THE STAG-BEETLE

Field, Forest and Farm by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE STAG-BEETLE

CHAPTER XLV. THE STAG-BEETLE

“One of the joys of your time of life, I am sure,” resumed Uncle Paul, as he and his hearers seated themselves in the shade of an old oak tree amid the humming and whirring of insect life all about them, “is the study of the little creatures of field and farm and forest, so interesting in their mode of life, so varied in their forms and colors. You chase the splendid butterfly from flower to flower, you take up the cockchafer and put it on a bed of fresh leaves, with a straw you drive the cricket from its hole. The insect that amuses you can also instruct you. In our modest studies let us now have a little talk on this subject.

“What is this tiny creature with the stout coat-of-mail of chestnut color? Its large head, showing parallel folds that might have been carved by a sculptor’s hand, is armed with two branching nippers which open like a pair of tongs and then close, mangling between their teeth the finger they have seized. Woe to the giddy-pate that lets himself be caught by them! The trap closes tighter and tighter and never lets go.

“But, vigorous as are its mandibles, the insect is not one to be afraid of, provided only you look [229]out for those nippers. For all its threatening aspect, it is at bottom a peaceful creature. Catch it by one leg and it will fly round and round like the June-bug. It is called the stag-beetle, a name that explains itself, for it has branching mandibles resembling a stag’s horns, and it belongs to the family of beetles. Put the two words together and you have ‘stag-beetle.’

“The singular creature has not always been as we see it to-day. In its youth, not later than last year, it had neither its present mandibles nor its six legs nor its chestnut-colored coat-of-mail. In fact, its form had nothing in common with what we now behold. Then it was a big, fat worm, with fine white skin, crawling on legs so small and feeble as hardly to deserve mention.

Stag-beetle

“The whole animal consisted of little more than a crawling stomach unprovided with any protection. The head alone was fortified with a substantial skull of horn, and it also bore, one on the right side of the mouth, the other on the left, two short but strong teeth adapted to cutting in pieces the wood of the oak, its sole nourishment.

“Such a worm, entirely naked, evidently cannot live in the open air, where the thousand little roughnesses of the ground would be continually wounding its delicate skin. It must have a safe shelter that it need not leave until it has become the well-armored insect we now see. The grub of the stag-beetle does [230]in fact live inside the oak, which affords it at once food and lodging. There, in the depths of the tree-trunk, is its inviolable retreat.

“With its two teeth, as hard and sharp as a carpenter’s tool, it cuts away, patiently, bit by bit, the fresh wood imbued with sap. Each fragment thus detached is a mouthful for the worm’s nourishment; but as it is by no means a rich diet there must be a good deal of it to furnish enough nutriment. Therefore the gnawing goes on without cessation, in all directions, with a corresponding enlargement of the domicile, which soon becomes a labyrinth of galleries that go up and down and cross one another, penetrate farther into the trunk or approach the surface, at the pleasure of the occupant, whose choice is determined by its taste for morsels lying in this or that direction.

“For three or four years this is the worm’s mode of life. To make itself big and fat is its sole business, and to this it devotes itself with vigor. I leave you to imagine what must become of an oak tree worked by a dozen of these gnawing creatures. Under the bark, which is almost intact, the trunk is one vast wound, perforated with galleries that are themselves littered with wormhole dust, and oozing with a brown juice that smells like a tannery. Unless the forester applies a remedy, and that speedily, the enormous oak will be ruined. Leaving this care to his charge, let us go on with our story.

“When it has become big enough and fat enough, after at least three years of continual feasting, the [231]worm prepares to change its form. Near the surface, that its future exit may be the easier, the little creature hollows out a sufficiently large oval chamber and lines it with a sort of wadding made of the finest fibers of the wood. Thus the tender flesh of the rejuvenated insect will be protected from all rude outer contact.

“These precautions taken, the worm undergoes its transfiguration: it splits open all down the back, strips off its skin, throws it away like a discarded garment, and is born a second time, as one might say, but under a totally different form. It is no longer a worm—far from it—but it is not yet a stag-beetle, although the outlines of the latter are already discernible.

“The creature is quite motionless, as if dead. The legs, neatly folded over the stomach, are as transparent as crystals; the nippers are pressed close to the breast; the wings, not yet expanded, have the appearance of a short scarf encircling the flanks; and the whole is swathed in swaddling-clothes finer in texture than an onion skin. The entire organism is wrapped in a repose so profound that one might think all life extinct. It is white or crystalline in appearance, and so tender that a mere nothing will wound it. The coarse worm of the beginning has been succeeded by this most delicate of creatures.

“Out of the material amassed by the wood-gnawer’s voracious appetite there is created an entirely new being. The flesh, at first nearly fluid, slowly [232]acquires consistency; the skin hardens, assumes a chestnut hue, takes on the firmness of horn; in fact, when the warm season returns again the insect wakes up from that deep sleep, not of death, but nevertheless very much like it. The creature moves, tears apart the swathing bands under which its rebirth has taken place, strips off these wrappings, and here at last we have the insect in its full perfection. Behold the stag-beetle!

“It comes out from its native oak, spreads its wings in flight under cover of the foliage, and settles down, now on this tree, now on that, in the rays of the sun. The freedom of the open air and the enjoyment of the light of day constitute its supreme felicity for which it has been preparing during the three or four years of constant toil in the dark galleries of an old oak.

“Thenceforth it grows no larger. Just as it was on emerging from its cell, so it will remain to the end, without the least increase either in weight or in bulk. Thus it leads a very staid existence. In its grub state the famished creature gnawed wood night and day; its life was a perpetual digestion. Now, on the contrary, all that it needs in the way of sustenance is an occasional sip of the sweetened sap oozing from the bark of the tree.

“But its days of idle delight are numbered; it has scarcely a couple of months to spend joyously among the oak trees. Then it lays its eggs, one by one, in the crevices of tree-trunks, to propagate its kind; and, that done, it very soon dies. It has played its [233]part. From those eggs will come forth worms which will patiently work their way into the wood, hollow out galleries there in their turn, and begin all over again the very sort of existence led by their fore-fathers.

“The greater number of insects have the same life-history as the stag-beetle: they pass through different stages before taking on their final form. All without exception, the smallest as well as the largest, come from eggs deposited by the mother in chosen places where the needed nourishment, so variable in different species, is easy to find.

“From the egg emerges, not the finished insect with all its distinctive traits, but a provisional creature bearing, very often, no resemblance to the parent or to the matured offspring of that parent. This initial form we called a worm in speaking of the stag-beetle, and the name is in that instance appropriate; but in a multitude of cases it would be incorrect, having no agreement with the creature’s appearance. We then call it a larva.

“The larva is therefore the insect under the form it presents on emerging from the egg. Its continuance in this form is longer than in that of the finally perfected creature. The larva of the stag-beetle remains a larva for three or four years, whereas the beetle itself lives but a couple of months. The sole occupation of this grub is eating, continual eating, that it may grow fat and store up supplies enough to carry it through its subsequent transformations.

“Having attained sufficient size, the larva constructs [234]a retreat for itself, hollows out a little cell, and spins a cocoon where in perfect quiet the delicate task of transformation will be undertaken. It strips off its skin and becomes an inert, formative body known as a nymph.

“Finally, the nymph, having arrived at the right degree of maturity, casts off its wrappings and reveals itself as transformed into a perfect insect. It lays its eggs, and the same succession of changes is again repeated. The egg, the larva, the nymph, the perfect insect—there you have the four stages of the insect’s life. These changes of form are called metamorphoses.”

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