SOME ANOMALIES
The anomalous is that which forms an exception to the rule, which again
is based upon an aggregate of concordant facts. An insect has six legs,
each ending in a finger. That is the rule. Why six legs and not some
other number? Why one finger and not several? Such questions are so
obviously inane that they do not even occur to our minds. The rule
exists because it does exist; we note it and that is all. We remain in
blissful ignorance of the reason for its existence.
Anomalies, on the other hand, make us uncomfortable and upset all our
ideas. Why should there be exceptions, irregularities, contradictions
of the letter of the law? Does the sign-manual of disorder leave its
imprint here and there? Is the shriek of crazy discord heard amid the
general harmony? This is a weighty question; and we should do well to
look into it a little, though we have little hope of ever solving the
problem.
Let us, to begin with, mention a few of these infractions of the rule.
Among the strangest that my chance discoveries have submitted to my
scrutiny is that of the larva of the Geotrupes. When I made its
acquaintance for the first time, the crippled grub had attained very
nearly its full growth. One might reasonably ask one’s self whether
certain hardships endured during its lifetime had not gradually brought
about the weakness of the hind-legs and their abnormal position;
whether, at all events, the curious deformity might not be explained by
the grub’s cramped situation in a narrow corridor in the heart of its
food-supply.
Today I am better-informed. The Geotrupes’ larva does not gradually
become lame through straining itself; it is born crippled, there is no
doubt of that. I observe its hatching. I watch the new-born grub
through my magnifying-glass as it leaves the egg. The hind-legs which
the adult Beetle uses as powerful squeezers for pressing the material
which he has gathered and making it into sausages are for the moment
reduced to the sorriest of appendages, mere useless counterfeits. They
lie withered against the larva’s back. Bent into a hook, their
extremities avoid the ground and turn in towards the insect’s back,
without furnishing the least support for standing. They are not legs
but uncertain attempts, awkward experiments.
The fore-legs, though well-shaped, are of insignificant dimensions. The
tiny creature keeps them tucked away under the front of its body, where
they serve to hold in position the morsel at which it is nibbling. The
middle pair, on the contrary, are long and powerful and well in
evidence. Standing up like two stout crutches, they lend stability to
the fat, curved paunch, which has a tendency to capsize. When seen from
behind, the grub gives the impression of being the most whimsical
creature on earth. It is just a pot-belly mounted on a pair of stilts.
What is the object of this curious organization? One can understand the
grotesque hump worn by the grub of the Onthophagus, the sugar-loaf
knapsack whose weight is constantly overturning the little creature
when it tries to change its position. This hump is a storehouse of
cement for the construction of the cabin in which the transformation is
to take place. But we cannot understand the two withered, misshapen
legs of the Geotrupes’ grub, which, one would think, would have been
very useful if they had grown into serviceable grappling-irons. The
grub shifts its position; it climbs up and down inside its tall column
of victuals; it moves about in quest of morsels to suit it. Those two
neglected supports would make the climbing easier if they were in good
condition.
On the other hand, the grub of the Sacred Beetle, confined in a narrow
recess, has hardly any need of locomotion. A simple movement of the
hinder-part brings within the reach of its mandibles a fresh layer of
the victuals to be consumed. No matter: it is blessed with six sound,
well-turned legs. The cripple moves to and fro, the lusty athlete is
stationary; the limping grub takes its walks abroad, the nimble one
sits still. There is no satisfactory way of explaining this paradox.
In the adult form, the Sacred Beetle and his kinsfolk, the Half-spotted
Scarab, [79] the broad-necked Scarab [80] and the Pock-marked Scarab
[81]—the only three that I know—are likewise atrophied: all of them
lack the tarsi of the fore-legs. These four witnesses prove to us that
this singular mutilation is common to the whole group.
An absurd system of nomenclature has seen fit, in its blindness, to
substitute for the ancient and venerable term of Scarabæus that of
Ateuchus, meaning weaponless. The inventor of the name was none too
well-inspired: there are plenty of other Dung-beetles that have no
horny armour, such as the Gymnopleuri, [82] who are so closely allied
to the Scarabæi. Since his intention was to designate the genus by
calling attention to a characteristic peculiarity, he should have
coined a word meaning, “deprived of tarsi on the fore-legs.” Only the
Sacred Beetle and his kinsfolk, in the whole of the insect-world, could
rightly bear that name. This never occurred to the nomenclator; this
important detail was apparently unknown to him. He saw the grain of
sand and did not notice the mountain: a defect not uncommon among the
forgers of names.
For what reasons are the Scarabs’ fore-legs bereft of that one finger,
the five-jointed tarsus, which in itself represents the insect’s hand?
Why a stump, a docked limb, instead of a fingered extremity, as is the
rule every otherwise? One reply suggests itself which at first seems
rather plausible. Those zealous pill-rollers push their load backwards,
with their head down and their hinder-part in the air; they support
themselves on the tips of their fore-legs. The whole effort of the
transportation is brought to bear on the extremities of these two
levers, which are in constant contact with the rough ground.
A delicate finger, liable to be sprained under such conditions, would
be a hindrance, wherefore the pill-maker decided to do without it. How
and when was the mutilation effected? Does it occur nowadays, as a
workshop accident, during the actual work? No, for you never see a
Scarab furnished with tarsi to his fore-legs, however new he may be at
his trade; no, for the nymph, lying perfectly at rest in its shell, has
fingerless fore-arms like the adult.
The mutilation dates farther back. Suppose we admit that, in the dim
and distant ages, a Scarab, owing to some mishap, lost those two
inconvenient and almost superfluous fingers. Finding himself all the
better for it, he transmitted the fortunate defect to his race by way
of an ancestral legacy. Since then, the Scarabs form an exception to
the rule that fore-legs have digits like the rest.
This would be an attractive explanation, but there are serious
difficulties in the way. We ask ourselves by what curious freak the
organism can have elaborated in days long past portions destined to
disappear afterwards as too cumbrous. Can the plan of the animal frame
be devoid of logic, of foresight? Does it design the structure blindly,
at the hazard of conflicting circumstances?
Away with such foolishness! No, the Scarab did not at one time have the
tarsi which he lacks to-day; no, he did not lose them as the result of
being harnessed upside down when rolling his pill. He is now what he
always was. Who says so? Unimpeachable witnesses: the Gymnopleurus and
the Sisyphus, [83] themselves enthusiastic pill-rollers. Like the
Scarab, they push them backwards, head down; like the Scarab, they
support themselves, during their arduous task, on the tips of their
fore-legs; and those legs, notwithstanding their contact with the rough
ground, are as perfectly fingered as the others: they possess the
delicate tarsi which the Scarab is denied. Then why should the latter
prove an exception to what in the others is the rule? How gladly would
I welcome a word from the discerning person who could answer my humble
question!
My satisfaction would be equally great if I knew why the Iris-weevil’s
[84] tarsus has a single nail, whereas the other insects have two, set
side by side and bent into a hook. Why was one of these two little
claws suppressed? Would it not have been useful to the insect? One
would think so. The little Weevil thus mutilated is a climber; she
clambers up the smooth stems of the iris; she explores the flowers,
visiting the lower surface of the petals as well as the upper; she
walks upside down on the slippery pods. An extra hook would do much to
ensure her steadiness; yet the thoughtless Weevil deprives herself of
it, though by law she has a right to the double claw invariably wielded
by the others, even in her own long-nosed clan. What then is the secret
of the little Iris-weevil’s missing finger-nail?
A tiny claw the less, though a serious business where matters of
principle are concerned, is after all a detail of no great material
value; one needs a lens to perceive the irregularity. But here is
something that the eye can see without the aid of the magnifying-glass.
A Locust from the green slopes of the Alps, Pezzotettyx pedestris, [85]
who dwells on the higher ridges of Mont Ventoux, [86] renounces her
right to wings of any kind; she reaches the adult stage while
preserving the larval formation. The approach of the wedding-day makes
her a little handsomer, adds a touch of coral-red to her sturdy thighs
and of sky-blue to her shanks; but there all progress stops. She
becomes ripe for marriage and maternity without acquiring the power of
flying which the other Acridians possess in addition to that of
leaping.
Among the hoppers, all endowed with wings and wing-cases, she remains a
clumsy pedestrian, as her Latin affix, pedestris, informs us.
Nevertheless, the cripple bears on her shoulders a pair of skimpy
sheaths which contain the organs of flight, incapable of unfolding. By
what curious evolutionary whim is the pretty Locust with the azure legs
deprived of the wings and wing-cases of which she carries the germs in
two miserable little bundles? She is promised the gift of flight and
does not receive it. For no appreciable reason, the wheels of the
animal mechanism are arrested.
Stranger still is the case of the Psyches, whose females, unable to
become the Moths promised in their early stages, remain caterpillars,
or rather change into wallets stuffed with eggs. Wings with gorgeous
scales, the supreme prerogative of Moth and Butterfly, are denied them.
The males alone achieve the promised shape; they turn into plumed
dandies, clad in black velvet, and are excellent flyers. Why does
one—and that one the more important—of the sexes remain a wretched
little sausage, while the other is made glorious by the metamorphosis?
And now what are we to say of the next, Necydalis major, a denizen of
the poplar and the willow in his larval state? He is a Longicorn,
fairly imposing in size as compared with Cerambyx cerdo, the little
Capricorn of the hawthorn. When one is a Beetle—and that he assuredly
is—one dons wing-cases which form a sheath, enclosing the body and
protecting the delicate wings and the soft and vulnerable abdomen. The
Necydalis laughs at rules. He wears on his shoulders, by way of
wing-cases, two short pieces which make him an inadequate jacket. It
really looks as though there were not sufficient stuff to lengthen out
the coat and give it a pair of tails capable of covering that which
ought to be covered.
Beyond it stretch, entirely unprotected, two large wings reaching to
the tip of the abdomen. At first sight, you would think that you had
before your eyes some sort of huge, fantastic Wasp. Why, in an actual
Beetle, this niggardly provision of wing-cases? Can the material have
run short? Was the cost of prolonging the protective sheath begun at
the shoulders too great? We stand amazed at such meanness.
What again shall we say of this other Beetle, Myodites subdipterus? Her
grub establishes itself, I know not how, in the cells of Halictus zebra
[87] and battens on the nymph that owns the premises. The adult
frequents in summer the prickly heads of the field eringo. To look at
her, you would take her for a Dipteron, for a Fly, because of her two
big wings uncovered by wing-cases. Examine her more closely and you
will see that she carries on her shoulders two small scales, all that
remains of the suppressed wing-cases. She is yet another who has not
known how or rather has not been able to complete the parts of which
she carries these absurd rudiments.
An entire group, one of the most numerous among the Beetles, that of
the Staphylini, or Rove-beetles, cuts down its wing-cases to a third or
a quarter of the normal dimensions. With excessive economy, the insect
with the long, wriggling belly makes itself unsightly and goes too
scantily clad.
I might continue for a long time to enumerate the deformed, the
irregular, the exceptional; the “whys” would follow close upon one
another and no reply would be forthcoming. Animals are uncommunicative;
plants, when cunningly entreated, lend themselves better to enquiry.
Let us consult them on this problem of anomalies; perhaps they will
tell us something.
The rose-tree sets us this puzzle:
“We are five brothers; two of us have beards, two have none and the
fifth has half a beard.”
The case has even been stated in a Latin couplet:
Quinque sumus fratres: units barbatus et alter;
Imberbesque duo; sum semiberbis ego.
Who are the five brothers? None other than the five lobes of the rose’s
calyx, the five sepals. Let us examine them one by one. We shall find
two of them furnished on both edges with leafy or beard-like
appendages, which sometimes revert to the original form and expand into
follicles similar to those of the leaves proper. Botany in fact teacher
us that a sepal is a modified leaf. These are the two brothers with
beards.
We shall see two others totally devoid of appendages on either side.
These are the two brothers without beards. Lastly, the fifth will show
us one bare and one bearded surface. This one represents the brother
with half a beard.
These are not casual variations, differing from flower to flower; all
the roses present the same arrangement, all have their sepals divided
into three classes in the matter of beards. It is a fixed rule,
resulting from a law which governs floral architecture, even as the art
of a Vitruvius [88] governs our buildings. This law, so elegant in its
simplicity, is thus stated in botany: in the quinary order, the most
important order of the vegetable world, the flower groups the five
portions of a whorl at intervals upon a close spiral, almost equivalent
to the circumference of a circle; and this arrangement is so contrived
that two turns of the spiral contain the series of five parts.
Having said this, it is easy to construct the plan of the rose, in so
far as concerns the calyx. Divide a circumference into five equal
parts. At the first dividing-point, place a sepal. Where shall we put
the second? It must not be at the second dividing-point, for then the
set of five pieces would fill the circumference in a single revolution,
instead of in two. We shall place it at the third point and continue in
like fashion, each time missing one division. This mode of progress is
the only one that brings us back to the starting-point after two turns
of the spiral.
Let us now give the sepals a base wide enough to provide a tightly
closed containing wall. We shall see that the parts on sections 1 and 3
are completely outside the spiral; that the parts on sections 2 and 4
have their two edges fitting under the adjoining sepals; and that,
lastly, the part on section 5 has one edge covered and one free. On the
other hand, it is manifest that, hampered in their expansion by the
petal placed over them, the edges caught under the others cannot send
forth their delicate appendages. Hence we have the two bearded sepals
at points 1 and 3, the two beardless sepals at points 2 and 4 and the
half-bearded sepal at point 5.
This explains the riddle of the rose. The disparity of the five pieces
of the calyx, apparently an irrational structure, a capricious anomaly,
is really the corollary of a mathematical law, the natural consequence
of an immanent algebraical relation. Disorder is eloquent of order;
irregularity bears evidence of a ruling principle.
Let us continue our excursion into the realm of the plants. The quinary
order allots to the flower five petals arranged in a whorl of perfect
accuracy. Well, a good many corollas depart from the normal grouping,
as instance the labiate and the personate corollas. In the former, five
lobes compose the limb expanding at the end of a tubular portion and
represent the five regulation petals. They are arranged in two
wide-open lips, one pointing upwards and one downwards. The upper lip
has two lobes, the lower three.
The personate corolla likewise is divided into two lips, the upper
having two lobes, the lower three; only, the latter is expanded into an
arch that closes the entrance to the flower. A pressure of the fingers
on the sides opens the two lips, which close again as soon as the
pressure ceases. Hence a certain resemblance to the jaws—the mufle or
gueule—of an animal, a resemblance which has earned for the plant in
which this formation is most clearly seen, the name of Snapdragon,
muflier or gueule-de-loup. A certain analogy has also been drawn
between the appearance of the two thick lips of the snapdragon and the
exaggerated features of the masks, or personæ, with which the actors in
the ancient theatres used to cover their faces to represent the
characters whom they were playing. Hence the expression “personate
corolla.”
The anomaly of the two-lipped corolla entails modifications in the
stamens, which have to adapt themselves to the exigencies of the space
enclosed, which is narrower at one point and roomier at another. Of the
five stamens, one is suppressed, while often leaving a vestige at its
base, as a certificate that it was once there. The four others are
grouped into two pairs of unequal length, with a tendency to the
suppression of the lesser pair.
The sage achieves this suppression. It has only two stamens, those of
the longer pair. Moreover, on each of the staminal filaments it
preserves only half an anther. According to the rule in the vast
majority of cases, an anther consists of two compartments, placed back
to back and separated by a slender partition, known as the connective.
The sage exaggerates the size of this connective and makes of it the
beam of a balance placed crosswise on the filament. At the end of one
arm of this beam is the half of an anther, that is to say, a
pollen-sac; at the other end is nothing. The whole of the staminal
verticil, all save that which is strictly necessary, is sacrificed to
the beautiful strangeness of the corolla.
Now why do the Labiatæ, the Personatæ and other vegetable orders
present these anomalies which completely disarrange the regular
structure of the flower? Let us in this connection venture upon an
architectural comparison. The first men who ventured to balance heavy
hewn stones over empty space, thereby deserving the proud title of
pontifex, or bridge-builder, took as the pattern of their fabric the
semicircular arch, which rests the thrust of the load on uniform
voussoirs. The result is strong and majestic, but also monotonous and
lacking in elegance.
Next came the pointed arch, which opposes two arcs described from
different centres. With the new type, soaring curves, slender ribs and
magnificent superstructures are possible. Variety, inexhaustible in its
graceful combinations, replaces monotony.
Well, the regular corolla is, so to speak, the semicircular arch of the
flower. Whether campanulate, rotate, urceolate, stellate, or of any
other shape, it is always a grouping of similar parts around a
circumference. The irregular corolla is the ogive, with its wonderful
audacities; it lends to the poetry of the flower the admired disorder
of all true poetry. The thick-lipped mask of the snapdragon, the gaping
jaws of the sage are every whit as effective as the rosette of the
hawthorn or the sloe. They are so many chromatic notes added to the
gamut, so many charming variations upon one glorious theme, so many
discords that enhance the value of the harmonies. The floral symphony
gains if interrupted by occasional solos.
The Pedestrian Locust, hopping among the saxifrage amid the lofty
summits of the hills, explains his incapacity to fly by reasons of a
like order; so does the Staphylinus his skimpy jacket, the Necydalis
his short coat, the Myodites her Fly-like aspect. Each after his
fashion varies the monotony of the general theme; each strikes a
special note in the universal concert. It is not so easy to see why the
Scarab abandons his fore-tarsi, why the Iris-beetle has only one claw
to her fingers, why the Geotrupes-grub is born mutilated. To what are
these minute aberrations due? Before answering, let us once again take
counsel with the plant.
One of the inmates of our hothouses is the Alstrœmeria pelegrina, or
Inca lily, a native of Peru. This curious plant sets us a puzzling
problem. At the first glance, its leaves, shaped more or less like
those of the willow, offer nothing that deserves attentive examination;
but look at them more closely. The leaf-stalk, flattened into a ribbon
of some length, is tightly twisted upon itself; and the twist is
repeated on every one of the leaves. From one end of the plant to the
other we find this clearly-marked torsion.
Delicately, with the tips of our fingers, let us re-establish the
natural order of affairs and spread out flat the ribbon of the twisted
leaf-stalk. A surprise awaits us. The untwisted ribbon, replaced in its
normal position, is upside down; it shows on the top what ought to be
underneath, that is to say, the pale surface, rich in stomata and
deeply veined; it shows underneath what ought to be on top, that is to
say, the green, smooth surface, as is the rule with all other plants.
In short, the Inca lily, when we forcibly restore the natural
arrangement by undoing its torsions, has its leaves upside down. What
was made for the shadow faces the light, what was made for the light
faces the shadow. In this contrary arrangement, the functions of the
leaves become impossible; and so the plant, to correct this defective
order, twists the necks of all its leaves by the spiral deformation of
the leaf-stalks.
The rays of the sun provoke this reversal. If we intervene with our
artificial devices, they may undo what they did at first. With the aid
of a light prop and a few ligatures, I bend a shoot of the lily and fix
it head downwards. As a result of exposure to the sun, the leaf-stalks
in a few days’ time untwist themselves and become flat ribbons, which
turn their smooth, green sides towards the light and their pale, veined
surface towards the shade. The torsion has disappeared, the normal
direction of the leaves is restored, but the plant is upside down.
In the case of the Inca lily, with its leaves set the wrong way round
on the stem, are we confronted with a blunder which the plant, aided by
the sun, does its best to correct by twisting its leaf-stalks? Are
there such things as organic frivolity, mistakes, the signature of
disorder? Is it not rather our ignorance of cause and effect which
regards as erroneous what is actually correct? If our knowledge were
greater, how many discordant notes would become harmonious! And so the
wisest course is to doubt.
Of all the signs which we employ in writing, the one most nearly
resembling the idea which it expresses is the note of interrogation. At
the bottom, a round speck: the ball of the world. Above it, twisted
into a great crozier, is the lituus of antiquity, the augur’s wand
interrogating the unknown. I like to regard this sign as the emblem of
science in perpetual colloquy with the how and why of things.
Now, high as it may rise to obtain a better view, this questioning
staff is surrounded by a narrow and obscure horizon, which future
investigations will replace by other horizons more remote and no less
obscure. Beyond all these horizons, laboriously torn asunder, one by
one, by the progress of knowledge, beyond all this obscurity, what is
there? Assuredly, the broad light of day, the wherefore of the why, the
reason of reasons, in short the great x of the world’s equation. So
says our questioning instinct, ever dissatisfied, never weary; and
instinct, which is infallible in the animal domain, should be no less
so in the domain of the mind.
So far as lies in my power, I have sought to discern the essential
motives of the insect’s anomalies. By no means always has the answer
brought a firm conviction. And so, to end this chapter, in which so
many glimpses remain shrouded in doubt, I set here, plain to see, in
the middle of the page, the augur’s lituus, the note of interrogation:
?