THE GIANT SCARITES
The military profession can hardly be said to favour the talents.
Consider the Carabus, or Ground-beetle, that fiery warrior among the
insect people. What can he do? In the way of industry, nothing or next
to nothing. Nevertheless the dull butcher is magnificent in his
indescribably sumptuous jerkin. It has the refulgency of copper
pyrites, of gold, of Florentine bronze. While clad in black, he
enriches his sombre costume with a vivid amethyst hem. On the
wing-cases, which fit him like a cuirass, he wears little chains of
alternate pins and bosses.
Of a handsome and commanding figure, slender and pinched in at the
waist, the Carabus is the glory of our collections, but only for the
sake of his appearance. He is a frenzied murderer; and that is all. We
will ask nothing more of him. The wisdom of antiquity represented
Hercules, the god of strength, with the head of an idiot. And indeed
merit is not great when limited to brute force. And this is the case
with the Carabus.
To see him so richly adorned, who would not wish to find him a fine
subject for investigation, one worthy of history, a subject such as
humbler natures provide with lavish generosity? From this ferocious
ransacker of entrails we expect nothing of the kind. His art is that
of slaying.
We may without trouble observe him at his bandit's work. I rear him in
a large breeding-cage on a layer of fresh sand. A few potsherds
scattered about the surface enable him to take shelter beneath the
rocks; a tuft of grass planted in the centre makes a grove and
enlivens the establishment.
Three species compose the population: the common _Jardiniere_, or
Golden Beetle, the usual inmate of our gardens; _Procrustes
coriaceus_, the sombre and powerful explorer of the grassy thickets at
the foot of walls; and the rare Purple Carabus, who trims the ebony of
his wing-cases with metallic violet. I feed them on Snails, after
partly removing the shell.
Hidden at first promiscuously under the potsherds, the Carabi make a
rush for the wretched Snail, who, in his despair, alternately puts out
and withdraws his horns. Three of them at a time, then four, then five
begin by devouring the edge of his mantle, specked with chalky atoms.
This is the favourite morsel. With their mandibles, those stout
pincers, they lay hold of it through the froth; they tug at it, tear
off a shred and retire to a distance to swallow it at their ease.
Meanwhile the legs, streaming with slime, pick up grains of sand and
become covered with heavy gaiters, which are extremely cumbersome but
to which the Beetle pays no attention. Heavy with mire, he staggers
back to his prey and cuts off another morsel. He will think of
polishing his boots presently. Others do not stir, but gorge
themselves on the spot, with the whole fore-part of their body
immersed in the froth. The feast lasts for hours on end. The guests do
not leave the joint until the distended belly lifts the roof of the
wing-cases and uncovers the nudities of the stern.
Fonder of shady nooks, the Procrustes form a separate company. They
drag the Snail into their lair, under the shelter of a potsherd, and
there, peacefully and in common, dismember the mollusc. They love the
Slug, as easier to cut up than the Snail, who is defended by his
shell; they regard the Testacella,[1] who bears a chalky shell, shaped
like a Phrygian cap, right at the hinder end of her foot, as a
delicious tit-bit. The game has firmer flesh and is less nauseously
slimy.
[Footnote 1: Or Shell-bearing Slug, found along the shores of the
Mediterranean.--_Translator's Note_.]
To feast gluttonously on a Snail whom I myself have rendered
defenseless by breaking her shell is nothing for a warrior to boast
about; but we shall soon see the Carabus display his daring. I offer a
Pine-chafer, in the pink of strength, to the Golden Beetle, whose
appetite has been whetted by a few days' fasting. The victim is a
colossus beside the Golden Carabus; an Ox facing a Wolf.
The beast of prey prowls round the peaceful creature and selects its
moment. It rushes forward, recoils, hesitates and returns to the
charge. And lo, the giant is overthrown! Incontinently the other
devours him, ransacking his belly. If this had happened in a higher
order of the animal world, it would make one's flesh creep to watch
the Carabus half immersed in the big Cockchafer and rooting out his
entrails.
I test the eviscerator with a more difficult quarry. This time the
victim is _Oryctes nasicornis_, the powerful Rhinoceros Beetle, an
invincible giant, one would think, under the shelter of his armour.
But the hunter knows the weak point of the horn-clad prey, the fine
skin protected by the wing-cases. By means of attacks which the
assailant renews as soon as they are repulsed by the assailed, the
Carabus contrives to raise the cuirass slightly and to slip his head
beneath it. From the moment that the pincers have made a gash in the
vulnerable skin, the Rhinoceros is lost. Soon there will be nothing
left of the colossus but a pitiful empty carcase.
Those who wish for a more hideous conflict must apply to _Calosoma
sycophanta_, the handsomest of our flesh-eating insects, the most
majestic in costume and size. This prince of Carabi is the butcher of
the caterpillars. He is not to be overawed even by the sturdiest of
rumps.
His struggle with the huge caterpillar of the Great Peacock Moth[2] is
a thing to see once, not oftener: a single experience of such horrors
is enough to disgust one. The contortions of the eviscerated insect,
which, with a sudden heave of the loins, hurls the bandit in the air
and lets him fall, belly uppermost, without managing to make him
release his hold; the green entrails spilt quivering on the ground;
the tramping gait of the murderer, drunk with slaughter, slaking his
thirst at the springs of a horrible wound: these are the main features
of the combat. If entomology had no other scenes to show us, I should
without the least regret turn my back upon my insects.
[Footnote 2: Cf. _The Life of the Caterpillar_: chap.
xi.--_Translator's Note_.]
Next day, offer the sated Beetle a Green Grasshopper or a White-faced
Decticus, serious adversaries both, armed with powerful lower jaws.
With these big-bellied creatures the slaughter will begin anew, as
eagerly as on the day before. It will be repeated later with the Pine-
chafer and the Rhinoceros Beetle, accompanied by the usual atrocious
tactics of the Carabi. Even better than these last does the Calosoma
know the weak point of the armoured Beetles, concealed beneath the
wing-cases. And this will go on so long as we keep him provided with
victims, for this drinker of blood is never satiated.
Acrid exhalations, the products of a fiery temperament, accompany this
frenzy for carnage. The Carabi elaborate caustic humours; the
Procrustes squirts a jet of vinegar at any one who takes hold of him;
the Calosoma makes the fingers smell of mouldy drugs; certain Beetles,
such as the Brachini,[3] understand explosives and singe the
aggressor's whiskers with a volley of musketry.
[Footnote 3: Or Bombardier Beetles. When disturbed, they eject a fluid
which volatilizes, on contact with the air, with a slight report.--
_Translator's Note_.]
Distillers of corrosives, gunners throwing lyddite, bombers employing
dynamite: what can all these violent creatures, so well equipped for
battle, do beyond committing slaughter? Nothing. We find no art, no
industry, not even in the larva, which practices the adult's trade and
meditates its crimes while wandering under the stones. Nevertheless it
is to one of these dull-witted warriors that I am deliberately
proposing to apply to-day, prompted by the wish to solve a certain
question. Let me tell you what it is.
You have surprised this or that insect, motionless on a bough,
blissfully basking in the sun. Your hand is raised, open, ready to
descend on it and seize it. Hardly have you made the movement when the
insect drops to the ground. It is a wearer of armoured wing-cases,
slow to disengage the wings from their horny sheath, or perhaps an
incomplete form, with no wing-surfaces. Incapable of sudden flight,
the surprised insect lets itself fall. You look for it in the grass,
often in vain. If you do find it, it is lying on its back, with its
legs folded, without stirring.
It is shamming dead, people will tell you; it is pretending, in order
to escape its enemy. Man is certainly unknown to it; we count for
nothing in its little world. What does it care for our hunting,
whether we be children or scientists? It does not fear the collector
with his long pin; but it realizes danger in general; and it dreads
its natural enemy, the insectivorous bird, which swallows it with a
single snap. To outwit the assailant, it lies upon its back, draws up
its legs and simulates death. The bird, or any other persecutor, will
despise it in this condition; and its life will be saved.
This, we are assured, is how the insect would reason if suddenly
surprised. The trick has long been famous. Once upon a time, two
friends, at the end of their resources, sold the skin of a Bear before
they had killed the brute. The encounter was unfortunate: they had to
take to their heels. One of them stumbled, fell, held his breath and
shammed dead. The Bear came up, turned the man over and over, explored
him with his paw and his muzzle, sniffed at his face:
"He smells already," he said and, without more ado, turned away.
That Bear was a simpleton.
The bird would not be duped by this clumsy stratagem. In those happy
days when the discovery of a nest marked a red-letter day, I never saw
my Sparrows or Greenfinches refuse a Locust because he was not moving,
or a Fly because she was dead. Any mouthful that does not kick is
eagerly accepted, provided that it be fresh and pleasant to the taste.
If the insect, therefore, relies on the appearance of death, it would
seem to me to be very badly inspired. More wary than the Bear in the
fable, the bird, with its perspicacious eye, will recognize the fraud
in a moment and proceed to business. Besides, had the object really
been a corpse, but still fresh, it would none the less have gobbled it
up.
More insistent doubts occur to my mind when I consider the serious
consequences to which the insect's artfulness might lead. It shams
dead, says the popular idiom, which recks little of weighing the value
of its term; it simulates death, scientific language repeats, happy to
find some gleams of reason in the insect. What truth is there in this
unanimous statement, which in the one case is too unreflecting and in
the other too much inclined to favour theoretical fancies?
Logical arguments are insufficient here. It is essential that we
should obtain the verdict of experiment, which alone can furnish a
valid reply. But to which of the insects shall we go first?
I remember something that dates back some forty years. Delighted with
a recent University triumph, I was staying at Cette, on my return from
Toulouse, where I had just passed my examination as a licentiate in
natural science. It gave me a fine chance of renewing my acquaintance
with the seaside flora, which had delighted me a few years before on
the shores of the wonderful Gulf of Ajaccio. It would have been
foolish to neglect it. A degree does not confer the right to cease
studying. If one really has a touch of the sacred fire in one's veins,
one remains a student all one's life, not of books, which are a poor
resource, but of the great, inexhaustible school of actual things.
One day, then, in July, in the cool stillness of the dawn, I was
botanizing on the foreshore at Cette. For the first time I plucked the
_Convolvulus soldanella_, which trails along the high-water mark its
ropes of glossy green leaves and its great pink bellflowers. Withdrawn
into his white, flat, heavily-keeled shell, a curious Snail, _Helix
explanata_, was slumbering, in groups, on the bent grasses.
The dry shifting sands showed here and there long series of imprints,
recalling, on a smaller scale and under another form, the tracks of
little birds in the snow which used to arouse a delightful flutter in
my youthful days. What do these imprints mean?
I follow them, a hunter on the trail of a new species. At the end of
each track, by digging to no great depth, I unearth a magnificent
Carabus, whose very name is almost unknown to me. It is the Giant
Scarites (_S. gigas_, FAB.).
I make him walk on the sand. He exactly reproduces the tracks which
put me on the alert. It was certainly he who, questing for game in the
night, marked the trail with his feet. He returned to his lair before
daylight; and now not a single Beetle is to be seen in the open.
Another characteristic thrusts itself upon my notice. If I shake him
for a moment and then place him on the ground upon his back, he
remains a long time without stirring. No other insect has yet
displayed such persistent immobility, though I confess that my
investigations in this respect have been only superficial. The detail
is so thoroughly engraved on my memory that, forty years later, when I
want to experiment on the insects which are experts in the art of
simulating death, I at once think of the Scarites.
A friend sends me a dozen from Cette, from the very beach on which I
once passed a delightful morning in the company of this skilful mimic
of the dead. They reach me in perfect condition, mixed up in the same
package with some Pimeliae (_P. bipunctata_, FAB.), their compatriots
in the sands beside the sea. Of these last, a pitiable crew, many have
been disembowelled, absolutely emptied; others have merely stumps
instead of legs; a few, but only a few, are unwounded.
It was what one might have expected of these Carabidae, lawless
hunters one and all. Tragic events took place in the box during the
journey from Cette to Serignan. The Scarites gormandized riotously on
the peaceable Pimeliae.
Their tracks, which I followed long ago on the actual spot, bore
evidence to their nocturnal rounds, apparently in search of their
prey, the pot-bellied Pimelia, whose sole defence consists of a strong
armour of welded wing-cases.[4] But what can such a cuirass avail
against the bandit's ruthless pincers?
[Footnote 4: The Pimelia is a wingless Beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]
He is indeed a mighty hunter, this Nimrod of the sea-shore. All black
and glossy, like a jet bugle, his body is divided by a very narrow
groove at the waist. His weapon of offence consists of a pair of
claw-like mandibles of extraordinary vigour. None of our insects
equals him in strength of jaw, if we except the Stag-beetle, who is
far better armed, or rather decorated, for the antlered mandibles of
the inmate of the oak are ornaments of the male's attire, not a
panoply of battle.
The brutal Carabid, the eviscerator of the Pimeliae, knows how strong
he is. If I tease him a little on the table, he at once adopts a
posture of defence. Well braced upon his short legs, especially the
fore-legs, which are toothed like rakes, he dislocates himself in two,
so to speak, thanks to the groove that divides him behind the
corselet; he proudly raises the fore-part of the body, his wide,
heart-shaped thorax and massive head, opening his threatening pincers
to their full extent. He is now an awesome sight. More: he has the
audacity to rush at the finger which has touched him. Here of a surety
is one not easily intimidated. I look twice before I handle him.
I lodge my strangers partly under a wire-gauze cover and partly in
glass jars, all supplied with a layer of sand. Each of them without
delay digs himself a burrow. The insect bends his head a long way down
and, with the points of his mandibles, brought together to form a
pick-axe, he hews, digs and excavates with a will. The fore-legs,
spread out and armed with hooks, gather the dust and rubbish into a
load which is thrust backwards. In this way, a mound rises on the
threshold of the burrow. The dwelling grows deeper quickly and by a
gentle slope reaches the bottom of the jar.
Checked in the downward direction, the Scarites now digs against the
glass wall and continues his work horizontally until he has obtained a
length of nearly twelve inches in all.
This arrangement of the gallery, almost the whole of which runs just
under the glass, is very useful to me, enabling me to follow the
insect in the privacy of its home. If I wish to observe its
underground operations, all that I need do is to remove the opaque
sheath which I have been careful to put over the jar, in order to
spare the creature the annoyance of the light.
When the house is deemed to be long enough, the Scarites returns to
the entrance, which he works more carefully than the rest. He makes a
funnel of it, a pit with shifting, sloping sides. It is the Ant-lion's
crater on a larger scale and constructed in a more rustic fashion.
This mouth is continued by an inclined plane, kept free of all
rubbish. At the foot of the slope is the vestibule of the horizontal
gallery. Here, as a rule, the hunter lurks, motionless, with his
pincers half open. He is waiting.
There is a sound overhead. It is a specimen of game which I have just
introduced, a Cicada, a luscious morsel. The drowsy trapper at once
wakes; he moves his palpi, which quiver with cupidity. Cautiously,
step by step, he climbs his inclined plane. He takes a glance outside
the funnel. The Cicada is seen.
The Scarites darts out of his pit, runs forward, seizes the Cicada and
drags her backwards. The struggle is brief, thanks to the trap of the
entrance, which yawns like a funnel to receive even a bulky quarry and
contracts into a crumbling precipice that paralyses all resistance.
The slope is fatal: who crosses the brink can no longer escape the
murderer.
Head first, the Cicada dives into the abyss, down which the spoiler
drags her by successive jerks. She is drawn into the low-ceilinged
tunnel. Here the wings cease to flutter, for lack of space. She
reaches the knacker's cellar, at the end of the corridor. The Scarites
now works at her for some time with his pincers, in order to reduce
her to complete immobility, fearing lest she should escape; then he
returns to the mouth of the charnel-house.
It is not everything to possess plenty of game; the question next
arises how to consume it in peace. The door is therefore closed
against importunate callers, that is to say, the insect fills the
entrance to the tunnel with his mound of rubbish. Having taken this
precaution, he goes back again and sits down to his meal. He will not
reopen his hiding-place nor remake the pit at the entrance until
later, when the Cicada has been digested and hunger makes its
reappearance. Let us leave the glutton with his quarry.
The brief morning which I spent with him in his native place did not
enable me to watch him at his hunting, on the sands of the beach; but
the facts gathered in captivity are enough to tell us all about it.
They show us in the Scarites a bold hero who is not to be intimidated
by the biggest or strongest adversary.
We have seen him coming up from underground, falling on the
passers-by, seizing them at some distance from the burrow and dragging
them forcibly into his cut-throat den. The Rose-chafer, the Common
Cockchafer are but small deer for him. He dares to attack the Cicada,
he dares to dig his hooks into the corpulent Pine-chafer. He is a
fearless ruffian, ready for any crime.
Under natural conditions his audacity can be no less. On the contrary,
the familiar spots, freedom of movement, unlimited space and his
beloved salt air excite the warrior to yet greater feats of daring.
He has dug himself a refuge in the sand, with a wide, crumbling mouth.
This is not so that he may, like the Ant-lion, wait at the bottom of
his funnel for the passing of a victim which stumbles on the shifting
slope and rolls into the pit. The Scarites disdains these petty
poachers' methods, these fowlers' snares; he prefers a run across
country.
His long trails on the sand tell us of nocturnal rounds in search of
big game, often the Pimelia, sometimes the Half-spotted Scarab.[5] The
find is not consumed on the spot. To enjoy it at his ease, he needs
the peaceful darkness of the underground manor; and so the captive,
seized by one leg with the pincers, is forcibly dragged along the
ground.
[Footnote 5: Cf. _The Sacred Beetle and Others_: chaps. ii. and vii.--
_Translator's Note_.]
If no precautions were taken, the introduction of the victim into the
burrow would be impracticable, with a huge quarry offering a desperate
resistance. But the entrance to the tunnel is a wide crater, with
crumbling walls. However large he be, the captive, tugged from below,
enters and tumbles into the pit. The crumbling rubbish immediately
buries him and paralyses his movements. The thing is done. The bandit
now proceeds to close his door and empty his prey's belly.