THE BULL ONTHOPHAGUS: THE LARVA; THE NYMPH
May is the nesting-month of the different Onthophagi and of the Bull
Onthophagus in particular. The mothers now go underground to some
little depth, under the shelter of the cave whence the building and
victualling-materials are extracted. Unaided by the males, who,
heedless of family cares, continue to lead a life of jollity, they
fashion their cabins and stuff them with provisions after the egg is
laid. The work, for that matter, is crude and elementary and hardly
needs the collaboration of the horned dandies. Five or six
establishments at most, each founded in a couple of days, represent the
whole of a mother’s work and leave plenty of time for spring revelry.
The grub is hatched in about a week; and a strange and paradoxical
little creature it is. On its back it has an enormous sugar-loaf hump,
the weight of which overbalances it each time that it tries to stand on
its legs and walk. At every moment it staggers and falls under the
burden of the hunch. The Sacred Beetle’s larva showed us long ago a
knapsack which was a storehouse of cement to stop up the accidental
cracks in the provision-box and protect the food from drying too
rapidly. The Onthophagus’ grub exaggerates a similar warehouse to the
utmost degree; it makes a cone-shaped monument of it, so extravagant
and grotesque as to border on caricature. Is it some mad masquerader’s
joke or a rational deformity which will have its uses later? The future
will tell us.
Without saying anything more about it, for lack of words to give a
picture of anything so extraordinary, I will refer the reader to the
grub of the Oniticellus, which I sketched in an earlier chapter. [65]
The two hunchbacks are very much alike.
Unable to keep its hump upright, the grub of the Onthophagus lies down
on its side in the cell and licks the cream all around it. There is
cream everywhere, on the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor. As soon
as one spot is thoroughly bared, the consumer moves a little way on
with the help of its well-shaped legs; it capsizes again and starts
licking again. As the cabin is large and plentifully supplied, the
patent-food diet lasts some time.
The fat babies of the Geotrupes, the Copris and the Sacred Beetle
finish at one brief sitting the dainty wherewith their narrow lodge is
hung, a dainty frugally served and just sufficient to whet the appetite
and prepare the stomach for coarser fare; but the Onthophagus’ grub,
that puny dwarf, has enough to last it for a week and more. The
spacious birth-chamber, which is out of all proportion to the
nurseling’s size, has permitted this wastefulness.
At last the real loaf is attacked. In about a month everything is
consumed, except the wall of the sack. And now the splendid part played
by the hump stands revealed. Glass tubes, which I had got ready in
anticipation, allow me to watch the grub at work. Growing plumper and
plumper and more and more humpbacked, it withdraws to one end of the
cell, which has become a crumbling ruin. Here it builds a casket in
which the transformation will take place. Its materials are the
digestive residuum, converted into mortar and heaped up in the hump.
The stercoral architect is about to construct a masterpiece of elegance
out of its own ordure, held in reserve in that receptacle.
I follow its movements with the magnifying-glass. It curves itself into
a loop, closes the circuit of the digestive apparatus, brings its two
ends into contact and, with the tip of its mandibles, seizes a pellet
of dung evacuated at that moment. This pellet is extracted very neatly
and moulded into a brick which is measured most carefully. A slight
bend of the creature’s neck sets the brick in place. Others follow,
laid in the most scrupulously regular courses one above the other.
Giving a tap here and there with its palpi, the grub makes sure of the
steadiness of the parts, their accurate binding, their orderly
arrangement. It turns round in the centre of the work as the edifice
rises, even as a mason does when building a turret.
Sometimes the brick that has been laid becomes loose, because the
cement has given way. The grub takes it up again with its mandibles,
but, before replacing it, coats it with an adhesive moisture. It holds
it to its anus, whence a gummy consolidating-extract trickles
immediately and almost imperceptibly. The hump supplies the materials;
the intestines give, if necessary, the glue that sticks them together.
In this way an attractive house is obtained, ovoid in form, polished as
stucco within and adorned on the outside with slightly projecting
scales, similar to those on a cedar-cone. Each of these scales is one
of the bricks that have been produced from the hump. The casket is not
large: a cherry-stone would about represent its dimensions; but it is
so accurate, so prettily fashioned that it will bear comparison with
the finest products of entomological industry.
The Bull Onthophagus has not a monopoly of this jeweller’s art: all,
throughout the group, excel in it to the same degree. One of the
smallest, the Forked Onthophagus, whose work is hardly larger than a
pepper-corn, is as expert as the others in the manufacture of boxes
shaped like a cedar-cone. It is a family gift, an invariable gift,
despite all differences in size, costume or hornery. The Bison Onitis,
the Yellow-footed Oniticellus and certainly many others retire, for the
transformation, into a residence similar in architecture to that of the
Onthophagi; they too tell us that instincts are independent of
structure.
In the first week of July let us complete the destruction of the Bull
Onthophagus’ cell, already much impaired by the grub, which, after
exhausting the contents of its knapsack, has gnawed the inner layer of
the walls. The ruins are removed as easily as the husk of a ripe
walnut. A sort of shelling process gives us the seed, that is to say,
the nymphal casket, which comes out quite neatly, without sticking to
its wrapper at any point. Break open the gem. The nymph is there,
half-transparent and as it were carved out of crystal. Fortune favours
me with a male, who is more interesting because of his frontal armour.
The horns outline a splendid crescent, leaning backwards and resting on
the shoulders. They are swollen; they are colourless, like everything
that life elaborates in the midst of a generating-fluid; and at their
base are the dark ocular specks, not yet capable of sight, but
promising to become so. The clypeus is expanding and beginning to stand
out. Seen from the front, the head is that of a Bull, with a wide
muzzle and enormous horns, copied from those of the Aurochs.
If the artists in the time of the Pharaohs had known the immature
Onthophagus, they would certainly have used him for their hieratical
images. He is quite as good as the Sacred Beetle and even better from
the point of view of those oddities which offer such scope to
sacerdotal symbolism. On the front edge of the corselet, a single horn
rises, as powerful as the two others and shaped like a cylinder ending
in a conical knob. It points forward and is fixed in the middle of the
frontal crescent, projecting a little beyond it. The arrangement is
gloriously original. The carvers of hieroglyphics would have beheld in
it the crescent of Isis wherein dips the edge of the world.
Some other peculiarities complete the nymph’s curious appearance. To
right and left the abdomen is armed, on either side, with four little
horns resembling crystal spikes. Total, eleven pieces in the creature’s
harness: two on the forehead; one on the thorax; eight on the abdomen.
The beast of yore delighted in queer horns: certain reptiles of the
geological period stuck a pointed spur on their upper eyelids. The
Onthophagus, more greatly daring, sports eight on the sides of his
belly, in addition to the spear which he plants upon his back. The
frontal horns may be excused: they are fairly common; but what does he
propose to do with the others? Nothing at all. They are passing
fancies, jewels of early youth; the adult insect will not retain the
least trace of them.
The nymph matures. The appendages of the fore-head, at first quite
crystalline, now show, when held up to the light, a streak of reddish
brown, curved like a bow. This is the real horn taking shape,
consistency and colour. The appendage of the corselet and those of the
belly, on the other hand, preserve their glassy appearance. They are
barren sacks, void of any germ capable of development. The organism
produced them in a moment of impulse; now, scornful, or perhaps
powerless, it allows its work to wither and become useless.
When the nymph sheds its covering and the delicate tunic of the adult
form is rent, these strange horns crumble into fragments, which fall
away with the rest of the cast clothing. In the hope of finding at
least a trace of the vanished things, the lens vainly explores the
bases but lately occupied. There is nothing appreciable left: the nymph
is now smooth; the real has given place to the non-existent. Of the
accessory panoply so full of promise, absolutely naught remains:
everything has vanished into thin air.
The Bull Onthophagus is not the only one endowed with these fleeting
appendages, which completely disappear when the nymph sheds its
clothes. The other members of the tribe possess similar horny
manifestations on their bellies and corselets. One of them, the
Spectral Onthophagus, on achieving the perfect state, adorns the front
of his corselet with four tiny studs arranged in a semicircle. The two
end ones stand alone; the two middle ones are together. These last
correspond exactly with the base of the nymph’s thoracic horn and might
easily be taken for the atrophied remnant of the vanished appendage. We
must abandon this idea, however, for the lateral studs, which are more
developed than the middle ones, occupy points where the nymph had no
horns. In this Onthophagus, as in the others, the nymphal armour is
misleading and abortive.
Certain Dung-beetles related to the Onthophagi likewise possess horned
nymphs. One of these is the Yellow-footed Oniticellus, the only one
whom circumstances have allowed me to examine from this point of view.
He wears, in the nymphal stage, a magnificent horn on his corselet and
a row of four spikes on each side of his abdomen, as is the rule among
the Onthophagi. This all disappears entirely in the adult insect.
It seems likely that, if I had known how to improve the occasion some
years ago, when I was successfully rearing the Bison Onitis sent me
from Montpellier, I should have perceived the same armour on the
nymph’s thorax and abdomen. Not having been warned by earlier
observations and being anxious also to disturb the pair of strangers as
little as possible, I let the opportunity slip.
Let us remark lastly that the Onitis, Oniticellus and Onthophagus
genera all three construct for the nymphosis a scaly cabin whose shape
suggests the cedar-cone and the fruit of the alder. One may therefore
admit, without being too venturesome, that the various builders of
similar caskets are all acquainted with the nymphal panoply of a horn
on the corselet and a diadem of eight spikes around the abdomen. This
is not equivalent to saying that the armour determines the casket or
the casket the armour. These curious details go together without
influencing each other.
A simple setting forth of the facts is not enough: we should like to
see the motive of this horned magnificence. Is it a vague reminiscence
of the customs of olden time, when life spent its excess of young sap
upon quaint creations, banished to-day from our better-balanced world?
Is the Onthophagus the dwarfed representative of an ancient race of
horned animals now extinct? Does it give us a faint image of the past?
The surmise rests upon no valid foundation. The Dung-beetle is recent
in the general chronology of created beings; he ranks among the
last-comers. With him there is no means of going back to the mists of
the past, which lends itself to the invention of imaginary precursors.
Geological and even lacustrine schists, rich though the latter be in
Diptera and Weevils, have hitherto furnished not the slightest relic of
the dung-workers. This being so, it is wiser not to claim horned
ancestors from the distant past as accounting for those degenerate
descendants, the Onthophagi.
Since the past explains nothing, let us turn to the future. If the
thoracic horn be not a reminiscence, it may be a promise. It represents
a timid attempt, which the ages will harden into a permanent weapon. It
lets us assist at the slow and gradual evolution of a new organ; it
shows us life in travail of a thing not yet existing on the adult
Beetle’s corselet, a thing which will exist one day. We catch the
genesis of the species in the act; the present teaches us how the
future is prepared.
And what does the Beetle propose to do with this object of his
ambition, this spear which he hopes by and by to place upon his spine?
At any rate as a dazzling piece of masculine finery the thing is
already fashionable among the various foreign Scarabs that feed
themselves and their grubs on decaying vegetable matter. These giants
among the wearers of armoured wing-cases delight in associating their
placid corpulence with halberds terrible to gaze upon.
Look at one, Dynastes Hercules by name, a denizen of rotten tree-stumps
under the scorching skies of the West Indies. The peaceable colossus
well deserves his epithet: he measures three inches long. Of what
service can the threatening rapier of the corselet and the toothed
lifting-jack of the forehead be to him, unless it be to make him look
grand in the presence of his female, herself deprived of these
extravagances? Perhaps also they are of use to him in certain
operations, even as the trident helps the Minotaurus to crumble his
pellets and cart his rubbish. Implements of which we do not know the
use always strike us as singular. Having never been intimate with the
West-Indian Hercules, I must content myself with suspicions touching
the purpose of his fearsome equipment.
Well, one of the subjects in my insect-house would achieve a similar
savage finery if he persisted in his attempts. I speak of the Cow
Onthophagus (O. vacca). His nymph has on its forehead a big horn, one
only, bent backward; on its corselet it possesses a similar horn,
jutting forward. The two, approaching their tips, look like some kind
of pincers. What does the insect lack in order to acquire, on a smaller
scale, the eccentric ornament of the West-Indian Scarab? It lacks
perseverance. It matures the appendage of the forehead and allows that
of the corselet to perish atrophied. It succeeds no better than the
Bull Onthophagus in its attempt to grow a pointed stake upon its back;
it loses a glorious opportunity of making itself fine for the wedding
and terrible in battle.
The others are no more successful. I bring up six different species.
All, in the nymphal state, possess the thoracic horn and the
eight-pointed ventral coronet; not one benefits by these advantages,
which disappear altogether when the adult bursts its wrapping. My near
neighbourhood numbers a dozen species of Onthophagi; the world contains
some hundreds. All, natives and foreigners, have the same general
structure; all most probably possess the dorsal appendage at an early
age; and none of them, in spite of the variety of climate, torrid in
one place, temperate in another, has succeeded in hardening it into a
permanent horn.
Could not the future complete a work whose design is so very clearly
traced? We are the more inclined to ask this, because appearances are
all in favour of the question. Examine under the magnifying-glass the
frontal horns of the Bull Onthophagus in the nymphal state; then with
the same scrupulous care look at the spear upon the corselet. At first,
there is no difference between them, except for the general
configuration. In both cases we find the same glassy aspect, the same
sheath swollen with colourless fluid, the same incipient organ plainly
marked. A leg in process of formation is not more clearly announced
than the horn on the corselet or those on the forehead.
Can time be lacking for the thoracic growth to become organized into a
stiff and permanent appendage? The evolution of the nymph is swift; the
insect is perfect in a few weeks. Could it not be that, though this
brief space suffices to promote the maturity of the horns on the
forehead, the thoracic horn requires a longer time to ripen? Let us
prolong the nymphal period artificially and give the germ time to
develop. It seems to me that a decrease of temperature, moderated and
maintained for some weeks, for months if necessary, should be capable
of bringing about this result, by delaying the progress of the
evolution. Then, with a gentle slowness, favourable to delicate
formations, the promised organ will crystallize, so to speak, and
become the spear promised by appearances.
The experiment attracted me. I was unable to undertake it for lack of
the means whereby to produce a cold, even temperature over a long time.
What should I have obtained if my penury had not made me abandon the
enterprise? A retarding of the progress of the metamorphosis, but
nothing more, apparently. The horn on the corselet would have persisted
in its sterility and, sooner or later, would have disappeared.
I have reasons for my conviction. The abode of the Onthophagus engaged
on his metamorphosis is not deep down; variations of temperature are
easily felt. On the other hand, the seasons are capricious, especially
the spring. Under the skies of Provence, the months of May and June, if
the mistral lend a hand, have periods when the thermometer drops in
such a way as to suggest a return of winter.
To these vicissitudes add the influence of a more northerly climate.
The Onthophagi occupy a wide zone of latitude. Those of the north, less
favoured by the sun than those of the south, might quite possibly have
the date of their transformation postponed by a change in the weather
and consequently be subjected to a lower temperature for several weeks.
This would spin out the work of evolution and give the thoracic armour
time to harden into horn, at rare intervals, as chance may prescribe.
Here and there, then, the requisite condition of a moderate or even low
temperature at the time of the nymphosis actually exists, without the
need of any artificial agency.
Well, what becomes of this surplus time placed at the service of the
organic labour? Does the promised horn ripen? Not a bit of it: it
withers just as it does under the stimulus of a hot sun. In the records
of entomology I find no mention of an Onthophagus carrying a horn upon
his corselet. No one would even have suspected the possibility of such
an armour, if I had not bruited abroad the strange appearance of the
nymph. The influence of climate, therefore, has nothing to do with the
matter.
As we go more deeply into it, the question becomes more complicated.
The horny appendages of the Onthophagus, the Copris, the Minotaurus and
many others are the male’s prerogative; the female is without them or
wears them only on a reduced and very modest scale. We must look upon
these products as personal ornaments rather than as implements of
labour. The male makes himself fine for the pairing; but, with the
exception of the Minotaurus, who pins down the dry pellet that needs
crushing and holds it in position with his trident, I know none that
uses his armour as a tool. Horns and prongs on the forehead, crests and
crescents on the corselet are the male coquette’s jewels and nothing
more. The other sex requires no such baits to attract suitors: its
femininity is enough; and finery is neglected.
Now here is something to give us food for thought. The nymph of the
Onthophagus of the female sex, a nymph with an unarmed forehead,
carries on its thorax a vitreous horn as long, as rich in promise as
that of the other sex. If this latter excrescence be the design of an
incipient ornament, then the former would be so too, in which case the
two sexes, both anxious for self-embellishment, would work with equal
zeal to grow a horn upon their thorax. We should be witnessing the
genesis of a species that would not be really an Onthophagus, but a
derivative of the group; we should be beholding the commencement of
singularities banished hitherto from among the Dung-beetles, none of
whom, of either sex, has thought of planting a spear upon his chine.
Stranger still: the female, always the more humbly attired throughout
the entomological kingdom, would be vying with the male in her
hankering after quaint adornment. An ambition of this sort leaves me
incredulous.
We must therefore believe that, if the possibilities of the future
should ever produce a Dung-beetle carrying a horn upon his corselet,
this upsetter of present customs will not be an Onthophagus who has
succeeded in maturing the thoracic appendage of the nymph, but rather
an insect resulting from a new model. The creative power throws aside
the old moulds and replaces them by others, fashioned with fresh care,
in accordance with plans of an inexhaustible variety. Its laboratory is
not a peddling rag-fair, where the living assume the cast clothes of
the dead: it is a medallist’s studio, where each effigy receives the
stamp of a special die. Its treasure-house of forms, illimitable in its
riches, makes niggardliness impossible: there is no patching up of the
old in order to create the new. It breaks every mould once used; it
does away with it, without resorting to shabby after-touches.
Then what is the meaning of those horny preparations, which are always
blighted before they come to anything? With no great shame I confess
that I have not the slightest idea. My reply may not be couched in
learned phraseology, but it has one merit, that of absolute sincerity.
NOTES
[1] Chapters I. and II. of the present volume, forming the first two
chapters of Vol. I. of the Souvenirs entomologiques. The remaining
chapters on the Sacred Beetle appeared, in the original, in Vol. V. of
that work, for which volume the above was written as a
preface.—Translator’s Note.
[2] A village in the department of the Gard, facing Avignon.—Author’s
Note.
[3] ‘When you and I start housekeeping, alas, what shall we do?
You in front and I behind, we’ll shove the tub along!’
[4] Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), the French socialist, author of
Qu’est-ce que la propriété? etc.—Translator’s Note.
[5] Émile Blanchard (b. 1819), a French naturalist, best known by his
works on entomology.—Translator’s Note.
[6] The Scarabæi also bear the name of Ateuchus.—Author’s Note.
[7] Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger (1775–1813), a German naturalist,
editor of a Magasin für Insektenkunde and author of Prodromus
systematis mammalium et avium, etc.—Translator’s Note.
[8] Gymnopleurus pilularius is a Dung-beetle nearly related to the
Sacred Beetle, but smaller. As his name suggests, he also rolls pellets
of dung. The Gymnopleurus is very general, even in the north, whereas
Scarabæus sacer is hardly ever found away from the shores of the
Mediterranean.—Author’s Note.
[9] A light opera, with music by Victor Massé and libretto by Jules
Barbier and Michel Carré (1852).—Translator’s Note.
[10] ‘Ah, how sweet is far niente,
When round us throbs the busy world!’
[11] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. i. to v.—Translator’s Note.
[12] The weekly holiday in the French schools.—Translator’s Note.
[13] This seems the place in which to remind the reader that the first
two chapters of the present volume correspond with Chapters I. and II.
of the first volume of the Souvenirs entomologiques in their original
form. Chapters III. to VII. of the present volume are translations of
Chapters I. to V. of the fifth volume of the Souvenirs, published many
years later, at a time when Fabre had completed his study of the Sacred
Beetle.—Translator’s Note.
[14] Cf. Mulsant’s Coléoptères de France: Lamellicornes.—Author’s Note.
[15] Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), author of the famous
Fables.—Translator’s Note.
[16] ‘... a double chance of gain:
First, one’s own profit; next, another’s loss.’
[17] .11 to .15 inch.—Translator’s Note.
[18] Close upon 9½ feet.—Translator’s Note.
[19] 1.75 × 1.17 inches.—Translator’s Note.
[20] 1.36 × 1.09 inches.—Translator’s Note.
[21] .39 × .19 inch.—Translator’s Note.
[22] Cf. The Life and Love of the Insect, by J. Henri Fabre, translated
by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xi.—Translator’s Note.
[23] Cf. The Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander
Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, iv. to x.—Translator’s Note.
[24] .19 inch.—Translator’s Note.
[25] The last ventral segment of the abdomen.—Translator’s Note.
[26] Cf. Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. ix.—Translator’s Note.
[27] Pierre André Latreille (1762–1833), one of the founders of
entomological science, a professor at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle
and member of the Académie des sciences.—Translator’s Note.
[28] Cf. Mémoires du Muséum d’histoire naturelle: vol. v., p.
249.—Author’s Note.
[29] Horapollo Nilous, Orus Apollo, or Horos Apollo (fl. circa 400),
author of the Hieroglyphica.—Translator’s Note.
[30] Etienne Marcel Mulsant (1797–1880), author of the Histoire
naturelle des coléoptères en France (1839–1874) mentioned on page
94.—Translator’s Note.
[31] Hieroglyphics: Book 1., x.; Cory’s translation.—Translator’s Note.
[32] 1.28 × .93 inch.—Translator’s Note.
[33] Cf. inter alia the author’s Some Reflections upon Insect
Psychology, in The Mason-Bees, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. vii.—Translator’s Note.
[34] Mites or Ticks.—Translator’s Note.
[35] Rove-beetles.—Translator’s Note.
[36] A genus of Dung-beetles.—Translator’s Note.
[37] Cf. Chapters XI., XVII. and XVIII. of the present
volume.—Translator’s Note.
[38] 1.56 × 1.32 inches.—Translator’s Note.
[39] Cf. Chapters XII. to XIV. of the present volume.—Translator’s
Note.
[40] Cf. The Mason-bees and Bramble-bees and Others:
passim.—Translator’s Note.
[41] Rose-chafers.—Translator’s Note.
[42] Or imperial mushroom. For this and the purple boletus, cf. The
Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos: chap. xviii.—Translator’s Note.
[43] .546 × .273 inch.—Translator’s Note.
[44] .585 × .39 inch.—Translator’s Note.
[45] Pantagruel: chap. i.; Sir Thomas Urquhart’s
translation.—Translator’s Note.
[46] Minotaurus typhœus. Cf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chap.
x.—Translator’s Note.
[47] A genus of Longicorns, or Long-horned Beetles.—Translator’s Note.
[48] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps, i. to v.—Translator’s Note.
[49] .273 to .312 × .156 inch.—Translator’s Note.
[50] Johann Leonhard Frisch (1666–1743), a Lutheran clergyman,
lexicologist and natural historian and member of the Berlin Academy.
His Beschreibung von allerlei Insecten in Deutschland was published in
1720 to 1738.—Translator’s Note.
[51] Martial Étienne Mulsant (1797–1880), professor of natural history
at the Lycée de Lyon; author of Histoire naturelle des coléoptères de
France (1839–1846) and other entomological works.—Translator’s Note.
[52] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. vi. to ix.—Translator’s
Note.
[53] Cf. Bramble-bees and Others: chaps. ix. and x.—Translator’s Note.
[54] The Rose-chafer, whose grub forms the prey of the Scolia-wasp. Cf.
The Life and Love of the Insect: chap. xi.—Translator’s Note.
[55] Cf. Fabre’s own youthful experiences, in The Life of the Fly:
chap. vii.—Translator’s Note.
[56] For the author’s stay at Ajaccio, where he was a schoolmaster in
his youth, cf. The Life of the Fly: chap. vi.—Translator’s Note.
[57] Chapter XI. of the present book appeared in the fifth volume of
the Souvenirs entomologiques; this and the following chapter formed
part of the tenth and last volume.—Translator’s Note.
[58] Cf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chap. x.—Translator’s Note.
[59] For the Epeiræ, or Garden Spiders, the Lycosa, or Black-bellied
Tarantula, and the Labyrinth and Clotho Spiders, cf. The Life of the
Spider, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos:
passim.—Translator’s Note.
[60] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. viii., ix., xvi. and
xvii.—Translator’s Note.
[61] Cf. The Life of the Fly and The Life of the Caterpillar:
passim.—Translator’s Note.
[62] .039 inch.—Translator’s Note.
[63] Cf. The Life and Love of the Insect: chaps. xvii. and xviii. The
seven essays on the Languedocian Scorpion will be included in the last
volume of this complete edition of Fabre’s entomological
works.—Translator’s Note.
[64] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xix.—Translator’s Note.
[65] Chapter XI. of the present volume.—Translator’s Note.