The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Part 11

One of these is _Phanaeus Milon_, a magnificent insect, blue-black all over.

The male's corselet juts forward. On the head is a short, broad, flattened horn, ending in a trident. The female replaces this ornament by simple folds. Both carry on the forehead two spikes which form a trusty digging-implement and also a scalpel for dissecting. The insect's squat, st.u.r.dy, four-cornered build resembles that of _Onitis Olivieri_, one of the rarities of the neighbourhood of Montpellier.

If similarity of shape implied purity of work, we ought unhesitatingly to attribute to _Phanaeus Milon_ short, thick puddings like those made by Olivier's Onitis.[16] Alas, structure is a bad guide where instinct is concerned! The square-chined, short-legged Dung-beetle excels in the art of manufacturing gourds. The Sacred Beetle herself supplies none that are more correctly shaped nor, above all, more capacious.

[Footnote 16: I owe this detail on the work of Olivier's Onitis to a note and a sketch communicated by Professor Valery-Mayer, of the Montpellier School of Agriculture.--_Author's Note_.]

The thickset insect astonishes me with the elegance of its work, which is irreproachable in its geometry: the neck is shorter, but nevertheless combines grace with strength. The model seems derived from some Indian calabash, the more so as it has an open mouth and the belly is engraved with an elegant engine-turned pattern, produced by the insect's tarsi. One seems to see a pitcher protected by a wickerwork covering. The whole attains and even exceeds the size of a Hen's egg.

It is a very curious piece of work and of a rare perfection, especially when we consider the artist's clumsy and ma.s.sive build. No, once again, the tool does not make the workman, among Dung-beetles any more than among ourselves. To guide the modeller there is something better than a set of tools: there is what I have called the b.u.mp, the genius of the animal.

_Phanaeus Milon_ scoffs at difficulties. He does much more than that: he laughs at our cla.s.sifications. The word Dung-beetle implies a lover of dung. He sets no value on it, either for his own use or for that of his offspring. What he wants is the sanies of corpses. He is to be found under the carca.s.ses of birds, Dogs or Cats, in the company of the undertakers-in-ordinary. The gourd which I will presently describe was lying in the earth under the remains of an Owl.

Let him who will explain this conjunction of the appet.i.tes of the Necrophorus[17] with the talents of the Sacred Beetle. As for me, baffled by tastes which no one would suspect from the mere appearance of the insect, I give it up.

[Footnote 17: Or Burying-beetle. Cf. Chapters XI. and XII. of the present volume.--_Translator's Note_.]

I know in my neighbourhood one Dung-beetle and one alone who also works among carrion. This is _Onthophagus ovatus_, LIN., a constant frequenter of dead Moles and Rabbits. But the dwarf undertaker does not on that account scorn stercoraceous fare: he feasts upon it like the other Onthophagi. Perhaps there is a twofold diet here: the bun for the adult; the highly-spiced, far-gone meat for the grub.

Similar facts are encountered elsewhere, with differing tastes. The Hunting Wasp takes her fill of honey drawn from the nectaries of the flowers, but feeds her little ones on game. Game first and then sugar, for the same stomach! How that digestive pouch must change during development! And yet no more than our own, which scorns in later life the food that delighted it when young.

Let us now examine the work of _Phanaeus Milon_ more thoroughly. The calabashes reached me in a state of complete desiccation. They are very nearly as hard as stone; their colour inclines to a pale chocolate. Neither inside nor out does the lens discover the slightest ligneous particle pointing to a vegetable residue. The strange Dung-beetle does not, therefore, use cakes of Cow-dung or anything like them; he handles products of another cla.s.s, which at first are rather difficult to specify.

Held to the ear and shaken, the object rattles slightly, as would the sh.e.l.l of a dry fruit with a stone lying free inside it. Does it contain the grub, shrivelled by desiccation? Does it contain the dead insect? I thought so, but I was wrong. It contains something much more instructive than that.

I carefully rip up the gourd with the point of a knife. Within a h.o.m.ogenous wall, whose thickness is over three-quarters of an inch in the largest of my three specimens, is encased a spherical kernel, which fills the cavity exactly, but without sticking to the wall at any part. The small amount of free play allowed to this kernel accounts for the rattling which I heard when I shook the thing.

In the colour and general appearance of the whole, the kernel does not differ from the wrapper. But break it open and minutely examine the pieces. We now recognize tiny fragments of bone, flocks of down, threads of wool, sc.r.a.ps of flesh, the whole mixed in an earthy paste resembling chocolate.

This paste, when placed on hot charcoal, sifted under the lens and deprived of its particles of dead bodies, becomes much darker, is covered with shiny bubbles and sends forth puffs of that acrid smoke by which we so readily recognize burnt animal matter. The whole ma.s.s of the kernel, therefore, is strongly impregnated with sanies.

Treated in the same manner, the wrapper also turns black, but not to the same extent; it hardly smokes; it does not become covered with jet-black bubbles; lastly, it would not anywhere contain bits of carcase similar to those in the central kernel. In both cases, the residue after calcination is a fine, reddish clay.

This brief a.n.a.lysis tells us all about the table of _Phanaeus Milon_.

The fare served to the grub is a sort of meat-pie. The sausage-meat consists of a mince of all that the two scalpels of the forehead and the toothed knives of the fore-legs have been able to remove from the corpse: hair and down, small crushed bones, strips of flesh and skin.

Now hard as brick, the thickening of this mincemeat was originally a paste of fine clay steeped in the liquor of corruption. Lastly, the light crust of our meat-pies is here represented by a covering of the same clay, less rich in extract of meat than the other.

The pastry-cook gives his work an elegant shape; he decorates it with rosettes, with twists, with scrolls. _Phanaeus Milon_ is no stranger to these culinary aesthetics. She turns the crust of her meat-pie into a splendid gourd, with a finger-print ornamentation.

The outer covering, an unprofitable crust, insufficiently steeped in savoury juices, is not, we can easily guess, intended for consumption.

It is possible that, somewhat later, when the stomach becomes robust and is not repelled by coa.r.s.e fare, the grub sc.r.a.pes a little from the sides of its pasty walls; but, until the adult insect emerges, the calabash as a whole remains intact, having acted at first as a safeguard of the freshness of the force-meat and all the while as a protecting casket for the recluse.

Above the cold pastry, right at the base of the neck of the gourd, is contrived a round cell with a clay wall continuing the general wall. A fairly thick floor, made of the same material, separates it from the store-room. This is the hatching-chamber. Here is laid the egg, which I find in its place but dried up; here is hatched the grub, which, to reach the ball of food, must first open a trap-door through the part.i.tion that separates the two stories.

We have here, in short, the edifice of the Gromphas, in a different style of architecture. The grub is born in a casket surmounting the stack of food but not communicating with it. The budding larva must therefore, at the opportune moment, itself pierce the covering of the pot of preserves. As a matter of fact, later, when the grub is on the sausage-meat, we find the floor perforated with a hole just large enough for it to pa.s.s through.

Wrapped all round in a thick casing of pottery, the meat keeps fresh as long as is required by the duration of the hatching-process, a detail which I have not ascertained; in its cell, which is also of clay, the egg lies safe. Capital; so far, all is well. _Phanaeus Milon_ is thoroughly acquainted with the secrets of fortification and the danger of victuals evaporating too soon. There remain the germ's respiratory requirements.

To satisfy these, the insect has been equally well-inspired. The neck of the calabash is pierced, in the direction of its axis, with a tiny channel which would admit at most the slenderest of straws. Inside, this conduit opens at the top of the dome of the hatching-chamber; outside, at the tip of the nipple, it spreads into a wide mouth. This is the ventilating-shaft, protected against intruders by its extreme narrowness and by grains of dust which obstruct it a little without stopping it up. I said it was simply marvellous. Was I wrong? If a construction of this sort is a fortuitous result, we must admit that blind chance is gifted with extraordinary powers of foresight.

How does the clumsy insect manage to accomplish so delicate and complex a piece of building? Exploring the pampas as I do through the eyes of an intermediary, my only guide in this question is the structure of the work, a structure whence we can deduct the workman's method without going far astray. I therefore imagine the building to proceed in this manner: a small carcase is found, the oozing of which has softened the underlying loam. The insect collects more or less of this loam, according to the richness of the vein. There are no precise limits here. If the plastic material be plentiful, the collector is lavish with it and the provision-box becomes all the more solid. Then enormous calabashes are obtained, exceeding a Hen's egg in volume and formed of an outer wall three-quarters of an inch thick. But a ma.s.s of this description is beyond the strength of the modeller, is badly handled and betrays, in its shape, the awkwardness attendant on an over-difficult task. If the material be rare, the insect confines its harvesting to what is strictly necessary; and then, freer in its movements, it obtains a magnificently regular gourd.

The loam is probably first kneaded into a ball and then scooped out into a large and very thick cup by the pressure of the fore-legs and the work of the forehead. Even thus do the Copris and the Sacred Beetle act when preparing, on the top of their round pill, the bowl in which the egg will be laid before the final manipulation of the ovoid or pear.

In this first business, the Phanaeus is simply a potter. So long as it be plastic, any clay serves her turn, however meagrely saturated with the juices running from the carcase.

She now becomes a pork-butcher. With her toothed knife, she carves, she saws some tiny shreds from the rotten animal; she tears off, cuts away what she deems best suited to the grub's entertainment. She collects all these fragments and mixes them with choice loam in the spots where the sanies abounds. The whole, cunningly kneaded and softened, becomes a ball made on the spot, without any rolling-process, in the same way as the sphere of the other pill-manufacturers. Let us add that this ball, a ration calculated by the needs of the grub, is very nearly constant in size, whatever the dimensions of the final calabash.

The sausage-meat is now ready. It is set in place in the wide-open clay bowl. Loosely packed, without compression, the food will remain free, will not stick to its wrapper.

Next, the potter's work is renewed. The insect presses the thick lips of the clay cup, rolls them out and applies them to the prepared force-meat, which is eventually contained by a thin part.i.tion at the top end and by a thick layer every elsewhere. A wide circular pad is left on the top part.i.tion, which is thin in view of the weakness of the grub that is to perforate it later, when making for the provisions. Manipulated in its turn, this pad is converted into a hemispherical hollow, in which the egg is forthwith laid.

The work is completed by rolling out and joining the edges of the little crater, which closes and becomes the hatching-chamber. Here, especially, a delicate dexterity becomes essential. At the same time that the nipple of the calabash is being shaped, the insect, when packing the material, must leave the little channel which is to form the ventilating-shaft, following the line of the axis. This narrow conduit, which an ill-calculated pressure might stop up beyond hope of remedy, seems to me extremely difficult to obtain. The most skilful of our potters could not manage it without the aid of a needle, which he would afterwards withdraw. The insect, a sort of jointed automaton, makes its channel through the ma.s.sive nipple of the gourd without so much as a thought. If it did give it a thought, it would not succeed.

The calabash is made: there remains the decoration. This is the work of patient after-touches which perfect the curves and leave on the soft loam a series of stippled impressions similar to those which the potter of prehistoric days distributed over his big-bellied jars with the ball of his thumb.

That finishes the work. The insect will begin all over again under a fresh carcase; for each burrow has one calabash and no more, even as with the Sacred Beetle and her pears.

Here is another of these artists of the pampas. All black and as big as the largest of our Onthophagi,[18] whom she greatly resembles in general build, _Canthon bispinus_ is likewise an exploiter of dead bodies, if not always on her own behalf, at least on that of her offspring.

[Footnote 18: Cf. _The Sacred Beetle and Others_: chaps. xi. xvii., and xviii.--_Translator's Note_.]

She introduces very original innovations into the pill-maker's art.

Her work, strewn like the aforementioned with finger-prints, is the pilgrim's gourd, the double-bellied gourd. Of the two stories, which are joined together by a fairly plainly-marked groove, the upper is the smaller and contains the egg in an incubating-chamber; the lower and bulkier is the food-stack.

Imagine the Sisyphus' little pear with its hatching-chamber swollen into a globule a trifle smaller than the sphere at the other end; suppose the two protuberances to be divided by a sort of wide open groove like that of a pulley; and we shall have something very like the Canthon's work in shape and size.

When placed on burning charcoal, this double-bellied gourd turns black, becomes covered with shiny warts that look like jet beads, emits a smell like that of grilled meat and leaves a residue of red clay. It is therefore formed of clay and sanies. Moreover, the paste is sprinkled with little sc.r.a.ps of dead flesh. At the smaller end is the egg, in a chamber with a very porous roof, to allow the air to enter.

The little undertaker has something better to show than her double sausage. Like the Bison Onitis, the Sisyphus and the Lunary Copris, she enjoys the collaboration of the father. Each burrow contains several cradles, with the father and mother invariably present. What are the two inseparables doing? They are watching their brood and, by dint of a.s.siduous repairs, keeping the little sausages, which are in constant danger of cracking or drying up, in good condition.

The magic carpet which has allowed me to take this trip to the pampas supplies me with nothing else worth noting. Besides, the New World is poor in pill-rollers and cannot compare with Senegambia and the regions of the Upper Nile, that paradise of Copres and Sacred Beetles.

Nevertheless we owe it one precious detail: the group which is commonly known by the name of Dung-beetles is divided into two corporations, one of which exploits dung, the other corpses.

With very few exceptions, the latter has no representatives in our climes. I have mentioned the little Oval Onthophagus as a lover of carrion corruption; and my memory does not recall any other example of the kind. We have to go to the other world to find such tastes.

Can it be that there was a schism among the primitive scavengers and that these, at first addicted to the same industry, afterwards divided the hygienic task, some burying the ordure of the intestines, the others the ordure of death? Can the comparative frequency of this or the other provender have brought about the formation of two trade-guilds?

That is not admissible. Life is inseparable from death; wherever a corpse is, there also, scattered at random, are the digestive residues of the live animal; and the pill-roller is not fastidious as to the origin of this waste matter. Dearth therefore plays no part in the schism, if the true dung-worker has actually turned himself into an undertaker, or if the undertaker has turned himself into a true dung-worker. At no time have materials for the work been lacking in either case.

Nothing, not the scarcity of provisions, nor the climate, nor the reversed seasons, would explain this strange divergence. We must perforce regard it as a matter of original specialities, of tastes not acquired but prescribed from the beginning. And what prescribed them was anything but the structure.

I would defy the greatest expert to tell me, simply from the insect's appearance and without learning the facts by experiment, the manner of industry to which _Phanaeus Milon_, for instance, devotes himself.

Remembering the Onites, who are very similar in shape and who manipulate stercoral matter, he would look upon the foreigner as another manipulator of dung. He would be mistaken: the a.n.a.lysis of the meat-pie has told us so.

The shape does not make the real Dung-beetle. I have in my collection a magnificent insect from Cayenne, known to the nomenclators as _Phanaeus festivus_, a brilliant Beetle in festive attire, charming, beautiful, glorious to behold. How well he deserves his name! His colouring is a metallic red, which flashes with the fire of rubies; and he sets off this splendid jewellery by studding his corselet with great spots of glowing black.

What trade do you follow under your torrid sun, O gleaming carbuncle?

Have you the bucolic tastes of your rival in finery, the Splendid Phanaeus? Can you be a knacker, a worker in putrid sausage-meat, like _Phanaeus Milon_? Vainly do I consider you and marvel at you: your equipment tells me nothing. No one who has not seen you at work is capable of naming your profession. I leave the matter to the conscientious masters, to the experts who are able to say: I do not know. They are scarce, in our days; but after all there are some, less eager than others in the unscrupulous struggle which creates upstarts.