Black beetle

“ The black beetle has always been a maligned insect: it is a sort of nigger among insects, apparently born only to be poisoned, drowned, or smashed; but some one ought, decidedly, to take the race in hand and see of what it is capable. I have, myself, a horror of most of the creatures I have named, but happen not to have been reared with an aversion for Cats, and I have a strong belief that if I tried hard (which I am not going to do) I might get upon friendly relations with the other animals named above, which, I suppose, most of us are taught, when children, to dislike ”

“ That were unjust to the crew of the Julia, and would give no adequate idea of their sufferings. As a purring tabby to a roaring jaguar, so is a British black-beetle to a cock-roach of the Southern Seas. We back our assertion by a quotation from our lamented friend Captain Cringle, who in his especially graphic and attractive style thus hits off the peculiarities of this graceful insect. "When full grown," saith Thomas, "it is a large dingy brown-coloured beetle, about two inches long, with six legs, and two feelers as long as its body. ”

“ The attacks of all species are confined to the growing point and as far downward as the wood is tender and susceptible to the action of their powerful mandibles.
The black beetle makes its attacks when fully mature, eating its way into the soft tissues and generally selecting the axil of a young leaf as the point of least resistance. Others simply deposit their eggs, which hatch out, and the resulting grub is provided with jaws powerful enough to do the same mischief. ”

“ It is the name given to a fair-sized black Beetle, closely related to the earth-borers, the Geotrupes.1 This is a peaceable, inoffensive creature, but even better provided with horns than Minos’ Bull. None among our armour-loving insects wears so threatening a panoply. The male carries on his corselet a bundle of three sharp spears, parallel and pointed forwards. Imagine him the size of a Bull: Theseus himself, if he met him in the fields, would not dare to face his terrible trident. ”

“ Then more brown objects, larvae of dragon-flies and water-beetles, detach themselves from the stems of the plants and cruise up and down seeking what they may devour. Other creatures feeding and swimming among or beneath the plants crawl out on to the upper surface, and the water-beetles come up to breathe, or to play upon the surface. One of the largest of these is a very fine black beetle, a vegetable-feeding creature. It is most interesting to see two of them--they generally live in pairs--browsing on one of the fern-like plants of the Thames. ”

“ While speaking of insects, I ought not to forget that this evening one of the negro slaves who had been looking for dry wood, presented me, to my great surprize, with a beetle no less than three or four inches in length, and above two in breadth, called in Surinam the rhinoceros, on account of its proboscis or horn, which is hooked, forked, and thick as a goose-quill; on the head it has many hard polished knobs; the limbs are six; the wings are large, and the whole animal is perfectly black, being the largest of all the beetle kind in America. ”

“ A dead beetle loses all this wonderful luster. Even on the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these jeweled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvae, or the tiny chrysalids suspended by their tails, although it is the wild bindweed that is ever their favorite abiding place. ”

“ I should like to learn something of her larva. As I cannot do this with the Beetle that visits my Moles, I apply myself to a kindred species, as nearly as possible her equivalent in respect of size.
In winter, when I raise the stones beside the foot-paths, I often come across the larva of the Stinking Staphylinus (S. olens, Müll.) , or Devil’s Coach-horse. The ugly animal, which is not very different in shape from the adult, measures about an inch in length. The head and thorax are a fine, glossy black; the abdomen is brown and bristles with sparse hairs. ”

“ Beetles also are utilised for ornament, and the fondness of the Indian for black is shown in his rejection of such beetles as the gaudy-coloured Longicornes and his preference for the shiny breastplate of a fat squat beetle in black armour. ”

“ The adult insect is a small, broad-oval beetle, about three-sixteenths of an inch long, black in color, but is covered with exceedingly minute scales, which give it a marbled black-and-white appearance. ”

“ There is no picking and choosing: what the mandibles encounter they crunch. And this goes on indefinitely, always with an unimpaired appetite, so that the insect attains the perfect stage without a check. When the back is black as ebony and the belly an amethystine violet, I set my Geotrupes at liberty. I am filled with amazement by what he has taught me.
An inverse experiment was essential. A [222] Dung-beetle thrives on rotten leaves; shall I be equally successful in rearing an eater of vegetable refuse on dung? ”

“ Some dismal-looking Flies, half black and half white, are flying indolently from gallery to gallery, evidently with the object of laying their eggs there. Many of them are hanging dry and lifeless in the Spiders’ webs. At other places the entire surface of a bank is hung with the dried corpses of a certain Beetle, called the Sitaris. Among the corpses, however, are a few live Beetles, both male and female. The female Beetle invariably disappears into the Bees’ dwelling. ”

“ Another insect, the church-yard beetle, which is of a jet black colour, is related by the great Linnæus as producing the most alarming feelings upon the minds of the superstitious and ignorant among the peasantry of Sweden.
The death-tick beetle has also a terrible reputation for frightening people. This little creature takes up its abode in decayed wood, and thus frequently makes the bed-post its dwelling-place, or ensconces itself in the wainscot of an old room. ”

“ These little yellow and black beetles, which illumine our way like a cloud of tiny meteors, have indeed a wonderful power, for the light which they produce within their own bodies is a cold glow, totally different from any fire of human agency.
In some species there seems to be a most romantic 189 reason for their brilliance. Down among the grass blades are lowly, wingless creatures—the female fireflies, which, as twilight falls, leave their earthen burrows in the turf and, crawling slowly to the summit of some plant, they display the tiny lanterns which Nature has kindled within their bodies. ”

“ The adult flies readily and is often seen crawling on window panes and screens. It is during the adult stage that the black carpet beetle spreads most easily from house to house.
The female beetle lays small, white, fragile eggs upon fabrics, in floor cracks, or in any sheltered spot near its food. The length of life of the parent insect ranges from 3 to 35 days during April, May, and June. Seldom are adults found later than July, except in very warm storage houses. ”

“ If you put down your hand to touch him, and he rears in response, ten to one you will withdraw it in alarm at sight of him. In England these beetles often enough find their way into larders or cellars, seeking whom or what they may devour; and when the servants light upon them, they almost invariably decline to touch them: there is a general opinion about that the ugly and threatening black beasts are uncanny and poisonous, or else why should they turn up their tails at you in such an insulting fashion? ”

“ Panic seized the human herd, grovelling for shrimps in the sandy soil with its tufts of red grasses. Milling in an uneasy mob, they cowered under the lashes of the antenna of the beetle guards, which sacrificed their backs through their hair garments whenever any of them tried to bolt.
Nearer and nearer came the beetles, louder and more penetrating the shriek of their rasping legs. Now the swarm came into sight, rank after rank of the shell-clad monsters, leaping fifteen feet at a bound with perfect precision, until they had formed a solid phalanx all around the humans. ”

“ Far overhead shoot the strong-winged males, searching for their minute insect food, weaving glowing lines over all the shadowy landscape, and apparently heedless of all beneath them. Yet when the dim little beacon, hung out with the hopefulness of instinct upon the grass blade, is seen, all else is forgotten and the beetle descends to pay court to the poor, worm-like creature, so unlike him in appearance, but whose little illumination is her badge of nobility. The gallant suitor is as devoted as if the object of his affection were clad in all the gay colours of a butterfly ”

“ I observe its hatching. I watch the new-born grub through my magnifying-glass as it leaves the egg. The hind-legs which the adult Beetle uses as powerful squeezers for pressing the material which he has gathered and making it into sausages are for the moment reduced to the sorriest of appendages, mere useless [257] counterfeits. They lie withered against the larva’s back. Bent into a hook, their extremities avoid the ground and turn in towards the insect’s back, without furnishing the least support for standing. They are not legs but uncertain attempts, awkward experiments. ”

“ One could easily imagine this mutilation to be the result of the insect’s hard work. Poking about, digging [39] and raking and slicing, at one time in the gravelly soil, at another in the stringy mass of manure, do not constitute a task in which organs so delicate as the tarsi can be employed without risk. And here is an even more serious matter: when the Beetle is rolling his ball backwards, with his head down, it is with the extremities of his fore-feet that he presses against the ground. ”

“ Perhaps we shall end by attributing our own logic to the insect. After all, it will be just as remarkable to see a wonderful agreement prevail between that which reason dictates to us and that which instinct dictates to the animal.
A grave danger threatens the Sacred Beetle in its grub state: the drying-up of the food. The crypt in which [26] the larval life is spent has a layer of earth, some third of an inch thick, for a ceiling. Of what avail is this slender screen against the canicular heat that burns the soil, baking it like a brick to a far greater depth? ”

“ There was nothing but a swarm of beetles, walking about like men with shells upon their backs.
And now Tommy saw evidences of Bram's devilish control of the swarm. For out of the cloud dropped what seemed to be a phalanx of beetle guards, the military police of beetledom, and, lashing fiercely with their tentacles, they drove back all the swarm that sought to join their companions in their ghoulish feast. There was just so much food and no more; the rest must seek theirs further.
BUT even beetles, it may be presumed, are not entirely under discipline at all times. ”

“ It is a dangerous ascent and the merest trifle may yet ruin everything. For see, a leg slips on a smooth bit of gravel! Down come ball and Beetle, all mixed up together. And the insect begins over again, with indefatigable obstinacy. Ten times, twenty times, he will attempt the hopeless ascent, until his persistence vanquishes all obstacles, or until, wisely recognizing the futility of his efforts, he adopts the level road. ”

“ This is the work of patient after-touches which perfect the curves and leave on the soft loam a series of stippled impressions similar to those which the potter of prehistoric days distributed over his big-bellied jars with the ball of his thumb.
That finishes the work. The insect will begin all over again under a fresh carcase; for each burrow has one calabash and no more, even as with the Sacred Beetle and her pears. ”

“ In this voluptuous bed of stamens and petals he is encrusted, motionless; he remains there night and day, intoxicated by the heady fragrance, drunk with nectar. It needs the stimulus of fierce sunlight to arouse him from his bliss and set him soaring with a buzzing flight.
To watch the idle Beetle in his sybaritic bed, without further information, one would hardly suspect him of gluttony. What nourishment can he find on a rose or a cluster of hawthorn-blossom? At most a tiny drop of sugary exudation, for he does not browse upon the petals, still less upon the foliage. ”

“ At one time it is provided with an egg, at another it is eaten, while no accident ever happens by inadvertence to the exactly similar pills kneaded by the Copris.
That the insect, finding itself in this mixed assembly, should rip open what is still inanimate matter and respect what is already a cradle, that it should discriminate between the lawful and the unlawful, in circumstances such as these, seems to me incapable of explanation, if there be no guide but senses resembling our own. It is useless to say that it is a case of sight: the Beetle works in absolute darkness. ”

“ The curious thing was that, on it, produced apparently by some process of photogravure, was an illustration of a species of beetle with which I felt that I ought to be acquainted, and yet was not. It was of a dull golden green; the colour was so well brought out,—even to the extent of seeming to scintillate, and the whole thing was so dexterously done that the creature seemed alive. ”

“ When the earth is exceptionally cool, the bursting of the shell and the deliverance of its occupant can occur at an earlier period; but in ground scorched by the pitiless summer sun, as is usually the case in my district, the Beetle, however eager he may be to see the light, must needs wait for the first rain to soften his stubborn shell. A downpour is to him a question of life and death. Horapollo, that echo of the Egyptian magi, saw true when he made water play its part in the birth of the sacred insect. ”