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The Life of the Fly; With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography

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Title: The Life of the Fly; With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography

Author: Jean-Henri Fabre

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos


        
Release date: September 1, 2002 [eBook #3422]
                Most recently updated: February 28, 2009

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3422

Credits: Produced by Gerry Rising, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF THE FLY; WITH WHICH ARE INTERSPERSED SOME CHAPTERS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY ***




Produced by Gerry Rising





THE LIFE OF THE FLY:

With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography


By J. Henri Fabre


Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

Fellow of the Zoological Society of London




CONTENTS

   TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

   I      THE HARMAS
   II     THE ANTHRAX
   III    ANOTHER PROBER (PERFORATOR)
   IV     LARVAL DIMORPHISM
   V      HEREDITY
   VI     MY SCHOOLING
   VII    THE POND
   VIII   THE CADDIS WORM
   IX     THE GREENBOTTLES
   X      THE GRAY FLESH FLIES
   XI     THE BUMBLEBEE FLY
   XII    MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: NEWTON'S BINOMIAL THEOREM
   XIII   MATHEMATICAL MEMORIES: MY LITTLE TABLE
   XIV    THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE LAYING
   XV     THE BLUEBOTTLE: THE GRUB
   XVI    A PARASITE OF THE MAGGOT
   XVII   RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
   XVIII  INSECTS AND MUSHROOMS
   XIX    A MEMORABLE LESSON
   XX     INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY




TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

The present volume contains all the essays on flies, or Diptera, from
the Souvenirs entomologiques, to which I have added, in order to make
the dimensions uniform with those of the other volumes of the series,
the purely autobiographical essays comprised in the Souvenirs. These
essays, though they have no bearing upon the life of the fly, are
among the most interesting that Henri Fabre has written and will, I am
persuaded, make a special appeal to the reader. The chapter entitled The
Caddis Worm has been included as following directly upon The Pond.

Since publishing The Life of the Spider, I was much struck by a passage
in Dr. Chalmers Mitchell's stimulating work, The Childhood of Animals,
in which the secretary of the Zoological Society of London says: 'I have
attempted to avoid the use of terms familiar only to students of zoology
and to refrain from anatomical detail, but at the same time to refrain
from the irritating habit assuming that my readers have no knowledge, no
dictionaries and no other books.'

I began to wonder whether I had gone too far in simplifying the
terminology of the Fabre essays and in appending explanatory footnotes
to the inevitable number of outlandish names of insects. But my doubts
vanished when I thought upon Fabre's own words in the first chapter of
this book: 'If I write for men of learning, for philosophers...I write
above all things for the young. I want to make them love the natural
story which you make them hate; and that is why, while keeping strictly
to the domain of truth, I avoid your scientific prose, which too often,
alas, seems borrowed from some Iroquois idiom!'

And I can but apologize if I have been too lavish with my notes to this
chapter in particular, which introduces to us, as in a sort of litany,
a multitude of the insects studied by the author. For the rest, I have
continued my system of references to the earlier Fabre books, whether
translated by myself or others. Of the following essays, The Harmas has
appeared, under another title, in The Daily Mail; The Pond, Industrial
Chemistry and the two Chapters on the bluebottle in The English Review;
and The Harmas, The Pond and Industrial Chemistry in the New York
Bookman. The others are new to England and America, unless any of them
should be issued in newspapers or magazines between this date and the
publication of the book.

I wish once more to thank Miss Frances Rodwell for her assistance in the
details of my work and in the verification of the many references; and
my thanks are also due to Mr. Edward Cahen, who has been good enough to
revise the two chemistry chapters for me, and to Mr. W. S. Graff Baker,
who has performed the same kindly task towards the two chapters entitled
Mathematical Memories.--Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. Chelsea, 8 July,
1913.

[Recorder's Note: Most Translator's Footnotes have been omitted from
this text, but some of his references to localities and insect names
are included in brackets. I apologize to English readers for changes to
American spelling.]




CHAPTER I. THE HARMAS

This is what I wished for, hoc erat in votis: a bit of land, oh, not so
very large, but fenced in, to avoid the drawbacks of a public way; an
abandoned, barren, sun scorched bit of land, favored by thistles and by
wasps and bees. Here, without fear of being troubled by the passersby, I
could consult the Ammophila and the Sphex [two digger or hunting wasps]
and engage in that difficult conversation whose questions and answers
have experiment for their language; here, without distant expeditions
that take up my time, without tiring rambles that strain my nerves,
I could contrive my plans of attack, lay my ambushes and watch their
effects at every hour of the day. Hoc erat in votis. Yes, this was my
wish, my dream, always cherished, always vanishing into the mists of the
future.

And it is no easy matter to acquire a laboratory in the open fields,
when harassed by a terrible anxiety about one's daily bread. For forty
years have I fought, with steadfast courage, against the paltry plagues
of life; and the long-wished-for laboratory has come at last. What it
has cost me in perseverance and relentless work I will not try to say.
It has come; and, with it--a more serious condition--perhaps a little
leisure. I say perhaps, for my leg is still hampered with a few links of
the convict's chain.

The wish is realized. It is a little late, O my pretty insects! I
greatly fear that the peach is offered to me when I am beginning to
have no teeth wherewith to eat it. Yes, it is a little late: the wide
horizons of the outset have shrunk into a low and stifling canopy, more
and more straitened day by day. Regretting nothing in the past, save
those whom I have lost; regretting nothing, not even my first youth;
hoping nothing either, I have reached the point at which, worn out by
the experience of things, we ask ourselves if life be worth the living.

Amid the ruins that surround me, one strip of wall remains standing,
immovable upon its solid base: my passion for scientific truth. Is that
enough, O my busy insects, to enable me to add yet a few seemly pages
to your history? Will my strength not cheat my good intentions? Why,
indeed, did I forsake you so long? Friends have reproached me for it.
Ah, tell them, tell those friends, who are yours as well as mine,
tell them that it was not forgetfulness on my part, not weariness, nor
neglect: I thought of you; I was convinced that the Cerceris [a digger
wasp] cave had more fair secrets to reveal to us, that the chase of the
Sphex held fresh surprises in store. But time failed me; I was alone,
deserted, struggling against misfortune. Before philosophizing, one had
to live. Tell them that; and they will pardon me.

Others again have reproached me with my style, which has not the
solemnity, nay, better, the dryness of the schools. They fear lest a
page that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression
of the truth. Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only
on condition of being obscure. Come here, one and all of you--you, the
sting bearers, and you, the wing-cased armor-clads--take up my defense
and bear witness in my favor. Tell of the intimate terms on which I live
with you, of the patience with which I observe you, of the care with
which I record your actions. Your evidence is unanimous: yes, my pages,
though they bristle not with hollow formulas nor learned smatterings,
are the exact narrative of facts observed, neither more nor less; and
whoever cares to question you in his turn will, obtain the same replies.

And then, my dear insects, if you cannot convince those good people,
because you do not carry the weight of tedium, I, in my turn, will say
to them: 'You rip up the animal and I study it alive; you turn it into
an object of horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labor
in a torture chamber and dissecting room, I make my observations under
the blue sky to the song of the cicadas, you subject cell and protoplasm
to chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations;
you pry into death, I pry into life. And why should I not complete
my thought: the boars have muddied the clear stream; natural history,
youth's glorious study, has, by dint of cellular improvements, become a
hateful and repulsive thing. Well, if I write for men of learning, for
philosophers, who, one day, will try to some extent to unravel the tough
problem of instinct, I write also, I write above all things for the
young. I want to make them love the natural history which you make them
hate; and that is why, while keeping strictly to the domain of truth, I
avoid your scientific prose, which too often, alas seems borrowed from
some Iroquois idiom.

But this is not my business for the moment: I want to speak of the
bit of land long cherished in my plans to form a laboratory of living
entomology, the bit of land which I have at last obtained in the
solitude of a little village. It is a harmas, the name given, in this
district [the country round Serignan, in Provence], to an untilled,
pebbly expanse abandoned to the vegetation of the thyme. It is too poor
to repay the work of the plow; but the sheep passes there in spring,
when it has chanced to rain and a little grass shoots up.

My harmas, however, because of its modicum of red earth swamped by a
huge mass of stones, has received a rough first attempt at cultivation:
I am told that vines once grew here. And, in fact, when we dig the
ground before planting a few trees, we turn up, here and there, remains
of the precious stock, half carbonized by time. The three pronged fork,
therefore, the only implement of husbandry that can penetrate such
a soil as this, has entered here; and I am sorry, for the primitive
vegetation has disappeared. No more thyme, no more lavender, no more
clumps of kermes oak, the dwarf oak that forms forests across which we
step by lengthening our stride a little. As these plants, especially the
first two, might be of use to me by offering the Bees and Wasps a spoil
to forage, I am compelled to reinstate them in the ground whence they
were driven by the fork.

What abounds without my mediation is the invaders of any soil that is
first dug up and then left for a long time to its own resources. We
have, in the first rank, the couch grass, that execrable weed which
three years of stubborn warfare have not succeeded in exterminating.
Next, in respect of number, come the centauries, grim looking one
and all, bristling with prickles or starry halberds. They are the
yellow-flowered centaury, the mountain centaury, the star thistle and
the rough centaury: the first predominates. Here and there, amid their
inextricable confusion, stands, like a chandelier with spreading, orange
flowers for lights, the fierce Spanish oyster plant, whose spikes are
strong as nails. Above it, towers the Illyrian cotton thistle, whose
straight and solitary stalk soars to a height of three to six feet and
ends in large pink tufts. Its armor hardly yields before that of the
oyster plant. Nor must we forget the lesser thistle tribe, with first
of all, the prickly or 'cruel' thistle, which is so well armed that the
plant collector knows not where to grasp it; next, the spear thistle,
with its ample foliage, ending each of its veins with a spear head;
lastly, the black knapweed, which gathers itself into a spiky knot.
In among these, in long lines armed with hooks, the shoots of the blue
dewberry creep along the ground. To visit the prickly thicket when the
Wasp goes foraging, you must wear boots that come to mid-leg or else
resign yourself to a smarting in the calves. As long as the ground
retains a few remnants of the vernal rains, this rude vegetation does
not lack a certain charm, when the pyramids of the oyster plant and the
slender branches of the cotton thistle rise above the wide carpet formed
by the yellow-flowered centaury saffron heads; but let the droughts of
summer come and we see but a desolate waste, which the flame of a match
would set ablaze from one end to the other. Such is, or rather was,
when I took possession of it, the Eden of bliss where I mean to live
henceforth alone with the insect. Forty years of desperate struggle have
won it for me.

Eden, I said; and, from the point of view that interests me, the
expression is not out of place. This cursed ground, which no one would
have had at a gift to sow with a pinch of turnip seed, is an earthly
paradise for the bees and wasps. Its mighty growth of thistles and
centauries draws them all to me from everywhere around. Never, in my
insect hunting memories, have I seen so large a population at a single
spot; all the trades have made it their rallying point. Here come
hunters of every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers of cotton
goods, collectors of pieces cut from a leaf or the petals of a flower,
architects in pasteboard, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters
boring wood, miners digging underground galleries, workers handling
goldbeater's skin and many more.

Who is this one? An Anthidium [a tailor bee]. She scrapes the cobwebby
stalk of the yellow-flowered centaury and gathers a ball of wadding
which she carries off proudly in the tips of her mandibles. She will
turn it, under ground, into cotton felt satchels to hold the store of
honey and the egg. And these others, so eager for plunder? They are
Megachiles [leaf-cutting bees], carrying under their bellies their
black, white or blood red reaping brushes. They will leave the thistles
to visit the neighboring shrubs and there cut from the leaves oval
pieces which will be made into a fit receptacle to contain the harvest.
And these, clad in black velvet? They are Chalicodomae [mason bees], who
work with cement and gravel. We could easily find their masonry on the
stones in the harmas. And these noisily buzzing with a sudden flight?
They are the Anthophorae [wild bees], who live in the old walls and the
sunny banks of the neighborhood.

Now come the Osmiae. One stacks her cells in the spiral staircase of an
empty snail shell; another, attacking the pith of a dry bit of bramble,
obtains for her grubs a cylindrical lodging and divides it into floors
by means of partition walls; a third employs the natural channel of a
cut reed; a fourth is a rent-free tenant of the vacant galleries of
some mason bee. Here are the Macrocerae and the Eucerae, whose males are
proudly horned; the Dasypodae, who carry an ample brush of bristles on
their hind legs for a reaping implement; the Andrenae, so manifold in
species; the slender-bellied Halicti [all wild bees]. I omit a host of
others. If I tried to continue this record of the guests of my thistles,
it would muster almost the whole of the honey yielding tribe. A learned
entomologist of Bordeaux, Professor Perez, to whom I submit the naming
of my prizes, once asked me if I had any special means of hunting,
to send him so many rarities and even novelties. I am not at all an
experienced and, still less, a zealous hunter, for the insect interests
me much more when engaged in its work than when struck on a pin in a
cabinet. The whole secret of my hunting is reduced to my dense nursery
of thistles and centauries.

By a most fortunate chance, with this populous family of honey gatherers
was allied the whole hunting tribe. The builders' men had distributed
here and there in the harmas great mounds of sand and heaps of stones,
with a view to running up some surrounding walls. The work dragged on
slowly; and the materials found occupants from the first year. The mason
bees had chosen the interstices between the stones as a dormitory where
to pass the night, in serried groups. The powerful eyed lizard, who,
when close pressed, attacks both man and dog, wide mouthed, had selected
a cave wherein to lie in wait for the passing scarab [a dung beetle
also known as the sacred beetle]; the black-eared chat, garbed like a
Dominican, white-frocked with black wings, sat on the top stone,
singing his short rustic lay: his nest, with its sky blue eggs, must be
somewhere in the heap. The little Dominican disappeared with the loads
of stones. I regret him: he would have been a charming neighbor. The
eyed lizard I do not regret at all.

The sand sheltered a different colony. Here, the Bembeces [digger wasps]
were sweeping the threshold of their burrows, flinging a curve of dust
behind them; the Languedocian Sphex was dragging her Ephippigera [a
green grasshopper] by the antennae; a Stizus [a hunting wasp] was
storing her preserves of Cicadellae [froghoppers]. To my sorrow, the
masons ended by evicting the sporting tribe; but, should I ever wish to
recall it, I have but to renew the mounds of sand: they will soon all be
there.

Hunters that have not disappeared, their homes being different, are the
Ammophilae, whom I see fluttering, one in spring, the others in autumn,
along the garden walks and over the lawns, in search of a caterpillar;
the Pompili [digger or hunting wasp], who travel alertly, beating their
wings and rummaging in every corner in quest of a spider. The largest
of them waylays the Narbonne Lycosa [known also as the black-bellied
tarantula], whose burrow is not infrequent in the harmas. This burrow is
a vertical well, with a curb of fescue grass intertwined with silk. You
can see the eyes of the mighty Spider gleam at the bottom of the den
like little diamonds, an object of terror to most. What a prey and what
dangerous hunting for the Pompilus! And here, on a hot summer afternoon,
is the Amazon ant, who leaves her barrack rooms in long battalions and
marches far afield to hunt for slaves. We will follow her in her raids
when we find time. Here again, around a heap of grasses turned to mould,
are Scoliae [large hunting wasps] an inch and a half long, who fly
gracefully and dive into the heap, attracted by a rich prey, the grubs
of Lamellicorns, Orycotes and Ceotoniae [various beetles].

What subjects for study! And there are more to come. The house was as
utterly deserted as the ground. When man was gone and peace assured, the
animal hastily seized on everything. The warbler took up his abode in
the lilac shrubs; the greenfinch settled in the thick shelter of the
cypresses; the sparrow carted rags and straw under every slate; the
Serin finch, whose downy nest is no bigger than half an apricot, came
and chirped in the plane tree tops; the Scops made a habit of uttering
his monotonous, piping note here, of an evening; the bird of Pallas
Athene, the owl, came hurrying along to hoot and hiss.

In front of the house is a large pond, fed by the aqueduct that supplies
the village pumps with water. Here, from half a mile and more around,
come the frogs and Toads in the lovers' season. The natterjack,
sometimes as large as a plate, with a narrow stripe of yellow down his
back, makes his appointments here to take his bath; when the evening
twilight falls, we see hopping along the edge the midwife toad, the
male, who carries a cluster of eggs, the size of peppercorns, wrapped
round his hindlegs: the genial paterfamilias has brought his precious
packet from afar, to leave it in the water and afterwards retire under
some flat stone, whence he will emit a sound like a tinkling bell.
Lastly, when not croaking amid the foliage, the tree frogs indulge in
the most graceful dives. And so, in May, as soon as it is dark, the
pond becomes a deafening orchestra: it is impossible to talk at table,
impossible to sleep. We had to remedy this by means perhaps a little
too rigorous. What could we do? He who tries to sleep and cannot needs
becomes ruthless.

Bolder still, the wasp has taken possession of the dwelling house. On my
door sill, in a soil of rubbish, nestles the white-banded Sphex: when
I go indoors, I must be careful not to damage her burrows, not to tread
upon the miner absorbed in her work. It is quite a quarter of a century
since I last saw the saucy cricket hunter. When I made her acquaintance,
I used to visit her at a few miles' distance: each time, it meant an
expedition under the blazing August sun. Today, I find her at my door;
we are intimate neighbors. The embrasure of the closed window provides
an apartment of a mild temperature for the Pelopaeus [a mason wasp]. The
earth-built nest is fixed against the freestone wall. To enter her home,
the spider huntress uses a little hole left open by accident in the
shutters. On the moldings of the Venetian blinds, a few stray mason
bees build their group of cells; inside the outer shutters, left ajar, a
Eumenes [a mason wasp] constructs her little earthen dome, surmounted by
a short, bell-mouthed neck. The common wasp and the Polistes [a solitary
wasp] are my dinner guests: they visit my table to see if the grapes
served are as ripe as they look.

Here, surely--and the list is far from complete--is a company both
numerous and select, whose conversation will not fail to charm my
solitude, if I succeed in drawing it out. My dear beasts of former days,
my old friends, and others, more recent acquaintances, all are here,
hunting, foraging, building in close proximity. Besides, should we wish
to vary the scene of observation, the mountain [Ventoux] is but a
few hundred steps away, with its tangle of arbutus, rock roses and
arborescent heather; with its sandy spaces dear to the Bembeces; with
its marly slopes exploited by different wasps and bees. And that is why,
foreseeing these riches, I have abandoned the town for the village and
come to Serignan to weed my turnips and water my lettuces.

Laboratories are being founded, at great expense, on our Atlantic and
Mediterranean coasts, where people cut up small sea animals, of but
meager interest to us; they spend a fortune on powerful microscopes,
delicate dissecting instruments, engines of capture, boats, fishing
crews, aquariums, to find out how the yolk of an Annelid's egg is
constructed, a question whereof I have never yet been able to grasp the
full importance; and they scorn the little land animal, which lives
in constant touch with us, which provides universal psychology with
documents of inestimable value, which too often threatens the public
wealth by destroying our crops. When shall we have an entomological
laboratory for the study not of the dead insect, steeped in alcohol, but
of the living insect; a laboratory having for its object the instinct,
the habits, the manner of living, the work, the struggles, the
propagation of that little world, with which agriculture and philosophy
have most seriously to reckon?

To know thoroughly the history of the destroyer of our vines might
perhaps be more important than to know how this or that nerve fiber of
a Cirriped [sea animals with hair-like legs, including the barnacles and
acorn shells] ends; to establish by experiment the line of demarcation
between intellect and instinct; to prove, by comparing facts in the
zoological progression, whether human reason be an irreducible faculty
or not: all this ought surely to take precedence of the number of joints
in a Crustacean's antenna. These enormous questions would need an army
of workers; and we have not one. The fashion is all for the Mollusk
and the Zoophytes [plant-like sea animals, including starfishes,
jellyfishes, sea anemones and sponges]. The depths of the sea are
explored with many drag nets; the soil which we tread is consistently
disregarded. While waiting for the fashion to change, I open my harmas
laboratory of living entomology; and this laboratory shall not cost the
ratepayers one farthing.




CHAPTER II. THE ANTHRAX

I made the acquaintance of the Anthrax in 1855 at Carpentras, at the
time when the life history of the oil beetles was causing me to search
the tall slopes beloved of the Anthophora bees [mason bees]. Her curious
pupae, so powerfully equipped to force an outlet for the perfect
insect incapable of the least effort, those pupae armed with a multiple
plowshare at the fore, a trident at the rear and rows of harpoons on the
back wherewith to rip open the Osmia bee's cocoon and break through
the hard crust of the hillside, betokened a field that was worth
cultivating. The little that I said about her at the time brought me
urgent entreaties: I was asked for a circumstantial chapter on the
strange fly. The stern necessities of life postponed to an ever
retreating future my beloved investigations, so miserably stifled.
Thirty years have passed; at last, a little leisure is at hand; and
here, in the harmas of my village, with an ardor that has in no wise
grown old, I have resumed my plans of yore, still alive like the coal
smoldering under the ashes. The Anthrax has told me her secrets, which I
in my turn am going to divulge. Would that I could address all those who
cheered me on this path, including first and foremost the revered Master
of the Landes [Leon Dufour]. But the ranks have thinned, many have been
promoted to another world and their disciple lagging behind them can but
record, in memory of those who are no more, the story of the insect clad
in deepest mourning.

In the course of July, let us give a few sideward knocks to the bracing
pebbles and detach the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Walls [a mason
bee] from their supports. Loosened by the shock, the dome comes off
cleanly, all in one piece. Moreover--and this is a great advantage--the
cells come into view wide open on the base of the exposed nest, for at
this point they have no other wall than the surface of the pebble. In
this way, without any scraping, which would be wearisome work for the
operator and dangerous to the inhabitants of the dome, we have all the
cells before our eyes, together with their contents, consisting of a
silky, amber-yellow cocoon, as delicate and translucent as an onion
peeling. Let us split the dainty wrapper with the scissors, chamber by
chamber, nest by nest. If fortune be at all propitious, as it always is
to the persevering, we shall end by finding that the cocoons harbor two
larvae together, one more or less faded in appearance, the other fresh
and plump. We shall also find some, no less plentiful, in which the
withered larva is accompanied by a family of little grubs wriggling
uneasily around it.

Examination at once reveals the tragedy that is happening under the
cover of the cocoon. The flacid and faded larva is the mason bee's.
A month ago, in June, having finished its mess of honey, it wove its
silken sheath for a bedchamber wherein to take the long sleep which is
the prelude to the metamorphosis. Bulging with fat, it is a rich and
defenseless morsel for whoever is able to reach it. Then, in spite
of apparently insurmountable obstacles, the mortar wall and the tent
without an opening, the flesh-eating larvae appeared in the secret
retreat and are now glutting themselves on the sleeper. Three different
species take part in the carnage, often in the same nest, in adjoining
cells. The diversity of shapes informs us of the presence of more than
one enemy; the final stage of the creatures will tell us the names and
qualities of the three invaders.

Forestalling the secrets of the future for the sake of greater
clearness, I will anticipate the actual facts and come at once to the
results produced. When it is by itself on the body of the mason bee's
larva, the murderous grub belongs either to Anthrax trifasciata, MEIGEN,
or to Leucospis gigas, FAB. But, if numerous little worms, often a score
and more, swarm around the victim, then it is a Chalcidid's family which
we have before us. Each of these ravagers shall have its biography. Let
us begin with the Anthrax.

And first the grub, as it is after consuming its victim, when it remains
the sole occupant of the mason bee's cocoon. It is a naked worm, smooth,
legless and blind, of a creamy dead white, each segment a perfect ring,
very much curved when at rest, but with the tendency to become
almost straight when disturbed. Through the diaphanous skin, the lens
distinguishes patches of fat, which are the cause of its characteristic
coloring. When younger, as a tiny grub a few millimeters long, it is
streaked with two different kinds of stains, some white, opaque and of a
creamy tint, others translucent and of the palest amber. The former
come from adipose masses in course of formation; the second from the
nourishing fluid or from the blood which laves those masses.

Including the head, I count thirteen segments. In the middle of the body
these segments are well marked, being separated by a slight groove; but
in the forepart they are difficult to count. The head is small and is
soft, like the rest of the body, with no sign of any mouth parts even
under the close scrutiny of the lens. It is a white globule, the size
of a tiny pin's head and continued at the back by a pad a little larger,
from which it is separated by a scarcely appreciable crease. The whole
is a sort of nipple swelling slightly on the upper surface; and its
double structure is so difficult to perceive that at first we take it
for the animal's head alone, though it includes both the head and the
prothorax, or first segment of the thorax.

The mesothorax, or middle segment of the thorax, which is two or three
times larger in diameter, is flattened in front and separated from the
nipple formed by the prothorax and the head by a deep, narrow, curved
fissure. On its front surface are two pale red stigmata, or respiratory
orifices, placed pretty close together. The metathorax, or last segment
of the thorax, is a little larger still in diameter and protrudes.
These abrupt increases in circumference result in a marked hump, sloping
sharply towards the front. The nipple of which the head forms part is
set at the bottom of this hump.

After the metathorax, the shape becomes regular and cylindrical, while
decreasing slightly in girth in the last two or three segments. Close to
the line of separation of the last two rings, I am able to distinguish,
not without difficulty, two very small stigmata, just a little darker
in color. They belong to the last segment. In all, four respiratory
orifices, two in front and two behind, as is the rule among Flies. The
length of the full sized larva is 15 to 20 millimeters and its breadth 5
to 6.

Remarkable in the first place by the protuberance of its thorax and
the smallness of its head, the grub of the Anthrax acquires exceptional
interest by its manner of feeding. Let us begin by observing that,
deprived of all, even the most rudimentary walking apparatus, the animal
is absolutely incapable of shifting its position. If I disturb its rest,
it curves and straightens itself in turns by a series of contractions,
it tosses about violently where it lies, but does not manage to
progress. It fidgets and gets no farther. We shall see later the
magnificent problem raised by this inertness.

For the moment, a most unexpected fact claims all our attention. I refer
to the extreme readiness with which the Anthrax' larva quits and returns
to the Chalicodoma grub on which it is feeding. After witnessing flesh
eating larvae at hundreds and hundreds of meals, I suddenly find myself
confronted with a manner of eating that bears no relation to anything
which I have seen before. I feel myself in a world that baffles my old
experience. Let us recall the table manners of a larva living on prey,
the Ammophila's for instance, when devouring its caterpillar. A hole is
made in the victim's side; and the head and neck of the nursling dive
deep into the wound, to root luxuriously among the entrails. There is
never a withdrawal from the gnawed belly, never a recoil to interrupt
the feast and to take breath awhile. The vivacious animal always goes
forward, chewing, swallowing, digesting, until the caterpillar's skin is
emptied of its contents. Once seated at table, it does not budge as long
as the victuals last. To tease it with a straw is not always enough
to induce it to withdraw its head outside the wound; I have to use
violence. When removed by force and then left to its own devices, the
creature hesitates for a long time, stretches itself and mouths around,
without trying to open a passage through a new wound. It needs the
attacking point that has just been abandoned. If it finds the spot,
it makes its way in and resumes the work of eating; but its future is
jeopardized from this time forward, for the game, now perhaps tackled at
inopportune points, is liable to go bad.

With the Anthrax' grub, there is none of this mangling, none of this
persistent clinging to the entrance wound. I have but to tease it with
the tip of a hair pencil and forthwith it retires; and the lens reveals
no wound at the abandoned spot, no such effusion of blood as there would
be if the skin were perforated. When its sense of security is restored,
the grub once more applies its pimple head to the fostering larva,
at any point, no matter where; and, so long as my curiosity does not
prevent it, keeps itself fixed there, without the least effort, or the
least perceptible movement that could account for the adhesion. If I
repeat the touch with the pencil, I see the same sudden retreat and,
soon after, the same contact just as readily renewed.

This facility for gripping, quitting and regripping, now here, now
there and always without a wound, the part of the victim whence the
nourishment is drawn tells us of itself that the mouth of the Anthrax
is not armed with mandibular fangs capable of digging into the skin and
tearing it. If the flesh were gashed by any such pincers, one or two
attempts would be necessary before they could be released or reapplied;
besides, each point bitten would display a lesion. Well, there is
nothing of the kind: a conscientious examination through the magnifying
glass shows conclusively that the skin is intact; the grub glues
its mouth to its prey or withdraws it with an ease that can only be
explained by a process of simple contact. This being so, the Anthrax
does not chew its food as do the other carnivorous grubs; it does not
eat, it inhales.

This method of taking nourishment implies an exceptional apparatus of
the mouth, into which it behooves us to inquire before continuing. My
most powerful magnifying glass at last discovers, at the center of the
pimple head, a small spot of an amber-russet color; and that is all. For
a more exhaustive examination we will employ the microscope. I cut off
the strange pimple with the scissors, wash it in a drop of water and
place it on the object slide. The mouth now stands revealed as a round
spot which, for hue and for the smallness of its size, may be compared
with the front stigmata. It is a small conical crater, with sides of a
pale yellowish-red and with faint, more or less concentric lines. At the
bottom of this funnel is the opening of the gullet, itself tinted red in
front and promptly spreading into a cone at the back. There is not the
slightest trace of mandibular fangs, of jaws, of mouth parts for seizing
and grinding. Everything is reduced to the bowl shaped opening, with a
delicate lining of horny texture, as is shown by the amber hue and
the concentric streaks. When I look for some term to designate this
digestive entrance, of which so far I know no other example, I can find
only that of a sucker or cupping glass. Its attack is a mere kiss, but
what a perfidious kiss!

We know the machine; now let us see the working. To facilitate
observation, I shifted the newborn Anthrax grub, together with the
Chalicodoma grub, its wet nurse, from the natal cell into a glass tube.
I was thus able, by employing as many tubes as I wanted, to follow from
start to finish, in all its most intimate details, the strange repast
which I am going to describe.

The worm is fixed by its sucker to any convenient part of the nurse,
plump and fat as butter. It is ready to break off its kiss suddenly,
should anything disquiet it, and to resume it as easily when
tranquillity is restored. No Lamb enjoys greater liberty with its
mother's teat. After three or four days of this contact of the nurse and
nursling, the former, at first replete and endowed with the glossy skin
that is a sign of health, begins to assume a withered aspect. Her sides
fall in, her fresh color fades, her skin becomes covered with little
folds and gives evidence of an appreciable shrinking in this breast
which, instead of milk, yields fat and blood. A week is hardly past
before the progress of the exhaustion becomes startlingly rapid. The
nurse is flabby and wrinkled, as though borne down by her own weight,
like a very slack object. If I move her from her place, she flops and
sprawls like a half-filled water bottle over the new supporting plane.
But the Anthrax' kiss goes on emptying her: soon she is but a sort of
shriveled lard bag, decreasing from hour to hour, from which the sucker
draws a few last oily drains. At length, between the twelfth and the
fifteenth day, all that remains of the larva of the mason bee is a white
granule, hardly as large as a pin's head.

This granule is the water bottle drained to the last drop, is the
nurse's breast emptied of all its contents. I soften the meager remnant
in water; then, keeping it still immersed, I blow into it through
an extremely attenuated glass tube. The skin fills out, distends and
resumes the shape of the larva, without there being an outlet anywhere
for the compressed air. It is intact, therefore; it is free of any
perforation, which would be forthwith revealed under the water by an
escape of gas. And so, under the Anthrax' cupping glass, the oily bottle
has been drained by a simple transpiration through the membrane; the
substance of the nurse grub has been transfused into the body of the
nursling by a process akin to that known in physics as endosmosis. What
should we say to a method of being suckled by the mere application of
the mouth to a teatless breast? What we see here may be compared with
that: without any outlet, the milk of the Chalicodoma grub passes into
the stomach of the Anthrax' larva.

Is it really an instance of endosmosis? Might it not rather be
atmospheric pressure that stimulates the flow of nourishing fluids and
distils them into the Anthrax' cup-shaped mouth, working, in order to
create a vacuum, almost like the suckers of the Cuttlefish? All this
is possible, but I shall refrain from deciding, preferring to assign a
large share to the unknown in this extraordinary method of nutrition.
It ought, I think, to provide physiologists with a field of research
in which new views on the hydrodynamics of live fluids might well be
gleaned; and this field trenches upon others that would also yield
rich harvests. The brief span of my days compels me to set the problem
without seeking to solve it.

And the second problem is this: the Chalicodoma grub destined to feed
the Anthrax is without a wound of any kind. The mother of the tiny larva
is a feeble Fly deprived of whatsoever weapon capable of injuring her
offspring's prey. Moreover, she is absolutely powerless to penetrate the
mason bee's fortress, powerless as a fluff of down against a rock. On
this point there is no doubt: the future wet nurse of the Anthrax has
not been paralyzed as are the live provisions collected by the Hunting
Wasps; she has received no bite nor scratch nor contusion of any sort;
she has experienced nothing out of the common: in short, she is in her
normal state. The billeted nursling arrives, we shall presently see how;
he arrives, scarcely visible, almost defying the scrutiny of the lens;
and, having made his preparations, he installs himself, he, the atom,
upon the monstrous nurse, whom he is to drain to the very husk. And she,
not paralyzed by a preliminary vivisection, endowed with all her normal
vitality, lets him have his way, lets herself be sucked dry, with the
utmost apathy. Not a tremor in her outraged flesh, not a quiver of
resistance. No corpse could show greater indifference to the bite which
it receives.

Ah, but the maggot has chosen the hour of attack with traitorous
cunning! Had it appeared upon the scene earlier, when the larva was
consuming its store of honey, things of a surety would have gone badly
with it. The assaulted one, feeling herself bled to death by that
ravenous kiss, would have protested with much wriggling of body and
grinding of mandibles. The position would have ceased to be tenable
and the intruder would have perished. But at this hour all danger has
disappeared. Enclosed in its silken tent, the larva is seized with the
lethargy that precedes the metamorphosis. Its condition is not death,
but neither is it life. It is an intermediary condition; it is almost
the latent vitality of grain or egg. Therefore there is no sign of
irritation on the larva's part under the needle with which I stir it and
still less under the sucker of the Anthrax grub, which is able to drain
the affluent breast in perfect safety.

This lack of resistance, induced by the torpor of the transformation,
appears to me necessary, in view of the weakness of the nursling as it
leaves the egg, whenever the mother is herself incapable of depriving
the victim of the power of self defense. And so the nonparalyzed larvae
are attacked during the period of the nymphosis. We shall soon see other
instances of this.

Motionless though it be, the Chalicodoma grub is none the less alive.
The primrose tint and the glossy skin are unequivocal signs of health:
Were it really dead, it would, in less than twenty-four hours, turn a
dirty brown and, soon after, decompose into a fluid putrescence. Now
here is the marvelous thing: during the fortnight, roughly, that the
Anthrax' meal lasts, the butter color of the larva, an unfailing symptom
of the presence of life, continues unaltered and does not change into
brown, the sign of putrefaction, until hardly anything remains; and even
then the brown hue is often absent. As a rule, the look of live flesh is
preserved until the final pellet, formed of the skin, the sole residue,
makes its appearance. This pellet is white, with not a speck of tainted
matter, proving that life persists until the body is reduced to nothing.

We here witness the transfusion of one animal into another, the change
of Chalicodoma substance into Anthrax substance; and, as long as the
transfusion is not complete, as long as the eaten has not disappeared
altogether and become the eater, the ruined organism fights against
destruction. What manner of life is this, which may be compared with
the life of a night light whose extinction is not accomplished until
the last drop of oil has burnt away? How is any creature able to fight
against the final tragedy of corruption up to the last moment in which a
nucleus of matter remains as the seat of vital energy? The forces of the
living creature are here dissipated not through any disturbance of
the equilibrium of those forces, but for the want of any point of
application for them: the larva dies because materially there is no more
of it.

Can we be in the presence of the diffusive life of the plant, a life
which persists in a fragment? By no means: the grub is a more delicate
organic structure. There is unity between the several parts; and none of
them can be jeopardized without involving the ruin of the others. If I
myself give the larva a wound, if I bruise it, the whole body very soon
turns brown and begins to rot. It dies and decomposes by the mere prick
of a needle; it keeps alive, or at least preserves the freshness of
the live tissues, so long as it is not entirely emptied by the Anthrax'
sucker. A nothing kills it; an atrocious wasting does not. No, I fail to
understand the problem; and I bequeath it to others.

All that I can see by way of a glimpse--and even then I put forward my
suspicions with extreme reserve--all that I am permitted to surmise is
reduced to this: the substance of the sleeping larva as yet has no very
definite static existence; it is like the raw materials collected for a
building; it is waiting for the elaboration that is to make a bee of it.
To mould those shapeless lumps of the future insect, the air, that prime
adjuster of living things, circulates among them, passing through a
network of ducts. To organize them, to direct the placing of them, the
nervous system, the embryo of the animal, distributes its ramifications
over them. Nerve and air duct, therefore, are the essentials; the rest
is so much material in reserve for the process of the metamorphosis. As
long as that material is not employed, as long as it has not acquired
its final equilibrium, it can grow less and less; and life, though
languishing, will continue all the same on the express condition that
the respiratory organs and the nervous filaments be respected. It is as
it were the flame of the lamp, which, whether full or empty, continues
to give light so long as the wick is soaked in oil. Nothing but fluids,
the plastic materials held in reserve, can be distilled by the
Anthrax' sucker through the unpierced skin of the grub; no part of the
respiratory and nervous systems passes. As the two essential functions
remain unscathed, life goes on until exhaustion is completed. On the
other hand, if I myself injure the larva, I disturb the nervous or air
conducting filaments; and the bruised part spreads a taint, followed by
putrefaction, all over the body.

I have elsewhere, speaking of the Scolia [a digger wasp] devouring the
Cetonia grub, enlarged upon this refined art of eating which consists
in consuming the prey while killing it only at the last mouthfuls. The
Anthrax has the same requirements as his competitors who dine off fresh
viands. He needs meat of that day, taken from a single joint that has to
last a fortnight without going bad. His method of consuming reaches the
highest level of art: he does not cut into his prey, he sips it little
by little through his sucker. In this way, any dangerous risk is
averted. Whether he imbibe at this spot or at that, even if he abandon
the sucking process and resume it later, by no accident can he ever
attack that which it is incumbent upon him to respect lest corruption
supervene. The others have a fixed position on the victim, a place at
which their mandibles have to bite and enter. If they move away from
it, if they miss the appointed path, they imperil their existence. The
Anthrax, more highly favored, puts his mouth where it suits him; he
leaves off when he pleases and when he pleases starts again.

Unless I labor under a delusion, I think that I see the necessity for
this privilege. The egg of the carnivorous burrower is firmly fixed on
the victim at a point which varies considerably, it is true, according
to the nature of the prey, but which is uniform for the same species
of prey; moreover--and this is an important condition--the point of
adhesion of that egg is always the head, whereas the egg of a bee, of
the Osmia, for instance, is fixed to the mess of honey by the hinder
end. When hatched, the new born Wasp grub has not to choose for itself,
at its risk and peril, the suitable point at which to take the first cut
in the quarry without fear of killing it too quickly: all that it need
do is to bite at the spot where it has just been born. The mother, with
her unfailing instinct, has already made the dangerous choice; she has
stuck her egg on the propitious spot and, by the very act of doing so,
marked out the course for the inexperienced grub to follow. The tact of
ripe age here guides the young larva's behavior at table.

The conditions are very different in the Anthrax' case. The egg is not
placed upon the victuals, it is not even laid in the mason bee's cell.
This is the natural consequence of the mother's feeble frame and of her
lack of any instrument, such as a probe or auger, capable of piercing
the mortar wall. It is for the newly hatched grub to make its own way
into the dwelling. It enters, finds itself in the presence of ample
provisions, the larva of the mason bee. Free of its actions, it is at
liberty to attack the prey where it chooses; or rather the attacking
point will be decided at haphazard by the first contact of the mouth
in quest of food. Grant this mouth a set of carving tools, jaws and
mandibles; in short, suppose the grub of the Fly to possess a manner of
eating similar to that of the other carnivorous larvae; and the nursling
is at once threatened with a speedy death. He will split open his
nurse's belly, he will dig without any rule to guide him, he will bite
at random, essentials as well as accessories; and, from one day to the
next, he will set up gangrene in the violated mass, even as I myself do
when I give it a wound. For the lack of an attacking point prescribed
for him at birth, he will perish on the damaged provisions. His freedom
of action will have killed him.

Certainly, liberty is a noble attribute, even in an insignificant grub;
but it also has its dangers everywhere. The Anthrax escapes the peril
only on the condition of being, so to speak, muzzled. His mouth is not a
fierce forceps that tears asunder; it is a sucker that exhausts but does
not wound. Thus restrained by this safety appliance, which changes the
bite into a kiss, the grub has fresh victuals until it has finished
growing, although it knows nothing of the rules of methodical
consumption at a fixed point and in a predetermined direction.

The considerations which I have set forth seem to me strictly logical:
the Anthrax, owing to the very fact that he is free to take his
nourishment where he pleases on the body of the fostering larva, must,
for his own protection, be made incapable of opening his victim's body.
I am so utterly convinced of this harmonious relation between the eater
and the eaten that I do not hesitate to set it up as a principle. I
will therefore say this: whenever the egg of any kind of insect is not
fastened to the larva destined for its food, the young grub, free to
select the attacking point and to change it at will, is as it were
muzzled and consumes its provisions by a sort of suction, without
inflicting any appreciable wound. This restriction is essential to the
maintenance of the victuals in good condition. My principle is already
supported by examples many and various, whose depositions are all to the
same effect. The witnesses include, after the Anthrax, the Leucospis
[a parasitic insect] and his rivals, whose evidence we shall hear
presently; the Ephialtes mediator [an Ichneumon fly], who feeds, in
the dry brambles, on the larva of the Black Psen [a digger wasp]; the
Myodites, that strange, fly-shaped beetle whose grub consumes the larva
of the cockchafer. All--flies, ichneumon flies and beetles--scrupulously
spare their foster mother; they are careful not to tear her skin, so
that the vessel may keep its liquid good to the last.

The wholesomeness of the victuals is not the only condition imposed:
I find a second, which is no less essential. The substance of the
fostering larva must be sufficiently fluid to ooze through the unbroken
skin under the action of the sucker. Well, the necessary fluidity is
realized as the time of the metamorphosis draws near. When they wished
Medea to restore Pelias to the vigor of youth, his daughters cut the old
king's body to pieces and boiled it in a cauldron, for there can be no
new existence without a prior dissolution. We must pull down before
we can rebuild; the analysis of death is the first step towards the
synthesis of life. The substance of the grub that is to be transformed
into a bee begins, therefore, by disintegrating and dissolving into
a fluid broth. The materials of the future insect are obtained by a
general recasting. Even as the founder puts his old bronzes into the
melting pot in order afterwards to cast them in a mould whence the metal
will issue in a different shape, so life liquefies the grub, a mere
digesting machine, now thrown aside, and out of its running matter
produces the perfect insect, bee, butterfly or beetle, the final
manifestation of the living creature.

Let us open a Chalicodoma grub under the microscope, during the period
of torpor. Its contents consists almost entirely of a liquid broth, in
which swim numberless oily globules and a fine dust of uric acid, a sort
of off-throw of the oxidized tissues. A flowing thing, shapeless and
nameless, is all that the animal is, if we add abundant ramified air
ducts, some nervous filaments and, under the skin, a thin layer
of muscular fibers. A condition of this kind accounts for a fatty
transpiration through the skin when the Anthrax' sucker is at work. At
any other time, when the larva is in the active period or else when the
insect has reached the perfect stage, the firmness of the tissues would
resist the transfusion and the suckling of the Anthrax would become a
difficult matter, or even impossible. In point of fact, I find the grub
of the fly established, in the vast majority of cases, on the sleeping
larva and sometimes, but rarely, on the pupa. Never do I see it on the
vigorous larva eating its honey; and hardly ever on the insect brought
to perfection, as we find it enclosed in its cell all through the autumn
and winter. And we can say the same of the other grub eaters that drain
their victims without wounding them: all are engaged in their death
dealing work during the period of torpor, when the tissues are
fluidified. They empty their patient, who has become a bag of running
grease with a diffused life; but not one, among those I know, reaches
the Anthrax' perfection in the art of extraction.

Nor can any be compared with the Anthrax as regards the means brought
into play in order to leave the cell. These others, when they become
perfect insects, have implements for sapping and demolishing, stout
mandibles, capable of digging the ground, of pulling down clay partition
walls and even of reducing the mason bee's tough cement to powder. The
Anthrax, in her final form, has nothing like this. Her mouth is a short,
soft proboscis, good at most for soberly licking the sugary exudations
of the flowers; her slim legs are so feeble that to move a grain of
sand were an excessive task for them, enough to strain every joint; her
great, stiff wings, which must remain full spread, do not allow her to
slip through a narrow passage; her delicate suit of downy velvet, from
which you take the bloom by merely breathing on it, could not withstand
the rough contact of the gallery of a mine. Unable herself to enter the
Mason bee's cell to lay her egg, she cannot leave it either, when the
time comes to free herself and appear in broad daylight in her wedding
dress. The larva, on its side, is powerless to prepare the way for
the coming flight. That buttery little cylinder, owning no tools but a
sucker so flimsy that it barely arrives at substance and so small that
it is almost a geometrical point, is even weaker than the adult insect,
which at least flies and walks. The Mason bee's cell represents to it
a granite cave. How to get out? The problem would be insoluble to those
two incapables, if nothing else played its part.

Among insects, the nymph, or pupa, the transition stage between the
larval and the adult form, is generally a striking picture of every
weakness of a budding organism. A sort of mummy tight bound in swaddling
clothes, motionless and impassive, it awaits the resurrection. Its
tender tissues flow in every direction; its limbs, transparent as
crystal, are held fixed in their place, along the side, lest a
movement should disturb the exquisite delicacy of the work in course
of accomplishment. Even so, to secure his recovery, is a broken boned
patient held captive in the surgeon's bandages. Absolute stillness is
necessary in both cases, lest they be crippled or even die.

Well, here, by a strange inversion that confuses all our views on life,
a Cyclopean task is laid upon the nymph of the Anthrax. It is the nymph
that has to toil, to strive, to exhaust itself in efforts to burst the
wall and open the way out. To the embryo falls the desperate duty, which
shows no mercy to the nascent flesh; to the adult insect the joy of
resting in the sun. This transposition of functions has as its result
a well sinker's equipment in the nymph, an eccentric, complicated
equipment which nothing suggested in the larva and which nothing recalls
in the perfect insect. The set of tools includes an assortment of
plowshares, gimlets, hooks and spears and of other implements that are
not found in our trades nor named in our dictionaries. Let us do our
best to describe the strange piercing gear.

In a fortnight at most, the Anthrax has consumed the Chalicodoma grub,
whereof naught remains but the skin, gathered into a white granule. By
the time that July is nearly over, it becomes rare to find any nurslings
left upon their nurses. From this period until the following May,
nothing fresh happens. The Anthrax retains its larval shape without any
appreciable change and lies motionless in the mason bee's cocoon, beside
the pellet remains. When the fine days of May arrive, the grub shrivels
and casts its skin and the nymph appears, fully clad in a stout,
reddish, horny hide.

The head is round and large, separated from the thorax by a strangulated
furrow, crowned on top and in front with a sort of diadem of six hard,
sharp, black spikes, arranged in a semicircle whose concave side faces
downward. These spikes decrease slightly in length from the summit to
the ends of the arch. Taken together, they suggest the radial crowns
which we see the Roman emperors of the Decadence wear on the medals.
This six-fold plowshare is the chief excavating tool. Lower down, on the
median line, the instrument is finished off with a separate group of two
small black spikes, placed close together.

The thorax is smooth, the wing cases large, folded under the body like
a scarf and coming almost to the middle of the abdomen. This has nine
segments, of which four, starting with the second, are armed, on the
back, down the middle, with a belt of little horny arches, pale brown in
color, drawn up parallel to one another, set in the skin by their
convex surfaces and finishing at both ends with a hard, black point.
Altogether, the belt thus forms a double row of little thorns, with a
hollow in between. I count about twenty-five twin-toothed arches to one
segment, which gives a total of two hundred spikes for the four rings
thus armed.

The use of this rasp, or grater, is obvious: it gives the nymph a
purchase on the wall of its gallery as the work proceeds. Thus anchored
on a host of points, the stern pioneer is able to hit the obstacle
harder with its diadem of awls. Moreover, to make it more difficult for
the instrument to recoil, long, stiff bristles, pointing backwards,
are scattered here and there among the climbing belts. There are some
besides on the other segments, both on the ventral and the dorsal
surface. On the flanks, they are thicker and arranged as it were in
clusters.

The sixth segment carries a similar belt, but a much less powerful one,
consisting of a single row of unassuming thorns. The belt is weaker
still on the seventh segment; lastly, on the eighth, it is reduced to a
mere rough brown shading. Commencing with the sixth, the rings decrease
in width and the abdomen ends in a cone, the extremity of which, formed
of the ninth segment, constitutes a weapon of a new kind. It is a sheaf
of eight brown spikes. The last two exceed the others in length and
stand out from the group in a double terminal plowshare.

There is a round air hole in front, on either side of the thorax, and
similar stigmata on the flanks of each of the first seven abdominal
segments. When at rest, the nymph is curved into a bow. When about to
act, it suddenly unbends and straightens itself. It measures 15 to 20
millimeters long and 4 to 5 millimeters across.

Such is the strange perforating machine that is to prepare an outlet
for the feeble Anthrax through the Mason bee's cement. The structural
details, so difficult to explain in words, may be summed up as follows:
in front, on the forehead, a diadem of spikes, the ramming and digging
tool; behind, a many bladed plowshare which fits into a socket and
allows the pupa to slacken suddenly in readiness for an attack on the
barrier which has to be demolished; on the back, four climbing belts, or
graters, which keep the animal in position by biting on the walls of the
tunnel with their hundreds of teeth; and, all over the body, long, stiff
bristles, pointing backwards, to prevent falls or recoils.

A similar structure exists in the other species of Anthrax with slight
variations of detail. I will confine myself to one instance, that of
Anthrax sinuata, who thrives at the cost of Osmia tricornis. Her nymph
differs from that of Anthrax trifasciata, the Anthrax of the mason bee,
in possessing less powerful armor. Its four climbing belts consist of
only fifteen to seventeen double spiked arches, instead of twenty-five;
also, the abdominal segments, from the sixth onwards, are supplied
merely with stiff bristles, without a trace of horny spikes. If the
evolution of the various Anthrax flies were better known to us,
the number of these arches would, I believe, be of great service
to entomology in the differentiation of species. I see it remaining
constant for any given species, with marked variations between one
species and another. But this is not my business: I merely call the
attention of the classifiers to this field of study and pass on.

About the end of May, the coloring of the nymph, hitherto a light red,
alters greatly and forecasts the coming transformation. The head, the
thorax and the scarf formed by the wings become a handsome, shiny black.
A dark band shows on the back of the four segments with their two rows
of spikes; three spots appear on the two next rings; the anal armor
becomes darker. In this manner we foresee the black livery of the coming
insect. The time has arrived for the pupa to work at the exit gallery.

I was anxious to see it in action, not under natural conditions, which
would be impracticable, but in a glass tube in which I confine it
between two thick stoppers of sorghum pith. The space thus marked off
is about the same size as the natal cell. The partitions front and back,
although not so stout as the Chalicodoma's masonry, are nevertheless
firm enough not to yield except to prolonged efforts; on the other hand,
the side walls are smooth and the toothed belts will not be able to grip
them: a most unfavorable condition for the worker. No matter: in the
space of a single day, the pupa pierces the front partition, three
quarters of an inch thick. I see it fixing its double plowshare against
the back partition, arching into a bow and then suddenly releasing
itself and striking the plug in front of it with its barbed forehead.
Under the impact of the spikes, the sorghum slowly crumbles to pieces.
It is slow in coming away; but it comes away all the same, atom by atom.
At long intervals, the method changes. With its crown of awls driven
into the pith, the animal frets and fidgets, sways on the pivot of its
anal armor. The work of the auger follows that of the pickaxe. Then the
blows recommence, interspersed with periods of rest to recover from the
fatigue. At last, the hole is made. The pupa slips into it, but does not
pass through entirely: the head and thorax appear outside; the abdomen
remains held in the gallery.

The glass cell, with its lack of supports at the side, has certainly
perplexed my subject, which does not seem to have made use of all its
methods. The hole through the sorghum is wide and irregular; it is
a clumsy breach and not a gallery. When made through the mason bee's
walls, it is cylindrical, fairly neat and exactly of the animal's
diameter. So I hope that, under natural conditions, the pupa does not
give quite so many blows with the pickaxe and prefers to work with the
drill.

Narrowness and evenness in the exit tunnel are necessary to it. It
always remains half caught in it and even pretty securely fixed by the
graters on its back. Only the head and thorax emerge into the outer air.
This is a last precaution for the final deliverance. A fixed support is,
in fact, indispensable to the Anthrax for issuing from her horny sheath,
unfurling her great wings and extricating her slender legs from their
scabbards. All this very delicate work would be endangered by any lack
of steadiness.

The pupa, therefore, remains fixed by the graters of its back in the
narrow exit gallery and thus supplies the stable equilibrium essential
to the new birth. All is ready. It is time now for the great act. A
transversal cleft makes its appearance on the forehead, at the bottom
of the perforating diadem; a second, but longitudinal slit divides the
skull in two and extends down the thorax. Through this cross-shaped
opening, the Anthrax suddenly appears, all moist with the humors of
life's laboratory. She steadies herself upon her trembling legs, dries
her wings and takes to flight, leaving at the window of the cell
her nymphal slough, which keeps intact for a very long period. The
sand-colored fly has five or six weeks before her, wherein to explore
the clay nests amid the thyme and to take her small share of the joys
of life. In July, we shall see her once more, busy this time with the
entrance into the cell, which is even stranger than the exit.




CHAPTER III. ANOTHER PROBER (PERFORATOR)

What can he be called, this creature whose style and title I dare not
inscribe at the head of the chapter? His name is Monodontomerus cupreus,
SM. Just try it, for fun: Mo-no-don-to-me-rus. What a gorgeous mouthful!
What an idea it gives one of some beast of the Apocalypse! We think,
when we pronounce the word, of the prehistoric monsters: the mastodon,
the mammoth, the ponderous megatherium. Well, we are misled by the
scientific label: we have to do with a very paltry insect, smaller than
the common gnat.

There are good people like that, only too happy to serve science with
resounding appellations that might come from Timbuktu; they cannot name
you a midge without striking terror into you. O ye wise and revered
ones, ye christeners of animals, I am willing, in my study, to
make use--but not undue use--of your harsh terminology, with its
conglomeration of syllables; but there is a danger of their leaving the
sanctum and appearing before the public, which is always ready to show
its lack of deference for terms that do not respect its ears. I, wishing
to speak like everybody else, so that I may be understood by all, and
persuaded that science has no need of this Brobdignagian jargon, make a
point of avoiding technical nomenclature when it becomes too barbarous,
when it threatens to lumber the page the moment my pen attempts it. And
so I abandon Monodontomerus.

It is a puny little insect, almost as tiny as the midges whom we see
eddying in a ray of sunshine at the end of autumn. Its dress is golden
bronze; its eyes are coral red. It carries a naked sword, that is to
say, the sheath of its drill stands out slantwise at the tip of its
belly, instead of lying in a hollow groove along the back, as it
does with the Leucospis. This scabbard holds the latter half of the
inoculating filament, which extends below the animal to the base of
the abdomen. In short, its utensil is that of the Leucospis, with this
difference, that its lower half sticks out like a rapier.

This mite that bears a sword upon her rump is yet another persecutor of
the mason bees and not one of the least formidable. She exploits their
nests at the same time as the Leucospis. I see her, like the Leucospis,
slowly explore the ground with her antennae; I see her, like the
Leucospis, bravely drive her dagger into the stone wall. More taken up
with her work, less conscious perhaps of danger, she pays no heed to the
man who is observing her so closely. Where the Leucospis flies, she does
not budge. So great is her assurance that she comes right into my study,
to my work table, and disputes my ownership of the nests whose occupants
I am examining. She operates under my lens, she operates just beside
my forceps. What risk does she run? What can one do to a thing so very
small? She is so certain of her safety that I can take the Mason's
nest in my hand, move it, put it down and take it up again without
the insect's raising any objection: it continues its work even when my
magnifying glass is placed over it.

One of these heroines has come to inspect a nest of the Chalicodoma of
the Walls, most of whose cells are occupied by the numerous cocoons of
a parasite, the Stelis. The contents of these cells, which have been
partially ripped up to satisfy my curiosity, are very much exposed to
view. The windfall appears to be appreciated, for I see the dwarf ferret
about from cell to cell for four days on end, see her choose her cocoon
and insert her awl in the most approved fashion. I thus learn that
sight, although an indispensable guide in searching, does not decide
upon the proper spot for the operation. Here is an insect exploring not
the stony exterior of the mason's dwelling, but the surface of cocoons
woven of silk. The explorer has never found herself placed in such
circumstances, nor has any of her race before her, every cocoon, under
normal conditions, being protected by a surrounding wall. No matter:
despite the profound difference in the surfaces, the insect does not
waver. Warned by a special sense, an undecipherable riddle to ourselves,
it knows that the object of its search lies hidden under this unfamiliar
casing. The sense of smell has already been shown to be out of the
question; that of sight is now eliminated in its turn.

That she should bore through the cocoons of the Stelis, a parasite of
the mason bee, does not surprise me at all: I know how indifferent my
bold visitor is to the nature of the victuals destined for her family. I
have noticed her presence in the homes of bees differing greatly in
size and habits: Anthophorae, Osmiae, Chalicodomae, Anthidia. The Stelis
exploited on my table is one victim more; and that is all. The interest
does not lie there. The interest lies in the maneuvers of the insect,
which I am able to follow under the most favorable conditions.

Bent sharply at right angles, like a couple of broken matches, the
antennae feel the cocoon with their tips alone. The terminal joint is
the home of this strange sense which discerns from afar what no eye
sees, no scent distinguishes and no ear hears. If the point explored be
found suitable, the insect hoists itself on tiptoe so as to give full
scope to the play of its mechanism; it brings the tip of the belly
a little forward; and the entire ovipositor--inoculating-needle and
scabbard--stands perpendicular to the cocoon, in the center of the
quadrilateral described by the four hind legs, an eminently favorable
position for obtaining the maximum effect. For some time, the whole of
the awl bears on the cocoon, feeling all round with its point, groping
about; then, suddenly, the boring needle is released from its sheath,
which falls back along the body, while the needle strives to make its
entrance. The operation is a difficult one. I see the insect make a
score of attempts, one after the other, without succeeding in piercing
the tough wrapper of the Stelis. Should the instrument not penetrate,
it retreats into its sheath and the insect resumes its scrutiny of the
cocoon, sounding it point by point with the tips of its antennae. Then
further thrusts are tried until one succeeds.

The eggs are little spindles, white and gleaming like ivory, about
two-thirds of a millimeter in length. They have not the long, curved
peduncle of the Leucospis' eggs; they are not suspended from the
ceiling of the cocoon like these, but are laid without order around
the fostering larva. Lastly, in a single cell and with a single mother,
there is always more than one laying; and the number of eggs varies
considerably in each. The Leucospis, because of her great size, which
rivals that of her victim, the Bee, finds in each cell provisions enough
for one and one alone. When, therefore, there is more than one set of
eggs in any one cell, this is due to a mistake on her part and not a
premeditated result. Where the whole ration is required for the meals
of a single grub, she would take good care not to install several if
she could help it. Her competitor is not called upon to observe the
same discretion. A Chalicodoma grub gives the dwarf the wherewithal to
portion a score of her little ones, who will live in common and in all
comfort on what a single son of the giantess would eat up by himself.
The tiny boring engineer, therefore, always settles a numerous family
at the same banquet. The bowl, ample for a dozen or two, is emptied in
perfect harmony.

Curiosity made me count the brood, to see if the mother was able to
estimate the victuals and to proportion the number of guests to the
sumptuousness of the fare provided. My notes mention fifty-four larvae
in the cell of a masked Anthophora (Anthophora personata). No other
census attained this figure. Possibly, two different mothers had laid
their eggs in this crowded habitation. With the Mason bee of the Walls,
I see the number of larvae vary, in different cells, between four
and twenty-six; with the mason bee of the Sheds, between five and
thirty-six; with the three-horned Osmia, who supplied me with the
largest number of records, between seven and twenty-five; with the
blue Osmia (Osmia cyanea, KIRB.), between five and six; with the Stelis
(Stelis nasuta), between four and twelve.

The first return and the last two seem to point to some relation between
the abundance of provisions and the number of consumers. When the mother
comes upon the bountiful larva of the masked Anthophora, she gives it
half-a-hundred to feed; with the Stelis and the blue Osmia, niggardly
rations both, she contents herself with half-a-dozen. To introduce into
the dining room only the number of boarders that the bill of fare will
allow would certainly be a most deserving performance, especially as the
insect is placed under very difficult conditions to judge the contents
of the cell. These contents, which lie hidden under the ceiling, are
invisible; and the insect can derive its information only from the
outside of the nest, which varies in the different species. We
should therefore have to admit the existence of a particular power
of discrimination, a sort of discernment of the species, which is
recognized as large or small from the outward aspect of its house. I
refuse to go to this length in my conjectures, not that instinct seems
to me incapable of such feats, but because of the particulars obtained
from the three-horned Osmia and the two mason bees.

In the cells of these three species, I see the number of larvae put out
to nurse vary in so elastic a fashion that I must abandon all idea of
proportionate adjustment. The mother, without troubling unduly whether
there be an excess or a dearth of provisions for her family, has filled
the cells as her fancy prompted, or rather according to the number of
ripe ovules contained in her ovaries at the time of the laying. If food
be over-plentiful, the brood will be all the better for it and will grow
bigger and stronger; if food be scarce, the famished youngsters will not
die, but will remain smaller. Indeed, with both the larva and the full
grown insect, I have often observed a difference in size which varies
according to the density of the population, the members of a small
colony being double the size of their overcrowded neighbors.

The grubs are white, tapering at both ends, sharply segmented and
covered all over their bodies with a coat of fine, soft hairs which is
invisible except under the lens. The head consists of a little knob much
smaller in diameter than the body. In this head, the microscope reveals
mandibles consisting of fine spikes of a tawny red, which spread into a
wide, colorless base. Deprived of any indentation, incapable of chewing
anything between their awl-shaped ends, these two tools serve at best to
fix the grub slightly at some point of the fostering larva. Useless for
carving, therefore, the mouth is a pure osculatory sucker, which drains
the provisions by a process of exudation through the skin. We see here
repeated what the Anthrax and the Leucospis have already shown us:
the gradual exhaustion of a victim which the parasite consumes without
killing it.

It is a curious spectacle even after that of the Anthrax. We have here
twenty or thirty starvelings, all with their mouths pressed, as for a
kiss, to the body of the plump larva, which, from day to day, fades and
shrinks without the least appreciable wound, thus keeping fresh until
reduced to a shriveled slough. If I disturb the gluttonous swarm, all,
with a sudden recoil, let go, drop off and flounder around the foster
mother. They are no less prompt in resuming their savage kisses. I need
not add that neither at the point where they leave off nor at the point
where they recommence is there the faintest trace of liquid. The oily
exudation occurs only when the pump is at work. To linger over this
strange method of feeding is superfluous after what I have said about
the Anthrax.

The appearance of the full grown insect takes place at the beginning of
summer, after nearly a whole year's stay in the invaded dwelling. The
large number of inhabitants of one and the same cell led me to think
that the work of deliverance ought to present a certain interest. They
are all equally anxious to clear the walls of the prison at the earliest
possible moment and to come forth into the great festival of the sun: do
they all at the same time, in a confused horde, attack the ceiling which
has to be pierced? Is the work of deliverance arranged in the general
interest? Or is individual selfishness the only rule? These are the
questions which observation will answer.

A little in advance of the proper season, I transfer each family into
a short glass tube, which will represent the natal cell. A good, thick
cork, quite a centimeter deep, is the obstacle to be pierced for
an outlet. Well, instead of the mad haste and the ruinous lack of
organization which I expected to find, my broods show me in their glass
prison an exceedingly well regulated workshop. One insect, one only,
works at perforating the cork. Patiently, with its mandibles, grain by
grain, it digs a tunnel the width of its body. The gallery is so narrow
that, in order to return to the tube, the worker has to move backwards.
It is a slow process; and it takes hours and hours to dig the hole, a
hard job for the frail miner.

Should her fatigue become too great, the excavator leaves the forefront
and mingles with the crowd, to polish and dust herself. Another, the
first neighbor at hand, at once takes her place and is herself relieved
by a third when her task is done. Others again take their turn, always
one at a time, so much so that the works are never at a standstill
and never overcrowded. Meanwhile, the multitude keeps out of the way,
quietly and patiently. There is no anxiety as to the deliverance.
Success will come: of that they are all convinced. While waiting, one
washes her antennae by passing them through her mouth, another polishes
her wings with her hind legs, another frisks about to while away the
period of inaction. Some are making love, a sovran means of killing
time, whether one be born that day or twenty years ago.

Some, I said, make love. These favored ones are rare; they hardly count.
Is it through indifference? No, but the gallants are lacking. The sexes
are very unequally represented in the population of a cell: the males
are in a wretched minority and sometimes even completely absent. This
poverty did not escape the older observers. Brulle [Gaspard August
Brulle (1809-1873)], the author of many works on natural history and one
of the founders of the Societe entomologique de France, the only author
whom I am able to consult in my hermitage, says, literally: 'The males
do not appear to be known.'

I, for my part, know them; but, considering their feeble number, I keep
asking myself what part they play in a harem so disproportionate to
their forces. A few figures will show us what my hesitations are based
upon.

In twenty-two Osmia cocoons (Osmia tricornis), the total census of the
inmates yields three hundred and fifty-four, of whom forty-seven
are males and three hundred and seven females. The average number of
inmates, therefore, is sixteen individuals; and there are six females at
least to one male. This disparity is maintained, in more or less marked
proportions, whatever the species of the bee invaded. In the cocoons of
the Mason bee of the Sheds, I discover the average proportion to be six
females to one male; in those of the Mason bee of the Walls, I find one
male to fifteen females.

These facts, which I am unable to state with any greater precision, are
enough to give rise to the suspicion that the males, who are even tinier
dwarfs than the females and who, moreover, like all insects, are injured
by a single act of pairing, must, in most cases, remain strangers to
the females. Can the mothers, in fact, dispense with their assistance,
without being deprived of offspring on that account? I do not say yes,
but I do not say no. The duality of the sexes is a hard problem. Why
two sexes? Why not just one? It would have been much simpler and saved
a great deal of foolery. Why such a thing as sex, when the tuber of the
Jerusalem artichoke can do without it? These are the pregnant questions
suggested to me, in the end, by Monodontomerus cupreus, the insect so
infinitesimal in body and so overpowering in name that I had really
vowed never to speak of it again by its official designation.




CHAPTER IV. LARVAL DIMORPHISM

If the reader has paid any attention to the story of the Anthrax, he
must have perceived that my narrative is incomplete. The fox in the
fable saw how the lion's visitors entered his den, but did not see how
they went out. With us, it is the converse: we know the way out of the
mason bee's fortress, but we do not know the way in. To leave the cell
of which he has eaten the owner, the Anthrax becomes a perforating
machine, a living tool from which our own industry might take a hint if
it required new drills for boring rocks. When the exit tunnel is opened,
this tool splits like a pod bursting in the sun; and from the stout
framework there escapes a dainty fly, a velvety flake, a soft fluff that
astounds us by its contrast with the roughness of the depths whence it
ascends. On this point, we know pretty well what there is to know. There
remains the entrance into the cell, a puzzle that has kept me on the
alert for a quarter of a century.

To begin with, it is evident that the mother cannot lodge her egg in the
cell of the mason bee, which has been long closed and barricaded with
a cement wall by the time that the Anthrax makes her appearance. To
penetrate it, she would have to become an excavating tool once more and
resume the cast-off rags which she left behind in the exit window; she
would have to retrace her steps, to be reborn a pupa; and life knows
none of these retrogressions. The full grown insect, if endowed with
claws, mandibles and plenty of perseverance, might at a pinch force the
mortar casket; but the fly is not so endowed. Her slender legs would be
strained and deformed by merely sweeping away a little dust; her mouth
is a sucker for gathering the sugary exudations of the flowers and not
the solid pincers needed for the crumbling of cement. There is no auger
either, no bore copied from that of the Leucospis, no implement of any
kind that can work its way into the thickness of the wall and dispatch
the egg to its destination. In short, the mother is absolutely incapable
of settling her eggs in the chamber of the Mason bee.

Can it be the grub that makes its own way into the storeroom, that same
grub which we have seen draining the Chalicodoma with its leech-like
kisses? Let us call the creature to mind: a little oily sausage, which
stretches and curls up just where it lies, without being able to shift
its position. Its body is a smooth cylinder; its mouth simply a
circular lip. Not one ambulatory organ does it possess; not even hairs,
protuberances or wrinkles to enable it to crawl. The animal is made
for digestion and immobility. Its organization is incompatible with
movement; everything tells us so in the clearest fashion. No, this
grub is even less able than the mother to make its way unaided into the
mason's dwelling. And yet the provisions are there; those provisions
must be reached: it is a matter of life or death; to be or not to be.
Then how does the fly set about it? It would be vain for me to question
probabilities, too often illusory; to obtain a reply of any value, I
have but one resource; I must attempt the nearly impossible and watch
the Anthrax from the egg onwards.

Although Anthrax flies are fairly common, in the sense of there being
several different species, they are not plentiful when it is a case of
wanting a colony populous enough to admit of continuous observation.
I see them, now here, now there, in the fiercely sun-scorched places,
flitting hither and thither on the old walls, the slopes and the sand,
sometimes in small platoons, most often singly. I can expect nothing
of those vagabonds, who are here today and gone tomorrow, for I know
nothing of their settlements. To keep a watch on them, one by one,
in the blazing heat, is very painful and very unfruitful, as the
swift-winged insect has a habit of disappearing one knows not whither
just when a prospect of capturing its secret begins to offer. I have
wasted many a patient hour at this pursuit, without the least result.

There might be some chance of success with Anthrax flies whose home was
known to us beforehand, especially if insects of the same species
formed a pretty numerous colony. The inquiries begun with one would
be continued with a second and with more, until a complete verdict was
forthcoming. Now, in the course of my long entomological career, I have
met with but two species of Anthrax that fulfilled this condition and
were to be found regularly: one at Carpentras; the other at Serignan.
The first, Anthrax sinuata, FALLEN, lives in the cocoons of Osmia
tricornis, who herself builds her nest in the old galleries of the
hairy-footed Anthophora; the second, Anthrax trifasciata, MEIGEN,
exploits the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. I will consult both.

Once more, here am I, somewhat late in life, at Carpentras, whose rude
Gallic name sets the fool smiling and the scholar thinking. Dear little
town where I spent my twentieth year and left the first bits of my
fleece upon life's bushes, my visit of today is a pilgrimage; I have
come to lay my eyes once more upon the place which saw the birth of the
liveliest impressions of my early days. I bow, in passing, to the old
college where I tried my prentice hand as a teacher. Its appearance is
unchanged; it still looks like a penitentiary. Those were the views of
our mediaeval educational system. To the gaiety and activity of boyhood,
which were considered unwholesome, it applied the remedy of narrowness,
melancholy and gloom. Its houses of instruction were, above all, houses
of correction. The freshness of Virgil was interpreted in the stifling
atmosphere of a prison. I catch a glimpse of a yard between four high
walls, a sort of bear pit, where the scholars fought for room for their
games under the spreading branches of a plane tree. All around were
cells that looked like horse boxes, without light or air; those were the
classrooms. I speak in the past tense, for doubtless the present day has
seen the last of this academic destitution.

Here is the tobacco shop where, on Wednesday evening, coming out of the
college, I would buy on credit the wherewithal to fill my pipe and thus
to celebrate on the eve the joys of the morrow, that blessed Thursday
[the weekly half-holiday in French schools] which I considered so well
employed in solving hard equations, experimenting with new chemical
reagents, collecting and identifying my plants. I would make my timid
request, pretending to have come out without my money, for it is hard
for a self-respecting man to admit that he is penniless. My candor
appears to have inspired some little confidence; and I obtained credit,
an unprecedented thing, with the representative of the revenue. [The
government in France has the sole control of the tobacco trade, which
forms an important branch of the inland revenue.] Ah, why did not I open
a shop and expose for sale some packets of candles, a dozen dried cod,
a barrel of sardines and a few cakes of soap! I am no more of a fool nor
any less industrious than another; and I should have made my way. But,
as it was, what could I expect? As an accoucheur of brains, a molder of
intellects, I had no claim even to bread and cheese.

Here is my former habitation, occupied since by droning monks. In the
embrasure of that window, sheltered from profane hands, between the
closed outer shutters and the panes, I used to keep my chemicals, bought
for a few sous cheated out of the weekly budget in the early days of our
housekeeping. The bowl of a pipe was my crucible, a sweet jar my retort,
mustard pots my receptacles for oxides and sulfides. My experiments,
harmless or dangerous, were made on a corner of the fire beside the
simmering broth.

How I should love to see that room again where I pored over
differentials and integrals, where I calmed my poor burning head
by gazing at Mont Ventoux, whose summit held in store for my coming
expedition' those denizens of arctic climes, the saxifrage and the
poppy! And to see my familiar friend, the blackboard which I hired at
five francs a year from a crusty joiner, that board whose value I paid
many times over, though I. could never buy it outright, for want of the
necessary cash! The conic sections which I described on that blackboard,
the learned hieroglyphics!

Though all my efforts, which were the more deserving because I had to
work alone, led to almost nothing in that congenial calling, I would
begin it all over again if I could. I should love to be conversing for
the first time with Leibnitz and Newton, with Laplace and Lagrange, with
Cuvier and Jussieu, even if I had afterwards to solve that other arduous
problem: how to procure one's daily bread. Ah, young men, my successors,
what an easy time you have of it today! If you don't know it, then let
me tell you so by means of these few pages from the life of one of your
elders.

But let us not forget our insects, while listening to the echoes of
illusions and difficulties roused in my memories by the cupboard window
and the hired blackboard. Let us go back to the sunken roads of the
Legue, which have become classic, so they say, since the appearance of
my notes on the Oil beetles. Ye illustrious ravines, with your sun-baked
slopes, if I have contributed a little to your fame, you, in your turn,
have given me many fair hours of forgetfulness in the happiness of
learning. You, at least, did not lure me with vain hopes; all that you
promised you gave me and often a hundredfold. You are my promised land,
where I would have sought at the last to pitch my observer's tent. My
wish was not to be realized. Let me, at least, in passing, greet my
beloved animals of the old days.

I raise my hat to Cerceris tuberculata, whom I see engaged on that
slant, storing her Cleonus [a large species of weevil]. As I saw her
then, so I see her now: the same staggering attempts to hoist the prey
to the mouth of the burrow; the same brawls between males watching in
the brushwood of the kermes oak. The sight of them sends a younger blood
coursing through my veins; I receive as it were the breath of a new
springtime of life. Time presses; let us pass on.

Another bow on this side. I hear buzzing up above, on that ledge, a
colony of Sphex wasps, stabbing their crickets. We will give them a
friendly glance, but no more. My acquaintances here are too numerous;
I have not the leisure to renew my former relations with all of them.
Without stopping, a wave of the hat to the Philanthi [bee-hunting wasps]
who send the long avalanches of rubbish streaming down from their
nests; and to Stizus ruficornis, [a hunting wasp] who stacks her praying
mantises between two flakes of sandstone; and to the silky Ammophila
[a digger wasp] with the red legs, who collects an underground store of
loopers [also known as measuring worms, the larvae or caterpillars of
the geometrid moth] and to the Tachtyti [hunting wasps], devourers of
locusts; and to the Eumenes, builders of clay cupolas on a bough.

Here we are at last. This high, perpendicular rock, facing the south
to a length of some hundreds of yards and riddled with holes like a
monstrous sponge, is the time-honored dwelling place of the hairy-footed
Anthophora and of her rent free tenant, the three-horned Osmia. Here
also swarm their exterminators: the Sitaris beetle, the parasite of the
Anthophora; the Anthrax fly, the murderer of the Osmia. Ill informed as
to the proper period, I have come rather late, on the 10th of September.
I should have been here a month ago, or even by the end of July, to
watch the fly's operations. My journey threatens to be fruitless: I see
but a few rare Anthrax flies, hovering round the face of the cliff. We
will not despair, however, and we will begin by consulting the locality.

The Anthophora's cells contain this bee in the larval stage. Some of
them provide me with the oil beetle and the Sitaris, rare finds at one
time, today of no use to me. Others contain the Melecta [a parasitic
bee] in the form of a highly colored pupa, or even in that of the full
grown insect. The Osmia, still more precocious, though dating from the
same period, shows herself exclusively in the adult form, a bad omen for
my investigations, for what the Anthrax demands is the larva and not the
perfect insect. The fly's grub doubles my apprehensions. Its development
is complete, the larva on which it feeds is consumed, perhaps several
weeks ago. I no longer doubt but that I have come too late to see what
happens in the Osmia's cocoons.

Is the game lost? Not yet. My notes contain evidence of Anthrax flies
hatching in the latter half of September. Besides, those whom I now see
exploring the rock are not there to take exercise: their preoccupation
is the settling of the family. These belated ones cannot tackle the
Osmia, who, with her firm, adult flesh, would not suit the nursling's
delicate needs and who, moreover, powerful as she is, would offer
resistance. But in autumn a less numerous colony of honey gatherers
takes the place, upon the slope, of the spring colony, from which
it differs in species. In particular, I see the Diadem Anthidium [a
clothier bee who lines her nest with wool and cotton] at work, entering
her galleries at one time with her harvest of pollen dust and at
another with her little bale of cotton. Might not these autumnal Bees be
themselves exploited by the Anthrax, the same that selected the Osmia as
her victim a couple of months earlier? This would explain the presence
of the Anthrax flies whom I now see fussing about.

A little reassured by this conjecture, I take my stand at the foot
of the rock, under a broiling sun; and, for half a day, I follow the
evolutions of my flies. They flit quietly in front of the slope, at a
few inches from the earthy covering. They go from one orifice to the
next, but without even penetrating. For that matter, their big wings,
extended crosswise even when at rest, would resist their entrance into a
gallery, which is too narrow to admit those spreading sails. And so they
explore the cliff, going to and fro and up and down, with a flight that
is now sudden, now smooth and slow. From time to time, I see the Anthrax
quickly approach the wall and lower her abdomen as though to touch the
earth with the end of her ovipositor. This proceeding takes no longer
than the twinkling of an eye. When it is done, the insect alights
elsewhere and rests. Then it resumes its sober flight, its long
investigations and its sudden blows with the tip of its belly against
the layer of earth. The Bombylii [bee flies] observe similar tactics
when soaring at a short height above the ground.

I at once rushed to the spot touched, lens in hand, in the hope of
finding the egg which everything told me was laid during that tap of the
abdomen. I could distinguish nothing, in spite of the closest attention.
It is true that my exhaustion, together with the blinding light and
scorching heat, made examination very difficult. Afterwards, when I made
the acquaintance of the tiny thing that issues from that egg, my failure
no longer surprised me. In the leisure of my study, with my eyes rested
and with my most powerful glasses held in a hand no longer shaking with
excitement and fatigue, I have the very greatest difficulty in finding
the infinitesimal creature, though I know exactly where it lies. Then
how could I see the egg, worn out as I was under the sun-baked cliff,
how discover the precise spot of a laying performed in a moment by an
insect seen only at a distance? In the painful conditions wherein I
found myself, failure was inevitable.

Despite my negative attempts, therefore, I remain convinced that the
Anthrax flies strew their eggs one by one, on the spots frequented by
those bees who suit their grubs. Each of their sudden strokes with the
tip of the abdomen represents a laying. They take no precaution to place
the germ under cover; for that matter, any such precaution would be
rendered impossible by the mother's structure. The egg, that delicate
object, is laid roughly in the blazing sun, between grains of sand,
in some wrinkle of the calcined chalk. That summary installation is
sufficient, provided the coveted larva be near at hand. It is for the
young grub now to manage as best it can at its own risk and peril.

Though the sunken roads of the Legue did not tell me all that I wished
to know, they at least made it very probable that the coming grub must
reach the victualled cell by its own efforts. But the grub which we
know, the one that drains the bag of fat which may be a Chalicodoma
larva or an Osmia larva, cannot move from its place, still less indulge
in journeys of discovery through the thickness of a wall and the web
of a cocoon. So an imperative necessity presents itself: there must
perforce be an initial larva form, capable of moving and organized for
searching, a form under which the grub would attain its end. The
Anthrax would thus possess two larval states: one to penetrate to the
provisions; the other to consume them. I allow myself to be convinced
by the logic of it all; I already see in my mind's eye the wee animal
coming out of the egg, endowed with sufficient power of motion not to
dread a walk and with sufficient slenderness to glide into the smallest
crevices. Once in the presence of the larva on which it is to feed, it
doffs its travelling dress and becomes the obese animal whose one duty
it is to grow big and fat in immobility. This is all very coherent;
it is all deduced like a geometrical proposition. But to the wings of
imagination, however smooth their flight, we must prefer the sandals
of observed facts, the slow sandals with the leaden soles. Thus shod, I
proceed.

Next year, I resume my investigations, this time on the Anthrax of the
Chalicodoma, who is my neighbor in the surrounding wastelands and will
allow me to repeat my visits daily, morning and evening if need be.
Taught by my earlier studies, I now know the exact period of the Bee's
hatching and therefore of the Anthrax' laying, which must take place
soon after. Anthrax trifasciata settles her family in July, or in August
at latest. Every morning, at nine o'clock, when the heat begins to
be unendurable and when, to use [the author's gardener and factotum]
Favier's expression, an extra log is flung on the bonfire of the sun,
I take the field, prepared to come back with my head aching from the
glare, provided that I bring home the solution of my puzzle. A man must
have the devil in him to leave the shade at this time of the year. And
what for, pray? To write the story of a fly! The greater the heat, the
better my chance of success. What causes me to suffer torture fills the
insect with delight; what prostrates me braces the fly. Come along!

The road shimmers like a sheet of molten steel. From the dusty and
melancholy olive trees rises a mighty, throbbing hum, a great andante
whose executants have the whole sweep of woods for their orchestra. 'Tis
the concert of the Cicada, whose bellies sway and rustle with increasing
frenzy as the temperature rises. The strident scrapings of the Cicada of
the Ash, the Carcan of the district, lend their rhythm to the one note
symphony of the common cicada. This is the moment: come along! And, for
five or six weeks, oftenest in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon,
I set myself to explore the flinty plateau.

The Chalicodoma's nests abound, but I cannot see a single Anthrax make
a black speck upon their surface. Not one, busy with her laying, settles
in front of me. At most, from time to time, I can just see one passing
far away, with an impetuous rush. I lose her in the distance; and that
is all. It is impossible to be present at the laying of the egg. I know
the little that I learnt from the cliffs in the Legue and nothing more.

As soon as I recognize the difficulty, I hasten to enlist assistants.
Shepherds--mere small boys--keep the sheep in these stony meadows,
where the flocks graze, to the greater glory of our local mutton, on the
camphor saturated badafo, that is to say, spike lavender. I explain as
well as I can the object of my search; I talk to them of a big black Fly
and the nests on which she ought to settle, the clay nests so well
known to those who have learnt how to extract the honey with a straw in
springtime and spread it on a crust of bread. They are to watch that fly
and take good note of the nests on which they may see her alight; and,
on the same evening, when they bring their flocks back to the village,
they are to tell me the result of their day's work. On receiving
their favorable report, I will go with them, next day, to continue the
observations. They shall be paid for their trouble, of course. These
latter day Corydons have not the manners of antiquity: they reck little
of the seven holed flute cemented with wax, or of the beechen bowl,
preferring the coppers that will take them to the village inn on Sunday.
A reward in ready money is promised for each nest that fulfils the
desired conditions; and the bargain is enthusiastically accepted.

There are three of them; and I make a fourth. Shall we manage it, among
us all? I thought so. By the end of August, however, my last illusions
were dispelled. Not one of us had succeeded in seeing the big black Fly
perching on the dome of the mason bee.

Our failure, it seems to me, can be explained thus: outside the spacious
front of the Anthophora's settlement, the Anthrax is in permanent
residence. She visits, on the wing, every nook and corner, without
moving away from the native cliff, because it would be useless to go
farther. There is board and lodging here, indefinitely, for all her
family. When some spot is deemed favorable, she hovers round inspecting
it, then comes up suddenly and strikes it with the tip of her abdomen.
The thing is done, the egg is laid. So I picture it, at least. Within a
radius of a few yards and in a flight broken by short intervals of rest
in the sun, she carries on her search of likely places for the laying
and dissemination of her eggs. The insect's assiduous attendance upon
the same slope is caused by the inexhaustible wealth of the locality
exploited.

The Anthrax of the Chalicodoma labors under very different conditions.
Stay-at-home habits would be detrimental to her. With her rushing
flight, made easy by the long and powerful spread of her wings, she must
travel far and wide if she would found a colony. The bee's nests are not
discovered in groups, but occur singly on their pebbles, scattered more
or less everywhere over acres of ground. To find a single one is not
enough for the fly: on account of the many parasites, not all the cells,
by a long way, contain the desired larva; others, too well protected,
would not allow of access to the provisions. Very many nests are
necessary, perhaps, for the eggs of one alone; and the finding of them
calls for long journeys.

I therefore picture the Anthrax coming and going in every direction
across the stony plain. Her practiced eye requires no slackened flight
to distinguish the earthen dome which she is seeking. Having found it,
she inspects it from above, still on the wing; she taps it once and
yet once again with the tip of her ovipositor and forthwith makes off,
without having set foot on the ground. Should she take a rest, it will
be elsewhere, no matter where, on the soil, on a stone, on a tuft
of lavender or thyme. Given these habits--and my observations in the
Carpentras roads make them seem exceedingly probable--it is small wonder
that the perspicacity of my young shepherds and myself should have come
to naught. I was expecting the impossible: the Anthrax does not halt on
the mason bee's nest to proceed with her laying in a methodical fashion;
she merely pays a flying visit.

And so I develop my theory of a primary larval form, differing in every
way from the one which I know. The organization of the Anthrax must be
such, at the beginning, as to permit of its moving on the surface of the
dome where the egg has been dropped so carelessly; the nascent grub must
be supplied with tools to pierce the concrete wall and enter the Bee's
cell through some cranny. The fly grub, perhaps dragging the remnants of
the egg behind it, must set out in quest of board and lodging almost as
soon as it is born. It will succeed under the guidance of instinct, that
faculty which waits not to number the days and which is as far seeing at
the moment of hatching as after the trials of a busy life. This primary
grub does not seem to me outside the limits of possibility; I see it, if
not in the body, at least in its actions, as plainly as though it were
really under the lens. It exists, if reason be not a vain and empty
guide; I must find it; I shall find it. Never in the history of my
investigations has the logic of things been more insistent; never has
it directed me with greater certainty towards a magnificent biological
theory.

While vainly trying to witness the laying of the eggs, I inquire, at the
same time, into the contents of the Mason bee's nests, in quest of
the grub just issued from the egg. My own harvest and that of my young
shepherds, whose zeal I employ in a task less difficult than the first,
procure me heaps of nests, enough to fill baskets and baskets. These are
all inspected at leisure, on my work table, with the excitement which
the certainty of an approaching fine discovery never fails to give. The
Mason's cocoons are taken from the cells, inspected without, opened and
inspected within. My lens explores their innermost recesses; speck by
speck, it explores the Chalicodoma's slumbering larva; it explores the
inner walls of the cells. Nothing, nothing, nothing! For a fortnight
and more, nests were rejected and heaped up in a corner; my study was
crammed with them. What hecatombs of unfortunate sleepers removed from
their silken bags and doomed, for the most part, to a wretched end,
despite the care which I took to put them in a place of safety, where
the work of the transformation might be pursued! Curiosity makes us
cruel. I continue to rip up cocoons. And nothing, nothing! It needed the
sturdiest faith to make me persevere. That faith I possessed; and well
for me that I did.

On the 25th of July--the date deserves to be recorded--I saw, or rather
seemed to see, something move on the Chalicodoma's larva. Was it an
illusion born of my hopes? Was it a bit of diaphanous down stirred by my
breath? It was not an illusion, it was not a bit of down, it was really
and truly a grub. What a moment, followed by what perplexities! The
thing has nothing in common with the larva of the Anthrax, it suggests
rather some microscopic Thread worm that, by accident, has made its way
through the skin of its host and come to enjoy itself outside. I do not
reckon my discovery as of much value, because I am so greatly puzzled
by the creature's appearance. No matter: we will take a small glass
tube and place inside it the Chalicodoma grub and the mysterious thing
wriggling on the surface. Suppose it should be what I am looking for?
Who knows?

Once warned of the probable difficulty of seeing the animalcule for
which I am hunting, I redouble my attention, so much so that, in a
couple of days, I am the owner of half a score of tiny worms similar
to the one which caused me such excitement. Each of them is lodged in
a glass tube with its Chalicodoma grub. The infinitesimal thing is so
small, so diaphanous, blends to such good purpose with its host that the
least fold of skin conceals it from my view. After watching it one day
through the lens, I sometimes fail to find it again on the morrow. I
think that I have lost it, that it has perished under the weight of the
overturned larva and returned to that nothing to which it was so closely
akin. Then it moves and I see it again. For a whole fortnight, there
was no limit to my perplexity. Was it really the original larva of the
Anthrax? Yes, for I at last saw my bantlings transform themselves into
the larva previously described and make their first start at draining
their victims with kisses. A few moments of satisfaction like those
which I then enjoyed make up for many a weary hour.

Let us resume the story of the wee animal, now recognized as the genuine
origin of the Anthrax. It is a tiny worm about a millimeter long and
almost as slender as a hair. It is very difficult to see because of its
transparency. When tucked away in a fold of the skin of its fostering
larva, an excessively fine skin, it remains undiscoverable to the lens.
But the feeble creature is very active: it tramps over the sides of the
rich morsel, walks all round it. It covers the ground pretty quickly,
buckling and unbuckling by turns, very much after the manner of the
looper caterpillar. Its two extremities are its chief points of support.
When at a standstill, it moves its front half in every direction, as
though to explore the space around it; when walking, it swells out,
magnifies its segments and then looks like a bit of knotted string.

The microscope shows us thirteen rings, including the head. This head is
small, slightly horny, as is proved by its amber color, and bristles in
front with a small number of short, stiff hairs. On each of the three
segments of the thorax there are two long hairs, fixed to the lower
surface; and there are two similar and still longer hairs at the end of
the terminal ring. These four pairs of bristles, three in front and one
behind, are the locomotory organs, to which we must add the hairy edge
of the head and also the anal button, a sustaining base which might
very well work with the aid of a certain stickiness, as happens with
the primary larva of the Sitaris [a Parasitic Beetle noted for the
multiplicity of transformations undergone by the grub]. We see, through
the transparent skin, two long air tubes running parallel to each other
from the first thoracic segment to the last abdominal segment but one.
They ought to end in two pairs of breathing holes which I have not
succeeded in distinguishing quite plainly. Those two big respiratory
vessels are characteristic of the grubs of flies. Their mouths
correspond exactly with the points at which the two sets of stigmata
open in the Anthrax larva in its second form.

For a fortnight, the feeble grub remains in the condition which I have
described, without growing and very probably also without nourishment.
Assiduous though my visits be, I never perceive it taking any
refreshment. Besides, what would it eat? In the cocoon invaded there is
nothing but the larva of the mason bee; and the worm cannot make use
of this before acquiring the sucker that comes with the second form.
Nevertheless, this life of abstinence is not a life of idleness. The
animalcule explores its dish, now here, now elsewhere; it runs all over
it with looper strides; it pries into the neighborhood by lifting and
shaking its head.

I see a need for this long wait under a transitory form that requires
no feeding. The egg is laid by the mother on the surface of the nest,
somewhere near a suitable cell, I dare say, but still at a distance from
the fostering larva, which is protected by a thick rampart. It is for
the new born grub to make its own way to the provisions, not by violence
and house breaking, of which it is incapable, but by patiently slipping
through a maze of cracks, first tried, then abandoned, then tried again.
It is a very difficult task, even for this most slender worm, for the
bee's masonry is exceedingly compact. There are no chinks due to bad
building; no fissures due to the weather; nothing but an apparently
impenetrable homogeneity. I see but one weak part and that only in a few
nests: it is the line where the dome joins the surface of the stone. An
imperfect soldering between two materials of different nature, cement
and flint, may leave a breach wide enough to admit besiegers as thin as
a hair. Nevertheless, the lens is far from always finding an inlet of
this kind on the nests occupied by Anthrax flies.

And so I am ready to allow that the animalcule wandering in search of
its cell has the whole area of the dome at its disposal when selecting
an entrance. Where the line auger of the Leucospis can enter, is there
not room enough for the even slimmer Anthrax grub? True, the Leucospis
possesses muscular force and a hard boring tool. The Anthrax is
extremely weak and has nothing but invincible patience. It does at
great length of time what the other, furnished with superior implements,
accomplishes in three hours. This explains the fortnight spent by the
Anthrax under the initial form, the object of which is to overcome
the obstacle of the mason's wall, to pierce through the texture of the
cocoon and to reach the victuals.

I even believe that it takes longer. The work is so laborious and
the worker so feeble! I cannot tell how long it is since my bantlings
attained their object. Perhaps, aided by easy roads, they had reached
their fostering larvae long before the completion of their first
babyhood, the end of which they were spending before my eyes, with no
apparent purpose, in exploring their provisions. The time had not yet
come for them to change their skins and take their seats at the table.
Their fellows must still, for the most part, be wandering through the
pores of the masonry; and this was what made my search so vain at the
start.

A few facts seem to suggest that the entrance into the cell may be
delayed for several months by the difficulty of the passages. There are
a few Anthrax grubs beside the remains of pupae not far removed from the
final metamorphosis; there are others, but very rarely, on Mason bees
already in the perfect state. These grubs are sickly and appear to be
ailing; the provisions are too solid and do not lend themselves to
the delicate suckling of the worms. Who can these laggards be but
animalcules that have roamed too long in the walls of the nest? Failing
to make their entrance at the proper time, they no longer find viands to
suit them. The primary larva of the Sitaris continues from the autumn to
the following spring. Even so the initial form of the Anthrax might well
continue, not in inactivity, but in stubborn attempts to overcome the
thick bulwark.

My young worms, when transferred with their provisions into tubes,
remained stationary, on the average, for a couple of weeks. At last, I
saw them shrink and then rid themselves of their epidermis and become
the grub which I was so anxiously expecting as the final reply to all
my doubts. It was indeed, from the first, the grub of the Anthrax, the
cream-colored cylinder with the little button of a head, followed by
a hump. Applying its cupping glass to the mason bee, the worm, without
delay, began its meal, which lasts another fortnight. The reader knows
the rest.

Before taking leave of the animalcule, let us devote a few lines to its
instinct. It has just awakened to life under the fierce kisses of the
sun. The bare stone is its cradle, the rough clay its welcomer, as it
makes its entrance into the world, a poor thread of scarce cohering
albumen. But safety lies within; and behold the atom of animated glair
embarking on its struggle with the flint. Obstinately, it sounds each
pore; it slips in, crawls on, retreats, begins again. The radical of the
germinating seed is no more persevering in its efforts to descend into
the cool earth than is the Anthrax grub in creeping into the lump of
mortar. What inspiration urges it towards its food at the bottom of the
clod, what compass guides it? What does it know of those depths, of what
lies therein or where? Nothing. What does the root know of the earth's
fruitfulness? Again nothing. Yet both make for the nourishing spot.
Theories are put forward, most learned theories, introducing capillary
action, osmosis and cellular imbibition, to explain why the caulicle
ascends and the radical descends. Shall physical or chemical forces
explain why the animalcule digs into the hard clay? I bow profoundly,
without understanding or even trying to understand. The question is far
above, our inane means.

The biography of the Anthrax is now complete, save for the details
relating to the egg, as yet unknown. In the vast majority of insects
subject to metamorphoses, the hatching yields the larval form which
will remain unchanged until the nymphosis. By virtue of a remarkable
variation, revealing a new vein of observation to the entomologist,
the Anthrax flies, in the larval state, assume two successive shapes,
differing greatly one from the other, both in structure and in the part
which they are called upon to play. I will describe this double stage of
the organism by the phrase 'larval dimorphism.' The initial form, that
issuing from the egg, I will call 'the primary larva;' the second form
shall be 'the secondary larva.' Among the Anthrax flies, the function
of the primary larva is to reach the provisions, on which the mother
is unable to lay her egg. It is capable of moving and endowed with
ambulatory bristles, which allow the slim creature to glide through the
smallest interstices in the wall of a Bee's nest, to slip through the
woof of the cocoon and to make its way to the larva intended for its
successor's food. When this object is attained, its part is played.
Then appears the secondary larva, deprived of any means of progression.
Relegated to the inside of the invaded cell, as incapable of leaving
it by its own efforts as it was of entering, this one has no mission in
life but that of eating. It is a stomach that loads itself, digests and
goes on adding to its reserves. Next comes the pupa, armed for the
exit even as the primary larva was equipped for entering. When the
deliverance is accomplished, the perfect insect appears, busy with its
laying. The Anthrax cycle is thus divided into four periods, each of
which corresponds with special forms and functions. The primary larva
enters the casket containing provisions; the secondary larva consumes
these provisions; the pupa brings the insect to light by boring through
the enclosing wall; the perfect insect strews its eggs; and the cycle
starts afresh.




CHAPTER V. HEREDITY

Facts which I have set forth elsewhere prove that certain dung beetles'
make an exception to the rule of paternal indifference--a general rule
in the insect world--and know something of domestic cooperation. The
father works with almost the same zeal as the mother in providing for
the settlement of the family. Whence do these favored ones derive a gift
that borders on morality?

One might suggest the cost of installing the youngsters. Once they have
to be furnished with a lodging and to be left the wherewithal to live,
is it not an advantage, in the interests of the race, that the father
should come to the mother's assistance? Work divided between the two
will ensure the comfort which solitary work, its strength overtaxed,
would deny. This seems excellent reasoning; but it is much more often
contradicted than confirmed by the facts. Why is the Sisyphus a hard
working paterfamilias and the sacred beetle an idle vagabond? And yet
the two pill rollers practice the same industry and the same method
of rearing their young. Why does the Lunary Copris know what his near
kinsman, the Spanish Copris, does not? The first assists his mate, never
forsakes her. The second seeks a divorce at an early stage and leaves
the nuptial roof before the children's rations are massed and kneaded
into shape. Nevertheless, on both sides, there is the same big outlay
on a cellarful of egg-shaped pills, whose neat rows call for long and
watchful supervision. The similarity of the produce leads one to believe
in similarity of manners; and this is a mistake.

Let us turn elsewhere, to the wasps and bees, who unquestionably come
first in the laying up of a heritage for their offspring. Whether the
treasure hoarded for the benefit of the sons be a pot of honey or a bag
of game, the father never takes the smallest part in the work. He does
not so much as give a sweep of the broom when it comes to tidying the
outside of the dwelling. To do nothing is his invariable rule. The
bringing up of the family, therefore, however expensive it may be in
certain cases, has not given rise to the instinct of paternity. Then
where are we to look for a reply?

Let us make the question a wider one. Let us leave the animal, for a
moment, and occupy ourselves with man. We have our own instincts, some
of which take the name of genius when they attain a degree of might
that towers over the plain of mediocrity. We are amazed by the unusual,
springing out of flat commonplaces; we are spellbound by the luminous
speck shining in the wonted darkness. We admire; and, failing to
understand whence came those glorious harvests in this one or in that,
we say of them: "They have the gift."

A goatherd amuses himself by making combinations with heaps of little
pebbles. He becomes an astoundingly quick and accurate reckoner without
other aid than a moment's reflection. He terrifies us with the conflict
of enormous numbers which blend in an orderly fashion in his mind, but
whose mere statement overwhelms us by its inextricable confusion. This
marvelous arithmetical juggler has an instinct, a genius, a gift for
figures.

A second, at the age when most of us delight in tops and marbles, leaves
the company of his boisterous playmates and listens to the echo of
celestial harps singing within him. His head is a cathedral filled with
the strains of an imaginary organ. Rich cadences, a secret concert heard
by him and him alone, steep him in ecstasy. All hail to that predestined
one who, some day, will rouse our noblest emotions with his musical
chords. He has an instinct, a genius, a gift for sounds.

A third, a brat who cannot yet eat his bread and jam without smearing
his face all over, takes a delight in fashioning clay into little
figures that are astonishingly lifelike for all their artless
awkwardness. He takes a knife and makes the briar root grin into all
sorts of entertaining masks; he carves boxwood in the semblance of a
horse or sheep; he engraves the effigy of his dog on sandstone. Leave
him alone; and, if Heaven second his efforts, he may become a famous
sculptor. He has an instinct, a gift, a genius for form.

And so with others in every branch of human activity: art and science,
industry and commerce, literature and philosophy. We have within us,
from the start, that which will distinguish us from the vulgar herd.
Now to what do we owe this distinctive character? To some throwback of
atavism, men tell us. Heredity, direct in one case, remote in another,
hands it down to us, increased or modified by time. Search the records
of the family and you will discover the source of the genius, a mere
trickle at first, then a stream, then a mighty river.

The darkness that lies behind that word heredity! Metaphysical science
has tried to throw a little light upon it and has succeeded only in
making unto itself a barbarous jargon, leaving obscurity more obscure
than before. As for us, who hunger after lucidity, let us relinquish
abstruse theories to whoever delights in them and confine our ambition
to observable facts, without pretending to explain the quackery of
the plasma. Our method certainly will not reveal to us the origin of
instinct; but it will at least show us where it would be waste of time
to look for it.

In this sort of research, a subject known through and through, down to
its most intimate peculiarities, is indispensable. Where shall we find
that subject? There would be a host of them and magnificent ones, if it
were possible to read the sealed pages of others' lives; but no one can
sound an existence outside his own and even then he can think himself
lucky if a retentive memory and the habit of reflection give his
soundings the proper accuracy. As none of us is able to project himself
into another's skin, we must needs, in considering this problem, remain
inside our own.

To talk about one's self is hateful, I know. The reader must have the
kindness to excuse me for the sake of the study in hand. I shall take
the silent beetle's place in the witness box, cross-examining myself
in all simplicity of soul, as I do the animal, and asking myself whence
that one of my instincts which stands out above the others is derived.


Since Darwin bestowed upon me the title of 'incomparable observer,' the
epithet has often come back to me, from this side and from that, without
my yet understanding what particular merit I have shown. It seems to me
so natural, so much within everybody's scope, so absorbing to interest
one's self in everything that swarms around us! However, let us pass on
and admit that the compliment is not unfounded.

My hesitation ceases if it is a question of admitting my curiosity in
matters that concern the insect. Yes, I possess the gift, the instinct
that impels me to frequent that singular world; yes, I know that I am
capable of spending on those studies an amount of precious time which
would be better employed in making provision, if possible, for the
poverty of old age; yes, I confess that I am an enthusiastic observer of
the animal. How was this characteristic propensity, at once the torment
and delight of my life, developed? And, to begin with, how much does it
owe to heredity?

The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they
cannot think of preserving the memory of the past. And yet what
surpassingly instructive records, comforting too and pious, would be the
family papers that should tell us who our forebears were and speak to
us of their patient struggles with harsh fate, their stubborn efforts to
build up, atom by atom, what we are today. No story would come up with
that for individual interest. But by the very force of things the home
is abandoned; and, when the brood has flown, the nest is no longer
recognized.

I, a humble journeyman in the toilers' hive, am therefore very poor in
family recollections. In the second degree of ancestry, my facts become
suddenly obscured. I will linger over them a moment for two reasons:
first, to inquire into the influence of heredity; and, secondly, to
leave my children yet one more page concerning them.

I did not know my maternal grandfather. This venerable ancestor was, I
have been told, a process server in one of the poorest parishes of the
Rouergue. He used to engross on stamped paper in a primitive spelling.
With his well-filled pen case and ink horn, he went drawing out deeds up
hill and down dale, from one insolvent wretch to another more insolvent
still. Amid his atmosphere of pettifoggery, this rudimentary scholar,
waging battle on life's acerbities, certainly paid no attention to the
insect; at most, if he met it, he would crush it under foot. The
unknown animal, suspected of evil doing, deserved no further enquiry.
Grandmother, on her side, apart from her housekeeping and her beads,
knew still less about anything. She looked on the alphabet as a set of
hieroglyphics only fit to spoil your sight for nothing, unless you were
scribbling on paper bearing the government stamp. Who in the world, in
her day, among the small folk, dreamt of knowing how to read and write?
That luxury was reserved for the attorney, who himself made but a
sparing use of it. The insect, I need hardly say, was the least of her
cares. If sometimes, when rinsing her salad at the tap, she found a
caterpillar on the lettuce leaves, with a start of fright she would
fling the loathsome thing away, thus cutting short relations reputed
dangerous. In short, to both my maternal grandparents, the insect was a
creature of no interest whatever and almost always a repulsive object,
which one dared not touch with the tip of one's finger. Beyond a doubt,
my taste for animals was not derived from them.

I have more precise information regarding my grandparents on the
father's side, for their green old age allowed me to know them both.
They were people of the soil, whose quarrel with the alphabet was so
great that they had never opened a book in their lives; and they kept
a lean farm on the cold granite ridge of the Rouergue tableland. The
house, standing alone among the heath and broom, with no neighbor for
many a mile around and visited at intervals by the wolves, was to them
the hub of the universe. But for a few surrounding villages, whither the
calves were driven on fair days, the rest was only very vaguely known
by hearsay. In this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires
oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source
of wealth, with rich, wet grass. In summer, on the short swards of the
slopes, the sheep were penned day and night, protected from beasts of
prey by a fence of hurdles propped up with pitchforks. When the grass
was cropped close at one spot, the fold was shifted elsewhere. In the
center was the shepherd's rolling hut, a straw cabin. Two watchdogs,
equipped with spiked collars, were answerable for tranquillity if the
thieving wolf appeared in the night from out the neighboring woods.

Padded with a perpetual layer of cow dung, in which I sank to my knees,
broken up with shimmering puddles of dark brown liquid manure, the
farmyard also boasted a numerous population. Here the lambs skipped, the
geese trumpeted, the fowls scratched the ground and the sow grunted with
her swarm of little pigs hanging to her dugs.

The harshness of the climate did not give husbandry the same chances.
In a propitious season, they would set fire to a stretch of moorland
bristling with gorse and send the swing plow across the ground enriched
with the cinders of the blaze. This yielded a few acres of rye, oats
and potatoes. The best corners were kept for hemp, which furnished the
distaffs and spindles of the house with the material for linen and was
looked upon as grandmother's private crop.

Grandfather, therefore, was, before all, a herdsman versed in matters of
cows and sheep, but completely ignorant of aught else. How dumbfounded
he would have been to learn that, in the remote future, one of his
family would become enamoured of those insignificant animals to which
he had never vouchsafed a glance in his life! Had he guessed that that
lunatic was myself, the scapegrace seated at the table by his side, what
a smack I should have caught in the neck, what a wrathful look!

"The idea of wasting one's time with that nonsense!" he would have
thundered.

For the patriarch was not given to joking. I can still see his serious
face, his unclipped head of hair, often brought back behind his ears
with a flick of the thumb and spreading its ancient Gallic mane over
his shoulders. I see his little three-cornered hat, his small clothes
buckled at the knees, his wooden shoes, stuffed with straw, that echoed
as he walked. Ah, no! Once childhood's games were past, it would never
have done to rear the Grasshopper and unearth the Dung beetle from his
natural surroundings.

Grandmother, pious soul, used to wear the eccentric headdress of the
Rouergue highlanders: a large disk of black felt, stiff as a plank,
adorned in the middle with a crown a finger's breadth high and hardly
wider across than a six franc piece. A black ribbon fastened under the
chin maintained the equilibrium of this elegant, but unsteady circle.
Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, butter; washing the clothes,
minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household: say that
and you have summed up the strenuous woman's round of ideas. On her left
side, the distaff, with its load of flax; in her right hand, the spindle
turning under a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with
her tongue: so she went through life, unwearied, attending to the order
and the welfare of the house. I see her in my mind's eye particularly on
winter evenings, which were more favorable to family talk. When the hour
came for meals, all of us, big and little, would take our seats round
a long table, on a couple of benches, deal planks supported by four
rickety legs. Each found his wooden bowl and his tin spoon in front of
him. At one end of the table always stood an enormous rye loaf, the
size of a cartwheel, wrapped in a linen cloth with a pleasant smell
of washing, and remained until nothing was left of it. With a vigorous
stroke, grandfather would cut off enough for the needs of the moment;
then he would divide the piece among us with the one knife which he
alone was entitled to wield. It was now each one's business to break up
his bit with his fingers and to fill his bowl as he pleased.

Next came grandmother's turn. A capacious pot bubbled lustily and sang
upon the flames in the hearth, exhaling an appetizing savor of bacon and
turnips. Armed with a long metal ladle, grandmother would take from it,
for each of us in turn, first the broth, wherein to soak the bread,
and next the ration of turnips and bacon, partly fat and partly lean,
filling the bowl to the top. At the other end of the table was the
pitcher, from which the thirsty were free to drink at will. What
appetites we had and what festive meals those were, especially when a
cream cheese, homemade, was there to complete the banquet!

Near us blazed the huge fireplace, in which whole tree trunks were
consumed in the extreme cold weather. From a corner of that monumental,
soot-glazed chimney, projected, at a convenient height, a bracket with
a slate shelf, which served to light the kitchen when we sat up late. On
this we burnt chips of pine wood, selected among the most translucent,
those containing the most resin. They shed over the room a lurid red
light, which saved the walnut oil in the lamp.

When the bowls were emptied and the last crumb of cheese scraped up,
grandam went back to her distaff, on a stool by the chimney corner. We
children, boys and girls, squatting on our heels and putting out our
hands to the cheerful fire of furze, formed a circle round her and
listened to her with eager ears. She told us stories, not greatly
varied, it is true, but still wonderful, for the wolf often played a
part in them. I should have very much liked to see this wolf, the hero
of so many tales that made our flesh creep; but the shepherd always
refused to take me into his straw hut, in the middle of the fold, at
night. When we had done talking about the horrid wolf, the dragon and
the serpent and when the resinous splinters had given out their last
gleams, we went to sleep the sweet sleep that toil gives. As the
youngest of the household, I had a right to the mattress, a sack stuffed
with oat chaff. The others had to be content with straw.

I owe a great deal to you, dear grandmother: it was in your lap that
I found consolation for my first sorrows. You have handed down to me,
perhaps, a little of your physical vigor, a little of your love of
work; but certainly you were no more accountable than grandfather for my
passion for insects.

Nor was either of my own parents. My mother, who was quite illiterate,
having known no teacher than the bitter experience of a harassed life,
was the exact opposite of what my tastes required for their development.
My peculiarity must seek its origin elsewhere: that I will swear. But
I do not find it in my father, either. The excellent man, who was hard
working and sturdily built like granddad, had been to school as a
child. He knew how to write, though he took the greatest liberties with
spelling; he knew how to read and understood what he read, provided the
reading presented no more serious literary difficulties than occurred
in the stories in the almanac. He was the first of his line to allow
himself to be tempted by the town and he lived to regret it. Badly off,
having but little outlet for his industry, making God knows what shifts
to pick up a livelihood, he went through all the disappointments of the
countryman turned townsman. Persecuted by bad luck, borne down by
the burden, for all his energy and good will, he was far indeed from
starting me in entomology. He had other cares, cares more direct and
more serious. A good cuff or two when he saw me pinning an insect to a
cork was all the encouragement that I received from him. Perhaps he was
right.

The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in heredity to explain my
taste for observation. You may say that I do not go far enough back.
Well, what should I find beyond the grandparents where my facts come to
a stop? I know, partly. I should find even more uncultured ancestors:
sons of the soil, plowmen, sowers of rye, neat herds; one and all, by
the very force of things, of not the least account in the nice matters
of observation.

And yet, in me, the observer, the inquirer into things began to take
shape almost in infancy. Why should I not describe my first discoveries?
They are ingenuous in the extreme, but will serve notwithstanding to
tell us something of the way in which tendencies first show themselves.
I was five or six years old. That the poor household might have one
mouth less to feed, I had been placed in grandmother's care, as I have
just been saying. Here, in solitude, my first gleams of intelligence
were awakened amidst the geese, the calves and the sheep. Everything
before that is impenetrable darkness. My real birth is at that
moment when the dawn of personality rises, dispersing the mists of
unconsciousness and leaving a lasting memory. I can see myself plainly,
clad in a soiled frieze frock flapping against my bare heels; I
remember the handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of string, a
handkerchief often lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve.

There I stand one day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back
and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendor fascinates me. I am
the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp. With what am I enjoying the
glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question put
by my budding scientific curiosity. Reader, do not smile: the future
observer is already practicing and experimenting. I open my mouth wide
and close my eyes: the glory disappears. I open my eyes and shut my
mouth: the glory reappears. I repeat the performance, with the same
result. The question's solved: I have learnt by deduction that I see the
sun with my eyes. Oh, what a discovery! That evening, I told the whole
house all about it. Grandmother smiled fondly at my simplicity: the
others laughed at it. 'Tis the way of the world.

Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighboring bushes, a sort of
jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly through
the evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is it a little bird
chirping in his nest? We must look into the matter and that quickly.
True, there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods at this time, so
they tell me. Let's go all the same, but not too far: just there, behind
that clump of groom. I stand on the look out for long, but all in vain.
At the faintest sound of movement in the brushwood, the jingle ceases.
I try again next day and the day after. This time, my stubborn watch
succeeds. Whoosh! A grab of my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a
bird; it is a kind of Grasshopper whose hind legs my playfellows have
taught me to like: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush. The best
part of the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavor,
but what I have just learnt. I now know, from personal observation, that
the Grasshopper sings. I did not publish my discovery, for fear of the
same laughter that greeted my story about the sun.

Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to the house! They seem to
smile to me with their great violet eyes. Later on, I see, in their
place, bunches of big red cherries. I taste them. They are not nice
and they have no stones. What can those cherries be? At the end of the
summer, grandfather comes with a spade and turns my field of observation
topsy-turvy. From under ground there comes, by the basketful and
sackful, a sort of round root. I know that root; it abounds in the
house; time after time I have cooked it in the peat stove. It is the
potato. Its violet flower and its red fruit are pigeonholed for good and
all in my memory.

With an ever watchful eye for animals and plants, the future observer,
the little six-year-old monkey, practiced by himself, all unawares.
He went to the flower, he went to the insect, even as the large white
butterfly goes to the cabbage and the red admiral to the thistle. He
looked and inquired, drawn by a curiosity whereof heredity did not know
the secret. He bore within him the germ of a faculty unknown to his
family; he kept alive a glimmer that was foreign to the ancestral
hearth. What will become of that infinitesimal spark of childish fancy?
It will die out, beyond a doubt, unless education intervene, giving it
the fuel of example, fanning it with the breath of experience. In that
case, schooling will explain what heredity leaves unexplained. This is
what we will examine in the next chapter.




CHAPTER VI. MY SCHOOLING

I am back in the village, in my father's house. I am now seven years
old; and it is high time that I went to school. Nothing could have
turned out better: the master is my godfather. What shall I call the
room in which I was to become acquainted with the alphabet? It would
be difficult to find the exact word, because the room served for every
purpose. It was at once a school, a kitchen, a bedroom, a dining room
and, at times, a chicken house and a piggery. Palatial schools were not
dreamt of in those days; any wretched hovel was thought good enough.

A broad fixed ladder led to the floor above. Under the ladder stood
a big bed in a boarded recess. What was there upstairs? I never quite
knew. I would see the master sometimes bring down an armful of hay for
the ass, sometimes a basket of potatoes which the housewife emptied into
the pot in which the little porkers' food was cooked. It must have been
a loft of sorts, a storehouse of provisions for man and beast. Those two
apartments composed the whole building.

To return to the lower one, the schoolroom: a window faces south, the
only window in the house, a low, narrow window whose frame you can touch
at the same time with your head and both your shoulders. This sunny
aperture is the only lively spot in the dwelling, it overlooks the
greater part of the village, which straggles along the slopes of a
slanting valley. In the window recess is the master's little table.

The opposite wall contains a niche in which stands a gleaming copper
pail full of water. Here the parched children can relieve their thirst
when they please, with a cup left within their reach. At the top of the
niche are a few shelves bright with pewter plates, dishes and drinking
vessels, which are taken down from their sanctuary on great occasions
only.

More or less everywhere, at any spot which the light touches, are
crudely colored pictures, pasted on the walls. Here is Our Lady of the
Seven Dolours, the disconsolate Mother of God opening her blue cloak
to show her heart pierced with seven daggers. Between the sun and moon,
which stare at you with their great, round eyes, is the Eternal Father,
whose robe swells as though puffed out with the storm. To the right
of the window, in the embrasure, is the Wandering Jew. He wears a
three-cornered hat, a large, white leather apron, hobnailed shoes and a
stout stick. 'Never was such a bearded man seen before or after,' says
the legend that surrounds the picture. The draftsman has not forgotten
this detail: the old man's beard spreads in a snowy avalanche over the
apron and comes down to his knees. On the left is Genevieve of Brabant,
accompanied by the roe, with fierce Golo hiding in the bushes, sword in
hand. Above hangs The Death of Mr. Credit, slain by defaulters at the
door of his inn; and so on and so on, in every variety of subject, at
all the unoccupied spots of the four walls.

I was filled with admiration of this picture gallery, which held one's
eyes with its great patches of red, blue, green and yellow. The master,
however, had not set up his collection with a view to training our minds
and hearts. That was the last and least of the worthy man's ambitions.
An artist in his fashion, he had adorned his house according to his
taste; and we benefited by the scheme of decoration.

While the gallery of halfpenny pictures made me happy all the year
round, there was another entertainment which I found particularly
attractive in winter, in frosty weather, when the snow lay long on the
ground. Against the far wall stands the fireplace, as monumental in size
as at my grandmother's. Its arched cornice occupies the whole width of
the room, for the enormous redoubt fulfils more than one purpose. In the
middle is the hearth, but, on the right and left, are two breast-high
recesses, half wood and half stone. Each of them is a bed, with a
mattress stuffed with chaff of winnowed corn. Two sliding planks serve
as shutters and close the chest if the sleeper would be alone. This
dormitory, sheltered under the chimney mantel, supplies couches for the
favored ones of the house, the two boarders. They must lie snug in there
at night, with their shutters closed, when the north wind howls at the
mouth of the dark valley and sends the snow awhirl. The rest is occupied
by the hearth and its accessories: the three-legged stools; the salt
box, hanging against the wall to keep its contents dry; the heavy shovel
which it takes two hands to wield; lastly, the bellows similar to those
with which I used to blow out my cheeks in grandfather's house. They
consist of a mighty branch of pine, hollowed throughout its length with
a red-hot iron. By means of this channel, one's breath is applied, from
a convenient distance, to the spot which is to be revived. With a couple
of stones for supports, the master's bundle of sticks and our own logs
blaze and flicker, each of us having to bring a log of wood in the
morning, if he would share in the treat.

For that matter, the fire was not exactly lit for us, but, above all, to
warm a row of three pots in which simmered the pigs' food, a mixture
of potatoes and bran. That, despite the tribute of a log, was the real
object of the brushwood fire. The two boarders, on their stools, in
the best places, and we others sitting on our heels formed a semicircle
around those big cauldrons, full to the brim and giving off little jets
of steam, with puff-puff-puffing sounds. The bolder among us, when the
master's eyes were engaged elsewhere, would dig a knife into a well
cooked potato and add it to their bit of bread; for I must say that, if
we did little work in my school, at least we did a deal of eating. It
was the regular custom to crack a few nuts and nibble at a crust while
writing our page or setting out our rows of figures.

We, the smaller ones, in addition to the comfort of studying with our
mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which were quite
as good as cracking nuts. The back door communicated with the yard where
the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks, scratched at the dung hill,
while the little porkers, of whom there were a dozen, wallowed in their
stone trough. This door would open sometimes to let one of us out, a
privilege which we abused, for the sly ones among us were careful not to
close it on returning. Forthwith, the porkers would come running in,
one after the other, attracted by the smell of the boiled potatoes. My
bench, the one where the youngsters sat, stood against the wall, under
the copper pail to which we used to go for water when the nuts had made
us thirsty, and was right in the way of the pigs. Up they came trotting
and grunting, curling their little tails; they rubbed against our legs;
they poked their cold pink snouts into our hands in search of a scrap
of crust; they questioned us with their sharp little eyes to learn if we
happened to have a dry chestnut for them in our pockets. When they
had gone the round, some this way and some that, they went back to the
farmyard, driven away by a friendly flick of the master's handkerchief.
Next came the visit of the hen, bringing her velvet-coated chicks to see
us. All of us eagerly crumbled a little bread for our pretty visitors.
We vied with one another in calling them to us and tickling with our
fingers their soft and downy backs. No, there was certainly no lack of
distractions.

What could we learn in such a school as that! Let us first speak of the
young ones, of whom I was one. Each of us had, or rather was supposed
to have, in his hands a little penny book, the alphabet, printed on gray
paper. It began, on the cover, with a pigeon, or something like it. Next
came a cross, followed by the letters in their order. When we turned
over, our eyes encountered the terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the
stumbling block of most of us. When we had mastered that formidable
page, we were considered to know how to read and were admitted among the
big ones. But, if the little book was to be of any use, the least that
was required was that the master should interest himself in us to some
extent and show us how to set about things. For this, the worthy man,
too much taken up with the big ones, had not the time. The famous
alphabet with the pigeon was thrust upon us only to give us the air of
scholars. We were to contemplate it on our bench, to decipher it with
the help of our next neighbor, in case he might know one or two of the
letters. Our contemplation came to nothing, being every moment disturbed
by a visit to the potatoes in the stew pots, a quarrel among playmates
about a marble, the grunting invasion of the porkers or the arrival of
the chicks. With the aid of these distractions, we would wait patiently
until it was time for us to go home. That was our most serious work.

The big ones used to write. They had the benefit of the small amount
of light in the room, by the narrow window where the Wandering Jew and
ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large and only table with its
circle of seats. The school supplied nothing, not even a drop of ink;
every one had to come with a full set of utensils. The inkhorn of those
days, a relic of the ancient pen case of which Rabelais speaks, was a
long cardboard box divided into two stages. The upper compartment held
the pens, made of goose or turkey quills trimmed with a penknife; the
lower contained, in a tiny well, ink made of soot mixed with vinegar.

The master's great business was to mend the pens--a delicate work, not
without danger for inexperienced fingers--and then to trace at the head
of the white page a line of strokes, single letters or words, according
to the scholar's capabilities. When that is over, keep an eye on the
work of art which is coming to adorn the copy! With what undulating
movements of the wrist does the hand, resting on the little finger,
prepare and plan its flight! All at once, the hand starts off, flies,
whirls; and, lo and behold, under the line of writing is unfurled
a garland of circles, spirals and flourishes, framing a bird with
outspread wings, the whole, if you please, in red ink, the only kind
worthy of such a pen. Large and small, we stood awestruck in the
presence of these marvels. The family, in the evening, after supper,
would pass from hand to hand the masterpiece brought back from school:
'What a man!' was the comment. 'What a man, to draw you a Holy Ghost
with a stroke of the pen!'

What was read at my school? At most, in French, a few selections from
sacred history. Latin recurred oftener, to teach us to sing vespers
properly. The more advanced pupils tried to decipher manuscript, a deed
of sale, the hieroglyphics of some scrivener.

And history, geography? No one ever heard of them. What difference did
it make to us whether the earth was round or square! In either case, it
was just as hard to make it bring forth anything.

And grammar? The master troubled his head very little about that; and we
still less. We should have been greatly surprised by the novelty and the
forbidding look of such words in the grammatical jargon as substantive,
indicative and subjunctive. Accuracy of language, whether of speech
or writing, must be learnt by practice. And none of us was troubled
by scruples in this respect. What was the use of all these subtleties,
when, on coming out of school, a lad simply went back to his flock of
sheep!

And arithmetic? Yes, we did a little of this but not under that learned
name. We called it sums. To put down rows of figures, not too long,
add them and subtract them one from the other was more or less familiar
work. On Saturday evenings, to finish up the week, there was a general
orgy of sums. The top boy stood up and, in a loud voice, recited the
multiplication table up to twelve times. I say twelve times, for in
those days, because of our old duodecimal measures, it was the custom to
count as far as the twelve times table, instead of the ten times of the
metric system. When this recital was over, the whole class, the little
ones included, took it up in chorus, creating such an uproar that chicks
and porkers took to flight if they happened to be there. And this went
on to twelve times twelve, the first in the row starting the next table
and the whole class repeating it as loud as it could yell. Of all that
we were taught in school, the multiplication table was what we knew
best, for this noisy method ended by dinning the different numbers
into our ears. This does not mean that we became skilful reckoners. The
cleverest of us easily got muddled with the figures to be carried in a
multiplication sum. As for division, rare indeed were they who reached
such heights. In short, the moment a problem, however insignificant, had
to be solved, we had recourse to mental gymnastics much rather than to
the learned aid of arithmetic.

When all is said, our master was an excellent man who could have kept
school very well but for his lack of one thing; and that was time. He
devoted to us all the little leisure which his numerous functions
left him. And, first of all, he managed the property of an absentee
landowner, who only occasionally set foot in the village. He had under
his care an old castle with four towers, which had become so many pigeon
houses; he directed the getting in of the hay, the walnuts, the apples
and the oats. We used to help him during the summer, when the school,
which was well attended in winter, was almost deserted. All that
remained, because they were not yet big enough to work in the fields,
were a few children, including him who was one day to set down these
memorable facts. Lessons at that time were less dull. They were often
given on the hay or on the straw; oftener still, lesson time was spent
in cleaning out the dovecote or stamping on the snails that had sallied
in rainy weather from their fortresses, the tall box borders of the
garden belonging to the castle.

Our master was a barber. With his light hand, which was so clever at
beautifying our copies with curlicue birds, he shaved the notabilities
of the place: the mayor, the parish priest, the notary. Our master was a
bell ringer. A wedding or a christening interrupted the lessons: he had
to ring a peal. A gathering storm gave us a holiday: the great bell must
be tolled to ward off the lightning and the hail. Our master was a choir
singer. With his mighty voice, he filled the church when he led the
Magnificat at vespers. Our master wound up and regulated the village
clock. This was his proudest function. Giving a glance at the sun, to
ascertain the time more or less nearly, he would climb to the top of
the steeple, open a huge cage of rafters and find himself in a maze of
wheels and springs whereof the secret was known to him alone.

With such a school and such a master and such examples, what will become
of my embryo tastes, as yet so imperceptible? In that environment, they
seem bound to perish, stifled for ever. Yet no, the germ has life;
it works in my veins, never to leave them again. It finds nourishment
everywhere, down to the cover of my penny alphabet, embellished with
a crude picture of a pigeon which I study and contemplate much more
zealously than the A B C. Its round eye, with its circlet of dots, seems
to smile upon me. Its wing, of which I count the feathers one by one,
tells me of flights on high, among the beautiful clouds; it carries me
to the beeches raising their smooth trunks above a mossy carpet studded
with white mushrooms that look like eggs dropped by some vagrant hen; it
takes me to the snow-clad peaks where the birds leave the starry print
of their red feet. He is a fine fellow, my pigeon friend: he consoles
me for the woes hidden behind the cover of my book. Thanks to him, I sit
quietly on my bench and wait more or less till school is over.

School out of doors has other charms. When the master takes us to kill
the snails in the box borders, I do not always scrupulously fulfil my
office as an exterminator. My heel sometimes hesitates before coming
down upon the handful which I have gathered. They are so pretty! Just
think, there are yellow ones and pink, white ones and brown, all with
dark spiral streaks. I fill my pockets with the handsomest, so as to
feast my eyes on them at my leisure.

On hay making days in the master's field, I strike up an acquaintance
with the frog. Flayed and stuck at the end of a split stick, he serves
as bait to tempt the crayfish to come out of his retreat by the brook
side. On the alder trees I catch the Hoplia, the splendid scarab who
pales the azure of the heavens. I pick the narcissus and learn to
gather, with the tip of my tongue, the tiny drop of honey that lies
right at the bottom of the cleft corolla. I also learn that too long
indulgence in this feast brings a headache; but this discomfort in no
way impairs my admiration for the glorious white flower, which wears a
narrow red collar at the throat of its funnel.

When we go to beat the walnut trees, the barren grass plots provide me
with locusts spreading their wings, some into a blue fan, others into a
red. And thus the rustic school, even in the heart of winter, furnished
continuous food for my interest in things. There was no need for precept
and example: my passion for animals and plants made progress of itself.

What did not make progress was my acquaintance with my letters, greatly
neglected in favor of the pigeon. I was still at the same stage,
hopelessly behindhand with the intractable alphabet, when my father, by
a chance inspiration, brought me home from the town what was destined to
give me a start along the road of reading. Despite the not insignificant
part which it played in my intellectual awakening, the purchase was
by no means a ruinous one. It was a large print, price six farthings,
colored and divided into compartments in which animals of all sorts
taught the A B C by means of the first letters of their names.

Where should I keep the precious picture? As it happened, in the room
set apart for the children at home, there was a little window like the
one in the school, opening in the same way out of a sort of recess and
in the same way overlooking most of the village. One was on the right,
the other on the left of the castle with the pigeon house towers; both
afforded an equally good view of the heights of the slanting valley.
I was able to enjoy the school window only at rare intervals, when the
master left his little table; the other was at my disposal as often as I
liked. I spent long hours there, sitting on a little fixed window seat.

The view was magnificent. I could see the ends of the earth, that is
to say, the hills that blocked the horizon, all but a misty gap through
which the brook with the crayfish flowed under the alders and willows.
High up on the skyline, a few wind-battered oaks bristled on the ridges;
and beyond there lay nothing but the unknown, laden with mystery.

At the back of the hollow stood the church, with its three steeples and
its clock; and, a little higher, the village square, where a spring,
fashioned into a fountain, gurgled from one basin into another, under a
wide arched roof. I could hear from my window the chatter of the women
washing their clothes, the strokes of their beaters, the rasping of the
pots scoured with sand and vinegar. Sprinkled over the slopes are little
houses with their garden patches in terraces banked up by tottering
walls, which bulge under the thrust of the earth. Here and there are
very steep lanes, with the dents of the rock forming a natural pavement.
The mule, sure-footed though he be, would hesitate to enter these
dangerous passes with his load of branches.

Further on, beyond the village, half-way up the hills, stood the great
ever-so-old lime tree, the Tel, as we used to call it, whose sides,
hollowed out by the ages, were the favorite hiding places of us children
at play. On fair days, its immense, spreading foliage cast a wide shadow
over the herds of oxen and sheep. Those solemn days, which only came
once a year, brought me a few ideas from without: I learnt that the
world did not end with my amphitheater of hills. I saw the inn keeper's
wine arrive on mule back and in goat skin bottles. I hung about the
market place and watched the opening of jars full of stewed pears, the
setting out of baskets of grapes, an almost unknown fruit, the object
of eager covetousness. I stood and gazed in admiration at the roulette
board on which, for a sou, according to the spot at which its needle
stopped on a circular row of nails, you won a pink poodle made of barley
sugar, or a round jar of aniseed sweets, or, much oftener, nothing at
all. On a piece of canvas on the ground, rolls of printed calico with
red flowers, were displayed to tempt the girls. Close by rose a pile of
beechwood clogs, tops and boxwood flutes. Here the shepherds chose their
instruments, trying them by blowing a note or two. How new it all was
to me! What a lot of things there were to see in this world! Alas,
that wonderful time was of but short duration! At night, after a little
brawling at the inn, it was all over; and the village returned to
silence for a year.

But I must not linger over these memories of the dawn of life. We were
speaking of the memorable picture brought from town. Where shall I keep
it, to make the best use of it? Why, of course, it must be pasted on
the embrasure of my window. The recess, with its seat, shall be my study
cell; here I can feast my eyes by turns on the big lime tree and the
animals of my alphabet. And this was what I did.

And now, my precious picture, it is our turn, yours and mine. You began
with the sacred beast, the ass, whose name, with a big initial, taught
me the letter A. The boeuf, the ox, stood for B; the canard, the duck,
told me about C; the dindon, the turkey, gave me the letter D. And so
on with the rest. A few compartments, it is true, were lacking in
clearness. I had no friendly feeling for the hippopotamus, the kamichi,
or horned screamer, and the zebu, who aimed at making me say H, K and
Z. Those outlandish beasts, which failed to give the abstract letter the
support of a recognized reality, caused me to hesitate for a time over
their recalcitrant consonants. No matter: father came to my aid in
difficult cases; and I made such rapid progress that, in a few days,
I was able to turn in good earnest the pages of my little pigeon book,
hitherto so undecipherable. I was initiated; I knew how to spell. My
parents marveled. I can explain this unexpected progress today. Those
speaking pictures, which brought me amongst my friends the beasts, were
in harmony with my instincts. If the animal has not fulfilled all that
it promised in so far as I am concerned, I have at least to thank it for
teaching me to read. I should have succeeded by other means, I do not
doubt, but not so quickly nor so pleasantly. Animals forever!

Luck favored me a second time. As a reward for my prowess, I was
given La Fontaine's Fables, in a popular, cheap edition, crammed with
pictures, small, I admit, and very inaccurate, but still delightful.
Here were the crow, the fox, the wolf, the magpie, the frog, the rabbit,
the ass, the dog, the cat: all persons of my acquaintance. The glorious
book was immensely to my taste, with its skimpy illustrations on which
the animal walked and talked. As to understanding what it said, that
was another story! Never mind, my lad! Put together syllables that say
nothing to you as yet; they will speak to you later and La Fontaine will
always remain your friend.

I come to the time when I was ten years old and at Rodez College. My
functions as a serving boy in the chapel entitled me to free instruction
as a day boarder. There were four of us in white surplices and red
skull-caps and cassocks. I was the youngest of the party and did little
more than walk on. I counted as a unit; and that was about all, for I
was never certain when to ring the bell or move the missal. I was all
of a tremble when we gathered two on this side and two on that, with
genuflection's, in the middle of the sanctuary, to intone the Domine,
salvum fac regern at the end of mass. Let me make a confession:
tongue-tied with shyness, I used to leave it to the others.

Nevertheless, I was well thought of, for, in the school, I cut a good
figure in composition and translation. In that classical atmosphere,
there was talk of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two sons, Numitor and
Amulius. We heard of Cynoegirus, the strong jawed man, who, having
lost his two hands in battle, seized and held a Persian galley with
his teeth, and of Cadmus the Phoenician, who sowed a dragon's teeth as
though they were beans and gathered his harvest in the shape of a host
of armed men, who killed one another as they rose up from the ground.
The only one who survived the slaughter was one as tough as leather,
presumably the son of the big back grinder.

Had they talked to me about the man in the moon, I could not have been
more startled. I made up for it with my animals, which I was far from
forgetting amid this phantasmagoria of heroes and demigods. While
honoring the exploits of Cadmus and Cynoegirus, I hardly ever failed, on
Sundays and Thursdays [the weekly half-holiday in French schools], to go
and see if the cowslip or the yellow daffodil was making its appearance
in the meadows, if the Linnet was hatching on the juniper bushes, if the
Cockchafers were plopping down from the wind shaken poplars. Thus was
the sacred spark kept aglow, ever brighter than before.

By easy stages, I came to Virgil and was very much smitten with
Meliboeus, Corydon, Menalcas, Damoetas and the rest of them. The
scandals of the ancient shepherds fortunately passed unnoticed; and
within the frame in which the characters moved were exquisite details
concerning the bee, the cicada, the turtle dove, the crow, the nanny
goat and the golden broom. A veritable delight were these stories of
the fields, sung in sonorous verse; and the Latin poet left a lasting
impression on my classical recollections.

Then, suddenly, goodbye to my studies, goodbye to Tityrus and Menalcas.
Ill luck is swooping down on us, relentlessly. Hunger threatens us
at home. And now, boy, put your trust in God; run about and earn your
penn'orth of potatoes as best you can. Life is about to become a hideous
inferno. Let us pass quickly over this phase. Amid this lamentable
chaos, my love for the insect ought to have gone under. Not at all. It
would have survived the raft of the Medusa. I still remember a certain
pine cockchafer met for the first time. The plumes on her antennae, her
pretty pattern of white spots on a dark brown ground were as a ray of
sunshine in the gloomy wretchedness of the day.

To cut a long story short: good fortune, which never abandons the brave,
brought me to the primary normal school at Vaucluse where I was assured
food: dried chestnuts and chickpeas. The principal, a man of broad
views, soon came to trust his new assistant. He left me practically a
free hand, so long as I satisfied the school curriculum, which was very
modest in those days. Possessing a smattering of Latin and grammar, I
was a little ahead of my fellow pupils. I took advantage of this to
get some order into my vague knowledge of plants and animals. While a
dictation lesson was being corrected around me, with generous assistance
from the dictionary, I would examine, in the recesses of my desk, the
oleander's fruit, the snapdragon's seed vessel, the wasp's sting and the
ground beetle's wing-case.

With this foretaste of natural science, picked up haphazard and by
stealth, I left school more deeply in love than ever with insects and
flowers. And yet I had to give it all up. That wider education, which
would have to be my source of livelihood in the future, demanded this
imperiously. What was I to take in hand to raise me above the primary
school, whose staff could barely earn their bread in those days? Natural
history could not bring me anywhere. The educational system of the time
kept it at a distance, as unworthy of association with Latin and Greek.
Mathematics remained, with its very simple equipment: a blackboard, a
bit of chalk and a few books.

So I flung myself with might and main into conic sections and the
calculus: a hard battle, if ever there was one, without guides or
counselors, face to face for days on end with the abstruse problem which
my stubborn thinking at last stripped of its mysteries. Next came
the physical sciences, studied in the same manner, with an impossible
laboratory, the work of my own hands.

The reader can imagine the fate of my favorite branch of science in
this fierce struggle. At the faintest sign of revolt, I lectured myself
severely, lest I should let myself be seduced by some new grass, some
unknown Beetle. I did violence to my feelings. My natural history books
were sentenced to oblivion, relegated to the bottom of a trunk.

And so, in the end, I am sent to teach physics and chemistry at Ajaccio
College. This time, the temptation is too much for me. The sea, with its
wonders, the beach, whereon the tide casts such beautiful shells,
the maquis of myrtles, arbutus and mastic trees: all this paradise of
gorgeous nature has too much on its side in the struggle with the sine
and the cosine. I succumb. My leisure time is divided into two parts.
One, the larger, is allotted to mathematics, the foundation of my
academical future, as planned by myself; the other is spent, with much
misgiving, in botanizing and looking for the treasures of the sea. What
a country and what magnificent studies to be made, if, unobsessed by x
and y, I had devoted myself wholeheartedly to my inclinations!

We are the wisp of straw, the plaything of the winds. We think that we
are making for a goal deliberately chosen; destiny drives us towards
another. Mathematics, the exaggerated preoccupation of my youth, did
me hardly any service; and animals, which I avoided as much as ever I
could, are the consolation of my old age. Nevertheless, I bear no
grudge against the sine and the cosine, which I continue to hold in high
esteem. They cost me many a pallid hour at one time, but they always
afforded me some first rate entertainment: they still do so, when my
head lies tossing sleeplessly on its pillow.

Meanwhile, Ajaccio received the visit of a famous Avignon botanist,
Requien by name, who, with a box crammed with paper under his arm, had
long been botanizing all over Corsica, pressing and drying specimens
and distributing them to his friends. We soon became acquainted. I
accompanied him in my free time on his explorations and never did the
master have a more attentive disciple. To tell the truth, Requien was
not a man of learning so much as an enthusiastic collector. Very few
would have felt capable of competing with him when it came to giving the
name or the geographical distribution of a plant. A blade of grass, a
pad of moss, a scab of lichen, a thread of seaweed: he knew them all.
The scientific name flashed across his mind at once. What an unerring
memory, what a genius for classification amid the enormous mass of
things observed! I stood aghast at it. I owe much to Requien in the
domain of botany. Had death spared him longer, I should doubtless
have owed more to him, for his was a generous heart, ever open to the
troubles of novices.

In the following year, I met Moquin-Tandon, with whom, thanks
to Requien, I had already exchanged a few letters on botany. The
illustrious Toulouse professor came to study on the spot the flora which
he proposed to describe systematically. When he arrived, all the hotel
bedrooms were reserved for the members of the general council which had
been summoned; and I offered him board and lodging: a shakedown in a
room overlooking the sea; fare consisting of lampreys, turbot and sea
urchins: common enough dishes in that land of Cockayne, but possessing
no small attraction for the naturalist, because of their novelty. My
cordial proposal tempted him; he yielded to my blandishments; and there
we were for a fortnight chatting at table de omni re scibili after the
botanical excursion was over.

With Moquin-Tandon, new vistas opened before me. Here it was no longer
the case of a nomenclator with an infallible memory: he was a naturalist
with far-reaching ideas, a philosopher who soared above petty details to
comprehensive views of life, a writer, a poet who knew how to clothe the
naked truth in the magic mantle of the glowing word. Never again shall
I sit at an intellectual feast like that: 'Leave your mathematics,' he
said. 'No one will take the least interest in your formula. Get to the
beast, the plant; and, if, as I believe, the fever burns in your veins,
you will find men to listen to you.'

We made an expedition to the center of the island, to Monte Renoso,
with which I was already familiar. I made the scientist pick the hoary
everlasting (Helichrysum frigidum), which makes a wonderful patch of
silver; the many-headed thrift, or mouflon grass (Armeria multiceps),
which the Corsicans call erba muorone; the downy marguerite
(Leucanthemum tomosum), which, clad in wadding, shivers amid the
snows; and many other rarities dear to the botanist. Moquin-Tandon was
jubilant. I, on my side, was much more attracted and overcome by his
words and his enthusiasm than by the hoary everlasting. When we came
down from the cold mountaintop, my mind was made up: mathematics would
be abandoned.

On the day before his departure, he said to me: 'You interest yourself
in shells. That is something, but it is not enough. You must look into
the animal itself. I will show you how it's done.'

And, taking a sharp pair of scissors from the family work-basket and
a couple of needles stuck into a bit of vine shoot which served as a
makeshift handle, he showed me the anatomy of a snail in a soup plate
filled with water. Gradually he explained and sketched the organs which
he spread before my eyes. This was the only, never-to-be-forgotten
lesson in natural history that I ever received in my life.

It is time to conclude. I was cross-examining myself, being unable to
cross-examine the silent Beetle. As far as it is possible to read within
myself, I answer as follows: 'From early childhood, from the moment
of my first mental awakening, I have felt drawn towards the things of
nature, or, to return to our catchword, I have the gift, the bump of
observation.'

After the details which I have already given about my ancestors, it
would be ridiculous to look to heredity for an explanation of the fact.
Nor would any one venture to suggest the words or example of my masters.
Of scientific education, the fruit of college training, I had none
whatever. I never set foot in a lecture hall except to undergo the
ordeal of examinations. Without masters, without guides, often without
books, in spite of poverty, that terrible extinguisher, I went ahead,
persisted, facing my difficulties, until the indomitable bump ended by
shedding its scanty contents. Yes, they were very scanty, yet possibly
of some value, if circumstances had come to their assistance. I was a
born animalist. Why and how? No reply.

We thus have, all of us, in different directions and in a greater
or lesser degree, characteristics that brand us with a special mark,
characteristics of an unfathomable origin. They exist because they
exist; and that is all that any one can say. The gift is not handed
down: the man of talent has a fool for a son. Nor is it acquired; but it
is improved by practice. He who has not the germ of it in his veins will
never possess it, in spite of all the pains of a hothouse education.

That to which we give the name of instinct when speaking of animals is
something similar to genius. It is, in both cases, a peak that rises
above the ordinary level. But instinct is handed down, unchanged and
undiminished, throughout the sequence of a species; it is permanent
and general and in this it differs greatly from genius, which is not
transmissible and changes in different cases. Instinct is the inviolable
heritage of the family and falls to one and all, without distinction.
Here the difference ends. Independent of similarity of structure, it
breaks out like genius, here or elsewhere, for no perceptible reason.
Nothing causes it to be foreseen, nothing in the organization explains
it. If cross-examined on this point, the Dung beetles and the rest, each
with his own peculiar talent, would answer, were we able to understand
them: 'Instinct is the animal's genius.'




CHAPTER VII. THE POND

The pond, the delight of my early childhood, is still a sight whereof my
old eyes never tire. What animation in that verdant world! On the warm
mud of the edges, the frog's little tadpole basks and frisks in its
black legions; down in the water, the orange-bellied newt steers his
way slowly with the broad rudder of his flat tail; among the reeds are
stationed the flotillas of the caddis worms, half protruding from their
tubes, which are now a tiny bit of stick and again a turret of little
shells.

In the deep places, the water beetle dives, carrying with him his
reserves of breath: an air bubble at the tip of the wing cases and,
under the chest, a film of gas that gleams like a silver breastplate;
on the surface, the ballet of those shimmering pearls, the whirligigs,
turns and twists about; hard by there skims the unsubmersible troop of
the pond skaters, who glide along with side strokes similar to those
which the cobbler makes when sewing.

Here are the water boatmen, who swim on their backs with two oars spread
cross-wise, and the flat water scorpions; here, squalidly clad in mud,
is the grub of the largest of our dragonflies, so curious because of its
manner of progression: it fills its hinder parts, a yawning funnel, with
water, spurts it out again and advances just so far as the recoil of its
hydraulic cannon.

The mollusks abound, a peaceful tribe. At the bottom, the plump river
snails discreetly raise their lid, opening ever so little the shutters
of their dwelling; on the level of the water, in the glades of the
aquatic garden, the pond snails--Physa, Limnaea and Planorbis--take
the air. Dark leeches writhe upon their prey, a chunk of earthworm;
thousands of tiny, reddish grubs, future mosquitoes, go spinning around
and twist and curve like so many graceful dolphins.

Yes, a stagnant pool, though but a few feet wide, hatched by the sun, is
an immense world, an inexhaustible mine of observation to the studious
man and a marvel to the child who, tired of his paper boat, diverts his
eyes and thoughts a little with what is happening in the water. Let me
tell what I remember of my first pond, at a time when ideas began to
dawn in my seven-year-old brain.

How shall a man earn his living in my poor native village, with its
inclement weather and its niggardly soil? The owner of a few acres of
grazing land rears sheep. In the best parts, he scrapes the soil with
the swing plow; he flattens it into terraces banked by walls of broken
stones. Pannierfuls of dung are carried up on donkey-back from the
cowshed. Then, in due season, comes the excellent potato, which, boiled
and served hot in a basket of plaited straw, is the chief stand-by in
winter.

Should the crop exceed the needs of the household, the surplus goes to
feed a pig, that precious beast, a treasure of bacon and ham. The ewes
supply butter and curds; the garden boasts cabbages, turnips and even a
few hives in a sheltered corner. With wealth like that one can look fate
in the face.

But we, we have nothing, nothing but the little house inherited by my
mother and its adjoining patch of garden. The meager resources of the
family are coming to an end. It is time to see to it and that quickly.
What is to be done? That is the stern question which father and mother
sat debating one evening.

Hop-o'-my-Thumb, hiding under the woodcutter's stool, listened to his
parents overcome by want. I also, pretending to sleep, with my elbows on
the table, listen not to blood curdling designs, but to grand plans that
set my heart rejoicing. This is how the matter stands: at the bottom of
the village, near the church, at the spot where the water of the large
roofed spring escapes from its underground weir and joins the brook in
the valley, an enterprising man, back from the war, has set up a small
tallow factory. He sells the scrapings of his pans, the burnt fat,
reeking of candle grease, at a low price. He proclaims these wares to be
excellent for fattening ducks.

"Suppose we bred some ducks," says mother. "They sell very well in town.
Henri would mind them and take them down to the brook."

"Very well," says father, "let's breed some ducks. There may be
difficulties in the way; but we'll have a try."

That night, I had dreams of paradise: I was with my ducklings, clad in
their yellow suits; I took them to the pond, I watched them have their
bath, I brought them back again, carrying the more tired ones in a
basket.

A month or two after, the little birds of my dreams were a reality.
There were twenty-four of them. They had been hatched by two hens, of
whom one, the big, black one, was an inmate of the house, while the
other was borrowed from a neighbor.

To bring them up, the former is sufficient, so careful is she of her
adopted family. At first, everything goes perfectly: a tub with two
fingers' depth of water serves as a pond. On sunny days, the ducklings
bathe in it under the anxious eye of the hen.

A fortnight later, the tub is no longer enough. It contains neither
cresses crammed with tiny shellfish nor worms and tadpoles, dainty
morsels both. The time has come for dives and hunts amid the tangle of
the water weeds; and for us the day of trouble has also come. True, the
miller, down by the brook, has fine ducks, easy and cheap to bring up;
the tallow smelter, who has extolled his burnt fat so loudly, has some
as well, for he has the advantage of the waste water from the spring at
the bottom of the village; but how are we, right up there, at the top,
to procure aquatic sports for our broods? In summer, we have hardly
water to drink!

Near the house, in a freestone recess, a scanty source trickles into a
basin made in the rock.. Four or five families have, like ourselves,
to draw their water there with copper pails. By the time that the
schoolmaster's donkey has slaked her thirst and the neighbors have
taken their provision for the day, the basin is dry. We have to wait for
four-and-twenty hours for it to fill. No, this is not the hole in which
the ducks would delight nor indeed in which they would be tolerated.

There remains the brook. To go down to it with the troop of ducklings is
fraught with danger. On the way through the village, we might meet cats,
bold ravishers of small poultry; some surly mongrel might frighten and
scatter the little band; and it would be a hard puzzle to collect it in
its entirety. We must avoid the traffic and take refuge in peaceful and
sequestered spots.

On the hills, the path that climbs behind the chateau soon takes a
sudden turn and widens into a small plain beside the meadows. It skirts
a rocky slope whence trickles, level with the ground, a streamlet,
forming a pond of some size. Here profound solitude reigns all day long.
The ducklings will be well off; and the journey can be made in peace by
a deserted footpath.

You, little man, shall take them to that delectable spot. What a day
it was that marked my first appearance as a herdsman of ducks! Why
must there be a jar to the even tenor of such joys? The too frequent
encounter of my tender skin with the hard ground had given me a large
and painful blister on the heel. Had I wanted to put on the shoes stowed
away in the cupboard for Sundays and holidays, I could not. There was
nothing for it but to go barefoot over the broken stones, dragging my
leg and carrying high the injured heel.

Let us make a start, hobbling along, switch in hand, behind the ducks.
They too, poor little things, have sensitive soles to their feet; they
limp, they quack with fatigue. They would refuse to go any farther if I
did not, from time to time, call a halt under the shelter of an ash.

We are there at last. The place could not be better for my birdlets;
shallow, tepid water, interspersed with muddy knolls and green eyots.
The diversions of the bath begin forthwith. The ducklings clap their
beaks and rummage here, there and everywhere; they sift each mouthful,
rejecting the clear water and retaining the good bits. In the deeper
parts, they point their sterns into the air and stick their heads under
water. They are happy; and it is a blessed thing to see them at work. We
will let them be. It is my turn to enjoy the pond.

What is this? On the mud lie some loose, knotted, soot-colored cords.
One could take them for threads of wool like those which you pull out of
an old ravelly stocking. Can some shepherdess, knitting a black sock and
finding her work turn out badly, have begun all over again and, in her
impatience, have thrown down the wool with all the dropped stitches? It
really looks like it.

I take up one of those cords in my hand. It is sticky and extremely
slack; the thing slips through the fingers before they can catch hold of
it. A few of the knots burst and shed their contents. What comes out is
a black globule, the size of a pin's head, followed by a flat tail. I
recognize, on a very small scale, a familiar object: the tadpole, the
frog's baby. I have seen enough. Let us leave the knotted cords alone.

The next creatures please me better. They spin round on the surface of
the water and their black backs gleam in the sun. If I lift a hand to
seize them, that moment they disappear, I know not where. It's a pity: I
should have much liked to see them closer and to make them wriggle in a
little bowl which I should have put ready for them.

Let us look at the bottom of the water, pulling aside those bunches of
green string whence beads of air are rising and gathering into foam.
There is something of everything underneath. I see pretty shells with
compact whorls, flat as beans; I notice little worms carrying tufts and
feathers; I make out some with flabby fins constantly flapping on their
backs. What are they all doing there? What are their names? I do not
know. And I stare at them for ever so long, held by the incomprehensible
mystery of the waters.

At the place where the pond dribbles into the adjoining field are some
alder trees; and here I make a glorious find. It is a scarab--not a
very large one, oh no! He is smaller than a cherry-stone, but of an
unutterable blue. The angels in paradise must wear dresses of that
color. I put the glorious one inside an empty snail-shell, which I plug
up with a leaf. I shall admire that living jewel at my leisure, when I
get back. Other distractions summon me away.

The spring that feeds the pond trickles from the rock, cold and clear.
The water first collects into a cup, the size of the hollow of one's two
hands, and then runs over in a stream. These falls call for a mill: that
goes without saying. Two bits of straw, artistically crossed upon
an axis, provide the machinery; some flat stones set on edge afford
supports. It is a great success: the mill turns admirably. My triumph
would be complete, could I but share it. For want of other playmates, I
invite the ducks.

Everything palls in this poor world of ours, even a mill made of two
straws. Let us think of something else: let us contrive a dam to hold
back the waters and form a pool. There is no lack of stones for the
brickwork. I pick the most suitable; I break the larger ones. And, while
collecting these blocks, suddenly I forget all about the dam which I
meant to build.

On one of the broken stones, in a cavity large enough for me to put my
fist in, something gleams like glass. The hollow is lined with facets
gathered in sixes which flash and glitter in the sun. I have seen
something like this in church, on the great saints' days, when the light
of the candles in the big chandelier kindles the stars in its hanging
crystal.

We children, lying, in summer, on the straw of the threshing floor,
have told one another stories of the treasures which a dragon guards
underground. Those treasures now return to my mind: the names of
precious stones ring out uncertainly but gloriously in my memory. I
think of the king's crown, of the princesses' necklaces. In breaking
stones, can I have found, but on a much richer scale, the thing that
shines quite small in my mother's ring? I want more such.

The dragon of the subterranean treasures treats me generously. He gives
me his diamonds in such quantities that soon I possess a heap of broken
stones sparkling with magnificent clusters. He does more: he gives me
his gold. The trickle of water from the rock falls on a bed of fine sand
which it swirls into bubbles. If I bent over towards the light, I see
something like gold filings whirling where the fall touches the bottom.
Is it really the famous metal of which twenty-franc pieces, so rare with
us at home, are made? One would think so, from the glitter.

I take a pinch of sand and place it in my palm. The brilliant particles
are numerous, but so small that I have to pick them up with a straw
moistened in my mouth. Let us drop this: they are too tiny and too
bothersome to collect. The big, valuable lumps must be farther on,
in the thickness of the rock. We'll come back later; we'll blast the
mountain.

I break more stones. Oh, what a queer thing has just come loose, all in
one piece! It is turned spiral-wise, like certain flat snails that come
out of the cracks of old walls in rainy weather. With its gnarled sides,
it looks like a little ram's horn. Shell or horn, it is very curious.
How do things like that find their way into the stone?

Treasures and curiosities make my pockets bulge with pebbles. It is
late and the little ducklings have had all they want to eat. Come
along, youngsters, let's go home. My blistered heel is forgotten in
my excitement. The walk back is a delight. A voice sings in my ear,
an untranslatable voice, softer than any language and bewildering as a
dream. It speaks to me for the first time of the mysteries of the pond;
it glorifies the heavenly insect which I hear moving in the empty snail
shell, its temporary cage; it whispers the secrets of the rock, the gold
filings, the faceted jewels, the ram's horn turned to stone.

Poor simpleton, smother your joy! I arrive. My parents catch sight of
my bulging pockets, with their disgraceful load of stones. The cloth has
given way under the rough and heavy burden.

"You rascal!" says father, at sight of the damage. "I send you to mind
the ducks and you amuse yourself picking up stones, as though there
weren't enough of them all round the house! Make haste and throw them
away!"

Broken hearted, I obey. Diamonds, gold dust, petrified ram's horn,
heavenly beetle are all flung on a rubbish heap outside the door.

Mother bewails her lot: "A nice thing, bringing up children to see them
turn out so badly! You'll bring me to my grave. Green stuff I don't
mind: it does for the rabbits. But stones, which ruin your pockets;
poisonous animals, which'll sting your hand: what good are they to you,
silly? There's no doubt about it: some one has thrown a spell over you!"

Yes, my poor mother, you were right, in your simplicity: a spell had
been cast upon me; I admit it today. When it is hard enough to earn
one's bit of bread, does not improving one's mind but render one more
meet for suffering? Of what avail is the torment of learning to the
derelicts of life?

A deal better off am I, at this late hour, dogged by poverty and knowing
that the diamonds of the duck pool were rock crystal, the gold dust
mica, the stone horn an Ammonite and the sky-blue beetle a Hoplia! We
poor men would do better to mistrust the joys of knowledge: let us dig
our furrow in the fields of the commonplace, flee the temptations of the
pond, mind our ducks and leave to others, more favored by fortune, the
job of explaining the world's mechanism, if the spirit moves them.

And yet no! Alone among living creatures, man has the thirst for
knowledge; he alone pries into the mysteries of things. The least among
us will utter his whys and his wherefores, a fine pain unknown to
the brute beast. If these questionings come from us with greater
persistence, with a more imperious authority, if they divert us from
the quest of lucre, life's only object in the eyes of most men, does it
become us to complain? Let us be careful not to do so, for that would be
denying the best of all our gifts.

Let us strive, on the contrary, within the measure of our capacity,
to force a gleam of light from the vast unknown; let us examine and
question and, here and there, wrest a few shreds of truth. We shall sink
under the task; in the present ill ordered state of society, we shall
end, perhaps, in the workhouse. Let us go ahead for all that: our
consolation shall be that we have increased by one atom the general mass
of knowledge, the incomparable treasure of mankind.

As this modest lot has fallen to me, I will return to the pond,
notwithstanding the wise admonitions and the bitter tears which I once
owed to it. I will return to the pond, but not to that of the small
ducks, the pond aflower with illusions: those ponds do not occur twice
in a lifetime. For luck like that, you must be in all the new glory of
your first breeches and your first ideas.

Many another have I come upon since that distant time, ponds very much
richer and, moreover, explored with the ripened eye of experience.
Enthusiastically I searched them with the net, stirred up their mud,
ransacked their trailing weeds. None in my memories comes up to the
first, magnified in its delights and mortifications by the marvelous
perspective of the years.

Nor would any of them suit my plans of today. Their world is too vast. I
should lose myself in their immensities, where life swarms freely in the
sun. Like the ocean, they are infinite in their fruitfulness. And then
any assiduous watching, undisturbed by passers by, is an impossibility
on the public way. What I want is a pond on an extremely reduced
scale, sparingly stocked in my own fashion an artificial pond standing
permanently on my study table.

A louis has been overlooked in a corner of the drawer. I can spend it
without seriously jeopardizing the domestic balance. Let me make this
gift to science, who, I fear, will be none too much obliged to me. A
gorgeous equipment may be all very well for laboratories wherein the
cells and fibers of the dead are consulted at great expense; but such
magnificence is of doubtful utility when we have to study the actions
of the living. It is the humble makeshift, of no value, that stumbles on
the secrets of life.

What did the best results of my studies of instinct cost me? Nothing
but time and, above all, patience. My extravagant expenditure of
twenty francs, therefore, will be a risky speculation if devoted to the
purchase of an apparatus of study. It will bring me in nothing in the
way of fresh views, of that I am convinced. However, let us try.

The blacksmith makes me the framework of a cage out of a few iron rods.
The joiner, who is also a glazier on occasion--for, in my village, you
have to be a Jack-of-all-trades if you would make both ends meet--sets
the framework on a wooden base and supplies it with a movable board as
a lid; he fixes thick panes of glass in the four sides. Behold the
apparatus, complete, with a bottom of tarred sheet iron and a trap to
let the water out.

The makers express themselves satisfied with their work, a singular
novelty in their respective shops, where many an inquisitive caller has
wondered what use I intend to make of my little glass trough. The thing
creates a certain stir. Some insist that it is meant to hold my supplies
of oil and to take the place of the receptacle in general use in
our parts, the urn dug out of a block of stone. What would those
utilitarians have thought of my crazy mind, had they known that my
costly gear would merely serve to let 

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