MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS: FURTHER OBSERVATIONS

More Beetles by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS: FURTHER OBSERVATIONS

CHAPTER VI. MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS: FURTHER OBSERVATIONS

The bamboo tripod, so alien in its arrangement to the Minotaur’s habits, might well have been the cause, in part, of the father’s premature decease. In the glass tube, only one cylindrical cake alone was prepared. Evidently this was not enough. Two at least are needed to maintain the species in the actual state; more would be needed, as many as possible, for increased prosperity. But in my apparatus there is no room, unless the food-cylinders are superimposed and piled in columns, a mistake which the mother would never commit.

Superimposed stories would afterwards make the emergence of the offspring difficult. In their eagerness to reach the light, the oldest, grown sufficiently mature and occupying the foot of the column, would topple over and lacerate the late arrivals, who are [126]not yet ready to occupy the top. For a quiet, exodus it is important that the shaft should be free from one end to the other. The several cavities must therefore be grouped side by side and communicate, each by a lateral passage, with the common ascension-shaft.

Long ago, the Bison Ortis1 showed us his preserves, the rations of so many grubs, arranged near the bottom of the burrow. A short passage connected each of the chambers with the vertical shaft. The cells were all grouped on one landing. Probably the Minotaur adopts a similar system.

Indeed, when I go digging in the fields, a little late in the season, when the father is already dead, my trowel unearths a second chamber, with an egg and provisions, at some distance from the main chamber, which itself contains an egg and is duly victualled. Another excavation gives me two eccentric cells. The arrangement is the same in each case, in the blind alley of the burrow and in its annexes: at the base, in the sand, is an egg; above it are the victuals, packed into a column.[127]

It may be assumed that, if the difficulty of wielding the spade at the bottom of a funnel had not exceeded my assistant’s patience and flexibility, similar excavations, repeated throughout the proper season, would have added to the number of cells served by the same shaft. How many are there altogether? Four or five or six? I do not know exactly. A moderate number, in any case. And this is bound to be so. The hoarders of food for the family are not excessively fruitful. They have no time to bequeath supplies to a numerous brood.

The rearing-apparatus in the bamboo tripod has a surprise in store for me. I inspect it after the father’s departure and decease. There is certainly a column of provisions similar to that which I dig up in the fields; but these provisions are not accompanied by an egg, either at the base or elsewhere. The table is served and the consumer is not present. Can it be that the mother is reluctant to populate the inconvenient abode which I force upon her? Apparently not, for she would not first have kneaded the long loaf, if that loaf was to have proved useless. When desisting from [128]laying because of a defective home, she would have abstained from baking a cake that would serve no purpose.

Besides, the same fact recurs under normal conditions. In my dozen excavations in the fields—that their number was no greater must be attributed to the difficulty of the operation—the egg was lacking in three instances. The larder was deserted. No laying had taken place; and the provisions were there, manipulated in the usual fashion.

What I suspect is that the mother, not feeling in her ovaries germs ripened to the requisite degree, none the less labours to provide a store of food with her collaborator. She knows that the horned dandy, the enthusiastic helper, will disappear ere long, worn out by toil and time. She makes the most of his zeal and his energies before being deprived of them. Thus food is prepared in the cellar to be used afterwards by the mother, now a widow. To these provisions which are all the better in that they have been improved by fermentation, the mother will return, moving them and piling them up in a lateral cell, but this time with an egg under the heap. Thus provided for and enabled [129]to carry on alone, the widow that is to be will do the rest. The father may now die; the household will not suffer unduly.

The father’s premature end may well be caused by the melancholy due to inaction. He is a hard worker easily upset by the boredom of inactivity. In my apparatus, he pines away, after the first cake has been made, because the workshop is brought to a compulsory standstill, the rest of the glass having no accommodation for superimposed cells, which later would hinder the emergence of the family. For lack of space, the mother ceases to lay eggs; and the father, having nothing more to do, departs to die outside. Idleness has killed him.

In the open, the space underground is indefinite; it allows such a group of cells as is needed by the mother’s fruitfulness to be formed at the bottom of the shaft; but another difficulty arises, and a most serious one. When I myself am the purveyor, there is no fear of famine. I enquire daily into the state of the stores and I renew as required the available provisions scattered over the surface. My prisoners, without being overloaded, are always in the midst of plenty. It is a very different matter in the fields. [130]The Sheep is not so lavish that she always drops at one spot the number of pellets needed by the Minotaur, two hundred and more, as my subsequent observations will testify. An emission of three or four dozen may be regarded as a good many. The ruminant moves on and continues its distribution elsewhere.

Now the pill-gatherer is not of a roaming disposition. I cannot picture him going far in quest of the wherewithal to endow his offspring. How could he find his way again, after a long expedition, and come back home, pushing with his feet the pellets which he had picked up one by one? That flight and scent combined may enable him to light upon windfalls at a great distance for his own refection, I am quite ready to admit: the sober eater needs but little food; and, besides, the matter is not urgent. But, when nest-building is in question, the need is felt of great numbers of pellets, very quickly obtained. The Beetle, it is true, has taken care to establish himself near as copious a heap as possible. At night, he goes the rounds outside his dwelling, gathering the pellets almost on his threshold; he will even continue his search at a distance of some feet, in familiar [131]places, where he cannot go astray. But there comes a time when nothing is left in the neighbourhood; everything has been harvested.

The hoarder, who cannot bear distant expeditions, thereupon perishes of inaction; he quits the home where henceforth there is no more work for him. Having nothing left to do for want of materials, the roller, the bruiser of pills dies out of doors, in the open air. This is my explanation of the males found dead on the surface when May comes. They are the disconsolate victims of their passion for work. They abandon life the moment life becomes useless.

If my conjecture is well-founded, it must be possible for me to prolong the existence of these pessimists by placing gradually at the workers’ disposal as many pellets as they can wish for. It occurs to me to load the Minotaur with favours; I propose to create on his behalf a paradise where droppings abound, where the sugar-plums will be renewed as and when those already there are lowered into the cellar. Moreover, this delightful land will have a sandy soil, kept moist to the requisite degree; a depth equal to that of the usual burrows; and lastly ample [132]space to allow several cabins to be grouped at the bottom, one beside the other.

My calculations result in the structure which I will now describe. With strips of boarding a good finger’s-breadth thick, which will later reduce evaporation, the carpenter builds me a square, hollow prism, measuring some 56 inches in height. Three of its sides are permanently fastened with nails; the fourth consists of three shutters of equal size held in place by screws. This arrangement will enable me to inspect at will the top, the bottom or the middle part of the apparatus without shaking the contents. The inner side of the prism measures nearly 4 inches each way. The lower end is closed; the upper end is free and has a ledge on which rests a wide, projecting tray, representing the surroundings of the natural burrow. The tray is covered by a wire-gauze dome. The hollow column is filled with moist sandy earth, suitably packed. The tray itself receives a layer of the earth, a finger’s-breadth in depth.

There is one indispensable condition to be observed: the earthy contents of the apparatus must not get dry. The thickness of the planks prevents this partly; but it is not [133]enough, especially during the heat of summer. With this purpose in view, the bottom third of the long prism stands in a large flower-pot, filled with earth, which I keep damp by watering it in moderation. A slight absorption of the surrounding moisture through the wood will prevent the contents from becoming parched. The same contrivance ensures the steadiness of the apparatus, which, firmly implanted in a heavy base, will withstand the onslaughts of the wind, if need be, all the year round.

The middle third is wrapped in a thick coat of rags which the watering-can moistens almost daily. Lastly, the top third is bare; but the layer of earth on the tray, subjected by me to pretty frequent artificial rains, transmits a little moisture to it. By means of these various devices, I obtain a column of earth, neither swamped nor parched, of the kind which the Minotaur requires for his nest building.

Had I lent an ear to my ambitious plans, I should have had a dozen of these appliances constructed, so many questions were there to be solved; but it is a troublesome business, far beyond the means of my personal ingenuity; and impecuniosity, that terrible evil of [134]which Panurge complained, curbs my desire for apparatus. I allowed myself two and no more.

When they were stocked, I kept them during the winter in a small green-house, for fear of frost in a mass of earth of no great volume. At the bottom of his natural gallery, the Minotaur need not dread the severe cold: he is protected by a wall of unlimited thickness. In the narrow quarters of my divisioning, he would have undergone the sorest trials.

When the warm weather had come, I set up my two columns in the open air, and a few steps from my door. Standing side by side, they form a sort of pylon, of a strange order of architecture. Not a member of the household passes them without a glance. My own visits are assiduous, especially in the evening and the morning, when the night work begins and when it is finished. What happy moments I have spent, on the lookout near my pylon, watching and meditating!

Here are the facts: about the middle of December, I install in each of my two appliances a female, selected from among those which best lend themselves to my designs. At this time of the year, the sexes remain [135]apart. The males live in burrows of middling depth; the females go down rather lower. Some of these strenuous workers have already, without the aid of a helper, completed or very nearly completed the well required for the laying. On the 10th of December, I unearth one of them at a depth of almost four feet. These early diggers are not what I want. Wishing to observe the work when in full swing, I choose subjects buried not too low down in the fields.

In the centre of the column of earth in each apparatus, I make a shallow hole, which marks the beginning of the burrow. I drop the prisoner down it; and this is enough to accustom her to the place. A recorded number of Sheep-droppings are distributed around the opening. Henceforth things proceed of themselves: I have merely to renew the provisions when the need arises.

The cold season is spent in the balmy atmosphere of a green-house; and nothing remarkable happens. A small mound is formed, hardly big enough to fill the hollow of my hand. The hour has not yet come for serious operations.

In the middle of February, when the almond trees begin to blossom, the weather is [136]very mild. It is no longer winter, and it is not yet spring; the sun is pleasant in the daytime and at night there is a certain charm in the blaze of a few logs upon the hearth. On the rosemary bushes in the garden, already displaying their wealth of liliaceous flowers, the Bees are gathering booty, the red-bellied Osmiæ are humming, while the big grey Locusts stand twirling their great wings and proclaiming their joy of life. This delicious season of awakening spring should be to the Minotaurs’ liking.

I marry my captives: I give each of them a mate, a magnificent horned male, brought home from the fields. The household is set up during the night; and without delay the couple get to work in earnest. The co-operation has given fresh life to the workshop. Before this, the males, leading solitary lives in short burrows, used commonly to doze, not caring to gather pellets or to sink shafts of any depth; the females for the most part displayed no greater industry; the burrows remained superficial, the mounds comparatively flat, the harvest unproductive. As soon as the household is established, they dig deeply, and hoard plentifully. In twice twenty-four hours, the expulsion of rubbish [137]has hidden the home beneath a dome-shaped heap of earthly plugs nine inches in width; moreover, a dozen droppings have been sent down into the cellar.

This activity is maintained for three months or longer, broken by intervals of repose of varying duration, which are apparently rendered necessary by the operations of the miller and baker. The female never appears outside the burrow; it is always the male who emerges and sets out upon his quest, sometimes when twilight falls, more often at a later hour of the night.

The crop varies greatly, though I take care to keep the part around the burrow properly supplied. At one time, two or three pellets are enough; at another, as many as twenty are collected in a single night. The gleaner seems to be influenced by the atmospheric conditions. The harvest is usually most active when the sky looks threatening, as though preparing for a storm that fails to materialize, or when I myself create rain by watering the tray of my apparatus. In dry weather, on the contrary, whole weeks pass without the slightest attempts at storing.

As June draws nigh, feeling his end at [138]hand, the gallant fellow redoubles his ardour; he wishes before he dies to leave his family abundantly provided for. With a not always well-timed enthusiasm, the prodigal heaps pellet upon pellet, to the pitch of encumbering the burrow and making the mother’s business difficult to carry on. Excessive wealth is an incubus. The thoughtless Beetle recognizes the fact at last and ejects the superfluous food from the shaft.

On the first day of June, in one of my appliances, the sum of pellets sent down amounts to 239, a number that speaks well for the trident-bearer’s industry. My record of the droppings, kept as strictly as a banker’s account, confirms the enormous result. I am overjoyed by the treasure of the Minotaurs’; but, a few days later, an unexpected issue alarms me. One morning I find the mother dead. She has come up to breathe her last on the surface. It appears to be the rule that neither of the pair shall die in the children’s home. It is at a distance, in the open air, that the father and mother meet their end.

This reversal of the normal order of decease, the mother dying before the father, calls for enquiry. I inspect the inside of the [139]apparatus by unscrewing the three movable shutters. My precautions against dryness have been fully successful. The uppermost third of the column of sand has retained a certain moisture which gives firmness and prevents any landslips. The middle third, with its sheath of wet rags, is even more moist. Here the victuals are heaped up in a well-stored granary; the male is there, brisk and energetic. In the lowest third, which stands in the wet earth of a large flower-pot, the plasticity is as great as that which my spade encounters in the deep natural burrow. Everything seems to be in order; and yet there is not a trace of nest-building at the bottom of the shaft; there are no sausages prepared or even preparing. All the pellets are untouched.

It is quite obvious: the mother has refused to lay and consequently the father has refrained from grinding. Directly the kneading of loaves is discontinued, meal becomes useless. The harvest is none the less plentiful, in view of future events. The 239 pellets to which my notes bear witness are there, in their original condition and divided into several heaps. The shaft is not straight; it has spiral slopes, it has landings communicating [140]with little warehouses. Here are kept in reserve, at every level of the shaft, treasures which the mother will be able to employ even after the hoarder’s decease. Pending the arrival of the eggs and the preparation of the loaves on the offsprings’ behalf, the zealous father keeps on collecting, storing a little of the food at the bottom of his dwelling and a great deal more in lateral chambers, distributed over several floors.

But the eggs are wanting. What can the reason be? I begin by perceiving that the shaft runs down to the bottom of the apparatus, which is 55 inches high. It stops suddenly at the board which closes the bottom of the prism. This insuperable obstacle shows signs of attempted erosion. The mother, therefore, dug as long as digging was possible; then, coming to a barrier against which all her efforts failed, she climbed back to the surface, worn out and disheartened, having nothing left to do but die, for lack of an establishment to suit her.

Could she not lodge her eggs at the bottom of the prism, where a degree of moisture is maintained equal to that of the natural burrows? Perhaps not. In my part of the [141]world, we had a very peculiar spring in this year 1906. It snowed hard on the 22nd and 23rd of March. Never in this district had I seen so heavy and especially so late a fall of snow. It was followed by an endless drought, which turned the country into a dust-heap.

In the apparatus, in which my watchful care maintained the requisite moisture, the mother Minotaur seemed protected against this calamity. There is nothing to tell us, however, that she was not fully cognizant, through the thickness of the planks, of what was happening, or rather about to happen, outside. Gifted with an exquisite sense of atmosphere, she had a presentiment of the terrible drought, fatal to grubs lodged too near the surface. Being unable to reach the deep places recommended by instinct, she died without laying her eggs. I see no other reason than this distrustful meteorology capable of accounting for the facts.

The second apparatus, two days after the installation of the couple, provides me with a grievous surprise. The mother, for no apparent cause, leaves the house, goes to earth in the sand on the tray and does not budge, heedless of the cell where her horned [142]mate awaits her. Seven times over, at one day’s interval, do I carry her home, dropping her head foremost down the shaft. It is of no avail: she climbs back persistently during the night, makes off and goes to earth as far away as possible. If the trellis work of the cover did not restrain her flight, she would run away for good, seeking another husband elsewhere. Can the first be dead? Not at all. I find him hale and hearty as ever in the upper level of the pit.

Can these stubborn attempts at escape on the part of the mother, so stay-at-home by nature, be caused by incompatibility of temper? Why not? The female worker goes away because the male worker does not please her. It was I myself who made the match, which was subject to the hazard of my discoveries; and the suitor has not found favour. If things had happened according to rule, the bride would have made a choice, accepting this one and refusing that, guided by merits of which she alone could judge. When a couple plan a long life together, they do not lightly enter into indissoluble bonds. This at least is the opinion of the Minotaur family.

That others, the vast majority, should [143]become friends, fall out and make it up again, in sudden and fortuitous encounters, is a matter of no consequence. Life is short; they enjoy it as best they may, without being too particular. But here we have the true household, enduring and laborious. How is it possible to toil in double harness for the welfare of the offspring without mutual sympathy? We have already seen the Minotaur couple recognizing each other and coming together again amid the confusion resulting from the upheaval of two adjoining burrows; here we find it subject to quite as sensitive a repugnance. The ill-mated bride sulks; she means to get away at all costs.

As the divorce seems destined to be indefinitely prolonged, despite the calls to order which I repeat day after day for a week by restoring the female to her burrow, I end by changing the male. I replace him by another, no better—and no worse-looking than was the first. Henceforth matters resume their normal course and all is as well as can be. The shaft is deepened, the outside mound is raised, the provisions are stored away, the factory of preserved foodstuffs is in full swing.[144]

On the 2nd of June, the total number of pellets carried down amounts to 225. It is a splendid hoard. Shortly after, the father dies of old age. I find him near the mouth of the burrow, convulsively clutching his last pellet which he had not had time to carry down. The malady of age has surprised him in the midst of his labours, has struck him down on the harvest-field.

The widow continues her domestic work. To the riches amassed by the deceased, she adds, by her own activity, in the course of the month, thirty more pellets, making in all, since the foundation of the household, 255. Then comes the great heat, which favours idleness and slumber. The mother does not show herself any longer.

What does she do down below, in her cool cellar? Like the Copris mother apparently, she looks after her brood, going from cell to cell, sounding the cakes, investigating what is happening inside. It would be an act of barbarism to disturb her. We will wait till she comes out, accompanied by her offspring.

Let us profit by this long interval of rest to set forth the little that I have gathered from my attempts at rearing the Minotaur in a glass tube on the regulation diet. The [145]egg takes about four weeks to hatch. The first that I find, dating from the 17th of April, gives birth to a grub on the 15th of May. This slow process of hatching can be due only to an insufficiency of heat in the early spring: underground, at a depth of five feet, the temperature hardly varies.

For that matter, we shall see the larva likewise taking its time and going through the whole summer before changing into the adult insect. It is so snug inside a sausage, in a cellar free from atmospheric variations, far from the hurly-burly of the outer world, where rejoicings are not unattended by danger; it is so sweet to do nothing, to indulge in digestive slumbers! Why hurry? The bustle of active life will come but too soon. The Minotaurs seem to hold that opinion: they prolong as far as may be the bliss of infancy.

The grub which has just been born in the sand pegs away with its legs and mandibles, strains and heaves with its rump, makes itself a passage and, from one day to the next, reaches the provisions piled up above it. In the glass tube in which I rear it I see it climbing, slipping into crevices, making a selection from the food about it and capriciously [146]tasting on this side and on that. It coils and uncoils, it wriggles about, it sways to and fro. It is happy. So am I, to see it satisfied and glistening with health. I shall be able to watch its progress to the end.

In a couple of months’ time, now ascending, now descending through its column of food and stopping at the best places, it is a handsome larva, well-shaped, neither fat nor spare, not unlike the Cetonia-grub in appearance. Its hind-legs have none of the shocking irregularity that used to surprise me so greatly when I was studying the family of the Geotrupes.

The grub of the last-named has hind-legs weaker than the rest, twisted, unfit for walking and turned over on its back. It is born a cripple. The grub of the Minotaur, despite the close analogy between the two dung-workers, is exempt from this infirmity. Its third pair of legs is no less accurate in shape and arrangement than the two other pairs. Why is the Geotrupes knock-kneed at birth and his close kinsman perfect? This is one of those little secrets of which it is only fitting that we should know how to admit our ignorance.

The larval stage ends in the last days of [147]August. Under the grub’s digestive efforts, the food-column, while retaining its form and its dimensions, has been converted into a paste whose origin it would be impossible to recognize. There is not a crumb left in which the microscope can detect a fibre. The Sheep had already divided the vegetable matter very finely; the grub, an incomparable triturator, has taken the aforesaid matter and subdivided it yet further, grinding it after a fashion. In this way it extracts and uses the nutritive particles of which the Sheep’s fourfold stomach is unable to take advantage.

To dig itself a cell in this unctuous mass ought, according to our logic, to suit the grub, desirous of a yielding mattress for the nymph to lie on. We are mistaken in our suppositions. The grub retreats to the lower end of its column, retires into the sand where the hatching took place and there makes itself a hard, rough cavity. This aberration, which takes no account of the future nymph, and its delicate skin, would be likely to surprise us if the homely dwelling were not subjected to improvement.

The hermit’s wallet has retained a part of the digestive residues, residues destined to [148]disappear completely, for at the moment of the nymphosis the body must be free of any impurity. With this cement, which has undergone a prolonged refining in the intestine, the grub plasters its sandy wall. Using its round rump as a trowel, it smooths, polishes and repolishes the layer of stucco, until the rude cell of the start becomes a velvet-lined chamber.

All is ready for the stripping that releases the nymph. This nymph has peculiarities deserving special mention. The male’s trident, in particular, is already, both in shape and size, what it will be in the adult Beetle. At last, when October is at hand, I obtain the perfect insect. The total period of development, beginning with the egg, has lasted five months.

Let us return to the Minotaur mother who is provided with 255 pellets, 225 of which were amassed by the male, before he went out to die, and 30 by the widow herself. When the great heat comes, she no longer shows herself at all, detained at the bottom of the shaft by her domestic duties. In spite of my impatience to know what is going on indoors, I wait, keeping ever on the watch. At last October brings the first rains, so [149]greatly wished for by the husbandman and the Dung-beetle alike. Recent mounds become numerous in the fields. This is the season of autumnal rejoicings, when the soil, which has been like a cinder all the summer, recovers its moisture and is covered with green grass to which the shepherd leads his flock; it is the festival of the Minotaur, the exodus of the youngsters who, for the first time, enter into the joys of the daylight, among the sugar-plums dropped by the Sheep in the pastures.

However, nothing appears under the cover of my apparatus. It is no use waiting any longer, the season is too far advanced. I take the pylon to pieces. The mother is dead; she is even in tatters, a sign of an end already remote. I find her at the top of the vertical shaft, not far from the orifice.

This position seems to show that, when her work was done, the mother climbed up to die out of doors as the father had done before her. A sudden and final break-down overcame her on the way, almost at her door. I expected something better; I pictured her coming out accompanied by her offspring: the plucky creature deserved to see her family revelling in the last fine days of the year.[150]

I do not abandon this idea of mine. If the mother did not come out with the youngsters, there must have been—and in fact there were, as we shall see—important reasons for it. Right at the bottom of the column of sand, in the part which is coolest thanks to the large, frequently watered flower-pot, are eight sausages, eight portions of preserved food admirably worked into a fine paste. These are grouped in different stories, close together and each communicating with the main corridor by a short passage. Since each of these sausages was a ration, the brood amounts to eight. This restricted family was anticipated. When rearing becomes a costly matter, the mothers wisely limit their fecundity.

But here is an unexpected state of affairs: the food-cylinders contain no adult, not even a nymph; they have nothing but grubs in them, though these are glossy with health and almost fat enough to clamour for nymphosis. This check in their development arouses surprise, at a time when the new generation is full-grown, leaves the native homestead and is beginning to dig the winter burrows. The Minotaur mother’s surprise must have exceeded my own. Weary [151]of waiting for her offspring, she decided to set out by herself before her strength was completely exhausted, lest she should block the ascending shaft. A spasm, due to the inexorable toxin of old age, struck her down almost on the threshold of the dwelling.

The reason for this abnormal prolongation of the larval state escapes me. Perhaps it should be attributed to some hygienic flaw in my rearing-apparatus. It is obvious that all my care was unable to realize fully the conditions of well-being which the grubs would have found in the dampness of a deep, unlimited soil. Within a narrow prism of sand, too much exposed to the variations of temperature and humidity, feeding did not take place with the customary appetite and growth was slower in consequence. After all, these belated larvæ appear to be in first-rate fettle. I expect to see them undergo their transformation at the end of the winter. Like the young shoots whose development is interrupted by the inclemency of the season, they await the stimulus of spring.

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