrinks into itself for an instant, quickly recovers and makes off; if it be profound, hypnosis supervenes, with its prolonged immobility.

The insect, which knows nothing of death and therefore cannot counterfeit it, knows nothing either of suicide, that desperate means of cutting short excessive misery. No authentic example has ever been given, to my knowledge, of an animal of any kind robbing itself of its own life. That those most richly endowed with the capacity of affection sometimes allow themselves to die of grief I grant you; but there is a great difference between this and stabbing one's self or cutting one's throat.

Yet the recollection occurs to me of the Scorpion's suicide, sworn to by some, denied by others. What truth is there in the story of the Scorpion who, surrounded by a circle of fire, puts an end to his suffering by stabbing himself with his poisoned sting? Let us see for ourselves:

Circumstances favour me. I am at this moment rearing, in large earthen pans, with a bed of sand and with potsherds for shelter, a hideous menagerie which hardly comes up to my expectations as regards the study of morals.¹ I will profit by it in another way. It consists of some twenty-four specimens of Buthus occitanus, the large White Scorpion of the south of France. The odious animal abounds, always isolated, under the flat stones of the neighbouring hills, in the sandy spots which enjoy the most sunlight. It has a detestable reputation.

¹ For the habits of the White or Languedocian Scorpion, cf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chaps. xvii. and xviii.—Translator's Note.

"After having my dinner, I was dozing for a moment among my faggots, when I was roused by a sharp pain. It was like the prick of a red-hot needle. I clapped my hand to the place. Sure enough, there was something moving! A Scorpion had crept under my trousers and stung me in the lower part of the calf. The ugly beast was full as long as my finger. Like that, sir, like that!"

And, adding gesture to speech, the worthy man extended his great fore-finger. This size did not surprise me: while insect-hunting, I have seen Scorpions as large.

"I wanted to go on with my work," he continued, "but I came out in a cold sweat; and my leg swelled up so you could see it swelling. It got as big as that, sir, as big as that."

More mimicry. Our friend spreads his two hands round his leg, at a distance, so as to denote the girth of a small barrel:

"Yes, like that, sir, like that; I had great trouble to get home, though it was only half a mile away. The swelling crept up and up. Next day it had got so high."

A gesture indicates the height.

"Yes, sir, for three days I couldn't stand up. I bore it as well as I could, with my leg stretched out on a chair. Soda-compresses did the trick; and there you are, sir, there you are."

Another woodcutter, he adds, was also stung in the lower part of the leg. He was binding faggots together at some distance and had not the strength to regain his home. He collapsed by the side of the road. Some men passing by carried him on their shoulders:

"À la cabro morto, moussu, à la cabro morto!"

The story of the rustic narrator, more versed in mimicry than in speech, does not seem to me exaggerated. A White Scorpion's sting is a very serious accident for a human being. When stung by his own kind, the Scorpion himself quickly succumbs. Here I have something better than the evidence of strangers: I have my own observations.

The fight does not last long. One of the Scorpions receives the full force of the other's poisoned weapon. It is all over: in a few minutes the wounded one succumbs. The victor very calmly proceeds to gnaw the fore-part of the victim's cephalothorax, or, in less crabbed terms, the bit at which we look for a head and find only the entrance to a belly. The mouthfuls are small, but long-drawn-out. For four or five days, almost without a break, the cannibal nibbles at his murdered comrade. To eat the vanquished, that's good warfare, the only sort excusable. What I do not understand, nor shall until we tin the meat on the battle-field for food, is our wars between nations.

In the centre of a ring of burning charcoal, I place the largest specimen from my menagerie. The bellows increase the glow. At the first smart of the heat, the animal moves backwards within the circle of fire. It collides by inadvertence with the burning barrier. Now follows a disorderly retreat, in every direction, at random, renewing the agonizing contact. At each attempt to escape, the burning is repeated more severely than before. The animal becomes frantic. It darts forward and scorches itself. In a desperate frenzy, it brandishes its weapon, crooks it, straightens it, lays it down flat and raises it again, all with such disorderly haste that I am quite unable to follow its movements accurately.

In my uncertainty, I pick up the apparently dead body with the tip of my forceps and lay it on a bed of cool sand. An hour later, the alleged corpse returns to life, as lusty as before the ordeal. I repeat the process with a second and third specimen. The results are the same. After the frantic plunges of the desperate victim, we have the same sudden inertia, with the creature sprawling flat as though struck by lightning, and the same return to life on the cool sand.

Apart from man, no living thing knows the last resource of a voluntary end, because none has a knowledge of death. As for us, to feel that we have the power to escape from the miseries of life is a noble prerogative, upon which it is good to meditate, as a sign of our elevation above the commonalty of the animal world; but in point of fact it becomes cowardice if from the possibility we pass to action.

He who proposes to go to that length should at least repeat to himself what Confucius, the great philosopher of the yellow race, said five-and-twenty centuries ago. Having surprised a stranger in the woods fixing to the branch of a tree a rope wherewith to hang himself, the Chinese sage addressed him in words the gist of which was as follows:

This humdrum Chinese philosophy is not without merit. It suggests the moralizing of the fabulist:

"... Qu'on me rende impotent,
  Cul-de-jatte, goutteux, manchot, pourvu qu'en somme
  Je vive, c'est assez: je suis plus que content."²

² "... So powerless let me lie,
   Gout-ridden, legless, armless; if only, after all,
   I live, it is enough: more than content am I."

Yes, yes, La Fontaine and Kung the philosopher are right: life is a serious matter, which it will not do to throw away into the first bush by the roadside like a useless garment. We must look upon it not as a pleasure, nor yet as a punishment, but as a duty of which we have to acquit ourselves as well as we can until we are given leave to depart.

We alone know how life's pageant closes, we alone can foresee our end, we alone profess devotion to the dead. Of these high matters none other has any suspicion. When would-be scientists proclaim aloud, when they declare that a wretched insect knows the trick of simulating death, we will ask them to look more closely and not to confound the hypnosis due to terror with the pretence of a condition unknown to the animal world.

Ours alone is the clear vision of an end, ours alone the glorious instinct of the beyond. Here, filling its modest part, speaks the voice of entomology, saying:

"Have confidence; never did an instinct fail to keep its promises."

CHAPTER XVI

I am a stubborn disciple of St. Thomas the Apostle and, before I agree to anything, I want to see and touch it, not once, but twice, thrice, an indefinite number of times, until my incredulity bows beneath the weight of evidence. Well, the Rhynchites¹ have told us that the build does not determine the instincts, that the tools do not decide the trade. And now, yes, the Crioceres come and add their testimony. I question three of them, all common, too common, in my paddock. At the proper season, I have them before my eyes, without searching for them, whenever I want to ask them for information.

¹ A genus of Weevils, the essays upon whom will appear in a later volume to be entitled The Life of Weevil.—Translator's Note.

As a matter of fact, our Crioceris, so ill-treated by the nomenclators, is a sumptuous creature. She is nicely shaped, neither too large nor too small, and a beautiful coral red, with jet-black head and legs. Everybody knows her who in the spring has ever glanced at the lily, when its stem is beginning to show in the centre of the rosette of leaves. A Beetle, of less than the average size and coloured sealing-wax red, is perched up on the plant. Your hand goes out to seize her. Forthwith, paralysed with fright, she drops to the ground.

Let us wait a few days and return to the lily, which is gradually growing taller and beginning to show its buds, gathered together in a bundle. The red insect is still there. Further, the leaves, which are seriously bitten into, are reduced to tatters and soiled with little heaps of greenish ordure. It looks as if some witchcraft had mashed up the leaves and then splashed the mess all over the place.

The origin of the garment of which we have just stripped it would be unmentionable, save in the world of the insect, that manufacturer devoid of shame. This doublet is, in fact, obtained from the creature's excretions. Instead of evacuating downwards, on the superannuated principle, the Crioceris' larva evacuates upwards and receives upon its back the waste products of the intestine, materials which move from back to front as each fresh pat is dabbed upon the others. Réaumur has complacently described how the quilt moves forward from the tail to the head by wriggling along inclined planes, making so many dips in the undulating back. There is no need to return to this stercoral mechanism after the master has done with it.

We now know the reasons that procured the Lily-beetle an ignominious title, confined to the official records: the grub makes itself an overcoat of its excrements.

Sometimes also the stuff is too thick and the heap capsizes. The denuded grub recks nothing of the lost overcoat; its obliging intestine repairs the disaster without delay.

Whether by reason of the clipping that results from the excessive length of a piece which is always on the loom, or of accidents that cause a part or the whole of the load to fall off, the grub of the Crioceris leaves accumulations of dirt in its track, till the lily, the symbol of purity, becomes a very cess-pool. When the leaves have been browsed, the stem next loses its cuticle, thanks to the nibbling of the grub, and is reduced to a ragged distaff. The flowers even, which have opened by now, are not spared: their beautiful ivory chalices are changed into latrines.

The eggs are laid in May, on the under surface of the leaves, in short trails averaging from three to six. They are cylindrical, rounded at both ends, of a bright orange-red, glossy and varnished with a glutinous wash which makes them stick to the leaves throughout their length. The hatching takes ten days. The shell of the egg, now a little wrinkled, but still of a bright orange colour, retains its position, so that the group of eggs, apart from its slightly withered appearance, remains just as it was.

² .959 inch.—Translator's Note.

The grubs emerging from any one group of eggs at once begin to browse, each beside the empty skin of its egg. Here, singly, they nibble and dig themselves a little pit in the thickness of the leaf, while sparing the cuticle of the opposite surface. This leaves a translucent floor, a support which enables them to consume the walls of the excavation without risking a fall.

Seeking for better pasture, they move lazily on. I see them scattered at random; a few of them are grouped in the same trench; but I never see them browsing economically abreast as Réaumur relates. There is no order, no understanding between messmates, contemporaries though they be and all sprung from the same row of eggs. Nor is any heed paid to economy: the lily is so generous!

The artist is a master from the first attempt. If its baby-flannel is so good to start with, what will the future ulster be, when the stuff, brought to perfection, is of much better quality? Let us proceed; we know what we want to know concerning the talents of this manufacturer of excremental broadcloth.

What is the purpose of this nasty great-coat? Does the grub employ it to keep itself cool, to protect itself against the attacks of the sun? It is possible: a tender skin need not be afraid of blistering under such a soothing poultice. Is it the grub's object to disgust its enemies? This again is possible: who would venture to set tooth to such a heap of filth? Or can it be simply a caprice of fashion, an outlandish fancy? I will not say no. We have had the crinoline, that senseless bulwark of steel hoops; we still have the extravagant stove-pipe hat, which tries to mould our heads in its stiff sheath. Let us be indulgent to the evacuator nor disparage his eccentric wardrobe. We have eccentricities of our own.

The first has a tricolor costume which is not without merit. Blue wing-cases, braided with white on the outer edge and each adorned with three white dots; a red corselet, with a blue disk in the centre. Its eggs are olive-green and cylindrical and, instead of lying flat, grouped in short lines, after the manner of the lily-dweller's, occur singly and stand on end on the leaves of the asparagus-plant, on the twigs, on the flower-buds, more or less everywhere, without any fixed order.

It is of a bright greenish yellow, fairly fat behind and thinner in front. Its principal organ of locomotion is the end of the intestine, which protrudes, curves like a flexible finger, clasps the twig and supports the creature while pushing it forward. The true legs, which are short and placed too far in front with regard to the length of the body, would find it very difficult by themselves to drag the heavy mass that comes after. Their assistant, the anal finger, is remarkably strong. With no support, the larva turns over, head downwards, and remains suspended when shifting from one sprig to another. This Jack-in-the-bowl is a rope-dancer, a consummate acrobat, performing its evolutions amid the slender sprigs without fear of a fall.

Its attitude in repose is curious. The heavy stern rests on the two hind-legs and especially on the crooked finger, the end of the intestine. The fore-part is lifted in a graceful curve, the little black head is raised and the creature looks rather like the crouching Sphinx of antiquity. This pose is common at times of slumber and blissful digestion in the sun.

An easy prey is this naked, plump, defenceless grub, snoozing in the heat of a blazing day. Various Gnats, of humble size, but very likely terribly treacherous, haunt the foliage of the asparagus. The larva of the Crioceris, motionless in its sphinx-like attitude, does not appear to be on its guard against them, even when they come buzzing above its rump. Can they be as harmless as their peaceful frolics seem to proclaim? It is extremely doubtful: the Fly rabble are not there merely to imbibe the scanty exudations of the plant. Experts in mischief, they have no doubt hastened hither with another object.

And, in truth, on the greater number of the Crioceris-larvæ we find, adhering firmly to the skin, certain white specks, very small and of a china-white. Can these be the sowing of a bandit, the spawn of a Midge?

I collect the grubs marked with these white specks and rear them in captivity. A month later, about the middle of June, they shrivel, wrinkle and turn brown. All that is left of them is a dry skin which tears from end to end, half uncovering a Fly-pupa. A few days later, the parasite emerges.

The white spots sprinkled over the larva of the Crioceris were the eggs of the hateful Fly. The vermin born of those eggs have perforated the victim's paunch. By subtle wounds, which cause little pain and are almost immediately healed, they have penetrated the body, reaching the humours in which the entrails are bathed. At first the larva invaded is not aware of its danger; it continues to perform its rope-dancer's gymnastics, to fill its belly and to take its siestas in the sun, as though nothing serious had occurred.

Fierce though the competition is among these bandits, the Beetle's race does not threaten to die out. I review the innumerable troop on my asparagus-bed. A good half of them have Tachina-eggs plainly visible as tiny white specks on their green skins. The blemished larvæ tell me of a paunch already or on the point of being invaded. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether those which are unscathed will all remain in that condition. The malefactor is incessantly prowling around the green plumes, watching for a favourable opportunity. Many larvæ free from white spots to-day will show them to-morrow or some other day, so long as the Fly's season lasts.

I estimate that the vast majority of the troop will end by being infested. My rearing-experiments tell me much on this point. If I do not make a careful selection when I am stocking my wire-gauze-covers, if I go to work at random in picking the branches colonized with larvæ, I obtain very few adult Crioceres; nearly all of them are resolved into a cloud of Midges.

Under its thick mantle of ordure the grub of the Lily-beetle escapes the troubles so fatal to its cousin of the asparagus. Strip it of its overcoat: you will never find the terrible white specks upon its skin. The method of preservation is most effective.

Her eggs, which are a deep olive-green and cylindrical, pointed at one pole and squared off at the other, closely resemble those of the Field Crioceris and, like these, usually stand up on the supporting surface, to which they are fastened by the square end. It would be easy to confuse the two if we had not the position which they occupy to guide us. The Field Crioceris fastens her eggs to the leaves and the thin sprays; the other plants them exclusively on the still green fruit of the asparagus, globules the size of a pea.

The grub of the Twelve-spotted Crioceris is a dull white, with an interrupted black scarf on the first segment of the thorax. This sedentary creature has none of the talents of the acrobat grazing on the swaying foliage of the asparagus; it cannot take a grip with its posterior, turned into a prehensile finger. What use would it have for such a prerogative, loving repose as it does and destined to put on fat in its cell, without roaming in quest of food? In the same group each species has its own gifts, according to the kind of life that awaits it.

It is not long before the occupied fruit falls to the ground. Day by day, it loses its green colour as the pulp is consumed. It becomes, at last, a pretty, diaphanous opal sphere, while the berries which have not been injured ripen on the plant and acquire a rich scarlet hue.