Jean-Henri Fabre

“ It is the taint of the belly, that inexhaustible source of brutality.
The intestine rules the world. In the midst of our gravest affairs the question of bread and butter rises imperious. So long as there are stomachs that digest—and as yet we see no possibility of dispensing with them—we must have the wherewithal to satisfy them and the strong will live by the misfortunes of the weak. Life is an abyss which only death can fill. ”

“ At this season, every evening, in the gloaming, if the weather be still, the Cockchafer comes to visit the pine-trees in the enclosure. I follow his evolutions with my eyes. With a silent, impetuous flight, the males especially veer to and fro, displaying their great antennary plumes; they make for the branches where the females await them; they fly back and forth, visible as dark streaks against the pallor of the sky, from which the last remnants of daylight are fading. They settle, take flight again and resume their busy rounds. ”

“ Without the aid of sight, we see the grub evacuating at intervals and renewing its store of cement; we can follow it as it gathers the clod with the tips of its mandibles, squeezing it with its legs, dividing it to its liking and spreading it with its mouth and forehead on the weak spots of the wall. A rolling motion of the rump gives it a polish. Without borrowing any extraneous materials, the builder finds within itself the building-stones of its edifice. ”

“ Would it not have been useful to the insect? One would think so. The little Weevil thus mutilated is a climber; she clambers up the smooth stems of the iris; she explores the flowers, visiting the lower surface of the petals as well as the upper; she walks upside down on the slippery pods. An extra hook would do much to ensure her steadiness; yet the thoughtless Weevil deprives herself of it, though by law she has a right to the double claw invariably wielded by the others, even in her own long-nosed clan. What then is the secret of the little Iris-weevil’s missing finger-nail? ”

“ Recent mounds become numerous in the fields. This is the season of autumnal rejoicings, when the soil, which has been like a cinder all the summer, recovers its moisture and is covered with green grass to which the shepherd leads his flock; it is the festival of the Minotaur, the exodus of the youngsters who, for the first time, enter into the joys of the daylight, among the sugar-plums dropped by the Sheep in the pastures.
However, nothing appears under the cover of my apparatus. It is no use waiting any longer, the season is too far advanced. I take the pylon to pieces. The mother is dead ”

“ The sleepers forthwith awaken, scenting the rich prey defiling close at hand. One of them runs forward; three or four others follow, arousing the whole assembly; those who are buried emerge; the whole band of cut-throats falls upon the passing herd. Then comes an unforgettable sight. The mandibles get to work in all directions; the procession is attacked in the van, in the rear, in the middle; the victims are assailed in the back or the belly at random. The hairy skins are ripped open, their contents escape in a rush of entrails green with the pine-needles that constitute the food ”

“ In the middle of February, when the almond trees begin to blossom, the weather is [136] very mild. It is no longer winter, and it is not yet spring; the sun is pleasant in the daytime and at night there is a certain charm in the blaze of a few logs upon the hearth. On the rosemary bushes in the garden, already displaying their wealth of liliaceous flowers, the Bees are gathering booty, the red-bellied Osmiæ are humming, while the big grey Locusts stand twirling their great wings and proclaiming their joy of life. ”

“ Nature has not our scruples: she makes direct for her goal, heedless of our approval and our dislike. Let us silence a delicacy which seems out of place: we must ourselves become animals to a certain small extent, if we wish to understand the beautiful economy of animal industry. Let us [28] gloss over things as best we can, but let us not shrink from the truth.
The Cetonia-larva is about to build itself a strong-box in which the transformation, the most delicate of tasks, will be accomplished; it is about to erect itself an enclosing wall, I might almost say, to spin itself a cocoon. ”

“ The bustle of active life will come but too soon. The Minotaurs seem to hold that opinion: they prolong as far as may be the bliss of infancy.
The grub which has just been born in the sand pegs away with its legs and mandibles, strains and heaves with its rump, makes itself a passage and, from one day to the next, reaches the provisions piled up above it. In the glass tube in which I rear it I see it climbing, slipping into crevices, making a selection from the food about it and capriciously [146] tasting on this side and on that. It coils and uncoils, it wriggles about, it sways to and fro. ”

“ To a certain degree the nature of the diet acts as an excuse: Dectici and Grasshoppers are first and foremost carnivores. Coming upon a corpse of their own species, the matrons consume it more or less thoroughly, even if it be that of last night’s lover. Considered as game, one is as good as another.
But what shall we say of the vegetarians? As the laying-season approaches, the Ephippiger turns upon her companion, still full of life, and bites him, makes a hole in his belly and eats as much of him as her appetite allows. ”

“ There is no sportiveness in their orgy, even when the sun shines fiercely into the cage. All activity is suspended; the time is wholly devoted to the joys of the stomach. In this torrid heat it is so pleasant to lie under the greengage, oozing with juice! With such good things at hand, why go flying across the fields where everything is parched? ”

“ She alights, coils her belly, opens her pincers and dives impetuously into the Mole’s fur. Then, with her powerful nippers, she punctures the skin, now blue and distended by gases. The sanies oozes out. The glutton greedily eats her fill; and that is all. Soon she departs, as suddenly as she came.
I have not had the good fortune to see anything further. The big Staphylinus hastens to my pans only to feast upon a highly seasoned dish. Her family dwelling must be in the dung-hills about the stables of the neighbourhood. I should have much liked to see her make her home in my charnel-pits. ”

“ To ease the work of his mate, who shreds and compresses the preserved foodstuffs, packing it away in layers, he once more changes his trade and becomes a miller. At some distance from the bottom, he bruises and crumbles the materials found hardened by the sun; he makes them into a meal and flour which gradually pour down into the maternal bake-house. Lastly, worn out by his efforts, he leaves the home and goes out to die at a distance, in the open air. He has gallantly performed his duty as the head of a family; he has spent himself without stint to secure the prosperity of his offspring. ”

“ None of my madcaps will heed the sufferings of the insect, a melancholy galley-slave chained to a cannon-ball. These artless minds find amusement in torture. I dare not always call them to order, for I admit that I on my side am also guilty, though I am ripened by experience, to some extent civilized and beginning to know a thing or two. ”

“ In the lowest third, which stands in the wet earth of a large flower-pot, the plasticity is as great as that which my spade encounters in the deep natural burrow. Everything seems to be in order; and yet there is not a trace of nest-building at the bottom of the shaft; there are no sausages prepared or even preparing. All the pellets are untouched.
It is quite obvious: the mother has refused to lay and consequently the father has refrained from grinding. Directly the kneading of loaves is discontinued, meal becomes useless. The harvest is none the less plentiful, in view of future events. ”

“ The Cetonia does not display this haste. She was a gross eater in her days of pot-bellied grubhood; she remains a gross eater beneath the splendour of her adult cuirass. She spends her life, so long as the heat is not too overwhelming, in the jam-factory of the orchard: apricots, pears, peaches, figs and plums. Lingering over her meal, she forgets all else and defers her egg-laying to the following year. ”

“ When the mating is over, a female meeting a male in the open must then treat him as fair game and munch him up in order to close the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones but have never chanced upon this spectacle; no matter: what I saw in the cage is enough to convince me. What a world the Gold Beetle lives in, where the matron devours her partner when she no longer needs him to fertilize her ovaries! And how lightly do the laws of creation hold the males, to allow them to be butchered in this way! [313]
Are these fits of cannibalism following upon love widely distributed? ”

“ Nothing, absolutely nothing, we are told by the two guests in my apparatus. Neither of them appears looking for food on the surface of the pie-dish. The mother does not leave the bottom for a moment; the father alone goes up and down. When he comes up, it is always with a load of rubbish. I am warned of his arrival by the hillock which shakes and partly crumbles under the impetus of the navvy and his load; but the Beetle himself does not appear, for the mouth of the erupting cone remains closed by the plug ejected. Everything happens in secret, sheltered from the indiscretion of the light. ”

“ It even seems as though a day would come when legal murder will disappear from our codes: instead of killing the criminal, we shall strive to cure his infirmity. We shall fight the virus of crime as we fight that of yellow fever or of the plague. But when may we expect to see this absolute respect for human life? Will it take hundreds and thousands of years to come into being? Possibly. Conscience is so slow in emerging from its slough. ”

“ CHAPTER I THE CETONIÆ
My hermitage boasts a long, wide lilac-walk. When May is here and the two rows of bushes, bending beneath their load of clustering blooms, form pointed arches overhead, this walk becomes a chapel, in which the loveliest festival of the year is celebrated beneath the kisses of the morning sun: a peaceful festival, with no flags flapping at the windows, no expenditure of gun-powder, no drunken squabbles ”

“ This persistence of life in such puny creatures deprived of food rouses our astonishment. It reminds us of the grubs of the Attelabus-beetle, which, subjected to the drought of summer in their little kegs made of a strip of oak-leaf, cease eating and slumber, half-dead, for four or five months, until the autumn rains have softened their food. ”

“ One only has enclosed itself in a cocoon, which is correctly made but very much reduced in size. If there is a living insect within, it can only be a dwarf. In the middle of September, I [251] open the cabin myself, for there is nothing yet, at this late period, to announce an impending natural fracture.
The contents fill me with delight. They consist of a Cetonia, alive and kicking, all brilliant with metallic gleams and streaked with a few white stripes, like those of the species who have developed freely in the great heap of earth-mould. ”

“ The Carabus is expeditious in his love-affairs. A male passing in the crowd flings himself upon a female, the first that comes, without any previous flirting. The she thus bestridden lifts her head a little as a sign of acquiesence, while her rider whips her neck with the tips of his antennæ. When the coupling is finished—and it does not take long—the two separate abruptly, recuperate their strength by a mouthful of the Snail served up for their food, after which they both get married again, the wedding being repeated so long as males remain available. ”

“ We recognize one another by our speech, by the tone, the inflection of our voices. They are dumb, deprived of all means of vocal appeal. There remains the sense of smell. Minotaurus finding his mate makes me think of my friend Tom, the house-dog, who, when the moon stirs his emotions, lifts his nose in the air, sniffs the breeze and jumps the garden-walls, eager to obey the remote and magical summons; he puts me in mind of the Great Peacock Moth,2 who hastens from miles afield to pay his respects to the newly-hatched maid. ”

“ They come out at night and solemnly stroll to and fro, now on the wire [189] trellis, now on the pile of wood that represents the pine-stump to which they must hasten when the egg-laying season arrives. Never do they touch the provisions, though these are kept fresh by almost daily renewals; never do they nibble at the fruit, at the dainties in which the Capricorn delights. They scorn to eat.
Worse still: apparently they disdain to pair. I watch them every evening for nearly a month. What melancholy lovers! There is no eagerness on the part of the male, no impetuous hurry to woo his mate ”

“ It is the Cetonia. The handsome insect has [5] not yet recovered from the chill of morning; it lies slumbering all golden on the lilac-blossoms, unconscious of danger, incapable of flight. It is plentiful. Five or six are quickly caught. I intervene, so that the rest may be left in peace. The booty is placed in a box, with a bed of blossoms. Presently, during the heat of the day, the Cetonia, with a long thread tied to one leg, will fly in circles round the little girl’s head.
Childhood is pitiless because it does not understand, for nothing is more cruel than ignorance. ”

“ Respectable married life becomes impossible from the moment when the house falls in from day to day.
No matter: the first three experiments, made when scares, time after time renewed, had not yet tangled the delicate connecting thread, seem to point to a certain constancy in the Minotaur’s household. The male and female recognize each other, find each other in the confusion of events which my mischievous doings force upon them; they exhibit a mutual fidelity, a very unusual [84] quality in the insect class, which is but too prone to forget its matrimonial obligations. ”

“ The Pedestrian Locust, hopping among the saxifrage amid the lofty summits of the hills, explains his incapacity to fly by reasons of a like order; so does the Staphylinus his skimpy jacket, the Necydalis his short coat, the Myodites her Fly-like aspect. Each after his fashion varies the monotony of the general theme; each strikes a special note in the universal concert. It is not so easy to see why the Scarab abandons his fore-tarsi, why the Iris-beetle has only one claw to her fingers, why the Geotrupes-grub is born mutilated. ”