The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles

Hunger, we can no longer doubt, is the cause of this agitation. What shall I give my famished nurselings? They are vegetarians: there can be no doubt whatever about that; but this is not enough to settle the bill of fare. What would happen under the natural conditions? Rearing the insects in cages, I find the eggs scattered at random on the ground. The mother drops them carelessly, here and there, from the top of the bough where she is refreshing herself by soberly notching some tender leaf. The Taxicorn Clythra fits a long stalk to her eggs and fixes them in clusters on the foliage. While I cannot yet make up my mind, in the absence of direct observation, whether the new-born larva cuts the suspension-thread itself, or whether the thread is broken merely as a result of drying up, sooner or later these eggs are lying on the ground, like the others.

The same thing must happen outside my cages: the eggs of the Clythræ and the Cryptocephali are scattered over the ground beneath the tree or plant on which the adult feeds.

Now what do we find under the shelter of the oak? Turf, dead leaves, more or less pickled by decay, dry twigs cased in lichens, broken stones with cushions of moss and, lastly, mould, the final residue of vegetable matters wrought upon by time. Under the tufts of the centaury on which the Golden Cryptocephalus browses lies a black bed of the miscellaneous refuse of the plant.

I try a little of everything, but nothing answers my expectations very positively. I observe, nevertheless, that a few disdainful mouthfuls are taken, a little bit here, a little bit there, enough to tell me the nature of the first layers which the grub adds to its natal sheath. With the exception of the Taxicorn Clythra, whose egg, with its suspension-stalk, seems to denote rather special habits, I see my several charges begin to prolong their shell with a brown paste, similar in appearance to that with whose manufacture and employment we are already familiar.

Discouraged by a food which does not suit them and perhaps also tried by a season of exceptional drouth, my young potters soon relinquish their task; they die after adding a shallow rim to their pots.

Only the Long-legged Clythra thrives and repays me amply for my troublesome nursing. I provide it with chips of old bark taken from the first tree to hand, the oak, the olive, the fig-tree and many others. I soften them by steeping them for a short time in water. The cork-like crusts, however, are not what my boarders eat. The actual food, the butter on the bread, is on the surface. There is a little here of all that the first beginnings of vegetable life add to old tree-trunks, all that breaks up decrepit age to turn it into perpetual youth.

There are tufts of moss, hardly a twelfth of an inch in height, which were sleeping droughtily under the merciless sun of the dog-days, but which a bath in a glass of water awakens at once. They now display their ring of green leaflets, brightened up and restored to life for a few hours. There are leprous efflorescences, with their white or yellow dust; tiny lichens radiating in ash-grey straps and covered with glaucous, white-edged shields, great round eyes that seem to gaze from the depths of the limbo in which dead matter comes to life again. There are collemas, which, after a shower, become dark and bloated and shake like jellies; sphærias, whose pustules stand out like ebony teats, full of myriads of tiny sacs, each containing eight pretty seeds. A glance through the microscope at the contents of one of these teats, a speck only just visible to the eye, reveals an astounding world: an infinity of procreative wealth in an atom. Ah, what a beautiful thing life is, even on a chip of rotten bark no bigger than a finger-nail! What a garden! What a treasure-house!

This is the best pasture put to the test. My Clythræ graze upon it, gathering in dense herds at the most luxuriant spots. One would take this heap for pinches of some brown, modelled seed or other, the snapdragon's, for instance; but these particular seeds push and sway; if one of them moves the least bit, the shells all clash together. Others wander about, in search of a good place, staggering and tumbling under the weight of the overcoat; they wander at random through that great and spacious world, the bottom of my cup.

Not a fortnight has elapsed before a strip, built up on the rim, has doubled the length of the Long-legged Clythra's shell, in order to maintain the capacity of the earthenware jar in proportion to the size of the grub, which has been growing from day to day. The recent portion, the work of the larva, is very plainly distinguishable from the original shell, the product of the mother; it is smooth over its whole extent, whereas the rest is ornamented with tiny holes arranged in spiral rows.

Planed away inside as it becomes too tight, the jar grows wider and at the same time longer. The dust taken from it, once more kneaded into mortar, is reapplied outside, more or less everywhere, and forms a rubble under which the original beauties end by disappearing. The neatly-pitted masterpiece is swamped by a layer of brown plasterwork; not always entirely, however, even when the structure reaches its final dimensions. If we pass an attentive lens between the two humps at the lower end, we very often see, encrusted in the earthy mass, the remains of the shell of the egg. This is the potter's mark. The arrangement of the spiral ridges, the number and the shape of the pits enable us almost to read the name of the maker, Clythra or Cryptocephalus.

From the very first I could not imagine the worker in ceramic paste designing its own pottery by drafting the first outlines. My doubts were justified. The grubs of the Clythra and the Cryptocephalus possess a maternal legacy in the shape of a shell, a garment which they have only to enlarge. They are born the owners of a layette which becomes the groundwork of their trousseau. They increase it, without, however, imitating its artistic elegance. A more vigorous age discards the laces in which the mother delights to clothe the new-born child.

notes

1

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), author of La Psychologie du goût. —Translator's Note.

2

Cf. The Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim. —Translator's Note.

3

.195 inch. —Translator's Note.

4

Cf. The Mason-bees, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. viii.; and Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim. —Translator's Note.

5

Cf. The Mason-wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. vi. and x. —Translator's Note.

6

Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. ii. and iv. —Translator's Note.

7

Cf. Bramble-bees and Others: passim. —Translator's Note.

8

Mites and Ticks. —Translator's Note.

9

A genus of Beetles of which certain species (Clerus apiarius and C. alvearius) pass their preparatory state in the nests of Bees, where they feed on the grubs. —Translator's Note.

10

Another genus of Beetles. The grub of A. musæorum, the Museum Beetle, is very destructive to insect-collections. —Translator's Note.

11

.026 inch. —Translator's Note.

12

Fabre, as a young man, was a master at Avignon College. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chaps. xii., xiii., xix. and xx. —Translator's Note.

13

Jean Marie Léon 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: chap. i.; and The Life of the Fly: chap. i. —Translator's Note.

14

A genus of Burrowing Bee, the most numerous in species among the British Bees. —Translator's Note.

15

George Newport (1803-1854), an English surgeon and naturalist, president of the Entomological Society from 1844 to 1845 and an expert in insect anatomy. —Translator's Note.

16

Thursday is the weekly holiday in French schools. —Translator's Note.

17

Carolus Linnæus (Karl von Linné, 1707-1778), the celebrated Swedish botanist and naturalist, founder of the Linnæan system of classification. —Translator's Note.

18

Jean Baptiste Godart (1775-1823), the principal editor of L'Histoire naturelle des lépidoptères de France. —Translator's Note.

19

Baron Karl de Geer (1720-1778), the Swedish entomologist, author of Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des insectes (1752-1778). —Translator's Note.