The highest manifestation of the faculties of instinct

The Sacred Beetle, and Others by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Author’s Preface

Author’s Preface

In the building of the nest, the family safeguard, we see the highest manifestation of the faculties of instinct. That clever architect, the bird, teaches us as much; and the insect, with its still more diverse talents, repeats the lesson, telling us that maternity is the supreme inspirer of instinct. Entrusted with the preservation of the species, which is of more importance than the preservation of individuals, maternity awakens in the drowsiest intelligence marvellous gleams of foresight; it is the thrice sacred hearth where are kindled those mysterious psychic fires which will suddenly burst into flame and dazzle us with their semblance of infallible reason. The more maternity asserts itself, the higher does instinct ascend.

In this respect no creatures are more deserving of our attention than the Hymenoptera, upon whom the cares of maternity devolve in their fulness. All these favourites of instinct prepare board and lodging for their offspring. They become master-craftsmen in a host of trades for the sake of a family which their faceted eyes will never behold, but which is nevertheless no stranger to the mother’s powers of foresight. One turns cotton-spinner and produces cotton-wool bottles; another sets up as a basket-maker and weaves hampers out of bits of leaves; a third becomes a mason and builds rooms of cement and domes of road-metal; a fourth opens pottery-works, where clay is kneaded into shapely vases and rounded pots; yet another goes in for mining and digs mysterious underground chambers in the warm, moist earth. A thousand trades similar to ours and often even unknown to our industrial system enter into the preparation of the abode. Next come the provisions for the expected nurselings: piles of honey, loaves of pollen, stores of game, preserved by a cunning paralysing-process. In such works as these, having the future of the family for their sole object, the highest manifestations of instinct are displayed under the stimulus of maternity.

So far as the rest of the insect race is concerned, the mother’s cares are generally most summary. In the majority of cases, all that is done is to lay the eggs in a favourable spot, where the larva, at its own risk and peril, can find bed and breakfast. With such rustic ideas upon the upbringing of the offspring, talents are superfluous. Lycurgus banished the arts from his republic on the ground that they were enervating. In like manner the higher inspirations of instinct have no home among insects reared in the Spartan fashion. The mother scorns the sweet task of the nurse; and the psychic prerogatives, which are the best of all, diminish and disappear, so true is it that, with animals as with ourselves, the family is a source of perfection.

While the Hymenopteron, so extremely thoughtful of her progeny, fills us with wonder, the others, which abandon theirs to the accidents of good luck or bad, must seem to us, by comparison, of little interest. These others form almost the whole of the entomological race; at least, among the fauna of our country-sides, there is, to my knowledge, only one other example of insects preparing board and lodging for their family, as do the gatherers of honey and the buriers of well-filled game-bags.

And, strange to say, these insects vying in maternal solicitude with the flower-despoiling tribe of Bees are none other than the Dung-beetles, the dealers in ordure, the scavengers of the cattle-fouled meadows. We must pass from the scented blossoms of our flower-beds to the Mule-dung of our high-roads to find a second instance of devoted mothers and lofty instincts. Nature abounds in these antitheses. What are our ugliness or beauty, our cleanliness or dirt to her? Out of filth, she creates the flower; from a little manure, she extracts the thrice-blessed grain of wheat.

Notwithstanding their disgusting occupation, the Dung-beetles are of a very respectable standing. Their size, which is generally imposing; their severe and immaculately glossy attire; their portly bodies, thickset and compact; the quaint ornamentation of brow or thorax: all combined make them cut an excellent figure in the collector’s boxes, especially when to our home species, oftenest of an ebon black, we add a few tropical varieties, a-glitter with gleams of gold and flashes of burnished copper.

They are the sedulous attendants of our herds, for which reason several of them are faintly redolent of benzoic acid, the aromatic of the Sheep-folds. Their pastoral habits have impressed the nomenclators, too often, alas, careless of euphony, who this time have changed their tune and headed their descriptions with such names as Melibœus, Tityrus, Amyntas, Corydon, Mopsus and Alexis. We find here the whole series of bucolic appellations made famous by the poets of antiquity. Virgil’s eclogues have lent their vocabulary for the Dung-beetles’ glorification. We should have to go back to the Butterflies with their dainty graces to find an equally poetic nomenclature. In their case the epic names of the Iliad ring out, borrowed from the camps of Greek and Trojan and perhaps too magnificently bellicose for those peaceable winged flowers whose habits in no wise recall the martial deeds of an Ajax or an Achilles. Much better-imagined is the bucolic title given to the Dung-beetles: it tells us the insect’s chief characteristic, its predilection for pasture-lands.

The dung-manipulators have as head of their line the Sacred Beetle or Scarab, whose strange behaviour had already attracted the attention of the fellah in the valley of the Nile, some thousand years before the Christian era. As he watered his patch of onions in the spring, the Egyptian peasant would see from time to time a fat black insect pass close by, hurriedly trundling a ball of Camel-dung backwards. He would watch the queer rolling thing in amazement, even as the Provençal peasant watches it to this day.

No one fails to be surprised when he first finds himself in the presence of the Scarab, who, with his head down and his long hind-legs in the air, pushes with might and main his huge pill, the source of so many awkward tumbles. Undoubtedly the simple fellah, on beholding this spectacle, wondered what that ball could be, what object the black creature could have in rolling it along with such vigour. The peasant of to-day asks himself the same question.

In the days of the Rameses and Thothmes, superstition had something to say in the matter; men saw in the rolling sphere an image of the world performing its daily revolution; and the Scarab received divine honours: in memory of his ancient glory, he continues the Sacred Beetle of the modern naturalists.

It is six or seven thousand years since the curious pill-maker first got himself talked about: are his habits thoroughly familiar to us yet? Do we know the exact use for which he intends his ball, do we know how he rears his family? Not at all. The most authoritative works perpetuate the grossest errors where he is concerned.

Ancient Egypt used to say that the Scarab rolls his ball from east to west, the direction in which the world turns. He next buries it underground for twenty-eight days, the period of a lunary revolution. This four weeks’ incubation quickens the pill-maker’s progeny. On the twenty-ninth day, which the insect knows to be that of the conjunction of the sun and moon and of the birth of the world, he goes back to his buried ball; he digs it up, opens it and throws it into the Nile. That completes the cycle. Immersion in the sacred waters causes a Scarab to emerge from the ball.

Let us not laugh overmuch at these Pharaonic stories: they contain a modicum of truth mingled with the fantastic theories of astrology. Moreover, a good deal of the laughter would recoil upon our own science, for the fundamental error of regarding as the Scarab’s cradle the ball which we see rolling across the fields still lingers in our text-books. All the authors who write about the Sacred Beetle repeat it; the tradition has come down to us intact from the far-off days when the Pyramids were built.

It is a good thing from time to time to wield the hatchet in the overgrown thicket of tradition; it is well to shake off the yoke of accepted ideas. It is possible that, cleansed of its obscuring dross, truth may at last shine forth resplendent, far greater and more wonderful than the things which we were taught. I have sometimes harboured these rash doubts; and I have no reason to regret it, notably in the case of the Scarab. To-day I know the sacred pill-roller’s story thoroughly; and the reader shall see how much more marvellous it is than the tales handed down to us by the old Egyptians.

The early chapters of my investigations into the nature of instinct1 have already proved, in the most categorical fashion, that the round pellets rolled hither and thither along the ground by the insect do not and indeed cannot contain germs. They are not habitations for the egg and the grub; they are provisions which the Sacred Beetle hurriedly removes from the madding crowd in order to bury them and consume them at leisure in a subterranean dining-room.

Nearly forty years have elapsed since I used eagerly to collect the materials to support my iconoclastic assertions on the Plateau des Angles, near Avignon; and nothing has happened to invalidate my statements; far from it: everything has corroborated them. The incontestable proof came at last when I obtained the Scarab’s nest, a genuine nest this time, gathered in such quantities as I wished and in some cases even shaped before my eyes.

I have described my former vain attempts to find the larva’s abode; I have described the pitiful failure of my efforts at rearing under cover; and perhaps the reader commiserated my woes when he saw me on the outskirts of the town stealthily and ingloriously gathering in a paper bag the donation dropped by a passing Mule for my charges. Certainly, as things were, my task was no easy one. My boarders, who were great consumers, or more correctly speaking great wasters, used to beguile the tedium of captivity by indulging in art for art’s sake in the glad sunshine. Pill followed on pill, all beautifully rounded, to be abandoned unused after a few exercises in rolling. The heap of provisions, which I had so painfully acquired in the friendly shadow of the gloaming, was squandered with disheartening rapidity; and there came a time when the daily bread failed. Moreover, the stringy manna falling from the Horse and the Mule is hardly suited to the mother’s work, as I learned afterwards. Something more homogeneous, more plastic is needed; and this only the Sheep’s somewhat laxer bowels are able to supply.

In short, though my earlier studies taught me all about the Scarab’s public manners, for several reasons they told me nothing of his private habits. The nest-building problem remained as obscure as ever. Its solution demands a good deal more than the straitened resources of a town and the scientific equipment of a laboratory. It requires prolonged residence in the country; it requires the proximity of flocks and herds in the bright sunshine. Given these conditions, success is assured, provided that one have zeal and perseverance; and these conditions I find to perfection in my quiet village.

Provisions, my great difficulty in the old days, are now to be had for the asking. Close to my house, Mules pass along the high-road, on their way to the fields and back again; morning and evening, flocks of Sheep go by, making for the pasture or the fold; not five yards from my door, my neighbour’s Goat is tethered: I can hear her bleating as she nibbles away at her ring of grass. Moreover, should food be scarce in my immediate vicinity, there are always youthful purveyors who, lured by visions of lollipops, are ready to scour the country to collect victuals for my Beetles.

They arrive, not one but a dozen, bringing their contributions in the queerest of receptacles. In this novel procession of gift-bearers, any concave thing that chances to be handy is employed: the crown of an old hat, a broken tile, a bit of stove-pipe, the bottom of a spinning-top, a fragment of a basket, an old shoe hardened into a sort of boat, at a pinch the collector’s own cap.

‘It’s prime stuff this time,’ their shining eyes seem to proclaim. ‘It’s something extra special.’

The goods are duly approved and paid for on the spot, as agreed. To close the transaction in a fitting manner, I take the victuallers to the cages and show them the Beetle rolling his pill. They gaze in wonder at the funny creature that looks as if it were playing with its ball; they laugh at its tumbles and scream with delight at its clumsy struggles when it comes to grief and lies on its back kicking. A charming sight, especially when the lollipops bulging in the youngsters’ cheeks are just beginning to melt deliciously. Thus the zeal of my little collaborators is kept alive. There is no fear of my boarders starving: their larder will be lavishly supplied.

Who are these boarders? Well, first and foremost the Sacred Beetle, the chief subject of my present investigations. Sérignan’s long screen of hills might well mark his extreme northern boundary. Here ends the Mediterranean flora, whose last ligneous representatives are the arboraceous heather and the arbutus-tree; and here, in all probability, the mighty pill-maker, a passionate lover of the sun, terminates his arctic explorations. He abounds on the hot slopes facing the south and in the narrow belt of plain sheltered by that powerful reflector. According to all appearances, the elegant Gallic Bolboceras and the stalwart Spanish Copris likewise stop at this line; for both are as sensitive to cold as he. To these curious Dung-beetles, whose private habits are so little known, let us add the Gymnopleuri, the Minotaur, the Geotrupes, the Onthophagi. They are all welcomed in my cages, for all, I am convinced beforehand, have surprises in store for us in the details of their underground business.

My cages have a capacity of about a cubic yard. Except for the front, which is of wire gauze, the whole is made of wood. This keeps out any excessive rain, the effect of which would be to turn the layer of earth in my open-air appliances into mud. Over-great moisture would be fatal to the prisoners, who cannot, in their straitened artificial demesne, act as they do when at liberty and prolong their digging indefinitely until they come upon a medium suitable to their operations. They want soil which is porous and not too dry, though in no danger of ever becoming muddy. The earth in the cages therefore is of a sandy character and, after being sifted, is slightly moistened and flattened down just enough to prevent any landslips in the future galleries. Its depth is barely ten or eleven inches, which is insufficient in certain cases; but those of the inmates who have a fancy for deep galleries, like the Geotrupes for instance, are well able to make up horizontally for what is denied them perpendicularly.

The trellised front has a south aspect and allows the sun’s rays to penetrate right into the dwelling. The opposite side, which faces north, consists of two shutters one above the other. They are movable and are kept in place by hooks or bolts. The top one opens for food to be distributed and for the cleaning of the cage; it is the kitchen-door for everyday use. It is also the entrance-gate for any new captives whom I succeed in bagging. The bottom shutter, which keeps the layer of earth in position, is opened only on great occasions, when we want to surprise the insect in its home life and to ascertain the condition of the progress underground. Then the bolts are drawn; the board, which is on hinges, falls; and a vertical section of the soil is laid bare, giving us an excellent opportunity of studying the Dung-beetles’ work. Our examination is made with the point of a knife and has to be conducted with the utmost care. In this way we get with precision and without difficulty industrial details which could not always be obtained by laborious digging in the open fields.

Nevertheless, outdoor investigations are indispensable and often yield far more important results than anything derived from home rearing; for, though some Dung-beetles are indifferent to captivity and work in the cage with their customary vigour, others, who are of a more nervous temperament or perhaps more cautious, distrust my boarded palaces and are extremely reluctant to surrender their secrets. It is only once in a way that they fall victims to my assiduous wooing. Besides, if my menagerie is to be run properly, I must know something of what is happening outside, were it only to find out the right time of year for my various projects. It is absolutely essential therefore that our study of the insect in captivity should be amply supplemented by observations of its life and habits in the wild state.

Here an assistant would be very useful to me, some one with leisure, with a seeing eye and a simple heart, whose curiosity would be as unaffected as my own. This helper I have: such an one indeed as I have never had before or since. He is a young shepherd, a friend of the family. He has read a little and has a keen desire for knowledge, so he is not frightened by the terms Scarabæus, Geotrupes, Copris or Onthophagus when I name the insects which he has dug up the day before and kept for me in a box.

At early dawn in the dog-days, when my insects are busy with their nest-building, you may see him in the meadows. When night falls and the heat begins to lessen, he is still there; and all day long, till far into the night, he passes to and fro among the pill-rollers, who are attracted from every quarter by the reek of the victuals strewn by his Sheep. Well-posted in the various points of my entomological problems, he watches events and keeps me informed. He awaits his opportunity; he inspects the grass. With his knife he lays bare the subterranean cell which is betrayed by its little mound of earth; he scrapes, digs and finds; and it all constitutes a glorious change from his vague pastoral musings.

Ah, what splendid mornings we spend together, in the cool of the day, seeking the nest of the Scarab or the Copris! Old Sultan is there, seated on some knoll or other and keeping an autocratic eye upon the fleecy rabble. Nothing, not even the crust which a friend holds out to him, distracts his attention from his exalted functions. Certainly he is not much to look at, with his tangled black coat, soiled with the thousands of seeds which have caught in it. He is not a handsome Dog, but what a lot of sense there is in his shaggy head, what a talent for knowing exactly what is permitted and what forbidden, for perceiving the absence of some heedless one forgotten behind a dip in the ground! Upon my word, one would think that he knew the number of Sheep confided to his care, his Sheep, though never a bone of them comes his way! He has counted them from the top of his knoll. One is missing. Sultan rushes off. Here he comes, bringing the straggler back to the flock. Clever Dog! I admire your skill in arithmetic, though I fail to understand how your crude brain ever acquired it. Yes, old fellow, we can rely on you; the two of us, your master and I, can hunt the Dung-beetle at our ease and disappear in the copsewood; not one of your charges will go astray, not one will nibble at the neighbouring vines.

It was in this way that I worked, at early morn, before the sun grew too hot, in partnership with the young shepherd and our common friend Sultan, though at times I was alone, myself sole pastor of the seventy bleating Sheep. And so the materials were gathered for this history of the Sacred Beetle and his rivals.

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