INSTRUMENTS OF THE INSECT: AND ITS CHEMICAL ENERGIES, AS IN THE
COCHINEAL AND THE CANTHARIDES.
Have I insisted too much upon my theme? No; I have reached its very
depths, its most important details.
Silk is not a particular, but a general view or aspect of it, for
nearly every insect produces silk.
Hitherto we have dealt with only one kind of silk,--that of the bombyx,
and indeed that of a species of bombyx which is not very fertile. Let
us hope that the meritorious Society of Acclimatization will introduce
here the Chinese bombyx (_Attacus_), which lives on the dwarf oak,
whose strong and cheap silk might be used as clothing for the poor.
All classes thenceforth might wear a material warm, light, impervious,
solid; and not only so, but beautiful, brilliant, and noble. Such a
change would be equivalent, in my eyes, to the general ennoblement and
transfiguration of the people.
Réaumur long ago asserted that numerous chrysalides would furnish a
beautiful silk. The spider would yield a substance both delicate and
tenacious,--as witness the admirable veil of spider's silk preserved in
the Paris Museum.
The delicate Arachne, whose light thread resembles a fleecy
cloud,--which is nevertheless so strong, as it issues from the
spinnerets,--Arachne is pre-eminently the spinner. But, as a general
rule, the insect is the weaver, and wholly devoted to that feminine
art. I was about to say, the insect is a woman.
In our vocabulary "feminine" means feeble; but in the Insect World
it is the synonym of strength and energy. It is,--as is the case
with maternity everywhere,--it is for the purpose of defending and
nourishing the child, of provisioning the cradle in which the orphan
will remain alone,--it is for this purpose specially that the insect is
a warrior, and furnished with formidable weapons.
As far as concerns the instruments which pierce, and cut, and saw, the
insect, in spite of all our progress, is perhaps a little in advance
of man to-day. The instinct of maternity, the need of providing for
its child--the future orphan--the protecting shelter of the hardest
bodies, has evidently inspired it to make extraordinary efforts for the
development and refinement of its tools. A few, in their fantastical
character, have as yet no analogues in any of our factories.
Long before Réaumur organized the thermometer, the ants, for the
protection of their delicate, hygrometrical, and susceptible
eggs, divided their habitations into a series of thirty or forty
stories,--lowering or raising the tiny creatures to the degree of
warmth, dryness, or humidity, which the temperature of the day and of
the hour of the day rendered necessary. Thus they formed an infallible
thermometer, on which one might rely with as much certainty as on that
of the philosophers.
In the comparisons between human and insect industry, the differences
which we remark belong not so much to the methods as to the speciality
of their wants and situation. The insect aptly varies the application
of its arts. For example: the spider which, in its network-trap,
improvised every day, lightens its work by a mixture of gluing and
spinning, follows quite a different process in the important labour of
fabricating the soft, warm, and durable cocoons which are intended to
receive its young. The nest would seem to be partly spun and partly
felted, like the majority of birds' nests.
We know that from the water-spider man derived the idea of the
diving-bell; but it is _not_ generally known that an ingenious Norman
peasant has succeeded in imitating perfectly the operations of the
larva of the syrphes, which, by means of an extremely prolonged
respiratory apparatus, preserves a communication with the pure and
wholesome air, even while working at the bottom of the most putrid
waters.
It seems, then, that in the Insect World exist a complete pharmacy,
chemistry, and perfumery. Have our sciences been sufficiently attentive
to this fact? The potent vitality which gives an extraordinary force
to the muscles of such tiny creatures, seems also to endow their
liquids with active properties and burning energies which the large
animals do not possess. Many, for defensive purposes, are gifted with
caustic secretions--which they eject the moment you approach--or
with fulminating powders. Others with poison, which flows as soon as
the sting has been thrust in. Some possess, in addition, an art of
magnetizing or etherizing their enemy; and others, like certain ants
which work in damp, woody places, season their abodes by burning them,
as it were, with potent formic acid.
* * * * *
The entire genus of the _Cerambyx_ (or Long-horned Beetle) exhale a
strong, rose-like odour, which is smelt at a distance, is lasting, and
endures after the creature's death. Even among the Carnivora, ay, and
among the Coprophagi, we meet with perfumed insects, or, at all events,
with insects which, when in danger of being captured, endeavour to
deceive you, or implore pity, by emitting agreeable odours.
Others shine with admirable colours. The deep reds of the Nopal Coccus
have furnished the purple of kings.
By a skilful mixture, we also obtain from the cochineal the
pre-eminently gay and radiant colour, carmine, with its innumerable
tints and rosy shades.
A sovereign art with the insect is to carry on its sting, and
concentrate at a particular point, the liquids which flow in the plant,
in the living being. It is the very art of irritation. Its applications
are innumerable in medicine and industry; tints, paintings, varied
ornaments, a hundred fantastic and beautiful things come to us from
the sting of the galls, the excrescences and gibbosities which they so
skilfully raise.
The cochineal insect, while engaged in extracting by this process from
exotic vegetables the envelope of solid green in which it will spend
its prolonged period of rest, furnishes us with the red of reds, the
scarlet of lake, which will colour varnishes, and wax, and a multitude
of objects.
In health or illness, the stings of insects upon the living flesh are
violent irritants for disturbing or re-establishing the course of life.
In these there is nothing mediocre. A few, without sting, burn you by
their internal acridity.
Who has not seen on the dusty plain, before the thirsty harvest, the
cantharides, with its emerald enamel, abruptly crossing the footpath
with a wild and agitated movement! Burning elixir of existence, where
love transforms itself into a poison,--it is not with impunity that
we make use of it medicinally. That medieval pharmacy, which was so
dangerous to man, is not without peril, it seems, for the animals
themselves. A very intelligent but eccentrically ardent cat, which
I kept for a long time, among its other caprices of violence loved
to hunt the cantharides. It seemed attracted by the acridity of the
beautiful insect, as the moth is by the flame. It was an intoxication.
But when, hunting it through the flowers, she had seized and crushed
her dangerous victim, the latter appeared to take its revenge.
The inflammable feline nature, stimulated by the fiery sting, broke
out in cries, in excesses of fury, in strange leaps and bounds. She
expiated her orgie of fire by terrible sufferings.
But, on the contrary, another insect, the bamboo-worm, or _malalis_,
provides you, if you first remove its head, which is a deadly poison,
with an exquisite cream, the sweet and soporific influence of which,
say the Brazilian Indians, lulls love asleep. For two days and nights,
the young maiden who has tasted of it, crouching under the blossomy
tree, feels all the more powerfully in her soul the depth of the virgin
forests, and the mystery of those fresh glades which have never seen
the sun, nor echoed to the step of man, nor known any intruder but the
lonely great blue butterfly. And yet she is not alone: love quenches
her thirst with the most delicious fruits.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: VIII.--THE STUDY OF THE INSECT.]
[Illustration]