THE LANGUEDOCIAN SPHEX
When the chemist has fully prepared his plan of research, he mixes his
reagent at the most convenient moment and lights a flame under his
retort. He is the master of time, place and circumstances. He chooses
his hour, shuts himself up in his laboratory, where nothing can come to
disturb the business in hand; he produces at will this or that
condition which reflection suggests to him: he is in quest of the
secrets of inorganic matter, whose chemical activities science can
awaken whenever it thinks fit.
The secrets of living matter—not those of anatomical structure, but
really those of life in action, especially of instinct—present much
more difficult and delicate conditions to the observer. Far from being
able to choose his own time, he is the slave of the season, of the day,
of the hour, of the very moment. When the opportunity offers, he must
seize it as it comes, without hesitation, for it may be long before it
presents itself again. And, as it usually arrives at the moment when he
is least expecting it, nothing is in readiness for making the most of
it. He must then and there improvise his little stock of experimenting
material, contrive his plans, evolve his tactics, devise his tricks;
and he can think himself lucky if inspiration comes fast enough to
allow him to profit by the chance offered. This chance, moreover,
hardly ever comes except to those who look for it. You must watch for
it patiently for days and days, now on sandy slopes exposed to the full
glare of the sun, now on some path walled in by high banks, where the
heat is like that of an oven, or again on some sandstone ledge which is
none too steady. If it is in your power to set up your observatory
under a meagre olive-tree that pretends to protect you from the rays of
a pitiless sun, you may bless the fate that treats you as a sybarite:
your lot is an Eden. Above all, keep your eyes open. The spot is a good
one; and—who knows?—the opportunity may come at any moment.
It came—late, it is true; but still it came. Ah, if you could now
observe at your ease, in the quiet of your study, with nothing to
distract your mind from your subject, far from the profane wayfarer
who, seeing you so busily occupied at a spot where he sees nothing,
will stop, overwhelm you with queries, take you for some water-diviner,
or—a graver suspicion this—regard you as some questionable character
searching for buried treasure and discovering by means of incantations
where the old pots full of coin lie hidden! Should you still wear a
Christian aspect in his eyes, he will approach you, look to see what
you are looking at, and smile in a manner that leaves no doubt as to
his poor opinion of people who spend their time in watching Flies. You
will be lucky indeed if the troublesome visitor, with his tongue in his
cheek, walks off at last without disturbing things and without
repeating in his innocence the disaster brought about by my two
conscripts’ boots.
Should your inexplicable doings not puzzle the passer-by, they will be
sure to puzzle the village keeper, that uncompromising representative
of the law in the ploughed acres. He has long had his eye on you. He
has so often seen you wandering about, like a lost soul, for no
appreciable reason; he has so often caught you rooting in the ground,
or, with infinite precautions, knocking down some strip of wall in a
sunken road, that in the end he has come to look upon you with dark
suspicion. You are nothing to him but a gipsy, a tramp, a
poultry-thief, a shady person or, at the best, a madman. Should you be
carrying your botanizing-case, it will represent to him the poacher’s
ferret-cage; and you would never get it out of his head that,
regardless of the game-laws and the rights of landlords, you are
clearing all the neighbouring warrens of their rabbits. Take care.
However thirsty you may be, do not lay a finger on the nearest bunch of
grapes: the man with the municipal badge will be there, delighted to
have a case at last and so to receive an explanation of your highly
perplexing behaviour.
I have never, I can safely say, committed any such misdemeanour; and
yet, one day, lying on the sand, absorbed in the details of a Bembex’
household, I suddenly heard beside me:
‘In the name of the law, I arrest you! You come along with me!’
It was the keeper of Les Angles, who, after vainly waiting for an
opportunity to catch me at fault and being daily more anxious for an
answer to the riddle that was worrying him, at last resolved upon the
brutal expedient of a summons. I had to explain things. The poor man
seemed anything but convinced:
‘Pooh!’ he said. ‘Pooh! You will never make me believe that you come
here and roast in the sun just to watch Flies. I shall keep an eye on
you, mark you! And, the first time I...! However, that’ll do for the
present.’
And he went off. I have always believed that my red ribbon had a good
deal to do with his departure. And I also put down to that red ribbon
certain other little services by which I benefited during my
entomological and botanical excursions. It seemed to me—or was I
dreaming?—it seemed to me that, on my botanizing expeditions up Mont
Ventoux, the guide was more tractable and the donkey less obstinate.
The aforesaid bit of scarlet ribbon did not always spare me the
tribulations which the entomologist must expect when experimenting on
the public way. Here is a characteristic example. Ever since daybreak I
have been ambushed, sitting on a stone, at the bottom of a ravine. The
subject of my matutinal visit is the Languedocian Sphex. Three women,
vine-pickers, pass in a group, on the way to their work. They give a
glance at the man seated, apparently absorbed in reflection. At sunset,
the same pickers pass again, carrying their full baskets on their
heads. The man is still there, sitting on the same stone, with his eyes
fixed on the same place. My motionless attitude, my long persistency in
remaining at that deserted spot, must have impressed them deeply. As
they passed by me, I saw one of them tap her forehead and heard her
whisper to the others:
‘Un paouré inoucènt, pécaïre!’
And all three made the sign of the Cross.
An innocent, she had said, un inoucènt, an idiot, a poor creature,
quite harmless, but half-witted; and they had all made the sign of the
Cross, an idiot being to them one with God’s seal stamped upon him.
‘How now!’ thought I. ‘What a cruel mockery of fate! You, who are so
laboriously seeking to discover what is instinct in the animal and what
is reason, you yourself do not even possess your reason in these good
women’s eyes! What a humiliating reflection!’
No matter: pécaïre, that expression of supreme compassion, in the
Provençal dialect, pécaïre, coming from the bottom of the heart, soon
made me forget inoucènt.
It is in this ravine with its three grape-gathering women that I would
meet the reader, if he be not discouraged by the petty annoyances of
which I have given him a foretaste. The Languedocian Sphex frequents
these points, not in tribes congregating at the same spot when
nest-building work begins, but as solitary individuals, sparsely
distributed, settling wherever the chances of their vagabondage lead
them. Even as her kinswoman, the Yellow-winged Sphex, seeks the society
of her kind and the animation of a yard full of workers, the
Languedocian Sphex prefers isolation, quiet and solitude. Graver of
gait, more formal in her manners, of a larger size and also more
sombrely clad, she always lives apart, not caring what others do,
disdaining company, a genuine misanthrope among the Sphegidæ. The one
is sociable, the other is not: a profound difference which in itself is
enough to characterize them.
This amounts to saying that, with the Languedocian Sphex, the
difficulties of observation increase. No long-meditated experiment is
possible in her case; nor, when the first attempts have failed, can one
hope to try them again, on the same occasion, with a second or a third
subject and so on. If you prepare the materials for your observation in
advance, if, for instance, you have in reserve a piece of game which
you propose to substitute for that of the Sphex, it is to be feared,
nay, it is almost certain that the huntress will not appear; and, when
she does come at last, your materials are no longer fit for use and
everything has to be improvised in a hurry, that very moment, under
conditions that are not always satisfactory.
Let us take heart. The site is a first-rate one. Many a time already I
have surprised the Sphex here, sunning herself on a vine-leaf. The
insect, spread out flat, is basking voluptuously in the heat and light.
From time to time it has a sort of frenzied outburst of pleasure: it
quivers with content; it rapidly taps its feet on its couch, producing
a tattoo not unlike that of rain falling heavily on the leaf. The
joyous thrum can be heard several feet away. Then immobility begins
again, soon followed by a fresh nervous commotion and by the whirling
of the tarsi, a symbol of supreme felicity. I have known some of these
passionate sun-lovers suddenly to leave the work-yard, when the larva’s
cave has been half-dug, and go to the nearest vine to take a bath of
heat and light, after which they would come back to the burrow, as
though reluctantly, just to give a perfunctory sweep and soon end by
knocking off work, unable to resist the exquisite temptation of
luxuriating on the vine-leaves.
It may be that the voluptuous couch is also an observatory, whence the
Wasp surveys the surrounding country in order to discover and select
her prey. Her exclusive game is the Ephippiger of the Vine, scattered
here and there on the branches or on any brambles hard by. The joint is
a substantial one, especially as the Sphex favours solely the females,
whose bellies are swollen with a mighty cluster of eggs.
Let us take no notice of the repeated trips, the fruitless searches,
the tedium of frequent long waiting, but rather present the Sphex
suddenly to the reader as she herself appears to the observer. Here she
is, at the bottom of a sunken road with high, sandy banks. She comes on
foot, but gets help from her wings in dragging her heavy prize. The
Ephippiger’s antennæ, long and slender as threads, are the
harnessing-ropes. Holding her head high, she grasps one of them in her
mandibles. The antenna gripped passes between her legs; and the game
follows, turned over on its back. Should the soil be too uneven and so
offer resistance to this method of carting, the Wasp clasps her
unwieldy burden and carries it with very short flights, interspersed,
as often as possible, with journeys on foot. We never see her undertake
a sustained flight, for long distances, holding the game in her legs,
as is the practice of those expert aviators, the Bembeces and Cerceres,
for instance, who bear through the air for more than half a mile their
respective Flies or Weevils, a very light booty compared with the huge
Ephippiger. The overpowering weight of her capture compels the
Languedocian Sphex to make the whole, or nearly the whole, journey on
foot, her method of transport being consequently slow and laborious.
The same reason, the bulk and weight of the prey, have entirely
reversed the usual order which the Burrowing Wasps follow in their
operations. This order we know: it consists in first digging a burrow
and then stocking it with provisions. As the victim is not out of
proportion to the strength of the spoiler, it is quite simple to carry
it flying, which means that the Wasp can choose any site that she likes
for her dwelling. She does not mind how far afield she goes for her
prey: once she has captured her quarry, she comes flying home at a
speed which makes questions of distance quite immaterial. Hence she
prefers as the site for her burrow the place where she herself was
born, the place where her forbears lived; she here inherits deep
galleries, the accumulated work of earlier generations; and, by
repairing them a little, she makes them serve as approaches to new
chambers, which are in this way better protected than they would be if
they depended upon the labours of a single Wasp, who had to start
boring from the surface each year. This happens, for instance, in the
case of the Great Cerceris and the Bee-eating Philanthus. And, should
the ancestral abode not be strong enough to withstand the rough weather
from one year to the next and to be handed down to the offspring,
should the burrower have each time to start her tunnelling afresh, at
least the Wasp finds greater safety in places consecrated by the
experience of her forerunners. Consequently she goes there to dig her
galleries, each of which serves as a corridor to a group of cells, thus
effecting an economy in the aggregate labour expended upon the whole
business of the laying.
In this way are formed not real societies, for there are no concerted
efforts towards a common object, but at least assemblies where the
sight of her kinswomen and her neighbours doubtless puts heart into the
labour of the individual. We can observe, in fact, between these little
tribes, springing from the same stock, and the burrowers who do their
work alone, a difference in activity which reminds us of the emulation
prevailing in a crowded yard and the indifference of labourers who have
to work in solitude. Action is contagious in animals as in men; it is
fired by its own example.
To sum up: when of a moderate weight for its captor, the prey can be
conveyed flying, to a great distance. The Wasp can then choose any site
that she pleases for her burrow. She adopts by preference the spot
where she was born and uses each passage as a common corridor giving
access to several cells. The result of this meeting at a common
birthplace is the formation of groups, like turning to like, which is a
source of friendly rivalry. This first step towards social life comes
from facilities for travelling. Do not things happen in the same way
with man, if I may be permitted the comparison? When he has nothing but
trackless paths, man builds a solitary hut; when supplied with good
roads, he and his fellows collect in populous cities; when served by
railways which, so to speak, annihilate distance, they assemble in
those immense human hives called London or Paris.
The situation of the Languedocian Sphex is just the reverse. Her prey
is a heavy Ephippiger, a single dish representing by itself the sum
total of provisions which the other freebooters amass on numerous
journeys, insect by insect. What the Cerceres and the other plunderers
strong on the wing accomplish by dividing the labour she does in a
single journey. The weight of the prey makes any distant flight
impossible; it has to be brought home slowly and laboriously, for it is
a troublesome business to cart things along the ground. This alone
makes the site of the burrow dependent on the accidents of the chase:
the prey comes first and the dwelling next. So there is no assembling
at a common meeting-place, no association of kindred spirits, no tribes
stimulating one another in their work by mutual example, but isolation
in the particular spot where the chances of the day have taken the
Sphex, solitary labour, carried on without animation though with
unfailing diligence. First of all, the prey is sought for, attacked,
reduced to helplessness. Not until after that does the digger trouble
about the burrow. A favourable place is chosen, as near as possible to
the spot where the victim lies, so as to cut short the tedious work of
transport; and the chamber of the future larva is rapidly hollowed out
and at once receives the egg and the victuals. There you have an
example of the inverted method of the Languedocian Sphex, a method, as
all my observations go to prove, diametrically opposite to that of the
other Hymenoptera. I will give some of the more striking of these
observations.
When caught digging, the Languedocian Sphex is always alone, sometimes
at the bottom of a dusty recess left by a stone that has dropped out of
an old wall, sometimes ensconced in the shelter formed by a flat,
projecting bit of sandstone, a shelter much sought after by the fierce
Eyed Lizard to serve as an entrance-hall to his lair. The sun beats
full upon it; it is an oven. The soil, consisting of old dust that has
fallen little by little from the roof, is very easy to dig. The cell is
soon scooped out with the mandibles, those pincers which are also used
for digging, and the tarsi, which serve as rubbish-rakes. Then the
miner flies off, but with a slow flight and no sudden display of
wing-power, a manifest sign that the insect is not contemplating a
distant expedition. We can easily follow it with our eyes and perceive
the spot where it alights, usually ten or twelve yards away. At other
times it decides to walk. It goes off and makes hurriedly for a spot
where we will have the indiscretion to follow it, for our presence does
not trouble it at all. On reaching its destination, either on foot or
on the wing, it looks round for some time, as we gather from its
undecided attitude and its journeys hither and thither. It looks round;
at last it finds or rather retrieves something. The object recovered is
an Ephippiger, half-paralysed, but still moving her tarsi, antennæ and
ovipositor. She is a victim which the Sphex certainly stabbed not long
ago with a few stings. After the operation the Wasp left her prey, an
embarrassing burden amid the suspense of house-hunting; she abandoned
it perhaps on the very spot where she captured it, contenting herself
with making it more or less conspicuous by placing it on some
grass-tuft, in order to find it more easily later; and, trusting to her
good memory to return presently to the spot where the booty lies, she
set out to explore the neighbourhood with the object of finding a
suitable site and there digging a burrow. Once the home was ready, she
came back to her prize, which she found again without much hesitation,
and she now prepares to lug it home. She bestrides the victim, seizes
one or both of the antennæ, and off she goes, tugging and dragging with
all the strength of her loins and jaws.
Sometimes she has only to make one journey; at other times and more
often, the carter suddenly plumps down her load and quickly runs home.
Perhaps it occurs to her that the entrance-door is not wide enough to
admit so substantial a morsel; perhaps she remembers some lack of
finish that might hamper the storing. And, in point of fact, the worker
does touch up her work: she enlarges the doorway, smooths the
threshold, strengthens the ceiling. It is all done with a few strokes
of the tarsi. Then she returns to the Ephippiger, lying yonder, on her
back, a few steps away. The hauling begins again. On the road, the
Sphex seems struck with a new idea, which flashes through her quick
brain. She has inspected the door, but has not looked inside. Who knows
if all is well in there? She hastens to see, dropping the Ephippiger
before she goes. The interior is inspected; and apparently a few pats
of the trowel are administered with the tarsi, giving a last polish to
the walls. Without lingering too long over these delicate
after-touches, the Wasp goes back to her booty and harnesses herself to
its antennæ. Forward! Will the journey be completed this time? I would
not answer for it. I have known a Sphex, more suspicious than the
others, perhaps, or more neglectful of the minor architectural details,
to repair her omissions, to dispel her doubts, by abandoning her prize
on the way five or six times running, in order to hurry to the burrow,
which each time was touched up a little or merely inspected within. It
is true that others make straight for their destination, without even
stopping to rest. I must also add that, when the Wasp goes home to
improve the dwelling, she does not fail to give a glance from a
distance every now and then at the Ephippiger over there, to make sure
that nothing has happened to her. This solicitude recalls that of the
Sacred Beetle when he leaves the hall which he is excavating in order
to come and feel his beloved pellet and bring it a little nearer to
him.
The inference to be drawn from the details which I have related is
manifest. The fact that every Languedocian Sphex surprised in her
mining operations, even though it be at the very beginning of the
digging, at the first stroke of the tarsus in the dust, afterwards,
when the home is prepared, makes a short excursion, now on foot, anon
flying, and invariably finds herself in possession of a victim already
stabbed, already paralysed, compels us to conclude, in all certainty,
that this Wasp does her work as a huntress first and as a burrower
after, so that the place of the capture decides the place of the home.
This reversal of procedure, which causes the food to be prepared before
the larder, whereas hitherto we have seen the larder come before the
food, I attribute to the weight of the Sphex’ prey, a prey which it is
not possible to carry far through the air. It is not that the
Languedocian Sphex is ill-built for flight: on the contrary, she can
soar magnificently; but the prey which she hunts would weigh her down
if she had no other support than her wings. She needs the support of
the ground for her hauling-work, in which she displays wonderful
strength. When laden with her prey, she always goes afoot, or takes but
very short flights, even under conditions when flight would save her
time and trouble. I will quote an instance taken from my latest
observations on this curious Wasp.
A Sphex appears unexpectedly, coming I know not whence. She is on foot,
dragging her Ephippiger, a capture which apparently she has made that
moment in the neighbourhood. In the circumstances it behoves her to dig
herself a burrow. The site is as bad as bad can be. It is a well-beaten
path, hard as stone. The Sphex, who has no time to make laborious
excavations, because the already captured prize must be stored as
quickly as possible, the Sphex wants soft ground, wherein the larva’s
chamber can be contrived in one short spell of work. I have described
her favourite soil, namely, the dust of years which has accumulated at
the bottom of some hole in a wall or of some little shelter under the
rocks. Well, the Sphex whom I am now observing stops at the foot of a
house with a newly-whitewashed front some twenty to twenty-five feet
high. Her instinct tells her that up there, under the red tiles of the
roof, she will find nooks rich in old dust. She leaves her prey at the
foot of the house and flies up to the roof. For some time I see her
looking here, there, and everywhere. After finding a proper site, she
begins to work under the curve of a pantile. In ten minutes, or fifteen
at most, the home is ready. The insect now flies down again. The
Ephippiger is promptly found. She has to be taken up. Will this be done
on the wing, as circumstances seem to demand? Not at all. The Sphex
adopts the toilsome method of scaling a perpendicular wall, with a
surface smoothed by the mason’s trowel and measuring twenty to
twenty-five feet in height. Seeing her take this road, dragging the
game between her legs, I at first think the feat impossible; but I am
soon reassured as to the outcome of the bold attempt. Getting a
foothold on the little roughnesses in the mortar, the plucky insect,
despite the hindrance of her heavy load, walks up this vertical plane
with the same assured gait and the same speed as on level ground. The
top is reached without the least accident; and the prey is laid
temporarily on the edge of the roof, upon the rounded back of a tile.
While the digger gives a finishing touch to the burrow, the
badly-balanced prey slips and drops to the foot of the wall. The thing
must be done all over again and once more by laboriously climbing the
height. The same mistake is repeated. Again the prey is incautiously
left on the curved tile, again it slips and again it falls to the
ground. With a composure which accidents such as these cannot disturb,
the Sphex for the third time hoists up the Ephippiger by scaling the
wall and, better advised, drags her forthwith right into the home.
As even under these conditions no attempt has been made to carry the
prey on the wing, it is clear that the Wasp is incapable of long flight
with so heavy a load. To this incapacity we owe the few characteristics
that form the subject of this chapter. A quarry that is not too big to
permit the effort of flying makes of the Yellow-winged Sphex a
semisocial species, that is to say, one seeking the company of her
fellows; a quarry too heavy to carry through the air makes of the
Languedocian Sphex a species vowed to solitary labour, a sort of savage
disdainful of the pleasures that come from the proximity of one’s kind.
The lighter or heavier weight of the game selected here determines the
fundamental character of the huntress.