THE PSYCHES: THE LAYING
In the springtime, old walls and dusty roads harbour a surprise for
whoso has eyes to see. Tiny faggots, for no apparent reason, set
themselves in motion and make their way along by sudden jerks. The
inanimate comes to life, the immovable stirs. How does this come about?
Look closer and the motive power will stand revealed.
Enclosed within the moving bundle is a fairly well-developed
caterpillar, prettily striped in black and white. Seeking for food or
perhaps for a spot where the transformation can be effected, he hurries
along timidly, attired in a queer rig-out of twigs from which nothing
emerges except the head and the front part of the body, which is
furnished with six short legs. At the least alarm he goes right in and
does not budge again. This is the whole secret of the little roaming
bundle of sticks.
The faggot caterpillar belongs to the Psyche group, whose name conveys
an allusion to the classic Psyche, symbolical of the soul. We must not
allow this phrase to carry our thoughts to loftier heights than is
fitting. The nomenclator, with his rather circumscribed view of the
world, did not trouble about the soul when inventing his descriptive
label. He simply wanted a pretty name; and certainly he could have hit
on nothing better.
To protect himself from the weather, our chilly, bare-skinned Psyche
builds himself a portable shelter, a travelling cottage which the owner
never leaves until he becomes a Moth. It is something better than a hut
on wheels with a thatched roof to it: it is a hermit’s frock, made of
an unusual sort of frieze. In the valley of the Danube the peasant
wears a goatskin cloak fastened with a belt of rushes. The Psyche dons
an even more rustic apparel. He makes himself a suit of clothes out of
hop-poles. It is true that, beneath this rude conglomeration, which
would be a regular hair-shirt to a skin as delicate as his, he puts a
thick lining of silk. The Clythra Beetle garbs himself in pottery; this
one dresses himself in a faggot.
In April, on the walls of my chief observatory, that famous pebbly acre
with its wealth of insect life, I find the Psyche who is to furnish me
with my most circumstantial and detailed records. [25] He is at this
period in the torpor of the approaching metamorphosis. As we can ask
him nothing else for the moment, let us look into the construction and
composition of his faggot.
It is a not irregular structure, spindle-shaped and about an inch and a
half long. The pieces that compose it are fixed in front and free at
the back, are arranged anyhow and would form a rather ineffective
shelter against the sun and rain if the recluse had no other protection
than his thatched roof.
The word thatch is suggested to my mind by a summary inspection of what
I see, but it is not an exact expression in this case. On the contrary,
graminaceous straws are rare, to the great advantage of the future
family, which, as we shall learn presently, would find nothing to suit
them in jointed planks. What predominates is remnants of very small
stalks, light, soft and rich in pith, such as are possessed by various
Chicoriaceæ. I recognize in particular the floral stems of the
mouse-ear hawkweed and the Nimes pterotheca. Next come bits of
grass-leaves, scaly twigs provided by the cypress-tree and all sorts of
little sticks, coarse materials adopted for the lack of anything
better. Lastly, if the favourite cylindrical pieces fall short, the
mantle is sometimes finished off with an ample flounced tippet, that is
to say, with fragments of dry leaves of any kind.
Incomplete as it is, this list shows us that the caterpillar apart from
his preference for pithy morsels, has no very exclusive tastes. He
employs indifferently anything that he comes upon, provided that it be
light, very dry, softened by long exposure to the air and of suitable
dimensions. All his finds, if they come anywhere near his estimates,
are used just as they are, without any alterations or sawing to reduce
them to the proper length. The Psyche does not trim the laths that go
to form his roof; he gathers them as he finds them. His work is limited
to imbricating them one after the other by fixing them at the fore-end.
In order to lend itself to the movements of the journeying caterpillar
and in particular to facilitate the action of the head and legs when a
new piece is to be placed in position, the front part of the sheath
requires a special structure. Here a casing of beams is no longer
allowable, for their length and stiffness would hamper the artisan and
even make his work impossible; what is essential here is a flexible
neck, able to bend in all directions. The assemblage of stakes does, in
fact, end suddenly at some distance from the fore-part and is there
replaced by a collar in which the silken woof is merely hardened with
very tiny ligneous particles, tending to strengthen the material
without impairing its flexibility. This collar, which gives free
movement, is so important that all the Psyches make equal use of it,
however much the rest of the work may differ. All carry, in front of
the faggot of sticks, a yielding neck, soft to the touch, formed inside
of a web of pure silk and velveted outside with a fine sawdust which
the caterpillar obtains by crushing with his mandibles any sort of dry
straw.
A similar velvet, but lustreless and faded, apparently through age,
finishes the sheath at the back, in the form of a rather long, bare
appendix, open at the end.
Let us now remove the outside of the straw envelope, shredding it
piecemeal. The demolition gives us a varying number of joists: I have
counted as many as eighty and more. The ruin that remains is a
cylindrical sheath wherein we discover, from one end to the other, the
structure which we perceived at the front and rear, the two parts which
are naturally bare. The tissue everywhere is of very stout silk, which
resists without breaking when pulled by the fingers, a smooth tissue,
beautifully white inside, drab and wrinkled outside, where it bristles
with encrusted woody particles.
There will be an opportunity later to discover by what means the
caterpillar makes himself so complicated a garment, in which are laid
one upon the other, in a definite order, first, the extremely fine
satin which is in direct contact with the skin; next, the mixed stuff,
a sort of frieze dusted with ligneous matter, which saves the silk and
gives consistency to the work; lastly, the surtout of overlapping
laths.
While retaining this general threefold arrangement, the scabbard offers
notable variations of structural detail in the different species. Here,
for instance, is a second Psyche, [26] the most belated of the three
which I have chanced to come upon. I meet him towards the end of June,
hurrying across some dusty path near the houses. His cases surpass
those of the previous species both in size and in regularity of
arrangement. They form a thick coverlet, of many pieces, in which I
recognize here fragments of hollow stalks, there bits of fine straw,
with perhaps straps formed of blades of grass. In front there is never
any mantilla of dead leaves, a troublesome piece of finery which,
without being in regular use, is pretty frequent in the costume of the
first-named species. At the back, no long, denuded vestibule. Save for
the indispensable collar at the aperture, all the rest is cased in
logs. There is not much variety about the thing, but, when all is said,
there is a certain elegance in its stern faultlessness.
The smallest in size and simplest in dress is the third, [27] who is
very common at the end of winter on the walls, as well as in the
furrows of the barks of gnarled old trees, be they olive-trees,
holm-oaks, elms or almost any other. His case, a modest little bundle,
is hardly more than two-fifths of an inch in length. A dozen rotten
straws, gleaned at random and fixed close to one another in a parallel
direction, represent, with the silk sheath, his whole outlay on dress.
It would be difficult to clothe one’s self more economically.
This pigmy, apparently so uninteresting, shall supply us with our first
records of the curious life-story of the Psyches. I gather him in
profusion in April and instal him in a wire bell-jar. What he eats I
know not. My ignorance would be grievous under other conditions; but at
present I need not trouble about provisions. Taken from their walls and
trees, where they had suspended themselves for their transformation,
most of my little Psyches are in the chrysalis state. A few of them are
still active. They hasten to clamber to the top of the trellis-work;
they fix themselves there perpendicularly by means of a little silk
cushion; then everything is still.
June comes to an end; and the male Moths are hatched, leaving the
chrysalid wrapper half caught in the case, which remains fixed where it
is and will remain there indefinitely until dismantled by the weather.
The emergence is effected through the hinder end of the bundle of
sticks, the only way by which it can be effected. Having permanently
closed the top opening, the real door of the house, by fastening it to
the support which he has chosen, the caterpillar therefore has turned
the other way round and undergone his transformation in a reversed
position, which enables the adult insect to emerge through the outlet
made at the back, the only one now free.
For that matter, this is the method followed by all the Psyches. The
case has two apertures. The front one, which is more regular and more
carefully constructed, is at the caterpillar’s service so long as
larval activity lasts. It is closed and firmly fastened to its support
at the time of the nymphosis. The hinder one, which is faulty and even
hidden by the sagging of the sides, is at the Moth’s service. It does
not really open until right at the end, when pushed by the chrysalis or
the adult insect.
In their modest pearl-grey dress, with their insignificant
wing-equipment, hardly exceeding that of a Common Fly, our little Moths
are still not without elegance. They have handsome feathery plumes for
antennæ; their wings are edged with delicate fringes. They whirl very
fussily inside the bell-jar; they skim the ground, fluttering their
wings; they crowd eagerly around certain sheaths which nothing on the
outside distinguishes from the others. They alight upon them and sound
them with their plumes.
This feverish agitation marks them as lovers in search of their brides.
This one here, that one there, each of them finds his mate. But the coy
one does not leave her home. Things happen very discreetly through the
wicket left open at the free end of the case. The male stands on the
threshold of this back-door for a little while; and then it is over:
the wedding is finished. There is no need for us to linger over these
nuptials in which the parties concerned do not know, do not see each
other.
I hasten to place in a glass tube the few cases in which the mysterious
events have happened. Some days later, the recluse comes out of the
sheath and shows herself in all her wretchedness. Call that little
fright a Moth! One cannot easily get used to the idea of such poverty.
The caterpillar of the start was no humbler-looking. There are no
wings, none at all; no silky fur either. At the tip of the abdomen, a
round, tufty pad, a crown of dirty-white velvet; on each segment, in
the middle of the back, a large rectangular dark patch: these are the
sole attempts at ornament. The mother Psyche renounces all the beauty
which her name of Moth promised.
From the centre of the hairy coronet a long ovipositor stands out,
consisting of two parts, one stiff, forming the base of the implement,
the other soft and flexible, sheathed in the first just as a telescope
fits in its tube. The laying mother bends herself into a hook, grips
the lower end of her case with her six feet and drives her probe into
the back-window, a window which serves manifold purposes, allowing of
the consummation of the clandestine marriage, the emergence of the
fertilized bride, the installation of the eggs and, lastly, the exodus
of the young family.
There, at the free end of her case, the mother remains for a long time,
bowed and motionless. What can she be doing in this contemplative
attitude? She is lodging her eggs in the house which she has just left;
she is bequeathing the maternal cottage to her heirs. Some thirty hours
pass and the ovipositor is at last withdrawn. The laying is finished.
A little wadding, supplied by the coronet on the hind-quarters, closes
the door and allays the dangers of invasion. The fond mother makes a
barricade for her brood of the sole ornament which, in her extreme
indigence, she possesses. Better still, she makes a rampart of her
body. Bracing herself convulsively on the threshold of her home, she
dies there, dries up there, devoted to her family even after death. It
needs an accident, a breath of air, to make her fall from her post.
Let us now open the case. It contains the chrysalid wrapper, intact
except for the front breach through which the Psyche emerged. The male,
because of his wings and his plumes, very cumbersome articles when he
is about to make his way through the narrow pass, takes advantage of
his chrysalis state to make a start for the door and come out half-way.
Then, bursting his amber tunic, the delicate Moth finds an open space,
where flight is possible, right in front of him. The mother, unprovided
with wings and plumes, is not compelled to observe any such
precautions. Her cylindrical form, bare and differing but little from
that of the caterpillar, allows her to crawl, to slip into the narrow
passage and to come forth without obstacle. Her cast chrysalid skin is,
therefore, left right at the back of the case, well covered by the
thatched roof.
And this is an act of prudence marked by exquisite tenderness. The
eggs, in fact, are packed in the barrel, in the parchmentlike wallet
formed by the slough. The mother has thrust her telescopic ovipositor
to the bottom of that receptacle and has methodically gone on laying
until it is full. Not satisfied with bequeathing her home and her
velvet coronet to her offspring, as a last sacrifice she leaves them
her skin.
With a view to observing at my ease the events which are soon to
happen, I extract one of these chrysalid bags, stuffed with eggs, from
its faggot and place it by itself, beside its case, in a glass tube. I
have not long to wait. In the first week of July, I find myself all of
a sudden in possession of a large family. The quickness of the hatching
balked my watchfulness. The new-born caterpillars, about forty in
number, have already had time to garb themselves.
They wear a Persian head-dress, a mage’s tiara in dazzling white plush.
Or, to abandon high-flown language, let us say a cotton night-cap
without a tassel; only the cap does not stand up from the head: it
covers the hind-quarters. Great animation reigns in the tube, which is
a spacious residence for such vermin. They roam about gaily, with their
caps sticking up almost perpendicular to the floor. With a tiara like
that and things to eat, life must be sweet indeed.
But what do they eat? I try a little of everything that grows on the
bare stone and the gnarled old trees. Nothing is welcomed. More eager
to dress than to feed themselves, the Psyches scorn what I set before
them. My ignorance as an insect-breeder will not matter, provided that
I succeed in seeing with what materials and in what manner the first
outlines of the cap are woven.
I may fairly hope to achieve this ambition, as the chrysalid bag is far
from having exhausted its contents. I find in it, teeming amid the
rumpled wrapper of the eggs, an additional family as numerous as the
swarm that is already out. The total laying must therefore amount to
five or six dozen. I transfer to another receptacle the precocious band
which is already dressed and keep only the naked laggards in the tube.
They have bright red heads, with the rest of their bodies dirty white;
and they measure hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch in length.
My patience is not long put to the test. Next day, little by little,
singly or in groups, the belated grubs quit the chrysalid bag. They
come out without breaking the frail wallet, through the front breach
made by the liberation of the mother. Not one of them utilizes it as a
dress-material, though it has the delicacy and amber colouring of an
onion-skin; nor do any of them make use of a fine quilting which lines
the inside of the bag and forms an exquisitely soft bed for the eggs.
This down, whose origin we shall have to investigate presently, ought,
one would say, to make an excellent blanket for these chilly ones,
impatient to cover themselves up. Not a single one uses it; there would
not be enough to go round.
All go straight to the coarse faggot, which I left in contact with the
wallet that was the chrysalis. Time presses. Before making your
entrance into the world and going agrazing, you must first be clad. All
therefore, with equal fury, attack the old sheath and hastily dress
themselves in the mother’s cast clothes. Some turn their attention to
bits that happen to be open lengthwise and scrape the soft, white inner
layer; others, greatly daring, penetrate into the tunnel of a hollow
stalk and go and collect their cotton goods in the dark. At such times
the materials are first-class; and the garment woven is of a dazzling
white. Others bite deep into the piece which they select and make
themselves a motley garment, in which dark-coloured particles mar the
snowy whiteness of the rest.
The tool which they use for their gleaning consists of the mandibles,
shaped like wide shears with five strong teeth apiece. The two planes
fit into each other and form an implement capable of seizing and
slicing any fibre, however small. Seen under the microscope, it is a
wonderful specimen of mechanical precision and power. Were the Sheep
similarly equipped in proportion to her size, she would browse upon the
bottom of the trees instead of cropping the grass.
A very instructive workshop is that of the Psyche-vermin toiling to
make themselves a cotton night-cap. There are numbers of things to
remark in both the finish of the work and the ingenuity of the methods
employed. To avoid repeating ourselves, we will say nothing about these
yet, but wait for a little and return to the subject when setting forth
the talents of a second Psyche, of larger stature and easier to
observe. The two weavers observe exactly the same procedure.
Nevertheless let us take a glance at the bottom of the egg-cup, a
general workyard in which I instal my dwarfs as the cases turn them
out. There are some hundreds of them, with the sheaths from which they
came and an assortment of clipped stalks, chosen from among the driest
and richest in pith. What a whirl! What bewildering animation!
In order to see man, Micromégas cut himself a lens out of a diamond of
his necklace; he held his breath lest the storm from his nostrils
should blow the mite away. I in my turn will be the good giant, newly
arriving from Sirius; I screw a magnifying-glass into my eye and am
careful not to breathe for fear of overturning and sweeping out of
existence my cotton-workers. If I need one of them, to focus him under
a stronger glass, I lime him as it were, seizing him with the fine
point of a needle which I have passed over my lips. Taken away from his
work, the tiny caterpillar struggles at the end of the needle, shrivels
up, makes himself, small as he is, still smaller; he strives to
withdraw as far as possible into his clothing, which as yet is
incomplete, the merest flannel vest or even a narrow scarf, covering
nothing but the top of his shoulders. Let us leave him to complete his
coat. I give a puff; and the creature is swallowed up in the crater of
the egg-cup.
And this speck is alive. It is industrious; it is versed in the art of
blanket-making. An orphan, born that moment, it knows how to cut itself
out of its dead mother’s old clothes the wherewithal to clothe itself
in its turn. Soon it will become a carpenter, an assembler of timber,
to make a defensive covering for its delicate fabric. What must
instinct be, to be capable of awakening such industries in an atom!
It is at the end of June also that I obtain, in his adult shape, the
Psyche whose scabbard is continued underneath by a long, naked
vestibule. Most of the cases are fastened by a silk pad to the
trelliswork of the cage and hang vertically, like stalactites. Some few
of them have never left the ground. Half immersed in the sand, they
stand erect, with their rear in the air and their fore-part buried and
firmly anchored to the side of the pan by means of a silky paste.
This inverted position excludes any idea of weight as a guide in the
caterpillar’s preparations. An adept at turning round in his cabin, he
is careful, before he sinks into the immobility of pupadom, to turn his
head now upwards, now downwards, towards the opening, so that the adult
insect, which is much less free than the larva in its movements, may
reach the outside without obstacle.
Moreover, it is the pupa itself, the unbending chrysalis, incapable of
turning and obliged to move all in one piece, which, stubbornly
crawling, carries the male to the threshold of the case. It emerges
half way at the end of the uncovered silky vestibule and there breaks,
obstructing the opening with its slough as it does so. For a time the
Moth stands still on the roof of the cottage, allowing his humours to
evaporate, his wings to spread and gather strength; then at last the
gallant takes flight, in search of her for whose sake he has made
himself so spruce.
He wears a costume of deepest black, all except the edges of the wings,
which, having no scales, remain diaphanous. His antennæ, likewise
black, are wide and graceful plumes. Were they on a larger scale, they
would throw the feathered beauty of the Marabou and Ostrich into the
shade. The bravely beplumed one visits case after case in his tortuous
flight, prying into the secrets of those alcoves. If things go as he
wishes, he settles, with a quick flutter of his wings, on the extremity
of the denuded vestibule. Comes the wedding, as discreet as that of the
smaller Psyche. Here is yet another who does not see or at most catches
a fleeting glimpse of her for whose sake he has donned Marabou-feathers
and a black-velvet cloak.
The recluse on her side is equally impatient. The lovers are
short-lived; they die in my cages within three or four days, so that,
for long intervals, until the hatching of some late-comer, the female
population is short of suitors. So, when the morning sun, already hot,
strikes the cage, a very singular spectacle is repeated many times
before my eyes. The entrance to the vestibule swells imperceptibly,
opens and emits a mass of infinitely delicate down. A Spider’s web,
carded and made into wadding, would give nothing of such gossamer
fineness. It is a vaporous cloud. Then, from out of this incomparable
eiderdown, appear the head and fore-part of a very different sort of
caterpillar from the original collector of straws.
It is the mistress of the house, the marriageable Moth, who, feeling
her hour about to come and failing to receive the expected visit,
herself makes the advances and goes, as far as she can, to meet her
plumed swain. He does not come hastening up and for good reason: there
is not a male left in the establishment. For two or three hours the
poor forsaken one leans, without moving, from her window. Then, tired
of waiting, very gently she goes indoors again, backwards, and returns
to her cell.
Next day, the day after and later still, as long as her strength
permits, she reappears on her balcony, always in the morning, in the
soft rays of a warm sun and always on a sofa of that incomparable down,
which disperses and turns to vapour if I merely fan it with my hand.
Again no one comes. For the last time the disappointed Moth goes back
to her boudoir, never to leave it again. She dies in it, dries up, a
useless thing. I hold my bell-jars responsible for this crime against
motherhood. In the open fields, without a doubt, sooner or later wooers
would have appeared, coming from the four winds.
The said bell-jars have an even more pitiful catastrophe on their
conscience. Sometimes, leaning too far from her window, miscalculating
the balance between the front of the body, which is at liberty, and the
back, which remains sheathed in its case, the Moth allows herself to
drop to the ground. It is all up now with the fallen one and her
lineage. Still, there is one good thing about it. Accidents such as
this lay bare the mother Psyche, without our having to break into her
house.
What a miserable creature she is, a great deal uglier than the original
caterpillar! Here transfiguration spells disfigurement, progress means
retrogression. What we have before our eyes is a wrinkled satchel, an
earthy-yellow sausage; and this horror, worse than a maggot, is a Moth
in the full bloom of life, a genuine adult Moth. She is the betrothed
of the elegant black Bombyx, all plumed with Marabou-feathers, and
represents to him the last word in beauty. As the proverb says, beauty
lies in lovers’ eyes: a profound truth which the Psyche confirms in
striking fashion.
Let us describe the ugly little sausage. A very small head, a paltry
globule, disappearing almost entirely in the folds of the first
segment. What need is there of cranium and brains for a germ-bag! And
so the tiny creature almost does without them, reduces them to the
simplest expression. Nevertheless, there are two black ocular specks.
Do these vestigial eyes see their way about? Not very clearly, we may
be sure. The pleasures of light must be very small for this
stay-at-home, who appears at her window only on rare occasions, when
the male Moth is late in arriving.
The legs are well-shaped, but so short and weak that they are of no use
at all for locomotion. The whole body is a pale yellow, semitransparent
in front, opaque and stuffed with eggs behind. Underneath the first
segments is a sort of neck-band, that is to say, a dark stain, the
vestige of a crop showing through the skin. A pad of short down ends
the oviferous part at the back. It is all that remains of a fleece, of
a thin velvet which the insect rubs off as it moves backwards and
forwards in its narrow lodging. This forms the flaky mass which whitens
the trysting-window at the wedding-time and also lines the inside of
the sheath with down. In short, the creature is little more than a bag
swollen with eggs for the best part of its length. I know nothing lower
in the scale of wretchedness.
The germ-bag moves, but not, of course, with those vestiges of legs
which form too short and feeble supports; it gets about in a way that
allows it to progress on its back, belly or side indifferently. A
groove is hollowed out at the hinder end of the bag, a deep, dividing
groove which cuts the insect into two. It runs to the front part,
spreading like a wave, and gently and slowly reaches the head. This
undulation constitutes a step. When it is done, the animal has advanced
about a twenty-fifth part of an inch.
To go from one end to the other of a box two inches long and filled
with fine sand, the living sausage takes nearly an hour. It is by
crawling like this that it moves about in its case, when it comes to
the threshold to meet its visitor and goes in again.
For three or four days, exposed to the roughness of the soil, the
oviferous bag leads a wretched life, creeping about at random, or, more
often, standing still. No Moth pays attention to the poor thing, who
possesses no attractions outside her home; the lovers pass by with an
indifferent air. This coolness is logical enough. Why should she become
a mother, if her family is to be abandoned to the inclemencies of the
public way? And so, after falling by accident from her case, which
would have been the cradle of the youngsters, the wanderer withers in a
few days and dies childless.
The fertilized ones—and these are the more numerous—the prudent ones
who have saved themselves from a fall by being less lavish with their
appearances at the window, reenter the sheath and do not show
themselves again once the Moth’s visit to the threshold is over. Let us
wait a fortnight and then open the case lengthwise with our scissors.
At the end, in the widest part, opposite the vestibule, is the slough
of the chrysalis, a long, fragile, amber-coloured sack, open at the end
that contains the head, the end facing the exit-passage. In this sack,
which she fills like a mould, lies the mother, the egg-bladder, now
giving no sign of life.
From this amber sheath, which presents all the usual characteristics of
a chrysalis, the adult Psyche emerged, in the guise of a shapeless
Moth, looking like a big maggot; at the present time, she has slipped
back into her old jacket, moulding herself into it in such a way that
it becomes difficult to separate the container from the contents. One
would take the whole thing for a single body.
It seems very likely that this cast skin, which occupies the best place
in the home, formed the Psyche’s refuge when, weary of waiting on the
threshold of her hall, she retired to the back room. She has therefore
gone in and out repeatedly. This constant going and coming, this
continual rubbing against the sides of a narrow corridor, just wide
enough for her to pass through, ended by stripping her of her down. She
had a fleece to start with, a very light and scanty fleece, it is true,
but still a vestige of the costume which Moths are wont to wear. This
fluff she has lost. What has she done with it?
The Eider robs herself of her down to make a luxurious bed for her
brood; the new-born Rabbits lie on a mattress which their mother cards
for them with the softest part of her fur, shorn from the belly and
neck, wherever the shears of her front teeth can reach it. This fond
tenderness is shared by the Psyche, as you will see.
In front of the chrysalid bag is an abundant mass of extra-fine
wadding, similar to that of which a few flocks used to fall outside on
the occasions when the recluse went to her window. Is it silk? Is it
spun muslin? No; but it is something of incomparable delicacy. The
microscope recognizes it as the scaly dust, the impalpable down in
which every Moth is clad. To give a snug shelter to the little
caterpillars who will soon be swarming in the case, to provide them
with a refuge in which they can play about and gather strength before
entering the wide world, the Psyche has stripped herself of her fur
like the mother Rabbit.
This denudation may be a mere mechanical result, an unintentional
effect of repeated rubbing against the low-roofed walls; but there is
nothing to tell us so. Maternity has its foresight, even among the
humblest. I therefore picture the hairy Moth twisting about, going to
and fro in the narrow passage in order to get rid of the fleece and
prepare bedding for her offspring. It is even possible that she manages
to use her lips, that vestige of a mouth, in order to pull out the down
that refuses to come away of itself.
No matter what the method of shearing may be, a mound of scales and
hairs fills up the case in front of the chrysalid bag. For the moment,
it is a barricade preventing access to the house, which is open at the
hinder end; soon, it will be a downy couch on which the little
caterpillars will rest for a while after leaving the egg. Here, warmly
ensconced in a rug of extreme softness, they call a halt as a
preparation for the emergence and the work that follows it.
Not that silk is lacking: on the contrary, it abounds. The caterpillar
lavished it during his time as a spinner and a picker-up of straws. The
whole interior of the case is padded with thick white satin. But how
greatly preferable to this too-compact and luxurious upholstery is the
delightful eiderdown bedding of the new-born youngsters!
We know the preparations made for the coming family. Now, where are the
eggs? At what spot are they laid? The smallest of my three Psyches, who
is less misshapen than the others and freer in her movements, leaves
her case altogether. She possesses a long ovipositor and inserts it,
through the exit-hole, right into the chrysalid slough, which is left
where it was in the form of a bag. This slough receives the laying.
When the operation is finished and the bag of eggs is full, the mother
dies outside, hanging on to the case.
The two other Psyches, who do not carry telescopic ovipositors and
whose only method of changing their position is a dubious sort of
crawling, have more singular customs to show us. One might quote with
regard to them what used to be said of the Roman matrons, those model
mothers:
“Domi mansit, lanam fecit.”
Yes, lanam fecit. The Psyche does not really work the wool on the
distaff; but at least she bequeathes to her sons her own fleece
converted into a heap of wadding. Yes, domi mansit. She never leaves
her house, not even for her wedding, not even for the purpose of laying
her eggs.
We have seen how, after receiving the visit of the male, the shapeless
Moth, that uncouth sausage, retreats to the back of her case and
withdraws into her chrysalid slough, which she fills exactly, just as
though she had never left it. The eggs are in their place then and
there; they occupy the regulation sack favoured by the various Psyches.
Of what use would a laying be now? Strictly speaking, there is none, in
fact; that is to say, the eggs do not leave the mother’s womb. The
living pouch which has engendered them keeps them within itself.
Soon this bag loses its moisture by evaporation; it dries up and at the
same time remains sticking to the chrysalid wrapper, that firm support.
Let us open the thing. What does the magnifying-glass show us? A few
trachean threads, lean bundles of muscles, nervous ramifications, in
short, the relics of a form of vitality reduced to its simplest
expression. Taken all around, very nearly nothing. The rest of the
contents is a mass of eggs, an agglomeration of germs numbering close
upon three hundred. In a word, the insect is one enormous ovary,
assisted by just so much as enables it to perform its functions.