THE SACRED BEETLE: THE PEAR
A young shepherd, who had been told in his spare time to watch the
doings of the Sacred Beetle, came to me in high spirits, one Sunday, in
the second half of June, to say that he thought the time had come to
commence a search. He had detected the insect issuing from the ground,
had dug at the spot where it made its appearance and had found, at no
great depth, the queer thing which he was bringing me.
Queer it was and calculated to upset the little which I thought I knew.
In shape, it was exactly like a tiny pear that had lost all the colour
of its freshness and turned brown in rotting. What could this curious
object be, this pretty plaything that seemed to come from a turner’s
workshop? Was it made by human hands? Was it a model of the fruit of
the pear-tree intended for some child’s collection? One would say so.
The children come round me; they look at the treasure-trove with
longing eyes; they would like to add it to the contents of their
toy-box. It is much prettier in shape than an agate marble, much more
graceful than an ivory egg or a box-wood top. The material, it is true,
seems none too nicely chosen; but it is firm to the touch and very
artistically curved. In any case, the little pear discovered
underground must not go to swell the collection of nursery treasures
until we have found out more about it.
Can it really be the Scarab’s work? Is there an egg inside it, a grub?
The shepherd assures me that there is. A similar pear, crushed by
accident in the digging, contained, he says, a white egg, the size of a
grain of wheat. I dare not believe it, so greatly does the object which
he has brought me differ from the ball which I expected to see.
To open the puzzling “find” and ascertain its contents would perhaps be
imprudent: such an act of violence might jeopardize the life of the
germ enclosed, always provided that the Scarab’s egg be there, a matter
of which the shepherd seems convinced. And then, I imagine, the
pear-shape, opposed to every accepted idea, is probably accidental. Who
knows if chance has anything like it in store for me in the future? It
were wise to keep the thing as it is, to await events; above all, it
were wise to go in search of information on the spot.
The shepherd was at his post by daybreak the next morning. I joined him
on some slopes that had been lately cleared of their trees, where the
hot summer sun, which strikes so powerfully on the neck, could not
reach us for two or three hours. In the cool air of morning, with the
flock browsing under the care of the sheep-dog, we went in search
together.
Scarabæus’ burrow is soon found: it is recognizable by the recent
mole-hill that surmounts it. My companion digs with a vigorous wrist. I
have lent him my little pocket-trowel, the light, but workmanlike tool
which, incorrigible earth-scraper that I am, I seldom omit to take with
me when I go out. I lie down, the better to see the arrangement and
furnishing of the hypogeum in process of excavation; and I am all eyes.
The shepherd uses the trowel as a lever and, with his free hand, pushes
back the rubbish.
Here we are! A cave opens out and, in the moist warmth of the yawning
vault, I see a splendid pear lying full-length upon the ground. I shall
certainly long remember this first revelation of the maternal work of
the Scarab. My excitement could have been no greater were I an
archæologist digging among the ancient relics of Egypt and lighting
upon the sacred insect of the dead, carved in emerald, in some
Pharaonic crypt. O blessed joys of truth suddenly shining forth, what
others are there to compare with you! The shepherd was in the seventh
heaven: he laughed in response to my smile and was happy in my
gladness.
Luck does not repeat itself: “Non bis in idem,” says the old adage. And
here have I twice had under my eyes this curious shape of the pear.
Could it be the normal shape, not subject to exception? Must we abandon
all thought of a sphere similar to those which the insect rolls on the
ground? Let us continue and we shall see. A second hole is found. Like
the previous one, it contains a pear. The two discoveries are as like
as two peas; they might have issued from the same mould. And a valuable
detail is this: in the second burrow, beside the pear and lovingly
embracing it, is the mother Beetle, engaged, no doubt, in giving it the
finishing touches before leaving the underground cave for good. All
doubts are dispelled: I know the worker and I know the work.
The rest of the morning confirmed these premisses to the full: before
an intolerable sun drove me from the slope explored, I possessed a
dozen pears identical in shape and almost in dimensions. On various
occasions, the mother was present in the workshop.
Let me tell, to finish with this part of our subject, what the future
held in store for me. During the whole of the dog-days, from the end of
June until September, I renewed almost daily my visits to the spots
frequented by the Scarab; and the burrows dug up with my trowel
supplied me with an amount of evidence exceeding my fondest hopes. The
insects brought up in the volery supplied me with further documents,
though these, it is true, were rare and not to be compared with the
riches of the open fields. All told, at least some hundred nests passed
through my hands; and it was always the graceful shape of the pear,
never, absolutely never, the round shape of the pill, never the ball of
which the books tell us.
And now let us unfold the authentic story, calling to witness none save
facts actually observed and reobserved. The Sacred Beetle’s nest is
betrayed on the outside by a heap of shifted earth, by a little
mole-hill formed of the superfluous rubbish which the mother, when
closing up the abode, has been unable to replace, as a part of the
excavation must be left empty. Under this heap is a shallow pit, about
two-fifths of an inch deep, followed by a horizontal gallery, either
straight or winding, which ends in a large hall, spacious enough to
hold a man’s fist. This is the crypt in which the egg lies wrapped in
food and subjected to the incubation of a burning sun, at a few inches
underground; this is the roomy workshop in which the mother, enjoying
full liberty of movement, has kneaded and shaped the future nursling’s
bread into a pear.
This stercoral bread has its main axis lying in a horizontal position.
Its shape and size remind one exactly of those little poires de
Saint-Jean which, thanks to their bright colouring, their flavour and
their early ripeness, delight the children’s tribe. The bulk varies
within narrow limits. The largest dimensions are 45 millimetres in
length by 30 millimetres in width; [7] the smallest are 35 millimetres
by 28. [8]
Without being as polished as stucco, the surface, which is absolutely
regular, is carefully smoothed under a thin layer of red earth. At
first, when of recent construction, soft as potter’s clay, the pyriform
loaf soon, in the course of desiccation, acquires a stout crust that
refuses to yield under the pressure of fingers. Wood itself is no
harder. This bark is the defensive wrapper which isolates the recluse
from this world and allows him to consume his victuals in profound
peace. But, should desiccation reach the central mass, then the danger
becomes extremely serious. We shall have occasion to return to the woes
of the grub exposed to a diet of too-stale bread.
What dough does the Scarab’s bake-house use? Who are the purveyors? The
mule and the horse? By no means. And yet I expected to find it so—and
so would everybody—at seeing the insect draw so eagerly, for its own
use, upon the plentiful garner of an ordinary lump of dung. For that is
where it habitually manufactures the rolling ball which it goes and
consumes in some underground retreat.
Whereas coarse bread, crammed with bits of hay, is good enough for the
mother, she becomes more dainty where her family are concerned. She now
wants fine pastry, rich in nourishment and easily digested; she now
wants the ovine manna: not that which the sheep of a dry habit scatters
in trails of black olives, but that which, elaborated in a less parched
intestine, is kneaded into biscuits all of a piece. That is the
material required, the dough exclusively used. It is no longer the poor
and stringy produce of the horse, but an unctuous, plastic, homogeneous
thing, soaked through and through with nourishing juices. Its
plasticity, its delicacy are admirably adapted to the artistic work of
the pear, while its alimentary qualities suit the weak stomach of the
newborn progeny. Little though the bulk be, the grub will here find
sufficient food.
This explains the smallness of the alimentary pears, a smallness that
made me doubt the origin of my find, before I came upon the mother in
the presence of the provisions. I was unable to see in those little
pears the bill of fare of a future Sacred Beetle, himself so great a
glutton and of so remarkable a size.
Where is the egg in that nutritive mass so novel in shape? One would be
inclined to place it in the centre of the fat, round paunch. This
central point is best-protected against accidents from the outside,
best-endowed with an even temperature. Besides, the budding grub would
here find a deep layer of food on every side of it and would not be
exposed to the mistakes of the first few mouthfuls. Everything being
alike on every side of it, it would not be called upon to choose;
wherever it chanced to apply its novice tooth, it could continue
without hesitation its first dainty repast.
All this seemed so very reasonable that I allowed myself to be led away
by it. In the first pear which I explored, slender layer by slender
layer, with the blade of a penknife, I looked for the egg in the centre
of the paunch, feeling almost certain of finding it there. To my great
surprise, it was not there. Instead of being hollow, the centre of the
pear is full and consists of one continuous, homogeneous alimentary
mass.
My deductions, which any observer in my place would certainly have
shared, seemed very reasonable; the Scarab, however, is of another way
of thinking. We have our logic, of which we are rather proud; the
Dung-kneader has hers, which is better than ours in this contingency.
She has her own foresight, her own discernment of things; and she
places her egg elsewhere.
But where? Why, in the narrow part of the pear, in the neck, right at
the end. Let us cut this neck lengthwise, taking the necessary
precautions, so as not to damage the contents. It is hollowed into a
recess with polished and shiny walls. This is the tabernacle of the
germ, the hatching-chamber. The egg, which is very large in proportion
to the size of the layer, is a long white oval, about 10 millimetres in
length by 5 millimetres in its greatest width. [9] A slight empty space
separates it on all sides from the chamber-walls. There is no contact
with these walls, save at the rear end, which adheres to the top of the
recess. Lying horizontally, following the normal position of the pear,
the whole of it, excepting the point of attachment, rests upon an
air-mattress, most elastic and warmest of beds. Let us observe also
that the top of the nipple, instead of being smooth and compact like
the rest of the pear, is formed of a felt of particles of scrapings,
which allows the air sufficient access for the breathing-needs of the
egg.
We are now informed. Let us next try to understand the Scarab’s logic.
Let us account for the necessity for the pear, that form so strange in
entomological industry; let us seek to explain the convenience of the
curious situation of the egg. It is dangerous, I know, to venture upon
the how and wherefore of things. We easily sink in this mysterious
domain where the moving soil gives way beneath the feet, swallowing the
foolhardy in the quicksands of error. Must we abandon such excursions,
because of the risk? Why should we?
What does our science, so sublime compared with the frailty of our
means, so contemptible in the face of the boundless spaces of the
unknown, what does our science know of absolute reality? Nothing. The
world interests us only because of the ideas which we form of it.
Remove the idea and everything becomes sterile, chaos, empty
nothingness. An omnium-gatherum of facts is not knowledge, but at most
a cold catalogue which we must thaw and quicken at the fire of the
mind; we must introduce thought and the light of reason; we must
interpret.
Let us adopt this course to explain the work of the Sacred Beetle.
Perhaps we shall end by attributing our own logic to the insect. After
all, it will be just as remarkable to see a wonderful agreement prevail
between that which reason dictates to us and that which instinct
dictates to the animal.
A grave danger threatens the Sacred Beetle in its grub state: the
drying-up of the food. The crypt in which the larval life is spent has
a layer of earth, some third of an inch thick, for a ceiling. Of what
avail is this slender screen against the canicular heat that burns the
soil, baking it like a brick to a far greater depth? The grub’s abode
at such times acquires a scorching temperature; when I thrust my hand
into it, I feel the moist heat of a Turkish bath.
The provisions, therefore, even though they have to last but three or
four weeks, are exposed to the risk of drying up before that time and
becoming uneatable. When, instead of the tender bread of the start, the
unhappy worm finds no food for its teeth but a repulsive crust, hard as
a pebble and unassailable, it is bound to perish of hunger. And it
does, in fact, so perish. I have found numbers of these victims of the
August sun who, after eating plentifully of the fresh victuals and
digging themselves a cell, had succumbed, unable to continue biting
into fare too hard for their teeth. There remained a thick shell, a
sort of closed oven, in which the poor wight lay baked and shrivelled
up.
While the worm dies of hunger in the shell turned to stone by
desiccation, the full-grown insect that has finished its
transformations dies there too, for it is incapable of bursting the
enclosure and freeing itself. I shall return later to the final
delivery and will linger no more on this point. Let us occupy ourselves
solely with the woes of the worm.
The drying-up of the victuals is, we say, fatal to it. This is proved
by the grubs found baked in their oven; it is also proved, in a more
precise fashion, by the following experiment. In July, the period of
active nidification, I place in wooden or cardboard boxes a dozen pears
dug up, that morning, from the native spot. These boxes, carefully
closed, are put away in the dark, in my study, where the same
temperature reigns as outside. Well, in none of them is the infant
reared: sometimes the egg shrivels; sometimes the worm is hatched, but
very soon dies. On the other hand, in tin boxes or glass receptacles,
things go very well: not one attempt at rearing fails.
Whence do these differences arise? Simply from this: in the high
temperature of July, evaporation proceeds apace under the pervious
wooden or cardboard screen; the alimentary pear dries up and the poor
worm dies of hunger. In the impermeable tin boxes, in the
carefully-sealed glass receptacles, evaporation does not take place,
the provisions retain their softness and the grubs thrive as well as in
their native burrow.
The insect employs two methods to ward off the danger of desiccation.
In the first place, it compresses the outer layer with all the strength
of its wide armlets, turning it into a protecting rind more homogeneous
and more compact than the central mass. If I smash one of these
well-dried boxes of preserves, the rind usually breaks off sharp and
leaves the kernel in the middle bare. The whole suggests the shell and
the almond of a filbert. The pressure exercised by the mother when
manipulating her pear has influenced the surface layer to a depth of a
few millimetres and from this results the rind; further down, the
pressure has not spread, whence proceeds the central kernel. In the hot
summer months, my housekeeper puts her bread into a closed pan, to keep
it fresh. This is what the insect does, in its fashion: by dint of
compression, it confines the bread of the family in a pan.
The Sacred Beetle goes further still: she becomes a geometrician
capable of solving a fine problem of minimum values. All other
conditions remaining equal, the evaporation is obviously in proportion
to the extent of the evaporating surface. The alimentary mass must
therefore be given the smallest possible surface, in order by so much
to decrease the waste of moisture; nevertheless, this smallest surface
must unite the largest aggregate of nutritive materials, so that the
worm may find sufficient nourishment. Now which is the form that
encloses the greatest bulk within the smallest superficial area?
Geometry answers, the sphere.
The Scarab, therefore, shapes the worm’s allowance into a sphere (we
will pass over the neck of the pear for the moment); and this round
form is not the result of blind mechanical conditions, imposing an
inevitable shape upon the workman; it is not the forcible effect of a
rolling along the ground. We have already seen that, with the object of
easier and swifter transit, the insect kneads the plunder which it
intends to consume at a distance into an exact ball, without moving it
from the spot at which it lies; in a word, we have observed that the
round form precedes the rolling.
In the same way, it will be shown presently that the pear destined for
the worm is fashioned down in the burrow. It undergoes no process of
rolling, it is not even moved. The Scarab gives it the requisite
outline exactly as a modelling artist would do, shaping his clay under
the pressure of the thumb.
Supplied with the tools which it possesses, the insect would be capable
of obtaining other forms of a less dainty curve than its pear-shaped
work. It could, for instance, make the coarse cylinder, the sausage in
use among the Geotrupes; simplifying the work to the utmost, it could
leave the morsel without any settled form, just as it happened to find
it. Things would proceed all the faster and would leave more time for
playing in the sun. But no: the Scarab adopts exclusively the sphere,
so difficult in its precision; she acts as though she knew the laws of
evaporation and geometry from A to Z.
It remains for us to examine the neck of the pear. What can be its
object, its use? The reply forces itself upon us irresistibly. This
neck contains the egg, in the hatching-chamber. Now every germ, whether
of plant or animal, needs air, the primary stimulus of life. To admit
that vivifying combustible, the air, the shell of a bird’s egg is
riddled with an endless number of pores. The pear of the Sacred Beetle
may be compared with the egg of the hen. Its shell is the rind,
hardened by pressure, with a view to avoiding untimely desiccation; its
nutritive mass, its meat, its yolk is the soft ball sheltered under the
rind; its air-chamber is the terminal space, the cavity in the neck,
where the air envelopes the germ on every side. Where would that germ
be better off, for breathing, than in its hatching-chamber projecting
into the atmosphere and giving free play to the interchange of gases
through its thin and easily penetrable wall and especially through the
felt of scrapings that finishes the nipple?
In the centre of the mass, on the other hand, aeration is not so easy.
The hardened rind does not possess the eggshell’s pores; and the
central kernel is formed of compact matter. The air enters it,
nevertheless, for presently the worm will be able to live in it, the
worm, a robust organism less difficult and nice than the first throbs
of life.
These conditions, air and warmth, are so fundamental that no
Dung-beetle neglects them. The nutritive hoards vary in form, as we
shall have occasion to perceive: in addition to the pear, such shapes
as the cylinder, the ovoid, the pill and the thimble are adopted,
according to the species of the manipulator; but, amid this diversity
of outline, one feature of the first importance remains constant, which
is the egg lodged in a hatching-chamber close to the surface, providing
an excellent means for the easy access of air and warmth. And the most
gifted in this delicate art is the Sacred Beetle with her pear.
I was urging just now that this first of Dung-kneaders behaved with a
logic that rivals our own. At the point to which we have come, the
proof of my statement is established. Nay, better still. Let us submit
the following problem to our leading scientific lights: a germ is
accompanied by a mass of victuals liable soon to be rendered useless by
desiccation. How should the alimentary mass be shaped? Where should the
egg be laid so as to be easily influenced by air and warmth?
The first question of the problem has already been answered. Knowing
that evaporation is in proportion to the extent of the evaporating
surface, science declares that the victuals shall be arranged in a
ball, because the spherical form is that which encloses the greatest
amount of material within the smallest surface. As for the egg, since
it requires a protecting sheath to avoid any harmful contact, it shall
be contained within a thin, cylindrical case; and this case shall be
implanted on the sphere.
Thus the requisite conditions are fulfilled: the provisions, gathered
into a ball, keep fresh; the egg, protected by its slender, cylindrical
sheath, receives the influence of air and warmth without impediment.
The strictly needful has been obtained; but it is very ugly. The
practical has not troubled about the beautiful.
An artist corrects the brute work of reason. He replaces the cylinder
by a semi-ellipsoid, of a much prettier form; he joins this ellipsoid
to the sphere by means of a graceful curved surface; and the whole
becomes the pear, the necked gourd. It is now a work of art, a thing of
beauty.
The Scarab does exactly what the laws of æsthetics dictate to
ourselves. Can she, too, have a sense of beauty? Is she able to
appreciate the elegance of her pear? Certainly, she does not see it:
she manipulates it in profound darkness. But she touches it. A poor
touch hers, rudely clad in horn, yet not insensible, after all, to
nicely-drawn outlines!