SOME ANOMALIES

More Beetles by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. SOME ANOMALIES

CHAPTER XII. SOME ANOMALIES

The anomalous is that which forms an exception to the rule, which again is based upon an aggregate of concordant facts. An insect has six legs, each ending in a finger. That is the rule. Why six legs and not some other number? Why one finger and not several? Such questions are so obviously inane that they do not even occur to our minds. The rule exists because it does exist; we note it and that is all. We remain in blissful ignorance of the reason for its existence.

Anomalies, on the other hand, make us uncomfortable and upset all our ideas. Why should there be exceptions, irregularities, contradictions of the letter of the law? Does the sign-manual of disorder leave its imprint here and there? Is the shriek of crazy discord heard amid the general harmony? This is a weighty question; and we should do well to look into it a little, though we have little hope of ever solving the problem.

Let us, to begin with, mention a few of these infractions of the rule. Among the strangest that my chance discoveries have submitted to my scrutiny is that of the larva of the Geotrupes. When I made its acquaintance for the first time, the crippled grub had attained very nearly its full growth. One might reasonably ask one’s self whether certain hardships endured during its lifetime had not gradually brought about the weakness of the hind-legs and their abnormal position; whether, at all events, the curious deformity might not be explained by the grub’s cramped situation in a narrow corridor in the heart of its food-supply.

Today I am better-informed. The Geotrupes’ larva does not gradually become lame through straining itself; it is born crippled, there is no doubt of that. I observe its hatching. I watch the new-born grub through my magnifying-glass as it leaves the egg. The hind-legs which the adult Beetle uses as powerful squeezers for pressing the material which he has gathered and making it into sausages are for the moment reduced to the sorriest of appendages, mere useless counterfeits. They lie withered against the larva’s back. Bent into a hook, their extremities avoid the ground and turn in towards the insect’s back, without furnishing the least support for standing. They are not legs but uncertain attempts, awkward experiments.

The fore-legs, though well-shaped, are of insignificant dimensions. The tiny creature keeps them tucked away under the front of its body, where they serve to hold in position the morsel at which it is nibbling. The middle pair, on the contrary, are long and powerful and well in evidence. Standing up like two stout crutches, they lend stability to the fat, curved paunch, which has a tendency to capsize. When seen from behind, the grub gives the impression of being the most whimsical creature on earth. It is just a pot-belly mounted on a pair of stilts.

What is the object of this curious organization? One can understand the grotesque hump worn by the grub of the Onthophagus, the sugar-loaf knapsack whose weight is constantly overturning the little creature when it tries to change its position. This hump is a storehouse of cement for the construction of the cabin in which the transformation is to take place. But we cannot understand the two withered, misshapen legs of the Geotrupes’ grub, which, one would think, would have been very useful if they had grown into serviceable grappling-irons. The grub shifts its position; it climbs up and down inside its tall column of victuals; it moves about in quest of morsels to suit it. Those two neglected supports would make the climbing easier if they were in good condition.

On the other hand, the grub of the Sacred Beetle, confined in a narrow recess, has hardly any need of locomotion. A simple movement of the hinder-part brings within the reach of its mandibles a fresh layer of the victuals to be consumed. No matter: it is blessed with six sound, well-turned legs. The cripple moves to and fro, the lusty athlete is stationary; the limping grub takes its walks abroad, the nimble one sits still. There is no satisfactory way of explaining this paradox.

In the adult form, the Sacred Beetle and his kinsfolk, the Half-spotted Scarab,1 the broad-necked Scarab2 and the Pock-marked Scarab3—the only three that I know—are likewise atrophied: all of them lack the tarsi of the fore-legs. These four witnesses prove to us that this singular mutilation is common to the whole group.

An absurd system of nomenclature has seen fit, in its blindness, to substitute for the ancient and venerable term of Scarabæus that of Ateuchus, meaning weaponless. The inventor of the name was none too well-inspired: there are plenty of other Dung-beetles that have no horny armour, such as the Gymnopleuri,4 who are so closely allied to the Scarabæi. Since his intention was to designate the genus by calling attention to a characteristic peculiarity, he should have coined a word meaning, “deprived of tarsi on the fore-legs.” Only the Sacred Beetle and his kinsfolk, in the whole of the insect-world, could rightly bear that name. This never occurred to the nomenclator; this important detail was apparently unknown to him. He saw the grain of sand and did not notice the mountain: a defect not uncommon among the forgers of names.

For what reasons are the Scarabs’ fore-legs bereft of that one finger, the five-jointed tarsus, which in itself represents the insect’s hand? Why a stump, a docked limb, instead of a fingered extremity, as is the rule every otherwise? One reply suggests itself which at first seems rather plausible. Those zealous pill-rollers push their load backwards, with their head down and their hinder-part in the air; they support themselves on the tips of their fore-legs. The whole effort of the transportation is brought to bear on the extremities of these two levers, which are in constant contact with the rough ground.

A delicate finger, liable to be sprained under such conditions, would be a hindrance, wherefore the pill-maker decided to do without it. How and when was the mutilation effected? Does it occur nowadays, as a workshop accident, during the actual work? No, for you never see a Scarab furnished with tarsi to his fore-legs, however new he may be at his trade; no, for the nymph, lying perfectly at rest in its shell, has fingerless fore-arms like the adult.

The mutilation dates farther back. Suppose we admit that, in the dim and distant ages, a Scarab, owing to some mishap, lost those two inconvenient and almost superfluous fingers. Finding himself all the better for it, he transmitted the fortunate defect to his race by way of an ancestral legacy. Since then, the Scarabs form an exception to the rule that fore-legs have digits like the rest.

This would be an attractive explanation, but there are serious difficulties in the way. We ask ourselves by what curious freak the organism can have elaborated in days long past portions destined to disappear afterwards as too cumbrous. Can the plan of the animal frame be devoid of logic, of foresight? Does it design the structure blindly, at the hazard of conflicting circumstances?

Away with such foolishness! No, the Scarab did not at one time have the tarsi which he lacks to-day; no, he did not lose them as the result of being harnessed upside down when rolling his pill. He is now what he always was. Who says so? Unimpeachable witnesses: the Gymnopleurus and the Sisyphus,5 themselves enthusiastic pill-rollers. Like the Scarab, they push them backwards, head down; like the Scarab, they support themselves, during their arduous task, on the tips of their fore-legs; and those legs, notwithstanding their contact with the rough ground, are as perfectly fingered as the others: they possess the delicate tarsi which the Scarab is denied. Then why should the latter prove an exception to what in the others is the rule? How gladly would I welcome a word from the discerning person who could answer my humble question!

My satisfaction would be equally great if I knew why the Iris-weevil’s6 tarsus has a single nail, whereas the other insects have two, set side by side and bent into a hook. Why was one of these two little claws suppressed? Would it not have been useful to the insect? One would think so. The little Weevil thus mutilated is a climber; she clambers up the smooth stems of the iris; she explores the flowers, visiting the lower surface of the petals as well as the upper; she walks upside down on the slippery pods. An extra hook would do much to ensure her steadiness; yet the thoughtless Weevil deprives herself of it, though by law she has a right to the double claw invariably wielded by the others, even in her own long-nosed clan. What then is the secret of the little Iris-weevil’s missing finger-nail?

A tiny claw the less, though a serious business where matters of principle are concerned, is after all a detail of no great material value; one needs a lens to perceive the irregularity. But here is something that the eye can see without the aid of the magnifying-glass.

A Locust from the green slopes of the Alps, Pezzotettyx pedestris,7 who dwells on the higher ridges of Mont Ventoux,8 renounces her right to wings of any kind; she reaches the adult stage while preserving the larval formation. The approach of the wedding-day makes her a little handsomer, adds a touch of coral-red to her sturdy thighs and of sky-blue to her shanks; but there all progress stops. She becomes ripe for marriage and maternity without acquiring the power of flying which the other Acridians possess in addition to that of leaping.

Among the hoppers, all endowed with wings and wing-cases, she remains a clumsy pedestrian, as her Latin affix, pedestris, informs us. Nevertheless, the cripple bears on her shoulders a pair of skimpy sheaths which contain the organs of flight, incapable of unfolding. By what curious evolutionary whim is the pretty Locust with the azure legs deprived of the wings and wing-cases of which she carries the germs in two miserable little bundles? She is promised the gift of flight and does not receive it. For no appreciable reason, the wheels of the animal mechanism are arrested.

Stranger still is the case of the Psyches, whose females, unable to become the Moths promised in their early stages, remain caterpillars, or rather change into wallets stuffed with eggs. Wings with gorgeous scales, the supreme prerogative of Moth and Butterfly, are denied them. The males alone achieve the promised shape; they turn into plumed dandies, clad in black velvet, and are excellent flyers. Why does one—and that one the more important—of the sexes remain a wretched little sausage, while the other is made glorious by the metamorphosis?

And now what are we to say of the next, Necydalis major, a denizen of the poplar and the willow in his larval state? He is a Longicorn, fairly imposing in size as compared with Cerambyx cerdo, the little Capricorn of the hawthorn. When one is a Beetle—and that he assuredly is—one dons wing-cases which form a sheath, enclosing the body and protecting the delicate wings and the soft and vulnerable abdomen. The Necydalis laughs at rules. He wears on his shoulders, by way of wing-cases, two short pieces which make him an inadequate jacket. It really looks as though there were not sufficient stuff to lengthen out the coat and give it a pair of tails capable of covering that which ought to be covered.

Beyond it stretch, entirely unprotected, two large wings reaching to the tip of the abdomen. At first sight, you would think that you had before your eyes some sort of huge, fantastic Wasp. Why, in an actual Beetle, this niggardly provision of wing-cases? Can the material have run short? Was the cost of prolonging the protective sheath begun at the shoulders too great? We stand amazed at such meanness.

What again shall we say of this other Beetle, Myodites subdipterus? Her grub establishes itself, I know not how, in the cells of Halictus zebra9 and battens on the nymph that owns the premises. The adult frequents in summer the prickly heads of the field eringo. To look at her, you would take her for a Dipteron, for a Fly, because of her two big wings uncovered by wing-cases. Examine her more closely and you will see that she carries on her shoulders two small scales, all that remains of the suppressed wing-cases. She is yet another who has not known how or rather has not been able to complete the parts of which she carries these absurd rudiments.

An entire group, one of the most numerous among the Beetles, that of the Staphylini, or Rove-beetles, cuts down its wing-cases to a third or a quarter of the normal dimensions. With excessive economy, the insect with the long, wriggling belly makes itself unsightly and goes too scantily clad.

I might continue for a long time to enumerate the deformed, the irregular, the exceptional; the “whys” would follow close upon one another and no reply would be forthcoming. Animals are uncommunicative; plants, when cunningly entreated, lend themselves better to enquiry. Let us consult them on this problem of anomalies; perhaps they will tell us something.

The rose-tree sets us this puzzle:

“We are five brothers; two of us have beards, two have none and the fifth has half a beard.”

The case has even been stated in a Latin couplet:

Quinque sumus fratres: units barbatus et alter;

Imberbesque duo; sum semiberbis ego.

Who are the five brothers? None other than the five lobes of the rose’s calyx, the five sepals. Let us examine them one by one. We shall find two of them furnished on both edges with leafy or beard-like appendages, which sometimes revert to the original form and expand into follicles similar to those of the leaves proper. Botany in fact teacher us that a sepal is a modified leaf. These are the two brothers with beards.

We shall see two others totally devoid of appendages on either side. These are the two brothers without beards. Lastly, the fifth will show us one bare and one bearded surface. This one represents the brother with half a beard.

These are not casual variations, differing from flower to flower; all the roses present the same arrangement, all have their sepals divided into three classes in the matter of beards. It is a fixed rule, resulting from a law which governs floral architecture, even as the art of a Vitruvius10 governs our buildings. This law, so elegant in its simplicity, is thus stated in botany: in the quinary order, the most important order of the vegetable world, the flower groups the five portions of a whorl at intervals upon a close spiral, almost equivalent to the circumference of a circle; and this arrangement is so contrived that two turns of the spiral contain the series of five parts.

Having said this, it is easy to construct the plan of the rose, in so far as concerns the calyx. Divide a circumference into five equal parts. At the first dividing-point, place a sepal. Where shall we put the second? It must not be at the second dividing-point, for then the set of five pieces would fill the circumference in a single revolution, instead of in two. We shall place it at the third point and continue in like fashion, each time missing one division. This mode of progress is the only one that brings us back to the starting-point after two turns of the spiral.

Let us now give the sepals a base wide enough to provide a tightly closed containing wall. We shall see that the parts on sections 1 and 3 are completely outside the spiral; that the parts on sections 2 and 4 have their two edges fitting under the adjoining sepals; and that, lastly, the part on section 5 has one edge covered and one free. On the other hand, it is manifest that, hampered in their expansion by the petal placed over them, the edges caught under the others cannot send forth their delicate appendages. Hence we have the two bearded sepals at points 1 and 3, the two beardless sepals at points 2 and 4 and the half-bearded sepal at point 5.

This explains the riddle of the rose. The disparity of the five pieces of the calyx, apparently an irrational structure, a capricious anomaly, is really the corollary of a mathematical law, the natural consequence of an immanent algebraical relation. Disorder is eloquent of order; irregularity bears evidence of a ruling principle.

Let us continue our excursion into the realm of the plants. The quinary order allots to the flower five petals arranged in a whorl of perfect accuracy. Well, a good many corollas depart from the normal grouping, as instance the labiate and the personate corollas. In the former, five lobes compose the limb expanding at the end of a tubular portion and represent the five regulation petals. They are arranged in two wide-open lips, one pointing upwards and one downwards. The upper lip has two lobes, the lower three.

The personate corolla likewise is divided into two lips, the upper having two lobes, the lower three; only, the latter is expanded into an arch that closes the entrance to the flower. A pressure of the fingers on the sides opens the two lips, which close again as soon as the pressure ceases. Hence a certain resemblance to the jaws—the mufle or gueule—of an animal, a resemblance which has earned for the plant in which this formation is most clearly seen, the name of Snapdragon, muflier or gueule-de-loup. A certain analogy has also been drawn between the appearance of the two thick lips of the snapdragon and the exaggerated features of the masks, or personæ, with which the actors in the ancient theatres used to cover their faces to represent the characters whom they were playing. Hence the expression “personate corolla.”

The anomaly of the two-lipped corolla entails modifications in the stamens, which have to adapt themselves to the exigencies of the space enclosed, which is narrower at one point and roomier at another. Of the five stamens, one is suppressed, while often leaving a vestige at its base, as a certificate that it was once there. The four others are grouped into two pairs of unequal length, with a tendency to the suppression of the lesser pair.

The sage achieves this suppression. It has only two stamens, those of the longer pair. Moreover, on each of the staminal filaments it preserves only half an anther. According to the rule in the vast majority of cases, an anther consists of two compartments, placed back to back and separated by a slender partition, known as the connective. The sage exaggerates the size of this connective and makes of it the beam of a balance placed crosswise on the filament. At the end of one arm of this beam is the half of an anther, that is to say, a pollen-sac; at the other end is nothing. The whole of the staminal verticil, all save that which is strictly necessary, is sacrificed to the beautiful strangeness of the corolla.

Now why do the Labiatæ, the Personatæ and other vegetable orders present these anomalies which completely disarrange the regular structure of the flower? Let us in this connection venture upon an architectural comparison. The first men who ventured to balance heavy hewn stones over empty space, thereby deserving the proud title of pontifex, or bridge-builder, took as the pattern of their fabric the semicircular arch, which rests the thrust of the load on uniform voussoirs. The result is strong and majestic, but also monotonous and lacking in elegance.

Next came the pointed arch, which opposes two arcs described from different centres. With the new type, soaring curves, slender ribs and magnificent superstructures are possible. Variety, inexhaustible in its graceful combinations, replaces monotony.

Well, the regular corolla is, so to speak, the semicircular arch of the flower. Whether campanulate, rotate, urceolate, stellate, or of any other shape, it is always a grouping of similar parts around a circumference. The irregular corolla is the ogive, with its wonderful audacities; it lends to the poetry of the flower the admired disorder of all true poetry. The thick-lipped mask of the snapdragon, the gaping jaws of the sage are every whit as effective as the rosette of the hawthorn or the sloe. They are so many chromatic notes added to the gamut, so many charming variations upon one glorious theme, so many discords that enhance the value of the harmonies. The floral symphony gains if interrupted by occasional solos.

The Pedestrian Locust, hopping among the saxifrage amid the lofty summits of the hills, explains his incapacity to fly by reasons of a like order; so does the Staphylinus his skimpy jacket, the Necydalis his short coat, the Myodites her Fly-like aspect. Each after his fashion varies the monotony of the general theme; each strikes a special note in the universal concert. It is not so easy to see why the Scarab abandons his fore-tarsi, why the Iris-beetle has only one claw to her fingers, why the Geotrupes-grub is born mutilated. To what are these minute aberrations due? Before answering, let us once again take counsel with the plant.

One of the inmates of our hothouses is the Alstrœmeria pelegrina, or Inca lily, a native of Peru. This curious plant sets us a puzzling problem. At the first glance, its leaves, shaped more or less like those of the willow, offer nothing that deserves attentive examination; but look at them more closely. The leaf-stalk, flattened into a ribbon of some length, is tightly twisted upon itself; and the twist is repeated on every one of the leaves. From one end of the plant to the other we find this clearly-marked torsion.

Delicately, with the tips of our fingers, let us re-establish the natural order of affairs and spread out flat the ribbon of the twisted leaf-stalk. A surprise awaits us. The untwisted ribbon, replaced in its normal position, is upside down; it shows on the top what ought to be underneath, that is to say, the pale surface, rich in stomata and deeply veined; it shows underneath what ought to be on top, that is to say, the green, smooth surface, as is the rule with all other plants.

In short, the Inca lily, when we forcibly restore the natural arrangement by undoing its torsions, has its leaves upside down. What was made for the shadow faces the light, what was made for the light faces the shadow. In this contrary arrangement, the functions of the leaves become impossible; and so the plant, to correct this defective order, twists the necks of all its leaves by the spiral deformation of the leaf-stalks.

The rays of the sun provoke this reversal. If we intervene with our artificial devices, they may undo what they did at first. With the aid of a light prop and a few ligatures, I bend a shoot of the lily and fix it head downwards. As a result of exposure to the sun, the leaf-stalks in a few days’ time untwist themselves and become flat ribbons, which turn their smooth, green sides towards the light and their pale, veined surface towards the shade. The torsion has disappeared, the normal direction of the leaves is restored, but the plant is upside down.

In the case of the Inca lily, with its leaves set the wrong way round on the stem, are we confronted with a blunder which the plant, aided by the sun, does its best to correct by twisting its leaf-stalks? Are there such things as organic frivolity, mistakes, the signature of disorder? Is it not rather our ignorance of cause and effect which regards as erroneous what is actually correct? If our knowledge were greater, how many discordant notes would become harmonious! And so the wisest course is to doubt.

Of all the signs which we employ in writing, the one most nearly resembling the idea which it expresses is the note of interrogation. At the bottom, a round speck: the ball of the world. Above it, twisted into a great crozier, is the lituus of antiquity, the augur’s wand interrogating the unknown. I like to regard this sign as the emblem of science in perpetual colloquy with the how and why of things.

Now, high as it may rise to obtain a better view, this questioning staff is surrounded by a narrow and obscure horizon, which future investigations will replace by other horizons more remote and no less obscure. Beyond all these horizons, laboriously torn asunder, one by one, by the progress of knowledge, beyond all this obscurity, what is there? Assuredly, the broad light of day, the wherefore of the why, the reason of reasons, in short the great x of the world’s equation. So says our questioning instinct, ever dissatisfied, never weary; and instinct, which is infallible in the animal domain, should be no less so in the domain of the mind.

So far as lies in my power, I have sought to discern the essential motives of the insect’s anomalies. By no means always has the answer brought a firm conviction. And so, to end this chapter, in which so many glimpses remain shrouded in doubt, I set here, plain to see, in the middle of the page, the augur’s lituus, the note of interrogation:

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