THE GIANT SCARITES

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE GIANT SCARITES

CHAPTER XIII. THE GIANT SCARITES

The military profession can hardly be said to favour the talents. Consider the Carabus, or Ground-beetle, that fiery warrior among the insect people. What can he do? In the way of industry, nothing or next to nothing. Nevertheless the dull butcher is magnificent in his indescribably sumptuous jerkin. It has the refulgency of copper pyrites, of gold, of Florentine bronze. While clad in black, he enriches his sombre costume with a vivid amethyst hem. On the wing-cases, which fit him like a cuirass, he wears little chains of alternate pins and bosses.

Of a handsome and commanding figure, slender and pinched in at the waist, the Carabus is the glory of our collections, but only for the sake of his appearance. He is a frenzied murderer; and that is all. We will ask nothing more of him. The wisdom of antiquity represented Hercules, the god of strength, with the head of an idiot. And indeed merit is not great when limited to brute force. And this is the case with the Carabus.

To see him so richly adorned, who would not wish to find him a fine subject for investigation, one worthy of history, a subject such as humbler natures provide with lavish generosity? From this ferocious ransacker of entrails we expect nothing of the kind. His art is that of slaying.

We may without trouble observe him at his bandit's work. I rear him in a large breeding-cage on a layer of fresh sand. A few potsherds scattered about the surface enable him to take shelter beneath the rocks; a tuft of grass planted in the centre makes a grove and enlivens the establishment.

Three species compose the population: the common Jardinière, or Golden Beetle, the usual inmate of our gardens; Procrustes coriaceus, the sombre and powerful explorer of the grassy thickets at the foot of walls; and the rare Purple Carabus, who trims the ebony of his wing-cases with metallic violet. I feed them on Snails, after partly removing the shell.

Hidden at first promiscuously under the potsherds, the Carabi make a rush for the wretched Snail, who, in his despair, alternately puts out and withdraws his horns. Three of them at a time, then four, then five begin by devouring the edge of his mantle, specked with chalky atoms. This is the favourite morsel. With their mandibles, those stout pincers, they lay hold of it through the froth; they tug at it, tear off a shred and retire to a distance to swallow it at their ease.

Meanwhile the legs, streaming with slime, pick up grains of sand and become covered with heavy gaiters, which are extremely cumbersome but to which the Beetle pays no attention. Heavy with mire, he staggers back to his prey and cuts off another morsel. He will think of polishing his boots presently. Others do not stir, but gorge themselves on the spot, with the whole fore-part of their body immersed in the froth. The feast lasts for hours on end. The guests do not leave the joint until the distended belly lifts the roof of the wing-cases and uncovers the nudities of the stern.

Fonder of shady nooks, the Procrustes form a separate company. They drag the Snail into their lair, under the shelter of a potsherd, and there, peacefully and in common, dismember the mollusc. They love the Slug, as easier to cut up than the Snail, who is defended by his shell; they regard the Testacella,1 who bears a chalky shell, shaped like a Phrygian cap, right at the hinder end of her foot, as a delicious tit-bit. The game has firmer flesh and is less nauseously slimy.

1 Or Shell-bearing Slug, found along the shores of the Mediterranean.—Translator's Note.

To feast gluttonously on a Snail whom I myself have rendered defenseless by breaking her shell is nothing for a warrior to boast about; but we shall soon see the Carabus display his daring. I offer a Pine-chafer, in the pink of strength, to the Golden Beetle, whose appetite has been whetted by a few days' fasting. The victim is a colossus beside the Golden Carabus; an Ox facing a Wolf.

The beast of prey prowls round the peaceful creature and selects its moment. It rushes forward, recoils, hesitates and returns to the charge. And lo, the giant is overthrown! Incontinently the other devours him, ransacking his belly. If this had happened in a higher order of the animal world, it would make one's flesh creep to watch the Carabus half immersed in the big Cockchafer and rooting out his entrails.

I test the eviscerator with a more difficult quarry. This time the victim is Oryctes nasicornis, the powerful Rhinoceros Beetle, an invincible giant, one would think, under the shelter of his armour. But the hunter knows the weak point of the horn-clad prey, the fine skin protected by the wing-cases. By means of attacks which the assailant renews as soon as they are repulsed by the assailed, the Carabus contrives to raise the cuirass slightly and to slip his head beneath it. From the moment that the pincers have made a gash in the vulnerable skin, the Rhinoceros is lost. Soon there will be nothing left of the colossus but a pitiful empty carcase.

Those who wish for a more hideous conflict must apply to Calosoma sycophanta, the handsomest of our flesh-eating insects, the most majestic in costume and size. This prince of Carabi is the butcher of the caterpillars. He is not to be overawed even by the sturdiest of rumps.

His struggle with the huge caterpillar of the Great Peacock Moth2 is a thing to see once, not oftener: a single experience of such horrors is enough to disgust one. The contortions of the eviscerated insect, which, with a sudden heave of the loins, hurls the bandit in the air and lets him fall, belly uppermost, without managing to make him release his hold; the green entrails spilt quivering on the ground; the tramping gait of the murderer, drunk with slaughter, slaking his thirst at the springs of a horrible wound: these are the main features of the combat. If entomology had no other scenes to show us, I should without the least regret turn my back upon my insects.

2 Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar: chap. xi.—Translator's Note.

Next day, offer the sated Beetle a Green Grasshopper or a White-faced Decticus, serious adversaries both, armed with powerful lower jaws. With these big-bellied creatures the slaughter will begin anew, as eagerly as on the day before. It will be repeated later with the Pine-chafer and the Rhinoceros Beetle, accompanied by the usual atrocious tactics of the Carabi. Even better than these last does the Calosoma know the weak point of the armoured Beetles, concealed beneath the wing-cases. And this will go on so long as we keep him provided with victims, for this drinker of blood is never satiated.

Acrid exhalations, the products of a fiery temperament, accompany this frenzy for carnage. The Carabi elaborate caustic humours; the Procrustes squirts a jet of vinegar at any one who takes hold of him; the Calosoma makes the fingers smell of mouldy drugs; certain Beetles, such as the Brachini,3 understand explosives and singe the aggressor's whiskers with a volley of musketry.

3 Or Bombardier Beetles. When disturbed, they eject a fluid which volatilizes, on contact with the air, with a slight report.—Translator's Note.

Distillers of corrosives, gunners throwing lyddite, bombers employing dynamite: what can all these violent creatures, so well equipped for battle, do beyond committing slaughter? Nothing. We find no art, no industry, not even in the larva, which practices the adult's trade and meditates its crimes while wandering under the stones. Nevertheless it is to one of these dull-witted warriors that I am deliberately proposing to apply to-day, prompted by the wish to solve a certain question. Let me tell you what it is.

You have surprised this or that insect, motionless on a bough, blissfully basking in the sun. Your hand is raised, open, ready to descend on it and seize it. Hardly have you made the movement when the insect drops to the ground. It is a wearer of armoured wing-cases, slow to disengage the wings from their horny sheath, or perhaps an incomplete form, with no wing-surfaces. Incapable of sudden flight, the surprised insect lets itself fall. You look for it in the grass, often in vain. If you do find it, it is lying on its back, with its legs folded, without stirring.

It is shamming dead, people will tell you; it is pretending, in order to escape its enemy. Man is certainly unknown to it; we count for nothing in its little world. What does it care for our hunting, whether we be children or scientists? It does not fear the collector with his long pin; but it realizes danger in general; and it dreads its natural enemy, the insectivorous bird, which swallows it with a single snap. To outwit the assailant, it lies upon its back, draws up its legs and simulates death. The bird, or any other persecutor, will despise it in this condition; and its life will be saved.

This, we are assured, is how the insect would reason if suddenly surprised. The trick has long been famous. Once upon a time, two friends, at the end of their resources, sold the skin of a Bear before they had killed the brute. The encounter was unfortunate: they had to take to their heels. One of them stumbled, fell, held his breath and shammed dead. The Bear came up, turned the man over and over, explored him with his paw and his muzzle, sniffed at his face:

"He smells already," he said and, without more ado, turned away.

That Bear was a simpleton.

The bird would not be duped by this clumsy stratagem. In those happy days when the discovery of a nest marked a red-letter day, I never saw my Sparrows or Greenfinches refuse a Locust because he was not moving, or a Fly because she was dead. Any mouthful that does not kick is eagerly accepted, provided that it be fresh and pleasant to the taste.

If the insect, therefore, relies on the appearance of death, it would seem to me to be very badly inspired. More wary than the Bear in the fable, the bird, with its perspicacious eye, will recognize the fraud in a moment and proceed to business. Besides, had the object really been a corpse, but still fresh, it would none the less have gobbled it up.

More insistent doubts occur to my mind when I consider the serious consequences to which the insect's artfulness might lead. It shams dead, says the popular idiom, which recks little of weighing the value of its term; it simulates death, scientific language repeats, happy to find some gleams of reason in the insect. What truth is there in this unanimous statement, which in the one case is too unreflecting and in the other too much inclined to favour theoretical fancies?

Logical arguments are insufficient here. It is essential that we should obtain the verdict of experiment, which alone can furnish a valid reply. But to which of the insects shall we go first?

I remember something that dates back some forty years. Delighted with a recent University triumph, I was staying at Cette, on my return from Toulouse, where I had just passed my examination as a licentiate in natural science. It gave me a fine chance of renewing my acquaintance with the seaside flora, which had delighted me a few years before on the shores of the wonderful Gulf of Ajaccio. It would have been foolish to neglect it. A degree does not confer the right to cease studying. If one really has a touch of the sacred fire in one's veins, one remains a student all one's life, not of books, which are a poor resource, but of the great, inexhaustible school of actual things.

One day, then, in July, in the cool stillness of the dawn, I was botanizing on the foreshore at Cette. For the first time I plucked the Convolvulus soldanella, which trails along the high-water mark its ropes of glossy green leaves and its great pink bellflowers. Withdrawn into his white, flat, heavily-keeled shell, a curious Snail, Helix explanata, was slumbering, in groups, on the bent grasses.

The dry shifting sands showed here and there long series of imprints, recalling, on a smaller scale and under another form, the tracks of little birds in the snow which used to arouse a delightful flutter in my youthful days. What do these imprints mean?

I follow them, a hunter on the trail of a new species. At the end of each track, by digging to no great depth, I unearth a magnificent Carabus, whose very name is almost unknown to me. It is the Giant Scarites (S. gigas, FAB.).

I make him walk on the sand. He exactly reproduces the tracks which put me on the alert. It was certainly he who, questing for game in the night, marked the trail with his feet. He returned to his lair before daylight; and now not a single Beetle is to be seen in the open.

Another characteristic thrusts itself upon my notice. If I shake him for a moment and then place him on the ground upon his back, he remains a long time without stirring. No other insect has yet displayed such persistent immobility, though I confess that my investigations in this respect have been only superficial. The detail is so thoroughly engraved on my memory that, forty years later, when I want to experiment on the insects which are experts in the art of simulating death, I at once think of the Scarites.

A friend sends me a dozen from Cette, from the very beach on which I once passed a delightful morning in the company of this skilful mimic of the dead. They reach me in perfect condition, mixed up in the same package with some Pimeliæ (P. bipunctata, FAB.), their compatriots in the sands beside the sea. Of these last, a pitiable crew, many have been disembowelled, absolutely emptied; others have merely stumps instead of legs; a few, but only a few, are unwounded.

It was what one might have expected of these Carabidæ, lawless hunters one and all. Tragic events took place in the box during the journey from Cette to Sérignan. The Scarites gormandized riotously on the peaceable Pimeliæ.

Their tracks, which I followed long ago on the actual spot, bore evidence to their nocturnal rounds, apparently in search of their prey, the pot-bellied Pimelia, whose sole defence consists of a strong armour of welded wing-cases.4 But what can such a cuirass avail against the bandit's ruthless pincers?

4 The Pimelia is a wingless Beetle.—Translator's Note.

He is indeed a mighty hunter, this Nimrod of the sea-shore. All black and glossy, like a jet bugle, his body is divided by a very narrow groove at the waist. His weapon of offence consists of a pair of claw-like mandibles of extraordinary vigour. None of our insects equals him in strength of jaw, if we except the Stag-beetle, who is far better armed, or rather decorated, for the antlered mandibles of the inmate of the oak are ornaments of the male's attire, not a panoply of battle.

The brutal Carabid, the eviscerator of the Pimeliæ, knows how strong he is. If I tease him a little on the table, he at once adopts a posture of defence. Well braced upon his short legs, especially the fore-legs, which are toothed like rakes, he dislocates himself in two, so to speak, thanks to the groove that divides him behind the corselet; he proudly raises the fore-part of the body, his wide, heart-shaped thorax and massive head, opening his threatening pincers to their full extent. He is now an awesome sight. More: he has the audacity to rush at the finger which has touched him. Here of a surety is one not easily intimidated. I look twice before I handle him.

I lodge my strangers partly under a wire-gauze cover and partly in glass jars, all supplied with a layer of sand. Each of them without delay digs himself a burrow. The insect bends his head a long way down and, with the points of his mandibles, brought together to form a pick-axe, he hews, digs and excavates with a will. The fore-legs, spread out and armed with hooks, gather the dust and rubbish into a load which is thrust backwards. In this way, a mound rises on the threshold of the burrow. The dwelling grows deeper quickly and by a gentle slope reaches the bottom of the jar.

Checked in the downward direction, the Scarites now digs against the glass wall and continues his work horizontally until he has obtained a length of nearly twelve inches in all.

This arrangement of the gallery, almost the whole of which runs just under the glass, is very useful to me, enabling me to follow the insect in the privacy of its home. If I wish to observe its underground operations, all that I need do is to remove the opaque sheath which I have been careful to put over the jar, in order to spare the creature the annoyance of the light.

When the house is deemed to be long enough, the Scarites returns to the entrance, which he works more carefully than the rest. He makes a funnel of it, a pit with shifting, sloping sides. It is the Ant-lion's crater on a larger scale and constructed in a more rustic fashion. This mouth is continued by an inclined plane, kept free of all rubbish. At the foot of the slope is the vestibule of the horizontal gallery. Here, as a rule, the hunter lurks, motionless, with his pincers half open. He is waiting.

There is a sound overhead. It is a specimen of game which I have just introduced, a Cicada, a luscious morsel. The drowsy trapper at once wakes; he moves his palpi, which quiver with cupidity. Cautiously, step by step, he climbs his inclined plane. He takes a glance outside the funnel. The Cicada is seen.

The Scarites darts out of his pit, runs forward, seizes the Cicada and drags her backwards. The struggle is brief, thanks to the trap of the entrance, which yawns like a funnel to receive even a bulky quarry and contracts into a crumbling precipice that paralyses all resistance. The slope is fatal: who crosses the brink can no longer escape the murderer.

Head first, the Cicada dives into the abyss, down which the spoiler drags her by successive jerks. She is drawn into the low-ceilinged tunnel. Here the wings cease to flutter, for lack of space. She reaches the knacker's cellar, at the end of the corridor. The Scarites now works at her for some time with his pincers, in order to reduce her to complete immobility, fearing lest she should escape; then he returns to the mouth of the charnel-house.

It is not everything to possess plenty of game; the question next arises how to consume it in peace. The door is therefore closed against importunate callers, that is to say, the insect fills the entrance to the tunnel with his mound of rubbish. Having taken this precaution, he goes back again and sits down to his meal. He will not reopen his hiding-place nor remake the pit at the entrance until later, when the Cicada has been digested and hunger makes its reappearance. Let us leave the glutton with his quarry.

The brief morning which I spent with him in his native place did not enable me to watch him at his hunting, on the sands of the beach; but the facts gathered in captivity are enough to tell us all about it. They show us in the Scarites a bold hero who is not to be intimidated by the biggest or strongest adversary.

We have seen him coming up from underground, falling on the passers-by, seizing them at some distance from the burrow and dragging them forcibly into his cut-throat den. The Rose-chafer, the Common Cockchafer are but small deer for him. He dares to attack the Cicada, he dares to dig his hooks into the corpulent Pine-chafer. He is a fearless ruffian, ready for any crime.

Under natural conditions his audacity can be no less. On the contrary, the familiar spots, freedom of movement, unlimited space and his beloved salt air excite the warrior to yet greater feats of daring.

He has dug himself a refuge in the sand, with a wide, crumbling mouth. This is not so that he may, like the Ant-lion, wait at the bottom of his funnel for the passing of a victim which stumbles on the shifting slope and rolls into the pit. The Scarites disdains these petty poachers' methods, these fowlers' snares; he prefers a run across country.

His long trails on the sand tell us of nocturnal rounds in search of big game, often the Pimelia, sometimes the Half-spotted Scarab.5 The find is not consumed on the spot. To enjoy it at his ease, he needs the peaceful darkness of the underground manor; and so the captive, seized by one leg with the pincers, is forcibly dragged along the ground.

5 Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chaps. ii. and vii.—Translator's Note.

If no precautions were taken, the introduction of the victim into the burrow would be impracticable, with a huge quarry offering a desperate resistance. But the entrance to the tunnel is a wide crater, with crumbling walls. However large he be, the captive, tugged from below, enters and tumbles into the pit. The crumbling rubbish immediately buries him and paralyses his movements. The thing is done. The bandit now proceeds to close his door and empty his prey's belly.

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 (2009). The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27868/pg27868-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.