In order to follow the progress of the family, I place under a glass a

couple of capsules which so far contain only the founder. Two days

later I have a dozen young Lice, who soon desert the natal pocket and

make for the cotton-wool closing the glass tube. This hasty migration

indicates that the young Lice have their function elsewhere, on the

tender, already unfolded leaves. Detached from its fostering support,

the little purple cell dries up and its inhabitant dies. My census can

no longer be continued. No matter: I have learnt that one day is enough

to produce three births. If this birth-rate persists for a fortnight,

the maker of the capsule will have brought forth a handsome family,

gradually scattered over the wide field of exploitation offered by the

terebinth.

A fortnight later the red eggs hatch out, when the young twigs are

already shooting and unfolding their leaves. As far as I could judge

from my highly unreliable observations of these swarming insects, which

are not clearly distinguishable one from the other, the later

generation begins as did the earlier. It causes purple nodules to

appear on the tips of the leaflets, little wallets similar in shape and

size to a grape-stone. Like those already mentioned, these cells are

inhabited at first by a single Plant-louse.

In both cases the rage for rapid multiplication is the same. The

recluses soon produce offspring, who desert the natal shelter and

proceed to settle elsewhere as colonists. At last, its flanks drained

dry, the viviparous little insect dies in its withered arbour.

How many were they, coming from under the lichens and climbing to the

assault of the terebinth? There were thousands of them; and this

multitude is not enough. Hastily each Louse attacks her leaflet with

her beak; she makes herself a lair out of its swollen tip and

immediately gives birth to other Lice, multiplying ten- or perhaps a

hundredfold in this invasion of the innumerable. The tree has now its

full number of colonists, all capable of founding populous tribes.

Are we to regard them as different branches of the same trade union, of

the same family, exploiting the terebinth in various fashions,

according to the point attacked? We hesitate to regard them as

strangers to one another, when they are employed on the same work; yet

there are significant reasons for concluding that we have here a

duality or multiplicity of species.

Besides the disparity of the work accomplished, there is, at the

outset, one distinctive feature: the colour of the eggs, of which some

are black and others red. These vividly contrasted hues must correspond

with independent ancestries. It is even possible that a patient

examination, capable of analysing this minute object, would find

differences in husks of the same colour. All my own searches beneath

patches of lichen and in the crevices of dead wood end in nothing more

than the discovery of two sorts of ovular carapaces but of two only, at

least to judge by appearances; and yet on the tree we shall find five

categories of workers who, though resembling one another, build very

dissimilar structures. If there are no other germs, germs which have

escaped my careful observation, it would seem, therefore that the eggs

have different contents under an identical shell, whether black or red.

Lastly, the configuration, that essential characteristic of the

species, displays, in late autumn, very emphatic differentiating

features. Up to this late season, the inmates of the galls of every

form are so much alike that it is impossible to distinguish them one

from another once they are taken from their dwellings. When the final

exodus comes, at the close of the year, a generation makes its

appearance which differs greatly from its predecessors, giving final

proof of multiple species, to the number of five.

Their generic name is Pemphigus, which is to say, bubble, capsule,

bladder. This scientific name is well deserved. The Terebinth-lice and

some others that pursue similar callings, living on the elm and the

poplar, are, in a word, artificers of swellings: by the incessant

tickling of their suckers they cause the formation of hollow

excrescences, which are at once board and lodging to the community.

On the terebinth, the simplest of these dwellings consists of a lateral

fold of the leaf, the edge of which is turned back over the upper

surface and fastened to it without losing its green colour. This hem

gives a very low-roofed dwelling: the floor and the ceiling meet.

Therefore, being unduly confined, the family is not numerous. The timid

maker of these green hems bears the name of Pemphigus pallidus, DERB.

She is called pale because she has not the knack of painting her house

purple.

Elsewhere the lateral fold, still turned over the upper surface of the

leaf, grows much thicker, swells with fleshy tissue, develops wrinkles,

assumes a crimson hue and becomes a short, hollow, spindle-shaped

growth. This home, a fairly successful imitation of the seed-pods of

the peony and the larkspur, belongs to the Pemphigus follicularius,

PASS.

Elsewhere again the fold, which at first is made in the plane of the

leaf, is now bent down at right angles under the leaf, becoming an

ear-shaped appendage, a knotted, fleshy crescent, with a straw-yellow

as its prevailing colour. This is the work of the Pemphigus

semilunaris, PASS.

The spherical galls take higher rank in the Plant-louse’s art. They are

smooth, pale-yellow globes, varying in size from that of a cherry to

that of an average apricot. They hang from the base of the leaves,

which, despite these monstrous bladders, retain their normal colour,

and, in all other respects, their normal shape. The insect which

inflates these pretty capsules is Pemphigus utricularius, PASS.

But the most remarkable structures are the horn-shaped galls, truly

Cyclopean monuments compared with their minute builders. Some attain a

length of nine inches and are as thick as the neck of a claret-bottle.

Grouped in threes or fours at the tips of the upper branches, they form

barbaric trophies, twisted and fantastic danger-signals which might

have graced the brows of some Alpine Ibex.

The other galls all fall off with the leaves; not a trace of them

remains on the tree in winter, and even these firmly cemented to their

bough, last for a long time. Only the protracted assaults of wind and

weather will destroy them completely. The base itself does not easily

disappear. Next year it is still in its place, but dilapidated and

reduced to the broken stump of a horn of plenty packed with the waxy

felt that clothed the population in the days of its prosperity. In

these palaces lived Pemphigus cornicularius, PASS.

The purple pitchers of the first phase are provisional stations in

which the Lice prepare for wholesale colonization. Each of these humble

cottages has its Plant-louse from the foot of the tree. The solitary,

who was herself hatched from a germ, makes haste to give birth to live

youngsters, who gradually spread over the new leaves, and die. Then the

true galls come, the great cities which will provide room for several

generations. Here again, all the five classes of specialists between

whom we have discriminated set to work, all labouring independently at

the first filling out of the cabins. Mutual assistance will come later.

May arrives; and already the simpler galls begin to grow: the lateral

folds which, bent back upon the edge, become so many green hems.

Beneath the awl of the black Louse, patiently pricking away at the

leaf, a narrow border curves inwards from the edge. The line of attack

measures a couple of centimetres. [65] When it has worked long enough

at this or that point, the tiny insect changes its place and goes

elsewhere to begin all over again, standing motionless while its

implement performs its functions.

Now what is the atom doing thus to warp what would be flat under

natural conditions? Merely implanting its sucker. The prick of a

needle, however skilfully guided, would bruise the tissues without

affecting their form. The little insect must therefore instil a certain

virus, which provokes an exaggerated flow of sap; it injects an

irritant poison and the plant reacts by the swelling of the wounded

parts.

And now the hem is growing wider, with a slowness that defies our

scouting: as well try to follow with the eyes the growth of a blade of

grass. It is now a slanting roof, a gaping fold. The Louse is in the

angle, at her post, doing her duty as a turncock. With her fine probe

she stimulates and controls the flow of sap. In twenty-four hours the

roof completes its descent, pressing tightly against the leaf. It is a

lowered trap-door; but the mechanism of the structure works with such

caution that the tiny insect, far from being crushed between the two

thicknesses of leaf, retains its liberty of movement and moves about

inside the fold as it would do in the open air.

A curious instrument, the awl of the little black Louse! With our

modern machinery a child’s finger, applied to this or that lever, this

or that valve, sets enormous masses in motion. Similarly, the Louse,

with her delicate probe, sets powerful hydraulic machinery going and

trims the sails of a leaflet. She is, after her fashion, an engineer on

a gigantic scale.

The spindle- or ear-shaped galls make their first appearance on the

edge of the leaves in the form of narrow crimson borders. Soon the

walls grow thicker and become gnarled and fleshy, expanding into

excrescences from which all green is excluded.

How is it that the part of the leaf treated by the Louse is naturally

yellow and crimson, when, if simply folded, it retains its normal green

hue unimpaired? Again, how is it that in the one case the thickness of

the tissues is not increased while in the other it becomes augmented?

Why does the spindle keep to the plane of the edge, whereas the

ear-shaped gall, or auricle, abruptly bends its leaf and hangs

vertically? In all three cases, the implement is the same and the work

differs profoundly. Is it the effect of a virus whose properties vary

according to the sucker that inoculates it? Is it the result of a

change of method in wielding the awl? We are confounded.

The problem becomes doubly obscure when we consider the spherical

galls. Here the original black Louse settles just at the base of a

leaf, on the upper surface, against the median vein. There she takes

her stand, motionless and patient. The point abraded by the awl is

hollowed into a tiny pit, which soon forms a small protuberance beneath

the underside of the leaf. As though its foothold were gradually

withdrawn, the insect dives and is swallowed up by a pocket whose

opening closes of its own accord by the contact of its lips.

Here we have the Plant-louse at home, strictly isolated from the world.

Though the edge of the fostering leaflet undergoes no alteration of

shape or colour, the pitcher-shaped appendage at its base turns a pale

yellow and grows larger day by day, thanks to the centrifugal expansion

provoked by the insect’s irritant sucker. The continual punctures of

the solitary Louse and presently of her offspring will enlarge it, by

the end of the summer, to the dimensions of a fair-sized plum.

The horn-shaped galls originate in an entire leaf, selected from among

the smallest. On the tops of the boughs there are sickly leaves, the

last achievements of an exhausted impulse. Scarcely unfolded and

innocent of green, the colour of health, they measure barely a fifth of

an inch in length. It is on these vegetable trifles that the enormous

horn-shaped structures are based; and even so the leaf is not

completely utilized, but only one of its lobes: in short, a speck, a

mere nothing.

Exploited by the Plant-louse, this mere nothing acquires a peculiar

energy. In the first place, it welds itself to the tip of the twig and

becomes one with it, so that it lingers on the tree when the leaves

fall and, with them, the other galls; next, it excites a flow of sap

comparable with that of the pumpkin-stalk nourishing its fruit. The

very small begets the huge. The gall is at first a pretty little horn,

regular in shape and green all over. Open it. The interior is a

magnificent flesh-colour and soft as satin. For the moment, a solitary

Louse, a black one, inhabits this attractive residence.

The five kinds of establishment have been founded, from the fold to the

horn; they have only to grow larger as their population increases. Now

what are they doing, these Lice immured in solitary confinement, each

after her own fashion? To begin with, they are changing their clothes

and their shape. They used to be black and slender, suitably built for

wandering over the budding leaves: now they adopt sedentary habits,

turn yellow and put on flesh. And now, with the sucker implanted on the

wall, which is swollen with turpentine, they quietly give birth to

their young. For them this is a continuous function, like that of

digestion. They have nothing else to do.

Shall we call them fathers? No: the word would clash with the

expression “giving birth.” Shall we speak of them as mothers? Not that

either. The exact meaning of the word prevents us. They are neither one

nor the other, nor are they an intermediate form. Our language has no

term to describe these animal curiosities. We must resort to the plants

to acquire an approximate notion of the whole procedure.

In our parts, the common garlic scarcely ever flowers: cultivation has

caused it to lose its sexual duality. It knows nothing of true seed, to

which the paternity of the stamen and the maternity of the pistil

contribute. Yet the plant multiplies readily enough. The underground

part begets its offspring directly, that is to say, it produces large

fleshy buds, gathered into a cluster of what is known as cloves. Each

is a living embryo plant, which, when buried in the soil, continues its

development and grows like the original plant. To multiply the garlic

in his kitchen-garden, the gardener has no other resource than that of

the cloves, the usual seed being here non-existent.

Some plants of the same alliaceous group are even more remarkable. They

send up a normal stem, ending in what appears to be a spherical head of

blossom. Properly this head should blossom into an umbel of flowers.

But this is not what happens. There are no flowers whatever; they are

replaced by bulbils, a diminutive form of clove. Sexuality has

disappeared: instead of seeds, announced by the preparations for

flowering, the plant produces plantlets, concentrated into fleshy buds.

On the other hand, the underground part has a lavish supply of cloves.

Though the garlic is sexless, its future is assured; it will have no

lack of successors.

To a certain extent, the genesis of the Plant-louse will bear

comparison with that of the garlic. The strange insect also puts forth

bulbils: that is to say, it is spared all ovarian delay and procreates

live offspring without assistance.

The male is nobler than the female, says Lhomond. [66] This is a

pedantic formula, generally refuted by natural history. In the animal

kingdom, work, industry and ability, those true titles of nobility, are

the attributes of the mother. No matter: let us accept Lhomond’s

dictum; and, since we are allowed the choice, let us speak of the

Plant-louse as of the masculine gender, which is the nobler from the

grammarian’s point of view. For that matter, nothing shall prevent us

speaking of it as feminine, if our speech thereby gains in lucidity.

Isolated in his cell, the original Plant-louse, we were saying, grows a

new skin and puts on flesh. He brings sons into the world, all of whose

beaks play their part in enlarging the gall, while all their bellies

are engaged in increasing the population. We are reminded of the

avalanche which, at first a mere lump, becomes an enormous mass of

snow.

When summer is over, in September, let us open a gall, no matter which,

spread out the contents on a sheet of paper, take up a

magnifying-glass, and see what there is to see. Folds, spindles,

auricles, globes and horns afford us almost the same spectacle,

allowing for numbers, which are here restricted and there enormous. The

Lice are a magnificent orange yellow. The largest have stumps on their

shoulders, the rudiments of wings to be.

All are clad in an exquisite cloak, whiter than snow, which projects

some distance behind them, like a train. This finery is a waxy fleece

exuded by the skin. It will not bear the touch of a camel-hair brush; a

breath destroys it; but the Louse despoiled of it will soon sweat out

another. In the crowded gall, where so many individuals are huddled

together, jostling one another, the waxen garment is often torn to

shreds and pulverized. Hence a collection of floury rags, forming the

downiest of beds, in which the tribe lie about.

Mixed higgledy-piggledy with the orange Lice we see others, much less

numerous but easily detected. They are smaller, and are sometimes a

rusty-red, sometimes a fairly bright vermilion. Always stocky and

wrinkled, they are, according to the age and the pattern of the gall,

either round as a Tortoise or shaped like a triangle with rounded

corners. On their backs, they carry six to eight rows of white tufts, a

waxy exudation, like the white smocks of the others. An attentive

examination with the magnifying-glass is needed to detect this detail

of their costume. They never sport the wing-stumps which the others

acquire sooner or later.

One last characteristic, more important than all the rest, places these

pigmies in a category completely by themselves. From time to time I see

on their backs a monstrous protuberance which mounts as high as the

neck and doubles the creature’s bulk. Now this hump, which is here

to-day and gone to-morrow, only to reappear later, is the conjurer’s

wallet containing the future. When I manage to open one, without

mishap, with the point of a needle, I extract from it a slimy speck

displaying two black eye-spots, with traces of segmentation. My

Cæsarean operation has laid bare an embryo.

I reserved the right to pass, grammatically, from the masculine to the

feminine gender. And this is the time to do so. I isolate a few of the

hunch-backed squaws in a small glass tube, with a scrap of gall. They

give me young ones; and the humps disappear. The observation,

unfortunately, cannot be continued: the scrap of gall withers and my

specimens die. None the less it is now established that these pigmy

Lice are mothers and that they carry knapsacks on their backs as

incubating pockets.

The little red tortoises found in all the galls in the late summer are

therefore as prolific as the famous old woman who lived in a shoe: they

alone bring forth young. All around them swarm their descendants, fat

orange babies, who deck themselves in snow-white furbelows, suck the

sap, distend their stomachs and prepare to grow wings in view of an

approaching migration.

Are the hunch-backed mothers all the immediate daughters of the black

Louse, the founder of the gall, or do they form a lineage at various

removes? The latter seems probable in the horn-shaped galls, where the

mothers are so exceedingly numerous. A single origin would not account

for this prodigality. As for the other, far less thickly-populated

galls, it seems to me that a single generation of red Lice would be

sufficient.

Let me mention a few approximate figures. In the first week of

September I open a horn-shaped gall, selected from among the largest.

It measures eight inches in length by nearly an inch and a half in

thickness at its greatest diameter. The population consists mainly of

orange Lice, plump, smooth, and endowed with wing-stumps. These are the

progeny of the tiny mothers. These latter are scarlet, stocky and

wrinkled, with their fore-part tapering and their hinder-part as if it

were cut off short, so that their shape is almost triangular. As far as

I can judge in the confusion of such a multitude, they should number

some hundreds.

To estimate the whole population, I pack it into a glass tube eighteen

millimetres [67] in diameter. The column thus formed occupies a height

of 56 millimetres. [68] The volume, therefore, amounts to 16,532 cubic

millimetres. [69] Therefore, allowing one Louse, roughly, to each cubic

millimetre, the population of the gall is about sixteen thousand. As I

cannot count, I gauge. Even so did Herschel [70] gauge the Milky Way.

For numerical infinity, the Louse vies with the star. In four months

the black atom, the first pioneer of the gall, has left all these

descendants; and the end is not yet.

CHAPTER IV

THE TEREBINTH-LOUSE: THE MIGRATION

By the end of September the horn-shaped gall is full, almost as full as

a keg of anchovies. There would not be room for them all were the Lice

to form only one layer, side by side, with their suckers implanted.

They lie in strata according to the length of their probe: uppermost

are the big Lice, in the second layer the medium-sized and between

their legs the small ones, all of them motionless, with their trunks at

work. Above those engaged in drinking is the shifting horde, seeking a

place at the refreshment bar. Eddies occur in the crowd: those at the

top dive down, those underneath return to the surface; and this

continual ebb and flow gives each one time for a little tippling.

In this rough and tumble the white waxen finery turns to flour, which

fills up the interstices and makes of the whole a swarming conglomerate

in which the metamorphosis is effected. Here, without a moment’s quiet,

the moult takes place and not a leg is out of joint: here, when there

is no free space, wide wings are unfurled and not a wing is torn. To

achieve transfiguration without a hitch in such a tumult the insect

must be peculiarly favoured by fortune.

The pot-bellied orange Lice are now handsome, black, slender midges,

provided with four wings. Their secluded life is over; the time has

come for soaring in the open air. But how will they get out? The

internees are quite incapable of making a breach in the ramparts: they

have no tools. Well, what the prisoners cannot accomplish the fortress

itself will do. When the population is ripe the gall is ripe too, so

closely does the calendar of the bush synchronize with that of the

insect.

The hems raise their upper folds a little; the spindles open like so

many purses, each lined with pink satin; the auricles part their thick

gnarled lips. The doors open of themselves for the impatient inmates,

by the mere action of the sap. In the other galls, the globular and

horn-shaped ones, the mechanism does not work so easily; the unclosing

is a violent affair. More and more distended day by day, the globes

burst their sides in star-shaped rents, while the horns split open at

the top.

The exodus is worth close observation. I choose a few of the

horn-shaped galls whose cracked tips announces the coming rupture. I

expose them to the sun, in my study, facing a window, at a distance of

a few paces from the closed casements. In the intervening space I set

up a thick branch of leafy terebinth. I reckon upon this bait to

attract the flying Lice, at least as a resting-spot. Next morning one

of the horns opens, and by midday, in radiant sunlight, in calm, hot

weather, the winged Lice are emerging.

They come forth in small companies, without hurrying. It is a quiet,

gently-flowing stream. They are dusted over with a waxy flour, all that

remains of the sometime powder-puffs. When barely on the threshold of

the cranny, they spread their wings and are off, shedding a faint trail

of dust from their shoulders, shaken by the vibrations of their wings.

With an undulating flight they all make straight for the window, where

the light is brighter than elsewhere. They dash against the panes and

slip down upon the cross-bars. There, bathed in the sunlight, without

attempting to go further afield, they remain, collecting in a drift.

Although the rest of the room is thoroughly well lit in all directions,

the flight of the departing Lice is always directed towards the window

facing the sun. There are thousands upon thousands of them; and not one

takes another path, veering ever so little to the right or left. You

feel a certain surprise at the invariable route pursued by these atoms

which, when released, in a space well lit on every side, all, from the

first to the last, rush towards the delights of a ray of sunshine. A

handful of shot dropped from a height does not return to earth with

greater certainty. The leaden pellets are attracted by gravity, to

which all dead matter is subject, while the specks of living matter

obey the light.

My window-panes check them. In the absence of this obstacle, where

would they go? Certainly not to the terebinth-trees near by. I have

definite proof of this here, before my eyes. As a resting-place I have

set up a bough of the cherished bush. None of the newly emerged insects

takes notice of it; none of them pauses there. If on the way to the

window one of them collides with the green thicket and falls upon a

leaf, it quickly picks itself up again and makes off in a hurry to join

the others in the sunlit window. Freed henceforth from the demands of

the stomach, they are no longer interested in the terebinth; they all

avoid it.

The exodus lasts a couple of days. When the last loiterers have gone,

let us open the gall entirely. The population has been rigorously

sorted. At first it was a mixture of wingless red and winged black

Lice. The latter have all left their dwelling; the others are still

there. Those faithful to their home are small as before, squat,

wrinkled and vermilion. Some of them bear the dorsal wallet, the

maternal pouch. In them I recognize the legion of the mothers, now left

alone in the house. For some time yet they linger on languidly, the

gall being open to wind and weather; those less exhausted continue to

produce offspring; mere abortions without a future; the time is too

short and the house is falling into decay. At length they perish, with

their belated young. The gall is a deserted ruin.

Let us return to the emigrants, checked in their flight by the

window-panes. In shape, colour and size they are all alike; the swarm

is a monotonous repetition of the same individual; there is not one

detail, however minute, to denote any difference. Yet we should expect

to find males and females here. The Plant-louse, until this moment in

the humble larval stage, has just acquired the attributes of the

perfect insect. The heavy, pot-bellied Louse has become a slender

midge, glorified by four iridescent wings. In any other insect this

would be an infallible token of the nuptial frolics.

Well, in the children of the galls, these wings, these adornments of

maturity, belie their promises. There is no wedding and there can be

none. Not a Louse in all the swarm is endowed with sex, and yet each

has her brood, which she brings into the world by direct reproduction

as her predecessors did.

With a slip of straw moistened with saliva I pick up a winged Louse at

random. I press its abdomen with a pin. My brutal obstetrics produces

an immediate effect: the insect’s outraged flanks eject a string of

five or six fœtuses; and the process is repeated without variation no

matter what specimen we deliver.

Let us, for that matter, consult the natural procedure. A couple of

hours elapse and my prisoners behind the window are in the throes of

childbirth on the glass of the panes, the plaster of the embrasure, the

wood of the cross-bars. Matters become so urgent that any place suits

them.

The Louse in the act of parturition raises her two large wings, the

upper pair, and gently moves the two small ones, the lower pair. The

tip of the abdomen bends downwards, touches the supporting surface and

the thing is done: a fœtus is implanted perpendicularly to the support,

with its head uppermost. A little farther away, a second is deposited

as promptly, followed by another and yet others. In one brief sitting

the distribution is over. The average number of the litter is six.

The infant, we were saying, is fixed in an upright position, at right

angles to the supporting surface. This nicely-balanced attitude is

necessary. The new-born Louse is, in fact, wrapped in a thin tunic of

which it must first of all divest itself. In a minute or two this

swaddling band splits and is thrust backwards. The legs release

themselves, kicking freely in all directions, which they could not do

were the tiny creature lying on the ground. By this means joints that

are working for the first time gain strength and suppleness. After a

few moments of these gymnastic exercises, the tiny insect drops on its

feet and wanders forth into the wide world.

While it is struggling in an upright position, passers-by sometimes

knock it over, without consideration for its tender age. Then the

danger is great. Thrown from its sticky pedestal, the little insect

often perishes, incapable of casting off its slough. There are a few

threads of cobweb in the corner of the window. Some winged Lice have

been caught in them. The garlands of hanging Lice give birth to their

offspring all the same, but the young ones, falling on the sill of the

embrasure, cannot manage to strip, because they are not in a standing

position.

Soon the cross-bars of the window are peopled with vermin, jogging

along with great activity, promiscuously with the winged Lice. What a

to-do on the borderland of the invisible! What are they seeking, these

busy atoms? What do they want? My ignorance will be their undoing. In

two or three days the winged Lice die. Their part is played. That of

the children is beginning. For some time yet the latter wander about,

but at last nothing stirs at the window; the legion of Lice is dead.

Before sweeping them away with a camel’s-hair brush, let us give a

brief description of them. The new-born insects are pale green and

slender in shape. Their length is not far short of a millimetre. [71]

Nimble and standing fairly high on their legs, they trot about busily.

The globular galls burst and the hems, auricles and spindles begin to

gape a little earlier than the horn-shaped galls, about the middle of

September. The five gall-makers of the terebinth all have the same

customs. After emerging from their open dwellings, all the adults, or

winged black Lice, give birth, within twenty-four hours, to a small

number of young, some five or six, as do those of the horn-shaped

galls.

The auricles yield a dumpy Louse, wider behind than before and of a

dark olive colour. Her most remarkable feature is her sucker, which,

folded underneath the insect, sticks out behind, recalling after a

fashion a Grasshopper’s oviscapt. What can the puny creatures want with

this mechanism? It is a sword, a sabre. Held erect, the implement would

prevent any attempt at walking. To drive it into the food-plant, the

insect apparently hoists itself on its legs, which correspond in length

with the enormous probe. I should like to see this inordinate beak at

work. My captives refuse what I give them: leaves and fresh galls. They

lie huddled on the plug of cotton-wool which closes the tube. They have

business to attend to. They want to get away; but to what?

Likewise squat of build, packed, not without a certain prettiness, into

the shape of miniature Toads, the Lice from the globular galls are a

pale yellowish brown, while those of the folded leaves are greenish

black. Neither the first nor the second have beaks of exaggerated

length. That extraordinary rostrum, which sticks out behind, and, when

at rest, resembles a caudal appendage, recurs in the young Lice from

the spindle-shaped galls; but this time the little creature is oblong

and its colour is pale green.

Let us cut short these dry details. It is enough if we recognize that

these five fellow-guests of the terebinth are not of one race following

different trades, but separate species. If the earlier generations,

which all resemble one another, seemed to bear witness to a specific

unity, the family of the winged Lice testifies to the contrary. These

thickset insects and these slender ones; these bearers of the rostrum,

sometimes of normal length and sometimes fantastically prolonged into

the semblance of a caudal beak; these pale-green, olive-green,

light-yellow insects are obviously independent forms.

A meticulous examination might find here preeminently all the

characteristic features of the five categories; but the reader,

repelled by prose descriptions, would soon turn the page. Let us pass

on. Let us leave the insect laboratory, with its jars and test-tubes;

let us go out of doors to see how matters come to pass under natural

conditions on the terebinth in the grounds.

The galls, frequently inspected during the hottest hours of the day,

open before my eyes; the horns are splitting at the top, the globes are

opening their sides, the others are parting their lips. The moment the

fissure is wide enough the black emigrants appear, without haste, one

by one, in absolute composure, despite the fierceness of the sun. The

exodus was not accomplished with greater sobriety in the comparative

darkness of my study. For a few seconds they linger in the breach;

then, shedding a dusty trail from their floury backs, they spread their

wings and are off. Their flight, favoured by the least breath of air,

promptly carries them to a distance at which I soon lose sight of them.

As a rule the exodus is partial, being distributed over several days.

When the whole swarm has disappeared there are still the wingless red

Lice, the hump-backed pigmies, the progenitors of the big migrants.

Some of them come to enjoy a little sunlight on the brink of the

aperture. They soon go in again. Others follow them; perhaps they too

are attracted by the brilliant sunshine. Then we see none at all. The

festival of the light is not for them. For a week or two longer they

lead a hand-to-mouth existence in the ruined gall, but their end is not

far off. The withered gall starves them and old age kills them where

they stand.

So far there is nothing new: my laboratory experiments have already

shown me what the terebinth in the garden tells me. The window-panes

and test-tubes have even taught me more than the tree: they have

enabled me to realize the part played by the winged Lice. In the

liberty of the open air one fundamental detail of their story escapes

me, for parturition takes place at a distance, I do not know where. The

new-born Lice must be scattered everywhere, often at a considerable

distance, as the emigrant’s flight informs me. Shall I then not find on

the tree itself the little Lice with which my indoor observations have

made me familiar? Yes: and in circumstances which are worth recording.

Let me recapitulate: to escape from their galls, strongly-built

dungeons without any outlet, the Terebinth-Lice have no means of

breaking through. Though very clever at tickling vegetable tissues and

making them swell into excrescences, they can do nothing with the walls

of their prison. When it is time to go, however impatient they may be

to get out, they must wait until the gall opens of itself, until the

horn, in particular, splits into jagged segments at the top and the

globe bursts open at the side. Until the fort is thus spontaneously

dismantled, there is no possibility of escape.

Now it may happen that the winged population is ripe and ready to

increase and multiply before there is a breach in the wall, either

because the gall is not yet sufficiently distended, or because it has

dried up before its time and is henceforth unable to open.

What do the captives do in the event of such a disaster? Precisely what

they would do in the open air. Their business cannot be postponed. When

the imperious hour has struck they bring forth their young, one on top

of another, in such a crush that it is hardly possible to move. For

good, or ill, the great task is accomplished.

In this tangle of wings a-flutter in the midst of a waxy powder, this

skirmish of legs seeking equilibrium on an ever-shifting support, many

young Lice are trampled underfoot and injured, many are unable to strip

and shrivel into grains of dust. The majority, none the less, so

tenacious of life are they, contrive to escape in the swarming

confusion.

Let us, in October, open a globular or horn-shaped gall which has dried

up without bursting. We shall find it crammed with black Lice, all

winged and all dead; a mass of procreators who have died after

parturition. Beneath the heap of corpses, more especially against the

walls of the dwelling, the lens, in amazement, discovers thousands of

young ones. This is a new people: it is the future struggling amidst

the cadaveric relics of the past; it is the progeny of the winged Lice,

the family born in prison. Here and there, in the midst of this

bustling youth, are vermilion-coloured specks, more awkward in their

gait but as lively as the rest. These are the grandmothers of the

colony, still doing fairly well and capable, I should say, of surviving

the winter.

I have some hope of keeping them alive, they look so healthy. Perhaps

their part is not yet fully played. I set them aside, together with

their galls, opened with a penknife. If left to the inclemencies of the

weather in their ruined cells, they would die when the cold sets in;

but may they not hold out if sheltered under glass? I almost think they

will.

And indeed at the outset things do not go so badly. My little red

insects continue to look in the best of health. Then, at the first

frosts, they become motionless, though still fresh in appearance as

though they meant to return to life in the spring. Appearances deceive;

the motionless Lice never move again. Long before April the whole herd

is dead. My care has slightly delayed the dissolution, without

preventing the inevitable end. None the less I marvel at the tenacious

vitality of the little red grandmothers. They live half the year, their

daughters but a few days.

Released henceforward from the necessity of feeding themselves, the

black emigrants, the winged Lice, leave their terebinth and need not

search for another, as is proved by my bough, which, placed in the path

of the emerging insects, does not even serve them as a temporary

resting-place. They seem equally heedless in selecting a spot for the

establishment of their family. Before my window the young Lice are

dropped at random, at any point to which the hazards of flight have

led: on the window-panes, the plaster of the embrasure, the wood of the

cross-bars or the threads of cobweb indifferently. There is nothing to

show that the unfamiliar spot is regarded as inopportune. There is no

sign of uneasiness, no attempt to fly off elsewhither, to a more

propitious place. Soberly and serenely, the winged legion brings forth

its young and goes its way.

In the open country things must happen no otherwise. The moment they

are free, the emigrants shake off their waxen dust and flit away in

this direction or in that, according to the prevailing breeze. A

flying-machine has sprouted from their shoulders, a remarkable contrast

to the clumsy paunch of their early days. Quick, for the sunlight, for

flight, for the joys of the ballet in mid-air! Off they go, hovering as

long as their feeble wings allow; then, wearied of merry-making in the

sun, they alight on the first object that offers, without henceforth

renewing their flight as do my prisoners behind the closed window.

Here, no matter what the nature of the site, parturition takes place.

There is nothing left for them but to die.

With these urgent methods, disdainful of deliberate selection, the

wastage among the emigrants’ tiny offspring must be great. On the bare

soil, on stones, on dry bark, the little Lice undoubtedly perish. They

need food quickly; and they are scarcely capable of wandering in quest

of it themselves. Their sucker, sometimes of inordinate length,

projecting beyond the tip of the abdomen like a caudal rapier, demands

that the wearer shall erect it, shall drive it into some yielding

source of sap. The insect must drink or die. In the test-tubes wherein

I collect the young Lice born before my eyes, my captives die in less

than a fortnight from want of food.

I try various kinds of green stuff. I have no success with any of them.

But here, if direct observation fails me, logic comes to my assistance.

There is no doubt that the tiny Lice, at the present moment the sole

representatives of their race, must live through the winter and serve

as the origin of the population which will occupy the terebinth in the

spring. These puny creatures cannot remain exposed to the severities of

the winter. A shelter is indispensable, a shelter that will afford them

both food and lodging. Where will they find it? Only one shelter is

possible: it must be underground, beneath some sort of grass that will

retain a little green in winter.

It is, in fact, to be presumed that the thick tufts of certain grasses

will afford them shelter. This abiding-place, where the sucker will

sink into the sweet root-fibres, and where the drip of rain or snow

does not easily find access, is beloved by several Plant-lice. Those of

the terebinth also may very well take up their winter-quarters there.

As for what happens in these subterranean lairs, we are reduced to more

or less probable conjectures.

CHAPTER V

THE DORTHESIA

After the exodus of the young, when she deserts her tent of swansdown,

half a finger’s-breadth in thickness, very warm and soft, but blocked

with rubbish which would hamper a second family, the Clotho Spider [72]

proceeds to fashion elsewhere a light hammock with a canopy, an

inexpensive summer-house where she will pass the remainder of the warm

weather. Those who are not yet marriageable ask no better protection

against the inclemencies of the winter; their robust powers of

endurance are satisfied with a muslin tent under the shelter of a

stone.

The matrons, on the other hand, as the heat begins to decrease, hasten

to enlarge and strengthen their cells, lavishing upon them the contents

of their silk-reservoirs, which the hunting-expeditions of the fine

summer nights have left distended. When the sharp white-frosts set in

they will doubtless find more comfort in their luxurious mansions than

in the first rickety hovels; nevertheless, they do not build them

precisely for themselves but rather for the use of their expected

offspring; wherefore the walls are never stout nor the feather-beds

downy enough.

The superb structure of the Clotho is above all a nest, beside which

those of the Chaffinch and the Siskin are but squatter’s huts. The

mother, it is true, does not sit upon her eggs, being as she is without

an incubator; she does not feed her offspring, who for that matter do

not require her assistance; but the part which she plays is, none the

less, one of exquisite tenderness. For seven or eight months she

watches over her brood, protecting it with a devotion equal to that of

the bird, or even greater.

Maternity, the supreme inspiration of the noblest instincts, has

thousands upon thousands of masterpieces to bear witness to its skill.

Let us recall that of the Labyrinth Spider. [73] What a wonderful

achievement is the spacious building where the mother mounts guard

about the star-shaped tabernacle, the family cradle! What an eminently

logical stronghold is this rampart of silk reinforced by masonry, to

protect the eggs from the probe of the Ichneumon-fly!

Similarly, each mother has her own defensive methods, which are

sometimes the most ingenious inventions and sometimes devices of

extreme simplicity. The strange thing is that the distribution of

talents takes no account whatever of the insect hierarchy. Certain

insects of the highest rank, protected by sumptuous wing-cases, or

sporting lofty plumes, or attired in garments of imbricated gold

scales, are almost or quite incapable of doing anything; they are

magnificent duffers, whereas others, among the very humblest, and

passing unperceived, amaze us by their talents when we grant them our

attention.

But do not things happen likewise amongst ourselves? True merit shuns

indolent luxury. If we are to turn to the best advantage the little

good which may lie hidden within us, we must feel the incentive of

need. As long as nineteen centuries ago, Persius prefaced his satires

with the lines:

Magister artis ingenique largitor Venter.

One of our proverbs repeats his views in terms a little less crude:

L’homme est comme la nèfle; il n’est rien qui vaille

S’il n’amûri longtemps au grenier, sur la paille. [74]

Insects are like ourselves. Necessity stimulates their wits and at

times enables them to make discoveries which upset all our conceptions.

I know of one, amongst the humblest and least well-known, which, to

safeguard its progeny, has found the following strange solution of the

problem: at the laying-season, the normal length of the body is

trebled: the fore part is left at the service of the insect, which

feeds, digests, roams about and shares in the joys of the sunlight; and

the hinder part becomes an infant’s crêche, a nursery in which the

little ones are gently exercised.

This singular creature is called the Dorthesia (D. Characias, Latt). We

find it from time to time on the Greater Spurge, which the Greeks used

to call Characias and which the Provençal peasant of to-day calls

Chusclo, Lachusclo.

A lover of the climate in which the olive flourishes, this spurge

abounds on the Sérignan hills, in the driest spots, where its great

blue-green tufts contrast with the poverty-stricken vegetation of the

neighbourhood. Standing in a bed of pebbles which reflect the sun’s

rays upon it, by its vigorous foliage it protests against the hardships

of winter. Still, it is not devoid of prudence. When the foolish

almond-tree is already abandoning its shivering petals to the

north-east wind, the spurge, less hasty, continues to observe the

weather and keeps the tender tips of its blossoms rolled up

crosier-wise for protection. The worst frosts are over. Then, with a

sudden urge of sap, the stems swell with a milk that burns like hot

coals and the crosiers uncurl and straighten out into clusters of dingy

little flowers, at which the first Gnats of the year come to slake

their thirst.

Wait a few days longer. As the weather grows milder, we shall see a

numerous population slowly emerging from the heap of leaves that have

fallen at the foot of the spurge. It is the Dorthesia quitting her

winter quarters under the remnants of the old foliage, and climbing,

gradually, by cautious stages, from the base to the topmost summits of

the plant, where the joys of heat and radiant light await her, together

with the delights of an inexhaustible feeding-bottle.

In April, or at latest in May, the ascent is completed; all the little

creatures are assembled on the topmost tips of the branches, in

close-packed groups, side touching side, after the fashion of the

Plant-lice. A sap-drinker and endowed with a beak that acts as a

gimlet, the Dorthesia is, in fact, related to the Aphides, whose

sedentary and social habits she shares; but, far from reminding us in

appearance of the plump, naked vermin which the rose-tree and so many

other plants have made familiar to us, she is clothed, and her costume

is one of unusual elegance.

The orange Terebinth-lice, imprisoned in galls, whether horn-shaped or

rounded like apricots, attach to their hinder parts a long train of

extreme delicacy, which the slightest touch reduces to dust. In the

Dorthesiæ, on the other hand, we see a complete garment, a

close-fitting coat of indefinite length, though fragile and breaking

off in particles under the point of a needle, just as a brittle rind

might do.

Nothing could be prettier than the cloak of this large Louse, either in

shape or in colour. It is a uniform dead white, more pleasing to the

eye than even the white of milk. The forepart of the garment is a

jacket of curly knots arranged in four longitudinal rows between which

other, smaller knots are distributed. The hinder part is a fringe of

ten slats gradually increasing in width and spreading outwards, not

unlike the teeth of a comb. The breast is covered by a shirt-front

formed of symmetrical plates and pierced with six neatly-rounded holes,

through which the brown legs emerge, quite naked and unconstrained.

This shirt-front and the curly mantle on the back together form a sort

of sleeveless woollen waistcoat with easy-fitting armholes. In the same

way the hood is pierced by holes to give free play to the rostrum and

the antennæ. All the other parts are covered by the white cloak.

This is the winter costume; it covers the whole body but does not

extend beyond it. Later, when the laying-season draws near, the garment

grows longer, as though the insect, which in reality cannot undergo

further change, were growing at a furious rate and trebling its length.

Gracefully curved like the prow of a gondola, the new portion is

furrowed above by wide parallel grooves; underneath it is finely

streaked, almost smooth. The end is cut off square. The

magnifying-glass here reveals a transverse button-hole plugged with

fine cotton-wool.

The material of the garment is everywhere brittle, fusible and

inflammable; when laid on paper it leaves a slightly translucent mark.

From these qualities we judge it to be a sort of wax, similar to

beeswax. In order to obtain it in some other form than that of tiny

particles removed from the insect, I collect a handful of Dorthesiæ and

subject them to the action of boiling water. The waxen coverings melt

and dissolve into an oily liquid which floats on the surface; the

denuded insects sink to the bottom. On cooling, the thin floating layer

sets into an amber-yellow sheet.

This colour causes us a certain surprise. We began with a substance

whose whiteness rivalled that of milk; and now melting gives it a look

of resin. This is a matter of molecular arrangement and nothing more.

To impart a proper whiteness to the yellow wax as it comes from the

hive, the wax-chandler melts it down and pours the melted substance

into cold water, thereby reducing it to thin flakes which he afterwards

exposes, on wattled screens, to the rays of the sun. Further meltings

follow, with a further production of shell-like flakes and further

exposure to the bright sunshine; and, little by little, the wax turns

white by changing its molecular structure. In this art of bleaching how

far our superior is the Dorthesia! Without treating the material by

repeated meltings and prolonged exposures to the sun, she then and

there transforms a yellow wax into one of incomparable whiteness. She

obtains by her gentle methods a result that eludes the violent

procedures of the laboratory.

Like beeswax, the Dorthesia’s wax is not collected in the outer world:

it is a first product, exuded through the surface of the body. No

manipulation is required to induce it to form itself into curly knots,

to fall into uniform streaks or graceful flutings. Merely in exuding

from the pores of the skin, it automatically acquires the requisite

form; like the fledgling’s plumage, its clothing grows correctly by the

mere activities of the organism; the wearer of the dress has no need to

improve upon it.

The tiny creature, when it issues from the egg, is perfectly naked, and

brown in colour. Soon, before leaving the mother and settling on the

bark of the spurge to draw its first sips, it becomes covered with

thinly-scattered white specks, which form the first outline of the

future jacket. By slow degrees these specks increase in number and are

produced into curly knots, so much so that the youngster, at the moment

of its emancipation, is clad like its elders.

The exudation of the wax is continuous; the white tunic is constantly

growing larger and nearer to perfection. Therefore the insect, if I

cunningly strip it bare, ought to be capable of clothing itself anew.

Experiment confirms my expectations. Destroying her garments with the

point of a needle and brushing them off with a camel-hair pencil, I

completely denude a mature Dorthesia. The persecuted Louse comes forth

in her poor brown skin. I isolate her on a sprig of spurge. In two or

three weeks’ time the coat has been remade; not so full as the first,

but large enough and of the regulation cut. With the wax which would

have added to the original garment the insect has sweated forth

another.

What is the use of this backward prolongation which trebles the actual

size of the body? Is it merely an adornment? It is much more than that.

Let us, once April is here, detach and lay open this strange appendage.

It is hollow, and full of an incomparable downy wadding; no feather-bed

or eider-down could boast of so fine, so white a filling. In the midst

of this magnificent eider-down some ovoid beads are scattered, some

white and others tinged with a ruddy brown. These are the eggs. The

new-born insects are swarming amongst them, higgledy-piggledy; some are

bare and brown, some are more or less speckled with white, according to

the more or less advanced state of the coat.

On the other hand, let us watch the Dorthesia idly roaming about the

spurge. At long intervals we shall see emerging from the orifice at the

end of the padded pocket a young Louse, handsomely clad, and nimble in

his movements, who chooses his place beside his mother and settles

down, plunging his bill into the juicy bark. He will not stir again

until the well is dry. Others follow him from day to day; and this goes

on for months on end!

If we were guided only by these observations we should conclude that

the mother was viviparous, given to dropping, here and there, living

offspring, all ready dressed. Nothing of the kind: we have just found

in the thickly-quilted pocket both eggs and young. Moreover, the laying

and hatching of the eggs may be witnessed without difficulty.

In a glass tube provided with a sprig of spurge I segregate a few

mothers whose terminal wallet I have removed. Laid bare, the insect’s

hind-quarters have no further secrets from us; I see, sprouting from

them, a sort of white mildew, like an unshaven beard. This is the waxy

secretion that sprouts from the insect’s hind-quarters, producing,

instead of tassels, filaments of extreme fineness. It is thus that the

down which fills the wallet must be produced. Presently, in the midst

of this tuft of down, an egg appears, like those which we obtained by

breaking into the maternal treasury.

This method enables me to estimate the size of the clutch. Two

Dorthesiæ stripped bare behind and isolated, with provisions, in a

glass tube, produced, in thirteen days, thirty eggs, or fifteen apiece,

or rather more than one egg daily. As the process of laying continues

for nearly five months, the total number of eggs for a single mother

must be nearly two hundred.

The eggs hatch in three or four weeks’ time. The hatching is announced

by a change in the colour of the egg, which from white becomes a bright

reddish-brown. On leaving the egg-shell the infant Louse is

reddish-brown and absolutely naked. Its appearance is that of a very

tiny Spider, the more so as its long antennæ look very like a fourth

pair of legs. Before long, four longitudinal rows of tiny white tufts

appear on its back, with bare spaces between them. This is the

beginning of the waxen mantle.

The protracted period of egg-laying, which continues for four months or

more, the comparatively quick hatching, and, finally, the gradual

exudation of the Louse’s clothing, explain why white eggs and

reddish-brown eggs, with naked youngsters and others more or less

clothed, are found simultaneously in the maternal pouch. This pouch is

a warehouse in which the Louse’s eggs are collected for months

together.

Inside the pouch, in the depths of its luxurious padding, the young

Lice are born, grow up, and clothe themselves in wax before risking the

dangers of the open. The mother gently carries them from twig to twig

of the spurge without troubling herself as to those that emerge from

her pouch. One by one, as they feel themselves strong enough, they

migrate, when their time has come, to settle down in the neighbourhood.

The exit from their home is always open; they have only to force their

way through the barrier of down.

The Narbonne Lycosa carries her family about with much less tenderness

and security. There is no shelter on the back of the Gipsy Spider, no

safeguard against falls, which are frequent in such a scramble. The

Dorthesia, more happily inspired, makes a box of the skirts of her

mantle and a downy bed of her caudal tufts. To find an equivalent

method we must go back from the Spurge-louse to the first-born of the

Mammifers—Kangaroos, Opossums and others—who rear their young in a

pouch formed by a fold of the skin of the abdomen. Coming before its

time, the shapeless embryo fixes itself on the teat and completes its

development in the maternal pouch or marsupium.

Let us make use of this term to denote the Dorthesia’s pouch. There is

a great similarity between the two wallets, although the insect is

superior to the mammal in this respect: Life often begins with

excellence in the lowly and ends with mediocrity in the strong. In the

original device of the marsupium a Louse has done better than the

Opossum.

With the object of following the history of my insects more

conveniently than was possible under the blaze of the sun by the

roadside, I placed before one of my study windows a fine clump of

spurge transplanted into a capacious flowerpot. As a result of my

diligence the plant was populated during the course of March by three

or four dozen Dorthesiæ, all wearing more or less fully developed

marsupia. My experiment in the domestication of plant and insect was

extremely successful: the spurge did well, so its inhabitants prospered

also.

The wallets became filled with eggs and then with young Lice, who,

matured in the nick of time, and more numerous every day, emerged and

spread themselves at will over the spurge. During the heat of the

summer you might have thought it had snowed on the plant, so populous

was the colony of white Lice. It contained thousands of new

inhabitants, varying in size and easily distinguished from the mothers

and foundresses by their smaller dimensions, but above all by the

complete absence of the marsupium, an addition which must develop very

much later, after hibernation at the root of the food-plant.

Some are larger and others smaller, according to age, for the matrons

still continue to procreate, but all wear the same costume and present

the same appearance; yet certain differences, unnoticed at the time of

my summary examination, should divide them into two groups, one very

small, consisting almost wholly of exceptions, and the other forming

the vast majority.

In August these differences become very plainly visible. On the tips of

the leaves, here and there, are isolated a few Lice who are surrounding

themselves with a fragile waxen enclosure, a sort of shapeless capsule,

while the rest of the flock, nearly all, in fact, continue to drink,

their bills plunged into the bark. Who are these solitaries, withdrawn

from the world of drinkers? They are males, undergoing transformation.

I open some of these fragile capsules. In the centre, on a downy bed

like that which fills the wallets of the mothers, lies a nymph endowed

with wing-stumps. At the beginning of September I obtain the first

males in their perfect state.

Strange creatures, in truth! Standing high on their legs, with long

horns, they have the look of certain Bugs. The body is black and

powdered with a fine waxy powder, the remains of the capsule in which

the transformation took place. The wings are of a leaden grey, rounded

at the tips, overlapping one another when at rest and protruding a long

way beyond the extremity of the abdomen. To the rear is an aigrette of

white filaments, very long and straight, composed, no doubt, of wax,

like the cloak of the larval stage. It is a very fragile ornament: the

insect loses most of it merely in wandering about among the few leaves

in his glass prison, the tube in which I am observing him.

In moments of elation the tip of the abdomen rises between the lifted

wings and the bundle of spokes spreads out fanwise. The insect is

showing off, erecting his tail, like the peacock. To glorify his

nuptials, he has attached a comet’s tail to his rump; he displays it

fanwise, closes it, opens it again, making it quiver and glisten in the

sunlight. When the crisis of joy has passed his finery is folded up and

the abdomen sinks down under cover of the wings.

The head is small, with long antennæ. At the tip of the abdomen is a

short, pointed projection, a sort of hook, an implement of pairing. Of

mouth-parts or rostrum there is absolutely not a trace. What would he

do with them, this microcephalous coxcomb? He has changed his shape

only to flirt for a moment with his neighbours of the other sex, to

mate and to die. Moreover, the part which he fulfils does not seem to

be particularly necessary. On the spurge in my study the female

population of the second generation numbers several thousands, and I

obtain, in all, some thirty males. Approximately, there are a hundred

times as many females. The dandified wearers of the aigrette cannot

suffice for such a harem.

On the other hand, they do not seem to be very eager. I see some who,

on emerging from the ruins of their capsule, covered with powder, brush

and wipe themselves a little, try their wings, and then, with a lazy

flight, make for the window, which is closed to prevent their escape.

The festival of the sunlight is to them a greater attraction than the

emotions of pairing. It is possible that the indifferent lighting of

the room is in this case the cause of their coldness. In the open

country, under the direct rays of the sun, they would certainly have

displayed their finery amidst the marriageable females, and the

business of pairing would not have lacked ardour. But even though the

most favourable circumstances had conditioned the pairing, the

exaggerated number of females, out of all proportion to the males,

tells us that very few are chosen among many that are called: roughly

about one in a hundred. Nevertheless, all produce offspring. With these

singular creatures it is enough that a few mothers are fecundated from

time to time, and the race continues to thrive. The impulse

communicated to the elect is a heritage which is handed down for some

considerable time, on condition that a few couples, year by year,

restore to the community its exhausted energies.

A parasite frequently observed in Bee-hives, the Monodontomerus, has

already shown us a similar example of the rarity of the males. Two tiny

little creatures tell us of a vast field yet to be tilled by our

genetic theories. One day, perhaps, they will help us to unravel the

obscure problem of the sexes.

Meanwhile the old mothers, the Dorthesiæ bearing the marsupium, grow

day by day fewer on the spurge. Their ovaries exhausted and their

wallets empty, they fall to the ground, where the Ants cut them to

pieces. On the plant only those young mothers whose maternal pouches

will not begin to make an appearance until the return of spring are

visible nearly till Christmas. When the cold becomes severe the flock

descends to the foot of the spurge, under the heap of dead leaves. They

will come up again at the end of March, slowly climbing the

spurge-plant, to acquire the rearing-pouch and begin once again the

cycle of evolution.

CHAPTER VI

THE KERMES OF THE OAK [75]

The nest, that notable expression of maternal skill and care, is

rivalled by other modes of rearing which often reveal the most

wonderful tenderness. The Lycosa drags behind her, hanging to her

spinnerets, the wallet of eggs that bangs against her legs; and for

half the year she carries about on her back her young, fore-gathered in

a serried group. In like fashion does the Scorpion nurse her offspring

on her back; for a fortnight she allows them to gather strength against

the moment of emancipation. Exuding a white wax, the Dorthesia

contrives at the tip of the abdomen an exquisite muff into which the

young are born, and in which they adorn themselves with cottony tufts

and peacefully grow ripe for the exodus. The downy refuge, with its

narrow opening, allows the secluded offspring to emerge, one by one, as

they become capable of settling down upon the fostering spurge.

Lowly among the lowliest, the Kermes of the oak has invented something

even better: the mother, transformed into an unassailable fortress,

bequeaths to her family, as its cradle, her skin, toughened into an

ebony bastion.

In May let us patiently examine, in sunny corners, the slender twigs of

the holm-oak or evergreen oak. Let us also inspect that cross-grained

shrub with small prickly leaves, known to the Provençal peasant as the

avaus, and to botanists as the kermes oak. This wretched brushwood,

which one can pass over in a single stride, is really an oak, a genuine

oak, as is proved by its handsome acorns, set in their rough, prickly

cups. We will gather our harvest here as well as on the holm-oak. But

we shall pass by the ordinary or English oak; we should find on it

nothing in the least like what we are seeking to-day. Only the two

species first mentioned will repay exploration.

On these we shall see, a few here and a few there, but never in

abundance, certain globules of a glossy black, about the bigness of a

moderate-sized pea. Here we have the Kermes, one of the strangest of

insects. But is this an insect? Is it of the animal kingdom? The

uninitiated would never suspect such a thing; he would take the object

for a berry, some species of black current. The mistake is all the more

natural in that the globule, if bitten into, cracks, and yields a

sweetish flavour, offset by a slight bitterness.

And this all but delicious fruit, we are told, is of the animal

kingdom; it is an insect. Let us look at the creature closely, through

the pocket microscope. We look for a head, an abdomen, and legs. There

is absolutely not a vestige of a head, nor of an abdomen, nor of legs;

all there is to be seen is a sort of large bead, fit for that cheap

jewellery which is made of jet. Is there not at least that division

into segments, which is the documentary proof of the insect? No! A

pebble is not more lifeless.

Perhaps we shall find on the under surface of the globule, in the part

in contact with the twig, some trace of animal structure? The bead

comes away easily and without breaking, like a berry. The base is

slightly flattened and powdered with a white waxy substance which acts

as a cement and causes the bead to adhere to the twig. Soaked in

alcohol for twenty-four hours this substance dissolves and leaves

uncovered the part to be examined.

Careful examination with the lens fails to reveal on the base of the

bead the legs, or claws, however minute, which would serve to establish

the fact of animal life. Nor does it reveal the sucker which, implanted

in the bark, would imbibe the sap, that indispensable aliment. Although

less smooth than the back, this portion is as bare as the rest. One

would say, in fact, that the Kermes adheres to the twig because it is

cemented to it, but has no other connection with it.

This cannot be the case. The black bead feeds itself; it grows; and

without cessation it pours forth a product which might be the work of

the distiller. To make up for such expenditure it must at least possess

a rostrum to perforate the juicy bark. It assuredly does possess such

an organ, but so small that my worn eyes are powerless to detect it.

At the very moment of detaching the Kermes from its support the

implement of suction may possibly withdraw itself, shrinking into

itself to the point of becoming invisible.

In that half of the sphere which lies toward the base of the twig, the

globule is traversed by a wide furrow which occupies the greater part

of the half-meridian. At the lower edge of this furrow, on the confines

of the supporting base, is a narrow opening, in the shape of a

button-hole. By this opening only is the Kermes in touch with the outer

world. It is a gate which serves many functions, and first of all, that

of a fountain of syrup.

Let us cull a few twigs of evergreen oak peopled by Kermes and place

the cut ends in a glass of water. The foliage will remain fresh for

some time—a condition which will suffice to ensure the insects’

welfare. We shall see, ere long, a colourless, transparent fluid which,

in the course of a couple of days, collects itself into a drop equal in

volume to the flask from which it oozes. If it becomes too heavy the

drop falls, but without flowing over the Kermes, for the outlet is as

it were a postern gate. Another drop at once begins to form. The spring

is not intermittent, but perpetual; uninterrupted it sheds its solitary

tears.

With the tip of the little finger let us gather this drop from the

still and taste it. Delicious! In taste and aroma it is very nearly

equal to honey. If the Kermes were to lend itself to wholesale rearing

as well as to the easy harvesting of its product, we should have in it

a valuable sugar-refiner. But it is for others to exploit it with the

needful diligence and devotion.

These others are the Ants, those patient harvesters. They make for the

Kermes even more eagerly than for the Plant-louse or Green-fly. The

latter is niggardly in the matter of yielding its ambrosia; the Ant has

to solicit it with patience; tickling its paunch before she can obtain

even a meagre sip from the tips of its tiny horns. The Kermes is a

spendthrift. Fully consenting, and at any moment, it permits all comers

to quench their thirst from its cellar, and its liquid largesse is

offered in streams.

The Ants, therefore, crowd about the distillery; they form quite a

company; by threes and fours they lick the opening of the gourd-like

vessel; and however high the Kermes is installed amidst the foliage of

the oak, they possess a most wonderful power of discovering it. When I

see one slowly climbing I have only to follow her with my eyes; she

takes me straight to the Ant’s tavern. She is my infallible guide when,

still in its early youth, the Kermes by its minuteness would escape the

glance of an eye not warned and on the alert. Even the very tiny

insects are perambulating taverns and are well frequented like the big

ones.

On the tree, in the full liberty of the fields, the diligence of the

Ants, collecting the syrup as it oozes forth, will hardly permit us to

estimate the value of the spring. The little round barrel, incessantly

drained dry, shows barely a trace of moisture round the bung-hole. We

must take an isolated twig, far from thirsty drinkers, to determine the

true value of this flask of nectar. Then, in the absence of the Ants,

we see the liquor collecting with considerable rapidity in a drop of

surprising volume. The extravasated fluid exceeds the capacity of the

beaker, and the trickling continues, as evenly and abundantly as

before. The sugar-refinery is now in permanent business; when there is

no syrup left there is still plenty to come.

The Ants rear the Plant-lice, their milch-cows. What herds they would

amass, what incalculable benefits they would derive therefrom, if the

Kermes could only be reared in captivity! But it is found only in

isolated groups, which, for that matter, are not numerous in

themselves, and it cannot be moved from spot to spot. Removed from its

position it dies, unable to take root elsewhere. The Ants exploit it

where they find it, without the slightest effort to gather together a

flock of Lice in a leafy chalet. Their ingenuity wisely draws back when

confronted by the impossible.

What is the purpose of this nectar, so plentiful and so highly

appreciated by the connoisseur? Can it be that it flows forth for the

benefit of the Ants? After all, why not? In virtue of their number and

their activity as harvesters, they perform a function of far-reaching

significance in the general picnic of living creatures. As the price of

their services, they are granted the horn-shaped nectar of the

Plant-louse and the fountain of the Kermes.

At the end of May let us break open the black capsule. Beneath the

envelope, hard and brittle, a hasty dissection shows us eggs: nothing

but eggs. We looked for the apparatus of a distiller of liqueurs, for

rows of retorts; we find only an obtrusive ovary. The Kermes is little

more than a coffer bursting with germs.

The germs are white, and assembled to the number of thirty or

thereabouts, in little groups or clusters, which remind us, as regards

their arrangement, of the masses of seeds in the buttercup. Tufts of

extremely fine tracheal filaments encompass the glomeruli, surrounding

them with an inextricable litter which makes an exact count impossible.

A rough approximation gives us a hundred. The total of the eggs would

therefore be some thousands.

What does the Kermes want with this prodigious number of offspring? An

alchemist of the general food supply, it does as do so many others

among the humble creatures predestined to the elaboration of nutritive

molecules: by means of excess numbers it seeks to avert the

extermination with which it is threatened. With its liquor it provides

the Ant, an importunate guest perhaps, but not a dangerous one, with a

delicious beverage; on the other hand, with its eggs it nourishes a

consumer who would lead to the extinction of the Kermes, were it not

itself subjected to a drastic thinning out.

It has so happened that I have found the lover of omelettes at work. It

is a negligible little grub which creeps from one tiny cluster to

another, emptying his eggs still enclosed in their natal sheath. As a

usual thing it is alone; sometimes it has companions—two, three or

more. Ten, according to my notes, is the largest number recorded by its

holes of exit.

How did it find its way into the strong-box, armoured on every side

with impenetrable horn? We may be sure that it was introduced while yet

a germ through the button-hole aperture whence oozes the syrup. A

mother must have chanced this way, who, discovering the orifice, took a

sip, and then, turning herself about, plunged her oviduct into the

opening. Here, without use of violence, the enemy entered the citadel.

The enemy belongs to the tribe of Chalcidians, those zealous ransackers

of entrails. An extremely rapid worker, she acquires her adult form and

emerges from the shell in the early part of June. In comparison with

the offspring of the Kermes she is a giant, being no less than a

twelfth part of an inch in length. The narrow dormer-window by which

the germ was introduced being no longer able to give it passage, the

recluse, with his patient, steely tooth, opens a door of emergence for

himself through the wall of the shell, so that the latter is finally

pierced with as many round openings as there were fellow-feasters. When

they have departed the coffer is empty; there is no trace left of the

plentiful omelette.

This ravager of ovaries is of a deep bluish-black colour; dark, concave

wings, closely pressed down after the fashion of the elytral apron,

giving it a vague look of the Beetle family. The head is flattened,

projecting beyond the corselet on either side; the powerful mandibles

are such as are needed to perforate the tough, leathery wall. The long

antennæ, incessantly vibrating, bent at an angle, slightly dilated at

the tip, are ornamented with a white ring. Dumpy and thickset, the tiny

creature runs swiftly along, polishing its wings and brushing its

antennæ; it is full of delight at having emptied the belly of a Kermes.

Has it a name in our scientific catalogue? I do not know, and am not

especially anxious to know. A label in barbarous Latin would afford the

reader no more information than would a few lines of history.

June is nearly over. For some time the sugary oozing has ceased; the

Ants no longer come to their restaurant, a sign of profound alteration

within. The outer aspect, however, has undergone no modification. We

still have the small, black, glossy sphere, smooth and firmly fixed on

its base, which is whitened with wax. With the point of a pen-knife let

us break open the ebony casket, at the upper pole, at a point opposite

the point of adhesion. Its wall is quite as hard and brittle as the

wing-cover of a Scarabæus. Within, not a trace remains of the juicy

pulp: the contents consist of a dry meal, a mixture of red and white

specks.

Let us collect this powder in a small glass tube; let us reinforce our

sight by a magnifying-glass, and examine it. The appearance of the

stuff is amazing. This dust is moving, these ashes are alive, and with

life so numerous that the very idea of computation becomes alarming. It

is the legion of the uncountable. In safeguarding a Louse fecundity

knows no limits.

By their white hue we may distinguish those eggs that are not yet ripe

for hatching. Now, at the end of June, these are the less numerous. The

others, coloured by the tiny creatures within them, are bright red or

orange yellow. Preponderant over all is the collection of white specks,

the tattered husks of the eggs which have been hatched.

Now these discarded husks are arranged in radiating clusters, just as

were the germs in the glomerulus of the ovary. This detail informs us

that there was no period of egg-laying; that is, not only were the eggs

not conveyed to a point external to the mother’s body, but they were

not even conveyed to any particular point of the enclosure bounded by

the carapace, by a common protecting roof. They were hatched on the

very site of their formation. The bunches of eggs, their arrangement

and position remaining unchanged, have become clusters of offspring.

The Psyche has already provided an example of that singular genesis

which exempts the mother from the process of egg-laying, the family

being hatched out on the spot occupied by the eggs. Let us recall the

shapeless moth, whose appearance is even more miserable than that of

the caterpillar. She withdraws herself into the husk of her chrysalid,

and there she wastes away, swollen with eggs which will be hatched on

the spot. The mother Psyche becomes a lifeless bag whence emerges her

living family. This is likewise the case of the Kermes.

I witness the process of birth. The new-born insects are struggling to

escape from their envelopes. Many of them succeed in doing so by

leaving the delicate husk of the egg where it is fastened, still

included in the radiating pattern. Others, no less numerous, drag their

sheath from its place and for a long time trail it after them, hanging

to their hinder parts. It adheres so firmly that the tiny creature is

able to cross the threshold of the shell with its moulted husk,

completing its liberation in the open air. Thus it is that we find on

the natal twig, at some distance from the maternal pill, numbers of

white discarded husks, which, if one had not closely followed the

progress of events, would give one reason to believe that the eggs were

hatched outside the Kermes. These filmy envelopes are deceptive; for

the whole family was hatched inside the coffer.

Having collected the living dust with which it is now filled, let us

glance at the ebony box itself. The cavity is divided into two storeys

by a transverse partition, a fine-spun relic of the dessicated animal.

The individual substance of the Kermes was so little that it is now

represented by a delicate film. The rest of the mass enclosed by the

shell appertains to the ovaries. The upper storey is therefore occupied

by the newly born no less than the lower.

It is easy to emerge from this latter compartment when the time of the

exodus has arrived; at its base is an ever-open door, a fissure shaped

like a button-hole. But how is it possible to escape from the upper

storey, separated from the other as it is by a partition? The

newly-hatched young are so feeble, so tiny, that they would never be

able to break through the membrane. Let us look more closely. The

partition is pierced in the centre by a round manhole! The inhabitants

of the lower storey can make immediate use of the door of their

dwelling-house, the button-hole exit; those of the upper storey can

reach it by means of the hole in the floor. Magnificent foresight on

the part of the mechanism of the dessication! The mother Kermes, of

whom no more is left than an unsubstantial ceiling, contrives in her

substance a trap-door without which half her family would die

imprisoned.

Owing to its minute proportions, the tiny insect all but escapes the

unaided eye. A good magnifying-glass shows it as a tiny Louse, shaped

like an egg, the large end of the egg to the fore, and in colour a

delicate reddish brown. It has six very active legs. Its motionless

future, its lifeless maturity, are prefaced by a quick, toddling walk.

The long antennæ are in constant vibration; on the hinder part of the

body are two long, diaphanous cirri, which will escape remark unless we

look for them with sustained attention. There are two black eye-spots.

In the small glass test-tube in which I am observing it, the tiny

creature appears to be extremely busy. It strays hither and thither,

the antennæ outspread and waving to and fro; it climbs, descends, and

climbs again, wandering this way and that, colliding as it goes with

the torn skins of the hatched eggs. It is making ready for departure,

that is evident. This mere speck of life is about to adventure into the

wide world. What does it want? Apparently a sprig of its food plant. I

have had an eye to its requirements.

In the orchard is an evergreen oak, one single specimen, a small but

sturdy tree some ten to twelve feet in height. About the middle of

June, when the young are beginning to appear, I place there some thirty

Kermes, still adhering to their supporting twig.

In spite of all my pains, it will be no easy matter to follow the

peregrinations of the Kermes’ family, should it disperse itself over

the tree, as I suppose it will. The traveller is too small and the

country to be explored too vast. Moreover, to examine the tips of all

the boughs with the magnifying-glass, leaf by leaf, twig by twig, is

impracticable; no one’s patience would suffice to the task.

A few days later I inspect those that are within my range. Many

migrations have taken place, as is proved by the white filmy skins left

by the roadside. As for the young, I cannot see them anywhere, neither

on the bark of the twigs, nor on the leaves. Is it possible that they

have all attained the inaccessible tips of the boughs? Or can they have

gone elsewhere? This is the first problem to be solved, and it must be

solved under such conditions that the emigrants cannot escape my gaze.

I transplant some young evergreen oaks ten to twenty inches in height,

into flowerpots filled with leaf-mould. On the twigs of each young tree

I fix, with a little drop of gum, five or six Kermes, taking especial

care not to obstruct the door of emergence. This miniature artificial

coppice is placed where it is sheltered from the fiercest heat of the

sun, in my study, facing one of the windows.

On the 2nd of July I witness a migration. At the hottest time of the

day, about two o’clock, the new-born Lice leave their fortress in an

innumerable swarm. The young Kermes emerge hastily from the door of

their dwelling, the button-hole-shaped cleft; many of them dragging

behind them the discarded husk of the egg. For a moment they stand

motionless on the domed roof of their spherical house; then they

scatter over the neighbouring twigs. Several of them climb upwards and

reach the summit of the plant, without appearing to gain much

satisfaction from their ascent; some of them climb downwards along

their twig, so that I cannot possibly guess what objective the swarm is

seeking. It may be that we are witnessing a brief period of disorder,

due to the joy of the first few steps in a world of unrestricted

freedom; the tiny creatures may be wandering at random, abandoned to

the delights of emancipation. Let them do as they will; they will soon

quiet down.

On the following day, indeed, I can no longer see a single Louse on the

tree; all have found their way downwards to the black leaf-mould in the

flowerpot, not far from the main stem. This mould, recently watered, is

rich in the savours of foliage which has rotted and fallen into dust.

There, on a surface barely larger than one’s fingernail, the little

creatures have gathered into a closely packed flock. Not one of them

moves, so well satisfied do they seem with their pasture, or rather

their watering-place. As far as I can see they are feeding, motionless

in their well-being.

I do what I can to increase their felicity. To keep the place cool and

to provide a little shadow I cover it with a few dead leaves from the

evergreen oak, previously moistened in a glass of water. And now,

little Lice, you must proceed after your own fashion; I have done for

you all that I can!

I have just learned of one essential point of your history, one detail,

without which all the rest of my investigations must inevitably have

come to naught. My first conjectures, although perfectly reasonable,

were unfounded. Instead of settling down on some twig, as their mother

did before them, the young Lice descend to the ground at the foot of

their natal tree. There, in the midst of the mosses and dead leaves,

they find a shelter offering some degree of coolness, which will

nourish them with its exudations, at all events at the outset.

And what do they live upon later?—I am not in a position to say. For

five or six days I find them on the same spot, a motionless flock. Not

one of them leaves the flock, not one of them descends underground.

Then their numbers begin to diminish; little by little they all

disappear, evaporating as it were, returning to that nothingness from

which they were so little removed. The flock of atomies has left not a

trace.

Apparently the flowerpot with its evergreen oak did not sufficiently

fulfil the conditions of prosperity. There should have been also some

grasses with underground rootstocks: in short, a jungle of herbaceous

vegetation, rich in superficial root-fibres in which the young Kermes

would have implanted their suckers. Is this the trouble?

I continue my investigations in the open country, at the foot of some

evergreen oaks which, I noted, were thickly populated in May. The

families of Lice are certainly there, within a fairly small radius, for

the puny little creatures are incapable of a lengthy journey. I inspect

the varied vegetation covering the ground beneath the trees; I dig,

uproot, and patiently, lens in hand, examine one by one the roots and

stems grubbed up. Repeatedly resumed, in winter as well as in autumn,

my laborious investigations are fruitless; the tiny Louse cannot be

found.

The following year, on the return of spring, I was to learn that the

presence of vegetation at the foot of the tree is not a necessity. Let

us go back to the evergreen oak in the orchard. I peopled its foliage

with some thirty Kermes which had reached maturity. There emerged from

it, caravan by caravan, a multitude of Lice. Now, at the foot of this

tree and all around it, for a distance of some yards, the soil is

perfectly bare. Not a blade of grass, not a weed of any sort, has

sprouted on this surface, so recently excavated by the spade. As for

the roots of the oak itself, it is, as far as I can judge, useless to

take them into account; for they lie at depths which the tiny Louse

could never attain.

Yet in May the tree, hitherto exempt from Kermes, is covered with black

pills. My sowing has prospered; the young Lice which emerged from the

shells have passed the winter underground, and on the advent of warm

weather have returned to the tree, there to transform themselves into

globules. What did they live on in this ungrateful soil, which contains

not a single root-fibre? Probably on nothing at all.

They descend to earth in search of shelter rather than refreshment.

Their refuge against the inclemencies of winter is precarious indeed,

if it consists, as everything seems to declare, in a few cracks in some

lump of earth, not far from the surface. In a hard winter, how many of

these ill-protected creatures must disappear? To the ravages of the

devourers of new-laid eggs we must add the more dreadful depredations

of winter; and thus it is that in order to preserve one life the Kermes

gives birth to thousands upon thousands.

The remainder of its story is not easily discovered. It is now the

beginning of April. My three children, the joy of my declining years,

lend me the keen sight of youth. Without their assistance I should

abandon all thought of the chase, which I now propose to pursue on the

confines of invisibility. The previous year certain thickets of

evergreen oak, well within the reach of the observer, were marked down

as being thickly peopled by the Kermes. At that time I marked every

populated twig with a white thread.

It is here that my little collaborators patiently pursue their

investigations, leaf by leaf, and twig by twig. After a brief glimpse

through my lens the harvest is placed in a botanist’s specimen box; a

more scrupulous examination will be made in my study, with all the

conveniences which the observer may require.

On the seventh of April, just as I am beginning to despair of my

investigations, the tiny insect crosses the field of my pocket

microscope. This is she, actually this is she! Just as I saw her last

year emerging from her natal shell, so once more I behold her now. No

change whatever is visible: neither of aspect, nor shape, nor

colouration, nor size. She goes bustling along as though busy in the

extreme, searching doubtless for a spot to her liking. At every moment

the smallest wrinkle in the bark conceals her from sight. I place the

twig that bears the precious atomy under a bell-glass. On the following

day I expect a moult. The bustling little insect is replaced by a

motionless corpuscle. This is the first stage of the globular Kermes.

Fortune has only once vouchsafed me such a “find,” which would have

been examined in greater detail had I possessed a sufficient number of

subjects. My inspection of the evergreen oaks was somewhat in arrears;

I ought to have made it in March. At this period, I imagine, I should

have caught the insect emerging from the soil and returning to the

foliage of its oak-tree, in order there to undergo transformation.

Instead of one single subject I should have had many, though even then

I could not have counted upon a numerous collection, for the hardships

of winter have certainly thinned out those families, which were in the

beginning so numerous. They descended from the tree in their hundreds

of thousands; they climb it again in scanty groups, as is attested by

the scarcity of the black globules in the warm weather.

As for what becomes of the climbers, my single specimen tells us

plainly enough. It has become a spherical speck, the indubitable sign

of the future Kermes. In a few days’ time it has dried up, despite the

glass of water into which the base of the twig was immersed.

Fortunately I have a few other similar corpuscles, a little more

developed. My gleanings give me two kinds of corpuscle.

The more numerous are spherical in shape, their size varying according

to their age. The smallest are rarely a millimetre [76] in diameter.

The ventral surface is flat, and surrounded by a snowy cushion, the

rough foundation of the waxy base. The dorsal surface is rounded, and

in colour of a rusty red or pale chestnut with delicate white tufts

distributed without any orderly arrangement. In this costume the young

Kermes reminds us of a certain shell found in tropical seas: the

striped or tiger cowry. The sugar refinery is already at work. At the

back of the shell a limpid drop is gathering, to which the Ants repair

in order to quench their thirst. In a few weeks’ time the colour has

changed to an ebony black, the sphere has attained the size of a pea

and the Kermes has reached its final state.

The minority stretch themselves out in the likeness of a tiny

half-contracted slug. The ventral surface is flat and its whole area is

closely applied to the twig. The dorsal surface is convex, and its

colour a more or less vivid amber yellow. It is sprinkled with

protuberant specks of a snowy white, arranged in longitudinal rows to

the number of five or seven. With its amber yellow colouration and its

ornamentation of white specks, the tiny creature has something of the

look of a certain kind of pastry which is sprinkled with spots of white

sugar. There is no oozing of a syrupy liquid to the rear of the insect,

so that the Ants do not visit it.

I have conjectured that this second form is the larval state of the

males. From this, I imagine, will emerge winged insects ready for

mating. To verify this guess of mine is impossible. My slug-like

specimens die on their withering twig, and to follow their development

beyond the walls of my study would be an undertaking too great for my

patience.

Of this very incomplete history of the Kermes of the oak-tree, one

point especially should be remembered. The mother, an enormous ovary,

exempt from the labours of egg-laying, contracts into a strong-box in

which the family is hatched without the removal of the eggs. Within

this shrivelled relic the family swarms in its thousands until the

moment of exodus. Simplifying to the very extreme the usual method of

procreation, the insect turns into a boxful of young.

FINIS

NOTES

[1] Thursday is a whole holiday in the French schools. At this time the

author was a schoolmaster at Avignon. Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J.

Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. xix and

xx.—Translator’s Note.

[2] Scolopendra cingulata, the centipede.—Translator’s Note.

[3] Cf. The Life of the Spider, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim.—Translator’s Note.

[4] More recent opinion conceives the comb or picten as originally the

respiratory organ of an aquatic ancestor of Scorpio, now probably

serving as a guide or clasper when pairing.—“B. W.”

[5] For the Narbonne Lycosa, or Black-bellied Tarantula, cf. The Life

of the Spider: chaps. i and iii to vi.—Translator’s Note.

[6] The enclosed paddock, or piece of waste land, in which the author

used to study his insects in their natural state. Cf. The Life of the

Fly: chap. i.—Translator’s Note.

[7] Or Large White Butterfly. Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar, by J.

Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap.

xiv.—Translator’s Note.

[8] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. xv and xvi.—Translator’s

Note.

[9] Pill-Millipedes.—Translator’s Note.

[10] Worm-like Millipedes.—Translator’s Note.

[11] Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles, by J. Henri Fabre, translated

by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. Chaps. xv and xvi.—Translator’s Note.

[12] Tiger-Beetles.—Translator’s Note.

[13] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. vi to ix and in particular

chap. vii.—Translator’s Note.

[14] Cf. The Life of the Spider: chap vi.—Translator’s Note.

[15] Cf. idem: chap. xvi.—Translator’s Note.

[16] Or Garden Spiders. Cf. The Life of the Spider: chaps. ix to xiv.

and appendix.—Translator’s Note.

[17] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. vi to ix.—Translator’s Note.

[18] Cf. The Life of the Spider: chap. xvi.—Translator’s Note.

[19] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xviii.—Translator’s Note.

[20] Cf. idem: chap. vii.—Translator’s Note.

[21] Cf. More Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander

Teixeira de Mattos: chap. viii.—Translator’s Note.

[22] The Mantes are the only insects that can turn their heads to right

or left. Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. vi.—Translator’s Note.

[23] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. xviii and

xix.—Translator’s Note.

[24] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xviii.—Translator’s Note.

[25] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. xiii and xiv.—Translator’s

Note.

[26] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. xi to xiii.—Translator’s

Note.

[27] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. i to v.—Translator’s Note.

[28] Oryctes Nasicornis, the Rhinoceros Beetle.—Translator’s Note.

[29] The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chap. vii.—Translator’s Note.

[30] The Scarabæi include the Sacred Beetle, the Copris and other

Dung-beetles. Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others, by J. Henri Fabre,

translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. i to x.—Translator’s

Note.

[31] Or Gold Beetle. Cf. More Beetles, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. xiii and xi.—Translator’s Note.

[32] Or Rose-chafer. Cf. idem: chap. i.—Translator’s Note.

[33] Cf. idem: chap. ix.—Translator’s Note.

[34] Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chaps. xii to xiv.—Translator’s

Note.

[35] Cf. More Beetles: chap. i.—Translator’s Note.

[36] Cf. idem: chaps. xiii and xiv.—Translator’s Note.

[37] Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar: chaps. i to vi.—Translator’s

Note.

[38] The grub of the Cockchafer.—Translator’s Note.

[39] This is Z. Æsculi, also known as the Wood Leopard

Moth.—Translator’s Note.

[40] The Diptera are the order of insects comprising the Flies,

Mosquitoes, Gnats and Fleas.—Translator’s Note.

[41] The Hymenoptera are the order including the Bees, Wasps, Ants,

Ichneumon-flies, Sawflies, Gall-flies, etc.—Translator’s Note.

[42] The order comprising the Grasshoppers, Locusts, Crickets,

Cockroaches, Mantes and Earwigs.—Translator’s Note.

[43] Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar: chap. xi.—Translator’s Note.

[44] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xvi.—Translator’s Note.

[45] Cf. idem: chap. vii.—Translator’s Note.

[46] Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), the famous French chemist and

bacteriologist.—Translator’s Note.

[47] Léon Dufour (1780–1865) was an army-surgeon who served with

distinction in several campaigns and subsequently practised as a Doctor

in the Landes. He attained great eminence as a naturalist. Cf. The Life

of the Spider: chap. i.—Translator’s Note.

[48] .35 inch.—Translator’s Note.

[49] .15 inch.—Translator’s Note.

[50] .351 increased to .546 inch.—Translator’s Note.

[51] .156 increased to .235 or .275 inch.—Translator’s Note.

[52] Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chaps. xviii. and

xix.—Translator’s Note.

[53] For the Nut-weevil, cf. The Life of the Weevil, by J. Henri Fabre,

translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. vi; also his Social

Life in the Insect World, translated by Bernard Miall.—Translator’s

Note.

[54] Baron Karl de Geer (1720–1778), author of Mémoires pour servir à

l’histoire des insectes.—Translator’s Note.

[55] René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757), author of Mémoires

pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des insectes and inventor of the

Réaumur thermometer-scale.—Translator’s Note.

[56] Or Burying-beetle. Cf. The Glow-worm and Other Beetles: chaps. xi

and xii.—Translator’s Note.

[57] For the Bluebottle cf. The Life of the Fly: chaps. xiv to

xvi.—Translator’s Note.

[58] Cf. More Beetles: chap. i.—Translator’s Note.

[59] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chap. xiii.—Translator’s Note.

[60] Golden Apple-beetles, or Leaf-beetles. Cf. The Mason-Wasps, by J.

Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap.

viii.—Translator’s Note.

[61] Bacon-beetles. Cf. More Beetles: chap. ii.—Translator’s Note.

[62] 1⁄25 inch.—Translators Note.

[63] Carolus Linnæus (Karl von Linné: 1707–1778), the Swedish botanist

and naturalist, author of Systema naturæ, etc.—Translator’s Note.

[64] 1⁄25 inch.—Translator’s Note.

[65] A little more than ¾ inch.—B.M.

[66] The Abbé Charles François Lhomond (1727–1794), a famous French

grammarian and classicist.—Translator’s Note.

[67] Not quite ¾ inch.—Translator’s Note.

[68] 2.18 inch.—Translator’s Note.

[69] 10 cubic inches.—Translator’s Note.

[70] Sir William Herschel (1738–1822), the Hanoverian-English

astronomer, invented the principle of “gauging” the skies which was

subsequently applied to the Milky Way by his son, Sir John Frederick

William Herschel (1792–1871).—Translator’s Note.

[71] 1⁄25 inch.—Translator’s Note.

[72] Cf. The Life of the Spider: chap. xvi.—Translator’s Note.

[73] Cf. The Life of the Spider: chap. xv.—Translator’s Note.

[74] Man is like the medlar: he is worth nothing

Unless he has ripened long in the granary, on the straw.

[75] Kermes in French, the word is pronounced Kurmees in English. The

dried bodies of the female insect were long supposed to be galls or

berries: they were even known to trade as “kermes berries,” and were

sometimes used in medicine. It is allied to the cochineal insect,

although the female of the latter is very obviously an insect, browsing

on the juice of certain cactuses. The kermes is found on several kinds

of oak, but principally on the kermes oak, a dwarf evergreen, Q.

Coccifera.—Translator’s Note.

[76] Approximately .04 in. or 1⁄25 in.