THE STAG-BEETLE
“One of the joys of your time of life, I am sure,” resumed Uncle Paul,
as he and his hearers seated themselves in the shade of an old oak tree
amid the humming and whirring of insect life all about them, “is the
study of the little creatures of field and farm and forest, so
interesting in their mode of life, so varied in their forms and colors.
You chase the splendid butterfly from flower to flower, you take up the
cockchafer and put it on a bed of fresh leaves, with a straw you drive
the cricket from its hole. The insect that amuses you can also instruct
you. In our modest studies let us now have a little talk on this
subject.
“What is this tiny creature with the stout coat-of-mail of chestnut
color? Its large head, showing parallel folds that might have been
carved by a sculptor’s hand, is armed with two branching nippers which
open like a pair of tongs and then close, mangling between their teeth
the finger they have seized. Woe to the giddy-pate that lets himself be
caught by them! The trap closes tighter and tighter and never lets go.
“But, vigorous as are its mandibles, the insect is not one to be afraid
of, provided only you look out for those nippers. For all its
threatening aspect, it is at bottom a peaceful creature. Catch it by
one leg and it will fly round and round like the June-bug. It is called
the stag-beetle, a name that explains itself, for it has branching
mandibles resembling a stag’s horns, and it belongs to the family of
beetles. Put the two words together and you have ‘stag-beetle.’
“The singular creature has not always been as we see it to-day. In its
youth, not later than last year, it had neither its present mandibles
nor its six legs nor its chestnut-colored coat-of-mail. In fact, its
form had nothing in common with what we now behold. Then it was a big,
fat worm, with fine white skin, crawling on legs so small and feeble as
hardly to deserve mention.
“The whole animal consisted of little more than a crawling stomach
unprovided with any protection. The head alone was fortified with a
substantial skull of horn, and it also bore, one on the right side of
the mouth, the other on the left, two short but strong teeth adapted to
cutting in pieces the wood of the oak, its sole nourishment.
“Such a worm, entirely naked, evidently cannot live in the open air,
where the thousand little roughnesses of the ground would be
continually wounding its delicate skin. It must have a safe shelter
that it need not leave until it has become the well-armored insect we
now see. The grub of the stag-beetle does in fact live inside the oak,
which affords it at once food and lodging. There, in the depths of the
tree-trunk, is its inviolable retreat.
“With its two teeth, as hard and sharp as a carpenter’s tool, it cuts
away, patiently, bit by bit, the fresh wood imbued with sap. Each
fragment thus detached is a mouthful for the worm’s nourishment; but as
it is by no means a rich diet there must be a good deal of it to
furnish enough nutriment. Therefore the gnawing goes on without
cessation, in all directions, with a corresponding enlargement of the
domicile, which soon becomes a labyrinth of galleries that go up and
down and cross one another, penetrate farther into the trunk or
approach the surface, at the pleasure of the occupant, whose choice is
determined by its taste for morsels lying in this or that direction.
“For three or four years this is the worm’s mode of life. To make
itself big and fat is its sole business, and to this it devotes itself
with vigor. I leave you to imagine what must become of an oak tree
worked by a dozen of these gnawing creatures. Under the bark, which is
almost intact, the trunk is one vast wound, perforated with galleries
that are themselves littered with wormhole dust, and oozing with a
brown juice that smells like a tannery. Unless the forester applies a
remedy, and that speedily, the enormous oak will be ruined. Leaving
this care to his charge, let us go on with our story.
“When it has become big enough and fat enough, after at least three
years of continual feasting, the worm prepares to change its form. Near
the surface, that its future exit may be the easier, the little
creature hollows out a sufficiently large oval chamber and lines it
with a sort of wadding made of the finest fibers of the wood. Thus the
tender flesh of the rejuvenated insect will be protected from all rude
outer contact.
“These precautions taken, the worm undergoes its transfiguration: it
splits open all down the back, strips off its skin, throws it away like
a discarded garment, and is born a second time, as one might say, but
under a totally different form. It is no longer a worm—far from it—but
it is not yet a stag-beetle, although the outlines of the latter are
already discernible.
“The creature is quite motionless, as if dead. The legs, neatly folded
over the stomach, are as transparent as crystals; the nippers are
pressed close to the breast; the wings, not yet expanded, have the
appearance of a short scarf encircling the flanks; and the whole is
swathed in swaddling-clothes finer in texture than an onion skin. The
entire organism is wrapped in a repose so profound that one might think
all life extinct. It is white or crystalline in appearance, and so
tender that a mere nothing will wound it. The coarse worm of the
beginning has been succeeded by this most delicate of creatures.
“Out of the material amassed by the wood-gnawer’s voracious appetite
there is created an entirely new being. The flesh, at first nearly
fluid, slowly acquires consistency; the skin hardens, assumes a
chestnut hue, takes on the firmness of horn; in fact, when the warm
season returns again the insect wakes up from that deep sleep, not of
death, but nevertheless very much like it. The creature moves, tears
apart the swathing bands under which its rebirth has taken place,
strips off these wrappings, and here at last we have the insect in its
full perfection. Behold the stag-beetle!
“It comes out from its native oak, spreads its wings in flight under
cover of the foliage, and settles down, now on this tree, now on that,
in the rays of the sun. The freedom of the open air and the enjoyment
of the light of day constitute its supreme felicity for which it has
been preparing during the three or four years of constant toil in the
dark galleries of an old oak.
“Thenceforth it grows no larger. Just as it was on emerging from its
cell, so it will remain to the end, without the least increase either
in weight or in bulk. Thus it leads a very staid existence. In its grub
state the famished creature gnawed wood night and day; its life was a
perpetual digestion. Now, on the contrary, all that it needs in the way
of sustenance is an occasional sip of the sweetened sap oozing from the
bark of the tree.
“But its days of idle delight are numbered; it has scarcely a couple of
months to spend joyously among the oak trees. Then it lays its eggs,
one by one, in the crevices of tree-trunks, to propagate its kind; and,
that done, it very soon dies. It has played its part. From those eggs
will come forth worms which will patiently work their way into the
wood, hollow out galleries there in their turn, and begin all over
again the very sort of existence led by their fore-fathers.
“The greater number of insects have the same life-history as the
stag-beetle: they pass through different stages before taking on their
final form. All without exception, the smallest as well as the largest,
come from eggs deposited by the mother in chosen places where the
needed nourishment, so variable in different species, is easy to find.
“From the egg emerges, not the finished insect with all its distinctive
traits, but a provisional creature bearing, very often, no resemblance
to the parent or to the matured offspring of that parent. This initial
form we called a worm in speaking of the stag-beetle, and the name is
in that instance appropriate; but in a multitude of cases it would be
incorrect, having no agreement with the creature’s appearance. We then
call it a larva.
“The larva is therefore the insect under the form it presents on
emerging from the egg. Its continuance in this form is longer than in
that of the finally perfected creature. The larva of the stag-beetle
remains a larva for three or four years, whereas the beetle itself
lives but a couple of months. The sole occupation of this grub is
eating, continual eating, that it may grow fat and store up supplies
enough to carry it through its subsequent transformations.
“Having attained sufficient size, the larva constructs a retreat for
itself, hollows out a little cell, and spins a cocoon where in perfect
quiet the delicate task of transformation will be undertaken. It strips
off its skin and becomes an inert, formative body known as a nymph.
“Finally, the nymph, having arrived at the right degree of maturity,
casts off its wrappings and reveals itself as transformed into a
perfect insect. It lays its eggs, and the same succession of changes is
again repeated. The egg, the larva, the nymph, the perfect insect—there
you have the four stages of the insect’s life. These changes of form
are called metamorphoses.”