The Pelopaeus (A Mason-wasp forming the subject of essays which have not
yet been published in English.--Translator's Note.) gives us a very poor
idea of her intellect when she plasters up the spot in the wall where
the nest which I have removed used to stand, when she persists in
cramming her cell with Spiders for the benefit of an egg no longer there
and when she dutifully closes a cell which my forceps has left
empty, extracting alike germ and provisions. The Mason-bees (Cf. "The
Mason-bees": chapter 7.--Translator's Note.), the caterpillar of the
Great Peacock Moth (Cf. "Social Life in the Insect World" by J.H. Fabre,
translated by Bernard Miall: chapter 14.--Translator's Note.) and
many others, when subjected to similar tests, are guilty of the same
illogical behaviour: they continue, in the normal order, their series
of industrious actions, though an accident has now rendered them all
useless. Just like millstones unable to cease revolving though there be
no corn left to grind, let them once be given the compelling power and
they will continue to perform their task despite its futility. Are they
then machines? Far be it from me to think anything so foolish.
It is impossible to make definite progress on the shifting sands
of contradictory facts: each step in our interpretation may find us
embogged. And yet these facts speak so loudly that I do not hesitate
to translate their evidence as I understand it. In insect mentality, we
have to distinguish two very different domains. One of these is INSTINCT
properly so called, the unconscious impulse that presides over the
most wonderful part of what the creature achieves. Where experience and
imitation are of absolutely no avail, instinct lays down its inflexible
law. It is instinct and instinct alone that makes the mother build for a
family which she will never see; that counsels the storing of
provisions for the unknown offspring; that directs the sting towards the
nerve-centres of the prey and skilfully paralyses it, so that the game
may keep good; that instigates, in fine, a host of actions wherein
shrewd reason and consummate science would have their part, were the
creature acting through discernment.
This faculty is perfect of its kind from the outset, otherwise the
insect would have no posterity. Time adds nothing to it and takes
nothing from it. Such as it was for a definite species, such it is
to-day and such it will remain, perhaps the most settled zoological
characteristic of them all. It is not free nor conscious in its
practice, any more than is the faculty of the stomach for digestion
or that of the heart for pulsation. The phases of its operations are
predetermined, necessarily entailed one by another; they suggest a
system of clock-work wherein one wheel set in motion brings about the
movement of the next. This is the mechanical side of the insect,
the fatum, the only thing which is able to explain the monstrous
illogicality of a Pelopaeus when misled by my artifices. Is the Lamb
when it first grips the teat a free and conscious agent, capable of
improvement in its difficult art of taking nourishment? The insect is no
more capable of improvement in its art, more difficult still, of giving
nourishment.
But, with its hide-bound science ignorant of itself, pure insect, if it
stood alone, would leave the insect unarmed in the perpetual conflict
of circumstances. No two moments in time are identical; though the
background remain the same, the details change; the unexpected rises on
every side. In this bewildering confusion, a guide is needed to seek,
accept, refuse and select; to show preference for this and indifference
to that; to turn to account, in short, anything useful that occasion may
offer. This guide the insect undoubtedly possesses, to a very manifest
degree. It is the second province of its mentality. Here it is conscious
and capable of improvement by experience. I dare not speak of this
rudimentary faculty as intelligence, which is too exalted a title: I
will call it DISCERNMENT. The insect, in exercising its highest gifts,
discerns, differentiates between one thing and another, within the
sphere of its business, of course; and that is about all.
As long as we confound acts of pure instinct and acts of discernment
under the same head, we shall fall back into those endless discussions
which embitter controversy without bringing us one step nearer to the
solution of the problem. Is the insect conscious of what it does? Yes
and no. No, if its action is in the province of instinct; yes, if the
action is in that of discernment. Are the habits of an insect capable of
modification? No, decidedly not, if the habit in question belongs to the
province of instinct; yes, if it belongs to that of discernment. Let us
state this fundamental distinction more precisely by the aid of a few
examples.
The Pelopaeus builds her cells with earth already softened, with mud.
Here we have instinct, the unalterable characteristic of the worker.
She has always built in this way and always will. The passing ages will
never teach her, neither the struggle for life nor the law of selection
will ever induce her to imitate the Mason-bee and collect dry dust
for her mortar. This mud nest needs a shelter against the rain. The
hiding-place under a stone suffices at first. But should she find
something better, the potter takes possession of that something better
and instals herself in the home of man. (The Pelopaeus builds in the
fire-places of houses.--Translator's Note.) There we have discernment,
the source of some sort of capacity for improvement.
The Pelopaeus supplies her larvae with provisions in the form of
Spiders. There you have instinct. The climate, the longitude or
latitude, the changing seasons, the abundance or scarcity of game
introduce no modification into this diet, though the larva shows itself
satisfied with other fare provided by myself. Its forebears were brought
up on Spiders; their descendants consumed similar food; and their
posterity again will know no other. Not a single circumstance, however
favourable, will ever persuade the Pelopaeus that young Crickets, for
instance, are as good as Spiders and that her family would accept them
gladly. Instinct binds her down to the national diet.
But, should the Epeira (The Weaving or Garden Spider. Cf. "The Life
of the Spider" by J. Henri Fabre translated by Alexander Teixeira
de Mattos; chapters 9 to 14 and appendix.--Translator's Note.), the
favourite prey, be lacking, must the Pelopaeus therefore give up
foraging? She will stock her warehouses all the same, because any Spider
suits her. There you have discernment, whose elasticity makes up, in
certain circumstances, for the too-great rigidity of instinct. Amid the
innumerable variety of game, the huntress is able to discern between
what is Spider and what is not; and, in this way, she is always prepared
to supply her family, without quitting the domain of her instinct.
The Hairy Ammophila gives her larva a single caterpillar, a large one,
paralysed by as many pricks of her sting as it has nervous centres in
its thorax and abdomen. Her surgical skill in subduing the monster is
instinct displayed in a form which makes short work of any inclination
to see in it an acquired habit. In an art that can leave no one to
practise it in the future unless that one be perfect at the outset, of
what avail are happy chances, atavistic tendencies, the mellowing hand
of time? But the grey caterpillar, sacrificed one day, may be succeeded
on another day by a green, yellow or striped caterpillar. There you have
discernment, which is quite capable of recognizing the regulation prey
under very diverse garbs.
The Megachiles build their honey-jars with disks cut out of leaves;
certain Anthidia make felted cotton wallets; others fashion pots out
of resin. There you have instinct. Will any rash mind ever conceive the
singular idea that the Leaf-cutter might very well have started working
in cotton, that the cotton-wool-worker once thought or will one
day think of cutting disks out of the leaves of the lilac- and the
rose-tree, that the resin-kneader began with clay? Who would dare to
indulge in any such theories? Each Bee has her art, her medium, to which
she strictly confines herself. The first has her leaves; the second
her wadding; the third her resin. None of these guilds has ever changed
trades with another; and none ever will. There you have instinct,
keeping the workers to their specialities. There are no innovations
in their workshops, no recipes resulting from experiment, no ingenious
devices, no progress from indifferent to good, from good to excellent.
To-day's method is the facsimile of yesterday's; and to-morrow will know
no other.
But, though the manufacturing-process is invariable, the raw material is
subject to change. The plant that supplies the cotton differs in species
according to the locality; the bush out of whose leaves the pieces will
be cut is not the same in the various fields of operation; the tree that
provides the resinous putty may be a pine, a cypress, a juniper, a
cedar or a spruce, all very different in appearance. What will guide the
insect in its gleaning? Discernment.
These, I think, are sufficient details of the fundamental distinction
to be drawn in the insect's mentality; the distinction, that is, between
instinct and discernment. If people confuse these two provinces, as they
nearly always do, any understanding becomes impossible; the last glimmer
of light disappears behind the clouds of interminable discussions. From
an industrial point of view, let us look upon the insect as a worker
thoroughly versed from birth in a craft whose essential principles never
vary; let us grant that unconscious worker a gleam of intelligence
which will permit it to extricate itself from the inevitable conflict of
attendant circumstances; and I think that we shall have come as near to
the truth as the state of our knowledge will allow for the moment.
Having thus assigned a due share both to instinct and the aberrations
of instinct when the course of its different phases is disturbed, let
us see what discernment is able to do in the selection of a site for
the nest and materials for building it; and, leaving the Pelopaeus, upon
whom it is useless to dwell any longer, let us consider other examples,
picked from among those richest in variations.
The Mason-bee of the Sheds (Chalicodoma rufitarsis, PEREZ) well deserves
the name which I have felt justified in giving her from her habits: she
settles in numerous colonies in our sheds, on the lower surface of the
tiles, where she builds huge nests which endanger the solidity of the
roof. Nowhere does the insect display a greater zeal for work than in
one of these colossal cities, an estate which is constantly increasing
as it passes down from one generation to another; nowhere does it find a
better workshop for the exercise of its industry. Here it has plenty of
room: a quiet resting-place, sheltered from damp and from excess of heat
or cold.
But the spacious domain under the tiles is not within the reach of all:
sheds with free access and the proper sunny aspect are pretty rare.
These sites fall only to the favoured of fortune. Where will the others
take up their quarters? More or less everywhere. Without leaving the
house in which I live, I can enumerate stone, wood, glass, metal, paint
and mortar as forming the foundation of the nests. The green-house with
its furnace heat in the summer and its bright light, equalling that
outside, is fairly well-frequented. The Mason-bee hardly ever fails to
build there each year, in squads of a few dozen apiece, now on the glass
panes, now on the iron bars of the framework. Other little swarms settle
in the window embrasures, under the projecting ledge of the front door
or in the cranny between the wall and an open shutter. Others again,
being perhaps of a morose disposition, flee society and prefer to work
in solitude, one in the inside of a lock or of a pipe intended to carry
the rain-water from the leads; another in the mouldings of the doors and
windows or in the crude ornamentation of the stone-work. In short,
the house is made use of all round, provided that the shelter be an
out-of-door one; for observe that the enterprising invader, unlike
the Pelopaeus, never penetrates inside our dwellings. The case of
the conservatory is an exception more apparent than real: the glass
building, standing wide open throughout the summer, is to the Mason-bee
but a shed a little lighter than the others. There is nothing here to
arouse the distrust with which anything indoors or shut up inspires
her. To build on the threshold of an outer door, or to usurp its lock,
a hiding-place to her fancy, is all that she allows herself; to go any
farther is an adventure repugnant to her taste.
Lastly, in the case of all these dwellings, the Mason-bee is man's free
tenant; her industry makes use of the products of our own industry. Can
she have no other establishments? She has, beyond a doubt; she possesses
some constructed on the ancient plan. On a stone the size of a man's
fist, protected by the shelter of a hedge, sometimes even on a pebble
in the open air, I see her building now groups of cells as large as a
walnut, now domes emulating in size, shape and solidity those of her
rival, the Mason-bee of the Walls.
The stone support is the most frequent, though not the only one. I have
found nests, but sparsely inhabited it is true, on the trunks of trees,
in the seams of the rough bark of oaks. Among those whose support was
a living plant, I will mention two that stand out above all the others.
The first was built in the lobe of a torch-thistle as thick as my leg;
the second rested on a stalk of the opuntia, the Indian fig. Had the
fierce armour of these two stout cactuses attracted the attention of the
insect, which looked upon their tufts of spikes as furnishing a system
of defence for its nest? Perhaps so. In any case, the attempt was not
imitated; I never saw another installation of the kind. There is one
definite conclusion to be drawn from my two discoveries. Despite the
oddity of their structure, which is unparalleled among the local flora,
the two American importations did not compel the insect to go through an
apprenticeship of groping and hesitation. The one which found itself in
the presence of those novel growths, and which was perhaps the first of
its race to do so, took possession of their lobes and stalks just as it
would have done of a familiar site. From the start, the fleshy plants
from the New World suited it as well as the trunk of a native tree.
The Mason-bee of the Pebbles (Chalicodoma parietina) has none of this
elasticity in the choice of a site. In her case, the smooth stone of the
parched uplands is the almost invariable foundation of her structures.
Elsewhere, under a less clement sky, she prefers the support of a
wall, which protects the nest against the prolonged snows. Lastly, the
Mason-bee of the Shrubs (Chalicodoma rufescens, PEREZ) fixes her ball of
clay to a twig of any ligneous plant, from the thyme, the rock-rose and
the heath to the oak, the elm and the pine. The list of the sites that
suit her would almost form a complete catalogue of the ligneous flora.
The variety of places wherein the insect instals itself, so eloquent of
the part played by discernment in their selection, becomes still more
remarkable when it is accompanied by a corresponding variety in the
architecture of the cells. This is more particularly the case with
the Three-horned Osmia, who, as she uses clayey materials very easily
affected by the rain, requires, like the Pelopaeus, a dry shelter for
her cells, a shelter which she finds ready-made and uses just as it is,
after a few touches by way of sweeping and cleansing. The homes which I
see her adopt are especially the shells of Snails that have died under
the stone-heaps and in the low, unmortared walls which support the
cultivated earth of the hills in shelves or terraces. The use of
Snail-shells is accompanied by the no less active use of the old cells
of both the Mason-bee of the Sheds and of certain Anthophorae (A.
pilipes, A. parietina and A. personata).
We must not forget the reed, which is highly appreciated when--a rare
find--it appears under the requisite conditions. In its natural state,
the plant with the mighty hollow cylinders is of no possible use to the
Osmia, who knows nothing of the art of perforating a woody wall. The
gallery of an internode has to be wide open before the insect can
take possession of it. Also, the clean-cut stump must be horizontal,
otherwise the rain would soften the fragile edifice of clay and soon lay
it low; also, the stump must not be lying on the ground and must be kept
at some distance from the dampness of the soil. We see therefore that,
without the intervention of man, involuntary in the vast majority of
cases and deliberate only on the experimenter's part, the Osmia would
hardly ever find a reed-stump suited to the installation of her family.
It is to her a casual acquisition, a home unknown to her race before
men took it into their heads to cut reeds and make them into hurdles for
drying figs in the sun.
How did the work of man's pruning-knife bring about the abandonment of
the natural lodging? How was the spiral staircase of the Snail-shell
replaced by the cylindrical gallery of the reed? Was the change from one
kind of house to another effected by gradual transitions, by attempts
made, abandoned, resumed, becoming more and more definite in their
results as generation succeeded generation? Or did the Osmia, finding
the cut reed that answered her requirements, instal herself there
straightway, scorning her ancient dwelling, the Snail-shell? These
questions called for a reply; and they have received one. Let us
describe how things happened.
Near Serignan are some great quarries of coarse limestone,
characteristic of the miocene formation of the Rhone valley. These
have been worked for many generations. The ancient public buildings of
Orange, notably the colossal frontage of the theatre whither all the
intellectual world once flocked to hear Sophocles' "Oedipus Tyrannus,"
derive most of their material from these quarries. Other evidence
confirms what the similarity of the hewn stone tells us. Among the
rubbish that fills up the spaces between the tiers of seats, they
occasionally discover the Marseilles obol, a bit of silver stamped
with the four-spoked wheel, or a few bronze coins bearing the effigy of
Augustus or Tiberius. Scattered also here and there among the monuments
of antiquity are heaps of refuse, accumulations of broken stones
in which various Hymenoptera, including the Three-horned Osmia in
particular, take possession of the dead Snail-shell.
The quarries form part of an extensive plateau which is so arid as to be
nearly deserted. In these conditions, the Osmia, at all times faithful
to her birth-place, has little or no need to emigrate from her heap of
stones and leave the shell for another dwelling which she would have
to go and seek at a distance. Since there are heaps of stone there, she
probably has no other dwelling than the Snail-shell. Nothing tells us
that the present-day generations are not descended in the direct line
from the generations contemporary with the quarryman who lost his as or
his obol at this spot. All the circumstances seem to point to it: the
Osmia of the quarries is an inveterate user of Snail-shells; so far as
heredity is concerned, she knows nothing whatever of reeds. Well, we
must place her in the presence of these new lodgings.
I collect during the winter about two dozen well-stocked Snail-shells
and instal them in a quiet corner of my study, as I did at the time of
my enquiries into the distribution of the sexes. The little hive with
its front pierced with forty holes has bits of reed fitted to it. At the
foot of the five rows of cylinders I place the inhabited shells and
with these I mix a few small stones, the better to imitate the natural
conditions. I add an assortment of empty Snail-shells, after carefully
cleaning the interior so as to make the Osmia's stay more pleasant. When
the time comes for nest-building, the stay-at-home insect will have,
close beside the house of its birth, a choice of two habitations: the
cylinder, a novelty unknown to its race; and the spiral staircase, the
ancient ancestral home.
The nests were finished at the end of May and the Osmiae began to answer
my list of questions. Some, the great majority, settled exclusively
in the reeds; the others remained faithful to the Snail-shell or else
entrusted their eggs partly to the spirals and partly to the cylinders.
With the first, who were the pioneers of cylindrical architecture, there
was no hesitation that I could perceive: after exploring the stump of
reed for a time and recognizing it as serviceable, the insect
instals itself there and, an expert from the first touch, without
apprenticeship, without groping, without any tendencies bequeathed by
the long practice of its predecessors, builds its straight row of cells
on a very different plan from that demanded by the spiral cavity of the
shell which increases in size as it goes on.
The slow school of the ages, the gradual acquisitions of the past,
the legacies of heredity count for nothing therefore in the Osmia's
education. Without any novitiate on its own part or that of its
forebears, the insect is versed straight away in the calling which it
has to pursue; it possesses, inseparable from its nature, the qualities
demanded by its craft: some which are invariable and belong to the
domain of instinct; others, flexible, belonging to the province of
discernment. To divide a free lodging into chambers by means of mud
partitions; to fill those chambers with a heap of pollen-flour, with a
few sups of honey in the central part where the egg is to lie; in short,
to prepare board and lodging for the unknown, for a family which the
mothers have never seen in the past and will never see in the future:
this, in its essential features, is the function of the Osmia's
instinct. Here, everything is harmoniously, inflexibly, permanently
preordained; the insect has but to follow its blind impulse to attain
the goal. But the free lodging offered by chance varies exceedingly in
hygienic conditions, in shape and in capacity. Instinct, which does
not choose, which does not contrive, would, if it were alone, leave
the insect's existence in peril. To help her out of her predicament,
in these complex circumstances, the Osmia possesses her little stock of
discernment, which distinguishes between the dry and the wet, the solid
and the fragile, the sheltered and the exposed; which recognizes the
worth or the worthlessness of a site and knows how to sprinkle it with
cells according to the size and shape of the space at disposal. Here,
slight industrial variations are necessary and inevitable; and the
insect excels in them without any apprenticeship, as the experiment with
the native Osmia of the quarries has just proved.
Animal resources have a certain elasticity, within narrow limits. What
we learn from the animals' industry at a given moment is not always the
full measure of their skill. They possess latent powers held in reserve
for certain emergencies. Long generations can succeed one another
without employing them; but, should some circumstance require it,
suddenly those powers burst forth, free of any previous attempts,
even as the spark potentially contained in the flint flashes forth
independently of all preceding gleams. Could one who knew nothing of the
Sparrow but her nest under the eaves suspect the ball-shaped nest at the
top of a tree? Would one who knew nothing of the Osmia save her home
in the Snail-shell expect to see her accept as her dwelling a stump
of reed, a paper funnel, a glass tube? My neighbour the Sparrow,
impulsively taking it into her head to leave the roof for the
plane-tree, the Osmia of the quarries, rejecting her natal cabin, the
spiral of the shell, for my cylinder, alike show us how sudden and
spontaneous are the industrial variations of animals.