Jean-Henri Fabre

“ When there is no wind and the sun is shining brightly, the warmth-loving insect comes to its threshold to bask luxuriously in the hottest rays, or it will even timidly venture outside and, step by step, stroll over the surface of the spongy bank, polishing its wings as it goes. Even so does the little Grey Lizard behave, when the sun once more begins to warm the old wall that represents his native land.
But vain would be our search in winter, even in the most sheltered refuges, for a Cerceris, Sphex, Philanthus, Bembex or other Wasp with carnivorous grubs. ”

“ At this moment of the return to the nest, I see nothing particular in the play of the antennæ. Without once letting go her prey, the Bembex scratches a little in front of her, at the very spot where she has alighted, gives a push with her head and straightway enters, with the Fly under her abdomen. The sand falls in, the door closes and the Wasp is at home.
It makes no difference that I have seen the Bembex return to her nest hundreds of times; it is always with fresh astonishment that I behold the keen-sighted insect find without hesitation a door whose presence there is nothing to indicate. ”

“ The insect moves about; when it strays too far, I restore it to its position. At last the Cerceris shows her wide face and emerges from the hole; my heart beats with excitement. The Wasp stalks about the approaches to her home for a few moments, sees the Weevil, brushes against him, turns round, passes several times over his back and flies away without honouring my capture with a touch of her mandibles: the capture which I was at such pains to acquire. I am confounded, I am floored. Fresh attempts at other holes lead to fresh disappointments. ”

“ After twenty-four days spent in the nymphal stage, the insect has achieved the perfect state. It tears the cocoon that holds it captive, opens itself a passage through the sand and comes out one fine morning into the light of day, undazzled by that hitherto unknown radiance. Bathed in sunshine, the Sphex brushes her antennæ and her wings, passes and repasses her legs over her abdomen, washes her eyes with her front tarsi wetted with saliva, like a cat; and, her toilet finished, flies away joyfully: she has two months to live. ”

“ The cleanliness and freshness of the Buprestes whom she buries in her lair incline one to believe that she must seize these Beetles at the moment when they are leaving the wooden galleries in which their final metamorphosis has taken place. But what inconceivable instinct urges her, a creature that lives solely on the nectar of flowers, to procure, in the face of a thousand difficulties, animal food for carnivorous children which she will never see, and to take up her post on utterly dissimilar trees, which conceal deep down in their trunks the insects destined to become her prey? ”

“ It is not at a time when the bleak mistral howls for a fortnight without intermission and freezes the ground hard, it is not at a time when snowstorms follow close upon that icy blast, that the delicate transformations of the nymphosis are able to take place or the insect to dream of abandoning the shelter of its cocoon. It needs the warm moisture of the earth under the summer sun before it can leave its cell. ”

“ Nevertheless, the prey cannot be packed into the cell alive, as we pack the cattle destined to furnish fresh meat for the passengers and crew of a ship. What indeed would become of the delicate egg laid among live provisions? What would become of the feeble larva, a tiny grub which the least touch would bruise, among lusty Beetles who would go on kicking for weeks with their long, spurred legs? We need here two things which seem utterly irreconcilable: the immobility of death combined with the sweet wholesomeness of life. ”

“ The Wasp’s nest is certainly there, a few [255] inches below the ground; in a little cell dug in the cool, firm sand lies an egg, perhaps a grub for which the mother caters from day to day, bringing it Flies, the unvarying food of the Bembex in their first state. The mother has to be able at any moment to enter the nest, as she flies up carrying in her legs the nurseling’s daily portion of game, even as the bird of prey enters its eyrie with the food for its young in its talons. ”

“ First, there is a wild struggle in the tangle of the grass between the Wasp and the Eristalis, who is bigger than her assailant. The Fly is unarmed, but powerful; a shrill buzz of her wings tells of her desperate resistance. The Wasp carries a dagger; but she does not understand the methodical use of it, is unacquainted with the vulnerable points so well known to the marauders who need a prey that keeps fresh for long. What her nurselings want is a mess of Flies that moment reduced to pulp; and, so long as this is achieved, the Wasp cares little how the game is killed. ”

“ None would dream of destroying the pretty Wasp that goes fluttering nimbly from one path to the other, that visits this corner of the garden, then that, then the next, then the one over there; none dreams either—and none, unfortunately, can dream—of assisting her to multiply.
In the immense majority of cases the insect evades our influence: to exterminate it, if it be harmful, to propagate it, if it be useful, are impracticable undertakings for us. By a singular contrast of strength and weakness, man cuts through the neck of continents to join two seas, he pierces the Alps, he weighs the sun ”

“ She whose impassiveness, whose care to stop up the burrow would at first have made one take her for the mistress of the house, was in reality a mere usurper. How is it that the Sphex, who is larger and more powerful than her adversary, allows herself to be robbed with impunity, confining herself to fruitless pursuits and fleeing like a coward when the interloper, who does not even appear to notice her presence, turns round to leave the burrow? Can it be that, in insects as in man, the first chance of success lies in de l’audace, encore de l’audace et toujours de l’audace? ”

“ The Bembex, laden with game, alights with almost mathematical precision on the threshold of her door, which is blocked with sand and indistinguishable from the rest of the sandy expanse. Where my sight and recollection are at fault, their eyes and their memory possess a sureness that is very nearly infallible. One would think that insects had something more subtle than mere remembrance, a kind of intuition for places to which we have nothing similar, in short, an indefinable faculty which I call memory, failing any other expression to denote it. There can be no name for the unknown. ”

“ The Wasp has refinements of taste unknown to us: she must have the prey intact, with all its elegance of form and colouring, no broken limbs, no gaping wounds, no hideous disembowelling. Her victim has all the freshness of the live insect; it retains, without the loss of [41] a single speck, that fine tinted bloom which is destroyed by the mere contact of our fingers. If the insect were dead, if it were really a corpse, how great would be our difficulty in obtaining a like result! Each of us can kill an insect by brutally crushing it under foot ”

“ Why does she not pounce upon her and get rid of the little wretch? The Wasp is quick enough on the wing to catch her; and, small though the capture be, the larvæ will not scorn it, since any sort of Fly suits them. But no: the Bembex flees from a foe whom she could cut to bits with a single stroke of her mandibles; it is to me as though I saw my Cat fleeing in terror from a Mouse. The ardent huntress of Flies is hunted by a Fly, and a small one at that. I bow before the facts without hoping ever to understand this inversion of the parts played by each insect. ”

“ The Wasp, not at all intimidated by my presence, bestrides her victim and advances, bearing her head proudly aloft and hauling the Cricket, who trails between her legs, by an antenna held in her mandibles. If the ground be bare, it is easy to drag the victim along; but, should some grass-tuft spread the network of its shoots across the road, it is curious to observe the amazement of the Sphex when one of these little ropes suddenly thwarts her efforts ”

“ There are some—and their number seems to increase daily—who settle the stupendous question with magnificent audacity. Give them half-a-dozen cells, a bit of protoplasm and a diagram for demonstration; and they will account to you for everything. The organic world, the intellectual and moral world, everything derives from the original cell, evolving by means of its own energies. It’s as simple as A B C. Instinct, roused by a chance action that has proved favourable to the animal, is an acquired habit. And men argue on this basis, invoking natural selection, heredity, the struggle for life. ”

“ Every now and again she sifts the sand at the entrance; then she flies away and disappears, perhaps to dig other cells elsewhere and to stock them in the same way. But, however long she may stay away, she never forgets the young larva so scantily provided for; the instinct of a mother tells her the hour when the grub has finished its food and is calling for fresh nourishment. She therefore returns to the nest, of which she is wonderfully capable of discovering the invisible entrance; she goes down into the earth, this time carrying a bulkier piece of game. ”

“ The formidable enemy, the fearsome foe that must be avoided at all costs, is there, sitting motionless on the sand, near the house. It is a miserable little Fly, feeble and inoffensive in appearance. This insignificant Gnat is the terror of the Bembex. The scourge of the Fly-tribe, the fierce slayer who so swiftly wrings the necks of colossal Gad-flies sated with blood from an Ox’s back, does not enter her own residence because she sees herself watched by another Fly, a regular pigmy, who would make scarcely a mouthful for her larvæ. ”