Jean-Henri Fabre

“ Let us now show up the Dioxys. At the time when the work of construction is in progress, she is an impudent visitor of the nests, exploiting with the same effrontery the enormous cities of the Mason-bee of the Sheds and the solitary cupolas of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles. An innumerable population, coming and going, humming and buzzing, strikes her with no awe. On the tiles hanging from the walls of my porch I see her, with her red scarf round her body, stalking with sublime assurance over the ridged expanse of nests. Her black schemes leave the swarm profoundly indifferent ”

“ If the impression produced by the violent seizure of another's property is strong enough to be handed down by heredity, how deep should be the impression of the actual moment when the Mason-bee is in the first flush of success! The precious advantage is fresh in the memory, dating from that very instant; the mother has but to continue in order to create a method of installation favourable in the highest degree to her and hers. Come, poor Bee! Throw aside your exhausting labours, follow the evolutionists' advice and, as you have the means at your disposal, become a parasite! ”

“ There was no time for nest-building and foraging; if she would save her family, she must perforce appropriate the fruit of another's toil. Thus relieved of the tedium and fatigue of work, freed of every care but that of laying eggs, she left a progeny which duly inherited the maternal slothfulness and handed this down in its turn, in a more and more accentuated form, as generation followed on generation; for the struggle for life made this expeditious way of establishing yourself one of the most favourable conditions for the success of the offspring. ”

“ When the Chalicodoma of the Sheds works, in her thousands, at her Cyclopean edifice, each has her own home, a sacred home where not one of the tumultuous swarm, except the proprietress, dreams of taking a mouthful of honey. It is as though there were a neighbourly understanding to respect the others' rights. Moreover, if some heedless one mistakes her cell and so much as alights on the rim of a cup that does not belong to her, forthwith the owner appears, admonishes her severely and soon calls her to order. ”

“ So, to avoid slow and painful work, to achieve an easy life, to give herself the leisure favourable to the settlement of her family, the erstwhile cotton-presser or collector of resin-drops took to gnawing hardened cement! She who once sipped the nectar of flowers made up her mind to chew concrete! Why, the poor wretch toils at her filing like a galley-slave! She spends more time in ripping up a cell than it would take her to make a cotton wallet and fill it with food. ”

“ And all day long, with not a sign of weariness, the same activity is maintained as long as the sun is high enough. When it is late, if the house is not yet closed, the Bee retires to her cell to spend the night there, head downwards, tip of her abdomen outside, a habit foreign to the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. Then and then alone the Mason rests; but it is a rest that is in a sense equivalent to work, for, thus placed, she blocks the entrance to the honey-store and defends her treasure against twilight or night marauders. ”

“ Countless ages, such as the evolutionists require, have made her adopt forcible usurpation as an inveterate habit. Moreover, robbery is so incomparably easy for the mother. No more cement to scratch up with her mandibles on the hard ground, no more mortar to knead, no more clay walls to build, no more pollen to gather on hundreds and hundreds of journeys. All is ready, board and lodging. Never was a better opportunity for allowing one's self a good time. There is nothing against it. The others, the workers, are imperturbable in their good-humour. ”

“ To deceive the eyes of their bird-tyrants, the Swift, the Swallow, the Chat and the others, these Chrysis-wasps, who glow like a carbuncle, like a nugget in the midst of its dark veinstone, certainly do not adapt themselves to the sand and the clay of their downs. The Green Grasshopper, we are told, thought out a plan for gulling his enemies by identifying himself in colour with the grass in which he dwells, whereas the Wasp, so rich in instinct and strategy, allowed herself to be distanced in the race by the dull-witted Locust! ”

“ And it is the honey of these well-guarded chambers that has to be reached by piercing a wall almost as hard as rock.
The parasite pluckily sets to; the idler becomes a glutton for work. Atom by atom, she perforates the general enclosure and scoops out a shaft just sufficient for her passage; she reaches the lid of the cell and gnaws it until the coveted provisions appear in sight. It is a slow and painful process, in which the feeble Stelis wears herself out, for the mortar is much the same as Roman cement in hardness. ”

“ Here is one of my travellers back.
Over waving corn, over fields all pink with sainfoin, she has covered the two miles and a half; and here she is, back at the nest, after foraging on the way, for the doughty creature arrives with her abdomen yellow with pollen. To come home again from the verge of the horizon is wonderful in itself; to come home with a well-filled pollen-brush is superlative economy. A journey, even a forced journey, always becomes a foraging-expedition. ”

“ She explores the slope on foot, inspects every nook and corner, sounds the soil with her antennae. She is a Mutilla, the scourge of the cradled grubs. The female has no wings, but, being a Wasp, she carries a sharp poniard. To novice eyes she would easily pass for a sort of robust Ant, distinguished from the common ruck by her garb of staring motley. The male, wide-winged and more gracefully shaped, hovers incessantly a few inches above the sandy expanse. For hours at a time, on the same spot, after the manner of the Scolia-wasp he spies the coming of the females out of the ground. ”

“ The air seems traversed by incessant trails of smoke, so straight and rapid is the worker's flight. Those on the way to the nest carry tiny pellets of mortar, the size of small shot; those who return at once settle on the driest and hardest spots. Their whole body aquiver, they scrape with the tips of their mandibles and rake with their front tarsi to extract atoms of earth and grains of sand, which, rolled between their teeth, become impregnated with saliva and form a solid mass. ”

“ In this implacable struggle of devourers and devoured, of pillagers and pillaged, of robbers and robbed, the Melecta deserves no more than we the title of ignoble; in ruining the Anthophora, she is but imitating man in one detail, man who is the infinite source of destruction. Her parasitism is no blacker than ours: she has to feed her offspring; and, possessing no harvesting-tools, ignorant besides of the art of harvesting, she uses the provisions of others who are better endowed with implements and talents. ”

“ When there is more than she needs, what earthly motive impels the Dioxys to destroy a rival in the germ stage? Why cannot she allow the larva, her mess-mate, to take advantage of the remains and afterwards to shift for itself as best it can? But no: the Mason-bee's offspring must needs be stupidly sacrificed on the top of provisions which will only grow mouldy and useless! I should be reduced to the gloomy lucubrations of a Schopenhauer if I once let myself begin on parasitism. ”

“ The how and why escapes us; what we dignify with the pretentious title of a law is but a way of looking at things with our mind, a very squint-eyed way, which we adopt for the requirements of our case. Our would-be laws contain but an infinitesimal shade of reality; often indeed they are but puffed out with vain imaginings. Such is the law of mimesis, which explains the Green Grasshopper by the green leaves in which this Locust settles and is silent as to the Crioceris, that coral-red Beetle who lives on the no less green leaves of the lily. ”

“ She persists in trying to fill her cracked receptacle, whence the provisions disappear as soon as stored away. She constantly alternates between builder's and harvester's work; she raises the edges of the cell with fresh rows of bricks; she brings provisions which I continue to abstract, so as to leave the breach always visible. She makes thirty-two journeys before my eyes, now for mortar, now for honey, and not once does she bethink herself of stopping the leakage at the bottom of her jar. ”

“ For three or four weeks, each Osmia is scrupulously faithful to her tube, which is laboriously filled with a set of chambers divided by earthen partitions. Marks of different colours painted on the thorax of the workers enable me to recognize individuals in the crowd. Each crystal gallery is the exclusive property of one Osmia; no other enters it, builds in it or hoards in it. If, through heedlessness, through momentary forgetfulness of her own house in the tumult of the city, some neighbour so much as comes and looks in at the door, the owner soon puts her to flight. ”

“ Nevertheless, the real proprietress seems to derive double courage and double strength from the feeling that she is in her rights. She takes up a permanent position on the nest and receives the other, each time that she ventures to approach, with an angry quiver of her wings, an unmistakable sign of her righteous indignation. The stranger, at last discouraged, retires from the field. Forthwith the Mason resumes her work, as actively as though she had not just undergone the hardships of a long journey. ”

“ My invention, in both cases alike, is a cumbrous tackle of which the Bee tries to rid herself at once by every possible means. To look to her for normal actions so long as she carries an apparatus, magnetized or not, upon her back is the same as expecting to study the natural habits of a Dog after tying a kettle to his tail.
The experiment with the magnet is impracticable. What would it tell us if the insect consented to it? In my opinion, it would tell us nothing. In the matter of the homing instinct, a magnet would have no more influence than a bit of straw. ”

“ Oh, don't come and forbid me to think, though it were but a dream, of a responsible human personality, of conscience, of duty, of the dignity of labour! Everything is linked together: if the animal is better off, as regards both itself and its race, for doing nothing and exploiting others, why should man, its descendant, show greater scruples? The principle that idleness is the mother of prosperity would carry us far indeed. ”

“ Time was when I used to share the common fears, when I hesitated before venturing into a swarm of Anthophorae or Chalicodomae; nowadays, I have quite got over those terrors. If you do not tease the insect, the thought of hurting you will never occur to it. At the worst, a single specimen, prompted by curiosity rather than anger, will come and hover in front of your face, examining you with some persistency, but employing a buzz as her only threat. ”

“ All things considered, is ignoble the right epithet to apply to parasitism? No doubt, in the human race, the idler who feeds at other people's tables is contemptible at all points; but must the animal bear the burden of the indignation inspired by our own vices? Our parasites, our scurvy parasites, live at their neighbour's expense: the animal never; and this changes the whole aspect of the question. I know of no instance, not one, excepting man, of parasites who consume the provisions hoarded by a worker of the same species. ”

“ As there is nothing, except the mark of my pencil, a mark devoid of meaning to the insect, to indicate that the auger has already been at work there, it may easily happen that the same operator, finding under her feet a spot already exploited by herself but effaced from her memory, repeats the thrust of her tool in a compartment which she believes herself to be discovering for the first time. However retentive its memory for places may be, we cannot admit that the insect remembers for weeks on end, as well as point by point, the topography of a nest covering a surface of some square yards. ”

“ I see others who spend as many as three hours on a single operation, three long hours of patient watching for me, in my anxiety to follow the whole performance to the end, three long hours of immobility for the insect, which is even more anxious to make sure of board and lodging for its egg. But then is it not a task of the utmost difficulty to introduce a hair into the thickness of a stone? To us, with all the dexterity of our fingers, it would be impossible; to the insect, which simply pushes with its belly, it is just hard work. ”

“ If the first starves the Mason's grub to death, if the second makes it perish in the egg, there are others who have a more pitiable ending in store for the worker's family. When the Bee's grub, all plump and fat and greasy, has finished its provisions and spun its cocoon wherein to sleep the slumber akin to death, the necessary period of preparation for its future life, these other enemies hasten to the nests whose fortifications are powerless against their hideously ingenious methods. ”

“ On the lid, it scrupulously stops up every pore that could admit so much as an atom; but it leaves the great opening that places the house at the mercy of the first-comer. It goes to that breach repeatedly, puts in its head, examines it, explores it with its antennae, nibbles the edges of it. And that is all. The mutilated cell shall stay as it is, with never a dab of mortar. The threatened part dates too far back for the Bee to think of troubling about it.
I have said enough, I think, to show the insect's mental incapacity in the presence of the accidental. ”