THE VINE-WEEVIL

The Life of the Weevil by Jean-Henri Fabre and Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE VINE-WEEVIL

Chapter VIII. THE VINE-WEEVIL

In the spring, while the poplar-leaves are being worked into cylinders, another Rhynchites, who is likewise magnificently attired, is making cigars out of vine-leaves. She is a little bigger, of a metallic lustre, a golden green that changes to blue. Were she only larger, the resplendent Vine-weevil would occupy a very respectable place among the gems of entomology.

To attract our eyes, she has something better than her brilliancy: she has her industry, which has earned her the hatred of the vine-grower, jealous of his property. The peasant knows her: he even calls her by a special name, an honour rarely bestowed in the world of the smaller creatures.

The rural vocabulary is rich in names of plants, but very poor in names of insects. A couple of dozen words, inextricably confused because of their general character, represent the whole list of insect names in our Provençal idiom, expressive and fertile though this idiom be when it refers to the vegetable world and even, at times, to a sorry weed which one would think was known to the botanist only.[128]

The man of the soil is interested above all things in the plant, the great foster-mother; all else leaves him indifferent. Splendid adornment, curious habits, marvels of instinct: all these make no appeal to him. But to touch his vine, to eat other people’s grass: what a heinous crime! Quick, a name, a badge of infamy, to hang round the malefactor’s neck!

This time the Provençal peasant has taken the trouble to invent a special term: he calls the cigar-roller the Bécaru. Here the scientific name and the rural name are in complete agreement. Rhynchites and Bécaru are exact equivalents: both allude to the insect’s long beak.

But how much more correct is the vine-grower’s term, in its lucid simplicity, than the scientific name, set forth in full, with its imperative complement relating to the species! I rack my brain in vain to guess the reason why the cigar-roller of the vine was called the Rhynchites of the Birch (R. betuleti, Fab.).

If there be in fact a Weevil that exploits the birch-tree, it is certainly not the same as that of the vineyards: the two leaves to be rolled are too dissimilar in shape and size to suit the same worker.

Recorders of descriptions, you who, under the scrupulous eye of the magnifying-glass, specify the shapes and establish the identity of the animal species, before you give names and surnames to your impaled insects, pray, pray inquire a little [129]into their manner of life. By so doing, you will see things more clearly, you will avoid much detestable nonsense, and you will spare the novice such doubts as those which obsess him when he finds himself obliged to label a Weevil inhabiting the vine-branches as a Rhynchites of the Birch. We are ready to excuse cacophonous syllables and grating consonants; but we reject with exasperation a name that misrepresents the facts.

In her work the Vine-weevil pursues the same method as the Poplar-weevil. The leaf is first pricked with the rostrum at a point on the stalk, which checks the flow of the sap and makes the edges of the faded leaf pliable. The rolling begins at the angle of one of the lower lobes, with the smooth, green upper surface inside and the downy, strongly-veined lower surface outside.

But the great size of the leaf and its deeply indented outline hardly ever allow of regular work from one end of the leaf to the other. Over and over again, sudden folds occur and alter the direction of the rolling, leaving now the green and now the downy surface outside, without any appreciable design, as though by chance. The poplar-leaf, with its simple form and its moderate size, yields an elegant cylinder; the vine-leaf, with its cumbersome width and complicated outline, produces a shapeless cigar, an untidy bundle.

This is not due to defective talents, but to the difficulty of manipulating and controlling a leaf [130]of this kind. The mechanical method, indeed, is the same as that practised on the poplar-leaf. With three legs here and three legs there on the edges of the fold, the Bécaru obtains a purchase on one side and tugs and strains on the other.

Like her rival cigar-maker, she works backwards, keeping her eyes upon the part which, folded that moment and still unset, may require immediate touching up. The product is thus watched until it gives proof of its stability.

Like the other, she too seals the denticulations of the final layer by pressing them with her rostrum. Here there is no sticky secretion oozing from the edges of the leaf, but there is a downy fluff whose fibres get entangled and cause adhesion. On the whole, therefore, the method employed by the two Rhynchites is the same.

Nor do their domestic habits differ. While the mother is patiently rolling her cylinder, the father remains close at hand, on the same leaf. He looks on. Next, he comes running along in a hurry, takes his stand in the crease and kindly lends the assistance of his grappling-irons. But he again is not a very diligent helper. His brief collaboration is a pretext to tease the worker and achieve his ends by sheer persistence.

He retires satisfied. Let us watch him. Before the roll is finished, we shall see him return many times, inspired by the same intentions, which are rarely scorned. I need not insist further on these [131]pairings, which are repeated indefinitely and run counter to the classic data on one of the nicest points of insect physiology. To impress the seal of life upon the hundreds of eggs of the mother Bombyx,1 or the thirty thousand or more of the mother Bee, the father exerts only one direct intervention. The Weevil claims the privilege of intervening for almost every egg. I leave the curious problem to the experts.

Let us unroll a recently-made cigar. The eggs, fine, amber-coloured beads, are scattered, one by one, at very different depths in the spiral. As a rule, I find several, from five to eight. The multiplicity of fellow-feasters, in both the rolled poplar-leaf and the rolled vine-leaf, bears witness to extreme frugality.

The two leaf-rollers are quickly hatched: the grub is born in five or six days’ time. Then the observer begins to be faced with the same difficulties that beset a prentice hand in the rearing of larvæ; and these difficulties are all the more exasperating in that there was nothing to predict them. The course to be followed here seems indeed so very simple.

Since the rolled leaves are at the same time board and lodging, we have but to pick them, from the vine and the poplar respectively, and to place them in the glass jars, whence we can take them at such times as we consider suitable. What used to be [132]effected in the open air, amid the disturbances of the atmosphere, will be effected all the better in the peaceful shelter of the glass. There can be no doubt, therefore, of an easy success.

But what is this? From time to time I unroll a few cigars to ascertain the state of their contents. What I see fills me with anxiety for the fate of my baby-farm. The young larvæ are very far from thriving. I find some of them languishing and emaciated, shrivelling into a wrinkled ball; I find some of them dead. Vainly I possess myself in patience: the weeks go by and not one of my grubs grows or gives a sign of energy. From day to day my two colonies dwindle until they consist wholly of dying larvæ. When July comes, there is not a living thing left in my glass jars.

All have died. And of what? Of starvation, yes, of starvation in a well-stored granary. This is evident from the small amount of food consumed. The cylinders are almost untouched; at most I perceive in the midst of their layers a few scratches, the traces of a scornful tooth. Probably the food was too dry, had been rendered uneatable by desiccation.

Under natural conditions, while the burning heat of the sun hardened the leaves by day, the mists and the dew softened them at night. Thus, in the heart of the spiral layers, a column of soft crumb is preserved, a necessity for the tender nurselings. A sojourn in the uniformly dry atmosphere [133]of the jars has, on the other hand, turned the roll into a hard, stale crust which the grubs refused to touch. The failure is due to that.

A year later, I begin again, this time more cautiously. The rolled leaves, I said to myself, remain hanging for some days on the vine or the poplar. The perforation of the leaf-stalk has not completely severed the ducts conveying the sap; a scanty flow still persists and for some time maintains a certain flexibility in the leaf, especially in the centre of the spiral, which is not exposed to the action of the sun. Consequently the new-born grub has fresh provisions within reach of its mandibles. It waxes big and strong and acquires a stomach able to satisfy itself with less tender food.

Meantime, from day to day, the roll turns brown and dry. If it remained indefinitely hanging on the bough and if, as often happens, there were a lack of moisture at nights, it would dry up completely and its inmates would perish as they did in my glass jars. But, sooner or later, the wind shakes them off and they drop to the ground.

Their fall is the salvation of the grub, which is still very far from full-grown. At the foot of the poplar, under the grass of the meadow subject to frequent irrigation, the soil is always damp; at the foot of the vine-stock, the earth, overshadowed by the branches, fairly well retains the moisture of the last showers. Lying in the wet and sheltered [134]from the direct onslaughts of the sun, the Rhynchites’ victuals remain as soft as need be.

Thus I argued, meditating a fresh experiment; and the facts confirmed the accuracy of my forecast. This time all goes well. Rather than the green rolls of recent manufacture, I gather the brown cigars which are due to fall to the ground. The larvæ in these latter, being older, are less difficult to rear. Lastly, my harvest is installed in glass jars as before, but on a bed of moist sand. With this and this alone I achieve complete success.

Despite the mildew which this time invades the heaped cigars and seems bound to jeopardize everything, the larvæ thrive and grow without hindrance. The decay which I distrusted so much in the beginning, when I kept my crops dry to avoid it, this decay suits them. I see them taking big mouthfuls of decomposing shreds, the tainted remains of leaves that have almost turned to mould.

I am no longer surprised that in my first experiments my nurselings allowed themselves to die of hunger. Obeying a mistaken idea of hygiene, I took pains to keep the rations in good condition, in an atmosphere free from mustiness. I ought, on the contrary, to have allowed fermentation to do its work, softening the tough tissues and enhancing their flavour.

Six weeks later, in the middle of June, the oldest rolls are dilapidated hovels, retaining scarcely a [135]trace of their cylindrical form save the outer layer, a protecting roof. Let us open one of these ruins. Inside, there is absolute wreck, a mixture of shapeless remnants and black granules, like fine gunpowder; outside, a crumbling envelope, pierced here and there with holes. These openings tell me that the inhabitants have departed and made their way underground.

I find them, in fact, in the layers of moist sand with which the jars are provided. Pushing and heaving with their backs, they have each dug themselves a round hollow, taking up the least possible room, in which the grub, rolled into a bunch, makes ready for its new life.

Though formed of sandy particles, the wall of the cell does not threaten to collapse. Before lapsing into the sleep of the transformation, the recluse has deemed it prudent to strengthen its house. With a little care, I am able to detach the dwelling in the form of a little ball the size of a pea.

I then discover that the materials are cemented by means of a gummy produce which, liquid at the moment of its emission, has penetrated to a sufficient depth and welded the sandy grains into a wall of a certain thickness. This product, which is colourless and not very plentiful, leaves me in doubt as to its origin. It certainly does not come from glands similar to the silk-tubes of the caterpillars; the Weevil-grub possesses nothing of that [136]kind. It is, therefore, a contribution from the digestive canal, presented through either the entrance or the exit-door. Which of the two?

Without completely solving the question of this cement, another Weevil supplies a fairly probable answer. This is Brachycerus algirus, Fab., an ugly, unwieldy insect, covered with little warts each ending in a claw-like horn. It is soot-black and almost always soiled with earth when you meet it in spring. This dusty garb denotes a tunneller.

The Brachycerus, in fact, haunts the subsoil, hunting for garlic, the exclusive food of her larva. In my modest kitchen-garden, garlic, dear to the Provence folk, has its special corner. At the time when we gather it, in July, most of the heads give me a magnificent grub, fat as butter, which has dug itself a large hollow in one of the cloves, only one, without touching the rest. This is the grub of the Brachycerus, which discovered the aioli of the Provençal cooks long before they did.

Raw garlic, Raspail2 used to say, is the camphor of the poor. The camphor possibly, but not the bread. This paradox becomes a reality in the case of our grub, which is so much in love with this powerful condiment that it will not eat anything else its whole life long. How, with this fiery diet, does it put on such fine layers of fat? That is its [137]secret; and there is room for every sort of taste in this world of ours.

After eating its clove, this lover of garlic dives deeper into the soil, fearing perhaps the lifting of the bulbs, the time for which will soon arrive. It foresees the annoyance which the market-gardener would cause it; and it goes below, far from the natal plant.

I have reared a dozen in a jar half full of sand. Some have established themselves right against the wall, which enables me to obtain a vague idea of how things happen in the underground cell. The builder is bent into a bow which now and again closes and forms a circle. I then seem to see it collecting, with the tips of its mandibles, as the Larini do, a sticky drop which forms at its hinder end. With this it soaks the sandy wall and smears the glass, on which the stuff hardens in cloudy streaks, white and pale-yellow.

On the whole, the appearance of the cement employed and the little that I can see of the grub’s proceedings incline me to believe that the Brachycerus strengthening its cabin uses the same method as the Larinus building its thatched hut. The Brachycerus also knows the whimsical secret of turning the intestine into a factory of hydraulic cement. The sandy agglomerate thus obtained forms a fairly solid shell, in which the insect, which reaches the adult stage in August, remains until the garlic season is at hand.[138]

This method may well be general among the various Weevils that, in the larval, nymphal or adult state, spend part of the year tucked away in an underground shell. The leaf-rollers, notably the Rhynchites of the poplar and the vine, sparing though they be in the use of their cement, no doubt have a store of it in their intestine, for it would be difficult for them to find anything better. Let us, however, leave a door open to doubt and continue.

For the first time, at the end of August, four months after the rolling of the cigars, I take the Poplar-weevil in her adult form out of her shell. I disinter her in all her gleaming gold and copper; but the beauty, if I had left her undisturbed, would have slept in her subterranean fortress till the young leaves sprouted on her tree, in April.

I disinter others, soft and quite white, whose limp wing-cases open to allow the crumpled wings to spread. The most advanced of these pale sleepers boast, by way of a startling contrast, a deep-black rostrum with violet gleams. The Sacred Beetle, in the early days of his final form, begins by hardening and colouring his implements of labour: the toothed arm-pieces and the clypeus with its semi-circular notching. The Weevil likewise in the first place hardens and colours her drill. These industrious workers interest me with their preparations. Barely has the rest of the body set and crystallized before the tools of its future work [139]acquire exceptional strength, which they owe to an early and long-protracted tempering.

From the broken shells I also take nymphs and larvæ. The latter apparently will not pass beyond the first stage this year. What is the use of hurrying? The larva, no less than the adult and perhaps more so, is given to slumbering through the severities of the winter. When the poplar unfurls its sticky buds and the Cricket on the greensward strikes up the first bars of his melody, they will be ready, one and all: the forward and backward alike; faithful to the call of spring, all will come forth from the ground, eager to climb the kindly tree and to renew the leaf-rollers’ festival in the sunlight.

In its pebbly, parching soil, on which the food-cylinders dry up so quickly, the Vine-weevil lags behind, exposed as she is to periods of unemployment due to the absence of properly softened food. It is in September and October that I obtain the first adults, splendid gems, enclosed, until spring, in their casket, the underground shell. At this season there is an abundance of buried nymphs and larvæ. Many of the grubs even have not yet left their cylinders; but, to judge by their size, they will hardly linger much longer. At the first frosts, all will become torpid and postpone their further development until the end of the winter.

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