Scientific nomenclature joins two formidable names

To describe the insect that forms the subject of this chapter, scientific nomenclature joins two formidable names: that of the Minotaur, Minos’ bull fed on human flesh in the crypts of the Cretan labyrinth; and that of Typhœus, one of the giants, sons of Terra, who tried to scale the heavens. Thanks to the clue of thread which he received from Minos’ daughter Ariadne, Theseus the Athenian found the Minotaur, slew him and made his escape, safe and sound, after delivering his country for ever from the dreadful tribute destined for the monster’s food.

Typhœus, struck by a thunderbolt on his heaped-up mountains, was hurled under Mount Etna. He is there still. His breath is the smoke of the volcano. When he coughs, he spits out streams of lava; when he shifts his position from one shoulder to the other, he puts Sicily aflutter; he shakes her with an earthquake.

It is not unpleasant to find an echo of these old fables in the history of animals. Mythological denominations, so resonant and pleasing to the ear, entail no inconsistencies with reality, a fault that is not always avoided by the terms compiled wholly of data gathered from the lexicon. When vague analogies, in addition, connect the fabled with the historical, then surnames and forenames [128]both become very happy. Such is the case with Minotaurus Typhœus (Lin.).

It is the name given to a fair-sized black coleopteron, closely related to the Earth-borers, the Geotrupes. He is a peaceable, inoffensive creature, but even better-horned than Minos’ bull. None among our harness-loving insects wears so threatening an armour. The male carries on his corselet a sheaf consisting of three steeled spears, parallel to one another and jutting forward. Imagine him the size of a bull; and Theseus himself, if he met him in the fields, would hardly dare to face his terrible trident.

The Typhœus of the legend had the ambition to sack the home of the gods by stacking one upon the other a pile of mountains torn from their base; the Typhœus of the naturalists does not climb: he descends; he bores the ground to enormous depths. The first, with a movement of the shoulder, sets a province heaving; the second, with a thrust of its chine, makes his mole-hill tremble as Etna trembles when he stirs who lies buried within her depths.

Such is the insect wherewith we are concerned.

But what is the use of this history, what the use of all this minute research? I well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of pepper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of this kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent upon one another’s extermination. The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves.

The insect is easy to obtain, cheap to feed and not repulsive to examine organically; and it lends itself far [129]better than the higher animals to the investigations of our curiosity. Besides, the others are our near neighbours and do but repeat a somewhat monotonous theme, whereas the insect, with its unparalleled wealth of instincts, habits and structure, reveals a new world to us, much as though we were conferring with the natives of another planet. This is the reason that makes me constantly renew my unwearied relations with the insect and hold it in such high esteem.

Minotaurus Typhœus favours the open sandy places where, on their way to the grazing-ground, the flocks of sheep scatter their trails of black pellets which constitute his regulation fare. Couples jointly addicted to nest-building begin to meet in the first days of March. The two sexes, until then isolated in surface-burrows, are now associated for a long time to come.

Do the husband and wife recognize each other among their fellows? Are they mutually faithful? Cases of breach of matrimony are very rare, in fact unknown, on the part of the mother, who has long ceased to leave the house; on the other hand, they are frequent on the part of the father, whose duties often oblige him to come outside. As will be seen presently, he is, throughout his life, the purveyor of victuals and the person entrusted with the carriage of the rubbish. Alone, at different hours of the day, he flings out of doors the earth thrown up by the mother’s excavations; alone he explores the vicinity of the home at night, in quest of the pellets whereof his sons’ loaves shall be kneaded.

Sometimes, two burrows are side by side. Cannot the collector of provisions, on returning home, easily mistake the door and enter another’s house? On his walks abroad, does he never happen to meet ladies taking the [130]air who have not yet settled down; and is he, then, not forgetful of his first mate and ready for divorce? The question deserved to be examined. I tried to solve it in the manner that follows.

Two couples are taken from the ground at a time when the excavations are in full swing. Indelible marks, contrived with the point of a needle on the lower edge of the elytra, will enable me to distinguish them one from the other. The four subjects of my experiment are distributed at random, one by one, over the surface of a sandy area a couple of spans thick. A soil of this depth will be sufficient for the excavations of a night. In case provisions should be needed, a handful of sheep-droppings is served. A large reversed earthen pan covers the arena, prevents escape and produces the darkness favourable to mental concentration.

The next morning provides a splendid response. There are two burrows in the establishment, no more; the couples have formed again as they were: each Jack has his Jill. A second experiment, made next day, and a third meet with the same success: those marked with a point are together, those not marked are together, at the bottom of the gallery.

Five times more, day after day, I make them set up house anew. Things now begin to be spoilt. Sometimes, each of the four that are being experimented on settles apart; sometimes, the same burrow contains the two males or the two females; sometimes, the same crypt receives the two sexes, but differently associated from what they were at the start. I have abused my powers of repetition. Henceforth disorder reigns. My daily shufflings have demoralized the burrowers; a crumbling home, always requiring to be begun afresh, has put an [131]end to lawful associations. Respectable married life becomes impossible from the moment when the house falls in from day to day.

No matter: the first three experiments, made when alarms, time after time repeated, had not yet tangled the delicate connecting thread, seem to point to a certain constancy in the Minotaurus household. He and she know each other, find each other in the tumult of events which my mischievous doings force upon them; they show each other a mutual fidelity, a very unusual quality in the insect class, which is but too prone to forget its matrimonial obligations.

We recognize one another by our speech, by the sound, the inflection of our voices. They, on the other hand, are dumb, deprived of all means of vocal appeal. There remains the sense of smell. Minotaurus finding his mate makes me think of my friend Tom, the house-dog, who, at his moony periods, lifts his nose in the air, sniffs the breeze and jumps over the garden-walls, eager to obey the distant and magical convocation; he puts me in mind of the Great Peacock Moth, who swiftly covers several miles to pay his homage to the new-hatched maid.

The comparison, however, is far from perfect. The dog and the big Moth get wind of the wedding before they know the bride. Minotaurus, on the other hand, has no experience of long pilgrimages, yet makes his way, in a brief circuit, to her whom he has already visited; he knows her, he distinguishes her from the others by certain emanations, certain individual scents inappreciable to any save the enamoured swain. Of what do these effluvia consist? The insect did not tell me; and that is a pity, for it would have taught us things worth knowing about its feats of smell.[132]

Now how is the work divided in this household? To discover this is not one of those easy undertakings for which the point of a knife suffices. He who proposes to visit the burrowing insect at home must have recourse to arduous sapping. We have here to do not with the apartment of the Sacred Beetle, the Copris or the others, which is soon laid bare with a mere pocket-trowel: we have to do with a pit the bottom of which can be reached only with a stout spade, sturdily wielded for hours at a stretch. And, if the sun be at all hot, one returns from the drudgery utterly exhausted.

Oh, my poor joints, grown rusty with age! To suspect the existence of a fine problem underground and not to be able to dig! The zeal survives, as ardent as in the days when I used to pull down the spongy slopes beloved by the Anthophora; the love of research has not abated, but the strength is lacking. Luckily, I have an assistant, in the shape of my son Paul, who lends me the vigour of his wrists and the suppleness of his loins. I am the head, he is the arm.

The rest of the family, including the mother—and she not the least eager—usually go with us. One cannot have too many eyes when the pit becomes deep and one has to observe from a distance the minute documents exhumed by the spade. What the one misses the other perceives. Huber,1 when he went blind, studied the bee through the intermediary of a clear-sighted and devoted adjutrix. I am even better-off than the great Swiss naturalist. My sight, which is still fairly good, although exceedingly tired, is aided by the deep-seeing eyes of all [133]my family. I owe to them the fact that I am able to pursue my researches: let me thank them here.

PLATE VI

Minotaurus Typhœus, male and female.

Excavating Minotaurus’ burrow.

We are on the spot early in the morning. We soon find a burrow with a large mole-hill formed of cylindrical stoppers forced out in one lump by blows of the rammer. We clear away the mound and a pit of great depth opens below it. A useful reed, gathered on the way, serves me as a guide, diving lower and lower down. At last, at about five feet, the reed touches bottom. We are there, we have reached Minotaurus’ chamber.

The pocket-trowel prudently lays things bare and we see the occupants appear: the male first and, a little lower, the female. When the couple are removed, a dark, circular patch shows: this is the end of the column of victuals. Careful now and let us dig gently! What we have to do is to cut away the central clod at the bottom of the vat, to isolate it from the surrounding earth and then, slipping the trowel underneath and using it as a lever, to extract the block all in a lump. There! That’s done it! We possess the couple and their nest. A morning of arduous digging has procured us those treasures: Paul’s steaming back could tell us at the price of what efforts.

This depth of five feet is not and could not be constant; numbers of causes induce it to vary, such as the degree of freshness and consistency of the soil traversed, the insect’s passion for work and the time available, according to the more or less remote date of the laying. I have seen burrows go a little lower; I have seen others reach barely three feet. In any case, Minotaurus, to settle his family, requires a lodging of exaggerated depth, such as is dug by no other burrowing insect of my acquaintance. Presently we shall have to ask ourselves what are the [134]imperious needs that oblige the collector of sheep-droppings to reside so low down in the earth.

Before leaving the spot, let us note a fact the evidence of which will be of value later. The female was right at the bottom of the burrow; above her, at some distance, was the male: both were struck motionless with fright in the midst of an occupation the nature whereof we are not yet able to specify. This detail, observed repeatedly in the different burrows excavated, seems to show that each of the two fellow-workers has a fixed place.

The mother, more skilled in nursery matters, occupies the lower floor. She alone digs, versed as she is in the properties of the perpendicular, which economizes work while giving the greatest depth. She is the engineer, always in touch with the working-face of the gallery. The other is her journeyman-mason. He is stationed at the back, ready to load the rubbish on his horny hod. Later, the excavatrix becomes a baker: she kneads the cakes for the children into cylinders; the father is then her baker’s boy. He fetches her from outside the wherewithal for making flour. As in every well-regulated household, the mother is minister of the interior, the father minister of the exterior. This would explain their invariable position in the tubular home. The future will tell us if these conjectures represent the reality as it is.

For the moment, let us make ourselves at home and examine at leisure the central clod so laboriously acquired. It contains preserved foodstuffs in the shape of a sausage nearly as long and thick as one’s finger. This is composed of a dark, compact matter, arranged in layers, which we recognize as the sheep-pellets reduced to morsels. Sometimes, the dough is fine and almost homogeneous from one end of the cylinder to the other; more often, the [135]piece is a sort of hardbake, in which large fragments are held together by a cement of amalgam. The baker apparently varies the more or less finished confection of her pastry according to the time at her disposal.

The thing is closely moulded in the terminal pocket of the burrow, where the walls are smoother and more carefully fashioned than in the rest of the pit. The point of the knife easily strips it of the surrounding earth, which peels like a rind or bark. In this way, I obtain the food-cylinder free of any earthy blemish.

Having done this, let us look into the matter of the egg; for the pastry has certainly been manipulated in view of a grub. Guided by what I learnt some time ago from the Geotrupes, who lodge the egg at the lower end of their pudding, in a special recess contrived in the very heart of the provisions, I expect to find Minotaurus’ egg right at the bottom of the sausage. I am ill-informed. The egg sought for is not at the expected end, nor at the other end, nor at any point whatever of the victuals.

A search outside the provisions shows it me at last. It is below the food, in the sand itself, deprived of all the finikin cares dear to mothers. There is here not a smooth-walled cell, such as the delicate epidermis of the new-born grub would seem to call for, but a rough cavity, the result of a mere landslip rather than of maternal industry. The worm is to be hatched in this rude berth, at some distance from its provisions. To reach the food, it will have to demolish and pass through a ceiling of sand some millimetres thick.

With insects held captive in an apparatus of my invention, I have succeeded in tracing the construction of that sausage. The father goes out and selects a pellet whose length is greater than the diameter of the pit. He [136]conveys it to the mouth, either backwards, by dragging it with his forefeet, or straight ahead, by rolling it along with little strokes of his shield. He reaches the edge of the hole. Will he hurl the lump down the precipice with one last push? Not at all: he has plans that are incompatible with a violent fall.

He enters, embracing the pellet with his legs and taking care to introduce it by one end. On reaching a certain distance from the bottom, he has only to slant the piece slightly to make it find a support at its two ends against the walls of the channel: this because of the greater length of its main axis. He thus obtains a sort of temporary flooring suited to receive the burden of two or three pellets. The whole forms the workshop in which the father means to do his task without disturbing the mother, who is fully engaged below. It is the mill whence will be lowered the semolina for making the cakes.

The miller is well-equipped for his work. Look at his trident. On the solid basis of the corselet stand three sharp spears, the two outer ones long, the middle one short, all three pointing forwards. What purpose does this weapon serve? At first sight, one would take it for a masculine decoration, one of so many others, of very varied forms, worn by the corporation of Dung-beetles. Well, it is something more than an ornament: Minotaurus turns his gaud into a tool.

The three unequal points describe a concave arch, wide enough to admit a spherical sheep-dropping. Standing on his imperfect and shaky floor, which demands the employment of his four hind-legs, propped against the walls of the perpendicular channel, how will Minotaurus manage to keep the elusive olive in position and break it up? Let us watch him at work.

PLATE VII

The Minotaurus couple engaged on miller’s and baker’s work.

[137]

Stooping a little, he digs his fork into the piece, thenceforth rendered stationary, for it is caught between the prongs of the implement. The fore-legs are free; with their toothed armlets they can saw the morsel, lacerate it and reduce it to particles which gradually fall through the crevices of the flooring and reach the mother below.

The substance which the miller sends scooting down is not a flour passed through the bolting-machine, but a coarse grain, a mixture of pulverized remnants and of pieces hardly ground at all. Incomplete though it be, this preliminary trituration is of the greatest assistance to the mother in her tedious job of bread-making: it shortens the work and allows the best and the middling to be separated straight away. When everything, including the floor itself, is ground to powder, the horned miller returns to the upper air, gathers a fresh harvest and recommences his shredding labours at leisure.

Nor is the baker inactive in her laboratory. She collects the remnants pouring down around her, subdivides them yet further, refines them and makes her selection: this, the tenderer part, for the central crumb; that, tougher, for the crust of the loaf. Turning this way and that, she pats the material with the battledore of her flattened arms; she arranges it in layers, which presently she compresses by stamping on them where they lie, much after the manner of a vine-grower treading his vintage. Rendered firm and compact, the mass will keep better and longer.

After some ten days of this united labour, the couple at last obtain the long, cylindrical loaf. The father has done the grinding, the mother the kneading.

I have even succeeded in watching the digging of this very deep burrow, thanks to a complicated series of [138]artifices which it would take too long to set forth here. The mother is at the bottom of the pit: she alone attacks the working-face, she alone digs. The male keeps at the back of his spouse. He gradually collects the rubbish and makes a load of it which he lifts with his three-pronged fork and hoists outside with much exhausting labour.

This is the moment to recapitulate Minotaurus’ merits. When the great colds are over, he sets out in quest of a mate, buries himself with her and thenceforth remains faithful to her, despite his frequent excursions out of doors and the meetings to which these are likely to lead. With indefatigable zeal, he assists the burrower, herself destined never to leave her home until the emancipation of the family. For a month and more, he loads the rubbish of the excavation on his forked hod; he hoists it outside and remains ever patient, never disheartened by his arduous feats of climbing. He leaves the comparatively easy work of the excavating rake to the mother and keeps the more troublesome task, the exhausting carriage through a narrow, very high and perpendicular gallery, for himself.

Next, the navvy turns himself into a collector of foodstuffs; he goes after provisions, he gathers the wherewithal for his sons to live upon. To facilitate the work of his mate, who shreds, stratifies and compresses the preserves, he once more changes his trade and becomes a miller. At some distance from the bottom, he bruises and crumbles the matter found hardened by the sun; he makes it into semolina and flour that gradually pour down into the maternal bakery. Lastly, worn out by his efforts, he leaves the house and goes to die outside, at a distance, in the open air. He has gallantly performed his duty as [139]a paterfamilias; he has spent himself without stint to secure the prosperity of his kith and kin.

The mother, on her side, allows nothing to divert her from her housekeeping. Throughout her working life, she never leaves her home: domi mansit, as the ancients used to say, speaking of their model matrons; domi mansit, kneading her cylindrical loaves, filling them with an egg, watching them until the exodus arrives. When the day comes for the autumnal merry-makings, she at last returns to the surface, accompanied by the young people, who disperse at will to feast in the regions frequented by the sheep. Thereupon, having nothing left to do, the devoted mother perishes.

Yes, amid the general indifference of fathers for their sons, Minotaurus displays a very remarkable zeal where his family are concerned. Forgetful of himself, refusing to be led away by the delights of spring, when it would be so pleasant to see a little country, to banquet with his fellows, to tease and flirt with his fair neighbours, he sticks to his work underground and wears himself out so as to leave a fortune to his descendants. Here is one who, when he stiffens his legs for the last time, is well entitled to say:

“I have done my duty; I have worked.”