THE HOME AND LOVES OF THE SPIDER.
The spider greatly surpasses all other solitary-living insects. It not
only possesses its nest, its ambush, its temporary hunting-station;
it has (or, at least, certain species have) a regular house, a house
of a very complex description: a vestibule, and a sleeping-chamber,
and a mode of egress in the rear; and, finally, a door which is a very
triumph of art, for it closes of itself, falling back by its own weight.
The door! It is this which is wanting even in the grand cities of the
bees and the ants; these industrial republics have never hitherto
attained to so lofty a climax.
The ants have just reached the point at which most of our African
tribes have halted. Every evening they shut up their dwelling-places
with immense labour--renewed daily--and by a little, unsubstantial
lattice-work, which does not relieve them from the necessity of
planting sentinels. It is true, however, that these great, valiant, and
well-armed peoples have no fear of invasion, and, like Lacedæmon, need
neither walls nor ditches. Their proud intrepidity has set limits to
their industry.
On the other hand, the poor artisan which lives by itself, and is
always exhausted by the incessant toil of spinning and weaving, cannot
rely upon its valour. It has need, in certain countries and under
certain alarming conditions, of profound ingenuity, and has discovered
this little miracle of prudence and combination, which eclipses both
the savage and the insect. I do not refer to the great animals, none of
which, except the beaver, are very industrious.
In the neighbourhood of Lucerne we for the first time saw the house
of the spider (the _Agelena_). It was a kind of sheath, and very well
made, with a vestibule facing the south, which expanded outward like a
funnel. This exterior portion, forming a little sunny retreat, was the
snare and the citadel. The lady of the house stationed herself quite
at the bottom of the funnel; but behind this very bottom, at the lower
extremity of the case or sheath, was constructed a back apartment,
small and very secure, in a white substantial cocoon. In this she
trusted so completely, that while we detached the silken cables which
moored the entire edifice to the bush, she made no attempt to escape.
We had neither destroyed nor damaged, but simply detached the dwelling,
and on the day following we found it repaired and moored to the bush on
every side. The exposure was no longer so favourable; but, undoubtedly,
the workman, in an advanced season of the year (in September, and under
the Alps), did not possess the resources for recommencing this grand
summer-work.
In the Brazilian forests a little spider has its case suspended exactly
in the centre of its web; and thither it hurries at the slightest
approach of danger, and has no sooner entered, says Swainson, than the
door suddenly closes behind it by a spring.
But the masterpiece of the genus is seen, especially in Corsica, in
the laborious _Mygale_. Its residence is a kind of well, industriously
walled round, with smooth and polished sides, and a double tapestry,--a
coarse strong hanging on the earthward front, and a fine satiny hanging
in the interior. The orifice of the well is closed by a door. This door
is a disc, much larger at the top than at the bottom, and let into
a groove in such a manner as to shut hermetically. The disc, which
is not more than three lines thick, contains, nevertheless, thirty
double woofs, and between the woofs intervene the same number of coats
or layers of earth,--so that the entire door is really composed of
sixty doors. Here, in truth, is a miracle of patience; but observe,
too, the ingenuity,--all these doors of network and earth clamp into
one another. The thread-doors at one point are prolonged to the wall,
fastening the door to the wall as by a hinge. This door opens outwardly
when the spider raises it to go forth, and closes by its own weight.
But the enemy might eventually succeed in opening it. This has been
anticipated. On the side opposite the hinge some small holes are worked
in the door; to these the spider clings, and becomes a living bolt.[O]
[Footnote O: See the works of Audouin and Walckenaër.]
What would happen if this astonishing artisan, placed in peculiar
and trying circumstances (like the bees under Huber's experiments),
were called upon to vary its art and devise a novelty? Could it do
so? Has it the intelligence, the resource, and, at need, the power of
innovation which the superior insects display under certain conditions?
It would be worth while to make the experiment. This, at all events, is
certain, that the simple _Epeiras_ (our garden-spiders) know very well,
when deprived of the necessary space for extending their geometrical
curtain, how to construct one of irregular design, decreasing in
proportion to the restrictions of their area.
Experiments, moreover, are difficult. The spider is so nervous, that
the fear which makes it an artist can also paralyze and utterly
confound it. Its web alone gives it courage. Out of its web, everything
makes it tremble. In captivity, having no web, it actually flees before
its prey, and has not the resolution to confront a fly.
Its miserable condition of passive expectancy fully explains its
character. To wait, while acting, running, fighting, is to cheat both
time and hunger; but to remain there immovable, to be unable to stir
from fear of alarming your prey, to watch it coming nearer and nearer
but eventually escaping, and to suffer from an empty stomach! To be
a witness of the endless, heedless dances of the fly, which, in the
sunbeam, amuses and balances itself for hours without responding to
the avid prayers of the tempter which whispers, "Come, little one!
Come, my darling!" is a terrible punishment, a series of hopes and
disappointments.
[Illustration]
It pursues its gay measure, and thinks nothing of the sufferer.
The fatal inquiry, "Shall I dine?" returns, and lacerates its bowels.
Then comes the more ominous reflection: "If I do not dine to-day, no
more thread! And far less, then, may I hope to dine to-morrow!"
From all this results a suffering, restless, but prodigiously wary and
attentive being, which detects not only the slightest contact, but
the slightest noise. The spider is only too sensitive. A very little
disturbance seems to overthrow its self-control. It apparently faints;
you see it suddenly fall from its position, struck down by fear.
* * * * *
This sensitiveness, as you will readily believe, is especially
displayed in the spider's maternal condition. However miserable and
avaricious in its nature, it is tender, liberal, and generous towards
its young. While the birds of prey--the winged hunters which have so
many resources--drive away their young at a very early age, look upon
them as greedy competitors, and force them by blows of their beaks to
dwell afar from the domain which they reserve as their own, the spider
is not contented with carrying its eggs in the cocoon, but, in certain
species, nourishes them when living and greedy, guards them, bears them
on its back; or else she makes them walk, holding them by a thread;
if danger threatens, she draws in the thread, they leap upon her, and
she saves them. If she cannot do so, she will perish. Some there are
which, rather than abandon their offspring, will suffer themselves to
be swallowed up in the gulf of the ant-lion. Others, of a slow species,
which, when unable to save them, make no effort to escape, but allow
themselves to be captured also.
Their nests are frequently masterpieces. At Interlaken, in Switzerland,
I have admired their long soft tubes, warm in the interior, and
well-lined,--externally, disguised with much skill by an artistic
pell-mell of small bits of leaf, tiny twigs, and fragments of gray
plaster, so as to melt perfectly into the colour of the wall supporting
them. But this was nothing in comparison with a work of art which I
have here at Fontainebleau.
On the 22nd of July 1857, I discovered in an outhouse a very pretty
round basket, about an inch across, made of all kinds of materials,
and, as it had nothing to fear from rain, without any cover. It was
very gracefully suspended to a beam by some elegant silken threads,
which I should call little hands, such as are possessed by the climbing
plants. Within, brooding on its eggs with a constant incubation, might
be seen a spider. It never stirred, except, perhaps, for a moment at
night, in quest of food. Never was there any animal so timid. At the
gentlest approaches fear made it fly, and almost fall. Once when we
disturbed it a little abruptly, it was seized with such an excess of
terror that it did not recover for an entire day. It sat for six weeks,
and, but for these perturbations, would perhaps have remained much
longer.
An admirable mother,--an ingenious and delicate artist,--before all
things a female,--a female nervous and timid to the highest degree,
this strange sensitive creature explained to me perfectly the very
opposite sentiments with which the spider inspires us,--those of
repulsion and attraction. We start away from it, and yet we draw near
to it. It is so coarse, and yet, at the same time, so prodigiously
sensitive! It breathes as we do. And the delicate tubercle which
secretes its silk, like a milky cloud (as the microscope shows us), is
the most feminine organ which exists, perhaps, in nature.
Alas, it is alone! Except a few species (mygales) in which the father
renders some assistance to the mother, it expects no help. The male,
after its moment of love, becomes, indeed, an enemy. Cruel consequences
of misery! It perceives that its children are capable of furnishing
it with food. But the mother, who is bigger than he, makes a similar
reflection,--thinks that the eater is eatable,--and frequently crunches
her spouse.
These atrocious events never happen, I am confident, in climates where
ease and abundance do not deprave their natural disposition. But in our
well-peopled countries, with game very rare, and competition of extreme
violence, these unfortunates act towards one another like the wretched
castaways on the raft of the _Medusa_.
A cruel tyrant, the stomach, dominates over all nature, and vanquishes
even love. Passion, in an anxious and restless being like the spider,
is very mistrustful. At the height of his devotion, the lean and feeble
male dares only approach the majestic lady with a timid reverence and
the utmost reserve. He advances, he retires, he watches; he seems
to ask himself if he has at all succeeded in subduing the haughty
creature. He resorts to the timid methods of a slow magnetism, and
especially to an extreme patience. He puts little faith in the first
signs, and does not willingly yield his confidence. And, finally, when
the adored object shows herself sensible of his sincerity, and grows
ardent in her expansion of soul, he does not so wholly trust in her
but what he will escape, and fly with all his speed, at some sudden
impulse, and under the influence of an indescribable panic.
* * * * *
Such is the terrible idyl of the dusky lovers of our ceilings. Among
our garden-spiders less suspicion seems to exist. Nature softens
hearts, and rugged industrialism itself grows smoother in rustic
life. We see some upon our trees which behave tolerably well to their
husbands, and do not too often remember that they are competitors in
the chase. They permit them to reside in the same locality, although
a little apart, and keeping them at a distance. A light partition
separates them. The princess consents that he may live under her roof,
and on the ground-floor, while she lives on the first story,--keeping
him below and in subjection, so that he may not presume to think
himself the king, but only the _prince consort_, and the _husband of
the queen_.
* * * * *
Have they any sympathies beyond their own race? So some authorities
have asserted, and I believe it. They are isolated from us far less
than the true insects. They live in our houses, have an interest in
knowing us, and seem to observe us. They pay great attention to voices
and sounds, and have a marvellous perception of them. If they have not
the insect-organs of hearing (which would seem to be the antennæ), it
is because they are _all antennæ_. Their excessive vigilance, and the
nervous irradiation which makes itself felt everywhere among them,
endow them with the keenest receptivity.
* * * * *
Much has been said about the musical spider of Pellisson. Another and
less-known anecdote is not less striking. One of those little victims
which are trained into virtuosi before they are ripe of age,--Berthome,
illustrious in 1800,--owed his astonishing successes to the savage
confinement in which he was forced to work. At eight he astounded and
stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin. In his perpetual
solitude he had a comrade whom no one suspected,--a spider. It was
lodged at first in a quiet corner, but it gave itself license to
advance from the corner to the music-stand, from the music-stand to the
child, even climbing upon the mobile arm which held the bow. There, a
palpitating and breathless amateur, it paused and listened. It was an
audience in itself. The artist needed nothing more to fill him with
inspiration and double his energy.
Unfortunately the child had a stepmother, who, one day, introducing an
amateur into the sanctuary, saw the sensible animal at its post. A blow
from her slipper annihilated the auditory. The child fell swooning to
the ground, was ill for three months, and died,--heartbroken!
[Illustration]
Book the Third.
COMMUNITIES OF INSECTS.
[Illustration: I.--THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
THE CITY IN THE SHADOWS: THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS.
M. de Prefontaine (cited by Huber, in his work on "The Ants") relates
that, when travelling in Guiana, he saw a party of negroes besieging
certain fantastic edifices which he calls ant-hills. They did not
venture to attack them except from a distance, and with firearms;
having first taken the precaution, moreover, to dig a little trench and
fill it with water, to check the progress of the beleaguered army and
drown its battalions, if they adventured a sortie.
These edifices are not the habitations of Ants, but of Termites,--quite
a different species of insect; which are found not only in Guiana, but
in Africa, New Holland, and in the prairies of North America.
A host of travellers have described them. But the standard and most
instructive authority is that of Smeathman, which now lies before
us, enriched with excellent plates. The drawings are taken from the
termite-hills of Africa.
Figure to yourself a mound of earth, about twelve feet high (some have
been discovered measuring twenty), which, from a distance, might easily
be mistaken for a negro's hut. Approach it, and you will at once detect
that it is the product of a higher art. Its curious form is that of a
pointed dome; or, if you like, of an obtuse and preponderating obelisk.
For support, the dome or obelisk has four, five, or six cupolas from
five to six feet high; and against these are propped up below some
small bell-like structures, nearly two feet in elevation. The whole
might well be taken for a kind of Oriental cathedral, the principal
spire of which had a double cincture of minarets, decreasing in height;
the said whole being of extreme solidity, and composed of a compact
clay, which, when burnt, makes the best bricks. Not only may several
men stand upon it without injury, but even the wild bull's station
themselves on its summit as sentinels to watch, through the high
grasses of the plain, that the lion or panther does not surprise the
herd.
Nevertheless, this dome is hollow, and the inferior platform which
supports it is itself supported by a semi-hollow construction formed by
the junction of four arches (two to three feet in span),--arches of a
very substantial design, being pointed, ogival, and in a kind of Gothic
style. Lower still extends a number of passages or corridors, plastered
spaces which one might call saloons, and finally, convenient, spacious,
and healthy lodgings, capable of receiving a large population; in
brief, quite a subterranean city.
A broad spiral passage winds and rises gradually in the thickness of
the edifice, which has no opening, no door, no window; the vomitories
are disguised and at a distance, terminating afar in the plain.
It is the most considerable and important work which displays the
genius of insects; a labour of infinite patience and of daring art. We
must not forget that these walls, which time has hardened, were very
friable at first, and always crumbling. To raise this Titanic edifice
to such a height, a continuity of effort was absolutely requisite, and
a succession of provisional constructions, demolished one after the
other when they had served their purpose. The masons commenced with the
exterior pyramids, a foot and a foot and a half in height; then with
those of the second rank. But the latter being solid and indurated,
they intrepidly undermined their base to make room for the passages,
the windows, and the spiral staircase. The same operation was carried
out beneath the dome, which was excavated with great labour, and in
such a manner that the great hollow vault, in conjunction with its
lower platform, rested on the narrow vaults of the four arches forming
the centre and foundation of the edifice.
Observe that this dome is self-sustaining, and that its substructions,
strictly speaking, would amply suffice for its support; the lateral
pyramids being only its not indispensable auxiliaries. Here, then,
we find the principle of a true, honest, and courageous art, which,
relying on itself and its calculations, requires no assistance from
external supports, and needs neither props nor buttresses. It is
exactly the system of Brunelleschi.
Who has carried the art to such a climax? We must own that it is the
supreme of usefulness. The sharpened dome, the belfries or needles,
are admirably arranged so as to resist the terrible rain-storms of the
tropics. The dome keeps off the water, and assists it to flow away
rapidly. If it cracked, the platform on which it leans would throw
the water, as from a roof, on to the exterior _enceinte_, which would
carry it to the ground. Hollow like a kiln, it quickly gets warmed, and
absorbs the heat; duly communicating it to the subterranean passages to
hatch the eggs, and promote the comfort of a race which, being wholly
naked, prefers an elevated temperature.
* * * * *
It is a masterpiece of art, precisely because it is a masterpiece of
utility. The beautiful and the useful admirably harmonize. Now one
would wish to know who _are_ these astonishing artists: we hardly dare
to confess that they are the objects of our entire contempt.
Various names have been bestowed upon them; among others, that of
termites: and again, that of wood-ants,--a designation not very
accurate, for the ants are their enemies, and their body, being
exceedingly soft, is exactly the opposite of the dry hard body of the
ant.
They have been also called wood-lice; and they seem, in truth, a soft
and feeble kind of vermin, which are crushed without resistance.
Magnificent jest of God, who loves to exalt his humblest creatures! The
Memphis, the Babylon, the true Capitol of the insects, is built--by
whom? By lice! Though their luxury of jaws, and their four stages of
teeth, make them admirable rodents, nevertheless, if we except their
_élite_, the soldiers, they have no important weapons. Their teeth,
made to gnaw, are powerless in combat. The destiny of the termites is
plain; spite of the formidable names which have been given to their
species (_bellicosus_, _mordax_, _atrox_), they are simply _workers_.
Every other insect is stronger than they are; or at least harder,
better protected, and more completely armed. All, especially the ants,
hunt them, and devour them by myriads. Birds greedily pursue them; the
poultry-yards absorb them in frightful quantities. All (even man, who
cooks them) find them of an agreeable taste; and the negro can never be
satiated with them.
They work without seeing their work. They have no eyes, at least none
which are visible. Very probably, the darkness in which they live
destroys their ocular organs, as is the case with a species of duck
found in the subterranean lakes of Carinthia. The rare species of
termites which venture forth into the daylight have very conspicuous
and perfectly formed eyes.
The darkness and the persecution to which they are exposed under the
light, seem to have developed their singular industry. Against that
world of day which shows them so bitter a hostility, they have built,
as they have been able, this little world of the shadows, in which they
exercise their arts. They issue forth only in search of food, and the
gum and other substances of which they make their magazines.
Their attachment is extreme for these cities of darkness. They defend
them obstinately. The first blow that is given each resists in his own
fashion; the workmen plastering the interior with a kind of mortar
which closes up the holes, the soldiers attacking the assailants and
drawing blood with their sharp pincers, clinging to the wound, and
suffering themselves to be crushed rather than let go. A naked man
(like the negro) shrinks under these bites, grows discouraged, and is
conquered.
If you still persist, if you penetrate, you admire the palace, its
circuits, its corridors, its aërial bridges, the halls or saloons where
the population lodge, the nurseries for the eggs, the caves, cellars,
or magazines. But, above all, search to the centre. There lurks the
mystery of this little world; there is its palladium, its idol,
incessantly surrounded by the cares of an enthusiastic crowd. A strange
and shocking object, which is not the less obeyed, and visibly adored!
It is the queen, or common mother, frightfully fecund, from whose body
issues an uninterrupted flood of about sixty eggs per minute, or eighty
thousand eggs per day!
You can conceive of nothing more fantastic. These strange creatures,
which we compare to vermin, have nevertheless their moment of supreme
poesy, their hour of love; for a moment their wings uplift them, and
almost immediately they sink. The couples thus bereft, having neither
refuge nor strength, and no means of resistance, are a prey for all the
insects,--a manna upon which they straightway throw themselves. The
working termites, which have neither love nor wings, endeavour to save
a couple of the victims, welcome them,--weak, and fallen, and wretched
as they are,--and make them monarchs.
They remove them to the centre of the city, and establish them in the
saloon on which all the apartments and corridors abut. There they
are revived, recruited, and nourished day and night; and the female
gradually assumes an enormous size, until in body and stomach she is
two thousand times larger than her natural condition,--though, by a
hideous contrast, the head does not increase. For the rest, immovable,
and therefore captive, the doors through which she entered have become
infinitely too narrow to admit of the egress of such a monster.
Accordingly, there she will remain, pouring out, until she splits
asunder, that torrent of living matter which the termites day and night
collect, and which, to-morrow, will be the People.
This soft and whitish-looking creature, a stomach rather than a being,
is at least of the size of the human thumb: a traveller pretends to
have seen one as large as a crab.
The bigger she is, the more fertile, the more inexhaustible, this
terrible mother of lice seems the more enthusiastically worshipped by
her fanatical vermin. She appears to be their ideal, their poetry,
their ecstasy. If you carry them off, with a fragment, a ruin of the
city, you may see them, under a glass shade, instantly set to work to
build an arch for the protection of the mother's venerated head, to
reconstruct her royal hall, which will become, if the materials be
sufficient, the centre and basis of the resuscitated community.
I am not astonished, let me add, at the extravagant love which they
show towards this instrument of fecundity. If every other race did not
jointly labour to destroy them, this truly prodigious mother would make
them masters of the world,--nay, what do I say?--its only inhabitants.
The fish alone would survive; but the insect world would perish. It
suffices to remember that the queen-bee takes a year to accomplish
what the termite mother accomplishes in a day. Through her means they
would swallow up Everybody; but they are feeble and savoury, and it is
Everybody which swallows up them.
When the species of termites which live and dwell in the woods
unfortunately approach near our habitations, there is no means of
arresting their ravages. They work with a truly incredible vigour and
rapidity. They have been known in one night to eat their way through
the leg of a table, then through the thickness of the table itself,
descending through the leg on the opposite side.
The reader can easily imagine the effect produced by such toil as this
on the joists and framework of a house. The worst of it is, that a long
time may elapse before their ravages are detected. We continue to rely
upon supports which suddenly, one fine morning, crumble away; we sleep
peacefully under roofs which to-morrow will cease to exist.
The town of Valencia, in New Grenada, undermined by the subterranean
galleries these insects have excavated in the earth, is now literally
suspended upon their dangerous catacombs.
We have ourselves seen, at Rochelle, the formidable beginnings of the
ravages they executed in the timber-work of a quarter of the town where
they were introduced by foreign ships. Whole buildings are found eaten
up, though apparently sound,--all the wood hollowed and tunnelled,
even to the banisters of the staircase: do not rest upon them, or they
will yield and give way under your hand. These terrible nibblers seem
willing, however, to confine themselves to one district of the town,
and not to invade the remainder. Otherwise, this historical city,
important still through its marine and its commerce, would be reduced
to the condition of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: II.--INSECTS AT WORK.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
THE ANTS:--THEIR DOMESTIC ECONOMY--THEIR NUPTIALS.
The ants enjoy a superiority over all other insects, inasmuch as they
are less specialized by their mode of life, their nourishment, and the
instruments of their industry. Generally, they adapt themselves to
all conditions, and work in all climates; nor in all Nature do more
energetic agents in purification and cleansing exist. They are, so to
say, the factotums of Nature.
The termites, at least the majority of them, work in the darkness,
under the earth; the ants both above and below.
Like the termites, they build, at least in tropical countries, the
most remarkable edifices,--domes under which their chrysalides enjoy
the warmth of the sun without being injured by its scorching rays.
But these are not fortresses; the ants have no need of them; for in
the tropical regions they are the sovereigns and tyrants of all other
beings. The exterminating _carabi_, the invading _necrophori_, which
play among us, as insects, the _rôle_ of the eagle and the vulture,
scarcely venture to make their appearance in the burning latitudes
where the ants hold sway. Everything which lies on the earth's surface
they immediately devour. Lund, in his _Mémoire sur les Fourmis_, says
that he had scarcely time to pick up a bird which he had seen drop. The
ants were already on the spot, and had seized upon it. The sanitary
police is performed by them with an implacable and energetic exactitude.
The great ants of the South are much more savage than our European
species; and feeling themselves sovereigns and mistresses, feared by
all, dreading none, they march forward imperturbably, without suffering
any obstacle to divert their course. If a house stand in their way,
they enter, and all that is alive within it--even the enormous,
venomous, and formidable spiders, ay, and small mammiferous animals
also--is devoured. Men give place to them. And if you cannot quit your
house, you have reason to fear their invasion. Once, at Barbadoes,
a long column was seen defiling for several days in formidable
numbers. All the earth was black with them, and the torrent poured
forward straight in the direction of the houses. They were crushed
by hundreds, without heeding their losses; myriads were destroyed,
but they continued to advance. No wall, no ditch, was of any service;
water even could not arrest their progress: for it is known that they
construct living bridges, by fastening on to one another in clusters
and garlands. Fortunately, the plan was adopted of sowing the ground in
advance of them with numerous tiny volcanoes, small heaps of gunpowder,
which were fired at intervals beneath them, and exploding, swept away
whole files, and dispersed the rest,--covering them with fire and
smoke, and blinding them with dust. This scheme proved successful.
At least, the ants turned aside a little, and moved in a different
direction.
* * * * *
Linnæus calls the termites the scourge of the two Indies; and we might
equally well bestow this appellation on the ants, if we considered only
the havoc they commit among the labours and cultivation of man. In a
few hours they strip a large orangery, denuding it of every leaf. In a
single night they devastate a field of cotton, manioc, or sugar-cane.
Behold their crimes! Their virtues? they destroy to a still greater
extent all things that might prove hurtful to man, and but for them
certain countries would be uninhabitable.
* * * * *
As for our European species, I cannot see that they do the slightest
harm, either to man, or to the plants he cultivates. Far from it, they
deliver him from an infinity of little insects. I have frequently seen
long files of them, with each carrying in his mouth a very small grub
as a contribution to the food stores of the republic. Such a picture
should ensure them the benedictions of every honourable agriculturist.
The mason-ants, which work in and entirely under the earth, are
difficult to observe. But the "carpenters" may be easily followed, at
least in the upper part of their constructions. The cupola of their
edifice being subject to dilapidation, they are constantly under a
necessity of repairing and re-excavating it. With the small amount of
soil which they make use of, they mix the leaves and spines of the
fir, and the catkins of the pine. If they meet with a bent; twisted,
and knotty twig, it is a treasure; they employ it as an arcade, or,
better still, as an ogive; for the pointed arch is the most solid.
The numerous avenues which lead to the surface spread out in radii
like a fan; they start from a concentric point, and extend to the
circumference. The mass of the edifice is divided into low but spacious
apartments. The largest is in the centre and under the dome; it is also
the most elevated, and destined, apparently, for public communications.
There, at all hours, you will find a knot of busy citizens, who, by
the rapid contact of their antennæ (a kind of electric telegraph) seem
to relate to one another the news, and exchange opinions or mutual
directions. It is a kind of forum.
There is nothing more curious than to observe the various occupations
and movements of this great people. While some, as purveyors, go in
search of grubs, hunt insects, or collect materials, others, sedentary
in their habits, attend entirely to domestic cares and the education
of the young. An immense and an incessant occupation, if we may judge
from the continual movement of the nurses round the cradles. Let but a
raindrop fall, or a single sunbeam penetrate, and a general stir takes
place, a general removal of all the children of the colony, and this
with an ardour which never wearies. You may see them tenderly taking up
the big children--which weigh as much as themselves--and transferring
them from stage to stage, to rest them in a convenient position.
This scale of heat, extending over forty degrees, what is it but a
thermometer?
But more remains. The cares of alimentation, of what one might call
"suckling," are much more complicated than among the bees. The eggs
must receive a nourishing humidity from the mouth of the nurses. The
larvæ take the beakful. And the young one which has worn through its
husk and become a nymph, would not have strength enough to emerge
from it if the attentive guardians were not at hand to open the husk,
release the little tenant, and initiate it into the light. In the
artificial ant-hills, which we have procured for the sake of closer
examination, we have even succeeded in observing a circumstance which
Huber regrets he had been unable to discover.
Some light movements which the infant communicates to its
swaddling-clothes give warning that its hour is come. We took great
pleasure in watching the nurses seated upon their hind limbs like
little motionless, upright fairies, plainly discerning under the silent
veil the first yearning for liberty.
As in every superior race, the young comes into the world weak, and
frail, and incapable of effort. Its first steps are so infirm that
at every movement it falls upon its knees. It requires, as it were,
to be kept in leading-strings. Its great vitality is only shown by
an incessant demand for food. Therefore, when the heat is great, and
numerous swaddling-husks must be opened daily, the new-born are all
lodged in the same part of the city.
[Illustration: NEST OF RUSSET ANTS.]
One day, however, I saw a young ant thrust forth its head, still
somewhat pale, at a gate of the city, then step across the threshold,
and march along the summit of the ant-hill. The escapade, however, was
not long permitted. A nurse encountering the fugitive, seized it by
the top of its head, and conducted it gently towards a neighbouring
entrance.
The child resisted; it suffered itself to be dragged along, and on
the way coming in contact with a small piece of wood, profited by it
to stiffen itself, and exhaust its conductor's strength. The latter,
always keeping its temper, let go for a moment, executed a flank
movement, and then returned to the charge, until its nursling, tired
out, was compelled to yield obedience.
As soon as the young are strong enough, they have to be brought
acquainted with the interior labyrinth of the city, the suburbs, the
avenues which lead to the outer world, and the neighbouring roads. Then
they are trained to hunt, are accustomed to provide for themselves, to
live hap-hazard and upon little or any kind of food. Temperance is the
basis of the whole commonwealth.
The ant, not being fastidious, but accepting all descriptions of food,
is from this very cause the less anxious, restless, and selfish. It is
very wrong to call it a _miser_. Far from being so, it seems solely
intent upon multiplying in its city the number of its co-partners.
In its generous maternal care of those whom it has not begotten, in
its solicitude for those little ones of yesterday which to-day become
young citizens, originates a feeling quite novel and very rare among
insects,--that of fraternity. (See the works of Latreille and Huber.)
The obscurest and most curious point of their education is,
undoubtedly, the communication of language, which reminds the observer
of the forms of freemasonry. It enables them to transmit really
complicated directions to their legions, and to change in a moment the
march of a whole column, the action of an entire populace.
This language principally consists in the touch of the antennæ, or in
a light collision of the mandibles. They urge (or perhaps persuade) by
blows of the head against the thorax. Finally, they sometimes carry
off the auditor, who makes no resistance, and transport him to some
designated place or object. In this case, which undoubtedly is both
difficult to believe and explain, the convinced auditor unites with
the other, and both together carry off other witnesses, which in their
turn perform upon others--the number continually increasing--the same
operation. Our parliamentary phrases, "to carry away the crowd," "to
transport the hearer," are by no means mere metaphors among the ants!
To this lively gesticulation they join many other scarcely explicable
movements,--such as cavalcades, in which they march mounted one upon
another, exchanging gay defiances and light blows upon the cheeks.
Then they rear themselves upright, and contend by couples, seizing
upon a leg, a mandible, or an antenna. Naturalists have spoken of
these as their pastimes, but I know not what to think. Among so busy,
and obviously serious a family, this gymnastic exercise has perhaps a
hygienic object which we do not understand.
* * * * *
We had so well managed our prisoners that they had become habituated
to their new domicile, and toiled under our eyes as they would have
done in their own city. They rebuilt for themselves a small town in
miniature, with gates whose number they carefully augmented, especially
on very hot days, for the purpose of giving air to their little ones,
whom they took care to place near the openings.
In the evening they conscientiously proceeded, according to their
invariable custom, to shut up the gates, as if always afraid of some
nocturnal invasion of idle vagabonds. A spectacle of deep interest,
which we frequently took occasion to enjoy in front of the great
swarming ant-hills.
Nor could there be a more varied picture; on all sides, and at great
distances, you might see them coming in long files, each bearing some
little article,--one a long straw, another a pretty pine nut-cup, or
(according to the country) a black needle-like leaf of the fir-tree.
These, like little woodcutters returning at close of day, brought back
imperceptible bundles of twigs; others, which seemed empty-handed,
were but the more heavily loaded, having just taken prisoners some
wood-lice, which they carried home for the evening meal of the little
ones.
At the approaches of the City, the points where the ascent commenced,
it was a pleasure to see the vigour, the zeal, and the ardour
with which they dragged up such heavy materials. If one let go,
exhausted, two or three others succeeded. And the joist or beam, full
of animation, and apparently alive, gradually ascended. Skill and
foresight supplied the want of strength. If checked at any particular
point, they turned and advanced in a somewhat different direction,
ascending a little higher than was necessary; then they let down the
weight exactly over the opening which they wished to conceal; a quick
light movement made the mass pirouette, and it fell into its place.
[Illustration]
Numerous problems in statics and mechanics were solved by a felicitous
audacity and with a great economy of effort. By degrees all was
secured. The vast dome, embracing with a soft and delicate curve a
great nation of workers in its lawful repose, offered nothing to the
sight, neither door nor window, and appeared to be a simple heap of
tiny fragments of fir. Do I mean that all slumbered in full confidence?
It would be wrong to think so. A few sentinels wandered to and fro; at
the lightest touch of a switch, or the rustle of a leaf, the guards
would issue forth, perambulate the exterior of their city, and when
reassured would re-enter, but, undoubtedly, to continue their watch,
and remain upon duty.
* * * * *
The most surprising scene at which any one can be present is a marriage
of ants.
Of all follies, as everybody knows, the worst are those of the wise.
The honourable, economical, and respectable republic accordingly
presents (one single day yearly, it is true) a prodigious spectacle--of
love? of madness?--we do not know, but certainly of vertigo, and
to speak plainly, of terror. M. Huber saw in it the appearance of a
national holiday. What a holiday! And what a scene of intoxication! But
no; nothing human can give an idea of this boiling effervescence.
I watched it on one occasion, between six and seven o'clock in the
evening. The day had been one of heavy showers and warm gleams of
light. The horizon was lowering, and yet the air calm. It was Nature's
pause before resuming her storms of rain.
Upon a low sloping roof I saw descend quite a deluge of winged insects,
which seemed stunned, confused, delirious. To describe their agitation,
their disorderly movements, their somersaults and shocks to arrive
more quickly at the goal, would be impossible. Many rested, and loved.
The greater number whirled round and round without stopping. All were
so eager to live, that their very eagerness proved an obstacle. This
feverish desire produced a feeling of alarm.
A terrible idyllic poem!
It was impossible to make out what they wished. Were they enjoying
a festival of love? Were they devouring one another? Right through
this distraught multitude of _fiancés_ who had lost their senses
passed other and wingless ants, which threw themselves without mercy
on the most embarrassed individuals, bit them, and treated them so
severely, that we thought we could see them crunching the lovers.
But no! They wanted nothing more than to force them to obey, and to
recall them to their senses. Their vivid pantomime was the counsel of
prudence translated into action. The wingless ants were the wise and
irreproachable nurses, who, having no children, bring up those of the
others, and bear all the burden of the toil and management of the city.
* * * * *
These virgins maintained a surveillance over the amorous and slothful,
and rigidly inspected the marriage-festival as a public act, which,
every year, renews the nation. Their natural fear was lest the winged
fools should be wooed and won elsewhere, and create other tribes,
without any thought of the parent community.
Numbers of the winged ones submitted, and allowed themselves to
be carried below towards their country and virtue. But many tore
themselves away, and flew afar, obedient only to the dictates of love
and caprice.
It was an astonishing vision, a fantastic dream, which can never be
forgotten.
In the morning nothing remained as a memorial of the excesses of the
preceding evening, except the fragments of some severed wings, in which
no one could have divined the trace of a unique _soirée d'amour_.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: III.--THE ANTS: THEIR FLOCKS AND THEIR SLAVES.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
THE ANTS:--THEIR FLOCKS AND THEIR SLAVES.
When I learned for the first time, from the pages of Huber, the strange
and prodigious fact that certain ants keep slaves, I was greatly
astonished--as everybody has been by this singular revelation--but I
was especially saddened and wounded.
What! I turn aside from the history of man in search of innocence. I
hope at least to discover among the brute creation the even-handed
justice of nature, the primitive rectitude of the plan of creation.
I seek in this people, whom I had previously loved and esteemed for
their laboriousness and temperateness, the severe and touching image of
republican virtues--and I find among them this thing without a name!
What a joy, what a triumph for the partisans of slavery, for all the
friends of evil! Hell and tyranny, laugh ye, and make merry! A black
spot is revealed in the brightness of Nature.
I had flung aside Huber, and no book had ever seemed to me more
hateful. Pardon, illustrious observer! your grandfather and your father
had enraptured and charmed me. The first of the clan--Huber, the great
historian of the bees--has inspired with new warmth the religion of
man, and lifted up his heart. But Huber of the ants has broken mine.
It was, nevertheless, a duty to resume my perusal of his work, and
examine it more attentively. An immoral, a Machiavellian, and a
perverse insect is worthy of investigation.
But, in the first place, let us make a distinction. A portion of these
pretended slaves may only be cattle.
It is enough to look at the ants, thin to an excess, brilliant, and
varnished, to conclude that they are the driest and most parched of
beings. Their singular acridity has been established by chemical
researches, and science has contrived to extract the mordant formic
acid from their bodies. Sometimes, when they are in peril, they hurl
it at their enemies like a venom. Not a few species employ it in
drying, blackening, and almost burning the trees where they establish
their abodes. Is not a substance so corrosive for others equally
dangerous to themselves? I should be tempted to think so, and to this
extreme acridity should attribute their greediness for honey and other
lubricating substances. I submit my hypothesis to the consideration of
the scientific.
The ants of Mexico, in a specially favoured climate, have two classes
of workmen,--one charged with the duty of seeking provisions; the
other, inactive and sedentary, entrusted with the work of elaborating
them, and making out of them a kind of honey for the common nourishment.
The ants of our temperate climates, for the most part incapable of
making honey, satisfy their imperative need of it by licking the
honey-dew found upon certain grubs, which, without labour, by the mere
fact of their organization, extract saccharine juices from all species
of plants. The transmission of this honey to the ants is effected
quietly, and, as it were, by mutual agreement.
It operates by a kind of titillation or gentle traction, such as we
exercise upon the cow. These grubs, placed at the extreme limit of
animal life--viviparous in summer, oviparous in autumn--are very humble
creatures, and prodigiously inferior in intelligence to the ants. The
magnifying-glass reveals them to the observer as always bent, and
always engaged in feeding. Their attitude is that of the cattle. They
are, in truth, the milch-cows of the ants; and that they may always
profit by them, the latter frequently transport them to their ant-hill,
where they live together on admirably good terms. The ants take great
care of the grubs, superintend the incubation, and nourish the adults
with their favourite vegetables.
In situations where great difficulty would be experienced in
transporting and installing them, they empark them on the ground
by throwing up around their field of pasture a fence of twigs and
cylinders of earth. This may justly be termed the grazing-field, the
_chalet_ of the ants; which repair to it at certain hours to milk
their herds, and sometimes carry their young thither for the easier
distribution of the food. I am frequently present, especially in the
evening, at these Dutch-like scenes, which have hitherto found no Paul
Potter among the ants to depict them.
Observe that these grubs, whether transported to the ant-hill or
emparked on their favourite feeding-ground, possess the inestimable
advantage of having their safety guaranteed by the redoubtable
republic. The "lion of the grubs" (as a small worm is called), and
other wild beasts, if they dared approach the herd, would feel very
cruelly their strong mandibles and burning formic acid.
So far, then, we have no reproach to make; the grubs are cattle, and
not slaves. The ants do exactly what we do; they make use of the
privilege of superior beings, but exercise it with more gentleness and
management than does man.
But we now come to a more delicate consideration. There are two
kinds of ants, of a tolerable size, but otherwise of no peculiar
distinction, which employ as servants, nurses, and cooks, certain
small ants endowed with more skill and ingenuity.
This strange fact, which ought apparently to change our ideas of animal
morality, was discovered early in the present century. Pierre Huber,
the son of the celebrated observer of the manners and habits of bees,
walking one day in a field near Geneva, saw on the ground a strong
detachment of reddish-coloured ants on the march, and bethought himself
of following them. On the flanks of the column, as if to dress its
ranks, a few speed to and fro in eager haste. After marching for about
a quarter of an hour, they halt before an ant-hill belonging to the
small black ant, and a desperate struggle takes place at its gates.
A small number of the blacks offer a brave resistance; but the great
majority of the people thus assailed flee through the gates remotest
from the scene of combat, carrying away their young. It was just these
which were the cause of the strife; what the blacks most justly feared
was the theft of their offspring. And soon the assailants, who had
succeeded in penetrating into, the city, might be seen emerging from it
loaded with the young black progeny. It was an exact resemblance of a
descent of slave-dealers on the coast of Africa.
The red ants, encumbered with their living booty, left the unfortunate
city in the desolation of its great loss, and resumed the road to
their own habitation, whither their astonished and almost breathless
observer followed them. But how was his astonishment augmented when, at
the-threshold of the red ants' community, a small population of black
ants came forward to receive the plunder, welcoming with visible joy
these children of their own race, which, undoubtedly, would perpetuate
it in the foreign land.
This, then, is a mixed city, where the strong warrior-ants live in a
perfectly good understanding with the little blacks. But what do the
latter? Huber speedily discovered that, in effect, they do everything.
They alone build; they alone bring up the young red ants and the
captives of their own species; they alone administer the affairs of the
community, provide its supplies of food, wait upon and nourish their
red masters, who, like great infant giants, indolently allow their
little attendants to feed them at the mouth. No other occupations
are theirs but war, theft, and kidnapping. No other movements in the
intervals than to wander about lazily, and bask in the sunshine at the
door of their barracks.
The most curious circumstance is, that these civilized helots really
love their great barbarous warriors, and carefully tend their children,
gladly and cheerfully perform their tasks of servitude, and, more,
encourage the extension of their slavery and the abduction of the
little blacks. Does not all this wear the appearance of a free adhesion
to the established order of things?
And who knows but that the joy and pride of governing the strong and
tyrannizing over their tyrants, may be for the little blacks an inner
liberty--an exquisite and sovereign freedom--far superior to any
pleasure they could have derived from the equality of their native
country?
Huber made an experiment. He was desirous of observing what would be
the result if the great red ants found themselves without servants, and
if they would know how to supply their own wants. He thought, perhaps,
that the degenerate creatures might be inspired and uplifted by the
maternal love which is so strong among the ants.
He put a few into a glass case, and with them some _nymphs_.
Instinctively they began to move them about and to cradle them
after their fashion; but soon discovered (big and robust as they,
nevertheless, were) that the weight was too much for them; they
accordingly left them on the ground, and coolly abandoned them. In
truth, they abandoned themselves. Huber put some honey for them in a
corner, so that they had nothing to do but to take it. Miserable the
degradation, cruel the punishment with which slavery afflicts the
enslavers! They did not touch it; they seemed to know nothing; they had
become so grossly ignorant and indolent that they could no longer feed
themselves. Some of them died from starvation, with food before them!
Huber, to complete the experiment, then introduced into the case one
black ant. The presence of this sagacious helot changed the face of
things, and re-established life and order. He went straight to the
honey; he fed the great dying simpletons; he dug a hole in the ground,
placed in it the eggs, prepared the incubation, watched over the
nymphs (or _maillots_), and restored to life and happiness the little
people, who, becoming industrious in their turn, seconded the efforts
of their nurse. Felicitous influence of genius! A single individual had
re-created the city.
The observer then understood that with such a superiority of
intelligence these helots might, in reality, wear the chains of
servitude very lightly, and perhaps govern their masters. A persevering
study proved to him that such was, indeed, the case. The little blacks
in many things carry a moral authority whose signs are very visible;
they do not, for example, permit the great red ants to go out alone on
useless expeditions, and compel them to return into the city. Nor are
they even at liberty to go out in a body, if their wise little helots
do not think the weather favourable, if they fear a storm, or if the
day is far advanced. When an excursion proves unsuccessful, and they
return without children, the little blacks are stationed at the gates
of the city to forbid their ingress, and send them back to the combat;
nay more, you may see them take the cowards by the collar, and force
them to retrace their route.
These are astounding facts; but such as they are, they were seen by our
illustrious observer. He could not trust his eyes, and summoned one of
the greatest naturalists of Sweden--M. Jurine--to his side, to make new
investigations, and decide whether he had been deceived. This witness,
and others who afterwards pursued the same course of experiments, found
that his discoveries were entirely accurate.
Yet--shall I dare to confess it?--after all these weighty testimonies
I still doubted. Let me say, I _hoped_ that the fact, without
being absolutely false, had not been correctly observed. But on a
certain occasion I saw it--with my own eyes saw it--in the park of
Fontainebleau. I was accompanied by an illustrious philosopher, an
excellent observer, and he too saw exactly what I saw.
It was half-past four in the afternoon of a very warm day. From a
pile of stones emerged a column of from four to five hundred red or
reddish ants, precisely the same colour as the wing-cases of the
gnat. They marched rapidly towards a piece of turf, kept in order by
their sergeants or "pivot-men," whom we saw on the flanks, and who
would not permit any one to straggle. (This is a circumstance known to
everybody who has seen a file of ants on the march.) But the novel and
astonishing thing to me was, that gradually those who were at the head
drew near to each other, and advanced only by turning; they passed and
repassed the whirling crowd, describing concentric circles; a manoeuvre
evidently fit to produce enthusiasm, and to augment energy,--each, by
contact, electrifying himself with the ardour of all.
Suddenly the revolving mass seemed to sink and disappear. There was no
sign of ant-hills in the turf; but after a while we detected an almost
imperceptible orifice, through which we saw them vanish in less time
than it takes me to write these words. We asked ourselves if it was an
entrance to their domicile; if they had re-entered their city. In a
minute at the utmost they gave us a reply, and showed us our mistake.
They issued in a throng, each carrying a nymph on its mandibles.
From the short time they had taken, it was evident that they had a
previous knowledge of the localities, the place where the eggs were
deposited, the time when they were to assemble, and the degree of
resistance they had to expect. Perhaps it was not their first journey.
The little blacks on whom the red ants made this _razzia_ sallied out
in considerable numbers; and I truly pitied them. They did not attempt
to fight. They seemed frightened and stunned. They only endeavoured to
delay the ravishers by clinging to them. A red ant was thus arrested;
but another red one, who was free, relieved him of his burden, and
thereupon the black ant relaxed his grasp. In fine, it was a pitiful
scene for the blacks. They offered no serious resistance. The five
hundred red ants succeeded in carrying off nearly three hundred
children. At two or three feet from the hole, the blacks ceased to
pursue them, abandoned all hope, and resigned themselves to their fate.
All this did not occupy ten minutes between the departure and the
return. The two parties were very unequal. It was evidently a facile
abuse of strength,--very probably an outrage often repeated,--a tyranny
of the great, who levied a tribute of children from their poor little
neighbours.
[Illustration]
Let us now endeavour to understand this shocking and hideous fact.
It is peculiar to certain species; it is a particular incident, an
exceptional case, yet related on the whole to a general law of the
life of the ants. Their societies are founded on the principle of the
_division of labour_, and the _speciality of functions_. The ant-hill,
in its normal state, comprehends, as we know, three classes:--
1st. The great multitude, composed of laborious virgins, who confine
themselves to the love of the children of the commonwealth, and perform
all the work of the community;
2nd. The fecund females, feeble, soft, and, unintelligent; and,
3rd. Some little shrivelled males, who are born only to die.
The first class is, in truth and reality, the people. But in this
people you find two industrial divisions, two great bodies of workmen.
The one executes all the more arduous tasks, such as the transportation
of heavy burdens, and the far and perilous hunt after provisions,--and,
at need, carry on war. The other, nearly always at home, receives
the materials, superintends the domestic economy, and undertakes the
principal duty of the republic,--the education of the young.
The two corporations, that of the purveyors and warriors,--that of the
nurses and tutors,--are, in every tribe, of unequal size, but identical
in species, colour, and organization.
Between the big warriors and the little industrials the moral equality
seems perfect. If there were any difference, we should say that the
class of the little ants, who build up the city and train up the
people, is the more important, the life, genius, and soul of the state;
the one which of itself could, at need, constitute the republic.
M. Huber has discovered two species (the red-brown and red) who do
not possess this essential class, this fundamental element of the ant
communities. It would not surprise us if the accessory or warrior
class were wanting. But here, in reality, it is the basis which we
find deficient,--the vital foundation,--the _raison d'être_. We are,
therefore, not so much astonished at the depraved resource by which
these red ants subsist, as at the monstrous lacuna which compels them
to adopt it.
There is a mystery in the matter which we cannot at present explain,
but which would probably be cleared up if we could arrive at a
knowledge of the general history of the species, its changes, and
migrations. Who does not know the modification effected in animals,
both externally and internally, in their forms and their manners, by
the displacements they undergo? Who, for example, would recognize
the brother of our bull-dog--of the St. Bernard--of the giant dog of
Persia, which could strangle lions--in that abortion, the Havannah dog,
so weak and frail, that even in a torrid climate Nature has clothed it
with a thick fleece, which conceals it, and converts it into an enigma?
The animal, when transplanted, may become a monster.
The ants also may have had their revolutions, their moral and physical
changes, in proportion, as the globe, everywhere becoming inhabitable,
has favoured their migrations. Several species, in the beautiful
American climates, have preserved the honey-making industry; our own
are ignorant of it, and are compelled to have recourse to the grubs;
thence arises an art and a progress,--the art of breeding, preserving,
and pasturing cattle.
Some species may have advanced, others retrograded. And it is thus I
should explain the kidnapping habits of the red ants. Probably they
belong to expatriated and demoralized classes--fragments of decayed
communities which have lost their arts,--and which could not live but
for this barbarous and desperate method of slavery. They no longer
possess the artistic and teaching class, without which all peoples
perish. Reduced to a military career, they could not live two days if
they did not take unto themselves _souls_. Therefore, that they may not
perish, they carry off the little black souls, which tend them, it is
true, but also govern them. And this not only in the city itself, but
in its external relations,--deciding or adjourning their expeditions,
and regulating their campaigns; while the red, far from regulating the
affairs of peace, do not seem even to comprehend them.
Singular triumph of intelligence! Invincible power of genius!
[Illustration]
[Illustration: IV.--EXTERMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
THE ANTS:--CIVIL WAR--EXTERMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY.
It is the tyrant's punishment that he could not, even if he would,
easily deliver his captive. So long as my nightingale sings, I know
that he cares little for his cage, and I bear his captivity lightly;
but when the time of song has gone by, I share his melancholy, and the
question again and again recurs to my mind, "How can I release him?" He
no longer knows how to fly; in truth, is almost without wings. If I set
him free, he would perish before he had gone two steps. The liberties
which he takes at Paris in a large chamber, and here, at Fontainebleau,
in a small garden, are, really, of but little importance. He does not
profit by them; almost always remains concealed in a gooseberry-bush,
dreaming and listening. The strains he hears,--the lively songs of the
warblers, the voices of love and, maternity,--augment, I believe, his
sadness; so much so, that here, in the open air, under the blue sky,
enjoying a relative degree of freedom, he loses his appetite, and will
eat no longer. We bethought ourselves of giving him his natural diet,
and of feeding him with the insects on which he lives in the woods. But
here is another difficulty. Who would not shrink from hunting after
and carrying living victims to be devoured? We preferred to give him
insects _in futuro_, the eggs of insects, and inert sleeping nymphæ. We
carried on a traffic in them at Fontainebleau, where our aristocratic
pheasants, a feudal race, do not deign to eat anything but ants' eggs.
On the evening of the 8th of June, there was brought to me from the
forest a great clod of earth, mixed with dry twigs, and especially with
tiny _débris_ of the Northern trees, such as the needles of the firs,
or little prickly leaves resembling thorns.
In the midst, the inhabitants pell-mell, of every size and grade, eggs,
larvæ, nymphæ, diminutive artisans, great ants, which seemed to be
warriors and defenders; finally, a few females which had just assumed
their wedding garments, the wings which they wear for the moment
of love. Thus it turned out to be a very complete specimen of the
republic, varied, but well distinguished by one identical sign,--all
this brownish-coloured populace having on their corselets a dull red
spot. As for the classes and professions of the ants, they were easily
characterized by their very habitations, notwithstanding the general
confusion. They were carpenter-ants, of the species which prop the
upper stories of their buildings with timber framework.
Though their situation was so completely altered, my ants were in no
wise prostrated. They continued their different tasks, of which the
principal was, to protect the eggs and nymphæ from the action of a too
powerful sun.
The general commotion had flung them out of their subterranean cradles,
and exposed them on the surface. The little ants busied themselves
actively in rectifying the disorder. The great ones went and came, and
circled about a great earthen vase which contained the dismembered
fragment of the republic. They marched with a firm step, and recoiled
before no obstacles. We could not frighten them. If we placed in their
way any impediment,--a bit of twig or our finger,--they crouched upon
their loins, manoeuvred with great address their tiny arms, and patted
us like a young kitten.
In their revolutions around our vase, they encountered upon the sand
some ashy-black ants which had taken possession of our garden, and
constructed underneath its soil a large establishment. The latter do
not have recourse to timber, but build in masonry,--cementing the earth
with their saliva, and drying and seasoning it with their formic acid.
The spot was rendered peculiarly agreeable to them by its rose trees,
apple and peach trees, which furnished them with abundant herds of
gnats, that they might extract honey-dew for themselves and their
little ones.
The rencontre was not very friendly. Though among the big carpenters
were some ants of a sufficiently diminutive stature, they wholly
differed from the black through their long legs and the red-spotted
corselet. They were pitiless. Perhaps they suspected the blacks had
been sent out as spies, to explore the ground, and lay snares for the
emigrant colony which had just been disembarked. At all events, the big
carpenters slew the little masons.
The act was followed by terrible and wholly unexpected results. Our
vase was unfortunately placed near an apple-tree covered with those
woolly grubs which are the despair of the gardener and the joy of the
ants. Our masons had just taken possession of the precious sugary herd,
and encamped themselves in the very roots of the tree, within reach of
the invaluable booty. There they were, under the ground, a complete
nation, an infinite number.
The massacre took place about twelve o'clock. At a quarter past eleven,
or a little later, all the black legions were warned, aroused, erect,
and ascending from their subterraneous habitations, poured out through
every gate. The sand was hidden beneath the long black columns; our
paths were all alive. The sun, shining full upon the little garden,
stimulated and burned up the multitude, which only quickened their
pace. Living always underground, they have necessarily a very
susceptible brain. The furious heat, and especially their fear lest the
invading giants should pounce upon their families, impelled them to
confront death unflinchingly.
And a death which seemed certain; for each of the big carpenters, as
far as size and thews were concerned, was well worth eight or ten of
the little masons. At the first collision we saw a big ant fall upon a
brown dwarf, and annihilate it at one blow.
The masons, however, had the advantage of numbers. But what of
that? Suppose the front ranks were checked in the assault, and
perished,--then the second, then the third,--if the army, still
advancing, did but furnish the enemy with new victims? Such was our
apprehension. All our fear was for the little aborigines of our
garden, disturbed by that invasion of a foreign people which we had
brought upon them,--a people ill-bred and brutal, which, without
any provocation, had marked their first arrival by slaughtering the
inhabitants of the country.
But it must be acknowledged that we had compared only the material
forces of the two armies, and had not taken into account their moral
strength.
We recognized at the first onset an astonishing amount of skill and
intelligence on the part of the little blacks. By sixes, they seized
upon one of their gigantic opponents, each holding and neutralizing
a claw; then two leaped on its back, and firmly grasped its antennæ,
until the giant, bound in every limb, was reduced to an inert body. It
seemed to lose its senses; to grow dull and stupid; no longer to be
conscious of its enormous superiority of strength. Others then rushed
to the attack, and, without incurring any danger, stabbed him above and
below.
The scene, regarded from a near point of view, was frightful. Whatever
admiration the little ones merited for their heroic courage, their
fury made one shudder. It was impossible to see without a feeling of
pity these poor garotted giants, dragged miserably to and fro,--fired
at from right and left,--floating as in an open sea on these billows
of rage and impetuosity,--blind, powerless, and incapable of
resistance,--like lambs beneath the butcher's knife.
* * * * *
We longed to separate them. But how was it to be done? We were in
the presence of infinity. A man's strength was nothing when tested
against such multitudes. We might have proceeded to the extremity of
a universal deluge,--a moment's _noyade_[P]--but even this would have
proved insufficient. They would not have let go their death-grasp; and
when the torrent had flowed by, the massacre would have continued. The
sole remedy, and an atrocious one--worse even than the evil--would
have been to have burned alive, with a wisp of flaming straw, the two
contending hosts, the conquerors and the conquered.
[Footnote P: The wholesale drownings which took place at Lyons during
the Reign of Terror were known as _noyades_.--Translator.]
We were particularly struck by the fact that, after all, it was only a
very few of the big ants that were garotted and captured; and that if
those which remained free had fallen upon the assailants, they might
easily have wrought a frightful carnage, their action being so rapid,
and one blow inflicting death. But no such idea occurred to them.
They ran hither and thither in a panic of fear, and rushed into the
very throes of danger, into the thickest press of the hostile masses.
Alas, they were not only vanquished, but seemed to have lost their
senses! While the little ants, feeling themselves at home, on their
native soil, showed so firm a front, the gigantic foreigners,--without
any stake in the ground,--a desperate fragment of an annihilated
city,--wholly ignorant of the country whither they had been
transplanted,--recognized that everything was antagonistic to them,
that a snare was hidden at every step, that no refuge was open to their
scattered forces. Ah, woful condition of a people whose fatherland has
perished, and who have lost their gods!
* * * * *
Yes, I excuse them. We ourselves were almost terrified at the sight
of those legions of death,--that formidable army of little black
skeletons which had all escaladed the earthen vase, and in that
confined region, choked and burning, crowded and furious, mounted one
upon another. As the discomfiture of the giants became a thing assured,
horrible appetites were revealed among the blacks. An opportune moment
arrived. It was a dramatic stroke! In their mute but terribly eloquent
pantomime, we heard this cry: "Their young ones are fat!"
The gluttonous army of the lean threw themselves on the children. The
latter, belonging to a superior race, were sufficiently heavy; and
more, their oblong nymph-like envelope, round and smooth, offered no
points of vantage. Two, three, four little blacks, by combining their
efforts, succeeded, though not without difficulty, in carrying a single
one of these up the smooth sides of the earthen vase. Then they came
abruptly to a terrible resolve,--to seize upon the _maillots_, to bear
off the naked children. It was no easy matter, for the little one clung
stoutly, and its interwoven limbs were, so to speak, soldered together;
in such wise that this violent and sudden development could only be
effected by severe wounds,--in fact, by quartering them. The black ants
then carried them off, torn and palpitating.
At the commencement of this kidnapping of children, we had expected
to see some such spectacle as a _razzia_ of slaves, which is only too
common among both men and ants. But we now understood that something
more was meditated. In drawing them cruelly from their outer coat,
which is to them the very necessity of life, it became too evident that
their captors cared very little whether they lived or did not live. It
was for their flesh they seized them; as a tender prey for the young
ones they had left at home, the fat children being delivered up alive
to the furious appetites of the lean!
To understand the horror of the scene, you must know the true nature
of the large eggs of the ants,--improperly called eggs, but in reality
their nymphs or chrysalides,--diminutive organized ants which, under a
thin veil, strengthen their tender, delicate, and still soft existence.
They remain in this envelope for the purpose of accomplishing a
progress of successive solidification and colouring.
The very fine and wonderfully soft web which they weave for themselves
is, as we know, of a dull white, lightly shaded with a delicate yellow,
which, when stronger, turns into a nankeen tint. Open it shortly
before the emergence of the perfect insect, and you find a being of
exactly the same colour, all folded and rolled up in itself like the
human embryo in its mother's womb. When stretched out, the aspect of
the future ant is easily recognized, but it singularly differs from it
in character: the head is quite innocent; lift up the antennæ, which,
in this condition, resemble ears, and the young white head reminds
you of that of a little white rabbit. The eyes alone,--two black
points,--marked with sufficient prominency, indicate the next stage of
colouring. For the rest, there is nothing to forewarn you that this
little, weak, and denuded animal, so touching and so interesting, will
become in a few days the black being so full of energy, so keen with
life, so fierce in blood, which will traverse the earth in a fury of
labour and burning activity.
One comprehends that in this stage of existence the milky and succulent
nymphs of the ants will prove a very appetizing dish for the bird, and
for the infinite number of creatures which hunt them greedily.
I have dissected only one nymph in the last days of its nymph-period,
and when near its time of hatching. But that one was sufficient. The
sight (seen through a lens of twelve times magnifying power) was very
painful. The being was completely formed, and already black on the
belly, yellow on the corselet. The head was intelligent, like that of
an old ant, but pale, and changing from yellow to black. Still weak
and heavy, and seized, as it were, with vertigo, it rolled from right
to left, and from left to right, with a singular effect of somnolence
and pain. You might have supposed it to be saying: "Ah me! so soon!
Why hast thou called me so cruelly, before the proper hour, from my
soft cradle to the harsh drudgery of life? But it is all at end for
me!" It struggled nevertheless to confront the unknown chances of its
novel situation, and to disengage its trammelled limbs. The antennæ
were already perfectly free, and stirred about in their anxiety to
discern the new world; this cerebral organ revealed very plainly
the disquietude and agitation of the brain. Its greatest perplexity
arose from its failure to release its two arms (or anterior limbs).
It laboured violently to do so. They were glued to the body by an
indescribable something which might be called a pale blood, and one
sweated to see the poor little creature, already prudent and timid,
unable to complete its offensive arrangements, and to extricate
(apparently to snatch or pluck away) its two bleeding arms.
I have explained this at some length, in order to make the reader
understand the passionate interest felt by the ants in the little
balls which, to our eyes, seem so insignificant. Beneath its soft and
transparent tissue they feel the infant palpitating under its two
touching forms,--the creature, denuded and innocent, which dreameth
still--the creature already formed and intelligent, perceiving
everything, but incapable of self-defence, and, before it sees the
light, disturbed by all the fears and agitations of existence.
* * * * *
The most painful shock for the young of the insects is the sudden
cold; at least, the nudity, the exposure to the air and light. This
is so antipathetic and painful to them, that in certain species it is
the source of their arts and their most ingenious devices. The eggs
and nymphs of the ants in their tiny transparent swaddling-robe,--and
still more the larvæ which are deprived of it,--feel with an excessive
sensibility every atmospheric variation. Hence the delicate and
continual attentions of their nurses in carrying them from place to
place, in translating them from one to another of the well-contrived
steps of their thirty or forty stories, in protecting their dear little
chilly charge from cold, damp, or excessive heat. A degree more or less
means for it life or death.
It is a cruel and tragical change for these children of love,
spoiled hitherto with excessive indulgence, and tended with greater
care than any princess, when they are abruptly deprived of their
garments,--stripped, with blows from pincers, teeth, and claws,--and
despoiled by the hands of the executioner. Suddenly exposed to the
burning sun, dragged hither, pushed thither, rolled over all the
roughnesses of a coarse sandy soil,--sensible, infinitely sensible,
in their new condition of nakedness, to the shocks, blows, and rude
somersaults which their violent enemies do not spare them!
In towns captured by a furious enemy, it has happened that the tombs
of the dead have been desecrated. But here, we behold the exhumation of
the living,--the despoiling of innocent and all vulnerable creatures,
poor bits of skinless flesh, to whom the very lightest touch had been a
sufficient agony!
This immense execution upon the population and their young was hurried
over so rapidly, that at three o'clock in the afternoon nearly all was
ended; the city was sacked and depopulated in every corner, and its
future beyond all hope of a resurrection.
We thought that some fugitive might still be lurking in concealment;
that perhaps the conquerors would abandon the desert if we transported
them, with the destroyed city, into a paved coach-yard outside the
garden; that then would awake in them the remembrance of their family,
to whom, moreover, they could carry nothing more to be devoured. Our
expectation was realized.
On the morning of the 10th of June we saw them scattered along all the
roads which led towards their dwelling-place, at the other end of the
garden. But the destiny of the vanquished seemed accomplished. The dead
and silent city was nothing but a cemetery, where, with the exception
of a few scattered bodies, could only be seen some dead wood, some
old pods of Northern trees, and their gloomy _aiguilles_ (pines and
once-green firs), not less dead than the city itself.
I confess that such a vengeance, so disproportionate to the act
which was its cause or pretext, excited in me a strong feeling of
indignation, and my heart, changing sides, was completely alienated
from those little black barbarians.
So, observing that some of them, still implacable, were promenading
among the ruins, I sent them rudely flying over its walls (that is, the
edges of the vase). In vain it was gently pointed out to me that these
blacks had been provoked, that they had shown the greatest courage,
having braved so great a peril that their destruction might almost have
been predicted. They were cruel and savage but heroic tribes, like the
Iroquois, the Hurons, the revengeful heroes who formerly peopled the
forests of the Mississippi and Canada. These reasons were good, but
did not calm me. I felt too keenly the enormity of the crime. Without
wishing to annihilate them, I confess that if these ferocious blacks
had chanced to come under my foot I should not have turned aside.
The unfortunate empty vase continually reminded me of what had
occurred, and held me as by a spell. On the evening of the 11th we
were still seated on the ground before it, with our chin in our hand,
completely absorbed in thought. Our gaze plunged into its depths. We
persisted in longing for a sign of life to appear upon its perfect
immobility, a something which might still say that all was not
finished. This firm resolve seemed to have the potency of an evocation,
and as if our desires had recalled to daylight some miserable spirit
of the widowed city, one of the victims which had escaped made its
appearance, and hurried headlong away from the field of death. And we
perceived that it carried a cradle.
Night came, and it was in a completely strange locality, surrounded by
enemies. A few holes, which one might mistake for places of refuge,
were precisely the mouths opening into the Inferno of the blacks. The
unhappy fugitive, with its misfortune increased by the burden of its
infant, ran distractedly, and without knowing whither. I followed it
with my eyes and heart, until the darkness concealed it from me.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: V.--THE WASPS.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
THE WASPS: THEIR FURY OF IMPROVISATION.
When the wasp on a summer's day enters at the window, with its loud,
aggressive, and menacing _zou! zou! zou!_ everybody is on his guard.
The child trembles, the mother suspends her work, even the husband
lifts his eyes: "Insolent, impudent intruder!" and he arms himself with
a handkerchief.
Meanwhile, the superb insect, having flown into every corner, and cast
around the room a rapid and scornful glance, departs with a loud noise,
not condescending to notice the unfriendly welcome accorded to him.
His only reflection has been this: "A paltry house! Not a fruit, not a
spider, not a fly, not the smallest bit of meat!"
Then he makes a descent on the shop of the country butcher: "Butcher,
my custom is yours. I am desirous of dealing with you. Do not hesitate,
foolish miser. Cut me a good slice of meat, and I will pay you for it;
I will kill all your flesh-flies. Let us agree to be friends. We are
both born to kill."
The slow dull animals of the genus _Man_ are much scandalized at the
proceedings of the wasp. It acts, it does not talk. But if it deigned
to speak, its apology would be simple. A word would suffice. It is
the being on whom Nature imposes the terrible destiny of suppressing
time. We speak of the ephemera which lives a few hours: the period is
sufficient for a creature that does nothing. The true ephemera is the
wasp. In a brief six months' summer (not more than four months of full
activity) it has to accomplish, not only the cycle of the individual
life--to be born, to eat, to love, to die--but, what is far more
onerous, the cycle of a prolonged social life, the most complicated
which any insect is required to perform. What the bee leisurely
elaborates in several years, the wasp must realize immediately. Much
more than the bee! For the latter makes its honeycombs in a completed
house (the hive, the hollow of the rock, the trunk of a tree); but the
wasp must improvise without as within, the ramparts of the city no less
than the city itself.
Four months to create everything, to make and unmake a people, and a
people of lofty organization!
Learn, ye idle races which mutter that in fourscore years ye have no
time, learn to despise it. It is a purely relative affair. There is
never any time for the flat-bellied snail, were it to crawl through
centuries. There is always time for heroic activity, firm will, and
resolute energy.
The wasp dies. Its city of thirty thousand souls, improvised by
a revolution, as by a thundering stroke of genius and courage,
subsists as a testimony to its labours. Solid, eminently substantial,
conscientiously wrought, and seemingly intended for eternity!
* * * * *
Let us note the starting-point.
A miserable fly, which in winter has survived the destruction of its
race, issues all a-dust from its hiding-place. Thank Heaven, it is
the spring-time! Does it seek to enjoy the sun? No, it will not allow
itself a day's repose. What is its first duty? To love with a rapid and
burning love, to go straight to its goal, to seize and take up as it
passes that vital force which will create an entire people. Love on the
wing,--no delay,--everything made to bear on the great social aim!
Savage and alone, with its idea and its hope, this mother of the
future commonwealth creates in the first place its citizens, some
thousands upon thousands of labourers. You have already learned that
among insects every worker is a female. These too are workers, but the
harsh necessities of toil suppress in them their sex. They love with a
lofty devotion. The austere virgin looks for no other spouse than the
community.
The chain of ardent labour is continued from the mother to her
daughters. Her task was to beget: it is theirs to build. The fury
of improvisation is the same in them, however, as it was in her.
According to the region and the climate, the tribe, the species,
and the work vary. Here they will excavate underground the cave in
which they construct their edifice, isolating it from the soil, and
preserving it from damp. There they suspend it in the air, and build it
of strong coarse pasteboard to defy the heaviest rains. To make this
paper or pasteboard, they hasten to the forest, where they select some
thoroughly prepared wood, which has been long soaking, and has been
already steeped by Nature just as we steep flax. Then within, with a
strong sharp tooth (for theirs are not the graceful probosces of bees
intended to kiss flowers), they gnaw, and tear, and loosen, and sever
the rebellious filaments, pound them into pulp as we do the linen rags,
and knead them with a heavy tongue. After the paste has been mixed
with a viscous and adhesive saliva, it is spread out into thin layers.
With teeth closed like a press, the work is completed. The elementary
substance of the pasteboard is prepared.
A second industry now commences. The paper manufacturer is transformed
into a mason. It has not the beaver's tail to serve as a trowel, but
with the American wasp a sort of palette on the leg serves the same
purpose. The operation is not the same here as in Guiana. The mason
of Cayenne, having built up the walls, has only to suspend to them a
succession of floors or platforms, following in that dry hot land the
type of our human habitations. But the European mason, working with
pasteboard, in a damp climate, where even in the summer heavy rains
are frequent, adopts a different plan: _a house within a house_, a
hive completely isolated from the envelope which encloses it. This
is the most successful device for an ardent and chilly people, whose
life-flame needs careful guarding.
As it is without, so it is within. As the house, so too the inhabitant.
We men are not yet sufficiently acquainted with the influence exercised
upon our moral dispositions by our habitations. This duplication of
walls, this potent envelopment of a people so completely shut up under
its strong twofold enclosure, largely contributes to the unity of the
commonwealth.
Observe another singularity: shall we call it a trivial one? No; to
the serious observer it is of importance. The city has two gates;
its people enter by the one, and pass out by the other, so that no
confusion can take place, and no collision between the ingressing and
egressing crowds. This plan is adopted by all people who economize
time, and wish to transact their business expeditiously. In London,
the rule is the same as with the wasps: on the one side those who are
coming, on the other those who are going; each person keeps to the
right; these take one footpath, those another. No such impediment
is met with in the Strand as the idlers of our Rue Vivienne, who
incessantly convert themselves into a serious obstacle, and swim
laboriously in the confusion they create.
* * * * *
But to return to our subject.
What is the object of these constructions? Is this robust being,
endowed with such an intensity of vital force, more afraid of the air
than numbers of delicate insects,--than the nervous spider, which
has only a house of thread, or even lives under a leaf? Therein lies
the lofty mystery of life for the higher insect. It is this which
stimulates the universal genius of the ant either above ground or
under ground. It is this which inspires the activity, the persevering
toil and economy of the bee. What, then, is it? The _love of the
future_,--the yearning to perpetuate and eternize that which one loves.
All their love centres in their offspring.
[Illustration]
To love the child and the future; to toil in view of time and of that
which as yet is not; to exhaust their vitality and die of work, that
posterity may have less cause to labour,--a noble ideal, assuredly, of
society, wherever it may be. One can well understand it in those who
have time before them, and a life to make use of, like men and bees.
But that this insect which has no time, which perishes in the evening,
should love the time that will never be its own, should immolate its
little life for the sake of the life that is to come, should devote to
the child of to-morrow its solitary day, is a sacrifice peculiar to the
wasp: it is original and sublime!
There is not a minute to lose; and the mother incessantly increases the
burden. Besides the female workers, she produces some few males who
do not work, whose little and very brief function scarcely prevails
as an excuse for their inactivity. Among those tragical and serious
insect-races, Nature, as if to divert herself a moment by a comical
distraction, has made the poor little males ordinarily squat and
obese, innocent little Falstaffs, who are guarded like a seraglio of
unimportant servants. The caricature is complete in the case of the
male bee, which, alleging that it neither knows how to glean abroad nor
to build at home, passes the time in humming before its bee-hive (like
our young cigar-smoking idlers).
Among the wasps life is so tense, burning, and keen, that the
very males, slothful as they may be, dare not abandon themselves
to complete indolence. Yonder ladies, who do not jest, and who
have stings of which the males are deprived, might look upon their
idleness sourly, and stir them up with dagger-thrusts. So they have
conceived the idea of working without work; they have the air of
doing something,--a small part of the domestic labour, cleaning, and
sweeping. If any one dies, the ceremony of interment provides them with
a pretence; with the effort of carrying a slight weight they sweat and
groan, and several put their shoulders together. In a word, they are
very ridiculous. And I am confident that their terrible companions
laugh at them.
Theirs truly is an onerous undertaking. Twenty or thirty thousand
mouths to feed, is a very extensive household. If they were only gifted
with the prudent activity of bees, their community would perish of
famine. What they need is a violent, furious, murderous rapidity,--all
the appearances of an immense gluttony,--all the love and devotion
which Sparta had for the art of thieving. But the secret of their
power, which is plainly discernible in them if we observe them but
a moment, is their magnificent insolence, their superb contempt for
all other beings, and their firm conviction that the whole world is
their inheritance. If we consider, it is true, their wonderful energy,
compared with which lions and tigers are mere races of sheep,--and
their prodigious yearly effort of improvisation,--and, finally, their
absolute devotion to the public welfare,--we shall not find in all
nature creatures relatively of greater power, nor which possess a
clearer right to value themselves highly.
Our modern minds, however, find a difficulty in admiring the violence
of the antique virtues. Their boundless love of the commonwealth is
pushed to an almost criminal excess. Who has not marked with how
ferocious an ardour they hunt the bees! Yet certain species of wasps
can make honey; but only in fine climates, which, knowing no winter,
allow the wasps an interval of peaceful labour. Here the case is
different. Their life, cut short in six months, compels them to resort
to measures of cruel simplicity. Honey is needed for their children.
Thereupon they attack the bee, and take it prisoner; with their pliable
body, whose waist is a mere thread, they so curve the extremity as
to stab the prisoner underneath with their deadly sting; when thus
stricken, the wasp saws it with three strokes of its teeth, and leaves
the head and corselet to palpitate for some time longer, while the
belly, filled with honey, the barbarian carries off as a gift for its
young.
It feels no remorse. The death of others apparently does not cause a
pang to this creature, which knows that it too will die to-morrow.
What do I say?
Our virgins of Tauris do not wait until Nature lays upon them her
heavy hand and the ignoble leaden shroud of winter. They have borne
the sword; they will die by the sword. The republic ends in a general
massacre. The children, recently, ay, and still, so dear, are slain;
dilatory children whom cold and want would kill to-morrow; their
sisters, aunts, and affectionate nurses securing them at least the
advantage of dying by the hands of those who love them. This latter
gift, a speedy death, is freely bestowed on numerous unfortunates who
had no thought of soliciting it,--on little useless males, even on
young workers who were born late, and cannot boast of a constitution
sufficiently strong to resist the winter.
Let it not be said that the heroic race of wasps is ever seen to
request the humiliating hospitality of the smoky roofs of man, and, for
the sake of living a little longer, to expose its melancholy remains
in the shambles of a spider's web! No, children! No, sisters! Die! The
republic is immortal. Some one of us, favoured by the yearly miracle
and great lottery of Nature, will be called upon to recommence the
entire work. And if but one remains, it is enough. Should the world
perish, a single true heart would suffice to re-create it.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: VI.--THE BEES: A TOMB AT PÈRE-LACHAISE.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
"THE BEES" OF VIRGIL.
All modern writers have triumphed over the ignorance displayed by
the poet Virgil in his fable of Aristæus, who draws life out of the
womb of death, and causes his bees to spring from the entrails of
immolated bulls.[Q] But, for myself, I have never laughed at it. I
know, I feel, that every word of this great sacred poet has a weighty
value, an authority which I would designate as that of an augur and
a pontiff. And the fourth book of the _Georgics_, particularly, was
a holy work, issuing from the inmost recesses of the heart. It was a
pious homage rendered to sorrow and to friendship; an eulogium on the
proscribed Gallus, Virgil's dearest friend. This eulogium, undoubtedly,
was struck out by the prudent Mæcenas; and Virgil then substituted his
Resurrection of the Bees: a song full of immortality, which, in the
mystery of Nature's transformations, embodies our highest hope, that
death is not a death, but the beginning of a new life.
[Footnote Q: The passage to which Michelet refers is found in the
fourth book of the _Georgics_, and is thus translated by Dryden:--
"The secret in an easy method lies:
Select four brawny bulls for sacrifice,
Which on Lycæus graze, without a guide;
Add four fair heifers yet in yoke untried:
For these, four altars in their temple rear,
And then adore the woodland powers with prayer.
From the slain victims pour the streaming blood,
And leave their bodies in the shady wood:
Nine mornings thence, Lethean poppy bring,
T' appease the manes of the poet's king:
And, to propitiate his offended pride,
A fatted calf and a black ewe provide:
This finished, to the former woods repair.
His mother's precepts he performs with care;
The temple visits, and adores with prayer.
Four altars raises, from his herds he calls,
For slaughter, four the fairest of his bulls;
Four heifers from his female store he took,
All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke.
Nine mornings thence, with sacrifice and prayers,
The powers atoned, he to the grove repairs.
Behold a prodigy! for, from within
The broken bowels, and the bloated skin,
A buzzing noise of bees his ears alarms,
Straight issue through the sides assaulting swarms;
Dark as a cloud they make a wheeling flight,
Then on a neighbouring tree, descending light:
Like a large cluster of black grapes they show,
And make a large dependence from the bough."
]
Would he have descended to the empty pleasure of inserting a popular
fable in that consecrated portion of his poem which had been occupied
by his friend's name? I will never believe it. The fable, if it be
one, must necessarily possess some serious foundation, and a truthful
side. We are not dealing here with the worldly poet, the urbane singer,
like Horace, the elegant favourite of Rome. It is not the charming
improvisatore of the court of Augustus, the gay and indiscreet Ovid,
who betrays the loves of the gods. Virgil is the child of Earth,
the pure and noble figure of the old Italian peasant, the religious
interrogator, the reverently simple interpreter of the secrets of
Nature. But he may be mistaken in his words,--that he may have
ill-applied the names,--this is not impossible; but so far as the
facts are concerned, it is an entirely different matter: whatever he
describes, I firmly believe he saw.
An accident threw me into the way of understanding the poet's
intention. On a certain memorable day, my wife and I repaired to the
cemetery of Père-Lachaise, to visit before winter the burial-places of
my family, the tomb which reunites my father and his grandson. This
latter had been born to me in the very year which terminated the first
half of the present century, and I had named him Lazarus in my devout
hope of the Awakening of the Nations. I had imagined that I saw upon
his countenance a gleam, as it were, of the strong and tender thoughts
which throbbed in my heart at that last moment of my teaching. Oh,
vanity of human hopes! This flower of my autumn, which I yearned to
animate with the potent vitality that had been of too tardy development
in myself, disappeared almost in the act of birth. And there was
no help but to deposit my child at the feet of my father, who had
already been four years dead. Two cypresses which I then planted in
that ill-omened nook of clay have acquired in the brief interval an
extraordinary growth. Two, nay, three times taller than myself, they
clothe their vigorous branches with a young, rich foliage which ever
points towards heaven. If, with an effort, you lower them, they rear
themselves again, in all their pride and strength, flourishing with a
marvellous pith, as if they had drank from the earth where I planted
them the precious treasure of my past and my unconquerable aspiration.
While revolving these thoughts I ascended the hill, and before arriving
at the tomb, which is situated in the upper alley, I made this
observation,--that though I had on so many occasions frequented this
melancholy and beautiful spot, having been in earlier life the most
assiduous visitor of the dead, I had scarcely ever seen any insects
in the Père-Lachaise. Hardly even at the great epoch of the flowers,
when everything is covered with bloom, and numbers of the old deserted
sepulchres are embowered in roses, I had not remarked that animal life
abounded there as it abounds elsewhere. Very few birds, and very few
insects. Why? I could not say.
While making this reflection, we had finished climbing the hill; we
stood in front of the tomb. And there, with admiration, with a species
of astonishment, I found a surprising contradiction of what I had just
been saying.
About a score of very brilliant bees hovered above the little
garden-plot,--which was narrow as a shroud, stripped of bloom and bare
of flowers, and saddened by the influence of the season. In the whole
cemetery remained only the last autumnal flowers,--some withering
and half-leafless Bengal roses. The spot where we stood, full of new
buildings, masonry, and plaster, was an Arabia Deserta. Finally, on the
tomb, towards the head of the grandfather, flourished only a few sickly
white asters, and over my child the cypresses. It must needs have been
that these asters, in their cold clayey soil, nourished either by the
whispers of the air or the spirits of the earth, treasured up a modicum
of honey, since the little gleaners resorted thither for their harvest.
* * * * *
I am not superstitious. I believe in but one miracle, the constant
miracle of the Providence of Nature. I experienced nevertheless how
powerfully the mind may be affected by a lively surprise of the heart.
I felt an emotion of gratefulness at the sight of the mysterious little
creatures animating this solitude, whither, alas! I myself came but
rarely. The increasing absorption of my work, in which day pressed upon
day,--the palpitating flame of the forge where one forges more and more
quickly, in the doubt whether one will be living to-morrow,--all this
kept us further from the tombs than in the days of our dreamy youth. I
was much affected by seeing my place supplied. In my absence the bees
peopled and vivified the spot, consoled, and perhaps rejoiced my dead.
My father may have smiled on them in his kindly indulgence; they may
have been the happiness and first delight of my child.
Selfish motives could not have led them thither; there was so little
for them to take. Nevertheless, when we suspended to the cypress-boughs
the garlands of _immortelles_ we had brought with us, they were curious
enough to ascertain if there was any treasure in the new flowers. The
hard, prickly corolla soon repulsed them, and sent them back to the
faded asters. I felt very sad, and said to them:--"Late, very late, my
friends, you come, and to the tomb of the poor! Why am I not able to
recompense you with a banquet of friendship, which should sustain and
warm you during the first cold breezes, already blowing on these icy
heights, so exposed to the northern wind!"
As if they had understood me, their movements afforded an exact reply.
Some I saw, with their little limbs skilfully bent forward, rubbing
their backs in the sun; they longed to absorb into every vein its
genial radiance. They made the most of that brief hour when the sun
revolves too quickly; one scarcely feels it before it has gone! Their
significant gesture plainly said:--"Oh, what a cold morning we have
had! Let us make haste! In less than an hour commences the equally
inclement evening, the frozen night,--nay, who knows? the winter! and
then our death is at hand."
They were still full of life, however; marvellously trim and bright,--I
may even say radiant,--under their illuminated wings, all shot with
gold. I never saw more beautiful insects; insects more clearly inspired
by a higher life. One thing embarrassed me; namely, that they were
too handsome, and too shining, inasmuch as they did not wear their
industrial attire, their velvety coat, their pincers, and their
brushes. And, finally, I discovered another circumstance: that they had
not the four wings of the bee, but only two.
I perceived my mistake. It was these insects which had deceived Virgil.
Like myself, he thought them bees, and so he erroneously called them.
Réaumur confesses that for a moment even he was deceived by them.
But the fact related by Virgil is not inaccurate. We can understand how
keenly it would impress the minds of the ancients, and how they would
see in it a type of resurrection. They seem the daughters of death. Of
the three ages of their existence, they spend the first in morbid and
deadly waters, fatal to all other creatures, which permit the escape of
the residuum of life in dissolution; with ingenious tenderness, Nature
there preserves them, maintains them alive, and enables them to breathe
in the very midst of death.
Their second period is passed under the earth,--in the shades,--where
they sleep their chrysalis-like slumber.
But when once they have quitted the place of sepulture, they are fully
compensated for their previous abasement; a light aërial life, exempt
from the bee's incessant toil, and glorified by golden wings, such
as the latter never boasts of, is bestowed upon them, with the gift,
moreover, of gentle manners. Innocent, and without stings, they live
their season of love under the sun and among the flowers. Far from
blushing at their origin,--these noble Virgilian bees!--they do not
disdain the flowers of the cemetery, they keep company with the dead,
and for the living collect that honey of the soul,--the hope of the
future!
[Illustration]
[Illustration: VII.--THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII.
THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.
"When the plant attains to the flower, the climax of its
existence,--when it assumes its symmetrical outlines, its perfumes,
its colours, and a certain degree of animal irritability,--it emerges
from its condition of isolation, and connects itself more closely
with the great Whole. But it remains fixed in one place, without any
reciprocation of love. The animal, on the contrary, is movement itself,
and manifests its joy in living by its capricious mobility. Then the
captive plant casts a glance of amicable confidence on the animal's
life of freedom, offers it the abundance of its substance, and for sole
reward expects that it will achieve its fecundation. Then, too, as an
elder brother might do, the animal assists the plant, and affords it in
its dependent state the succour of liberty. But, for this purpose, the
animal must be completely free, I would say winged, bound up with the
vegetable life which was its kindly nurse. Behold the insect, love's
messenger and mediator to the plants, their propagator, and the zealous
instrument of their fertilization.
"With a maternal care, the plant provides a place in its own body where
the insect's egg may be developed. It nourishes the young larva which
as yet is incapable of action, but which, in due time, emerging from
its vegetation in the egg, will move freely to and fro, and seek its
own sustenance. The creative fecundity of the plant easily replaces
whatever the insect has extracted from it; and thus both animal and
plant harmoniously attain to the climax of existence.
"The animal, from its low sphere of nutrition, rises to a more elevated
sphere, the pure need of motion, and the pursuit of love. The plant,
it is true, does not soar so high; but its flower is a bright dream of
a higher state of being,--a dream which, though fugitive, proceeds, by
means of its fruits, to secure the conservation of the species. The
blossoming plant and the winged insect reach, as if by concert, an
analogous development, manifested by their colours, their beautiful
symmetrical forms, and their refinement of substance. Papilionaceous
flowers, for instance, might almost be called insects-become-plants.
"This harmonic existence marches forward with the same rhythm as the
moments of the day. Each flower to whose juice an insect is assigned
expands at the hour when its life is most intense, and shuts at the
hour of its repose. Thus they feel their unity; love attracts them
one towards the other. Here the plant plays the part of the female,
the fixed basis of creation, absorbed in nature. The insect resembles
the tiny male who frees himself from earth and curvets in the air;
recalled, nevertheless, by the plant to the oneness of the terrestrial
whole. It is a winged anther, which diffuses life among the flowers."[R]
[Footnote R: Burdach, bk. ii., c. 3.]
What the wind accomplishes hap-hazard, flinging abroad in capricious
showers the generative elements, the insect performs through love,--the
direct love of its species, the _in_direct and confused love of the
amiable auxiliary which welcomes and nourishes it, which will hereafter
nourish also its eggs and continue its maternal work. Its action,
therefore, is not external and superficial, like that of the wind;
it is internal and penetrating. The ardent, curious insect will not
suffer itself to be checked by the light and trivial obstacles with
which vegetable modesty surrounds the threshold of its mysteries; it
boldly dashes aside the veil, and enters into the inmost economy of
the flower. It seizes, it pillages, and it carries away, assured that
all it does will be approved. The flower, in its powerless expansion,
rejoices only too keenly in the deeds of these thievish liberators,
who will transport its desire whither it would fain transport itself.
"Take," she says, "and take yet more!" The insect then exhausts its
utmost effort; each of its hairs becomes a tiny magnetic dart, which
attracts and wishes to attract. Would that it might be enveloped in
these points, and over all its surface (like the lightning conductor)
concentrate this treasure of vegetable electricity! Such is its
aspiration. An aspiration realized in the higher insect, in the
bee, which bristles everywhere with a magnetic apparatus,--the bee,
predestined by the tools peculiar to it, both to its little individual
industry of honey-making, and to the grand, general, universal industry
of the fecundation, of plants.
It is an admirable creature, and what the great physiologist has just
said of the loves of the flower and the insect applies particularly
to it; except with this notable distinction on the part of the bee,
that it robs the flower only of that noble luxuriance of life which it
lavishes upon love. The bee does not establish its cradle in the plant
that the young may thence derive its sole sustenance, and gradually
devour its nurse. Instead of depositing its egg, and exposing it to
the hazards of the vegetable existence, as the butterfly does with
its future caterpillar, the bee economizes the plant, and, without
attacking it, borrows from it the precious materials which its art
works up into palaces of alabaster, amber, or of gold, where its
children will in due time repose.
The innocency of the bee is one of its lofty attributes, no less than
its miraculous art. Its sting is simply a defensive and indispensable
weapon, not against man-with whom, of its own accord, it does not
wage war--but against the cruel wasps, its terrible enemies. The
bee, on the other hand, injures none. It does not live by death; its
inoffensive life does not demand the sacrifice of other lives. It
stimulates innumerable existences; it vivifies and fecundates them.
There is no uncultivated desert, no wild, bare region which it does not
animate,--where it does not infuse fresh vigour into the languishing
vegetation, urging the plants to bud, watching over and inspecting
them. It reproaches them with their slothfulness; and as soon as they
open to the influence of love-these poor dumb virgins!--it establishes
between them the requisite interpreters, carries off in its murmurs
their pollen and perfume, and harmonizes the aromas which are their
blossoms of thought.
This process begins in the month of March. When an uncertain but
already potent sun reawakes the sleeping sap, the tiny flowers of the
fields, the wild violet, the Easter-daisy of the sward, the buttercup
of the hedgerow, the precocious gillyflower, expanding, perfume the
air. But their expansion lasts only for a moment. Barely open at
noon, by three o'clock they fold themselves up again, and veil their
shivering stamens. In this brief interval of gentle heat you may see
a little wan-looking creature, completely clad but very chilly, which
also ventures to unfurl its wings. The bee quits its city, in the
knowledge that the manna is ready for it and its little ones.
A little matter then, it is true, but most cradles are empty at this
epoch. The great fecundity of the mother bee still lurks concealed in
her bosom. The regular and rapid incubation, which might suffice to
create a world, will not commence until a much later period,--the sunny
time of May.
How admirable is this agreement! Most of the shivering flowers, like
the shivering bee, wait a more equable season before they bare to the
sun their corolla, too delicate to endure the caprices of April.
It is pleasant to watch the intercourse between these charming
creatures. The docile flower inclines and yields to the insect's
unquiet movements. The shrine which it had closed against the winds,
and the inquisitive glance, it opens to the beloved bee, which,
impregnated by it, speeds afar on her message of love. The delicious
precautions which Nature has taken to veil from profane eyes the
mysteries enacted therein, do not delay for a moment the audacious
seeker, who is completely at home, so to speak, and has no fear of
being considered an intruder. One flower, for example, is protected by
a couple of petals which join together in the form of an arch (as, for
instance, the iris on the border of the waters, which in this manner
defends from the rain its delicate little lovers). Another, like the
sweet-pea, dons a kind of helmet, whose vizor must be lifted by its
suitor.
[Illustration]
The bee takes its stand at the bottom of these recesses worthy of the
fairies, covered with the softest tapestry, under fantastic pavilions,
with walls of topaz, and roofs of sapphire. Paltry comparisons these,
for they are borrowed from dead gems, while the flowers live, and feel,
and desire, and wait. And if the happy conqueror of the little hidden
kingdoms,--if the imperious violator of their innocent barriers, the
insect, mingles and confuses everything, they readily whisper its
pardon, overwhelm it with their sweetnesses, and load it with their
honey.
There are favoured localities, and there are happy hours, where and
when the bee, while gathering its harvest, accomplishes--chaste
toiler!--myriads of marriages. On the coasts, for example, and in
the immediate neighbourhood of the savage sea, where one would
hardly expect to meet with such pacific idyls, should there be but
one shadowy, secure, and warm recess, Nature never fails, in the
warm and humid mildness of that maternal retreat, to create a little
chosen world; and there the flower distils to the bee its sweetest
nectar,--there the bee assuages the impetuous yearning of the flower.
Genial, bland, and still is the hour which precedes the evening.
Caressed by the last rays of the sun, whose warmth it preserves
within its bosom, besprinkled in its corolla by the light and already
radiant mist, the flower becomes conscious of two lives and a twofold
electricity; it is urged to love, and it loves! The stamens blaze
forth, and scatter abroad their cloud of incense. Then at that charming
and sacred hour let the mediatrix come; let the Samaritan bee appear!
Let her collect the sweet odours dispersed by the evening breeze; let
her redivide them with wise forethought, giving here and taking there!
The blossoms are no longer solitary; through the agency of the bee, the
meadow has been converted into a society where all understand and all
love each other, initiated into the hymeneal rites by their friendly
little high-priest.