THE WORKS OF J. H. FABRE
THE
HUNTING WASPS
BY
J. HENRI FABRE
Translated by
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS, F.Z.S.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Henri Fabre’s essays on Wasps will fill three volumes in all, of which
this is the first. The others will be entitled The Mason-Wasps and More
Hunting Wasps. The former will include the chapters on the Common or
Social Wasp.
The first seventeen chapters of the present book appeared some years
ago, wholly or in part, in a version of vol. i. of the Souvenirs
Entomologiques prepared by the author of Mademoiselle Mori for Messrs.
Macmillan and Co., by arrangement with whom I am now permitted to
retranslate and republish them for the purpose of this collected and
definite edition of Fabre’s entomological works. Of the remainder, ‘The
Modern Theory of Instinct’ first saw the light in the English Review,
and ‘An Unknown Sense,’ in an abbreviated form, in the Daily Mail.
It is a pleasure once more to express my thanks to Miss Frances
Rodwell, who, as usual, has rendered me much valuable assistance, and
to Mr. Geoffrey Meade-Waldo, of the Natural History Museum, who has
been kind enough to set me right on many an entomological point.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
Chelsea, 1916.
CONTENTS
PAGE
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE V
CHAPTER I
THE BUPRESTIS-HUNTING CERCERIS 1
CHAPTER II
THE GREAT CERCERIS 18
CHAPTER III
A SCIENTIFIC SLAUGHTERER 40
CHAPTER IV
THE YELLOW-WINGED SPHEX 58
CHAPTER V
THE THREE DAGGER-THRUSTS 75
CHAPTER VI
THE LARVA AND THE NYMPH 86
CHAPTER VII
ADVANCED THEORIES 107
CHAPTER VIII
THE LANGUEDOCIAN SPHEX 129
CHAPTER IX
THE WISDOM OF INSTINCT 149
CHAPTER X
THE IGNORANCE OF INSTINCT 174
CHAPTER XI
AN ASCENT OF MONT VENTOUX 196
CHAPTER XII
THE TRAVELLERS 215
CHAPTER XIII
THE AMMOPHILÆ 231
CHAPTER XIV
THE BEMBEX 251
CHAPTER XV
THE FLY-HUNT 271
CHAPTER XVI
A PARASITE OF THE BEMBEX. THE COCOON 284
CHAPTER XVII
THE RETURN TO THE NEST 305
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HAIRY AMMOPHILA 323
CHAPTER XIX
AN UNKNOWN SENSE 341
CHAPTER XX
THE MODERN THEORY OF INSTINCT 354
APPENDIX 379
CHAPTER I
THE BUPRESTIS-HUNTING CERCERIS
There are for each one of us, according to his turn of mind, certain
books that open up horizons hitherto undreamed of and mark an epoch in
our mental life. They fling wide the gates of a new world wherein our
intellectual powers are henceforth to be employed; they are the spark
which lights the fuel on a hearth doomed, without its aid, to remain
indefinitely bleak and cold. And it is often chance that places in our
hands those books which mark the beginning of a new era in the
evolution of our ideas. The most casual circumstances, a few lines that
happen somehow to come before our eyes, decide our future and plant us
in the appointed groove.
One winter evening, when the rest of the household was asleep, as I sat
reading beside a stove whose ashes were still warm, my book made me
forget for a while the cares of the morrow: those heavy cares of a poor
professor of physics who, after piling up diplomas and for a quarter of
a century performing services of uncontested merit, was receiving for
himself and his family a stipend of sixteen hundred francs, or less
than the wages of a groom in a decent establishment. Such was the
disgraceful parsimony of the day where education was concerned; such
was the edict of our government red-tape: I was an irregular, the
offspring of my solitary studies. And so I was forgetting the poverty
and anxieties of a professor’s life, amid my books, when I chanced to
turn over the pages of an entomological essay that had fallen into my
hands I forget how.
It was a monograph by the then father of entomology, the venerable
scientist Léon Dufour, [1] on the habits of a Wasp that hunted
Buprestis-beetles. Certainly, I had not waited till then to interest
myself in insects; from my early childhood I had delighted in Beetles,
Bees, and Butterflies; as far back as I can remember, I see myself in
ecstasy before the splendour of a Ground-beetle’s wing-cases or the
wings of Papilio machaon, the Swallowtail. The fire was laid; the spark
to kindle it was absent. Léon Dufour’s essay provided that spark.
New lights burst forth: I received a sort of mental revelation. So
there was more in science than the arranging of pretty Beetles in a
cork box and giving them names and classifying them; there was
something much finer: a close and loving study of insect life, the
examination of the structure and especially the faculties of each
species. I read of a magnificent instance of this, glowing with
excitement as I did so. Some time after, aided by those lucky
circumstances which he who seeks them eagerly is always able to find, I
myself published an entomological article, a supplement to Léon
Dufour’s. This first work of mine won honourable mention from the
Institute of France and was awarded a prize for experimental
physiology. But soon I received a far more welcome recompense, in the
shape of a most eulogistic and encouraging letter from the very man who
had inspired me. From his home in the Landes the revered master sent me
a warm expression of his enthusiasm and urged me to go on with my
studies. Even now, at that sacred recollection, my old eyes fill with
happy tears. O fair days of illusion, of faith in the future, where are
you now?
I am sure that my readers will welcome an extract from the essay that
formed the starting-point of my own researches, especially as this
extract is necessary for the due understanding of what follows. I will
therefore let the master speak for himself, abridging his words in
parts: [2]
‘In all insect history, I can think of no more curious, no more
extraordinary fact than that which I am about to describe to you.
It concerns a species of Cerceris who feeds her family on the most
sumptuous species of the genus Buprestis. Allow me to make you
share the vivid impressions which I owe to my study of this
Hymenopteron’s habits.
‘In July 1839, a friend living in the country sent me two specimens
of Buprestis bifasciata, an insect at that time new to my
collection, informing me that a kind of Wasp that was carrying one
of these pretty Beetles had let it fall on his coat and that, a few
moments later, a similar Wasp had dropped another on the ground.
‘In July 1840, I was visiting my friend’s house professionally and
reminded him of his capture of the year before and asked for
details of the circumstances that accompanied it. The identity of
the season and place made me hope to make a similar capture myself;
but the weather that day was overcast and chilly; and therefore but
few Wasps had ventured out. Nevertheless, we made a tour of
inspection in the garden; and, seeing nothing coming, I thought of
looking on the ground for the homes of Burrowing Hymenoptera.
‘My attention was attracted by a small heap of sand freshly thrown
up and forming a sort of tiny mole-hill. On raking it, I saw that
it masked the opening of a shaft running some way down. With a
spade we carefully turned over the soil and soon saw the glittering
wing-cases of the coveted Buprestis lying scattered around.
Presently I discovered not only isolated and fragmentary
wing-cases, but a whole Buprestis, then three or four of them,
displaying their emerald and gold. I could not believe my eyes.
‘But this was only a prelude to the feast. In the chaos of rubbish
produced by the exhumation, a Wasp appeared and fell into my hands:
it was the kidnapper of the Buprestes, trying to escape from among
her victims. In this burrowing insect I recognized an old
acquaintance, a Cerceris whom I have found hundreds of times, both
in Spain and round about Saint-Sever.
‘My ambition was far from satisfied. It was not enough for me to
identify the kidnapper and her victim: I wanted the larva, the sole
consumer of those rich provisions. After exhausting this first vein
of Buprestes, I hastened to make fresh excavations and, planting my
spade more carefully still, I at last succeeded in discovering two
larvæ which crowned the good fortune of this campaign. In less than
an hour I ransacked the haunts of three Cerceres; and my booty was
some fifteen whole Buprestes, with fragments of a still larger
number. I calculated, keeping, I believe, well within the mark,
that this particular garden contained five-and-twenty nests, making
an enormous total of buried Buprestes. What must it be, I thought,
in places where in a few hours I have caught on the garlic-flowers
as many as sixty Cerceres, whose nests were apparently in the
neighbourhood and no doubt victualled just as abundantly? And so my
imagination, never going beyond the bounds of probability, showed
me underground, within a small radius, Buprestis fasciata by the
thousand, whereas, during the thirty years and upwards that I have
been studying the entomology of this district, I never discovered a
single one in the open.
‘Once only, perhaps twenty years ago, I found the abdomen of this
insect, together with its wing-cases, stuck in a hole in an old
oak. This fact was illuminating. By informing me that the larva of
Buprestis fasciata must live in the wood of the oak, it completely
explained why this Beetle is so common in a district which has none
but oak-forests. As Cerceris bupresticida is rare in the clay hills
of such districts, as compared with the sandy plains thickly
planted with the maritime pine, it became an interesting question
to know whether this Wasp, when she inhabits the pine country,
victuals her nest in the same way as in the oak country. I had a
strong presumption that this was not the case; and you will soon
see, not without surprise, what exquisite entomological
discrimination our Cerceris displays in her choice of the numerous
species of the genus Buprestis.
‘We will therefore hasten to the pine region to reap new delights.
The field to be explored is the garden of a country-house standing
amid forests of maritime pines. One soon recognized the dwellings
of the Cerceris; they had been made solely in the main paths, where
the firm, compact soil offered the Burrowing Hymenopteron a solid
foundation for the construction of her subterranean abode. I
inspected some twenty, I may say, by the sweat of my brow. It is a
very laborious sort of undertaking, for the nests, and consequently
the provisions, are not found at less than a foot below the
surface. It becomes necessary, therefore, lest they should be
damaged, to begin by inserting a grass-stalk, serving as a landmark
and a guide, into the Cerceris’ gallery and next to invest the
place with a square of trenches, some seven or eight inches from
the orifice or the landmark. The sapping must be done with a
garden-spade, so that the central clod can be completely detached
on every side and raised in one piece, which we turn over on the
ground and then break up carefully. This was the method that
answered with me.
‘You would have shared our enthusiasm, my friend, at the sight of
the beautiful specimens of Buprestes which this original method of
treasure-hunting disclosed, one after the other, to our eager gaze.
You should have heard our exclamations each time that the mine was
turned upside down and new glories stood revealed, rendered more
brilliant still by the blazing sun; or when we discovered, here,
larvæ of all ages fastened to their prey, there, the cocoons of
those larvæ all encrusted with copper, bronze, and emerald. I who
had been studying insects at close quarters for three or four
decades—alas!—had never witnessed such a lovely sight nor enjoyed
so great a treat. It only needed your presence to double our
delight. Our ever-increasing admiration was devoted by turns to
those brilliant Beetles and to the marvellous discernment, the
astonishing sagacity of the Cerceris who had buried and stored them
away. Will you believe it, of more than four hundred Beetles [3]
that we dug up, there was not one but belonged to the old genus
Buprestis! Not even the very smallest mistake had been made by the
wise Wasp. What can we not learn from this intelligent industry in
so tiny an insect! What value would not Latreille [4] have set upon
this Cerceris’ support of the natural method!
‘We will now pass to the different manœuvres of the Cerceris for
establishing and victualling her nests. I have already said that
she chooses ground with a firm, compact, and smooth surface; I will
add that this ground must be dry and fully exposed to the sun. She
reveals in this choice an intelligence, or, if you prefer, an
instinct, which one might be tempted to consider the result of
experience. Loose earth or a merely sandy soil would doubtless be
much easier to dig; but then how is she to get an aperture that
will remain open for goods to pass in and out, or a gallery whose
walls will not constantly be liable to fall in, to lose their
shape, to be blocked after a few days of rain? Her choice therefore
is both sensible and nicely calculated.
‘Our Burrowing Wasp digs her gallery with her mandibles and her
front tarsi, which are furnished for this purpose with stiff spikes
that perform the office of rakes. The orifice must not only have
the diameter of the miner’s body: it must also be able to admit a
capture of large bulk. It is an instance of admirable foresight. As
the Cerceris goes deeper into the earth, she casts out the rubbish:
this forms the heap which I likened above to a tiny mole-hill. The
gallery is not perpendicular, for then it would inevitably become
blocked up, owing either to the wind or to other causes. Not far
from where it starts, it forms an angle; its length is seven or
eight inches. At the end of the passage the industrious mother
establishes the cradles of her offspring. These consist of five
separate cells, independent of one another, arranged in a
semicircle and hollowed into the shape and nearly the size of an
olive. Inside, they are polished and firm. Each of them is large
enough to contain three Buprestes, which form the usual allowance
for each larva. The mother lays an egg in the middle of the three
victims and then stops up the gallery with earth, so that, when the
victualling of the whole brood is finished, the cells no longer
communicate with the outside.
‘Cerceris bupresticida must be a dexterous, daring, and skilful
huntress. The cleanliness and freshness of the Buprestes whom she
buries in her lair incline one to believe that she must seize these
Beetles at the moment when they are leaving the wooden galleries in
which their final metamorphosis has taken place. But what
inconceivable instinct urges her, a creature that lives solely on
the nectar of flowers, to procure, in the face of a thousand
difficulties, animal food for carnivorous children which she will
never see, and to take up her post on utterly dissimilar trees,
which conceal deep down in their trunks the insects destined to
become her prey? What yet more inconceivable entomological judgment
lays down the strict law that she shall confine herself in the
choice of her victims to a single generic group and capture
specimens differing greatly among themselves in size, shape, and
colour? For observe, my friend, how slight the resemblance is
between Buprestis biguttata, with a long, slender body and a dark
colour; B. octoguttata, oval-oblong, with great patches of a
beautiful yellow on a blue or green ground; and B. micans, who is
three or four times the size of B. biguttata and glitters with a
metallic lustre of a fine golden green.
‘There is another very singular fact about the manœuvres of our
Buprestis-slayer. The buried Buprestes, like those whom I have
seized in the grasp of their kidnappers, are always deprived of any
sign of life; in a word, they are decidedly dead. I was surprised
to remark that, no matter when these corpses were dug up, they not
only preserved all their freshness of colouring, but their legs,
antennæ, palpi, and the membranes uniting the various parts of the
body remained perfectly supple and flexible. There was no
mutilation, no apparent wound to be seen. One might at first
believe the reason, in the case of the buried ones, to be due to
the coolness of the bowels of the earth, in the absence of air and
light; and, in the case of those taken from the kidnappers, to the
very recent date of their death. But please observe that, at the
time of my explorations, after placing the numerous exhumed
Buprestes in separate screws of paper, I often left them in their
little bags for thirty-six hours before pinning them out. Well,
notwithstanding the dryness of the air and the burning July heat, I
always found the same flexibility in their joints. Nay more: I have
dissected several of them, after that lapse of time, and their
viscera were as perfectly preserved as if I had used my scalpel on
the insects’ live entrails. Now long experience has taught me that,
even in a Beetle of this size, when twelve hours have passed after
death in summer, the internal organs become either dried up or
putrefied, so that it is impossible to make sure of their form or
structure. There is some special circumstance about the Buprestes
killed by the Cerceres that saves them from desiccation and
putrefaction for a week and perhaps two. But what is this
circumstance?’
To explain this wonderful preservation of the tissues which makes of an
insect smitten for many weeks past with a corpse-like inertness a piece
of game which does not even go high and which, during the greatest heat
of summer, keeps as fresh as at the moment of its capture, the able
historian of the Buprestis-huntress surmises the presence of an
antiseptic fluid, acting similarly to the preparations used for
preserving anatomical specimens. This fluid, he suggests, can be
nothing but the poison of the Wasp, injected into the victim’s body. A
tiny drop of the venomous liquid accompanying the sting, the needle
destined for the inoculation, would therefore serve as a kind of brine
or pickle to preserve the meat on which the larva is to feed. But how
immensely superior to our own pickling processes is that of the Wasp!
We salt, or smoke, or tin foodstuffs which remain fit to eat, it is
true, but which are very far indeed from retaining the qualities which
they possessed when fresh. Tins of sardines soaked in oil, Dutch smoked
herrings, codfish reduced to hard slabs by salt and sun: which of these
can compare with the same fish supplied to the cook, so to speak, all
alive and kicking? In the case of flesh-meat, things are even worse.
Apart from salting and curing, we have nothing that can keep a piece of
meat fit for consumption for even a fairly short period.
Nowadays, after a thousand fruitless attempts in the most varied
directions, we equip special ships at great cost; and these ships,
fitted with a powerful refrigerating-plant, bring us the flesh of sheep
and oxen slaughtered in the South American pampas, frozen and preserved
from decomposition by the intense cold. How much more excellent is the
Cerceris’ method, so swift, so inexpensive, and so efficacious! What
lessons can we not learn from her transcendental chemistry! With an
imperceptible drop of her poison-fluid, she straightway renders her
prey incorruptible! Incorruptible, did I say? It is much more than
that! The game is brought to a condition which prevents desiccation,
leaves the joints supple, keeps all the organs, both internal and
external, in their pristine freshness, and, in short, places the
sacrificed insect in a state that differs from life only by its
corpse-like immobility.
This is the theory that satisfied Léon Dufour, as he contemplated the
incomprehensible marvel of those dead Buprestes proof against
corruption. A preserving-fluid, incomparably superior to aught that
human science can produce, explains the mystery. He, the master, the
ablest of them all, an expert in the niceties of anatomy; he who, with
magnifying-glass and scalpel, examined the whole entomological series,
leaving no nook or corner unexplored; he, in short, for whom insect
organism possessed no secrets can think of nothing better than an
antiseptic fluid to give at least the semblance of an explanation of a
fact that leaves him confounded. I crave permission to emphasize this
comparison between animal instinct and the reasoning power of the sage
in order the better to bring to light, in due season, the overwhelming
superiority of the former.
I will add but a few words to the history of the Buprestis-hunting
Cerceris. This Wasp, who is common in the Landes, as her historian
tells us, appears to be very rarely found in the department of
Vaucluse. I have met her only at long intervals, in autumn—and then
only isolated specimens—on the spiny heads of the field eryngo
(Eryngium campestre), in the neighbourhood either of Avignon or of
Orange and Carpentras. In this last spot, so favourable to the work of
the Burrowing Wasps owing to its sandy soil of Molasse formation, I
have had the good fortune, not to witness the exhumation of such
entomological treasures as Léon Dufour describes, but to find some old
nests which I attribute without hesitation to the Buprestis-huntress,
basing my opinion upon the shape of the cocoons, the nature of the
provisioning, and the presence of the Wasp in the neighbourhood. These
nests, dug in the heart of a very crumbly sandstone, known in the
district as safre, were crammed with remains of Beetles, remains easily
recognized and consisting of detached wing-cases, gutted corselets and
entire legs. Now these broken victuals of the larva’s banquet all
belonged to a single species; and that species was once more a
Buprestis, the Double-lined Buprestis (Sphenoptera geminata). [5] Thus
from the west to the east of France, from the department of the Landes
to that of Vaucluse, the Cerceris remains faithful to her favourite
prey; longitude makes no difference to her predilections; a huntress of
Buprestes among the maritime pines of the sand-dunes along the coast
remains a huntress of Buprestes among the olive-trees and evergreen
oaks of Provence. She changes the species according to place, climate,
and vegetation, which alter the nature of the insect population so
greatly; but she never departs from her favoured genus, the genus
Buprestis. What can her reason be? That is what I shall try to show.