Jean-Henri Fabre

“ When he has to dig himself a retreat that shall shelter him against the rigours of winter, the Geotrupes really deserves his name: none can compare with him for the depth of the pit or the perfection and rapidity of the work. In sandy ground, easily excavated, I have dug up some that were buried over a yard deep. Others carried their digging farther still, tiring both my patience and my implements. There you have the skilled well-sinker, the inimitable earth-borer. When the cold sets in, he will be able to descend to some stratum where the frost has lost its terrors. ”

“ The Copris mother does more in her humble household. Alone and entirely unaided, she provides each of her children with a cake whose crust, hardening and constantly renovated with the maternal trowel, becomes an inviolable cradle. So intense is her affection that she neglects herself to the extent of losing all need for food. Down in a burrow, for four consecutive months, she [171] watches over her brood, attending to the wants of the germ, the grub, the nymph and the perfect insect. She does not return to the glad outer life until all her family are emancipated. ”

“ Zealous to excess before the laying is over, she is indifferent afterwards. The finished work no longer concerns her. Imagine a pebble in the place of the ovoid or pear: the mother would treat it no better and no worse. One sole preoccupation urges her: to get away. I can see that by the manner in which she paces the enclosure that keeps her prisoner.
That is instinct’s way: it buries perseveringly the lifeless lump and leaves the quickened lump to perish on the surface. The work to be done is everything; the work done no longer counts. Instinct sees the future and knows nothing of the past. ”

“ To complete the cycle of the year in the adult form, to see one’s self surrounded by one’s sons at the spring festival, to double and treble one’s family: that surely is a most exceptional privilege in the insect world. The Bees, the aristocracy of instinct, perish once the honey-pot is filled; the Butterflies, the aristocracy not of instinct but of dress, die when they have fastened their packet of eggs in a propitious spot; the richly-armoured Ground-beetles succumb when the germs of a posterity are scattered beneath the stones. ”

“ As he watered his patch of onions in the spring, the Egyptian peasant would see from time to time a fat black insect pass close by, hurriedly trundling a ball of Camel-dung backwards. He would watch the queer rolling thing in amazement, even as the Provençal peasant watches it to this day.
No one fails to be surprised when he first finds himself in the presence of the Scarab, who, with his head down and his long hind-legs in the air, pushes with might and main his huge pill, the source of so many awkward tumbles. ”

“ If the grub with the outrageous hump were to show itself in public, it would doubtless represent the supreme expression of the beautiful in the eyes of the Oniticellus and the Onthophagus. Because it is a recluse, nobody sees it. Its charms would remain unknown but for the philosophical observer, who says to himself:
‘Everything is good that harmonizes with the functions to be fulfilled. The grub requires a cement-bag to safeguard its provisions against desiccation; it is born with a knapsack on its back so that it may live.’
Thus is the hump excused and abundantly justified. ”

“ To close the transaction in a fitting manner, I take the victuallers to the cages and show them the Beetle rolling his pill. They gaze in wonder at the funny creature that looks as if it were playing with its ball; they laugh at its tumbles and scream with delight at its clumsy struggles when it comes to grief and lies on its back kicking. A charming sight, especially when the lollipops bulging in the youngsters’ cheeks are just beginning to melt deliciously. Thus the zeal of my little collaborators is kept alive. ”

“ The father’s usefulness is manifest so long as there is a house to dig and wealth to amass; it is less evident when the mother is cutting up her loaf into rations, shaping her ovoids, polishing them and watching over them. Can it be that the cavalier also takes part in this delicate task, which would rather seem to be a feminine monopoly? Is he able, with his sharp leg, to slice up the cake, to remove from it the requisite quantity for a larva’s sustenance and to round the piece into a sphere, thus shortening the work, which could be revised and perfected by the mother? ”

“ They have one crime only to expiate: that of poverty. So far as I am concerned, for half a century and more I have painfully climbed that steep ascent, leaving garments stained with blood and sweat on its sharp crags; I have strained every nerve, drained myself dry, spent my strength recklessly in the struggle to hoist up to safety that crushing burden, my daily bread; and hardly is the loaf balanced when it slips off, slides down and is lost in the abyss. Try again, poor Sisyphus, try again until the load, falling for the last time, smashes your head and sets you free at last. ”

“ He has read a little and has a keen desire for knowledge, so he is not frightened by the terms Scarabæus, Geotrupes, Copris or Onthophagus when I name the insects which he has dug up the day before and kept for me in a box.
At early dawn in the dog-days, when my insects are busy with their nest-building, you may see him in the meadows. When night falls and the heat begins to lessen, he is still there; and all day long, till far into the night, he passes to and fro among the pill-rollers, who are attracted from every quarter by the reek of the victuals strewn by his Sheep. ”

“ In the receptacles which are not moistened by artificial showers, things come to a miserable end. The dry shell, almost as hard as an apricot- or peach-stone, offers indomitable resistance. The insect’s legs manage to grate [170] off barely so much as a pinch of dust. I hear the tools rasping against the unyielding wall; then silence follows and not a prisoner survives to tell the tale. The mother too perishes in that home which has remained dry when the season for dryness has passed. The Copris, like the Sacred Beetle, needs the rain to soften the granite shell. ”

“ The rightful owner, the Beetle who throughout has kept the place of honour, behind the ball, the one in short who has done almost all the carting by himself, sets to work to dig the dining-room. Beside him is the ball, with number two clinging to it, shamming dead. Number one attacks the sand with his sharp-edged forehead and his toothed legs; he flings armfuls of it behind him; and the work of excavating proceeds apace. Soon the Beetle has disappeared from view in the half-dug cavern. Whenever he returns to the upper air with a load, he invariably glances at his ball to see if all is well. ”

“ In the building of the nest, the family safeguard, we see the highest manifestation of the faculties of instinct. That clever architect, the bird, teaches us as much; and the insect, with its still more diverse talents, repeats the lesson, telling us that maternity is the supreme inspirer of instinct. Entrusted with the preservation of the species, which is of more importance than the preservation of individuals, maternity awakens in the drowsiest intelligence marvellous gleams of foresight ”

“ These scrupulous cares, cares occupying every moment, have results which would strike the attention of the least-experienced observer. The egg-shaped vessels, or better the cradles of the nursery, are wonderful in their regular curves and in their neatness. We see none of those chinks with a blob of putty showing through, none of those cracks, of those peeling scales, in short none of those defects which, towards the end, nearly always disfigure the Sacred Beetle’s pears, handsome though they be at the start. ”

“ The Geotrupes do not leave their burrows until after sundown. With the last glimmer of daylight, if the air be calm and the temperature mild, they roam about, flying low with a humming noise, seeking the materials which have accumulated for them in the course of the day. If they come upon something that suits them, they drop down heavily, tumbling over in their clumsy eagerness, thrust themselves into their new treasure and spend the best part of the night in burying it. ”

“ In August I break the casket in which I hear the helpless captive chafing. I place the insect, the only one of its species, in a cage together with some Gymnopleuri. There is plenty of fresh food provided. This is the moment, said I to myself, when we take refreshment after so long an abstinence. Well, I was wrong: the new recruit shows no interest in the victuals, notwithstanding my invitations, my summons to the tempting heap. What he wants above all is the joys of the light. He scales the metal trelliswork, sets himself in the sun, and there motionless takes his fill of its beams. ”

“ What the Geotrupes buries and abandons the next day is not lost: far from it. Nothing is lost in the world’s balance-sheet; at stock-taking, the total never varies. The little lump of dung buried by the insect will make the nearest tuft of grass grow a luxuriant green. A Sheep passes, crops the bunch of grass: all the better for the leg of mutton which man is waiting for; the Dung-beetle’s industry has procured us a savoury mouthful. ”

“ Here then is the mutilation on which the philosophers base their theory. And it is no rare accident: every year the cripples outnumber the others when the time comes for retiring to winter-quarters. In their final labours they seem no more embarrassed than those who have been spared by the buffeting of life. On both sides I find the same nimbleness of movement, the same dexterity in kneading the reserve of bread which will enable them to bear the first rigours of winter with equanimity in their underground homes. In scavenger’s work, the maimed rival the others. ”

“ Rich though his booty be, the Geotrupes leaves it at sunset to dally in the last gleams of daylight and to go in search of a new workplace. With him, one would say, the wealth acquired does not count; the only thing of value is that to be acquired. Then what does he do with his warehouses, renewed each twilight in favourable weather? It is obvious that the Dung-beetle is incapable of consuming all those provisions in a single night. He has such a superabundance of victuals in his larder that he does not know how to dispose of them; he is surfeited with good things by which he will not profit ”

“ The grub sheds its skin and becomes a nymph. There are very few inhabitants of the insect world that can compare for sober beauty with the delicate creature which, with wing-cases recumbent in front of it like a wide-pleated scarf and fore-legs folded under its head like those of the adult Beetle when counterfeiting death, calls to mind a mummy kept by its linen bandages in the approved hieratic attitude. ”

“ It cannot be maintained that the grub is endowed with its strange talent to protect itself against the troubles brought upon it by human curiosity. What has it to fear from man, in its life underground? Nothing, or next to nothing. Since the Sacred Beetle started rolling his ball under the broad canopy of the sky, I am probably the first to worry his family in order to make them talk to me and instruct me. Others will come after me perhaps; but they will be very few! No, man’s destructive interference is not worth the pains of providing one’s self with a trowel and cement. ”

“ With this crude equipment, excellently adapted to pickaxe-work though it be, how does the Scarab obtain the natal dwelling, the oval nest so daintily polished and glazed within? Does her foot, a regular saw, fitted with enormous teeth, begin to rival the artist’s brush in delicacy from the moment when it is inserted through the narrow orifice of the sack? Why not? I have said elsewhere, and this is the moment to say it again: the tool does not make the workman. The insect exercises its own particular talents with any kind of tool with which it is supplied. ”

“ The mother, therefore, enjoys in her underground home that rare privilege for an insect, the joy of knowing her family; she hears her [139] children scratching at the shell to obtain their liberty; she is present at the bursting of the casket which she has fashioned so conscientiously; maybe she helps the exhausted weaklings when the ground has not been cool enough to soften the walls. Mother and progeny leave the underworld together; and together they arrive at the autumn banquets, when the sun is mild and the ovine manna abounds along the paths. ”

“ O ingenious theorists, so triumphant on paper, so impotent in the face of facts, just listen to me for a moment! If the loss of the front fingers is a fortunate circumstance for the Sacred Beetle, who faithfully transmits the leg of olden time fortuitously maimed, why should it not be so with the other limbs, if they too chanced to lose their terminal appendage, a tiny, feeble filament, which is very nearly useless and which, owing to its fragility, is a cause of awkward encounters with the roughness of the soil? ”

“ As long as the hoard lasts, the Copris, engrossed in the pleasures of the table, does not return to the surface. The home is not abandoned until the larder is emptied, when the insect recommences its nocturnal quest, finds a new treasure and scoops out another temporary dwelling.
As his trade is merely that of a gatherer of manure, shovelling in the stuff without any preliminary manipulation, the Copris is evidently quite ignorant, for the time being, of the art of kneading and modelling a globular loaf. Besides, his short, clumsy legs seem utterly irreconcilable with any such art. ”

“ What excitement over a single patch of Cow-dung! Never did adventurers hurrying from the four corners of the earth display such eagerness in working a Californian claim. Before the sun becomes too hot, they are there in their hundreds, large and small, of every sort, shape and size, hastening to carve themselves a slice of the common cake. There are some that labour in the open air and scrape the surface; there are others that dig themselves galleries in the thick of the heap, in search of choice veins ”

“ How does the clumsy Sacred Beetle, who is so stiff in her movements, accomplish a work of this kind in complete darkness, at the bottom of a hole crammed with provisions and hardly leaving room to stir? When I consider the delicacy of the workmanship and then the rough tools of the worker—angular limbs capable of cutting into hard or even rocky soil—I think of an Elephant trying to make lace. ”