Social Life in the Insect World Part 9

The legs of the miserable victim tremble, announcing the end. The murderess takes no notice; she continues to rummage as far as she can reach for the narrowing of the thorax. Nothing is left but the closed boat-shaped wing-covers and the fore parts of the body. The empty sh.e.l.l is left lying on the scene of the tragedy.

In this way must have perished the beetles--always males--whose remains I find in the cage from time to time; thus the survivors also will perish. Between the middle of June and the 1st of August the inhabitants of the cage, twenty-five in number at the outset, are reduced to five, all of whom are females. All the males, to the number of twenty, have disappeared, eviscerated and completely emptied. And by whom? Apparently by the females.

That this is the case is attested in the first place by the two a.s.saults of which I was perchance the witness; on two occasions, in broad daylight, I saw the female devouring the male, having opened the abdomen under the wing-covers, or having at least attempted to do so. As for the rest of the ma.s.sacres, although direct observation was lacking, I had one very valuable piece of evidence. As we have seen, the victim does not retaliate, does not defend himself, but simply tries to escape by pulling himself away.

If it were a matter of an ordinary fight, a conflict such as might arise in the struggle for life, the creature attacked would obviously retaliate, since he is perfectly well able to do so; in an ordinary conflict he would meet force by force, and return bite for bite. His strength would enable him to come well out of a struggle, but the foolish creature allows himself to be devoured without retaliating. It seems as though an invincible repugnance prevents him from offering resistance and in turn devouring the devourer. This tolerance reminds one of the scorpion of Languedoc, which on the termination of the hymeneal rites allows the female to devour him without attempting to employ his weapon, the venomous dagger which would form a formidable defence; it reminds us also of the male of the Praying Mantis, which still embraces the female though reduced to a headless trunk, while the latter devours him by small mouthfuls, with no rebellion or defence on his part. There are other examples of hymeneal rites to which the male offers no resistance.

The males of my menagerie of Gardeners, one and all eviscerated, speak of similar customs. They are the victims of the females when the latter have no further use for them. For four months, from April to August, the insects pair off continually; sometimes tentatively, but usually the mating is effective. The business of mating is all but endless for these fiery spirits.

The Gardener is prompt and businesslike in his affairs of the heart. In the midst of the crowd, with no preliminary courtship, the male throws himself upon the female. The female thus embraced raises her head a trifle as a sign of acquiescence, while the cavalier beats the back of her neck with his antennae. The embrace is brief, and they abruptly separate; after a little refreshment the two parties are ready for other adventures, and yet others, so long as there are males available. After the feast, a brief and primitive wooing; after the wooing, the feast; in such delights the life of the Gardener pa.s.ses.

The females of my collection were in no proper ratio to the number of aspiring lovers; there were five females to twenty males. No matter; there was no rivalry, no hustling; all went peacefully and sooner or later each was satisfied.

I should have preferred a better proportioned a.s.sembly. Chance, not choice, had given me that at my disposal. In the early spring I had collected all the Gardeners I could find under the stones of the neighbourhood, without distinguishing the s.e.xes, for they are not easy to recognise merely by external characteristics. Later on I learned by watching them that a slight excess of size was the distinctive sign of the female. My menagerie, so ill-proportioned in the matter of s.e.x, was therefore the result of chance. I do not suppose this preponderance of males exists in natural conditions. On the other hand, one never sees such numerous groups at liberty, in the shelter of the same stone. The Gardener lives an almost solitary life; it is rarely that one finds two or three beneath the same object of shelter. The gathering in my menagerie was thus exceptional, although it did not lead to confusion.

There is plenty of room in the gla.s.s cage for excursions to a distance and for all their habitual manoeuvres. Those who wish for solitude can obtain it; those who wish for company need not seek it.

For the rest, captivity cannot lie heavily on them; that is proved by their frequent feasts, their constant mating. They could not thrive better in the open; perhaps not so well, for food is less abundant under natural conditions. In the matter of well-being the prisoners are in a normal condition, favourable to the maintenance of their usual habits.

It is true that encounters of beetle with beetle are more frequent here than in the open. Hence, no doubt, arise more opportunities for the females to persecute the males whom they no longer require; to fall upon them from the rear and eviscerate them. This pursuit of their onetime lovers is aggravated by their confined quarters; but it certainly is not caused thereby, for such customs are not suddenly originated.

The mating season over, the female encountering a male in the open must evidently regard him as fair game, and devour him as the termination of the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones, but have never chanced upon this spectacle, but what has occurred in my menagerie is sufficient to convince me. What a world these beetles live in, where the matron devours her mate so soon as her fertility delivers her from the need of him! And how lightly the males must be regarded by custom, to be served in this manner!

Is this practice of post-matrimonial cannibalism a general custom in the insect world? For the moment, I can recollect only three characteristic examples: those of the Praying Mantis, the Golden Gardener, and the scorpion of Languedoc. An a.n.a.logous yet less brutal practice--for the victim is defunct before he is eaten--is a characteristic of the Locust family. The female of the white-faced Decticus will eagerly devour the body of her dead mate, as will the Green Gra.s.shopper.

To a certain extent this custom is excused by the nature of the insect's diet; the Decticus and the Gra.s.shopper are essentially carnivorous.

Encountering a dead body of their own species, a female will devour it, even if it be the body of her latest mate.

But what are we to say in palliation of the vegetarians? At the approach of the breeding season, before the eggs are laid, the Ephippigera turns upon her still living mate, disembowels him, and eats as much of him as her appet.i.te will allow.

The cheerful Cricket shows herself in a new light at this season; she attacks the mate who lately wooed her with such impa.s.sioned serenades; she tears his wings, breaks his musical thighs, and even swallows a few mouthfuls of the instrumentalist. It is probable that this deadly aversion of the female for the male at the end of the mating season is fairly common, especially among the carnivorous insects. But what is the object of this atrocious custom? That is a question I shall not fail to answer when circ.u.mstances permit.

CHAPTER X

THE FIELD-CRICKET

The breeding of Crickets demands no particular preparations. A little patience is enough--patience, which according to Buffon is genius; but which I, more modestly, will call the superlative virtue of the observer. In April, May, or later we may establish isolated couples in ordinary flower-pots containing a layer of beaten earth. Their diet will consist of a leaf of lettuce renewed from time to time. The pot must be covered with a square of gla.s.s to prevent the escape of the inmates.

I have gathered some very curious data from these makeshift appliances, which may be used with and as a subst.i.tute for the cages of wire gauze, although the latter are preferable. We shall return to the point presently. For the moment let us watch the process of breeding, taking care that the critical hour does not escape us.

It was during the first week of June that my a.s.siduous visits were at last repaid. I surprised the female motionless, with the oviduct planted vertically in the soil. Heedless of the indiscreet visitor, she remained for a long time stationed at the same point. Finally she withdrew her oviduct, and effaced, though without particular care, the traces of the hole in which her eggs were deposited, rested for a moment, walked away, and repeated the operation; not once, but many times, first here, then there, all over the area at her disposal. Her behaviour was precisely the same as that of the Decticus, except that her movements were more deliberate. At the end of twenty-four hours her eggs were apparently all laid. For greater certainty I waited a couple of days longer.

I then examined the earth in the pot. The eggs, of a straw-yellow, are cylindrical in form, with rounded ends, and measure about one-tenth of an inch in length. They are placed singly in the soil, in a perpendicular position.

I have found them over the whole area of the pot, at a depth of a twelfth of an inch. As closely as the difficulties of the operation will allow, I have estimated the eggs of a single female, upon pa.s.sing the earth through a sieve, at five or six hundred. Such a family will certainly undergo an energetic pruning before very long.

The egg of the Cricket is a curiosity, a tiny mechanical marvel. After hatching it appears as a sheath of opaque white, open at the summit, where there is a round and very regular aperture, to the edge of which adheres a little valve like a skull-cap which forms the lid. Instead of breaking at random under the thrusts or the cuts of the new-formed larva, it opens of itself along a line of least resistance which occurs expressly for the purpose. The curious process of the actual hatching should be observed.

A fortnight after the egg is laid two large eye-marks, round and of a reddish black, are seen to darken the forward extremity of the egg.

Next, a little above these two points, and right at the end of the cylinder, a tiny circular capsule or swelling is seen. This marks the line of rupture, which is now preparing. Presently the translucency of the egg allows us to observe the fine segmentation of the tiny inmate.

Now is the moment to redouble our vigilance and to multiply our visits, especially during the earlier part of the day.

Fortune favours the patient, and rewards my a.s.siduity Round the little capsule changes of infinite delicacy have prepared the line of least resistance. The end of the egg, pushed by the head of the inmate, becomes detached, rises, and falls aside like the top of a tiny phial.

The Cricket issues like a Jack-in-the-box.

When the Cricket has departed the sh.e.l.l remains distended, smooth, intact, of the purest white, with the circular lid hanging to the mouth of the door of exit. The egg of the bird breaks clumsily under the blows of a wart-like excrescence which is formed expressly upon the beak of the unborn bird; the egg of the Cricket, of a far superior structure, opens like an ivory casket. The pressure of the inmate's head is sufficient to work the hinge.

The moment he is deprived of his white tunic, the young Cricket, pale all over, almost white, begins to struggle against the overlying soil.

He strikes it with his mandibles; he sweeps it aside, kicking it backwards and downwards; and being of a powdery quality, which offers no particular resistance, he soon arrives at the surface, and henceforth knows the joys of the sun, and the perils of intercourse with the living; a tiny, feeble creature, little larger than a flea. His colour deepens. In twenty-four hours he a.s.sumes a splendid ebony black which rivals that of the adult insect. Of his original pallor he retains only a white girdle which encircles the thorax and reminds one of the leading-string of an infant.

Very much on the alert, he sounds his surroundings with his long vibrating antennae; he toddles and leaps along with a vigour which his future obesity will no longer permit.

This is the age of stomach troubles. What are we to give him to eat? I do not know. I offer him adult diet--the tender leaves of a lettuce. He disdains to bite it; or perhaps his bites escape me, so tiny would they be.

In a few days, what with my ten households, I see myself loaded with family cares. What shall I do with my five or six thousand Crickets, an attractive flock, to be sure, but one I cannot bring up in my ignorance of the treatment required? I will give you liberty, gentle creatures! I will confide you to the sovereign nurse and schoolmistress, Nature!

It is done. Here and there about my orchard, in the most favourable localities, I loose my legions. What a concert I shall have before my door next year if all goes well! But no! There will probably be silence, for the terrible extermination will follow which corresponds with the fertility of the mother. A few couples only may survive: that is the most we can hope.

The first to come to the living feast and the most eager at the slaughter are the little grey lizard and the ant. I am afraid this latter, hateful filibuster that it is, will not leave me a single Cricket in my garden. It falls upon the tiny Crickets, eviscerates them, and devours them with frantic greed.

Satanic creature! And to think that we place it in the front rank of the insect world! The books celebrate its virtues and never tire of its praises; the naturalists hold it in high esteem and add to its reputation daily; so true is it of animals, as of man, that of the various means of living in history the most certain is to do harm to others.

Every one knows the _Bousier_ (dung-beetle) and the Necrophorus, those lively murderers; the gnat, the drinker of blood; the wasp, the irascible bully with the poisoned dagger; and the ant, the maleficent creature which in the villages of the South of France saps and imperils the rafters and ceilings of a dwelling with the same energy it brings to the eating of a fig. I need say no more; human history is full of similar examples of the useful misunderstood and undervalued and the calamitous glorified.

What with the ants and other exterminating forces, the ma.s.sacre was so great that the colonies of Crickets in my orchard, so numerous at the outset, were so far decimated that I could not continue my observations, but had to resort to the outside world for further information.

In August, among the detritus of decaying leaves, in little oases whose turf is not burned by the sun, I find the young Cricket has already grown to a considerable size; he is all black, like the adult, without a vestige of the white cincture of the early days. He has no domicile. The shelter of a dead leaf, the cover afforded by a flat stone is sufficient; he is a nomad, and careless where he takes his repose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1. THE FIELD-CRICKET. A DUEL BETWEEN RIVALS.

2. THE FIELD-CRICKET. THE DEFEATED RIVAL RETIRES, INSULTED BY THE VICTOR.]

Not until the end of October, when the first frosts are at hand, does the work of burrowing commence. The operation is very simple, as far as I can tell from what I have learned from the insect in captivity. The burrow is never made at a bare or conspicuous point; it is always commenced under the shelter of a faded leaf of lettuce, the remains of the food provided. This takes the place of the curtain of gra.s.s so necessary to preserve the mysterious privacy of the establishment.

The little miner scratches with his fore-claws, but also makes use of the pincers of his mandibles in order to remove pieces of grit or gravel of any size. I see him stamping with his powerful hinder limbs, which are provided with a double row of spines; I see him raking and sweeping backwards the excavated material, and spreading it out in an inclined plane. This is his whole method.

At first the work goes forward merrily. The excavator disappears under the easily excavated soil of his prison after two hours' labour. At intervals he returns to the orifice, always tail first, and always raking and sweeping. If fatigue overcomes him he rests on the threshold of his burrow, his head projecting outwards, his antennae gently vibrating. Presently he re-enters his tunnel and sets to work again with his pincers and rakes. Presently his periods of repose grow longer and tire my patience.

The most important part of the work is now completed. Once the burrow has attained a depth of a couple of inches, it forms a sufficient shelter for the needs of the moment. The rest will be the work of time; a labour resumed at will, for a short time daily. The burrow will be made deeper and wider as the growth of the inmate and the inclemency of the season demand. Even in winter, if the weather is mild, and the sun smiles upon the threshold of his dwelling, one may sometimes surprise the Cricket thrusting out small quant.i.ties of loosened earth, a sign of enlargement and of further burrowing. In the midst of the joys of spring the cares of the house still continue; it is constantly restored and perfected until the death of the occupant.

April comes to an end, and the song of the Cricket commences. At first we hear only timid and occasional solos; but very soon there is a general symphony, when every sc.r.a.p of turf has its performer. I am inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the choristers of spring.

In the waste lands of Provence, when the thyme and the lavender are in flower, the Cricket mingles his note with that of the crested lark, which ascends like a lyrical firework, its throat swelling with music, to its invisible station in the clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias upon the plain below. From the ground the chorus of the Crickets replies. It is monotonous and artless, yet how well it harmonises, in its very simplicity, with the rustic gaiety of a world renewed! It is the hosanna of the awakening, the alleluia of the germinating seed and the sprouting blade. To which of the two performers should the palm be given? I should award it to the Cricket; he triumphs by force of numbers and his never-ceasing note. The lark hushes her song, that the blue-grey fields of lavender, swinging their aromatic censers before the sun, may hear the Cricket alone at his humble, solemn celebration.

But here the anatomist intervenes, roughly demanding of the Cricket: "Show me your instrument, the source of your music!" Like all things of real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that of the locusts; there is the toothed fiddlestick and the vibrating tympanum.

The right wing-cover overlaps the left and almost completely covers it, except for the sudden fold which encases the insect's flank. This arrangement is the reverse of that exhibited by the green gra.s.shopper, the Decticus, the Ephippigera, and their relations. The Cricket is right-handed, the others left-handed. The two wing-covers have the same structure. To know one is to know the other. Let us examine that on the right hand.