How does the Scarab obtain the maternal pear?

The Life and Love of the Insect by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE SACRED BEETLE: THE MODELLING

CHAPTER III. THE SACRED BEETLE: THE MODELLING

How does the Scarab obtain the maternal pear? It is certain, to begin with, that this is in no wise shaped by the mechanism of conveyance along the ground: the shape is incompatible with a rolling in every direction, at haphazard. We might accept that for the belly of the gourd; but the neck, the ellipsoid nipple, hollowed into a hatching-chamber! This delicate work could never result from violent, unmeasured jerks. The goldsmith’s jewel is not hammered on the blacksmith’s anvil. Together with other reasons, all good in evidence, already quoted, the pear-shaped outline delivers us, I hope, once and for all, from the antiquated belief that placed the egg inside a roughly-jolted ball.

To produce his masterpiece, the sculptor retires to his den. Even so the Sacred Beetle. She shuts herself down in her crypt, to model, in contemplative seclusion, the materials introduced. Two opportunities offer for obtaining the block to be worked. In the one case, the Scarab gathers from the heap, according to the method which we know, a choice block, which is kneaded into a ball on the spot and which is already spherical before it is set in motion. Were it only a question of provisions intended for her own meals, she would never act otherwise.

When she thinks the ball of sufficient bulk, if the place do not suit her wherein to dig the burrow, she sets out with her rolling burden, walking at random till she lights upon a favourable spot. During the journey, the ball, without improving upon the perfect sphere which it was at the start, hardens a little on the surface and becomes encrusted with earth and little grains of sand. This earthy rind, picked up on the road, is an authentic sign of a more or less long excursion. The detail is not without importance; it will serve us presently.

Less frequently, the spot close to the heap whence the block has been extracted satisfies the insect as suitable for the excavation of the burrow. The soil is free from pebbles and easy to dig. Here, no journey is necessary, nor, therefore, any ball convenient for transit. The soft biscuit of the sheep is gathered and stored as found and enters the workshop a shapeless mass, either in one piece, or, if need be, in different lumps.

This case occurs seldom in the natural state, because of the coarseness of the ground, which abounds with broken stones. Sites practicable for easy digging are few and far between and the insect has to roam about, with its burden, to find them. In my voleries, on the other hand, where the earthy layer has been purged with the sieve, it is the usual case. Here the earth is easy to dig at any point; wherefore the mother, working for her laying, is content to lower the nearest morsel underground, without giving it any definite shape.

Whether the storing without preliminary ball or conveyance be achieved in the fields or in my voleries, the final result is most striking. One day, I see a shapeless lump disappear into the crypt. The next day, or the day after, I visit the workshop and find the artist face [34]to face with her work. The uncouth mass of the start, the loose shreds introduced by armfuls have become a pear of perfect accuracy and conscientious finish.

The artistic object bears the marks of its method of manufacture. The part that rests upon the bottom of the cavity is crusted over with earthy particles; all the rest is of a glossy polish. Owing to its weight, owing also to the pressure exercised when the Scarab manipulates it, the pear, which is still quite soft, has become soiled with grains of earth on the side that touches the floor of the workshop; on the remainder, which is the larger part, it retains the delicate finish which the insect was able to give it.

The inferences to be drawn from these minutely-observed details are obvious: the pear is no turner’s work; it has not been obtained by any sort of rolling on the ground of the spacious studio, for then it would have been soiled with earth all over. Besides, its projecting neck precludes this mode of fabrication. It has not even been turned from one side to the other, as is loudly proclaimed by its unblemished upper surface. The Scarab, therefore, has moulded it where it lies, without turning or shifting it in any way; she has modelled it with little taps of her broad battledores, just as when we saw her model her ball in the daylight.

Let us now return to the usual case, in the open. The materials then come from a distance and are introduced into the burrow in the form of a ball covered with soil on every part of its surface. What will the insect do with this sphere which contains the paunch of the future pear ready-made? The answer would present no serious difficulty if, limiting my ambition to the results obtained, I sacrificed the means employed. It would be [35]enough for me, as I have often done, to capture the mother in her burrow with her ball and carry one and all home, to my animal laboratory, to watch events at first hand.

A large glass jar is filled with earth, sifted, moistened and heaped to the desired depth. I place the mother and her beloved pill, which she holds embraced, on the surface of this artificial soil. I stow away the apparatus in a half-light and wait. My patience is not very long tried. Urged by the labour of the ovaries, the insect resumes its interrupted work.

In certain cases, I see it, still on the surface, destroying its ball, ripping it up, cutting it to pieces, shredding it. This is not in the least the act of one in despair who, finding herself a captive, breaks the cherished object in her bewilderment. It is an act of wise hygienics. A scrupulous inspection of the morsel gathered in haste, among lawless competitors, is often necessary, for supervision is not always easy on the harvesting-spot itself, in the midst of thieves and robbers. The ball may contain a blend of little Onthophagi, of Aphodians, which have not been noticed in the heat of acquisition.

These involuntary intruders, finding themselves very comfortable in the heart of the mass, would themselves make good use of the contemplated pear, much to the detriment of the legitimate consumer. The ball must be purged of this starveling brood. The mother, therefore, destroys it, reduces it to atoms, scrutinizes it. Then, out of the collected remnants, the ball is remade, stripped of its earthy rind. It is dragged underground and becomes an immaculate pear, always excepting the surface touching the soil.

Oftener still, the ball is thrust by the mother into the [36]earth of the jar just as I took it from the burrow, with the wrinkled covering which it acquired in rolling across country during the journey from the place where it was found to the spot where the insect intended to use it. In that case, I find it at the bottom of my jar converted into a pear, itself wrinkled and encrusted with earth and sand over the whole of its surface, thus proving that the pear-shaped outline has not demanded a general recasting of the mass, inside as well as out, but has been obtained by simple pressure and by drawing out the neck.

This is how, in the vast majority of cases, things happen in the normal state. Almost all the pears which I dig up in the fields are crusted, unpolished, some more, others less. If we put on one side the inevitable encrustations due to the carting across fields, these blemishes would seem to point to a prolonged rolling in the interior of the subterranean manor. The few which I find perfectly smooth, especially those wonderfully neat specimens furnished by my voleries, dispel this mistake entirely. They show us that, with materials collected near at hand and stored away unshaped, the pear is modelled wholly without rolling; they prove to us that, where the others are concerned, the earthy wrinkles of the rind are not the signs of a rolling manipulation at the bottom of the workshop, but simply the marks of a fairly long journey on the surface of the ground.

To be present at the construction of the pear is no easy matter: the sombre artist obstinately refuses to do any work as soon as the light reaches her. She needs absolute darkness for her modelling; and I need light if I would see her at work. It is impossible to unite the two conditions. Let us try, nevertheless; let us seize by fragments the truth which hides itself in its fulness.

PLATE III

1. The Sacred Beetle pushing away and overturning a thieving friend who tries to force his assistance upon him.

2. Crypt in which the Beetle shapes a grub’s provision into a pear.

The arrangements made are as follows: I once more take the large glass jar. I cover the bottom with a layer of earth a few inches in thickness. To obtain the transparent workshop necessary for my observations, I fix a tripod on the earthy layer and, on this support, a decimetre1 high, I place a round deal slab of the same diameter as the jar. The glass-walled chamber thus marked out will represent the roomy crypt in which the insect works. In the edge of the deal slab, a hollow is cut, large enough to permit of the passage of the Sacred Beetle and her ball. Lastly, above this screen, I heap a layer of earth as deep as the jar allows.

During the operation, a portion of the upper earth falls through the opening and slips down to the lower space in a wide inclined plane. This was a circumstance which I had foreseen and which was indispensable to my plan. By means of this slope, the artist, when she has found the communicating trap-door, will make for the transparent den which I have arranged for her. She will make for it, of course, only provided that she be in perfect darkness. I therefore contrive a cardboard cylinder, closed at the top, and place the glass apparatus inside it. Left standing where it is, the opaque sheath will provide the dusk which the Scarab demands; suddenly raised, it will give the light which I require on my side.

Things being thus arranged, I go in search of a mother lately removed from her natural lodging with her ball. A morning is enough to provide me with what I need. I place the mother and her ball on the surface of the upper layer of earth; I cap the apparatus with its cardboard sheath; and I wait. The insect, stubborn at [38]its work so long as the egg is not deposited, will dig itself a new burrow, dragging its ball with it as it goes; it will pass through the upper layer of earth, which is not sufficiently thick; it will come upon the deal board, an obstacle similar to the broken stones that often bar its passage in the course of its normal excavations; it will investigate the cause of the impediment and, finding the opening, will descend through this trap-door to the lower compartment, which, being free and roomy, will represent to the insect the crypt whence I have just removed it. Thus prophesies my foresight. But all this takes time; and I must wait for the morrow to satisfy my impatient curiosity.

The hour has come: let us go and see. The study-door was left open yesterday: the mere sound of the door-handle might stop my distrustful worker. By way of greater precaution, before entering, I put on silent slippers. And——whoosh! The cylinder is removed. Capital! My expectations are fully justified.

The Scarab occupies the glazed workshop. I catch her at work, with her broad foot laid on the rough sketch of the pear. But, startled by the sudden light, she remains motionless, as though petrified. This lasts a few seconds. Then she turns her back upon me and awkwardly ascends the inclined plane, to reach the darkling heights of her gallery. I give a glance at the work, take note of its shape, its position and its aspect, and restore darkness with the cardboard sheath. Let us not prolong the indiscretion, if we would renew the test.

My sudden, brief visit gives us a first insight into the mysterious work. The ball, at first exactly spherical, now has a stout pad circumscribing a sort of shallow [39]crater. The work reminds me, in greatly reduced proportions, of certain prehistoric pots, with round bellies, thick lips around the mouth and a neck strangled by a narrow groove. This rude outline of a pear tells us of the insect’s method, a method identical with that of Pleistoscene man ignorant of the potter’s wheel.

The plastic ball, girt with a circle at one end, has been hollowed out in a groove, the starting-point of the neck; it has, moreover, been drawn out a little into an obtuse projection. In the centre of this projection, a pressure has been effected, which, causing the matter to fall back over the edges, has produced the crater, with its shapeless lips. Circular enlacement and pressure have sufficed for this first part of the work.

Fig. 2.—The Sacred Beetle’s pill dug out cupwise to receive the egg.

Towards evening, I pay a fresh sudden visit, amid complete silence. The insect has recovered from its excitement of the morning and gone down again to its workshop. Flooded with light and baffled by the strange events to which my artifices give rise, it at once makes off and takes refuge in the upper storey. The poor mother, persecuted by my illuminations, runs up into the thick of the darkness, but regretfully, with hesitating strides.

The work has progressed. The crater has become deeper; the thick lips have disappeared, are thinner, closer together, drawn out into the neck of a pear. The object, however, has not changed its place. Its position, its aspect are exactly as I noted them before. The [40]side that lay on the ground is still at the bottom, at the same point; the side that faced upwards is still at the top; the crater that lay on my right has been replaced by the neck, still on my right. Whence comes a conclusion completely confirming my previous statements: no rolling; mere pressure, which kneads and moulds.

The next day, a third visit. The pear is finished. Its neck, yesterday a yawning sack, is now closed. The egg, therefore, is laid; the work has been carried through and demands only the finishing touches of general polishing, touches upon which the mother, so intent on geometrical perfection, was doubtless engaged at the time when I disturbed her.

The most delicate part of the affair escapes my observation. I see quite clearly, in the main, how the hatching-chamber of the egg is obtained: the thick pad surrounding the original crater is thinned and flattened out under the pressure of the feet and lengthened into a sack the mouth of which gradually narrows. Up to this point, the work provides its own explanation. But we have no explanation of the exquisite perfection of the cell wherein the egg is to hatch, when we think of the insect’s rigid tools, the wide, toothed armlets whose jerky awkwardness suggests the spasmodic movements of an automaton.

With this clumsy equipment, excellently adapted to coarse work though it be, how does the Scarab obtain the natal dwelling, the oval nest so daintily polished and glazed within? Does the foot, a regular saw, fitted with enormous teeth, begin to rival the painter’s brush in delicacy from the moment when it is inserted through the narrow orifice of the sack? Why not? I have said elsewhere and this is the occasion to repeat it: [41]the tool does not make the workman. The insect exerts its gifts as a specialist with any kind of tool wherewith it is supplied. It can saw with a plane or plane with a saw, like the model workman of whom Franklin tells us. The same strong-toothed rake with which the Sacred Beetle rips the earth is used by her as a trowel and brush wherewith to glaze the stucco of the chamber in which the grub will be born.

In conclusion, one more detail concerning this hatching-chamber. At the extreme end of the neck of the pear, one point is always pretty clearly distinguished: it bristles with stringy fibres, while the rest of the neck is carefully polished. This is the plug with which the mother has closed the narrow opening after placing the egg; and this plug, as its hairy structure shows, has not been subjected to the pressure which, throughout the rest of the work, crams the smallest projecting scrap into the mass and causes it to disappear.

Why this arrangement at the extreme pole, a very curious exception, when every elsewhere the pear has received the powerful blows of the insect’s foot? The hind-end of the egg rests against this plug, which, were it pressed down and driven in, would transmit the pressure to the germ and imperil its safety. The mother, aware of the risk, blocks up the hole without ramming the stopper: the air in the hatching-chamber is thus more easily renewed; and the egg escapes the dangerous concussion of the compressing paddle.

About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books.

This book is part of the public domain. Jean-Henri Fabre (2022). The Life and Love of the Insect. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68974/pg68974-images.html

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.