THE SACRED BEETLE: THE NYMPH; THE RELEASE
The larva increases in bulk as it eats the walls of its house from the
inside. Little by little, the belly of the pear is scooped out into a
cell whose capacity grows in proportion to the growth of its
inhabitant. Ensconced in its hermitage, supplied with board and
lodging, the recluse waxes big and fat. What more is wanted? Certain
hygienic duties have to be attended to, though it is no easy matter in
a cramped little niche nearly all the room in which is occupied by the
grub; the mortar incessantly elaborated by an excessively obliging
intestine must be shot somewhere when there is no breach that needs
repairing.
The larva is certainly not fastidious, but even so the bill of fare
must not be too outrageous. The humblest of the humble does not return
to what he or his kin have already digested. Matter from which the
intestinal alembic has extracted the last available atom yields nothing
more, unless we change both chemist and apparatus. What the Sheep, with
her fourfold stomach, has left behind as worthless residue is an
excellent thing for the grub, which also boasts a mighty paunch; but
the larva’s own droppings, though no doubt pleasing in their turn to
consumers of another class, are loathsome to the grub itself. Then
where shall the cumbrous refuse be stored, in a lodging of such
niggardly dimensions?
I have described elsewhere the singular industry of the Cotton-bees,
[26] whose larvæ, in order not to foul their provision of honey, make
from their digestive dregs an elegant casket, a masterpiece of inlaid
work. With the only material at its disposal in its secluded retreat,
with the filth that apparently ought to be an intolerable nuisance, the
grub of the Sacred Beetle produces a work less artistic than the
Cotton-bee’s but much more comfortable. Let us see how it is done.
Attacking its pear at the bottom of the neck, eating steadily downwards
and leaving nothing intact in its area of operations except a flimsy
wall necessary for its protection, the larva obtains a free space at
the back, in which its droppings are deposited without dirtying the
provisions. The hatching-chamber is the first to be filled up in this
way; then gradually more and more of the segment which has been eaten
into follows suit, always in the round part of the pear, which
consequently by degrees recovers its original compactness at the top,
while the bottom becomes less and less thick. Behind the grub is the
ever-increasing mass of used material; in front of it is the layer,
smaller day by day, of untouched food.
Complete development is attained in four or five weeks. By that time
there is in the belly of the pear an eccentric circular cavity, with
walls very thick towards the neck of the pear and very flimsy at the
other end, the disparity being occasioned by the method of eating and
of progressive filling up. The meal is over. Next comes the furnishing
of the cell, which must be padded snugly for the tender body of the
nymph, and the strengthening of one of the hemispheres, the one whose
walls have been scraped by the last bites to the utmost permissible
limit.
For this most important work the larva has wisely reserved a plentiful
stock of cement. The trowel therefore begins to be busy. This time, the
object is not to repair damage; it is to double and treble the
thickness of the wall in the weaker hemisphere and to cover the whole
surface with stucco which, after being polished by the movements of the
grub’s body, will be soft to the touch. As this cement acquires a
consistency superior to that of the original materials, the grub is at
last contained within a stout casket which defies all efforts to open
it with one’s fingers and is almost capable of withstanding a blow from
a stone.
The apartment is ready. 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. Semitranslucent and honey-yellow, it looks as though
it were carved from a block of amber. Imagine it hardened in this
state, mineralized, rendered incorruptible: it would make a splendid
topaz gem.
In this marvel of beauty, so severe and dignified in shape and
colouring, one point above all captivates me and at last provides me
with the solution of a far-reaching problem. Have the fore-legs a
tarsus, yes or no? This is the great matter that makes me neglect the
jewel for the sake of a structural detail. Let us then return to a
subject that used to excite me in my early days, for the answer has
come at last, late, it is true, but certain and indisputable. The
probabilities which were all that my first investigations could give me
turn into certainties established by overwhelming evidence.
By a very strange exception, the full-grown Sacred Beetle and his
congeners have no front tarsi: they lack on their fore-limbs the
five-jointed finger which is the rule among the highest section of
Beetles, the Pentamera. The remaining legs, on the other hand, follow
the general law and possess a very well-shaped tarsus. Does this
curious formation of the toothed fore-arms date from birth, or is it
accidental?
At first sight, an accident seems not unlikely. The Sacred Beetle is a
strenuous miner and a great pedestrian. Always in contact with the
rough soil, whether in walking or digging, used moreover for constant
leverage when the insect is rolling its pill backwards, the front limbs
are exposed much more freely than the others to the danger of spraining
and twisting their delicate finger, of putting it out of joint, of
losing it entirely, from the first moment when the work begins.
Lest this explanation should appeal to any of my readers, I will hasten
to undeceive him. The absence of the front fingers is not the result of
an accident. Here before my eyes lies the unanswerable proof. I examine
the nymph’s legs with the magnifying glass: those in front have not the
least vestige of a tarsus; the toothed limb ends bluntly, without any
trace of a terminal appendage. In the others, on the contrary, the
tarsus is as distinct as can be, notwithstanding the shapeless, lumpy
condition due to the swaddling-bands and humours of the nymphal state.
It suggests a finger swollen with chilblains.
If the evidence of the nymph were not sufficient, there would still be
that of the perfect insect, which, casting its mummy-cloths and moving
for the first time in its shell, wields fingerless fore-arms. The point
is established for a certainty: the Sacred Beetle is born maimed; his
mutilation dates from the beginning.
‘Very well,’ our popular theorists will reply, ‘the Sacred Beetle is
mutilated from birth; but his remote ancestors were not. Formed
according to the general rule, they were correct in structure down to
this tiny digital detail. There were some who, in their rough work as
navvies and carters, wore out that fragile, useless member which was
always in the way; and, finding themselves all the better equipped for
their work by this accidental amputation, they bequeathed it to their
successors, to the great benefit of their race. The present insect
profits by the improvement obtained by a long array of ancestors and,
acting under the stimulus of the struggle for life, gives more and more
durability to a favourable condition due to chance.’
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?
The Sacred Beetle is not a climber; he is an ordinary pedestrian,
supporting himself upon the point of an iron-shod stick, whereby I mean
the stout spike or prickle with which the tip of his leg is armed. He
has no occasion to hold on by his claws to some hanging branch, as the
Cockchafer does. It would therefore, meseems, be entirely to his
advantage to rid himself of the four remaining digits, which jut out
sideways, give no help in walking, and do not play any part in the
making and the carting of the ball. Yes, that would mean progress, for
the simple reason that the less hold you give the enemy the better. It
remains to be seen if chance ever produces this state of things.
It does and very often. At the end of the fine weather, in October,
when the insect has worn itself out in digging, in trundling pills and
in modelling pears, the maimed, disabled by their exertions, form the
great majority. Both in my cages and out of doors, I see them in all
stages of mutilation. Some have lost the finger on their four
hind-limbs altogether; others retain a stump, a couple of joints, a
single joint; those least damaged have a few members left intact.
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.
And these cripples found families: they spend the cold season beneath
the soil; they wake up in the spring, return to the surface and take
part for a second time, sometimes even for a third, in life’s great
festival. Their descendants ought to profit by an improvement which has
been renewed year by year, ever since Sacred Beetles came into the
world, and which has certainly had time to become fixed and to convert
itself into a settled habit. But they do nothing of the sort. Every
Sacred Beetle that breaks his shell, with not one exception, is endowed
with the regulation four tarsi.
Well, my theorists, what do you say to that? For the two front legs you
offer a sort of explanation; and the four others give you a categorical
denial. Have you not been taking your fancies for facts?
Then what is the cause of the Sacred Beetle’s original mutilation? I
will frankly confess that I have no idea. Nevertheless those two maimed
members are very strange, so strange indeed that they have enticed the
masters, the greatest masters, into lamentable errors. Listen, first of
all, to Latreille, [27] the prince of descriptive entomologists. In his
article on the insects which ancient Egypt painted or carved upon her
monuments, [28] he quotes the writings of Horapollo, [29] a unique
document preserved for us in the papyri for the glorification of the
sacred insect:
‘One would be tempted at first,’ he says, ‘to set down as fiction
what Horapollo says of the number of this Beetle’s fingers:
according to him, there are thirty. Nevertheless, this computation,
judged by the way in which he looks at the tarsus, is quite
correct, for this part consists of five joints; and, if we take
each of them for a finger, the legs being six in number and each
ending in a five-jointed tarsus, the Sacred Beetles evidently had
thirty fingers.’
Forgive me, illustrious master: the number of joints is but twenty,
because the two fore-legs are without tarsi. You were carried away by
the general rule. Losing sight of the singular exception, which you
certainly knew, you said thirty, obsessed for a moment by that
overwhelmingly positive rule. Yes, you knew the exception, so much so
that the figure of the Scarab accompanying your article, a figure drawn
from the insect and not from the Egyptian monuments, is irreproachably
accurate: it has no tarsi on its front legs. The blunder is pardonable,
because the exception is so unusual.
Mulsant, [30] in his volume on the French Lamellicorns, quotes
Horapollo and his allowance of thirty fingers to the insect according
to the number of days which the sun takes to traverse a sign of the
Zodiac. He repeats Latreille’s explanation. He goes even farther. Here
are his own words:
‘If we count each joint of the tarsi as a finger, we must admit
that this insect was examined with great attention.’
Examined with great attention! By whom, pray? By Horapollo? Not a bit
of it! By you, my master: yes, indeed yes! And yet the rule, in its
very positiveness, is misleading you for a moment; it misleads you
again and in a more serious fashion when, in your illustration of the
Sacred Beetle, you represent the insect with tarsi on its fore-legs,
tarsi similar to those on the other legs. You, painstaking describer
though you be, have in your turn been the victim of a momentary
aberration. The rule is so general that it has made you lose sight of
the singularity of the exception.
What did Horapollo himself see? Apparently what we see in our day. If
Latreille’s explanation be right, as everything seems to indicate, if
the Egyptian author began by counting the first thirty fingers
according to the number of joints in the tarsi, it is because he made a
mental enumeration on the basis of the general circumstances. He was
guilty of a slip which was not so very reprehensible, seeing that, more
than a thousand years later, masters like Latreille and Mulsant were
guilty of the same slip. If we must blame something, let us blame the
exceptional structure of the insect.
‘But,’ I may be asked, ‘why should not Horapollo have seen the exact
truth? Perhaps the Sacred Beetle of his day had tarsi which the insect
no longer possesses. In that case, it has been transformed by the slow
work of time.’
I am waiting for some one to show me a natural Scarab of Horapollo’s
period before I reply to this objection on the part of the
evolutionists. The tombs which so religiously guard the Cat, the Ibis
and the Crocodile must also contain the sacred insect. All that I have
by me is a few figures showing the Scarab as we find him engraved on
the monuments or carved in fine stone as an amulet for the mummies. The
ancient artist is remarkably faithful in the execution of the thing as
a whole; but his graver and chisel have not troubled about such
insignificant details as the tarsi.
Poor as I am in documents of this kind, I doubt whether the work of
sculptor or engraver will solve the problem. Even if an image with
front tarsi were discovered somewhere or other, the question would be
no further advanced. It would always be possible to plead a mistake, an
oversight, a leaning towards symmetry. The doubt, so long as it
prevails in certain minds, can be removed only by the sight of the
ancient insect in the natural state. I will wait for it, though
convinced beforehand that the Sacred Beetle of the Pharaohs differed in
no way from our own.
We will stay a little longer with the old Egyptian author, though his
wild allegorical jargon is usually incomprehensible. He is sometimes
strikingly accurate in his ideas. Is this due to a chance coincidence?
Or is it the result of serious observation? I should be glad to take
the latter view, so perfect is the agreement between his statements and
certain biological details of which our own science was ignorant until
quite lately. Of the home life of the Sacred Beetle Horapollo knew much
more than we do. He tells us this in particular:
‘The Scarabæus deposits this ball in the earth for the space of
twenty-eight days (for in so many days the moon passes through the
twelve signs of the Zodiac). By thus remaining under the moon the
race of Scarabæi is endowed with life; and upon the twenty-ninth
day, after having opened the ball, it casts it into water, for it
is aware that upon that day the conjunction of the moon and sun
takes place, as well as the generation of the world. From the ball
thus opened, the animals, that is, the Scarabæi, issue forth.’ [31]
Let us dismiss the revolution of the moon, the conjunction of the sun
and moon, the generation of the world and other astrological
absurdities, but remember this, the twenty-eight days of incubation
required by the ball underground, the twenty-eight days during which
the Scarab is born to life. Let us also remember the indispensable
intervention of water to bring the insect out of its burst shell. These
are definite facts, falling within the domain of true science. Are they
imaginary or real? The question deserves investigation.
The ancients were unacquainted with the wonders of the metamorphosis.
To them a larva was a worm born of corruption. The wretched creature
had no future to lift it from its abject state: as worm it appeared and
as worm it must disappear. It was not a mask whereunder a higher form
of life was being elaborated; it was a definite entity, supremely
contemptible and doomed soon to return to the putrescence of which it
was the offspring.
To the Egyptian author, then, the Scarab’s larva was unknown. And, if
by chance he had had before his eyes the insect’s shell inhabited by a
fat, pot-bellied grub, he would never have suspected in the foul and
ugly animal the sober beauty of the future Scarab. According to the
ideas of the time, ideas that were long maintained, the sacred insect
had neither father nor mother: an error excusable among the untutored
ancients, for here the two sexes are outwardly indistinguishable. It
was born of the ordure that formed its ball; and its birth dated from
the appearance of the nymph, that amber jewel displaying, in a
perfectly recognizable shape, the features of the adult insect.
In the eyes of antiquity the life of the Sacred Beetle began at the
moment when he could be recognized, not before; for otherwise we should
have that as yet unsuspected connecting-link, the grub. The
twenty-eight days, therefore, during which, as Horapollo tells us, the
offspring of the insect quickens, represent the duration of the nymphal
phase. This duration has been the object of special attention in my
studies. It varies but never to any great extent. From my notes I find
thirty-three days to be the longest period and twenty-one the shortest.
The average, supplied by some twenty observations, is twenty-eight
days. This very number twenty-eight, this number of days contained in
four weeks, actually appears oftener than the others. Horapollo spoke
truly: the real insect takes life in the space of a lunar month.
The four weeks passed, behold the Sacred Beetle in his final shape: the
shape, yes, but not the colouring, which is very strange when the nymph
casts its skin. The head, legs and thorax are dark-red, except the
denticulations of the forehead and fore-arms, which are smoky-brown.
The abdomen is an opaque white; the wing-cases are semitransparent
white, very faintly tinged with yellow. This imposing raiment, blending
the scarlet of the cardinal’s cassock with the white of the celebrant’s
alb, a raiment that harmonizes with the insect’s hieratic character, is
but temporary and turns darker by degrees, to make way for a uniform of
ebon black. About a month is needed for the horny armour to acquire a
firm consistency and a definite hue.
At last the Beetle is fully matured. Awakening within him is the
delicious restlessness born of coming freedom. He, hitherto a son of
the darkness, foresees the gladness of the light. Great is his longing
to burst the shell so that he may emerge from his underground prison
and come into the sun; but the difficulty of liberating himself is no
small one. Will he or will he not escape from the natal cradle, which
has now become a hateful dungeon? It depends.
Generally in August the Sacred Beetle is ripe for release: in August,
save for rare exceptions, the most torrid, dry and scorching month of
the year. If therefore no shower come from time to time to give some
slight relief to the panting earth, then the cell to be burst and the
wall to be breached defy the strength and patience of the insect, which
is helpless against all that hardness. Owing to prolonged desiccation,
the soft original matter has become an insuperable rampart; it has
turned into a sort of brick baked in the kiln of summer.
I have, of course, made experiments on the insect in these difficult
circumstances. I gather pear-shaped shells containing the adult Beetle,
who is on the point of emerging, in view of the lateness of the season.
These shells are already dry and very hard; and I lay them in a box
where they retain their dryness. Sooner or later I hear the sharp
grating of a rasp inside each cell. It is the prisoner working to make
himself an outlet by scraping the wall with the rake of his forehead
and fore-feet. Two or three days elapse; and the process of deliverance
seems to be no further advanced.
I come to the assistance of a pair of them by myself opening a loophole
with a knife. My idea is that this first breach will help the egress of
the recluse by giving him a place to start upon, an exit that will only
need widening. But not at all: these favoured ones make no more
progress with their work than the others.
In less than a fortnight silence prevails in all the shells. The
prisoners, worn out with vain endeavours, have perished. I break the
caskets containing the deceased. A meagre pinch of dust, hardly as much
as an average pea in bulk, is all that those powerful implements, rasp,
saw, harrow and rake, have succeeded in detaching from the invincible
wall.
I take some other shells, of equal hardness, wrap them in a wet rag and
put them in a flask. When the moisture has soaked through them, I rid
them of their wrapper and keep them in the corked flask. This time
events take a very different course. Softened to a nicety by the wet
rag, the shells open, burst by the efforts of the prisoner, who props
himself boldly on his legs, using his back as a lever; or else, scraped
away at one point, they crumble to pieces and reveal a yawning breach.
The experiment is a complete success. In every case the release of the
Beetles is safely accomplished: a few drops of water have brought them
the joys of the sun.
For the second time Horapollo was right. True, it is not the mother, as
the ancient writer says, who throws her ball into the water: it is the
clouds that provide the liberating douche, it is the rain that brings
about the ultimate release. In the natural state things must happen as
in my experiments. When the soil is burnt by the August sun, the
shells, baked like bricks under their thin covering of earth, are for
most of the time hard as stones. It is impossible for the insect to
wear away its casket and escape. But let a shower come—that life-giving
baptism which the seed of the plant and the family of the Beetle alike
await within the cinders of the earth—let a little rain fall; and soon
there will be a resurrection in the fields.
The earth becomes soaked. There you have the wet rag of my experiment.
At its touch the shell recovers the softness of its early days, the
casket becomes yielding; the insect makes play with its legs and pushes
with its back; it is free. It is in fact in September, during the first
rains that herald autumn, that the Sacred Beetle leaves his native
burrow and comes forth to enliven the pastoral sward, even as the
former generation enlivened it in the spring. The clouds, hitherto so
ungenerous, at last set him free.
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.
But let us drop the jargon of antiquity, with its fragments of truth;
let us not overlook the first acts of the Scarab on leaving his shell;
and let us be present at his prentice steps in open-air life. 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 passes through his dull-witted Dung-beetle brain during this first
bath of radiant brightness? Probably nothing. His is the unconscious
happiness of a flower blossoming in the sun.
At last the insect goes to the victuals. A pellet is made in accordance
with all the rules. There is no apprenticeship: at the first attempt,
the spherical form is achieved as accurately as after long practice. A
burrow is dug in which the bread just kneaded may be eaten in peace.
Here again we find the novice thoroughly versed in his art. No length
of experience will add anything to his talents.
His digging-tools are his fore-legs and forehead. To shoot the rubbish
outside, he uses the barrow, exactly like any of his elders, that is to
say, he covers his corselet with a load of earth; then, head downwards,
he dives into the dust, afterwards coming forward and depositing his
load a few inches from the entrance. With a leisurely step, like that
of a navvy with a long job before him, he goes underground again to
reload his barrow. This work upon the dining-room takes whole hours to
finish.
At length the ball is stored away. The front-door is shut; and the
thing is done. Bed and board secured, begone dull care! All is for the
best in the best of all possible worlds. Lucky creature! Without ever
seeing it practised by your kindred, whom you have not yet met, without
ever learning it, you know your trade to perfection; and it will give
you an ample share of food and tranquillity, both so hard to achieve in
human life.