MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS: FURTHER OBSERVATIONS
The bamboo tripod, so alien in its arrangement to the Minotaur’s
habits, might well have been the cause, in part, of the father’s
premature decease. In the glass tube, only one cylindrical cake alone
was prepared. Evidently this was not enough. Two at least are needed to
maintain the species in the actual state; more would be needed, as many
as possible, for increased prosperity. But in my apparatus there is no
room, unless the food-cylinders are superimposed and piled in columns,
a mistake which the mother would never commit.
Superimposed stories would afterwards make the emergence of the
offspring difficult. In their eagerness to reach the light, the oldest,
grown sufficiently mature and occupying the foot of the column, would
topple over and lacerate the late arrivals, who are not yet ready to
occupy the top. For a quiet, exodus it is important that the shaft
should be free from one end to the other. The several cavities must
therefore be grouped side by side and communicate, each by a lateral
passage, with the common ascension-shaft.
Long ago, the Bison Ortis [42] showed us his preserves, the rations of
so many grubs, arranged near the bottom of the burrow. A short passage
connected each of the chambers with the vertical shaft. The cells were
all grouped on one landing. Probably the Minotaur adopts a similar
system.
Indeed, when I go digging in the fields, a little late in the season,
when the father is already dead, my trowel unearths a second chamber,
with an egg and provisions, at some distance from the main chamber,
which itself contains an egg and is duly victualled. Another excavation
gives me two eccentric cells. The arrangement is the same in each case,
in the blind alley of the burrow and in its annexes: at the base, in
the sand, is an egg; above it are the victuals, packed into a column.
It may be assumed that, if the difficulty of wielding the spade at the
bottom of a funnel had not exceeded my assistant’s patience and
flexibility, similar excavations, repeated throughout the proper
season, would have added to the number of cells served by the same
shaft. How many are there altogether? Four or five or six? I do not
know exactly. A moderate number, in any case. And this is bound to be
so. The hoarders of food for the family are not excessively fruitful.
They have no time to bequeath supplies to a numerous brood.
The rearing-apparatus in the bamboo tripod has a surprise in store for
me. I inspect it after the father’s departure and decease. There is
certainly a column of provisions similar to that which I dig up in the
fields; but these provisions are not accompanied by an egg, either at
the base or elsewhere. The table is served and the consumer is not
present. Can it be that the mother is reluctant to populate the
inconvenient abode which I force upon her? Apparently not, for she
would not first have kneaded the long loaf, if that loaf was to have
proved useless. When desisting from laying because of a defective home,
she would have abstained from baking a cake that would serve no
purpose.
Besides, the same fact recurs under normal conditions. In my dozen
excavations in the fields—that their number was no greater must be
attributed to the difficulty of the operation—the egg was lacking in
three instances. The larder was deserted. No laying had taken place;
and the provisions were there, manipulated in the usual fashion.
What I suspect is that the mother, not feeling in her ovaries germs
ripened to the requisite degree, none the less labours to provide a
store of food with her collaborator. She knows that the horned dandy,
the enthusiastic helper, will disappear ere long, worn out by toil and
time. She makes the most of his zeal and his energies before being
deprived of them. Thus food is prepared in the cellar to be used
afterwards by the mother, now a widow. To these provisions which are
all the better in that they have been improved by fermentation, the
mother will return, moving them and piling them up in a lateral cell,
but this time with an egg under the heap. Thus provided for and enabled
to carry on alone, the widow that is to be will do the rest. The father
may now die; the household will not suffer unduly.
The father’s premature end may well be caused by the melancholy due to
inaction. He is a hard worker easily upset by the boredom of
inactivity. In my apparatus, he pines away, after the first cake has
been made, because the workshop is brought to a compulsory standstill,
the rest of the glass having no accommodation for superimposed cells,
which later would hinder the emergence of the family. For lack of
space, the mother ceases to lay eggs; and the father, having nothing
more to do, departs to die outside. Idleness has killed him.
In the open, the space underground is indefinite; it allows such a
group of cells as is needed by the mother’s fruitfulness to be formed
at the bottom of the shaft; but another difficulty arises, and a most
serious one. When I myself am the purveyor, there is no fear of famine.
I enquire daily into the state of the stores and I renew as required
the available provisions scattered over the surface. My prisoners,
without being overloaded, are always in the midst of plenty. It is a
very different matter in the fields. The Sheep is not so lavish that
she always drops at one spot the number of pellets needed by the
Minotaur, two hundred and more, as my subsequent observations will
testify. An emission of three or four dozen may be regarded as a good
many. The ruminant moves on and continues its distribution elsewhere.
Now the pill-gatherer is not of a roaming disposition. I cannot picture
him going far in quest of the wherewithal to endow his offspring. How
could he find his way again, after a long expedition, and come back
home, pushing with his feet the pellets which he had picked up one by
one? That flight and scent combined may enable him to light upon
windfalls at a great distance for his own refection, I am quite ready
to admit: the sober eater needs but little food; and, besides, the
matter is not urgent. But, when nest-building is in question, the need
is felt of great numbers of pellets, very quickly obtained. The Beetle,
it is true, has taken care to establish himself near as copious a heap
as possible. At night, he goes the rounds outside his dwelling,
gathering the pellets almost on his threshold; he will even continue
his search at a distance of some feet, in familiar places, where he
cannot go astray. But there comes a time when nothing is left in the
neighbourhood; everything has been harvested.
The hoarder, who cannot bear distant expeditions, thereupon perishes of
inaction; he quits the home where henceforth there is no more work for
him. Having nothing left to do for want of materials, the roller, the
bruiser of pills dies out of doors, in the open air. This is my
explanation of the males found dead on the surface when May comes. They
are the disconsolate victims of their passion for work. They abandon
life the moment life becomes useless.
If my conjecture is well-founded, it must be possible for me to prolong
the existence of these pessimists by placing gradually at the workers’
disposal as many pellets as they can wish for. It occurs to me to load
the Minotaur with favours; I propose to create on his behalf a paradise
where droppings abound, where the sugar-plums will be renewed as and
when those already there are lowered into the cellar. Moreover, this
delightful land will have a sandy soil, kept moist to the requisite
degree; a depth equal to that of the usual burrows; and lastly ample
space to allow several cabins to be grouped at the bottom, one beside
the other.
My calculations result in the structure which I will now describe. With
strips of boarding a good finger’s-breadth thick, which will later
reduce evaporation, the carpenter builds me a square, hollow prism,
measuring some 56 inches in height. Three of its sides are permanently
fastened with nails; the fourth consists of three shutters of equal
size held in place by screws. This arrangement will enable me to
inspect at will the top, the bottom or the middle part of the apparatus
without shaking the contents. The inner side of the prism measures
nearly 4 inches each way. The lower end is closed; the upper end is
free and has a ledge on which rests a wide, projecting tray,
representing the surroundings of the natural burrow. The tray is
covered by a wire-gauze dome. The hollow column is filled with moist
sandy earth, suitably packed. The tray itself receives a layer of the
earth, a finger’s-breadth in depth.
There is one indispensable condition to be observed: the earthy
contents of the apparatus must not get dry. The thickness of the planks
prevents this partly; but it is not enough, especially during the heat
of summer. With this purpose in view, the bottom third of the long
prism stands in a large flower-pot, filled with earth, which I keep
damp by watering it in moderation. A slight absorption of the
surrounding moisture through the wood will prevent the contents from
becoming parched. The same contrivance ensures the steadiness of the
apparatus, which, firmly implanted in a heavy base, will withstand the
onslaughts of the wind, if need be, all the year round.
The middle third is wrapped in a thick coat of rags which the
watering-can moistens almost daily. Lastly, the top third is bare; but
the layer of earth on the tray, subjected by me to pretty frequent
artificial rains, transmits a little moisture to it. By means of these
various devices, I obtain a column of earth, neither swamped nor
parched, of the kind which the Minotaur requires for his nest building.
Had I lent an ear to my ambitious plans, I should have had a dozen of
these appliances constructed, so many questions were there to be
solved; but it is a troublesome business, far beyond the means of my
personal ingenuity; and impecuniosity, that terrible evil of which
Panurge complained, curbs my desire for apparatus. I allowed myself two
and no more.
When they were stocked, I kept them during the winter in a small
green-house, for fear of frost in a mass of earth of no great volume.
At the bottom of his natural gallery, the Minotaur need not dread the
severe cold: he is protected by a wall of unlimited thickness. In the
narrow quarters of my divisioning, he would have undergone the sorest
trials.
When the warm weather had come, I set up my two columns in the open
air, and a few steps from my door. Standing side by side, they form a
sort of pylon, of a strange order of architecture. Not a member of the
household passes them without a glance. My own visits are assiduous,
especially in the evening and the morning, when the night work begins
and when it is finished. What happy moments I have spent, on the
lookout near my pylon, watching and meditating!
Here are the facts: about the middle of December, I install in each of
my two appliances a female, selected from among those which best lend
themselves to my designs. At this time of the year, the sexes remain
apart. The males live in burrows of middling depth; the females go down
rather lower. Some of these strenuous workers have already, without the
aid of a helper, completed or very nearly completed the well required
for the laying. On the 10th of December, I unearth one of them at a
depth of almost four feet. These early diggers are not what I want.
Wishing to observe the work when in full swing, I choose subjects
buried not too low down in the fields.
In the centre of the column of earth in each apparatus, I make a
shallow hole, which marks the beginning of the burrow. I drop the
prisoner down it; and this is enough to accustom her to the place. A
recorded number of Sheep-droppings are distributed around the opening.
Henceforth things proceed of themselves: I have merely to renew the
provisions when the need arises.
The cold season is spent in the balmy atmosphere of a green-house; and
nothing remarkable happens. A small mound is formed, hardly big enough
to fill the hollow of my hand. The hour has not yet come for serious
operations.
In the middle of February, when the almond trees begin to blossom, the
weather is very mild. It is no longer winter, and it is not yet spring;
the sun is pleasant in the daytime and at night there is a certain
charm in the blaze of a few logs upon the hearth. On the rosemary
bushes in the garden, already displaying their wealth of liliaceous
flowers, the Bees are gathering booty, the red-bellied Osmiæ are
humming, while the big grey Locusts stand twirling their great wings
and proclaiming their joy of life. This delicious season of awakening
spring should be to the Minotaurs’ liking.
I marry my captives: I give each of them a mate, a magnificent horned
male, brought home from the fields. The household is set up during the
night; and without delay the couple get to work in earnest. The
co-operation has given fresh life to the workshop. Before this, the
males, leading solitary lives in short burrows, used commonly to doze,
not caring to gather pellets or to sink shafts of any depth; the
females for the most part displayed no greater industry; the burrows
remained superficial, the mounds comparatively flat, the harvest
unproductive. As soon as the household is established, they dig deeply,
and hoard plentifully. In twice twenty-four hours, the expulsion of
rubbish has hidden the home beneath a dome-shaped heap of earthly plugs
nine inches in width; moreover, a dozen droppings have been sent down
into the cellar.
This activity is maintained for three months or longer, broken by
intervals of repose of varying duration, which are apparently rendered
necessary by the operations of the miller and baker. The female never
appears outside the burrow; it is always the male who emerges and sets
out upon his quest, sometimes when twilight falls, more often at a
later hour of the night.
The crop varies greatly, though I take care to keep the part around the
burrow properly supplied. At one time, two or three pellets are enough;
at another, as many as twenty are collected in a single night. The
gleaner seems to be influenced by the atmospheric conditions. The
harvest is usually most active when the sky looks threatening, as
though preparing for a storm that fails to materialize, or when I
myself create rain by watering the tray of my apparatus. In dry
weather, on the contrary, whole weeks pass without the slightest
attempts at storing.
As June draws nigh, feeling his end at hand, the gallant fellow
redoubles his ardour; he wishes before he dies to leave his family
abundantly provided for. With a not always well-timed enthusiasm, the
prodigal heaps pellet upon pellet, to the pitch of encumbering the
burrow and making the mother’s business difficult to carry on.
Excessive wealth is an incubus. The thoughtless Beetle recognizes the
fact at last and ejects the superfluous food from the shaft.
On the first day of June, in one of my appliances, the sum of pellets
sent down amounts to 239, a number that speaks well for the
trident-bearer’s industry. My record of the droppings, kept as strictly
as a banker’s account, confirms the enormous result. I am overjoyed by
the treasure of the Minotaurs’; but, a few days later, an unexpected
issue alarms me. One morning I find the mother dead. She has come up to
breathe her last on the surface. It appears to be the rule that neither
of the pair shall die in the children’s home. It is at a distance, in
the open air, that the father and mother meet their end.
This reversal of the normal order of decease, the mother dying before
the father, calls for enquiry. I inspect the inside of the apparatus by
unscrewing the three movable shutters. My precautions against dryness
have been fully successful. The uppermost third of the column of sand
has retained a certain moisture which gives firmness and prevents any
landslips. The middle third, with its sheath of wet rags, is even more
moist. Here the victuals are heaped up in a well-stored granary; the
male is there, brisk and energetic. In the lowest third, which stands
in the wet earth of a large flower-pot, the plasticity is as great as
that which my spade encounters in the deep natural burrow. Everything
seems to be in order; and yet there is not a trace of nest-building at
the bottom of the shaft; there are no sausages prepared or even
preparing. All the pellets are untouched.
It is quite obvious: the mother has refused to lay and consequently the
father has refrained from grinding. Directly the kneading of loaves is
discontinued, meal becomes useless. The harvest is none the less
plentiful, in view of future events. The 239 pellets to which my notes
bear witness are there, in their original condition and divided into
several heaps. The shaft is not straight; it has spiral slopes, it has
landings communicating with little warehouses. Here are kept in
reserve, at every level of the shaft, treasures which the mother will
be able to employ even after the hoarder’s decease. Pending the arrival
of the eggs and the preparation of the loaves on the offsprings’
behalf, the zealous father keeps on collecting, storing a little of the
food at the bottom of his dwelling and a great deal more in lateral
chambers, distributed over several floors.
But the eggs are wanting. What can the reason be? I begin by perceiving
that the shaft runs down to the bottom of the apparatus, which is 55
inches high. It stops suddenly at the board which closes the bottom of
the prism. This insuperable obstacle shows signs of attempted erosion.
The mother, therefore, dug as long as digging was possible; then,
coming to a barrier against which all her efforts failed, she climbed
back to the surface, worn out and disheartened, having nothing left to
do but die, for lack of an establishment to suit her.
Could she not lodge her eggs at the bottom of the prism, where a degree
of moisture is maintained equal to that of the natural burrows? Perhaps
not. In my part of the world, we had a very peculiar spring in this
year 1906. It snowed hard on the 22nd and 23rd of March. Never in this
district had I seen so heavy and especially so late a fall of snow. It
was followed by an endless drought, which turned the country into a
dust-heap.
In the apparatus, in which my watchful care maintained the requisite
moisture, the mother Minotaur seemed protected against this calamity.
There is nothing to tell us, however, that she was not fully cognizant,
through the thickness of the planks, of what was happening, or rather
about to happen, outside. Gifted with an exquisite sense of atmosphere,
she had a presentiment of the terrible drought, fatal to grubs lodged
too near the surface. Being unable to reach the deep places recommended
by instinct, she died without laying her eggs. I see no other reason
than this distrustful meteorology capable of accounting for the facts.
The second apparatus, two days after the installation of the couple,
provides me with a grievous surprise. The mother, for no apparent
cause, leaves the house, goes to earth in the sand on the tray and does
not budge, heedless of the cell where her horned mate awaits her. Seven
times over, at one day’s interval, do I carry her home, dropping her
head foremost down the shaft. It is of no avail: she climbs back
persistently during the night, makes off and goes to earth as far away
as possible. If the trellis work of the cover did not restrain her
flight, she would run away for good, seeking another husband elsewhere.
Can the first be dead? Not at all. I find him hale and hearty as ever
in the upper level of the pit.
Can these stubborn attempts at escape on the part of the mother, so
stay-at-home by nature, be caused by incompatibility of temper? Why
not? The female worker goes away because the male worker does not
please her. It was I myself who made the match, which was subject to
the hazard of my discoveries; and the suitor has not found favour. If
things had happened according to rule, the bride would have made a
choice, accepting this one and refusing that, guided by merits of which
she alone could judge. When a couple plan a long life together, they do
not lightly enter into indissoluble bonds. This at least is the opinion
of the Minotaur family.
That others, the vast majority, should become friends, fall out and
make it up again, in sudden and fortuitous encounters, is a matter of
no consequence. Life is short; they enjoy it as best they may, without
being too particular. But here we have the true household, enduring and
laborious. How is it possible to toil in double harness for the welfare
of the offspring without mutual sympathy? We have already seen the
Minotaur couple recognizing each other and coming together again amid
the confusion resulting from the upheaval of two adjoining burrows;
here we find it subject to quite as sensitive a repugnance. The
ill-mated bride sulks; she means to get away at all costs.
As the divorce seems destined to be indefinitely prolonged, despite the
calls to order which I repeat day after day for a week by restoring the
female to her burrow, I end by changing the male. I replace him by
another, no better—and no worse-looking than was the first. Henceforth
matters resume their normal course and all is as well as can be. The
shaft is deepened, the outside mound is raised, the provisions are
stored away, the factory of preserved foodstuffs is in full swing.
On the 2nd of June, the total number of pellets carried down amounts to
225. It is a splendid hoard. Shortly after, the father dies of old age.
I find him near the mouth of the burrow, convulsively clutching his
last pellet which he had not had time to carry down. The malady of age
has surprised him in the midst of his labours, has struck him down on
the harvest-field.
The widow continues her domestic work. To the riches amassed by the
deceased, she adds, by her own activity, in the course of the month,
thirty more pellets, making in all, since the foundation of the
household, 255. Then comes the great heat, which favours idleness and
slumber. The mother does not show herself any longer.
What does she do down below, in her cool cellar? Like the Copris mother
apparently, she looks after her brood, going from cell to cell,
sounding the cakes, investigating what is happening inside. It would be
an act of barbarism to disturb her. We will wait till she comes out,
accompanied by her offspring.
Let us profit by this long interval of rest to set forth the little
that I have gathered from my attempts at rearing the Minotaur in a
glass tube on the regulation diet. The egg takes about four weeks to
hatch. The first that I find, dating from the 17th of April, gives
birth to a grub on the 15th of May. This slow process of hatching can
be due only to an insufficiency of heat in the early spring:
underground, at a depth of five feet, the temperature hardly varies.
For that matter, we shall see the larva likewise taking its time and
going through the whole summer before changing into the adult insect.
It is so snug inside a sausage, in a cellar free from atmospheric
variations, far from the hurly-burly of the outer world, where
rejoicings are not unattended by danger; it is so sweet to do nothing,
to indulge in digestive slumbers! Why hurry? The bustle of active life
will come but too soon. The Minotaurs seem to hold that opinion: they
prolong as far as may be the bliss of infancy.
The grub which has just been born in the sand pegs away with its legs
and mandibles, strains and heaves with its rump, makes itself a passage
and, from one day to the next, reaches the provisions piled up above
it. In the glass tube in which I rear it I see it climbing, slipping
into crevices, making a selection from the food about it and
capriciously tasting on this side and on that. It coils and uncoils, it
wriggles about, it sways to and fro. It is happy. So am I, to see it
satisfied and glistening with health. I shall be able to watch its
progress to the end.
In a couple of months’ time, now ascending, now descending through its
column of food and stopping at the best places, it is a handsome larva,
well-shaped, neither fat nor spare, not unlike the Cetonia-grub in
appearance. Its hind-legs have none of the shocking irregularity that
used to surprise me so greatly when I was studying the family of the
Geotrupes.
The grub of the last-named has hind-legs weaker than the rest, twisted,
unfit for walking and turned over on its back. It is born a cripple.
The grub of the Minotaur, despite the close analogy between the two
dung-workers, is exempt from this infirmity. Its third pair of legs is
no less accurate in shape and arrangement than the two other pairs. Why
is the Geotrupes knock-kneed at birth and his close kinsman perfect?
This is one of those little secrets of which it is only fitting that we
should know how to admit our ignorance.
The larval stage ends in the last days of August. Under the grub’s
digestive efforts, the food-column, while retaining its form and its
dimensions, has been converted into a paste whose origin it would be
impossible to recognize. There is not a crumb left in which the
microscope can detect a fibre. The Sheep had already divided the
vegetable matter very finely; the grub, an incomparable triturator, has
taken the aforesaid matter and subdivided it yet further, grinding it
after a fashion. In this way it extracts and uses the nutritive
particles of which the Sheep’s fourfold stomach is unable to take
advantage.
To dig itself a cell in this unctuous mass ought, according to our
logic, to suit the grub, desirous of a yielding mattress for the nymph
to lie on. We are mistaken in our suppositions. The grub retreats to
the lower end of its column, retires into the sand where the hatching
took place and there makes itself a hard, rough cavity. This
aberration, which takes no account of the future nymph, and its
delicate skin, would be likely to surprise us if the homely dwelling
were not subjected to improvement.
The hermit’s wallet has retained a part of the digestive residues,
residues destined to disappear completely, for at the moment of the
nymphosis the body must be free of any impurity. With this cement,
which has undergone a prolonged refining in the intestine, the grub
plasters its sandy wall. Using its round rump as a trowel, it smooths,
polishes and repolishes the layer of stucco, until the rude cell of the
start becomes a velvet-lined chamber.
All is ready for the stripping that releases the nymph. This nymph has
peculiarities deserving special mention. The male’s trident, in
particular, is already, both in shape and size, what it will be in the
adult Beetle. At last, when October is at hand, I obtain the perfect
insect. The total period of development, beginning with the egg, has
lasted five months.
Let us return to the Minotaur mother who is provided with 255 pellets,
225 of which were amassed by the male, before he went out to die, and
30 by the widow herself. When the great heat comes, she no longer shows
herself at all, detained at the bottom of the shaft by her domestic
duties. In spite of my impatience to know what is going on indoors, I
wait, keeping ever on the watch. At last October brings the first
rains, so greatly wished for by the husbandman and the Dung-beetle
alike. Recent mounds become numerous in the fields. This is the season
of autumnal rejoicings, when the soil, which has been like a cinder all
the summer, recovers its moisture and is covered with green grass to
which the shepherd leads his flock; it is the festival of the Minotaur,
the exodus of the youngsters who, for the first time, enter into the
joys of the daylight, among the sugar-plums dropped by the Sheep in the
pastures.
However, nothing appears under the cover of my apparatus. It is no use
waiting any longer, the season is too far advanced. I take the pylon to
pieces. The mother is dead; she is even in tatters, a sign of an end
already remote. I find her at the top of the vertical shaft, not far
from the orifice.
This position seems to show that, when her work was done, the mother
climbed up to die out of doors as the father had done before her. A
sudden and final break-down overcame her on the way, almost at her
door. I expected something better; I pictured her coming out
accompanied by her offspring: the plucky creature deserved to see her
family revelling in the last fine days of the year.
I do not abandon this idea of mine. If the mother did not come out with
the youngsters, there must have been—and in fact there were, as we
shall see—important reasons for it. Right at the bottom of the column
of sand, in the part which is coolest thanks to the large, frequently
watered flower-pot, are eight sausages, eight portions of preserved
food admirably worked into a fine paste. These are grouped in different
stories, close together and each communicating with the main corridor
by a short passage. Since each of these sausages was a ration, the
brood amounts to eight. This restricted family was anticipated. When
rearing becomes a costly matter, the mothers wisely limit their
fecundity.
But here is an unexpected state of affairs: the food-cylinders contain
no adult, not even a nymph; they have nothing but grubs in them, though
these are glossy with health and almost fat enough to clamour for
nymphosis. This check in their development arouses surprise, at a time
when the new generation is full-grown, leaves the native homestead and
is beginning to dig the winter burrows. The Minotaur mother’s surprise
must have exceeded my own. Weary of waiting for her offspring, she
decided to set out by herself before her strength was completely
exhausted, lest she should block the ascending shaft. A spasm, due to
the inexorable toxin of old age, struck her down almost on the
threshold of the dwelling.
The reason for this abnormal prolongation of the larval state escapes
me. Perhaps it should be attributed to some hygienic flaw in my
rearing-apparatus. It is obvious that all my care was unable to realize
fully the conditions of well-being which the grubs would have found in
the dampness of a deep, unlimited soil. Within a narrow prism of sand,
too much exposed to the variations of temperature and humidity, feeding
did not take place with the customary appetite and growth was slower in
consequence. After all, these belated larvæ appear to be in first-rate
fettle. I expect to see them undergo their transformation at the end of
the winter. Like the young shoots whose development is interrupted by
the inclemency of the season, they await the stimulus of spring.